Who is this coming up from the wilderness, Leaning upon her beloved?

There are two layers of interpretation/application of Biblical book known as the Song of Solomon, or simply “Song." The first has to do with the love  between King Solomon and his Shulamite bride. There is much sound teaching from this book on the physical side of marriage. If you find it surprising that the Bible would give helpful teaching on these things, it should be remembered that it is God who invented sex! In the context of this quote (Song 8:4 ) the narrator has warned (verse 3) about the misplaced awakening of sexual love. I may be stretching the meaning of the text too far when I say that when we do this, we end up looking for love in all the wrong places and end up in the wilderness. But in any case it seems to be true that when our passions (not just sexual) take us out of God’s perfect place and order, we finish up in our own personal wilderness reaping what we have sown in terms of sorrow and pain. And most of us have done this. I certainly am no exception.

The second interpretation/application of Song, has to do with God’s love for His people and in particular for you and me. The Judean wilderness is a “dry and thirsty land,” and of course the longer we stay in our own particular spiritual wildernesses, the thirstier we are going to be. At various levels we all seem to need to come to the place where we are thirst for something meaningful, something real, something deeper. I am reminded of the saying that if we have nothing worth dying for, we will likely have nothing worth living for. But in any case, the way out of our own personal wilderness is all about leaning on our Beloved, on our beautiful God. Switching speakers, verse 4 goes on to talk about awakening love in the one loved. In our application it is about the Lord awakening love in us, about our responding to His love. The Scripture tells us that “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 1:9). In particular, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge Him or not, He is the source of all love.

So for us this morning, the Beloved in verse 4 is God, and His love for us is stronger than the chains of death and unyielding as the grave, it is a burning compassionate fire (verse 6). How shall we respond to this fiery passionate compassionate love? We are to lean on Him, setting Him as a seal upon our hearts (still verse 6), responding to passion with passion. It is about Him being our all, about Him being the centre of our universe. It is about trusting Him to be our shield, our deliver our protector our first and last resource, the One in whom we find our identity,  purpose and meaning.

Father, thank You for Your amazing love and compassion. Truly the only reasonable response to Your tender mercies and fiery love is to give ourselves to You in ongoing total surrender (Romans 12:1). We are prone to wander Lord, and we need Your help. So I want to thank You again this morning Lord, that Your mercies are new every morning and that You will never let us go in Jesus Name Amen