As you may know, our teaching theme for this year here at First Presbyterian Church is “The Love of God: Vast, Unmeasured, Boundless, Free.” And to help us reflect on that theme we begin a new series of sermons today examining the teaching of the Song of Songs. It’s a book about love, pure love in a world where love is distorted, commercialized, and marketed. Love has been cheapened by pornography, made fragile by abuse, poisoned by obsession, trivialized by entertainment. Love comes to us often with strings attached. Love is too often toxic and controlling or permissive and indulgent. Love is fleeting and elusive. We are starved for real love.
But the Song of Songs is an unashamed and exuberant celebration of love in its holy hypes and beauties. The song wants to do more of course than merely tell us about true love. It wants to lead us into an experience of real love – the love of Jesus Christ for ourselves. That’s why, in my judgment, the Song of Songs has never been more relevant or more urgently needed than it is in our own day.
Let me invite you then to take your Bibles in hand and turn please to page 561 in our church Bibles. God helping us, we’re going to do four things this morning. We’re going to wrestle with some important preliminary questions about how to interpret this book as we get started on our journey through the song. And with that foundation laid, we are going to notice three themes in the opening section – verses 2 through 4 – of chapter 1. First, we’ll think about longing for love. Longing for love in the first part of verse 2 and the first part of verse 4. Then secondly, we’ll notice reasons for love in the second part of verse 2 and in verse 3. And finally, we’ll think about rejoicing in love in the remainder of verse 4. Longing for love, reasons for love, rejoicing in love. Before we get to all of that, let’s pray together and then we’ll read God’s holy Word. Let us all pray.
Lord our God, our loves are often idolatrous things, fixed on what we ought not to love, ought not to pursue. We run after other lovers. Have mercy on us. And as we open the words of the song, beginning today and in the weeks ahead, would You show us that in Jesus Christ there is a love that exceeds and excels all other love, offered to us in the Gospel. And draw us, Lord Jesus, O Holy Spirit, draw us to Him who is the great lover of our souls. For we ask it in Christ’s name, amen.
The Song of Solomon, chapter 1 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine; your anointing oils are fragrant; your name is oil poured out; therefore virgins love you. Draw me after you; let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers.
We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you.”
Amen.
Well as we begin, we do need to take a moment, a few beats here, to get our interpretive bearings. The Song of Solomon, I suspect for most of us, is rather unexplored territory. And that is true, tragically, because Song of Songs is one of the least read and least preached on books in holy Scripture, mainly because the scholarships since about the end of the 19th century has rejected the historic interpretation of the book, reducing it to little more than a romantic poem, or in the view of some interpreters, a disconnected series of poems celebrating purely human love at best or even viewing it with the dubious assistance of Freudian puns as a crass, almost pornographic depiction of human sex and sexuality at worst. And all of that, coupled with the thick imagery of this extended Hebrew poem, all of that is enough to scare many people, including many preachers, away from the song for good. But I believe it is a great mistake to hang a “No Entry” sign at the front door of the Song of Songs. It is, after all, part of the Word of God for us. And so to refuse to wrestle with its message is to rob ourselves of the blessing God intends for us in it. We are impoverished if we neglect the song.
So let’s start by looking at the title of the song. You see it there in verse 1 – “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.” And my first brilliant insight from that title is that this is a song! As obvious as that might sound, it’s actually really very important for understanding the material before us. This is poetry. It’s not a straightforward story. It’s not mere history. It is not a tightly argued polemic. It’s a love song, full of metaphor and symbolism. It is beautiful art. It’s not an epistle like Romans or a book of law like Deuteronomy. It’s poetry, and so it’s meant to awaken, it’s meant to hit our affections as much as it is to instruct our understanding. It’s a love song designed to lead us into love, seeking to awaken us to the depths and power of love in all its sacred fullness. And you don’t do that with a math equation or a logical syllogism. You do it with a ballad, don’t you. You do it with a love song. And that means as we work through the text together, we’re not going to try to interpret every detail or unpack every metaphor. Much of this material is suggestive and allusive. We won’t be wielding an exegetical scalpel to dissect the song like a tissue sample in a laboratory. We’re dealing with the intoxicating power of love expressed in the greatest love song in Scripture. And so we need to try and see and feel and taste the beauty and the artistry of the Song of Songs as we go.
And that means, secondly, second insight, this is the “Song of Songs” – it’s a Hebrew way of saying this is the greatest of all songs, the most sublime song. On that point, it’s been a common place of interpreters across the ages to point out the parallel, which is actually really quite rare in Hebrew literature. With the way the song is described in verse 1 and the way the inner sanctuary in the temple, the holy of holies, the Song of Songs, the holy of holies was described. So for example, Rabbi Akiva, a Jewish interpreter writing around the end of the first century, said of the song – quote – “No man in Israel ever disputed that the Song of Songs is holy. For all the ages are not worth a day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel. All the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.” That’s a very different attitude, isn’t it, to our modern uncertainty and nerves and even discomfort about the song. “All the ages are not worth a day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel.” It is precious. Not to be missed. And so the song isn’t just another love song, one among many. It is the Song of Songs – the greatest of all songs.
Now it is, on its surface, very clearly a celebration of the romantic love between a man and a woman. But if it is the greatest of all the songs, can that really be its central burden and message? Does a song celebrating merely human romance rise to exceed in value and worth every other song in Scripture so that the rabbi, Rabbi Akiva, would liken it to the holy of holies amongst all the texts of God’s Word?
That question brings me to the third thing to consider as we prepare to work through the book together. We need to read the Song of Songs as holy Scripture. James Hamilton, whose little commentary on the Song of Songs is excellent – here it is right here. If you want to get this book, if you’re looking for a companion to read along with this sermon series, it’s not very long; it’s incredibly accessible and immensely helpful. Let me commend it to you – The Song of Songs – A Biblical, Theological, Allegorical and Christological Interpretation – James Hamilton, Christian Focus Publications. Super helpful. James Hamilto says this – “The song is in the Bible. That means we should read the song in light of the bigger story that is unfolding in the whole Bible. We should read the song as summarizing and interpreting the big story of the Bible, contributing to it, depicting it, in verse.” That’s a basic principle, really, of all sound, Biblical interpretation, isn’t it? We should always read every book of the Bible in light of its connection with and contribution to the total storyline of Scripture.
And we don’t suspend that principle once we finish with Ecclesiastes and then skip all the way to Isaiah. If this is the greatest of all songs, and it is a Scriptural song, then its central message must also be the central message of the Scriptures. And that is not the mundane, albeit beautiful romance of one man and his bride. No, the central message of the Bible is the union of Jesus Christ and His Church, which the Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testaments describe in terms of a marriage between the great bridegroom and His bride, His people. This is a love song, and so it does indeed have much to say to us about earthly, romantic relationships, but it was not inspired simply or even mainly to be a manual of Christian romance or marriage. Rather, it sings the love song of Scripture, the love song of great Dvaid’s greater Son, the greater than Solomon who has come – the Lord Jesus Christ. And it sings the delight of His bride, the Church, for Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.
I am persuaded that the song was inspired to communicate as its primary meaning the great love of Messiah for His people. And we are going to read it, therefore, as a Gospel song – a song full of hope for ultimate, everlasting, redeeming love in a dark, loveless world. Yes, the song uses the imagery of a human marriage to teach us about this ultimate love, and there are therefore legitimate, necessary, important lessons for us to draw along the way about husbands and wives, about longing for love, waiting for love, about sexuality and purity and about joy in the union of one man and one woman in the sacred bonds of marriage. All of that is true; we mustn’t miss that. But the big idea here is about Jesus and His people. That’s not a secondary use of the song; it’s the central message and big idea – Jesus and your soul. Jesus and His people. This song is inviting you into the intimacy of living, felt, personal fellowship and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, the lover of your soul.
That the song was always meant to point to the Messiah and His love for His people is reinforced, as I hope to show you as we work through the material, in a number of different ways throughout the text. We’re going to see, for example, that everything in the song essentially takes place in two locations. It all happens in a city and in a garden. These are sometimes used metaphorically by the speakers in the song to describe and celebrate the characteristics of their beloved. But sometimes they are simply the geographical setting for their interactions with each other. What’s important, as we’ll see in the coming weeks, is that the pair of lovers in the song are described very much like Adam and Eve dwelling together in a perfect, unfallen garden where there is no evidence of the curse that broke the world to be found.
And that garden in the text blurs into a city and back again. It is the city of God, the city of the great king, the city of Jerusalem. But it is also a walled garden, a paradise of unfallen delights. And there, Solomon lives, verse 1 tells us. In chapter 7 verse 13, his bride is called the “Shulamite.” A Shulamite may refer to her place of origin. She is from Shulem or Shunem perhaps. But the name, Shulamite, is really simply the feminine form of Solomon. So she is, we might say, Mrs. Solomon. That’s what it means. And both names, Solomon and Shulamite, have as their root the Hebrew word for “peace” – shalom. As by the way does “salem” in the second half of the name “Jerusalem.” Solomon and Mrs. Solomon live in Jerusalem, this city of peace, which their love makes into an Eden restored.
And that is the Gospel story in a nutshell, isn’t it? David’s son, a second Adam, come to fix what Adam the first destroyed. And His love for His bride makes her like Himself. The Prince of Peace makes her the daughter of peace. And they live together in this city of peace which blossoms through their loving union like the garden of Eden with the curse undone at last. Isn’t that precisely the picture that the apostle John sees at the close of the book of Revelation when he sees the heavenly city, new Jerusalem, descending from heaven from God as a bride adorned for her husband. And there is a river running through the city with a tree on either side. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. There is a garden city, paradise regained, Zion redeemed. That’s very much the picture in the background of the Song of Songs.
But wait a minute, you might be saying. There’s one big problem with all of this. Here it is. Solomon was a rotter. That’s the problem. Solomon was a rotter. He was a bad dude. First Kings 11:3 tells us that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And 1 Kings says his wives turned away his heart to worship pagan gods. So this guy has an appalling track record, especially when it comes to marriage and romance and human love. So how do we square the idealized picture of monogamous, faithful, marital love in the song with Solomon, the backsliding womanizer? I think the best way is the way Hamilton, in his little commentary, suggests that we read the song. We should read it much like the book of Ecclesiastes as the reflections of Solomon toward the very end of his long life, looking back in repentance after years indeed of backsliding and sin and infidelity.
Listen to Hamilton again. He says, “Books like Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs can be read as statements of repentance, indicating that their author recognized how things should have gone and how he had failed.” In other words, the song isn’t really Solomon’s description of one of his real, historical marriages – one of the 700 – so much as it is a repentant portrayal of the marriage that ought to have been, of the Solomon who never was, of the true king he failed to be but for whom God’s people were waiting and longing. We don’t need to try and force the song into the historical narrative of 1 Kings, asking which of his wives the song is talking about. This is Solomon telling us about the man he now realizes he ought always to have been all along but never was. It’s Solomon pointing away from himself to his greater Son who would be the true Prince of Peace, the one that he and we all really need.
And so that’s going to be our approach to the song. And I want you to keep all of that in mind as we turn our attention now to the first section of chapter 1 there in verses 2 through 4. And we’re going to think about three things here, remember – longing for love, reasons for love, and rejoicing in love.
Longing for love, first of all. So imagine yourself, you are going to a venue to hear a singer, a small place, intimate, the audience are sitting at tables, there’s candles, the lights are low, moodlighting, you know. And typically in situations like that when the curtain rises, the singer emerges, the first song sort of eases you into their set. It starts quietly and slowly and it builds and it builds and it builds. That’s not what happens however here as the Shulamite takes the stage. Is it? Look at verse 2. There’s no easing in; no gentle beginning. The song starts with the Shulamite belting it out at the top of her voice, straight in at the high note. In verse 2, she’s Whitney Houston at the crescendo of “I Will Always Love You.” Do you see that in verse 2? The song starts already full of passion and urgency and longing. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!” Alright. We know where we stand at least. She’s head over heels for this guy, and she wants the nearest intimacy with him that she can enjoy.
Notice, by the way, she is entirely unashamed of this longing for his kiss. We are going to see this Eden-like, unashamed stance all the way through this song. This is not seedy or illicit. The Song of Songs is not a book of schoolboy innuendo to snicker at. This is joyous and good and pure, the way human sexuality was always meant to be before we broke it by our sin. “We were made for each other,” she’s saying. “I want to be as close to him as I can be.” “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!”
Now the Shulamite, you’ll notice, is talking here to her companions, isn’t she? She calls them “the virgins” in verse 3. They are “the daughters of Jerusalem” in verse 5. They actually appear throughout the story in various ways along the way to help or challenge or celebrate with the Shulamite as the plot of the song unfolds. There is a sort of a plot in the song, a story arc as it were, so the song moves largely from courtship in the opening chapters to marriage and consummation in chapter 4 to a disruption in relationship in chapter 5 to eventual restoration of their union at the end. But the song doesn’t start, actually, at the beginning of their romance with the courtship as we might expect. It starts in these opening four verses from the vantage point of the Shulamite as an already married woman. As she puts it in verse 4, “The king has brought me into his chambers,” already as a married woman. And here she is, she still says, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!”
We know, don’t we, that love, if it’s not carefully cultivated and worked at, can grow cold. Here is the Shulamite, Mrs. Solomon, and her desire, her longing is still bright and strong, long after she said, “I do.” She is longing for her husband’s kiss. The bride longs for the king’s presence and for close intimacy with him. As a Christian, you may know already indeed the love of the King of kings for yourself. The one to whom Solomon points us here may already have come and made you His own, years past. But let me ask you if your ardor for Him as grown cold of late. Do you still long with passion and zeal to be near to Him and to enjoy His fellowship, to have conscious, felt communion with the King of Zion? Maybe the truth is that you find yourself not breathing out the same longing as the Shulamite here but actually looking back over your Christian life of late and saying with Cowper, “Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul refreshing view of Jesus and His Word? What peaceful hours I once enjoyed, how sweet their memory still, but they have left an aching void the world can never fill!” Is that you? You need to know the whole focus of the Song of Songs is to stir up again your longing for Jesus Christ so that you seek Him and find Him “whom your soul loves.” Its great purpose is to restore and reignite the passionate love of the Bride for the Bridegroom, the Church for her Savior, the Christian for Christ. How we need this book.
Now if you look down at verse 4, you’ll see this same note of ardor and longing sounding again. Do you see it in verse 4? “Draw me after you,” she says to him. “Let us run.” She is looking here for her husband now to take the initiative. If the intimacy she craves is to be fulfilled, he must draw her after him. Husbands, perhaps you feel like your wife doesn’t desire you as once she did and the fire and the ardor has grown cold in your marriage and it hurts your heart. But could it be, actually, that you no longer take the initiative to pursue her as you once did? “Draw me after you,” she says to him.
Notice, by the way, she is not speaking directly to her husband. Did you catch that? She was talking in the first part of verse 2 to her companions, expressing her longing – “Let him kiss me.” But since the second part of verse 2, she’s transitioned now to speaking directly to him. She knows, after all, he’s not a mind reader, and so she tells him plainly what she wants. “Draw me after you. Pursue me. Lead me. Draw me after you.” Husbands, you must pursue your wives. Wives, you should invite your husbands into that pursuit and speak plainly to them. They’re only knuckledragging men after all; they’re not mind readers!
But there’s a deeper lesson here for our spiritual lives surely. Suppose your felt communion with Christ has indeed grown cold. What then? Why not make the cry of verse 4 your prayer to the Lord Jesus? This week, every morning, would you go to Him and say, “Lord Jesus, draw me after You. I can’t work my way up to You. I need You to come down to me. I need the initiative of sovereign grace. If Thou hast drawn a thousand times, O draw me Lord again. Around me cast the Spirit’s band, O draw me Lord again! Lord Jesus, send me the Holy Spirit, into my heart, to shed abroad the love of God once more.” The Shulamite is longing for love. “Draw me after you.” That’s the first thing I want you to see. Do you long for the love of your King or has your love grown cold? These opening words surely are a call to repentance and a call to renew your pursuit of your Savior. Longing for love.
Then secondly, reasons for love. Look again at verse 2 and at verse 3 please. She has two reasons for love. The first is the quality of the bridegroom’s love for her. “Your love,” she says to him, “is better than wine. It’s intoxicating, potent, and I want more.” The way he loves her awakens in her a longing for that long. Do you see that? The way that he loves her – “Your love is better than wine and I want more” – the way he loves her makes her long for his love. What is it John says about the way, about the reasons that we love the Lord Jesus Christ? First John 4:19, “We love” – why? “Because He first loved us.” We need to get this clear, don’t we? Jesus doesn’t begin to love you after you first move toward Him and express your desire to know Him and follow Him and have Him in your life. It’s not your love for Christ, but Christ’s love for you that lies at the foundation of the Christian life. He loved you first; He loved you in your sin and unloveliness. You didn’t make Him love you. His love for you made you love Him. “He loved me ‘er I knew Him, and all my love is due Him.” Solomon’s love is better than wine; that’s why the Shulamite longs to be with him. It’s the quality of his love – it’s power, it’s beauty, it’s sweetness that calls forth from her this ardent response that we see in the text. That’s how it is when Jesus comes and loves us. He loves us first, and the potency and power of His love awakens in us love to Him.
In Ephesians 5, the text to which we’ll have cause to return often in the course of these sermons, Paul points out that Christian marriage is meant to be a picture that preaches to us about Christ’s love for the Church, much in the same way as does the song. If this is how Christ loves His Bride, Paul says husbands ought to also love their wives this way too. “Husbands,” he says, “love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.” Here’s the love that awakens love in her heart – love like this, a love that gives self up for her.
Husbands, this is your calling – a love that gives up self for your wife, that dies to self in order to put her first. This is the love that’s better than wine that echoes the love of the great Bridegroom who loved us and went to the cross to save us and sanctify and beautify us. Sacrificial love like that, it’s demanding, it is hard work, it is the way of the cross, it is God’s call on your life, husbands. And you single men in the church, this is the kind of godly masculinity to which you are being called to aspire. Not the silly machismo that defines maleness by domination and control and calls it leadership, but the costly, courageous, manly, death to self that loving a spouse in a Christlike way demands.
And you single ladies in the congregation, this is what you are looking for in a future mate, isn’t it? Ask yourself, above all else, “Will he put himself aside to care for me and serve me and put my spiritual best at the top of his agenda? Or is he demanding and selfish and petulant and needy?” If he is, run away. He’s not the man for you. “His love,” the Shulamite says, “is better than wine.” It’s the kind of love she wants more of. She loves him because he first loves her with love like this.
The second reason that she longs for Solomon has to do with his character. So look again at the text. She says in verses 2 and 3, “Your anointing oils are fragrant; your name is oil poured out.” This is classic Hebrew poetry. The first line is explained and amplified by the second. “Your anointing oils are fragrant.” He is the anointed king. The anointing oils smell lovely. But then she amplifies her point. It’s really his name that is oil poured out. The name in Scripture is a reference to his reputation, his character. That’s why she adds, “therefore virgins love you.” “Everybody admires you. Your character is such that everyone who looks on you and gets to know you and sees what kind of man you are, they love you.”
Now this language, by the way, of “anointing” keeps the fact that it is the Davidic king, the Lord’s anointed, the one who points us to the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ that is in view. And likewise, the language of “the name” does very much the same thing. It connects back to God’s covenant promises. God told Abraham in Genesis 12, “I will make your name great.” And in 2 Samuel 7 at verse 9, God entered into a covenant with David in which that promise to Abraham, long ago, was repeated. “I will make your name great.” And in the context of that covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7, God then promised him He would establish the throne and kingdom of his son forever. Solomon, whose name is celebrated here, is a type, a picture of that Son. He wasn’t yet the full fulfillment of the promise, but he was a picture of it. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who has been given the great name “that is above every name” as Paul puts it in Philippians 2. “That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
If you do find your zeal to be near Jesus growing cold, and your experience of His presence lacking, what should you do? Well I wonder if part of the problem is you haven’t spent much time of late dwelling on the loveliness of His name, that is, of His reputation, His character, what He’s like. He’s become an assumption, a taken for granted, background reality. The reason the virgins love Solomon, the reason the Shulamite longs for the kisses of his mouth and for him to draw her after him, the reason she sings this whole song is because his name is oil poured out; his character is compelling and attractive. He has the great name.
The real, historical Solomon was a mess of course, but here he is at the end of the train wreck of his life imagining the perfect Solomon, the true King, with the great name whose character compels love. He’s picturing Jesus. Go, meditate on the character of Christ. Think long and hard about what He’s like. Plunder the Scriptures for new descriptions of His love. Do not take Him for granted anymore. You may need to focus your Scriptural lenses to get your picture of Him as sharp and clear and rich and detailed as you can once again. See how His name is oil poured out, fragrant and beautiful and attractive. Let the fragrance of His character fill your nostrils with pleasure and awaken your desire to know Him better.
Longing for love. Reasons for love. And then very quickly as we conclude, rejoicing in love. As the Shulamite finishes her opening speech, her companions respond and join her in celebrating the one she loves. They rejoice in adoring the king. Verse 4, “We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you.” What do you do when the fragrance of the character of the Lord’s anointed reaches you and fills you? What do you do when Jesus’ excellencies and beauties and love for you get ahold of your heart? You sing, don’t you. You sing. That’s what you do. You praise the Beloved.
Secular music in every culture across all the ages is full of love songs, isn’t it? When love grips the human heart, people everywhere, across the ages, sing. They can’t help it. They sing. That’s what the daughters of Jerusalem do here. It’s what the Shulamite is doing right throughout the book. “Your love is better than wine,” she and they both all say. Interestingly, right before Paul speaks about husbands and wives loving each other like Christ and the Church in Ephesians 5:18, Paul says, “Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.” There is something better than wine – the Spirit who pours out the love of Christ in the human heart. That’s what you really want. “Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” The love of Christ is better than wine, and those who drink it in open their mouths to exult and rejoice in Him. They sing and make melody to the Lord.
First Presbyterian Church, our singing is a reflection of our ardor for more of Jesus. It is an index of our delight in His love. If you love Him, what should you do? Open your mouth and give Him praise. Longing for love. Are you longing for more of Jesus? This book is for you if you are. Reasons for love. No one is worthy of your love like Him. He deserves the devotion of your heart like no other. He has the great name. And rejoicing in love. When you begin to taste it, fill your lips with the praise of His name and consecrate your lives to His honor and glory. Say to Him with the daughters of Jerusalem, “We will exult and rejoice in you!”
May the Lord make it so. Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, we do love You, but our love is a fickle thing. Prone to wander, Lord we feel it; prone to leave the God we love. That’s our hearts. So Lord Jesus, get ahold of us anew. Show us that Your name is oil poured out, fragrant and beautiful and compelling and attractive. Draw us after You that we may run with You all our days and we will exalt and rejoice in Your love. For we ask this in Your name, amen.