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Sunday 18 May 2014

Song of Songs 1:1-4 Desire

Verse 1 seems to make it pretty clear that Solomon wrote this. Song of Songs means that it is the greatest of songs. Now think about this for a moment. What is the song about? It is about the love of a man and a woman for each other, it is about their desire for one another, and it gets pretty erotic. It is also an allegory of the love between God and His people, between Christ and the church. So the implication is that the love of a man and a woman for each other is something to be celebrated, and it is also the implication that the love of Christ for the church, for you and me, is something to be celebrated. We need to understand, to appreciate, the depths of God's love for us (Eph 3:18,19).
There are three main "players" in this song. There is the woman, the man and the friends of the woman. The woman longs for the tender caress of the man, and to be with the "king in his chambers". This is a clear reference to sexual desire for the man. Now this presents us with a problem. We may immediately think,"they are not married, they shouldn't be thinking like this". This is because we live in an age when barriers and boundaries of all sorts have been swept away, along with self-control. The desire is not the problem, it is what we do with that desire. Indeed we are meant to have the desire, but the desire awaits the appointed time for fulfilment.

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