All right, let's seek God's blessing.
Our Heavenly Father, how good it is that we can meet together
this morning, and we pray that you'll open our minds and hearts
that we might receive the benefit that is stored within these scriptures. It's in the name of Christ we
pray it, amen. Now, the scriptural title of
this book is The Song of Songs of Solomon. Solomon wrote 1,005
psalms, and whoever devised this title for the book considered
it to be his best work. And there's no wonder because
of the subject of it. It's a poetic drama, giving us
insight into the powerful and intimate relationship between
Christ and his church. Some have considered it to be
a romantic illustration of God and his relationship with Israel. Well, that's not entirely wrong,
but that works only because God's relationship with Israel was
set up in order to serve as a picture or an illustration of his relationship
with the church. You know, all the promises made
to Israel were fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul writes
that God made his promises to Abraham and his seed, meaning
one, not seeds, meaning many. And the promises then, what he's
pointing out is the promises actually were made to Christ.
And the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were chosen
not because there was anything specifically good about them,
or that they would ever be a spiritual people, though there were some
of them who truly were a spiritual people. They believed God, but
for the most part, the Jews didn't believe God. They were idolaters
by nature, just like all of us are, but they were put in place And
the covenant of Sinai was put in place to preserve the nation
of Israel until the seed should come unto whom the promises were
made. And so once that seed came, there
was no more need for this physical representation of the people
of God. And they wouldn't accept that.
They would not tolerate the idea that they were not held in any
higher regard than the Gentiles, because the gospel says in Christ
there's neither Jew nor Gentile. It's irrelevant. Well, they didn't
like to be considered irrelevant, and therefore they rejected the
gospel and continued on approaching God through old covenant means
until finally God said, I've had enough of that, and sent
the Roman army in and destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the
temple. Now they couldn't do it, and they still can't. And
it's my personal opinion, and I'll have to say this, the scriptures
actually do not address it, but there are many who believe that
someday the temple will be rebuilt and the sacrifice is reestablished
and all of this, and it will be, you know, God would approve
of that. No, he wouldn't. You don't go
back to the picture once the realities come in place. But
if God has any special regard to the physical descendants of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And we know he doesn't, because
the Bible says there's neither Jew nor Gentile. But there may be many of his elect
among them. Paul says there's always a remnant
according to the election of grace. But here's how we will know if
God has any plan, so to speak, for the nation of Israel, a large
portion of them will believe the gospel. They won't be reinstituting
the old covenant. God will give them faith. He
will give them new birth that they might receive the truth
of that covenant. So yes, Solomon may have even
been thinking something about the special relationship that
God had with the Jews, but that's only because it pictures that
eternal relationship that God has had with his chosen people. Some have considered this to
be a sort of manual of Christian sexuality. Well, it's true that
the book contains a great deal of romantic and sexual expression,
and its application to Christ and his church can be understood
only within the context of an Israelite king and his wife as
they would have lived out their marriage under God. But the book was not given to
teach us about appropriate marriage. It begins with the assumption
that we understand what marriage is. And it uses the relationship
of marriage and not just any marriage, the marriage of the
king and his wife. And that is used as an illustration
of how Christ relates to his church. And indeed, Paul, in
speaking of husbands and wives, he says, you've got to understand
here, there's a mystery here. He says, what I'm really telling
you about is Christ and his church. When I give these instructions
about, for lack of a better way to put it, household economics,
he said, really, I'm not addressing that directly. I'm using that,
and God set it up as an illustration of Christ and his church. Now, as a poem, certain aspects
of the artistry of Jewish poetry can be seen if you're able to
see it and understand it in Hebrew. You know, when I was preaching
over in India and then again in Africa and had to do so through
a translator, I knew that if I used poetry, it would fall
apart in the translators. What's he going to do with it?
What's poetry in English isn't going to come out as poetry in
another language. So as we read this, we know it's
a poem, but we miss some of what we might call the artistic aspects
of it. It doesn't mean we need to miss
the general meaning of it, but if we can take note of several
things that show up in the Hebrew structure that's given to it,
we get some insights to it we might otherwise miss. And whenever
it seems appropriate to do so, I'll bring those up. Now, as
a drama or a play, it has identifiable characters. In this play, there
are three of them, three characters. The primary character is King
Solomon. Now, it's an idealized version
of Solomon, to be sure, but the inspiration for this character
is indeed Solomon, king of Israel. It says that rather plainly in
chapter two, verse nine. I wrote down the wrong... Wrong
verse. I'll bet you it's verse nine.
Yeah, chapter three, verse nine. There you go. Scripture is God's infallible
word, but I'm not infallible, so. It says, King Solomon made for
himself the carriage. He made it of wood from Lebanon.
So there you can see it's obviously he is using himself as the inspiration
for the Solomon in this book. I don't know if he was as good
looking as this book sets him forward. But Solomon, as the
king, is providing the inspiration for the character. And well it
should, for within the economy of it, or the history, let's
say the history of Israel, Solomon's kingship was as high as Israel
ever got. It was at that time that the
temple was built. And with the temple there, And David, he was a picture of
Christ too, but he's a picture of Christ at war and is sort
of a picture of Christ in his days upon the earth as he did
battle and established the kingdom,
so to speak. Solomon is a picture of Christ
ascended on high. God has made him to be Lord and
Christ. He reigns in peace. And so that's why Solomon, you
know, it isn't the song of David. It's the song of Solomon. Because
it's showing Christ in his peaceful reign along with his bride. Now, in Hebrew, his name is pronounced
Shelemot. This cues us to the meaning of
his name, which is peace. Most of us are familiar with
the standard Hebrew greeting, shalom. Well, his name comes
from that word. Now, while the concept of peace,
as we normally think of it, underlies all the uses of this Hebrew word, its meaning is broadened because
it also includes such thing as completeness, soundness, welfare. If a Jew greeted and said Shalom,
he wasn't just saying, you know, I hope you're not at war with
anybody. He's actually saying, I hope that all things are well
for you, that your body is not engaged in the conflict of illness,
that your home is not wracked by conflict, that your life is
at peace. Remember when our Lord was in
the boat and the disciples thought it was going to capsize and so
he stood up in the boat and he said, peace, be still. Well,
the sea was not at war, but it was troubled. And so he said,
peace. And so this name signifies, in
fact, it has many or much of the same meaning that is covered
by the Greek word commonly translated salvation in the New Testament. Now, there's also a Greek word
for peace, but you know, salvation, the word sozo, to save, is often
used of healing, of preserving, In the sense we normally think
of it, it's used for rescue and things like that. But it simply
perceives a problem and the resolution of that problem. And peace speaks
of the resolution of all the conflicts that we have. Well, this picture is Christ
because he's the peace of his people. In fact, one of the names
of God found in the Old Testament Jehovah is our peace. How is
Jehovah our peace? In the person of Jesus Christ. Through faith in Him, they have
peace with God. This is what Paul says, being
justified by faith, we have peace with God. And that's the foundation
of all other peace. If we are believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ, if we've trusted our soul to Him, there is no
longer a warfare between us and God, we are reconciled. And this
produces all kinds of other peace. He is our peace with God, and
by the blood of his cross, peace is made between all kindred,
tribes, tongues, and families of the earth, for his blood has
erased any significance that fleshly distinctions can stir
up. Now that doesn't mean that in
our flesh we won't stir them up, but I can tell you this about
the people of God. No matter where they come from,
in their hearts they are not at war with one another. Paul says, he is our peace. And
that's often preached up that he is our peace with God. Well,
it's true that he's our peace with God, but that's not what
he's talking about. He was saying that was peace between Jew and
Gentile. Under the law, there was a wall put up between Jews
and Gentiles. The Jews were in, the Gentiles
were out. But when Christ came, that middle
wall of partition, which was simply the old covenant, it was
torn down. It was taken down. And now Jew
and Gentile are of one body. Paul says this was one of the
mysteries of Christ that was revealed to him, that the Gentile
was a fellow heir with the Jew, which in essence meant it's of
no consequence whether you're Jew or Gentile. And he goes on
in other places, in Christ Jesus, there's neither Jew nor Gentile,
bond nor free. So the slave? and the free man. Same before God. Male or female? Well, God has established certain
roles which the two sexes are to occupy themselves with, though
I don't think it's nearly as strict as many people think it
is. But nonetheless, there are traditionally
speaking roles assigned to each of the sexes. Nonetheless, in
the sight of God, they are equal persons of equal value, of equal
blessedness through Jesus Christ. There's not going to be a male
heaven and a female heaven. You know, we heard, and I know
we may have heard a lot of things that aren't true about the Muslim
religion when, you know, we were at war with so many of the countries
over there, but it was said that these fellows believed that if
they died in battle, that they'd go to whatever their version
of heaven is, and one of the blessings there would be 72 virgins.
Well, that kind of makes a distinction, doesn't it, between men and women? They go to heaven, and they're
blessed, and the ones blessing them are the women. Well, in
Christ, male or female, it's irrelevant. That's the way it
was in the Garden of Eden. Both were created in the image
of God. They were different. in some ways, had different qualities. But neither one of them was held
in higher regard than the other. So we have peace. And if we allow
that peace to be disturbed, it's evidence that our flesh is getting in the way. And then, Christ is the peace
of his people in that his presence in them, known and experienced
by them, relieves the turmoil of their minds created by the
fear of God's wrath and or the distresses of life. Now, we never experience a perfection
of this, or very few do. Why? Because while we are spirit,
and that spirit has been renewed in the image of the one who made
it, and there's nothing wrong with it, and it completely trusts
Christ, we are also flesh. People bring added burden on
themselves when they fall for the erroneous idea that When
a man is saved, somehow God makes a big change in their flesh.
Now God can do what he wants with the flesh, that's for sure.
And someday he will make a big change in the flesh. He will
raise it from the dead, but he'll not raise it back to what it
was. He'll raise it to what he is presently, a glorified body. But for the believer, his sinfulness
resides within his fleshly nature. Paul says, in me, that is in
my flesh, dwells no good thing. And there are a lot of preachers
who They know they, you know, they feel they can't use the
bondage of saying you have to do good works in order to be
saved. The scripture's too clear about
that, but they nonetheless find a way to bring their people into
bondage by saying, but you know, if God saves you, there's going
to be a big change in your life. Well, then I don't know many
people who've been saved. I've known a few people who've been
saved for two or three weeks, but that glow, that most people
experience when they've been newly converted is kind of like
the glow of romance. It kind of fades out. And they
do come to the realization, I'm the same person I was in the
flesh. Now God has delivered some of his people from their
bondage to particular sins, but just because he did that for
them doesn't mean he does it for all of them. There are some
who were alcoholics and God saves them and they don't have any
desire ever again to drink alcohol or certainly to get drunk with
it. And they're never, never ever problem with that before.
More often than not, he leaves them to struggle with it. It's
just that there is now a spiritual nature within them that rises
up to fight. And you can say that with regard
to any of the sins in scripture. You know, there's always, you
know, religions, Christian religions always got one, two, or three
sins that are the ones they're attacking the society for. And the reason is, is they are
under the impression, well, nobody in our church is doing this,
so we can name these and that'll be okay. And right now, the two
biggest, at least the ones you always, see mentioned is abortion
and homosexuality. Those are horrible things. I'm
talking about abortion on demand, that kind of thing. But you know something? Awful
as they are, a believer could be guilty of them. The one thing
a believer cannot do is when he's guilty of them, think that
it's okay. You know, the whole time David
wouldn't confess his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, it must
have been a miserable time, because he knew what he did was wrong.
He just wouldn't admit it. There is no sin. that a believer
is incapable of committing except the sin of unbelief. I'm not
saying so, hey, don't worry about your sin. No, we grieve over
it, awful thing. It's as awful now as it ever was. In fact,
there's a certain extra awfulness in the sin of a believer because
he's not just sinning in the face of God the judge, he's sinning
in the face of Christ, his Redeemer. He's been treated so well, and
to respond to that with such gross acts of immorality and
sin, well, that's worse than when a rebel does it, in some
respects. But when these things come upon us,
they trouble our hearts, and Christ is our peace in these
things. When we find ourselves falling
to some notable sin, some sin that we may have thought, well,
I've conquered that one. Or people say, I'd never do that.
And then they find out they did. The answer is the way back to
peace is not to say, OK, I resolve from this day forward I will
never do that again. That used to be the way I approached
things. especially as a young boy and a teenager in early adulthood,
you know, OK, I'm not going to do that again. And then I did. There's only one place of peace
for the believer's conscience. And that's Jesus Christ, our
heavenly Solomon. Now, the female lead in this
story is not named in the normal sense of the word. Many have
tried to speculate who the woman is. Some have speculated it was
the Queen of Sheba. Remember, she came to visit Solomon.
But they didn't get married. She went back to Sheba. If she'd
married Solomon, she would have become part of his harem and
would have stayed there. It is never said, excuse me,
in truth, the female character might not be any particular person. Remember, Solomon had 700 wives
and 300 concubines. Now that's a lot of wives. Two
wives is one too many. This guy had 699 extra wives
and 300 other women he shouldn't have had under any circumstances.
God tolerated a lot out of Solomon, didn't he? One of the most powerful
statements in all the scriptures when God was telling David about
Solomon, he says, my love will never depart from him. That's
a good thing God promised that ahead of time because Solomon
did plenty that would have, I mean, he built idol shrines for his
wives. He's the one that reintroduced
idol worship into Israel after his father David had done a pretty
good job of getting rid of it. No, we don't know who this refers
to, if anyone. But she is given a name in chapter
six, verse 13. Chapter six, verse 13 says, come
back, come back, oh Shulamite, come back, come back that we
may gaze on you. Now, some have translated that
Shunamite, thinking it means she came from an area called
Shunam. But the script, the text says Shulamite. And there's a
good reason. Shulamite is simply the feminine
form of the name Solomon. She has the same name as her
husband. And one commentator that I was
reading on this pointed out It appears with the article. Now, in grammar, remember what
the article is? You have what, in the English,
what we call the indefinite article, which is the letter A or A-N
if it comes before a word with a vowel. So, you know, an elephant,
you know, a golf ball. Then you have the definite article,
the word T-H-E. So, you know, take the dog out
for a walk. Well, this has the T-H-E, so
to speak, you know, the Hebrew version of it. And so she is
called the Shulamite, which, according to this commentator,
meant that it was kind of a pet name, an affectionate name that
was given to her. You know, we call our spouses,
you know, Honey, Sweetie Pie, at least I do. You know, things
like that. And it indicates our special
affection for them and how we perceive them. And so while the
people who say, return to us, oh, Shulamite, they are the third characters we'll see
in this. But it's actually, she's called
that because it must be that's what Solomon called her. one. The Lord Jesus Christ says to
his disciples, my peace I leave with you, not the peace that
the world gives. In this world, you'll have trouble,
but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world. And so her natural born name
wasn't peace, but a name given to her. was peace. This well described the church
of the Lord Jesus, especially viewed in her perfect state when
she is with her Lord. In this world, she does experience
conflict and trouble, but her king, her Solomon, has overcome
the world and rules it so that all things that happen in it
are worked out for her welfare. She is at peace within herself.
For there is no conflict among the members of Christ's church
over Christ himself. Now there's conflicts in churches.
Sometimes there's conflicts in churches because they aren't
really churches, or they're churches who have a significant amount
of goats in them, and goats never get along with sheep. Sometimes
there's conflicts between the sheep, but those conflicts No
matter how they may try to express them, they are really never over
Christ and his gospel. Because if you agree with God
and his gospel, and every believer does, then that means all those
believing God are also in agreement with one another. Faith can be defined as simply
agreement with God. In fact, the word translated
In the Greek language, the word translated confess homolegomen. It means to say the same thing.
We confess our sins. We agree with God we're sinners.
And we agree with God concerning his son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the record that God has given concerning his son. We agree. All believers do. When they disagree, you can be
sure of this. The flesh is getting in there
somewhere, bringing up issues that are irrelevant, religious issues that are irrelevant,
or they are allowing the natural things that divide us. We are
so polarized in this country politically. You talk to some
believers and they'd act like, well, there aren't any believers
in the other party. whatever to them is the other
party. There are Republicans who, you know, profess to be
Christians, but they think, well, you can't be a Christian and
a Democrat, and there's Democrats who think the same way. Neither
one of them's right. Political issues are not gospel
issues. And God's people are in peace
over the gospel. The third character are the friends, or as some of
them simply call them, the others. Now, these people, this group
of people that make responses, you know, the first time they
show up here is just a verse or two later. I've got to get
past Ecclesiastes. Here we are. And yeah, the latter
part of verse 4. And in my copy, you know, it
puts in italics, friends. They've gone through and so that
you'll know who's speaking. In the original text, it doesn't
say. The only way we can figure out who is speaking is seeing
whether the verb is masculine or feminine, or in the case of
the friends, plural. That's how they're able to divide
it up. But these friends, they serve in the same capacity
as what was called the chorus in ancient Greek drama. Now, the chorus wasn't a bunch
of singers. I don't exactly know what the word chorus means, but
I know its significance within the dramatic world. And what
they were was a group of people who would say things in explanation. to the audience. They really
weren't involved in the plot. They were just there so that
when information needed to be given to the audience that would
be too clumsy for one of the characters to speak it, the chorus
would. In fact, they would, I can't
remember the dramatic expression for it, but they would sometimes
directly address the audience. And even in Shakespeare's plays,
some of the characters that he would write would satisfy that
thing, and they would be up there on stage saying their lines,
and then one would turn to the audience and say, oh, I think
he is blah, blah, blah. And that was to give you information
that you needed, but it just couldn't be put in within the
plot. Well, that's what these others do. They say, things that
need to be said, but there was no way to put them in the mouth
of Solomon or the Shulamite. Often they are showing us how
we should respond to what's being said. And that way they serve
also in the capacity that we now do with music and movies.
The reason for music and movies is to tell you how you're supposed
to be feeling emotionally. And if you want to see how important
it is, try watching a movie one time. If you can find what the
music is out of it, it can be just as boring as anything. The
music tells you how to feel and these others tell us how to feel
and give us information. Now, I thought we were going
to get a lot farther than that, but that happens quite often
with me. It's not unusual, but we have these three characters
now in this book, Solomon. the man of peace, the Shulamite,
his beloved one to whom he has given peace, and then the others. And they cue us in, give us some
either background information or cue us as to how we ought
to be viewing these things. And so next week, the Lord willing,
we will begin verse two, let him kiss me. with the kisses
of his mouth. You are dismissed.