Song of Songs 8 The End: An Endless Love

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 I'm really glad for the opportunity we have to worship together. I'm glad for all of us and the chance to be together.

We're a church that's seeking to honor God through simple programming, and so when you notice simplicity, the S in Recast stands for simplicity. We value simplicity, which means that we define maturing in the Christian life as growing in three areas.

And when we say simplicity, you might just think, well, things can get pretty complicated in relationships in a church, and there's different programs, and there's different things to be involved in. Well, what we mean by simplicity is a kind of laser-like focus on three areas that we believe that everybody needs to be growing, and that's it.

Like we're saying, those three things are what the church desires of you, and we believe that really, at the end of the day, what God desires of you in community, that He desires us to be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

So we have one program designed for each of those areas. We have a Sunday morning service in which to take in God's Word, believe it, and live it out. And so there's one main thing that the church provides.

Now, we're not suggesting that that's the only thing that you need in terms of your faith. You need to be taking in the Word daily. How many of you know that the things that I say on Sunday morning are gone pretty quickly from your mind?

You need constant reminders.

So that's on you.

What the church is providing is a Sunday morning opportunity to hear the Word. Then we provide community groups throughout the week, and we believe that everybody needs to be growing in community and relationships with one another.

We need accountability. We need people to care for and people to care for us. And then lastly is service. Growing in service means that we've got a lot of different opportunities, a lot of different ways that you can grow in your faith.

I mean, rather grow in your service. You really do grow in faith by using your gifts and your skills in the service of others. So there's a lot of different ways that you can be involved in that. And so it's been really amazing over the last 12 years to see God growing us all more and more in maturity, particularly in those areas of faith, community, and service.

And I commend you for those of you that are involved and are connecting, and then encourage those of you that are not to begin that process of getting connected through community groups and through service.

And obviously you're here, so you're taking on some sense of growing in faith. I trust that this sermon series has been challenging to your faith like it has been to mine. Seeing just how deep this book dives into the idea of romantic love has been a stark reminder to me in a season that amounts to a lot of busyness.

Any of you busy in life? That's supposed to be what you answer? And so what can happen a lot of times is that in the busyness, it crowds out business. So we come to the end of the book, and God in His wisdom made this a short and intense book.

Anybody with me that you're glad that this book doesn't have 60 chapters? Anybody with me on that? It has eight chapters, and we are wrapping it up this morning. Amen? So I think that the cycles of romance and unrealized ideals could potentially become discouraging and disheartening to us if this was a longer book.

But I hope that this series hasn't served as merely a reminder of how we are all failing in the area of sexuality, or failing in our marriages, failing to love like we ought, because we look at this ideal and we know we don't measure up.

But I hope that it's had two other effects on us that have been beneficial. I hope it leads us to the Savior as we see more and more of our own sinful failure to meet the standards within our own lives of what He has set forward for marriage and for singleness.

Second, I hope it has led us to trust in Him in the battle moving forward toward the ideal. Not to become discouraged and disheartened and give up the battle, but rather to recognize that the Spirit alive in those of you who have trusted in Jesus Christ, that the Spirit alive in us is able to carry us forward.

Has more for us. He's not done with us yet, amen? So He's got a plan for us, regardless of what stage of life you are in. If you woke up this morning breathing, which I think you did because you're sitting here.

Hopefully there's nobody not breathing here. If you are and you're alive and you're awake, He has plans for you. He has a design for you for today, and He wants to grow you. I thought more and more about what it means to be a godly husband over the past couple of months.

I have certainly seen my own level of sinfulness and my own level of failure. But I am so glad for the cross of Jesus Christ. And I am so glad that He has saved me. But of course we know that that isn't the end of the matter.

It isn't just the past that's taken care of. I am married. I have a woman in my life to love well. And I have a pattern that is given to me in scripture. And I have the Holy Spirit within me that takes the blueprint of His word.

And says let's build on this and build this into your marriage day by day. And it's a lifelong journey. Our text this morning is going to be wrapping up with a final barrage of cautions regarding romantic love.

The theme of caution throughout the book has taken place in the context of the powerful desires that awakened intimacy brings with it. If you awaken intimacy, it brings with it a powerful force. Romantic love is indeed powerful in the lives of all people.

And the text today will highlight just how powerful a force it can be. It is appropriate and powerful then that this whole song ends with desire.

That's how we're going to end.

It ends with desire just like the place that it began. It started with an invitation and it ends with an invitation. Because romantic love is never finished. Romantic love is never completed between a couple while we still have breath.

For those of us in the room who have already said the till death do us part thing, and that's many of us. We have a calling to care for, to love, and to cherish our spouses all the way to the end. And since this song doesn't end in death, the song ends with another invitation to intimacy.

Because that is what it means to be married and still breathing. To be married and still breathing is a calling to continue to grow in relationship with your spouse. So let's open our Bibles, open our devices, Scripture journals to Song of Songs chapter 8.

We're going to read this in its entirety recast. This is God's holy and precious word. What he desires to communicate. But most importantly, not just communicate. This isn't just an exercise in education.

I hope that as we read it we hear God's gracious words to us that desire to transform us and change us from the inside out. Song of Solomon, Song of Songs chapter 8. She, oh that you were like a brother to me who nursed at my mother's breasts.

If I found you outside I would kiss you and none would despise me. I would lead you and bring you into the house of my mother, she who used to teach me. I would give you spiced wine to drink, the juice of my pomegranate.

His left hand is under my head, his right hand embraces me. I adjure you, oh daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved?

Under the apple tree I awakened you. There your mother was in labor with you. There she who bore you was in labor. Set me as a seal upon your heart. As a seal upon your arm. For love is as strong as death, jealousy as fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.

Others, we have a little sister and she has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister on the day when she is spoken for? If she has a wall, we will build on her a battlement of silver. But if she has a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.

She, I was a wall and my breasts were like towers. Then I was in his eyes as one who finds peace. Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-Haman. He let out the vineyard to keepers. Each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver.

My vineyard, my very own, is before me. You, O Solomon, may have the thousand and the keepers of the fruit, two hundred. He, O you who dwell in the gardens with companions listening for your voice, let me hear it.

She, make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices.

Let's pray.

Warning About Awakened Desire in Song of Songs 8:1-5

Father, I thank you for this series. I thank you for the opportunity that we've had to dive into your word. Even just in a culture and in a world that is just swirling with sexual confusion. Just so much bombarding us time and time again at every turn.

Father, we thank you for your word that helps to clarify your good and gracious design. Your ideal for marriage. Father, I pray that even as we wrap this series up in this final message, that you would bring caution to those whose hearts need caution.

That you would bring wholeness to those who are broken. That you would bring healing and forgiveness to those who feel unforgiven or are unforgiven. Father, that you would heal marriages and bring people back together.

That you would help us to recognize this ongoing, routine, glorious, beautiful calling to love our spouse as well. For those who find themselves in a stage of singleness, to not awaken love before it's time.

Not just because it's the church's standard, but because it's what's best for them at this season and this time. Father, I pray that you would receive our worship to you. Not just merely in singing. We think so often of worship as just singing songs, but that you would receive our worship.

That we would be moved to worship you with our very lives. To worship you with our sexuality. To worship you with the way that you have designed us and the good plan that you have for us. That means for some abstaining, for some leaning in.

So Father, I pray that you would meet us where we're at here this morning. Thank you for the opportunity we have to sing. And I pray that the musicians would be able to fade into the background as we meditate and think about you through the words of these songs.

In Jesus' name. Amen. I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to Song of Songs. Song of Solomon chapter 8. And it's going to outline this way this morning. Give you the outline up front so that you can kind of see as we kind of go through it.

You've got those main points. The first is a warning about desire in verses 1 through 5. The second is a warning about the power of love verses 6 and 7. And then a warning about promiscuity verses 8 through 12.

And then a final invitation. So we have warning, warning, warning, invitation. That's the structure as we're closing out the book of the Song of Songs. So let's jump into the warning about desire first.

Verse 1 would be fun to skip over because it adds a strange level of creepiness. Or at least deflated romance. I hope you see it just like I do. Oh that you were like a brother to me. Not the most romantic words ever uttered by a woman.

Creepy.

She says to him, I wish you were like a brother to me. I had that happen to me once in college.

Literally.

Literally those words. Oh you're like a brother to me. I went to invite a girl out and she literally saw it coming. Commandeered the conversation. And let me know that she thought of me like a brother and wouldn't want anything to get in the way of that.

She also mentioned something in passing in that conversation about dating Jesus in college. I went to a Bible college. And I was totally friend zoned in that conversation. She thought of me like a brother and that was not going anywhere.

But what's going on in verse 1 is that she is merely stating in a culturally understood way that she wishes she could be close to him in public. You see what you need to understand and what's fundamental to understanding this verse in this context is that all public displays of affection, all PDAs were culturally unacceptable between people of the opposite sex in ancient Hebrew culture and even between spouses.

Even between spouses it was not appropriate. You wouldn't walk down the mall, walk through the market holding hands with your spouse in public in this context. But a brother could hold hands with a sister.

A brother could kiss her on the cheek. A brother could greet her with a hug. And she wishes she could have this type of freedom with her man. Nothing more, nothing less. She's not rooting for incest here, nothing like that.

She is demonstrating a desire for him that goes beyond social convention. She wishes her culture was different so they could walk down the street arm in arm. So when she ran into him out in public she could greet him with a kiss or a hug.

But she can't because of her culture. She is faithful to let him know in this verse that she desires him. That's the main point. Wives here, your man is designed to both want you to want him and equally he is designed to rarely use words to admit it.

But men raise your hand if you want to be seen as desirable to your wife. Seems like a pretty good number there. I think a lot of us do. I think all of us do. But in verse 2 the desire continues to build.

Because she says if they were able to express that romantic relationship she would take him by the hand and lead him to her mother's house and there she would give him spiced wine and sweet pomegranate juice.

That kind of fruity image has always been in wine and intoxication and all that has always been a metaphor throughout this book for sexual intimacy. So I found it interesting that this last week I was reading through Genesis in my quiet time and it's cool how sometimes things overlap, right?

And if you're ever reading something in one place and it's on the radio and it's like, oh man, that totally dovetails exactly what I was reading in my Bible time this week or whatever. But that happened to me this week about this very passage.

I was reading in Genesis and I found the passage where Isaac and Rebekah get married. And it says in Genesis that Isaac took her into his mother's tent and she became his wife and he loved her. And that is the start of their marriage.

We live in a culture where the expectation is that a married couple moves to their own place when they get married. It was not so and has not been so for the majority of human history. It was not the case in the ancient world.

And that's what you have going on there, a shared tent. But the detail here is peripheral to the point. She has a deep desire and she wishes she could just have her hands on him all the time, even in public.

She wishes she could brashly take him by the hand and lead him to bed. And even if the bed seems kind of repugnant to us here in the text, her mother's bed, the point remains her love has been awakened.

Her love has been awakened. And the warning of awakening desires returns for the last time here in verse 4. But only after verse 3 shows where the desire leads. It leads to romantic embraces and acts of sexual intimacy.

And so we see them in that same embrace. His left hand is under her head and his right hand embraces her. And so the first warning in our text today, don't stir up or awaken love until it pleases. That's our first warning.

We have talked about this a lot since the phrase has occurred already three times in the book. This is the fourth time that this warning has been given. It's given just a little subtly different, a little shorter than it normally is.

Usually it has something about gazelles and does in the middle of it. He leaves this off at the end here. But this book about the ideal of marital intimacy has a whole lot to say to single people. It serves as a caution to those who want to just stir the coals of the fire of romance just a little and see what happens.

Let's stir up intimacy between me and my boyfriend, me and my girlfriend and see what happens. And let me just suggest to you that this passage all throughout this book is indicating that you will not be able to control the conflagration that may awaken by you stirring the coals.

I was interested, we had a couple of bonfires out here. Did anybody see the smoke as you were coming in? That smoke was the result of a fire that had been put out. And you know how intense heat and just over time, and it's smoldering again this morning after water had been poured on it.

So you can just see how once you awaken it, you don't know all that's going to come up out of that. It can be very, very, very, very intense. So she goes past the caution in verse 4 to highlight in verse 5 that the awakening in her has caused her to awaken him.

She is with her man, she is leaning on her man, depending on her man, coming up out of the wilderness with her man in verse 5. And she has been out in the countryside with him and it says under the apple tree she aroused him, she awakened him.

This is a sexual word. They are married and this is okay. It would not be okay for the young maidens of Jerusalem to do this and that's why verse 4 is there. But the end of verse 5 connects love, romance, sex, and conception, having children.

Now sex and conception were always much more connected for the vast majority of human history than it is today because of contraception. But having kids has always been shown to be a blessing from the Lord.

To make love was also to consider for the vast majority of human history, to make love was to make babies. Those two things were together. The mention of his mother bearing him and delivering him is there for a purpose.

It highlights that their romantic relationship as husband and wife is seen as a long line of obedience to the original mandate, the original mandate from God, creation mandate, to be fruitful and multiply.

To understand this appeal here during romance to a previous generation of faithful procreators would seem to maybe ruin the mood for most of us. But it sets sexual intimacy in its proper and very good context from which it's been removed fundamentally in our culture.

God designed us all to exist and our very existence is based on obedience to the command of our parents to be fruitful and multiply. So this first warning looks like this. Here's the rabbits, there you go.

Human race, the rabbit race, whatever. So it looks like this. This is what Solomon is writing in this song and this is his warning. Hey single people, playing around with intimacy opens up a floodgate of desire that will drive you towards sexual expression.

It results in waking up one morning in bed in his arms or waking up one morning in bed in her arms. And further it is to dabble with the design of God for procreation. Verse 5 is there to remind us all of one of the really awesome blessings of sexual intimacy which is the production of children.

But it's also a caution that the blessing of children can also come in the wrong context of extramarital sex. And we all know that to be true but the text of scripture knows it and wants to make sure we're attentive to it as well.

Children are always a blessing from God. The context is not always a blessing from God. So the second warning in the text is a warning about the power of love. That's both within marriage and outside.

A warning that equally applies to both singles and those who are married. Intimacy is more than a physical romp in the hay. She says to her husband, this is a paraphrase, set me as a seal on your heart, set me as a seal on your arm.

Here's my paraphrase, be imprinted with me. That's what she says to him. Be imprinted with me. A seal was a ring or a cylinder that was pressed into wax or clay and when the wax would cool or the clay would dry, it would bear a unique imprint of whatever was on the ring.

So the ring had a design, maybe a letter or something like that. It could have your monogram on it or something like that. You print it and now that declares some type of ownership over that thing. But it also is a seal that has to be broken.

The clay either has to be broken in order for something to be open or the wax seal over a letter has to be broken and you can tell that you're not the first one there. She says, let your heart bear my imprint like a seal.

In your thoughts, here's what she's getting at, in your thoughts throughout the day, in the way you fight your battle against lust, in the way you pray, pray to God for me. In all of your decisions, let them be flavored by consideration of me.

She wants the seal in two different places and those two places have a significance. The seal on the heart is likely the image of the inner life, the part of a person you can't see. How many of you right now are having some kind of conversation in your head?

Nobody else around you can hear it. Nobody else is attentive to it. But there's something else going on inside of you despite the fact that you look like you're just sitting there. You can have this dialogue and this inner life that's going on inside of you.

That's the place where all of that's going on. That's the heart. That's the interior of you. But the arm is the place of action. It's the place where stuff gets done. That's the image of the arms moving to accomplish things.

What she's getting at here is set me as a seal on your heart. Set me as a seal on your arm. Imprint me on you. She wants all of him to be devoted to her and I want to clarify. She wants all of him devoted to her and that's not over and against God.

Certainly you might have a question in your mind. Isn't this in the Bible? Isn't God supposed to be his everything? Isn't God supposed to be imprinted on his heart? How in the world can he be devoted to her?

But it's not over and against God that she wants her imprint to be on him. But it's over and against other women. Now some might say one of the worst things that you could do in the tattoo category. But one of the worst things you could do in the tattoo category is to imprint your spouse's name on your arm.

Because that's just spelling.

It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be.

Maybe that's biblical here. Imprint me on you is what she's saying. I want you to be known as my man. I'm good with that and I want that. Let me be special to you and consider in all that you think and do.

That's what's going on here.

Married couples, let me encourage you to protect your heart against all others. You pledged that when you got married. Let your spouse be a seal on your heart. Like a tattoo on your arm. Both in your thought life and in your outward actions.

Let your spouse be the definitive owner of your romantic and intimate attentions and affections. And here's why. She gives a why to that. Why do I want to be a seal on your heart? Why do I want you to set me as a seal on your arm?

Here's why. Because love is as strong as death. Romantic love, particularly, is as strong as death. Where the word strong could more powerfully be translated as tenacious as death. It pursues a person.

Love is as tenacious as death. It holds those caught in it captive. And jealousy is as fierce as the grave. Here we see the first, really kind of, maybe it's the second to some degree. But what I would say is the first real deep concession to the fallen world that we find in this idealized love song.

There's a concession here. Jealousy comes in only in a world where the ideal isn't realized. And in this case, she wants to be his only love. Because she is caught in the strong death grip of romantic love and intimacy.

And she knows that the undercurrent of jealousy will pull her under if he is opening his heart and breaking that seal toward others. In his heart, if he's entertaining the thought of other women or his actions toward other women.

And she says, it's going to destroy me. It's going to carry me to the grave. Jealousy is that strong. And it has for many people. I want to point out, what are we talking about when we're talking about this kind of love, this deep kind of love.

This is not the bastardized love of American culture that seeks only to possess. I suggest to you that there is a twisted, broken, it's done violence to the idea of love. That what I would say most often passes as love in our culture.

When we say it, we mean to possess something. To want to have it. She has been giving throughout the song. She has not been merely taking. She belongs to him and he equally belongs to her. So don't let your mind slip into a selfishness on her part.

She is rather defining the exclusive nature of romantic love as part of his pure design when she evokes images of jealousy. She says, this kind of love is like flashes with flames of fire. Like the very flames of the Lord himself.

True love, true love, true love has a jealousy built into it. It's like a module attached to true love. Even God himself will use the word jealous for his own love, his own perfect love. Has a jealousy component to it.

It is part of what love is. And God himself is the source of this burning and powerful love that all of us, most of us in the room have experienced. As strong as death, as fierce as the grave, like the consuming flames of the almighty.

That is what love awakens in a heart. So spouses, set the one you pledged your love to as a seal on your heart. As a seal on your arm. Both internally and externally. I love this following quote because of both the poignancy, I think it's a powerful quote, but it's also surprising the source.

I'm not going to give you the source until the end. A great theologian says these words. It's powerful, listen to the words, you'll see them written up there, take it in. Love is like a friendship caught on fire.

In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as cold, deep burning and unquenchable. Talking about the maturation of love.

Who said these wonderful, amazing words? It sounds like he was very attentive to the song of songs here. Bruce Lee, martial artist. Apparently he had a way with words as well as a way with his hands. He had the whole package there.

What he's getting at there in the quote is kind of really similar exactly to what the text is saying. Many waters cannot quench this kind of romantic love. Flash floods cannot drown out the burning flames once awakened.

Don't stir it up until the seal is in place. Further at the end of verse 7, love cannot be purchased. As a matter of fact, it says very directly in verse 7, many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.

If a man offered for love all the wealth of his household, he would be utterly despised. Even attempting to buy love would bring shame or embarrassment on you. It would be embarrassing to even offer money for it.

Now in contrast to this, and I only point this out to help clarify exactly what the book itself has been getting at all along. You can buy sex, but you can never buy love. And this once again demonstrates that the love this book, the Song of Songs is talking about, is so much deeper than merely physical intimacy.

So much more than two bodies. Physical intimacy, physical sexual intimacy is sold every night in cities around the world. But love has never been bought. The caution here in the text, love is powerful once awakened.

Take it seriously. Those of you who have pledged it and have given it, take it on as a seal. Just like death has its own brand of permanent power, so too does love. The third warning is a warning about promiscuity.

Warning Against Promiscuity and the Value of Chastity

In verse 8 we have some strange text really here throughout this section. We have probably the brothers of a young lady speaking, a young girl speaking here. And although it says in the ESV it will have others, you can put a BR in front of that and it's probably more accurate to what's going on there.

Get that from others to brothers. But they are speaking of a younger sister who they are charged with protecting. And I've mentioned before in the book that it was a charge and has been down through the ages for brothers to take care of their sisters.

It's something that we don't necessarily formalize in our culture today. But it might be to our detriment that we don't do that. But she is pre-adolescent but they are anticipating that she will soon go through puberty.

And will be pledged or spoken for shortly after that. But what should they do in the meantime is what this is getting at. They propose two potential scenarios for this young sister. Either she is a wall or she is a door.

And they really only give two categories. If she is a wall, which means rejecting all sexual advances in her youth. Then they will celebrate her and encourage her in that. With adding to her resolve battlements of precious silver.

If she is a wall then we will decorate that resistance for her. We will endorse it, encourage it, support it. But in practice, in real life, this is probably just that celebration and encouraging here.

It's not real silver that they are giving her or anything like that. But they are going to celebrate her choice to wait until the seal of marriage to awaken love. But what if she is a door? In other words, what if their little sister proves to be promiscuous or sexually curious?

Then what? Because they will enclose her with boards of cedar. This is not saying that they are going to literally lock her in a closet. Brothers have been known to do that from time to time. And it doesn't even necessarily mean what I kind of picture.

And that's that they might end up hitting some guys with a 2x4 made of cedar or something here.

I don't know.

But I would suggest that there are two ways to read this. And I would suggest to you that there is a way that is probably pretty popular in our culture. Would be a way to take this passage on. I think that way is misogynistic.

The other way is a way of beauty. To take this misogynistic thread is to ask in this text, what about the guys? And I would recommend to you and commend to you the entire rest of the Bible to clarify that men are not let off the hook by the instructions of God regarding sexual deviancy and sin.

Men are indeed called up short too. Just not here in this specific text. But you may even reject the notion of men or in this case brothers as the protectors of sisters. And if you're kind of looking at that kind of going, I don't really know how that fits in with our modern culture.

I don't really know if that's a good thing or not. Let me just encourage you to step back and see the tender care and beauty of a big brother seeing it as his role to protect his little sister. God has placed, and I would suggest this to you unashamed, unashamed.