Clough Proverbs Lesson 36
Sexual Destruction – Proverbs 5:7-14
[can’t hear] What about Paul’s view of man being better
off without women, 1 Corinthians 7, and Genesis 2:18 where God says that man
needs a woman? This statement is made in
1 Corinthians 7 and if you’ll look at the context Paul is giving you his
opinion as a celibate; as one with the spiritual gift of celibacy, he desires
that others have this gift because it maximizes the performance in evangelistic
work and so on, Paul needed men to help him throughout the eastern
Mediterranean. And so therefore he
wished he had more helpers and desired that many believers had the gift. However he then adds, but every man has his
gift; he knew that if they do not have the gift of celibacy then obviously they
are to stay married or get married if they’re not. So the gift of celibacy is the gift where God
gives to believers to whom He has called for various calls in which marriage
would be a hindrance. Now the reason
this does not conflict with Genesis
Next question: for
two months I have been attending your sermons alone; today you said the Bible
has an answer for every problem. Can you
please suggest where I may find an answer as to how to get my husband to come
with me? Well, there are several things,
1 Corinthians 7 deals with one passage of Scripture, 1 Peter 3 is another and I
recommend those passages with hesitation because they’re very difficult for
women to do says 1 Peter 3 says the place to begin is to keep your mouth shut
and most women have great difficulty with this and so therefore we recommend
this to you trusting you will recognize it is impossible apart from the working
of the Holy Spirit. But 1 Peter 3 is
addressed to this very problem and the trouble that we have is that women tend
to nag and some of you women have never understand a man’s nature. If you want to (?) faster than any other way
just nag and we’ll (?) exactly opposite to what you want us to do. So the 1
Peter 3 passage is very important to understand. There are some special situations that come
up in all seriousness from time to time and these involve special coaching but
generally speaking it’s patience with the principles outlined in 1 Peter
3. The problem he is that the man is put
into the family as a spiritual leader.
When his wife begins to assume spiritual leadership or get in advance he
has a problem because it forces him into a state of conviction rapidly. Number one, he doesn’t want to give up his
position of leadership which he feels threatened in and number two, it is always
unwise for the woman to make these decisions in spiritual areas when the man
should be the one that’s doing it. We
hope to lick some of this problem by the Framework training literature so that
the parents will have in the home means of teaching their children. If this is in place then possibly that would
be an area of interest for the husband, to have him begin to see what is
necessary to teach his children. There
are cases where there is no other option in this area except to be patient in 1
Peter 3, sometimes for years and years, but nevertheless 1 Peter 3 gives you
these (?).
Another question:
Can a woman have a separate calling from the Lord outside of her husband; if
so, under what conditions. Does this
necessarily require a gift of celibacy as well?
The woman’s calling will always be phased with the husband’s calling,
otherwise you’d have a divided marriage and the Holy Spirit is not going to
call one to do one thing and one to do another and destroy the second divine
institution. So the woman’s calling in
Scripture, we can deduce from the structure of the second divine institution,
to be compatible with the husband’s calling, within his area; if he’s called to
a geographic area or a job and then if the ministry opens up for his wife it
will be something that will be compatible with that.
A fourth question:
You frequently stress how a Christian is to put his spiritual gift to use;
please explains how a believer is to discover exactly what his spiritual gift
is, and then in parenthesis it says: yes, I am new. I appreciate that because if you were old
you’re a sorry case. But the way of
deciding what the spiritual gift is, there’s several ways; first I recommend
that you read Dr. Ryrie’s book, The Holy
Spirit, it’s available through our church library. In there you will find a chapter on spiritual
gifts. A second publication is by George
Meisinger, The Doctrine of Spiritual Gifts, and this is also available through
our library and that has a detailed analysis of what the gifts are and how to
find them.
Let’s turn to
Proverbs 5. Chapter 5 continues the
theme of chapter 4 and the theme of these two chapters is that the son must
avoid sexual… the theme of the two chapters is that the wisdom is to be
exercised in and through the family and chapter 5 deals with one of the key
problems that the father briefs the son and trains the for and that is the son
must avoid sexual promiscuity and anticipate sexual fulfillment in his right
woman. And last time we reviewed the
doctrine of the right woman; we won’t go through all the details except just
the highlights of that doctrine so that you can understand what the background
is for Proverbs 5.
The first thing is
that the second divine institution, which is marriage, is designed by God and
was designed before the fall, in the state of innocence. And in innocence we have a situation where
there is right woman for every right man and she’s called the ‘ezer, or you can make the “h” sound if
you want; Eve was made especially for Adam.
Adam had a calling that was given to him by God before he met his
woman. Some who are looking around, it’s
nice to look around, that is if you’re unmarried, but if you’re looking and
you’re looking for a right woman, you men are going to have a hard time finding
her if you do not have first have established in your own mind a general idea
where God’s leading you, because as Adam, who had his calling and he recognized
that Eve was the one suited. There are
two words in the Hebrew, one ‘ezer
means helper, so that’s the first word used of the right woman, a helper, an ‘ezer.
The other word is a word that means to correspond to him in his
calling. So it is a helper suited, two
words describe the right woman. She has
been built by God to fit the right man in his calling.
Now that’s the way
marriage functioned ideally in innocence.
But after the fall we have depravity entering into the marriage
relationship and as a result of this we have problems of death, divorce and
just stupidity and this is after the fall.
We have these problems enter the marriage relationship, and as a result
the right man/right woman pattern is damaged, sometimes extremely seriously
this pattern is damaged. Then the third
thing is under grace God works with the second divine institution in a fallen
world to restore, or at least to prevent, all the effects of the fall from
taking over and in place of the right man/ right woman, though we will still
use those terms we really are talking about the best man or the best woman
under the circumstances of the resultant fallout from the fall, that God can
provide for your needs, Philippians 4:19, for your every need; it is your need
that you have the best man or the best woman fitted to that situation. And so therefore God will provide that and we
have those promises in God’s Word.
Last week we went
through the Proverbs 5:1-6; the first two verses of chapter 5 were commands to
avoid promiscuity because of two major reasons.
The first one, verse 4 was that though the affair, and we remember that
verse 3 refers to the beginning of sex, and verse 4 is the end result of it,
verse 4 deals with something called the wormwood analogy. Wormwood was an herb that smelled wonderful
in the ancient world, but when you tasted it and swallowed it you were sorry
you ever saw the thing. So wormwood is
used as an analogy for promiscuity because the first step (?) grace and it’s
highly enjoyable and very attractive until the end, and that’s why verse 4 says
the end is as “wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.”
And the second
reason given for obeying the command was in verse 6, where it says, and this
man is speaking to his son, now for you girls it’s reverse, you just reverse
the roles here, but in verse 6 this fellow is fooling around with the wrong
woman and the statement is made about her that “Lest she should ponder her path
of life, her ways are movable,” which is a strange way of saying her ways are
so unstable that she can’t even understand them. And the point of verse 6 is that if the woman
human spirit been called to help you in your calling, and she can’t even
understand where she’s going she’s not going to be a helper, so just forget it;
she’s just going to tube out your call as far as God is concerned and louse up
your life. So those two reasons are
given in verses 4-6.
Now beginning in
Proverbs 5:7 we have a second section; verses 7-14 and these again are commands
given to avoid the wrong woman. If we
could summarize the content of the first six verses we would say avoid the
wrong woman because the results are bitter at worst and absolutely useless at
best. In verse 7-14 the thought is avoid
the wrong woman because it destroys you sexually, spiritually and
socially. Three results of promiscuity:
a destruction of one sexually, a destruction of one spiritually, and a
destruction of one socially. Again
please notice that when the Word of God commands the Word of God always
motivates, the Word of God always provides reasons. These admonitions are not hanging in thin
air; they’re given with reasons behind them.
Proverbs 5:7,
“Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my
mouth. [8] Remove thy way far from her,
and come not near the door of her house.”
One problem we have to deal with immediately are who are the
“children?” The children would be
Solomon and his brother, Nathan, and others that were in the household of
David. David is talking to all his boys
here, because the particular family of the house of David had tremendous
problems in the area of sex. David had a
problem in this area, practically every one of his sons had a problem in this
area and Solomon had a tremendous problem in this area. So this seemed to run in the family and this
family had a lot of experience in promiscuity and whereas we do not condone it
we are thankful they did because they relate to us the principles of how to
control Christian behavior in this area.
Those of you who
are parents, if you’ll study Proverbs 5 it will teach you how to teach your
children about these things. There’s a
mentality that you can capture; you’ve got to read it, I can’t convey all the
mentality to you but if you re-read this thing and put yourself in David’s
shoes it will give you a feeling for how these Hebrew parents taught their
children. And I don’t think there’s any
other place in family life where lack of communication between parents and
children come out more loudly and more clearly than in the area of sex. If there’s not good communication in the home
it will always show up right here. If
the parents cannot teach and discuss sex with their children, they’ve got
problems and it’s not sex problems, it’s communication problem that preceded it
by many months and probably many years.
This is a thing
that those of you with young children, before this becomes an issue, build your
bridges of communication solidly so that when this issue comes up you’ll have a
bridge prepared that you can talk to them.
And you should, after all, they should be able to learn more about sex
from you than anybody in the locker room.
You should have biblical standards; you should know what the Bible
says. Now it’s too bad, I know some of
you have gone to churches all your life where if you mention the word sex you
have to take ten deep breaths to get over the tension in the atmosphere. But the Word of God deals with this like it
deals with any other problem so let’s look at verses 7-14.
David gives a
command; he repeats in Proverbs 5:7-8 the command that he gave in verses
1-2. And he says in verse 8
particularly, and this gives a principle of counseling. In verse 8, “Remove thy way far from here,
and come not near the door of her house.”
The picture here is of a city and Solomon and David’s sons will be
walking around the city and they know that over a couple of blocks was Mary’s
house, my apologies to Mary’s that may be present, I’m just using this as an
illustration so relax. And they know
that Mary has a few interests, extracurricular type, so they also know that
well, gee, I’m not supposed to go over there and so on, but somehow they ride
their bicycle and manage to get over to Mary’s house. But by the time they get over near Mary’s
house, all of a sudden they discover themselves powerless to avoid the
temptation to give Mary a call. Now what
David is saying, in that situation the way to handle the problem is don’t go
near Mary’s house and if that means staying 85 blocks away, stay 85 blocks
away, because it’s a particular thing about sin and you might as well learn
this about how the flesh works.
When we sin
there’s actually a chain reaction that’s set up. It looks like this, you have a series of
steps and the sin with which you’re concerned may be down here, it’s maybe the
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the sixth step in the chain; maybe going to bed with Mary. The first step in the chain may be deciding
well gee, I ought to go for a ride today, and the second step may be a left
turn, and the third step may be a right turn and the first thing you’re on the
same block and then you’re at her door.
Now what David is saying, recognize that by the time you have made the
first step or the second step you’ve already chosen the sixth step. In other words, don’t presuppose that once
you’ve gone step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5 you can stop at this. Now here’s a principle and this is how your
soul works; by the time you’ve taken step 1 you’ve taken it against your
conscience. If you’ve taken step 1
you’re already on negative volition because you know what you have in mind,
even though you don’t like to admit that that’s what you have in mind, you do
have it in mind and your conscience is telling you you do have it in mind.
So watch what
happens, and here’s how you get in trouble every single time. You go negative volition at step 1, what does
negative volition do against your conscience?
It knocks you out of fellowship; you lost the filling of the Holy Spirit
right at the first step. And this is why
once you find yourself down at step 4 you can’t do it anything about it because
you got out of fellowship back at step 1.
This is the delayed approach but it shows you that the issue to your
conscience occurs many times hours before the final act, and David, therefore,
is saying in verse 8 “Remove your way far from her,” the word “way” means when
you’re out for a walk, you’re going out on your bicycle or chariot Solomon,
just reroute, keep your route far from it because the moment you adjust your
route you know what you want and you’re out of fellowship and there’s no way
you can stop the process. Now this looks
on the face of it as being chicken. And
this is usually the objection to this kind of approach.
Let me show you
from the pages of God’s Word that God insist we use this; it may be acting like
a chicken but in this case the chicken is the wise one. So let’s look at some of the verses in the
New Testament that confirm this principle.
The first one, Matthew 5:28. In
other words, simply stated, the idea is to cut off the thing when it first
begins, not after you’re half way down the slide. While you’re in the middle it’s the old
story; you’re sliding down a slide and you never think you’re going to hit
bottom until boom, there you are and it smarts.
But all the time you’re at step 2, step 3, step 4, nobody on earth can
convince you you’re going to have trouble because you have made a decision back
here to step out of fellowship and get into a situation where you know you will
be tempted. Now that is an act of
rebellion in itself, preceding the second act of rebellion. You are deliberately choosing to place
yourself in a situation that you know will lead to your temptation. Why are you doing it? Because you want to, that’s why, because
you’ve already made up your mind to do that.
And so in Matthew
5 we have Jesus articulating the same version of another principle in other
words, “But I say unto you that whosoever looks at a woman to lust after has
committed adultery with her already in his heart. [29] And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck
it out, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy
members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
hell.” Now Jesus is using the extreme
method to teach the principle. What He
is saying is that down here we have adultery, literal adultery. But He goes back to the first point on this
chain which may be the eye itself and its looking, and Jesus says look, you
have trouble with your eye and you can’t control your eye… this has to be
interpreted, by the way, in the context of the Sermon on the Mount which is
something else again, deal with it there, not at the end of the chain. Deal with it firmly at the root which is
chronological sequence [can’t understand words], if you have to blind yourself,
blind yourself but don’t get trapped in this operation toboggan slide where you
start going down and once you go it goes faster and faster and faster and
faster. And there are men here that can
testify to that. So this is the way it
goes and this is how easily it happens and the Bible says once you start on the
slide it’s too late then, friend. The
place to stop it is right up here.
There’s another passage which we do not have time to cover this morning,
it’s 2 Timothy 2:22 which is flee lust, the same thing, same concept.
Let’s turn back to
Proverbs 5:9 begins the motivation section; remember, we are dealing with
instruction literature. The first nine
chapters of Proverbs are written as instruction literature, not proverbs;
Proverbs doesn’t begin until chapter 10 but the first 9 chapters are
instruction literature and instruction literature differs in many respects. First, instruction literature will have a
command and the verbs will be the imperative mood. Proverbs are never commands; never! Proverbs are just simple statements, “train a
child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it” later on. There’s no command there, it’s just stating a
principle, and the verb is in the indicative mood. But commands are given in the imperative mood
and they are usually clear; instruction literature is not like proverbs. Proverbs are deliberately structured so you
have trouble understanding it because it was a mental exercise that was
required of believers in the ancient world that in order to learn the Word of
God they had to interact mentally with the Word and Proverbs is set up to force
you to think; agonizing (?). And then
motivation was usually given after the command.
So these sections break down, verses 7-8 is the command, verses 9-14 is
the motivation.
Now Proverbs 5:9
we begin the motivation clause. “Lest
thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel; [10] Lest
strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labors be in the house of a
stranger.” Now verses 9 and 10 are
parallel in practically every respect.
Notice, for example, in verse 9, the indirect object, “lest thy give
thine honor to” who? “others.” Is it
singular or plural? Plural. Notice in verse 10, “Lest strangers be filled
with thy wealth,” plural. So you have a
parallel between “others” and “strangers,” both are plural nouns. Notice the last part of verse 9, “thy years
unto the cruel ones,” singular; and the last part of verse 10, “thy labors in
the house of a stranger,” singular. So
you have an analogy with plurals and singulars.
You also have
another analogy; the beginning of verse 9, “Lest thou give thine honor unto
others,” and verse 10, “Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth,” the nouns
“honor” and “wealth” are synonyms which we must study to understand this
passage. Notice the last part of verse 9
and the last part of verse 10, “thy years unto the cruel; verse 10, “thy labors
be in the house of a stranger.” So
verses 9 and 10 are parallel in practically every respect.
Now in order to
understand the word we have to go back and figure out the use of the word
“wealth” and “honor.” We’re looking at
two words, “honor” and “wealth.” We have
a problem with these words; these words can be used in many different
respects. They can be used for physical
strength; they can be used for financial power.
And we have to decide and the translators have tried to decide for
you. Those with the King James
translation will notice that the first one, “give thine honor” refers to the
physical power and so on, and the second way they translated the one in verse
10 is “wealth”, so they wanted to be sure they were right, they took one
meaning for one and one meaning for the other and that way they figured they’d
hit it some place. But these nouns are
used synonymously so either both refer to wealth or both refer to physical
strength but one can’t refer to one and one to the other; there has to be some
sort of consistency.
Now it just turns
out that in one of the extra canonical books we have a very similar passage
that these words are used in. In your
bulletin you’ll see two passages taken from the book of Ecclesiasticus; now
this is not Ecclesiastes, this is Ecclesiasticus. Let me explain what we’re doing here. In the ancient world we have what we call
non-canonical books and canonical books.
The word “canon” comes from the word “law,” tied in with a yardstick, it
doesn’t mean a canon, a 105mm or something like that, it refers to law, or a
measure. The books that were canonical
fits the measure of inspiration, so the Jews in the nation Israel took the
books that they had, they had gobs of books but only some were inspired books,
and they took the books that were inspired from the books that were not
inspired. Now I go into this for you
because in our day we have evangelicals writing in magazines all over the place
that inerrancy and so on isn’t critical.
How do you suppose the ancient world ever distinguished inspired books
from non-inspired books? They did it,
one of the criteria was inerrancy. Well,
if inerrancy doesn’t matter then don’t you see we have just destroyed the whole
concept of canonical and non-canonical literature? That’s why we have canonical literature;
we’re setting this literature apart as something special.
Now there were (?)
a lot of books that are very important on the non-canonical list. Many of these books were written in the
latter days of the nation Israel just before the time of Christ. One of these books is 1 Maccabees; if you
have a Catholic friend they have this book in their Bible, 1 Maccabees or 2
Maccabees, they’re thrilling stories and if you have a chance to read… this
whole thing is called Apocrypha, you can buy it in a Christian bookstore. And it’s a good background; it’s literature
that was written by the Jews between the testaments. In other words between the end of the Old and
the beginning of the New they wrote this kind of literature. It was not written by prophets, it was not
written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and therefore is not
considered inspired but it is very important for two reasons. The Apocrypha gives us control over
vocabulary because it tells us how they used these words. So first of all words that are rare in the
Bible and we want to get a feeling for and they don’t occur anywhere else, how
are we going to find out; we’ve got to go to some other literature where these
same words are used. So one use of these
kind of books is vocabulary. It enables
us to control the vocabulary.
Secondly, they are
also used to fill in details of history.
Now they’re not necessarily reliable but they do give us some details of
history. We’re not interested in the
second reason here; today we’re only interested in vocabulary. Now these two passages use the words that
we’re going to study. The first passage
is Ecclesiasticus 26:19-21, and it’s written in the same style as Proverbs so
it’s very powerful evidence of what’s going on.
“My son, keep sound the bloom of your youth, and do not give your
strength,” same word, “to strangers.
[20] Seek a fertile field within the whole plain, sow it with your own
seed, trusting in your own fine stock, so your offspring will survive and
having confidence in their good descent will grow great.” Now I hope some of you aren’t overly literal
and that you understand what that passage is talking about. It’s talking about procreation of children
and obviously it uses the word “strength” for sexual vigor.
Now let’s look at
this word; you notice after the word “strength” in your bulletin I have a
parenthesis, ischus is a Greek word,
this is the Greek, this Ecclesiasticus apparently was written in Greek, so this
tells us that the Greek word ischus
is used in these kinds of contexts for sexual strength. But it also turns out that the Greek
translation of the Old Testament, which is Hebrew, in other words, the
Septuagint was just a Roman numeral 70, this is how it’s written, LXX, the
Septuagint, was kind of the living Bible of the generation and it was their
modernized version of the Old Testament.
So many Jews spoke Greek and they didn’t like to study Hebrew. That’s Hebrew; the small little dot that you
see up in the last word on the left, the last little mark you see there, is a
yot or yodh and that particular yodh is the smallest letter in the Hebrew
alphabet; that is the word that Christ said, one yodh or one tittle shall in no
wise pass from the Law until all be fulfilled.
He meant that one of those little marks is not going to be changed. Would you say Christ was an overly literal
fundamentalist? So we have, then, the
Septuagint.
The Septuagint was
a Greek translation of Hebrew, so the thing was written in Hebrew and in Hebrew
the word looks like this: (?) coach
or actually k if you want to make koach
and that’s the way the Hebrew word is used.
Now the Septuagint, when it came to Proverbs 5, this verse, verse 10
when it says “thy wealth” this is talking about coach, the Septuagint translating it ischus, and therefore we know from Ecclesiastes which also uses the
Greek word for sexual strength, now we understand how ischus was understood and therefore coach does not mean wealth in verse 10; it’s not talking about
hiring a hand and it’s going to break you financially. This is not talking about financial wealth;
it’s talking about sexual strength.
All right, then
what does this refer to? “Lest thy give
thine honor,” thy sexual strength, “unto others,” and then we’ll read the
parallel in verse 10, “Lest strangers be filled,” or satisfied, “with your
sexual strength,” and this is obviously referring to the son, say Solomon, and
he goes out and has sex with the wrong woman, and David says you know Solomon,
you’re an idiot because this woman is satisfied sexual by your sexual strength
and you have just blown it as far as your life is concerned, you have wasted
your sexual strength on the wrong woman.
Now that’s quite blunt but that’s just what the Bible says. And after, in the last part of verse 9, and
the last part of verse 10, it uses plurals, notice, “Lest thou give thine honor
unto others, and thy years,” plural, “thy years unto the cruel.” “…and thy labors be in the house of a
stranger.” The pluralness is the plural
acts of sexual intercourse. This is
another way, a euphemistic way of placing it, all your labors are going to be
in the house of a stranger, you could have had the best woman, Solomon, you
could have exercised your sexual vigor upon her to make her respond to you and
then you would have a woman that would be helping you in your calling and
instead you have just blown it by wasting it on others.
Now if you’ll look
here there’s another problem that has to be solved. “Strangers” and “years” are both, or at least
the word strangers, are masculine plural.
Now we’ve got one other interpretation problem. How do we explain “thy labors,” that’s easy,
but “thy years unto the cruel,” and these “strangers” in verse 10 that are
filled. Masculine, this is not
homosexuality, the masculine plural is used to denote a class of people, and
the masculine plural is used to denote the wrong women as part of those, that
general class of (?), or strangers. Now
what are strangers? Strangers would be
people who do not participate in your calling.
And so this word “strangers” (?) back to divine guidance on a young
man’s life. The young man has a calling
from God; God has… let’s go back to the fact when he became a Christian. When you became a Christian, some of you
ought to remember this because I hope some of you, when the Billy Graham thing
that’s coming up you ought to be counselors; you ought to be able to sit down
and explain to somebody how to become a Christian and you ought to sit down and
explain what their basic possessions are as a believer. Now the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
do certain things for us at the point of salvation; we’ll only go with the
Father here to illustrate the point. The
Father, according to Romans 8:29-30 foreknows, He predestines, He calls, He
justified, He glorifies and He disciplines.
Six things the Father does for every believer.
Now let’s look at
foreknowing and predestination. That has
to do with the fact that here you are, (?) incomplete saint, and eventually
conformed to the image of Christ, halo in tact.
Now you have a path that you go, from the time that you accept Christ
until the time you die and judgments are made after your death and so on,
believer’s judgments, etc. Now during
this path God has ordained something for you to do in history, a calling; it
may be a janitor or it may be something else but God has a calling for you,
just as He gave a calling for Adam and in order to do that you need an ‘ezer, you need someone to help
you. And so what David is saying, these
“strangers,” the ones who are not you ‘ezer,
the ones who are not sympathetic with your calling, who can’t fit into the
calling of God, these are the people that are going to (?) from the sexual
strength that God has given you. Now if
you (?) you’re just wasting your resources and this why, by the way, the same
noun is used for financiers as is used for sexual strength, you’ve made a bad
investment. And it’s no accident that
these nouns are used both ways.
Now if we look further
in Proverbs 5:10, “Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labors be
in the house of a stranger,” “house of a stranger” emphasizes the family of the
stranger and emphasizes that the benefits go to someone other than your best
woman that God has for you.
Then Proverbs 5:11
is another motivation; verses 9-10 was one motivation, parallel verses. Verse 11 is another motivation. And it says, “And you mourn at the last, when
your flesh and your body have been consumed.”
Now there are two words that are used for flesh and body. The one word for flesh, the first word is basar, that’s the normal word for
flesh. The next word looks like this, shar, or maybe two a’s if you want to get another vowel in, basar and shar; basar is
the usual word for flesh, shar is not
the usual word for flesh; shar is a word that apparently is tied with
blood. In the book of Leviticus this is
spoken of sacrifice, “flesh and blood.”
This is another euphemism for the male sex organ and refers to the fact
of potency. Now I told you we’d get into
it here and here we are, so you can hide yourself behind the person in front of
you if you want to blush in your private response but…
In verse 11 we’re
talking about the destruction of the sexual vigor of the male. This is a claim which can be checked. This is one of those instances in God’s Word
where the Bible goes on record as making a claim that can be tested. Is it really true that promiscuity, as spoken
of here, will ultimately lead to verse 11?
Is that really the case? And the
word “mourn” means groan in despair, because then this man, this son, finally
after messing around with a few wrong women is going to go and he may meet his
best woman and now he’s going to groan because now he cannot satisfy her because
he has blown it down through the years of his life and these promiscuous
adventures of his. And the only word
that describes the condition of the person is that they’re going to moan
because they know that they should be able to deal with this situation in the
second divine institution and now they can’t do it.
Now watch; we
have, fortunately today, several medical evidences that substantiate verse 11;
I’m thankful to some of the people in our congregation who occasionally present
me with papers from their own reading and I encourage this because this is the
way it helps to illustrate the word. We
have several medical papers that substantiate the truth of verse 11, that
promiscuity leads to a destruction of the person sexually.
First, obvious, you
have the… [tape turns] … one of the papers is a paper written by Dr. Robert
(?), professor at Harvard Medical School, called: Promiscuity and Pre-malignant Lesions of the Cervix, and it’s
talking about sores in the woman that can eventually lead to cancer. And he began to study the outbreak of this in
various classes of women and in his paper he divided it into two classes; one
he called low risk and high risk women; that is, the women in the right side,
on the high risk, had a tremendous risk of cancer of the cervix, where women on
the other side have a very low risk of cancer of the cervix, and so he began to
study this and here’s what he came up with.
On the low risk side, virgins; on the high risk side, prostitutes. On the low risk side, Catholic and Protestant
women who attend services regularly, religious services regularly; on the high
risk side Catholic and Protestant women who attend services none or very
infrequently. Now obviously going to
church doesn’t solve cancer, there are several intermediate steps but I think
you catch on to the fact… it’s very interesting, he had several other classes
which I won’t go into but it’s the same kind of thing. In other words, all the groups on the left
basically are not promiscuous, and the ones on the right are. And as one person wrote, who discovered the
paper because the doctor seems under consternation about what causes this, he
said I wonder if we have moral (?), obviously the case is that we have cases
where these women are having sex with a number of different partners and as a
result they are having a very high risk type of cancer of the cervix. All right, that’s one evidence.
There’s another
evidence, a paper that I read to you earlier by Ted McWilliams, I read it in
the Proverbs series, where you can take a person who is promiscuous and then a
person who is not promiscuous and you can diagram their sexual response and you
can take a promiscuous person and it’s as though God has given you, at the time
of your birth, the ability to respond sexually in 360 different degrees, in the
sense of many different types. After
promiscuity, or at the point when a person has sex, these patterns start to
bend in the direction of the person with whom they have sex, so that they adapt
themselves to that person. Now that’s
partner one, and now we have, say partner number 16 and by this time these
patterns have become confused and the potential has been destroyed for
adaptability; they’ve tried to adapt to one, they’ve tried to adapt to two,
adapt to three, and the patterns have been erased; these patterns are fixed
here and then say, if you want to use it by percent, suppose you use 10% of the
potential on number one, that leaves 90% left, so both looking at it from the
psychological point of view, the physical point of view, there are evidences
available in modern medical literature that substantiate the claim of verses 9,
10 and 11 that human sexual potency is limited and can be wasted.
Now just look at
this, look how different the Word of God handles this than most people
think. The average person thinks the
Bible is very prissy, that God is a meany, He doesn’t want anybody to have fun
and so on. And yet isn’t it exactly the
opposite: What is God teaching here?
Conservatoin of natural resources.
For what? For enjoyment, that’s
what. God is simply teaching people the
principles that you can destroy and wipe out something that you has been given
to you from physical birth and you can destroy it on the way, and as this verse
says you’re going to moan because you have.
Now, Proverbs
4:12-14, by the way, before we get there let me turn to a passage in the New
Testament that also shows promiscuity in another light. 1 Corinthians 6, there’s a strange verse in
this chapter that I have thought long and hard about and we must deal with
this, and this is the best place today to work with it. 1 Corinthians 6:18. It says “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is outside his
body; but he that commits fornication sins against his own body.” What is peculiar, then, about promiscuity
according to 1 Corinthians 6:18?
Obviously, something is different about this particular kind of
sin. Now I have to be careful; on the
one hand, I am trying to warn you about the cause and effect that God’s Word
gives, a cause and effect that is gradually becoming substantiated by medical
research, not always, not completely today, granted. But it is becoming established by medical
research. I want to then warn you of the
effects.
But obviously
there are going to be people and there are people here who have been involved
in promiscuity. Now what does this verse
do? Does this damn you? No.
First of all, for those of you who have blown it, you haven’t blown it
in the total sense of the word. You may
have had sex with the wrong person but at least you haven’t married them,
hopefully. And you, therefore, haven’t
made the biggest mistake of all of hooking your life on to their destiny, as it
says in the last part of the first six verses they don’t know what’s going on
and so you’re going to wind up wandering around because they don’t know what’s
going on. Now hopefully you haven’t
hooked your chariot onto the wrong star.
So you may have blown it as far as promiscuity goes but you at least
haven’t blown it as far as the second divine institution is concerned and as
far as you are still accessible to your right woman or your best woman or your
best man.
Now, the second
thing, under God’s grace +R learned behavior patterns can be established. It takes hard work unto the Holy Spirit, with
the Holy Spirit working to establish this but it can be done, and you can have
a satisfactory relationship with your best woman and your best man but it will
take effort to do. And it will take
weeks, months and maybe years to undo damage that has been done but by God’s
grace it can be ameliorated to some degree.
So this is not a sentence of doom upon those who have dropped the ball
here a little bit.
Let’s go back to
Proverbs 5. The second way it destroys
you, Proverbs 5:12-13. Proverbs 5:9-11
we go on a triad here, 9 10 and 11, sexual destruction; 12 and 13 spiritual
destruction, verse 14 social destruction.
Notice the priorities here. Isn’t
this interesting; what do you suppose God’s concerned with. Doesn’t it, from the priorities of these
verses look like that God is really concerned with a person’s sexual
happiness? Of course He is. Jesus Christ invented sex; Hugh Hefner did
not. Jesus Christ was the one who
created it and created it to be used for enjoyment. And it’s a marvelous thing when used properly
and God is just simply giving you instructions on how to use what He has
created for you, that’s all, it’s not some meany thing, do this and don’t do
that, it’s not related like that at all.
Let’s look at
Proverbs 5;12-13; “And you say,” this is
the person who’s mourning over impotency because he’s wandered around, “And you
say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart has despised reproof, [13] And
have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that were
instructing me!” The word “instruction”
and “reproof” deal with the two phases of instruction given in Ephesians. You know, the parents are told bring your
children up “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” there’s two nouns
there, “nurture” and “admonition.” These
are the same two, except in the Hebrew form.
The first word that in the King James is translated as “instruction” is
actually not instruction, it’s musar,
it’s instruction all right, it’s tough, physical training. Someone loaned me a book which is the best
book I’ve ever seen on sanctification, we’re going to get it in the library,
it’s called the Marine machine, and it’s a photographic essay of ten weeks of
basic training in Paris Island, and obviously the language might raise a few of
your hairs when you read through but it shows you what musar is; it’s a beautiful exposition of musar. And the man who wrote
the book made the interesting point at the beginning of the book; he said
inevitably during the training everybody thinks the D.I. is the worst man ever
to descend to this earth until a strange thing happens, until that same soldier
is out in combat some time and he suddenly discovers the responses that were
trained into him by that D.I. come through and save his life and he turns
around and he says thank you, thank you that he was so hard on me and he
trained me so well for the crisis.
Now this is an
aspect of Christian training which I think is very lacking. We have this picture that God is love but
don’t exclude these two words, “love” and “severity.” Those are not antonyms, they’re not
contrasts. God can love you very much
and be very severe with you because He is training you and you and I have no
idea of the spiritual forces of evil that would want to take advantage of us
and harm us. We don’t have our eyes open
to the unseen world, but there are powers there who would destroy you, who
would destroy me, who would destroy our fellowship, who would be in glee over
everything they can do to destroy, and it is because of these unseen powers,
these unseen enemies, that God is administering musar.
Now the musar here is that which the father
administers to his son. “How have I
hated musar,” you see, this is the
son reacting to severe training by his father, ooh, I hate it. Now obviously if you understand what musar is you can understand why the son
might hate it. And obviously those of
you who are parents know exactly what we are talking about. You know what it is when you administer some
physical discipline or you lay down the law and your children don’t like
it. I don’t like that, I have the
meanest parents on the block, and Johnnie’s parents, they don’t do that to him,
what’s wrong with you. That’s the
diplomacy argument, the pressure tactic, all the other people are doing it this
way, you’re the only people that are out of line; probably you’re the only
people that are standing for biblical principles as far as(?). All right, musar is the sever physical form.
The next word is
verbal counseling; the word “reproof” is a word which means a verbal
counsel. This means giving advice and
notice the milder verb, “my heart despised” my parents verbal advice. I know what mother and father told me but
what do they know, they’re clods, and it’s the clod disease develops somewhere
around 14 and lasts until about 21 and during that 7 year interval nobody is
more stupid than parents. And then for
some reason there’s a great revival of respect after 21, usually. I know some of you are saying yeah, I’m still
waiting, but there is a revival on down the line if you’ve done your job
properly, which illustrates in this point something of vital interest to
parents. Verse 12 is telling you parents
something about attitudes that your children have towards you. Your job as parents is not to make your
children like you. Your job as parents
is to make your children respect you and if you have to choose between them
respecting you and liking you, you choose respect, because the liking will
follow. But you can never get them
ultimately to really like you if they have no respect for you. So you just concentrate on one word, the
attitude you want on the part of your children is respect. They may hate your guts for a while, that’s
all right. They respect your authority
and your power and that’s the way it should be run.
And that’s what
happened here, you can see, obviously verse 12 is a son who rejected the
authority of the second divine institution, he despised the authority and power
of his parents, and what kind of a jam is he in. See!
Where did he get himself? He got
himself right down to the end of the line, that’s where, and he has destroyed
himself sexually and now he thinks I have reacted, my attitude has been wrong,
and so he says, Proverbs 5;13, “I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers,”
and there’s your authority coming in.
Verse 12 is more of the power, verse 13 the authority, “I have not
obeyed the voice of my teachers.”
In other words, he
acknowledges his sin in verses 12-13. So
whereas verses 9, 10 and 11 was the sexual destruction, here the spiritual
destruction is pointed out, I have a rebellious mental attitude in my
life. And I’ll tell you something as
pastor, wherever you have the patterns described in verses 12-13 toward
parents, inevitably you have it toward the Lord. I don’t care how bad the parents were, I have
seen this again and again and again in believers; kids who are raised without
respect carry the same behavior pattern over into the Christian life and they disrespect
the Word, they could care less what the Word of God says. There are some here like that. And some of you people have despised your
parents and you can’t stand them and you can’t stand the authority and the attitude
is right on your face, even as I teach the Word of God I can tell, you can’t
stand it either. I don’t know why you
stand me, probably because it’s your parents are sitting in the back row. But it’s too bad and you have a very
enlightening series of events coming to you because you may have to go through
the same thing as Proverbs 5 is warning you about and you’re just going to have
to get down at the end of the slide and become sexually impotent because you
couldn’t stand to be constrained by your parent’s advice and you’ll wind up
just like this.
All right,
Proverbs 5:14 is the final disastrous result and that is social
destruction. “I was almost in all evil
in the midst of the congregation and assembly.”
Now this may be a technical expression, except for the fact, if you’ll
turn again to your bulletin there’s another passage in Ecclesiasticus where the
noun “congregation” is used in a very similar context and refers just simply to
society. It’s not referring to the
official worship of the Old Testament.
It’s just a synonym for society at large. This is very fun; those of you who have
daughters will appreciate it. “Keep
strict watch over a head strong daughter, lest she make you a laughing stock to
your enemies, a byword in the city, and notorious among the congregation of the
people, and put you to shame before the great multitudes.” The word “congregation” is the same word as
verse 14 and refers to society in general, not the specific worship group of
the Old Testament.
So here we have
the destruction of the social reputation, it just goes right down the drain and
that is important. The reason for this
is the expression, God and man. Remember
when we were going through conscience in the introduction to the Proverbs
series, I said we’d encounter passages like this. And I told you that men lived their lives
before God and before men, now that doesn’t mean we compromise before men but
it means that if I am a lone person I have my own private conscience, but I
live inside of a lot of other people and these people have consciences. They are made in the image of God also and so
my life is constantly being measured by their conscience. This is not measured by social standards; it
is people will be embarrassed to stand in front of other people.
This leads to one
of the great defense mechanisms called isolation. Isolation is a carnal way of handling this
thing where a person will gradually isolate themselves from everybody. Why is this?
Because they are being condemned by the conscience of other people. You have forms of paranoia develop, everybody
is against me, I won’t go in there because they’re all hypocrites or
something. That’s not the reason; the
reason is you just can’t stand it because of your own guilt. And you know, the funny part about it is, is
that this person may have genuine… suppose this person is promiscuous; suppose
we take the position here of Proverbs 5 and suppose this person has been
promiscuous with four or five people and he has that on his mind. He’s going to have a hard time with some
people and these people won’t even know about it, but he’ll give it away by the
way he acts. And that’s a very
interesting phenomena to watch; a person who is guilty, who has not handled
their guilt before God properly, by 1 John 1:9 will inevitably give their guilt
away and they’ll think it’s some sort of a prod or something to undo them in
society. No, that’s not all, they are
just guilty and their own guilt, by the way they act, you say what the heck,
what’s wrong with this person, why do they act so queer. And finally a few smart people over here figure
out what’s going on and that’s what happens.
So Proverbs 5:7-14
deals with the second installment on messing around with the wrong woman. Now beginning in verse 15 next week we’ll
deal with the proper approach to the best woman; this states the positive,
we’ve been on the negative and now we will be on the positive.