Do not desire her beauty in your heart, nor let her capture you with her eyelids. For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread, And an adulteress hunt for the precious life. - Proverbs 6:25-26

This is the nearest verse in the entire bible to Matthew 5:28 where it says, do not lust after a woman in your heart. There's no other verse in the entire bible which is as close to Matthew 5:28 as Proverbs 6:25. It is a foreshadowing of the New Covenant. Wisdom warns that adultery begins in the heart. It begins with just an admiration of beauty in the opposite sex. I want to emphasize this because there are Christians (believers) who teach that there's nothing wrong in admiring beauty. That is because they have no fear of God in their heart. The word of God says, "Do not desire her beauty in your heart."

Do you have a wrong understanding of physical beauty? Proverbs 31:30 says that physical beauty is an empty, hollow thing. Young men, I want to tell you this, if you don't keep before your mind that physical beauty is an empty, hollow, useless thing, you'll be deceived by it one day. You'll get married to the wrong person and suffer for it the rest of your life. Don't turn your eyes and look at beauty, saying, "Well, I'm not lusting. I'm only admiring the beauty." That is a terrific deception and God sees it! God may have called all such men to a ministry, but he puts them on the shelf and says, "You can't have it. I could have given a ministry to you, but you just fooled around with your eyes and called yourself a believer and talked about the New and Living Way, but you're not wholehearted in this area!" Do not desire her beauty even in your heart! This is not talking about adultery. This is just speaking about admiring physical beauty in a girl! Don't even admire it, it says. Well, that's wisdom if you want to take it. Be careful.

Then it says, "Don't let her capture you with her eyelids." The word of God is very practical. It says here that there's something about a woman's eyes which can catch a young man. And that's why we find that the devil has taught girls nowadays to paint their eyelids to make them more attractive - all those fancy colors, and in case you're one of those who want the mark of the beast on the hand so that you can have a good testimony in the assembly, I assume there are some colorless varieties also that you can put on your eyes and lips and all over the place so that you can make yourself attractive. It says here, "Don't let her catch you with her eyelids."

I want to show you a verse in 2 Kings 9:30 that speaks of a girl with a painted face. That's Jezebel. You also read about her in Revelation 2. There's a Jezebel sitting in the church in Thyatira. It says in 2 Kings 9 when Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she painted her eyes. Do you know there was mascara used hundreds of years before Christ? It's not a 20th century invention. Jezebel was the one who started that product. She painted her eyes and adorned her hair. I'm sure she painted the rest of her face too and looked out the window, and Jehu said in verse 33, "Throw her down!", and they threw her down and killed her. He wasn't impressed by a painted face, and neither should you be. Jehu was not even a God-fearing man, and yet he could withstand all that. Be careful in this area of painted faces, and the eyelids particularly.

Like Solomon, I never tire of warning young people to be particularly careful in their relationship with the opposite sex. If you tremble at God's word and take it seriously, it will keep you from that woman who can be Satan's agent to ruin and destroy your life! And if he doesn't succeed at ruining and destroying your life, he will at least try to destroy your spiritual usefulness to God as a man of God! There are people who are saved and yet fool around with women, and they have lost an entire ministry that God could have given to them! That's something we have to take seriously. It's not enough to say, "My sins are forgiven." Imagine standing in eternity and finding out that God had a ministry for you, and you lost it just because you weren't very careful in your relationships with the opposite sex. Think of standing in eternity and discovering that just for some silly little pleasure with some silly old girl, you lost a ministry that could have made all eternity glorious for yourself, but you lost it because you were such an idiot on earth. Think of the regret there will be in the hearts of many, many people on that day.

Particularly when you're young, be careful.