Thursday, May 19, 2022

Never Take Love for Granted
15-16 Do you know the saying, “Drink from your own rain barrel,
draw water from your own spring-fed well”?
It’s true. Otherwise, you may one day come home
and find your barrel empty and your well polluted.
17-20 Your spring water is for you and you only,
not to be passed around among strangers.
Bless your fresh-flowing fountain!
Enjoy the wife you married as a young man!
Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose—
don’t ever quit taking delight in her body.
Never take her love for granted!
Why would you trade enduring intimacies for cheap thrills with a prostitute?
For dalliance with a promiscuous stranger?
21-23 Mark well that God doesn’t miss a move you make;
he’s aware of every step you take.
The shadow of your sin will overtake you;
you’ll find yourself stumbling all over yourself in the dark.
Death is the reward of an undisciplined life;
your foolish decisions trap you in a dead-end.
-Proverbs 5:15-23 The Message
15 Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16 Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
17 Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
18 Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
21 For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders all his paths.
22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
23 He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly, he is led astray.
Verse 15 study: “Drink water from your own cistern,” is a picture of faithfulness in marriage. This means that God has given you a spouse to enjoy. In desert lands, water is precious, and the family’s most important prize is a well. In the Old Testament times, stealing water from someone else’s well was a crime. It was also a crime to have intercourse with another man’s wife. In both these cases, the offender is endangering the health and security of a family.
Verses 15-21 studies: This passage encourages couples to look to each other for lifelong satisfaction and companionship. This is contrary to what most people read and hear today. Instead, many temptations attract husbands and wives to desert each other for excitement and pleasures to be found elsewhere when a marriage becomes dull. Marriage is God’s design, and he sanctified it. Only through this covenant relationship can we find real love and fulfillment. Don’t let your illusions be wasted because you didn’t listen to God to see if the grass is greener on the other side. Take the time to rejoice with your spouse as you give yourselves to God and each other.
Verses 18-20 studies: The way God designed marriage is not for it to be boring, lifeless, pleasureless, and dull. Sex is a gift from God given to married people for mutual enjoyment. Real happiness comes when we decide to take absolute pleasure in the relationship God has given us and commit to making it pleasurable for our spouse. The danger is doubting that God knows and cares for us. So we start resenting his timing and carelessly pursue sexual pleasure without his blessing.
Verse 19 study: Song of Solomon chapter 4 has parallels to this expression of joys of sexual pleasure in marriage.
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