Making Sense of Tempation
Make it Make Sense Series Part 5
Guest Preacher: Damon Missouri (Central Church)
Everybody in this room is drinking from something.
You may not call it that. You may not even be aware of it. But every single one of us has a cup we return to when life gets hard. When the house gets quiet. When we're feeling unseen. When we're tired, lonely, bored, or hurting.
The question is never if we're thirsty.
The question is: what cup are you drinking from?
That question, from Damon Missouri's opening moments on Sunday, set up one of the most honest and tender messages of the entire Make It Make Sense series. And it came from one of the more surprising passages in all of Proverbs, chapter 5.
More Than a Warning About Adultery
On the surface, Proverbs 5 looks like a father warning his son about an adulterous woman. And yes, that's part of it. But Damon was careful to point out what this text is really about.
The lips of the adulterous woman drip honey. Her speech is smooth as oil. What starts sweet ends as something that cuts you in half.
Most of us recognize that picture. Not necessarily in the form of an affair, but in the form of anything that starts feeling like relief and ends leaving us worse off than before. The drink that takes the edge off. The relationship that feels exciting until it doesn't. The distraction that numbs the pain until the numbness wears off and the pain is still there.
This text isn't only about lust. It's about loneliness. Boredom. Feeling unseen. Unresolved conflict in our closest relationships. Psychological and emotional holes that desperately want filling.
And the cords of sin described in verse 22 aren't placed on us by someone else. We braid them on ourselves. One small compromise. One small justification. One step in the wrong direction. The fall is almost never sudden, it's a slow fade.
Think about Samson. It wasn't his hair that caused him to fall. The hair was the final symbol of a man who had been breaking his Nazirite vows one small compromise at a time, long before Delilah ever showed up.
Joseph and David: Two Responses to the Same Honey
Wisdom gives us a contrast through two men of GOD, Joseph and David.
Joseph had Potiphar's wife pursuing him day after day. Smooth words. Every opportunity. Every justification he could have wanted. And he ran. "How could I do this great evil and sin against GOD?"
David was king. He should have been at war, but he was home, idle, walking the rooftop. He wasn't hunting for trouble. Wasn't even looking for it. And then he saw Bathsheba. And he sent for her. And everything after that unraveled.
The key point: it didn't start with lust for David. It started with a man who wasn't where he was supposed to be. Idleness created the opening. The honey found the gap.
None of us woke up one day and planned to end up in the places some of us have ended up. But idleness, unresolved conflict, emotional holes… they open doors. And what starts sweet can end as a double-edged sword.
GOD's Provision: He Built a Well
Here's where the message turned from warning to invitation.
If Proverbs 5 stopped at verse 14, it would just be a sermon about consequences. But it doesn't stop there.
Verse 15: "Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well."
GOD didn't just say don't. He built something and said: here, this is where I want you to drink and be satisfied. That's not just prohibition. That's provision.
And for those who aren't married. Who are single, widowed, or divorced, whose well feels dry or even like poison right now, there is a wider well.
John 4. Jesus meets a woman who has been bouncing from relationship to relationship trying to get filled. She was drawing water alone at midday because she didn't want to be seen. And Jesus didn't reject her or condemn her. He said: "Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give will never be thirsty again."
Jesus himself is the well that never runs dry. And even in marriage, He is the source that refills both partners so they have something to give each other.
No Condemnation
Maybe you've been the woman caught in adultery, dragged out in front of everyone at your worst moment.
And Jesus got quiet. And started writing in the sand. And one by one, the crowd dropped their stones. Because He was exposing their sin too. And nobody was without one.
When everyone was gone, Jesus looked at her and said: "I don't condemn you. But sin no more."
Not condemnation. Not permission. Grace and a call to something better.
Paul said it in Romans 8:1: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Not for the one who just fell. Not for the one who was devastated by someone else's failure. GOD is in the business of healing everyone.
Have You Tested What You're Drinking From?
When Damon bought his house in Hopewell, he had to get the well water tested before his family could drink from it. Over a week of testing, because that water was meant to sustain their lives. It had to be clean.
He closed Sunday by asking us the same question:
Have you tested what you're drinking from lately? Is it bitter? Is it leaving you thirstier than before?
Whatever cup has failed you. Whatever well has run dry or was never really clean to begin with.
Jesus is standing at the well right next to you, right now, offering living water. Not partial relief. Not a temporary sweetness that turns bitter.
A spring that wells up to eternal life.
Nothing this world has for you is going to be sweeter than the water of life that Jesus has for you.