Hello, this is Brother Denny.
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All right, we're going to move on to
the next session here, joining the next generation.
Proverbs chapter 5, verse 18 and 19 say
these words, Let thy fountain be blessed and
rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
Let her be as the loving hind and
pleasant roe.
Let her breast satisfy thee at all times
and be thou ravished always with her love.
The pursuit of godly seed is not a
one-generation thing, brethren.
If our hearts are filled with God's burden
for sanctified children, we will look way beyond
our present generation.
I think that I've made that clear all
week long.
If our hearts are truly set for a
godly seed, we will be looking way beyond
where we are right here.
I hope by now that you have caught
the vision of what God is longing for.
God is pursuing godly seed with all his
heart.
And this burden reaches into the realm of
marriage partners for our children.
This is not a little issue.
We have one more strategy that I want
to consider here.
If we stop and think about it, we
all know this is not a little issue.
Ponder this.
You can lose much of the work that
you have invested for twenty years if you
stand idly by and allow your children to
fall in love with whoever comes by.
You can lose nearly twenty years of labor.
We need to wake up on that one.
That's not a little thing.
As a pastor for the last twenty years,
I have seen this happen a few times.
It is a great burden every time I
see it.
I have seen the whole next generation lost
by a foolish love affair.
Can I say it that way?
That ended in a marriage that mom and
dad did not want.
But what could they do about it?
It seems to me to be utter folly
after you have spent twenty years training your
children to then send them out into a
mixed up Christian world to find a partner
all on their own.
This is folly in my opinion.
They say that the divorce rate is now
fifty percent in the Christian church.
Could this whole matter of joining the next
generation have anything to do with this devastation?
I do believe that it does.
I don't think we are doing wisely.
Children are growing up and they are thrust
out into a mixed up, confused Christianity.
Their hearts mesh with somebody else.
They fall in love.
They get married.
And then all of a sudden they find
out what reality is all about.
And it is not very good.
The scriptures are full of examples of a
sweet and a happy marriage.
The text above, the one I just read,
is one of those examples.
There are others.
I believe there are things that we parents
can do that will help our children to
have the reality of this blessed experience that
we read here in Proverbs chapter five.
The whole appeal of these verses is to
stay with the wife that you chose in
your youth and enjoy a happy marriage.
Now, I studied this text a bit, and
if I understand it properly, that word fountain
there is referring to the children of that
union.
Let thy fountain, let thy children of your
union be blessed and rejoice with the wife
of your youth.
Stay with your partner.
And that is exactly what God is saying
to us out of Malachi chapter two and
verse fifteen.
I made them one so that the next
generation would receive an overflowing blessing that flows
out of a godly union between a husband
and a wife.
Here is my plea in this meditation here
this morning.
Parents, please get involved.
I know there are lots of opinions today.
There are lots of little different slants on
courtship and how the next generation is joined
in holy matrimony.
I know there are different opinions on that,
and I'm not going to cover all of
those different opinions in this message, but I
would make this plea.
Parents, please get involved in the joining of
the next generation of your children.
That's my plea.
The whole issue is parental involvement.
This whole thing is coming back out of
the closet in the last fifteen years.
Some parents are waking up and saying, Hey,
wait a minute.
Something isn't turning out right here.
This isn't how we did it.
This isn't how I got married.
I had to see what dad thought about
it.
I had to ask my mom what she
thought about him.
And they're dragging this whole thing of parental
involvement back out of the closet, and I
think it is a wise move, no matter
what the different opinions on how it's all
done, that mom and dad are being brought
back into this whole plan of the children
getting married, I think is a blessing.
There are several voices in our land that
are calling us back to the old paths
of Bible courtship and parental involvement, and I'm
one more of those voices.
There's no way that I, in this short
amount of time, can cover all the things
about godly courtship.
However, I do desire to at least stir
up your interest so that you will look
into it more fully if you haven't already.
Most of our children are not able to
seek their life partner without some outside input.
That's my opinion.
There are simply too many gray areas that
undiscerning youth cannot see through.
I will give them in a moment.
The young people need your 20 plus years
of experience to guide them through the maze
of this mixed up gray Christian world that
we're living in today.
I mean no offense to any youth when
I say that, but it is harder than
you youths may think it is to come
up with the right godly partner for your
life's partner.
In the Bible, we learn that the father
exercised his influence with his child before they
were ready to be married.
Abraham arranged a bride for Isaac.
It seems this was common in his day.
When a young man was seeking a wife,
he sought permission from her father.
In addition, the father gave the word to
his son when it was time to go
and get his bride.
The parents were involved, this is clear.
There are several reasons that I would like
to bring out here this morning why I
feel it's important for the parents to get
involved.
Number one, because of false Christians.
We live in America, the Christian nation, in
quotes.
Millions stake their claim on the Christian faith.
Many professors are not possessors of the real
thing.
Bless God, sincere youth are tricked into marriage
only to find out later there's no substance
to their partner's Christianity at all.
This is a lifelong tragedy.
Awesome!
The parents are the ones who can stop
it.
These false professors sound very good when you
talk to them.
They can wax eloquent.
They have their theologies.
They can say all the right things.
You ask them questions about their faith, they'll
give you theological answers.
They may even quote you a Bible verse.
Our young people are not mature enough to
discern all of this.
Some of them are.
Some of them are not.
They need our help.
We parents, through proper teaching, should lay the
groundwork for this kind of involvement.
By that I mean that our children expect
that we are going to get involved when
it's time for them to choose a godly
mate.
Through teaching, we should lay that foundation so
that when that time comes, it's very relaxed
and the child is already knowing this thing
has to be cleared with mom and dads.
A mutual understanding on this point is imperative.
Lead your child to covenant with you.
I will not release my emotions without your
blessing.
Second reason why moms and dads need to
get involved.
Divorce is becoming very, very common.
Fifty percent in the church.
I wish it was not this way, but
it is.
The possibility of a partner breaking the marriage
vows is very high today.
It happens all the time.
It must be stopped.
The Christian ideals of marriage have dropped very,
very low and the binding power of those
vows are gone.
Dear parents, I think most of us still
believe that marriage is for life.
But we must protect our children from the
tragic separations that are happening everywhere today.
If we believe that marriage is for life
and we allow our children to hook up
with somebody who doesn't have a deep commitment
like that, they're going to let them set
someday.
And guess what?
There's not another one to go to.
Marriage is for life.
Not till death do us part.
That makes it very urgent that we not
allow our children to just flip off into
the world somewhere, or into the Christian world,
or into some youth group somewhere, fall in
love with some guy or some gal, and
get married because they had a flitter-flutter
inside their heart over them.
Only to find out five years later, those
vows didn't mean a thing to that person
and they leave them set with two or
three children.
I'm telling you it happens all the time.
If we are not alert, it will spoil
the next generation, brethren.
I meet many Christian men who are afraid
to get married because of this very reason
right here.
I mean, I've heard them say it.
I'm afraid to get married.
Oh?
Why?
Oh, he said, out there where I'm at,
you know, people get married and divorced all
the time and I believe marriage is for
life and I don't want to get a
woman who's going to drop me.
Our children need our discernment in these things.
We must get involved.
We must teach our children that it's right
for us to get involved.
Lay the groundwork.
A third reason.
Emotions are very powerful.
There is a lot of truth in the
old adage, love is blind.
Once the heart falls in love, it is
almost too late to try to change things.
The youth cannot see straight anymore.
This is the power of emotions.
Many a parent tried to turn the thing
around after the heart had already fallen and
they only ended up with conflict and bitterness
and discontent and a division in their family
and the youth went off and got married
anyway.
This is the power of emotions.
And that is from God.
God designed us that way.
But God designed us that way that all
the power of all those emotions would be
given to one for life.
When these emotions are released in a proper
relationship, it is most beautiful.
It's Proverbs chapter 5 like I just read
to you so beautifully describes what these emotions
can be like.
But when these emotions are released on the
wrong person, they are just as powerful and
just as hard to stop.
Many waters cannot quench love even if it's
love to the wrong kind of person.
Many waters cannot quench it.
You can sit them down and offer them
anything and they will not take it.
Lay the groundwork.
That's the plea that I'm making.
You lay the groundwork in your teachings with
your children so that they understand when I
get up there in age, I will keep
my heart.
I will not let some fella or some
girl throw me some note.
If I get a note, I'll bring it
to my dad.
And my dad will go see the fella
with a furrowed eyebrow, by the way.
Yes, young man, I have a few things
to say to you.
I understand you gave my daughter a little
note.
Yes, I did.
I believe that's the way it ought to
be.
We need to protect our daughters and we
need to protect our sons, but more so,
we need to protect our daughters.
Number four, you have the issue of the
possibility that they're not compatible.
I've given some strong reasons up until now,
but this one is not so strong, but
it is still a reason.
Sometimes a couple is simply not compatible.
There may be many different reasons for this.
Their convictions may be different and that can
hinder a marriage.
It may be they were raised in a
different culture.
This can also be a problem in a
marriage.
Young people need help in discerning all of
these things.
That's what the parents are for.
And the fifth reason is the best reason.
The rewards of a happy marriage.
We want our children to have a happy
marriage.
As God says in Malachi 2.15, secures
a godly seed for the next generation.
We want our children to have a happy
marriage.
This is the most urgent point that I've
made.
All the rest were negative, but this one's
positive and it's the most important one of
all.
I've been a pastor now for 20 years.
I now have a long list of couples
who have followed this old-fashioned way to
get married.
Guess what?
They all have happy marriages.
Hallelujah!
Guess what else?
They're all raising godly children.
You can see them.
Some of them have been married 15 years
now and the children line up behind them
like stair steps.
Guess what?
They're raising godly children.
Godly couple.
Godly young man.
Godly young lady.
Come together under authority with the blessing of
their parents.
They're joined together in holy matrimony.
They have a happy marriage.
They kept themselves for each other.
They kept their hearts for each other.
They kept their hands off of each other.
And they married in a pure courtship.
Guess what?
They have beautiful happy marriages.
The atmosphere of their happy marriage blesses the
children and the children are godly children growing
up in the next generation.
This is no little issue, brothers and sisters.
It is no little issue.
It is our responsibility to help our children
to preserve their hearts for one.
In Genesis 2, verse 22 and 24, we
find these words out.
And the rib which the Lord God had
taken from man made He a woman, and
He brought her unto the man.
And Adam said, This is now bone of
my bone and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was
taken out of man.
Therefore, the Bible says, shall a young man
leave his father and his mother and shall
cleave unto his wife, singular, and they shall
be one flesh.
As I understand it, God's heart is that
a young man and a young lady's hearts
are saved for that time when they know
it's God's will for them to marry.
Now I know there's lots of ups and
downs in all this.
I know we're working with real children.
They're human beings.
They have all the things in them that
we have in us.
Sometimes that doesn't work right.
Sometimes a child will let their emotions go
and different things like that will happen.
But I believe that God's heart is that
they learn to hold their heart.
That they learn not to release the emotions
of their heart.
That they keep that so that when they
know, this is my husband or my wife.
Let them go.
I mean open up the dam.
This is my wife.
Open up the dam and let all the
emotions go.
But until you know it is your wife
or your husband, you hold them back.
Let us consider these verses a little further
as we consider the subject of God's heart
for our marriages.
God prepared Adam to see and to feel
his need of a help meat.
This is very evident as you read the
flow of the context of the chapters.
Adam named all the animals.
Male, female, male, female, male, female.
It's almost like God set him up.
And when he got all done looking at
all these animals and giving them all names
and seeing male, female, male, female, there he
was all by himself.
God set him up.
For what?
That he would recognize, I have a need.
Something is missing in my life.
And then when God prepared his heart so
well that way, then God put him to
sleep.
And while he was asleep, God took out
of his side a rib and made he
the woman and took the woman and gave
the woman to the man.
And I'm telling you, all the emotions of
Adam were released on Eve.
And all the emotions of Eve were released
on Adam.
And it was one heavenly relationship in the
garden.
Now I know the fall gets thrown in
there and that makes things up a bit.
But we see what God's heart is as
we look at Scriptures like this.
Adam became a one-woman man that day
and Eve became a one-man woman.
And I believe it's still God's will that
it be just like that here with us,
2003, maybe 6,000 years since God did
that with Adam and Eve.
It's still God's heart that it be that
way, that a young man gets married and
he can say, I am a one-woman
man.
This may sound silly to you, but God
could have easily given Adam two wives if
that would have been the best for him.
But God didn't give Adam two wives.
He only gave him one.
The permanency of their relationship is very clear
in our text.
From the beginning, the pattern is one man
and one woman for life.
That's it.
We Americans sure have lost our way on
this one.
But God's heart has never changed.
The beauty of what Adam and Eve had
is still possible if we follow a few
godly principles.
And again, may I say, with 20 years
of experience, having seen many couples follow this
kind of a pattern, it is awesome to
see a young couple get married like that.
In fact, mom and I look on with
jealousy and say, Wow!
Their love surpasses anything we've ever, ever seen
or known.
They're so excited.
They're so well-balanced.
They're so flowing.
They're so right.
Their relationship is just so beautiful and right.
Why?
This one kept their heart.
God brought them together.
And all their emotions were released.
And God put His blessing upon it.
And they are not living under any law
that says we have to be married the
rest of our life.
There's no need for divorce laws for them.
Amen?
That's what we're talking about, dear brothers and
sisters.
Adam and Eve entered into their marriage from
a place of utter innocence.
They were both virgins physically and emotionally.
The emotional fountains of their hearts found release
for the first time on their God-given
partner.
I believe this is the foundation of a
happy marriage.
We parents have a responsibility to preserve the
hearts of our youth for that glorious day.
And I'll tell you what, that's pretty sweet
to be at the wedding too.
And you look over at them and they're
holding hands for the first time.
And you look at them over there at
the table and they give each other a
peck on the cheek and the glow is
just flowing there.
I'll tell you what, it's worth it.
It's worth it.
When you look over there and you realize
they're pecking on each other's cheek and they've
never done it before today.
Hallelujah!
Oh, glory!
There's nothing like it, I'm telling you!
What a reward it is!
I tell you what, it makes those few
years of waiting and holding back the heart
seem like nothing at all.
When all of a sudden, God brings your
young people together, the right young man with
the right young woman, and all those emotions,
and all that innocence, and all that beauty
is released on each other.
Oh, glory!
It's beautiful!
You look at it and say, that's God's
ways!
And it has such an answer of wisdom
upon your heart, you know it's the right
thing!
This may seem radical to some of you,
but it is possible for your children to
come to the marriage altar with a heart
that has never loved another man or woman.
It is possible.
I have seen it many times in my
20 years.
They can come to the altar with a
heart that is not being motivated by fleshly
desires.
What a different foundation for the beginning of
a marriage.
Yes, God gives the option that if you
can't keep yourself from lusting, you can get
married.
It's better to marry than to burn.
But I'm telling you, that is a cheap
second-rate option compared to holding the emotions
of your heart and your life and refusing
those fleshly motivations and getting married to a
pure young man or a pure young lady,
because you want to glorify God in a
holy union together.
There's a big difference between the two of
those.
I would encourage you to shoot for the
best one.
They can come with a heart that says,
what can I give?
Instead of a heart that says, what can
I get?
That will make a big difference in their
marriage too, by the way.
Let's look at the spirit of a virgin
just a little bit here.
I would like to use this term to
describe the beautiful state of innocence that Adam
and Eve had in the beginning.
Whatever happened to the word virgin?
That used to be held up everywhere.
That used to be the high goal and
held in high esteem, and every young person
sought after that with all their heart.
It used to be the crowning prize over
a young man or a young lady's life
that a young man or a young lady
could say, my partner is a virgin.
We lost it somewhere in the rubble of
free love.
A few men have pulled it out of
the dust and brushed it off, and praise
God for that.
Listen to the root meaning of this Greek
word virgin.
It means unknown.
Take that as deep as you want to.
There are many implications in this meaning.
The word virgin is in the Bible, and
it describes a maiden who has not known
a man, or a young man who has
not known a woman.
And by the way, I feel as strongly
about young men being that as I do
about young ladies being that way.
You know, enough of this double standard stuff.
Young men need to be the virgins also.
It has the connotation of fresh, new, and
unused.
These are all other words that describe the
original meaning of the word virgin.
Hallelujah!
God, give us that!
Give us young people that get married like
that.
That's my heart.
These words portray the lovely purity of Adam
and Eve's marriage.
It is our duty as parents to keep
our young people fresh, new, and unknown in
every area of love, and it is possible
to do it.
In Bible days, a true virgin was fresh
and unknown physically and emotionally.
And I praise God for every young person
who has determined in their heart that they
will not have sexual intercourse before they get
married.
This is commendable.
But I want to tell you, there is
a higher plane than this, however, and that
is to have a heart that has never
known romantic love.
That is a higher plane yet.
Praise God for everyone who is a physical
virgin, but let's shoot higher than that.
Watch over the hearts of your children, your
young people, so that when they come to
the marriage altar, they are not only a
physical virgin, they are also an emotional virgin.
Virginity is sacred and something to be highly
esteemed.
We need to guard over our children that
they do not lose this sacred treasure prematurely.
But I believe the heart is just as
sacred as the body, especially when you look
at it in light of the marriage relationship.
The heart is more sacred than the body.
This is overlooked by most parents and young
people.
To bring a virgin heart to the marriage
altar is powerful stuff!
We have fallen so far that it is
hard to imagine what this would be like.
Oh, my parents, let your imagination drift and
dream a bit this morning.
Imagine it.
A young lady enters into courtship with a
man that she's going to marry, and she
can say to him, I saved my heart
for you!
Praise God that she could say, I've saved
my body for you.
But oh, how much more powerful when she
could say, I have saved my heart's emotions
for you.
Here, take them all.
125% of them.
Whoa!
I'll tell you what, that makes a solid
marriage.
And guess what?
That solid marriage sanctifies blessed little children and
makes them godly.
God is after a godly seed.
Let's look at a couple of touchy applications
here as we move down toward the end.
This all sounds wonderful, dreamy, and much like
a storybook.
But how do you make it happen?
We will have to change a few things
in order to attain such high ideals.
Would you allow me to just touch on
some of those touchy things that we need
to change if we're going to seek such
high ideals?
Number one, the dating game.
Dating is a temporary romantic relationship with the
opposite sex.
That is the literal definition of it, by
the way.
It is very common in our society.
However, it is relatively new.
Through the means of dating, a young person
can, quote, fall in love several times before
they get married.
They think that it is great fun, but
they do not know what they are playing
with.
They do not realize that they are playing
with two of the most powerful things in
their whole life.
They are playing with the heart, which is
the most powerful part of their being, and
with the emotion of love, which is the
most powerful emotion within man.
They are playing with both of those.
Oh, let's play ball with the most powerful
thing.
You throw it to me, I'll throw it
to you.
I think I'll give it to you for
a while.
Give it back.
I'm going to hurt you when I take
it back, and I'm going to go give
it to somebody else over here.
Foolish, foolish, utter foolishness to do that.
That's what all marriages are falling apart.
They do not realize the depth of what
is happening on the inside of them when
they break up, which they do all the
time, in quotes.
It is like a mini-divorce.
Each time they do it.
Remember what I said earlier?
Play is practice for future living.
They are playing at divorce.
Let's practice divorce for a while.
Each time a young person, quote, breaks up,
they tear holes in their sacred emotions.
These wounds leave scars of mistrust and vengeance
that hinder their marriage for the rest of
their life, unless God comes in and delivers
them somehow from it.
Let's look at the next touchy application.
Flirting.
The definition of this word is very revealing.
Look at this definition in the light of
what I have presented in the previous point.
Flirting means to court triflingly, to express emotions
of love without serious intent, to play at
love, to toy with love.
That's what flirting means if you look it
up in the dictionary.
This word does not sound so innocent after
reading the true definition, does it?
These definitions are relatively new.
The old dictionaries only allude to them.
The modern dictionary calls a flirting woman a
loose woman.
Wow!
If we are saving our hearts for one
man or woman, we will stay as far
away from this loose activity as we can.
The Bible calls flirting defrauding.
Stirring up in somebody else something that you
cannot lawfully fulfill in their life.
That's called defrauding in the Bible.
Number three.
Sensuous clothes.
Many different motivations lay underneath the world of
fashion and provocative dress.
For most of our youth, it is the
desire to draw the attention of someone else.
They want to be noticed.
They want the boys or the girls to
look their way.
These three points flow together like sisters.
The dating game flirting and sensuous clothes.
Think with me.
Let us reason this one out a little
bit in our own minds.
If we are saving our heart for one
man, we will not have any interest in
drawing the attention of boys in our youth.
So what's with all the fancy clothes?
Let's sum it up this way.
Let me give you a very simple little
equation.
Sensuous clothes plus flirting plus the dating game
equals fornication and divorce.
Do you want that?
That is the foundation that many young people
are playing with.
We shouldn't be surprised that the divorce rate
is 50%.
We shouldn't be surprised that young people in
the church are falling into fornication.
We shouldn't be surprised when marriages end up
breaking up because of adultery.
We shouldn't be surprised at all.
We allowed our young people to play the
game they've been practicing, they've been meditating upon
it, and no wonder they end up doing
it in their very real life.
In conclusion, the sad part of all this
premature play at love is the immorality that
it breeds among those who claim to be
Christians.
This brings more devastation into the marriage.
It is heartbreaking to look at all of
it together.
Imagine the scenario.
Two young people come to that glorious day
of their wedding.
They are filled with all the hopes and
dreams of a good life together.
And everyone is happy for them.
They both have some of this baggage that
they carried along with them into their marriage
because no one watched over them.
The hurts are there from previous relationships.
Fear and mistrust are standing right beside the
hurts, remembering the pain of those past relationships.
They have plenty of fleshly desires cultivated during
the many fun days of playing in the
field.
In addition, they both have their ideas about
what a man or a woman is really
like filed away from their future from all
their past experiences for their future responses.
By God's grace, some will make it through
all of this and secure a happy marriage
after they wade their way through all that
mess, if they knuckle down and work their
way through it.
But on the other hand, many will not
make it.
We all know the statistics, don't we?
Parents, we have some responsibility in this.
I'm pleading with you.
We can save our children years of heartache
if we will just get involved, direct their
lives through those crucial years.
And I plead with you again at the
end.
Lay the foundation so that you have the
freedom to get involved in your children's courtship
and marriage.
Lay the foundation with proper teaching so that
when that day comes, everything is free and
clear and open and nobody is saying, what
are you doing speaking here?
What do you mean I can't see him
anymore?
Who do you think you are?
Get rid of all of that and lay
a good, solid foundation so that your young
people know my dad and my mom are
going to be involved when it's time for
me to get married because they love me.
This is the plea that I'm making as
we consider the subject of joining the next
generation in holy matrimony.
We have to wake up on this one.
Or, you can throw 20 years of labor
just like that and a godly seed is
cut off just like that.
It happens a lot.
It happens way more than I wish that
it would.
But it doesn't have to happen.
May God wake us up as parents and
open up our eyes and may you dear
young people wake up also.
You are playing with fire.
You just think you're having fun.
But you're not if you're involved in these
things.
I give these thoughts for two reasons.
One, to encourage you parents to search out
this subject and study it further and whet
your appetite.
And number two, it is clearly part of
pursuing godly seed.
May God help us find our way in
this mixed up Christian world that we are
in.
Let's pray.
Oh, Father, my heart weeps for joy, Lord,
as I think of the beautiful couples that
I have seen get married and the beautiful
marriages and the happy homes and the happy
children that came forth from it.
I weep for joy, dear God.
But my heart also weeps with an ache
when I think of some of the others
and the destruction that it's bringing.
Oh, God, I pray.
Deliver us, Lord.
Deliver us from these things, oh God.
I pray.
Open the eyes of our understanding, God.
Help us to take a stand.
Help us to be a bit different in
a very mixed up world, Lord.
Our children are at stake.
Your glory is at stake.
The happiness of the next generation is at
stake.
Oh, God, may we invest our hearts and
lives in a right way.
Is there not a cause, Lord?
Yes, there is.
I pray, help us to see the cause.
I pray it in Jesus Christ's name, Amen.
God bless you all.