The following message, Considering the Marriages of Our Sons and Daughters, Principles and Practices, was given by Scott Brown at the Regional Uniting Church and Family Conference in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 2008. I think we all know that the devil hates marriage. I think we all know that the devil desires to destroy your marriage. Well here's another thing that we need to understand. The devil desires to destroy the future marriages of your sons and daughters.

He's working on it now. He's working on it in your home and the ways that your home is operating. He's creating an environment as best he can to end up being an influence to destroy the marriages of your sons and daughters. Why would the devil be so intent on destroying something so wonderful as marriage? Well, because it is wonderful.

Because the Bible says that an earthly marriage is a picture of the love of Christ for His Church. The Bible says, husbands, love your wives as also Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. This is why the devil hates marriage. The devil hates women. The devil doesn't want women to be cared for.

The devil doesn't want men to be connected with women who would protect them and help them and nourish and cherish them. The devil doesn't want men to be servant leaders in their homes. The devil doesn't want men to be a blessing to women at all. So he would work as hard as he can to destroy men in various ways. Why do you think the pornography industry is here?

Why do you think there are so many pressures that feminism has brought into the culture? It's because the devil hates marriage. And so what I'd like to talk about now is our principles for thinking about preparing our children for marriage. And I would like to speak of it in terms of problems. I would like to speak of it in terms of principles to guide us in this matter.

And I'd like to begin, first of all, with problems, because there are many problems in this whole matter of bringing our children together in marriage. And so I'd like to give you 12 problems that we have to grapple with in this thing called courtship and marriage, or use whatever word you want, whatever the process is, to get your children married, whatever techniques they use and principles they operate by, you can name that courtship, betrothal, whatever. But what's really important is that we are locked in on biblical principles for family life that relate to this area. Why is it such a mine field? Why do you hear so many problems that are traced to this engaging area of bringing children together in marriage?

I'm going to give you 12 problems that we have to grapple with. First of all, terminology. This can be a minefield of miscommunication. People use similar language to describe something that only they understand, and so they use words like courting or betrothal or Christian dating, but the definitions to any of these terms can be as diverse and personal as one's own DNA. And so there are lots of problems when we engage the subject because people use a confusing array of terminology.

So when two families come together and they start considering courtship and marriage, they're using the same words, but they're not thinking the same thing at all. And so it's a minefield there. The opportunities for misunderstanding and miscommunication are absolutely massive. Here's a second problem to grapple with, maturity. When people have problems with the processes of getting their children married, they often want to blame the process because things didn't go well.

They had a disappointing experience. Often these problems with courtships and marriages are really rooted in maturity problems. Maturity in the young man, maturity in the young woman, maturity in the parents. Often the biggest problems in my experience that come in getting children married, they come from the parents and the immaturity of the parents. Maybe they watch too many romantic movies.

Maybe they have fed, maybe the children have fed themselves too much affection for the physical. Maybe they have, They've so focused on physical beauty that they've forgotten what love is all about. Maybe their expectations for the person that they want to marry can never be fulfilled in anyone on the planet because they've read too many lovesick novels and they've seen too many pretty pictures of models. And maybe they've been gossiping in their homes and fostered a critical spirit. And around the dinner table they've learned how to pick people apart until every little quirk becomes a major issue.

Maturity problems are, I believe, pose some of the greatest roadblocks in bringing our children in marriage together in a godly way. There's a wonderful book that has been written. I've republished the words of Reverend Samuel Phillips who wrote in 1859, Helping Them to Choose. It's a book that gives counsel to parents on how to help their children get married. What are false tests of love?

What are true tests of love? What is a true inheritance? What are parents' responsibilities? What are children's responsibilities in choosing a marriage partner? Well, this council from 1859 I think is great.

I republished it because I thought it'd address a lot of the problems that we're seeing today, and you can find it back here in the book table. Often there are unwise requirements. Often there is poor treatment of a young man, treating him like he's an enemy. Poor treatment of a young woman as if she's an intruder. Unwise emails, unwise words exchanged in the heat of a moment or in some kind of fleshly dishonorable heart.

These are the problems that afflict these processes. They're maturity problems. It's not that there's anything wrong with the system. It's always the people running the system. And so this is one of the great problems.

Here's another problem. People want foolproof techniques. There's something in us that wants to, that craves for a perfect situation, and we want to have a mistake-proof, premarital situation. Doesn't exist, sorry. Now, some may be smoother than others, but if you want a clinical no liability, no heartbreak, no danger of life or relationship, then you're going to have to go to a different planet Because that doesn't exist here, even in Christian courtships, because you're bringing all manner of thinking and all manner of sinning to bear into this situation.

So one of the problems as people engage this matter of courtship, is people want foolproof techniques, and they're not willing to work through problems in a godly way, because they think that somehow for them there's going to be this perfect, smooth situation where there's no tension, no questions, no problems, nothing like that. Well, there are more. There are external pressures and expectations. When there's the opportunity for a couple to begin to get to know each other, There are all kinds of people looking in to provide different kinds of pressure into that situation. There are peers, there are church members, there are concerned family members.

There's a high emotion and a pretty highly charged situation. You know, you often have to ask yourself this question, how many sacred cows have to die for me to have a good relationship with these people? And so external pressures and expectations are critical. What should we do? Look at everything biblically.

How has God commanded me to respond? How has he commanded me to speak and relate with people? The Bible has much to say about all these things, and yes, they do apply to the courtship situation. And so there are problems because of external pressures and expectations. There are also problems that come from the fact that godliness has not been cultivated.

And then it's expected. Tension is inflamed and parents desire a godly marriage for their children, but they've not properly prepared their children for a godly marriage. Mishaps are ahead when sons and daughters have not been prepared in their homes. They've been preparing for a life of entertainment. They've been preparing for a life of self-gratification.

And so there are problems because godliness has not been cultivated. You want a wonderful young man, you know, knight in shining armor, who's guarded his heart. Well, how about your daughter? Is your daughter a silly girl? Has she cultivated silly things?

Has she let her mind groove on things that would make her really unworthy of a truly godly man? These are problems. Parents want to just instantly, in a flash point, make their daughter or their son a ready marriage partner, but they didn't do anything when they were five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 years old, and their expectations are beyond what the process is able to bear. Here's a sixth problem. Mothers who won't let their children go.

Mothers lose a sense of the divine purpose of children and they think that God has given them children so that they'll live on the same piece of property for the rest of their life. So all of their thinking is clouded by the selfish, unbiblical idea. And they can't imagine, they can't imagine letting their daughter go off 10 miles, 100 miles, 1, 000, 10, 000 miles away. But what we know about parenthood is that we're supposed to be preparing our daughters to follow a man to the ends of the earth and to happily go with him and help him along the way and not be bound up by this mother who won't let her daughter go. You know, God calls daughters to be like Sarah who followed Abraham who didn't know where he was going and he went a long way away.

And we need to raise daughters like that, hearty daughters who are ready to go to the ends of the earth with these men and help them and bless them and also leave and cleave to their spouse. So there are problems with mothers who won't let their children go. There are also problems with fathers who do not listen to their daughters. And they want to force their daughters to marry this person or that, or not marry this person or that. They don't listen.

They don't care about the feelings and the thoughts and the meditations of their daughter's hearts. Of course, God has given parents to help their daughters discern good and evil. And parents have a sixth sense. Sometimes though, there's evil that grips the hearts of parents and they counsel their children in a wrong way. And so there are tremendous problems with sin in our hearts as we engage in this situation.

Untangling those things can be very, very difficult. I'm aware of a situation in which a man was put under church discipline because he was unduly withholding marriage from his daughter. And you know this this kind of thing can happen. This happened in John Calvin's Geneva by the way. In Number eight, fathers who face confusing signals from their submissive daughters.

Here's the reality. We have a crop of daughters, probably for the first time in a long time, who really want to be submissive to their fathers. And they want to say, Daddy, would you help me understand whether I should have affections for this man? And because they have submissive hearts, often their fathers don't get it. They don't get the communication.

They don't get the signals of what the daughter might say, yes, Daddy, sure, I would consider this young man, but in reality, they don't want to have anything to do with it and the father just doesn't pick up on it. These submissive daughters are the most beautiful things in the culture today, and yet there are dangers in everything. And there are dangers in fathers who don't take time to really listen to the hearts of their daughters because they have submissive daughters and they often misread them. Number nine, courtship and also godly processes are not taken seriously. There's not enough serious inquiry with parents toward prospective spouses.

And biblical considerations are left behind. And it ends up to be just like the bankrupt traditional dating system that we're so well aware of. Number 10, there can be an overreaction to the dating culture. Let's be honest, okay? We are reacting.

We are responding to a bankrupt evil system that has caused untold immorality and problems in families. And because of that, because we see the wrong philosophy that has so pervaded the culture, We want to do something different. And there's a danger of overreacting. Instead of the hands-off dad of old, now we have the obsessive dad who won't even let his daughter talk to anybody, okay? I mean, I'm just going to say that's an overreaction to a real serious problem.

And we need to be very careful with all these situations that we react with biblical wisdom. Number 11, there's the danger of theological box checking. You know what I mean by that? A theological box checking is really a lot like the dating system. In the dating system, in the dark past days of dating, relationships were formed on really shallow ground.

Attraction was enough. He's cute is enough. Well, now we have its counterpart. Oh, you're reformed? Why don't you marry my daughter?

Okay. We have the same theological beliefs. I think you should get married. You know, we are like-minded, whatever that's supposed to be. I've never really met anyone who's like-minded.

We are so diverse, we think so differently. But we think if we find people who believe, you know, we ask 200 questions on points of doctrine and say, well that must mean we should get married. That's just theological box checking. There's far more to marriage to that. Is there spiritual compatibility?

Is there a genuine attraction? Is there a compatibility of personality? Is there a common vision for life? Is there a yoking that's appropriate? Those are all important questions that go far beyond points of theology.

Is there genuine love? Is there affection and attraction? Theological box checking is one of the problems that's out there. Here's another, panic. Can you relate to this one?

If you have older daughters, panic has probably gripped your heart a number of times. What do you say? What do you do in times like this? It's a time of extreme vulnerability. And what happens often is men jump ship on their principles in the midst of the panic.

And here's some hedges against panic. Let me just give you a few. First, remember that God's principles apply everywhere. The temptation to slip into the logic that says, hey, this isn't working, let's throw off the principles. That's the wrong direction.

And so, you know, the urging here is don't panic. You know, remember the example of Sarah and Abraham who they could not wait for their promised son. They panicked. They jumped ship on the promise and did their own thing. That's what we often do.

It's not working. I'm going to make it work now. The principles that were so clear somehow become irrelevant because of panic, and that happens to us. Are you tempted to return to the ways of the world? Don't forget that God's ways are fixed in heaven.

And even though we are often confused by the surrounding situations, we have to say this, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He, not you, He will make your path straight. And we need to realize that to remove a daughter from headship and protection of her daughter defeats the creation order relationships of headship and protection. We often jump ship on protection and headship and care for a daughter because of our panic. And then we cast our daughters off into the great broad road of vulnerability.

And we know what the Bible says about protecting daughters and caring for daughters. And often men flip those principles over the side and then go and do their own thing and there's damage, but it's all because of panic. We need to understand that God is in control of every heart. He's in control of every synapse of every brain in the world, and He holds not only the hearts of the kings of the earth, but he also holds all the hearts of all the young men and women. Yes, your daughter, who is 20 something and has no one yet in her mind to marry or anyone else's mind to marry her, still you have to realize that God controls the minds of every person on the planet.

God is big enough to change the mind of anyone, anywhere, at any time. And we need to be comforted by that, that God is faithful. Don't jump ship on your principles. God is faithful, and He will perform His will. He knows you're sitting down and you're rising up.

He knows your thoughts before you have them. Whatever the Lord does, He pleases in heaven and earth. That's what Psalm 135 says. Fathers and mothers and daughters and sons need to remember that. You may think that you're too old right now, but do you think God is sovereign?

Is God in control of this world or not? Does he control the synapses of every mind in this world or not? He does. And we need to have that kind of confidence and not jump ship on the principles that God has given. God has not called us to compromise marriages.

God would not have us provide unequal yokes. You know, your household, your household needs to be like heaven on earth. It needs to be a place where your children love to be. It needs to be a place full of vision and activity and real significant quests that you're on. If not, your children, as they get older, they'll lose their hearts and maybe they'll flip their principles over the wall as well.

But we need to remember that God has given us responsibilities for the kinds of homes that we build. These things are for the preparation of our sons and daughters. We need to be about our father's business. Jesus is the model child. He was about his father's business.

And 12-year-old sons and daughters need to be about their father's business, as well as the 20, 25, 29, 35-year-old daughter, perhaps maybe even still living in her father's house. They need to be about their father's business. Be faithful. Continue. Continue to do the works of God in your family and your community, and fear not.

God is in control. Either he is sovereign or not. Either he is sovereign over every leaf that falls to the ground, or he is sovereign over nothing. And we have to understand that in this whole proposition that we're considering about courtship and marriages, we need to understand that God cares for his people and he will bring people together in his own time. Do you have confidence in that?

I pray that we would have tremendous confidence and it would give us the resolve that we need. Now, let me give you a few thoughts about this whole area. How do we do this? How do we do this in the 21st century? First of all, let's remember this, that Scripture presents sufficient principles for this area.

Scripture presents patterns that are workable and applicable. I don't believe that Scripture provides a formula to govern every single courtship and marriage, but I do believe that there are principles that can guide every single one of them. There are principles of sexuality, of community, of the church, the nature of marriage, the nature of relationships, the creation order relationships, the laws of kindness. All these things come and they inform the process of courtship and marriage or whatever you want to call it. So first thing we need to really be clear on is that scripture presents sufficient principles to guide all of the processes.

If you're confused, open that book and go there. Here's a second thing that we need to remember. At least I'll just give you my opinion. I believe there are no airtight biblical formulas for how these things proceed. At the same time, though, I'm very comfortable with presenting principles that should guide every part of the process.

I don't think you find a cookie cutter, you know, marriage engagement in the Bible. Why is that? Why are they not the same? It's because God seems to work in different ways in families. And God has cast a vision for behavior and ways to think about marriage and relationships.

And so all of those need to inform the process, not with an airtight, cookie-cutter formula for doing it. Here's something else to consider. And I trust that we understand that the current dating system is unbiblical and it's destructive. They're bankrupt and they're fraught with faith-destroying, marriage-unraveling principles. They destroy evangelism from one generation to the next and they cause tremendous problems.

This is a system that we've adopted from the world. We should reject it and we should look to the Lord and say, what are relationships supposed to be like and how should we engage them? The marks of dating in our day are so clear. Random engagements instead of strategic engagements. Multiple engagements instead of carefully considered engagements.

Romantic methodology instead of principled methodology. Individualistic inclinations and passions instead of kingdom conscious thinking. The process of getting and staying married is so malfunctioning in our culture that we have to think biblically about it. We have to go back to our Bibles and consider what's happening. We're all born, every person on the planet has been born into an ungodly culture.

What believers should do is open up their all-sufficient, all-perfect Scriptures and compare and contrast, and then do everything that we can to make all of our practices conform to the principles that are in Scripture. There are just so many problems that face us. Let me give you five sort of procedural data points to consider in handling the premarital relationship. First of all, honor and jurisdiction. This is, I believe, one of the most important principles to consider, honor and jurisdiction.

A couple must honor parental authority and responsibility. Scripture makes fathers heads of sons and daughters, which is why I believe that it's not appropriate for suitors to be flirting and trying to win the hearts of daughters without first dealing with her head, her father. And because of the structural headship in the household, suitors should cheerfully place themselves under the care and authority of these heads, and these heads also are given responsibilities for how to treat young men as well. But the first, I think, perhaps the most important biblical principle is the principle of honor and jurisdiction. The second is the principle of counsel.

Wise counselors who know the couple need to be consulted, and there should be a general affirmation of the marriage. And what if parents do not affirm the match? What if there's a disconnect? My counsel is this, it's time to wait. It's time to see what the Lord might do.

Parents don't know everything, and sometimes parents miss it. Sometimes they're driven by sinful inclinations. Still, still yet, God has placed parents in authority. And what children should do is this. They should submit.

They should listen. They should place their plans on the table for a period of time. They should wait. Maybe God has something for them that they cannot see because the principle of wise and godly counselors is critical. The parents should see this as a beautiful and helpful engagement.

Friends should generally see it as the right thing. Elders and spiritual leaders in the family of God should be able to look at this and say, yes, this makes sense. No, it doesn't mean that every single person has to think exactly the same way at the same level of affirmation. It doesn't mean that at all. But there should be a general sense of fitness among the counselors, the godly counselors that are around.

Thirdly, there should be equal yoking. There should be a process of interviewing and screening so that there's an establishment of equal yoking and compatible values. And so in order for equal yoking to be verified, there needs to be an opportunity to get to know one another in some way. Love includes knowledge. Love includes mutuality and affection.

You know, love is a decision, but love isn't just a decision. There's more to it than that. And there can be an overreaction to the dating system to say, oh, we can just put any two people together. Well, I think you can make a case for the legitimacy of that from time to time. But as the primary principle, I reject it.

The Bible seems to present affection and love and passion in marriage. It's more than just, oh, my parents think that we should get together. And so there needs to be an equal yoking that acknowledges the differences of preferences and callings and things like that. To establish equal yoking, time needs to be taken. When scripture speaks of yoking and equal yoking, they were talking about something that we don't understand very well.

They were talking about taking two different animals and putting them in a yoke. And it was a very complex affair. The animals have different personalities. You know, wise farmers knew that you just couldn't put any two animals together. One favored a certain gait and the other had a certain quality about it that would or would not make it compatible.

And the language of equal yoking assumes a lot of things that we're just not connected with because we're not agrarian in our experience. And so an equal yoking included personality, size, all kinds of things like that. And of course we're not saying that couples have to be of the same personality or the same size, but that there needs to be a fitness and an ability of a couple to walk together, that they have a similar vision, that they love similar things. Of course, we all know how wonderful it is to marry someone who is very different from you. This is a tremendous blessing.

I thank God for the many ways my wife is so different from me and how helpful that has been to me. We're not saying that people marry someone exactly the same. That doesn't really seem to happen. God seems to bring very different people together. Why?

Probably a lot of reasons. How about this one? Sanctification. God wants to knock off rough edges. How about this one?

Sanctification. God wants to expose your sins. So he gives you someone totally different than you. And so there's the principle of equal yoking that needs to be considered. And we need to think of teams of animals and the complexities of putting them together.

And Though it probably is true that if you put any two true believers together, they could probably live happily ever after, but is that the model? Is that the pattern? I would just suggest that equal yoking needs to be considered in that whole thing. Then there's love and mutuality. I would just like to suggest that a couple should have genuine mutual love for one another and passion for the marriage.

It should not be forced. And, you know, we've lived in a Christian culture where doctrine was not important at all, was not even considered. And now we react and think that love and mutuality doesn't matter at all either. And so we need to think carefully about all these things. Here's another principle, an extremely critical principle that should guide all the processes of courtship or betrothal or whatever the pre-marriage relationship might be called.

Purity. Purity. The couple's purity must be maintained according to biblical definitions and protections. Protections should be in place to care for the moral success of the relationship. And so when it comes to providing all the right protections for purity.

We need to go back to the biblical test. We need to go back to the phrase, all things must be tested. All things must be tested by scripture. And we must make honest observations about actions, opportunities, and results of whatever kinds of contacts that are made. And when it comes to our dating culture, we need to be honest.

You know, recent studies have come out saying 95% of American marriages are characterized by premarital intimacy. Well, that's because there are no biblical cautions. There are no biblical principles that guide the relationship in the area of purity. Purity is a huge issue in this whole matter, and families and couples need to come to agreement for how purity should be protected in this thing. Now, the problem with purity is that we have tremendous temptations and they start in the heart where no one can see.

And so we have to help our children to deal with sin in their hearts because you can put in all the processes you want but until the heart is governed by the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no hope. So purity is a critical consideration in considering the marriages of our sons and daughters. So these are biblical considerations for helping our children to engage in marriage. We have to understand that the devil hates your family because he does not want all the families of the earth to be blessed by the promises that are for Abraham's sons and daughters.

The devil wants to see your heritage broken 50 times in the next three generations as there's one divorce after another, or there's one insipid marriage after another. There's one man after another who doesn't take care of his wife. There's one woman after another that doesn't submit to and love and help her husband. The devil hates women who help their husbands. The devil hates women who are keepers at home.

The devil hates men who would adjust anything to help their wives and teach their wives. How many of you are teaching your wives? How many of you are reading scripture to your wives? The devil is at work. The devil is waging war against you, as he is with me, to destroy our marriages.

And he'll use anything to do it. He might use homeschooling to destroy your marriage. He might even use courtship to destroy your marriage. He might use anything to destroy your marriage so that the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven would not be passed from one generation to the next. We've been memorizing these last two days a marvelous text of scripture to help us understand how critical these things are.

We've been speaking of Deuteronomy 5 29, where Moses, his voice rises up with such passion and urging, and he says, oh, oh, that they had such a heart in them that they might fear me and always keep all my commandments that it might be well with them and with their children forever. God Almighty has placed in your hands, brothers and sisters, a mighty force for the glory of Jesus Christ from one generation to the next. He's given you two gigantic and wonderful things. He's given you the family, and He's called you to govern your family in a particular way. And He's given you the church, and that you would help your family love the church of Jesus Christ, because the Church is the place where the family is cared for through the preaching, through the prayers, through the communion, through the singing, through the discipline, through the evangelism, through the fellowship, through the breaking of bread from house to house, God has given these two wonderful gifts, the family and the church.

And I pray that God would rise up within us a great faithfulness to these marvelous institutions that have been designed for one purpose, for the praise of Jesus Christ from one generation to the next. May God give us wisdom and strength. May He give us success. May He fall upon us with resolve and clarity. May He be so great in our minds that we would care nothing for this world, but we would care only for His things from one generation to the next.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, I pray that you would bring a great anointing upon us, that you would fill us with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, that we might know what is the width and the length and the depth and the height and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. Lord, I pray that you would cause a great and mighty wave of church planting in this land where biblical churches are planted, where there are relationships that are as you have described them to be, where there are practices that you have ordained, that, oh Lord, that you would use us to rescue a generation, and that that generation would turn and do the same and that you Lord Jesus Christ would be so adored in every home and in every church across this land. Oh Lord I pray that you would give it to us. In Jesus' name, Amen.