Beloved 4: Beautiful Boundaries
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: SOS 1:15-2:7
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Bye, kids!
Good morning, and welcome to family worship with the church body of Eastern Hills. Whether you are here in the room, or online, thanks for being part of our celebration of Jesus today. We call this time “Family Worship” because that is one of our Core Values: Authentic Family. We like to have fun and to encourage each other through all of life’s ups and downs.
If you are visiting with us for the first time today, thanks for choosing to worship with Eastern Hills! We would like to be able to thank you for your visit and to pray for you, so if you wouldn’t mind, please take a moment during the sermon to fill out a visitor card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. If you’re online, you can let us know about your visit by filling out the communication form at the bottom of our “I’m new“ page. If you’re here in the room today, you can get that card back to us in one of two ways: you can put it in the boxes by the doors at the close of service, or I would love the opportunity to meet you personally, so after service, you can bring that card to me directly, and I have a gift to give you to thank you for your visit today.
I want to recognize and thank our Women’s Ministry Leadership Team for their service to the ladies of the church through the Women’s Ministry. I’ve heard great things about the Christmas in July event that happened yesterday, and I’m glad that we can have such an active Women’s Ministry.
Announcements
Announcements
WHDR Offering ($5,665) Goal $7500 VIDEO about Send Relief efforts with the Satere-Mawe people of Brazilian Amazon.
Opening
Opening
The Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon, is one of the most difficult books of the Bible to interpret and understand. Many of us basically either avoid it altogether in our Bible reading, or we just “gut it out” and get through it. I’ll be honest: The study for this each week can definitely feel like mental and spiritual heavy lifting! But it’s been really encouraging that since Family Worship last Sunday, I’ve had several conversations where people have shared their gratitude for us tackling this book together, because they never have, and they know that it’s still the Word of God. We need to see it that way, and not to be afraid of it or think that it has nothing to say to us in our contexts, even if we aren’t in the midst of courtship or marriage. The Song has something to say to us today. Isaiah 55:10-11 says:
10 For just as rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return there without saturating the earth and making it germinate and sprout, and providing seed to sow and food to eat, 11 so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.”
Let’s continue to press into God’s Word this morning as we continue our look at the Song.
Last week, we explored the power of appreciation and the life-giving role our words play in relationships. Looking at the beginning of the first exchange between the Lover and the Beloved, we saw how they intentionally expressed honor, affection, and value. He spoke words that affirmed her beauty, character, and worth. She reflected on the joy, comfort, and security found in his nearness. Their relationship reminded us that love is not merely something we feel, but something we communicate through both our words and actions. Along the way, we were also pointed to Jesus, our Shepherd-King, whose love surrounds us, whose sacrifice declares our value, and whose grace refreshes weary hearts. We were challenged to become people who regularly build others up, communicate appreciation, and reflect the heart of Christ in our relationships.
We ended that message with a question: What kind of atmosphere do our words create? And this morning, we get to continue to see how the Song’s main characters encourage and support one another, even while seeking to maintain appropriate boundaries in the process.
So please open your Bibles or your Bible apps to the end of the first chapter of Song of Songs, and stand as you are able as I read our focal passage today: Chapter 1, verse 15 through chapter 2, verse 7:
15 How beautiful you are, my darling. How very beautiful! Your eyes are doves. 16 How handsome you are, my love. How delightful! Our bed is verdant; 17 the beams of our house are cedars, and our rafters are cypresses. 1 I am a wildflower of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. 2 Like a lily among thorns, so is my darling among the young women. 3 Like an apricot tree among the trees of the forest, so is my love among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. 4 He brought me to the banquet hall, and he looked on me with love. 5 Sustain me with raisins; refresh me with apricots, for I am lovesick. 6 May his left hand be under my head, and his right arm embrace me. 7 Young women of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and the wild does of the field, do not stir up or awaken love until the appropriate time.
PRAYER
In Daniel Akin’s commentary on the Song, his introduction to the section on this passage contains a couple of sobering statistics about the state of marriage in the U.S. in the first quarter of the 21st century. I don’t want to bring us down with this, but I want us to consider what he wrote:
On the one hand, cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In fact, more than half of all marriages are now preceded by cohabitation, even though evidence indicates that “couples who cohabitate before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriage—and more likely to divorce—than couples who do not. Those negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect” (quoting Meg Jay, “The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage”, New York Times).
On the other hand, we are seeing a rise in what some call “Grey Divorce,” with there now being a significant number of persons divorcing after the age of 50. For the first time in our country’s history, “more Americans 50 and older are divorced than widowed, and the number is growing” (quoting Sam Roberts, “Divorce After 50 Grows More Common”, New York Times).
— Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in Song of Songs
A more recent New York Times article than the Roberts article Akin quoted (like 3 weeks ago recent) said that “gray divorces” make up 40% of divorces today. Ouch!
What’s happening?
People tend to say that the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960’s and 70’s has brought us to this place, and I suppose that might be at least partially true. But I think what we’re seeing is sinful mankind’s natural tendency to view God-given, wise, responsible boundaries not as they are—a beautiful protection against driving off the cliff of sin—but as shackles that entrap us and keep us from really living.
But really, this view of God’s boundaries isn’t anything new or modern. It’s been happening since the Fall: The serpent told the woman that God was keeping something the first humans—shackling them—by telling them that they were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:
4 “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
They had one boundary, and they just had to cross it in order to be “free” of God’s rule. It’s the same today: people gonna people.
But we—humanity—have it all wrong. What we discover in the Song is that God offers us a different vision of His loving limits. Instead of seeing His boundaries as ugly shackles that are the enemies of love, they are instead presented (particularly by the Beloved) as the guardians of it. In this part of the Song, we find that real love doesn’t flourish when every desire is immediately followed and satisfied. Rather, it flourishes when affection is nurtured through encouraging communication, when longing is rightly understood and respected, and when boundaries are heeded.
1: The beauty of encouragement
1: The beauty of encouragement
Before there is anything physical between the Lover and the Beloved in the Song, there is a back-and-forth of communication that expresses both affection and encouragement. This dialogue started with the man’s three-verse poem about her beauty back in verse 9, followed by her three-verse poem about his closeness in verses 12-14. Now the two of them shift into kind of a rapid-fire exchange in verses 1:15-2:3:
15 How beautiful you are, my darling. How very beautiful! Your eyes are doves. 16 How handsome you are, my love. How delightful! Our bed is verdant; 17 the beams of our house are cedars, and our rafters are cypresses.
The setting is still the same: the pasture (or perhaps now the forest on the edge of the pasture) where our heroine went to find her betrothed shepherd-king. The language indicates that this is likely the case, and I’ll point that out as we go through the verses.
He begins the rapid exchange with double declaration of her beauty—repetition in Hebrew usually means amplification: He thinks she’s beautiful-beautiful. Again, we see his favorite “pet name” for her, “my darling,” as I mentioned last week. The comparison to doves is a little strange for us, and the commentaries I read agree. Do her eyes look like doves’ eyes? Or are they shaped like doves’ bodies? Or do her eyes make the Lover feel peaceful or tranquil? Or perhaps her eyes are innocent and pure? I asked Mel, and she said that she thought maybe her eyes are gentle and soft like doves. I think any of these are possible interpretations, but there’s no way for us to know which one Solomon actually meant. If I had to say which one I think, it’s that her eyes make him feel peaceful and tranquil.
Her response is to say basically the same thing to him: The word that the CSB translates as “handsome” is just the masculine of the word that the Lover used about her in verse 15, but we generally don’t call men “beautiful” today. She follows this with her favorite pet name for him, and then changes it up by saying that he is “delightful.” This is actually a play on his compliment that her eyes are doves—the word she uses specifically means that he is nice to look at.
Then she says, “Our bed is verdant.” This is the first part of why I believe we’re still in the pasture. The word translated “bed” here is any piece of furniture that you can recline or lie down on. This doesn’t mean that anything sexual is going on, and I don’t think there is anything going on, given what she says in chapter 2. “Verdant” can mean green in color, which is how the ESV translates it, or it can mean green with plant growth, which what she means in this case. The image that fits in my mind is the two of them in the grass under a tree at the edge of the pasture, him laying against the tree, her with her head on his chest, together taking in the beautiful scene around them.
I personally treat verse 17 a little differently than the CSB does, because I attribute verse 17 to the Lover instead of the Beloved, as it keeps the flow of the banter. The pronouns that determine who is speaking which line are indeterminate in verse 17: The first-person plural could be spoken by either of them. So to me, he responds to the mention of their verdant bed by continuing the imagery it brings up: he’s thinking of their future together as if it is now. He looks around and sees the trees: “The beams of our house are cedars.” He sees the branches overhead: “our rafters are cypresses.” This is innocent dreaming of an engaged couple using the setting they are surrounded by as they share an intimate conversation with one another.
The thing about intimate conversations like this is that they eventually allow us to to feel safe enough to let our guards down and share what we feel deep in our hearts. This isn’t just a couple thing. Being in a conversation with someone—spouse, parent, friend, for example—when we know that the other person loves us enables us to be vulnerable and risk acknowledging our flaws and insecurities.
Remember the doubt that the Beloved had when she was speaking with her girlfriends in verse 5 and 6 of chapter 1? Her insecurities are still there, and they are expressed in the first verse of chapter 2.
1 I am a wildflower of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. 2 Like a lily among thorns, so is my darling among the young women. 3 Like an apricot tree among the trees of the forest, so is my love among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.
You might be wondering why the CSB doesn’t say “rose of Sharon.” This common translation (ESV, NASB, NIV) obscures this a little, and the CSB is actually a better translation. Roses as we know them today didn’t exist in Solomonic Israel. The word for “rose” here really means “flowering plant” in a generic sense, and a “lily” was a water lily. The Sharon Plain is a fertile, sometimes marshy, coastal area that slopes down to the Mediterranean between modern-day Tel-Aviv and Haifa. Each spring the valleys are covered with irises, tulips, narcissus, and anemones.
So where does the insecurity come in? When the Beloved compares herself to these flowers, she’s not saying that she’s something special—in fact, she’s saying exactly the opposite. She’s suggesting that she’s not the one IN a million, but merely one OF a million. Not an outstanding specimen, but a common wildflower in field full of them.
But the Lover disagrees in a powerful way: not only is she not just one among many, but in his eyes, she is a radiant flower and every other woman is a thorn or a bramble. Her appearance defines what is beautiful for him. Quick side note, gentlemen: Is this your attitude about your wife? Do you only have eyes for her? This is a behavior that we need to cultivate: defining beauty by what we see in our wives, and telling them about the beauty that we see in them.
Not to be outdone by his impressive comparison, the Beloved compares the shepherd-king to an apricot (or apple) tree among the trees of the forest. Nearly none of the wild trees in the forests of Israel are fruit-bearing trees. You might find a rare fig or olive tree, but to come across a wild apricot or apple tree when you were hungry on a hike would be an incredibly welcome and rare sight. That’s how she sees her Lover among the young men: He shields her from the sun, he provides her with what she needs, he refreshes her, and he gives asking nothing in return.
Quick side note, ladies: expressing appreciation to your husband for what he does is a massive encouragement to him! Knowing that you notice and have gratitude for whatever he provides—whether it’s financial or safety or relational or whatever—it motivates him to provide that even more, not less. Cultivate in yourself a practice of encouraging your husband.
To apply this point in a broader context, encouraging words are helpful in all relationships, aren’t they? Proverbs 25:11 tells us:
11 A word spoken at the right time is like gold apples in silver settings.
And the author of Hebrews tells us in the church:
13 But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception.
When we express encouragement well, we do more than make someone feel good in the moment. We deepen our relationships. We cultivate affection. Think about the people in your own life who are encouraging to you: how do you feel about those people? Do they help you feel warmth, safety, trust, and affection?
Granted, the context of the Song is a romantic relationship. But that doesn’t mean the same thing isn’t true in our other relationships. Their words don’t tear down, they don’t manipulate, they’re not self-serving. They’re giving. We should BE these kind of speakers in one another’s lives, and in the lives of those around us.
Now, for the Beloved and the Lover, the affection that their mutual encouragement shows and produces intentionally leads in a romantic direction. As their care and appreciation for each other deepens, so does their longing. So for this biblical couple, the encouragement of verses 1:15 through 2:3 leads pretty naturally to what we see next.
2: The beauty of longing
2: The beauty of longing
I’m being intentional in my wording here. I really struggled with this point, to be honest: I don’t want to give the wrong impression or say something that might cause someone to stumble. The word “attraction” didn’t really feel right. The words “desire” and “wanting” have the wrong connotation—I didn’t want this point to come across as tawdry or lustful. “Longing” is a strong feeling of yearning for someone or something that’s normally accompanied by a sense of absence or distance. That’s what is happening in verses 4-6:
4 He brought me to the banquet hall, and he looked on me with love. 5 Sustain me with raisins; refresh me with apricots, for I am lovesick. 6 May his left hand be under my head, and his right arm embrace me.
The reason I see this as longing is because the tense changes. She’s not with him anymore. She’s thinking back to their time together in the pasture, and the canopy of trees over them as they reclined at the edge of the forest. Perhaps they enjoyed a cup of wine together under the trees, because the translation of “banquet hall” is more literally “house of wine.” (Don’t forget that this is nearly 3,000 years ago... wine was really all they had that was guaranteed clean to drink in that time).
While the CSB says “he looked on me with love,” the kind of “standard” translation of this is “his banner over me is (or was) love.” Commentators say all kinds of stuff about this, but honestly, I think they both work in the way I’m interpreting this verse. A banner or standard is a military rally point, a public declaration of position, a beacon of hope for a soldier in an army. If his banner over her is love, then he’s declared his love for her publicly so there is no mistaking it—everyone can see where his love is. Isn’t that what we saw in verse 2?
If it’s that he looked on his Beloved with love, then it’s the same idea, only private. She could see in his eyes, hear in his words, feel in his touch that he loves her. Again, that’s what we saw in the first section of this morning’s passage.
Here is where we find an echo pointing to the Gospel. One of the names of God in Scripture is “The Lord is My Banner.” Jesus is the only banner under which we can gather for eternal life. To pay the penalty for our sin, He was lifted up, dying on the cross, so that whoever looks to Him and believes will have eternal life:
14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
And not only that, but God looks at us with love, knowing our need and providing for us through Jesus’s death on the cross in our place:
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Either way you take this passage, it images the Gospel and God’s great love for us proven in Christ. Believe that Jesus died for your sins, repent and turn to Him for salvation, believing that He rose again, and trusting Him as your Lord.
So back in the Song, we have a question to answer: why did I choose “longing?” It’s because as the Beloved thinks about their time together in the pasture and the love that the have for each other, she swoons. She says that she is so overwhelmed by longing that she feels its effects physically, and commands whoever is there (not the Lover, because it’s plural) to get her some food to sustain her. There are some references regarding pagan uses of raisins in cakes as some sort of aphrodisiac or part of a fertility ritual, such as in Hosea 3:1:
1 Then the Lord said to me, “Go again; show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.”
But I seriously doubt this is what this is referring to. I think she has been so caught up in thinking about her shepherd-king that she hasn’t eaten anything, and needs food to sustain her. She’s longing to see him again, to be held by him again, according to verse 6. She misses him terribly! But that doesn’t mean that longing is necessarily bad.
Think about an engaged couple as their wedding day approaches: every day, the anticipation of being husband and wife builds. Every day, the change of life before them comes closer and closer. Their future is still out there, and they long for it to arrive so that they can experience it together.
Longing isn’t always evidence that something is wrong. Sometimes it’s evidence that something is valuable or important. God often uses longing to prepare us for His plans for the future. Our longings remind us that we are incomplete in ourselves—We are designed for communion with God, as the psalmist wrote in Psalm 42:
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God. 2 I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?
And more than that, our longings also remind us that there’s a future with God that we can look forward to experiencing if we are in Christ:
23 Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits—we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.
We live in a culture today that treats longing as a problem to be solved immediately. If you want something, get it. If you have a desire, satisfy it. If you feel something, act on it. But the Song presents a different vision: Longing is not always a problem to eliminate. Sometimes longing is a part of God’s preparation for something better. And that’s exactly why boundaries are necessary.
3: The boundary of waiting
3: The boundary of waiting
I’m going to unapologetically say that this last point is almost completely for those who have not married yet—students and young adults. And that’s not just from me: it’s who the Beloved specifically speaks to when she says it. This is also for those who are not currently married (divorced, widowed). Just because you’ve been married doesn’t mean that you should act married with someone you’re not married to. That’s not to say that it has nothing in it for the rest of us by way of illustration and extension, but it’s really for them first and foremost.
7 Young women of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and the wild does of the field, do not stir up or awaken love until the appropriate time.
This feels like the Beloved is slamming on the brakes, doesn’t it? In a way, she is.
She again speaks to the chorus of young women, her girlfriends. And she charges them, or calls them to an oath, “by the gazelles and the wild does of the field.” What on earth does that mean? There’s really only one explanation that makes any sense to me: There might be a hidden allusion to God here that we cannot hear in English, but only in the Hebrew. If we were to say the phrase “Lord of Armies, God Almighty,” in Hebrew, we would say Yahweh-Tsebaoth El-Shaddai. The phrase “gazelles or wild does of the field” in Hebrew would sound like this: sebaoth o ayeloth hassadeh. Certainly the young women would have heard this near homophone? If that’s not what’s happening here, then I confess that the alternatives suggested in my commentaries aren’t particularly convincing to me. Perhaps it was a saying whose true meaning is now lost to the sands of time.
Her call to these young women is for them to promise not to “stir up or awaken love” until the time is appropriate. The Beloved tells her friends that there’s a right time and a right context for physical intimacy. She has the desire, but knows that the time has not arrived for it to be expressed. But instead of this call being a woeful cry of the denial of true love, it’s a wise instruction from a loving friend about guarding love from foolish choices.
In his commentary on the Song, Duane Garrett explains her call this way:
This flies in the face of modern thinking. In the songs, stories, movies, and television shows of today, the perhaps unspoken idea is that love is shackled to sex—that if two people “love” each other in the romantic sense, then that love is not fully expressed until it is expressed sexually. Interestingly, the converse is not true. Modern thinking says that love needs sex, but it is fine for sex to be completely disconnected from any feelings of love, any responsibility to the other person, any marriage covenant, any responsibility before God for how we use our bodies. But this is a lie.
Hebrews 13:4 says:
4 Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.
If the “sexually immoral” are those who engage in sexual behavior outside of a marriage covenant (which is what it means), then this means that your “marriage bed” exists before you get married—you’re to keep it set apart for your spouse. You’re to safeguard it FOR your wedding night.
Waiting to express our love sexually until marriage is a wise boundary from our loving God. It is a protection for us from consequences that we likely won’t be thinking about in the heat of passion. The sad thing is that in the name of being “free,” we throw off God’s good boundaries for us, ignoring His commands and instructions which are given for our good, our well-being, our blessing, declaring His ways as repressive, strict, and antiquated. Wrongly declaring that we are free, we actually choose to shackle ourselves to the vicious taskmaster of sin—lust, greed, idolatry, even perversion—that will lead us down a dark path toward death:
14 But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. 15 Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.
16 Don’t you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey—either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness?
See? Sin shackles us to death. It’s in obedience to God that we become righteous. God is not a cosmic sexual killjoy. He’s good, wise, and loving Father who wants the very best for us, and has given us instructions on what to choose to arrive at that best.
Closing
Closing
Isn’t that the same lie that the serpent told Eve in the Garden? “God’s keeping something good from you. You’ll be happier if you cross that boundary.” All this time later, and the lie hasn’t changed!
The Song tells us that boundaries are not the enemies of love—they’re the guardians of it. They are there to protect and preserve what is precious and beautiful. The Song has also shown us that encouragement deepens affection and that longing can deepen appreciation for God’s good provision for us.
Some of you are young and unmarried. The application for you is obvious: trust God’s timing more than your feelings. Refuse to awaken what God says should wait. Believe that His boundaries are better, safer, and wiser than your desires. Those boundaries are beautiful because the God who drew them loves us.
Some of you are dating, engaged, widowed, or divorced. The call is the same. Honor Christ with your body and trust His design.
And for those of us who are married, may we continue cultivating encouragement, affection, and faithfulness in the covenant that God has already given to us.
And some might hear a message like this and feel shame for having already crossed God’s boundaries in the past. There’s a balm for that feeling! The good news of the Gospel is that our hope isn’t based on our performance—it’s found in our perfect Savior Jesus. He died so we could be forgiven for our failures, our rebellion, our sins. His grace is greater than all our sin, so there is no stain so great that His blood cannot cleanse it. Will you believe in Jesus today? Come and share that with us.
Baptism
Church membership
Giving
Prayer
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Woody & Kathy Weed Video Testimony
Neighboring Moment
Some friends and I went to the hospital to put flowers on people’s cars. While I was there I saw a man limping out of the hospital with a hospital wristband on. I went up to him and asked how I could pray for him and he said he didn't know how he was going to get home from the hospital. He was just trying to get to the bus stop hoping the driver let him on. I gave him the cash I had in my purse, and he thanked me profusely and cried.
Bible reading
No Pastor’s Study - Business Meeting
Prayer Meeting: Looking at variations of the Divine Name “Father”
Sarah Faris died on Friday. Services have not been planned yet.
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
Hymn #105: Grace Greater than Our Sin (verse 1)
Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt,
Yonder on Calvary’s mount out-poured,
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt.
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin.
