Dangerous Affairs

Far too many people think that they can pursue an immoral lifestyle without consequence. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no such thing as safe sex outside of marriage. That's like going to an area of the ocean where sharks have been sighted and rip tides observed and hammering up a sign that says, Safe Swimming. Or going to the edge of a drainage ditch next to an industrial plant and posting a sign that says, Safe Drinking Water. Is it possible to pursue immorality safely?

Sure, you might not get a disease and you might avoid getting caught. But does that make it safe? Not in God's eyes it doesn't. Welcome to this Friday edition of Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today, Stephen continues a series he's been working through out of the book of Proverbs called, The Quest for Hidden Treasure. Today's lesson looks at what God's Word has to say about sexual purity and the temptation toward impurity. Morality may be on the decline in our culture, but we know that God's Word has not changed. Today's lesson is called, Dangerous Affairs.

Here's Stephen. Three young men were driving home after spending an evening at a bowling alley just outside Tampa, Florida. Kevin was driving his white Camaro, his friend Randall was in the back seat, and another friend Brian was riding in the front passenger's seat. Even though it was dark, they knew they had the right of way as they drove through an intersection on Keysville Road. Or they assumed they had the right of way since there was no stop sign visible at that intersection. The trouble was the stop sign had been stolen earlier as a prank to cause traffic congestion and confusion. About this time, a two-ton Mack truck approaching the intersection thought he had the right of way as well because his stop sign was missing. The collision at that intersection could be heard blocks away.

All three young men in that Camaro were instantly killed. An investigation followed and some young men were caught who admitted to stealing dozens of street signs and dumping them in the river outside of town. I happen to believe that in our world there is another road sign being removed from the landscape. It's another kind of stop sign.

They are being removed at alarming speeds and with equally alarming results, the casualties are literally everywhere. Frankly put, our culture has removed the stop signs whenever and wherever sexual issues are encountered. What's worse to me is that the stop signs have been replaced with signs that say speed up or congratulations for not stopping signs. Our culture has now labeled sexual behavior outside of marriage as alternative lifestyles or legal acts between consenting adults or rites of passage or you know people or boys will be boys.

Our generation has even come up with a word that they have attached to the sign. It now says safe and they have attributed the word safe to sex outside of marriage. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no such thing as safe sex outside of marriage.

That's like going to an area of the ocean where sharks have been sighted and riptides observed and hammering up a sign that says safe swimming or going to the edge of a drainage ditch next to an industrial plant and posting a sign that says safe drinking water. There's no such thing as safe sin. I have been challenged by the writing of one author who gave some powerful warnings about promiscuity before marriage and infidelity after marriage. In fact, he speaks pointedly because it comes out of his own past home life. He'd seen what it had done to his own dad when his dad had failed, had an affair. In fact, his dad had gotten involved with the wife of one of his employees. He sort of pushed his weight around. You know, he was the boss.

But she willingly went along thinking that this just might boost her career, I suppose. When she became pregnant, he became furious. And this boy's dad didn't want anybody to find out. It could ruin him at the office.

It could ruin his career in the business world. So he swore her to secrecy and then, without her knowing about it, had one of his security detail make sure her husband didn't make it home from work alive. His dad would later marry this woman, and this author happened to be their second child. His name was Solomon. He learned firsthand of the devastation.

He had learned of his father's cover-up. In fact, he would tragically follow a similar path to utter ruin. However, while he was still pursuing integrity and he was searching for the hidden treasure of wisdom, he collected proverbs that over and over again warn of immorality. And he will deliver them to his own son. And by virtue of God's inspiring decree to every one of us as well. It seems to me that Solomon was troubled by stolen stop signs.

You know, it occurred to me as I studied these proverbs that this is the only subject, the only subject that Solomon devotes two entire chapters to and portions of other chapters. In broad terms, it's the word fornication. The Greek word is porneia.

It gives us our word, ironically enough, porn. It is illicit sexual activity, often translated in the scriptures as immorality. It's even translated at times adultery or fornication.

Throughout the scriptures, the believer is consistently warned. In fact, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the body is not meant for sexual immorality. It is meant for the Lord and the Lord for the body. 1 Corinthians 6 13, he writes later in verse 18, We flee from sexual immorality, every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? You're not your own.

You've been bought, remember, with the dowry price. So glorify God in your body. Solomon will tell us what it means to sin against yourself and it will explain what Paul meant in living color. So take your Bibles and turn to Proverbs chapter 5.

We'll look at 5, 6, and 7 portions of them. In Proverbs chapter 5 verse 1, Solomon writes, My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. Now he will begin to deliver to us in stages what this collision will look like. And the first stage is simply the word delight.

It starts with delight. Notice, for the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. The word, by the way, forbidden here might be translated in your version or translation foreign or strange. Solomon is using a word that refers to a woman, quote, not related to, foreign to you in the sense of marital bonds.

In other words, she isn't this man's wife. Now turn over to chapter 7 and listen as Solomon watches a man race toward this intersection, ignoring God's warning signs to stop. Look at verse 6. For at the window of my house, I have looked out through the lattice and I have seen among the simple, I perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sins. He's passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness. And behold, the woman meets him dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart. She's loud and wayward, her feet do not stay at home. Now in the street, now in the market, and at every corner she lies in wait, she seizes him and kisses him, and with bold face says to him, I had to offer sacrifices and today I have paid my vows, so now I've come out to meet you, to seek you eagerly, and I have found you. She says further in verse 16, I have spread my couch with coverings, colored linens from Egyptian linen.

I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. You see, what she's doing is portraying herself to this man as if she were a queen. In other words, she's not some low life. She's not from the wrong side of the tracks. She's wealthy. She's connected. She's industrious. She's sophisticated. She's even religiously minded. Did you notice back in verse 14 where she said, I'm caught up with all my sacrifices and my vows.

I'm a religious girl. And she's not just for anybody. Verse 15 says she waited for this guy, not just any guy. She flatters him.

She says effectively, I have been looking all over just for you. You are the one worthy of my love. People involved in this kind of sin have convinced themselves and each other that they are worth more than perhaps their spouse can see. And the person they are with is someone who can truly appreciate them.

The trouble is the foundation for true appreciation is integrity and trust and truth, which means they have become involved in something that is destined for disappointment because it lacks trust and truth. Listen to some statistics from a study of men who were involved in an adulterous relationship and refused to repent. Because of it, they left their spouse. These men in this particular survey were interviewed ten years after their relationship or affair and the breakup of their home. 33% were intensely angry with life in general. 50% ended up divorced again, most of them from the woman they had believed was the answer to all their problems. 80% experienced the same or lower quality of life financially. 50% under the age of 50 were unhappily remarried. 66% over the age of 50 were unhappily married.

And listen to this. 80% of these men, whose names remained anonymous, admitted that they would remarry their former wives and regain what they lost if they only had the chance. 80%. It began with delight. It's all honey, it's all sweetness, and it just drips. Delight.

The second stage is reached soon enough. Delight turns to disgust. Go back to chapter 5 and look at verse 3. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as two-edged swords.

She can cut you coming and going. In other words, the taste of honey now is replaced with the taste of wormwood. I had to dig around for that.

It happens to be a small flowering bush in Palestine from which a bitter drink was made. Warren Wiersbe commenting on this text wrote, Solomon is suggesting here that a wise person checks out the destination before he purchases the ticket. Delight turns to disgust and then disgust. Number three digresses to dishonor. Look at verse 8 here in chapter 5. Keep your way far from her. Do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless.

Lest strangers fill their houses with your strength and your labors go to the house of a stranger. What a perfect description of alimony is that. What a vivid description of the frustration brought about by sin.

Perhaps it's not even yours. Perhaps for you it is your spouse's sin and you struggle with the Lord over the frustration that now the years and your labor and your money go to somebody else's bank account. To you I would encourage you to remember that God will finish the books and settle the account.

You keep doing what's right. But to the one considering adultery, Solomon writes, look over at chapter 6 quickly and look at verse 27. He says, Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Skip down to verse 33. He will get wounds and dishonor and his disgrace will not be wiped away. In other words, though confession and forgiveness are always possible for the truly repentant, the consequences will be felt for a lifetime in the lives of men and women and children and families who endure the lasting effects of betrayal and sin. And this is the bad news that has to be stated, especially to warn the generation coming behind us.

Forgiven, yes, but there is the lasting lingering effects of betrayal and sin and rebellion in the lives of those who will say, I will ignore the signs. These are dangerous affairs. Delight turns to disgust. Disgust digresses to dishonor.

Dishonor leads to disaster. Go back to chapter 5, verse 11. Solomon is telling his son advice he will not follow himself eventually.

But look at what he writes. And at the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and your body are consumed. He just lays it out thick.

Doesn't pull any punch, does he? Solomon is implicating the presence of sexually transmitted diseases, most believe, Old Testament scholars. Your flesh and your body are consumed. Solomon isn't writing a commercial.

He's not after a box office hit. He's telling the truth here. Sexual sin brings a harvest of decay and loss.

And he will highlight in these verses several losses. There is the first one here that we have just read. There's the loss potentially of health. Your flesh is consumed. Josh McDowell writes in his work, more than 4,000 teenagers contract a sexually transmitted disease every day. 4,000. In fact, while the world pushes, he writes, for different forms of protection, the Minnesota Institute of Public Health has reported that there are now 21 sexually transmitted diseases which are not prevented by contraception. Now more than 25 million Americans, he writes, suffer from genital herpes, which is an incurable disease. 300,000 people contract hepatitis B every year, causing permanent liver damage and resulting in the deaths, listen, the deaths of at least 13 people in America every day. From what we're watching and the world is applauding and we're marketing to another generation.

And we dare add the word safe. Bruce Wolke added this in his commentary on this text, this statistic from the United States Public Health Services Center for Disease Control, and I quote, a new sexually transmitted infection is diagnosed in our country every 45 seconds. And in its wake are pain, blindness, arthritis, infertility, brain damage, heart disease, and death. Wolke writes further, in spite of half a century of penicillin and wonder drugs, millions of people are contracting new generations of disease, including incurable strains of herpes which has been linked to cervical cancer and can be passed on to newborn babies.

Why don't we hear about this? Because we live in a culture that would rather remove the stop signs and enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season than subject themselves to the moral law of God. There is the potential loss of health. Secondly, he writes in chapter 6, verse 35, there is the loss of wealth.

Just get ready to try to bail yourself out. He speaks of this one who was caught in his adultery. That other husband will accept no compensation. He will refuse, though you multiply gifts.

This is a broader issue or subject, but I read one study that found that 73% of women who left their spouses for another man reported experiencing a lower standard of living. The most expensive, costly, the most destructive, dangerous thing in the world is immorality in any and every form. Delight turns to disgust. Disgust digresses to dishonor. Dishonor leads to disaster. And if that isn't bad enough, number five, in this exposure of dangerous affairs, Solomon uncovers, disaster leads to despair.

Just listen to the despair coming from the lips of someone who now knows the consequences of his dangerous affairs. Look at chapter 5, verse 12. You're going to say, oh, how I hated discipline. That is, the guidelines of God, my heart despised for proof.

I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation. Did you catch that? This person is part of God's assembly. He is in the midst of God's people. He is, however, a prodigal who is now wishing he had never left spiritual, his spiritual home. Solomon says, look, there are signs here.

You'd better look. He ends his illustration, by the way, of this dangerous affair in chapter 7. Go to the end of the chapter. Chapter 7, verse 24. He says, and now, O sons, listen to me. Be attentive to the words of my mouth. Let not your heart turn aside to her ways.

Do not stray into her paths. For many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng. He uses battle terminology for the casualties of war.

He doesn't hold anything back. Many are her slain. Let me clarify before we wrap up this study with a few warnings for men and women. Number one, don't justify little compromises as innocent. Dangerous affairs don't begin in a bedroom. They begin in a boardroom, a copy room, a backyard.

They begin at the baseball field or at the YMCA or at the gym. And don't justify little compromises there because that's where the battle starts. Number two, don't just plan to fight the battles when they become really dangerous. It's probably too late. Fight the skirmishes early in your mind.

The best place to stop is early on. In fact, it's already dangerous if you are now sitting here recognizing in your own life and heart that you are putting it off somewhere already. Number three, don't assume you are above or beyond any temptation. Don't allow yourself to say, nothing like this will ever happen to me. That's not a problem for me.

Something like this isn't really all that wrong. I can stop whenever I want. Don't fool yourself into believing what I have heard people say over and over again to me. We're not hurting anybody.

Yes, you are. There is a financial cost, a physical cost, an emotional cost, a spiritual cost, a character cost, a future cost. You are deeply hurting yourself. You are sinning against your own body and others. Sin happens to cost more than we can imagine. One author said, Sin will cost you more than you wanted to pay. It will take away more than you ever planned to give, and it will lead you further than you ever wanted to go.

Number four, stay away from anywhere and anything where you would not want to be caught or seen. You understand what I mean? Just let that little voice in the back of your head be a wonderful guide. When it whispers, You don't belong here. This party is not for you.

You don't belong on this internet site or in this chat room. Consider that God's warning signal is saying to you, You need to clear out. Number five, force yourself to be honest when temptation knocks. Be honest when temptation knocks and ask Christ to answer the door. Listen, the power of temptation is in the pleasure of what temptation offers. If stolen waters weren't sweet, Proverbs 9 17, nobody would steal the water.

Nobody would want it. Stolen water is sweet, and the enemy of your soul knows that Jesus Christ now lives in the apartment of your heart, but he still sends people over and knocks on the door. They show up like the pizza delivery guy at eight o'clock at night. The worst time in your diet.

Eight o'clock at night when you are starving and the doorbell rings and he's come to the wrong house and you tackle him. In a world of real spiritual temptation, send the Lord to answer the door. Let him respond. You say effectively, Lord, I can't respond to that. You're going to have to do that. Lord, I can't handle that. You're going to need to do that for me.

One more. Stay alert at all times. Just stay alert. Don't justify little compromises as innocent. Don't just plan to fight the battles when they become dangerous. Don't assume you are above or beyond any temptation. Stay away from anywhere and anything where in your heart you know you wouldn't want to be caught or seen. Force yourself to be honest when temptation knocks and ask Christ to answer the door and stay alert at all times. And while we're at it, let's make sure we don't take down stop signs that God put up.

He put them up for a reason. For our health and our hope and our joy and our progress and our safety. Leave them where they are and ask God to help you pay attention every time you see one as you travel along the roadway of your life. Temptation is everywhere and there's no end to the opportunities we have to ignore God's Word and pursue the desires of the flesh. But I hope that this reminder from God's Word will encourage you today.

And for all of us, I hope today's lesson will remind us of the importance of pursuing godliness and forsaking immorality. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen is the pastor-teacher of Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, North Carolina.

If you're unable to join your church on Sunday, Stephen broadcasts live each Sunday morning and you can join us for worship online. There's information about that on our website, wisdomonline.org. The lesson you heard today was called Dangerous Affairs and it comes from the series entitled The Quest for Hidden Treasure. It's a series from the book of Proverbs on living wisely.

This was the last lesson in the series so I'll mention that we've taken all 10 of the lessons and bound them as a set of CDs. If you'd like this series for your library of biblical resources, call us and we can help you. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE.

We'd love to hear how this ministry is blessing you. There are many ways you can reach us, but if you'd like to write cards or letters, our address is Wisdom for the Heart, P.O. Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. I'll repeat that for you. It's Wisdom for the Heart, P.O.

Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. It would mean a lot to get a note of encouragement from you. My name's Scott Wiley and I thank you for listening today. We'll be back next week and Stephen will be in a series from Romans 1, right here on Wisdom for the Heart. ...