through the Ark of Redemption and focusing briefly on the Song of Solomon. And our scripture reading tonight will be the first four verses of that book. Song of Solomon, chapter one, verses one through four. This is God's word to us. The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, The bride, sorry. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For your love is better than wine. Your anointing oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore, virgins love you. Draw me after you. Let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you. We will extol your love more than wine. Rightly do they love you. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Let's pray. Father, as we turn to this perhaps little understood book, or perhaps not often focused upon, I pray that you would bless our time. This is your holy word for us. It's meant for our instruction. It's meant to tell us about you. It's meant to tell us about us. It is for our good and it is for your glory. And so we ask that as we have this book open and discuss it tonight, that you would bless us, that you would work in our hearts by your spirit that you would be honored. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Stephanie and I met at a Bible school in Texas, and in that Bible school, the director of that school and his wife, they had gotten married in their mid-30s. And so when they got married, they each obviously had their own goals and whatnot and they have children and grandchildren and all that now. That was decades ago already. But Patsy was, she's the older of the two and she was, very desirous to develop and grow her relationship with her new husband, and so she was focused on relationship and the romance, and the two of them related together. He, a solid Christian man growing in his faith, was desirous to be a good spiritual leader in his home. and wanted to begin their marriage by doing family worship together from the get-go, and so they did, and they opened up Song of Solomon, and that's how they began their marriage, day after day after day, doing their family worship from the Song of Solomon, and that's certainly an appropriate way to start a marriage, isn't it? I thought that was interesting, and when he taught on Song of Solomon, there was a lot of blushing involved, and it was a good time, but it had particular relevance for them. So he obviously, and she obviously, took it in a way, a particular way, reading Song of Solomon as being about a loving relationship between husband and wife. But that's not the only way the book has been taken through the years. It's been interpreted in different ways. In fact, if you, I have a few lines here that will spark a memory or a thought in your mind. The first one is, he is the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley. Right. That's in chapter two and verse one. Or another one in 2.16, my beloved is mine and I am his. Thirdly, in 5.16, he is altogether lovely. And then in 2.4, his banner over me is love. So clearly, These lines take a different tack on how to interpret the book. And it's read differently. And I see David already singing the song in his head. Because you can usually see the song he's singing on his face. So you can see that clearly there has been some disparity over the years about how to interpret this. And so we want to dig into it in this series and cover the entire book tonight as we've been wont to do. And the first question in our introductory question is how ought we to interpret it? Some have interpreted it allegorically as symbolizing something. That it's given in the form of this marriage relationship. But really it means something else. It refers to something different. That's the allegorical interpretation. We'll look at a couple of examples of those. The other interpretation, and I'm oversimplifying a little bit to say there are two interpretations, because there are a number of ways to do the allegorical, and frankly a number of ways to do the literal, which is the other side. So you have the allegorical interpretation, you have the literal interpretation. Jewish interpreters traditionally, very often, have usually interpreted it as an allegory. It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of Scripture. It doesn't seem to have the same themes. It's focused on marital love. It's focused on sexuality. And though the Bible talks about those topics in various places. It doesn't ever do so in other places quite like it does here. And so, you've got the Jewish interpreters interpreting it allegorically very often, and when they do, they see it as a relationship between God and Israel, right? And that makes sense in the sense that in the Old Testament, Israel was often in trouble for idolatry, And it was depicted by the prophets as adultery, right? That Israel had been adulterous toward her husband. And Ezekiel 16 really plays that out in great detail, the book of Hosea, right? And in other places you can see the same thing. So when they interpret it as the relationship between God and Israel, it's not that much of a stretch, right? You can see how they would do so. And secondly, many Christian interpreters have taken it also to be allegorical, but they interpret it more as a relationship between Christ and the church. Again, they have looked at it and they've seen that the genre is different. It's love poetry. And what is love poetry doing in the Bible? It doesn't read like the rest of the Bible, so surely it must be talking about something else. And so they have often interpreted it historically, have interpreted it allegorically, and seen it as a depiction of the relationship between Christ and the church. That's another allegorical interpretation. And again, there are varieties within these, Those are the basic kind of outlines of how it has historically been interpreted. But there's a third way to interpret it. Others have taken it literally, and they see it as describing love and sexuality between husband and wife. they take it at face value for what it says. Now, I'm oversimplifying it because even saying I'm going to read it literally and then you weighed into it, you can go a number of different directions, right? So it's not straightforward at being poetry. Recent scholarship really tends to favor this last line of interpretation, especially since they have uncovered in the last decades and centuries, other ancient Near Eastern love poetry very similar to this, that's contemporaneous with this from surrounding cultures. So it was a genre that existed for its own purposes in surrounding cultures, and so modern interpreters tend to interpret it on a more literal fashion. And this is the interpretation I take. I take it more as being a description here of a relationship between husband and wife as it relates to love, as it relates to the problems of marriage. And again, it's leading up to marriage and then continuing on. So it's not just husband and wife, but it's geared that direction. And this, I don't arrive at that conclusion easily. Any of you who have talked to me about this over the years know that, There's a lot of appeal to the allegorical side in that you have examples like Ezekiel 16 and Hosea, which very clearly describe the relationship between God and his people as a husband and wife relationship. And so if the entire chapter of Ezekiel 16 is focused on this allegory, this description of God finding Israel and providing for and raising Israel and then ultimately marrying Israel and Israel running off and the adultery and all that's involved, it's very similar to Hosea. If you see that in Ezekiel 16, an entire chapter focused on that, it's not that much of a stretch to see that there might be a book focused on that, but I don't think that's the case for reasons I think that will become clear. Even though we've decided, or I have decided, that I really do think it is a literal book, it is clearly poetry, it's clearly love poetry. I don't have a lot of experience with love poetry, Not my go-to reading, right? There's still the question of how we are to read it. Is the book meaning to tell a story? This is the way I was taught it. This is how Charlie taught it to us at school, in Bible school where Stephanie and I met. He taught it as if it were a story. and it's a story that's told in poetic fashion, and so maybe that's the way it's being told, but even if you ask that question, or answer that question, that way you still have the question of who are the characters, and what's the love story, who's the love story between, right? You've got a couple of different options. Is it a shepherd and the Shulamite woman, and they're coming together in their marriage? Right, is it between this anonymous kind of couple? There are references to Solomon, but that could easily have been like an idealizing kind of reference to Solomon, where actually the characters are just anonymous, an anonymous shepherd and an anonymous Shulamite. Well, that's possible. Another interpretation is that it's about King Solomon and the Shulamite woman and their marriage. But that's difficult when you think about Solomon and all the wives and concubines he had and all that kind of stuff. Like, ooh, romantic, I get to marry Solomon. Everybody else is married to Solomon. What's romantic about that, right? But if you read through the ESV, and you look at the section headings and whatnot that the ESV editors have put in there, they seem to interpret it that way, that it's between Solomon and this Shulamite woman. Maybe, I'm unconvinced by that one. I do tend to think it's more like the first one, the shepherd and the Shulamite. But there's a third way of reading it, and that's actually that it's kind of a love triangle. that you've got this, and this could very easily be a movie, it probably is a movie, where you've got this poor couple, and they're interested in each other, they're coming together, they're anonymous, the shepherd and the Shulamite, but then King Solomon sees her and takes an interest in her, and now he suddenly becomes interested, and now there's this kind of love triangle thing of which way is she gonna go, and unrequited love, and I don't know. That's another possibility. All of these have been suggested, and others that I've not mentioned. These are just kind of some ways that people have tried to understand it, because that's really what they're doing. When it's poetry, it doesn't have the same sort of plot. development and prose that's explaining what's going on. You do have dialogue all the way through. It's he says this and she says that and then the daughters of Jerusalem say this or others say this. So it's almost like a play. It's a play done in this weird kind of love poetry that's hard to interpret and figure out exactly what the through story really is. And so the way The way I understand it and what I think is helpful in trying to read it and understand it is imagine that you have discovered a notebook of one of the lover's poetry. And it's written in chronological order, it's just poetry written about certain episodes in their relationship. And so it's early on, there's poetry, and then later on there's some different poetry, and they're courting and whatnot, and then they get married, or they're about to get married and there's poetry, and so it's not exactly a story, but it's episodes being reflected upon in poetic fashion throughout the course of this relationship. That seems to make sense to me, and some of the commentators that I read point out, oh yeah, there are eight different sections, and there are 12 different sections, whatever, where these different episodes and these individual poems, and so you can kind of read the poem, And your goal of reading the poem is not to figure out the storyline of the book, not to figure out the plot of the book, but really to examine this aspect of love, this aspect that's being discussed by the poet. I think that's kind of helpful. As you do that, you're gonna have to keep in mind that this is poetry, and so there's flowery, flowery, literally, flowery language, right? There's discussion of myrrh, and Lebanon, and cedars, and towers, and, you know. And so it's poetic language, it's drawing in this kind of fanciful kind of language to describe various things. There are pomegranates and spices and other things like that. So you're gonna read language that's not everyday. We're gonna have to keep in mind that we're reading poetry. We're reading imagery that doesn't perhaps seem to work in English the same way it worked in Hebrew. So for example, chapter seven verses four through six. Your neck is like an ivory tower. So women, see if you're wooed by this, okay? See if this really, your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-Rabim. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon. Just exactly what every woman wants to hear. Look at the nose on her, right? That thing's like a tower, like a tower of Lebanon, right? I'm not making fun of God's word. I'm trying to help us see that we need to think about it. We need to think about what is being conveyed here. Otherwise, we end up making fun of God's word in our mind, right? Perhaps when you think about a tower of Lebanon, there's a particular beauty and a particular boldness, right? That it stands there and weathers the storm like her nose, that she faces difficulty in her life. Right, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I'm not into love poetry, okay. No skills, nothing. Your head crowns you like Carmel. Your flowing locks are like purple. Not that she has purple hair. There's a wealth, there's a beauty, there's a richness, there's a nobility to her hair. The king is held captive in the tresses. How beautiful and pleasant you are, oh loved one, with all your delights. So the language may not be the language we would use. Right, but there's something being conveyed and just as in English we do poetry in such a way that it rhymes, there's meter and there's rhyme and stuff like that, Hebrew doesn't do the same thing. Hebrew does poetry, we've talked about this a million times. It uses parallels, you've got these different kinds of parallels and there can be antithetical parallelism and there can be synonymous parallelism, there can even be a different kind of parallelism that develops as a synthetic parallelism, they call it, and that's poetry to them, and they're thinking, wow, that's wonderful poetry, and we have trouble memorizing it because it doesn't rhyme and it doesn't have meter. We do things differently, they did things differently. And so the imagery that they use carries a significance with it, whereas we might think her nose is like a tower, we think, poor woman, right? She's got a giant nose, apparently. But that's not the point, right? It's not just this image on the face of it, okay? This may not go well. All right, next question is who wrote it? Well, obviously it's called the Song of Solomon at the top of my Bible, and even verse one says the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. The problem is that the Hebrew there could just as easily indicate that the Song of Songs is dedicated to Solomon. It's in honor of Solomon. Or somehow in reference to him, and maybe that is why the name is brought in. He's the king, or perhaps he's the recently deceased king, or something like that. It seems like it's during the days of Solomon or immediately thereafter that this is written. But it was probably not, I think, in my opinion, I'm not gonna go to battle over this. I don't think it was written by him. I think it was written by someone else. That phrase there, in English, it's very clear that it says, the song of songs, which is Solomon's. Therefore, he must have written it. The problem is, the Hebrew is not that clear. And that happens sometimes in the Psalms, as well. Prepositions don't work the same in Hebrew as they do in English. There's a breadth of meaning. Our English translation can be a little bit misleading. It seems like that you're actually denying what verse one says if you deny that Solomon wrote it, and that's not the case. Because frankly, verse one says something in Hebrew, and we're reading a translation of it. So I'm not gonna die on that hill, but I don't believe Solomon wrote it. I think it's dedicated to Solomon. I think it's written during his day, and it's dedicated to him. What does the title mean? Song of Songs. Verse one, the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. Well, it's the same as King of Kings, Lord of Lords. It's the Hebrew way of doing a superlative. The highest song, the greatest king, the ultimate Lord, Song of Songs. King of kings, Lord of lords. So basically it's the greatest song. The greatest song is what it means. So where do we fit this in, after looking at that introductory type material very briefly, how do we fit this in with the redemptive historical context? Or what sort of redemptive historical contributions does this make? Well, there are probably more. I'll confess that in my own studying of this, I spent the majority of my studying trying to figure out how to interpret it. and then haven't drawn all that many conclusions just because of the difficulty of trying to work through those things. You obviously have to make those interpretive decisions before you dive in and make headway in actually interpreting it. You have to have laid the ground rules for how you think it ought to be interpreted. But I do think that this is a very strong emphasis that it has, a conclusion that we can draw regarding the redemptive history. that even though I take the book to be about the loving sexual union of a man and a woman in marriage, you can see how that nevertheless points to Christ. You can see how even focusing on that marriage, and not in some allegorical way, let me give you a picture, and the picture means something else, and yeah, there are these two people. They're not all that important, really. No, it's focusing on the people. It's focusing on the marriage. It's focusing on the development of that relationship. It's focusing on that kind of love, on even the sexuality of that. It's focused on those things, and yet, according to Paul, even all of that points us to Christ. Right, so you keep your finger here in Song of Solomon chapter one and turn to Ephesians five. No new passage to us. But you can see how having a better understanding of the marriage relationship and even sexuality and love, romantic love, and how a marriage works and all of that actually helps us to think about the relationship between Christ and the church. And so I just wanna read for us here in Ephesians chapter five, starting in verse 22. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church. So even, going back to Song of Solomon, if we take it literally, and I do, it nevertheless points to Christ in the church, doesn't it? According to Paul in Ephesians 5. Because the very nature of the husband and wife relationship does that. It exemplifies and teaches us about Christ and the church and how they relate to one another, et cetera. And so I think if there are no other... redemptive historical contributions for the book of Song of Solomon, certainly that is one. It gives us a picture, a fuller picture of that loving relationship between husband and wife that helps us to think about the relationship between Christ and the church. Theological contributions. Maybe the primary theological contribution of the book is sort of half theological, half ethical, and that is that it honors and it shows value for the love relationship between husband and wife, even the sexual union between the two. I've not read a ton of church history. I would like to read more, but I've been struck in reading the history of the early Christians, first couple of centuries, and very often, they really clearly took to heart the warnings in scripture about the dangers of rampant unbridled sexuality and promiscuity and lust and those sorts of passions and things like that. And it almost seems like perhaps they recoiled against them to such a degree that they viewed marriage as kind of an agreement to help us live life together, help us do ministry together, that was more noble. That a husband and wife, if you need to, you take a wife and really she will be your partner in ministry, and that seems to be a focus, not entirely, but enough so that it stood out to me that, wow, that's a really utilitarian kind of view, or I don't even know what to call it really, sanitized view of what marriage is, that oh, it's two people who have agreed that they're going to travel together and the husband needs a wife so that she can minister to the women that he's trying to minister to because he can't because he's a man. And so when they're going and doing missions, when they're church planting, when they're ministering the way they are, really the wife is there to be the one who can minister in places he can't minister. And that seems like that's almost all. Right, you don't have language that I've been struck by, the lack of. Again, I've not read a ton of church history, and this is not true across the board, but there seem to be almost an ascetic view of marriage, right, that, you know, it's almost marital, what's the word I was gonna say? I can't think of the word. Monasticism. Almost, right, and so this book doesn't allow for that. Now, so if you think of the first couple of centuries of church history that I'm talking about, right, where it led to monasticism, it led to the guy sitting on top of the pole for years because that's the way to be holier, people living in caves or out in the desert so they weren't around people, and thus they were able, Stephen talked about this in Sunday school, talking about church history. That same kind of idea that says we need to separate from all the passions and everything of the world so that we can get alone and we can really be with God and we can really grow and really be spiritual in that kind of context, you can see how that would affect marriage. If you have that line of thinking regarding how spirituality really works, well, you're gonna think about marriage the same way. You're gonna look at marriage and say, well, Why would I ever give in to the desires of the body? Obviously we're trying to get away from those things. We don't even eat food that's tasty. We live in the desert where things are miserable. I'm on top of a pole, I'm not even comfortable. I'm living in a hole in the ground. I don't wear soft clothing. Why would it be okay then to actually enjoy the sexual union between husband and wife? So, you see how the thinking kind of leads that direction? And then you begin to think about marriage that way, and well, yeah, but it might be helpful, actually, if I had a woman with me, a co-laborer, a minister with me, that when we went into a new town and we were trying to minister to someone, she could go minister to the women, because I can't really do that. So I really do need a wife for that purpose, right? And so, the idea, the fear of, of bodily pleasure and of enjoyment of the gifts that God has given us in this life, led them to some odd places. right, ultimately to sitting on top of poles in the desert for decades, right, and other things, and you think about sort of the denigration of marriage in the sense that if you really want to be close to God, you become a priest or you become a nun, and then you are celibate, right, there is no marriage in that regard. So, Song of Solomon read literally seems to argue strongly against that, which might have been a reason to want to read it allegorically, right, to keep it in this spiritual, it's very spiritual, yes. It's in these kind of fleshly seeming terms, but it's a very spiritual message instead. So that could be one of the reasons that it is so often read allegorically. And so I think that's one of the main theological contributions of it is to put marriage really in its right place. To put sexuality in its right place. Scripture is replete with cautions and warnings and examples of those who have run their life into the ground because of their rampant sexuality and immorality and all those sorts of things. We see that And we are to, certainly we prioritize, even when we are married, we prioritize our relationship with God first. But nevertheless, that relationship with our spouse is a powerful, good, God-given expression of genuine love and is not unspiritual in any way. It is a gift of God. So I think one of the roles the book plays is in bringing balance to that discussion. And cultures tend to go back and forth throughout time, they go back and forth on that kind of thing, but this is like a stake in the ground, saying don't you dare denigrate marriage. Don't you dare denigrate marital love. It's legit, it's given from God, and in its place it has very great purpose and gives strength. What about some ethical contributions? really where I think there's a lot to learn and it's really hard to bring it to bear. The first one, there's a refrain that runs throughout the book that basically says, don't awaken love before time. Before it's time, before it's proper. You read it in three or four different places. It's right in the fabric of the poem itself. It's a refrain. For example, in 2-7, I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awake in love until it pleases. And you read that a couple more times. You read it in 3-5 and in 8-4. And then, You read, immediately following 8.4, in 8.5 you read, I awakened you. So there seems like there's a progression, don't waken, don't waken, don't awaken love too early, before it's time, but there comes a time when it's okay and it's appropriate to awaken that love. Romantic love and sexual passions can lie dormant for a long time. which can make a developing relationship and the life of a young person or really any person much easier to navigate and remain sexually pure. And I think that's what's being said here in this refrain. I adjure you that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. When I talk to young couples, who are moving towards marriage or they're in some dating relationship and they think about what ought the boundaries to be, the physical boundaries. Is it okay to hold hands? Is it okay to kiss? Is it okay to hug? Those sorts of questions, right? My answer is drawn from this refrain. Whatever You set as a boundary, becomes the new norm, and now there's a desire to move past that boundary. So, I still remember the first time we held hands. Yeah. It's a moment, that's sweet, everybody else is like. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna write a poem. Your nose is like, no, I don't have it in me, can't do it. The reason I remember that, we've held hands 10 million times since then, but when you agree, okay, we're going to this level of intimacy, that awakens that love to a certain degree. and now you've just crossed a threshold, just crossed a barrier, right? You've entered into a new area. Is that wrong? I'm not saying that in the least, but I'm saying you just moved into a new arena. You just peeled back one level and you're moving closer toward one another, right? The same with kissing. Oh, you're gonna kiss? Well, just know You are entering into a new level of intimacy and you will begin to have the desire to move beyond that level of intimacy. Each line you come to, you cross that line, even if it's a good line, you just need to recognize that's a line, it was there, I've crossed it, oh look, there's another line, right? And maybe I'm not ready to move across that line yet, but I really want to, right? So you're opening the doors for those kinds of things. And there's an application here for us that I wish we would all heed, and that is not to tease children about the person they have a crush on. Why cross that line? Why introduce the idea? Oh, little Joey, he thinks you're sweet. Is he your boyfriend? He just blew right through that line with that child who may be six or whatever, right? Why introduce those topics? The time will come, right? That's gonna happen. Do they need to be prepared for it at six? No. It shouldn't be a thought in their mind. They should be chasing butterflies, okay? This is, I feel strongly about this, that when we tease our own children or other children, or when we allow them to do it with one another, oh, he has a crush on you. No, we don't talk like that around here. We don't need to have that conversation. You don't need to awaken that, right? It's awakening love before it's time. They'll get there. They'll get there. Even someone as boneheaded as me eventually got there. We need to let them remain innocent and let the relationship remain innocent as long as possible. You're getting to know one another. Why do you need to hug? Why do you need to hold hands? Why do you need to kiss? You're getting to know, just get to know one another so that you can remember the first time you held hands. later on if the relationship goes there. So don't awaken love before it's time. That's a big helpful contribution that Song of Solomon makes, and that has been in my mind since Charlie taught it 32 years ago or whatever it was. It's a very helpful way for us to think about relationships. Secondly, I don't know what to call this one, but notice how easy it is for troubles to enter. If you will look at chapter five, seems like maybe this is a dream. It's hard to say. Frankly, interpreters differ about what is happening here in chapter five, verses two through eight. how often miscommunication slips in, how easily it does between husband and wife, and causes difficulty where there really doesn't need to be any difficulty. Here you have this situation. So this is, she's doing the talking here. She says, I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound, my beloved is knocking. Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one. For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night. I'm standing out here, let me in. I had put off my garment. She says, how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet, how could I soil them? So she's thinking to herself, I can't be bothered right now, I can't be bothered. My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me. I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh on the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not. I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen found me as they went about in the city. They beat me, they bruised me. They took away my veil, those watchmen of the walls. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am sick with love. You see, it was just a timing thing. It was a simple, that caused a problem in marriage and how often is that the case in marriage where it's just a miscommunication, it's just bad timing, it's just a joke that wasn't well received, it's just a comment that wasn't meant that way. It's just a silence and lack of response for another reason entirely, not because you're putting off the other one or anything like that and it leads to problems in the relationship and difficulties. that there's not really a cause for, right? And I think, I'm not exegeting this passage. I'm just making an observation. Again, I don't even know if this is a dream. I don't know if this really happened. I don't know in this case. But it seems to be describing those times when you just kind of stick your foot in your mouth. And it can cause problems. It can lead to problems. It's not really a problem. It's not a big deal. but it can lead to a big deal. I think often in relationships, in our marriages, we let little things fester. Little, simple, silly things. There was an example that I'm thinking of right now, I don't remember much of the context, where I was talking about, I was telling my wife about a, I think it was a conversation that I had had after church, something like that. And it was a critical conversation. I was reporting to her a critical conversation, some comments that someone had made, and I don't remember what they were, praise God. Usually I fester on that stuff, and I could tell you verbatim, but I'd forgotten what it was, praise the Lord. But I told my wife about it, and she made a comment. And then she got quiet, and It ruined the next 24 hours for me because I misunderstood her. I don't remember what she said, but what she said was something encouraging toward me that I had misheard or misunderstood. And I didn't sleep well that night. I was miserable the next day. I just thought, I thought she was agreeing with the critical statements of this person and all of this. And then finally the next day we talked about it and she had said exactly the opposite of what I thought I heard. There's 24 hour shot, right? There's my sin revealed. I'm gonna grumble and I'm gonna fuss and I'm gonna slam doors and I'm gonna walk around and be crushed. And ultimately, there was no reason behind it at all. How often does that happen in our marriages? Let's be gracious toward one another. Five minutes, are you kidding me? All right, next. Notice how the lovers talk. And I think this would be a profitable study. If you wanna go and study Song of Solomon, I would encourage this study. Notice how the lovers talk because they are different, the man and the woman. I don't remember which commentator or which, I read all the, I have three different study Bibles and I was reading everything in them about this trying to, trying to figure out how to get a grasp on how to interpret this, and one of them was pointing out how differently the man talks versus how the woman talks. And you're thinking, Pastor Brennan, you didn't know men and women talk differently? Turns out they do. And you see that in the text here, right? And how the two talk reflects how much about how men and women think differently about the one they love. We think differently. Men are different from women. For example, the man really only talks to and about the woman. His focus is on her. His focus is on her. So a few verses here that come to mind. Chapter one, verses nine to 10. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots. Pause for a second. What kind of horses does Pharaoh get to choose? the very best, right? So he's not saying she's like a mare. He's saying she's the very best choice, lovely. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments, your neck with strings of jewels. Verse 15, behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful, your eyes are doves. Chapter two, verse two. As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women. And then chapter four, verses one through four. Behold, you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them has lost its young. Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like the Tower of David, built in rows of stone. On it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. Whatever all of that means, he is praising her. He's talking about her, he is talking to her. On the other hand, differently, the woman talks to him and about him, but also to others around him. She's in conversation here and there as well. For example, to the daughters of Jerusalem, Right, so we can read as one example of all of this, chapter five, verses 10 through 16. This is her talking. And notice the difference. My beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among 10,000. His head is the finest gold. His locks are wavy, black as a raven. His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, bathed in milk, sitting beside a full pool. His cheeks are like beds of spices, mounds of sweet-smelling herbs. His lips are lilies dripping liquid myrrh. His arms are rods of gold set with jewels. His body is polished ivory bedecked with sapphires. His legs are alabaster columns set on bases of gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, and this is my friend. O daughters of Jerusalem. So I don't know how to really flesh out all the differences between the way the two talk, but there is a difference in how they talk. There is a difference in where their focus is and where their language is. that he is talking to her about her. The focus is there. Now, he also has life, and he has work, and he has all the things he's doing, but the two don't really mix, right? He's focused on her, and he's talking to her, and he's talking about her, and hers is different. She's talking to him and about him, and she's describing him in glowing terms as well. She's praising him, and she's rejoicing in what he's like and all that, and she talks to others about the same thing. There's a difference. There's a difference in focus. One is not bad versus the other being good or anything like that, but there's a difference between the way men and women think about a relationship. Maybe that's part of the reason it's so hard for us to understand one another. I hear men rightly say that you're not gonna understand the mind of a woman. I haven't yet. But I falsely hear that women saying men are simple. Well, I mean, yeah. No. There's more. There's more. We're different. We're just different. And so it takes work to understand one another. It takes grace to live together, grow together, be together, to grow in this love relationship with one another. We talk differently, and even the way they talk and it's expressed in here is different from the man to the woman. I think that would be a worthy study, to sit down and look at how the man talks And you might think, oh, the man is more visual or whatever. No, she's pretty visual, that's not the issue. They're just very different. They view the relationship differently. So I hope. I would rather have given a better summary and overview of the book to you. Maybe I've given you some lines of further study to kind of ask some questions yourself and look further into it, or maybe some guidelines in interpreting it, I don't know. This has been a difficult book for me because of the varied types of teaching that you read on it. But in the end, when we think about this book that's dedicated, it's part of the wisdom literature. Does it take wisdom to be married appropriately? So far it has. I'm sure Rick and Katie have got it figured out. Katie has and Rick hasn't. She's been trying to teach him. It takes wisdom to be in relationship and it takes wisdom to be in this intimate relationship. Right, there's more at stake. I can keep you at a distance, at a certain distance, right? And there's, you know, you can harm me and all that kind of stuff, but we're not, you know, you're at a certain distance. It may be a close distance, but you're at a distance, but your spouse is right there in the inner circle. Right, there's risk, and there's great reward. And this book would have us think about those topics. This book, I think, would have us think about the nature of marriage itself. And when you look at the broader context of scripture, there are a couple of very important reasons why that is necessary for us. That's because the Bible tells us who God is, who we are, and among other things, how we are to live in this world, how we are to understand how we are made, and what our families ought to be like, and relationships and all those things, and this book focuses on that. That piece of the relationship or that piece of the Christian life that's not often focused on in scripture, at least not in such a condensed and focused way as Song of Solomon is, but secondly, When we think about Paul's words in Ephesians chapter five, and how this points us to Christ and his love for the church, we grow in our understanding of the level of commitment that he has for us. And the relationship that we really have is such a blessing, pictured here in this relationship between a man and a woman who fall in love and enjoy all of those marital blessings that God has for us. What an encouraging book. So, again, maybe those are some avenues for further thought on the topic, but it's encouraging, and I'm encouraged to go and look at some of those aspects. Let me pray for us, and then we'll go ahead and be done. Father, thank you for this great book that I have poorly understood and neglected over the years, and yet there is so much wisdom You are the one who designed man, designed woman, and put them together. You have thought of marriage. It's not something that we came up with to deal with loneliness or anything like that. No, you made the woman and brought her and presented her to the man, and marriage is your idea. It would make sense that you teach us about marriage in your word, and we are grateful that you have done so. We are grateful that you have given us our spouses. What a blessing marriage is. And I pray for those who have lost their spouse and maybe are alone. I pray that you would bless them and give them fond memories and give them joy and give them comfort, even as we talked about in Sunday school this morning, that they would be comforted in that sweet dew of life that nourishes them and encourages them and sanctifies this suffering to them in such a way that they are blessed. I pray for those who want to be married and are not. I pray that you would provide a godly spouse for them in due time. That you would be preparing that person even now. that you would put together that relationship. It is the norm for your people to be married. It's what usually happens, and we pray that you would bring that about for these dear ones who want to be married, that you would do so soon, that you would do so well, that their marriage and any children and relationship that comes from it would be honoring to you and a blessing. We are grateful that you have given us this great joy of marriage. It's not always joyful. There are very difficult, challenging times, and there are very difficult and challenging marriages. But Father, we are grateful that you have blessed us in this way, and we pray that you would help us to be gracious and patient and forgiving toward one another, that we would rejoice in the wife of our youth, that we would rejoice in the spouse of our youth. We're grateful for your tender mercies and care toward us. And we pray for your blessing in Jesus' name, amen.