Good Evening. I invite you to turn in your bibles with me to Song of Solomon chapter 3. Song of Solomon 3.
We’re continuing in our journey through this love song, the song of all songs, as we have a poetic couple who are desirous to be married. Last time we saw the bride longing to hear the voice of her beloved, longing to be together.
Tonight, we have a change of scene. The once joyous union, is now different. She’s left without the presence of her beloved king. And in her feeling of bereavement, we see pictured something that is a common experience of most, if not all believers, at one point or another.
If you’ve been a believer for any length of time at all, you will likely find yourself in this section of poetry. You’ve tasted of your beloved King’s presence. You’ve known his voice with such intimacy and familiarity, that the absence of it is unpleasant, unsatisfying, even fearful.
Let’s read from chapter 3 to get a sense of the scene. Hear God’s word for you this evening:
3 On my bed by night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not.
2 I will rise now and go about the city,
in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but found him not.
3 The watchmen found me
as they went about in the city.
“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
4 Scarcely had I passed them
when I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go
until I had brought him into my mother’s house,
and into the chamber of her who conceived me.
5 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.
Solomon Arrives for the Wedding
6 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?
7 Behold, it is the litter[a] of Solomon!
Around it are sixty mighty men,
some of the mighty men of Israel,
8 all of them wearing swords
and expert in war,
each with his sword at his thigh,
against terror by night.
9 King Solomon made himself a carriage[b]
from the wood of Lebanon.
10 He made its posts of silver,
its back of gold, its seat of purple;
its interior was inlaid with love
by the daughters of Jerusalem.
11 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.
Let’s begin by noting The Bride’s Desire. The Bride’s desire for her beloved’s presence.
The scene opens with the woman. She could be dreaming, or not. This is poetry, remember, so it could be a dream, or simply a poetic scene. Either way, the application is the same. She’s in her bed, and unlike the pleasant and joyful scene from the previous chapter, she’s in the dark. The text opens:
3 On my bed by night
The scene here is significant. It’s dark. Quiet. It’s a scene that many people know well. You’re alone in your bed, left with nothing but your own thoughts and feelings. And anxiety sets in. Your mind is racing.
You long for the previous moments of togetherness. The feelings of security and satisfaction that only your beloved’s presence can provide.
It’s in these dark moments that Satan loves to attack. He can prompt in your mind thoughts of yourself, because there is nothing else to look at, because it is dark. You have yourself, your memories, perhaps memories of ways that you’ve failed in the past.
Your mind is left to wonder. Will it always be this way? Will I always feel like this? Where did he go? What if he doesn’t come back? Does he not love me anymore?
Within our earthly marriages, we can find easily ourselves feeling this way. Perhaps your partner is not physically absent, but you feel distant from him or her. They might be in the bed with you, but they might as well be a thousand miles away. You feel a gulf, a chasm of relational distance that makes you anxious.
What did I do? Why are they so far away? Dangerous thoughts creep in. Do they not love me anymore? Am I not lovely in their eyes anymore? Has he found someone else?
Feeling alone. In the darkness. In the quiet.
And the same experience has been felt my most, if not all of us as believers. There are seasons to the Christian life. Sometimes God feels nearer, and we can taste a sweetness of communion that satisfies us immensely, and makes us feel loved.
But other times our bridegroom feels far from us. I’m speaking here of what the Puritans would describe as our “Feeling sense” of God’s presence. We know from scripture that the great bridegroom would never abandon us. Indeed, we know that in His divinity, our bridegroom is everywhere, he is omnipresent.
Where can I go to flee from your presence, the psalmist asks. And the answer is nowhere. You can’t get away from God.
And yet, in our feelings, in our feeling sense, we can feel like God has abandoned us. Spiritual desertion is a real feeling. We can find ourselves like the woman on the bed:
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not.
Have you ever felt that way? Either relationally distant from your spouse, or feeling spiritually abandoned by your beloved bridegroom? It can be a terrifying experience. It rattles us to our core. The one who brought us an immense sense of safety, now leaves us feeling alone.
Maybe the feelings come in the middle of the night, in the actual darkness. Or maybe the feelings come in the daytime. Either way, things feel dark and lonely in the soul. You’re bereft of light, full of doubt and insecurity. Tempted by Satan to ponder all the worst-case scenarios.
So what do we do when the times come? And trust me, they will come. What does the woman do? She doesn’t just sit there and wallow in self-pity. She gets up. Verse 2:
2 I will rise now and go about the city,
in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves.
She’s not content with being alone. She takes initiative. She seeks to restore the joy of her communion.
To the married here, when you feel this kind of relational distance in the marriage, don’t be content with it. Get up. Go. Pursue. Seek out your beloved.
Whatever the cause of the marital distance, seek to solve it. If it is your sin, then go and seek to be reconciled. If they’ve sinned against you, love them enough to go after them and point it out to them in love.
Emotional distance is a dangerous thing in marriage, especially if it is left unrepaired. It will grow. We mustn’t be content with a lukewarm marriage. It’s a fearful and dangerous place to be.
Go after them. Go to the places where you used to walk with your beloved, like the bride does seeking her husband. Go back to the moments of intimacy and communion. Initiate the romance that seems to be waning. Delight yourselves in the wife of your youth, and be intoxicated with her love, the proverbs say. Don’t be content. Pursue your beloved one.
And for believers, if you find a distance from the Lord, a distance of soul where God feels so far away, and the once joyous communion seems like a distant memory. Pursue him. Seek him. Don’t let your love grow cold.
Earnestly desire him, communion with him, and you will find him. Jeremiah 29 promises this “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Don’t be halfhearted, but rather whole hearted in your pursuit. Get up out of your bed, and go for him.
And where will you find him? You’ll find him in the places where he once walked with you. But not in the streets of Jerusalem. You’ll find him in the old paths of His word, in prayer, in the gathering of the saints, and the the preaching of the Word. That’s where he has promised to meet us.
We’re too quick to give up on him. To neglect his word and prayer. To neglect the gathering of the body on the Lord’s day. And in his loving kindness, one of the ways that he often woos us back to Him, is by removing our sense of his presence.
He withdraws the ministering presence of the Holy Spirit in order to woo us back. He reminds us of our danger, by unsettling us, so that we wake up in the middle of the night, and realize we need to find him.
Don’t doubt your salvation when you feel this way. Satan will tempt you to that conclusion. That’s he’s abandoned you. That you’re not lovely. He’ll say to you that a “REAL believer” wouldn’t feel this way, so you must not be truly saved.
Rather, let your sense of his absence instead confirm in your mind the importance of seeking him. Only a true believer is distraught by the Lord’s absence.
Unbelievers have never tasted of the Lord’s true presence, and so they don’t miss his absence. But a true believer, united to God by faith, knows what it is to commune with the Bridegroom, and so remember his promises, remember that he promises never to leave us or forsake us. He walks with us and goes before us, even we can’t see him.
And remember our King’s own experience, to remind you of his love.
Christ alone has felt true abandonment. On the cross he cried “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He knows what it is like to be alone and abandoned in the moment of trial and darkness. In his humanity, Christ felt what it is like to truly be abandoned, when God poured out his wrath upon the image of sin, upon your sin.
And because Christ has experienced the full abandonment of God, you can know that you will never be truly abandoned. To his bride Christ has given His very own Spirit. He’s given the promise of eternal security, that he’ll always be with us and working for our good, even when we don’t deserve it.
Remember Jesus and His love, the great bridegroom, in your moments of feeling alone. Pursue him the old Paths of the Word of God and in prayer. Lean into the preached word and worship on the Lord’s day with the saints of God. Christ will never forsake her beloved.
The bride continues:
I sought him, but found him not.
3 The watchmen found me
as they went about in the city.
“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
4 Scarcely had I passed them
when I found him whom my soul loves.
Note also that The bride in our text didn’t find her lover, until after she sought help. She asked the watchmen. See talked to people. She wasn’t content to search alone.
Finding our beloved is often a community effort. Talk to others, and ask how they found Christ. Ask other saints how they kept the communion in their marriage, and ask of others how they persevered in their search for intimacy with God, even when things felt dark, lonely, and scary.
But maybe you’ve never experienced what I’m talking about. Maybe you’ve never experienced the feeling of being spiritually deserted, feeling far from God. If you’ve never tasted of that, it could be because you’ve never tasted of Christ himself.
You can only feel deserted once you’ve first tasted of his presence. If that’s you, having not been united to the bridegroom Christ Jesus by faith, then I urge you to consider your condition. You’re in the dark, surrounded with your sin and your failings.
You might search the streets of this world to find him, running up and down the channels of religion and of philosophy and of tradition. But you will not find your bridegroom there. You will not find rest for your soul in anything this world can offer.
You’ll only find Christ when you seek him in the right places. He’s found in His word. In the bible and in prayer. Seek him, and seek him with all your heart, and you will find him. You’ll find rest for your soul. You’ll find security and satisfaction. Trust in Christ, and don’t give up the search until you find him.
And what do we do when we find what we seek? Verse 4:
I held him, and would not let him go
until I had brought him into my mother’s house,
and into the chamber of her who conceived me.
The bride searches until she finds him. She’s determined. She won’t be distracted. And when she finds him, she won’t let go.
There is a resiliency to her search. A persistence. She won’t be content until she finds her prize. That same persistence should mark us in our marriages, and in our Christian walk. When we feel distant from our spouse, we need to pursue with diligence, we need to lean in and fight for our beloved and for communion with them.
And when we search for the feelings of communion with our beloved Christ, we search hard, and when we find him, we don’t let him go. Persistence in our search, rewards us with a sweet embrace.
The language in this verse speaks of taking the beloved into her mother’s house. This is typical of a wedding celebration of their day. It would be a week-long party, which would include a time of consummation after the wedding ceremony.
When formerly distant spouses are reunited, it is fitting that they come together again. Cherish the communion. Don’t be content to remain apart for any longer than necessary, lest the devil tempt you.
But, given that the wedding has not yet taken place in the story, I tend to think that the bride is dreaming still. And as such, she offers a warning, the same warning that we preached upon last week. Verse 5:
5 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.
For the singles and those engaged to be married, there is a similar warning. As you search for, desire, long for a spouse, remember that there is a right time to express these desires. It’s not good for man to be alone, God said in the garden. It’s a fitting desire to long for a spouse.
But also know this, that even if God doesn’t ever provide you a spouse, he has provided something that can fulfill you in an even greater way. Christ is the perfect Bridegroom who can satisfy you with love, and provide a satisfaction that is greater than any earthly spouse could ever provide.
Trust in Christ, and draw near to him, and he will grant you the desires of your heart.
And what will that look like? What will it look like to have these desires fulfilled in our hearts?
Let’s move onto the second section in our text, and see The King’s Arrival. The King’s arrival.
In the next scene we have is a picture of the King arriving in all his Glory. He’s finally come, ready for the wedding day, dressed in glorious splendor.
And what I want us to especially note here, is the language that Solomon uses to describe the king’s arrival. He uses language from the Exodus. He describes the arrival of the king in terms of language evoking God’s own presence. Look with me at Verse 6:
6 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?
The chapter began with a desire, a longing for presence. Similar to the Israelites in Egypt, longing for a king to come and save them from the darkness of their slavery.
And then the king in our text comes out of the wilderness, like a column of smoke. Just like God led the Israelites by a pillar of fire and smoke. And he’s said to be perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, which are two of the many spices used to create the incense that was burning the tabernacle and temple.
Exodus 30 says this: “And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord. 38 Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people.”
God alone was to be perfumed with these precious perfumes of myrrh and frankincense. The king in the text is smelling like God himself. And how does he arrive? Verse 7:
7 Behold, it is the litter[a] of Solomon!
Litter here does not mean like a litter of puppies. A litter was an elevated structure that kings would be carried in. Like a carriage, but instead of wheels, it was carried by poles, which men would lug around on their shoulders.
What else in the Old Testament carried the presence of a King around in a box elevated by poles? It was the ark of the covenant, the symbol of the presence of Israel’s king. Solomon is intentionally evoking imagery of the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant, where God’s presence would be carried around in the middle of God’s people.
And just like the tabernacle was placed in the middle of the camp of people of God, with the tribes of mighty men arrayed around him, here too the king is surrounded by might men. Around the litter were:
sixty mighty men,
some of the mighty men of Israel,
A previous king had might men. David had a band of might men, men of renown. But how many did David have? He had thirty. The king here is greater than David. He had twice as many mighty men, indicating his military strength would exceed the greatest kingly fighter Israel had had. Verse 8:
8 all of them wearing swords
and expert in war,
each with his sword at his thigh,
against terror by night.
These men are dressed for battle, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Arrayed in glory, and armed for the war. The imagery continues:
9 King Solomon made himself a carriage[b]
from the wood of Lebanon.
What else was crafted from the wood of Lebanon? The temple was. It was built with the best wood of the region. Arrayed and crafted in glorious detail. Verse 10:
10 He made its posts of silver,
its back of gold, its seat of purple;
its interior was inlaid with love
by the daughters of Jerusalem.
The earthly Solomon, the one who built the earthly temple, is using temple-specific language to describe the arrival of a king. But he’s describing not himself. He’s describing another king, a greater Solomon. I think Solomon is using the text here to intentionally point beyond himself.
Solomon could never measure up to the king in this text. Solomon wasn’t faithfully committed to a single bride, but took for himself a vast number of women.
But under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Solomon is pointing us to a greater Solomon, a greater son of David..
Jesus Christ is pictured as a victorious king in the new testament. He’s the true son of David. He’s the one who’s arrival was marked by frankincense and myrrh. He said of himself that he’s greater than the temple, the resting place of the ark of the covenant.
He’s the same God who led Israel by a pillar of smoke and fire. And He’s the leader of a new exodus, which leads His bride out of slavery to sin and darkness.
But he’s done so not merely through moving some water around in the red sea. He’s done so through a sacrifice of his own blood. Just like the ark of the covenant was sprinkled once a year with blood from a sacrifice to atone for the people of God, now another blood sacrifice has been made.
But as the book of Hebrews makes clear, Christ’s blood is greater than the blood of any goat or lamb. His blood is an eternal covenant, and His blood sprinkled on us makes us clean forever.
Now, that was a lot of biblical theology thrown at you real fast, but I want us to begin to land here, and listen to the text. What would the text have us do? Verse 11:
11 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.
Go out and look. Look at the king in his splendor. Look upon that greater king, who Solomon could only barely imagine.
Look upon the crown that he’s been given. It says a crown from his Mother. This is one of the reasons why I think this text points beyond the earthly Solomon to a greater Solomon to come. The earthly king Solomon was given a crown, but it came from his father.
What other Solomon is given a crown from his mother? Jesus was. His crown, his Davidic lineage and therefore kingly right to the Davidic covenant, came through his mother, who was of the line of David. Mary was Jesus’s earthly bloodline, and therefore gave Christ the right to be called truly a son of David.
So I think this text is pointing to an earthly king of the line of David, while ALSO pointing to the presence of God himself by using temple and ark of the covenant David. Only Christ could be the true son of David by birth AND ALSO the presence of God himself. We have a text describing a kingly bridegroom who is both God AND the son of David.
And this King is arriving for a wedding. His wedding. And when will Christ, the true God man and Son of David be wed?
And when is that wedding in scripture? It’s described for us in Revelation 19. We won’t turn there, but I’ll remind you of that great wedding day to come.
The king returns, and he’s finally married to his betrothed bride. She’s dressed in her wedding garments, fine white linens, which are the righteous deeds of the saints.
But instead of needing 60 mighty men, Christ comes ready for war. The text says:
“And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”
The king has come to judge any who would not bow to him in this age. Don’t let that be you. Trust in the king now, and have him as your bridegroom, lest you wait to see the king then, and have him as your judge.
And for believers, I’ll close with one final application, related to the command to look upon the king, and tying back to the desire that the bride has in the first point.
In Matthew 25 Jesus teaches a parable about the 10 virgins. They were told to be ready for the return of their bridegroom. The wise ones kept their lamps ready, full of oil, wicks were trimmed. They were prepared for the bridegroom’s return.
But the foolish were not prepared. They weren’t ready.
The parable ends with the admonition: “Watch for the Bridegroom. Be Watchful. Be ready and expectant for the returning bridegroom.” That’s where we are to be, as believers. Watchful. Expectant. The wedding day is at hand. We’re in the last days, and our king will return soon.
Don’t let yourself grow drowsy. Pursue the king. Seek after him. Search the streets of his word, be frequent in the old paths of prayer and fellowship with the saints. Commune with him through the preached word and the Lord’s Supper.
He’s brought you out of slavery to sin, but we’re not yet through the wilderness. The promised land awaits us. Look for him and his return.
That day is coming, and it is not far. Be watchful and hopeful, knowing that the glorious wedding day awaits, when we will finally and eternally united with our bridegroom, and will never again experience dark nights of loneliness. That’s what we wait for. That’s what we watch for. Are you watchful?
