In this sermon, Don Hart discusses the problems associated with the dating culture and the practice of courtship in pursuit of marriage. He emphasizes the importance of protecting a daughter's purity and a father's role in giving her in marriage. The speaker identifies the dangers associated with premature romantic attachments and the difficulties in navigating the balance between emotional purity and pursuing a relationship. He encourages the audience to continue questioning their assumptions and to always be reforming their understanding of biblical patterns in relationships. Hart also raises concerns about the diverse practices in courtship within the Christian community and suggests that a better model should be established to promote harmonious relationships within the body of Christ.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Don Hart with the message, Do we have our cart before our horse when it comes to love? The question that we've posed with regard to our analysis in this talk is do we have our cart before our horse when it comes to love. Now that might be how a Texan would describe the sort of problem that it seems that we need to address at least at one level. We've actually got some real slides. There's one advantage to having friends in Texas who have horses and teams.

And there's a good friend of mine literally with his cart in front of his horse. I don't know if you can see it real well, but he's bringing the team around, and here's the end result, and what we would love to get to, and what a good friend to let me drive his team and let our whole family ride in his wagon as we tried to have our cart before our horse. And we want to do the same thing in pursuit of marriage. We don't want to do things in the wrong order. And I'll assure you, I don't have perfect solutions.

I don't have a handle on every single way in which we may have our cart in front of our horse. But hopefully we can dive in together and identify some areas where we've got room for improvement and where we can identify the best biblical patterns. And as we do that, we'll actually challenge some of our assumptions in the process. So That's essentially the life of those who are always reforming, isn't it? Just about the time we get comfortable and think that we've got something figured out, it's time to ask the question, do we really have it figured out?

Or do we still need to be reforming? It's an interesting description in terms of our faith to be called reformed because we are never really reformed. We are always reforming and always seeking to be sanctified before the Lord and to be making progress in our Christian walk. And that's what I hope that we're able to do in this talk today. Now, here's three little fellows who are with me at the conference.

I'd like you to guess, just sort of in your own mind, with which two of these I may have had my most recent conversations about marriage. That's Valler, Victor, and Jackson. That picture, I think, Victor's five, and Vowler's seven, and Jackson is three. And you would think that I'd be having conversations about these kinds of things with older children than them, wouldn't you, but it might surprise you, the two with whom I've had my most recent discussions about marriage. Before I tell you about my boys' comments in this area, though, I'd like to tell you about the comment of a good friend of mine.

He was telling me about a discussion he had with his son. He was challenging his son about being manly, about taking responsibility, about being about the things of men and about growing into a man. His son's young, but a fine young man who really, his dad has his heart, and he was really plugged in and listening, and as his dad concluded the discussion, he said, and son, when you begin to do these things, and I begin to be able to trust you, and you begin to show that you've grown in these areas, you'll be making the transition to being a little man instead of a little boy. And his son thought about it for just a second and he said, well when I do that, does that mean I get a little wife? You know our children are thinking about these things pretty early.

One of my most recent conversations was with my middle son there, Victor. The expression that he has on his face in that picture is not too different from the expression that he had on his face during some of these discussions. And I think by the end of our discussion, I may have looked a lot like that too. Victor was really interested in the issue of marriage. And he wanted to talk through the issue with me, and he's concerned about who he was going to marry.

And after having a talk about sisters not being an option, and you know, you haven't lived until you've had the discussion of the laws of consequently with a three year old, four year old. That is, that's a pretty challenging, pretty challenging conversation to have, but we had that one. I appreciated his affection for his sisters, and we got that cleared up. And then he brought another option before me, and he wanted to discuss a really saintly woman in our church. She is an amazing lady, an incredible keeper in the home, a beautiful Christian woman, a cook who just, you know, can knock your doors off, hospitable, an amazing helper to her husband.

So we had to have another conversation about not coveting another man's wife. And about being appropriately and equally yoked. This dear lady is in her 70s. But I mean a genuine admiration for the Christian character of this woman. And so we really had a sweet conversation about it, even at his tender age.

And the next conversation that I wanted to tell you about was one that I had with Jackson. He's here, sitting beside his mama and his brother's over here on the other side. And we didn't have a real in-depth conversation, and this was the most recent. In fact, it came up on the way to the conference. As We were driving along, Jackson's seated in the seat behind me, coming all the way from Texas to North Carolina.

He was singing through much of the trip. He is a singer, he likes to sing. One of the songs that he was singing, as I listened to him repeat the verse about two or three times, I began to have a little bit of concern and it went something like this, I Want me a wife before I go, a pretty little gal with a turned up nose, and twinkling music, or dancing music, and they're twinkling toes. Well we had to have a discussion about where he got verses to that song, and sort of his perspective on marriage that was reflected by that, and I learned that, well, suffice it to say, we had a discussion about the theology of cowboy music, and we are suspending all viewings of Roy Rogers, Davy Crockett, until further review pending discussion of musical content. My point, we are thinking about these issues as parents and as young people who are prepared for marriage in many of your cases, and even as little bitty ones, we're thinking about this issue of marriage, we're thinking about this issue of the family, we're thinking about how to get from point A to point B, and to do it in the most biblical and godly way, And just like we did when we were little bitty, our little ones are thinking about these things as well.

We've seen examples of the interactions of those who aren't married throughout our lives. And we know what the world would like to communicate to us about it, and it's not good. The world's message is one of sensuality, of lust, perversion, filth. All around us, our culture is fighting to redefine marriage, to replace biblical femininity with something more akin to harlotry and nakedness, to reduce manhood, to drunken perversion in many cases, interrupted only by occasional gluttony and maybe sports. We are not getting the message with regard to our world view with regard to marriage, at least not the right message from the world in which we are immersed.

It embraces this dating culture, which I trust, I hope, I believe, that we have resoundingly rejected. We won't spend a tremendous amount of time on the issues. We, I think, know the problems associated with it, how it promotes an approach to love between a man and a woman that really is based on feelings rather than on biblical commands, how it presents such unprotected situations, how it leads to intimacy without commitment, how it really cheapens relationships between men and women, and how it is really such excellent preparation for divorce As people get involved with each other in ways that they shouldn't, and then figure out how to get disentangled and then get involved again, and then get disentangled, even if it's simply emotional in terms of the attachment that arises. We know what good preparation for divorce this dating culture is. And so, I am so grateful that we reject it.

That we simply reject it. And if we haven't, if you're here and you haven't, and you're tempted to dabble in that area, let me just exhort you. Brother, sister, it is not the right way. It is not the right way. The fruit proves it, you can't back it up biblically, it is not the right way.

And so what have we done? Well, One of the things that we have embraced as we've rejected the dating concepts is a concept that many of us call courtship. Webster's 1828 defines courtship as the act of soliciting favor, the act of wooing in love, the solicitation of a woman to marriage. It defines the word court, the verb there, as to flatter, to endeavor, to please by civilities and address, a use of the word derived from the manners of a court, as we would behave in the presence of one with whom we would like to curry favor, with whom we would subject ourselves for that purpose. We take our definition of to court, and of course to woo, to solicit for marriage.

Example that's shown here on our slide, a thousand court you, though they court in vain. Courtship. Well, have we figured it out? Not surprisingly, the practice of courtship generally looks a lot like these definitions would suggest, doesn't it? I'm going to assume again about those of you who are here that we have a level of understanding about something at this point.

I'm going to assume that we agree and understand that daughters are given in marriage by their fathers. We'll talk about this a little bit more in a few minutes. But that daughters are to be protected, provided for, and presented pure for marriage. This is the duty of a father. And frankly, if We don't have pretty clear agreement on this.

We probably don't have time to get there during this talk. But we will touch on it just briefly. If you want to jot down some scriptures that speak to the issue, 1 Timothy 5.8 describes fathers providing for their daughters. Deuteronomy 22, 13 through 21 describe a father's duty to protect daughters. The concept of the bride price, which is so important to our understanding of biblical marriage, is described in Exodus 22 and Genesis 34, and again in 1 Samuel 18 verse 25, Jeremiah 26, we see the father giving the daughter in marriage.

Again, without making a tremendous amount of argument about our application of this, I'm going to assume that we have some agreement in this area. Because frankly, that lines up with what I've seen in the application of courtship. So to court, to flatter, to endeavor, to please, by civilities, to woo, to solicit, for marriage. Isn't that the application of courtship you've so frequently seen? This is not for entertainment.

This is not for our personal enjoyment. We're not dating for fun. We're about something more important. We are purposing to try to end in marriage as this process unfolds. And so clearly we've got a different purpose than that dating culture that we've described.

What I've typically seen in courtship is a situation in which, reflecting the understanding that a daughter is to be protected and given in marriage, a man initiates his pursuit of a wife. Generally, in my experience, the woman's father has examined the man, qualifies him, does that in the duty and understanding of the context of his role as a protector of his daughter. And if the man passes muster with dad, he's then permitted to try to woo his daughter for the purpose of marriage. Does that line up with what you've generally seen in sort of a conservative application of courtship? Or no?

That's pretty similar to what I've usually seen. I see some nods, I see some quizzical expressions. If I had to say how it generally plays out, That's the way that I've generally seen it play out. And again, that lines up with what the word means, doesn't it? To woo, to solicit in marriage.

Well again, we've said already, we're going to challenge some of our assumptions. And while I think what we're describing here is a vast improvement, over dating, and a real step in the right direction, I think we need to continue to ask the question, have we arrived? Have we discerned the most biblical path that we could travel in the pursuit of marriage? Do we have the whole picture? Or are we in that glorious and exciting but uncomfortable position of always reforming and always having to continue to ask questions, even about the things that we have embraced as we've rejected things that we know we ought not to embrace.

We try to be careful about some things in courtship, don't we? We try to pay attention with regards to issues of purity and defrauding, so we, again, I'm going to assume a level of understanding and agreement that we, we understand we're to be careful, clearly, about physical purity before marriage. Again, an essential part of how a father protects and presents his daughter for marriage is that he presents her pure. We not only understand that we've got to be concerned about physical purity, but we understand that we've got some duties with regard to emotional purity, that we have a duty to guard our minds and affections, and that we don't want to either defraud others of affections of theirs, which should be reserved only for the one that they might marry. Nor do we want to defraud someone who someday we might marry by indiscriminately giving our affections to other people.

Fair? The scriptures exhort us, don't they? Don't defraud one another. Do not defraud one another. So we desire not only to be pure physically, but we desire to maintain the purity of heart.

That's just what's described in James 4.8, Proverbs 4.23, where we're admonished to Keep our hearts with all diligence, for out of it spring what? The issues of life. So we're to be careful about our hearts. We're to be careful about our minds also, aren't we? We are warned about the danger of lust.

That ugly word. Lust. We also know that as part of keeping our hearts and minds pure, we are to avoid it. Matthew 5 28 makes it clear what a profound issue of the heart and not just what we do this is. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

2 Timothy 2.22 gives us a good general warning about the lusts of the flesh. Flee also youthful lusts, but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Lust. What does this word mean? Is it purely something that connotes a physical action related to sensuality and sexuality?

I'm not at all sure that it does. Youthful lust, is that the only kinds of lust that anyone ever struggles with in their youth? The meaning of lust, the Greek word epithumio, means to turn upon a thing, to have a desire for, long for, to desire, to lust after, to covet, often of those things forbidden. Lust. King James translates this Greek word into lust into English several different ways.

It translates it eight times desire, three times covet, three times lust, once lust after, and once feigned. Matthew 5 28, we've already read. Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 13.17, for surely I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. There's a very different application of that same Greek word.

Strong desire. Desiring to see something good. The Messiah. Luke 15, speaking of the prodigal son, he would gladly fill the stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. That's how he desired food in his hunger.

Oh boy, this thing of lust is not necessarily so limited simply to a sexual impurity issue, is it? We go on, Luke 17, then he said to his disciples, the days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. A strong, strong desire for something is this Greek word that in English, we see translated, so often lust or desire, even to covet. Luke 22, 15, with fervent desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. And Christ uses that same strong desire, that same Greek word.

Of course we know that that's not an indication of anything remotely sinful. It couldn't be with the person of Christ. It's an indication of strong, strong desire for something. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet. There's that word again, covet.

And if there's any other commandment, all summed up in this, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, Romans 13 nine. There again, that same word used, the same word used in 1 Corinthians 10, where we're warned about lusting after evil things, the same word used in Galatians five, for the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish. Number of other scriptures use this same word. I bring this to your attention at this point in the talk to illustrate this. We need to be careful about the things that we desire strongly.

We need to be careful that we don't cross into a sinful, lustful attitude about those things, or a number of other verses that we could talk about with regard to that. But our topic here is the path to marriage, the most biblical path that we might pursue with regard to marriage, and how might we have things in the wrong order in our understanding of love as we travel that path. We'll begin to see a level of tension in our application here, don't we? We have all kinds of don'ts and lines that we are not to cross in the pursuit of marriage. We're not to cross lines with regard to physical purity, emotional purity, defrauding, lust.

Well, we are navigating an area of profound danger in which incredibly fine and godly men have fallen horribly. And part of that danger involves premature, romantic attachments. Wanting something so badly that the will of God, or the process by which it might be obtained, or truth and honesty, or a whole host of other things become less important than having that thing that we want. Be careful of lust. Not just a sexually impure application of lust, but of desiring something that we may not lawfully desire at the level at which we might desire it.

And so I bring us back to our discussion of how we typically see courtship unfolding. Daughter, protected. Dad, as the protector. Young man, approaching with the intent for marriage, approaching, I think, frequently, nobly, with great intentions, but approaching with grave vulnerability because of the very dangers of the waters which he seeks to navigate. Do you see it?

And this young man has got to be careful about all these things that we're talking about. And he's got to be careful that he doesn't want that woman so badly, that he doesn't lust after her, even if he only, if there's no physical impurity in terms of his, if we cannot set our minds and our desires on things so strongly that we're sinful about it. Do we see young men placed into that situation? Sometimes in courtships. Have we arrived?

Do we have it all figured out? Or does this duty to always reform help us with the struggle that we might face in keeping things in proper balance. Romans 13, nine essentially defines this balance for us. But we have not perfected its application. And while we never will in this life, Our duty is to keep moving in that direction as we are sanctified.

Think about our practice and what we have seen as Christian young women and young men and their fathers and their mothers pursue marriage. Well, what does it look like frequently whenever faithful, good Christian people are pursuing this noble goal of marriage with all these concerns and cautions in mind? How do they interact with one another? How does this work out practically? Sometimes we're going to be so sure to avoid emotional entanglement that we live as if our brothers and sisters in Christ don't even exist.

Have you seen that? Have you seen applications where you have boys here, girls here, young men here, young women here, a wall of separation, and there's no crossing. Because we're going to stay pure. We're going to be careful. We're not going to do the things that we ought not to.

We're gonna be really, really cautious and careful about the don'ts. Haven't you seen this as you've seen people moving in the direction, maybe not in a courtship, but young people moving in the direction of marriage. Some are churches, look sort of like this. All these young men, these young women who really don't know each other because they are really trying to be careful about their attachments. Well, as you've probably seen, and as you might imagine if you haven't seen, after a couple of decades of this, it can be a pretty good chore knowing who to pursue for marriage.

Is that the picture of loving someone with whom you are equally yoked as a brother and sister in Christ in all purity? Do we love by ignoring? Don't think so. But we're trying to be careful. We're trying not to do what we shouldn't do.

So, we try something else. Well let's love by evaluating each other all the time. Instead of this wall of separation, let's spend our time once we begin to get to a marital age and our children are there, just getting to know each other. But getting to know each other how. Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation.

I'm thinking you as a perspective wife. I'm thinking of you as a perspective husband. I'm evaluating you in exactly that light. That's how I'm seeing you, That's how I'm evaluating you. We all know what happens a lot of times when we go too far the other way, don't we?

It becomes frequently flirtatious as young women and men see each other as little other than potential spouses. Invariably, we end up with some sort of a mix of applications which can really lead to awkwardness and tensions of its own and even resentment toward one another. And sometimes we end up with something that looks like this. Model number one didn't work for some, so they tried model number two. Model number two, bad results for others, so they flip-flop.

And then we've got this other category of folks that just sort of could be described as everyone else. Young men and young women on opposite sides of the wall of separation, some evaluating each other constantly, crossing lines that they probably shouldn't if they want to remain emotionally pure, and then you've got everyone else, those who aren't in that season of life, over here in another place, it really doesn't look all that much like the body of Christ, does it? Where the parts work in harmony, and where the parts depend on one another, it doesn't look real family integrated, does it? As we're at a National Center for Family Integrated Churches Conference, does it? Looks pretty segmented.

Looks pretty fragmented. Looks like there's lots of opportunity to trip up. Have you seen these applications and variations of them that we're talking about is people have tried to navigate this path from unmarried to married. I see a fair bit of agreement that this is often what we see. Now, is any of them representative of the perfect model?

And again, we're not gonna get there today. What we'll try to do is talk about what we can understand and what we can better apply and move toward a better model. But you know, one of the things that we often want as Christians is we really want a formula. I want these 10 steps and I want this precise way of doing things and I want to be assured that if I can check off 1 through 10, I'm going to end up with a godly wife and I'm going to be pure in the process and we're going to navigate it perfectly. You know, very few things that are important in the Christian life work that way.

God's not about checklists as much as he is about relationships. Glorifying God is less about being mechanically sure that we follow certain processes than it is about crying out to Him and seeking His face and searching His word and crying out for His favor and His kindness when we are beyond our own ability to navigate dangerous waters. It's about fasting and about praying and about crying out to God. It's really about relationship a whole lot more than it is checklists. And so is this.

This process will look different every time we apply it. From family to family, probably from child to child. In the same family, we're going to see dramatic differences. But there are a handful of things that perhaps we can identify as having led to some of the problems that we're trying to work through. Sometimes we've accepted the wrong assumptions.

Sometimes we've bought into the fairy tale, haven't we? Many of you young ladies here feel like you have got an absolute right to have a white knight, shining armor, come and rescue you from whatever distress you may find yourself in. Well, the world has told you you do. The world has insisted that you do. Greco-Roman philosophy, lots and lots of things.

Hollywood has pummeled us with a set of assumptions that we're supposed to just blindly accept. Here's the question. Do we accept assumptions like love at first sight? Being swept off our feet? Not just the damsel who has the right to be rescued, but being the white knight who gets the rescuer.

Have we bought into some wrong assumptions? And while we quickly say no we haven't, sometimes our practice tells a little different story. In theory we don't agree with a lot of what the world, the culture, Hollywood, and the western civilization we live in might immerse us in. But we've gotta be careful because little boys at four are singing about pretty little wives with a turned up nose. And dancing, music in their twinkling toes.

The immersion is real. And brothers and sisters, a lot of times beautiful and handsome seems to draw more suitors or cause acceptance of more suitors than does godliness. Have we accepted wrong assumptions? If we're experiencing trials and we're seeing things that we are not pleased with in our applications, we have got to ask the questions. Is anything we're doing bringing God's displeasure?

Are we laboring under judgment at any level because of anything that we are doing? And The fact that we're not being established in marriages quite as early as we might like to is not necessarily an indication of God's judgment. It may be that we just need to wait. And there is a host of scripture about the beauty of waiting on the Lord. And it may be that we just need to wait and see things come to fruition in God's timing.

And frequently, I believe that really can very well be the case. But there are also times where we are seeing things delayed and seeing things navigated poorly and perhaps it's because of something that we're doing or that we're not doing. So we have to continue to reform. We have to keep stopping, examining what we're doing, understanding there's no right to marriage as much as we might desire it, hope for it, believe that it's God's will for us and understand that it is God's normative pattern that most every young person in this room and in this world will ordinarily be married. We don't need to panic, but we also don't need to turn a blind eye with regard to things that perhaps aren't working out as well as we might like.

So have we accepted any wrong assumptions? Just file that away. Continue to ask as you navigate these waters. Is there any level at which I've accepted wrong assumptions and am being driven by that acceptance of what the world is encouraging? You know, God's Word's got a different program for us.

You know that danger of wanting something so bad that you just do anything to get it? Being so determined to get something that nothing will stand in your way? You know that young man who would run through a brick wall for that woman? Hey, there's a part of that that is beautiful, and there's a part of that that is indicative of a man who is strong and who is ready to be married and who is well prepared and who is showing the evidence of manhood that a man ought to have. But there are lots of ways to prove that.

Sometimes seeking to prove it under the watchful eye of a potential father-in-law leads young men to be maybe a little less than completely forthright. Maybe to give an impression that's not quite as accurate as it might be. You know how we learn a little better? You know what I do, I'm thinking about hiring someone. Let's check references.

Let's see what people who have seen this young man operate in circumstances where he's not trying to win a wife have to say about him. Let's see if he's the same man of strength and determination and character and integrity that he certainly wants to appear to be as He's trying to convince me to let him court my daughter. There are lots of ways that we can evaluate young men, I'm grateful that Brother Doug's been talking about the right ways and gracious ways to evaluate suitors. Here's the question. If it is our duty as equally yoked Christians pursuing marriage to have certain attitudes towards each other and throughout the whole process to be singularly aware of our duty to glorify God, are we accepting any assumptions?

Are we engaged in any processes that by definition make it more difficult to do that than we should. Again, I'm going to make another assumption. And that is that most in this room understand that your duty as a Christian is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Read Psalm 86. If you want to see that proven.

Praise the Lord my God, with all my heart, I will glorify thy name forevermore. Look at Isaiah 60, 21. People shall be righteous, they shall inherit the land, work in my hands, that I may be glorified. Romans 11, for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen.

Our duty is to glorify God. 1 Corinthians 6, 20, for you are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. These are never bad things for us to be reminded about. Even though we agree on them and we understand and we've heard since we were a little bitty, if we were catechized about the chief end of man and man's duty to glorify God and enjoy him forever, it is never a bad idea to be reminded that we are bought with a price. And whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we're to do it all for the glory of God as described in 1 Corinthians 10.

It is always good for us to reflect on the worthiness of our God, to receive glory and honor as it's described in Revelation chapter four. While we focus on glorifying God, and as we should focus on glorifying God, remember also the second part. Glorify God in what? Enjoy Him forever. Do you know that the most pleasant, the most happy, the most enjoyable, the most joyous, the greatest Christian life is one whose singular purpose is to glorify God?

Do you know that the world's message about, oh, you're going to miss so much if you live that way, is a bucket of lies. I know you do. I just want to remind you of what you already know. What a lie. Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand. I shall not be moved. Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall rest in hope, for thou will not leave my soul in hell. Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption.

Thou will show me the path of life and thy presence is fullness of joy. With thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. That sounds like a happy man, doesn't it? That sounds like a man glorifying God and enjoying glorifying God. Perhaps if you don't remember anything else about this talk with regard to the path to pursue marriage, remember this, glorify God, glorify God, glorify God.

Don't let anything that you want, or you want for your children, cloud your vision and distort and deceive and cause you not to glorify God. Glorify God. I promise you, you will be happier for it. If you are His, I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, it will be a path to joy and happiness and rejoicing and delight. Behold, God is my salvation.

I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. He also has become my salvation. This is a gospel-centered marriage conference. Gospel-centered. Glorify God.

Remember, remember, remember. And the angel said unto him, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, the Lord Jesus Christ. May he always be central, May He always be exalted. May we glorify our Savior. Rejoice in the Lord always.

And again I say rejoice. We could go on and on about the happiness and the rejoicing and the glory that is attenuate to glorifying God. To glorifying God. From Genesis to Revelation. You can look at Revelation 21.

3 and 4. Glorify God. Let's never forget that glorifying God and enjoying Him forever is the chief end of man. And that happy are those people, as we see in Psalm 144. Happy is that people whose God is the Lord.

So, if we are seeking to navigate these dangerous and difficult waters, and we hope to do it successfully, glorify God and don't lose sight of it. Don't want something so bad that your vision of it is obscured. Don't let a process creep in based on wrong assumptions from the world that make it virtually impossible. Glorify God. Glorify God.

When it comes to love, love between a man and a woman, especially in pursuit of marriage, especially when that affection happens before a godly commitment, a betrothal, ultimately a wedding. We often struggle with a mysterious disconnect with this duty to glorify God that I have emphasized so much for the last few minutes. We do. We may not want to acknowledge it, we may not want to admit it, but God's people struggle with it. How many times has the wedding day been all about me?

And I don't care who gets hurt, I don't care who gets bankrupt. This is my day. This is all about me. Oh, I know I'm supposed to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, but on this particular day, I have an exception. Suddenly I am more important than the duty according to which I am to live.

Or perhaps it's in the pursuit of marriage that we see this mysterious disconnect. Hard to explain except to understand that we are navigating difficult waters with flesh that is weak and subject to dangerous temptation. Godly people struggle with this. Some of the most godly struggle with this. The man after God's own heart struggled with it.

In the next talk tomorrow morning at 9.30, we'll talk more specifically about David and Bathsheba and David's struggle. We'll talk about applications that we see in scripture where these struggles are reflected. We'll touch on them today to try to give a picture, but we'll talk about them in more detail in our next talk as we again try something that scares me to death. We try to have real application-oriented talks about how to navigate things that are very difficult. Today's talk is more foundational.

Tomorrow we'll have application even more. But I want us to talk about application as much as we can both times, as difficult and as scary as it is. And one of the areas that help us to understand is to see what's happened in this area with some of the most godly men to ever live. Men who at the pinnacle of their lives, men who were kings, victorious, Men who had faithfully glorified God through the most difficult of circumstances. Being pursued relentlessly, being lied about, being defrauded, having Kingdom that had been declared to be his by the prophet withheld by the king having been defrauded with regard to the king's daughter, having been pursued and hunted like an animal in a cave.

And who had not perfectly, but so consistently, been so faithful through all of those trials. David. I mean, what man has been more tender of conscience about glorifying God throughout his testimony up to a certain point in his life than was David. His conscience was so tender that it smote him for merely cutting off a part of the king's robe that represented his royalty and his kingdom and the thought that he had stepped over the line and taken something before God actually delivered it to him. What a tenderness of conscience that in doing that instead of killing him, like his men urged him, that David's conscience smote him for such a man to fall so shockingly over his desire for a woman ought to humble us and ought to make us a little bit shake in our boots about our own frailty, about our own flesh, about the seriousness of what we are seeking to navigate as we seek to relate to one another and be established in marriages that are reflections of Christ and the church and are so important with regard to the glory of God.

David's desire for Bathsheba compromised him and made him willing to do anything and callous the most tender of conscience. Look at how it killed his love for his brother Uriah. This faithful warrior who would put his life on the line and give it for David and deny himself when his brothers were in the field. I mean this man that we could talk about for so long, look at how it changed David's attitude toward Uriah and made him murderous toward this valiant man. And by the way, other valiant men in the field beside him.

Look at what the man after God's own heart with the most tender conscience that we've, you know, have perhaps observed throughout biblical history to this point. Look at him. Look at the cover up in which he was willing to be involved. Look at the deceit that took this truest of hearts. Consider how his fall in this area completely compromised his commitment to what we've been talking about, to loving and glorifying his God.

It had been his chief aim, purpose, central thought throughout his life. And next talk we'll talk about part of his area of vulnerability, the time of victory that he enjoyed, how he had reached the pinnacle right when he fell, but we won't spend a whole lot of time on that today. Time just doesn't permit us during most talks. But look at how it did violence to his love for God, how his wrong attitude in this regard did violence to his love for his brother, his neighbor, his servant Uriah. Look at how it blinded him to his dominion work.

Look at how it blinded him to the purpose of marriage itself. That purpose of a man with dominion work, needing a helper suitable for him to do it. Isn't that what was established with Adam and Eve? A man with work needing a suitable helper. Boy, do we see any element of that in his approach to Bathsheba?

Look at how it blinded him to the purpose of marriage, to his duties before the Lord. You know, we've talked about some of the struggles we experience with some of the don'ts with regard to marriage, with regard to purity and defrauding and various things. Thankfully, we really do have some things that we're clearly instructed to do that address lots of the issues that simply looking at a list of don'ts sometimes make us feel is just almost impossible to overcome. We've talked about the admonitions of Scripture that we that we love our neighbors. You know that I believe is one of the real antidotes to the incredible struggles with what we ought not to do, doing what we should do is really one of the great answers to being sure that we don't do what we should not do.

And love for our neighbors, a tender heart to glorify God, A proper understanding of our duties before the Lord. The things that we are to do are so critical. And again, we're not in danger of being robbed if we believe God about those things. Glorifying God. Enjoying Him forever.

Remembering our purpose. If loving our neighbor is really the answer, what should we think about that? How should we apply it? Just sort of say it and say, love your neighbor, you'll get married fine. Good shape.

Not quite that simple. You know, English doesn't do a great job of describing love. Many in Texas will describe, I love my dog, I love fried chicken, I love my truck, and I love my wife. Same word. All the way through.

Some of you ladies look a little mortified at being included in that list. Men, you better be using that word differently when you're talking about those other three. Our word, our English word for love is not super precise. Hebrew has some of the same limitations in terms of the word that is frequently interpreted love. We often have to look at the context in which something is used when love is described in the Old Testament to understand how that word is being used.

That verb form, ahob, or ahobah, the noun, that we see used in Hebrews. We are blessed, though, that we do have a little bit more specific and precise description of love in the Greek. And we're gonna spend the time that we have left talking about some of the things that we can do that will help us with the don'ts, that will perhaps challenge some of our assumptions and help us maybe navigate in a little more godly manner this important path to marriage. Love as described in the Greek. One word is Eros.

That's the world's probably favorite word for love. You know, we don't find that one in Scripture. We find something that many would say looks an awful lot like it in Song of Solomon and that beautiful description of that intimacy between a husband and a wife, but we don't see the Greek word Eros used in Scripture. Then there's phileo, that brotherly love with which we're familiar. Someone we just really like.

I just really like you, brother. Enjoy you. We have that word agape, which is that deepest of love, that unconditional love, that love which we are commanded as we are. Philao as well, but I think you'll be surprised at how resoundingly we're commanded to agape, our brothers and sisters in Christ. And then there's the word storge, which is not used by itself in the New Testament, but is used in a compound sense with phileo in one scripture that we'll talk about.

And storge is essentially an affectionate kind of love that flows naturally. It is descriptive of the love that exists among family. As a father, you just have a natural affection for your children. Not much you can do about it. It just flows because you have that relationship with them.

That's what that storge kind of love, or storge really refers to. And it's used with phileo in the scriptures, that brotherly, affectionate kind of love. It's the word that's also used when Christ interacts with Peter when he asks him, do you love me? And he asks him, do you love me? And he asks him, do you love me?

Christ asks, do you agape me, Peter? And Peter replies, I phileo you. And he asks a second time, do you agape me? And Peter replies, I filet-o-you. And he asks a third time.

And Christ says, do you filet-o-me? And Peter is grieved. Because he understands the lack of depth with regard to his love for his savior. These kinds of words are more descriptive than what we sometimes talk about when we use the English word Love. There's a love that is described as existing between unmarried men and women, Christians especially.

1 Timothy 5, 1, do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father. Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters with all purity. Sisters with all purity. Brotherly love. Romans 12, 10 is where we find that phileo storge compound word where we're instructed to be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love in honor giving preference to one another.

But you know that 1 Timothy 5 description? Agape. Unconditional, not flowing out of a brotherly affection so much, but a chosen, specific, intentional, Christ-like love. The overwhelming weight of commands regarding love, we are to have for each other's believers, are agape loves, that Christ-like love, actually defined in scripture by how Christ loves us, that a husband in Ephesians 5 is instructed to have for his wife. And yet we as believers are instructed frequently to have that love for each other.

So again, in the context of how we approach marriage, how does agape work? You know, it's used more than a hundred times in the New Testament. These are all agape commands in the New Testament that are described here. We won't go through all of them, obviously. We won't have time.

But 1 John 4, 8, anyone who does not know God, who does not love, does not know God, because God is love. That's that agape kind of love described there. A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, John 13. Agape. For God so loved the world, agape.

Romans 5, eight, God shows his love for us, That while we were sinners, Christ died for us. 1 Corinthians 13, that's agape. That's a command. That's a Christ-like love. 1 John 4-10, in this is love that we have loved God, I'm sorry, and this is love not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Agape, John 15, greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life. First Friends, every single one of these verses describe agape kinds of love. Now faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love, and that is an agape kind of love. And we could talk and preach sermons for weeks about these very verses and the commands that we find there. We've described that phileo storge love, which is also commanded with regard to believers in Romans 12, 10 as we've mentioned.

You know what? Marital love described in Ephesians five, as we've already mentioned, First Peter three, Colossians three, these are also agape commands. Agape commands. Now, how are we applying these as we seek to navigate courtship? In the way that it typically plays out, are there any tensions between a brother and sister potentially equally yoked for marriage, who are certainly brothers and sisters in Christ, who are commanded to have an agape love for each other, trying to navigate their way to marriage through all the processes that we've come up with thus far.

Well, I think the fact that we're here, seeking answers and trying to do better with regard to that very application is an indication that none of us are quite satisfied. And that we still are in need of reform. Clearly, that's not the kind of love that we saw played out in David's relationship with Bathsheba. The word love's not even used there of any kind. How about Jacob and Rachel?

You know why Jacob was described as loving Rachel? And that's the word that you use, that ah-ha-ba-ha-ba. A Hebrew word that in many contexts is indicative of a desire to be with, to possess, to really, really want something. It begins to almost flirt with this lust that we're told to be careful about. I mean really, really, really desire, want to possess, want to be with, I want that thing.

That's the word that's used there with regard to Jacob's love for Rachel. And you remember why? Because of her beauty. Because of her beauty. Rooted in desire.

Rooted not in an unlawful desire, I don't think, on Jacob's part in terms of wanting to have her before he was lawfully permitted to have her, but nonetheless rooted in a selfish, I want that woman because she is so beautiful, sort of an attitude to love. How'd that work out for him? Not so great. Not so great. 20 years later, quadruple polygamist, defrauded, lied to, cheated, mistreated by perspective father-in-law.

What was his motivation? What drove him? What the world says is supposed to drive us with regard to love? I want that. Love at first sight.

I am captivated, I am swept away. I am attached to her now. I've seen her, I want her, I'm attached to her. And yet he wasn't committed to her. He was trying to get there.

Does that resemble some of what we are sometimes trying to navigate with regard to courtship? Does that explain why we sometimes have difficulty navigating? Does that look like Agape? Does that look like him loving her more than he loves himself and wanting to be married to her only if it glorifies God? And only if it is God's will?

And only if it is the best thing for his sister? Not even close, brothers and sisters. And yet that is the attitude into which I think we must enter these difficult waters of courtship, if that's what we want to call it, or pursuit of marriage, or if we can come up with a better term, I'm happy for us to use it. Very different than the attitudes and the preconceptions and the things that so frequently flow as we pursue relationships that we hope will result in marriage between men and women. We don't have to talk about this example too much, do we?

We're running short of time, we don't have time to. Shechem and Dinah, he loved her. That's the word, it's used, it's there. Ahob, Ahobah. He wanted her, he desired her, he lusted after her, he violated everything that a man ought to have with regard to his love for a Christian woman, for a sister, and it resulted in rape, deception, multiple murders, because he desired her unlawfully, he wanted her selfishly.

Brothers and sisters, he had his cart in front of his horse. We go back to the premise that we're sort of trying to address in this talk foundationally. He had his cart before his horse. Jacob had his cart before his horse. You see how judgment gets clouded whenever we let a desire for something that's willing to run through a brick wall or do whatever is necessary for us to have it affect us.

Look at how it clouds judgment. Look at how it affected Jacob. Look at the man for a season that it made of David. I still can just hardly believe, hard to preach through, hard to contemplate the man after God's own heart, the shadow and type of Christ, falling so far and falling so hard. But he had his cart way before his horse and a host of other problems in his pursuit of this woman.

And look at how it affected him. Boy, attachment and a lustful desire to possess and have something before appropriate commitment, before a decision has been mutually reached to pursue marriage for the glory of God, before a brother and sister in Christ have agape'd each other in such a way that they say, as much as in my flesh I might desire to marry you, in my spirit, sister, I don't want it unless it's the best thing for you. And young men, I want those same things as I'm the father of daughters. And men, boys, fathers of daughters, we do have a duty to protect and present our daughters pure. But we have a duty to deal faithfully with our brothers as well.

We have a duty to deal truthfully and kindly. I'm not under the impression that we've got any Labans in this room, any wicked men who would intentionally say, you know what, I need six new barns and a whole herd of goats and, you know, this guy's my path. God forbid that we would treat a brother that way. But sometimes in our zeal to protect our daughters, we say, you know what, I'm not gonna gappe this guy. I don't know what he's up to.

These are our brothers. These are our brothers in the Lord. Brothers in the Lord. You know Amnon's described as loving Tamar. Not in the way they ought to.

Not in the way they ought to. You know, there are some more positive examples that we can talk about and we will talk about in the next talk. Adam and Eve, Christ and the church. Isaac and Rebecca, You know Isaac is described as loving Rebecca in that same way, that ah hab, ah hab hab. But the difference was, he was committed to her and she was committed to him.

They were betrothed. And so when he had that feeling, that intensity, that desire, that love for her, it was in lawful bounds. Very different from what you see with Jacob. Solomon, the Shulamite, Othneil, and Acts of that, Caleb's challenge situation. Joseph and Mary, we don't know all the details about these situations, but we know that there was certainly no physical impurity with regard to Joseph and Mary, and we know that they were betrothed and committed to each other and that he loved her in such a way that when he thought she had to have been untrue and had to have been impure, that he was to put her away quietly, not avail himself of the full extent to have her punished under the law, not humiliate her, even when he had to have been so hurt, so crushed at what he thought must have happened.

The dangers of getting a cart before a horse. Setting these kinds of affections, deciding I'm gonna have that woman, whatever the cost, deciding I'm gonna marry that man, whatever it takes, determining certain things in the wrong of work and be really, really harmful. That's why commitment is beautiful and important. That's why, even with regard to Christ and the church. Another example that we'll talk about tomorrow morning.

We see the Father and the Son working together to choose the bride and that betrothal being accomplished before time began. Commitment, part of the groom. And a known commitment on the part of the bride that we can't duplicate. But Christ seeking His bride, the one betrothed to Him, His own. We have our struggles.

This is not an easy application. Loving our brothers and sisters helps us a tremendous amount. Glorifying our God in all that we do and however we do it is so beautiful and so perfect. And practically as these things work out, brothers and sisters in the Lord really can know each other. They really can love each other.

They can have a brotherly and sisterly affection. My children, brothers and sisters, they know what's going on in each other's lives, they pray for each other, they have the right kind of affection for each other. They're not strangers. They're not divided by some wall of separation. They don't struggle with the same issues that young men and women who aren't related might have in trying to have that same kind of relationship, but that's the brotherly and sisterly affection that we're commanded to have.

That's Christ-like, self-sacrificial, brother and sisterly affection for each other. Love each other, pray for each other, don't defraud each other. There's an awful lot of evaluation with regard to marriage that can happen without any emotional entanglement. Is it easy? No.

We need the wisest counsel and the best help and the best pastors and the best marriages and the best knowledge of the scripture and the most determination to glorify God that we could possibly have to navigate it. We better not be haughty. The man after God's own heart fell so hard and so fast. Yes, daughters are to be protected and men are to be sent, but let's be careful how we send them and let's be careful how we treat them whenever they are sent. We have good examples.

We have beautiful examples. Marriage really can be a picture of Christ and his church. And brothers and sisters, the Scriptures are sufficient. I'll end with this. The Scriptures are sufficient.

They may not have the checklist that we might like with regard to navigating these difficult waters. They might not have everything we want in our flesh. But the scriptures have everything we need. And it is about relationship, and it is about love for the brethren, and it is about love for God and glorifying him. And let's don't ever give in to this temptation of our flesh and this tendency that we might have as we navigate that path.

Let's don't believe that if we miss out on the world's notions of romance, that we'll be robbed of something. It is such a lie. White knights of fairy tales. Heroes of the most creative stories. The greatest and most dashing men of Hollywood.

The most beautiful women that we could ever imagine. These things pale in comparison to the beautiful path that God has for us. They pale in comparison to the beauty of glorifying God and enjoying Him even in this difficult process. And ladies, you won't be robbed of a knight in shining armor if we follow God's path. You will instead have the opportunity to be wed to a real hero.

A man who loves his wife like Christ loves his church. Thank you. To find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org.