Essentials of the Song of Songs - Lesson 3

In this particular introductory lecture to the Essentials of Song of Songs for Biblical Training, we want to consider why God in His wisdom and providence would dedicate an entire book to the topic of love and marriage. And first we could just say this, love and marriage are universal. They have existed since the beginning and they appear to, in my mind, are going to exist until the end.

In fact, marriage transcends all cultures and all times. I don't personally know of any particular culture that does not have the concept of marriage at work in it in some way or another, right? And in all of the, at least the modern worlds that we live in now, in the major nations, you think of China or India or Europe or America or South America, marriage is everywhere. Everyone thinks about it.

Everyone's involved in it. In fact, if you consider that the way in which you're married is by sexual union, then, you know, more people are married than not that you might think, okay? In the Bible, marriage occurs not when you say, I do, but when you say, we did. And so it's everywhere.

And it was all around in the ancient world. I mean, this is, you might not know this. If you read the Old Testament by itself, you might think, whoa, this book is weird.

There's no other book like it that talks about breasts and male and female reproductive anatomy that are sexually active and desiring to be united that way. There's no other book that talks about the desire and wanting to be making love with one another. The woman says at the end, behold, we're going to go out to the vineyards and to the villages, and there I'll give my love to you, or there I'll make love to you.

I mean, that's, I don't see that in any other part of the Bible like that. But it actually is a part of the culture that Israel lived in all over the place, just like it might be today. If you think about like, you know, music from the eighties or country music or even rap music or whatever kind of music you like, the themes of marriage and love and intimacy are pervasive throughout all of those.

And in the ancient world, love literature abounded, especially in Egypt, Babylon, and Samaria. And we have actually treasure troves of this information. And there are books written on Egyptian love poetry and Samarian love poetry and Babylonian love poetry.

And all of the same themes that we see in the Song of Songs are present. There's the theme of lovesickness or being absent from your beloved. There's the theme of wishing that your significant, your desired person might be a family member so you could kiss them in public and not be ashamed.

There's the mention of flora and fauna and like fruit and animals that are lovely and beautiful and fruit delicious to taste as expressions of the desire for love. There's the speaking of one another as brothers and sisters and brides and the mentions of mothers and brothers and fathers, all of which appear in the Song of Songs. In fact, I've got some Egyptian love literature and you could just think about it this way.

Like it says here, my heart is not yet done with your love, my wolf cub. Your liquor is your love making. I will not abandon it until blows drive me away.

Right? So the whole idea of intoxicating love or here, I will lie down inside and I will feign illness. Then my neighbors will enter and see and then my sister will come with them. She'll put the doctors to shame.

She alone will understand that I'm lovesick. Right? I mean, it's language right out of the Song of Songs. It says here, I'm excited by your love alone.

My heart is in balance with your heart. May I never be far from your beauty. All right? The scent of your nose alone is what revives my heart.

All of this language is a common stock to the world. Here we have like, I am your favorite girl. I am yours like a field planted with flowers, all sorts of fragrant plants.

Pleasant is the canal within it while we cooled ourselves and the north wind blew. A lovely place for strolling about with your hand upon mine. My body is satisfied and my heart rejoices in our walking together.

To hear your voice is pomegranate wine. I draw life from hearing it. Could I see you with every glance? It would be better for me than to eat or drink.

I mean, this is the language of the Song of Songs. And so the Song of Songs is not unique to its world, but it is slightly unique to the canon of scripture. There are hints of it in Proverbs 5 or Proverbs 7, perhaps, you know, Hosea 1-3 or Ezekiel 16.

But really the better context, you know, in terms of conceiving of the Song of Songs and all of that literature comes from Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt. Okay. Now the question then is why would information like this or why would there be an entire book dedicated to the topic of marriage? And first, you can see that culturally for Israel, it was a significant topic.

They lived in a world in which marriage and intimacy, like in our own particular world, is a primary concern to almost everyone, right? In fact, even in our own culture, when we argue about what is the definition of marriage or who can get married or who can legally be conceived of as married, what that means is marriage is important at some level. And the fact that we argue and debate about it means it's significant to us. So the question becomes why is marriage important and why would God dedicate an entire book to it? All right.

We've already talked about the fact that the marriage of Genesis 2 points to Revelation 21 and 22 and the desire that God has for us to be related to him in this covenantal type of relationship. But I wanted to pause briefly in this particular lecture and talk about seven critical truths from the book of Genesis, the Genesis Foundations of Marriage, that are important for us to consider when we're thinking about marriage. And I think it's important for us to do this in a course like this because we live in a particular cultural context where the question and the definition of marriage is being debated.

And so one of the best things we can do, if we're going to talk about a book that deals with marriage, is to say what does the Bible itself teach us about marriage? And so I'm going to begin this way. I'm going to begin with a working definition of marriage, a working definition of marriage. And then I'm going to provide you with seven basic truths about marriage as instituted by God in Genesis 2. All right.

Here we go. Here's my working definition of marriage. It's something I've worked on for several years.

I've just kind of keep it on my desktop and have been massaging it as I've been working on teaching and writing on the Song of Songs. And so it's occupied a central place of thought in me. And by working definition, I mean, of course, this is still a definition that I'm working on and it's in progress.

Here we go. A working definition of marriage. Marriage, my friends, was designed by God to be an exclusive, lifelong, life-giving, one-flesh, covenantal union between one man and one woman according to the standards of natural or cisgender.

This covenantal relationship begins with sexual union and is subsequently renewed in the same way. It was instituted by the one true God as part of the original order of creation in Genesis chapter 2 before the fall. It is God himself who bears witness to this covenant and who also enacts the one-flesh marriage union.

Sexual union is covenantal, or we can just say it this way, sex is covenantal. It is either covenant making, covenant renewing, or covenant breaking via adultery. In the Bible, there is no category for what we have come to call premarital sex.

That is sexual union. That is not covenantal in nature. There is no non-covenantal sexual activity.

It can be violating a covenant, but that is still a covenantal violation. Adultery breaks the marriage covenant because it violates the definitional one-flesh aspect of the covenant depicted by the oath sign of sexual union. Death also dissolves the covenant of marriage, though not in any illicit manner, though death itself is the result of sin.

I had a professor in seminary. His name was Gordon Hugenberger. He wrote a massive book on marriage as a covenant.

In one of those chapters, he argues with great persuasion that all sexual union is covenantal in nature. It is covenant making, covenant renewing, or covenant breaking. That is exalting or lifting up our definition of marriage.

In our own particular culture, we have kind of debased our sexual intimacy. Anyone can have sex and it can be done in any way at any time. It can be filmed and sold and exploited.

It has been corrupted to no end. But we are saying, no, that sex is covenantal. In terms of its covenantalness, it is special and sacred and something to be protected.

Whether we know it or not, when we engage in sexual activity, we're engaging in covenantal activity. And that's why it's important that we understand these seven truths about marriage from Genesis chapter 2. Number one, marriage is a pre-fall institution, my friends. Marriage is a pre-fall institution.

That is, marriage was created by God in Genesis chapter 2 as one of the things that brought day six from not good to very good. It is not a post-fall Genesis 3 reality that helps us to cope with our fallenness and brokenness. No, marriage in Genesis chapter 2 is a very good thing.

It's woven into the very fabric of creation. Like the sun and the moon, like the oceans and the earth, like the flora and the fauna, marriage has been here since the beginning and will be here to the end. Removing marriage from this world would be like trying to remove the oceans from the globe.

It would be impossible and bring cataclysmic destruction at the same time. Marriage is also, as a pre-fall institution, a universal human institution or a universal image of God institution. It's not just a Christian institution, right? You have to be a Christian to get married and marriages don't have to occur only in the context of a church.

Any human can get married, a male and female can get married by way of sexual union, all right? Marriage is a universal human institution. So number one, marriage is a pre-fall very good institution. I'll just say this, oftentimes we think poorly about marriage because perhaps people get abused in marriage or seem to lose their identity or their rights in marriage, but it's not the institution of marriage that's broken, gang, right? It's people that are broken.

Marriage is very good, right? It's a pre-fall institution. Humans are sinners now after Genesis chapter three. And so the problem with marriage is not the institution.

The problem with marriage is going to be that sinners keep getting married. And so unless we repent and exhibit grace and kindness in the context of marriage, we're never going to have what God has intended for us, okay? Number one, marriage is a pre-fall institution. Number two, I've said this earlier, but I'm going to say it again.

Marriage moves day six from not good to very good. The creation of the woman and the marriage covenant is the one thing that moves day six from not good to very good. Let me put it this way to you.

We know that in Genesis chapter one, God created all things very good. Day one, good. Day two, good.

Day three, good, et cetera. Day six stands out from all the other days by being a very good day, all right? Now in Genesis chapter two, God rehearses the events of day six. And when He does that, He creates the man.

Then He creates the garden. Then He puts the man in the garden. He says, it's not good for man to be alone.

Then God creates all of the animals. And then man names all the animals. And so there's God and the animals in the garden, right? With man and man is still alone, right? There's some, he's not alone physically.

There's God, there's the garden, there's the animals, but he's in some sense alone existentially. God is transcendent and holy other. The animals are not image of God bearers.

And so the man is still fundamentally alone. And so the text says, it's not good, which should bring us to a screeching halt in our reading of the text, because we know that from Genesis chapter one, that day six is going to be very good. So how do we get from not good to very good on day six in Genesis chapter two, the creation of the woman and the marriage covenant, where God created a helper that corresponds to the man and suits him in terms of strength.

The ezer kenegdo is the Hebrew expression, the creation of the woman and the marriage covenant is the climax of day six, right? And so if you're a woman out there listening to these lectures, I want you to know that you're a part of that community that brought the creation of this world from not good to very good. I say it this way. If humanity is the crown of creation is being created in the image of God, then the woman, her creation is the jewel in that crown.

And so I want every woman out there to feel that emphasis in the scriptures. The old Testament is a radically woman favoring book, right? In what other ancient near Eastern account of creation is the creation of the woman and the marriage covenant, the climax of creation? None, not one. Only in the Bible is the creation of the woman and the marriage covenant, the climax of creation and what other ancient near Eastern literature are there female heroes like Miriam and Rahab and Ruth and Esther or the woman of valor or the woman in the song of songs? None, right? In fact, we have books in the old Testament named after the main characters like Ruth and Esther.

What other books of the ancient world do that? None, right? Marriage, or you can say the creation of the woman in the marriage covenant brings day six in the creation account from not good to very good. So number one, marriage is a very good pre-fall institution. Number two, the creation of the woman and the marriage covenant is the one thing that brings day six from not good to very good.

Number three, marriage is an eschatological reality. We've hinted at this before, but it bears saying again in Genesis chapter one, God creates everything by separation. He separates light from darkness, the waters above from the waters below, and then the dry land from the seas.

All right. He even creates the woman in Genesis chapter two by taking her out or separating her from the man. All right.

In fact, one dictionary or one lexicon for Hebrew says that the verb bara to create means to create by separation, which of course makes perfect sense in light of Genesis chapter one. All right. But what's interesting is that in the marriage covenant at the end of Genesis chapter two, that which was once separated, the man from the woman is reunited in the marriage covenant and becomes one flesh.

So everything to this point in Genesis one and two has been separated, separated, separated, separated. And then Genesis chapter two climaxes in the reunion of what was once separated. And we call this the consummation of the marriage covenant, where the two become one.

So it should be no surprise, there's no accident that when we call the end of the age, the consummation of the ages, because that's the time when the invisible realm and the visible realm will once again be reunited. What was separated will be brought back together. So marriage in that way is an eschatological reality in the sense that it points us to the fact that all of the things that God has separated in creation will one day consummate and be brought back together into a whole.

Marriage is an eschatological reality. It points to the ultimate marriage of Christ and his bride. That is the marriage covenant of Genesis two was always designed to point us to Revelation 19, 21 and 22, where we have the marriage covenant of the of the bride and the lamb.

Okay, marriage is an eschatological institution. Number four, and this is a subset of number three, but I think it's important to understand this. With the woman's creation, with the woman's creation, man beholds his telos, that is his end, our goal point in life.

The woman represents humanity's ultimate hope as the collective bride of Christ. She represents the second order, the final act of creation. God didn't make or form the woman, he built her for the man in Genesis 2, 22.

Like the tabernacle is built, like the temple is built, like the new Jerusalem is built, the woman is built. And so built for the man. And in this way, think about it this way, when Adam saw Eve for the first time as his bride, he beheld something of his destiny, because Adam himself was created to be part of the collective bride of Christ in the eschatological realm.

So that's why I said the woman represents, according to Amy Byrd, the second order, the second order. She is the glory of man. That is, she is something of man's glorified state in the new heavens and new earth.

That's a wonderful thing to think about, that one of the ways that God gives us encouragement and hope in this world is to give us pictures of the world to come. And the bride or the woman of Genesis chapter 2 is a picture of the world to come. So it's no accident that when a man beholds a woman, he's overwhelmed.

When I behold my wife, I'm overwhelmed. When I behold my wife in intimacy, I'm doubly overwhelmed. And that is something of the overwhelming nature of our destiny that God wants to overwhelm us with what he has created us for.

So number one, marriage is a pre-fall institution. Number two, marriage and the creation of the woman is the one thing that brings that creation on day six from not good to very good. Number three, marriage is an eschatological reality.

That is, there is an eschatological covenant of marriage that the marriage of Genesis 2 is pointing to. And the creation of the woman as bride shows us what the collective bride of Christ was created to be, his people. Number five, sexual union in the context of marriage is one of the primary ways in which we fulfill the cultural mandate.

In Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, God says, he's created men in the image of God and he blesses them. And he says, be fruitful and multiply and rule over the birds of the sea and the fish of the, scratch that, rule over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, unless you want the birds of the sea and the fish of the air, I guess that's possible, flying fish and swimming birds. So let's rule over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and then rule and subdue them.

So fill, fill, fill, rule, rule. There are five verbs in the cultural mandate. The first three are fill and man cannot fill this world without the woman.

Man cannot fulfill or fill this world without the woman. So sexual union fulfills the cultural mandate, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The one flesh union is the means for experiencing and achieving this blessing.

All right. So my friends, it is not unbiblical and perhaps it's even fun to ask your spouse to share with you in the blessing of the cultural mandate as an invitation to sexual intimacy, because you're participating in what God created humans to do on this earth, to be in covenant relationship with one another and to be fruitful and multiply and fill this world. It is a beautiful thing to behold.

Sexual union is one of the ways in which human beings fulfill the cultural mandate. Number six, the corruption of the marriage covenant in the Bible brings world-ending judgment. The corruption of the marriage covenant in the Bible brings world-ending judgment.

Because God has designed the marriage covenant of Genesis 2 to point beyond itself to the marriage covenant of Revelation 21 and 22, the marriage covenant of Genesis 2 is a picture of how God desires to relate to us as his people. And so when we corrupt that marriage covenant through our sin, it's a corruption of that image of beauty that God desires for us with him. And so it provokes the Lord to anger.

Think about Solomon in 1 Kings 11. Solomon did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord and the anger of the Lord burned against him because of his harem and idolatry. All right.

Well, I want to just point out to you, Genesis 2 begins this theme right away. You know about two cataclysmic events in the book of Genesis, the great flood of Genesis 6 to 9, and the great extermination of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, okay? One judgment by water, the other judgment by fire, the two big judgment symbols in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, okay? Bracketing those events, the judgment by water in the flood and judgment by fire in the Sodom and Gomorrah are accounts of the corruption of the marriage covenant, which in some sense teaches us that what precipitates God's wrath in this area is the failure of humanity to uphold the beauty and the wonder of the marriage covenant. So in the flood, right at the beginning in Genesis 6, the sons of God sleep or take the daughters of men and have children with them, right? Whatever you think about that, who are the sons of God and daughters of men, it's an evil perversion of the marriage covenant that produces the so-called Nephilim, okay? Now in this course, we don't have time to talk about who are the sons of God and who are the daughters of men and who are the Nephilim, but whatever it is, it's clearly a violation of the marriage covenant, easy enough, okay? At the end of the flood account, we get the description that's a little bit odd to us that Ham uncovers the nakedness of his father, which precipitates Noah cursing Canaan, the son of Ham, okay? Now, what does that mean to uncover the nakedness of your father? Well, in the book of Leviticus, specifically Leviticus 18, the uncovering of the nakedness of your father is a euphemism for maternal incest, okay? So what Ham did in Genesis chapter 9 was he engaged in maternal incest with his mother, and the product of that illicit sexual union was Canaan, and Canaan became the cursed offspring who became the Canaanites, those people who fell under the ban in the books of like Joshua and Judges later on in the Bible, okay? So you've got the corruption of the marriage covenant in Genesis 6, the corruption of the marriage covenant in Genesis 9 by way of maternal incest, and world-ending flood judgment in the beginning.

Think about Genesis 19, right at the beginning of or right before God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah and saves Lot out of it, right? Remember that there are the two angels that came to visit Lot and to save him, and all of the men of Sodom came and wanted to have sex with those two angels, right? And then they had to like protect Lot, get him out of the town, and get rid of the men there, okay? So there was this again, once again, this intense perversion of the marriage covenant right before the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. And what happened right after Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19? Well, Lot's daughters thought they're never going to get a husband because of all, you know, everyone just got incinerated by God, and so what they do is they get their father drunk, just like Noah got drunk in Genesis 9, and then they engage in paternal incest with him. And then from them, the Ammonites and the Moabites are born, okay? And so both things here, the flood and the Sodom and Gomorrah event, are bracketed by the perversion of the marriage covenant, where you see in the midst of that perversion, God brings eschatological judgment into the world.

He suspends common grace and just wipes out those people involved, all right? This is a way of showing the value that God places on the marriage covenant and the necessity of God's people to uphold the Genesis 2 ideal of that marriage covenant, because its violation brings judgment. It brought it in Genesis 6 to 9, it brought it in Genesis 19, and it even brought it in 1 Kings 11 with Solomon. We see this pattern over and over again.

Even in the book of Revelation, right? There's the prostitute and the whore and all this other kind of business. It's still going on, and those realities are bringing worldwide cataclysmic eschatological judgment. That's number six.

So we've got marriage as a pre-fall institution. Marriage is something that moves day six from not good to very good. Marriage is an eschatological reality.

With the creation of the woman, man beholds his telos, that is, his destiny as the bride of Christ. Sexual union is one of the ways in which we engage in the cultural mandate. And finally, the corruption of the marriage covenant brings judgment.

One more thing. Marriage, my friends, can serve as an evangelistic tool. Marriage can serve as an evangelistic tool.

And what I mean by that is not missionary dating or something like that, all right? I mean this, that good marriages put on display what God desires for his people. Covenantal union, intimacy, friendship, and love, right? Marriage shows what we were created for. Living out gospel grace in marriages preaches the gospel without words, right? We live in a culture that has corrupted the marriage covenant perhaps unlike any other, right? We've redefined marriage.

We've removed the covenantal status of sexual intimacy. We've even redefined who can get married and not get married or even, you know, even gender within the context of marriage, right? It's a mess in our culture. And oftentimes, Christians are tempted simply to hate that which is bad.

And it's true. I do not like, you know, I do not like the corruption of the marriage covenant. I do not like the redefinition of marriage covenant.

I do not like same-sex marriage. These are all extreme violations of the Genesis 2 ideal, all right? But one of the things I can do to promote the Genesis 2 reality is to try and have a good marriage myself, right? One of the best ways I can convince my own kids that marriage is a good thing is by having a good marriage. Does that make sense? One of the ways in which I can show the world that this thing is actually a good thing is by having a good marriage.

I think it just makes sense like that. So it's a positive apologetic for the very good thing that God has created as an evangelistic tool. I'm not advocating missionary dating, but I'm saying if God designed marriage to be beautiful and to point to the relationship that He desires for us, then trying to have a beautiful marriage and letting the world see that marriage can show the world that there's something different about what God has designed and there's something different about His Christian community that upholds that value.

We don't all need to be haters. In fact, it's perhaps more powerful to be true lovers of our spouses in the context of a world that hates to promote that. These are the seven things that Genesis 2 teaches us about marriage in a way that sets us up to appreciate and love and embrace the message of the Song of Songs, that God created the marriage covenant to be rock solid and white hot, and that marriages that uphold this value between one man and one woman for a lifetime of commitment can better endure hardship, resist temptation, and promote wholeness.