Word of Salvation – Vol. 39 No.44 – November 1994

 

The Bond That Ties

 

Sermon: by Rev. R. Brenton

Text: Song of Songs 8:6-7

 

My brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ,

Deep in the heart of the Old Testament is the most eloquent love song ever composed: Solomon’s Song of Songs.

This song is so sublime that the ancients said that Solomon must have been singing of a heavenly love with pleasures that earth cannot afford.  Many believed that Solomon was so enthralled by the love of the Lord for His people that he wanted to express this love in the most intimate, passionate and eloquent of terms.  After all, the Lord is the loving bridegroom and His church is His beloved Bride.  Being in love, should not the Bridegroom and his beloved Bride sing to one another in the language of love?  Should not their deepest and most intimate feelings be explicitly revealed?

Anyone who has ever listened to the Song of Solomon has heard words that only lovers in the bond of a marriage may voice.  Surely such sensuous and passionate song finds its sanctity in the marriage bond.  The question is: in whose marriage bond?  Must we insist, as many have in the past, that these words are best suited for the union between Christ and His church?  I don’t think so.  And I am not alone in this opinion.

Along the way some people have accepted the Song of Songs as it appears at face value: it’s a song about the love that a man and a woman may know within the bond of God blessed marriage.

True, nobody knows love or shows love better than the Lord.  God is love.  He is the fountain of all true love.  If the Lord had not first loved us, we would not know what true love is or how to love another person.  That’s why His love has priority.  His love is the pattern for our love.  As the apostle Paul puts it: for as Christ loved the church, so the husband must love his wife.

Nevertheless, I submit to you that the Song of Songs is sublime not because it speaks the language of husband-wife intimacy in order to sing the glories of God’s love.  Rather this song is sublime because it drinks from that heavenly fountain from which all true love flows in order to lead us here below into fruitful avenues of intimacy within our own very human marriages.  Solomon’s Song of Songs is nothing more than that – and certainly nothing less than a celebration of the God-blessed marriage of man and woman.  Better yet, think of it as a wedding song to last you a life time.  Your wedding song!  Lover and beloved are singing to each other, wooing and responding.  But they are not alone.  The friends of the bride and groom keep the love drama moving as they sing in praise of the lover and his beloved on the way to their wedding day and anticipate the consummation of their union.  More than that, they bear witness to the marriage.

Today, I want to draw your attention to one small segment of this song: namely, chapter 8, verses 6 and 7.  (Read)

Here the beloved bride sings to her loving husband of her yearning for a life-long union.  In her yearning, she is urging him to take the primary responsibility toward the maintenance of the marriage bond.  As she entreats him to take this responsibility upon himself, she assures him that maintaining their marriage union is neither an insurmountable task nor a hit-or-miss proposition in which the lucky few score big and win.  Not at all!  If love is given its way, the marriage bond will not break.  It cannot.

You see love has its habits.  You could say that love is always true to its nature.  So much so, that if given its way, love will have its way.

You who are now married can afford to be reminded of these habits of love.  You who are contemplating marriage – whether you have found your true love or not makes no difference – need to know what love can do.  You who are not yet interested in what love can do will pay attention anyway because you need to know for future reference.  You who have been cruelly deceived by love’s counterfeit might just want a proper introduction to true love some day.  True love is recognised by its habits, of which three are worthy of note:

1.  Love is unyielding: it won’t give up on its prize.

2.  Love is unquenchable: its flames won’t go out.

3.  Love is uncompromising: it doesn’t sell out.

The first habit is the unyielding jealousy of love.  All of us at some time in our lives were taught that jealousy is a sinful habit to avoid at all cost.  Let us suppose that you are a young man.  You and your best friend both have eyes for the same girl.  You are in competition for her love.  You go to extremes in order to get her to notice you.  You do almost anything to impress her.  The idea is to woo her and win her.  But at the end of the day, your best friend prevails and wins the love you both so highly prize.  Instead of congratulating your best friend on his success, you begin to resent that she is with him instead of with you.  You want her so desperately that you determine to stop at nothing short of murder to get her away from him.  Your friendship once amiable to competition, turns into a jealous rivalry.  As you can see, this kind of jealousy is vicious.

Let us suppose however, that you are the best friend who woos and wins the beloved one, and then marries her.  Within the bond of marriage jealousy is a necessary virtue.  In its proper context, true love is habitually jealous.  When I was a child I was taught that the Lord was a jealous God.  At first the thought of the Lord being jealous disturbed me, but in time I learned that the Lord is jealous not in a vicious way, but in a virtuous way.  You see, the Lord guards the people who belong to Him.  He loves them so much that He cannot tolerate any rivals.  He says, ‘you shall have no other God before me.’ Because the Lord lives in covenant with His people – and that’s a kind of marriage bond – He can tolerate no competitors going after the love of His people.  We who belong to the Lord are, in a sense, married to Him.  He prizes us as His most beloved, so He is not about to risk losing us to some other lover.  In the same way, the loving husband jealously guards his beloved wife.  He protects her from any predators and wards off any rivals who would compete for her love.

Solomon’s choice illustration for jealously is not God’s love, but the grave!  Everyone is appointed to die once and be placed in the grave.  Death and the grave mean the same thing for Solomon.  The point to remember is that when a person dies, the grave gets a hold on him and never lets go.  We know that because corpses do not climb out of caskets.  Once the grave gets its man, there is no letting go.  So, in a manner of speaking, we can say the grave is jealous, to the extreme.  True love, with respect to jealousy, is like the grave because it never lets go of its prize.  Nowadays we see so much that masquerades as love.  When a man and a woman vow to remain married as long as their love shall last, they betray true love by denying its jealous nature.  From the outset they are showing a determination not to let love have its way.  Love that is true to habit will last as long as life itself, without letting go.

So, I say to husbands, you lovers: let love be true to habit.  Never let go of your beloved.  In your love be as strong as death and as unyielding as the grave.  Guard your wife and give way to no rivals.  True love does not let go.

The second habit is the unquenchable passion of love.  Everybody knows that love is a fire.  The Don Juans of the world boast of their latest flame.  In the late sixties, Jim Morrison, notorious leader of The Doors, was singing, ‘Light my fire.’ Everybody knows that passionate love is ‘hot’ and that people in love sometimes get burned.

Some people play with love like little children play with matches: they light love’s fire for the sheer thrill of the blaze.  There are promiscuous lovers who light fires all over the place as they make moves from one partner to another to another.  Such fires burn and consume uncontrollably and insatiably, never satisfied or gratified.

This kind of wild fire reminds me of the man who started a fire in his barbecue grill because he wanted to cook a T-bone steak.  First, he lit the charcoal and got a blazing fire going.  When the flame was high, he set the steak on the grill and walked away.  In about 10 minutes he returned to turn the steak over.  Much to his dismay, he found the steak burnt to a crisp on the outside while exceedingly rare on the inside.  Yet, the barbecue’s flame was still ablaze, as if hungry for another slab of raw meat.

We know where the man went wrong.  We know how to cook a steak to perfection.  What’s needed is not some wild red-hot flame, but some white-hot coals with hardly any flame at all.  Perhaps not a fire watcher’s flame; but if your goal is to sink your teeth into a juicy T-bone, you simply cannot allow some red-hot flame to lap away at it.  Only white-hot coals, spread broadly over the base of the barbie, can generate a passion that penetrates to the heart and brings out the best in the beloved T-bone.

The fire of the barbecue grill is a splendid analogy of love’s passionate fire.  Any child can light a match.  And any lover can light your fire, if you’re willing to be turned on and set ablaze!  Yet, if you were to ask the beloved bride who sings of love’s fire in the Song of Songs, what kind of blaze she favours, you will find she has no time for the red-hot lover who is wild, impatient and selfish.  What she wants is a white-hot lover whose controlled flame can penetrate through the skin to that waiting heart which yearns for and responds to true love.  She favours the white-hot love because God created her to be responsive to that love which warms the heart.

Consider the Apostle Paul’s sublime love poem found in 1Corinthians 13.  The first characteristic which defines love is ‘patience’.  Love is patient.  Some versions translate ‘long suffering’ instead of patience.  Whatever translation you prefer, the original word is ‘macro-thumia’.  Macro’ means broad or expansive, like the way I spread my coal across the bottom of my barbecue grill.  “Thumia” means heat or warmth of passion, with the potential to embrace and penetrate deeply, like the white-hotness of my steak-ready coals.

This New Testament insight is most illuminating, for it portrays the unselfish and exceptionally patient white-hot lover.  Usually we think of the patient person as the one with the sense of calm endurance.  But we overlook the biblical ideal of patience as exemplified in the one who selflessly, passionately, wholeheartedly embraces his beloved.  Sure, she might thrill him, but he’s not a thrill-seeker.  She may well light his fire, but he’s not so careless as to let her get burned.  He’s not in love with being in love, so he takes full responsibility for love’s fire.  He wants to bless her, not burn her.  So he tends love’s fire, keeping the temperature just right and the flame burning bright.  This means that he always trusts her response to him.  He is always hopeful of their future in marriage.  He always perseveres in the face of challenge and adversity.

Love like that, my brothers and sisters, never fails.  Nobody and nothing can quench such a love.  Today, more than ever, we need white-hot lovers with a deep- seated passion for their beloved.  We need husbands who will vow to love their wives for as long as they both shall live and who will back up those vows by tending love’s fire to ensure that its passion extends from heart to heart, come what may.

So, I say to husbands, you lovers: let your love be true to habit.  Always tend love’s fire as you burn white-hot for your beloved.  And let no rivers wash it away.  True love is never quenched!

The third habit is the uncompromising integrity of love.  The marriage bond must be maintained at all costs.  This means that the love which ties the husband and wife together can never be compromised.  God has said that when a man marries a woman, the two become one.  In other words, the two are now reconstituted as one marriage organism.  She belongs to him and he belongs to her.  Her body is his and his body is hers.  Together they are an integrated whole.  They are marriage partners.  Each partner gives to the whole marriage.  So crucial is the integrity of the marriage that nothing is allowed to come between husband and wife that might possibly disintegrate their marriage.  The husband, especially, must do all in his power to maintain the integrity of the marriage.

In order to do this, he must realise the value of the marriage and the price of true love.  In the Song of Songs, the beloved reminds her lover that their love is priceless.

Almost everything has a price tag to ensure its exchange in the market place.  If I need to buy a loaf of bread, I am willing to part with $2, but no more; $20 for a shirt; $100 for shoes.  I have my price, you see.  If the market keeps its goods within my price range, we’re in business.  Yes, almost everything comes with a price tag.  But not love!  The true love of husband and wife is price-less.  Do you know why there is no price tag?

First of all, nobody knows what the price tag for true love should be.  Should it be $10,000?  Or is $10,000,000 a better estimate?  How about the worth of the world?  How much is one life worth?  How about two lives in love?  Who can say for sure?  Such value is impossible to price.

Second, and this is the crucial reason, to put a price tag on love makes love a marketable commodity.  Put love up for sale and you have immediately compromised the integrity of your marriage.  To put a price on love reveals a willingness to sell out.  The very idea is born of compromise.

Love is not for sale!  When the God of all creation unites a man and a woman in the bond of marriage, He wills for that union to remain inviolable.  The whole must not be taken apart so that one part(ner) can be given in exchange for someone or something else.  The beloved in the Song of Songs reminds her lover of love’s uncompromising integrity: ‘If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.’

True love refuses to compromise the integrity of marriage.  True love does not go to the market place.  Not even for the pleasure of window shopping to find out what’s hot and what’s not!  True love is not for sale.

Yet, today’s professed lovers show up in droves at the buyer’s market.  That market may be disguised as a pub or nightclub.  It may even have the respectable trappings of a business office.  The market could be anywhere.  All it takes is for one partner to lose all sense of value to the point of putting a price-tag on the price-less.  All it takes is a damning judgement call by one partner to the effect that the other’s worth is anything less than inestimable.  Once that happens, the integrity of the marriage is compromised.

Some partners sell out for a new partner.  Others sell out in the interest of a high powered career, for personal freedom or for adventure.  We are living in the day when priceless things are being tagged and sold.  Consequently, we are suffering the loss of all that we hold dear, as evidenced by the grand scale sell-out of marriage and family.

So, I say to you husbands, you lovers: let love be true to habit.  Let love never compromise the integrity of your marriage.  Realise that your love is a priceless gift from the God of love.  Know that your love is not for sale or exchange.  Not now.  Not ever.  True love never sells out.

Remember this.  Love is true to habit: unyielding in its jealousy, unquenchable in its passion and uncompromising in its integrity.  Because love has such habits, the beloved entreats her lover: ‘Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm.’

Way back in the days of the ancients the seal was an article of stone or metal on which was engraved an impression or figure representing the seal’s owner.  Today we would call that impression the owner’s signature.  Often the seal was the shape of a ring or cylinder; a cord could be passed through the opening so that the seal could be worn either around the neck, the arm or the waist.

Today the wedding ring represents the lover’s seal.  By this ring the lover signifies that he is bound to his beloved within the covenant of marriage.  She is now his priceless treasure.  He vows never to betray his love for her.  No sell-outs!  He vows to keep love’s fire passionately ablaze for her and her alone.  He vows to jealously hold on to her for dear life, as long as life shall last.

That’s the marriage bond.  Now you can see why the beloved one has every good reason to entreat her loving husband for such a life-long commitment.  Notice the beloved says to her lover: Bind yourself to me!  Place me as a seal!  Think of me as the ring on your finger which encircles you and binds us to each other for life!  Think of me as your very own signature which attests to your honour and integrity!

Brothers and sisters, how desperately we need to recover this binding language, not merely for the sake of marriage ceremony, but as the signature of our covenant life!  We need to recover the life-long passionate and uncompromising love of the two God has joined as one.  Our marriages must become bonds which tie us irrevocably together.  Listen once more to the entreaty of your beloved:

Bind yourself to me so that our love will last without letting go, washing away or selling out!

AMEN