If you would take your copy of God’s Word in hand once again and turn now with me to the Song of Songs that is Solomon’s, chapter 2. If you’re using one of our church Bibles, you’ll find it on page 561.
Last time, we looked together at chapter 1 verses 15 through chapter 2 verse 7 and the early blossoming of love between the Shulamite bride and her fiance, Solomon. And in that part of chapter 2, we saw they were very clearly together in the same physical space, enjoying one another. So for example, we were told he has brought her into his banqueting house in verse 4. The engagement celebrations are underway in other words. Later in verse 6, we find them in an embrace. She says his left hand is under her head and his right hand embraces her. They are wonderfully close and tender; there’s intimacy here between them.
But in our passage this morning, we pick up the reading in chapter 2 verse 8 through to the end of the chapter, we’re presented with a very different picture. The lovers are not together in the same place. There’s distance now, separation, obstacles of various kinds that must be overcome. Look at the passage with me for a moment in verse 8. Solomon is journeying towards her, leaping over mountains, he says, to get to her. In verse 9, having arrived where she is, they are still not together. He is peering through windows and lattices just to get a glimpse of her. Later in verse 10 and again in verse 13, he invites her to come away with him so that they can be together at last. And in verse 14 he tells her he really just wants to see her face. So unlike the previous section of the song, very clearly in this new section it begins with distance between the lovers. What’s going on?
Well I think the Shulamite is reminiscing here. Perhaps she has a specific incident during their courtship in mind, or more likely she’s generalizing and summing up their whole romance leading up to their marriage, which in the rich symbolism of the song’s poetry she describes as a process of overcoming all the obstacles that would otherwise have kept them apart. Now remember, we have been arguing that the song was inspired to be read at two levels. On the first level, there are of course important lessons here for human romantic relationships. But as instructive and beautiful as this story is of human love between the Shulamite and Solomon, we’ve already begun to see, haven’t we, woven throughout the text there are hints and allusions that are designed to evoke the bigger and more beautiful story of salvation. The Song of Songs needs to be read at a second level. It sings the great love song of the Word of God. It sings in celebration of the marriage covenant between the Lord, the Husband, and Israel. The union of Solomon’s heir, the Lord Jesus Christ, with His Bride, the Church. The song teaches us about Jesus and His ways with us and it’s joyous, romantic, and sometimes frankly quite uncomfortable language is meant to shake us out of the routine a little bit and call us back into or invite us for the first time into the depths of an intimate, felt communion with the Lord Jesus.
And that, I think, is especially the case in the rich, beautiful exchange between Solomon and the Shulamite in the verses we will be considering together this morning. At their heart is the passionate love of Christ for His people that overcomes every obstacle that can come between us and Him. That’s the key idea here. Don’t miss it, as part of the song is about the passionate love of Christ that overcomes every obstacle that would come between us and Him. We’re going to consider that theme under two simple headings. First, the bridegroom’s pursuit of his bride in verses 8 through 14. And then secondly, the bride’s response to the bridegroom in 15 through 17. The bridegroom’s pursuit of his bride. The bride’s response to the bridegroom. Before we think about all of that, let’s bow our heads and pray and then we’ll read God’s Word together.
Let us pray.
O Lord Jesus, Lover of our souls, heavenly Bridegroom, You have sought Your Church, bought Your Church with Your own blood, won her to Yourself, married her, yet You continue to seek us and pursue us by Your Word and Spirit. Would You seek us and find us now as Your Word is read and proclaimed, for we ask this in Your name. Amen.
Song of Songs, chapter 2, at the eighth verse. This is the Word of God:
“The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. 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. My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 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. 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. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.’
My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains.”
Amen.
First of all, the bridegroom pursues his bride. The bridegroom pursues his bride. You’ll notice right away how Solomon takes the initiative. Do you see that in verses 8 through 10? The scene opens with the words of the Shulamite exclaiming suddenly that she can hear her beloved’s voice. I wonder, did you ever see the delightful Pixar movie, the animated movie, Up? In the movie, Doug, the golden retriever, will sit attentively, really dialed in listening to someone until he suddenly gets distracted and exclaims, “Squirrel!” Right? You know what I’m talking about? I imagine the Shulamite here in verse 8 having a “Squirrel!” moment. Perhaps she’s talking with her companions about something entirely mundane when suddenly her heart skips a beat and she breaks off midsentence and almost shouts out loud, “It’s him! The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes! He’s here!”
And look how she says he comes to her. He comes leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills, so he comes with eagerness and energy, leaping, bounding, energetically, swiftly. Importantly, you might notice in 8 through 10 the subject of all the verbs are focused on him and his action. He comes. There he stands. He’s gazing. He’s looking. My beloved speaks. All the initiative belongs with him as he rushes to be with her with all the energy and the urgency he can muster. This is how the bridegroom feels about his bride, demonstrated not just in his words but in his actions, in his behavior. Clearly above everything else he just wants to be with her.
And don’t skip past the comparison that she makes of him to a gazelle or a young stag. Do you see that in verse 9? You might remember from last week back in verse 7, the Shulamite demanded an oath, a promise, a commitment from her young female companions about sexual purity before marriage. Do you remember that? She used the same imagery then, didn’t she, in verse 7, only in its feminine form – “I adjure you,” she said to them, “by the gazelles or the does of the field.” So she was saying, “These wild animals have a mating season. Even they follow the order of nature established for them by almighty God. So listen, daughters of Jerusalem, if the wild animals can follow the divinely mandated order, surely we can too.” Right? So the point is sexual purity and chastity before marriage is the call of God, this is God’s order for us, and until the right time comes we must wait. And so she says to them, “Do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” That was verse 7.
But now here in verse 9 it’s not the young women but Solomon himself that she compares to a gazelle or a young stag, the masculine forms of the same animals from verse 7. And that connection between verse 9 and verse 7 is important I think. She is now saying, “My man embodies the kind of purity I just called you all to imitate. He is what you all should be like. However intense his ardor, however strong our love, he will respect the divine boundaries set for us by God. And that means I know I am always safe with him.”
Christian men, brothers, do not be passive. Step up. Take initiative and pursue her. That’s part of your calling. But as you do, don’t overlook the fact that in the song, no matter how eager Solomon is to get to the Shulamite, she can be completely confident in his character and motives. She knows he is already what she called the daughters of Jerusalem to be – pure and committed to God’s design for sex and sexuality. And of course that means that the pursuit we are talking about here isn’t the cheap thrill of the chase. It isn’t another tawdry sexual conquest by a man with no conscience. This is a song that pictures the true and ideal Solomon, remember. This is how the historical Solomon who wrote these words ought to have been in life but never really was. This is about a man of godly character taking the responsibility to be the first to move towards his beloved but doing it with integrity and all purity in obedience to the divine plan and order.
Now look, we live in a hypersexualized society, don’t we, when young people especially are being bombarded relentlessly with images and ideas that objectify people as sexual objects for the libidinous gaze of the voyeur. Increasingly, a good deal of contemporary online culture is designed to validate the illicit indulgence of our worst desires, and so it ought not to be a surprise to us that sexual addiction and deviancy and sexual violence is a growing problem. This is our world. If ever there was a time when we needed the example and the challenge of the perfect Solomon as we meet him here – a king who pursues his lover with eagerness that is nevertheless always tempered by unblemished purity – it is this time. It is now; today. Isn’t it? This is who we are all called to be like in our own romantic relationships and in every expression of human sexuality.
And we are to be like this because this is what the Lord Jesus is like. He is the one to whom Solomon points us here. This is how He has pursued us after all, isn’t it? Eagerly. Urgently. Yet always with our highest, everlasting good in view. How does Paul put it in Ephesians 2? “We were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” All the initiative in our salvation is His entirely. He came in pursuit of us, and His agenda in that pursuit was only our eternal good. He doesn’t use us for His own selfish pleasures. By His Word and Spirit He has sought us and found us and made us His own because of the great love with which He loved us. Like Solomon in the song, Jesus too is the subject of all the verbs in our salvation. He comes leaping over the mountains to us, bounding over the hills. Salvation belongs to the Lord. This is what Jesus is like. And because this is what He is like, this is what we are to be like.
And did you notice that as the bridegroom comes to the Shulamite, as he arrives where she is, she appears to be just as delighted at his voice as she is at his physical proximity. Did you see that? “The voice of my beloved!” she exclaims in verse 8. “My beloved speaks,” verse 10. How does the Lord Jesus come to us today? By what means does He pursue us still? The bridegroom comes to us by His voice. He speaks. “The voice of my beloved!” That ought to be the grateful cry, the grateful heart cry of a healthy Christian whenever he, whenever she hears the Word of God. “The voice of my beloved, He comes!” That’s what’s happening, you know, in the preaching of the Gospel. We are hearing the voice of our beloved. He speaks.
Over the last few weeks we’ve had together in the Song of Songs, we’ve been learning how important words are. And so far, we’ve applied that observation to the way we speak to one another in marriage and in our romantic relationships. But if it’s true that our words, our merely human words in marriage carry this kind of weight, how much more weight ought we to apply to the words of the heavenly bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, the lover of our souls, who speaks to us in the ministry of His Word. In my judgment, grasping that that is what’s really happening, makes all the difference in the world when we sit down to listen to the exposition of the Scriptures on the Lord’s Day. That’s the attitude that we need to cultivate – “That’s the voice of my beloved! He’s here to speak to my heart by His Word and Spirit!” Is that how you think about preaching?
“What did you do this weekend?” The next time you are asked that question, let’s try this answer on for size – “What did you do this weekend?” “Oh, I went to hear the voice of my beloved. Jesus Christ Himself came to me, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills, and He met me and spoke to me.” “Oh really? Jesus came to you?” You know, using that voice you see TV hostage negotiators using with the criminally insane. You know, “Put the gun down sir. It’s going to be okay.” “Jesus spoke to you this weekend? Okay.” And you can say with a smile, “You know it happens every week. Every Sunday morning when the Bible is opened and read and preached we hear the bridegroom’s voice, proclaiming His great love for us. Why don’t you come along with me and you can hear Him too.” “The voice of my beloved. Behold, he comes. He speaks.”
And as he comes to her, you’ll notice there are obstacles to be overcome, aren’t there? There are geographical obstacles in verse 8. He leaps over mountains, runs over hills. There are architectural obstacles between them, keeping them apart. In verse 9, when he arrives he is behind a wall. He’s gazing at her through a window looking through a lattice. There are meteorological obstacles. In verse 11, he invites her to come away with him, which I take to be a reminiscence by her of his proposal of marriage. He’s inviting her to leave her family home and come and join him. And as he does, he says, “Behold, the winter has passed. The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth. The circumstances that stopped me coming are gone now.” You see?
And then in verse 15, in keeping with the pervasive animal imagery we find all through this song, there are even, you might say, zoological obstacles to overcome. Do you see them in verse 15? Probably now in verse 15 it’s actually the Shulamite who is speaking again. And based on the verb forms that she is using, she isn’t actually talking directly to Solomon. She is talking to a group of other people who are listening. In context, probably her companions, the daughters of Jerusalem, are the likely candidates. And she tells them – did you notice – to catch the little foxes that spoil their vineyards. Like animals that invade the garden and eat all the fruit, like deer that get in and eat your tomatoes, she knows there are things that interrupt their love and spoil their fellowship. So there’s a whole array of obstacles to surmount before their relationship can really thrive.
But the message of this part of the song – I want you to see it clearly – is that none of them can keep the beloved from his lover. No providential hindrances – landscape, weather, providence, no human barriers of our own invention like a wall or a window or a lattice, not even living hostility like the little foxes that break in and spoil and wreak havoc – none of it can keep the Lord Jesus Christ from a sinner upon whom He has fixed His love. Jesus will not be kept from His bride. In His incarnation, He came leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills, from the glories of heaven to a manger on earth for us. Throughout His life, as Isaiah 53 puts it, “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hid their faces. He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Yet surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Though we esteemed Him smitten by God and afflicted, He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.” His family all misunderstood Him. His own familiar friend betrayed Him. Every one of His disciples deserted Him. The religious leaders condemned Him and conspired against Him. The civil powers abused authority to murder Him. Satan constantly tempted and assailed Him. Demonic powers everywhere confronted Him. Though Colossians 2:15, “He triumphed over them, putting them to open shame at the cross.”
He silenced the howling wind and calmed the raging sea with a word. He walked over the surface of the water as though it were dry ground. He healed the sick and raised the dead. He turned the day into night with His dying breath. And when death itself claimed Him and He was laid in the tomb, not even the grave could keep our Savior from His bride. And so He rose in victory. He has come for us. He has come for us, and nothing in creation – not Satan, not sin, not even death could keep Him from us.
And He comes to us still, doesn’t He? Still He runs towards sinners whom He loves. His presence draws near, although we experience Him today like the Shulamite here in verse 9 – behind a wall, as it were. We can’t see Him. He sits in heaven at the Father’s right hand, but we hear His voice speaking to us, don’t we? So listen, the Lord Jesus comes to you today, bounding over the mountains, leaping over the hills. And nothing in you – not your sin and failures this week, not your difficult circumstances, not your shameful past, not your present weaknesses, not your lack of understanding, not your guilty conscience – nothing in you and nothing about you will keep Him from you. There are no obstacles between you and the Lord Jesus, the lover of your soul, that He cannot, does not overcome to bring you to Himself. You are not beyond His reach. You are not too far gone. You are not too messed up, too dirty, too bad, too broken for Him. You’re not.
And having arrived at his beloved’s home, having overcome all these obstacles to get to her, he issues his invitation. Twice over, in verse 10, in verse 13, he says the same thing. There’s emphasis and importance here. “Arise my love, my beautiful one,” he says, “and come away.” And then in the lovely description of spring that the choir actually sang to us so beautifully a few moments ago in verses 11 through 13, he’s telling her effectively, “Look, the time has come. The day has arrived. Let’s get married. Let’s be one flesh at long last.” That’s what he’s saying. “Winter is over. The land is flowering,” verse 11. “The birds are singing,” verse 12. “The fruit on the fig tree and on the vines, they’re all ripening,” verse 13. “All the obstacles have been overcome. Every hindrance has been surmounted, and now the time is right. Nothing remains, nothing remains but for you to answer my invitation and arise and come away with me. No more delays. No more objections.”
I want you to see as the Shulamite saw that he loves you. He loves you, and he has come for you. He has given his all for you. And now all things are ready and he is here, inviting you to Himself. Twice over he says it, arguing, pleading, urging, summoning his bride to come and marry him who has come for her. And then he adds in verse 14, “Let me see your face. Let me hear your voice. Let me hear your voice.” She can hear his; now he wants to hear hers. In other words, it’s time to reciprocate; it’s time to answer.
This is the call of Jesus Christ to you this morning. Will you stop throwing up barriers and obstacles? Stop pointing to your unworthiness. Stop arguing it’s not the right time. Hebrews 3:15, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.” Today, the Bridegroom is calling to you. Today. Can’t you hear Him? He’s calling to you in His great love. Don’t harden your heart. He wants you to come to Him. “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden. I want to give you rest. I have rest for you. Just come. Come away with Me, My love, My beautiful one. Every obstacle has been taken care of, every barrier removed, every objection answered. The time is now. Today. Here.” Listen, He’s calling. Rise and come away with Him.
Well how do we do that exactly? What does that look like? Consider with me now briefly the Shulamite’s response to her beloved. Hear the beautiful words of verse 16. “My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies.” Now remember the adjuration, this oath that she extracted from her companions back in chapter 2 verse 7. We’re going to see that adjuration repeating three times right throughout the song, and in the same way, we’re going to see these words here in verse 16 repeating three times over. We’ll see them again in chapter 6 verse 3 and in chapter 7 verse 11 with some variation. And they’re expressive, aren’t they, of complete surrender. This is the total embrace of the invitation the bridegroom has made. Actually they express something higher than a formal acceptance of a groom’s proposal. So she hasn’t cut a deal; she’s not come to acceptable terms with Solomon. Nothing so prosaic. No, Solomon himself has become hers; she’s become his. “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” No qualifications, no provisionality, nothing held in reserve. That’s what she means, by the way, when she adds that he “grazes among the lilies.” She called herself a lily back in chapter 2 verse 1, and she likened him to a gazelle. So all the distance now has been eroded between them, and she is given up to him.
And that note of commitment and surrender actually becomes all the weightier when you realize that the Hebrew structure of her “Yes” to his “Will you marry me?” carefully mirrors the structure of the central promise of God’s covenant with Israel. She says, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” In Exodus chapter 6 verse 7, God says to Israel, “I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God.” And that promise rings throughout the Bible. You find it again in Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 7:23, Jeremiah 11:4. In the book of Ruth, when Ruth is converted and commits herself to the covenant people of God, she does something actually quite similar to what the Shulamite is doing here and she takes the covenant formula and she adapts it to express her own commitment. And so she tells Naomi, her mother-in-law, “Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Where you die, I will die, and there I shall be buried. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” And later on in Ezekiel 36, God promises one day a new covenant will dawn, a covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ – the age in which we are now currently living, the Gospel age. And in Ezekiel 36:28, God repeats this promise. At the very heart of the blessings Jesus brings is this reality – “You shall be My people and I will be your God.”
And so when the Shulamite responds to Solomon’s proposal, the template for her commitment to him is borrowed from God’s covenant commitment to His people by His grace. What does it mean to respond to Jesus the Bridegroom who invites you today to come away with Him and be His? I think our text is telling us it means to take His covenant promise for your own and enter gladly into a binding union of love with Him, completely surrendering yourself to Him. You give yourself up to Him who has given Himself for you. What is it, you know the vow that is exchanged when rings are given in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Elizabethan prayer book? The lovers say to one another, “With my body, I thee worship, and with all my earthly goods I thee endow.” That’s what you are being invited to say, as it were, to the Lord Jesus, the Bridegroom. “With everything I am, I surrender and give myself gladly to You because of the way You love me.”
You remember how in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22 Paul urges wives to submit to their husbands, but the template to which he points as the model for that submission is the church’s submission to Christ. And he goes on to say Christ loves the church and gives Himself up for her. That’s the kind of man you submit to. That’s who the Shulamite sees Solomon to be here. And so she gladly submits and surrenders and says, “My beloved is mine. He gives himself to me without conditions, without strings attached. He’s for me, and because he is, I give myself to him.” Jesus comes to you now in the Gospel, today, here this morning, right now, pleading with you, “Arise, my love, my beautiful one and come away! What are you waiting for? Everything is ready. You just come to Me.” And you are to respond, “My Beloved is mine. He’s mine, and gladly and with all my heart I am His.”
One last thing before we close. Look at verse 17 please. She says, “Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains.” Now just notice how this last verse directly mirrors the first verse back in verse 8. You see how the imagery reappears? In verse 8, he was like a gazelle or a young stag, bounding and leaping over the mountains and the hills when he came to her the first time. Now, she wants him to return a second time, “Until the day breathes and the shadows flee. Overcome the cleft mountains and come and be with me again.”
There’s an echo here, I think, of Genesis chapter 3 verse 8 when our first parents sinned in the garden. Do you remember? They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden “in the cool of the day.” The Hebrew of that expression really means “in the wind or the breath of the day.” The Shulamite here in verse 17 is using a slightly different word, a cognate word, but it’s the same image – the day breathing and the bridegroom coming. She’s saying when Solomon comes back, it will be like God coming back into the garden, only it won’t be to expose the sin of our first parents that led to judgment and curse for the world. When He comes, it will be a new dawn, a new creation, a remaking of all things. When you answer Jesus’ call, come to Him and you trust in Him, there is a joyous, present, felt union and communion with Him that you enter as your Savior and the Lover of your soul. But there will also awaken in you a yearning for what you know is still yet to come and has not yet appeared. And so like the Shulamite here, as Scott did earlier in the service, you pray for His quick appearing, His return. You long for the day when the dawn breathes and the greater than Solomon walks again amidst the trees in the cool of a better, brighter, perfect day. It is that longing, you know, that will keep us clinging to Him and looking to Him and seeking Him and crying, “Come, Lord Jesus. I long for the day when we are face to face at last, until the day breathes and the shadows flee away.”
Well friends, Jesus has come near. There He stands, behind the wall, gazing through the window, looking through the lattice. He’s just over there. He’s just over there, close at hand. We can hear His voice. He’s speaking to you, the voice of the Beloved, and He’s calling to you, “Arise, My love, My beautiful one, and come away. Come to Me. Come. All things are ready. There are no more obstacles between us. Don’t delay. The winter has passed. The rains are over. Today’s the day. Now’s the time.” Won’t you answer His call and come and surrender to Him?
Let’s pray together.
Lord Jesus, we bow now before You. We praise You that You have come, You have come, and surmounted every barrier, overcome every obstacle, silenced every objection, made every necessary provision, that every sinner whom You invite to Yourself in the Gospel, may now come to You. You have professed Your love for us and You plead with us to arise and come away. Help us now, please. Grant to us that ministry of Your Spirit in the heart that enables us to answer gladly and take You for our own, “My Beloved is mine,” and surrender ourselves to You. “I am His.” For we ask this, Lord Jesus, in Your name. Amen.