Video Transcript: The Dramatic Story and its Implications

We're looking at the Song of Songs one of the most intriguing and interesting and different  among the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, we've taken a look at Job which certainly  wrestles with a problem that we all face at one time or another. How do we deal with or  respond to the challenges or the sufferings that we face in life? We're looking at Psalms which state for us so many of those wishes of our hearts in our relationship with God those laments  as well as those notes of praise those songs of confidence. We've looked at Proverbs and  began to understand what it means to be committed to a relationship with God and how it  changes one's life in terms of life activities. And we've looked at Ecclesiastes, which probes  that tough question about what is the true meaning of life among the various worldviews  possible. But now we've been looking at the Song of Songs are the Song of Solomon, and I  suggested that there is a plot or we can understand a plot behind the poetry that we face as  we read through the chapters. But one must make an interpretive choice most often in its  history of interpretation, the duet the love duet has been the primary idea put forward. That is to say that this is a statement of love between Solomon and a young woman who's unsullied  by the world. And they, he takes as the powerful one, this young woman into His grace and  His confidences and she becomes his honored queen. Similarly, to the way in which God took  Israel and made Israel the queen of the Divine plans and activities. similarly to the way in the  New Testament, we think of Jesus marrying the church, His body, His Bride. But I suggested  that there's a second possible way to interpret the Song of Songs. And that's to see it as a  love triangle in which it's not Solomon, who's the good guy, but Solomon who's doing the  wrong things and actually violating the very essence of what it means to be in a meaningful  relationship of love. And so we took a look at a possible understanding of the chapters as a  plot by which Solomon has seen this woman brought her into his harem, her country lover  comes to claim her and restore her to their relationship in the countryside. Solomon comes  looking for her to repossess her, there's a second attempt to get her out of town. Solomon  stymies that and he continues with his his lustful wooing. But in the end, the young woman  manages to escape and spurned Solomon and marries her country lover. Now, if that's true,  then it fits more with the larger drama of love and marriage that we find throughout the Bible, and may even push back against something which is a terrible crime in every age, including  our own. And that's sex trafficking, where particularly young girls before their time, are stolen  away from families and communities and placed in a system where they are just marketed off as property as things to be possessed. And it almost seems like a subtle similar idea is  resident in a Song of Songs, where Solomon in his power, has the ability to grab a young  woman out of her context, and before her time for mature love, and to place her in a context  where she becomes an object of lust. And if we look at this, rather as the love triangle in  which she escaped from that it resonates with things that we have found to be true in our own times, and in our own attitudes toward love, and lust, and life and human trafficking. It's good at this point to think about the whole of the Bible from beginning to en and what it seeks to  teach us about ethics and morality. Now, this is not the primary tool or use of Scripture. It's a  very important part of our understanding of Scripture. The key and central elements are God's intentional relationship with Israel, and God's intentional relationship with the whole of the  world through Jesus and the message that's given there. But along the way, if one is in  relationship with God, then it's important to understand that there are certain moral codes or  ethical choices one makes related to that relationship. And that's where we find a number of  helpful ideas that are scattered throughout At the Bible, there are at least four things that  helped shape our ethical and moral response to God. The first of those being creation itself. If  indeed there is a Creator and this world was made by God, then however the creator intended for this world to be, ought to awaken our senses and draw us in our attention to it. What was  the creator's intent for humankind? What was the creator's intent for marriage? What was the  creator's intent for male and female relationships and so we see some of that already in  Genesis one and two, where God makes human beings, males and females, and endorses and affirms their loving relationships with one another. Now, although there are many expressions  of polygamy throughout the Bible, and among some of the greatest folks that we know  Abraham and David and Solomon and, and many others, one of the things that becomes true  of the teachings as we move along is that God's intention was something that transcends 

polygamy. While polygamy happens within the human arena, God's intentions are the  intimacy that develops between one female and one male Jesus affirms that talking about a  man leaving his family and cleaving to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. And Paul  writes about that when he writes to the young pastors Timothy and Titus, what are the  qualifications for those who give leadership in the church that they're married to one person.  So we have that as a kind of larger norm. And even in the fact that the picture of Jesus in the  New Testament is that of the bridegroom to the bride, not the bridegroom, to the many brides but the bridegroom to the singular bride, even though the bride is herself, the collective of  the Christian people, the church, still, it's a singular relationship. And so some of this is simply the manner in which the Bible portrays from beginning to end, how God intended for things to be. And it's reflected in that interpretation of the Song of Songs that I've suggested to you  that Solomon may not be reflecting what God intended for human loving relationships, that he may in fact, be working against what the creational norms of God were. A second major  theme in the Bible is the idea of the restraint of sin. Obviously, we live in a broken and  compromised world. That's not something that needs to be proved. It's something that we  experienced from day today. People do bad things, they do wrong things. They say bad things, they find themselves in an opposition with an antagonistic talk toward other people. There are relationships that need reconciliation, there are deeds that are sinful and harmful and need to be restored or forgiven, or some restitution being made. This is a world in which perfection  simply does not exist. And if that's the case, then at least part of what we read in the Bible is  God's intention to for the duration of this age, restrain sin. Perfection was part of the original  plan, and perfection and righteousness is part of the outcome seen at the end of times, but in  between how can sin and its effects be restrained? Evil has infested our world, how can that  be restrained and counteracted. And so we find things like the 10 commandments and the law codes to Israel, which are mostly stated in negative ways. Don't do this, don't do that. Don't  go here, don't participate in that you should not do this. And those kinds of things are  intended as safeguards sort of as barriers. If you're going to the top of a large building a  skyscraper in one of our major cities and you go out on the observation deck, you don't need  that railing in front of you. You don't need that plate glass in front of you. But you know that if  it wasn't there, there'd be people who would push people over and there'll be people who  would jump from that. And there'd be accidents in which people would trip and fall and go  over that. And so there's restraints in place in order to accommodate some of the  compromised character of the world in which we live. The restraint of sin is a big part of  ethical foundations, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Here again, we have  the statements in a Song of Songs don't awaken love before its time. The idea that there may  be things that we choose not to do even in otherwise seemingly loving relationships because  they are inappropriate to age or circumstances. I remember When our daughter in first grade  came home and said, I'm in love with Ian. And I remember how we smiled and thought that  that was a good thing. But when our daughter in the first grade said, I'm going to marry Ian,  that was quite another issue. She was old enough to understand that love happens even  between females and males. But she was not old enough to participate in the mature  responsibilities of a relationship that had ongoing significance. They could smile at one  another, they could laugh together, they could talk to one another, they could be with one  another. But they were not old enough to be married. And there seems to be something of  that behind the Song of Songs, where the chorus keeps saying, Don't awaken love before it's  time. There's this sense of the restraint of sin, and nasty fingers fingers wagging in the  direction of Solomon as if he is doing what is wrong and inappropriate. A third part of the  biblical, moral and ethical worldview is the idea of what exactly is God's intent for our lives?  Not? Not just how did God create us to live? But what are the values of the one who thought  up this world in itself? What drives the heart of God? What is it that God values? Fun?  Probably, delight? Certainly, there are many things we could say. But how do we know the  heart of God? How do we know the mind of God. And here are a couple of things come into  play. When God speaks of God's values through the prophets and apostles, we begin to  understand the heart and the passions and the will of God. And we can begin to respond to  them because not merely they're forced upon us or because they're the right things to do. But

because we learn to love God and mirror God's own values in our lives, you know what it's like to fall in love. You may choose to do things you hadn't thought about doing before. When you  find yourself in relationship with another person, that person's heart values and desires  become intriguing to you, and you want to know more about them. And so, especially through Jesus, we learn more of the heart and mind of God. And when Jesus talks to us about the  meaning of marriage, it seems to be different from what the Song of Songs portrays with  regard to Solomon. So it's important for us to understand what it is that the mind of God, the  mind of Christ is all about in terms of values that are prominent, and how they may reflect in  the choices of our lives, and finally eschatological hope. Not only do we look toward the  beginning of time when God made all things, and what his intentions were, what God's plans  were, what God's standards for the values of human life were, but also for how does God seek to resolve all things? What goals or plans or expectations is God drawing us toward, in the  consummation of all things? So, Paul, in first and second, Thessalonians points to this very  strongly, other first generation Christians in general, their belief that Jesus would return very  soon, and we need to keep our eyes focused on the world that is to come and live appropriate to that, well, what is it that we would we want want to be found doing if Jesus were coming  soon, if the world were ending, if God was resolving all things into its final or eschatological  expectations, certainly, we would not want to be abusing people abusing children, we would  not want to be doing things that were harmful to a person's psyche, we would want to be  invested in loving relationships. And again, these kinds of things begin to reflect also on our  understanding of how then the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon may, in fact, speak to  us as we think about all of what it's saying to us. And for those reasons, I think that it's  important to understand the Song of Songs in terms of love triangle, rather than a love duet,  and that Solomon becomes the indication of what we ought not to do in relationships between the genders. And the Shulamite maid and her country friend, expressed the best of what God  intends for us to be.