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Don Filcek; Song of Songs 4:1-5:1 Drunk with Love
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.
Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I hope that you are here to grow together in faith, to grow together in community, and to grow together in service.
We believe that everyone that's in a relationship with Jesus Christ needs to be growing in trust in him day by day. We also need to grow together in community. The church has been challenged on this front in the last couple of years.
And for many of us, there have been temptations to step out of community during the pandemic, and even for a short season, we didn't even have services. But God has designed us with a fundamental need to grow in the context of relationships.
We need to be together in order to do the love one another things that we're called to do in the pages of the New Testament. And further, God has given us all specific gifts and talents and abilities to be used to build up the body.
And the closer we draw to God through faith in community, the more we will find a desire to serve others around us. And so we need this together. How many of you are glad to be together this morning? You're glad for that, praise God for that.
We're working through the text of the Song of Songs, and I confess that so much of these messages are gonna continue to ring the same gong. If they sound similar week after week, it's because they circle around the common themes of romantic love.
Themes like good communication, like kind communication, like gentleness, like admiration, desire, sexual intimacy, and patience. This morning, we're gonna see more words from the king about his bride and about their intimacy.
And to be honest, in this text, he's gonna speak more words here in chapter four than he has spoken in all the previous three chapters combined. We're gonna see this guy unload some words. And is it any surprise that his words are delighting in his wife's beauty?
He is captivated by her, he says. She drives him crazy with desire. And as he starts to describe and praise her beauty and praise her features, he only gets so far before he is caught up in his desire for more than a visual, merely visual assessment of her beauty.
This text is a bit more tricky to outline, and so despite the fact that many of these passages throughout so far, the Song of Songs, have had like, I've given you like six points or seven points or different things like that, it's more tricky to outline.
It would be best to just highlight that the text is very sensory-driven. It begins heavy on the visual. It is a man who's speaking, after all. But it moves to the sense of smell and then to taste, and it progresses, and it's clear that there's a progress towards an intoxication with love till the very end of the text.
The pinnacle of this text concludes with the endorsement of God on all that is going on here. It is not enough to say that God invented sex, though that might be as far as we've been able to go with it in our own lives, but it's not enough to say that he is just good with it.
He's all right with it. He endorses, in this text, being intoxicated with it. He encourages married couples to feast on love, to drink deeply of intimacy, to become intoxicated with physical intimacy.
Far from the common notion that God is against pleasure, this text, more than maybe any text in Scripture that we're gonna read, highlights that God wants his people to enjoy sexual intimacy within the bounds of marriage.
He is not a cosmic killjoy. Far to the opposite, he commands us to be drunk with the pleasures of sexual fulfillment in marriage. It's in Scripture, and surprising to many of us, it's a command. So let's open up our Bibles or devices or Scripture journals to the Song of Songs, chapter four.
We're gonna read from chapter four, verse one, all the way through five, verse one. You're gonna see why verse five, verse one of chapter five is included here. It wraps it up, and the guy who undertook to divide up the chapters in the Middle Ages didn't get them all right, and in this case, I don't think he got it right, but bravo to him for giving it a shot.
So Song of Songs, chapter four, through the first verse of chapter five, and recast, this is God's holy and precious word. It might make us blush at times, and that's why I call the series Blushing Our Way Through the Song of Songs, and yet, it is exactly what God wanted you to hear because he brought you here this morning.
Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are like flocks of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all which bear twins, and not one among them has lost its young.
Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like the Tower of David, built in rows of stone. On it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors.
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle that graze among the lilies. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, I will go away to the mountains of Myrrh and the hill of Frankincense.
You are altogether beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride. Come with me from Lebanon. Depart from the peaks of Ammanah and from the peak of Sener and Hermon, from the dens of lions and from the mountains of leopards.
You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride. You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes and one jewel of your necklace. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride. How much better is your love than wine and the fragrance of your oils than any spice.
Your lips drip nectar, my bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon, a garden locked as my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed.
Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choices fruits, henna and nard, nard and saffron and calamus and cinnamon with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes with all choice spices, a garden fountain, a well of living water and flowing streams from Lebanon.
Awake, oh north wind, and come, oh south wind, blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choices fruits. I came to my garden, my sister, my bride. I gathered my myrrh with my spices.
I ate my honeycomb with my honey. I drank my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love. Let's pray. Father, you have designed things according to your will and you have inspired your word according to your will.
And so we come to a text that could be uncomfortable to us, so we come to a text that says some things in there that seem provocative intentionally. And Father, we know that you have designed this world to go in a certain way and our world runs heavy in the other direction.
There seems to be little wonder and awe over marital love and a whole lot over extramarital love. There seems to be very little sense given and appreciation for the way that you have designed things. And we would be a culture and a people that would run the opposite direction.
We no longer see beauty as beauty. We no longer see the roles that you have given, male and female. We no longer, it's crazy how our culture has gone. And so Father, I pray that you would help correct within our hearts the goodness of sexual intimacy between a husband and a wife, the goodness of your design.
And Father, for those who are single in this room, for those who are in a position of seeking out holy singleness, at least for a season, if not for a life, Father, I pray that you would guide and direct them to understand the prohibitions are only ever for their benefit and for their blessing.
And then Father, the injunctions and the instructions for us who are married are only ever for our good and for our benefit. Father, I thank you for the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ. The hope that we have of healthy marriages is only found at the cross, not in applying some kind of certain brand of talk and applying these strange metaphors to our marriages, but our hope comes from Christ.
Our hope comes from the Spirit convicting and drawing us closer to him so that our marriages can be stronger and more intimacy, more love, and more service, and more strength, and more power out in the world around us that flows from us because we are satisfied in the good gifts that you have given to us.
Father, we have an opportunity now to praise you, and I ask that you would receive these songs as worship from a people who are being redeemed, who are redeemed at the cross, but are being redeemed and sanctified day by day.
We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, you can go ahead and be seated, and thanks a lot to the band for leading us in worship this morning. I'm grateful for them. And if at any time during the message you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts while supplies last, and then out the double doors down the hallway on the left-hand side are the restrooms if you need those.
But our goal is to keep our attention on Song of Songs, chapter four, for the remainder of our time together. And so make sure you have that open in front of you as well. You can either navigate in your device or your scripture journal or in the Bible that you brought with you if you did.
So analogy and metaphor is really culturally driven. And they change so rapidly that compliments in one generation will not communicate to another. So this week a few times I tried a few of the lines on my wife and she was having none of it.
Like she wasn't so excited about me calling her hair like flock of goats coming down off of a mountain or something like that. So it didn't translate for some reason. She wasn't like, oh, my heart. She was like, cut it out, I know what you're doing.
That was more like it. But many words that we use have really short runs and they're gone just shortly after they catch on. I'm gonna throw a couple out there. You tell me if you relate to them at all.
How about, that is so fat. P-H-A-T, fat. Anybody? Anybody remember that? Oh, that's weird. How about on fleek? Where'd that go, right? How about gnarly? Anybody in my generation? Like, so gnarly. That's gotta come back, you guys.
We gotta bring that back. That is so gnarly. Or how about totally tubular? Anybody on that one? Okay. So you know that things just are passing fads in the way that we describe things. But our king here in our text starts off describing his bride.
And many of these illustrations make us question if he even liked her. You read them and you're like, man, these don't sound super kind. He starts with her eyes. That's good. He compares them to doves.
And right from the get-go, we're unsure. We really don't know a lot, to be honest, about the reference of some of these metaphors. So we know that there's something, some quality of doves that reminded him of his wife's eyes.
And it's likely, the best that I can guess is that it's the pure whiteness of them that grabs his attention. And the stark whiteness of her eyes is part of what he's driving for there. But more fundamentally, before we get into a piece-by-piece, part-by-part kind of analysis of these illustrations, more fundamental to this is something I alluded to in the introduction.
And that is that he is very visual. And he's commenting on her physical beauty. Now, I want you to consider what he's doing here. He's making every effort to calm her fears about her appearance. A little girl's voice rings in my ears.
Look at me, Daddy, look at me. Do I look like a princess? Any of you fathers of a daughter ever hear that? Look at me, look at me. And that's one of the first calls of a little girl's heart. Look at me.
Am I beautiful, am I pretty? We can try to suppress the differences in roles between the sexes, but I can tell you that my sons never asked me that question. They wanted me to look at them. Look at Dad, I can throw this this far.
I can do this. But it was never, look at me, am I beautiful? Am I handsome? Never got that once. I mean, I've got a 21-year-old son, an 18-year-old son, never heard it one single time. There's a difference, is there not?
When we think about what in the world is going on with Instagram and photos and all of that type of stuff and Snapchat and pictures, and for those of you that are an older generation like me, women's magazine covers were full of beauty tips, were they not?
The world knows what sells to women, and there is a desire for women in general, and I'm generalizing, but there's a general desire to be seen, a general desire to be looked at, and there is also a general desire in men to look at them, to look at them.
Beauty standards shift from culture to culture, right? But I wanna clarify that God has made humanity and made for us a part of our nature to enjoy beauty. We enjoy a cute little puppy or a kitten. We enjoy the grandeur of a mountain vista.
We enjoy a sunset over Lake Michigan. Yes, we even enjoy snow blanketing the spruce trees, at least for the first time. Like, early in the winter, that's good. I'm gonna be, you know, February, you're tired of it.
Like, get rid of that, you know what I'm talking about. But despite the fall of humanity into sin, we still are designed, and in our core, we admire beauty. And as squirrelly as it is to define, we know it when we see it.
And the king sees beauty and comments on the beauty he sees in his wife. She's likely veiled out in public in this ancient time, but he knows what is behind the veil, and he is here admiring it. Her hair is like the sun, shining off the black goats, descending the slopes of Gilead.
Gilead, you need to understand, just culturally, is a well-watered region in the north of Israel, famous for large goat herds, because there was ample fresh water there to water the herds. It's quite likely that he plays with a double purpose in many of these metaphors.
It's the color and the sheen of her hair that makes him think of the black goats descending the mountains, as he can see them from a distance. But he also brings up flocks of goats because of the great blessing that it meant to have great flocks in that day and age.
I think that we could liken it this way. If a husband today were to say that his wife's hair shines more brightly than all of the gold in Fort Knox, we are left with the impression of both color, but subtly is also brought into the picture great value.
Do you see? That would be a good illustration of what he's getting at here by talking about the goats descending from the slopes of Gilead. Our minds are subtly brought in to consider value and color, and goats were very valuable in that day and age.
One thing I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to in this goat comparison is to the fleas and ticks. Hopefully her hair has less of those than the average goat. Not as many laughs as I'd hoped for, but everybody's like, that's weird.
He next notices her teeth. We like to joke about this, but it is a true statement that what he's saying here in very poetic way is that he's very glad and impressed that she has all of her teeth. That might have been a standout in that ancient culture without dentistry.
Her teeth are white like newly washed shorn sheep, and again, a reference to blessing in the flocks and to color is mentioned there. Again, I'm making a case for this being set to a country western tune.
My girl, she's got all her teeth. I mean, what's he singing about here? Look at her, look at her, she's fine. She's got all her teeth. I mean, can you imagine it being set to country and western? Probably not so much heavy metal or anything going on here.
Her lips are colored with red lipstick. Her cheeks are flush red with a color like a pomegranate behind her veil, maybe even indicating some level of blushing. But even the ancient Egyptians, Egyptian women used lipstick to draw attention to their lips.
So you might be actually going, why in the world are her lips red? Well, it's a long time, a long history of women coloring and using makeup, and it even predates the writing of this. So we have documentation that the ancient Egyptians used lipstick as well.
The admiration of her neck may strike us as really strange, and certainly the wording that he uses here doesn't sound romantic to our ears, but he is reminded of strength and dignity with the way that she holds her head up is kind of what he's getting at here.
Like a fortified tower of David is her neck. She has necklace upon necklace, which reminds him of the shields that ring that tower. And now we come to the extent of his observations. They are obviously unclothed, and he admires her two breasts.
Says right in the text, they are like two fawns appropriately imaged as twins of a gazelle grazing among the lilies. Raise your hand if you're awkward right now. Anybody? Anybody with me on this? Okay.
No one. Everybody's like, this is comfortable because you're talking and we get to listen. Yay, that's why nobody raised their hand. But aside from the twin nature of most offspring of the deer family, commentators draw a blank on why in the world Solomon likens her breasts to fawns.
You can let your imagination run on that and it's still unclear. But most of the commentators that I read this week are male, and so they very well may get distracted and lose interest in the ability to define the metaphor any further as their minds wander off.
I don't know. I mean, you're getting that. But seriously, I mentioned in an earlier message that there are very real and relatively illogical draw. There is rather a very real and illogical draw between the minds and eyes of a man and his wife's breasts.
As he admires her fawns, he starts singing all night long by Lionel Richie, apparently. In verse six, he is stopped in his comment about her physical appearance by her breasts and doesn't pick back up on the progress.
This isn't to say that she has no further lovely features, but he has seen enough to be captivated already. He is done at this point in the song with merely looking. His wife has called him twice so far in this extended song to spend the night between her breasts.
And here he gives his intention to oblige her requests. And here is an application that you would never imagine you would ever hear your pastor saying, and trust me, I never imagined saying this in front of the church, but in honor of this text, go ahead and name them.
The king does. He says, I will go away to the mountain of Myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. Now, that's literally what he's doing. It's literally what he's doing. And I'm not trying to be crass. I'm not trying to be over the top.
That's what the text is doing. And here's what I want to point out on that. Do not read technical speech into this love song. See it for what it is. And as uncomfortable as it might make us to talk about in the church setting, there is to be an intentional playfulness in your marriage.
Not always serious, not always technical, but loving, endearing, playful, teasing, intimate, private, personal, affirming, and desirous. Do you see it in the text? Do you see what I'm getting at here?
Not for the intention of being crass, but for the intention of saying that we are free in marriage to be fun. It's okay. He lets her know that he finds her altogether beautiful, and he basically agrees with Ed Sheeran, and he tells his wife, I'm in love with the shape of you.
He sees, he says, I see no flaw in you. And again, men, this is not technical quality control type of assessment. You know, down halfway on your back on the right, there's a mole there. There's an imperfection right there.
Romantic speech doesn't follow the flow of logical language. Still speaking, he wants to have her close and have her safe and in verse eight, he pictures her as way too far away in a dangerous land. Now, whether they were actually apart and all of a sudden, verse eight is interjecting some distance, he's picturing that.
Far north of Israel is the range of the Lebanon Mountains or Lebanese Mountains, and he calls for her to come away from those mountains where lions and leopards live. He wants her close, and the king tells her that she has captivated his heart with a single glance.
With a glint off her necklace, she has grabbed his attention. Now, the word sister in verse nine might ruin the mood a bit here, and it occurs multiple times throughout the text, but this word was employed, and what you need to understand, this is well-documented.
This word was employed as an ancient term of endearment, as weird and as creepy as it can be to us and make us think of incest or something like that. It's a term of endearment that appeals to the protective nature of a husband for his wife.
Well, why so? What's the connecting point there? Well, most young men had sisters during this age of, you know, there's no birth control, there's none of that. I mean, most of them had very large families.
There would be boys and girls born within the same household, and the young men, the brothers, were given a significant role in the protection of their sisters. That responsibility for protection transfers to his bride upon marriage, and the terminology stays.
He now protects her like he has protected his sister or sisters for his entire life up to the point of marriage. Now, the word captivated is a strong word in the text. It's a word of capture. He is caught in her gravity.
He is emotionally taken with her. All of him is captivated. The reality of this is so strong that the Apostle Paul even acknowledges that those who are married will of necessity have a divided attention.
And this is not spelled out as a bad thing, but is a genuine and a real thing that we need to grapple with in marriage. You see, I have an allegiance to God, an allegiance to this church, and I have an allegiance to my wife and to my family.
And of course, the Roman Catholic Church avoids that by saying that people who are in charge of the church do not have marriages, do not get married. I don't see that in Scripture. I certainly don't see that in the writings of Paul.
I certainly don't see that indicated anywhere else. But those three things, God and church and family, mixed together in my life, and they need not be in conflict, but they can be, they can be. And I point this out here because of the word captivated.
She has captured his attention in a legitimately strong way. And God acknowledges here that a married man is indeed, without joking, don't laugh at this, a married man is a captured man. A married man is a captured man in all the best ways that a man can be captured.
He has received a precious gift from God. And it is a good thing that she has the power to get his attention. God designed marriage this way. It is holy, it is good, it is right. And he praises her love as beautiful.
He says, your love is beautiful. And he praises her romance, and he says it's better than intoxicating wine. And he admires her fragrance above all other fragrances. Now we are now moving in this text forward into increasingly intimate territory.
He has assessed her captivating beauty. He got as far as her chest, and he wants more than just merely a visual show. And now the text turns to taste and smell. He says, her lips drip sweet. Her lips drip sweetness.
How does he know that? Honey and milk are under her tongue. How does he know that? Apparently the French didn't invent certain types of kissing. And just saying, maybe we should call it a Jewish kiss and not a French kiss, I don't know.
But it's there in the text. And her clothes smell like good perfume from Lebanon. He loves the smell of her clothes. Verse 12 can seem out of place in this romantic escapade between a husband and wife, but it highlights something we all know to be true.
Even if our culture wants to act like it doesn't matter, we live in a society that tells us that it doesn't matter how many sexual partners you have as long as you're just safe. That doesn't make sense.
True intimacy, true intimacy, always has at its core a longing to be exclusive. And as much as we might try to kick back against God's design, we all know that we desire to be the object of a unique and exclusive affection from one other.
Not one another, one other. We want to be captivating to someone. His wife has been a locked garden, he says, a spring locked and a fountain sealed. In other words, what's he getting at here? My wife has held out for me.
She has not been available to quench the hunger of any passerby. She has not been there to satisfy the thirst of any guy who comes along. How many of you guys would say that matters? That's a significant thing.
Do you hear what he's saying here? She is like a garden and the young plants, the shoots, the young plants of her garden are like an orchard of pomegranates with choicest fruits, with henna and the very expensive and rare nard.
To have this assortment of plants in one garden would be a big deal. She is to him a private garden of delights and pleasures. Her body is a wonderland and he holds an exclusive all season pass. The list of spices and fragrances bounce back and forth between scent and taste.
She is spicy and soothing. She is all the good scents and smells and tastes and they all overwhelm him with desire. And again, the metaphor is explicit in verse 15. She is a garden, a well of living water and a flowing stream from Lebanon.
She is life giving in her passion. She is refreshing to him. And let me speak directly to this refreshing nature of romantic love, married couples, a healthy sexual intimacy is indeed a pathway to peace, satisfaction and power in your public life.
He feels satisfied with her. He feels refreshed by her. She has captivated him and she alone possesses the keys to his sexual expression. We see the words well and fountain occur elsewhere in scripture regarding sexuality, but it's a more negative and darker text.
Proverbs 5, 15 through 18, you can jot that down as a reference. You don't need to turn over there. I'm gonna read it here in a second. But Proverbs 5, 15 through 18 are the words of a wiser, older Solomon to a son.
And he says this, quote, drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. There is one place for sexual fulfillment in marriage. It is both a responsibility and a delight. She is to him like a garden locked to all others, but open for business with him.
He finds delight. He finds nourishment, refreshment, and strength from their sexual intimacy. Her love is better than wine and better than cool, clean flowing streams. Glorious words, right? How many of you think that he's holding up a standard?
Does our relationship with our spouse meet this standard? Goodness, we've got some work to do, don't we? I think all of us do, and I think that's the point. This is an idealized love song where it's not meant to be like, oh, I failed, I could never do this.
It's an injunction to work. She wants to entice him, and he wants her. And indeed, she is the only place for his sexual pleasure. But she equally is for it as well. She is into it too. She calls in verse 16 for the winds to blow, bringing her enticing scents to her husband and to her lover.
She invites him to come to his garden. Her body is the metaphor, but she says it is his garden. She invites him to join with her in a feast of love. She calls her body his. This is the necessity of trust in human intimacy.
There is a vulnerability in sexual intimacy that cannot be overcome by mere consent. Despite all the words of our world right now, consent just doesn't cover it. We need more than consent. We need the deep commitment of marital love, of bonds of covenant love.
The human heart knows we want more. Even those who settle for a no-strings-attached expression of sexuality, I believe know at the end that they are just merely settling. And chapter five, verse one, expresses in metaphorical language the culmination of all of this anticipation.
They make love, and he likens it to gathering myrrh and spices. He likens it to eating sweet honeycomb with the honey. He likens it to drinking wine and drinking milk. But notice the possessive pronoun throughout verse one of chapter five.
Do you see it? Do you see how often it's there? My garden, my sister, my bride, my myrrh, my spice, my honeycomb, my honey, my wine, my milk. This joint ownership of each other and marriages recently under siege by the realities of abuse.
But don't get off to the margins before you hear what the text is trying to say at its core. The norm of Christian marriage goes like this. And by the way, I think 1 Corinthians 7 that I'm about to read, 1 Corinthians 7, three through five, again, jot that down.
And honestly, this would be good to go back to this week. If some of these things God presses on your heart in terms of your relationship with your spouse, this is the passage that I think would be very beneficial for all of us to reflect on.
1 Corinthians 7, three through five. I believe that Paul, which comes first, Song of Songs comes way, way, way before the apostle Paul. He was a student of the Old Testament. He knew this stuff. I believe that he was thinking about this very passage when he wrote these things in 1 Corinthians 7, three through five.
Quote, the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does.
Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourself to prayer but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control, end quote.
Notice the emphasis in this text is on the giver, not on the taker. It is an instruction to give of yourself to the other. It assumes congeniality and kindness and gentleness. In marriage, you have agreed to work out of love and therefore on behalf of the pleasure of the other.
Unfortunately, deprivation of intimacy is a real thing and unfortunately, abuse is a real thing as well but the standard here in Song of Songs as well as in First Corinthians is joint ownership of our bodies in marriage.
It is giving of ourselves for the blessing of the other not a taking for yourself. It is to be something we communicate about and if we will choose to forego sex for a time, it will be based on a discussion together that results in agreement together and it will be only after agreement and only for, according to the text, a limited time has an expiration date on it.
Some may well think it's an abuse of this passage to bring this up to a spouse. Some may think that it's an abuse to talk this through with your spouse and imply that there's just not enough going on there and yet I would suggest that if one spouse is feeling like the other holds the keys to their intimacy and withholds them for not unloading the dishwasher or not talking kindly or whatever it might be, then it is thoroughly appropriate to have this discussion.
In love, this passage will not be used as a bludgeon but it will also not, hear me carefully, church, it will not be ignored. This passage is not there to be ignored. It's not there to say, oh, it's been abused so I guess that doesn't apply.
It does apply. It is valuable. It is important. God desires healthy sexual intimacy in marriage. Why would you withhold yourself from the one you said you would not withhold yourself from? Or did you not know that when you got married that a commitment to sexual intimacy was part of the deal?
Did you not know that? I hope I'm not telling you something you didn't already know but our king and our bride work to enjoy their intimacy together, together and what is credited to the others here at the very end of our text, you see it there in the ESV text, it says that he is saying the first part of verse one and then others, meaning the chorus, is speaking the phrase eat, friends, drink and be drunk with love.
What is credited to the others can rightly be credited to God. Since this is his revelation after all, in the mouth of the chorus, we see the command eat, drink and be drunk with love. The chorus throughout Song of Songs is used to convey commentary, sometimes to just alleviate some of the intensity of the intimacy of the couple at like high points.
It's kind of like, oh, let's let the chorus talk for just a second here. But here the chorus serves to bring a hearty and strong endorsement. And all the commentators I read this week hear within these words of the chorus an echo of God's approval over sexual intimacy.
Remember, church, this is a song about human love written in the Bible to give us wisdom. It's a song, it takes flower language, it's about human love, it's written in the Bible so we interpret it in our understanding of who God is and it is there to give us wisdom.
Let me share some observations that may very well prove to be applications for many of us here as we try to land this plane. First, I'm gonna kind of go through different categories and subsections. Some of these may apply to you even if it's not your category, but I want you to think it through.
The first thing that I wanna highlight is, guys, tell her she is beautiful to you. Married guys, tell her she is beautiful to you. Be creative in your words. You don't have to be a poet, but let her know it frequently.
None of this business that I told her when I married her and if I change my mind, I'll let her know. Keep letting her know. She needs to hear it. She needs to hear that she is captivating to you. Married women, recognize the power of the visual in the way that your husband is built and intentionally seek to use your beauty to his blessing.
I don't wanna say too much more about that, but it is appropriate for you to try to be and to work to be appealing to him. Single guys, quit looking at pornography. I'll say it directly, quit looking at pornography.
Married guys, quit looking at pornography. Confess it is sin, repent of it, acknowledge that Jesus suffered on the cross for it, and then seek help in relationship with others, seek help and accountability.
Single ladies, you cannot appreciate what I'm about to say and it's really hard to communicate it, but you must take by faith that men are much more visually enticed than you can understand. Married women, I think you know some of this a little bit better, but even you need to take this on as well.
You may and probably have from time to time in your life accidentally enticed men sexually by what you wear. Are they responsible for their eyes? Amen. They're responsible for their eyes, they're responsible for their thoughts, but men need your help.
And at the very least, women, confess or repent of trying those times where you have attempted to get illicit attention, times where you have been intentional about it. And you know what I'm talking about.
There is a little practice, and this isn't in my notes, but I was thinking about it earlier this morning and I was like, I'm gonna go for it. There's something that I like to do, and I don't like the mall.
I go there occasionally, I got teenage kids occasionally. How many of you ever go to the mall? Just ever, ever, ever. How many of you knew that there's a store called Victoria's Secret at the mall? Any of you know that?
None of the guys raised their hand, but a few of the girls, a few of the ladies, all the guys were like, no, what are you talking about? Didn't know it was there. Are you serious? What is that? No idea what you're talking about.
I developed a habit surrounding Victoria's Secret. Now that sounds weird. You're a pastor, right? What is going on? I'll get to the end here really quick. My habit is when I walk past that store to intentionally watch, what?
Other guys' eyes. I watch them. It's a practice of mine, it's a habit. I intentionally seek to do that. Anybody ever do that? Am I the only one? Has anybody ever tried that? Wow. You watch this. You watch a guy with a woman on his arm and he's like, mm, mm, yeah, okay.
And he's just taking those glances and you can see it as he walks down. Men are visually enticed. And as much as I can go, oh, that's gross. What in the world is he doing that for when he's got this woman on his arm?
And what is that about? What's going on there? But it can be in any of us. It can be in all of our hearts. We need to be cautious about these things and we need to work together as male and female to do this thing.
I mean, there is a binary. There is male and female. We respond differently to the world around us. And church, we are, by sliding over into the nebulous of our culture and buying into some of the notions that they're saying there's really no difference, well, that leads us in the wrong direction because we need to work together.
He's created us male and female. We need to be respectful to one another. Guys, you're responsible for your thoughts. You're responsible for your eyes. Women, you're responsible when you entice and when you intentionally dress to entice.
The second point is that guys rejoice, particularly married guys, rejoice that your wife has given herself in a vow to you. She has a garden locked up, a spring locked and a fountain sealed for you alone to enjoy.
I hope that's the case, but be grateful and be thankful that a woman has pledged that kind of vow to someone like you. Guys, that's an awful masculine chuckle there. That was a lot of guys there. And then women, married women, be that for your husband.
Be that for your husband. Be a place of sexual fulfillment for him. Single ladies, stay locked up until the right man comes along, a man who will be patient, a man who will lead you to the altar before he leads you to bed.
That's what you're looking for. Young men, unmarried men, respect the women in your life and respect them because God has called you to lead in godliness. And the last kind of section of application here, married couples, married couples.
So there's two prongs, one for married, one for not. The first, to those of you that are married in the room, eat, drink, and be drunk with love. It's business time. Not right here, not right now. Make it soon, make it frequent, make it something that you communicate about.
Do not deprive one another. Wives, invite him to the garden with your lotions and your perfumes. Husbands, go to your garden, drink deeply from the spring that God has given to you. And then the application for singles, don't.
Not yet, not yet. Despite all of the sins that so easily swirl around human sexuality, and I've chosen not to, I don't know if you've noticed, I've chosen not, line those all out. I mentioned pornography and I mentioned some of the things and withholding and some certain sins that I might see, but there's no point in us trying to catalog the various sins that swirl around sexual intimacy.
Rather, the text is here to hold up an ideal. It's here to hold up what marriage and what it's meant to be within the confines of holy marriage. There's a lot that swirls around human sexuality, is there not?
A lot of sin. How many of you just say, there's some sin out there around this. There's some sin in here around this. I like the way that Albert Moeller said it. He said, the question when we talk about homosexuality or we talk about all these other things that we might have an issue with, the question isn't about their sexual brokenness, the question really comes back at us because all of us are sexually broken in some way.
That's what Albert Moeller said. All of us are sexually broken. It's just a question of how. Question of in what way. God has entrusted us with such a powerful gift in marriage and sexuality and intimacy.
He is the giver of good gifts. And I think if we're all honest, we acknowledge what we are. He's the giver of good gifts. We're the corrupter of good gifts. We're the breakers of good gifts. So as we come to communion together this morning, let me encourage you to give over any and all of your sexual brokenness to him this morning.
Repent of it. Turn from it. Pray to him and talk to him about it. You know, maybe there's a young couple here who has gone further than they should and they're not married and I'd encourage you to repent and turn away today.
Maybe there's a young lady who's been captured by curiosity and now finds herself chained to pornography. I encourage you to confess it and make a plan for accountability and turn away today. Maybe there's a wife who is starving out her husband sexually.
She's been withholding from him for a long time without discussion, without agreement, and with no end in sight. Confess it. Repent of it. And remember that it is for these types of sins that Jesus died.
And then if you've asked Jesus to save you, and if you've asked him to be your king, if you now desire for him to call the shots in your life, especially around what the world says nobody else should call the shots for, I want you to know that the world right now is shouting at you, you are the master of your own sexuality, you are the one in charge.
Is that what the world's saying? And it couldn't be further from the truth. We who belong to Jesus Christ have asked him to be our king. We've asked him to be the Lord. We've asked him to call the shots.
So if you're in that position where you really strongly desire for God to be in charge, for Christ to rule and reign in your life, not that you're doing it perfectly, but that you wanna, you want to, you wanna honor him, you wanna obey, you feel guilt when you fail, and you keep coming back on a short leash to apologize and say, I wanna do better, God, give me strength, help me.
Then if that's you, then I encourage you, confess once more today before you come to the table, and then come to the tables of communion if you belong to Jesus Christ. If you've asked him to save you, then come to the tables of communion to remember his body broken for us, and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.
Jesus died for broken and busted up sinners like us, and he did so to bring us into an abundant life with him. So let me encourage all of us, church, go out from here with a commitment to live in the design he has put forward for our own flourishing.
He loves us and has given us many, many, many good gifts. Let's pray.