In the sermon 'Beautiful Intoxication' by Peter Allison, the focus is on the sanctity and beauty of marriage, as expressed in Proverbs 5. The metaphor 'drink water from your own cistern' is used to emphasize the importance of marital fidelity and the exclusive nature of the marriage bed. The sermon extends its relevance to unmarried individuals, highlighting that understanding biblical teachings on sexuality is crucial for everyone. The marriage relationship is depicted as a defense against fornication and lust, urging couples to find satisfaction and joy in their union. The sermon also discusses two types of love essential for a successful marriage: 'agape' love, which is selfless and giving, and 'phileo' love, which symbolizes companionship and friendship. The relationship between husband and wife is compared to the relationship between Christ and the Church, underscoring the spiritual significance of marriage. The sermon concludes by advocating for the exclusive and blessed nature of the marriage bed, encouraging couples to strive for a love that reflects divine principles.

Please turn in your Bibles through Proverbs chapter 5 verse 15, the Word of the Lord. Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. Should your fountains Be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be only your own and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving dear and a graceful doe, let her breast satisfy you at all times, and always be enraptured with her love.

For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, and be embraced in the arms of a seductress? For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. His own iniquities entrap the wicked man, and he is caught in the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. Thus far the reading of God's word Almighty Heavenly Father please write with your finger upon the tablet of our heart.

Please speak to us now through your spirit, your words. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. The passage that we have read from the Word of God deals with marriage, deals with specifically the marriage bed. What if you aren't married this morning? What if you are widowed, single, never married?

Does that mean that you need to leave or that maybe we shouldn't preach on texts such as this one? Well, Peter, the Apostle Peter, wrote to the saints that were scattered abroad. And in this letter, which is clearly addressed to the pilgrims of the dispersion, to the saints, he says in there, now to the elders who are among you and then proceeds to give very specific Instruction to how the elders were to shepherd the flock But he didn't say before he gave those instructions to the elders now you all other people don't need to listen to this part, it doesn't apply to you. He didn't send them out of the room. He didn't say, now here's another spiel letter inside this letter, this one's just for the elders.

No, this instruction and these commands that were given to the elders on how they were to carry out their work as shepherds. Things that you might say are unique, specific to that office. These were given to the elders as they sat among the saints, as the saints sat with them, the rest of the people. Timothy, we read, knew the scriptures. Remember in Timothy's day, the scriptures were the Old Testament.

Not the new, the new wasn't written when he was growing up. But Timothy knew the scriptures from his infancy. Scriptures that were able to make him wise and to salvation. And this then is a part of what Timothy had been taught by his mother and grandmother as a young child. In Ezra chapter 10, when the congregation gathered together to deal with this problem of people, priests and Levites, who had married unbelieving wives, The children, we read, were a part of that congregation.

This wasn't just the men or just the adults. The children were there, were present as this was discussed, as this sin was confessed and they dealt with how are we going to deal with this. The children were there. And so this message, well, it is dealing with the subject of marriage and specifically contains instructions to those who are married. It is appropriate for all of you who are not married this morning for whatever reason to sit here as well because this is the Word of God and this is written to you as well.

And you have a need to know what is being taught here because you were created as a man or a woman, which is to say you were created as a sexual being. You are not an it, despite what some people may think today. You do not control what you were, but God has created us, male and female, just like He created you with a mouth and with eyes and with ears. He's created you with organs that make you a male or a female. And you need to know what the scripture says about your sexual appetite.

You need to have a right and a biblical view of what it means to be a male or a female and the appetites that come with that. And we looked the last time, I know it's been a few weeks now, but we looked, the last time we looked at this chapter, at the powerful attraction of fornication, the fruit of fornication and how to avoid fornication. It is in that context that this text is given to us in the pages of the scripture of the Word of God. How to avoid fornication. The passage before it spoke about the sorrow of one who hated instruction, whose heart had despised correction, who had not obeyed the voice of their father, their teacher.

They didn't listen when these instructions regarding their sexuality were given. And it says, I was on the verge of total ruin in the midst of the assembly and the congregation. This is a confession, a confession. And what is the response? Well, this is the importance of the marriage bed rightly understood.

It is a defense against fornication and lust, against the strange woman. Proverbs here translates it immoral woman or seductress, but it is literally a strange woman. Now a strange woman is not somebody that you don't know and you never saw before, but it's referring to a woman who is strange in the sense of the covenant. Remember Paul told the Ephesians that you were aliens from the commonwealth and strangers to the covenants of promise. What was he saying?

He was saying they were outside of the covenant. They were strangers to the covenant, outside. No stranger could partake of the Passover. Somebody who was not circumcised, somebody who was outside of the covenant. No, They could not enjoy that which was meant for the citizens.

And so the strange woman then is rightly understood as an immoral woman, but is specifically speaking of somebody who is outside the covenant of your marriage. Somebody who is outside the covenant of your marriage, that is the stranger, specifically the strange woman. And so the scriptures then don't just tell us what not to do, but they also tell us what to do. That's a very, very important principle for your life in any area that you may be dealing with. We have to pay attention not just what not to do, but what we ought to do.

Because when we are doing what we ought to do, and when we're doing it heartily and fully and thoroughly, there usually isn't time left to do what you ought not to do. And so there's this process of putting off the old man but putting on the new, being renewed in knowledge and righteousness and holiness. And so putting off in the fornication means that we put on something else. And we put on the right use of our sexuality. Drink water from your own sister.

So we want to look this morning at the sanctity of marriage and the blessing of the marriage bed. The sanctity of the marriage bed and the blessing of the marriage bed. Because the Bible speaks of the sexual relationship in marriage as something of great beauty, something that is a sweet fragrance. Paul told Hebrews the marriage bed is holy, it's defiled. Solomon describes it very poetically.

And we are told, Paul told the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 7, that it is better to marry than to burn, to have a desire for this appetite. It's better to marry than to have that desire unfulfilled. This is also important because this relationship specifically is said in scripture in several places to be a type, to be typical of the relationship of Christ to his church. And so those two go together. When a husband wants to know how to love his wife, he's to look to Christ and how Christ loved the church.

When a wife is to look at how she is to respect her husband, she's to look at how the church is to respect and obey Christ. And we know in the Pentateuch that Moses was forbidden to enter the promised land because he misused a type. He struck the rock instead of speaking to it. One time earlier he was to strike the rock, but the next time he was to speak to the rock and he struck the rock instead. That might seem like a simple thing, especially when another time he'd been told to strike the rock and water came out of it.

But the reason that was so significant is because that rock was the type of Christ. And because he misused a type of Christ, he was forbidden from entering the Promised Land. Nadab and Abihu, we've looked at recently, misused something that was pointed to, a shadow that pointed to Christ's work. And for that they were struck dead. And so this type, this sexuality between a husband and a wife, It is important.

It is important that we rightly use and understand it. And the first command we have here is, drink water from your own cistern and writing water from your own well. The Bible as a whole speaks very directly and openly about the purity, about the wholesomeness, about the chastity of sexual activity within the covenant of marriage. And it's equally direct about the wickedness, the evil, the sin of such activity outside of marriage. But marriage is holy.

And while the scriptures speak directly, they also speak very discreetly. There is nothing graphic in the language of scripture. It is direct, but it is discreet. And this is the language that we are presented with here. Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well, should your fountain be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the street, let your fountain be blessed.

I mean, at this point, up until this point, if we didn't have the context, we might think he's just talking about our homes. You know, Rabbi Shachar, remember when he stood on that wall and spoke to Israel in 2 Kings, which is recorded actually in 2 places, in 2 Kings and in Isaiah. But in 2 Kings 18 is one place this is recorded And he speaks in verse 31, he says, Don't listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, Make peace with me by a present and come out to me, And every one of you will eat from his own vine, And every one of you from his own fig tree, And every one of you drink waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away. A sister is something that every family had. You all have a house.

Well, today we get water from a city water, some of us do, but some of us have our own cisterns, our own wells, And in this day that was just like we have our own houses, everybody had their own well for providing water or cistern. And it could be that Solomon here is just talking about that, talking about drinking from your own well. But that's clearly not what he's talking about because of the context of this. He says, let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. This passage is talking in euphemisms, is speaking very discreetly about the act of marriage, about the practice of sex within marriage.

See, the Bible speaks in several places with this figure of speech. In Isaiah 51, just to give one example. We have the Israelites are told that they came from a rock and a well. People came from a rock and a well. Well that rock and a well for Abraham and Sarah.

Isaiah says, listen to me you who follow after righteousness, you who seek to the Lord, look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the hole of the pit from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you. You who fear the Lord, look to the rock and the well from which you came. Look to Abraham and Sarah." There's an example of that euphemism of a woman, the wife, being called a sister, a well. But we have some of the strong, besides here in Proverbs 5, where it says, let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of the youth, clearly equating these two things.

Clearly saying that this, when it says drink water from your own cistern, it's not speaking here primarily of that which flows down the rivers and streams, but it's speaking of the marriage relationship, the marriage bed. Peter says to husbands to dwell with their wives in an understanding way as a weaker vessel, a vessel, a well, a cistern, something that holds water. Paul told the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 4, 4, use the same word, when he said they were to acquire their vessel in sanctification and honor. Acts 9 speaks of Paul as a chosen vessel. God said, don't be afraid.

He is my chosen vessel. Same word as Peter uses to refer to the wife. In Romans 9, Paul speaks of, you know, speaking of election and reprobation. He speaks of vessels under honor and vessels under dishonor. Again, referring to people through this figure, this idiom of a vessel.

2 Timothy chapter 2 speaks of it in the same way, but in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver in verse 20, but also of wood and clay, some for honor, some for dishonor. Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter he will be a vessel for honor. People will be a vessel for honor. Same word Peter uses to refer to a woman, a wife as a vessel. Sanctified and useful, prepared for every good work.

Flee also, youthful lusts. Can't be a honorable vest if your heart is filled with lusts. But also in Proverbs, I'm going to look at it because that's the book we're still looking at and that's the same language, written in the same language in Hebrew. Proverbs 23 and verse 27 speaks of a harlot with a similar idiom. For a harlot is a deep pit and a seductress is a narrow well.

Now narrow, I think, misses the meaning here of what it's saying, a narrow well. What is that word narrow? That is the only place out of 100 other times this word is used in the Old Testament. That is the only place where it is translated narrow. It's translated enemies 26 times.

It's translated adversaries 21 times. It's translated trouble 17 times. Enemy, distress. Do you get the idea? A harlot is a bad well.

It's going to give you a lot of trouble. It is your enemy. It's the enemy well. You drink out of that poisoned water, you die. Rather, we are to drink water from our own cistern.

Our own cistern. It is not for strangers. We're not to be drinking, but we're also not to drink from other cisterns. We're to drink only from our own. There are many ways to drink water from other cisterns without appearing to drink water from other cisterns.

And that has been true throughout the history of mankind. There have always been culturally acceptable ways to break each one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus talked about one of those ways to break the fifth commandment by saying that all your goods were dedicated to the Lord and therefore you didn't have to support your parents. So you dishonored your parents. People could commit murder in a respectable way by a duel.

You couldn't go and murder them in cold blood, but it was perfectly acceptable to challenge someone to a duel culturally. That is not in the eyes of the Lord, not in actual fact. But you could challenge somebody to a duel and then that was honorable and you could kill them that way. Today it is considered culturally acceptable to murder your unborn children. Just don't do it after they're born.

Today, if you want, if somebody is wealthy and you covet their goods, you can sue them. Does it matter if there's any merit to that? You can sue them and that's legal. It's not right and it's often not respected, but it's legal. And so in a similar way, there are many ways that we can drink water from other cisterns that are culturally acceptable, but they're wrong.

They're sin. Tenth commandment says, do not covet. Do not covet. Do not even desire. That's what the word covet means.

This means desire. And some desires are good and some desires are wrong. The desire for your neighbor's wife is wrong. Do not do it. That is not drinking water from your own cistern.

The desire to see other women is a desire, is a sinful and evil desire. It is drinking waters from another sister and that's not your own. Seeking fulfillment, seeking emotional fulfillment from somebody outside of your marriage And why you deprive that to your spouse is to drink water from another's sister. The marriage relationship is holy. And If you're married, you should not be seeking to have close friendships and to get emotional fulfillment from other people, other people's spouses, particularly other men and women that are the other gender from what we are.

Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. Reserve for your marriage the fat of your conversation, the pinnacle, the emotional highs, the joys of the fellowship, of camaraderie, of being together, those should come from your spouse. In any attempt to flirt with or to play around the edges with these kind of relationships with people outside the marriages, simply the Bible says wrong. It's wrong. It's trying to drink water from somebody else's sister instead of your own.

The world may think it's okay, But it's not. It may be acceptable in our culture, but it's not pleasing to the Lord. It's not right. Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. The marriage bed is holy and it is a private matter between a husband and a wife.

Let them, it says, verse 17, be only your own. It asks the question first, should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the street? It's speaking here of the seed. Should that be scattered about? It's calling it a fountain, a stream of water in the street.

Remember it referred to the strange woman as a woman of the street. Should your fountain be dispersed abroad? Streams of water in the street? No. Let them be only your own and not for strangers with you.

Not for those who are outside of the covenant of marriage. Pornography viewed together is still pornography. It's still drinking water from another's cistern. Just because a husband and a wife agree about something doesn't make it right. Just because it's done together doesn't make it right.

Let them be your own, only. Let them be only for you. There's an exclusivity that must guard the marriage bed in the same way that God is jealous for our worship. And we are not to worship anything else, because God is a jealous God. It's one of God's attributes.

In fact, those who said, let's go worship another God, were to be put to death. It was a capital crime. In Deuteronomy, I believe it's 13, somebody says, let's go seek another God. That was a capital crime. Somebody was a false prophet, capital crime, we are to be as married people.

We are to be jealous for the marriage bed in the same way. It is to be exclusively reserved for marriage. And so anything, any pleasure that is sought outside, away from your spouse in any way, is wrong. It is to be only in marriage. Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.

Should your fountains be dispersed abroad? Streams of water in the streets? Rhetorical question. Answers, of course not. Of course not.

Let them be only your own and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoiced with the wife of your youth. Not only is marriage holy, not only is the marriage bed sacred, but the marriage bed is a source of great blessing. Let your fountain be blessed. Be blessed.

Psalm 127 and 128 speak of the blessing of this fountain. When it speaks of children as being arrows in the hands of a mighty warrior. When it speaks of children being as olive plants that are about your table, it's speaking of the blessing that comes from the marriage bed. Psalm 128 says, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. And what then are those blessings that are to the one who fears the Lord?

You will be happy, it will be well with you. You will eat the labor of your hands. Your wife will be as a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house. Your children like olive plants, the blessing of the fountain all around your table behold thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord may the Lord bless you out of Zion may you see the good of Jerusalem may you see your children's children. So not only are you blessed that way, but your children are also blessed likewise.

And so it's a double blessing then to see the children of your children. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe let her breast satisfy you at all times." See the act of marriage brings great satisfaction. The word there for satisfy literally means to slake the thirst, to quench the thirst. To God has created us with appetites.

We have an appetite for food. We have an appetite for water. We have an appetite to be challenged intellectually. And for most people, with the coming of adulthood comes the sexual appetite and just like God has created oil to make our face glad wine to make our heart merry herbs plants the green leaf for food and for healing for our bodies. He has created sex to satisfy an appetite with which we were created.

It is a good thing. It is not a wrong appetite. It is not an appetite that needs to be put to death But rather it is a good appetite that needs to be satisfied in the way that scripture teaches us at our own sister One of the blessings of marriage then is it is the source of satisfaction. It is the source of satisfying, an appetite that God has given to us, to most of us. There are some the New Testament speaks of, those who have the gift of confidence.

And for those it is all right for them not to marry. But secondly, another blessing of the marriage bed is that it is the source of joy. It's the source of joy. As we read in Psalm 128, so it is here. Rejoice, rejoice in the wife of your youth.

There is an admonition in that. It's not, it's the wife of your youth. The wife of your youth. In other words, the expectation is that you will grow old with the one that you married in your youth. Now, because of sin, that sometimes isn't possible.

But that is the ideal. That is the way that God created marriage. And that is the blessing that we should look for, that we should seek from the Lord, because it is a blessing from the Lord. Just as a wife is a blessing of the Lord. He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

And so we are to rejoice with the wife of our youth. That's a rebuke to those who grow weary with the wife of their youth and seek to drink water from another's sister and after 20 years of one wife want to drink from another sister. We are to rejoice in the life of our youth. We are here to celebrate sexual activity in marriage. Something to be celebrated.

But if you begin, if you seek your happiness and your pleasure, if you begin with sexual pleasure you will be sorely disappointed. Sorely disappointed. Yes, this is taught here, but it is not the beginning. It is rather the ending. The foundation of marriage and the foundation of satisfaction and of fulfillment and of blessing in marriage must begin with agape love.

That is what husbands are commanded in the New Testament, to agape their wives. You see, to love is to give. And if you come at marriage, especially the marriage bed, with an attitude of receiving, what can I get? You will go away unfulfilled. You will go away disappointed.

You will go away bored and unhappy. It is more blessed to give than to receive. The foundation of marriage must begin with agape love. This is the same love that we are commanded to have with our enemies. We are commanded to agape our enemies.

What does that mean? It means we provide for them. If we see them lying on the road in need of help, we don't turn away. We do like the Samaritan. We take up the enemy, the Jew, and bring them help.

That must be the foundation of marital love. Husbands, you need to love Agape, your wife, to help them out just like the Samaritan helped out his enemy. To help them out where they need it. To be understanding of them in their labor and in their weaknesses. To come alongside of them and to help hold them up, to affirm them, to serve them.

That's what agape love is. And you know something? Agape love does not require a response. The love that we're to have for our enemies doesn't require our enemy to respond to that love. We're to have that love And we can have that love regardless of their response.

They could spit in our face. We are still to agape our enemy and agape our neighbor and agape our wife. It doesn't matter if she respects us. It doesn't matter if she appreciates us. We are to have that agape love for her.

Agape love does not require a response. Now it may produce one by the grace of God, but you don't need a response. It doesn't have to be reciprocated. So that's the foundation of marriage. But what I'll call the structure of marriage is that of phileo love, the love of companionship.

And this is the love that wives are to have for their husbands. When Paul in Titus said, let older teach the younger women to love their husbands, he doesn't use the word agape. He uses the word for a love of men. We get the word philanderer from, but that's not what that meant there. It meant the love of a companion, the love of a companion, the love of a friend.

Marriage is to be held together by this companionship. The foundation is agape love. The glue is companionship. Togetherness, mutual attraction. See this does require a reciprocation.

You can't be good friends with somebody that ignores you, spits in your face, or doesn't pay any attention to you. You can't be friends with somebody who doesn't reciprocate with you. You can't have fellowship with somebody who doesn't want to talk to you. You can agape them, but you can't have a companionship unless there's a reciprocity. And you see only when these are in place, only when there is the desire to give and not to get, only when there is a fellowship, then when you come to the marriage bed, you will be satisfied because you are giving.

You are seeking to give. You bring that context in to the marriage bed, that of how can I give? How can I continue to agape love my wife and to exercise this love of friends, of fellowship and communication? It's out of that context that the satisfaction spoken of here in this passage of the marriage bed will come. Maybe some people find after some years of marriage that the marriage bed is boring.

That there's no satisfaction in it and they sinfully seek to turn to other things to bring an element, to bring an element, an edge back into that relationship that's missing. Well, they're doomed to never find it because that satisfaction is found from the love of giving, not getting. Love fundamentally is giving. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And if we're to have the satisfaction, this pinnacle, this peak of satisfaction inside of marriage, it must come from a life of giving, a life of fellowship, even in the marriage bed.

If you come to the marriage bed thinking, what can I get? I'm here to get satisfaction, you will be disappointed. And it will become boring and meaningless and of no interest to at least one of the couples, to one of the parties, if not both. Rather the Bible speaks here of a great rejoicing, rejoicing with your wife, Rejoicing as you serve together, rejoicing as you walk side by side through your life together in what God has called you to do. Rejoicing as you agape your wife, As you have that companionship and communication with each other.

As a loving deer and a graceful doe. This is describing something of beauty. Have you ever seen a deer jump a fence? Isn't it breathtaking if you've ever seen it? They're graceful.

They are graceful beyond measure. And the deer is down here and the fence is up here and all of a sudden, boom, they're over the fence. There's no effort. There's no struggle. There's no, you know, climbing the fence and clawing your way over it and tumbling down the other side.

No, there's just a graceful boom. That's what it's speaking about. A loving deer and a graceful doe. Disney picked the image of a deer for Bambi to communicate the essence of innocence, of the creature that is peaceable, that is gentle, that is loving, right? Bambi, the deer.

They didn't pick Bambi, the mountain lion, or Bambi, the bobcat. It's Bambi, the deer. The picture of grace, the picture of beauty, the graceful beauty, that's how you're to view your wife and how you view each other as a loving deer and a graceful doe. Let her breast satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love." That word means intoxicated. Almost every other place in the Bible, in fact every other place in the Bible, it is used in a simple sense, to be intoxicated with wine and so forth.

But here it is used to describe what is to happen between a husband and a wife in the marriage bed. You're to be intoxicated. Yes, it is good. In this case, in this situation, to be enraptured, to be carried away, literally it means to lose your way. A drunk person is called intoxicated because they're lost.

You know, they have to be directed how to get home. They don't know. They bang into things. Describing somebody who's lost. The common thing was to put drunks on the train track and tell them that was the way home and watch them stumble down the track.

They're lost. And the word means, literally, to lose oneself. You're to lose yourself in the marriage bed, in the love of your wife. You're to be intoxicated and raptured with her love always, Always. What a beautiful picture of the culmination of agape love that matures into a love of companionship and friendship that reaches the pinnacle of expression in the marriage bed.

If you aren't married, you need to save yourself for that day. Save yourself for that day knowing that if you spend yourself elsewhere, If you drink water from another's sister, you ruin, you will ruin the beauty and the joy of your marriage bed when you do get married. Well, what if this doesn't describe your marriage? What if your marriage is without sex? Well, first of all, there is hope.

Because the Bible never commands of us what it doesn't supply. God never commands of us what he doesn't supply, all that we have need of. God does not command of us what he doesn't supply, all that we have need of to obey. So there is hope, but there's also no excuse. This is something that has been that is commanded of us.

Drink water from your own sister. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. Let her breast satisfy you at all times. And always be intoxicated with her love. For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, by a strange woman, and be embraced in the arms of a seductress?

For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord and He ponders all His paths. All that we do, even the marriage bed is before the way eyes of the Lord. And what we do in marriage is important because we are communicating. We are communicating something about how Christ loves this church and how the church submits to Christ. What are we communicating?

Are we communicating truth? Are we communicating a lie? Are we communicating truly about this picture or are we communicating falsely? This earthly pilgrimage is to prepare us for heaven. In heaven there is no marriage.

Women are neither given in marriage nor do people marry. But we will be as the angels in heaven so this time on earth and this time as married people is to prepare us and to Equip us one day for heaven where we won't need marriage. We won't need the type because we'll have the real thing. And do you want to be prepared for heaven? Do you want to be like the wise virgins who were ready?

Then if you're married, you will pay attention to this passage and for what it says about how you live in your marriage. Those who follow these commands, those who follow Christ in their marriage, those whose marriage is based upon a love of God, a love of Christ. And out of that flowing then, an agape love for one another and a phileo love leading to the marriage bed. The Bible says you will be blessed. You will have great joy in your wife and in your children, the fruit of that union.

You won't be ashamed when you sit in the gates of the city. But his own iniquities entrap the wicked man and he is caught in the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction and in the greatness of His folly He shall go astray. Don't let that be you. Let's pray.

Almighty Father in Heaven, we ask Your forgiveness where we have made a God out of the appetites that you have given to us, where we have sought after their fulfillment and satisfaction instead of seeking after you, where we have first desired to satisfy our mouth with good things to eat, to satisfy our body with pleasures, and have forgotten that we live by every word that proceeds from your mouth and have forgotten to desire you as the deer desires the water when it's heated by the chains. We thank you Father for these appetites that You have given to us, and for the great enjoyment that You bring through them to us. May we learn to rejoice before You in everything, even in the marriage bed, for you do see all that we do and you ponder our ways. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.