Today’s passage: Proverbs 5
Helpful thoughts:
- Our lips can guard knowledge (Speaking wisely) only after we have first listened and learned truth.
- A person can sound wonderful to listen to, be incredibly entertaining or make us feel great, and be entirely wrong.
- We must place greater value on wisdom and understanding, though sometimes we’re more prone to value humor, glamor or other forms of entertainment.
- Verses 15-18 are figures of speech used to depict the loving faithful physical relationship of a husband and wife. She is for him. He is for her. They are to procreate together and enjoy the blessing of parenthood together.
- To be lured and lustful toward the forbidden woman (Anyone who is not your wife), is a massive step down. The quality of love between a husband and wife can not even be compared to the cheap, wasteful, destructive lust between two people outside of marriage. The world’s depictions of sexuality are lies.
Questions to consider:
- What were the consequences of the one who chose not to listen to instruction in verses 9-14? How would you describe those consequences in our day and culture? What would that look like today?
- What words are used to describe what becomes of the man in sexual sin (Verse 22)? What words of wisdom do we need to hear if we would ever think we could pursue sin and not see consequences? What has been laid before us? Who is watching? How do we escape and walk in freedom?
- Who all could rightly apply this warning against sinning with the “forbidden woman?” If the only person who we are to delight in physically is our spouse, then how many other people should we see as forbidden? Is this true before someone gets married too?
Prayer:
Father, thank you for the picture of Christ and the church…Christ the groom and the church the bride. Thank you for Christ’s selfless loving sacrifice and for your promise to present us spotless and without blemish, even though that can only be true of us when you see us through His shed blood. Please forgive us when we think the “pleasures” of this world could even compare with the pleasures of following and worshiping you! And we thank you that after learning, “the wages of sin is death,” that we also then learn that your gift to us is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord…that we can receive forgiveness, a cleansed heart, a righteous record, and eternal love and freedom because of your great grace. Lord, please protect the marriages in our church. May our men love you first and therefore love their wives as Christ loved the church. May our women love you first and therefore trust you and love and support their husbands. May our children grow up seeing their moms and dads loving you together as a couple and grow up to do the same with their spouses…that you may be honored and that they would receive the blessing of living according to truth and wisdom.