Deepening Your Relationship Series

INTRO: A farmer was sitting on the porch of his house when a stranger came by and asked, "How’s things?"

"Tolerable," came the reply. He continued, "Two weeks ago a tornado came along and knocked down all the trees I would have had to chop down for this winter’s firewood. Then last week lightning struck the brush I had planned to bum to clear the fields for planting."

The stranger responded, "That’s remarkable, what are you doing now?"

The farmer answered, "Waiting for an earthquake to come along and shake the potatoes out of the ground."

-I read this short story and thought, "Isn’t this just like marriage?"

1. God is doing so many wonderful things to help our marriage be the best it can be.

2. All the while we sit around waiting for him to do one more thing.

Tommy Nelson talks about 4 major issues we will have to deal with within marriage. He calls them the 4 Horsemen (taken out of the 4 horsemen in Revelation).

1. Sin — illusion will fade of whom you married.

2. Age — your beauty fades.

3. Forgetfulness — take for granted the faithfulness of your mate.

4. Laziness — where you take each other for granted, early in the relationship there was tenderness, romance, and love —

-Now, after a few years, it seems to be worse.

-One fellow put it like this — the 1st year of marriage, guy pulls out chair for his wife and takes off her coat and says, "We don’t want my darling to get a sniffle."

3rd year of marriage, "Honey, cover your mouth when you cough." 5th year of marriage, "How can we eat with you barking like a seal?" POINT: Friends, this is the way marriage will go if you let it. Review: We’ve been going through the Song of Songs — we’ve looked at:

The right way to attract

The right way to court

The right way to fight

The right way to deepen your marriage

TITLE: Deepening Your Relationship

TEXT: Song of Songs 7:1-13, 8:1-3

I.. Concept: We’ve witnessed on their honeymoon Solomon progresses from her head on down talking about her body parts.

But now they’ve been married for a while and the order is the exact opposite order starting at her feet and then to her head.

A. Principle: I believe what it’s speaking about here is change. What was good on our honeymoon, or our five-year anniversary is not God’s best for our ten-year anniversary. We need to continually work on getting better.

Ex... Let me phrase it another way so you can better understand. You hire an employee to do a job. Initially the employee is learning, so they’re not very proficient at their assigned task, but six months down the road, they should be better, or five years later, they should be better.

-What would you do if your employee were less proficient after five years than the first week of the job he was hired? In other words he did his job better the first week than after five years of training. It would not make sense.

B. Q: Why is it that way sometimes in marriage? The longer you are married, the worse your marriage is! It’s because of an unwillingness to change. Tommy Nelson would call it laziness.

1. So the first and important point today is a willingness to change.

-Key: You change for God’s sake not your spouse’s sake.

TS: Next I want to focus on the men v. 1-9a and how Solomon treated Shulamith.

-Then it will be the ladies turn – v. 9b-8:4

II. Some Topics Men Must Deepen in Marriage

A. Your knowledge of your mate – How beautiful your sandaled feet. Solomon knew every square inch of her, from her feet to the top of her head.

1. Men, you must become an authority of your wives – spending time with your mate does this.

B. 2" – Your exaltation of your mate – 0 prince’s daughter.

1. In this letter we’ve seen Solomon call her Dove, Unique One, Perfect One, His Darling, Mare, Lily, Rose.

-Now he is calling her Royalty.

POINT: Friends, I think we agree that there is a tremendous danger in taking each other for granted, so let’s go the opposite way and elevate our exaltation for one another so we don’t fall in that trap.

C. 3rd — Knowing intimate details of your mate – your graceful legs are like jewels, your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine, waist is a mound of wheat.

1. Wine and wheat was a spring and fall crop in Israel.

-Joseph Dillow – "it would appear that Solomon is suggesting that her garden is never lacking sexual pleasure for him."