Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

**Proverbs 5**

My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to mine understanding, that thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge. For the lips of a strange woman drop as in honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil, But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on hell. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life.

Her ways are movable that thou canst not know them. Hear me now, therefore, oh ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house, lest thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel, lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy laborers be in the house of a stranger and thou more at the last when thy flesh and thy body are consumed and say how have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof and I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers nor inclined thine ear to them that instructed me I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly drink waters out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well let thy fountains be dispersed abroad and rivers of water in the street eats.

Let them be only thine own, and not strangers with thee. Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe. Let her breast satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger? For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goingings, and own his own iniquities shall take the wicked himself and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.

He shall die without instruction and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.

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Okay, there’s lots of work to be done for us politically. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Most of you, of course, are more than aware of the elections coming up in November. I wanted to use this small opportunity to again encourage you, as I did last week, to be part of Denny Woods’s phone bank. We have a covenant statement here.

Remember this church, you’re supposed to be committed to doing whatever you can to end abortion, and you’re supposed to see yourself as committed to the other people at this church. As probably all of you know by now, homeschoolers are under direct frontal attack from the state board of education. The only way to remedy that probably will be through legislative action. The legislature is the key to turning abortion around and these phone banks are very important to help you fulfill your obligations to the covenant community and to the fatherless, the aborted babies in America.

We have a lot of work to be done there. As again some of you may know, Roy and I met last Wednesday in Salem with a lawyer from the state department of education and an assistant attorney general, another lawyer and several other people and then also some people from the homeschooling community. Carmen, the Osbornes, Dr. Hogue, and Kurt Bumcrop. And essentially, there are new rules that you probably may have seen copies of, I don’t know, that would greatly restrict homeschooling liberties in the state.

And they wanted to meet with us to see what our input was in the process. Now, they had drawn up the rules and ignored our previous input. And we essentially told them our input is this is unacceptable and that if this is what you want to do, you can go ahead and do it. I guess you talk the state board into adopting these things, but you ought to know that thousands of people simply won’t obey your law anymore.

It really—I doubt whether it is actual law. We’re talking about administrative rules that are changing administrative rules drafted in 1986 that correctly implemented the bill that was passed in 1985. And they think now because they’re concerned the people of Oregon may vote a particular way on a particular initiative that they can just by fiat change that legislative intent through state board action.

It’s ridiculous. And we told them, you know, we’re not going to spend—they asked for our input in trying to help clean up their rules and we said, “Well, we’re not going to spend four weeks helping you get these things a little bit better. We’re going to spend four weeks preparing to defeat this before the state board.” And that’s what we’re doing. So, we got a lot of battles, a lot of work to be done.

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We got a lot of work to be done economically in our covenant communities and the churches here in the state. We know that the whole world is riding a debt pyramid that is incredible. We know that many families are in that same debt pyramid and that economic collapse of some type is absolutely assured in the near future of this country and in many families and communities. We’ve got a lot of work to rebuild godly families.

I’ve counseled with men particularly and you know it’s a common phenomena in Christian circles for men to want to put a lot more time into their job than they do their family. And I think one of the reasons for that is that most of us have not seen good biblical models of male leadership in the home. And as a result, we don’t feel confident there. And when you don’t feel confident in doing something, you don’t do it.

I used to when I worked as a purchasing agent have a pile of things for tough tasks and I just keep putting them off and then once a week I’d forced myself to go through those tough jobs and you probably have jobs in your vocational callings that are like that. Well, a lot of us feel that way about the home and so it’s going we got a lot of work ahead of us to find out what the scriptures say and to believe that God will be with us as we lead our families and to build those families up.

We’ve got a lot of work in front of us in terms of the church communities, this church and other churches, and rebuilding and reconstructing the church on a whole Bible model. We’ve got a lot of work in lots of areas. We have a whole world eventually to reconstruct. We have a whole world that for the most part has fallen into the worship of the civil state and secular humanism. When I was down at my brother Mike’s house in the Bay Area, he had some song by a group called Faith No More.

Funny name for a group, a rock group. I don’t know if they mean that, you know, faith and no more is what we need to have in order to believe God. Or I don’t know, maybe what they’re saying is faith used to be here but no more. In any event, one of the songs, the chorus of it said, “We save the world. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.” Kind of funny. And in a way, in a way, without going off and getting our head in the air and whatnot, that’s really what God has called the Christian community to do, to save the world, as it were, through preaching the gospel and then discipling nations, men and nations to obey every word of Christ and to reconstruct the world.

It is a dirty job when you’re in the midst of a situation like we have culturally today, but it’s a job that God has given us to do. It’s a setting that he has provided for us to work in. We’ve got a lot of work.

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We were last week in a counseling session with George Cypion. Excellent week on lots of different levels and he was saying that one of his associates was being asked to work with National Institute of Mental Health. They had some hearings to talk about a proposal they had for doing some work in conjunction with NIMH. And I asked. After being sort of challenged by the state with a this national fellow Cypion’s associate said the real question is will you—that is secular humanists—work with us Christians self-consciously biblical counsel—that’s the real question here. The response on the part of the state, from the federal official from NIMH was, well we just don’t want a jihad here. You know, we’ll work with you guys, we just don’t want a jihad. Well, you know, jihad is like a holy war. It’s been going on in the Middle East in many ways but really not in a physical sense. But in a religious sense, that is exactly what we are involved with is a holy war.

It’s preaching the gospel of Christ in all areas of life and calling men to realize that whether or not they like it, there’s a God in the heavens who reigns and they either obey, they either put their faith in Jesus Christ or they’re cast into outer darkness in hell. So, in a sense, that’s what we do have. We’ve got a lot of work to be done that requires an army.

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Now, you’ve heard it said that pastors and elders are point men for the army. And as such come under particular attack from Satan and from those forces that would seek to stop the church in continuing the religious holy war—in a proper sense, not the ungodly sense of the Middle East, but in the proper sense of preaching the gospel. These men are in the front and so their attacks come upon them. And we’re talking today about lust. We’re continuing that series. And many times the attack upon pastors or elders in local churches comes through the area of lust, lots of reasons for that, some which we’ll touch on.

I thought about this about how God sort of—how God gives Satan the ability, permission to attack us in particular areas. And I almost wasn’t here today. I almost this morning called Mark McConnell who at one time I had asked to prepare a homily that he could read in case I got sick. I’ve been sick. I’ll be leaving after the first half of the service cuz I don’t want to contaminate you all downstairs. Bad cough. I don’t know what it is exactly. It’s not a big deal, but I don’t want to get you sick. And I almost didn’t come, but I thought this is an important thing to talk about, and I hope that you have open ears to hear from the scriptures on this matter. It’s vitally important.

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Well, again, quoting from some talks with Cypion last week, talking about the way that Satan uses sexual attack on pastors to knock out the heads of the platoon, as it were, in this spiritual warfare. One of his counseling friends was called to a counseling situation with a woman and he went there to her apartment and he walks from the apartment and she immediately stands up takes off her robe and she’s stark naked. He with presence of mind goes immediately to the telephone calls his wife says this is what just happened. I’m on my way home just so you’ll know what’s going on. And he leaves and he found out later that there was a fella in the room next door apparently with a camera ready to get evidence against him to knock him out of the game, so to speak, and out of the spiritual warfare that’s going on.

Done. When Cypion shared this with some Black pastors, I think in Southern California area, they said that’s a frequent device in their communities to try to get rid of the work of the church in local areas is to cause these Black pastors to be compromised sexually. Those of you who saw the film The Natural, remember that was how the metaphor for how the Roy Hobbs was compromised was again through the sexual arena.

Well, now remember that and then remember that what we’ve taught here at this church is that we have in every believer ministry. We don’t have some men who are in the army and other people who are praying for him. We have everybody in the army of God and everybody is a minister in a very real sense, a servant of God to preach the gospel in his particular calling. Whether it’s preaching in church, whether it’s selling mail order goods, whether it’s being a corporate executive, whether it’s your own business, whatever it is, and all of our callings that are to be seen as callings relative to the kingdom of Christ. So we all, if you keep that model in mind, we all are point men.

And every one of us, Satan will try to knock out of this game if he can. And so the material we’re going to be talking about today, and we probably won’t get to all of it, but the material we’re going to be talking about is quite important, not just for me, it’s real important for you. You understand the concept of an every believer ministry. It means that you must be very careful that you’re not knocked out of the box.

If you’re correctly evaluating your calling is just as holy and just as important in the scheme of things as my calling, which is what the scriptures I think tell us quite clearly—what was one of the distinguishing marks the Reformation and what will be a distinguishing mark of reconstruction—to see all callings as essential to spiritual warfare. If you understand that then you understand that you need to do a lot of work in reconstructing, rebuilding that—therefore you are also going to be a target in a stronger sense than many people sitting in many churches that don’t understand this perspective and aren’t engaging themselves in spiritual warfare.

You’re going to be a target of satanic attack and frequently that’ll come through the sexual area. One way to remember all this is the benediction every Sunday. Remember we talked about worship as a model pattern for life. Try to think about that as we go through our worship service on Sundays and try to think about specific elements what we’re doing and how it relates to life. Remember the benediction that we read at the end the first half of the worship service from Numbers 6.

Remember we talked there that benediction is placed interestingly in the book of Numbers. The theology is the army of God, the host is convocated and it’s all gathered around and everything’s put in shape. And then the benediction is placed. The theme is a militaristic one. And when you go forth from here, having heard that benediction and having believed that God through that benediction places real power upon you, you should be thinking that you’re leaving this room not with a nice spiritual warm thing that you’ve just had done, but rather you should feel yourself empowered for battle to be part of that army of God that goes out and exercises spiritual warfare.

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So, the many references in the book of Proverbs to sexual sin and sexual temptation, which we’re going to be looking at, are very important for you. They’re very important because they’re not found in the pastoral epistles. They’re found in the book of wisdom that is to guide all of us in our vocational callings and in every area of our walk of life. Okay? It’s not just—the pastoral epistles are not geared toward pastors being tempted this way, but all of us.

Having said that, let’s look at first the prominence of warnings against sexual sin and the development of biblical wisdom. And I just want us to look through some of these passages. You’ll notice that most of them are in the first nine chapters. If you’ve got your outline, you should have an outline. If you don’t, you ought to get one. Most of these are in the first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs.

And we’re going to talk a little bit about that as we go through them, but it’ll make it real easy for you to keep up with me. So, turn to Proverbs 2:16-19. Well, actually here we’ll take the context. Proverbs 2:10-11. For wisdom will enter your heart. Knowledge will be pleasant to you, and discretion will guard you, and understanding will watch over you. Four words that are repeatedly found in clumps like that in the book of Proverbs.

It’d make a very good study on your own to go through those words. But any event, this is a summation essentially, I think, of the book of Proverbs. Wisdom, knowledge, discretion, understandings, which you’ll find here. For what purpose? Verse 12 says to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things. And it goes on to talk about that particular category. And then verse 16 says the second purpose—to deliver you from the strange woman, from the adulteress who flatters with her words.

Okay. So the way I understand Proverbs 2 is we got Proverbs 2:10-11 summation telling two purposes. 12-15 describes one purpose—to deliver you from the man of evil. Matthew Henry said from the man who teaches bad principles—and then verses 16-19 from the woman who encourages you to bad practice. Now, I’ll say right off here, you know, obviously the sexual references are real and important, but don’t think that, oh, it’s only men who are tempted into sexual sin by women.

It goes the other way around. And we get to the practical application of this, we’ll talk about that a little bit. But don’t get hung up in thinking that the men are always the ones who are given bad teaching and the women are always bad practice. There’s reasons for that, but it isn’t always as cut and dry as that. There’s—there’s obviously some big themes going on here that’s being developed.

But in any event, he says two purposes. Deliver you from the man with perverse teachings and deliver you from the strange woman. And then verses 20 through 22 sort of sum the same thing up: so that you will walk in the way of good men and keep to the path of the righteous. For the upright will live in the land and the blameless will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off, the treacherous will be uprooted from it.

So Proverbs 2, I think, is a good way to categorize much of what’s in the book of Proverbs. It gives us wisdom, understanding, discretion, and knowledge for the purpose of keeping us away from bad men and bad philosophies and principles and evil women and sexual sin as a metaphor and as an overall category for all kinds of other things as well. And then the purpose of all that is so that you may dwell in the land and not be rooted out by God’s judgments and curses. The way the wicked will be.

Now, I take a little bit of time there because it’s real important. If I’ve got this correct and if I’ve understood Proverbs correctly, that means that a lot of what’s in the book of Proverbs is geared toward this second category, the strange woman. Now, I’m not trying to say all it refers to is sexual sin. When we were at the counseling sessions last week of Mr. Cypion, he uses the term a presenting problem.

You counsel somebody, they have a presenting problem. They can’t sleep, they feel bad. They’re seeing, they’re hearing things, whatever it is. And you want to get behind the presenting problem to the bigger areas of stuff that have been manifested in that way. And so you’ve got the presenting problem and then what goes behind it. And certainly what goes behind sexual sin is important. We’ve talked about that a little bit. We’ll talk about it more before this series on lust is over.

But I guess what I’m saying here is I don’t want us all to get so symbolic about this somehow and getting back to the root causes of this stuff that we fail to see the clear and distinct warnings time and time again in the wisdom literature here found in the Proverbs to avoid the specific act of sexual sin. Okay? Yes, it means more, but it means that as well. It means the actual act. And so, it’s real important that we have our ears open to hear this stuff.

So, Proverbs 2 tells us much of the book of Proverbs and much of godly wisdom is to prepare you so that you don’t fall into sexual sin and the devices of the strange woman. Okay. Proverbs 5. You can trace this pattern, by the way, these two groups that I just talked about here in many of these other passages. We won’t take the time, but it’s very been a very interesting study for me personally to go through that and see it working out. Proverbs 5, we read it for our sermon text. We’ll be going back to it in more detail. And so I won’t reread it here, but obviously verses 3 through 23 talk about this general group to keep us from the strange woman. There’s various things that are said there that are covered in the outline later on in our talk.

Here again in verse 14 of Proverbs 4, there’s a section beginning, I think, with the evil ways of the men. So, this follows that pattern again and Proverbs 5 spends most of it talking about the strange woman. Proverbs 6. Now, see, maybe you don’t—the first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs are written differently than chapters 10 and following. Beginning at chapter 10, we have the Proverbs of Solomon. We have a bunch of little I think what Bahnsen called them—jawbreakers, little pithy statements that you got to work over and think about.

We’ll look at one of those later. Maybe not today, maybe next week if I don’t get to it. So, what I’m saying is chapters 1-9 sort of set up for a bunch of very specific individualized proverbs that follow chapter 10 and on in that book. So, it’s interesting that again here in Proverbs 2, Proverbs 5, Proverbs 6, 7-9, we have all these references to avoid the strange woman.

Proverbs 6:20-23. Well, actually starting at verse 24, he says various things in those first three verses. Then he says to keep you from the evil woman and from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. Don’t desire her beauty. And then most of that section from Proverbs 6, those verses there to the end of Proverbs 6, those are mostly warnings about what happens if you engage in sexual sin. So it’s curse-oriented. Okay. Curse. That’s the distinctive mark of Proverbs 6 in those sections.

Then the very next chapter again there’s an interlude of four verses. In verse 5 of Proverbs 7 that they may keep you from an adulteress from the foreigner who flatters with her words. And there Proverbs 7 describes the way she works. It describes the way of the strange woman. And so he warns you with these cursed passages in Proverbs 6. And then he warns you with understanding her ways in Proverbs 7 and an extended discussion of what she does ending up of course with more cursed passages at the end of Proverbs 7 and then Proverbs 9—the last chapter of the book of Proverbs.

And this really concludes these first nine chapters and prepares us for chapter 10 of the specific jawbreaker instruction. Proverbs 9 ends with the last verses 13-15. The woman of folly is boisterous. She’s naive, knows nothing, and she sits at the doorway of her house and on a seat by the high places of the city calling to those who pass by who are making their path straight. Whoever’s not Eve, let him turn in here. To him who lacks understanding, she says, stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant, but he doesn’t know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

And so, it kind of wraps up this idea with the strange woman being the ways of foolishness, the ways of death, and makes it real obvious there again that it’s referring to much more than just sexual sin. We don’t want to miss the obvious point here. It’s a reminder against sexual sin. Okay? And then some of a couple of specifics. Very few specifics in the rest of the book of Proverbs after we get to this opening introduction section which warns us again and again and again about the strange woman.

In Proverbs 22:14 there’s a specific verse. You don’t have to turn there, I’ll just read it: the mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit. He who is cursed of the Lord will fall into it. Interesting verse. We’ll talk about it a little bit later. And then in Proverbs 23 we read: a harlot is a deep pit and an adulterous woman is a narrow well. Surely she lurked as a robber and increases the faithless among men.

Another very interesting verse which we’ll make reference to in a little bit. Some more warnings about sexual sin. One thing I mentioned there before we move on—in Proverbs 23. After that section, it talks about the dangers of drunkenness in the next few verses in Proverbs 23. And there’s a verse in Proverbs 23:33 that says, “Your eyes will see strange things.” The King James says, “Your eyes will see a strange woman.” Now, I don’t know—you know, it’s a tough verse in terms of the translation, I guess—but it is certainly true and important to point out here.

We’re not going to spend much time on this. I don’t think drunkenness is too much of a problem in this church, but there’s a real warning here that drunkenness dulls your senses and your ability to discern the evil woman when she comes across your path. And so, that’s important not to leave that out. It’s important to mention that.

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Now, in all these warnings in the first part of the book of Proverbs that sets us up for how this wisdom is to be applied in our lives—to keep us from the man of perverse thinking and speaking and to keep us from the strange woman—that setup there.

Important thing you realize: that the strange woman there—the verse, the specific words that are used in only one or two cases is the word, the technical term for prostitute or harlot. Usually that is not what’s being talked about. And for right now I’ll get to this a little bit later, but for right now just think of it this way: that the strange woman is a big set of women here. And a subset of that are prostitutes or women that specifically engage in sexual intercourse for pay.

And so if you’re thinking that all this is a warning to stay away from, you know, bordello or brothel, that’s not the point. That’s a very small subsection of sexual sin as it enters into the things that we’re to avoid through the correct application of God’s wisdom. Okay.

It’s important here again to point out then that there is a preeminence of warnings against sexual sin and the development of biblical wisdom and the application of wisdom is to keep us from that area. Hebrews 5:14 says that we are supposed to have by reason of the use of our senses we should have those senses exercised to discern good and evil. And so there’s a relationship to the development of wisdom and a character. and being able to discern who the strange woman is, for instance, to discern good and evil and what you’re involved with. All this fits together to tell you that if you ignore these warnings and you ignore the teaching that God provides in these warnings to help us resist this sort of sin, you are likely to fall into it.

You are likely to fall into it, not originally as an act necessarily of your volitional will, but from failing to have trained your senses rather to discern good and evil. So, it’s real important. The title of this sermon is watch out and prepare would be a good thing to add on. And we’re going to try to do today and probably into next week is help us realize the danger and then help us learn to be prepared for this sin.

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And as I said, moving on to point two of the outline, one of the first things that God does with us is he tells us that sure end of this particular sin. And we’re going to be looking mostly at verses from Proverbs 5. I’ll be bringing in some other verses as well.

So, first of all, we have these preeminent warnings. And secondly, right away in these warnings in Proverbs 5, we read in verse 4: her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell. Okay, so we have some strong warnings in Proverbs 5. One of the first ways to prepare for resisting sexual temptation is to recognize the strong curse and the ends of this particular woman. It says that her end is bitter as wormwood. Her feet go down to death.

Now, I hope I’m not drawing too much of a distinction here. We’ll look at many verses here in a couple of minutes that talk about how your end will be there, too. But it’s good to realize the scriptures identify that’s her end as well. That’s where she’s going is to the pit of hell if she continues in that way. And then secondly, you’re to know the eschatology, the end result for the victim. And here on the outline, I put potentially you. Don’t think about somebody else. Think about potentially you. The book of Proverbs is given to you to prepare you.

And so, you are the potential victim if you fail to take heed on these things. Grab hold of them. And particularly, as I said before, if you’re a member of a reconstructionist church that knows the battles we’re involved with, you’re a frontline troop. And if you’re a frontline troop, you’re going to try to be knocked out in what you’re doing. And this is one of the ways that Satan will try to do it. Okay?

For the victim, potentially you. Now, I mentioned before a couple weeks ago about Solomon, David, and Samson. Solomon, wise. David, great love for God. Samson, mighty strength. But they all fell to this particular thing that we’re talking about today. They fell to sexual temptation. And not only did all these men fall to sexual temptation, they all in their lives evidence great judgment from God because of it. Great judgment from God because of it.

We read of that judgment continuing on in Proverbs 5 and verses 8 through 14. Verse 9 says that if you don’t watch out for her, you’ll end up giving your honor unto others, your years unto the cruel. Strangers will be filled with your wealth. Thy labors will be in the house of a stranger. And I will mourn at the last when thy flesh and thy body are consumed and say, “How have I heeded instruction and my heart despised reproof and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers.

I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.” That’s the end for you if you fail to be diligent to avoid sexual sin in your lives.

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Now, I mentioned Samson and as I was reading through these verses, His the teachings of the scriptures on Samson’s end came to mind. Remember Samson fell into sexual temptation went into a harlot from Philistia first then he takes up with Delilah and Delilah tempts him and he and entices him—he’s nagging him until he tells his strength because Samson gave into sexual temptation in terms of the harlot and in terms of Delilah.

Samson is judged by God and he ends up a picture of what all this is. He ends up being dragged away to the Philistines doing labor for them. It says he worked in the—even though he wasn’t as strong as he used to be, they still had him working in the grinding room, grinding out wheat or something for the Philistines. He gave his labor to the cruel and to the stranger. His flesh and his body were being consumed. He’d lost his strength. They were mocking him and making fun of him.

He says that I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly. And in the case of Solomon, it was the wicked congregation and assembly that he was in the midst of. Remember, they brought him out to make fun of him—Samson that is. And then of course he prays and his hair is grown back and God blesses Samson. Picture of salvation and he ends up destroying the wicked Philistines.

But the point is that Samson’s downfall is a good model to keep in front of your own mind and the minds of your children as you teach them about the realities of God’s judgment upon sexual sin. The end. I talked before from Romans 1, that downward spiral to hell. And that’s what Proverbs says over and over and over again. Verses 18 and 19 of Proverbs 2, verses 26-35 of Proverbs 6, verses 22, 23, 26, and 27 of Proverbs 7, and verse 18 of Proverbs 9.

If you go back and look at Proverbs 26, 7, and 9 in addition to Proverbs 5, in every one of those, you will see the same thing pointed out over and over and over again. Why does God keep repeating that message in the first quarter of book of Proverbs? To get it home to you and to make it real to you because we tend to ignore these things. Okay? So, we have to understand the end of it where it’s going.

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I was reading Arnot’s commentary on some proverbs. I don’t remember which one it was now. And he said that the Romish Inquisition, they had a picture of or a statue of I believe it was Mary—good-looking statue of Mary. And when an Inquisitor—when somebody would go and kiss her hips—one of the men I guess that they were torturing or whatnot or trying to exact information from—it would put into play a spring system and her arms would come up. This mechanical Mary they had there, her arms would come up, grab the man that was kissing her, you know, mechanical motion, and hundreds of knives would spring out of the arms.

See? And that’s another good model to keep in mind. You kiss the mouth of an adulteress, of the strange woman or women—if you kiss the mouth of a strange man, looks real attractive. And that’s one of the things we’ll be going through. Looks real attractive. But remember that system is activated. God’s judgments are in play and those arms will end up piercing you through and killing you and taking your strength apart from God’s grace.

Good picture for us to remember. Lust is one of the seven deadly sins. Not because in and of itself it’s worse than hypocrisy or something else, but it puts into play a whole bunch of other factors and sins in your life. Woody Allen’s Crime and Misdemeanors, that movie, while I’m not recommending it totally, is a good picture of that as well, where it was an extramarital affair that put in motion a whole bunch of other things leading up to murder of his of his gal.

And so, it puts into these things into effect. I mentioned this before, but I want to mention it again. It’s one of the strongest images of what I’m talking about here in Dante’s Purgatorio. As he goes out of those first three cornices, remember what we had back there? Pride, envy, anger, and then what’s the interim seventh sin? The middle one that splits into the—sloth, loss of heart, depression, pride, envy, anger, root sins, sloth, and then active sins, greed, gluttony, and lust.

As Dante is leaving these first three and going through the fourth cornice as an entrance into these other last three—greed, gluttony, and lust—he sees a woman who comes to him. And at first, she doesn’t look that great. But as he looks at her eyes, and we’ll talk about that again in a couple of minutes or maybe next week. As he looks at her eyes, she becomes more and more attracted. It’s like she grows in beauty as he gazes upon her.

And he’s—he’s asleep is what he is. He’s on this sloth of lust. He’s kind of half-dreaming. He isn’t able to hear things. He’s in a sleep-like stupor, so to speak. Well, there’s implications for that, too, in terms of sloth, but in any event, so he gazes upon her. The more he gazes, the better she looks. And he’s about ready to fall into, you know, sin in terms of thoughts or whatever with this woman, this beautiful woman who grows more and more gorgeous.

And then his companion—Virgil, or the Beatrice, is also involved. But in any event, his companion Virgil yells and rips the robes off of this image of this beautiful woman. And Dante immediately sees things as they are and she’s rotting. She’s putrid. She’s really an old hag. And all the facade of beauty is immediately gone away and she’s portrayed to be what she is. And the point of all that is that the scriptures do that for us.

The scriptures say this: the strange woman or the strange man, point of application to the women here, may look attractive and the more you gaze at them, the better they’re going to look. But you’ve got to recognize what the scriptures say the reality is. The scriptures say the reality is that is fetid, that is putrid, that is rotting, that is death. Okay. And will end up as I said the arms of the Mary coming out and cutting you to pieces. Keep that image in mind when you begin to think about the attractiveness of another woman or another man apart from your mate.

Proverbs 6:25 says do not desire her beauty in your heart. You’re to control your mind and your heart. One of the ways for controlling it is to have the proper images sent them from God’s word as to the reality of those who would tempt you sexually.

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We talked about the judgments then for the woman and for you. And the third point there is that those judgments come forth from God. It’s not automatic cause and effect. It’s not like, oh, be careful there because something bad might happen. It’s be careful because God is the one who is at work to cause those knives to come out and get you as it were. See, he’s at work. He brings these judgments to pass.

Verses 22 and 23 of Proverbs 5: his own iniquity shall take the wicked himself, and he shall behold with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction, the greatness of his folly. He shall go astray. We have a picture there of God’s system of judgment. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. You do these things, your own sin wraps you up in them, and so God’s judgments come forth on you. Proverbs 22:14, I said we’d go back to that just real shortly.

Find it here. Proverbs 22:14. The mouth of an adulteress is a deep pit. The idea is it’s a deep pit. Pit has a narrow opening at the top. Real deep. You can’t climb out. Real tough to get out of that thing. Impossible on your own strength. It’s a deep pit. He who is cursed of the Lord will fall into it. The falling into the pit there is not just some sort of natural cause and effect. It is the act of curses of God being played out in your life.

Very important. This is important. Doug H. said asked if I was going to say anything about safe sex during these sermons on lust. And this would be a good place for it. You know, safe sex is apparent, it seems to me, an attempt to avoid the judgments of God for the sin. We want to keep sinning. We want to get around the judgments of God somehow. Now, in Deuteronomy 28, we see a progression of God’s judgments against sin.

Or maybe a better picture for you would be to remember with Pharaoh and how God brought the curses upon Pharaoh in Egypt. They got worse in intensity leading up to the final one which was the death of the firstborn, the wiping out of the whole culture symbolically in the firstborn. And so when people try to engage themselves in safe sex, all they are doing is God will ratchet up the judgments. Then I heard somebody, I don’t remember who it was now, say a while back, a Christian, he said, “Oh, they’ll find a they’ll find a cure for AIDS. They found something that takes care of syphilis.”

That was God’s judgments, too. You read at the time the Reformation, you know, the reformers knew syphilis and those things were God’s judgment against sexual sin. Well, they modern medicine finds solutions to these things. And God brings that to pass. For what reason? To demonstrate that these people are not interested in righteousness. They’re interested in avoidance of the punishments that come from God.

But all it leads to is worse and worse plagues. AIDS is worse than syphilis. The next will be worse still. These judgments continue to increase. Now, that’s those wicked guys out there. But just the same. If all we try to do is avoid is let our minds wander into these sorts of areas and avoid what we know will bring, you know, the wrath of God on our behind or something, we’re the same way. And we try to let ourselves dwell into some of these areas and protect ourselves from the judgments.

God’s going to ratchet that judgment up and up and up and up and up. Cypion again said that a man came to him for counseling. I won’t tell you the specific thing involved. But essentially, Cypion said the man wanted to be a more efficient fornicator. And frequently, that’s what we want. We want the guilt of sin avoided. We want the thing taken care of so we can continue to do the activity that’s wrong. And God doesn’t let that happen.

He lets you become numb to sin, but only because he’s going to bring a greater judgment and a greater judgment upon you. You stiffen your neck, God brings greater judgments. Okay? So, the judgments come forth from God upon sin. And a very important thing to keep in mind.

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Now, third, the inspired instructions for avoiding this sin. And the first thing under that I’ve got is the big picture, God’s wisdom. You’ll notice on those verses under point number one of your outline, I’ve got like I’ve got Proverbs 2:10-11/2:16-19.

Notice that there. And here in Proverbs 5 on the outline, 1:2-3/5:3-23. Proverbs 1 and 2 says, says, “My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding, that thou mayest regard discretion, that thy lips may keep knowledge.” See that four-fold pattern again? Wisdom, understanding, discretion, and knowledge. That same four-fold pattern we saw in Proverbs 2.

Well, those first verses that precede the slash are always these instructions to abide by God’s wisdom. And then he gives the teaching about how to avoid the strange woman. And so, the first thing to do to avoid this temptation, the only thing really is to abide and hear God’s word, his wisdom, his law, his statutes and judgments. And as a result of perpetually going through this stuff and chewing these jawbreakers to train our senses to discern it. That’s the real big picture. And we could spend the entire, you know, we could spend the rest of the next 20 years talking about the book of Proverbs and how that relates.

But the important thing there is that don’t think that you can just look at the mechanical stuff that I’m going to point to in the second part of this subsection and think that if you do that and ignore God’s wisdom and God’s law that you’ll be able to avoid this particular sort of sin. Probably not. God says the big picture is the entire book of his wisdom and his law.

Now, that’s good news for us. Why is that good news for us? Because we haven’t rejected God’s law. Probably one of the reasons why evangelical pastors these days fall a lot into sexual sin. One, they’re sort of teaching spiritual adultery in many cases. Not all of them, but many cases. But two, they’ve rejected God’s wisdom. They’ve rejected his law. And that’s the first thing you need to prepare yourself for avoiding that sin. So, here at this church, if you aren’t just a, you know, a professing theonomist, but if you are a if you really work at your theonymy, if you really understand the law of God and continue to teach yourself and your family the law of God, his wisdom is found in all the Bible and the Old Testament’s important, then you’re going to be much better prepared to avoid this sort of sin in your life.

And as I said, every section there in Proverbs 2, 5, 6, 7, 9 begins with that general—the big picture acknowledge God’s wisdom obtain God’s wisdom as the key vehicle to avoiding sexual temptation and sin each section has its preparation items it’d be good for you to look over those at some time in your in your home okay so that’s the big picture now for some details out of all that.

We can’t deal with all of that, but we want to deal with some of the detailed instructions on how to avoid these things.

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First, you and the strange woman negatively—know her ways. Know Satan’s devices. 2 Corinthians 2:11, Paul says that we are not ignorant of his, that is Satan’s devices. And God doesn’t tell us here just to not think about all this stuff. In his inspired word, he gives us teachings so that we can understand what the strange woman is like. and can therefore avoid it. And that is what we’re going to be spending some time on now. And just we’ll try to go over this fairly briefly.

You and the strange woman, you’ve got to know her ways. Otherwise, why is this instruction in the scripture? It’s there for a reason. And one of the most frequently repeated things in the verses I’ve given you and found here in verse 3 of Proverbs 5 talks about the tongue of the strange woman. For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil. Her mouth is smoother than oil.

Proverbs 2:16 says that she flatters with her words. And if you want to write down the references, Proverbs 6:24, Proverbs 7:5, 14-21, Proverbs 9:15-17. These things all talk about the strange woman as verse 3 does in our central text, Proverbs 5, that she’s deceitful and that she is flattery. Now, here’s real practical advice for us. If you work in an office with women and a woman flatters you a lot, that’s a real dangerous sign to you. Keep away from that sort of a person.

You know, if you think about it, if a person is feeling bad about their home relationship or whatever, and then they hear this flattering words from the strange woman, it’s going to be much easier then to start to develop a relationship there. And so, it’s very important that we recognize that people’s speech should be evaluated. We should think to ourselves, why is this woman flattering me?

And the other thing we should recognize is God’s word says she may be flattering you with her lips, but she is deceitful. She is lying to you. She is not telling you the truth. She has her own purposes in mind. She doesn’t have your well-being in mind. She is deceitful. She is covenantally unfaithful. In Proverbs 2:17 and 7:19 and 20, she ignores the covenant of God and she leaves the companion of her youth.

She doesn’t keep covenant. And now that has to do with what she says with her mouth. She enters into a marriage covenant and she doesn’t keep that covenant. And that’s a distinctive thing of the strange woman throughout all these various passages we’ve looked at. She is one who is a flatterer, who is a deceiver, and one other thing in terms of her tongue, she is boisterous, loud, and rebellious.

And so it’s very important we recognize that and that we as I said evaluate speech of the people that we know and particularly female co-workers or female associates be very careful if you know another thing if you get flattered be careful watch out or if you know a woman who doesn’t keep her word frequently watch out because she also is exhibiting one of the characteristics of the strange woman along this line I wanted to point out in 2 Corinthians 2 and we read about the requirement to see to acknowledge our mates property rights over our own bodies.

Your body doesn’t belong to you. It’s the property of your wife. Your wife’s body is property of her husband. And he encourages in 2 Corinthians two and we’ll talk about this more later on but I bring it up now for a reason.