Brethren, this is our second run at this topic, The Ungodly Way, an exposition of Proverbs 30, verse 20. I believe we'll be requiring next Lord's Day as well to develop the biblical theme that I have sounded in our preaching from this text. That particular verse is, I think, quite striking. It presents an image to our minds that is amazing and instructive besides spiritually. Such is the way of an adulterous woman. She eateth and wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no wickedness. I believe the Lord has led me to urge you in this series of messages to consider the way of the ungodly and shun it. I hope I demonstrated in the morning message convincingly to your mind and to your conscience that the way of the adulterous woman, specifically in this passage, And the way of the ungodly, generally speaking, is an incomprehensible way. It's an amazing thing. It defies human explanation, really, by anyone who would continue in the ungodly way. I think that's one of the main points that the text is making since The way of an adulterous woman follows the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man with a maid, all of which ways, he has said, to be beyond his ability to understand. He says specifically, these things are too wonderful for me and I know them not. I can't comprehend. something about these things in the list. Some ways are incomprehensible even in the natural world. They are such to excite wonder and curiosity, perplexity. But especially perplexing to a godly person is the ungodly way. I had a good conversation with one of you after the sermon this morning about this, whether the way of the ungodly is understandable or not. And of course, being that we all have been sinners and none of us are without remaining sin on a certain level, we completely understand why it is that the unconverted continue in the way of sin. But that is not the thought. Identification with the adulterous woman is not the Holy Spirit's intention in giving these words. It is rather to cause us to stand aghast at such a lifestyle as this. And not only what she practices in her life, but this sense of innocence in the midst of the practice. How can it be explained? It's really quite incomprehensible. And that's the first point I wanted to draw out and show you from the text about the ungodly way it baffles a person who is thinking reasonably. rationally, according to the way things really are. Now we proceed with more of our meditation on Proverbs 30, 20. And so the second thing I wanted to show you, the second major point about this is, the ungodly way is an immoral way. And that's not to say the same thing. The ungodly way is an immoral way. To be more specific, the way of the adulterous here is an immoral way. And that is not stated explicitly, but by calling her an adulterous, the Spirit intends that we should see her as a bad person and we should have an inner negative reaction to her way. We should think to ourselves, this woman, who is an adulterous woman, is an immoral person behaving immorally. But I'm using a word now that I think needs to be more clearly understood in our generation. And there needs to be clear thinking Christians that contend for a theologically sound a usage of the word moral and the word immoral. What does it mean for something to be moral and conversely to be immoral? If you consult an ordinary English dictionary on the term, like the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, which is one of the ones I consulted, moral, you discover, means conforming to a standard of what is right and good. And I'm okay with that. I think that's a true and accurate definition. Conforming to a standard of what is right and good. And of course, a regular dictionary will tell us how people generally and commonly use a word in what sense. It's not an advocacy necessarily of that idea or a condemnation of the idea. It just tells us what generally people mean when they use a word. So another definition of moral I found is this, in the same dictionary. Moral implies conformity to established sanctioned codes or accepted notions of right and wrong. And right here, is where the battle rages over what is moral and what is immoral. We could all agree generally that morality is conformity to established sanction codes or accepted notions of right and wrong. But the questions are these. What are the established sanction codes that we should live by? What is the written law, if you will, that is the reliable indicator of what is right and what is wrong? When it says accepted notions of right and wrong, accepted by whom? And is acceptance really the vindication of a moral standard, whether it's generally accepted or not? You know, in another dictionary, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, moral says the word, the definition says it can refer to the code of behavior that is considered socially right or acceptable. Socially right or acceptable. Socially acceptable. Surely This is talking about morality by a general consensus of society. Now, what, if anything, is wrong with that? Morality by the general consensus of society. Well, there's a lot wrong with it. But I've thought about it for a while, and if I could summarize it tersely, I would say this. A group of immoral individuals is an immoral group. That's the problem with it. If you take a group of people who are hostile to God, who are practicing all kinds of sins, and ask them to form a consensus about what's right and wrong, it's not going to be a reliable guide to what is right and wrong. It's not going to be a reliable guide. When we all appear before the risen Lord Jesus Christ on Judgment Day, when He returns to this world, summoning both the living and the dead to appear there in His court, the Lord Jesus, the Judge of all men, is not going to make the standard what society generally considered to be right or wrong. The Scriptures are crystal clear about this matter. Proverbs 11.21 says, Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished. Though hand join in hand, if all the devil's servants form this watertight conspiracy. It's not going to shield them from the righteous judgment of Christ and the punishment for their sins that follows. In Proverbs chapter 16, verse 5, similarly, everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord, that is, Yahweh or Jehovah. Though hand joint in hand, he shall not be unpunished. A majority consensus does not make immorality moral. You cannot determine what is right and good and pure and noble and just and virtuous by a poll. Exodus chapter 23 verse 2 in God's Word says this. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. God is not impressed with the consensus of a world of sinners. God has no intention to grade on a curve. To look down at his rebel creatures and say, well, now they're mostly all bad, so I'm not offended as much by their sins because they're all committing them together. I mean, you can look at this in any number of ways. But an ungodly society is a ship of fools, so to speak. Which way should we steer this ship? Well, I know nothing about navigation. Let's just take a boat and see which way most of us want to go. That is not a reliable way to navigate a ship. We can't make our way safely through the moral ocean by boat. I think that any reasonable person upon reflection would concede this point because it would not be hard at all to multiply examples when the majority has been wrong. Not to mention one majority in one place and time having come to very different conclusions about what's moral and what's wrong than another majority in another place and time. You know, what about the antebellum United States before the Civil War? Was it moral, was it moral for a white man with a big plantation to own a bunch of black men and force them, against their will, to offer slave labor. Was that wrong? A lot of white men in the South apparently didn't think so 150 years ago, but today we cringe at the very notion of it, and rightly so, I would add. I was thinking about historical examples when the consensus was oh so wrong. You know, in ancient Rome, at a certain period in Roman history at least, there was a very prevalent bloodlust among both the Caesars and the common man in the street. That's what the Colosseums came to be largely about. They were supposedly some kind of a competition, but they degenerated finally to little more than ferocious lions tearing men apart limb from limb to the salacious gratification of the violent crowd that beheld the spectacle. The gladiators were used and abused for the popular entertainment. You surely would agree with me that that was immoral. Men's lives should not be sacrificed to the popular clamor. And yet it was done. And even worse, as we all know, In the darkest time of Christian persecution in ancient Rome, believers, men and women, simply for being followers of Jesus, were thrust into the same Colosseum and devoured by lions. With multitudes of their neighbors watching this for the for the fun of it. Was it right then for them to do that because it was a popular thing to do? Of course, it was hideously immoral. We appeal as well to the general moral insensitivity in Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s with the Holocaust in which not only Jews but other people were hideously slaughtered for various reasons. I think we have, as Christians, no further to look convincingly than the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus. And the Bible doesn't lay the blame for that only on the Jewish people. The Gentiles as well were there condoning what was done The Scriptures summarize the matter very neatly in the book of Acts when it says, if I might find the passage here, I didn't sorry, I didn't note the reference. Yeah, but it says when the early church was praying, They prayed to the Lord. The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ for of a truth against thy holy child Jesus whom thou hast anointed both Herod Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined to be done." enough blame to spread around to Jews and Gentiles. On that day, it was a popular thing to do, to crucify Jesus Christ. It was also the greatest sin mankind ever committed. We can't determine morality by general consensus of society. I'm not an old man yet. But even in my lifetime, in the last several decades, I have observed a seismic shift in the moral consensus of our society concerning what is acceptable morally and ethically and what's not. It's implausible that the majority is always right. It's completely implausible. When we're on the ship of morality, we can't navigate by a vote. We need a fixed North Star. A standard that never changes. By which we can make a judgment whether we're sailing in the right direction or not. In order to think correctly about morality, and I'm not just talking about for Christians, I'm talking about for anyone. In order to think truly, correctly, according to reality concerning morality, we need to think biblically. Because the only divinely authorized written code for morality today is God's moral law in Scripture, which is fixed, universal, perpetually binding. In other words, what the Christian faith at its best has always held, and this is not just a Reformed distinctive, but all Christians through the ages, that true morality, or what the Scripture calls righteousness, is a conformity in heart and conduct to God's revealed will in the Bible. And this is often been referred to as the moral law of God with a conscious distinction between moral law and civil law for Old Testament Israel and ceremonial law as well for Old Testament Israel. The civil law was for theocratic Israel in those days and should not be blindly adopted by modern nations. This is our confessions position. The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith and the ceremonial law is fulfilled in Christ and therefore ought not to be continued in the practice of it. We can still look back to the record of the ceremonial law. to understand God's plan of redemption especially. But the moral law continues. And according to the biblical teaching, righteousness is conformity to that written code in heart and conduct, period. And it's so important for us really to grasp this intellectually, to have a firm hold upon it if we to have any hope of becoming truly good and godly Christian people. We have to know what the standard for right and wrong is to have any hope of progress in conformity to that standard. The corollary to saying the moral law is the code of righteousness is to say that sin, the opposite of righteousness, is any lack of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God, particularly the moral law. That's what the Westminster Shorter Catechism says in answer number 14. But we needn't depend on trusty, old, traditional, reformed catechisms and creeds and confessions for this, because the Bible teaches the same. That's why the Orthodox substandards say these things. For example, there is 1 John 3, verse 4, which sounds quite catechetical in its form after all. It says, Whosoever commiteth sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is the transgression of the law. If you ever wanted a biblical definition of sin, you could hardly do better than this. sin is transgression of the law. And in the context, I believe this is a reference to God's moral law and scripture. Now, if you were to do a man on the street interview with many people and in America, if you chose randomly, many of the people that you interviewed would be professing Christians and you were to ask them, what is sin? It would be, I think, quite eye-opening to hear the responses that you'd get to the question. But I venture to guess that very few of the people, professing Christians or not, would say sin is transgression of God's law. Very few people think in those terms, even among those who are considered part of the church. Very few, relatively few, professing Christians have a consistently word-based sense of right and wrong. And this is absolutely foundational to living as a Christian. How do we know what's right and what's wrong? Consult our Bibles. That's how we know. Study the words of Holy Scripture in their context prayerfully to understand the mind and the will of God and have direction for how we can live in a manner that pleases God. It's not a question of our feelings about something. It's not a question of a moral consensus in society. It certainly shouldn't be just blindly trusting some religious authority like a pastor or a church or a denomination. We all have God's will revealed to us in Scripture. It's a great blessing to us that He has given us such a marvelous spiritual advantage. We're responsible to know what it says, understand what it says, and apply what it says to our own lives and live according to God's expressed will morally in Scripture. There are sophisticated theological systems popular today, even in evangelical churches, which seem to be calculated to undermine this way of thinking about morality. That is, a word-based morality, a morality that is anchored to the commandments of God in Holy Scripture, so that righteousness, true and spiritual righteousness, is conformity in heart and conduct, to what it says and sin is any lack of conformity unto or transgression of that law. Believe me, there are many professing Christians that would tell you that what I just said is wrong and even some might say dangerous to teach you such a thing. There are three very basic theological truths about God's moral law that are hopefully brought out to us in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. And I want to bring those to your attention right now before we proceed to look at the adulterous woman. Number one, the moral law of God was first given to Adam in the Garden of Eden. This is chapter 19 of the Confession, paragraph one. Listen to this. God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience. promised life upon the fulfilling and threatened death upon the breach of it and endued him, that is Adam, with power and ability to keep it. That's the first basic truth about the moral law. God gave it to Adam originally in the garden in seminal form. Secondly, the moral law was codified and summarized in the Ten Commandments, paragraph 2. the same law that was first written in the heart of man, this is a reference of course to conscience, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall and was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai in Ten Commandments and written in two tables, the first four concerning our duty or containing our duty towards God, and the other six, our duty to man. God's moral law is summarized in the Ten Commandments delivered on Mount Sinai. Our Confession says this. It's a biblically defensible statement. It's an important statement to understand. And it's a statement that even otherwise Good Bible teachers today oppose. Famous people whose names you know could not subscribe to this statement because they have erred on the topic of the moral law. Thirdly, the moral law is universally binding both in its matter and authority. Paragraph 5 of this chapter in the Confession. The moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof, and that, not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation." What is this paragraph saying? It's saying that the moral law is God's will and standard for judgment in the world everywhere for everybody. It's in effect. It's saying that everyone has a moral duty to obey the Ten Commandments, whether they've ever heard of them or not. That everybody is judged by God in themselves. I'm a standard of the morality summarized in the Ten Commandments. It says as well that the Ten Commandments are morally obligatory not only for unbelievers and for breaches against them, they'll be condemned and punished, but also morally obligatory for Christians, even more so than for unbelievers. when it says Christ in the gospel does not anyway dissolve but much strengthen the obligation to the Ten Commandments or the moral law. Now again, in evangelicalism, to believe and say such things provokes a storm of protest in many places. But this is faithful to the biblical teaching. And you know, that being the case, isn't it hideous and horrible to realize that most people don't even know the Ten Commandments. I heard an anecdote of a certain famous Reformed theologian saying he quizzed seminary entrants, first-year students, write down the Ten Commandments in order and relatively few of them, this is not your ordinary Christian person, this is a young man preparing for the ministry. Relatively few of them were able to pass the quiz, write down the Ten Commandments in order. People don't know the Ten Commandments. I've seen interviews, man-on-the-street interviews, and people can think of like two of them, if that, and then they come up dry. And this is the standard by which God's going to judge them on Judgment Day outside of Christ. And then some Christians foolishly deny that we have a duty to keep the Ten Commandments. Some will say, well, nine of them we have to keep, but one of them we no longer have an obligation to keep, and that's the infamous Fourth Commandment. This is so dangerous. To teach against obedience to the Ten Commandments is spiritually perilous. You know, we come to this passage in Proverbs 30 and we read about a woman who is described as adulterous. An adulterous woman, this is her way. She eats, she wipes her mouth and says, I've done no wickedness. Surely, surely most of the people who would come into contact with a verse like this would not agree with her. Surely most would say, oh, she's an adulterous woman and this involves, you know, this is figuratively describing her sinning in this way of adultery. Then, of course, she has been guilty. She has committed a sin. But how do we know? How do we know that there's anything wrong with adultery? It doesn't conform. to the standard of God's law. God's law in the seventh commandment says, thou shalt not commit adultery. That's how we know it's wrong to commit adultery. It doesn't matter if it's popular. It doesn't matter if I prayed about it. Now I feel OK about proceeding in adultery. God's law stands fixed as the North Star for our navigation. through the moral ocean. We know adultery is immoral because God forbids it in His moral law. Now come with me more specifically to Proverbs 30, 20 and think through with me the immoral way of this woman. The verse is written in such a way to suggest her immoral identity and then her immoral acts. Some of us are familiar with a classic novel that is not good in all respects called The Scarlet Letter and the primary character, I would say, in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic was named Hester Prynne and she had she committed adultery with the pastor of the church and he was spared public humiliation at least in the short term but when it was found out that she was with child and she was not married she was censured by the church and she was forced to wear a big red A on her clothing which stood for adulterer now Nathaniel Hawthorne had a very different axe to grind when he wrote that letter. But this woman in Proverbs 30, 20 actually deserves to have the big red A on her because she's called an adulteress in the text. The Hebrew word so translated, adulteress, is one that is typically in the Old Testament reserved for men, but here It is occasionally used of a woman, and this is one of those instances. She is an adulterous woman. It doesn't mean that's the only sin she was guilty of, but the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testament, characteristically calls the unconverted, the non-Christians, the wicked, the unrighteous, the ungodly by their most characteristic sins. Sometimes they're called just generally the ungodly or the wicked, but in many places, particular persons sin in different patterns. They have different propensities, if you will, toward various forms of immorality. So the Bible uses terms with a very weighty moral overtones in them like fornicators and idolaters and adulterers, thieves, drunkards, extortioners, swindlers and so forth. Not because those people are innocent in other respects, but this is the particular sin that has thoroughly mastered them. This is their pet lust, They're besetting sin. They're characteristic vice. And so they are labeled with those appropriate terms. Look with me, for example, and there are many. Well, here's one. Proverbs 30, 20. An adulterous woman. But I've got another example to show you, and it's instructive in another way. 1 Corinthians 5, verse 9. Paul writing to a church. at Corinth and he says, I wrote unto you in an epistle, not to company with fornicators. See, here he is using, and he's not being uncharitable. He's not arrogant when he says this. He's just acknowledging that there are people in this world who devoted, in this case, for example, to sexual sin. They live in a way of sexual sin. It's a pattern. It's a habit. It's a custom. You know, I mean, we wouldn't be offended if it was amoral if you said, my friend is a painter, my friend is a musician, my friend is a car salesman. Not that they don't do anything else but these, but these are such a big part of their lives that this is a fair label for them. I wrote to you, he says, in another epistle, not to keep company with fornicators, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters, for then ye must needs go out of the world." Now, what's Paul saying here? He's saying, look, in another letter I told you don't have dinner with or don't have friends, really. They're the fornicators. But I didn't mean ordinary run-of-the-mill fornicators. You're allowed to have friendships with them. That is, the ordinary kind of sinners out in the world. If you tried to have no friendships with any fornicators or with any idolaters or any covetous people or any extortioners, you couldn't live in this world. Because the world is full of them. When I said don't have any companionship with fornicators, I wasn't talking about ordinary fornicators. I was talking about hypocritical fornicators. Those supposedly Christians that practice these sins. Look at verse 11. But now I have written unto you, not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or a covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such a one know not to eat." This is what the church absolutely should not tolerate. People within the church who have a formal status of being Christians while they live impenitently in these vices. See, that is not right. Everybody understands in the church that out in the world you have the sinners. But in the church, that is in the membership of the church, you're supposed to have the holy people. So what the church ought not to abide is people who are fundamentally and spiritually worldly in heart and conduct as members of the church. And in the case where a church member proves to be apparently a fornicator or some other kind of habitual, vicious, habitually vicious person that is devoted to some vice, the church is supposed to discipline that person if they won't repent, to excommunicate them from the membership. And when they're under discipline, or after they've been excommunicated, the instruction is not even to eat with such a person. That is, you love them by shaming them and saying to them, they must repent if they would expect to be saved. But I bring this to you especially to show how the Bible labels certain kinds of sinners by their characteristic sins. And then Paul says to the church, oh, I'm sorry. This is useful for what I intended, but it's not the very same passage I had in mind. Let me show you another example of labeling according to the life dominating sin. Revelation 21 verse 8. This is about the final judgment and what God is going to do. And it says here, but the fearful. That's a sin. To be cowardly, spiritually cowardly and not be characterizing you. to be cowardly rather than fearing God. The fearful and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and whoremongers and fornicators and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." A couple questions for interpretation. What is a liar? A liar is not simply someone who has told a lie. A liar is a person for whom deceit and lying is their characteristic M.O. This is what they do. They're liars. You can't be a Christian, a true Christian, and a liar. Liars are not Christians. And if we needed any more convincing proof text for that assertion, this is it. There couldn't be anything more than this. How many liars shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone? How many, according to the Scripture? All liars! All liars! If you're found to be a liar on judgment day, there's one place you're going, and it's not heaven. This is the condemnation of the various forms of ungodliness found in the world. Some are murderers, some are fornicators, some are sorcerers, some are open, blatant idolaters, and some are just liars. In other words, Any life-dominating, chronically indulged sin marks you as that kind of sinner. Okay? Any life-dominating, chronically indulged sin marks you as that kind of sinner. Now listen, few people will admit this to themselves. Right? Isn't that your observation? How many people have ever walked up to you and said, Hi, how are you? My name is Scott. I'm a liar. Nobody says that. Oh, hey, I'm Joe, the fornicator. People don't want to think of themselves in those terms, even though they are. Imagine what society would be like if God tattooed every sinner's primary vice on their forehead for all to see. And he tattooed the word saint on all the real Christians' foreheads. That would make a trip to the mall so much more interesting, wouldn't it? But on judgment day, on judgment day, all this will become perfectly public and obvious. The woman of Proverbs 30 verse 20 is called an adulterous woman. That's what she was in her fundamental identity. She wasn't a saint. She wasn't a worshipper of God. She's an adulterous woman. That's who she is at heart. That's why she's called an adulterous woman. And she engages in immoral acts, specifically in adultery. And this is not a one-time moral lapse in her case. This is her manner. This is her custom, her way of living. Such is suggested by the Hebrew word translated way. Such is the way of an adulterous woman. Such is her custom. This is her manner of conduct. This is her habitual lifestyle, if you will. And what is it that she's accustomed to doing repeatedly, impenitently? It is committing adultery. Adultery is flagrantly against the seventh commandment. This ain't subtle. The seventh commandment in Exodus 20.14 and Deuteronomy 5.18 is unmistakable. It says, Thou shalt not commit adultery." It's one of the ten basic laws of morality God gave mankind. This is not an incidental reference in an obscure passage in Habakkuk somewhere. This is one of the big ones. God gave ten rules to regulate all of our lives. The ten commandments. And this is not a sin because it's inferred from the seventh commandment. This is the gross, flagrant, obvious, indisputable, undeniable transgression of that basic moral standard. It is, in both the Old and New Testament, characterized as an extremely serious sin. If we look to a Bible dictionary for a more specific definition of adultery, we read this, and I think this is a good way to put it. Adultery is basically this, sexual intercourse by a married man with another than his wife, or by a married woman with another than her husband. Adultery is not just sexual immorality of any kind. It is a violation of the sacred marriage covenant. It involves that. In the original creation ordinance, which is marriage, we read in Genesis chapter 2, and I cited this this morning, that God brought the woman unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." You know, you have to understand, Adam and Eve were literal historical persons. And when God presented her to Him, it wasn't presenting her to Him as a girlfriend to enjoy. This was a wedding ceremony. Adam and Eve were covenantally bound one to another to be faithful to each other till death would they part. That is the very nature in Scripture, of course, of marriage. It is a covenantal bond between one man and one woman. and let the states of this country pass whatever laws they want to pervert the institution of marriage. Real marriage, by biblical standard, involves only one man and one woman. Malachi 2, verse 14 brings out the covenantal nature of marriage when it says, and this is a somewhat difficult to interpret verse, but there is a phrase here in which God is convicting unfaithful husbands of their sin against their wives. And the protest is in these words, she is thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. Or it could be rendered, your wife by covenant. It's to break the most sacred promise a person can make, I believe, in this life, short of being committed to the Lord Himself. Adultery is a betrayal of the spouse that placed their trust in you. Adultery is a taunt of the holy God who witnessed your vows and will hold you to them. Adultery is a capital offense under Old Testament civil law. Leviticus chapter 20 verse 10. This is to convey the seriousness of the immorality involved in adultery. And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress, shall surely be put to death. And adultery is a snare to bring people to hell according to the biblical teaching. Proverbs chapter 7 verse 25. Do not let your heart decline to the ways of the immoral woman. Do not go astray into her paths. For she has cast down many wounded. Yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell going down to the chambers of death. And finally, prevalent adultery makes a society like Sodom and Gomorrah and provokes God's wrath against that people. Jeremiah 23, verse 14. I have also seen in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing. They commit adultery. and walk in lies. They strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness. They are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah." The way of the ungodly is not only an incomprehensible way, it's an immoral way. It's a gross offensive, obvious trampling upon the standard of righteousness that God has given us, summarized in the Ten Commandments. And so it is with all in the ungodly way. Those who are not living godly in Christ Jesus are walking in a way of violation, habitual, impenitent violation, of the code God has given for righteousness. So that even those who are so-called moralists are living in flagrant violation of the law because the law requires not only external conformity in matters of behavior, but an internal reverence and fear of God as we render obedience to His revealed will. Well, may God bless this much of the preaching from Proverbs 30, 20. And we have two major sections left for delivery in the pulpit. The ungodly way is an insincere way. And then a section of personal applications from these things. May the Lord help us take these things to heart and give us grace associated with salvation.