A Sleeping Giant

Song of Songs 1:15-2:7, Message 3

Two messages down, and several to go as we continue our study through the Song of Songs. My goal in this series is for you to truly think about what love is. I want for you to see that love is embodied in God – revealed to us in its most complete form in the person and work of Jesus Christ. I believe that even though this book never mentions the name of God specifically, it points us toward the source of love – God Himself. I also believe that from this work of love poetry, we can learn to seek love in its proper order: First, you discover the love that God has for you. We need to come to grips with the fact that the value God places on your life cost Him the life of His one and only Son. Second, we learn to receive His love – we can experience love in its purest form through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Third, we allow His love to permeate every relationship we are a part of. God invites us into a covenant love relationship with Him and as his workmanship, we respond in total, radical obedience to God’s redeeming love. We cannot understand love in its purest form when we are disconnected from the source of love itself – embodied in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Verse 7 is going to be our focal point this morning as we look at this part of our collection of love poems. It says, “Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” The Message Bible for that verse says, “Oh let me warn you sisters in Jerusalem, by the gazelles, yes by all the wild deer: Don’t excite love, don’t stir it up, until the time is ripe – and you’re ready.”
By way of introduction, I want to talk for a couple of minutes about biblical love. In the New Testament, different forms of love are discussed: Agape love – agape love is best understood as self-less love. It is charitable, unconditional love – you can express agape love toward someone you don’t even know – you can even express agape love toward someone you don’t even like. It’s the form of love that allows us to fulfill the command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. A second form of love found in the New Testament is “phileo” love – best understood as brotherly love. It is the love I have for you my brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s the love we experience together as the Body of Christ in a relationship with Jesus. I always remember “Phileo” love by thinking of the Philadelphia, which is the city of brotherly love. Anyway… There are two other words used in Greek literature for love that do not appear in scripture specifically. The first is storge (stor-jay) which is the kind of love expressed between a parent and child, and the second is eros – which is the romantic love expressed between a man and woman.
The Hebrew language which the Song of Songs was written uses a much more generic word for love - we face a similar struggle with Hebrew that we face in the English language. The word for love used through most of the Song of Songs is “ahabah” – pronounced “ah hav ah” – and it is a generic word for love. It can mean everything from the love God has for us to the love we have for Him, on to sexual desire between a man and woman in a marriage relationship. Throughout the Song of Songs, it’s pretty widely understood that the love being talked about here is romantic love. That love still comes from God, and it has boundaries that we need to respect. I think it is awesome to know that the same God who loves us enough to send His Son Jesus to die for our sins, also created intimate love between a man and a woman as His gift to us. However, we should not awaken love before its time…
In nature we are given some awesome examples of this. Think about a caterpillar. We read stories about the caterpillar, my favorite being, “The Very Hungry Catepillar” by Eric Carle. The caterpillar eats everything in sight, growing and growing – sews himself up into a cocoon, and comes out a beautiful butterfly. Now let’s talk about the reality of a caterpillar. A caterpillar eats leaves – not sugary candy like in the story – he eats leaves. He grows, and if he’s lucky and doesn’t get picked off by predators, sews himself up in his cocoon. Then, if he doesn’t get eaten while he’s in the cocoon, he hatches into a beautiful butterfly. It doesn’t end there though. After he’s a butterfly, the former caterpillar inherits a whole new set of problems. Flying being the first. He still has to find food, and he has a new set of predators he has to avoid. We often paint this picture of love, that once you really fall in love, your problems are over and you live happily ever after.
If we look to the New Testament, specifically in 1st Corinthians 13, we see the first thing mentioned in the famous list about love in verse 4 is that, “love is patient.” We see that reflected in the One who embodies love in His patience with us. But why not awaken this deep love between a man and a woman prematurely? What’s the big deal? Can’t we just act on our emotions when it comes to human love? Why doesn’t a caterpillar just sew himself up in the cocoon early so that he can jump to the butterfly part? Well, let’s talk about real love for a minute…
We see here in verse 17 that a big part of the concept of love is protection, as well as pleasure. When we truly love someone, we want to protect them at all cost. I literally would die to protect my wife. Here in the Song of Songs, we see the man tell his beloved, “The beams of our house are cedars; our rafters are firs.” Cedar wood strong as well as fragrant. It offers pleasure – it’s beautiful and it smells good, but it also offers great protection. That is what true love does. Can I just tell you, this man’s cedar and fir house did not get built overnight. In a healthy relationship between a man and woman, there is protection as well as pleasure. It should be no surprise that the man is telling this to his beloved. He is offering her En Gedi…an oasis of protection and pleasure within the relationship. Love that is awakened before its time does not have the opportunity to create protection, and as a result, true pleasure in the relationship often disappears. We can look to the New Testament again to the story of the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7. The foolish man, builds a house with no lasting foundation, no strength to withstand the storms of life. True love is patient, true love awakened at the right time has an opportunity to build a solid foundation for a healthy relationship.
“Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens.” I believe this statement shows the fragile nature of human love, and also guys, it gives us a picture of how we should view our spouse. When we are truly in love, we hold the one we love in the highest regard and are willing to build a relationship built on a foundation of love that is strong and sure.
In 1st Corinthians, Paul tells us that love is not self-seeking. I will submit to you, that premature…or immature love is nearly always self-motivated, it is not centered on the needs of another, but rather focuses on self-gain. True love is motivated toward the other person, it is not interested in selfish gain. “His banner over me is love” is an interesting phrase. The banner was flown during battle – love is something we fight to protect. It is not something we should rush into and cheapen. I look back at my teen years and my early 20s and often wish I could take a lot of things back. I think about how selfish I was, and how I would rush into relationships to try and fulfill a void that was lacking in my life. It wasn’t until I recognized that void could only be filled in a healthy and whole relationship with Jesus that I met my wife.
She says, “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.” This maiden has found a safe haven in the relationship with her lover. She can be herself in his presence, she feels protected and she experiences pleasure. She doesn’t have to worry, she and her man do not have to put on masks to try and make themselves out to be something they are not. Love, we are reminded again in 1st Corinthians “delights in the truth.”
Many of the expressions of love relate to nature in the Song of Songs – cedar beams, firs, roses, lilies, raisins, apples – later many more references to nature will be used in the description of love. This is not by accident, and it relates to this idea of protection and pleasure. God’s fingerprint is all over nature and I believe what we find constant reminders of His love for us in creation. God created the world for us to enjoy – he created it for our pleasure as well as our protection. He gives us boundaries that are for our benefit. Mankind ignored those boundaries initially, and we have been paying for it ever since. God doesn’t give up on us though: God in His love sends us Jesus to restore what was broken and create that intimacy again. Love between a man and a woman has boundaries as well. Love awakened before its time misses out on the protection and pleasure that we can experience when we are patient, we are not self-seeking, when we delight in the truth - when we are connected to that source of love found in an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Love is a sleeping giant, and it needs to be awakened at the right time. When awakened, it’s hungry and needs to be fed. I believe that love awakened prematurely gets fed junk food, it does not get the proper nourishment and can end up unhealthy and starved. Over the years, many have thought this passage needs to be directed specifically toward young people – don’t awaken love prematurely, don’t awaken it before you are old enough. I will tell you that I don’t believe age is necessarily the issue. What we need to do regardless of our age is experience love in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Discover who you are in Him, then allow human love to be awakened and properly nourished. When we rush it, regardless of our stage in life, we miss out on God’s best for us. Love is already work, but love awakened at the wrong time becomes extremely difficult – it becomes the opposite of what 1st Corinthians 13 talks about. The passage in 1st Corinthians tells us that love always protects, always trust, always hopes and always perseveres. Love awakened before its misses the protection that true, patient love offers. Love awakened prematurely is not built on a foundation of trust, and it lacks perseverance.
If you are here this morning and you are eager – eager to fall in love, let me encourage you to do exactly that. But don’t give your heart to a person…give your heart to Christ. Experience intimacy with Him, experience a life-transforming relationship with Him – then, when someone else who is experiencing that life-transforming relationship knocks on the door of your heart and you are ready to answer…allow God to lead and guide you into the beauty of a shared relationship in Him – it’s exciting, it’s glorious, it’s not easy – but it’s the most satisfying human relationship you can be a part of. If you are here this morning, and you have already skipped a lot of those steps – let me encourage you – together with the one you love, journey toward Christ – commit your relationship to Him and experience His transforming grace together.