The Devil in a Red Dress- Proverbs 7
Have you ever heard a sad tale of a Christian who blew it? Maybe as you heard the story, you asked yourself, “How could anyone fall for that?” I have certainly asked that question. On both sides: As it relates to others and with myself, “How could I fall for such a simplistic temptation?” I have often said that spiritual warfare would be fairly easy if the devil knocked on your door in the morning with a pitchfork, a red suit, and a long pointy tale. The problem is he, in many cases, wears a dress.
The Bible says that the devil disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). Sometimes, the schemes of the enemy are simply to baptize sin in spiritual waters and present it to us as if we were the Judge of the facts.
Proverbs 7, one of the ten introductory chapters of Proverbs, expresses wisdom from Solomon (for the most part) as addressed to his son in order to equip and provoke his son toward godly living. Here he addresses the weak-kneed response toward sexual temptation. You could really insert any temptation into the story because the tactics are similar across the spectrum.
10The woman approached him, seductively dressed and sly of heart…
13She threw her arms around him and kissed him, and with a brazen look she said,
14“I’ve just made my peace offerings and fulfilled my vows.
15You’re the one I was looking for! I came out to find you, and here you are!
Proverbs 7:10, 13-15 (NLT)
The writer positions the teacher as a wise onlooker observing an unfolding scene involving a naïve young man and a cunning woman. This woman is stunning in appearance and seductive in her demeanor. She is outgoing as she sought out the man (vv.11-12). When she spots him, she seizes and kisses him, appealing to his senses and feelings, not reason, logic, or worship. She exudes confidence (v.13), taking full charge of the situation, and then makes the case that this is not only not bad…but is a gift from God. The man is precisely what she prayed for earlier in the day! She answers his mental objections…not objecting to the immorality of the situation but to the potential consequences of the sin. Her home offers privacy and comfort. Her arms offer fulfillment, enjoyment, and sensual adventure (vv.16-18). The deed will be a secret as the husband is away (vv.19-20). The liability of her coming back to tell tales is minimal as she is married, after all. And she continues to persuade and entice (v.21).
22Suddenly he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter, Or as one in fetters to the discipline of a fool,
Proverbs 7:22 (NASB95)
I am always arrested by the “suddenly” of this verse. For us, we see the situation unfolding over several minutes or maybe hours. But at some point, the decision is made, and the consequences are attached. Certainly, the husband may never learn of the unholy liaison. The man, however, is immediately aware. And God is righteous in judgment.
How can one combat such overwhelming attacks? Solomon says to be attentive to the Word of God, guard your heart, and avoid dark alleys on the wrong side of town (vv.24-25). Choose to pursue the Person and Presence of God through His Word. The Scriptures not only explain the expectations of discipleship but offer wisdom on navigating the distracting schemes intended to take us off the path we were made for. We must choose not to let the consideration of sin enter our hearts, and we must recognize our weaknesses, avoiding situations that could exploit them.
Effectively battling for holiness involves both pursuit and avoidance. Otherwise, we will find ourselves suddenly facing the consequences of yielding to the enticement of the devil in a red dress.
God’s Portrait of Blessing- Psalm 128
What comes to mind when you think about the blessing of God? For many, the mind races to those things of material significance. A new car, a promotion, a fat retirement account, or perhaps increased influence among men. These are all potential evidence of God’s blessings. After all, James tells us that every good thing comes from God (James 1:17).
But what if the evidence of God’s affirmation, the outpouring of His benevolence, the portrait of His effusive grace was something more subtle?
Notice the words of the Psalmist:
1How blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, Who walks in His ways.
2When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, You will be happy and it will be well with you.
3Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine Within your house, Your children like olive plants Around your table.
4Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed Who fears the Lord.
One condition and the exhibits of God’s blessing:
The Condition– Fear God and walk in His ways. These are one and the same thing. I know we like to separate them in modern culture and create some spiritual category for those who might claim to love God but walk in willful rebellion. This is a foreign idea to the Scriptures. While all people do, in fact, sin against God…the disciple of Jesus looks to Christ’s atoning work for that sin, repents of sinning, and pursues holy living. This is an ongoing and ever-progressive work for the disciple. As Martin Luther wrote and nailed to the door of Wittenberg Chapel, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”
The Exhibits:
- You shall eat of the fruit of your hands (v.2). This speaks of God’s provision for all our needs and our enjoyment of them. These provisions, contextually speaking, were not only personal but familial. It speaks of the ability to provide for one’s family through his labor. Now, before you @me and start quoting Miley Cyrus lyrics about buying your own flowers, the idea in biblical times was clear. Part of God’s blessing was evident in man’s ability to care for those in his household.
- Your wife shall be a fruitful vine within your house. This image would connect with the agrarian mindset of the audience. God’s blessing will be evident through many children from your wife. Large families were considered a blessing from the Lord. Furthermore, the imagery of the vine is used elsewhere to speak of refreshment and lavish enjoyment.
- Your table will be surrounded by children like olive plants. Both olive plants and vines are rich in biblical imagery and communicate rich blessings. The children around the table are not commodities to be used or consumed but plants that take quite some time to grow to maturity. They must be tended, nurtured, and cultivated. When this is done, they produce blessings in abundance. This picture communicates to us both responsibility and reward. Children are not inconveniences. They are not interruptions to our otherwise fruitful lives. They are not a means to a particular end. They are blessings that have been entrusted to our stewardship of developing and shaping to know and love God.
I know that the image of success and the evidence of God’s blessing may look different in the mind of the novice or the unbeliever. But for God’s people, satisfying provisions, a fruitful marriage, and the opportunity to develop our children into followers of Jesus, as we walk in the fear of God, are evidence of a life well-lived and God’s gracious blessing.
Today is the Day
Have you ever given consideration to the stewardship of “the day?” By that, I mean, “What if today was not what you made it (as if you were master of the day) but an assignment to be discerned, carried out, and celebrated?”
I have been “the guy” who thought of the calendar as an obstacle rather than an opportunity; a challenge rather than a commission. If I could control the appointments, arrange the flow of activities, choose the level of energy needed for each encounter, delegate away some of the less significant tasks…THEN I could look back on the day and talk about all that I had done. What if though, I had an assignment in the day that was completely overlooked in the hustle and hurry of my effective administration?
Someone asked me recently about a weakness or struggle that I knew about myself. I responded that, at times, I moved too quickly through a room. Even when pastoring, my default was to maximize my time and get to the front and in position at just the right time. In fact, after watching one of my mentors engage the same crowds, I realized that I needed to intentionally slow down. I would often pray for the Lord to show me His divine appointments in the conversations that I might have along the way. Sure, I needed to be at the front when the clock struck 00:00, but I also needed to maximize the appointments that God might have along the way.
The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us that God is in the appointment business. He appoints everything under heaven.
1There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
Ecclesiastes 3:1, NASB95
Often, the moments that we pass through are appointments affecting eternity for others. That disabled vehicle on the side of the road. The conversation after prayers with your son as you tuck him in. The Car rider line. The chit-chat with a co-worker over lunch. Any one of these may be an appointment that affects eternity.
2for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation”—
2 Corinthians 6:2, NASB95
Finally, since God assigns the moments and controls all of the circumstances, we can rejoice in every element of the day. We can be grateful for the traffic stall on the highway, or the appliance repair that we have to arrange on the hone. We can thank the Lord that our coffee order is delayed for a fresh pot that is being brewed. Each one of these moments is divinely appointed.
24This is the day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24, NASB95
Today, the Lord will entrust you with 86,400 seconds. He has appointed some of them for eternal purposes. Make the most of every opportunity and rejoice…for the Lord made the day!
Zeal or Righteousness?
1Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.
2For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.
3For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.
4For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Romans 10:1-4, NASB95
I once worked for a guy who was the consummate motivator. He was a football player and an aspiring football coach. Circumstances to him were less important than attitude. I never saw him without a smile on his face. He was always motivating. I imagine that if he were my son’s little league coach, the score could be 100 to 0 with two minutes to play and he would passionately tell the team that there was still a chance for victory. He had zeal!
Paul said the same thing of the Jews, His kinsmen according to the flesh…his fellow countrymen. They were passionate about the Law but saw the Law as the means by which we achieve righteousness. This is in direct conflict with the gospel. If my beliefs or your beliefs require us to do anything to earn our salvation, then our faith is no longer in the good news (Gospel) because there is nothing we can do that earns our righteousness. In fact, as verse four states, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness…to all who believe.
That means that earnestness will not make us right with God. Transparency will not make us right with God. Authenticity will not make us right with God. Good deeds that we do will not make us right with God. Only Christ can make us right with God because only Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.
This is good news…and bad. It is good news because it levels the ground around the cross. You are not behind. You are not ahead. You are precisely equal with every other human being from Adam to the Apostle Peter, John to Jude, and from Malachi to Matthew. No one is excluded at all. The bad news is…we struggle to believe that we are bad enough to need a Savior. We think that in the pecking order of sin, surely, we are more righteous than Hitler, or Osama Bin Laden, or Chris Aiken. Surely! But we are not. In fact, the more we understand God and His gracious plan of redemption, the more humbled we become. We are slow to try to compare ourselves with others, and we certainly don’t elevate ourselves to a place of judging others in a manner that conflicts with the Word of God. If God says “forgive” …we don’t reply, “Yea, but…”.
In many ways, it seemed that Paul was so grieved because his countrymen felt they had an inside line, an advantage, a Fast Pass to get through the Pearly Gates and he argues that what should have been an advantage (the Covenant and the Law), because they had misused it, actually became to be an obstacle to overcome.
The same could be said for religious people today. Your neighbors perhaps. Maybe even you. Stop giving your resume to the Lord. Stop relying on “standing” from your good works. Instead, fall down before Jesus, surrender to His reign in your life, and find that which truly satisfies…the righteousness that only Christ can provide.
Choose not to cheat
In this section of Romans, Paul gives an analogy of marital faithfulness to clarify our relationship to the Law as believers who are saved by grace. He says unequivocally that the Law is dead, and we are now irrevocably joined to the covenant of grace. He further states that this new life of grace is the only way we may bear fruit for God.
4Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
Romans 7:4, NASB95
Of course, he sets up the argument by discussing the Law and its teaching on adultery.
1Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? 2For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. 3So then, if while her husband is living, she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.
Romans 7:1-3, NASB95
These four verses illuminate the fact that if we are to marry grace, the Law must be dead to us. What is the relationship to the Law? In the Old Testament Law, God’s people were chosen by Him and called by His name. He entered a covenant with them where, as a condition of the covenant, their blessing demanded their obedience to God’s commands. While mine is an imperfect analogy, think of this covenant like your employment agreement. You are given a job and as a result, you must fulfill certain expectations. If you do not fulfill your responsibilities, your employer may not fulfill his.
Under the Law, when you failed to fulfill the covenant expectations, you were to go to the Priest and offer a costly sacrifice, prescribed by God in the Law, as atonement for your sin. As you offered it, you sought the Lord’s mercy and prayed for his acceptance of the sacrifice in your place.
Under the covenant that Jesus ushered in, there was only one sufficient sacrifice—Jesus Himself. He satisfied the sacrificial requirement ONCE for ALL people in His death on the cross (Hebrews 10:12). There is no new sacrifice to bring to God to ask for mercy and offer it as a substitute. In place of sacrifice, we are to confess our sins…fully trusting that God is faithful to His declaration that Jesus’ death is a satisfactory and sufficient sacrifice on our behalf and that by our confession (a Greek word that means to “say the same thing as”) God will forgive our sins and fully cleanse us from our unrighteousness. (See 1 John 1:8-9).
The faithful Christian lives according to this covenant declaration. We, as believers, are not perfect. We are being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-30) but that is an ongoing work that God is doing, and we are cooperating in. It will not be completed until we step into the presence of Christ Himself one day.
It is patently unfaithful to seek God’s favor or mercy by any sacrificial act today. We cannot tip the scales in our favor. We cannot stir up God’s benevolence by good works. We cannot prompt Him to suddenly reconsider our judgment because we did something nice.
So how does a faithful believer live? By glorifying God in the freedoms granted to you in the New Covenant and seeking to magnify that glory as you mirror the heart of Christ in extending His hope in the gospel. We are to undertake the gospel enterprise–proclaiming God’s satisfaction of debt in Jesus to every people, everywhere, until Jesus takes us home. This life of grace living is our exclusive hope. We must not cheat on grace by placing any hope in our good deeds…either in our heads or our hands. To the faithful believer, the Law is dead, and Grace is our new bride.
Chris Aiken
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