19 Overcoming Sexual Sin: God’s High View of Sex and Marriage (Proverbs 5:15-20)
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In order to be wise, which is the goal of this series, ‘Pursuing Wisdom in Proverbs’, we have to learn how to understand and manage the power of sexuality.
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Last week we dove head on into Proverbs 5-7, where Solomon gives warning to the dangers of sexual sin. We talked about how the honey from sexual sin may be sweet, but it's short lived, and that bee stings, OH it stings! - and that stinger is not easily removed.
If you haven’t heard that episode yet, I encourage you to do so before continuing with this episode, where we will build off of last week, looking at the main answer Solomon provides to overcoming sexual sin, which we find in Proverbs 5: sex within marriage. One commentator says, ‘If sexual looseness has its dangers, sexual loyalty has its advantages’. Solomon says the true cure to the disease that is sexual sin is to be sexually active with your spouse.
Now I know when I say that everyone has their own suppositions and thoughts on sex and on marriage and certainly on sex within marriage and I also know the single people listening are probably losing their minds right now because they can’t be sexually active with a spouse that doesn’t exist and so how are they supposed to overcome sexual sin in our lives? Now listen fellow singles, we’ll get to that, okay? Relax! Relax.
And for all of us listening, whatever thoughts or suppositions you may have, I just want to ask you, right now, to as best you can, store those thoughts and feelings on your bookshelf for the next ten or so minutes, and listen, not to my perspective, but to what God says in His Word about sex and marriage, and sex within marriage.
I ask you to do that in part because as we will see, and as I’m about to read, God has an incredibly high view of sex, He has an incredibly high view of marriage, and He has an incredibly high view of sex within marriage. God’s view was incredibly counter-cultural as of Solomon’s writing some 3000 years ago, and that still holds true today. And His view, to me at least, is beautiful.
Let’s look at it. Proverbs 5:15-20 reads
‘Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. 16 Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? 17 Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. 18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, 19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. 20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?’
Here we have, in its simplest form, a Father teaching his son what marriage should be like. And what we see here is a description and teaching of marriage and the intimacy within marriage that is, as Tim Keller puts it, ‘SO erotic, that it's kind of hot to handle, even now’.
Now it may not seem that way at first glance, but the more you look at and understand the language Solomon uses to describe sex and marriage here, the more erotic it is.
Let’s look at it, beginning in verse 15, where Solomon says,
‘Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.’
Here in the verse we see God’s design for sex, particularly in regards to the exclusivity of it, which that idea is furthered in the next verse, but I want to point you toward the picture given of female sexuality. The language here in this verse describes women as ‘cisterns’ and ‘wells’. These are two things that must be entered into.
You must enter into a cistern; you must go down into the well.
Now if you look at the next verse, verse 16, as well as verse 18, you will see Solomon speak of his son’s ‘spring’ being scattered abroad and his ‘fountain’ being blessed, which those words there ‘spring’ and ‘fountain’ are depictions of male sexuality.
Keeping with the same theme of water, water from a spring or fountain is not water that you must enter into to get, rather it is water that spurts out. Does that make sense? I hope it does. Solomon is graphically depicting what sex is here through the metaphor of water, and furthermore he’s describing it as something incredible.
Look at his word choice. He says,
‘Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth..’
‘Flowing water from your own well’…
Solomon is speaking of a kind of intimacy, a kind of sex that won’t run dry. A continuous stream, flowing water, a never-ceasing blessing. There’s a joy to it, an excitement to it, a celebratory theme surrounding it. And procreation is certainly an application and a part of this text, but from my study that’s not the main point… Solomon is not describing sex for the purpose of procreation but for the purpose of pleasure!!! For the purpose of pleasure!
And we’re not done there in verse 18, look at the next verse, verse 19: Solomon describes the wife as,
‘a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.’
I mean my goodness! That’s an erotic description right there. There’s so much to cover here:
One, the wife being described as ‘a lovely deer, a graceful doe’ is so interesting.
A deer is a beautiful animal, and it is as graceful and gentle as it is beautiful. And if you’ve ever come across a deer, the way that they move is just so quiet and peaceful and gentle. There’s a beauty and a gentleness, a gracefulness to one’s wife that is to be cherished and embraced. I think it's easy as we’re going through this text, especially as men, to become like a little kid who is frantically full of energy and passion. YEAH! Like yes and amen, love the energy. But, there’s also this double entendre here, where there’s a gentleness, a familiarity, a gracefulness that comes with intimacy as well. Not just a banging your head against the wall, but a gentle and lovely embrace.
Two, continuing on in the verse, Solomon maintains the use of language from verse 15 that elicits sex as an act a husband and a wife do consistently, by saying ‘let her breasts fill you at all times with delight’.
Also, that’s a very erotic image of sex, and that’s in the Bible! Reading that might have you thinking Solomon was a little drunk writing this, but he’s not. Rather, he describes intimacy with the spouse as such. He describes it as ‘intoxicating’. He says, end of verse 19,
‘be intoxicated always in her love.’
Again there’s that same language ‘always’ that denotes sex as commonplace in marriage. The language here is genuinely so consistent in this text that it's hard not to leave this passage thinking that the marriage Solomon is describing is one where sex happens all the time.
But more distinct than that, it is crazy to me that Solomon chooses to describe the love that induces the sex and marriage as an ‘intoxicated’ one. How about that?
‘be intoxicated always in her love.’
Solomon is talking about a love that has you staggering. You’re wobbling. You can’t think straight. Another translation of the Hebrew word used there is ‘led astray’. This is a love and an intimacy that has you feeling like you’ve entered into a new place, a different dimension, it is distinctly ‘other than’ anything you’ve experienced.
That sounds amazing!
God clearly has a VERY HIGH view of love and of intimacy.
And this love, this intimacy, was so counter-cultural during the time of Solomon’s writing.
In a time where marriage was strictly a business deal, where it was all about gaining status, improving economically and socially, popping out business babies - man companionship or love was by no means part of the criteria for marriage in that time.
But the Lord through His Word and through Solomon spins that narrative around in Proverbs.
If we go back a few chapters to chapter 2 verse 17 Solomon described the wife as a ‘companion of your youth’, and that word ‘companion’ there in greek is ‘allûp̄’ (al-loof'), which means intimate friend, best friend. Couple that with what we see here in Proverbs 5,
Marriage is that intimate, best friend companionship, that drunk in love, flowing waters of intimacy type of relationship.
And in the same vein, in Proverbs 5 sex becomes not a transaction, which it mostly was in Solomon’s time, but a very intimate, loving, blessed thing.
This kind of marriage and sex we see in Proverbs 5 was SO counter-cultural in that day. And it still is today.
Marriage is significantly downplayed in our culture in the US today, and I think it could be argued it currently holds the least amount, or close to the least amount of value it's ever held in our world. Nowadays most people get married for tax benefits & social status. It’s honestly not all that different from the culture in Proverbs, and the sex is the same as well. It’s transactional. It is.
I love Keller’s point on this when discussing sex presented in Proverbs. He talks about consumer vs commitment based relationships. He says in a consumer based relationship, the product matters more than the person. His example was a grocer you’re friends with at the grocery store. You may like talking to them, but if the prices at that store jack up, you’re not going back, you’re not visiting that grocer. That’s because you care more about the product. That’s a consumer based relationship. A commitment based relationship is one where the person matters more than the product.
And unfortunately, much of what we have today are consumer based relationships. If the sex is good, you’re good. If not, you’re out. And all sex outside of marriage springs from a consumer based relationship. It’s all lust, not love. It’s product over person.
And there may be some of you who disagree with me, and you may think the sex you have with your boyfriend or the sex your friend has with their partner comes from this love I’m describing in Proverbs 5 but it doesn’t. You may think it's commitment based, person over product, but it's not.
The Bible in Genesis gives a great & simple depiction of the best image of marriage with Adam and Eve. Before the fall, they were naked and unashamed. That’s the best image of marriage. Naked and unashamed. They had given each other their whole self, nothing to hide, everything to give, and they had received each other’s whole self. The relationship was an end in itself, for better or worse. That’s the love being described vividly here in Proverbs 5.
So if you are having sex outside of marriage, this isn’t describing you. You haven’t given your whole self to someone, you still have control over so many areas of your life. And likewise you haven’t received the other person either. You are naked and ashamed at best.
This goes for casual sex too. Solomon says
16 ‘Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? 17 Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.’
Why would you, men, scatter your fountain when it could be blessed in such a way as described in these verses?
Women, why would you allow different streams of water to enter your well when THIS is in Proverbs 5 is possible?
When this kind of best friend, drunk in love, blessed intimacy, beautiful companionship, is available at home or for those who are single is available in marriage, would it not be an act of sheer stupidity to seek it in the arms of a person who is foreign to you? Would it not be sheer stupidity to seek that in a consumerist relationship?
That leads me to Solomon’s concluding question, verse 20:
20 ‘Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?’
Why? Why? Solomon is asking ‘Why commit sexual sin?’
With such a view we now have on the deadly perils of lust and sexual sin, and the holy delight of sex and marriage and sex within marriage, why would anyone leave the pleasures that always quench for the pleasures that always sting? Why leave this beautiful depiction of marriage, full of drunken love & joyful intimacy, to embrace a foreign man or woman for a night that is loveless & joyless?
God has an incredibly high view of sex, He has an incredibly high view of marriage, and He has an incredibly high view of sex within marriage.
I think it's so hard for people to believe that because the flesh says otherwise. The world says otherwise. The world and flesh say my view is better. Instant gratification rules. Disregard God’s statement ‘they that wait’, instead it’s ‘let us masturbate’. Our flesh is consumeristic and our world is too. It’s hard to fight against that. I think this is especially hard for the singles. And I imagine that is the majority of my audience listening to this episode. It’s hard to proactively fight against sexual sin when the Bible says sex in marriage is your best offense and you can’t run that play because you aren’t married! That’s tough. It’s tough when you have a desire for intimacy, you have a desire for marriage, and you don’t have the partner for it. That’s hard. It is.
So if you are single, what do you do?
Truth is you will never understand sexuality & married love unless you understand God’s love for you.
Now I’m sure you have heard that before but there’s a reason why. You think of the love we’ve talked about in Proverbs 5, it's certainly one that captivates the mind.
I have been told, and I have certainly experienced through my parents, what that love looks like on earth. A love in which you are constantly thinking about the other person. I feel like my Dad thinks about my Mom all the time. A lot of what my Dad does, if not everything, is centered around my Mom.
And that’s a picture, with my parents, and with marriage, ultimately, of what God wants with us. He wants to be on our minds all the time, He wants us to center everything around Him. He wants us to have an intimate kind of love with Him in which we feel so intoxicated by His goodness and His beauty.
There is no way you can properly embrace the beauty of a man or woman before you have first learned to embrace the ultimate beauty that is Jesus Christ.
There is no way you can know this Proverbs 5 love between a man and a woman without firstly knowing the Love that made them both.
It’s impossible.
And let’s not forget why Paul harps on the beauty of singleness.
It’s beautiful because your only responsibility is cultivating love with the One who is love (1 John 4:8).
The One whose greatness is unending and His character is perfect. What an opportunity, not a burden, but an opportunity, for us as singles to grow in our love for our Lord before one day we will get to share in that with someone else. That’s unique, and it's glorious.
And to my married folks tuned in, you’ve chosen your love and it's time to love your choice. This can be a challenging passage if you can’t read and go, ‘yeah, that’s me and my man’ or ‘yeah, that’s me and my woman’. And I’m not married, so I’m not the one to give any advice on that, BUT, I will say, if this depiction from Proverbs 5 of intimacy and marriage is not you, it seems clear to me that the first step in the right direction is to increase intimacy with your spouse. So I’d encourage you to do that.
I love you all.
God bless.
