Text- Song of Solomon
Title- Lessons in Love- Part 2
Lesson #4- Love Requires Maintenance- 5:9-6:9
- Communication
1. Genuine love
2. Learn to listen
3. Know your mate
4. Speak the right language
The 5 Love Languages
- Service
? How can I serve you better?
- Sacrifice
? What am I willing to give up for you?
Lesson #5- True Love is a Model to Others- 8:5-14
- Exemplify purity
- Exemplify faithfulness
- Exemplify Christ’s Love
Last week we started this study of the book of Song of Solomon. As we saw, Song of Solomon is this unusual poetical writing between a woman and the man she loves. It doesn’t mention God; it isn’t a deep theological discourse; it’s simply a collection of love letters between two people. And some of the letters are very explicit and passionate.
Why is this book in the Bible? What does it have to offer us in our spiritual lives or in our walk with God? We’ll talk a little more about that today.
Before we get into this week’s lessons in love, let me summarize what we talked about last week for those of you who weren’t here.
The first lesson was romantic love is a good thing. It isn’t something evil or something to be ashamed of. God created it for our enjoyment and well being.
We also talked about how it is something that needs to be protected and preserved. There is a right way to go about things, and a wrong way. The beloved in Song of Solomon kept urging the daughters of Jerusalem not to awaken or arouse love before the right time.
And we talked about how love is a commitment. It is more than a feeling, it is a choice. It is a commitment to that other person, even when the feelings of love fade.
This week we are going to finish out this short study in Song of Solomon. I have two simple application points today. First, love requires maintenance. Read with me from 5:9-6:9…
Any relationship takes some amount of investment on our part. In order to maintain a relationship with our friends, our family, and even with God we need to invest something. It takes some work on our part.
We can’t just take all the time and never give anything. Have you ever met someone like that? Someone who is very needy and selfish and tiring. In a marriage relationship both people have to be willing to give of themselves.
Just this week I read a great article in the Focus on the Family magazine I get. Let me read just a few paragraphs from the article…
This article goes on to explain that there will inevitably be times in your marriage when the weight of the relationship ends up on one person’s shoulders. Either due to illness, addiction, work, school, or selfishness, often a marriage will go through a season where one person isn’t as plugged in to the relationship as they need to be.
This is incredibly difficult for the spouse who is left to hold things up. Often it creates anger and bitterness and even hatred. The spouse who carries the weight will even justify divorce, or separation, or and affair.
So what can we do to make sure that our marriages are healthy, and balanced, and honoring to God? A great place to start is by improving your communication. I know that communication is such an obvious and almost cliché thing to talk about when discussing marriage, but communication really is vital to a healthy relationship.
This is one of those topics that has been studied and written about for generations. There is a lot of advice out there about how to improve communication, but there is still a lot of people that simple don’t know how to communicate effectively.
When we’re talking about communication between men and women the problem is even greater. Men and women are different. That isn’t a new idea to any of us. We think differently and we process information differently and we relay information differently.
Some keys to effective communication have to be established in your relationship if it is going to succeed.
First, you need to have a genuine love for the other person and a desire to make them happy. Selfishness and pride will kill communication.
Second, you need to learn how to listen. Guys, have you ever had one of those conversation with your wife where you didn’t say a single word? I had one like that just a few weeks back. Camille had something she wanted to talk about and I soon realized that this was one of those situations where she wasn’t looking for advice or a solution or an opinion, just some one to listen. So I just listened and added the occasional “Uh-Huh”.
Third, in order to know how to listen, you have to know the other person. How well do you know your spouse? What is their favorite color, song, food, book, beatle, etc? Do you understand their moods and their coping mechanisms?
Fourth, effective communication involves speaking the right language. A few years back Gary Chapman wrote a book called, “The Five Love Languages”. It is a very simple concept that I think holds a lot of validity. The idea is that different people feel loved in different ways. The five love languages are:
1. Words of affirmation
2. Quality time
3. Receiving gifts
4. Acts of service
5. Physical touch
Not everybody is the same when it comes to love and affection. The problem is that usually we try and show love in the way that works for us, but it might not be communicating love to the other person.
For example, my love language is physical touch, which is probably every man’s love language, it’s also words of affirmation. But Camille’s love language is receiving gifts and acts of service. So I show her my love through hugs and kisses. But what she really needs is for me to do the dishes more often.
If you are going to communicate your love for your spouse you have to speak their language. On your way home today I want you to take this list of love languages and ask you spouse what they think theirs is. You might be surprised.
The book of Song of Solomon is a great example of words of affirmation. They openly and freely communicated their feelings for each other. They told each other how much the loved each other. Communicate you love for your spouse in word and in deed on a daily basis.
Along with maintaining healthy communication, we also need to have a heart of service for our mate. This is one of the love languages, but it is also a biblical command. Ephesians 5:21 says “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”.
We are such selfish, greedy people. It is hard to put other’s first. But service to our spouse is a necessity.
Service is really just love in action. If we love someone we will do something about it. Service doesn’t have to be fancy or elaborate. Often it is the little acts of service and kindness that show our mate that we still care, that we are thinking of them.
Replacing the toilet paper, cleaning the kitchen, dealing with the children, making dinner, whatever. There are a million ways in which we can demonstrate our love.
The best way to find out how to better serve your spouse is to ask them. So the second question I want you to ask each other on the way home is; what can I do to serve you better?
The last suggestion I have about how to maintain a healthy marriage is be willing to sacrifice. Service and sacrifice go hand in hand. Often you have to give up something that you want to do in order to better serve your spouse.
What have you given up for your mate lately? Are you willing to sacrifice money, or a promotion at work, or a night hanging out with your friends? Are you unintentionally communicating to your spouse that they are not as important to you as those other things.
Think back to when you were first dating. You would give up anything for that other person. You would sacrifice sleep, money, comfort, anything just to make that other person happy. After a few years of marriage some people won’t even mute the TV for ten minutes so their spouse can talk to them.
Are you willing to sacrifice for your spouse?
Well we all know that love requires maintenance. That task is so much easier at the beginning of the relationship. These love poems in Song of Solomon are an affirmation of love and commitment and sacrifice. They would give anything for each other.
As we move on to chapter 8 we will see just how powerful and important love is. I am skipping over chapter 7, it’s just some more hot and heavy stuff. In chapter 8 we see the power of love and we see that love is a model to others. Follow along as I read 8:5-14
This entire book is a model of healthy, God-honoring love. It is a book that celebrates what romantic love should be. It is a guide and an encouragement to us. And just like the love relationship between Solomon and his wife was a model to us; our relationships are a model to others.
Your relationships should exemplify purity. No matter what stage of the game you are in, you need to be a model of purity. If you are single and dating remain pure. If you are engaged, remain pure. If you are married remain pure.
We saw an example of this in our text where the beloved’s brothers share about how they have helped to protect the honor and purity of their sister. She saved herself for her husband and that brought great contentment to him.
The question is, does purity matter? Will it really hurt anyone if you get physically involved with someone before marriage? What’s the harm in looking at inappropriate web sites?
The dangers of impurity are great. It not only weakens and ruins our relationships with others, it damages our relationship with God and renders us useless. This was the sin that Satan used to bring down the nation of Israel time and time again. By co-mingling with pagan people the Israelites faith became watered down and worthless.
We need to strive for purity because others are watching. They are looking to see if we really believe God. They will take note of how you handle temptation and sin. Unfortunately Christians don’t always set the right example.
Every time a pastor or Christian leader is caught in a sex scandal it does significant damage to the name of Christ. But in the same way, on a smaller scale, whenever any of us compromises our purity it slanders the name of Christ.
If your faith is real, you will strive for purity in your love relationships. The goal isn’t to look good so other people will be impressed with us. The goal is to obey God so others will see what genuine faith looks like.
I cam e across a quote this week that said,
“If you try to improve one person by being a good example, you’re improving two. If you try to improve someone without being a good example, you won’t improve anybody.”
It is not only important to be an example of purity, but we need to be an example of faithfulness. With a 50% divorce rate, a consumer Christian mentality, and in-born arrogance and selfishness, faithfulness is not something that very many people understand.
Even Christians aren’t very faithful people. The divorce rate among believers is just as high as unbelievers. Instances of infidelity and adultery are common. We aren’t faithful to our spouses, or to the church, or to our employers, or to anyone.
The world needs to see what faithfulness looks like. The problem is that too often Christians are looking at the world for direction. We are taking our cues on morality and decency from the media. We aren’t influencing society in a positive way; society is influencing us in a negative way.
Faithfulness requires us to be humble, selfless, and committed. It is one of the most important character traits that we can have, in marriage and in life. If we lack faithfulness and trustworthiness then we are worthless. We are unreliable and unstable.
If your alarm clock didn’t go off once or twice a week you would throw it out and get a new one. If your hot water heater gave you a cold shower ever few months you would soon get fed up and replace it. If your car didn’t start a couple of times a month you would spend money to get it fixed. We expect these things to be faithful, to be dependable, to work like their supposed to.
Faithfulness is one of those qualities that is either there, or it isn’t. It’s like being pregnant. You can’t be just a little pregnant, you either are, or you aren’t. In marriage you are either faithful to you spouse, or you aren’t. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever hear someone say, “Well, he only cheated on me once, but he is mostly faithful.”
Others are watching to see how well you keep you promises. Are you completely faithful to your spouse? Are you not only faithful in the big things, but trustworthy and reliable in the little things too?
The last thing that I want to talk about is how our marriages are an example of Christ’s love. Like I mentioned last week; some people see the book of Song of Solomon as an allegory about the love relationship between God and His people, but that’s not really the purpose of the book. However, inherent in the marriage relationship is this mystical illustration of the relationship between Christ and the church.
Song of Solomon is a story of love and marriage, but love and marriage is a story of Christ and the church. This is explained for us over in the book of Ephesians. Turn with me to Ephesians 5:22-32…
Ephesians 5:22-32 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery-- but I am talking about Christ and the church.
God knows us so well. He knows how forgetful we can be, and how thick-headed we can be. That’s why Christ spoke in parables, or word pictures. That’s why He established these ordinances of the church like communion and baptism, to help remind us of important things. Even marriage, one of the most common human activities, is an illustration of Christ’s love.
This command for mutual submission and love here in Ephesians is given to help us understand how to better live with our mate, but it is also given to remind us of Christ’s love.
Husbands, when you love and protect and care for you wife you are exemplifying Jesus Christ’s love and care for the church.
Wives, when you submit to your husband you are serving as a model for the church’s relationship to Jesus Christ.
So in the life of two Christians, marriage isn’t just a marriage, it is an object lesson. It is a living picture of what the relationship between Christ and the church is like.
I don’t know about you, but I find this a little intimidating. This is a very high calling. This makes things like faithfulness and purity and service even more important in my marriage. It means that when we fail in our marriages, we are misrepresenting Christ.
Do you view your marriage in this light? Have you given it the same level of importance that God does? Men, are you loving your wives the way Christ loves the church? Wives, are you submitting to your husbands the way the church is to submit to Christ? Are we sending the right message, or have pride and selfishness and animosity gotten in the way?
Your relationships are an example to others. People are watching and learning about Christ from you.
Song of Solomon is a great love story about two people who were able to be passionate, romantic, and deeply in love; while still being honoring to God. You can accomplish that task too. Pray together, study God’s Word together, serve together, and make the commitment to love each other no matter what.
