A Cure For Loneliness Series

We are continuing our study of the Song of Solomon this morning, and I hope you are finding this study useful. We are spending a lot of time on it, but I pray that our study is creating within you a more acute understanding of the Love that Christ has for us. We know that “16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” but has this melted our hearts with an overwhelming feeling of how great this love must be?

We can imagine how great this love must be and we can try to understand it by saying we would give our own lives for our children, but this doesn’t even scratch the surface on a love so deep and pure that He gave His Son’s life to save sinners. To save sinners while we were still in our sin.

Have we been overwhelmed to the point where we long for Him even as He longs for us? And if we have then what does this cause us to do in our lives when we feel that we don’t find Him?

In our reading for this morning we see our beloved lying in her bed, longing for her love. She isn’t sleeping, I can imagine she is tossing and turning, not able to rest, searching for the one her heart loves. She looks for Him, but does not find Him. She is feeling alone and scared and uneasy. Longing for her love. She is longing for Him throughout the song, but here, in the middle of the night, alone in the dark, her longing in magnified. She becomes even more aware of her need for Him. More aware of her agonizing need for Him. She becomes even more aware of her lack of self-sufficiency. It wasn’t a bad thing to need her beloved, but it was agonizing not to find Him.

There is no pain greater than unrequited love. This is love that is not openly reciprocated and in many cases the beloved may not even be aware of the deep and strong affection that exists in the other. It might even be consciously rejected, but in either case the unfulfilled longing creates a pain that can be so deep it can’t be described.

I imagine this is the feeling our beloved has as she lies in her bed all night long, looking for the one she loves, looking for Him but not finding Him. Her longing becomes more than she can bear and she gets up and goes out into the city in search for the one her heart loves.

She goes into the streets, not a safe place for a young women, I’m sure, but she goes out into the streets and into the squares. She searched for her love but still does not find Him. She’s found by the watchmen as they make their rounds.

She didn’t stop her search when they found her. Her loneliness wasn’t cured. They were not the object of her longing. She didn’t feel secure with their presence, she asks them if they’ve seen the one her heart loves, but they offer little help.

Her search is not in vain. Despite the lack of help from the watchmen, she finds the one she sought. She was saved from her loneliness and dread. She was saved from her agony and doubt. She held him and would not let him go. She wouldn’t let him go until he was safely at home in her mother’s house. They were married, that is what this passage is saying to us.

This was an ancient Israelitish custom we read of back in Genesis. 24:67 - “67 Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her;” This is what this verse is telling us about the Shulammite woman, when she finds her beloved, she grabs ahold of Him and will not let Him go until she becomes His wife. Until He became her husband.

Are you grabbing hold of Christ? Are you being that BOLD in your love for Him? This is what the song is leading us toward. If we look at what the maiden does was can see the following progression: she LOVED HIM, SHE SOUGHT HIM, SHE FOUND HIM NOT, SHE FOUND HIM, SHE HELD HIM, SHE BROUGHT HIM. The song makes it very clear that she held Him and WOULD NOT LET HIM GO. And I think this is an important part of this scripture. She WOULD NOT LET HIM GO, which indicates He would have had she not held Him tight.

We can see in this, according to the text, that there is a very real chance that Christ will go away from us if he is not held. Now I am not talking about losing our salvation, but she says I held him and I would not let him god. Clearly she had a concern that if not held, he would go.