It is hard to stand before someone naked. I don’t mean physically naked, but
emotionally naked—to let your guard down and be real with people, to take off
the mask and reveal your insecurities.
In his book and marriage, Tim Keller explains that to be loved but not
known is nice but superficial, to be known and not loved is our worst
nightmare, but to be fully known and totally loved is the gospel.
You can stand naked before God and be unashamed because God
has covered your shame with the blood of his Son. On the cross Jesus removed all our spiritual
blemishes. Because he has washed you need
never fear his rejection.
As a church this sort of grace needs to be our atmosphere.
1. Wasf—love celebrates
Along the Ennis Road there is a beauty clinic called
Wasfi. Wasfi is a Arabic term meaning ‘one
worthy of praise.’ Related to this is a
Wasf—an Arabic love poem where the lover describes their beloved from head to
toe. That is the sort of thing we have
in our reading. The one man looks at his
new wife and praises her.
She has kept her virginity for their wedding night, and now
stands before him with very little on—a veil, a neckless and her hair. His job is to tell her how beautiful she
is. Sadly, some men would rather die
than praise their wife, and as a result the love slowly drains from their
marriage.
Behold, you are
beautiful, my love; behold you are beautiful (1). Her hair is like a flock of goats—think of a
flock of black goats weaving their way together down a mountainside. Her teeth are like shorn ewes—over time a ewe’s
out coat will become discoloured, but when it is shorn it is lovely and
white. None of her teeth have lost their
young—they each have the matching one, none are missing (a rare thing in the age
before dental care). Her cheeks are like
pomegranates cut in half—in other words they are red and healthy.
He sums up by declaring, ‘there is no flaw in you’ (7). Remember that earlier in the song she had
complained about her skin being darkened by the sun and that she had not kept
herself will (she had neglected her vineyard), but he sees her through the eyes
of grace. He calls her ‘my sister’—possibly
because he feels like he has always known her.
Dane Ortland says that, ‘it is better to offer too much
praise, with the possibility of making a person pride, than giving them too
little with the possibility of discouraging them.’ Think about how the apostle Paul affirms the
Christians he writes to: ‘We give thanks to God always for
all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before
our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of
hope in our Lord Jesus Christ' (1 Thess. 1:2-3).
Love is exclusive
The consummation of their marriage lies at the exact centre
of this song. In the Hebrew the song has
a title, then one hundred and eleven lines, then the description of their
becoming one flesh (4:16-5:1) and then another one hundred and eleven lines. Sex in marriage is to be celebrated. In fact, those in the community encourage the
new couple in their love life—‘eat friends, drink and be full of love’ (5:1).
He acknowledges that she has kept her body exclusively for
him. ‘A garden locked up is my sister,
my bride’ (4:12). Remember that she had
told her friends not to awaken their sexual love. Now on her wedding night the time has come to
‘awake’ (4:16). She invites him into ‘his’
garden. Nine times he uses the word ‘my’
in the first verse of chapter five—they belong to each other. ‘I come into my garden’ (5:1).
But is Christ exclusive, after all he loves all of his
people? We must remember as we read the
song of songs that the bride of Christ is a people, not individual
people. In other words, there is one
bride of Christ, one people of God, the true church of all those who know and
love him. There isn’t one people of God
called Hindus, and another called Muslims, and another people called Buddhists. There is one people of God, the true church
of God, not all who call themselves Christians, but those who have allowed
themselves be washed by Christ’s death and are living in the power of his
resurrection.
This reminds us of the importance of loving the church that Christ loves. It means that a true Christian will be
attached to a local expression of Christ’s bride. It means that one of the ways we love Christ
is through loving his people, one of the ways we receive the love of Christ is
by being loved by his people. While in
isolated parts of the world a Christian may have to live in isolation from
other Christians, the New Testament knows nothing of solitary Christianity.
Love is rooted in
grace
You might not have kept your garden locked, you might not
have kept your fountain sealed. You
might not be able to offer virginity to your marriage. Indeed, everyone approaches life and marriage
with some level of sexual failure. In
his book about porn Ray Ortland writes, ‘I love my wife, I don’t watch porn,
but I am a sexual sinner.’ Many of us
would say the same.
But we take comfort in the fact that Jesus was a friend of
sexual sinners. He spoke of the highest
degrees of purity, but offered the absolute promise of forgiveness. He is the one who can restore virginity. To those with difficult sexual pasts he can
say, ‘there is no flaw in you’ (4:7).
I want to finish by reading you a great article called ‘My
wife has tattoos.’
‘My wedding day was last week and I didn’t marry the girl of
my dreams. If you told me, when I was a
teenager, that my wife would have seven tattoos and a history of drug and alcohol
abuse … I would have laughed at you …
It wasn’t my dream to marry a complicated girl.
I never dreamed I’d sit on a couch with my future wife in premarital
counselling listening to her cry and tell stories of drunken nights …
confessing mistakes made in past relationships.
That wasn’t my dream …
Many people wouldn’t have put Taylor and me together. In High School we probably wouldn’t have been
friends. She probably would have thought
I was a nice, boring, judgemental Christian kid. I probably would have thought she was a nice,
lost, party-scene girl who guys like me were supposed to avoid …
But everything changes when people meet Jesus … Right in the
middle of the mess of life, Taylor met Jesus, and he placed his flag in her life
… this is how I see Taylor. She is
completely new, completely transformed and completely clean … He took all her
sins, placed them on his Son and gave her Jesus’ righteousness to wear like a
perfect white wedding dress.
In reality, Taylor’s story is my story as well. As she walked down the aisle towards me, I
was reminded of how much I don’t deserve the precious gift she is to me. I’ve spent my life singing a self-centred
siren song. Nothing in my life cries for
blessing … yet god dressed me in white, put my sins on his Son, and gave me a
heart that loves him.
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