Strange women and Dumb men

I am preparing to teach a lesson this week on the dangers of sexual sin. As I was preparing, I was amazed to see how relevant this message is for the 21st Century even though it was originally written almost 3,000 years ago. Our culture is full of naive men and strange women (strange to the ways of God). Let’s take a look at this lesson and see how it compares to our modern society.

There are a couple of passages that I want us to read before we begin to discuss what we learn.

• Proverbs 5:1-15
• Proverbs 6:20-35
• Proverbs 7:1-27
• Proverbs 5:15-23

In order to understand this passage, I would like to break it up into 4 parts, 1) the commands 2) the adulteress 3) the results 4) God’s solution

I. The Commands

Here are the commands from the Proverbs mentioned above:

• Give attention to the words of your father. The father was to teach his children the Word of God, the Bible. The expression “give attention” literally means “to hear with understanding, pay attention”.
• Incline your ear to your father’s teaching. Stretch out your ear and get close to my mouth so that you can catch every single word that I say.

Many times, as parents, we assume that we have to wait until our children get “a little older” so that they can really understand what we are telling them. This is not true. When they are young, they “eat up”every word that you say. You have their attention and they want to hear what you have to say. When they get older, you may want to teach them but you no longer have their attention like you did when they were younger. Start teaching them when they are young and continue. In order to be able to teach our children, we must first know the Word of God ourselves and be able to teach It to them. Teach your children when they are young to hear your words with understanding. Teach them when they are young to pay attention to every word that comes out of your mouth. Children, as you grow and mature, learn to:

• Listen to the good advice that your parents give to you, as they teach you from God’s Word.
• Do not depart from the advice that your parents give you. In other words, apply what they teach you and do it each and every day.

There is some very specific advice that moms and dads are to give to their children.

• Stay away from the girl/woman who is foreign to the ways of the Lord.
• Do not go near her (the places where she can be found).
• Do not desire her beauty.
• Do not let her capture you with her tactics.
• Do not fall for her temptations.
• Stay far, far away from her.

The question that many young men would have next is, “why should I listen to you and not follow my desires? Don’t you want me to be happy?”. Let’s take a look at the strange woman and find out why we should stay away from her, or, if you are a girl, why you should not become her.

II. The Adulteress

Before we discover why we should stay away from her or not become her, we need to find out how to recognize her.

• Her lips drip honey. She knows how to talk to you in such a way that you want to hear more of what she has to say. Her speech is smooth. Those words quickly turn bitter and that mouth that dripped honey quickly becomes sharp as a double-edged sword.
• She knows how to capture a naive man with her eyes.
• She is on the hunt. She takes the initiative in relationships. She is actually a predator seeking new life to devour. She seizes her prey, kisses him, seeking to seduce him with many different enticements.
• She dresses in a way to catch your attention. You do not notice her by chance. She has made sure to capture your attention by the way she looks, the way that the clothes fit just right in all the right places.
• She is cunning of heart. She knows what she is doing. Nothing is done by chance. Nothing just happens. She has planned out her actions.
• She is boisterous. She is loud, wanting attention and getting it by her words, actions, looks, everything about her screams pay attention to me.
• She is rebellious. She is stubborn and does not listen to anyone. She does not take advice from others. She knows it all and does what she does on purpose.
• She cannot stay at home. She is out and about where all the naive men are, to get their attention and seduce them. She did not just run into you on the street by chance. She was there looking for you, waiting on you.
• She is brazen. She is determined to have what she wants, when she wants it, where, how etc. You have become her prey.
• She is dangerous because she is religious. She knows what to say, when to say it, how to say it. She easily calms her own conscience and her prey’s conscience.
• She is led by her passions and desires. She does not think about the consequences of her actions, just satisfying her desires. She does not care about you either.
• You are not the first victim and you will not be the last. She is an expert at what she does.

Why is she so dangerous?

• Her feet go down to death. She is destroying herself and she will take you with her.
• Her lifestyle leads to the grave and she will take many naive men with her.
• She is just as deceived as you are. She does not realize the consequences of her actions even though she has calculated all of her actions that attracted you.
• She is actually an evil person because not only does she destroy herself, she destroys others with her.
• She is on the hunt for your life.

So, we have seen that there is a predator on the prowl. Your father and mother have tried to warn you about her. Now you have to make a choice. You can either listen to them and do what they say or, you can choose not to listen to them and do what you want to do. You get to choose the actions but don’t forget about the fact that there are consequences for your actions. God allows us to choose the actions but He has already established the results of those actions.

III. The Results

There are two kinds of results, positive ones for obedience and negative ones for disobedience. You choose the actions and then have to face the consequences. The good part about God is, He tells us the results before we act. We do not have to act not knowing what the consequences are ahead of time.

1. Negative
   • By following after the strange woman and falling into her trap, you will waste the few precious years that you have been given by God. You will give your vigor away. The power that you have been given by God as a man to accomplish great things, will be thrown away on nothing. You will not even have satisfaction from what you have done. What seems so great for a moment will become bitter and make you the same way. Those beautiful words will become a double-edged sword and cut you to pieces. You will end up suffering and the pleasure that you once had, fleeting as it was, will lead you to groaning because of all of the bad that has happened to you.
   • By not listening to your parents, you mark yourself as a naive person, a person who lacks sense. You will bring wounds and disgrace in your life. You are like an ox being led to the slaughter. You go of your own free will. You mark yourself as a fool.
2. Positive
   • If you listen to you parents and apply what they have taught you from the Word of God then you will have understanding and wisdom which will help you make the right choice and not follow the strange woman. Not only will you not follow the strange women but you will also warn others not to follow her ways. The Word of God will guide you in the right way. You will be safe from the strange woman, even though she is chasing after you. You will live and will be all that God created you to be as a man.

IV. God’s Solution to avoid the strange woman

Proverbs 5:15-23 teaches us that, as men, we are to wait for the right woman, the woman who is not foreign to the ways of God. She is to be a woman who has been formed by God’s Word to be the suitable helper that we need. Once God has given her to us and we are married, here is what we need to do. Remember, just because you are married does not mean that you are safe from the strange woman who is on the prowl.

Drink water from your own cistern. God has given your wife to you to enjoy. Enjoy her and her alone. Do not even consider what other women would be like. Focus on your wife and the joy that you have from her. Rejoice in your wife when she is young and rejoice in her all the days of your life, especially when you have grown older with her. Let your wife satisfy you at all times. Do not be enticed by anyone else. In order not to be enticed by another, be drunk with your wife’s love. Her love needs to control you the way that alcohol controls a drunk man. When you have her love, you want more of it. When you do not have it, that is what you think about until you do get it. This is the joy that God wants us to have from our wives.

My dear friend, I have a few questions that I would like to ask you here at the end. Are you a parent? Are you teaching your children to avoid the strange women out there? Are you teaching your girls not to become those strange women? As a man, are you intrigued by a strange woman? Have you considered giving in to her? Do you realize what will happen to you? If you are married, are you rejoicing in your wife the way that Proverbs 5 teaches? May the Lord help us not be dumb men and strange women but be children of God who teach others to become children of God and not fall into the categories of dumb men and strange women.