Proverbs 7 verses 6 through 9. These are God's words. For at the window of my house I looked through my lattice and saw among the simple I perceived among the youths a young man devoid of understanding passing along the street near her corner and he took the path to her house. in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night." So far the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. As the passage goes on to the end of the passage, it will turn out that this man who is being described is going to what he thinks is going to be pleasure but his destruction will come like an arrow suddenly striking him in the liver or in the vitals and much worse than just death. It is hell itself to which he is going. But just now in verses six through nine, there are three things, maybe four things here that I'd like to point out that are predecessors or conditions that lead to the destruction of a person, to the destruction of life. The first is where the illustration here finds the young man. Instead of finding him with his father and learning and assimilating wisdom, as the first four verses of the chapter had urged him to do, he finds him among the youths, verse 7. So there's two things going on here. One is he's not valuing learning wisdom from those whom the Lord has given to him to teach him the wisdom. And the second is he's surrounding himself with other fools like he is. We have to have the humility to understand that we begin as fools and the impulse or inclination to surround yourself with people who think like you is basically a way of sentencing yourself to not gaining wisdom, sentencing yourself to remain foolish and subject to the consequences of your folly. The third thing here is how not guarding your way not guarding your life in those things that are most healthy. And this applies to for things like your body and your mind, not just your soul, but quickly translates into positively making self-destructive decisions. In verse eight, he's passing along the street near her corner. We've had by the time you get to this point in the book of Proverbs, Many instructions not even to go near to direct your path away from and far from But notice how passing along the street near her corner first half of verse 8 turns into he took the path to her house second half of verse 8 there is a progressively increasing or domino effect to not being careful and intentional in what is wise and prudent and healthy. And this is especially so when it comes to sin, and especially sin that is related to impulse behavior. things that very directly affect the flesh, things that we've discovered or learned and are very still minuscule, but increasing understanding of how the brain works, so quickly affect brain chemistry. like food or alcohol or other drugs or sexual sin, the desire to have the physical feelings of a man and his wife without being with your wife or for the ladies, with your husband. And in any of these areas, if you don't plan to go as far from that which is harmful and foolish as possible, it will very quickly translate to positively choosing that which causes you harm. And so that's third thing to notice there in verse eight. And then in verse nine, the silliness and the stupidity of thinking that evening or darkness are hiding him. There are all these things that give you the illusion of protection or secrecy or being able to get away with something, whether it's whatever people that you would have been more embarrassed of or felt in trouble with, whether it's them not being around, Or in the new digital world, all the ways of covering tracks and hiding or whatever. But in the context of the scripture, we read in verse 9, in the twilight, in the evening, in the black, in the dark night. And the context of the Bible is the context of being before the face of God. He sees even the heart, which we do not see or understand in ourselves. Our hearts are deceitful above all things, but not to him, he knows the heart. And blackness, darkness cannot hide us. The darkest or blackest part of the night is as light to him. It says Psalm 139 and a bunch of other places in the scripture and suggest the ridiculousness or the folly of trying to hide anything or thinking that we're getting away with it. We think of children as being ridiculous when they leave a trail behind them or cover their eyes and think that they are invisible to you because they are invisible to themselves with their eyes covered. And we think, ha ha ha, isn't that so silly? But then those of us who are not little children, are we not just as stupidly silly when we think that just because we've covered our eyes to ourselves or even somehow duped other people or hidden things from them, that because we can't see ourselves, that God can't see us, or that whether or not God can see us isn't the most important thing? in the situation. And so even before we get to the woman and all the different ways she entraps him and how it gets rationalized and how he gets pulled down into it, you have these several things just in these four verses that are great warnings to us about how someone ends up in such self-destructive sin. So may the Lord give us to not try to surround ourselves with people who have all the same follies that we do. May the Lord give us to make good use of his word and the wisdom that he gives us by his word and those particular ones whom he has appointed to be the ones through whom he gives us his word. May the Lord give us to be careful on the front end and to heed all of the instructions to give a wide berth and to direct our paths away from and far from any way that puts us in danger of falling. And may the Lord give us to remember that we are always before his face. to be mindful of him and to care most of all about what he sees so that we don't get to the place where we feel comfortable with sinning because we think we are hidden from creatures or even from ourselves. Let's pray. Father, your son, our Lord Jesus has taught us to pray, lead us not into temptation. And now we have come to this passage in which your spirit has shown us several important ways that we ought to avoid temptation. And so we take these two things together and we pray that your spirit would write the truth of this portion of your word on our hearts. and cause us to live by them so that we would not foolishly walk into fall into temptation when you have instructed us about how not to do so so please help us we ask by the life of christ goodness of christ in us and for the sake of christ's glory in our lives so we ask in his name amen