Song of Songs 1:1-8 Desire in the Daylight

You're listening to the podcast, A Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series,

The Awkward Love Book, Blushing Away Through the Song of Songs. Let's listen in. Well, thanks a lot to Pastor Spencer for introducing stuff for us.

I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I wanna just say welcome to all of you. I'm really glad that you're here. I hope that by the end of this message, you're also glad that you're here.

We're gonna be kicking off, as Spencer said many times, a new series in the Song of Songs.

It also is sometimes called the Song of Solomon, as you'll notice the front of the Scripture Journal is Song of Solomon there.

But our conviction here at Recast is shown in our core values. Our core values are replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

And that makes an acronym for our name. That's actually what our name is, Recast, and if you follow those.

And it starts and ends, really, our convictions here start and ends with that God's word is truth given for us in real life.

It is for our real lives, and all of it is given to us for our benefit and for building us up.

I'm not preaching this series because I feel like we need to stir up some kind of controversy.

I'm not trying to spice things up a bit. You know, it's kind of been humdrum in 1 Timothy. You know, I hope you've enjoyed 1

Timothy and going through 1 Timothy and other books of the Bible are great. But I do imagine that the book may result in some spicing things up amongst the marriages here.

So that's a possibility, and that would be great. But we're gonna be studying this because it is an often overlooked and misunderstood book of the

Bible. And it's here for our blessing. It is here for our benefit. It is here and written and recorded for us that our faith might grow, that our faith might grow.

And although you look at it and you go, well, what is this about? And it gets confusing. How many of you have read the Song of Songs before? Just curious, raise your hand, good.

So I know that most of you are familiar with it. So when I talk about it being confusing, you already know. So let me explain from the get -go that obviously it's a book that covers quite a bit about human sexuality.

And there are two modes of holy sexuality that all of us need to be aware of. There is singleness and there is marriage.

Now our world is heaping other words on top of that. And other words that I believe are unhelpful categories for the

Christian to think of. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, transgender, binary, non -binary, all of these words that come down the pipeline to us and filter into our minds through media and through all kinds of things.

But those are unhealthy, unhelpful categories. Some Christians would even go so far as implying that heterosexuality is the goal and actually holy sexuality is the goal, which is only expressed in two ways, singleness or in the bonds of holy marriage before God.

So this book is gonna speak to both of those groups, to singleness and it's going to speak to marriage.

And at face value I can understand why a single person might be tempted to zone out on this series, maybe say

I'm gonna skip a few weeks and come back when you jump into 2 Samuel or some Christmas messages before we get to 2

Samuel. And I don't think that would be helpful for you as a single if you're here.

You might be tempted to think this book only applies within marriage. But I believe that we will see that God's word has something to say to all of us regardless of our current circumstances and where we're at in life right now.

There are four guiding principles that I'd like to cover and I'd like you, whether you have one of those scripture journals or not, this would be a good thing to jot down because I think

I'd like this in front of you. I've kept it in front of me for weeks as I've been preparing for this service, for this sermon series rather.

But these four guiding principles help us to understand and interpret more accurately the book of the

Song of Songs. So the first and fundamental thing that you need to have in your mind when you approach this book is it is a song.

It's a song. It's not a drama. It's not a sequential narrative. It is not an allegory where every single thing stands for something else.

And it's not even merely an anthology. Like an anthology is just a collection of the greatest works of, like it's not the greatest collection of the greatest songs that Solomon wrote.

It was, it has thematic progression. Everything in it indicates that it was indeed a song with some thematic progression.

It certainly is not a techniques manual as some have preached it recently.

That's not what it is at all. Fortunately, I don't have to do that. But it's idealized ancient love poetry.

Idealized ancient love poetry. It is written like a song that has verses that amount to kind of vignettes about romantic love and what it means to be husband and wife and what it means to be singled with desire in your heart and those kinds of things.

And if it gave you an assignment, and I actually would love for you to do this, maybe even this afternoon, go listen to your favorite love song.

Now, how many of you maybe have a favorite love song? You have a song between you and your spouse or significant other or something like that.

Like some of us have songs. So go listen to that and answer these questions. Is it logical?

Is it all logical? Is it sequential? Does it really do a great job telling details?

I would suggest to you probably not. Songs are poetry set to music, and that's what we're looking at when we're studying the song of songs.

There's mystery, there's emotion, there's metaphor in the songs. All songs that we listen to possess those characteristics, and we would be left in the dark and will indeed be left behind if we try to bend this song into answering all the questions it doesn't propose to answer.

We wanna start off with questions. How old are they? What's her name? How in the world did she get involved with the king?

Why in the world is he a shepherd? Why is this happening? Why is she a shepherd? Why is she talking about where she's gonna take her flocks?

What is all of this stuff going on? And it's a song. It's a love song. The second thing is that it's a song, but it's a song about a specific topic, human love.

I like the way that Philip Reich and in the commentary that I'm recommending to you, he describes the content of this book this way.

He says, it is sexually provocative without being spiritually impure.

It's sexually provocative without being spiritually impure. And that's gonna be my target as we move through the book together.

I have to confess that three things combine to make me give you a little bit of a service announcement at the front end of this to kinda clarify a couple of things.

One is I'm a dad, which means I like puns, okay? I love a good dad joke and I enjoy that.

My kid's grown enough to be able to acknowledge that. I'm a pastor who loves to work with words and works with words as my primary tools.

That's what I do all week long. I read words, I manipulate words, I write words. I try to convey things through words.

So those two things are true of me. I love a good pun. I work with words all day. And equally, kind of the negative side of things is

I used to be a middle school boy who never, ever missed a double meaning, okay? That was me.

So whether it was intended or not, I did not miss them. And so I'm gonna state this right from the get -go.

I'm gonna give you permission to laugh at awkward things. I'm confident that at least once during this sermon series,

I will say something that is an inadvertent double meaning. It's going to happen.

It's definitely going to happen at some point. And I'm not going to ever intentionally, if you hear anything that I say as crass humor, it is not intentional.

I pledge to you, I'm not going to be intentionally crass on purpose. No, that's what she said, jokes or anything like that.

But we may laugh occasionally together at things that just happen to go that direction.

So I just give you that as a caveat at the start so that we're all aware we have freedom to laugh here together.

The third thing is that this is so it's, it is indeed a song, it's a song about human love. And the last, or the third thing is it's a book, it's a book in the

Bible. And that's obvious, but it needs to be said and it needs to be taken into account as we study this.

That's why we know it's not just merely a techniques manual. We know it ties into a relationship with God in some way. Now there's a long history of allegorical interpretation to this book.

Many societies were scandalized by the content. And so they chose to see it as only a reflection of Christ and the church.

As if the bride in this scenario is the church and the groom is

Jesus. And if that's the only thing that you get out of this, then I think you're doing it wrong. Now there certainly is, how many of you know that there's a common theme throughout scripture that Christ is indeed the groom and we are indeed as the church, the ones that he is one, we are his bride.

And so that's not in a literal sense. The metaphor is the anticipation of his coming, all of that kind of stuff.

But if that's all that you get out of it, now I think there's room for some application. You'll see that by the end of the message.

But that's not the main thing. The metaphor of God's marriage to his people is a consistent metaphor throughout scripture.

And yet this book quite clearly has more than mere allegory in mind. It does have a spiritual message because it's in the word of God.

But it is spiritual to just even understand that human sexuality is a gift from God.

So even if that's the main message that we get out of this entire series, that's okay.

That's a good message to glean from it. The fourth thing is that it's a book and this is the last kind of key to interpretation for this book is that the book is written to give us wisdom.

It's in the wisdom literature. It's in a long ancient tradition of wisdom literature for the

Jews. It's found in the wisdom literature there and think of it this way to understand how in the world, how many of you would just be confused all of a sudden?

How in the world does a book about sexuality give us wisdom? Anybody confused a little bit by that?

What's that got to do with wisdom? But think of it this way to understand how it fits into the broad picture of wisdom literature.

The book of Proverbs serves as the hub of wisdom. It's the centerpiece of Jewish writing regarding wisdom and the way that life usually goes is found in the

Proverbs. So you read the Proverbs and you get a basic picture of how life generally goes here on this planet.

But Jewish wisdom also gives three exceptions to the common everyday common sense kind of wisdom.

Job is in wisdom literature. Many of us don't know that, but Job is a wisdom literature book and explains the exception of suffering.

It exists to demonstrate to us that wisdom cannot be used to deduce the cause of suffering in somebody's life.

You can't just look at the proverbial wisdom of life and go, oh, that's why you're suffering.

That's what all of Job's friends did is they just tried to apply human wisdom to the situation God was doing what

God wanted to do with Job. The book of Ecclesiastes, of course, is in wisdom literature and it gives the exception of godlessness.

So wisdom cannot draw meaning into a godless life and that's what that exception exists to communicate.

And then this last one that we're gonna be taking on. Song of Songs gives the exception of romantic love.

Romantic love doesn't follow the rules of everyday wisdom. Anybody give me an amen on that? It doesn't follow the rules of everyday wisdom.

It's more powerful than it should be at face value. And how many irrational decisions have been made through the power of romantic love?

To try to stem it is to try to stop the tsunami from hitting the shore. It's a crazy powerful force and we all know it.

So this song is Flush With Desire right from the opening line and I'm gonna encourage you to grab your scripture journal, your device, or your

Bible and open up to Song of Songs one, one through eight. Hopefully you're already there because it might take you a second to find it.

Turn to the Psalms. If you get to the Psalms center of the Bible, go a little bit to the right and you'll find it there.

Psalms one, one through eight. The interesting thing is I'm gonna confess that one of the strangest things in this series is me reading the text.

I get to read the woman's part too, which is just super awkward. And so I'll just get that out, but this is God's holy and precious word.

My wife and I talked about, she said, well maybe I could just get up and read the woman's part and you could read the man's part. And I said, I think that's awkward too.

Like, when you get to some of these passages, you would go, I don't want husband and wife up there reading it together.

So, and even worse would be just, I was like, I'll just let somebody else read. Anybody wanna volunteer for me?

So, we'll read it together. Remembering that this is God's holy word. This is not me wanting a guy to kiss me, okay?

So let's clarify that. The Song of Solomon. The Song of Songs, which is

Solomon's. She, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For your love is better than wine.

Your anointing oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore virgins love you.

Draw me after you, let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers. Others, we will exalt and rejoice in you.

We will extol your love more than wine. Rightly do they love you. She, I am very dark but lovely,

O daughters of Jerusalem. Like the tents of Kadar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me.

My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me keepers of the vineyards. But my own vineyard

I have not kept. Tell me you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flocks, where you make it lie down at noon.

For why should I be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions? He, if you do not know,

O most beautiful among women, follow in the tracks of the flocks and pasture your young goats beside the shepherd's tent.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word and it's a strange word to our ears.

I pray that you would allow understanding and clarity, that you would, I pray for families here.

I recognize that there's a lot of break and a lot of, just a lot of anxiety going on in our culture right now.

There's a lot of division and that division cuts right down into the family unit. Father, I pray that you would allow this message to have its intended desire by the power of your spirit in making men the men that they need to be and women the women that they need to be, both married and single here.

Father, I know that desire is a strong force for everyone in this room. That desire can be for money, that desire can be for sex, that desire can be for all, a whole host of things.

But Father, I pray that you would turn our desire to you first and foremost so that all of these other things are only used within the confines of your good plan but also recognized as good gifts from you.

I pray that if there's anybody here that has bought into the lies of the world that either sex is dirty or that sex is king,

I pray that you would break the bonds of that through this sermon series and that there would be freedom realized.

Father, there would be strength in marriages as a result of this. There would be strength in the church and there would be a gospel message that goes out to the world because you're strengthening marriages through this series.

Father, I thank you that we have an opportunity to sing praises to you now and I pray that we would lift up our voices to you with enthusiasm and with gladness.

You are the giver of all good gifts and so we turn to you now because you alone are worthy, amen.

If at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, take advantage of that. If you need the restrooms, they're out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side.

And reopen your Bibles or your devices or your scripture journal, whatever you have there in front of you to the Song of Songs 1, that opening eight verses there and we're gonna dive in.

A question that's gonna likely be on your minds as a group of people talking about sex in the church over the next eight weeks is, are these two married?

That's, I think, the fundamental question that we need to answer at the very beginning because it's on everybody's mind and this is a book

I've read and I've never seen any of you ever, you said you read the book, a lot of you have read it. Did you see the wedding in it?

It wasn't in there. Now, a lot of our love songs don't have weddings in them, right? I mean, there's a handful of songs that kind of talk about a wedding or whatever but most love songs don't.

So you're going, are they married or are they not married? Well, let's get down to this and we're a people who like details and this matters to us.

But the obvious answer from any ancient Jewish reader would be, duh, they have sex.

Of course they're married. That would be the obvious answer. This is the Bible. This is a

Jewish love song found in the pages of scripture. The Jews did not ever in any context celebrate romantic sexual escapades outside of marriage in no uncertain terms.

Read the book. Have you read the Bible? How many of you know that there's some taboos and there's a prohibition surrounding extramarital sex in the pages of scripture?

Do you already know that? So why would we have to ask the question? It's already there. Now, some of the vignettes,

I believe, some of the verses of this pertain to a longing and a desire outside of marriage.

They're already, they're not married yet. So we have some people that are single that are kind of like, boy,

I'd really look forward to our wedding day. And then there's some obvious contexts in which they're already married.

Some of the vignettes or verses of the song demonstrate that they're looking forward to it. But longing and desire feature prominently in this text and where you see that there's already, there's sexuality expressed, we can take for granted that they're married.

Longing and desire are the primary feature of the entire book, the entire song.

And we're gonna be told later that singles are not to awaken love before it can be fulfilled.

We'll be told that multiple times throughout this book, and that's a message to those who are single. Do not awaken love before it can be satisfied, before it can be taken forward.

And so for a dating relationship, this level of longing is common. It's extremely common. It's as common as humans have been, as long as humans have been around, this is a common experience, a common feeling, a common desire for somebody of the opposite sex to pay attention to us, to be close to us, to be intimate with us.

But that longing needs to be converted for a longing for marital relationship that is blessed by God and is blessed by community.

And so let me speak clearly at the start of this letter. It is okay, are you guys ready for this?

This is gonna be shocking to our American ears. It is okay to have, gasp, an unfulfilled longing.

It's okay to have an un, you heard me say it.

Now I might get in trouble on the internet for saying this. I don't know. I'm being sarcastic, obviously. But I mean, it's okay,

Americans. It's okay, church. It's okay, people, to have an unfulfilled desire.

That's all right. It is okay to wait for something. That's a calling.

How many of you know that you've had to wait for some things in your life? Some of you that are more mature and been around a while, you've had to wait for some things, right?

There are things that are worth waiting for, and this is one of those things. That desire is real. That desire, that young desire is absolutely real.

And at the same time, it is okay for that to be put off until a future wedding.

We see right away that this song was written by Solomon. And believe it or not, you look at it and you go, the first verse says, the

Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, and I read a lot of pages defending and disagreeing with whether or not

Solomon, either he wrote it or he didn't write it. Tons of writing on this. There's a significant debate about this subject, and I don't wanna get into all the nuances of it, but what settles it for me that this is indeed

Solomon's writings is that according to 1 Kings 4, verse 32, Solomon is recorded to have written over 1 ,000 love songs, it says in 1

Kings 4, 32, as well as over 3 ,000 proverbs. He was clearly a prolific songwriter, and here is a song with his name in the title, and it's a love song, and it says that he wrote over 1 ,000 love songs.

I think it's fair for us to kind of go, we'll just stick with what the text tells us. It's Solomon's. Now, you can tell that a man wrote it, at least, right, because he's the object of affection, and he's the hero, and I'm barely kidding, you can tell right away, but many have balked at Solomon being the author for good reason, and I think if we just kinda, those of you that are more informed about Solomon's life get a little bit, you know, a little bit weirded out that he's the author of this thing, and with good reason.

I mean, it's not just for pure scholarship's sake that some people doubt that Solomon wrote this.

It's because of the content. The beauty of this love song, the beauty of this love poetry is sullied and stained by what we know historically and biblically about King Solomon's life.

If you know much about him, then you suddenly go, what gives him the right to tell us about romantic love?

He had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Those are women that were committed to him. 700 wives and 300 concubines, but what we read here is an idealized love poem between a single man and a single woman.

How in the world could Solomon be the author of this thing, some people have asked, but I would call it an idealized love poem.

This serves, I believe, as somewhat of a correction from the very wise Solomon about romantic life.

He did not write it merely to correct everybody else, but I believe he wrote it as an ideal that he never met.

I believe that we can see within these pages a longing for something less complicated than his reality. Here's somebody laughing and you know what

I'm talking about. 700 wives, are you kidding me? How many of you think that that would be complicated? Both men and women, raise your hand.

I mean, that's complicated on both sides of the equation. Like that's crazy complicated and certainly not held up as a noble thing.

I believe that he wanted something more pure than his reality. I think he wanted something more isolated and singular and I use the word monogamous and therefore this poem.

His crowning achievement of love songs is what it is, it's the song of song superlative. The greatest of his, and I believe it's the greatest of his songs.

Again, he wrote over a thousand of them, but this is his greatest. I think there's something more, something less complicated, something more pure and we see a king with one wife throughout the poem.

I believe Solomon wrote it and he was eminently qualified as a matter of fact. I think he was actually significantly qualified to tell us about the ideal as he had experienced the opposite.

He had seen it all, he had had it all. He says, this is what would be better. And what he comes back to in his idealized and I wanna point out what

I believe is likely fictionalized or maybe a composite of some things that he had studied or known or composite of people that he knew or something like that, but it's a fictionalized love song.

It does not follow his reality. We know that because he had 700 wives, but here's this romantic singular relationship with this one woman that we find throughout the consistent thematic progression of this song.

When he comes back to it, it's his idealized, fictionalized love song as a model of romantic and even erotic love.

Now the translators of the English Standard Version do us a solid and they show us who is speaking.

That's not in the original and I wanna clarify that when it says in the English Standard Version, she, other, she, he in our text, who's talking.

Now we do, that is interpretive, but it also is somewhat translation because the text actually indicates who's speaking and who's being spoken to.

And so within the pronouns and all of those things, analyzing the text itself, we can tell who it is that's speaking at any given time throughout this and it's fairly reliable.

So we see this kind of back and forth between her and him and then this group of others that we're gonna see here in the text.

Now she speaks first and she comes on hot and heavy, right out of the gates. The opening lines drip with intense desire in the

Hebrew language and certainly the English tries to preserve that to some degree. And here's the structure before we kind of just jump in to the hot and heavy.

The structure of the first eight verses break down like this. So if you're taking notes, verses one through four is that intimacy creates longings.

There's your big heading under verses one and four. Verse five, intimacy is exemplary.

It's an example to others. And then verses six through eight is intimacy calms insecurities.

Intimacy calms insecurities. So let's jump into the first part here. Intimacy creates longings.

She wants, right out of the gate, more than a kiss. She wants more than one. She wants his mouth on hers and she states it emphatically.

Now it seems strange to us, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. Okay, what else was he gonna kiss her with?

Is that one of those things? Okay. She wants his mouth here.

And what we need to understand is what makes this make sense to us is that it was common in the ancient

Near East and we have kind of documents that support this and stuff, that it was common for friends to greet each other with a nose kiss.

It was common to greet like the Eskimos. You know how many Eskimo kisses with your little kids or something like that? You know what

I'm talking about? I used to do that with my kids when we were putting them to bed and stuff. So that was common. It was common for friends to greet one another that, wait,

I have a hard time picturing that in the ancient Near East, but that's what I'm told. Again, I wasn't alive then, so I'm only dependent on other sources, but they say this was relatively common.

She does not want a friend -to -friend kiss from him. She wants romantic kisses from her man.

She gives a reason for this. She says, here's why I want you to kiss me and I want you to kiss me now. And it's because of this, she has this desire and longing and it's because his love is better than wine.

His intimacy is intoxicating to her, she says. Now the word for love in verse two is the word dod in Hebrew, a word that occurs so many times in this that I'm gonna mention it a lot and I don't usually throw in Hebrew pronunciations of words or Greek pronunciation of words, but this one is a valuable one for us to grasp and get our minds around because it's gonna be used so much.

The word dod is more than merely sexual actions, but it encompasses sexual activity, but it's not just merely the union of bodies, but it is most significant way to describe this word, the concept of dod is a mingling of souls.

It is two people who are united at the heart level, not at the physical level.

They are committed to one another, they love one another, they cherish one another, they are doing life together, they have this covenant relationship with one another so that it's not just merely body on body, but it's soul on soul, are you getting that?

There's a different picture there than what a lot of our world, our world does not have the concept, particularly a materialist has no concept of this, but we do.

A materialist is two bodies, chemical reactions, just do the thing that the bodies do, that's it.

It's a pretty bleak picture of romantic love, isn't it? How many would say that's bleak? Bleak like the looks on some of your faces right now.

Like it's a grim perspective to think that that's the best that can happen between two humans is just this physical thing, but obviously there's much more than that at the picture here.

She says, the way that we mingle our souls together, not the way we mingle our bodies together, but the way we mingle our souls together, the way that we're knit together, the way that you pursue me, the way that I pursue you, the way that we're in relationship throughout the daylight time makes me want the nighttime.

That's what she's getting at here. I want your kisses, I want your romantic touch because you've touched my heart.

Do you hear that? There might be a lesson in here for us guys, somewhere in here, I don't know.

We'll get there here in a minute. It's much more than just the mere mingling of bodies is this word dode, two souls intimately connected.

But catch this, men. She wants physical intimacy with him and she's asking for it.

And many guys are honestly just maybe sitting here right now and maybe that's why some of your faces look kind of blank because you're thinking, but you're wondering how in the world do

I incite this kind of longing in my wife? How do I get her to talk to me this way?

My wife never shouts across the bar, Don, you big stud, take me to bed or lose me forever. You know, she looks over at me in bed, bats her eyelashes and says with a sultry bedroom voice, can you pick the kids up from practice tomorrow?

You know, I mean, anybody with me on that? Anybody have those conversations? Like that's where the conversations go.

But in this idealized love poem, it goes this way. He's connected with her at the level of soul.

They get each other. He knows her. She feels known by him. She feels the connection of her soul, his soul to hers.

And that sparks a desire for more than immaterial, the mere immaterial mingling that happens during the day.

She wants more of him because of what he has already given to her of his heart.

She wants kisses and she feels overpowered to declare it. No shame. Do you see that in the text? No shame from the get -go.

No fear of rejection. The woman is far from passive. And she starts out the song openly declaring her desire from verse two.

First person to speak and it is dripping with desire. Married men, straightforward question.

Are you fostering intimacy with your wife? You're gonna have to talk, guys.

You're gonna have to ask questions. You're gonna have to, are you ready for it? Listen to the answers.

You're gonna have to talk about things like feelings and desires. You're gonna have to make it clear to her that she is special and number one to you.

Married women, are you open to communicating your desires and longings to your husband?

Or have you adopted the myth? And I call this a myth. I think it's a very dangerous myth. But have you adopted the myth that his love for you is best expressed in mind reading?

Some conviction, maybe? Is that a convicted laughter or? But it's more, it's not, his love for you is not defined by his ability to, if he really loved me, he would just know.

Well, she talks from the beginning. And she talks a lot. She tells him what she wants.

And you see it all throughout the text. So let me just ask you a more generic question.

Those of you that are married here, as the fire gone out, isn't there no more pizzing in the kisses?

I read this week that one of the first things to go when intimacy is failing in a marriage is just straightforward kissing.

You just don't kiss anymore. It's interesting to think that through. But that's one of the first things to go out the window.

So get back to carving out time for one another. And I'm not talking about just carving out time for physical intimacy.

I'm talking about carving out time to talk, to interact, to mingle your souls together.

And in the mingling of souls, you might just find an increased desire for the mingling of bodies too.

But he shows her love, and she responds. But now in verse three, we see she respects him openly.

She wants something from him, but she also gives him something here. All of the senses, by the way, are involved in this desire.

And so you start seeing fragrance and stuff like that. She wants the touch of his lips, but she also is glad that he takes care of himself and smells good.

Application two, guys, hygiene. He apparently wears all the Axe body sprays or something.

I don't know. I kind of thought that might be an accurate translation of this anointing oils, colognes and body sprays.

I don't know. Probably not Axe though. Right, ladies? That's probably not where it's at. That's a middle school thing.

Okay. The center of verse three is the key here. His name, she says, his name is like oil poured out.

What in the world could that mean? This is a statement of building him up. She is saying your reputation is a blessing.

In other words, when your name is said, it is received by others like a fragrant bottle of oil broken in a room that diffuses.

When your name is said, others are blessed. Others rejoice at the hearing of your name, my man.

That's what she's saying. Think of it this way, like the oil that was considered wasted on the feet of Jesus, so is the name of her man.

It is precious and valuable. And I want to just tell you, even just publicly to commend my wife,

Linda will build me up with words frequently. She tells me things like you're a good husband, you're a good father.

And one of my favorites, and probably every week she says this sentence to me, you're so wise.

Now I can't vouch for the veracity of any of those statements. I'm not even sure I believe them, but I can tell you this, they build me up.

They are fuel for my soul. And as much as at times I don't feel those things that she's saying,

I still feel her love through them. You know what I'm talking about? Guys, do you like to hear those kinds of things?

You need to be built up. You don't ask for them, you don't even really know you want them until you receive them.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Guys, go ahead, you're looking at me blank. You know what I'm talking about? You kind of want to be built up.

You kind of want people to say nice things about you. You want to have a good reputation, at least four of us do. The rest of you wives don't need to say anything good to those husbands, because those five,

Dave said he's, count him in too now, because Rachel's right there, so. So yeah,

I think we want that, and it is, it's fuel for my heart when my wife says kind things like that to me.

And we see at the end of verse three that this woman has confidence in their relationship. A crazy significant level of confidence in their relationship, because she knows, and this could be awkward, but she knows that all the young maidens, all the virgins totally love her husband.

She is basically saying, all the women want you. This is not, of course, a technical statement as if she's done a survey or a poll,

I hope. Kind of going around saying, how much, do you like my husband? You do, okay, yep.

Everyone, everyone, it's right here on the list, everybody. No, but in romantic love, we say silly things that still work, right?

That's part of it, is not everything in the book makes logical, technical sense, but it works on the heart level.

She says, all the women want you. Now, the intimacy leads to increased longing and desire until she finally blurts out, and it gets kind of crazy, and I'm not gonna get into the details, but she just blurts out, hurry, bring me along.

Let's not go slow, she says. Now, a major scandal in the ancient

Jewish culture was the way that she takes so much initiative in the text. But I wanna point out that if we think about this as a model in a healthy married relationship, this is a good thing.

Both are sharing together. Both have voices that ought to be heard and desires that ought to be expressed.

And we see for the first time in verse four that she has been speaking to the king all along.

Who does she desire? The king. Who is writing this? The king.

I wonder why he would take her into his chambers at this point in the verse.

Probably just for some private kisses. The latter half of verse four is where we see our second point.

Intimacy is exemplary. Intimacy is exemplary. We see this in the statement of the others who are identified throughout the poem as the daughters of Jerusalem.

They speak up in celebration here. They will exalt and rejoice in him. They will extol this mingling of souls.

They declare that it is right that the king's people love him. And that word love is not dode.

It's not a mingling of souls. It is a word of doing good for the other and blessing them.

It is good that his people follow him and love him and want to honor him.

We may wonder what are all these people doing here? They just went into the wedding chamber.

And again, the questions just don't always match up. But they're giving the people here, these others in this chorus singing this song.

This is the part where they break in and they are giving communal endorsement on the goodness of what is going on here.

This is why I love weddings so much because it is the place in our culture where we still celebrate God's good design for man and woman.

Do you agree with me on that? How many of you enjoy going to weddings? I like going to weddings. I like doing weddings. The funny thing about a wedding, the elephant in the room at every wedding is you know where the couple's going afterwards.

But we are celebrating. We're celebrating together with them the mingling of two lives, the bringing together of two hearts.

And of course, what's gonna happen later, the bringing together of two bodies as well. We don't go with them to celebrate that, but we certainly know where they're going and we celebrate that together with them in the ceremony, in the celebration, in the reception afterwards, in the blowing of bubbles on their way out the door and the weird traditions that we have.

It's still a place where we celebrate the way that God has designed things. These others celebrate the love of Solomon and his queen.

They are glad for the romantic love expressed between the two who are mingled in soul.

And again, this is somewhat idealized by Solomon, but he envisions in this song an exemplary monogamous love that makes others rejoice and be glad.

He holds out a standard of romantic love that causes those who behold it to be moved, to thank

God that he has designed this. Now, as far as application, those who are married ought to realize that they're an example on this one.

Your marriage is indeed a model and example. We have a responsibility to demonstrate a good love before others.

And yet more directly, this applies to those who are single in the room, a direct application to you.

Celebrate the love of those who are married around you. Now, in an ideal world, those who are single would never have jealousy over the relationship of others, but we know that it's otherwise in our culture.

There are people who are single that don't want to be single, and I recognize that maybe that's some of you here in the room. And pray that your time would come, but also pray for God's grace and direction in your life regarding whether singleness is the plan that he has for you.

It certainly is for right now. But we ought to be able to celebrate when somebody else gets a raise. We ought to be able to celebrate when somebody gets a new house.

We ought to be able to celebrate when somebody gets a new car. And we also ought to be able to celebrate when somebody else finds love.

Lastly, in verses five through eight, we see that intimacy calms our insecurities, the third and final point.

There are two particular insecurities expressed by the bride here in this vignette. She is concerned about her outward appearance, and she's concerned about one particular point of her outward appearance.

Interestingly, she feels confident about everything else. There's one feature that stands out to her as distinct, different, and problematic.

And then secondly, she's worried about access to her man. She wants to know that she's attractive, and she wants to know that he is available for her, that he's thinking about her, that he wants to be with her.

And how many of you would just acknowledge that that's probably an age old, these two concerns are just, as long as humanity's been here, as long as the fall, there has been a concern, am

I pretty, and are you available? Are you, can we spend time together?

Can we have some quality time? And that's what she wants. Now, standards of beauty shift from era to era, and I hope that's as obvious to you as it is to me.

People pay a lot of money to get a tan, and it's desirable to have darker skin, so what in the world is this girl concerned about here?

Seems kind of strange, like she's got a natural tan, good for you, right? But it wasn't always the way that it is now, so now you have to afford a tan, because you can be inside all the time, but it wasn't always that way.

This has nothing to do, by the way, with natural skin color or race at all. That's evidenced by the fact that she is darkened by the sun in verse six.

But among those who might attract a king's attention, she feels like she stands out, because she has been forced to work outside.

Back then, the standard of beauty was, I mean, those who would be courting a king would be those who could afford to be inside.

They didn't have to be outside working in a field all day. They would have fairer skin, and that would be the point of beauty was kind of wealth, and you don't have to be outside.

But I love the juxtaposition of what she says here. Two things, it's interesting how they combine.

Do not gaze on me because I am dark, and the I am dark, but lovely.

She has some self -confidence. She knows that she's attractive, but is concerned about one cultural feature that makes her stand out as different to others, and how much of beauty is just a straightforward attempt to look like everybody else, to not stand out.

It's kind of strange, really, when you think about it. Or you just grasp some model of beauty on the cover of a magazine and then shoot for that.

And it's strange how we have a tendency to do this. Her brothers, she says, were mean to her and made her work outside in the vineyards.

So she is sun -darkened like the tents of Kadar. Kadar, interestingly, means blackened.

She says, my skin is like the color of the tents of Kadar, blackened, or like the curtains of Solomon.

Curtains, she has seen and knows, having been taken into his chambers. But the timeline leaves us asking questions that the text doesn't care to answer at all.

When was she in the vineyard? Is this prior to her wedding to the king that her skin was darkened?

Did she go out to work in the vineyards after she was married to the king? Why in the world would the king let her go out and work?

Or why would she even be allowed to do so? And you guys, it's not a cop -out to say that this is a poetic love song.

It's gonna have dots that just don't connect, and that's okay. But notice she calls him, what does she title him?

You whom my soul loves. They are knit together again in emphasis.

She feels knit together with him at the heart and soul level. This is not some cheap and chintzy physical tryst.

These are two people doing life together, passionately engaged with one another, even in the daylight.

She also wants to be near him, in verse seven. She wants his schedule so that she can run into him.

When I was a counselor at Camp Baruch El, and Len and I, we first started dating up there, and I was always glad for common camp activities.

Just to see her across the circle for flag raising in the morning was awesome, or looking out for a tribe to show up at chapels.

We always knew where each other's table was assigned in the dining hall. So we could glance over that direction.

Wondering what kind of dress or what dress she'd be wearing for chapel, looking forward to running into her during free time at the archery range, just wanting to steal a glance.

Much of my thoughts and feelings were wrapped up in just stealing a moment away to talk with her. But if we couldn't talk, then just seeing each other was the next best.

And if you know what I'm talking about, you know those feelings? I hope every married person in the room has those feelings, at least can relate to it.

But if you went back and looked, and we ironically did because my daughter found a shoebox full of our old love notes that date back to that era.

So any of you have a shoebox like that? Anybody? A few of us? Embarrassing when you look back at them.

You're like, oh my goodness, that is so cheesy. It's just about as cheesy as a song of songs. But it's just this romanticized thing.

And if you go back and you look at them, it's crazy how much they reflect these couple of verses here. Where are you gonna be and when are you gonna be there?

How much of that is taken up in romantic love? How much of that is a part and parcel of just wanting to spend quality time together?

By the way, I'm gonna be taking my tribe down to archery at three o 'clock tomorrow, says in a couple notes, just in case you might wanna bring your tribe down there too because everybody needs archery.

So whatever, you can make all kinds of excuses for it, but we just wanted to be together.

There's no question, and this is obviously before we're married, there's no question that desire begins before marriage, but its fulfillment is not to be met until after marriage.

So he calls her, we see the king speak for the first time in verse eight. And he answers her two insecurities in this verse, and that's why

I incorporate this in this message because he's solving it. He calls her the most beautiful among women.

She's the most beautiful. The hyperbole of romantic love again is not rational, but it is important.

He calls her the most beautiful woman, not because he's seen every woman to ever live, but she needs to hear it, and in his eyes, she is.

But the shepherd king also explains to her where he will be so that they can cross paths in the middle of the day. Nothing is pointedly sexual about this, getting together at noon, but romance is not about what happens at night.

Romance begins during the day. I mean, in our time and era now, we can text each other, right?

You can text, I think that's a good thing. You can text during the day. We don't need a map to connect. Lynn and I can find each other on our phones.

We can see where the other person is at any time, and yet, we ought not to allow texting and devices and technology to get in the way of an occasional follow the tracks of the flock, and I'll be out by the shepherd's tent, kind of get together.

Why not cross paths in your day if you can? Right now, some of your work schedules don't allow for that, but some of them do.

Why not connect during the day if you can? And wives, there is nothing wrong with you initiating this.

I wanna point out the king, now he's a king. He's over, he's in charge of a lot more than me, and he appears a bit oblivious in this, and she's like, where will you be at noon?

I'd like to see you today, and he's like, okay, I'll be up by the shepherd's tent. All right, sweet, that'd be cool. Without stealing anything here then, we've kind of covered the text.

Without stealing anything from the actual human level of this passage as far as applying it within real human relationships and singles and marrieds and men and women, applying the things that you've heard here so far.

There's something else that I discovered as I studied this passage. I finished my study, and I looked over my initial organization and realized just how much this explanation of love does indeed apply to Christ and his church, and I see where the lines can get crossed very easily.

I don't adopt a strong allegorical view. I think it's fine to leave it at the level of applying this within marriages, and I believe that that's the primary point of it, but I also do believe that because this is found in the word of God, that it's totally inbounds to see

Christ in the church in some of these things that I had already written down about marriage.

Intimacy begets romance was verses one through four, but if you think about it, as it breaks down and as she talks and interacts, she says, he loves me, and I want him.

His love is the basis, Christ's love is the basis of our desire to be close to him, and you can see these spiritual impressions throughout the text.

She respects him, verse three, and we, the church, glorify him by lifting up his name.

His name is a fragrant aroma, and he accepts her in verse four. Good love is exemplary, we said, in verse five, and certainly the love of Christ for his church is indeed an example to the world.

Good love calms our insecurities in verse six and eight, the beginning of verse eight.

We are pretty sure we're stained and ugly and unworthy, and he treasures us as his crowning achievement.

We are pretty sure in verse seven that he would not accept us or want to be with us, and he invites us into prayer and shows us the way to him.

The imagery in this text is clearly about desires and longings and intimacy between husbands and wives, and yet this passage gives us a glimpse of what it means to be loved by Christ and drawn into desire and love for him as well.

Jesus came from heaven to seek us out. His people now long for his return. We desire to be near him, and only through a relationship in him can our insecurities be quelled.

So we come to communion to remember the radical love that God demonstrated toward us. Without the cross, we would be left wondering, does

God love us? Does he really care for us? Does he want to be near us?

Will he cast us off as ugly and repulsive as the sinners that we are? But no, church, it's our privilege to take the cracker to remember his body broken for us because of his great love.

And no, we are not left forlorn and loveless because we take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed for us.

Married men, I'm talking to you, married men, how are you reflecting the love of Christ in your marriage?

Are you pursuing intimacy with your wife or are you pushing a mere physical romp in the hay? Wives, are you open to honest expressions of desire about your insecurities and what you want?

Be willing to communicate. The woman in the text doesn't think that true love is mind reading.

She tells him what she wants, what she really, really wants. Let's pray.

God, I thank you that you're able to forgive even Spice Girls references and your grace is abounding more and more day by day.

I do thank you for the marriages that are represented here. I also thank you for the singles that are here. I recognize that this hits differently depending on what group you're in.

Some have longings and desires that cannot be met. Some have longings and desires that ought to be met. And so,

Father, I pray that you would help us to get those categories right in our hearts to allow this message to filter into our hearts at the level that you desire to communicate to us.

Father, I pray that you would help us to be open and that you would actually be healing communication in relationships that,

Father, intimacy would be forged in the daylight here first. I'm just so grateful and thankful and I love how you open up this text with indication of that dode, that mingling of souls, that mingling of heart and the doing of life together and that connection of genuine care and concern for one another before the physical.

So, Father, I pray that you would allow that to have its way in the married couples here. Men would be pursuing their wives and talking with them and interacting with them and cherishing them and acknowledging them, listening to them, living with them in an understanding way.

And you give the wives boldness in that place of being cherished by their husbands to then be able to declare what's going on in their hearts and to be able to be open and even speak their desires and speak their concerns and speak their insecurities.

And, Father, that you would be healing and bringing forward marriages here. But I thank you for the greatest healing of all that applies to all of us, regardless of what station we are in life, whether single or married, whether long -term single or engaged or whatever it might be here.

Father, I thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ that is shared across all of us. And as we come to communion,

I pray that all of those who belong to you would feel free to come to that table. But if there's anybody who does not yet know the love of Jesus Christ through faith in him and his sacrifice on the cross, pray that they would skip this communion but come and talk with me, come and talk with Dave, come and talk with the other on duty about how they can start a relationship with Jesus Christ today.