Song of Songs 1:9-17 Love Talk

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

The Awkward Love Book, blushing away through the song of songs. Let's listen in. Remind you at the start here that this is an idealized love poem.

So this is going to set a standard that most of us do not meet. It intentionally is so, so that we actually see somewhat of a standard that is difficult for us to grasp, it's difficult for us to get to, but it's something that is held up as something that we ought to be applying in our marriages and in our lives.

And so I want to encourage you to think of it that way. There's four guiding principles that if you didn't take notes and you weren't here last week,

I want these to be in front of us every time. And so if you've got one of those scripture journals or you're a note taker, I'd love for you to like find the title page of the scripture journal and jot these four things in there as a reminder of the interpretive keys to this book.

The first, this is a song. It is about human love. Found in the

Bible to convey human wisdom. So it's a song, and that tells us something about how we understand it, a lot of poetry, a lot of emotion.

It's about human love. Gives us the focus and direction of the book. It's found in the

Bible, which sets it in a spiritual environment. And fourth, it is to convey human wisdom.

It's found in that body of wisdom literature, basically written to demonstrate the exception of romantic love in terms of everyday routine wisdom.

Love and romance and intimacy does not follow the patterns of everyday life.

It's a powerful force in our lives that's beyond what makes logical sense. And so those will help us better to understand this idealized love song better.

The sermon's gonna have five points, and we're gonna find the first in verses nine and 10. The title of the sermon is

Love Talk. It's really all about communication within marriage, but you'll see that there's some parts for singles in here too.

But Love Talk, the first point is love talk highlights beauty. Love talk highlights beauty.

We know this song has both of the main genres of music right from the first verse.

We know what style it was written in. It must have been both country and western. The reason we know that, of course, is because the dude compares his bride to a horse, okay?

So country and western right here, boom. And he apparently, this is crazy, guys.

This is how much she loved him. He got away with it. He got away with it, okay?

But joking aside, this is not as bad as it might seem at face value. First, you have to understand who's writing,

Solomon. Solomon, who it's recorded in the Book of Kings, actually proliferated the horses for the king and for Israel.

He bought a lot of horses. He understood horses. He got horses. He knows them. He sees beauty in horses.

But there's something else going on here that isn't as clear to our modern mind, something that we have to grasp and understand, that when he talks about a mare among the chariots of Pharaoh it doesn't really compute with us, but would have been significant understanding in that day and age.

The fact is he speaks to the gender of the horse. Pharaoh's chariots were pulled by stallions and male war horses.

A mare among the stallions is a way of indicating that she is disturbing all the other guys.

That's what he's getting at here. It was even a war strategy in that time, and it is recorded in ancient documents that Egypt itself was the victim of this very battle strategy, where a mare in heat was released on the field of battle to distract and draw away the attention of the stallions pulling the chariots, putting all the chariots in disarray because one single mare in heat was released on the battlefield by the enemy in order to completely obliterate the other side.

And that's a strategy that's documented. So when he says, hey, babe, you are a mare among the chariots of Pharaoh, then all the guys are tripped over you.

That's what he's getting at here. She told him last week, she said to him last week, all the young maidens love you.

All the virgins are completely drawn to you, dude. You are so hot. And here he implies a reciprocal statement.

All the stallions want you. There's parallelism between what she said to him and what he's saying to her here.

Now, men, just as far as application, comparisons can be dangerous. Be careful.

You are treading in a minefield comparing your wife to a horse, okay? So just be careful. Unless you're a really gifted poet,

I would be careful applying this this afternoon when you get home or even right now leaning over to your wife.

It could be dangerous. Poetic comparisons is a pro move only to be taken on by pros.

So anybody ever venture into that and crash and burn on it? Comparisons are dangerous. Some of us don't even wanna go there.

And it's gonna take practice and skill. But what you can apply, men, right away, you could lean over to your wife, is letting her know that you find her lovely.

Let her know that she is the best -looking woman in the room to you, that you find her completely lovely, you find her completely and utterly attractive.

Use terms of endearment that would make other people's eyes roll back in their head. He calls her my love, he calls her my darling.

In some translations, maybe, in some way, you might actually call her my little schmoopsy -poo or whatever you guys, whatever you guys work on, that's between you.

Know that there's a little bit of a roll -your -eyes gag factor when you use that a lot in public, okay? But have those terms of endearment.

Those are beneficial. That's helpful talk in a marriage. And he keeps his comments for now, in this text, above the shoulders.

He says her cheeks are lovely and are framed with earrings. That's what he's talking about, with her cheeks being framed with gold.

Her neck is also lovely with a string of jewels on it. He's talking about her features that are accentuated by her accessories.

Now, here in these first two verses, we're seeing an important use of love talk.

We're seeing an important use of the way that we talk to one another in intimacy and love. Build up one another.

This will be a continued and obvious theme all throughout this book. These guys are constantly lifting each other up, constantly talking about their love, constantly talking about the features, constantly talking about how attractive they are to one another.

But the fact that we know that this is valuable, how many raise your hand and say, I already knew that was valuable in a relationship? Go ahead and raise your hand.

I just wanna see. So you already knew that that's beneficial, but the fact that we know it does not mean that we're doing it.

I hear so many couples, and I have over the years, and some of you have those friends that you get together and you play cards with, or you do different things, get together, and you hear them tear each other down.

How many of you know what I'm talking about on that? Raise your hand. And it's just awkward for everybody. Like, everybody's sitting there going, oh, can we get past this point?

And even in the name of good joking, she is not, men, your ball and chain. Do not joke about things like this.

The way you talk matters. Building each other up with your words.

Providing encouraging words, and certainly in private, certainly within the household, certainly to your children, certainly to your friends, and to your church, and in public.

Build each other up, lift each other up. Let others know that you are madly in love with your spouse.

And I think sometimes the words help make it true. Do you know what I'm talking about? Sometimes the words lead the heart.

And so the way we talk about our spouses matters significantly. We're a culture, by the way,

I wanna just identify this. This is a little bit of a barb in my own heart. We're a culture that is increasingly critical.

Anybody relate to that? Easy to find fault, easy to say, yeah, but it could've used a little more salt, or we're quick to say what's wrong with things.

And there is even a terrible trend of rating women according to physical appearance. And you can find that all over the internet.

There are apps and hashtags dedicated to this type of ranking where a girl can put a picture up of her face, and people will rank her, and it's terrible.

It's to our shame as a culture that we stand for that type of objectifying. And these words highlighting beauty from this king to his bride are not objectifying.

They are encouraging, and they are empowering, and they're saying, babe, I love you. I love your features.

I love who you are. I'm hot for you. These are words of affirmation within the protective confines.

So, dudes, there is one other thing here that's missed. It's missed on me way too often, and I'm guessing that I'm not alone on this.

She accessorized. How many of you missed it in the text? She accessorized. She put on earrings. She put on a necklace.

She chose those earrings on purpose. She put on that necklace on purpose. She applied her makeup on purpose.

So, take more notice of the things your woman is doing to make herself attractive. Pay attention.

She wants to be lovely to you. Better know when you notice. Work on noticing.

Make an effort to notice. By the way, this is a message to myself. I don't know if any of you are getting anything out of this, but I need to pay more attention.

How many times have I come home from work, and my wife says, notice anything different? Uh, yeah?

Haircut? Anybody with me? Guys, you gonna leave me hanging on this one? Okay, all of us, right?

But work to notice. That's right, I mean, I'm being serious, and I think that that is valuable in your marriage, to work to notice her.

She is doing things to be noticed. And I mean, this is not in my notes, but a side note. You don't notice somebody might.

You don't notice that somebody else might. Work to notice your wife. In verse 11, we see our second point.

Love talk celebrates love. The first was love talk highlights beauty.

The second is that love talk celebrates love. Now, we find this in the chorus of others. They're singing their lines in the song, and they can be a little bit hard to interpret, and hard to understand what they're getting on about.

They're talking about making jewelry for her. And since jewelry was often a gift, primarily reserved for weddings, where the community would come around and particularly the community of ladies would come around and help her to decorate, and help her to do like henna designs on her arm, and help her to accessorize, and all of that kind of stuff for the wedding, it's quite likely that that's what's going on here.

That's the primary view. And remember that this song was primarily sung at weddings. And so I believe the declaration of the chorus, that they will make accessories of gold and silver for the bride in this text shows the verbal affirmation of this couple and their wedding from all the others in the community.

We might say it this way in modern times. This might be a good translation of verse 11. We will shower you with toasters, cutlery, and vacuum cleaners from your registry.

I think that's kind of the way that we would apply this, but it still is kind of the same gist. What are we doing when we shower a couple prior to their wedding?

Why would we get the red toaster that we don't like, but they do? We are celebrating the goodness, the glory, and the beauty of marriage when we do so.

This is no trivial thing that we have the freedom to participate in by blessing a young couple who is coming into marriage.

This is a celebration of the amazing and glorious design of God to bring together two people in soul and body to become one, to forge a new family, a glorious and beautiful thing that God has designed.

So a practical application for all of us, both married and single, is to speak highly of marriage.

Whether you're married or whether you're single, speak highly of marriage. Lift it up as a good and glorious design from our almighty creator.

Do not denigrate it. Do not disparage it. Support engaged couples. Celebrate with them and speak with delight of celebrating marriage together.

Just this past week, a matter of fact, it was just a couple of days ago, it came across my Facebook news feed.

Somebody, and I don't even remember who it was, hopefully it's not somebody here, but somebody posted a meme that was basically the world's shortest fairy tale.

Now, some of you might have seen that one. World's shortest fairy tale. It was on Facebook and it was just like one little screen with just some words on it.

And it went like this. There once was a man and he asked the fair maiden to marry him. She said no and so now he fishes and hunts and does all that he wants.

He doesn't have to pick his socks up off the floor. And he drinks beer and watches whatever he wants on TV and he lived happily ever after.

The end. What a bleak view.

Yeah, it's intentionally, it's intended to be funny. And I understand that. I mean, I kind of chuckled when I first read it and then

I thought what a bleak view of marriage. What a misunderstanding of the glory that God desires to bring to both husband and wife in marriage.

Now, I understand the joking nature of it and I'm not sure that the person who posted it even believes it or meant it or whatever. But what does

God want to accomplish in your marriage? What does he want to accomplish in your heart? Through the sharpening that it takes to learn to pick the socks up off the floor, guys.

There's something to that. There's something to having another in your life that you don't go fishing every chance you get.

You know why? Because there's another in your life that God says matters. Are you getting what

I'm saying in this? So, it's this notion that we speak well.

Love talks, celebrates love. Love talks, celebrates marriage and is glad for it and talks it up, talks it up.

I mean, you single people in the room, you have an opportunity to speak into a generation that married people don't get to because at the end of the day, we have a generation that is really skeptical of marriage in general.

Their parents have divorced. They haven't seen true love and they haven't really seen what God desires to do in it because it's been throwaway and it's been cheap and it's been chintzy.

So, those of you that are in Christ to build it up and say, no, it's a glorious thing.

It's not easy. It's hard work and it is glorious beyond compare. It is a beautiful thing.

Our third point is found in verses 12 through 14. Love talk heightens anticipation.

Love talk heightens anticipation. Verses 12 through 14 and we see in this section three things that she says to him that heightens sexual anticipation between this couple.

She is intentionally, mildly indirect. She is teasing him and as a man,

I speak for myself when I say that I think she's on to something. She indicates three locations where she sees him and the three locations are mixed between reality and metaphor.

So, in verse 12, this first snippet gives a location. The bed or the couch. It can be translated both.

Probably, honestly, the place of lovemaking. That's the location and what is that?

You think about what she's saying and you put it in a story form. What is that amazingly sweet smell? Thinks the king as he lounges on the bed with his laptop going over battle plans to take it to the

Philistines. What is that smell? He smells her fragrance before he even sees her and despite the lack of direct speech, the poetry here implies that the smell impacts him.

He is enamored with it before he even sees his wife. Nard is a word that's borrowed from Sanskrit which is one of the earliest indications that the ancient

Jews, this passage, by the way, lets us know something historically that other documents don't even necessarily clarify.

But by this being such an ancient document, we know that the Jews had interactions with the area of India prior to this which we see indications that in Solomon's reign, his ships went far and wide trading but this is a ancient

Indian word like from the Hindi, the progenitor to the Hindi language.

Nard is the most rare and therefore the most expensive perfume mentioned in scripture which lets us know, reminds us that this is in a royal context, the fact that they could afford nard itself, that specific type of spice or scent is a big deal.

Considered an aphrodisiac and her love talk amounts to her saying here in this text, I want to start by seducing you with smell.

This is intentionally provocative. He's on the bed and she wants to smell good for him.

Get it? The second snippet has a very intense and mildly blush -worthy location.

This is where the PG -13 rating comes in. This is where your kids might ask some questions and there might be some shock factor to your pastor saying the next things that are in the next two or three paragraphs.

The location of her lover is between her breasts. Now let me state the technical before I explain the poem or before I pass out that I'm up here saying this.

I'm gonna state a couple technical things that I think we all know and I'm not educating anybody but I just want to remind you mammary glands exist to provide nourishment to newborns and infants.

Did you already know that? Go ahead and raise your hand, just cut the tension here. We knew that. They lactate.

We knew that. It's an amazing design of God that a woman is able to form a new life within her womb.

Anybody in awe of that? That is a stunner. Like that's an amazing design. And it's even further amazing that she's able to nourish a baby for a long time after she gives birth.

That's astonishing. She can produce a child within her womb by eating food.

Like somehow she turns the food into a baby by God's design obviously but that's just crazy.

And then she turns the food into milk to provide nourishment for the baby. Like everybody, kudos to the women, okay?

Kudos to your mom. Like that's just amazing. Good job, I'm glad for you. You were able to do that, okay?

But let me be clear about the text here because it's indicating that those are more than just merely mammary glands for infants.

There is an irrational and even somewhat mysterious draw between the male mind and his wife's breasts.

And maybe some of you women need to hear that, that your husband is not just psycho, okay? That's a real thing. I cannot pinpoint where this draw comes from.

And I'm sure Freud had some ideas and I'm sure some psychiatrist had some ideas but it is illogical at face value and yet it is ubiquitous.

It is a real thing, guys, right? Nobody's gonna say a word. Leave me on the chopping block on that one but it's a real thing, it really is.

So the king's wife, get this, the king's wife knows this. She isn't being naive by telling him where she imagines him as if it's just merely some strictly innocent naive metaphor or oh,

I didn't know that that would make you think that. Her words are intentionally sexually provocative without being spiritually impure.

Remember, that's the kind of theme of the book, sexually provocative but not spiritually impure.

She imagines him as a sachet of myrrh, a sweet -smelling, pleasing spice between her breasts.

And the word that the ESV translates lies in verse 13 is probably because those who translate the Bible really have kind of a stodginess to themselves.

They tend to be more in academic circles looking at dusty books. But verse 13 is a longer stay than a moment.

The word lie there, look at the verse. My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh that lies between my breasts.

The word lies there has a duration to it. Verse 13 is longer than a momentary stay.

It means to spend the night there. She wants him to linger in this location.

So this particular verse has been so awkward for some church leaders down through the ages that it has produced some really super funny and awkward interpretations.

Super funny. Cyril of Alexandria, who was a theologian in the fifth century who probably,

I'm gonna just go out on a limb, I didn't look it up, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and just basically say he probably was a virgin and remains so,

I don't know. He interpreted it this way as a theologian. Again, the thing about allegory is you can make it up as you go.

You can make things stand for whatever you want and it's not very healthy or helpful. He says in his writings about this very verse, the right breast is the

Old Testament and the left breast is the New Testament. And Christ is the glorious sachet of myrrh between the two.

Or I think he may have said betwixt the two. Anybody with me in assuming that he may very well have been single?

And stayed that way? These verses, this very verse causes babies.

This verse, when applied and spoken by wives to their husbands, will result in a need for more nursery workers in nine months.

A wife who understands her power to create anticipation in her husband is a wife who is free to express sexual desires by text, by phone call, and throughout the day.

The third snippet here is set in En -Gedi, an actual real location.

This is a fertile garden area where there are waterfalls and fresh water streams flowing into the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea you wouldn't want to take a drink of.

It's all salty and not good, stagnant. But the water that flows into it, there are some freshwater streams that flow into there.

En -Gedi was a refreshing place. It's an oasis in the desert. And she declares that her beloved is like beautiful, sweet -smelling, colorful henna blossoms in the vineyards of this place.

He stands out. In a beautiful place, he stands out. Now, the area of En -Gedi is already glorious.

It's already a destination. It's kind of like saying Cancun or the Riviera Maya or some really beautiful place, whatever it might be for you.

Might be the mountains out in the Rockies or the Grand Tetons or something. She's saying, my lover is like going to that place.

But he stands out among what's already good. How many of you think vineyards are kind of pretty? Like people have weddings around here in the grape vineyards and it's a big deal.

But grapes, have you ever noticed, grapes don't produce really big, beautiful flowers, but henna blossom does. And he stands out even in the midst of that lovely and peaceful oasis.

He is in a glorious place and she says you're great. She says in these three snippets,

I want you on the bed enjoying the scents of my perfumes. I want you to spend the night between my breasts. To me, you are a blessing and handsome, even among all of the other good things in life.

You stand out. Women, send a text like that to your husband.

He may very well take half a day off work, show up and maybe even get a babysitter.

I don't know. I'm not making any promises, but it just could happen. What are you doing to produce and tease out anticipation as a couple?

This isn't just for the women. Are you doing anything that produces anticipation in that?

Or does preparation for lovemaking look like, hey, you got a couple minutes? Emphasis on couple minutes.

I'm not being critical here. And I mean, this sounds really crass, but I'm being honest and direct. I'm not being critical of a quickie from time to time.

But if that has become the pattern, and this is genuine, intentional critique, if that has become the pattern in your marriage, re -strike that match.

Try to rekindle those fires. I know it might be uncomfortably direct the way that I'm speaking, but this text is intentionally addressing the anticipation for lovemaking that should be fostered in the ideal marriage.

In the ideal marriage, this should be relatively routine. Ideal, of course, is the operating word.

Because some of you are, even right now, just thinking, how in the world does that happen? There are kids, there are jobs, there are real things that get in the way.

But don't let that stop the effort of keeping your intimacy alive. Keep the intimacy alive.

So love talk highlights beauty. Love talk celebrates love. Love talk creates anticipation.

And fourth, we see in verses 15 through 16, that love talk conveys mutual attraction.

Love talk conveys mutual attraction. He says to her, behold, you are beautiful, my love. Again, term of endearment, darling, is another translation of that.

Behold, you are beautiful, my darling. Behold, you are beautiful. Men, do you notice what just happened there? He's repeating himself.

Repetitious communication is necessary in intimacy, men. The old joke,

I told her I loved her when I married her, if anything changes, I'll let her know. That is not the pathway to abiding intimacy.

Say it often. Say it in many ways. Say it in your actions. Say it with gifts.

Say it with time. And keep on saying it. You are lovely, and I love being with you.

I would suggest to you that there's a mild problem, and I mean, I've read the five love languages, and I think there's some benefit to it, but I think there's also a problem with it that's often overlooked.

The five love languages is a book, how many of you are familiar with it, or have read it, or at least know about it? It's a book that proposes that everybody's got a love language, it's their primary way of receiving love, and then once you find that out, then you know how to get to the heart of your spouse, or somebody else, or whatever.

But the problem with that is that it misses the full -orbed creative intention that's at our disposal for showing love.

What we can get in our mind is that she just wants that one thing, and that's it, and that's not helpful.

She might favor one, but my hunch is that she would also appreciate all different kinds of forms of love shown to her, and vice versa, your man as well.

He definitely has multiple ways that he experiences love. Time, gifts, attention, physical touch, all of those things that filter into what it means to really love a person, it's much more broad than the five love languages getting down to just one thing and nailing that.

Are you getting what I'm saying? A lot of times, it really appeals to the American mind, right, because we want to turn love into a checklist.

If I just do this, this, and this, then it's gonna be okay. So if I just give her gifts, okay, that's her love language, and I'm fine.

But notice the increase in clarity that this husband and wife are truly into each other. You begin to see that, and it just becomes clear right out of the gate, they express mutual attraction.

And let me say this to the singles that are here listening in. Some of you are here, you're single, but you think that God probably has a plan for marriage for you in your future.

You don't know where that's going, you don't know when it's gonna be, but you have some hunch that God might have have that in your future.

An actual attraction to one another is not superficial or unspiritual, as some might think.

Attraction to the external beauty of the other is certainly not what makes a lasting marriage.

But I also equally would say a marriage devoid of physical attraction is not a marriage taking into account this very book of the

Bible. This book is flush and chock full of declarations of physical attraction between this couple.

And there's one thing, I know that it's really popular right now to dog on Mark Driscoll, there's an entire podcast dedicated to it, but I wanna pass along a tidbit of something that I think was beneficial that I learned from him back in the day.

He did preach through this series in a way that I'm not necessarily comfortable with, but one of the things that I gleaned from what he said,

Mark Driscoll says of married people, when you got married, your standard of beauty is now located in your spouse.

If she gained 50 pounds, then guess what you're into? 50 pounds more. If his hair falls out, ladies, you're into bald.

Our spouse is to be our standard of beauty.

Only to our shame would we hold some outside external standard of beauty and then try to force our spouse into that mold that we have created or that the world has created or that the tabloids have created or the magazine covers have created.

God forbid that we do that. And I'm speaking mostly to the men here because that's more your tendency. I know that a lot of this ends up being stereotypical talk, but that is a significant thing.

The king here is taken by her eyes. The comparison to Doves is a bit unclear and it's a little unclear whether it's the whiteness, like there's just a purity to the white or whatever it is, but he is just as lost in her eyes as Debbie Gibson.

To my shame, confession moment, to my shame, I owned the single on cassette.

So what I'm doing is this is a double confession. This is a double whammy. I am both showing my age and my poor taste in music.

So there you go. Back in high school, yes, that was shameful. He is lost in her eyes.

And she reciprocates with the same words except masculine. So some translations wanna call it handsome, but it doesn't show the repetition.

She sees him as handsome and she adds to it this phrase truly delightful, which is an interesting phrase in Hebrew that kind of means has the word pleasant right in the middle of it.

It is pleasant to the eyes. He's not hard to look at, she says. So love talk conveys mutual attraction.

And lastly, we see at the end of verse 16, going over to 17, love talk keeps intimacy in mind.

This is similar to that heightened anticipation from the third point earlier. So this is, again, an added during the day kind of anticipation that's building, and yet what the wife does here is a little less provocative than it was in verses 12 through 14.

But here at the end of 16 and 17, she's still trying to remind him she wants to keep intimacy in his mind.

It may seem strange that she begins to talk about their bedroom, but I think you don't have to be very creative to imagine what she's trying to get him to think about.

Our covers are green or verdant, as some translations have it. She's comparing their bedroom to an outdoor space, a lush green field under the cover of trees.

The beams of our house are nice -smelling cedar, and the rafters are a pleasant pine. She is imagining poetically the place that they make love.

She wants her man to know she is thinking about their bed, their private chambers. And again, she is thinking about intimacy, and she wants him to be thinking about it too.

She wants to be in the green bed surrounded by cedars and pines and him. And she lets him know.

In a very specific way, I encourage those of us that are married to take a deeper assessment of our communication with our spouses.

At my stage of life, kids need to be picked up and dropped off, and there are just daily details that need to be communicated.

Anybody relate to that? Are there just a lot of details, and it can become the bulk of your communication is just detail -oriented.

Who's going to get the kids? What's going to happen? Where are we going to drop them off? What's your schedule look like tomorrow? And all of that.

And there is very little fire or passion that will naturally find me and my wife. It's just not going to naturally, it's not going to naturally be there.

It has to be intentional. And it's not enough to say, well, some other stage in life, later, we'll kick that can down the road, and eventually we'll get back to the steam.

How many people, what's a terrible trend in our culture right now is empty nesters divorce.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Kids go off to college, we did our work, got that done, and then they split.

What's that about? They didn't stoke any of this intimacy down through the stretch.

And instead, what they did, is they made it all about their kids, they made it all about their schedules, they didn't take time for each other, and they wake up one morning to an empty house going,

I'm living with a stranger. Did not foster the intimacy, I didn't speak to them words of love and affirmation and upbuilding.

This, without being intentional, and I think you guys can all relate to this, because I have the feeling that all of us have some work to do in this area of communication.

This type of love talk will be some of the first communication to get kicked to the curb if we are unintentional, if we are not investing.

You know what I'm saying? Nod your head if you kind of think, yep, I've seen that. But how many marriages, how many marriages could have been saved by some investment in this type of communication?

Light a little fire this week in your talk, light a little fire in your texting. Come up with some code talk.

Let your wife know that you love both the Old and the New Testament. Get a little mileage out of that one.

I said we were gonna blush together a couple of times, and I see some blushing, that's fabulous. Let her know you would gladly serve her as a sachet of myrrh.

But this passage is clear in terms of a call to intimate communication, is it not? Love talk should describe our relationships, love talk that highlights beauty and mutual attraction with one another, love talk that heightens anticipation and brings to mind intimacy, and love talk that celebrates love and intimacy and speaks highly, highly, highly of marriage.

So why does this even matter? Why does it matter? Why would God write about the way that we talk to one another in a romantic way?

Well, we serve a God who communicates to us, right? Very fundamental to who God is is that he spoke, and when he speaks, stuff happens.

When he speaks, things come into being. The very first chapter of the Bible is full of the very speech of God that this stuff is made out of, that we are made of.

He speaks, and light comes into existence. He speaks, and stuff occurs. Matter occurs out of nothing at his communication.

And he has, that God, that creator God, that almighty God has recorded for us an idealized love song to remind us that we need to be actively working at romance in our marriage.

God is saying this to us. The whole counsel of God includes care and concern for your marriage or your future relationships.

But healthy marriages are nowhere near the central communication of God. Despite the fact that we know that it is indeed marriage is a image of Christ in the church, marriage isn't the point,

Christ in the church is. Our marriages matter, but they do not matter most.

Do you hear me? Marriages matter, but they do not matter most. We know there is love talk, but I think many of us are very familiar with hate talk as well.

I've seen it firsthand. I've grieved over it. I've watched married couples in my office that should be planning their next night away, and instead they're yelling at each other and berating each other, even in my presence.

Not even ashamed to scream at each other in the presence of their pastor. Not that I'm a big deal, but it's just like, how many of you know they usually hide that stuff?

Sensible people do. Wait, did I, no they don't. They get that stuff out.

Did I just say that out loud? That's not right, you guys. Get it out, I'm serious. Get it out while you can.

Seek counseling, get some help about it. But I know all of us have seen that we are not what the ideal puts forward.

To a person in this room, if we could, this is kind of creepy, I just thought of this. There is a best marriage in this room.

I don't know whose it is. All the way from the worst to the best, and if we were to sit up and rank that baby, and really in God's eyes, see the best marriage in this room, it still falters.

It still is less than the ideal. It is still failing in terms of what God desires for it.

Why? Because we're sinners. Because we're broken. And so a healthy marriage needs so much more than a commitment here to romantic and intimate communication.

A healthy marriage can only be realized through the rescue and redemption of a savior. So let's land the hope for our marriages and for healed relationships at the table of communion this morning.

Here every Sunday, we bring it back to our sin and to our savior. We are busted and broken.

We deserve punishment for our rebellions and our betrayals. But Jesus took on himself there at the cross, our punishment.

By his broken body and his shed blood, he took the punishment we deserved on himself. So that if you believe in Jesus, and you believe that he died on the cross for your sins, a literal event that happened 2 ,000 years ago, if you believe that's true, and you have given him the reins of your life and said, be my lord, be my king, then you're welcome to come to the table this morning.

But married couples, I'm gonna ask you to do something different this morning, and I want you to really do it. If you can, I mean,

I can't force you to, but I really want you to. I want you to have a brief conversation before you take communion.

And I mean the briefest of conversations. It's really just two questions. I want you to lean over to your spouse if you're married and say, do we need help?

Do we need help? And the second question is, is the fire dead or dying?

Do we need help? Is the fire dead or is it dying? And if so, and if you'd be willing, at the very end of communion here, we're gonna sing a song, we're gonna have communion, but there's gonna be some people up front here to my left after the closing song, right up here by the doors, back by the fire extinguisher, to pray with anybody who would come up.

And say, I just want prayer for my marriage. You're not coming up and basically declaring my marriage is just crap, it's just terrible.

You're coming up and saying, I would like somebody to pray with me. I'd like somebody to pray over our marriage, and it's gonna be innocuous, you don't have to share what's going on in the bedroom, you don't have to share any of that stuff.

It's just straight up like, we need help. And we're acknowledging that by taking the step of faith and asking somebody to pray.

And so if you are those, and I mean some of you know that you're the ones who are gonna come up and pray, and I want you to just get right up out of your chairs at the end of communion when

Dave prays and kind of dismisses everybody, I want you to just shoot up and come up over here to pray with people.

We would love to walk with you. Don't know what that means, but we would love to walk with you. We would love to pray with you, and see you take steps towards healing in your marriage.

There is no shame in that. We falter, and we all go through tough times, but it will be to our shame,

I think, if nobody comes up for prayer, because I know that none of us meet this ideal of esteeming intimacy in our marriages, just nailing this thing, this communication thing.

So praise God that Jesus has rescued us from hell. That's first. Anybody glad for that? Amen to that.

But church, let's also be sure that we're leaning on Jesus in our daily, day -to -day relationships as well.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word that drives down into our hearts and minds down into the recesses of where we are less than ideal.

We thank you for Christ who makes up that gap in our lives. We thank you for your spirit that can convict and draw us in.

I pray that messages like this, as we go through the Song of Songs, may be the very building blocks of a restored relationship between some couples here, that you might help them to lean into communication, and that you might use this by the power of your spirit.

There may be some saved couples here who genuinely want to honor you, and are just now beginning to realize, oh man, we have slidden so far from the ideal, and I pray that you would propel people back into that anticipation, that love, that mutual affection for one another, and talking well together.

Father, I pray that you would be with us now as we have an opportunity to take communion. Thank you for the work of Christ that is our only hope, and I pray that nobody walks out of here with just the notion that, oh, pastors spoke about me being better, a better husband or a better wife, that it really ends up being all about Christ and what he has done for us, and our hope placed on him to lead us into the marriage that you desire.

Father, for the singles that are here, I pray that you would be increasing within them a knowledge of the types of things that you want within marriage, the types of things that you want in their relationship, the types of ways to talk about marriage and speak of it highly, and to anticipate it if it's your desire, and if not, that you would help them to anticipate the great marriage that is coming at the end for all who belong to you.