Kingdom Keys - Song Of Songs Series

So maybe you’ve heard it said, ‘read your bible’ so you tried and failed. Our hope as leaders is that all of us will pick up God’s word and come to understand the true nature of God. After all, the bible is God’s Word curated over centuries detailing His nature, His will, the meaning of life and humanity’s historical interactions with Him. The Bible details the hidden keys to the Kingdom. Hence, the reason we are reviewing a new book each week.

The last couple of weeks, we learned from the wisdom books about the origin and power of wisdom to navigate and understand the meaning of life. This week we continue our stroll through the Old Testament by looking at the key passage from Solomon’s Song of Songs. Now, before I go any further, we might ask why there is a poem about romance and sex in the bible? 1) Poetry was considered a form of entertainment in ancient times - there were no Tik-Toks or netflix or Romcom movies. 2) God created sex. Romance was his idea. The two are interlinked and powerful in our understanding of God. 3) Finally, we read about these topics because before that moment in the garden when everything became tainted, sex was a perfect gift from God. It is only after we have made it selfish and self centered.

If you have your bible or bible app, to Song of Songs chapter eight verse 6. While you find the text, let me pray for us.

The speakers in the poem are the friends speaking about the couple. The He and She are the other voices in the story.

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm;

for love is as strong as death, its intensity as (ARDOR) unyielding as the grave.

It burns like blazing fire, like a very flame of the Lord

7 Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.

If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

Friends

8 We have a little sister, and her breasts are not yet grown.

What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for?

9 If she is a wall, we will build towers of silver on her.

If she is a door, we will enclose her with panels of cedar.

She

10 I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers.

Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.

11 Solomon had a vineyard in Baal Hamon; he let out his vineyard to tenants.

Each was to bring for its fruit a thousand shekels of silver.

12 But my own vineyard is mine to give; the thousand shekels are for you, Solomon, and two hundred[e] are for those who tend its fruit.

He

13 You who dwell in the gardens with friends in attendance, let me hear your voice!

She

14 Come away, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice-laden mountains.

Poetry is literary work in which a special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm. This book’s poetry tries to express the idea of deep and intense love. It’s more than physical. For the author, love is all encompassing and everlasting. So much so, it’s considered divine and eternal.

As I read the scriptures this week, I couldn’t get the singer Tina Turner out of my mind. One of her big hits was “what’s love got to do with it?” A song about telling a lover their attraction to each other will remain only that: an attraction. Tina had a history of being abused and had come to know the difference between love and attraction, between unconditional and conditional, between transactional and relational. By the time she wrote her grammy award winning song in 1984, she knew the kind of love the writer of the Song of Songs was describing.

Do you remember the first time you were really in love? The first hand holding, deep discussion, hug, kiss, fight, separation and breakup. It was intense. From that moment on, many of us hoped to find love with the same type of intensity. The truth is all love ebbs and flows. It heats up and cools down. If you’re lucky, over time it becomes a relationship of comfortable shared values and customs. However, our first experience of love is something we never forget. For many of us, its power helps all of us define the intensity of the idea of being spiritual and sets expectations for what it means to be in a relationship.

Unfortunately, our first experience of love is incomplete. The new emotions, expectations and pain come at a time in many of our lives we wonder if any love last or if it's worth the trouble. Thankfully God demonstrates His love to us in other ways as well. There are many witnesses to love: