Would you bow with me, please? Our most gracious and loving Heavenly Father, creator of all things, sustainer of life itself, the glad giver of forgiveness and mercy, we confess to you that we as a people, individually and corporately, have longed too much for the comforts and the treasures of this world rather than seeking first your kingdom. We have loved the gifts that you have created more than you, the giver. In your mercy, God, we plead, help us to see that the things that we strive for are but shadows, and you are the substance. That they are quicksand, but that you are a mighty and everlasting rock. That they are shifting, but you are an eternal anchor. We plead for your forgiveness through the riches of Jesus Christ. Accept, Father, His worthiness for our unworthiness. Accept His sinlessness for our transgressions. Take, Father, His fullness for our emptiness, His glory for our shame. His righteousness for our dead works. Take, Father, we pray, His riches for our poverty, and most of all, His death for our life. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, when we last were in the book of Matthew, We ended with a discussion of getting along, how Christians are to relate to one another, that we're not to judge one another superficially, and that only the truth is our judgment, and that we are to love one another rightly, purely, without reservation. And as I was preparing and teaching that little series entitled Getting Along, It just came to me that perhaps before we press on in Matthew, we ought to talk about how we get together. So we're going to do that. We have relationships in the body of Christ. We're drawn together by God and his spirit. But there are relationships among us, husbands and wives and families that are born out of the pursuit of one another. God has much to say about that. And we're going to take a few weeks to look at how we are all to get together. We're going to talk this morning in particular, by way of introduction almost, about the dating dilemma. Everybody dates, right? Or at least if you don't date, there's something wrong with you, right? Or you're ugly. What do we mean by dating? What is that all about? Well, By way of definition and for the context of our talks together these next few weeks, I'm talking about the 20th century, mark that, the 20th century phenomenon known as recreational dating. At least that's what I'll refer to it as. That's where boy meets girl. Girl is pleasing to boy in some way. She has a cute smile or a, Sexy body according to the world standard. She has a nice voice, cool friends. As she grows older, she's got a good job and a nice car. Boy asks girl to go out on a date. Girl says yes. And if she says yes, then he'll pick her up for dinner perhaps and a show, a concert or a movie. And if everything goes well, then in most cases, The boy will take the girl to a secluded spot where they will engage in what has been called everything from necking to, well, whatever. If that goes well, well, it will proceed farther. Petting is a word that is tossed around in this circle. Of course, we should understand nice girls would never do that on the first date. They would wait until the second or third or maybe the fourth. But they're only delaying, in most cases, the inevitable. In modern America, among college students and high school students and increasingly among junior varsity students, this process is aided by parties and dances and booze and drugs. And without some unusual constraints, the necking and the petting will become sexual intercourse. This is dating. And this is a good thing, we're told. But there's more. If boy and girl date for an extended period of time, then they will decide that they're not supposed to date anybody else. And so they will go steady. That's what we called it. I don't know what they call it today. I suspected something like that. This, in many ways, is I guess sort of an adolescent form of imitating marriage. Now, bear in mind, the boy here might give the girl a ring or a necklace or, you know, as I recall, we sometimes gave them our coat. I can't remember why we would do that in the middle of the winter, but it happened. Of course, this imitation marriage, we need to understand, doesn't have any real commitment attached to it. You can break it off at any time, either party, just arbitrarily or Maybe because someone cuter came along or someone nicer or with a bigger house or a nicer car or whatever it is. But boys and girls will go steady as a part of this dating process. And when they do, they will become attached. While they may not be attached legally, they will become attached romantically. They will become attached emotionally. And most of the time, huge majority of the time, they will become attached sexually. And then when the boy or the girl gets bored or one of them is caught cheating, well, then that imitation, shallow commitment, well, it's over. And then begins the heartache and the anger and sometimes worse. After a string of these failed relationships that we call dating, these young men and women have finally grown up, we say. And now, having been thoroughly trained by our culture, they are ready, we say, for what? Marriage? Does it make any sense to any of you that that would be training for marriage? It sounds more like practice for divorce to me. And the statistics would support that I'm right. And yet we still date. In fact, going from one relationship to another has become sort of a national pastime in America. And thus marriage, moving from one spouse to another, has become much the same. Just a national pastime, something we do because relationships end. That's just the way they are. When they end, we get over them and we move on. But something has been lost here. In fact, it's been gone so long for most of us, it was never even in view. Relationships between boys and girls and men and women has been stripped of anything pure and righteous and holy. And all that we're operating in is the dross, the stuff that gets burned away, the trash. And listen to me carefully. While professing Christians, who through ignorance or bad teaching or the horrible role models that we are providing, or just a simple syncretism with the world culture, while these Christians, professing Christians, are involved in this process of recreational dating, while they might have better motives and perhaps a higher intention, they are playing the same game. They have bought into the same system. Now, they may not be doing it so they can score, but they're doing it nonetheless. And even though their intentions are better, I will tell you that the process is thoroughly unbiblical. It is absolutely destructive and it is wreaking havoc in the church and out of the church alike. There is in this idea of dating an absolute lack of any real parental oversight. There is the regular practice of the coming together of men and women without any chaperones, without any supervision. There is, even among Christian dating, a certain amount of physical intimacy that is expected, if you're normal. All of these things are found in Christian dating. And they are, nothing more than what I have already called in the world's definition, recreational dating, refined to ease the conscience. The result? Well, the rates of sexual immorality among professing evangelical Christian high school students and college students is almost identical to the rates of the same activity among unbelievers, those who claim no knowledge of Christ or desire to serve the Lord. And on Christian college campuses, according to a lot of surveys, it's not uncommon to find the statistics there even higher. After college, the single scene is thrust upon us. And there is almost no observable differences between professing Christians and unbelievers in their practice and their approach to relationships in the singles phase. And then after all of that, in marriage, once again, among professing Christians, there's absolutely no difference in the divorce rate between those and those who do not know the Lord. I would sum it up this way. The modern 20th century phenomenon that we call recreational dating is bankrupt. It doesn't work. It has been a total disaster. And worse, for Christian Americans, we have given our children just enough Christianity to ensure their guilt when they participate in their fornication and other activities, but not enough Christianity to ensure their purity as they approach life together, men and women. And you know what's frightening to me about all of this? Pride. The human pride that finds itself at the root of all of this, that despite all of these facts and figures, which are not new to most of you, besides our ability just to think reasonably through a situation, it seems the worse our troubles get, the more confidence we place. in such failed systems and methods and procedures. After all, we would say, I turned out alright, right? Christians, that is a pitiful way to approach the rearing of children and entering into relationships between men and women. So common is this practice. So common is this paradigm that I suspect that much of what I'm going to say the next few weeks will sound otherworldly to you. But then I'm comforted by the reality that the Bible tells me that as believers we are not of this world. And we are different. And it should make a difference in how we come together. So we're going to jump in, just by way of introduction really, by an examination from the Word of God. And I want to present a premise. What is that premise? Simply this. Dating. i.e. recreational dating as I have presented it, is simply wrong. It's sinfully wrong. Now let me quickly add here before I go into this, the four points, some ground rules concerning my remarks. You may want to write this down or at least jot it down so you don't forget. It's really not something you're going to make quick notes of. But nothing that I say and nothing that we come to understand from Scripture these next few weeks is intended as a directive, listen, I am not intending to direct you against the idea of godly Christians coming together within some system, as I have called it here. I'm not trying to attack dating as it should be. I'm trying to attack dating as it is. Secondly, I know a lot of you have wonderful godly marriages and you can with all sincerity say, I did it that way and it is okay. But I just want to challenge you before I press any farther to think about this, as one writer put it, people survive airplane crashes. Some walk away without a scratch. And we are thrilled by that. But I don't see any of us lining up to embrace the habit of crashing airplanes. And don't let your successful marriage justify an ungodly and unbiblical approach to relationships. One more thing, back to the ground rules. The tendency among a lot of us who might get alarmed these next few weeks will be to say, great, give me a better way. Give me a new system. Give me one of those connect the dot approaches. Give me a list and I'll be sure that my kids don't do it that way or that I don't do it that way. And you know, that's where we seem to go in the church all the time. We want some pattern, some method, some system, some program. You can go to the Christian bookstores, the shelves are full of them. The shelves are full today of Christian books telling us exactly what to do, a method of process to follow that's going to fix all of our relationships. I don't want to be overly cynical, but I will tell you asking questions like, how many times does a young man have to come over before a young girl is allowed to sit next to that young man at dinner is not going to get us a lot closer to a biblical model of how to approach relationships. That is shallow. That's just another method. That's just another program. And listen to me, folks. We are men and women with sons and daughters. We are not social engineers playing with Legos so we can just snap the parts together. Christianity doesn't work that way. Relationship with God doesn't work that way, and relationships with one another won't work that way either. And in most our cases, if we are Christians who are learning that God has principles of truth that press in on us, we are learning that those principles rightly applied will affect our behavior and will produce righteousness and godly acts of goodness. But it's the principles, it's the relationship, it's the truth that leads us to that, not some method, not some program. And one more ground rule. This is not just a matter of switching terms. I am a bit disgruntled by the recent fervor to trash dating and to embrace courtship. Swapping the names won't help, folks. And by the way, I'm not sure courtship is where you want to go. We live in a fallen world and the evidences of that are all around us. And I'm going to tell you that I have decided we don't have a word today that adequately describes what God intends for men and women to do when they come together. For the purposes of these lessons or sermons together, I will contrast biblical courtship to recreational dating. But I am not contrasting courtship and dating. Well, I'll tell you that in most cases, those that are chasing the courtship model are no closer to the truth than those chasing the dating paradigm. By the way, I know when you think of courtship, it conjures up those images of Camelot and the maidens in distress and a greater day, I suppose. But courtship comes from the Latin word, which is cohorts. Out of that word, we get our word cohort. It meant an enclosed yard, a confining. And specifically, it was addressing a cohort when selected men are come together in this yard. So it's addressing a group of men confined together in a yard. From that foundation, we get words like court. and courtier, and curtsy. I don't know how many of you girls are learning to curtsy, but it comes from the same root word. We also get our word courtesy, which simply means behavior fitting to a court, to this confined place where these select group of men have assembled. But it's also where we get our word courtesan, and a courtesan was a loose woman with just a high enough class to serve. sexually the men that had gathered in that court. This woman was usually married to somebody else and most of the men in that court were married to somebody else. All that just to say courtship is not our answer. Its roots are as pagan as the current modern dating system. Well, there's so much to talk about and we will, but I've got to get to the point this morning or we'll be here all day. Four reasons why recreational dating is wrong. Number one, recreational dating is wrong because it does, by design, tempt the parties to become involved in sexual immorality. It's designed to do that. When it does that, it's working the way it was designed to work. But that's a problem. That's a real problem for Christians. You see, because of our sinful natures and because of our natural sexual appetites, We are not to be in situations and force upon ourselves practices which intentionally tempt us in this arena. God has warned us. God told us to flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body. But the one who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Are there degrees of sin? The Bible says, yeah. We're not going to get into that until this morning. And rating sins won't help you because the least is the worst and sufficient to damn us all outside of God's grace. But I will tell you sexual immorality consistently in Scripture is held up as a heinous sin because of its destructive nature and because it's within your body and it has eternal effects. The Bible goes on to say, for this is the will of God, your sanctification. You should pause there when you read that verse. It is God's will that you be sanctified, not just saved. It's God's will, having saved you by His grace, that you begin to live out that grace in your life. And He says that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, and not in passion of lust like the Gentiles or the world does, those who do not know God. So that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this manner, because the Lord is the avenger of all such. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but He called us to live holy." And yeah, you're right. There's judgment in the middle of that verse or those verses. It's a serious matter, folks, how we approach the sexual arena of life. And as I said, recreational dating is designed to approach it wrong. by its very nature. You see, recreational dating presupposes that there will be a certain amount of kissing and a certain amount of touching that is acceptable outside of marriage and that there is no harm in that as long as we don't go too far. One Christian writer likened it to preheating the oven but not putting the roast in, as though that is some sort of a Christian virtue. And concerning those things, We are, again, very wrong. The Bible says, concerning the things of which you wrote to me, Paul writing, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Speaking of single men. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, because it is natural to have those persuasions, then let every man have his own wife, and let every wife have her own husband. And then let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and that affection will include touching. And it's appropriate there. But it's appropriate in marriage. And then likewise also, the wife should treat the husband the same way. Sexual touching before marriage is forbidden by God. Therefore, a modern dating system, which is designed to allow that in private seclusion without any supervision, is outright rebellion against God. That's what it is. I know that's a little uncomfortable. But that's what the Bible says. No other conclusion can be drawn. We could add to that, can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be seared? So is he who goes into his neighbor's wife. Whoever touches her shall not be innocent. Say, well, that's applied to a married woman. It's applied to any woman who is under a covenant headship. And prior to marriage, that is her father. And you are not allowed to touch those women. Now, the modern hermeneutic of changing the Bible to say whatever we want it to say would say that touching is just symbolic of the intimate relationship. No, when the Bible wants to talk about the intimate relationship, the consummation of a man and a woman together, it calls it what it is. And it's pretty harsh and pretty direct and pretty frank about those things. No, this means exactly what it says. Keep your hands off the women. Got that, young men? That's what God says. It's wrong. It's a lot of other Scripture. Romans 12, verse 2 says we're not to be conformed to this world. We're to act differently. Colossians 3, verse 5 says that we are to put to death passion and evil desire. We're to fight against it. We're not to feed it. Ephesians 4, verse 22 says we have to put off former conduct. That's the way the worldlings act, if I could use that word. That's not the way Christians act. And this is really gripping. Get this. We just studied it a few months ago. Jesus said that lust is adultery. And adultery is punishable in the old law by death. It's a serious matter when a man looks on a woman to lust after her. The recreational dating system is designed to create that lust. If you fear sin, you have to fear temptation. Now, I don't want to take this too far. The church has. Puritans did. We are not taught in the Bible to treat temptation as though it is the untouchable. It's the sin that's untouchable. And temptation is common to all men and women. But it ought to frighten you. You shouldn't want to snuggle up with it. For the Bible says that each one is tempted when he's drawn away by what? By his own desires. And he's enticed. And it happens in the dark often, and it happens in dead-end roads often, and it happens in back seats of cars often. And this is what happens. When that desire has conceived, it will give birth to sin. And that sin, when it is full grown, will bring forth what? Say that. Death. I have another premise for you. I'm still in point number one. Recreational dating is deadly. That's what the Bible says. It's deadly. It's an intentional setting of our path on a road that God forbids outside of marriage. Again, I want to say I'm not a prude. Sexual attraction is normal. It is wonderful. It is one of the greatest gifts God would tell us in his own words that he gives to men. But there are rules and God means them to be followed. And all sexual relationship between men and women belongs in marriage and marriage alone. You say, well, I was raised in a Christian home and I can date because I'm immune to those temptations. I don't even think that way. And quite honestly, Steve, I'm offended by your suggestions. Well, God's word would say to you, be careful when a man thinks he stands, lest he fall. And you will. Number two. Recreational dating is wrong because it treats lightly the biblical model of male-female covenant relationship. I'm not going to spend any time here now because that principally is our study. We're going to have to understand God's principle of covenant relationship. I wish we could take the many weeks it would take to rightly treat the entire theology of Scripture which has as its foundation a covenant understanding between God the Father and His chosen people. If we took all of those weeks, we'd forget where we started, I'm afraid, and we'd lose our track of dating. We will do that very soon because it's necessary that we understand it. But just know this, it is God's plan that when men and women come together, they come together under a covenant promise. And that promise involves a commitment of both parties, and it is not to be broken. Recreational dating, by its very practice, violates this principle. Number three, recreational dating is wrong because building from that principle, it violates the biblical teaching concerning covenant headship. I alluded to it just a moment ago. And again, this is our study for the next few weeks. But let me say here, it is God's design that a woman always be under a covenant head, a relationship with a man that guards her and protects her and secures her against her greatest weaknesses, which God has told us what they are. And that head for every woman is her father when she is born. And that headship is transferred at marriage to her husband. But the Bible knows nothing of a young girl fitted for marriage who would ever be outside of a covenant relationship, a headship if you would. Nothing of that. The Bible does know something of those women not fitted for marriage, those gifted for singleness, And they are allowed to live and exist safely under their own decision-making process, if you would, their own direction, if you would. But lest we be too hasty there to apply more liberty than is due, they are under the headship first as a Christian of their church and elders, and certainly always under the headship of Jesus Christ. It's just part of it, folks. And recreational dating, by its design, violates that premise. We have taken the parents completely out of the window. Modern recreational dating is by design self-centered. It is hedonistic. It is all about me and it is nothing about a covenant or a promise or a commitment. It trains young people to be pleasure-oriented, self-seekers, and shallow in how they relate to one another. The Bible would teach that the father and the parents have a biblical responsibility to guard and to preserve a girl's virginity until marriage and to guide their sons into how to choose a mate so that they don't violate the headship of the woman they are approaching. But today a father turns his daughter over to a stranger who he at best shook hands with at the door and measured him how? By outward appearances. which Christians are forbidden to do, by the way. That's sin, to judge a person outwardly. But if a father makes any investment at all today, that's about it. And then he sends that daughter away, based on her recommendation of this young man, who, if she's already infatuated with, emotionally attached to, trust me, dads, she'll tell you whatever you want to hear, as long as you'll let her go. A long way from the responsibility that God has given fathers and parents. The dating paradigm takes the process of finding a life partner and puts it in the hands of those least suited to approach such an eternal commitment. Adolescent men and women, in most cases, at the height of their hormonal development, without the intelligence or the faith or the maturity to make such decisions. It's a recipe for failure. Number four, and then I'm done. Recreational dating is wrong because it confuses emotion and lust and selfish indulgence with genuine love. It just mixes it all up. And this isn't a new problem, folks. This has been around for a long time. I want you to turn in your Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 13. We'll conclude here this morning as we spend just a few minutes with this text. 2 Samuel chapter 13. We meet a family in verse 1 in 2 Samuel chapter 13, and they will model for us this very fact. We have confused as human beings emotion and lust and selfishness with love. And we just use the words interchangeably as though there's no difference. Look at your Bible, 2 Samuel chapter 13, look at verse 1. We meet the family. You see there David? That's the daddy. He's the king of Israel. He has a son named Absalom. You see that in that verse? And Absalom has a sister whose name is Tamar, and don't miss it, she's beautiful. And then they have a half-brother named Amnon. You see that? There's the family. David and three of his children. We have Absalom, Tamar, and Amnon. Now, we don't have time to develop David, but he has been less than a stellar model. Read this afternoon back about chapter 10 through 13, You will see what these children have watched and observed in their home. Look at verse 2. Amnon was so frustrated because of his sister Tamar that he made himself ill. You know what he is? Listen. He loves sick. That's what he is. That's what we call it. That's what you would call it if your son were going through that. You'd say, well, son, you're just lovesick. And you'd just laugh it away and eventually take a pill or something. You'd get over it, I guess. But he made himself ill because Tamar was a virgin, and it seemed hard to Amnon to do anything to her. By the way, that's a good thing. It's a good thing that it was hard for him to do anything to her, because that's the way it's designed to be. It's not supposed to be easy. But you see, he has his eyes on his half-sister. Look at verse 4. He brought in a council, Jonadab, and he said to him, O son of the king, why are you so depressed morning after morning? Won't you tell me? And then Amnon said, what? I'm in love with Tamar, the sister of my brother, not my sister, the sister of my brother. His justification is well on the road already. And he has confused lovesick, selfish lust with love. And he looks at his best friend, he says, I'm in love. And his best friend, if he were alive today, would say, well, you know, when that bug bites you, ain't no sense running. You got it bad. You can't sleep. You can't eat. You can't think straight. Your faith is all breaking out. Man, you've got to do something. Verse 5, So Jonadab said, Lie down on your bed and pretend to be ill. And when your father comes to see you, say to him, Please let my sister Tamar come and give me some food to eat. Let her prepare the food in my sight so that I can see it and eat from her hand. He's emphasizing the food and diminishing the her hand part. Well, David didn't see any problem with that. His discretion is not the sharpest at this point in his life. Verse 7, Then David sent to the house for Tamar, and he said, Go to your brother Amnon's house, prepare food for him. That's a mistake. Verse 8, So Tamar did what her dad said and went to her brother Amnon's house, and he was lying down, and she took the dough and kneaded it and made cakes in his sight and baked the cakes. Isn't that romantic? The way to a man's heart is hot. Through his stomach. That's goofy. But it worked in this case. Verse 9, she took the pan and dished them out before him and well, he just couldn't eat it. I don't know if it was too much salt or what. Most likely had something else on his mind. And Amnon said, get everybody else out of here. And so they went out for him. Verse 10, so Amnon said to Tamar, bring the food into the bedroom. Boy, that's a big mistake. It's bad enough to be there in the house with him. Now she's going to go to the bedroom with him. Daddy's not there. Daddy didn't tell her to go in the bedroom, by the way. She made this decision on her own. That I may eat from your hands. So Tamar took the cakes which she had made and brought them into the bedroom and her brother Amnon. And when she brought them to him to eat, he took hold of her and said, Come and lie with me, sister. Which interpreted means come and lie with me, sister. You can interpret that yourself. But she answered him and said, No. Now let me tell you something folks, you can watch all the TV you want to, this whole idea of date rape 99% of the time is just hogwash. It's too late to say no when you put yourself in this position. It's way too late to say no after you've been in the apartment and now you're in the bedroom and now you're standing by the bed. And ladies, to blame that on Amnon is to just shirk your personal responsibility for putting yourself in such a spot. Just saying no is not God's principle to biblical relationship. At least not at this point, to say no. But she said no, and we must give her some credit. And she suddenly had an awakening of truth. She said, don't violate me. And that's what it would be. And she said that such a thing is not done in Israel. We don't act like that as God's people, she said. And that's true. And then she said, it's a disgraceful thing to do something like this. She looked at her half-brother and she said, this is sinful. I'll have nothing to do with this. Verse 13, As for me, where would I get rid of my reproach? Well, she understood sin, but she missed the part about grace, didn't she? I'm not diminishing what's about to happen to her, but ladies, God's grace is sufficient for whatever violation or reproach has come upon you. Need to press on. As for you, you're going to be like a fool. That's what sin creates, fools. Now, therefore, speak to the king. There is a way this is supposed to work, she said. It shouldn't work between half-brothers and sisters, but that's another discussion. Verse 14, he wouldn't listen to her, and get this, he was stronger than she was, and he violated her, and he laid with her. He raped her. And look at the next verse. The woman who he loved, he now hated. He hated her with a very great hatred. You ought to circle that in your Bible, folks. You ought to write it in the margins somewhere so you don't forget 2 Samuel, chapter number 13, verse 15. This is what happens, young people, when you follow your lust and you call it love. It will produce hate. He hated her. And I promise you, it had nothing to do with whether or not she was good in bed by the world's standards. Look at the next part of that verse. For the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. Which tells you, mark this, that he never loved her to begin with. Because I promise you that the love of a believer is the love of God, amen, that's poured out within us. And there is no hatred greater than that love. There is nothing greater than the love of God. This isn't love. This is lust. This is selfishness. This is recreational dating 101. And he said, get up and leave me. And she said, no, listen to this, folks, because it is wrong. This wrong in sending me away will be greater than what you've already done to me. She's got nowhere to go. She's ruined. Verse 20, Absalom learns about it. He's about as sharp as a bowling ball. Has Amnon, your brother, been with you? Be quiet, my sister. He's your brother. Don't take this matter to heart. Folks, sexual immorality is always a matter of the heart. Every other sin is outside the body. But this is a sin against the body. You can tell them to feel all right all you want to. The end is the same. You see the latter part of that verse? She was desolate. Good plan, huh? Recreational dating. Wish we had time to read the rest of the story, but we don't. Just a couple of things. Look at verse 21. David heard about it and now he's mad. A little late for that, isn't it? Absalom's not speaking to Amnon, verse 22, about anything, good or bad. The brothers aren't speaking. The daddy's mad. And now Absalom hates Amnon because of what he did to his sister. You know what's going to happen? Absalom is going to murder Amnon. That's what's going to happen. Read it this afternoon. And then David, after running from his son Absalom, who because he wouldn't deal with his hatred and his vengeance and all the rest that had been cooked up after watching Daddy do what Daddy did and sleeping with Bathsheba and murdering her husband, Absalom becomes David's greatest enemy and tries to take over his kingdom and is by and large successful until finally Absalom too will pay with his life. If you're not doing anything tonight, Go on a date. What are we thinking? Turn over to chapter 18. It's gripping. Absalom is dead. Amnon is dead. Tamar is desolate. And in verse 33 of 2 Samuel chapter 18, Upon learning of Absalom's death, the king was moved, and he went up to his chamber over the gate, and he wept. And this is what he said as he walked, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son. A broken hearted father. Too late. Too late to save his family. But not too late. Not too late for God's grace. Listen to me. One principle and I'm done. David is right. Had only he died instead of his son. Oh, I'm not talking about David killing himself. I'm talking about that night when he was on his porch and he looked over there and he saw the beautiful Bathsheba. Oh, if only then David had died to self and rather chose to follow God. Amen? Oh, son, had I died, perhaps you would have lived. And that's it, folks. Redefining the words won't help you. If we're going to get together God's way, we're going to have to die to the self, flesh, lust and all the death that it brings. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, for the truth that we have received, we are grateful. For the grace that is beyond measure, we rejoice. God, I can't help but believe because it's true in my heart. But to come to grips with your truth on these matters exposes us in so many ways. We have been wrong and we have been wronged. But your grace is greater. Forgive us, Father, we pray. Continue to teach us as we approach your word and relationships with reverence and honor, desiring to bring glory to you alone. You help us, Father, is our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.