If you want to join me this evening in Proverbs chapter 5, we've been doing a study through the book of Proverbs, and so Proverbs chapter 5 is our text tonight.
It's not a real long chapter, so we're just going to read through that. So if you haven't read your Bible today, you're going to read your Bible, alright? So, Proverbs chapter 5. This is Solomon giving wisdom and guidance to his son, and he says, My son, attend unto my wisdom and bow thine ear to my understanding that thou mayest regard discretion and thy lips may keep knowledge for the lips of a strange woman. And you'll notice that word throughout here, it's a caution of a seductress, that drop is honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil, but her end is bitter as wormwood sharp as a two-edged sword, her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell. Or she old, lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her ways are movable that thou cannot know them. Hear me now, therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth, remove thy way far from her, come not nigh the door of her house, lest thou give thine honor unto others and thy years unto the cruel, lest strangers be filled with thy wealth and thy labors be in the house of a stranger, and thou mourn at the last when thy flesh and body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof?
Imagine how many people look back and say, Boy, if I could have gone back and they've done so much damage, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me. I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation assembly. And then he gives instruction here in verse 15, Drink waters out of thine own sister and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad and rivers of waters in the streets. Let them be thine only and not strangers with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind in pleasant row.
Let her breast satisfy thee at all times. Be thou ravished always with her love, and why will thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman or a seductress and embrace the bosom of a stranger? And if you'd read verse 21 with me, For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. Verse 22, he goes on and says, His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
He shall die without instruction, and the greatness of his folly shall go astray. Father, we thank you for the word tonight. We pray that as your people, Lord, that we would heed the wisdom of warning.
Sometimes the scriptures give us positive things we are to do, and other times it gives us warnings of dangers that can destroy us. And so we pray that we would be those who would listen, and we would heed these words, and that you would give us not only the wisdom for ourself, but we could pass that on to our children and grandchildren to be warned of the great many dangers of the sins that are the enticers in this world that are calling them into things that could bring great ruin to their life. Lord, I pray that you would be glorified in all that's said and done. Be with the teens, the youth, and the other classes going on tonight that you would be honored in all of those, and bring forth fruit for your own glory. We ask it in Jesus' name. God's people said amen. Thank you.
You may be seated. Well, I have been away from our Wednesday service for a few weeks, and I thank the O's who were able to preach in my stead, and it's good to have A.J. York from Michigan. He came and preached, and we're going to be glad to be able to support his ministry there. He's going to do a great job in planting a church in Michigan. Michigan needs the gospel, amen.
I have a friend here from Michigan, yeah, right over here, and he was showing me a map of Michigan Sunday morning. He said, I just want to show you this preacher, and there is actually a place called Hell, Michigan. I said, we need to get him out of Hell, man.
We need to get him out of there, or we need to bring the gospel to him, all right? That'd be a good place. Maybe you feel called to start a church in Hell, Michigan, but there's not a Heaven, Ohio, but that would be a good place, right? There is a Nockemstiff, Ohio. Did you know that?
Yeah, that's kind of crazy how they got that name. Anyway, that's over in the hills. But I appreciate the guys preaching in my stead, and they've done a great job in wielding the Word, and tonight I want to return back to the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is a book of wisdom. It is giving us a lot of pithy statements, but guidance on how to live our life in a way that is wise, that is led and instructed so that we don't go down the path of folly or foolishness. Now, just by a way of review to bring us up to what the last four chapters discussed, chapter one was the wise following after wisdom, really the key verse. I'll give you a key verse out of each of those chapters just briefly, but Proverbs 1.7 would be what I would consider a key verse. There it says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
Fools despise wisdom instruction. And you see there in chapter one where he warns his son of sinners, and you see in chapter one where wisdom is pursuing the sinner, even in the streets, and yet they reject the voice of God's wisdom, and they go into their own peril. And then chapter two, the pursuit of wisdom's fruits, the key verse is Proverbs 2.6, the Lord giveth wisdom, out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
And Proverbs lays out multiple conditional clauses that if you do these things, if you pursue this, if you follow after wisdom, not passively or casually, but diligently and passionately, then you will receive the great and many fruits from that. That's what chapter two really deals on. And then chapter three is all about trusting in wisdom. And we know that key verse of Proverbs 3.5 and 6, right, trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding. And we are to trust God with life's direction and also our possessions as well as trusting God when he chastens us and it walks you through those elements throughout chapter three. Then chapter four elevates wisdom as the principal thing. And maybe a key verse there would be chapter four, verse seven, when he says, wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom with all thy getting, get understanding. And there he again is talking to his son and he's elevating in the eyes of his children the priority of wisdom.
I was talking to a parent before church and they said, they got two little ones, I believe they're both under the age of five or so. And the boy was doing something a little bit ornery and the sister said, you need to be obedient because the Bible says obey your parents. And so that's good to see when siblings are straightening each other out with the word of God at that young age. And so, but chapter four is a father passing down wisdom to his son. And then in chapter five we find here that wisdom will guard you.
And this is a father's wisdom to avoid sexual immorality. Perhaps a key verse here would be verse 21, that the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord who ponders all our goings. And so in light of knowing that God sees everything, that should be a way to provoke us to love and good works, this chapter is a wonderful counsel from a loving father to his son. It's a warning against that which will destroy him. It seems somewhat ironic coming from Solomon, doesn't it?
Solomon at this time was doing good but he went downhill later in life. One thing that love does is love will warn. Love is a warner of things.
It lets people know where danger is. Wisdom warns against the deadliness of sexual immorality, that those who give in to sexual immorality pay a higher price than what they realize. Chapter five deals with a sinful seductress, one who is seeking to lure young men into her enticements.
These enchantments will ultimately destroy this young man. Now the focus of this chapter I confess is clearly of a woman that's seeking to do this to a young man, but clearly this happens both ways in society and in Scripture where men would do that as well. But we have seen in our country the elevation of seduction through the body of a woman and the appeal that that gives. And it's been plastered on so much in our country and it's just such a horrible thing. It turns women into items, into just physical elements and it just degrades them and it's tragic that that has happened. Even the dress in our culture today seems like women want to constantly be told and elevated that they need to dress with less clothing and it seems like anywhere you go now all the lady bellies are hanging out. I'm like, could you just cover your abdomen?
Nobody wants to see that most of the time, I don't think, and so make that a priority in your circle of influence to try to diminish that kind of a thing that just seems to continue to grow and it's just unfortunate. Back in the day though, there could be said where the guys were wearing shorts up to here too, so I have pictures of my grandfather. I said, Grandpa, what in the world? That's rated R. My grandma, I'll never forget, she's like, boy he looked good in them shorts. I was like, that makes it worse. I don't want to hear that.
No mas, no I don't want to hear no more. But in chapter five, wisdom comes as a guardian to this young man and it's seeking to guard him. Lust is not only a rampant problem that we see in our culture, but we know that it took hold of David's heart. We know it took hold of Solomon's heart and it became an issue throughout the Bible. You know, money used to be the number one cause of divorce in America. That has now been usurped by infidelity. Top three reasons most studies point to is infidelity then money then communication.
It used to be that the thought out of four out of five marriages in like that 25 to 45 range were due to money and now, again, infidelity has just been one of the great elements of disasters to families and marriages. Max Anders entitled this chapter The Myth of Greener Grass. He says, for many people the grass seems greener somewhere else. If they are single, the grass seems greener with premarital sex. If they are married, the grass seems greener with another person other than their present spouse. And that's the lie of the greener grass. You know, they have cow patties over there too, right?
They have manure, they have problems, they have moles, they have all the other things that go in and the idea of the greener grass is a myth. In chapter five, we will see that God has blessed couples with marriage that should be a hedge against sexual immorality. And there's four thoughts I want to walk through tonight in this chapter is the enticement of sin, the warning of the seductress, the results of falling victim to her and how to avoid the seductress. And so let's look at the enticements that are laid out here in verse one through three, this wisdom that we have. It says in verse number one through three, again, he's calling attention to his son to listen to him. He says, bow thine ear to my understanding that thou mayest regard discretion, that thy lips may keep knowledge. And then he says in verse three, the lips of a strange woman, you could, again, this is a seductress, drop is a honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil. So she's called a strange woman. This is the idea of a harlot and she is luring in the simple and naive into a sexual sin.
And her method is the use of flattery. It's compared to honey. Now, if you were living in the old world, honey was the sweetest thing that was there. I think about our day we live in now, we have so many things that taste so wonderful. But back then, honey was the sweetest element that was known in the ancient world. And then he says that her mouth is smoother than oil.
You know, the idea of honey would be the enticement, smoother than oil would be really just making it available, making it smooth, making this an easy on the ears. And that's what sin does. It makes it available.
It makes it easy. She's saying things to him that are building up his ego, making him feel good. And sometimes you'll find people who fall into fornication or adultery and some sin, you know, well, you know, they, my husband never talked to me like that.
My wife never gave me encouragement like this person does. And they'll begin to say how that person flattered them. And they said things to them that excited them in a way that maybe they weren't looking for a relationship, but it began to play on their heart and they began to think about those things. And it drew them in through verbal statements. Anybody that would commit adultery with you will commit adultery on you. And so technology has also provided people ways of this.
It's just a, just another avenue that people can communicate in ways of seduction and flattery. But it also, technology has provided youth with the access to so much sexual immorality. You know, I didn't, I got saved as a young teenager, but I thank God that we didn't have the accessibility to the sins that young people have today.
I know the things that I would have wanted to have, but I couldn't get to them. And perhaps you can look back on your life and there were sins that you would have done, but you just couldn't get to it, right? And so we live in a world today where sin comes after you. It is aggressive. It is compelling. It is everywhere.
It is accessible. It's not hard to get. And so we see that wisdom comes warning this young man and the warning is first a warning of the enticement to sin. Sin is the fruit of enticement. Before a person sins, they are lured by temptation. Her method here then is seen as enticing words.
It reminds us of Genesis 3, doesn't it? It was the smooth talking serpent that used words of enticement that allured Eve into sin. Before she ate the fruit with her lips, she had the desire planted in her heart. And consider that the tree had been there.
We don't know how many weeks, months, or even years that they had passed by the tree, never having given into it. But it was through the words of enticement that caused them to yield. Words are powerful. It is what covetousness is to materialism is what lust is to sexual immorality. It is planted in a heart.
It starts there and it comes out in the life. And so you have to guard yourself against enticement. You have to guard yourself against that which will create the desire on the inside that will become the sin on the outside.
And really it becomes the sin on the inside before it's expressed on the outside. Now, what caused Adam and Eve to yield, to take into the sin? It was that he talked to them. He elevated the benefits. How that if they ate the fruit of the tree, the knowledge of good and evil, that their eyes would be opened and he says, you will be as gods. Not only did he elevate the reward that that fruit would provide, but he also de-elevated the consequences.
When she said we would die, he said you will not surely die. And so one thing that sin will always do is it will always raise the bar of this is how good this is going to be. You can't live without it.
You must have it. That's the lie of lust. And the other lie is that it doesn't cost you much. Lust is living on credit, but payment's coming and it's drawing heavy interest. And you have to guard yourself against such foolishness.
You know what wise people do? They don't just buy things without looking at the tag. They look at the price tag, right? And I'm a slow shopper. Like I'll go in to buy something. I won't buy it because I'm like I ain't going to pay that for that.
And it's gotten worse over the years. Anybody else like that, like you just, I'm like I know I could get it cheaper somewhere else. I probably spent $50 in gas to buy, say, 10 bucks or something, driving around looking for it.
You look at a price tag because you want to know what it's going to cost and how many people don't really consider the weight of the cost. And that's really what we're going to find tonight in this chapter is it gives us the weight of that consequence. There can be things in your life, and it's important to know, that you can say no to, but if there were enough enticing words given to you, you would give in to the sin.
Just know that. If you were around the enticements long enough, you would yield. The only reason you don't is because you've been wise enough to remove yourself from the enticement.
Does that make sense? That's why they say people play some things, right? And most people who've ever been around any type of recovery in life know that I have to remove myself from conversations, from environments, from things that excite the dopamine and draws me into that. The excitement starts before the sin even starts. It is engaging.
It is physical. It is exhilarating. We're pulled into it by our depravity, by our own sin nature.
And so we have to realize that we have to guard ourselves. That's really what Psalms 1 does. Psalms 1, again, the first Psalm, the first song of Israel starts out like this. Blessed is the man. And then you would ask the question, how would he define the blessed man? Verse 2 says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law does he meditate day and night. You would think you would say blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law does he meditate day and night. That's the blessed man. But before he gets to what he does right, he says the blessed man is first known by what he does not do. He is first known by he doesn't walk among the ungodly nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scornful. He is blessed when he removes himself from certain environments.
This is Ephesians 4 as well, right? That you would put off the old man, renew your mind, and then put on the new. You have to remove things from your life. And if you don't do that, it will create incredible enticement that no one here has the ability to overcome.
No one. Desire to live for Jesus is not enough. We must be wise. We must guard our hearts.
We must guard our minds. Pastor Josh is not so spiritual he could not fall into a sin. You're not so spiritual that you could not fall into a sin that could destroy you. And so guard yourself with the word of God, but also by removing yourself from that which would bring destruction. I had a young man ask me this week a question. He said, what is that passage that you referenced the other week about not even talking about things that are sinful?
And it's Ephesians 5, 12. It says this, it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. When I was a young man having come out of some sinful things in my life, and I remember as a teenager and even into college, when a conversation would go certain places, like somebody could just be talking about some, oh man, that situation in Hollywood or that situation in that family's life or something that had to do with some sin that maybe I had given into or struggled with in the past.
Just hearing about it, I would find myself thinking about it and it would bring in some wrong thoughts into my mind. So just understand this, guard yourself against conversations that may not be enticing to you, but can stir up enticement in others. You have to be wise in your ways you can't converse with. Again, some people may have no struggle with certain things. They may not have any issues with things that could cause other people great difficulty.
So just understand that just because you don't struggle doesn't mean others don't. James deals with sins of enticement. In James 1, 13 he said, let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted, it says this, when he is, two words here I want you to notice, drawn away of his own lust and, what's the next word?
I don't know if we have it there. We got the next verse. We don't have the next verse. I'm putting them on the spot. They're like, why do you do this?
Yeah, they got it now. They're drawn away of their own lust and, what's the next word? Enticed. So drawn away and enticed.
Now these two words, the word drawn away is the idea of baiting a trap. You ever seen those shows? I enjoy watching those shows like where they're out by themselves and like try to live off the land or something, you know, they drop.
Anybody else enjoy those shows? It's like, I'm like, what if I ever just like, you know, I'm like, I've come to the conclusion I could not start a fire. I'm going to have to have some flint. I'm going to have to have some, God send down some lightning.
I'll be praying because this little thing here, type of work and all that. I'm like, man, you know. Anyway, they will set up snares and things like that, but they usually, if they can get some meat or something, the chances are just tripled that they're going to catch something. And then the word enticed, in the original Greek, it meant baiting a hook. If you're a fisherman, and I love to fish, you have to have more than a bare hook. Fish typically aren't naive enough to go up and just bite a hook and perhaps something would bite a shiny item, but it's always got to be covered and hid. The trap and hook have to have something attractive so they can snare them. Now the hook and trap are always covered.
And so the bait that is thrown to us never shows us the hook, the punishment and sorrow for the sin. What got the nation in America to become smokers in the United States? It was Marlboro Man.
Anybody remember the guy? It's probably during John Wayne, all that stuff. You look back on all those movies.
Number one, you can't even watch shows that were made in the 80s, the cussing and the just, anybody else, anyway. But everybody's smoking. You go back in the 60s, 70s, you watch some old, I mean, the women are smoking, it's like a smoking machine. And they so dignified smoking.
And everybody in the world's like, man, I got to smoke. But they've gone away from that enticement. But Marlboro and a lot of these cigarette companies spent millions on advertisement. And beer commercials are the same thing.
They never show the guy with like his gut hanging out. Yeah. They're like it's a protein builder or something. I'm like, you know how much sugar this is destroying your body. If they show the reality of it, people are like, I ain't going to drink that if I'm going to look like that guy.
Right? But they don't do that. They cover it in something nice. Well, it'd be nice if they showed the car wreck. It'd be nice if they showed the person whose marriage was ruined. Or how many people that I buried in their 40s.
There's got to be at least a dozen guys and ladies that I've buried in their 40s, early 40s, because their kidneys shut down. They don't show that. That's the lie, isn't it? In Genesis 13, Abraham and his nephew Lot had to part ways because their herds became too big and to stay with one another. Abraham said, Lot, you can have the choice which direction do you want to go. And Genesis 13, 10 it says, and Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan. It was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt and thou come to Zoar. You know, he didn't go to Sodom to see his family destroyed. He went to Sodom because he thought that was the best option.
It just looked so wonderful. But when he went there, he lost everything. He allowed his soul to be vexed so his flesh could be satisfied. You know, and what's so tragic is he left Sodom and he lost everything.
He lost literally everything but his two daughters. Sin allures us with deception. That is why we must be on guard against enticements this year. It is very likely that your teen or child will have someone who will talk to them to seek to entice them into some kind of sin. Your child may go to school or some school event or some activity not expecting to do anything wrong.
They're just going there to be part of an event or some activity but they can be pulled into something that they were not planning on. Anyone remember a time in your life you were not looking for sin but you ended up sinning? That night that you went to the ball game or you went to the football game or you went to that activity and you didn't have any plans on going down that road of sin or doing that thing and boy sin got a hold of your life and you found yourself in peer pressure or whatever other influences. Again, that's why the first thing the blessed man is known for is what they disassociate themselves from. And notice how early in Proverbs Solomon speaks of his responsibility for the parents. In Proverbs 1.8 he says, my son, hear the instruction of the father and the law of thy mother. If sinners entice thee, he says in verse 10, consent thou not. I mean right away he's like beware of sinners because they're going to try to get you into sin. Parents we need to speak to our children not in passing but on purpose. If the only time you really sit down and talk to your child about the enticement and danger of sin is after they've sinned, you're working in reverse.
You need to warn them on the front end. You know it only takes one bad friend to bring destruction to your child. It doesn't take like four or five peers. I just remember growing up, man, it was just like one kid that would get me going into trouble and I probably got them going into trouble. I mean, you see me today as a pastor, I remember days of going to the principal's office three times in a day and just thinking, you know, my dad's going to kill me but you just, just wanting to sin but there's, when you have peer pressure around you, pulling you into that. But I don't remember at that point in my life my parents sitting down and warning me. Like I don't remember those conversations happening until later when God got a hold of us and we got in a Bible preaching church like this and it changed our lives. And so just, you can't force your kids, you can't keep them in a bubble, that doesn't work either.
But you have to allow the word of God to be implanted there. That's why the hear journals to me are the best things you can do and if you're not doing it with your kids, I'm telling you, you're missing something. There's nothing that's been better for my children than doing hear journals and sitting down on Saturday nights and hearing them tell me what God's shown them and not me telling them what God's word says. When they're bringing the truth of God's word to me so I can see, are they getting the word of God? I just, over these last four or five years we've done those Saturday nights, always doing those Saturday nights and early on where it's like, man, you know, they're missing some things in that passage but they're picking out some things. But as the years have gone by, just their grasp of it, their exposition of certain texts, some things that I'm just like, man, it's just amazing what they're pulling out of that. And that's God's word in them.
I can't create in them. I'll give you an example of this. One time, not one time, many times when kids growing up where they'd be spatting back and forth at each other, and I remember there was just some prideful attitudes and I asked one of my daughters, I said, I want you to just talk to us about pride. Look up some stuff on pride and teach us. God got so ahold of her heart and even her sisters on just her looking up passages about pride and bringing that to us.
God did in their heart so much more than I could ever have done. I remember one night during hear journals, and I'm just being real personal and open because I think it's important that one of the kids had said something very unkind to one of the other siblings, and Candice said, I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm going to let them tell you what it is. And I was like, I'd like to have a family gathering where you're not having some peace and harmony and I knew it was going to be contentious with whatever issue was there. So we sat down and we're going through this stuff and the child who ended up saying that very unkind thing began to share her hear journal and began, and this is one of my children that never cried very often, began to weep really uncontrollably, so broken over her sin and how she treated her sister that they got down in the other room on their knees and began to pray together and weep together. I still don't know what she said.
And guess what? I didn't need to know because God dealt with it. You see the power of the word of God? I could stand on the outside and say, you need to talk right to your sister and you need to.
You can do that. Sometimes it calls for that. Sometimes it calls for some heavy conversations and all of those things. But boy, when the word of God gets implanted, it produces the fruit. It wasn't my parents' external discipline that changed me. It was the insertion of the word of God into my soul that changed me. I began to love Jesus and He changed me from the inside. I didn't have to be asked in high school, hey, don't go get drunk and don't do this and don't do that because I didn't want to dishonor Christ. My parents were secondary to me at that point.
I didn't want to dishonor the Lord. He got a hold of me. So I remember growing up like I don't want to get in trouble with dad, right?
You all know what I'm talking about? I was like, man, if dad finds out, you know. The worst thing you could ever hear was we have contacted your father. I was like, oh, I remember once, I'm confessing too much and I remember one time I was like in fourth grade and I had gotten in trouble at school and I had like a week to get my dad to sign this paper from the principal that told him what I did. And I was like, oh, I couldn't forge it because I was a child and so I had to get him to sign it and so I like covered the top part up because I'm so ignorant. And I said, dad, it was the last morning and I was like, I have to get him to sign it today or I'm shot, like they're going to call him. And so I hit it and I said, could you just write?
And he was in a hurry that morning and made it the worst. And I said, could you just write your signature? I just was curious what it would look like.
Oh, the wisdom of a youth. He's like, what are you talking about? I said, I just would love to see what your signature looks like real bad.
I'd love to see what it looked like right there. Would you sign that? He pulled that paper out, read it and boy, I was in trouble ever since and so boy, wasn't that the worst. Anybody else have that, you know, I'm like, I principal one, so I remember going to the principal and he said, I'm going to whip you.
I'm like, I'm fine with that. I said, just don't contact dad. You know, my dad was not abusive. I just didn't want to face him, right? Anybody else deal with that?
We've contacted your dad. Like that was always the, you know, my mom, you know, was one thing, but my dad, you know, he could just a little bit more fear there. So now the warning is the, of the enticements, but now the warning against this seductress in verse four, Solomon warns his son of sin's enticements and the destruction that can come. He says in verse number four, but her end as bitter as wormwood sharp as a two edged sword.
Wormwood is used in Revelation eight to talk about poison that kills sharp two edged sword. It really, the idea that it cuts either way it turns and her steps take hold on hell or sheol. She is going to lead you to destruction. She is going to lead you down the wide gate, the path that leads to destruction.
Verse six, lest thou should ponder the path of life. And, and then what that saying in verse six is she wants to keep you from pondering seriously the path of life. She wants to keep your eyes on the path of sin. She wants to keep you on a broad road.
She doesn't want you to ponder the right path. Her ways are movable, literally changeable and varied. Matthew Paul commentary says she transforms herself into several shapes to accommodate herself to the humors of her lovers and hath a thousand arts and deceits to ensnare them and hold them fast. You know, Satan did that with Jesus, right? Tempted in with food, then with pride, then with power and riches. Her ways are movable. Thou cannot know them. They're so changeable, subtle, and deceitful that you can't know all of them. You, you will be devoured by them. You have to get away from that. The whole point of this verse one through six is that the young man should heed wisdom and be preserved because the adulteress is the hunter.
She is not the victim. And the third thing here, we see the consequence of giving in in verse seven through 14. Verse seven, notice what he says, hear me now therefore O children. So he's really expanding it to all of his kids. He started with his son.
Now he's talking to his kids. Verse eight, remove thy way far from her, come not nigh the door of her house. So, so hear me and get away from her. It's really the exclamation of this. These verses detail the price. This is the price tag. This is what it's going to cost you.
Verse nine, what's it going to cost? He says, lest thou give thine honor unto others. Honor comes from a word that speaks of your majesty, beauty, or excellency. Those who give into sexual sin lose their reputation. We have all seen this happen, haven't we? We've all seen somebody who's lost their honor, who's lost their dignity because they gave into some sexual sin.
They fell into some sin. It should matter what is thought of your name, that a person's name should carry some, some honor, some, some dignity. I want to live in such a way that when I am old and even passed on, that when somebody comes up to my children and says, hey, I knew your dad, that that would be a good thing. The name that I have would be honorable. Sometimes people will have a name and it's like, oh man, I feel sorry for that guy. He's got that same guy's name. And maybe it's not even in their family that sinned, but that name is associated with someone or maybe their name is just passed down.
And so, so have a name and maybe your past has been very checkered, but, but, but begin to live in such a way that your name is honorable. Verse nine, he says, in thy years unto the cruel, you know, the harlot that talks sweet to you now is the one who is not only taking your honor, but is now cruel and unkind. The sin you give into will drain you of life. Have you known someone who lived in sexual sin and, and now they are drained of life?
It is destroying them. Had a guy one time who was on his hands and knees, big, strong guy, tough guy, man. I mean, this is a, he said, I always wanted to be the toughest guy in town, fought a lot, slept around all the time. He said, my mind is so corrupted sexually. He said, I, I feel so dirty all the time. I can't have a pure thought.
And he just was on his face, weeping, weeping, broken. He just tormented, tormented. It is harassing what sin does to people. You will pay with your resources. In verse 10, he says, lest strangers be filled with thy wealth and thy labors be in the house of a stranger. Many who choose to give into sexual sin, not only lose their marriage, but they ended up going bankrupt and losing everything.
The man who indulges himself will pay the price a thousand times over. I never forget. I never, I never understood some of these things until probably, probably about four years, three to four years out of college, I came across the guy I played football with. Me and him were captains on the team and he was always trying to get me to go to parties.
I always try to get him to go to church. I never went to his parties and he never really came to church. So, but, I'll never forget when I came back through Wilmington one time, I ran into him at Walmart and this kid had great promise to go and play college football and great promise in sports. He was a very good athlete. And he pulled up in an S-10 that couldn't be worth more than $100.
I would not have taken it if somebody gave it to me. He's like, hey, Josh, he ran up and gave me a hug. I was like, how you doing?
And I said, how you doing, man? And he said, yeah. He said, you remember that girl I was sleeping with in school and we had kids together. He said, she turned on me and now I'm paying and he's this crazy amounts of money to her every month so that she could live with her boyfriend in a house. He's paying basically the house payment for her. He never gets to see his kid. The seductress turned very cruel. It's a lie. And then I went and helped my brother start a church and I remember being in this company I was working for and one of the guys in there, a couple of the guys had kids out of wedlock and they had slept around and they'd come out of college and these guys, I never understood this side of it, but they were so broken. One guy knew a girl for no more than five to 10 minutes, had a relationship with her in that amount of time.
Dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Had a kid and is now 18 years in child support. He's so broke. He said, I just want to go to prison because I can't keep up on the payments while I'm paying for her to stay in a, just thousand dollars a month for that guy.
It just, just broken situation that he was in. You know, obviously guys should be paying child support in those situations, but many times the system, the girl doesn't get married because they know they'll lose some support over here and they work the system financially. And, but what you find is those decisions, when those guys were sleeping around, they did not take into consideration what that longterm cost was going to look like.
They were living in lust and they didn't understand that you may not even see your child in the future much at all and you're going to be paying while she lives with another man and another guy and her are going to be raising your child. Was that sin worth it? Boy, isn't it nice to save sex for marriage.
Isn't it nice to stay pure for that and to have a marriage that's kept there? You think teens know this? What I just said, do you think they know that?
No. No, they don't know that. They're like, oh, she's really good looking.
He's really, really good looking. Boy, you know, have no idea the destruction, the pain. It was so bad that my buddy from school was close to committing suicide. The only time he came to church was to keep himself from shooting himself in the head. That's the level of frustration.
And this happened to guy after guy that I knew. I was like, I never knew that, but I was thinking, praise God, I didn't go down that road. They will pay with inward pain, verse 11. It says, and thou mourn at the last when thy flesh and body are consumed. Sin will leave you in brokenness and tears.
The momentary pleasure will steal your joy. Show me a Christian in sin. I'll show you a Christian who is not filled with joy. They're down, depressed, hurt, trust issues.
They always have trust issues. Fourth, they will pay with their health when thy flesh and body are consumed. Sin ages people.
They will have deep regret. Verse 12, notice what he says there. Well, actually verse 11, he says, and thou mourn at the last when thy flesh and body are consumed and say, how have I hated instruction of my hard despised reproof? In other words, why didn't I listen to my teachers?
Why didn't I listen? The guilt, the shame, the crushing weight of all of that, the broken lives. Many will pay with their very souls, according to Proverbs 5-5 and Proverbs 7-27, that her house is the way to hell going down to the chambers of death, as Proverbs 7-27 says. What a high price. What a high price for momentary pleasure. Wiersbe says, the book of Proverbs emphasizes the importance of looking ahead to see where your actions will lead you.
The wise person checks on the destination before buying the ticket. Sometimes when I'm doing marriage counseling, I'll say, see that picture on the wall of me and my wife and my four kids and we're smiling? I'm so thankful I did that.
That God's grace allowed me to serve him. It's been so worth it. So worth it. Thousand times again I would do it. Absolutely yes.
Absolutely yes. It's so nice to be able to trust your spouse. It's so nice to have, and it's only by the grace of God. I was heading down a road of total rebellion and ruin. God's grace saved me and I'm telling you, my dad got serious with Jesus, my mom got serious with Jesus.
Their authenticity and the love of God and the word of God and the Bible preaching and the grace of God brought me to truth. And I believe we all stand at a crossroads and we say, am I going to live for Jesus or live for myself? And I'm telling you friends, I think it, I think we're here tonight and I'm speaking to the choir, but I think many of us could stand up with great tears in our eyes and say, boy, I wish I knew then what I know now.
Would have changed courses, right? But praise God we know now. Praise God you're here tonight. A lot of other places you could be.
Thank the Lord. And then let me get to this last point. How to avoid the seductress. This is kind of interesting.
Most guys will probably appreciate this, but how to avoid the seductress by being satisfied with your wife. This is an important for me to talk about for a moment. Verse 15 he says, drink waters out of thine own sister and waters here speak about the male's procreation capacity.
Very vivid but veiled. The husband is to be satisfied with the wife of his youth according to verse 18. The King James does not translate verse 16 well. It says, let thy fountains be dispersed abroad and rivers of waters in the streets.
That would seem like committed adultery. New King James has it better, should your fountains be dispersed abroad and streams of waters in the streets? Question mark. You see what he's saying? Is that what you should be doing? No. It's a rhetorical.
The New American Legacy, ESV, CSV, all of them translated the accurate way which should be in the form of a question that should render a no answer. The picture is, should you go and just sleep around and then your children end up being just street urchins and these children of the street from the harlot relationships you have? Verse 17, that's why he comes back and says, let them be only thine own and not strangers with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. And if you have any questions about what he's talking about here, you just read verse 19, let her be as the loving hind. This goes into First Solomon. I've never done a study through First Solomon. I may let Braden teach that course before he leaves, right?
He's like, oh preacher, I'm heading out, man. But let her be as the loving hind in a pleasant row. Let her breast satisfy thee at all times and be thou ravished always with her love. This lets us know that the pro, that a relationship, a marital relationship is not designed only for procreation.
It's not only to have children, which that's one reason, but it's also for pleasure to be satisfied at all times, be ravished, or literally it can be translated intoxicated with her love. Somebody said, I heard some somewhere last year, the most beautiful thing a man will ever see is the wife, is the body of his wife and the most beautiful body the woman will ever see is the body of her child, that little baby. I don't know if I should have said that in public. I just thought that was so hilarious.
And it's so true. I think we're adults in the room to be able to say this, but God designed men to be visually attracted to things. It's just we're visually stimulated. It's something that, again, it's why it's important for women to understand you need to veil those things and guard how you dress and be modest and so forth. But it's important to understand inside of marriage, if you're married tonight, it's important for men and women to know that you need to make sure that you have a healthy physical relationship. That healthy physical relationship is typically based on a healthy verbal relationship.
It's got to be healthy. And let me say this, when your marriage is healthy spiritually, you will have a healthy verbal relationship that typically will lead into a very healthy marital physical relationship. But sometimes guys will be like, well, you know, she's being distant from me. And I'm like, well, are you leading her spiritually? Well, you know, how are you talking to her verbally? Well, you know, no ball and chain I call her.
You need to go shave, put some cologne on, smell decent, talk kind, lead her spiritually, be a loving husband, treat her good, and she'll treat you good. Sometimes it's just, selfishness is the destruction of a marriage, isn't it? Where a man wants his way, the wife wants her way, and it just goes downhill from there. You know, but Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. He teaches in 1 Corinthians 7, there's nothing wrong with celibacy, but marriage is not designed for celibacy. So some people at Corinth were writing to him saying, should we be celibate? Because a lot of people in Corinth were involved in such sexual perversion. They were thinking maybe it's wrong to even have sex inside of marriage. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, he says, let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence or affection, and likewise also the wife unto the husband.
And he says here in verse number 5 of 1 Corinthians 7, he says, defraud ye not one another. Like, don't hold back from one another. Sometimes people think, well, you know, should I, is it wrong? No, it's not wrong. It's not just for procreation. And actually, he says, lest Satan should get an advantage. The enemy can get into a marriage and cause some real problems. There are things that women have needs, areas of, and there are areas where men have needs.
And let me just say this, in the area of physical intimacy, there's no one else outside of marriage that can satisfy that. You can eat food at McDonald's. I wouldn't advise it. You can eat food in places.
There's places you can get drinks. There's things you can satisfy, really everything else except intimacy. It's only in marriage.
So if a spouse is like, no, I'm not going, then what that does is it creates a tension that can create incredible problems. And so see that as a way that, hey, we need to get right spiritually. If that area is off, let's start spiritually. Let's start growing in prayer together, reading the Word together. Let's grow in our spiritual lives together, our verbal communication and love together, and pour out love one to another. But I can tell you, I've had pastor friends, probably getting too vivid on some of this stuff, who they tell me, and even older guys, that they said, make sure that you have a healthy physical relationship with your spouse. And any time they travel, they're like, they just make sure that they are prepared for their trip. And I'll just leave it at that, where they have spent time with their spouse in love, and where they're not going away on a three or four day trip, and they've been away from their wife for the last several days in their.
And so just think about that. As a wife, you may not see the level of need in yourself or the man at times could also maybe, but see that as a ministry. I know this isn't a topic we often talk about, but I can tell you that probably every marriage has dealt with this and struggled with this at some level.
And we have counselings and premarital counselings and things like that, but I can tell you, this is an area that can create incredible pain, incredible difficulty in couples. And it's interesting to me that Solomon says, one way you guard your marriage is by being satisfied with your wife. He doesn't say read the Bible more.
You see it? He doesn't say pray more. He says you need to be satisfied with your wife.
And we also have to see some other things that can promote this. Remember not only to have a loving relationship with your wife, verse 21, but remember the fear of the Lord. The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord. He ponders all his goings.
Boy, that should keep you on track. And then remember the painfulness of sin. Let's close out in verse 22 and three. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself. He shall beholden with the cords of his sin. He shall die without instruction and the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. Be pure. Guard yourself so that one day when your life is passed on, you've passed on a name that is honorable. Amen. Let's all stand this evening.
