In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of love and how it should be understood biblically. He argues that love is not just a random force or an overwhelming and uncontrollable emotion, but rather an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. The speaker criticizes the Greco-Roman myth of love that our culture operates from, stating that it is too fickle for family life. He emphasizes the importance of teaching young women how to love biblically, rather than just culturally and emotionally.

Look for a woman who teaches what is good. Why? Because she is going to be the primary instructor of your children. You talk to my sons right now, they'll tell you a woman who is not committed to the education of our children in our home, I can't even consider as a wife. People ask me all the time, do your kids resent being homeschooled? Do they resent it? You know one of the ways we used to threaten them? You don't get your act right. We'll sign you up and send you to school. Daddy, daddy, daddy, please. They're committed, they're absolutely committed to this hands-on education and discipleship of their children. My sons are not interested in a woman who is not absolutely committed to that hands-on education and discipleship of their children. Not absolutely committed to that. Now we'll get to that more in a minute. But because of this, she has to teach what is good. She has to be able to give instruction in what is good. Otherwise, the time that he is off toiling in the land as he's commanded by God will be time that she is there undermining what it is that he's trying to build into the next generation. Okay? Or they will be passed off for somebody else to undermine what it is that he's trying to build into the next generation. So she must be committed to teaching what is good. Look at the next part of this. And so train the young women too. Now we've seen this in the character of the older women. And again, we have to put both of these together to get this Titus 2 picture of biblical womanhood because the older women are to be something and they're also to teach something. So we get a picture when you put those two things together of a more full-orbed understanding of what biblical womanhood is. So what are they to instruct the young women in? And by the way, this guidance that they are to give to young women, the word here is not for the kind of instruction that we have for indoctrination. The word here is for gently bringing people along and guarding them from other tendencies. That's the goal here. That's the word that's used here. Gently bring these women along, direct them, disciple them because their tendency is going to be to move in a direction other than what I'm about to say. Look at this. Teach the young women to love their husbands and children. And here's what's interesting. We hear that and we go, okay, time out. Teach them to love their husbands and children? Now, women are these intuitive, emotional creatures. Why should we need to teach women to love their husbands and teach women to love their children? If they're these intuitive, emotional creatures, they're the loving ones, are they not? Depends on how you define love. The idea that we say they're the loving ones because they're intuitive and emotional creatures basically gives away the fact that we don't understand what biblical love is. We've bought into the Greco-Roman myth. Now, here's the Greco-Roman myth. The Greco-Roman myth says that love is an, you know, overwhelming, uncontrollable, sensual force. A random, overwhelming, uncontrollable, sensual force. That's what we believe love is, all right? First of all, love is random. By the way, what is the basic illustration in our culture of love? Cupid, Cupid's arrow, that's love, okay? By the way, we have this idea of the heart drawn, but that's an incomplete picture. It's the heart with the arrow through it. That's the way we define love in our culture. What's the heart with the arrow through it? That's Cupid, it's Cupid's arrow. That's the way we've defined love in our culture. And so it's a random force. We don't know when we'll be struck with this force. It's random. We don't choose who we fall in love with. That's one of the phrases that we use in our culture. Why? Because we believe that love is a random force. We don't choose who we fall in love with. Love is a random force. It's also an overwhelming and uncontrollable force. How do we state that? This thing is bigger than both of us. Don't act like you never heard nobody say that. We do say stuff like that. We don't choose who we fall in love with. This thing is bigger than both of us. And my favorite, the heart wants what it wants. I have more degrees than a thermometer. I don't know what that means. So love is a random, overwhelming, uncontrollable, and it's a sensual force, okay? It's a sensual force. So that's what we believe love is. Small problem. That's not the way the Bible defines love. It's not random. It's not uncontrollable and overwhelming. It's not just sensual. And by the way, because we believe that about love, let me give you a couple of examples, all right? Let me give you two examples of why that's faulty thinking. And it's two examples that we've all experienced and we've all heard before. Because this definition of love doesn't work. Here's example number one. A woman's pregnant with child number two. While she's pregnant with child number two, she's worried. Why is she worried? Well, I loved my first baby so much and what? How am I going to be able to love this baby and love that baby? And will I love one of them more than I love the other? Why is mom worried about her ability to love child number two? Because she thinks love is a random, overwhelming, uncontrollable, sensual force. And what if Cupid is busy when baby number two is born? That's why we have such a hard time with this idea of the sovereignty of God in salvation and God loving us. Because we think that love is this random, uncontrollable, overwhelming, sensual force. So how is it that a sovereign God shows us this random, overwhelming, uncontrollable, sensual love when the fact of the matter is he worked this thing out according to the counsel of his own will? Because will and love don't go together right if you have a faulty, godless definition of love. Example number two. We have four children. Two of our children were adopted. Our three-year-old and our eight-month-old were adopted. And we're in the process of our next adoption. Even as we speak, we're working on our next adoption. And so we get this question all the time. People wanna ask us this about adopted children. And they go, do you find that you love your adopted children as much as you love your own children? And I love when people try to ask us these questions because I just mess them up. I'm just not nice. And sometimes I need to be rebuked for the way that I deal with this. But I do. You love them as much as you love your own children? Well, they are our own children. Well, you know, as much as your natural children. Well, are you saying our adopted children are unnatural? I mean, you know what I'm saying as much as like your real children. Oh, so now they're not even real. Eventually, I let them off the hook. But you know what I tell them? And I mean this with every fiber of my being. Oftentimes, it's not until somebody asks a question like that that I think about the fact that our two youngest children are adopted. We don't think like that. It never enters into our mind. These are our children, period. End of discussion. Yes, we most assuredly and absolutely and unconditionally love them. We don't even think about divisions like that. We laugh sometimes because we'll, you know, look at, you know, one of our adopted children and, you know, my wife will be saying something like, you know what, he got your eyes and he's got your this and that and the other and he's got, and then she looks at me and goes, huh. Adopted, wasn't he? I said, yeah. But that's okay. He still, you know, looks, that's wonderful. That's great. We don't think like that. Why do we ask questions like that? Because we don't know what love is. We think it's a random, overwhelming, uncontrollable, sensual force. Let me give you a third example. I said I'd give you two, okay. Let me give you one more. And this is with fathers and daughters. A lot of daughters dress the way that they do because they yearn for male affection. Because a lot of fathers, as soon as their daughters develop into women, become uncomfortable being affectionate toward them. Because of a wrong definition of what love is. We define love as sensual. Therefore, love is inherently inappropriate between a man and his daughter of a certain age. Do we mean that? No, we don't mean that. But if you buy the definition, you also have to buy the limitations. And there's a lot of you girls in this room. And your first boyfriend coincided with dad not letting you sit on his lap anymore. You yearned for some male to show you the kind of physical attention and affection that you used to get from your father. And you went and found it. Because God created you to yearn for it. But then the world lied to your daddy and told him that he couldn't give you that which you needed anymore. And instead, let you run off into the arms of some irresponsible, sinful, lustful boy. My daughter's 17 years old. Five, 10, whatever. She still climbs up in my lap. I have to balance a little more than I used to. I can, you know. Cause she's part of her way over there and part of her way up here. And she absolutely loves it. So do I. A lot of men are leaving their wives for younger women because they yearn for attention from younger women. And God gave them a daughter who could give them that. And instead, they go find a substitute daughter. You've seen it. We've all seen it. These old guys going and finding these substitute daughters. Why? Why? We don't understand what love is, folks. So what is love? For the sake of time, let me just give you this, okay? Biblical definition of love. And this is derived. And those of you got family-driven faith, you probably already looked at this. But it's derived from Deuteronomy chapter six. You know, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. You know, it's interesting. You exegete those words. And by the way, Jesus repeats this in the New Testament, Matthew 22. Love is, when you exegete these words, here's the definition that I use. Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. Let me say that again. Love is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. The problem with the Greco-Roman myth of love that we operate from in our culture is that it is too fickle for family life. It won't work. Why? A woman's not going to be overwhelmed toward her husband and her children all the time. And that's why. What do women talk about all the time? I just, I feel like we've fallen out of love with each other. Why? Because the Greco-Roman myth is wearing off. This is why young women have to be taught how to love biblically, not just culturally and emotionally, but biblically. Teach young women how to love biblically, not just culturally and emotionally. Teach them how to do this. Because contrary to popular belief, they don't know how to do it intuitively. This is a work of sanctification. And one of the problems that we have is women think that whatever this intuitive emotional thing is that women have going on is actually enough to sustain what God intends to be sustained on the part of biblical womanhood in the context of marriage relationship. It's not enough. It's not enough. Biblical womanhood does not rely on this intuitive emotional version of love. Biblical womanhood pushes past that to biblical love, an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. It is first and foremost an act of the will. It is a choice. We choose to love. You better believe we do. We don't choose who we fall in love with. First of all, you fell in love, you already got a problem because anything you can fall into, you can climb out of, amen? It is a choice. It is an act of the will. We choose to love. Sometimes it's more will than anything else. We have to push past because we don't always feel like loving each other. My wife doesn't always feel like loving me. I know that shocks you. It's only happened like once or twice early in the marriage, but she didn't always feel like loving me. What do you do? You push past that. You love in spite of. Beautiful answer Paul gave us last night talking about these areas where we are not going to be fulfilled through our mate because that's what God uses in order to teach us this unconditional love. It is an act of the will. It is a choice. We do choose. I tell my wife all the time, girl, you leave me, I'm going with you. It is a choice. We choose to love. It is an act of the will. It is accompanied by emotion, not led by emotion, but it's also not void of emotion. It is accompanied by emotion. Women tend to err on the led by emotion part. Love that's led by emotion is a roller coaster. You just, you can't do that. You know, that's the 16 year old dating relationship right there. Love that's led by emotion. You go from, oh my God, I love him to I just wish he'd never been born in 10 minutes. It's not led by emotion. It's also not void of emotion. This is where men tend to err, by the way. And I know we dealt with you guys yesterday, but let me just put this in here, all right? Because men, you know, I do get that from men. You know, well, you know, I'm more of a stoic person and I'm more of a, you know, sort of just kind of a matter of fact kind of person and I'm not really an emotional person. You know what? Sell that somewhere else. You know why? Because here's what I know. If you're on the golf course and you shank one, you don't say, oh, I seem to have hit that one poorly. Nope. You're watching a ball game and your team's getting beat like a tied up goat. You don't just say, they seem to have far more points than we do at this time. You go sell that somewhere else about not being an emotional man, okay? God created you to be emotional. We don't all show emotion in the same way, but we're all emotional. And so it's an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. In the words of that theologian, Janet Jackson, what have you done for me lately, okay? Love leads to action on behalf of its object. By the way, if you're wondering where an example of this kind of love exists, it's the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is praying intently, sweating drops of blood, saying if there's any other way, let this bitter cup pass from me. But he comes to a point where he says, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. What did he do in the Garden of Gethsemane? An act of the will. It was a choice. It was accompanied by emotion and it led to action on behalf of its object. It was not selfish. Jesus didn't need the cross. Not for his own benefit. That was for his bride, okay? And because women have this natural inclination toward the intuitive, emotional version of love, they have to be taught how to exhibit biblical womanhood, which pushes beyond that to the appropriate kind of love. The next part of this, love their husbands and children. To be self-controlled, to be self-controlled. That goes back to what we talked about with the older women being reverent. We have to teach the younger women to be self-controlled, not volatile, self-controlled. Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Self-controlled, okay? It's self-explanatory. For the sake of time, I wanna get to something, let's move here. Pure, pure. Again, back to what we talked about with reverence. This is why reverence is so important in the older women. You can't teach a younger woman to be self-controlled and pure unless you are self-controlled and pure. Amen? Teach younger women to be self-controlled and teach younger women to be pure. Here's what's interesting. We talk about purity, and when we use that in modern American culture, what we use it for is, don't have sex until you get married. That's synonymous with purity. No, purity is not something that you do until you get married. Purity is something that we're, I'm called to purity now. My wife is called to purity now. Purity is not just, and the other thing is, a lot of people think purity is, you just don't go all the way. There are little ones in the room, so we'll just leave it at that, okay? Purity means you don't go all the way. You do everything else up to that point. Notice I didn't say everything. Everything. Beyond everything. You do everything else up to that point. But as long as you haven't committed the final act, you say that you've still been pure. No, that's not pure. That's what we talked about yesterday with courtship, and a lot of you looked at me cross-eyed when I talked about the young man going to the girl's father first, even before going to her. Why? Purity. Because when you go to that young woman first, here's what you've done. You have actually said to her, I've chosen you, and I'm going to go to your father. You have opened up all sorts of things for that young woman, and you haven't even earned the right to pursue her. That is impure.