Marriage is intended by God to be a picture of the gospel. The relationship of the church and her Savior is symbolized in the relationship of a wife and husband. Since most people will marry, and considering the great value God places on marriage, it is the duty of parents to prepare their children for this beautiful and noble calling. Parents must be proactively training and instructing in the things that make a good marriage beginning long before the wedding day. 

The title of our last talk is Forming Marriages for the Glory of God. We're here because we're married and it's a privilege to consider our marriages and work on our marriages and by God's grace have our marriages grow in the Lord. Most of us in the room, though, are also parents with children of various ages. And so this is really time set aside to consider how we can be a blessing to our children as they approach and enter the age where they'd be considering entering into marriage as well. Well, my name's Jason Dome.

I live about 20 minutes away from here. So I know many people have come from afar. That's not me. Janet and I have been married for 26 years, and the Lord has given us six children. One of them is married, so Janet and I have survived one courtship, and we praise the Lord for that.

One challenge that all of us have is that scripture doesn't give us a nice, neat, single, one-size-fits-all way to form a marriage. There's not a book of courtship within the scripture, but it does give us a series of principles to navigate by. So this is really what we're talking about in our time. What are the principles that we can glean from scriptures that will help us be a blessing to our children as they approach the age where young people are beginning to consider getting married. In Ephesians 5, which we've been to, and I think every talk so far, how can you have a marriage conference or even a marriage talk without at least referencing Ephesians 5.

So this is my turn. In Ephesians 5 verse 32 Paul says, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. When he says mystery, he's not saying that marriage is something confusing and that can't be understood almost always in the New Testament when you see the word mystery. It's meaning that God kept it hidden or veiled to a certain extent until the fullness of time to explain it in Christ. Meaning that Christ is the fullness of the revelation of God.

And So things that really couldn't be understood in their fullness before Christ with the coming of Christ can be understood in their fullness. And so marriage and the understanding of marriage is an area of progressive revelation. There are hints of it in Genesis and through the Old Testament, but you really can't understand it in its fullness until Jesus Christ, the bridegroom, comes and lives his life before the world. And so now, with the coming of Christ, the revelation of marriage is now complete. And it means that every time we as the people of God think about marriage, we should understand how what we're thinking about relates to the marriage, Christ and the church.

So we can't allow ourselves to think about our marriages and not understand how the dynamics that we're thinking of relate to Jesus Christ and his church because we have the fullness of the revelation about marriage now that Jesus has come. So having said that, it is the job of Christians to make sure that our marriages reflect the marriage because we have the fullness of the revelation. And in light of that, I don't believe it is a stretch to say that this extends to the forming of marriages. In other words, we know that the husband and wife relationship is a picture of Christ and the church and how they relate to one another, but that it's completely appropriate to not just start with at the altar and moving forward, but also to look upstream and say, hey, how was the marriage that we're supposed to be picturing formed and what principles can we glean from that in terms of the forming of marriages for the grace of God. As we come to our time, let's pray and ask the Lord to help us.

Oh God, I pray that you would come, that you would help us to be faithful to you. You're so faithful to us in every way. We want to learn to be faithful to you. And, oh God, we want to learn to be faithful to our children, make us a blessing to our children, make us a help to them as they consider marriage. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

If you've got your Bibles, turn to Matthew 22. Matthew 22, Jesus teaches a parable. We won't actually even look at the parable. We'll just start it as a way to set the stage. Matthew 22.

I'll be reading verses one through four. Follow along as I read. And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said, The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding and they were not willing to come. Again he sent out other servants saying to them, tell those who were invited, see I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and fatted cattle are killed and the things are ready.

Come to the wedding." This is about the gospel drama. This is about the beginning of the gospel drama and Jesus coming to lay down his life for a bride. It begins by saying that the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son. It doesn't start with a married son. It starts with a king who arranges a marriage for his son.

He helps his son to marry. Now I want to make two disclaimers before I go very far, and I think they're important disclaimers. The first is this. This is a parable, and the parable is not primarily about the process of forming marriages. So I just want to acknowledge that truth right off, right out of the gate, that the parable is primarily about other things, but it does touch on the forming of this marriage.

Secondly, because this is talking about God, God is actually two main characters. God the Father and God the Son are characters in here. We have to be careful to understand that the analogy does not hold at every point. Are you with me? No groom in the room is Jesus.

He's a picture of Jesus, but he's not Jesus. So it would be taking the analogy too far to say that wives in the room should hold their husbands as infallible. And that it's always inappropriate for a wife to be an instrument of correction and rebuke in the life of her husband because the church should never be an instrument, can never be an instrument of correction and rebuke in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ because he doesn't need correction and rebuke. Well, the husbands in the room aren't like that. And so there are times and there are ways in which it is appropriate for a wife to be an instrument of correction and rebuke.

Scott talked about that earlier and that certainly is true. The analogy doesn't hold at every point because husbands aren't God And Jesus is God. That said, if the marriage is the marriage, the actual reality that our marriages are supposed to approximate or reflect, this tells us something about the forming of a marriage. And it tells us this, that it's not only appropriate, but it's particularly fitting and consistent with Scripture that fathers and mothers be involved. Now there's no mother in this parable, but we know that wives are helpers to their husbands.

This is one of the things that wives help their husbands with. They help them with everything. And they are going to help them help their children form their marriages. So because of what we see in the heavenly marriage, that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who arranged a marriage for his son, we know that it's appropriate for, and not only appropriate, but fitting and consistent with scripture that we help our children with their marriages. It is legitimate to take hold of the principle of parental involvement.

But you know what? We don't even need this parable. All we need is the fifth commandment that children are to honor their father and their mother and that a blessing is promised with them. All we need is Ephesians chapter 6 which quotes that commandment honor your father and mother that it may be well with you and that parents are to bring up their children in the training and admonition of the Lord. If you take just those two things you end up with with parents having a responsibility to train their children what it means to walk before the Lord, to walk with the Lord, and a big part of that is how they walk with the Lord in the forming of a marriage, and children have a responsibility to honor their parents, certainly in the most important things of life, one of which is how you form a marriage.

I want to answer this question. I'll spend most of my time today answering this question. What would the ideal be? In other words, if we just start with a blank sheet of paper and map out, gleaning the best principles from scripture that have a bearing on this with a blank slate, how would we map it out so that we have an ideal process for the forming of a marriage? And a comment.

I believe that we often think wrongly about the ideal, and as a result we abandon it much too quickly. Meaning, it's really easy to jump ship and say, well that would be ideal, but... And then we wander off to what we think is next after the ideal has been abandoned. It goes like this. The commands and the principles and the patterns of the Bible send us in this direction, but because we are all people with a broken history in a fallen world, our starting point is completely inconsistent with that.

So, the ideal doesn't have anything to do with us, because I have a broken history, I live in a fallen world, and that doesn't fit in America 2018. The pilgrims might be able to try that, but we're just not in that kind of world before. Have you ever caught yourself thinking that or have you ever heard that? Of course we all have. I'm going to try to describe the ideal, meaning the principles that scripture would put before us as exemplary and desirable.

And I'm going to try to keep track of all the places that the train can go off the rails, and then try to lead us in thinking about how we could migrate from those places of being off the tracks to get in the right direction. So to come from a place that acknowledges the reality that I have a broken history and I live in a fallen world and yet the target hasn't changed. The target hasn't changed. What God desires, the design of God is still the same. And no matter what our starting point for, we see where God wants to take us.

And so we may have a different angle than if we lived in a, if we had a perfect starting point, but we're still headed to the same point. So let me give you six points and then a few other considerations. But first, something from my mom who sent me this. It's kids answering the question, how do you decide whom you marry? Okay, so This is wisdom from Kristen, a 10-year-old.

She says, no person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all the way before and you get to find out later who you're stuck with. So we give her high marks for Calvinism, like she gets it, and we give her low marks for having the high view of marriage that we think is biblical. So God determined who you would be stuck with. Alright, six points.

Number one, the training and admonition of the Lord. I've already referenced Ephesians chapter six, verse four. But the first consideration for us, that I would like for us to think about, is the training and admonition of the Lord and the commandment that parents bring up their children in the training and admonition of the Lord. This is our duty, is it not? This is what the Lord has launched us into when He gave us children.

Here's my question for you. When should parents start with their children on the big stuff? Early or late? Early. Right?

It's a rhetorical question. It's a question whose answer is so obvious, you know, no one needs to answer it. Not everything shares the same importance in terms of imparting truth to our children. We would all say that the holy grail for our children, the thing that is most sought after in the life of our children, is That God, through His grace and through the teaching of Scripture, God using the teaching of Scripture to help them understand what their condition is before Him. That they love themselves and they serve themselves and They deserve to be judged by Him, but that He's a merciful God and that He hasn't left us in that condition and that they would embrace what Jesus has done in shedding His blood.

If you ask any right-thinking Christian parent, if you can have one thing in the life of your children What would you want you would say that they would know the Lord that they would repent of their sins and be clean before him? Alright, then ask them then what? Our right-thinking Christian parent then would say that they marry well in the Lord. What's bigger than that? If you were thinking of educational attainments or financial benchmarks, you are not thinking right.

Those things are so far from the core of their happiness and healthiness for the rest of their life, outside of knowing Christ and growing in their faith. Who they marry is going to have a bigger impact than anything else in their life. So the question is, when should we start about that? Early or late? And the answer to the rhetorical question, of course, is early, as soon as possible.

And so we want to begin the earliest days of our children. Some of us, My baby now is 11 years old. And some of you have babies who are a lot older than that, but for those of us who have young children, however young they are, we want to start today. We don't want to let any more time slip by. So we want to give them a framework early for marriage.

And over time we'll hang lots on that frame. The framework is the fundamentals. And the fundamentals is Son or daughter, marriage isn't just about you. All the things that we've been learning. That marriage is about reflecting the relationship of Jesus Christ and His church.

If I were to go around the room and say, how many years had you been married before that really dawned on you? You probably heard it before that. You might have heard it before that, but when it really dawned on you, how old, how many years have you been married? Some of us would have big numbers. Some of us would have double-digit numbers.

Like, it didn't really dawn on me that my relationship with my wife was really supposed to reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church. Well, it doesn't have to be true for our children. It should not be true for our children. So we're giving the framework of what the significance of marriage really is. It's not just to make you happy for the rest of your life, although done well it actually will contribute significantly to the happiness for the rest of your life.

If you chase happiness, you'll end up miserable. That's what married people find. If you chase Jesus, you'll find yourself very happy more often than not. Here's a phrase that we've said many times in our home. Be the right person.

Marry the right person. We hooked that to scripture. Here's what it means for a Christian to be the right person, to be a person who's ready to be engaged in a marriage that is for the glory of God. And here's what it means to marry the right person, to engage in a marriage that is for the glory of God. And that includes teaching on how to identify the right person.

So we're exhorting our children. Like, you've got to work on you, and These are spiritual matters. These are spiritual matters. These are heart matters. Being the right person is fundamentally a heart matter.

And marrying the right person comes with the ability to see beyond people who are charming and funny and attractive and fun to be around. Honestly, isn't that how most people on planet Earth find a spouse? Who's charming and humorous and fun to be around and good-looking. Well, if you start with those criteria, you're going to end up with a mass. And so, we want to train our children to be the right person and to marry the right person and all this is these are terms that have to be defined by the Bible.

The world has a definition for what it means to be the right person. That's not the right definition. The world has a definition for what it means to marry the right person. That's not the right definition And so we need to give our children the right definition which comes from Scripture. You might say we have a child who's in the marriage window right now, meaning they have come of age, and we haven't done hardly anything along these lines.

We've not explained these things. Two things I would say to you if you find yourself in that position, and many people find themselves in that position. First, just decide how to make up for lost time. There is no time machine. All you can do now is decide how's the best way we can make up for the most lost time in the least amount of time.

Secondly, oh and on that point, be gentle. People find themselves learning something new and transformational, but God didn't teach it to them until they were 45, but now everybody else on planet Earth has 24 hours to catch up. That is a recipe for exasperation and an explosion in your home. So if you're learning anything this weekend that you think is transformational, but God hasn't taught that to you until your late 20s, or your 30s, or your 40s, you cannot expect the rest of planet Earth to catch up in the next 24 hours. Okay, so don't do that.

Number two, secondly, do you have younger ones? So you might have an older one that's in that window, well, you want to catch up with them, but for the younger ones you can start. You can start now. There's an opportunity to be closer to the ideal. None of us start at a place of perfection.

We're all taking a different angle but the target is the same. That was number one, the training and admonition of the Lord. Start early. Give them the framework for what marriage really is so that they understand that and they start thinking in these terms and using this language. That's really what we want.

Number two, setting expectations long before the time comes. Setting expectation long before the time comes. So we're saying all along to our sons and daughters, when the time comes, when you are at the age when you're starting to think about becoming married, We are going to work together with a unified vision. We're going to be on the same team with you. We're going to help you for this endpoint, for you to engage in a marriage that brings glory to the Lord through being ready to play your part in the gospel drama.

So that the young man understands what it looks like to play the part of the church in the gospel drama. And so we're speaking to them. We're going to be on the same team. When we come into this time, we're going to work together for this end point. We painted the picture of the endpoint.

And the process is going to look something like this. Daughter, when a young man is interested in you, hopefully he'll know to come talk to us. But maybe he won't know that. Maybe he won't know better. Maybe he'll come talk to you, and we want you to send him to us.

And son, here's what it looks like for you to be ready, and when you're close to ready, we want to start having conversations. Who does it seem like would be fitting for you? So we can talk through these things and start sort of laying the groundwork for these things. Here's the objective. The objective is that our children know what we plan to do and why we plan to do that and why it matters.

So this is all under the heading of setting expectations long before the time comes. In other words, we're not waiting until we've got 18 and 20 year olds to say, hey, let's talk about how this might come about. We're sort of way upstream from that. We're setting expectations. It's going to look like this.

We plan to do this, and here's why we plan to do it this way and here's why we think it matters and that they totally buy in. This is the objective. So that they say, yes, I am with the program. I am on the team because they've seen that all these things are grounded in Scripture. These are not just things that are popping out of your head.

The Word of God is behind these things. These are the principles that we've drawn out of Scripture. That's number two, setting expectations long before the time comes. Number three, working towards readiness. Working towards readiness.

We've set the expectations and we're periodically reinforcing them. This is not one and done. This is not a conversation we had with them when they're 12, never to be revisited again until something comes up, right? We've been reinforcing these things, not one and done. And now we're angling towards readiness.

We've painted the picture of what the objective is, what it means to engage in a marriage for the glory of God, and now we're headed there. And there are very concrete, practical things, but The most important things have to do with who they are. Not what they know how to do, not how much money they have. Does it matter what they know how to do? Of course it does.

Does it matter how much money they have? Of course it does. Are those The most fundamental things in the equation are very hard to measure. Are the parties born again? Are they cultivating the fruit of the Spirit?

You don't skip past that directly to the bank account and the skill sets. These are obvious things. I know these are obvious things. But sometimes we forget them. There will be more on that in a minute but for now we'll leave it there.

Now it's number three, working towards readiness. And really readiness is more a function of Christian maturity in the heart. Being born again and having the fruit of the Spirit in abundance makes you ready for marriage in a hundred different ways. Number four, deepening the pool. Deepening the pool.

If you care about this stuff, you're probably in a very shallow pool. Meaning, when you look around at the prospects for someone to marry, for your child to marry someone else who has any of this on the radar are not that abundant. It's not the deep end of the pool where we say, hey, anyone with good looking with two eyebrows will do. That's not us. That's a lot of people, actually.

Their pool is that deep. Well, okay, we want good looking and eyebrows, but we want them to be born again. Okay? The pool just got a lot shallower. We want to have an abundance of the fruit of spirit.

The pool just got a lot shallower. Do you want them to be reformed theologically? Do you think they should care about homeschool? All these things are making the pool shallower. And you can be down to a millimeter thick where there are two people on planet Earth that your child can marry.

That they know. That they know. My observation is this. Most people are actually only doing things that make the pool shallow. And In saying that, the things that I'm thinking of are actually things I love, things I advocate for.

But there are implications of that. So I'm saying, wise parents who intend to be a blessing and help their children have to acknowledge that there are implications from all the things that we do to make the pool shallower and that we should think, are there ways that we can actually counteract that? Not to compromise things that we think that are important, but things that actually make the pool deeper than they are today. We should be doing those things. I'm not talking about an exponential explosion of English barn dances.

I only say that half jokingly. That's a thing. That's a thing. And I don't think it's a good thing. I think it creates a romantic environment which prematurely stirs affections.

I think it's the wrong way to make the pool deeper. I believe that our shallow pools are actually evidence of our wrong thinking and our wrongdoing. In other words, I think we should have been deepening the pool all along for other reasons that have nothing to do with the marriage of our children. I think that for the optimal advancement of the kingdom we should be cultivating as many family-level friendships as we can both near and far." Do you agree with that? I hope you agree with that proposition.

I hope it at least sounds like it makes sense. In other words, we have a great commission. It is great in the sense that it's fantastic, but that's not what that phrase means. It means a big, all-encompassing commission. We need all the assets we can get for the work that God has given us to do.

It means we should be building a robust network of family-level relationships with people near and people far to get the work done, the kingdom work done that God has given his people to do. And then we should be engaged, great friends to each other, and figure out ways to work on kingdom stuff together. Maybe we should be making appeals together outside the abortion clinic. Maybe we should be going to nursing homes together to be an encouragement to the Christians that are there and to preach the gospel to the people who are in their last days and are lost. Maybe we should be doing local outreach together.

Maybe we should be engaged in international missions together. And a byproduct of that will be that our young people have an opportunity to get to know each other in an atmosphere that isn't romantically charged. Hello? Could the shallow pool be evidence that we have remained too isolated and not expanded our universe enough? Yes, of course.

Of course, we need to be expanding our universe for better reasons than simply my children need somebody to marry. Friends, the alternative is becoming increasingly mercenary when we reach the point of desperation. I have daughters, anyone wanna marry my daughters? Okay, because for the past 20 years, I haven't been thinking about this, and now it looks like it's not going to happen. So we're like fishing for eligible spouses.

The only alternative to being increasingly mercenary about it is to deepen the pool proactively, now. So I think couples, when they leave here today, should start talking about how they can deepen the pool for their children, How they can begin to develop these family level relationships that have a byproduct of giving our children the opportunity to just be around each other, work together, get to know each other so that the pool is deeper when the time comes. Because the alternative is being more mercenary over time. We don't want that. Notice We're at the end of number four.

I said there were six points. We're at the end of number four. I haven't talked about the process at all yet. Here's, I think, the point to draw from that. The real work is upstream.

The real work is upstream. The real work isn't waiting around until we're 18 and say, Oh, what are we going to do now? We've got an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old or a 22-year-old who is thinking about marriage, and now we need to catch up with what life has put at our doorstep. No, no, no, the work is upstream. Number five.

Executing the courtship plan. When the time does come, we want to simply be executing the plan, not scrambling to find a plan. What should that plan include? Here are several thoughts. I don't believe there's only one way to go about these things, but I have some thoughts.

The first thought is this. First things first, and by that I mean the correct entry point for our children engaging is vetting before a courtship. Vetting, significantly vetting before. So, As I'm speaking to my son, I'm saying, as you approach readiness, son, Are you thinking about marriage? What are you thinking about marriage?

What's the timing in your mind? I have a timing in my mind. I want to know what the timing is in your mind. Who are you thinking about that might be a potential spouse for you? Have you thought about this part of that person that you just named life?

We're having those kind of discussions. And so, I'm vetting him, right? Because I don't want to send a son into a courtship until I'm satisfied that he's ready. I don't want to hold him back inordinately, but I don't want to send him out if I don't think he's ready. My wife and I don't think he's ready.

And I'm vetting her, The one he thinks he should be interested in, who would be a good spouse to engage with. And to my daughters, I'm saying that, daughter, my expectation is that we're going to do the first round of vetting. Mom and I are going to do the first round of vetting. And then, if the guy can get past that, we're going to bring this consideration to you. And then, if you want to enter into a courtship, then there will be a courtship.

If you don't want to enter into a courtship, then there will be a courtship. If you don't want to enter into that courtship, you will not enter into courtship, and mom and I will take the heat. Make sure in the vetting that you understand important things. You've heard this phrase, hope is not a strategy. You cannot afford to be squeamish about hard conversations.

Young man, are you looking at pornography? If you can't ask that, you're in a world of trouble. Okay, no, that's a good answer. Okay, but I'm not prepared to take your word for it. I want, like, I, young man, I'm going to talk, I'm going to talk to your dad.

I assume I have your permission to talk to your dad. No? Oh, well. Seems nice enough is not vetting. Hard questions about a world that is bringing destruction into all of our lives is not only appropriate, it's essential.

It is a parent's duty. And we can't be prepared to just take what someone's personal testimony about what their self is. You have not only the right, but the responsibility to check behind those answers. No one should be offended by that. Then, as a courtship is entered into, we provide protections against the common temptations, and they must be explicitly established by parents, or better yet, approved by parents.

So as I said, we've been through one courtship. On the day that Tyler and Anna announced their courtship, we had already vetted him. We were delighted with all that we learned from him and that everything he told us checked out with the other people in his life who were close to him. And we took it to Anna and she wanted to go forward. And so there was a courtship.

And the day we announced it, Janet and I sat down with Tyler and Anna, and instead of imposing the limitations on them, we said, we want you to tell us what you think the limitations will be, and we'll let you know If that's acceptable to us. Well, you know what? We had done a fair amount of work upstream. And what we found was, if I'm remembering this right, what we found was, what they suggested was a little bit more restrictive than what we would have imposed. So we said, approved.

So we said, approved. But, hey, that was an encouragement to us because it let us know that they got what we were angling towards. They got what we were angling towards. Jonathan Edwards has written a wonderful book called Charity and its Fruits. Well, the joke in our house is that Janet is going to write a book called Clarity and its fruits because she's clear, you know, if you do that, I will strangle you and hide the corpse.

Okay, she's like, that level of clarity. And, hey, Courtship is not the time to take things for granted. It's the time to communicate clearly, to have the boundaries clearly and explicitly drawn. Parents own that. Here's another thought.

The nuking of Valentine's Day. Mushroom cloud. Tyler, Valentine's Day happened during their courtship. Two days before Valentine's Day, Mr. Dome, you know, an email comes across, Mr.

Dome, I'd like to send Tyler, I'd like to send Anna flowers on Valentine's Day, could I send her flowers? I repeated back, I replied back, Tyler, I'd think less of you if you hadn't asked. I'd think less of you if you didn't want to. Don't you dare. Love, Mr.

Dome. Why? Because courtship is not a time to stir the emotions. They don't need the help. They're already stirred enough without the external stuff going on.

Now, I'm not saying there's not a time for Valentine's Day, and there's not a time for stirring the emotions. I'm saying courtship, at least as we understood it and as we defined it, was a time for getting to know each other as dispassionately as possible to see if they wanted to go further into something more. That's not the time to stir the passions. So I was delighted that he asked and I was delighted to say no. And the next year he was free to do for Valentine's Day whatever they wanted to do because they were married.

So we wanted them to have a fighting chance for rationality. You know, the more you stir the romantic emotions, the less rationality there is. If you don't think so, then you're old enough that you don't remember your teen years at all. Everyone knows that's true. Last thought on this point.

You want the general affirmation of multiple experienced godly counselors. You don't want to leave this with the thoughts that are inside your own head. Men, You absolutely have to know everything that your wife is thinking and saying about this, and you want to give her voice in this. You should tremble to do anything that's against the counsel of your wife in these matters. And you want more people on board who you trust through experience.

You want the general affirmation of multiple experienced godly counselors, which leads me to number six. Number six, move on if and when the key stakeholders are sure. Who are the key stakeholders? Well, it doesn't get any more key than the young man and the young woman. They have to be sure.

That goes without saying. Both sets of parents are key stakeholders. Can I imagine? A scenario in which you would go ahead if you didn't have all four parents, and in some cases now you have more than four parents because there could be multiple marriages on one side or both sides. Yes, I can imagine a scenario where you go forward without the full affirmation of all the parents involved, but boy, my imagination has to work.

My imagination has to work. You would be very reluctant. You would go really slow before you would do that. And I think you would want, if there is more than one church involved, you would want both pastors or both teams of elders, however church government, you would want them all nodding, yes, yes, this seems good to us. This seems good.

Under this, just a sub-bullet, the wisdom of very short engagement periods. When he's proposed to her, and they know they want to marry each other, the risk is a hockey stick curve. You remember? When you knew she wanted to marry you and she knew you wanted to marry her. Did I say that right?

Anyway, you wanted to marry each other. How hard it gets to be with each other. Short engagement periods makes it easier to honor the Lord during that period. We've had in our circles, in the marriage counseling I've done, the weddings I've been a part of performing, we've had one long engagement period. She was in Germany and he was here and there was a cold ocean of water in between, so we thought it was okay.

Otherwise, Tell them six weeks, two months tops, get married. That's just my advice. This is not, thus says the Lord. I just remember what it was like to be engaged. And you should get married fast, I think.

There are other extenuating circumstances that probably that doesn't accommodate for. The other thing I would say, just in passing, modest weddings. Modest weddings. Hey, we are members of one another. Some of us can afford a lot of money for a wedding.

Some of us can't afford very much for a wedding. Just understand the impact of the budget you set on your brothers and sisters in Christ. Just understand. I think modest weddings are a blessing to the rest of your brothers and sisters in Christ. As for us, we told Anna and Tyler, here's the number.

All the expenses that are over the number are yours and anything under will write you a check for the balance. Is this a biblical way to do it? No, of course not. I'm just saying that's what we did and at the end of the day we wrote a check for $200. And they were happy to have it.

A few other considerations. Yeah, yeah. A few other considerations. I want to give you five other considerations quickly. Number one, consider the alternative.

Consider the alternative to active, engaged, proactive parental involvement. The alternative is the way of the Gentiles. Jeremiah 10 verse 2, Thus says the Lord, do not learn the way of the Gentiles. If you just leave it to your 18, 20, 22, 25 year old to figure it out on his own or her own, the world will help them. The world is at their doorstep ready to help, ready to counsel them.

There will be few or no protections from real and mortal dangers. They'll find someone and marry, probably after finding a lot of others prematurely along the way, with the many divorces that go along with that. And they've sort of learned how to get emotionally involved and then split and deal with the pain of that and move on to the next one. Do you want that pattern to have been the pattern that they take into their marriage? No you don't.

We have to recognize the insanity of what passes for normal. Let's just together declare it insane. What the world is doing in the formation of marriages is insane. We need to be saved from this perverse generation. These are the words that Peter used in Acts chapter 2.

If in the middle of Jerusalem Peter says we need to be saved from this perverse generation, how much more does that apply to us today in our day and age which is characterized by sexualization and radical individualism and autonomy? No, this is madness the way the world is going about forming marriages. If you think you should do something that the culture at large recognizes in any way, you are not thinking rightly. We should be engaging this in a way that makes the world say, you people are nuts because of how different it is from what the world is doing. Embrace it as a badge of honor.

Be content to be nuts and have your parents call you nuts and have your neighbors call you nuts, but have your children engaged in marriages for the glory of God. What a good trade that would be. Number two, work hard not to exasperate your children work hard not to exasperate your children work hard not to exasperate your children Ephesians 6 for the part we instantly go to is honor your father and your mother that it may be well with you as first commandment with a promise that's not how the verse starts the verse starts with these words father fathers do not provoke your children to wrath Resolve that you're going to be clear. Resolve that you're going to be consistent. Resolve that you're going to communicate a lot.

If you're not clear with them, if you're not consistent, if it's always changing, and if you're not communicating a lot, both in speaking to them so that they know your mind and drawing them out so you know their mind, you're running the risk of exasperating them. Number three, consider equal yoking. Consider equal yoking. 2 Corinthians 6.14, do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Say, we got that.

That's the most fundamental of all. The most important thing to me is being in Christ. So I never want my child to be put together in the harness with someone who doesn't value Christ. Someone who doesn't value Christ, there's a difference between being a good citizen in a sound church and being born again. I wouldn't have even added this 10 years ago.

But I'm 10 years older and I've seen 10 years more. And I know that there are many people who are good citizens in sound churches but they have no affection for God. And you can't be sure someone like that really has a new heart. You can't be sure they don't have a new heart either. But how much risk are you willing to take in this category?

Does it seem like a category where you take a lot of risk? We want our children to have affection for God. And we want our children to marry people who have warm hearts, alive hearts, not just good citizens in a sound church. Heaven forbid that anyone ever describe me as a good citizen in a sound church. Don't you want to be known for so much more than that, that there's a live affection, affection for God in your heart.

Number four. Decide what you think about the place of affection and attraction. And so our objective is to be a blessing to our children and to help them form a marriage for the glory of God. Now, what role does affection and attraction have in that? Christians that I respect, Bible-loving, God-loving Christians have very different answers to that question.

So I'm just saying, go sort out what you think about that so that you're not sorting it out when you have a child who holds the person there in a courtship in the highest esteem, but there's no affection there yet and there's no attraction. How are you going to counsel them? That could happen. I've seen that happen. I'll just give you my personal take on that.

There should be affection and attraction. Some people disagree with that. Some people disagreeing with that have gotten married and found that affection and attraction developed. I would just say, wow, I'm glad. Praise the Lord.

I would say that if gospel is a picture of Christ and His church, Christ engaging in it without affection and attraction doesn't make sense to me. I'm going to counsel my children, even if you hold them in the highest esteem, if there's not affection and attraction, wait. Stop now and wait. Number five. Finally, acknowledge the overriding and overruling factor.

God. God overrides, overrules it all. Seek God in His favor. Cry out to God. It is possible that you'll do everything that I'm speaking about and that it'll go horribly wrong.

I don't have any magic to offer you. It's possible that you will not do anything that I'm talking about and that your children will end up in the sweetest marriages, most God-glorifying marriages. It would be presumption to not do anything that I'm talking about, But all I'm saying is we know this of God. He's merciful. He doesn't give us what we deserve.

These are not merit-based things. I end with this point to say this is not us earning good marriages for our children. Heaven forbid that we would be ones who would think like that. There is no foolproof formula and yet the scriptures have given us principles to navigate by. We should grab a hold of them.

We should go way upstream from a courtship or whatever you want to call it or however you want to define it and do it. We should go way upstream and begin with our youngest children, helping them to understand what marriage really is so when it comes time for them, that will have been ingrained in their thinking for the longest time, it would be unthinkable that they would marry someone who is out of Christ because they know what that means on the picture that they are supposed to be displaying. Let me end with Jude 24 and 25. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.

God, we thank you for your goodness. Thank you that you are able to keep us from stumbling and to present us before yourself with great joy, blameless with great joy. Thank you that you have never for a day of our lives treated us as we deserve to be treated. Thank you for your goodness and your mercy. Would you have compassion on our children, Lord?

Would you be merciful to them? Would you allow them the joy and the pleasure of marrying people who love you, who have real, alive affection in their hearts for you. We desire to see it with our own eyes. They would glorify you with their lives. We pray that you would send help from heaven.

In Jesus' name, amen.