Myths of Marriage #7: "To find a spouse, I should only spend time around people my age."

Join us on Sunday for worship. We have Sunday school at 9 .30 and then worship service at 11. And we've got lunch afterwards every week at 12 .30. So we'd love for you to join us for any of that. So we've been going through a series called Myths About Marriage.

And we're on myth number 7 today. And this myth is that if you're pursuing a spouse, you shouldn't waste time. You shouldn't waste time in a church context where there are not many compatible singles.

Now, obviously, you want to meet compatible singles. By compatible, I just mean of the right age range and of the opposite sex. Obviously, that's what an event like this is for. But what I'm talking about is a strategy some people have where they don't want to waste time.

They're not going to be around compatible singles. They're looking at the different groups they might join at church. And they only join the one with their age range. People who are going to be single like them at their stage of life and their age.

And then when they're looking at which Bible studies to join, they only join the young professionals Bible study. And when they're looking around for which church they're going to be a part of, they might even decide not to be a part of a church because of whether or not there are people their age there.

This is something that happens all the time. I know people who have been a part of a church, been a fruitful member of a church, and decided that because there aren't other singles there that they're going to go to a different church, even though it means compromising on their doctrinal convictions, even though it means being further away from where they go to church so they can't participate as much and give as much of their time.

And so people who have this strategy end up pursuing these sorts of things so much that it ends up ultimately, I believe, being a detriment to their development, which would help them end up pursuing marriage.

And let me give you one more example. There are a lot of church functions where there's a lunch or something like that, some kind of fellowship event. And who do they sit with? They only sit with people their age.

And this applies to any group. It applies to youth. It applies to young professionals. It applies to older adults. A lot of people are just naturally drawn to people who share your interests. And so you don't think to sit with people who are not your own age.

The Age-Segregated World We Live In

Now, as I say, almost every time in these talks, we need to consider the era that we live in, and whether or not that biases us in how we're thinking about these things. And I would like to submit to you that we live in one of the most age-segregated eras that has ever existed.

You know, if you just consider how you were raised, if you were raised in the public school system, now, a homeschool or a small private school is going to be different. But if you're raised in the public school system, you've got a very small teacher-to-student ratio.

So you're not even around that many adults. Then on top of that, you're each classed by different grades. And so you're only around kids who are at most one, maybe two years different in your age. And so there's not a lot of opportunities to meet people who are and learn from people who are significantly older and significantly younger.

In a more traditional school context, there's less students to break into these thin slices. So you actually have to be around students who are older, students who are younger, or students who have a class level of anything.

And this can be very helpful. But now consider, as you grow into adulthood and you have the opportunity to meet people at different stages of life, but what happens then? Society is so disconnected that that often doesn't happen.

We live in an era of remote work. How many of you really know your coworkers? Even neighborhoods are pretty broken down. Now think about the neighbor to your left and the neighbor to your right, not the neighbor at the table, but the neighbor at your house or apartment or wherever you are.

How many of you know the names of both of those neighbors? Go ahead and raise your hand if you do. All right, we've got two people. Good for you. Nobody else. See how rare that is? See how disconnected society is?

So even when there are opportunities to meet people in a different stage of life than you, that usually doesn't happen. And then that even affects churches. Consider how churches go about their church life.

You often have churches that have children's churches, so the children are segregated from the adults. You often have main Bible studies that exist based on age range. You've got your senior Bible study.

You've got your youth Bible study. You've got your young professional Bible study and your middle-aged Bible study, et cetera. And consider how many churches have two services, one with traditional worship, one with contemporary worship.

And what does that design do? It breaks down the church so that you're only meeting with the older or you're only meeting with the younger. And something that's pretty common around here at the ethnic churches that were designed particularly for immigrants who are speaking a certain language, a lot of times what happens is because their children, you know, are mostly speaking English, they have an English convocation.

And then the foreign language convocation. And then you end up, once again, breaking the church between the older and younger. Now, obviously, there's a need for addressing people who speak one language better than another one.

But all these things work to segregate the church into different ages. A lot of people don't think about just how age-segregated everything in society is, even church. Even church more than many other things in a lot of ways.

Honoring Older Believers and Seeking Their Wisdom

All right. So if the myth is that someone pursuing marriage shouldn't waste time in a church context where there aren't many Catholic singles, the fact is that if you're pursuing marriage, you need to be spending time with the whole community of God.

And that is a myth to me. All right. So I've got several verses I want you to think about. The first one, let's talk about the elderly first. The first one is the Leviticus 13 .32. You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God.

I am the Lord. So the Bible repeatedly speaks of the importance of honoring those who are older. Now, you might not feel particularly disrespectful if you're only spending time around your peers. But what does that say in your heart if you're exclusively hanging around your peers and not going out of your way to spend time around those who are older?

Does that speak to a heart that really honors the values of the elderly who have much wisdom to share and have much to offer? I would say it doesn't. And consider also what the Bible says in Titus. Now, this is even more direct about marriage.

Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working in their own kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

So it describes that older women should be teaching younger women. Now, in this context, it's talking particularly about older wives teaching younger wives. But this obviously applies even if someone is not a wife yet and one day may be that she should be taught by an older woman who would be able to pass on the information that she should be learning.

And I think it's also obviously true, especially given the context that we just talked about men, that this applies to men as well. And men have a lot to learn from older men in how to be a husband and how to even pursue being a husband or being a wife.

This is incredibly valuable. And it's valuable in two ways. One is that mentorship where there's this passing on of information that can help shape you and mold you. But the other way, and I think the way that many people don't consider very much, is actually hands-on helping.

Right? If you are trying to find a spouse, have you actually asked someone who is older to help you find a spouse? You know, it's something they can do. They know people. They know what you should be looking for.

They probably know what you should be looking for even better than you know what you should be looking for. And so there's just so much value you can have by forming relationships with older people that you're not exclusively your peers.

Learning from Younger Believers and Children

Now I'd also like to tell you about the importance of spending time with people who are younger than you. And by younger than you, we're talking about stages of life. So I'm not talking about, you know, five or ten years younger than you.

But specifically those who haven't reached development yet. So consider these words in 1 Timothy 5. They talk about the normative mode of the church, to be spending time with people who are not your peers.

It says, Do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as your father. Younger men as brothers. Older women as mothers. Younger women as sisters in all purity. You know, what that's describing is a church life where if you're spending time with older people, you're spending time with younger people.

You're spending time with the opposite sex. You're spending time with your own sex. A church life is supposed to be more than what you are. It's supposed to be all the big graphics of the church, not just your own big graphics.

So with that in mind, the Bible greatly values children. Matthew 18 .5 says, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. Whatever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck, that he drown in the depths of the sea.

You know, it is very important that we value children and that we would help children, assist them in their pursuit of what is good, in their pursuit of what is holy, and to keep them from stumbling into temptation.

And just like I asked about the gray-haired man, et cetera, you know, if someone thinks of this, well, I'll honor the gray-haired man if I ever encounter him. Or I'll care about the child if I ever encounter him.

What does that describe about the heart of the person who thinks that this is only important once you happen to encounter those and that the caring only begins there and not before where you might seek out these people to care for?

It doesn't show real care, once again. I would say it doesn't. There are a lot of ways that you can interact with children in the church in order to lead them in the right way that they should go. You know, speak by the person to them in the situation that they're in.

And I am always amazed, you know, based on, once again, this problem of age segregation that exists in our world, I'm always amazed when people spend time around my kids who aren't usually around kids, just how they're surprised by very normal things.

You know, you'll be holding a baby. The baby will be toy. Someone will say, oh, he's got something there. You need to pick it up, and then he'll go and wipe it. You know, baby drills all the time. You don't really need to do anything about it.

It's not as big of a deal as I've seen some people react to it or, you know, surprising kids getting dirty and things like that. People are very surprised by kids. It kind of shows just how little they interact with them.

And I really do believe a lot of the world's problems would be greatly mitigated if people spent more time with children. You know, people develop all sorts of ideas about social policies and politics, all sorts of ideas about education based on the fictitious ideas that children may have in their own head that aren't based on any real experience or reality.

You know, people have all kinds of things that they do. For example, you know, they're willing to elevate child activists like Greta Thunberg, you know who that is. You know, who would do that unless you, you know, really yes, she's well-spoken.

But being well-spoken doesn't mean you aren't fraught with the same frailties of childhood that any other child might be. You might be greatly mistaken about things. That doesn't speak to, you know, great wisdom.

And there's people who don't spend a lot of time around kids when they have kids of their own if they ever do. Then they are surprised by everything. They don't know what to do. It's a lot harder for them than it would be otherwise if they had spent time around kids.

So it's worthwhile to spend time around kids. It's very beneficial. It's something that can really change your worldview on a lot of things. We host a lot of people at my house. I have eight kids. My wife and I have people staying there often.

And the number of people who come through and just really change their view about kids, about families, about all kinds of things just by being around children. It's quite a lot. So when I say you should spend time around children, what I'm not saying is that you need to go volunteer in a nursery.

I'm also not saying that you need to go be creepy and say, oh, you're the kid that killed me. What I'm really striving is spending time with young kids. Like, you should get to know young families. And if you spend time with them, watch the parents interact with the children in days like that, all that can be beneficial to you.

Partiality, Christian Unity, and the Whole Community of God

So pulling it all back, where does this come from? The heart that would segregate one's own self. Spend time just with peers. James 2, verse 8 says, if you really fulfill royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

You are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but vows in one point has become guilty of all of it.

You know, what is it that leads people to segregate themselves into their peer groups? And not that there's anything wrong with doing that on occasion, but primarily and exclusively, it's a heart of partiality that would do that.

And what James says is the one who has that heart of partiality is transgressed against the whole law. This is not a small thing. People might imagine it being to address that. And that way is through having unity in Christ.

You know, why is it that people want to be around people that are of age or of their own age? Because you have shared experience, you have shared interests, right? You want to be around people who know your experience, who care about the things that you care about.

For example, if I'm really into baseball cards, I'm going to want to be around people who are really into baseball cards. Or at least I really enjoy being around people who are really into baseball cards.

But in the church, what do we have? We have Jesus Christ. Jesus is really who is primary to you. He's your greatest interest. That provides the grounds for having excellent unity with people across the spectrum as far as their stage of life.

If that's more important to you than the other experiences you have, your relationship with Jesus Christ, you can bond better with an old man or with a young child who shares the same interests than you can even with a peer who doesn't.

And this should be so primary that it should get past many of these problems that we have in interacting with people who aren't our own age. Galatians 3 .28 says, there's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free.

There's no male or female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. So there is a unity that's provided in Christ Jesus that surpasses all other unity, something that is greatly enjoyed by the church. And you can deal with that partiality where it's best.

Questions to Consider in Pursuing Marriage

So in conclusion, consider these questions. Consider whether or not you spend time with young families, whether or not you spend time with older, married people. And then consider whether or not you have a mentor who is helping you think through marriage and your pursuit of marriage.

Could it be that your difficulty in these things, a client, a spouse, or whatever your case may be, could it be that your difficulties are from not having someone to help you in this area? And then if you do have some kind of mentor in the church, what have you asked them for?

What kind of help have you asked them for? Have you asked them to give you some kind of evaluation of yourself as a potential spouse, to know whether or not you have character flaws that need to be addressed as you pursue marriage?

Have you asked this mentor to help you find someone who would be an appropriate partner to the wife? These are important questions to be asking yourself. And then in conclusion, consider this, that there in that same passage about partiality in James, it says, Listen, my beloved brothers.

Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? So in James, how partiality is primarily talked about is the poor is still rich against the poor.

But this could just apply to anyone else's spouse and partner. Has God not chosen the young to be mature in faith? Has not God chosen the old to be full of the vitality of eternal life? If these things are true, if he's even chosen us to go through all those stages, there's no room for partiality.

Rather, we should be counseled by the whole community of God, experiencing the blessings it has to offer. And so this thing that Christ has done for us, giving partial support to us and saving us, is something that should flow out of our heart as we connect with those who share those same priorities of salvation in Jesus Christ.

All right, let me go ahead and pray for us.