Restoring God’s Marriage: The Song of Solomon and Intimacy as God Intended

Introduction

So did I tell you about elephants in rooms? We all went and had Mexican food or Italian food or maybe a nice hamburger. Who’s ready to talk about intimacy?

I told the people back in Centerville when I taught this lesson over a year ago that preachers need to preach sermons like this for two reasons. Number one, because we need to connect people with the Bible in the meaningful ways and the meaningful parts of their life. And quite frankly, the relationship between the husband and the wife is a very meaningful part of life. But number two, and maybe this is more important, nothing draws a crowd quite like a guy who’s going to walk a tightrope. And I am equally aware of both of these truths. And let me say, if we don’t begin to think more deeply about the kinds of connections we have with our spouse, the devil is going to continue to run up the scoreboard on us.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the problems we have with misplaced intimacy in our culture. And if you don’t, just go back and listen to the lesson from this morning. And if you haven’t noticed these things, then it’s very likely that you just haven’t been paying attention. Can I just say at this point in the lesson, this right here and right now, this part of our marriage belongs no less to God than any other thing he created? He intended intimacy in marriage for very specific purposes. And like all of his creation, you’d ought to honor those purposes. And so I’m aware that some of you may be a little apprehensive about the topic, hello, elephant. And maybe you wondered if it was appropriate for your children, baby elephants in the room.

To that, let me say what I’m going to say. This afternoon is going to be far less uncomfortable than if you were to sit in the room with them when your average Victoria’s Secret commercial comes on the television. Or were you to look over their shoulder while they’re on YouTube waiting innocently for their next Minecraft or Xbox tutorial video to stream, and the commercials come on for various online entertainment that you can go look at, YouTube web series, Netflix, things like that. While they’re waiting for that video to download.

Particularly as part of a series where the focus of the series is returning to God those things that really belong to him. But I want you to be not to be unaware that I am not tone deaf regarding this. And your little babies will still be innocent. Let me leave here for a second.

And more than that, I’m thankful that you brought them to a lesson where you knew that these things were going to be considered. Knowing full well that these are likely to lead to discussions in the privacy of your own home. And can I say this to you? Have that discussion. Have it with them. Let them ask their questions. However young or old they may be, let them ask their questions. You might be surprised at some of the morals that they’ve already learned, some of the stands that they’ve already taken against immorality, even at some very young ages. And it may surprise you, but it may veer into some uncomfortable questions or maybe even some confessions about things. Have those talks. And here’s why. Because if you don’t, you can rest assured that someone else is.

And that thought ought to spur us to action. Every program, every pop song, every movie, every advertisement, every video game, every young adult novel, comic book, blog, YouTube star, magazine, website, teacher, and friend is an opportunity for the devil to whisper into the ears of our children about these things. And you put them all together, and they’re no longer a whisper, they’re a megaphone. And he’ll tell them that there is no right and wrong, no normal, no sin, and no consequence. Our enemy has perfected the art of turning intimacy into something that you from God honoring, into something that is tawdry and secretive and dishonoring to both our God and ourselves. The sexual aspect of the marriage has become a stumbling block for men and women.

I want to share some statistics with you.

I do want to share. We’re going to go to Genesis 2 in just a second. Why are we talking about this? Well, we’re talking about this because six hours. Six hours. Anybody want to hazard a guess as to what six hours is? Well, five years ago, if memory serves, that’s the average amount of screen time that a child in America receives every day. That’s computer, that’s iPhone, that’s iPad, that’s television. Six hours we’re talking about this. 4,000 advertisements a day. Not a week. 4,000 advertisements. Anyone else do like me when you walk through them all and you see your son beginning to, because he’s a male and he’s only four and doesn’t understand there’s anything wrong with that. His head begins to turn to the Victoria’s Secret.

You do this. I perfected that move. It’s like, look at the Legos. We call it the look at the Legos. Look at the Legos. 4,000 advertisements. 9 to 11 years of age is the average age for the first exposure to pornography. You know what that means? They’re learning about it from those YouTube videos and from those friends that come over for sleepovers. And that means that somebody else taught them. Nine to eleven years of age. 12 to 17 years of age is the largest group of consumers for pornography by any age demographic. Does anybody else see a problem with that? I mean, besides the fact that it’s pornography. Nobody in that age demographic is old enough to buy it. Even by society’s standards. Last I checked, it was 18.

By the way, if you go searching for statistics like these, clear your web browser history when you get done, or you’re going to get a lot of weird commercials that you really don’t want. But this is the largest consuming group of pornography. I think this one takes from a key research call of memory search. I know this one gave high school, high school students. Active versus inactive. We’re going to leave this as a euphemism for right now. You adults know what I’m talking about. This is a survey of all high school students. Ready for it? 48% active, 52% inactive. Hey, that sounds like a win. We’re below 50%, right? Doesn’t sound good to me, but you know what happens when you subtract freshmen and sophomores out of that.

I don’t know why that looks the way it is. 39. The inactive group goes down to 39%.

1. Every Conversation Has to Go Back to God's Word

Then the Lord God took man and he put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it, keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat freely. But from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die. Then the Lord God said, It is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. And out of the ground the Lord formed every beast of the field and every bird in the sky and brought them to the man to see what he could call them. And whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name.

And the man gave the name to all the cattle and all the birds of the sky and every beast of the field, but for Adam. There was no helper found suitable for him. So the Lord God caused deep sleep to fall upon man. And he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into woman the rib which he had taken from man, and he brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. And for this reason, Genesis 2 and 24, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked. They were not ashamed. Do you see the shame attached to this? Do you see the shame? The fact that our children came to exit high school without the peer pressure to where a vast minority are the ones who are still inactive in this part of their life. Is that a problem for us?

Not so that we can be shocked and outraged, but so that we can identify the problem. Everyone open to the book of the Song of Solomon. You don’t know where that is, find Ecclesiastes and just turn one more page. Fair warning, these pages are not always used a lot. They may often feel like a new Bible. Might even have to break the seams along the edges where the printer’s gilding has caused them to stick together. Once you’re there, I want you to put your bookmark there, and I want you to turn back to the 119th Psalm. Because before we get into the song of Solomon and the tight rope walk begins, I want to talk about the duties that we have, or the duty rather that we have, to go in back to God’s word to understand his ways about how to conduct our life.

The 119th Psalm beginning in verse 9 says, How shall a young man keep his way pure? This is where our song, how shall the young secure their own comes from? Oh, John, that would have been a great one to lead. I should have thought of that. How shall the young man keep his way pure? My keeping it according to your word, with all my heart I have sought you. Do not let me wander from your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips I have told of all the ordinances of your mouth, and I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies, as much as in all the riches, and I will meditate on your precepts and regard your ways, and I shall delight in your statutes.

I shall not forget your word.

If we’re going to have the kinds of conversations that we need to have that they desperately need us to have with them, can I tell you that every conversation we have has to go back to God’s word? That’s got to be the foundation for it. That’s got to be the root of it. This is the ideal that we just read when we talk about intimacy. This is the kind of conversation that we should have. It’s about purity, it’s about seeking God, it’s about avoiding sin. It’s about treasuring the things that God says are important. It’s about honoring him with our lips, it’s about rejoicing in the things that he says are good. It’s about letting his ways fill our thoughts rather than the commercials that we see in the world and whatever the message of the latest movie or it happens to be at that moment.

It is about taking joy in the things that God has testified to us as true. It is delighting in his rule so often. So often I hear people express lament over the limitations God places in their life. And it doesn’t have to be about intimacy. I hear people do this all the time about it.

Divorce. If only we could change what the Bible says about divorce, you know how many more people we can save. No, we couldn’t say one more person. God has those rules for a reason. If only we could change the rules about drinking. I know my neighbor, he’s a good man, but he likes his deer. Maybe if we could just, if we could just change the warnings the Bible gives him out drinking, if we didn’t condemn so strongly drunkenness, we could bring him into the fall, but God would all love that. No.

Can we stop talking about God’s rules with lament? I’m going to tell you something. The limitations that God places on intimacy are a good thing. They’re a good thing for God’s people to consider the reason why they’re there. Why? Because these people, and even these people are not equipped to handle the emotional load. They are not equipped to make the kind of commitments that is designed to bring children. Remember from lesson one this morning? What’s the purpose of the family? Part of that is to fill the earth. To bring children into the world to watch over those children, and much less to lead them in a godly way because they themselves are struggling with it. So this is the way we need to talk about it.

We need to start by instilling within our children a desire for what is pure, what is right, and above and what is above reproach in every aspect of their lives, but especially in the days, in this day and age, in the area where the wrong information is so readily available, so undeniably destructive, and that the best way to do that is to start them what is right. Just as we would with any other topic that we were taking from Scripture. So why did God create intimacy? Because it’s not good for a man to be alone. To fill and subdue the earth, to satisfy the need to be part of a covenant, relationship that is wholly satisfying and God honored. So let me ask another question before we move advance to the next slide.

2. The Devil Started Before You Did

What age group? On that screen, you don’ll start with 9 to 11 on the 34th. Where do we start these conversations?

What’s right for your family is going to have to be a decision between your between you as a husband and as a wife. But I do want to give you this warning. No matter when you start it, you can expect that the devil started before you did.

Maybe in some nascent, hardly noticeable way. But he’s there. And it scares me to think about this, and I try to imagine it imagine the image in my head every time I’m not bold enough to say something that needs to be said. The devil is already on his shoulder whispering in his ear. So we have the conversations in the middle of the shopping mall about the ladies not wearing enough clothing in the advertisements. Somebody says, but people will think you’re weird. Let them think they’re weird. I want my son to think I honor God in that area of my life. Let him think I’m weird. I don’t care. I’ll never meet those people, Tony told me about my ellipses. I say I don’t care, and then I go on and tell you what I care about more.

Absolutely. I don’t care what they think. If I never get another opportunity to teach that person, guess what? I taught them something, even if they think I’m a lunatic for doing it. He stopped in the middle of the mall and he pointed out an advertisement to his son, telling him we don’t look at that and moved him on and pointed him out there. Well, why’d he do that? Doesn’t he know that’s just gonna teach his little boy to objectify women? No, the commercial is gonna teach him to objectify women. Well, that’s just gonna teach him to body shame women. No, that commercial body shames women. That’s just going to teach him this or that or the other thing. No, it won’t. What do it teaches him?

Is that daddy doesn’t look at that and he’s trying to impart the lesson to him because daddy looks at mama. I tell you, that is one of the best lessons I ever learned about marriage. My dad kissed my mom every day when he left for work. When he came in the door, I married a woman whose dad kissed her mother every day. When he left for work, when he came in the door, sometimes when they just leave the room. Sometimes it’s disgusting to be at John and Cheryl’s house and you’re just leaving the room.

So why talk about this? Because intimacy is part of God’s design for man’s happiness. It really is. It’s not good for a man to be alone. Ladies, if you’ve ever gone away for a weekend and come home to see the disaster that is your house, I was proud of myself. Lauren took Will down the Southside for their Bible study this week for the kids. I managed to keep the house relatively clean. I’m so proud of myself. I think she said something like, Honey, you tried when I got home.

You ever notice that? He always goes back to the marriage. He rebukes them for their adultery, or he talks about his loving kindness, his faithfulness to them. He addresses them very specifically as a husband would a wife. It’s the same analogy that he uses for Jesus in the church through the Spirit there in chapter 5 of the book of Ephesians. It helps us to understand what God means about covenants. What it means that his people belong to him. Where that goes, what happens when we don’t adhere to that. And thirdly, if we can’t talk about it within the confines of what God approves, I’ve said this already, and I think it bears repeating. Satan will surely provide access to those things that he does not agree with.

3. Do Not Awaken Love Before It's Time

Let’s read together, will you? From the book of the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon’s chapter 8. We’ll get to Hebrews 13, he was the same. Beginning in verse 1. And I’m going to pause to give you some editorial comments on this strange type of poetry. We’re not very familiar with to help you understand some of the sayings. No need for snickering. Oh, that you were like.

No one would despise me either. Our love, parenthetical statement here on the preacher’s part, is not to be despised. But it’s something God honoring, it’s something natural. The people see this, they approve of it. They’re doing it in the way God respects. Verse 2, I would lead you and bring you into the house of my mother, who used to instruct me, and I would give you spiced wine to drink from the juice of pomegranates. She said, I would give to you all that I have and show you that my love to you is about serving you, and this is my part and purpose in the thing that I’ve been trained to do since I was young. Incidentally, remember we talked about moms teaching the children, huh?

She’s been taught how to be a good wife. In every aspect of that. In every aspect of wifedom, she has been instructed, or wife hood, not to ask Alyssa what the right word is it, dumb or hood. Dumb? Okay, whacked them. I got it from the English major at the back of the auditorium. We’re good. I would give you spiced wine to drink from the juice of my pomegranates. Let this left hand, let his left hand be under my head and his right hand embrace me. You can figure that one out. I want you to swear, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not arouse or awaken my love until she pleases. Second time, the Shulamite woman has said this in the book. The first one’s over in chapter 2.

Do not awaken or arouse my love until she pleases. This love that she is describing here, she’s being very emphatic about this, although it’s within poetry, so maybe it’s a little lost on us. She’s being very emphatic that the things that she’s doing here are done in a way that God intended. They’re within a marriage that He had that He approves of, and they are only within that marriage. Do not awaken love before it’s time. And can I tell you something? If anybody’s ever told you that the Song of Solomon is about the relationship between Jesus and the church. He loves her. That blows this out. That is blown out of the water by this verse. This is something that there is an inappropriate time and an appropriate time to be engaged in.

And what she is telling her bow is at the appropriate time. And she’s telling all the daughters of Jerusalem. You see this wonderful shepherd boy I’ve fallen in love with. I’m going to show you in a second. It ain’t Solomon she falls in love with here. This shepherd boy I fallen in love with that I chose over Solomon, because I think that’s the right way to read the book. Find you a love like that, but you find you a boy like that waits until it’s the right time. Who is coming, verse 5 from the wilderness? Leaning on her beloved. Beneath the apple tree I awakened you. There, your mother was in labor with you. And there she was in labor and gave you birth. Put me like a seal upon your heart.

And like your sea, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death. Twice in those two verses, she says, we belong to each other. Seal on your heart, a seal on your arm. We belong to each other. You for me. I’m the one that can leads you out. If you’ve been working with the sheep all day, you’re tired, you’re coming out of the wilderness. I’m going to go out to meet you because you’re mine. I’m going to help you back to the house. And you can bank on that. Well, why is she telling him these things? Well, because of what she says later in verse 6. Jealousy is as severe as sheol, and the flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.

Many waters cannot quench love, nor rivers will, nor will rivers overflow it. If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly despised. He says, You don’t have to be right. You don’t have to be the jealous man. I’m those. Waters could not separate me from you. Waters could not quench my desire, my thirst, my love, my longing for you. And not only that, a rich man, here’s the side eye at Solomon. Here’s the shade. Are you ready for it? A rich man could come and try to buy my love, which incidentally that’s what he tried to do earlier in the book, I think, if you read it the right way. Took her to his house, showed all look at all the beautiful women.

You can be part of. These are my wives, these are my concubines. Let me show you my bedroom with the giant timbers that are built just like the temple. Let me show you this wonderful house that I built. She goes, you know what? He could give me everything he has, and he could not buy my love. Her love is not for sale. Then she expresses the trouble that her own brothers gave her with this commitment to this shepherd boy. We have a sister and she has no breast. What shall we do for our sister? On the day when she is spoken for. If she is a wall, we will build her a battlement of silver, but if she is a door, we will barricade her with planks of cedar.

I’ll let you figure that one out. Her brothers are not liking this arrangement. But what is her response? I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers. And then I became in his eyes as one who finds peace. I was made for you. I was made for you. Wants more side eye for Solomon? Here you go. Solomon had a vineyard in Baal Haman. He entrusted the vineyard to caretakers, and each one of us, each one was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit. Solomon had some tenants that were renting vineyards from him, and they were paying him money. But my very own vineyard is at my disposal, verse 12. The thousands of shekels are for you, Solomon, and 200 are for those who take care of its fruit.

O you who sit in the gardens, my companions are listening for your voice. Let me hear it. Hurry, my beloved. Solomon can have my money. I’ll be his itinerant farmer. My vineyard is not for sale. Be like a gazelle or a young staff on the mountains of spice. So what is this book if it’s not an allegory for the church and for Christ? I think passages like two and seven and eight and four do not arouse love before its time really don’t make any sense as an allegory there. As I mentioned in the reading, I think it’s fairly evident that try as he might to praise her for her beauty and lavish her with gifts and impress her with his wealth. Solomon could never strike the right cord with this woman.

So, what is the book about? I would say to you, there are really two options. Number one, the possibility that maybe the best possibility is that it’s an ideal expression of love. I mean, Solomon in 1 Kings chapter 11 says it tells us that he loved many foreign women, along with the daughters of Pharaoh and the Moabite and the Ammonite, the Edomite, the Sidonian, and the Hittite woman. And he goes on to tell us that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And every bit of his idolatry came out of that. All of the problems, we’re going to talk about idolatry tomorrow morning. All the problems that Solomon had with idolatry came out of the women that he chose to marry. Mamas, if you can give your boys one lesson, help them figure out who a good man is.

And you do that by helping them fathers figure out how to be a good man. I told you this was going to be a PG version. The other possibility is that maybe it’s a literal story with three literal people, but if it remains a but it remains a story, I would say, in which Solomon clearly does not end up with a Shulamite woman. Because he cannot be for her. What she says is she’s found in chapter 7. I am my beloved, and his desire is for me. The other possibility, if there’s a third, is that it is perhaps an idealized story, in which she is saying, not even the wealth of Solomon, perhaps Solomon’s not even figuring in there, but not even the wealth of Solomon could dissuade her from the love that she has for the shepherd that her brothers hated.

4. Love Waits Because Love Honors God First

If he were to offer it to her, it would be utterly despised. And she’s telling her love that he has no reason to fear, no reason for jealousy. She belongs only to him. Water cannot quench her desire for him, nor would she trade her love for all the wealth of a rich man. It’s also worth noting, and I think this is one of the reasons why we become so uncomfortable with the book. It’s worth noting that it’s not written from Solomon’s perspective. It’s written from the perspective of the Lord. And to that, let me just echo the sentiment from the earlier lesson. Ladies and girls, we’ve thrown you guys to the wolves and behaved as if the devil does not target you. He’s not interested in you.

He’s not interested in you and stumbling blocks concerning intimacy. In fact, for the better part of 60 years, I’ve grown up in the church, 41, I’ve grown up around the church, I don’t grow up in. Said that last night. But growing up around the church for 41 years of my life, finally becoming a Christian. One of the things that I’ve noticed is I’ve heard very few sermons directed toward women. And intimacy and the struggles that they have there. And I think the logic is you know, it takes two. So what we’ll do is we’ll nip it in the bud, we’ll aim at the boys because they’re the aggressors. There’s the problem. Guess what? The devil saw, hey, I just got to lay out a new playbook.

I gotta lay it out, I gotta lay out a new playbook. Well, there is I’ll put some bestsellers out there on the list that all their friends are reading. I’ll tell them it’ll make their marriage better. And then what it’ll do is it’ll stoke their desire to go another way. Guess what? Fifty Shades of Gray made no one’s marriage better. And if you read it, I don’t want to know it. I hope nobody’s read. Pornography is not a problem for just boys. The numbers are in, women are now almost as likely as men to have extramarital affairs. You know what I say to that? No kidding. There’s always two people involved, right? No kidding. Imagine for the better part of the century we ignored the needs of these of this group of sisters in Christ and acted as if the devil was not targeting them with illicit imagery and pornography.

But rather than initializing the conversation, they often get the double standard and then the double dose. Don’t do it, but we’re not going to help you. Can I tell you something and mean it mean it? It’s okay, girls, to say no. I don’t care what the message is. They are setting you up for the quagmire of sin. Depression over your body if you use it the way they say you should, and depression over your over your marital prospects for love if you don’t. It’s a quagmire. And if your boyfriends are trying to guilt you into shame or into sin by telling you he loves you and that love needs to be expressed in ways that God does not approve of, at times that God does not approve of, with people God does not approve of, he does not love you.

That’s lust. When love is pressuring you to fulfill these desires in ways that God did not ordain, with people that God does not approve of, at times he doesn’t approve of that. It is not love. It never is. The truth is love waits. Because love honors God first. Why do I say that? Because God invented it. And I would encourage you to determine your own worth by choosing to be worthy before your God. Young boys, that would tell you the same because the myth of the male being the only aggressor in the situ in the in the relationship is no longer true. Young ladies are just as apt to be. I say ladies, I guess that’s a euphemism too. Young women are just as likely to be the aggressor as the males.

I’ve seen the data.

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled for fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. I just want you to take a second to soak that in. Tell me, how much wiggle room is there? How much, how much clarity is that lacking in? How much hold your mouth in the right direction and told turn the point over in your head until you find a loophole is there in the statement that God intends for the marriage bed to be honorable? And that means keeping it undefiled. Well, what does it mean to keep the marriage bed undefiled? It means that love waits for marriage. Fornicators and adulterers, God will judge.

Not because I wanted to find one, but because I wanted to be sure about how I’m going to say this. There is no gray room in that verse. And so, young people, if you are being enticed into this direction, I want to say to you very clearly, that person does not love you. They do not have your best interest at heart. They are not going to be your shepherd from the Song of Solomon, young ladies. They are not going to be your Shulamite woman, young boys. They are a stumbling block. They are a hindrance, and they are a mouthpiece for Satan to undermine your spiritual vitality. Because the first lesson in loving someone and an intimacy is if we are going to engage in intimacy, we need to be worthy of loving by being attentive to the emotional and the spiritual needs of your spouse.

5. I Am My Beloved's

Notice I said spouse, not significant other, not boyfriend, not girlfriend. Spouse. Marriage bed undefiled, Hebrews 13. We need to be attentive to the emotional and spiritual needs of our spouses. It’s interesting to me that within the book of the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, the word beloved, one who is loved by me, one who I have given my heart to, one who has my affection, appears 31 times. The book is only eight chapters long. Now, I’m not the greatest at math. But last time I checked, if you take, round that up to 32 and divide that by eight, it shows up roughly four times each chapter. You’ll have to ask a math expert over there to check me on that. Preachers are lousy at math.

That’s why we go into speaking. There’s probably one that’s good somewhere.

The focus of the book is the exchange of love within the Union of Mary. And here’s one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this and build this lesson. Maybe not necessarily bring it to every meeting that I preached, but wanted to talk about it at home. The focus of the book is the exchange of love within the union of bears. Too often people want to take this book and they want to try to parse out different kinds of euphemisms and expressions for different kinds of actions, and it becomes something taught you. And they forget that the people here are on a path toward marriage. And by chapter 8, they’re there. The people there are committed to one another. And before there is this intimacy that’s engaged in, it’s been established in God’s eyes as what it ought to be.

Look at Song of Solomon chapter 7. Verse 10 and following. I am my beloved’s.

And yes, I have favorite quotes in Song of Solomon. I am my beloved, and his desire is for me. Come, my beloved. This just sounds like a honeymoon to me. Come, my beloved. Let us go out into the country. Let us spend the night in the villages. Let us rise early and go to the vineyards. Let us see whether the vine is budded and the blossoms have opened and whether the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love. The Mandarin’s have given forth fragrance, and over our doors are all the choice fruits, both new and old, which I have saved up for you, my beloved. Whatever else you want to say about this passage, I want you to see what she says at the end.

These things belong to you. Ladies, this is you want to talk about all of the empowering that pop stars talk about with the kinds of sexual imagery that they use and the writhing on stage and all of the nonsense that’s brought out there by the Katy Perry’s and the Ariana Grande’s, and whoever wears that moniker today. You want to talk about empowering. This is empowering. I choose who I give my love to. I choose who is my beloved. And the one that I have given myself to, I am his only. He is mine. Solomon does not. You might say that she, that Solomon is her only, but you are not going to say that Solomon was her only. I told you, Solomon does not get the girl in this book.

And I tend to think that maybe rather than three literal people, and I know what I think doesn’t matter, but just to kind of give you some context, this may be Solomon expressing the kind of love that he wished he had waited for. Because at the end of his life, much like Ecclesiastes says, he’s writing, you know, here’s the whole duty of man, fear God and keep his commandments. He’s looking back, and he may be seeing where all of his problems came from. All of the idolatry, all of the immorality, all of the problems that divided the kingdom and set his son Jeroboam up for failure. Rehab up for failure. Started with the wives that he chose. And maybe what he’s saying here is, I wish that this is what I had been waiting for.

But even if it is literal people, can I tell you this is your power? And we need to be telling our young girls this. This is your power. This is where you are powerful. We always talk about husband here, wife here, children here. That’s not how that’s the hierarchy. That’s a structural thing that God put in there. But this is your power to reserve yourself only for the one that you have committed yourself to before God. And then once you’ve made that commitment, give him your all and he to you. It’s not just powerful, it’s beautiful. I don’t care whatever else you may say or think. But you will never be able to say, or how beautiful you may think some relationship is, you will never be able to say, I am my beloved’s, and his desire is only for me.

If there is not a covenant and a commitment between two people. Because you’ll never know. You’ll never know. 1 Corinthians chapter 7 says in verse 1, now concerning the things which about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman, but because of the immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his duties to the wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does, and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Can I tell you something? This is not a, this is not a two-way street that you want to be in with somebody that you don’t know where else they’ve been.

Stop depriving one another. Accept his agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again so that, look at here comes our adversary. Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I’ve had four good pieces of advice on marriage in my life, and I keep counting. Number one came from an old, an older couple as Lauren and I were getting married. They gave us a card and had a check in it. It’s a very nice card. And inside was written in a hand note, shaky handwriting. I’ll never forget Sister Pasitima’s handwriting. The secret to a happy marriage is to love each other more than you love yourself. And love God more than that. Point number two comes from my comes, or the second piece of advice comes from my mother-in-law.

Actually, it comes from my wife via my mother-in-law. Or no, my mother-in-law being my wife. She told her, Lauren, your daddy may look perfect to you, but he did not come perfect. Lauren was aghast at that. He required some fixing. And then she went on of all the things she could say about me. She said, There’s going to be days when you don’t love Jared very much, or even at all. I thought, wait a second, I’m lovable. This is the horrible thing to say on our wedding day. I thought, wow, this woman hates me. And she says, on those days, if you want to get past that, don’t go out looking for somebody who tells you’re right. Go serve him. Because you love the thing that you serve.

And guys, that cuts both ways for us. We need to let our lives serve us, and we need to serve them. The third one is my parents’ commitment to each other that they would never speak the word divorce in their marriage. And they don’t go to bed angry. Lauren and I have lived by that. Made that same commitment to ourselves. Continue to honor that commitment as much as we possibly can. Sometimes that means staying up late because we’re having a disagreement over something. The fourth also comes from my mother-in-law, and it’s this very simple thing. Love is a doing word, it’s an action. Well, why do I give these pieces of advice and pieces of advice now? Because intimacy affects the heart. Intimacy is not about the actions.

Intimacy is about what’s happening in the heart, and we need to practice the kinds of behaviors that grow the hearts together. Because intimacy is about knitting two hearts together before God. Can we read a few passages from the fifth chapter of the Song of Psalms? Beginning in verse 1, it says, I have come to my garden, my sister, my bride, I have gathered my myrrh along with my balsam. I’ve eaten my honeycomb and my honey, and I have drunk my wine and my milk. Eat, friends, drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers. I wake, I was asleep, but my heart was awake. And a voice, my beloved, was knocking, open to thee, my sister, my darling, my dove, my perfect one. For my head is drenched with dew, my locks with the damp of the night.

I have taken off my dress. How can I put it on again? I have washed my feet. How can I dirty them again? My beloved extended his hand through the opening, and my feelings, pay attention to this, young ladies and young boys, my feelings were aroused for him. I arose to open my beloved to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh and my fingers with liquid myrrh on the handles of the bowl, and I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and he had gone. My heart went out to him as he spoke, and I searched for him, but I did not find him. I called him, but he did not answer to me. The watchman who makes the rounds in the city found me, and he struck me and he wounded me, and the guardsmen of the wall took away my shawl from me.

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem. Listen to me, she says. If you have found my beloved, as to what will you tell him? For I am lovesick. She says, I’m lovesick. I’m sorry I didn’t open the door to him, even though it was all just a dream. What kind of beloved is your beloved, O most beautiful of women? What kind of beloved is your beloved that you would say these things to us? I’m going to be a little blunt about this, not too blunt. But there is no such thing as casual, meaningless sex. It doesn’t exist. Your creator did not make you that way.

And that’s one of the reasons why there is so much grief and so much depression and so much negativity associated with this thing that God gave us that’s supposed to honor Him. He doesn’t exist. As the song says, we are looking for love in all the wrong places. When we go looking for that.

That we not awake in God. Before it’s time.

But they are not whatever time that someone feels that we should be available to them in a way that God does not approve of.

6. God Takes Covenants Very Seriously

But you almost can’t talk about intimacy anymore without talking about how disposable it’s become. Genesis 2, the text says the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from man, brought her to the man, and the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed. Again, this is this is God’s idea. Two joined together. As if they are one, so much so that they become in some ways, and this is not a this is not a euphemism as it so often gets taught, one person.

We are so, Lauren and I are so close to each other. Her righteousness, her holiness, her desires for the future affect my own.

She belongs only to me, I belong only to her.

Matthew chapter 5, it was said, Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit divorce adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. So they will know more about this later in his ministry as he’s talking in Matthew 19. It says some Pharisees came to Jesus testing him and asking him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? Look at what it look at what it says here. And he answered and said, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one flesh.

And what therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. And they said to him, Why then is this? This is very underhanded, the way that they phrased this question. I mean, it’s surprising, right? They’re being underhanded. Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? And they’re going back to Leviticus 19. First of all, Moses did not command people to give certificates of divorce. The law of Moses allowed for this. But he did not give an instruction that this is what God expects of you. The expectation was what God set in the beginning. The two become one flesh. They are one unit, they are one person. And he said to them, here’s why this happened. Because of your hardness of heart.

Moses permitted you. Notice the word changes there. It’s not command. It’s what? Permit it. To divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it has not been in this way. And I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for an immorality, that word there is pornea. And the word pornea is used there because the way that they consider the marriage relationship, if you go back and you read early in the book of Matthew about Joseph being an honorable man and wanting to put Mary away secretly, well, their marriage had not been unionized yet. It had not been consummated. They were in the betrothal period that to them was still part of the marriage. He’d entered into a contract with their father. He was, for all intents and purposes, at that point, her husband.

So he has to go through the process of putting her away. Well, she’s with child. Guess what? There’s been some sexual immorality. Is that adultery? Is it fornication? In our day and age, people are married. What happens? It’s adultery. Except for sexual immorality. He uses a word that covers everything here relating to the husband and the wife. Guess what?

And marries another woman. Commits what?

Adultery. What did we see in Hebrews 13 about adultery? God is going to judge. The disciples said to him, that this is the relationship of a man and his wife. These are some romantic guys, ladies. This is the relationship between a man and his wife. It’s better not to marry. Who wants to marry a guy? That’s his attitude toward marriage, go ahead. It’s better not to marry. I want to really talk about what Jesus actually just said there for just a second. Man is always trying to find a way to fix the thing that God made that was perfect. And that he subsequently wrote. Not God would man. And so we’ve created all kinds of things like no fault divorce. I just fell out of love with you.

Love is a feeling, not an action. You know what? If you start serving your wife or your husband, that love might correct itself. But what we’ve done is we’ve given up on a society on the institution of marriage, and we’ve thrown this window that says, look, except for adultery, fornication, the cornea. We’ve thrown that rule out the window because we don’t like it anymore. So now we’ve got this jumble where people are intermarried in the ways that God said not to be intermarried and connected in ways that God said not to connect it. And we go to him and we say, fix this. And God says, I told you how to do it. There is one thing that God takes very seriously, and that’s covenants. And that’s what this is.

You promised, you belong to her. She promised, she belongs to you. And if this is not being separated because one of you broke this promise, then it doesn’t and shouldn’t be separated. No fault divorce is nothing more than institutionalized saying, I quit and I give up. It is institutionalized selfishness, but adultery is non-institutionalized selfishness because that’s what drives it. I don’t care what society says in their commercials about what was it? Ashley Madison.com, have an affair, make life better. I remember those commercials on the radio when I used to drive around down here. Have an affair, it saved my marriage. No, it didn’t. Adultery is never right, it’s always wrong. And we need to be very careful.

Very careful. About how much we listen to the people that agree with us when we’re contemplating the ends of our marriages. I’m going to tell you, there are times when it’s necessary. The sin is unrepentant. There’s no there’s no visible fruit of repentance. There’s no coming together after adultery. But just because we want somebody different, there’s no reason for divorce. In fact, God addressed it this way, and that was that technically. Here’s another thing that you do. He’s reading into the riot act and that was patent. You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with growing. Because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Yet you say, For what reason? Because the Lord has been a witness between you, wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by what’s that next word?

Covenant. God takes covenants very seriously. The covenant we’re under was inaugurated by the blood of his son. Your companion and your wife by covenant, but no one has done, so was it. He had been ridden in the spirit. And what did the one do while he was seeking a godly offspring? Take heed to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of you. For I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel, and him who covers his garments with wrath, says the Lord of hosts. So take heed to your spirit that you do not deal treacherously. So, guys, we should not be dealing treacherously with the wives of our youth. I need to include even when we get a little older. Our marriages in days of great joy and sorrow.

At the height of glory, and in the depths of daily struggle, at times when it’s easy and at times when it’s hard. For as much as you and I can bring to that relationship, need to honor God. That is bone of my bone right there. And she will be till the day that one of us dies. God helped that to be so.

Conclusion

So that we can help each other get to heaven. We can build families that are strong. We can support the people that God has placed us in covenant with in their walk with the Lord. Do you owe some duty to God? If we can help in any way, come forward confessing those sins.