Training Your Children in Truth

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to give us an urgent reminder to be on guard against sexual temptation.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: No matter how old you are, no matter how much you know, no matter how much exposure you've had to the ways of God, you are never past sinning morally. You are not invincible; I am not invincible. The moment that we start to think that we are, we are in the gravest of danger.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest, for August 6, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Yesterday Nancy began a series on Proverbs 31. If you missed it, you can go to ReviveOurHearts.com or to the Revive Our Hearts app to find it. Let’s listen as Nancy continues.

Nancy: What are the very most important things that you want your children to remember? When they’re grown, when they’re gone from your home, what do you want them to remember? What do you want to be a part of their lifestyle as an adult man or woman?

We’re looking at Proverbs chapter 31, this week. Today we’re still in the very first paragraph where we’re reading about the instruction that a mother gave to her son. Her son was going to be the king, King Lemuel. And when he became an adult, he would go on to teach others the things that his mother had taught him when he was still a young prince.

We think that perhaps this king was King Solomon. If so, then his mother would have been Bathsheba. She had learned some things the hard way as a result of her illicit relationship with King David, Solomon’s father. There were some things she was very concerned to pass on to her son, the young prince, to prepare him to be a good king.

So as we come today to verse 3, we see this woman is going to give her son some cautions and some counsel in verses 3–9. We’ll just look at the first part of that today. Just by way of overview—cautions and counsel—she’s going to warn him about things like moral impurity and what that can do to a king.

She’s going to warn him about being intemperate and about the need for self-control and sobriety. She’s going to warn him against over-indulgence. Then she’s going to give him some counsel about the importance of being a king, of being compassionate and executing justice.

Beginning in verse 10, she’s going to give him a lot of counsel about choosing a wife, about the qualities to look for in this life partner, and the importance of choosing a partner who will be a blessing and an asset to him through all of his life. So she’s going to give him counsel and cautions, and it’s going to be very important that he heed this wisdom.

Let me just say parenthetically here, by way of reminder. Though we are now adults, how important it is for us to continue to heed the counsel, the cautions, the instructions that we received from parents. Your parents may or may not have been believers, but chances are that your parents taught you some important things about life.

Wouldn't you agree that many of the ways that we've gotten ourselves in trouble as adults are because we didn't listen to things that we were taught as young people. Heed the counsel of godly parents, of teachers, and of pastors, because if we violate godly counsel, we will not be an exception to God’s rule. We will experience consequences that will be highly destructive.

That’s what we see here in verse 3 where this mother says to her son and then, as an adult, he’s telling what it was that she taught him. She said to him in verse 3:

Do not give your strength to women,
nor your ways to that which destroys kings.

Now if you would think about the first thing you’d want to have recorded about what you taught your sons, would this be one of the first things? She says to her son—she taught him as a young prince—number one: “Don’t give your strength to women, nor your ways to that which destroys kings.”

This is a warning against, I think, two things. First, against losing his masculinity, and secondly, against moral impurity. Two things she’s cautioning him about here. Don’t give your strength to women.

Now the word "strength" here, interestingly, is the same word in the original language that is translated “virtuous” or “excellent” when we get to verse 10. Who can find a virtuous woman or wife, an excellent woman, a virtuous woman? She’s saying here . . . That’s the same word that could be translated in that verse strength.

We’ll come to that when we come to verse 10, but she’s saying here don’t give your strength—your manly strength—that which is distinctively your virtue as a man. Don’t lose it. Don’t give it up.

You see, God made men and women different. But God gave to men a distinctive type of strength and virtue. God gave to women—as we’ll see when we get to the latter part of this chapter—a distinctive kind of feminine strength and virtue. This verse, I think, is saying in essence, "Men, don’t give up your distinctively masculine strength or virtue."

When we get to verse 10 and the rest of the chapter, the message will be, "Women, don’t give up your distinctively feminine strength or virtue." See, our culture has today such a distorted sense of the differences between men and women. We’ve twisted the God-created differences, and now we have men acting like women and women acting like men.

So what do we end up with? Confusion. Chaos. The battle of the sexes. Competition. When what we should have . . . If men were keeping their masculine strength and women were keeping their distinctively feminine strength, what we would have is a beautiful rhythm, a harmony, a oneness, a complementarity. “Be a man” is what she’s telling her son.

Then she’s going to tell him, “Look for a wife who is a woman, a distinctively feminine woman.” So she warns him against the loss of manliness and then against adultery and immorality. She says it will debilitate your mind and your body. It will destroy you. Don’t give your ways to that which destroys kings.

You see, if this woman was Bathsheba and the son was Solomon, then this woman knew very well how sexual immorality can destroy even kings and leaders. She knew there were no exceptions to God's rules. She knew what David's immorality had done that was destructive in his life and his family and in her marriage. She lost a husband as a result of another man's adultery and immorality.

 

Perhaps she was thinking of another leader: Samson, who not too many years earlier was one of the judges of Israel who had given his strength to women. He had given himself to that which destroys kings. It was a man who had so much going for him, but he lost the power and presence of God in his life because he couldn't handle women.  He gave into moral temptation. This woman knew and she warned her son that violating God’s standards of moral purity will render you powerless. It will destroy you. It will make you useless.

Moral impurity, she’s telling her son . . . You need to be telling your sons and your daughters. We need to be reminding ourselves that moral impurity, sexual impurity will destroy:

• Your relationship with God.
• It will destroy your relationship with your mate, with your children, with other family members.
• It will destroy your testimony as a Christian.
• It will destroy your future.
• It will destroy your sensitivity.
• It will destroy your reason. People who give in to moral impurity often become irrational.
• It will destroy your capacity for joy.
• It will destroy your conscience.
• It will destroy even kings.

No matter how how high up in life you are, no matter your position, if you give into moral impurity, it will be destructive.

She’s saying no one is invincible. Just because you’re the king and you have all this power and you have all this authority, you are not invincible. You’re not past sinning in this way. You're not past giving into moral temptation.

I'm so thankful that my parents from the time we were little emphasized the importance of moral purity, of moral fidelity, of fidelity in marriage, of faithfulness to God prior to marriage in terms of morality and sexual relationships. What a protection those cautions and that training has been for me.

One of the things I can really picture learning from my parents is: no matter how old you are, no matter how much you know, no matter how much exposure you've had to the ways of God, you are never past sinning morally. You are not invincible. I am not invincible. The moment we start to think that we are, we are in the gravest of danger. So she warns her son and then her son puts these words in the Holy Scripture to warn us. It’s a warning for both men and women.

Now if this son was Solomon, then he apparently did keep his mother’s counsel early in his life, but later on he wandered from this counsel. He gave up his distinctive manliness to women. He gave up his distinctive strength as a man of God and he gave himself morally to other women. First Kings 11 tells us that his wives turned away his heart from God.

He started out with a heart for God. You need to remind your children and we need to be reminded, you can start out with a heart for God, but you can end up shipwrecked if you do not trust in God to preserve and maintain you in the area of your morals. Immorality will turn your heart from God.

Have you warned your children, your sons, your daughters about the importance of moral purity and the destructiveness of sexual activity outside of marriage? Have you been clear with them? Have you been specific? Don’t wait for the sex ed program in your kids’ school to teach them what’s right and what’s wrong. God gave you that responsibility to teach your children. If you’re not teaching them, the world is teaching them a whole different way of thinking.

Are you letting God guard your own heart? Or is it possible that even now you’re playing with fire? You’re involved emotionally on the computer, at work, even at church in a relationship that has the makings of something that’s immoral. Can I just say to you, “Get out!” Don’t stop to think about it, just get out.

Be ruthless in dealing with this whole area of sexual purity. 

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, reminding us to be on guard to protect the good gift of sexuality God has given us. Nancy’s been in Proverbs 31 in a series called “To be Praised: The Woman Who Fears the Lord.” This is a classic message from Nancy that we are revisiting. Now the truth of God’s word is timeless. But cultures are constantly changing. I want to remind you of something we heard Nancy say a few minutes ago.

Nancy: Our culture has such a distorted sense of the differences between men and women. We've twisted the God-created differences. Now we have men acting like women and women acting like men.

Dannah: A lot has changed since we first aired this message on Revive Our Hearts. Now we need to address some other topics. Like is there such a thing as a man? Is there such a thing as a woman? Can someone be gender fluid or non-binary? We’re going to hear from a few different women who will address these questions with compassion, wisdom, and biblical truth.

Juli: Our sexual chaos begins with a wrong perspective of who God is, a disfunction in our worship.

 

Dannah: This is Dr. Juli Slattery, author of Rethinking Sexuality.

There are a lot of Christian who, without realizing it, have really begun to buy into the fact that God exists to serve me—to make me happy, to please me, to follow my desires. Instead of, I was created to serve and know God. That's the fundamental issue underneath of all this.

Dannah: Laura Perry Smalts experienced that kind of frustration with God. As a teenager she felt emotional and physical pain and attributed a lot of it to God making her a young woman.

Laura: I began to turn away from the Lord. I was angry at God. I didn't believe God that His design of me was good. I thought I knew better than God. When I was fifteen I still had never heard the word "transgender." I didn't know there was anything I could do about me being female. But I was so angry at God that I told Him that I would never serve Him again. I began to run away from the faith. I wanted to be the opposite of a Christian, whatever that was. I wanted to sin as much as possible. I wanted to do everything that I had been told not to do. I was so angry, and I was so wounded.

I pursued that road and got deeper and deeper into sexual sin. I thought that would bring me happiness and fulfillment. I thought that would help me get the worth and value that I was seeking. But the reality was: the more that I gave away to men, the more I began to feel less and less valued.

I was in this horrible relationship with this alcoholic. Finally, one day I thought, The reason this never worked out, the reason I'm never happy is because I was supposed to be the man. If I was the man, I would know how to treat a woman. I began to shift in my thinking. I lived in a fantasy world for several months. And it just began to drive me crazy. I was consumed with this idea that I had become a man.

Juli: The narrative of this world is that your sexuality is all about your personal expression, about your identity. So to be sexually mature, you've got to experiment; you've got to seek your own heart, what you want, who you are, what you desire. Then you form your sexual behavior around what's inside of you.

Laura: As I began to pursue that road I began to take the hormones, my voice began to get lower, and I began to grow facial hair. Then I had my name legally changed. I was with a partner who was also living as transgender. He was a man living as a woman. So, we had that mutual comfort for one another in this journey.

Juli: The world would say, “The only rules around sexuality are, really, not to get in the way of anyone else’s sexual expression, because that’s cruel, to not let them be free in their own expression.” And then, “Don’t hurt somebody else.”

Laura: But this journey was a lot harder than anyone had told us. We used to say we wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemy, because even in the early years, as much as it was exciting, it was also mentally very, very difficult, because I was trying to make it real. 

I thought I could reinvent my life. So as began to pursue that, I had my name legally changed, and in 2009 I went to San Francisco and had an outpatient double mastectomy.

I woke up from my surgery, and I forgot God. I was so happy with the results. I was on my merry way, but God didn’t forget, and God really began to pursue me.

After my chest surgery, I realized that the surgery really hadn’t made me a man. I began to get very, very depressed, even though I liked the physical results. A couple years later I thought, It’s because I still have all the female organs. Once I have all the female organs removed, then it will be real. So, I had all the female organs removed, and that still didn’t make it real.

But as I started looking into the final surgeries, I was devastated. No one had ever told me how bad these surgeries are. If anyone is out there listening who is even considering this, please, these surgeries are so bad! There are so many complications, there are so many horrific things that have happened. On top of that, they’re never real. I realized how fake it was going to be. 

God had been pursuing me during this time. He ended up actually using my mom. I was working on a website for her, for her Bible study. God just began to reveal Himself to me through His Word. As I began to get more and more interested in the Word, I finally said one day, “Mom, what’s happened to me? Six months ago I was 180 degrees from where I am now.” I said, “All I want is to hear the Word of God. I have never wanted that in my whole life!

Dannah: In Romans 1 we’re reminded that everyone looks at nature and knows deep down that there must be a Creator. Mary Kassian applies that truth to gender and sexuality.

Mary Kassian: Nature teaches us even to look at the birds and the bees and the animals and to see that there’s a way that they behave in terms of what they do that falls in line with them being created as a female animal or as a male animal.

Laura: That began to free me. I realized then that no matter what I did, no matter who I said I was, no matter what I claimed to be, no matter how I looked, I was never going to be anyone other than who God had created me to be.

Dannah: Juli Slattery says all of us need the church to come alongside us in our sexual brokenness.

Juli: Discipleship trains you how to think about all sexual issues. It gives you a framework. Discipleship is very relational. 

Laura: I went back to this church that I said I would never go back to. I was never going to step foot in the door. As I walked in, they embraced me. I can’t tell you. I told God He was going to have to help me love my name again, and I had 300 people that morning call me Laura. 

Juli: You’re walking out, “How do I follow Jesus related to my sexuality? What does it look like, whether I’m an eighteen-year-old young man or a forty-five-year-old married woman, someone struggling with same-sex desires, someone addicted to pornography, someone who has had sexual abuse in your past?” Where does Jesus intersect with the sexual questions and struggles that we have? Because if the gospel is true, if Jesus is who He claimed to be, He is Lord of all, not just certain parts of our lives.

As I dig into the Scripture, I believe that sexuality is important because it is a profound metaphor that’s a tangible way that teaches us about God’s covenant love!

Covenant love is so different from what we normally think of as “love.” It’s not primarily based on a feeling, although it does have passion involved. It’s a love based on a promise—even in Scripture, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5). And so, our marriage vows reflect that: “Until death do us part.”

There’s a permanence; there’s a choice to it. “I’m moving toward you. I’m choosing to love you no matter what, based on a promise of My Word.” And so, that’s the most profound thing that God can communicate to us, is that He’s a God that pursues us with a covenant love! It’s not based on our beauty, not based on what we’ve done, but because He is love.

Mary: So, male and female and all the rest of creation tell us something about God. They reveal something about the character of God: that God’s justice and God’s greatness and God’s power and God’s amazing capacity to shape and create the world how He sees fit.

Juli: Like in church, when we do certain physical things to remember spiritual truths, sexual intimacy between a husband and wife is God saying, “I want you to do something physical that’s very vulnerable, that’s very intimate, that is very passionate, to remember, to remind yourself, of the covenant promise you’ve made with your whole life!”

Mary: The reason that history opened with a story of a male and a female and a marriage is because history is going to close with a story of a male and a female and a marriage. 

Who’s the male? Jesus Christ.

Who’s the female? The Church.

What’s the marriage? It’s what we’re going to see in eternity in heaven at the union of Christ and His Bride.

Laura: I’m so grateful to our Savior, because today I stand before you, and not only have I thought I was going to be miserable the rest of my life. Not only have I embraced my femininity, I love being a woman for the first time in my life! (applause)

Dannah: We’ve just heard from Mary Kassian, Juli Slattery, and Laura Perry Smalts. You can listen to a lot more biblical insight from all of them when you visit our website, ReviveOurHearts.com.

And right now we’re offering a specific resource to help you learn to delight in God’s design for women. With your gift of any amount this month, we’d love to send you a copy of Biblical Portrait of Womanhood: Discovering and Living Out God’s Plan for Our Lives by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. 

Your support helps women thrive in Christ as they live out God’s design. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com and request your resources today, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we’re going to look at some practical advice Proverbs chapter 31 offers when it comes to self-control, specifically related to alcohol. I hope you’ll be back as Nancy continues this series on Revive Our Hearts.

Nancy: You better learn to rule yourself here and now if you are ever going to rule others effectively. Moms, you will never be able to govern your children effectively if you can't govern your own passions. You won't be able to teach your children sobriety, temperance, and self-control if you're not a model of sobriety and temperance and self-control.

Dannah: I hope you'll be back as Nancy continues this series on Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the NKJV unless otherwise noted.

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