The Lure of Folly

I. Introduction: Series on Proverbs for youth
II. Explanation of Proverbs 7:1-27
A. 1-4 My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you; 2 keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; 3 bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call insight your intimate friend 5 to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words.
1. There is a great and fatal danger that lurks in your future, which will take much wisdom and discernment to avoid.
2. This is really important for you to hear.
3. Everything else be thrown aside, I’ve got to have this!
B. 5- 21 The next 17 verses tell us about this forbidden woman appealing to the young men. They can be summarized by v. 21 “With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him.”
C. 22-23 tell us the result of all her appeals: “All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know that it will cost him his life.”
D. 24-27 give us a final lesson or exhortation: “And now, O sons, listen to me, and be attentive to the words of my mouth. 25 Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths, 26 for many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng. 27 Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.”
III. The two competing women of Proverbs: Folly and Wisdom
A. But don’t think for a moment that the Bible or the book of Proverbs has painted woman as the source of evil.
1. Proverbs, recognizing the power women have over men, has used that reality to describe the setting in which every human being finds himself or herself.
2. there are
B. The fact is that there is another woman in the book of Proverbs. The other woman in the book is named Wisdom. She also cries out: “Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: ‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?’” 1:20-22
1. So we have two women of Proverbs: the personification of wisdom and foolishness.
a. Both women are crying out to young men: “Come to me and I’ll feed you, I’ll fill your mind with my goods. I will give you what you want and need!”
b. Of course, the book is written to a young man, so it’s written in that way, but the point is that these two women are calling out to mankind, esp. young people.
2. The first nine chapters of Proverbs are different than the rest. The rest is individual proverbs of wisdom, in almost random order, with little flow of thought from one verse to the other. But those first nine chapters very much have a flow of thought as you go along.
a. What is that flow of thought? Well, primarily, it is about these two women, wisdom and folly.
b. Let me illustrate. There are 260 verses in Proverbs 1-9, and 138 of them are specifically talking about these two contrasting and competing women. 138 out of 260, that’s 53%, more than half.
c. See Proverbs 1:20-33; 2:16-19; 3:13-18; 4:5-9; 5:1-20; 6:23-30; 8:1-36; 9:1-18
C. The same two women in Revelation
1. The two women are carried over to the last book of the Bible as well, the book of Revelation.
2. Just as there are two women in the book of Proverbs competing for young men, so there are two women of Revelation doing the same thing. And it seems that the women are the same.
3. In Revelation there is the harlot, and there is the bride (“the bride/wife of the Lamb” Rev.21:9)
4. The church corresponds to “Wisdom” and the harlot (the world) corresponds to “Folly.”
IV. Folly
A. Whereas the woman Wisdom is offering real help, Folly’s offer is a sham, a lie. It looks good at first, like a worm on a hook looks good to a fish. But it does not help, it destroys.
1. Proverbs 9:13-18 The woman Folly is loud; she is undisciplined and without knowledge. She sits at the door of her house, on a seat at the highest point of the city, calling out to those who pass by, who go straight on their way. "Let all who are simple come in here!" she says to those who lack judgment. "Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!" But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of the grave.
2. "Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!" There is a special pleasure in doing what you’re not supposed to do.
B. “Folly” represents far more than mere sexual temptation.
1. This says a lot about sexual temptation and it says a lot about folly.
2. Sexual temptation:
a. One of the hardest traps to avoid
b. One of the most powerful weapons that can be used against us
3. Folly: As alluring and seductive as sexual temptation
C. Notice that it all leads to death.
1. Like a fishing lure. The best ones are the ones that look real. They are death disguised as life.
2. And that is what Satan is all about. He disguises death as life and life as death.
3. That’s what he did with Adam and Eve, didn’t he? What actually would cause death, he said would bring life. And what actually would bring life, he implied would cause death.
4. False advertising: promises pleasure, delivers death.
V. We know, of course, that there is a real enemy behind these temptations.
A. 1Peter 5: 8 “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
1. The one behind it is Satan. In fact, he’s the one who makes it look so good.
2. His hope is that you will only see the glamor of these things, and have no idea who really is behind all that seductive beauty.
3. The ways he tries to attack us are many, but one major way is through making destructive things look alluring, attractive and inviting, making things that bring death look like they give life.
B. You see, Satan is a con artist, a master of deception. He specializes in making things look different than they really are.
1. We expect evil to look evil. We expect lies to appear like lies. But the worst things are the bad things that look good, the dangerous things that look safe, the harmful things that look harmless.
2. 2Corinthians 11:14 “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
3. The devil deals in counterfeits. And here in Proverbs we see that he has created a counterfeit joy, a counterfeit road, a counterfeit pleasure, a counterfeit fulfillment, a counterfeit view of the world, a counterfeit set of rules, a counterfeit heaven, a counterfeit home.
4. He makes sin look normal and appropriate, and God's truth look strange.
5. He makes right look wrong and wrong look right.
6. Satan can make things look very different than they really are.
C. And the one truth Satan most wants to cover up is that Christ is the fulfillment of all our human need and longing.
1. Just as Satan makes dung to look like treasure, so he also makes the One who rides on a white horse, whose eyes are a flame of fire, and upon whose head are many crowns; and from whose mouth comes a sharp sword look boring.
2. He makes the Lord of liberty who came to set the captives free look repressive.
3. He makes the One who is the perpetually new wine that can’t be put into old wineskins appear to be stodgy and old-fashioned.
VI. But God is a jealous God.
A. We would like to have both: Christ and worldly pleasures.
1. Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other.”
2. Jm. 4:4 “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
3. 1John 2:15 “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
4. This gets to the heart of the issue. Being a Christian isn't merely a matter of loving Jesus, or desiring salvation, or wanting to go to heaven. There is also something that you must not love.
5. Satan doesn’t really care what we love, as long as we don’t love Jesus. Family or fame, heroism or heroin. It really doesn’t make much difference to him.
B. 2Corinthians 11:2-3 “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”
C. Is God’s jealousy selfish? His love requires Him to be jealous. He has a passion for our welfare, and therefore He wants us to have Him and love Him and know Him, because that is the key to our welfare. We grieve Him when we eat poison, not so much because it’s against His law, but because it harms us and threatens us, at best, and kills us at worst.
D. God calls us away from these tantalizing things not because they are too much for us but because they are far too little for us. He has much more for His children.
1. Ultimately we are not being asked to give anything up.
2. Thinking that you’re being deprived if you give up on these things is like a fish thinking that he’s deprived because he didn’t get to enjoy that delicious worm that was on the hook. Eating the worm might taste good for a moment but it means death. It means you get eaten.
3. Mk 10:28-30 Jesus said, “There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses & brothers & sisters & mothers & children & farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life.”
a. You don’t miss anything. In fact you get 100 times as much.