Episode Transcript
Proverbs 11 chapter 22, the title of the message tonight is "Living in a Swine Snout."
Living in a Swine Snout.
Relationships can sometimes be very difficult to understand and near impossible to endure.
A lot of y'all, a lot of us have been involved in relationships like that in our lifetimes.
In our taxonite it sheds some much needed light from God's Word on the relationships that many people get into.
Proverbs 11, 22 says, "As a jewel of gold in a swine snout."
So in our verse tonight, the Lord is teaching us about relationships.
Now you may think, "Well, what does a jewel of gold in a swine snout have to do with relationships?"
Well, to illustrate the particular message that God has for us in this verse, the Holy Spirit is drawing our attention between the relationship between a jewel of gold and a swine snout.
A pig's nose.
How many of you would go to a jewelry store?
Well, we could probably stop right there and eliminate me and Brother Shepherd right there.
I never go to jewelry stores and neither does he.
Y'all want a little trade secret?
Y'all want to know a little personal secret about me?
You know where I got my wife's wedding ring?
Huh?
You got it.
Fonshot.
You want to know where my wife got my wedding ring?
You got it.
Fonshot.
Two different ponchops, by the way.
Yeah, what a way to go, man.
I'm all about cheap.
But how many of y'all would actually go to a jewelry store and purchase a beautiful solid gold ring and then take that beautiful solid gold ring to a smelly hog farm and put it inside some pig's nose?
Nobody would.
Nobody in their right mind would do that.
Nevertheless, the Lord is giving us a scenario tonight in which a ring of gold is, in fact, in a hog snout.
What kind of relationship does a jewel of gold have with a swine snout?
I just went out and got the mail.
Mail and a mailbox belong together.
A key and an ignition belong together.
A mother and a child belong together.
A doctor and a patient belong together.
A husband and a wife belong together.
But a ring of gold and a pig's snout, they don't belong together.
They both exist, but they don't belong together.
So this verse tonight, understand, is talking to us about relationships that are, but should have never been.
Repeat that again.
This verse tonight is talking to us about relationships that are, but should have never been.
How many of you have known someone, whether yourself or someone else, who has been in a relationship with someone that should have never existed?
It's pretty much everybody here.
We've all known or experienced relationships like that, and that's why God is so kind and so gracious and wise to address those kinds of relationships in our text tonight.
The fact that God addresses relationships like that of a jewel of gold in a hog snout shows us that God acknowledges that relationships like this do exist.
Relationships that are, but should have never been exist when we are dealing with fallen people in a fallen world.
Of course, the Bible wasn't written for gold.
The Bible wasn't written for pigs.
The Bible was written for people.
So this verse has a message for people tonight.
People who were or people who are currently in a relationship that is, but should have never been.
Solomon says, "As a jewel of gold in a hog snout loop back in your text, so is a fair woman, which is without discretion."
Now the word fair here means beautiful.
So the Bible is comparing a beautiful woman to a jewel of gold, or a gold ring, if you were to look at the Hebrew specifically.
So a beautiful woman to a gold ring.
When we think about a gold ring, we're learning attributes about a woman.
So there are two things that we need to recognize tonight about a gold ring.
First, it's beautiful.
Second, it's valuable.
A gold ring is beautiful, and a gold ring is valuable.
Ladies, here is a kingdom truth for you tonight.
God made you beautiful, and God made you valuable.
You getting that, ladies?
God made you beautiful.
And God made you valuable.
God created you, ladies, as a jewel of gold.
Like a gold ring, you are beautiful, and you are valuable.
But when a woman fails to recognize her true beauty and her true value, she can easily find herself in a swine snout.
She can find herself in a relationship with a man that she should not be in.
You see, the fair woman who winds up in a swine snout is a woman who is, the Bible says, without discretion.
That's how she got there in the swine snout.
Let's think about the jewel of gold for a moment so we can understand what Solomon is saying.
A gold ring, once again, has beauty and value.
And something that has beauty and value needs two things.
If you have beauty and you have value...
Now, when my wife got me my very luxurious pawn shop ring here, it never comes off my fingers when I lift weights, or use it for a sermon example.
When she got this from me, did you know she sent me a photo of it first?
See if I liked it.
I liked it.
In fact, she gave me a few to choose from.
And I picked this one.
And I took her to the pawn shop, a very high-end pawn shop, Miss Ann, very high-end.
And I took her to two or three pawn shops, and I let her choose which ring she wanted.
I'm not one of these guys that surprises someone.
If I want to spend money, I want them to like it.
Not pretend like it.
And then think down inside, "I don't want that."
Value and beauty.
If something has beauty, God made it to be admired.
If something has value, then it not only needs to be admired, it needs to be what?
Treasured.
So if God made you, ladies, as a gold ring, if he made you beautiful and valuable, then you need a man who admires you and who treasures you.
Now what about a pig?
Do you know why that gold ring has no business in the hog snout?
Because the pig has no ability to recognize beauty.
Would you all agree with that?
You take that gold ring and put it in front of a hog snout, that hog may smell of it, but only because he's hoping it's something he can eat.
He's not going to look at that and go, "Rrrr, rrrr," and just think, "Oh, this little tail wiggling thing, how pretty that is."
He's not going to.
That hog is not going to recognize the beauty of that ring.
He's not going to recognize the value of that ring.
He's going to eat his slop and he's going to get filth all over that ring.
It won't matter to him at all.
He has no capacity to admire or to treasure the gold jewel.
So a woman without discretion is a woman who doesn't understand, first of all, her beauty, and she doesn't understand her worth because if she did, then she would want a man who admired that beauty and who treasured that value, that worth, that she has.
Not perceiving, she enters into relationships that she should never be in.
I've seen some beautiful women in relationships with some very ugly men before.
Have you all?
I mean ugly, just ugly men.
But physical beauty is, even though it's put in here, that's not primarily what's important to God.
What's important to God in a relationship is spiritual beauty.
Like light shining from a lamp, spiritual beauty radiates from the inside out.
Here's the kingdom truth for you tonight.
Ladies, and this is speaking to a lady here primarily, but everything we're looking at tonight applies to men.
Every single thing that we're talking about with a woman applies to a man.
A man has a certain amount of beauty and a certain amount of value, even though the beauty's different.
A man also needs to be admired and he needs to be treasured just in a different way than a woman.
He needs to be admired for the characteristics that God has given him as a man created in God's image.
He needs to be treasured as that person of value, someone who represents God here on earth in his family, in his occupation, in the role that God has given him.
Here's the kingdom truth.
Your true beauty and value comes from God.
So only a man of God can admire you and treasure you in your walk with God.
Repeat that again.
Your true beauty and value comes from God.
So only a man of God could admire you and treasure you in your walk with God.
And again, this goes for men too.
Your true beauty and value comes from God.
I'll tell you the truth.
My wife just keeps getting older and older.
Her hair gets grayer and grayer.
And mine is getting grayer and grayer.
And I am not the incredible athlete and physical specimen I was when my wife first met me.
I am getting older.
And I wasn't a specimen, but I'm sure less of what I was, whatever I was, when my wife married me.
But I'll tell you this about my wife.
The older and older my wife gets, the more beautiful.
And the more beautiful she gets to me.
And that's the truth.
She really does.
Physical beauty fades, but spiritual beauty keeps getting better and better as the days go by.
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4, 16, "For which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day."
Before my wife and I ever met in person, we'd already fallen in love with each other, learning about who we were on the inside.
And what makes my wife so beautiful to me is that I see God shining out of her.
And I see that beauty of her inward man, and that beauty of her inward man that I love and that I admire and that I treasure, that's renewed each and every day.
It's always fresh.
And as she grows in grace, then her beauty becomes brighter and brighter.
Again, our outward man perishes, but our inward man is renewed day by day.
Here's a kingdom truth for you.
Especially to you young ladies, or to you older widows or divorcees who are qualified to remarry.
If you date the inward man, then you'll never divorce the outward man.
If you date the inward man, then you'll never divorce the outward man.
Does that make sense?
You date for the right reasons, for the godly reasons, you fall in love with the inside of that person, you'll never divorce the outside of that person.
That person become maim, that woman can grow a beard better than you can.
But the inside of her will always emanate the true beauty of God, and the Holy Spirit in you will love the Holy Spirit in her.
And the Holy Spirit in you will always admire and treasure the person you married.
But here's the thing about a pig and a piece of gold.
Once again, the pig has no ability to discern the beauty or value of the gold of that ring.
They're simple-minded creatures.
They eat and they get dirty.
That's all they care about.
So the pig doesn't discern the gold for what it is, and the gold doesn't discern the pig for what it is.
And that's how they get into the relationship together.
And unfortunately, once they're attached, they're attached.
And sometimes when you have two young people, especially, neither one of them are saved or maybe one's saved and they're not seeking the Lord, they're not following God's will at that time, you can have two people join up together in marriage, and then later in life, one of those two people can become a born-again Christian.
And now you've got a ring of gold and a hogsnap.
And if that hogsnap never turns into another ring of gold, another beautiful ring of gold or silver and gold, you know what's going to happen?
That ring of gold is going to recognize its beauty, it's going to recognize its value, and it's going to recognize that it is bound to someone who does not.
And they're going to become frustrated, and they're going to try to get their husband or their wife to appreciate them for what they are, and they're not going to have that capacity.
Sadly, there are many Christian men and women because of some foolish decision they made when they weren't seeking the wisdom of God, or again, when they were lost, they turned to a relationship with a swine instead of a saint.
And the Christian wants to be admired, the Christian wants to be appreciated so badly by their spouse, but that spouse has no capacity to see the ring of gold for what it is.
I've known Christian women who were married to ungodly men, and those ungodly men, being the swine that they were, loved to wallow in the mire.
And you know what happened?
Well, those ungodly men dragged just like you would if you have a ring of gold in the swine snout.
Guess what's going to happen to that ring of gold?
It's going to get drugged through the mud.
You can't help but getting drugged through the mud when you're bound inside a swine snout.
It's sad because those poor Christian women, they get dragged through the filth, and the men become unpleased with their wives when they can't make them trashy like the women they see in their pornographic videos.
They become unpleased with their wives.
And so they want their wives to become trashy like those women.
And when they want, they become frustrated.
They put blame on the woman, the ring of gold, because the woman, the ring of gold, won't turn into hog slop for them.
They'll start gaslighting them, making them feel guilty for being who and what they are, who and what they are in Christ.
And ladies, when men try to make whorish women trashy women out of their wives, it's because they love to wallow in the mire.
And if you're in the swine snout, you need to understand that apart from the grace of God, as long as your husband and men, again, the same thing can happen with the woman, as long as your spouse is a swine, apart from the grace of God, their once-born nature will never, ever understand your twice-born nature.
It's just not possible.
You can clean your spouse up just like a pig.
But you know what the Apostle Peter says about pigs?
Yep, you get them cleaned up.
The hog that was washed returns to his wallow in the mire.
There's been a lot of ladies who try to be patient with their unbelieving husbands, and their unbelieving husband will have a revival.
The unbelieving husband will come to church.
The unbelieving husband will make promises to the wife after he's cheated on her, after he's done something else.
And what's he doing?
The hog got washed up on the outside, but he's still a hog on the inside.
And after a while that will play out, then the hog will go right back to the mire, and the wife will start thinking, "What have I done wrong?"
Well, you haven't done anything wrong, other than getting the relationship to begin with, and now you can't do anything about that.
You're clipped to the hog snout.
And so you're just going to have to understand that you've made that decision, you've entered in that relationship, and you only leave that relationship if you can do so biblically.
If you can do so biblically, then exercise the grace of God and get out of the hogs now.
But if you can't, you've got to honor your commitment, you've got to keep your vow, and you pray that your hog will be redeemed and become a jewel of gold along with you, someone who can appreciate you.
And you know, sometimes that happens too, and the Bible talks about that too.
Praise God, that can happen too.
But you can clean your spouse up, you can dress your spouse up, you can take them to church, but until he or she is born again, they will never see the value of your gold.
So just understand that.
The Bible says in Matthew 7, verse 6, and this applies to relationships too, the Bible says in Matthew 7, 6, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."
You can have a spouse that despises your walk with God, that hates it.
And as much as you want to share it with them, you will not be able to share it with them.
Anymore than Adam could have shared his walk with God with all of the animals that he looked for, and among all those animals there was not found a helper that was suitable for him.
And you get a swine, and what's going to happen?
They're not suitable either.
But there you are.
If you've ever lived in a swine snout, then you know exactly what I'm talking about tonight.
It's miserable.
You know exactly what the Bible is saying here.
It's miserable being unequally yoked together with unbelievers, but it is a situation that believers often find themselves in due to their indiscretion.
If you're someone you know is in that situation tonight, the Bible says you should love your lost spouse.
Don't seek to leave them.
That should never be a desire.
And I know that frustration can bring that desire.
I understand that.
You should never seek to leave someone that you have married.
You should pray for that person.
You should love that person, and ask God to save that person until God and his providence, through the Scriptures, separate you through redemption or through death.
But if your spouse rejects you, if that hog rejects you, if that hog gets tired of that ring in his nose, and he's sick of that ring in his nose, then this verse tonight will help you understand that your lost husband or your lost wife is not rejecting you because of your lack of beauty and value, but because they lack the ability to perceive it.
Christians get in this all the time when they're in these relationships like this.
They become so frustrated.
They think, "What is wrong with me?"
And they're trying to fix themselves and better themselves and make themselves pleasing to their spouse, and all those things are great to do.
But you, in your twice-born nature, trying to please Jesus, that is not attractive to a once-born person trying to wallow in the mire.
Don't let a swine snout cause you to not recognize your beauty and your value if you're a child of God.
You do everything that Bible tells you to do.
Don't disregard what the Bible says and says, "Well, my husband needs to love me just like I am."
No, you do what the Bible says.
You do everything you should do to make yourself attractive to your husband biblically, attractive to your wife biblically, invaluable in your husband and wife's eyes biblically and beautiful if you can help it, biblically.
But once you've done what the Scripture says, don't let that once-born person make you second-guess your twice-born beauty and value.
That's why it's so important for precious metals to marry one another.
Silver and gold, they go well together, but swine and gold do not.
Stay out of the hog snout.
Only precious metals can make precious marriages.
Well, that will go ahead and close tonight.
Father, we thank you so much for everything you've done.
We thank you for the grace, the wisdom that you give us in your Scripture.
We thank you for taking obscure verses like this, Lord, and sticking them out there in front of our eyes to make us face the obvious Lord of what happens today and make us understand it.
There's a fair woman, so is a, without discretion, so is a jewel of gold and a hog snout.
Lord, I pray first of all, you'll make us all people who are filled with your Spirit, who have discretion, who have the wisdom and grace of God.
In having that, Lord, I pray, Father, that we'll not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
I pray, Father, Lord, that we'll be wisest, serpents, and harmless as doves.
And anyone listening tonight who is in a relationship, like what your word described tonight, I pray for your grace in their lives, your strength in their lives, with all the pain that they suffer, with all the stress that they endure, with all the depression, Father, that they wrestle with day and night.
And, Lord, they may be bound to a hog snout, but it's God who makes the gold.
And, Father, one day, when you redeem all of the saved, the twice-born people from this world, they'll also be redeemed from the hog snout.
And, Lord, ultimately, they may be bound to a swine on earth, for they're bound, Father, to a heavenly husband in the Church of Jesus Christ.
In His name we pray, and we thank you, Father, for that exceeding great hope for all who listen tonight.
It's in His name we pray, thank you, Father, most of all, that we are bound to Him.
In His name we pray.
Amen.
