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Ring of Truth provides 366 daily ‘proofs’ that the Bible is consistent throughout from Genesis to Revelation, and relevant for our lives today!
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Proverbs 5:15
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.
We finish May with a note of wisdom, which is also a challenge.
When we see relationships breaking up all around us, it is timely to look at the subject of marriage. Here in this chapter, we are warned from committing adultery or succumbing to prostitution and the warnings continue for the next two chapters.
Why so much focus? Because it’s as relevant today as it was then. It is rife within society. Adultery and prostitution – the so-called ‘oldest’ profession. What is so wrong with an affair on the side? Why must I be content with just one wife? Why can’t I have a mistress as well?
Today, if you have been married to one wife or husband for more than 7 years, you are in the minority. Take that on to 20 years and you are considered to be strange or very boring. But God doesn’t think so.
God designed marriage and sex and both are very good. It is not sex that is wrong – it is not marriage that is wrong – it is taking sex out of context. It is impossible for a person to have the best sexual experience outside of God’s intended union.
Sexual intercourse was designed by God, for a man and a woman to enjoy within a stable, loving and God-centred marriage where mind, body, soul and spirit are united in a way that expresses itself in the highest form of intimacy.
Most sexual intercourse is enjoyed on a lower plain. Unless both the man and the woman have surrendered their lives to the claims of Christ, they will never fully know the intimacy of unity of spirit, and therefore that dimension is completely denied them.
Those who commit adultery or engage in prostitution are on an even lower level yet – body-to-body only or mere ‘flesh on flesh’ like animals. Men ‘give love for sex’, women ‘give sex for love’ – neither satisfies. But it is worse than that. Adultery destroys the relationship with the spouse, and if children are involved, the results are catastrophic.
Additionally, these couples suffer the same fate as two singles engaged in pre-marital sex or prostitution – they have joined themselves to the other and taken ‘on board’ all the baggage of the other, because it becomes a “one flesh union” each time (see Genesis 2:24 & Malachi 2:13-16).
Such sexual acts are outside of God’s intended covenant and those who engage in them will reap the consequences. If conception takes place, all the turmoil of unplanned childbirth ‘comes home to roost’, which may result in adoption or taking the murderous step of abortion. If conception doesn’t take place, not only are they still susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases but they have also violated a picture of the pure unity within the Godhead and our eternal destiny – the picture of Christ and His Bride. It is an ‘exclusive’ union.
Our verse is imploring married couples to keep what they have unique, sacred and pure – protect it at all costs – the consequences and penalties of not doing so are devastating.
And remember – sure you can be forgiven – but the consequences still follow.
Remember King David? If not, look back at 2 Samuel 11 & 12 and Psalm 51.
It is always better not to engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage in the first place.
Marriage is the ultimate God-designed human relationship.
Enjoy it, cherish it, develop it, and protect it with all your strength. And draw on God’s strength too, as necessary, because He is on the side of marriage. It’s a ‘Ring of Truth’!
IT IS THE BEST.
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