Turn to Proverbs, chapter 5. That's on page 530 of your Pew Bibles. This is a follow-up to our sermon on the ordinance of marriage last week. We'll be focusing on marital intimacy this week. And in this proverb, a father in the faith teaches his son, and by extension all of us about the importance of faithfulness and romantic intimacy in marriage and relationships. And I'm gonna read all of Proverbs 5. This is the Word of God. My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a 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 Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life. Her ways wander, and she does not know it. And now, O sons, 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. 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 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. Drink water from your own cistern, 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 lovely 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. We invite you now to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 7 for our New Testament reading. You can find that on page 955. And here Paul emphasizes that the intimacy of marriage is to be freely given by both man and wife so that they might fight against sexual temptation. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 1 through 5. Now concerning the matters about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. For the word of the Lord is a light unto our feet and a lamp unto our path. Let's pray. Lord, give us your spirit in greater measure so that we might understand your word and apply it to our lives and everything that we think, say, and do. Amen. Well, last week we reflected on marriage as a creation ordinance established by God for our good and for God's glory. We saw how marriage is designed to be a blessing to a man and a woman and how this is a beautiful picture of God's covenant love for his people. And we were also reminded that Satan hates Christ and Satan hates Christ's bride with all that he is. And one of his battle tactics is to take something good that God made, to take God's good gifts that He's given, and then to take them and to twist them and pervert them. And one of the good gifts that God has given is intimacy in a marriage relationship. But the evil one wants to undermine and destroy this beautiful gift. He wants to distort this picture of God's love for his people. This is why, not just in our age, but throughout the ages, it seems that Satan has been obsessed with distorting God's good designs and purposes for marriage and marital intimacy. And we are all aware, especially in our age, that we live in what we would call a sex-crazed world, and a world that even believes that personal identity is directly tied to sexual desire. Well, as Christians, we must not lay down, we must not stay quiet about this. Christ rules every square inch, and this includes the marriage bed. The evil one does not get to destroy God's gift of intimacy in marriage. And this is not a topic for us to avoid, but it's a topic for us to actively engage as it comes to us in the Word of God. Christ came to save sinners, and He came to remove the effects and pollution of the fall of sin as far as the curse is found. In this sense, He redeems all things, and this includes sexual intimacy in marriage relationships. I realize that this topic might make some of us uncomfortable, and it's certainly difficult to figure out how to introduce this topic and to preach it. So to move us along and to get to our theme, I'm going to quote Raymond Ortlin because somehow it seems at times on these topics that someone else's words are a bit safer. You can say, well, I didn't write it, I'm just, you're repeating it here. So he begins his discussion of Proverbs 5, he says this, and so this sums up our sermon this morning. One of the benefits of preaching through a section of the Bible is that the Bible itself raises topics that we might otherwise avoid, like sex. The Bible is not shy about sex, and its message is clear. Sexual folly destroys, sexual wisdom satisfies, and Christ is even better than the best sex. You see why I wanted to quote someone else now on that. But we'll unpack these ideas a bit further. First, we'll see there's this time for the father-son talk in verses one through six. We'll see the dangers of adultery in verses seven through 14. And then we'll see the delight and wisdom of a passionate marital intimacy in verses 15 through 19. And then in our conclusion, we'll look at verses 20 through 23. So our points are the talk, Danger of adultery, delight of marital intimacy, and God is watching. In Proverbs 5, Solomon's having a sit down with his son. We can imagine a young man who's about to get married or newly married, and Solomon sits him down and wants to give him some very important wisdom and wants him to focus on what he has to say about keeping the marriage bed pure. And by the way, even though we're speaking of this is a father to a son, and we're speaking a lot to sons and husbands today, there's plenty of wisdom here for sexual purity, for wives, for single people, and we're not going to have time to do a few of those extra applications, but You're going to need to really focus on understanding the proverb and then later continuing to apply this message to you in your own situation, whether you're a man, woman, married, or single. So Solomon starts off with something that's just a little bit unexpected if we think about it. He instructs his son to use his lips to guard knowledge. Now he certainly means that all actions and speech must be guarded, but he chooses the lips for a very poetic and memorable reason, and we see that reason in verse 3. The lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil." Solomon's comparing lips that guard wisdom to the folly of the lips of a woman who is not your wife. And this is extremely sensual language here. Solomon knows all too well the temptation of foreign women, doesn't he, with many, many wives. He also knows that his sons will be tempted. And he points out that the lips of the forbidden woman, that they drip honey. That means they're sweet, they're desirable, they look like lips that are begging to be kissed. Sugar didn't exist in the ancient world in the form that it does today, so honey would be the sweetest and one of the most pleasurable tastes around. And we know it's sticky. And not only are her lips sweet to the taste, but they're smoother than oil. Oil was fragrant. It was pleasant. She will tell the young man exactly what he wants to hear. She'll build him up in his vanity. She'll make him feel desirable. And from a woman's perspective, this happens as well. It might be a man who is not your husband, whose lips are sweet-talking you, saying sweet nothings to you. And how do you know if that's happening? It's because the conversation's making you blush and feel uncomfortable. So this goes the other way as well. But the lips of this woman will be attractive and tempting, and they will look so good that the man thinks that he wants this. These lips look sweet, they look tasty, but they're dangerous to his body and to his soul. In verses 4 through 6, we read, 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 to Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life. Her ways wander, and she does not know it. Now wormwood is a bitter plant and too much of it can be deadly. This woman's sweet lips are a lie. They're not what they appear to be and the reality is that to taste her lips is to taste bitterness and to cut your mouth with a sharp two-edged sword. Her lips don't lead to blessing. They don't lead to pleasure. They lead to bitterness. They lead to injury and they will even take you straight down to the path of hell. The warning is, she doesn't love you. She lives for the moment. She doesn't think about tomorrow. In fact, she's on the road to destruction and she doesn't even know it. She's on the road to hell and she's just admiring the view all the way there. And to be intimate with her is to go down to your own destruction and your own death. Now Solomon is going to explain in even more detail why this woman and committing adultery is so dangerous. But before we get there, I want to make a short application. And this application is for parents and all parents to be potentially. We must teach and warn our children about the dangers of sexual sin. We must do this. If we don't teach them about God's good purpose for sexual intimacy between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, then Disney, their friends, or the world will teach them. If we avoid the topic, If it's taboo, if we're embarrassed about it, then we're risking our children getting their information from their peers, from school. And those of us, especially those of us that are in public school, we remember how that worked out. Or worse places, like social media, or countless songs and movies and shows. That's where they'll get their ideas about marital intimacy. It's our job, given to us by God, to instruct our children on these matters, and it's a job that we must take seriously. Because if not us, someone else is training and catechizing our kids. Even if we try to lock them in a tower and shield them, it won't work because there's an air of this sexually charged culture that they won't be able to help but breathe in. So parents, we must be active in helping our children understand the dangers of intimacy outside the marriage relationship. And we must teach them about the great blessings of marital intimacy inside the marriage relationship. Solomon knew his children would be tempted, and so will yours. Let us be proactive in teaching our kids, as it's age appropriate, about these things. Don't wait too long. Start earlier than you think you should. And kids, come to your parents with questions. They want to hear from you. They want to talk to you about these things. They just don't always know how to start the conversation. Well, you can help them. Now point 2 dives into the further dangers of adultery in verses 7 through 14. And we're going to go through these fairly quickly so we have a good amount of time for point 3. In verse 8 we're instructed, keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house. Do not put yourself in a bad situation. Do not put yourself near women that are interested in bringing you down to the pit. Don't hang out with them. Don't flirt with them. Don't build extra friendship and relationships with them. And this proverb, if it was written today, would add, don't chat with them on social media or befriend them on Facebook. I know Facebook is now supposedly for old people, so Instagram or whatever it is that we're using these days. Don't have a bunch of intimate text conversations with them. If you're surfing the internet, don't click on that provocative news story. Don't linger too long over that picture in that ad of that scantily clad lady there. Run away from anything. Run away from all pornography. Don't estimate your own ability. Don't play with fire. You will get burned. That's what Solomon's saying here. Then in verses 9 through 11. We read this, 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. I'll paraphrase what I think Solomon's getting at here. He's saying stay away from her, and we can also think of her as all pornography. Stay away from her. And if you don't stay away from her, you're going to give the best life of your years to her and all your strength. They're going to go to cruel people that don't care about you, that want to just exploit you. That's a tension that should have been given to the Lord, to your wife, to your family, if you're not married to your future wife. And evil people are going to take your hard work and your labors and even your money from you, and you will be ruined. It's describing a lot of the effects of adultery, even those effects are often financial as they result in divorce and alimony and supporting two households and broken lives. It's not just spiritual, it's also physical. You'll come to the end of your life and your flesh and your body will be all used up. Talking about, I don't think he's just talking about getting old. He says your flesh and your body are consumed. He might also be referring to sexually transmitted diseases here. It's possible. Those are the dangers. In verses 12 through 14, he says, and you say, ah, this is the regret, 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 assembly of the congregation. He means that if you sin with this woman, you're going to look back on your life. with pain, bitterness, and regret. You'll see the mess you made and you'll cry out, Lord, why didn't I listen to your wisdom? Why didn't I listen to my parents? Why didn't I listen to your word? Why didn't I listen to my pastor, those that love me? And then lastly, your sin, it will not be kept a secret. You will be found out, and it will be made known in the midst of the congregation. Your family eventually will find out. Your children will find out. Your church will find out. Your friends and your extended family will find out. And there'll be pain, and there'll be shame, and ruined lives, and a trail of brokenness and pain. A few minutes of what seems like pleasure can result in a lifetime, and even if you're unrepentant, an eternity of pain if you do not seek the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. When we put it that way, how are those sweet lips dripping with honey looking now? I hope that we see them for what they are. And I hope when we see them, instead of something that we desire, they start to look repulsive and make us want to vomit or at least run away. Well, let's just ask and answer a question for a moment here. Because I know that many of you sitting here are engaged in these activities in one way or another. You might be thinking, what if it's too late for me? What if I've been spending time with a forbidden woman or man? Either even in what I'm watching or what I'm looking at on the internet, what do I do? What if I'm partaking of the forbidden woman by looking at pornography? Whether you're married or not. If you have sinned sexually, you must fall on your knees, confess your sins to the Lord, repent of them, turn to Christ, cry out, Lord, I'm a sinner, forgive me. I don't want to do this anymore. Rescue me from this sin. Help me to see how ugly it is and how it doesn't just harm me but harms others and is a threat to you. Help me see the cesspool of this sin. Help me to see it so I don't want it anymore. And when you pray that prayer, the Lord will forgive you your sins. He will remove you as far as the east is from the west. And the road to healing and restoration may not and probably will not be instant. It will be a long road. It will be a hard road. And it will definitely be a humbling road, as you admit. your sins, but Christ will walk that road with you. If you're stuck in these types of sins, look ahead, see where it leads. Ruined relationships, financial ruin, ruining of your health, and ultimately, if you do not repent, death and hell. If this is where you are, repent. Turn to Christ, even if you've done it a million times already, do it again. and He is merciful and He will forgive, and our Lord is the great physician. He will heal your body and your soul. Start here with this prayer, and then seek help offered by Christ and His church and this community of saints. Build some relationships with other people. Your pastor and your elders are certainly here to talk to you, but we can't be every single person's partner on covenant eyes. You know, if you know what that is. We can't get 20, like, notifications of violations on there. So we're here for you. We want to talk to you. We want to help you. But you have to seek out relationships and accountability with one another. These kinds of sins will tend to keep you isolated and will keep you from building those relationships. You've got to reach out if you want deliverance from those sins and seek the help offered. You've got to do that. I did want to save some time for point three. I know some of you were like, where's point three? And you want to know what I'm going to say about these verses. Solomon explains the best defense against sexual sin in marriage. He instructs his son to enjoy and delight in romantic love with his spouse. Verse 15 through 17. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your offspring be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. So to describe marital intimacy, Solomon uses various pictures of water. He refers to a cistern. That's a water storage tank, a well, springs and streams. is a common way to talk about these things in the ancient world because water is something that quenched and satisfied thirst and it was refreshing. The desire or thirst for physical intimacy is a desire that is given to us by God. In Genesis 2.24, the Lord prescribed marital intimacy between husband and wife when He said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So the way to quench this thirst for physical intimacy in a way that glorifies God is to drink the water or to have sexually intimate relationships in the exclusive context of marriage. Your own cistern is for you. Your wife is for you, and you are for her exclusively. And then in verses 18 and 19, Solomon pronounces a blessing upon the marriage bed, and he gives instructions for the marriage bed. And yes, these verses are meant to be spicy and sensual and romantic. They are. Verse 18, 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. We'll take this one phrase at a time. Let your fountain be blessed, should be understood as the pronouncement of blessings. May your fountain be blessed. You see, God's people, we're not ashamed of romantic love and marital intimacy. The Lord designed marriage for this purpose. And Solomon, as a loving father, prays for blessing in the area of his son's marriage bed. We also want our children to enjoy marital intimacy. The second thing he says is rejoice in the wife of your youth. This means the husband is to rejoice and take pleasure in his wife. And not just as young newlyweds, but this marital enjoyment should continue long into the marriage, potentially as long as both parties are physically able. Things do change eventually. But marital intimacy is certainly for the purpose, it's for the purpose of bringing forth children, it is. But it's also something to be enjoyed through much of the married life of a couple. The wife is referred to as a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Now, this could also be translated a lovely deer, a graceful mountain goat. I mean, I've seen those mountain goats with those long, pretty hair, right? You guys have seen those, right? So a mountain goat is actually a symbol of beauty. Perhaps, husband, you can try that. Your hair is looking like a beautiful mountain goat this morning. You're moving so gracefully, like as a mountain goat hops from rock to rock, you know? Don't let me know how that goes. But it's a poetic way to refer to the beauty of one's wife. A deer is admired for its beauty, mountain goat for its grace and the smooth way that it moves. Every husband is to enjoy his wife. This also means visually by looking at her and every wife should allow herself to be admired by her husband and she should seek to accentuate her beauty. Then he gives another command and a blessing. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Now this is sensual and it's also a beautiful description of marital intimacy. And as Paul tells it, the husband and wife are not to deny one another, except in certain cases for perhaps a time. They're not to deny, but they're to enjoy the blessings of touch. of physical intimacy. One commentator says it this way, first Solomon instructed his son to keep his hands off forbidden women, but then instructs his son to keep his hands on his wife. Husbands are to physically enjoy the woman God has given to them. The woman is to allow herself to be enjoyed. The husband and the wife are to enjoy being intimate with one another, not occasionally but frequently. Solomon finishes up this section of blessing in instruction saying, be intoxicated always in her love. Be intoxicated, drunk, consumed by, enraptured, be ravished by her love. This is not an intimacy that just goes through the motions, but a passionate, active, and even time-consuming intimacy. As we read this proverb, some of us are probably surprised to find such a romantic and sensual description of marital intimacy in the Bible. And for a long time, the church forgot that marital intimacy was to be enjoyed in this way. And it took the Puritans, yes, some of us think of the Puritans as straight-laced and rule followers and legalists. That's only partially correct some of the time. It took the Puritans to recover the doctrine of delight in marital intimacy. It was Puritan John Milton who said marital intimacy is a perpetual fountain of domestic sweets. Puritan William Gouge said that married couples should engage in sex, and I quote, with goodwill and delight, willingly, readily, and cheerfully. Another Puritan claimed that when the two are made one by marriage, they may joyfully give due benevolence one to the other, as two musical instruments rightly fitted do make a most pleasant and sweet harmony in a well-tuned consort. Now, these words of due benevolence, this is how, this is King James Version language in 1 Corinthians 7.3, let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence and likewise also to the wife unto her husband. It has the idea behind it, due benevolence, the idea of good deeds that are owed to someone else in the context of marital intimacy. So in summary, with Proverbs 5 along with Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, he teaches us that the context of the marriage bed, physical intimacy, is a blessing given by God to both husband and wife to be enjoyed and is given to keep one another from sexual temptation. This is how we must also think of marital intimacy and this is what we must train our children to believe as well. He does end with something in case we're still not convinced and think we can dabble. After painting this breathtaking view of marital intimacy, Solomon returns to reminding his son why adultery is so dangerous. And in verse 20, Solomon asks, why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? Well, if the way of adultery leads to desecration, disease, destruction, and death, and delighting in the woman the Lord has given you results in joy, delight, and great pleasure, then why would you go anywhere near that woman and risk destroying what you have? And just in case the young man needs even more convincing, he closes with sort of a little proverb within a proverb in verses 21 through 23. It says, 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 sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly, he is led astray. Essentially, he says, if you're still tempted, remember, God is omniscient. God is watching. He knows all, and all will be exposed. That sin that you think is private, even those extra glances and thoughts, God knows all of those things. And our God is just. And if you entangle yourself in the cords of sexual sin, those cords may strangle you in body and soul. Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, there's certainly more that we could say here about fighting against sexual temptation, about how do I foster that type of intimacy in my marriage, but I'll leave those for Pastor Menninger. It was hard how to introduce the sermon, and it was difficult to figure out how to end it. So I'm gonna let Ray Ortlin bail me out once again. I think this is a great summary of what we learn from Proverbs 5. This is what he says. Sex is like fire. In the fireplace, it keeps us warm. Outside the fireplace, it burns the house down. Proverbs 5 is saying, keep the fire in the marital fireplace and stoke that fire as hot as you can. That's what Proverbs 5 is teaching us. And may we as the people of God, whether married or single, be chaste in our relationships. And especially may we be faithful in our relationship with the lover of our soul, Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord God, as we hear these words, first, many of us ask that you forgive us our sins. And we thank you that if we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to cleanse us from our sins and to train us up in all righteousness. And we pray that you would give us wisdom and humility to ask for assistance when we need it and to pursue holiness in this area. And Lord, we know that there is much brokenness here among us. not just those who are single, but those who are married. We ask that you would heal our marriages so that marital intimacy might be a delight once again for those who it's not. We ask that you would give us wisdom and that we would actively seek to train up our kids. We ask that you would keep us from temptation. Lord, give us victory and help us to be faithful in all of our relationships. We thank you for the blessings of marital intimacy for this ultimately is a picture of your covenant love for us. We pray in the name of Christ our husband, amen.