Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Proverbs Chapter 5

I have not posted in a while but I will attempt to do better. It is not that I have not been writing at all, I just haven’t been posting. So please continue to encourage me in this area. I know I should be posting but... well no excuses, I have been lazy and a bit discouraged lately. Anyway I am glad to be back and thankful that God has blessed me to be able to write yet another day. I pray that I would be a blessing to you and would honor God and His Word in all that I do and write.
The text for this will be from the book of Proverbs so I thought it would be fitting to make sure that we understood what a Proverb is so that we can read this and understand it in the way it was intended.

According to...
American Heritage dictionary
Proverb - A short pithy saying in frequent and widespread use that expresses a basic truth or practical precept.

The part of that definition I would like us to focus on is that it expresses a basic truth or practical precept. It, in itself, is not necessarily THE truth; it conveys the truth through a statement, which may not even be related to the truth itself. For example the worldly proverb that says... Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, really has nothing to do with chickens, although it may apply literally. The truth or precept that is being conveyed is to not count on something that hasn’t happened yet. So, with that in mind I am going to read chapter 5 of Proverbs and interject my thoughts as we go through them. All that is in blue italics is directly from the Word. My comments follow.

My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding,
that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.


Solomon was the author of this Proverb and it would appear as though he is speaking only to his son and giving him some advise about becoming a man and some things that he should watch out for. However in the first verse the term “my son” in the Hebrew translates to not just your direct offspring but it could be used for many generations or perhaps even an entire race of people. Just as they called Jesus the son of David, He was not the direct offspring of David. So we should see if this biblical precept or truth applies to us, and I believe it does, partly because we find the same principles elsewhere in the Bible and also because 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that...

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

Then, we should be attentive to the Wisdom of Solomon and incline our ears to what he has to say. Why? Because if we are interested in preserving our sanctification and not being tossed to and fro by anything that comes our way then we should pay attention to this and hold on to it and not forget it and even bring it to our lips so that we can remember the Word of God when other things arise that may be contrary to it.

Pro 5:3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil,

Is Solomon only talking about women and how deceptive they are? Of course not, I believe he is conveying a truth here through a statement that is not necessarily related. Honey does not literally drip from a woman’s mouth. So what is he trying to say? Perhaps that carnal thing that you desire can look real sweet. It may even try to talk you into following through with your fleshly desire. It looks as sweet and smooth as honey. I am listening to a sales training series that teaches me ways of convincing or persuading people to buy what I am selling and there are some pretty smooth ways of convincing people, when they don’t even realize that they are in the process of being persuaded. We should be cautious of smooth talkers and man pleasers. As we read the next few verses we see why.

Pro 5:4but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
Pro 5:5 Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol;
Pro 5:6 she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.
If we do not stay away from our fleshly desires and turn toward righteousness then we are destined to follow those desires straight to Hell. Lets take just a minute and talk about what is a fleshly desire. Anything that does not glorify God, Glorifies man or the flesh. If somebody accidentally runs over your foot and your desire is to curse them out for it or yell at them for an accident, then that would be a fleshly desire and would not glorify God. But if you are quick to forgive that person then that would glorify God and would be denying the fleshly desires that Solomon is speaking of. That may seem to simple and trivial to you but something that the Lord has been teaching me through His Word and through circumstance is that the difference in going to Heaven or going to Hell is one sin. The Bible says that only the righteous will inherit the kingdom of God. The only way we can be righteous is to repent (turn away from) our sins and believe that forgiveness of our sins can only come from Jesus Christ. Repentance and Faith is the life of a Christian.

Pro 5:7 And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
Solomon seems to be beseeching us to listen. Have you ever had a conversation with somebody and they seemed to be off in another world? I am guilty of this myself and I am working on getting better. My wife will be talking to me and I just zone out and get caught up in my own thoughts and don’t even hear her speaking anymore. Of course when I realize that I have done that I apologize to her and ask her to repeat it. Solomon wants to make sure that the words that he is speaking are not falling on deaf ears. PAY ATTENTION this is important! That is what he is saying.
Pro 5:8 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,
lest 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,
Pro 5:12 and you say, "How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!


After making sure that we are listening he repeats the original message and gives us more instruction on completely staying away from those desires. I gave this illustration before about the lions in the back yard that my pastor J.D. Hatfield (even so) taught us about. That the lion we feed the most will become strongest and eventually beat out the other lion all together. Well my extended illustration of that was that when we feed that lion that we throw that meat so far toward the good lion that the bad lion never gets a bite or even a sniff. Not, to just throw the meat in the middle and see which one gets it. We must make an effort to stay as far away from the bad lion as we can. Don’t even give it a chance.

Pro 5:13 I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.

How many of us here when we are doing something wrong and know it, do not want to listen to somebody else tell us that we are doing wrong? The last thing that we want to do is to be reminded of our guilt. My wife used to remind me every Sunday that I should be in church and I began to become hard of heart and wouldn’t listen to her or the men of the Church that would come to visit from time to time.

Pro 5:14 I am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation."

But, church itself was not enough. Even though I started going to church, I was only going so that it would not cause strife between my wife and I. I despised people for coming to me and saying they missed me and were glad to see me. Of course, they were showing me love but my soul was in utter ruin at the time and church just seemed to make that more obvious to me. Why was I in utter ruin? I was in ruin because I was living my life trying only to please my flesh. There is never any satisfaction to pleasing the flesh. You will ALWAYS want more than you have.
Pro 5:15 Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
Pro 5:16 Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
Pro 5:17 Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.
Pro 5:18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.
Pro 5:20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
I believe the point that is being made here is that we need to be satisfied with what we have, who we are, where we live etc. We should not be looking elsewhere for our wants. We need only look to God who is our provider. All good gifts come from the Father.

Pro 5:21 For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths.
Pro 5:22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
Pro 5:23 He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray.


God sees all that you do. He sees in your hearts the things that you think and do not do. Our sin can tangle us and choke us to the point that we can no longer breathe. If we live a life of no discipline then we will die holding on to our sins misled to believe that that is what we actually want. I’ve heard people say that they want to go to hell because they won’t know anyone in heaven. I’ve heard people that think that hell is going to be a big party. They are deceived like I spoke about earlier. Your self can be your own worst enemy. We have to learn to be disciplined and taught by others no matter who you are because you, yes even you, can be deceived. A group of people is a lot less likely to be deceived than one lone person. There is strength and encouragement there.