Song of Songs 7 Focused Desire

You're listening to the podcast of 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, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and it's really good together, together with God's people, to praise Him. How many of you are glad to be in the house of the Lord this morning?

Amen. It's good that we grow together in faith, in community, and in service. God has designed us in such a way that we need others, and others need us. And if you're here to take in a show, and that's kind of what your MO has been regarding church, I hope that you move past that quickly to community and connecting with others, and that you begin to make that a priority by checking out different opportunities they have, like the service day, or community groups, or things like that, and begin to really forge those relationships here.

I hope that you see the value of the purpose of gathering, and that is that we are the church, and so very excited about that. Our church is an acronym for our core values. We value replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

You see that on the plaque back there above the donuts? And those are the things that we're all about. We want to spread the work God has done in us through replication. We want to see other people experience God through the gospel like we have, and then we also have set it a goal to plant another church.

God has not provided us a church planter yet, but would encourage you to please keep praying for that as well. We value community, and we want to be a blessing to the place where God has planted us. That happens to be Matawan right now, and we want Matawan to be blessed that we are here.

We don't want to be one of those churches that if we were to close our doors and go away, they'd be like, oh, there was a church there? I didn't even notice. We want to be a church that actually has an impact on the world around us.

We want to always be trending toward authentic relationships. That means that when you walk in the door, if you've had a hard week, you can say to somebody, I've had a hard week. You don't have to put on a mask and pretend that this has been a fabulous week if it hasn't.

But on the flip side of that, have any of you ever had something celebratory, anything good go on in your life and there was nobody to celebrate with you? That's even worse than when you're mourning and there's nobody to mourn with you.

When something's good and you're like, who do I call? I got nobody to call. So we want to be a people who celebrate with those who are celebrating and are mourning with those who are mourning. We value simplicity in programming so that we can have some margin in our lives for relationship.

That's why there's not a program every night of the week here at Recast Church. We want you to be able to get to know your neighbors so that you can do that replication thing in the lives of your neighbors and co-workers and things like that.

And we most importantly value the truth of God's Word. It's not last because it's least. It's last because it ties everything else together. We value truth and it's fundamental that the Bible is the truth of God's Word.

It guides us into the knowledge of who He is. Now we believe that the Bible is the Word of God which means that all of it is beneficial to us. Even these increasingly repetitive sections of racy poetry that we've been going through in the Song of Songs.

Now I want to warn you ahead of time and we've talked about this in the past. We've talked about the PG -13 rating of these messages. I am going to say some things guaranteed this morning that you will not expect to hear in a church.

I'm going to say some things this morning that you do not expect to hear in a church. But nothing that I say this morning is going to be meant for shock value. It is all intentional and it is all with the purpose to explain the text of Scripture and try to bring it to light better for us.

God is concerned for expressing to us some intentionally provocative expressions of marital intimacy. We're going to see that in the text today. We're blushing our way through this book because some of the things that are talked about, some of the content is indeed blush worthy.

Simultaneously it is not crass in nature, it is not trying to provoke or trying to shock us. It is about real life. We have two more messages in this Idealized Love Song this morning and the next week.

It's been very encouraging but also very valuable to me to preach through this book. I hope it's been beneficial to you as well. Poetry is not my forte and a penchant for romance is not a natural quality that I possess.

It's something that I have to work at and I think many of the guys in the room would agree with me on that. We come to the text this morning that has our king yet again praising the beauty of his wife.

I think God is telling us something here men, very fundamental by the sheer volume of compliment that this husband here in an Idealized Love Poem heaps upon his wife. It's over the top and it gets to be repetitive and it gets to be time and time again.

He's talking about her beauty and her great and intense value to him. And we need to be quick and frequent with life-giving encouragement to our wives, those of you that are married here. We need to leave her with no question that she is the one for us.

And lest you think this is a message for only married people, I want to encourage everyone to consider that as we read this book, we are not meant to consider the whole thing as just fun and games and bedroom antics.

The whole thing is the serious, important, and vital self-giving that is required in marriage, that is fundamental to what a healthy marriage is. And by the way, all of this takes into account aging.

None of it has to do, I mean we have a tendency to think that this romance is all about, it's like that's the purview of the young. When we get older, this doesn't matter to us anymore, it absolutely does.

But the value of my wife increases with age. Anybody testify to that? The value of my wife increases with age. It doesn't decrease with age. It's not like the beauty parts of this are just like for the young, not at all.

Not at all. And some may listen to these messages, and because they've listened to these messages, may actually choose to not get married. Now we value marriage highly here as a church. The Bible values, God values marriage highly.

Matter of fact, He values it so highly that you ought not to get married if you do not intend to follow through. Like that's what I'm trying to communicate. That's what this text is communicating. Some might listen to these messages and never get married as they consider what a high and serious calling it is to love one other very well.

The most fundamental and difficult decisions of life, anybody notice this as you've aged? The most fundamental and difficult decisions of life are made in your youth. They are young decisions that we often don't think well through.

Many will get married simply because it's the next step. And I fear that many marriages end poorly because they didn't start with any serious consideration of what it takes for a man to love and truly love a real woman, and for a woman to truly love a real man.

You hear in this book some ideals and standards expected in a healthy marriage, and they do not come naturally. But how many of you in the room that are married, as I kind of add that caveat there, would say your marriage has been an immense blessing in your life?

It's been an amazing thing. And so I don't want to scare people off of it, but I want to say how many of you also would raise your hand and say it's been hard work?

It's work.

It's work, and it also provides great blessing and great reward. Just like anything in life that provides great blessing also requires some effort. So let's open our Bibles or your devices or your scripture journals to Song of Songs, Chapter 7.

We're going to read this together, Song of Songs, Chapter 7. We'll read it in its entirety, even the awkward parts. And we're almost done with this book, guys. We've got one more chapter to go, and we will have read the whole book together, and we will blush our way through these last two chapters.

Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, Chapter 7.

He.

How beautiful are your feet and sandals, O noble daughter! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat encircled with lilies.

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools and hashbin by the gate of Bath-Ribbon.

Rabim.

Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, which looks towards Damascus. Your head crowns you like caramel. Not caramel, but caramel. And your flowing locks are like purple. A king is held captive in the tresses.

How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all of your delights. Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit.

O may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine.

She.

It goes down smoothly for my beloved, gliding over lips and teeth. I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages. Let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom.

There I will give you my love. The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and beside our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you. O my beloved.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you again for your word. I thank you for a word that is, as far as knowing where this text goes and leads me in this sermon, I know that it brings deep conviction, and it ought to bring deep conviction to all of us.

So Father, I pray that you would prepare our hearts for the things that you desire to communicate to us. It is such a major thing that marriages here are centered on you first and foremost, and the forgiveness and the grace that we've been given that we can then extend to our spouse, and that's very fundamental.

And Father, on a very surface level, but a very important level, it is so vital and important that men let their wives know that their desire is for them. So Father, I pray that you would correct all of us in the areas where we have gone wayward, that you would remind us of the cross this morning, even now as we come to singing songs before you.

How in the world could we sinners come into the presence of a holy God? How could we come into your presence with any gladness or with any joy? Without the blood of Christ, we couldn't. But because of the sacrifice of your Son, we have hope in your presence.

We have joy, we have gladness, we have peace, we have a future. And we have hope in our marriages, hope in our homes, hope in the church, hope in this life, only in Christ. So I pray that that would produce a gladness within our hearts that would overflow into our worship this morning, that we would lift our voices with gladness and with joy, that everybody here would be moved in your presence, not by the words, not by the song, not by the performance of the musicians, but Father, because you are present here and we are contemplating and considering the great salvation that has been given to us through Jesus Christ.

And it's in his name that I pray. Amen.

You can go to be seated and, like I say, every week, get comfortable. If you need to get more coffee or donuts,.

It looks like there's some still left back there. So don't rush, no elbows, but there are some left. And then if you need to use the restrooms at all, either due to embarrassment or any other reason, you can go out the barn doors down the hallway on the left-hand side.

If you just need to skip out for just a second.

I'm going to tell you honestly, this is probably the strongest language I will use in a sermon. So I want to make sure that you guys are all aware of that. This is kind of maybe a last call. If you're not comfortable with your kids sitting in here and listening to it, we did send out an email expressing that, and there are some things for kids to do, even if it just means that they can go back and sit in room,.

Let's see, five, six.

They could go back and sit in room six if you wanted them to do that, maybe give them a Bible and something to read.

But that's up to you.

The Bride and Groom in Song of Songs 7

Let me start off by saying here, keep your Bibles open to Song of Songs chapter seven. The things I'm saying are coming from that. None of it is my intention to make you uncomfortable or awkward. The text will do that for you, and we're going to talk through what this book has been leading towards.

She knows, let me state this emphatically to start off with. This is fundamental to the message this morning, and I'll start with stealing my own thunder. She knows he loves her. She knows he loves and cherishes and desires her.

Not that he desires women, he desires and loves and cherishes her. In the middle of our text this morning, she blurts this out, I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. She knows she is loved, and he has been persistent and adamant and lavish in his declarations that she is delightful to him.

She is beautiful to him, and she is further, multiple times throughout this book, he said, you're the only one for me.

You're the only one for me.

Now, we maybe have in our culture an understanding of a leery and creepy man who will let his eyes roam up and down a woman's body in a way that causes discomfort. But I hope we're all on the same page that this is merely an issue of misplaced attention.

In the book of Genesis, God brought Eve to Adam, and they were both naked and unashamed. And Adam was enthusiastic about this beautiful naked helper that was brought to him. And he was so enthusiastic that he shouted out, Whoa, man!

And the name stuck. There you go. It can feel in this book, by the point that we come to in chapter 7, that we're stuck in a bit of a cycle. He is complimenting her, they make love. They talk about fruit, and then they make love.

She compliments him, and they make love. They are apart and get back together again, kiss and make up and make love. And now, once again, we have him complimenting her appearance, once again, and guess what they're going to do before the end of the text this morning.

You guessed it.

But what do you expect from a love song? What are your expectations when you listen to a love song? Are they not repetitive still? Isn't there some repetition in the love songs that we listen to? Are they not intimate still?

I find it ironic that as I've been studying this book for the past couple of months, my mind has wandered back to songs and artists that I wasn't supposed to listen to when I was a kid. ACDC came to mind.

I went over some of the lyrics of their songs this week just to kind of contrast and compare them to the song of songs. And the interesting thing is, just in the mind of youth, like going back to my 80s experiences as a teenager, I looked at some of these songs and I thought, these are not completely that far off of this book.

I'm being serious.

It's just that the context is in marriage. Did you hear the difference? But some of these songs are just like shook me all night long.

It's just not that far off of what we're reading here in this text.

Some language in there I don't necessarily endorse, but aside from that, it's pretty close. I mean, that would make me uncomfortable to read the lyrics to that song in front of you.

It would equally make me uncomfortable to read the lyrics.

Of this song in front of you, and both have that awkwardness to them, that blushing kind of feeling. So we return to the song where he told the young women of Jerusalem. That's where we come into chapter 7.

Back at the end of chapter 6, he told the young women of Jerusalem that his dance is only for her. Her beauty is for his eyes. She is captivating in her beauty like a dance between two armies was what was said last.

And the word dance there leads right into this text where he takes her in from the feet up. Her feet are moving in dance, and he begins at her feet. He calls her a noble daughter, demonstrating some royalty there, and says that her feet are beautiful in sandals.

He moves up to her thighs and hips and says she has curves in all the right places. He basically says his girl is thick. Did I use that right?

Somebody? Maybe even the fact that I used it made it wrong. I don't know, but just so that you guys know,.

The word thick, if you look it up in the Urban Dictionary, it means curves in the right places.

It's actually what the text...

If I was translating this, I might use that word for it. Maybe it would be better to quote one of my favorite songs by Matt Kearney called Money, a song that I play for my wife when I want to make her blush.

We joke about it, and our family listens to it sometimes. He says these lines, First class like Cabernet. No, she ain't no runway.

Round-tripper curves ought to have their own runway.

He's admiring the curves. And again, jewels are used as a metaphor for her value,.

And I want to make sure that you understand.

That this is not merely physical attraction. They love one another. They care about one another outside of the bedroom.

When they're clothed, they love each other.

He is speaking of her appearance, and yet more than that, he is highlighting her great value to him, where he uses jewels as a metaphor,.

And she used gold as a metaphor for him,.

And costly gems and all of that. And I want to point out, charm is deceitful. The same person who wrote this also wrote in Ecclesiastes. Charm is deceitful, and beauty is empty or vain and fleeting. But he loves his woman and finds in her great, great blessing and great value in her.

And we come the closest here in the text to the whole book to see a mention of God at the end of verse 1. It's the closest we come to God being mentioned. He's not named in the entire book. But note that he sees her as a work of a master craftsman.

He is not merely looking at his wife like a slab of meat. He sees in her a design, a gift from the master craftsman. He is thankful to God, and he rehearses her beauty. Now, our intimacy within marriage and even our physical sexual expressions are a gift from God in marriage.

And rather than what the culture around us would dictate and point us to as the worship of sex, we don't worship sex. Christian married couples enjoy it as a gift from our loving creator. But sex is never the point.

External beauty is not the end goal of life. Rather, it is merely one more launching point for thankfulness to our kind and gracious creator. Well, he moves up, and it says in the text, in the English Standard Version, he moves up to her navel.

He doesn't move up to her navel. After studying a lot here, and the word there is just as uncomfortable as you might think, and so I'm just going to say the word genitals. That got weird. But both uses for that word, for navel or for genitals, are used in Hebrew.

The word is rare.

It's not used commonly in the Hebrew language. And translators seem to trend towards being less provocative, and therefore they're not going to go there. But the text should. And it is likely here that it is, I'll say it, it's speaking of oral sex.

And while we're already feeling uncomfortable, my voice is starting to constrict as I'm talking.

Am I blushing yet?

I probably am. That's good. Yeah, this is for you guys.

This is for God.

I'm talking about his text here. But let me say that this love song seems to answer an honest question that I have honestly received from people during this series. So people have been faithful to email me and ask me questions and talk with me about this, and the question has come up, and it's come up more than one time in 12 years of ministry.

Is oral sex okay in Christian marriage? And oral sex does not appear to be a sin, according to this love song. As a matter of fact, not just this obscure passage, but in multiple places. And if you just want to jot these down, back in verse 11 of chapter 6, and in verse 3 of chapter 2, there were allusions, and many scholars believe that oral sex is at least implied in the terminology, if not directly, the intention of the text.

So when I said last week that sin has no place in a Christian bedroom, that evoked questions about, what about this, what about this, what about this? And I said that we should avoid things that are harmful, that are coercive, that are degrading, that are a practice of sin.

And of course, when I say practice sin,.

Then that enters in a whole lot of,.

Well, is oral sex sin, is this sin, is this sin? But I believe that it must be arrived at by a couple, in discussion together, but hear me carefully, church. Consent, the standard of consent,.

Of what you both want to try,.

Or what you're both into, in the bedroom as Christians, that consent is not the only standard. What my wife will or won't do, or what your husband will or won't do, is not the standard. There is a higher standard above and beyond that.

Now certainly over those gray area issues, there is a discussion to be had, and what's comfortable and what's not. But for example, let me just give you an illustration to put some teeth to this. I was going to say put some flesh on it, but you'll see why that's weird.

But using pornography by a couple, even if both were to consent to it, would still be sin.

Do you understand that? Does that make sense?

It's still lusting after others, it's still bringing others in, it's not appropriate. And so when I say what is known to be sin,.

Clearly from scripture,.

Is to be absent from the bedroom of Christians. And if that produces more questions than it does answers for you, then feel free to reach out to me and Linda. Some of you have been faithful to just ask questions, and some of you may have follow-up questions as a result of that.

So feel free to bring that to my inbox, and we can talk that through. Even if you want to sit down and meet with Linda and I, we can talk that through with you as well. But her navel is intoxicating with mixed wine.

He goes on, and I want to tell him,.

Slow your roll, Casanova, for just a second. Her belly is like a heap of wheat.

Any of you women signing up for that compliment?

Is there something weird going on here?

Well, wheat is obviously a commodity in that era.

It's a significantly good thing. There may be even a color reference there, or something like that. The word heap just sounds uncomfortable. The king's compliments are getting carried away here. I think that it's a compliment.

I have to take on faith. Her breasts are like two fawns. He's said that multiple times already. Perfectly twinned like twins of a gazelle. Her neck is stately and holds her head up in dignity like an ivory tower.

Her eyes are like deep pools of water and heshpen. Just like Debbie Gibson, he could totally get lost in her eyes. Or even drown, I think, is kind of the image there. It's a deep well is her eyes. Her nose...

What?

Her nose is like a tower of Lebanon pointing toward Damascus. I'm going to take on faith. A lot of this I take on faith that it's a compliment. I don't see it. I'm not sure that there's.

A woman in this room.

That is eager for a commentary on her nose. I don't think there's a woman.

In the room that's like...

You might skip that one. I think culturally that's past. Must be an ancient Jewish thing. Her head is like Mount Carmel. I mentioned not caramel, but Mount Carmel is a beautiful mountain in the north of Israel.

Her flowing locks are like the very costly purple dye that was reserved for royalty. It is actually presumed by the language that's used here that she very well may have even.

Dyed her hair purple.

That would be a sign of lavish royalty to be able to afford that. But it's possible that that's even the case.

Here in the text.

Here he once again identifies that he is held captive by her. In this particular case he's held captive by.

Her hair.

Rapunzel was held captive in a tower with long hair. This man is held captive.

By her long hair.

That's what we've got going on here. He's like, your hair is beautiful and it captures me. He summarizes his assessment in verse 6 by saying,.

She is beautiful,.

She is pleasant,.

He calls her loved,.

And she has many, many, many delights. It isn't just one thing about her. It isn't just one feature about her that he's tripped over. He is captivated by.

All of her.

He wants to act on what he sees. He says she is like a date palm and her breasts are like its clusters. Wow, we're going there. In verse 8 he cannot get more graphic about his desires. He wants to climb the tree and lay hold of its fruit he says.

This guy spends a lot of time declaring what he wants to do. He blesses her breasts with a wish prayer for them to be sweet like clusters of grapes and he wishes for her breath to be like the scent of apples and for her mouth to be like a fine wine.

This man wants to climb the palm tree and hold the fruit or to use a previous metaphor he wants to visit the petting zoo where the twin fawns live. Or to go even further back, I'm milking this one but he also wants to go back to the study of the Old and the New Testament.

Did I just say milk it in the middle of that? I told you there was going.

To be at least one of those.

I need a free pass on that one. That was not intentional at all. I'm sorry.

Not trying to be crass.

Up here. There you go.

We got our one out of the way this morning. Again he finds her kisses to be intoxicating. She wants their love to be like a fine wine that goes down smoothly over lips and teeth. Poetic language and all the floweriness of that poetic language about their love going down smoothly.

And in verse 10 we find out what all of this has produced in their marriage. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is the key, the linchpin to all of this. She.

Is his.

She is his. She has no qualms identifying herself, even identifying her body as being given over to her husband. And she is again well aware that his desire is.

For her.

Let me say that again.

She is confident.

In this text that his desire is for her. Folks, we're talking about an ideal marriage. We're talking here about the ideal standard of romance within marriage, within Christian marriage, within a godly marriage.

Do you see how this ties in with the call to be a husband? With the call to be a wife? Let me state this more clearly than I have so far in this text, and I'm going to speak primarily to the men for just a moment.

It's very beneficial for the women to listen in. Married men, let me talk to you specifically for a moment. Is it clear that your desire is for your.

Wife?

Further, let me just suggest to you that you single men ought to take this on to some degree as well. Is it.

Clear that if God were to bring you.

A wife, that you are practicing now what it.

Takes for your desire to be for her?

Would your wife, those of you that are married, would your wife be able to make this statement, his desire is for me? Or would she say more likely that your desire is for internet pornography? Like Matt Chandler said in a sermon, and I don't think I can improve upon it as an indictment, he said.

Maybe a few years ago in a sermon that I was listening to, Matt Chandler, the pastor of the Village Church in Texas, he said, how many men are up late at night in another room lusting after pixels on a screen when your real breast-having wife sleeps in the next room?

I would.

Suggest to you, and I'm leveling an indictment at us all men, men can be lazy brutes. Lazy because loving real women with real breasts takes effort, it takes time, it takes words, it takes affection, and it takes understanding.

And these are things that internet pornography never asks of a man. It never asks of anything.

From you.

Virtual sex impedes by necessity real intimacy. God calls us into the real world with real people, with real benefits and real rewards. This ideal love song makes sure that we know that the ideal is that a wife knows that her husband's desire is.

For her alone.

Well, my hunch is that I'm speaking to many people who have failed at that standard, and if you have failed, this is not meant to make you throw in the towel, it's not meant to make you just go, I'm a terrible person, and I'm a terrible person who's done terrible things.

It's time to reestablish a commitment to work on growing intimacy in your marriage, or maybe in your future marriage. And no man can be both engaged in internet pornography and cultivating a holy desire for God or his.

Wife. The two are.

Mutually exclusive. And anybody who would disagree is merely self-justifying.

Say, yeah, I can.

Love my wife and have a little porn on the side, not at all. You can't. The standard of beauty for every husband is to be his wife, but entertaining images of other women's bodies will begin to move the standard of beauty outside of your marriage and away from the real and into the virtual fiction of perpetual youth and effortless.

Virtual sex.

So let me state again very directly another truth. Every woman that participates in pornography, that's ever been videoed in pornography, is either a victim or a prostitute.

She's either a victim.

Or a prostitute. She's either forced through sex trafficking, or she's having sex for money. She's in a contract. Every woman in pornography.

Is also, equally,.

A daughter. Every woman in pornography is made in the image of God and has immense, maybe unrealized, dignity. She is not an object, men. She is not yours.

She's not yours.

And if you.

Would like help with your problem with pornography, I have a suggestion, men. Let's start with prayer. Let's start there. If you would be willing to get together and pray once a week, I would like to hear from you.