"Wisdom's Enemy" Proverbs 5 Sunday Evening Worship Service

I've been going through Proverbs on our evening worship services together now, and we've made it not as far as I would have liked.

But Proverbs 5 is where we'll be tonight.

Let me read the whole chapter for us.

And we'll begin.

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.

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

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

She doesn't ponder the path of life.

Her ways wander, she doesn't know it.

Now, sons, listen to me.

Don't depart from the words of my mouth.

Keep your way far from her.

Don't go near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the merciless, lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner.

At the end of your life you groan, and when your flesh and body are consumed, you say, Oh, how I hated discipline, how my heart despised reproof.

I didn't listen to the voice of my teachers or inclined my ears to my instructors.

I'm 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 deer, a graceful doe, let her breast 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 Yahweh, and he ponders all of his paths.

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him.

He's held fast in the cords of his sin.

He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly, he is led astray.

This is the word of God.

To say that our culture has an epidemic of sexual immorality would, of course, be an understatement.

Pornography is a literal public health crisis.

Pornography flourishes in our world because of what sociologists refer to as the three A's of cybersex: accessibility, anonymity, and affordability.

Accessibility, anonymity, and affordability.

And honestly, those are the three contributing factors to any kind of sin.

It's said differently in different environments.

You know, the police will sometimes say a factor driving crime is opportunity, the likelihood of getting away with it, and the reward at the end of it, it's the same basic function, accessibility, anonymity, and affordability.

You see this all the way back in Genesis with the first prostitution recorded in the Bible.

A person goes thinking that they won't be found.

It's something they can afford, although he has to leave his staff as uh payment, and he thinks he can get away with it.

The same exists today, but of course, uh internet pornography just makes the accessibility off the charts in your own pocket.

Anonymity, you're at a distance, affordability, despite most pornography online being free, it is a billion-dollar industry.

I I spent some time reading different uh journal articles this week.

Forbes Magazine, Wall Street Journal has an article about this and some other places trying to calculate exactly how big of a business online pornography is.

Nobody really knows.

You see numbers thrown around, they're like it's a$10 million a year business, a$5 billion a year business.

Nobody really has a good understanding, I don't think.

Northwest University says the best guesses in their study are that advertising and online pornographic sites bring in about$3 billion a year.

About one billion of that would be cleared as profit.

So it's a massive, massive industry.

There's several statistics.

Most universities do these kind of studies.

Study from a university was gonna obviously skew towards um you know certain demographics and socioeconomic statuses that are not that useful as far as gauging all of society.

But a typical survey from colleges right now 96% of today's uh college students say that porn is beneficial to society.

2% neutral, 2% negative.

That's a study done in 2022, so after COVID.

Meaning that most college, not even most, almost all college students would view pornography as a positive in society.

One of the more shocking stats from this survey is that more teens today, by a long shot, more teens say failing to recycle is worse than pornography.

The most comprehensive study on online activity is done by Northwest University, and they last published it in 2017, the study I'm looking at.

Now, you know, so it's a little bit dated seven years ago now.

But in 2017, 4% of websites were devoted to pornography.

However, 25% of searches online through Google and other search engines were for pornographic content.

So despite making 4% of the internet, 25% of people are actively engaging it.

There's other statistics that make a more complicated picture for sure.

Something like 60%, this is a current study this year, 60% of teenagers today who say they have encountered pornography online, say they encountered it accidentally.

But the flip side of that is that they also say they encounter it regularly.

So you wonder if the word accidental is not doing a lot of heavy lifting right there.

It's an accident, but it happens all the time.

Common Sense Media, which is not a Christian organization, um, but you know, they provide entertainment screenings.

I'm sure most many parents are aware of them, and if you're not, you you should be.

It's a very helpful, uh helpful tool.

Common Sense Media has their own study on teenagers and their internet consumption.

Um, they do a study on behavior around it, and they have an encouraging statistic compared to millennials.

Millennials, 68% of millennials said they learned about sex from pornography.

That number is dropping.

Common Sense Media, with a study they joined together with BYU to do, says that now it's something like 40%, meaning that 60% of Gen Z says they learn about sex from a trusted adult like a parent or teacher.

But still, it is a massive, massive problem.

And it's a problem that has a corrosive effect on marriages, of course.

Because pornography doesn't stay on your phone, it of course jumps the banks and goes into every area of life.

Person who is looking at pornography is likely going to be angry with those around them, is likely going to be uh short with their own spouse, with their own kids, or a child with their own parents.

It leads to anger, it leads to self-loathing, it leads to a lack of contentment, it leads to just bitterness.

Of course, it leads to a detachment from the Lord as the person drifts further and further away from the Lord.

It's hard to be actively engaged in Bible study and prayer and reading while addicted to pornography.

Those problems jump the banks into marriage.

As I said, not just anger towards a spouse and short towards a spouse, but lack of intimacy in marriage is normally associated with pornographic intake, and then that of course leads over to adultery.

That's where the road goes.

I'm not saying that everybody looks at pornography as going to have an actual affair with somebody, but obviously if you feed a fire long enough, it burns the house down.

All kinds of motivations are behind those who have affairs.

I stress the pornography element of it just because that is the ubiquitous one in our own society.

It is everywhere.

It fuels divorce.

I've become convinced that there are no good statistics about uh divorce.

I think a lot of most statistics about divorce are lies.

You hear people say, you know, 50% of Christian marriages end in divorce and blah, blah, blah.

I mean, that's just not true.

People say it all the time.

When you start to drill down to what percentage of marriages actually do end in divorce, it's so much lower than that now.

And in our society today, it's probably around 6%.

However, the rare marriage rate in our society has likewise plummeted.

The bottom has fallen out of that.

There's pros and cons of that.

You know, obviously there's less divorce because there's less marriages.

Maybe that increases the longevity of a marriage by and delaying it.

Who knows?

I doubt it.

Frankly, I think some of the happiest people who are married are the ones that got married young.

But what seems unique in our society is that the ubiquitous, accessible nature of pornography definitely fuels divorce.

When I think of the couples that I know of that have gone through divorce, it's usually because of an affair which is usually traced back to pornography.

Not a one-to-one correlation.

Like I was looking at porn, so then I decided to have an affair, but more just the desensitization of the conscience, the repeated desensitization of the mind.

So the person isn't, their conscience just gets deadened and deadened and deadened.

So they're not aware of what they're doing that should be setting off all the alarms.

They're not aware that friendship with this lady who's not your wife is going to be dangerous.

They're not aware of that because their conscience is so dead.

They're not even setting out to have an affair, they're just blinded by their own sin.

Affairs themselves are obviously not new.

Solomon warned about them.

Solomon himself, you know, orbiting in the world of about a thousand women here.

It kind of gets you back to the nature of Proverbs along with the Song of Solomon.

I'm not suggesting if you go back to the, you know, the introduction to the series of Proverbs 1, I'm not suggesting that Solomon wrote all of these Proverbs himself from his own personal experience, nor that Song of Solomon was written right by Solomon about his first wife with his, you know, his first marriage with his first wife.

If you remember, Solomon's first wife was an Egyptian princess.

That doesn't exactly fit Song of Solomon.

Rather, Song of Solomon is the chief of the love songs written and presented in Solomon's court, did it with Proverbs, it is the chief of wisdom that is presented to Proverb to Solomon.

Solomon compiles this stuff and gives it to us as kind of a way to teach young men.

And that's where this is headed.

And so Solomon has taken this wisdom.

Some of it, I'm sure, matches his experience, some of it I'm sure matches his own folly.

And he packages it to give it to young people, to warn them about sin and to direct them towards wisdom.

And Solom warns against this even in Proverbs chapter 5.

Proverbs 5 · chapter mention

This is a wonderful practical theology here.

This is where the kind of the abstract in chapters 1 through 4, the abstract of the way of folly and the way of life, those two voices, and it becomes real here, almost becomes embodied.

In Proverbs 1 through 10, there are five different discourses devoted to sexual purity.

Solomon hits this theme more than any other theme.

He's aware that it is a unique danger.

He had 700 wives, 300 concubines.

But his words here survive to sober up a generation that is intoxicated by sex while also desensitized to it.

And the amount of space that Solomon gives you to wrestle with this leaves no doubt that he saw in sexual sin a great hazard in the path of young people.

Solomon structures this chapter to alternate between wisdom and warning.

He begins with wisdom.

Verses one through two.

My son, be attentive to my wisdom.

Pay attention to my wisdom, he says in verse one.

Turn your ears in, kid.

Listen up.

The phrase is translated, be attention in the SV.

It literally means bend your ear.

It's an idiom.

Turn your ear towards me.

Sometimes people still use that expression, don't they?

Can I bend your ear for a minute?

You might hear someone say.

So this is this is Solomon turning that expression around.

The American expression is can I bend your ear?

Solomon is saying, Hey, give me that ear.

Bring it over here, kid.

He bends his son's ear towards him to get understanding, it says in verse 1.

Incline your ear to my understanding.

So this is the imparting of knowledge.

And this is hard.

You really need Proverbs 1 through 4.

I'm kind of uh sad about the break wrecking the momentum here.

But in Proverbs 1 through 4, you're really appealing with the kid.

You have to submit yourself to the teaching of the person above you.

You have to trust that your parents have a little bit of wisdom in this.

And that's so hard to remember in Proverbs 4.

That's so hard for the child because the kids don't tend to view their parents as the source of wisdom, but with a more skepticism here.

But you can't advance in wisdom unless you're willing to learn the wisdom from the person teaching you wisdom.

So that's where this goes.

Like, kid, turn your ear this way.

Understand, I have wisdom and I'm trying to give it to you.

In these Proverbs 1 through 10, the voice of the parents and the voice of lady wisdom is the same voice, recall.

It's the friends that are leading them down astray.

It is the world that's pulling them down the path of folly.

It is the parents who are saying, No, go that way.

And it's the voice of wisdom that comes in and corroborates that.

So last time we saw the voice of wisdom.

Now we're back to the son of the parents again, the father saying, Listen to my words.

Hear my wisdom, he says in verse 1.

Why does the son need wisdom?

Because wisdom leads to purity.

That's verse 2.

That you may keep discretion.

Discretion here is just it's another word for purity.

That you would be discreet.

Purity and discretion are synonymous in Hebrew, less so in English.

In English, something is pure meaning it's undefiled, and something's discreet meaning that it's hidden.

But in the in the Hebrew mind, those are much more synonymous.

So you want to have a chaste marriage, you're not showing yourself.

You know, modesty is connected to chastity, in other words.

And so here the word discretion is connected to purity.

If you want to be pure, be discreet.

Sexually, emotionally, etc.

Have some discretion.

And then your lips will guard knowledge.

Lips becomes a refrain through this chapter.

Your lips will guard knowledge.

Your lips aren't going to be taken in by the sweet talking of the adulterous woman.

Your lips instead will be guarding knowledge.

Guarding knowledge is sometimes active, like your speaking treats from Psalm 119.

Guarding knowledge is sometimes defensive.

You're guarding it in your mind.

Here, the lips are on the defense.

Normally it's the mind that guards knowledge, like you think of Psalm 119.

How does the young man keep his way pure by guarding his path according to the word?

Here it's the lips that are doing the guarding.

In other words, the lips are the ones focused on what am I talking about?

What is my speech?

It's going to be discreet, which will keep the heart pure.

This becomes a very easy warning sign.

Is your speech matching purity or not?

And then one of the first warning signs you're going to see as we go through this chapter of somebody who's setting themselves up for an affair is their speech.

When their speech slips, when they lose plain speech, clear speech, discreet speech, it's usually a window that something is wrong in the heart.

Well, the purpose of listening to wisdom is to avoid the dangers that come next.

The wisdom leads to the warning.

Warning in verse 3.

The lips of the forbidden woman drip honey.

Why is the woman forbidden?

Well, literally it means foreigner, the Hebrew word, or strange woman.

The Jews were not supposed to intermarry.

Most of Solomon, or I don't know, most many of Solomon's wives were not Hebrew, of course.

So again, Solomon would be aware of this, but the word means a foreigner, somebody who's not from your people.

And it's also idiomatic for somebody you're not supposed to be with.

In monogamous marriage, every other woman would be a strange woman.

Here, the word is functioning like anybody who would encourage you towards any kind of sexual experience outside of marriage.

To borrow the language in verse 15, the strange woman is anybody who is not, any cistern that is not your own wife.

And gender, of course, can be taken too far here.

It's called a forbidden woman because it's lessons to the son.

The genders, I think, in chapter 5 here, can be reversed.

I'm sure there's some temptations that are unique to men over women, but I think generically speaking, the temptation for sexual immorality transcends gender distinctions here.

And so it's just putting the feminine here because he's talking to his son, but he's saying, son, be aware, be aware of the woman who is trying to trap you.

This adulterous woman, she is active.

I shared that stat earlier about how often people accidentally come across pornography.

It's accidental perhaps to the person who comes across it.

It is not accidental to the pornography company.

They're very active in it.

They want you to come across it.

It's the same thing with the adulterous woman.

This guy, this young guy, he is, you know, he's naive.

All right?

He's starting off Proverbs.

He's naive.

He doesn't have the rest of Proverbs yet.

He's naive.

And this woman is trying to lure him in.

She's forbidden.

Now, I do not think that he is married.

The son is married here.

So this is not a warning against going off with someone, some woman who is different than the other person you're married with at home.

This isn't a lesson to go back home with your own wife.

No, not yet.

This person probably isn't married yet.

He's still trying to figure out which path he's going to walk on.

And so Solomon's warning here, a strange woman, is saying, don't go with a woman who is not your wife.

You don't have a wife.

You want to go with a woman, go marry one.

That's coming up in this chapter.

We'll get there in a few paragraphs.

But for now, it's just a warning.

Lead a pure and chaste life.

Don't use the excuse of your singleness to justify your morality.

So here's a single person, and they are being seduced.

You can tell they're being seduced in verse 3 because it's the lips of the forbidden woman who are dripping honey.

Honey is sweet, and her lips are dripping honey, which means she's flattering the person.

She's saying nice things to him.

She's trying to get him to follow along.

She's fishing and she's trying to get him to bite the hook.

Flirting in Proverbs, it's a common expression.

It's usually connected to harlotry.

Somebody who themselves is sexually immoral.

Proverbs 29, 5 says that flattery is a trap.

The tempter sear is having flattering lips that drip with honey.

Honey, as I mentioned, is sweet, but often honey in the Old Testament refers to something that is good that goes bad.

We don't think that way because we put honey in our cabinet and it lasts forever there.

But in the Hebrew world, honey was something that's good, but it could go bad.

Proverbs 25, 16, have you found honey?

Eat only what you need unless you have it in excess and vomit it.

That's not talking about just honey there.

It's telling you to be content with what the Lord gives you.

Proverbs 27, verse 7.

Proverbs 27:7

A sated man, which is another way of saying a satisfied soul, loathes honey.

But to a famished man, any bitter thing is sweet.

When you're satisfied, you don't want honey.

After Thanksgiving dinner, you know, you eat the turkey and the mashed potatoes and everything, you make the best meal, and you're like, uh, you know what I could go for right now?

Is a spoonful of honey.

Gross.

If you're satisfied, you don't need the spoonful of honey.

But for the person who's famished, they could eat vinegar and it would taste like honey to them.

They're starving.

That's Proverbs 27, verse 7.

Proverbs 27:7

That's this woman.

For the person who's not content with where they are in life, she's going to be alluring.

The person who's not content in their singleness will be trapped by this person.

The person who's not content in their marriage will be trapped by this person.

And this person is trying to be a sweet talker.

A little coaxing, a little flattery, a little decision.

They say such nice things.

Oh, you're you're so handsome, you're so strong, you're so wise, you're so interesting.

You know, you're not at all like the other people I know.

Like they're they're boring.

You're interesting.

I would love to talk to you more.

You're interesting.

And you think, oh, somebody's interested in me.

That's flattery.

It's a common chord in affairs.

Because in marriage, you know, you've been with the person ten years.

You've said what you want to say, you've heard what you want to hear.

And then this other person comes along and is like, you know what, I find you interesting.

And you think at home I'm not found interesting.

You believe the person who's telling you.

When the person tells you, oh, I find you interesting and tall, dark, and handsome, they're not speaking the truth to you.

They don't really find you interesting.

They don't really find you tall, dark, or handsome.

They're lying to you.

They're trying to trap you.

They're trying to lure you in.

Verse 4 lets you know this.

In the end, she is as bitter as wormwood.

Well, that's disgusting.

Wormwood is the, you know, the moldy, almost sawdust kind of thing.

Imagine going to take a spoonful of honey and it's like sawdust.

Wormwood, the flower of wormwood, by the way, can be quite beautiful, but it's practically poisonous.

And underneath it tastes like chalk, not like honey at all.

This is deceptive.

This is deceptive.

And Solomon is trying to get his son, who's so naive, the son right now, I think, nobody would ever lie to me about that.

Nobody would ever lie to me about how interested they are in me.

Yes, they do all the time.

And this fast forwards to today.

You know, one of the most common scams today is you'll you'll get a random spam text message from somebody that you don't know.

Hey, I saw you at the gym today.

Was that you?

Nobody saw you at the gym today.

It wasn't you.

They're not genuinely confused.

I actually, I mean, I know people, I'm sure you know people too, that fall into those traps.

And go, this person wants to meet me.

All I need to do is text them my, you know, my own pictures of me, and they sent me pictures of her, and look, she's beautiful.

And you think that's not her.

That's the person sending that message is not her.

I was with Steve Hawley, and I'm gonna share this story.

It was with Steve Hawley.

We were talking to somebody about this, and the person was so positive that this the pictures he was getting were this very attractive person.

And Steve told him, the person who's sending you that is probably a 300-pound guy with hairy knuckles.

Do you know that?

The guy did not, in fact, know that.

Proverbs 5 is trying to teach you that though.

The person behind those texts, that's not real.

And even if the person does actually exist, and you do actually meet them, maybe they they met you at a restaurant or at a bar, maybe they did meet you at the gym, they talked to you at the gym.

They're like, oh, she's a real person, and she does look like that.

And she says the sweetest things.

The end of it is is death.

It's not the pretty flower that it looks like on the outside.

That's wormwood.

Her feet don't care about the Lord.

Verse 5, her feet go down to death.

Her steps follow the path to Sheol.

Remember, in Proverbs, you want to be on the path to life.

You want to be following the path of life.

Wisdom teaches you how to live in this world.

And this person comes along and says, Oh, you're so beautiful, come with me.

And you think, oh yes, she's interesting and she's beautiful and she knows my name, and yes, I'm gonna go with her.

Do you recognize for a second?

Just stop.

I know sin makes you stupid, but Solomon is saying, Stop for a second.

You were trying so hard to be in this path, and she's tucking your hand and running that way.

You were headed that way, and they're going that way.

Do you get that?

That's the wrong way.

That's this point in verse 5.

Her feet go to death.

You're trying to live for life.

You want to go to heaven when you die?

She doesn't.

Her feet go to Sheol.

She doesn't have a sign around her neck, by the way, that says, Hello, I lead to death.

Hey, you look interesting.

Can we talk more?

By the way, I'll kill you.

Her sign doesn't say that.

But if there was honesty in advertising, it was.

It says she doesn't ponder.

You know, she's naive herself.

She's foolish herself.

She's more cunning than this innocent guy is.

She's more cunning.

She's trying to trap this guy.

But nevertheless, she is not introspective, verse 6.

She hasn't pondered the path to life, she hasn't meditated on Proverbs.

No way.

Her ways wander.

And she, it says, doesn't even know it.

This harlot or prostitute or adulteress or whatever word you want to ascribe to her, she herself is naive.

She's not wise.

She's deceitful.

She's cunning.

She's not introspective.

She doesn't reflect on the Lord.

And she doesn't even know the danger she's in.

She doesn't know.

This is all the more true in our digital age.

You know, the person on the screen, she's not thinking about life.

The person texting you is not, if they do exist, most of the time they're binary codes.

You think binary codes are considering the path of life?

I doubt it.

The lie, she's attractive, sweet, and persuasive.

The truth, she's ugly, bitter, and destructive.

You just have to see past it.

You gotta see beyond the surface.

Sin offers joy.

All sin offers joy.

You sin because you think it'll bring satisfaction.

Sin never pays.

Sin never pays.

Sin gives you an IOU.

It never ever pays.

And that's the way adultery often is.

It never pays up.

You know, there's all the scams where, you know, you won the lottery, or you're a secret shopper, or you, you know, somebody died and gave you an hair, and some scam to get you on the ropes.

I'm sure you know people that have fallen for these scams, and you know, all they need to send you your million dollars is a thousand dollars.

And that's all.

A thousand dollars.

And then you send them a thousand dollars and you look, hey, it's a it's only a thousand dollars, and after all, they promised me a million dollars, and so you get on the line.

You send them a thousand bucks and they say, Okay, great, the courier's on the way to your house with your checks for a million dollars.

Oh, the courier went to the wrong house.

Another thousand dollars, and we'll send them out tomorrow.

I know one person who got in one of these kind of traps, and you know, the they sent him a picture of the front door of his house.

And I'm like, oh, the courier was here.

All I need to do is send him another thousand dollars and he'll come back tomorrow.

Oh no, the courier ran away with my money.

For a thousand dollars, it'll pay the fee for the marshals to give it back to me.

I mean, there's one lie like that after another.

And the person keeps going and keeps going and keeps going.

I use that analogy, it's not a sexually immoral analogy.

I use that analogy because I think you can relate to it.

And you, it's easy to see how silly it is.

Like, how dumb does a person have to be to get sucked into that is how you think.

If you're being honest, that's what you're thinking.

Why does a person get sucked into that?

Because they they believe what they were told, they think the the payoff might be worth it.

Is the payoff ever worth it?

No, it's not.

Now back up a bit.

That's what adultery is like, that's what a sexual sin is like.

It tells you I'll deliver the pleasure you're looking for.

Uh-oh, the courier went to the wrong house.

Sorry.

Try it one more time.

Then the joy will show up.

Oh, sorry, that didn't work either.

The package got intercepted.

Try it one more time, and this time you'll find satisfaction.

This time you'll find happiness.

It's not gonna work.

Somebody says they're leaving their family because they want to go have a life that will make them happy somewhere else.

Here's this other woman, she'll make me happy.

I'm leaving my family because this other woman will make me happy.

I have a news flash for you.

That other woman will not make you happy.

It's not gonna happen.

It's more likely she'll kill you.

Verse six says.

So that's the warning.

Adultery leads to death.

Practical footnote.

Let me give you the next wisdom principle here.

Wisdom.

Verse 7, oh sons, listen to me again.

We're back to the word.

Give me your ear.

Don't depart from the words of my mouth.

The parent is pleading with their child here.

Listen, don't depart from this.

Keep your feet far away from her.

Do not go to the door of her house.

Don't go there.

This is a how far is too far kind of question, and the answer is the other way.

How far is too far?

Well, I would run the other way.

If you're asking that question, it's time to get out of the car and run home.

How holy is too holy is the right answer.

That's what the dad is telling the son here.

Don't ask how close you can get to the adulterous woman.

I don't want to have an affair with her.

I don't want to be immoral with her.

I just want to talk to her.

I'm not going to go inside her house.

I'm just going to take her up to the door of her house.

What do you think will happen at the door of your house?

You think it'll be easier to run away from her?

You were just walking her home from the restaurant.

You were just walking her back to her hotel room.

Do you think it'll be easier for you to run away before you get into the hotel or at the elevator?

Think it'll be easier to run away at the floor where she gets off?

Or do you think it'll be easier to run away at the door to her hotel room?

Where do you think is the easiest place to run away?

How about yesterday?

That's what the data is saying.

You want any wisdom here, son?

Get out of here before you're at that point.

You don't need to go to the door of her house.

Get away from her.

I have a friend who was an uh Uber driver.

He told me that he dropped somebody off at a house or someone in her house, and he said, Never happened before.

But she said, Why don't you come in?

My husband's out of town.

Why don't you come in?

To the Uber driver.

And he said, in all honesty, it was it was tempting for a few seconds.

It's like I was actually tempted for a few seconds.

Yeah, Rasm, why don't I come in?

She's attractive, why don't I come in?

And he's like, Oh yeah, because I'm a Christian.

No.

And he told me this.

I told him, I'm you made the right choice, but let me just tell you, if you're tempted for a second, let me just tell you this.

Do you know where that road goes?

Like, go back to Proverbs 5.

Where does that road go?

It doesn't go with you getting away with it.

I mean, he's her husband is as likely as not to murder you.

I mean, that's how people literally die.

You're not thinking that at the moment.

You're thinking she's attractive and she said her husband's out of town.

You might get murdered tomorrow for this.

And good luck with the jury convicting you.

Good luck even getting put in trial.

This is the wisdom gives you distance from sin.

You say, I'm not gonna go to the door.

I'm not gonna be caught in her ring camera.

I'm not gonna be, I'm gonna drop her off down the street.

She says, Hey, would you come in?

Okay, this is where the ride ends.

See you later.

That applies to more than just Uber drivers.

That's Joseph's logic.

Let me get out of town.

The time that you solidify this runaway from danger principle is not in the backseat of a car, not in the closed room of the house, or not at a strange hotel.

The time you solidify this principle in your heart is when you are very far away from temptation.

You make it solid in your heart.

I'm like Joseph, man.

You if I feel like you are leading on to me or flirting with me in any way, I'm just gonna bounce.

I can go eat at some other restaurant.

I can walk home, I can do whatever, I can get out of here, though.

You settle that in your heart now.

And so you might ask yourself, how do you keep a safe distance from temptation?

Is the glory of God in your mind when you're dealing with somebody that you is potentially a danger to you?

Have you learned to run away from sin?

Well, this goes to the next warning.

Warning.

The word leads to purity, adultery leads to death, the word leads to distance, adultery now leads to despair.

Earlier I said, this might, the girl's husband might come home and kill you.

It'll end in despair, it'll end in God's judgment.

But what do I actually mean by that?

Well, here we're focusing more on your actual life.

Let's pretend the husband doesn't show up and murder you, okay?

Just for the sake of the argument, let's just go down this road.

What's actually going to happen?

It's not just that it leads to death, it actually destroys your life.

Verse 9, you'll give your honor to others and your ears to the merciless.

What does that mean?

You're gonna father somebody with a woman that you're not married to.

They didn't have the concept of child support necessarily.

You're gonna have a child with some other person, and now your money is gonna be going to that other family.

That kid's not even gonna have your name.

And you're gonna be paying for his college.

And you should be paying for his college.

You're gonna spend the rest of your life giving half of your money to that person over there.

Why?

Because you were stupid.

That kid's not gonna know your name.

And when that kid grows up, even if he knows your name, even knows who you are, he's not gonna have your name.

And even if he grows up, he's probably not gonna like you that much.

After all, you're the dad that wasn't around.

You're gonna sap your strength.

You're gonna be working for T families.

Your labor, verse 10, is gonna go to the house of a foreigner.

At the end of your life, you're gonna groan.

Your flesh and body are consumed, in other words, you're in old age, and you're gonna say, Oh, I hated discipline.

My heart despised reproof.

I didn't listen to the voices of my teachers.

I didn't incline my ear to my instructors.

I'm at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation.

That phrase is so interesting to me.

In the assembled congregation, I think back often to the sermon where I was installed here at Emmanuel Bible Church as the pastor.

Michael Easley, I was sitting right where Alex is now.

Michael Easley took out a little note from the back of his Bible and read it to me in front of God and all of you.

And he said, Jesse, I just want you to think what's gonna happen if you have an affair on your wife.

Let me read it to you.

And he had this written down.

Your wife will experience the anguish of betrayal, shame, rejection, heartache, and loneliness.

And no amount of repentance from you will ever soften those blows.

Your wife will never again say that you're a model of faithfulness.

Suspicion will rob her of trust.

The devastation that your sin would bring to your children is immeasurable.

Their growth, innocence, trust, and healthy outlook on life will be severely damaged.

The heartache you'll cause your parents, families, peers, indescribable.

The embarrassment of facing other Christians who once appreciated you, respected you, and trusted you will be overwhelming.

You'll lose your job.

The dark shadow of losing your job in that way will accompany you everywhere and forever.

Forgiveness won't erase it.

Your fall will give others license to do the same.

The inner peace you've enjoyed will be gone.

You'll never be able to erase the fall from your own mind.

It will remain indelibly etched in your life's record, regardless of your later return to your senses.

In the name of Jesus Christ, whom you once honored, will be tarnished, giving the enemies of faith further reason to sneer and jeer.

You can add your own things to that.

It's helpful to think through.

What would telling my wife look like if I had an affair?

Garrett Kell and his book on Purity at Heart, which is going to be our book of the month next month, so we'll have it in our bookstore and I'll give one or two away here.

He has such a moving section in there where he says, I just want you to imagine parking at the top of your street to compose your thoughts before you walk into your house.

Tell her you had an affair.

Is she cooking dinner for you, maybe?

Where are the kids?

What are you gonna have them do while you're talking to your wife?

And he has a whole page that walks you through.

Just chart it out.

Of course, you don't think that when the woman comes up to you and says, Oh, you're so sweet.

It's gonna destroy your life.

That's Solomon's point.

It's gonna destroy your life.

Well, this leads to wisdom.

Get married then.

Remember what's the solution to this?

To get pulled back and forth at the intersection here?

To be like, I don't know if I want to walk in the way of the world or in the way of the Lord, I'm being pulled back and forth.

I don't know which way to go.

And all these adulterous ladies are saying, Come with me, come with me.

I mean, if this guy is 15, 16, 17, let's say, he's got people, he's got women that are actually saying, Come be with me.

And he's tempted to do it, of course.

How long is he gonna fight that temptation for?

It's gonna keep growing and growing and growing.

How long is it?

What's he gonna do with that temptation?

Solomon has some pretty straight-up direct advice for him.

Hey, if you're tempted to go with them, I have a better idea for you.

Why don't you marry someone?

Now, Proverbs has Proverbs 31 in it.

He's gonna tell his son what kind of person to marry.

The book is gonna end with that.

And I really do think that so much of this book is bracketed with that instruction.

Go get married.

And this is the kind of person you want to marry.

And the middle of it is all about wisdom and what that'll look like.

But for here, he goes straight down to go get married.

Verse 15, drink water from your own cistern.

Most people don't have private cistern.

Cistern is the big cave, you know, cave underground, the water pours into it.

Most people use wells.

If you use a well, you have to stand in line, you have to take turns.

Uh sometimes it's dry.

If you have a cistern, you can get water whenever you want to.

That's the image.

A private cistern is very unusual, but if you have one, you can have a drink of water any time of day you want.

That's the analogy he uses.

Drink water from your own cistern.

From your own well.

Why do you want to scatter your springs everywhere?

You're going to dig wells in 12 different countries?

You have one house.

Put a cistern there instead of going to wells all over the place.

Let that cistern be for yourself alone.

It becomes plural there.

But let that cistern be for yourself alone, not for strangers with you.

Don't share your cistern with your neighbor, and don't you go running around with other people's wives.

Let your fountain be yours.

Let it be blessed.

Rejoice in the wife of your youth.

That's his direction to him.

Listen, son, just go get married and be happy with your wife.

She's a lovely deer.

That one still works, doesn't it?

You can call your wife deer.

Spell it differently.

She's a graceful doe.

Solomon is known for language, I think a song of Solomon chapter 7, some of his compliments to his wife.

Song of Solomon 7 · chapter mention

Your navel is like a round goblet.

Your belly is like a heap of wheat.

You know, in the in that society, you were attractive if you were fed well.

You know, starvation was the threat.

So the skinny person, you'd be like, yikes, she must be poor.

I don't want anything to do with her.

Yowser's.

And you're like, oh, that person is so attractive.

She looks like she has a whole heap of wheat in her belly.

Husbands, try that.

See how it goes.

Your neck is like an ivory tower.

You're like, your eyes are like the pools of Heshbon.

Your nose is like the Tower of Lebanon.

Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.

The flowing locks of your hair are like purple threads.

Goats running this way and that.

Here he just says Get married when you're young, your wife is like a deer.

Graceful, beautiful, enjoy it.

Rest will fill you at all times with delight.

Be intoxicated in her love.

Be drunk on her love.

Not with stupidity on other people, but with her love.

Why would you be intoxicated, verse 20, with somebody else's wife, with a forbidden woman?

A woman that just wants to kill you when you can build your life with somebody.

You don't want to embrace the bosom of an adulteress.

Remember, she wants to destroy you.

What's the difference between an adulterous relationship for a single person?

What's the difference between an adulterous relationship and a marriage relationship?

A commitment that will last your life.

You build a family with one.

That's the difference.

One brings pleasure and joy that lasts a lifetime.

Solomon doesn't mean here that you never have an argument in your marriage, that there's never hard times in your marriage.

He doesn't say that.

He says you're going to delight in your marriage, though.

You'll be so happy.

So happy in your marriage.

Well, this leads to the final warning.

God sees what you do.

God sees, verse 21, man's ways are always before the eyes of Yahweh.

He ponders all of his paths.

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he's held fast in the cords of his sin.

He dies for lack of discipline, and because of great folly he's led astray.

Solomon's dad here is, or the dad in the story is washing his hands of this, like I've told you, the adulteress will kill you.

I have sounded the alarm, I've given you the warning.

Now if she kills you, my hands are clean.

That's basically how the speech ends.

I told you not to do it, so now if you do it and the Lord kills you, I'm innocent of your blood.

It's kind of a manly conversation.

I've discharged my duty.

And the person who commits has an affair thinks, you know what, I'll get away with this.

Nobody will know.

Verse 21, the Lord will see, the Lord will judge.

Proverbs 15, verse 3, the eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching every evil, watching for all the evil and good.

Proverbs 15:3

Job 34, 21, the eyes are always heavy on the ways of a man.

He sees all of his steps.

Hebrews 4, 13, nobody's hidden from the sight of God.

All things are laid naked before the eyes of him of whom we have to give an account.

Sexual sin seeks for secrecy, but sin cannot be concealed from God.

He sees and he knows.

I want to wrap up tonight just with the going back to the three A's of cybersex.

Accessibility, anonymity, affordability.

Do you notice how Proverbs 5 erodes and contradicts all of them?

All of them.

Accessibility, it'll wreck you.

Affordability, it will cost you everything.

Anonymity, the Lord knows.

And He will judge.

Even those are lies.

There's no anonymity with God.

There's no affordability with an affair.

And if your goal is to be on the path of life, there's no accessibility either because you've run away.

Practically, what does this look like in your life?

Well, it looks like having obviously guardrails.

It looks like when you are tempted, you've solidified in your heart, I'm running.

Practically, for young people, it looks like pursuing marriage.

I know there are those that that want to be married and are unable to, but Proverbs 5 is just straight up telling, especially the young men, get married already.

Guard yourself from this temptation.

Get married.

For those that are married, have the don't believe the lies of the adulteress.

Don't believe that the person is interested in you and actually, you know, this and that.

They're after your soul.

Their goal is to kill you.

Run from them, don't foster them.

And for those that have had, that have confessed their sins before the Lord, of course, the Lord forgives you of your sin.

The Lord restores and forgives.

He gives grace, the covers.

But of course, the effects of the sin remain.

You can't undo effects where a child out of wedlock or the lack of trust or the doubts and the suspicions, and it becomes a sanctification issue in both parties now.

Even the innocent spouse is still fighting her own or his own doubts and temptations about the faithfulness of the other spouses are trying to keep their marriage together, and that lasts.

That lasts.

That becomes a beacon to warn others: don't do what we did.

Don't do it.

But there is, of course, grace and forgiveness that comes through Christ.

Listen, an affair is not the unforgivable sin.

Rejecting Jesus is the unforgivable sin.

Any other sin, you can come before the Lord and He forgives.

Pornography is not the unforgivable sin.

Confess it, seek help, repent.

The Lord forgives.

The Lord forgives.

He's so gracious and kind.

You wouldn't be here tonight if he didn't forgive you.

You'd be somewhere else.

You'd be watching some garbage football game.

You're here tonight because the Lord delights in forgiveness.

Delights in forgiveness.

So receive his forgiveness with the joy that he wants you to.

God, we're grateful that you forgive us through Christ.

Thankful for your kindness in that.

We're so overcome, really, with the pervasiveness of temptation.

And yet we're so glad with every temptation there's a way of escape.

No, temptation is overcome, you accept that which is common to all people.

And with every temptation, God, you make a way of escape in front of us.

For those that are dealing with sin in their own life, I pray for a clear conscience that comes from confession, restoration, and forgiveness.

Lord, we're so thankful that you are a saving God.

For those of us who have been wronged, we find righteousness in you.

For those of us who've been the victims of this kind of thing, we find um incredible comfort that you are a God who knows what it's like to be betrayed and receive vengeance and stroke strokes and blows from your enemies when you were innocent.

You know what that's like.

And so we can bring our concerns and compassions to you.

For the young people here, Lord, I pray that they would set their hearts in a life that would be pleasing to you.

They would not get sucked away at a young age, even into this kind of immorality, but would set their course for you.

Lord, we know, and despite the grief or doubts, or despair or temptation in our life, that through our faith in you it is indeed well with our soul.

It says in Jesus' name, amen.

And now, for parting word for 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 time, 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 both.