¶1The Song of Songs may be the most difficult book in the whole Bible. Maybe it's a tie with Leviticus. For a couple of reasons. One is Song of Songs is very obscure. I wonder if how many of you spent much time reading this or hearing sermons about this.
¶2But the other big reason is not just is it difficult, it's filled with erotic content. And for many people this is surprising and scandalizing that there'd be a book like this in the Bible. We'll go through some examples. On the other hand, all throughout church history Christians have seen the Song of Songs as a unique window into the love of God. And I'm going to press this point.
¶3I hope to press this. I hope you'll stay to the end where I have these five points where I'm pastorally working with this book trying to convey the love of Christ to your soul. This will be a more devotional window. I'm going to agree with that and say the Song of Songs can convey the love of Christ to you in some respects like no other book in the Bible can. I think if you'll stay to the end you'll find that worthwhile and edifying as I did in my own soul.
¶4However, this emphasis and these what are called allegorical interpretations have often been so emphasized as to exclude any reference to human sexual sexuality in this book. And so it raises this question. Is the Song of Songs about sex or is it about God? And in this video I want to develop an answer of saying, yes, it's about both. And in working through that, so you can see on each side of the screen here it's we're going to say it's not just a strict allegory about divine love.
¶5But it's also not just about human sexual love. It's about human sexuality pointing us up to God. It's a both and and actually I think developing this is a good test case for theology. And as I say it's one of the most devotional books in the Bible for us. So I hope this video will serve you.
¶6We'll go in two sections. First we'll talk about how the Song of Songs is indeed about marriage and sex, sex within marriage. Very graphically, as we'll see. But also secondly we'll see it is about the love of God. On the first point I'm going to give a bunch of practical thoughts about preaching and teaching from this book and why I think it's actually very helpful in our cultural moment right now.
¶7And on the second point, I'm going to conclude what is really the main part of the video with five specific ways that sexual love expressed in its proper context in marriage points us to God himself, which is very edifying actually to think about, strange as it might sound. So, let's dive in. Uh let me ask you this question and ask you to leave a comment. How many sermons have you heard on Song of Songs? My hunch is probably a lot less than on a book like Romans.
¶8Now, in the 1100s, Bernard of Clairvaux famously preached 86 sermons on Song of Songs, and yet even after 86 sermons, he'd only reached the end of chapter 2, which makes Martin Lloyd Jones going through the book of Romans in 12 years seem rushed by comparison. But Bernard is very rare, at least today. I suspect we don't hear too many sermons on this book now and again, but not too often. And part of the answer is it's a very difficult book. Two famous Lutheran biblical commentators describe this book as the most obscure book in the Old Testament, and they're just talking about it's just that the language and and what's just happening is difficult to interpret.
¶9By the way, uh throughout church history, this neglect has not been as much as it is today. Christians plumbed the depths of this book to explore the nature of God's love. And so, what we're going to do in this video is draw from two great Christians, though very different from one another, Bernard of Clairvaux, the great medieval theologian, and John Owen, the great Puritan divine, to kind of model a possible way forward. And I'm drawing this video, this video was inspired by reading a chapter of this great book, Owen Among the Theologians by Kelly Kapic and Ty Kieser. Hope I've said both their names right.
¶10Great book. One of the chapters is on this, and so we're drawing from that. I'll link to that book in the video description. That chapter sort of inspired this video. I thought this could be edifying to put out there.
¶11Now, we We the book Song of Songs because of the very first verse. Uh the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. That title is kind of a superlative. So, it's saying it's sort of the apex of all songs. Kind of like when we say Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
¶12You may have heard it called Song of Solomon. And and traditionally, it is held to be authored by Solomon. Though that is actually very uncertain. Um and we really don't know who the author is. The phrase there in chapter 1 verse 1 can mean by Solomon, but it can also mean for Solomon, about Solomon, belonging to Solomon.
¶13The truth is we don't know who wrote this. And that is just as well because it turns out Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Which, as we will see, is not exactly the ideal that is presented in Song of Songs. One way to read this book is as a polemic against polygamy. We'll talk about that.
¶14But actually, one of the biggest debates is about whether Solomon is a sympathetic character in the text at all. So, one of the big debates with Song of Songs is whether it's a singular dramatic narrative moving cohesively start to finish. Or whether it's a collection of different love poems. And if you think it's a singular dramatic narrative, there's a further debate about basically whether you have two characters in the book, the man and the woman or the lover and the beloved, or whether you have three characters in what is sometimes called the shepherd interpretation. Where you have Solomon, then a young woman, and then a young shepherd boy.
¶15And in this view, typically Solomon is seeking the woman's consent to become a part of his harem. And so, he's kind of the bad guy, and she's resisting this, and she loves the shepherd boy, and then and you can read about this. That's actually held by some evangelicals as well. I personally don't find that reading very persuasive. And actually, the very fact that in a singular dramatic narrative view, it's hard to answer even these basic questions.
¶16And there's disagreement about just the basics of what is the narrative and who are the main characters and so forth. Maybe one reason to consider that this is actually a collection of love poems. But here's the biggest challenge for interpretation that I want to focus on in this video. I'm going to try not to ramble because I really want you to stay to the end to these five points at the end that I think will be edifying for us. Uh but the the big question that we do need to cover here is allegory.
¶17An allegory is a story or a picture where the characters and the events stand for deeper hidden meanings. And this is the traditional interpretation of Song of Songs among both Jewish and Christian interpreters. In Jewish readings, this book was held as an allegory of Yahweh's love for Israel. That's reflected in the Targum, for example. And it all throughout church history, uh this is how it's been read.
¶18It's an allegory for Christ's love for the church. And then in the modern era, uh starting in the middle of the 19th century, the trend has decisively swung away from that view. And so Song of Songs is a fascinating case study in the question of how premodern biblical interpretation relates to modern biblical interpretation. Here's how one book that I reference again, so I'll just hold it up now while I'm thinking of it so you can check this out. They have a pretty good introduction to the Song of Songs here.
¶19Here's how they how they put it. "Perhaps no other biblical book has been read so differently from one time period to another. In the Middle Ages, very few would interpret the book in connection with human sexuality. Indeed, to do so was dangerous and could result in excommunication or worse. Today, most Christians find such an approach natural and sensible." So let's give some texture to this.
¶20What do we mean by allegorical reading? Well, let's just go Well, I already showed you verse one, very short verse. Let's go to the next few verses to see what we're talking about. Here's how the book starts off. Verse two, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine.
¶21Your anointing oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore, virgins love you. Draw me after you. Let us run.
¶22The king has brought me into his chambers. You can see I'm going to talk later about how this book should change our thinking about sex and it should basically, you know, it's like the Bible is not your stereotypical religious book. >> [laughter] >> I mean, you open you can see how this will scandalize people. You open this and it's I mean, right there, you know. Each of those verses is kind of eyebrow-raising depending on which what expectations you bring to the Bible.
¶23But in an allegorical interpretation, so for example, in the Targum, this is interpreted as a reference to the Exodus where God draws Israel out of Egypt and into his own chambers all aka the promised land. Now, I'm going to argue in the final section of this video that I hope you stick around for that we can learn a lot from the instincts of pre-modern Christian interpretation of this book and we need to be humble to receive that and to to sit with it. But I think there are good reasons to question and reject a purely allegorical interpretation. Let me give two reasons. Number one, in the 19th century, we discovered Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature which strongly parallels the Song of Songs and it's basically love poetry.
¶24And there's amazing similarities and that really favors the idea that there's a known classification that this book belongs to that isn't strict allegory. If you want some examples, again, this book has gives a number of passages where it's pretty clear the parallelism. It's kind of amazing. So, that puts some pressure on a strictly allegorical reading. But more basically than that, the just the nature of the book, the quantity of details, the graphic nature of them, it's hard to read it as a pure allegory.
¶25At a certain point you're trying to do it and it just sort of strains credulity because the interpretive judgments become arbitrary. So, for example, when there are references to the woman's two breasts throughout this book, which is pretty common, and we'll talk about how graphic this language is and what do we do with that, but the common allegorical move is to say that this is a really a reference to the Old and New Testament. But that raises questions like, well, why is it the Old and New Testament and not, say, Moses and Elijah or baptism and the Lord's Supper or the two great commandments or the two natures of Christ or something else like this? Or the woman's navel uh as a rounded ball has in been interpreted often as the baptismal font. But why baptism rather than the Eucharistic Eucharistic cup?
¶26You see the the the worry of arbitrariness here. Because the text itself supplies no interpretive key, it's hard to see a principled way to decide among the different allegorical possibilities. And it's the danger here is the text can become this malleable thing that you can turn any way you want. Here's how Keil and Delitzsch, these wonderful Lutheran older commentators on the Bible, put it. If you're looking for a good set of commentaries on the Old Testament, by the way, they're very good.
¶27They say, "If one understands the church to be meant, there yet remains much that is inexplicable. Why Who are the 60 queens and the 80 concubines, chapter 6, verse 8? And why are the heroes just 60, chapter 3, verse 7? But notwithstanding all this, it is certain that the great mystery, Ephesians 5:32, mirrors itself in the song." So, they're pushing against a strict allegory by while still allowing for a connection to be made between marriage and God's love, which is what I'm going to do in this video and then we'll get there, but for now, they're noticing, you know, it's hard to make sense of the details. Why is it 60?
¶28And why is it uh That was one number. I think there were 80 was the you know, the other number. And those are just two examples, but it's the cumulative effect of so much detail and so much graphic sexual detail. So, and I won't give you the most explicit examples here for shock value. It's not hard to find, read through the book, and you can see this.
¶29There's a reason why uh there's an old Jewish saying that the Song of Songs should not be studied until you're 30 years old. This is a very graphic book. That's one of the questions we're going to work through in this video. And but but for now I'm observing this sort of puts pressure on a purely allegorical reading in which it's not clear why you would need all these graphic details to make that basic point. Now, I want to reiterate, the problem is not recognizing theological resonance between human love and divine love.
¶30That's the whole direction we're going here. We're going to talk about the gospel in this video. Song of Songs points us to the love of Jesus. I'm going to be asking you all through at the end of this video, can you hear the voice of Jesus calling to you through this book? The problem is not that basic instinct in the heart of the believer.
¶31The problem is treating every detail in this book like a cryptogram where it has some hidden doctrinal referent, right? And so, I take the view that this book is indeed first and foremost about human marital love. And not just the spiritual pleasures of marriage or the emotional comforts of marriage, but the physical pleasures of marital sex. And so, when this book is talking about breasts and thighs and so forth, it means what it says, right? So, let's think about that, you know?
¶32It's kind of amazing you have a book like this in the Bible, and we want to think theologically about that. Let's just say two things about it, trying to be brief and keep things moving here to hold your attention. Number one, the sex depicted in Song of Songs is marital. The woman is referenced as a bride. There are numerous statements that the man and the woman, the beloved the lover and beloved, belong to one another.
¶33The love is described as binding and jealous. And there are glimmers of an actual wedding ceremony in the book, particularly in chapter 3, as you can see here in toward the very end of chapter 3. Of course, this fits with the rest of the Old Testament as well, which is very clear that sex is only to be enjoyed in the context of marriage between one man and one woman. And polygamy I'm going to do a video on polygamy at some point to show that that's not the ideal presented. That's sort of something that is tolerated, but it's not something that is good.
¶34The ideal is there in Genesis chapter 2. Also, one of the repeated motifs in this book is to not awaken love until the appropriate time. I'll put up this phrase which recurs all throughout the book at key moments of the book. So, in having this very openly sexual imagery, Song of Songs, we should not think of this book as just throwing off all restraint and all boundaries. Absolutely not.
¶35In fact, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes this book is read as a polemic against polygamy. And I'm not sure about that how to push that how to emphasize that, but part of the basis for this comes in chapter 6 verse 8, which I think I mentioned earlier. There are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only of one of her mother, pure to her who bore her. Well, I I think what I would say we should envision here in Song of Songs is this idealized sexual relationship, which means one man, one woman bound together in covenant love, that is in marriage.
¶36And even their their love being described even in language that's reminiscent of the Garden of Eden, which is interesting. So, then we ask the second thing just to think about is what do we do with that? You know, a lot of people find this pretty shocking that you have a a book in the Bible that doesn't just talk about sex in general terms, but it talks about body parts, it talks about delighting, and I mean it's very graphic. And I think the basic point that I want to make from this before we move on to talk about the love of God, which we learn about in this book, is the reminder that marital sex is good. And it is to be delighted in and enjoyed.
¶37And actually, I I think it's worth I hope you'll hang with me through this section of the video. I worked carefully at trying to say this in the most pastoral and helpful way. I really believe we need this message. And without this book, if we had a 65 book canon, sorry non-Protestant Protestant. Uh that's for another time.
¶38But if if this book was missing in our Bibles, something vital would be taken away from the Bible's message. Now, let's think this through carefully. On the one hand, I want to push against sermons and teaching on Song of Songs that I have heard where it seems like they're trying to push the envelope and take the most provocative verses and really focusing on them. I've seen this done where it feels immature and it feels like it there's kind of it's done for shock value a little bit. At the same time, here's the lesson to be taken is that, you know, the fact that Song of Songs is in our Bible is a reminder we should not be more prudish than God.
¶39God created sex. Sex is not a dirty thing. Sex is profoundly good. Marital sex is holy and it's worth talking about that. It's worth thinking about that.
¶40We need to teach on that and we shouldn't be embarrassed by this. You know, sometimes we just avoid this topic altogether and Song of Songs can help us with that. Now, if someone's reason for embracing a purely allegorical view of this book of the Bible is that surely no book of the Bible could ever have erotic passages or talk about delighting in the physical pleasures of sex and so forth, then we're going to have problems with other books of the Bible as well, like Proverbs 5 for example, which talks about delighting in the breasts of your wife. Okay, so it's not just Song of Songs. And the simple fact is the Bible is not embarrassed by this language.
¶41And if we have a problem here, it may be worth thinking how the Bible can help our thinking. And I actually think there's something wonderful to that can help us push against the sin and sexual immorality in our culture to see God's alternative just gloried in and celebrated. I actually think this is good. You know, one of the basic ways to make the point is to say sex is not the devil's territory. Sex is God's good gift in his creation.
¶42Let's develop this a little bit and maybe we can just first observe how kind it is of God to give us such a human book that focuses on human experiences. You know, this is part of the wisdom of God to give us the the wisdom literature. And uh the wisdom literature in the Bible that Song of Songs is a part of has some pretty practical verses. When I say the Bible's human, I don't mean it's not also revelation from God. I just mean it speaks to real existential situations.
¶43And so it's kind of amazing to look at the wisdom literature and you have a a book in it that is pro-sex, Song of Songs, pro-youth, Ecclesiastes, pro-music, read Psalm 150, and pro-laughter and pro-work and pro-shrewdness, the Book of Proverbs. The Bible is very much not like a stereotypical religious book. And the simple point from Song of Songs is to be reminded that God made sex for marriage and it's very good and it's been to be delighted in. Now, why do we need this message right now? I think there has been a the part of the discomfort with this book throughout church history, unfortunately, is as much as I'm always wanting to emphasize we can learn from church history, at times there's this error of viewing sex as this dirty thing.
¶44And you see that throughout church history. At times you get this idea that virginity is super holy. Sex within marriage is like a a B plus and uh virginity is an A plus. Or uh some another way it might come out is uh sex within marriage is an A but virginity is an A plus plus plus plus, like this. And Origen is an influence for this.
¶45Augustine, unfortunately, is an influence for this. Consider the way Jerome puts it. He's writing a long letter to one of his disciples about the proper education to give from scripture. He lists a bunch of biblical books. I've cited this letter in my discussions on the canon because it's a shorter canon that he goes through here.
¶46But then he says, "When she has done all these things, she may safely read the Song of Songs, but not before. For were she to read it at the beginning, she would fail to perceive that though it is written in fleshly words, it is a marriage song of a spiritual bride. And not understanding this, she would suffer from it." Now, those final words there give the rationale for Jerome. You can be damaged if you interpret this book in a non-allegorical way. And I'm going to argue in a little bit we've got a lot to learn from pre-modern instincts about this book.
¶47But there's also a danger here we need to see of being stricter than the Bible itself. Think of 1 Timothy 4, where the Apostle Paul warns of false teachers. And uh these the false teaching that's envisioned here is people who forbid marriage and insist on an overly strict diet. You can see these verses on the screen. And the rationale against this is, "No, everything God made is good.
¶48Nothing is to be rejected if it's received with thanksgiving." It's interesting to realize not all false teaching tries to get you to positively embrace something evil. Some false teaching tries to get you to forbid what is good. Not all false teaching is like health and wealth teaching. Some false teaching is overly scrupulous and overly legalistic, and that's what's envisioned there. Think of The Screwtape Letters, where one demon is writing about God, and he says, "He's a hedonist at heart.
¶49Out at sea, out in his sea, there is pleasure and more pleasure. He has filled his world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without his minding in the least. Sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it's of any use to us.
¶50So, the the this is a great reminder and what I'm trying to press into our hearts because I think this is helpful pastorally is to realize that sex is not the problem. Sin has come into the world and twisted God's good gift. But, there is so much confusion about this topic in the church and I want us to remember sex itself is such a good thing. Not just to be permitted. It is to be celebrated and gloried in as the Bible does within its proper context in a loving marriage with each person serving the other person and so on and so forth.
¶51Now, possible objection someone might have is um if we open the door to the enjoyment of sex like this and if we speak in such graphic details about it, aren't we opening the door to sin? How is this really different from pornography or erotic literature that you can increasingly find at places like Barnes & Noble and that kind of thing? And this this objection, I understand this because a lot of us have this worry. We're seeing how much sexual immorality there is around us in our culture escalating everywhere. It we're awash with it.
¶52And I understand this instinct because many people have only ever heard sexually graphic language used in ways that are either degrading or intended to cause arousal. Various forms of erotic literature for example. And so, people can wonder is the Bible going into that territory? But, the answer is no. Song of Songs is God's alternative to those things.
¶53And it helps us understand that God's message to the world is not that sex is bad or that you should never talk about sex or that you should feel just this like sense of restriction and ominous doom dooming thoughts. If you even think about this topic, you know, that is not God's message to the world, nor is it even that sex is something that is permissible. The biblical alternative is a celebration of sex for what it actually is. Namely, in the context of marriage, where there's this commitment, and and what is happening in that act is this profound spiritual union. And that is to be celebrated and delighted in, and try to speak about this sensitively to not, you know, be too provocative, but I just think we need to be able to talk about this and say what the Bible says.
¶54And I think people need to hear this today because uh here here's here's part of the pastoral value. I'm going to quote Screwtape Letters again. This is one demon writing to another. He says, "Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are in a sense on the enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure.
¶55All the same, it is his invention, not ours. He made the pleasures. All our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our enemy has produced at times or in ways or in degrees which he has forbidden." So, my question that I kind of invite you to consider with me is, can we see the Holy Spirit's wisdom in inspiring a book like this? Can we see what would be missing if we didn't have this book?
¶56And in for pastors out there and ministry leaders, does is our teaching ministry consistent with Song of Songs? Because I think sometimes the church's uh teaching on this topic is either a lot of times it's way overly restrictive and in weird ways. A lot of times the undercurrent tone of all church teaching on the topic of sex is nothing but shame-based and it just tears people down. That's really not biblical. The Bible has these dire warnings about, for example, not sleeping with a prostitute.
¶57And the warnings of to this end are are dire because it's saying that is deadly because this good gift God has given is so powerful that its misuse can destroy you and destroy others. But the Bible also has these passages where celebrating sex and we should reflect something of that in our preaching and teaching. So, how do we do that? Well, I was thinking about this and a couple ideas. I mean, one thing, you know, imagine so imagine a young man who's tempted to sin by looking things on his iPhone, very common struggle.
¶58And we're trying to help this person. By the way, if you're watching this video and that's temptation of yours, which it is for most human beings, I just want you to feel hope about that struggle and know the gospel comes to you to deliver you and to bring you to freedom and joy. I'm going to link to a book by Matt Fradd that tells the stories of deliverance. I hope that could be an encouragement to you. Check that out in the video description.
¶59I never want I always want to leave people with hope on this topic. But for those of us who are ministering to others, which is this is an epidemic issue in our culture, it won't help us if the thoughts of people are like this where the temptation over there is very exciting, but the path of holiness is what I need to do and that's this restrictive more boring path. That is not the message of the Bible. Actually, the temptations that we're pulled into steal joy from us. They're often degrading and they leave us lonely.
¶60One of the one of the tragedies of pornography is it's taking an experience that was designed to connect you to another human being and it's actually making you more alienated. And that's one of the the horrors of getting trapped in there. Again, don't feel hopeless in that state. God will forgive you and God can change your heart and God can change you. But the point is just to say we don't want to be thinking like oh, the temptation is intriguing and the path of holiness is boring.
¶61You can't read Song of Songs and think like that. The biblical alternative to the sexual immorality in our culture is not sheer restraint. There is restraint involved at the proper times, but it is the holiness that God calls us to that for single people, God calls you I mean that that's something I I I hope you feel seen out there if you're a single person. God calls people to celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7. That's a in many respects a superior position and I just want every person to know who's called to singleness that you are not missing out on the ultimate reality to which marriage points.
¶62Christ gives himself fully to you and the final joy that marriage is a sign of belongs to every Christian including yourself. And there's so much more we could say about that. But just a few thoughts about how to teach this book in the church today. I just think we need this message today. So I'm thinking of youth pastors and college ministries and I'm thinking are there ways we can model, we can show a positive picture of how happy marriage is even if it's too awkward to get into the the sexual side of that and and a and you know a Sunday morning youth group event or something like that.
¶63You're not going to talk about that or maybe you can. I mean again, it's like be as open as the Bible is. But you also want to have sensitivity to your context. But I'm just saying even if you just see godly couples and they're happy and they're 40 years into their marriage or they're 15 years into their marriage or whatever and everybody sees wow, they're really happy and marriage is kind of delightful and normal and human and good. So many of our young people don't see that modeled.
¶64They've never seen happy marriages. So that's part of our teaching from this book I think is to commend marriage as a great blessing. Um for parents, I think we need to be talking to our kids about this whole area of our lives and with each child at different ages we have to have wisdom to know what does that look like. But if we don't catechize our young people about this area of our lives, uh the culture will and we want to give the message of Song of Songs and Proverbs and so much else in scripture to counterbalance the message of our culture. The last thing I just want to emphasize though is we need to offer people the hope of the gospel.
¶65And we need to let people know that God will forgive you and God can change you because I think the enemy often brings the temptation and then he brings despair afterwards to say you're stuck here. And that's why I want to get to the final section of this video and talk about how the Song of Songs points us to the love of God. I now want to argue that the instincts lying behind a pre-modern exegesis of this book are not crazy. Even if I don't agree with a full allegory, there's actually a lot to learn and I think we also need to push against the modern tendency which claims that there is absolutely nothing in the Song of Songs itself that hints of a meaning different from the sexual meaning. And I want to say no, the book Song of Songs is not about less than marital sex, but it is about so much more than that and it makes theological sense to draw connection between sex within marriage and the love of God.
¶66And we want to think carefully about this and part of the reason here will be we want to read this book of Song of Songs canonically. That means in the context of the rest of scripture. So when Bernard of Clairvaux was preaching, you know, 80 some sermons about this, that's not just a waste of time. There's a reason why people make this connection. Let's go through some of these.
¶67I'll just give two reasons why we should see the Song of Songs as directing us to the love of God. Number one, when we read this book canonically, meaning in the context of the canon, we understand because this is important to know that the basis each biblical book can stand on its own. We can interpret each verse in the context of other verses, but if we believe the same Holy Spirit inspired each of these different books, the same Holy Spirit inspired Song of Songs who inspired say the Gospel of Luke. And if we believe that, just like we can read each verse in the context of the surrounding verses and each chapter in the context of the surrounding chapters, we can read each biblical book in the context of the surrounding books, and that sheds a lot of light on them. Now, all throughout the Bible, from Genesis 2 to Revelation 21, there is a connection made between marriage and God's ultimate purposes of love and redemption for the world.
¶68Marriage is from the get-go and by its very nature pointing to something more. The apex of this perhaps comes in Ephesians 5, which we saw Kyle and Dalics site earlier, where Paul quotes the most foundational text in the Bible on marriage, Genesis 2:24. And then he calls marriage a mystery, which means a divine reality or a divine purpose that is once hidden, but then revealed. And he says this refers to Christ and the church. Now, Paul in that verse is not making something up.
¶69He's working with the rest of the canon of scripture. For example, Jesus himself refers to himself as the bridegroom, as you can see on screen in Mark 2 there. Also, we'll put up John 3, where John the Baptist speaks of Jesus as the bridegroom. And all throughout the Old Testament, God is called the husband of Israel. And this is where you get this theme all throughout the prophets of spiritual adultery, where Israel's unfaithfulness to God is portrayed as though she's sleeping around with the other nations.
¶70You get this with Ezekiel 16 or the book of the entire book of Hosea, for example. I said a little bit more more about this at my talk at the Patristic Nectar conference last year. >> This world is a romance story. The God who made all things loves you like a jealous husband. When we understand this, so much of the Bible comes into focus.
¶71We understand why a book like the Song of Solomon has always been interpreted as pointing to the love of God. We understand why the prophets would use marital imagery to rebuke Israel. We understand why the Bible doesn't just start with marriage in the Garden of Eden, but ends with marriage, as you can see here, with Revelation's vision of heaven, where the people of God are like a bride adorned and prepared for her husband, so that human history doesn't just begin with marriage, it ends what with marriage. What God built at the Garden of Eden is there to give us a foretaste of what it will be like one day when those who are in Christ are gathered to be with him forever. Full video linked in the video description.
¶72It was an honor to be a part of that great conference. Check out the other talks from that as well. So, the point is if you read Song of Songs canonically, it's natural that your mind will make connections between idealized marriage and the love of God. But second, building on that, even in the text of Song of Songs itself, the climactic moment of the book itself invites a consideration of the nature of love. Love is as strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave.
¶73Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. So, the connective tissue between Song of Songs and the gospel has to do with the nature of love itself. This is what Bernard of Clairvaux taught, quote, "Sacred love is the subject of the whole canticle and love itself speaks everywhere." So, a thoughtful reader is going to be asking, "What is this love that is as strong as death?" Death is absolutely unstoppable. It's relentless. There's no way to escape it.
¶74So, how is it that love can be as strong as that? What is this love ultimately? And this is one example of where the particular language about love in the Song of Songs has resonance with the nature of divine love. Now, this book that I've referenced uh uh Owen among the theologians introduces the category of prosopological exegesis, which is where certain words have what a big term here, but all it means is certain words have one speaker, but there's a deeper persona or speaker implicitly in the background. And the authors of this chapter are exploring examples like this and like the invitational character of the of the speeches in the book of Song of Songs and how this suggests a comparison with a divine voice speaking through the text through through these characters.
¶75And they give uh Bernard and John Owen as examples of readers who are pushing in that direction, who have this instinct. And their conclusion is this proposed reading of the song allows modern readers to retain the embodied, erotic, and human relational context. It's not as though every detail of every line is allegorically pointing to some aspect of Christ or life with him. Indeed, the song reveals much about human intimacy. The song may be less than that, but it is also much more.
¶76So, what we're trying to argue here, if you got lost in that, just to summarize here, we're trying to say this is not a strict allegory, but those who've read it that way aren't totally wrong. It's appropriate to for our minds to be drawn up to the love of God through this book. In other words, we don't need to fear that recognizing the graphic sexual language of this book is going to lead us away from God, nor do we need to fear that focusing on divine love is going to draw us away from, say, your marriage being able to benefit from reading this book and so on and so forth. The divine and human loves are not at a competitive relationship. You might say they're in something like more of a sacramental relationship.
¶77And therefore, when we're reading through this book, our minds should be drawn up to God. Mark Dever preached a sermon on the Song of Songs. If you get this and he's got one on the New Testament as well, the message of the Old Testament. What he's doing here is it's a collection of sermons each on every book of the Old Testament, each sermon on that whole book, which is a really creative and great way to do preaching. Here's what he says in his sermon on Song of Songs.
¶78As we consider how Song of Songs celebrates human love, we get a scent of God's love for us and the love we are to have for him because the very act of physical love within marriage should draw us toward that far greater love. And again, the basis for this is reading the book canoncially, but also asking about the nature of love itself. In the Song of Songs, love is as strong as death. In the gospel, we discover a love that passes through death and ultimately proves stronger than death. How specifically, to finish this video, should marital sex point us up to God and how should the Song of Songs invite us to love Jesus more and receive his love more?
¶79Let me give an illustration before I give my five examples. Richard Wurmbrand, wonderful saint in the Lord, a Lutheran minister tortured in communist Romania for I think 14 years for his faith in Christ. I've talked about him many times. What a what a wonderful and inspiring story his is. He describes the agony of his physical torture, but then the the experience of the love of Christ in the midst of that.
¶80And I'll never forget hearing these words. This is amazing. Listen to what he says here. >> But then I remember that time, I remember it as a glorious time. The bride was in the embraces of the heavenly bridegroom.
¶81>> [music] >> We received his holy kiss. We knew his caresses. It has been one of the most beautiful times of my life. >> So, I'll read these words that that he just said. I mean, it's just uh his his life is such a blessing to study.
¶82I I should do a whole video on Richard Wurmbrand. He's a great inspiration for us. But in the context of being tortured, he's talking about how he knew the love of Jesus and he goes to marital imagery. He says, "The bride was in the embraces of the heavenly bridegroom. We received his holy kiss.
¶83We knew his caresses. It was the most beautiful time of my life." Now, for him to speak like that in the context of solitary confinement, uh just, you know, it very clear this is not weird or anything like that. This is not inappropriate. He's just going to that language which is all throughout the Bible describe the experience of being loved by Jesus and how we can find joy even amidst torture. And that to me makes me want to apply this pastorally to your heart.
¶84So, let's do that as we finish here by asking this question, how is human marital love, including in its sexual expression, a fitting image for divine love that should draw our minds up to consider the ultimate expression of love, Jesus on the cross for us? Number one, affection. One part of a healthy human marriage is affection. So, if you imagine a wife uh coming home and there's a bouquet, huge bouquet of flowers on the kitchen counter. And uh she says, "Why did you do this?" He says, husband says, "That's just how I feel about you, right?" How does that make her feel?
¶85This is affection in marriage. Just feeling loved. Imagine the wife makes this really intricate detailed birthday present for her husband, tailor-suited to him based upon what he she knows will encourage him and he receives it and she says, "I you know, uh she worked for months on it." And how does he feel? Well, this is part of the affection of marriage, of being being known, being loved. Um I could give so many other examples of this, but this is one of the great things about being married married is that the the sheer enjoyment of love, the affection, the sense Think of how you feel when you're first falling for someone and there's this sense of the the enraptured emotions you feel, the lilt in your heart, the joy.
¶86You wake up in the morning a little more easily. There's a a sense of adventure and a thrill and an excitement to it. Uh you know, you can't wait to see this person and so forth. Okay, that aspect of human romance that involves delight and affection and makes you write poetry and makes you daydream about the person. That should in some way be reflected in your relationship with Christ.
¶87Granted there is difference, there must be reverence. Human romance is not strictly identical. Nonetheless, there's something we can learn here from human love that points us up to the love of Christ. This affection, this delight. In the invitations of the bridegroom in the Song of Songs, older exegetes like Bernard of Clairvaux and John Owen identify the affectionate call of Christ.
¶88And the category we're working with here is communion with Christ as distinct from our union with Christ. And they're inviting us to think, can you see the love of Jesus in this language, right? Some Christians have a relation to Christ that is like a marriage where the husband and wife have stopped going on dates and they don't laugh together and they don't have any fun. And Jesus wants you to delight in his love. He wants you to spend time enjoying being loved by him.
¶89John Owen called the Song of Songs the Holy Spirit's book of loves and he said it sets forth this sense of the love of Christ and the effect of it in communion with him. He says the love of Jesus is what your soul should fall back upon for comfort, for stability. This is what you turn to. He says the souls of men do naturally seek something to rest and repose themselves on, something to satiate and delight themselves withal. And he's saying the Song of Songs is an invitation to make Jesus that for your soul.
¶90So the question I would ask you is, can you hear hear the voice of Jesus calling to you, saying, "Come and enjoy fellowship with me. Let me love you so much that my love becomes the delight of your heart and that your place of repose that you turn to to carry you through whatever else you're going through." A second reason why marital love is a fitting symbol for divine love involves intimacy. So, sex, for example, involves this complete vulnerability, uh unhindered intimacy, the happy experience of being fully known and fully loved and fully safe. And in marriage, you have this experience of being known so well, sometimes your spouse knows you better than yourself, and sometimes, you know, they'll know what foods you you're going to order at the restaurant before you do and this kind of thing. It's one of the great joys of being married.
¶91Well, Jesus knows us like this. He knows us down to the roots and yet he still loves us fully. Do you get a sense of why being loved by Jesus is so thrilling that you can't put it into words and why all we can do is use imagery like marital intimacy to describe this love that goes beyond all other loves that we have no words that can possibly plumb the depths of and and all you can do is experience it. You can't put it into words. So, I'll say from this point, can you hear the voice of Christ calling to your soul, saying, "I know the depths of your heart and I love you without reserve.
¶92I know everything about you and I know you fully, holding nothing back. Let me love you fully and open up your heart fully to me in return." So, would Jesus say to each one of us? Thirdly, jealousy. Another aspect of marital love is jealousy and commitment, the sense of intense personal loyalty. So, for example, when I get criticized unfairly, Esther always takes it worse than I do.
¶93Of course, if anyone hurts her, I'm even more angry than she is. In a healthy marriage, each side is looking out for the other and we know we belong to each other and you have this feeling in your heart like, I want you all for myself, and you're jealous for their affections. So also, this can direct our minds and our hearts up to the love of Christ, who is the jealous husband uh par excellence. If any husband has ever been jealous for his bride, Jesus is the ultimate expression of that. If any husband has ever longed for the affections of his bride and wanted her all to himself, this is what Jesus does for us.
¶94He loves us with a jealous love. He loves you in a way the world could never understand, and he will spare nothing to have you as his very own. So may I put it like this, can you hear the voice of Jesus calling to your soul saying, I want you? And I want you all for myself. I want the ultimate affections, the ultimate loyalties of your heart for me, to not be shared with anybody else.
¶95You cannot love me and money the same. You need to love me above everything else in your life. I see you, I know you, and I want you all for myself. And if we hear those words from Jesus, and we think, but I'm nobody important, why would you want me? You are exactly the kind of person Jesus loves and delights to love.
¶96A fourth aspect of marital love is longing. So when you miss this person and you can't wait to see them, right? You it's agony to be separated, and there's such joy of reunion. All throughout the Song of Songs, you have this tension between the presence and absence of the lover and beloved, and this is a dynamic there. And this also can make us think of Jesus.
¶97It makes me think of the children in the Narnia stories longing to see Aslan, and of course us today longing for the second coming of Christ, and longing to see Jesus face to face in heaven. Our sense of Jesus' presence in our lives kind of comes and goes to some degree. Have you noticed this? It kind of wax like on a Tuesday, you might feel the love of Jesus a lot more than you feel it on a Wednesday. Why does this happen?
¶98Well, in part, according to people like John Owen, it's to make us long for him more. In his wisdom, Christ withdraws a sense of his love at times to increase our desire for him. He writes, he doth it to stir us up in an eminent manner unto a diligent search and inquiry after him. And Bernard's application, because they're both saying this from this this motif in the Song of Songs about presence and absence. And his application is when we feel the presence of Christ through his spirit in our lives, we should be very attentive to this.
¶99Unless we use the utmost vigilance in attending to these gift-laden visits of the Holy Spirit, we shall neither desire him when he seems absent nor respond to him when present. So, in other words, in other words, the love of Jesus in your life throughout this earthly pilgrimage kind of comes and goes so that you long for him all the more and with the day you will see him face-to-face in heaven. So, from this point I would ask, can you hear the voice of Jesus calling to you saying, "One day, I am coming back for you and I will see you face-to-face." Doesn't it make your heart long for that? The last thing is self-sacrifice. Of course, this takes us to the gospel.
¶100Every human marital love says, "I will give myself for you." In every healthy marriage, each party sacrifices for the other. And the particular calling for husbands in Ephesians 5 is lay down your life for your wife and serve her. But Christ gives himself utterly for his bride. He enters into death for her, bears judgment for her on the cross, rises up out of the grave for her, the church, and will not relinquish her, and now stands to defend her and protect her. All throughout, you know, I think of in Revelation, Jesus protecting churches and so forth.
¶101That's what he's doing for your soul and mine today. So, can you hear the voice of Jesus calling to your soul through the Book of Song of Songs saying, "Love is as strong as the grave. I went to the cross for you. That is how much I love you. That is how committed I am to your soul and to your everlasting welfare.
¶102So, those are the kinds of spiritual lessons I think are fitting and pastorally appropriate to derive from Song of Songs, even while we recognize this is also a book about human sexual love in the context of marriage and we're resisting a strict allegory, either. Let me know what you think. I hope this video is helpful. It's a lot of work to to work through this. I hope it helps serve you in your reading of this book and your teaching from this book.
¶103Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks for watching everybody. Let me know if you stayed all the way to the end. Little bit of a longer video video. God bless you all.