Proverbs 13:19 (KJV) The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.

Desire Is Not Bad In The Right Context

Word Study:“DESIRE” is not a bad thing. The word translated “DESIRE” is the Hebrew ta’ăvâ which means “desires, wishes, longing for that which you do not have”. When used in a negative way, it can mean “lust or covetousness”.

God made humans with the ability to desire, to want something outside of ourselves.

When God made man and woman, the Bible says that God said “Let Us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let THEM have DOMINION over the earth” (Genesis 1:26). God gave man and woman the whole world and everything in it. Adam and Eve lacked nothing, but were told to dominate all creatures. God told them:

Genesis 1:28-29 (ESV) Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

Adam and Eve were to desire three things: one another, food, and to be good stewards of what God graciously gave them.

Adam and Eve were created with desires – needs that could only be fulfilled by relying on another. God gave Adam and Eve sexual desire, one toward another. Their desire was to be toward one another, which is the basis for Godly marriage. God demands that we direct our desires into Godly pathways.

Proverbs 5:18-20 (ESV) Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice with the wife of your youth. 19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; And always be enraptured with her love. 20 For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman, And be embraced in the arms of a seductress?

Sexual desire is fine, but only within the marital unit (one man, one woman). When you seek to fulfill desire outside of that union, this leads to evil. Thomas A. Tarrants of the C.S. Lewis Institute notes:

“The desires of one’s heart will determine the direction of one’s life and ultimately one’s eternal destiny. … Scripture shows us that desire is not inherently evil but is good or bad depending on whether it is God-centered or self-centered. God made us to be desiring creatures. His intention in doing so was for our desire to be focused upon Him and His will — for Him to be the freely chosen supreme love and desire of our hearts and the sole object of our worship and for His will to be our will. When our desires are God-centered, they are good and fulfill their intended role. But when they are self-centered, when our desires are captured by the things of the fallen world and the sinful nature (the flesh), they are evil. These have been called disordered loves.”

The fall of man came about because of misplaced desire. The devil is the Tempter, the one who whispers to our desires, trying to lead us away from the loving God Who made us. When Jesus was fasting in the wilderness prior to the beginning of His ministry,

“The TEMPTER came to Jesus and said, If You are the Son of God, command that these stones be made into bread” (Matthew 4:3).

Jesus was hungry – a normal human desire after 40 days of fasting – so the devil asked Jesus to make His own bread, to serve Himself rather than the Father Who sent Him. Jesus controlled His desire by quoting Scripture:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God(Matthew 4:4).

As God become Man the Tempter sought to quote Scripture, to twist the Word of God, and to get the Son of God to live by the flesh and by self centeredness. This is where the devil always goes. He knows our desires, and offers us a way to be selfish and capitalize on our desires rather than desire God’s will. If we take the bait, we can easily be destroyed in our Communities, in our Churches, and in our Families. God tells us in The Shema, the Call To Hearing:

Deuteronomy 6:4 (Literally) Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord ALONE …

Our desires are not to be our gods, but the Lord ALONE is to be our God. When God spoke of King David, He called David “A man after My own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22). Why did God regard David so? Because David understood that his foremost desire was to please the Lord Who saved him. David said:

Psalm 27:4 (ESV) One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple

David’s desire was to focus on God, to meditate on God’s Word. There were times in David’s life when his desire went in an ungodly direction – and he suffered for it:

• David’s desires led him to have an affair with another man’s wife, then have the man murdered in an attempt to cover up his evil ways. (2 Samuel 11-12)
• David desires allowed pride to lift him up, and he numbered Israel and Judah (1 Chronicles 21)

David was punished for his sins, though he repented when confronted by the Prophet Nathan. Yet the consequences of his actions caused terrible repercussions in his family. God told David “the sword will never leave your house BECAUSE YOU DESPISED ME AND TOOK THE WIFE OF URIAH THE HETHITE TO BE YOUR WIFE” (2 Samuel 12:10). What was behind David’s egregious sins? We are told:

1 Chronicles 21:1 (NKJV) Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.

The Tempter comes to our desires, and strives to twist them to where we will do his bidding. When the Devil came to tempt Eve, the Bible says:

Genesis 3:6 (ESV) when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a DELIGHT {ta’ăvâ} to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

After the fall of mankind, God told Eve (and all women who are married) to direct your DESIRES to your husband.

Genesis 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

The wife should desire to follow the leading of her husband, and the husband should desire to give his life for his wife “just as Christ love the Church and gave Himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25).

The Fool Refuses To Re-Train Desires

Proverbs 13:19 (KJV) The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.

God made us with desires, but the wise person directs their desires Godward and not toward the flesh. When King David gave in to the wrong desire, and pursued the wife of another man, David became enslaved by what he started. In time the sinful path he started on made him look like a fool. The Apostle Paul warns us:

Romans 6:6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Sin enslaves those who dabble in it. The Christian is told to turn away from any desire that does not glorify God, for misplaced desire leads to a destroyed sin riddled life. Again we read:

Romans 6:12-18 (ESV) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

“FOOLS” or unbelievers cling to sin, for they seek to satisfy their desires regardless as to what God has said.

The Christian is called to not just restrain, but to RE-TRAIN their desires godward. We submit to the Lordship of Christ. As my commentary notes:

“Yielding to the sinful desires of the fallen world results in disordered loves, which draw us away from wholehearted love for God and into idolatries of various kinds. These idolatries corrupt and distort our lives and take a heavy toll on us and our families.”

Again, the lost person or what the Bible calls “the FOOL” is enslaved to sin. They cannot see the truth of God’s Word, but only the god, the desires that rule them. When the Christian seeks to glorify God and His Kingdom, that person “lays up for themselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20, AP). Contract this to the Fool, of whom God says:

Proverbs 11:7 (ESV) When the wicked dies, his hope will perish, and the expectation of wealth perishes too.

The desires that the lost chase in this life leads to nothing but anguish in the next life, coupled with eternal separation from God. How horrible to “gain the whole world, but lose your own soul” (Matthew 16:26)!

The Best Way To Control Desire Is To Choose Good Companions In Life

Proverbs 13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

Choose your companions carefully in life. God certainly expects the Christian to reach out to and share the Gospel with the lost.

We who are saved are called to be friendly with the lost, but NOT FRIENDS of the lost.

Matthew Henry in his commentary states, “Multitudes are brought to ruin by bad company. And all that make themselves wicked will be destroyed”. The Bible is very clear that believers are not to bind themselves together with unbelievers. The Apostle told the Church at Corinth – truly one of the most liberal and sin infused Churches of the ancient world:

1 Corinthians 15:33 (ESV) Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”…

Of course, the Corinthian believers didn’t listen to Paul in his first letter to them, so he wrote again:

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”

The best way to destroy a Church is to lower the standards of righteousness so as to appeal to the unbeliever – then allow that unbeliever to “yoke” or join himself with that Church. Again, God wants us to reach out to all with the Gospel of Christ. But we must be careful lest we begin to compromise with the darkness, letting it rub off on our lives.

Our desire is to be toward our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We are told:

a companion of fools shall be destroyed

A good example of this is found in the life of Lot, Abraham’s nephew. Lot ignored the desires of God, and following his own heart ended up in Sodom.

Genesis 13:10 (NKJV) Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere (before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) like the garden of the Lord

Lot did not desire God’s will for his life, but his own will. Was Lot a saved man? Yes, the Scripture says:

2 Peter 2:7 (ESV) … righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked …

Lot did not like the condition of Sodom, but he continued to hang out with and do business with the lost of Sodom. The Bible tells us that “Lot SAT IN THE GATE OF SODOM” (Genesis 19:1). This was where the business of the ancient world was conducted, “in the gate” (2 Samuel 19:8; 2 Kings 7:1, 18; Amos 5:12, 15). Lot knew that Sodom was horrendous with sexual sin, but he maintained a residence in that city, and routinely traded “in the gate”, because that satisfied his desire for prosperity. He should have known better. Yet Lot compromised his faith, and yoked himself to the godless.

When Sodom was destroyed, so was Lot’s family and Lot’s wealth.

Proverbs 13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a COMPANION of fools shall be destroyed.

Lot, though saved by faith in God, made himself “a COMPANION of fools”, and as a result he lost everything. Walk with the wise. Walk with the Christian who lives their faith out loud. Other than to share Christ with them, avoid intimate contact with fools, the godless, the self serving and selfish.

God is watching you!

Proverbs 13:21 Evil pursueth sinners: but to the righteous good shall be repayed.

Evil, like a wild animal, chases down and eventually destroys those who do not direct their desires Godward. Those who are righteous, however, will be blessed. The Bible tells us:

Proverbs 22:8 He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity …

and again,

Galatians 6:7-8 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

We must control our desires, and point them Godward. If not, we lose our blessings in this life, and perhaps enjoy damnation in the next life. Adam was made the dominate the earth, not to be a slave of his sins. Let us look to Jesus, honoring Him. Let us crucify ourselves daily, making ourselves “living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1).

For the glory of God.
For the growth of Christ’s Kingdom.
For the good of God’s people.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.