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| 'The Kiss' by Auguste Rodin |
The Next Seven Weeks
I’m not going to speak for long tonight, because I want to give Mike plenty of time to present Evaluate a bit later, but I think it would be good to set the scene for this series of talks on sexuality and relationships that we’re going to do here over the next seven weeks.
In the next two Sundays we’re going to be looking at marriage and singleness, in that order. A little girl was once asked, “What is it called when a man is married to just one woman? And she replied, “Monotony!” Many marriages struggle along in an unhappy truce of boredom and non-communication. That’s not God’s plan.
I would guess that most people here have suffered from close family members getting divorced. For some of you it will have been your parents and that will have hurt you deeply. So many marriages collapse and end in divorce. Christian couples are just as vulnerable to marriage breakdown as non-Christian ones. That’s not God’s plan either. So how can I make my marriage work? What are the keys to a good marriage according to God’s word?
With so much unhappiness in marriage you would have thought that most single people wouldn’t want to go near it. But many people suffer from acute loneliness and low self-esteem by remaining single. So how can I honour God in singleness? We’ll look into that in a fortnight’s time.
Then, the following two weeks, we’re going to think about the broader issue of masculinity and femininity. In the last 30 years or so our culture has embraced and promoted a blurring of male and female distinctives. So we now have less feminine women and less masculine men. That’s not good. We’re going to look into God’s word and try and recapture a vision of masculinity and femininity as God intended.
In early June, we’re going to look at two big, big issues. Firstly, homosexuality. I suspect that many here will privately have major questions about this. Instinctively, we feel from quite a young age that, biologically speaking, homosexuality just doesn’t fit. But the pressure to uncritically accept gay sex in our culture is overwhelming and unrelenting. In fact it’s borderline against the law to openly disapprove of it.
Many people, especially young people, just don’t know what to think anymore. So I’ve invited two people, who have both come out of an openly gay lifestyle since becoming Christians, to speak about their experience and on their understanding of God’s plan for their lives. I suspect that this is a voice that will be completely new to you, such is the aggressive agenda in the Western world to silence it by all possible means.
The second big issue is sexual brokenness; that is to say the traumas that result from abuse, rape, incest and so on. Tragically, a surprising number of people have suffered this kind of ordeal. It can lead to bitterness, an inability to form healthy relationships, guilt, self-harm, depression and a whole host of other consequences. Is there any healing for the victims? Is there any hope of real change for the perpetrators?
The Strength of Sexual Passion
That’s where we’re going. But tonight, to set the scene, I want to start by reading some words from the Song of Songs, chapter 5 which Chris is going to read for us…
I need to say first of all that I don’t think this kind of language has any place in our worship songs. “You’re altogether lovely.” “Let my words be few. Jesus I am so in love with you.” “I’m desperate for you.” “Beautiful One I love you.” “I turn my eyes upon you now, look full in your wonderful face.” “Renew me in your presence and refresh me with your kiss.”
Yes, the Church is the bride of Christ and marriage does point to the covenant love between Christ and his Church, but at no time is our relationship with Christ ever portrayed as erotic in Scripture. If Jesus was my girlfriend the Bible would say so.
The Song of Songs does not primarily have the relationship between Christ and the church in view. Some people disagree. Some say, “This is an allegory.” In other words, it doesn’t mean what it looks like it means. So when she says in chapter 1.12 “My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts” some interpreters claim this is actually a picture of Christ’s appearing between the Old and New Testaments. I just don’t think it does. When I read “My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts” I just don’t think about the incarnation – at all. And I don’t think Solomon was thinking about it either when he wrote those words.
The Song of Songs is an uninhibited, passionate, sensual love poem with strong sexual suggestion and many playful euphemisms – it’s quite hard to read it without your glasses steaming up. It’s sexually and emotionally intense. But its purity and innocence are unequalled in world literature.
The Song of Songs is a poem about human, sexual love with erotic overtones. As C.J. Mahaney put it, and I can’t say it better than this; “This Song is intended to arouse husband and wife to cultivate and experience holy romance and sex… for the pleasure and the glory of God.”
The Song of Songs confirms - with divine approval - what we already know; sexual attraction arouses the most ardent passions we are capable of. In the Song of Songs romantic love fills the senses. It is intoxicating. It can be almost hypnotic. Verse 1; “I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride, I have gathered my myrrh with my spice... I have drunk my wine and my milk...” “Drink your fill of love.”
This is a celebration of those passions that get the blood pumping, the heart beating and the mind racing. In v2-8 the girl has a vivid dream. She is longing for lover all the time. She imagines he’s there. In v5; “I arose to open for my beloved and my hands dripped with myrrh.” Her hands are sweating, he’s not there. She longs to see him again. Every minute they are apart seems like hours. Verse 6; “I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him.” Verse 8; “Tell him I am faint with love.”
Sexual attraction is potent and very physical. In chapter 4 he describes her – to her face – and says how attractive he finds her. Her eyes, her hair, her teeth, her lips and mouth, her temples, her neck and breasts… He stops there! “All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you” (v7). “You have stolen my heart” (v9). Notice this; he initiates.
In chapter 5, verses 10-16 she, in turn, picks out features and describes the effect looking at him and being with him has on her; his head, his hair, his eyes, his cheeks and lips, his arms, his torso, his legs, his kiss. “His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely.”
Ending
I only want to briefly set the scene for the rest of the series before handing over to Mike who is going to present Evaluate.
So let me wind up here. Along with the will to survive and the quest for significance, the sex drive is the strongest urge we have. The Song of Songs reveals it as explosive, volatile, excitable and almost unstoppable. It is designed by God for our pleasure and for his glory. It is healthy and good.
We know too that the devil corrupts it, society trashes it and sin perverts it. It can be horribly abused and defaced. The biggest heartaches in life can come from wrong thinking and wrong choices about sex. We need to hear from God, be educated in his ways and walk in the light of his revelation – and that’s what the ministry Evaluate is all about.
So Mike, let me pray for you and then I’ll hand over…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 4th May 2009
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