How am I Supposed to Find a Spouse?

Well, good morning, Summit Church, and welcome at all of our campuses across the Raleigh-Durham area. If you have a Bible this weekend, I would invite you to take it out and open it to Genesis chapter 24, Genesis 24. We are in week number five in our series called From the Beginning. I was going to, my plan was to wrap up this series this weekend with a message on friendship, but I called an audible earlier this week.

And I'm going to insert a message here this weekend on dating or on finding a spouse before I give our last message on friendship. Why, you ask? I'm sure you're curious. A few reasons. Number one, we have a church full of single people.

According to our records, 73% of the adults at the Summit Church are single. And this is what many of them think about from dawn till dusk. And so I felt like it's worthy to address. Number two, most people in our culture do not have a clue how to approach this subject in a healthy way.

I mean not a clue. Dating in our culture, I think you would agree, it's just goofy. It's really more like used car sales than anything else. In a used car sale, you hide everything that will make a sale less likely, and you advertise whatever will close the deal.

Oh, and by the way, make sure you take it for a test drive because you would never want to buy a car without having time for a test drive. The stats on the hookup culture are truly staggering. One recent study I saw reveals that 77% of college females admitted to hooking up during college.

For guys, the number is 84%. We even have apps now that can facilitate. I don't have that app, but I hope you don't either. But the apps are out there, and I'm not telling you their names so you don't have to look them up. But I heard it said that the way that we date today is actually better preparation for divorce than it is for marriage. Because essentially what you do is you find somebody that captures your attention and they thrill you. And so you give yourself to them. But then they begin to disappoint you or get bored with them, which inevitably happens, I explain, 18 months.

And you're going to find annoyance and disappointment. And so you walk away and you search for a new person because they must not have been the right person. Our whole philosophy of dating is built on what we call the right person myth. The right person myth is that happiness in life is achieved by finding the right person. And if you're not happy now, well, it's because you're with the wrong person and you need to get rid of the wrong person and find the right person. And so we end up establishing in dating the relational patterns that lead to divorce and marriage.

So that's a reason I want to deal with it. Thirdly, the local church is supposed to be the community that best facilitates the romantic process from start to finish. The local church is supposed to be the best community in which relationships form and they flourish and even finish well. And so even if you are married and you have kids already, or if you're single and you have no aspirations or desires to get married, there is a lot that is in this message for you because this area is so broken in our culture because it affects so many people. This is the source of their greatest struggle and unhappiness. We, we Summit Church, need to learn how to be the body of Christ in which these relationships form and flourish. And we need to be that kind of community.

So that's why I wanted to take a week and do it. Genesis 24, we've got a marvelous little story of Isaac and Rebekah. We're going to read almost the whole chapter, but let's start in verse one. Abraham was now very old and the Lord had blessed him in just about every way. Abraham was the man that God chose to give the promise to, and that promise consisted of a Messiah that would come from one of his descendants. The problem, as you recall, is that Abraham was very old and didn't have any kids. So God gave him a miraculous birth, a son named Isaac. Well, now Isaac is of marriageable age, and in order for, you know, Isaac to have descendants who would have descendants who would one day have Jesus, he's going to have to get married to have kids, and Isaac is single. And so verse two, Abraham says to his senior servant, a guy named Eliezer, the one who was in charge of all that Abraham had, he said, put your hand here under my thigh, which admittedly is a little weird.

Verse three, I want you to swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I'm living now, but you will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife there for my son, Isaac. Okay, so let's first address the obvious here. Abraham basically calls his intern into his office and says, listen, I got a really big assignment for you, but first put your hand here.

Honestly, if anybody on our staff tried this with an intern, HR would definitely have to get involved. And lest you think I'm being unnecessarily lewd, scholars say the reality was actually a bit more graphic. In saying he put his hand under the thigh, the author is using a little bit of euphemism. By put your hand under my thigh, he meant, well, exactly where you think he meant. All Hebrew commentators make this connection, but it is hilarious to me how they dance around it. One commentator, for example, said, and I quote, the thigh is a euphemism for the generative organ upon which the sign of circumcision was also placed.

Right, that's what we called it growing up, the generative organ. Anyway, the point of this exceedingly awkward charade is nothing perverted, I assure you. It was to say to Eliezer, in essence, the promise that God made to me is about offspring. And this mission I'm sending you on is about offspring. And this mission is important, and I do not want you to forget that it concerns the offspring. And I can assure you that after this little encounter, Eliezer did not forget that.

Second observation I have here, a little less awkward. Why does Abraham not want his son Isaac to marry a girl from among the Canaanites? Well, Abraham is not being racist. Many great biblical heroes married interracially, including Moses, who wrote this story down. It was because the Canaanites were all idol worshipers. And Abraham wanted his son to marry a girl in the faith.

And he knew of people back in his hometown who shared the worship of God with him. And so he wanted Isaac to marry a girl who would help propagate the promise into the generations to come. So this was about marrying somebody in the faith. Do not let anybody ever tell you that this story, or any other in the Bible, discourages interracial dating, because that's just not true. Verse 5, the servant asked him, What if the woman is unwilling to come back with me to this land? Shall I then take your son back to the country that you came from? And Abraham said, make sure that you do not take my son back there.

This is about bringing this girl into the land of promise, not about going backwards into the land of comfort and security or disobedience. Verse 10, then the servant left, taking with him 10 of his master's camels, loaded with all kinds of good things from his master. Verse 11, he had the camels kneel down near the well outside of the town. It was toward evening, the time when the women went out to draw water.

This was, I guess, like the hair salon in those days, where they caught up on the day's news, gossip, whatever. Verse 12, then he prayed, Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. May it be that when I say to a young woman, please let your jar down that I may have a drink, that she says, drink, and I'll water your camels too. Let that be the one, let her be the one that you have chosen for your servant Isaac to marry. Verse 15, before he had even finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethul, son of Milcah, who was the wife of Abraham's brother Nahor, and the woman was very beautiful.

Now, you and I would probably read that. She's beautiful, but she's your cousin. They read that as, she's beautiful, and she's your cousin too.

All I can tell you is, in those days, this was not that uncommon, and in my home church in West Virginia, this required no explanation at all. Verse 17, the servant hurried to meet her and said, please give me a little water from your jar. Drink, my Lord, she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink. Verse 19, after she'd given him a drink, she said, you know what? I'll draw water for your camels too until they've had enough to drink. Now, in case you don't know this, camels drink a lot, and Eleazar has 10 of them, and they've all just finished trucking across the desert several hundred miles, which means that they are thirsty, and we're not talking about her going back to the well to get one or two more jars of water. We're talking about her going back and forth to this well dozens of times.

This is exceptionally generous. Around here, we would say she's all in. Verse 21, without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful. Verse 22, when the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring, weighing a becca and two gold bracelets, weighing 10 shekels, and put them on her wrist, which was the equivalent in those days of changing your Facebook status to in a relationship.

If you only put on one or the other, it meant it's complicated, but she put them both on. Verse 26, then the man bowed down and worshipped the Lord, saying, Praise be to the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master. The young woman ran and told her mother's household about all these things. Then Rebecca had a brother named Laban, and he hurried out to the man at the spring. And Laban said, Come, come, you who are blessed by the Lord. So Eleazar repeats the whole story to him, and Eleazar concludes with, Verse 49, Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me now.

But if not, tell me so that I may know which way to turn next. Verse 57, then they said, Well, let's call the young woman and ask her about it. So they called Rebecca, and they asked her, Will you go with this man?

I will go, she said. All right, let's be very clear. The book of Genesis is not primarily a romance manual or instructions on how to date or how to raise kids. The book of Genesis is primarily the story of how God fulfills his promise to bless Abraham and to make Abraham a blessing to the world by bringing forth the Messiah from his lineage.

But the book deals with practical matters about life along the way. Scholars tell us that the Hebrew people retold stories like this one to instruct young boys about how to approach various situations in life like marriage. So what we see in this story are embedded six principles, six instructive things about finding a wife that are going to translate into any culture.

Our cultures are very different, but these six things are going to translate as well into ours as it was in theirs. But before I give those to you, let me acknowledge that there are some things in this story that we clearly do not apply. We are never encouraged, for example, to employ these kinds of special give me a sign test, you know, make this happen. The Bible never encourages us in this day and age to do sign tests for God. At the Bible college that I went to for my first year of college, we tried to apply this story by going up to girls on campus and asking them if they would iron our shirt.

And the deal was if she volunteered not just to iron our shirt, but she said, I'll iron the shirts of every guy in your dorm, then we knew that she was the one. That is probably not a valid application of this passage, so I'm not encouraging that at all. Those things don't apply. But here are the six vitally important components of healthy dating or courtship in really any culture. Here is number one, the importance of knowing what time it is.

The importance of knowing what time it is. There is a time, you see in this story, to seek a wife. There was a lot of intentionality here.

Abraham knew it was time, and he sent out the servant. And I say that because there seemed to be a lot of guys in the Christian world especially who were just sitting around waiting on marriage to kind of fall in their laps. But there is a time to seek marriage intentionally. I have heard girls at our church complain of the phenomenon that they refer to as the sneak-a-date. The sneak-a-date where a guy figures out how to go out with you without ever going through the danger of having to ask you out. You're just always arranging these circumstances where, oh, look, we're together again. Oh, what do you know, we're here together.

I don't have to actually ask you out because you might turn me down, so I'll just manipulate the circumstance. The other name that we give this is the friend-ationship. The friend-ationship. We're kind of friends, but it seems to be something else, so maybe I should check your Facebook status and see how you refer to me.

I don't know. Guys, when it's time to seek a wife, do it with boldness. I really thought I'd get some more amens. Thank you very much for that, for that from you girls. Put on a shirt, guys, with buttons.

Preferably nothing that has Star Wars written on it anywhere. Bathe, shave, get somebody to show you how to put product in your hair. And when you know that it's right, don't string her along. Don't keep a ring on her finger with some elusive promise of marriage way out there. Marry her. Now, I'm not talking about rushing into things or bringing up marriage on your first date. Do not ever tell anybody I encourage you to do that because that's creepy in any context.

Cut that out. I'm just saying, know when it's time, what time it is in your life, and act decisively during that time. On the flip side, if it's not time to get married, as in you're too young or you don't have a job or your life is way too much of a mess for you to enter into a relationship or you still live in your parents' basement or you've got to achieve high-ranking status in World's of Warcraft and you're not there yet, then by all means, don't flirt with girls or lead them on, right?

I mean, dating is a road that leads to marriage, and if you don't want to go to the destination, then don't get on the road. The point is, know what time it is in your life and act decisively. My father gave me this verse from the book of Proverbs when I was 17 years old. He that finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Two things from that verse. He says, first of all, a godly wife is a blessing from God. Secondly, God expects you at some point in your life to go looking for her.

He that findeth implies he be looking, right? So here we go, number two. Number two, you see in this story the importance of reciprocity.

Now, this is kind of a lightweight point, I feel like it's worthy to acknowledge. There is no God told me to come marry you, Rebecca, so pack your bags. There is seeking of her consent. In their culture, scholars say this would have been a temper on arranged marriages. In our days, it means that, guys, you should never, ever, ever pull the God card. I feel like God wants us to get married. Don't blame that on God. Own it.

It's you, right? Or girls. It works the other way. If I was single and I would go around and preach at youth groups or college events, I got more than one letter.

In fact, I kept them in a file. I got more than one letter telling me, some girl telling me that God had told her that we were supposed to get married. And I'd be like, uh, the Lord just does not put that in my heart yet or with ever with you, I don't think.

But I think I, too, have the spirit of God, so don't ever pull the God card. Number three, the importance of marrying in the faith. The importance of marrying in the faith. Abraham did not want Isaac marrying a Canaanite. Why?

Because he didn't want his descendants to lose the threat of the promise. One of the most damaging things, maybe the most damaging thing that you can do to your children and your grandchildren is to marry a non-Christian. We have people in our church who are dating somebody who does not share their faith right now, and they think, oh, it's no big deal. I like him.

I like her. I can probably convert him. Well, first of all, that's probably not true. But here's the bigger question. Have you thought about your future children? The biggest impact on their spiritual lives is going to be that person that you marry. And you are intentionally going into a relationship where you're going to make the biggest influence on them.

Somebody who doesn't even share your faith. Honestly, are you really that selfish? Are you really that selfish that you'd be like, well, I'll stay with him or her because I like him. Who cares the impact they have on my kids later? Do you really care about the faith of your future children? I told you a few weeks ago, only marry a non-Christian if the faith of your future children is not that important to you. And by the way, if you're not a Christian, I'm not trying to pick on you, and I'm certainly not trying to demean you. In fact, I told you a few weeks ago that if you're not a Christian, honestly, it's in your best interest, you shouldn't date one unless you plan to become one.

Why? Because the Christian that you're dating right now really wants to convert you. I told you, you mean prove that? They have you here this weekend. And they're hoping I say the magical line, that's why they're always cutting their eyes at you to see if you've got the tear yet.

Or did he do it? Point is, they don't accept you as you are, they want you to change. Their parents don't like you. Right now, their family, right now at this moment, they know you're at church and they're praying somewhere for your soul right now. I promise you that's what they're doing. And at family dinner, it's never going to be totally harmonious because everybody wants you to become a Christian. And I'm just saying, don't date one unless you plan to become one.

I would say that for your own interests as much as anything else. Alright, believers, let me make sure you get this. Let me tell you how our enemy works. When our enemy cannot successfully attack our faith, what he does is he puts us up in situations that stop the progress of the faith beyond us. Balaam did this in the Old Testament. Balaam was the prophet that the Moabite king, Barak, hired to curse Israel. Well, Balaam tried to do it three times, and he could never do it.

That's the whole donkey story, the donkey speaks back to him and everything. Balaam could never do it because he said, God has not cursed these people, so I can't curse them. So Barak says, well, what am I going to do? I've paid you, Balaam, all this huge sum of money and you tell me you can't curse them? He said, well, you gave me all that money, so I'll tell you what.

I can't curse them, but you can get them to curse themselves. Barak said, tell me how to do it. He said, just send out all the hot Moabite women into the camp and make them seduce the Israelite men so that they get married, so that their children grow up in homes where they're not sure if they worship God or if they don't, and you'll destroy the next generation. And that's what they did, and it worked. It worked in their generation, it works in ours. When God cannot, excuse me, when Satan cannot destroy your faith, he just puts you in a situation where he destroys it in the next generation. I have told my kids, I want my grandkids to trust Jesus. And by God's grace, I want my great grandchildren to trust Jesus.

But that's going to be in their hands, not mine. And it's in large part determined by whom they choose to marry, and whom they marry is going to be determined by who they choose to date. So when Paul gives the command in 2 Corinthians 6, 14, do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. Do not be in an intimate relationship of any kind with an unbeliever. That is a command, it is period, it is end of sentence.

There are no exceptions. It means that if you are a Christian dating a non-Christian, you are out of the will of God, and you are walking in disobedience. But that command is given to you not to be mean to you.

That command is given to you because it understands what the future looks like for you, and you would be wise to heed it. Number four, this story shows you the importance of character. The importance of character, Eliezer observes her from a distance. What does he see as he observes her? He sees that she's a servant-hearted person. He sees she's gracious and hospitable, excessively so.

The tests that she goes through reveal her character. Now, character is not the only thing that matters in a relationship. She's beautiful too, I mean they notice that. But character is by far the most important thing. Over a thousand years later, the apostle Peter would say it this way, he's speaking specifically to the women here, but it would apply to both genders. Verse three, 1 Peter 3, your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, your beauty should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, watch this, which is of great worth in God's sight. In other words, character is of greater value in God's sight than physical beauty. And I would say to you, ought to be of greater value in your sight than physical beauty.

Why? Peter says because that kind of beauty is unfading. Physical beauty, Peter implies, is fading in at least two ways. First of all, the physical beauty itself fades, as we have said here before.

As you get older, things sag and they wrinkle and they gray and they droop. And if that is the entirety of somebody's beauty, then they become really ugly in old age, if that's the only beauty that they have. The second way physical beauty fades, listen to this, is its power over you fades. Even if somebody could manage to hang on to their physical beauty through makeup or botox or liposuction or whatever, its impact on you fades. Psychologists say 18 months is all that it takes for the intoxicating effects of beauty to wear off. Thus, listen, if you are wise, in the dating process, you will prioritize the evaluation of character the way Eliezer did with Rebecca, because that kind of beauty, that kind of beauty is unfading.

That kind of beauty just gets more beautiful as you get older. And how do you tell their character, you ask? By watching how they relate to other people.

You see, character is rarely revealed in how they relate to you in the dating stage. As I explained in the dating stage, they are in the used car salesman mode. Let's hide the defects and let's put forward the awesome stuff. Oh, what's that right on the engine? I don't know, let's turn up the radio. This area works great. Oh, the air conditioner, look how cold the air is.

No, don't worry about that sound. That's what they are doing. So what you need to do is you have to have time to see them relate to the camels in their life, metaphorically speaking. I had lunch one time with a very successful CEO here in Raleigh-Durham, who told me that when he interviews somebody and he does it at a restaurant, he's always watching how the person he interviews treats the people around him, how they treat the waitress. He told me, he says, more than twice, twice in my career I've hired a waiter or waitress on the spot, just watching how he or she treated me, how they treated the person around him. He said, because that kind of character that would show itself in the midst of waiting on tables is the kind of character that I want working for me and my company.

That's what Eliezer did. The English word character, by the way, comes from the ancient word carax, which referred to the engraving done on like a signet ring. And so no matter what you pressed it in, it always made the same impression every time. Character is the kind of thing in your soul that no matter what relationship you're in, you make the same imprint, you act the same. So if you want to evaluate someone's character, you ask questions like, what's their reputation? I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said that reputation is the shadow that is cast by the tree of character.

Your character is going to cast a shadow, and so you want to know, what's that person's reputation? How do they treat their parents? That's a really good question. Because guys, how that girl treats her dad is a pretty good picture of how she's going to relate to you in 20 years. And girls, how that guy treats his mom is a pretty good relationship about how he's going to relate to you in 20 years.

You don't believe that? Ask anybody who's been married for more than two decades. How do they have a servant spirit like Rebecca? Is he or she faithful in their commitments? If they can't hold a job, if they can't keep their word to other people, then what in the world makes you think that they're going to be able to keep their commitment or keep their word to you? Can they keep their hands off of you? I mean, if they can't control themselves in the dating stage sexually when they know that it's wrong and they can't do it now, what makes you think they're going to change when they get married? Girls, if he can't control himself now, what makes you think he's going to control himself when he's on the internet late at night and you're not around?

If she can't keep her hands off you, sir, guy, what makes you think that in a compromising situation after you get married, she's going to be able to control herself then? Character does not change. To really see character, you need at least two things here. You need letter A. You need time.

You need time. You have to be able to observe them in regular life contexts. I haven't been a pastor that long, only 13 years, but it still amazes me. People coming in after two weeks, they're like, well, we're ready to get married. I'm not saying you can't ever be right, but don't bring God into it.

God's not in that. I'm just saying there's no way you can know, and do not say my heart knows, because your heart is all hopped up on the drug of infatuation. Here's what happens. You're so excited about the idea of being in love that you take this person that you like, but you don't know all of them yet, so the parts of them you don't know, you fill in with what you want them to be. But just because you want them to be that doesn't mean that's what they are. And then you get married and find out all the parts you made up are not really true at all.

You need time to see them in different contexts. I heard about a Christian couple, no joke. God in our church told me this. I got engaged after a week and a half, and they'd never even met. They'd only talk through email and pictures. There's some other guy, this guy in our church challenged this guy on this, and the guy said, well, sure, we never met, but she's perfect. We both want to have the same number of kids.

In his case, it was eight. He's like, that's a sign. She dresses how I've always wanted a girl to dress.

I'm assuming that was a denim jumper. And she wears her hair the way that I've always wanted a girl to wear it. Bro, respectfully, I think you need more to go on than that. Only time and proximity reveals who they really are.

You need to understand how their past shapes them, how the wounds of their past affect their relationships, what they're like under pressure, how they handle responsibility, what their ideas of family and success are. The other thing that you need to see character, listen to this, is you need to keep the physical out of it. You need to keep, and by that I mean sexual stimulation. Sexual stimulation intoxicates you, and it hinders your ability to evaluate anything soberly. It kind of works like a drug. You know, when your body's in pain or you're sick, you go to the doctor and he prescribes a codeine pill, and you take the codeine pill, and then you feel awesome. Now, your body actually isn't awesome, but you feel awesome because the drug deceives you as to how you really feel, which is fine when you're sick. But when you do that in a relationship, it leads you to disaster.

When the codeine wears off, your body's still sick. When the physical excitement of sex fades, all you're left with is a sick relationship. So I would encourage you to keep the physical minimal for your own sake.

Around here we say postpone physical commitment, A-L-A-P, as long as possible, because sexual stimulation sabotages the wise spouse selection process. My dad, not a theologian, never been in any kind of full-time ministry or even part-time ministry, just a very down-to-earth guy who just gave really practical wisdom when I was 17 years old. He said, listen, I'm going to give you four laws that if you obey these laws in your relationship with girls, it's going to save you from a lot of trouble. My dad's first name is Lynn, so these came to be known as Lynn's Laws.

Any college, if you ever meet my dad, within three minutes he will give you these laws. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you right now. He said, first of all, son, he said, nothing in the dark in the dating stage. Nothing, nothing in the dark. He said, number two, nothing should last longer than five seconds, because if it lasts longer than five seconds, it just became sin. He said, number three, nothing in the dating stage should ever happen below the chin. He said, number four, never, ever, ever, ever lie down, because if you can lie down with a good-looking girl and not become sexually aroused, he said, you and I got other things that we need to talk about. Matt Chandler, nothing good and godly ever happens between dating couples when they lie on a couch together late at night to watch a movie.

It has never in the history of humankind led to discussions about cinematography or the symbolic resonance of the director's body of work or whatever. It never leads to anything good. Solomon says it this way in the Song of Solomon, speaking to women here, promise me, O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and the wild deer, not to awaken love until the time is right. In their culture, gazelles and wild deer represented youthful sexual vigor, and so Solomon is saying, keep them hibernating until it's time for them to run.

When it's time for them to run, let them out of the cage and let them go wild, but until that time, keep them sleeping, keep them hibernating, keep in the cage. By all means, listen, do not live together. Somebody who has lived with two to three people before they get married has right at a 0% chance, statistically, of staying married in their first marriage. Even if you don't believe in God, I would say that is sound counsel for you.

Now, you're like, well, I have done that. I'm going to get to that at the end, how God's grace rewrites a lot of these stories, but I'm just simply trying to say, I know this is difficult, but this time where you're dating is a test for you. It's a test in which God builds character. It's a test in which God sees if you trust Him enough to wait, to wait on what He has to see if you love Him enough to bring your sexual desires under His Lordship. And I'm going to tell you, when a man, a young man or young woman, brings this area under the control of the Lordship of Christ, God uses that to establish lifelong trust and health in their relationships and releases dynamite spiritual power into their lives.

Now, let me just be really clear on the standard because there seems to be some conclusion. God's Word says that any sexual relations are to happen only after the covenant of marriage has been formalized. That means not in the dating stage, not in the engagement stage, not in the week leading up to your wedding.

After the covenant has been made, that is when you awaken the gazelles and the wild deer. So you need to prioritize character in the dating process. And while you're waiting, focus on it, prioritize its development in you. You become the kind of Rebecca that we're talking about. The way we said it a few weeks ago is, are you the person that the person you're looking for is looking for?

Are you the person the person you're looking for is looking for? And that's what God wants you to prioritize and then let him worry about what he is going to bring to you in his time. Number five, we see in this story the importance of godly counsel. In this story, we are immediately struck with how involved the families are, more so than we're used to. And I'm not trying to push us back to arranged marriages.

I mean, there was a lot of problems with that. Actually, my kids are probably not a bad idea, but I remember who my parents picked out for me. I don't want to go back there.

But in our culture, in our culture, we've gone to the opposite extreme, have we not? In arguably the most important decision of our lives, we isolate ourselves and tell ourselves that our heart knows best. Your heart is an emotional idiot. No offense, but it is.

Mine too. It is easily deceived. Or, about this decision, we consult only with our best friends who are no older or wiser than we are. You ever read Lord of the Flies?

It's basically the plot line. You consult with a bunch of people your age. It doesn't turn out well, I can assure you. You need wise and godly counsel, particularly at this stage of your life. If there were no other practical reason to be involved in the church as a single, this would be it. Attraction and dating are so exhilarating and confusing. You need people who are wise, who can look in from the outside soberly without the diluting adrenaline of attraction and help you navigate the relationship. Sometimes they can see the obvious problems that you can't see because you're so hopped up on pheromones. Or maybe they can see that you're writing somebody off because of some silly preference or fear that really makes no long-term difference. Again, Matt Chandler, one sure way to walk in foolishness in a romantic relationship is to date somebody who troubles the godly counselors in your life. Here's the question, do you have godly counselors in your life? Maybe that's why it doesn't trouble anybody because nobody knows you.

And if you do, are you listening to them? Let me give a practical application of this to both married people and single people. Married people first, open your life up to single people in our church. Include them in your families, don't hang out in married people cliques all the time.

Include them in your small groups, get to know them. A friend of mine tells the story of being at a restaurant with his wife where his oldest daughter was working as a waitress. She was waiting on tables across the restaurant and there was this guy who was 15 years older than her that was trying to hit on her. Kept, you know, making suggestive comments, kept, and she said, you know, she's not interested, he wouldn't leave her alone. He keeps saying, you know, this suggestive comment, give me your number.

Eventually my friend said she stopped, she pointed across the restaurant and she said, that's my dad. We share the same phone number. If you want my phone number, why don't you go ask him? My friend says, listen, it is God's plan that every woman in the body of Christ should have a man around her that she can point to and say, you're interested in me?

Why don't you ask him? Single people need a community, single people need a community that can help these relationships form and flourish. Single people, the flip side is for you, you need to get integrated in the church. Don't hang out in singles only cliques. We've got young professional ministries here and ministries to be singles at really every stage of life.

You need to go to those. But when you're there, you need to ask your leader, you should say, help me get involved in the lives of some families here at the church too. That might be through a small group. Maybe you're in a small group with only single people, that's fine. But serve on a ministry team here, that's one of the best ways to get to know people at different ages.

Get to know some family in a ministry team and just tell them, invite me over for dinner. Don't feel bad, it's not rude because you're single, they don't want to come over to your house. Because I remember what my house was like when I was a single guy, I don't want you coming over. When I was single, get that out real quick. When we were single, one of my roommates had perfected what he called the pile system. The pile system, four piles. When he washed his clothes, he would take them out of the dryer and he would put them in pile number one. Once you wore it once, it would go into pile number two. Two to three times after you'd worn it, it goes into pile number three. After you played basketball in it, it went into pile number four, at which point you picked the pile up and you washed it again. The best part of his old system was he said that if it laid there, the article of clothing laid there for more than three weeks, it automatically upgraded a pile.

That was his system. So you know what my house smelled like. I didn't want anybody married with kids coming over to my house. So don't worry about not inviting us. Just come up and say, invite me over for dinner. And they'll do it and they'll pay for it. You can go out today. Just find a married person and say, invite me over for dinner.

They'll take you out today. Number six. Number six, the importance of trust in God. The importance of trust in God. Eliezer and Abraham and Isaac bathed this whole process in trust. There are two ways that Eliezer demonstrates his trust in God.

I give him to you as an ANAVA. He prayed. Eliezer prayed. Do you notice this? At every turn he keeps praying. And he really believed that God heard his prayers and would provide in this area. Here's my question. Do you believe that?

Do you believe that God really hears your prayers about this and that he is working and that he is answering those prayers? My daughter, five-year-old Raya, this week, in our kitchen we have a thing called a Vitamix. You ever heard of that? It's like a high-powered blender that you can basically drop a shoe in and it'll turn it into something that you can drink. And so it is so loud.

I mean, I'm surprised I haven't gotten complaint letters from people that live three straights away telling me, cut that out. It's like a jet engine taking off in our kitchen. Well, this week I'm mixing something.

I don't know, like a fruit and a brick. Raya comes up to me. And the thing is, you can't hear anything in the house. Raya taps me on the hip and I look down and she for 30 seconds talks to me. I can't hear a thing coming out of her mouth.

And then she nods her head and she walks off. And I'm like, she thinks that I just heard her. And I thought, I was like, is this how I understand the Heavenly Father hears me? That no matter what noise is going on in my life or around me, I know that He is listening closely to everything that I say on this regard. Matthew chapter 6, Jesus said, the Heavenly Father knows when one hair falls out of your head. He knows when one bird drops out of the sky. If he understands what's going on with hair and what's going on with birds, then he knows and he hears when you call out to him about this most important area. And you can trust him with it.

Do you really believe he hears your prayers? Here's the other way that Eliezer showed his faith. He wouldn't compromise. He wouldn't compromise.

If Rebecca wasn't the one, he's not going to settle. The proof of trust. Listen, the proof of trust is that you won't compromise even when things get difficult. There are many of you that have good intentions. And if you could wave a magic wand, you would marry the right guy or the right girl. But what happens is God doesn't work on your timetable.

And so you compromise. Faith is not shown in the intentions you have. Faith is shown by your refusal to compromise when things don't work out on your timetable.

You hear that? Faith is not shown by you writing anything down right now. I'm glad you're writing it down, but that's not where you show faith.

Faith is what you show when it's not working out the way that you want and you say, God, I'm going to trust you. I love the way that Jim Elliott, the missionary to Ecuador, who would one day be martyred, talked about his pursuit of a wife. He said, I'm like Adam in the book of Genesis. Adam fell asleep in the will of God and he woke up and God had provided a wife.

I want to fall asleep in the will of God and know that God will provide that when it's time. You need to focus on the will of God in your life and trust God to supply that. And listen, do not date somebody that you wouldn't marry.

Dating is a road that leads to a destination and every mile you travel together gets harder and harder to take the exit ramp. Let me give you one last side light on how Abraham, or excuse me, LEAs are trusted God. One other element in this, and it fits into the bigger picture of Genesis that I started with at the beginning.

Listen very closely to this. All of Genesis, as I explained, is not about how to find a wife. The book of Genesis is about a promise that God gave to Abraham. A promise that would bring him exceeding joy.

A promise that would give us what Jesus called the abundant life to bless us and make a blessing. Listen, that blessing did not consist of romance and a good family. That blessing consisted of a Messiah who would come to restore what had been broken in our lives. And what had been broken was not romantic. What had been broken was spiritual. It was our relationship with God that had been broken. The blessing in life, the blessing is not getting married. The blessing is being reunited with God. We say Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

Now it's true. As I've explained, you were created for community and it's not good that you live alone. But as I've shown you in this series, marriage and biological family is not the only way. It's not even the ultimate way that God fills our lives with community. The church, deep friendships within the church, ministry, relationships, these are God's ultimate community.

And that's what we're going to spend our last message in this series on. But for now, what I need you to understand, listen, the blessing that you're looking for, the promise of Abraham. It's not a wife. It's not a husband.

It's not children. It's Jesus. And that's where this story takes a really sweet turn. You see, in the greater story of Genesis, the one about Jesus, in many ways it turns this story on its head. Jesus is like Eleazar, the servant of God.

He leaves the home and he crosses great distance. More than a desert, he crossed the gap between deity and humanity, the gap between holiness and sin. But he did not find in us a worthy, virtuous bride like Rebekah. He found in us someone who had sold themselves out to prostitution. It was not our generosity that impressed him. It was his generosity that took compassion on us. He didn't give us gold bracelets or a nose ring.

He shed his blood to make us his bride. And this is why this is really good news for some of you. Some of you have really messed up your dating story. In fact, you've messed up your whole life. The good news of the gospel is not, hey, follow these rules and everything's going to be fine. The good news of the gospel is you've messed everything up, but I make all things new. My blood can wash. My blood can cleanse.

My blood can bring new life. That's why we say the gospel is not primarily good advice. The gospel is good news. Not primarily a message about what you need to do to fix your life, but a message about what God has done that he wants you to receive. The good news of the gospel is that God came for you in spite of how you'd mess things up.

That his blood can wash you. The whole Bible is about God redeeming us as his wayward, unworthy bride. We weren't worthy the way that Rebekah was, yet God set his affection on us when we're still sinners.

He pursued us when we were running the other way. He purchased us with his own blood when we had sold ourselves into spiritual prostitution. And he offers that love to us as a gift. But like Rebekah, you have to choose to receive it. God's not going to force it on you. There's reciprocity involved.

You have to say yes. But here's the awesome thing. When you choose to receive his love and forgiveness as a gift, it's actually going to heal your damaged soul. And it's going to give you the ability to become the right kind of marriage partner.

It's what we've said over and over throughout this series. When you have problems in horizontal relationship, the way to fix them is not to focus on them. It's to fix this relationship. Because the quality of your vertical relationship with God will determine the quality of your horizontal relationships with everybody else. So the question is, do you have that kind of relationship with Jesus? Maybe that's why you're here.

If not, if you don't have that kind of relationship, do you want it? Because you can have it by simply receiving the lordship of Christ and trusting him as your savior. Why don't you bow your heads at all of our campuses. Bow your heads. Listen, the gospel consists of two commands, repent and believe. Another word for repent is surrender. Are you willing right now to say to Jesus, if you don't know for sure that he's your lord and savior, are you willing right now to say, Jesus, I surrender?

You're right, I'm wrong. You're the lord, not me. Believe, another word for believe is receive. Are you willing to receive the salvation that he came and purchased for you as a gift? If you're willing to receive him right now, you surrender and you receive and you say yes, Lord Jesus. Father, at all of our campuses, as we prepare to take the Lord's table, the great symbol of the price you paid to purchase us as your bride. God, I pray that you would open our hearts to the largeness of your love. That God, we would be overwhelmed by your love so that we would love others the way that you have loved us. We ask for that, God, in Jesus name.