Dating and Courtship

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, we need to…well, that was… Let me get this thing clipped in my pocket here. There we go. Okay, let’s start off in prayer and then we’ll get going. Father, help us to understand what you would have us do in this subject and that we would honor you with this and we as fathers would protect our daughters and have our sons be raised up to be the men that we would have them be and We thank you that you give us your word to be our guide and that We have a fellowship of people that want to do what you want them to do So help us to understand that better tonight, and we thank you for all those things Amen Well the first verse I’d like to read is is this one, and it’s Mark 12, 29, 31.

I use this a lot in talking to the school kids and their parents sometimes at assemblies and that kind of thing. But Jesus answered and said, the most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second commandment is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.

I always start off with that, at least in my head, because if you really, truly believe that and you discover stuff, you’ll change over a period of time as you discover that. The other thing is that you probably can tell the whole title of my message is Dating in Courtship or the Patriarchy Prevails. Those are two titles. So that probably gives away where I’m going to come from here and if that’s a little obscure, I did not know Bazin would make this drawing but Craig is in the back and he has more of these copies. If none of you people have any of these that you haven’t seen the drawing, it’s really very cute and right to the point.

She has a lovely lady up in the tower and a knight coming with a flower to talk to her. And sir knight goeth out of mine presence and speaketh with mine father, good day. I had not seen this. I had no idea she was going to make it and then Gail sent me, Gail Martin sent me the drawing, what was it yesterday? It was really perfectly stated. So I can sit down or we can just ask questions from here. Have you seen this? Just for you Jack, so when you’re, you know, make sure you go to the guy’s husband. Or the guy’s, the girl’s father. The guy’s husband, the girl’s father. Oh, no, we have all this. So anyway, the basic principles here are purity, all right, big subject purity, smaller subject marriage, And then the last subject is fathers are responsible.

Okay? That’s the big overarching thing I’d like to give out. I am noted for going too long and I only have about 1600 words, so I should be able to get it in within 25 minutes or so. So we have a long question and answer if we want it. And we can’t answer the question I don’t know, but we would be happy to get back to you if we can’t come up with some answer, the elders and I. And I, the first thing that my granddaughter, Hallie, told me is that I have to tell you I did it all wrong.

Not even a little bit right, okay? I was one of those stories for you that haven’t heard. I got baptized at nine in the First Baptist Church of Tucson, Arizona. And then I lived the next nine, 26 years like a major pagan. And then I hired a guy that gave me the gospel. I got saved, totally changed my life. I was 37. Gail was 35. We already had had Morgan. We lived in LA, New York City, all that kind of stuff. I had been all kinds of different places doing all kinds of things that were not Christian ministry. And when Gail and I got together, we did it absolutely the wrong way. And yet God blessed it that we were together together for, well, since 84, 13 years before we got saved.

And then it was like, whoa, what happened? So we sat down and talked about it and decided, you know, okay, how do we learn all this? How do we catch up? And it was quite the adventure during that time. And then as Morgan grew older, we had Shawn show up and he took liking to Morgan, which I had my radar on at that point. And we were at Grace Community Church, and I looked across the gymnasium, and I asked Gail, I said, who is that guy? And she said, oh, that’s the white bread from Ohio.

I think he’s kind of interested in Morgan. And pretty soon from then, Sean asked, called me up and said that he’d like to talk to me. And I went, oh, man, this is getting serious. What do I do with this? So anyway, we went down that road. And it was very interesting. And I’ll probably give you some of the little things that happened during that as we talk about this.

So the first thing is, in the first verse that I want to bring up, and I’m not sure I need to read all these, but I think it might be good that you know that the purity issue is probably the biggest issue when guys notice a certain girl and they’re ready you’re ready and the thing is in our society even now we wait so long before people get married that it it can really throw a curve at you. And so purity is something that is difficult to attain and you have to work at it and walk in the Spirit and all the rest of your Christian walks. So first Thessalonians 4, 1 through 7 says, finally then brothers we ask and urge you in the Lord that Jesus, that as you receive from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know that the instruction we gave you through the Lord Jesus, for this is the will of God and your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion just like the Gentiles who do not

know God that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this manner because the Lord is an Avenger in all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you for God has not called us for impurity but in holiness. In 1 Corinthians 6 15 through 20 it makes it clear about that our bodies are are members of Christ. Our bodies, the Holy Spirit, God, if you are a true believer, God lives inside of you, okay? Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes but one body with her?

For it is written that two will become one flesh, But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? You are not your own. For you were bought with a price, so glorified God in your body. Then Romans 12, one and two, we just got out of Romans, I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So all those warnings, we know those things, we’ve probably heard them, you’ve probably heard them talking with your buddies, whatever. But it’s a constant battle, especially in a world like we live in, in a world like Paul lived in. And especially today when, you know, the society can’t even tell what’s a man and what’s a woman and all that nonsense. Then the Bible speaks to the cure of this marriage and it says in Genesis 2 24 therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Proverbs 18 22 says he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. 1st Corinthians 11 3 but I want you to understand the head of every man is Christ the head of wife as her husband and the head of Christ is God. So we’re all in that pyramid, those of us that are married, and we are also under God individually.

Ephesians 5 23 to 24, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church and his body and he himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Matthew 19, 4 through 6, he answered, this is Jesus, have you not read, he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man, not man, separate. Matthew 10, 37, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

I threw that one in there so that everybody understands in the pyramid, God, your relationship with God if you’re the husband, then your relationship with your wife, then the relationship with your kids. Keep all that together in that way and that will help you greatly as you sort through some of the things. 1 Corinthians 7, 6 through 9. Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all of you were as I myself am, but each has his own gift from God, one of a kind and one of another. To the unmarried and widows, I say it is good for them to remain single as I am, but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

Better to marry than to burn in the old King James, okay? 2 Corinthians 6, 14, 15. 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? What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

Obviously, you should only get together with believers. Okay, there’s two other sections about father’s responsibility, but first I want to read the in bold things that I put at the end so you can keep these in mind and see if you hear something that your alarm bell goes off and where is he getting that, and hopefully we can talk about that if you don’t like it.

Biblical courtship is the standard. Involved authority of the Father is appreciated in this. It is the core issue of it. The dad is the dude that’s over the girl. Covenantal faithfulness keeps the marriage together. This is a big one. We’ll get more into talking about it. But romance and love does not keep you together, you make a covenant to keep together before God, and that’s what we witness when we witness marriages. And Gail and I have made it a real point to make sure that we go to wedding ceremonies where people are going to commit to that, especially people we know, because then we can be witness to what they’re doing in case they go a little off track and need a little help getting back on track. So covenantal faithfulness keeps the marriage together.

Romantic love is a creation of the 13th century. That’s when all of the poetry starts and everything, and what it did was facilitate adultery. It was married people finding somebody that wasn’t married to them, falling deeply in love, and then writing a bunch of poems, how they could get together with that person. Not good. Romantic love, okay? Romance does not keep the marriage together. Some of the physical, some physical intimacy is expected in romantic type of love, okay? Or romantic dating, we’ll say. Or serial dating, however you wanna say it. Recreational dating was actually created in the 20th century. So in the 1900s, it became popular.

Oh, let’s take girls to the prom and let’s go out and let’s go to the movies and all that kind of stuff. And it slowly crept in. Certainly by the 40s and 50s, it moved from church functions. Certainly by the time Gale and I were in our teens, It was totally, you waited for Friday night so you could go to the prom or the dance at the school or whatever and then weekend parties you would always date and hook up with people. So not do, that is of the 20th century and the whole propaganda that we have in movies, books, every TV show and how those TV shows that the dad is always the idiot in the family And the mom and the kids are the ones, oh, we’re so wise, and we met each other, and dad and mom don’t understand, and so we’ll just get along like that.

So the whole society is beating its head against this thing. The system is the villain, the system of recreational dating. It gives situations that don’t protect the heart. The whole issue is your daughter’s heart and your son’s heart. He needs to understand that too. The other thing that the Bible teaches is that sons leave and daughters are given. We’re raising up sons to be the men in the society and the leaders, and they then go out and make their household and govern that household. Our daughters are held in check and underneath our wing to be that prize to be sought after and won over by permission from the dad that they can go to that next state.

So sons leave, daughters are given, and there is no intermediate state for daughters. Daughters still remain under their dad until they’re given in marriage, unless they have the gift of singleness and on you go there. The father is the protector of her purity. The father is the protector. The suitor, the person chasing the girl, is the threat. I did use that word on purpose. The suitor, no matter how wonderful he is and how Christian he is, he’s still in the back of his head. Oh my goodness, I finally have found the woman that I’m going to live with the rest of my life. And that’s dangerous, and that’s good. God gives us all these desires, but the dad is there to protect his daughter until the right time to be given over.

And then before there is a covenant, there is no protection. So the whole issue, and we’ll talk about this, and there’ll probably be questions about it. What happens if, you know, we’ve now made a date for the marriage and we’re engaged and we’re gonna get married in the six months and all of that, and so it’s like we’re married, so we can do all this and that. No, no, no. Until you make the covenant, the vows before God, you’re not free, okay? So those are big things to be put in the category of how you sort this out. There’s two passages that speak to these issues. They’re somewhat long but not too bad. Numbers 30, 1 through 16, and Deuteronomy 22, 13 through 21. Now for those of you that listen to my thing on covenants in the Bible, yes these are under the Mosaic law and all of that, but the principles here are things that that we want to practice and want to think, because it’s talking about family situation, who’s in charge, who governs that situation, who protects what and all that kind of thing.

So as you see that, I agree, we don’t live under the Mosaic covenant, but these principles are still there. Moses spoke to the head of the tribes of the people of Israel saying, this is what the Lord has commanded. If a man vows a vow to the Lord and swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. If a man, okay. If a woman vows a vow to the Lord and binds herself by a pledge, while within her father’s house, in her youth, and her father hears of her vow and of her pledge by which she is bound herself and says nothing to her, then all her vows stand and every pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand.

So if he lets it slide that she makes this promise, it’s a deal, all right? The woman’s made a deal. But if the father opposes her on which she has bound herself, bound herself shall stand. But if her father opposes her on the day he hears of it, no vows of hers, no pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. If your daughter does have promises something stupid, you as her dad can go down and protect her that way. There used to be laws that minors couldn’t make deals, you know, that kind of thing. You might have a kid that, I can remember friends of mine that went to toy stores and bought stuff, and their parents thought it was too much money to spend on that, would go back because we would go to this hobby shop and they would take the thing back and get the money back as long as the package wasn’t destroyed or anything.

A kid comes up, look what I bought, this $20 model and the dad said, no, you didn’t. So that kind of thing. Now, we’re talking more serious vows obviously. Let’s see here. I’m gonna probably oppose it, okay. If she shall stand and the Lord, yeah. But if her father opposes her on that day, hears of it, her no vows, no pledge, by which she was bound herself shall stand and the Lord will forgive her because her father opposed her. Notice God is watching this and God wants the dad to oversee what his daughter is doing. If she marries a husband while under her vows or any thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she has bound herself, and her husband hears of it and says nothing to her on that day he hears, then her vows shall stand and her pledges by which she has bound herself shall stand.

Again, he lets it go, it goes, it’s a deal. But if on the day that her husband comes to hear of it and he poses her and then makes void her vow, that was on her and the thoughtless utterance of her lips by what she bound herself, bound herself, and the Lord will forgive her. So if he says no on that same day, then no. But he can overlook that by ignoring it, and then it does become a thing. So negligence is not a good excuse. But any vow of a widow or a divorced woman, Anything by which she has bound herself, she’ll stand against her. She’s on her own now. She got married, she’s out of the father’s protection, right?

And if she vowed in her husband’s house to bound herself by a pledge with an oath, and her husband heard of it and said nothing to her and did not oppose her, then all her vows shall stand in every pledge by which she bound herself, she’ll stand. But if her husband makes them null and void on the day he hears them, then whatever proceeds out of her lips concerning her vows or her pledge of her shall so not stand. Her husband has made them void and the Lord will forgive her. Any vow and any binding oath to afflict herself her husband may establish or her husband may make void.” Just repeating the same principle. But if her husband says nothing to her from day to day, then he establishes all her vows and all her pledges that are upon her.

He has established them because he has said nothing to her on the day he heard of them. But if he makes them null and void, he has heard of them and he shall bear her iniquity. These are the statue of the Lord. So the principle here, the big principle is dad governs the household and if the woman or the daughter or whatever goes out and makes his thing for his household, he immediately can take that back that day. But if he says, oh, let it slide, that’s all right. Okay, don’t carry this down and all kinds of things. The principle here is dead is the one that decides, all right? These are the statute of alerts. And then Deuteronomy 22, 13 through 21.

If any man takes a wife and goes into her and then hates her and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her saying, I took this woman when I came near her. I did not find her in evidence of virginity. Then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate. And the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, I gave my daughter to this man to marry and he hates her. And behold, he has accused her of misconduct saying, I did not find your daughter evidence of virginity. And yet this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity, and they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city.

Then the elders of the city shall take a man and whip him, and they shall find him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days. But if the thing is true that the evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall stoner to death with stones because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

Pretty severe punishment, but also protection there from the dad if things are straight, all right? The purpose here of reading those things is to reiterate, dad is in charge of the household and it’s our duty to protect our daughters. Okay, so now I wanna repeat what I’ve said and then we’ll have questions and kinda flush all this out maybe a little bit for people.

Biblical courtship is the standard, okay? Involved authority of the father is appreciated. It’s not appreciated, it’s absolutely needed. You’re the dad, these are your protection things that you need to protect. Covenantal faithfulness keeps the marriage together, big principle. You’re gonna all have stars in your eyes and everything’s wonderful and I love her. And as the years go on, you still love her, but you love her in a whole different way than you did when you first saw her and we’re all tingly, okay? And as that relationship grows, it gets deeper and more bound together, but it is, again, to your word and her word, and as you go through life and deal with all those problems, those bonds become really glued together because you deal with all these problems together.

And when you do that, it makes you really way stronger than you ever were when you saw an awe. That’s the one I want to spend my life with. So that’s that thing. Remember that romantic love and all of that and all we see in the movies is an invention from the 13th century and then carried on to absolute insanity the way we can see it with movies and radio programs, books, All the rest of it just goes all together. And romance, romance is a good thing, paying attention, doing little things, all of that, but it doesn’t really, that isn’t what holds things together. And then in romantic love and serial dating or recreational dating, one of the ingredients that happens there, and it slips in Christian romantic dating also is there is a certain degree of intimacy that happens.

When that happens you’ve crossed the line. When you become physical with somebody, no matter whether you’re holding hands, putting your arm around or a little goodnight kiss or whatever, you have crossed the line from being pure to now you’re in that zone of oh my goodness what’s going on here how do I feel about this not to mention how she feels about it and all of that can grow and turn into a big fire that you don’t want okay then the whole issue that we talked about the propaganda of all this dating just causes everybody to say oh Oh, you’re just being an old fuddy-duddy or whatever, okay? The father is an obstacle that the suitor needs to get over.

You are an obstacle. You are a fence, a protective wall around your daughter. The system, especially if you’re involved in the romantic dating kind of thing, is the villain. Gives situations that don’t protect her heart. And the other thing that you’re trying to do is protect her heart. Now, does this mean that I’m saying that we can’t have dances like we do that where you do in the line and you do all this stuff together and you learn how to comport yourself properly and all of that in group settings? No, because what you’re doing is learning how to function and be in the right attitude with people. What I’m talking about is, you guys all know, if you’ve ever been to senior proms with my age and I’m 77, so you probably know, tell them how they dance these days.

They hang all over each other and all they’re doing is not cool. So you’re looking for situations that don’t have that. Group situations getting to know each other. Whole different kind of situation. You’re watching other people in Bible studies or in group situations, life-to-life group you’re watching and you’re surveying the thing and, you know, oh, who do I think is interesting there? And those kinds of conversations in your house are good. Those kinds of conversations though, amongst you girls or even amongst you guys, you have to be very careful with what you’re talking about, all right? Morgan, my daughter and a friend of hers had a coupon book and they used it as a kind of thing where they would look at people and say, well, those six guys, they could be in a coupon book.

I don’t want to redeem the coupon, but at least they seem to qualify as people that look okay, all right? So all that’s going to go on, and I’m not saying it’s not going to, and I don’t think it’s sinful to think about those things, but the acting on them is the other thing. And when you expose that to the person maybe you’re putting in your coupon book, now you’re messing around with their heart and how they feel about things. And that can go wrong in a pretty quick way. So you gotta be very careful about that. Remember the situation that sons leave and daughters are given. The daughters are given by the father, okay?

And there’s no intermediate state for the daughters. or at least really not really an intermediate state for sons either. They get to a place where they can leave and support themselves, they can leave and support themselves. The father is the protector of her purity. The suitor is the threat, remember that? And that’s not to say he’s not a good guy. But if you’ve raised up a great prize, this guy wants your great prize, all right? And before marriage, there is no covenantal protection. So you really want to be careful in those things. OK. So that’s what I want to say about the thing. I’m not sure how everybody in the room feels about it.

I know how some of you feel about it. But are there any questions? Or what do you think about all this and all of that? and we do have a microphone so that we’ll all hear the question so I don’t have to repeat it. Getting complaints from people who are watching later. Well, we can’t hear what the people in the audience are saying, so now I’m shoving a mic in your face, so that has to happen. What about dating before marriage? Going to the movies, going to dances. Yeah. I would say that it depends on what you’re thinking about dating, you know. The movies and dancing as a date together probably shouldn’t be done.

Let me tell a little story here on the side. Who exposed me to this is this guy in a big way. I read about it, but I really didn’t farm it through. Remember I’m a guy that’s just getting saved. I meet Shawn, when did we meet you? 92, sometime like that, 93. 97. Oh, 97. So we’d been saved for, you know, 10 years, 12 years. He was a threat. He wasn’t, yeah, well, I knew he was a threat when I looked across the room and I realized there’s all kinds of chemistry going on between him and Morgan, right? Across the gym, I’m seeing that. So, anyway, and then he called me up and said he wanted to meet and said, I’m interested in pursuing your daughter.

He gave me a list of references of friends of his that have known him for a while, all kinds of things, and said he wanted to be put on the grill, right, basically, for my thing. I went home to Gail and I said, You don’t have to do anything to get to know the other person until you’re actually made the covenant married. I mean, no, no, nothing comes into marriage. So Jack is asking, how do you get to know someone? Right. Are you allowed to do anything to get to know them? I mean, so how do you get to know the person? And I mean, are you just going to be in your separate houses for a year before you actually get married?

No. Yeah, I know. This is, think about, how old are you now, Jack? I’m 85. 85. So you’re like another 10 years from me. So you’re in that thing. So you were raised in that same environment I was, except a little earlier in the 50s and that kind of thing. And when you start seeing this played out, and here’s the answer to your question. No, absolutely not. We think about it, and we farm it through a biblical system. How does he get to know her? He comes over to our house, and we have dinner. He knows her through group studies or group activities. You guys were in what were you, discipleship group, what was that thing called?

Youth ministry where they had all kinds of activities and they would do, but it was always in a group. And as they got to know each other on the side, then Sean and I would meet also weekly. It ended up, Sean and I met a lot because he was also an intern under, at that time, the junior high pastor. And I would meet with them weekly, and then Sean and I would talk about all kinds of stuff. So I’m getting to know him. He’s getting no more hanging around our house. And this is a progression that got quite a bit of static when I was an elder down at Grace. We had Sean actually come and live in our house with us. I wanted Sean to see Morgan in the morning and see her when she was fighting with my wife.

In her morning glory. Yes. And we would see him in his morning glory. Now he slept downstairs in a cubby hole, the thing under the stairs. Closet. Yeah. Yeah, closet. And Morgan slept upstairs and everything. And when the elders heard of this, I had guys coming to me, how can you let the perspective guy that’s gonna marry your daughter? And I said, because I want to get to know him better, and I want him to get to know what he’s getting involved with. I said, you guys allow your daughter, the guy shows up, they all look pristine and pretty on Friday night, and they’ve all dolled themselves up. And you say, oh, it’s good to see you, Bob, and you’re a great guy, and the wife and I.

And you guys have fun at the movies or wherever you’re going, and they get in the car and drive off for four to five hours or six hours. Where are they? What are they doing? What’s happening? I knew where they were all the time. It’s a whole different scene, and it’s really different. But think about it, I know, you know, I was a major pagan and I was out there just to have as much fun and all of that as I could. So no way would I pass the test with anybody, which is good. Their daughter should have been protected from it. But you get to know them that way. And when we have a body like this, I think we know a lot of people in our fellowship group maybe better than I could dating them, just all the interactions we have.

You already said it, but I think that the important part is not exclusive. So Kim and Ian did a lot of things together, but it was Kim and Ian and often Esther Martin, who is no longer S-Mart. But, I mean, the three of them were doing stuff all the time. And so they really did know each other very well because they were in school together, they were in youth ministry together, they just, they were in a lot of sports together. And so in this community, it is pretty easy, but you have to think, okay, not exclusive. Because Dave hasn’t said it, but the guys got one thing in mind. And you’re the protector. And yeah, I mean, I, I, uh, I wouldn’t require, I mean, because the, how we did it as it turned out in history, you know, I wouldn’t make that method be the only way that it can happen, but there are definitely principles.

So danger of exclusive time together is a principle. And it does seem like a lot of Christians have a higher priority on spouse hunting than sanctification. So, you know, that there are challenges in different people’s situations to actually meet or get to know somebody. That is true. but also we’re not talking about exceptions. We’re talking, we’re trying to set up some principles in general and ideally you can actually get to know a whole lot about a person without going to a movie.

But the idea that you get to know a person better by taking them to dinner and a movie is kind of funny. Like, you get, there’s lots of ways that you can get to know somebody and different amounts of time that that can take and that’s fine. Different counselors who are helping you learn how to do that, including your dad. Like, it turned out, I didn’t know until after I had talked to Moe and to Dave that I didn’t know that they had already been talking about me at their house for over a month. I didn’t know that, but like in a good, cause what we’re talking about is establishing good households, not trying to immediately address all of the exceptions to the rule.

So dad’s involved, dad’s helping, dad’s watching, dad’s getting counsel from mom on mom’s vibes and what she can see in somebody else. But again, principles are significant. And the girl you’re interested in, getting to know her family is wonderful. Because that teaches you, oh, wow, that’s interesting.

They’re a little conservative about this or that. Or, you know, and you might not know that if you’re just dating her. Because the whole dating principle of the showing up and everybody is perfectly dressed and everything And then you go off, they have this wonderful time, and then you come home, and then you wake up in the morning and you gotta do all this stuff, and you’re cranky and all of that. That’s life, that’s how you really wanna do it. All right, so the biblical paradigm really isn’t, I think really courtship, it’s betrothal, and that was a covenant between the parents when the children were very young, and it was really an arranged marriage.

So I guess my question is, because we have a great group of Christians here, right? And why not reintroduce that in the context of church life, since we’re all kind of pioneers now, and social, biblical social pioneers, and reintroduce that concept, it wouldn’t be popular. But it is the biblical model.

The betrothal thing is a little bit tricky. There are some betrothal things in the Bible, but generally speaking the guy goes and pays a bride price and that kind of thing, buys her, or they see each other and they get together. So yeah, betrothal is, or betrothal between two families sometimes is it, the same like we see in Kings and Queens, you know, we got to match them up because this one is going to marry, so we get a political thing like that. But I don’t think that’s totally what the Bible says. But I do think, obviously, parents looking and saying, what do you think about Bob over here? He looks pretty good and we like that family and, you know, that kind of thing. I think those discussions are good. But again, like Sean says, we want the principle out there, which you’re already recognizing. But I’m not sure, well for sure for me at this stage, I wouldn’t say I’m advocating, you know, arranged marriages. I wouldn’t say that for sure. I’m not doing that. I wouldn’t do it, but yeah.

I think I understand, I mean, I think I understand the principle that you’re getting after, But why is it helpful to phrase the suitor as a threat when, you know, you could phrase anything as, I’m a threat to my wife when I’m not walking in righteousness, you know, like I’m a threat to my children. Like there’s always a threat when you’re not walking in righteousness. So I mean there is threat all around when those two aren’t walking. Yeah. I chose the word purposely because most people, at least in my generation, look upon it isn’t that cute. They love each other and isn’t that great. And they forget that the issue is they are playing with fire, especially if they’re too close.

Just as much if your daughter is provoking that fire. Absolutely. Yeah. It goes without saying that I agree that you have to watch your daughter’s behavior and not have your daughter be this, you know, Christina Aguilera or whatever, you know, I know. Yeah. And the discussions around our house and it bores Calvin to death, but we have a lot of them. What do you think about this dress? What do you think about these shoes? Can I wear this? And I appreciate it that my granddaughters come to me and I’m kind of the guy that they come in, because they know I like stylish stuff from all my comments about movie things and stuff, but I also don’t like too much.

Too much is too much, and that’s your husband or your future husband’s business, that’s not everybody’s business kind of stuff. And that’s a problem in today’s world with swim teams and all the rest of it. I mean, you know, Elo. Yeah, the girls want that, not just the guys. I think one of the important things is that this is hard work on the parents’ part. They really have to know their children, what their weaknesses are and what their strengths are, and be working on those from when they’re toddlers so that they can understand heart issues when you’re talking then about when they’re a marriageable age. And if you haven’t done that work, then I think that’s where train wrecks.

That’s where you don’t understand. Or then you get subterfuge and hiding. So I think that parents need to understand. It’s an early starting job of really digging into sinning their kids and then what pleases them. I don’t know. It’s just early starting work that we didn’t know we had to do.

And as as we witnessed, we’ve learned especially a lot living with Morgan and Sean, watching them do their children. But that that’s the whole purpose of this. We want generation generationally to change this thing. Swing the pendulum over here. And Wilson has some good things that you guys can listen to about this that don’t require you to become commandantals, so I can recommend them. But the idea is we’re building a new paradigm to live in. Our church here is trying to build a paradigm of fellowship of believers that are going to be the salt and light to the to change a lot of these mistakes they’ve made over the years.

And just because I made mistakes, I don’t feel bad about it. I feel, okay, I learned from that. Now I can be an example of what not to do and help people to do the right thing. And we’ve got other people that are probably mid-range in this kind of thing, too. I mean, Philip, how did you greet this issue? marriage and you know when you finally got to the point and you said I like that one and you know what do you do yeah we did certain things wrong and then when I realized we did it we were doing it wrong so we we met younger and got emotionally attached when you couldn’t do anything about it right you can’t about it, right? Yeah, and so when I was convicted of that, I talked to her dad and asking him permission to pursue her dad. That was very unusual for him. That was not in that paradigm.

And so kind of stepping back, asking that permission and setting up my intentions for That was unusual for him. That was not normal. He was just kind of like why can’t You know, you just hang out and then eventually get married But I wanted to Do it in that? Proper order. Yeah, but yeah that was I would not I Would not allow for my kids to get as emotionally attached to somebody the way we did so you learn from your miss Right, yeah. So stupid people learn from this thing. I had a long list I had to go through. Right. And we didn’t do so good until it came along that Sean introduced this whole concept to us. We were fudging around with…

So the whole idea of over first place? Yeah, that kind of thing. And it did a lot of damage. We got married younger. We had to correct. So at 19 I proposed and then got married within I think six months or so, March to August. But I had a question maybe off of Ian’s point as well about the sudras of threat.

Maybe specifically in our context, we’re looking for more threats in our church. We want these… We want more threadable candidates. Yeah, we want a risky lifestyle. More of it here. Right, so if we are too on guard and these threats are not coming, it’s also a problem. Definitely. Yeah, so fathers are presented as a gatekeeper right in that way, which is good and correct. What are maybe some principles or maybe even practices that a father in our context could be doing when, like the goal, his ultimate goal for the dad is not to make sure the daughter is just protected, right? The goal is to make sure the daughter is married, to make sure the daughter is given to marriage.

Protection is a means to an end there. So in pursuing that ultimate goal of marriage, if there is a shortage of marriageable men interested or even available, are there some principles that dads could be thinking about working through in their own households and how to approach that kind of context? That is an excellent question, I think. You want to try that one, Sean? Yeah, I mean, well, one thing is I take threat as sort of a playful way to say it’s more than just cute. And I think your comment about how we’re playing with fire is a significant piece. We actually do want men who are men, not weenies. So like Phillip said, do want men who are strong but know what that strength is for.

So think you’d in terms of like what you’re looking for, you’re looking for a guy who has self control, you’re looking for a guy who is not always waiting for someone else to tell them what to do, you’re looking for and so is taking some measure of initiative somewhere, which could even include initiative with the dad and pursuing him to ask him the question. So he’s got self control in his own life, seen through a variety of spheres, initiation, willingness to go first. If he’s not going to be willing to risk something in having a conversation with the dad, then who’s to say that he’s going to be able to make a decision in their marriage, what he cares about, and that you can only find out, either by living with him in the midst of the community or by asking him directly.

But like I only have done it one time so far, but I… It really clicked when I realized that this guy could take care of her better than me. And that didn’t disappoint me. That excited me. I was like, all right. There’s no doubt in my mind he can do it. I see the things in him that are actually better of a compliment for her that she can also compliment rather than even just that I can do. And that made it sweet. And not everybody maybe gets to be in that such a clear position, but in terms of, in my own thinking, that was super helpful. So what is it, knowing the frame of your daughter, in this case, knowing her frame and knowing her strengths and weaknesses, her gifts, her temptations to sin.

So I made Taylor read a book about having nerve and courage and being strong, because I seem to raise kids that have opinions about things. So I knew that any man who was going to take Maggie, who was going to need to have his own strong opinions, which, you know, Taylor totally does. So that was great. And he has things that are just way better for her than what I was offering her as a dad. That said, I will include that because we had been seeking to protect Maggie. We did assign Maggie on one of their dates. We did assign Maggie to put her arm through his arm while they were walking somewhere to make sure that she had all of the physical interest rather than just being cold and afraid.

But that’s because Maggie’s problem was not being a hussy or Christina Aguilera or whatever label you want to use. That was not Maggie’s ditch. So she was in the a little bit too reserved maybe. And so we gave her instructions to get up close to him and see how that went. And turned out, she liked it. So that kind of thing, yeah. We’ve been talking a lot about looking for a guy who’s a threat in a good way. But what are some like hot tips for young men to become more of a threat in a good way?

Because if we’re, if fathers are supposed to be looking for young men who are a threat in a good way and we need more guys who are threats or marriageable material, what are some tips or what are some good practices to become that sort of a threat? Practicing those things that like we recommend, like future men, those principles and making those principles happen in whatever job you go in. I mean, I don’t wanna embarrass you, Sam, but Sam went to work for, what do you guys need? bend wire into special things and stuff. And immediately he knew to get ahead in this place that he had to make it happen. So he’s watching and Sam’s very engineering looking.

He looks at stuff and oh, we could do this. So he became very competent in it and worked his way up immediately. And the other day when you’re waiting around in the mud whenever that was at the wedding, obviously you went somewhere and mucked it out made it happen. Those kind of traits are the things that I look for in people. It’s like hiring an employee. If a person comes through a job interview for me and their first question is what days do I get off and what’s my vacation pay, that’s the end of the interview. You can go out the door. Goodbye. We’re raised in a world that is so upside down that it’s But it’s hard to find people that realize what you want is somebody to show up on time, do what you say, and work as hard as you can.

And when you find those kind of people, I’ll take them with almost zero knowledge in my company because I realize that kind of character will make them valuable. But if they don’t have that, it ain’t gonna happen. And they’re taught, I mean, I was interviewing people in the 70s that came to me And that was their first question. They’d been to college and they’d have all this theoretical sales experience. And their first questions, I mean, they bring out a list of questions. And all the questions are, what are the bonuses? And what days do I get off? And all of that kind of stuff. And I got tired of talking with them.

We quit doing it. So it’s crazy. Yeah. The one thing, I kind of talked to Cal’s question a little bit, we know that God’s will for us is our sanctification. And Sean alluded to it, but I think that ultimately, it seems like that’s the thing that we all want to be working on primarily in our lives. Even thinking as fathers, you’ll be in the best position to be a discerning protector the more sanctified you get.

get and it’s the thing that we can be doing all the time. So for young people that want to want to be married there’s a lot of moving parts that have to take place before that happens but the one thing you can do every single day is work on your sanctification and that will prepare you I mean that will prepare you to be a better spouse whether you’re male or female and so I think I think that’s, to me, that’s sort of the, maybe it seems simplistic in one sense, but it’s the call for all of us, but it is the one thing that will be most helpful in all the areas, whether it’s parents, whether it’s future spouses. Yeah, with us.

If you are growing leaps and bounds in a church community, all the moms are gonna see that young man growing in Christ. and likewise the ladies. So that sanctification is going to be super visible. And that helps arrange marriages when you’ve got people who are obviously being fruitful in their growth in Christ. And you want to see those people, because they look more ready. Well, in their participation, You see them having fun and being together and having a sense of humor. Like the Bikinis’ you guys just generate all that. There’s all kinds of action going on. Whether you got a dead chicken you got to take care of or a new dog or whatever it is.

And yeah. And all of that is part of life and the joy of that and watching that. A lot of people notice all that. And the big problem with how do we find the men, is it’s tricky. Because right now we have not that many eligible men in our church. And so how do you go outside that sphere? In the things that you do, in the places you go, who knows, you know? But I do know that we worship an all powerful God that knows if you are meant to be married, he already knows how that’s going to get together. And I think in your sanctification, you can be calm in that knowing that will happen. First of all, I wanted to say this is really cool.

This is a subject that I’ve been thinking about for a while for my kids. And yeah, a lot of the stuff that I’ve heard has been very helpful. One of the questions I had was what are some of the advices for how to help our kids find the one? Like what are the environments that we as parents can set up for them to help them with that? Like for me, for example, I met my wife at a kid’s camp, but I was the director and my wife was one of the teachers, and that was one of the ways that we were able to see each other working with kids, and both of us really cared about, like, how’s my future spouse gonna work with kids and deal with kids?

That was very important for both of us. And we were able to see those interactions from each one of us. So what are some of the advices from you guys? Yeah, live life. Like with my son, Morgan, it was fortunate that she really didn’t leave the home at any time. She did work for, once she got married, she worked for all kinds of different people. And she was capable of doing all of that. But like with our son, we found out what he really liked to do And then we encouraged him to find jobs like that that would help him. And as he actually went to work as a janitor at Grace Community First, which was like the lowest on the totem pole there because the seminary guys would work at night because then they’d go to classes and stuff.

And Eldy got to know a few of them. And then he had a great interest in computers, so then he went to work and that kind of thing. And as he did that, he met other people in the church. And he would look around and see people. Of course, with that big a church, you have a dearth of all kinds of people. And he would look around and find somebody. And his thing was he would ask them to coffee. And he got refused a whole bunch of times. Or they would come, and after they had coffee, they didn’t want any more coffee with him. And so, right. And the interesting thing, see what creeps in, we are all schooled that the ding, ding, ding’s got to go off when really you’re looking for an inner character that will be there 50 years from now.

And that’s very difficult when you’re young and you’ve watched all the movies and you have in your head what you’re looking for and all of that. It’s hard, and you have to depend that God will bring you to those circumstances. But you certainly don’t stay hovered in. I mean, everywhere you go, I think you want to be nice to people and all that. And if you have opportunity, like if you knew you liked working with a camp or something, you go there, you’re probably going to find somebody that is doing that because they like it too, you know, that kind of thing. But it is tough, especially thinking about here.

If you’re the guy and you’re of marriageable age in this group, I think you have quite the choice. If you’re a girl that’s getting there, all us cool dudes are taken. I didn’t mean that tomorrow, you guys. But yeah, but it’s a problem. and you just have to follow what God brings in front of you, I think, because we don’t have any big cure to it that I know of, right? Jim’s not here, see, he got sick today, so he didn’t have to answer this. But I’ll tell a story on Jim. Esther and, or not Esther.

Azumi and Chris, did they, I mean, spark it off immediately the first year she came here to be an exchange student? Yeah. And it never faded away. And Izumi went down to Grace Community Church and was the secretary there for a while while Chris was there and everything. And it was crazy. And Chris, with Izumi at the same place, it just shorted his circuits where he couldn’t even do, was it his second year that he fell off the wagon because she came there and it just fried his brain. He couldn’t do anything. And Jim and I talked about it and I said, they gotta get married. Well, he’s not done. And I said, no, no, I said, let him get married.

They’ll be, as a team, they’ll be way better off. And they got married and now, have they finally made him the senior pastor yet? Or is it? Yeah. And it’s fascinating their whole story and how they did that, very similar to you guys. And you’re of that group, weren’t you? If you stay after, we can arrange you into couples. Yeah, that’d be good. We’ll pair you all up. But Jeff has to give the final approval. Sorry, is everybody ready? Good. Watch the prayer, yeah. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this church And the way you have blessed us, bringing families to us. And we do ask that you would give us wisdom in the ideas of having more balanced younger men, maybe, that are excited about you and all of that.

But we thank you the way that you bless us and the way that we are blessing the community. And I see that all the time. I meet people that go, oh, I met that person and saw them in this store or whatever. So it is having an effect, and we thank you for that. And we thank you how you know, and that’s where our sanctification as we’ve spoken about is wonderful. As we know you better, we know you want what’s best for us even though we in our own deciding and planning sometimes think we know better than you. Help us not to be that way. Help us to understand from your perspective as much as you would have us know. And help us to be faithful.

So we thank you for all these things. And of course we thank you most of all for your son and his sacrifice for us. In Jesus name we pray, amen.