Then I say what is your ketubah? I can't tell you the number of married couples who have no idea what their basic agreement is, so I would sit down with Cecilia. It would be me and my father and her and her father, and we would sit down and we would make a ketubah. I could put anything in the ketubah I wanted and she could put anything in the ketubah she wanted, so long as we both agreed because how can two walk together lest they be agreed? It was at this point that we determined what our deal breaker was. What are our deal breakers? You wouldn't believe the stuff that goes on in marriages. They end up in my office so I know. Like you wouldn't believe the stuff, the ways that wives address their husbands. It is unbelievable. The ways that husbands talk to their wives and treat them, unbelievable. These would have been deal breakers. We're talking about ketubah, a basic understanding of the boundaries that will define our marriage.
We would talk about money, we would talk about sex, we would talk about power, we would talk about interpersonal communication boundaries. We would talk about expectations on both sides and we would put it in writing, and we would make an agreement, a handshake agreement, yes, we will live this way. This will be what our life is defined by, and once the ketubah was set and signed that was the definition of our marriage covenant. This teaching that says marriage is a covenant, is it true? Yes, but the part of the teaching that is not true is this; because marriage is a covenant you should have to just put up with anything on earth. That is not true. It is dangerous. Every covenant had a deal to it, a basic set of agreements - and I'm not talking about no grace. I'm talking about basic expectations and basic agreements, like let me give you something that was in every ketubah okay, on the man's side. It was called the Doctrine of Oil, Bread and Shelter, which means it was the man's responsibility to keep the family warm, fed and dry okay? So if that man turned into a lazy bum who laid around drinking all day, they would have him for breaking his ketubah because he promised that he would keep the family to the best of his ability warm, fed and dry.
If you broke your ketubah they had a word for that. It was called marital unfaithfulness because you're being unfaithful to your deal, yeah and you would confront that. You would have to confront that one on one, like if I was breaking my ketubah she would have to come to me one on one. Then if I didn't repent she could go to me two on one with her dad, because he witnessed the ketubah. Then if I didn't repent she would go get her pastors and they would confront me with a group on one, and if I didn't repent then they would flog me. [Laughter] If I still didn't repent they would say you've done everything you can do, this is marital unfaithfulness. And on the woman's side and this won't be as popular but like withholding sex was in there, like you couldn't withhold. Like Paul makes that very clear, New Testament, Old Testament, all of it, like he says don't withhold. It causes bitterness. A man will lose his mind. [Laughter] And anybody here who's been married any length of time, they know that husbands love, wives respect, don't withhold sex and put children in their right place, that's the way to do a marriage. That was Paul's way thousands of years ago. That was [His 00.20.45] way too.
So this ketubah would get worked out. Everybody understand what ketubah is? They had spiritual authority there too by the way and the ketubah between me and my dad, her and her dad, and a spiritual authority there to hold us accountable that what we were putting down as a ketubah was realistic, yeah. I want sex three times a day. [Laughter] Yeah, probably not happening right? I want him to build me a mansion on whatever. These were - you were supposed to have realistic expectations that were mutually agreed upon, where two people could journey through life with a mutual agreement to what was basically going to rule their life on an everyday basis. It's not that we never waiver. It's not that. It's just basic lines that say this is how our life's going to be defined. Does that make sense? Okay. Now check this out. You're going to love this.