We live in a hyper-sexualized cultural moment, a moment in which sexual temptation has been weaponized. You no longer have to go visit dark, seedy buildings to find it. Temptation will seek you out. It’s on TV, it pops up un-prompted online, it’s in movies, it’s in songs, it’s in novels.
But as much as modern culture has done to weaponize this temptation, the temptation itself is not new. Solomon knew full well the dangers that come with wandering eyes and untamed appetites. He also knew full well the consequences of such illicit liaisons and covert rendezvous.
In today’s text we get to listen in on the conversation of a father speaking to his sons. The father is teaching his sons, training them, warning them about the dangers that lie ahead of them in life, and also about the sweet blessings that can be theirs if they choose the path of wisdom.
The text is written by a father, and to sons, and I will preach it that way. But nothing I say here is exclusively for men. These same temptations may take a slightly different form, but the heart level temptation is the same for women as well. Further, you may not be married yourself, and might be thinking this doesn’t apply to me, but that’s not true either. The specific sin addressed here is adultery, but the temptations, the consequences, the costs, the dangers are all similarly found in other types of sins.
So even though you might not be a son and might not be actively battling lust, listen closely and apply these principles to the sins in your own life. Let’s read Proverbs 5:
My son, be attentive to my wisdom;
incline your ear to my understanding,
2 that you may keep discretion,
and your lips may guard knowledge.
3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech[b] is smoother than oil,
4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death;
her steps follow the path to[c] Sheol;
6 she does not ponder the path of life;
her ways wander, and she does not know it.7 And now, O sons, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
9 lest you give your honor to others
and your years to the merciless,
10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
11 and at the end of your life you groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
12 and you say, “How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
13 I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
14 I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”15 Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16 Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
17 Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
18 Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated[d] always in her love.
20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?[e]
21 For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders[f] all his paths.
22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
23 He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is led astray.
We will survey this chapter of scripture under four different headings, four different points: Heads up. Watch out. Lean in. Stand firm. Heads up. Watch out. Lean in. Stand firm.
Let’s start with the first one: Heads up. Verses 1 and 2 say: My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, 2 that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. My son, be attentive. Heads up. Listen closely. This is a father speaking to his son, passing on the wisdom that he has learned in this life. And the father is no mere passive observer. He, too, was a young man, and has experienced the temptations that the son will soon face. The father knows that youthful lusts, combined with a not yet developed ability to exercise self-control, mean that young ones should especially take heed to the advice that follows.
Pay attention, the father says to the son, as all fathers should rightly warn their sons of the danger of sexual temptation. Fathers, are you being faithful to warn your son about the dangers and temptations that they will encounter? Sin and temptation will seek them out, and we can’t protect our children forever. We have to train them, warn them, give them the skills they need to recognize the temptation when it arises, and the tools they need to flee it.
This training and warning is not merely for fathers and sons. Inside the household of God, the family of the church, we need older saints to be actively training and warning younger saints. We need mothers encouraging their daughters to marital faithfulness. We need older men mentoring younger men. We need generational encouragement and exhortation to stay fighting the good fight of faithfulness to our spouse and to Christ.
And why is all this necessary? Because as we all know, we are sinfully inclined toward unfaithfulness. Sure, you may have never committed adultery yourself, but you’ve no doubt looked at another woman or another man with a twinkle of lust in your eye. You’ve replayed those images you’ve seen before, or you’ve used your imagination to envision what it would be like to be with that person, or to be married to someone else.
All of that naturally bubbles up from within, and the wise father knows that, and that’s why he is calling his son to be attentive. Heads up. Listen closely. Your life depends upon it, as we will soon see. Heads up.
Second, not only is the father saying heads up. He also is saying Watch out. Watch out. Watch out for this adulterous woman, whom the father describes in verses 3-14. This is really just a father using metaphor and imagery to illustrate what the 7th commandment prohibits: you shall not commit adultery. But the father goes even further by showing us some of the psychology, some of the mental games that surrounds the temptation. And he also shows us some of the consequences.
So, what should we watch out for?
In verse 3 he warns us to watch out for her appeal. Watch out for her appeal: “For the lips of a forbidden[a] woman drip honey, and her speech[b] is smoother than oil.” Her lips are so sweet. They promise satisfaction, joy, happiness. Just a little kiss, just a little taste. And her words are smoother than oil. Her logic will seem so sound, and her words will make the indulgence seem so rational. Like the sirens that lulled men to sleep, only to sail to their deaths, lady folly temps us with her appeal.
Sexual sin promises sweetness. Another little look, another lingering gaze, one more download, one more clip, one more kiss. But there is always a hook on the inside of that bait.
Which is why in verses 4-6 he warns us to watch out so that we can avoid her hidden poison. Watch out for her hidden poison. Verse 4:
in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death;
her steps follow the path to Sheol;
She promises satisfaction with her sugary lips, but in the end those lips bring death. What we thought would satisfy all our desires, has brought about our demise. The same is true regardless of the expression: porn or unseemly romance novels or hookup apps all promise satisfaction, a sense of belonging and fulfillment, but always leave us feeling empty, used, shameful, and even more dissatisfied.
And if we continue down the path, we’ll end up consumed entirely. Ecclesiastes 7:26 says “I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her.” The adulterous woman’s path leads us down the path to hell.
If you are here today and you are toying with some kind of sexual sin, you need to know that you’re not in control of it. It WILL end up controlling you, and you are but one step removed from hell itself. Her path leads to the grave, and all those who indulge her will be bound by her. Sexual sin is no joke, it will ruin your soul.
And lest you think you’re the one that is in control, notice how the woman herself is blinded. Verse 6: 6 she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.” She does not know it. Sexual sin has a way of blinding the understanding of the participants. They don’t think it is that bad, or that they’ll get caught, or that it’s really a big deal.
In Hosea 4:11 and 12 God condemns Israel for their unfaithfulness, and makes clear that their whoredom, along with their lust for wine, has blinded their understanding. That’s exactly what the adulterous woman experiences. She thinks she is fine.
Don’t listen to the sugary lies of the adulterous woman. Flee from her and her paths. Confess your sins and turn back to Jesus who can forgive you of our sins and help you walk in holiness again. He is the only one who can save you from your bondage.
No amount of will power or self-derived determination will be able to completely and finally free you from the snare of lust and sin in this life. You need a savior who has completely and finally broken the power of sin, and that is Jesus. He never gave into the adulterous woman’s advances. He never succumbed to temptation, even though he was personally tempted by Satan himself in the desert. Jesus never lusted, not even for a moment, after another man or woman, and he never once had a lingering thought about being unfaithful to his bride.
Come to this Jesus and you too can be freed from the power of sexual sin. It won’t be easy, but you’ll begin to see that Christ is the one that can truly and completely fulfill our desires, unlike the wayward woman her hidden poison.
Next, not only do we need to watch out for her appeal and her hidden poison, we need to watch out for her path. In verses 7-8 he warns us to watch out for her path. Verses 7-8 say,
7 And now, O sons, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
Stand clear, Watch out, keep away, don’t go near. We shouldn’t merely keep sexual temptation at arm’s length. We need to be like Joseph in Potiphar’s house and flee from it. Don’t keep it like a pet. Kill the sin. Kill the temptation.
We should be intentional and diligent. If you see yourself succumbing to sexual sin, analyze your situation, find out where you are weak, and do something about it. If your phone is a temptation, get rid of it and get a dumb phone. If your computer is a temptation, put it in a public room, or get rid of it entirely. If you’re tempted to fantasize about someone at work, maybe you need to change offices, or get out.
Jesus teaches us that our diligence in these areas is not only necessary, but needs to be radical. In the sermon on the mount he tells us if our eye causes us to sin, to gouge it out, and if our hand causes us to stumble, to cut it off. Better to go to heaven maimed, than to go to hell with all our members.
We may not need to start with cutting off our hand, but we need to be wiling to do whatever is necessary, however painful, to root out the sexual temptations and sin in our lives and flee from it. Watch out, and keep far from her paths.
Next, In verses 9-14 he warns us to watch out for her costs. Watch out for her costs. What are the costs that come to us if we indulge in the temptation?
Verse nine says that your affair with the wayward woman will cost you your honor. It costs you your honor. Your reputation will be ruined. People will scoff at you, will joke about you. The language is similar to having someone come up to a king and remove his crown from him. You’ve defamed yourself, dishonored yourself, soiled yourself and your reputation with your sin.
Not only that, the text says that adultery costs you your time. Your time. Some translations say “your youth” or “your years.” The best years of your life will be thrown away for the sake of some fleeting fornication. You’ll see that your energy, your productivity, your calendar, your life gets divvied up and spent in a hundred different directions. Your affections will be split, and your energy will be the same.
Not only your time, but your money, verse 10 tells us. Adultery costs you your money: “lest strangers take their fill of your wealth, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner.” Not only will adultery cost you child support payments and alimony, splitting your wealth among others, but hiding a mistress (either real or virtual) costs men much more than they originally thought. One lie leads to another, and another. You need a secret credit card or hidden bank account to cover your tracks. Your expenses pile up and your strength and wealth dwindle.
Which leads to the next cost mentioned in verse 11: adultery costs you your physical health. It costs you your physical health. Verse 11: “at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed.” The stress of having unconfessed sin, the stress of hiding in the darkness, stress of always looking over your shoulder, will wear you out faster and earlier than everyone else. And it will damage your mental health and sanity too: verse 12:
and you say, “How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
13 I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
14 I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”
A man ensnared in sexual sin will be filled with not only a tortured conscience, but a sorrow of regret that he didn’t listen to his teachers. His father warned him, his pastors warned him, his bible warned him, his common sense warned him, but he didn’t listen, and now he’s in despair.
His time with the adulterous woman has cost him his honor, his time, his money, and his health. We should listen to this wise father. Why would we risk so much, for such fleeting enjoyment? It makes no sense, when you see the full picture, to even toy around with sexual sin. Flee from it and to Jesus today, lest you too be filled with regret and pain because of your foolishness. Watch out, for the wayward woman.
Third, not only does the father tell us Heads up, and watch out, he also tells us to Lean in. Lean in. Verse 15-20 show us what we should do instead of chasing after the adulterer. Or to put it another way, these verse encourage us in how can we positively fulfill the 7th commandment, which says not to commit adultery, and thus further implies that we’d be faithful to Christ, and to our marriage covenant.
The father begins:
15 Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16 Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
17 Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
Don’t go dipping into another man’s well, he says. Drink water from your own cistern, which was a reservoir for catching rain water. The context is clearly suggesting that he’s talking about marital relations within the marriage covenant. The physical union is one of God’s good blessing for his creatures, and our contentment and satisfaction should be found in the spouse that God has provided for us. Enjoy your spouse regularly, and with thankfulness, for this is a good thing that pictures the gospel itself, as Paul teaches us in Ephesians 5, and this too is a way to help guard against the temptations that come from the adulterous woman.
A side not for those that are not married yet: the application for you is to remain sexually pure in faithfulness to your future spouse that, Lord willing, you will marry one day. Singleness can be a terribly difficult season to remain chaste, but Christ is sufficient for you. He will see you through it. And know that any sacrifices you make to remain pure, God will reward. If you’re in this situation and you need help and encouragement, reach out to some other members, to older saints, or to us pastors, we’d love to come alongside you and encourage you as you battle to remain pure.
Moving on in the text, the father explains a little bit deeper what the call for a faithful husband is. The husband is not merely commanded to physically stay with his wife. The call is much deeper than that: it’s down to the level of faithful affections. Let’s read starting in verse 18:
18 Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
Did you catch all the imperatives? REJOICE, DELIGHT, BE INTOXICATED in your wife’s love. This is language that speaks to more than marital activity. It speaks to the heart. The faithful husband is called to delight in the wife he has been given. He’s called to lean in and to rejoice at the precious jewel that God has given him in marriage. He’s called to be intoxicated ALWAYS in her love. This language is similar to what Paul commands in Ephesians 5, for husbands to CHERISH their wives. The husband is called to be so in love with her that the adulterous woman isn’t even a possibility in his mind. He can’t look at her, because his eyes are always fixed on his wife. His heart is guarded against sexual temptation because his heart is devoted to another.
That’s the standard for us, that’s what being a faithful spouse is to be. To have a heart so rejoicing, so delighted, so thankful, so intoxicated by our spouse that we’re not even tempted to taste of the honey-lipped adulterer.
But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t always live up to this standard. We don’t always rejoice in the wife of our youth. We aren’t always thankful for the spouse that God has given us; in fact, we can be tempted to covet your neighbor’s spouse, or linger over that movie that we know we shouldn’t watch, or fantasize about that person we know from work. We’re all guilty of being unfaithful in heart, even if we never once touched another woman.
Jesus explains in Matthew 7 that if we even but look at another woman with lustful intent that we’ve committed adultery, we’ve broken the 7th commandment, and are thus no better than the adulterous woman.
When you look into the mirror of God’s law, what do you see? Do you see yourself as the adulterous one, the harlot, who is justly condemned by God’s law and worthy of everlasting punishment in Hell? Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 6 that the sexually immoral, and adulterers, and those who practice homosexuality will not inherit the kingdom of God. Sexual sin bars you from God’s kingdom.
But the good news of the bible is that Jesus Christ is THE faithful bridegroom to his spouse. Jesus came with singular devotion to his bride. He came and was born of a woman and took on the fullness of human nature, including all of its desires and appetites, and yet was without sin. He never once lusted after another man or woman. He never once was discontent with the bride that God had given him, in fact, the bible says that for the JOY set before him he willingly endured the cross. His motivation was from the heart, a heart of joy, rejoicing in the salvation of his bride so that she might be washed, made pure.
He is the faithful spouse that we never were, and if we repent of our sins and believe in him, we can have his purity counted to our account and our sinful adultery nailed to the cross. That’s the sweet exchange of Calvary: all of our sin and infidelity dead and buried, and all of his life and faithfulness, credited to us.
In fact, that’s what Paul is talking about back in 1 Corinthians 6. Right after he says that adulterers and the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God, do you remember what he says? He says, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
That’s the good news of what you can have today. You too can be washed, can be justified, that is, declared righteous by the great Lawgiver, and you can be sanctified, that is, made holy through the work of God’s own Holy Spirit.
Won’t you come to Jesus and believe today? What better good news can there be? What more needs to be done for your salvation? Christ has done it all. Come to him this day, and take his gospel of grace as your own. Lean into him, and you too can have purity and satisfaction, regardless of your past infidelity.
Lastly, the father says to us: Heads up, Watch out, Lean in, and lastly, Stand Firm. Stand Firm. Verse 21-23:
21 For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders all his paths.
22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
23 He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is led astray.
The father begins his closing section by exhorting faithfulness in his sons to stand firm in the path of wisdom. How do we stand firm? First by remembering that God is always watching over us. Our ways are before His eyes, and He ponders all our paths, the text says.
Regardless of whoever we can deceive, and whatever schemes we have to cover our tracks, God knows. God sees all.
But it’s not as if he is some sort of peeping tom who likes to spy on us. He’s the God of the universe, our creator and sustainer; it would be contrary to his nature NOT to know everything and to see everything.
Perhaps you too find this to be a wonderful help in times of temptation. If a stray thought comes in, or a fiery dart from Satan lands, and the adulterous woman is using her smooth speech and sugary lips, then you should think about God.
Would I commit this sin if Jesus Christ was sitting her in the room with me? Would I indulge if Jesus was right here watching me? Of course not. Then why would I ever indulge just because I can’t see him? It doesn’t mean he can’t see me. He does see me, and he knows what my temptation is.
The father knows this, and he is encouraging his sons to remember. We can be tempted to think like Adam and Eve, and think we can hide our sins in the bushes, cover them up with fig leaves. But God will not be deceived. He ponders our paths, he knows our steps.
Further, the father warns his son to Stand Firm in the path of wisdom because the path of sin ensnares. The path of sexual sin ensnares.
22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
23 He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is led astray.
The father concludes with the sober reminder that a man trapped in sexual sin is enslaved to it. He’s chained to it. And those chains are attached to a sinking ship. He dies for lack of discipline, for lack of self-control.
If that is you, if you feel chained to your sexual sin, don’t kid yourself. Don’t rationalize it and say you’ll do better next time. Don’t wait another day. Get help. First cry out to Jesus for liberation, and then come to your brothers or sisters for help. We’re called in the house of God to bear one another’s burdens, and sexual sin can be a burden too great for some to carry alone. It’s not weakness, but wisdom, to seek out help when you need it.
Each of us has violated the 7th commandment in one way or another, and each of us likewise needs Jesus’s grace to be faithful to our spouses. We’re all recipients of grace, and should handle with gentleness anyone who comes and seeks help with a burden.
Don’t let the lie of Satan, which says that you’re worse than everyone else, you’re more sinful than everybody else, don’t let that lie keep you from confessing the sin and getting the help you need. Don’t die for lack of discipline.
Remember the words of the faithful Father: Heads up, Watch out, Lean in, and Stand firm, confident in the knowledge that Christ is our sure and faithful spouse, who loved us enough to die for us, and who washes us so that we might be free from the spell of the adulterous woman.
