The Folly of Adultery

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come this morning to a new section of the book of Proverbs. While we are still in the first nine chapters, the extended lectures that set the context for the whole book, we have spent the first four chapters hearing about why we should listen to wisdom and how we can get wisdom. But now we have three entire chapters dedicated to profiling the fool. What stands out about the fool in each of these three chapters is his sexual profligacy. He commits adultery and doesn’t care. We see some other characteristics of fools in the first part of ch. 6, but we see three entire lectures devoted to the folly of adultery. Now, do you think adultery might have been a problem in Solomon’s day? And do you think that sexual immorality is a problem in our world today? To ask that question is to answer it. Surely our culture is one of the most sex-obsessed ever. And so we begin this morning to look at the portrait of the fool, a topic on which we will spend most of the next five weeks. What I hope to show you today is that sexual immorality is a major characteristic of the fool, one that will ensnare and ruin him.