Lessons In Love- Pt 1

Text- Song of Solomon

Title- Lessons in Love- Part 1

Lesson #1- Romantic love is a good thing 1:1-11; 2:1-2

- Because God created it

- Because God inspired Song of Solomon

- Because it makes us happy

Lesson #2- Love needs to be preserved- 2:3-7; 3:1-5

- Wait for the right time

- Wait for the right person

Lesson #3- Love is a commitment- 4:8-15

- Be committed to God

- Be committed to your spouse

- Be committed to nurturing romantic love

I have a confession, I like love songs. I mean, I enjoy rock, Christian music, and other genres, but I have always enjoyed love songs. I don’t think of myself as a particularly romantic person, but I do enjoy listening to songs about love and romance.

I think this is one of the reasons I’ve always had a hard time finding Christian music that I like. There are times when I want to sing praise songs to God. But there are other human emotions beside praiseful. Sometimes you feel sad, or lonely, or excited, or totally in love. And a lot of times there just aren’t Christian bands that play music that fits.

I am discovering more and more that there are a lot of Christian rock bands out there that do write songs about something other than Jesus. I remember when I was in college hearing one Christian rock band complaining about how the Christian recording labels would impose a “Jesus count” on their records. They had to use the word “Jesus” a certain number of times in their record for it to be recorded.

I am discovering that this isn’t really the case any more. There are great, original Christian bands that play all kinds of different music and sings songs about lots of different things, even love songs. (So now I don’t have to listen to Elton John if I want to hear a good love song, I can listen to bands like Switchfoot and Jars of Clay and Newsboys and hear a great mixture of praise songs and love songs, and songs about life.

Right in the middle of all this rich history of who God is and what He has done, we find a love song. It seems so out of place here. In the book right before, Ecclesiastes, Solomon is dealing with the meaning of life. And in the book following, Isaiah, God speaks through His prophet about a coming savior. But right here in the middle of the OT is a steamy love story between two people who are clearly very much in love with each other.

This book has caused theologians fits throughout history. Many have taken the book as an allegory about the love relationship between God and His people. They think that this book isn’t really about two people in love, but it is a representation of the Love that God has for us.

I don’t think that interpretation is very fair, or valid. There can certainly be some correlation made between the church as the bride and Christ as the bridegroom, but that isn’t really what this book is about. This book is about the blossoming relationship between Solomon and the wife of his youth.

This book is a love story, but also a guide for us. It is a great example of how love begins, grows, and persists. It is a useful book for young people who have not yet entered into marriage, it is a useful book for people who are newlyweds, and it is a useful book for people who have been married a long time. There are a number of great lessons in love that we can learn from this book of the Bible.

I wanted to preach on this book for a couple of reasons, first, like I said before, I like love songs, and this is one of the greatest ones ever written. Also, I have just started a small group for couples and I have been thinking about this topic a lot. And I just think that this is a book of the Bible that gets neglected sometimes.

I won’t be able to read through the whole book, instead I want to simply draw application from different places in the book. I would encourage you to read it all the way through on your own at home. There are a lot of figures of speech in the book that you might not be familiar with, but the message comes across loud and clear.

The first lesson that we can learn from this book is that romantic love is a very good thing. It is a gift from God. It is not something that is dirty, or evil, or shameful. Unfortunately it can be turned into something disgraceful by people who abuse it. But those strong feelings of attraction and desire are not wrong.