Ecclesiastes chapter 9 and verse number 9, I'm telling you, God just gave us a wonderful day today. I mean all day long, the music and the worship and the spirit has just been absolutely wonderful. I'm so thankful for that. We had a wonderful attendance today in our life groups. At 9.30am we had over 536 and that's with not all the count coming in. That's an amazing number in our life groups. We're going beyond goals that we've had. Well over 700 in the morning service. Lord's just blessing a great way. Watching our bus ministry begin to blossom again. It's really encouraging and my heart's been blessed by that. Well, turn in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 9. You're turning there. I'll be flying out to Texas this week preaching a meeting. I'll be back for Sunday and you'll be in your place Wednesday. I'll be in my place preaching there, revival meeting. and a little ranching town there, a community outside Navasota, and try to be an encouragement there. And I know that things will be going well here. Ecclesiastes 9.9, the Bible says, Live joyfully 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." This is something that God's blessed us with. He that findeth a wife, findeth a good thing, obtaineth favor of the Lord, the Bible says. And in thy labor which thou takest under the sun. Almost every other place in the book of Ecclesiastics, that word vanity has the idea of being empty. Life without God is empty, meaningless, purposeless. Life under the Son makes no sense apart from a relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ. Here it has to do with the brevity of life. Life is short. God's given us precious relationships in life that need to be cherished, they need to be nurtured, they need to be cemented together. As a matter of fact, He says here that we're to live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of thy life. God meant marriage to last. How many of us agree with that? Can I tell you, God, the Lord, Malachi said, He said, I hate divorce. He didn't say, I hate divorcees. He didn't say that. He didn't hate people that's experienced the scar of divorce. But He hates what divorce does to people's lives. That was never God's intention. As a result of living in a fallen world, we know that there are broken relationships in life. Some of you have experienced broken relationships. Aren't you glad that God can bring forgiveness and healing and hope and put the pieces of our lives back together again? God bless you. But whatever state you find yourself in as it relates to marriage, whether you're desiring marriage, whether you're in marriage, God desires for that relationship to be everything that He designed for it to be. God teaches us that He's for our marriages and therefore we should be for our marriages. And God teaches us that we ought to protect that that He's given us. We ought to protect it. We ought to love what God has given us enough to protect it. Look back in Psalm 89 and verse number 40. We remember when we read last week in the book of Job that Satan accused God of hedging him in. He said, God, I can't get to Job because You've put a hedge about him. God had put a protective barrier hedge in Job's life. Aren't you thankful for the protective barriers in our own lives? I'm glad God hedges us in, aren't you? Boy, I'm glad that Satan can't do with me or to me whatever he desires. That God's in charge. Aren't you glad God's in charge? We come to Psalm 89, and look if you would, verse number 40. He said, Thou hast broken down, talking about the judgment of God upon the nation of Israel, Thou hast broken down all His hedges, Thou hast brought His strongholds to ruin. He's talking about when God took His hand of blessing off of the nation of Israel, allowed our enemies to come in. The hedges, God's protection of His people had been removed, and the enemy had come in. Can I tell you? When we don't have hedges in our lives, the enemy can get in. He can. Remember Song of Solomon 2.15, where Solomon and the Shulamites said, take us the foxes, the little, not the big fox, the little. You know, I've found that usually marriages don't fall apart because of big things, it's small things. It's the little things that accumulate, that are undealt with, and then something large happens and it blows it out, blows the relationship out. He said, take the little foxes. How do little foxes get in? Because He said that they spoil the vines and our vines have tender grapes. He talks about the fragility and the tenderness of their love and their relationship in those early years. And He said we need to guard that. We need to capture the things that can destroy the relationship and the love that we have for one another. We need to do that. We need to be on guard. How do the foxes get in? There's no hedge or the hedge is broken down. in their lives. God wants you and I to put some protective hedges in our lives. We looked at them last week. Hedge number one, that if I'm going to put some barriers in my life, if I'm going to have a marriage that's going to last, if I'm going to guard my marriage, I love it enough to protect it, then you need to avoid spending large amounts of time with a person, a person of the opposite gender who is not your spouse. Need to be careful. Can I tell you, my best friend in life is my wife. You need to guard against forging deep friendships with people of the opposite gender who are not your spouses. It can open the door during times of vulnerability to relationships and affairs and situations that are not pleasing to God and are destructive to the marriage relationship. Matter of fact, outside of Jesus Christ, I hope nobody be more important in your life, married person, than your mate. Hedge number two, be careful about touching. The Bible said in 1 Corinthians 7 verse 1, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. That doesn't mean you can't have a firm handshake. That doesn't mean that every person is off limits and you can't have any interaction with anybody. It doesn't mean that at all. That word touch is a Jewish euphemism for sensuality, of touching in a sensual way, flirty way, a sexual way, a way that's not appropriate. As a matter of fact, I can promise you this, that whenever a man and a woman in the early years, I remember, whenever I would touch my wife, she would touch me. And it wasn't static electricity, there was a charge there. Just a reality. Can I tell you, that same charge can be there with somebody that you're not married to. Teenagers or young people sitting in the building tonight that are courting. And by the way, I'm not against young people courting. I think that's a biblical thing when they reach a certain age and under their parents' direction and all of that. That's parent decision about the age and the time. who and how and all of those things. And I tell you what, if you want to guard that though, you want to be in charge of that relationship. But I can promise you, if they're sitting beside one another and they touch, there's something charged going back and forth and they don't hear much of what I'm saying. I know that's quiet, but it's true. It doesn't hurt to put a song book between them. Go out on a courting situation and just put a Bible there. Just some thoughts. I'm just trying to help you men out. I ought to hear an amen around here every once in a while. The idea of being careful about interaction with people of the opposite gender. And just in my own life, I've made it my business that I embrace close family members, close relatives. There are certain ages that I will hug. I told you last week I'm raising that upper age. Early in my ministry I could say below 10 and above 60. I'm having to move that the closer I'm getting to 60 years of age. Just be careful about the interaction. I can promise you this. I'm not going to be the pastor at the door hugging every young woman and every teenage girl going out the door. As a matter of fact, I'm just going to tell you a preacher that stands at the door and does that, he's got a problem. He's got a problem. I wouldn't go to a church like that. Hedge number three, be careful how you compliment. I'm just giving you some practical counsel. Be careful how you compliment a person who is not your mate. I compliment taste and style, but never the person. I learned this early on in my ministry in my former church. I was a young preacher. I wasn't real smart. I hope I've learned a little bit, Brother Dan. I don't know. Just maybe a little bit since then. But I remember that I was standing at the door, I was shaking hands, and one of the ladies coming out the door I noticed that, and I'm a young preacher, I'm probably 25 years old at the time, and I noticed one of the ladies, probably middle-aged, her and her husband go out the door, and I noticed there was a stark difference in her hair color, hair style, hair, everything. And I commented, I said, well, that looks good. And she said, well, I'm glad you noticed, preacher. My husband sure did. You ever felt the elbow? My wife standing beside of me. Some of y'all get those in services when I'm preaching on marriage. I understand. They ought to make rib protection when the preacher's preaching on hazardous material from the Bible. They ought to do that. Complimentation style. Here's what you have to be careful of on the job. People you're close to. People that you know or are close to. We never know what someone else is going through. A hurting wife. A husband starved for attention. Maybe there's breakdown of communication in the relationship. And you can say something seemingly harmless, but yet that person read far more into it than what's there. And then suddenly there becomes an interaction that's unhealthy. And we had to guard against how we compliment, how we say good things about other people. And so, I want to be careful of that. I never comment about how a woman is dressed. I never do that. I never do that. To that woman, I never do that. I don't say those things. You say, why do I not do that? Because I'm going to compliment one woman or I'm going to make a statement about one woman and that's my wife. Fellas, can I tell you, your wife is hungry for you to notice her. to say good things about her, to compliment her, to boost her emotional fuel tanks. She desires that from us. We're sort of not always there. We don't always notice like we should. I'll be honest with you, I struggle at certain things, noticing my wife, how different men and women are. I'm not going to preach all night. But we can visit someone's home and she'll say, did you notice the decoration in the house and here on that wall and the color there? And I'll say, no. How many guys know what I'm talking about? So my wife, she'll send me little cues. She'll say, now look at the porch on your way in. Because see, I never look at the porch. She changes the porch. How many have wives that change the porch, the cushions, the this, the that? Nobody's raising their hand. You all are scared. You're scared. I know the reality of it. So I'm coming in from here and it's been a busy day and I'm just trying to let the stress roll off as I'm heading to the house. I have actually drove to the top of the driveway, put my car in reverse and backed back up. Went back down to the bottom of the driveway, looked at the porch so I could come in and say, honey, the porch looks wonderful. You just have to work at those things. By the way, I fail more often than I succeed. She's gracious. Be careful about how you compliment people. Number four, avoid flirtation or suggestive conversation even in jest. Proverbs 7.5 speaks of the strange woman that flattereth with her words. Proverbs 7.21, with her fair speech, she caused him to yield. The unsuspecting, the foolish man, she caused him to yield. With the flattering of her lips, she forced him. That's what Solomon said. He watched it out the window as it took place. Flirting is like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. A flirt needs a target. It needs a response, something to bounce back. There are people that will walk into office or into settings and there will be a group of women or maybe a lady, and more often than not, it's a man or with a group of women. More often than not, sometimes it's the reverse of that, but usually it's not a group of men, it's one man. And a man will walk into a setting with women. He'll throw out a flirty suggestion, throw out something. And I'm going to tell you what he's doing. He's waiting on the response to come back. He's looking for somebody to bounce back at him. The moment he gets that, then it's no longer that man and a group of ladies. It's now that man and that one lady. And that's how it operates. I've often wondered, can I just be very frank and honest, how people that are open to cheating on their mate find each other. It's usually through flirtatious suggestion. It takes two. There's no such thing as a harmless flirtation. Proverbs 6.27 says, can a man take fire into his bosom and his clothes not be burned? And the answer to that is a rhetorical question. Absolutely not. Sexual sin is often the end result of carnal, fleshly, flirtatious conversation. And the reason it is wrong is because the flirter has no right to the emotions, the inappropriate attention, as it relates to the one flesh relationship. that belongs only to our spouses. Now, when I'm not preaching in a setting like this where there's young people, I get much more open about what I'm saying. But you know what I'm talking about. And God says that we need to guard against that. We need to be careful against that on the job, out in the community, around people that are not our mates. We need to be careful how we interact with them. Matter of fact, I can promise you, if I think someone is making some kind of suggestion, even in jest, I never respond. I refuse to. Not going to do it. Not going to play games. Not going to recreationally play around. She's not going to do it. I've got too much to lose. I've got too much vested in my life of 34 years of marriage with my wife. I have a God that I'm responsible to and that I want to honor. And I don't want to bring reproach to His name. I have relationships that I cherish. I have children that are grown and they live for God. And I don't want to do anything as their father to break their trust in their dad. and to lose their respect later in life. Hedge number five, memories. We're moving really good tonight. Memories. I really stole rollover minutes last week. Actually, Brother Delp did that to me, but anyway, that's okay. I won't hold it against him. I'm just kidding. It's just all part of the service. He didn't. Memories. Remind your mate often of your commitment to your love and marriage vows. Remind your mate often of your commitment to your love and marriage vows. Both orally, I mean verbally, that's a better phrase, as well as through notes, cards, gifts, dates. Never stop dating your wife. Never stop sending notes to your husband. Never stop doing those little things that remind you of the love, He says, live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest. God said you need to nurture your love. You need to grow your love. Listen, we need to add the fire and the fuel to our love relationship. Never stop doing that. I'll never forget. One of the ladies in our church, and I'm trying to remember her name, and it was there and then it left just as good as I'm sitting here. She's now in heaven. She probably was in her 90s when she passed away. Miss DeHaan. How many remember Miss DeHaan? And Mr. DeHaan, Paul. How many remember them? They were such a delightful couple in our church. They got married, I guess they were probably, what, in their 60s, 70s when they got married? Oh, Lori said it was 80s, because I think they lived almost forever. I mean, they were up in there. I mean, they were moving close to 100. I never forget, she told me, she said, he's there, I mean, honestly, I'm visiting him, he can barely move, okay? He can barely move now. I mean, they've gotten older, I mean, they used to bowl together in their 80s and early 90s. And I'll never forget, Mr. Hahn walked up, I'm sitting there, and she runs his finger up his back, you know, and his shirt's on, runs her finger maybe down his back, and he just went, hmm, I love that. She said, he still loves it every time I run my... He gets little electrical feelings every time I run my finger down. I mean, we're talking 90s. Down his back. You know, what I can tell you is this. You never get too old to be in love. You never get too old to flirt with your mate. You never get too old. Can I go ahead and tell my wife's favorite one? Not everybody laughs at it. It's my wife's favorite marriage joke of all time. I mean it is up here. It's her favorite of all time. About the two older folks that were there together and they're sitting there and the wife says to her husband as they're on the couch watching TV, she says, Honey, you don't whisper sweet nothing. Sit close to me like you used to. So he scooted over real close to her. And she said, you know honey, you don't whisper those sweet things in my ear like you used to. So he leaned over and he began to whisper in her ear and say sweet things. And she said, you don't nibble my ear like you used to. And he jumped up and he went to the bathroom and she said, where are you going? He said, I'm going to get my teeth. I'm just saying, we never get too old. Never get too old. Can I tell you that I renew my vows often? We have renewed our vows. It was 25 years we renewed our vows. I'm not saying you have to ever renew your vow in church. You say, well, somebody says, well, I said I do one time. I don't have to say it again. Wonderful. I don't have a problem with that. You renew your vows many times, but we renew our vows very often. There's times we'll be out together and there's times that in a good setting I'll reach over and I'll take her hand and I'll just look at her and I'll just say, I want you to know that you're the only woman in the world for me. I love you and I'm committed to you and I want you to know that tonight, right now, I'm renewing my commitment to you right now. There's nothing wrong with sitting there and renewing your commitment to one another. Just reiterating the commitment in the relationship. Now, you know what I want to say to some ladies here? If your husband does that, don't just say to him, well, you're just doing that because the pastor said it. Take whatever you get. Amen. You know us guys. OK? I'm not the perfect husband. I promise. Spend 15 minutes with my wife. She will tell you. I get it right once in a blue moon. I get it right. OK? So I'm not up here like I'm the star husband. I'm just saying that really, my kids know it. They'll see me. Dad's vacuuming. He must be preaching on marriage. Dad, why are you washing the dishes? What's going on? What are you preaching on? You know? They always could cue in on those kind of things. I know that I take pictures. My wife doesn't fly and she doesn't float. You say, Bro, what does that mean? She don't fly in an airplane. She don't float on a cruise ship. She don't get on any kind of ship. The only time my wife's hair ever gets wet on purpose is in the shower, okay? I'm just telling you now. All right. It's just what you know. And so anyway, but I travel. I travel quite a bit. I fly quite a bit. It's not my favorite thing to do, but it's something that I do. And it's part of I don't want mine flying. It's just a hassle of actually doing it. But I take her with me everywhere I go. Before cell phones, by the way I did pastor before cell phones and before all the amenities we have now and all of that, I took her with me. I would pack a picture of my wife in my luggage. Whenever I got to where I was going, the first thing I would do, it's one thing to have it in your wallet, it's something else to get to the hotel room and there on the vanity or whatever it is in front of you to open up an 8x10 picture of your wife and set it right there so that you can see it. It's a reminder that while I'm away, I'm married and committed to her. It's a barrier. It's a reminder that I've made a commitment to a woman and I need to keep it. You say, preacher, why do you do that? You're a preacher. Because I've got a wicked flesh that I don't trust, and so do you, and you shouldn't trust your flesh either. Number six, spend quality time with your mate as well as your children. The Bible says in Ephesians 5.16, redeeming the time because the days are evil. When he talks about evil, he's not talking about sinful, wicked, vile. He's talking about the fact that life is fleeting, it's short, It deals with the hardship, the heartache, the difficulty of life. It talks about how that life before we know it is over and therefore we need to buy up every opportunity that God gives us to live life to its fullest for Him. God wants us to enjoy the journey. Amen? And He wants us to enjoy the journey and the relationships in life that He gives us. And many times those relationships are commensurate, they're equal to the time and the energy and the effort that we put into those relationships. We can be at home, yet not be at home. We can be neglectful. We can fail to nurture the relationships that God gives us in life. How danger that is. I'm reading here in Proverbs 24, and he said, verse 30, I went by the field of the slothful, here's the negligent, the lazy, and by the inured of the man, void of understanding, he's foolish, and lo, it was all grown with thorns and nettles, and had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well, and I looked upon it and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, and thy want as an armed man. And here's what he's saying. He's talking about the person who's slothful and unwilling to put energy and effort into maybe work or whatever it is, and their life is just in shambles. And he's dealing with neglect. And here's what I want you to understand. Listen, when you and I neglect the relationships that God gives us in life, they become overgrown with weeds. so to speak, things in those relationships such as bitterness and anger and resentment and unforgiveness because we're not nurturing, we're not paying attention, we're not putting energy, we're not putting effort. Listen, can I tell you one of the most dangerous things that you'll do is to neglect your mate and neglect your children. Many a young person who went away from God, out of godly homes because of their parents, or neglect for their children. One of the dangers of independent Baptist churches, and I believe it's been inherent within our ministries for years, is because we keep our people so busy, and it's good, some of the things that we do, but sometimes we're so busy that we can't work on the relationships that God's given us. That's one of the reasons we work every year to try to minimize. We take breaks through the year. A visitation. You say, well preacher, you can't put a price tag on a soul. You're exactly right. But you can't put a price tag on your marriage and your children either. Some ministries work their people to the bone and then they say, now you have good families. And yet their families never have any time to build the relationships they need to build. How many believe that the family was the first institution of God? Therefore, to neglect it is to sin against the God of heaven. These guys, there's times they know we put in a lot of hours. There are heavy seasons of ministry where there's times we'll go several weeks and we'll work seven days a week. And you say that's not healthy. You're right. There's just seasons of ministry that that's what it takes to get the job done. But they always know that somewhere after it's over, I'm going to say, guys, why don't you take this time off? Or they know if they get so busy in ministry that they're beginning to neglect family, all they have to do is come to me and say, Pastor, I need some time. And immediately I give it to them. Because you know what? If we don't have healthy relationships as pastors, then we can't have healthy relationships in our church. Redeem the time. One of the sweetest times that we have is when we come together as a family and remember. I don't know about you, but I'm thankful for memory. I have bad memories. I have memories I wish I could forget. But I'll take all the bad memories for the many more good memories that makes life rich and full and meaningful. For years, my wife I guess it was popular. A lot of people would do this. They would scrapbook things. And we still have many scrapbooks of our entire ministry in Lenore, our kids growing up. And she made one for each of them and all of that and stuff. And some of my sweetest times is when I can go back and look at those early years and remember. Because I promise you, it goes by much faster than you ever want it to. Don't waste life. Life is too short to spend fussing and fighting and fuming over the littlest, smallest matters. Then in eternity, at the very end of life, will not matter. I'm almost finished. Hedge number seven. Commit yourself to God's design in marriage because commitment's the key. You remember God said, therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife. That cleave is the idea of gluing together. It's the idea of the permanence of the marriage relationship. Can I tell you that I've talked to hundreds of couples. Within those hundreds of couples are those that would involve infidelity in the relationship. Almost without fail, I'll ask the question, do you love your husband or do you love your wife? Almost without fail, the answer is yes. Do you know you can love your mate and still cheat on him? You can. But you can't be committed to your mate and cheat on him. Commitment's the key. Hedge number eight, be accountable. Be accountable. I tell our guys, you don't want to be the preacher where no one knows where you're at. I go all over the place. There's no one that necessarily knows where I'm at all the time. Or it could be that they don't know where I'm at all the time. But I purposely make myself accountable. I never walk out the door of our office that whoever the lady is setting nearby, and sometimes multiple, I tell them where I'm going. You say, well, preacher, you could go somewhere and you could lie to them. You're absolutely right. I could. But you know what? With God's help, I'm not going to. But what I want is I want them to know I'm going here and here and here. I'm coming back or I'm going there. Why? Because I don't want to be the preacher that when somebody calls, well, I have no idea where the pastor's at. They know where I'm at. I tell them. You say, why? Accountability. My wife knows. I'll never forget, I was pastoring in Lenore. And I had an office downstairs in the basement of the church that I shared with the treasurer and the money counters. And during the week, a lizard. The lizard liked to come through the door. And that thing was so big, I could hear it walking. I'd have to chase it back out the door. You know them little purple lizards that run around outside? If y'all don't have those up north, you hang around here long enough, you'll have some at your house. They're all over around here. That thing was a monster. I don't know what it ate. I don't know if it ate dog food, purina. I have no idea. Miracle Grove? I don't know, but it was a big one. It'd come through there. I remember one day I was there working in the office and one of the younger ladies, she wasn't far off from my age, came in to clean the church. You say, preacher, what did you do? I left. You say you left your work. I just packed it up and I went somewhere else. You said, why? Because I don't want anybody to look at her car. She was cleaning the church. It was as innocent as it could possibly be. But I didn't want anybody to see my car and her car and nobody else's car at the church because people could think anything they wanted to think. I immediately, as I left, called my wife and said, listen, so and so came to clean the church. I want you to know I'm leaving and I'm on my way here and I'm going to do some study at McDonald's. You couldn't study at my house. There's too many kids there. The only tour I could pray was the bathroom. I'm praying. Be accountable. It's okay for you to work late, but call your wife or your husband and say, hey, I'm running late. It's okay to do that. Well, I don't have to keep tabs. It's okay to be accountable. Number nine, this is the last one. Are you ready? Keep the fire burning. Keep the fire burning. One of my favorite emojis on the phone is the fire emoji. I didn't even know that thing was there. It's amazing. Now some emojis I wish wasn't on my phone. Y'all know what I'm talking about? You gotta be careful sometimes what you send. All right, you just do. And check your talk to text, just so I throw that out there. I've talked to text some things I wish never got sent. Anybody know what I'm talking about? But I found that fire emoji. Man, that thing's great. You know, she'll send me a kiss and I'll hit that fire emoji. I'll send it to her, you know. You say, why? Because I'm excited about her. I'm excited about our marriage. I'm excited about our relationship. 34 years, I'm still excited. And it's because we work at it. We want it to be. Is our marriage perfect? Absolutely not. Do we have our moments? Yes, we do. Most of the time, they're my fault. Yes, we do. There's nobody got a perfect marriage. Nobody's marriage is everything it ought to be all the time. It's impossible. But we can make it as good as we can make it this side of planet Earth, this side of heaven. And could I just help us to understand that if you want your marriage to go all the days of your life, then you're going to have to put some hedges in your marriage. You're going to have to love it enough to protect it. Do you love your marriage? Are you willing to fight for it? Are you willing to fight for your family? I'm not talking about fistfights. I'm not talking about social media war. I'm talking about doing what's necessary to love your mate the way God tells you to love your mate so that it breaks down the barriers, it covers the multitude of sins, and it keeps the fires burning in the relationship. Are you committed? Maybe you need to recommit tonight. Maybe you just need to slip forward and say, God, I want a marriage like what you want. I'm not married yet, Lord, but that's what I want. Let me help you understand those of you that aren't married that want to be. Are you ready? This is the best counsel I can give you. You gave me that last week. No, this is the best. If you want the right person, be the right person. If you want the right person, be the right person. Begin to work on yourself now and make necessary changes in your life so that when God does bring that person into your life, it doesn't sabotage the relationship. Learn to be selfless and giving and nurturing and caring and committed. Because when you become the right person, it may be that then God can give you the right person. Amen. Father, take the message tonight and use it in the lives of your people. Lord, I've never saved a marriage. I can't save marriages. I can't strengthen