Sermon Tone Analysis

Canticles 8:5b-7

The Love We Each Seek

 

/Under the apple tree I roused you;/

/there your mother conceived you,/

/there she who was in labour gave you birth./

/Place me like a seal over your heart,/

/like a seal on your arm;/

/for love is as strong as death,/

/its jealousy unyielding as the/

/grave./

/It burns like blazing fire,/

/like a mighty flame./

/Many waters cannot quench love;/

/rivers cannot wash it away./

/If one were to give/

/all the wealth of his house for love,/

/it would be utterly scorned/.

A & E apparently felt they had discovered something unusual.

At the least those responsible for programming thought that they had hit upon a subject which would boost ratings.

They presented a Valentine special purporting to reveal erotica of the Bible.

They had all the usual suspects known for promoting pornographic and erotic themes including the wizened hag substituting for the goddess of love on talk circuits, Dr. Ruth.

What A&E thought was new territory was but a perversion of a major theme at the heart of the Word of God.

God is love.

Fallen man has perverted that love into lust.

Consequently, though we have a world awash in gratification of every lust, we discover that we long for something which seems always to be just beyond our reach … love.

No one really knows how Valentines Day came to be observed.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia lists at least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs.

Each alike is listed in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February.

One is listed as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two suffered in the second half of the third century.

The third Saint Valentine suffered in Africa with a number of companions and nothing further is known.[1]

Mid-February was traditionally the time of the Lupercian festival, an ode to the God of fertility and a celebration of sensual pleasure.

This was a time to meet and court a prospective mate.

In ad 469, Pope Gelasius outlawed the pagan festival.

In order to make his order palatable to the populace he replaced it with a similar celebration which was deemed morally suitable.

He needed a lover’s saint to replace the pagan deity Lupercus.

The martyred bishop Valentine was chosen as the patron saint of the new festival.

Bishop Valentine had been beheaded for helping young lovers marry against the wishes of the mad emperor Claudius.

Before execution, Valentine himself had fallen in love with his jailer’s daughter.

He signed his final note to her, “From your Valentine,” a phrase which has lasted through the centuries.

Pope Gelasius didn’t get everything he wanted.

The pagan festival died out, it is true, but he had further hoped people would emulate the lives of saints.

Instead they latched onto the more romantic aspect of Saint Valentine’s religious life.

While not immediately as popular as the more passionate pagan festival, eventually the concept of celebrating true love became known as Valentine’s Day.[2]

 

Whatever the original intent for instituting the observance, Valentines Day is today a celebration of romantic love.

At least most individuals would contend that they celebrate romance.

I suppose that most women receiving a Valentine card would say they desire romance, if not with the one delivering a Valentine then with someone.

Likewise, most men sending a Valentine (with flowers and chocolates and jewellery) would say that they are honouring one with whom they wish to be romantic.

Unfortunately, not all who wish to be romantic are romantic.

I am convinced from a growing variety of sources that Christians are better lovers.

Multiple studies and surveys demonstrate that Christians are more likely to be satisfied with their spouse and more content with their love life then are non-Christians.

Christians not only have happier marriages but they are less likely to end their marriages in the divorce courts.

Almost twenty years ago Redbook surveyed American men and women.

The survey made news headlines for weeks being the hottest topic on television talk circuits because the study revealed that the most sexually content people in America were fundamental Christians.

News commentators, comedians and scholars alike pondered the reason for the disparity between fact and the popular fiction that Christians are uptight about intimate matters.

Follow-up studies revealed that contentment wasn’t simply a result of resignation which created the climate of deep satisfaction, but rather contentment arose from something which the studies were challenged to quantitate.

Christians accept the will of the Creator as revealed in His Word and as result they have discovered that He really does know what He is talking about.

Committing themselves to their spouse and reserving themselves for one another, the secure environment created enhances instead of decreases romance.

The most romantic people in the world are those couples who have committed themselves to the Lord God and then before Him have committed themselves to one another.

The least romantic people in the world are those who live a promiscuous lifestyle and flit from one sexual encounter to another.

Those individuals are insecure and incapable of discovering the joy which must underlie happiness in order for the full depth of love to be expressed.

A&E was right; the Bible is not at all prudish about romance.

In fact, one entire book of the Bible is devoted to romantic love.

That book is, of course, the Song of Solomon, also referred to as Canticles.

It is a love poem relating the romance of Solomon and a young woman known as the Shulammite.

The text is not at all reticent about speaking of marital bliss.

As we read the poem, however, we find that rather than voyeurs invading the sanctity of the marriage bed we are instead drawn into a celebration of the most beautiful aspect of romance, the deep love which a man and a woman should discover with one another as they invest themselves in each other.

*The Passage Does Refer to Romantic Love* — Perhaps I am an iconoclast.

Although I may not intend to destroy contemporary myths I do manage to do so without any effort.

One myth of this present age is that Christians do not speak about sex.

Many people, perhaps even most people, suppose that Christians are terribly uptight about sex.

Such a position seems strange in light of the fact that our God created us to be sexual beings.

You will no doubt recall Jesus’ teaching on the subject of gender distinction in marriage.

/“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?

So they are no longer two, but one.”/

Based upon the teaching revealed in these words the Master established the teaching stating divine opposition to divorce.

/“Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate”/ [*Matthew 19:4-6*].

I don’t want you to become hung up on the teaching concerning divorce, but instead focus on the underlying truth which our Lord presents.

The Creator created our first parents to be /male and female/.

In other words, the distinction of gender is deliberate.

Sexual differences are deliberate.

Because this is true, sex is recognised and blessed, for /a man will … be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh/.

Throughout the New Testament man as a sexual creature is a recognised truth.

Paul, in his first Corinthian letter, speaks of the need to honourably control one’s passion.

/Each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that/.

/Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.

But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion/ [*1 Corinthians 7:7b-9*].

This apostolic teaching flows from questions first raised by these Corinthians.

Get the setting.

The Corinthians came out of pagan culture, a culture which was noted for its licentiousness.

A term of opprobrium which was current in that day was to be called a Corinthian.

It recognised the casual sexual views permeating Corinthian society.

People exiting that morally destitute society wanted to know something about romance!  Listen to the Apostle and capture the underlying note of astonishment.

/Now for the matters you wrote about/…  The Corinthians requested instruction in sexuality.

/It is good for a man not to marry.

But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

The husband should fulfil his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.

The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband.

In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.

Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.