"How to Be Dumb and Mess Up Your Life" April 11 Readings: Proverbs 5-9

Today's Reading - Proverbs 5-9

Background

Proverbs 5-7 gives us a series of four sermons on the consequences of folly will lead us. Three of these sermons have to do with the devastating consequences of sexual immorality, of adultery. Since Solomon was writing to his sons who would rule Israel, he presented adultery in a female form. That is in no way intended to put the burden of the sin on the woman. His whole point was that his sons were responsible for their choices. The other sermon deals with financial issues. Money and morality - the two areas where foolish choices have the most visible consequences.

Chapters 8 and 9 reiterate the calls of wisdom and folly and are essentially a marriage proposal from wisdom. "Walk with me down the path of life," she says.

Devotional - How to Be Dumb and Mess Up Your Life

Proverbs 7 demonstrates how Solomon gathered the principles of wisdom he recorded in the book. It was a simple process - observation, evaluation, expression. He would observe something going on around him and evaluate it, drawing an important life principle from it. Look at that ant, how hard he works. Look at that sluggard, how all his stuff falls apart. He would then take those principles and state them in a pithy, memorable way.

In Proverbs 7:6-8 Solomon saw a young man behaving in a foolish way. There are four evidences of his folly.

⁶ For at the window of my house
    I have looked out through my lattice,
⁷ and I have seen among the simple,
    I have perceived among the youths,
    a young man lacking sense,
⁸ passing along the street near her corner,
    taking the road to her house
⁹ in the twilight, in the evening,
    at the time of night and darkness.

He was the wrong kind of young man. He lacked understanding - that inner sense of right and wrong that develops when one listens to God's Word and obeys it. He lacked the moral compass that God's Word gives to those who immerse themselves in it.

He also had the wrong kind of friends. He was hanging out with other young men in the same moral quandary he was in. Bad company corrupts good character, according to 1 Corinthians 15. Think of what it does to a young man who lacks character. A young man of low character hanging out with other men of low character is in deep trouble.

He was hanging out in the wrong kind of places. Verse 8 says he was near "her corner" - the woman of low moral character who would eventually lead him astray.

At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, he was also in the wrong place at the wrong time. When he should have been home sleeping, studying or doing something productive, he was out with his buddies getting in trouble.

Solomon observed all of this, evaluated it with his wisdom principles and spent the rest of the chapter expressing both the trouble this young man would find himself in as this woman seduced him and brought shame and trouble on him and the course of correction others should take to avoid the destruction he was bringing on himself.

A key lesson here for us to immerse ourselves in the Word so that we build that inner guidance system governed by the Holy Spirit to keep us on the right path. But perhaps even more important is that we must avoid people and places of temptation. Wise folks do not simply fight temptation, they avoid it. An alcoholic should stay out of bars. A shopaholic ought perhaps to avoid the mall. And those of us who want to break the hold of sin in our lives ought to avoid situations in which we will find temptation welling up.

Father, I thank you for the Holy Spirit who uses this precious Word to build that inner moral guidance system within me. May I immerse myself in the Word daily. Give me strength not only to resist temptation, but also the wisdom to avoid it by wisdom. 

Think and Pray

Do you walk carefully to avoid the devastating consequences of folly - especially sexual and financial folly?
Or do you play the dangerous games this young man did?