A Man and a Maid

Proverbs 30:18-19

Introduction

We have explored many aspect of families.

Today I would like to talk about how they begin.

Serious Business

“Let’s not make too big a deal about this.”

There is only one honorable end to a romantic relationship (Prov. 7:6-27; Heb. 13:4).

If you stop short, you are killing a passion (Song 2:7).

The Bible doesn’t have a category for romance that doesn’t communicate marriage (Gen. 26:8-9)

Is there a stronger influence for happiness or misery in this life than marriage (Prov. 21:9; 25:24)?

And yet we almost entirely surrender the process over to children who we wouldn’t trust to make decisions half as weighty (Prov. 14:12; 28:26).

And we do this in a moment when hormones and the attendant emotions are most calculated to mislead them.

Now, we may say, they won’t listen to me, and we will come to that in a moment.

And we haven’t forgotten what it is like to be young, we have a far better understanding of the realities of being young. Things we couldn’t understand at the time. We understand the far reaching consequences better than we used to.

Under the Law

We obviously are not bound by the Law of Moses (Num. 36:6-13).

But it remains instructive to us (1 Cor. 9:9).

The father had authority over and responsibility for his daughter (Num. 30:3-16).

Sons marry, daughters are given in marriage (Deut. 7:3).

This is more a matter of protection than of ownership (Deut. 22:13-29).

It proves a man to be financially able to care for this woman.

It shifts those resources from him to her family where her father (who is more likely to have her interests at heart)

Some Takeaways

Children who aren’t ready to think about marriage aren’t ready to date.

Parents need far greater involvement in the process than they generally have.

Fathers need to act as protectors to their daughters and leaders to their sons.

We think girls used to need protection but THEY STILL DO!

If you want to have this role, you have to cultivate trust.

Conclusion

I’m not suggesting that we can reinstitute all the details of the Old Law here.

I’m not suggesting that we can reinstitute all the details of the Old Law here. But that Law was given by God and has far more wisdom than anything our American culture has devised in the last 100 years or so.

There were faults committed by men and women under that law and there are far more committed under our current system. The “system” isn’t going to fix everything here. But we will be better off if whatever systems we put in place are Biblically informed and not just compliance with nor even reactions to the current culture.

All of it is a picture of a far greater marriage that we are each meant to be preparing ourselves for.