We come in your presence now, having had the joy of seeing your praises, having had the joy of bringing our petitions before you, and now we sit as your children to hear your word. We pray that you will instruct us what a rich treasure your word is. We can never exhaust what you've given us in that word. Think of the words of Psalm 19 that says, The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than honey, than the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward. Father, help us to taste the sweetness of the honey of your word today, to heed the warning in your word, to have our hearts filled with hope and joy at the prospect of the reward that it reveals to us in the knowledge of God. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. You will have found in your bullets in both an outline and my translation of Proverbs chapter five, I'd encourage you to have your Bibles open to Proverbs five as well as we're going to have a full lap, aren't you? Have your Bibles open because we'll look at some passages in that area and have my translation as well as the outline at hand. Solomon knows what his son needs to hear now at this point in his life as he stands at the threshold of adulthood, and he tells him what he needs to hear. Proverbs chapter five is about a specific particular temptation that is very common to mankind. It's exactly what young men and women need to hear at this point in their lives. We've all known people who have ruined their lives by bad decisions, by sinful choices that they've made at this very point. So the result, by inspiration of the Spirit of God, is a very candid chapter using very frank language. And it's right here in our Bibles. That Bible that we're told is profitable for teaching, reproof, instruction, training and righteousness. That Bible that I'm told to preach to you, not just the easy and G rated parts, but all of what Scripture says. So what we're going to do is I'm going to preach this passage to you straight up. I'll do it prayerfully. I'll do it directly. I'll do it very tactfully. And those for whom this is relevant right now in your lives are going to understand everything I'm saying to you. And hopefully at the same time, those little bitty pictures with the big, big handles will get something appropriate to their level and the rest will sail safely over their heads. And maybe they'll come back in five or ten years and listen to the sermon and get what's then appropriate at that point in their lives. Does that make sense to you? That's how we're going to approach this. So let's launch together. And then the first six verses, we find Solomon setting the stage. And we must not read this as if this is something that's just like a good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we're so glad to have you here, something we can just brush past. This is really very important, what he says, I mean, to show you. The first two verses are a somewhat different call to listen. In my translation, he says, my son, to my wisdom, pay attention to my insight. Turn your ear by keeping planning skills and knowledge your lips guarding. Now, if you contrast this to some of the calls to listen that he's just said in the chapters before, like chapter 3, verse 1, listen, he says, My son, my law do not forget and my commandments let your heart guard. Or in chapter 4, verse 4, he says, Let your heart take hold of my words. Keep my commandments and you will live. Verse 10, same chapter. Listen, my son, and receive my sayings. Verse 20, same chapter. My son, to my words pay attention to my sayings. Turn your ear. See, all those calls have an emphasis on the specific units of instruction, words, commandments, sayings, law. The son is told to commit all of those things, the very words of his father, to memory. But now look at this. He says wisdom. insight, planning skills, knowledge. So do you see the previous calls to worship focus on the units of communication, but this focuses on the content of the communication. Do you see that? This focuses on the wisdom, the insight, the planning skill that all those words are meant to convey. And I think the effect of this is that, yes, he's already said and said several times, you need to memorize the very words that I'm using in teaching you. That's true. But you need to understand they're not magic words. If you simply memorize those units without understanding what they're conveying to you and think you can just repeat them like a magic formula, that's not going to do you any good, any more than the Jewish exorcists who tried to cast out demons by Jesus, whom Paul preached. The demons were not impressed. We're not impressed by the formula. It's not enough to memorize the words of formula. We've got to get what the words convey, the wisdom, which is to say, wisdom, remember, is skill in living in the fear of God. Wisdom is not just sit-in-your-armchair knowledge, but it is practical knowledge for how to live life, how to make decisions, how to make choices, how to invest our energies in a God-fearing way in the practical details of life. Insight, he says, that's the ability to see the difference between right and wrong, the difference between worthwhile and worthless. That's what insight is. Planning skill is that ability both to look at a thing and see where it leads, see what the consequences are, or to identify a goal and see what steps you need to get there. That's planning skill. And then knowledge being that relationship with God that is living out his lordship in the details of life. So that's what his words teach, and those concepts, that content, that wisdom, is what he's saying. Pay attention, turn your ear, keep it, and then he says, let your lips guard them. So he calls them to listen and to retain what he's been teaching him. Verses three to six point us to the need to listen and give us three reasons why the son needs to listen to what the father is saying to him. The first reason is because of competing speech, which is to say what she says, because once again, we met her in chapter two, the strange woman reappears. Remember, it's not that she's a foreigner. It's not that she's of another tribe. The idea is that she's not your woman. She's not your wife. She's someone who's strange, who's alien, who's foreign to you. She's not the one woman who you should form a lifelong bond with. So she comes with competing speech. Verse three says, because with honey dripped the lips of a strange woman and smoother than oil is her palate. See, the father knows that he's not going to be the only one who's ever going to try to reach his son. He's not going to be the only one who tries to connect to him and persuade him. He knows that somebody else is going to come along. Now, he's got first crack. He's got the first shot at his son. So he's determined to make the most of it and lay up some strong preventative medicine before the strange woman comes along and gets her chance. But the father also knows that the next salesman who comes along, the strange woman, is going to totally thump him. He's going to totally blow everything he ever said to his son right out of the son's brain if the son doesn't know what to look for and if the son doesn't know how to think about what she says. And so that's why he is bound to determine to teach his son how to think and how to hear what she's going to say to him. And what sort of stuff does she say? Well, Solomon says that her lips drip with honey. Now, think of that image, honey. Well, what is honey? This is something that is the idea of instant appeal. You know, for most people, honey is not an acquired taste. Maybe squashes, maybe spinach is. Maybe garlic is an acquired taste. I like lots of foods now I didn't like as a kid. Didn't like garlic as a kid, like it now. Didn't like onions as a kid, like it now. Always like spinach, never like squash. But you already know that. So honey's not that way. Nobody needs to be taught to appreciate honey. It's instant sensual gratification. A drop of honey on your tongue, mm, that's sweet. You know what that is, that's sweet. Instant appeal, instant sensual gratification. That's what she brings. Her lips drip with that. And her speech is oiled. Now, what's the picture of something that's oiled? It's something that's smooth. It's slick. Something that's not abrasive. It's not rough. It's not harsh or hard or cutting. It's slick. Why is this a danger? Why are her honeyed lips and her smooth, oiled palate a danger? Well, for one thing, the father's speech to his son has been neither honeyed nor oily. He's had to be challenging. He's had to challenge his son to think. Sometimes what he's had to say has been rough. Sometimes it's been a matter of iron sharpening iron. What are some of the words that we've read in Proverbs? It talks about correction. It talks about reproof. So the father has to cut across the son's will. The son may want to doze off, but the father says, wake up, turn your ears to me, listen. So the father doesn't bring honeyed lips. He doesn't bring oily speech. He tells the son not so much what he wants to hear, but what? what he needs to hear. But, you know, to appreciate that is not an instant thing. Appreciation of honey is an instantaneous thing. But what the father's brought him is something that is not always an instantaneous payoff. That's why he has to tell him to treasure it up. That's why he has to tell him to keep it, because he may not see the application right now, but the father knows that he absolutely will. So the father teaches him from what he knows, not from what the son knows. It is not a child led house. It's a God led house. by a godly father. So the father has a lot to teach his son that does not have instant payoff. What she offers is something that's just smooth and slick and offers instant payoff. And let's just be frank and candid about it, just by the virtue of the fact that she's a desirable woman, she has what the father can't compete with directly. He can't compete with what she brings. She's going to light up biological lights and electrify circuits that Bible memory and prayer and and all the instruction sections are just not going to touch. They're not the same thing and they don't have the same effect. So knowing this, as the father knows it, how does he prepare his son? He warns him about what she brings, and then he points her number two to the alternate result. That is where she leads. First, he talks about what she says. Now he talks about where she leads in verses four and five. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two edged sword. Her feet go down to death of Sheol. Her steps lay hold. Now, do you remember what Chapter 4 was all about? I'd really encourage you, as you review the sermon this afternoon, read Chapter 4 and then into Chapter 5, and you'll see that this chapter really grows out of and depends on what we studied together in Chapter 4. What was Chapter 4 all about? It's all about life. It was all about the life of a wise man, the life of a wise woman, a godly life, a God-fearing life, the quality of life, that wisdom produces. Well, where does this woman lead? Not to life. She leads to death. She doesn't go upward to life. She goes downward to death. Now, notice here that in talking to his son, the father doesn't debate the honey and he doesn't debate the oil. He doesn't say they're not really honeyed lips. He doesn't say it's not really an oil palette. He doesn't say sweet isn't sweet. He doesn't say smooth isn't smooth. He doesn't deny that there's an appeal to it. Do you know the Bible does talk about the pleasures of sin? Yep, that's a phrase right from the Bible. Hebrews 11.25, the pleasures of sin. What the father doesn't do is he doesn't deny that there's an appeal in what she says. What does he do? Here's what he does. Listen. He forces the son to extend the line. Now, here's what temptation does. Temptation always only draws a line so far, stops and says, you want that, don't you? And what the father does, he says, wait, wait, wait, we're not done. Go to that line and keep drawing and let's see where that line goes. And what he says is the line goes and goes till it ends up in death. This is the constant moral refrain of the book of Proverbs. Consider the end. That's the constant way in which he does morality. Sure, this path looks great at first. Sure, this choice looks great. This lifestyle looks great at first. But where does it go? Where does it lead? Where does it end? So Solomon wants his son to be unable to hear her pitch without at the same moment seeing the product he's buying. He wants his son to be unable to hear the honeyed lips without seeing the path going down to the land of the dead, ending up in death itself. And notice too, did you notice right back-to-back verses 2 and 3? Look at it here. Knowledge, your lips guarding, because with honey dripped the lips of a strange woman. His lips, her lips. Do you see how he opposes the two? If the son's lips Have wisdom and knowledge ready at hand, he'll be ready for the strange woman's lips. If he's kept up the response of wisdom and of the fear of God, if he's guarded that answer on his tongue and he's got it ready at hand, then when she comes up with a sales pitch, he's ready to say, no, thank you. I love God too much and I trust God too much to go that way. Not interested. No sale. You see, he's filling the son's lips with God's viewpoint so that the honeyed lips of the temptress won't appeal. Armed with wisdom, the sun's going to see that part that I left out of Hebrews 11, 25. What did I leave out? Hebrews 11, 25 speaks of the pleasures of sin. But how does it how does it modify those pleasures? Fleeting. It says the fleeting pleasures of sin. Or I think that King James says, which are but for a moment. Those are both work. Pleasures, yes, but short lived. And oh, oh, what a payoff. So what her words really are is they're sweet, like like I've read that lead acetate is sweet and yet poison. Sweet at first, but deadly. And the oil, the oil just serves to make a slicker, deeper cut. Ever been cut by a razor blade or a scalpel? You don't even know you've been cut at first. So you see all that blood pouring out and you realize it must have been cut. This is what this does. This oily palate makes a deep and deadly cut because her words really are bitter and her slickness really hides a deadly end. And her path really leads not in life like chapter four is all about, but it ends in death, not in joy and gladness and hope and glory, but in guilt and gloom and despair and destruction. So, you just trace verses 3, 4, and 5. Her lips, her speech, they're sweet now, verse 3, but they're bitter afterwards, verse 4, and they're deadly in the end, verse 5. That's what the Father wants His Son to be prepared with. And notice, just in case I neglect to say it later, He's doing all this before the fact. He's not waiting until his son has been tempted and falls, and then having a little judicious discussion about what just happened. It hasn't even happened. The boy may not even be shaving yet, but he's preparing him for it. The girl may not even be putting on perfume and lipstick yet, but he'd be preparing his daughter for this coming, because this will go either way, gender-wise, sex-wise. Thirdly, an alternate teacher. Who she is in verse 6. Who is she? He says about her, She does not examine the path of life. Her roads wander. She does not know." Well, chapter 4 was all about the path of life. It was all about that. And he says here in verse 6, she doesn't know anything about that. And she doesn't know that she doesn't know. That's even worse. So, as a teacher, she has what the father doesn't. What does she have that the father doesn't have? Sensual appeal. He's got none of that. She's got buckets of that. But what does he have that she doesn't have? Well, for one thing, he loves God. She doesn't. For another thing, he loves his son and she doesn't. Oh, she'll say that she does. She'll speak words of love. We'll see that in chapter seven. She'll speak words of love, but she doesn't love him. People who use each other apart from marriage in a sensual way aren't loving each other. They're co-perpetrators and they're fellow abusers. They're both taking from each other things they don't have the right to take, and they're both giving to each other things they don't have the right to give. So what she does does not serve him. What she does hurts him. She doesn't love him. The father does love him. And so what he gives his son leads to life. What she gives him would lead to death. What he gives his son leads to joy and life. What she would give him leads to bitterness and death. This is a sad story. The boy has been given good training and good schooling. The woman has nothing but sensuality to offer. She herself is utterly lost. But for too many, that's enough. That's enough. And the fall is terrible. Let's continue then. A Roman numeral to teaching the lesson versus one through six were very arresting. Were they not called to attention? Here's why you need to listen to me. Here's why you need to hang on to what I'm teaching you. So now that wasn't even the lesson. That was the introduction. That was some introduction. Now comes the lesson itself versus seven through 20. And first we see whom to hear. He says, and now, sons, listen to me and do not turn aside from the sayings of my mouth. You might say, well, I thought he just did the call to listen. Wasn't that what verses one through six were about? Now he's saying it again. Well, yeah, he renews his plea to listen because once again, he's getting in ahead of the temptation. We've all we've got our own proverb. An ounce of prevention is worth what? worth a pound of cure. Well, that's the situation here. He's not waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting until it's too late. He's preparing the son. He's proactive. Every parent should take note. Every parent should take note or prepare for deep, bitter regrets. Proactive. But why this plead again? I want you to follow me out here. He says, and now, sons, listen to me and do not turn aside from the sayings of my mouth. I want to just think together about why he makes this plea. So who's the father? The father here, the model father of Proverbs, is somebody who knows God. He knows God's word. He loves God's word. He loves his son. He's teaching God's word to his son. That's who the father is. What's a young man like at this age? A young man at this age, ready to go out and launch his own career, his own independent life, full of sap and vinegar, he's bursting with self-confidence, he's headstrong, he's arrogant, he's so naive, and he doesn't even know it. He thinks he's got all the answers, he's got it all planned out, he's got a schedule, he's got a map, he's got a flowchart, he's got it all down on paper. Yep, he's got it all down on paper. But what the Father has is love for God, love for God's Word, and he has experience. Now, how do you get a headstrong, arrogant, full-of-himself young man to listen to his non-thrilling, boring old dad telling him stuff that dad thinks is important? And you and I sitting here know that what he says is important. This kid needs to listen. He doesn't think he needs to listen. If there was only some way to make him listen, right? If only there was some figure who could come in, a third figure who could come in and say to the son, look, you need to listen to your father, some figure who Who knows everything? Some figure who's never, ever wrong. Some figure who has the authority to tell the Son what to think and how to think. If only there were a figure like that that could say to this boy, look, I know you don't think you need to hear it, but you do. So respect him and listen to him. If only there were a figure like that, right? I see some smiles because there is a figure like that. And he has said that, right? That would be God whose first command on the horizontal plane was honor your father and your mother. In other words, he tells the boy, whether or not you see the sense of what he's teaching you right now, you need to listen. You need to take what he's saying as being weighty. You need to take it to heart. So the issue here is the same issue it always is for all of us. It isn't, do you think your dad is the smartest dad who ever lived? It isn't, is your dad never wrong? It isn't, do you see the use of what your dad is saying? The issue is, do you believe God? Do you fear God? Do you love God? Is God's word sufficient for you? Well, if it isn't, then nothing's going to work for this kid. I mean, if God saying so doesn't mean anything to him, well, then he's already sunk. But what he needs to do is he needs to trust God, fear God, believe God. And because of that, listen to what his father says and not forget it and take it just as seriously as his dad says that he should take it. So we've seen whom to hear. Now let's see what to avoid. Verse eight, he says, put your way far from her and do not come near under the opening of her house. Let's start with some basic thoughts. What's the easiest habit to break? When you never start, what's the easiest addiction to beat when you never get hooked on? Right. Well, good. We're all experts. We all understand that. We're all experts here. So here's the thing. He says, don't even get near the opening of your house. Why? Because the opening never looks bad. Well, sometimes it actually does. And objectively, you look and think, what were you thinking? But that said, the opening seldom has a sign hanging on it that says, come in here and destroy your life. Come in here and abandon all hope. It seldom says that. That's not what signs say. It's meant to appeal. It's meant to beckon. So the son can't look at the opening and see, yeah, there lies my doom. But the father does. The father knows what's in that door. And he's warning the son. And the son needs to hear. So look, I'll never have misery getting out of something that I never get into, right? I'll never get into something that I don't get near to. And that's what the father says. Don't get near to this. Don't get near that opening. And chapter seven, we'll see a story of a young man who did. But that is in the future. So let's make some application. I'm talking to married Christians. I'm talking to unmarried Christians, married Christians. I might have occasion to ask somebody this. Why are you pursuing a deeper relationship with that attractive person who isn't your spouse? You know, that person lights up lights on your board, that person excites you in ways that maybe your husband, your wife hasn't for a while. Why are you pursuing a relationship with that person? Why are you finding time to be with that person? Why are you allowing your relationship to get deeper? You know where that road goes and you know what God says about it. You say, well, I don't think the road goes that way. Well, if it keeps going, where does it go? See, the thing is, it's a whole lot easier never to get on that road than it is to get off the road once you're on it, because it goes downhill. And the further you go, the faster you're going. We get there in just a second. So don't start. And if you started, get off. Unmarried Christian, why are you getting emotionally involved with the with this unbeliever or this wobbly professed believer who doesn't know the Bible from the phone book and never seldom goes to church and has no involvement in church and no interest in serving the Lord or being with his people? Why are you getting deeply involved with this person? You know where that road leads. You know what God says about that. So don't start. I put a link on our Facebook page to an article about that dating when choices and words clash. I'd encourage you to read that. It's just about this topic. So let's just stop right here for a second. What we've heard is sufficient. You could end the chapter there. God says, don't go there. Don't even start. He could stop. That's sufficient. God said it. That's all I need to know. But as so often, as God does so often, he gives me more. He gives me explanation and he gives me both warnings and promises. So why should I avoid it? Verses nine through fourteen gives two main reasons of which the first is you should avoid that because of the four new friends you'll make. Now, notice that the word friends is in quotation marks because they're not really friends. But these will become your friends if you walk this road. Give to others your majesty, or yours to the cruel, as strangers be stuffed with your strength, and your painful labors end up in the house of a foreigner. Others, the cruel, strangers, a foreigner. Now, who are these people? Who are these four people? Four names for the same person, four different people? Well, if you read commentaries, they spend a lot of time arguing for this or that or the other thing. But I think when Solomon is ambiguous, we should take that he's ambiguous for a reason. I mean, who might he have in mind if we get involved in an immoral relationship? Maybe does he have in mind a jealous spouse? Or does he have in mind furious parents? Or does he have in mind gossip mongers? Or court officials? Or judges? Or lawyers? Or reporters covering your campaign when you decide you want to run for public office? And now here's this thing for them to dig out. But he doesn't specify because that's his point. His point is for us all to feel what a vulnerable position immorality puts us in. What a vulnerable position that foolish choice ends up putting one in. open to all sorts of miseries and all sorts of troubles. So one reason to avoid it is because of the four new friends you'll make if you go down that road. A second reason is because of the four new lessons you'll learn. And you'll notice that new is in quotation marks there because these aren't really new lessons either. But here's the first. The first new lesson that you'll learn if you go down this road is your sin will find you out. That's the word that goes in those blanks. Your pardon me, your sin will find you out and you groan at your ends at the wasting away of your flesh and your body. Oh, wait, that's not a new lesson. Numbers 3323 said, be sure your sin will find you out. That's an old lesson. Solomon heard since he was a kid. Solomon's dad heard since he was a kid. Yeah. Dad used to say it all the time. God is not mocked. Your sin will find you out. So here's the thing. You know, pay me now or pay me later. Learn this lesson now with joy because of the traps that will steer you around or learn the lesson later with misery and regret and bitterness. Second lesson is you should have learned what you should have learned when you should have learned it. And that's verses 12 and 13. You should have learned what you should have learned when you should have learned it. And you say how I hated discipline and reproof my heart spurned. Oh, those are the things that the Father kept saying. I'm teaching you. I'm teaching you. Receive my discipline. Accept my reproof. But He has to say now how I hated discipline and reproof my heart spurned. And I did not listen to the voice of my instructors and to my teachers. I did not turn my ear. Yeah, you should have learned all that when you were a one-year-old, when you were two, when you were five, when you were seven, when you were ten, twelve. You should have learned all that. By now, this should be old hat. It should be second nature. Oh, but you didn't. Playtime was much more appealing. Your friends out in the street with the baseball were much more appealing. And Dad, you know, all you had to do, you could get by by just by just looking at him and thinking about fishing, nodding occasionally, and at the end saying, yeah, and running off. And as you run, everything he said vanishes on the air he used to say it to you, because you are not writing it on your heart. You are not keeping it. You're not thinking about it. You're not praying about it. And now you're wrecked. Now you've come into the situation that all that teaching would have taught you to avoid. All that teaching would have steered you around. But you didn't listen. You didn't learn it when you should have learned it. You didn't learn what you should have learned when you should have learned it. And so now here you are. Here's that exact situation Dad said would happen. And it happened. And you had nothing on your lips except the craving hunger of unbelief. So, first, your sin will find you out. Second, you should have learned what you should have learned when you should have learned it. And thirdly, slower than sin is a vicious lie. We have a lot of expressions that I think are weird. This is one of the weirdest. Slower than sin. Where did that ever come from? Where did that expression ever come from? Slower than sin. Well, slower than sin is a vicious lie. What does he say? I was soon in all evil. The Hebrew word kim'at means As a little. In other words, it was just a little. It just took a little. How much time did it take? Just a little. And I was in utter ruin. Just bam, like that. The hand, Mickey's hand, just did one tick. And I was in utter ruin. It was quick. Listen to me. Listen to me. Sin will take you further than you ever thought you would go. Faster than you ever thought you'd get there. further than you ever thought you'd go, faster than you ever thought you'd get there. You thought you were going to hop on that bus just for a block or two, just a block or two. And suddenly you've left your block. You've left your neighborhood. You've left your city. You've left your state. You've left your country. And you find yourself someplace you never dreamed that you would end up. How did I get here? How did I get here so fast? Because slower than sin is a vicious lie. Sin is fast. It is fast. Well, you thought you were in control when you hopped on that bus. But the thing is, you hopped on the bus. You hopped on the bus and the bus had a motion all its own. And you got where you were going awful fast. In the fourth lesson, new lesson, quote unquote, private sin seldom stays private. So it goes in those two blanks. Private sin seldom stays private. He says, I was soon in all evil in the midst of the assembled congregation. Private sin seldom stays private. Everybody in the congregation knew that this fellow's mom and dad had taught him the word of God. And now everybody knows he didn't listen. Everybody knows it. His private sin when his girlfriend turns up pregnant or whatever, now everybody knows he did not listen. Well, does all that sound like fun? It's not supposed to. It's supposed to sound terrifying. But here again, Solomon doesn't just say what, and he doesn't just say why, but he says what to do instead. He's focused on avoiding the wrong woman, but now he focuses on embracing the right woman. Verses 15 through 20. I won't read all that, but I just want to make some comments over it. First, I want to notice what is and isn't said in this section that begins, drink waters from your cistern, and flowing waters from the midst of your well. Verse 17, let them be for you alone and not for strange men with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoiced because of the wife of your youth. And at the end of verse 19, in her love be intoxicated always. Well, notice what is and is not said. For one thing, notice that God does not say the desire of a man for a woman is a dirty thing. It's a shameful thing. It's a wrong thing. And it must be denied forever. As Christians are often slandered as saying, and the Puritans totally slandered as saying, that these desires in themselves are shameful, filthy, guilty desires. This section does not say that. None of Scripture says that. That is not the message of the Bible. But equally, notice that this section does not say that the desires of a man for a woman are good, healthy, and must be indulged at will. Must be indulged every time, everywhere you can. It doesn't say that either. It says something else. So what's the right mindset about the desire of a man for a woman? First, let's have several things. The right mindset. First, God made us the way He made us on purpose. God made us with these desires. Now, think about it. Just think about it. Food. God made all kinds of fruits and all kinds of food. Could He have made it so it all tasted like tofu? Absolutely. Could He have made it so that it all had all the nutrition we need and it all tasted like tofu? Yep. Think of all the flowers there are. Could he have made it so that all the flowers smell like Windex and they're all the same color? Absolutely, absolutely. He could have done that and he could have programmed the bees to be attracted to that. And could God have made it so that babies are produced as the result of a secret handshake that doesn't involve any emotion or feeling or particular thrill. It's just, you know, you do this the right way and bam, baby. Here's a baby just like that. Could God have made it that way? Absolutely. But you see, he didn't do any of that. He made food delicious and thrilling to the palate. He made flowers, roses of all varieties and all fragrance. He made colors to be enjoyed, to be thrilling. And he designed marital love to be thrilling, to be exhilarating, to be joyous. He made it that way. That was his design. It was his idea. Secondly, So God made us what we were. Secondly, sin made us what we are. Sin made us what we are. An unfallen person would be totally satisfied by his delight in God more than anything. And he would enjoy the pleasures of creation as an act of worship to the God who is all to him. But sin takes our good desires and twists them. It takes good desires and perverts them. Have you ever thought a lot of sin is just a matter of wanting the right thing at the wrong time, or wanting the right thing to the wrong degree, or wanting the right thing in the wrong place? Like food. Is it good to want food? Yay! Food. It's good to want food. Is it good to want stolen food? Boo! Right thing in the wrong way. How about fruit of labor? You know, wealth, profit. Is it good to want that? Yay! Is it good to want it by murdering your neighbor and taking what belongs to him? Boo! Right thing in the wrong way. And so likewise, intimacy that we're talking about. Is intimacy a good desire? Is a good thing to want? Yay! It's created by God. Pursuing it against God's laws? In the wrong way? To the wrong degree? Boo! That's the problem. Sin has made us what we are. Thirdly, God redeems sinners. So first, God made us as we were. Second, sin made us what we are. Third, God redeems sinners. In the Old Testament, as in the New, God counts us righteous through faith in his word. In the Old Testament, as in the new, it's the blood of Jesus that washes away sin. In the Old Testament, as in the new, it's sinners that God saves. In the Old Testament, as in the new, God calls us to love him above everything, to love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. And he urges us to pursue our lives in a way that honors him. So what of the physical desire for intimacy? What of the emotional desire for intimacy? Well, the bottom line is that that desire itself is created by God. It's a good desire. It's a healthy desire. It glorifies God. Seeking to satisfy it in a sinful way is ruinous. It is ruinous. Satisfying it in God's way is beautiful, delightful, and blessed by God. So what does God say in this section in Scripture? What does he say to the young man? What does he say to the young woman about this? He says two things. First, he says the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge. Never forget that. Every lesson he teaches us, no matter what the topic is, that is where we start. The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge. So to us, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That's what he says to every young man and every young woman. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. Be reconciled to God through Christ. Get your heart right with God and be motivated by true, genuine, hearty love for God. That's the first thing. Secondly, drink deep from your own fountain. Do you notice how he says that? From your own fountain. Now, he's been talking about the wrong woman and the strange woman. Maybe she's married. She's not married to him. But he says, let your fountain be blessed. And what's my fountain in verse 18? Because of the wife of your youth. That's who my fountain is. That's where he tells me to drink from the wife of my youth. Verse 15, drink waters from your cistern. Now, a cistern is a rain catcher. And remember, this is a desert land that doesn't have plumbing everywhere. So a rain catcher is a good thing. But even better is line B. Flowing waters from the midst of your well. Here's fresh spring water. And to the parched desert dweller, yearning for water, he says, slate your thirst. Drink and drink and drink. from your cistern, from your well. And then verse 16, he says, should your springs overflow outside, let them be for you alone and not for strange men with you. If you try to slake these desires with someone who's not your wife, this is somebody anybody might have had that works for men and women. I've taught my kids somebody who would Be intimate with you apart from marriage might be intimate with anybody apart from marriage. And if you're that sort of person, same goes for you. Unfaithfulness is unfaithfulness. Immorality is immorality. Yes, each person thinks this time is special. But apart from marriage, it's not special. It's not special. It's just squandering outside and sharing with strange men, as verse 17 says. So he urges the young man to be intoxicated with love for his wife, to drink deep from that exclusive relationship. God encourages exhilaration. and joy in that context, in that context. So this is the fact that normally God's intent is that men and women marry. Jesus says there are those who've chosen singleness to serve God better. Paul says there are those who have the gift of singleness. But normally it's God's will that men and women find this desire fulfilled within the bonds of the covenant of marriage. One man And one woman, I have to I have to explain these days, one man and one woman married. And so God says in that context, drink, drink and drink. And so you look here and you see some imagery that's a little strange to us. He says in verse 19, a loving doe and a graceful mountain goat, let her breast like you thirst at all times. You think. a doe and a mountain goat. I don't know how flattering that is as a point of comparison. Well, that's true, because that's a cultural thing. So through the eyes of somebody in Solomon's culture, he looks at one of these animals, sees the sleek, glossy coat, sees the sparkling, soft, limpid eyes, sees the grace, and he says, that's beautiful. While you're sneering at them, think about your truck. Think about your car. You got somebody coming from the bush in Australia or from the Congo. And you say, isn't that beautiful? Your truck. And they look at this. metal and angles and rubber and some idea of beauty, no. But to you, your truck, your F-150, that's beautiful. To you, that bass, that's beautiful. To you, maybe that asparagus, that's a beautiful asparagus or it's a beautiful squash. Maybe not to everybody. But obviously, in that culture, these are beautiful things. And so he urges the man's is to see the beauty of his wife and to drink deep. And notice he ends this section of encouraging just to to let himself go. He asks a question. Now, I want to point out something interesting here in verse 18. He says in her love, be intoxicated, intoxicated. Always. That's a really interesting word, word shagah. It often means to be led astray. You hear it even in Yiddish, meshuga, meaning somebody who's crazy, somebody who's gone off. Well, that's this word here. And so what he's saying is, lose yourself in her love. This is a relationship where you can let yourself go. You can let yourself go, be intoxicated. And then he turns around and asks a question in verse 20 to poke his conscience. He says, why would you be intoxicated with a stranger and embrace the bosom of a foreigner? So in other words, if you look at the ends, what are you building there with this woman who's not your wife? You're not building anything. You're not establishing anything except your death and hers. And you bring kids into that. Oh, boy. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. This is death. This is dead end. This is foolishness. God condemns it. And so he says, why would you do that? Why would you do that knowing what God tells you? And then he gets to the real the real punch line. The last three verses driving it all home. Roman numeral three verses twenty one through twenty three. First, we see what reality is. Verse twenty one. Here's the heart of it. But reality is, in verse 21, for, and he says this in a striking way, not the normal way of saying it in Hebrew, so I don't translate it for before Yahweh. He says, for in front of the eyes of Yahweh are the ways of a man and all his roads he examines. In other words, he wants us to have the mental image of Yahweh and all of a man's life as right in front of him. Not just somewhere in his sight, but right in front of him. And he says that all a man's ways are right in front of the eyes of Yahweh. Now look, what does sin want to do? Sin wants to create a fictional universe in which we are gods. Right? Sin wants to create a fictional universe that never existed, where we are gods and we can do, our will be done is the rule. My will be done is the rule of this universe. I can eat that fruit and not die. I'll be as God. That's what sin wants to do. But the reality is that God is God. The reality is that the universe that exists is his kingdom. And the reality is, I think we're alone now, is never true. Some of you older folks know that. Tommy James and the Shondells, 1967. I think we're alone now. You know what, though? They weren't. You can run as fast as you can. I don't think they're running to have a Bible study together. But they're not alone. They never are alone. Let's go to some secluded place where we can be alone. Let's go to a no-tell motel or lover's leap or whatever. You're not alone. Solomon wants to make that very quick. You are not alone. You're never alone. All a man's ways are right in front of the eyes of Yahweh. This is the real point the Father wants to make. Oh yes, all that other stuff is true. The consequences, the pain, the regret, the misery. Yes, that's true because this is the way God's made the world. But here's the real bottom line. The real bottom line, the unchangeable universal bottom line, that's just as true sitting here at home in the family kitchen as it will be if the son becomes a merchant and travels to lands that the father can't even imagine. Wherever he goes, here is the universal truth. All a man's eyes are before the eyes of Yahweh. The ways of a man are in front of the eyes of Yahweh. So God is always the moral context. So he wants the son to ask himself, Would I do this if God were standing right in front of me? Because He is. Because He is. Now, he says this a lot. He says this in Proverbs 15, 3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the good and the evil. Proverbs 15, 3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the good and the evil. Ecclesiastes 12, verses 13 and 14 say, some of the matter is fear God and keep his commandments. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil, Solomon wrote, Ecclesiastes 12, 13. And Paul writes, Romans 2, 16, of the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. No deed is hidden from God. He is the moral. This is what atheists can't do. This is what no non-theist can do. Try to come up with a system of morality. Can't do it because they don't have a God who makes it universal. But that's what we have. That's what reality is. There is a God that makes right and wrong universal. So that's what reality is. And let it be where reality ends up. Verses 22 and 23. His own iniquities will trap the wicked, and with the cords of his own sin will he be held fast. He himself will die for lack of discipline, and in the greatness of his denseness he will be intoxicated. I know that psychologically it's always good to end something on an up note, but this is where the Bible ends it, so I think we should end it there, because that's where he ends. He ends with this solemn warning. He wants this to be the note that continues to ring in his son's mind. He's being given discipline, but if he doesn't keep it, he'll die for lack of it. His own iniquities will trap him, the cords of his own sin. and he will be the one to blame. Now, every sinner thinks he's pursuing freedom. That's what he thinks he's doing. That's why people do what they do. They think they're pursuing freedom. That was the first call and the first temptation, right? Eve had a rule, and Satan said, you don't need to be under that rule. Be over that rule. Decide for yourself whether the fruit's fruit that you want. Be free from God. free from the God who made everything and is everywhere. So that's the same call in every temptation, not just the sensual temptation, any temptation. It's the same call. Be free from God. And every sin has the same aim. God be dead. Every sin wants God dead. so that I can have my own way. That's why sin is a serious thing. But here's the thing. Here's the catch. God doesn't oblige. He doesn't stop existing because we wish He would. He doesn't get out of the way because we want our own. God was and always will be God. And this is and always will be God's world. And so, with every act of sin, the sinner simply knots and tightens the noose around his own neck. Notice the emphasis on this verse. Yes, God's behind it. But his own iniquities will trap him. God doesn't have to do anything extra. With the cords of his own sin, he himself will die for lack of discipline. In the greatness of his denseness, he will be intoxicated. God just, as it were, ties the ribbon on that package. But he's bounded up. There's many warnings like this. One of the most ringing ones I've read is what we studied in Proverbs 132. Proverbs 132 says the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them. Proverbs 8.36, Lady Wisdom says, He who fails to find me injures himself, and all who hate me love death. The New Testament echoes the same thoughts. We see in John 3.19, this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, but men what? Love darkness rather than light. Because their works were evil. Or what does Jesus say to the religious Pharisees who were resisting him in John chapter five? He says, you search the scriptures because you think you have life in them and they testify about me. John 540. And yet you refuse to come to me that you might have life. Why are you dead? She won't come. You refuse to come to me that you might have life. Finally, Paul says in Galatians six, verse seven, to not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever one sows that will he also reap. So. We could hear this very wrongly, we could hear this this sermon on on temptation to sensuality, and we could think smugly, yes, those are those are terrible sins. I'm so glad I never committed that sin. I'm so glad I never did. ABC and we could feel smug and pretty good about ourselves and overlook the fact that when maybe we didn't do that sin, but we did another sin or wanted to do that sin or played that sin out in our hearts over and over again over our computer screen or on our flat screen TV or in a theater somewhere or over a magazine played it out again and again and again. What does God see? Does he see what we do? Yes, he does. Does he see our hearts? Yes, he does. So we'd be very wrong to hear this sermon and feel smug. The truth is we're all broken people. We're all law-breaking people. We're all sinners. And that's why we need to remember there is no gospel for moral people. Because there are no moral people. There is no gospel for perfectly righteous people. Because there are no perfectly righteous people. The only gospel there is, is a gospel for sinners, sensual sinners, moral sinners, intellectual sinners, sinners, the gospels for sinners. What is first Timothy 115 say faithful is the saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save. Sinners of whom I am chief and notice everything we've said in this chapter really applies to all temptation, every Sin marks a path that leads to death. And the wages of sin is death. Not just the wages of this sin or that sin. The wages of sin is death. Every sin advocate wanders, strays and is lost. Every unrepentant sinner is going to die in his own sin and is enslaved to his own sin. That's why every one of us needs a strong savior to break the cords of sin and give us that real freedom that comes in the service of God. So here is how we need to hear today's study. Young person, just starting out, just this side of the threshold of your own life, you need to know that the world is a dangerous place. It's not your friend. It's full of people who, given their way, would trap you in deadly sin. Because misery not only loves company, it insists on it. And so you've got a world that wants to trap, and especially if they can make a Christian raised kid fall, bonus points. The scariest point, though, is that all of us are born with something in us that wants that, an itch that wants to go that way. So the only safe thing for you and the thing you need to do right now is you need to call on the Lord Jesus Christ. You need to call on Jesus to save you. You need to ask him to forgive your sins, to give you a new heart that loves God and loves the word of God. more than it loves sin, a heart that delights in his ways. You need to kneel before Jesus as your Lord, and you need to learn and do the word of God, because only it can and will keep you safe. That's what young people need to take from this sermon. How about? Well, not so young people, not so young people perhaps are sitting in the sermon thinking of all our sins. thinking of all our failures, thinking of our bad choices, our sinful choices. Well, the good news is that redemption is only for sinners. That's what redemption is for. Redemption is for sinners and redemption is and is only a come as you are event. So forget about cleaning up. Forget about reforming yourself. Forget about getting everything in order before you come to Jesus. Come to Jesus as you are now, as a repentant sinner. Believe in Him now. Call on His name now. He will forgive you. He will receive you. And He will give you that life that you can begin learning to live, learning to walk in His ways by His grace. Let us pray. Father, it's possible for us to come before the Word of God with such hard hearts, and yet we remind ourselves that Scripture is like a hammer that can shatter the rock, that Scripture is a living and powerful and sharp beyond any two-edged sword. We pray, Father, that your Word will find us wherever we are and bring us to you. Pray for those who've walked with you for some time, that they will find themselves encouraged and instructed and equipped to be of help and greater use in ministry to others. I pray for those who've come in perhaps not knowing the Lord Jesus with regrets, with guilt, with sin. Oh, Father, I pray that the Spirit of God will Lead them to hear the Savior's call. Open their ears and their heart to hear the Savior's call, to come running to Him for life and for grace, for forgiveness, for reconciliation. And Father, we pray for the young people just starting out, that You'll lead them to a solid, sound faith in You, that they will give themselves to laying up Your Word in their heart, that they might take Your wisdom, for they have no wisdom of their own, that they will lean on your wisdom and learn to walk your ways and thus be delivered from these paths of ruin against which you just warned us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.