Sexually Immmorality and Morality - Proverbs 5

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

The Value of Listening and Disagreeing

Welcome back to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth, your host here, and I am a man who has received much from the Lord, everything from the Lord. What do I have that I haven't received? And I have a privilege of being on the radio and having you listen.

I appreciate that you do listen. I appreciate the emails, most positive. Even the negative ones, I appreciate. It makes me think people are listening. Lots of people who have written me have said, I disagree with you, but I'll still listen.

How about that? I think that's excellent. By the way, we are so effeminate these days that we don't want to disagree because that means it'll be some kind of personal affront to someone. I don't care if you disagree.

It's fine by me. It doesn't matter if you take a certain view and I take a certain view, as long as they're both orthodox views, I'm fine with that. Even if your view's unorthodox and my view's orthodox, I don't care.

It's a free country. I will try to persuade you that you're not right. I'll try to persuade you of the truth. I want you to believe the right things. If I didn't think what I was saying was true, why would I bother?

I have better things to do than to come here in the studio and have the pressure of five shows a week to put together. And so the good news is I've been doing this long enough that I don't have to come up with new shows every week.

I just pull up files from the computer, print them, and then off we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Lord help me, hit the button. I have a little record button here and off we go for 24 minutes and 30 seconds with plenty of time to tell you about something full of gospel truth.

Warning Against Sexual Sin in Proverbs 5

Today I want to talk to you about Proverbs chapter five and what the Bible says about the devastating effects of sexual sin, a warning that Solomon gives from sinful experience. You say, well, why should I listen to such a loser like Solomon?

Because he did not do the right things when it comes to sexual purity. And I might remind you that this is divinely inspired scripture, Proverbs chapter five, and it is actually something that is very relevant.

People struggle with sexual sin. Colossians chapter three says, therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry, for it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come, and in them you also once walked when you were living in them.

Sexual sin is prevalent. Sexual sin has consequences. Sexual sin causes broken marriages, broken homes, disease, chastisement. One man said sugar-coated poison is still poison and it will kill just as quickly.

No matter how you airbrush sexual sin, make it look popular, vogue, in, trendy, fashionable, fun, it still is wrong. And so the Bible tells us all kinds of things, and it does address this topic. Mr. Imes was a man who was confined to an iron lung and he had gotten polio before vaccines were made.

And he was living in this machine, and of course could not get out of the machine, and he had two cousins who were in the same condition as well. And he spoke of one of the cousins. His arms and legs were skin and bones.

He could not feed himself nor even turn the pages of a book. A friend of Mr. Imes asked him what was the severest hardship he found day after day in the iron lung? So if you were in an iron lung and you said, you know, I'm in this box, I can't get out, what's my hardest temptation?

What's my biggest trial? What's my most severe hardship? His answer astounded everyone when he said, the temptations of the lusts of the flesh. That's amazing. Can't even really act out, couldn't act out on the temptations, but he still had those temptations.

And so everywhere we go in our society today, there are sexual dangers. And the Bible is blunt about these sexual sins. The Bible is not pornographic. Sometimes it's fairly graphic, but it is not prudish.

It is not Victorian, but it is frank. It is certainly not sleazy. It is not something that causes our mind to be corrupted. No, it tells us the right way. J. Vernon McGee says, this is the kind of sex education that God gives.

And if you're listening with your kids now, before you want to turn the radio off, I think this is something that fathers need to teach sons. That's exactly what's going on here in Proverbs 5, verse one.

My son, somebody's going to teach your kids about, quote unquote, the birds and the bees. I don't know why we ever say it that way. Somebody's going to teach your kids about sex. And so it might as well be Solomon.

It might as well be the fathers using the Bible to teach them about what to watch out for and what to enjoy. And so Paul, no, Solomon says in Proverbs 5, verses one to 14, watch out for all types of sexual immorality.

It's an easy outline in Proverbs. And he first says, watch out for all sexual immorality. Run from it, flee from it. And so we have God's word to give us discretion. It says, give attention to my word, incline your ear to my understanding.

And he is addressing this young man. Pay attention, listen up. You need to know what's going on. And you're going to be weaponless without this kind of knowledge that you may observe discretion and your lips may reserve knowledge.

You need a prudential consideration of this, one scholar said. And the context is sexual sin and how to avoid sexual sin. And so what Solomon does to start is he analyzes the temptress. He's talking to his son.

So now he's going to tell him, here's how you look at a woman who is an unchaste woman. She does, what does she do? She does things. Verse three, for the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her sweet.

It's not necessarily her kisses that are sweet. It's what she says. And she energized probably by Satan tries to get this person to buy into the lie. And she knows what leads a person down this long corridor to death.

Verse four, but in the end, she is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two edged sword. She is the decoy that Satan uses for what really is behind door number two. There is an afterward, there is an end.

Her feet go down to death. Her steps lay hold of shield. She does not ponder the path of life. Her ways are unstable. She does not know it. When you get involved with a woman like this, it's like walking on ice, slippery.

And you could fall very, very easily as she is so unstable. Her ways are unstable. I found it interesting that Proverbs seven talks about this kind of woman as well. Behold, the woman comes to meet him dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart.

She's guarded of heart. She's not gonna let her real secrets out. She seizes him and kisses him. And with a brazen face, she says to him, I was due to offer peace offerings. Today I've paid my vows. Therefore I've come out to meet you to seek your presence earnestly.

I have found you. I've spread my couch with coverings with colored linens of Egypt. I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let us drink our fill of love until morning. Let us delight ourselves with caresses.

Listen how she reassures this ignoramus. For the man is not home. My husband's gone. He has gone on a long journey. He has taken a bag of money with him. He's got a lot of business. At full moon, he will come home.

Oh, he got days before the full moon. With her many persuasions, she entices him. With her flattering lips, she seduces him. And so now back to Proverbs chapter five. Solomon says, there's a price for unchastity.

There's a price for infidelity. Now then my 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. Stay clear. You don't want to try to be some kind of hero.

How close can I get to sin without sinning? No, how far can you stay away? By the way, when it comes to pornography, the same thing could be used. I think more people struggle with just pornography than they do real adultery.

That is to say with a real other woman. They are other women, but they're made of pixels on computers or in magazines. I don't know if pornography magazines sell anymore. They're almost not needed because people have access to internet so quickly.

And so run, be cautious. There's a price of infidelity. Stay clear. Pornography is dangerous. Give it a wide berth. I have known people that say, well, I can't cancel my internet because I'd have to lose my job.

Well, lose your job, change your job, get some new friends, lose some of your old friends. Don't stray into the path of this woman. Proverbs 7 says the same thing. Look what you could lose, Proverbs 5, 9.

Lest you give your vigor to others and your ears to the cruel one. You could be blackmailed. Lest strangers be filled with your strength and your hard-earned goods go to the house of an alien. You got to pay money to the prostitute.

You've got to pay for the hotel. You've got to pay for the husband. You pay off the husband. You got child support. And you've grown at your latter end when your flesh and your body are consumed. Some kind of destitute.

One man said shows an animal cry of anguish when the sex sinner finds himself destitute. See, there's a latter end. The body is wasted. It's consumed. Sounds like a venereal disease to me. Doesn't it to you?

Sex sins harm your body. So flee immorality, 1 Corinthians 6, 18. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. And then there's the if onlys. Proverbs 5, 12.

And you say how I hated instruction and my heart spurned reproof. It's too late now. And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers nor inclined my ear to my instructors. Boy, your conscience is after you now, isn't it?

I was almost in utter ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation. The community lost all its respect for me. The congregation, I'm ruined. Let me say this before we go on to the next side of Proverbs 5.

If you are sexually sinning now and you're committing adultery, if you're fornicating, if you're caught up into pornography, run, flee, stop, repent, turn, quit. God forgives sin, doesn't he? God forgives sinners.

And based on the work of Christ, you can have forgiveness. You can have free forgiveness. These sexual sins do not keep people out of heaven if they're repented of and God grants forgiveness. So run, make today the day.

Make today the day that you stop that and that you get cleansed by the blood of Christ Jesus. Now, Solomon first says in the first 14 verses or so, run from sexual sin. By the way, all sex outside of marriage is sinful.

All sex outside of marriage is sinful. From hooking up to try to say, well, we didn't really have sexual intimacy, et cetera, et cetera. Whether it's homosexuality, adultery, fornication, all sex outside of marriage is sinful.

God made sex, God designed sex. It's not wrong. It's what the human heart does with sex that makes it a problem. It's just like alcohol. Alcohol is not wrong. It's what the human heart does with it. And so here, now Solomon says, what do you do?

God has given you testosterone. God has given you hormones. God has given you a desire for intimacy. So get married and enjoy yourself. That's basically what he says. The answer for Christianity is not when it comes to sex, no, don't, stop.

There are some Christians who even think that way who are married, that somehow it's something that's dirty. No, God has invented it and he's invented it for his glory and for our pleasure. And so in verses 15 through 23, Solomon says, enjoy this great gift from God as long as it's in the right context, that is marriage, the only marriage there is between a man and a woman.

The Bible glorifies sex in marriage and you can read Song of Solomon for that. Maybe I'll do a show on that. God had designed you a certain way, has designed you a certain way, and he could have figured out a way, of course, to get children a different way, but you get children this way.

And God has ordained that there can be pleasure between men and women in marriage. So Hebrews 13, let marriage be held in honor above, excuse me, Hebrews 13, four, let marriage be held in honor among all and let the marriage bed be undefiled for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

When you have marital fidelity, it doesn't impoverish, that is the way that God blesses. And so he says to the husband, and he's telling the son, when you're a husband someday, here's what I want you to do.

Verse 15, drink water from your own cistern and fresh water from your own well. Isn't that a neat way Solomon teaches his son? He doesn't have to be pornographic about it, he doesn't have to talk about anatomy, he doesn't have to say things that would be inappropriate, but these are appropriate.

He's saying with this figurative language, have sexual relations with your wife alone, cistern, singular. And as you have a thirst, if you're working hard outside and you get thirsty and you drink water to quench your thirst, here is a figure of speech that is quenching your thirst for conjugal love.

That's used in Song of Solomon as well, chapter four, a well of fresh water and streams flowing from Lebanon. You don't share your well, this is private property. He says, should your springs be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets?

No, you use your sexual energy at home where you're supposed to, with your wife, let them be yours alone and not for strangers with you. Rejoice with your wife, don't think she's inadequate, don't think she doesn't measure up to these other girls that you like to look at, rejoice in your wife.

Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. Find fulfillment in her. And I don't wanna hear, you know, she doesn't look like she used to. You ought to take a good look at yourself if you would say something so foolishly.

Delight in her, this is erotic kind of language, but it's perfectly appropriate for WVNE or for No Compromise Radio or for you to read to your sons or for you to read. Then he says in verse 19, as a loving hind in a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times, be exhilarated always with her love.

Be exhilarated with her love. This is the word that means to be ravished, to be infatuated, to be intoxicated with. It is one of those concepts that you say, you know, this is such a wonderful thing that God has designed between the two of us that I am just infatuated.

I'm just in love with my wife. And here you have society always saying that skinnier is better, this shape is always better. Advertisement, my friends, they sell things by creating discontentment in you.

And Solomon is saying, through the inspiration of the Spirit of God, be content with your wife. Whatever she looks like, whatever she acts like, you be content with her. Of course, the context here is sexually.

And so be careful because God is watching. God is watching. And he uses two rhetorical questions to make a point, to make the point that you shouldn't be captured with another, some fake other, some captivated by another person that's either real or doesn't exist.

Proverbs 5 .20, For why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress? Be exhilarated with your wife and embrace the bosom of a foreigner. Don't think that way, son. For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord and he watches all his paths.

He watches all your ways. God sees what you're doing. Nothing escapes his holy gaze. Everything's open before God. Ironside said, all is naked and open before him with whom we have to do. He weighs and ponders every thought and word and action.

Nothing is too insignificant for his notice. Nothing too great for his attention. God is a God of knowledges. God is a God of knowledges. 1 Samuel 2, The darkness does not hide from thee. Psalm 139. Proverbs 15, The eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good.

Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the Lord. How much more the hearts of men can't hide behind the tree in the garden. God sees Adam and Eve. Nobody saw Cain murder his brother, but God did. Sarah thought she was alone laughing in the seclusion of her tent, but God saw.

Your sin will find you out. Numbers 32, 23. Sin does not pay. Verse 22 of Proverbs 5. His own iniquities will capture the wicked and he will be held with the cords of his sin. He can thank himself. If you're caught up in sexual sin, it's not because your wife isn't some kind of, she can't satisfy you and she doesn't look the right way.

You made yourself do it. Don't blame somebody else. Your own hands forged the chains of your sexual sin. And here God uses sin as the instrument of punishing sinners. He will die for lack of instruction and in the greatness of his folly, he will go astray.

So with Proverbs 6, I say, can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Or can a man walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? So is the one who goes into his neighbor's wife.

Whoever touches her will not go unpunished. The one who commits adultery with the woman is lacking sense. He who would destroy himself does it. 1 Corinthians 10. Nor let us act immorally as some of them did and 23 ,000 fell in one day.

1 Thessalonians 4. For this is the will of God. You want to know the will of God? Your sanctification. That is, that you abstain from sexual immorality. That you avoid it. That you hold yourself far from it.

Every form of sexual sin. It's a very comprehensive term. That you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor. Not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God. That's how unbelievers act.

And that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things. Just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. Paul goes on in 1 Thessalonians 4 to say, for God has not called us for the purpose of impurity but in sanctification.

Consequently, he rejects this as not rejecting man but the God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. You want to know what God's will is for you? Sexual purity. The good news is there's forgiveness to be found at the cross.

Jesus Christ, when he died for sinners, for every sinner that he died for, he died for all the sins that those sinners committed. Every sin, past, present, future. Every sexual sin. Can you imagine the wrath of Almighty God poured out on Jesus Christ for sins, sex sins that Jesus didn't commit but he bore in our place on our behalf as a substitutionary atonement in our place.

And Jesus assuaged the wrath of God to the full, to the degree that the Father said, I agree that that was an excellent substitution and I am raising you from the dead to prove it. We need to be careful of mental sins.

You need to be careful of things that lead you on the road to pornography. If you're married and you've got great friends who are ladies and you're a married man and you've got great friends who are ladies and you've got this kind of problem with other people, then you better be careful.

If you are a person today and you have sexual desires and you're not married, I have some advice for you. Get married. If they do not have self-control, let them marry for it is better to marry than to burn.

So if you are a young person in college and you'd like to get out of school, you'd like to get out of debt, you'd like to have a job, you'd like to have a career, you'd like to have to pay off all your student loans but you're burning inside to have intimacy with another person and you're sinning, I've got news for you, you ought to marry.

If you don't have self-control, marry. That's exactly what you should do. That's exactly what you should do. And if you don't have that wife and you want one, then I think you should probably actively look.

You actively should look. You should spend time with mature Christians to help you understand what maturity is like so you could actually win a girl who wants somebody like you. You ought to get away from your Nintendo and your Xbox and your Wii and all your other things instead of spending all the time on the games, how about spend the time on yourself, working out your salvation with fear and trembling so you'll be the kind of guy that a godly girl would want and then you win her and then enjoy yourself on the marriage bed and afterwards.

Final Summary: Run from Sexual Sin, Enjoy Marriage, and Remember God's Watchful Eye

Well, this is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry, and today we looked at Proverbs chapter five. Proverbs five says, run from all kinds of sex that's not inside of a marriage, all sexual sin, then enjoy yourself if you're married, enjoy your wife, don't enjoy pornography, don't enjoy other ladies on the internet, and make sure you understand God is watching and He's watching all that we do and all that we say and then you can look at Song of Solomon later.

God bless you.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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