Photo by Kathy of her two kittens in Congo
551- 2 LIVING WITH THE WRONG WOMAN
June 15, 1980
Henry F. Kulp
Proverbs 2: 12 - 22 To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things; Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked. Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths: To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words; Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead. None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.
Wisdom is speaking here, and it says in Verses 10, 11 When wisdom entereth into thy heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee.
So wisdom is what every young person, teenager and adult should be seeking. The Word of God hidden in the heart, coupled with the fear of God, so you will obey wisdom.
1/ Then starting in Verse 12 When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee:
Two enemies are seen. These enemies are for the young person. First is the evil man, in the next few verses, then the strange woman. These two enemies are very real to young people.
2/ Who is the evil man? Romans 5: 12 Who speaks perverse things? Who leaves the path of uprightness to walk in the way of darkness? Who rejoices to do evil? This, of course, is society. Here this man speaks of society as it tries to deal with the problems of life. We have it in the New Testament—the world—the world system. It seeks to answer all the problems of life, the desires of life, and all it does is lead to destruction.
3/ A young woman is taught by society, and of course society is contrary to the Word of God. It doesn’t love the Word of God, it doesn’t want the Word of God. It doesn’t believe or accept what the Word of God teaches.
4/ We learn everything we know in three ways. First of all it is by faith. This is the first way we learn as a child. A child is told by its parents certain things, and because that child trusts its parent, it believes what the parent teaches. Then it goes to school, it takes the teachings as true. One plus one equals two. It doesn’t questions it for a minute. This becomes the basis for the whole system of mathematics. Educators tell us 75 to 80% of all we assimilate before we are nine years of age is by faith.
5/ EMPIRICISM This is the scientific approach of life. Learn by observation and experience, and from this we draw conclusions. We use our five senses, we use what we see, hear and taste, feel and smell.
6/ RATIONALISM Then as a child grows and thinks for himself, he comes to conclusions. He leaves out faith and empiricism. It is only what he thinks that counts.
7/ All three of these ways of perception are part of the world. The world system—then in Proverbs 2
Teach faith—believe what we say. Then they also teach you the scientific approach, and then the rational approach. Faith can be a very dangerous thing. It can destroy a person if you have faith in the wrong thing.
8/ I Corinthians 2: 9 Eye hath not seen, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for him.
You cannot find God’s Word by faith in what man says, by the system of empiricism, by the scientific approach or by rationalism. Thinking your way through—You must have the Word of God.
9/ Colossians 2: 8 Beware lest anyone spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.
Philosophy is something that mankind has exalted. It has almost worshipped it. Notice, the company that philosophy keeps—vain or empty deceit. You have often heard it said, you can tell a man by the company he keeps, and also that is true of words, by the company they keep.
10/ Empty deceit is about as much emptiness as you can put into words, and philosophy is linked with that.
11/ Is philosophy dangerous? Certainly it is, for philosophy is man’s explanation of how things came to be. Here is a world, there are the heavens, there are billions of planets and stars, there are millions of people, animals, insects—what is the explanation of it all? Man has tried to give an explanation. God said, I created them, and those who believe the Bible accept it. That is not philosophy, that is revelation. The philosopher says, I will tell you how it came to be. It started this way or that way. The greatest example of philosophy we have is evolution, and someone says it should be spelled with a “D”—there is not an atom of truth in it. Nevertheless the world accepts it as true.
12/ But yet there is another part to the world system—tradition. Tradition is something that is accepted, but it has never been proved. Tradition is not just found in religion, in spiritual things, but it is also found in everyday life.
13/ II Corinthians 10: 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Here is the answer to the whole problem of Proverbs 2 Casting down Imagination— and that could be reasoning, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God.
You are to refuse everything that doesn’t help you to know God or doesn’t give God the glory. Any theory, any teaching that doesn’t exalt God and put Christ in the place of preeminence, we are to cast down and cast out.
14/ Verse 14 Who rejoice to do evil and delight in the perverseness of the wicked.
You say that’s the world? Yes, that is the world system. The world system loves wickedness. Just pick up your newspaper—listen to your TV, and see if wickedness is not loved. Society exalts the wicked.
15/ Here is the second enemy, the strange woman. Here is the attack upon the morals of the teenager. This is an attack upon the institution called marriage. Read it and see if it is not so. And would you not say this is happening right before our eyes today? The strange woman who lures to the enticement of sexual sin. Why is she called strange, and why is she called a foreigner? Because it is written to God’s people. This is not the way God’s people were to act. God has set very rigid rules when it comes to sexual behavior.
16/ This woman, of course, is an attack upon the program of God. The relationship of man and woman.
17/ GODLY MARRIAGE STARTS WITH THE IDEAS THAT ARE PLANTED IN THE MIND OF A TEENAGER AND HIS ACTIONS WHILE HE IS YET A TEENAGER.
18/ The relationship between man and woman in marriage is to be based upon love, not upon passion. Passion has a part in it, but it is not the basis of the relationship.
19/ Let me ask you very important question. What is marriage? Someone will say it is a partnership, but marriage is far more than a partnership. Marriage is A TESTIMONY OF TWO PEOPLE IN LOVE. Actually, the Bible meaning of marriage is a testimony of two people in love, and in the Hebrew it means, it is the celebration of love. This is much better than the idea of partnership in marriage. God expects a husband and wife, to be constantly celebrating their love one for another. Why is this true? For many reasons, but let me give you a basic one.
I Peter 4: 8 And above all things have fervent love among yourselves, for love shall cover the multitude of sins.
When two people live together, they have many things that will annoy the other, but true love will be able to overlook those grating, hard problems, and cause them to live together in victory.
20/ Love means a testimony to the outside world that we love one another—we are in love. This strange woman, this foreign woman is an attack on all that God has ordained.
21/ Genesis 2:18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
Notice the words, it is not good that a man should be alone. God placed in man the need for companionship, and there is a very good reason brought out for this in this verse. God said, I will make him an help meet for him. The word, help meet is an old English word; and it really doesn’t mean too much to us today. It is a good word but it doesn’t mean much in our vocabulary at this present hour.
22/ What does help meet mean? I’ll give you what it should mean, I WILL GIVE HIM A COMPLETION TO WHAT HE IS. In other words, a man is only half a human being until he gets married to a woman. A woman is only half a human being until she gets married. It takes a man and a woman united in marriage to make one human being.
23/ There are to be no cross overs—men are not to be feminine. Women are not to be masculine. There is to be no unisex. The whole thing is blasphemous.
24/ A man and a woman are to compliment one another.
25/ Genesis 2: 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
This union is shown very clearly here. A man shall leave the father and mother and shall cleave, be glued to his wife, to be cemented to his wife, and they shall be one flesh. This strange woman is an attack upon the institution of godly marriage.
26/ This woman flits in and out of the book of Proverbs.
Proverbs 5: 3 - 5 For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two- edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
Here it says she is so sweet as far as the flash is concerned—so attractive—her kisses are sweet. She has an allure about herself. She has the fragrance of perfume. But don’t look at what she is now, and what she can do for you now, but look at the end. Her house is the land of death.
27/ Luke 15: 14 - 16 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. and he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
Look at the prodigal boy. This is the end of the sinful practice of this world. Sexual sins that know no restraint.
28/ But does she speak of anything more than impurity and uncleanness? I believe that is the primary meaning, and it is clear from the book of Proverbs. I think there is another meaning to be taken from the many warnings about the strange woman. And the secondary sense, it the matter of religion. All through the Bible you read about Babylon the great, the mother of harlots. Religion is such an evil thing.
29/ Revelations 17: 1, 2 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying, unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitters upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
Here we see the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters. She is a religious system— the many waters according to Verse 15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
This is the final end of religion. Religion that started away back at the Tower of Babel, and here she is seen controlling the world, being the outstanding force.
30/ Revelations 17: 2 With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
Fornication everywhere in the Bible is a common term used for the sin of idolatry. Religion is idolatry. Religion which is human works does not worship the God of the Bible, but it substitutes another god for the God of the Bible. A god either made with hands, or with imagination, but definitely made, and religion consists of human merit, of pleasing this god made with hands or the imagination or the mind.
31/ Let us go back to the foundation of mystery Babylon, the religious system that is in this world.
Genesis 10: 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.
Here is the source and origin of all idolatry. Nimrod is the founder, he is called a mighty hunter—that could be translated, A MIGHTY REBEL BEFORE THE LORD and so he gathered to him those who were rebels against God. They fashioned their own god and built a system around this god that they fashioned.
32/ Nimrod married Semiramis, and had a son by the name of Tammuz and when you go back to the Old Testament, you will find that the enemies of Israel, the Philistines, were great followers of this mystery Babylon religion. Semiramis believed Tammuz was the incarnation of Nimrod, thus, she was both wife and mother to Tammuz.
33/ Here the Israelites are warned against the strange woman. Against this foreigner, this one who was religion that seemed so beautiful with its ordinances, it’s rites and its rituals, and its clothing are so beautiful, but yet so damming.
34/ Proverbs 2: 20 - 22 That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.
Not only will wisdom deliver us from evil man and the strange woman, but it will guide the Israelites into the way of good men.
35/ All the Israelite young people and young people today have Joseph as a picture of what it means to resist through wisdom the evil woman.
Genesis 39: 2 - 4 And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand.
Genesis 39: 7 - 9 And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me. But he refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand; There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?
Notice when Joseph was tempted by his master’s wife, and I imagine she was a very beautiful and attractive and seductive woman. He said, I cannot do this great wickedness and sin against God. He had wisdom and the fear of God in his mind.
36/ This is to go back under the point of the world. How bad is the world system? Let me show you something that I am sure will truly amaze you.
John 17: 9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.
Jesus Christ in His high-priestly prayer said I pray not for the world. Notice, Jesus Christ did not say I am going to make a better world, we are going to straighten out the world system. He said, I pray not for the world, but for those thou hast given unto me.
Be careful, and don’t live with the wrong woman. Don’t live in idolatry.
AMEN
Ref: 06/15/1980/ 551-2 LIVING WITH THE WRONG WOMAN / 11/12/2021
