At Westminster Seminary, we've been doing faculty devotions through various portions of the wisdom literature. And so it's because of that that we're looking this morning at Proverbs 5. Proverbs is a good book to look at to remind us of God's wisdom and how it applies to our life. So open with me page 673 in your pew Bibles, Proverbs chapter 5. And our text today will be the whole chapter. So hear God's word. My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path to Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life. Her ways wander, and she does not know it. And now, O sons, listen to me and do not depart from the words of my mouth. Keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless. Lest strangers take their fill of your strength and your labors go to the house of a foreigner. And at the end of your life you groan. When your flesh and body are consumed and you say, How I hated discipline and my heart despised reproof, and I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation. Drink water from your own system, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be spread, scattered abroad, streams of water in the street, let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly, he is led astray. And chapter 5 belongs here to the first part of the book of Proverbs, chapters 1 through 9 that are usually called the prologue. And they are given as a father's instructions to his son. And as you read through this prologue, you see what's the father trying to teach his son. And as we think of our chapter here, in one sense we could say it's fairly simple. Don't commit adultery. We know that. And if we read elsewhere, we find many of the other points are not that complex. Don't steal. Don't murder. These very basic things that we read even this morning from God's law. And yet, as you read these chapters, the father is pressing on the son the need to strive after, to persevere in the pursuit of wisdom. Why does he press that home so much if these points are rather simple? One commentator, Michael Fox, he says this, The reason that the wisdom the author is seeking to impart is at once difficult and obvious is that it is not reducible to the book's precepts. The precepts, for example, don't commit adultery. Instead, he goes on to say that the wisdom needed, the wisdom that the father is teaching to his son, it is the ability to discern right from wrong and also the desire to pursue the right. So this wisdom that he's talking about, many have said, is really moral character. And that's why it's so difficult. So Michael Fox goes on, he says, For moral character comes down to desiring the right things. And how do you teach desire? So did you catch that? That the father wants to teach his son to desire the right things. Not just know right from wrong, but to desire what is right. What a noble goal that is. So how does he do it? How does he proceed in this? Well, it's helpful that he does something more than just, quote, God's law. As important and proper as that is. And he does even something more than what we talk about in Heidelberg question and answer 86, as we ask, why do we do what's good? In summary, we say because of gratitude. Instead, all of those are important, but the father does something else. And so Fox talks about it again. He says, the father's pedagogical, his teaching rhetoric, aims at guiding desire, fostering the right ones, suppressing the wrong ones. He seeks to connect deed and consequence deep in the son's mind so that he knows not only the principle of reward and punishment, he feels it. The father portrays before his son where his various choices will lead him in life. and he does it in vivid and often compelling detail. Life doesn't have a do-over button, a reset switch. Many of the choices that we make have consequences that we need to deal with for the rest of our lives. The father wants his son's eyes to be wide open and focused as he steps out in life. Fox says that he speaks to him in a confidential man-to-man tone, alerting him to the pull of greed, conformity, and above all, lust, with the vividness that reveals his own nagging susceptibility to their attractions. The wise man is not devoid of such desires, and he doesn't demand that his son be. We'll see that. The father doesn't condemn the son's sexual desires, the same desires the father wrestles with. He calls upon him to control them and focus them in the one place where they can lead to something beautiful and blessed in marriage. So as we look at our passage, we will use basically the title of this These are our two points, the two parts here that we find of fleeing seduction and then finding satisfaction. So the father starts out by exhorting his son, verse 1 there, to be attentive, to listen carefully, to incline his ear, stretch it out to his wisdom, his good sense. This is something more than just hearing audible things coming in our ears. It's those elements being internalized. And why does the son need that? Well, in verse 2, he gives two reasons that you may keep discretions and your lips may guard knowledge. Discretion and knowledge are key in the book of Proverbs, especially for the youth. Proverbs 1, 4 says, wisdom gives knowledge and discretion to the youth. Now, this term discretion, it often refers to a plan or even a scheme because it can be for good or for evil. It's that ability to think clearly about a situation, know what you want and how to go about getting it. to not be carried along by circumstances as they come about, but to see consequences where things will go. And so maybe one other way we could translate it is to keep your wits about you. Keep your head in all situations. If you don't have a plan, you'll be tossed to and fro. And so when that happens, when you have that ability, and you've internalized this wisdom, this internal wisdom, is then conviction that you have, and that's that second part. If it's internalized, it then comes out of your mouth. Your lips guard knowledge. You don't just babble as the circumstances change, but you speak what is true. And so I'm reminded of two somewhat modern proverbs that get at a similar idea. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And likewise, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Now, the Father is bringing this about and applying it to a most serious situation. Sexual temptation. Why is it important to keep your wits? Well, to put it briefly, hormones. Along comes a good-looking, sweet-talking woman, And we know what she does to a man. Logic goes out the window along with coherent thoughts and speech. We've all seen it in movies, on TV shows, taking a perfectly sensible guy and turning him into a babbling idiot. Men are susceptible to feminine charms. And I imagine most men here have experienced it to some degree. When the attention of a woman freezes our tongue, addles our brain. So the father is telling his son that he needs to learn how to keep his wits. Keep that discretion when that happens. When he's faced with this, when this woman comes along, you need to have a plan in temptation. You need to have principles to fall back upon. Otherwise, you let hormones take over and all reason is thrown out the window. Now, it's important to emphasize, and we'll see this more later, that the father is not condemning those feminine wiles or charms. Later, we see him, I would say, actually praying for those to be true of the son's wife. The problem is not the charms, but who is using them. It's the wrong woman. The same terminology of lips dripping honey is used in Song of Songs 4 verse 11 by the lover talking of his beloved. Your lips drip honey. Sexual allurement, it's a good thing. It's something to be celebrated in a marriage. But it's wrong. It's out of place here. when it's this strange woman. She is using her powers of attraction, being smoother than oil, to seduce a man, not to embrace her husband. This is sexuality out of place. So who is this strange woman? The term isn't a harlot or an adulteress. Instead, it most often means strange or maybe we could say foreign or forbidden. There's much discussion of this woman's identity. Is she a foreigner as far as nationality? The same term later on is used again in verse 20. Another word in parallel to it means foreigner, though again we could take it maybe as outsider. And as we look at these, I think the focus isn't on nationality. It doesn't make sense here. Instead, the term is someone outside the family, someone outside of the clan, a woman that's outside of a man's proper bounds for his sexuality. So really, it's any other woman than his wife. That's the strange woman. And in Israelite society, most of the time, it would have been another man's wife. And as we look elsewhere in Proverbs, where we have these similar exhortations, that's usually the focus, somebody who is married. Now, we don't get what these honey words are. We could look in chapter 7, and there you have a demonstration, an illustration of what these honey words are from this strange woman. But here we get very brief imagery that shows that this woman and her words are powerful. They are alluring. They are desirous. But you need to know where they end. You need to know the consequences even when your mind is swimming. And so that's what the Father does in verses 4 through 6, giving these consequences in very general terms. And as we read through them, we may think that they're speaking about final consequences. As it talks about death, her feet go down to death, a path to Sheol. She doesn't ponder the path of life. And while there certainly is that ultimate judgment, a life of willful, unrepentant sin will lead to God's judgment in the end, Most often, Proverbs, and I think here too, has a nearer horizon in view. This is the quality of our earthly life. This strange woman and her sexuality will take you away, the Father says, from what is good and pleasant in this life and lead you down a hard and bitter path. There will be consequences. Sexuality is a good thing, but taken out of its proper context, it doesn't lead to fulfillment. It doesn't lead to happiness, to the pleasures for which God created it. And we can see that further illustrated then in verses 7 through 14. They tell us what is waiting for you if you can't keep your head when faced by the charms of this strange woman. And the father here now speaks in the plural to his sons. Listen to me, don't depart from the words of my mouth. And he first tells them the surest way to avoid this strange woman. It's to stay away. Stay far away. Verse 8, keep your way far from her. Do not go near the door of her house. That is the surest way you are not to pretend that you're stronger than you are. Know the power of sensuality and don't flirt with danger. And then he gives us the reasons why. And this section may be the hardest to understand exactly what is being described. But in a general sense, he says, you're going to lose everything in life. From your property to your physical strength. And it talks about all of these individuals, strangers, cruel ones, outsiders. They're all terms that refer to men here. And they're probably speaking in an Israelite context of people that the son would now owe debts to or other husbands or fathers of those that he had adultery with. Because adultery, even in our context, has serious financial consequences. And it did so in Israel. We could label this section as the loss of property possession and all things. In many ways, he loses the family farm. Because of his sexual sins, his youthful power, his productive years, when he should have been building up his house, when he should have been building up his family, growing it, it says that it's now all wasted. He's toiling for someone else, satisfying strangers, his goods are going into their house. And so what is he reduced to? We see that's verse 11. At the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and body are consumed. You look back at your life, at what has happened, the shipwreck that you have made of everything because of your indiscretions. And so then you cry out. Verse 12, How I hated discipline and my heart despised reproof. I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. How could I have been so stupid not to listen? How could have I been so foolish to walk in this path that had this ruin at the end? And it's not only ruin of his body, his material. I think verse 14 there really speaks of the ruin of his standing, his reputation. We could translate it, How quickly I've become an utter ruin in the midst of the assembly and the congregation. He is in disgrace. So as we hear these words and we apply them to ourselves, We know that the issues are the same, even if some of the circumstances are different. Adultery is certainly rampant in our culture, as are various forms of infidelity. But maybe the biggest difference between our time in ancient Israel is that today the strange woman may not be your neighbor's wife in the flesh. She may be the one on the screen. And in our culture, adultery doesn't have the same social stigma as in Israel, though certainly there are still consequences. Anyone who's gone through a divorce can tell you how painful, how costly it is, especially when children are involved. And even those casual hookups, whether real or with images, they have lasting consequences. Emotional pain, emptiness, guilt. They can consume your time, your energies. You may lose your job, your friends, your reputation. This is not the way of life. It is not the path God has set before us. And even though this passage is given from the Father to the Son, I think we can still apply it to daughters, to women also. Sexual temptation may be different for women, but it's still real, as are the consequences. So as the Father says, you need a plan to keep your wits about you. Convictions to fall back upon in this heat, in the heat of the moment. And the best plan, as the Father says, is to stay away, but we know that that's not always possible, especially from temptations on a screen. So you need to know yourself, know your weaknesses, and don't be afraid to have a very practical plan as you face temptation. I know of one dear brother who has a designated friend that he always calls when he's on a trip by himself to guard himself. Many books talk about having some sort of hobby or distraction you can use when your hormones are starting to take over. And as we think of that, as we put that into practice, we need to do that as Christians. Do that as those who are in Christ, forgiven sinners, striving out of gratitude, being transformed by His Spirit. The book of Proverbs tells us that God, the fear of the Lord, is the foundation of wisdom. So in this, pray for God, for insights, power in temptation, and turn, as we'll talk more, in repentance as you fail because he will forgive. Now, in verse 15, as the Father has brought us, brought us this call to flee wrongful sexuality, brought us to this picture of disgrace. He now dives in without any introduction to the glorious alternative. And the answer to sexual temptation and seduction is not the emptying of desire. It's not the monastery. Instead, he says, it's the bedroom. It's not a condemnation of feminine wiles, but their celebration, their expression in joy in marriage. In verses 15 through 18, the father uses another number of images referring to sources of water, a rather obvious metaphor that he finally makes explicit in verse 18, let your fountain be blessed, rejoice in the wife of your youth. Now, as we see those images, verse 16 is the one that is somewhat debated. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? And commentators have gone on both sides. The ESV goes with it here as this bad thing. Verse 15 tells you to drink from your own cistern, flowing streams from the midst of your own well. This private, in marriage expression of sexuality with your own wife. And then in contrast, verse 16 would be it being spread abroad in the streets. And so verse 17 is then taken as a command. Let them be for yourself alone, not for strangers round about you. And I think that is possible, but I'm convinced that instead, verse 16, is a positive thing. Another reference to the wife using an image of water. It's talking about her great abundance. The images of water in 15 and 16, they get better and better, if you note. A cistern is something dug into the ground to catch rainwater. A sure source, but it's not near as good as a well that has fresh water fed by underground streams. See that in the second half of 15. The cistern versus flowing waters from your own well. But even a well isn't as good as an actual spring as it comes out into canals, channels in the streets. And so I think we should see in 15 through 16, the father portraying before the son the abundance found in his wife. And thus, verse 17, isn't so much a command but a statement. This abundance, this blessing, all of it, it's for you. It's for you alone. It's not to be shared with strangers, strange men. And so the father then pronounces a blessing. Maybe it's better even to say praise for a blessing on his son's wife. Verse 18, let your fountain be blessed. May it be. May this be true. I think it's worthy to note that this is the only prayer for blessing in the whole book of Proverbs. The Father knows that all the abundance he's been talking about, it's not automatic. The Father knows that it's not to be taken for granted. Marital bliss doesn't come apart from God's blessing. And the latter part of verse 18 there, rejoice in the wife of your youth, can be taken as a command or I think maybe better as a result. If your wife is blessed from God in this way, you will rejoice in the wife of your youth. Marriage and the joys for which God created it will be present. And we could even see here, probably in the Old Testament context, an attack on polygamy. To look for the wife of your youth to enjoy her means you don't keep looking round about. Your eyes roving, looking for another. Focus on your wife alone and her abundance. In verse 19, we get these two animals. We have the female deer and a female mountain goat or an ibex. And I think we need to take these images. Maybe they don't quite translate as well, but images of feminine charms. And they're part of this blessing again. They would come out of verse 18. May your fountain be this. May she be a lovely dear. May she be this graceful doe, this alluring Ibex. And then he again uses the image of drinking in the second half of 19. Though here he has something in his mind that's a little stronger than water. As he says, let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated. Or the verb could be translated even as stumble about, stagger about, always in her love. That latter verb is used of drinking, right, the effects of alcohol. And he is, sorry, I'm finding my place. All right, that latter term, it refers to being intoxicated, this idea of staggering, stumbling about. And the image is those effects of a woman on a man, that they are proper, that they should happen, but they should happen in a marriage. Your wife is the one who should make you weak in the knees, knock you off your feet. Her charms are the ones that should tie your tongue and addle your brain. And so the father, having put that before his son, He turns then in 20 and says, if you have all this at home, why are you going elsewhere? Why would you ever look elsewhere? Why would you stagger about with strange women? Why would you embrace these others, these foreign women? Look to your own sister in your spring, your lovely doe. Now, having said that, I don't think the Father would say that marriage is easy and always blissful. Other Proverbs talk about that. The Father isn't naive about marriage. We have to remember that most Israelites probably had arranged marriages. At a very young age, they had to learn how to live with and love each other. But the father knows all those difficulties. Knowing all those, he's still praying for his son's marriage. That it will be this blessing that God made it to be. He knows that it takes work on both sides. He knows that sex can be one of those most common areas of conflict. But he also knows it's worth it. That it's worth cultivating. It's worth working at. it's worth making the marriage bed this place of mutual pleasure because it will guard them both from temptation and it will be a lot of fun. And so the Father ends then in verses 21 through 23 with instructions on sin that are more general in character but yet very applicable to sexual sins. He tells us there, For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord. He ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him. He's held fast in the cords of his sin. For he dies for a lack of discipline. And because of his great folly, he stumbles about. He's led astray. God knows. What you think you do in secret, what you hide is not in secret. God ponders those secret sins. They don't usually stay secret. Instead, they come out in our lives. There are consequences. They wreck homes, everything else. Iniquities and stir a man, they hold him fast. He stumbles about, not in the pleasures of his wife, but in the misery of his folly. And so as we think on this, We, both men and women, we need to look to this marriage bed. See it as this gift, this place given by God for enjoyment, for passion, for love. But it needs to be part of a greater intimacy. It's part of sharing a life together. And it needs to be cultivated. It even needs to be prayed for as a blessing from God. Wives often don't feel they're this abundant source that Proverbs talks about. They have no interest maybe in channeling their inner lovely doe or alluring eye back. Husbands have a great role to play in this, in the way they treat their wives. They are to build them up through their care and their love. The father doesn't tell his son to make demands of his wife, but he prays for this blessing. The bedroom is this crucial part of marriage. A blessing from God, worthy of effort, needing constant attention, and also this place that needs incredible forgiveness. Forgiveness from both God and each other. True intimacy demands that. It will never flourish amid anger, against resentment, or even apathy and indifference. But as we apply it, I know that there are a number of you that aren't married. And so your sexual passions and desires don't have an appropriate place for expression or fulfillment. And some of you have maybe been called to a life of singleness, gifted with this, as Paul talks about. And in that, you're still called to be chaste, to be holy. But I imagine most of you aren't called to singleness. Instead, you're in a period now of transition, waiting, this period that can be agonizing. In our present culture, we have such long time, such long period that wasn't there in Israel between puberty and marriage because of education, financial stability, and that can make for some very rough times. And so you need to guard yourself. You need to seek out brothers, sisters to join together with for mutual support. As we talked about, you need to have your plan to flee seduction in all its forms. But also pray. Pray for a wife. Pray for a husband. Proverbs 18.22 says, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. I say amen to that. But as we close, the most amazing thing as we take these instructions and we put them within the Bible is that the God there portrayed at the end, the one who sees all, who ponders all, who knows all, who knows everything that you do in your closet, in your deepest, darkest recesses, that's the same God that has loved you so much that he has sent his son to die, That he has provided a way of salvation. And so if you fall, whether single or married, and we have to admit that we will all fall to some degree, turn, repent, pray for that forgiveness. And it's key that you accept, you know that that forgiveness is true and real. I think too often we can think of sexual sins as the unforgivable sin. They remain hidden, so personal. Guilt can often consume us. But there is forgiveness. It doesn't mean that there won't be consequences in this life. But it does mean that God can take you. A broken sinner who's made a shipwreck of his life, he can make you new again. and he can give you a sure and lasting hope. So turn in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ, our Savior, the one who has given his life to pay for such sinners as us. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, your law and your wisdom show us our need for a Savior, but they also build us up as we see that we are now what we are now called to, to walk in the joy and the freedom that we have in Christ. And so as we've heard your word, how you've made us, we pray that we would take these words and internalize them, that you would use them when we are faced with temptation, to keep our wits about us, so that we may be spared the pain, the agony that comes about because of sin. Guard us in that, we pray. But may we always remember that we can turn to you in repentance and know that you will forgive. And may you continue that transformation by your Spirit in our hearts and in our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.