This book teaches us many things about marriage. One has to do with communication. This is a problem in many marriages these days. Some...
(1) Do not talk enough.
(2) Talk too much.
Illus: One wife said, "What's the idea? You yawned seven times while I was talking to you. " He said, "I did not, I tried seven times to say something and could not because you would not stop talking!"
Illus: The story is told of a woman who always had to get the last word in. Her husband was always frustrated because she always managed to get it in no matter what. One day when his frustration was to the breaking point he had a heart attack. He was at the point of death when she appeared on the scene fussing and talking non-stop. He knew if he would ever have a chance to get the last word in, this would be the time, right before he took his last breath. For years he had wanted to tell her exactly what he thought of her. He timed it just right. He did not hold back. He said all he had to say and when he finished he died. The wife was furious. She had no way to get the last word. After he was buried she became furious again when she saw engraved on his tombstone, "Rest in Peace." That was the last thing she wished for him! She insisted it be changed but was told that it had to remain on the stone. She said, "Well, I want you to add these words under "Rest in Peace," "Until we meet again!"
(3) Some do not express themselves in such a way that the marriage partner can clearly understand what they are saying.
Illus: A lady went to a lawyer and said, "My husband wants to divorce me.” The lawyer said, "Does he have a complaint?" She said, "Yes he has a camcorder.”
The lawyer said, "No, I don't mean that. Does he have any grounds?" The woman said, "Yes, he has five acres.”
The lawyer said to the lady, "What is the problem?" The lady said, *My husband says we can't communicate!"
All across this nation lack of communication erodes the foundation of marriages. There is absolutely nothing that will destroy a marriage like poor communication. Proverb 18:21 says, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof." Also we read in I Peter 3:10, "For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile." You can talk to marriage counselors around the world and they will tell you that one of the major problems in marriages is communication.
The Song of Solomon is the love story of King Solomon and the Shulamite girl. This love story has every ingredient that teaches any couple how to communicate. Let us eaves drop on their conversation and see four things that will help every couple here today. Notice...
I. THEIR WORDS ARE PLENTIFUL.
Married people should talk to each other. As we read through the book of Solomon, we see that King Solomon and the Shulamite girl's words to each other are PLENTIFUL, but we are not necessarily talking here about people who just love to hear themselves talk.
Illus: One man told his friend, "Your wife sure is outspoken!" The friend said, "By who?"
Illus: A man who had been accused of never staying home told his preacher one day, "Preacher, I get tired of her talking all the time. From the time I get home she starts yakking. When I finally can not take it any more I go to bed. Then she yaks on the telephone until midnight to someone else." He added, "That is the reason I do not like to stay home. She won't stop talking!"
Illus: Some husbands feel like the man who called the doctor to report, "Doc, my wife has just dislocated her jaw. If you happen to be in the neighborhood in the next few weeks would you mind dropping by. There's no big hurry...”
Illus: Astronaut Mike Collins estimated that in an average day a man speaks 25,000 words, and in that same time a woman speaks 30,000. He said, "The problem is, when I get home I have spoken my 25,000 words and my wife hasn't spoken any of hers....”
In the Song of Solomon they did not yak just because they loved to YAK. They talked to each other because they loved to TALK TO EACH OTHER. They spoke a lot to each other. In fact, 60% of this book consists of what those lovers spoke to each other. For a marriage to survive a couple must TALK PLENTY TO EACH OTHER. Here is the problem. Before marriage, lovers talk to each other. The man talks to his love about the things she loves to talk about. The woman talks to her love about the things he loves to talk about. But, after marriage things change:
(1) The husband, who is the bread earner, becomes GOAL
ORIENTED.
(2) The wife, who is the house keeper, becomes SECURITY
ORIENTED.
Before marriage their one common interest was in each other, but then, after marriage, they fall into their traditional roles and do not have anything to talk about. For a marriage to succeed, they must make time to talk to each other, plenty of time to talk!
Listen to our example couple as they talk. Read Solomon 1:7-8. Notice how she affectionately addresses him, "'...O thou whom my soul loveth...' where are you feeding your flock today? Where will you be at noon? I will come and join you there."
The answer comes that she should follow the trail of his flock to the shepherd's tent and she would find him there. In other words, she wanted to be with him every time she could be with him, and he enjoyed her company. They wanted to be with each other every time they could be with each other. They enjoyed being with each other, and they enjoyed talking to each other. Now I do not recommend that you husbands go home and start your conversation off with, "…O thou whom my soul loveth," because your wife will think you have come home drunk. But, when two will spend time together and talk, they will have a strong marriage. THEIR WORDS ARE PLENTIFUL.
II. THEIR WORDS ARE PLEASANT - VERSES 9-10.
"I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots. Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold." It is important that we speak PLENTIFULLY to each other, but it is equally important that we SPEAK PLEASANT WORDS. Now again, I would not recommend that you husbands use the same lines that Solomon used to describe your wife's beauty. She might not consider them complimentary. Notice, Solomon said, "I have compared thee...to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots..." What did he mean by that? Do you remember when Moses was leading Israel out of Egyptian bondage and the Red Sea was before them and they could hear the roar of Pharaoh's army behind them, getting closer and closer until finally they could see them coming. It was an AWESOME, OVERWHELMING sight! Solomon said that the Shulamite woman was OVERWHELMING! She was AWESOME!
He then tells her how lovely her cheeks are, and her neck, and how he wished to adorn her with ornaments to accentuate her femininity, speaking of those parts which appeal to him as her lover. The book of Solomon is filled with words like, "My love,” "My dove," etc. Those were pet names he had for her. That is, he had names for her that did not apply to anyone else.
Why? He wanted her to know she was that very UNIQUE and special person in his life. Their words were PLENTIFUL and also PLEASANT. Look at the lovely words in chapter 2:2-3, "As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste." Notice, he makes two comparisons:
A. He tells her she is a LILY AMONG THORNS. That is, she is still tops in his book above all the others. The word, "daughters" here refers to the daughters of Jerusalem. Now he was not saying that she was the only attractive girl among the daughters of Jerusalem. If that had been the case he would have been attracted to her because there was no one else so attractive. He was saying that she was so lovely to him that the rest seemed like "thorns." He said she was not only top among all others, to him she was like a LILY AMONG THORNS.
Women have always enjoyed being told how great they look. Why do you think they go through all the trouble they go through to look pretty and smell like orange blossoms? Before we men marry them, we tell them everything they want to hear; it is after we are married that they can walk between us and the television in an enticing negligee, and we ask them not to block the television set... It is after we marry them that we do not tell them the pleasant words, "You are like a lily among thorns." We always told them about those great features that attracted them to us before we were married, but after marriage the tune changes.
Illus: Instead, we become like the man who told his wife, "Before we got married your chin was your greatest feature, now it is a double-feature."
In the Song of Solomon we see many of examples where they spoke pleasant words to each other. He said she was, "As the lily among thorns..."
B. She tells him he is AN APPLE TREE AMONG THE
TREES OF THE WOOD. Again, I would not recommend that you ladies go home and tell your husbands they are like apple trees. He might scratch his head and wonder if you are about ready to be committed to an asylum. To us today, that does not sound particularly complimentary. However, at that time that was a high compliment and that is how she meant it. Before we can appreciate how pleasant those words were, we need to understand the conditions of those times.
Illus: They had no air conditioned homes as we do today, and the climate there was very hot and dry, as in southern California or Florida in the summer. So, during the day, when it was hot, they would go outside and find a big, healthy tree that would provide shade and comforting relief from the rays of the hot sun. A person who was looking for such a tree would look for the very best tree he could find, one that would provide the SHADE and COMFORT he was seeking. She further states that he was as an "APPLE TREE AMONG THE TREES OF THE WOOD." She said, "...I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste."
We need to restore to our marriages the art of complimenting each other. We need to do away with insults. We can learn from the Song of Solomon. King Solomon and the Shulamite girl spoke PLENTY and PLEASANT WORDS TO EACH OTHER.
III. THEIR WORDS ARE PERSONAL - PROVERB 1:13.
“A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me; he shall lie all
night betwixt my breasts." Now when we say, that in our communication there are some things that are PERSONAL, we mean that there are things you talk to your mate about that you can not talk to anyone else about.
Illus: We should be shocked. It is wrong when people will talk in mixed company (male and female), about things that they should not even discussed with their best friends. What a sad commentary on our nation today that people so freely do this.
When we say "personal things," here, we are talking about things that are so intimate that they should only be shared by two beings. For example:
A. We have an intimacy with God. We can tell God those
things we cannot tell anyone else. Some may disagree about this, but there are some things we all have done that we would not want anyone, even the pastor or our mate, except God to know about. This is one of the problems we are constantly hearing about that the Catholic church is having. Women confess to the priest about things they should only be confessing to God. Then we wonder why we hear about immorality in the priesthood.
Illus: This causes problems in the ministry. Perhaps a woman is having problems in her marriage, and she wants to pour her heart out to her pastor and tell him how LONELY and NEGLECTED she is. Soon the pastor may become a little more than sympathetic, and the devil takes advantage of the situation, and the pastor thinks he is in love with the woman and they fall into sin.
What I am trying to tell you is, that there are some things that only God can help you with, and YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME, AND SOMEONE ELSE'S TIME WHEN YOU ARE CONFESSING TO THEM. It does no good to sit down with anyone and have a pity party. If you want help, pour your heart out to the One who can help you - God! You can tell Him things you would not, and should not, dare tell anyone else, knowing that He will never tell anyone what you talked to Him about. We have an intimacy with God that we do not have with anyone else!
B. We have an intimacy with our marriage partner. We can share things with our marriage partner that we cannot share with any other human. God saw it was not good that man should be alone. He knew man needed a helpmate to communicate with.
The devil will waste no time, when a couple gets married, trying to wreck the line of communication between a man and his wife.
Illus: General Schwarzkoph has been on many television programs since the Persian Gulf War. Many times he has been asked how he went about defeating Iraq's army. When he is asked this, he talks about how he had to destroy their lines of communication. He says that once they had destroyed the communication then victory was a sure thing!
The devil knows this strategy. He knows if he can destroy the communication between a husband and wife, the marriage will fail. We need the same kind of communication today in our marriages that Solomon and the Shulamite girl had. In the book of Solomon their words were PLENTY, PLEASANT, and PERSONAL.
Conclusion/Summary: Paul said, in Colossians 4:6, "Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt..." Now doesn't that seem a bit unusual - "Let your speech be …seasoned with salt..."? What does he mean? Salt adds flavor to our food. Salt is a preservative. If we are going to preserve our marriage we had better learn how to "season" our marriage with "salt." In the couple we use as our example we see:
I. THEIR WORDS ARE PLENTIFUL - PROVERB 1:7
II. THEIR WORDS ARE PLEASANT - VERSES 9-10.
III. THEIR WORDS ARE PERSONAL - VERSE 13.
