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 want to 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.

The Song of Songs as Idealized Love Poetry and Wisdom Literature

We're going to 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, 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. It's kind of been humdrum in 1 Timothy. 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 going to 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 going to 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 going to 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 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 want to 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 going to take her flocks? What is all of this stuff going on? 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. That's going to be my target as we move through the book together. I have to confess that three things combined to make me give you a little bit of a service announcement at the front end of this to clarify a couple of things.

I'm a dad, which means I like puns. 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. Those two things are true of me. I love a good pun. I work with words all day, and equally, the negative side of things is I used to be a middle school boy who never, ever missed a double meaning.

That was me. Whether it was intended or not, I did not miss them. I'm going to state this right from the get-go. I'm going to 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. 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.

That's what she said, jokes or anything like that. We may laugh occasionally together at things that just happen to go that direction. 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. The third thing is it's a book in the Bible. 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. 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.

If that's the only thing that you get out of this, then I think you're doing it wrong. 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 has won, we are his bride.

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

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, like 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 as 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 going to 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 going to encourage you to grab your scripture journal, your device, or your Bible, and open up to Song of Songs 1, 1 through 8.

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 1, 1 through 8. The interesting thing is, I'm going to 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 want to 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, oh 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, oh 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 doughnuts, take advantage of that. If you need the restrooms, they're out the double doors down the hallway on the left-hand side.

Are They Married? Desire Before and After Marriage

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 going to dive in. A question that's going to 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 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 where are 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 context in which they're already married. Some of the vignettes or verses of the song demonstrate it, that they're looking forward to it. But longing and desire feature prominently in this text and somewhere 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 going to 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 or 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 going to 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 want to 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 a thousand 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 entitled, in the title, and it's a love song, and it says that he wrote over a thousand 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 kind of, 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. I hear 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. One of 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 imminently 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. And he says, this is what would be better. And what he comes back to in his idealized, and I want to 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 is not, 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.

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 want to 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, fairly reliable. So we see this kind of back and forth between her and him and then this group of others that we're going to 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 into 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 going to 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's 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 get 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 way. 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 dode in Hebrew, a word that occurs so many times in this that I'm going to mention it a lot, and I don't usually throw in, you know, 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 going to be used so much.

The word dode 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 dode 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. 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 night time.

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. 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? 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, has 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. 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.