Proverbs 5:15-17

Drink water from your own well—share your love only with your wife. Why spill the water of your springs in the streets, having sex with just anyone? You should reserve it for yourselves. Never share it with strangers.

While this passage is focused on sexual intimacy within marriage, it also contains a powerful exhortation for single people, too. Why have sex with just anyone? Your sexual nature is precious and of immense value (like fresh water was when this was written), so why spill it so casually in the streets? God made you – and your sexuality – far more valuable than that.

With respect to married couples, W.A. Criswell comments that, “These verses use frankly erotic language as is found in the Song of Solomon in expressing that sexual delight in marriage is by divine design, as is the joy of procreation, in which husband and wife join hands with the Creator God to produce the next generation. The wife is compared to a ‘cistern’ and ‘well’. This figure enhances her value in the eastern world, in which water was scarce and valuable. The terms ‘fountains’ and ‘streams of water’ are references to children who are victims of marital discord. They suffer from lack of a proper home, either abandoned or raised by ‘strangers’.”

God makes his sexual ethic abundantly clear in both the Old and New Testaments. Is it because he is a Cosmic Killjoy and doesn’t want any of us to have any kind of sexual enjoyment? Of course not! God invented sex and infused it with all kinds of power and pleasure! However, that power and pleasure is only beautiful and blessable in it’s proper context: marriage. Outside of that it offers only a temporary thrill…a short-lived excitement that comes with both immediate and long-term curses like guilt, shame, disease, divorce, and lack of true intimacy.

Your sexual side is precious and highly valued, so keep it for yourself and your spouse! Doing it God’s way unlocks God’s blessings. Doing it the world’s way only wreaks havoc.