Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 26, 2015 | Route 66 - Song Of Solomon

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July 26, 2015 | Route 66 - Song Of Solomon · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting, we're on Route 66 in our sermon series, 66 Sermons on the 66 Books of the Bible.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this morning we have come.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just visiting, ha ha ha.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe you came this morning.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I have to say.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Since I've been approached by more people than ever this last week, like you're going to talk on Song of Solomon the Sunday.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Should I leave the kids at home?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, uh this will actually be uh I'm gonna take a break from Route 66 for three weeks after this for some special stuff next week.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be our annual student ministry Sunday.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's the first year that uh Derek Rowe, Derek and Gabby here have been, it's been our youth pastor, our student ministry pastor, and they just got back from Haiti, where this picture was taken a week ago, where they took uh their interns and high schoolers, and we're gonna see the half a dozen uh interns, awesome interns, amazing interns, are gonna be up here on the stage as well next week, as well as a number of the high schoolers to share their stories.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's been an awesome summer for the student ministry, and that's gonna be next week.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope to see you here.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: The two weeks after that, uh I won't share with you what I'm gonna talk about, but I have two special Sundays there.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll begin uh Isaiah the Prophet's, uh the perhaps the greatest book, the Romans of the Old Testament, in four weeks.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this morning, however, Song of Solomon's eight chapters, just 117 verses, but there has been more literature, more books, more comments about these 117 verses, this small little book, than any book ever written in the history of the world.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my title for it is Love is a Burning Flame from God.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: This book is all about L-O-V-E love.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, which is sort of a smudged word today.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Wife says, How would you describe me?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Husband says, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: She says, What does that mean?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: He says, adorable, beautiful, cute, desirable, elegant, fashionable, gorgeous, hot.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: She says, wow, thanks.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: What about the IJK?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just kidding, he says.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: A few years ago, Melody and I, we used to live close to Mount Hope Cemetery.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're a wonderful place to relax, walking through the cemetery.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's this girl.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: She's all over this guy.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: She's just kissing him, she's devouring his face.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I nod you, I go, so why don't you do that?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: She says, but I hardly know the guy.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk today about Song of Solomon.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: You should have it open.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: The first verse is the title, Solomon's Song of Songs.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Song of Songs means it's the best song, like Holy of Holies means the most holy place.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Lord of Lords is the greatest Lord, King of Kings, the King of all Kings.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So Song of Songs is the best song, which makes sense because we're told that Solomon wrote, guess how many?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: A thousand five songs.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like one song a week for 20 years.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: This guy could make a mint in Nashville if only he knew it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, he wrote a thousand and five songs, and this is the only one we have remaining to us.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Song of Songs, it's the best one, though.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, if you take all of the love songs ever written down through the centuries, I suspect that we should agree with God that this is the best song about love ever written.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's been a little hard over the years because, well, after all, it's a song about that seems to me about passion and sex and marriage, and the church has always been a little skittish about it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, even people in the Old Testament, the Israelites were skittish about it.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the very next verse is, oh, that he would kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is sweeter than wine.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, you know, 1500, 2,000 years ago, the Israelite dads and moms and priests weren't all that excited.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: They set a rule that young people shouldn't read this book until they were age 50, which is the average age of death in that society.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, and in fact, that was still true in Jesus' day.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The rabbis said, you know, we'll read it at special times, uh, but generally this should not be common consumption.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, you know, it really can't mean kisses.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just way too sort of erotic.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh they decided that this book was an allegory, that you should read it but not take it absolutely literally, that what it had to do with was the love, the divine love between God and Israel, and you should read into it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not kisses, it's sort of spiritual feelings or something.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh a hundred years after Christ died, the church picked this up.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: They also had really severe problems with the ideas of sex and passion being, you know, in the Bible.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Augustine, for example, who taught that sex was only for procreation to have children, you know, certainly would say this.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so it became a book about Christ and the church and their love, and so you allegorized it, like Pilgrim's Progress, you know, where you're reading one thing, but it really doesn't mean that, it really means something else.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh one of the devotional uh writers that that I read sometimes from for my devotion, Saint Teresa of Avalon, 1580, used to hold bonfires where everybody was supposed to throw in the Song of Solomon, and and and she exerted a lot of pressure against any priests or any pastors, whoever preached from this book.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And to some extent you have to sympathize because this book lacks a couple of things that good books of the Bible should have, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, it lacks any religious or really gospel type stuff.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing here about sin or salvation or the Messiah, nothing about the temple or nothing about worship.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing it lacks is it lacks a plot.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you sort of have these little pictures of love and so forth, but there's no real storyline.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, it has some things that also bother us, the things it has that bother us even worse than the things it lacks.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: It has a lot of erotic descriptions.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it gets it gets really pretty erotic, pretty blunt when it's talking about intercourse and the wedding night and so forth.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Very detailed.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And also what it has, it has these inexplicable words and phrases, things we don't understand.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in the first chapter, he he compares her.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's really two characters in this book.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's the maiden and her beloved, and then the third sort of character are her girlfriends.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're sort of a cheerleading squad.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're always saying, you go for it, girl.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and but anyway, in the first chapter, he says to her, you know, you are like a mare among the chariots of Egypt.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't advise you to use that nowadays.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, if you read it back in there, I mean the chariots of Egypt were pulled by Pharaoh's stallions, and you put a pretty mare, Pharaoh's mare, bedecked with all the jewelry and so forth, like a beautiful girl in the midst of those stallions, they're gonna go absolutely crazy.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, that's not the way we talk nowadays.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like every generation has its own way of talking about love.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth Barrett Browning a hundred years ago could say it about as romantic as you got.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do I love thee?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let me count the ways, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get a little sloppier in the 1960s.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and now we're into rap music and we've gotten we've gotten pretty explicit.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you can see why, you know, this book would be difficult.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem with allegorizing this book.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is, taking it not literally, not really about passion, sex, and marriage, but about your love for God and Christ's love for you and so forth.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for one thing, it really doesn't make sense to me that that God would completely ignore the subject of sex.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: After all, uh God is interested in everything He's created and He cares about everything that we care about, and the Old Testament saint firmly believed that the entire, everything in creation was something that God cared about.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and and that includes sex.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And since sex is such a major, a huge topic looming in the mind of society, wouldn't it be remarkable if God, in the book, which he says is to perfectly furnish us for all good works, if he completely ignored that topic?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the other problem with allegorizing this book and not taking it at all literally, is, and in fact, by the way, God says in the very center verse of this book, right after the the wedding night, shall we say, he says he his voice comes out into the bedroom and he says, Eat, friends, drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of his stamp of approval that I'm for this.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is this is a great thing.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, the other thing uh about allegorizing that uh that really causes me trouble, especially nowadays, is that anybody can read into it anything they wanted.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so you have dozens of different interpretations of the body parts, you know, in this book.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and you have, and in fact, Origen, the early church father, wrote, I think, 12 huge volumes on the Song of Solomon.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was reading into it so much.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And a thousand years ago, Bernard of Clairvaux, we sing a couple of his songs, preached 86 messages in the Song of Solomon and never made it out of chapter 2.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when you see little cults springing up, little private things, you know, around our country, you will find that invariably, almost invariably, this is a big part of it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Take the Song of Solomon and they read into it just amazing stuff.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Don't take it literally, but just, and what has happened, and I just want to caution you about this.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: You may never hear this before, after, or from anyone else.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to caution you about eroticized worship songs.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because on the rest of the Bible, you know, the love, the divine love is described in very, you know, in very normal ways.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's, you know, there's the stars and there's a sea, and there's the mountains, and there's the love of Jesus, and there's kindness and so forth.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you'll find that it's it's from it's from groups that take the Song of Solomon, the erotic song of Solomon, as being really about God's love for us, that you suddenly start finding in our circle songs about sloppy wet kisses from heaven and things like this.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we won't do those here.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we don't believe that's that's how we should think of our love to Jesus Christ and God.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a problem I have with allegorizing it too.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: But what I want to do today is I want to walk you through uh the verses in this book, just so I want you to love this book and appreciate its view of romance and passion and sex.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna skip over, you know, the naughty bits, but um I'm uh I, you know, I I'm gonna remind you of some of the beautiful verses of this book, all right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm gonna go to the major passage, the climactic passage of the book in chapter eight, and then we'll wrap it up.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the very next verse in chapter one, verse three, she says, your name is like perfume poured out.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you remember that name means reputation back then, it's not just your name, it's who you are that what she's saying is in the same way that the olive oil perfume, you know, are poured out and it smells so good.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your reputation, the odor of your reputation is so widespread, she says in the next line, all of the all of the daughters of Jerusalem, everybody loves you.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're just your reputation is so great.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's something really the pure olive oil is a picture, the perfume of the purity of his reputation.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So her beloved is an admired man.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then we read in chapter one, verse 4a, draw me after you and let us run together.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you can find love songs down through history without this idea of let's get away together.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Half a dozen years ago.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Natasha Beddington sang, uh number one hit, I think, was Take Me Away, a secret place, a sweet escape, take me away, take me away to better days, take me away, a hiding place.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what she's singing about.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: She's saying, Listen, draw me after you.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get away alone.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Every young couple longs to get away.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden you have the cheerleaders, her friends, the daughters of Jerusalem, chime in in chapter 1, 4, verse C.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: We rejoice and delight in you, they say.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: We'll praise your love more than wine.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of like after a wedding, and all of the friends gather around and throw rice or sparklers or whatever else.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Don't throw sparklers, just kidding about that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then as you walk through the book, you see such amazingly beautiful descriptions of romance.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: This idea that somehow the church has gotten that God allows romance, but reluctantly, so screwed up, because this is the God, listen to the romance that God puts in this book.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: How beautiful you are, my darling, he says.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: How beautiful you are.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And notice she's not quiet in this book, she says how handsome you are.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this book starts with her talking.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, in an age of male sort of patriarchalism?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why is the Song of Solomon more her book than his, which it is.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: She's sort of the voice in this book.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the answer is that in love and in sex and in passion and in romance, male and female, there's absolutely no difference.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a wonderful thing in here to see that she may be shy a little bit about her appearance, but she's not shy about her passion and her feelings for him.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And she sings in chapter 2, verse 4, he's brought me to his banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you like I have sung this as a song about God's love for us and so forth.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's fine as long as you keep in mind that first and foremost, this is a statement about my beloved bringing me into their place of delight and pleasure and their banner of protection over us and security and affection as a banner of love.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3, verse 4.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: We read, When I found him whom my soul loves, I held on to him and I wouldn't let him go.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a great picture of this seeking and finding theme that reoccurs in this book?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want him, I want her, I look for her, I look for him, and finally when I find him, when I find her, I'm simply not gonna let go.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: How can you not think of a of a, you know, one of our uh military coming back from overseas and not wanting to let his bride go, and vice versa.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: You are altogether beautiful, my love.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is no flaw in you.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Song of Solomon chapter 4, verse 7.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's what young lovers are like.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, other people would say, well, there's a flaw.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: She's absolutely perfect.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's absolutely perfect.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of verses later, he says, You've captured my heart with one glance of your eyes.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the next line is with one, you know, with one uh uh jewel on your necklace.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way it is when you're, you know, remember young love?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how cool that is?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she just simply glances at you and she's stolen your heart, and your heart melts.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or even if you see, just you just look at her necklace, and there's just something about that that just captures, or as one translation says, steals away your heart.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Two verses later, this is getting a little more explicit.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your lips, my bride, drip honey.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Honey and milk are under your tongue.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Enough said.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, um, but but you know, this should remind you at least that Israel was the land, the promised land was the land of milk and honey, right.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so for him, this is the promised land, her lips.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the promised land is her mouth.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: He absolutely, absolutely delights and longs to enter the promised land and and to get there.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: He absolutely loves that.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the of the wedding night, you have God speaking, eat friends, drink, be drunk with love.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is an echo, by the way, of Proverbs chapter 5, versus in Proverbs 5.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the only time God cheers on sexual consummation.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: He says to the husband in Proverbs 5, he says, Why would you take your love to town when you could stay home and get intoxicated with the body of your wife?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And here you have the same thing.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: God's view is get drunk, get crazy, get a little crazy.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Logic, there's a place where logic needs to end, you know, in the bedroom, and where you absolutely get drunk.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 7, we'll move on.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 7, verse 6.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: How beautiful and how delightful you are, my love, with all your charms.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And chapter 7, verse 10, very famous, the verse repeated basically three times in this book.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: I am my beloved, and his desire is for me.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's for me.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that it's a shock?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the shock when your beloved you found out they liked you?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were gonna choose out of all the fish in the sea, he or she was gonna choose you.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm my beloved, and his desire is for me.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I'd like to do is move to a little paragraph that sort of summarizes the main messages of this book, and that's in chapter 8.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most famous passages in the book.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: You may want to take a look at this chapter.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start in chapter 8, verse 5.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: The text goes like this.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've heard it, and by the way, lately, just in the last couple years, I've had I've had uh as many married couple, uh wedding couples have asked me to speak on this passage as any other passage.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Send me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jealousy is as fierce as the grave.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Many waters can't quench love, neither can floods drown it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But let's start the verse before this.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 8, verse 5, I'm on the back of your study sheet.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing to know about love in this book is that love hurts.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Love hurts.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: The verse goes like this: Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Under the apple tree, I awakened you, he says.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: There your mother was in labor with you.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: There she who bore you was in labor.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize it's not easy to understand, but but this has to do with the pain of love, which this book is full of.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: The pain of insecurity, the pain of longing and waiting, the pain of separation.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you see it, by the way, in the key words here: wilderness, apple tree, awakened, and labor.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: The apple tree and awakened, uh, apple, um, you're familiar with the vine and the olive and the fig tree, which the n, which those are the national vine was the national tree of Israel, the fig tree was the religious tree of Israel, the olive was the spiritual tree of ancient Israel.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the apple tree was the love tree of ancient Israel.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it gets referred to in this book as the place where love awakened, that is the consummation of the wedding night, the intercourse with his beloved virgin.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, that's where love awakened.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and but he says there was pain and there is hurt associated with our love.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he uses the two metaphors of the wilderness where Israel had to wander for 40 years becoming into the promised land, and and labor.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he uses that twice to say that basically it was the same location uh where love was awakened that that mother was in labor.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you have these pictures of pain.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And these pictures of pain are carried throughout the book.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have the pain of insecurity that oftentimes happens when you're fall in love.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: For the guy's going, really?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm such a nerd.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, how could she love me?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or the girl's going, really?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not as pretty as the other girls.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 1, verse 6, she says, I'm dark but lovely.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm lovely in a certain way, but but I'm too dark because I had to go out and work in the vineyards, she says.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Even in the ancient, even in the Near East today, in Arab cultures, and so uh, you know, girls cover themselves partly because they have to, but also because uh being white, the whiter you are, the better, the darker you are is it's not a good thing.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it was True back then as well, and she says, I'm swarthy, I'm dark, and I know that's not a good thing, and she's insecure about his affection for her, and that's a painful thing when you're dating.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the pain of longing and waiting, which this book is absolutely full of.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because here you have a couple who's determined they're going to wait for their wedding day to consummate their relationship.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so they have all these longings.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that he would kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then she says in chapter two to her girlfriends, I'm faint with love.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that his left hand were under my head and that his right hand embraced me.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Daughters of Jerusalem, girlfriends, I charge you, don't arouse or awaken my love till it so desires.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, don't encourage me before the right time.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the pain of longing is a pain because you're waiting for something and refusing to give in to that desire.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that that hurts because you're because patience hurts.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Putting things off hurts.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Night after night, here's another illustration.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Night after night, she says, I sought him whom my soul loves, but I didn't find him.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: So hard when you are in love to be separated from the one you love.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she says a couple of times in chapter 2 and 5, I'm lovesick.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sickness and a and a hurt to love.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is just part of being in love.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Love hurts like childbirth.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wilderness experience.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a labor experience.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's just part of it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And realizing that love is painful can be one of the most helpful things to you, to a premarital couple.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the second thing, second theme that you find that's picked up in chapter 8 is that love grips.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Love grips like death.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know how death grips.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Death chases you all of your life, and finally, when it grabs hold of you and it plants you under the ground, it will not let you go.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Place me like a seal over your heart, we read, like a seal on your arm.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: For love is strong as death.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's jealousy, unyielding as the grave.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: In those days, this seal was sort of a combination of like your ring and your credit card and your personal ID.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, so it was everything.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was you.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you gave that to someone else, it's like saying, all I am and all I have is yours.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Place me as a seal on your arm.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be like as if a couple whispered and had a wonderful couple marry right on this stage where I'm standing yesterday.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be as if Reuben and Leslie had whispered, listen, as I slip this ring on your finger, I'm slipping myself on your finger.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like at a wedding saying, you know, today I am yours.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am yours.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sort of a possessiveness, and that's what the seal is, and the seal is as strong as death, and there's a jealousy as part of it.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I that's a tough thing for a lot of people to grasp.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Molière may have said, true love is possessive and cannot bear to share with all the world.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And young people don't mind that.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wedding couples, though, though you'll find sometimes you'll find, talk with a young man this year, and you know, find when you wake up the very first morning of your wedded life on your honeymoon, you go, oh MG, what just happened?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I am owned by someone else.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am no longer free.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you feel this sort of panic, this sort of sort of claustrophobia.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Great book on that called The Mystery of Marriage, by the way, by Mike Mason.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and but there's a possessiveness that sort of we run from, and we were scared of this society, goes, you know, you don't own me, you know.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, the moment you hear a spouse say, you don't own me, you know it's time for marriage counseling.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because this book is absolutely full of this theme.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I am my beloved's.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And my beloved is mine.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: There is a true and godly possessiveness about this.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wearing on my hand.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Melody wears an identical ring on her hand.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: She got them for us over in Israel.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: I am my beloved's and he is mine.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, the Hebrew words are even more beautiful than the English words.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, let's do this just for kicks.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: They won't know what you mean because it's Hebrew.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to turn to somebody else and I want you to repeat some words after me, okay?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Turn to somebody else, look them in the eye and say, Ani, Lododi, V-Dodi, Li.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what you just said is my beloved is mine, and it's just absolutely beautiful state, very popular in Israel today.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Melody and I wear these rings, and anytime I see those Hebrew letters, I'm reminded that my purpose on earth, I married her, is to love her and to serve her.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: In a sense, I said to her on the day of our wedding, from now on, I am yours.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And again, wedded couples don't have any problems with this.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love how possessive he is of me, she says.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love it so much when he holds me tight and whispers, you're mine in my ear.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and couples, after 50 years of marriage, you know, that's easy too.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we love to go to a cemetery and see, you know, you know, double tombstones, you know, with a husband and a wife holding hands and the word, set me as a seal upon thine heart, for love is strong as death.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: But where we have trouble is this whole possessive idea in marriage.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, there is a godly possessiveness, a godly jealousy.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is jealous of our love.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't tell us in the other in the other services, but it I was just reminded of of the guy in Dylan's who walked up to a beautiful woman and he said, Would you talk to me?
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just for a couple minutes.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Why?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: She said, because I've lost my wife in the store.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: She says, How will that help?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, every time I start talking with a beautiful woman, she shows up.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there's just there's a there's a there's a holy and a godly jealousy that says, uh, God gave me to you, therefore you have a right to me.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: I am possessed by you.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that's got love grips.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And third, love lasts.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: We usually don't think of lasting like fire.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: We think of fire going out, but not here, because the flame of the Lord is like the Olympic torch.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like an underwater torch, and love's flashes are like flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord, chapter 8, verse 6.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Many waters cannot quench love, nor can floods drown it.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is interesting, isn't it, when you compare, you know, death to love.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Really, really, love is the only thing that's as strong as death in this earth.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else, death has control of everything else.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Even the stars are subject to death.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in ten billion years, maybe when the last star twinkles out, love will still be there.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Love will still be strong.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And at the moment of your death, and at the moment of my death, knowing that he who is love incarnate has conquered death, we can say that love perseveres, love lasts, love endures.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And many waters can't quench love, nor floods drown it.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how, that's why I think Paul concluded 1 Corinthians 13 in his climax: love endures all things, love never fails.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the heart of the vows at a wedding are all about this whole idea of the loyalty of love.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: I take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer for poor, sickness and unhealth, to love and cherish till death us do part.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: The possessiveness, the enduringness, the perseverance of love, and because it pains, it hurts, because it possesses, it grips, and because it perseveres, it lasts the flame of love will surely burn you.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it's priceless.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Eight, six, and seven.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: If a man gave all the wealth of his house, he concludes, for love, he would be utterly despised.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is it because he underrates the value of love?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, some of you may have seen the Woody Harrelson Demi Moore movie called Indecent Proposal, or Robert Redford offered a million dollars for just one day, one night with Demi Moore.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Called Indecent Proposal.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that proposal indecent?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Was it that love's worth 10 million or love's worth a billion dollars?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: We would call it indecent if it was a billion dollars.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: A man would be despised if he offered$10 billion to a woman for her love.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we can buy sex, but you can't buy love.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Love can only be given.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you demean both her and love itself.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: You depersonalize them, you objectify them when you start equating them with money, which is why, by the way, it's such a tragedy when in a marriage a couple starts exchanging love time for a little, a few extra hours of work to bring in a little bit more money, want a better, better car, want a bigger house.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what they've done is they've actually exchanged love for a certain price, a little bit more money.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: But but listen, if a person offers a billion dollars for love, then you despise them, and then their proposal is indecent.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we say love is absolutely without price.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let me summarize for you, let me give you five lessons that I come up with from this passage and from this book really quickly.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, don't rush it, don't rush it, wait for it.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is a message clearly in this book for premarital couples who are in love.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about don't hurry me, don't rush it, don't, you know, wait for it.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be painful, expect it to be painful, longing is that way, don't rush it, wait for the wedding night.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, tend to your marriage.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lukewarm love and sort of boring cohabitation is not God's idea.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: The whole passionless marriage, sort of uh enduring sex idea, that's not that's not God's idea at all.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: God is all for passionate marriages, for romance and for joy.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, C.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis, yeah, I need to read a couple of his books about the whole that God's put a longing in our hearts, a longing for love and a longing for heaven.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this longing is is put in in our hearts by him because God wants us to long for what really is exciting and inspiring and and joyful.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: So tend to your marriage, tend to your marriage.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't allow anybody to talk of you as you know these repressed sex type of a Christian.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh that that that that moves to point number three, celebrate sex.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: God apparently loves the idea of great sex, He's given us a book on it.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: He would not ignore this topic, but you celebrate it in its place several weeks ago.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Up here, I talked about the gay marriage decision by the Supreme Court.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I really don't want the idea that anybody has to be that Christians are against sex.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not true.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: We like sex.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do we like sex?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we like sex.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're excited about sex, we celebrate sex, we celebrate it in its place.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is, so we don't celebrate premarital sex, we don't celebrate extramarital sex, we don't celebrate homosexual sex, we celebrate sex in its place in all of its eroticism and all of its excitement.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: So cheer sex, celebrate sex, realize God is all about this.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, honor longevity.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Cheer longevity.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that nowadays couples who've been married for 30, 40, 50 years will have a party and every, they'll have a party for them.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Get together.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's what, so we can honor because that's true love.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's enduring love, that's the flame of love that comes from God.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: After first service this morning, a woman came up, she says, My husband recently died.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: We had been married 68 years today.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, This book, what she said, is just so much like our marriage.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he can never walk by me, you know, without touching me or caressing me or saying I love you, or calling me angel, and said, I can never walk by him without slugging him or pushing him or something.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's just so cute.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that's that's celebrate, honor, longevity.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, listen, let all loves remind you of your divine lover.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the same thing as saying you should allegorize this book.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just saying, okay, start out, start out with passion in your love life, but then remember all of these loves point to the greater and eternal love that Jesus Christ has for you and you have for him.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: As John Dunn, the Christian poet, said 400 years ago, love is strong as death, but nothing else is as strong as either.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And both, love and death, met in Christ.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they did, didn't they?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: They met in Christ, who out of love came down to this earth to live and then to die for you.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there on the cross, love and death met, and he conquered death, his love did, so that you and I would have a wonderful picture of what it's like to love our husbands and to love our wives.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for you, and then I'm gonna ask Jeremiah to come and sing a song that illustrates this last point about the about Christ's love for us.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I pray for these dear friends, these dear folks at TBC and ask that you'd give them a desire and a passion to have the kind of love life that that you have laid out for us, Song of Solomon.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Pray that we would be examples to the world of exciting marriages.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, in all of it, to place you first in Jesus' name.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.