In Song of Solomon, Chapter 2, the Bible reads in Verse 1, "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood so is my beloved among the sons." And I talked about this last week, by clearly in Verse number 1 we have a woman speaking, not a man, because we can see that the Book of Song of Solomon is a dialogue, most of it that is, it's a dialogue between a husband and his wife.
There are other people that pipe up at times throughout the Book and speak, but the vast majority of the Book is a husband speaking with his wife, and it's usually pretty easy to tell who is speaking whether it be the husband, or whether it be the wife. Now here we can see that there's a back and forth going on because in the first verse it says, "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." Now at first guess, does that sound like something that a woman would say, or that a man would say?
I mean: what kind of a man goes around calling himself the rose of Sharon or the lily of the valleys? The way I like to explain this, is you think of truck drivers, they often have their handle that they use on their CB radio, it's usually something like Junkyard Dog, or something, or whatever. It's probably not; Rose of Sharon; this is Lily of the Valley. Do you copy? Because that’s not a very many term. So, obviously, just if you look at it right away at first blush, you are going to say, that’s her talking.
But it's pretty obvious because she's talking in Verse 1, and then he is talking in Verse 2, he says, "As the lily among thorns," obviously in reference to what she just said in Verse 1, "As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters." So he, here, is talking about his wife as being a lily among thorns.
Then she says in Verse 3, "As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." So you can see, it goes back and forth. She is speaking in Verse 1, he is speaking in Verse 2, she is speaking in Verse 3, and she continues to speak for several more scriptures.
So, the bottom line is, you have to just use common sense when you are reading this book on who is talking. Now the song in the hymnal, He is the Lily of the Valley, about Jesus, and I've heard preachers all the time say, Jesus is the lily of the valley, Jesus is he rose of Sharon. That is found nowhere in the Bible, nowhere. Look it, look up every time the word "lily" occurs, look up every time the word "rose" occurs, that song is coming from this verse which has nothing to do with Jesus number one, and number two it's not even a man that’s saying it, it's a woman that’s saying it, and really it's just crystal clear from this.
That goes to show that you can't base what you believe and what you think just based on songs from the hymnal, because some of the songs in the hymnal are inaccurate.
Now Song of Solomon is a Book that’s not very often read, and not very often preached, and so, therefore, not a lot of people understand the Book of Song of Solomon, and there's a lot of strange teachings about the Book of Song of Solomon. Now, I don’t know about you, but in my Bible that I'm preaching out of here, it doesn’t have any notes or study helps or anything like that, but it has these little subject lines, maybe every 10 verses, it will tell you what it's about, so everybody knows what I'm talking about?
Does your Bible do the same thing, sometimes at the top of the page in the Bible they kind of tell you what's going on on that page, and I always just ignore that stuff, because that’s not God's word, that’s usually just man's opinion, they just put that in there, whether it's at the top. Or like in the Bible, and I'm preaching out of it tonight. It's actually every 10 verses or so, there's a little line that tells you what it's about.
Usually I just ignore it, but as I was reading the Song of Solomon out of this Bible, these subject lines are so ridiculous that I literally had to just take a pen and just cross them out, which I never do that, because they are just so ridiculous and it's almost like the person who put these in is reading a different book. They put a subject line, and then you read the next verses and it has nothing to do with what they wrote. These are their subject lines, they said, "The Shulamite's love for the shepherd, the shepherd's banner of love. The shepherd pursues the Shulamites. The Shulamite's faithfulness to the shepherd, the search for the shepherd, the shepherd found the coming of the King."
And they basically have the shepherd and the King as two different people, and this whole love song has nothing to do with the King, nothing to do with King Solomon, according to whoever put in these subject references. But if you actually read the book, like if you actually read Chapter 1, that we preached through last week, it's clear that she's expressing her love for King Solomon, she's talking about being at the King's table, she's talking about the King bringing her into his chamber, in the first couple of verses of the book.
This is what I'm saying, you need to stay away from commentaries, and stay from study Bibles that explain everything, because they will more often than not, lead you astray, and this book, especially, they have a very strange belief on what this book is about. If you actually read the book and study it, it is a man expressing his love for a woman, and a woman expressing her love for that man.
And we also see the word over and over again, spouse in here, so this is a husband and wife, these people are married. And obviously a lot of it is very dramatic, and obviously a lot of it is very exaggerated, and there is a lot going on in the book that I'm going preach through as we get to each verse, but I just wanted you to understand that, that this is not a love triangle between the shepherd and Solomon, and the woman. That is a very strange doctrine indeed. I've studied this book for years, I've memorized several chapters of it, and I'm not seeing it. I'd say it's just a complete fabrication. That’s my opinion.
And so as we read this we see that, first of all, the song, The Lily of the Valley, is completely unscriptural. In Verse 3 it says, "As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." That’s a more fitting metaphor for a man. A man would probably be compared to a tree a lot sooner than he's compared onto a lily, okay. And it says, "I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love."
Now, as we read Song of Solomon, first of all, the primary application of Song of Solomon is that it's a book about love, and it's a book about the love between a husband and wife, between a married couple; now there are a lot of other secondary symbolic applications obviously because of the fact that the Bible talks about the fact that marriage is symbolic of Christ's love for us. The Bible says, husbands love your wives as Christ love the church, and gave himself forth; and so there is a lot of symbolism here of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We know that all scriptures point us to Jesus Christ in some way, the primary application is a marital application. We should read this book and be instructed on love within marriage. That’s the primary thing that we should take from it, and that’s the main thing we took from it last week when we were in Chapter 1. But then there is a secondary application especially in Chapter 2, there is a lot of really heavy, secondary, symbolic application that I want to get into in regard to the second coming of Christ, that’s very prevalent in Chapter 2. We are going to get to that in a moment.
But first of all in Verse 4 it says, "He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me."
Now, when you read the term "I am sick of love" this is not like we would say today that you are sick of something, meaning like you are tired of it, as in: man, I'm so sick of eating this and so. When it says I'm sick of love, it's not saying, man, I'm tired of love, I'm sick of love. When she's saying I am sick of love, it's like being love sick, right. Basically she's saying that because of love, she is very physically ill, or physically sick. Okay, love has made her sick.
Now, not in a bad, this isn't referring to pregnancy by the way, that’s one way that love will make you sick, right? But any way, what this is talking is just, when people have very intense feelings of love, often it has a very strong effect on their body, and can actually make you feel sick, and you’ve heard of people being love sick. Where you are basically sick to your stomach, you are skipping meals.
Now what I see in this passage, when we look at all of this, that pretty much in every chapter of Song of Solomon we see very strong expressions of love between these two people. It's a very intense relationship as you read Chapters 1 through 8 of Song of Solomon. I believe that this is what God intends for us to have as people that are married. As Christians that are married, that we are intended to have a loving relationship with our wife, with our husband, that that we should have intense feelings of love, and strong feelings of love for our spouse, and that’s what we see demonstrated in Chapters 1 through 8 of Song of Solomon.
I mean love to the point in this chapter of actually becoming physically ill, actually skipping meals, actually needing to eat apples and drink flagons in order to feel better, just in order to recover. I think that a lot of people have shied away from this simply because of the fact that there are a lot of people, when they are young; that are overcome by these types of feelings, and we've often called it infatuation.
Where, basically, one young person becomes just obsessed with someone, and just infatuated, and just all love sick and all starry-eyed, for someone that they are not married to, and oftentimes that love that they are feeling, and that infatuation can actually make them blind to a lot of red flags about that person, or a lot of things that are there that should be telling them, "Hey, you should not marry this person, you should stay away from this person," but they get so starry-eyed and love sick, and infatuated that they … people say, love is blind.
So because of that, there's a lot of people out there that will teach that basically is not a feeling, love is not an emotion, love has nothing to do with feeling sick to your stomach, and skipping meals and being infatuated, and all these intense feelings, and they want to basically reduce love down to a math problem, and just basically take the emotion completely out of it. Take the intensity completely out of it. Or I guess the modern word would be the romance.
They want to kind of remove that out of it, and just basically say; well, you should just marry someone that just fits this criteria of X, Y and Z. Just find somebody that fits this criteria of X, Y and Z, and don't let your heart and your emotions and all these feelings that you are having, don’t let that affect your decision, that’s blinding you. You need to just base it completely on this set of parameters that, get that virtuous woman chapter, and get that list of things and find somebody that fits that criteria, and marry that person.
But I think that people are making a mistake when they completely divorce marriage, and divorce love from this aspect of love which is an intense infatuated starry-eyed feeling. Honestly, you should be in love with the person that you get married to, and when we see these strong outpourings in the Book of Song of Solomon, first of all they are not between people that are single, they are between people that are married.
When you are married it's great to feel this way about your spouse, and to just be uninhibited in the love that you show for yourself and the love that you receive from your spouse, but what becomes dangerous is when young people that are not married succumb to these type of feelings and become too infatuated with the wrong person. But I will say this, you should not, and I'm talking to those that are single right now, you should not marry someone that you do not have feelings for. Just because, well, I'm saved, you are saved, I'm single you are single, we both have the same doctrine, so let's just get married.
There should be some element of attraction and love there, because we see that emphasized in the Bible and to just completely ignore that, is to ignore many passages in the Bible besides just Song of Solomon to just say; well, just don’t worry about your feelings at all, you should have feelings for the person that you get married to, but if you are not married though you should not get involved in a relationship that is this intense.
Because of the fact that, until you are married, until that vow is there, you don’t really know whether that relationship is going to end, and so you don’t want to get all these really strong feelings for someone that you are not even going to end up marrying or spending the rest of your life with.
There is a danger that I've seen of people developing these really strong intense boyfriend, girlfriend relationships that lasts for years, and then they break up, and it's almost like they are getting divorced or something, because they had such a serious relationship, and what I'm saying is that I don’t believe that you should have a serious relationship with somebody that you are not married to.
Okay, now again, I'm not saying … obviously it should go without saying that you should not be having a physical relationship with someone that you are not married to, you should not be committing the wicked sin of fornication.
But I'm saying also that as a single person you should not be in a very intense infatuated relationship with somebody that you are not married to, because it will blind you from things that should be red flags about that person, and basically if you are not getting married, that means that you haven't made your final decision yet, whether you are even going to be with that person, because marriage is when you make that final decision, you both make that vow and swear to one another to be with each till death do us part. And until you’ve made that vow, until that bond is here, you should be careful not to get too deeply involved with anyone until you get there.
You see, this is one of the problems that I see also with Internet dating, and then again, I don't want to … I'm not down on you if you met your spouse on the Internet, because every single person I talk to these days, met their spouse on the Internet, so don’t be ashamed if that’s you, that’s pretty much everybody you talk to nowadays.
So I'm not down on you, and I'm not saying that good relationships could not come of it, I'm not saying that at all. I know plenty of people who have great marriages that that’s how they met their spouse. But let me say this though, you need to be warned and cautioned of meeting someone from the Internet, okay because just like I know a lot of people who had a really good experiences, I know a lot of people who have really bad experiences with this.
Now let me just explain to you, and don’t get offended and mad when I say this, but let me just give you something to think about, and here is the thing. If you come to our church, it doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything that I say. I am not God, I am not infallible, I am not perfect. Some things that I preach are just God's word, and then other things are things that I'm going to state that are my opinion, just like Paul did in 1 Corinthian 7, he gave some things, and he said, "This is not the command of the Lord, this is my thought on it, this is my opinion on it."
And I'm going to give my opinion about Internet dating or meeting someone on the Internet. It's probably going to offend people and make people mad, I'm trying to offend or hurt anybody's feelings, or make anyone mad, but I want my kids to hear this, and I want every single person that’s here to hear this so that they can at least understand that there is a danger in meeting people on the Internet.
And let me explain to you what that is, it's that people present themselves on the Internet differently than what they are really like in real life. And this is what you have to be careful of, and what happens is, people will, (quote/unquote) "meet on the Internet" and then what will happen is, they are already sick of love. They are already obsessed and infatuated and all head-over-heels before they’ve even met the person in real life.
Then what happens is, then when they meet the person in real life, there are all these red flags, but it's too late, because they’ve already decided this person is so wonderful, this person is so great. At least if you meet people in real life you have a better feel for what they are really like before you just go head over heels, sick of love, infatuated with them. You can actually get a better feel for who they are, you can usually know a little bit more where they are coming from, and maybe you might know some of their family, or know some their friends, or maybe they are a friend of a friend, or maybe they are from church.
There is a little bit more of a background of who you are meeting. For example, I know, and I'm not going to reveal who this is, but somebody in my extended family that basically met their spouse on the Internet, and when they met their spouse on the Internet, they said that they were 10 years younger than they really were. And then once they go on a few dates they reveal: yeah, I'm actually 10 years older than what my profile said.
But here is the thing, he already had her on the hook at that point, right, and they are married to this day. But, you see, he lied about his age on there, and this is the type of thing that I'm talking about, because you like about stuff like that, and then basically by the time, you are already on the hook, you find out that all these things aren’t really quite true, or that the person isn't really quite the way that they presented themselves online.
Now let me tell you a horror story. Now, this pre-dates Internet dating, this predates the Internet, but this is another relative of mine, and I've got a story of something that was kind of like the equivalent back then, just a similar thing that happened, but this girl that’s in my extended family, she one time, made a phone call, and accidently dialed the wrong number. And basically it was the wrong number but the person said, "Oh, wait. No, don't hang up." And just wanted to chat with her, just a random person, she just accidentally dialed the wrong number.
So this guys is just kind of chatting with her over the phone randomly, so she chats with him and then decides to: oh, she'll meet him at the mall with a friend, because she figured that will be a safe place, it's a public, she's talking to this guy on the phone, he's a cool, young guy or whatever, and she's going to bring her friend with her, and meet him at the mall, it's a nice, safe, mutual zone.
I mean: doesn’t this kind of sound familiar to Internet dating. You are on the Internet you meet somebody, okay, we are going to meet at the mall with a fried. So goes, her and a friend, and they meet this guy and they talk to him for a little while, and the guy is kind of weird. Oh, do you think so. He's just picking up on some girl that just accidentally called the wrong number.
So the guy turns out to be a little bit weird. So, she's like: okay, we've got to go, whatever, just wants to get away from this guy, so her and her friend they go out and they get in the car, and they go to drive away, and this is before cell phones, this is before Internet, and she goes to drive away with her friend, and all of a sudden, the guy is behind them on a motor cycle, and all of a sudden he just starts ramming his motorcycle into the back of the car; just, grrrooom, just hitting the back of the car with his motorcycle.
She's scared, she's got no cell phone, she's freaked out and just, how do we get away from this guy. So that’s all there is to the story, you probably thought I was going to go even worse than that. But anyway, that’s my horror story right there, but the bottom line is, that I would say, that it's better if you can just meet people in real life, and maybe I'm just old fashioned, because I'm 32 years old, and I was dating there was such thing as Internet dating, and all this stuff, and every girl that I dated I met in real life, and talked to. Imagine that.
But I'm just saying, young people, you need to be cautious and don’t be foolish and get all excited, and get all infatuated, and get all head-over-heels over some person that you are meeting on the Internet.
You are a young lady and you are talking to some guy on the Internet, you might be talking to some guy that’s 50 years old, who is pretending to be a teenager. Seriously, you might be talking to some weirdo, some pervert, that’s just putting up photos of whoever, and saying this is me, I'm this age, it happens all the time, and you need to be very careful.
And I'm just going to tell you right now, and again don’t be offended, I will not let my children take part in Internet dating, as long as they are living in my house, they will meet people in real life.
RESPONSE: Amen.
And again, I'm not against anybody who met their spouse that way, I'm just telling you, I'm going to have that rule in my house. I can make whatever rules I want in my house, I don’t see the benefit of it, I think it's dangerous, and so that’s my rule in my house. My children will never participate in it.
Anyway I don't what that has to do Song of Solomon Chapter 2, but it has to do with the fact that we see people, that sometimes they want to just … because of that danger where they see young people getting obsessed and infatuated before the rings on the finger, before they are actually married, then they basically want to just go too far in the other direction, and just act like: well, that just doesn’t exist, that’s not really love.
Well, the Bible calls that love though. All through the Song of Solomon, the Bible calls physical attraction and these intense romantic-type feelings, it calls it love. The Bible talks about it as love, and within marriage it's very important toward having a good marriage, and when the Bible says, "Husband love your wives," this is part of what God means by that when he says, "Husbands love your wives."
This is how husbands need to feel about their wives. There needs to be excitement there, there needs to be intensity, there needs to be a physical attraction, and that’s what we see all throughout the Book of Song of Solomon, we see physical affection between the husband and wife, not between people that are single. We are not talking about people that are getting obsessed and infatuated and sick of love that are single, but people that are married.
It says here, in Verse 5, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me."
Now look, you say, "Well, Pastor Anderson, I don't feel that way about my wife. I don’t feel that way about my husband at all. I don’t have any feelings like that at all. My wife and I are more like business partners or roommates." And look, I'm telling you, many marriages are like that. It's like a business partnership, it's like two roommates living together, and that is not God's plan for marriage, and I believe that that can be fixed. I believe that the love can be rekindled in your marriage, and that you shouldn’t just be satisfied with that kind of a relationship.
Now, a lot of people will look at that and say: well, I married the wrong person. I married the person. But that’s not true either, because you know what, God wouldn’t command you to do something that you are not capable of doing. If he says, "Husbands love your wives," obviously there's a choice there where you can decide to make the effort to love your wife, and that wives are commanded to love their husbands, and that the older women are teach the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children.
It must be possible if you are being commanded to do it. Is it a feeling? Is it emotion? Yes, but it's still something that you choose to feel, or choose to go into, or invest in, because you see, those that are single can choose to hold back on these feelings which will be smart until they are actually committed to that person. And those that are married can choose to have these feelings.
Now look! I've been married for 13 years in just a few days here, when my anniversary takes place, it will have been 13 years that I've been married. Now, I can honestly say that when I first married my wife, when I was dating my wife, and first got married to my wife, I was definitely very intensely and very strongly in love with my wife, and she was with me. We had very intense, strong feelings for each other, where I can relate to this package. When we first got married that’s how it was.
Now look! Maybe when you first got married maybe it wasn’t like that, but when I got married it was like that, and it was like that for a long time. But let me ask you this, do you think that in 13 years of marriage it's always been like that all that time?
RESPONSE: No.
No, because it hasn’t. There have been times when these type of feelings were not necessarily there in this intensity. Marriage has its ups and downs, and as I look back on my 13 years of marriage, I can see that perhaps it was my fault, maybe there were mistakes that I made, and mistakes that my wife made as t why those feelings were not always there, the way that they should have been.
So I'm not saying that it's impossible to have these feelings all the time, I'm just telling you that in my experience, I love my wife very much, she loves me very much, we have a wonderful marriage, but I'm saying that there were times when these feelings were not necessarily there in this intensity, and they were at lower points in our marriage, and other points that were high point in the marriage.
Even though when we started out we were definitely in love with each other and definitely had this in our lives, and the thing is that a lot of people, when there is a low point in the marriage, or when things are going poorly, they bail out of marriage, they quit, and they think to themselves: Oh, I was just infatuated. I made a mistake. I married the wrong person. You hear this kind of stupidity, I just don't know if I love him anymore. I just don’t know if I love her anymore. I just don't think I love her.
It's like; shut up and do what the Bible told you to do and love your spouse, love your husband, love your wife. But you hear people who are just; I just don’t know if I love them anymore. Well, you know what, then why don’t you fix it, fix problem. And people just resign themselves, I don't love them anymore.
I think that there's a natural tendency that obviously when the relationship is new, it's going to be very intense, and then sometimes, over time, the newness wears off, so to speak, and you might go through a phase. And look! By the way, I see the same thing when people get saved, or when people get in church. You'll see people, who, when they first come to Faithful Word Baptist Church, it's their first time in a soul-winning church, Baptist church.
Man, they are excited, they are fired up, they are going to all three services, they are just hanging on every word of the preaching, they are going home and listening to it again. Man, they can't wait for church, they can't wait to go soul-winning, they think it's the greatest place in the world, and you see those people, eventually, the newness wears off. Isn't that true?
RESPONSE: Yes.
It's not just marriage, it's anything. Where, there is that initial, it's new, it's exciting, where it's just easy to be excited about it because it's so new. But here is the thing though, you see a lot of people when the newness wears off, they bail out of church. Pretty soon they are only coming once a week, then they are coming three times a month, they are not doing the soul-winning, pretty soon they are completely gone, and some of the most excited, zealous, fired-up people.
Brother Dave is nodding his head, because he has been here for what, six-and-a-half years, or seven years. So he has seen people like this, over and over again. Just people that you thought man, this guy is fired up, he is excited, and then they are not there anymore.
But here is the thing, you see other people though, who out of character hang in there, stay with it, and listen, church becomes exciting again.
RESPONSE: Amen.
Soul-winning becomes exciting again, reading your Bible becomes exciting again. But here is the thing, a lot of people bail before they get to that point. And so look, there are times in marriage where you may be going through a period that is a low point in your marriage. Where maybe the newness has work off, maybe it's just not as exciting as it was.
Maybe you just don’t have very strong feelings for your wife or your husband, but you can rekindle that flame and if you stay with it and get through that, and maybe you need to make some changes in your life. Maybe your spouse needs to make some changes in their life, you can fix it and you can get to a point where you can have these types of feelings and this type of intensity of love in your heart for your spouse once again.
And by the way, if you feel this way about your spouse, the way that Song of Solomon Chapter 2 teaches here, and the way Chapter 1 taught, and the way the rest of the book teaches; do you think you are going out and looking to commit adultery?
RESPONSE: No.
I guarantee you; I guarantee you that 99 percent of adultery is people not having the right relationship with their spouse. Because if you have the right relationship with your spouse, you are not looking for anything else, you are satisfied, you are happy, you are excited about that person. You are not looking for everything else. And look, I'm not condoning adultery, it's so wicked, it's so ungodly, but let me say this though, you could eliminate 99 percent of it, by having the right marriage that said, look, the Bible says, the Bible says, lead us not into temptation.
And I can tell you, you have the right relationship with your spouse, there is no temptation to commit adultery, none, zero. What's the point? If you are happy with what you have, if you are content with what you have, if you are excited about what you have, why would you be looking for something else? You wouldn’t be. And you say, well why do you even preach on it? What do you care, Pastor Anderson, whether I'm excited about my wife or not? I pay the bills, I go to work, I'm faithful to my wife.
Because you know what, if you are smart you'll have a good relationship with your spouse so that you are not tempted, and she is not tempted, and just, frankly, because you should enjoy your life a little bit, and enjoy marriage and enjoy your children. By the way, set a good example for your children. You don’t want to teach your children: being married stinks. It's the old ball and chain. Do you know what I mean? Be sure that you have fun before you get married kids, don’t get married too young. Be sure you go out and see the world and have fun, because when you get married, all fun is over.
Look! You know that’s how people's attitude is, you know that’s what this world thinks, you know that’s what they teach, and so it is important to have this type of relationship with your spouse. Do you know what? If you are hanging out … I can honestly say, I can stand up here, and I'm not just blowing smoke, I'm not just using rhetoric or trying to be extreme to make a point, I can honestly say that after being married for more than a decade, my feelings for my wife are more intense than they were when I first got married.
And that might be hard to believe, but honestly I go … and I'm not saying that it's always been that way, but I'm saying that there have been periods after over a decade of marriage, where I felt about my wife, and she felt about me, more intensely than we did even when we were first married, even when we were newlyweds. Where we had stronger feelings of love and affection than we had ever had, that shows you … and I'm not exaggerating at all, that shows you that you can have that within marriage.
You don’t have to keep switching spouses in order to enjoy that feeling. That’s what people do today in the world. That’s why you see people on their fourth marriage. Right? The newness wears off, get a new one. That’s where you have people getting married eight times, because you know what, it takes about two years for the newness to wear off on average.
I read the statistics somewhere, and basically, two years, the first two years are great, then the newness wear off, then they just kind of suffer through it for a while, then they get divorced, and they go find another one, and it's: Oh, it's just so great. It's so much better than the last one. Okay, and then a couple of years later, the same thing, the same fights, the same problem, the same issues, often because you were the problem not them.
But what I'm saying is, that if you hang in there and stay with marriage, maybe you can learn things through the preaching of God's word, through reading of God's word, you can make changes in your life, your spouse can make changes in their life, and do you know what, you can eventually get to a point where you have a great marriage once again.
So if your marriage is suffering tonight, don’t give up on it, don’t throw in the towel, hang in there, because it can even get better than it's ever been, if you'll stay with it, if you hang in there. And by the way, I've talked to many, many people, I just talked to somebody less than a week ago, who told me same thing. A lot of people told me that at the 10-year mark, their marriage got dramatically better, at the 10-year mark. For some reason it just got better.
I can think of three separate people in my mind right now that have told me that. Right about 10 years in, things just got a lot better. But how many bail after five, six, seven, eight, nine, when really there was that light at the end of the tunnel right there, and they could have a great marriage once again, and fix their problems and get along with one another.
I just wanted to say that, first of all, you should marry someone that you have feelings for, not just like this arranged marriage mentality, where you are just put with somebody, and you are just, but at the same time, once you are married, even if you’ve never had those types of feelings, I think that those types of feelings can be developed over time, and that God commands you to do it, and so you should work at it.
You say: well, how do I do it? How am I going to love my spouse if I just … I just don't love my husband, or I just don’t love my wife. Do you know what? Part of it is that you need to make an investment in your marriage, and make an investment of time into that person. Because do you know what, the Bible says, "God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son." If you give of yourself, and give of your time, and the Bible says, "Husbands love your wives as Christ love the church, and gave himself for it."
If you give of your time and your energy and you invest in something, then you will have stronger feelings about it. For example, let's say I would invest my money in a business. Let's say I invested my money in a business that was starting up, now all of a sudden I care about that business, how it's doing. Even if I invested just a little bit of money, and even if I didn’t really care if I lost the money, it was just a small amount of money though, I would take pride if that business one day became a big, booming business. I would say, man, I invested in that business, I had something to do with that.
You'll see a lot of times churches will build a building, the people who work on the building, who did the physical work, they are more likely to stay that church, because they invested in it, they worked on that building and so they feel connected to it. Other people who maybe, contributed to the church financially, or contributed with manpower of soul-winning, and just cleaning the building, and whatever you invest in, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
You spend money on someone; you'll probably have stronger feelings for that person. You spend time on someone, you are going to have stronger feelings for that person. If you do nice things for someone, you are going to like them more. I don't have time to go into all that tonight, but honestly, I'm not going to go into the how tonight, but there is a way to improve your marriage, and there are other sermons that I've preached about that.
But just don’t give up on it and you should have these types of strong feelings in your heart for spouse, and if you don’t have them, you should try to develop them, and you should try to have a marriage that is fulfilling for you and your spouse, so that you cannot then be tempted to look somewhere else.
But now, as we get into Chapter 2, Verse 7, we get into a part of the Book of Song of Solomon that has really strong, prophetic implications. Because when we see here that the Bible talks about the husband saying, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." It's interesting, if you compare this to the Second Coming of Christ in the rapture, just how much of it fits together.
Let me show you. It says in Verse 7, "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, showing himself through the lattice. My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."
Now keep your finger and turn to Matthew 24, if you would, which is a great passage on the second coming of Jesus Christ; Matthew 24. Now a lot of people will say this, they’ll say, "Hey, don’t confuse the rapture with the second coming of Christ. Two different events, but hold on a second, what's the most famous rapture passage; 1 Thessalonians 4, and do you know what it says in 1 Thessalonians 4, "That we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds."
So the Bible calls the rapture the coming of the Lord, or the coming of Christ. And since he already came the first time, in Bethlehem's manger, that one … can everybody count with me, one, two, that would be the second coming, right? But anyway it says in Matthew 24, in Verse 29, it says, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."
And here is part I want you to pay special attention to, "Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors."
So he's using the fig tree as an illustration saying, when you see the fig tree have the leaves starting to come up on it, that’s when you know that summer is near. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things come to pass, then you'll know that it is near, the coming of Christ is coming in the clouds, for the elect the trumpet sounding. It's even at the doors.
Flip over to Luke, Chapter 21, and I'll show you how this ties in with Song of Solomon Chapter 2. Look at Luke 21, it says in a parallel passage here, Verse 27, "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."
You say: well, that’s not talking to us. So when he says "you" that’s not me, he's not talking to me. Who I she talking to? Oh, the Jews. No. because he calls the Jews this people in verse number … let's see here, Verse 20, 21, 22, he talks about. "Wrath upon this people…"
RESPONSE: Twenty-three.
Twenty-three, is that where it is? Yes, there we go. "Wrath upon this people," these people, they are going to do this, their hearts are failing them for fear. That’s them, that’s the Jews, this is talking to believers, because he even says at the end of Mark 13, "What I say unto you, I say unto all, watch." He says, "When you see these things begin to come to pass, look up for your redemption draweth nigh." He's talking to the believer, and he says, "When you see these things, and the things are the tribulation of those days, followed by the sun and moon being darkened, following by Christ coming into the clouds.
When you see those things, look up, your redemption draweth night. And he uses the leaves of the fig tree as an illustration of those things. You see the leaves of the fig tree, you know summer is near, you see these things happen, tribulation, sun and moon darken, then you'll know that his coming is nigh. Then you'll know that your redemption is nigh.
Flip back to Song of Solomon 2 with that in mind. In Song of Solomon 2, Verse 10, it says, "My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." So basically he is calling her to be with him, and he is even using the word "rise up" which indicates going upward, right. Rise up my love, my fair one and come away. And then one of the things that he says is, "For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone."
Now, the rain being over and gone, of course we know that April showers bring May flowers, so therefore we are talking about late Spring when all the all the spring time, rain is over and gone, and all the former and the latter rain is gone, so we are basically late spring heading toward summer, and he says, in Verse 13, "The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."
So, basically in Song of Solomon Chapter 2, we see that she is not called up or called to rise up, or to arise, and to come away with him, until the winter has passed, the rain is over and gone, and until the fig tree putteth forth the green figs. So this supports further than Matthew 24 is talking about the rapture. Not that we needed any more support, because is already so much. But it just, again, lines up with it perfectly, that the fig tree basically blossoms and has the leaves and the figs, before the rapture takes place, and that is a symbol of, basically the tribulation, sun and moon darken, those are the things we watch for, just like you'd watch the fig tree to have leaves and figs, to know what season it is, to when the summer is coming.
So we see the identical thing in Song of Solomon Chapter 2, and then there are other things that are similar. Like, for example, it says in Verse 8, in Song of Solomon 2, "The voice of my beloved." Now of course the Bible says that he'll descend from heaven with shout, right, so there is the voice right there. "The voice of my beloved, behold, he cometh," and then it says, "Leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills."
Now try to picture this, picture a man leaping upon the mountains and skipping upon the hills. Now, what do you picture? Everybody just get this in your mind's eye. A man leaping on the mountains and skipping upon the hills, and he is basically using his voice to say, "Arise my love, my fair one and come away." So he's coming to get her, but look, obviously he's moving quickly, leaping and skipping denotes that he's going fast. I picture somebody running on the mountains, because if you’ve ever run on mountains, you are basically leaping and skipping when you run.
Now if you are running on a flat surface you are just running, but when you are on mountains, you are basically doing a lot of jumping and skipping, because mountains are filled with uneven surfaces up hills, down hills, we go running sometimes at South Mountain. One mile away there is a trail head, where you go up really steep hills and steep mountains of running into rocks and you are kind of, doing like this, like dodging the rocks, and it's a leaping and skipping type of movement.
And when we compare this with the second coming of Christ, what does Jesus say over and over again about his coming, "Behold I come…"
RESPONSE: Quickly.
"Behold I come quickly." Now look at the last verse of the Book of Song of Solomon. In the last verse of the Book of Song of Solomon it says in Chapter 8, Verse 14, "Make haste…" What does that mean? You are going fast. "Make haste my beloved and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of Bether." Now roes and harts are basically a deer, and deer are known for moving very fast, for leaping and skipping very quickly, and moving quickly.
So, in Song of Solomon Chapter 2, it says, "Behold he cometh," in Verse 8, "Leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills, my beloved is like a roe or a young hart," which is exactly what was found in the last verse of Song of Solomon talking about the speed, making haste. Now what does it say at the very end of the Bible, one of the last things in the Bible is, "Behold I come quickly." And it says, "Even so, come Lord Jesus."
And so this is more a symbolism of the second coming of Christ, he's coming quickly, he's coming with a shout, it says here in Verse 9, "My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice."
This is similar to Jesus Christ coming in the clouds, because what is a lattice? A lattice is basically a network or some kind of a … We have a lattice work that’s by our carport at our house. It's like a grid that tacked diagonally, right, the wooden lattice. Who knows what a lattice is? Okay, good, I'll stop explaining it then.
If you think of someone looking through a lattice, you kind of see them, and you kind of don't see them, do you know what I mean, because basically you can see through the lattice but it's somewhat obscured. This makes me think of Christ coming in the clouds. Basically a cloud you could see through, but it's still … it's cloudy, it's obscure, so there's more symbolism there.
"My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." So it's very symbolic of the second coming of Christ, and what's interesting is that the verse before all that, in Verse 7 says, "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please." Then all of a sudden he's coming.
So I looked up scriptures on, basically the Lord sleeping and waking, and I thought, I don’t have time to turn there, because it's late, but in the Book of Psalms, I found a few places in the Book of Psalms where it talked about God's people being greatly persecuted, and God's people suffering, and David is praying to God saying, "God when you going to awake? When are you going to awake out of your sleep and basically judge these people.
When are you going to come and avenge us, and that’s basically the same symbolism with the tribulation, if you think about, God's people are suffering, they are going through trials. It's like, God, when are you going to awake, God. And if you remember even in the opening of the fifth seal, in Revelation 6, they are saying, "Oh, Lord. How long oh, Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth."
So basically coming two different times in the Book of Psalms, God coming and being awaked out of sleep is used as a metaphor of the fact that He allows His people to suffer, then He steps in and delivers them and judges them. So it's the perfect picture of the rapture here, and it's, the lines are perfectly with Matthew 24, a lot of other scriptures, so it says, that we stir not up nor awake my love till he please.
Basically he is going to come at a time that pleases him. No man knoweth the day or the hour of his coming. Just like in this passage, they don't really know when he's going to wake up. They don’t know when he's coming. They just say, "Don’t stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please." He comes at an unknown hour just like the Bible says that of his second coming, "No man knoweth the day or the hour, in Matthew 24.
So anyway, it's really interesting that even in the Book of Song of Solomon, there is Bible prophesy, and I find Bible prophesy in pretty much all 66 books, it's a major subject of the second coming of Christ. It's found all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, and yet so many preachers just don’t even preach on it whatsoever, even though it's a major theme of the Bible, because they are confused by the pre-tribulation rapture, that none of this will make any sense to them.
Try to look at this of your pre-trib, how does it work? Here it says that she's to rise up after the fig tree putteth forth the green figs. Jesus said the fig tree puts forth its leaves is likened unto the tribulation, the sun and moon being darkened and Christ coming in the clouds. When you see those things, it's like seeing the fig tree. Oh, the fig tree is real. That’s not what Jesus said, Jesus said, when you see a fig tree puts forth its leaves, you summer is near. Likewise when you see these things come to pass, you'll know it's not it, did he mention, Israel coming a nation in 1948? Is that what he said? No.
He said, "You'll see wars, famine, pestilence, great tribulation, sun and moon darkened, Christ coming in the clouds, when you see those things, you'll know that it's near. He didn’t even mention the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers founding the Nation of Israel in 1948, through the satanic United Nations. Do you see what I mean, about people just add to the Bible, but when you get rid of that false doctrine, it makes perfect sense putting Song of Solomon, too, side-by-side with Matthew 24, they fit together perfectly.
But I have hurry. It says in verse 14, "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Take us to foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." A fox is always a bad animal in the Bible. Remember Jesus called Herod that fox, and the Bible also, there is a chapter in Ezekiel where he likens false prophets and bad preachers unto foxes.
So, he says, here that the foxes will spoil the vines, for the vines have the tender grapes, he says the little foxes that spoil the vines. This reminds me of in Ecclesiastes when he said, a little folly will destroy basically the name of one who is in reputation for wisdom and honor.
A little sin in your life, can cause big problems, and in your marriage sometimes it's just making little changes can greatly improve your marriage, and sometimes little things can really mess up your marriage. Just small changes, just small improvements, just small improvements and things, we need to be careful of allowing little things to come in and become a big problem. We might just look at our sins, and say, well this is just a little sin.
Do you know what? There are little sins, but those little sins can sometimes spoil the vines and destroy our lives and destroy our marriage. So, everything matters. Sometimes you'll try to preach something from the Bible, and will go, oh, it's just a little thing. Yeah, but Jesus that whosoever shall break one of the least commandments, shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven, but whoever will do and teach them, the same should be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
He says in Verse 16, "My beloved is mine, and I am his, he feedeth among the lilies. Until the day break and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether." And again we can compare that to the second coming of Christ; the shadows fleeing away, the day breaking, that glorious day when Jesus Christ returns in the clouds and he comes quickly for us.
Let me point out Verse 16, because we are talking a lot about marriage, when we talk about the Book of Song of Solomon, and last week, if you weren’t here you need to listen to the sermon, because I covered a lot of great things to improve your marriage from Chapter 1, and there's going to be a lot more to improve your marriage from Chapters 3 through 8, and there's a lot of great things that we can learn.
But in Verse 16, here is an important key to having a good marriage, it says, " My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies." What do we see in that verse? Possession, do we not? We see possessiveness, my beloved is mine, meaning he belongs to me, and I am his, I belong to him. Now, a lot of people will criticize you if you are possessive of your spouse. Because they are, oh, man, he is just so possessive, or she is so possessive. And they’ll accuse you of being a jealous husband, or a jealous wife, and I'll say, guilty as charged. I'm very jealous of my wife.
Because I'm very possessive of my wife, and you say: oh, you think you own your wife? I do own my wife, but she owns me. This is something that goes two ways. Now the authority structure in my home only goes one way, but when it comes to possessiveness it goes both ways.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 7, "That the woman hath not power of her own body, but the husband, and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife."There is a possessiveness, now, look, you say, "Well how is that going to improve my marriage?" Because I'll tell you this, when you feel like something belongs to you, when you feel like you possess something, when you feel like own something, you are better care of it, than if it's something that you don’t own. Isn't that the truth?
I rent cars all the time, and my motto is, drive it like you rented it. Do you know what I mean? Because, look, when you are renting a car, you don’t treat it the same way as you treat your own care. Or, how about this, here is a better example, because you do have to turn it in when you are done, and prove that it has no damage, but think about this. What about when you are driving the company vehicle, versus your own vehicle, what do you take better care of?
I remember when I worked for my first job where I had my own company vehicle, everybody in this company, when they go into the store to buy anything, Home Depot, a gas station, whatever, they would just always leave the keys in the ignition of the car, they would never take the keys out and put it in their pocket. I would say to people: why are you just leaving the keys in the ignition, what if they get stolen? They'd just be like, "I don’t care." Who has ever seen people do that? A couple people. I thought it was just that one company.
I thought it was the weirdest thing, because I wouldn’t just go inside somewhere and just the key in the ignition. You just leave it unlocked, keys in the ignition, "It's not my truck, I don’t care." Some people have that attitude, don’t they? But do you know what all of us treat things better when they belong to us, rather than things that are just shared, or things that are borrowed.
When you feel like you own something, and when you feel like something is yours, have you heard this term, pride of ownership, all right, you take pride in what's yours. Do you know what, if I feel like my wife is mine, and she belongs to me, and I'm possessive of her, then it makes me want to treat her better. And to take good care of her, and to protect her, and to treat her well, and to nourish her, because she's mine.
But do you know what, is if felt like wife were just rebellious against me, if I just felt like my wife hasn’t really given me all of her heart, or that she's really thinking about other people she'd rather be with, or she doesn’t really see me as her husband, or as an authority figure, as her … I don’t know, you know what I mean, her husband.
If she didn’t see me that way, do you know what, I probably wouldn’t really feel as much like taking care of here, and being as good to her, because I wouldn’t feel that ownership and that possession. You say, you are sounding like a mad man, but do you know what though, I have a great marriage. And I'll you why, because I own my wife, and she belongs to me. And look, she owns all of me. She has all my love, all my affection, and I only have eyes for her.
And do you know what? That's going to improve your marriage when you get that mentality. This is step one for you, if you don’t have a good marriage. As you need to get Verse 16 down, "My beloved is mine, and I am his," and get that, and make that your mantra, and make that your motto, and understand, and take pride in your wife, is what I'm saying. Take pride in your husband. Say: this is my husband.
And look! You see it over and over again, this is my beloved, this is my friend, this is my love among the daughter, this is mine, just saying it over and over again. He is mine, my beloved is mine, I'm am his, you see that over and over again in this book and so that’s something that could probably help you have the right mentality about your marriage, is both husbands and wives, to get a possessive mentality about your spouse, and to see them as yours, and to really feel that they belong to you, and that you belong to them. That is part of having a great marriage.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, thank you so much for this Book and help us to learn everything that we can from it, and to put it into practice in our lives. Please just help us to study the Bible, it's so deep. There's so much imagery and symbolism of the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for those teachings. But, God, please help us not to miss the primary application of just reading eight chapters about a husband and wife that are infatuated with each other, in love with each other. That are physically attracted to each other, expressing their love, physically, that are excited about one another. And that feel possession and ownership for one another. Help us to have…
