No Such Thing as Casual Sex

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If you'll take out your Bibles with me and again turn to Proverbs chapter 5, the title of tonight's lesson is Beware the Forbidden Woman.
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And I guess I ought to give a preface because it might be easy for someone to hear this, especially within our modern context and think that this only applies to promiscuous women.
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But in one sense, this could be applied equally among the two sexes.
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Men can be promiscuous, women can be promiscuous, and both are dangerous.
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But the context is Solomon speaking to one who is his son, and he's treating the reader as if a father is speaking to his son about the dangers of the forbidden woman, the promiscuous woman.
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And throughout the book of Proverbs, there is a call to wisdom.
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Often this call is in the positive, the wise man does thus and so.
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But also the call is sometimes in the negative, beware, flee, turn from.
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And when we arrive at chapter 5, it is obvious one not need be a sleuth to discern that the form that this proverb has taken is the form of the warning.
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The danger which is in view is not the greed of money, nor the overindulgence in wine, but rather the danger in this chapter is more primitive, and I would say somewhat more universal.
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Because the danger is the danger of sexual temptation.
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And that's what this chapter is all about.
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And so it's a small group tonight, I don't see a lot of small children here, which maybe is by the grace of God, obviously the two smallest ones won't be able to understand a word I'm saying.
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But this is a topic which I would hope that we would have the maturity that we won't blush throughout some of the things that are said, but at the same time, these are serious topics that do hit us right in the heart and in the mind.
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So I want to ask that we read the whole chapter together.
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It is not a long chapter, it's only 23 verses.
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And when we are finished, we're going to focus on the first half tonight.
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Now it is typical that we would stand for the reading of God's word.
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I know I just asked you to sit, but if you don't mind, let's stand to give attention to the reading of God's word.
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My son, be attentive to my wisdom.
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Incline your ear to my understanding that you may keep discretion.
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And your lips may guard knowledge for the lips of a forbidden woman, drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil.
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But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood.
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She is sharp as a two edged sword.
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Her feet go down to death, her path, excuse me, her steps follow the path to she.
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Oh, she does not ponder the path of life.
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Her ways wander and she does not know it.
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And now, all 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.
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And at the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and body are consumed and you say how I hated discipline and how my heart despised reproof.
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I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.
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I am at the brink of utter ruin and the assembly, excuse me, in the assembled congregation.
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Verse 15, 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.
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Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a gracious doe, let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love.
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Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For 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.
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He dies for lack of discipline and because of his great folly, he is led astray.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray even now that you would keep me from error as I seek to give an understanding of it, I pray for everyone in this room, Lord, that you would open their ears, their mind and their heart to the truth of the word and Lord for.
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Your Holy Spirit to ultimately be the teacher, Lord, that I would decrease and that you would increase.
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And Lord, that your will would be done among us and and Lord, if there are those here who are struggling.
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Lord, as I know, this is such a common sin for people to struggle with.
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Lord, I pray that tonight would be a call to arms.
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A call to battle.
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Abiding sin.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.
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One of the most interesting stories in the Old Testament.
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Is that of Samson and Delilah? It has been retold in countless sermons and Sunday school classes and even in film.
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In fact, it's the subject of our Sunday school right now, so I'm not going to go too much into an examination of it, but I do want to point out one thing.
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The story captivates our imagination, it gives insight into how far a man can be deceived when he is being driven by the lusts of his body instead of his own common sense and fidelity to God.
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You ever think about the story of Samson? Samson, how do you lose your power? And he would tell her something that wasn't true.
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She would do it.
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The next day he'd break loose.
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And then, of course, it was like you think for a moment he would think she's got she's up to something.
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She's got something on her mind.
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But no, his his infatuation with her beauty, his infatuation with her.
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Sexuality was ultimately his undoing.
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And what many find so interesting about the story is that Samson is considered to be the most powerful man in all of Hebrew literature, not necessarily by faith.
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He certainly is not the most faithful of all the men, but but powerful by strength.
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He was a man who who took on armies and and defeated them all when it came to physical power.
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He was unmatched, yet he still fell.
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Not by sword or spear.
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Not by the battle of another soldier, but rather.
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Through the lips of a deceitful woman, it was Samson's lust which ultimately led this powerful man of God to his downfall.
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And by that lust induced fall, he became the archetype for many men to follow.
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The lust for the opposite sex has led to the defrocking of pastors, the disbarring of judges, the removal of politicians, even the impeachment of a president.
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I remember when I was a teenager and Bill Clinton was in office and we got treated to those fancy words like no one knows the definition of what is is and things like that.
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And we heard him say with.
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That stern voice, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, only to find out that, of course, that he had.
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It is clearly an issue.
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Which has been the thorn in the side of many men and been the impetus for the destruction of many families, many churches, many governments.
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Many businesses.
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In fact, sexual indiscretion is so pervasive among people that the Apostle Paul addresses it over and over and over in his writings.
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We're not going to do Bible drills tonight, but I do want to read to you a few New Testament passages, and if you're interested in turning with me, I'll give you a few seconds to do so.
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The first one I want to look at is Ephesians chapter five.
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This is Paul writing about the danger of sexual immorality being named among Christians.
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And in Ephesians chapter five and verse three, he says this.
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I still hear pages turning, so I'll give you a second.
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But in Ephesians five, three, he says, but sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not be even named among you as is proper among saints.
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Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place.
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But instead, let there be thanksgiving for many of you.
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Be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetousness, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
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Notice what he notice what Paul compares sexual immorality to.
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He compares it to covetousness and idolatry.
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What is the definition of coveting? It's wanting what you do not need or what God does not have for you.
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It's wanting what you shouldn't have.
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And the comparison of sexual immorality, that makes sense because the idea of sexual immorality is wanting that which you shouldn't have, whether it is whether you're married and you're wanting someone that's not your spouse or whether you are unmarried and you want to be with someone who is not married to you.
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So he compares the sexual immorality to covetousness and he and he and he compares it to idolatry.
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Why? Because it becomes the thing that's more important than God.
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Let me tell you something.
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In many people's lives, sex is more important than God because they are so willing to put sex as the number one goal, as the number one pursuit.
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And if that's not idolatry, I don't know what idolatry is.
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If you can't define idolatry is the number one pursuit of your life.
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And isn't that what we see is sex is often the number one pursuit.
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I mean, what the most the most prolific websites are the websites that that produce sex as a as something that people can go and find photographs or images or stories that they can read to produce sexual thoughts.
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Turn over just a few pages to First Thessalonians, chapter four.
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Brother Andy referenced this passage last week, what is the will of God for us? Brother Andy, it is our sanctification.
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That's right.
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First Thessalonians four, three says this is the will of God, your sanctification.
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But I want you to notice what he says right after that, for this is the will of God, your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality.
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That's.
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Often the area where we are least sanctified, that is often the area where we're battling sanctification now, I know I am in a mixed room of men and women, and maybe the women in the room say, well, we don't battle the same way that men battle and and but but there is a battle that goes on.
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And Paul is not saying only men here, he's saying to everyone that the goal is sanctification and the battle is often one of sexual immorality.
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And I'll tell you how women do it.
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Women are different than men in this way, I have noticed, and this is not universal and not ubiquitous, but often men are infatuated with the pictures or the images.
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Women are infatuated with the stories and they read the books and you go to the you go to the grocery store or to the airplane.
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And as you walk into the airport, there's these pictures with those men that look like Adonises and the story books are these stories of sexual gratification.
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So it's not just men, it's just often different.
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Some people are fascinated with what they see.
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Some people are fascinated with what they feel.
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Either way, it is sexual immorality.
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And notice what he goes on to say in verse four, that each of you know how to control his own body and holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.
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Notice what he says.
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The Gentiles who do not know God, they are led about by their lusts.
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That deserves an amen, because that is exactly the case.
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Look at the world.
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How are items sold? Through sex.
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How are movies and television shows encouraged through all kinds of sex and if it's not sex, it's violence.
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Or both.
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One more passage from Paul, and then we will make our way back to Solomon.
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Go to 1 Corinthians chapter six, verse 13, 1 Corinthians 6, 13 says food is meant for the stomach and stomach for food.
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God will destroy both one and the other.
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This is the context Paul is speaking about.
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Those who would eat things that were offered to idols and things like that.
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He says the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
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Just think of that.
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The body is not made for sexual immorality.
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That's a powerful thought.
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He goes on to say, and God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
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Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Shall I take the that which belongs to God and give it over to the harlot? Never, or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her, for as it is written, the two will become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
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Therefore, flee sexual immorality.
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Verse 18.
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Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but sexual immorality sins against his own body.
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Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, you are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.
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Understand this.
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There are people who think that as long as their spirit is right, their body doesn't matter.
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And that's not actually new.
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That's called dualism.
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It is a very common belief that it doesn't matter what I do as long as my spirit is right with God.
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But Paul is denying that he is saying what you do with your body actually matters because you were bought with a price and not just half of you.
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And he mentioned about dichotomous and trichotomous and hippopotamus.
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So we could talk about whether you're whether man is made up of body, soul or man is made up of body, soul, spirit.
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But either way, it's not just your soul that belongs to God.
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It's every part of you belongs to God.
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So the hand that you use to sin against God is God's.
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The eye that you use to sin against God is God's.
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The mouth that you use to sin.
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James talks about this.
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How do we with the same mouth use one word to bless and another word to curse? Ultimately, our culture glorifies illicit sexual behavior.
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And Paul says.
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Instead, glorify God.
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With your body, you can turn back to Proverbs, but as you're doing that, I want to read a quote to you, this is from Brian Swartley, Brian Swartley is a pastor, I believe he's Presbyterian, but I won't hold that against him.
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He is he's a pastor who often writes and says many good things, and this is something he says about sexual immorality.
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He says our culture has denigrated to the point where sexual sin is celebrated.
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In songs.
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And in movies, there are whole industries devoted to feeding this sin, the multi billion dollar pornography industry, unlawful sexual stimulation is used to sell everything from soup to beer, to cars, to shaving cream.
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Modern bathing suits are so skimpy and provocative that Christian men cannot go to the public beach or pool without immediately being confronted with many sexually stimulating sites, and many young women today dress indecently for the very purpose of causing men to lust after them.
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For men in particular, this is one of the most common and soul snaring sins around.
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I remember once I was doing a funeral.
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And for those who don't know, I know some of you are relatively new, I help at a funeral home, I do a lot of services.
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So when you hear me talk about doing a funeral, often it's for people I don't know.
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Often it's for families that are unbelievers and they just they want to minister to be there.
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And I count that as a blessing because I get to preach the gospel to unbelievers.
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It's almost like it's almost like open air preaching.
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I get to preach to people who otherwise would not hear the gospel.
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So I go.
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But the service is always two parts.
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There was the part where I talk about the person who died and I talk about their life and what they did for a living and things like that.
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And usually there's a song and then I talk about Jesus.
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And the family gets to pick the song, and sometimes I am unaware of the song until it plays.
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And this isn't really funny, I don't know why I'm laughing, but it is.
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There was a I was at a service.
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I'm sitting down and the song begins to play.
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And it is a song about a man and a woman having sex on the beach.
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And it is a graphic song that plays for a while.
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And I'm behind the pulpit trying to bury myself under the seat that I'm sitting in, I'm going to crawl underneath the seat because, again, I am I know it just is amazing that this is what they wanted played.
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This was the song that reminds them of the person who has passed this graphic song about sex on a beach.
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Another time I was at a service and I actually previewed the songs because I learned a lesson and the song was about not only about sex, but about drugs.
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And it was about getting drunk and having promiscuous sex.
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And I went to the family and I said, I don't think we should play this.
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And this is what the sister and mother were there with me arguing back, and the sister says, this is what he was about.
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I know that was that was the literal words.
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This is what he was about.
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He was about drugs and sex.
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Let me tell you something, he's not by himself.
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A lot of people in this world, if you said, what's that guy about? Pleasure.
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Whether it's sexual, whether it's drug induced, whether it's alcohol induced, it's about pleasure and that's it.
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Well, it's important to understand that this particular indiscretion is nothing new.
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Sexual sin is not something that just happened this generation or the generation before.
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I know there was a big sexual revolution in the 60s, but guess what? There were prostitutes in the 50s.
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And there were people having premarital sex in the 1800s and the 1700s, and this is why Paul had to address the issue in the first century.
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This is not a new sin for people.
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There's just new ways to express it.
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Solomon is very aware of the danger of this sin in the lives of men.
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And so he calls the reader whom he identifies as his son to have discretion about this particular sin.
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And here are the two parts of chapter five.
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And I'm going to do the first part tonight and the second part next week.
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The first part is flee the forbidden woman.
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That's verses one to 14.
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Flee the forbidden woman.
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And the second part is cleave to your wife.
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And I look forward to preaching that because what Solomon says in the second half is to learn contentment in the wife of your youth, learn contentment in the wife that God has given to you.
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And I'm going to argue next week that a man who finds a wife early and spends his life with her is a blessed man.
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Is a blessed man, but that's going to be next week.
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But tonight we're going to talk about the first part, and that is fleeing the forbidden woman.
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So let's look, let's look at three parts.
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First is a call to discernment.
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That's verses one and two.
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Then there's the contrasting of the forbidden woman.
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That's three to six.
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And then there's the commands and the consequences.
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Versus seven to 14.
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So we look at verses one and two, it says, my son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline you to my understanding that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge.
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OK, so he's calling this person to be attentive to his wisdom.
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Now, why would Solomon say, give attention to my wisdom? You think Solomon knew something about sexual sin? First of all, Solomon is the most wise man from from the biblical perspective outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, Solomon has a wisdom which is divine.
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So when he says, give attention to my wisdom, first of all, he has a divinely implanted wisdom that is from God that he can say, listen to my wisdom, because it's ultimately from God.
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But he also has the wisdom of experience, because if we go over to the narrative about Solomon's life, what do we learn about Solomon? He had some problems with his own sexual appetite.
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Seven hundred wives.
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Three hundred concubines.
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Now, a lot of that was political in nature, and the Bible never endorses multiple wives.
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It never endorses the idea of polygamy and especially polygamy on the on the on the to the tune of a thousand women.
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The Bible never endorses that.
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But it does tell us something about him as a as a man.
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He knew something about the dangers of this particular sin.
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And so he says, my son, pay attention to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding.
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I know about this that you may keep discretion and you may guard knowledge.
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Your lips may guard knowledge.
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Now, I want to mention something because Brother Andy has preached so far through Proverbs and he's preached up until this point in chapter two.
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Solomon has already mentioned the dangers of a forbidden woman, and he will mention it again in chapter when Brother Andy gets to chapter six.
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There's a portion there.
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And then in chapter seven, I'm going to be doing all this again.
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Not the same sermon, but in chapter seven, he's going to go through it again.
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So this is obviously very important to him.
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By the way, the the address in chapter two is chapter two, verses 16 to 19.
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He talks about the forbidden woman.
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If you want to go back in and reference your notes there.
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Now, I want to quote a commentary.
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This is from Benson's commentary, but he's quoting Bishop Patrick, who he doesn't say specifically who that is.
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But I thought this quote was very useful.
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He says there being nothing to which youth is so prone as to give up themselves to satisfy their fleshly desires and nothing proving so pernicious to them, the wise man gives a new caution against those impure lusts, which he's already taken notice of before.
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And he's referencing Proverbs two as great obstructions to wisdom and with repeated entreaties begs attention to so weighty an argument which here he prosecutes more largely impresses not only with singular evidence, but with powerful reasons.
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That's fancy wording.
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Let me kind of break that down.
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This isn't just about keeping the young man away from the forbidden woman.
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This is also about maintaining the wisdom of God, because this whole book is about what Brother Andy's talked about it.
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It's about wisdom and foolishness.
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Right.
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And the point of chapter five is not just to keep you from sexual sin, but it's to keep you in the wisdom of God.
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And what will cause you to abandon the wisdom of God so quickly as the enticements of the flesh? It is unwise from God's perspective to engage in sexual immorality.
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It is unwise from God's perspective to seek after the forbidden woman.
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That's the point is this is not just about the maintaining of purity, it's about the maintaining of wisdom.
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For it is foolish to do otherwise, so about this subject, a young man must have discernment.
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So we go to verse three.
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And he begins to contrast the forbidden woman.
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He gives a picture of what she looks like.
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Verse three, it says, for the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil.
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Stop right there for a moment when it says that her lips.
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Drip honey, this does not mean that she has sweet kisses, I heard a pastor preaching on this text, and I thought that was kind of he's he's not saying that she has sweet, tasty kisses.
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What he is saying is that her words.
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This is what we call a parallelism.
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When he says her her lips drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil.
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That's saying the same thing twice in a different way.
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We're going to see this throughout Proverbs, especially when we start getting to the singular Proverbs or their singular statements.
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Oftentimes they come at us in parallels, parallelism.
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And so when he says her lips drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil, that's a parallel.
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It's saying that the most dangerous thing about these women is often their words, because it is through their words that they entice.
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You look handsome today, boss, I bet your wife's been a while since she mentioned how strong you look and every man wants to be made to feel like a man.
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And so often it is through the words that a man is enticed, not even just through the physicality of a beautiful woman, but through the words of a woman.
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And oftentimes you see a man who has a beautiful wife and yet he he has cheated on her with a woman.
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And you look at the woman he's cheated on her with and it's like, wow, his wife was so beautiful.
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Why did he go to this woman who is who just seems to be not as beautiful? I don't know what the other way to say she ugly.
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I don't want to say.
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And you say the reason is because she attracted him with her words.
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He made her feel he made him feel like a man.
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And so Solomon says, understand this, the danger will come from her mouth, not from her kisses, but from her words.
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He says her lips are like honey.
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Her speech is smooth like oil.
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She sounds good, but verse four, in the end, she is bitter as wormwood.
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I had to look up what wormwood was.
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I mean, I've heard the term, but I was like, well, if I'm preaching, I better know.
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It's a it's a it's an herb that's used and it's bitter, obviously.
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It's used in medicine and things like that.
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And he says, you know, when you when you hear this woman, she's going to sound like she's so attractive.
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And yet when you finally get the taste and again.
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Not to produce a provocative visual, but the idea when you finally taste those lips, it's not going to be as sweet as you thought, but it's going to be bitter.
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And it's going to be sharp, it's going to be like a knife with two edges, she looks and sounds good, but she is dangerous, her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path of Sheol.
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Now, verse six, I don't want to get into a I don't want to get into this too much because I don't want to lose traction on what I'm talking about here.
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But verse six is translated differently in the ESV and in the King James.
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We're going to see this again in verse 16.
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I'm going to talk about this next week.
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And it does have sometimes the translational differences don't matter, but sometimes the translational differences do matter.
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And in this case, it does matter because in the King James Bible, it says, Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life.
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And in the ESV, it says she does not ponder the path of life.
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So the subject of the sentence is different in the King James version.
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The subject is the hearer who is not pondering his past because he's being led around by the nose by this woman.
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And in the ESV, the one who's not pondering the path is the woman.
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And so if you go and look at it in the Hebrew, it is a little obscure, so it is difficult to interpret.
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And I'm not going to stand up here and argue for one way or the other.
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Both obviously could be true, but both can't be true at the same time because one of them has to be right.
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So we either have to say, well, King James is always right or the ESV is always right and that kind of thing.
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And I don't want to get into that argument right now.
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I see a smile from my my brethren in the back.
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But the point of it is, I think the last part really helps because it says her ways wander and the King James says her ways are movable and that thou can't not know it.
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Or in the ESV, she does not know it.
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Ultimately, this woman.
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This woman is dangerous in so many ways, but one of the ways that she is dangerous is she's reckless because she is going about doing these things and doesn't realize the danger that she's bringing into the situation, whether it's going to be a danger to her or a danger to him, it's going to be a danger to both of them.
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And ultimately, it's a reckless situation that's going to bring wreck to both of them.
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So in simple terms, if I was going to say here is what versus three to six mean in the simplest of terms, she may look good, she may sound good, but she is a dangerous woman.
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And therefore.
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Run, flee, do not.
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Do not seek her out.
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David uses a similar language to contrast someone who looks good on the outside and someone who is dangerous on the inside in Psalms 55, you don't have to turn there, but just listen to this, this is Psalm 55, verse 21, he says, speaking of a companion, he says his speech was smooth as butter, yet war was in his heart.
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His words were softer than oil.
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Yet they were drawn swords.
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That similar comparison is the comparison that Solomon is here making to the dangerous woman, she has words that are smooth as oil, her speech is sensuous and alluring, but she is dangerous like a drawn sword.
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So we come then to verse seven.
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Now, verses seven to 14 gives us commands and consequences.
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Because we're 70 says, oh, now and now, all sons, listen to me, 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.
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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've grown when your flesh and body are consumed.
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Notice what he's saying.
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Don't do this because this is what's going to happen.
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This is going to ruin your life.
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You say, wow, isn't he being just a little melodramatic? No, he's not.
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As I've already described to you in the opening of this sermon, there is nothing else in the history of man that has brought so many men to their knees than this particular thing.
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There is nothing else in the history of men that has brought so many men in their business, in their home, in their church, in their political aspirations, anything down to their knees than this one thing.
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Men have other men raising their children because they walked away from their wives.
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My wife and I have had many conversations about so many of these types of things, just people that we see things happening to and praying that God would always protect us from these things, protect us from these things.
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And one day we were just happened to be conversing about this particular subject.
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And I thought, what a life it is to watch another man raise your children because you had to have a woman who was not your wife.
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Do not understand.
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But that's one of the consequences.
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That's what he says.
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That's verse 10.
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Less strangers take their fill of your strength and your labors go to the house of a foreigner.
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What you have built, what you have raised up is now in someone else's house and they are benefiting from what you have because you gave it up because you had to find yourself at the door of the house of the harlot.
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And what does he do? Verses 13 and 14, he says, or verse 12, he said, and he says to himself, how I hated discipline, how I despised reproof.
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I've talked to men who were cheating on their wives.
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They don't want to hear.
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Keith, you don't understand, she makes me feel great and she might for a minute that lustful feeling may feel good for a moment, but it brings ruin.
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I want to give you three points of application as I draw to a close tonight.
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Three things that I think sum up this and then I want to read you a quote from Matthew Henry and then I'm going to pray three applications.
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And honestly, I'm going to tell you, I wrote these this afternoon as I was doing my last bit of study.
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Jennifer and I had the opportunity to go see the baby today.
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We did an hour of sonogram, saw his little face.
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It was beautiful.
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And after that, I came up here and I had about an hour by myself.
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And so I was reading back over the notes and I got to thinking, I really want to I really want to press this home some of the ways to apply this text.
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So here are three thoughts from this afternoon.
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Number one, there's no such thing as casual sex.
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The idea that sexual interaction can be casual and meaningless is unbiblical.
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There's no such thing as casual sex.
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And Solomon is telling us that and so is Paul.
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When we read back through Paul, he says, you're taking your body and you're marrying it to the prostitute.
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You can't do that and just think it's no big deal.
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There's no such thing as casual sex.
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That's number one.
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Number two.
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There's no such thing as innocent flirting.
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Innocent flirting, you hear people say that, oh, I got my work wife.
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I go to work and this woman, she treats me good, she buys me this or she takes me to lunch and, you know, this is innocent.
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There's no such thing as innocent flirting.
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I'm not saying you can't have a friend.
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But I am saying this, there is a line and you don't cross it.
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And when and when she starts making if she if you're more happy to see her than you are, your wife run, if it means get another job.
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There's no such thing as innocent flirting.
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There's no such thing as casual sex.
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And one often leads to the other.
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Number three, there is no safety in the bosom of a harlot.
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Notice what he says, he leads down to hell.
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There's no safety there.
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You may feel comforted in the moment, but you are not safe.
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So essentially.
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She's not worth it.
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And women, he's not worth it.
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Matthew Henry said this.
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Solomon cautions all young men as his children to abstain from fleshly lusts, some by the adulterous woman here understand idolatry, false doctrine, which tends to lead astray men's minds and manners.
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But the direct view is to warn against Seventh Commandment sins.
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Often these have been and still are Satan's method of drawing men from the worship of God into false religion.
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Consider how fatal the consequence, how bitter the fruit.
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Take it any way it wounds.
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It leads to the torments of hell.
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The direct tendency of this sin is to the destruction of the body and the soul.
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We must carefully avoid everything which may be a step towards it.
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Those who would be kept from harm must keep out of harm's way.
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If we thrust ourself into temptation, we mock God when we pray, lead us not into temptation.
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How many mischiefs attend this sin? It blasts the reputation, it wastes time, it ruins the estate, it is destructive to health.
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It will fill the mind with horror, though thou art merry now, yet sooner or later it will bring sorrow.
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Hear that again, though thou may be merry now, sooner or later it will bring sorrow.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth and Lord, I look forward to next week talking about wives and the value of being satisfied in the life of your youth.
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But Lord, tonight was a warning, a warning to all of us not to pursue that which you have not provided for us.
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Not to pursue the ungodly relationship.
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Father, I pray that you would impress upon our heart.
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The areas within which we all need to repent, and I pray this in Jesus name.