Posted on 07/06/2022 11:38:35 PM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him” (Proverbs 7:21 KJV).
“With her much fair speech,” Paul warned us about fair speeches and great swelling words. “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple” (Romans 16:17-18 KJV).
People listen to these false preachers on the television and don’t use a lick of discernment. “Well,” they say, “He preaches the Gospel.” Sure! But which one? “But he changes people’s lives!” Okay, just go ahead and send him your money. Good luck, though, finding out what they are spending it on.
Sin sounds good and looks good, and it looks like you can get away with it: “He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed,” He took plenty of money with him, he’ll be gone a good long time and we have the house all to ourselves. She used her fair speech, or as we might say, her beautiful words, and “caused him to yield.”
“. . . with the flattering of her lips she forced him,” now, her conscience might well be seared, but his isn’t—yet. He’s got a conscience. This woman does not, she can sin and not think twice about it—in fact, she is even at the point where she can justify it in her own mind. The young man cannot. He still got caught. At one point, there was a wall there, but she pushed him beyond it, and he is captured.
Too many things have overcome the young fool. And empty head, the wrong companions, out late at night, nothing to do with his idle time—and then sin looked good, sounded good, smelled good, tasted good. Everything was just right for his fall. Even a person with a lot of character would likely have struggled in these circumstances—but this boy had no character—nothing to hold him back.
“With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him,” he can’t win. The best thing to do is to just stay out of the place of temptation. David said, “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes” (Psalm 101:3), because he finally knew better—he learned the hard way. That is probably the way that most people learn, but it doesn’t have to be that way. James wrote that “every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed” (James 1:14).
This woman enticed the young fool, she has played on his lust of the flesh. Looking at this whole passage you see every aspect of the flesh is stimulated. With sin, you just reach a point where you don’t care, you can’t stop—you just keep on—and you keep going further down. At one point you even see you are going down, and you see where the road is going to end, but you just can’t stop. It is like something is pulling you, forcing you.
What can a man do when he reaches that place in life. The majority of men just go right on down the drain and are finished. A few are granted repentance and are restored. “In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will” (II Timothy 2:25-26 KJV).
For everyone that gets out of it, there are a hundred that perish. “Flee youthful lusts!”
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