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| Series Theme: Studies in Proverbs 1-9 | |
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Contents:
Ch.5-7
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Chapter: Proverbs 5
Passage: Proverbs 5:1-10
A. Find out :
1. What again does Solomon ask and why? v.1,2 2. Who does he warn against and what is she like? v.3 3. What is her end? v.4,5 4. What more does he say about her? v.6 5. What does he exhort his sons to do? v.7,8 6. What does he warn would happen? v.9
B. Think:
C. Comment:In chapter 2 Solomon indicated that wisdom would save from adultery ( 2:16 -19). Now he specifically warns against the path of adultery. Sexual immorality is not something new. Faithlessness is a common sin throughout history, for that is what adultery really is.
Look, says Solomon, listen to me (v.1) because I understand these things (and implied, you do not). Hear these things so that you may maintain discretion (you will be wise and cautious), and so that you may continue to be able to pass on (preserve) knowledge (v.2). Look, he continues, when you encounter an adulteress, it will be her smooth words that will first lead you astray (v.3). Outwardly she will be saying such apparently nice things, but understand what she is really like. When someone is willing to be faithless, that isn't their only bad characteristic; you will find that eventually when she's fed up with you she will be bitter and her words will turn from being soft and gentle to being harsh and cutting (v.4). Her direction in life is towards death and destruction. She will destroy you (v.5) spiritually, morally, emotionally, mentally and eventually physically! She's not aware of her folly (v.6), but you should be so. If you go to her you will give to her the best of your life and you will not get what could be there for a child of God. You will forfeit the blessing of God and will live a life of poverty in so many ways. Avoid this at all costs.
D. Application:
Chapter: Proverbs 5 Passage: Proverbs 5:11-17
A. Find out :
1. What does Solomon say is the end of such a course? v.11 2. What does he say you will say? v.12,13 3. What does he say you will see? v.14 4. What does he say you should do? v.15 5. What does he say you shouldn't do? v.16 6. So what does he conclude? v.17
B. Think:
C. Comment:All the previous verses were a warning against adultery. Verse 8 was a warning to stay away from the door of an adulterous woman. Verses 9 & 10 were a warning against the consequences of going with such a woman in life. So verses 11 to 14 are a conclusion to that warning. Solomon says that if you go down that path, when you get near the end of your life, in your broken state you will look back with great regret and see that your ruin has come because you failed to listen to those who would warn you. From verse 15 on he starts using a cistern or water storage facility as a picture of what your married life should be like. Your relationship with your marriage partner should provide all the emotional and physical resources you need. The blessing coming from your marriage relationship should be like an overflowing well – an abundant source of blessing to you (v.15), but that is not for sharing publicly (v.16) or for receiving from others in life. Your emotional and physical resources should be a private matter. They should come out of that relationship between you and your marriage partner in life, from no one else. That is what God blesses. That is why adultery, which is unfaithfulness, has no place in our lives. That is the way God has designed life – one man with one woman – and we ignore it to our cost! No doubt we will look back to the beginning of the 21century and realise that this was true in our society in the West.
D. Application:
Chapter: Proverbs 5 Passage: Proverbs 5:18-23
A. Find out :
1. What does Solomon say is good ? v.18,19 2. What, by comparison, is bad? v.20 3. Of what does he remind us? v.21 4. What do the evil deeds of a wicked man do? v.22 5. What will happen to him? v.23
B. Think:
C. Comment:Verses 18 to 20 conclude Solomon's plea about avoiding adultery. As we said yesterday, verses 15 to 17 speak about the marriage covenant. So he concludes in verse 18, may the wife you married when you were young still be a blessing to you throughout your life, may she be the source of satisfaction and blessing to you. If the joy has gone out of our marriage, we need to take steps to rekindle the spark that was once there. Solomon firmly believes (even though he never kept to it in old age!) that love should still be there, that physical attraction and pleasure should be maintained, right the way through life.
The temptation that many men foolishly fall to, is that as age creeps on they look to someone younger and physically more attractive. That is when adultery occurs. Solomon challenges us that this should not be so. Remember, he is saying, God is watching what you are thinking and doing. Adultery falls into the category of “wickedness” and “evil”, be quite clear about that! The fruits of that, Solomon reiterates, are imprisonment (loss of personal freedom as enslaved by sin), aimless wandering (as God's purposes are lost to sin), and death (loss of spiritual life with God, loss of relationship with your marriage partner, death to sensitivity). All of these are very real and very sure.
D. Application:
Chapter: Proverbs 6 Passage: Proverbs 6:1-11
A. Find out :
1. What does Solomon now warn about? v.1,2 2. What does he say to do to remedy that? v.3 3. What does he say about the way you do it & why? v.4,5 4. Who does he say to look at and why? v.6-8 5. Who does he exhort? v.9,10 6. What does he say will happen? v.11
B. Think:
C. Comment:Solomon now moves on to deal with specific areas of foolish thinking and behaviour. First of all he tackles the problem of having made rash and hasty pledges that underwrite debts of others. The situation is one where he sees you have stood in to guarantee another person, but that has not worked out and you are now responsible for the debt and there seems no way out. You are trapped! The only way he says is to go cap in hand, humbly, and beg release. Legally you are bound and so it is only the mercy of another that can free you. This is true of salvation and it can be true in life. Humility is the answer. The second warning he gives is against laziness. Look at an ant, he says, for it has no one forcing it to work but it wisely works hard and puts aside provision. The lazy person keeps putting off work – a little more sleep, a little more rest – with the result that nothing is achieved and poverty will creep up on you. In a society where financial “benefits” are provided by the state, it is easy to pretend that we aren't suffering from poverty because we have enough to live on, yet there is poverty of spirit and failure to live in abundance and all, so often, because we have lost the will to work. The Bible speaks strongly against the person who will not work and will not provide for their family.
D. Application:
Chapter: Proverbs 6 Passage: Proverbs 6:12-19
A. Find out :
1. Who does Solomon next speak against? v.12a 2. What 5 things does this person do with his body? v.12b-14 3. What will happen to him? v.15 4. What 5 misuses of the body does God hate? v.17,18 5. What other two people does he find detestable? v.19
B. Think:
C. Comment:In verses 12 to 14 Solomon details how you can watch an evil man and see the various ways he uses his body to do evil. He uses his mouth to speak falseness, his eye to deceive, his hands and feet to signal others in doing evil while all the time his heart is plotting evil, i.e. his innermost being is turned to evil. His end, says Solomon, is destruction.
Then comes this strange expression in verse 16 that comes up a number of times in Scripture: seven is the number of perfection, six is the number of humanity. Is it “Six human things that God hates perfectly”?
What are these things? They are pride, lies, violence, plotting wickedness, eagerness to do evil, giving false testimony, and being an agitator. These are all things that are so much part of Western life. Why are they so wrong? Because they are the exact opposites of how God has made mankind to be. He desires there to be humility in awareness of our frailty and imperfection, truth, righteousness and peace. As the apostle Paul said, “The kingdom of God is…. righteousness, peace and joy” (Rom 14:17 ). At this stage of his life, Solomon was fully aware of these things. When you consider this you realise that this knowledge alone does not keep you – as Ecclesiastes makes clear. It needs a firm and steady commitment to the will of God to keep us on the right way. Knowledge alone will not do that. It's a matter of the heart.
D. Application:
Chapter: Proverbs 6 Passage: Proverbs 6:20-29 A. Find out :
1. What again does he exhort his son to do? v.20,21 2. What will they do? v.22 3. How does he picture them? v.23 4. From whom will they keep him & what does she do? v.24,25 5. What further does he say she does? v.26 6. What further warning illustrations does he give? v.27-29
B. Think:
C. Comment:First, yet another exhortation to hang onto his teaching and to keep it close to you always (v.20,21). Then come the general benefits of keeping this teaching in this way (v.22). In your general walk in life they will guide you. When you are asleep you will have peace, knowing that you are secure in this walk. While you are awake, they will instruct and teach you. They are like a lamp that will show you the way (v.23). They will bring order and discipline (training) to your life, which in turn will bring ‘life'. Then he brings us yet a further warning (the third!) against immorality that will come through the enticing of an adulterous or immoral woman. Beware he says, beware her words that will seem good to you, beware her beauty that will seek to captivate you. But remember, he goes on, the outcome of going with her: she will prey upon you and drain you and you will end in poverty (for the blessing of God cannot remain upon you!). He concludes this part with general warnings that you will reap what you sow, that actions have consequences (See also Gal 6:7). If you take the embers out of a fire, you will be burnt. If you walk on those embers, you will be burnt. That is just how the physical world is. So, similarly, if you play with the fire of adultery, you WILL be burnt! Why won't this foolish world of ours understand this!
D. Application:
A. Find out :
1. Who does Solomon now use as an example? v.30 2. What happens if he is caught? v.31 3. But what does he say about an adulterer? v.32 4. What will be his end? v.33 5. Why? v.34 6. What won't happen? v.35
B. Think:
C. Comment:This whole section is the third of four sections in these early chapters that is given over to warnings against adultery. Solomon sees this as a special temptation of the young that is to be avoided. In the previous verses he warned that you will “get burned”! Now, as he concludes this section, he warns that adultery is far worse than say theft. In the Law, God provided that a thief, if he was caught, would have to recompense the victim. There is a sense that for the victim, the whole thing is put right, even making it better than before by the compensation. So, in the case of theft, there are not ongoing bad feelings about the thief. He's done wrong but now he's paid for it. Now compare that with adultery, says Solomon, and you'll see the awfulness of adultery. That will end with ongoing shame and hostility. The fact is that if you steal another man's wife, you will gain life long antagonism from him. You brought about, not only a breach of the marriage covenant, but you brought a breakdown in trust between the couple which, even if the affair is terminated, will take a long time to restore. Forgiveness is relatively easy to give in such a situation, but regaining trust takes a long time. For this reason the adulterer will always have the eyes of the husband on him, always resenting, always mistrusting, always wary, wondering if the same thing will occur again. Adultery lingers on, even if the affair is ended. For the adulterer there will long lasting effects. Stay away from it, says Solomon.
D. Application:
A. Find out :
1. How does Solomon exhort his son yet again? v.1-3 2. How is he to view wisdom & understanding and why? v.4,5 3. Who had Solomon seen, when and doing what? v.6-9 4. Who met him, doing what? v.10-13 5. What did she say to entice the young man? v.14-20 6. What was the outcome? v.21-23 7. So what is his conclusion? v.24-27
B. Think:
C. Comment:We consider the chapter as a whole because, as a case study, it is a summary of much of what Solomon has said already. He starts and finishes with an exhortation to his son (real or imaginary) to hold onto his words and let his wisdom act as protection throughout his life against the woman who would lead him astray. Sexual infidelity is perhaps one of the great temptations, as our society today clearly shows. To illustrate this he tells how he watched out the window and saw an unwise young man, walking down the street at dusk, going near the house of an immoral woman. When she saw him she came out and enticed him to come in to “make love”. She has prepared her bed for him because her husband is away on a business trip. In his folly the young man went in. He was, says Solomon, like an animal going to the slaughter. In his folly he doesn't realise the consequence of his action, he doesn't realise he is about to sell his soul, he thinks it will be all right, but it won't! Just like so many people in our society today! Unfaithfulness always brings its own consequences of destruction in so many ways that we have already considered. There are ALWAYS consequences and they are always destructive.
D. Application:
RECAP - "Expanded Warnings" - Proverbs 5-7 SUMMARY :In this fifth group of 8 studies we have seen Solomon giving :
COMMENT :In these chapters Solomon spells out at length some of the things that wisdom guards against. Adultery is the main temptation but he also covers the folly of rashly giving pledges, laziness and plotting against others. Each of these things can pull us down and destroy us. Each of these things are far from the design of God for our lives. Thus wisdom is the means of avoiding these things. Building wisdom into our lives will help counteract the temptation that comes. Wisdom will reject each of these things and thus keep us from destruction.
LESSONS?1. The desire for forbidden sensual pleasure can bring downfall. 2. Unwisely carrying responsibility for others can bring downfall. 3. Laziness can bring our downfall.
PRAY :Ask the Lord to help these teachings of Solomon have real impact in your life, the counter these temptations.
PART 6 : "Wisdom Personified"In this final section we will see Solomon speak about wisdom in a variety of ways, each one as a person. In this way he makes wisdom seem alive, proactive, requiring our attention or response. This is yet another way he demands we consider wisdom.
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