Song of Songs Chapter 5 -- John Karmelich

1. In Chapter 4, we have the wondrous, beautiful story of the wedding night.

a) Chapter 5 is post wedding. Reality sets in. J

i) Some people say this is a dream sequence.

ii) Some people say this is an actual event that takes place some time in the future after the wedding.

iii) Either way you look it, the applications to you and me are the same.

2. The main point of Chapter 5 is about the danger of complacency.

a) In any relationship, there is always the danger of taking the other person for grant it.

b) That can be about your relationship with God, or your spouse, or even a good friendship.

c) All good relationships require work (time & effort) to keep them fresh and alive.

d) In Chapter 5, we are going to read about the bride “losing her man, looking for her man and describing her man to others in her search.”

i) In summary, the bride is in her bed. The groom attempts to get into the room (or the house), but it is locked from the inside. The bride, in her laziness to get up in time, misses the opportunity to let him in. Realizing her mistake, she then takes to the streets to find him. After having a hard time with the local officials of the town, she then spends the second half of the chapter describing his beauty.

a) There, all done. Let’s pray and call it a week, unless you want more. J

ii) The big-picture idea is to see the danger of complacency in our relationships.

a) Her failure to get up and greet her man was due to her complacency.

(1) She was taking her relationship for grant it.

(2) It caused a series of problems that required restoration.

(a) The “happy ending” is that once she realized her mistake, made every effort to restore that relationship.

b) This is a model of our relationship with God.

(1) It is so easy to get complacent. We can skip a devotional time here and there. We can skip our prayer time because we get busy.

(2) God has a wonderful way of helping to restore that fellowship. This is usually when things go “a little wrong” in our life. That is often God urging us to restore that relationship.

(3) God, in His perfection, knows all things. He is aware of our faults. Any healthy relationship requires time and effort. It is always easy to get lazy. Because of God’s perfect love, He wants to spend time with us and draw us into a closer relationship. Thus God allows circumstances to get worse often for the purpose of drawing us back to Him.

(4) It doesn’t guarantee things will automatically get better once we start praying again. It will restore our attitude but not necessarily the situation. That is God’s problem. God promises things will work out, but it works out the way God wants it to work out, not the way we think it will.

3. With that cautious introduction J, let’s start verse 1 of Chapter 5. Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers.

a) The “troubling” part of Chapter 5 actually begins in Verse 2.

b) Verse 1 belongs better with Chapter 4, in my humble opinion. J

i) The chapter breaks were added in the 12^th century AD.

ii) We’re stuck with the chapter breaks where they are, so I just deal with them. J

c) To understand Verse 1, we probably need to discuss the last verse of Chapter 4:

i) “Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.” (Song of Songs, 4:16, NIV)

ii) Many commentators see the last verse of Chapter 4 and the first verse of Chapter 5 as the high point of the Song of Songs.

iii) If you count the number of verses, this is exactly the mid-point of Song of Songs.

iv) The last verse of Chapter 4 was the bride’s one verse response to a love poem by the groom that covered most of Chapter 4.

v) It is her response to his love. This “yes” response is given poetically.

vi) If you remember my notes from last week, I discussed how, in Hebrew, the word for “spirit” and the word for “wind” is the same word.

a) That last verse in Chapter 4 is her request of the wind to stir up her aroma’s to entice her bride.

b) The “pun” is that the verse can be used for the Holy Spirit to “stir up” the emotions inside us so that we can praise God through our thoughts, our voice, our efforts, or gifts. This way, like the sweet smell of the bride to her groom, so our thoughts, voice etc. can be a “sweet aroma” to God the Father. In the Old Testament, the smell of sweet incense in the Tabernacle is a word picture of our prayers going up to God.

d) Which leads us to the first Verse in Chapter 5. I better repeat it again:

i) “Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers.” (Songs 5:1, NIV)

a) Most study bibles list this verse as being spoken of by “The Daughters of Jerusalem”.

b) Whoever is speaking, it is neither the bride nor the groom.

c) Whoever this is, they are encouraging the love making between the bride and the groom.

ii) Hopefully you can see the tie-in between this verse and my main points in the last verse of Chapter 4.

a) The bride is calling for the wind or “spirit” to stir up that love relationship.

b) In the first verse of Chapter 5, we have these outsiders also encouraging the lovers to have their “fill” of love.

c) It is a model of the Holy Spirits response to her request.

d) Personally, I think God would grant that same request to you and me. God the Father, in His perfect love for us, always wants to have a better love relationship with us. For ask to ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to increase that love relationship is a request God is more than happy to fulfill that request.

(1) The problem of course, is that we may not like the answer. J

(a) God may show us some sin area of our life he wants us to clean up to better our relationship.

(b) Or He just may inspire us to do something for somebody else to better that relationship.

(c) The point is God is trying to increase our intimacy with Him. Often that requires work on our part that we may not be too crazy about. Our egos often block God’s desire to increase that relationship.

e) One can easily apply this to our marriage or to any relationship.

(1) God wants us to have a great marriage, a great family relationship and healthy friendships.

(a) Ask God what can I do, (not your partner or your children or your friend!) to better that relationship.

(b) Does my spouse have faults? Of course. The biblical response is to let God work on them, not me!

(i) Pray to God about them. Let God gang up on your spouse. They don’t stand a chance! J

(c) In the meantime, ask God about our own faults!

iii) Ok, enough guilt. Let’s move on to Verse 2. J

4. Verse 2: I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night."

a) We now have the bride speaking in Verses 2-8. This is the main plot of the chapter.

b) Most people see Chapter 5 as a dream or nightmare.

i) Notice the Verse opens with “I slept”.

a) It would seem unusual to go from lovemaking to “he’s outside knocking”, and thus many people see this as a dream sequence.

b) The other view is that this is a time delay. There is a break in the story and this event takes place later.

c) One can read the chapter either way.

d) I believe the main point is to see her actions and not worry too much about whether this is a reality or a dream.

c) So here is the bride. He is outside the door, knocking to get in.

i) He is calling out to the one he loves.

ii) Many of you fellow Bible experts out there may have this verse flash in your head:

a) “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20, NIV)

(1) That verse in Revelation is often used in evangelism. It is often used as an invitation for people to turn their live over to Jesus.

(2) One can also see this verse as an opportunity to restore a relationship that has been separated.

(3) This verse in Revelation can also be read to a believer in Jesus.

(4) It goes back to my main theme today of the danger of complacency.

(a) When we get complacent in our relationship with God, He “steps out of the picture” for a time. Other things become more important that God for the moment, and God is now figuratively-speaking on the outside of our heart (our homes) “knocking to come in”.

d) Notice what the groom is not saying. “Yo, honey, let me in. Can’t you do anything right? I’ve freezing and wet out here. Get your behind out of bed and let me in! J

i) Read the verse again. Guys, take notes here.

a) He is appealing in love, not in strength. Notice his humility.

(1) He calls her his “love”, his “darling”, his “flawless one”.

(2) When our relationship has its bad moments, it is restored so much faster when we approach our spouse or parent or grown child or God the Father in humility as opposed to having a tough attitude.

b) One of my favorite proverbs about relationships is:

(1) “A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Proverbs 15:1, NIV).

(2) In those way-too-few inspiring moments when I am successfully defusing an argument with my spouse J, if I can remember to give, soft gentle and humble responses, this always calms the situation.

(a) Next time you are angry with a spouse, a family member or even angry with God because of a situation, try the “soft answer” approach. If anything, speaking softly will cause the other partner to strain to hear your answer.

c) The point is we need to have grace to our spouses, our friends and family.

(1) The easy thing to do is argue back when someone is arguing with us or doing things that are wrong.

(2) Grace is unmerited favor toward someone. The way to end an argument or return love to a situation is to begin with grace toward your spouse (family, friend) even when they don’t deserve it!

(a) Yes this is difficult, especially when you are hurt.

(b) It is only through God’s love for us, and Gods grace for us that we are able to channel that love and grace to others.

(c) Often it is necessary to take those hurt feelings in prayer to God and ask for God’s guidance in how He wants you to respond. You will be amazed at the answer!

(d) Again this is difficult, but remember what Jesus said:

(i) “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26b, NIV).

(3) This discussion continues with the next verse:

5. Verse 3: I have taken off my robe-- must I put it on again? I have washed my feet-- must I soil them again?

a) You can summarize her response in one word: excuses.

b) In our lives, we are so quick to justify our opinions, to give excuses to give logical reasons why we can’t restore our relationship at the moment.

c) It is almost amazing how we creative we can be with our excuses not to restore our relationship.

d) Often times, the hurt we have from those relationships are real. The pain is so bad we don’t want to restore that relationship.

i) We could have had some disaster in our life and we blame God. We relish in the pain and don’t want to let go of it.

ii) We may have been hurt by our spouse, or by a parent or children. That pain hurt so much, we can’t mentally or emotionally handle the forgiveness.

e) Logically we know that restoration is better. Our ego’s say, “well, that person hurt me so bad, there is nothing I can do about it”.

a) We forget that God is bigger than they are, and God is bigger than we are!

ii) I always loved the quote by Corrie Ten Boom that says:

a) “The blood of Christ has never covered one excuse”.

b) Saying “I’m sorry without adding anything is always the way to restore relationships. That applies to our relationship with God as well as people.

iii) Sometimes loving others requires a supernatural ability. Let’s face it; we all have to deal with people who are difficult to get along with.

a) That is when we desperately have to depend upon God’s strength to work through us to be able to deal with that relationship.

b) We need to give those hurt feelings to God, and not back on the other person! Once we do that, God can work with us to give us the ability to love that person. That way, God gets all the glory and not us.

c) Which, surprisingly, leads us back to Verse 3. J

f) Here is the bride, in bed, complaining she can’t get up to get the door because her feet will get dirty. It sounds like a flimsy excuse. Most of us who have lived a while can remember equally flimsy excuses we have given to our spouses or family members.

i) If you can’t recall any bad excuses, just ask your spouse! J

6. Verse 4: My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him.

a) Apparently the door style was one where the person on the outside could open the door (or open an outer door) but couldn’t get much further.

i) So here was the groom on the outside attempting to get in.

ii) Let’s face it. This was King Solomon. If he wanted, he could have his guards bust down the door or just break through a window.

a) The point is, in his love for her, won’t disturb her free-will choice to restore their relationship.

b) Some of you can see where I’m going with this! J

b) There are a few things God can’t do.

i) God cannot lie. (See Titus 1:2) If God were capable of lying, we can’t trust Him.

ii) God cannot learn. (See Isaiah 46:10). If God is perfect, then He can’t learn.

iii) Finally, God cannot force you to love Him.

a) If God loves us with a perfect love, that out of that perfect love He must give us the free choice to choose Him.

b) If God could somehow “force” us to love him, in a robotic type of love, then that love wouldn’t be perfect, it would be forced.

iv) Which leads us back to Solomon.

a) Solomon goes as far as making his presence known, but won’t go any further, out of his love for her.

v) Her response in this verse is that, “Her heart pounds for him”.

a) Yet, we don’t read of her getting up until it’s too late (next verse).

(1) Not in the “too late forever”, but late enough where she now has to pay the consequences and go out and look for her.

vi) Her love for him convicts her. The verse says, “Her heart pounds.”

a) To me, that is a good sign that you are “saved”.

b) Even when you realize you’ve sinned against God, you make an effort to restore that relationship. You may have to suffer some consequences like this girl did in this chapter, but that love is embedded.

c) Let’s get back to the plot.

7. Verse 5: I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock. ⁶ I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer.

a) OK, the plot thickens. J

b) Solomon left the scent of myrrh on the door handle. In that culture, it was a “calling card” so she would know who was there.

i) She still has the sweet smell of myrrh on her.

ii) In her mind she may have thought, “oh, Solomon’s at the door. Well, I did wait a while for him, but he loves me, so I can take my time. Once she was stirred up by him, she smells the myrrh, remembers the wonderful wedding night, and is now aroused by him. But, for the moment, it is too late.

c) Which leads us again back to my opening theme of the danger of complacency.

d) To those of us who are saved, God is always there reminding us and pleading with us to come back.

i) Even when we are angry with our spouse, or angry with God for something that happened to us, we deep down know that they (or He) still love us. While this isn’t always the case with a spouse, it is with God.

ii) Even when we are mad at our spouse, or children, or parents, we still love them. We are angry at something they did, but we are still committed to them. We can’t undo our relationship out of love.

iii) Remember that love is a commitment. From that commitment come the feelings and all the emotions that come from love.

iv) Even when the bride made the mistake of procrastinating, in her heart she knew what was the right thing to do.

a) God puts that “feeling” in our heart. Once we realize our mistake, God makes a way for us to restore that relationship.

b) That is what the story of the “prodigal son” is about. (Luke 15:11-24).

(1) The main point of that parable told by Jesus is the son, who took half of the father’s estate and squandered it, never lost his “son-ship”. Despite his failure, he was still the father’s son.

(2) That is the type of love God has for us. When we fail, we suffer the consequences in our lifestyle. But we never lose our salvation as long as we acknowledge The Father (via the Cross) and act upon it.

v) This is the point of these two verses. The bride realized her mistake.

a) The rest of this section of the story is about her struggle to restore that relationship.

8. Verse 7: The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me, they bruised me; they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the walls!

a) Well, that’s not good. J She walks out looking for him, and gets beat up.

b) Again, this could be a dream sequence, or this could be an event in the story.

c) All she did was delay and grumble about getting up to let in her husband and look what trouble she gets herself into! J

d) What is interesting is that this is the only mention of the pain of this beating.

i) We don’t read later of her asking Solomon to get revenge for her.

ii) We don’t read of her saying, “but my husband is the king, better lay off! J

iii) Instead, she pleads with whoever this is, to help her in her request to find her man.

iv) Now there is an attitude of love! Girls, take note here, it’s your turn! J

a) Sometimes the relationship is painful.

b) Sometimes terrible things do happen.

c) Sometimes the consequences of our actions do cause further pain.

d) The point here is to see the perseverance in the name of love!

e) Love is a commitment, through the good and bad times.

(1) Again the bible does make an exception for adultery, and I do believe in martial separation, especially if your partner is abusive.

(2) But I don’t believe in the easy-divorce of “we just don’t love each other anymore”. If that is the case, your problem isn’t that bad.

(3) We all have our faults. It is only through God’s love and God’s strength that we even have the ability to live with others. I’m sure, if there was a clone of me, I would be no less difficult to get along with than my spouse. J The same probably goes for any married couple.

(4) The point is, that out of love, she persists on!

v) Let’s go back to our relationship with God.

a) Sometimes in order to restore that relationship, God asks us to “clean up” some aspect of our life. That can be painful and hurtful. The incentive is the reward at the end of that struggle is greater than the pain of keeping that pain locked up inside of us.

e) The beautiful thing to see about this event is to see it in context of the rest of the chapter.

i) Here is the bride being beat up in her search for the man she loves.

ii) We see her n