God Stories – Attributes of God May 11, 2003
God of Intimacy
Song of Songs (Song of Solomon)
This is a piece of the scriptures that we usually ignore – I have never preached a sermon from this book, and I have even preached from Nahum! I think that we ignore it because it is so hard to figure out what it is doing in scripture – scripture is supposed to be about God, who He is, and his interaction with humanity – what is this sensual love song doing in the midst of it?! This song is not just a love song – in his introduction to the Song, Peterson writes “We don’t read very far in the Song of Songs before we realize two things: one, it contains exquisite love lyrics, and two, it is very explicit sexually.” This is why we’ve generally stayed away from it – we don’t like to mix faith and sex.
But Peterson goes on to write: “The Song, in other words, makes a connection between conjugal love and sex – a very important and very biblical connection to make. There are some who would eliminate sex when they speak of love, supposing that they are making it more holy. Others, when they think of sex, never think of love. The Song proclaims an integrated wholeness that is at the center of Christian teaching on committed, wedded love for a world that seems to specialize in loveless sex.”
“Yes Mike, that’s very nice, but in Church?”
Yes in church; because it is in the Bible, and because it teaches so much about God, who he is and how he created us! (“All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching…”) And because Solomon says it is his best song! The first verse is translated “This is Solomon’s song of songs, more wonderful than any other. Solomon gave us most of the proverbs, and a few of the psalms, and he probably had a number of unpublished psalms, but he says of this song – it is so far better than all the rest, it is the song of songs – all the other songs are just words without rhythm or poetry compared to this song!
Just before we get into it, I need to talk about how to read the scripture. There are some people who read the song as only a metaphor for the relationship between God and his church, and it is that, and we will get to that, but it is not only a metaphor, nor is it first a metaphor, it is first and foremost a love song that Solomon wrote for a specific woman in a specific time. And it is a beautiful and God-breathed love song. To not know this is to miss the song altogether. This is always the way that we must read scripture – take the most obvious reading first – even if it goes against our theology, or our sensibilities. Take the most obvious reading first, and struggle with that against the backdrop of the rest of scripture and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
Here we go – (this sermon has an at-least 14+ rating)
The song has three voices – the Man, the woman, and the chorus made up of the woman’s friends. The man is the king and they are newly married – she has her own chamber. The imagery doesn’t always wash with modern sensibilities, but just try to go with it.
The woman begins: 2-4
Continue to 4:15
It is a great song!
- the deep affection that they have for each other, the passion
- the attraction, the glorying in each other, they swoon over the very presence of the other
- the joy of each other’s presence, the longing & anticipation when they are apart!
- The joy that the young women take in the whole romance, and the beauty of the two!
It is a great song! But in the Bible? In Church?
Yes! Why? – because God is the God of intimacy. We are looking at attributes of God in the sermons the first week we saw a bit about the awesome holiness of God, and last week that he is the creator of all that is – both thins seen and unseen, this week we are talking about the God of intimacy.
God created intimacy, he created sex and sexuality, he created romantic love – he created all that is unseen – like romantic love.
God created pleasure – for some reason we think that the devil created pleasure – he didn’t he is a created being, he can’t create anything, he only perverts what God has created. To pervert means to twist something that is good into something that is bad.
When I say that God created sex and sexuality, It is not the same as saying that God created this rock, or this flower. No, God created sex and sexuality as something sacred, something set apart, something to hold in high honor. The Bible tells us that this is the place where a man and a woman become one flesh – there is a mystical union created. Paul describes it as a mystery – a holy mystery. Not only is this the place where the two become one, but this is the place where new life is conceived! It is sacred, and holy. And as something that is sacred and holy it has its place – just as when the articles of worship were consecrated as sacred and holy they were kept in the temple at the altar, so sex and sexuality has its place in the marriage and only on the marriage. Marriage is the temple that holds these sacred acts. This is why adultery is such a terrible sin – it takes the sacred out of the temple and profanes it on another altar.
The way that the world has perverted the good and right sex and sexuality is they have taken the sacred and treated it like a common cooking pot. So we use sex to sell everything from cars to soda pop, we talk about “casual sex”, and talk about youth “experimenting” with sex as if it is just part of growing up.
You don’t experiment with the sacred. The men of Beth Shemesh tried a little “experiment” with the Ark of the Covenant. One night, after a few pints, some of the boys decided to take a look inside the ark – and either 70 or 5,070 people died. You don’t mess with the holy.
In Daniel 5 1-6 … King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way
Daniel is called to read the writing and this is what it said:
"This is the inscription that was written:
Mene , Mene , Tekel , Parsin
"This is what these words mean:
Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." (25-28)
Belshazzar took the holy items and used them for his own purposes, and debased them using them for common purposes while they worshiped false gods.
When we take sex outside the marriage temple, we debase it, using it for our own purposes, and not the holy purpose it was created for.
The world has debased sex by taking it out of the realm of the sacred and placing it in the realm of the common and base.
The church is no better. We have taken sexuality out of the realm of the sacred and placed in the realm of sin!
We are like those prudish mothers who say to their daughters “Sex is dirty, vile and disgusting, … so save it for someone you love.”
The way that we battle the low view of sex that the world has taken is not with a lower view of sex – but a higher, vastly higher view – sex can never be casual or meaningless, it is sacred and holy, set apart for the marriage union.
Josh Mcdowell has a book for youth called “why wait?” I haven’t read the book, but I want to add a few more reasons – we wait because it is holy and pure and should happen only in the holiness of the God–given marriage union.
Saul was waiting once for the priest to come and offer sacrifice so that his army could go into battle. Only priest could offer sacrifice – it was holy, but the priest took a long time to come – the men of the army started to get nervous and leave, Saul thought that he was losing his army and he got scared and took things into his own hands and made the sacrifice himself. It was then that Samuel showed up and declared that because of his disobedience, God had left him and he would lose the kingdom.
Some of you might be getting nervous that you are missing your chances and your youth is leaving – you need to wait – wait for the sacred.
The waiting is good.
Romantic love and sexuality is a creation and a sacred gift from God. If nothing else the Song gives us a great model of how. If you have lost the ability to romance your spouse (I am not just talking to the men here) you should sit down and read the Song daily for a few weeks – with the illumination of the Spirit it can’t but help you love your spouse better and more passionately.
The Song does not just teach us about human relationships and passion – Throughout the ages the song has been read on many levels: as the intimacy of marital love between man and woman, God’s deep love for his people, Christ’s bridegroom love for his church, the Christian’s love for their lord. Peterson says “It is a prism in which all the love of God in all the world, and all the responses of those who love and whom God loves, gathers and then separates into individual colors.
As I sat with my good church-historian friend Don Goerts this past week he told me that the one book of the Bible that has the most commentaries written on it in church history is the Song of Songs! Don told me of how these historic Saints like Bernard of Clairvaux took the imagery of the Song as descriptions of our relationship with God that would make you squirm in your pews.
Bernard wrote the hymn “Jesus the Very Thought of Thee”
Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than thy blest name,
O Saviour of mankind
What the church of history understood that we have lost sight of in recent history is that our God is the God of intimacy
This is a mystery – the Holy God – in whose presence anything impure would incinerate, the Creator God who made galaxies and subatomic particles, the God who created all that is – seen or unseen – This God wants an intimate relationship with you.
This God wants an intimate relationship with his church. At the conference this week Mark Dupont said a number of times, “while we read the scriptures through the ego-centric lens of salvation, there is a pervasive theme of the Father creating a Bride for His Son.”
He is an intimate God. Intimacy is caught up in his very being as the triune God.
Intimacy in the Trinity
We have in the triune God, the ultimate intimacy. God is three, and yet he is one. All three are intimately involved in creation, the three who are one are intimately involved in the coming of the Son to earth, all three come together at Jesus baptism when the Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove, and the Father’s voice booms out of heaven and says “this is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
The intimacy in the God head is so strong that Jesus is able to say things like “the Father and I are one,” and if you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” and his deepest cry is that we might be one as Christians as he and the Father are one.
When I speak of God as being the God of intimacy, I am not just saying that he created the intimacy that we share, (he did) I am not just saying that he desires intimacy with us, (he does) even more than this, he is intimacy
Intimacy with the Church
The reason that the Song is taken metaphorically is that the image of the church as the bride of Christ is a very biblical one – this is what Paul says to Husbands in Ephesians 5:25-32
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- 30for 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." 32This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church.
That line “but I am talking about Christ and the church” is this amazing throw away line that says it all – that Jesus left the unity that he had with his father and came to be unified with his church as a pure and glorious bride – this is the mystery!
John gives this vision of the last days in Revelation and he writes, Revelation 19:6-7
Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:
"Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
7Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Revelation 21:1-4
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
This speaks so deeply of the intimacy between Christ and the church. Mark Dupont pointed out how the first Adam had a rib removed from his side to create his bride, and how Jesus had his side pierced in-order to create his bride – the church.
We don’t get this.
Often times I have heard that men don’t get this imagery because of being the other gender from the bride – but it was men who wrote it! You \would have hoped they “got it!”
What we don’t get is that we, the church are the Bride of Christ – I’m not the bride, but I am part of her. We were led this week a number of times by people who were using bride imagery to talk of our relationship with God, and they would have us close our eyes and use our imagination to enter the presence of God, and they would say that there is no one else here, just you and Jesus. Well there were a lot of other people there, and it is not just me and Jesus – we need to learn the corporate nature of our relationship with God – we are together in this! We are the Bride, not any one of us! And as we increase our sense of unity and the corporate nature of the universal church, we will become more and more prepared to be presented to our bridegroom as his bride!
That said, the Song also speaks of an intimacy between God and the individual Christian. We are being romanced by God as a community and as individuals.
Intimacy with Christians
We were made for intimacy with God – walking with him in the cool of the evening
God desires intimacy with us, and we have a great need for intimacy with our God – it is what we were created for.
When Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis, one of the first things that they did was to cover their bodies with leaves – not as much from each other, as hiding themselves from God – the leaf garments are a sign of the broken intimacy that they had with God. Since then we have gone much further than fig leaves to hide ourselves from intimacy with God; we have created walls and whole structures to keep us from getting too close. We set up theologies so we can study God like he was a bug or something that we can know all about without ever knowing. We set up priests and ask them to God and be intimate with God, and let us experience that intimacy vicariously through you. We have all sorts of walls and barriers that keep us on the right side of God, but not too close. That is why I love the song “King of Love” when it says “Before such love and before such grace I will let the walls come down…”
We were made for intimacy with God – we are not complete without it. But in avoidance of intimacy with this holy creator, we have created all sorts of false intimacy. We usually go looking for it in sex – I’ve heard it said that men have pornography and women have romance novels – they both give a false sense of intimacy with others that will never satisfy. Or we go and try to fill the place of God with promiscuity. It is interesting to note that most of the idolatry in the Old Testament involved sex. The Israelite men were seduced into serving other Gods by the Moabite women, the same happened to Solomon who wrote this great song. Worship of the gods that the Israelites most ran after, Ba’al and Astoreth, involved ritualized sex. Instead of the true intimacy with their creator, they ran after the false intimacy, and we are still doing it.
We can also run after what I’ll call replacement intimacy, where we take the good, God ordained intimacy that we find in marriage and in family, between good friends, and we treat it as a replacement for the intimacy we are called into with God. We need these intimacies, they are good and righ and true, but they will always leave us wanting more because they cannot replace the intimacy that we are called to with God.
This intimacy is not always easy, there are things that get in our way, like past hurts, like bad theology, strongholds in our minds and bad habits.
I have a great relationship with my Dad – I thank God for him all the time, so it isn’t “fatherhood issues,” but there was a time years ago that I realized that I seldom if ever called God “Father” in my prayers. Upon further reflection I realized that it was because my main image of God was that of King, Lord and Judge – all right and true, but lacking if I don’t also realize that he is also my Father, my Dad. I started revamping my image of God by first revamping my prayers – I forced myself to stop saying “Lord” and to start saying “Father” and it changed me, it changed my prayers and it has changed my relationship with the Father immensely.
Jesus encourages us to call God “Abba” which is hard to translate into English – it has all the intimacy of “Daddy” without the childishness.
I would encourage you to change your prayer language – find a word that you can live with – father is distant, daddy is childish, papa might work, Dad? Begin to use these words in your prayers – in private.
I have heard people use them in public, and I have felt at times that it is still too affected and that they are teaching the rest of us how to pray by their prayers – which actually leads to less intimacy rather than more – if you took your spouse and kissed her in public just to arrogantly show the world how it’s really done, it would not likely lead to more intimacy.
So… use these terms of endearment in your private prayers – let the words change your heart, and if after ten years or so they happen to slip out in your public prayers, so be it.
I remember when Hana first started the “Seek His Face” nights. The title came from a word that David Ruis(?) had where God was saying “seek my face, and not my hand” God is calling his people to come and be with him just to be with him, not to get the next word of instruction, not to give him some instruction, but just to be with him as two good friends or two lovers would do.
Pam and I have some friends whose marriage broke up a few years back, and as we were reviewing the break-up with some other friends it came up that they were both so busy that all their relationship had become was business. “did you pay this bill…” can you pick up the kids…” when can we schedule this event in…” When what is supposed to be an intimate relationship becomes one of just business, it is destined for ruin. If our relationship with God is one that is really just a business relationship – prayer requests and seeking direction – it is destined for ruin. It is not that God will get up and walk away, he will never leave, but we are placing ourselves in a precarious position – the relationship is not giving us the intimacy that we need at the core of our being, and our core will start to seek it out elsewhere.
God is the intimate God – intimacy is at the core of his being just as holiness is, so get intimate with Him
Read the Song of Songs – find God in it, let him romance you.
Seek His Face
Have a date with God – candle light, wine…
Go for a walk in the cool of the day
Change your prayer – use the terms of endearments that you can – lover of my soul…
