Here Are My Thoughts

READ: Proverbs 5

“He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray.” (Proverbs 5:23)

Plain and simple-this passage is a warning. Specifically, it’s a warning about the dangers of sexual immorality. Solomon is trying to help us see that a life spent attempting to fulfill sexual desires is never worth what it costs. But additionally, this text gives us insight into a huge benefit of wisdom. Wisdom warns.

I once heard gaining wisdom like this: Someone runs into a brick wall, and it really hurts. They tell you about it, and you listen. Because you listen, you don’t have to run into the brick wall in order to know that it hurts-someone has already learned that lesson for you. When we get wisdom, we learn lessons secondhand-we avoid some painful, consequential situations because we have seen how they affect other people. Wisdom shows us what happens in life and calls us to act accordingly.

That’s what Solomon is doing for us here-he’s trying to teach us something from his own experience so we don’t have to learn it the hard way. Obviously, sometimes pain is unavoidable-and occasionally, it’s good for us to experience painful situations because the lessons we learn from them are so good. But many of the situations we find ourselves in, especially when it comes to sin, could be easily avoided if we just learned from the misdeeds of others. And so, Solomon writes to us, warning us of the dangers of falling prey to sexual sin, showing us, blatantly, how destructive it can be to us. He ends this warning with the verse I have at the top of this post, the ending to a sad story-that lack of discipline can be our downfall, that because we are foolish, and lack wisdom, we are led astray.

And it’s unfortunate that Solomon didn’t follow his own advice. As I said earlier, wisdom allows us to learn from the experiences of others. And Solomon had the perfect person to learn from when it comes to the way that sexual sin can ruin a person’s life-his dad. Solomon succeeded his father David on the throne of Israel. David was the ideal king, someone God called a man after His own heart. David was strong and mighty, a great warrior, one who was well-liked and wise. But David, like all of us, had a fatal flaw-when he saw Bathsheba bathing on a roof, he couldn’t help himself. He slept with her, impregnated her, and then had her husband (one of his soldiers) killed. And he dealt with major consequences from that decision, losing the child he and Bathsheba had but also, in the years to come, losing several other children from the after-affects of that decision. Solomon should have seen the way that his dad struggled. He should have learned from it, and avoided the same pain from the same sin that his dad had.

But he didn’t. 1 Kings tells us that Solomon, by the end of his life, had 700 wives and 300 concubines. His sexual appetite was so out of control that he felt the need to be in relationship with 1000 women (which is crazy even by a king’s standards). But that’s not even the sad part. What’s tragic is that this same passage tells us that in his old age, his foreign wives (who God told him not to marry, because they worshipped false idols) turned his heart away from God. Solomon, the man who became known as “the wisest man in the Bible”, the great king of Israel, turned away from God. The writer of the book of wisdom didn’t act wisely, he didn’t learn from his father and it cost him greatly.

And I don’t want it to cost us. That’s why I love Proverbs, and try to apply its principles-to seek out wisdom so that I can learn from the experiences of others and avoid situations that have the potential to destroy me. And I know you want to do that too. So let’s allow wisdom to warn us.

-Brett