Good morning church. How are we doing? Good. Wow. Okay. Well, it’s good to be with you again. My name is Colby Flowers. I’m the student pastor at Valley View here. And, I’ve been delighted to have opportunity to teach with you this morning. And we’re continuing in our series of proverbs. This morning we are going to be in Proverbs chapter seven. And so if you want to turn to the scriptures we will be in Proverbs chapter seven. I’m looking forward to this passage. But, we had a great weekend last weekend. If you were here on Sunday last week we had a delightful, delightful spring picnic with a lot of pie. Can I get an amen in the house of the Lord? Pie was great. We even were surprised by a visit from Valley Dairy Freeze. So catch this a Baptist church here. We had a cookout, grilled out food, pie and ice cream. That’s the trifecta right there, right? And if you noticed last week, did you know this, the strategic placement of the Valley Dairy Freeze truck, did y’all notice this? I call I caught wind of it really quickly because one of our food lines, we had two food lines that went around the pavilion out there and one food line went to the right, and they parked their truck right next to that food line. Isn’t that good marketing? So in order to get to the food line, you had to cross the food truck or the ice cream truck. And so it’s very easy to just start seeing people walk away with an ice cream cone. You even feel the the rush of cold air when they open and close that cooler. And you just thinking, hey, I wonder what kind of flavors they might have. So you peek over there and see what they got, and it’s almost impossible not to get an ice cream while you’re waiting for your food. And actually, my mother in law, she’s in the room this morning. She loves dessert before dinner, and and I’m starting to pick that up. So there is this. There is this temptation. You walk past that, you have to get it. But Valley Valley Dairy Freeze has done this to me multiple times. Because to pick up my daughter from daycare, I drive right past Valley Dairy Freeze. And so my daughter’s three. And what three year old doesn’t love ice cream? Okay, so she has a very unique way to manipulate me. I don’t say to manipulate. That’s kind of a bad word. Sweet talk me. I mean, that’s the that’s the better word. Sweet talked me into stopping for ice cream, and I’m not going to bring up the fact that her father is also a lover of ice cream. And so it’s an easy yes for us. And so I had to start thinking of a different route to go home because we were spending too much money at the Dairy Freeze. But we’re going to see something this morning in Proverbs chapter seven, a similar situation in which we probably shouldn’t go down a path or go even near something that might tempt us. So we’re going to look here in Proverbs chapter seven. We’re talking about, once again, the topic of adultery. Now, if you’re keeping count, this is the third message we’ve had on the issue of adultery and lust thus far in Proverbs. And we’ve only been through seven chapters, and some of y’all are thinking, okay, Solomon, like, we get it, you’re wanting to instruct on adultery, but can we move on here? But before we we jump to a conclusion, I think the reason why he mentions it so much because it was so prevalent. And if we we could be honest today the issue of less than adultery is still prevalent today. And so for us, even as parents, as we did our family commitment this morning, this isn’t shouldn’t not be an issue that we delay talking about until our kids are adults. Instead, we believe here at Valley View in the appropriate setting that we teach our young ones biblical sexuality in the appropriate way from an early age. And it begins with the parents. And this is exactly what Solomon, King Solomon is doing in the book of Proverbs. So he is speaking about it for the third time already. But it’s important. And so as we’re going to see this morning, here’s what we’re going to go with this, that to protect yourself from digitalized adultery. And we’re going to come to that phrase in just a second. To protect yourself from digitalized adultery, you must make a covenant with wisdom and your eyes. We’re going to unpack this, this is where we’re headed, because we’ve already spoken about it two times in this issue of less than adultery. But here’s what I want to do this morning. I want to get very specific and a particular type of adultery that King Solomon wasn’t facing back then, but we certainly face today. So we might get a little uncomfortable in this room today, but that’s okay. What we’re going to do is we’re going to work through God’s Word this morning. And here in Proverbs chapter seven, verses one through three, this is what it says. It says, my son, keep my words, keep my words, and treasure up my commandments. The word keep is so important here. We’re going to see it multiple times. But the word keep is so crucial because it doesn’t just mean keep. It means protect. To guard, to watch. And we’re going to see it multiple times this morning in this passage. So what he’s saying here is keep my words, treasure my commandments. Verse two keep my commandments and live. Keep my teaching as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers while that while and write them on the tablet of your heart. So we get the picture already from the father. He’s playing with the son. What I’m instructing to do. What I’m warning you to do. You’ve got to keep them, protect them, guard them. Put them around your finger like a ring. Get them on the inside. Don’t merely make them things that you talk about. Get them on the inside of your heart. So the first thought here is wisdom should be treasured and guarded in our hearts. Wisdom should be something that we value and treasure and delight in, that we are that we guard and protect and keep and bind to our lives. It is sort of this picture is we’re going to see in these next verses this idea of, of of wedding, marrying wisdom. Look here in verse four. It says, say to wisdom, you are my sister and call insight your intimate friend, to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulterous with her smooth words. Now a few things to note here when it says you are my sister. We might think in our modern American context that we’re talking about a biological sibling, but but often in the ancient text, particularly in verses like Song of Solomon 5:1 the word sister would often be used to talk about your wife. So here we get a picture of him saying, say to wisdom, you are my wife, you are my bride, you are my betrothed. Call insight your intimate friend. But then in verse five, what he does is, is he separates it. He then looks at verse five and says to keep you from the forbidden woman. So notice the two options. You can choose wisdom as your wife or you can go along with the forbidden woman and go on to folly. You see that the the split in the comparison he’s making here, because when you are married to wisdom, you will protect. It will protect you from the forbidden woman. Being married to wisdom, in other words, being so closely knitted to wisdom that we treasure it, we desire it, we protect it, we keep it. And we want to choose wisdom over folly, over the forbidden woman. So my first point this morning put a ring on wisdom. If I could say it that way. Ring her up. When I met Maggie, when we started dating. And I knew the day. This is the girl that I want to marry. And I knew it was. I put a ring on that finger as fast as I could. I didn’t want her going anywhere else because I wanted to marry her. But when we’re talking about wisdom, we need to marry and be wedded to wisdom. We need to to keep it so close to us that we don’t let it go and we protect it. Does that make sense? So it goes on here in verse nine because or sorry, I want to give you another verse. Psalm 119:9 it says, how can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. It’s a beautiful verse, a simple picture of God’s word, God’s wisdom protecting us, keeping us on a pure path and all of this says, man, this can be applied to men and women, so we keep our way pure when the Word of God is first in our lives. So the father goes here in verse six, he gives more instruction to the son, and he sets us up because he talks about him sitting at his window, looking out through his window into the public square. And he makes some observations. The father here tells his son, listen, this is what I’ve been noticing has been happening in the public square. This is what it says. For at the window of my house I have looked out through my lattice, and I have seen among the simple I have perceived among the youths a young man lacking sense. So here’s a picture here. The father notices young men in the square, in the town, in the city, and he sees one particular, one particular young man who is lacking sense. He’s impulsive, he doesn’t think before he does. He’s simple minded, not as a necessarily an evil thing, but simple minded in the sense of he doesn’t think about what he’s doing, and he notices this person and he pulls his son aside and say, listen, this is what is going on right outside, right in front of you. And then verse eight, he comes in and says, passing along the street near her corner, her being the forbidden woman. He says, this man, this young man’s simple minded, passes along the street, taking the road to her house. And in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness. So not only this young man go to the wrong place, he goes at the wrong time. You have heard this phrase being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Kind of implies this person being unlucky that something happened to them, and they were unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you know, I know another phrase nothing good happens after midnight. Because, see, sometimes I think we put ourselves in unlucky positions, you know what I mean? Like, we make decisions, putting ourselves in the path of things that are unlucky. Because here’s what I think. Sometimes unlucky people are just fools who keep making bad choices. That is, they may feel unlucky, like bad things keep happening to them, but the reality is, is they keep putting themselves in places they shouldn’t be in at times that they shouldn’t be. And this is for this young man. He’s going near this known location where forbidden woman in adulterous lives goes down her path, goes down her street and goes it midnight. You know, nothing good is going to happen there. Because here’s the thing, lust. It begins when a good desire is lured in the wrong direction. Having the desire of, of sexual intimacy and wanting to be close to to a spouse is a godly, beautiful, God created thing. But lust takes those good desires and makes them into bad desires or God desires. It takes them in the wrong direction. In James 1:14-15, I would encourage you to take some time to look at these verses, but it says it very clearly that our desires are enticed, they are lured and enticed and then it gets to the place where we give birth to sin, and then sin leads to death. So what it is, is saying here is, is that we need to be cautious. And for us this morning, we need to look at what how we are lured. Because harkening back all the way back to Genesis three, the enemy’s been active. He’s been using the same game plan that you and I can be lured in different ways. And so looking at these verses to come up here, we’re going to look at a good chunk of verses. We’re going to see exactly how the forbidden woman lures this young man. Look here in verse ten, Proverbs chapter seven, verse ten, and behold, the woman meets him dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart. She is loud and wayward. Her feet do not stay at home now in the street, now in the market. In every corner she lies in wait. So she comes out, dressed the part. She dresses to get attention. She’s never at home. She’s going from place to place. From here to there. She’s looking for her next victim. This woman is a predator on the prowl. Wanting, searching, looking. Who is next. And at this point, this should be the young man’s thought. I need to go somewhere else. I need to leave. I need to get away. But here’s the problem. He sees her, his eyes lock in on her. He sees the way that she’s dressed. He sees the way that she carries herself. He sees the way that she operates. And now his attention has been grabbed. You see, lust grabs your attention by luring your eyes. If, if if the enemy can get your eyes. He’s got a lot of you. Because then it lures you to a place to where other things can lead to other things. All he has to do is get your attention. And that was her scheme. That’s her plan this whole time. If I can get his eyes, I can get him. It goes on here in verse 13. Let’s see what happens. It says she seizes him and kisses him. She just goes up, grabs him, kisses him, flirts with him, gives him her full attention, and with bold face she says to him, I had to offer sacrifices. And today I paid my vows. It’s her religious alibi. I’m a good Jew. I went and made my peace offerings. I made my vows to God. All that’s taken care of. So not only does she show her full attention to him, she flirts with him. She says, I’m a good Jew. Verse 15. So now I have come out to meet you, to seek you eagerly, and I have found you. You see your plain coming together. Verse 16 I have spread my couch with coverings, colored linens from Egyptian linen. I have perfume, my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. She has all the entrapment, all the luxuries. Everything’s ready. All he has to do is say yes in verse 18. Come, let us take our fill of love till morning. Let us delight ourselves with love. What young man could get this type of attention to get this type of flirtation, to get this type of scenario and have the ability to run away from it at this point, this is difficult. So here’s the next thing. Lust draws you closer by luring your desires. So first it gets your eyes, then it gets your heart. It wants to get your desires, your urges. It wants to get your attention. And now it wants to get you to move. And this is her scheme all along. I’m going to apply this today in just a little bit. But before we get there, here’s what happens. She gives another another lure. She says for my husband in verse 19, for my husband is not at home. He’s gone on a long journey. He took a bag of money with him. At full moon he will come home. Meaning don’t worry, no one’s going to find out. It’s secret. It’s okay. My husband’s gone. He’s not going to come back. I know exactly when he’s coming back. He’s got the. He took his money with him. He’s going to be fine. And we’ve got everything for ourselves. See lust entices you with the luring of secrecy. It’s going to be secret. No one’s going to know and we can get away with it. Is this not. Do we not see this prevalent played out today in our culture? It may have happened back then, but it still happens today. And so she continues here. It continues in verse 21 with much seductive speech. She persuades him with her smooth talk. She compels him. Verse 22, all at once he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver, and as a bird rushes into a snare, he does not know that it will cost him his life. She’s the predator on the prowl, and she’s got her victim. And he willingly goes. Because step by step he continued to make choices, small choices that got him to this place. And here’s the reality. Lust may not lead to your physical death, but it certainly may lead to the death of your marriage. It may lead to the death within your community and may break your community apart. It may break your friends apart. It may break a marriage apart. That’s where this journey leads. So you can imagine why a father would want to tell his son this such crucial information. But the reason why we don’t talk about it in church today, because it’s taboo. We don’t talk about this stuff. It’s kind of uncomfortable. But that’s the way the serpent, the enemy wants it to be. The crafty serpent has the same goal and lies since the garden, but he uses different means today. The serpent wants to blaspheme God. He wants to destroy families. He wants to destroy marriages. He wants to destroy communities. He wants to bring as many people down with him as he can. And he does it by driving a wedge in between husband and wife, but not just husband and wife. He wants people to lust after other people, so he’s got tons and tons of schemes. And today, the fact that we live in a digital age, Satan has been armed with more. And so we as Christians, we can’t be quiet about this. We need to head this, go at this straight, head on. Verse 24. This is the father now pausing the gave him his observations. Now he’s going to pause and say, listen, here’s my instruction. Here’s my warning to you, son. All the sons of Israel. He says, listen to me and be attentive to the words of my mouth. Let not your heart turn aside to her ways. Do not stray into her paths. Pause here. I want this to stay up for me. Look at this. Notice the father doesn’t go to and say, hey, let me address the way she was dressed. Let me address the the entrapment and luxuries that she tried to. She might try to give you. Now, let me address how she promised you secrecy. He doesn’t talk about any that you know what he talks about. Notice. Let not your heart turn aside to your ways, and don’t stray into her paths. You know what that means. Stay away from her. Don’t go anywhere near her. If you never see her, you won’t have the desire to be pulled towards her. So listen. Don’t go anywhere near her. You know what that means for us today. Don’t go down the office to that cubicle. Don’t walk past or interact with someone that you know might get you in trouble. Don’t friend somebody on social media and digitally speaking, don’t be looking at things on your screens that might stoke a fire that you can’t put out. So what it is, is it’s we cannot tiptoe up to the line of sin, but we should head in the opposite direction church. If this is sin, we can’t treat it like I’m going to tiptoe right up to the line, I’m not sinning, I’m not sinning, I’m not sinning. And then trust our self-control and discipline is going to keep us there. Baloney. And it’s something as simple as ice cream going down the right path to the ice cream. That’s what that we have to walk past. If I can’t keep myself from ice cream, you think you’re going to be able to keep yourself from something a lot stronger? So you know what you do? You don’t go right. Because we had two lines that day. You know where you go, you pick a different path. Don’t go down the path where temptation is going to hit you. We cannot tip toe to the line of sin, but we should head in the opposite direction. So if I can share the second point for us this morning, we need to make a covenant with our eyes. We make an agreement with our eyes, and I’m not going to look upon something that’s going to stoke a fire that I can’t put out. I’m not going to put myself in a position where I can get myself in trouble. Instead, I’m going to go way over here. Look at this in Job 31:1. This is so clear. I love this verse. I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze at a virgin? I’ve resolved in myself. I’m not going to look at something that’s going to tempt me. But here’s the problem church. Here’s where I think we we have it wrong sometimes in the Christian faith. Sometimes we think, well, certain things don’t really affect me that much. I can watch those movies, I can watch that TV show. I can look at these things online. It’s really not that big of a deal. It doesn’t really affect me. Really? Really? You see, we have to draw a hard line between what is going to lead us into temptation and what is not. Do you all know where the phrase I know it when I see it? You know where that phrase comes from. Just curious. So where it comes from, it’s actually a Supreme Court justice that first, like coined the phrase all the way back in 1964, there was this case that was brought up to the Supreme Court over the issue of an obscene movie and whether it was a First Amendment right to ban it. So Ohio banned the movie, and then there was a, a case brought to the Supreme Court, and they were trying to decide whether or not pornography is okay under the First Amendment. And I’m not trying to get into the legal issue here is. But but what’s interesting is that they couldn’t really describe what pornography was. And we can fall victim this because we think, well, this is we kind of keep moving the line. There’s not a clear definition. So I’m going to keep moving the line of what I think it is because we want to keep looking at it. But here’s what this person says. He says, I know it when I see it. For me, I’ve got a big problem with that because now we’re talking about something that’s different for everybody. So instead of laying the line like, I’m not going to cross this line, it’s not pornographic or whatever it is, but it is. The movies that we’ve normalized, the TV shows that we normalize, the music that we’ve normalized, all have become so obscene that it’s just normal to us now. And now it’s stoking fires in our hearts, privately, in the in our bedrooms with screens and things that it becomes a very big issue that starts with one small choice. But I want you to understand this morning too, that pornography is an old pagan practice that has been digitalized and weaponized against us today. See back in the Old Testament, there was a, a Canaanite god that they worshiped. His name was Baal. And to worship Baal, you would go to a cult prostitute and interact with her. And that was your worship to Baal to get a crop yield back. And it was on public display for everybody. There was participators and observers and all that was to worship Baal. Paul writes in First Corinthians, Christians don’t keep going to the cult prostitutes, you are a believer now. Your body is a temple. It cannot be aligned with both a prostitute and with Christ. He is writing to them saying, listen, there is no more public things that can happen like this anymore. You’ve got to go away from that lifestyle. It’s an age old practice that’s still being practiced today. And here’s the thing. The sad reality of all this is that pornography, it turns people into products for self consumption. 69% of men in America view porn every year. 40% of women in America view porn every year. 51% of young adults 18 to 25 view porn once a month. The earliest ages that children come into contact with porn is ages 9 to 13. Here’s another one. It’s pretty crazy. In a study, they asked people whether pornography was good or bad, morally wrong, right, indifferent, and 14% said that that pornography is bad, 14% 50, I believe it was — I don’t want to misquote it here — I think it was 57% said that pornography is not bad or it’s good. Morally indifferent. And to think that we as Christians, we don’t have a clear, defined line in Scripture. What is pornography? But I can tell you what the father told the son is don’t go anywhere near it. So I think we have to be disciplined and laid down the law. And the hard line is we can’t get anywhere close to it. And I may sound like a fuddy duddy, I get it. That’s okay. But I’d rather protect your marriage than for you to watch a movie. I’d rather that your marriage would be protected, than you continue to scroll mindlessly and letting the enemy stoke a fire that’s in your heart. See? Digitalized adultery. It makes an easier pathway to physical adultery. It’s one choice that leads to another, to another, to another. And this is what Jesus said. Matthew five is a familiar verse. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. I think we all would agree with that. Verse 28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has committed adultery with her in his heart. It’s a heart matter. And I don’t want to shame anybody this morning. But here’s what I’ll say. We are saved by grace through faith. All of our sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus, and what is impossible with man is possible with God. Jesus has given us the power to overcome any sin that we’re dealing with. So I don’t want to end this service on a bad note. I want to end it on a good note, because if you’re in this room and you’re struggling with this issue, or you know someone who is struggling with this issue, I can say in the name of Jesus, you have victory over it. Oh. So let me close this with five things. Five quick things. How to have victory over pornography begins with these five things. Okay. This is not exhaustive. This is where it begins. First thing, honesty. You need to be brutally honest with yourself. 1 John 1:8: if anyone lies and says that he is without sin, he is a liar and the truth is not in him. You need to admit to yourself, this is sin, this is addiction. This is a problem and I don’t want to keep going. It begins with being honest. Second thing, confession 1 John 1:9: If you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When you confess your sins to God, he will cleanse you. He will forgive you. There is no shame in confessing sin to God. He will bring healing to you. Third, repentance. You can’t just confess. Now you got to turn the other way. Repentance. Psalm 51:10: create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit, a right attitude in me. Change me from the inside so I don’t go back to it. Fourth: discipline. This requires extreme discipline. And the greater the addiction, the greater the discipline is required. Jesus says this in 5:29 Matthew 5, 29 through 30. This is right after he gets done talking about lust. He says, if your eye causes you to sin, what do you need to do? Pluck it out. If your hand, your arm causes you to sin, what do you do? Cut it off. It’s better to enter heaven with one than to enter with both and go to hell. It’s better to have one and maintain a healthy marriage than to have both your eyes and continuing down a path of lust that could lead to adultery and divorce. Fifth, accountability. This is the bread and butter of it right here. This is why we have life groups. This is why we have friends in ministry, friends close to us in life. Accountability– James 5:16: Confess your sins to one another and you will find healing. Pray for one another. Even says in the next verse, the righteous prayer or the prayer of a righteous person is powerful. You have allies in this room that you can walk and do life with. And if this is ever a struggle with you, you need to get accountability now because you know what the enemy wants you to do. He wants you to stay in a closed, dark room, so don’t stay there. So my challenge for us this morning, are you willing to take extreme measures to battle lust? For some of you, that means cutting out the movies. That means cutting out the shows, cutting out the mindlessly scrolling, cutting out, not having accountability through your screen. And as I close, there is. This is just for your reference. There is a company, an app called Covenant Eyes that will help you give a have accountability through something like this. And the reason why I’m so passionate about this is I’m a I’m a student pastor. I work with teenagers, and the group of people that are attacked most by this is kids, but it leads to them becoming adults. But that doesn’t mean any of us are immune to any of this. So I pray that you would take steps to have extreme measures to fight this issue. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for your grace, for forgiveness, that in Christ we have forgiveness of all sin, that there is not one sin that we struggle with, not one temptation that we have that you have not given us victory over. I pray in this room that anyone who’s struggling with the sin issue, and maybe specifically the issue of lust, that you have already given victory over it in the name of Jesus Christ. But God, I pray that you would give people the boldness to take extreme measures to fight the sin, that we would take our eyes off the things that are stoking fires, that we would step away and not go the route that might lead us into temptation. God, I pray that you would strengthen our marriages, strengthen our families, and that we we would glorify you by how we by how we look at things. God, I pray this morning that you would give us boldness to make the right decisions and the wise decisions. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.