Good Evening. Please open your bibles with me to Song of Solomon chapter 2. Song of Solomon chapter 2.
We’re going to continue tonight our study through the Song of all Songs. Through this wonderful book of lyrical poetry. Solomon has, by the inspiration of the very Spirit of God, gifted to God’s people, a beautiful celebration of marital love. Marital intimacy was God’s design from the very beginning in the garden, it was God’s plan, His idea, and in this book we have the most concentrated teaching in scripture about this kind of love and what it should look like.
Most recently we’ve been looking at the text and noticing how Solomon is describing love according to the senses. In chapter 1 he describes the beloved King in terms of smell, using language of myrrh and flowers. Then the description moved to the sense of sight, wherein the King and his beloved bride describe the loveliness of each other in a delightful back and forth.
Then the language switched to using the sense of taste, describing one another in terms of fruit trees. “My beloved is an apple tree among all the trees of the forest…his fruit was sweet to my taste.”
Tonight, we’ll move on to see another sense: the sense of hearing. The voice. The speech of the beloved moves the bride in the very core of her being. His voice builds anticipation within her, it calls for her, and it woos her to action.
Let’s begin by reading our text. I’ll begin in verse 7 of chapter 2, going through the end of the chapter.
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.
8 The voice of my beloved!
Behold, he comes,
leaping over the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
9 My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Behold, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
looking through the lattice.10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come away,
11 for behold, the winter is past;
the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing[d] has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree ripens its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come away.
14 O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the crannies of the cliff,
let me see your face,
let me hear your voice,
for your voice is sweet,
and your face is lovely.
15 Catch the foxes for us,
the little foxes
that spoil the vineyards,
for our vineyards are in blossom.”16 My beloved is mine, and I am his;
he grazes among the lilies.
17 Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle
or a young stag on cleft mountains.
We’ll begin by noticing something different that happens in verse 7. We have almost an interruption in the drama. They move from describing each other’s appearance and their love in the first 6 verses of chapter 2, to a transition point in verse 7.
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.
This move is certainly intentional on the part of Solomon. It is a refrain, not to stir up or awaken love, that is repeated four times in this book, more than any other. I think it serves literarily as a marker in the text, kind of a transition point.
The refrain is used here before the king approaches. It is repeated in 3:5 before the wedding day. It’s used again in 5:8, before the bride finds her lost lover. And again in 8:4 when they are united again.
I won’t exhaust the wisdom of this verse tonight, especially because we will get to the same refrain multiple times, but I do think it wise to speak to it, specifically noting the way that it is used in this portion of the book.
Solomon seems to be signaling a transition point. The plot is moving closer to marriage, but they aren’t there yet. We might think of it as the King and his woman are dating, perhaps more specifically, as engaged for marriage.
And Solomon seems to be stopping here to give a warning, especially perhaps to those who are not yet married.
that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.
There is a danger with love in this fallen world, especially before marriage. So if you’re single, if you’re dating or desire to date and be married, this word is especially pertinent to you.
God warns us, through Solomon’s words, about stirring up love prematurely. There is a way to use the mind and the emotions in a way that is dangerous to us. We can stoke the fires of affection in a way that is unhelpful.
What does that look like? Well, it might mean daydreaming unhelpfully about things that can’t happen yet. It can mean using our imagination, which God has given us for good, to stoke up emotions and desires that can’t righteously be expressed yet, because you’re not yet married.
In that sense, this is an immensely practical book. Most of us in this room have been teenagers at one point, full of zeal and hormones, full of desire, and we all can remember the temptations that come along with that.
Young people especially, be warned about the danger that can come by awakening love too soon. There’s a wrong way to be in love, which is the opposite of everything the culture tells you at the moment.
So what wisdom does the bible offer to people who aren’t yet married, but desire to be.
Well, first we could say that scripture is crystal clear regarding the object of our love. Very simply, if you’re a believer, then you have no business dating someone who isn’t. In 2 Corinthians 6 Paul describes such a condition as being unequally yoked with an unbeliever.
If Christ is your Lord, and the potential suiter doesn’t say the same thing, then you are foolish for seeking to yoke yourself to them. It doesn’t matter how sweet they may seem, how kind they are to you, how good looking they are. If they aren’t following Christ, then you’d be a fool to tie yourself to them.
You’re setting yourself up for immense heartache and a painful marriage, if you tie yourself to an unbeliever in marriage. Don’t do it.
But is that all that scripture says about who we should date? Certainly not. You can read the book of Proverbs and find all sorts of related wisdom.
For example, Proverbs 22:24 says:
Make no friendship with a man given to anger,
nor go with a wrathful man,
25 lest you learn his ways
and entangle yourself in a snare.
If you’re dating someone and they are prone to anger, then run. Run away quickly, lest you get trapped. They may not have pointed their anger at you yet, but he or she is an angry person, then rest assured that one day you will taste of their anger yourself.
What else? Proverbs very clearly warns about pride also. Proverbs 28:26:
Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool
And proverbs 6 lists haughty eyes, that is pride, as one of the things that is an abomination to the Lord. He hates it. If you’re dating someone who is always right, who has to win every argument, who doesn’t need help from anyone else, then run.
They’re not ready to be married, and you shouldn’t want any part of it. Humility is a key factor in any healthy relationship, and if they aren’t teachable, aren’t willing to take advice and correction, then you need to leave it alone.
If these negative traits are found in somebody that you’re considering as a potential partner, you need to listen to Solomon. Don’t awaken love. Don’t stir it up. You’ll only end up in pain and heartache. We have many older people in this congregation who can speak with personal experience about the pain they have faced because they didn’t listen to Solomon’s wisdom when they were younger.
Don’t awaken love until the proper time, and in the proper way. That’s enough about that for the moment. Again, we’ll cover that verse again in later in the book.
Let’s move on to the next section.
In verse 8 we switch to another sense. The sense of hearing. The Sense of Hearing. The bride hears the voice of her beloved, and it excites her.
8 The voice of my beloved!
Behold, he comes,
leaping over the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
Each of us who are married probably can remember a time when the simple voice of our beloved was exciting to us. You looked forward to hearing from them on the phone. You could spend hours just sitting together and talking. That’s what Solomon is describing here.
And how much more would the anticipation be built by living in a time before telephones. When you only got to hear the voice of your suitor when they came to visit.
But what does the king do with his voice. The woman continues:
9 My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Behold, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
looking through the lattice.
He doesn’t come right up to the crowd. It’s like he’s whispering quietly, through the lattice, from behind the bushes: Pst. Hey. He’s trying to get her attention discreetly. And what does he say? Verse 10:
10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come away,
11 for behold, the winter is past;
the rain is over and gone.
He’s saying it’s time. The right season has arrived. Winter is over. Spring time has come. Verse 12:
12 The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree ripens its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
But he’s not simply concerned with the seasons. He wants more.
Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come away.
14 O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the crannies of the cliff,
let me see your face,
let me hear your voice,
for your voice is sweet,
and your face is lovely.
The king wants to get away with the bride. He wants to spend time together. He wants to spend quality time with his bride, whom he finds pleasant and beautiful. That’s what most young people want when they are dating. They want to get away, to sit and talk, they want to learn more about each other, they just want to be together, to hear each other’s voice.
And we can take a few lessons here from the Shepherd king. First, for those that are married, do you use your voice like the king does here? Initiating, complimenting, wooing your spouse. Showing your desire for them by asking to spend time with them.
Most marriages start off well in that way, but over time, through the business of life or through inattention, the relationship can grow cold. There’s no wooing. No pursuit. No sweet whispers of love and complements on appearance.
The things that used to excite you, like the simple voice of your beloved, no longer engages you.
In fact, if we’re not careful. The opposite can slip in. Rather than the voice being sweet and soothing to the ears, we can have the opposite effect.
Proverbs says that our words can serve one of two ways: either as sword thrusts, or has a healing balm. When we speak with harshness or bitterness, when we speak with irritation or frustration, when we speak with anger, it’s like daggers to our spouse. Rather than wooing, it makes them repulsed.
In fact, Proverbs says that it’s better to live out on the roof, or in the middle of the desert, than to live in the house with a quarrelsome or nagging wife. Our words, from the man or the woman, can bring life and refreshment, or can bring death and resentment.
We can unify and woo, or we can divide and repel. Death and life are the in the power of the tongue, scripture says. Which one more characterizes your speech? Would your spouse find your voice lovely? Or repulsive?
The voice of the king in our text is delightful to his beloved. And in as much as every marriage is a picture of Christ and his bride, the church, there’s encouragement that we can draw from this king.
Christ is the faithful bridegroom, and his voice is always sweet to his beloved.
Consider again what we saw from Proverbs, and how it relates to Christ. Proverbs 12:18:
There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts,
but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
Christ was never rash with his words. Rather, his words bring healing. Consider how he spoke in the gospels.
He spoke words of consolation to the grieving widow at Nain.
He spoke words of protection and forgiveness to the woman caught in adultery.
He spoke words of consolation to the disciples in the upper room.
He spoke words of comfort, saying that even though he had to go away, he would send the Holy Spirit who would guide and comfort them.
He spoke words of peace to the disciples after the resurrection.
And even now, he speaks to you, a word of forgiveness and grace. If you find yourself failing to use your voice as you should, if you’re prone to be bitter and nagging, angry and harsh, then know that you can be forgiven.
Your faithful shepherd, king Jesus, came and perfectly used his voice for good. He brought healing, rather than death to his bride, and he’s speaking to you now to know that you are forgiven. You’re washed. You’ve been brought from death to life, and he gives you His very own Holy Spirit so that you can grow to speak like him.
I hope you find his words to you refreshing and encouraging. Think about how he’s used his tongue, and how he speaks to you today through his word. And as your soul is healed through his voice, you can go back to your marriage with renewed strength and love.
We can grow in our speech. To be loving and patient, rather than harsh and bitter. We can forgive, because we have been forgiven so much by Him. We can be givers of life through our tongue, rather than agents of death. We can be unifiers and peacemakers, rather than contentious dividers.
Isn’t that what we want to be? Proverbs 16:13 says that righteous lips delight the king, and so make it your aim to delight your king by growing to have increasingly righteous lips.
But before we leave this voice of the king, I think there is one further application for us. If the woman in the text delights in the voice of her shepherd king here, what ought that teach us about our delight in the voice of our king?
The bride of Christ ought to have a persistent and expectant delight to hear from her beloved king. And how do we hear the voice of our bridegroom? We hear it in his Word.
We sing it all the time:
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
is laid for your faith in God’s excellent Word!
What more can be said than to you He hath said,
to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
Christ speaks through his word, and speaks words of grace and life to his Bride. And yet, how often do we neglect his voice? We spend our days full of distraction, full of a million other voices, and then sit there and wonder to ourselves, “why does Christ seem so distant from me?”
We say we want to hear Christ, that we want to know him more, and yet we spend so little time with him. We don’t go away with him alone. We don’t speak to him in prayer. We neglect the means of communion that he’s given us.
Rather than approaching his word with expectancy and anticipation, we let the Bible gather dust on our shelf, and let our prayer life grow cold.
Or to push it further, we could ask ourselves: what’s the posture of my heart as you come to church to hear Christ’s word preached to me? In as much as a sermon aligns with the word of God, it is as if Christ himself is speaking to his bride personally, and if that is the case, then what does it say about us when we come to church out of cold duty? We can even feel reluctance in our hearts as we approach the preaching of the word.
We should come to church expectantly, joyfully, eager to hear from our beloved Bridegroom. He’s prepared a message for us to feed us, and he’s ready to speak a word of life to us.
And yet so often we come reluctantly. We come critically, ready to reject the entirety of the sermon because it wasn’t what WE wanted to hear. We let our own pride and our worldly distractions keep us from hearing the life-giving voice of our king.
Our prayer should be: Father forgive us for neglecting the voice of our king. Remind us again of the good news that Christ’s perfect work is the only reason we believe at all, and keep us from distraction. Keep us humble and expectant. Make our hearts eager to hear the voice of our bridegroom.
Let’s us join with the Psalmist and say “Incline my heart to you, oh Lord” (Ps 119:36), and “Satisfy me with your steadfast love” oh God (Ps. 90:14).
Believers, train your heart to be eager to hear from your bridegroom. Discipline yourself to hear from him. Make His voice the desire of your heart, and he will grant you what your heart desires.
And above all, remember his voice, which cried out, “it is finished.” His atoning work is complete. All that was needed for your forgiveness has been paid. Your relationship with your bridegroom is secure, because HE has made it so.
But, I must also warn you, if you are listening and you don’t trust in Christ, if he is not your bridegroom by faith, then know that you WILL hear his voice again. If you reject the voice of Christ now, you will hear it again on the last day.
And you won’t hear it as a gentle shepherd king.
Nor will his voice be simple whispers through the lattice. His voice will be public, for all to hear. Unmistakably audible, and triumphant.
You’ll hear his voice as judge. Christ will return with a sword, and he will judge between the sheep and the goats. He will finally separate the bride from the world, the believers from the unbelievers, and he will cast the unbelievers into eternal judgment.
Why would you reject his sweet voice now, which is wooing you to repentance and faith, and instead wait to hear his voice on the last day? Don’t wait. His voice calls now. His word is clear. Trust in the great bridegroom, and don’t delay, lest your rejection of his gracious voice now store up a voice of wrath to come.
Now, let’s move to the final section of this chapter, and look at some foxes. The foxes that spoil the vineyard of love. That’s the final point. The foxes that spoil the vineyard of love.
Look at verse 15:
15 Catch the foxes[e] for us,
the little foxes
that spoil the vineyards,
for our vineyards are in blossom.”
Spring has sprung, blossoms are on the tree, the vineyard of love is thriving. Everything seems great, we might even say it sounds like the garden of Eden, but then the attention turns. The foxes here are the only negative element in this section of poetry which is otherwise quite idyllic.
The bride asks the bridegroom to remove the things that could spoil their love. It doesn’t say exactly what these foxes are. Perhaps they are other suitors who might draw her attention from her king. Perhaps they are her brothers, mentioned in chapter 1, who might not want her to be married and released from her work in their vineyard.
Whatever they are, the bridegroom pleads, indeed prays, that the shepherd king would rid the vineyard of their love of these pesky problems.
What are some of these foxes that we can experience in our relationships?
One fox we might say is apathy. Apathy. Laziness. Some people get into a pattern of laziness in the marriage, and they feel like they can coast. They liked it and so they put a ring on it, they’ve won the prize, now they can quit. The hard part is over, they think, and so they can relax.
That’s a dangerous place to be. We all need to be reminded that our marriages take effort. It takes work. It’s no wonder that Solomon uses a garden as a prime picture in this book about marriage. A garden without tending will soon be overrun with weeds, and so too will a marriage.
It takes intentionality to pursue love. It takes cultivation to remove the weeds. It takes fertilizing and tending to ensure lasting fruitfulness. Don’t fall into the trap of apathy, because you can rest assured that Satan loves nothing more than to undermine marriages by setting loose as many foxes as he can, and foxes multiply rapidly. Apathy is a dangerous fox.
But another fox we can experience in marriage is stagnation. Stagnation. This one is often related to apathy, but it is more experiential. Marriages go through seasons, just like the seasons mentioned in our chapter. Some seasons are easier and some are harder. Sometimes God allows couples to experience a season of stagnation, where things feel cold, sterile, where the soil in the garden seems especially rocky, where the weeds feel especially difficult to remove.
I think that God does that in part to remind us of the spiritual battle that’s taking place. We can take our eye off the ball, and sort of lulled to sleep. Routine takes over. Nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing unexpected. Pursuit gets replaced with patterns. Romance gets replaced by routine.
Foxes creep in, and can chew through a once thriving vineyard of marriage. Don’t let your marriage grow cold and stagnate. Too much is at stake. Your relationship won’t work if you put it on cruise control and take your hands off the wheel.
In a world where thorns and thistles grow constantly, we must take our job of tending the vineyard just as seriously, lest our marriage languish on the vine.
A third fox that can grow in our marriage is distraction. Distraction. Again, this is not unrelated to some of the other foxes, but distraction is different from apathy because a distracted person is often busy. If an apathetic person is lazy, a distraction person can look like the opposite.
His or her attention is focused and they are doing things, but they aren’t doing the most important things. Maybe they’ve let their schedule consume them, taking on too much. Maybe they let their less important things, like a hobby or interest, take the priority away from more important things, like their marriage.
Paul says in Ephesians 5: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time.” We’re not called simply to fill our time and be busy, but to make the best use of our time. How might your marriage change if you applied that verse to your relationship with your spouse? Making the best use of your time.
Perhaps you’d turn off the tv and spend more time talking. Perhaps you’d spend less time on your hobby or one your phone, and more time with your hubby.
Don’t let distraction slowly undermine your marriage, because foxes are crafty, they slip in unnoticed, just like distraction, and if we aren’t careful, they’ll destroy a whole vineyard in short work.
But a final fox that can slip in is the fox of separation. Separation. I don’t necessarily mean somebody moving out of the house, though that is one unfortunate end if this fox is not caught. Rather, I mean relational separation.
Often times in our marriage sin is committed, by one or the other or both, and if not rightly dealt with, that sin will create a crack in our fencing. And if that crack is not mended promptly, it can spread. Foxes will wedge themselves in the crack, and soon the garden is destroyed.
Sometimes the fox is resentment. Sometimes it is bitterness. Sometimes it is having a critical spirit. Whatever the initial fox is, it will grow and bear more little foxes. Contempt and disdain. Hardness. Coldness. Distance. Separation.
Part of maintaining the healthy vineyard of a relationship is mending fences quickly. Reconciling. Talking about whatever the problem is, naming the sin, and seeking forgiveness for the ways we’ve failed.
Marriages, like gardens, don’t grow strong and healthy on their own. We must not tolerate relational separation in marriage, because if untended, that fox can grow to terrorize the whole vineyard.
And a word to those listening who see many foxes in your vineyard, sometimes we need to get outside help. If you’re trying to remove foxes and not seeing success, please get help. Talk to someone older in the church who seems to have a healthy marriage. Ask them for wisdom. Talk to your pastors, we do marriage counseling all the time.
Don’t let the foxes grow and pillage the vineyard. Get help sooner, rather than later.
Apathy, stagnation, distraction, and separation. Those are four foxes that can destroy a marriage.
But let’s not also neglect to apply these to our relationship with Christ either. The bridegroom has established a relationship with every believer, and you better believe that Satan delights to let foxes lose in that relationship as well.
I won’t go deep here, but ask yourself, “what foxes am I prone to let slip into the garden of my relationship with Christ? How am I being tempted?”
Is it Apathy in the Christian life, whereby believers grow lazy in the things of God? They drift from the word of God and fellowship of the saints, letting sin get a foothold.
Or stagnation, perhaps due to neglect. They grow cold in prayer, speaking only to Jesus when they say a 5 second prayer before dinner. Content with a lifeless walk with Christ, and exposing themselves to the temptation of Satan.
Or maybe Distraction. Letting their attention be pulled away from eternal things. Fixating on all manner of ideas and practices, rather than tying their obedience and doctrine to what is clearly revealed in God’s word.
Or maybe Separation. Here, we need not fear that our Bridegroom will separate from us permanently. Christ says very clearly in His word that nobody can snatch his sheep out of his hand.
But we can experience a relational distance from him. For example, Paul speaks of grieving the Holy Spirit, which we can do when we persist in unrepentant sin.
Let us not tempt the Spirit to withdraw his ministering presence from us by choosing sin over righteousness. Confess the sin. Reconcile with Christ. Restore the relationship.
And in all of these ways, remember what Christ says of his beloved.
16 My beloved is mine, and I am his;
he grazes[f] among the lilies.
And how long will this relationship be?
17 Until the day breathes
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle
or a young stag on cleft mountains.
All night, until the sun rises and the shadows flee. The bridegroom does not leave his bride in the alone darkness. Rather, He stays with her until the morning sun allows them to see each other face to face.
That’s the love that Christ has for his bride as well. He’ll be with her until that final day, when the Sun rises for the last time, and He brings his bride up out of her grave into his perfect garden, the eternal vineyard, where the final wedding feast will take place.
