Category: Song of Solomon/Songs

Reading

Audio, Visual

SAA Notes

Grape vines budding and pomegranates flowering in the grove of nut trees are two very explicit images that should be immediately understandable (especially if you’ve seen the process of a pomegranate flowering). God’s design for humanity is chastity, not celibacy. All must be chaste, while some might have to be both, as Jesus said of Himself. Matthew 19:12

SJA Notes

“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.”

Every part of God’s word is HIS WORD.

Which means this passage, in which we read of the act of sex between husband and wife – these passages are important.

We have here a very clear word from God on the beauty that He has ordered and ordained for sex within the bonds of marriage.

Wisdom is heard again,

“… That you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.”

The world though tells us loud and often that we need to express our freedom to be sexual beings, to be overt in our sexuality, to not be held back by archaic regulations, that you need to experiment.

Yet here in this song of songs God points us to His creation order. Husband and wife bound up in marriage, and within that faithful covenant we find beauty such as sex.

This order is what is good and beneficial for us. God gave us this order, these rules, because they make sense!

Sex does not eclipse everything else that is good and right in marriage, but it has a beautiful place.

* Creator God,

Thank You for this Your word. Please write it on our hearts today.

For those of us who are single, please mark us as faithful servants of Your will.

Help us to practice holiness, listening to You rather than the world.

And for those of us who are married, please mark us as faithful services of Your will.

Help us to reflect Your wonderful order for marriage in every aspect, including sex.

Amen.

Reading

Audio, Visual

SAA Notes

The expression of our sexuality in marriage is both good and desirable – “eat … drink your fill, O lovers”. It is good to look for appropriate and modern metaphors in talking with your spouse about their body. Proverbs 5:18,19 has some good advice to husbands in this area.

SJA Notes

“There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, …”

We continue to plumb the depths of what relational faithfulness looks like here in this book, the Song of Solomon.

Solomon does not choose to deride or mock, to put down, the other women around. Sometimes we might feel as though finding fault in others is a solid strategy for maintaining faithfulness in our beloved.

But that is not what we read here.

Solomon’s mind is bent in a singular fashion.

In Jeremiah chapter 29 we read,

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

The love of husband and wife patterns the devotion that we see between God and His people, between the Head (Jesus) and the Body (the Church).

We read of the singularly devoted seeking of the wife for her beloved.

And the eye of the husband (Solomon) remains single.

“My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, …”

* Faithful God,

Please mark us as a faithful people.

Please help those of us who are married to be singularly devoted to our beloved.

And Lord God for every one of us, please help us each day to keep our eyes fixed on You and Your alone. No other god, no other power, no other view.

Please Lord, please show us Jesus today.

Amen.

Reading

Audio, Visual

SAA Notes

The Apostle Paul when he uses the illustration of the human body to the Church says: And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty. So too in this work, those parts are treated with special modesty. Images such as hills, mountains, gardens, fountains, aromatic plants all were immediately understood 3,000 years ago in terms of human physiology and bodily responses. God wants married couples to be able to talk with each other about this most central subject to their marriage with appropriate delicacy, humour and tact.

SJA Notes

“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

This is an important idea to wrestle with.

Beautiful and breath-taking poetry aside, this is God’s word.

In the now, husbands must work hard at singular devotion to their wives.

In the now, wives must work hard at singular devotion to their husbands.

We are to love one another with a steadfast faithful love, a love that ascends past our limited frail selves – God’s love first shown to us.

So that we can say truer and deeper each day of our beloved,

“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”

And how much then do we look forward to the _not yet_, where truly, as we read of our King Jesus, the Christ, and His bride, the church – That in the new heavens and the new earth we will have no flaw, perfectly adorned for the marriage supper of the Lamb (read Revelation 19 and 21).

* Loving God,

Thank You for Your faithfulness, without end, steadfast and true.

Thank You for Your love, given in grace, mercy abounding.

Please help us to love one another as You have first loved us.

Amen.