Posted on 12/08/2022 7:30:34 PM PST by Pilgrim's Progress
“For she sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city, To call passengers who go right on their ways: Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: and as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell” (Proverbs 9:14-18).
This woman is exposed up in the high places, to call out to passers-by. She is a harlot. We might call her a high-class harlot.
“Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither,” here is someone that is just as dump as she is. Maybe she is a little smarter than them, seeing that she is the temptress. They are stupid enough to fall for her wares.
“and as for him that wanteth understanding,” here the people are not “wanting” understanding in the sense that they desire it as the wise man earlier in our chapter. These are those that are “lacking” understanding. Here the word “wanting” is to be see in the light of one absent of any common sense. When someone “wants for” something, it means that they don’t have it.
“and as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant,” that describes the “pleasures of sin,” but they “are but for a season.”
Perhaps if a man has waxed his conscience sin might be sweet. There is always the thought of being able to get away with something, the challenge of sin, can you do it without getting caught? All sin is built around the lie that they Devil tells, “You can get away with it.” Some people steal compulsively. Some people lie because they enjoy doing it or are able to profit from it. They have just trained themselves over the years to habitually lie, cheat, steal, or whatever. They have learned to enjoy the things that are wrong, because “stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
No doubt, this is exactly what the passer-by wanted to hear. He is looking for something exciting
Sin always tastes good at the beginning, and each time a man tastes of it, it is a little less sweet and a little less pleasurable then it was at the first. And pretty soon, when that things got a hold of you it tastes bitter—but you can’t quit drinking of it.
The Gospel of truth is just the opposite. When you first hear the truth of sin and hell, it is most bitter. “Oh! I don’t like that! I don’t like what it says about me!” When you first taste it, it doesn’t taste good. “I don’t like that! Yuck! I don’t like what it says about me, I just don’t believe that! But I’ll try it anyway. I’ll down it, like medicine, like cod liver oil.” Now, no medicine can be any good if it tastes good. Anything that you put on a cut, if it doesn’t burn, it really doesn’t do anything. They may say that it will do the same thing, but I’m suspicious of it.
I just think that God’s got it worked out that if anything is going to work or do any good, it’s going to be bitter to start with. With the Gospel, you just can’t sugar coat it. Before a man can get saved, he has to get lost first.
“Stolen waters” is the advertisement of sin. “But he knoweth not that the dead are there,” she has a good looking place—it doesn’t look like it will end up in a bad situation—but the dead are there. Christ said, “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew 15:14 KJV). They don’t have any understanding, they don’t have any spiritual life—the dead are there.
“. . . and that her guests are in the depths of hell,” her guests, her religion, a religion of convenience. “For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell” (Psalms 86:13 KJV). There are levels of hell, and the Pharisees are said to have the greater damnation. And person that deceives another person in a religious or a spiritual matter is going to receive the greater damnation than the one he deceives. A person like a Pope who deceives 800 million souls as to what the true plan of salvation is, and how to get to heaven, is far more wicked than an Adolf Hitler could ever possibly be. Hitler will be in a lower level of hell to be sure, but not as low as a religious charlatan that deceived upwards of a billion souls.
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