PLEASANT FRUITS FOR MY BELOVED – Song of Solomon 7:11-8:4
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on February 28, 2018 under PM Bible Study |
PM Bible Study Group; February 28, 2018 from Song of Solomon 7:11-8:4
Theme: The more we give ourselves to the delight of our Savior, the deeper our love for Him will grow.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
As we have been working our way though this wondrous ‘photo album of love’ between King Solomon and his Shulamite bride, we have discovering in it an analogy of the love that the Lord Jesus shares with His bride the Church—and particularly, of how that love works out in the relationship He enjoys with each one of us as His followers. More and more in this study, we find ourselves moved by the majesty of His love for us; and become inspired by that love to love Him more and to give ourselves to Him more devotedly.
Most recently, we have been looking together at the section of this book that we have been calling ‘The Deepening of The Union’—a section that we find in Song of Solomon 6:13-8:5. And it would be important and helpful for us to pause and recapture the context.
In 6:13, we saw the exhortation given to the Shulamite to give herself unreservedly to her beloved. This exhortation came from the ‘daughters of Jerusalem’; and it seems it came because she was uncertain of herself and hesitant. She had lapsed in her devotion for a season (5:2-5); and even fell back to thinking of herself in the old ways that characterized her before Solomon had taken her as his bride and adorned her with his glory (6:13b).
She does, however, receive the exhortation to give herself fully to the love of her beloved; and is encouraged to do so by the favor of his grace toward her. The ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ remind her of how much glory he had poured out on her—and all of it undeserved. As we read the words that they speak to her in 7:1-5, we discover that they were simply inviting her to give herself to him as what he had already made her to be.
Having given herself to him in love, he expresses his great delight in her in 7:6-9a; and in verses 9b-10, she receives his grace toward her as firmly established in her heart. What a picture this is to us! It shows us what a transforming thing it is in our life with our Lord Jesus when we cease to allow our failures of the past to hold us back, and enter into the full delights of His love by grace!
And now we come to the second half of this ‘Deepening of The Union’ section. And it builds upon that first half—that is, upon the discovery of the bridegroom’s grace, and the giving of the Shulamite fully to him on the basis of the confidence of his full acceptance and delight. This second half illustrates to us how the secret to our delight in the love of our Lord Jesus is to first give ourselves over to His delight to love us!
The Lord Jesus fully loves and accepts—yes, even immeasurably delights in—those He has redeemed. It is a union of love that we share with Him that is mysterious and majestic. It’s a love that grows—if we may put it like this—in an almost ‘humanly counter-intuitive’ way. In most relationships of love, we tend to think that the more we delight in someone, the more we will love them. And that’s certainly true in many respects of our relationship with Jesus. But because the union of love we share with Him is entirely based upon His grace, and because it is shown in the fact that He has showered all His own glory upon us in such a way as to have already made us 100% acceptable in His sight, we find that the only way we can respond to His love is to receive it. Therefore, we ourselves grow in our delight in Him by giving ourselves over to His delight in us!
The basis of our delight in Jesus starts with His unmerited love for us. As the apostle John has put it, “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And this creates a remarkable reciprocity of love in which the more we give ourselves to the delight of our Savior, the deeper our love for Him will grow.
This is illustrated to us wonderfully in the way the Shulamite’s delight in the bridegroom grew the more she gave herself over to His delight in her.
* * * * * * * * * *
Now; the delight that the Shulamite woman had in her husband had waned before; and it was because when he sought her, she was too inconvenienced to give herself to him. Here focus at that time was upon what she wanted—not on what he desired from her. But now, that growing delight in her bridegroom is shown in …
I. GIVING HER BELOVED WHAT HE HAD DESIRED BEFORE (7:11-13).
It seems that after having come to terms with his unlimited delight in her—the Shulamite having said in 7:10, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me”—she now continues to speak. The curtain was drawn over the intimacy of that moment; and now it is opened again to a new scene. It’s time to go out on a date.
She says;
Come, my beloved,
Let us go forth to the field;
Let us lodge in the villages.
Let us get up early to the vineyards;
Let us see if the vine has budded,
Whether the grape blossoms are open,
And the pomegranates are in bloom (7:11-12a).
Remembering that this is Solomon’s kingdom—remember that the fields are all his; and all the villages belong to him, and the vineyards, and the grapevines, and the fruitful fields—she invites that they go together and enjoy what is His … which also, by his grace toward her, now belongs to her.
If we will think back to it, we’ll remember that she used to live in those villages and work in those fields. When Solomon first found her, she was a mere farm girl who labored in his tenant under the supervision of her brothers. As she said before, “they had made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept” (1:6). But now, she wants to go back and look at those old places again—but this time in the context of his love and acceptance of her.
Have you ever thought back on the place of your former live that you used to inhabit?—before Jesus’ love came into your life? With shame, we all would have to admit that some of those places were places of sin; and we should be glad to be free of them. We should, in that sense, ‘forget what is behind’ (Philippians 3:14). But there are also other places that were not places of sin. They were the old, normal, natural forms of daily life and labor—our families, our neighborhoods, our work, our homes. These were places that, in His providence, God used to shape our lives. But now, they have a new color—a new joy—a new dimension. Jesus’ love for us changes everything about us and around us. He renews our story. He even takes those old places of our life and—in a sense—‘redeems’ them as a part of the unfolding of His transforming love for us. We go back to those old places now, bearing the testimony of His love for us; and that love changes those old places.
The Shulamite bride goes on to speak of how she would bear the testimony of that love in her former places of life. She says;
There I will give you my love.
The mandrakes give off a fragrance,
And at our gates are pleasant fruits,
All manner, new and old,
Which I have laid up for you, my beloved (vv. 12b-13).
These are very intimate words. Mandrakes were plants that were used to foster marital intimacy (Genesis 30:14-16). The mention of ‘pleasant fruits’ which she had laid up for him speaks of the things about her that he delights in—things that she has prepared for him—things that are old and familiar, and things that he rejoices to discover. Every married couple in love knows about this: how there are ways that their beloved continues to surprise them, and how they find new things about them that they didn’t know before. Here, the bride is wanting to go back to those old places and give her love to her husband there—letting him take ever expanding delight in her.
In a sense, then, she is offering to give to her husband what he had wanted long before. She recalls what he had said to her back in 2:10-14;
My beloved spoke, and said to me:
“Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away.
For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove
Is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grapes
Give a good smell.
Rise up, my love, my fair one,
And come away!“O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the secret places of the cliff,
Let me see your face,
Let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your face is lovely” (2:10-14).
Having now accepted the delight he has in her fully, she now wants to go back and give him what he had always desired.
And may we too be so gripped by the love of our Savior for us—so captivated by His delight in us through His grace—that we, as it were, long to go back and give to Him what He has always wanted of us; even back in the days before we knew that love. May we give ourselves to His love in all the places of our lives—and let the discovery of that love expand.
* * * * * * * * * *
Now; we begin to see how much the Shulamite is beginning to celebrate her bridegroom’s delight in her by the fact that we find her …
II. WISHING SHE HAD GIVEN HERSELF TO HER BELOVED SOONER (8:1-2).
Perhaps it was somewhere along the way in this ‘date’—this ‘second-honeymoon’ time together—that she began to reflect on his love in the context of these former places of life. She said;
Oh, that you were like my brother,
Who nursed at my mother’s breasts! (8:1a).
She had already mentioned her mother with respect to her bridegroom. You may remember that, some time back in our study, we considered how a woman would traditionally bring her intended bridegroom to the place of her upbringing. It was a way of sealing the betrothal (see Genesis 24:67). Not long before the wedding day—after her lapse of love—she went in search of her beloved; and was stopped and hindered by the guards of the city. And at that time, the Shulamite spoke these words;
Scarcely had I passed by them,
When I found the one I love.
I held him and would not let him go,
Until I had brought him to the house of my mother,
And into the chamber of her who conceived me (3:4).
And now, she wishes she had known him sooner. She doesn’t of course say that she wishes he had actually been her brother, because her passion or him would then be inappropriate. But rather, she wishes he had been ‘like’ her brother—known to her all her life, close to her from the earliest days—’childhood sweethearts’ as it were. She went on to say;
If I should find you outside,
I would kiss you;
I would not be despised.
I would lead you and bring you
Into the house of my mother,
She who used to instruct me.
I would cause you to drink of spiced wine,
Of the juice of my pomegranate (8:1b-2).
The pleasure the Shulamite bride now enjoys in her husband’s delight in her moves her to wish she had pleasure in that love all her life. And those of us who have tasted of our Savior’s love can certainly identify with that wish. How glad we should be that we have been brought under His love at the time of our life that He brought us to Himself. But because His love for us is an eternal love—and as we see how much He had always had us on His heart—how we wish we had always tasted of His love for us and had always sought His delight in us.
* * * * * * * * * *
The realization of Solomon’s delight in her thus leads her toward …
III. FINDING HER DELIGHT IN DEEPENING IN HIS (8:3-4).
In words that are truly intimate, we find her saying,
His left hand is under my head,
And his right hand embraces me.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
Do not stir up nor awaken love
Until it pleases (8:3-4).
These words may make us feel a bit uncomfortable. They may make us feel as if we’re gazing upon something that it is not our place to see. But because they describe the most intimate expressions of love between the bride and her bridegroom, they become the only fit analogy to use in order to teach us of the sanctified intimacy of love and union and delight that our Savior delights to enjoy with us as His redeemed ones.
And the Shulamite has described this same expression of intimacy more than once. In almost the same exact words in 2:6-7, she says;
His left hand is under my head,
And his right hand embraces me.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles or by the does of the field,
Do not stir up nor awaken love
Until it pleases (2:6-7).
And later, in 3:5, she says;
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles or by the does of the field,
Do not stir up nor awaken love
Until it pleases (3:5).
And so now, it seems, the bridegroom’s delight in her has become her delight. And the more she gives herself over to his delight, the more her delight in him grows—and the more her love for him grows too.
* * * * * * * * * *
The more we grow to know the Lord Jesus—and the closer we draw to Him—the more we will find that He comes to us and asks for us to give ourselves over to Him in the specific areas of our lives. Many times, we find that He is asking us to give ourselves over to Him in areas of life we may not want want to give up. We may fear that if we give ourselves over to Him fully and unreservedly, He may take away all that is meaningful to us. He may call us to things that we don’t want to do, or to take up tasks we don’t want to take up. We fear that He may take away our very selves.
At those moments, we become like the Shulamite had been in her lapse of love. He comes to knock at the door; but we’re too inconvenienced to answer—to devoted to our own ‘delights’ to submerge ourselves in what He delights in us.
But the lesson of this portion of the Song of Solomon is that we should never fear to give ourselves over completely to pursue the delight of our Savior in us. We will find that, in the doing so, our own love for Him deepens in the pursuit of His delight in us; and so also does our love for Him. It’s like the apostle Paul said—in a somewhat different context;
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:7-11).
Just as was true in the relationship of the Shulamite bride toward her royal husband, the more we give ourselves to the delight of our Savior, the deeper our love for Him will grow.
So; don’t wait for your delight in Jesus to become the motivation for giving yourself completely to Him. Instead, seek first His delight in you as a matter of greatest priority. Give yourself unreservedly to His love and His longing for you now. Let Him have what He delights to have from you. And you’ll find your delight in Him deepen and your love for Him grow.
