Song of Songs 5:2 - 6:13 Conflict and Resolution

You're listening to the podcast, 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.

Announcements, Giving, and the Church Potluck

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and we are not going to slide past announcements. I'm actually gonna give the announcements. So, if you're new here, or even if you've been here for a little while, I encourage you to fill out the connection card that you received when you walked in.

Turn that in back at the welcome table, and we'll give you a free T-shirt or a coffee mug back there, your choice, just as a way of saying thank you for being willing to share your information with us.

We do have an app that is the primary way that we choose to get out communication to you. If you go to the Google Play Store or the App Store, you can look up Recast Church there. You can find our app.

It's got all the up-to-date information that is available there. And then some information in that worship folder that you received when you walked in, you'll notice that it's not chock full of information, primarily because we wanna drive all of that information towards the app as much as possible.

And then you received an offering envelope when you walked in. You can recycle that back there. There's no pressure on you here. We don't want to add any pressure around the area of giving, so we don't pass an offering plate.

We just give you that envelope every week. It's between you and God, in terms of worship and relationship with him. If you choose to use that, there's a slot in the welcome table out there where you can use that slot to give.

Otherwise, just throw your envelope. There's a place to recycle it back there so that it doesn't end up on the floorboards of your car, or just a bunch of those stacked in your Bible, or whatever, however that works for you.

Then immediately after the service, there's going to be a potluck. Please stay. Even if you didn't bring food, that's okay. There's gonna be plenty of food to go around, so hang out here afterwards, and we'll have some time to eat some food together and just chat and get to know each other better.

We are better together in community, and we need community, and so encourage you in that direction. I say this, I'm giving a rating to every single one of these messages as we go through the Song of Songs, and I mean them sincerely.

This one is rated PG -13, and I give that the rating. That means that this is the highest rating that I'm gonna give to a sermon. I really genuinely mean this, and I wanna make sure you understand this.

We only got three more messages in the Song of Songs, but when I give it PG -13, I'm actually suggesting to you as parents that my standard would be that I don't think there's anything to gain for a 13-year-old or under to listen to this message.

That's what I'm trying to communicate to you by that rating. I actually don't think it's beneficial for them. I don't think it's helpful for them. So if you have somebody in here, it's okay if there's some rustling during the introduction, and you wanna get your kids out of here, there's some programming back there for them, so you can take them around the corner to the kids' area back there, and they can hang out back there.

But that said, we're gonna dive in. We've been granted another Sunday in which to worship God together. He has been good to us. He has been kind to us. He has given to us his amazing and great love poured out through his son, Jesus Christ, and I hope that you feel that in the gathering of God's people here this morning.

I hope that you lean into the love of God in Christ this morning in community. As we've been going through the Song of Songs, it may be striking that we have a book that's so pointed in terms of being a love song in the Bible.

It really is a book that's very physical in nature. It is very provocative in its content. It can at times feel disconnected and far from the gospel and kind of like, how does this get in the Bible? But all of that changes as we remember that God is our creator, and that the gospel is good news that our God is not a big cosmic killjoy.

He is for the blessing and for the benefit of his people, and he loves us dearly, and it is his delight to give to his people good gifts. He is in the abundant life business. He is in the setting captives free business.

He's in the relationship business, and he is even in the healthy marriage business, and all of these things come back to the central way that we know his love. He made it all good. We broke it through sin, and he is fixing it through the sacrifice of his only son, Jesus Christ, and so in our text this morning, we're gonna see an example of conflict within the marriage of the king and his bride.

A common and age-old conflict. As a matter of fact, a conflict that goes all the way down to maybe even this past week, it's probably likely that this very conflict that they experience here maybe has worked out in your marriage within the last month or couple of weeks or this past week.

This text is honest. Marriage isn't all naked romance. It also involves moments of apathy, moments of busyness, moments of conflict, but we also see in this text that a married couple, for a married couple, it also involves moments of fixing, moments of healing, moments of kissing and making up.

So let's open our Bibles or our devices or your scripture journal to Song of Songs, chapter five. We're gonna start in verse two, and we're gonna go all the way through the end of chapter six, so we're almost reading two whole chapters of the Bible here together.

It's gonna be a little bit longer, but it is good for us to listen together to God's holy word, what he desires for us to hear recast. Again, Song of Songs, chapter five, starting in verse two all the way through the end of chapter six.

She, I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound, my beloved is knocking. Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew and my locks with the drops of the night. I had put off my garment.

How could I put it on? I had bathed my feet. How could I soil them? My beloved put his hand to the latch and my heart was thrilled within me. I arose to open to my beloved, but my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh on the handles of the bowls.

I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not. I called him, but he gave no answer. The watchmen found me as they went about the city.

They beat me, they bruised me, they took away my veil, those watchmen of the walls. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him, I am sick with love, others. What is your beloved more than any, more than another beloved, oh, most beautiful among women?

What is your beloved more than another beloved that you thus adjure us? She, my beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among 10 ,000. His head is the finest gold, his locks are wavy, black as a raven, his eyes are like doves beside streams of water bathed in milk, sitting beside a full pool.

His cheeks are like beds of spices, mounds of sweet-smelling herbs. His lips are lilies dripping liquid myrrh. His arms are rods of gold set with jewels. His body is polished ivory bedecked with sapphires.

His legs are alabaster columns set on bases of gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice is the cedars. His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem, others.

Where is your beloved gone, O most beautiful among women? Where is your beloved turned that we may seek him with you? She, my beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies.

I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine. He grazes among the lilies. He, you are beautiful as terza, my love, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners. Turn away your eyes from me, for they overwhelm me.

Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are like flocks of ewes that have come up from the washing. All of them bear twins. Not one among them has lost its young.

Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. There are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one. The only one of her mother, pure to her who bore her.

The young women saw her and called her blessed. The queens and concubines also, and they praised her. Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?

She, I went down to the nut orchard to look at the blossoms of the valley, to see whether the vines had budded, whether the pomegranates were in bloom. Before I was aware, my desire set me among the chariots of my kinsmen, a prince.

Others, return, return, O Shulamite, return, return, that we may look upon you. He, why should you look upon the Shulamite as upon a dance before two armies? Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word.

It's a challenge to understand all of this poetry and to dig in and to really make sense of it. And Father, even upon this reading, I'm sure there's some confusion. There's difficulty in knowing what are the illustrations pointing to?

What is all of this metaphor about? But Father, I pray that you would help me with accuracy and clarity and with passion about your word to declare this truth here in the presence of your people for their benefit, for their blessing.

Father, that your spirit would superintend this in a way that drives home to our own hearts, especially those in this room who are married and then those who are single, to recognize your desire for them to wait and to not awaken this kind of romance until the right time.

But Father, I pray that you would be working in our hearts the redemption of the cross, the redemption that we need in order to have healthy relationships, in order to resolve conflict within our marriages and our relationships out in the world.

Father, it's only on the basis of the cross that we understand and truly grasp love and forgiveness and healing and resolution to the wounds that we experience from others around us, including our own spouses.

So Father, I pray that you would allow this to be a message of healing, a message of resolution and reconciliation for those who are married, who have wounded one another, for those in other relationships where there have been deep wounds.

I pray that the cross would come in and would compel us to forgive. We have been forgiven so, so, so much. And so Father, I pray that from that place of forgiveness, we would now lift our voices in praise and glorious, just awe over you in these songs that we sing.

Please receive them as worship to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Encourage you to get as comfortable as possible considering the content of what we're gonna be talking about and keep your Bibles open if you've lost your spot to Song of Songs, chapters five and six.

And having that in front of you is only gonna help you to see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's word. We're walking through this poetry together. Our text is gonna outline pretty well this morning.

For those of you that have one of those scripture journals or you're taking notes, it outlines fairly well, although the breaks are a little bit confusing. The first is the conflict. And we see the conflict from verse two of chapter five through verse six, the first part.

And then we see the second part begins again in chapter five, verse six, and goes all the way through chapter six, verse one, and that's the pursuit. And then it ends with the resolution, which is almost the rest of chapter six.

So it's the conflict, the pursuit, and the resolution. Now, whether or not the whole text is a dream is up for debate. You see it right from the get-go that she says in verse two of chapter five, I slept, but my heart was awake.

Well, what does she mean by that? And again, we're talking about poetry. We're talking about a song written by King Solomon in his wisdom, idealizing romantic love between one man and one woman, husband and wife.

And then she says, I was on my bed, but I was awake. So what does she mean by that? Or I was sleeping on my bed, but I was awake. And it's like, well, is she talking about a dream? It's quite likely. But the method of communication here matters little.

It makes more sense of a woman wandering the streets alone at night in her nightgown in that ancient culture, as well as the way that the watchmen treat the Queen of Israel to see this as a dream. The queen was beat up by the king's assigned watchmen, and that seems like the stuff of a nightmare, not the stuff of reality.

And so the conflict begins here right off the bat in verse two. While she was asleep on her bed, she has gone to bed alone. I wanna point that out. She's in bed, she's alone. She has gone to bed alone.

Her husband has been out late. It is late enough for the heavy dew to have settled on the land. He says, my hair is wet with dew, implying that this is pretty late, if not early in the morning, that he is showing up.

He was likely out working among his men, but it's not even explained very clearly. We just know she went to bed alone, and he shows up later. He has come home. He's wet with dew. It's cold outside. He wants to be in his bed with his wife.

Knock, knock, knock. Let me in. He knocks, and he tells her to come unlock the door. He calls her by terms of endearment. The first one, a little bit creepy to us. His sister. He says, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one.

All these cutesy terms for endearment, except for sister, which just creeps us out. But remember from last week, we talked about that creepy title, sister. Why in the world would that be used between husband and wife?

Are they brother and sister? Is this incest? Not at all. The term was a term of endearment that evoked the idea of protection in that ancient culture. He is the protector for her, much like a brother was responsible to protect his sisters.

And so that was a lifelong assignment until marriage. So it was a very common role for a brother to be the protector of his sister until she is married, at which point that protection is expected to be the responsibility of her husband.

And so that's why this is a term of endearment that was used in that ancient culture. But he wants into his room. He's there, he's knocking, he's cold, he's wet, he's on the outside. And how many of you just think, just go ahead and raise your hand just to get you engaged a little bit.

How many of you think that what he wants here is a reasonable request? Go ahead and raise your hand. I think it's fairly reasonable. He wants in his own bedroom. So let me in, he says. But her thinking is expressed in verse three, and it's likely that she said it out loud to him as he's there calling to her from the door.

My love, my dove, my cutie pie, my sweetie, let me in. And she says, I'm already in bed. It's cozy in here. I don't want to get out of the bed. It's kind of cold out there. Anybody ever just, like you get snug in bed and it's like, I'm not getting out.

Like it's not, once you're in there, it's like, nope. And not only that, she says, I've already cast off my clothes. My feet are washed. My feet are gonna get dirty if I walk across the floor, which maybe you need a broom and then you sweep a little bit better, but I don't know.

She's taken off her outer garment and she has washed her feet. And the effort, I want you to just see what is in the way here. The effort required to throw on a robe and to rewash her feet seems fairly minimal to his discomfort outside in the cold.

But these inconveniences deter her from letting her husband in. She is not welcoming in this context even to her own husband in this scenario. Some think she might be teasing and behaving playfully here, but I mean, she does mention her nakedness.

She does mention she has bathed and is in bed. But the nature of the conflict implies that she is at least for a moment caught up in the inconvenience of the whole thing. He makes a more concerted effort to get in and in his eagerness, he puts his hand through the latch to try to unlock the door from the outside and there would have been a hole there for a key and he's trying to reach around and lift the latch, the bar that would have gone down to make sure that nobody from outside could get in and he can't quite get it.

But she sees him trying and her heart leapt within her. She has moved past, suddenly moved past in her heart. She's moved past the headache to increased openness to be together with her man. So she gets up and she applies more myrrh and that's what's going on with the hands dripping with myrrh.

She's applied more sweet smelling, good smelling perfume and she opens the bolt to the door, swings it wide to her man and he's gone. He's gone. She's too late. He asked her to open the door, she said no.

He tried again to get in but there was no way to unlock the bolt from outside. He has felt rejected and she now in the text even expresses that she now feels terrible as well. The phrase that you see in the middle of verse six, my soul failed me when he spoke.

Well, when did he speak? He spoke when he was outside of the door. He's talking to her. He's talking to her kindly. Please, sweetie, come and unlock the door. Let me in and she says my soul failed me.

My heart failed me. I didn't do well in that situation. It can be understood to mean that her inner response betrayed her when he first spoke to her through the door. This wife is wishing, in other words, she had responded differently and had just jumped up and let him in but she didn't.

Her heart told her no and now she regrets it. So let's take a moment to dissect what is a routine conflict within marriages. For some reason, undisclosed, she went to bed alone. That's not ideal. Even though this is a dream, the author Solomon is in charge of the dream as the author of this dream within a song and he knows that there are plenty of times in marriage when a couple are separated.

There are going to be plenty of times that you don't go to bed together at the same time but that's never ideal and if it becomes too frequent, then it can cause a lot of conflict, especially for those of you that have to travel, your company takes you away from your spouse for long periods of time.

How many of you just would acknowledge that that's a tough thing? Like that's not an ideal, that's not a good thing. When you have to travel for business and you're gone and gone and gone, it racks up and it can become a significant conflict in a marriage.

So he speaks sweetly to her through the door but her gut response, her soul's response is to come up with excuses. She's too tired, she has a headache, she has to get up early. I don't know, all these things.

It's cold out there, whatever. But when her heart changes and she is ready, she finds him gone. He ditched her. And ladies, let me just suggest this to you and then I'll suggest something to the men as well.

Ladies, the rejection card is not a pro move. The rejection card is not a pro move. But men, the avoidance in ditching her card is also not a pro move. He says, fine, she doesn't want me, I'm out. And he walks, gets in the car, squeals the tires and drives off.

No words, no talk. He's just gone. He has a bruised ego, do you see that in the text? He has a bruised ego, he's bruised. She has dirty feet and sadness having rejected him. She had to get up anyways.

Now she's standing there cold and nothing. Now I don't imagine many of you have locked your spouse out of the bedroom literally. It may have happened. Don't tell me, I mean, you can tell me about it privately if you need some counseling or something but don't say it right now.

But you may have, and I think this is probably more likely that some of us and many of us have done so, locked our spouses out of the bedroom metaphorically. And this, of course, we know can go either way.

I know men who withhold sex from their wives and I know wives who withhold sex from their husbands and I have counseled both. And yet the passage we looked at last week in 1 Corinthians 7, I'd encourage you to jot that down if you weren't here and go look up that passage, what it has to say about the mutual ownership of each other's bodies in romantic love and the giving and giving and giving of yourself in romantic love and the intention behind marriage is that self-giving.

But that passage indicates communication and agreement regarding sexual intimacy in marriage. You have the right, hear me carefully, you guys, this is the truth. You have the right to say, not tonight, and have that honored.

But you also need to consider how you're going to feel if that becomes a routine. How is he or she going to feel if that becomes a routine? And you also need to, according to scripture, talk it through and come to an agreement about these things.

And unfortunately, many of us men have strong egos that get way too easily bruised. And eventually we're walking away and giving up on even asking anymore. Frank discussions are a good application to this text.

Let me say that again. Frank discussions with one another is a good application to this text. Honesty and talking about your intimacy in marriage. And on this front, let me say that there's a silliness surrounding the debate or the consideration of how frequent is normal.

Why would it matter if you knew the average number of times that married couples globally have sex? Does that matter to you? Talk to your wife, talk to your husband, and figure it out for you. It's up to you.

Figure that out. In our text, we see the conflict. He feels rejected. She wishes, in this text, an ideal marriage. She wishes she hadn't made him feel rejected. She's not twisting the knife. She feels bad for the way she treated him.

And that leads to the pursuit. The pursuit begins at the end of verse six if you see it in the text. The offending party here, this is a good model. This is a good example. The offending party begins the pursuit.

The one who rejected pursues the one who feels rejected. She is trying to find her man. She is seeking to make it right. She calls out for him, but he is long gone. And like in her previous dream, she encounters the city watchman.

And in this text, and not in the previous text, they didn't really factor into the story much at all. But here they beat her and leave her bruised and they take her veil. Now remember that this is a song written by Solomon and we need to understand why he would include this in his song about love.

And I believe after a lot of reading this week, what makes sense to me is that this is here to highlight the insecurity that she feels at being ditched. Of course, everything's kind of dreamland here.

He feels rejected, so he departed to make her pay. And she does indeed feel abandoned by him. She feels unprotected by him. And she wanders the night streets alone. And this insecurity is expressed in a tragic dreamland encounter with bad men.

She rejected him, so he rejected her. He lost out, so has she. And this is the age old stubbornness of living together with another sinful human. How many of you that are married know that you married somebody who's sinful?

You already know that? It's good, I mean I don't have to tell you that you guys know that that's true. And any prince charming that comes along for you single ladies, he's a sinner. Any princess who you go to sweep off her feet, single guys, she's a sinner.

You're gonna have to, the number one thing that I think is a priority, and I say this to everybody that I do premarital counseling for, forgiveness, practice it, get used to it. It is a fundamental established thing that is necessary for a successful marriage.

Learn to forgive, do it often. Practice it. It's going to become a lifestyle for you if your marriage is going to be successful. Anybody that's married wanna say amen to that? Have you had to do some forgiving?

A lot of it. Almost daily. It is just the reality of loving another sinful human. But she is pursuing him, and she is seeking to show him love here in the text. And in verse eight, she enlists the help of the young maidens, probably her young maidens who were with her in her marriage.

They would often have young maidens who would walk in the marriage procession ahead of everybody with lamps, and Jesus gives a parable about those young maidens that would walk like that. But she makes them promise that if they find him, that they inform him that she is lovesick for him.

She says, I'm so sorry for what I did the other night. I'm sorry for making you feel rejected. If any of you find him, let him know I'm lovesick for him, and I feel terrible about what I did. She is desperate to make it up to him.

And so then the chorus of the musical, the others, these young maidens speak up in verse nine, and they have a singing part asking why in the world should they help her find this guy? He sounds like a bum.

This is the group of ladies who get along with the bride and basically say, ditch him. Are you serious? Why in the world would we help you find him? He's a jerk. Look, he left you in the dark. I mean, you were exposed to the watchman.

You were completely out there on your own. What's the big deal about your lover that we should help you? They seem to kind of take her side, don't they? And so she describes him in verse 10 through 16.

Against the counsel of these young maidens, here's my man. Here's what I rejected the other night. He is one in a million, she says. He is radiant and ruddy. He's got a healthy complexion. And by the way, when she says 10 ,000 in verse, is it verse 10?

When she says this in verse 10, my beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among 10 ,000, you're going, well, hopefully there's not like 30 ,000 in the, I mean, how many were in the community, right?

So like, she's got three of them? One for every 1 ,000? I don't know. What you need to understand is that's the largest numerical division expressed in Hebrew and in the Greek language. In a world that was very concrete, what you need to understand is there was not much abstraction.

They didn't go to math class and multiply really huge numbers together. It wasn't really common. I mean, when you think about sitting down and physically counting things, how many of you are gonna sign up to count 10 ,000 of anything?

No. Maybe, anybody? Anybody on that? None of us. None of us are eager to count 10 ,000 feathers or lead weights or anything. We don't want that assignment. Why? Because it's just a large number to count.

Well, everything was concrete back then. You were counting real things. You were counting real oranges. You were counting real fruit. You were counting real people. And so, at the end of the day, counting much more than 10 ,000 or anything that, you know, you can go multiples of 10 ,000, but you really didn't wanna count much beyond that.

So, when the book of Revelation, for example, wants to explain how many angels surround the throne of God, and it wants to say a number that you don't wanna count, a number beyond counting, it literally goes above that.

And it's a big deal in scripture. It says 10 ,000 times 10 ,000. The biggest number that they wanna talk about multiplied by itself. That's myriad and myriad. 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 are the numbers of angels that are around the throne of God praising him.

Uncountable numbers is the idea. So, when she says this, she's saying, he's one in a gazillion. He's one in a million. He's just, he's it. Distinguished among all. His head is the finest gold. Speaking of value, his hair is wavy, and his black is a raven.

None of this gray stuff for the queen, okay? His eyes sparkle. Apparently they didn't even do the touch of gray back then, but I don't know. His eyes sparkle like streams of water, but the whites of his eyes are like doves bathed in milk, super white.

His cheeks are like beds of spices. Well, how in the world are his cheeks like beds of spices? What does that mean? It's likely an allusion to his beard. Men were bearded in those days, and his lips are scented like myrrh.

And I wanna point out that she also is visual. I made a big point of saying that men are visual from the text last week, but this is the only place where she comments on his appearance in the entire love song.

While the man can't stop talking about her beauty all throughout this song. There's a distinction and there's a difference in the way that they respond to one another. His arms are rods of solid gold.

His body is chiseled like polished ivory, bedecked with jewels and sapphires. Value is expressed through the use of gold and jewels and ivory in her descriptions. He is tall like the cedars of Lebanon.

He is strong, stable, and valuable to her according to verse 15. The man that she rejected because she was afraid of getting her feet dirty. She knows from experience that his mouth is sweet and altogether desirable.

She rejected him for fear of getting her feet dirty. She rejects, she regrets it here in the text, and she speaks here of what she missed out on. He is indeed her lover, but he is also, and here it is in verse 16, her friend.

Why do I want help finding him? He's not just merely my lover, he's my friend. He's one in a million, handsome and valuable. He is strong and stable. He is her lover and her friend. So let me point out this ideal here in verse 16 that is so fundamental.

It's more than an ideal. I would even say it's a necessity in marriage. A husband and wife must be both lovers and friends. Friends and lovers. Not one without the other. Cultivate friendship with your spouse through communication.

Cultivate it through hobbies. Cultivate it through time spent together. Cultivate it through meals and through doing life together. Through playing games together. Through having fun together. In the bedroom and outside of the bedroom.

And there's a further reason for this interplay with the young maidens. Why is she saying this to the young maidens of Jerusalem? Why is that interaction going on with the queen? This is to help them know who they are to look for in marriage.

They are not, these young maidens are not to be merely, you know, they're basically saying, why would we wanna help you find a guy like that? She said, because he's amazing. He's my lover and he's my friend.

They're not to be looking for a wealthy man, a merely handsome man, or a merely radiant man like Gaston. They are to be looking for a friend, one who talks to them and listens to them. One who will do life together with them.

So she has convinced the young ladies to help in the pursuit. And they ask her in verse one of chapter six where he has gone. And they're willing to join her in the pursuit. But the author of this song doesn't show us any interest in explaining how the wife and husband get reconnected.

We don't see them walking down the street and all of a sudden, or he shows up the next night after work and she lets him in. Or we don't even know how they get back together again, but they are back together again in verse two.

And you might not see it at first glance, verse two of chapter six. But that's where the resolution starts. And it starts hot and heavy. The search is over. He has gone down, the ladies are like, where can we find him?

That's okay, we're back together again. How do you know? He's gone to his garden. She has been consistently the metaphor for garden all throughout the song. All throughout the song where you see garden, that's her.

They are reunited in verse two. The maidens don't need to keep up the search. They have found one another and they have made up. Let me just suggest to you something that the young kids that are still in the room could cover their ears on this, but I could just tell you that makeup sex is good sex.

And that is what is going on here. He has gone to the garden and they are once again feeding and feasting on intimacy. She reestablishes that she belongs to her lover and her lover belongs to her. And I think Solomon chose intentionally to leave out the way that they were reunited.

How did they find one another? How did that all come about? How are they together again? And he did so so that he could instead focus on the reestablishment of their sexual union. Her rejection of him, hear me carefully church, this is fundamental marriage to those of you that are, this is like marriage 101 to those of you that are married.

Her rejection of him on one particular night didn't stop this couple from enjoying one another. His ego wasn't so fragile that they couldn't move past it. She is enamored with him. He is captivated with her.

And after the hiccup of conflict, they are back to romance quickly. Do you see it? They're back to romance quickly. He reaffirms her in verses four through 10 where she's affirmed him. And I wanna just point out that we could have recorded his first words after this bad night where he ended up going off and who knows where he slept that night.

He could have said many things, right? You left me out in the cold. Your clean feet are worth more than me. You didn't even let me in my own bedroom. This is my bedroom. I pay for this. I'm the king of Israel and you rejected me.