So I take her on the date; we get home, and there's this moment and I say: Ali... Segullah!
Now this time, she can barely keep her hands off me - because I'm so irresistible. She is so excited; so she calls her friends: he said Segullah to me! He said Segullah to me! OH MY GOD! He said Segullah to me!
Segullah means 'treasured possession'. It takes Lakah one step further, and that one step further is: I don't just want to make you mine, I want to make you the most important person in my whole life, treasured possession.
Exodus 19, same group of people. Leading up to the Ten Commandments, they've already heard Lakah; and they would have been longing to hear the word Segullah.
In Exodus 19:5 here's what God says to them. “If you obey me fully, and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession (special treasure)”. In Hebrew it's: Segullah.
So once again, these people - for 430 years, all they've known is slavery - and they're like: does God want to marry us? Is He serious? Did He just say ‘Segullah’?
Now the next one, the next word she'd be longing to hear is Mikveh. Now Mikveh is not as romantic as the first two. The first one's sort of romantic; the second one's really romantic, like: I want to make you the most important person in my whole life. Women hear that and they go: isn't that something! They like that!
Mikveh is far less romantic, but it was necessary. Mikveh was a three-day warning that the betrothal was coming, and Mikveh meant this. Mikveh meant: go wash. Like: girl - you need a bath. Your breath is stinky!
Mikveh meant: go wash; or if you want to get spiritual with it, you could say: consecrate. It was a three-day warning, and the reason they did it was gracious; you wanted to give them a three-day warning before the betrothal happened, so that they could be touched. You wanted to be clean at the proposal, so you could be touched; so you'd give them a three day warning: go wash.
You see this all over the Bible, but I'll give you the most extreme example in the whole Bible that I know of, and that's Esther. Remember she bathed in perfume - for a year - before she went in and saw her husband (which I think is overkill). Can you imagine that? Whew girl, where you been! You know she bathed in a year's Mikveh.
Exodus 19:10 – “and the Lord said to Moses: have the people consecrate themselves for three days, and have them wash their clothes” - Mikveh.
Three days from now - a Ketubah is coming, a Ketubah is coming - and they would have known this. This is Hebrew culture - they knew the sequence; so three days from then, Exodus 20 happens. Exodus 20 is a Ketubah.
A Ketubah is a marriage contract. This is what would happen (in the natural)... Three days after Mikveh; I would come and get Ali, and we would go sit at a table. Normally it would be: her, and her father; me, and my father - and we would make an agreement, a list that defined the basic boundaries of our marriage. She could put anything in the Ketubah she wanted; and I could put anything in the Ketubah I wanted - so long as we both agreed.
If you're here today, and you're thinking about getting married, let me give you Paul's advice: don't! Remember was he said? “He who marries does not sin” (but they're signing up for a life of pain)! Marriage is one of those things that, even between two pretty good-hearted people - it's tough!
I'm a counsellor by trade. Anytime a man and a woman comes to me; and it turns into who's right and who's wrong - it never works; because typically, it's not a matter of right and wrong. Typically, it's a matter of just differences. I think marriage might be one of those things that God steps back and goes: what was I thinking? What was I doing? Men and women are just different, okay; they're not wrong, they're just different.
For example, when a woman says: “I have nothing to wear”, what she means is: “I have nothing new” - and other women understand that code! If a woman says to another woman: I have nothing to wear; the other woman says: girl, let's go shopping, right? If a man says: I have nothing to wear; what he means is: I have nothing clean - do some laundry right? Not wrong, just different...