These workshops is sort of somewhat informal supposed to be discussion oriented. So I've got kind of 10 points since we get started, which should go fairly quickly. So you might be willing to interact about that. So let's begin by reading God's word. I'm going to read both the text of that Reverend Wilkins read from Genesis, and then I'll turn to Jeremiah 29, four to seven. So from Genesis, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And then Jeremiah 29, four to seven, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon. Build ye houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat the fruit of them. Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city, whether I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it. For in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the topic before us. We thank you, Father, for the theme of this camp. And families, thank you for the development of families through courtship and dating and other ways that young men and young women come together in Christ. And we pray you'd bless our talk now considering some of these things that we need to think through carefully in terms of overseeing these relationships. In Jesus' name we ask it, amen. So a couple of quick comments first on the Genesis text in terms of God is overseeing the process, so there's no biblical model of courtship. And I don't know if courtship itself is a good term. Back in the old days, 20 years ago, there were the real conservatives that didn't like courtship, they liked betrothal. And dating, well, if you're gonna court somebody or seek out a mate, you're gonna have dates with them, right? You're gonna set a date on your calendar. I'm not big on these terms necessarily, but what we see from Genesis is that marriage is a result of a father overseeing the process. And so father and mom overseeing the process is what I'm talking about today in terms of courtship, dating, whatever you want to call it. And not much more than that in terms of some kind of biblical model, because there just isn't one. There's all kinds of biblical models of courtship, all kinds of interesting ways that men and women marry in the context of the covenant. So, you know, this wasn't actually on my list, but the first problem with good court and gone bad is when we think that our church has some kind of model of courtship that we're all supposed to follow. Back in, again, in the early days of RCC when we did this stuff, people said, well, this is the RCC way of courting. No, there's no RCC way. We bring some instruction, but there's all kinds of diversity in the scriptures. But from Genesis, men and women are brought together, father's overseeing the process. The purpose of them being brought together is to cleave into one flesh and have children. So sexual response is definitely a part of what's happening here. And that's very important when you get into Casual dating, where there's romantic relationships going on, we forget that the whole purpose of those relationships is to lead to marriage and sexuality. So sexual response is a big part of what's going on, and the purpose of it all, in terms of Adam and Eve, the first marriage, is dominion. Jeremiah 29 tells us that this process of marriage is absolutely essential for living in a time that we could say is analogous to the exile. Now we want to be careful with that because the exile is fulfilled, the restoration from the exile is fulfilled in the coming of Christ ultimately. And ever since then, there's no more exile. But there are times that we feel more that way, where we're living in a Babylonian sort of culture. In my talk tomorrow, we'll talk about some of the financial implications of that. Can we use Federal Reserve notes? How do we engage in banking? Can we use government benefits? All that sort of stuff. And we're in those positions, trying to think that stuff through, because we're in a culture that has become less and less Christian. So there's a sense in which Jeremiah 29, one of very few specific exhortations to the faithful remnant in exile, is applicable to us. What do we do in the midst of Babylonian captivity, so to speak, or something like it? Well, you just do the simple things of life. And one of those simple things is marriage. And very specifically, Jeremiah says that this, again here, marriage is overseen by the parents. So you're supposed to take wives for your sons, give your daughters to husbands. And so there's a difference of terminology there. that indicates what Genesis did, that the man leaves the father and mother and seeks out a bride. And so this giving and taking is distinguished between sons and daughters. But again, the important thing to notice here is that what they're doing is they're going to be faithful, they're going to increase in the land, they're going to seek the peace of the city, and a very important, one of the few instructions we're given, how to turn all of this around when we're in a mess, is marriage and specifically marriage overseen by parents and in the context of the faith. So, you know, it's a very important topic, this whole thing of marriage and how to live in families and how we get into marriage to begin with. So my talk, you know, Good Court and Gone Bad, there was an old song many years ago, Good Love and Gone Bad. And so, you know, while parents want to do courtship, I've seen over the last 20, 25 years a number of train wrecks, some common mistakes. And so I wanted to sort of share those from my experience primarily of what bad things we can do, common and costly mistakes in courting, dating, don't get hung about the term. Whatever way you're going to oversee your kids getting into Christian marriage, that's what I'm talking about. And of course, I presume here that that's what we're all talking about. If you don't think that parents should oversee these things to some extent, this talk isn't for you. And if you don't think that we should marry in the context of the Christian faith, again, this talk isn't for you, because those are the things I'm assuming that we all agree upon. And I think we should all agree, too, that there is no biblical model of courting, as I've said before. The only thing that's going on there is oversight by the parents. That's consistent throughout the scriptures. And as I said, it's very important to understand the importance of courtship, then, or dating, biblical, overseen preparation for marriage in terms of eschatology. Jeremiah 29. This is one of the ways in which we seek and work for the peace of the city, is this very thing. All right. Really, my first point is my most important one here, at least in my heart right now. I've seen a one very significant, I've seen a lot of errors, but this one error is really costly. This is an error of omission in courtship, and the first thing I want to talk about then is this error of omitting, not setting a goal for the process. Now, stepping back just a bit, when I do marriage counseling, or a lot of counseling, but marriage counseling specifically, I always, to some degree, employ what you can call three-gift counseling. So on the Lord's Day, we receive three gifts from God. We receive all kinds of gifts, but in the Bible, Leviticus 9, 22, before the benediction is pronounced, Aaron comes down from offering three offerings. The sin offering, that purifies the environment, purification offering. The ascension offering, Okay, and the peace offering. Now the tribute isn't there, it's linked to the ascension, but the point is there's three specific offerings. Now, Leviticus is like a prism where you take the single sacrifice of Christ, the offering of Christ that's gonna happen. You break it out into its constituent elements, and Leviticus teaches us what all the things are that Jesus does for us with that single sacrifice. And there are three specific things that are focused on in Leviticus 9.22. The first is purification from sin, forgiveness of sin. And this is unfortunately the end of the story for a lot of evangelicals. The Christian faith, what Jesus did, begins and ends with saving us from our sins, but that's only the start. Saving us from our sins is a restoration of glory to us. Our sins bring shame, disrespect, all men sin and fall short of the glory of God. Jesus restores us to weightiness as persons through the application of his purification from our sins. And when we go to worship, you know, the first movement of covenant renewal worship is God ministering to us this gift of renewed glory, respect, honor, personhood. The second offering that's mentioned in Leviticus 9.22 is the ascension offering. And this isn't about death. There is the idea of total consecration, I suppose. But what it's really about is what the word says. It doesn't say whole burnt offering in the Hebrews, most of you know. It means it's the Hebrew word for ascent. So the emphasis is transformation of state. We go to heaven. to get a heavenly perspective on what's happening here, to sing God praises there, but also to learn from him, from the preaching of the word, what's going on down here and how we're supposed to understand everything. God gives us knowledge, a heavenly knowledge of what's happening in the earth. So the second wave of our worship service is God's gift of knowledge to us, an understanding of things the way they are. And the third gift is rejoicing life together at the table. It's the peace offering in Leviticus 9.22. The third movement of the worship service is the Lord's Supper. And it's Miller time. It's rejoicing time. Great, it's the culmination of worship is joy. God feeds us not in isolation, but in community. So it's rejoicing time together. Couples come to my office, we're not having much rejoicing going on anymore. Well, okay, we'll talk about maybe some of that later. But first, let's see how well you've ministered glory or respect to each other waiting us. And have you ministered knowledge as a result of that? And when you do those things, you make better decisions and you have a lot happier life together. What's it got to do with courting? Well, it has a lot to do with courting because several of the other points I'm going to make have to do with respect or glory. Fathers, particularly of the bride, are to guard her glory and respect. If a man seduces a virgin in the Old Testament, it says he's humbled her. He's taken some of her glory away and he's humbled the parents. So there's a lot of things about that. Secondly, knowledge. Well, when you're involved in a relationship, whatever you call it, dating, courting, you're going to find out something about the other person you didn't know. You're going to find out quite a bit about them. And a lot of times you'll find a lot about their families, right? So there's a lot of knowledge that goes back and forth depending on how long that dating or courtship thing lasts. And the question is, is there a commitment, and usually there isn't, to rejoicing life together at the end of the process? What's the goal of the courtship? Well, it might be marriage. And of course, if it is, everybody's shooting for rejoicing life together. But it might not be marriage. It might be that, for whatever reason, marriage doesn't happen. Does that mean you can't have life at the end of the process? No. Because what that means is you should understand you've gotten to know this person better. You've gotten to know their family better. That should increase your rejoicing with them in the context of the Christian community. And I think that one of the most important things I tell parents to help their children do at the beginning of a dating, courtship, whatever you want to call it, is to pray and formally commit that relationship that whatever happens, whatever weird stuff we find out about each other, whether the knowledge is good or bad, whether we get married or not, we're committed to rejoicing life together as friends in the context of the body of Christ. I have seen over and over and over in the last 25 years When the thing goes south, our normal reaction is to blame somebody, right? We don't want to just say, well, it didn't work out. Sometimes we do, but sometimes the instinct is to say, well, I didn't marry that person because of X reason. And then what you do is you tell your friends that, they tell their friends that, people start buzzing around about something you knew about that person that might be completely private. And you've destroyed their glory, or at least torn down some of it. And what you've done then is you've taken a process, the purpose of which is to lead to rejoicing life together in the extended family of the church. And it's become a thing where the church is damaged, where community life is actually hurt by this process. Because we wanna have a reason why the thing didn't work out, see? This is so important. Couples that are moving through courtship and dating should be committed and their parents should help them to get through it. It's not easy because some of that stuff you find out maybe some of the reasons why you decide it isn't right. Maybe it's not. Maybe the people just don't think it's the right person for me. That's okay. You don't have to have a reason. In our constitution at our church, We have a provision we never follow, and I guess now that we're in a body that's gonna hold us accountable for our documents, we have to change it. But the provision we never follow is, anymore, years ago we wrote that if you're gonna leave the church, you've gotta write us a letter giving us your reasons for leaving. We don't do that anymore. Because what we found was, sometimes people don't know why they're leaving. You know, they just, they need to be someplace else. And that may be perfectly fine. They may need a better body to be in to rejoice and grow. And if you force them to give a reason, they're going to come up with something. So when they come up with something, now you've got a problem because now they've gotten, maybe they even weren't all that dissatisfied, but now they start thinking, yeah, what is wrong with this church? See? So it can be a real, we don't do it anymore. We should change our constitution, we're going to do that this year. But it's the same with courting, right? If you think, if the couple thinks they've got to come up with reasons why they're not going to marry each other, they're going to tend to focus on the shortcomings of the other person. And in really bad cases, and I've seen this, many of you have seen it too. You know that at the end of the day, these two people aren't getting along and the families aren't getting along and the church has people on his side and her people on her side. And it's not good. And more often than not, my observances is, my observation is, that typically the guy gets the short end of the stick. You know, he just does, because we want to protect gals and all that stuff. So we tend to blame the guy. So, you know, number one, the most deadly, costly error you can make is not getting your children that you're overseeing or your adults you're overseeing to move toward The end result of that, to think about the flow of worship and to think about the flow of all relationships, they should move through glory, knowledge, and produce rejoicing life together, if not in a new family, in the context of increased fellowship in the church. By the way, one thing that I think a lot of people that courting should do is read a book called Crucial Conversations. It's kind of a secularized version of glory, knowledge, and life. They say the most important thing is knowledge, keeping people talking, adding their information, their meaning to the shared pool of value, they call it, in business meetings or family meetings, whatever it is. And the thing that breaks down knowledge is a lack of respect. So if people don't feel respected, they feel intimidated, they don't add knowledge, and then you don't get good decisions, you don't come to rejoicing life. It's very practical stuff in terms of how to think about the gifts of glory, knowledge, and life, and how to minister them in the context of marriage or in the context of the courting-dating relationship. Okay? So that's the most important thing I wanted to say today, and I'm glad I've got it. I didn't run out of time. I put it first. Are there any questions or comments about that one? Like I said, I want to, you know, these are supposed to be kind of interactive. You know, and I'm not going to be able to see hands, so just shout out. In that case, you have increased responsibility on the parent of the other party. And if you've got, if the parents are away, you mean, or just they don't have parents, period. Well, there are. So there's really no one answer for any of it. You do as best you can, right? With older adults, the oversight role of the parents, of course, diminishes as they become more and more mature adults. I mean, if a guy's entering into marriage at 45, then probably parents aren't really involved in that relationship. But what I'm talking about is the normal kind of young guy, young gal sort of thing. And if the parents aren't there, well, you know, we have good communication ability now worldwide. And of course, the elders of the church can be useful as a friend, friend of the family, whatever it is. Yeah. Okay. He asked me if I would remind repeating their questions, or I would mind if I repeated the question. Anybody else? On this one? Yeah. Peggy wants her name on the tape, so it's Peggy Erland. Yes. Yeah, Peggy's comment for the tape was that this idea is also the idea of committing to rejoicing life together at the end of a process in which somebody may not be chosen for something, such as church office. The same thing holds true in those sort of situations. Lots of situations in a church community, selection of officers, whatever it is. The same thing will happen. You're absolutely right. And again, so worship is forming and modeling to us the way to live in community correctly. And I'm applying it to courtship. But yeah, you're absolutely right. It's an excellent point. Jeff said he takes great comfort in rejoicing in what he doesn't need to know about. But you needed to know that on the tape, so. Okay, any other questions or comments specifically about this thing of trying to commit to that and avoid scapegoating, blaming the other person? Yes. That's the RCC model. Everybody's involved. We're all Dutch uncles. We're all going to throw in. Well, you know, to the extent that we're an extended family, yes. But more often than not, yeah, so there's encouragements and stuff. But, you know, I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, Paul. There is a community involvement in the whole process, but not very formal and not very active, I wouldn't think. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. As families commit to this process, Paul is asking if an elder could step in and help them achieve that goal. Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. That's an excellent point, that if there is a jam at the end of the thing, and it looks like rejoicing life in community may not eventuate, Yes, absolutely. Pastors, elders, other people that are wise counselors to the couple. You know, I'm real big on bringing people into whoever, you know, we're meeting, we'll probably be meeting shortly with a guy who has become a member of a Roman Catholic church. And we'll talk to him about whether he's fulfilled all his vows in terms of the CREC church he's part of. He wants a couple of priests there. Okay. I think that what brings people to a degree of comfort, when we're talking about Christians, will assist the process of communication. Because one thing that happens in these jams, of course, is fear starts to come in and defensiveness. And so I think a wise person overseeing that, if somebody wants to bring an elder to the table with them, they'll say, sure, yeah, absolutely, that's gonna help you communicate, do it. Yeah, I don't think we'd wanna sign things formally or anything, but as a jam occurs, getting in the way of this, absolutely. The church has all kinds of resources, people that are wise old grand folks, elders, whatever it is, that can become involved if both parties agree in how we're gonna get past the jam and make sure we maintain fellowship here in the context of the church. Is that what you're getting at? Okay. Anybody else? Okay, I'll move on. Second, I have seen a radical failure to understand what seems, I don't know, some of the stuff, most of the stuff I'm gonna say is maybe it's culturally bound. Maybe it's just in our culture, but I think there's some indication of this from the scriptural account of men leaving to find wives. Sometimes I think, I've seen this common mistake where fathers of the girl don't understand the roles of what's happening here. And for good or ill, when guys seek a wife and enter into a dating slash courting relationship, they are the pursuer. They are a laser-guided missile. or a heat-seeking bomb, they will focus right in on what they hope to attain out of this. Now, that seems to be their role. Maybe we should raise our young men to be more sensitive in terms of these things, but it seems like, right now at least, that's the way it works. Dads need to know that. Number one, if you don't understand that, every time you see it happen, you're going to think the guy's a stalker or something. What is wrong with this guy? Well, that's what they're supposed to do. And what you're supposed to do is slow them down. So if you don't understand that that's what they're going to do, it's a common and costly mistake to not recognize that usually the father of the girl has got to be the control rod in this nuclear fission reaction of two young men and young women moving toward marriage. I mean, it's just, that's the way it is. And don't let it freak you out. But it means that if you have a hard time stepping up, then, you know, get wife to hold you accountable, get an elder to ask you every week, are you stepping up? Are you slowing the thing? Are you putting the proper controls in? That's your role. The dad's role is to guard the girl to a certain extent. And you have to understand, the role of the young guy seems to be just to go right at the thing. So, it's important to sort of understand the roles, and a failure to understand them leads to kind of misperceptions of what's happening. And in the worst case, of course, it leads to the girl being pursued and not having anyone to help her to sort through the pursuit. So that's the second mistake, is not understanding the roles of pursuing guys and dads who have to step up and understand that's not necessarily a horrible thing. That's what they're supposed to do, and your job is to slow it down. Any questions on that one? Yeah. No. Right. No, I'm talking about dating courting. Yeah. Right now, I'm saying if you've got a recognized relationship where a young man has said, I'd like to, you know, pursue your daughter for marriage. You've said, okay, understand that he is going to be very driven and motivated to make that happen typically. And so understand that you have to, you know, you've got to put the control rods in. Anyone else? Okay. The next one, and you know, all of these are sort of sensitive issues, I know. But given what I just said, if the father's going to do a good job of guarding his girl particularly, he has to understand, let's see, I believe it's best, let's put it this way, a common mistake of courting is to allow a girl to be courted too early in her life. My belief is, she ought to be ready for marriage before you let the thing even start. The fact is, You know, some guys will go for the easiest way to get something accomplished. And if they don't think they're going to be able to compete very well with older guys for older gals, then some of them will, you know, move down the age scale a little bit. They will do this. It's not good. It's sinful. But that's what they'll do. I know it. I've seen it over and over again. And parents, remember what I just said, once he gets involved in a relationship with you, your family, moving toward marriage, whether it's stated or not, you should start to think very carefully about guarding your daughter. A 14, 15, even 18-year-old girl sometimes can have her head spun pretty easily by the attentions of an older guy in a way that can be quite damaging to them. And I know this is, I know I'm stepping on toes here, and I'm not thinking of anybody in particular. For 25 years, we have dealt pastorally with situations about age differences. We've got pretty old fellas and pretty young gals. And okay, I'm not against that necessarily. But if the gal is so young that the parents don't think she's really equipped to enter into marriage, then she's not ready to enter into courtship. Because the problem, of course, is the guy then will start to develop, well, the girl will respond to the fella, and she'll start, you know, the old classical line, she'll give her heart away before she's ready, before she knows, has discernment in terms of making that decision. I know that most of the world you have arranged marriages, and that's a whole other topic. I don't, you know, we don't do that. Now, if you want to, I guess you can, but I'm talking about a situation where I think that all of us agree that at the end of the day, the girl and the guy make that decision whether they want to commit to each other and take those vows and enter into that relationship. Well, if the girl's not ready to make that commitment, she's not ready to be wooed by the fella in a way that's going to draw her heartstrings to him, okay? So this is a common and a costly problem because you end up with young girls and then if the relationship doesn't actually occur when they become adults, then they've kind of gone through what we're trying to avoid, which is a series of many divorces along the path. So age, age roles was number two, age is number three. I believe it's a real mistake to let kids engage in this stuff before they're ready for marriage. Yep. Well, you know, when we do that with young men and adults in the context of the church, we use 20 years old. 20 years old seems to be the age of maturation in the Old Testament. So I would tend to say that's a good marker of adult life, but I wouldn't want to make that firm or hard and fast or anything. I think it's up to the parents, but my only point is that the parents should self-consciously decide, is my daughter ready to work through that kind of stuff, make that kind of lifelong commitment? So no, I don't have really objective criteria. It's just the parents have to discern that. Did you have something in mind? Well, one, maybe she ought to be as educated as her parents and her decided they want her educated. And so that that isn't truncated by this relationship. Okay, so just for the tape, those are good things. Chris has been asking what objective criteria for young women or maybe even young men being at an age ready to be enter into marriage. And the first point Chris has made that if the parents have agreed on a certain level of education, that the girl should have attained that education rather than have it truncated by marriage, okay? Do you have another one? It has to be more squishy at that point, things like emotional maturity, able to have some household management skills that she's demonstrated in the home. There's probably others that can think about it. Okay, that's good, household skills in the home, general emotional maturity, and I was probably thinking of that one mostly. Anybody else with comments or, yes? Very good. Guys, gals, they're not ready. It's inappropriate to get into the thing. Good. Good comment. to be married, which would certainly address the age issue. But in terms of maturity, character, ability to secure a household, are those all things that dad should be involved in before he allows the emotional Yeah, so John's point for the tape is that not just the girls evaluating the daughter's emotional maturity, but also doing an evaluation of the prospective suitor in terms of his readiness for marriage, and that's certainly true. And that was one of my other points is, you know, pre-qualifying guys on a number of bases, and those would be some of them. I don't know if I have this written down or not, but before I forget it, another important point in this, however, is, you know, another mistake we enter into in overseeing these things is think that they really have to be ready for everything. I mean, they gotta be ready to be married at some level, but they're getting married because they're not complete people. Because they need help. So, you know, one of our deacons that's no longer with us, Dave Hoover, used to say that he wanted a completer for his daughter. He looked for a husband that would complete the work of the daughter that the family had begun. And I think the opposite's true as well. I think that wives complete husbands. I mean, I can't stand my children's messy room and my wife always reminds me of what my room was like before we got married. So, you know, if you're going to... The guy... The reason they're getting married is because they're sort of half people, right? They have this need for someone else, not just sexually, but as a completer of who they are. So you do a real disservice if you have all these characteristics that you're looking for in a spouse, whether it's the girl or the guy, and unless they meet everything, you know, you're not going to qualify them. If they meet everything, they don't need your child. So, you know, you ought to be careful on the degree to which we evaluate men and women. Any other comments or questions about the age thing? Okay. Next. Next, next, next. Oh, yeah. And again, you may have a different method in all of these things, but I think a common and costly mistake is unitary courtship. So this idea of a formal courtship, one guy is going to court one gal, And, you know, remembering that the guy is in competitive mode, he's trying to win the game, he's trying to, you know, attain the goal. What the guy is being tempted to do in that is to freeze out the opposition. For the period of the courtship, if you've got a formal courtship, okay, you can court my daughter for six months and then maybe there's an extension at the end of that time. That means for six, 12 months, you've frozen out all the competition for your daughter's hand. or vice versa. And I just don't think that's right until you're ready for those two really to begin to move into engagement. And I think that you can do it if you like. Obviously, people have done it. It's worked. But I think that I've seen that the end result of this is it's greatly to the man's advantage to freeze out the opponents. I sort of think that multiple suitors going to a daughter with multiple options for the parents to select is probably a good thing. So that's another common mistake. There are gifts they bring. One guy brings the beer, the other one brings the cigars for the day. The bidding war began. So does that make sense? Isaac Mayhar, I think, actually wrote a paper on this. What was that? Okay, so any comments about that one, freezing out the competition? Where only one person's allowed? No, no, the other way around, where there's more than one guy. That's right. We should wonder why, what's our problem? Maybe we have this perception that that's the way it should be. I'm serious. Early on, I think a number of families did some fairly formal courtships, which is another common and costly mistake, because it puts all kinds of pressure. We used to announce courtships on Sundays. All this pressure, everybody looking at him, you know? And I think maybe people, it could be that that's still a perception, that you have this kind of thing. But you're right, it's very rare to get more than one person involved. Yeah? In terms of multiples, my comment would be that you can deal with that by having some kind of a duration. It can't go on and on and on. And the duration will allow, you don't have to have multiples at the same time. but that it doesn't extend. Right. Yeah, that's good, good comment. So the comment for the tape is you can have a series of times and short times. You don't have to have multiples, but you don't want to freeze out the opposition either. Yeah, see all that stuff, all I'm trying to say is make parents aware of the effects of some of the things they do that they haven't even thought about, you know, that you haven't even thought about. So there's ways around it, lots of ways to do that. The next one is a failure to guard our children from sexual sin. And I crank on this all the time at RCC. It continues to be a problem. It will be a problem in the context of our culture. Pornography is everywhere available for young men and young women. Usually it's the men that are into it. It's a real problem. As Steve taught us, that Proverbs, the first nine chapters, five references, five warnings against sexual immorality. In the old, I don't remember what commentary I read it in, but unless you think your son or daughter is stronger than Samson, wiser than Solomon, or more dedicated to God than David, don't assume they're not gonna fall in this area. I have parents tell me this all the time. I know my child, they're not gonna sin sexually. You don't know them very well. Or you've forgotten what it was like when you first got serious physically about another person. It's like the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody's ready for the Spanish Inquisition. Young girls and young guys are typically completely unprepared for the kind of sparks and electricity and racing of hormones that begin to happen. And before you know it, I mean nobody None of our young children would plan to do that. But they can fall into it quite easily. So a common and costly mistake is not taking great pains to guard against it. Now maybe I'm the overreaction against the licentiousness of my generation 40 years ago that was raised. So maybe I'm the Puritan reaction against it. We were talking about that the other day. Some of us sitting around talking. Maybe I'm like that. But I've always sort of thought that line of sight courtship is a pretty good model. Nothing's going to happen if you've got line of sight. You can be way over there as long as somebody's watching him, right? I know a lot of you let your kids go on dates and go in cars and all that stuff. The evil car. That's not a bad, I know you let them get into cars. No, and I'm not insisting, all I'm saying is understand that you have an obligation to guard your daughter's glory, right? That's your job, dad. And at the end of the day, if your daughter ends up with her glory diminished, you're responsible for that. And more often than not, you're probably also at fault for that. You're always responsible, but in this case, you're likely at fault for it because of your failure to oversee the physical aspect of courtship in a way that's proper. Another common mistake along these same lines is, particularly with our younger kids, when dads don't take advantage of the brothers of the girl. as part of the courtship process. Now, I suppose that I could, if everybody starts using brothers next year, I'll say a common mistake is letting the brothers get involved. But, you know, Jim Jordan has pointed this out, that, you know, Jacob's son's being involved in the Dinah incident, well, it didn't turn out too good. And some people have interpreted the Song of Songs, I think Chris Schlecht did when he was here and spoke to us about courtship and stuff, that brothers are involved. You know, when dads get older, you get less ability to attend and have the energy level and all that stuff. You know, I mean, our first daughters, we raised them, they couldn't listen to words on the radio until they were like 15 or something. It's classical music only. No words. And my 15 year old, 16 year old daughter rather, you know, she's had an iPod for several years and everything is what she's listening to. We just tend to drift that way. So when we try to... Charity, Next time, if my boys are near or close to home, they're going to be part of this. I don't want to have to go running after her and whoever might be involved with her. You've got younger sons for a reason. They have energy levels that you don't have. And they're going to be just as guardian-like, bulldog-like about their sister as you would be, probably more. Any questions about or comments about the The sexual guarding thing. I can't stress it enough. Yes. Uh-huh. away from their parents, is that they get some of the older men in the church involved to help them make sure that they're ready for, you know. Yes. So for the tape, Bob Evans' comment is that when parents aren't around, or even if they are around sometimes, the boys are older, you get other older men in the church helping them evaluate their maturation, their readiness for courtship, and get advice as they're involved in a relationship too. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, excellent comments. We only have five minutes left, I did want to make a couple of other quick things, I won't get to all of these, but another common mistake I think, so some of the things I've just talked about are dad not paying enough attention. But you can run it, we have two ditches, and the other ditch is that dads can be too involved. And specifically, one of the things I've seen over and over again that makes it difficult for relationships to culminate in rejoicing life if they don't culminate in marriage, is dad keeps moving the bar up. Right? Dad, I think, should pre-qualify guys. Everybody knows what the bar is. Everybody's got everything clearly defined. And at that point, I think Dad needs to kind of back out of formal oversight. And he's now kind of advised, if his daughter's of marrying age, adult woman, knows what she's doing, she's advising him. He's going to find out more knowledge about the guy. But what his primary job, I think, should be is advising the girl at that point, not throwing up, making the bar higher and higher and higher, or changing the rules over here. For years, we've talked about having a rich blood soda camp. And years ago, when we were thinking about having him, I heard, listened to a tape from him on eschatology and how the role of families in eschatology is a little different take on it as most of his stuff is. And he said, you know, that really no family continues. So each household, when Lana married Mike, they established a new family, a new household. And what happens is God is kind of taking out all the mistakes of the past household and bringing her into relationship with the different household. And so at that point, I realized that up to that point, I had been way too controlling in my mind of who I thought would be the best person for my daughter. I had to let that go a little bit. We don't know what's best for our children a lot of times. We will just tend to repeat the errors that are existing in our home, as opposed to having freedom to accept a godly guy who meets basic qualifications and who the girl is interested in, I think we have to be kind of able to see that that's the way the Holy Spirit moves us into the future and keeps us from producing clan-like repetition of family errors over and over and over again. So I think fathers can be too involved as well as they can be not involved enough. and specifically an evidence of that is moving the bar up, up, up, changing the criteria. One last thing and then I'll have, we have a couple of minutes for questions, but the last thing I want to say is definition of terms and particularly as you move toward the end of it. You know, it used to be, as I said, courtship versus betrothal. I've seen engagements, a number of them, where this happens. They're getting engaged, but nobody knows what that means. And some people have read, you know, the family stuff, the patriarch stuff, and they're thinking betrothal. And the other person is thinking more modern engagement. Now, I think it's okay to get engaged, and it's okay if you think betrothal, which is binding, you have to have cause to break it off. Engagement, you know, you can sort of say, well, I just don't want to do it. At betrothal, you can't do that. There has to be a cause to break that covenant. It's a stronger, firmer form of engagement. I'm not saying one's right and one's wrong. But what I'm saying is, as with a lot of these things, is common definitions have to be brought to the table. Because I've seen on many occasions at the end of the day, well, I thought it meant this. Well, I thought it meant this. And that's the fault of the parents. The parents have to help the kids think through what are you doing by engagement? Are you trying to do betrothal? What's going to happen to that ring that you gave her if the engagement falls apart? Which happens, you know, it happens all the time. And that's not necessarily a bad thing that it falls apart, but nobody's thought through defining what the terms mean and what they don't mean. So clarity of definition in terms of the end result of the thing as well. Okay, any last comments or questions? and I think there's a point where you might have to think about as our children become adults, is there a point where we trust them enough, they're mature enough, they're wise enough, they're lovely enough to send them off to a college in another state? We have to, at some point, be able to trust them to be discerning and find people to be accountable to in that area and still try to stay in communication. But at some point, they have to be comfortable with their own choices if they move away from Except if you are in public order, sorry. Yes, and that was one of my points, too, is another common mistake is not treating courting adults over 20 as adults. We start to think of them as kids still. Yeah, so Patty's point for the tape is that kind of what I was just saying that there comes a point at which if adults have moved away from home, maybe they've lived away from home for several years, maybe they're going to college, whatever it is, yeah, the oversight of the parents will be far reduced. Now, I do think at the end of the day, you know, that girl is still going to be given away by her dad. So, and that doesn't happen at the end of the process. So, but I agree that relationships will form apart from as much involvement with parents as you would have here. Yeah, but on the other hand, one of the nice things about Moscow is we can send kids off to college and they got a church to go to too. And anybody, you know, that was what you'd want to do. You want to have accountability of your kids there. But yeah, you're right. It becomes more difficult and it becomes less needful in certain circumstances. So yeah, there's a balance between how much involved parents are. Anybody else? Anything I, yeah. Well, he's really part of the overseeing thing too, right? So it says there in Jeremiah that we're supposed to receive, or take rather, daughters for our sons. So they're still involved, the fathers of sons. It's a little different role. But I think in a Christian community, The father of the son is just as committed to glory, knowledge, and life as the father of the girl. He wants his son to respect that woman who's gonna either be her sister in the Lord in church or gonna be his potential wife. So it's not as if the father of the girl alone is responsible to guard her purity and glory. The father of the son is too, and he's to guard his own son against sexual temptation. We always talk about the culpability of guys in sexual sin, but in Proverbs, You know, it's the adulterous woman, right? And the guy seems like the naive one that's being tempted into sexual sin. So the dad has just as much responsibility toward his son and toward the other party, I think, to guard them from sexual sin, for instance, to try to communicate. I think the father of the son can be in a communicative role with the father of the girl. There should be a relationship formed between the parents, all that sort of stuff. Anybody else? I guess we're over time. Okay, let's pray. Father, we do thank you for the wonderful truth that in the last 20, 30 years, Christian parents have thought a lot more about their children's marriages and have committed to see them only marry in the context of the Christian faith. Thank you for that. Thank you that parents have decided to try to step up and be more involved in these relationships and in these marriages as well. We thank you, Father, for the movement of your spirit. And we know that whenever that happens, there'll be immaturity. And we thank you for those periods of immaturity and the courtship. community because that's what we needed to do. We needed to crawl, walk a little bit, fall down, and then recover and see what we did wrong so that we can improve on it. We thank you, Father, for the process of the last 30 years. We thank you for the truths you've taught us that are good and some common things to avoid as well. We pray that you would bless us Help us to think about these things, particularly those parents with teenage kids. Help them, Lord God, to be diligent in overseeing these relationships, knowing indeed that that produces ultimately the peace of the city, a godly Christian civilization built up from godly relationships culminating in either good friendships in the church or wonderful marriages, in which case celebration comes in that form. Thank you, Father, for our families, for our children. Bless them in Jesus' name, amen.