Where is Your Water Going?
Water is vital to our lives. In an arid country like Israel it is also scarce and precious. Proverbs 5:15-20 uses water to illustrate the need for sexual purity—warning specifically against promiscuity and adultery.
Should your fountains be dispersed….in the streets?
Water stands for our sexual activity. This passage in Proverbs teaches us that we need to guard our water and control where it goes.
Central to the passage is the following pointed question:
Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? (Proverbs 5:15-16)
The obvious answer to the question is: “No Way!”
In saying this as Christians, we agree that promiscuity and adultery are wrong. We also agree that using pornography is wrong. However, there is more.
Based on what Jesus taught us (Matthew 5:28)—sexual sin goes beyond these observable sexual activities. Spilling your “water in the streets” also includes any time you willfully allow the pleasurable gratification of wrongfully directed sexual desire in your heart.
This was seen as a radical idea when Jesus presented it and remains radical today. Most of those around us—even Christians—believe that secret lusting is unavoidable. Adultery in the heart—the careless lusting after any and all—is even seen as OK.
However, Jesus did not see it this way. As His followers we must acknowledge that seizing an illicit sexual buzz is like foolishly spilling and wasting water—pouring it out in the streets.
Let’s apply the image of water further:
Water that falls on the earth will eventually find its way to the sea. Whenever this water is channeled, it is called a river—the more channeled, the more powerful the flow.
For example, the river shown in the above picture is intensely channeled before it explodes into the canyon below. That kind of energy can only be generated because the water had nowhere else to go. It runs fast and deep.
Compare this to what happens when water is flowing but not channeled. Instead of running fast and deep, it runs slow and is disbursed. The result is a delta or a swamp, places where water pools up and stagnates.
Instead of predictable and dependable, the water found in a swamp is treacherous. Instead of pure and refreshing, it is polluted and infested.
Lust is unfocused and unselective. It unleashes itself in any convenient way available. The result of this sin—as with all sin—is death. One of the things that can die is the ability to enjoy legitimate pleasure—when the time is right there is failure—it is not as fulfilling as it should be. Having been misdirected and poured out of the bottle somewhere else, it is no longer powerful and pure.
If you have given yourself over to lust, you have cheated yourself, your spouse (or your future spouse).
Don’t pour your water in the streets. Only use it in the focused, intended way that God designed.
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