Today is the first Sunday of February. Some of you will soon be shopping for valentines, trying to find one with just the right message to express your feelings of friendship or love and romance.
• You might look for the biggest card you can find. I did that one year. It was so big I had to hand-deliver it.
• You might order flowers. A 20-year-old guy told his girlfriend he would send her one rose for every year of her age. The florist liked this guy because he was a good customer and decided to throw in an extra dozen roses. The guy is still trying to figure out why he no longer has a girlfriend.
• You might try writing your own poetry. I’m sure you can do better than the poems a newspaper published after a contest for poems with the best first line and the worst last line. Here are two:
Roses are red, violets are blue,
sugar is sweet, and so are you.
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead,
the sugar bowl’s empty and so is your head.
Of loving beauty you float with grace.
If only you could hide your face.
http://www.bettybookmark.com/v/valentine.htm
Song of Solomon.
The book of the Bible we are looking at today is a collection of poems that are much better. They speak of the ecstasy of romantic love. Listen to these lines:
Ah, you are beautiful, my love;
Ah, you are beautiful;
Your eyes are doves.
Ah, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Let me see your face, let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.
How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful!
Your eyes are doves behind your veil,
Your hair is like a flock of goats moving down the
slopes of Gilead. Your neck is like the tower of
David…
In some verses, though, the language is so explicit that some people have concluded that God must not have meant it that way, so they interpret this book as a metaphor or allegory for God’s love. A French preacher in the 11th century, Bernard of Clairvaux, preached 86 sermons on this book without ever mentioning sex.
But if we take the simplest reading, these poems are about two lovers who passionately desire, marry, and satisfy one another. So we can think of the Song of Solomon as a celebration of marriage, the most intimate and intense of all human relationships. And we shouldn’t be surprised to find it here. After all, marriage is an institution that God designed.
Back in the Garden of Eden, God blessed Adam and Eve. We read in Gen. 2 that “a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh.” Jesus quoted the same words Matt. 19. Marriage provides the highest kind of intimacy when it is found in a pure, beautiful, and committed relationship. That is the ideal picture and in Song of Solomon the passion of that relationship is described with utter abandon and satisfaction. After all, God has created everything good, we read in I Tim. 4:4. That includes sex. So no wonder we read lines like:
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
He brought me to the banqueting table and his intention toward me was love.
I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.
Call for restraint.
But in this book of poems, we see more than passion and romantic display. We find a note of restraint as well, a caution that recognizes the possibility of too much too early. We find it first in 2:7.
Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready.
We find this line again in Chapters 3 and 8. God’s word is pointing out something very important. It reminds me of something I used to teach about communication in college classes – the idea that relationships develop step by step. If you move too fast in a friendship, you jeopardize the stability of the relationship. If you share too much about yourself too quickly, you might scare the other person off because he or she is not ready to reveal that much.
So the words Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready, help us see that premature expressions of love are not healthy. Love is more than skin deep. True love does not just appear fully grown. It is not something you produce on demand. True love requires time; it requires a certain maturity. Unfortunately, sometimes people mistake their emotional feelings for love. Love is a quality centered at the core of our being and to misuse the deepest expression of love in a relationship that has not yet developed to that level is to violate God’s intention.
Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready.
When I was a junior in high school, I knew a girl I wanted to date. I had known her all of my life and I thought I was ready for a deeper relationship. So I talked with her and she told me that her priority right then was to focus on her school work. She said that if I still felt the same way a year later, she would be glad to date me. I admired her strong character and her spiritual commitment. Yes, her name is Sue and I have never regretted the wait.
Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready.
Society’s attitude.
Unfortunately, in our society, it is becoming more and more difficult to hold to the wholesome values the Bible teaches because our culture is flooded with lies about sexuality. You may be in church one or two hours per week, but day after day, you are bombarded with sexual messages. If you spend only one or two hours a week considering God’s way, you are facing an uphill battle. Think about the messages you see in movies, on TV, on internet pages, or in stories people tell at work. In our culture, it is as though you have to look sexy, talk sexy, and engage in sex in order to be cool.
Last week one evening, I turned the TV on. For those who don’t know, we rarely watch TV in the evening. We watch the news at meal times and occasionally record a special program to watch later, but we almost never turn on the TV just to watch it..
But since I was preparing today’s message, I wanted to see for myself what was playing in a well-advertised TV series. It was Will & Grace night. I found that the dialogue was so filled with sexual references, I shut it off after 10 minutes. That is all I needed to know.
A survey in 2001 by Family Circle magazine survey showed that 93% of respondents had turned off the TV or changed channels during a program because of sexual content. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey the same year indicated that 80% of parents were concerned about their children’s overexposure to sex and violence. The public has tried to bring pressure on the media to make changes and, according to recent reports, have had some impact. The percentages of sexual material have gone down in the last 5 years.
But, according to Parents Television Council, the bad news is while there is less sex on TV than in 1998 – what’s left is often more explicit. (L. Brent Bozell III, President of the Parents TV Council on the release of The State of the Television Industry: Sex on TV) I won’t go into detail here because I would have to use explicit language.
What kinds of thoughts and attitudes do these programs put into the minds of viewers? Is that the kind of material we want swirling about in our minds? You may not be able to dictate what messages they put on television, but if you can find your remote, you can shut them off. There are restraints we need to take.
Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready.
Our society encourages shortcuts to real love and intimacy, shortcuts that deprive people of the kind of security and fulfillment that God intended. If you believe the polls and TV shows, then you will probably conclude that everyone in society accepts sex outside of marriage and there is something wrong with you if you aren’t doing it. But let me tell you, “It just ain’t so.”
This afternoon, one player for the Pittsburg Steelers says he will be wearing his simple, silver wedding ring under his black gloves as he plays against the Seattle Seahawks. He says, “I don’t think we put any value on marriage any longer in our country and, to me, the wedding band is a symbol of my wedding bond with my wife and my bond with God.” INTERCESSORS FOR AMERICA, Friday, February 03, 2006.
And as you think about this kind of faithfulness, make a mental list of the people you know who have been faithful to their spouses 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. Thank God for their example of love and commitment.
In Song of Solomon, we see this couple waiting to consummate their relationship and above all else we see them honor each other. What a challenge for all of us, no matter what stage of life and relationship we are in. (Brian Newman, Leadership, Winter 2006)
Don’t take shortcuts.
But, regardless of your age or stage in life, this little verse comes back to remind us that the temptation to throw off the restraints and to take shortcuts is close by.
Do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready.
Even those of us who have been married many years must confess that we have not done all we can to keep our marriage relationships vibrantly alive. And others of you have found yourselves falling short of the ideal picture we find in Song of Solomon. But let me reassure you. All is not lost. God offers forgiveness.
Two things that can happen when we take shortcuts:
1. Pre-marital sex. When I was a teenager, my dad sat me down and explained to me what had happened in church the Sunday before. A teenage couple had stood before the church to confess their sexual involvement with each other and asked for the forgiveness of God and of the congregation. My dad helped me see the seriousness of pre-marital sex. It affects not just one or two people, but an entire community.
I haven’t seen it, but in the movie Vanilla Sky, the woman who was stalking Tom Cruise said, “Don’t you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not?” That is pretty profound for a movie. I can’t help but wonder if someone had read I Cor. 6:16, “Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her?” The Bible says in 1 Thess. 4:3 "It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;"
Young people, don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t love them if you won’t have sex with them. True love will not want to have sex with that person. If they are pressuring you to have sex, they do not have love for you, but rather are using you. They do not care about you, and you need to let them know your beliefs.
http://christianteens.about.com/cs/christianadvice/a/SEX_2.htm
2. Pornography
One other short-cut some people take is to turn to pornography. I only want to say this. The biggest problem with pornography, in addition to its addictiveness, is that it removes sex from the context of a relationship. Anything or anyone who tells you that sex can happen outside of a real life relationship with all its blessings and challenges, is telling you a lie about sex. Pornography, which says you can have sexual pleasure whenever you want it, totally on your own terms, destroys your ability to participate as a wholesome being in a living relationship. (Lauren Winner, Leadership, Winter 2006)
Conclusion
I realize that we are all at different places in our lives. Some of you have lost your partner through death or divorce. Some of you may be struggling to keep a relationship alive. Or maybe God has not provided you with the opportunity to marry.
I read of one woman who went through a broken engagement and lonely nights as a single person and who spoke about her experiences to a congregation. She said, “God is enough.” As wonderful as it is to love and be loved by another person, it is more wonderful to love and be loved by God. Whether you are married or single, keep working on that relationship. You can’t go too fast with God.
