The Bible Study Podcast, episode 493. Today, the Bible Study podcast concludes the study of the book of Proverbs.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We're concluding the book of Proverbs today,

so I have a great sense of completion, satisfaction, and of course panic because I have

absolutely no idea what we're going to do next. If you have some ideas, send me emails,

send them quick, because I need to decide that right away. From the time you hear this,

I'll have about two days to

decide what to do next. But first, let's finish up Proverbs with Proverbs 31. First, the

sayings of Lemuel. And it goes like this. The sayings of Lemuel, an inspired utterance, his mother taught him.

Listen, my son, listen, son of my womb. Listen my son to the answer to my prayers.

Do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings.

We're not trying to say that Lemuel is a mother's boy, but remember that one of the themes here in

Proverbs is the learning from our parents, the honoring of our parents. And so these are things

that he learned from his parents, as we should hopefully learn from our parents. And it sounds

like he is passing on this wisdom to his son. And one of the things he's saying is don't spend your

strength in women, your vigor on those who ruin kings. Obviously, those who ruin kings being

women. This is obviously coming from a very specific point of view. But I think what it's saying

can be extended for those of us who are not kings and who don't live in that situation.

Remember all of the verses that talk about being very, very careful about who you marry,

and I think those verses are as apt today as they were then, obviously doubly so if you're a king,

or someone who, someone might want to marry

for reasons other than they're just madly in love with you, but they might be attracted to

what you have or the power that you have. And a lot of people are going to be attracted to us

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