Welcome And The Big Question

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All right, welcome back. This week we're going to be talking about Proverbs eleven twenty two, and I'm going to title this one Can I isn't the question? It's about beauty, discretion, and wisdom's real question. Now remember last week we were with verses twenty and twenty one how God delights in the direction of your walk, wobble included. Not a flawless record, a heart pointed toward him. This week Solomon zooms in on one of the places our feet wobble the hardest, and I warn you up front, this verse sounds like it's only talking to women, but it's not. Stay with me because by the end, every one of us needs to learn this verse. I've thought about this verse a lot this week. Honestly, I know some genuinely beautiful people, men and women both, and I watch up close what happens when looks gets way out ahead of their character. It's not pretty, no pun intended. So today isn't a takedown of anybody, it's a mirror of holding it up for you and for me. Here's where we're headed.

The Gold Ring And The Pig

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Solomon paints one of the strangest pictures in the whole book, a gold ring shoved in a pig's snout. And once you see what he's really saying, you can't unsee it in your own life or in the lives of people you know and love. So let's dig in. Let me break down a couple of the original words, you know the Hebrew words, real quick and simply. When it refers to ring, it's a fine, expensive piece of jewelry, not costume jewelry, the real thing. Swine, of course, is a pig, and in Israel the picture of something unclean, something that roots around in the mud by nature. And discretion is his word team. We're gonna run into that a few times today. And this is the one word we're sitting on. It literally means taste, not fashion sense, moral taste, judgment. You know, the ability to tell what's noble from what's cheap. So let's read the verse Proverbs eleven twenty two. As a ring of gold in a swine's snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion. Solomon's cross references back to a scene in Genesis, and once you see it, the whole proverb clicks into place. Genesis twenty four forty seven says Then I asked

Discretion Means Moral Taste

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her and said, Whose daughter are you? And she said the daughter of Bethel, Nahor's son, whom Milka bore to him, and I put the ring on her nose and the bracelets on her wrist. That's Rebecca. Abraham's servant didn't hand her that gold ring because she was pretty, even though she was. He gave it to her after she ran back and forth drawing water for ten thirsty camels, for a total stranger, without being asked twice. The gold went on a woman whose heart had already been proven. Now take that same ring and put it on a pig instead. That's Proverbs eleven twenty two. Here's why the picture works so well. A gold ring on a pig doesn't upgrade the pig. The pig is still going to do what pigs do, root through the mud, drag that gold through filth and never even notice what it's wearing. And the gold doesn't come out ahead either. It gets buried in exactly the same kind of mess it was never made for. That's Solomon's whole point. Beauty without character doesn't elevate the character. It just drags the beauty down into whatever mess the character was already making. Remember I mentioned that Hebrew word team, which means taste? The footnote in a lot of Bibles even says lack of taste instead of lack of discretion. And I love that because it's not talking about somebody's outfit. It's a woman or a man who can't tell the difference between what's noble and what's cheap. Somebody who looks incredible walking into a room and has absolutely no sense for what's beneath them, no restraint, no class. Now listen to this. Beauty is a gift God hands out. Taste and discretion, that's something you have to build. Think about the difference between those two for a second. Nobody earns their bone structure, nobody earns the family they were born into, or the metabolism they got, or the face staring back at them in the mirror. That's just grace, pure gift, no effort required. But nobody's born with discretion either. Taam, a fancy word again, gets built one decision at a time. Usually the hard way. You can't inherit taste. You have to grow into it. Now I don't want you to hear this proverb as outward appearance doesn't matter, so don't worry about that. That's not what Psalm is saying. It's not what the rest of Scripture says either. Remember in first Samuel sixteen, seven says, But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or the height of his structure stature, because I have rejected him. For God sees not as a man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Notice what that verse actually admits. Man does look at the outward appearance. God's just telling Samuel not to stop there, because God doesn't. People will judge you by your presentation before they ever get close enough to know your heart. That's just how this world works. So take care of yourself, stay healthy, dress well, carry yourself with some dignity. Paul even calls your body a temple. In first Corinthians six, nineteen through twenty he says, Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own, for you've been bought

Steward The Outside Build The Inside

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with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body. That's not a verse against looking good. That is a verse for stewardship. You take care of the temple, not because the temple is the point, but because it's not yours to neglect. But here's the line that Solomon draws, and so does Peter in first Peter three, three through four. Your adornment must not be merely external, braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses, but let it be the hidden person of the heart, and with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. Peter is not saying don't fix your hair. He's saying don't let that be the whole project. In fact, the Proverb thirty one woman doesn't neglect herself either. She's described making herself coverings of fine linen and purple, the finest fabric of the day. That's what it says in Proverbs thirty one twenty two where it says she makes herself coverings. Her clothing is fine linen and purple, but the same chapter tells you flat out which one actually earns the praise. In thirty one verse thirty of Proverbs it says Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. But a woman who fears the Lord she shall be praised. Steward the outside, sure. People are going to look there first, but build the inside, because that's what's still standing when the charm runs out. And I want to be really clear about something, because it would be easy to walk away from this verse thinking Solomon is against beauty. He's not. Scripture never once tells a good looking person to go make themselves less attractive. Abigail was described as intelligent and beautiful in appearance, both in the same verse, no tension between them. Joseph was handsome in the form of appearance, and he still ran for Potiphar's wife rather than trade his character for a night with her. David himself had described with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance, and he still gets called a man after God's own heart. Beauty was never the problem in any of those stories. It's only a problem when it's carrying the whole weight by itself, with nothing sturdy underneath it. Now, before the men listening get too comfortable, let's fix that. Solomon happened to use a beautiful woman in his picture, but swap out a gold ring for a fat paycheck, six pack abs, a fast car, and a big personality, or job title, and you got the exact same verse just aimed at us. A man can be sharp, successful, charming, in great shape, and still be exactly the pig in this proverb, if none of that is backed up by character. Different ring, same snout. So let's say it plainly. This verse isn't a verse about women. It's a verse about anybody who's been given something valuable, looks, money, charm, talent, and never bothered to build the character that should go underneath it all.

Men Too Different Ring Same Snout

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Here's what makes this proverb hit different, I believe, in 2026 than it did three thousand years ago. Back then, if you wanted to feel good about yourself, you had to actually build something, a marriage, a friendship, a harvest, a life. Today, you just want to feel good. You can get there in about ten minutes, a drink, weed, which is legal almost everywhere now, a dating app that can put another person in your bed tonight if you really wanted to. I believe God built us to find companionship, intimacy, and pleasure inside a marriage. Something with weight to it, something you can't just wipe your way out of when it gets hard. But when you get the buzz and the body without ever building the bond, why would you slow down long enough to build character? The flesh gets fed quickly. So people stop asking whether they should and just keep asking whether they can. That's the world Solomon's Proverbs just walked into a gold ring for anybody willing to post the right picture or say the right thing for one night. No taste required. Here's the piece I don't think we talk about enough. It's not just the shortcuts are easier, it's that the discomfort your shortcutting past was never pointless. It was actually the mechanism God built for growing you. Let's look at Romans chapter five verse three through five. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulations bring about perseverance, and perseverance proven character, and proven character hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured

2026 Shortcuts And Instant Relief

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out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. Read that again. Tribulation to perseverance, perseverance to proven character, character to hope. There's no shortcut in that verse that gets you to the character without going through the hard part first. Skip the tribulation and you don't skip ahead, you just never arrive. James is almost saying the identical things in chapter one verse two through four. It says consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Let endurance have its perfect results. That word let matters. You can cut endurance off early. You can numb it, medicate it, swipe past it, drink through it. And when you do, you're not simply delaying the result, you're pulling something out of the oven before it's even finished. I mean it still looks like dough, you know, it's close, but it's not finished. That's the problem with instant relief. It's not neutral. Every time you reach for the drink, the buzz, the hookup, instead of sitting in the egg long enough to let God actually work on you, you're not just avoiding discomfort. You're trading away the very thing the discomfort was there to produce. Look, Galatian puts a name on that. In Galatians six, seven through eight says, Do not be seed. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will reap from the flesh corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. And isn't that what we're after? Every time you feed the flesh instead of sitting with God and the egg, you're sowing a seed. It doesn't feel like sowing anything. It feels like just taking the edge off for one more night. But Paul says there's no such thing as a neutral seed. You're either sowing toward corruption or sowing toward life. One small decision at a time, whether you notice yourself doing it or not. And here's the part that explains why this whole process feels bad while it's actually working. Hebrews twelve verse eleven says all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Discipline is supposed to feel sorrowful in the moment. That's not a sign it's failing. That's what it feels like when it's working. The ache of waiting, the discomfort of staying single instead of settling for wherever's available for the night, the frustration of a hard season in a marriage instead of walking out the door. None of that is wasted pain. It's the training, and it only pays off afterwards for the people who let it finish instead of numbing it the second it starts to hurt. So here's what I really wanted to get across today. Every time the world hands you an instant off ramp from the egg, it's not offering you relief from something pointless. It's short

Trials Produce Character Over Time

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circuiting the one process God built to grow that exact thing you're missing. And I believe this is worth saying plainly because I don't think it's an accident that Scripture keeps landing intimacy back inside marriage over and over. In first Thessalonians chapter four, verse three through five it says, For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess your own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not even know God. And again in Hebrews thirteen four it says marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled, for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Notice the word honor shows up in both of those verses, not shame, honor. God didn't design the marriage bed because he's against pleasure. He designed it because covenant is the only container strong enough to hold what happens there without it wrecking somebody. Take intimacy out of the container and hand it to whoever is available on a given night, and you're not experiencing more freedom. You're experiencing the same gift with none of the protection it was built to have around it. That's not a small difference, that's huge. So here's the pivot, and I think this is a whole teaching in one sentence. The flesh only ever asks one question can I get this? Wisdom asks a completely different one. Should I? Can I get her attention? Can I get his interest? Can I get this deal, this bottle, this night? Sure. In this world with enough looks, money or charm you can. Solomon isn't denying that the pig can absolutely wear the ring. He's telling you the ring was never the point. The question was never can I get it. The question was always does what underneath deserve it? And here's what separates the person who actually builds real discretion from the person who never does. It's not how many mistakes they've made, it's whether they can hear anybody point it out to them. Look at Proverbs twelve verse one. Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid. That's a hard verse, but it's an honest one. Some people can watch the exact same relationship blow up for the fourth time and still tell you it was bad luck. Other people watch it blow up once and they're humbled enough to ask, wait, what's the common denominator here? The second person is one who actually changes. I want to tell you something I watched happen more than once with people I generally care about. I know several strikingly beautiful, smart women, and I watch the same pattern play out with them a few almost on repeat over three or four years. They land a good looking guy, it moves fast, they're basically living together within a few weeks, it's great for a few months, then it blows up hard. And a few weeks later, there's a new guy, and the whole thing starts over. I watched that cycle run four or five times with the same person. Every time, in their mind, the problem was never them. Never the pattern or the thought of why does this keep happening to me? And here's the part that gets me. Some of these women can post one picture and have their pick em in within an hour. For a season, beauty just works. It feels like it'll never stop working. But I've also watched what happens when the calendar keeps turning and their character never gets caught up to their beauty. I watched women I know hit their forties, still running the same place that worked at twenty two, except they're not landing the way they used to. And some of them start posting old pictures from ten, fifteen years back because deep down they know it, even if they can't say it out loud. That's not being harsh, that's honesty. Because I don't think any of them set up become that way.

Can I Versus Should I

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They just never stopped long enough to ask the second question. They kept asking can I? Because the answer kept coming back yes. And nobody, including them, ever stopped to ask should I? Or why does this keep ending the same way? And men don't think we get to sit this one out. I watched the exact same pattern, wearing a different outfit. My guy in his forties or fifties, still chasing the attention of women half his age, still trying to prove something with a new truck or a new title or a new gym personal best, because somewhere along the way his worth got tied to being what he wanted and not being trustworthy. Same gold ring, different snout. He's just as stuck asking can I as anybody I described a minute ago? And look, before this sounds like I'm only talking about somebody else, I'm not. Every one of us has a version of this. Something that worked for us, that kept giving us a yes from the world, that we never once run through the should I question. That's exactly why Solomon put this proverb in the book in the first place, not to shame beauty, to warn all of us that a gift without character eventually gets dragged to the mud it was never built for. Now here's the skinny on it all. Time reveals character either way. If you keep feeding the flesh and starving the character, time reveals that. But if you actually stop and let God build discretion in you, real taste, real restraint, a heart that asks should I before it asks can I, time reveals that too. It just takes longer to show up, and it's worth ten times more when it does. That's the whole reason I wrote my book actually, because so much of this comes down to actually hearing from God before you act, instead of just running on what your flesh is telling you in the moment. So let's bring it home. A gold ring in a pig snout doesn't make the pig noble. It just drags the gold through the mud. Beauty, money, charm, talent, none of it was ever meant to stand on its own. It was meant to sit on top of a heart with real discretion underneath it. None of that means hide your gift or apologize for it. Rebecca wore the ring. Abigail was beautiful and sharp. Joseph was handsome and faithful. David had the looks and the heart. God's not asking you to shrink. He's asking you to build something underneath what he's already given you. And this was never just a verse about women, it's

Closing Questions And Charge

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a verse about every one of us who's ever been handed something valuable and had to decide whether we build character to go with it. So here are my questions I want to leave with you today. First, is there something in your life right now, your looks, your money, your charm or your talent that keeps getting you in a yes while you never want to stop to ask if you should? And second, if you're honest, are you still asking can I get this? Or have you actually started asking God should I? Here's a sentence I want to share from this whole episode. The gold was never the problem. What it was resting on was. So if you've been running the same pattern for a few years now, and deep down you already know it, don't wait for the fifth blow up to ask God what you should do or how you should change. Bring it to Him today. Amen. Well, we'll pick up next time and keep moving through this chapter. Until then, stay in the Word, keep walking, and let discretion cat catch up with your gift. God bless.