While marriage is often, rightly, portrayed as a gift from God and the expected path for the Christian, this does not mean that all of life revolves around marriage. Singleness can also be a gift and unmarried individuals need to be encouraged to maximize their single years and trust in the sovereignty of God to find a marriage partner. God is in control and Scripture is our all-sufficient guide in every decision we make, including finding a spouse. You simply must trust Him and be faithful in the time that He has given you as a single person. 

Well this subject is dear to my heart. I find myself often speaking directly to the single people in our church. We have a whole lot of them. And scripture has much to say. So it really is a privilege to do this.

I wish I had a whole day to go through some of these things. Maybe someday I'll do something like that, but it's such a critical question that we're dealing with here. And I wanna give you some of my thoughts, and then I wanna throw it open for discussion. Ask me anything you'd like, challenge anything I said, whatever it might be. But What's on my mind really the most about this whole subject is the bigness, the majesty of God, that his rulership, his control.

We know from Psalm 135, which says, whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth. And what's burning in my soul on this whole subject is just confidence in God for what he's doing. And he is absolutely in control. I wanna give you a number of issues here tonight. There are six of them, and I'll just tell you what they are and then I'll just run on down through and talk about them.

I wanna talk about, first of all, the times in which we live and some of the challenges that we have. Secondly, I want to talk about the culture of a church and how you build a culture in your church for how single young people should relate to one another. It's really important. And church leaders and church members all have to work together to build a really great culture for singles in their church. Thirdly, I want to talk briefly about preparation for marriage.

Fourthly, I want to talk about Jesus and singleness. I want to go to a passage of scripture where Jesus gives his take on singleness. And then I'd really like to speak about the bigness, the might, the perfect control of a sovereign God. And then I wanna just sort of bare my soul a little bit about what my prayers are. For you, for the single young people in our church, you're in such an important and strategic time right now.

And my advice to myself, when I was single, I got married when I was age 28, and my advice to you is the same. Use your single years for the greatest advantage for the kingdom of heaven. You're in a period of life that is so critical and you have so many resources at your fingertips. Max them out, use them, and take this life that God gave you and pour it out for the greatest advantage of the kingdom of heaven. Well, I want to talk about the times that we live in.

Fortunately, the times that we live in are characterized by this one thing, God is absolutely in control. And I know that many of you who've kind of thrown off the dating culture have seen enormous fruit. And there's also difficulty and frustration in the midst of that, and I'm very well aware of that. There's a great concern for people who are not getting married. There's this idea that if you're not married by age 25, that there's something has gone haywire, that the world is falling apart, that things are not well.

And so what do you do when you see that nothing is happening? What do you do when you're a parent and you see that nothing is happening? What are you supposed to do in a situation like that? And you're asking yourself, how should our young people interact with each other? How do they keep from being flirtatious, or introverted, or just plain strange?

How do you keep from these things? What are the three steps to a perfect courtship in a marriage, what are they? They don't exist. How do you help your children overcome heartbreaks? It happens.

Then you finally ask, is the dating model really that bad? Come on. The answer to that question is yes, it really is that bad. But I know that many as the best of times have said, wouldn't it just be so much simpler to just go back to a basic dating culture? You'd eliminate all these problems, but you would also inherit a gigantic load of other far, far worse problems.

And it was right, it was right that we threw off the dating culture. It's a wicked proposition that has caused enormous problems. And many marriages are struggling today because of the fallout from that dating culture. We have to recognize that. If you're a pastor and you're counseling people, let me tell you something, the dating culture didn't do all that great for that generation.

And so it was right to throw it off. We should continue to throw it off and kick it in the head for what it's done. But there's so many problems. How do you get to know somebody casually without getting too formal, too fast? What do you do when you live across the country from somebody, how do you even possibly have a healthy relationship and get to know someone like that, How do you manage something like that?

What are fathers supposed to do to help their daughters get married? What are fathers supposed to do to get their sons married? We know Abraham did a lot to get his own son married. What about fathers today? What does that story have to do with us?

Well, I think it has a lot to do with us, really. But how do you deal with looking around and You're in your 20s and you see no prospects. There's absolutely nobody that you're interested in at all. Hey, that was my situation. I was 27 years old in California.

And I had no idea. I saw no one in sight. And then all of a sudden, this girl that I'd known since she was seven years old sort of caught my eye. There you go, her name was Deborah. And we ended up getting married.

But You just never know. You never know when these things are going to happen. God does them in his own sovereign time. He is absolutely in control. The Lord does whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth.

Nothing can stay his hand. I mean, that's really the bottom line for all of it. But there are problems that occur among those who've tried to throw off the whole dating scene. And there are lots of controversial issues, aren't there, to try to think through. How do you even define courtship?

Is that even the right word to use? It's not a Bible word, but what is that supposed to mean? How do you navigate all these waters? How does romance fit into all this? How do your feelings fit into all this?

What about following your heart? I mean, there are all kinds of questions that you have to ask and come up with the right answers in order to navigate these waters. How picky your father's supposed to be. How prepared must a son be. How much money does he need to have.

How well settled should he be. And what kind of criteria is a man supposed to have you know, in picking a wife? Hey, these are the questions. And you know, I'm not here to give a 10 step formula. I don't think there is one.

We're here to cry out to God. We're here to look for wisdom that's consistent with scripture. That's really our hope. And to trust that the Lord does whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth. So those are some of the issues that we're dealing with in the times in which we live.

They're really important questions. We should try to answer them, and we have to grapple with them. But those are the times of rent. I think they're great times, honestly. I'm grateful, I'm amazed, I'm thankful for the things that I've been seeing over the last decade in this whole area.

And I'm not discouraged for the person that's not married in their 20s yet. God is in control. He rules absolutely everything. And so that's where I have my confidence. He's the one that knit you together in your mother's womb.

Has he forgotten about you? Really? I don't think so. Not at all. I wanna talk a little bit now about building a culture for which there are healthy ways of young people relating to one another.

And so I wanna just walk you through a number of things that I think are critical in building a culture that's healthy for single young men and young women to exist in. You know, a few years ago I was doing research for a book that I wrote on John Calvin and the family. What did Calvin say about the family? And when I was writing this book, I realized Calvin was constantly talking to the single young people in his church. I mean, it was a culture of singleness.

25% of the population had taken vows of celibacy in Calvins Geneva. And it was a horrible situation. That's why the reformers were out there trying to rescue women from the convents, putting them in barrels, hauling them to places where they could get married like the way Martin Luther got married. It was amazing what was happening during that time. So Calvin was constantly speaking to the single people in his church.

Pastors should be doing that. And so I ended up extracting a number of the things that he said specifically in his counsel towards singles and his preaching. And I put it in a little book called, I can't remember what I call it, Preparing for Marriage or something like that. But hey, here's the truth. It's really important that there is a right culture in a church for how singles relate to each other.

And I'm grateful for spiritual fathers like John Calvin who got it, who understood it, how important it was to cast a vision and to speak about the really critical areas. And I mean, he spoke about really thorny issues as he was in his pulpit talking to the single people in this church. And it's right that we would do that. So, how do you build a good culture in your church? And here's a proposition.

The centrality of the local church for young people to find their spouses is a really important category. The very best place for young people to get to know each other is in a local church because that's where real life is lived. Now it doesn't always happen that way. God doesn't always do it that way. But as far as for us, we who are building church cultures, we should build a fantastic culture for young people in the church so that it's a blessing to them.

I have two children that met their spouses at church and they were very young when they first met in church. As they got to know each other and ended up finding out that they were interested in marrying one another, I love the way that they did that. They conducted themselves in an exemplary way. And I've just seen such benefit for the application of biblical principles for young people moving toward marriage. And my children, they maintained the best principles, and I was so grateful for that.

And it can be done. And I pray that God would just continue to give us more of those kinds of stories. You know, there's another reason I love this subject. You know, that there's a young lady sitting right over here who actually was a young girl in church when I met her. I didn't become really, really interested in her until way later, but I met her when she was seven.

And she was 13, and I was 20, and I started to actually notice her. But she was just so young. There's no way I could marry a girl like this. When you're 20, and the girl you think you might be interested in is 13, that's really dangerous. So, but you know, what began when she was really young, it had its own season.

It had its own season where we just weren't aware of each other at all. But this is the way God works. You never know. You never know what 13 year old in your church right now might be alive, okay? Does that scare you?

It should. But you know, it can work out great, honestly. I'll tell you, I can tell you about my real experience. And you really, you never know. You can't strategize your way through this.

God is in control. He does what he wants in heaven and in earth. That's what he does. And You have to roll up all of your experiences under that proposition that God is in control. And scripture is our all-sufficient guide to help us think through things, to help us to manage our feelings, to help us understand how we relate with people in the church.

I wanna give you three texts of scripture. I know you can't write any of this stuff down. I'm actually recording this right now on my iPhone, so if anybody wants it, I'll give it to you. The three texts that I think are really helpful are Titus 2, six through eight, First Timothy five, one and two, and First Timothy four, 16. And Those texts help us think clearly about the kind of culture that needs to be created in a local church.

Titus 2, six and seven says this, likewise exhort the young men to be sober-minded, in all things showing yourself a pattern for good works. In doctrine, showing integrity, reverence, and corruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed having nothing evil to say of you. That's directed to young men. Secondly, 1 Timothy 5, 1 and 2. The men should treat the younger women as sisters in all purity.

As sisters. That's the kind of relationship you should have. And then 1 Timothy 4, 16, which says, take heed to yourself and to your doctrine, let no one despise your youth, but be an example of believers in word. Now, those texts help us to understand how young people ought to relate to one another in a local church. There's a whole ethic, there's a whole way of living in a local church in this time that you're in right now.

And the kind of culture that we build will either breed healthy relationships or totally weird relationships. And it's just, it's really easy to breed weird relationships when you're kind of in transition, when you're changing really the paradigms of the way that young people get married. And how should young men and young women treat one another in the church? That's the question that these texts answer. And First of all, should they act as if they don't exist?

I mean, should young men and women act like they don't exist at all? Should they talk? How close Should they get in their conversations and things like that? Should they seek one another out and befriend one another? Those are questions that really have to be answered.

We all know, we all know that most of us are going to be married. That's gonna happen for almost every person in this room. God is gonna make that happen in his own time. You can rest assured with that. It may not be in your time.

It usually never is. I mean, where do you think the term lady in waiting came from, is that some kind of modern homeschooling term that came up when people threw off dating and marriage? No, people have been waiting for a long time, people have always been waiting. You know, The people who are married in here, they probably had to wait longer than they wanted to. I did.

I had to wait a lot longer than I wanted to. It didn't happen in my timing. And so, we can have this idea that something is just so weird and broken and wrong in the way we're doing this. I don't believe that's true. I think tensions and difficulties have always existed, and people have almost always wanted to get married way before the time that they got married.

I think that's a reality. I think we have to grapple. This is normal, and God uses that time of waiting for his own glory. He uses it to sharpen, he uses it to make you cry out to him because he's your only hope. But how you deal with that time is really, really important.

You know, here's another one of the challenges, and I'm glad there are a number of parents here tonight. The discipleship of younger children is different than the discipleship of your older children. And some parents have a really hard time making that transition. There's certain principles that work so well when your kids are four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. But then when they kick over the wall in their teens and then in their 20s, it's a whole different game.

I've sat down with a number of the men in our church and I've said, hey look, you've had great success here now with your younger children, game over. You got a new game now. You're gonna have to navigate these next years in a totally different way. And because now you are discipling adults instead of raising babies. And that can cause all kinds of difficulties, especially in this whole area.

Especially in a culture that just freely promotes destructive relational patterns. But here's what I want us to recognize. The implications of getting this wrong are pretty enormous, okay? The implications of allowing for defiling relationships or premature relationships or wrong relationships in this manner, The consequences are huge. And so it's not enough to just say, oh this is just frustrating, I think I'll go back to the dating culture.

Getting it wrong has enormous implications. And so, you know, we have to always be appealing to principles in this whole matter. And I'm gonna give you five principles. Principles in this scenario are really better than rules because God really gives us principles. And the principles really need to be guarded.

I'm gonna give you five of them. Five principles that need to be heeded in this whole matter. First is the preservation of purity. The preservation of purity. Whatever you do, I don't care if you call it courtship or smortship or whatever you want to call it, but it ought to preserve purity.

What safeguards need to be in place? There ought to be safeguards in place. This whole random relationship culture that we've lived in has been really, really destructive. Where there are no walls, where there are no true safeguards that exist. This is why Job had to make a covenant with his eyes.

You have to make covenants with your eyes and your time and all kinds of things in order to navigate this. It's right to do that. There's so many things in this whole matter of purity that have to be considered. How women dress is critical. How young men speak to young women is critical.

All these matters of purity and flirtatiousness have to be understood. But the principle of purity is the first principle. The second principle is the principle of honor. How do you honor another person? We have an obligation to do our best to stop our brothers and sisters from stumbling and to say, you know, I'm free in Christ and I can cause my brother to stumble.

That's not enough. That doesn't work. And God has already decided who you're going to marry. And you should be really careful what you say when you're unmarried. Often, in desperation, young people speak to one another wrongly and the bottom line of it is that they don't really believe that God is in control.

They don't believe that. And so they say things that they shouldn't say. And there's the whole matter of honoring parents as well. When you disregard the protections your parents put in place, you're in danger. Honor is really critical, as a principle.

Honor toward the one you might be interested in, and honor toward your father and your mother. He gave you a father and mother to guide you. Do you really believe that? When do you think that stops? Do you think that there's like this line in the sand where your parents don't have anything to say to you?

There are people who believe that. I don't believe that at all. But the truth is the principle of honor is critical. The devil works through dishonor. We have to recognize that.

God has given us parents for a reason. The third is discretion. Proverbs 2, 10 through 13 says, discretion will preserve you. There has to be sound judgment and discernment and discretion about the relationships that you open yourself up to. And then there's the principle of obedience.

You may not like the rules that your parents desire to be in place for you. But you have to recognize that they've been put there to protect you. And then there's the principle of protection. And it's right to protect holy things. And every unmarried person really needs to recognize that they're talking to someone's future husband or wife.

And so there really should be a sobriety and a sacredness about that. That you recognize that God is in control and God may not want that person to marry you and you should speak to them in that way, just assuming that God is in control of this whole thing And that there's really nothing you can do to flirt your way into this. Now you may cause all kinds of problems by doing that, but if you trust, if you rest, if you recognize that God Almighty does what He pleases in heaven and on earth. It just sets you free to be natural, to talk with people without fear, without all kinds of strangeness flowing into the thing. I think the greatest hedge against creating a weird culture in a church between young people is a recognition that God is in control.

And that just sets everybody free. Because we know that God is gonna make these things happen in his own time. I wanna give you seven relational malfunctions to avoid in a church. First of all, it's the malfunction of no relationships. I don't know if you've seen this in a church where there's just this atmosphere where there are no relationships between males and females in the church.

It's fueled by fears of emotional entanglement, fears of a broken heart, fears of maybe giving someone a wrong impression. But when there are no relationships between unmarried people and a church, Let me ask you to consider that that is so contrary to the sociology that you see in the Bible. Because we're supposed to be like brothers and sisters. The men should treat the women like sisters. Now that doesn't mean that they do to their sisters what they did when they were little.

They pull their hair and chase them around and push them down. That's not what that means. It has to do with a sober and honorable relationship without hooks. It's not a relationship to get something, it's a relationship to be something to someone, to be a brother to someone, or to be a sister to someone. But when you have a church culture where there are no relationships, it's a messed up culture.

Because it's not like what scripture has explained. There ought to be freedoms to have natural conversations about real spiritual matters. So when you have a church where there are no relationships, something really has gone wrong. This whole sociology of the church is defined in scripture. I mean, look at all the one anothers in the Bible.

That's how you should treat one another. Accept, treat, greet one another, holy kiss. Don't do that one. But scripture tells us how we ought to relate with one another. So no relationships, that's a malfunction.

Awkward relationships. When you have awkward relationships, you have people who don't really understand their biblical responsibilities. In scenarios like this, it becomes a really big deal if a young man ever talks to a woman, and they're talking and the couples are, they're gasping, they're saying, oh look, they must be courting. It's some insane conclusion like that, putting all kinds of ridiculous pressure on people. I mean, my view is, you ought to be able to talk naturally without five people starting a gossip session that goes across the United States that two people were recording because they were simply talking.

It's just ridiculous. Those kinds of awkward relationships, they're so detrimental. And It's hard to have healthy relationships when you have an atmosphere like that. Here's another, flirtatious relationships. This is another relational malfunction where there is so much selfishness in a person's heart and it's multiplied in the church that flirtatiousness becomes the norm.

And flirtatiousness is nothing but a rejection of the sovereignty of God. It's like saying God doesn't exist. It's like saying God doesn't do what he wants in heaven and on earth. It's like saying, you know, I can stay his hand. But God says, no, nothing will stay my hand.

So flirtatious relationships are also the result of a malfunctioning kind of a culture in the church. The fourth, purposeless relationships. This is where people are not having significant meaningful conversations with one another. They talk about nothing but shallowness. And so it's just one silly thing after another.

And rather than principled relationships where the glory of God is at the center of it, where we see one another not as something that we use or just have a time of interesting talk, but purposeful talk. And what are you supposed to talk about? Well, when you come together in a church, usually there's some message that's being given, there's something going on. I mean, you know, the leaders of the church have some hopes for the church, you should be talking about that. Maybe you've just heard a sermon, talk about that.

Talk about the things that the elders of the church have desired to foster in that church. That's the right thing to do. The whole church should be doing that, by the way. The whole church should be very fixated on what God is saying and doing in that church. That should provide enough conversation between young people, and it should be the central element of these relationships.

And that saves, it saves from purposeless relationships in the church. And then there's selfish and defrauding relationships, that's the fifth malfunction. And this is when there are selfish motives, when there are shallow or sensual or foolish or exploitive kind of talk. In contrast to pure relationships, respectful relationships, relationships that are characterized by self control, by edification, by joy, by friendliness, by happy conversations, by respectful conversations. These are the kinds of relationships that scripture calls for instead of selfish, defrauding relationships.

Here's a reality. If all you care about is getting married, you're just gonna have selfish relationships and selfish conversations. That's all you're gonna ever have. And somehow, somehow we have to rise above that and recognize that God has this thing already planned out. It's done in heaven.

It's decided. He is going to do his will on earth as it is in heaven and he's gonna do it in your life. So you might as well relax and just rest in the fact that God is going to do this. And a selfish relationship is so contradictory to his sovereignty. And then number six, age segregated relationships.

This is a culture where Only the single young people can really relate with one another. That's a wrong culture in a church. Hey, we have to fight this in our church all the time because everybody gravitates toward an age-segregated kind of culture. That happens. The old People do it too.

They wanna talk eyeball to eyeball with one another. The men wanna talk with the old men and the old women wanna talk with the old women. I'm talking about myself. So the whole church kind of gravitates to an age-segregated environment, and you have to fight it. You have to fight it all the time.

It really starts with the pastors of the church. They've got to make sure that they're not just talking at eye level either. They've got to be talking to the little boys and the medium girls and the bigger boys too as well. And age segregated relationships, when that's all there are, and that's all the people desire, that's a relational malfunction. Because God has made the church to be intergenerational.

And it's right that we preserve that. And you know, I mean you have to instruct your congregation about it, you've gotta live it, you've gotta model it. But when you look around at your church and all you see are these age segregated knots of people, you got something wrong. But it's really a matter of shepherding and instruction and helping people live a little bit more biblically in that whole thing. If you let that just go, you're just gonna end up, you're just gonna end up with another age segregated church.

It is going to happen. It's like the jungle. The jungle, You've always gotta be hacking back the jungle because it's gonna grow back over you. But age segregated relationships are far more superior. And then inappropriate, another malfunction, inappropriate communication between the unmarried, where there are just no barriers, where immodesty, uniting hearts, dating, these kinds of things are cultivated.

So Those are some of the malfunctions that exist in a church culture. And then you have to ask questions about what are the appropriate communication methods. We live in a day that's really different today, where communications have changed radically. It used to be that you actually had to go talk to somebody face to face. Those days are gone.

And with texting and email and things like that, I would like to spend about an hour talking about that, but we can't do that here tonight. But I just want to say that if you don't take dominion over your technology, it will take dominion over you. And I found that parents particularly have not been as aware as they ought to about the communication tools that we have today. Well, you've got most men would be really uncomfortable if some young guy took his daughter in a closed room and had a conversation with her, he's having no problem that the young man is texting her and it's private and there's nobody there. That's dangerous.

You have to recognize that technology presents new problems. And I'm a fan of technology. I use technology. I think we should use technology. It's a matter of taking dominion.

But if you don't take dominion over your technology, your technology will take dominion over you. And I've seen a lot of very messed up situations where technical, where protocols and discipline and communication was rejected and anything goes. And all kinds of trouble breaks out. You've seen it. I don't have to give any detail on that.

But you have to recognize that these new communication tools can cause all kinds of problems in the premarital relationship, because they're just such different communication tools. Okay, I'm gonna give you some solutions. Five of them. Number one, understand your role in the church. A young person who is not married has to understand that they have a role in the church and that is to be an example to the other believers.

And as you're in those years before you're married, you have to recognize that you have just as important a role before you're married as after you're married. Your role actually doesn't really change. And so it's critical that you Play your role when you're single and then keep playing it when you're married. And if you're just kind of waiting around, if you're waiting around before you're married, you're gonna be waiting around after you're married. You're not gonna change.

And so Understand your role in the church. Secondly, treat the young girls like sisters. Thirdly, be strategically serious about your relationships. Speak about real things. Have real relationships that surround important matters.

And throw off the silly, irrelevant kind of relationships that can happen among young people. Apply the one anothers in all relationships. Apply the one anothers. You know, God has told us what the relationship should look like. There are over 50 one anothers.

And if you wanna know how to treat one another, go read the one anothers. And they're very beautiful. And that is the kind of relationship that God desires to exist in his church between all the people, from the littlest ones to the oldest ones. And if you ever wonder, well, I'm single, how am I supposed to relate? Go read the one anothers and get recalibrated and ask the Lord to help you to fulfill those things.

You're gonna need those for the rest of your life. You might as well get really good at them now. Number five, exercise purity in relationships by fleeing immorality. Number four, I also just want to talk about preparation for marriage. You are in a time of preparation, and the greatest preparation that there is for you now is personal holiness.

That is the greatest preparation. Beyond that, preparation should always be according to what the objective is. So for example, if you're a man, how do you prepare for marriage? Well, you prepare for marriage by being the kind of man that God describes. It's really not that complex.

And if you're a woman, you prepare for a life that God describes for women. So what happens often, particularly with women, is if the years drag on in their minds and they begin to get word, then they begin to say, well, I'm gonna go spend my time doing other things that don't have anything to do with my role as a woman. And then they start preparing themselves for something that doesn't have anything to do with their biblically defined role. My advice is keep preparing yourself to fulfill the role of biblical womanhood as a wife and a mother. And if God doesn't give you a husband, he'll help you figure it out from there.

But it's critical that we trust God with the roles and relationships that he's already defined. And trust him in those things. And not be diverted from that. But the greatest preparation really is just personal holiness. Walking with God, filling your mind up with the knowledge of his will, being filled with the Holy Spirit, crying out to God in prayer for the things that are coming up in your life.

This is how you prepare. Because in a lot of ways, life doesn't really change after you're married. There's just somebody with you all the time. All your sins still exist. You might as well deal with them now.

They're not going to go away. Everything isn't going to get fixed when you get married. It just doesn't happen. The problem with marriage is you take yourself into it and then that causes all kinds of problems. So personal holiness is the greatest preparation.

Seek the Lord while he may be found." And again, it's really not that complex. Dedicate your whole heart and soul to the Lord to serve him and use your single years for the greatest advantage for the kingdom of heaven. And then when you get married, you'll tend to do the same. But don't expect that somehow marriage is gonna bring you into some kind of state of doing the will of God. If you're properly prepared and your heart hungers to do the will of God when you're single, then it'll just carry on.

If not, marriage will be a nightmare for you because there's no holiness in it and you didn't prepare your heart before God. That's absolutely the most important preparation. I want to talk about Jesus on singleness. The Lord Jesus had some really surprising things to say about singleness. Things to say about singleness.

In the Gospel of Matthew, his disciples respond to a situation that Jesus was speaking of in the whole context of divorce. And the disciples say, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it's better not to marry. So if marriage is so much trouble, And the kind of trouble they were talking about is the trouble of being stuck with someone. They were not happy that Jesus was saying that if you marry someone, you're stuck with them. That's what he was saying.

If you get married, you're stuck. And the disciples say, well if that's the way it is, it's better not to get married. And the reason is, you know, Jesus was teaching them a completely different worldview about marriage. The whole worldview that Jesus was attacking was the world view that said, if you don't like your wife, you can get rid of her for any reason. Hey, the disciples embraced that idea.

These are the disciples, and they believed that idea, that you could put your wife away for any reason. They believed it because the Pharisees taught them that. And they had embraced a really wrong idea about marriage. And so Jesus is confronting that. They had drunk the Kool-Aid of the culture at that time.

And so Jesus is confronting them. And then he starts talking to them about singleness and marriage. What do you really think about singleness, really? What do your parents think about singleness? What are their thoughts about a person who's single?

Well, Jesus weighs in here, and I just want to read to you some of the things that he says about singleness. He says, first of all, that singleness is given. He said to them, all cannot accept this saying, but only to those to whom it has been given. And what he's saying is that all cannot accept the idea that it's not good to marry and stay single, but some can't accept that idea. And it's only those to whom it has been given.

In other words, singleness is a matter of the sovereignty of God. In other words, it is something that God gives you and you are able to accept. It's a matter of divine sovereignty. And Jesus is saying, you know, you don't volunteer for singleness, it's given to you. That's what he's saying.

And it's imposed on you. And it's totally contrary to the whole Roman Catholic idea that You volunteer for singleness. You know how that, you get yourself holy passion and you decide that you're gonna become a nun, or a monk. And you now, you dedicate your life to be single. Jesus says, no, you don't give it to yourself.

It is given to you from heaven. That's his whole proposition. It's not something that You sort of figure out on your own. You're saying, well, maybe I should be single, Lord. Maybe I'm going to decide to be single.

I'm going to dedicate, no. It's something that is given from heaven. Your ability to embrace that idea of being single is something that's given from heaven. And if you don't have it, it hadn't been given you from heaven. Now Jesus, of course, himself was single.

But he says that it is given, and it is not given to all. It's an act of divine power. And so the disciples' disposition to this was they were just incredulous. They couldn't relate to it all. And then Jesus says that there are different kinds of single people.

There are different kinds of eunuchs. And he says that there are those who were born eunuchs. There were those who were born to be and stay single. And he says, for there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb. Isn't that interesting?

I don't know what you think about singleness. Jesus says that some people are just born that way. That's the way God wired the world. And in the same way that some people are born without hands or feet or various other organs, they are from their mother's womb made to be single. And in order to be married, it requires certain physical characteristics.

Some people are not born with those physical characteristics. God has done this. I know it's a really disturbing idea, But that's what God has done. And he is sovereign. When a child is born, they need to read this verse and recognize that God will cause some to be born who will not be married because of the physical makeup of their bodies.

And there are all kinds of perversions of this that we see in this world. This whole territory, I don't know if you know what a hermaphrodite is, someone who was born without the consistent organs for sexuality. What God has done, people have called evil. But it does happen. Is it a tragedy when someone is born a eunuch?

Jesus says it's not a tragedy. And we have to get over a man-centered view of life. We have to quit saying that God does things wrong. Because God does all things for his own glory, and he even glorifies himself when somebody is born a eunuch. Can you accept that statement?

The disciples had a hard time with that statement. And we've got to somehow quit acting like we're smarter than God. I mean, is it a tragedy when a Down syndrome baby is born? There are many people who think that's a tragedy. But God Almighty causes these things for his own glory.

We can't really understand it, but we have to recognize that God is absolutely in control of these matters. You know what we say when somebody's gonna have a baby, we say, well, we just hope that that baby's born healthy. What do we mean by that? I mean, do we mean that God has made a mistake if it's a Down's baby? Or if it's born without a hand or something?

Are we saying that God is an evil in that sense? For what he has done? And you know, you remember the man who was born blind and Jesus was asked why and he said, neither this man nor his parents sinned but that the works of God should be revealed in him. And God is in control of all these things. Then he says there are eunuchs made eunuchs by men.

God makes some eunuchs, but men also make men eunuchs as well. That something happens under the providence of God where they are deprived of being fathers. It happened to Daniel when Daniel and the Hebrew children were taken to Babylon they were castrated. They were made eunuchs by men. You can read about this whole matter in Deuteronomy 23.

There's so many applications of this, the whole eugenics movement, sterilization. There are lawsuits in my state of North Carolina now, because back in the 70s, the eugenics board ended up sterilizing thousands of people, and they're now paying them back. These are eunuchs made by men, wicked, wicked people doing things they shouldn't do. That happens. Jesus is just acknowledging that that happens.

And then there are eunuchs for the kingdom of God. He says, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it. And so here, I mean, Jesus is legitimizing singleness. I just want us to think about what Jesus says about singleness and not just be caught up with our own thoughts about it.

But, you know, we should not be teaching against singleness. We should not be teaching against it. We know that the married state is the normative pattern. But is it possible that we've gone too far the other way and not recognize what Jesus is saying here. And there are many reasons that people are not single.

This reason here is those who set themselves aside for the kingdom of heaven. And it is a legitimate way of living to glorify God. Okay, here are a few things. Hey, singleness is not necessarily an inferior state. It is the will of God for various people.

Secondly, singleness is a gift for the glory of God. You're single right now for one single reason and that is for the glory of God. There are ways that you can glorify God now and take the opportunity. Don't wait around to glorify God in some other state of being. The state of being married.

Singleness gives a reminder of heaven. Did you ever realize that? That the state of singleness is a reminder of heaven because in heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage. And singleness, I really believe, is a parable of the future. Where there is something so much more in store for God's people.

He is going to give more than he ever gave in marriage. And the single state is really a foretelling of heaven. I don't know if you ever thought of it that way. But there is this moment in time that you live on the Earth that is a precursor to your time in heaven because you won't have a wife or a husband in heaven. Here's another thing, wrongful use of the single years, living for the weekends, selfish independence, just wasting time on worldly matters, these things should be avoided in your single years.

Don't waste your life playing around because you don't have a spouse. Spend your life for the kingdom of heaven. Use it for the greatest advantage, for the kingdom of heaven. We know that a single person can be happy. The Lord Jesus is the great example.

He was the happiest of all the disciples, Hebrews 1-9 says. A single man can be a real man and take dominion. How about the apostle Paul? How about Jeremiah? How about the Lord Jesus Christ himself?

You can be a real man and be single. It's not an inferior state at all. And singleness has its advantages. And then finally, God chooses whether we are married or whether we are single. And we have to recognize that we'll give account for those years that we were single.

And recognize the great opportunity that God has given you. I wanna leave you with this. A man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. And that includes any trials or tribulations you've had in the whole matter of getting married. God gave you those things to refine you, to make you cry out to God, to teach you lessons, to humble you, to make you rely on Him.

He sent those things to you for His own glory because He wants your whole heart and your whole soul. He wants you to only trust in Him. He wants you to say He does what He wills in heaven and on earth. He wants you to say that with your whole heart so that you are torn, you're torn from earth and you're owned by heaven. And God gives these things to us for these reasons.

Whatever the Lord pleases, He does in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all the deep places. I just want to say that in these single years, God is preparing you. He is always preparing you. You don't want to spend these years just waiting and wanting, but to recognize that God is refining you as gold. And all of your longings, all of the pressures are designed to make you who he wants to be.

And he is going to do that. And he is going to send you through the fire, he's gonna send you through disappointment, he's gonna send you through trials, he's gonna send you through longings, and you'll even cry tears. But all of these things are designed by God to drive you to Him and to recognize, for you to recognize that He is your greatest joy. Because that's what it'll be in heaven. All you will have is him and he will be your greatest joy and you are single now to be taught that the greatest joy on Earth is found in your love and your submission toward him.

He is preparing you now for heaven. Prepare well, enjoy the Lord today, enjoy his gifts now. Focus your whole heart on him. He's preparing you for heaven, in a state where marriage doesn't exist anymore. And I pray for the single people in our church that their prayer would be this, thank you God, thank you for what you've given, thank you for what you've taken away, thank you for what you've withheld from me.

I pray that that's your prayer as well. And to recognize that He is teaching, He's disciplining, He's caring for you now in your single years, He's doing it for His own glory. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, oh Lord, that you would give us such a clear vision of the glories of heaven that you would prepare us for heaven in all of our experiences here. I pray for these people who are not married yet that you would give them such a vision of the sufficiency of your son Jesus Christ in preparation for that great day.

Amen. Okay, Any questions that anybody might have? Yeah. It's got to get a good code word that you can use instead of the C word. You use the C word, people get kind of polarized.

Is that the courtship word? Okay. Lordship instead of courtship. Lordship? Lordship.

There you go, okay. Yeah, I like that. That. It's not a biblical word and it means so many things to so many people. In that sense it's a dangerous word And it has to be very carefully defined.

And you do not want to go into a courtship without a real live definition, because people think it means different things. And it causes enormous trouble. Absolutely. I know this is kind of a specific question, but you mentioned texting between a young man and a young lady. Would you, in your personal opinion, say that that would be unwise under any circumstance?

Because of the sensitive and important nature of the relationship, you have to evaluate the nature and the importance of the communication method that you're using. And I haven't seen a communication method that is so susceptible to misunderstanding, to misunderstanding, ridiculousness, and brevity to the point of meaninglessness. That form of communication so easily lends itself to meaningless conversations, little backs and forth. And I would just ask, is it really a helpful communication tool when you're dealing with something so important? Does it facilitate or does it just titillate?

What does it really do? Honestly, it's really difficult to communicate thoroughly and clearly and carefully when you're doing this. And just miss a couple characters and you've offended the whole world. So I mean, there are a number of levels that I, you know, I'm processing this on a number of levels. That's sort of one level.

And plus it's permanent. It's permanent. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. I mean, my counsel would be, hey, talk to one another. Talk to one another.

Use the method that has existed for a long time. Now, that's one level. Because of that, all kinds of problems end up getting created. Is it appropriate for young men to begin to light the fires of young women privately, silently, and out from under the care and the authority of a father. And my view is no, it's not appropriate to do that.

So I think there are dangers on a number of different levels like that. It is just so easy to miscommunicate. You know, as far as the younger people in our church, our counsel to our parents is, don't let your kids do that. It causes so much havoc in a church when teenagers are texting one another. I don't know if you've experienced that.

It causes enormous havoc. And you just have to recognize the methodology and then analyze the dangers that are there. I don't think there's anything wrong with texting. But you have to manage the technology or it'll manage you. We just haven't had a communication tool like that where people can speak like in a closed door to a 13 year old girl.

I think that's dangerous. Well, that's not the stage of like you guys are in. So I think it's a little bit more nuanced, at a different stage of life. You propose a situation of like, how does somebody get to know somebody in a different state or whatever. Did you answer your own question by talking about what you need to do within your own church?

Or did you leave that unanswered and still have an answer for that situation? I'm not sure I completely understand your question. You talked earlier about getting to know somebody across the country or the state, but you didn't directly answer it, but I'm asking did you answer it by the relationships you have within your own church body, or does it have another answer to it? Oh, yeah, yeah, thank you. So, you know, distance relationships just pose different problems.

I don't believe they're wrong to enter into it all. I mean I had a daughter that married a guy who lived 1, 500 miles away. But it was different. It required a different way of their getting to know each other than my other two children who knew each other from the time they were little. Like, for example, I had a daughter who married a guy that, I traveled all over the world with him for about four years and I knew him really, really well.

And he poured his heart out to me. He was a son in the faith to me. And he had told me his sins, and I knew him really, really well. I knew what he thought about in every situation. I mean, in any category of theology or practical life, I knew what he thought.

So when he said, I want to marry your daughter, I said, great, I didn't have any questions. I had no questions for him. You know, they didn't have to get to know each other, They knew each other, they grew up together. So that was totally different than my eldest daughter who had to have a different way of doing it. So I think you have to just be wise with the situation that you have.

Am I touching on your question? Yeah, I guess I was thinking of just travel in general. Do you know people who purposely take their children with them around to places so they get to know people outside of the community? I mean, of course that kind of gets away from the God's in control thing where you're taking an action. Okay, I see.

So, Is it appropriate to take your family to places where they can meet people who they might be able to marry? Is that your question? Or what's your experience with that? Yeah, I do think that's appropriate. And I think it has to be done carefully.

And I, Amy, my view is that parents ought to create an environment where they're around marriageable people for their children. They gotta figure out how to do that. I mean, some people, they live so far out in the country, they're never gonna get to know anybody. And then they whine and complain about their children don't know anybody. Well they should move to a big city or something.

You know, I mean, it kinda does matter where you live. And parents have a responsibility to expose their children to right marriage opportunities. I think that's a right thing to do. I think that's an act of love. I think when it becomes predatory and maniacal, I think it probably can get that way, where people are just, they show up at your house, they're looking at all your other children and they're matching them up.

Well, hey, God is in control of that. But, You know, I think as shepherds of our family, we've got to shepherd that flock into the best pasture. And that may mean that we help our children get to know other people that don't even live in our geography. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In terms of the meaningful conversations, would you say those should begin at about the age that's represented here tonight?

I do, yeah. Although, I mean, my opinion is that natural brother-sister conversations can happen younger than that. But serious conversations, you know, should be reserved for a more serious time frame. When should those begin to happen? Well, when a person is really ready to be married.

I don't think those conversations are really all that appropriate until somebody is really ready to put their money where their mouth is. I agree 100% when everything has been said about God being sovereign and exercising his will to his good pleasure on heaven and earth. He turns the head of the king where he will. He turns the head of fathers where he will. He turns the heads of sons where he will.

I'd like to pause with a little thought regarding father's responsibilities and son's responsibilities primarily father's, and I got this from the book, Safety Home where a little insight into the Hebrew mind was, or the Hebrew paradigm was positive where the father understood he had three main things that he needed to do with his children one was to teach them a trade well let me start with the first one was to teach them about God the next was to teach them a trade And the next was to establish them a guy who were fine men. If you remove any one of those things, you break down the chain. Thank you. Thank you.