Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Song of Songs 8:5-7

Sermon text for today is the Song of Songs chapter 8 verses 5-7 which is the basis for most of the song we just sang, Isaac Watts’s rendition of these verses. Please stand for the reading of Song of Songs chapter 8:5-7.

Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree. There thy mother brought thee forth. There she brought thee forth that bear thee.

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm. For love is strong as death. Jealousy is cruel as the grave. The coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be condemned.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you that in love you have drawn us to yourself. We thank you, Lord God, that in your love you have drawn us to this worship service today to shower your love upon us and to receive our praise and love for you. Help us, Lord God, now by your Holy Spirit to illuminate this text for our understanding. Transform us, Lord God. Put us at rest as this woman is put at rest in the context of this portion of your scriptures. And may in that rest we look expectantly forward to the second coming of our Savior. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Advent is a kind of a double-minded time of the year. You know, from one perspective, during Advent, of course, we remember that the world waited for 4,000 years for the Redeemer to come. And we sing songs such as, “Oh, come, O come, Emmanuel.” Speaking as if we were Israel before Jesus came. And that’s a little strange to us, but it’s good to understand the longing of the world and of God’s people for the coming of the Messiah.

Of course, we also sing it this side of his coming. And so all the great Christmas songs that are sung at this time of year are songs that really bring delight to our soul. The whole world becomes, so to speak, postmillennial in attitude. All the wonderful truths of the scriptures about the importance and the definitive blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ’s arrival are things that we enter into as well. We prepare for that great celebration on Christmas Day as we look forward during the season of Advent to the commemoration of the coming of Christ.

Advent’s a time of preparation as well. And so we read texts such as “On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist Cries” and we remember that we’re to prepare ourselves for the advent of Christ. And it reminds us that there’s a certain sense in which every week is an advent season, Monday to Saturday. And we must prepare ourselves for the coming together of Christ and his bride at the wedding feast every Lord’s day.

Advent is also, of course, a time of preparation for the final coming and a longing for the final advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve decided to put the Hebrews series on hiatus for a few weeks here as we look at a couple of texts, one particularly here that I think is very appropriate to talk about during advent season.

The entire book of the Song of Songs is a very important one for understanding King Jesus Christ and it will hopefully put us in a sense of understanding for the season and also it will help us as we sing and continue to learn this song we just sang to understand what it means. Why are we singing about a flame so divine for instance? Well, by the end of today’s sermon you’ll understand that, if you don’t understand yet and probably some of you already do.

So hopefully today we can come to an understanding of this song we’re singing. We can think about the advent season and the great blessings that Jesus Christ affected at his first coming. Look forward to his final coming as well. We can do it in the context of the Song of Songs, the most beautiful song, the song of all songs, the preeminent love song. It’s a very interesting book. I don’t know if I will or not, but I’m thinking about perhaps doing a Sunday school class on this in the new year that would be aimed in part at making application to marriage and to married couples, but also just to come to an appreciation of the book and what it says about the relationship of Jesus Christ and his bride, the Church.

The Song of Songs is really about both those things. It’s about a real marriage of Solomon to his wife. You know, it’s really unfortunate that in your New King James versions, it has all these descriptions of who’s saying what. They really don’t know that. And in places they think they get it wrong and they think that the Shulamite is in the text all kinds of times. It’s not. It’s only in there a couple of times. And even to translate it as the Shulamite may be improper. It’s really the feminine form of Solomon. So we could think of it as Mrs. Solomon.

So it’s about love. It’s about marital love. It sort of challenges us, I think somewhat. It certainly talks about the value, the acceptability and in fact the definability of marriage in terms of romantic love. And so it helps us to place the covenant of marriage in the context of romantic love. If we can look at it that way or talk about it that way, it affects our understanding of our relationship to Jesus because clearly it’s talking. The imagery used, as we’ll see in some text today, is temple imagery. It’s a meditation upon the coming of the bride Israel into the temple to meet with her king. That’s partly what’s going on and that’s rather obvious once you start to study the terminology of it.

And sorts, it points of course as the temple did, to the greater coming of the Lord Jesus Christ not now in the temple but in his incarnation and the relationship of the bride of Christ to him. So it addresses all these themes and it says that there is this aspect of what we would call today romantic love that is appropriate and actually very important for the relationship.

You know, it challenges some of our views of courtship frankly as we read this book. The father isn’t mentioned in the Song of Songs at all. Mother, mentioned in today’s text, is mentioned actually seven times in this book. And of course there are big reasons for that beyond just the marriage of Solomon and his wife. We know that wisdom, for instance, in the book of Proverbs is a woman. And so here romantic love is set in the context of the mother and not the father. And we’ll see some of the reasons for that in today’s text.

Now there are the brothers. And in very typical Old Testament relationships, the brothers would help arrange some of that courtship, but we don’t have a father giving the woman away. And we don’t actually have a great deal of oversight for that matter. There is some oversight by the brothers, but the brothers are almost in the way of the thing here, it appears to me. I don’t see them as particularly positive characters in this book. They’re demeaning the girl. So the book can kind of challenge us and make us think a little bit. That’s good for us. It helps us broaden out. It helps us take the rest of biblical truths we know about themes of marriage and the relationship of the bride of Christ to him and courtship and other things like that and place them in a fuller biblical context. That’s always good for us, little challenging sometimes but good for us.

Now the context. I want to talk about the context for the specific verses that Watts based his song upon. And I want to set that in the big, mega context first and that’s the whole Bible. And the Song of Songs is set in the context of what we call wisdom literature. And there are five books that compose the wisdom literature so-called: Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.

And what I’ve given you on your outline is one way to think about them. You know, the Old Testament canon was not all produced at the same time, nor was it an evolutionary or a gradualistic approach of being built up book by book. There were periods of revelation leading up to the coming of the revelation of the new covenant. And you know, for many years, for hundreds of years, the tribes of Israel only had the Pentateuch plus the book of Joshua to guide them. So when you read Judges, you got to understand that.

Well, one of the great texts that I may or may not preach on next week. I’m tempted to, but I probably will do the tree of life and Revelation as is in your outlines, but I’ve taught the book of Ruth a little bit to the King’s Academy class this last week or two and very tempted to teach on here in Advent season as well. And last year we had our Christmas play about the book of Ruth.

Well, Ruth is this transition from Judges to Kings. And so this is a major transition in the Old Testament. And this is that during the period of the Kings that the wisdom literature is developed, written. And if Job is written by Solomon as some people think it is, then all of the wisdom literature is written by kings. But it’s kingly literature and we can think of it. We can think of the book of Job as the suffering king, right?

Job in all likelihood is an Edomite king. He’s the greatest man. All this stuff. He’s probably not just a rich guy. He is a king, he’s a ruler, and the three men are his mighty counselors. So we have the suffering king in the book of Job. And then we have the warrior king in the Psalms. I didn’t know how to put the singing king. Well, Song of Songs is a song too. The Psalms are songs made to be sung in worship. And much of it is about the warrior king.

So these are perhaps some ways to think about the movement of the wisdom literature. And then we have in Proverbs the ruling king, wisdom for ruling. Maybe the young king, development of a prince into a king is the whole model for Proverbs. And by the end, we’ve got King Lemuel. And the last portion of the book is about wisdom for ruling. So how do you rule? Not how you conquer, but how you rule.

And then in Ecclesiastes, we have the old king, philosophical. You know, and at the heart of Ecclesiastes is what? It’s the single admonition to hear and fear God. And then we have the climax of these books I suppose we could say is Song of Songs and this is the loving king. This is the king who loves his bride and the relationship of Jesus Christ and his people, or we could say of Solomon and the tribes of Israel. That relationship is set in the context of love.

Now we can see this as kind of a progression and there’s a sense in which we could see, certainly, in each one of these aspects of our Savior—his suffering can be thought about in terms of Job, his warring, the warrior king. We like those, you know, songs that we’ll sing again in January of the victory of Christ over his enemies out of the Psalms, those maledictory songs. But all of them are kind of war, there’s some suffering going on, there’s warring going on, and then there’s Jesus as our ruler. He comes to rule over us.

But he comes through suffering, through warring, and ultimately the warfare is accomplished on the cross. The first book of the Psalms, its very center is Psalm 22 with death and resurrection. So the warring that goes on in Psalms is really the coming of the Savior to die for his people. So that warfare is accomplished on the cross and then he ascends to heaven and he rules now through his Holy Spirit. He ascends to the right hand of the Father, you know, and he sits at the right hand and he stays there until all of his enemies are conquered. So there’s warring going on but he’s ruling over his people who are now doing that warring and there is certainly in the context of that this admonition to hear and fear the commands of our king as we get in Ecclesiastes.

But here another dimension of the relationship of Jesus Christ to his people kind of caps the whole thing and that’s this love song, the love song of all songs. This is pretty important stuff in the big picture because it tells us, for instance, that as men rule their homes, they are not just to be ones whose commandments are heard and feared. They are to be ones who are supposed to rule over their bride, their wife, and the children being a picture of the congregation they rule over. They are to rule over that congregation in love, a demonstrable love that has effects upon our subjects in the home.

We could say that’ll be described in this in the verses today. And when we sing this song—that Doug Schaefer, thank God for his ministry, that Doc taught us at family camp last year and we remember, I’ll remember him every time we sing it—but as we sing it, we’ll meditate not just on the love of Jesus Christ for his subjects, but we also as men should think about the love necessary as a vital capping component of our rule in the family. And you can make application to the church.

Obviously, the word pastor has this connotation of ruling and authority. Shepherding is like a kingly function in the Old Testament, but clearly the pastor must love the congregation and the elders of the church must be known for their love for the congregation. See, it’s important. The congregation needs to feel the love of her rulers, so to speak. And we could probably extend that to the deacons as well in businesses.

I think that we could say that if this is the model of how Jesus rules over his subjects, this is how Solomon was to see his subjects. You know, even in Proverbs, in the kingly section, the ruling section as near the end of the book, it’s sort of capped off with a vision of the flocks. That the king looks at his subjects as his flocks, love for them. And here Solomon is exhorted, I think, writes this, but it’s exhorted by God and taught by the Holy Spirit to rule civilly, politically as a king with a love, an obvious, evident love for his people.

And a people need to know that their rulers love them, whether it’s in the family, the church, or the state and I would think it’s proper also to make application to the area of business management. In business you can make the application for that. If you’re a ruler, a manager in business, think about it. If this model fits for civil rule then wouldn’t it also fit in the context of vocation? This is why I think Clinton was so popular with so much of the population. Whether he was being sincere or not, many members of the body politic believed he really cared for them. He felt their pain lovingly. This is what people want.

And so, and it’s not a bad thing to want here. This tells us—this big context of wisdom literature—that kings must love their constituents. And so it tells us that here in fear is not enough. Here, fear, the center of Ecclesiastes is not enough. It must be blended with this love. And we’ll see in just a minute what the center of that love is.

Well, let’s look at it.

Now, on the outlines I’ve provided, and you’ve seen these before, some structures from David Dorsey, an overall outline of the entire book. It’s important because it helps us to set the context for the verses we’ll look at in a couple of minutes, but it also shows us the overall theme of the book. You know, I’ve talked about crucial conversations. I’ll continue to talk about that. I’m just—I think this is such an important thing in the life of the church.

You remember when we talked about it that this book I’m reading—it’s Steve Sykes loaned to me, you know, he says, “There’s just one thing you need to know how to run a company.” Well, just one thing. And the rest of the book he tells you the one thing in the first chapter. The rest of the book is about how you do it. The one thing is to get people to dialogue, to speak freely in the context of whether it’s a two-person conversation or a group conversation to bring all ideas into the ideal idea pool in terms of running a business. So that when leadership decisions have to be made, they’re done in the context of the synergy developed by the sum being more important than the parts, the sum of it being more important or better than the adding up of the parts of it. It’s synergy. So there’s all kinds of reasons why that’s a good thing: crucial conversations.

Well, the Song of Songs is a crucial conversation. It’s sort of the picture. It is the Song of Songs. It is the picture of the relationship of Christ and his bride, Solomon and his bride, people that rule of other people. And what it is, you know, you always think of it in terms of sexual imagery. I don’t think there’s a lot of that in the book. There’s some of that, no doubt. But the imagery is primarily temple imagery, I believe. And it also sets up, it does certainly address the relationship of God and Yahweh and Israel in terms of marriage.

Ezekiel 16 is similar imagery where she’s seen as a young girl and God raises her up and marries her. This is the background, this kingly wisdom literature for the prophetic books that will use the faithless bride and use some of this very same imagery from the Song of Songs to bring indictments against Israel in the prophetic period of the Old Testament book. So it sort of sets that stage. And we think of it in terms of sexuality, but primarily it’s a book of dialogue. It’s primarily a book about communication of husband and wife. You see, that’s what it is. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And it’s communication that’s very instructive for us.

And at the very center of this book, and if you’ve been here, you probably heard me say this before, but the very center of the book is the marriage service. There’s a marriage service. And the language that begins that marriage service is very similar to the language that we have in our text today. In fact, it’s identical in the first line. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit.

The very center is the marriage service. And so, dropping down on the second part of the outline there in that first page, the wedding day has as its center a single statement by the king to his bride in verse 7 of chapter 4. That single statement is, “Thou art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee.”

That’s what Jesus speaks to us every Lord’s day. Not just on the Lord’s day, but preeminently on the Lord’s day. The absolution of sins spoken by the pastor is this statement. And in fact, this statement rings throughout the entire worship service, the declaration by the Lord Jesus Christ because of him imputing his righteousness to us, seeing us through the rainbow of God’s covenant, right? He tells us, “Thou art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee.” He brings us to peace and rest in his words and dialogue to us.

You know, uh men, this is all you need from today in terms of application. This means it’s your job to speak words of affirmation to your wife about her deepest fears. What we see in the Song of Songs is the bride is concerned about her physical beauty. In the last part of the Song of Songs, she comes to rest in peace about that and then she becomes as one who is seen as at peace by her lover. It says her husband. She gets there not immediately. She begins in the Song of Songs in insecurity about her physical beauty. Now, it’s not just physical beauty that women are insecure about. It’s the love of the husband. It’s themselves. And she’s brought, you know, from insecurity to security, from not being at peace to being one who is seen at peace.

It says explicitly in chapter 8 through the affirmation at the very center of the text in the marriage vows that are spoken, the affirmation by her husband that she is all fair, that she is his, my love, and that there is no spot in thee. That’s what Jesus tells us. That’s a crucial conversation we have every Lord’s day and we should hear what the Savior is speaking to us. And you should pray that the elders and the officiants of worship and those that compose the liturgy, that this is central to what the liturgy and the sermons and the way we conduct the liturgy is all about, is Jesus speaking to his bride at the center of what we do, at the center of our lives.

Thou art all fair. You are beloved by the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no spot in you. Beautiful, staggering picture here.

I know I’m taking a long time to get to the text, but you know, I want to set this up correctly. Now this section that’s begun, you know, the chapter breaks in the Song of Songs are really almost worthless. And verse 5 that we read as the first verse of the sermon text for today actually starts the seventh section of the book.

And you see back up to the top half of the outline now. That at the bottom—the closing words of love and desire in 8:5 to 14—there’s some evidences there taken from David Dorsey. Primarily the word Solomon, the name Solomon is only mentioned in three of the seven sections. That is, at the beginning, the end, and the middle where his actual name is used. So it kind of ties these things together. Being the term apple tree is only in this section and its match.

Okay. So it’s a device that tells us that the book is bounded by these two bookends. Apple tree, his left arm, you know, is described as embracing his love. And again, just in the first and seventh section. In the first section, the woman’s vineyard is contrasted with her brothers. And in the last section, it’s contrasted with Solomon. We see this covenantal transference through courtship, I suppose we could say, is seeing herself in relationship to her brothers and family to now seeing herself in relationship to her husband. So it sort of wraps it up and makes these bookends.

The woman is moved, as I just said, from insecurity to security. Whose job is it, men, to make your wives feel secure? If your wives have insecurity, what do you do about that? Well, you can talk to me or talk to a relative. That’s all good stuff to do. But at the end of the day, it may not be your fault. And in this case, it’s not Solomon’s fault that his wife is insecure.

But it is certainly Solomon’s job to bring his wife to security at the most basic level of who she is. That’s his job. Now, you know, he has help. And I’m not trying to lay it all on you individual husbands, but I’m telling you, if you don’t walk out of here today with a renewed sense to image a desire, renewed commitment to image the Lord Jesus Christ by bringing peace to your wife’s insecurities through your words—primarily, although the physical relationship is there—through your actions, through, in the words of the song we sing today, your heart and your arm, okay? If you’re not moving, and with your mouth particularly, as is evident in the whole thing, if you’re not moving to see it as your responsibility to try to bring your wife to an increasing sense of peace and rest, you’ve missed much of what we’ve tried to say today.

There’s all these practical implications. So this text that we’re looking at today is the beginning of the seventh section. And what do we have first of all then? Let’s get to the text proper. We have first of all two beautiful cameos. And again, you know, if all you do is remember these two beautiful pictures of the resolution to this book, you know, this is the capstone to the wisdom literature and the capstone to this book. The last section and the last section begins with these wonderful images of this relationship of woman and man. There’s these beautiful cameos.

First of all there is this statement. This first cameo is “Who is this?” So it’s a case of identity, right? Who is it? Who is she? Who are we? Who is your wife? It’s a case of identity. “Who is this that comes up from the wilderness?” You know, well, you know, this is a beautiful image—leaning on her lover. So we have a little picture, we could frame it, you know, a little picture and it’s a guy and a gal coming up away from the wilderness up, you know, we ascend to God, coming up into blessings and she’s leaning on him. Okay? She’s not just hand in hand. She’s leaning on him is the idea.

I preached on this text, a wonderful wedding text. Of course, I preached on this text at Doug and Amy’s wedding. Actually, it’s just such a wonderful picture of what happens, you know, we have the formal wedding service and but by the end as they’re leaving, she’s kind of leaning on him and that’s what will characterize their marriage. This beautiful cameo that there’s unity.

Now, this is contrasted with the beginning of the worship, the wedding service itself. It’s what we read for our responsive reading. It sounds identical, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. What we read for our responsive reading is the beginning of the central section of the book in chapter 3:6-9. “Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke perfumed with myrrh and frankincense with all powers of the merchant?”

And what will happen is we had that description of Solomon’s palanquin or whatever it is—he sent a chariot for—is what’s happening and literally she’s coming out of the outer regions to go to the capital city of Jerusalem to be married to her husband. So it’s a text that opens the marriage, the formal marriage ceremony, with a picture of her coming up away from the wilderness. It’s a picture of salvation. It’s a picture of what we do. We come up out of the wilderness wedded to Christ when he brings us into a saving knowledge of himself. We’re being saved from the curse. The wilderness is the place, you know, of—it’s the opposite of the garden. She’s not in a garden when she starts. And she comes up out of that garden being drawn by Jesus, so to speak, into his holy throne room to be wedded to him just like us. It’s a picture of salvation.

And it’s specifically a picture—very clearly, if we took the time to look at the details—we begin with pillars of smoke. That’s following God forward, right? And the smoke will ascend where? At the temple in Jerusalem. There’s descriptions here of the sort of wood that’s used, the gold. If we look at all the specific elements of the unit, the vehicle that Solomon sends for her, it’s temple imagery. Even here, she comes up with many perfumes of myrrh and frankincense used in temple service. So, you know, it’s a picture of the salvation of Israel being brought into the throne room of the holy of holies of the temple to be wedded to her husband. It’s a picture of salvation.

But in the at the beginning of the central section, she’s not with him yet. She’s coming up to meet him. Now, as the book comes to a climactic last section, now the marriage has been entered into. It’s been consummated. She’s now, they’re now husband and wife. And this now pictures who she is in her after-marriage life. Okay? Well, in her married life, but after the formal ceremony. And now she’s not alone. She continues to move away from curse into more and more blessing. She continues to move up from the wilderness, but now she’s leaning on her beloved, showing her dependence, her unity, the mutual love they have for one another, certainly.

And it is such a beautiful cameo of our relationship to Christ, of the sort of relationships that should characterize political rulers. People should be properly dependent to some extent on their civil rulers and our own families. Of course, all this is contained in this beautiful cameo. What’s going on at the conclusion, the climactic last section of the Song of Songs, it’s a beautiful, absolutely beautiful picture—cameo. It is a climactic picture of unity. They’re together. They aren’t apart.

The seven sections in the book, the first six sections all begin with them desiring to be together, but they start apart. Only in the seventh section do they start out together. You see, and if you don’t kind of know the flow of the book, you miss that. The very first line of this chapter shows you it’s climactic because now they’ve got apart even after the formal wedding service she has her worst dream of being deserted by her husband that night. I mean, they’re just apart, apart, and now finally they’re together at the very beginning.

Each of the other six sections begins apart and comes together by the end of the sections but here it actually begins together. So there’s unity together here. They’re there. There’s a dependence of the woman upon her husband. There’s a mutual love and, as I said, clearly here, it’s the salvation of the woman that she has been brought into this relationship with him. So we have security as one element of this cameo, right? She’s secure. She’s got Solomon, you know, king with all the mighty men that sent that great army to bring her to the wedding place. She feels secure, resting and dependent upon him and she is stabilized, as it were, by him as well.

She doesn’t have to walk on her own. She walks leaning on her beloved. You know, this is just such a wonderful picture of our relationship individually and corporately to the Lord Jesus Christ. In him, we have security. In him, we have stability, but only as we lean upon him and have dependence upon him, right? As we stay united to him. So, all that wonderful picture is given to us here. And as I said, there’s some very practical implications of this for various relationships that should be important to us.

But we have this great climactic picture. Another movement from the center of the book is there’s lots of military, right? When Solomon sends his chariot, he doesn’t just send his little carriage, but he sends all these men to protect her. But now there’s no militaristic—I made a mistake on your outline. I said Marshall picture. It should be marital picture. And that’s exactly what the movement is. It’s moved from a martial imagery at the center of the book to a marital imagery at the conclusion of the book.

And so there’s this transition now to not being at war, but her life is now—it’s now primarily characterized as lovingly dependent upon her husband. And these are wonderful great pictures for us.

There’s a second cameo though in the very next section of this verse. So we have “Who are you? Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?” Then we have “Under the apple tree I aroused you. This is where your mother conceived you. This is where she conceived, she gave you birth.”

Now another picture, a little cameo, is portrayed of the woman and the husband under an apple tree. Now the word “you” here in almost all of the texts, ancient Hebrew texts, is masculine. Only in one version, the Syriac version, is it feminine. And yet commentators like to think of this as the man arousing the woman because it seems like it’s more of a reading into the text what we think of as normal conventions.

But in this cameo, because the word almost assuredly is masculine, the U, the one doing the arousing, is the feminine. It is the wife who is arousing, awakening, not just waking him up. She is moving him to ardent passion for her. This is what she is doing. And we see this throughout the book. We see the husband certainly initiating romantic relationship, but we see the wife doing it as well. Another challenge to much of our perceptions of who should initiate relationships.

She arouses him now and it’s under this apple tree and that’s what it is. It’s really an apple tree. The apple tree is used in six or seven places in the scriptures. And some people don’t like it to be an apple tree because they say, “Well, you know, Jerusalem, it’s too hot and arid to have apples.” Well, you know, I mean, this is the time of Solomon. I’m sure he had all kinds of wonderfully cultivated plants even though it wasn’t native to this place. There’s no reason to doubt the word. The word is the same as the Arabic word which we know is apple. Every indication is this is an apple tree, a real apple tree.

And as much as I’ve said the contrary in my years of ministry, we don’t know what the tree was in the context of the Garden of Eden, but who knows? Could have been an apple tree. And I think we’re at least to draw these associations between this union of husband and wife again, their love for one another under an apple tree, the place where all that was broken apart. You see, some kind of fruit tree in the garden is where the relationship was severed. And the Song of Songs is now about face-to-face intimacy between husband and wife, between the bride and Jesus Christ, between Solomon and his people. All these imageries. And it’s accomplished, you know, in the context of the reversal of the fall.

So, this is a wonderful climactic picture of salvation. There’s an apple tree now that is not now the symbol of where we lost everything, but it’s now the symbol of where everything is regained because of the work of Jesus Christ. And the woman initiates this. And there’s a reference to generational succession. Here’s that reference to the mother I mentioned earlier. “There’s where your mother conceived, bore.” We’re not sure what the words mean, but it seems like the idea is that’s where the man came from was the apple tree. Not literally, of course. She didn’t go out to the apple tree for childbirth, but it’s imagery. It’s a beautiful cameo that shows again the love of husband and wife, but now it sets it in the context of generational succession and the movement of God’s history along.

Some people think one reason why the apple tree is that, you know, the branches tend to get gnarled. They look old even though they’re not that old. Apple trees. And it has this appearance of movement of age. And so this generational succession is a picture here in this wonderful cameo as well.

So we have another beautiful climactic picture, this time of ardor—not so much dependence and you know, there’s unity, but there’s unity here—but it’s more ardor, love, passion, generational succession and very importantly a picture of salvation. The woman is being brought to salvation, the reversal of the apple tree.

Now the apple tree, as I said, is used several times in the Bible. Apple tree is related to other trees in Joel. In Joel chapter 1 we read: “The vine has dried up, the fig tree has withered, the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree. All the trees of the field are withered. Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.”

So the climactic tree and the removal of joy is the apple tree. So the apple tree is can be seen here as the reversal of that and it’s the climactic tree in terms of joy.

Proverbs 25:11 very appropriately says that crucial conversations—good words spoken in crucial conversations—are like apples of gold. Now people say, “It’s apricots because apples aren’t gold.” Well, it’s a metal apple here, okay? That’s like the apples on this tree. The round ornaments on trees represent fruit. The tree of life with the 12 fruits that it bears according to the book of Revelation, and it’s like an apple tree. And we can think of the Christmas tree as an apple tree.

And here in Proverbs, the apples are words fitly spoken and to remind us of the thanksgiving for exertion. Its specific context is: “A wise rebuke to an obedient ear like an earring of gold and ornament of fine gold is a word fitly spoken.”

So through the conviction of sin, we come to this wonderful reversal of the loss of joy that the apple tree speaks of. The apple tree is also mentioned in the Song of Songs, and I’ll talk about this as we go to the communion table, but its fruit—the tastiness of its fruit—is described earlier in chapter 2 in the Song of Songs. The shade of the apple tree is described as protection for Mrs. Solomon. And its smell is also alluded to—one’s breath, actually the exhalation of one’s nostrils, smells like apples. And so, you know, a lot of people like apple perfume or apple fragrances in the home and this has been for a long time in the Middle East. There is this—has been for a long time—apples as a picture of a desirable fragrance wafting through the house.

Apples of course are related to art and passion as well. Aphrodite, one of the two fruits that she uses, is the apple. So, it’s a picture of love. And all those connotations are contained in this little cameo, this little picture of the climactic union of these two, the husband and wife, the dependence, but now the passion of love as well. And that sets us up for the two requests that form the basis of our song as well.

I should mention here that Watts actually has seven verses in the song that we only sing three of. So, let me read the first two verses that are based upon what we’ve just read or seen in the Song of Songs.

“Who is this fair one in distress that travels from the wilderness impressed with sorrows and with sins? On her beloved Lord she leans. This is the spouse of Christ our God brought with the treasure of his blood.”

And her request and her complaint is but the voice of every saint.

Second verse is kind of nice because it’s what we end up singing, right? Her request is to be put on—is to have this mark on her husband, of her, this—what we sing—and it’s the as Isaac Watts appropriately says, it’s the voice of every saint.

I don’t like his description in verse one. She’s not laden with sin in Song of Songs. She’s come to release from sin. She’s come to dependence on her lord and a joyful one at that. But those are the first two verses in the original text that Watts wrote. He wrote seven verses.

Now the first verse that we sing is described then in the two requests that follow these beautiful two cameos in verse 6 then.

So we’ve had these two beautiful pictures and then we have two requests, really sort of one request. “Set me” is the request. “Place me, put me on yourself.” And then she says explicitly: “Set me like a seal upon your heart and as a seal upon your arm.”

Now there’s a seal, a signet. A signet is a sign of ownership. It’s a sign of authority. It’s a sign of unity in this case, and she makes the request to her loved one that he puts her on him. She wants him to know she is owned by her. She makes the demand that he be seen as her property. One could say that’s what a signet or a seal did is it marked something as yours. And there’s a proper sense in which women do that to their husbands, right? “You’re mine. I’m yours. We belong to one another.” The New Testament makes that abundantly clear that our bodies are not our own. We’re purchased by Christ, but then we’re given over if we’re married to one another.

By the way, I should say as well that in terms of practical application, I failed to mention this, but when she talks about arousing him under the apple tree, this is the fourth reference to arousal under an apple tree. And the first three references in the Song of Songs are all negative. It’s a warning not to arouse love before it’s time. Not to arouse love—you young men and women—you should take this to heart most seriously.

This text that we’re talking about today is a beautiful picture of the results of marital unity. But on the other hand, if love is aroused too early prior to the marriage being covenantally entered into, it can create tremendous problems for people the rest of their lives. And so there’s three warnings. Again, this is the climactic end of it. We see that, you know, the warnings have now been removed and the wife, you know, embraces her husband under the apple tree.

But don’t forget that is the result of the center section of marriage. And up to then there are these warnings: “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” Young people, when we don’t want you alone together with one another—more often than not, this is why your parents know the arbiter passion of love and what can get, you know, moving and how difficult it is to stop it. And so we warn you: do not arouse love before it’s time.

Here, however, it is its time. And so, she says in the context of this relationship that she wants to be a signet, a sign of authority in some sense in terms of him, ownership of him. And where does she want this signet placed? Upon his heart, upon the center of his being, upon his emotional life as well as all that he is—her his heart. But not just the heart. “Seal me upon your arm.”

What’s the arm? The arm is the place of action. I don’t want to just hear you say you love me from your heart. I want to see your arm moving to defend me, moving to love me, moving in actions to demonstrate that I am really upon not just your heart but upon what you do. You see, the wife here, her request is to be set as a seal, a signet, upon the husband—and his heart and his arm.

Now again, here you don’t think of it but it’s temple imagery. Where do we have somebody with a seal upon a heart and an arm? Well, we do. It’s the high priest. And the word signet is only used a few times in the Old Testament. And there’s three or four other occurrences besides Song of Songs. In Exodus, but in Exodus, it’s talked about six times. Three times in describing the construction of something and three times in actually telling us that they did it that way. And what is it? It’s the clothing of the high priest.

The high priest had stones, two stones, one on each shoulder, part of the arm. And in fact, the word “arm,” it’s translated “arm” here, can mean strength and it actually is describing this particular Hebrew word in Song of Songs. The arm is describing the shoulder of a sacrificial animal in a couple of places. So it can mean the whole thing. The high priest has the tribes of Israel engraved—same word, “put me,” engraved—on two stones, one on each of his shoulders. The high priest has Israel engraved on his arm and the high priest has a breastplate with 12 stones with the names of the tribes. And again, the specific word used is the same word here. They’re engraved on the breastplate over the heart. The high priest indeed has Israel engraved on his heart and upon his arm. This is the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus is to us. He is the great high priest and we are always on his heart and his actions, his providential movements in history are always those that are driven by us being placed as a signet upon his arm.

Beautiful, wonderful imagery.

The only other signet that’s not related here, but in the high priest garb, is there are flowers, golden flowers. It says a plate in the King James, it’s really flowers. And upon that is engraved, sealed, “Holy to the Lord.”

So there’s a mutuality that, you know, we’re he’s—we’re sealed upon his arm, but we’re sealed as his as well, holy to the Lord. We’re on his thoughts. We’re on his heart. We’re on his actions. And we are also then likewise to have Jesus Christ always upon our thoughts. Our actions are to be done for him. And amazingly, we have this signet, this authority placed back and forth mutually, so to speak, in the context of the song. And we move in the context of having the authority signet of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we have two requests that really are a single request: marital commitment and authority from the heart and marital commitment and authority through the arm, through the arm. And this is temple imagery. It clearly relates ultimately to the work of Jesus Christ for his bride, but also it also has all these pastoral implications for authority relationships in the home, in the church, in the state, etc. This is a picture of Solomon and in the body politic ultimately.

All right. So there’s this covenantal commitment to displayed by the signet. And so we have that here in her two requests, and then there’s a series of comparisons of this love.

Recognize that she has—in the words of one commentator—unashamedly, possessively, or she is unashamedly rather possessive and exclusive about her relationship to her husband. See, she doesn’t want him having wandering eyes for someone else. She claims him as her own. You see, and that’ll be important for setting up one of these descriptions we see in the next section of the text from us.

We then have—and this is then these verses that we’ve just talked about—Watts’s verse. “Oh, let my name engraved stand both on thy heart and on thy hand. Seal me upon thine arm and wear that pledge of love forever there.” Watts verse three are verse one when we sing it.

And then third, there are four characteristics of this love and these are comparisons. You know, it doesn’t mean that love is stronger than death. It is that, but it’s compared to death. Okay? These are comparisons. The first comparison deals with the strength of love: that love is as strong as death. It has as much power as death, which comes to everyone. So, love has this tremendous strength to it.

By the way, this is the only place in the Song of Songs that death is mentioned and it is seen, is being combined or at least compared, with love. The love of God is equal to death. And then the love of God is also as severe, as enduring, as strong, as demanding as the grave. And here the love is described as being jealous.

Jealousy. Love is properly jealous for one another. Yahweh is jealous for his bride. He doesn’t like it when he sees us with other lovers, okay, with other competing interests than his. And in the marriage relationship, there is a proper jealousy and in fact, it is perverse for a man or a woman not to be jealous around potential real threats for the mate’s affection and commitment. I think it is actually perverse for someone not to engage in this godly jealousy.

It is this wonderful climactic picture of marriage relationship of Solomon and his wife and all these other implications and that climactic picture brings in the context of jealousy a proper jealousy and this jealousy is as strong as Sheol, the grave.

And then the comparison is to fire and water, its passion is a divine flame. So the verse goes on to say this love is strong like death. Jealousy is severe like the grave. Its spark, its fire is a flame, is a blaze of fire. It’s a mighty flame. Now, mighty flame—some of your translations may have in the sidebar, a flame of Yahweh. The word for a mighty vehement flame is actually the word for flame brought together with Yah, the shortened form for Yahweh. So, it’s a flame that comes from Yahweh. Yahweh’s fire comes forth from his throne. We have that imagery up here.

That fire is this flame of love that he has for us. And it’s seen in the marital relationship itself. This is why Watts’s verse, you might have wondered, “Hell and earth in vain combined to quench a fire so much divine.” Well, the source of marital love, the source of the love of Jesus Christ and his bride is Yahweh. It comes from heaven, heaven above. And the word spark is almost a picture of lightning coming down to set this heavenly fire ablaze.

Now, where do we see that? Again, in the temple, fire comes down from heaven. When the temple is first or the tabernacle is set up, the fire is started. There’s heavenly flame that exists in the context of the earth. And here in the imagery of that temple being applied to life, where is that heavenly flame found? It’s found in the home. It’s found in the relationship of husband and wife.

Now, it has implications for the king being wedded to his people. The love of a king for his people has its origins in God’s flame of fire and love for us. The church—other relationships—but preeminently this fire, this flame of a proper love, a consuming passion for one another—this comes from heaven. And so we have this verse four. As I said, verse five of Watts’s song said, “But I am jealous of my heart lest it should once from thee depart then let my name be well impressed as a fair sign it on my breast.”

So the mutuality of all this is seen by Watts and portrayed in the verse that we don’t sing. But this idea of this flame of fire and love, one for the other, is mutually described in this description of love as being a conquering flame. Its passion is this divine flame and its flame cannot be extinguished. It’s compared to water. Many waters are not able to extinguish this divine flame. Rivers cannot overwhelm it. If a man were to give all of his worldly possessions for love, his offer would be utterly scorned.

And so we have the last element of the description of love here: it’s inestimable value. It’s great value. Everything, all the possessions you could have are not worthy of this love. Love has a greater value than all those things.

You know, the implication of this pastorally, you know, God wants us to see all of our possessions as consecrated to him and being his ultimately, but he wants more than possessions. He wants more than your money. God desires you. And compared to your love for him, your obedience in tithing or your use of your possessions to him, if you do all those things, to paraphrase St. Paul, and don’t have love, we’ve missed the import of this text. You see, we’ve missed the import.

All those things are far inferior to this inestimable value of love. This is why the poorest household can rejoice during Christmas, during the rest of its year, when there’s love between husband and wife. You know, crucial conversations—marriages have problems with money. Money is one of the things that people fight over. But, you know, if you look at the statistics, it’s not people that fight over money that are more prone to divorce. It’s people that don’t know how to discuss in the context of mutual love, money, sexuality, whatever else they’re going to discuss. It’s the failure of communication that leads to divorce. It’s the failure in the crucial conversations about the proper use of one’s money. That’s what brings divorce.

It is the words spoken back and forth. It is that love, that romantic relationship of husband and wife that sets the context for properly resolving all the stresses and tensions. You know, for people that don’t have a lot of money, this is a wonderful verse. You know, do you fail your wife by not giving her tons of money? No. But you do fail her if you don’t give her your love, if you don’t make clear to her that she is on the center of your being, on your heart, on your actions as you move in the context of life. And vice versa. Husband and wife should know of this great love. It’s an inestimable value is talked about here and is a wonderful sort of conclusion of the description of this text.

This is advent season and part of this—what I’m doing here—is describing what has happened: the coming of the greater Solomon, the Lord Jesus Christ. But some of this of course remains yet future. The Song of Songs concludes with a verse that is the basis for the last verse that we sing of Watts’s song as well.

In verse 14, we read the last verse of the Song of Songs: “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices.”

You know, throughout the Song of Songs, husband and wife are getting out. They’re getting to a vacation. They’re going out in a walk in their backyard. They’re getting out in the exterior world of God’s creation apart from their homes. That’s, you know, can be seen here. “Let’s get away. Come fly with me. Let’s take some time off. Let’s take a walk outside.” And this is a wonderful way to encourage marital relationships according to the Song of Songs.

But of course, this is imagery as well. This is imagery that is now once more calling on behalf of the bride to the husband, to the beloved, to be like a gazelle or a young stag, come to me, come be with me. And again, in the context of the mountain, the ascension, in worship there is a recognition at the end of Song of Songs, as much as there’s this wonderful picture, these wonderful cameos—leaning on the beloved, arousing, you know, and having unity and generational succession in the context of the reversal of the curse and the apple. All those wonderful pictures, the great description of love and its power and the inability of heaven and earth to combine to quench a flame so divine. All that stuff is portrayed as real as now and ours.

And yet there is a future consummation that comes from that relationship. And yet the church cries out to her Savior to come to her in the worship service on the mountain and ultimately to come at the conclusion of all time. The wife is moved to a position of assurance of her beauty, assurance of her perfection, and at peace. She becomes as one who is at peace in the eyes of her husband.

We are that positionally in Christ. Every Lord’s day is an assertion of that. And yet, we know that ultimately these things are not going to be true until the final advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second coming. When Jesus Christ comes, this wonderful imagery seen in the Song of Songs will then find its climactic ultimate representation.

I won’t have to scratch anymore when the Lord Jesus comes. I’m not going to have to worry about blood sugar levels. I won’t have to worry about my respiration and can I breathe or not—having asthma as I do. I’ll be able to see very clearly the way I can’t now. I could go on with the physical implications of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’ll be a time of most peacefulness, most blessedness, most joy and the physical of course pales in relationship to the relational problems that we have even in the context of our marriages.

The best of marriages do not experience this sort of unity, this sort of dependence, this sort of ardor and passion 100% of the time. But it will, you see. It will ultimately. What we have in this wonderful song that we sing has all these pastoral implications for the here and now: both of our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, the greater high priest. We’re engraved on his arms and on his heart. Has all these pastoral implications for how we treat one another in functional relationships. Has all these implications for what we experience in Lord’s day worship.

But ultimately, it makes us want to enter the Advent season looking for the great and final advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, when he will come and affect the final consummation of the wedding. We’re at perpetual feast time, the night of the consummation of Christ and his bride. Will yet come forward in the future at Christ’s second coming.

Surely during the Advent season, we rejoice in the wonderful blessings, the unity we can have with Christ now, but we also look forward to the tremendous blessings that the ultimate unity is yet future for us.

Isaiah 49:13-16 says this: “Sing, O heavens. Be joyful, O earth. Break out in singing, O mountains. That what we do at Christmas because of the advent of Christ. The Lord has comforted his people and will have mercy on his afflicted. He has done it and yet he will perpetually and effectively definitively at the end of time have mercy on his afflicted.

Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me.’ You may feel that way today. We have these real difficulties and yet we read, ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, the mother under the apple tree, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you.’ God tells you today, ‘See, I have inscribed you. I have engraved you on the palms of my hands,’ the nail wounds of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘Your walls are always before me.’

Advent is a season of rejoicing in that great truth and rejoicing that this truth will be ultimately and fully known when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to us. Christmas is a season of is a season of joy and rejoicing about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, his coming in worship every Lord’s day to minister those wonderful words that we are his beloved. We are engraved on his palms, upon his thoughts, upon his arm, and upon his heart. It is that, but it’s also looking forward to the great consummation with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Song of Songs ends essentially, “Come quickly, my lover. Come quickly, Lord Jesus Christ.” The same way the book of Revelation ends. And as much as we rejoice in the Christmas season, we still want to say, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Culminate the blessings for the heavens and earth that you have definitively initiated with your coming the first time.”

Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for this wonderful picture, for these beautiful cameos. Lord God, help us to be transformed people. Help us to be as this bride in the Song of Songs, at peace, knowing that you have indeed cared for us and loved us and will eternally. And help us to be those that minister that love and grace one to the other.

During this season particularly, may husbands and wives rejoice together, assuring one another that they are on each other’s hearts and in each other’s actions. And may that extend out to our entire community. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.