Silence of Adam pt 4
Reflective Reading: Song of Songs
I believe it is a fair statement, though I have no scientific proof, that God has placed inside of each man a longing to live heroically. Unlike today, centuries of fairy tales have inspired the dramatic rescue of the woman in need by her heroic man. One of the reasons stories like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White are so loved is that the gospel of Jesus’s rescue of his bride is so woven throughout. The works of C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien have also elevated man’s heroism in our imaginations.
There is one story that exceeds all others in this imagery. It is the biblical story of the Song of Songs. This story of the Shepherd lover and Shepherd-King describes heroism within the greatest love story ever told. Before I go further, I would like to clear up some myths about this amazing book. The title Song of Solomon is the traditional title, but the accurate title is Song of Songs. This story is the Song of all songs! Sadly, this story is rarely heard in preaching or teaching. Church history tells us that this book was once an extremely popular book. Charles Spurgeon preached 59 sermons on this book, and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) preached 86 sermons on chapters one and two alone!
Today, this book of the Bible seems to have gone silent. Why? One reason is that our sexually immoral culture has made one of the greatest gifts of God (sexual intimacy) a mere cheap imitation. When something so beautiful has been marred so grievously, it is difficult to enjoy and see the beauty and sacredness of the Song.
The Song of Songs demonstrates how purity is the basis of heroism. Please ponder that statement before we move on. And before we dig deeper, we must back up and look at what precedes the Song of Songs. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes are the first four books of Wisdom literature. All together, these five make up the Wisdom books of the Old Testament. James would be the wisdom book of the New Testament. The five wisdom books of the Old Testament are structured with the following pattern:
A Fear GOD – Job 1:1, 9
B LORD fear - Psalm 2:11 (1 & 2 Introductory Psalms)
C LORD fear - Psalm 147:11 (144-150 Concluding Psalms)
C’ Fear LORD - Proverbs 1:7 (knowledge begins here)
B’ Fear LORD - Proverbs 31:30
A’ Fear GOD - Ecclesiastes 12:13
God’s Word is so divinely written! The more I read God’s Word, the more I am convinced that no genius of man could have written such a supernatural work. So what do we have here with this unique framing of the first four books of Wisdom? First, note the outer frame with the Fear of God. The two mysterious books, Job and Ecclesiastes, are framed with fearing Elohim/God, not LORD. In Psalms and Proverbs, we have Yahweh/LORD represented, which are our two relational Wisdom books. God is both powerful and distant (God/Elohim) and near and relational (LORD/Yahweh).
In our fifth Wisdom book, Song of Songs, the Hebrew words Fear, God, and LORD are all absent. Why? They are absent because they are replaced with love! Perfect love casts out all fear!!!
The word Love frames the book Song of Songs (2 & 8) and is repeated over 36 times! Once again, we must ask why? God is communicating in the first four Wisdom books that we are to fear him. In the fifth Wisdom book, God is communicating that we are to love him because he loves us. But we cannot love God until we first learn to fear him! We cannot properly love others unless we first fear God. Without this fear, heroism is replaced with narcissism, protecting and saving oneself.
In this incredible love story of Song of Songs, the Shulamite girl is desperately waiting for the return of her hero, the Shepherd lover. I know, I know…many of you are scratching your heads, wondering why I am replacing King Solomon with the Shepherd lover. Here’s why. Chapter one begins with the Shulamite being taken captive by Solomon, and the girl desiring to run away to find her Shepherd lover whom she longs for:
“Draw me after you; let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers” (1:4).
To go more in depth about the Shepherd lover being the primary focus of the book would take us away from our current focus on heroism…So, I need to set this aside for now. As the story progresses, the Shulamite wonders why she has to wait so long to be rescued, especially in the midst of such trying difficulties. She dreams of his return and longs to be with him. He promises to return, but not as a Shepherd. In chapter 2, verse 4, we read the familiar phrase, “His banner over me is love.” This is a military term! The banner is a flag by which he is claiming his authority and promised protection over her. He is claiming her as his own—“She is mine!”
The Shepherd-lover is now the Shepherd-King! This epic story begins with this important love claim and ends with her longing for his heroic return:
The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills (2:8).
Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices (8:14).
This scene in Song of Songs reminds me of when Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings rides on a white horse as the hero. These images of a hero on a horse inspire me, but true heroism doesn’t always follow the fantasy of fairytales. In fact, as beautiful and inspiring as these fairytales are, the important theme of the “fear of God” is left out. True heroism is lived out because of the fear of God. Without a healthy fear of God, we cannot purely love or have the manly desires to protect and rescue others. Without a healthy fear of God, heroism will take second place to self-protection and self-pleasure. It is one of the main reasons men are so silent today and the reason why the wicked have become so emboldened.
How can this change? We witnessed it in Charlie Kirk. Though he was not perfect, he was heroic. He was not afraid to speak the truth. His fear of God far outweighed his fear of man. Like Charlie and the Shepherd-King, we too must live for a greater cause. There are many waiting and wanting to be rescued. So let us be sanctified and fit to be heroic. Jesus said, “Sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth.” “Young men, you are strong because the Word of God abides in you.” Our strength comes from the Word of God. The more we have the Word in us, the more we will fear God and the less we will fear man. The less we fear man, the more we will become heroic. So let us rise, and “act like men.” Let us:
"Be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law (Word) that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Josh 1:7-9).
