February 4

and you say, “How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”
Proverbs 5:12-14

We talk about the idea of "damage control" today. But the damage from immoral relationships is so catastrophic that it cannot be controlled or undone. In Proverbs 5 Solomon warns us to weigh the temporary pleasures with the terrible temporal and eternal consequences.

This is a subject Solomon knew a lot about. He knew well of the hazards of impure relationships from the example of his own father and mother, David and Bathsheba, as well as from his own life choices. The sheer volume of space he devotes to this subject leaves us no doubt that the sage Solomon saw sexual sin as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, hazards lying in the path of young men.

And more than that, Solomon saw it as his responsibility, as father, to instruct, to admonish, to warn his son on the issue of relationships. It was as father that he was concerned for the purity of his son. It was as father that he had an urgency to explain to his son the need for self-control. It was as father that he explained the antidote to sinful relationships through waiting for the full blessings of marriage.

But in verses 12-13 the King paints a picture of the son (or student, or parent, or whoever) who rejects this loving counsel. Here is a heart full of well informed regret and remorse. Here is a heart that should have known better; that did know better. The greatest agony in the end is the realization that this could have been avoided. "If only I had listened to my father." "If only I had listened to my pastor."

If only...