Maturity in Brokenness

Well, next week is our last week in Song of Solomon! I have really enjoyed studying this book and pray that it has come alive for you. But, we have two chapters left and two more chances to make Brook squirm and blush.

We have seen the whole relationship of the beloved and King Solomon. We first saw them when they were courting and they were yearning to be with each other. We saw how deeply the beloved had fallen in love with the king because of his character and how he treated others and her. We saw their yearning to consummate the relationship.

Then, finally they were married. King Solomon came to take her as his wife. He vowed his protection and his provision before all Jerusalem, and then they consummated their marriage as worship to God through sex.

But, everything was not sunshine and roses. After they got married, the honeymoon ended and the feeling of love died. They had a conflict and had to work through it. Last week, we discussed the reconciliation of their relationship.

And this week, we see the maturity of their love in Song of Solomon chapter 7. Hopefully, marriages mature through conflict and we learn to love our spouse in spite of their brokenness and sin, and through their brokenness. We learn to embrace their differences, knowing that we need them in order to grow and become more godly.

Throughout this series, we have explored a defense of marriage. We spent two weeks on the glory of sex. A week on procreation. Two weeks on intimate companionship. And a week on a godly family legacy.

Now, as we see the maturity of their love in Song of Solomon 7, we will discuss God’s Covenantal Love.

Before we dive in, will you pray with me?

Pray

1. Exposition: Mature Sexuality

As I said, in this chapter, we see relationship between the husband and the wife matured. They have survived conflict and vow their love to each other even deeper than before. This is another sex passage. Some people refer to this as make-up sex, but it is something deeper than that.

They are vowing and consummating their love again. Before they consummated their covenant based upon what they kind of knew about each other. Here, they consummate their love in full knowledge of their brokenness and sin.

A. The Husband’s Pursuit:

Let’s look at the Husband’s pursuit of the beloved:

a. Song 7:1-5

Song of Solomon 7:1–5 NIV

How beautiful your sandaled feet, O prince’s daughter! Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of an artist’s hands. Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies. Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus. Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses.

This is reminiscent of his description of his wife on their wedding night. But, there are a few changes: first, instead of starting at the hair and going down, he starts and the legs and goes up.

Also, on the wedding night, he described her with seven descriptions. 7 is the perfect number. He spoke about her beauty and how she reminds him of the covenant of God. Now, he describes her with 10 descriptions. The number of completion. This is the amount of descriptions that she describes him back in chapter 5.

In chapter 6, she declares that he is her identity. And now, he describes her in terms matching his own. Just like, as we finally give up and say that Jesus is our identity, we start looking like him.

Let’s go back to marriage. He has never said: woman, you did wrong. Don’t you know how much you have hurt me. Instead of lashing out, he amplifies his description of how lovely she is to him. He meets hurt with passionate love.

b. Song 7:6-9

Song of Solomon 7:6–9 NIV

How beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights! Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. May the wine go straight to my beloved, flowing gently over lips and teeth.

In case anyone misses the point, I will speak it again. He loves his wife. She is beautiful, and he wants to have sex with her. In Hebrew poetry, and other cultures at this time, Palm trees were highly erotic. The Hebrew word is Tamar. Which happens to be the name of Judah’s daughter in law who prostituted herself with him in order to have a child. It’s also the name of David’s daughter who was raped by her brother. It’s a highly sexualized term.

The King says that he wants to Take hold of the fruit, which could mean the breasts of her beloved, or could mean the sexual act, probably both.

The word for mouth here is actually the inner palette. So, there is some deep kissing going on. You get the point.

I must stress. He is not forcing himself on her. He loves her, through her brokenness. She loves him, and they are passionately showing their love to each other, in a godly righteous way. Not like the Tamar’s of the Bible. The passion here is good, godly, and should be rejoiced in.

The King says: I love you, beloved, no matter how you have treated me, no matter how you have hurt me. I love you, and I choose to treat you according to my love. Let’s rejoice in our love and glorify God together, starting now, as he takes off his clothes.

B. The Wife’s Response

What is the wife’s response?

a. Song 7:9-10

Song of Solomon 7:9–10 NIV

and your mouth like the best wine. May the wine go straight to my beloved, flowing gently over lips and teeth. I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.

In verse 9, she could be speaking of the sweetness of kisses, because they have been doing some French kissing, saying: yes, my love, this mouth is all yours. Enjoy it.

But, then she says something amazing in verse 10.

This sentiment has been repeated multiple times.

Song of Solomon 2:16 NIV

My beloved is mine and I am his; he browses among the lilies.

She began by stressing how he belongs to her, and she belongs to him.

Then,

Song of Solomon 6:3 NIV

I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he browses among the lilies.

Then, she stresses how she belongs to him, and he belongs to her.

Now

Song of Solomon 7:10 NIV

I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.

Her whole focus is how she is defined by him. She gives up trying to control him. But, instead rests in his love. She has taken his name, and basks in his desire.

This is how we should be with Christ, when we mature in our faith, our focus is not in how Jesus is mine, but in how we are His and we want to reflect him.

b. Song 7:11-13

Then, she notices how much he wants to have sex. She doesn’t push him off, but tries to make their intimate time very special, for the good of the marriage.

Song of Solomon 7:11–13 NIV

Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom— there I will give you my love. The mandrakes send out their fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for you, my beloved.

She draws him away from the stress of life and the chaos of the home, and they get a hotel. They check up on their relationship, the vineyard, and based upon the rekindling of their relationship, she gives him her love. Which is the erotic love, in case you wondered.

Mandrakes were considered aphrodisiacs. Leah traded some mandrakes to Rachel for the ability to have sex with Jacob back in Genesis 30. So, yeah, mandrakes sending out fragrance. Every delicacy at our door. She is very open to having sex with him, as a consummation of their relationship.

And she is not grudging it. She is preparing a very special time for her beloved. She is intentionally planning old and new ways to enjoy their sexuality, as a gift for her love, who has loved her through all things.

2. Defense of Marriage: God’s Covenantal Love, Pt 1

Okay, let’s reel this in before I jump off the deep end.

Why is Marriage so great? Why should we embrace it, instead of a culture that encourages couples to move in together, a culture that offers free sex?

Well, the biggest reason is that it is a picture of God’s covenantal love.

We will spend two weeks on this.

A. Christ’s Love in Our Brokenness

Christ loved us in our brokenness. Paul writes:

Romans 5:8 NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That’s pretty cut and dried. We are the beloved who locked her husband out of the house, who said: “loving you, God, is too inconvenient.”

We are broken. We haven’t experienced true love, but are like Tamar selling her body to her father-in-law or Tamar being raped by her brother. We are like Leah and Rachel wrestling over the affections of their mutual husband, bartering for the ability to have sex with him.

In our abuse, in our dysfunction, in our willing ignorance of all things good, Christ enters, like the king in this poem, and shows us righteous love, not based upon evil desire or an ulterior motive, but pure, innocent, unconditional, righteous love.

His love redeems us from our past.

The beloved says:

Song of Solomon 7:10 NIV

I belong to my beloved, and his desire is for me.

That word for desire only occurs three times in the Bible. One time is this. The second time is in Genesis 4 when God is speaking to Cain.

Genesis 4:7 NIV

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

The desire of sin to control Cain, but also all of humanity.

The first time is in the curse narrative.

Genesis 3:16 NIV

To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

The wife is cursed with a desire to control her husband, instead of to help him.

Now, in Song 7, the desire is placed back into the hands of the husband, allowing him to lead.

God’s love redeems the brokenness of this world, returning all things back to how God created it to be in the garden. He makes all things right.

Not because we have earned it, but because in his love he reaches down into our brokenness and speaks beauty that we never saw.

In the face of that beauty, we cannot help but respond to him:

Song of Solomon 7:11 NIV

Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages.

I want to spend time with you Jesus. I can’t stay away, I want to spend all my time with you. We are compelled because of his love, his wooing, his beauty, to respond.

B. Marital Love in Our Brokenness

We live in brokenness. Anyone who is married knows this. Anyone who is not married should know this. But, once you enter into a covenant with another human being our brokenness comes and slaps us in the face.

We first see the brokenness of our spouse. And then, hopefully before it is too late, we see our own brokenness. And, we have a choice. How are we going to respond to the brokenness.

Hopefully, we respond as God has called us to respond. To choose love. Not the feeling, not the erotic acts. But, the covenant loyalty, that we have vowed before God and all who are present to cherish the person in front of us. To work for their good through all things. To lift them up when they are trodden down. To show them respect, even when they are not respectable.

Why do we do this? Because God does this for us. He looks at our brokenness and says: I see beauty.

We are to show that love to our spouse, because the world is watching. If you keep forgetting that the world is watching, at least remember that your kids are.

And when we have the courage and humility to answer love and covenant loyalty in the face of the brokenness before us. There will be a response.

I cannot count all the times that I have come to my wife with my tail between my legs because I have sinned against her and hurt her horribly. And she looks at me with love in her eyes, speaks of her respect for me and the man that God is making me into, and confesses her continual love for me. I melt. And I yearn to love her better. I just want to spend time with her.

She is a picture of Christ to me. I understand the Gospel so much better because of her.

That’s what marriage is supposed to be. A picture of God’s covenantal love of us for the watching world to see.

C. God’s Grace

I know that this is not easy. Showing God’s covenantal love is impossible for us.

We could look at our past, whether we are married or not, and we can see all the ways that we have not shown God’s covenantal love, with our spouse or any of our relationships. We are called to show it everywhere.

But, as married couples, we are called to strive for that image every single day, every moment of the day. And we don’t.

We get hurt and we want our spouse to feel the hurt. We get tired and we don’t want to sacrifice. We have our desires, our priorities, our conveniences, and we want our relationship to be all about us.

And, we look back at all these moments and realize how much we have sinned, yes against our spouse, but even more against God. Because of our selfishness and our pride, we have declared to God that we do not want to show his salvation, his Gospel, to spouse, to our kids, to the watching world who needs desperately to see him in us.

But, God is gracious. He has covenantal love, even if we don’t. And he holds out his hand and says: I died for that sin. It is paid for. It is covered. No, go, and sin no more.

When we see how we have not lived for, we stop, we confess, and we move forward and we vow to change, by the Grace of God which has saved us. It now gives us the ability to change.

Before we move forward, when we feel God’s conviction, no matter how small, we are called to stop and confess to the person we have hurt. Some people need to take their spouse off to the side today and acknowledge that they have not shown covenantal love as they should. If you are one of those, please let me know so that I can pray for you.

And if you are a spouse of someone who comes in contrition, please don’t respond with hurt or dismissal, take a cue from our heavenly lover and pour love on the brokenness, confessing all the ways that you love and respect the person in front of you, and maybe humble yourself to acknowledge your own brokenness.

And then, move forward. As Jesus told the woman caught in adultery: Go no and leave your life of sin.

Work together to show God’s covenant loyalty to each other. God has placed married couples together to help each other reflect him. As an old mentor once told me: marriage is a great sanctifier. So, use each other, in humility, to reflect the God who brought you together.

For his honor, and his glory.