The High Cost of Cheap Thrills Text: Proverbs 5:7-14
Introduction: Two Invitations
The book of Proverbs is a book of choices, and it presents these choices to us as two women, two invitations. On the one hand, you have Lady Wisdom, who has built her house, slaughtered her beasts, and prepared a feast. Her invitation leads to life, favor with God, and a good name. On the other hand, you have Dame Folly, the strange woman, the adulteress. Her house is the way to Sheol, and her invitation, though whispered with sweet words, is an invitation to self-destruction. She is the personification of a worldview that is at war with God.
Our modern world is saturated with the voice of Dame Folly. You hear her on every screen, in every pop song, in the curricula of our public schools, and in the talking points of our politicians. She promises freedom, self-expression, and pleasure without consequences. She tells you that your desires are your identity and that to deny them is the great sin. She markets her poison as liberation, but the price tag is always in the fine print. And that price is your life.
The passage before us today is a father's urgent plea to his son. It is not a detached, academic lecture on ethics. It is a passionate, almost desperate, warning. The father has laid out the smooth words of the adulteress, how her lips drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. He has shown the son the bait. Now he shows him the hook. He is pulling back the curtain to reveal the end game of sin, the final bill for a night of stolen pleasure. This is not about behavior modification; it is about worldview collision. It is a call to listen to the words of God's mouth instead of the words of hers, because one path leads to life and the other leads to a ruin so complete that you will groan at your end, your body and flesh consumed.
We live in a culture that has systematically dismantled every fence God put up for our protection. And so we are surrounded by the wreckage. This passage is not just for young men teetering on the edge of sexual temptation. It is for all of us, because the logic of the adulteress is the logic of all sin: a promise of immediate gratification that ends in bitter regret. We must therefore listen, and not turn away from the words of his mouth.
The Text
So now, my sons, listen to me And do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Keep your way far from her And do not go near the door of her house, Lest you give your splendor to others And your years to the cruel one; Lest strangers be satisfied by your strength And by your painful labor, those in the house of a foreigner; And you groan at your end, When your flesh and your body are consumed; And you say, “How I have hated discipline! And my heart spurned reproof! I have not listened to the voice of my instructors, And I have not inclined my ear to my teachers! I was almost in utter ruin In the midst of the assembly and congregation.”
(Proverbs 5:7-14 LSB)
An Urgent Command (v. 7-8)
The father begins with a direct, personal, and urgent command.
"So now, my sons, listen to me And do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Keep your way far from her And do not go near the door of her house," (Proverbs 5:7-8)
The "so now" connects what follows to the description of the adulteress that came before. Because her path leads to death, because her feet go down to Sheol, therefore, listen. This is not a suggestion. This is a command from a loving authority. The fundamental battle is a battle of voices. Will the son listen to the father's instruction, which is the voice of God's wisdom, or will he listen to the honeyed lies of the strange woman? He must choose which words he will live by.
And the instruction is not complicated. It is a strategy of radical separation. "Keep your way far from her." This is not a call to see how close you can get to the fire without getting burned. It is a call to not even enter the neighborhood where the fire is burning. "Do not go near the door of her house." The temptation does not begin when you are in her bed; it begins when you are walking down her street. The fight against sin, particularly sexual sin, is won or lost on the battlefield of "what if" and "maybe." It is won or lost in the small compromises, the lingering glance, the entertained thought, the casual click.
Our therapeutic culture tells us to "explore our feelings" and "understand our desires." God's word says to flee. Joseph did not stand around and debate the ethics of the situation with Potiphar's wife; he ran so fast he left his coat behind. This is not cowardice; it is strategic wisdom. You do not reason with a cobra; you get away from it. The father is telling his son that the path of wisdom is the path of avoidance. Don't toy with it. Don't investigate it. Don't rationalize it. Stay far away.
The Utter Ruin of Folly (v. 9-11)
The father then lays out the consequences in stark, economic, and physical terms. This is what happens when you ignore the command to stay away.
"Lest you give your splendor to others And your years to the cruel one; Lest strangers be satisfied by your strength And by your painful labor, those in the house of a foreigner; And you groan at your end, When your flesh and your body are consumed;" (Proverbs 5:9-11 LSB)
The word "lest" introduces the reason for the warning. The consequences are catastrophic. First, you give your "splendor" to others. This is your honor, your reputation, your God-given glory as a young man. It is squandered. It is handed over to those who do not value it. You become a joke, a cautionary tale. Your best years, your strength, your potential, are given "to the cruel one." Sin is never kind. The adulteress may seem tender, but she is a cruel mistress. She takes everything and gives nothing but ruin in return.
Second, the loss is economic. "Lest strangers be satisfied by your strength." Your hard work, your labor, your wealth, it all gets funneled into the house of a foreigner. This is the logic of folly. You work hard to build something, only to have it consumed by parasites. Think of the money spent on divorce lawyers, alimony, child support for a family you shattered, or the resources wasted in the pursuit of illicit pleasure. Sin is a terrible financial advisor. It always promises a party, but it never tells you who is paying the bill. You are.
Third, the ruin is physical. "And you groan at your end, when your flesh and your body are consumed." This is not a metaphor. The Bible is unflinchingly realistic about the consequences of sexual sin. In the ancient world, this meant venereal disease, for which there was no cure. It was a death sentence. Today, we have antibiotics, but we also have new plagues that mock our medical arrogance. But even apart from disease, a life of dissipation wears the body out. It consumes you from the inside out. The final picture is of a man at the end of his life, groaning in a body wrecked by his own foolish choices, with nothing to show for it but pain.
The Agony of Regret (v. 12-14)
The worst pain, however, is not the physical ruin, but the spiritual agony of regret. The father puts the words of the fool into his own mouth, a bitter confession at the end of a wasted life.
"And you say, 'How I have hated discipline! And my heart spurned reproof! I have not listened to the voice of my instructors, And I have not inclined my ear to my teachers! I was almost in utter ruin In the midst of the assembly and congregation.'" (Proverbs 5:12-14 LSB)
This is the cry of a man who now sees with perfect clarity what he refused to see before. "How I have hated discipline!" Discipline, instruction, correction, these are the guardrails God provides. But the fool sees them as a cage. He wants freedom, but he confuses freedom with autonomy. True freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want; it is the strength to do what you ought. By hating discipline, he hated his own life.
"My heart spurned reproof!" He didn't just ignore it; he despised it. When someone tried to warn him, his heart bristled with pride. He knew better. He was the exception. He could handle it. This is the native language of the fool. He cannot be told anything because he has enthroned himself as his own god. The problem was not a lack of information; it was a rebellious heart condition.
He traces his downfall to a failure to listen. "I have not listened to the voice of my instructors... I have not inclined my ear to my teachers!" He had the truth. It was spoken to him. But he would not incline his ear. He turned his head away. This is the essence of rebellion. It is a willful deafness to the Word of God. The tragedy is not that he didn't know the way; it's that he was shown the way and deliberately chose the path to ruin.
And where did this ruin culminate? "I was almost in utter ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation." This is the final, shocking twist. This is not the story of a pagan getting what pagans get. This is the story of a covenant son, a member of the visible church, who brought his sin right into the house of God. His ruin was public, a scandal among the people of God. He thought his sin was private, a secret pleasure, but sin never stays private. It metastasizes. It grows until it breaks out into the open, bringing shame and disgrace not just on himself, but on the whole community. He flirted with utter ruin, and he did it right under the noses of God's people.
The Fountain and the Cistern
The warning is severe because the stakes are so high. But God does not just warn us away from the polluted waters of the adulteress. In the verses that follow this passage, He points us to His provision: the pure water of covenant marriage. "Drink water from your own cistern and fresh water from your own well" (Proverbs 5:15). The answer to illicit sexuality is not no sexuality; it is holy, joyful, exuberant sexuality within the bonds of marriage.
The logic of the world, the logic of the strange woman, is the logic of theft. "Stolen waters are sweet," she says (Proverbs 9:17). But God's logic is the logic of gift. He gives a wife as a blessing, a fountain of life. The world offers a quick, dirty thrill that leaves you empty, diseased, and full of regret. God offers a lifetime of faithful love that is honorable, fruitful, and intoxicating in the best sense of the word.
But for those who have already drunk from the wrong cistern, for those whose lives are marked by the regrets described in these verses, the gospel does not leave you to groan at your end. The logic of the cross is that Jesus Christ came to take the ruin that we deserved. He took the shame, the cruelty, the consumption of flesh and body upon Himself. He became the fool on the cross so that we, the true fools, could be made wise in Him.
Therefore, the call is to repent. To turn from the hatred of discipline and to submit to the loving discipline of the Father. It is to incline your ear once again to the voice of your Teacher, the Lord Jesus. He does not offer cheap grace. The price was His life. But He offers full pardon. He can take the wasted years and the squandered splendor and redeem them. He can cleanse the shame. He can take the man who was almost in utter ruin and make him a pillar in the temple of God. Listen to Him. Do not turn away from the words of His mouth.