Quenching our thirst for love

Good morning.

Right, we're reading from Proverbs chapter 5.

Proverbs 5 · chapter mention

My son, be attentive to my wisdom.

Incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge.

For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil.

But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

Her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path to shield.

She does not ponder the path of life, her ways wander, and she does not know it.

And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house.

Lest you give your honour to her, and your years to us.

Lest strangers fill your hands.

And your labours go to the house of a foreigner.

And at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed.

And you say, how I hated discipline.

And my heart despised reproof.

I did not listen to the voice of my teachers, or incline my ear to my instructors.

I am at the brink of utter ruin, in the assembled congregation.

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?

Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth.

A lovely dear, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight.

Be intoxicated always in her love.

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman,

and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord,

and he ponders all his paths.

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,

and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.

He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly,

he is led astray.

To start with, I just want to share a picture with you

that I found on the internet while I was doing some research for this.

Joel Ferguson's going to bring it up,

and it's a picture that describes Proverbs along with some other books.

Look, obviously it's not an accurate representation.

It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek.

But I guess this is probably, you know, to be honest,

having a go at the other books about how they're all going,

life is meaningless, it's worthless, et cetera.

I actually think in reality Proverbs should look a little bit different

to this.

So I've had a crack at trying to fix up this photo for us.

This is probably a little bit more what I think Proverbs should look like.

But the reason I think Proverbs should look like this is because

that Proverbs is about a book that is about contrasting two ways

to live your life.

And as you read through the book of Proverbs,

you really do get this sense of, on the one hand,

if you embrace wisdom, then that's good.

Life will go well for you.

But on the other hand, if you embrace folly,

then life is going to go really bad,

and there'll be a lot of terrible consequences.

And Martin last week spoke about two paths to take in your life,

essentially the same thing.

One is the wisdom path, the life that leads to happiness and joy,

and the other is folly that leads to pain and death and destruction.

Another way that you would have heard it is Wilco and Marty both talked

about the fact that wisdom and folly are like two women,

so lady wisdom and lady folly.

And up until this point, Solomon's coming,

talking about the concept of wisdom, this idea of wisdom,

that, you know, you can get wisdom to chase after wisdom.

The wisdom of God is fear of the Lord.

But it's still these two choices that we're given in this concept.

Well, in today's passage, the rubber really hits the road.

Solomon goes, okay, that's the concept.

You've heard the concept of what wisdom is.

Now let's get to the practicals.

Let's talk about adultery.

It's a little bit like, you know,

he could have eased us into it and said, I don't know, you know,

wisdom is brushing your teeth and folly is not flossing.

What's an Old Testament example?

Maybe like shear your sheep in the summer and not in the winter.

I don't know.

But something like that to kind of get up to it.

But he doesn't waste breath.

He goes, okay, let's tackle adultery.

And on the one hand, he says, adultery is folly.

And faithfulness is wisdom.

And I've been actually super lucky with the kids talk this morning

because Jen did a great job of summarising that for us.

She messaged me earlier in the week and said, you know,

what are we going to be talking about?

And I said, oh, adultery.

So good luck making that into a kids talk.

But she's done a great job.

But those are the two options.

Wisdom is faithfulness and folly is adultery.

And then instead of looking at this as two ways, two paths to go down or two women,

I'm going to take a slightly different approach.

I'm going to say that there are two ways to quench your thirst.

And that's the question I'm going to be asking from here is,

what choice will you make to quench your thirst?

Now, something that the chapter here has assumed when Solomon wrote this

is that we should be looking for satisfaction or that we will want

to look for satisfaction in relationships, in sexual relationships.

It's who we are.

Humans are made that way.

We're wired that way.

We're created for relationships with each other.

We desire to be loved, to be valued at our very core,

to be significant to someone else.

And so the question I'm going to be asking is,

where will you look to have that thirst quenched?

Now, in the immediate sense, this passage presents us with two options.

The first one is that we can quench our thirst through the drink of honey and oil.

The honey and oil of adultery or the second option is that we can quench our thirst

in the water of our marriage relationships.

Now, I'm going to recognise here that I'm talking to a large group of people,

probably who more than two-thirds aren't married.

And this passage is heavily geared towards married people.

So if you aren't married, then please don't tune out.

Please don't turn off and go, oh, look, this isn't for me.

I think the points I'm going to be making along here are going to be helpful,

even if the applications aren't necessarily focused on you.

So, yeah, stick with me and hopefully you'll get something out of it at the end.

But let's tackle the first option.

The first option to quench our thirst is the silky smooth drink of honey and oil.

Adultery.

And what is the answer that Solomon gives us here to that?

Folly, folly, absolute folly.

Let's take a look at verse 3.

If you've got your Bible open, it's Proverbs chapter 5, verse 3.

Proverbs 5:3

For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,

and her speech is smooth than oil.

But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood,

sharp as a two-edged sword.

Her feet go down to death.

Her steps follow the path to Sheol, to the grave, essentially.

She does not ponder the path of life.

Her ways wander and she does not know it.

See, Solomon doesn't mince words here.

He says,

Adultery, the act of breaking your vow with your spouse

and sleeping with someone else who is not that person,

is adultery.

It's folly.

It is stupidity.

But that's the thing about adultery, isn't it?

The attraction is there.

That's the thing with adultery.

It's not like we can look at this drink and see,

you know, there's little chunks floating around in it

and it smells like vomit.

It's not like that.

It's attractive.

It's aromatic.

It smells good.

It's smooth.

It's silky.

And that's, you know,

the analogy of the woman that Proverbs uses here

is actually very helpful.

The woman's lips drip with honey.

It looks good.

But the reality is that it is bitter as wormwood,

as bitter as gall.

It's disgusting.

It's rancid.

It's not smooth as it looks.

It's razor sharp.

You know, we think that this will quench our thirst,

but it actually leaves us gasping for something else.

It gets stuck in our throat and it chokes us up.

You see, adultery is the drink that leads to death.

Now, Joel's going to play a song for us here in a second.

And it's a song that's based on these exact verses, actually,

by a Christian rapper called Lecrae.

Now, as soon as I say that I'm about to play Christian rap,

I recognise I'm alienating anyone over the age of 35

and anyone under the age of 25.

And I've just insulted anyone who is outside of those age ranges

and does enjoy Christian rap.

But the point of this is try not to pay attention

to the style of the music.

If you like it, great.

If you don't, then what I want you to do is try

and focus on the words.

There'll be slides that have the words coming up.

And he does move through them pretty quick.

But I think this really accurately portrays to us

the mirage of adultery.

So Joel's going to hopefully play that for us now.

Kinda.

Cada.

Br multooky.

Bella.

Bella.

Bella.

Bella.

Bella.

Kill out, kill out

I know it's gon' kill me, but I just can't let it go

And the taste of appeal has got a grip upon my soul

These honey dip lies mesmerize me

Cry's got its crooked fingers twisting all inside me

Fools walk the path I'm on, never to be seen again

Sipping on seduction while we eating on some secret sins

Says a whisper in my ear

And I know I should be over this, but I ain't seeing clear

And I ain't leaving here, unless somebody save me

Walk into my grave, letting evilness enslave me

Evil looks so lovely, covered in her lace of lies

And a silky smooth seduction just manipulates my mind

Her fabric of fabrication is fueling my fascination

While I'm intoxicated, she starts her assassination

Losing all my honor and my years to the merciless

Giving all my life away, but I'm just so immersed in this

Baby, that's a reason

Yeah, you're moving hard a little bit

Yeah, I'm only here for your benefit

I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here

Baby, that's a reason

You're moving hard a little bit

Yeah, I'm here, I'm here

You're moving hard a little bit

Yeah, I'm here

Hold your eyes and let's get lost tonight

Yeah, I'm here, I'm here

You're moving hard, you'll see my mind

Yeah, I'm here

Her feet go down the drift

So don't let her consume you

Even though her heart is black

Her exterior is beautiful

She'll take your life away

And strip away your joy

Pretend that she don't build you up

Or she just gon' destroy you

My friends fell low

When they were so high

Got me running scared of myself

No lie, and I know I'm gon' die

I try a cold turkey

But when I'm feeling worthy

Satan's sure I'm trying to murder me

I'm doing myself dirty

Flirting with what's perverted

I should follow the word

But I guess I'd rather be murdered

Excuse me, I mean martyr

Cause I'm killing myself

My sin conceived a baby

Your name or death

Breath, take it

She take my breath away

Replaces it with poison

And I'm so swept away

I need some bread today

Hope I wake up before they start my wake up

Somebody make me break up

I'm dating her

Girl, you're just a reason

You're not leaving how to live it

You're not

I'm only here for your benefit

I'm here every place

I'm on a land

Killer

Everything just as innocent

Killer

You're not leaving how to live it

Killer

Hold your eyes and ask your life tonight

Can't be a rest

You're still in my life

Killer

How good are those words?

But you can see the feeling in those words

Adultery

It destroys relationships

It destroys marriages

It destroys churches

It seems so obvious

Don't do it

Verse 9 to 14

It actually warns us of the consequences

If you've got your Bible

Have a look at verse 9

Lest you give your honour to others

And your years to the merciless

Lest strangers take their fill of your strength

And your labours go to the house of a foreigner

And at the end of your life

You groan when your flesh and body are consumed

And you say

How I hated discipline

And my heart despised reproof

I did not listen to the voice of my teachers

Or incline my ear to their understanding

Sorry

Ear to my instructors

And then verse 14 is the verse I think that totally sums it up

The consequences

I am at the brink of utter ruin

In the assembled congregation

And you see that's the warning that we're given

And we know that it's bad for us

But it still happens doesn't it?

You know it's not just enough to say

Don't commit adultery

Because if that was the case

No Christian would ever have an affair

Either men or women

Obviously this isn't

It often talks about

Solomon's talking to a son

But it can be men or women

But if it was that simple

No one would ever do it

You see adultery

Isn't about a lack of knowledge

Folly is not about coming about

Because of a lack of knowledge

It's not like

I was trying to think of some words

That you know

Could go in place of folly

And I started thinking about

Maybe like

Dumb or idiot

Or that type of thing

But they all kind of imply that I'm somehow

Logically deficient

That I just don't know enough

But you know if I ask my non-Christian friends

They all know that adultery is bad

You know it's a consensus that cheating is not a good thing

You see folly is not about knowing what is the right thing

Or knowing what is the wrong thing

Folly is about knowing the right thing

But doing the wrong thing anyway

You see adultery doesn't come because of being stupid

It comes about because of a lack of discipline

To act on what we know is right

Verse 1 and 2

When Solomon is talking to his son

He says this

He says

My son be attentive to my wisdom

Incline your ear to my understanding

That you may keep discretion

And your lips may guard knowledge

Verse 2

That you may keep discretion

You know not that you'll get it

And then once you've got it you'll have it forever

You need to work to keep it

That your lips may guard knowledge

You know what does the word guard imply

It implies that it can be lost

It can be stolen

It can be taken away

Verse 7

Do not depart from the words of my mouth

This is something that we can walk away from

We can walk away from wisdom

And you know it's really ironic

That the best example that we have

Of someone who's done that

Not just even in the Bible

Probably out of everyone I can think of

Is Solomon himself

He had 700 wives and 300 concubines

And it's kind of like you know

How far could you possibly depart

From what he wrote himself

It's really ridiculous

But it's not about staying out

And not being able to resist the temptation

When it's in front of you

It's not about when you're in the dark room

With that person

Saying no to them then

It's about putting in place the discipline

So you never even get to that place

The way to stay out of adultery

Verse 8

If you have a look at verse 8

Keep your way far from her

And do not go near the door of her house

See this is saying

Don't even get into the situation

Put in safeguards

Tell friends

Get them to challenge you

If you know something could be an issue

If you can see something coming

If in your mind you know that you're starting to get it

You know too close to someone

Who is not your husband or wife

If you're married

Then stop then

Now I had a bit of a talk to my wife about this

Alyssa

About you know what are some of the things that you can see as warning signs for women

If women if you're starting to get emotionally invested

In someone who is not your husband

Then cut it off there and then

If you find yourself dressing to get the attention of another man

Maybe you're not doing it really actively and consciously

But maybe subconsciously

Then get help then

Don't allow it to get to the point where you become so invested that it consumes your mind

You know if you're instant messaging someone

Facebook, Instagram, whatever it might be

And you're starting to share some intimate personal things

Then get help, be disciplined

Remember the wisdom in these verses

His feet go down to death

Don't let him consume you

His heart is black but the exterior is beautiful

Now married guys

Unfortunately I know my own heart

I didn't have to ask my wife for these ones

But if you find yourself looking

For the attention of a woman who is not your wife

You know you're looking for ways to be around that person

And your thoughts go back to her

And you know you think about being around them

If you try and be a little bit more funny than you normally would

When you're around that person

Then take action

Don't let it get any further

Tell someone that you trust

Let them help you to be accountable

Be disciplined

She'll take your life away

She'll strip away your joy

She pretends that she's going to build you up

But she's just going to destroy you

Now for everyone

And this isn't married specific or otherwise

Don't be the one whose feet leads to death

You know don't allow your relationships with married men or women

To get out of hand

Don't let them get to the point where they become an issue

It won't quench your thirst

And it has the potential to do great damage

Not just to families

But also to our wider church family

And you know if you can see the warning signs that I've talked about

Then get help

Be disciplined

Of course there's two sides to every story

You know just because

I guess they're not

You know they're accountable for their own actions as well

But don't be the person whose lips drip honey

And whose speech is as smooth as oil tempting them to the grave

Don't quench your thirst for intimate relationships

Don't quench your thirst for intimate relationships

With the silky smooth lure of adultery

Proverbs says folly, folly, folly

Now the second choice presented here to quench our thirst

Is the pure life giving water of finding pleasure in your spouse

Wisdom says proverbs

Now verse 15

Look at verse 15

Drink water from your own system

Flowing water from your own well

Should your springs be scattered abroad

Streams of water in the streets

Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you

Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth

A lovely dear, a graceful doe

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight

Being intoxicated always in her love

See what a contrast this is to folly of adultery

Now you might have noticed Jen pointed this out as well

There's a lot of references to water in this passage

Water from a cistern

Water from a well, springs, streams, fountains

They're all picture words for sex essentially

But this is how we can properly quench our thirst

For our desire for intimate relationships

It's life giving water

It's the opposite of adultery

It's remaining faithful

This passage says

Rejoice in your wife or husband

Take delight in them

Again, you know, again Solomon's talking to both men and women

It's not gender specific

But be intoxicated with their love

Be filled with delight

Rejoice in them

Verse 20

Why should you be intoxicated my son with a forbidden woman

And embrace the bosom of an adulteress

You see Solomon here says

Faithfulness is the real thirst quencher

And just like avoiding adultery

Remaining out of

Remaining faithful requires discipline

See just like folly is not about knowledge alone

Wisdom is not just intelligence

It's not just knowing the right thing

Wisdom is knowing the right thing

And then acting on it

You see marriages require work

They require investment

A strong marriage requires discipline

Verse 16

Should your springs be scattered abroad

Streams of water in the streets

Let them be for yourself alone

And not for strangers with you

You see in our marriages

We need to be working on actively finding delight in our relationships

Because we can lose them

That's what those verses are saying

They can go to someone else

You see, unlike adultery

Where it requires our discipline to stay out of adultery

Our marriages require us to have discipline to stay in them

To keep them healthy

You see, we should be focusing on what actually quenches our thirst for intimate relationships

Married relationships

And in fact, having a healthy married relationship is one of the best antidotes for adultery in the first place

So if you're married, don't accept a bad relationship, a bad marriage as the norm

If you're unhappy and you feel distant in your marriage, then don't accept it as okay

Make sure you get back to the delight that you once had rejoice in the spouse of your youth

If you have a healthy married relationship, then take delight in your partner

Be excited by them, rejoice in them

Be intoxicated by them at every opportunity

Proverbs says quench your thirst in your marriage

Wisdom, wisdom, wisdom

Now I want you to imagine for a second that I stopped the talk here

If I said thanks for coming, that's the end

You know, I've given you probably 10 minutes back

So you might be happy about that

But what would the takeaway be if I stopped the talk here?

It would probably be something like this

The moral of the story is adultery is bad and marriage is good

You know, and I can guarantee that if we looked back on this talk

Let's say we went away for a month and you look back on this talk

You'd go, really?

Is that really it?

You know, if I'm married

Like I love my partner, but is that really the height of satisfaction?

You know, I love them and I rejoice in them and I delight in them

But they let me down all the time

It's hard work

Is that really going to forever quench my thirst?

And if you aren't married, remember I said at the start that this is a passage focused mainly for married people

Then what have I told you so far?

Essentially that you need to get married

Because otherwise you can't quench your thirst for feeling loved

For being significant to someone else to feel known

If you're not married, then you can't have that met

You see, we cannot stop here

Because the ultimate answer to quench my thirst for relationships

Can't be found in earthly relationships

Married or otherwise

Our partners can't deliver eternal satisfaction

You just have to ask my wife

I know she loves me

But you know, I struggle to love her properly for a few hours, let alone for eternity

I'm never going to be able to fulfill her need for love and satisfaction

You know, if Alyssa thought that that was going to be the case

Then she would be bitterly, bitterly disappointed

You see, eternal wisdom, eternal satisfaction comes from having our thirst

For love and significance quenched by God through Jesus Christ

John chapter 4

John 4 · chapter mention

I don't know if you remember this story

But basically, Jesus is at a well

And he meets a Samaritan woman

And the background is Jews and Samaritans hate each other basically

They don't like to talk

They definitely don't eat together

And Jesus asks this woman for a drink from the well

And the woman basically says

You hate us, why are you asking me this?

Verse 10

In John chapter 4

John 4 · chapter mention

Jesus answers her by saying this

If you knew the gift of God

And who it is that is saying to you

Give me a drink

You would have asked him and he would have given you living water

The woman said to him

Sir, you have nothing to draw water with

And the well is deep

Where do you get that living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from it himself

As did his sons and his livestock

And in verse 13

Jesus said to her

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again

But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him

Will never be thirsty again

The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water

Welling up to eternal life

You see, only Jesus really eternally quenches our thirst

He is the only one who can give us eternal significance

You see, our marriages are great and they are good things

But they can't eternally quench our thirst for really perfectly being known and loved

You know, not that we don't try though, right?

Because we are very good at looking at everywhere except for God for that satisfaction

If we had to find ourselves in this Proverbs

Book, verse that we've just read, chapter 5

You know, we would be the adulterous woman

We have a loving, caring, devoted partner in God

Who time and time again shows faithfulness to us in every way

He's patient, he's slow to anger, he's abounding in love

But what do we do?

We constantly turn to other things to satisfy us

Things that cannot possibly satisfy us

But we try anyway

On Friday, in youth group, I help run the youth group

We watched The Prince of Egypt

I don't know if you've seen it

It's basically the Exodus story, it's a cartoon

It's got some banger songs, if you like Hans Zimmer, check it out

The soundtrack's very good

But the thing that's really good about this

Is that it really shows God's power

You really get that sense of awe in this movie

And his love for his people

You know, they're suffering in Egypt

And he does everything to save them

He sends fire from heaven

He sends all the plagues, he gets Moses to come along

And basically, the last scene of this movie

Is this shot here that Joel's got up

And it's Moses coming down from the mountains

So he saves them, they're out of Egypt

They've gone across the lake

And he's on Mount Sinai

He's met with Jesus, sorry, God

God's given him the Ten Commandments

Well, Jesus, God, same thing, I guess

But he's given them the Ten Commandments

And he's coming down the hill

And he's got this big swelling Hans Zimmer music behind him

And he gets to this point where he looks out over the valley

At the Israelites

And this is literally the last shot of the movie

It stops there

But it's a very convenient time to finish the movie, isn't it?

Because if we played even one more scene on

It would completely ruin the premise of what the whole movie is

Is that the Israelites are victims

And that they need saving

And that they've been treated terribly

Because what happens in Exodus 32

As Moses is coming down the mountain

He sees that the Israelites have immediately committed adultery against God

They've made two golden calves

Idols

To worship instead of God

At the very first opportunity

Whilst God is in the literal process

Of making a covenant commitment

To them

They have turned their backs on him

And gone after something else

But that's not just them, is it?

We're exactly the same

You see, we're happy to drink the honey and oil

And taste the gall

When we can even see that it's gall that we're drinking

We keep drinking

We continually in every aspect of our lives

Chase after other things

To quench our thirst

Instead of God

Now I'm not going to go into detail here

About what those things are

We don't know what they are in our lives

But our great God

With every right to leave us

With probably you would argue

Every cause to not want us back

Chased after the people that he created

Even though we constantly

Over and over and over

Every single time

Turning our backs on him

He chased after us

Adultery at every turn from our angle

And on his

And on his he gave up everything

To have us back

To remove our unfaithfulness

Our rebellion

Our adultery

You see, he is faithful to us

We find eternal satisfaction in him

And God knows that that is the only way

That we can find it, is through him

We can't find it anywhere else

God gave us Jesus

To die

To bring us back

To bring us back from our

Our rebellion and adultery

And then to rise again

To prove that the punishment

Had been taken

And as Jesus says in John 4

Whoever drinks the water I give them

Will never thirst

Indeed the water I give them

Will become in them

A spring of water

Welling up to eternal life

You see, that's the story here

It's a faithful God

Taking the punishment

For an adulterous people

Through no action of ours

God eternally gives us the opportunity

To have our thirst quenched

With the relationship with him

He has been faithful to us

It's why Solomon says

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge

The only way to have our thirst quenched

Is a relationship with Jesus

To trust in his death and resurrection

To trust that his actions mean that we can have a relationship with our faithful God

So where do we go to quench our thirst?

Ultimately, the only place

Is in God through Jesus Christ

Let's pray

Dear God, thanks for the wisdom that we see in Proverbs chapter 5

Proverbs 5 · chapter mention

Thank you so much

Thank you so much that you have given us married men and women partners to share our lives with

Thanks that you've warned us against adultery and the folly that can be found there

But God, I guess I pray that ultimately you would help us to look for the only place we can really find satisfaction

And that is in your son Jesus

And that is in your son Jesus

Thank you for his death and resurrection

That even though we at every turn

Don't look to you

You chase after us

Please pray that you would help us as we go on our lives to

Remember the importance of this

That Jesus is everything

It's the only way we can have our thirst quenched

Amen