Thank you. I need to take just a moment to express my appreciation to Pastor Turi and the elders and all of you for being so kind, first to invite me and then to be such generous hearers. Every pastor will tell you there's no greater blessing than having generous hearers, those who listen and are willing to give the most friendly interpretation to all of your crazy statements. and give you a lot of slack. And then if there's something that you can't quite do that for, they ask you gently and say, please explain. You've been exemplary in that. And I really appreciate it very, very much. But it's been a great privilege to be here and just a whole lot of fun to be with you this week. But thank you so much for giving me the opportunity. Now, let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 6. And I want to begin reading at verse 11, where Paul pleads with these Corinthians. He says, O Corinthians, we have spoken openly to you. Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections. Now in return for the same, I speak as to children. You also be open. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. That is the word of the living God. Let's pray. Again, our Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for your great mercy in speaking to us and in giving us a clear and firm and sure word and in promising your spirit to help us understand and to embrace and to follow these things. So do that. Help us to see and understand and to be transformed so that we can be lived to the honor of Christ Jesus, our Savior and King, in whose name we pray. Amen. Well, the Bible teaches us, as I've tried to emphasize all week, that marriage is far more than meets the eye. It's far more than finding someone who'll just walk down an aisle and say, I do with you. You know, I've often wondered, you know, anybody can get married. There's always somebody who'll do that with you. So it's not that big a deal if that's all you're looking for. But that's not all we must look for in marriage. Paul observes that marriage is a great mystery. It reveals to us the whole purpose of God in Christ Jesus. It's a picture of Christ in the church. God designed marriage to depict the relationship of Jesus with his church and to display the love and faithfulness that exists between the head, the Lord Jesus, and his people, his bride, the church. Your marriage is to be a living illustration of what God is doing in history. And thus we can say that our marriages are based upon the marriage of Christ and the church. And that tells us a great deal about what our marriages are to be like. Marriage is not primarily for the purpose of making us happy or even primarily for meeting our own needs. Marriage, our marriages, are to be for the good of the world. And we see this plainly when we understand that our marriages are patterned after the great marriage of history, the great story of Jesus and his people. Jesus took a bride, not primarily for his own pleasure, but for the good of the world. And he gets great pleasure out of the bride. You see, I'm not saying that's wrong. It's just that it's bigger, it's a bigger story than that. Marriage, like everything else, if rightly understood, exists primarily for the good of the world, for the good of the kingdom, for the glory of God. And this perspective is absolutely essential if our marriages are to be faithful, God-honoring, fruitful, and truly a blessing to us and to others. And this also tells us how our marriages are to work. We're not to be devoted to scheming and manipulating one another in order to get what we want out of the relationship, but rather we devote ourselves to our mates, giving ourselves to them. Jesus loves the church and gave himself for it. The cross is at the center of the great marriage, and it must be at the center of our marriages. Indeed, we can say unless you learn to die in your marriage, your marriage will never survive itself. It's only as husbands learn to give up themselves for their wives and wives learn to give up themselves for their husbands that they can live together with peace and joy and true fruitfulness. So the rule is always the way to find life is to lose it. If you're always seeking to save your life, you will never live. So marriages that have self-fulfillment and personal satisfaction at the center will never survive because marriage is seen merely as another means of self-love. The chief end of marriage is God's glory and the advancement of his kingdom through gospel reenactment. Husbands who love their wives and give themselves for them and wives who love their husbands and give themselves to them. So marriage in this way is central to the Great Commission and the future consummation of all things. Marriage matters, and it matters a great deal, which is why the topic this morning is important. It's getting serious about getting married. That was a sign, but I'm glad it was a sign because it is a very important point. Our culture is not marriage friendly. Very few see the need for it anymore, as I said, except for the homosexuals. They really want it, but the church doesn't care anymore about this or the world. The church must be countercultural in the most obvious and noticeable way at this point. Marriage is vital to our well-being and thus it's essential for our children and for us to have a clear understanding of what it requires and what it means to be serious about it. Well, so the question is then, what must be true of you if you're to have a blessed marriage? But I'm really pointing at those who are looking toward marriage and I want to say, what must be true of you as you look forward to this and seek it? Now, there's always a place for nuance and qualification and care and making fine distinctions, but I will be honest with you, that's not going to happen this morning. I'm not really interested in nuancing anything. If you want nuance, maybe we can talk later on. I want to be pretty blunt and straightforward and talk about what is important here, what is essential, what you need to get serious about. So I apologize at the beginning about the bluntness, but I do intend for it to be that way so that perhaps you can hear it. You need, first of all, to fear God. Now I've never been quite satisfied with the definitions that I've made up or others have made up. So try to explain what the Bible means when it says, fear the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear the Lord and keep his commandments, those things. The fear of the Lord, it's one of those things that's difficult to define, but you know it when you see it. And you instinctively sort of know what this means even though it's hard to explain it. To cover all the things that this involves. So let me just mention a few things that are involved here. This means honoring God for who he is. Living before him as if he really is who he says he is. Taking God seriously. We don't sometimes do that. It's almost like we don't really believe that he is who he says he is. But He's eternal, He is all-wise, He is the all-holy Creator and Judge. He made you, He knows you, He sees you. You can never escape Him and He has called you to love Him and serve Him all your days with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And when you're seeking to do that, you're fearing God. You're a true human being. You've quit living like a beast and a moron, and you're living as you ought to live. That's what it means. The fear of the Lord will express itself in various ways in your life. It's like love in that way. Love is never something that can be invisible and hidden inside of you if it's real. It always finds expression and so the fear of the Lord does the same thing. The man who fears God, for example, worships him and he understands that worship is not optional for him. Worship is the great happy obligation of all of God's creatures and it's the only reason and the only reasonable and sane response to having been given all you've been given. This is our reasonable service, Paul says. This is what anybody who is thinking rightly must do. This is what we do. We worship God. He's given his son for us and everything else. And so clearly worship is the proper response. And so the man or the woman who is ready for marriage, who is serious about marriage, understands this and is convinced of the centrality of worship for life. If you don't understand the centrality of worship, you are not fit to be married. And please do not do it. We've got enough marriages that are idolatrous. We don't need one more. So you stay away. until you learn this important issue. Worship is central to life. There's no life without it. It orients us around the true center of what is needful. It teaches us how we have to live. No matter how cute and beautiful you are, no matter how funny or gifted, no matter how good you look in sunglasses, you, if you're not devoted to loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength in worship, you cannot have a happy marriage. Please don't. The man who fears God sincerely desires to glorify him in all that he does. If you don't care about pleasing God and seeking to honor him with your life, you're not fit to be married. You're not ready to be married. If you think simply dragging your little body or your big body to worship and sleeping through and walking through worship and then after worship you feel free to live like an atheist the rest of the week. If you think that all that is required of Christians that you to be happily married is to show up like that and sleep through service, then you're going to make yourself miserable and discontented. But the problem is you're going to make somebody else miserable and discontented. So I encourage you, please do not marry. Keep it all to yourself. We've got enough misery around without you spreading it. So don't get married. Just be miserable all in your little self. Don't spread it around. Marriage is not for the man who thinks that everybody exists to please him and seek to do him good. Marriage is not for the woman who wants to be the object of men's attraction and lust, but hates the idea of sacrifice and service. It's not for you. If you love yourself supremely, you're not fit for marriage. Because marriage demands that you die to yourself so that you can live to your mate and for the world. And if you're not ready to do that, please do not say yes if somebody asks you. And do not ask anyone to join you. Fearing God means that you submit to his word. In other words, there's no question in your mind about what you're to do and how you're to do it. I mean, you do have questions about how, because then you ask others, say, well, how do I do? OK, that's fine. But there's no question about how you're to live. You have to follow God. That's settled. That issue is plain. That's clear. Even though we have questions in exactly the details of what that might mean, we still know, no, I've got to obey God. I've got to live for him. I've got to follow him as a disciple. I realized that I've not been created to argue with God, but to love him and follow him by doing what he says. No man or woman is ready to be married until the issue of who rules and whose word rules is settled. So you got to ask that question, wait a minute, who's going to be the umpire in this relationship? If the man says, well, it's going to be me, I'm the head of the house. Well, then you're disqualified from being married. That's not the way the head of the house lives. And if the woman says, well, obviously, it's going to be me. He's going to do what I say, or he's going to pay. All right, well, then you're not going to be married. You shouldn't be, because you don't understand. It is God who rules. His will determines every argument, so that when we get into one, and we're in it and neither one of us are given in, somebody's gotta say, okay, wait a minute, let's think about what does God say? And if we can't figure it out, we can call pastor, we can call elders, we can call our friends. We gotta find out what God says because that settles it. When I see what God says about it, then the argument is over. And I don't care if it was on my side or on her side or on neither one of our sides, argument is over. Do you believe that God's word is truth? Are you committed to doing what he says? If not, don't get married. We got enough marriages that are like that. We don't need you contributing to that number. Honestly, we don't need you to do that. Save us, save us that kind of sorrow and increasing our sorrow. Here's the second thing. To be fit for marriage, you must be committed to walking by faith. That is, you must believe God, trusting his promises, taking his warnings and his threats seriously, and obeying his commands. Now, I know you've heard that a million times, if not more, but you've got to hear it over and over and over again. Walking by faith means that repentance is not optional for you. It's not something you do when you feel like it. or when you get in the repentant mood, or when something terrible happens. Repentance is mandatory when you sin. As soon as you realize what you've done, there is no question about what you do when you sin. You don't excuse it, you don't ignore it, you don't blame it on others, you don't shift responsibility, you confess it and forsake it. That's what you do. You ask forgiveness and you seek reconciliation. You ask forgiveness of God and you ask forgiveness of the one that you've sinned against. That's what you do. You don't act like hoping, you know, go around hoping that he'll forget it or maybe he'll think that I was actually right or maybe something will happen and I won't have to humble myself and ask forgiveness. You ask forgiveness. One thing is certain when it comes to marriage. You're going to sin against your wife and your husband. It's unavoidable. It is inescapable. If you could marry an angel, all right, then only one of you would be sinning. But you don't marry angels. Angels don't marry nor are they given in marriage. So everyone, no matter what you might think, you're marrying a sinner. And it's disastrous. If you don't repent, remember Doug Wilson's thing, you can drop a thousand things on your carpet, but if you pick them up, everything's fine. But if you don't pick them up, you got a mess. And it's a big one and it doesn't get better by acting like nothing's on the floor. So, in the same way, we can sin against each other a whole lot, but when we ask forgiveness, when we seek reconciliation, not only is the breach repaired, but it becomes in many ways stronger. It's like when you break your arm. It's amazing, isn't it? When you break your arm, and everything is set again, and the doctors put one bone on top of another, and then they say God's glue takes over. That's what a doctor told me. I said, explain to me how a bone grows back. I had a feeling he didn't really know how a bone goes back. And he goes, oh, yes. Well, he said, that's just God's glue. Good. OK, well, that's right. But you know what happens is your bone becomes stronger. A break didn't destroy it necessarily. If it's dealt with properly, the break actually makes your bone stronger. What happens when we sin against one another? Does that make us weaker? If we deal with it properly, it doesn't. If we deal with our sins properly, we get closer and closer, because somebody who sins against you and comes to you and says, you know what, what I did yesterday to you, that was really a terrible thing, and I'm embarrassed about it, I'm ashamed of it, I really didn't love you like I'm supposed to, I have no excuses, and I'm very sorry, and I want you, please, please, will you forgive me for that? And you say, sure, what do you feel about that guy? And you think, you know, this is a guy I can trust. This is a guy I really want to be with. If he's going to live with that kind of integrity, I want to be as close to him as I can be. And it didn't weaken the relationship, it strengthened the relationship. If you deal with sin, things get better. But if you're not willing to do this, You're not ready for marriage. And if you're not gonna be willing to do it, then okay, live by yourself. Then at least we can limit the damage you're doing. Walking by faith means being faithful every day. Not merely when you feel like it, not merely when you feel holy, but every day. Not only when you're happy and everything is going well, but every day. Not only when you, not only when you feel great, you know, and all the birds are singing and you've just run your five miles before six o'clock and you got your blood pumping, you're feeling good. But in those days when you can hardly drag yourself out of bed when you feel really badly. You're to persevere in faithfulness all the time. You're to seek to obey and honor the Lord day in and day out. When people love you and when they don't, whether it rains or shines, whether they treat you kindly or unkindly, justly or unjustly, you're to be devoted to obeying the Lord every day. And if you're not willing to do that, then you're not fit for marriage. Walking by faith provokes a desire and an effort to grow in maturity and in the knowledge of Christ. It means if I believe in God, I love him. I love and trust the Lord Jesus. And if you love someone, you want to find out all about them. You remember how it was when you first saw your wife? perhaps, or you see someone you're very interested in, the first thing you do is you kind of go around trying to find people who know them, and you say, hey, what's the girl's name over there? What's that? And you find her name out, and you find out where she goes to school, and what she does, what's her family, what cereal she likes. And you can't find out enough. You just want to know everything. And girls are worse. They spy on you. They sneak around. They find out things. And you think, how did you know that? I've known that for years. I don't know how you know that. How do you find that out? Oh, I've got my sources. Yeah, but that's the way it is. When you care about someone, you get interested in someone, you want to know about them, and you want to know everything about them, and you never get tired of learning about them. Well, you know what? That's what it means to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, too. It works in the same way. You want to learn about Him. You want to know about Him. And you want to increase in that knowledge over the years as you live with him and fellowship with him. If you love him, you'll have an interest in learning his word and understanding how to apply it and getting a deeper and deeper grasp. Now, not everybody's going to be a theologian and you're not going to have as much time as maybe the pastor has. Sure, that's right. And you're going to work hard and you're going to come home at night and you're not going to feel like opening up a theology book or a book and reading. You're just going to want to relax and go to bed and get a good night's rest and be ready. Sure, that's all right. That's fine. Nobody's saying you have to read four hours a night. That would be crazy. But the interest and the hunger and thirst for righteousness is there. And you want to learn and you're interested in learning and you take advantage of opportunities to learn. And you seek to grow. If there's no interest in learning and growing and faithfulness and maturity, then really, honestly, believe me, you're not ready for marriage. But this brings me to the third thing. To be fit for marriage, you must be growing in boldness and courage. That may sound a little odd because we're talking about marriage not warfare. Well yeah well sometimes the two get awfully close together but it takes courage to be faithful in marriage. Remember that marriage is to proclaim the gospel to the world and this means that you have to be one who is courageous in your testimony before the world. You have to be one who is unashamed of your allegiance to Christ. That doesn't mean that you're wearing your big heavy cross around your neck all the time and your Jesus sign. You know, the blinking Jesus hat and all those really neat looking things that you can have. We don't need all that. But what it means is that you're very open about who you are and you're so friendly, people ask about you, you say, oh yeah, well yeah, you know what, I go to church over there, it's a great place, you need to come with me sometime. And they know right away who you are. And you're not embarrassed about them finding out who you are. You want to be identified. as a Christian publicly and it's okay with you and that's the way it is and you're outspoken in that way about it. You're not cowardly and you're not self-absorbed. because you really do love him and you are grateful to him for all that he's done and you owe everything to him. And so you're not embarrassed to be identified with him any more than you would be embarrassed to be identified with a very famous personage in the world with whom you were good friends and who'd done a lot for you. If I'm friends with one of our previous presidents, maybe, I would say, if I'm friends with this president, you're going to say, oh boy, take a hike. But if I'm friends with the president, and he's been good, and we've been close, and we're good friends, that's probably going to sneak out in conversation somehow or other. It's going to be too good a thing to hide from you. I know you'll want to know all about that. That's the way it is. When we as Christians, it's going to come out, not so much that I've always got my megaphone out and screaming in people's ear, but in normal living, this is who I am and everybody needs to know it. Marriage demands that kind of bold commitment. It flows from your commitment, your bold commitment to Jesus. And if you're embarrassed to be identified as a Christian publicly, then you're really too cowardly and too self-absorbed to be married. Because marriage demands that kind of boldness. It demands an ability to stand firm against opposition. and a willingness to endure pain and hardship without complaining and whining and wanting to quit. But it takes courage. It takes the courage that only God's grace and mercy can give. You have to be willing to fight for your marriage, to defend your family, and that requires a willingness to endanger yourself in various ways, perhaps losing the good opinion of others and losing other things as well. And that takes courage. You can't walk around feeling sorry for yourself that you've had to suffer. That's the price, and it's well worth it to preserve your marriage and family. You have to be willing as a woman to give up your desires and comforts for the good of the family. A woman's life is almost one of continual sacrifice. And it's interesting, isn't it? When you give birth, you shed blood. It's almost a picture of participating in the sufferings of Jesus. Every blessing comes with death. It comes from death. because resurrection follows it. New life always comes after a death of some sort. And so women know this sometimes much more instinctively than men do. We somehow think that we can die and not really hurt ourselves. I don't know how. Hey, y'all, watch this. You know, that's our great thing down south. Whenever you hear those words, you want to call the ambulance right now. Don't even wait to know what is going to happen. You know something bad is about to happen. But women instinctively know that, yeah, my life is a life of dying. It's a life of dying to myself. And you have to be that way if you're going to be a wife. You must be willing to do that. And if you want to be a model, be a model. I mean, by that, a model in the worst sense of the word, even though I know they're Christian models. But the model, in a sense, that all she's concerned about is making sure there are no unsightly wrinkles. Well, all right. But you can't be that and be a wife, because you're going to get them. And it happens, and it happens for men as well. And we can't keep what we might have had, or we thought we had, whether we had it or not. You can't keep it. And you've got to be willing to die to that. That's just the way it is. You must be willing as a man to do everything possible for the well-being of your family. And that means giving up sometimes your toys and games, which is really tough for guys. Because we enjoy our toys and like our games. And dying to our own desires. We have to die to those for the good of our wives and children. That requires a maturity most boys don't have. You have to be willing to undertake the risk of love. Let me address guys for a moment because we don't like to take, we like to take other kinds of risk. But it's interesting, you know, you will do the craziest things. Let's take a car and see if we can make that jump across the chasm. I think we can. You know, you'll try that kind of stuff where you could really be dead in two seconds. But you don't want to risk committing to a girl unless you're absolutely certain it's your thing. Because you don't want to stick your neck out and have the humiliation of her saying, no thanks. We're too proud for that. But you see, love is risky. It demands courage and trust, and that's scary because it opens you up to the most grievous pain and suffering you can have. It hurts. It hurts. And you have to be willing to suffer if you're going to commit your life to another in love. And there are those who are simply too cowardly to do this. One of the reasons why guys sometimes are single, because they're just too cowardly to do it. C.S. Lewis reminds us of this reality of how painful love is. He says, love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even to an animal. If you want to make sure, I'm sorry, he says, wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. And that's what everyone who is loved knows. To love is to be vulnerable. That means that I'm taking the risk of being hurt and hurt deeply. But you see, most and many in our day are simply too selfish and cowardly to do this, so they settle for sex. They settle for the superficial relationship, which they can drop whenever the demands get too great. so that there are no ties, no commitments, they say. No commitment, no commitment. Avoid all the responsibilities of love and the dangers of it. And that really becomes the guiding light for many unmarried people today. That's it. If you are too cowardly to give yourself in love for another with all the risk that it brings, you're not fit for marriage. Marriage is for those who are ready to be kings, and kings in the Bible are those who lay down their lives for others. Jesus, as the king, laid down his life for his friends. If you're not ready to give up your life for a woman to the glory of God, then you're not ready for marriage. If you're not willing to lay down your life for a man, then you're not ready for marriage. And that leads to the next thing, to be ready for marriage. And I guess I should tell you, so you should not wait wondering, how many of these next things are there? Okay, this is number four, and it is the last thing, and then I have two other things. No, it's not a numbered one, though. You see, those are not numbered. It's kind of like, you know, It's kind of like the pilot saying, we're coming to our final initial approach or something like that. Well, you know, okay, I've got about another hour and a half before we land. To be ready for marriage, you must be practicing self-denial. You must learn to deny yourself kings and queens. In the old days, godly kings and queens knew that they were there for the kingdom. They weren't there for themselves, they were there for the people. And they had to lay down their lives for the people. That's what a king does. Husbands must be willing to deny themselves for their wives and wives for their husbands. There can be no life unless that's true. And this means then you must be learning to say no to sin. If you're going to be ready for marriage, you must be learning to turn away from temptation now. If you can't do that, then you can't maintain a marriage. If you still think sin is cool and funny, then you're not fit for marriage. Sin is destructive and ugly and hateful. Until you think of it that way, you're just a danger to others. You're not going to be a blessing to anybody. You're just going to be someone who gets other people in trouble. Please don't marry because then you'll cause a lot of trouble and then the rest of us have to deal with it. And we're up to here with those kind of things. We don't need you adding to the pile. Don't do that. You gotta say no to sin. Learn to do that now. This means that you must learn to accept responsibility and fulfill your duty. You must be learning to take care of your business faithfully, whatever that business may be. You must be learning to work when it's time to work and to work happily and without complaining. and to work with integrity, without compromising, no stealing, no cheating, no lying. You must learn to be faithful to your word. Do what you say you're gonna do. And if you can't do it, ask forgiveness and say, I'm sorry, I told you I would do that, I'm just not able, I've broken my word, so I ask your forgiveness. And this is when we'll get to that. Be willing to submit to the lawful demands of your employer, even when you don't happen to agree with his perspective. Be faithful to finish the job you've been given. And you know what else? You've got to learn to live with imperfect justice and sometimes with injustice. We just somehow or other get it in our heads that that's something I'm not going to take. I'm not going to take being treated unjustly. Well, you may as well take a pill or something and check out, because this world is full of injustice, and you're going to be treated unjustly. I mean, I hope that's not a revelation to you, right? That's the way it is. My children say, that's not fair. And I said, you know what? I'm sorry, but get used to that, all right? If I'm not fair, I'll try to straighten it out. But you've got to understand, the people you work for, they're not going to be fair all the time. And you've got to learn to deal with that in a proper way so that you don't become this ugly, bitter little pile of, ugh, we don't need you like that. We've got enough of those. And we don't need another. So we've got to learn how to deal with this. You've got to learn how to press on, trusting that God is the judge. He'll make it up. Don't worry about somebody. He stole from me. OK, he stole from you. Yeah, he stole from me. Take a number on these things. Come on. Everybody's been treated unjustly. Everybody's been cheated. Everybody's been lied to. The question is, how do you respond to that? Can you trust God to work it out anyway? You see, the glorious thing about knowing that God is our Father and He's absolutely sovereign is I know He knows this, He saw it, and He'll make up for it. I don't have to go around trying to get it, get Him back, or her back, or that thing back. I don't have to worry about it. God will make up for it. He always does. So I have to learn to take responsibility for my life, paying bills and paying them on time, living within my means, avoiding irresponsible and foolish indebtedness. Taking care of the things that God has given you I had I was in a church one time and I wanted one of my one of my deacons was a Contractor he was a builder and I wanted to do some work on the house. And so I asked him to do it. He said Yeah, well, I'm kind of busy. And so I waited I went back to him said can you get to this work bill? What do you think he goes? Well, I'm I'm just kind of I don't know just not able quite to get to it So I waited another three months I go to him bill. What about the work? I need you He's going well, I don't know. I said, okay, wait, wait, wait I know you're not busy for the next 10 years. When are we going to get to this?" And he said, he said, okay, I'm going to tell you honestly. He said, I have done work for pastors before and I never get paid. And he said, I'm putting this off. I don't want to do it because I don't want to have a reason to be offended with you. All right? That's the world we're living in. That's the world. I talk to guys in business that are not Christians, say, who do you have the biggest trouble with collecting bills? All these professing Christians, the guys that put the little fish in the phone book. Amen. I'm telling you, you know, I've still got people, you know, This has got to stop. Can we stop this? Will you stop this? Pay your bill. Don't expect your friends to do things for free. They've got a family too. Now, if they want to give you a discount, okay, but that's their business. If they want to do something gratis, wonderful, praise the Lord, but that's their business. I can't assume or presume on my friends just because they can do plumbing and I can't. And they're my brother in Christ. They go to my church. I preach at them. They ought to be willing to do that for free. No, they shouldn't. I need to pay. That's what we have to do. We have to take care and to be faithful and use our possessions honorably. Be generous. You must be learning the discipline of generosity. You've got to be happy to give and to share God's blessings with others. You're not fit to have money if you refuse to be generous with it. Tithing and giving are essential disciplines to ensure liberty from idolatry, the idolatry of money and things. Give and teach your children to give. I don't care if they earned a dollar that week. They owe a dime to the Lord and an offering if they can do it on top of that. They do it. This is just life. That's the way it is. God is the one who gives you strength. Do not pretend. that you can take things and not be generous, take his things and not be generous with them to others and to him. You gotta learn to persevere. Perseverance is determination to keep on doing what God says regardless of the circumstances or the opposition or the results. You must refuse to stop, you can't refuse to stop obeying because now what you got yourself into is a lot bigger and tougher than you thought it was. You gotta keep going, you gotta keep on being faithful even when you're treated unfairly and badly. Perseverance, though, you see, is rooted in faith. You've got to believe that God is true, that He's faithful, that He's going to vindicate, and He's going to reward, and He will do what He said. So I can continue to walk in His ways regardless of what happens, regardless of the outcome. He will be faithful to uphold and provide. And I have to be learning self-control. I've already mentioned this a bit about self-denial, but a man who's ready for marriage is the one who's learned to respect the integrity of marriage. That means in part you've learned to respect women. Every man wants to marry a virgin. The only problem is he doesn't care if anybody else marries one. And you've got to realize that every girl, every young lady is somebody's wife. And you have to learn to treat her as you would another man's wife. And as you better be praying that other guys are treating your wife, right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You want your wife, some other guy, kissing your wife in a dark corner somewhere? The thought of it makes me mad now. But you can take somebody else's wife and do that? Really? What gives you the right to do that kind of thing? Why can you treat women like that and just not care about their futures? Why is that? Why is it there's no regard for women? You see, Avoiding sexual immorality is a matter of loving your neighbor as yourself. All the girls you meet are one day most likely going to belong to other men, not you. So you treat them like you want other guys treating your future wife, wherever she may be. Men that are always seeking the blessings of marriage but without the commitment are men who've never learned to love. And until a man is willing to deny himself that, he cannot love. That's the thing. And the same goes for a woman who has no regard for future husbands. Anyone who seeks sexual intimacy apart from the covenant commitment of marriage despises both God's glory and the well-being of others. You're an agent of Satan, whether you're witting or unwitting. That's who you're working for. Stop it. Repent. Quit it. You've got to love your neighbor as yourself. Remember, God loves sex. He created it. He loves it. But he hates fornication. You say, well, wait a minute. Fornication, not sex. No, sin. He hates fornication and adultery. Listen to Hebrews 13. Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed is undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Now, that's interesting because God judges all sin. He judges all kinds of sinners. But in Hebrews 13, he says, let me tell you something about the ones that I'm going to particularly have a target for. It's the fornicators and the adulterers who undermine marriage. They're trying to destroy the gospel. They're trying to undermine the great commission. And I take that pretty seriously because they're undermining my purpose in the earth. I have to have holy marriages. That's how. The picture of Jesus and the church is spread to the world. The godly man then keeps himself pure out of a fear of God and a love for his neighbor. Jesus died so that you no longer live for yourself, but unto him who loved you and gave himself for you. The one who refuses to live chastely hates the world, hates God, and is not fit for marriage. Now, two final words. You must accept as an unbreakable rule, you cannot marry an unbeliever. And the temptation, especially here for girls and sometimes for guys as well, is pretty high. Because often the only guys that'll come after you are unbelievers. They're the ones who don't mind taking initiative and sticking their necks out. They don't care. For them, risk is worth reward. They don't think about that. If you say no, well, they just go to the next one, they don't matter. You see, the unbeliever, and then, so here's a Christian girl and the only attention she's getting is from these unbelieving guys. And one of them's gonna come along one day and he's a nice guy. And he's funny. And all the Christians are nerds and dumb. They're not funny. They don't know what's funny. I don't, this guy's funny, he's interesting, he likes to go and have fun, he actually takes me to a restaurant that is expensive, and he's willing to spend money on. You know, all of a sudden, there's a lot of attention, and pretty soon you start thinking, you know, he must be a Christian, he must be. I mean, this is the way Christians ought to be. He must be one, even though he doesn't know it. Maybe he's one of these secret Christians, you know? Happens, it could happen. Honestly, let the girls, I won't ask them to say amen, but listen, that's exactly what happens. And you start rationalizing in your head because finally, here's somebody who's nice, and he's fun, and he's showing interest, unlike all the guys in the church. Well, that's when you gotta remember, there's no exceptions to this rule. If you don't know he's a Christian after a couple of days, he's not ready for marriage. He's not an option. a Christian, the kind of guy you need is going to be pretty clear about it. He's going to be pretty up front, and you're going to find out pretty soon. Now, maybe not instantly, but in a couple of days, you'll know, because he won't hide that. You'll see. There are all kinds of ways. So if you just are saying, well, I think he's a Christian, I think so. No. If you think so, I don't think so. All right? Unless you know, then he's not ready. No, an unbeliever, remember, is unsuited to love. No matter how cute and funny and interesting he may be, he can't love you. He can't love you like he's called to love you. He's unsuited to serve because he's unwilling when it gets down to it to die to himself. The man or the woman who doesn't fear God is disqualified. as a potential marriage partner. Don't do it. And you say, well, I know a girl that married a guy, he never, you know, he was an old but unbeliever, but he got converted next week. Okay, I know the guy that fell out of the plane without a parachute. See, there are exceptions. Exceptions never nullify the rules of God, all right? When you marry, you're not looking for an escort to parties. You're looking for a husband who will lay himself out for you and lay his life down for you and for the family. You're looking for a wife who's going to sacrifice day by day for you and the children, and that is only done by a believer. Now, last thing, pray that God prepare you for marriage. Pray for two things. Pray for your wife or husband now. We prayed for our our children from their conception to the day of their marriage for their wives. And we didn't have any idea who they were, but it was nice to be able to tell my oldest son's wife, hey, we've been praying for you for 32 years, which is older than she is. But we were praying for her. We didn't know it. We prayed for her every day. And I prayed for Wendy a long time. I didn't know who I was going to marry, but I just knew By now, she's probably in the world. I thought, oh, surely I'm not going to marry somebody 30 years younger than me. So she's probably in the world somewhere. So Lord, protect her. And if anybody tries to do anything, I pray that she will clock them into next week. I want her to beat his face in. Please give her a good right hook. Please. I did. I'm not embarrassed. I prayed that she would beat him to a pulp. I did. And I wanted then, and then let me meet him, please. I was so, oh, oh. All right. That's the way to pray, you know. Pray for your wife. Pray for your wife, pray for your husband, ask God to preserve them, to teach them, to prepare them, to help them to learn to die, all those things they need to know. And pray for yourself that you'll be prepared for that kind of husband and wife. And I've got to tell you a very embarrassing story, but... So what? I mean, what could be worse than what I've already done? Well, this is worse. When I was in college, a friend of mine decided we were both thinking, if we're going to get a good woman, we've got to know what the Bible teaches about women. So we just studied the Bible together. Man, we had this long, drawn-out Bible study. And we ended up with a list of 10 characteristics of a virtuous woman. We felt like, you know what? We kind of told each other, we can go into a room of women, kind of look around, and in about 10 minutes, we'll know the virtuous women that are there. We got it figured out buddy boy, this is gonna be fun, and we were walking around you know have our little is new Well, maybe maybe No, no, no, that's so bad. All right, we weren't looking for a silly bubble head. We wanted a woman that feared the Lord. We wanted one to know the Bible. She knew correct theology. She understood the importance of faithful, selfless service to Jesus and to us and would be willing to lose everything for the honor and glory of God. Who could cook and who was a knockout? That's all we wanted. It was reasonable, I thought, right? Just the little things, it wasn't big. That's all we wanted. One night, I had a dream. And I don't remember how it happened, but God came to me in the dream, and he goes, you got your list of qualities, do you? Oh, yes, sir. Right out of your book. It's really fine, really useful. And he says, ah, I see. OK, big shot. Suppose I brought that kind of woman to you. What makes you think she would be interested in you? And I had never thought of that. I just thought, God, that kind of woman. Come on, I mean, she's got to be interested. And you get to thinking, you go, you know what? If I brought a godly woman to you, she'd look at you and go, oh, sorry, you're so sweet. She don't want some obnoxious guy that thinks he knows everything. As a man, she wants somebody who's humble and learned to serve and who actually is willing to deny himself and not seek all things for himself. You could never have gotten that kind of woman. Here's the lesson. You must be the kind of person that the kind of person you want to marry will want to marry. So if you want a godly mate, you be the kind of man that'll attract a godly woman. A godly woman's not looking for a guy who looks good on the beach. He's not looking for a guy that can reach the top level in Halo. as attractive as that is, I mean. Yeah, yeah, I'm a top-level halo. I'm just saying. Oh, dear. You're just my kind of man. No. A godly woman is looking for a guy who will die for her. And the same goes for a godly man. He's not necessarily looking for a model. He's not looking for somebody who's concerned that her hair might be out of place if the wind blows. He's not trying to look for somebody who's trying to get the attentions of every male who walks down the street. He's looking for someone who's willing to lay down her life for him and for the children because that's what she's going to have to do. That's the way it is. Marriage is one of the most glorious gifts God gives us in this life. It's vital for your life. It's vital for the life of the world. It's vital for the glory of God. Get serious about it. Let's pray. Father, help us to get serious about these things in the right way, with great humor and with joy, but help us truly to honor you. We pray you will make our marriages, and we pray for our brothers and sisters who haven't yet been brought together with their wives or husbands, we pray for them, that you will prepare them in these ways for one another. Father, we thank you, you're good. and that you are gracious to sinners and arrogant people like we are and thoughtless people and insensitive people. Make us what we should be and help us to glorify you all the way for Jesus' sake. Amen. Pastor Wilkins has to leave in the morning to catch a flight, so let's give him another big hand if you like that.