Reclaiming the Sacred
Notes
Transcript
Well, this has been quite a year so far, hasn’t it?
We spent twelve sermons, studying addiction and recovery. We took breaks for the Resurrection season. I was gone for a few weeks and then shared about what I learned at the conference. Now, if the start of the year wasn’t disruptive enough, we are going to spend a total of nine weeks in Song of Solomon.
I was not allowed to read Song of Solomon when I was a kid. During the Victorian Era of history, end of the 1800s to beginning of 1900s, one was told that they couldn’t read this book unless they were married.
And you definitely, never heard a sermon on it.
The content of this book embarrassed the tender sensibilities of that era. There were certain things one didn’t talk about, and everything that is contained in Song of Solomon was contained in that list of taboo subjects.
But, unfortunately, even though churches didn’t talk about such subjects and good Christian homes didn’t talk about such subjects, the playgrounds did and then the schools did.
Then the sexual revolution hit in the 60s and 70s, and the church reacted by talking even less about sexual things, creating a vacuum that needed to be filled. So, movies, music, books, and the culture at large began to teach the kids about the precious things that God created. The sacred which the church had turned into the taboo.
Unfortunately, but not teaching on the sacred, the culture turned it into the lewd. Saying, if it feels good, do it. Don’t deprive yourself of something natural. Everyone’s going to do it, so make sure it is safe. Why would we stop them? Don’t be such a prude.
That attitude has destroyed generations. Such as now, it is the norm to be sexually active in high school, merging into Junior High. The expectation is that dating couples will live together. The marriage rate is dropping, because couples find life easier without it. They can have all the benefits right now, so why would they get married.
Do you see what happens when the people of God refuse to teach about God’s expectations on all of life, or another way of saying it: when the church of God refuses to preach the entire counsel of God.
As the internet burst onto the scene, not only were children taught by culture, but they were also taught by subculture, seeing things that no one should ever see, searing evil thoughts and scenes on the subconscious.
And all the church has said is: Don’t have sex. Leave it for marriage.
It is a negative message: don’t do. But, God inspired Song of Solomon as a positive message: Rejoice in doing this, according to righteousness. And the joy that comes from that.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s read the first verses of Song of Solomon:
Solomon’s Song of Songs.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
for your love is more delightful than wine.
Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.
No wonder the young women love you!
We are not going to be diving into the rest of the book or chapter today. Today is the introduction to the book. So, you don’t have to worry.
Before we dive in, will you pray with me?
1. Background
1. Background
We study books in the literal, grammatical, and historical perspective.
What does that mean? Well, we look at the genre of a book. In this case, it is a poem. We read poetry differently than history. Poetry using beautiful language to say something different than what they are saying. We read to understand concepts contained in the imagery rather than reading for events which are clearly outlined.
That’s the literal part of this.
Grammatical means we look at the very words and the sentence structure, to see what is actually said, both in the face and the idioms and innuendoes behind the words.
Historical means that we believe the book was written at a specific period of time, and should be interpreted as people of that time would have interpreted it.
So, let’s look at a bit of that background.
A. Who Wrote It?
A. Who Wrote It?
Well, who wrote it?
Verse 1 says:
Solomon’s Song of Songs.
Solomon wrote this poem.
Solomon was the son of David, who became king after Saul died. David was the king after God’s own heart. Though a sinner, he readily repented and turn back to God in humility.
David was promised a son that would sit on his throne forever.
When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
Solomon was the son who became king after David became too old to rule. He built the temple for God. However, his kingdom did not last forever.
Solomon was merely a picture of Jesus, who was born of the line of David, and who will reign on David’s throne forever in eternity.
Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’ ”
Solomon was also gifted with amazing wisdom by God and wrote tons of Proverbs and sayings, including this book that we are about to study.
B. When Did He Write It?
B. When Did He Write It?
Well, when did Solomon write this book?
Solomon reigned over Israel sometime between 970 BC and 920 BC. When he started, he was married to Naamah, of the Ammonites. They were married in his late teens. There are contextual clues in the book that Solomon is writing concerning his love for her.
My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
from the vineyards of En Gedi.
En Gedi is just across the Dead Sea from Ammon.
How handsome you are, my beloved!
Oh, how charming!
And our bed is verdant.
The word charming is a form of the word Naamah.
Some read this book and wonder how Solomon could write it, if he had as many wives and concubines that he ended up having.
He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.
He obviously wrote this book towards the beginning of his reign, before he made such horrible decisions.
One commentator wrote this:
“The fact that Solomon later went astray in the very area of human and divine intimacy, with is many wives and his idolatrous ways, does not of itself undermine the book’s value. Indeed, this factor acts as a warning sign discouraging the idea that there is any easy way to escape such temptations.”
C. What Did He Write?
C. What Did He Write?
Well, what did he write?
Solomon’s Song of Songs.
He wrote a song of songs.
Now in Hebrew, there are many ways to say that something is the best it could be, or the epitome. You could repeat something three times, such as Holy , holy, holy! Or you could say that is was the blank of blank. The best of the best, as we would say. Or the Holy of holies.
Solomon wrote a lot
He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five.
But, he labeled this as the best of them all.
Some people approach this grouping as a collection of love songs. However, if you sit down and read it, in one sitting, you will notice that there is a story arch to it.
Some people see three sections:
1:1-3:5 is a courtship period.
3:6-5:1 is the wedding. Chapter 4 seems to be a love-making scene, which would be the wedding night.
5:2-8:14 is married life. In the middle of that is a conflict-resolution narrative followed by another love-making scene and a conclusion to the song.
Others disagree with that assessment. But, I disagree with that assessment. And, I’ll talk about later.
As you read, you will see three characters.
The woman, referred to as “the beloved” or the Shulammite. She speaks over half the time in the Song and is an active initiator.
The man, referred to as “the man” or King Solomon, or the “lover”.
Finally, the friends or daughters of Jerusalem. We don’t really know who they are. but they seem to act as observers, and serve to draw the woman out.
How do we know there are these characters? Hebrew is an amazing language. By the words that are used, we know if the speaker is one person or many and we know whether the speaker is male or female.
These thee characters weave a story through this song, as one commentator summarized:
“the beloved was part of a family where the father was no longer on the scene and where she was under the authority of her half-brothers. Naturally beautiful, she was a somewhat neglected soul, forced by her guardians to work long hours under a hot sun in the vineyards and in other agricultural pursuits.
“One day a handsome stranger appears and shows interest in her. This man, it turns out, is King Solomon. He sees her hidden beauty, wins her heart, betroths her to him, marries her, and takes her into his palace. Although there comes a time when she takes his love for granted, and so drives him away, they are reconciled and come to a mature love that goes on into the future with no sign of ending.”
Such a beautiful narrative. You really should read it sometime.
2. Interpretation
2. Interpretation
But, when you do, you need to consider the interpretation of the poem. There are two main camps, and I argue for a blending of them.
A. Literal
A. Literal
The first camp is the literal camp. They say this is a poem about the beauty of marital love in all the forms that it comes in.
I use the word: literal, cautiously. Because they still read the poem as it is meant to be read, full of beautiful imagery and idioms, meanings behind meanings. Which I will let you decipher yourself for now.
But, the literal camp says that it is a poem about marriage, Solomon marrying his bride and their rejoicing in that marriage.
So, as they interpret the poem, they only consider marriage. Which is great.
This poem is about marriage: how marriage is a blessing and not a ball and chain. How God intended sex to be enjoyed by the man and the woman, but that the enjoyment was to be in marriage.
There has been a movement lately, thankfully, to lead churches through Song of Solomon to teach what marriage should be and what sex should be. To reclaim the sacred.
And pastors either shock their congregations by completely unpacking the imagery in the song, or they provide a PG rated sermon by giving the 30,000 foot view.
I know one pastor who explained the different forms of love in the Song, one being the erotic, lustful love and one being the friendship love, and whenever he came to a particularly suggestive idiom, he would just say that this was referring to the erotic love and move on.
B. Allegorical
B. Allegorical
There are many Bible scholars throughout the centuries, who have shied away from the literal interpretation, because they are afraid of the Bible being too crass.
Sebastian Castillio in the early 1500s took the book literally and claimed that is was Lascivious and obscene. Calvin condemned for that view.
The puritan writers, like Jonathan Edwards, loved this book. Edwards found an inward sweetness in the book, when he was a teenage, turning to the book throughout his life, as it explained the love of Christ for his church.
You see, this is a poem in the Bible. Therefore, it must advance the message of the Bible. The greater story from Genesis to Revelation must be connected to this book.
As you read the book, you will notice two distinct locations related. One is a garden and the other is a city.
The woman, the bride, starts in the Garden and ends up married in the city of the king. Just like humanity started in the Garden and will end up at the wedding supper of the Lamb, in the New Jerusalem, the city of the king.
Solomon, the groom, points to Christ. He is a promised son of David. He builds the temple, by which the people of God can approach God. Just as Jesus is the promised son of David and died that the people of God could approach God. Solomon, being the groom, has a beautifully intimate relationship with his bride, just as Christ desires a beautiful intimate relationship with his church, his bride.
As Solomon and his bride rejoice in standing unashamed, naked before each other, rejoicing in what God had created, so as one commentator wrote:
“Can you imagine what would it be like to stand naked, flawless, perfect, worshiping, without sin in the presence of God?” As it was in the garden of Eden?
“In the poetry of the Song of Songs, we have an impressionistic narrative that depicts a descendant of David who has overcome the alienation between himself and his wife, removed the hostility and mistrust by his loving words, worked and kept a cursed land such as has become like the Garden of Eden. In the words of this book, the man and the woman stand before one another naked and unashamed; theirs is a stunning renewal of Eden’s lost glory.”
Such a great book!
3. Application
3. Application
As I said, I am not in one camp or the other. I am in favor of blending the interpretations. It is a divine poem. As such, there is the surface meaning of the blessings of marriage and the deeper meaning of the message of Christ’s love for us.
Through the course of this study, we are going to discuss two things, while we unpack what is happing in each chapter:
A. Defense of Marriage
A. Defense of Marriage
My goal is to give a defense of marriage.
We live in a society that refuses to celebrate marriage as something sacred. In high school, teens are encouraged to practice safe sex, instead of abstinence. If they are taught abstinence, they are not taught about the real reason, but are warned against teenage pregnancy and STD’s, instead of the beauty of the marital union.
We live in a society where cohabitation is the norm. Most couples have lived together before marriage. All giving many different reasons why. But, no matter the reason, cohabitation is not marriage and destroys the sacredness of that God-given institution.
We live in a society that encourages the viewing of pornography, as an enjoyable way to learn about sexual habits and preferences, and to spark one’s sex life.
We live in a society that promotes the distortion of marriage through same-sex relationships. The opposite of what God designed, and something that God clearly writes against throughout his Word.
Yes, our society lifts up everything sexually that is against God, and poo-poos everything sexually that is as God designed it.
When married, people joke about the “Ball and chain” and you can’t be happy anymore. And many couples live that lie. They are miserable. Those that don’t get divorced are miserably dedicated to each until death due them part.
God designed marriage as a beautiful thing. Two different people, drastically different not only in biology, but in emotions and desires and dreams. These two people coming together to support one another, encourage one another, mature one another, and be completely devoted to one another, even if no one else in the world is.
It’s a beautiful thing.
B. As an Image of God’s Love for Us
B. As an Image of God’s Love for Us
Because it is a picture of God’s love for us.
Paul writes in that classic passage,
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
We are the one who felt unworthy, destroyed by working the fields and mire of this world. And Jesus, the king, comes by, confessing unconditional love, wooing us to himself, dying that we might have the ability to have a relationship with him. Ultimately, bringing us into his city where we can live at peace, basking in his unadulterated love for all eternity.
God designed marriage to be a picture of his relationship with us. So when we destroy marriage, we are shattering the picture that God has left us of the Gospel. We have a choice, will we show God in this broken world through the relationships that he has given us or will we join the world in taking a sledge hammer to the portrait of God.
“Many people are drawn to the perversions of God-honoring sexual expression because of the powerful pleasure and delight to be had, even from distortions of this gift of God. In the Song of Songs, God has shown us a blissful expression of marital love. God woos us away from sinful attempts at pleasure with a Song that sings the enjoyment of what He makes possible.
“God calls us away from the powerful pleasure of sin with the depiction of the superior pleasures of holiness in this most sublime Song. God doesn’t use a chisel to chip away at sexual perversion, he sues poetry set to music: The Song of Solomon.”
And you know what. I am looking forward to studying this with you.
My encouragement to you:
Read Song of Solomon. Prayerfully consider one way that you are not defending marriage in your life, perhaps it is viewing pornography, perhaps it is not seeking oneness or reconciliation with your spouse, perhaps it is the jokes you are telling. Consider one way that you are not defending marriage and change it, by the power of God and for His glory.