"Wisdom's Death" Proverbs 7 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Let me read for us the scripture from Proverbs chapter 7.

Proverbs 7 · chapter mention

This is a longer chapter, but it's one of the more gripping images in Proverbs.

My son, keep my words.

Treasure up my commandments with you.

Keep my commandments and live.

Keep my teaching as the apple of your eye.

Bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart.

Say to wisdom, You're my sister, and call insight your intimate friend, to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words.

For at the window of my house I've looked out through my lattice, and I have seen among the simple, I've perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense, passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness.

And behold, the woman meets him, dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart.

She is loud and wayward, her feet don't stay at home.

Now in the street, now in the market, and at every corner, she lies in wait.

She seizes him and kisses him.

And with bold face she says to him, I had to offer sacrifices, and today I paid my vows.

So now I've come out to meet you, to seek you eagerly, and I found you.

I have spread my couch with coverings, colored linens from Egyptian linen.

I've perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

Come, let's take our fill of love until morning.

Let us delight ourselves with love.

For my husband, he's not home.

He's gone on a long journey.

He took a bag of money with him.

At full moon, he'll come home.

With much seductive speech, she persuades him, and with her smooth talk, she compels him.

All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver.

As a bird rushes into a snare, he doesn't know that's going to cost him his life.

And now, sons, listen to me.

Be attentive to the words of my mouth.

Let not your heart turn aside to her ways.

Don't stray into her paths.

For many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.

Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.

This is the word of God, and I do pray that it awakens your heart and warns your eyes.

Homer's Odyssey has one of the most gripping scenes in all of literature.

Ulysses is warned of the dangers on his way to Ithaca.

One of the dangers, the most feared of the dangers, is the island of the sirens.

It's an island that sailors must pass if they were to attack Ithaca.

And it's a magical place where the sirens dwelled, and no one had successfully navigated it.

The sirens, if you recall, exist not just in Homer's Odyssey, but in Greek mythology at large.

They lured their victims in through the beauty of their song.

And their song was such that nobody could resist it.

Once the notes hit your ears, men lost all common sense and flung themselves in that direction.

The normal way that the people would die is that their ships would crash against the rocks.

They threw off all sense of regard for safety and for navigating through the rocks and just made a beeline towards the song of the sirens.

The ships would be wrecked on the rocks, and there were sea creatures and sea monsters in the ocean that partnered with the sirens that devoured their victims.

In Homer's Odyssey, there is a pile of bones around the sirens from the sailors that had successfully navigated the rocks and made it on land and found the source of the song.

They were just enthralled there and they stayed at the feet of the sirens until they died.

That's what you find in Proverbs chapter 7 tonight.

Proverbs 7 · chapter mention

Is a picture of the sirens' song.

A picture of the kind of allurement that traps people who are naive.

The crazy thing about the siren's song is they would keep their victims at their feet until they starved to death.

They didn't need chains.

The promise of their sin kept them there.

They didn't have to be locked and have the key hidden.

Oh no, it was just the promise that the beauty of the song is what compelled the people to stay.

If you're familiar with the Odyssey, you know that Ulysses successfully navigates it.

We'll talk about how later, but I want to give you instructions to avoid it as well.

How to avoid the siren's song.

Is there outline tonight?

How to avoid the siren's song.

The song of sin is like that of the sirens.

It lures people in.

People believe the music is too beautiful to walk away, too beautiful to resist, or too beautiful to disbelieve.

And that's exactly how sin functions.

Sin, like the sirens, lures its enemies or its victims to its feet.

The person who sins, especially the one who sins sexually, sins because they think that it is worth it.

They think that there's a payoff at the end.

They think that it will bring them some kind of satisfaction.

The compelling allure of it is too much to resist.

And they look around them and they see the destruction of those who sin sexually in their wake.

There's no myth about that.

They know that sexual sin has never actually satisfied anybody, has never actually brought somebody happiness.

The husband who leaves his wife to chase a younger woman knows that nobody has ever been made happy that way.

He knows that.

But there's just this idea in his mind that the beauty or the potential of it is too much to resist.

This is how sin operates.

You deserve this, sin tells you.

This is beautiful, sin says.

This is fun.

This is actually for your good.

Believe it or not, sin tells you, you deserve this, and I want to satisfy you.

And some people are too mesmerized by the sirens' call to turn away.

Now, honestly, it's not the beauty of the music.

You know this.

It's not the beauty of the song that captures its victims.

It's just the straight-up appeal to the flesh.

They're just, the victims are too foolish.

It's not that they're too refined.

It's not like they like music too much.

They're just drawn to the sound of the sirens.

They're honestly just too foolish.

They think that they can stand when in fact they will fall.

The first way to avoid the siren song is to commit to the right composer.

To commit to the right composer.

Now there's certainly an active way that this stanza starts off verses one through five.

I mean, there's a repetition here.

There are eight, count them eight imperatives in these first four verses.

This is the father speaking to his son, really begging with him, pleading with him to wake up and to be attentive.

All seven of these are, all eight of these are active.

They're both offensive and defensive.

Things that are offensive, write, as in write them down, verse 3.

Write the commandments on the tablet of your heart.

Now, this is old covenant world, but notice it's using new covenant language.

It's not make a copy of the law, not write it on papers here and roll it up and put it on your doorpost, although they will do that.

No, this is new covenant language.

Write it on your heart.

This, of course, is the very thing in the Old Covenant that couldn't happen.

So the obedience to the law in the Old Covenant, it couldn't write it on your heart.

That's why the Old Covenant exposed sin but didn't sanctify.

The new covenant, this is the blessing of being in Christ.

The new covenant, the law is actually written on our heart.

So the desire to obey comes from the inside.

But I just draw your attention to that in the middle of verse 3 right here.

There's a very clear, kind of passionate pleading from the Father, wanting his son to do the one thing he can't do is to make his heart obey.

So there's really an offensive-minded here.

Write this down.

Say it.

Repeat it over and over again.

Say it.

There's a calling.

Verse 4 call to insight.

Call out to her.

Label her.

Name her.

Make her your own.

And some of these are defensive.

Treasure them.

Now that you have the word that the dad has been teaching the son now through six chapters of Proverbs, now that you have this word, treasure it in your heart.

Don't lose sight of it.

Bind it.

He says in verse 3, bind it on your fingers.

Beyond that, keep it.

It says in verse 2, keep my commandments.

You have them?

Now guard them, keep them.

I say here, commit to the right composer.

You could even say marry the right woman.

You could say it that way.

The language in these verses is that of commitment.

It's that of marriage.

So Solomon is taking language of marriage here and telling the son, you need to marry wisdom.

Now the son doesn't know what verse 6 is yet.

He's hearing this for the first time.

He doesn't know the story that's about to come out.

And so just in the normal way Proverbs is working here, Solomon, who's already warned about the adulterous woman back in Proverbs 5, already warned about sexual immorality, already told his son to marry and marry well.

That happened in Proverbs chapter 5.

Proverbs 5 · chapter mention

There's a warning against adultery at the end of Proverbs 6.

But now the father is saying, listen, the key here to implementing wisdom in your life, you're gonna grow up and get married, okay?

Marry the right person, don't marry the wrong person, and don't throw your life away in kind of sexual immorality.

And now he's saying, here's the right person to marry.

And the language of verses 1 through 5 is that of marry wisdom.

Verse 3, bind them on your fingers.

That's a wedding ring kind of analogy.

You know, the Torah was supposed to be bound in your hair or on the uh the your tassels on your doorposts.

Here it's bind it on your finger.

This is why you put a wedding ring on your finger.

The wedding ring is not, so you remember you're married, right?

You're not gonna wake up one day, go, am I married or not?

Yes.

Okay.

Forgot.

No, the wedding ring is to remind you of the commitment you made to your spouse.

Of course, you remember you're married.

The ring represents your commitment to her.

That's why it's a constant reminder to you.

That's why it's always there.

Here, you're supposed to be committed to wisdom.

Wrap her on your finger.

It's not that you're gonna forget there's such a thing of wisdom, but you are prone to forget the commitments we make to her.

So bind your commitment to her on your fingers.

Write her on the tablet of your hearts.

Say to her, You're my sister.

Now, here's where Americans are like that's weird.

But in the Hebrew world, this is a common way to address your wife.

There's a sign of intimacy.

You're saying, You're my sister.

I'm bringing you, I'm married to you.

So this is a person who has got the wedding ring on to wisdom.

It's referring to wisdom with terms of endearment.

Uh verse 4, call insight your intimate friend.

Intimate there is another language for marriage.

You are married to this person.

So the dad is telling the kid, listen, I want you to grow up and get married.

But before you even do that, you need to commit to marry wisdom.

Follow her your whole life.

Verse 5, if you do that, you can keep the forbidden woman and the adulteress.

You'll stay away from her with her smooth words.

Understand the way this the dad is starting here with the head and then the heart.

Fight this battle in your head.

Commit now, before you're at the adulterous woman, before she's chasing you down the street, which is coming up in chapter 7, before she's laying an ambush for you, before you're tempted, before the person even comes up to flirt with you, you're decided already in your heart, I am more in love with wisdom than with that person over there.

That's something that happens in the mind.

That you have fought against sin in your mind, and you have committed in your mind to take every thought captive.

You've committed in your mind that you are more committed to God than you are to sin.

You have to have that battle before the moment of temptation, because the moment of temptation is when the siren song is the loudest.

If you wait to decide what you'll do when you're tempted to sin until you're tempted to sin, you will choose poorly.

Like, yeah, I don't know what I would do if that person actually flirted with me.

I don't know.

That's the kind of logic that will lead to death.

You have to decide how you're gonna act in that moment before that moment comes.

That's what the dad is teaching his kid right here.

Now, this is obviously something, you have to look out here, most of you are older than high school.

So this is obviously something that you've learned in your life.

You decide how you're gonna act in a situation before you get into it.

I guess it's a basic part of growing up.

Uh, you are going to a job interview, you run through it in your mind before you get there, you come up with answers to questions before you're there.

You're gonna have a hard conversation, you play it out in your mind before you have it.

I mean, this is just a normal part of being wisdom, of being wise.

You'll even think through if I'm tempted in this way, here's what I'm going to do.

And you think through that ahead of time.

But the young person doesn't know that.

So the young person is very naive and they're thinking, I'm just gonna go about my life, and if I'm tempted to sin, you know, I might size up the person.

I might see how beautiful she is, how seductive she is, and then I'll decide at that moment what the right thing to do is.

Well, that is just straight up folly.

You have to decide before you are there.

Because sin will lie to you at the moment.

And if any new information comes to you at the moment of temptation, that information is going to be a lie.

Because sin is the one presenting it.

You know, see, I used to work at a car dealership and they had this kind of expression: the person who comes back the second time is going to buy the car.

If they come back the second time and they don't buy the car, it's because the salesman messed it up.

I mean, the only reason they're back the second time is because they're entertaining it.

I mean, anybody who walks their car a lot one time, you come back the second time, home, you're hooked.

And if you come back the second time, you're like, oh, I'm really just looking for this piece of information or that piece of information.

Any information you hear at that moment is likely going to be a lie.

I mean, they they know that.

They know you're here to hear what you want to hear, to buy what you want to buy.

So you have to decide what you're going to do before you go back the second time.

The thing with the adulterous woman is you don't get the second time.

You have to decide what you're going to do before you get yourself in that situation.

And what the psalmist says here straight up is that you have to decide that you are more satisfied with God and with his law and with his commandments.

Look at language in verse 2.

His teaching is the apple of your eye.

Isaiah 33, verse 17 says, Our eyes will behold the king in his beauty.

Isaiah 33:17

Psalm 27, verse 4, one of my favorite verses.

Psalms 27:4

One thing I have asked, one thing I desire, that I would gaze upon the Lord in this temple and see him in his beauty.

That's all that David wanted.

His life was mesmerized by the beauty of the Lord.

So you have to decide in your mind before the situation that you are more enthralled with the beauty of the Lord than with the adulterous woman, with sexual sin.

And you want to behold God in his beauty.

If you behold idols, you become like idols.

If you behold God, you become like God.

If you behold pornography, you become sexually immoral.

If you behold the word of God, you become godlier.

You're conformed to the image of Christ.

If you behold idols, you become dead like your idols.

If you behold the commandments of the Lord, you become holy like the commandments of the Lord.

That's the moral of these imperatives.

That's why before we get to the adulterous woman, he's stressing again the beauty of God and God's word.

Do you want to fight sin?

Gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and commit to that music.

So that when the song of the sirens is playing, you recall in your mind and in your heart a better song than what you're hearing.

You recognize that you're committed to a better composer.

I mean, if you say, when I'm tempted for adultery or sexual morality, I'm going to remember that I love my wife.

That's good.

That's the right answer.

Somebody tempts you and you say, Ah, I'm not tempted by this because I love my wife, that's good.

But it's not sufficient.

Because at some point you're gonna have an argument with your spouse, you're gonna be at cross purposes with them, and if temptation comes at that moment, then your one defense is out the window.

Then you find yourself weak and vulnerable and trying to remember why was I supposed to say none of this?

This is why the dad says you're committed not to your spouse, although that's true and good and holy and noble and but you're resisting sin because you're committed to scripture.

You're committed to God and his beauty, which never fades, and you're never at cross-purposes with it unless you're harboring sin in your life.

You keep God and God's word is the apple of your eye.

So first, you commit to the right composer, marry the right woman, in other words, and here woman is wisdom.

Second, that you see behind the music to the misery.

You're able to see behind the siren song to the misery that's behind it.

So the first five verses are all these commands, imperatives, right?

Call, say, write, bind, keep, keep, treasure, keep.

All active things.

An immature person is not active.

That's one of the most obvious characteristics of the immature person.

The immature person is passive, the immature person is acted upon, the immature person is letting others move while they stay still.

All right?

The immature person is the pot that's not boiling because it's not on the heat.

Like it's just chilling out and it'll think, oh, all these other pots are boiling.

Maybe one day I'll inch myself over to the heat and then I'll boil.

But the immature person is not, he's not acting, he's not doing anything, he's watching other things.

So there's a massive contrast in Proverbs 7 between all the active words.

The father is begging the son in the first five verses, do these things, okay?

Write, call, keep, guard, treasure, do them.

It's like yelling at your teenager, do something.

Now we're going to the passive.

The naive person is passive.

Notice the naive person here in verse 6.

First of all, it's the dad.

The dad is transitioning here.

Out the window of my house, I look through my lattice.

Why is the dad inventing some kind of window he's looking out?

I mean, this is not a true story.

You get that.

He's pointing out that the dad, who's wise here, is in a different world in this scene.

The dad may as well be on Mount Everest looking down on this scene.

He's looking at something outside his window that is outside of his world.

This is not the dad's world in this scenario.

The dad is not the one who's tempted by the adulterous woman.

The dad has seen this temptation before, but it's not him.

He's in a different world looking out the window of his house.

Out his lattice.

And he sees out the window of his house the simple person, the naive youth.

He sees a lot of youths out there, but there's one in particular that lacks sense.

This guy is stubborn, he's dumb, he's just going through life.

He's passing along the street near the corner.

He's taking the road to her house.

In the twilight, the evening, at the time of night and darkness.

This kid is so dumb he doesn't see the danger of walking the streets at night.

Notice all this language that's in these passages is about darkness.

This is not the kind of thing that happens in daylight.

This is the kind of thing that happens under darkness.

This kid is too naive to know that.

He doesn't see the danger he's in.

The dad who has wisdom is inside at darkness, but not this kid.

He's roaming the streets at night, minding his own business, walking the streets, going every which way.

And behold, verse 10 says, a woman meets him.

Dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart.

She's loud, wayward.

Her feet don't stay at home.

Now the guy's just observing.

You can deduce all of that from the encounter.

He doesn't know anything about this boy except he's naive.

He doesn't know anything about this woman except she's wicked.

Deduced entirely from her dress.

And she's all over this place, this woman.

She's in the street, now the market, she's at every corner, and she's lying in wait.

Now she's lying, also.

She's gonna tell the guy, oh, I've been looking for you.

She's been looking for any guy.

She doesn't have a name attached to this.

It's not like, oh, you're so handsome, I've been I've been hunting for you.

You're the apple of my eye.

Oh no.

You're just the first guy that crossed paths with her.

She seizes and kisses him.

She lies to him.

This whole thing is creating a contrast, isn't it?

The mature guys at home, the passive, naive boys in the streets.

The one who's acting in the story is the devil through this woman, this harlot.

The boy doesn't realize that his enemy is also lurking the streets at night.

His enemy, of course, is the devil.

The devil is the only true enemy we have, but the devil lives and moves and has his being through the world and the flesh.

And our desires and sin.

That's how the devil operates.

The boy's desires become the devil's toys.

The boy is naive and led by his own lust.

And the devil is attacking the boy in that sense.

The boy's friends become the devil's advocates and the boy's enemy.

Here the devil is attacking this boy through this woman.

And the boy is too naive to understand he's toying with the devil himself.

Here the devil is in the form of the adulterous woman.

She is active as the devil is.

The devil roams and lies.

This is just so reminiscent of the way Adam and Eve were attacked by the devil.

The devil roams about and is actively pursuing his prey.

His prey is just wandering around, too naive to know what's about to happen.

The words in this are very active from the woman.

Notice verse 12.

She lies in waits, so she's disguising herself.

She seizes in verse 13.

She kisses in verse 13.

She makes up the story in verse 14.

I had to offer sacrifices and day I ped my vows.

All this means is, you know, in this world it was unusual to eat meat.

It was unusual to have like a, you know, a steak dinner kind of thing.

And she's saying, offered sacrifices, which means I have meat at my house.

Come enjoy it with me.

I have this extra meat, verse 15.

So I've come out to meet you and to seek you eagerly.

She's not even hiding it.

She says, I was hunting for you in verse in verse 15.

I was seeking you eagerly.

Now that to a wise person, that's a warning sign, right?

You get like the spam phone call, and you answer, and the person's like, Oh, Mr.

or Mrs.

Jesse Johnson, you're just the person I was seeking.

Really?

You were hunting me out?

You don't even know my name.

She's being hunted.

He's being hunted.

And then she says, I spread my couch with coverings.

In other words, she got out new linens on the couch.

That word could also be translated to bed, colored linens, Egyptian linen, soft sheets that are on the bed, soft, clean sheets that she prepared on the bed.

And she's telling the guy that she just met on the street, I prepared my bed for you.

Again, this is not subtle.

This is not, let's go to have dinner and watch a movie and see what happens.

This is I made my bed for you.

Come lie in it with me.

I've perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning.

Let's do this all night long, she says.

Let's delight ourselves with love.

Now notice the active words here.

Again, lies in wait, seizes, kisses, seeks, spreads, perfumes.

Even the invitation of verse 18, come.

She's very active in her seduction.

She has another lie ready to go.

My husband's not at home.

He's gone away on a long journey.

He took a bag of money with him, meaning he'll be gone a long time.

It's a business trip, probably.

At the full moon, he'll come home.

And the moon's waning right now.

We've got so long before he comes back.

There's no chance of getting caught.

And I mean, all of this is lies.

There's obviously a very high chance of getting caught.

Any thinking person would know that.

No thinking person would believe she was obviously looking for him and prepared the bed for him personally.

Of course not.

He is just the most naive individual possible, and he is out of his league right here.

He doesn't realize that he is being seduced by a professional adulteress.

He doesn't understand that.

This is going to cost him everything.

But he's too dumb to think that way.

He's only thinking about the allurement of it.

He's only thinking about the allurement of it.

He can't see beyond the surface.

The father says in verse 21, with much seductive speech, she persuades him.

Notice that she is arguing.

The boy initially is like a little put off by this, like a little unsure, but she keeps seducing him, and she is the one persuading with lots of words, tearing down all of his defenses.

With her smooth talk, she compels him.

Remember, the immature person is being acted on, the wicked person is doing the acting here.

This boy is too immature to know how to stand up for himself.

And he thinks he is.

I mean, that's the thing with like this 15, 16, 18, 22-year-old, whatever age group you want to give this guy, this dude thinks he's ready to stand before temptation.

But she compels him and he doesn't know what to do.

Verse 22, all at once he gives up.

He follows her.

He immediately caves in and follows her.

And the dad watching through the window describes it like an ox going to the slaughter.

Or stag that is caught fast till an arrow pierces his liver.

The stag catches itself in a trap.

The archer comes and shoots it in the liver.

Supposedly, I mean I've never hunted deer, but I know many of you have.

And I have been told by some of you that are here tonight that the fastest way to kill the deer is to shoot it through its heart or its liver and it will bleed out.

It won't even get very far away.

You don't want it to run far away because it'll leave a trail of blood.

The idea here, this is how immediate this takedown happens.

He's caught in a trap of this woman and he can't get out, and then it's like an arrow goes through his liver.

The bird falls for the trap.

The bird doesn't go into the trap thinking that it'll die.

It says in verse 23, the bird doesn't know it's going to cost him his life.

And this is graphic.

We went from perfumed beds with nice Egyptian cotton on it to an arrow through the liver.

The appeal from the father to the son here is to recognize that the moment of temptation, you might not believe it then, so settle on it now.

If you give in to that temptation, it will cost you your life.

Maybe literally, maybe the husband will come home and kill you.

It's within the realm of possibility.

But certainly figuratively.

It'll cost you money, it'll cost you reputation, it'll cost you your marriage, it'll cost you your family, it could cost you your job, it could cost you everything.

That's not what the woman says that night.

Then that night the woman says, hey, the woman doesn't say, hey, come lie with me.

By the way, it'll ruin your life and wreck your career.

The woman says, This is all be fine.

You'll enjoy it actually.

But it'll cost you your life.

The key to avoiding the siren song is to see through the appeal, to see through the siren's music, and to see the carnage behind it.

Just picture the deer with its liver split.

When you're tempted for sexual immorality, have that scene come to your mind.

Thirdly.

You avoid the siren song by committing to the right composer, by seeing behind the music to the misery, and thirdly, my understanding that love has a greater song, love a greater song than the siren song.

This is where the dad concludes this chapter.

He goes back, now, sons, plural, it transcends just the conversation with this boy.

Now, sons, to you and me, listen to me.

The dad's back with these commands.

Pay attention to the words of her mouth.

Let not your heart turn aside to her ways.

Don't stray into her path.

Notice again the imperatives.

Listen, attention, let stray.

Many a victim she has laid low.

The streets are covered with the carnage that she is given.

All her slain are a mighty throng.

Her house is the way of Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.

The father appeals to the sons.

Don't go where you don't belong.

Even with the word stray here in the middle of verse 25, it's clear that the boy has found himself where he doesn't belong.

The boy doesn't belong with the adulterer.

He doesn't belong with the prostitute.

He belongs at home.

He belongs with wisdom.

But he toyed with temptation and found himself killed by it.

One of my kids went through a phase where she loved reading the true stories of when animals attack.

There's a whole series of books at uh Fairfax Library, When Animals Attack, True Stories.

And we have checked out all of them 142 times.

And uh I enjoyed reading some of them with her.

And you have sympathy for some of them, like the guy in New Hampshire who walks the same path every day for 10 years and gets attacked by a moose.

You're like, oh, poor guy, you didn't see that coming.

You have sympathy for him.

But there's a story in there about a dude who befriends a wolf in Alaska, literally befriends a wolf, and the wolf attacks him.

Can you be surprised?

Or my favorite of those stories is a lady who was attacked by her anaconda in New Jersey.

She had a giant anaconda in a cage, and she fell asleep one night and woke up to the anaconda attacking her, wrapping her around, trying to eat her.

And she lives barely.

I think like the fire department came and killed the snake, and she's like, oh, it's not the snake's fault because I held my neighbor's cat that day, and the anaconda was probably just smelling the cat on my sweater or something crazy like that.

Yowser's.

Like if you befriend a wolf, how surprised are you allowed to be?

You're like, I worked hard, I gave the wolf my feeter jelly sandwich every Wednesday for a year, and then it bit me.

No kidding.

So it is with the person who is lured aside by the adulterous woman.

They have fallen in love and they have fed what is not beautiful and what will harm them.

A normal person hears those animal stories and thinks if your goal is not to get attacked, don't have one of those creatures as a pet.

The way you counter that, the way you counter that in Proverbs is that you love wisdom.

You recognize there is something more beautiful that you love.

Christianity in America in the 1990s went through a purity phase.

That's how many authors have referred to it as a purity phase or a purity fad.

If you were in high school or college during the 90s, you probably remember this.

Purity rings, purity pledges.

You could write a purity card and they would nail it on the steps of the Capitol building, kind of thing, and uh all of that.

And it was a whole, you know, purity industry with conferences and the whole nine yards.

And certainly that industry was ethical.

Teaching purity is a good thing, of course.

Purity is good, sin is bad.

That whole industry was ethical and pointing people the right way, but it wasn't doctrinal.

And it wasn't it wasn't profound, it was fairly shallow, and it intended to grow and prosper in churches that themselves are pretty shallow.

Purity is good, but not profound.

That kind of movement has the put off on correctly, like it has the put-off sexual morality, but it was lacking in what you put on.

The truth is, purity is not the absence of sin, but the presence of holiness.

Purity is not in a vacuum, but purity is active righteousness.

And this is where Proverbs 7 ends.

It's not enough just to say, I'm going to avoid the adulterous woman.

That won't do the trick.

You have to have something better, something more beautiful than her.

You have to pay attention to the words of Scripture and see the beauty of God in the pages of Scripture.

I mentioned it earlier, but I didn't give you the verse.

Psalm 115.

Those that make the idols, those that behold the idols, become like the idols.

So you're like, okay, I'm closing my eyes to idols.

I won't look at idols.

That's not going to make you pure.

Purity comes from beholding the beauty of God in Christ.

Purity comes from seeing there's a greater beauty than adultery.

In other words, there's a prettier song.

How did Ulysses survive the siren call, if you remember in Odyssey?

Well, he had his soldiers melt wax and they plugged their ears with the wax.

And then he tied himself, ready to soldiers, tie himself to the mast of his ship.

Because he wanted to endure.

He couldn't, you know, conquer Greece unless he had endured all the temptations.

And so he wanted to endure the song of the sirens for himself.

So he had his men tie him to the mast, and they had melted wax into their ears.

And he told them, no matter how much I beg or plead or lash, don't let me off of the mast.

And so he was able to endure temptation's song.

Obviously, it's a mythology.

It's not true.

That's not how the real Ulysses survived the real sirens.

It's not true.

Um, nor is it reasonable.

How will you survive the siren song?

I would say the way to survive it is to commit yourself to wisdom in your mind.

Commit yourself to wisdom.

Wisdom is better than sin.

See behind the allure of the temptation to all of the death that it would bring, and then go back to saying the Lord is more beautiful than sin.

You know who did survive the siren song?

Jesus, of course.

In his life, he endured every temptation.

Every temptation.

And as he was tempted, he did not have men to plug their ears.

His disciples were around him, their ears weren't plugged, and they gave in to sin all day long, didn't they?

All day long.

But he didn't.

He wasn't tied to any mast.

He resisted the song of the siren over and over and over again.

How was he able to do it?

Well, this way.

He knew that he could only do the will of his father in heaven.

He knew that any sin was contrary to the will of God, his father in heaven, and so he led a completely obedient and holy life with active righteousness.

He led a pure life, not because his ears were plugged, but because he had a bigger love in his heart than sin.

And that becomes our model.

Of course, we know when we fail, we have the forgiveness of Christ, who endured temptation on our behalf.

So when we fail, we can turn and receive forgiveness from him.

Lord, we're thankful that you play a better song for us in the Song of the Sirens.

Temptation is real and active and roams the earth looking for those to devour.

And yet you are beautiful and pure and holy and true.

Lord, we pray that you would create hearts of purity in our congregation, in our young people.

We pray they would be committed to purity.

Not because putting off sin is good, although it is, but that they would be committed to purity because they are committed to you and the beauty of Christ.

We know the young people in our lives face temptations that are even different than we face, more extreme, more immediate, more accessible.

So we pray for their boldness and their courage to resist sin because of their love for you.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.