Immanuel Church Brentwood
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Immanuel Church Brentwood
Song Of Songs Part 4 - True Love… Through The Years
Andrew Grey concludes the series on the book of Song of Songs. The Bible passage is Song of Songs 6v13 - 8v14.
This set of talks was given at Immanuel Church Brentwood’s weekend away at Ashburnham on 19th, 20th and 21st Sept 2025.
We'll be reading from chapter six, verse thirteen, and down to the end of the book. We'll be listening to an account of true love through the years. So let's listen to the words of God.
SPEAKER_01:Return and turn, O Shulamites, return and turn that we may look upon you.
SPEAKER_00:Why should you look upon the Shulamite as upon a dance before two armies? How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O noble daughter! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat encircled with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. 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, which looks towards Damascus. Your head crowns you like caramel, and your flowing locks are like purple. A king is held captive in the tresses. How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights. Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. May your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine.
SPEAKER_02:It goes on smoothly for my beloved, gliding for the lips and teeth. I am my beloved, and his desire is for me. Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages. Let us go out early into the village and see whether the vines have flooded, whether the great blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. The mandates give forth fragrance, and beside our adornment fruits, you as well as which I have laid out for you and my land. Oh that you are like a brother to me, who nursed at my mother's breast. If I find you outside, I would kiss you, and mother would despise me. I will lead you and bring you into the house of my mother, she who used to teach me. I would give you spiced wine to drink, the juice of my pomegranate. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me. There should be all as a seal of your heart, as a seal of your heart. Jealousy is fierce.
SPEAKER_01:What should we do for this?
SPEAKER_02:Someone keepers, each one must bring 23 a thousand pieces of silver. My brother is before me. You also have two hundred.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you who dwell in the gardens with companions listening for your voice, let me hear it.
SPEAKER_02:Make haste, my beloved, and be like a desert, or you are sad on the mountains of spices.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thanks be to God for his word to us today. So, Heavenly Father, we pray again that you would open up our eyes that we might behold wondrous things in your law for Jesus' name's sake. Amen. What does the passage of time do to our relationships? We're all getting older one day at a time. But what difference does the passing of time make to a marriage if we are married? There are different seasons within a marriage, but also things that do not change. How about our walk with the Lord? What changes, what does not change over the years? These last couple of chapters in the song, they bring to us both the passage of time and also that which is timeless and unchanging. And we begin with what I've called delight, new as well as old. The flow of this bit of a song goes like this. The man praises his wife, how beautiful you are. The wife summons him, come. And in chapter 7, verse 13, she promises the enjoyment of fruits, and she says these are new fruits and old fruits. That phrase, new and old, new delights, old delights. It suggests the passage of time, doesn't it? The love story, which uh the song contains, it does have different seasons within it. So this shepherd and his bride, we have seen them unmarried, we have seen them married, we've seen them negotiating a break in fellowship and then it's restoration. And now we listen once more as they exchange words of praise and invitation. It's plain that they intend to keep their relationship alight. It's actually one of the challenges for all married to different seasons of life, is to keep the home fires burning, to continue to delight in one another. At the end of chapter 6, that the man addresses his wife as the shulamite. It means complete. It means the perfect one. It comes from that Hebrew word shalom. And he looks upon her and he praises her, his perfect one, his complete one. This is now his third such song of praise that we've heard in the song. One might conclude, uh praising one's wife is not a one-time activity. And he praises her from feet to head, and all points in between. And do you notice his song is full of comparisons? Only verse six, chapter seven, verse six, has no comparisons in it. It says, you know, how beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights. And all of the verses around us explain those delights just with comparison after comparison, you know, metaphors and similes, you know, jewels, uh, bowls of wine, wheat, lilies, a pair of deer, pools, towers, a mountain. So the man takes images from God's creation, things that God has made wonderfully. And he also takes things that we have made. You know, we are sub-creators under God, you know, things that have been made by master craftsmen. And he pulls all of these things together to describe the beauty of the bride, and also by implication, to honour the God who formed her. You know, she is a masterpiece of God's handiwork. This description here, of all of the descriptions, the praises in the song, uh, is very physical, it is bodily, it's fleshy. It reminds us that the body, like every part of God's creation, is a praiseworthy object. The Christian faith, it is not anti-body. And if you wanted to try and capture this song of her beauty in just two words, if you were to try and take all of these different images that kind of get pulled together, they convey to us both straight lines and curves. Now let me explain what I mean by that. That sounds a bit uh random. These images, they roughly fall into two groups: things that are straight and things that are curved. So straight lines, now it sounds a little bit comic to us, doesn't it? Your nose is like a tower. Again, try that line out. I think the point is this. He is praising her strength. Your nature, your being, your character. You are like a strong tower. You are like Mount Carmel. There actually is a power to this woman which evokes his praise. But not just straight lines, but also curves. Many of those images, those metaphors and similes, they portray to us roundedness, if I can put it like that. And you put them together and it portrays a picture of desirability and of fertility. You know, built to be fruitful and multiply. I mean, just a tiny side note here about female beauty. Uh, Ian Dugod, uh commentator, he reflects on this woman, her shape, you know, her roundedness, and he comments like this. Um, as in many other cultures, ancient tastes preferred women always to look slightly pregnant rather than in danger of imminent starvation. And that's that's it's just that's an interesting comment to make, isn't it? Yeah, when we think of what is beautiful, particularly perhaps when we think of what is beautiful in a woman, what where do we get those ideas from? Anyway, she is delightful to him. He intends to lay hold of her. Chapter 7, verse 8. In the same way that she, back in chapter 3, seized him. Uh the woman is so eager that she finishes his sentence. You know, he says, You're like wine, and yes, my wine is for you. It goes down smoothly. I am my beloved, I belong to him, I am possessed by him. You know, I'm giving you not only my body, but I'm giving you myself. It's the giving away of the covenant. And he desires me. And the woman issues an invitation, she says, Come. Let's go on a vineyard tour together. It's a vivid picture of their union. I'll give you my love, I'll give you fruit, and yes, I'll give you old fruits, new fruits. Let's enjoy them together. In the start of chapter eight, she dreams of a situation where she could be publicly affectionate, publicly demonstrative with him. Sounds a bit strange to us, doesn't it? This comes originally from a different culture where family members could show public affection, but non-family members, maybe even a husband and wife, could not. And she imagines bringing him to what she calls the house of my mother, you know, the place where she was conceived, you know, a fitting place for their union and the fruitfulness that flows from it. And then for the third time, chapter 8, verse 4, she gives her wise caution about the power of this love. You know, do not pursue or arouse this love until the right time. So delights, new as well as old, within this within this human marriage. But when we step back, and as we've done all the way through the psalm, when we step back and we attend really carefully to the text of Scripture, we find that there is another marriage in view here. Before we get there, though, it's always God's intention to redeem this marriage, to redeem the human marriage from sin and mess and all that messes up and damages our human relationships. Did you notice that in the song here? We meet a woman who gives fruit to her husband. Ring any bells? We read about desire, and we know of another garden where desire was warped. And again, that word for desire, chapter 7, verse 10. We only ever read that word elsewhere in Genesis 3 and 4, where desire gets twisted by sin, and it becomes about control and domination. But it's always the plan of God to redeem marriage and to redeem through a marriage. Of course, a human marriage will always be tainted by sin. It is not an easy thing to deal with sin in a marriage, to learn to forgive, to continue to move toward one another in love and grace. But here is the encouragement of the song: in the hands of the Holy Spirit, a marriage can experience a kind of mini restoration of Eden, where permitted fruit is given, and where there is a true and a godly desire, which helps us to better feel and understand the desire of Christ. And as we draw near to the end of the song, uh one more time we hear the same question which has been asked before. So this is the third time, chapter 8, verse 5. Who is that, or better, who is she? It's exactly the same question in the Hebrew. Who is she? Who is she? Who is she? And each time it's the same answer. It is her, uh, it is the bride. And what we see in these last lines of the song, uh, it is a gorgeous picture of what you have when you lean upon your beloved. So, chapter 8, verse 5, there she is. She's coming up from the wilderness. Remember, from that place of uh desolation and death, and she is leaning on her beloved, she's resting on him, he supports and he carries and encourages her. And that verse alone, even just that verse alone, doesn't it speak volumes about Christ's vision for marriages and also about our walk with Christ, our leaning upon him. And then the bride, she sings to us of love's power and purity and peace. She sings to her bridegroom, set me as a seal upon me, upon you. Set me as a seal upon your heart, on your arm. So she's saying, I want to be engraved on you. I want to be stamped upon you. I want to be constantly by you and with you, you know, just quite literally in your flesh. This power of love, that desire for unbreakable union, it is strong, isn't it? It is powerful. It's joined up with jealousy. Love and jealousy, they march hand in hand together. They actually must. Jealousy is an attribute of God, remember. It goes along with his holy love. Um, I am yours, you are mine, no other loves are admitted to this relationship. And that is how the Lord Jesus loves us. Uh deep and a jealous and unquenchable love that took him to the cross and which brings us to his sides, such that we lean upon our beloved. Remember how the Apostle John leaned on the chest of Christ? Or do you remember how Jesus reached out to touch lepers? Or remember how the Lord Jesus embraced little children? Remember how we're told that on the last day he will wipe away every tear from every eye. It's the loving embrace of Christ. We have Him, He has us, we are bound to Him. The Apostle Paul can say, 1 Corinthians 6, 17, he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Such is our bond with the Lord Jesus. There is an analogy between the one flesh union of husband and wife and the Christian's union with the Lord. And it is it's powerful, it is fiery and loyal. And when we sense this in our human relationships, when we taste intense love or intense jealousy, we're actually tasting the flame of the Lord. So this is a yearning that's answered in our union with Christ. So the song says really explicitly, yes, there is a connection between these two marriages, a human marriage, and in that we taste something of this deep love of the Lord for his people. The precious gift of the Saviour whose love cannot be extinguished. That's what she sings of here, isn't it? You know, waters, they cannot drown the fire of Jesus' love. Verse 7. So think what those floods might be. You know, floods of floods of righteous judgments. Well, they cannot separate the Christian from Christ. We are so secure in the arms of the Savior. Sin and death, they cannot end Christ's love for his bride. And you can't buy it. This powerful, this precious gift of the Savior, you can't buy it, you can't earn it, we don't deserve it. It's given, and therefore you cannot lose it. He chooses to love us like this. So we live by, we breathe by the free grace and love of our Saviour. Power. But also uh purity. We're given this graphic picture of purity. Verse 8, it's a little mini-biography of someone else. Uh we meet a little sister. Do you see that? She is not yet ready for love and marriage, so she must be well protected and enclosed. These are actually images of virginity. She's a well-defended wall. She is a well-constructed and closed door. The message here is simple. Wait. You wait for your bridegroom. One of the best ways our young people prepare for their wedding days by staying pure. It's wise and holy to do so, to close up our bodies, to close up our minds from any hint of that which is sexual. Don't let impurity come in. If we're stumbling or falling in this regard, well, the call is to repent, to receive the bridegroom's mercy, and with his help rebuild that wall, maybe with the help of others too. And the bride reflects on her own experience. Verse 10, I was a wall. She was a wall, she was a tower, she was well defended, she was pure when she came to her marriage. But now, verse 10, she's like a strongly defended city which has joyfully surrendered. Then I was in his eyes as one who finds peace. So peace or wholeness in the Hebrew language, it's that word shalom. She is the Shulomite, the whole, the perfect, or the peaceful one. And she has found in this union, or maybe she brings to this union, peace or wholeness. And it is in ironic contrast with Solomon, Shlomo, whose name was meant to mean peace. He actually knew ultimately little of the Lord's jealous love. He knew little of its power and its purity and its peace. And in verse 11, we have a little story, a salutary story, told for us. Solomon had a vineyard. Okay, and we're thinking vineyards. Okay, we know what vineyards mean in the song. It's the body of the woman. Solomon's vineyard, you look at it on the map, where is it? It's at a place called the Lord of Multitudes. That's what Baal Haimon means. The Lord of Multitudes, loaded name. He does not care for that vineyard. He lets it out to keepers. He had a harem, in fact. The rent is a thousand silver pieces. Should that remind us of the 700 wives and 300 concubines of 1 King's 11 and he do the mass? You know, to him he treated women like a commercial farming enterprise. And they were foreign wives who led him from immorality to idolatry. Whereas, says the woman, my vineyards, my very own, is before me. It's mine. You can keep your harem, Solomon. You can have the thousand. In the realm of relationships, to multiply wives, to go down the road of immorality, it forfeits peace, it forfeits wholeness, which is found only in the biblical marriage covenant. So just like all through the song, we find that the covenant of marriage, it's a bit like a quieter, smaller, and temporary echo of the song's loud celebration of Christ's covenant of grace. And we hear the same notes struck in each marriage. There is power and there is purity and there is peace. There is this mutual self-giving and there is total fidelity. But at the end of all things, it is to the spiritual marriage that our hearts are lifted up. So power. It's with Christ alone that I am loved with an everlasting love. Purity. I will give myself purely and wholly to Christ in his service, in his care of his church, just as he gives himself to me. And here is the true peace that we crave in union with Christ. And so we come to what you could consider the epilogue, the last two verses of the song. The man and the woman they speak to each other one last time. The husband's final word is, I want to hear your voice. Speak to me. To which the wife, the bride replies, make haste. Hurry, come to me. And that is the everlasting cry of the church militant, you know, the church here on earth. It's come, Lord Jesus. It's how the Bible ends, it's how the book of Revelation ends. And those last two verses of the song, they remind us that the story has not ended. You know, the love story has not ended. We have fellowship with the Lord Jesus, but we are not in glory. We have communion with Christ, but we long to know him better and more closely. We do know his love, but we want to feel that never-ending embrace. And our experience of it now goes up and down. So there is still face-to-face fellowship to come when faith will give way to sight. So the song says, Make haste, Lord Jesus. And the church says, Come, Lord. I wonder what the Lord has been speaking to you about in the Song of Songs these last couple of days. Maybe it's spoken to us at both of those different levels, the level of a human marriage, the level of this divine marriage. Maybe it's been seeking him and speaking to him. Maybe there have been sins or coldness that have been highlighted. Maybe there have been joys that you want to rejoice in. Maybe there have been ways that this book has got under our skin. We hadn't felt that this rather marvellous and unique corner of scripture has not sort of got under our skin and pricked us in different ways. Maybe there are things here to ask help with, to talk about, to pray about. But where the Lord wants to lead us, the chasm that we will all experience between the ardour of the song and the reality that we experience, well, the Lord wants to close that gap. Just a bit. We won't close it perfectly until we see the Son face to face. But He wants us to grow in loving and being loved.