Now if you would take your copies of God’s Word in your hands, or turn in one of our pew Bibles to page 560 and to the Song of Songs that is Solomon’s, Song of Songs chapter 1. Today we get to see the romance between Solomon and his bride, the Shulamite, that was tentative and insecure in the first part of chapter 1, blossom and grow as it moves towards marriage. We begin to see the marriage happens at the end of the third chapter. Solomon’s love for her, we’re going to see, changes her in some radical and dramatic ways. And we are going to trace that change by noticing four themes together – imitation, transformation, anticipation, consecration. Imitation, transformation, anticipation, consecration – four themes that trace the arc of their burgeoning romance. But if you think about it, they also describe the arc of the Christian life. These are the ways that the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, the greater than Solomon, the true and perfect Bridegroom, works in us and changes us – imitation, transformation, anticipation and consecration.
Before we look at each of these, let me ask you to bow your heads with me as we pray and ask for the help of God as we study His Word together. Let us all pray.
Lord Jesus, our prayer continues to be with the Shulamite’s, that You would draw us after You, that we might run together. We do want to know You. We need the ministry of Your Spirit that we might hear Your voice and be drawn to You by Your grace. So come and do that great work among us now by Your Word and Spirit, for Your glory. For we ask this in Your name, amen.
Song of Songs, chapter 1, at the fifteenth verse. This is the Word of God. Solomon says to his beloved:
“Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves.”
She responds:
“Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful. Our couch is green; the beams of our house are cedar; our rafters are pine.
I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.”
Then he replies:
“As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.”
Then her response:
“As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Sustain me with raisins; refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me! 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.”
Amen.
In a 2022 article published in The Journal of Social, Behavioral and Health Sciences, researchers noted what they call “language style matching.” They said it is indicative of satisfaction in the marriages of older couples. They start mirroring each other’s words and phrases and turns of speech. Another study, quite revealingly about the beginnings of romance, was entitled, “Language Style Matching Predicts Relationship Initiation and Stability.” In other words, love, real, lasting love, leads us to, is marked by, imitation like this.
And isn’t that very much what we see in the exchange between the Shulamite, Solomon’s beloved, and Solomon himself in verses 15 and 16 of chapter 1? Imitation. That’s the first theme I want us to think about together. He says to her, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves.” And then she replies, verse 16, “Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful.”
You might remember back in verses 5 and 6 of chapter 1 how self conscious the Shulamite was about her sunburned appearance. She doesn’t want anyone looking at her. She doubts that Solomon could really want to be with her because her complexion does not fit the culturally accepted norms of outward beauty in her day. But here, Solomon is clearly having none of that, is he? “Behold, you are beautiful, my love; you are beautiful.”
Now as a poor, repressed Brit, I have to confess to you at this point that my instinct is to sort of shuffle my feet and look at the ground and brush past the gushy, romantic language as quickly as possible, which, that means I guess I’m in big trouble because the Song of Solomon is nothing but gushy, romantic language from beginning to end! But actually, this week I tried to sit with this language and let its weight and its power really land with me. And I have to say, that next to the words “I love you,” I’m not sure there are any more impactful words in the language that a man could ever say to a woman than these – “You are beautiful to me. You are beautiful to me.” Solomon not only sees her as beautiful here, when she can’t, but he insists on it with her. Doesn’t he? He proclaims it to her. She declaims and declares her beauty to her. And the repetition that he uses, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love; you are beautiful,” is meant to convey emphasis. He is adamant about this. This isn’t flattery. And to an insecure, fearful heart like hers, these words, they must have been like the sun, suddenly breaking through the fog, bathing her in a warm glow of his affection on an otherwise cold day. “You are beautiful.”
Men, it matters that you see the beauty of your bride, of course it does, but it really matters that you tell her how beautiful she is in your eyes. She needs to hear it. You need to say it. Some of us men, perhaps not a few of us women here too, need to sit with the Song of Songs and learn how to get over ourselves enough to use love language better than we do. Your words matter and your lack of loving words sometimes leaves scars that are at least as difficult to heal than saying the wrong words you’d ever inflict.
Well, given all of that, it’s hardly surprising that these powerful, insistent, loving words from Solomon, they melt her heart, don’t they? They melt her heart, and they draw from her their direct echo in her own language. Do you see that? This couple is engaged in what those academic studies I quoted a moment ago called “language style matching,” aren’t they? She uses his words right back to him. “Behold, you are beautiful my beloved, truly delightful.” This kind of thing is well documented, well studied human behavior in earthly relationships. This is what we do when we fall in love.
But isn’t this also what happens in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and at a far more profound level? I want you to listen to verse 15 again and try to hear in it the voice of great David’s greater Son, the better than Solomon who is here, speaking to your heart. You might feel unlovely. You might see your life as an ugly, regret-filled, shameful thing. Every morning you look in the mirror and feel nothing but reproach for what you can see there. But if you are a Christian today, no matter what you once were before Jesus made you His own, you must not doubt that now He says to you, “You are beautiful, and I love you. You are beautiful, and I love you.” That might be uncomfortable, it may even be hard to accept, but accept it we must. If you trust in Jesus, you are not ugly to Him. You are beautiful in His eyes.
George Burroughs was a 19th century American Presbyterian trained at Princeton Seminary, and he understood our struggles to accept this kind of love language from Jesus. “Feeling our depravity and knowing our shortcomings, we wonder what there can be in us to admire,” he says. “But He whose all present eye sees pure gems in the deep caves of ocean and delicate flowers in secluded retreats of the wilderness, penetrates beyond the outward appearance and notices what is beautiful in the heart. An unseemly shoot, engrafted into a tree, grows more beautiful by growing into the tree till at length it bursts into bloom. We are engrafted into Christ, and as we become more and more one with Him, our beauty increases by His beauty becoming ours.” “Behold,” Jesus says, “you are beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful.”
And when those assuring words from Him, uncomfortable though they might be to hear them, actually penetrate our hearts, they make us respond in kind, don’t they? The one who beautifies us by His grace, whose work in us makes our lives lovely, appears to us to be more and more lovely the more we taste of His love. Jesus takes us in the ugliness of our sin and He washes us and He sanctifies us and He beautifies us by His grace. And the more of that beautifying work He accomplishes in us, the more we see Him to be beautiful to us. And the result of all of that is that we begin to mimic Him. His words appear on our lips. We sound like Him. We begin to reflect His lovely character back to Him. This is, you know, this is His great project in your life, brothers and sisters. This is what He’s up to; this is what He’s doing. Jesus, the lover of your soul, is making you the mirror of Himself that He might delight in your beauty and you might delight in Him. Imitation.
Then secondly, transformation. In the second half of verse 16 through the first verse of chapter 2, the Shulamite continues to respond to Solomon’s loving words. We’ve already seen in the first part of verse 16 how she describes him – “You are beautiful.” Then in the second half of verse 16, she imagines their newlywed home together and she describes it. And then finally in the first verse of chapter 2, she even describes herself. And you’ll notice all along the way in each of these descriptions she’s using garden language, isn’t she. “Our couch is green,” she says. She means it’s lush and verdant, like a well-watered lawn. “The beams of our house are cedar. Our rafters are pine.” So our home is like a forest bower, or some secluded, wooded glade that our love has made alive.
And in 2:1, she even uses garden language for herself. “I am a rose of Sharon; a lily of the valleys.” Just as an aside here by the way, please don’t miss how she has now a very different perspective than the one she started with back in chapter 1 verses 5 and 6, doesn’t she. Back then, she complained about her sun-darkened skin that was the result of working out in the fields. She said her complexion was like the tents of Kedar, so covered in leathery old goatskin. That’s not a very flattering self description at all. But look what Solomon’s love has done to her sense of herself now – “I’m a flower,” she says. “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley. I am a changed person. Like the desert valleys after a monsoon rain.”
The L. A. Times this last week reported that because of the unusually strong El Nino, the driest desert on the planet, the Atacama Desert in Chile, has been subjected to record rainfall, and the result is that seeds that were dormant for forty years have suddenly sprouted, and 6,560 square miles of the most inhospitable wilderness in the world is now carpeted with wildflowers. That’s what she’s saying about herself. “I was a wilderness, and now I am blooming with lilies in the wake of the showers of your love and your care for me. Your love has made a new Eden of my whole dry, dreary world.”
Abusive relationships major in shame, don’t they? They use belittling words. They are coercive and manipulative. They gaslight and they blameshift. They make our fallen world of thorns and thistles worse, not better. But here in the song, we are shown real love as God intended it in action, and it has entirely different effects, doesn’t it? This is what human love, as God means it to be, does in the heart. It’s 1 Corinthians 13:1 and following, isn’t it? “Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” There’s nothing toxic or controlling about it. Love like this makes the desert heart blossom.
The Shulamite has discovered, despite her low estimation of herself, that she is valued and cherished and desired. And the discovery changes her. It communicates worth, even though she feels herself to be completely unworthy. If you are single or preparing for marriage, you need to get this distinction between real love in all its cheap, toggery, toxic counterfeits, you need to get the contrast between real love and all its counterfeits into sharp, clear focus in your mind. Get this straight right now. This is how you are called to love. This is the love you are looking for. And no substitute will do. Love like this.
Of course Solomon, who wrote these words, with his 700 wives and his 300 concubines – 1 Kings 11:3 – never did love like this, did he? His romantic life was a complete mess. And even the best of us now, let’s be honest, we fail to love like this in all the times and in all the ways we should. But again, let’s remember, shall we, that this is a song about the idealized Solomon, not the Solomon who was, but the Solomon who ought to have been but who never was. About a king who loves perfectly. This is really a song about Jesus. Only He matches the penned portrait of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Only He, only His love renovates and transforms our hearts the way that it does the Shulamite in the song.
And I think the garden imagery that the song is sort of crammed full of, especially here, this garden imagery is meant to point us in precisely this direction and lead us to this conclusion. Just take, for example, the way she speaks about herself in chapter 2 verse 1. The only other time in the whole of the Old Testament where the word translated “rose” – “I am a rose of Sharon” – the only other time it appears is in Isaiah 35 verses 1 and 2. It’s translated there – “a crocus.” It’s actually the same word translated “a rose” here in the song. And the prophet is speaking about a day when the Messiah will come and make all things new. And he appears to be using vocabulary drawn from this passage in the Song of Solomon when he talks about this flower; he talks about Sharon. “The wilderness,” he says, “and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus,” or “the rose.” “It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given to it; the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God.” It’s a vision of the Atacama Desert blossoming and carpeted with blooms. It is paradise regained through the arrival of the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The other flower that the Shulamite compares herself to in chapter 2 verse 1 also has deep resonance and connections to God’s plan of salvation. She says she is a “lily of the valleys” or possibly “a lotus.” It’s the same word that’s used in 1 Kings chapter 7, verses 18 and 22, to describe the decorations at the top of the beams in Solomon’s temple. They were carved like opening lotus flowers. And in verse 26 of the same chapter, it’s used to describe this great basin that was fashioned like an opening lotus flower or like a lily in which people could perform ritual washings in the temple.
The whole place, in other words, is meant to look like a new Eden, a second Eden. A stunning visual sermon, preaching the Gospel to anyone who walked through the doors of the temple, telling an Israelite worshiper, “The way back to paradise lost is through the work that is done in this building, in this temple that looks like Eden, mark two. You need sacrifice to atone for your sin to get back to the garden of God. You need priests to intercede with the Lord for you, to open the way to paradise regained.” That was the message of the temple, and all of that of course pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ, the greater than Solomon, who would build a temple not with bricks and mortar but with his own body and with the lives of His people saved by grace, who would offer Himself for us at the cross, a perfect sacrifice atoning for our sin, a great High Priest who ever lives to make intercession for us. And by His wonderful grace, His marvelous work, the way is opened once again for sinners who are otherwise shut out and excluded to come all the way in to the holy of holies, to have fellowship anew with our God who walks, as it were, in the garden in the cool of the day that we may commune with Him.
And in chapter 2 verse 2, there’s more language-style matching in Solomon and the Shulamite’s exchanse. Do you see it? “As a lily among brambles” – he’s agreeing with her description of herself – “As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.” So he’s saying, “All the others are like thornbushes to me, but you are indeed a lily, unique among them all in your beauty.” And then she replies in kind. She matches his sentiment using a different metaphor in verse 3, making the same point. “As an apple among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men.” In other words, they only have eyes for each other. “There’s nobody like you. You’re the one for me.” That’s what they are saying to one another.
And here too, there are deeper, Biblical resonances that we mustn’t miss. When Adam and Eve, our first parents, the first couple, fell into sin, do you remember in Genesis chapter 3, God cursed the ground and told them it would produce thorns and thistles and all their days would be filled with toil, and only in the sweat of their brow would they eat of its fruit. The Shulamite herself was a sunburned, sunblistered figure doing precisely that, knowing full well this experience – toiling in the sweat of her brow in the dusty soil of a cursed world. But now that they are united in love, she is a lily, though she’s blooming right there amidst all these thorns and thistles. He is an apple tree in the forest, and she says she sits in his shadow, verse 3. Because of him, she is no longer exposed to the scorching elements of nature that sin has cursed. He protects her from the blistering sun. And she eats his fruit and it is sweet to her taste, she says. So he sustains her. He provides for her. She isn’t scraping a living from the barren soil, eeking out a meager livelihood from thorns and thistles anymore. They are like a new Adam and Eve, aren’t they, and their love has made the world into a new Eden. The curse has been unpicked and undone. Isn’t that beautiful?
Listen, the Christian Gospel is not a cold, theological abstraction. It’s not a transaction, as if all we needed the Lord Jesus for was to take care of our God problem and then we can handle the rest on our own, thank you very much. “So God is angry with my sin, Jesus dies for my forgiveness, I give Him the requisite, religious performance, turn the crank, He gets God off my case – deal done.” Is that how you think? That is a monstrous distortion of the Christian Gospel. But the good news is that Jesus Christ has loved us and given Himself for us, borne our sin in His body on the tree, at the cross, certainly He has dealt with our sin and guilt. But having dealt with our sin and guilt, He brings us into the joy of union and communion with Himself so that we might begin to taste the reality of a whole new world – a world that is yet to come, breaking into our lives right here and now.
If your religion is a thing of cold, theological transactions, of moral accounts payable and contractual obligations owed, if that’s your Christianity, it’s like the Atacama Desert before the monsoon rains – a lifeless wilderness, void of the faith that alone really brings us into abundant life. Jesus doesn’t want you to tick His boxes and jump through His hoops. He wants you and He wants to give Himself to you. You were made for another world, a garden of delights, full of joy and rest and fellowship with Him. You need to stop trying to cut a deal with Jesus in exchange for services rendered and accept in meekness and repentance and childlike trust His offer of love and pardon and new life. That’s what He has for you. I wonder if you’ve missed it. Imitation. Transformation.
Thirdly, anticipation. In verse 4, Solomon has brought the Shulamite into his banqueting house. Do you see that? I take that to indicate they have now become what we would say as they’ve become engaged, the beginnings of an extended betrothal ceremony and celebration, which was not uncommon in the ancient near east, is now underway. They’re having a party, and in comes the memorable line – the choir sang it so beautifully a few moments ago – “His banner over me was love.” So his banner flies over the ramparts of the castle of her heart. He has conquered her. His love has conquered her and he’s with her now and he’ll never leave her.
In Edinburgh, back in Scotland, everybody in the city knows when King Charles is present at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Everybody knows. How do they know when the king is resident? Because the royal standard flies from the flagpole only when the king is at home. The Shulamite is saying, “Solomon’s banner declares for all to see the king has conquered me. He rules my heart and he’s here with me. He’s with me now; he’s resident in my heart forever.”
Do you know that Jesus never saves covertly? You know that, right? He never conquers us in secret. His banner flies over everyone He saves. His loves is raised like a flag over the lives of everyone He subdues to Himself. You can’t be a follower of Jesus and hide His lordship from the view of the world. Solomon and the Shulamite are both unashamed to let the world know of their love. “His banner over me is love. He has claimed me. I am his and everyone can see it.” So do your classmates know you belong to Jesus? Your roommate? Your work colleagues? Do your neighbors know whose you are? Or have you run the royal standard down the flagpole and hidden it away because you are ashamed to belong to Him who was not ashamed to give Himself for you? Those who know, who really know the love of Jesus Christ, are glad that His banner flies high over their lives for all to see. It preaches and assures them that the King is resident and He will never leave.
So there’s a banquet underway, they are celebrating their forthcoming union, but in verses 5 and 6 there is a discordant note that sounds. Do you see it in verses 5 and 6? She asks him to sustain her with raisins and apples in verse 6. She wants him to hold her up, hold her tight, because, she says, “I am sick with love.” Already she enjoys so much of his love and care, she is reveling in it, and yet she is pining, fading away with a lovesick longing because, as close as they’ve become, they’re not married yet. They’re not one flesh yet. They’ve not begun to live their lives together yet.
You engaged couples, you know all about this, don’t you? You’re head over heels for one another. You’re planning the big day. You’re celebrating. It’s all terribly exciting. But that day hasn’t come yet. You’re not living your new life together yet. It’s hard. It’s a struggle. You’re sick with love. But this sense of the “already” enjoying the love of the bridegroom and the “not yet” has its analogue in our Christian lives too, doesn’t it? Already we know so much of the love of Christ. Already we have the forgiveness of our sins. We are united to Him by His grace. We are adopted into the family of God. We are being sanctified, transformed from glory into glory by the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Already we have so much of the love of the Bridegroom breaking into our lives, but we don’t enjoy it all; not yet. Not as one day we will.
As believers in Jesus this side of the new creation, we are, as it were, we are engaged to be married. He has brought us into His banqueting house and His banner over us is love. We have His pledge, His promise of a deeper union to come. But not yet. Revelation 19:9, the marriage supper of the Lamb, hasn’t come yet. Revelation 21:2, new Jerusalem, adorned as a bride for her husband, coming down out of heaven from God, hasn’t come yet, not yet. We love to sing Isaac Watts’, “Joy to the World,” here at Christmas time, don’t we? But you know it wasn’t written about the birth of Jesus; it was actually written to express longing for the return of Jesus, for the new creation. You can almost hear the Shulamite sing these words, can’t you? “No more let sins and sorrows grow, or thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found.” You can hear her almost in these words here, this vocabulary here, singing Watts’ great hymn.
Are you longing for that great day? It is, I think, a reliable index of the strength of our own loving enjoyment and communion with Jesus Christ here and now to ask ourselves how much we are longing for the day when our fellowship with Him will be complete and consummated and full when we see Him face to face. I was talking to someone this past week who was describing various heavy challenges through which he’s passed, some of the weariness he’s carrying. And he said, “You know, we’re doing fine. The Lord Jesus is helping us. But it all makes us cry even so, ‘Come, Lord Jesus. Come.’” That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? The Lord is helping us already, right now. We know much of His love, His kindness, His grace. But oh, in this world of sin and sorrow, thorns and thistles, we’re longing for Him to come and make it new at last. Are you only living for the here and now, for the fleeting pleasures of a world that is passing away? Or are you sick with love, longing for the day when the Bridegroom comes and He makes the curse, He banishes the curse, and the dry, Atacama Desert of a broken world is carpeted in new blooms as Eden is restored? And are you crying with the Shulamite in the language of the song here till that day comes, “Great Bridegroom, lover of my soul, sustain me and hold me up and hold me tight”?
Imitation. Transformation. Anticipation. And finally and briefly, consecration. Look at verse 7. The Shulamite turns to her companions and says, “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.” So she turns to her friends and she says, “Now I want you to swear an oath. I adjure you” – that’s what it means. “Make a solemn promise and commitment to me now.” The language of the gazelles and the does of the field is a little difficult. Maybe what she means is something like, “Look, you know as well as I do that the wild animals have a mating season. There is an order to nature. Nature follows appropriate times. Surely if they can manage it, we can manage it.” This is a call to sexual purity, and so she demands an oath from them.
You can understand why at this point in the song, sick with love as she is, longing for the day of her marriage union to come, that this warning is entirely apropos. To be godly and pure and chaste – that’s what she’s asking for, a commitment from these young people in her life. Of course in the Bible, just like marriage is the primary image of a believer’s union with God and His covenant of grace, so adultery is the great metaphor for our infidelity and our wandering away. So James 4:4 rebukes us, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” Friendship with the world is a kind of spiritual adultery. It’s infidelity.
And so as we read these words, this challenge to be pure and chaste and godly, we need to hear a broader call to all the ways in which the Lord calls us to consecration and to single hearted devotion to the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly it is the universal teaching of Scripture and the teaching of the Song of Songs – three times over we’ll hear this adjuration, this oath throughout the song – it is the teaching of the song that sex and sexuality is a good gift of God to be gratefully received and enjoyed by His people, but only within the bonds of lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage. That is the teaching of God’s Word. It’s the teaching of the song.
But in the metaphor, the song is developing. We are to understand not just a call to sexual purity but to the entire consecration of our whole selves to be faithful to the Bridegroom, not to commit spiritual infidelity but to pledge ourselves to Him who has given Himself for us. The wedding day is coming soon. Christ the Bridegroom approaches. Will you be found faithful when He comes?
Well, as we come now to the Lord’s Table, we have in the bread and the wine another “already, not yet” moment, don’t we? It’s a little glimpse, a little foretaste of the marriage supper of the Lamb that is coming soon. It’s also a promise, the bread and the wine, it’s a promise that in the meantime while we wait for that great day when the Bridegroom comes, He will sustain us. He will hold us up and hold us tight. And it is a call to renewed consecration, to single hearted devotion to Him who is the lover of our souls. So as we come and sit together around the love feast with the Bridegroom Himself at the head of the table, let’s renew our commitment, by His grace, to live for Him with singlehearted consecration. Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, we bow down and we bless You that You are here with us, the greater than Solomon, the true Temple, the final Sacrifice, the perfect High Priest, the One who opens the way to the garden to have fellowship with God. God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your great work. Forgive us for our spiritual infidelity. Our hearts are prone to wander, Lord, we feel it; prone to leave the God we love. Here as we repent, as we prepare to come to Your Table, Lord Jesus, we renew our marriage vow, our covenant commitment, to cleave to You, forsaking all others, and with our whole bodies, our entire selves, to worship You alone. Accept our prayers and praises, for we ask this in Your name. Amen.