What is Love | Part 2
Continuing from last weeks teaching in Song of Solomon chapter 8, this episode explores how the fire of love—ignited by our relationship with God—can purify, strengthen, and sustain our most cherished bonds. By the end, you'll be equipped with a renewed perspective on love, understanding that marital commitment is more than just a feeling—it’s a covenant that can endure any storm. Get ready to be inspired to seek a love that isn’t just a fleeting whisper but a blazing beacon of hope, resilience, and strength.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Speaker A:It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.
Speaker A:Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.
Speaker A:And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.
Speaker B:Shulamite desired that Solomon be sealed to her heart, that he be inseparably linked to her in his attitude and in his devotion to her.
Speaker B:But she also desired to be sealed to his arm so that there would be no doubt in the public's mind who he belonged to.
Speaker B:She, she belonged exclusively and only to him.
Speaker B:So the seal was twofold.
Speaker B:Inner feelings and outer behavior.
Speaker B:And what a beautiful picture of marital love this is.
Speaker B:But she doesn't stop there.
Speaker B:That's the beginning.
Speaker B:Like a defense attorney, we might say, who provides evidence to prove their point, the Shulamite continues by making a case for her.
Speaker B:Love constrains her to ask for these two seals from Solomon.
Speaker B:And in the next two verses, we're given one of the most beautiful descriptions, as I said before, of love in the Bible.
Speaker B:We might say that these verses are the Old Testament equivalent of First Corinthians 13 in the New Testament.
Speaker B:She continues in verse 6 by saying, for love.
Speaker B:Listen, folks.
Speaker B:For love is strong as death.
Speaker B:For love is strong as death.
Speaker B:Physical death is unavoidable.
Speaker B:Physical death cannot be ignored.
Speaker B:It is final and it's irreversible.
Speaker B:Unless the Lord Jesus Christ returns, we will all go through something called death.
Speaker B:Death ends physical life and it abandons those who are left behind.
Speaker B:But love is stronger than death because true love abides in the lover's heart even after death has taken the one who is loved.
Speaker B:And as I think about that, wow, today do we understand this truth?
Speaker B:Today, as we lost a dear man of God that we dearly love, Dr.
Speaker B:B.F.
Speaker B:poured his love out to so many people in so many different ways for so many years.
Speaker B:And we see from hundreds of expressions of love on Facebook, from, I'm sure, hundreds of texts that the family have gotten in phone calls that they have received, that love is stronger than death in the hearts of those who loved.
Speaker B:Dr.
Speaker B:Allred, even though he is passed over through death.
Speaker B:Love is stronger than death.
Speaker B:It abides in the heart of those even after the one that they have loved has passed away.
Speaker B:Love withstands.
Speaker B:This kind of love, withstands separation.
Speaker B:It withstands even death.
Speaker B:The greatest of all love that man has ever known is the love of Jesus Christ, who conquered death.
Speaker B:And we will never be separated from him because his love is Stronger than death.
Speaker B:I'm reminded of the verses in First Corinthians 15 and verse 5.
Speaker B:O death, where is thy sting?
Speaker B:O grave, where is thy victory?
Speaker B:The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
Speaker B:But thanks be to God, which giveth us a victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:God's love, folks, never fail.
Speaker B:The Shulamite continues making her case for love in verse 6 by saying, jealousy is cruel as the grave.
Speaker B:You know, usually when we think of jealousy, we think of it as a very negative emotion.
Speaker B:We think of it as a refusal to share something that ought to be shared with someone else.
Speaker B:For example, if you've got children, they have toys, then you tell them, listen, share your toys with your brother and your sister.
Speaker B:Sometimes children get jealous of each other.
Speaker B:They get jealous that they don't have a certain toy that maybe the other child has.
Speaker B:And even though children might should share their toys, there are some things that we don't share that we are jealous over that it's not appropriate to share.
Speaker B:For example, if you were to come up to me and when my kids were little and say, listen, why don't you share your kids and let them come over and stay with me for two years?
Speaker B:I'm going to say, you crazy.
Speaker B:It's not appropriate.
Speaker B:I'm their mom and dad.
Speaker B:They live with who?
Speaker B:They live with me.
Speaker B:They don't live with you.
Speaker B:I don't share my children that way.
Speaker B:Some things are not meant to be shared in marriage.
Speaker B:Listen, you belong exclusively to your husband or to your wife.
Speaker B:If you're married, they belong to you.
Speaker B:As the Bible states, the two become one flesh.
Speaker B:So it's not appropriate to share your wife or to share your husband with someone else.
Speaker B:They're exclusively yours.
Speaker B:In fact, In Exodus chapter 34, the Bible says that one of the names for God is jealous.
Speaker B:God calls himself jealous.
Speaker B:God is a jealous lover.
Speaker B:And I believe that's what the Shulamite is referring to here when she says that jealousy is as cruel as the grave.
Speaker B:That is God in his relationship with you and I.
Speaker B:He is continually wooing us to Himself.
Speaker B:He is continually romancing us into a relationship intimately with Him.
Speaker B:And God doesn't want anything to stand between your love relationship with him and yourself.
Speaker B:In fact, if you begin to love something else, God calls that adultery.
Speaker B:If that love for something else is greater than your love for him, he calls it idolatry.
Speaker B:Because God is a jealous lover.
Speaker B:His love is an unyielding love, an unrelenting, passionate love, demonstrating the same power that the grave holds over its captive, its unyielding his love insists on complete devotion for our good and his glory.
Speaker B:So divinely jealous love gives each spouse security and protection from outside threats that seek to destroy their love.
Speaker B:It doesn't strive to control the object of that love, but provides unyielding devotion for the good of the one that's being loved.
Speaker B:So she says, first, love is stronger than death.
Speaker B:And then she adds this additional evidence to her case for love by saying that jealousy is as cruel as a grave.
Speaker B:But she's not finished yet.
Speaker B:She makes the next statement in verse six when she says, the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Speaker B:The Shulamite bride describes the power of love using the analogy of hot coals that have a most vehement flame, a raging flame that burns within her soul for her husband, for her lover.
Speaker B:When I think about a most vehement flame, it makes me reflect back to some years ago when there was a little store down below our house right there at the corner where you drive into Mission Point.
Speaker B:And it was an ugly eyesore.
Speaker B:And so finally we got the fire department.
Speaker B:Some of y'all may have been there that day.
Speaker B:We got the fire department to come over and set that little store on fire.
Speaker B:I'd never been that close to a fire quite like that when a whole building was going up in fire to be that close to it.
Speaker B:But I remember standing there on the road some yards away, many yards away, because it was very, very intense.
Speaker B:It was very, very hot, the flames coming off of that fire.
Speaker B:In fact, I can remember that the insulation on the electric lines across the road began to sizzle.
Speaker B:It was so hot, the leaves began to crackle on the trees some 40, 50 yards away because of the heat coming off of the flames of that fire that was burning down that house.
Speaker B:The statement I have this underlined in my Bible, a most vehement flame literally means the fire flame of Jehovah, the fire flame of Jehovah, or the flame of the Lord.
Speaker B:This is really the only direct reference to the literal name of God in this little song.
Speaker B:In God's love, she is saying, and she is pointing to that God's love is like a raging fire that consumes imperfections, leaves a much purer specimen behind.
Speaker B:The result is death to self.
Speaker B:That allows you the freedom to love completely and unconditionally.
Speaker B:Love that is stronger than death has its source, she's saying in God, for God is love.
Speaker B:A lot of people read this song and they think, how in the world can they have this kind of love relationship?
Speaker B:How can they love each other the way they do?
Speaker B:How can they talk terms and tones of endearment to each other the way they do?
Speaker B:And here, before the song closes out, we see in the very final verses that the Shulamite says, I want to tell you how we can love each other this way.
Speaker B:I want to tell you how we can have the marriage that we can have.
Speaker B:Because there's a fire inside of us that's literally the fire flame of the Lord.
Speaker B:It's all sourced our relationship with God.
Speaker B:This love consumes all that is ugly and replaces it with the beauty of God's holiness.
Speaker B:This love is so powerful that it does not let up until everything that is ugly in its path is destroyed by it.
Speaker B:This type of committed love is the greatest force known to man and when manifested in marriage, creates a pure relationship that's untainted by distractions that can blemish its beauty.
Speaker B:Shulamite reminds us that the flaming love she shares with Solomon is sourced in none other than God himself.
Speaker B:Her marital love is a friendship that is on fire with the love of God.
Speaker B:I'd ask you this morning, do you know that kind of love?
Speaker B:Or we know the feelings of love, but do you know that kind of supernatural love that's set on fire in your heart by God?
Speaker B:And a beautiful marriage is a marriage where there is a friendship of fire that's set aflame in the lovers hearts by their relationship with God.
Speaker B:What a beautiful picture this is.
Speaker B:Perhaps your attempts to express love to your spouse sometimes are cold, sometimes they're indifferent.
Speaker B:Sometimes you may get the cold shoulder.
Speaker B:You may never experience this kind of fire of love that I'm talking about in your marriage relationship.
Speaker B:Or maybe you have, but the fire has long since gone out.
Speaker B:But listen, today God is able to light that fire.
Speaker B:If you don't know Him.
Speaker B:He's able to save you here today.
Speaker B:If you'll call upon his name and ask him to save you here today.
Speaker B:By faith trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, he's able to light that fire.
Speaker B:You'll become a new creation in Christ and you'll have a heart on fire for God.
Speaker B:Or if you become cold and indifferent, he's able to relight that fire within your heart that the Shulamite talks about here in these beautiful words.
Speaker B:The Shulamite concludes her case for love by giving two results of having a love set aflame by God.
Speaker B:Look at verse seven.
Speaker B:As I close, many waters cannot quench Love, neither can the floods drown it.
Speaker B:The first result of marital love set aflame by God is it cannot be extinguished by the sounds, by the power of great floods or great waters that come against it.
Speaker B:Absolutely nothing can drown out this love.
Speaker B:Nothing can silence this kind of love.
Speaker B:I was reminded when I was thinking on this of being up in Buffalo, New York some years ago and being near the Niagara Falls.
Speaker B:And I didn't get a chance to go see the Niagara Falls.
Speaker B:Perhaps some of y'all have seen this magnificent display before in God's creation.
Speaker B:But I began to read about it and I jotted down something that I read that day and it said, Niagara Falls is one of the greatest natural wonders in the world.
Speaker B:For those who have observed, it's an awesome, breathtaking experience.
Speaker B:Each second, over 600,000 gallons of water flow over nearly 1/2 mile wide crestline at approximately 20 miles an hour.
Speaker B:The force generated by the water would demolish a house into splinters.
Speaker B:The noise produced by the falling water is so incredible that it drowns out every other sound around it.
Speaker B:Observers are forced to direct their attention to its magnificence surrounding.
Speaker B:Nature pales in comparison to this flashing display.
Speaker B:As a result of harnessing this mighty force, no other natural phenomenon, the world produces more electric power.
Speaker B:As I began to read and think and meditate on it, I thought the wonder of this love that the shulamite is talking about here in these verses cannot be displaced by the sounds or the power of waters as great as the Niagara Falls.
Speaker B:The heart of this kind of love licks up, evaporates and dispels all the thundering streams or even floods that could ever come against it.
Speaker B:The fire of this love cannot be quenched by powerful waters that might try to put it out.
Speaker B:This love is so powerful that it echoes within the eardrums of her heart and continually resounds in the deep recesses of her inner being.
Speaker B:We might say it seeks out.
Speaker B:It searches every empty crevice and hollow hole within her, replacing indifference, coldness and death with the fire of God's love.
Speaker B:Such is the power of love between two married people who allow God to permeate their souls with the burning fire of his love.
Speaker B:It becomes a fire kindled by the master stoker, God himself, that can never ever be put out.
Speaker B:It can never ever be quenched.
Speaker B:It can't be extinguished by persecutions that we go through, by trials and tribulations that would try to drown out our love or flood our love and take it away.
Speaker B:Just as nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Speaker B:Nothing should separate the love of a husband and wife whose hearts are set aflame with God's love.
Speaker B:So when trials and when tribulations come against this kind of love, it binds the husband and wife closer together, not further apart.
Speaker B:She concludes in verse seven, her case for love by adding, if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
Speaker B:Or the word contemned means despised.
Speaker B:It would be utterly despised.
Speaker B:I mentioned love songs at the beginning of the message, and one of them that comes to my mind when I read this verse is years ago.
Speaker B:I believe the Beatles got it right when they said, I don't care too much for money because money can't buy me what love.
Speaker B:That's exactly what she's saying right here.
Speaker B:She's saying that you can't buy this kind of love.
Speaker B:This kind of love is priceless.
Speaker B:This kind of love cannot be purchased.
Speaker B:This kind of love, the love that is the foundation of the love relationship between her and Solomon cannot be purchased.
Speaker B:The only way you can experience this kind of love is to intimately know God through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:Listen, this kind of love has already been purchased for you and I by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:There's no works we can do, there's nothing we can merit and do to earn this kind of love from God.
Speaker B:Because God is love.
Speaker B:And God demonstrated His love, committed his love to us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for you and he died for me.
Speaker B:This kind of love has already been purchased for us.
Speaker B:We don't have to purchase it.
Speaker B:It's already been purchased.
Speaker B:It's a free gift from God to us who will trust and believe in Him.
Speaker B:Paul says it this way in Ephesians, chapter 2 and verse 8.
Speaker B:For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
Speaker B:It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
Speaker B:What a beautiful conclusion the Shulamite gives in chapter eight to this song, the most beautiful love song that's ever been written, when she says that the only way we can have this kind of love is by having a love in our hearts that's set aflame by God.
Speaker B:I deal with so many couples so often that are having marital problems, and the first thing I want to make sure that they know is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:Because I know that they can never love each other horizontally the way they should until they're first loving God vertically the way they should.
Speaker B:The love that needs to overflow from one spouse to the other will never be the love that it needs to be unless their heart is first obsessed with the love of God.
Speaker B:Solomon and the Shulamite confirm here the source their love, and that is their relationship with God.
Speaker B:Whether we are happily married, unhappily married, divorced, widowed or single, it's our relationship with Jesus Christ that we truly find the love on fire that we really all need.
Speaker A:Thank you for joining the Fortifying youg Family podcast, and if you feel encouraged by today's teaching, give us a follow so we can invite you back back and share us on your socials so more marriages and families can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.
Speaker A:Remember, fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.
