Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse number 9, the Bible said, Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest. He's talking about a man and a woman who love each other. They're married. They evidently have been married for some time because he talks about the relationship here, "...with the wife whom thou lovest, all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity. For this is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun." I want you to underline all the days of the life of that vanity. Now, I've used this text preaching before, so you may have already underlined it, and that's alright. It's a different message. But the truth remains the same. That phrase is not talking about how that marriage is empty and meaningless. Much of the time in the book of Ecclesiastes, that word vanity means fleeting like the wind. It talks about the emptiness of life. But here it talks about the brevity of life, that life is short. Life's relationships that God gives us are extremely important. Life is too short to be lived in relationship crisis in our marriages and in our families. We're talking about family 101. We're talking about this matter of having a marriage that honors the Lord and being married for life. All the days of our life, God meant for marriage to last. He did. Now I recognize there are situations and circumstances where people experience brokenness in relationship. I understand that. In my own family, my mom, when I was a child, I was abused. My mom was abused. I come from a broken home in that regard. There was a man who married my mom that loved me, gave me his name. And I bear His name today. That's my dad. I'm going to tell you, it takes more than being a biological parent, a father. It takes more to be a father than just fathering a child. It takes commitment to that child. It takes love and commitment to that family. And I experienced that in my own life. I was a child. I don't remember much, just what I'm told. But I'm thankful that these last 50 years my parents have been married. It's till death do us part. You may have experienced the scar of divorce. Nobody goes to heaven second class. God didn't put anybody in the penalty box. forever. Maybe you're in a second marriage, or God expects this marriage to be everything that He intends for it to be, to be committed to it, to make it go forward till death do us part. All the days of thy life. We're living in a day when people would say to me, but preacher, in 2023 the divorce rate is down. That can be deceiving. When you look at the real numbers, what you understand is there's less people being married in 2023, therefore there's less divorces in 2023. Young people are getting married much later in life. The average marriage age for men in 2023 in our society today is about 30 years of age. The average marriage age for women is 26 years of age. Now not all of that is because they are prayerfully waiting on the right mate. Not all of that is the case. Sometimes that is the case. And by the way, I had a preacher many, many years ago when there was a Hardee's in King. How many of you remember Hardee's in King? Yeah, yeah, about less than a third of the church, OK? And we're talking 1985, 86, 87. Some of you are still mourning that you don't have a Hardee's Biscuit here in King anymore. You can drive up Pilot Mount. We do have that in Pilot Mount, but not in King. But anyway, side the point, all right? What I'm getting at, I was sitting there after church with a group of preachers, and one of them had preached here at the church, and he looked at me and he said, Kevin, he said, better not to have what you want than to have what you don't want. That's some of the best counsel anybody ever gave me. Better to have, not to have, what you want, than to have what you don't want. That means don't rush into something. Make sure that who you're going to marry is God's will for your life. The person that God has created for you and you for them. How important that is. How many people have told me, said, preacher, I'm married wrong. It ended in brokenness, a broken relationship, broken divorce, scars as a result of that. And then later in life they meet the person they're married to now. They've been married for years and they say, this is the person that I should have married. I was out of the will of God. Young people, marry in the Lord. How important that is. We see in our day that young adults, what we would consider Gen-C'ers, the late stage Millennials. That means they come on the tail end of the Millennial generation. Many times they're choosing to cohabitate rather than marry. They've experienced the hurt and the pain of a broken relationship, the divorce. They carry the scar of that. And here's their mindset. What's the point? Because someone has failed to model biblical marriage before them. Marriage as God designed it. One of the things that we want to do at Calvary Baptist Church is we want lasting relationships. God takes our marriages seriously, and so should we. They're sacred in the eyes of God. God is for your marriage. God is for my marriage. God wants my marriage to last all the days of my life. I don't know how long that's going to be. One of my prayers is this. It's Your will. My times are in Your hands. But God, I ask You to give me many, many, many years with my wife still that we may serve You together. It's a prayer I have. I pray it many times. Usually every day of the week I'll pray that prayer. We all know the danger of adultery, don't we? I'm preaching a very practical message tonight because I want to help you. I want to help me. I want to help me. And the Bible warns against the dangers of adultery. And I'm going to give you some thoughts. If you can't write this down, if you don't have paper to write things down tonight, get this message, pull out a piece of paper, and write down the points. Can I tell you, it's not just young people that end in divorce. People who have been married 30 and 40 and 50 years fall prey to immorality and immoral relationships and adultery. I know it for a fact. There's never a point in your life that you're home free. Let me give you some warning signs that could lead to immorality and adultery. Are you ready? Number one. When there are unmet expectations either real or imagined. When there are unmet expectations either real or imagined. Everyone goes into marriage and everyone in marriage has expectations from their spouse. Now, can I be honest with you? Some people have such expectations of their spouse that Wonder Woman and Superman couldn't meet them. That's just reality. Those are what's called imagined expectations. Can I tell you the person you married is made out of clay. They're human. They make mistakes. They're not going to be everything that they're supposed to be in any kind of relationship all the time. They're not. There's times that all of us are going to come short. We're all going to fail. We're not going to meet every expectation in every relationship. We're just not going to do it. It's impossible to do that. Now you know what? My goal in life ought to be to meet my wife's needs, to meet her expectations, to care for her, to be a blessing in her life, to nourish her, to cherish her. But I can promise you, we've been married 33 going on 34 years, there have been more than one time that I've failed. That I've been less than what I ought to be as a husband. There have been times in our marriage that no doubt there's been times that she would say, she's failed. I couldn't point one out necessarily, but I'm sure there are. That she would say to you, I've been less than what I desire to be or want to be to my husband. Why? Because we're human. They're imperfect people. There are no perfect marriages because there's two imperfect people living inside of that marriage. And many times they're imagined expectations or they're unspoken expectations. And can I help us understand? Our spouses are not mind readers. They do not know what our needs and our expectations are if we don't communicate. That's why at the core of divorce is a lack of communication. Husbands and wives failing to talk about important matters in their relationships and in their marriage. I give an exercise in my premarital counseling. I tell men, I say, now I want you to go get a cheap notebook, just a small one, something you can stick in your pocket. I want you to put your fiancé's name on it, okay? And then I give them questions, okay? So that we can jumpstart communication, alright? And I say, listen, when you sit down, I don't care if you talk about why school buses are yellow. I don't care as long as you are talking. Here's what happens. When we're courting, we talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. We get married, we stop talking. We quit communicating. We just expect the other to know. You're on a collision course to disaster. Number two. There is a danger of marital failure when there is a lack of intimacy in your marriage. The one flesh relationship within marriage. Number three, when you experience grief or depression. When there's a deep hurt or crisis in our lives, many times people spiral out of control and they look for something to take them out or get them out of the pit of grief or depression or despair or that situation, that emotional crisis that they're in. And then they will begin to look outside because they're not getting what they would think need in the relationship. They begin to look outside the relationship. for fulfillment during that time. Can I tell you, when you are in a crisis moment, it's a time that you need to get your guard up because Satan can take you out. Let me give you another one. When there are long periods of separation. Long periods of separation. I limit the length of time that I'm away from my wife. Now she travels with me. I'll talk about that a little bit later. Not physically. But she travels with me. I'll explain that to you just a little bit more when we get on down the line. But there is a long period of separation. I am not a fan of extra long engagement periods. Because too often in that time, young couples begin to act like they're married. And you're not. The intimacy of marriage is for marriage. Not for potential marriage. not for potential marriage. Number four, when you spend a lot of time alone with a person of the opposite sex, whether it's on the job, in the community, when you're around someone other than your mate, the opposite sex more than your mate, you're in a danger zone. Number five, am I on number five or six or what? Six. I preached this so many times and re-numbered it because I've added to it. I don't even know what the numbers are. I just haven't preached it much here. I preach it in marriage conferences that I go to. When you are successful. You realize that David, when he sinned with Bathsheba, wasn't a young man. He wasn't the sweet psalmist of Israel out watching the flocks and leading the sheep. He wasn't slaying the Goliaths. He wasn't fighting the wars. He wasn't leading the armies. No, he was in a period of rest. He had reached the zenith of his power. He was now king over the first superpower. Israel at that moment ruled the known world of that day. His enemies had fairly well been conquered. He didn't even need to go to the battlefield anymore because his armies were so strong and victory was so sure. He just delegated it to his subordinates. He said, Joab, you just take the men out and you do the fighting. I'm going to take a vacation. I've done my part. And he's on the top of his palace. He's about fifty-some years of age. And he sees a young woman washing herself. And you know the rest of the story. He was around 50 to 55 years of age when that took place. When the Bible talks about fleeing youthful lust, He's not talking to men in their 20's. He's talking to men in their 40's, 50's and 60's. Older men can get caught up in the passion of young men and walk away from marriages that have been decades long. for a fleeting moment of pleasure that brings devastation that's beyond comprehension. I'd encourage you not to cut me off tonight. If we'll listen, I'll help us. You say, well, this don't really apply to me. Oh, it's going to apply to somebody you know, and you can help them. I'm amazed when there's marital problems how easily that Satan can plant someone, whether it's on the job, in the community, even at church, that would make themselves available. It blows my mind how they even find each other. They're not even in the same orbit, yet somehow, it's because Satan's at work seeking to destroy Listen, can I tell you there's some sins we fight, others we flee. Sexual immorality is one that we're told to flee, that we're to run from compromising situations. One of the ways that you can assure a lasting, loving marriage and assure that you stay out of sexual immorality is to guard your heart. To affair-proof your marriage, you need to love it enough to protect it. That's the title of the message tonight. Loving it enough to protect it. You guys have an outline tonight? There we go. Good. Can we look at some verses, and then I'm going to dive in and give them to you real practically tonight. We're only going to get a couple. We'll come back and finish them up. Look with me, and we're going to look at several passages. Look at the book of Job, alright? We're going to go back to the book of Job. Or actually forward, let's see, where am I? Job, Psalms, look at it. Find Job chapter 1. Now, these verses are applications. I'm going to take something out of this to start setting the stage for where we're going this week and next week. Look at chapter 1 of Job. We know that the sons of God, the angels of God have come before the Lord. And Satan shows up among them, a fallen angel. He has access to God. And God asks him if he's considered His servant Job. That there's nobody like Him. A man who's upright and fears God and is screwed with evil. There's nobody like Him in the earth. And Satan begins to accuse God. He says in verse 9, Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Doth Job fear God for nothing? Hast thou not made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased. Here's the problem. The reason Job is serving you the way Job is serving you is because you put a hedge about him so that I can't get to him. A hedge is a protective a protective barrier, so to speak, okay? And he said, what it is, is God, you've hedged him in to protect him so that I can't get to him like I want to get to him. But if you let me at him, God, he'll curse you to his face. Now what I want you to draw out of that is the idea of a hedge, a protective barrier in your life. Alright? Look, if you would, to Psalm 89 and verse number 40. Turn there. Psalm 89 and verse number 40. Here the psalmist is talking about God's judgment upon Israel. How that they've revolted against God and rebelled against Him, and God is chasing them. And look at Psalm 89 verse 40. Thou hast broken down all His hedges, all the protective barriers that God had placed around the nation of Israel to protect it from its enemies. God, You've broken them down. Thou hast brought His strongholds to ruin. Hedges. Protective barriers. God had removed them and now the enemy had gotten in and had led them captive. Do you see that? God had planted a hedge about Job and all that he had. Psalm 89 verse 40 implies that strongholds are brought to ruin when the hedges are broken down. I want you to jot this down. Here's something I want you to remember. An unguarded strength is a double weakness. An unguarded strength is a double weakness. The very place you think you're strong, you're weak. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. How many a person have thought, I'll never commit adultery. I'll never be untrue. I'll never be immoral. I'll never get involved. Only to find their lives involved in immorality. an unguarded strength's a double weakness. God's dealing with the hedges. When the hedges are torn down, the strongholds are brought to ruin in our lives. I think about David. David, with the sin of Bathsheba, he sees the woman, he sends his servants for her. The barrier came up. The hedge came up in the sense to try to protect him from that sin. Is not this the wife of Uriah the Hittite? David, she is a married woman. She is bailed by marriage to one of your soldiers, one of your mighty men. David, do you not understand? You're getting ready to blow it. David, you're getting ready to colossally mess up. And he went on heedless anyway. And it brought untold ruin in his life. The man, after God's own heart, fell to the sin of adultery. Samson's the strongest man in the Bible. David's the most spiritual man in the Bible. Solomon was the smartest man in the Bible, but they all had something in common. You know what it was? Immorality took them all out and scarred their lives. Look with me, Song of Solomon. Let's just keep working our way. Could we go to the Song of Solomon? Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. You'll read book after book after book on the Song of Solomon, allegorizing it. You say, what does that mean? They spiritualize it and make it a picture of Christ in the church and they press verse after verse after verse, take it out of context, make it mean something that it's not. Do I see a relationship between Christ and the church here? We can in some instances. We see a relationship between Jehovah and Israel in certain circumstances. But when we study the book of Song of Solomon the same way you study every other book of the Bible, it is a treatise on married love. That's what it is. It's talking about a man and a woman that loved each other, were married, had a fight, made up, had a love that lasted a lifetime, except for the fact that Solomon had a problem. He loved a whole lot of women. It messed him up. If he'd have married this one woman and stayed right here, his heart might not have ever been turned away from God. We're in chapter 2. They're talking about their relationship. Many people believe of the hundreds of women in Solomon's life, this was the only woman that he loved. This was God's created love for Solomon and he blew it. Look at chapter 2 verse 15. Solomon the Shulamite, his future bride, they're talking. And here's what they say. They say, take us the foxes. The little foxes that spoil the vines. It's an agricultural picture of little foxes that destroy the vine grapes in the vineyard. He said, for our vines have tender grapes. He's talking about the love that they have for one another. It's tender, it's young. And what they're saying is if we want our love to grow and mature, and we want it to last and be everything that God intends, then we have to capture all the little foxes in life. that will seek to spoil the love that we have for one another. Have you ever noticed it's not the big things that destroy marriages, it's the little things? Oh, it may be the immorality that blew it up and blew it out, but there's a whole lot more problems before we ever got to that point. How did the foxes get in? The lack of hedges. If the hedges are thick and strong and healthy, the berries are there, the foxes can't get into the vineyard. There's no hedges. I want to talk to you about some protective hedges that needs to be about our hearts and lives to safeguard our marriages. These are very, very important. I've already mentioned one of them, and I know we're already running out of time tonight. But hedge number one is avoid spending large amounts of time alone with a person of the opposite sex. Someone who's not your spouse. I think I used the word gender. It sounded better, didn't it? I didn't update my message, I just updated my outline. You know, our former vice president, not the current president, vice president, There's a different prayer. I couldn't find the verse I was going to share with you tonight for everybody to pray. Having something to do with his place of position that lets somebody else take it. But I'll find it and share it so everybody can have it. Because I'm convinced that the leadership that we have in our nation is reflective of our nation right now. When you have an immoral nation and an unethical nation, you're going to have unethical leaders. People vote in what they are. Don't think more of America than what it really is. We're a broken, rotten, sinful, wicked, rebellious nation. And you know what God says to nations like that? They're turned into hell. What are we experiencing in our cities and in our land? I know we're quiet tonight, but I'm telling the truth. And the only hope of America are places like this. And you've got your family in the right place so that you can go forward. and be a difference maker in the world in which we live. God's let us be here for such a time as this. And God needs us to have strong relationships and model strong marriages and strong family life to be an example to those around us. I'm reminded of Vice President Pence who would not have a dinner meeting with a woman who was not his wife without other people present. And he was laughed to scorn by our liberal media in our nation. I applaud him. I applaud him because here's a man who has wisdom. Here is a man who values the relationship as a believer, as a godly man, that values the relationships that God's given him in life and does not put himself in a place where the protective hedges are brought down and the little foxes can begin to get in and begin to wear away at his relationship and build a bond with someone in a deep way that's not his mate. You say, well preacher, my job requires for me to travel with men, or travel with women, and we have to stay in hotels together, and we have to be places together, and all that. Maybe you need to find another job. Because if you're a man and there's Three secretaries on the job and they're all women and you're eating together and spending time together, there's the danger that you're going to build a bond with one of them. And vice versa. Hedge number two. Let me give you this one. I'm going to stop tonight or we could go all night. Be careful about touching a person of the opposite gender who is not your mate. I don't think there's anything wrong with greeting a person with a warm friendly handshake. But I have a rule that I embrace only close family members and relatives. I had a rule at one time in my ministry that I hugged little girls under 10, just a little sweet hug in front of their parents if they wanted to hug me. I never instigated that. Or they had to be over 60. I'm having to raise that age. I always have a motto, you hug your wife, I'll hug mine. It's just a good rule. I'm always leery of churches where all the people are hugging each other indiscriminately. And men are pulling women up into them close that are not their mates. I know I'm being a little bit graphic tonight, but I'm just being honest. You want to stay married a long time, then put some hedges up in your life and guard yourself. This is just good Bible preaching. By the way, this is the preaching of several decades ago that we don't hear today because nobody likes to say the hard stuff. Maybe I've just been in the ministry decades long enough to where I don't care. I'm going to say it. Because it just needs to be said. Wouldn't we agree with that? That's the kind of church I want to be in, by the way. I'm not going to be the pastor hugging all the young women going out the door on Sunday nights or Sunday mornings. I'm not going to be that person. I'm not going to be that person. I don't want that kind of testimony. I remember one situation. I never thought about it until it happened. I'd been preaching out of town. I flew into Charlotte. My sister lives in Charlotte. She's my baby sister. She's 11 years younger than me. We were talking and she said, Kevin, you're going to come in. She says, why don't we grab lunch? And I hadn't seen her in a long time. I thought, well, yeah, that'd be great. I'll grab lunch with you. Okay. I wasn't thinking. It's my sister. So she's a pretty young woman. I'm sitting down. She's married. Got two kids. I got a niece and nephew. We're sitting around. We're laughing. We're eating. We get up. I'm getting ready to leave. And I hug her. And it hit me. I hope nobody has a camera. I hope nobody puts this on social media. I don't even know if there was social media back then, but if there was, it could have been bad. Because while my wife knows that's my sister and my children know that's my sister, and maybe some of you knew that was my sister, most people wouldn't have known that was my sister. And I thought to myself, I just put myself in a situation to where I could be talked about and my testimony could have been brought in question. Because not everybody knows who this young woman is. And you say, preacher, you're being silly. No, we're living in a day when my position as a pastor is so precarious. I don't have to just mess up to lose my ministry. All I have to do is be accused and it be credible. and it not even be true. And my ministry is over. Everything that I've lived for... Do you realize that everything that you hold dear... Listen to me and I'm going to close with this. Everything you hold dear can be gone in a moment. But I can promise you the roller coaster of pleasure will never make up for the destruction that's at the bottom of the, I guess you go up and go down, I guess at the bottom of the hill, let's just put it that way. Because what you take years to build, you can destroy in a matter of moments. And you never, ever, ever get it back the same way again. You just don't. And I want to value life's relationships to the point that I don't lose what God's given me. And if I could leave you with this, please don't check out on the next message because what I'm giving you is practical counsel from the Scriptures. to help you and me have lasting relationships all the days of our lives, so that you don't experience, maybe if you're in your second or maybe even third relationship of marriage, you don't experience what you experienced in the others. And there's no more scars, and there's no more brokenness, and there's no more devastation. And if you have a marriage, and this is your first one, that you don't ever go through it to begin with, because anybody here that's ever experienced the scar of divorce will tell you, you do not want those scars. And you definitely don't want your children having them. Because I can promise you this. Children are not as resilient as you think they are. And even when they're older and they're adults, it still hurts when families break up. And let's just not let Satan send the little foxes into our relationships to do his destructive work. Let's put up some hedges. Amen? Do you love your marriage enough to protect it? Are you willing maybe to take the hand of that wife? Sir, don't wait on your wife to lead. You lead. You take her by the hand. You commit yourself. You let... Don't wait. Well, I don't know. Maybe she don't. I can promise you she wants you to lead her. She wants you to love her. She wants to feel secure in your love. She desires that. I promise you that. Maybe what you need to do tonight is slip forward and just commit to having the marriage God wants you to have and to put the hedges up to keep the little foxes out so it doesn't spoil the tender grapes of your love.