Beware of the Dog - Keep from the Forbidden Woman

Now, if you would, take your Bible and turn to Proverbs chapter 5. Proverbs chapter 5. I know many of you came in here thinking, "Where in the world is the pastor going to go?" We have just finished up looking at those seven churches in the book of Revelation, and we do have a series that is before us. I will announce Sunday morning where we are going next, so you'll just have to hold on. And I want you to turn to Proverbs chapter 5, and tonight and next Wednesday night, we're going to study this chapter. Tonight we're going to look at verses 1 to 14 and what I call, "Beware of the dog, the forbidden woman." That's the title of the message.

Beware of the dog, the forbidden woman. Next week we're going to look at verses 15 to 23, "Beware of the dog, stay at home." Beware of the dog, stay at home. Now you may ask a question, and this is a legitimate one, "Why am I sharing these messages? Why am I in this chapter?" Basically for three reasons. First of all, in the past four months, I have revived and rejuvenated my study personally through the book of Proverbs, and in reading Proverbs over and over, I have seen afresh and anew the repeated warnings against sexual immorality and adultery.

And to me, that reminds me that if Proverbs repeats this kind of teaching over and over and over, well, we may need to repeat these things over and over and over. Secondly, recently it has come out that a very high profile and influential Christian leader has confessed to, and I'm using the language that's out there, an inappropriate relationship with a woman that's not his wife. I know that many of you have listened to his teaching. Some of you may remember, but our small group study of the attributes of God drew heavily from this person's teaching.

And when these kind of things happen, it stirs up questions, it stirs up conversations, it stirs up lots of emotions. So to me, we should use these kind of situations as teaching moments. And then third, sexual immoralities and temptations are all around us in our culture. I don't have to really share that with you. You know that. But in our culture, we see sexual sin and sexual perversions of all kinds being celebrated and propagated and even portrayed as normal and good. The only thing pertaining to human sexuality that is condemned in our day is what God says about these things.

That means we need to remind ourselves of what God says about these things so as not to be tempted to view these things the way the world says we should. So tonight and next week, we'll study chapter five of Proverbs, which is all about adultery and all about sexual sin. Now if we know the Ten Commandments, we know that Exodus 20 verse 14 says, "You shall not commit adultery." Of course, this is a seven commandment and in this commandment, God clearly says that any sexual activity outside a marriage and a marriage vow is sinful. And here in chapter five, Solomon really expounds on that commandment.

He really continues to teach on Exodus 20 verse 14. He expounds on that teaching by revisiting something he's already dressed and that is in chapter two verse 16 to 19 and that is the forbidden adulteress woman. And if you study all of the Proverbs, and I encourage you to do that, if you study all of the Proverbs, you'll see that Solomon visits and revisits this forbidden woman of adultery over and over. We see this in chapter two. I mentioned those verses. We see it in chapter five. We'll study that tonight and next week. We see it in chapter six, chapter seven, chapter 20, chapter 22, chapter 23, and chapter 27.

One commentator that I read calls this forbidden woman a major character in the book. Think about it. A major character in the book and I agree. I think he hits the nail on the head there. So if the forbidden woman of adultery and the subjects of sexual sin and adultery are repeated over and over and over in the book and if sexual temptations and sexual sins are real and prevalent in our day, should we not revisit this teaching often? The answer is yes. As a matter of fact, today at lunch I was sharing with my wife that I don't think I have taught on this enough, near enough.

So let's read the chapter, Proverbs chapter five, starting in verse one. Solomon says, "My son, be attentive to my wisdom and climb your ear to my understanding that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path of sheal. She does not ponder the path of life, her ways wander and she does not know it. And now, O son, listen to me and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

Keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless. As strangers take their fill of your strength and your labors go to the house of a foreigner. And at the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and body are consumed and you say, how I hated discipline and my heart despised reproof. I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation. Take water from your own sister, flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving dear, a graceful doe, let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.

He dies for lack of discipline and because of his great folly he is led astray. Now this is how we will divide this chapter. There are four divisions in the chapter. Tonight we will cover two and then next week we will cover the last two. They're easy to see and I think you'll follow me easily. So number one, I want us to see the forbidden woman. Now we see the forbidden woman in verses one to six. I'm not going to go back and read those verses because of time. But here in verses one and two we see the father Solomon calling his young son to heed or to listen to his teaching and to his wisdom.

And if we study the Proverbs we see Solomon calling his young son to listen to his teaching many, many times. Now I want to pause right here. To me there's a lesson. If we have children we should be like Solomon. Over and over and over we should call our sons, we should call our daughters to hear God's word, to listen to God's word and to obey God's word. You may say pastor I feel like I repeat myself over and over and over and they don't hear me. I feel like I repeat myself over and over and it just goes in one ear and out the other. Well Solomon kept on. He repeated himself. He did it over and over and over. So if he did we should.

I like what the Bible commentator Jay Vernon McGee says here. He says this is wisdom bidding the young man to come to her school and learn from her. I like that illustration school. Now what's this school? This is the school of wisdom. What a question. Think back to when you were in school. That might have been a hundred years ago. But think back to when you were in school. How many days did you go to school? How many years did you go to school? So the lesson here is this. In the school of wisdom you go to school and you go to class over and over and over. We never quit going to the school of wisdom. We do it till we graduate.

In other words leave this life. And another thing we must see here. If we believe we can get two or three messages on sexual immorality and adultery and that is enough. Well we are in a very deadly and dangerous place. We are in a very dangerous place right where the enemy wants us to be. But here Solomon is working to keep his son in the school of wisdom and the lesson for the day is on the forbidden woman. Now right here we need to ask a few questions about this forbidden woman. The English standard calls her forbidden. The King James calls her a strange woman. The new American calls her an adulterous woman.

You noticed I kind of compared her to a dog. You might say pastor that's a little rude. I think you'll see that applies. But what kind of a woman was she? I mean was she a prostitute, a woman of the street? Was she a married woman? Was she an unmarried seductive woman? Well who was she? Was she young? Was she old? Well we really don't know. But we will revisit that in our application of these verses. Now right here I want us to see a few specifics about this woman and these specifics are descriptive and educational. Notice in verse 1 her kisses. Now here we see that Solomon writes about the lips of the forbidden woman.

He says her lips are as sweet as honey. And here we must see that in their day honey was seen as one of the sweetest of foods. Just like today it was added to foods to make them sweet. It was very desirable like candy or like sugar for us in our day. But here Solomon is saying that her kisses are as sweet and as pleasurable as the sweetness of honey. And to me this does not speak of her speech because when you speak of speech you speak of using the tongue. So to me he's speaking of the kisses of the adulterous woman. And then second notice her speech. We see this in verse 3, the second part of verse 3. Here Solomon is addressing her speech.

In their day oil was used regularly for medicinal purposes. It soothed the wounds. It soothed injuries. So Solomon was and is saying that her flattery and her flirtatious speech was and is as smooth as oil. So notice her seductive kisses were and are as sweet as honey and her seductive speech were and are as smooth as oil. But that's on the front end of things. Now notice the results. This is the back end of things. Third notice her end. We see that in verse 4. Now notice that there are two pictures used here to illustrate her end. Notice that she is as bitter as wormwood.

Now in their day in the land of Palestine there were several different types of wormwood and they all had a very very bitter taste. All throughout the Old Testament wormwood is symbolic of bitterness, calamity, and sorrow. So this is symbolic language used to say that the forbidden woman turns life into bitterness, into calamity, and into great sorrow. I remember years ago when I left full time ministry and became bi-vocational I went to work for a contractor. And the contractor that I worked for, I mean he worked for people who were in a higher, much higher tax bracket. He worked for people who built million and two million dollar homes.

And when we were doing a particular type of cabinetry, things like that, we would use a wood that was called Spanish cedar. And I'll never forget the first time I picked it up and I ran it through a table saw, I mean immediately I thought that smells beautiful. I mean it smells beautiful, but as soon as you think that, the taste hits you. That taste hits you. And it was bitter, I mean bitter bitter. And we learned that to combat the bitterness and working with it you had to just constantly eat peppermints because you had to work with it. You could smell it, smell beautiful, taste it awful.

You know I think about the bitterness, the wormwood, the end of this adulterous woman, the calamity, the bitterness, the great sorrow. It reminds me of a family member that I had years ago who fell prey to the adulterous woman and his life ended up in nothing but wormwood. It ended up in bitterness, calamity, and great sorrow. Even later when he was enduring all of that bitterness, all of that calamity and great sorrow, he begged his family for forgiveness when it was really too late. And then notice she is as sharp and painful as a sharp sword. Now in their day the double-edged sword was a very fierce fighting weapon.

It would do severe damage in battle as a four-handed weapon and a back-handed weapon. One commentator said that the sword of the harlot cut both body and soul. So this is very symbolic language as well. It used to communicate that the forbidden woman turns the life into very painful and deadly wounds. And then notice her direction. We see this in verses 5-6. Here Solomon shows us the direction of the forbidden woman. This is the road of destruction and death, not the path of life spoken of in verse 6. Listen to what one commentator said. He said, "The seductress's path of death is the opposite of wisdom, wisdom's path of life.

Just as wisdom's path makes life rich and full and really worth living and leads to the rightness of age, so the seductress's path impoverishes life and robs it of meaning and leads in the end to an untimely death." Now I know I've zoomed through those verses, but look what we have here. The forbidden woman of adultery. The seductive woman of adultery. Her kisses are as sweet as they get. Her talk is as smooth as it gets, but that's on the front end. On the back end there's nothing but bitterness, calamity, and sorrow. And a relationship with her brings nothing but pain in the life and ultimate destruction and death.

Now remember my questions earlier? Was this a prostitute? Was this woman a wayward wife? Was she a seductive young woman? Was she old? Was she young? Was she respectable or not respectable? We really do not know, but it really doesn't matter because all of these types of women are very dangerous. If it's a prostitute or a wayward wife or a seductive young woman, all of these types of women are wrong. Warren Wiersby says, "The strange woman is one to whom the man is not related by marriage." So what we need to see here is the fact that the forbidden, adulterous woman could be a woman of very bad reputation.

She could be a woman of good reputation. She could be married. She could be unmarried. She could be young or she could be old. For us, we must see that any seductive woman is an adulterous. She is very dangerous and she is forbidden. I think of the seductive young woman. Maybe she's in high school or in college. She's dangerous and forbidden. How many times do we see in the news where someone's had a relationship with a very young woman or a very young man?

Keith was telling me, of course you know that Keith teaches in a community college setting, he was telling me about all the statistics that are out there of these professors who have relationships with these young girls who are in their classes. Of course we hold the professors and the instructors accountable, but what about the accountability for the young seductive woman? And then I think of the seductive woman you may see and you may meet on the business trip. See, she's a dangerous and she's forbidden as well.

I'll never forget years ago in a particular church that I was a part of, there was a man very respected in the life of the church and you know he worked on the road. He had a respectable job and he worked on the road and God worked in his life where God brought him to a point of repentance and faith and he was converted to Christ. Well to repent and accept Christ, he had to repent of all of those women that he met on those business trips. What about the seductive wife of your neighbor who works offshore or who's on the business trip? She's dangerous and she's forbidden.

I remember growing up when I was a child, growing up right next door to us, there was a particular home where there was always a visitor there that wasn't the husband. That seductive wife that was there at home while her husband was away. And I also think about the seductive woman you may meet in town, the one you may come in contact with in a business here. Even one you may come in contact with in the life of this church. She is dangerous and she is forbidden. You might say, "Pastor in the life of this church?" That can happen in the life of this church.

I remember years ago a woman in the life of a church where I served, she came from a very respectable family but it turned out that she was a very, very seductive woman. Now before we move on, there are a few facts, a few lessons that I want us to see here. You can add to this but I want us to see them and I want us to accept them. First they are out there and you must be aware of them. Look guys, you cannot be naive. You cannot be naive and you cannot deny that you would run into them because if you were naive and you deny the fact that you can run into this kind of a woman, well then you set yourself up for failure.

And wife, you can't be naive. You can't deny this. And the second, it takes you and your spouse to see them. You and your spouse must be a team. You must understand these things. You must see these things. You must work together. Third, you need accountability beyond your spouse. This is when it becomes body life, body work, accountability. Men, you need accountability here. You need accountability here that go beyond your wife. But if you don't have it with your wife, you're starting off wrong. Fourth, they can be as close as right next to you.

I remember years ago, family that we ministered to was a best friend that turned out to be the seductive wife, that turned out to be the seductive woman. What am I trying to show you? It may not be your best friend, but it can be somebody that you're very, very close to. And then fifth, they are beautiful and they are attractive on the front end, but the back end always brings destruction. It always brings destruction. So the forbidden woman. And there's a whole lot more we could say there. Number two, the ruined life. We see this in verses seven to 14. The ruined life.

Now all through the Proverbs, Solomon has established the fact that the path of the wise is a path of blessing in life. In contrast, he established the fact that the path of the seductress woman is a path of destruction and death. Now here in these verses, verses seven to 14, Solomon takes us further down the path of this forbidden woman. But a question, who is on this path? The young man who does fall for her sweet kisses and her seductive speech. Here we see the man who was ruined by her ruin. And Solomon shows us the high price a young man will pay for such sin. Now here I want to make three observations.

And whereas in verses one to six, they were primarily about the seductive woman. These verses, verses seven to 14 are primarily about the young man who falls for her. Now notice first the warning. We see this in verses seven to eight. Here in verse seven, we hear the familiar cry of the father if we are familiar with the teaching of the Proverbs. And he is reminding his son to listen. Remember earlier when I talked about the school of wisdom. Here Solomon is keeping, trying to keep his son in school. And here he is giving him another lesson. But now he goes into a specific warning. We could call this a lesson.

He tells him to stay far away from this seductive woman. And notice a progression here. He says stay away from her door, stay away from her house. So Solomon was giving his son a warning and a lesson in the school of wisdom. And there's a lesson for us here as well. Men, we must stay away from the door in the house of the seductive woman. That means we stay off certain things on our phone and on our computer. That means we stay out of certain stores. That means we stay away from certain people. That may mean that we stay away from certain types of events. I give you an example. It's rather humorous on one side but serious on another.

There was a particular business that I would go into here in town. And the lady behind the counter would always call me baby. Hey baby, how you doing? What can I do for you today baby? Can I help you in any way baby? And I'll never forget I told my wife about it. Well boy howdy, she bowed up. She said I'm going in that store with you. Well we went into that store and it was a unique circumstance. She said I don't think I'm worried about that circumstance. But she looked at me and she said but I don't want you going back in there. I didn't.

I had a friend of mine, a minister friend of mine who had his wife in a particular business and a gentleman behind the counter kept flirting with his wife. Kept flirting with his wife. Finally he looked up and he said she ain't your baby. Don't call her baby again. What am I trying to show you? I'm trying to show you that we stay off of certain things on our phone, off of certain things on our computer. We stay out of certain stores. We stay away from certain people. We stay away from certain circumstances and events. Why? Because we stay away from the seductive woman. And that's a warning for us all. And then second, notice the loss.

Verses 9 to 11 are all about the loss. We need to see that Solomon gives a long list of things in the life of the young man that he will lose if he falls into the arms of this seductive woman. He lists five things here and I'll be quick here. First honor. We see that in verse 9. Here commentators believe that Solomon is speaking of the things which are honorable in the life. Like a wife. That's honorable. Children. Children are honorable. Family. Family is honorable. Friends. Jobs. Money. Material possessions. Reputation. All those things are honorable.

He seems to be saying that those honorable things in the life they will be lost to another because of the ruin brought on from this sin. Now let me pause here. How many people have you seen because of adultery have lost all of those honorable things in the life? Second years. See this in the second part of verse 9. Here it seems that Solomon is saying that years of life will be lost. Solomon seems to be saying that the young man's life will be cut short somehow because of the ruin brought on from this sin. Third strength in verse 10. Here Solomon seems to be saying that the young man will give his strength to others.

Solomon seems to be saying that the young man's physical abilities and strong years will be given away from this ruinous sin. How many times have we seen people go through adultery and sexual immorality and it seems to sap all of the strength and all of the vitality out of their life? Fourth labor. See this in verse 10. Here Solomon seems to be saying that the young man will give his labor to others. Some speculate that this term to the house of a foreigner refers to the house of a foreign prostitute. Others the young man will work for her home and her family. So it seems that the young man will give his labor away because of this great sin.

And then fifth the body. Verse 11. Here Solomon seems to say that the young man will end his life in groaning and misery and even poor health due to this sin. So it seems that this young man will see his body consumed by sin. He will groan in agony because of his ruinous sin. And again how many times have we seen people get involved in sexual immorality and adultery? They lose their marriage and it seems to be nothing but loss, nothing but loss, nothing but loss. And third we've looked at first the warning, second the loss, and third the regret. Verses 12 to 14. Now in these three verses we see the cry of remorse and regret, not repentance.

Here we see a principle found in Galatians 6 verses 7 to 9. Simply God will not be mocked. A man will reap what he sows. See at the end of his life this young man is crying in his remorse and regret. In verse 12 he said he hated discipline and correction. In verse 13 he said he did not listen at all. In verse 13 he says he's at the end and in total ruin. So this young man is crying out but he's crying out in regret and remorse and it's too late to change anything. So look at what we have here. We've zoomed through these verses. Simply the ruined life from adultery, the ruined life from this forbidden woman.

This young man seems to have one last warning from the school of wisdom then he takes that wrong path towards the door and the house of the forbidden woman and then loss. We see cascading loss of so much in the life and ultimately it led to great regret and great remorse. Eventually the days of repentance have long passed him by. Now an application for us in our day, we must see the obvious, the ruined life from going after the forbidden woman. We must see this teaching and then we must teach our children this teaching and we must teach others this teaching. You see we must see the obvious, the ruined life from this forbidden woman.

You know before I continue in some application here, some of you have experienced this ruin in your own family, from your parents and from others that you know well. So what we must do is see this teaching, understand this teaching and pass it on. First we must teach our young men, our young sons and look we show them the teaching and we show them the ruin. We show them the teaching and I hate to say it but some of the greatest teaching examples are the ones that are around us that are so negative. And we must also teach our young women, our daughters. We teach our sons, we teach our daughters.

We teach our adults, we teach our family, we teach our friends and we must hold each other accountable here. But there are two lessons I want us to see here. First we can never quit or graduate from the school of wisdom. I borrowed that language from Jay Vernon McGee. He says this is wisdom bidding the young man to come to her school and to learn from her. Now my point here is this, we never quit learning. We never graduate. We never quit learning. We never graduate. We must be reminded of these things over and over and over and over.

Now there are a lot of questions that we'll probably never have answers for with this particular individual that we know of that has fallen here. But one question I have is this, did he just graduate from the wise teaching about the immoral woman? Did he get to the place where one day he said, "I've got that, I don't need that teaching." It very well could have. And then the second lesson, we must understand that this is life and death. These things can be final. People make mistakes here to the point to where they get to a place of regret and remorse and there's no way to undo it all.

I have a minister friend that I'm really not in close contact with much anymore. He lost his wife to cancer. It's very sad. But he made a grievous mistake. He married a woman on the rebound and she turned out to be an adulterous woman, the forbidden woman. And he lost it all. And what I mean by lost it all, he lost his ministry, he lost his ministry career, he lost his reputation. Oh, he continued to try to do ministry, lost many friends, and he lost many friends because he wouldn't be God-sided on these things. So the ruined life. And we could look at many more examples and illustrations to illustrate the ruined life.

Now as I begin to conclude, I really move away from the verses. I want to turn our attention to a very slick and very attractive plan of the devil. Today he parades before us all types of famous people who have indulged in sexual lifestyles and escapades. And it seems that they have all gotten away with it. It seems that they are living the high life. They write songs about their lives and their exploits. They make movies about their lives, experiences, and choices. They really get famous for these things. Movie stars, stars in music, sports heroes, government officials, and many more.

They burn the candle of life sexually and morally and they seem to enjoy all those things and they seem to prosper and do good in those things. And if we look at them and we listen to them, it seems that they're living the high life and we're living the low life. It seems that they have it all and we have nothing. And if we're not careful, we can allow things like that to bring us to a place where we let our guard down and we get close to the dog. I've told you all this story before. Years ago when I was a youth minister, we had a visitation program and we'd all meet at the church on Tuesday night and we had prospects and people to go see.

When it's teenagers, it's usually a little bit on the creative side, but we'd always choose up and go out, usually females with females and guys with guys. One night I had a group of guys in my wife's car and we went to make a particular visit. We drove up to this house and there was a porch there and there was one of those plastic signs on the post of the porch that said, "Beware of the dog." Well, the dog was sitting on the porch. Maybe I was a little bit on the arrogant side. I looked at those guys and I said, "Just stay in the car. I'll show you how it's doing." And I got out of the car, the dog wagged the tail.

I kind of got around the side of the car and the dog looked real friendly. Well, I got between the car and the porch and the dog immediately turned non-friendly. And the next thing I know, I'm on top of the car. I guess I should have just read the sign. In Luke Church, sexual sin is just like that experience. We can allow certain things to get us to a place where we let our guard down and we get too close to the dog of sexual immorality in the dog of that adulterous woman. And when we get too close, bam, we're in her teeth. We're in the teeth of her sin, the teeth of her ruin. So beware of the dog, the adulterous woman.

Now I really want to close by giving you an assignment. In the assignment, as another assignment, I want you to contact two people in your small group and make sure they're doing this assignment. Go to Genesis, start with chapter 12, and read and study the life of Lot and how he followed the path of sin and how that destroyed him. And make sure you find out all that he lost. Now why did I call you to this exercise? Why go to Lot? I mean you might say, "Wait a minute, pastor. I don't think Lot failed sexually.

So what does that have to do with this dog of the forbidden woman?" Search Lot is a great and terrible example of carelessly, willfully, stupidly going towards sin and allowing sin to destroy him, destroy his family, and destroy others. Find out what he ignored, what he moved away from. Find out what he looked at and moved to. Find out if he had any grace, any second chances along the way, find out what happened when he stayed on that path and find out what it cost him. And you may have to really work hard to see all that it cost him.

And let's allow Lot in his example to be a pattern and a plan to keep us from the dog of the forbidden woman, this adulterous forbidden woman, and we'll come back to the example and pattern next week.