Good morning.
Right, we're reading from Proverbs chapter 5.
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 shield.
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 honour to her, and your years to us.
Lest strangers fill your hands.
And your labours 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.
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 cistern, flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
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.
To start with, I just want to share a picture with you
that I found on the internet while I was doing some research for this.
Joel Ferguson's going to bring it up,
and it's a picture that describes Proverbs along with some other books.
Look, obviously it's not an accurate representation.
It's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek.
But I guess this is probably, you know, to be honest,
having a go at the other books about how they're all going,
life is meaningless, it's worthless, et cetera.
I actually think in reality Proverbs should look a little bit different
to this.
So I've had a crack at trying to fix up this photo for us.
This is probably a little bit more what I think Proverbs should look like.
But the reason I think Proverbs should look like this is because
that Proverbs is about a book that is about contrasting two ways
to live your life.
And as you read through the book of Proverbs,
you really do get this sense of, on the one hand,
if you embrace wisdom, then that's good.
Life will go well for you.
But on the other hand, if you embrace folly,
then life is going to go really bad,
and there'll be a lot of terrible consequences.
And Martin last week spoke about two paths to take in your life,
essentially the same thing.
One is the wisdom path, the life that leads to happiness and joy,
and the other is folly that leads to pain and death and destruction.
Another way that you would have heard it is Wilco and Marty both talked
about the fact that wisdom and folly are like two women,
so lady wisdom and lady folly.
And up until this point, Solomon's coming,
talking about the concept of wisdom, this idea of wisdom,
that, you know, you can get wisdom to chase after wisdom.
The wisdom of God is fear of the Lord.
But it's still these two choices that we're given in this concept.
Well, in today's passage, the rubber really hits the road.
Solomon goes, okay, that's the concept.
You've heard the concept of what wisdom is.
Now let's get to the practicals.
Let's talk about adultery.
It's a little bit like, you know,
he could have eased us into it and said, I don't know, you know,
wisdom is brushing your teeth and folly is not flossing.
What's an Old Testament example?
Maybe like shear your sheep in the summer and not in the winter.
I don't know.
But something like that to kind of get up to it.
But he doesn't waste breath.
He goes, okay, let's tackle adultery.
And on the one hand, he says, adultery is folly.
And faithfulness is wisdom.
And I've been actually super lucky with the kids talk this morning
because Jen did a great job of summarising that for us.
She messaged me earlier in the week and said, you know,
what are we going to be talking about?
And I said, oh, adultery.
So good luck making that into a kids talk.
But she's done a great job.
But those are the two options.
Wisdom is faithfulness and folly is adultery.
And then instead of looking at this as two ways, two paths to go down or two women,
I'm going to take a slightly different approach.
I'm going to say that there are two ways to quench your thirst.
And that's the question I'm going to be asking from here is,
what choice will you make to quench your thirst?
Now, something that the chapter here has assumed when Solomon wrote this
is that we should be looking for satisfaction or that we will want
to look for satisfaction in relationships, in sexual relationships.
It's who we are.
Humans are made that way.
We're wired that way.
We're created for relationships with each other.
We desire to be loved, to be valued at our very core,
to be significant to someone else.
And so the question I'm going to be asking is,
where will you look to have that thirst quenched?
Now, in the immediate sense, this passage presents us with two options.
The first one is that we can quench our thirst through the drink of honey and oil.
The honey and oil of adultery or the second option is that we can quench our thirst
in the water of our marriage relationships.
Now, I'm going to recognise here that I'm talking to a large group of people,
probably who more than two-thirds aren't married.
And this passage is heavily geared towards married people.
So if you aren't married, then please don't tune out.
Please don't turn off and go, oh, look, this isn't for me.
I think the points I'm going to be making along here are going to be helpful,
even if the applications aren't necessarily focused on you.
So, yeah, stick with me and hopefully you'll get something out of it at the end.
But let's tackle the first option.
The first option to quench our thirst is the silky smooth drink of honey and oil.
Adultery.
And what is the answer that Solomon gives us here to that?
Folly, folly, absolute folly.
Let's take a look at verse 3.
If you've got your Bible open, it's Proverbs chapter 5, verse 3.
For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
and her speech is smooth 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, to the grave, essentially.
She does not ponder the path of life.
Her ways wander and she does not know it.
See, Solomon doesn't mince words here.
He says,
Adultery, the act of breaking your vow with your spouse
and sleeping with someone else who is not that person,
is adultery.
It's folly.
It is stupidity.
But that's the thing about adultery, isn't it?
The attraction is there.
That's the thing with adultery.
It's not like we can look at this drink and see,
you know, there's little chunks floating around in it
and it smells like vomit.
It's not like that.
It's attractive.
It's aromatic.
It smells good.
It's smooth.
It's silky.
And that's, you know,
the analogy of the woman that Proverbs uses here
is actually very helpful.
The woman's lips drip with honey.
It looks good.
But the reality is that it is bitter as wormwood,
as bitter as gall.
It's disgusting.
It's rancid.
It's not smooth as it looks.
It's razor sharp.
You know, we think that this will quench our thirst,
but it actually leaves us gasping for something else.
It gets stuck in our throat and it chokes us up.
You see, adultery is the drink that leads to death.
Now, Joel's going to play a song for us here in a second.
And it's a song that's based on these exact verses, actually,
by a Christian rapper called Lecrae.
Now, as soon as I say that I'm about to play Christian rap,
I recognise I'm alienating anyone over the age of 35
and anyone under the age of 25.
And I've just insulted anyone who is outside of those age ranges
and does enjoy Christian rap.
But the point of this is try not to pay attention
to the style of the music.
If you like it, great.
If you don't, then what I want you to do is try
and focus on the words.
There'll be slides that have the words coming up.
And he does move through them pretty quick.
But I think this really accurately portrays to us
the mirage of adultery.
So Joel's going to hopefully play that for us now.
Kinda.
Cada.
Br multooky.
Bella.
Kill out, kill out
I know it's gon' kill me, but I just can't let it go
And the taste of appeal has got a grip upon my soul
These honey dip lies mesmerize me
Cry's got its crooked fingers twisting all inside me
Fools walk the path I'm on, never to be seen again
Sipping on seduction while we eating on some secret sins
Says a whisper in my ear
And I know I should be over this, but I ain't seeing clear
And I ain't leaving here, unless somebody save me
Walk into my grave, letting evilness enslave me
Evil looks so lovely, covered in her lace of lies
And a silky smooth seduction just manipulates my mind
Her fabric of fabrication is fueling my fascination
While I'm intoxicated, she starts her assassination
Losing all my honor and my years to the merciless
Giving all my life away, but I'm just so immersed in this
Baby, that's a reason
Yeah, you're moving hard a little bit
Yeah, I'm only here for your benefit
I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here
Baby, that's a reason
You're moving hard a little bit
Yeah, I'm here, I'm here
You're moving hard a little bit
Yeah, I'm here
Hold your eyes and let's get lost tonight
Yeah, I'm here, I'm here
You're moving hard, you'll see my mind
Yeah, I'm here
Her feet go down the drift
So don't let her consume you
Even though her heart is black
Her exterior is beautiful
She'll take your life away
And strip away your joy
Pretend that she don't build you up
Or she just gon' destroy you
My friends fell low
When they were so high
Got me running scared of myself
No lie, and I know I'm gon' die
I try a cold turkey
But when I'm feeling worthy
Satan's sure I'm trying to murder me
I'm doing myself dirty
Flirting with what's perverted
I should follow the word
But I guess I'd rather be murdered
Excuse me, I mean martyr
Cause I'm killing myself
My sin conceived a baby
Your name or death
Breath, take it
She take my breath away
Replaces it with poison
And I'm so swept away
I need some bread today
Hope I wake up before they start my wake up
Somebody make me break up
I'm dating her
Girl, you're just a reason
You're not leaving how to live it
You're not
I'm only here for your benefit
I'm here every place
I'm on a land
Killer
Everything just as innocent
Killer
You're not leaving how to live it
Killer
Hold your eyes and ask your life tonight
Can't be a rest
You're still in my life
Killer
How good are those words?
But you can see the feeling in those words
Adultery
It destroys relationships
It destroys marriages
It destroys churches
It seems so obvious
Don't do it
Verse 9 to 14
It actually warns us of the consequences
If you've got your Bible
Have a look at verse 9
Lest you give your honour to others
And your years to the merciless
Lest strangers take their fill of your strength
And your labours 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
I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
Or incline my ear to their understanding
Sorry
Ear to my instructors
And then verse 14 is the verse I think that totally sums it up
The consequences
I am at the brink of utter ruin
In the assembled congregation
And you see that's the warning that we're given
And we know that it's bad for us
But it still happens doesn't it?
You know it's not just enough to say
Don't commit adultery
Because if that was the case
No Christian would ever have an affair
Either men or women
Obviously this isn't
It often talks about
Solomon's talking to a son
But it can be men or women
But if it was that simple
No one would ever do it
You see adultery
Isn't about a lack of knowledge
Folly is not about coming about
Because of a lack of knowledge
It's not like
I was trying to think of some words
That you know
Could go in place of folly
And I started thinking about
Maybe like
Dumb or idiot
Or that type of thing
But they all kind of imply that I'm somehow
Logically deficient
That I just don't know enough
But you know if I ask my non-Christian friends
They all know that adultery is bad
You know it's a consensus that cheating is not a good thing
You see folly is not about knowing what is the right thing
Or knowing what is the wrong thing
Folly is about knowing the right thing
But doing the wrong thing anyway
You see adultery doesn't come because of being stupid
It comes about because of a lack of discipline
To act on what we know is right
Verse 1 and 2
When Solomon is talking to his son
He says this
He says
My son be attentive to my wisdom
Incline your ear to my understanding
That you may keep discretion
And your lips may guard knowledge
Verse 2
That you may keep discretion
You know not that you'll get it
And then once you've got it you'll have it forever
You need to work to keep it
That your lips may guard knowledge
You know what does the word guard imply
It implies that it can be lost
It can be stolen
It can be taken away
Verse 7
Do not depart from the words of my mouth
This is something that we can walk away from
We can walk away from wisdom
And you know it's really ironic
That the best example that we have
Of someone who's done that
Not just even in the Bible
Probably out of everyone I can think of
Is Solomon himself
He had 700 wives and 300 concubines
And it's kind of like you know
How far could you possibly depart
From what he wrote himself
It's really ridiculous
But it's not about staying out
And not being able to resist the temptation
When it's in front of you
It's not about when you're in the dark room
With that person
Saying no to them then
It's about putting in place the discipline
So you never even get to that place
The way to stay out of adultery
Verse 8
If you have a look at verse 8
Keep your way far from her
And do not go near the door of her house
See this is saying
Don't even get into the situation
Put in safeguards
Tell friends
Get them to challenge you
If you know something could be an issue
If you can see something coming
If in your mind you know that you're starting to get it
You know too close to someone
Who is not your husband or wife
If you're married
Then stop then
Now I had a bit of a talk to my wife about this
Alyssa
About you know what are some of the things that you can see as warning signs for women
If women if you're starting to get emotionally invested
In someone who is not your husband
Then cut it off there and then
If you find yourself dressing to get the attention of another man
Maybe you're not doing it really actively and consciously
But maybe subconsciously
Then get help then
Don't allow it to get to the point where you become so invested that it consumes your mind
You know if you're instant messaging someone
Facebook, Instagram, whatever it might be
And you're starting to share some intimate personal things
Then get help, be disciplined
Remember the wisdom in these verses
His feet go down to death
Don't let him consume you
His heart is black but the exterior is beautiful
Now married guys
Unfortunately I know my own heart
I didn't have to ask my wife for these ones
But if you find yourself looking
For the attention of a woman who is not your wife
You know you're looking for ways to be around that person
And your thoughts go back to her
And you know you think about being around them
If you try and be a little bit more funny than you normally would
When you're around that person
Then take action
Don't let it get any further
Tell someone that you trust
Let them help you to be accountable
Be disciplined
She'll take your life away
She'll strip away your joy
She pretends that she's going to build you up
But she's just going to destroy you
Now for everyone
And this isn't married specific or otherwise
Don't be the one whose feet leads to death
You know don't allow your relationships with married men or women
To get out of hand
Don't let them get to the point where they become an issue
It won't quench your thirst
And it has the potential to do great damage
Not just to families
But also to our wider church family
And you know if you can see the warning signs that I've talked about
Then get help
Be disciplined
Of course there's two sides to every story
You know just because
I guess they're not
You know they're accountable for their own actions as well
But don't be the person whose lips drip honey
And whose speech is as smooth as oil tempting them to the grave
Don't quench your thirst for intimate relationships
With the silky smooth lure of adultery
Proverbs says folly, folly, folly
Now the second choice presented here to quench our thirst
Is the pure life giving water of finding pleasure in your spouse
Wisdom says proverbs
Now verse 15
Look at verse 15
Drink water from your own system
Flowing water from your own well
Should your springs be scattered abroad
Streams of water in the streets
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
Being intoxicated always in her love
See what a contrast this is to folly of adultery
Now you might have noticed Jen pointed this out as well
There's a lot of references to water in this passage
Water from a cistern
Water from a well, springs, streams, fountains
They're all picture words for sex essentially
But this is how we can properly quench our thirst
For our desire for intimate relationships
It's life giving water
It's the opposite of adultery
It's remaining faithful
This passage says
Rejoice in your wife or husband
Take delight in them
Again, you know, again Solomon's talking to both men and women
It's not gender specific
But be intoxicated with their love
Be filled with delight
Rejoice in them
Verse 20
Why should you be intoxicated my son with a forbidden woman
And embrace the bosom of an adulteress
You see Solomon here says
Faithfulness is the real thirst quencher
And just like avoiding adultery
Remaining out of
Remaining faithful requires discipline
See just like folly is not about knowledge alone
Wisdom is not just intelligence
It's not just knowing the right thing
Wisdom is knowing the right thing
And then acting on it
You see marriages require work
They require investment
A strong marriage requires discipline
Verse 16
Should your springs be scattered abroad
Streams of water in the streets
Let them be for yourself alone
And not for strangers with you
You see in our marriages
We need to be working on actively finding delight in our relationships
Because we can lose them
That's what those verses are saying
They can go to someone else
You see, unlike adultery
Where it requires our discipline to stay out of adultery
Our marriages require us to have discipline to stay in them
To keep them healthy
You see, we should be focusing on what actually quenches our thirst for intimate relationships
Married relationships
And in fact, having a healthy married relationship is one of the best antidotes for adultery in the first place
So if you're married, don't accept a bad relationship, a bad marriage as the norm
If you're unhappy and you feel distant in your marriage, then don't accept it as okay
Make sure you get back to the delight that you once had rejoice in the spouse of your youth
If you have a healthy married relationship, then take delight in your partner
Be excited by them, rejoice in them
Be intoxicated by them at every opportunity
Proverbs says quench your thirst in your marriage
Wisdom, wisdom, wisdom
Now I want you to imagine for a second that I stopped the talk here
If I said thanks for coming, that's the end
You know, I've given you probably 10 minutes back
So you might be happy about that
But what would the takeaway be if I stopped the talk here?
It would probably be something like this
The moral of the story is adultery is bad and marriage is good
You know, and I can guarantee that if we looked back on this talk
Let's say we went away for a month and you look back on this talk
You'd go, really?
Is that really it?
You know, if I'm married
Like I love my partner, but is that really the height of satisfaction?
You know, I love them and I rejoice in them and I delight in them
But they let me down all the time
It's hard work
Is that really going to forever quench my thirst?
And if you aren't married, remember I said at the start that this is a passage focused mainly for married people
Then what have I told you so far?
Essentially that you need to get married
Because otherwise you can't quench your thirst for feeling loved
For being significant to someone else to feel known
If you're not married, then you can't have that met
You see, we cannot stop here
Because the ultimate answer to quench my thirst for relationships
Can't be found in earthly relationships
Married or otherwise
Our partners can't deliver eternal satisfaction
You just have to ask my wife
I know she loves me
But you know, I struggle to love her properly for a few hours, let alone for eternity
I'm never going to be able to fulfill her need for love and satisfaction
You know, if Alyssa thought that that was going to be the case
Then she would be bitterly, bitterly disappointed
You see, eternal wisdom, eternal satisfaction comes from having our thirst
For love and significance quenched by God through Jesus Christ
John chapter 4
I don't know if you remember this story
But basically, Jesus is at a well
And he meets a Samaritan woman
And the background is Jews and Samaritans hate each other basically
They don't like to talk
They definitely don't eat together
And Jesus asks this woman for a drink from the well
And the woman basically says
You hate us, why are you asking me this?
Verse 10
In John chapter 4
Jesus answers her by saying this
If you knew the gift of God
And who it is that is saying to you
Give me a drink
You would have asked him and he would have given you living water
The woman said to him
Sir, you have nothing to draw water with
And the well is deep
Where do you get that living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob?
He gave us the well and drank from it himself
As did his sons and his livestock
And in verse 13
Jesus said to her
Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again
But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him
Will never be thirsty again
The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water
Welling up to eternal life
You see, only Jesus really eternally quenches our thirst
He is the only one who can give us eternal significance
You see, our marriages are great and they are good things
But they can't eternally quench our thirst for really perfectly being known and loved
You know, not that we don't try though, right?
Because we are very good at looking at everywhere except for God for that satisfaction
If we had to find ourselves in this Proverbs
Book, verse that we've just read, chapter 5
You know, we would be the adulterous woman
We have a loving, caring, devoted partner in God
Who time and time again shows faithfulness to us in every way
He's patient, he's slow to anger, he's abounding in love
But what do we do?
We constantly turn to other things to satisfy us
Things that cannot possibly satisfy us
But we try anyway
On Friday, in youth group, I help run the youth group
We watched The Prince of Egypt
I don't know if you've seen it
It's basically the Exodus story, it's a cartoon
It's got some banger songs, if you like Hans Zimmer, check it out
The soundtrack's very good
But the thing that's really good about this
Is that it really shows God's power
You really get that sense of awe in this movie
And his love for his people
You know, they're suffering in Egypt
And he does everything to save them
He sends fire from heaven
He sends all the plagues, he gets Moses to come along
And basically, the last scene of this movie
Is this shot here that Joel's got up
And it's Moses coming down from the mountains
So he saves them, they're out of Egypt
They've gone across the lake
And he's on Mount Sinai
He's met with Jesus, sorry, God
God's given him the Ten Commandments
Well, Jesus, God, same thing, I guess
But he's given them the Ten Commandments
And he's coming down the hill
And he's got this big swelling Hans Zimmer music behind him
And he gets to this point where he looks out over the valley
At the Israelites
And this is literally the last shot of the movie
It stops there
But it's a very convenient time to finish the movie, isn't it?
Because if we played even one more scene on
It would completely ruin the premise of what the whole movie is
Is that the Israelites are victims
And that they need saving
And that they've been treated terribly
Because what happens in Exodus 32
As Moses is coming down the mountain
He sees that the Israelites have immediately committed adultery against God
They've made two golden calves
Idols
To worship instead of God
At the very first opportunity
Whilst God is in the literal process
Of making a covenant commitment
To them
They have turned their backs on him
And gone after something else
But that's not just them, is it?
We're exactly the same
You see, we're happy to drink the honey and oil
And taste the gall
When we can even see that it's gall that we're drinking
We keep drinking
We continually in every aspect of our lives
Chase after other things
To quench our thirst
Instead of God
Now I'm not going to go into detail here
About what those things are
We don't know what they are in our lives
But our great God
With every right to leave us
With probably you would argue
Every cause to not want us back
Chased after the people that he created
Even though we constantly
Over and over and over
Every single time
Turning our backs on him
He chased after us
Adultery at every turn from our angle
And on his
And on his he gave up everything
To have us back
To remove our unfaithfulness
Our rebellion
Our adultery
You see, he is faithful to us
We find eternal satisfaction in him
And God knows that that is the only way
That we can find it, is through him
We can't find it anywhere else
God gave us Jesus
To die
To bring us back
To bring us back from our
Our rebellion and adultery
And then to rise again
To prove that the punishment
Had been taken
And as Jesus says in John 4
Whoever drinks the water I give them
Will never thirst
Indeed the water I give them
Will become in them
A spring of water
Welling up to eternal life
You see, that's the story here
It's a faithful God
Taking the punishment
For an adulterous people
Through no action of ours
God eternally gives us the opportunity
To have our thirst quenched
With the relationship with him
He has been faithful to us
It's why Solomon says
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge
The only way to have our thirst quenched
Is a relationship with Jesus
To trust in his death and resurrection
To trust that his actions mean that we can have a relationship with our faithful God
So where do we go to quench our thirst?
Ultimately, the only place
Is in God through Jesus Christ
Let's pray
Dear God, thanks for the wisdom that we see in Proverbs chapter 5
Thank you so much
Thank you so much that you have given us married men and women partners to share our lives with
Thanks that you've warned us against adultery and the folly that can be found there
But God, I guess I pray that ultimately you would help us to look for the only place we can really find satisfaction
And that is in your son Jesus
Thank you for his death and resurrection
That even though we at every turn
Don't look to you
You chase after us
Please pray that you would help us as we go on our lives to
Remember the importance of this
That Jesus is everything
It's the only way we can have our thirst quenched
Amen