Song Of Songs Part 2 - A Royal Wedding

Andrew Grey brings us the next in the series on the book of Song of Songs, chapter 3v1 - 5v1.

This set of talks was given at Immanuel Church Brentwood’s weekend away at Ashburnham on 19th, 20th and 21st Sept 2025.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

To open up your Bibles to Song of Psalms and Chapter 3. We come here to a royal wedding. So let's listen to the words of Almighty God.

SPEAKER_01: 0:22

On my bed by night I sought him who might follow up. I sought him but found him not. I will find my bowl of city in two in the square. I will seek him who might go out. I sought him but find him not. The watchman find him as they went about in the seat and who might follow that. I held him and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother's house and into the chamber of her conceived. I adore you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the doors of the field, let you not start or waking love until it pleases.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11

What is that coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the fragrant powders of a merchant? Behold, it is the litter of Solomon. Around it are sixty mighty men, some of the mighty men of Israel, all of them wearing swords and experts of war, each with his sword at his side, against terror by night. King Solomon made himself a carriage from the wood of Lebanon. He made its posts of silver, its back of gold, its seat of purple. Its interior was inlaid with love for the daughters of Jerusalem. Go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon, with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, on the day of the gladness of his heart.

SPEAKER_00: 2:11

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 shore 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. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle that graze among the lilies. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, I will go away to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense. You are altogether beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, come with me from Lebanon, depart from the peak of Amana, from the peak of Senea and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards. You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride. You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice? Your lips drip nectar, my bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choicest fruits, henna with nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all choice spices, a garden fountain, a well of living water and flowing streams from Lebanon.

SPEAKER_01: 4:16

Awake, O North Wind, and come, O sife wind. Blow my garden, let its spices flow. Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its treatest fruit.

SPEAKER_00: 4:28

I came to my garden and my sister, my bride. I gathered my myrrh with my spice. I ate my honeycomb with my honey. I drank my wine with my milk. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So we're in the Song of Songs, where the Spirit of God has given us lyrics about an idealized pair of lovers, a woman and her shepherd, to instruct us about desire. Yes, the desire that leads to marriage between a man and a woman, but much, much more to the desire which Christ has for us, for you, and the desire with which we are to love him. And if amid all of the details and the strangeness of the Song of Songs, we register just one thing and we take just one thing away, would it be that? That the Lord Jesus Christ loves his people and he would have us love him. In the story of the song, we now come to the wedding. I have married quite a few people. I get to see what's going on when I marry a couple. I see faces in the congregation. I see people who are reveling in the joy of the occasion. I also see faces that are very evidently not. Weddings can be strangely bittersweet. Our passage today climaxes in a wedding. Actually, it leads us to your wedding and mine. And it is a wedding which is pure and unadulterated and everlasting joy. Chapter three. It begins with a dream where the bride seeks for the love of her soul. Chapter 3, verse 1. On my bed by night I sought him. So she's singing here about seeking and longing. But it's all happening on my bed by night. So, in other words, this part of the song, it's a poem about a dream. And I think that explains some of its strangeness, some of the sudden shifts and changes. One minute she's not got it, and then all of a sudden she has it. It's like a dream. Strange things happen in dreams, don't they? And what is sung to us here, it's intense longing. She sings about the one whom my soul loves. Her soul goes out to this man. It's given to this man, but it's a painful lyric. It's minor tune, because she doesn't have him. I sought him, but I found him not. So there is a longing of the soul here with which we can all identify: a longing for a person, uh, the love of a person, the one whom I love, and I don't have him. I don't have her. So we all have longings, different sorts, we all have desires which have not been fulfilled. Our souls, our hearts go out after things, go out after people, and don't always take hold of them. How do we deal with those longings Christianly? Especially those longings for personal relationships. We are built for relationships, we are built for union because we are built for relationship with Christ. So our desire for union with another person, it is not a wrong one. It can obviously become idolatrous, it become overmuch desire or pursued in a sinful way. But in itself, God has made us hardwired for this union, and we're going to come back to that. But in the Psalm, do you notice chapter three? Our bride goes searching, she goes seeking. Now remember, this is in a dream. So we're to imagine this. It's not a historical account. But it's a serious search, isn't it? It is intense, it's fervent. Have you ever lost anything precious? So I lost my wedding ring on my honeymoon. This is wedding ring number two. There was a very, very intense search, but then imagine losing a person who you love. So, verse three, verse two, the bride goes down into the city, and it is night time, and this is not a place where a woman should be. It's an ancient city in the ancient world, it is not a good or a safe place, but she loves this man, she's utterly devoted to him, so she scours the city, and then just suddenly out of the blue, first of all, I found him. I found him whom my soul loves, and she will not let him go. You can feel the grip of her embrace. I held him, and then she brings him in her dream or in her imagination, she brings him into her mother's house. You know, it's the place of conception, it's closer union that she desires. So that desire that we experience for union, especially with another person. Well, I dare say for some that might be a very acute thing for some of us. We long for relationships and our minds, our imaginations sometimes get consumed with that. And when we feel that kind of depth of longing, well, we are actually very close to what we were built for. I mean, it's a perilous moment, isn't it? You can go in all kinds of terrible directions. But actually, it's very close to what we were built for. Because that longing, whatever our state of life, that longing, it will be satisfied only when we find and hold on to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our hearts are restless until we find rest in Christ. That is how we have been built. Now, tomorrow we're going to think about another problem, a painful problem, sort of connected to this. What about when someone who knows and loves Christ yet feels terribly distant from him? Now that's a reality all Christians face and have to deal with Christianly. We get to that in chapter five, but we will park that for now. Here, though, the bride encourages us, the bride, remember, who is like the church, you know, the church who is the bride of Christ. She says to us, seek him. You know, seek him, scour the city for him, seek Christ. Maybe our human longings are basically satisfied. Well, great, but seek Christ. Maybe our longings are deeply frustrated. Well, seek Christ. Maybe we want to marry and know this kind of human union, and that's a godly desire. Well, most of all, seek Christ. We seek him in his worship. We seek him in his word. We seek him when we come to his table in communion. We seek him in conversation with Christian friends. We seek him in prayer. We seek him when we're in our bedrooms alone. Seek Christ. Because he will always be found. Or rather, he will always find us. Come to the next part of the song. And that's really the theme here, where the king carries his bride to himself. In chapter 3, verses 6 to 11. And verse 6, it asks a question. You know, what is that? Now, a tiny bit of grammar that helps unlock this passage. In the original Hebrew, this is a feminine singular question with a feminine singular answer. So much better than what is that? The question really is, who is she? It is a she that we are talking about here in these verses. And who is the she? It's the woman. It is the bride. And she is coming up from the wilderness. So the wilderness, it is a place of desolation and death. In the Bible, when when people come up, it's quite a loaded phrase, they are typically coming up to the city of God. And we're told here that this bride, she is coming up with smoke and with myrrh and with frankincense. Now I've seen a few brides coming down the aisle. Never seen this one. Quite like to. But what we see here, actually, we can't see this with our eyes. The bride here is coming up with a particular kind of beauty. And it is the beauty of holiness. With our Bibles open, we understand that she comes with smoke. And we think of how Mount Sinai and the temple were smoked with the presence of God. She comes with frankincense, which was offered to God in the holy place, burned and ascended into the presence of God. She comes with myrrh, which was used to make anointing oil, with which the priests and the temple were anointed. So it is very significant that this bride should come up smelling as she does, smelling of smoke and myrrh and frankincense. She has been made holy. The bride has been sanctified, she has been consecrated. She has been made to belong to the Lord. Now, do you believe that of yourself? Do you believe that of the Church of Jesus Christ? That we have been sanctified, consecrated, set apart. Something has been done to us such that we can come up to the Lord, that we can have communion with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Have fellowship with him because he has made us, has made you holy. Wonderful thought, isn't it? The bride as she comes, she comes surrounded by mighty men. They are bearing swords. She knows the protection of her Lord. The carriage in which she travels, it is richly furnished. It's inlaid with love. Beautiful phrase, that isn't it? She is the object of her lord's devotion and care. And she is being carried. That is the point of a litter. We don't use litters anymore. Imagine a couch on poles, carried by very strong men. And it's implied, I think, that she is being carried by or on behalf of her Lord. He is carrying her up from the wilderness, now holy, and she is being brought to her wedding. Now, all of this, remember, it's being conveyed to us in a song, which in the first instance is about a Hebrew bride and her shepherd lover. And that's, I think, helpful to bear in mind when we come to verse 11. So go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon, with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, the day of the gladness of his heart. And I think that is saying, go now and look at this man, this bridegroom. He's a shepherd, but he's like King Solomon. He is crowned, he is glad in the presence of his bride. So that Hebrew bride who used to work in the fields under the scorching sun, and her shepherd bridegroom, they are actually like a king and a queen on their wedding day. And for the groom, well, it's the gladness for the king. And in chapter four, we're getting very close to the heart of the song as desire reaches its goal. But in chapter four, the man praises his bride. She is unique among women to him. Previously, he praised the beauty of her face. Remember? But now he sort of continues down her body. He doesn't need to stop their marriages to be consummated. And here is a right prelude to their union. He praises her. Verse 7, he says that she is altogether beautiful. There is no flaw in you. Now, hasn't the world around us distorted beauty so awfully? You know, things like pornography or plastic surgery or AI adjusted images. Well, husbands, we are to praise the beauty of our wives. You are to praise the beauty of your wife. But the way he sings of her beauty and praises her, it's quite strange, isn't it? And I think it would have been strange even to them back then. So it's not just that images were taken from 900 BC and a pastoral situation, and it would have all made perfect sense. There is more going on. For example, your hair and your teeth, they remind me of teeming flocks of goats and sheep. You remind me of a farm with unbelievable fertility. Try that one. As I hear your words and as I kiss your mouth, it's sweet like milk and honey. And then all of a sudden, the Bible reader, your ears might go bing at that point. You are like the promised land to me. That land that flows with milk and honey. You've got lips like a scarlet thread. There is one place, one other place in scripture where we read of a scarlet thread. And it's in the story of Rahab. She guides God's people into the promised land. He says of his bride, Your neck. It reminds me of a tower of shields. That is, you have a strength about you which is like the tower of David. You're like the city of God to me. That's what that is saying. Well, come down to verse 12. You are to me a garden. You are a garden with a spring. A garden where there is water running through you. All good and beautiful fruits and spices are in you. You're like Eden. It's Eden, isn't it? So do you see? In the song, the man is praising his bride. He's captivated by her. But he's talking about the promised land and the city of God and Eden. And we're really listening here to Jesus praising his people. He's talking to his bride. This is what I have made you into. My land, my city, my garden, my place that I love and where I dwell. Now come back down to the human level if you like. Remember, two marriages sort of run in parallel in the voice of the song, the spiritual marriage. Come down now to the human love story. And here we see the couple, they are now clearly married. Chapter 4, verse 8. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride. Here is the first time and the only time in the song he says this, my bride, and he says it six times, my bride. And it's worth noting in the story of the song that it's at this point that this couple unites sexually. For all of the longing that has previously been expressed, it's only at this point that the man resolves, in verse 6, to spend the night with her. Until the sun comes up, until the morning, in other words, I am going to take possession of this promised land. The song presumes a biblical sexual ethic. Remember that repeated refrain, do not stir up or awaken until the right time. And that's the message of the whole Bible, isn't it? And we see that depicted in a very graphic and visual image in verse 12. If I look down at verse 12, a garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed. So when the bridegroom comes to his bride in the story, he comes to a garden, but it's a garden that is locked. Its fruits have not been available. She is a spring of water that is locked. She's a flowing fountain that is sealed. And those are pictures of purity. She hasn't given herself to another man, and that's the way the Lord wants us to be: to be pure in our devotion to Him, to be pure as we approach marriage. Now, the thought of no sex before marriage, it's laughed at by the world, isn't it? But saving yourself for marriage, it's an act of worship, it's an act of obedience, and it saves us from a whole world of pain. If a Christian knows that they are sinning here, we must immediately repent. If we are guilt-ridden because of past sin, well, remember how the Lord Jesus loves a burned face. He makes us lovely despite our sins. And so we come to the heart of the book in a very clear way, but also a veiled way. We come to hear these two voices, three voices actually, singing of joy and delight. So enjoying the fruits of the garden. This section that runs from 4 verse 16 to chapter 5, verse 1, it is literally the centre of the book. Before it, there are 111 lines of Hebrew poetry. After it, there are 111 lines. It's very, very carefully constructed, this song. Someone didn't sit down in an afternoon and thoughtlessly dash it off. The man has resolved to come now to his bride, to his garden, and to possess her. And it is utterly mutual. Chapter 4, verse 16. She calls on the wind to blow and to awake. So before it was, do not awake, do not arouse. It's the same word. Now is the right time. My garden is available. Come and eat, she says. And the beloved comes to his garden, which is her. And it is very, it is veiled, it is modest, but it's also clear. Two become one flesh. Ian Dugod sums it up like this. What is being celebrated here is sexual purity leading to a delightfully fruitful union. But it's not just the couple who are celebrating. You see, even as they go to bed, they are not on their own. Chapter 5, the end of verse 1. Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with life. And presumably, this is the daughters of Jerusalem, that chorus looking on and giving a commentary and an encouragement. Actually, they're giving a kind of blessing. It's like a corporate benediction. We approve of this. Go on, friends, eat and drink. And that reminds us that sex and marriage are never merely individual appetites and pleasures. We're to see not just the blessing of God, but also the blessing of the Christian community. It's another reason for a public marriage ceremony. One of the chief things that happens when a couple are married is for a church and congregation to publicly approve and to bless their sexual union. And notice here, right at the very, very heart of the book, as two become one flesh, did you see what marriage is like? It is a total giving away of oneself. And we can see that in chapter 5, verse 1. Eight times in that verse, the man says, my. That's one reason why in the level of the human marriage, we marry with care. Who will you give yourself away to? To a young woman, would you you must give yourself to someone you would love enough to respect and submit to as you give yourself to him? To a young man, you give yourself in love to someone you would be willing to sacrifice yourself for as you give yourself to her. That's why we must be, those of us who are married, must be so careful with the one you have married. Because in a sense, we have them. So we must treasure them, care for them. But as we read that verse, we also hear the voice of Christ, do we not? He says things like this I came to what is mine. You know, I know my own, my own know me. John 10. My people, my flock. They are mine. I possess you. And wondrously, wondrously, you possess Christ, I possess Christ. So marriage is a holy thing. Human marriage, it is a holy thing. We should care deeply for marriages, whether we are married or not. But marriage is not heaven. There is a union, there is a marriage union in which all joy and gladness will be found. All of those longings and all of those frustrations that we experience, they are fulfilled and they are satisfied only in the Saviour Jesus. But as we study the shape and the feel of human marriage, as we rightly care for our marriages, we do please God who cares about it. And we learn something of that greater marriage. The Puritan preacher, John Owen, he taught much from the Song of Songs. And he uses a very powerful phrase. He talks about, and I put this down on the handout on the next page, he talks about that conjugal affection in this communion between Christ and believers. And then he unpacks that over many hundreds of pages in different ways. Conjugal affection. Sounds a bit of an unwieldy phrase, doesn't it? Marital affection, loving, desiring affection between Christ and believers. Take seriously what Paul says in Ephesians 5, but I'm talking about Christ and the church. So consider what that means. The Lord Jesus Christ, He delights in us, and we delight in Him. He values His saints, and we learn what it is to value Him above all other things and other persons. He showers on us His kindness and His pity and His compassion, and we respond with a pure love of Him. He comes to us with bounteous and generous gifts, and we respond with holy obedience. Now, how do we experience that? When do we experience that? Well, we taste it first when we first come to Christ. And that will look like and feel like different things for different people. There will be times and seasons in our pilgrimage with Jesus when we particularly experience the sweetness of communion with Him. And we are waiting. Now we are still waiting for the, well, you could say the consummation, the last great day. Our eternity, which the Bible would say will be like a never-ending wedding feast. Perfect union. It's coming. All joy in the presence of our Saviour when we see him face to face. It's the last two chapters of the Bible. A wedding and a wedding feast and a union like no other. Now, along the way, we all experience, don't we, so many sadnesses, distractions, we feel distracted, frustrations, longings, sins, graces. All of those things they find their right place when we look at the wedding day to come and as we consider our bridegroom's love for us. Let's finish with just a little more, John Owen. Let me read that quote down on the handout. Delight is the flowing of love and joy. Now, Christ delights exceedingly in his saints. The delight of the bridegroom in the day of his espousals, his marriage, is the height of what an expression of delight can be carried unto. This is in Christ answerable to the relation he takes us into. Now just check out these next sentences. His heart is glad in us without sorrow, and every day whilst we live is his wedding day. The thoughts of communion with the saints were the joy of his heart from eternity. God be praised.