Beware My Son .......

[Actaeon]

We all know that we live in a sexually saturated culture. We’ve come a long way from Victorian America, where bathing suits covered the entire body and where a scandal was seeing a woman’s knee. In the 1950s, when a young entrepreneur named Hugh Hefner left his job at Fortune magazine to start Playboy, that opened the floodgates of pornography. Today pornography in the United States is a multibillion dollar industry. Sexually explicit images are also piped into homes through cable TV, dish networks, and the internet.

Yet the even more dangerous part of our sexually saturated society is the message that a person can act on their sexual impulses without any consequences. This is one of the enormous lies of our generation. Millions of people today act out every sexual whim and they wonder why their lives are falling apart.

The first six verses of Proverbs chapter 5 issue a warning. One cannot but help to notice the emphasis on wisdom in the first two verses. Wisdom is the art of skillful living. This chapter is a father instructing his son about wise living, the warning is about the "adulteress." However, the principles we find there apply to all kinds of sexual temptation, not just a young man’s temptation with an extramarital affair. This chapter notes that what the temptation promises is always better than what it really delivers. Sexual temptation drips with honey. Honey is something sweet. Here honey represents words of seductive flattery that appeal to the person’s ego.

Sexual temptation is "smoother than oil." This is a way of saying that the source of temptation says all the right things, but that there’s really a hidden agenda. But in the end, what starts as sweet as honey tastes as bitter as gall. When all is said and done, the sweetness is gone, and all that’s left is a bitter taste. What looks as sweet as honey is really as bitter as arsenic. What looks as smooth as oil is really sharper than a sharpened sword. Sexual temptation creates an illusion, and then tries to persuade us that this illusion is real—sexual temptation peddles an illusion. That’s why sexual temptation appeals to the world of fantasy.

The father urges his son to steer clear of sexual temptation. Don’t even go down that street, he says. If you want to walk right--"Don’t go where it’s slippery." Then the father lists several of the consequences his son can expect if he gives in to the temptation.

It’s been said, "We don’t break God’s laws, but they break us." God’s ethical imperatives aren’t arbitrary rules that God pulled out of a hat. But God gave us these ethical absolutes for our own welfare, to protect us from consequences of sin.

The writer uses the metaphor of water to describe sexuality. He encourages his son to stay within the sexual boundaries of marriage. The marriage bed is likened to a well or a cistern in his yard, that place where he finds water to refresh his soul and strengthen his body. It also gives us the context for this blessing: marriage. Rejoice in your wife or your husband. God’s creation intention in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are always in the backdrop of the Bible’s discussion of human sexuality. God’s creation of the first man and the first woman provides the context for human sexuality.

God created a boundary for the enjoyment of sexuality, and that boundary is the covenant of marriage. God created a covenant relationship, a relationship of mutual trust and mutual commitment, a relationship that’s entered into with vows.

This means that if we express our sexuality outside of this covenant relationship we’ve gone outside the boundaries. The Bible teaches that premarital sexual expression is wrong and destructive in our lives. The Bible uses the word "fornication" to describe premarital sex. It teaches that all extramarital sexual expression is wrong and destructive in our lives. The Bible uses the word adultery to describe extramarital sex. The Bible also teaches that all same sex sexual expression is wrong and destructive. The Bible uses the word homosexuality to describe same sex activity.

We’re also warned that our choices have the potential of ensnaring us for the rest of our lives. Like a mouse caught in a trap, venturing outside of God’s boundaries is dangerous. We find ourselves tied to our sinful behavior. This snare can take many different forms. OUR CHOICES DETERMINE OUR DESTINY. Our choices in life reflect the road we’ve chosen, and the further we go down that road, the more difficult it is to change to a different road. Therefore, be careful to check your roadmap (Bible) before setting out on life's journey!

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