Every Little Thing He Does

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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

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The Awkward Love Book, blushing away through the song of songs. Let's listen in. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

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As Spencer said, I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here, and I am glad that we have the privilege of gathering together in the name of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, this morning. How many of you are thankful that you have a Savior this morning? Grateful, amen to that.

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I knew what I was getting into when I started a sermon series in the Old Testament book, The Song of Songs.

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I kind of knew the content. I had read it more than once before. I'm not surprised at all by the content, but I realize that some of you could be surprised, and even though Spencer just said it,

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I recognize that there's some other people who have just walked in, so I want to just highlight again to you, we don't give a rating to every sermon that I ever preach here, but during this series, we do.

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And so, PG -13, that means that parents, we want parents well -informed, that we will be discussing a text that has some sexually provocative content.

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It will not be spiritually impure, what we talk about, but it is sexually provocative.

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My goal is to avoid crassness or unnecessary graphic details. However, in explaining the text this morning, and even in some cases, explaining what the text doesn't mean, we will discuss things that you may not want addressed to younger children, and it is not too late if that makes you nervous.

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I'm saying it as a disclaimer so that you are a little nervous if you keep your kids in here. So, it's not too late to take your kids back there if you would like to during this introduction.

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Disclaimers aside, I want to remind all of us that all of God's word is beautiful, all of God's word is intentional, and all of God's word is life -giving.

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When understood as, when we think about what we're looking at when we're reading the pages of scripture, we are looking at God's great self -disclosure of himself.

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It's about his plan and his design for this created world. This word has the power to transform us from what we are naturally in our sin.

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We are petty, we are self -centered, we are powerless, we are sinners. And the word of God has the power when understood, believed by faith, trusted, and then applied into our lives, and it takes us from that place of pettiness and powerlessness and sinners to redeem servants of the almighty who are ready to love and serve others even to the very end of our lives.

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So, our text this morning will consist of the actions of the husband king toward his bride, and I see that is thematic throughout this section.

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It is her speaking, and she is speaking, the good things that he is and has done for her.

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And remember before we read that this is a song, here are the four guideposts to this book.

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If you're taking notes, I hope you've already got these down, I'm saying them every week. These are the things that help us to understand and interpret the song well, and that's first to remember, it's a song.

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It's not so interested in chronology, not so interested in giving us all of the details, much like your favorite love song, as I mentioned in the first sermon on this series.

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If you were to take your favorite love song and just say, does it answer all of my questions? Does it graphically detail who this couple is and how they met and all of the details?

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No, it gives us an impression, so it's a song, but it's a song centered on human love, that's the second thing.

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It is a song, it is about human love, it is recorded in the Bible, which tempers our understanding of what it's all about.

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It lets us know that we're not reading primarily a techniques manual here, we are reading God's word, and the fourth thing is that it is written to grant us wisdom, wisdom that kind of focuses on the exception of romantic love in terms of the corpus of wisdom literature is centered primarily on Proverbs, kind of the way that things normally go, but the way that the

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Song of Songs brings us wisdom is to identify that not everything in life goes according to proverbial wisdom, for example, romantic love.

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So the passage that we're looking at is gonna serve as a pretty bold challenge, particularly to the men and husbands here. I think that the primary challenge,

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I can state up front for the women in the room that are married, is primarily to recognize how she lifts up her husband, the things that she notices that he does for her that she verbalizes, and she says, and she commends, and so she is an encourager here, a cheerleader to him, while he is a servant to her, and you'll see that in the text.

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So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Song of Songs, we're gonna read the entirety of chapter two together.

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So Song of Songs two, if you've got a device, you can navigate over there, if you've got one of those scripture journals, you can use that, but let's make sure that the word of God is in front of us so that you can see that the things that I'm reading are coming from God's word.

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And again, once again, I get to read the woman's part two, I won't do voices, how about that?

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So Song of Songs chapter two, recast God's holy and precious word to us.

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She, I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. He, as a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.

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She, as an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men.

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With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

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Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me.

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I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

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The voice of my beloved, behold, he comes leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.

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Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me, arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.

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For behold, the winter has passed, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.

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The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom. They give forth fragrance.

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Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. O my dove in the clefts of the rocks, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.

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Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.

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My beloved is mine and I am his. He grazes among the lilies until the day breathes and the shadows flee.

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Turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on the cleft mountains.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for a word that can be, at times, easy to understand, at other times, cryptic and requires us to work.

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Father, I pray that you would bless the work that I put in this week in terms of study and research and trying to figure this text out and,

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Father, I pray that this would produce, within us, the desired effect of your spirit, particularly among those who are married but also among those who are single.

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Father, you have a message in this text for all of us that are gathered here. And so,

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Father, I pray that you would work through your spirit to convict and to draw us all into a relationship with you.

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It's our desire and it's my desire and I think it's all of us, those of us that stood before an altar and before witnesses that declared vows forever until death do us part.

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It's our desire, at least it was at one point, for us to live together in harmony and peace and love and cherish one another.

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Father, I pray that if any marriages here have strayed from that goal, I pray that you would draw us back, not as an effort of just us doing the things that this text says but, ultimately, leaning on your spirit and trusting in the salvation of Jesus Christ to give us the lives that we need in order to have healthy and holy marriages.

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And, Father, for those that are not married here, those that are single, I pray that you would not allow them to awaken love before it pleases, as the text says, that you would draw into their hearts and their minds the power and the importance of waiting.

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Father, I ask that you would receive our praise and worship before you now as a sweet scent rising to you, sweet to your ears.

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Father, it is such a privilege that we have to praise you in the congregation and the gathering of your people. And so,

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I ask that you would receive it because you alone are worthy, in Jesus' name. Amen.

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You can go ahead and be seated and get comfortable and find your way back to the Song of Songs, chapter two, so you've got that in front of you, whether that's on a device or a scripture journal or your own

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Bible. But we're gonna walk through that passage verse by verse, and so having that in front of you will only serve to benefit you understanding the flow of the text.

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And then, as I say, every Sunday, if at any time during the message you wanna get up and get more coffee or juice, I think all the donut holes are gone, it looks like, but coffee juice back there.

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And then if you need to use the restroom, it's out the barn doors, down the hallway on the left -hand side, so take advantage of that.

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You're not gonna distract me if you need to get up at any time during the message. Some might assume at first reading, when we're talking about Song of Songs, that this is a book about a married couple that can't keep their hands off of each other, but more to the point, they are a couple who don't seem to be able to keep their words off of each other.

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They exhibit in this text an extremely and abundantly verbal love.

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The words that they say are the very fabric of their relationship, and of course, we're reading a written text, so there's gonna be lots of words, but the words are a record of what they say to each other, what they say about each other, how they publicly testify about their love before one another, and this is an idealized love song, which means that it's setting forth a standard that probably none of us, that really,

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I shouldn't say probably, that none of us are going to achieve in our own marriages, but it sets a standard, it tells us something.

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And so we ought to anticipate that a healthy marriage is going to be built on many good words, ongoing good words, repetitive good words to one another.

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And so our text this morning is gonna have nine points, don't let that stress you out, we're gonna get done in the amount of time that we have here this morning, but nine points all focused on the actions of the husband.

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Now the fact of the matter is, she's gonna speak a lot more in this text than he does. She has many more words than him throughout the book.

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Anybody surprised by that? Anybody just completely shocked? She's got a lot more words than him. And yet our text focuses on nine things that he does for her while she gives us what's gonna amount to, in verse seven, a halfway, kind of halfwayish intermission of caution there in the middle as the text kind of builds up and builds up.

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And ladies, take note that throughout this text, she is talking up her man. She is using her words to build him up and identify what he is doing right.

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He is doing some good things, and she acknowledges it verbally. How many of you guys would just admit right now you kind of like it when your wife identifies the things that you're doing well?

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Anybody? How many love it, absolutely love it, not another show of hands, how many of you love it when she identifies the things that you're doing wrong?

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No hands? No takers on that one. And I don't think we're surprised by that. There's something about a relationship, there's something about a healthy marriage where there is a building one another up and identifying the good.

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And of course, there is always room from time to time, cautiously and carefully to identify some things that need to change.

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But if that's your routine, listen to this text. So our first point this morning is that he makes her feel special.

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He makes her feel special. Now to our ears, verse one of chapter two may sound like an expression of her confidence.

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It might sound like she's identifying, I'm lovely, I'm gorgeous, I'm beautiful, I'm a rose of Sharon, I'm a lily of the valley.

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How many of you just at first reading that sounds like a really nice thing? It sounds super, like she's confident, she knows she's beautiful, she knows she stands out, but not really, we need to understand the text in order to make sense of that and understand a little bit of the geography and a little bit of the context of what was going on, even with the plants in that area.

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She's expressing something that literally he has to correct for her, has to speak wisely into in verse two.

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So the King James version of the Bible translated the phrase, what I would like to call it, a flower of Sharon, and they invented rose of Sharon.

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And why they chose such a specific species of flower in that translation under King James centuries ago is unclear, but also, it's unclear, but it's also inaccurate.

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Roses were not introduced into the area of Palestine until the times between the Old and the New Testament. And those of you that were here last week, the times between the

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Old and the New Testament, we might call those the days of Myrrh. So between both the

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Old and the New Testament right there. So I've got a new, I'm coining a new phrase there, so you guys have that at your disposal.

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The time between the Testaments is the times of Myrrh. But the word translated rose here, as much as we might really like the phrase rose of Sharon, it's been written into hymns, it's been used over, oh,

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Jesus is our rose of Sharon, whatever, it's a word for generic flowers that were abundant in the area of Sharon, which is along the coast of the

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Mediterranean Sea. It's an area where, I mean, much like West Michigan, how many of you love lake effect snow?

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You love lake effect rains? We get the lake effect, right? And so things grow a little bit better here than they do in other places, although we have sandy soil.

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But things grow well, we've got a lot of fruit industry, fruit growing in this area and stuff like that. It's the same there, along the coast, there was a lot more growth.

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And so for her to say, I am a flower of Sharon, was to say, I'm a common flower.

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Further, the word lily is a little bit more concrete, we kind of know at least the species of that, and that's a little more easy to identify from ancient documents and things, and yet it's a very common flower throughout the watered valleys of Israel.

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So when she says, I'm a lily of the valley, she says, I'm a lily where you expect to find lilies. You expect to find lilies in the valleys of Israel, and that's mean.

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What she's getting at here, she's kind of fishing a bit for a compliment. She says, I'm a common flower among all of the flowers.

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Now, whether she's fishing or she's just genuinely saying what she feels is true about herself, we don't know all the nuances of it, but we do know that she's identifying herself.

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She feels relatively common. She feels relatively common, and he corrects her, and that's why you see verse two here.

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No, you're not a common flower in the valley. You are like a lily among the brambles, or as some translations have it, a lily among thorns.

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ESV has brambles. Among all of the young maidens, he says, you are unique. You are the only desirable one.

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Do you see him making her feel special? She stands out to him. My dude here in the text makes sure that his wife feels special and unique, and I wanna point out to you married guys, that is a challenge to you.

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That is your job. That is a responsibility that you have to make sure that your wife knows you have eyes only for her, that she is indeed your standard, but there's also a message here for the single guys, too.

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Think carefully. Listen as these things are exposed of what this man does for this wife.

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This is what you are signing up for when you are pursuing a woman toward marriage.

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This is the type of stuff that you need to be grappling with and bringing on, a life of making her feel special, of identifying that she is the only one for you.

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Married guys, remember, your wife is your standard of beauty. Let her know that all else is thorns and brambles in comparison to her.

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The second thing I wanna identify is in verse three. She compares her man to an apple tree among the forest.

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She's returning the favor here. She's returning the favor, making sure he knows that he is unique to her as well.

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Among all the forests, an apple tree stands out, right? Primarily because it provides apples. It's unique, it's different.

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I mean, you don't eat acorns off the oak tree, right? But you can eat an apple off the apple tree. And the illustration of him as an apple tree demonstrates that he is a comforting, protective shade to her, and she identifies that she rejoices and is glad and is delighted to sit in his shadow.

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Now, all throughout the Old Testament, the word shade or shadow is used consistently in Hebrew poetry as a metaphor for protection.

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Now, you might not understand why, only in that if you've ever been out working on a really hot day, how many of you value some shade?

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Now, in the Middle East, it's even more valuable because the sun is hotter. It's a desert kind of environment.

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So to find shade is a pretty significant thing there. And she sits in his shadow, sits under his shade.

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She is glad to be placed under his protective care. And in this same context, we see the third point.

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So the second is really, look back to the first. He makes her feel special. Second, he protects her.

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And the third point, he provides for her. Now, I wanna point out that she feels these things.

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She feels his love expressed through protection. She feels his love expressed through provision.

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And these heighten their intimacy all the way to the point of physical intimacy. So don't miss that there's a physical component to this that's moving forward in the text.

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However, I believe that she is talking about his protection and his provision. This is found both here and over in verse five, where she asks him to sustain her with raisins and apples, a symbol of love, but also a symbol of provision.

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And here, where she speaks of delight and nourishment from him. The analogy of her man as a tree is a simple and straightforward analogy.

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He protects her in his shade and gives her delicious apples. She feels protected and provided for.

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And despite the fact that this book is sexually provocative, there's nothing that I found in my own study that dissuaded me from this interpretation.

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Some interpreters have this, obviously, by the very nature of her location, have something else going on here.

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And some of your minds can go there, and I don't need to, for the teens that are here, be any more explicit than that.

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But when you read verse three, there's all kinds of nuance to what might be going on in the text.

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I don't see it, I see protection and provision there, despite the fact that, again, there's various interpretations, and I'll let you run with that for just a minute.

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But she identifies the analogy for us here. An apple tree gives shade, and an apple tree gives nourishment through apples.

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It would be a special treat in that ancient, that hot, warm climate and in that culture.

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So whatever else might be teased out of this text, I believe the application's to be direct. Men, we are to be protectors, and we are to be providers for our wife.

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We are to be a shade for our wife, and we are to sustain her with raisins and apples, or maybe with a reasonable grocery budget.

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Depends on how you look at it. Further in verse four, he provides for her drink as well.

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And again, the metaphor is both food and drink. The phrase banqueting house has been Christianized, so the translators haven't wanted to go all the way on this text, so they wanna make sure that Baptists read their translations too.

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And so it's literally, in Hebrew, house of wine is the word that's used for banqueting house there.

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It may be a metaphor for the place of their intoxication with love, but it is in all accounts in Hebrew, it would be a public location.

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So the fact that there's a public nuance to a couple of things here in the text, the banner and the house of wine, lead me to believe that they are not alone in the bedroom as they're talking about this, but this is about the public manifestation of their love, and he takes her to the house of wine.

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And keeping with that theme of provision of sweet apples, he also takes her out for wine.

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His love is pictured here as a refreshing meal. Apples, raisin cakes, wine. He provides for her what she needs to be totally into his love.

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She feels cared for, protected, and well provided for.

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Our fourth point is found at the end of verse four, he publicly declares his love for her.

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Publicly declares, and this is one that I wanna camp on for just a moment, but a little bit longer than maybe some of the others.

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As the ESV translates it, his banner over me was love. Any of you ever sing that old Sunday school class song and stuff, and some of you are laughing because you got it right away and it's in your mind now.

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But the word for banner here implies a military banner that was carried to identify a marching army into war, okay?

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So they would carry a standard, a banner, and there would be a standard bearer who would be on the march with the troops and you could identify whose side they were on by what banner they carried and identify them.

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The purpose of the banner, straightforward, was identification. And he has made it clear and easy to perceive that she is loved.

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When people see her, think about it, when people see her, they know that she has the love of a good man.

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She is marked by the love of a good man. When others see a wife, they can see in her something of the love of her husband.

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Is she confident in his care? Is she looking for the affection of others because she hasn't found it in him?

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A treasured woman stands out among a sea of needy and desperate women. So men, a very direct and honest question to you, is your wife confident in your love for her?

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Does she walk around like there's a banner over her that declares loved? Is that the way she expresses herself to the world around her?

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What banner have you lifted up over your wife, men? Does her banner read scorned?

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Does her banner read criticized and browbeaten? Does her banner read unprotected?

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Lifting up a banner over our wives that says loved, I would suggest to you, is done at home.

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The results are felt out in public, but it begins in the home. What happens within the household is what she will carry with her out into public.

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Start with building the banner over her at home. Listen to her, respect her, love her, cherish her, talk sweetly to her.

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Verse five goes with his provision for her. As I already mentioned, she turns to him for sustenance.

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And by implication, it's increasingly stated in sexual overtones, rising to an intimate embrace in verse six.

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This is still primarily focused on what the man is doing for her. And yet, in this ideal, all of these things he is doing for her, produces within her a desire for increasing physical intimacy.

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When she says she's sick with love in verse five, and needs to be sustained with raisin cakes and apples, she's saying,

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I'm weak with love, but I want more. I'm weak with love, but I want more.

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And in verse five, we see the fifth point. He is tender with her. It says directly in this posture, his left hand is under her head, and his right hand embraces her.

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Whatever you make of this physical position, it is indeed intimate in nature. And yet, it is also tender in nature as well.

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The indication is that his left hand cradles her head, leaving his right hand free to roam. And nothing is served by me getting more graphic.

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So you can all breathe a sigh of relief at this point. Everybody with me just for a second. Okay, all right,

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I'm not gonna get further than that. But nothing is served by me doing that. But John Mayer was onto something with his appropriate comparison to her body as a wonderland, okay?

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So, and men, just a word here directly to you guys, just to think it through and figure it out.

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Men, challenge to you, we are often in a hurry.

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Slow down, enough said. And all the women said amen.

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Amen. Verse seven serves as an intentional intermission in the rising action of this song.

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Hopefully you felt it get a little warmer at the end, and now it's gonna cool off for a second, and it's gonna get warmer again. So there's a cadence to this book.

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Did anybody feel the temperature get a little warmer? I did, I'm sweating a little bit. The last part, but it rises, and then there's an intermission.

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Whew, thanks for the break. And then we're gonna move on again, and it's gonna start building again. But she takes a break. The first stanza amounted to five things her man has done for her that heightened sexual desire within her.

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But it comes with a wise word of warning. After this ramped up expression of what he has done for her that has produced this hunger and desire for intimacy within her, she asked the young woman of Jerusalem to make her a promise.

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The word I adjure you means I want you to pledge. Pledge to me this, promise to me this.

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And what she wants them to promise to her is that they will not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

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She has been telling us where his love and actions have taken her. It has taken her to a place of deep desire for physical intimacy.

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And she is saying here in the text, beware, beware young ladies of this.

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Her appeal to the gazelles and does refers to something that's a little out of our common knowledge. Unless you're a hunter, you might be aware of it.

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How many of you are hunters in the room? Just raise your hand. So you understand that there's a rut season, you understand that kind of stuff.

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Her appeal to the gazelles and does refers to what would have been common knowledge in an agrarian, connected to nature kind of society that they lived in, that animals have a season that is right for reproduction.

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And she is likening that to that cadence of seasons, that cadence of heat among animals, and she's likening that to human intimacy also having a right and a wrong context.

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Just like gazelles and does have seasonal boundaries, sexuality, so too should humans.

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And it isn't exactly the same, but it's a call for constraint and self -control. Now, Ecclesiastes three says it this way, there's a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

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So the main force of this warning amounts to asking for the young ladies, the daughters of Jerusalem, young maidens of Jerusalem, which would imply unmarried women of Jerusalem.

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She's imploring those young ladies to promise to not awaken love, that they will not toy around with intimacy before the proper time, that they will not try to fan sexual intimacy into flame before it can be brought to a pleasing conclusion.

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Now, here's a pretty clear application for those of you who are seeking holy sexuality and singleness. Do not engage in activities that lead to guilt and shame in your heart.

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By the way, the interesting thing is what's being identified by default in the text is that really this will not please your heart in the end.

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To awaken it before it's time is not to bring the true pleasure that God has designed for it.

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It will leave you with emptiness. It will leave you with sorrow. And many, many, many, and I'm sure many in this room can testify to that sorrow and that emptiness found in premarital sex.

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But instead, the encouragement, the consistent encouragement in the text of scripture is to save your intimacy for the place and time that it will indeed bring full pleasure.

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Not merely the physical pleasure of bodily function. I'm not denying that there's, I'm not suggesting that there's no physical pleasure in premarital sex.

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Of course there is. But not the full pleasure that God has designed for it. What he has designed us for is not mere bodily function, but the full intimacy of a mingling of souls in God -blessed, holy covenant marriage.

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And let me remind all of us that Jesus himself, Jesus himself, did you hear me? Jesus himself in his singleness stood up under this injunction.

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Stood up under this pledge and remained chaste and celibate all of his days. As a model and example to all of us, he does not, it's not like he's ignorant of adolescence.

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It's not like he's ignorant of hormones that rage and war with us. With deep desires to be loved and to be touched and to be treasured.

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He's not ignorant of those things. And he still says, that's worth the wait. The sixth point resumes in verse eight then after clarifying for all, don't, please, please, please don't awaken us.

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There's a pleading in here. Please promise that you won't awaken this love before it can be brought to its wholeness and its completeness and its full pleasure.

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But the sixth point in verse eight, he pursues her. He pursues her.

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She hears his voice as she images him as a gazelle leaping over the mountains. Here is super Solomon, able to leap a whole mountain in a single bound.

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Who's writing this again? Solomon. But he's eager to come to her and she knows it.

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Whether gone on a business trip over the mountains or just out for the day on his way home, she knows her man.

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Listen, hear it? She knows her man wants to be with her. And her heart is clearly looking forward to his arrival.

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Building a life like this together takes work. Those of you that are married, you know it.

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Those of you that aren't married, trust it. It takes work. It may sound sexist, but I'm gonna stick with the biblical metaphor where she is at home and he's coming back to her.

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And you can feel free to deal with that, what's written here later on your own. But she is the kind of wife he is eager to get home to.

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He is the kind of husband that she is eager to have come back. Church, this is a calling.

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This may require some prayers for reconciliation and for repentance here. Because I'm convinced and I believe it, in this room

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I believe that there are some here not eager to come home. And some here wish their husbands, legitimately, not a joke, some of you here wish your husbands worked longer hours.

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And if that's you, let me in all seriousness recommend you make some effort to get some biblical counseling.

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If you do not want to be together, your marriage is in serious jeopardy.

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If you do not like being together, you are in danger. Get help, come and meet with me and Linda.

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We would love to walk through things with you, to talk through things. And if it's above us, we're very quick to refer somebody out to counseling if you need it.

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But take actions if you don't enjoy being with your spouse. She sticks with the gazelle metaphor, which makes us think he's a peeping

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Tom or at least a creeper. Okay, he's like, he's looking through the lattice, he's peeping through the window. It's like, oh, creepy, that's the weirdest verse in the

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Bible. Stands behind the wall. And it's our wall, do you see that in the text?

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It's our wall, I mean, it's theirs together. She is at their home. He wants her to come out to him.

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But picture, here's what you need. Instead of a peeping Tom, like trying to get a glimpse of her, picture

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Romeo outside of Juliet's window, hoping she comes out onto the balcony and the perspective changes a bit there, doesn't it?

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He is there calling out to her, come out to me. And that's a little bit better than a peeping

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Tom. So that's what's going on there. Point number seven, he calls her to come away with him.

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He shows up, he's been eager to get home, he's been eager to get there with her, and he has planned a time away with her.

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He wants to be with her and calls her out of the house to go away in verse 10, and he uses the words of endearment, calling her my love.

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Again, just encouraging you to have those cheesy little phrases that you call each other, to have that history and play into that history as often as you can.

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The image is in verses 11 through 14, a big chunk that just basically are a long poetic explanation that spring is in the air, the rainy season is over, migratory birds are returning, figs are figging, flowers are flowering, and romance is in the air.

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How many of you just identify that after a long winter, spring is kind of nice? That's when you get outside, kind of let your hair down, things start to get, you know, just more comfortable, and we know that that's kind of like generally a time for romance.

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And his words of call to her are repeated in verse 13. Arise, my love, come away with me.

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The way he speaks with her, encouraging her that the darkness of winter is behind them, it's helpful, but the main point here is that he wants to be with her enough that he makes a plan to take her away.

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She is like a dove nested and hidden among the rocks, probably settled in there for the winter, but he wants to see her face and hear her voice.

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He wants to be with her. Married couples.

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This is one of those rubber meets the road kind of points here. You make time for so many things, right?

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You make time for travel, baseball games, you make time for dance recitals, you make time for football games and all kinds of sports and Netflix watching and catching up on your favorite shows, but what kind of time are you investing in your marriage?

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What kind of time are you investing in your spouse? How long has it been since you got away, just the two of you?

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How long has it been? Now, it might be over applying the rich poetry of these verses, but take her away, husbands.

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Remove her from the stresses of house, remove her from the stresses of home and work and kids and all of that stuff, and let her know you want some face -to -face time and voice -to -voice time with her alone.

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That's what her husband says to her here in the text. And I believe that she's the one speaking in verse 15, and here we find the eighth point.

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He protects their relationship. In verse 15, she wants him to catch the little foxes that spoil the vineyards because their vineyards are in bloom.

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Now, vineyards are used throughout this book in multiple metaphors, and it can make your head spin a little bit. It's also used, vineyards are used as literal locations, they're used for figures of speech, the

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Vineyard of Engedi, Vineyards of Engedi were mentioned last week as a literal location, but she also said that she had not had time to tend her own vineyard, which is a metaphor for her entire body, instead because she was working out in the family vineyards, a literal location.

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So here I believe that vineyard is a metaphor for their marriage, it's for their relationship. And the little foxes represent obstacles to their intimacy.

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She is asking him to protect their marriage from the many nuisances that would spoil it. How many of you have identified a few things that would spoil your marriage?

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Given enough time, given a chance. I think it might be beneficial for us to just list some that I can identify, and of course you can pile on lists on top of this as long as you want to, you can keep thinking them through, but I want you to specify for you guys what is it that would be a fox, a little fox, that would seek to steal away and spoil your marriage?

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Long hours at work, a fox that needs to be dealt with before it divides.

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Pornography, a fox that can creep into a marriage and spoil all intimacy like that. A lack of communication, a fox that if not dealt with produces distance, an increasing distance in a marriage.

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How about this one? Letting your kids run the show. An often overlooked fox that will drive a deep wedge into a marriage, and I've seen it time and time again.

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Driving a deep wedge between a married couple as the focus on the kids slowly replaces the relationship between husband and wife to the degree that when the kids grow up and they go away, who am

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I living with again? Who are you? And I've heard many, many people who are empty nester divorces because they let the kids drive the relationship.

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Singles, I want you to also think about this. This is really, really a poignant point for you, so please listen up.

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Consider what habits you are forming now that are going to be hard for you to break in marriage. What habits are you forming now?

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How you spend your time now is how you're going to want to spend your time after marriage.

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Seven hours a day on your iPhone now is not going to easily translate into two hours on your iPhone after marriage.

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You spend seven hours a day on your phone now, guess what you're going to want to do when you're married? Spend seven hours a day on your iPhone.

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Think about what you're preparing your life to be. You're in a preparation stage right now.

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Be thoughtful, be diligent, be intentional. And the last point this morning is that he spends the night with her, really spends all night with her.

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The passage has been full of him serving her, him caring for her, him protecting her, providing for her, making time for her, and it now culminates in an all -night grazing, an all -night feasting on love.

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But first, we see something that is very important at the start of verse 16 that's worth paying a little bit extra attention to.

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"'My beloved is mine, and I am his,' she says. "'In a healthy marriage, "'belonging to one another is celebrated.'"

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It's celebrated in a healthy marriage. It is a given that a husband belongs to his wife and a wife belongs to her husband, and yet in our culture, in our day and age, that can really be abrasive to us.

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This is an ideal that needs to be carefully, carefully, carefully worked through because our mind runs to the exceptions of abuse right away.

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But please, please, please, church, don't miss the heart of this by immediately running to the edges and the exceptions.

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Let every wife consider what this means and let every husband consider what it means, that you are not your own, but there is another.

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I am not, I'm speaking for myself, but I also think it would be great if you guys can echo this, too, in your marriages.

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I am not the master of my time. I am not the soul master of my weekends. I am not the soul master of my finances or my body or even my very life.

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But in marriage, all considerations must include love and thought and care and consideration of the other, consideration for your spouse.

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This is a minor thing, but it's true. I am not bald right now because my wife does not want me to shave my head.

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I've always wanted to give it a try. This is a true story. I've always wanted to give it a try. I've pestered her a little bit too much about it, but she isn't having any of it.

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She's got no room for that right now. Now, I wanna point out, it's not as though she has stopped me.

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I have listened to her, and I choose to recognize that she has a valid and important opinion in the matter.

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I am not my own. My opinion is not the only one that plays in my life decisions about how

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I look, so I haven't shaved it off yet. But you can be sure that when I step up here to preach and you're getting this nice shine coming back at you, it's gonna be because my wife said, green light, give it a shot.

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So, and some of you are going, ooh, gross, don't do that. That's not your call. That's not your call.

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That's between me and my wife. She gives me the green light, it's gonna happen. So, for some reason,

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I think it'd be easier. I don't think it's gonna be that much easier, but we'll see if it ever works out. But out of this mutual love, this belonging to one another, comes the physical intimacy the entire passage has been building toward.

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Whatever images of grazing among the lilies might evoke in our minds, and trust me, I read a lot of different opinions and a lot of speculation and a lot of sexually provocative ideas about what grazing among the lilies might mean, it gives way to a

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Lionel Richie song in verse 17. The start of our last verse could be translated, the start of verse 17 could be translated, all night long, all night, oh.

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Okay, it could be translated that way. Closest to singing you're gonna get out of me. But anybody know the song that I'm talking about?

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I like to throw in some 80s songs here because cheesy 80s love songs. It's a love song, it just works.

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It's right. It's appropriate to be thinking Lionel Richie right here when what she says is, until the day comes to life.

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She says it so beautifully and so poetically. Until the day breathes, comes to life, and the shadows flee, she wants her man like a gazelle or a stag on the cleft mountains.

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She said it more directly last week and I think that verse 17 parallels almost exactly verse 13 of the text last week.

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Last week in verse 13 of chapter one, she said her man is like a sachet of myrrh that spends the night between her breasts.

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And here she says it again in more poetic language. She wants her man to be like a gazelle who spends all night until the morning light like a stag on the cloven mountains.

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The explicit nature of verse 13 of chapter one makes me think that she means more than mere mountains here in this text.

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Where does she want him to spend the night? And what does she want him to be doing there? But more important to this text is how did she get to the place of this desire?

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And it is his love expressed to her. His good love explained in this text through calming her fears, protecting and providing for her, raising up a public banner of love over her.

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Church, good sex arrives on the heels of intentional love, intentional commitment, and expressed intimacy throughout the day, throughout the week, not just when it's go time.

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How in the world can we land this one at the foot of the cross? I'm gonna try, okay?

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Our hope for healthy marriages is found in the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

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Not in mimicking this couple, not in saying the things that she says to him, not in doing the things that he does that she speaks of, but it is in Christ.

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Through the cross, I learn how to sacrifice in my marriage. Through his protection and provision for me,

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I can now serve my wife from a place of stability, not a place of neediness. In his strength and spirit,

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I find the conviction needed to identify and remove the foxes. The cross, church, is our everything.

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And so we come to the table of communion this morning to remember that Jesus loved us so much that he died for us.

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But let's not forget this morning that he also lived a sinless life first, before he died for us.

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He who knew no sin became sin for us there on the cross. He was not punished for his own sins, not punished for his own discretions.

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He was punished for our sins and our indiscretions. So if you've asked

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Jesus Christ to save you of your sins and you acknowledge him as your rightful Lord and King, then let me encourage you to come to the tables this morning to remember how he has saved us through his great sacrifice.

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But if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have not yet come to the place where you've said, please forgive me and take charge of my life, then

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I'd encourage you to skip communion, but then come and talk with me at the end of the service if you have any interest, any question, any curiosity about how you can start a relationship with Jesus Christ that is life -altering, that gives you hope and a place to stand so that you can have more direction and more grace in your relationship with others.

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And then let's go out from here, church, with a commitment to love one another well, and yes, I mean love one another well, singles honoring others through a

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God -pleasing singleness and married couples through a God -honoring intimate love that leans on him and his spirit day by day.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the love that you give to us that is the starting point of any love that we're able to express to others.

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Father, all else is greed, all else is self -centeredness, and so much sexuality and so much of our culture's view is just a bodily greed, a hunger for pleasing self and using others for that purpose.

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Father, you design so much more in intimacy, so much more of a mingling of souls, so much more of a giving, giving, giving, not a taking, taking, taking.

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We thank you for that modeled for us at the cross, that that giving is modeled there, that brand of love that is putting the other's need first.

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We didn't deserve that, and none of us deserve even the love of our own spouse, but Father, you call us to it, and so I pray that you would help us to be delighted to forgive, delighted to release our spouses from the wrongs that they've done to us, and we celebrate the release of the wrongs that we have done against you by taking communion this morning.

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We celebrate through taking the cracker that reminds us of his body that was broken in our place. We deserve that punishment.

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He took it, and his blood was shed for us, and so we take that cup of juice to remember that as well. I pray that during this next song that you would meet us in this place of gratitude and thankfulness, that we might just be completely stoked and enthusiastic and excited for this next week as we take communion together with your people.