The ancient legend of Camelot tells the story of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. If you know the tale, it's all about how the trusted knight Sir Lancelot became the king's rival for his own wife. It began with a very innocent look. But the look led to a touch, the touch to a kiss, and the kiss to adultery and, eventually, tragedy. There wasn't a large step between look and lust.

This is where we come to Proverbs 5, where Solomon talked about the birds and the bees with his kids. He was very honest and very descriptive in what he talked about in this chapter, but he did this so that his children wouldn't have the same real-life tragedy as what happened in Camelot. And I think Solomon is an important role model for us. Today I want to look at two things he addressed in Proverbs 5: the pursuit of sexual pleasure and the pain of sexual promiscuity.

First is the pursuit of sexual passion: "My son, pay attention to my wisdom; lend your ear to my understanding, that you may preserve discretion, and your lips may keep knowledge. For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil" (Proverbs 5:1-3).

Let's get it straight: sexual passion has been part of the human condition from the beginning, and God put it there. He invented sex, but man took it and perverted it, and it has become a fire that has burned many relationships to the ground. I've been a pastor long enough to know that this is a problem within the church. That's why there are so many admonitions and warnings in the Word of God against it.

Now let's look at the pain of sexual promiscuity. Proverbs 5:4 makes a sharp turn from the previous three verses: "But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell. Lest you ponder her path of life—her ways are unstable; you do not know them" (vv. 4-6).

It might seem sweet at first, but it's very bitter in the end. You can lose your wealth. You can lose your house. You can lose your family. You can lose your physical health—you could die from it (see vv. 7-11). It has disastrous consequences. A lot of people will say, "What's wrong with a little extramarital sex? People do it all the time, and they get away with it." Please ponder verse 4 again: "But in the end." That's exactly what people do not consider when they enter into an affair: "In the end."

You have to understand that the sexual impulse is God-given and therefore must be God-governed. When it is not, it can—and does—become perverted. Fire is beautiful in a fireplace. Take it out of the fireplace and put it on the couch, and suddenly that fire is not so beautiful. It has the potential for total destruction and ruin.

Sexual passion given by God is awesome, but sexual passion outside of the parameters that God has set brings pain and destruction. Here's the clincher, though: sexual immorality is sin, but that's precisely why it's forgivable. Jesus came to die for sinners. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). There are consequences to sin, and those consequences can often last a lifetime, but God will forgive you. Every sin is washable by the blood of Jesus Christ.

I pray that the Lord would direct our thoughts to His principles for this area of our lives as we discover them in His Word, and that those principles would be the guiding factors—the parameters—that we live our lives by.