His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: Next time you're in a conflict with your spouse, give this a try. What I love about this shows us the antidote. When we get those things in our marriage or our lives that just create those little pits or those difficulties, because we all will have them through marriage, so often the answer or the solution is to remember what you love about that person. Instead of focusing on what the wrong is or how you feel like you've been betrayed or how you don't feel like you've been treated properly, to go back and remember why you fell in love.

Guest (Male): It doesn't take long in a marriage for the first conflict to arise. Sometimes it even happens on the honeymoon. Conflict is to be expected, but there is a right and wrong way to handle it. Today on His Perfect Love, we'll go to the Song of Solomon for godly marital advice. Now, if you'll recall, Solomon and his wife were on their honeymoon last time we met. It didn't take long for their first fight. In chapter five, a conflict arises. Here is Pastor Matt VanderVen to tell us what went down.

Matt VanderVen: Let's continue in chapter five. I'll begin right here in verse one. "I have come to my garden, my sister, my spouse." This is Solomon speaking. "I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; and I have drunk my wine with milk." All the things Solomon just described there are all luxury items.

He is saying that when you think about all of the luxuries, especially at that time, it pales in comparison to his Shulammite wife, his spouse, the beloved. When he was to partake of her, it was better than any wine, any myrrh, any kind of fragrance, anything like that. Nothing in the ancient world compares to when your soul is so knit to that perfect person and you are fully enjoying them as God intended you to enjoy them. That's what he's describing here. It's better than all the luxuries on earth.

He says, "I have drunk my wine." We see that often can be joy. "My joy with my milk." It’s beautiful. He accepts the invitation the Shulammite had made. They consummate the marriage. Now he's going to tell his friends just what it's like when you're part of a godly marriage. Here he is, a young man, he's going to say, "Guys, this is great."

Men, we remember hearing about people saying, "Oh, once you're married, then you're locked in and you can't go out with the guys anymore. You can't travel." You don't want to. You want to be with your beloved. You don't want to go anywhere else. It’s a beautiful thing when you have that intimacy and that contentment. He is so excited about it that he wants to share that with everybody. He says, "This is wonderful. Look, eat, O friends! Drink, yes, drink deeply!" He speaks to his friends here about endorsing marriage. "O beloved ones!" It’s wonderful when people extol the beauty and the attributes of a godly marriage.

We're going to transition as we go into this next section. We just left this point of joy, the height of not just the sexual intimacy, but I also mean to the point of their relationship where everything is where they have dreamed it would be. One man, one woman, married for life, intimacy, love, beauty, all of the above. It’s all right there.

Now we're going to read about a moment where maybe somebody can relate to this. Traveling—I used to travel, and I can relate to some of this. Sometimes you're gone for a week, maybe two. You're traveling, you're visiting customers and different things, and you come home. You're tired, and you missed your wife, and you miss the affection and her kisses and her love and home-cooked meals and everything like that. You just can't wait to get home. I don't care how fancy those dinners are. One more time in a hotel or in a fancy restaurant, all you want is your beloved's cooking. Some of you are raising your hand, absolutely.

He comes home, but she's really tired. He comes home and he's been away for a while, and he wants to be intimate again. That's what's going to happen. He wants to be intimate again. He hasn't seen her in a few days, it appears, maybe weeks. We don't know exactly the time, but he's come back. She's tired. She's been keeping the house. Everything's been going on. All the stuff that still needs to be done in the home is still needing to be done. He wanders in and he just says, "Okay, I'm here."

She has a moment where she has a headache. I know that gets often said. We're all adults here, we can talk about these things. We know a lot of times that's simply not true. It’s not true. There are other things that we're trying to communicate by that. Maybe not feeling well, not feeling connected, things like that. But this is serious. There are times where there's that lack of connection or intimacy. So she is going to turn around and she's basically going to reject him.

I know that's hard to believe after we just came after chapter four and this climatic moment of them coming together, reaching the pinnacle of this beautiful marriage and all the beauty that comes with that. Then she's going to spend this terrible night regretting it. After he leaves, he says, "Okay, I understand." He doesn't want to fight about it, but he goes on his way. She's going to be thinking the rest of the night, and then she's going to actually have some desires because she's going to start thinking about him and she's going to be missing that desire. Then she's going to go searching for him, and it creates such anxiety in her heart. She thinks to herself, "I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to turn around and turn away my beloved."

This is actually a biblical precept. First Corinthians chapter seven describes this if you've ever read that passage in the scriptures. I'd really say this for males and females. I know I was being a little interesting in the way I said, "Oh, women will say I have a headache." We all understand that can go either way in both directions in a marriage.

It's something that God has warned us in biblical marriages not to go for long periods of time without intimacy. That is presuming there's not a medical reason. Everybody understands if there's a medical reason, this is not to make anybody feel guilted or convicted or anything like that. There are sometimes reasons for that that are beyond someone's control, and that's not what God is talking about in First Corinthians seven. That's certainly not what we're seeing here.

The idea is that God has given sex as an intimacy, as pleasure. It's something that a husband and wife should enjoy intimately, only the two of them together, not anybody else. It’s very special. It's pre-curse. Because of that specialness, what God tells us is that often a male or a female can become tempted. In First Corinthians seven, it says that temptation comes often when that fulfillment doesn't happen.

God actually says unless it's prayer or fasting, those are really the two reasons in First Corinthians seven that God gives. Certainly, medical conditions would fall in there as well. But anything besides those reasons, the idea is we should be open to our spouses wanting to have that time of intimacy. That's what the Bible teaches, and we have to understand that.

I've done counseling where sometimes guys will say, "Well, but my testosterone or my hormones are this and my wife's hormones are that." I've heard it the other way around. A wife says, "My hormones are this and my husband's hormones or libido is this." Really, I want to encourage all married couples to talk about those things together and intimately. Please don't keep those things private as though you can't share that with your spouse or your wife, your husband.

These are really important things within a marriage. Specifically, First Corinthians seven warns that when you don't actually have those discussions for a greed-upon point of time—in other words, "Okay, we're praying and fasting, so we're giving ourselves unto the Lord for this week," what have you—we understand that. But after that, First Corinthians seven says you are to come together again, lest you be what? Tempted by the devil.

That's something that we really need to understand within marriages. Even in marriages, men and women can get tempted with another. We can get tempted, quite honestly, with computers, pornography, all of these kinds of things can vie at really what only your wife or your husband was meant to fulfill by God's design.

I'm simply explaining what the passage is teaching in scripture. These things are important because if you would like a healthy marriage and you want a biblical marriage, there really isn't this idea of "I have a headache." There isn't this idea of "I've got to go wash my hair for the fifth time," guys or gals. This isn't this idea where we take sexual intimacy and we hold it hostage or we use it as a manipulation tool. I'm being very direct with you. I know this is a very sensitive topic, but it's in the Bible and we have to talk about all these things no matter if it's uncomfortable to any one of us. We've got to talk about these things because God wants us to understand what a biblical marriage should look like.

That is the context of what's about to happen here. Again, if you want to read more about the aspects of that, you can look at First Corinthians seven where it specifically commands that a husband and wife are to be together again unless there's a medical or a time of prayer and fasting.

The idea here is when you said, "I do," just like God uses marriage as a beautiful symbol of His love with us—He's the bridegroom, we're the bride—He tells us that we're doulos. What does that mean? Everybody remember the Greek? We're slaves. We're servants. Willing slaves, willing servants. So our minds, our bodies, and everything don't belong to us anymore when we surrender to Jesus. Do we all agree with that? The idea behind that.

It's that same idea that when we are married and we say, "I do," it's the same idea. We're not giving ourselves to anyone else. We give ourselves to our wives, we give ourselves to our husbands. Do we all agree on that? The other thing He wants us to understand is as often as we come together that way intimately, providing there's not a true medical—maybe you do have a migraine or maybe you really are sick and then that's certainly understandable. But if it's not that case, if it's for some other reason, maybe harboring a little bit of ill feeling, maybe a little bit of bitterness.

Sometimes in marital counseling, I've heard accounts of whether a husband or wife feel neglected and then they want to sort of—I don't use the word get even—but they want to make it known that they feel neglected and all that does is just continue to create animosity in the marriage. Do you see that? It doesn't ever bring the opportunity for the unity. Again, I don't know what's going on in the marriages in this church. The Lord does, but I want to encourage you. Please talk to your spouses. Please have those conversations and don't be ashamed, don't be embarrassed. Come and talk to them and say, "I would like to see us be more this, or can we agree on some of these things in our marriage so it's godly?"

Let's go into this section now. Verse two: "I sleep, but my heart is awake. It is the voice of my beloved! He knocks, saying, 'Open for me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is covered in dew.'" The time has passed. They're no longer newlyweds. Some amount of time has passed. Work starts to get real. The honeymoon's great, but after the honeymoon, you come back, you settle into your apartment, your house, wherever you're living, and real life begins because you've got to go to work. You've got to pay the bills. You've got all the dinners, you've got to figure all these things out. That's at the point they're at right now.

I love that this is in here. This is real life. This is really what happens. The honeymoon is over. What do we do now? This is a great example. He comes and whether he's traveling, whatever, he clearly wants intimacy there. We're going to read, "My locks with the drops of the night." She's half asleep. She hears him, but he's been away. She hears him knocking or moving around coming to the house.

"I have taken off my robe; how can I put it on again?" What is she saying? "I'm in bed and I'm settled for the evening. I'm not getting out of bed. I have washed my feet. Maybe that's where you ladies or maybe some of you guys said 'I washed my hair' or 'I've got to go wash my'—that's where it came from. 'How can I defile them?'"

"My beloved put his hand by the latch of the door." What is she really saying? "I don't feel well. I don't feel like it. I'm not in the mood. I'm tired. I'm sleepy." All these things are not legitimate unless it's really true, unless you really are sick or there's something wrong there. It's not legitimate to lie that way.

"And my heart yearned for him." There's sort of this change of heart that's happening at the same time. She's actually probably waking more up. She's kind of going, "Well, you know, I don't really want to get—it's cold out. I don't want to get out of bed. I'm here all warm, I'm all wrapped up. It's good." But then she says, "My heart yearned for him. I arose." She says, "All right, I'm going to get out of bed."

She says, "I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh." This is telling us what's going on here. This is really important for decoding this portion of the scripture. She goes to grab the handle at which he touched, the lock that he just had his hands on. Remember that? "And my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh on the handles of the locks." What she realizes and knows at this point is he wanted intimacy.

This is the way that it would be communicated biblically. The idea is almost if we could have had that idea of symbolic pheromones that would be left if I—you all know what pheromones are, hormones that spouses can breathe and it can create arousal between two married couples. What it's almost like is she touches the door and it's dripping with myrrh, liquid myrrh. The idea there, I think we all get the sensuality of what she's trying to say there. It's like the pheromones were at an all-time high. She touches the door and she says, "Oh man, he wanted to be with me intimately."

She's now connecting the dots. She knows that he wanted intimacy. She says, "I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had turned away and was gone." Again, he desired intimacy. She didn't initially know. She was thinking, "Oh, I've got to get out of bed," maybe just thinking he's coming home late. "I'm not going to do that." But then when she starts to desire herself for him, that's when she starts to get out of bed. But at that point, she comes to the door. "Oh man, he wanted to be intimate. I love him." But guess what he did? He turned away and said, "Okay, I'm not going to disturb her. She's sleeping. I'll go and do some work," or something like that.

"My heart leaped up when he spoke. I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer." Because he was long gone. The idea is we shouldn't deny each other in this capacity. She's now having regret. She's now having regret.

"The watchmen who went about the city found me; they struck me, they wounded me." I don't mean physically that the watchmen went up, "What are you doing looking for your husband?" They didn't do that, but the idea is that she's sort of being convicted. She's sort of going through this point where she's like, the watchman—what's a watchman do? Stays watch at night for security protection. He says it's become obvious he's wandering, he's not home. The town is going to know. Everybody's going to know the business. Why isn't he home with his wife?

So it's kind of like egg on the face, so to speak. "They struck me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am lovesick!" Now do you see the 180 there? He came there wanting to be intimate, just coming home. She says, "Not now. I'm asleep. I don't feel—I just got all cleaned. I'm all this, that, and the other." She says no. He goes about his business. "I'll go back to work. Okay, I'll go do this. I'll go do that."

She says, "Gosh, I do miss him." She starts probably thinking back to the honeymoon a couple weeks ago, however much time has gone. "Gosh, I do miss him. I miss him so. You know what? I want to be with him." She goes to get up and all of a sudden, now when she's ready, he's not to be found. Now she gets anxious. Her heart starts beating. "Oh no, where is he?" Then she sees her friends or the idea of talking to her friends. She says, "If you see him, if you see my husband, I'm so lovesick. I miss him so much. I wish he was here." She's basically exclaiming or giving this emotion. She's describing what she feels.

Look at how the daughters of Jerusalem respond. They actually rebuke her. This is the first time they do this in all of scripture here. We don't see this in any other chapters. "What is your beloved more than another beloved?" In other words, "Is your beloved so much special or not as special as another? O fairest among women!" Now they're using the terms, remember? She talked about how she was so happy with her husband in the marriage and now she uses the term "you are the fairest." Remember, that's what she wanted to be too. And Solomon used those words. "What is your beloved more than another beloved, that you so charge us?"

Look, if he was all those things as you mentioned earlier, why did you treat him that way? That's what the friends are saying, really. When you really read into it. "Is he more than another beloved? If he's so great, why did you do this to him? Why did you do that?"

Now she goes on to say, and she responds to their rebuke. "My beloved is white and ruddy." That means he's fair and a little bit reddish. "Chief among ten thousand. His head is like the finest gold; his locks are wavy." Finest gold would be doubly refined. His hair is "black as a raven." Think of hair that might be slicked back, black, curly, wavy hair. "His eyes are like doves." His eyes are peaceful and gentle. "By the rivers of waters, washed with milk." Again, the perfect proportion of his face, the whole thing. She's saying he's the perfect picture. "And fitly set. His cheeks are like a bed of spices, banks of scented herbs. His lips are lilies, dripping with liquid myrrh." They were soft and nice to the kiss.

"His hands are rods of gold set with beryl." She's trying to say he is the full package. He is not only aesthetically pleasing on the outside, he's got a beautiful heart we've already read about. But also when you look at him, yes, he would have been the guy with the abs, ladies. He would have been the guy with the abs. "His hands are rods of gold set with beryl. His body is carved ivory." Those abs are like—he's got like a twelve-pack instead of an eight-pack. I don't even know if that's possible. "Inlaid with sapphires. His legs are pillars of marble." She starts describing his physique and how he's so built. "Set on bases of fine gold." He's strong. "His countenance is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars." You think about how big those cedar trees are in Lebanon, strong.

"His mouth is the most sweet. Yes, he is altogether lovely." He's handsome. "This is my beloved." She's remembering why she fell in love with him. She's remembering why she fell in love with him. You know what I love about this? This shows us the antidote. When we get those things in our marriage or our lives that just create those little pits or those difficulties, because we all will have them through marriage, so often the answer or the solution is to remember what you love about that person. Instead of focusing on what the wrong is or how you feel like you've been betrayed or how you don't feel like you've been treated properly, to go back and remember why you fell in love.

Guest (Male): What a great idea. And with that, we'll draw this edition of His Perfect Love to a close. Pastor Matt VanderVen is at the tail end of a study in the Song of Solomon. You can catch a replay when you visit hisperfectlove.org. That's hisperfectlove.org. We're also at oneplace.com and look for us wherever you get your podcasts.

We also have a mobile app. This is a great way to take Pastor Matt's teachings with you wherever you may go. You can learn more about the mobile app and start your download when you visit our website, hisperfectlove.org. Thank you for your prayers and financial support. You can make a contribution to the ministry and send us your prayer requests through the website again at hisperfectlove.org.

Those of you that are in the Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania area or will be visiting the area, we want to cordially invite you to join us for a worship service. Just like on the radio, Pastor Matt teaches verse by verse through the Bible here at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You'll find us at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information. And then set aside another half hour to join us tomorrow at the same time on this same fine station when Pastor Matt will pick up where we left off in the Song of Solomon here on His Perfect Love.

His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.