Do Not Enter

Sermon Transcript

I taught a Sunday seminar on spiritual disciplines a couple weeks back, but Christians aren’t the only ones who try to adopt disciplines into their lives. Any time you have a goal, you have to adopt certain disciplines to accomplish it. Let’s take the most obvious: You want to be physically healthier. How will you do it? You’ll have to discipline yourself to eat healthy, exercise, and get enough sleep. And why would you do such a thing when we all know that eating unhealthy, laying around, and staying up late often feels good? Because you sense that by constraining yourself in these ways you will actually have a freer, happier life in the end.

 

In the book of Proverbs, the author Solomon is writing many of his addresses to his son, and what do most fathers want for their sons? A freer, happier life. But Solomon, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was wiser than we often are today: There are some things in the book about bodily health, but Proverbs along with the whole of scripture recognizes that we are more than bodies: We are embodied souls, and it is possible, common even, to eat healthy, exercise, and get enough sleep, while neglecting your soul. And that matters, because there is a real spiritual being, a real God, with whom we must deal, and if we neglect him, we are on a path to death, rather than a path to a freer, happier life. So the discipline we need most is not to avoid unhealthy foods. Instead, in this passage, there is another urge that can feel ever so natural to us that we must nonetheless avoid if we are to enjoy the freer, happier life God intends for us. Do not be led astray by the temptation of sexual sin. The temptation of sexual sin; that’s what this passage is telling us to avoid. How can you do it, especially when it feels perhaps even more alluring than junk food and the couch? Three ways this passage gives us: Fill your heart with scripture, recognize the temptation, and keep your heart far from it.

 

Fill your heart with scripture

 

Our passage begins in a familiar way if you’ve been with us for earlier sermons in Proverbs, with an address from Solomon, the author, to his son, and an exhortation to him to keep his words and treasure up his commandments with him. Those two commands are followed by six more similar ones in the three verses that follow, until we come to verse 5 and arrive at the purpose, the reason for which Solomon wants his son to do all these things with his commandments: To keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words. One of Solomon’s biggest arguments throughout these first nine chapters of Proverbs for why we should pay close attention to his words is because they protect us from danger, and the danger he’s especially had in view since chapter 5 is the danger of the forbidden woman. He focused on a forbidden woman because he is writing to his son, and the particular woman he’s warning him about here is forbidden because she’s married, but in the Bible any person, male or female, to whom we are not married, whether they are married or not, is someone with whom we are forbidden to have any kind of sexual relationship. The forbidden woman, then, serves as a kind of type for sin in general, and especially for sexual sin.

 

Solomon is clearly concerned to protect his son from sexual sin, but look at how he does it first. He starts with all these commands related to receiving his commandments. Often when people are trying to fight temptation they’ll try to figure out what to do in the moment of temptation; that’s a fair and important question to ask. But if that’s the only question you’re asking, you’re going to be woefully unprepared for the fight. That would be like a soldier training for war and just asking his commander, “Ok, so when I get into the battle and the other guy is pointing a gun at me, what should I do?” Good question, important question, but we don’t train soldiers by just answering that question and sending them to battle. Instead, we train them day in and day out, so that when the battle comes, they aren’t standing there thinking, “ok, now what did my commander say I should do in this situation?” Instead, their training kicks in, and they respond accordingly.

 

So also, you are unlikely to habitually weaken any sin in your life, including sexual sin, if you direct all your energies to developing strategies for the moment of temptation. Instead, you need consistent training when you aren’t in the heat of temptation to prepare you for the moments you are. But the preparation for this battle doesn’t involve long runs in body armor, shooting drills, or battle formations. The preparation for this battle involves keeping words, treasuring up commandments, keeping commandments, binding them on your fingers…the stuff of verses 1-4.

 

We could say verses 1-4 tell us to remember the words of scripture, meditate on the words of scripture, value the words of scripture, do the words of scripture, protect the words of scripture, and commit to the words of scripture. First, remember them: Verse 1: Keep my words. Verse 3: Bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart. Don’t let them go. Why put them on your fingers? You can’t easily forget what’s on your fingers. Why write them on the tablet of your heart rather than a tablet in your house? Because a tablet in your house can be broken, hidden, and forgotten, but your heart you always have with you. Some ways to remember the words of scripture are to hear them regularly in the gathering of your church, to read them regularly in private, to listen to the Bible on audio throughout the day, to listen to good, biblical preaching podcasts throughout the week, to talk about them regularly with the people with whom you live and with others with whom you regularly spend time, and to intentionally work to memorize verses and passages of scripture.

 

But then the idea of remembering the words is not merely to remember them; it’s to meditate on them. When we’re told to write them on the tablet of our hearts, we should remember that the heart is the control center of the person, as Proverbs 4 put it: From the heart flow the springs of life. One way to think of what biblical meditation is it it’s getting the words of scripture from the pages of scripture into your heart. In meditation, you sit with the words and ponder them. You consider not only the words themselves, but their meaning, and especially their application to your life. You consider the goodness and beauty of them, the wickedness and evil of their opposite, you pray in response to them, and you keep going in this until those words begin to shape you and change you.

 

To do the kinds of things we see described in verses 1-4 you probably already get the vibe that you’d have to value them highly. You already remember and meditate on the things you value highly, but here we read that we should treasure up the commandments of scripture, and keep them as the apple of our eye. If you feel you don’t have time to remember and meditate on scripture, with what are you filling your time, and what does that reveal about what you value? Becoming an expert on tv shows, sports, or politics is going to do exactly nothing to prepare you for the battle against temptation.

 

But scripture will not really stay written on our hearts if we don’t also do what it says. So verse 2 says, “keep my commandments and live”—you need to remember them and meditate on them, but part of getting them into your heart is also training your heart through the practice of the commandments. Are there commandments of scripture you remember and think a lot about, but that you don’t do much about? Are there commandments you do, but you’re facing the temptation to give up doing them? I know the commands to pray without ceasing and not to grumble, but then something happens to throw off my plans for the day, and what do I find myself doing? Grumbling, and not praying. I know the command to rejoice in the Lord always, but then I come to church, and what do I find myself doing? Just kinda saying the words of the songs with minimal joy. As you remember and meditate on the commandments of scripture, don’t put off obedience to them. Train your heart to obey by doing what the Bible says.

 

We can also see here the need to protect the words of scripture. Implied in keeping the commandments is not only to remember and do them, but to protect them; keep them preserved. Think about the apple of your eye, the pupil; what do you do with it? You protect it. If you see something coming at it, you move, or you close your eyelids over it. If you’re going outside and it’s sunny, you put on sunglasses. If you’re doing woodwork, you put on safety goggles. And that’s true of anything we value, right? We protect it. Charles Bridges, a pastor from centuries ago, commenting on this passage, said of scripture, “To explain it away, or to lower its requirements, breaks down the barrier, and gives an easy entrance to temptation.” One of Satan’s devices that we can trace back to the garden of Eden is that little question, “Did God really say?” If you start explaining away scripture or lowering its requirements you are inviting temptation into your heart. Protect scripture in your own heart from the assaults of Satan and the world against it.

 

And, finally, commit to it. Verse 4 says to call it your sister and intimate friend. This may even connote marriage, but the point is clear: Keep these words close to you, and don’t let them go. A sister is your family. In Proverbs what does a friend do? They stick close. If part of you likes the Bible but then you reserve part of your heart or life, say your money or your relationships or your time for yourself, you’re going to be powerless to fight temptation. You have to commit to a side. Our world is in a battle between the God who is beauty, joy, and life vs. Satan, sin, and death, and every word of scripture is the word of God. Get off the fence about it. Commit to believe whatever it says, do whatever it commands, and cease whatever it forbids. We all fall short of that and will continue to do in this life, but if you won’t even make obedience to all of scripture in every area of life your aim, Jesus says you aren’t just a bad Christian; Jesus says you aren’t a Christian. “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

 

If you remember, meditate on, value, do, protect, and commit to the words of scripture, can you see what that could do in your life? It would give it direction, or in the words of Proverbs, it would put you on a path. You’d wake up in the morning and the desire of your heart for the day could be to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Your aspiration could be the glory of God in all you do. Your hope and dream for the world could be to see Christ known and worshipped by all the peoples of the earth. You could not be so concerned about what people think of you or what the particulars of your life on earth will be in the future; your heart could be set on bigger things. And if that becomes the direction of your life, if that’s what’s shaping your thinking, if those sorts of things are your greatest desires, can you see how sexual sin just doesn’t really fit? Can you see how it would start to lose its power? Fill your heart with scripture and you’ll be better prepared to fight temptation. And next, learn to recognize the temptation when it comes.

 

Recognize the temptation

 

You need to train for a battle, but you also have to learn to recognize the enemy and his tactics. To help us do that, Solomon begins to tell us a story in verse 6. It’s probably imaginary, but the lesson is real. He gives us a scene in which he looks out the window of his house and sees a young, simple man. Remember that the simple in Proverbs are not quite the foolish. Fools despise wisdom; the simple don’t have it yet. Solomon doesn’t want his son to remain simple, though, hence the calls to commit to the path of wisdom already in this passage. But why doesn’t he want his son to be simple? Let’s keep going in the story.

 

What’s this young simpleton doing? He’s passing along the street near the forbidden woman’s corner, taking the road to her house, in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness. It doesn’t seem like he’s targeting her house; that would be foolish. But Solomon knows where she lives and he sees the simpleton going for an evening stroll and getting near her house. This is a vivid picture of the simpleton: He’s an aimless wanderer, and while he’s not quite going out in the middle of the night, he’s also not sticking to the daytime. Darkness in Proverbs is a bad thing; it’s the path of the fool, the path of the wicked, that is shrouded in darkness, and it is often the case that those who sin sexually do so in the dark, as inhibitions lower and as the fear of getting caught decreases. While filling your heart with scripture puts you on the clear path of wisdom, this simpleton is just wandering aimlessly, and what do you know? He finds himself prey to temptation.

 

Where are you wandering aimlessly? How often do you find yourself at night aimlessly scrolling on your phone when temptation finds you? It’s trite because it’s true: Idle hands are the devil’s tools. Intentionally chosen times of leisure are a gift from the Lord, but aimless leisure is dangerous. I get the attractiveness of it and have often given in to it myself; our flesh hates to be constrained. There’s something appealing about living like a ball of clay, “free” to bounce around wherever the wind blows. But the odds of such a ball of clay becoming something beautiful are pretty low. It’s far more likely that it will bounce into the path of the forbidden woman, as this simpleton does here. If you want to fight temptation, fill your life with good works and intentional rest; don’t wander aimlessly. Talk over lunch and at your Citygroup this week about what good works or intentional rest you could add to your life to squeeze out the time for aimless wandering.

 

Part of the reason you’re likely to end up bumping into the forbidden woman if you wander aimlessly is because she’s not wandering aimlessly! She’s out on the prowl. Elsewhere in scripture we read that our adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). So what do you know? Behold in verse 10: The woman meets him. He didn’t have to go looking for her; he just had to wander aimlessly, and she found him. Then look at the description of her; this will help you recognize temptation. Verse 10 says she is dressed as a prostitute and wily of heart. She’s not a prostitute, but she dresses like one, and how do prostitutes dress? They dress in such a way as to attract sexual attention. She’s showing her skin, but she’s withholding her heart; she has other motives, as the text says she is “wily in heart”.

 

Brothers, if you choose to use a dating app, and you see a girl who in her picture is dressed in such a way as to attract sexual attention, recognize that for what it is: A woman you want to stay away from. And sisters, don’t dress like that. I get that standards of modesty are culturally variable, and that sometimes men’s sexual desires are so perverted by sin as to make women feel like just about anything less than a birka is immodest. That’s not what scripture teaches, but modesty in dress is a biblical value and dressing like a prostitute is obviously a biblical vice of which both men and women should be cognizant.

 

In verse 11 we read that she is loud and wayward; her feet do not stay at home. This is the kind of girl a simpleton usually wants. She’s loud and wayward; she’s putting herself out there, she’s pursuing him. In modern terms, we’d say she’s flirtatious. She’s even physically forward, verse 13: She seizes him and kisses him. And simple boys love that kind of woman because she enables them to never run the risk of rejection. Simple boys generally wait for the girl who comes and flirts with them rather than pursuing a woman for marriage. Brothers, that’s a recipe for attracting the forbidden woman, because the forbidden woman is willing to do that, but she’s unwilling to work in her home; “her feet do not stay at home,” the text says. In Titus 2 older women are told to instruct younger women to love their husbands and children and to work at home. That doesn’t mean they can’t also work outside the home, but it means if they are married with children, they should be working at home to love their husbands and children, and this woman is clearly rejecting that. I mean, where’s the fun and glamor in that, after all? Isn’t the real action out there? Who wants to spend their days feeding, clothing, discipling, and nurturing the lives of other images of God, especially when they sometimes scream at you and poop in their diapers? Again, brothers, you don’t want to be the kind of man who wants a woman who thinks like that, and sisters, you don’t want to be that kind of woman.

 

In verse 14 the forbidden woman finally speaks, having already kissed him; again, bad order of operations, and she starts by reading him her religious resume. She says she had to offer sacrifices, and today she paid her vows. The word translated “offering” there is specifically the peace offering, and though it seems like forever ago now, earlier this year we preached through Leviticus and saw that the peace offering was the offering that didn’t consume all the meat on the altar or even for the priests; the offeror was given some of the meat and typically with a vow, required to eat it the same day. So she is likely offering him meat here, which was not a common food item in the ancient world, and cloaking what she’s doing in religious garb. She’s religious! So again brothers and sisters, if you’re on the dating app or you meet someone out and about, just seeing “Christian” in the profile doesn’t tell you much. Some more fruitful questions include, “What church do you worship with?” “Are you actually a member of it?” “How did you become a Christian?” “What are some things you’re praying for regularly?” And if you get blank stares in response to these sorts of questions, that person probably still needs more help following Jesus from someone besides you before you should consider dating them. Even the forbidden woman can make the occasional sacrifice; sin is happy to dress itself up in religious garb. Satan not only prowls around like a roaring lion; he also disguises himself as an angel of light.

 

In verses 16-17 she talks about how she’s spread her couch with coverings and perfumed her bed with myrrh. The type of linens are valuable linens; she appeals to the simpleton’s love of money and his sense of smell. Think of all the different bodily senses to which she has appealed here: She’s appealed to his sight by dressing like a prostitute, to his hearing by being loud and speaking these enticing words to him, to his touch by kissing him, to his taste by offering him the meat of her sacrifices, to his smell by describing the fine aromas of her perfumes. The bodily senses are not inherently sinful; they are part of God’s good creation, but just as our whole persons are now fallen, so are our senses, and therefore they are often the entry point of temptation, especially the temptation to sexual sin. What’s the simple explanation most people give for why they want sexual sin? Because it feels good.

 

And, it will typically present itself as consequence-free good feeling. In verses 18-20 the forbidden woman invites the simpleton to come and enjoy a night full of sexual pleasure, with the added detail that her husband is away, and won’t be back anytime soon. It’s a long journey, she says. It’s dark, it’s indoors, and her husband isn’t coming home. It looks good, it will taste good, it will smell good, it feels good, and doesn’t it sound good? What’s not to like? “She even says she’s a Christian!” “It’s just on my computer or in my head; how could anyone know?!” And so, verse 21: With much seductive speech she persuades him, and what’s he do? All at once he follows her, but Solomon perceives the reality: He’s like an ox being led to the slaughter. What’s the ox thinking on such a walk? He’s not thinking any slaughter is coming; he’s a simple animal. But we know he’s going to his death, and we pity him, don’t we? So also this simple boy thinks he’s in for a great experience, but here’s what you’ve got to train your eyes to see: He may be happy for a moment, like the ox enjoying the walk with the farmer, but their fate is the same: They’re on their way to the slaughter, and they don’t even know it.

 

And why’s Solomon telling his son that, and telling us that? So that we will know it! You’ve got to recognize that when you click on that reel, when you open that app, when you send or reply to that text message, when you meet up with that forbidden man or woman, and it just feels so good, and man, life in the real world is hard and stressful, but this will feel like such a relief, and you know what? It might. That night with this woman might have felt amazing to his touch, sight, taste, smell, and hearing, but make no mistake about it: It will cost you your life. It will not end well. So what do you do with that? What’s the application? Keep your heart far from it.

 

Keep your heart far from it

 

In verse 24 Solomon gives his summary and tells his sons again to listen to him and be attentive to his words, and then these are the words: Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths. He doesn’t just say, “Don’t stray into her paths”; he says do not even let your heart turn aside to her ways. When Jesus said he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, he said not only that you should not commit adultery, but that if you look on a woman with lustful intent, you had already committed adultery with her in your heart! The battle against the temptation to sexual sin starts with the heart, and that’s the level at which you must fight it. When you start fantasizing about the forbidden woman, when you start imagining your life with someone to whom you cannot be married, that’s the time to start fighting!

 

What’s that look like? It’s easy to imagine what not committing adultery looks like: Don’t have sex with a married man or woman. But that’s not all God wants from you when he says do not commit adultery! He’s after the heart, but it’s less obvious to us how to do verse 25: Let not your heart turn aside to her ways. Here are some steps: First, confession. Recognize that the desire to sin is sin, and confess it as such. Confess it to God, and I would recommend confessing it a trusted brother if you’re a man or a trusted sister if you’re a woman.

 

Here’s what that could sound like: “Brothers I’ve got to tell you, I was on Facebook the other day and I clicked on the profile of this woman I find attractive, and for the next few minutes I fantasized about what my life would be like if I was married to her instead of my wife. Would you pray for me and help me consider what I need to do put that to death? Should I unfriend that woman, block her, delete my Facebook, get rid of my internet, get rid of my computer?” That’s just an example, but first, confess it as sin with no excuses, and then even there I alluded to talking about how to restrict your access to it. Don’t wander aimlessly on the forbidden woman’s street. We talked about that a good bit a couple weeks ago so I won’t rehash it all here, but you are unlikely to keep your heart from turning aside to sexual sin if you keep giving yourself easy access to it. Confess, restrict access, and then get to the work of what older theologians called mortification. Consider reading John Owen’s book called The Mortification of Sin. Mortification is just a fancy way of saying “killing”; the book is about the killing of sin on a heart level. But again, how do you do that?

 

It’s another activity that requires meditation. You have to take time to think about it, typically interspersed with prayer, typically with an open Bible in front of you, and most also find it helpful to do so with a pen and paper or an open computer so they can write down their thoughts. Here are some questions to focus your thinking: What is this sin? How does the Bible define it? What is the opposite virtue that scripture commends? Why is it sin? Why does God hate it? Why do I kinda like it? When am I most tempted to engage in it? What lies am I believing about God when I engage in it? What am I desiring more than God when I engage in it? That’s hard work. It’s painful work. It’s work you typically shouldn’t try to do all by yourself; you need time to meditate and pray privately over it, but you should also involve a trusted brother, sister, and/or pastor to help you see the things to which you might be blind.

 

Keep your heart far from it, because, as our passage closes, many a victim she has laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng. Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death. If you’re on the broad street line and the train stops at walnut/locust after City Hall, you’re going to end up at the stadiums if you don’t get off. And if you go to the forbidden woman’s house, you’re going to end up in Sheol, the chambers of death, if you don’t get off. In Proverbs, Sheol is the place those who are under the judgment of God go in death. That’s why going the way of the forbidden woman is like being an ox led to the slaughter. There is a real God, you live in his world, and if you are riding the subway into sin, you will end up under his condemnation.

 

So, in the words of rapper Shai Linne, how you gonna stand bro, how you gonna fight? How you gonna stand sis, how you gonna fight? Fill your heart with scripture. Recognize the temptation. Keep your heart far from it. Simple enough, right? Or is it? If you’ve ever tried to really fill your heart with scripture, what have you found? Sometimes it seems a bit cluttered. If you’ve ever tried to keep your heart far from sexual sin, what have you found? Your heart seems kinda drawn to it, actually, like a strong magnet to metal. And it’s true, the hearts with which you and I were born are sinful hearts, hearts whose every inclination was toward sin, not away from it, hearts that repel the truth of scripture, rather than store it up. With those hearts you can try to read and memorize a lot of scripture, but such a heart will not allow itself to be written on with the words of scripture. And you can try by the sheer force of your will to keep your heart far from sexual sin, but it will still go after it, or it will simply shift to some other more acceptable pleasure of the flesh like food or a screen.

 

If you are here today and you are not a Christian, I want to make this very clear: To really fill your heart with scripture and keep it far from sexual sin, you first need a new heart. And that is why in scripture God does not just give us commandments against adultery and warnings of its consequences. In scripture he also speaks to us good news of a savior, who came to give us new hearts. Jesus Christ did not wander aimlessly into a sinful world; he intentionally left his heavenly throne, took on human flesh, and when on earth, went into the wilderness to fast for forty days. At the end of those forty days, Satan came to him and to what did he appeal? His sense of hunger: Eat something; aren’t you hungry? But what did Jesus do? He combatted the temptation with the words of scripture with which he’d filled his heart, and even when he faced the final temptation, the temptation to avoid death on a cross, he never once let his heart turn aside. Yet where did his path lead him? Sheol. When we say in our creed that he descended into hell, that’s what we mean; not that he went to the place of eternal condemnation, but that he descended into death under God’s curse, a curse he bore not for his own sins, of which he had none, but for ours. Though he’d never sinned, he boarded the subway and rode it all the way to the death we deserved, but God did not abandon his soul to Sheol, nor let him see corruption. On the third day he rose again to new life, purchasing for his people new hearts that God would then give them at his appointed time.

 

Turn from your sins, trust in Christ today, and you can know that you have a new heart, a new heart that gives you spiritual life, a life that will never end, and a life that will even lead to the resurrection of your body when Christ returns. Don’t just fill your heart with scripture in general. Fill your heart with the heart of scripture: The gospel, the good news of Christ. The forbidden woman offers you temporary, sinful pleasures that end in death, but through Christ we have access to God, in whose presence there is a pure fullness of joy, and pleasures forevermore. The forbidden woman makes you feel loved, when in fact she’s withholding her heart; but in Christ we see that God actually loves us, and has not withheld from us even his only Son. Fill your heart with Christ, and there just won’t be any room left for the forbidden woman.