Beware of the Dog - The Forbidden Woman

Proverbs chapter 5. Now I said it earlier and I'll repeat it. We will not cover the entire chapter tonight. Some of you might wipe your brow and feel like maybe we're not going to move quite as fast. We will have somewhat of a part one, part two in all of the chapter. There will be some similar themes in tonight's message and then next week's message. But then there will be some different themes as well because there is a transition here. Now I'm going to give you a little pastoral study tip here. Maybe this helps you. I try to give you tips because sometimes what works for you is different for me.

Sometimes something I share might be wonderful for you. Maybe you read two or three Proverbs ahead. You know we're dividing part of chapter 5 tonight, maybe this week and next week you read chapter 5 and then chapter 6, chapter 7. And you do that each week. Then you'll read each proverb two or three times and then we'll divide it together. And I think that could help it be firmly fixed in your mind. One reading usually will not do us the type of good that we need. And so that's just a tip. Maybe you read it a little bit different. Everybody is a little different. Now that leads me to the title, the series title.

The series title is Wisdom for Christian Living. As Christians we want God's wisdom. We want God to do this work in us. It's not just putting the word in our minds. We want it to be in our hearts and we want the Lord to give us understanding and ability in life. We want to be skilled in Christian living. Now we turn our attention to chapter 5. And chapter 5 truthfully is all about one subject. And some of you who are familiar with chapter 5, you know that subject. The subject all throughout the chapter is adultery or sexual sin or sexual immorality depending upon how you would phrase it.

Either of those, all of those are good descriptions of the main theme, the main teaching within the chapter. Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. That's the seventh of the ten commandments. It's real simple. It reads, "You shall not commit adultery." Here God simply states that any sexual activity outside of the marriage vow is sinful. I think we know that. Well here in chapter 5 Solomon is expounding on Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. He expounds on the theme of the forbidden adulterous woman which we dealt with in chapter 2. If you remember in verses 16 to verse 19 we dealt with this adulterous forbidden woman.

And Solomon back in chapter 2 was protecting his son from two things, the evil men, the gang, the peer pressure and then the forbidden woman. Well here in chapter 5 he continues to warn of this forbidden adulterous woman. And we will see this theme, this teaching and more throughout this proverb. And as we get into it we'll see. Now specifically this character of the forbidden woman is seen all throughout the proverbs. We will see here again in chapter 6, then in chapter 7, then in chapter 20, chapter 22, chapter 23, chapter 27. And that is why a commentator I ran across called her one of the major characters in the book.

And I will continue to use that language. Now a question. I think that you know by now I'm good at asking these rhetorical questions. I ask rhetorical questions because I want us to ponder something. But a question. Why is Solomon giving so much time and energy to this forbidden woman? The whole chapter is about the forbidden woman. Why so much time here? Solomon knows the destructive powers of this forbidden adulterous woman. He knows that she is one of the greatest dangers on the path of life for his son. Remember there are only two paths we learned last week.

The path of the wise, the upright, the righteous, and then the path of the foolish, the unrighteous, the unwise. There is no middle road. And he knows that in the paths of life this is one of the greatest dangers facing his son. He knows that many, many a young man fall into the trap of the forbidden woman and he does not want his son to fall into that trap. I have said numerous times that we have a young man in our church that's doing some mission work around the world. He's been in various places. He's in Australia right now. I'll talk about that a little later on after the message.

But periodically when I talk to him I will warn him, "You're a young man. You're alone. You're in a foreign country." And I'm saying watch out for the adulterous forbidden woman. And he says, "Thank you, Brother Chris." I like you reminding me of that. I point him out. I point these passages out, the teaching here, because we understand that this is one of the greatest dangers, not just for young men, but for all men. Now, we're going to divide this chapter in four ways. I see personally four divisions. They're kind of obvious for me. But we will only cover two tonight, two of these divisions. We'll cover verses 1, 2, 14.

We'll move a little slower, but yet there's a lot of information that we will see out of these verses. Now, as our habit I will read the passages as we progress, and I say this I think every week. If I do not read all the passages thoroughly, well then that's a portion of Scripture that I leave for you to go back and study on your own. So our first division or our first major truth in our outline, this comes out of verses 1 to 6. I'm calling this the forbidden woman. It comes right out of verse 3. This is all about the forbidden woman. Now, let's go to our Scriptures. Let's read all of these verses starting in verse 1.

He says, "My son," we know this is Solomon writing to his young son, "be attentive to my wisdom and cline 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 warm wood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path of Sheol, and she does not ponder the path of life. Her ways wander, and she does not even know it." So we have before us in these verses what I'm calling the forbidden woman.

Now, specifically in verses 1 and 2, we see Solomon, the loving father, calling his young son to heed his teaching, to listen to his wisdom again. This is repetitious. I think you know that. All through here we see Solomon doing the very same thing. I ran across a good analogy with this this week. The old Presbyterian commentator, J. Vernon McGeehee, he's long since passed. He was very popular in the 60s. He says of these verses, and I'm quoting, "This is wisdom bidding the young man to come to her school and learn from her." Now that leads me to another question. When we are in school, how many days do you go? Now think about that.

Back when we were in school, maybe you're in school now, how many days do you go? And so in the school of wisdom, you go to class over and over and over and over. We can't go to the classroom of wisdom one time and get it all. And I want you to really listen to your pastor here. If any of us think that after we get one or two lessons from the Word on any particular subject and then we have it, well then we are becoming very foolish. We're forgetful. We learn in our study of the Gospel of John. Jesus repeated over and over to his disciples. Solomon is repeating over and over to his son.

He's saying, "Stay in the school of wisdom." I like that analogy. So Solomon is keeping his son in school, and he is teaching him lessons of the forbidden woman. If Solomon is keeping his son in the school of wisdom, well then we need to stay there also. Now a few questions about this forbidden woman. This is before we get into the verses. A few questions about this woman. The English Standard Version that I'm reading from in verse 3 calls her a forbidden woman. The King James calls her a strange woman. The New American Standard calls her an adulterous woman.

Now that leads to some questions, and you'll run across questions, especially if you do some extra study. Was she a prostitute? Was she a married woman? Or was she just a young unmarried seductive woman? Who was she? Well truthfully commentators differ. I ran across some who said that she had to be a Gentile prostitute. They went on to say that Israelites were forbidden from going into prostitution. Now we know if we know our history that many of them did. There were others that said she was another man's wife. Now we really do not know. We cannot definitively say. But we will revisit this question in our application.

So hold on to that question in your mind. Was she a prostitute? Was she a married woman? Or was she an unmarried, maybe a young seductive woman? Now we really don't know, but we will revisit that question. Now I want us to see some specifics here about this forbidden woman. These specifics are very descriptive, and truthfully they're very educational. And I want you to notice verse 3 tells us of her kisses. Now that might sound strange for some of you, but yes that's what it is dealing with. Verse 3, "For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey." Here we see Solomon write about the lips of this adulterous forbidden woman.

He says her lips are as sweet as honey. Honey is seen as one of the sweetest foods within the scriptures. Just like today, it was added to foods back then, it was eaten, and it was very much a sweet food. It was very desirable, like candy or sugar or a sweetener for us today. And so Solomon is saying that her kisses are as sweet and pleasurable as the sweetness of honey. Now some said that this referred to speech. I do not think so. To me this does not reflect speech because it's with the tongue or the mouth that you speak. He specifically points out the lips. So to me this speaks of the kisses of this adulterous woman.

And then notice her speech, the second part of verse 3, and her speech is smoother than oil. Here Solomon is addressing that speech. In that day oil was used regularly for many purposes. One was for a medicinal purpose. It was smooth to the wound. And Solomon is saying that her flattery, her flirtatious speech is as smooth as oil. So her seductive kisses were as sweet as honey, and her seductive speech is as smooth as oil. But that's just the front end of things. That's just the beginning. Now we see as he continues we see the results starting in verse 4. And third we notice her end in verse 4. We see her end.

Verse 4, "But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword." Now there are two pictures that are here. I think they're obvious for you to see. And this illustrates her end. Notice she is as bitter as wormwood. Now that can be confusing for some of us because we do not understand the types of woods that they had. But in the land of Palestine in that day there were several types of wormwood and all had a bitter taste. And all throughout the Old Testament this wormwood is symbolic of bitterness, of calamity, and sorrow. So this is symbolic language.

And it's used to communicate that the forbidden woman turns life into bitterness, into calamity, and into sorrow. And those readers would have known exactly what that wormwood was. And then notice she is painful, as painful as a sharp sword. In that day a double-edged sword was a very fierce fighting weapon. It would do severe damage both as a forehand weapon and a backhand weapon. One commentator said the sword of the harlot here cut both body and soul. I like that. So this is symbolic language and it's used to communicate that the forbidden woman turns life into painful wounds. So what do we see here in verse 4?

The forbidden woman brings bitterness and calamity and sorrow and then she turns life into painful wounds. And then fourth we see her direction. So notice how it's unfolding. We see her kisses in verse 3, her speech in verse 3, her end in verse 4, and then we see her direction in verse 5 and 6. I want to go back. Verse 5, her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path of Sheol, she does not ponder the path of life, her ways wander, and she does not even know it. 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.

We go back to verse 6, she does not ponder the path of life. So this is different than the path of life. I want you to also notice the direction. In the Hebrew mind Sheol was seen as a place of inactivity and death, not necessarily a place of punishment. He is saying that her feet go down, her feet go down to death, not on the path or the road of life. So in summary, from verses 3 down to verse 6, what do we see here? The text says the forbidden woman. Now I'm going to add to that. The main truth that I've given you is the forbidden woman. But this is the forbidden woman of adultery. The forbidden woman of adultery.

We see this seductive woman. Her kisses are as sweet as they get. Her talk is as smooth as it gets. But that's just the front end, on the back side awaits bitterness and calamity and sorrow. A relationship with her results in a painful life and ultimately destruction and death. I ran across a good quotation today from a resource that I use and I'm quoting. He says, the seductress, he calls her the seductress. The seductress, her path of death is the opposite of wisdom's path of life. Just as wisdom's path makes life rich and full and really worth living and leads to rightness of age.

So the seductress, her path, impoverishes life and robs it of meaning and leads in the end to an untimely death. I think that description is really, really good. Now remember that earlier I posed a question. Who was this woman? Was she a prostitute? Was she a wayward wife or was she a young seductive woman? Now we really don't know. But this might ruffle the feathers of some Bible commentators. I don't think it really matters because all three are dangerous. All three are dangerous. The prostitute is dangerous. The wayward wife is dangerous and the young seductive woman is dangerous.

The Bible commentator Warren Wiersby says, the strange woman is the one to whom the man is not related by marriage. So to me it's all of the above. Any seductive woman that is not related to us by marriage. So we must see. In our application, in our day, completely different day than Solomon, but oh, it's the same day. We must see that any seductive or adulterous woman is forbidden. Why? Because it's outside of the marriage vow. Oh, if she's a prostitute, though the wife gone awry are the young woman. Oh, are forbidden. I think about three areas of life that might help.

I like to make application and take application and put it into our everyday life to help solidify the teaching. And I thought about one area. See, the young seductive high school girl or the young seductive college age girl, she's forbidden. I never forget a man that I know that works at a college campus. He had a coworker who got involved in a college age girl. He lost his marriage, lost his children, lost his job. It's just these verses illustrated right there in his life. He's a young seductive woman.

And you know when our young men go on that college campus, there's always that young seductive woman, there's always that young girl that can seduce him. So we see the young seductive woman in life. And then we see the seductive wife of the neighbor. Maybe that neighbor who works offshore. See, she's forbidden. I'll never forget years ago, I had a friend of mine who was a leader in a particular church. I loved him dearly. He loved me dearly. And I watched him begin to fall for the seductive wife. It was another man's wife. And oh, I went to him and I warned him. I loved him. I pointed out teaching that we would see right here.

And all he did was rationalize and overstep truth. And what did he do? He was falling for the seductive wife. And then I think about the third place, the seductive woman that you might see on a business trip. I'll never forget I knew of a particular person who traveled a lot. And on business, he was always in a new town. And he was always finding that seductive woman on that business trip. What am I doing? I'm just putting our minds in different scenarios where we can imagine the seductive woman, whether it's the prostitute or the wayward wife or the young girl that can be seductive.

So all young men, we must see that all young men meet these women, but yet all middle-aged men meet these women. This is a trap for any age man. When I was preparing and finishing up today, in my mind, I automatically went back to yesteryear when I was ministering at a particular church. I'll never forget I was at a local filling station and I was putting gas in my truck. And the mother of one of my teenagers came driving up and she got out and she began to talk. And I think I was probably going to get $25 worth of gas and it turned into $5 worth of gas real quick because I got in my truck and I left.

And I went straight home and I went straight home to tell my wife what went on. Nothing went on, but I immediately saw her as what? A seductive woman. I think about it from another angle. I'll never forget a friend of mine. He was exercising and he was going to a particular exercise class. There's nothing wrong with exercise classes. But his wife just kind of checked things out and she saw some women in there she didn't like. She said, "Oh, no, no. You're not going in there. I see some women that might be seductive women." He said, "Yeah, you're right." All this helps get our mind going in the right direction.

And see, we must remember the kisses of the seductive woman. Oh, they're as sweet as honey. Her speech is as smooth as oil. But in the end, destruction. A question for us, an application for us men. What do we do? What do we do? We see the danger out there. We see what can happen. Well, the question of what we do is answered for us right here if we continue in Solomon's teaching. So we move on to the second division, or the second major truth, and that is number two, the ruined life. This is what I'm calling the ruined life. We see this starting in verse 7, and it goes all the way down to verse 14. Let's read those verses together.

You'll see a transition starting in verse 7. "And now, O sons," we know he taught his son, and then other young men, "O sons, listen to me. Do not depart from my words of my mouth. Keep your way far from her. Do not go near the door of her house. Least you give your honor to others, and your years to the merciless. Least strangers take their field of your strength, and your labors go to the house of the foreigner. And at the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and body are consumed. And you say, 'Oh, how I hate a discipline, and my heart despises 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.'" Now Solomon has also established the fact that the path of the wise is the path of blessing in life. Has he not? He's established that the path of the wise is the path of blessing in life. But in contrast here, he establishes the fact that the path of the seductive woman is a path of destruction and death. Now here in verses 7 to 14, Solomon takes us further down the road, the road of this forbidden woman. Now, who's on the path? We've examined the seductive woman.

Now we see this is a young man who falls for her. This is a young man who falls for those honey sweet kisses, who falls for her seductive speech. This is the young man who is sad because of her ruin. He shows us the high price a young man will pay for this sin. Now I'm going to make three observations here, whereas verses 1 to 6 were primarily about the woman. We're going to see verses 7 to 14. They're about the young man who falls for her. So first notice the warning. We see a warning, verse 7 and 8. "And now, O sons, listen to me. Do not depart from my words." The words in my mouth. "Keep your way far from her.

Don't go near the door of her house." See that warning? Here in verse 7 we hear that familiar cry of the father. He is crying out in love for his son. He is reminding his son to listen. Remember that school of wisdom? I like that analogy. Solomon is trying to keep this young man in school. He is giving him another lesson. But now he goes into a specific warning. He tells him to stay far away from the seductive woman. Notice this slight progression. Stay far from her door and then stay far from her house. So Solomon is giving his son a warning. This is another lesson in the school of wisdom. And then second notice we see the loss.

We see second the loss starting in verse 9. "Least you give your honor to others in your years to the merciless. Least strangers take the fill of your strength and your labors go to the house of the foreigner. And in the end of your life you groan and your flesh and your body have been consumed." Here from verses 9 to 11, Solomon gives a long list of things in life that the young man will lose when he falls into the arms of this seductive woman. Now let me go down this list. I want us to notice honor. Verse 9 says he will lose honor.

"Least you give your honor to others." Here commentators believe Solomon is speaking of the things which are honorable in the life. Things like a wife. Things like children. Things like a family. Things like friends. Things like jobs and monies and material possessions and reputation. And that's just the beginning of the list. These are honorable things. He seems to be saying that those honorable things in life, they will be lost to another because of the ruin that's brought on from this sin. And then notice years. He loses years.

Verse 9, "Least you give your honor to others in your years to the merciless." Here it seems that Solomon is saying that years of life will be lost. Years of life will be lost. Solomon seems to be saying that the young man's life will be cut short because of the ruin brought on from that sin. And then notice he loses strength. He loses strength. Verse 10, "Least strangers take their feel of your strength." 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 because of the ruin of this sin.

And then notice he loses labor. The second part of verse 10, "And your labors go to the house of a foreigner." Here Solomon seems to be saying that the young man will give his labor to others. This is where some speculate about this term. They say this house of a foreigner refers to the house of a foreign prostitute. Now that might be the case. We do not know. In other words, the young man will work for her home and her family. So it seems that the young man, he will give away his labor because of this great sin. And then notice he loses his body in verse 11.

"And at the end of your life you groan when your flesh and body are consumed." Here Solomon seems to be saying that the young man will end his life in groaning and in poor health due to this sin. So it seems that the young man will see his body consumed by this sin. He will groan because of the results of this sin. So we see the warning in verse 7 and 8. Then we see this long list of loss. And then third, we see the regret. We see the regret. Verse 12, "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.'" In these three verses we hear the cry of remorse. You might need to write that down. This is the cry of remorse, not the cry of repentance. This is the cry of regret. Now this is the principle that we see in Galatians 6, 7 to 9, where Paul says in Galatians that God won't be mocked. What a man sows, that he reaps. That's exactly what is going on here. At the end of his life, this young man is crying out in regret. In verse 12, he says he hated discipline, he hated correction. In verse 13, he said he did not listen at all. In verse 14, he is at the end and he is in total ruin.

So this young man is crying out, but he's in regret. He's in remorse, not in repentance. So what do we have here? What do we have in all of these verses? We have the ruined life, and I added to that the ruined life from adultery. That major truth that I gave you earlier, it was the ruined life, but I added to that the ruined life from adultery. This young man seems to have one last warning in the school of wisdom. Then he takes the wrong path toward the door and the house of the forbidden woman. He goes to her door, he goes to her house, and then lost. I just see it as cascading loss of so much in life.

Ultimately, it leads to regret and it leads to remorse. The days of repentance are long gone by. Now, in application, we must see the obvious here, the ruined life of going after the forbidden woman. We must see this teaching and then we must teach it to our children. Listen, we must understand it and then we must teach it. First to our young men. We've got young men in our homes. We've got little boys in our homes, and we must teach this to our young men. We must warn our young men, and as they're younger, it's harder, but as they get older, they can understand. We warn them.

We keep them in the school of wisdom concerning the adulterous seductive woman. Then also to our young girls. Listen, we teach this to our young girls. I was reminded of a young girl that I went to high school with. I'll never forget. She just always had an eye for what I called a bum. I used to call those girls bum magnets. They attracted bums. Well, they attracted bums because they like bums. I'll never forget this girl. She ended up marrying one, and it was the wrong one. It's the same principles. We must teach our young girls as well. Then third, for adults, we have to teach this.

We have to make sure we digest this and keep this in our lives. When we see our friends and family, we see church members and brothers and sisters who maybe are in vulnerable circumstances. We just must remind them as well. But there are two more lessons here I want to point out. What I've just given us is the obvious, teaching our young men, our young girls, and even keeping each other accountable as adults. But there are two more lessons I want to point out here. One from verse 7, and then at the end, one from verses 12 to 14. The first lesson is this, we cannot quit the school of wisdom. We cannot. Again, I go back to the way that J.

Vernon McGee, he put it. He said, "This is wisdom, bidding the young man to come to her school and learn from her." We can never, ever, ever quit learning. We must constantly be reminded and be reminded again because we are prone to wonder. We are prone to leave the Lord we love. We are prone to forget God's word. We must always be in the school of wisdom. And we must always be teaching our young people, teaching our children, talking about it in our homes, always in the school of wisdom. Now, the second lesson that has to do with verses 12 to 14 is this. We must understand the life of regret and remorse. We must.

There is a time when someone has lived foolishly, when they have lived sinfully, and there is a threshold. I don't know where that is, or multiple thresholds. And there are people who get to the point in life where it's nothing but regret, nothing but remorse, and there are things that they can repent over, but they can never be undone. I don't mean this to sound casual. I've used this illustration with Brother Keith. It's like dumping out a bucket of marbles. You just can't get them all back up. It's regret, it's remorse.

And we must identify those in life who have gotten to that place, because remember the challenge is to always teach our children by example, and to teach our children with example. And we might have a brother or an aunt or an uncle or a neighbor, someone who has gotten to this place, and we can take these verses and apply it to their life, and then illustrate that with our children. Now as I begin to conclude, I want to turn our attention to a very slick, a very attractive, a very common plan of the enemy, Satan himself.

Today Satan himself parades before us all types of famous peoples who've indulged in sexual lifestyles, sexual escapades, and it seems that they have gotten away with it. They brag about it. They write songs about it. They make movies about it. They get famous from it. Movie stars, music stars, sports heroes, government officials, and many more who have burned the candle of life and sexual activity. They seem to prosper and do well, and if we listen to them, they are living the high and good life, and we're missing out. It's nothing but a lie. I'm reminded of our friend Lot. You remember our friend Lot in Genesis?

We learned about Lot starting in Genesis 12. God called Abraham out of that pagan world, God called him to worship the one true God, God called him to Canaan, and Lot was the nephew who really was a tag along. But what happened to Lot? If we look at the life of Lot, it's one of the saddest cases for a righteous man, because the New Testament says he was righteous. The text says that Lot looked at Sodom. Remember the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? It says that he looked at Sodom, and then it says that he moved near Sodom, and then it says that he went in Sodom.

And then we see that he was perverted by Sodom, because ultimately Lot lost his wife to Sodom, because when God was calling him out, her heart was in Sodom, and she looked back. And what did she do? She turned into a pillar of salt. So he lost his wife to Sodom, he lost his daughters to Sodom. Do you know the story of Lot and his daughters? It's pretty gruesome. He lost his daughters to Sodom, and then he lost his heritage. It was burned up because of Sodom. Because if you study his descendants, they later became enemies of God. And so what am I showing you? Oh, the devil took Sodom and just paraded it right in front of Lot.

It was slick, it was pretty, and maybe the devil just said to Lot, "Look, they're all living high, and you're living low in the desert." It won't be that bad if you go to Sodom. And see, what we must see is this. Satan keeps putting all this stuff in our minds. He keeps putting us in front of us, not just on television and in music. And we can become numb to this. And our children can become numb, and they can fall prey. And we must work hard to teach what the Scriptures say. We must stay in the school of wisdom. We must keep them in the school of wisdom.

We must illustrate and use example, and we must teach them verse by verse and plant into their minds. But, oh, listen, folks. Oh, listen. We can teach them the truth. We can do it as best as we know how. We can be the best example, no hypocrite. But if God does not save them, it's only information. This is the hard part, because we can preach and teach Sunday school. And we can work hard in our homes, and I can help you. I'm not taking your place. No. We can do this work from preschool, really from the nursery, all the way up to when they become adults. But if they do not get a new heart, they will go the way of the world.

They will go the way of sin. They will go the way of what we've seen here in these Scriptures. They will. They'll go the way of their nature. Now, I want to tell you a story about one time when I went visiting. In all of the churches in years past I've been involved in, we always had visitation programs. In my home church, we had a visitation program on Tuesday nights that was powerful. I mean, we had visitation meal. We would eat. We would meet. We would eat. And we had prospects, people who visited. Some went and visited people who had visited Sunday school. Some went and visited people who had visited church.

And some went out in the community and witnessed. And so when I went into the ministry, I always implemented some type of visitation program. But I'll never forget. I was in my wife's car one time and I had some teenagers. And there was a teenager that had visited our church. And we drove up to that house and there on the front porch was a sign and it said, "Beware of the dog." Well, there was the dog right there on the porch. And the dog looked pretty good. You know, he looked happy and didn't seem like he saw us as a threat. So I got out of the car and I just eased around. You know, in seminary they taught us all kind of things.

One of them was how to deal with these kind of things. And I just kept the dog in front of me and I talked real nice. And those guys that were with me, it was just guys, they were closer to the car. And lo and behold, when I got a little closer to the porch than the car, the dog changed. And I'm telling you, before I knew it, I was on top of my brown Toyota Camry. And I should have listened to the sign because it said, "Beware of the dog." Beware of the dog. And look, the whole time I'm studying this, because I began to study Monday, I keep thinking of this word, "Beware." Now, this is full of warning and full of teaching.

But isn't that what he's doing? He's taking what he taught back in Chapter 2 and he's going a little further and he's describing this adulterous woman, this lifestyle. He's saying, "Beware, beware, beware." But this led me to the title, I call it, "Beware of the dog, the forbidden woman." Why? Because she will devour and she will destroy every time. She will devour and she will destroy every time. So what do we see here? I'm calling verses 1 to 14, "Beware of the dog, the forbidden woman."