Some of you remember advice columnist, Ann Landers. Ottis of Wisconsin wrote Landers: Eleven years ago, I walked out on a 12-year marriage. My wife was a good person, but for a long time, she was under a lot of stress. Instead of helping her, I began an affair with her best friend. This is what I gave up:
1. Seeing my daughter grow up.
2. The respect of many long-time friends.
3. The enjoyment of living as a family.
4. A wife who was loyal, appreciative, and who tried very hard to make me happy.
This is what I got:
1. Two stepchildren who treated me like dirt.
2. A wife who didn’t know how to make anything for dinner but reservations.
3. A wife whose only interest in me was how much money she could get.
4. A wife who disparaged my family and ruined all my existing friendships.
5. Finally, the thing I got was a bitter, expensive divorce.[1]
This is the moral tragedy Solomon warned his children, and his readers, to avoid. Solomon gave us an eternally important choice of two roads [lifestyles] to travel in life: The road of the wise and the road of the fool. On these two life journeys are contrasting traveling companions.
On the road of the wise, the good wife is the traveling companion (Prov 31).
On the road of the fool, the fool is accompanied by the adulteress. Solomon used the “road” imagery in Proverbs 5:6, and 21 to convey his warning.
Solomon warned about the adulteress in 2:16-19, 5:1-23, 6:24-35, and 7:1-27. The adulteress theme is so prominent in Proverbs, that no study of Proverbs can ignore it.
The Main Point of this Sermon is: We must avoid the Home Wrecker (the adultress).
How can we avoid the Home Wrecker?
Solomon provided four insights that will aid in avoiding the adulteress in Proverbs 5:1-23.
1. Live by God’s Wisdom (5:1-2)
A. Explanation:
Solomon began his new “my son” admonition, instructing his son to be attentive to his wisdom (“my wisdom”) in contrast to God’s wisdom as previously stated. This is the eighth of the fifteen fatherly admonitions in Proverbs 1-9.
B. Argumentation:
After all, Solomon was the wisest of all men (1 Kings 4:29-34). What Solomon advised in the book of Proverbs, however, is God’s wisdom passed on by the parent Solomon to his children.
C. Application:
Mom and Dad, you have a great promise in James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”
D. Illustration:
A distraught father stood before his kicking and screaming child. He was baffled by his son’s temper tantrums. When his son started beating his head against the floor, the father dropped his chin to his chest, shaking his head in silent prayer, “Help me know what to do.” When an idea flashed, he got down on his knees, grabbed his son’s head, and said, “Here, let me help you bang it.” Careful not to hurt his son, he helped him with his tantrum, instead of resisting it. His surprised son stopped, cured of using tantrums that no longer worked.”[2] If you are frustrated and overwhelmed with the task of parenting, you can live by the wisdom God gives to those who ask. Next, Solomon spoke his first extended warning about the adulteress.
2. Avoid the Adulteress (5:3-14)
Solomon gave two reasons for avoiding this home wrecker.
The first reason:
Because of her destruction (5:3-6). Solomon identified the “adulteress” by stating that her “end” (5:4) is bitter. Solomon noted that this evil person whose end is “bitter’ speaks words that “drop as a honeycomb” (5:3). This is the first honey that drips from a broken honeycomb and was referred to as “virgin honey.” Ironically, her words like “virgin honey” drip from one who is no longer a virgin and who is bent on robbing, especially young, simple fools, of their virginity.
In Proverbs 7, Solomon gives an actual account or at least a vivid portrayal of how the huntress works. Her flatterous dialogue is recorded in 7:10-20. Solomon disclosed her success: “With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with her flattering lips she forced him” (7:21). She is the woman who hangs out at the drink machine at work during break and when the simpleton lumbers up like a dumb ox (Prov 7:22), squeezes his biceps and sweet talks, “Oh, you are so big and strong!” And he responds, “Yeah, I know.”
Solomon continued to warn. If you follow the road of fools to her house, the road does not end there. This road runs right through her house and dead ends in “hell” (5:5). This is her destiny and destruction but, on the way, she picks up every naïve hitchhiker she can and takes him with her.
The second reason:
Not only should the seductress be avoided because of her destruction, but also because of the destruction of those who are seduced by her (5:7-14). Solomon started his new advice with the mantra: “Hear me now, therefore, O you children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.” This helps identify a new main division in the Proverb and your sermon.
Solomon listed the devastating consequences of yielding to her enticing words. Those who fall prey to her temptations lose their honor in 5:9. Think of David “the man after God’s own heart” who is remembered more for his sin with another man’s wife. Next, there is the loss of wealth in 5:10. This sin often results in child support, blackmail, or hush money. Solomon lastly spoke of the loss of health: “You mourn at the last when your flesh and your body are consumed” (5:11).
Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke added in his commentary on this text a statistic from the United States Public Health Service’s Center for Disease Control – a statistic that no one will ever see on television or in print. I quote, “A new sexually transmitted infection is diagnosed every forty-five seconds and in its wake are pain, blindness, arthritis, infertility, brain damage, heart disease, and death. In spite of half a century of penicillin and wonder drugs, millions of people are contracting new generations of disease, including incurable strains of herpes which have been linked to cervical cancer, and can be passed on to newborn babies.[3]
Vernon McGee wrote about an infamous gangster in the penitentiary in Atlanta. One of the officers there told me [McGee] that this man had contracted syphilis, which had not been cured and went on to cause paresis and eventually insanity. That man was a blubbering idiot before he died. The officer told me [McGee] this: “This man was responsible for the ruin of many a girl. But it is interesting that he didn’t get by with that sort of thing. Some girl along the route got even with him.”[4] Finally, there is the loss of mental peace in 5:12-14. This section is dialogue which sets it apart as a new sub-division.
Listen to some statistics from a study of men who were involved in an adulterous relationship and who, because of it, left their spouse. These men were interviewed ten years after their affair and the breakup of their home.
33% were intensely angry with life;
50% ended up divorced again – most of them from the woman they had believed was the answer to all their problems;
80% experienced the same or lower quality of life financially;
50% under the age of fifty were unhappily remarried;
66% over the age of fifty were unhappily remarried;
80% [note this percentage] would remarry their former wives and regain what they lost if given the chance. [5]
3. Love your Wife (5:15-19)
In this new main division, after this dark warning of the reaping of this sin, Solomon spoke a positive insight for avoiding the adulteress. Solomon advised, “Rejoice with the wife of your youth” (5:18). Someone might be thinking, “Solomon needed to practice what he preached!” Solomon wrote three books in the Bible probably in this order.
First, he penned his love song to the Shulamite woman in Song of Solomon. While Solomon as the new king inherited a harem of one hundred and forty wives and concubines (Song of Sol 6:8) he told the Shulamite woman that she was “the only one, the only one of her mother” (6:9). At this point, Solomon was a one-woman man.
In Proverbs, which Solomon wrote next when he was older and wiser, he summarized the love song in Proverbs 5:15-20. The remedy for avoiding the adulteress is to stay in love with your wife. Sadly, Solomon departed from his own parental and pastoral counsel. At the end of Solomon’s life and reign, he no longer loved the wife of his youth. The biographer of Solomon in 1 Kings draws an intentional contrast. At the beginning of Solomon’s forty-year reign, Solomon “loved the Lord” (1 Kings 3:3). At the end of his forty-year reign, Solomon “loved many foreign women” (1 Kings 11:1). These foreign women who worshipped other gods, drew Solomon’s heart away from loving the Lord and his first love for his wife.
Some Bible scholars believe that Solomon lastly wrote Ecclesiastes after he repented before his death. Let’s hope this is the case. The remedy for avoiding the seductress is to fall in love again with the wife you married in your youth. Like, Solomon, the remedy might be repenting of losing that first love for the Lord and your wife. A good next step could be to watch “Fireproof” and take the forty-day “Love Dare.” Finally, Solomon circled back and emphasized the need for God’s wisdom.
4. Embrace Wisdom (5:20-23)
This new advice is prefaced with another “my son” (5:20). This new “my son” helps us identify a new main division. The youth should not “embrace” the adulteress but “embrace her [wisdom]” in Proverbs 4:8. Solomon closed this admonition with a strong warning in 5:21-23. If his son does not heed this warning, “He will die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he will go astray.”
Is there any hope? Yes! Solomon’s dad, David again is our example. After nine months of keeping silent about his sin, David repented of his adultery with Bathsheba and rejoiced in God’s forgiveness in Psalm 32:1-2: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”
I preached a similar message from Proverbs on a Sunday morning years ago. The next day, two church members came to the parsonage. One of the women, who brought her best friend, said she was guilty of the sin Solomon warned against. She confessed her sin. She left her job where her liaison also worked. That was many years ago. and God has blessed her confession and her marriage.
[1] Woodrow Kroll, Proverbs: God’s Guide for Life’s Choices (Lincoln: Back to the Bible, 1996), 162.
[2] Charles Sell, The House on The Rock (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1977), 19.
[3] Stephen Davey quoted Bruce K. Waltke, Proverbs: Volume 1 (Eerdmans, 2004), 129.
[4] J. Vernon McGee, Proverbs (Nashville: Nelson Publishers, 1991), 55.
[5] Stephen Davey’s sermon, Dangerous Affair.