Protected from Lust (The Protection of Proverbs #5)

A word before we begin: today we finish this series in Proverbs by talking about lust. For a number of us this is going to be an uncomfortable subject, and I want to name that honestly up front.

Some of you will be uncomfortable simply because you grew up in a family that never discussed sex, so working through this in a group setting feels strange.

Others will be uncomfortable because this may dredge things up — mistakes in your own past, or things that were done to you. Not long ago my wife sat with a friend who wept as she described eight years of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a man who kept giving in to his lust. That was thirty-five years ago, and it still affects her today. So I recognize that touching this subject may bring some of that back. I am not trying to cause you pain. My hope is that some of today moves you closer to healing.

And some of you will be uncomfortable because this is convicting — because this is your area of weakness.

Completing the Trifecta

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that as we work through Proverbs, we’ve been addressing three great categories of sin that especially trouble men but genuinely affect all of us: money, sex, and power.

Two weeks ago we saw how Proverbs protects us from greed — that’s money. Last week we heard a message on pride — that’s power. Which means today we complete the trifecta with lust.

So if money is your weak point, two weeks ago was your uncomfortable week. If you struggle with needing everyone to see how great you are, last week was your week to squirm. And if your weakness is lust, this is the week you’re not going to enjoy.

But I want you to know you’re not alone — because this is the area I struggle with most.

Why This One Is Mine

It was easy for me to preach about greed. Sure, I’ve daydreamed about being wealthy, but I haven’t done things to acquire wealth improperly. It isn’t where I fall.

It was easy for me to sit and listen to the message on pride. At no point did I wince — I’m not chasing followers, and God has thankfully brought things into my life that cut me down and humbled me.

This week is the one that makes me uncomfortable.

When our church brings someone into a key leadership position — a worship leader, an elder — one of the questions we ask during the interview is this: If Satan were going to take you out, how would he do it?

We ask because a leader must know their area of weakness. If they don’t know it, or they’re ignoring it, that’s exactly where the attack will come — and they’ll likely give in and wound themselves, their reputation, their family, and the church in the process. So to protect this church family and help you find and follow Jesus, our leaders have to be able to say: here is where I would fall.

This is mine.

“But I’m a Good Boy”

Now, I don’t have a long laundry list of sins here. By the standards of many conservative Christians I’m actually a model case. The only person I’ve ever been sexually active with is my wife, and we managed to wait until our wedding night — which apparently puts us in a small minority. And since we’ve been married I haven’t so much as held another woman’s hand, unless it was in prayer or it was my daughter or my mother.

So I’m fine. Right?

Wrong. Being married does not mean my weakness toward lust simply vanished.

And here’s what’s frustrating: when someone falls in this particular area, it is so much harder for people to forgive.

If I struggled with greed and stole money from this church, I’d lose my job and some of you would be furious — but over time most of you would find your way to forgiveness. If my weakness were pride, and out of that pride I emotionally manipulated our staff or elders to get my way, I should absolutely be removed, and many of you would be angry — but if I demonstrated genuine humility and brokenness, you’d likely forgive me eventually.

But when we hear about a pastor falling sexually — an affair, a series of encounters, a pornography addiction — it becomes a scarlet letter. They’re often never permitted back into ministry.

An Honest Confession

So I’ll confess something. Part of what has kept me from accumulating that long list of sins is fear — not being protected by the gospel, and not being protected by the wisdom of Proverbs. Plain and simple: I have been a good boy out of fear.

Fear of losing my family. Fear of losing my reputation. Fear of losing the ability to influence people toward Jesus in this role.

Some of that fear is healthy. But to be stuck there is not. I need to mature past a fear-based motivation into a Jesus-centered one. I’m trying to learn how to let the gospel be the engine, so that I begin to see women the way God sees them rather than the way my lust wants to see them.

Which means today’s message is for me. And my hope is that when you finish it, you won’t think “what a great sermon” — you’ll think “that message was for me too.”

Five P’s from Proverbs 5

In Proverbs 5, Solomon gives us five things that protect us from lust: prepare, plan, perceive, provide, and pray.

One clarification first. Many people use “lust” to describe general longing — the dictionary’s second definition is simply a passionate desire for something. You could lust after a car or a particular meal. That isn’t what we’re discussing. As you read Proverbs 5, it’s immediately clear Solomon is addressing sexual lust. Since he talks about it, we have to talk about it.

One: Prepare

Solomon opens by urging his son to be attentive to his wisdom and incline his ear to understanding, so that he may keep discretion and guard knowledge — because the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to the grave. She doesn’t ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she doesn’t know it.

Notice the opening words: my son.

Don’t be confused by that. Lust is not a male problem. Lust is a human problem.

While preparing, I visited the website of an organization called Fight the New Drug — a non-religious, non-political group working to inform people about the harms of pornography. They have a three-part documentary series, and I appreciated that all three episodes featured real people rather than only experts. Ordinary people, honest about this being their weakness and about giving in to it. And they weren’t all men. Plenty of women told the same story.

So when Solomon says “my son,” he could equally say “my daughter.”

She Can Appear Anywhere

The reason we must prepare is that sexual temptation arrives out of nowhere. Look at how she’s described in verse 3 — honey and smooth oil. It looks good. It looks appealing. Solomon’s point is that you must be ready, because she can appear anywhere.

In Proverbs 7 he describes her further. He’s up in the palace looking out a window, and he watches a young man walking down the street. As he passes her house, she rushes out and entices him inside.

Temptation happens in the street. Which means it can arrive in an advertisement, in a movie, in song lyrics — anywhere, including places you’d never expect.

When my family lived in Kansas City, we went to a department store to buy clothes for the kids. We picked things out, headed for the fitting rooms, and one of my children said, “Mommy, what’s this?” My child had found a page torn out of a pornographic magazine lying in the fitting room.

When we pulled into that parking lot, we did not say, “Now children, when we go inside we may be exposed to pornographic material.” You expect to find clothing at a clothing store.

I could tell you about hunting with my dad alongside another father-and-son pair, and moving between two cornfields through a wooded stretch — where the other boy found a large stash of pornographic magazines in the middle of the woods.

Or about living in Denver, serving as worship pastor at a small church plant that couldn’t pay much, so I took on web design work to support my family. I knew almost nothing about it, so I was combing through sites trying to learn. I clicked the fourth or fifth link in a list — and instead of a tutorial it delivered a pornographic video. The link had been hijacked. I have no idea how they managed it, but they did. And I saw it.

She’s in the street. Not tucked away in some seedy motel. Not confined to an adult bookstore. Not only in the break room where it’s just the two of you. Not even only on your computer. She can appear anywhere, at any time.

The Scale of What You’re Facing

This is a battle, so understand the terrain.

In 2019 there were roughly 43 million pornographic websites in the world, amounting to something like 379 million web pages of that material.

The single most-visited pornographic site that year recorded 42 billion visits and 4.6 million hours of video watched. Do the math on that and it equates to roughly 52,000 years of viewing — in one year, on one site. That same site had 1.3 million hours of new video uploaded. And that’s one of the 43 million.

Why so much? One word: money. Estimates for the porn industry range widely, but around twelve billion dollars seemed the most credible figure I found — and that doesn’t touch prostitution or sex trafficking.

They want your money. So she will appear anywhere she can to lure you in — slipped into social media, into your inbox, into the way an interaction goes at work or in the neighborhood. Anything to draw you in, whether to get a subscription or simply to generate ad revenue from your visit.

The sex drive within us is powerful, and it is God-given. What this industry does is exploit our sinfulness to hook us. That is why you must prepare.

Two: Plan

In verses 7 and 8, Solomon tells his sons to listen and not depart from his words — to keep their way far from her, and not even go near the door of her house.

That’s the plan: completely avoid. Stay away.

So if there are times or places where you know you’re especially vulnerable, avoid them. If a coworker is genuinely flirtatious, don’t go to the break room. If a neighbor has been flirtatious, don’t walk past their house. If you know there’s a time of day or night when you’re prone to go looking online, don’t be there.

Paul takes Solomon’s counsel and pushes further. In 1 Corinthians 6 he doesn’t say ignore or avoid — he says flee. Run. Get as far away as you possibly can.

Notice that whether it’s avoid or flee, it’s active. It isn’t sitting back thinking, “When it comes, I’ll deal with it.” I can imagine what it’s like to hit a ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastball. I would not be able to do it by imagining. It’s one thing to think it; it’s another to have the plan in place and ready.

So What’s Your Plan?

Do you need to give your device passwords to someone? Install filtering software? Set limits on your phone? Sign up for an accountability service that sends a report of what you’ve viewed to a trusted friend?

Part of my plan is that I don’t watch films containing sexualized nudity. My wife and I use a review site that costs about a dollar a month and tells you specifically how much sexual content, violence, and profanity a film contains — not just the rating. So I can read the breakdown and decide: that one isn’t for me, or that one I’ll be fine with.

And if something catches us unaware, or we knowingly watch something containing a scene I shouldn’t see, the plan is that I don’t watch alone. I sit with my wife, and when something comes up I simply turn and look at her for the duration. She watches the screen and tells me when it’s over.

That’s my plan. What’s yours?

Three: Perceive the Consequences

Maybe you need motivation. Starting in verse 9, Solomon spells out what’s at stake — giving your honor to others and your years to the merciless, strangers taking their fill of your strength while your labors go to another’s house. And at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed, and you say: how I hated discipline, and my heart despised correction. I did not listen to my teachers. I am at the brink of utter ruin.

And down in verse 22: the iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray.

You might hear that as poetic exaggeration. It isn’t. In ancient Judaism, the penalty for being caught in adultery was death. So yes — if his sons gave in, they could be executed. He’s being a good father.

But look at the specific language: you groan. Your flesh and body are consumed. The brink of utter ruin. Held fast in the cords of his sin. There’s something here beyond a legal penalty.

What the Research Shows

As it turns out, science is confirming Solomon.

Researchers have mapped regions of the brain, and one is nicknamed the reward center. It’s the part that delivers a dopamine rush when you do something pleasurable — excellent food, a genuine accomplishment. Sexual activity, including viewing pornography, triggers that rush.

Now, your brain is malleable — changeable. That isn’t inherently bad. Study a foreign language and part of your brain will grow. Begin an exercise program or take up a discipline and your brain adapts. The synapses form. That’s a good thing.

But it can also work against you. God also gave you a prefrontal cortex to keep the reward center in check.

Think of it this way. The reward center is the accelerator — floor it and you get the rush. The prefrontal cortex is the brake: yes, but we’re on a residential street, and a hundred miles an hour is not appropriate.

What happens with repeated pornography use is that the reward center grows larger while the prefrontal cortex shrinks — which makes the cycle progressively worse. And once you’re chasing that dopamine rush, the previous level stops being enough. That’s why so many people escalate: what began with provocative images moves to nudity, then to something more, then further still, because it takes more each time.

And here’s the cruel irony. While all of this is being pursued for pleasure, it’s simultaneously dulling the emotions. In the first episode of that documentary, several people described reaching a point where they couldn’t feel anything at all.

Remember week one of this series, where we said that without wisdom the things of this world will ruin your relationships, your life, and your reputation? That’s exactly what those interviews described. Relationships weren’t the same. They no longer enjoyed life. Pursuing pleasure was producing internal death.

No wonder God had Solomon write the word groan. No wonder he speaks of being ensnared. It gets its hooks into you.

But there is good news in the same science: because the brain is malleable, it can heal. When you stop, the reward center gradually returns toward normal, the prefrontal cortex recovers, and emotional life is restored.

Four: Provide

In verses 15 through 20, Solomon shifts to imagery of drinking water from your own cistern and your own well — asking why your springs should be scattered in the streets rather than kept for yourself alone. He tells his son to let his fountain be blessed and to rejoice in the wife of his youth, to be captivated always by her love. Why, he asks, would you be intoxicated with a forbidden woman instead?

Ancient cultures used water as a euphemism for sexual intimacy, which is why the imagery runs that way. The point is that sex is good — and it is to be fulfilled within marriage.

Let me put a warning on that. Do not get married assuming it will eliminate your lust. I know people who lost a marriage, a job, or an income because they could not say no. Don’t treat your spouse as your sexual savior; that places a weight on them they were never meant to carry.

What Sex Is Actually For

But notice that sex is meant to be part of marriage. It isn’t a weapon. It isn’t a bribe. It isn’t a carrot to dangle. It’s meant for protection.

The word “sex” traces back through Latin to a root meaning to cut or divide — the same root that gives us “section” and “sect.” A religion has one body with distinct sects; a table has distinct sections that together make the whole. So with humanity: there is the section of males and the section of females, and bringing them together makes a whole.

Sex is about union. Connection. God designed it for connection, for communication, for protection.

When two people are sexually intimate, the body releases hormones — many of which are designed for bonding. Which is precisely why Solomon warns his son against bonding himself to an adulteress. Stay bonded to your spouse. Don’t bond yourself to anyone and everyone. Don’t bond yourself to a person on a screen.

God designed it for your protection — for connection, and for where you feel loved and valued. So if you’re married, this is God’s gift to you: protection for your heart and your mind, and genuine help in the battle with lust. Your spouse is not the cure, but this is meant to be part of the plan.

And If You’re Single?

Remember that sex is about connection — about feeling loved, valued, and wanted. And every one of those things can be found outside sexual union.

So being single doesn’t mean you need an arrangement with a friend, or a series of encounters, because you need connection. You can find all of that apart from sex.

In fact, I believe this is exactly what the church is supposed to be. As the body of Christ we exist to tell people: you are loved. You have value. You have worth. You are wanted.

I know a number of people who have been single their entire lives and live deeply fulfilled, satisfied lives, feeling no sense of loss from not having a spouse. It is possible to find joy outside of sex.

Don’t believe the lie that you need it. You need food. You need shelter. You need sleep. You do not need sex. It is possible to live without it, despite how deep the urge runs.

So if you’re single, provide for yourself. Build friendships. Join a growth group. Get into real relationships. Let people into your life as you enter theirs, and let them tell you that you matter.

Getting married does not make you better. You are not more complete when you find a spouse. You are complete in Christ. Marriage changes you; it doesn’t upgrade you.

Five: Pray

The best provision leads us to the fifth P. Verse 21 says that a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and God ponders all his paths.

That verse is both a warning and an encouragement.

First the warning: a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord. So much sexual sin happens in the dark, in privacy, away from everyone else. So listen carefully — if you think you’re keeping this secret, that your spouse doesn’t know, that nobody is aware of what you do online or of that relationship at work, and let’s even suppose you succeed in keeping it hidden until the day you die: don’t be fooled. God sees. You are not tricking him.

But don’t let that frighten you off, because the second half is the encouragement: he ponders all his paths.

God ponders you. He is aware of you. He knows what is happening inside you. He knows your thoughts before you think them. And that should genuinely encourage us — because he knows what you’re going through, and he knows it personally.

A High Priest Who Understands

Remember that Jesus Christ, God the Son, left heaven, took on human flesh, and lived a fully human life.

Hebrews 4:14–16 says that since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, we should hold fast to our confession — hold fast to the gospel, to the truth that Jesus went to the cross to die for our sin, including our sexual sin.

Because we do not have a high priest unable to sympathize with our weakness.

God does not look at you and think, “I wonder what that’s like.” He doesn’t say, “Clean up your act, kid.” The text says he is not unable to sympathize — instead, he is one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

In Matthew 4 we watch Jesus in the wilderness tempted by hunger — we all know that. Tempted by power — some of us know that. But the text says in every respect. Which means Jesus knew the pull of lust as well. He knows what temptation is. The Creator of humanity undoubtedly saw a woman and recognized her beauty and felt the allure — and did not sin. He did not give in.

And that leads to the encouragement: therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

You Don’t Clean Up First

Hear that. Draw near with confidence. You do not need to clean yourself up before coming to God.

Bring your junk. Bring the addiction. Bring the affair. Bring the sexual sins of your past. Bring all of it and approach the throne of grace with confidence — because Jesus knows exactly what you’ve been through, and he says come.

For some of us that’s hard to accept. Let me put it this way. I’m not drawn to blood. I don’t faint at the sight of it, but I don’t watch films for the gore either. And yet if one of my children were injured and bleeding badly, I wouldn’t care at all. My first move wouldn’t be backward. It would be toward.

When Jesus sees your ugliest sin, he does not recoil. He rushes in. He came to this earth to go to a cross for it. He is not repulsed by you in your sexual sin. He does not look at your lust and say “get away from me.” He rushes in, holds you, and says: come with confidence to the throne of grace. Let me minister to you.

Because as you hand your lust over to him, the text says you receive mercy and grace to help in your time of need.

Give It to Him

So prepare. Plan. Perceive the consequences. Provide for yourself. But the best thing you can do is pray — go to the throne of grace and lay all of it out.

If you’re struggling today, don’t hold it back. If there’s something from your past, today you can let it go. There is forgiveness in this area.

Sexual sin ties into us more deeply than money or pride do. Those are genuinely dangerous, but there’s something about this dimension of us that makes it especially sticky. And God is not repulsed by any of it.

I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care whether you’re male or female. I don’t care whether this is your first marriage, your third, or whether you’ve never married. Bring it to Christ. Because Jesus went to the cross for all of your sin — and he did not go there unaware of what you have faced. He was tempted in every respect and yet was without sin. Because he was sinless, he owed no penalty. He paid ours anyway. And because he did, we can come to the throne of grace with confidence.

A Prayer

Father, thank you for your vast and lavish love. You are not the god of myth who despises us for our weakness and failure. You are the true God of heaven who rushes toward us in our pain, our mess, our sickness, and our brokenness, and covers us completely with your love and grace.

If this message has dredged something up in someone, bring them healing. Give them the courage to see a counselor — to go and talk with someone who can enter the mess with them and pray them through it. I don’t for a second imagine that a single sermon fixes everything, but I pray today might be part of what you use toward complete healing.

And make us a church that can genuinely welcome people whose weakness lies here — not a people who fasten scarlet letters on others and let that define them for life, but a church that offers forgiveness and love and becomes part of how you restore them as they work through the consequences of their sin.

Jesus, you paid it all. If you can forgive a sinner like me, help us forgive other sinners just like us — because the ground is level at the foot of your cross, and no one stands there better than anyone else.

For the person reading this who feels beaten down, lost in an addiction, or crushed by their past: let them know that forgiveness exists in you — and let them sense that forgiveness from us as well.

Work deeply in our hearts. Let us approach your throne of grace with confidence, drawing near because you have already drawn near to us. Amen.