Focal Passages: Proverbs 5:3-14, 20-23; 6:23-24, 27-29, 32-34
Have you ever noticed how our flesh always seems to want what it doesn’t have? We can be like children who get a new toy, play with it for a while and move on to something else. That selfish and dissatisfied mindset often appears in one’s sexual choices. Dating can become a conquest instead of a search for a future mate. To make matters worse that same attitude can be taken into marriage, and once the new wears off the conqueror hungers for a new conquest.
Solomon warned his son that the allure of a forbidden woman does not begin sexually. She sets a trap with sweet and smooth words (as part of her own conquest) that provide affirmations a husband isn’t getting at home.
He then compares all the “good” things she is saying to all the ways his wife is not using her words to inflate his ego. Solomon warned that this woman is “bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword” (Proverbs 5:4). What looks like a ticket to “The Love Boat” will turn out to be a carnal adventure on the Titanic, because “her feet go down to death” (Proverbs 5:5).
When a man and woman are joined together in the covenant of marriage God intends for them to keep their promises to Him and to each other, which is the cure for divorce. To do anything less fails, according to Ephesians 5, to demonstrate the relationship between Christ and the Church. He does not kick His bride to the curb when she fails, because He loves her by grace. To choose adultery means you choose not to share forgiveness, patience, understanding and love with your spouse. Instead of drinking water from your own cistern (Proverbs 5:15), you choose to destroy the cistern and dig another one under the assumption that it will satisfy all your unmet expectations. Instead of playing with the fire of adultery and getting burned (Proverbs 6:27), go stoke the marital fire at home. Remember, you did say, “For better or for worse.”