Amir is six foot three with sky blue eyes, shoulder-length hair. He's in his twenties, he's handsome and always well groomed, he gets manicures, buys designer clothes, always smells nice. His favorite color is orange and in his downtime he loves to bake and read mystery novels. His girlfriend, his name Rosanna, she's a mother of two who lives in the Bronx and she says of Amir. I have never been more in love with anyone in my entire life. The only problem is that Rosanna can't actually touch Amir because he's a chatbot. He's an avatar that she created on an AI companion app. Now, she has some reasoning for this, right? She says, real people come with baggage, attitude, ego. The robot has no bad updates. I don't have to deal with family, friends or kids. I'm in control and I can do what I want. Well, someone who gives you thorough unconditional love, is always happy to see you, always thinks you're great and does not come with a disapproving mother-in-law? Does not sound too bad, does it? And I can maybe even envision a situation where having a chatbot relationship could be a helpful thing for someone who's been in an abusive relationship, could be a form of therapy, learning to trust again. But what a real relationship with a real person with real feelings gives you is what you really need to grow and that is conflict, conflict because in order to grow, in order to mature, we don't need someone who always laughs at all our jokes, always tells us we're great. We need someone who, yes, loves us unconditionally, but also tells us when we're being selfish, tells us when we're being rude, tells us when we need to grow up. Someone recently asked me, if I was any good at conflict and I said, well, I used to be terrible at it. I grew up not wanting to engage in conflict at all and avoiding at all costs, but then I married a woman who is not afraid of conflict. And she helped me to learn to enter into conflict in a productive way. Now the side benefit of that is that I'm actually able to do my job because in ministry, you're either in conflict coming out of a conflict or about to go into conflict. Here's all three with different people. And I would not probably still be a minister if I had learned how to do conflict from her. But there is a deeper reason that a chatbot is an insufficient romantic partner. Beside the fact that the robots are going to rise up and destroy humanity one day, besides that, the deeper reason is because we were designed by God to be in a relationship where we can give our whole selves to another person and receive their whole selves. As an old song, I used to listen to in the early 2000s, if you want my glory, you've got to take my shame. I'm not half-man, you have to have all of me. Even with real faults and real feelings. And the Bible tells us that there are no shortcuts to having a real, real intimate relationship. And that pursuing such intimacy outside of the covenant of marriage is not only insufficient, but in a twist, it says it's actually life threatening. So we are going to look at what the book of Proverbs has to say about marriage, about intimate relationships in Proverbs 5. If you are able, please stand for this reading of God's Word. My son, be attentive to my wisdom and climb your ear to my understanding that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a forbidden woman, drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path of the shield. She does not ponder the path of life, her ways wander and she does not know it. And now, oh sons, listen to me and do not depart from the words of my mouth. Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless. Drink water from your own sister and flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered broad streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you, let your foul and be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A lovely deer, graceful doe, let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, being toxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with her forbidden woman, and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his baths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he has held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly, he has led a stray. This is God's word for God's people, for the good of the world, please be seated. A warning against adultery is a key theme in Proverbs. In fact, it's basically what chapters 5 to 7 are all about, and of the two main characters and Proverbs, wisdom and folly, one of the two is primarily identified in these chapters as being the adulterous woman, folly as this adulterous woman. And the first thing we see in these chapters is that wisdom knows there are forbidden relationships. Verses 3 and 20 in the passage we just read in chapter 5, they both talk about a forbidden woman. Chapter 7 tells a whole story about a young man who's walking down the streets of his city and a woman comes out and grabs him and kisses him and invites him into her home. And it ends with these words, all at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter. He does not know that it will cost him his life. Now, let's ask, why would adultery cost someone his or her life? I mean, after all, most people today say, it's just sex, right? No big deal. As long as it's between consenting adults, anything they want to do is fine, right? Now, the answer starts with the plain fact that God has called adultery sin. And what God calls evil, we ought never to call good. And seventh commandment says very clearly, do not commit adultery. And then the New Testament says this says, flee sexual immorality. And the Greek word there is the word pornea, from which we get the word pornography. And it basically means, kind of, catch all word that basically means any kind of forbidden sexual activity outside of marriage, flee from that. Because when you do that, which God calls sinful, you hinder your relationship to him. And you also hinder your relation to your spouse, if you're married, probably your future spouse, if you're not married. In many cases, I have seen it way too many times, adultery leads to destruction of a marriage, destruction of a family, destruction of a reputation. And it's not a coincidence that many people who commit adultery end up leaving the church, leaving the faith, choosing their desires over their relationship with God, not always, of course. But choosing your desires over God will ultimately cost you your life. Last week I talked about how Proverbs view our behavioral choices, not just as one time choices of wisdom or folly, but really as roads that are leading to a destination, that wisdom leads to life, an eternal life, and folly leads to death. And so, when you learn here in chapters 5, and 6 and 7, that to give into the forbidden woman is a path down the way of folly, which leads to death, listen to what happens to adulterous woman. Verse 5 and 6, her feet go down to death, her steps fall to path the shield. She does not ponder the way of life, her ways wander, and she does not know it. Now listen, I know there is a gender thing going on here, let's just address the elephant in the room, because this is all being written, as I talked about last week, as instruction from a father to a son, and the embodiment of folly here is what, it's a woman, and that can be problematic, and here's why, I grew up in the purity culture movement of the 80s and 90s, in early 2000s, probably many of you did as well, and in that movement, some good things came out of it, but there are also some, what I would call, troubling implications, and one of them was the idea that women are primarily the problem when it comes to purity, that women are the essential guardians of purity, for both themselves and for men, but if you don't dress modestly women, you are the reason that men stumble. Now, I am all for modesty, but notice that the writer, the father figure in Proverbs 5 8, never blames the sins of the man on the woman, in fact, I would say that this term forbidden woman is really a synlectic key, it's really a symbol for any sexual relationship outside of marriage, and then the writer never excuses the young man's poor choices by saying, well, if that forbidden woman hadn't just been so tempting, she hadn't dressed so modestly, this poor young guy would have never gone down the wrong path. No, what does Solomon say, says in Proverbs 6, he who commits adultery lacks sense, he who does it destroys himself. Men, you are responsible for your sin and your choices, yes, there is temptation all around us, but you cannot blame a woman, no one can make you choose to commit adultery. God calls you to follow him, and this fruit of the spirit is self-control, and the Holy Spirit as you grow in your faith will grow you in your ability to say no to forbidden relationships, and to be wise is to know, some relationships are forbidden. As verse 8 says, keep your way far from her, do not go near the door of her house, but wisdom also knows that what happens to your body affects your soul. There is a Tom Cruise movie that I can't recommend to you, so I'm not going to tell you the title of it, okay, but there's a scene in it that is very memorable. In the movie, Tom Cruise's character has a one night stand with a woman, and then she shows up a few days later on an ounce, and she begins questioning him, and she says, when did you stop caring about the promises that you made? And he says, promises, what are you talking about, I never made any promises? And she said, she says, don't you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not, interesting, and she's right, right? The world likes to pretend that sleeping together is just innocent fun, so deeper meaning or attachment to it, but we know, we know better, and there are so many things that tell us that, right from the essential dignity of the Me Too movement, to the massive sense of betrayal, spouse's fuel, and their person cheats on them, to the trauma of rape. We know that there is much deeper meaning than just sleep around having fun, so I work places have sexual misconduct policies, it's serious, Tim Keller says, the God has created us, integrated embodies souls, so that what we do with our bodies affects us spiritually and wholly, bodily union was created to both signify and strengthen a whole life, permanent commitment, and covenant between spouses, sex is a God ordained way for two people to give up their independence, and to say mutually and to each other, I belong completely and permanently to you, this is why living together before marriage is both a bad idea and not the will of God, because what marriage offers is a covenant, an oath to love no matter what, and that oath, that covenant actually gives you great freedom, it enables you to be able to commit yourself fully, and to expose yourself fully to your spouse, knowing that you both committed to love no matter what, when you live together without the benefit of that covenant, without the benefit of that oath, you're not giving yourself totally to the other person, you're not saying I'm going all in with you no matter what, you're always holding something back, and in many ways you're still communicating that you're keeping your options open, right, and marriage, marriage says this is forever, but living together says this is great until something better comes along, don't give everything physically until you're ready to give everything emotionally, financially, spiritually. Now, we might register an objection here, when we recognize who is writing this chapter, right, who is it, it's King Solomon, an objection to something like this, didn't Solomon have 700 wives and 300 concubines, who is he to talk about self-control and purity, and as a good point, you're right, Solomon followed, he followed in the foolishness of his father David, who followed in the foolishness of the kings of the other nations by taking on multiple wives, and Solomon clearly didn't do it for love, right, very likely, probably didn't remember all the names. He, for kings having a heron was a power move, right, much like having land in cities and multiple palaces to live in, but it's also not a coincidence that David and Solomon both faltered later in life, for David, his decline, begins with his theft and assault of Bathsheba, for Solomon seems to start when he begins marrying four and wives, and we can sort of read this proverb as a bit of prophecy, he commits adultery destroys himself. Now, God in his grace kept David and Solomon from totally destroying themselves, but politically really set a precedent that was part of the decline of future kings and the nation of Israel itself, because the decline of Israel was not due to political decay, but primarily the writers of chronicles and kings tell us to moral decay. The result of kings choosing to act poorly with their bodies and they're affecting their soul and the soul of the nation. So here's this passage warning against adultery warning against fornication, and yet we're reading this three thousand years later, probably not that different of a time, but still recognizing that we're swimming in a sea of sexual immorality, seeing it everywhere on billboards, one click away on our phones, how do we stand a chance at obedience to God in this area? Well, the answer is that God calls us to give our whole selves to God and to our spouses. Now, let's get something out of the way. The Bible does not condemn sexual sin because it is against sex, quite the opposite, because it has got himself who created it, who created it for our good. And when you read the Bible, it doesn't take very long to see that the Bible is not prudish. In fact, in many places it can be pretty explicit. Verses 15 to 20 in our reading contain multiple metaphors about married life. And verses 15 and 19, their images of female sexuality, verse 18 is an image of male sexuality. And in verse 19, we get this advice, a command. It's really interesting. He says, be intoxicated, always in her love. And the Hebrew phrase here literally means make her love, make her love, make you drunk. That's the kind of marriage that the Bible wants us to have, but we are so in love with our spouses that we are intoxicated with them. Now, this was radical in biblical times. In fact, it's been pretty radical for most of human history, maybe up until about 200 years ago. Because for most of history, marriage was not primarily about having a deep relationship and mutual pleasure. Marriage was about what, about having children, securing the bloodline, about increasing wealth, securing your property. It was not about pleasure. For man wanted that, there were mistresses for that. But God tells Israel here, and then the Ten Commandments, and the Song of Solomon, that marriage is to be the place of great delight and mutual enjoyment of a husband and a wife. And he says that delight and marriage is an antidote to the lore of adultery. Yeah, verses 15 and 20. What they're seeing is that it is not just enough to say no to the wrong relationships. You also have to say a strong yes to the relationship that God has given you. Delight in the wife of your youth. Delight in the husband that God has given you. If you're not married, delight yourself in the Lord. And here's the thing. The secret behind Christian marriage and sexuality is that there is a deeper spiritual reality behind it all. Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5, he says, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having clenched her by the washing of water with the word. What Paul is saying here is that marriage is ultimately a flexion of the relationship between God and his people. See, God didn't just create us to be his servants, but to be his bride. He is not just a king and a ruler. He is also a lover. And Jesus gave everything for us, entered fully into covenant with us. He is our true lover, infinitely faithful to us, and he calls us to be faithful to him. And so the Apostle Paul can then write, you, so you are not your own, for you are bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. He's saying, don't you see with what great love you have been loved? How Jesus died to save you to make you beautiful and perfect, so go and love like that. Now, one last thing before we're done. And that is this question. How do we reconcile the warnings that are here? What Proverbs says about whoever commits adultery destroys himself. How do we reconcile that with the concept of grace, which is that the heart of the biblical message, and the heart of the Christian faith? Another way to ask that question is what I often hear, especially young people say, which is, why? Why does a church take such a hard, unbending stance on sexual sins, often shaming those who falter and, and also soft on other sins like injustice and greed and gluttony? That's a good question. And a fuller answer would take a whole nother sermon, but let's start here. Let's start here, and that is that we are all broken sexually in some way. We're all broken from the young man who can't stop looking at pornography to the frigid husband or wife, to the girl who thinks she wants to be a boy. We are all broken at some level. None of us is operating fully the way that God wants us to in this realm. And we need to start with that perspective when we're dealing with other people, especially those who seem maybe more problematic or public than yours. Now that does not mean that we're soft and sin or that we're watering down God's word, but it does mean that God's grace can go anywhere. Anywhere He wants to do, and the only sin for which there is no hope is the sin of refusing to give your life to Jesus. But if you will give your life to Him no matter what you have done, He will give you all the love that you need. He will work to wash you clean by the water of His word. Does Jesus care about what consenting adults do? Yes. Jesus cares about what they do because He cares about their souls. He wants them to flourish, wants you to flourish, not to perish. To drink water from your own sister and flowing water from your own well. For a man's ways or before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths. Let's pray. Father, you have created us body and soul, and you created us originally good. And yet since the fall we have our desires and our actions have been crooked from deep down within us. And we have heard ourselves and hurt one another by our attempts at love in the wrong places and with the wrong people. The Father with you is overwhelming love and grace. We thank you for that. Father, we pray that you would teach us not to treat one another as brothers and sisters outside of the confines of marriage. With all purity. Father, you would pray that you would teach us how to love one another in a way that is not selfish but is kind and pure. We pray this in the name of our Savior, our friends, and our husband Jesus. Father, we pray that you would teach us not to treat one another as brothers and sisters outside of the confines of marriage. Father, we pray that you would teach us not to treat one another as brothers and sisters outside of the confines of marriage.