Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Let’s pray. Father, that’s what we want to do. We want to walk according to your ways and be led, Father, and matured and forsaking our ways and the ways of the world, the flesh and the devil. Help us, Lord God, to understand a little better tonight your ways in terms of the beginning of household. Help us, Lord God, to see the application of this for all of us. We pray your blessing upon us this evening. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

I don’t know. Maybe I should wear my hat. My wife said I should comb my hair. I forgot to. I want to tell you a couple of stories here. The first story is about a couple, we’ll call them Dick and Sally. And they didn’t come from a Christian home particularly, not distinctively. And they didn’t have instruction relative to relationships when they met each other and through their dating of each other and through their relationship growing outside of the oversight of the church or the family really, they began to live together and do things that cause problems for people when they’re doing things outside of marriage.

And this couple found themselves not married with a child on the way. They went to an abortion clinic and the child was killed. And as this couple grew older, more mature, called to the faith, called to obedience to the faith, got married, had other children, but those beginnings had effects on them throughout the rest of their lives. And there was tremendous guilt on Sally’s part. There was a degree of complete insensitivity to God’s word on Dick’s part and a lack of resolution of the issues of sin that started their relationship.

And the relationship is all but dead now because of the way they started. Now, the Lord forgives sin. The Lord brings us up. But if you cut off your arm before you become a Christian, he doesn’t necessarily give you a new arm. He is well able to do it. And he’s well able to forgive sins and to create newness in our hearts. But that’s a sad story.

Another story, another couple. The son is brought by his loving father a bride. The introduction is made through the oversight of the father. The relationship then is directed in terms of that oversight and that structure, that wisdom. This couple recognizes that this relationship initiated has a purpose. The purpose is not sexual union. Ultimately, it involves that, but it involves far more than that. It involves covenantal marriage. And this couple moved in terms of covenantal marriage relative to God.

This couple too has problems and they have sins and their sins are grievous and affect many people and yet salvation from their sins is promised to them and their relationship maintains and while one of their children does terrible things and goes bad the other child comes out pretty good. That second story is the story of Adam and Eve.

Well, we want to talk this week. We have already begun in our devotional times at the dinner table to talk about koinonia, our commonality based upon the commonality of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what we’re trying to do slowly over this week is bring out the verses that show and develop that from our participation in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ covenantally, we have participation in a culture based upon that. And that culture is as simple as children honoring one another and showing deference to one another. And yet it is complex as trying to figure out what we do with our children as they reach the age of marriage because koinonia is to be found at the core of the marriage relationship.

A commonality not shared with others. It certainly is shared in the sense of the faith but a commonality of a relationship in the context of marriage of giving and taking. And that’s what really creates commonality in communion and fellowship. We have, whether we like it or not, cultures we develop and at Reformation Covenant Church, we’re trying to develop a culture, a community, a koinonia, a fellowship that is not the partaking of the table of devils, but a partaking of the table of our Lord and all that means for our lives.

And so as we consider the relationship of koinonia and fellowship to marriage, we also want to see all that in relationship to the church of Jesus Christ and the culture that he would have us to build. We stand in the context of a culture in this world that has a completely different set of expectations when people reach the age of puberty and beyond and what happens and we know some of the relationships that develop and some of the terrible things that have happened in the context of our culture much having to do with this very thing we’re going to speak about for the next few days and that is what is the Christian culture how does it look different than the world’s culture as it comes to young women and young men meeting each other and moving on into marriage and creating families.

This camp is apparently about 76 years old. We were told that when we first got here on Saturday. It’s been here a long time. It means it’s been around since about 1920. If my math is okay. It was here when Emily Post in her book on etiquette wrote in that book and had a chapter entitled “Chaperones and Other Conventions.” By 1937, 17 years later, Emily Post’s reprinting of that book changed that chapter title from “Chaperones and Other Conventions” to “The Vanished Chaperon and Other Lost Conventions.” It wasn’t changed to “The Vanishing Chaperon.” It was changed to “The Vanished Chaperon.” It wasn’t changed to “Conventions We’re Losing” but to “Lost Conventions.”

What happens in this movement away from chaperone relationships to the sort of cultures that are built upon dating relationships? What are the effects of some of these kinds of things? What are the differences? We want to talk about that tonight. We’re going to have a panel discussion after that. We’ll also have in the next couple of days another presentation by me on the qualifications relative to courtship and what that means. And we’ll have another panel discussion about that.

So I’m not going to give you any big truths here tonight. I’m going to get you thinking about things so that we can interact in the context of our time here to try to build that aspect of our Christian culture, which is quite important.

And let me say at the beginning that there are some differences here that are really pretty obvious once you start to think about them. There’s a difference in the way relationships start. In 1922, when Emily Post wrote about chaperones and in the biblical text we read about how relationships start, there is the involvement of the family, the involvement of the church, the involvement of adult members of that church in the way relationships begin.

Today in our culture, there is virtually no felt need for the involvement of the family particularly and the mother and father to be involved in the beginning or initiation of relationships. In a courtship relationship the relationship of the two people, the two young man and the young woman, is overseen in the context of a structure. There are, as we said, chaperones whether they be vicinity chaperones—people in the vicinity of where they’re at—whether they’re always there or not there’s some degree of control or oversight in terms of chaperoning but in the dating relationship there’s absolutely no felt need again for chaperones in the context of oversight.

So the way the relationship begins and the way the relationship continues then is markedly different as we move from 1922 to 1937. The termination of the relationship as well. What’s the purpose? What are you getting together for? Obviously radically shifted as well because when you have a chaperone relationship in Christian cultures, it’s a relationship that is attempting to lead toward marriage. But in the dating culture, the relationship has no such goal as its obvious end. Rather, it is fun and amusement. And that’s why it’s referred to as recreational dating.

Now, it could lead to marriage. It could, but in the context of beginning dates and stuff, to think about whether we’re going to get married or not on your first or second date is seen as ridiculous by people. And that’s the very thing that we start to think about when our children develop interest. So the beginning is different, the structure is different. What happens is different and then what the goal of the relationship is different as well. And so from the beginning to the end and in the middle, there are differences between what happened in 1922 and before and what happened in 1937 down to today.

Let’s talk a little bit about the awesome and fearful consequences of the forsaking of some of these things as we move from this courtship pattern to a dating pattern.

Let me mention by the way here that there are several resources that I’m drawing on. For instance, the illustration from Emily Post’s book comes from Jim West’s excellent pamphlet called “Christian Courtship Versus the Dating Game.” Janice may have copies of this for sale. Wouldn’t surprise me the least. There’s a nice little pamphlet, not quite as useful frankly, but nonetheless helpful, by Mr. Lynval—Jonathan Lynval. “Youthful Romance Scriptural Patterns.” That’s another resource for you. I have other ones here. This is called “Courtship and Dating, A Biblical Analysis” by Angela Hansen. And then I also want to mention just real briefly that there is now a courtship ring. Steve Schlissell’s daughter Sarah Faith Schlissell. You can sign up if you have email or internet capabilities and he will send you via email to your email address on a regular basis, postings that people make to this courtship ring.

So there are conversations that occur via the internet, including by the way conversations Rachel Garrett is involved in this for those of you who know Rachel. And you can get those postings as you watch Christian men and women think through and struggle through issues relative to Christian dating and Christian courtship and what all those things look like. So I just want to give credit to all these things. Very little of what I have tonight is new to me. I glean this material from these resources available.

I mean, let’s just think a little bit about what happens. Why do we end up with a Dick and a Sally? What kind of things happen in the context of the loss of the father, okay? The loss of the family and the family head, the father in relationships between young people as we move from the culture of the past to the culture of the present in America.

A term for the father is “the lord of the home.” The good illustration I used of Adam and Eve is overseen by the father—you know, God the Father and God is the Lord. The English term “Lord” is a picture to us of what fathers in the flesh are to do as well as our Father in Heaven does for us. The English word “Lord” is a contraction of two Old English words “cloth” and “weird” or “ward.” And it’s a contraction that puts together “cloth,” which was “loaf,” and “ward” or “veard,” which is to guard. So the very word “lord” means fathers are to be the lord of the family.

Sarah called Abraham Lord. Okay that English word as it comes down to us in the providence of God who governs all things. That English word is a picture to us that the father is to guard and to nourish his children. He’s to provide bread and a fence.

Well, the failure to provide the fence is rather obvious in terms of these relationships I’ve described relative to dating and in the example of Dick and Sally. Children that are not guarded. Women are weaker vessels according to the scriptures. Sons are prone, Proverbs tells us, to the adulteress’s allurements and enticement. And when the father fails to guard the physical relationship, what happens? We end up with a phenomenon today that was never talked about in 1922 called date rape.

What is it? It’s things get going too far. Consent is given all down the line and then things don’t stop. Maybe consent continues to be given and you have consenting adults. But either way, what do you end up with potentially? You end up with potentially well certainly you end up with fornication all along the path and the implications of that are great according to the scriptures. You end up with fornication and as a result spoiled consciences—and these are Christian young people. You end up with what Jim West calls white collar prostitution and the scriptures compare it to that.

That’s not an attempt to get you angry at what your children may engage in or it’s not an attempt to belittle your children but what you might engage in as you become older. It’s an attempt to get you to realize the devastating results of a failure to guard yourself in this area.

What happens? Well, we got the wonders of birth control. But if you mess up there with birth control, you end up with unwanted pregnancies. And what do people do with unwanted pregnancies in the context of the Christian church? They have them, own up to the consequences. Sometimes they do, but in far too many elements of the Christian church, they terminate the pregnancy. They go to that abortion clinic that I mentioned earlier with this original example because they don’t want people to know and the parents don’t want to own up to the shame that their child raised in the church has done such a horrendous thing they kill the child.

Now if you think you are incapable of letting those actions go on in your household and if you think you’re prone—you are somehow have some kind of Teflon vest where that kind of temptation won’t stick to you—remember David a man whose heart sought God a man who loved God what did he do? He killed Uriah the Hittite. Why did he kill him? Because he slept with the man’s wife and a child was going to come. He covered his tracks through murder. And every day in this country, children who profess the name of the Lord Jesus Christ cover their tracks in this area with nothing short of murder of these children before they’re born. That’s the devastating results.

But it continues on. Satan’s work doesn’t stop there. Like Dick and Sally, my illustration, those families are far more likely not dealing with the guilt of that tremendous sin that they commit. Unlike David who said, “I did this. You’re right, Nathan the prophet,” children hide their sins. The difference between Saul and David, they both sin grievously before God. Saul doesn’t admit his sin, and David confesses it, repents, and God spares him. But far too many Christians don’t do that either, and they hide the sin, and they end up divorced like Dick and Sally, separated from one another. The marriage dissolved and what happens then? Does it stop there with the isolation of these two people what should be the most precious communion and fellowship they had with one another outside of the church of Jesus Christ? It doesn’t end there either because these people are attached to families and those families then end up polarized and isolated and the koinonia that we’re trying to build at Reformation Covenant Church the fellowship the Christian culture is shot and it’s broken and shattered as a result of a failure to apprehend the tremendous difficulties if young children are allowed to go on in the ways they do in this culture day in and day out in Christian churches.

We cannot allow that. We must look at a biblical alternative because this isn’t God’s way. This leads to the breakdown of culture and community to murder and all kinds of polarization of individuals. And we have a country in which we have no sense of covenant anymore. In which everyone is an individual for themselves and can make it on their own. And they can’t make it on their own. Partake of the table of devils and you end up on the outside of even that communion. You end up isolated and scattered. And that’s where this country is today.

And this subject we’re talking about here has relevance far beyond the issue of you know this or that person and trying to make a better marriage and all this stuff. It has societal implications that are vast and that are very important to us. The loss of koinonia is at stake.

Now let’s look. Turn open your Bibles if you will real quickly. Genesis 2:15-24. Genesis 2:15-24. Now, most of these people talking about Christian courtship, Jim West uses this example of the Father here and God the Father. They start at verse 18. You think through as I read this while I’m starting at verse 15, Genesis 2:15-24.

“And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt surely die.’

“And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a help meet to him.’ And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam, to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to the beast of the field.

“But for Adam, there was not found a help for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. And 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 bones, 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 they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.’”

Okay, we have here a picture of the Father seeing the need of a son or a help meet to him, and then providing under his guidance and his instruction in introduction to the first wife, looking overseeing that relationship with a view to union of the couples. We have the essential elements of courtship bound up in the creation pattern.

And I began at verse 15 because I think it is appropriate to make application of the text that Adam prior to his father seeking a wife for him brings him to a sense of calling vocation. He’s doing his job. There are qualifications for the son before he enters into the courtship, the meeting of his wife and the overseeing of the relationship of the one who will be his wife and then a consummation of the relationship.

In the creation pattern, we have pictured for us qualifications for marriage on the part of the husband, vocation and all that comes along with that. We have the introduction of the relationship by the father. We have the overseeing of the relationship by God the Father as well. And we see the relationship is intended to produce the result of sexuality. Yes, that is why relationships are entered into in the context of marital union and then offspring as a result of all of that.

So we have the basic elements of what the scriptures teach us or what we want to talk about tonight and the scriptures I believe teach in terms of the courtship pattern that we’re going to be talking about.

And I don’t care if we call it courtship and I don’t care if we call it Christian dating, frankly. I mean, the words do mean things, but the definition of the words is absolutely critical. We can call it Christian dating and say Christian dating is the father introducing having a role in the introduction of the children and the father overseeing the relationship as it develops and seeing qualifications on the part of the people. This is what Christian dating is. And the father makes sure that all this is intended to look toward whether or not they’re compatible for marriage and then approving that marriage and the relationship ensuing. And if we want to call that Christian dating, I don’t care. It’s okay with me. What’s important is the content because I’ve seen examples of Christian courtship that look a lot like dating. And I’ve seen people talk about their kids dating and it looks pretty good. Looks like courtship to me. Okay. But what the elements are right here.

Now, I bring this up because I want us to deal here with some other biblical texts. In a minute, we’re going to turn to 1 Corinthians 7, which is a very critical text in terms of what I’m trying to lay out tonight. The involvement particularly the involvement of the father to avoid the attack on the woman, particularly on the part of Satan, the serpent who always is out there to get us. That’s what we’re really talking about tonight.

I’m making a case with you. The scriptures teach Christian dating or courtship. The scriptures teach us that biblical culture, the culture of RCC should involve male female relationships in our young people growing up that is overseen by the father as the covenantal representative of the family and as a result the children are both protected from the wilds of the devil and the lust of the flesh and also then can produce that Christian marriage that is the basis for our continuing koinonia and culture. Okay, but that’s really what I’m getting at and I think 1 Corinthians 7 is critical.

So again, just to reiterate what we have in this text, we have calling your vocation first, qualifications which I’ll talk about at a later time, not tonight. We have the father overseeing the relationship, starting it, running it, and with a view to the termination of the relationship being in marriage. And we see then that sexual response, as Jim West puts it in his book, is an intended consequence of this relationship.

And all of this happens, and this is very important to remember, all of this happens prior to the fall. Okay? So we’re not talking about just when problems are going to exist. So courtship is not or biblical dating, whatever you want to call it—biblical relationships are not just a way to avoid the consequences of the fall. They’re the creation order. They’re a creation ordinance, the way relationships form and develop that are intended for the well-being of Christian culture and koinonian fellowship. See my point?

So it’s not just we’re trying to protect people, we’re trying to create what God intended man to create. And if we’re recalled to the dominion calling in Jesus Christ, and we are, then an essential part of that is a recalling back to the creation pattern for relationships.

Now, I’m not going to take the time to go through all the verses that we could look at, but let me give you a couple of verses to jot down. You could look at Genesis 24:50-58 and see there the securing of a wife for the son of Abraham on the part of his servant. You know that most of you know that text know some implications of it. We could look at Genesis 28:1-2, Genesis 21:21, Deuteronomy 7:3.

Let’s turn to that one at least. These other ones—let me give one more before I turn to that. Genesis 26:34-35. Okay, so Genesis 28:1-2, Genesis 21:21, Deuteronomy 7:3, Genesis 26:34-35. Read them later. But what you’ll see there is a consistent Old Testament pattern of involvement on the part of the father or the mother if there is no father. Ishmael and Hagar, Hagar finds a bride for her son. Okay? But there’s an involvement on the part of the parents covenantally represented by the father to secure mates for children.

And there’s a pattern there. Why is it there? We can say, well, it’s there to tell us about Christ calling the bride. It has a redemptive historical context to it. It pictures Jesus getting his bride, the church. We can say, well, there was a Jewish culture and this is the way they did things. We can look at it that way. What I’m arguing for is that what they’re doing here has to be understood in light of the creation pattern we’ve just referenced and therefore is an extrapolation of those truths in the recorded history of Israel in the Old Testament. See, you know what I’m saying? Not just you know, isolated facts being recorded. They fit the model. And because they fit the model, I believe they’re teaching us that model is an important one for us to see.

I do want to turn briefly to Deuteronomy 7:3. However, that particular one, Deuteronomy 7:3. Okay? And this is different than the other citations. The other citations are historical records. This is part of the law that God gives to Israel as they move into the land. And this is what it says in Deuteronomy 7:3.

“Neither shall you make marriages with them, that is with the Canaanites and those that you’re make covenants with in the context of the land you’re going to go into possess. Okay? They’re going to go to the promised land. Drive out the bad guys. And with those bad guys, he says, don’t make marriages with them. Don’t give your daughter to their son, to the bad guys’ sons. Nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.”

That’s an important verse because this shows us in case law what we can apply to ourselves today if we have no other references to the New Testament that says that parents give their children in marriage or take children in marriage. I mean it addresses both sexes. It says don’t give your daughters to a pagan man. You know when you give somebody in marriage it’s a transference of covenantal authority over that child. It doesn’t say don’t let your daughters marry these guys. It says don’t give your daughters. What’s the clear implication?

Christian householder, you are the one responsible to give your child. Boys and girls, teenagers, little ones, your parents, the scriptures say, will give you to someone in marriage. Doesn’t mean you don’t have a say in it. They’re responsible. They have the authority. Well, you say, “Yeah, I understand that about my sister here, but doesn’t say my dad’s going to give me to any girl. But your parents are recorded as saying, don’t take those bad people’s children for your son. Okay? So it works both ways. You know, don’t receive that on behalf of the covenantal representation of your son. Don’t receive that mate for your son if she’s pagan, if she’s not a Christian in our definition of the word. Okay?

So you see here we have case law. This is the same thing. The parents are overseeing the relationship that comes together for marriage that we saw in the opening chapters of scripture. And so that tells us that probably what we have in the recorded history is we can probably make a pretty good assumption these weren’t cultural. These weren’t just redemptive historical models. These were models of people who are trying to live godly lives. We should have known that because the guys involved, Abraham, etc. are godly men, fathers of the faith. They’re the patriarchs, the true patriarchs, church, true church fathers. They give us godly examples. Okay.

So now on the basis of that then—the creation pattern the historical record the case law representation—that this is the way it is. Let’s turn to 1 Corinthians 7:36-38. 1 Corinthians 7. Okay. 1 Corinthians 7:36-38.

“But if and Paul is writing here in the context of this problem that’s going on, the present distress, there’s difficulties. And he’s talking about why well, you know, during this particular period, it’s better not to get married. Now, we know that marriage is a good thing. God says it’s not good that man be alone and women are made essentially as that help meet that Adam didn’t have prior to the creation of Eve. Okay? So he knows marriage is good. So Paul’s addressing a particular historical circumstance that is odd when marriage isn’t good during this particular time for whatever the difficulty was. There are times when marriage is not that great a deal. But he goes out of his way to say, I’m not telling you can’t get married. I’m just saying it’s going to be tougher if you are married. But it could be tougher for some of you if you don’t get married. You don’t have the gift and the part of the man, you know, of celibacy. And so go ahead and get married rather than burn.”

So that’s what’s all going on before. That’s the context for these couple of verses. And then he talks about the case of people that have daughters who are of a marrying age. And he says this:

“But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will. He sinneth not, let them marry. Nevertheless, he that standeth steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart, that he will keep his virgin, doeth well. So then, he that giveth her in marriage doeth well. But he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better.”

Well, we can’t talk about everything that’s going on in these couple of verses. You know, you read verse 36 and you stop and you say, “Well, could be a guy is engaged to somebody.” But by the time you get to verse 38, no, that can’t be. Verse 38 makes the teaching very clear. The summary, the conclusion of the matter in verse 38 is, “He that giveth her, that is this virgin, his daughter, in other words, in marriage doeth well. It’s okay, you know, if to prohibit her from marriage is actually uncomely in verse 36. If it actually is an offense, not just an appearance of an offense, but an offense because maybe she’s getting older, the biological clock is ticking, maybe the phrase means she’s now of marriable age. One of those two things is going on, but there’s advancement maturity on the part of the daughter.

Need so require this girl really wants to get married real bad if she if you don’t give permission to marry this nice Christian man. She’s going to marry a pagan. I don’t know what these things mean by way of application in the particular instance in which he writes, but he’s talking about that the father here has the ability to give her in marriage.

And it’s okay even though he’s talked about how marriage is going to be a hindrance in terms of Christian work during this particular time of church history. But he goes on to say that he that giveth her not in marriage do it better. No, because of the present distress. Because marriage right now in a very unusual context in which the judgment of Jerusalem is coming in 70 AD and other things are going on this particular weird period of time if you don’t give remarriage that’s even better. Well, what’s the clear implication of the text?

Well, it’s consistent, isn’t it? With the creation pattern with the recorded history of the patriarchs with the case law instruction from Deuteronomy and now which we don’t need anything reiterating this but we have it right here we have this clear instruction that the father is to give the daughter in marriage or decide not to give her in marriage is authority.

The whole point of this text now I want to read some commentators to you. I mean you know what they say isn’t important in the context of you know it’s the word of God we want to look to but you know I’m what I’m what I want you to see is what I just told you when I first heard it sounded weird to me that the dad can decide not to let his daughter marry for a period of time. You know I got a daughter. She’s getting older. She can’t get married in her life. There’s a problem. This says it’s okay for him to do that. Well, that seems weird, doesn’t it? But listen to the commentators I pulled up and I have pretty good commentaries for the most part. Let me just read you a selection of them and what they say from this.

That’s what we just read. Here’s one. It says that the father decides in full freedom and stands by it. This is no obstinacy, but rather a decision resting on good arguments. But the point is this commentator said it’s the father’s decision. He has full freedom and may stand by his decision.

J. Alexander says this. He says that the apostle wrote regarding marriage at that time said that it was inexpedient. He tells fathers, this is J. Alexander speaking, excellent commentator, reformed man. He tells fathers that they were perfectly free to exercise their own judgment in giving their daughters in marriage or in keeping them single.

Alexander goes on to say, “In all cases of interference where no moral principle or indifference rather where no moral principle is concerned, our conduct must be regulated by a wise consideration of circumstances. But where a thing is in its own nature either right or wrong, there is no room for discretion.”

What he’s saying is things indifferent aren’t really indifferent. It just means that you can’t tell someone yes, it’s okay to have do this and no, it’s not okay to do this because the circumstances will dictate. In wisdom, there is a right and wrong usually, but wisdom will dictate that and you cannot make absolute pronouncements. And the application here of Alexander is that there is no right and wrong issue when it comes to a father deciding either to give his daughter in marriage or to not give her marriage. It’s his choice.

Now, he’s got to do it based on good biblical reasons. I mean, he’s not a free moral agent in the sense he can do whatever he wants to do and no repercussions from God. Is that Alexander’s commentary?

I have another one here from Bishop Alford and his commentary on this text. Let me read you that real quickly. He says the father or guardian is to be free to follow out the course to which his thoughts have been directing him. Whether that course is to keep his daughter a virgin forever or not maybe forever but at that time or to let her marry goes on to say that he points out that a particular Greek word here seems almost designed to mark how completely the matter was left with the father and regarded as dependent on his deliberate judgment.

So he says even in the Greek text which is he’s one of these exegetical commentaries that helps you know the language. Okay, even in the Greek language the particular words used are used to strongly say that it is really the father has the matter completely left to him and it’s regarded as dependent upon the father’s deliberate judgment, nothing else. And then finally he says the act is praised when it is indisputably the result of a well-considered decision on the part of the parent or guardian.

Okay. And that’s the next thing I want to say. This text I think as well as all the other biblical texts we’ve looked at summary of these scriptures is that the call is the dads, the call is the fathers. But it doesn’t just say that. It lays out particular things. The issue would come up Why did it come up? Because there’s a right time and a wrong time to forbid your daughter to marry. And this is the result after all of what Bishop Alford called a deliberate decision based upon his good judgment as a Christian householder. Okay.

So the second point I want to make from this text is that the father the parents have oversight responsibilities. But the point of all of this the entire point of Paul’s entire direction to the Corinthian church and to us is summarized by Jay Adams when he says this all that he has written from verse one on Paul says he has two objects in these verses to promote decency and devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ and then Adams says this about the fathers he said while Christian fathers have no absolute right to forbid or allow daughters to marry in our culture still their influence ought to be strong and while at the time of writing there is no persecution that would recommend them to urge singleness, there are many situations where desperate daughters would marry anyone rather than remain unmarried.

In which case, father should insist that it is better not to marry. So Adams is saying that the father has the decision, but it’s not an absolute right he has. In other words, it’s not an arbitrary decision. Dads, of course, I don’t got to tell you that. I don’t know any man who could have view it as an arbitrary decision prohibiting his daughter from marriage. But I do feel I have to say that to make sure I’m not misunderstood by the audience here.

So what I’ve argued from scripture is that the creation pattern is that the father indicated first by God the Father relating to his creation Adam and then the biblical examples the case law and the New Testament as well confirms that the father representing the family has involvement in the initiation oversight and the goal of relationships between single men and women in the context of our Christian culture.

Now, I want to talk very briefly about four phases of this. Okay? And I’ve got five different ways it could be said and you pick whichever one you like best.

If you if you one way to look at what I’m talking about here, Christian courtship is that there are four kind of stages or things we can talk about in it. One way to talk about these four-fold aspects is qualification, initiation, continuation, termination. Okay, four aspects: Qualification, initiation, continuation, termination.

If you want it alliterated with P’s, we have preparation, presentation, perpetuation, and propagation. Okay. Father prepares Adam presents Adam a wife perpetuates the courting arrangement short will it may be in that particular text to the view to propagation. So preparation, presentation, perpetuation and propagation.

Howard got me started on this. He was talking about a sermon he recently heard that needed one more letter to be a completely alliterated sermon outline. So here’s B’s: before, begin, behave, beget. That’s fun, huh?

C’s: conditions, conception. That’s of the relationship. Continuation and culmination. Okay. Conditions, conception, continuation, culmination. And this isn’t alliterated except it’s all, I think, one syllable words.

Prep. I had to shorten preparation. Prep, start, run, goal. Prep, start, run, goal. And then finally, under run, you can break that down to two aspects. Who and how.

Okay, what am I talking about? Well, I wish I had a whiteboard, but the whole point here is that I can’t get into any of these in detail, but what I’m arguing for is that I think that this is a wise way to conduct ourselves with our children relative to courtship is to think of it in terms of these four aspects of the relationship.

Packer says that wisdom is using the best means to achieve the best ends. And if you want me to give you proof texts for everything I say about courting, I can’t do it, nor can anybody else. We’re trying to help you to be wise to see the overarching themes based on scripture that parents should be involved and oversee the thing. That’s what it says. Meaning, and now we move to some application stuff that I cannot tell you this is the word of God in on each of these points but I’m trying to share what I believe might be wisdom as we consider this particular topic okay and there’s so I’ve just given you a bunch five now different systems of four and the first thing is there’s qualifications required of men and women who are going to enter into a relationship overseen by the parents that leads to marriage and propagation okay so there’s qualifications and that’s going to be for a talk later on there’s one talk Lord willing just on the qualifications I think that’s very important.

But then secondly the way the marriage culminates as we move from the culture when this camp was constructed to the culture of today. Relationships were begun, you know, the introductions were made in the context of adults and not just, you know, people cruising down Main Street and winking at each other. Okay. So what we want to do is have parents involved in the very beginning of a relationship between a boy and a girl or a man and a woman to get them to see that relationship is overseen by those people.

So qualifications determined by the parents when their children are ready to marry. The way kids get involved in the context of adults and particularly the family. And then the third thing is continuation or running or what happens the process of the courtship itself. And as I said you can look at this two things how and who means who oversees what these two young people do as they move to the goal of marriage. And of course that’s assumed isn’t it? Unlike dating these relationships and we see it as the purpose is marriage eventually. Maybe not to that purpose person, but marriage. It’s a goal.

So who oversees what they do together? And I’m arguing from these texts, if the dad’s going to make the call at the end of the game, he’s going to want to be involved at the beginning of the game and as the games being played. Okay? It’s all in the game. Beautiful song. And the game should be overseen. It is no game really, but you know what I’m saying. The game should be overseen by the parents and particularly by the father and the how of it is important too.

The culture moved from a situation where the running of relationships happened in the context of chaperones, vicinity chaperones, whatever it’s called, people around people. And one big movement in the how of the relationship being conducted was a movement from people doing things in public, whether it was semi-public or whatever, to children now or young people now doing things completely in private. It’s a big movement. And I’m saying that wisdom would have us not do that. Wisdom would have our children, certainly as they’re leading up to a courtship. And I would recommend even through courtship and even through the engagement period, I think it is wise to avoid complete privacy on the part of the two people.

Well, there’s a lot of ways to accommodate that. You don’t got to be sitting next to them the whole time. You know, the old there’s old custom that some country western singer sings about where the mom would always kind of be behind the couple as they were walking around at the moonlight and stuff maybe holding hands. The mom would be back a ways but she could see what was going on. So they had privacy of communication at that point in the courtship relationship and maybe even engagement. Vicinity chaperoning is what that can be called and this is a place where the church can be quite helpful because we can’t always do those things and the church has capability to include themselves in that.

So in terms of the how of the courtship, I would recommend no absolute privacy. And the second aspect of how is the physical intimacy. And here my recommendation is I don’t have a, you know, this is not what the scriptures command us to do, but I would recommend that the relationship include no touching. No touching. Okay.

And let me now go into a discussion of why I think that’s important. Actually, let me postpone that for just a second. Let me postpone for just a second and say that I’ll get back to that in a minute.

So the father initiates, father oversees the process and the father oversees that in such a way as to try to protect the couple from complete privacy and from too much physical intimacy and to the view of the termination is marriage or at least engagement.

And let me just say one thing real quickly about the shift as well from the biblical culture to our worldly culture. The end result of dating, the best thing they got going for it, maybe we end up engaged, but engagement in the terms of today’s world is not biblical engagement. The scriptures teach that betrothal or engagement is a covenant. It’s the beginning of the marriage covenant that is consummated with the wedding. But it’s not like today’s engagement. Today’s engagement is really like courting. There’s qualifications parents approved and people are moving toward marriage, but they’re still not sure if this is the one. So they get engaged. So you have a long engagement because you’re really involving yourself in courting almost.

But in the biblical model, the courtship ends up with a betrothal that is relatively short, but at a very important time. If you look in the case law, and we can’t we won’t take the time now to do it, but in Deuteronomy 22, if a woman is engaged, if a woman is married and someone has a relationship, sexual relationships with her, it’s adultery and they’re put to death. It’s treason, you know, against the family. Okay?

If a woman is single and sexual relationships occur with her consent, it’s not treason against the family. It’s treated more, as one commentator said, as seduction or theft from the father. They aren’t killed according to biblical law. In fact, the young man is required to make a dowry payment to the girl held by her father but not to the father. He’s not buying the girl. He’s endowing the woman because he’s humbled her. And if the father will consent and if the woman consents, he has to marry her.

Why the difference? Because one is, you know, you’re violating another man’s wife and here you’re not doing that. There’s something else. Couples have consented. It’s fornication. It’s sin. But it’s not capital crime. Well, there’s a third case that’s talked about and that’s if the woman is betrothed. If she’s engaged to someone and consents to a sexual relationship with another man, they’re both killed. Killed. Why? Because it’s seen as more akin to marriage than it is to singleness. A covenant has been involved and it’s treason now against really the family structure that’s already incipient in the betrothal or engagement. You see what I’m saying?

So in Christian courtship, terminates in betrothal short period of time then marriage and so when we think of engagement today that’s really more like courtship. Okay. So the termination point there is different as we move from dating to courting or the old way versus the biblical way versus our present culture. Okay.

And now I want to talk a and by the way that helps us to understand the story of Mary and Joseph and why Joseph is going to put Mary away going to divorce her what the language almost seems to talk about when She was with child by the Holy Ghost. See, if it’s an engagement, he just breaks off the engagement. But he didn’t break off the engagement. He was thinking of putting her away quietly. Okay, that helps you to understand that because betrothal in the scriptures, which is our model, right? It’s our only rule for faith and practice. Our children’s engagement is betrothal. That’s what I’m trying to say in context of Christian culture. Okay.

Now, so okay. Okay. So I okay, I want to now begin to talk a little bit again. What basically all I’ve said so far is to involve the father and the family in the context of the overseeing of the relationships of men and women as they move to adulthood and into maturity and into the marriage relationship. And I talked a little bit about how based on the creation model the importance of this is it really is not ultimately the guarding function as much as it is the flourishing function of the Lord or the Father.

I mean, ultimately for the Christian, we’re not trying to avoid sin in our lives. We’re trying to promote the building and maintenance of a Christian culture and a Christian kingdom manifested here in the context of our land, right? So we’re not trying to avoid, you know, things as much as we’re trying to promote godly marriage. And so, but on the other hand, there is also a sense in which we’re guarding our children from the deterioration.

That’s kind of what I was trying to say earlier at the Westminster Catechism and stuff, you know, you know, if you think about it, we think, well, we can do good or we can do bad or we can just sit in the middle. No, you can’t do that because you have an obligation on the part of the fifth commandment to do good to your equals. See, if you’re doing nothing, you’re doing evil. According to the Westminster Catechism definition, they have lists of stuff that is sins against the fifth commandment. But the first thing always listed is they point out the sins, the violation of the commandment is the absence of doing what’s required.

Okay? So see, if all you do as if you’re if you’re a parent here or if you’re a boy and girl and all you do is say, “I’m not going to do the sexual stuff and the independent stuff that this culture does.” Not good enough. You’ve avoided the evil of improper relationships, but you’ve not done the best of having a relationship guarded, developed, nurtured by the father and the mother and adults in the Christian community. You see what I’m saying? Very important to get that true.

We do want to guard against the evil. The children, what we’re really trying to give you a picture of is what we want is not just to keep you from something, but to deliver you into a Christian marriage that is one of great blessing for you and all those downstream benefits to this church and the church of Jesus Christ across the country.

And so courtship isn’t just the head making sure the kids don’t get into trouble. Courtship is the parents, the two fathers and the two mothers counseling, guiding, directing the relationship so that the next generation is a leg up from our generation. And we’ve learned from the maturity of the two families that are brought together. Now, God guards us against our own sins in that. I’ll talk about that in the qualification side of this because it was just one father overseeing all of this. Not as good. I’ll talk about that in. But you see what I’m saying? It’s a promotion of the positive well-being of the culture, the koinonia, the fellowship we’re talking about here to have these relationships overseen and nurtured by the fathers and mothers involved.

Now, there is also an aspect of guarding, however, and I do want to talk about that a little bit. God the Father is where we’re starting here. And fathers in terms of the households overseeing the relationships and father’s first job is to dress the garden. Our first job is to nurture. Our first job is to nourish and build up. But there’s a second job because God in his wisdom and providence has provided Satan. He’s provided an enemy. He’s provided someone we need to guard against. So Adam’s second job is to guard that garden. And father’s second job is to guard Adam till he gets married. And our second job is to guard our children from the sins they could enter into that would not just cause them to fail the positive side but actually slip into the negative side.

Okay? And I just want to read quickly a series of verses here about lust. And you know significantly Jim West talks about how lust began as a lust for the forbidden thing that God told us. Forbidden fruit the knowledge of the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Okay. And so lust for that was entered into in the part of Adam and Eve. And what did they do after that? They hid their the portion of their body connected with propagation and their sexuality. And so that lust there is transferred into and seen in the context of lust in terms of the physical relationship.

And I just want to read some verses real quickly here on that side of the equation. Okay.

Ephesians 4:22: “Ye put off concerning the former conversation of the old man, which is corrupted according to the deceitful lusts.”

Our lusts are deceitful. You think they’re not lust, but they turn into lust. You think they’re love, but it’s really lust going on in the context of relationships.

Timothy himself is told by Paul in 2 Timothy 2:22, “Flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”

Children, what was he telling you in the context of a relationship as you grow up and have an interest in women and men that you flee youthful lusts? Those lusts that will lure you into temptation by putting on the positive aspects of following righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call God out of a pure heart.

Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?”

My heart is good. My heart is pure. I don’t need my dad here. I don’t need my mom here and he doesn’t need his dad here. We’re pure Christian kids. We’re Dominion reconstructionists we’re full-blown theonomic postmillennial Calvinists. And we can be okay in this relationship. No, you can’t. And neither can your parents. And your parents guard themselves regularly. You don’t know it, but they do against sexual impropriety and all kinds of other things. So it becomes a pattern of guarding with them all their lives. Why? Because our heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. You cannot know it. And you will be deceived. If David could be, if Solomon could be, and if Samson could be, you can be. Okay.

1 Corinthians 7: “Now concerning the things whereof you wrote unto me, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto his wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife unto the husband.’”

He’s talking about sexuality here. And he begins this section, which by the way is the context for our quote relative to the relationship with the father to the virgin daughter in marriage. He begins this by saying to begin with he says it is good for a man not to touch a woman. I thought we were talking about sexuality here. You know maybe he just means not to touch the erogenous zones. Oh because in there’s a sense in which all of the body is an erogenous zone.

There’s an old rock and roll song by Tony Basil. I heard that snickering. I remember the name it was. Oh Mickey, you’re so fine. You’re so fine. You blow my mind. That wasn’t the right lyric. It was Oh Mickey. let’s see. Don’t you understand? You take me by the heart when you take me by the hand. That’s what it works. It works like with women to take a woman by the hand. Take her takes her by the heart. You’re taken an erogenous zone, so to speak, and it isn’t just not primarily even sexual, but there’s a relationship that a person is tugged into.

And if we’re trying to protect our children from what some call emotional fornication or emotional attachments, which are then broken off, emotional attachment to the next guy and broken off, emotional attachment to the next date and broken off in preparation for divorce through that process. If we’re trying to protect and guard our children against that then maybe we should tell them don’t hold hands till you’re engaged maybe when you’re courting some I can’t tell the line for you but I’m saying that the scriptures say it’s good for a man not to touch a woman and you know think well he’s found one verse there but you know there’s a lot of verses that talk about just this thing for instance in Genesis 20:4-6.

Abimelech you know he’s been kind of deceived here about Abraham and Sarah and he says, “Hey, you know, she said that he said that she was his sister.” And in verse 6, it says, “And God said unto him in a dream, Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart. And I also withheld thee from sinning against me. Therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.”

It could be he’s using that as symbolic language for, you know, sexual acts, but the fact is it’s still a symbol for the sexual act. Yeah. I mean, it’s close enough to be a symbol. So it’s close enough for us to be careful about if that’s all it is. And maybe he’s saying specifically that Abimelech didn’t even touch her. And I protected you, Abimelech, from relationship with her by not allowing you to touch her.

Ruth 2:9: “Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, and go thou after them. Have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee?”

Touch, touch, touch.

Proverbs 6:29: “He that goeth in by his neighbor’s wife, whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.”

Touch.

So you know, I we could go on, but the scriptures use the at least the analogy of touching to speak of the beginnings of sexual response. And I think because of that, we have a good reason to believe that to properly fulfill our guarding function, not forgetting our nurturing function, that we should try to whatever, you know, consider and I think for me and my household, the elimination of physical touching in relationships pre courting and maybe into the courting process and maybe even in the engagement process. Why not? Why not? You kill the romance, Dad.

There’s no romance. No, as Jim West so aptly put it, it’s the restoration of romance that we’re trying to accomplish here. Biblical romance. You think it’s romance, but it’s lust. You want to be lusted after by a man, young woman? And that’s what many believe the woman’s basic is a responder to men. And men lust after women. And you think that it’s romance, but really what you got going on frequently prior to marriage is lust. I mean, not an unhealthy lust. I mean, not a healthy lust, rather, but an unhealthy lust.

Well, we can’t communicate if we got all these, you know, people overseeing our relationship. We won’t be able to get off and have private conversations. Well, first of all, nobody says anything about private conversations, but what we’re trying to do is protect godly communication so that you communicate about important things at the beginning of your relationship. We’re not saying you got to study theology every time you’re together, but to have the conversation guided and nurtured by wise parents who want to see love developed between two people and want their children to be married. And so I believe that if we’re to fulfill our obligations relative to the guarding function that we have that the physical contact, the oversight right? The keeping or the elimination of complete privacy in the context of the courting relationship all these things are very important.

Now you know let me just read quickly here in closing couple of things. Well, I won’t read it. I’ll read it at the beginning of the maybe during the panel discussion or someone else can in terms of what I’m going to recommend to you if you have your Westminster Catechisms here that the Larger Catechism has a designation of the requirements of the seventh commandment that are very appropriate to go over with your children as they grow up and reach a dating years or courting years, whatever you want to define that term as. The seventh commandment. We’ll go through that another time, but let me just say a couple of things in closing.

What we’re trying to do is not simply guard our kids against improper lust. We’re trying to nurture them in Christian relationships. And I believe the scriptures teach from Genesis to the epistle the epistle to the Corinthians by Paul, from beginning to end, so to speak, that parents must oversee the relationship and particularly fathers. And that relationship involves both the initiation of the relationship, how people meet. It involves the actual operating of the relationship itself, how it works, how it runs, and it involves the termination the relationship. The aim of the whole thing is marriage.

I believe that to do that we properly fulfill our guarding responsibilities to guard our children from the youthful lusts that Paul warned Timothy about. And I believe that to do that we’re not just guarding them from those things but we’re positively nurturing them toward godly Christian relationship.

I me I failed to mention the primary source I use which is a book by a man named Andrews on the family. God’s Weapon for Victory, the Family by Andrews. I don’t know if Janice has that book either, but I highly recommend it. He says this. He said that romantic relationships, now he’s using the term romantic here to talk about dating in a bad romantic sense, are exclusive, turned inward with the focus on each other. Friendships in terms of the courting relationship and building up to it are inclusive, turned outward with the focus on friends, activities, and ideas of mutual interest.

And again, what I’m trying to get at here is the courting model is a way to turn our children a little bit more outward before they get to a place of focusing just on each other in the marriage relationship. It’s saying that whole relationship is one in which we positively promote what will become a proper passion as opposed to an improper lust, proper communication as opposed to improper communication, a proper sense of Christian romance and love as opposed to lust and improper lust on the other side of the equation.

You know, when I did my series of sermons going through the seven deadly sins, I was amazed at the case study of Joab as a man of anger and who did much evil for the kingdom as a result of that in spite of great giftings. Anger is a God-given attribute. And anger is to be used to accomplish kingdom goals. And when we use our anger sinfully, we not only do the negative, but we rob it, as it were, as a tool for the positive promoting of Christ’s kingdom. We lose moral high ground in that area.

And when we let our children engage in improper relationship building at its earliest conception, we don’t just lead leave them to unguarded relationships and hence an improper use of passion, but we also then bring down their moral ability and high ground to exercise proper passion, proper communication, proper relationship, proper koinonia for the well-being of God’s kingdom here on earth.

And that’s why I think this is an issue vital importance to it. We’re just opening ground at this camp, but I hope you see how I how it is vital to the continuation of the Christian culture that God is building at Reformation Covenant Church.

Let me just close by saying that this is hard work to do this today in this culture to try for if we only have one or two families doing this at RCC not going to work. We need the support mechanism of the church and we need the support mechanism of the godly homeschoolers we know that are talking about this same issue. And we need the support mechanism of churches like Christ the Sovereign Covenant Church.

I wanted to let you know that the covenant between Christ the Sovereign Covenant Church and RCC has been modified as we’ve talked to you at RCC all about. Doug H., Richard and I have agreed to the modifications. We have the new document with us that we’ve all agreed to and put our aim to. And so the relationship between CSCC and RCC continues and actually strengthens and grows. And that’s important because that’s the koinonian fellowship that our proper approach, dialogue, and practice of Christian young people relationships will continue to perpetuate and build on into the future.

Let’s pray for God’s guidance.

Father, we thank you, Lord God, for the truths of your scriptures that have been buried, it seems, so long, in the Christian community here in America. Father, we feel like King Josiah that we rediscovered a portion of your law relative to the relationship of children, young men and young women, as they move forward toward the marrying years. And Father, we thank you, Lord God, that you don’t leave us with these things with just cultural norms somehow, the Greeks or the Jews or the Americans.

And Father, we thank you that you instruct us how to build Christian culture. You instruct us how to build that culture based upon the self-government of the Christian man and the Christian woman and then the self-government of the Christian family and church. And Father, we pray that you would help us and may we be truly thankful in our hearts for the beginning knowledge you’ve given us in this area based on your scriptures.

And may you by your holy spirit lead us to ever increasing applications of these things as we try to guard, guide and direct to nurture as well as to guard young children in our charge. To that end we pray you’d bless the rest of our time and our conversations. May we be good and profitable to provoke one another to good works. In Jesus’ name we ask this. Amen.