Licentious sins have been called the forbidden sins. This devotions looks at what they are and if they are the unpardonable sin.
Nuggets
- Paul recognized how this appears to be Satan’s go-to sin.
- Maybe they think that they will always have the opportunity to repent, but that may not be the case.
- We don’t want the judgment that comes along with committing the sin — but it comes.
- Our relationship with God is on an individual basis.
- We may feel that God can’t — or won’t — forgive us of sexual sins. That is not true.
We are getting closer to the time when my Ladies and I can meet again for Sunday Morning Bible Study. I am really looking forward to getting back with them.
Of course, Proverbs can have some really challenging lessons. Case in point — today’s devotion.
Let's Put It into Context
The fifth chapter of Proverbs is about licentiousness. Licentious sins, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, are those “lacking legal or moral restraints especially disregarding sexual restraints.”
Sin is when we disobey God and break one of His laws and commandments. God hasn’t declared certain things are sins just to take away the good stuff or even to set us up for failure.
God’s laws and commandments show us His character. They help us to be more like Him as we obey them.
But why is licentiousness so bad? If it is a pleasure, why should it be guilty, right?
Wrong. Jowett addressed this when he wrote, “It is not merely a vice or crime, or even an offence against the law of God, to be punished here and hereafter. It is more than this. It is what men feel within, not what they observe without them; not what shall be, but what is; a terrible consciousness, a mystery of iniquity, a communion with unseen powers of evil.” It is a sin against ourselves.
It is our physical nature rearing it’s head in the most corrupted way. Solomon told us why. Let’s look.
Forbidden Sin
“Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her words are smoother than oil, in the end she’s as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps head straight for Sheol” (Prov. 5: 3-5 CSB)
Solomon is advising his son once again on the company he keeps. Some may bristle, though, when they are forbidden something.
The other versions explain the why it is forbidden. They translate forbidden as immoral or adulterous.
The King James Version translates it as strange, which brings an interesting connotation. It implies that the woman is just different than we are.
Binney explained this. He wrote, “The Jewish law was so framed as not to suffer any of the daughters of Israel to sink into harlotry; the text speaks of ‘a strange woman,’ because such were usually persons from the surrounding nations.”
But we’ve got to get past that word to get to the real meat of Solomon’s objections. The woman could tempt the son to turn his back on God.
Let’s see how she embodies sin.
- Her deceiving speech
- Her wrong actions.
If indulgence is seen as corruption, then holiness is seen as abstinence. Holy means to be set apart, perfect, and pure. The Holman Bible Dictionary indicates that holiness “… is in tension with relational personhood. Holiness tends toward separation and uniqueness.”
In the first chapter of Corinthians, Paul gave advice on how believers should address sexual sins. “But if they do not have self-control, they should marry, since it is better to marry than to burn with desire” (I Cor. 7: 9 CSB).
Paul recognized how this appears to be Satan’s go-to sin. Jowlett wrote, “Above all other things, the apostle insisted on purity as the first note of the Christian character; and yet the very earnestness and frequency of his warnings show that he is speaking, not of a sin hardly named among saints, but one the victory over which was the greatest and most difficult triumph of the Cross of Christ.”
Unstable Ways
“She doesn’t consider the path of life; she doesn’t know that her ways are unstable. So now, sons, listen to me, and don’t turn away from the words from my mouth. Keep your way far from her. Don’t go near the door of her house” (Prov. 5: 6-8 CSB)
Do you know people like that? They go through life by the seat of their pants. Whatever is the next interesting thing is what they are going to do.
Do you know people who don’t have a moral compass? Nothing is off limits. There are no guilty pleasures. There is just pleasure.
Solomon said that “… her ways are unstable” (Prov. 5: 6 CSB). Satan is wily. He knows what is most tempting, but he also uses a variety of temptations to trap us.
Lawson outlined the consequences. He wrote, “The devil obtains more influence; conscience, forcibly repressed, ceases to reclaim with so loud a voice; God gives you up to the lusts of your own heart, and leaves you to choose your own delusions.”
Maybe they think that they will always have the opportunity to repent, but that may not be the case. But we know God gives up on us when we continue to deny Him.
God wants us to keep our eyes totally focused on Him. We do this by “[keeping our] way far from her. Don’t go near the door of her house” (Prov. 5: 8 CSB).
Ooo, baby. Don’t we think we can get close? How many times to we risk it or justify it?
Yep. We like to flirt with sin.
The kicker is that the influences can come from within us, not just without. It is very easy to give into that temptation.
We can’t do it alone. If we could resist temptation on our own, we wouldn’t need God. We wouldn’t need Jesus to be our Savior.
We definitely need God and Jesus.
Consequences
“Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to others and your years to someone cruel; strangers will drain your resources, and your hard-earned pay will end up in a foreigner’s house. At the end of your life, you will lament when your physical body has been consumed” (Prov. 5: 9-11 CSB)
Sometimes, we expect God to just condone our actions. We don’t want the judgment that comes along with committing the sin.
It comes.
Look at what we give up.
- our vitality (Prov. 5: 9 CSB)
- our years (Prov. 5: 9 CSB)
- our resources (Prov. 5: 19 CSB)
- our hard-earned pay (Prov. 5: 10 CSB)
- our physical body (Prov. 5: 11 CSB)
Pretty much everything, right?
No, Solomon didn’t take his own advice. He didn’t even learn from his father.
That is how hard this sin can be to withstand.
And the sad part is it is usually given under the mask of love. What most of us is looking for is the love.
It really isn’t that hard to find it.
- “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (I Jn. 4: 8 NIV).
- “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3: 16 NIV).
What don’t we give up? Regardless of our lives in this world ends up, we don’t give up Heaven.
True, we will probably still have regrets. And, for some, those regret may come only as we are dying.
Death isn’t something we are going to avoid. Spurgeon called it the final trial. He noted three of four things that happened in the end.
- Death
- Judgment
- Heaven
- Hell
How much different the end would be for some if they would just open themselves up to the possibility that there is a God! What if mankind all knew from the beginning of life without a shadow of a doubt that God did exist?
An Individual Thing
“Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well. Should your springs flow in the streets, streams in the public squares? They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers. Let your fountain be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth” (Prov. 5: 15-18 CSB)
Man, that seems all gloom and doom.
- Most disciples struggle with it.
- The consequences are extreme.
We may feel that God can’t — or won’t — forgive us of sexual sins. That is not true.
God forgave David (II Sam. 11). Jesus told the crowd to cast the first stone to stone the adulterous woman — but only if they were without sin (Jn. 8: 1-11).
God can and will forgive us of sexual sins. He will even forgive us for turning our backs on Him.
This is not the unpardonable sin. The unpardonable sin is disbelief.
That forgiveness comes when we confess and repent. Confession is a recognition of sin in our lives by a repentant sinner and the commitment of faith that God, as Sovereign Lord, can and will forgive those sins. Repentance is expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things.
What can we do?
The Homilist gave us some encouragement. He wrote, “Man has independent spiritual resources.” He listed these as thought, experience, and usefulness.
At first glance, we might question why we are to drink from our own cistern. I think there are a couple of reasons.
We can only use what is within us to follow God.
Our relationship with God is on an individual basis. Yes, we congregate and form groups of like-minded believers. But our relationships with God are personal.
We can’t expect someone else to take the blame for our sin. There is only one other person who will pay the penalty for it — Jesus.
It Was Enough
Vocalist: Elaine Guthals
Keyboard: Chris Vieth
Making the Connections
We have to make sure that the only way we are moving is forward in grace and knowledge. We need to be correctly navigating the sanctification road. Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul beginning with regeneration and ending with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
We just never let Satan succeed in moving us away from God. He is going to try his best. We have to stand firm.
How Do We Apply This?
Jay told us six resources that can help keep us on track.
1. Other disciples
2. The Scriptures
3. Our preachers and teachers
4. The Holy Spirit using our conscience
5. “Irrational creatures”
6. “The dispensations of Providence”
Providence, according to the Holman Bible Dictionary, is “God’s faithful and effective care and guidance of everything which He has made toward the end which He has chosen.” That means God Himself is a resource to us.
No, God doesn’t want us to fail. God will help us — if we let Him.
If we try to make God work things out to our liking, He won’t do it. He calls the shots. It is His way.
We have to look to God for strength to follow His laws and commandments. He is the navigator on the sanctification road.
Father. We admit our sins, we believe in Jesus, we confess You — but we still continue to sin. We don’t want to sin. We want to be more like You. Only You can make us that way. We pray that You will strength us to withstand the temptations he throws our way. Amen.
What do you think?
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Good morning friend! Great job on your blogs. In this one I confess I have an issue with ‘But we know God gives up on us when we continue to deny Him.’ I was taught that God doesn’t give up on us, we give up on Him. Am I looking at this wrong? Hope you are well and look forward to tomorrow’s lesson.
Hey, sweetie! I was just thinking about you! I am so glad you brought this up. I was going to put the link back to a previous devotion but ran out of time.
A while back I did a devotion entitled Can God See Us If We Are Sinner? I can’t put a button in here, but if you click Current Posts that is at the top of the page, click the magnifying glass for the search tool, and put in the title, it will bring it up.
I learned doing that post (because I had believed as you do) that Isaiah 55: 6 says “Seek the LORD while he may be found …” (NIV). Even more to the point is Proverbs 29: 1. “If you get more stubborn every time you are corrected, one day you will be crushed and never recover” (GNT).
Once we get to the point that we will never ABCD, we have reached the unpardonable sin. We really aren’t told what that sin is, but I think it is unbelief. God can forgive murder, sexual sins, pride. However, we are told the only way to Him is believing Jesus is our Savior (Jn. 14: 6).
Does that grieve God to have to close the window? Oh, I bet. But I see that as us giving up on Him first.
I don’t think that either one of us is totally right or wrong. God might know you are going to have a deathbed confession, so He doesn’t close the window for you. On the other hand, He knew my heart was hardened a long time ago, so He has left me to the consequences of my decision.
I am glad you asked. If you catch something, ask me. I may have thought I typed something one way, but what came out was totally squirrelly. Plus, I know I am not going to get everything right. God is so much smarter than me.
We’ll have to do lunch some time when things get on a more even keel.