LOVE AND ROMANCE IN THE BIBLE

By Pastor Glenn Pease

CONTENTS

1.     ALONE IN PARADISE   Based on Gen. 2:18

2.     THE CELEBRATION OF LOVE Based on Gen. 29:1‑30

3.     INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE based on Num. 12

4.     RUTH'S ROMANCE Based on Ruth 2:1f

5.     THE CLEVER COUPLE Based on Ruth 3:1‑4, 4:1‑10

6.     THE POWER OF BEAUTY   Based on Esther 2:5‑18

7.     PRAISE AND ROMANCE  Based on Prov. 31:10‑31

8.     THE PRAISES OF LOVE   Based on Song of Songs

9.     THE FRAGRANCE OF LOVE  Based on Song of Songs 1:1‑17

10.   ROMANTIC AND RELIGIOUS FRAGRANCE   Based on Song of Songs 1:3

11.   ROMANTIC AND RELIGIOUS LOVE  Based on Song of Songs 1:1f

12.   ROMANTIC AND RELIGIOUS KISSES  Based on Song of Songs 1:2

13.   LOVE AND LUST Based on Song of Songs 1:4

14.   WHAT IS BEAUTY  Based on Song of Songs 1:15‑16

15.   ROMANTIC AND RELIGIOUS ROSES  Based on Song of Songs 2:1

16.   THE GIFT OF MARRIAGE  Based on I Cor. 7:1‑7

17.   THE SINGLE SAINT   Based on I Cor. 7:1‑7

18.   HOW TO LOVE YOUR WIFE Based on Eph. 5:22‑33

19.   MAKING MARRIAGE MARVELOUS Based on I Pet. 3:1‑7

20.   HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL HUSBAND Based on I Pet. 3:7

1.     ALONE IN PARADISE   Based on Gen. 2:18

  Back in the days when women were fighting for the right to vote there were a number of women speakers who could expound eloquently on the virtues and values of women.  The story is told the one such speaker who brought her message to a conclusion by saying, "Where would man be today without the care and comfort of women?  Where would man be today without the hands and heart of women?  Where would man be today without the labor and love of women?  Just tell me where would man be today without women?"  Just then a little man shouted from the back of the crowd, "Paradise!" 

        The battle of the sexes is one in which each side seeks to reinforce its position by going back to paradise and showing that everything would have been great if it hadn't been for the other.  Like the woman who said to her husband, "Our marriage would have been perfect if it hadn't been for you."  He probably agreed with the philosophy, but not the application.  Women delight in pointing out that man was incomplete without woman, and that even in paradise he was not happy without her.  There are no lack of poets to back up her claim to be the poetry of earth as the stars are the poetry of heaven.  Hargrave wrote, "Clear, light‑giving harmonies, women are the terrestrial planets that rule the destines of mankind."  Moore adds, "Ye are the stars of the night, ye are gems of the morn, ye are dewdrops, whose luster illumines the thorn."

        Men are quick to label this as sentimental nonsense, and they insist that Adam was better off when he had paradise to himself.  They also have poetic support, for Andrew Marvell has written,

Such was that happy Garden‑state

While man there walked without a mate;

After a place so pure and sweet,

What other help could yet be meet?

But 'twas beyond a mortal's share

To wander solitary there:

Two paradises 'twere in one

To live in paradise alone.

Women retaliate with the words of Dryden,

Our sex, you know, was after yours designed,

The last perfection of the Maker's Mind:

Heaven drew out all the gold for us, and left

Your dross behind.

Man then counters with these words:

For woman due allowance make.

Formed of a crooked rib was she.

By Heaven she could not straighten be;

Attempt to bend her, and she'll break.

        On and on the battle rages ad infinitum, ad nauseum, or in other words, until it gets sickening.  We are interested in this battle only because it calls our attention to a basic human need, and the only adequate solution to meet that need.  Man is made a social creature, and if he does not feel a part of society, or if he does not have companionship, he ceases to find value in life.  One of the most unbearable conditions of life is that of loneliness.  We want to examine God's relationship to this basic human problem and seek to discover what it means for our own lives.  In spite of all the fighting, men and women need each other, and they know it.  Josh Billings said, "Adam without Eve would be as stupid as a person playing checkers alone."  In verse 18 we find two aspects of God's relationship to the problem of loneliness.

I. GOD'S ATTITUDE.

       God says it is not good for man to be alone.  Man was to be a social being, and so he can never be complete alone.  Loneliness is opposed to the very nature of God Himself.  God is not alone and never has been in all eternity.  He is a trinity of three Persons in one Godhead.  He has had eternal fellowship within His own being.  One of the key values of recognizing God to be three Persons in One is that it explains His self‑sufficiency.  No other being is self‑sufficient, for they are dependent upon God and other forms of life.  God alone is self‑sufficient, for He is Triune, and all the requirements needed for love and fellowship are contained within His very nature.  God is complete in Himself, but man is incomplete in himself. 

        God did not intend to make man in His image with the nature of love and desire for companionship, and then not meet that need.  But for awhile Adam was alone, and it is interesting that God would say that it was not good.  This means that with all of the beauty of nature, and with all of the abundant provision of the garden, and with a job to keep him active, and with many animals to keep him company, there was still something missing.  There was an imperfection even in Paradise. That imperfection was not in what was there, but it what was not there. Without human companionship all of the physical blessings of the universe cannot satisfy the human heart.  If this was true in paradise, how much more is it true in our world today?

     Cyril H. Powell, in his book The Lonely Heart, tells of how an English landlady found one of her lodgers unconscious and almost dead due to gas fumes. It was discovered that he was once a well‑known actor whose name had been a household word in England. Yet apparently all of his popularity and prosperity had not gained for ham any true friends, and when he ceased to be famous he was left alone. Unlike the Prodigal Son in the same situation he had no father to return to, and apparently he did not know of God's good news of acceptance, and so he wrote a note saying, "I am taking the only way out of this hell of loneliness"

     If this was an isolated incident we could ignore it, but the fact is, this is a common experience. The statistics are shouting out the truth from every land that it is not good for man to be alone. It is, in fact, a very positive evil.  One of the most frequent causes for suicide is loneliness. G. Ray Jordan wrote, "Loneliness has driven far more people to nervous collapse than all the theoretical doubts of mankind added together."  Erick Fromm in The Art Of Living wrote, "The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.  The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity."

        All of the facts from every field of study confirm what God stated from the beginning, and that is that it is not good for man to be alone.  Man has to concede the point to the women here.  Paradise was incomplete without her, and every life is incomplete without someone to love, and someone to love them.  This was God's attitude in the beginning, and is, no doubt, His attitude yet today.  But God does more than express an attitude.  We see also in this verse:

II. GOD'S ACTION.

       God says, "I will make him a helper fit for him."  God did not stop with an attitude, but went on to action.  He did not make a pronouncement, and then not follow it up with performance.  He was not concerned with a resolution only, but was determined to come up with a remedy.  It is failure to follow God at this point that has led to the church becoming ineffective and meeting the world's deepest needs.  Paul Rees says something that we all know to be true, but he says it in a way that we need to hear it.

"One of our substitutes for basic Christian action is talk.

We are beguiled by the wizardry of words.  Our fault here

is both collective and personal.  Churchmen, meeting in

conference or synod, labor long and tediously over "resolutions"

and "pronouncements" they are going to make to their constituents

and the world.  Often the mountain labors and brings forth a mouse!

Some tame, nebulous statement is drooled out ecclesiastical jargon,

which pitiably few people will ever hear or heed.  We easily mistake

the saying of a thing for the doing of it.  And that goes for the piously

woolly talk that you and I do as individuals fully as much as it does

for the high‑sounding "whereases" and "resolves" of professional

ecclesiastics." 

        It is simply another way of saying that faith without works is dead.  We have told ourselves so often that there is no merit in good works that we have begun to believe that there is merit in doing nothing.  We need to realize that good works cannot save us, but they may be the means by which God can save others.  Someone has divided the world into three classes of people.  They are those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who do not know what is happening, and the last includes the vast majority.  If we take Christianity seriously, it demands that we dare not be in any category but the first.  Christians must be people of action.

        The whole Bible is a history of God's great redemptive acts, and it is a challenge to His people to become Godlike in their acts.  God cared about Adams loneliness, and He did something about it.  If we care, then we too must do something about the great need of lonely people.  Paul Tournier in his book Escape From Loneliness says that practically everyone is lonely, and the root of this is in man's sin and revolt against God.  Man's loneliness is basically his lack of an ultimate companion.  The unsaved person recognizes that no relationship will last, for all people must die.  What can a Christian do about this?  That is just the point, for though we cannot provide a mate for every lonely person, nor can we create friends for everyone, but we have a Gospel that offers every person a relationship to Christ, and it is an eternal relationship.  Christ is the Friend who alone can satisfy that empty place in the lives of all people. 

       We need to remember that it was not as a sinner running from God that Adam was alone, and that God then said it was not good for him to be alone.  It was an estate of perfect fellowship with God that he still felt alone.  Jesus experienced great loneliness not because He was out of fellowship with God, but because He lacked human companionship.  Jesus experienced what the great majority of people experience.  There can be crowds everywhere, and still not anyone really near you who understands you.   It is not true then that a Christian needs only to trust in God to escape all the loneliness.  We are still social creatures, and without friendship and companionship of others we will still experience loneliness, even when we have good fellowship with God. 

       It is at this point that the church plays a major role in providing fellowship.  Christians must learn to accept one another with all of their differences and weaknesses, and they must seek to provide a companionship in which there is real understanding.  This is the essence of what makes the church different from other groups of people.  Where there is not total acceptance of persons the church is failing to be the church.  We live in a world of loneliness with the only satisfactory answer to it.  God has given His Son, and the Son has given His life that we might be reconciled to God and know Him as Father, and Jesus as Friend.  All those who are friends of Jesus are friends of one another, and this is the key to overcoming loneliness. 

2.     THE CELEBRATION OF LOVE Based on Gen. 29:1‑30

      Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the famous medical missionary to Labrador, was a fast worker when it came to falling in love.  He was on board a ship returning to England when he spotted a charming lady on deck.  He was 43 years old, and so it was not as though he had never spotted a charming lady before.  But this woman had such an appeal to him that he proposed to her shortly after he met her.  She naturally resisted saying, "But you don't even know my name."  He responded, "It doesn't matter, I know what its going to be."  Here was a case of love at first sight, and history is full of such romantic stories where people find their mate in a moment and live happily ever after.

     Others who are equally open to God's leading have a tough time finding their life partner.  Billy Graham is a prime example of this side of the coin.  Graham was going steady with Emily Cavanaugh in college.  He felt she was beautiful, talented, and spiritual, and he told his parents he planned to ask her to be his wife.  She admired Billy a great deal, but she came to a point where she told him she had reconsidered his proposal, and she could not accept it.  He was devastated and felt the world had ended.

     Later Graham developed a relationship with Ruth Bell.  Their love grew, but it also hit a snag.  She was a missionary kid and felt God wanted her to be missionary, but Billy felt called to be an evangelist.  They became engaged in 1941, but at Wheaton College Ruth told Billy she was unsure after all.  There were tears and struggles before Ruth could make a commitment to be his wife.  She realized he needed the balance she could give him.  He was too serious, and she could add the lighter touch to his personality.  They have had a long and happy marriage, but the point is, there was struggle and a lot of adjustment. 

      Love stories can be romantic love at first sight, or tangled webs of struggle type stories.  In one of the great love stories of the Bible we have a case which is both.  The story of Jacob and Rachel is a classic case of love at first sight.  She came with her flock of sheep to the well, and Jacob became an instant servant by rolling away the stone from the well to impress her.  A short time after he was negotiating for her hand in marriage.  But the story takes on the characteristics of complexity and struggle as Laban throws his oldest daughter Leah into Jacob's bed, and thus began a lifetime of conflict and competition in Jacob's love life.  

     Out of this both simple and complex love story God brought forth His people‑the 12 tribes of Israel, and the blood line to the Messiah, and the greatest love story of all‑Christ and His bride the church.  Romantic love is to be celebrated because the whole redemption plan of God's love revolves around the romance of human love.  You cannot tell the story of God's love without the story of the love of husband and wife.  Romance is at the very heart of God's plan of salvation, and it becomes an effort in futility to try and separate love into the sacred and the secular. 

     Romantic love is a vital part of the sacred plan of God to save a lost world. It is valid, therefore, to celebrate the gift of romance. God does so Himself by making romantic love such a major part of His revelation. It is exalted to the highest level in the Song of Songs where we read of romantic love in 8:6‑7, "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."

     Jacob's love for Rachel illustrates this. He wanted her as his mate so strongly that he would work for 7 years to possess her as his own, and v. 20 says the 7 years were like only a few days because of his love for her. It was a small price to pay for such a treasure. Love was his motivation; love was his energy, and love was the fire that could not be quenched even though one wet blanket after another was thrown on its flame. There is no escape from the emotional side of love. It is a passion, or an intense feeling. The story of Christ's suffering for his bride is called a passion play. His intense feelings were a passion. Passion can be torment, and love sick people can go through torment in what they are willing to pay in terms of suffering to possess the object of their love.

     I remember the risks I used to take to see Lavonne when she lived 20 miles away from me. I was a teen driving 50 dollar cars, and more than once I was broke down on the highway between her home and mine. If I had a date with her nothing else mattered but the keeping of that date. I literally risked my life to keep a date with her. Blizzard warnings were irrelevant, and I would take off in a car most people would not keep for parts, and head into the storm to get to her.  In our courtship I put 18,000 miles on an assortment of junk bound cars as I traveled that 20 mile stretch over and over. I had to get out sometimes and put snow in the radiator to keep the car from burning up. I had to get help from both her father and mine to get out of the ditch. I had to suffer the torment of near worthless vehicles over and over, and all of the pain of it was nothing for the joy of being with Lavonne.  I know the power of the passion to possess.

     Romantic and Redemptive love have this in common‑they are passions to possess. God's passion to possess fallen man, and Christ's passion to possess His lost sheep were so great that they took on infinite suffering in order to make it happen. The greatest power in the universe is the power of love. It moves and motivates persons toward more goals than any other power. It is the prime mover of God, for God is love, and because He is love He created all that is, and he provided a plan whereby fallen man can be redeemed and restored to fellowship with Himself. Love is why there is anything to celebrate at all. Love is why there is a heaven to hope for, and why there can be joy in a fallen world.

     The most powerful motive for the overcoming of any problem is love. Aleida Huissen had smoked for 50 years and tried often to quit but just could not do it. Then 79 year old Leo Jansen came into her life and proposed. He refused to set the wedding day, however, until she quit her smoking. Will power had failed her for years, but love was stronger and she was able to quit for the sake of love. Love was the passion that gave her the power to do what she could not do without love.  A. Z. Conrad said of love, "It furnishes to the world its progress passion. It is storm‑defying, energy‑conquering, venture‑challenging, soul‑awakening. It eats up the fires sent to consume it. It swallows the floods sent to drown it."

     If we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, it will not be hard to give up anything that interferes with that love. If we cannot do it we lack the love that give us the power of passion.  If we cannot give up things that hinder our relationship with our mate, it is a sign that we have let the passion of love drain away. When we lose the passion of love we lose the power that makes all relationships the priority they need to be.

     Jacob loved Rachel, and when a monkey wrench was thrown into their lives, and he had to work another 7 years to possess her, he did it for his love for her kept her in the place of priority. This love story is like many of the classic romance stories of literature. It is often like a tragedy. Rachel had to fight the battle of the other woman, which was her own sister. She had to watch as Leah gained status by giving Jacob children she could not give him. She eventually bore him his beloved Joseph, but she never won the competition to give him the most children. She also died before Leah and Leah got to be buried with Jacob in the end. There were a lot of tears in this love story, but it is still a beautiful and powerful story of passion and priority that should motivate us who have less complex lives to celebrate the joys of love.

     The passion of Jacob for Rachel was persistent through all of the changes of life. Rachel did not stay the cute little shepherdess she was the day they met, and the day he fell in love with her. In chapter 30 she became a jealous wife and a nag. She wanted children so badly that she became obsessed, and Jacob had to get angry with her. Later she stole her father's idols, and she risked getting Jacob into serious trouble. It was not a trouble free marriage at all. Both had blemishes on their character, but they never ceased to put each other in a place of priority. "Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds."

     As monogamists we think we only marry one mate, but the fact is we all marry a number of people because our mates keep changing, and we have to adjust to these changes and learn to love a different person than the one we married. Through the years all mates change, and sometimes it can be hard to adjust, for your mate may not be the person now that you expected them to be for life. You have to fall in love again with a new person. Those who cannot adjust to changes in their mate often get divorced.  All couples go through what is called divorce periods where they are in the process of deciding if they love the new and different people they have become. This is where love is again the power that keeps them together. If love is allowed to fade, and there is no effort to rekindle the flame of passion, there is a danger that they will part.  Those who make it through these periods do so because they work at rekindling the flame. Those who neglect love and just drift tend to drift apart completely.  Divorce is a refusal to remarry the new person your mate has become. Long‑range marriage is a commitment to keep on marrying the mate you have no matter how often they change.

     Here is the other side of love that goes beyond the feelings and emotions of passion to the act of the will. Love on this level is a matter of choice. In Gen. 30:2 Jacob is angry at Rachel. He is no longer filled with passion to roll away stones for her, or to labor for 7 years for her. He now has negative emotions, and he wonders how she can be so ridiculous as to hold him responsible for her barrenness. If love was only passion and positive emotions, Rachel could have been divorced at this point, but Jacob's love was a commitment to her to love her even when she was totally unreasonable. One sided definitions of love that stress it to be a feeling fall far short of the real thing. Some have defined love this way:

1. "A tickling sensation around the heart that can't be scratched."

2. "Love is a dizziness that won't let me go about my bizziness."

      Such feeling oriented definitions lead to serious problems when people take them as the whole picture, for these feelings may be real for a time but they do not persist, and if people expect them to always be present they will feel that love has left them and they will move on to find it again with someone else. Feeling oriented love will lead people into affairs, for people can have strong feelings, and even passion for complete strangers who are attractive. If you let this kind of feeling and passion be your guide you will never have a lasting relationship of love. Love is commitment and choice to be loyal to one person even when the feelings are not there.

     The world's advice is to find a new partner when you come to a divorce period in your relationship.  This is a rejection of the other side of love which is commitment.  Commitment is what enables love to bridge the divorce period in marriage.  The feelings cannot leap that gorge, and so two people are cut off from each other unless there is some other means by which they can remain in contact.  Commitment is that means.  Eliminate commitment and live only on feeling love, and you can count on being a statistic, for divorce is almost inevitable where there is no commitment. 

     Commitment is a choice.  If I commit to turning right I cannot also turn left.  Every commitment means a loss of some other choice.  If I choose to be faithful to one person I cannot also choose to play the field.  But on the other hand, if I choose to play the field I cannot ever again choose to have been faithful to one.  Everybody has to give up something, and so the wise person looks at the record of where different choices lead.  Our promiscuous people the happiest people?  Are prostitutes noted for being the happiest partners in wedded bliss?  Does anybody give the playboy highest marks in being the example for youth to follow?  The facts are that two people committed to one another for a lifetime are always the ideal of what love is all about.  This is the kind of love that continues to grow, and makes a poet like A. Warren write,

We could not know, my dear, we could not guess

How years augment the miracle of love;

How autumn brings  a depth of tenderness

That is beyond young April's dreaming of!

How there would burn a richer flame some day

Then that which first threw glory on our way.

     The Bible makes it clear that God's ideal is two people who fall in love and passionately seek to possess each other, and spend the rest of their lives committed to weather all storms, and keep that passion alive until they are parted by death.  This means that marriage is not a gamble.  It is a sure thing that it is going to be costly.  Love is a commitment to pay that cost of maintaining the relationship.  The Jacob‑Rachel love story shouts out for all of history to hear that bad times, conflict, and obstacles do not destroy a love which has gone beyond feelings to commitment.  The reason the world is full of people who once loved each other, but are now divorced is because of a one sided love, which is passion that never developed the other side of commitment. 

      The number one secret of a strong marriage is the assurance that your mate is committed to you.  You can fail them, and get angry at them, but you know they are committed to you.  This is the solid rock on which marriage is built.  Jesus said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."  And Paul said, "Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  This is the foundation for security in our faith.  When you have that kind of security in your marriage you build on solid rock and not on sand.  Lack of commitment leads to insecurity.  If we had no assurance that Christ's love was permanent in spite of all our sin and failure, we could have no sense of security at all.  Some polls have revealed that many Christians feel spiritually divorced, for they do not have the assurance they will go to heaven.  They have a very unhappy spiritual marriage.  Mates who do not feel secure are also unhappy, for they feel their failure could lead them to be forsaken.  Commitment  is what makes mates realize their failure will not ever lead to being forsaken.  It can be costly to make such a commitment, but it is worth it for those who want the full potential of love in their relationship.  

     When we celebrate love we need to see it as a matter of rejoicing in the cost two people have been willing to pay to keep their relationship alive and growing.  Jacob had to give up always feeling the energy of his passion to labor for Rachel, and instead feel the energy of anger at her pouting and depression.   She had to give up the ideal of being the one to give him his first son, and the most sons.  She had to endure the heartache of barrenness.  Anybody could write a script for romance better than what reality produces, but reality is the price we have to pay for love in a fallen world.  Nobody gets it without cost, and that even includes God.  But God says, and history says, and life says, love is worth the cost.  Therefore, let us rejoice in romantic and redemptive love, and celebrate love as God's greatest gift.

3.     INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE based on Num. 12

  A boy in Harvard College, many years back, got his father in Maine to come to Cambridge and see the football game between Yale and Harvard. As they sat down, the boy slapped his father on the back and said, "Dad, for three dollars you are going to see more fight than you ever saw before." The old man smiled and replied, "I'm not so sure about that Son, that's what I paid for my marriage license."  Marriage is like football in several ways. It covers a lot of ground, and their are many obstacles to overcome. Whoever is not prepared to face obstacles had better not plan to play football, or get married.

     The football player faces two kinds of obstacles. There are those built into the game, and which must be accepted to give the game meaning. Then there are the illegal, or unjust, obstacles, which we call dirty playing. Sometimes the dirty player is penalized, and sometimes he gets by with it, and the innocent player suffers unjustly.  Those who enter into marriage face obstacles they know to be part of the game. There are natural and normal trials, struggles, and adjustments. Marriage partners also face the obstacles of dirty play also. They face the opposition of the ignorant, the cruel, the prejudiced, the jealous, and those with numerous other evil motives.

     Moses had to face this kind of dirty play when he chose to marry across the race line. He chose an Ethiopian, who was a descendant of Ham, to be his wife. His sister and brother were offended by this union, and they made it known publicly. They sought to degrade Moses because of it. Hastings Dictionary of the Bible says concerning the Ethiopian, "It is likely that a black slave girl is meant and that the fault found by Miriam and Aaron was with the indignity of such a union." Most are convinced she was black, or at least dark, but there is a possibility that she was no darker that Moses himself. She could have been a part of the Cushites who were of Arabian stock, and less dark that the Ethiopians. This is really irrelevant since the major fact is that it was an interracial marriage.

     The text indicates that Miriam did not approve of the union, but it does not give the slightest hint as to why. It could have that it had nothing to do with her race at all, even though this is assumed by almost everyone. It is possible that she was jealous of the woman. There is an ancient translation that reads, "Because of the beautiful woman he had married, for he had married a beautiful woman." Jealousy could have been the problem, and not racism, for it was thought to be a disgrace at this early stage for a Jew to marry a Gentile.

     Many find a typology here. Moses is like Christ marrying a Gentile, who represents the church. Miriam and Aaron are the angry Jews who oppose this union. All of this is historically true, but we have no basis for reading it back into this text as a prophetic type. We cannot read race hatred and prejudice back into the hearts of Miriam and Aaron. All we can say is that we have here an instance of interracial marriage by one who is a great man of God, and that he was upheld by God, and the opposition was judged. Moses was not lowered in his dignity before God, or the people, but is exalted as being a servant of God. His marriage across race lines did not reduce his role in the least. God appears to be highly indifferent to the matter of race or color in marriage. There is not biblical evidence against interracial marriage, but much that would show it to be perfectly normal and honorable.

     But why would anyone marry a person from another race? Why do you suppose Moses married an Ethiopian when there were all kinds of Jewish girls he could choose from as the leader of his nation? Solomon, no doubt, had dozens, if not hundreds of dark skinned wives, or concubines. Many were gifts from foreign governments. Moses, however, freely chose to marry one outside of his own race. The reason is likely the same as the one that accounts for interracial marriages all over the Western Hemisphere. He fell in love with her. It is a human fact that where any two races are in frequent contact, there will be intermarriage. People will fall in love with people of any race if they are in contact.

     A little known fact is that when Israel was delivered from Egypt a great many people of mixed races also went out with them. In the 400 years of captivity there was a good deal of interracial marriage. Joseph, who brought his people into Egypt, married Aseneth, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. He could do this, even as a member of a minority race, because he rose to a high level social status. Jews and Egyptians would intermarry, but most such marriages would be between the Jews and other slaves, such as the dark skinned people of Ethiopia to the South.  Their would also be a mixture of Jews and Arabs. We read in Ex. 12:37‑38, "And the people of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succdoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. A mixed multitude also went up with them..."

     It is not surprising that Moses would find one of this mixed multitude attractive, and then choose to take her as his wife. She was among his people, and romantic love knows no race barrier. This is so true that there is no such thing as a pure race. All races have intermarried down through the centuries.  For example, if we study the genealogy of Jesus we discover that Jesus was not a pure Jew.  There is Gentile blood in blood line.  The Jews were forbidden to marry with the wicked Canaanites, but Rahab the Canaanite is in the genealogy of Jesus.  He had in his blood line some of the blood of Canaan who was cursed by Noah. 

      Intermarriage with the Moabites was not allowed either, but Ruth the Moabitess is in the genealogy of Jesus.  She was, in fact, the grandmother of David, Jesus, as the son of David, had a Gentile for a grandmother.  Jesus was not a pure Jew, and there are few who are.  The fact that Jesus  had interracial marriage in His family tree makes it obvious that there is only a disgrace in the mind of the racist who makes race an idol, and pure blood a god.  You might ask, however,  why were these marriages allowed to be a part of the blood line to the Messiah when they were forbidden in general?  This is the key to the whole subject.  The reason marriage was forbidden between Jews and others was not at all based on race or color, but on belief and unbelief.  The only kind of marriage the Bible forbids is a marriage between a believer and an unbeliever.  If anyone of another race becomes a believer, as did Rahab and Ruth, there is no longer any reason to forbid marriage.  Anyone who enters the kingdom of God by faith in Christ becomes a potential mate for anyone else in the kingdom. 

     The secular scholars battle back and forth on the level of brain capacity, social and cultural equality, and other such issues which are totally irrelevant to the Christian perspective.  There is only one factor that makes any ultimate difference to the Christian, and that is the factor of faith in Christ.  When that is present, all else is secondary.  We will look at the problems the secondary factors do cause, but these are no basis for rejecting a legitimate interracial marriage. 

      Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, and our example.  Does He practice interracial marriage?  Consider His bride the church.  Here is marriage on the highest spiritual level, and we can discover that Jesus chooses all races to make up His bride.  His bride is red and yellow, black and white.  There are millions of racial differences in the body of Christ.  The body, like the Head, is not of any pure race, but is both Jew and Gentile.  The Head is more Jewish, and the body is more Gentile, but everywhere it is an interracial body.  Christ receives all races, and the Holy Spirit indwells all races.  Here is union on the highest level of God and man.  It is very near blasphemy to suggest that what he Holy Spirit freely does on the spiritual level is somehow evil on the physical level.  If a colored person can be a part of the body of Christ, and the Holy Spirit will impregnate them so that they bear spiritual children of God, who can find an objection to a white child of God taking a black child of God for his or her mate?

      Let us recognize we are dealing here with a totally Christian perspective that is unique to the body of Christ, and no other philosophy or viewpoint can see this as the Christian does.  Only the believer can see race from within the kingdom of God, and through the mind of Christ.  We cannot expect that non‑Christians will share this view.  It is an exclusive Christian view.  Practically it means this:  Any marriage between two believers is acceptable in the body of Christ.  Race is irrelevant.  A mixed marriage is preferable to an unmixed marriage of a believer and non‑believer.  If a white Christian has a choice of marrying a black Christian or a white non‑Christian, he is obligated to Christ and the church to choose the black mate.

     It is never right for a child of God to willfully and knowingly marry a non‑believer.  From a Christian perspective an interracial marriage is always superior to a marriage between faith and non‑faith.  The deciding factor is faith.  The Christian does not stand on anthropology or psychology, or any other ology.  He stands in Christ, and sees all people through the eyes of Christ.  From there he recognizes that those in Christ from every race are really the only pure race, for they alone are all equally children of God.  All believers are as free as Moses to choose their mate from any race, as long as the mate chosen is also a believer. 

     This does not scratch the surface of the problem out there in the world where the vast majority are not Christians.  When this message was written a good many years ago, there were still 19 states that forbid interracial marriages. This was progress, however, for in 1957 there were 30 states that forbid it. I have no  figures as to when all were changed, but at that time the United States was the only place in the world where interracial marriage was against the law. This is no longer the case because of the advancement of civil rights.

      Interracial marriage is going on continuously, and has been, and that is why there is no such thing as a pure race.  Whenever soldiers go to war they choose mates from among the people they are fighting.  During World War II American soldiers brought back over 5000 Chinese brides, and even 752 Japanese brides.  All the hate propaganda against the enemy could not stop men and women from joining in marriage.  This was true back in the days of Israel's conquest also.  We read in Deut. 21:10‑13.

      "When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hands, and take them captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails, and she shall put off her captive's grab, and shall remain in  your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month, after that you may go into her, and be her husband and she shall be your wife."

     This has happened all through history, and there is probably never been a war where it did not lead to intermarriage of the enemies. When men see beauty they desire the beautiful one for a mate, and it makes no difference that they are enemies, or that they are of different races.  Those who have fought for segregation know this, and that is the main reason for their objection to the races being together. They know they will fall in love with each other and marry each other.  The fear of interracial marriage is behind most racism.

     Where does this leave the Christian? We have already made it clear that race purity is irrelevant to the church. Sherwood Wirt in his book The Social Conscience of the Evangelical, which Billy Graham has said every evangelical should read, wrote, "It is the mark of original sin that men take their greatest pride in things over which they exercise no control and for which they can take absolutely no credit. Human skin color falls into this category."  We cannot join the racist and remain Christian. We do not have to encourage interracial marriage anymore than we have to encourage marriage between classes, but we do have to encourage all who are married of whatever races and classes, for it is a Christian obligation to be encouragers of people in whatever circumstance, when they are not doing anything that displeases God.  Miriam and Aaron made this mistake so we can learn not to make the same mistake.       

4.     RUTH'S ROMANCE Based on Ruth 2:1f

  Nowhere does history repeat itself more often than in the realm of romance.  James Madison was the forth president of the United States, and he was the chief framer of the Constitution.  He was the greatest scholar among the Founding Fathers.  But when it came to romance he was no big gun.  In fact,  he was the smallest of all the presidents.  He was so thin and frail that he weighed only a 100 lbs. at his heaviest.  He was very slow and he was not magnetic. 

     He was jilted twice.  He was 43 and still single when he met Dolly who was 24.  At that young age she was already a widow because her husband died in an epidemic.  She was taller and heavier than James, and there was just so much about them that was different.  They were a highly unlikely pair to ever become a couple.  But they did, and it was one of the happiest, most celebrated, marriages in the history of the White House.  They were ideal for each other, and Dolly Madison added a flare and dignity to the White House that it never had before.  James lived longer than any other president who served two terms until Truman came along and topped him by 6 years.  His romance made his a story with a happy ending. 

     Thomas Jefferson, the third president also married a widow who was considerably younger than himself.  History is filled with this theme, for if love does not make the world go round, most agree it does make the trip more enjoyable. 

     So it is in the book of Ruth.  Romance plays a major role in God's plan.  I don't what God would have done had Adam not fallen for Eve, for the whole plan of God revolves around romance.  Ruth is a story of romance, and there are so many parallels with her and Boaz, and numerous couples in history.  Boaz was older, and he had status and security.  Ruth was a lonely young widow.  The potential for cupid is great if these two could only meet, but it seems so unlikely.  Boaz is a big shot, and Ruth is  not even on the social register.  She is not only a poor nobody, she is not even a Jew.

     People have a way of meeting, however,  and sometimes it is by accident.  In Oslo, Norway a motorist struck a young woman at a busy intersection.  He wasted no time in getting her to the hospital, and he visited her everyday during her recovery.  Eventually he asked her to marry him, and she said yes.  They went on their honeymoon in the car that brought them together by accident.  Verse 3 hints that it was by accident that Ruth and Boaz met.  The KJV says, "And her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging to Boaz."  The RSV says she happened to come there, and the Living Bible says, as it happened.  The NIV says, as it turned out.  The point is, there was no plot or plan.  Later on the plot thickens, and Naomi does deliberately plan for Ruth to entice Boaz into a relationship.  But here at the start there is  no plan.  It is just what happened as Ruth went out to work to keep from starving. 

     The Hebrew word here is MIQREH, which means a chance event, or an accident.  It would be a fascinating diversion to study the subject of chance here, but for now we will pursue romance, and just point out that most people in our culture who meet and fall in love do so by chance, as did Ruth and Boaz.  No one but God could have known of the series of events that brought them together. 

     I am always impressed by the events that brought Lavonne and I together.  Three of my friends and I were at a drive in on the edge of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  We were waiting for a girl to come and take our order for root beers.  It was a hot summer night and the service was very slow.  We were restless and decided to take off down the highway to the nearest little town to see what we could find.  Who would ever dream that that decision would lead to three of us marrying three girls in the small town of Dell Rapids.  It was all because of slow service at a root beer stand.  We just happened to be at the right place at the right time.  So it was with Ruth and Boaz.  One of God's most useful tools in history is chance. 

      Chance does not mean that God is not in it.  Margaret Hese,  a writer for Scripture Press tells of how her happily married sister of 30 years met her mate. 

She was on a train when a soldier on leave sat down beside her.  In the course of the conversation she noted that one of the buttons was almost ready to fall off his coat.  She took out a needle and thread and sewed it on.  They kept in touch over half a continent apart for several years, while dating others.  He found that he could not forget her.  That sewing on of his button strongly touched him.  This act of kindness changed their whole lives.  The door of love is huge, but it so often swings on such a small hinge.  Had he not by chance had that loose button the opportunity for her act of love would not have existed, and their first meeting may have been the last as well.  Chance and romance are often partners.

It put Ruth in the field of Boaz, and the first thing Boaz asked his foreman was, "Whose young woman is that?  Romance almost always starts with‑

I. THE EYES.

     We can't say this was a case of love at first sight, but it was a case of interest at first sight.  Sometimes the eyes do not like what they see, and it takes other factors to develop a relationship.  John Keats thought Fanny Browne was awful looking, but after knowing her for awhile he thought she was the most beautiful creature he knew.  Everyone else still thought she looked awful, but love is not blind, it just develops a vision of beauty that non‑love never sees.

     Alexander Dumas thought Sarah Bernhardt had the body of a broom stick, but when he fell in love with her he said, "If nature had somewhat neglected her body, it had richly endowed her mind."  He saw the beauty of inner being, and he loved her.  We do not know what attracted Boaz to Ruth so rapidly, but he wasted no time in making her acquaintance.  Christopher Morley said, "Fifty per cent of the world are women, yet they always seem a novelty."  Boaz thought so about this new young woman in his field.  We do not know what Boaz was doing before this.  Maybe his philosophy was, the proper study of mankind is man, but all of the sudden he changed his major to the study of woman, and especially the one out in his field. 

     The Hebrew does not even have a word for bachelor, for seldom did one even exist in Israel.  But here is Boaz who is a middle age man of means, and he is single.  We don't know why, but we know he rapidly reversed his no romance state when he saw Ruth.  Robert Louis Stevenson said, "A wet rag goes safely by the fire; and if a man is blind, he cannot expect to be much impressed by romantic scenery."  For some reason Boaz spotted Ruth, and immediately he saw something romantic he had not seen before.  She may not have been his first love, but more important, she was his last love, and that is true romance.  The New York library has over 2,000 books on love, but man knows more about the rocks on the moon than he does about what makes certain people fall in love.  Ruth and Boaz were not unusual people.  They were just ordinary pleasant loving people, and they represent the majority of the romances of history. 

     The entire book of Ruth revolves around the romance of ordinary people.  That is one of its purposes for being a part of the Bible.  It is God's stamp of approval on the ordinary person as an instrument of His plan of history.  It magnifies its significance of the commonplace people.  From the moment Boaz meets Ruth the rest of the book is the story of how their romance developed and led to marriage.  This is an everyday story, and has been from the day Adam saw Eve.  Ruth is considered to be a beautiful woman, and not because there is any description of her, but because the more you know of her total character the more attractive she becomes.  People become attractive to the degree that you know them.

     The reason most foreigners do not seem attractive to us Americans is because we do not know them.  We see only the external form and face, and it is different and unusual.  If we could know them, and hear their experience, their feelings, and their ideas, we would see more and more of their beauty.  Romance is simply getting to know people well enough so that the eyes can see their beauty.  The Gospels are the revelation of the life and beauty of Jesus in His attitudes and actions.  It is by what we see in those accounts that we come to love Jesus.  If there is anything lovely, Paul said, think on these things, for when you see loveliness of any kind you are in a state of romance.  Romance begins with the eyes, but then it continues with the‑

II. THE EARS.

      Few things in life are more appealing to either males or females then hearing pleasant things about themselves.  Listen to this lover's conversation. 

Do you think I am beautiful?  You bet.

Are my eyes the loveliest you have gazed into?  Shucks yes.

Is my mouth like a rosebud?  Sure is.

Is my figure divine?  Uh‑huh.

Oh, Elmer, you say the nicest things! 

     Most women would prefer less prompting and more spontaneity. This is what we see in Boaz.  His immediate response in discovering who she was, was to go to her, and like a gentleman, make her feel as welcome and secure as possible.  She was his guest, and not a lonely isolated stranger.  She was to make herself at home and feel safe, for he had given orders that she was to be treated with respect.  He made it clear that the men were not to touch her.  A woman alone was open game, and had no protection unless she came under the care of a man with some power.  Boaz gave Ruth that protection.

     She is, of course, overwhelmed by this sudden good fortune, and she asks why he has shown her such favor.  Boaz had done his homework.  He knew all the good things about Ruth that were matters of public knowledge.  The story of Ruth and her commitment to follow Naomi, and to leave her family and homeland had spread all over Bethlehem.  The news traveled fast, and Boaz, who had never even seen Ruth, knew the whole account.

     We need to pause here, and point out that talking about people is not the same as gossip.  Gossip is the spreading of information, or disinformation, that in some way injurious to the people talked about.  The talking and sharing of facts and information about people, and the events that are shaping their lives is both legitimate and good.  Here we see that the spread of the story of Ruth enabled him to have the ammunition he needed to penetrate any defensiveness she might have.  He told her he knew just how wonderful a person she was, and he asked the Lord to richly reward her for her faithfulness.

     Ruth responds to these pleasant words with pleasant words of her own.  She expresses appreciation, and she acknowledges that Boaz has been a great comfort to her, even though she is nobody to him.  Here are two people who recognize the ears as keys to romance.  It is true we have to beware of the smooth talker who uses words to entice rather than to build up.  Some guys really have a line, like the guy who said, "I'm sure I've seen you somewhere before.  I've been to all the Miss America contest." 

     We need constant reminders that the abuse of anything is never an adequate reason for ceasing to use it properly.  Smooth talk can be a virtue, and pleasant complimentary words can be the greatest source of encouragement we give to those we love.  Spurgeon said, "I have no doubt that much sorrow might be prevented if words of encouragement were more frequently spoken...., and, therefore, to withhold them is sin."  James said that when we know to do good and don't do it it is a sin.  If you think you get through a day without the sin of omission, forget it.  Not a day goes by but what we could have said something pleasant and complimentary that we didn't say. 

     The ears are a great source of romance.  God gets His will done in history by people who know this and use it to kindle romance, or to keep and old fire burning.  If someone you love is not encouraged through the ear gate today, you have cast a vote against romance.  The eyes with their seeing are basic to romance, and the ears with their hearing are also basic, but there can be doubt that any successful romance will very soon involve‑

III. THE MOUTH.

       Boaz had just met Ruth, and they had a brief friendly encounter.  His next move was to invite her to join him for lunch, and he provided the lunch.  This was their first date.  We say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but it works for women as well, especially if they are as poor and hungry as Ruth.  She kept part of her lunch to take home to Naomi.  Ruth may be the first person on a date to ask for a doggie bag.  Boaz was obviously interested in more than employer‑employee relations.  He was really a fast mover. 

      He was not as fast as the famous Dr. Wilfred Grenfell the medical missionary to Labrador.  In 1908 at the age of 43 he was returning from a visit to England.  On the deck of the Mauretania he saw a lady that charmed him.  A few hours later he proposed to her.  She said, "But you don't even know my name!"  He responded, "It doesn't matter.  I know what its going to be!"  That was truly love at first sight.  Boaz took the more traditional approach of at least having a meal together before the wedding. 

      Food and love are linked together from birth.  Being given food is the first expression of love that a child understands.  It is his introduction to love, and all his life he will celebrate the love of family and special events by eating together.  It is perfectly natural then that romantic love will quickly led to two people eating together.  Dating and eating, and marriage and eating are inseparable.  This is not to say there is never any unpleasantness connected with eating and romance.

      Former president Lyndon Johnson tells of the time he invited Billy and Ruth Graham to the White House for dinner.  He describes the scene:  "I asked during the dinner if Billy would give me the name of a good vice‑presidential candidate.  Instead of answering my question he shot out of his chair and yelled, "Ruth, why did you just kick me under the table?"  She winced in embarrassment.  Then she took a deep breath and said quietly, "Bill, shouldn't you limit your address to spiritual matters?"   There could have been conflict, but Billy recognized what she was saying was true.  He reached across the table and squeezed her hand.  He did not always heed Ruth's advice, and he came to regret some of his political involvement's. 

     The mouth gets involved in romance, not just because of the pleasure of eating, but the mouth is the key instrument by which people give guidance to those they love.  Boaz gave such guidance to Ruth, and in chapter 3 the words of Ruth to Boaz, which she had received from the mouth of Naomi, led to his determination to win Ruth as his wife.  The mouth, or tongue, is a source of great blessing or cursing.  In romance and marriage it plays a major role.  Again we use Billy Graham as an illustration.  He had constant temptations to go other directions than his ministry.  He was once offered great financial support to run for president, and a Hollywood director offered him a star role in an epic extravaganza.  A major TV network offered him a million dollar a year contract to host a talk show.  Ruth said to him on each occasion of these tempting offers:

"You're bounded duty to the Lord is elsewhere." 

     We are to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, and sometimes these words come through the mouth of those who love us best. Romance and the plan of God are not just linked in the book of Ruth.  It is a part of all of history. Romance and redemption are inseparable.  God makes the male‑female relationship the symbol of His relationship to man.  Christ is the groom, and the church is the bride.  We are Ruth, and Christ is our Boaz.  He is coming again to take us to the mansion He has prepared for the everlasting honeymoon. 

      Heaven will begin with a great wedding and the marriage supper of the Lamb.  The eyes will see what none have ever seen before; the ears will hear what has never yet been heard, and the mouth will be filled with praise as never before, and we will enjoy eating like no gourmet as ever known.  Joni, who is paralyzed and cannot use her legs, says she will dance with endless romance in heaven. And that is what heaven will be, an endless romance. Ruth's romance was just one of many that led to the coming of Jesus into the world to complete the romance of redemption, and the greatest love story ever told. All of us can be a part of the world of romance by a wise use of our eyes, ears, and mouth in relation to those whom we love. These are all involved in the Gospel that leads to the eternal romance, and to the romance we enjoy in time. We need to pay attention to how we use them, and be more romantic in this world that always needs more love.

5.     THE CLEVER COUPLE Based on Ruth 3:1‑4, 4:1‑10

      A young couple who had just gotten married, and who had received many valuable wedding gifts, established their home in the suburb.  One morning they received in the mail two tickets for a popular show in the city.  A note said, "Guess who?"  The couple were amused as they tried to find the identity of the donor, but they could not find out who sent them.  They used the tickets, and they had a delightful evening.  On their return home, late at night, still trying to figure out the mystery, they found their house stripped of every article of value. 

On the bare table in the dinning room was a piece of paper on which was written‑ "Now you know!" 

      Crooks have so many clever ways of robbing people that it has given the word clever a bad name.  Vincent Teresa in his book My Life In The Mafia tells of numerous clever schemes he used to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from innocent people, and sometimes not so innocent people.  One that shows the thought and planning of these people is one I want to share.  There was a big horse race called the Constitution Handicap.  They put a fortune on Flauntless Light to win.  Non‑clever people would give their horse drugs to help him win, but the Mafia knows the winner will be tested for drugs, and so they bribed the stable boys of the other five horses in the race.  They juiced those five with a depressant.  Their horse won by 7 links, and they made a hundred and sixty three grand.  There was a big stink over the race, but the only horse that was checked was their horse, and he was clean.  Clever schemes like this enabled them to rip off billions of dollars a year.

     Because history is full of the clever schemes of con men, and because the fall of man began with the clever, cunning, and crafty scheme of that old serpent the devil, we have a tendency to put cleverness in the category of vice rather than virtue.  The Jews did not do so, however, but recognized cleverness as a great virtue, and one of the most powerful weapons in the cause of righteousness.  Yes,

they said, evil is clever but it is the task of the righteous to outwit the evil.  The book of Esther is about a very clever man named Haman, who out of personal pride almost succeeded in getting the Jewish people exterminated.  He was only foiled in his plot because Mordecai and Esther were even more clever, and they were able to turn the tables on him, and he was hung on his own gallows.

     The whole theme of wisdom in the Old Testament deals with the virtue of being clever enough to outwit the clever appeals of evil.  The fool falls for the wiles of the devil, but the clever stay one jump ahead of him.  After all, what is the battle of life all about?  It is about outwitting all the clever ways of the evil one to keep us from fulfilling the will of God.  Cleverness is part of the image of God in us.  He is the most clever of all Persons in the universe.  His wisdom is a marvel as we study His creation.  His cleverness in figuring out how to outwit Satan, and save a lost world, when Satan seems to have all the advantages of a fallen free willed creature who tends toward evil.

     Jesus faced the clever tempter, but He was more clever than the first Adam, and He outwitted the old serpent and all his agents.  No trap set for Him by the Pharisees could ensnare Him.  Jesus said that we are to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and He practiced what He preached.  He lived His whole life outwitting the devil, and He died a spotless Lamb of God for the sin of the world. 

He was, without question, the most clever man whoever lived.  He was a perfect man, and a perfect man by definition is clever.  There are few, if any, who become key links in the plan of God who are not in some way clever, and this goes for both Ruth and Boaz.  They were just ordinary people, but they were clever people, and from their story we can learn why it is important for us to strive at being clever.  By their cleverness they got themselves into the blood line of the Messiah.  The first thing we want to see is that‑

I. COMPLEXITY DEMANDS CLEVERNESS.

      Boaz and Ruth had something of a romance going, but it was not what you would call a whirlwind romance.  He watched her labor in the fields, and they ate lunch together.  They both found it pleasant, but this was not going anywhere.  Ruth was dressed in her old work clothes, and after a hot morning in the sun she probably did not have an attractive aroma about her.  The point is, Boaz had never really seen Ruth at her feminine finest.  She was just one of the gang.

     A woman has to be clever in such a situation.  How can she ever convey her feminine charms while dressed like a farmer, and smelling like the farm?  This is where the clever female mind has to be creative to overcome the obstacles to true romance.  When two women like Naomi and Ruth put their heads together to figure out how to entice a man into a relationship, you can count on it, he is as good as hooked.  Fishing for men was a female practice long before Jesus called His disciples to the task with a whole new slant. 

     You will observe that carrying scrolls of Moses to the field was not one of their ideas.  In fact, there is nothing spiritual about their plot at all.  They sound as secular as Hollywood hussies trying to entice their third husband.  It seems so worldly clever to be getting Ruth all dolled up and perfumed to go and entice Boaz.  The clear command of Paul was to not be conformed to the world.  But if the world uses common sense and cleverness to attain evil goals, does this mean the Christian is forbidden to use common sense and cleverness to reach godly goals?  Of course not.  The Bible describes the temptress out to entice men into sin, and she is bathed and perfumed, and dressed to kill.

     Here we see two godly women trying to make a big impression on a godly man, and they are using the same strategy as the temptress.  The reason, of course, is that godly men are just as attracted to nice clothes and pleasant perfume as are the ungodly.  These two ladies are not trying to get Boaz to give them a loan so they can set up a shop in Bethlehem to sell perfume and women's clothing.  They are out to make Ruth look and smell so attractive that Boaz will say, "I must be out of my mind risking the lose of this beautiful creature by not taking action."  Their clever scheme of giving Boaz a vision of Ruth in all her loveliness, in the middle of the night, so that she was like a pleasant dream, worked like a charm.  The next day Boaz was up bright and early resolving the legal issue that kept him from having Ruth with him as his wife every night.  Now that was clever work even though it added to the complexity of their lives.

     How can God bless this seemingly secular scheme?  Many Christians feel that all attractive dress is worldly, and some go so far as to forbid their men to wear ties.  It is a sign of spiritually to be plain, drab, and the opposite of the world where diamonds are a girls best friend, and mink is a close second.  Some have learned to be clever in just the opposite way from Ruth and Naomi.  Amy Charmichael was the first missionary to be appointed by the Keswick Convention.

      For 55 consecutive years she served in India.  Before she went to India she went to Japan for training, and there she learned a valuable lesson on clothing that changed her whole life. She went with a fellow worker to visit an elderly lady who was ill. She listened to the Gospel, and seemed ready to turn to the Savior.  Then she noticed the fancy gloves Amy was wearing, and she was distracted from the message. Amy went home saddened, and she removed her English gloves, and put on a simple Japanese garment, and never again wore anything but simple clothing lest they detract from the Gospel.

     Her life was blest of God, as was Ruth's, yet they were being clever in such opposite ways. One wore clothing to be attractive, and the other used clothing so as not to be attracting away from the Gospel. There is no contradiction in these two beautiful lives. They were each doing what was clever in a complex world to achieve goals God had called them to reach.  It is time to focus on definition. What is cleverness? It is the showing of great practical intelligence. It is being resourceful in attaining goals in spite of obstacles and difficulties. Ruth and Amy had different goals, and that is why each was being clever even though they were doing just the opposite thing.

     Ruth's goal was  to marry and bare a child. That was God's calling and purpose for her life. The use of all her femininity was wisely used to achieve that goal.  Amy never married, and never had any reason to try to be attractive to the opposite sex. Her calling was totally different, and she achieved it fruitfully by giving up the need to show any feminine charm. Not all people are called to the same goals in life. Many are called to remain single. Our goal is to be as clever as possible in fulfilling our calling, and not to judge those who have a different calling because they approach some things from an opposite perspective. I have always been middle class, but I once heard the testimony of a man who lived and worked among the upper class. He did things I would never do because he had to in order to be a part of his circles, and be a witness there for Christ. He wore clothing and ate in places I would never dream of doing, because it was a part of his culture. It made sense, and so we need to recognize people have to be clever in different ways to do the will of God in their circumstances.

     Mary Liu was sold as a slave girl to a Chinese women, and after much abuse she was thrown out on a trash heap to die.  Throw away people have always been a part of our tragic world.  A missionary walking passed heard the smothered sobs of this pathetic creature.  She reached in the pile and found this mutilated mass of misery.  Both of her feet had been burned off.  Her life was saved, however, and in the mission hospital a pair of wooden feet were made for her.  Her mangled fingers had to be amputated, but one thumb was saved.  The long story of her recovery and redemption in Christ leads to her becoming the editor of two Christian magazines for women.  The two were The Messenger, and The Star. 

     When the Japanese took over her town she had to use her wits to preserve her precious stock of paper.  She took all her trash and the junk she could afford to lose, and she stacked it all in carefully arranged bundles in a conspicuous place.  Her valuable paper she threw in a dark corner, and made it look like worthless stuff.  It was made to look sloppy, and with no care or order.  When the inspectors came they saw how she treated the trash with concern, and they ordered it carted away immediately, and they left all her good stuff. 

     The World Day Of Prayer Committee marveled that Mary Liu went on publishing her Christian literature month after month, and year after year, when all others in China had ceased for lack of paper.  Her cleverness kept her in business for the Lord.  It is not everyone's calling to be deceptively clever toward those who would hinder your ministry, but it was Mary's calling, and who would want to criticize her for outwitting her enemies, who would have shut down her ministry?  David faked madness when he might have been killed, and his life was saved.  She faked concern for junk, and indifference to valuables, and her ministry was spared.  It is a complex world, and cleverness is sometimes essential to the achieving of good goals.

     The world recognizes this.  They have to deal constantly with obstacles to good profit making goals.  A major oil company built 5 pilot gas stations near Los Angeles, and 3 near Philadelphia, which require no human attendant.  The motorist puts his credit card into an outdoor computer terminal.  If the card is valid, the customer pumps his own gas.  The computer issues a receipt, and later tallies a monthly total.  That is clever enough, but the added touch is what makes it great.  If the card is listed as stolen, or lost, the computer swallows it, and gives the motorist no gas. 

     Even the world is in constant battle with the evil forces that hinder good and honest goals.  If you are not clever, you are a sucker for the clever schemers who will rob you blind.  Cleverness is vital to godliness simply because ungodliness is so clever.  If you are not clever you will not be very effective in overcoming evil with good.  It you are not victorious over evil, you will be a victim of it, and so you have to be more clever then evil is. 

     Let's look at Boaz for awhile, and see his cleverness in a situation where there is really no evil foe, but there is competition.  The competition here is not between good and evil, but between the good and the best.  It would be good for the nearest of kin to redeem Ruth, but in the light of the fact that Boaz and Ruth were in love, this good would be bad in comparison to Boaz having the right to marry her.  It is sort of like, it is good to lose one eye compared to losing both of them, but that does not make it the best alternative.  The best is to lose neither eye.  The best in this setting is for the good not to happen so the best can. 

     We know that is just what did happen, but it could have been different had Boaz not been clever.  He had to so present the whole issue in such a way as to be an un‑salesman.  I don't know if there is such a word, but that is what Boaz was doing.  He was not trying to sell his relative on a deal.  He was trying to unsell him.  This called for the clever use of psychology, just as selling does.  I had to be an unseller myself with my grandson.  We were talking about good guys and bad guys, and he said he wanted to grow up and be a bad guy.  I could see he was testing my reaction.  I calmly accepted his statement and proceeded to look at whether this was a goal he really wanted to aim for.  I pointed out that bad guys often have to spend a lot of time in jail, and they often lose the love of the people they care about, and they make God angry at them.  He agreed it was not the best way to go.  I had to unsell him on the idea of being a bad guy. 

     Boaz had to unsell his relative on the idea of being the kinsman‑redeemer of Ruth.  He does this by first being a seller, and telling him the good news.  He tells him that he is first in line to buy the property of Elimelech.  Boaz suggests that he use his option of nearest relative, and he talks as if it is a matter of indifference to him.  He is as cool as cool can be.  He says,  "I'm next in line, but only if you don't want to buy it, I will.  Why don't you go ahead?"  It all seems like a mere matter of business, and the nearest kin says, "It sound good to me.  I will redeem it." 

     Now Boaz uses his shock strategy, and he throws in the bad news.  His relative is thinking this is a good deal for me.  I will have more property, expanding income, and greater status.  Boaz says, "I just thought you ought to know that on the day you buy the land you also acquire the widow of the man who owned the land, in order to maintain his name."  J. Vernon McGee says, "He was using some of the wisdom of the serpent here."  Right away the man felt the pressure of this demand.  He was frightened to think how close he was to making a deal that would back him into more complexity than he could handle. 

     When it was only land it was all to his advantage, but if he has to take Ruth and raise up a child for her deceased husband, then that child will eventually get the land anyway, and not his own children.  So he backed out of the deal, and he gave Boaz the right to redeem.  Boaz was really doing his relative a favor by presenting the case in such a way as to unsell him on the idea.  He was clever because he got what he wanted, but he did it, not by deception, but by a shocking and overwhelming presentation of the truth with all of its implications.  It was too much for the man to absorb, and the complexity made it look too risky, and so he backed out. 

     Cleverness is the ability to skillfully work your way through complex circumstances to a goal that is your aim to reach.  Godly cleverness is aiming for a goal that is pleasing to God.  Boaz was blessed with godly cleverness.  This is a virtue that has changed the entire world in which we live.  The example of one man's life that is astounding in its cleverness is that of Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators.  He died in April of 1982 at the age of 85.  His career in missions started in 1917 as a Bible salesman in Guatamala.  He discovered that 60% of the people could not read the Spanish Bibles he was selling, and so he, with no linguistic training, just settled down in a small Indian village, and translated the New Testament into the Indian language.  He spent 11 years doing that.  His philosophy was, "Do one thing and do it well."  As he learned more about the fact of hundreds of languages with no Bible, he founded a school called The Summer Institute Of Linguistics. 

     He learned another lesson in Guatamala, and that is to cooperate with the local authorities.  He was dragged before the mayor of a town for distributing Bibles without permission.  He apologized and never forgot that missionaries are guests, and the government is the host.  We must get their approval.  This became a distinguishing characteristic of his organization.  The first copy of the New Testament he sent to the president of Guatamala.  He spent hours waiting to see officials to get them involved in his projects.  There is no other mission movement like Wycliffe.  It reports to the government, and not the national church.  He gets contracts with the government, and so he is serving them.

     He got into Mexico where other missions were being rejected, and he even got the government to pay for part of the work.  His workers had special favors not granted to other missionaries.  There visas were made permanent when all others had to get theirs renewed every 6 months.  This pattern continued all through South America and the Philippines.  While other missions were fighting for survival, they saw pictures of Townsend in the paper with the Presidents, generals, and leaders of the land.  Other missionaries became jealous of this special treatment, but it was his clever strategy that enabled him to achieve his goals. 

     In 50 years he went from one employee to 4,255 people, and became the largest Christian mission in history. At the beginning of the 20th century there were only 67 languages that had the Bible. Now, some portion of the Bible exists in over 2000 languages. All because of his cleverness in doing what others did not see as the key to reaching goals. Cleverness got the Word of God into the language of millions, and cleverness got Ruth and Boaz into the Word of God.  Cleverness committed to God is one of the most powerful tools in history. We need to ask ourselves about what we are doing to love God with all of our minds. What are we doing to use our minds and cleverness to achieve goals for the glory of God and the good of His people? May God motivate us to learn from this clever couple to be clever ourselves for the kingdom of God.

6.     THE POWER OF BEAUTY   Based on Esther 2:5‑18

     In its 4,000 years of history only one woman became Emperor of China with absolute power.  She was Wu tes‑t'ien.  She got to the throne of China for the same reason Esther got to the throne of Persia.  She was a startling beauty.  As a young girl she was renowned for her beauty, and the Emperor made her his concubine.  Ordinarily a concubine like her would be relegated to secluded quarters, after the death of the Emperor.  She would live her life out in quiet retirement.  She was so beautiful, however, that the son of the Emperor also desired her as a concubine.  She was not only beautiful, she was clever.  She bore him several sons, and then promoted them among the leaders as the legitimate heirs to the throne.  She gained many political allies, and so maneuvered behind the scenes that when the Emperor suffered a crippling stroke, she was made Empress in 655 A.D.  She was brilliant as well as beautiful, and was excellent in administration.  She cut taxes, won a war, and had a united prosperous country under her long reign. 

     It is rare, but the fact is, there are many cases in history of women doing an excellent job of leading a whole nation.  One thousand years before Esther, in 1520 B.C. Hatshepst became the first woman Pharaoh of Egypt, for 21 years she reigned, and glorious monuments exist to praise her success.  When Julius Caesar marched into Egypt in 48 B.C. there was a vicious dispute going on as to who the next ruler should be.  Should it be Pothinius or his sister Cleopatra.  Cleopatra wanted to plead her case before Caesar, but she knew if she tried to get to him her brother would have his spies kill her.  Nobody would dare interfere with a gift for Caesar, however, and so a beautiful oriental carpet was sent from her palace to Caesar.  Imagine his surprise when the carpet was unrolled and a 19 year old girl stepped out to announce she was Cleopatra, the rightful Queen of Egypt.  Caesar fell in love with her beauty, and she did become the Queen.

     If you want to read of how Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, England, and other nations, were all ruled by greatly honored women, you can find these fascinating histories in Mildred Boyds book, Rulers In Petticoats.  My interest in these stories for our study of Esther is that they confirm what we see to be a major theme of this book, and that is, there is power in beauty.  Women know it, and that is why one of the largest industries in the world is the beauty industry.  Billions are spent each year by women who know their greatest asset is in looking beautiful.   Brains and other qualities are also vital, but it is beauty that opens the door for these other gifts to get a chance to function.

     Many modern women admit they use beauty to their advantage in industry.  They say they dress in a deliberate attempt to win favor with those who have power, and thereby they are raised to positions of power themselves.  If conflict is developing between them and a male boss, they can calm the waters by coming on with some feminine charm.  In beauty contests there is nothing subtle and hidden.  They are on open display to win prizes, prestige, and power by means of beauty.  Many object to the whole emphasis on beauty as pagan perversion.  They feel nothing is more secular than the parading of female bodies before the world. 

     The book of Esther, however, forces us to focus on this type of secular scene, for God in His providence uses just such a beauty contest to save his people.  It was Esther's beauty  that got her into the palace, and into a position of power where she could be used to save her people.  No other quality but beauty could have gotten her there.  King Xerxes was not looking for a female genius, or the best woman runner, or sports figure.  He was looking for beauty.  His demand for beauty was far beyond what is demanded for a Miss America or Miss Universe contest.  His contestants had to spend one solid year doing nothing but beautifying themselves just to spend a night with him.  After a year of using oils, spices, and ointments, they would be as soft and smooth as a baby. 

     Esther had to have been one of the most beautiful women to ever live.  Out of all the beautiful girls of the Empire, she won the favor of Hegai, the keeper of the women.  Verse 15 indicates she was also voted Miss Congeniality by the other girls, for she was favored by all who saw her.  Now this really is a Cinderella story in that, aside from her beauty, Esther had all sorts of disadvantages.  She was a poor orphan in a foreign land, and part of a minority group.  Fortunately for her she had a relative who took her in when her parents died.  Mordecai was her cousin, but he adopted her as his daughter.  Here is a rare case of cousins becoming father and daughter. 

     Her Hebrew name was Hadassah.  That is not a name known to us, but the largest Jewish organization of women in the world is called Hadassah, and they support the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.  Esther was her Persian name and this has become more popular among Gentiles.  Esther means star.  Estelle and Stella come from the same root. Take female beauty out of this book, and the star is gone.  This poor adopted orphan would never have been heard of in history had she not been blest with beauty.  Even with her beauty would she have won the contest with all her competitors had she not spent a year using all of the beauty aids available in her day? 

     The Bible puts you in a real bind if you are dogmatically against beauty aids, for they were part of the providential plan of God that saved the Jewish race.  Dr. William Stidger, one of the great American preachers, and author of over forty books, comes on strong in favor or beauty aids.  He writes, "As far as I am concerned.....there is something sacred in the everlasting passion women have for making themselves more beautiful.  I have no sympathy with these reformers who find nothing more important to do than harangue  women for using rouge, powder, clothes, and what have you, to make themselves more beautiful." 

     Certainly we can all agree, there is nothing spiritual or superior about being unclean,  unkempt, and unpresentable for public viewing.  All of us enjoy beauty, but like all good things, this too is so easily perverted.  Conrad Hilton, the multimillionaire owner of the Hilton hotel's around the world, was once married to Zsa Zsa Gabor.  He discovered that with her, beauty was a full time affair.  She started at ten in the morning before her dressing table.  He says it was a ritual with bottles, jars, and pots, both large and small.

It could have been the rite of ancient Aztex temple.  After lunch and shopping it was back to the dressing table for more make‑up, and agonizing decisions on furs and jewelry.  Hilton learned first hand about the idolatry of beauty, and of how impossible it is to live with a woman who is obsessed with vain‑glory. 

     So what we have in the power of beauty is another paradoxical power.  It can drive you to the heights of virtue, or plunge you to the depths of vice.  It can lead to one praising God for this gift, or it can lead to pride that competes with God.  It has the power to produce stories of victory, or stories of vanity.  One of the reasons women are so effective in taking the Gospel into all the world is there beauty.  Beauty attracts, and if the attracter points to God, her beauty is a stepping stone into the kingdom of beauty, the kingdom of God.  Many have the testimony of the poet‑

The might of one fair face sublimes my love,

For it  hath wean'd my heart from low desires;

Nor death I need, nor purgatorial fires.

Thy beauty‑ante‑past of joys above

Instructs me in the bliss that saints approve,

For Lo!  How good, how beautiful must be

The God that made so good a thing as thee.

     Is by the power of beauty that women have had their fair share of the control of history. By beauty the weak can master the strong, and Esther decides the course that the absolute monarch will take.  The Biblical ideal of female beauty involves the mental as well as the physical.  Brainless beauty is a joke.  Prov. 11:22 says, "Like a gold ring in a swine's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion."  In other words, a beautiful woman has to use the inside of her head as well as the outside to have any real power in her beauty.  Capito wrote, "Beauty alone, may please, not captivate; If lacking grace, tis but a hookless bait."

     Beauty can be superficial, and without depth, and this is what has led to the saying that beauty is only skin deep.  Prov. 31:30 agrees when it says, "Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."  So we come again to the paradoxical nature of beauty.  It can be vain, but it can also be a great value.  It is the paradoxical nature of reality that leads to so much overreaction, and imbalance in our thinking.  Because everything that is good can also be bad, and perverted, so as to become a source of evil, there is the constant temptation of abandoning what is good to avoid that danger.  All through history Christians have abandoned what is good, and left Satan free to use it as a tool for evil.  Just as tanks abandoned on the battlefield will be used by the enemy to fight those who abandoned them, so beauty, when abandoned by Christians, will be used by enemy forces against Christians. 

     The value of studying the book of Esther is that it forces us to reevaluate our views on the secular realm of life.  It forces us to look at beauty as a tool in the hands of God, and it forces us to ask questions about beauty, as it did about pleasure.  What we find when we search the Scripture is that beauty is no minor issue in God's plan.  It is basic and vital to the plan of God, and not just for the saving of Israel, but for saving all men from the pit of hell.  It is no surprise that God is portrayed in the Bible as ultimate beauty.  After all, He is the author of all beauty.  Someone said, "God is not only the all‑wise and all‑powerful, but the all‑beautiful."  In Psa. 27:4 all that David longs for is to dwell in the house of the Lord and to behold the beauty of the Lord.  The hope of all believers is to see the King in His beauty.  When that great event takes place, we will all partake fully of His beauty, and become perfected, and be like Him. 

     The goal of God is that all the redeemed might be like Jesus.  To be glorified is to be beautified with the beauty of Jesus.  But beauty is not just the goal, it is a powerful element of the Christian life on the way to the goal.  Three times the palmist says we are to "Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."  The power of worship is in beauty.  Beauty runs through the Bible, and we are called  upon to behold it over and over.  There is the beautiful robe, beautiful women, a beautiful situation, a beautiful heaven, a beautiful crown, a beautiful gate, and even the beautiful feet of those who proclaim the Gospel.  There are numerous beauties in the temple, and there is the beauty of wisdom. 

     Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest American preachers, came to the conclusion, as he studied the Bible, that beauty was really at the very heart of all theology.  We tend to think of beauty as a secular subject, but he made it the heart of his sacred theology.  This man changed the course of history in America, and he made beauty the unifying theme of theology.  He could see what most Christians never notice.  God is beautiful, and all that He does is beautiful, and so the good and the beautiful are one.  We could not love God if He was not beautiful.  If He was only powerful, He could force us to do His will, but He could not force us to love Him.  Love is a response we can only give to beauty.  If we had no revelation of God's beauty in nature, or in the plan of redemption, we could not love God.  God could only win man's love by the power of beauty.

     It works the other way also.  Man is ugly in sin, and so it would be hopeless for us to have fellowship with God, but Jesus became a man, and by the beauty of His holiness, and the beauty of His sacrifice, the way was opened for all to become beautiful, and, thereby acceptable to God.  Grasping the loveliness and the supreme excellency of our Lord is the beginning of the victorious Christian life.  Those who do not see the beauty of Christ will not have the motivating power to follow Him.  They will be sidetracked constantly by  the superficial beauties of worldliness.  All the fruits of the spirit are expressions of the beauty of Jesus in human life.

      Edwards said, "God is the foundation and the fountain of all being and all beauty."  Sin is a deformity and lack of beauty.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  That is, no one measures up to the beauty God intended for them.  They are all defective.  To be saved is to be restored to the place where you have the right to begin the process of beautification.  The doctrine of sanctification is really a doctrine of beautification.  To grow in Christlikeness is the same as growing in beauty.  Beauty is the measure of God's presence, just as ugliness is the measure of God's absence.  If a man is insensitive to beauty, and can see no beauty in life, or in people, he is alienated from God.  The man who sees most beauty, and is full of appreciation for it, is the man closest to God.

     When all beauty is gone, and all of life is ugly, that is when people take their own life, for the loss of all beauty is hell.  In hell there will be no beauty, and in heaven there will be nothing but beauty.  One's relationship to beauty in this life is the measure of the hell on earth, or the heaven on earth, that one experiences.   The only way to get heaven on earth is to see the beauty of heavenly things, and the loveliness of God's way.  Only those captivated by the power of beauty will be open to the working of God's Spirit.  Edwards says that in the hierarchy of values, first is existence, and then excellence; first is being and then beauty.  Anything defective in beauty is defective in being.

     The ability to discern what is truly beautiful from what is only superficial beauty is the key to the abundant life.  Jesus only used the word beautiful once in the New Testament record, and it was a warning about the danger of superficial beauty.  In Matt. 23:27‑28 we read, "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.  Here is surface beauty.  It has no depth, and is mere veneer. 

     Superficial beauty is Satan's primary method of deception.  All men chose what they feel is beautiful.  The first sin of choosing the forbidden fruit was made very attractive.  All sin is made to seem beautiful.  Satan does not expect anybody to be tempted by the ugly. He knows God made man in His image, and so He knows man is made to select the beautiful, and shun the ugly.  So he can only attract men to evil by making it seem beautiful.  People chose folly for the same reason they chose wisdom.  It looks good, and seems like the best way to go.  The liquor adds portray the camaraderie of the bar.  Sports and sex, and all that seems adventurous is linked to this drug, for drunkenness is not attractive or beautiful.  They never show the dead and twisted bodies of drunk drivers. They never show the ugliness of the vomit, and the awful agony of families ruined by drinking.  Evil can only survive by using the power of beauty to attract. 

     God wants us to chose beauty.  We are made to do so, and in Christ we are given the Holy Spirit, who will lead us to chose the highest in beauty.  Christian morality and ethics are built around beauty.  Whatever is truly beautiful, and by truly beautiful I mean lasting beauty, is right.  What is wrong is that which may have temporary beauty, but which leads to permanent ugliness.  Christian maturity is growing in your discernment so that you can see the whole, and not just the part.  Much of life is beautiful in part, but awful in the whole. A poison snake is beautiful in part, as are poison berries, but they are not wise choices, for as a whole they are ugly and destructive.  The power of evil lies in its use of superficial and partial beauty to entice men to chose the way of folly.  Evil is a parasite which depends on what is good for its existence. 

     This brings us back to Xerxes and Esther.  It is because Xerxes lives for beauty and pleasure that God was able to use his choice for His own purpose.  Pagan people, all through history, have chosen what they feel is beautiful.  This does lead to great evil because of Satan's deception, but let us remember, the world is full of true beauty as well, and even evil men often chose what is good because of its beauty.  Esther was a beautiful and godly woman.  Her beauty went to the heart, and was not just skin deep.  Her beauty would be attractive to most all men in history, pagan or Christian.  The point is, Satan is not the only one in the beauty business.  God's providence also works through beauty.  The beauty of women is one of the key ways God has worked in history.

     Esther in her day, and in our day, one of the great stories is that of Mei‑ling, better known as Madam Chaing Kai‑shek.  Chaing Kai‑shek was a Chinese war lord who was very successful in battle.  One of the Christian families of China sent their daughter Mei‑ling to America to be educated.  When she returned, she was  active in the political and social affairs of the nation.  On one occasion Chaing Kai‑shek's path crossed that of  Mei‑ling, and for him it was love at first sight.  He could not resist the charm and beauty of this Americanized daughter of the Orient.  We cannot go into the details of the long five year battle to win her hand in marriage, but battle it was, for he was a godless immoral warrior living with a concubine, and she was a beautiful Christian.  His love for her beauty changed his history, and he became a Christian.  He went on to become the Generalissimo of China, and together they did great things for the cause of Christ.  It never would have happened without beauty. 

     What all this means is that we need to keep a dual perspective on life, and especially the secular life.  Take beauty contest for example.  Yes there is lust and perversion of beauty, but do not forget, God is not shut out of that realm of life.  God is working through beauty, and often the winner of these contests is a dedicated Christian woman.  She goes  on to touch many lives for Christ, and all because she was beautiful. 

     Not all of us have the gift of beauty that attracts kings, generals, and wide popularity, but all Christians have gifts that are beautiful.  All the gifts of the spirit are attractive, and they are designed to attract others.  Every Christian is to be a light in a dark world attracting the lost to the Savior.  Nothing is really finished until it is fully beautiful, and that includes us.  God will never be done with us until we are perfectly beautiful.  Beauty is our goal, and beauty is what we need to pray for.  The more beautiful we are in every aspect of life, the more likely the providence of God will work through us to accomplish His purpose, for there is power in beauty. 

7.     PRAISE AND ROMANCE  Based on Prov. 31:10‑31

     We are conditioned by life in our culture to be more conscious of the negative than the positive.  The news is largely a focus on the negative, and we are made by the media to see life as tragic and full of accidents, murder, and endless blunders of one sort or another.  You have to go against the grain to say to yourself, thank God for the millions who did not get murdered last night along with myself.  Praise God for all the cars that didn't get hit.  I rejoice in the millions of homes that did not burn, and for the millions of children who got home safely, and for the many businesses that did not lay people off.  Good news is ten thousand times more common than bad news, but it does not make the news because news is devoted to the unusual.

      What this does, however, is make us a problem conscious people, and this is a hindrance to praise, both of God and of our mates.  There are dozens of things we appreciate about our mates, but like the news reporter we sniff out the real story which is the negative, the weakness, the blunder, the things that aggravate us.  The husband comes home from work and he brings home the groceries his wife asked him to pick up.  But he brought home the wrong kind of beans.  Now here is a wife who appreciates her husband.  She appreciates his working and his willingness to go out of his way to pick up groceries along with dozens of other good points, but when she sees the wrong kind of beans, what is the news flash?

Idiot husband blows it on beans.

     That is not what their life is all about at all‑the kind of beans they eat.  But all of the dozens of valued characteristics are pushed out of sight, and this minor blunder becomes the Rock of Gibralter sitting on their kitchen counter.  That is the news, and that is where we focus.  Not on the 142 times he came home with exactly the right order, but this present atrocious blunder.  So what if it represents a mere fraction of life?  It is now the headlines for the day.  She makes a federal case out of his stupidity, and he forgets all he admires about her and says she never appreciates anything he does.  In seconds they have an honest to goodness news worthy conflict. 

      This is what news is:  the unusual exalted to the level of such prominence that it dominates your consciousness.  This is what people are made to do, and mates often do it for nothing.  Has your mate ever said, "You never do anything to help me!"  This comes right after she has asked you to pick up a piece of lint off the floor.  Because you have a higher chair and a lamp in your hands you say, "I'll get it later."  That lint becomes the news.  It is all that matters now.  The sun, the moon, the stars, and all your labor of love over the years is blotted out, and you are nothing but a non‑picker up of lint.  It is not all lint for all time, but that particular lint which is now the news.

     What I am trying to illustrate is that as mates we become problem oriented rather than praise oriented, and this distorts our perspective so that we see life like the news.  The mini‑negatives stand out like an eclipse of the sun, and the maxi‑positives fade into the background like a sliver of a moon.  Reversing this perspective is not easy, but it is the Biblical goal, and Christians need to work at the praise perspective if they want the blessing of Christ in their union rather than the burden of the culture.  The question is, what do you focus on in your marriage‑the newsworthy or the praiseworthy?

      The difference is that the praiseworthy partner has their focus on the usual and the typical and the commonplace which is in no way newsworthy, but which is what their life is all about.  The positive values they share day by day that make life enjoyable.  The massive number of little things you appreciate, but tend to take for granted.  The Bible authorizes us to be people of praise, not just in our worship of God, but in our relationships on the human level.  In our text of Prov. 31 we see a marvelous wife and mother, and this is a hymn of praise to her.  In verse 28 her children bless her and her husband praises her.  In verse 30 it states that a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.  Verse 31 says, "Let her works bring her praise at the city gate." 

      In the space of four verses this woman; this wife, and this mother is praised three times with the same Hebrew word that is used for the praise of God all through the Old Testament.  No other person in the Old Testament receives this much praise, and what this leads to is another example of how the romantic and the religious are linked.  The nearest thing there is to the love of God is the love of a man for a woman.  That is why marriage is used in the Bible to illustrate the love relationship of God and His people.  The nearest you can get is the love of a husband and his wife.  The language of praise to God cannot be matched except by the praise of a man for the woman he loves.

     This same Hebrew word halal is used of the pretty woman in the Song of Solomon 6:9 where it says that even the Queen and all the other women praise her.  Then in 6:10 she is described:  "Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in the procession."  That is wild extravagant language usually only acceptable in reference to God,  but allowed by God on the lips of a man in love with the girl he considers the most beautiful of beings on earth.  It would seem that God permits men to come close to idolatry in their love for, and praise of, their wives.  The language of human love uses the same vocabulary as is used for the love of God. 

I adore you.

I worship the ground you stand on.

You are my angel.

You are the light of my life.

It's heaven to be in your arms.

     Even knowing that men would often choose their love for a woman over their love for Him, God still permits this kind of love to be acceptable.  Adam chose Eve over God.  David chose Bathsheba over God's will.  Many others in the Bible did the same thing, all of which has lead to a vast literature of an anti‑feminine nature blaming women for all the evil's of the world.  They can even sound valid until you look at the attitude of God.  In spite of all the risks God promotes the devotion of men to women, and especially their wives. 

     Prov. 5:18, using the same Hebrew word for rejoicing in the Lord, says, "May you rejoice in the wife of your youth."  Paul went as far as language can go when he wrote in Eph. 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her."  It is shocking, and it would border on blasphemy if it was not clearly Biblical that we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices unto our wives.  We are to rejoice in our wives always just as we are to rejoice in the Lord always.  We are to offer unto them also the sacrifice of praise.

     God will not tolerate any rival among the gods, yet He will tolerate and even encourage you to treat your wife like a goddess.  God has exalted romance to the highest level in His Word.  The essence of worship is praise, and the essence of romance is praise.  It is the beauty of God's being and His loving acts that motivate us to praise Him, and it is the beauty of the female and her loving acts that motivate us to praise her.  Just as we are happiest in our relationship to God when we are praising Him, so we are happiest in our relationship to our wives when are praising them. 

     The formula for revival and a renewed fire in our love for God is praise.  The same formula is the key to renewing the fires of romance in our marriage.  Praise is a form of power that works wonders on all levels.  The secret to keeping the fire of romance alive is praise.  Those mates who cease to praise can plan on living with a lot of cold ashes, but those who practice praising will be kept warm for as long as they live.  To praise is to love.  Anything, or anyone, you love you will praise.  If I love a certain kind of candy I will praise it, and let others know of my appreciation.  If I think Estes Park, Colorado is a place I love to visit, I will praise it and tell others of its beauty.  Love is expressed by praise. 

      Those who do not love the one I love will see their defects.  They will focus on the news worthy aspects of their being and doing.  The matters that have gossip value.  They talk too much, or they are too shy, or they lack maturity, or they lack depth, or on and on.  But love is blind to the defects because of the light of what is praiseworthy.  It blinds them to the minor defects, but reveals to them the beauty of the major values.  The highest level of romance is when all the negative realities are as nothing, and you are overwhelmed by all that is praiseworthy.

     This is what we call falling in love, for when this happens you seem somewhat crazy to everybody else.  Your parents see all the defects and weaknesses of the one you have fallen in love with.  They will try to subtly warn you of the these negatives realities.  But it is like trying to get you to feel bad that there is a spot on the sun.   You do not care, for there is light and warmth to meet your every need.  This is the state where people say you are walking on air, and your head is in the clouds.  It is so heavenly that you care nothing for earthly realities.  This is the height of the love state of romance, for it is totally praise dominated.  This is the state that the great love song of the Bible is all about.  The Song of Songs is eight chapters of almost continuous praise.  And the good news is that the male is praised by the female also, and so praise is a two way street.

     The Song of Songs is a book where rejoicing, delighting, and praising are the theme.  The romantic and religious life are so intertwined that all through history this song has been applied to both the love of man for God, and the love of male and female.  It is the Song of Songs‑the greatest song of all, and there can be no separation of the romantic and the religious, for they both thrive equally on praise.

The male is always saying, "How beautiful you are my darling."  Then he goes into a rapture of praise as he describes the loveliness of every part of her body.

The female returns the praise by saying, "How handsome you are my lover, oh how charming!"  Then she launches into a song of adoration of all his body parts, and ends up, "He is altogether lovely." 

     The bottom line is this:  God is revealing through this great romantic song that they key to romance is praise.  The female gets most of the praise, and the words for praise are used most often for her, but the fact is, it works both ways, and it becomes a basic principle of life that praise is what kindles love, and it is praise that keeps love glowing in any relationship.  The praiser is the true lover.  Now this has implications for all of life, for if love is the highest virtue without which, as Paul says in I Cor. 13, all other virtues are worthless, this means the single most important part of our personality is our spirit of praise. 

     To be spirit‑filled means to be filled with a spirit of praise.  To be Christlike means to be ever seeking for ways to praise.  To praise is to love.  How do you love your children?  There are many ways, but you will fall short of the best if you do not learn to praise them.  That is the basic need children have.   They need to be loved for who they are, and praise can give them that assurance that they are worthy even if they are not superior and able to do all things well.  A child raised with praise will be a love child with a strong sense of self‑esteem.

     How do you love people that you may have no depth relationship with?  Maybe they are people at work that you know only in that setting.  The latest management books like The One‑Minute Manager is telling managers all over the country to look for what people are doing right and give them a one minute praising.  Production will go up and the atmosphere of the work place will be much better, and everybody wins.  This is a Biblical principle being applied in daily life.  The news worthy will tear you down, but the praiseworthy will build you up.  Look for all the mistakes and errors, and there are always more than enough in fallen world, and you will destroy relationships.  But if you look beyond them to the praiseworthy, and let people know what they are appreciated for, you will build relationships and a positive atmosphere.  A praising personality is the greatest asset in any relationship.

     Tracy Cabot in her book How To Keep A Man In Love With You Forever stresses the need for praise.  She says the secret of long married women is they flatter their husbands and tell them they are wonderful.  Drug addicts, she points out, come back again and again to their drugs because they get predictable and repeatable pleasure on demand.  The goal of a wife is to get her husband addicted to her praise.  He will keep coming back to her again and again, for he will feel she is a dependable source of pleasure.  If all he gets is, "You lazy bum," in his face, there will be a lessening of that magnetic attraction.  The fact is, he may at times be just that‑a lazy bum.  But the question is, is this a newsworthy fact‑that is a small part of his total lifestyle, and if so, is that what you desire to focus on and be miserable, or will  you focus on the larger picture, the praiseworthy, that which made you fall in love with him? 

     A focus on the negative will depreciate your relationship and make it of less value.  But a focus on the positive will appreciate it.  Your home appreciates in value so that it is worth more this year than last year.  The best investments are in those things which appreciate.  Marriage can go either way, and the deciding factor is the power of praise.  If you want your marriage to appreciate in value, then you have to focus on what you appreciate about each other and praise your mate for those praiseworthy values.  The alternative is to start your marriage like a Cadillac and let it depreciate by being critical until all that is left is the junk value.  You determine by praise, or the lack of it, whether your marriage is a house appreciating in value, or a car depreciating in value.  Is your mate most often in a cave of criticism, or on a pedestal of praise? 

     Gary Smalley in his book The Joy Of Committed Love tells of the crisis he had to go through to see the light.  He is watching the Saturday afternoon football game, and his wife goes into the kitchen and comes back with sandwiches for his three children, and there he sat a few feet away and he gets nothing.  In a matter of seconds he is fighting resentment.  After all, he is the bread winner in this home, and if anyone deserves a sandwich it is him.  He in anger went and made his own sandwich, but he could not get rid of the resentment.  After letting it burn a few days he decided to confront his wife on the issue.  He asked her why she did not make him a sandwich last Saturday during the game.  He was not prepared for how fast the pieces of this puzzle were put together by her response. 

     "Are you serious," she asked?  "Do you realize that every time I make you a sandwich, you say something critical about it?"  'Norma, you didn't give me enough lettuce....Is this avocado ripe?...You put too much mayonnaise on this.....Hey, how about some butter?...Well, its a little dry'.... "Maybe you've never realize it, but you have had a critical statement for every sandwich I ever made.  I just wasn't up to being criticized the other day.  It wasn't worth it.  I don't enjoy being criticized." 

     Now he was not sure he didn't like it better when he was in the dark.  The light hurt, and he realized it was true.  He had sown criticism, and now he was reaping and empty plate.  From that time on he began to praise Norma for every sandwich she made, and his pleasant observation is that he has never been left out again.  Praise is a powerful tool of positive productivity.  Deprive any relationship of praise and you will suffocate it, for praise is the oxygen that keeps it alive and burning.  The number one way to rekindle the flame of romance is to stop looking for the newsworthy, and start looking for the praiseworthy.  Give up on your critical spirit, which is our fallen natures way of trying to bring about change, and follow the ways of praise which leads to change for the better.

     Secular studies confirm what the Bible says.  It is a principle that God built into human relationships.  The praising teacher has the best students.  The praising boss has the best workers.  The praising leader has the best followers.  The praising mate has the best marriage.  It is not a gimmick, but it is a law of life, and Christians are to obey this law to the highest degree, for this is the key way by which we please God and find happiness in all relationships.

     This is such an obvious and universal law that even many secular authors have discovered it.  Why is it that many Christians fail to live by it, and praise their mates often?  For the same reason they neglect the praise of God.  They are too preoccupied and just do not take the time to think about what they have to be thankful for, both to God and the one they love.  Charlie Tremendous Jones, the Christian motivational speaker and author, says that nobody can be completely positive about all of life all the time, but all of us can be engaged in a process of learning, growing, and developing positive attitudes. 

      If we are not so engaged, we are being self‑centered and deserve the poor relationships we have.  Charlie Shedd, one of America's most famous marriage enrichment authorities, says that most people spend most of their time thinking about themselves and just don't bother to consider the role that others play in their lives.  They seldom express praise for all the ways they are benefited and enriched by others.  This ideal wife and mother in Prov. 31 is praised to high heaven.  She is on a pedestal of praise.  But many wives who do their best never receive a compliment.  We know this because case histories are in most every book written about marriage problems of Christian mates. 

     If I, who have read several hundred books on the subject over the years, and who has taught a number of marriage enrichment classes dealing with the importance of complimenting your mate often, still neglect this area of praise, then I know it is almost universally neglected.  Jesus knew our weakness, and knew it was possible for His disciples to even forget and neglect to praise Him for His sacrifice on the cross that made their eternal salvation possible.  That is why He gave us the ordinance of communion.  He said, do this in remembrance of me, and by doing this made it clear that we can't rely on our own will and memory to be a praise‑ful person.  We need a reminder to keep us aware of the need to never forget and forsake praise.

     Applying this to marriage, we need to set aside a time, once a week, once a month, like we do communion.  The frequency depending on the degree of your weakness, but periodically reading the love portions of the Bible.  Prov. 31, the Song of Solomon, and I Cor. 13.  We need perpetual reminders that the essence of life is love, and the essence of love is praise, for both romantic and religious love.  God expects us to be ever growing in both realms, and be praisers of Him, and be praisers in romance.

8.     THE PRAISES OF LOVE   Based on Song of Songs

  A neurologist was flattered when a patient in a mental hospital said to him, "We like you better than any other doctor we have ever had."  "But why?" asked the doctor, with a smile, showing his delight.  "Because," replied the inmate, "You are more like one of us."  Sometimes flattery can be a flop. Even if it is sincere, it can come out wrong.  Like the woman who said to her pastor, "That message was like water to a drowning man."  He thought she meant it as a compliment, but he could never be sure.  Flattery can be used to deceive people in so many ways that it usually has a negative meaning.  The Jewish Talmud says, "A community where flattery prevails will end in exile." 

     Almost every reference to flattery in the Bible shows it to be a tool of evil.  Paul wrote in I Thess. 2:5, "We never used words of flattery..."  When Paul said he was all things to all men, he did not mean he was even a flatterer.  Paul considered this to be deceitful and not an acceptable tool in evangelism.  It could be so used, however, for we all like to think well of ourselves, and we are always delighted with anyone else who can perceive our good points.  So we are all susceptible to flattery.  Benjamin Franklin said,

A flatterer never seems absurd:

The flattered always takes his word.

     In the realm of romance flattery is a dangerous weapon, for it is possible to so love the nice things that are said that one soon believes he, or she, loves the sayer of them. The sayer is even himself deceived, and many people get married, not because they love each other, but because they love themselves, and enjoy being told how wonderful they are.  Flattery can be used to deliberately deceive for the sake of immoral gratification as well, and many a foolish girl lets sweet talk her life sour.

       Shakespeare said, "You play the Spaniel and think with waging of your tongue to win me."  A dogs waging tail is an honest expression of love, but a waging tongue of flattery is more often a tool of deceit.  David portraying a society which is totally corrupt says in Psalms 12:2, "Everyone utters lies to his neighbor with flattering lips and a double heart they speak."  Lying and flattery are like partners, as we see in Prov. 26:28, "A lying tongue hates its victims, and a flattering mouth works ruin." 

     Groucho Marx was an expert as using flattery in a negative way.  He was leaving a party he felt was exceedingly dull.  He said to the hostess, "I've had a wonderful evening, but this wasn't it."  Sometimes the truth does need to be told subtly.  Samuel Johnson said to an author, after reading his book, "Your manuscript was both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." That is telling it like it is, and is not really a negative use of flattery.  The person to be wary of is the person who agrees with everything you say and do.  Such flattery will hinder, rather than help.

    How can we reconcile the negatives of flattery with the positives of compliments and honest appreciation?  If I tell a person they look sharp, am I guilty of flattery, and using my tongue for evil?  If I see value, talents, and gifts in people, must I keep silent because of the danger of flattery?  Definitely not.  The Song of Solomon is filled with constant compliments coming from the mouths of lovers.  They flatter each other, as  most lovers do, as being the two most beautiful people on the planet.  The complimentary language of lovers is essential to their love.  Without beautiful words they would have a hard time expressing their love.  Yet, they may use all the same words that are used by the flatterer.  What is the difference? 

     The difference between good and evil in so many areas of life is in love.  Love makes the difference.  If I have the tongue of men and of angels, but have not love,

I am sounding brass and a clanging symbol.  All the evil of flattery is a matter of nice words without love.  When hate and deceit speak, they may use the best words for their evil ends.  Evil needs good words to get anywhere.  The evil of flattery could not exist without the use of good words, and so evil uses the very vocabulary of love.

     When love speaks, it looks for the best in everyone.  It looks for a way of being constructive and encouraging.  Jesus was a master at the art of complimenting.  Instead of blasting sinners with words of condemnation, He said, "Go and sin no more," expressing confidence in their ability to do so.  He even said to the Gentile Centurion, "A greater faith have I not seen in Israel."  Jesus even complimented His enemies. He knew the Pharisees were good students of the law.  He taught that what they said was good, even if they didn't follow it, so He said to do what they say, but not what they do.  He complimented sinners by eating with them, and He did the same with the Pharisees.  Jesus could find good points in all people.  Jesus was not opposed to any man, or any group, but only to the falsehoods that corrupted them.

     A legend is told about Jesus walking through the gates of Jerusalem.  He saw a crowd gathered around a dead dog.  The Scribes passing by kicked it with contempt, but Jesus stopped and said, "Behold the pearly whiteness of its teeth."  Jesus could find something to compliment even in a dead dog.  The reason He could is because He loved all men, and all creatures.  Love makes the difference. 

     Lust, however, uses the same words.  In Prov. 7:21‑22 we read of how the harlot ensnares a man.  "With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him.  All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter..."  We see that smooth talkers can be female as well as male.  When words are an expression of true feeling, they are beautiful and positive.  When they are used as a method of getting our own way, they are negative and ugly.

      Someone said there is really nothing remarkable about love at first sight.  It is after people have looked at each other for years that love is really remarkable.  True love goes on giving appreciation of the one loved.  Therefore, compliments and praise are a perpetual aspect of the lover's language.  When lovers cease to compliment one another, they are losing their admiration, and taking each other for granted.  Healthy love never stops singing the praises of the lover.

       In the Song Of Solomon we have a song of lover's praise.  The Shepherd and Shepherdess are constantly complimenting one another on their beauty.  We also have the flattery of King Solomon, however, who tries by sweet talk to persuade the Shulemite girl to forsake her lover and become his. 

     In verses 9‑11, many feel we have an example of the kings flattery.  It does differ from the language of the Shepherd lover.  Solomon's flattery revolves around the externals and deals with the man made adornments of beauty.  Solomon compares her to a mare of Pharaoh's chariots, and speaks much of jewelry.  The compliments of the Shepherd and the Shepherdess to each other all revolve around natural beauty.  The contrast is between the beauty of the kings palace, and all the man made objects, and the beauty of nature so precious to these two country lovers. 

     These two have no love for the adornments of the city.  Their hearts are filled with the pleasant realities of God's creation. In verse 12 she tells of the context she is in:  The king is on his couch.  A couch of fancy gold embroidery, no doubt, but she dreams only of the green grass of the field, so precious to the sheep, and so beautiful for the Shepherd lover, who rests on it under the shade of a tree.  The couch is green for them, and not gold, like that of the palace.  It is green and natural, and to them this is far superior.   In verse 16 the Shulamite girl says to her lover, "Our couch is green."  In verse 17 she says, "The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters are pine."  Again, she imagines looking up from the grass at the trees around them, and she longs for that kind of roof over her head, rather than the fancy roof of Solomon's palace. God's natural roof was her delight. 

     The contrast in this song between the natural and the manufactured is one that men struggle with constantly.  It is always a danger for men to become so enamored with the products of their own cleverness that they live in an artificial world, and love only the handiwork of their own creation rather than that of the Author of all natural beauty. If we truly love Jesus Christ, we will love His handiwork, and enjoy with Him that which He has designed for our pleasure, as well as His own.  Those who get so involved with the creations of man are allowing themselves to be flattered away from full devotion to the Creator.  If a Christian gets so taken up with jewels, furs, clothes, and all of the externals of man's inventions, he will tend to let the internal beauty of the soul slide, and become a conformer to the world. 

     This was the temptation of the Shulamite girl, but she had no ear for the flattery of the world.  She longed only for union with her true love.  In 2:16 we see the theme of her song: 

"My beloved is mine and I am his, he pastures his

flocks among the lilies."  The poet puts it: 

Yes, He is mine!  And nought of earthly things,

    Not all the charms of pleasure, wealth, or power,

The fame of heroes, or the pomp of kings,

   Could tempt me to forgo His love an hour.

Go, worthless world, I cry, with all that's Thine!

Go, I my Savior's am, and He is mine.

      This is the theme running through the whole song as we see love's compliments win out over enticing flattery.  In  verse 7 the Shulamite girl refers to her Shepherd  as you whom my soul loves.  She loves him internally and intensely, and her flame burns for Him alone, and that is why she so desperately longs to be out of the palace, and in His presence.  To us it may not sound very romantic to forsake a palace for the environment of a flock of sheep, but true love desires the presence of the lover whatever the environment.

     Our Shepherd lover is preparing a palace for His bride that where He is we may be also, but it is the person and not the place that is primary.  The Shulamite girl dreamed of the flocks, tents, grassy fields, and open forest, because that is where her true love was.  Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.  Most girls would feel obligated to yield to the king in such a setting.  He was offering her everything that wealth could buy.  He tells her in verse 11, he will make her beautiful jewelry with gold studded with silver.  It seems almost rude to turn down such an offer.  What good is the grass and trees and flowers?  They fade away, but jewels are lasting, and diamonds are supposedly a girl's best friend. 

     The Shulamite, however, chooses to be rude and sings nothing of the joys of jewelry. She has no praise for the palace, but longs only for her true love, the Shepherd.  She does not indulge in any flattery of Solomon and his offer, but rejects it by rude neglect. Andre Maurois, the French writer who has much to say about love, says that a true lover must often be rude to be wise.  He tells of a young man who was invited to an estate in Normandy, and the daughter of the house showed an obvious liking for him. He could tell that the parents hoped he would marry her, but he did not find her beautiful, and had no desire to be tied to her for life. 

     One evening as the stars were shining, and the apple blossoms were in bloom, he expressed a wish to take a moonlight stroll.  "What a lovely idea," said the hostess,

"Marie will go with you."  He was half‑trapped already, but as they walked though the orchard she stumbled, and instinctively he caught her.  She was in his arms and their lips were close.  "Ah," she said, "I always knew you loved me."  To undeceive her he needed to be ruthlessly rude, but he could not.  Their lips closed in the fatal kiss. When they went in they were engaged, and he spent the rest of his life with a woman he did not really love.  Maurios says, when it comes to love, whenever you think it necessary, be savagely rude. 

     It is folly to become enamored with one you do not love.  The Shulamite girl was too wise for that, and did not let the wealth and flattery of Solomon sway her from her true love.  So the Christian must sometimes be rude to the appeals of the world.  All that offers to win our love and loyalty is vanity of vanities.  The world can be an enticing lover, but those who really love the Lord Jesus, and have set their affections on things above, will not be flattered into its arms. 

What is the world with all its store?

     'Tis but a bitter sweet;

When I attempt to pluck the rose,

     A pricking thorn I meet.

Here perfect bliss can  ne'er be found,

     The honeys' mix'd with gall:

Midst changing scenes and dying friends,

              Be Thou my all in all. 

                                                                Author unknown

     The Shulamite girl ignores the kings offer of precious jewels, and she sings the praises of her Shepherd lover in verse 13, and says, "A bundle of myrrh is my well beloved unto me."  Myrrh was carried by women of the East in little bags on their bosom to perfume themselves.  It made them feel good and smell fragrant.  Right below their own nose they were ever conscious of its presence, and the Shulamite girl says that her Shepherd lover was just like her bag of myrrh to her.  What a compliment:  To be ever in the mind of your lover.  Myrrh was a very precious perfume.  It was one of the gifts given to Christ at His birth, and was symbolic of His own preciousness.

     In verse 14 the Shulamite says her beloved is to her a cluster of camphire, or henna blossoms, as other versions have it.  These were clusters of beautiful white and yellow flowers that women used to adorn their homes and their own persons.  This girl paid her lover the highest compliment she could in the language of her culture.  Her lover was everything pleasant and precious to her.  Whenever we sing a song in which we praise God for what He is to us, we are joining the Shulamite girl and turning her solo into a chorus of spiritual flattery, which we call praise.  Praise is positive because it is flattery from a heart of love.  It is an expression of true feeling.  Those who truly love Christ and feel loved by Him will be people of praise.  You cannot love Christ  and not praise Him. 

     C. C. Colton adds another perspective when he says, "Imitation is the sincerest  flattery."  If we truly feel that our Shepherd lover is the fairest of 10,000,  we will strive to be like him, and imitate him.  We will want the beauty of Jesus to be seen in us. It is only flattery if we sing of His glory, and then continue to walk in darkness.  It is like saying to someone, "I just love your new suit," and then turning to another and saying, "I wouldn't be caught dead in that."  What we really think is beautiful, we strive to  imitate.  True love for Christ does not just praise Him for what He is, it strives to become what He is.  Lovers long to be alike.  William Kirkpatrick put the true lovers desire in poetry, and it fits so well the conflict of the Shulamite girl. 

Oh, to be like Thee!  Blessed Redeemer,

     This is my constant longing and prayer.

Gladly I'll forfeit all of earth's treasures,

     Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.

Oh, to be like Thee!  Oh, to be like Thee!

     Blessed Redeemer, pure as Thou art!

Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness,

     Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

     May God help each of us to resist the false, but subtle, flattery of the world, and to offer up to our wonderful Lord the true praise of love.        

9.     THE FRAGRANCE OF LOVE  Based on Song of Songs 1:1‑17

   Napoleon and Josephine adored violets.  She often wore the extremely expensive violet scented perfume as her trade mark.  Only the wealthiest people could afford it. When she died in 1814, Napoleon planted violets at her grave, and just before his exile to St. Helena he made a pilgrimage to it.  He picked some of the violets and put them in a locket which he wore around his neck to the end of  his life.  Here were lovers who were linked by their noses, and a special fragrance kept that memory of their love alive even after death. 

     Solomon would not be surprised by this, for his love song is filled with the fragrance of love.  From the beginning to the end the nose is playing a prominent role in the romance. Solomon may not have known that we breathe about 23,000 times a day and move 438 cubic feet of air.  He may not have known that man is capable of detecting over 10,000 different odors, but Solomon knew that the sense of smell has more to do with love than most people ever dream of.  His love song is filled with perfume, incense, fragrant spices, flower and spring garden smells of all kinds, and also the smells of trees, plants and fruits. I doubt if there are so many references to romantic smells, in so short a space, in any literature on earth.

     Rather surprising is the fact that the first reference to perfume refers to the male. In verse 3 the female lover says pleasing is the fragrance of your perfume.  Not only is his wearing of perfume surprising, but it is plural‑perfumes.  The male lover has more than one kind, and he is giving her multiple pleasant sensations.  The mystery is easily solved by a study of the role of perfume in the ancient world.  We use deodorants, after shave, and cologne today, but we are conservatives compared to the ancient world where men use more perfume than women do in our day.

      John Trevenar in, The Romantic Story of Scent writes, "The men of the ancient world were clean and scented."  Keep in mind, we are talking about the Biblical world where it was hot and dusty, and you could perspire at the drop of a toga.  Smelling good was so much of a part of that world that we have detailed records of how they perfumed themselves, and even washed their clothes in perfume.  Two of the three gifts the wise men brought to Jesus were frankincense and myrrh.  These were two of the oldest and most expensive perfumes in the ancient world.  When Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt they were hot, and Joseph would have used as much of the perfume as Mary, for it was vital to a man to smell good. 

     We could spend hours just looking at the evidence to confirm the reality of Solomon's song, but let me just share one paragraph from Diane Ackerman's, A Natural History Of The Senses, which was published in 1990. 

Ancient he‑men were heavily perfumed.  In a way, strong scents

widened their presence, extended their territory.  In the pre‑Greek

culture of Crete, athletes anointed themselves with specific aromatic

oils before the games.  Greek writers of around 400BC recommended

mint for the arms, thyme for the knees, cinnamon, rose, or palm oil

for the jaws and chest, almond oil for the hands and feet, and marjoram

for the hair and eyebrows.  Egyptian men, attending a dinner party

would receive garlands of flowers and their choice of perfumes at

the door.  Flower petals would be scattered underfoot,  so they could

make a fragrance stir when guests trod on them.  Statues at these

banquets often spurted scented water from their several orifices.

Before retiring, a man would crush solid perfume until it was an

oily powder and scatter it onto his bed so that he could absorb its

scent while he slept.  Homer describes the obligatory courtesy

of offering visitors a bath and aromatic oils.  Alexander the Great

was a lavish user of both perfumes and incense, and was fond

enough of saffron to have his tunics soaked in its essence.

     Her elaborate research has led to dozens of pages of this kind of information, yet she  says, as a world authority on odors, "The most scent‑drenched poem of all times is the Song of Solomon."  This song makes the fragrance of love a major issue, and Christians who do not heed this revelation lose a valuable tip.  For centuries Christians ignored this book and did not take it seriously.  They developed the idea that it was worldly to use perfume and smell good.  They felt it was more holy to be dirty.  The Puritans did not go that far, but they did reject perfume as worldly.  To this day, the nose is not honored in romance, and the result is many a Christian couple damages their love life. 

     If God says the nose is part of His design for love, who are we to ignore the Designers plan?  In some cultures lovers kiss with their noses, and their word for kiss means smell. They get great pleasure in breathing in the odor of the one they love.  In Madagascar  they believe that every soul has it own unique scent.  And when they kiss they breathe in that unique odor of their loved one, and mingle their souls.  They experience a spiritual and physical intimacy.  In the Philippines some have so refined their sense of smell that by sniffing a pocket handkerchief they can tell if it belongs to their lover.  They send bits of linen to each other when they are separated so they can keep each other in mind by inhaling each others scent. 

     We laugh at nose kissing, but it is because we have little awareness of the role of the nose in romance.  When Ruth went to meet Boaz and stimulate his interest as taking her as a wife, her mother‑in‑law Naomi gave her good advice in Ruth 3:3.  She told her to wash and put on perfume.  A bad impression on the nose is a sure way to quench the spark of romance.  William Erb put it in poetry.

The shades of night were falling

     Around us thick and fast:

I stood beside Matilda

     The first time and the last.

I tried to give her kisses

     According to etiquette,

But she had eaten onions,

     Me thinks I smell them yet.

     If he kissed you once, will he kiss you again, is not a modern question.  That poem was written in 1897, and similar thoughts go back into ancient history.  On the other hand, it has also always been true that, "Aroma is beauty, and beauty is the stimulant to passion." The question, of course, is what does this obvious truth in the realm of romance have to do with our religious and spiritual love?  The Bible makes it clear that the nose is important in religious love, just as it is in the realm of romance.  The Jews were proud of their Semitic noses.  Levi Haytha said, "The Supreme Architect created man with a spout over his mouth, and it constitutes his beauty and his pride."  The nose was important in the worship of God, and still is to the Jews today.  Zohr wrote, "What would the world do without fragrance?  We would pine away without it, and so we burn myrtle at the conclusion of the Sabbath." 

     If we go back to the Old Testament days, we see that the sacrifices of animals was a major part of their worship.  If you enjoy meat cooking on a grill, then you can imagine the delicious odors as cattle and sheep were cooked on the altar by the hundreds and even thousands.  The smell was magnificent.  We know this for Scripture indicates that God enjoyed the smell of the offerings.  When Noah left the ark, and made his sacrifices to God, we read in Gen.8:21, "And Jehovah smelled the delicious odor and said I will never do it again."  He promised never to destroy the world again with a flood.

     All through the Old Testament sweet and delicious odors were to fill the temple.  Incense was to mingle with the sweet‑smelling offerings.  The reason we enjoy a good roast cooking, and sweet perfume, is because we are made in the image of God who also delights in pleasant fragrance.  He is the author of sense of smell, and all the fragrant aromas in the world of nature.  He is also the author of the very first perfume recipe known to man.  It was a very exclusive secret formula to be used in the temple, and for anointing holy objects, and the priests.  The formula and the description of its uses can be found in Ex. 30:22‑28.  It was a sacred formula that could only be used for the special purposes that God stipulated.  Any other use was strictly forbidden. 

     Worship and pleasant smell were linked together.  When the Jews went after other gods, they would burn incense to them.  They could not conceive of any truly religious love and devotion without the presence of pleasant fragrance.  There are hundreds of text in Scripture dealing with various kinds of perfume and aromatic materials.  The main point of it all is, pleasant smell is associated with religious love just as it is with romantic love.  Prov, 27:9 says, "Oil and perfume rejoice the heart."  All relationships are made better with the presence of pleasant odor. 

     When we move into the New Testament, we discover that Paul had a real nose for nice smells.  He expressed his thanks to the Philippians Christians for their support by writing in Phil. 4:18, "I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God."  Paul connected spiritual love, and the sacrifice of Christ, with a sweet smell in Eph. 5:2.  "And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."  Our great Shepherd lover was never more fragrant than when he breathed out His last breath and said, "It is finished."  God did not let His Son see corruption in the tomb.  Lazarus was stinking after four days in the tomb, but no foul odor was permitted to come upon the body of our Lord.  He became, by His death, the eternal lover, whose fragrance is like that of an eternal rose. 

     When Jesus came to the home of Mary and Martha just shortly before the crucifixion, we read of this unique event in John 12:3, "Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment."  Here was  a great act of love, with great symbolic meaning.  Jesus said it was for the day of His burial.  Many other spices and perfumes were put upon the body of Christ when He was buried, but this event hints that death would never leave its ugly smell on Christ, for He was the very embodiment of love and fragrance. 

In Him all excellence is found.

His name a fragrance sheds around,

Like that most costly oil of nard,

Which Mary poured upon her Lord.

     The Shulamite girl says her lover's name is like perfume poured out.  That is exactly how the church, the Bride of Christ, feels about Him and His name.  Bonar wrote,

I love the name of Jesus,

     Immanuel, Christ the Lord,

Like fragrance on the breezes,

     His name abroad is poured.

     The most significant passage in all the Bible which relates to smell, love, and the Gospel of Christ, is II. Cor. 2:14‑16.  "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere.  For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.  To one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life."  In this passage Paul links the very issues of heaven and hell to the nose.  To spread the Gospel is to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ.  Has anyone ever told you, you smell like a Christian?  How is a Christian suppose to smell?  According to Paul, he is to smell sweet and pleasant, like the perfume of God in Christ. 

     Billy Graham has every one of his counselors put a mint in their mouth, just as he gives the invitation, for it is hard to lead a soul to love Christ if you smell like onions, or have some other foul odor.  Religious love is aided by pleasant smell.  Pleasant odor was very important to Paul, for he was dealing with people in Greek culture, and if you study how the Greeks love perfume you will understand Paul's concern.  Listen to Antiphones as he describes the bath of an Athenian man of fashion. 

In a large gilded tub he steeps his feet

and legs in rich Egyptian unguents.

His jaws and breast he rubs with thick palm oil,

and both his arms with extract sweet of mint,

his eyebrows and his hair with margoram,

his knees and neck with essence of ground thyme.

Descriptions of a Greek banquet are unbelievable in the costly perfume used.  Xenophones describes an unique method by which all were showered with it.

He slipped four doves, whose wings were saturate

With scents, all different in kind‑these doves,

Wheeling in circles round, let fall upon us

A shower of sweet perfumery, drenching, bathing

Both clothes and furniture and lordlings all.

     The Romans were also fanatics for perfume, but time does not permit us to explore. In a world like that, Christians had to have a pleasant appeal to the nose of people in order to win their attention.  The pleasant appeal was, of course, the name of Jesus.  His was, and is, the only name on earth that rid men of the foul odor of sin.  All though the Bible the word stink, and the word stank, are used to describe sin and its consequences. Hate is linked to a stench in the nostrils.  Every man either stinks before God, because he is a sinner, and has no deodorant that can cleanse him, or he is like perfume before God, because by his faith in Christ he has covered himself with the sweet‑smelling sacrifice of the cross.  A rotten breath can hurt romance, and a rotten soul hurts your relationship with God.  Jesus Christ is God's only remedy for the foul breath of the sinful soul.  If you put your trust in Him you can come out of this foul world smelling like a rose.            

10.   ROMANTIC AND RELIGIOUS FRAGRANCE   Based on Song of Songs 1:3   

   In the tale of the Beauty and the Beast the horrible looking creature with 7 horns in his forehead begs the beautiful young maiden he has carried away to kiss him.  She, of course, refuses to kiss such ugliness, and the beast goes away.   She saw it no more until one day she found it lying dead under a bush in the garden.  She wept and cast herself down on the beast and kissed it.  Suddenly it returned to life and was transformed into the handsomest prince her eyes had ever beheld.  He then explained that he had been bewitched, and could never be delivered unless a maid fell in love with him and kissed him.  That kiss she gave him removed the curse, redeemed him from death, and restored him to his original state. 

     What a fantastic story of the power of a kiss.  It is only a fairytale, but the truth it relates is the very truth of the Christian Gospel.  The beast represents man under the curse.  He became ugly as he fell from his state of perfection.  He was restored and transformed by the power of God's kiss, which was the cross.  Jesus reconciled God and man by the power of His kiss of peace at Calvary.  In this Song of Songs we see the Shulamite girl longing for the kisses of her Shepherd lover, and God answered that longing in the souls of men to be united with the lover of their souls by sending His Son in the flesh.

     God reached down and embraced His people in Christ.  "He touched me and now I am no longer the same" is the testimony of those who have responded to His love.  But there is more to a kiss than touch, and that is our theme for this message. All of the senses are involved in romance and kissing as we see in this song.  Many lovers may never think of it, but the ears are important in kissing, for no kiss is complete without sound.  Most married people have been in situation where they have tried to be quiet as they kiss, and they have discovered that it is hard to kiss right without noise.

      A kiss without sound is like an egg without salt.  Most kisses in a marriage ceremony are not up to par because the atmosphere is such that the nervous couple feels conspicuous, and they want to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible.  They aim for a silent kiss, and they quickly learn that a silent kiss is a crippled kiss.   Shakespeare refers to a groom who took full advantage of his wedding kiss, but he was an exception.  In the Taming of the Shrew he writes,

This done, he took the bride about the neck,

And kissed her lips with such a clamorous smack

That at the parting, all the church did echo.

Sound is a part of a good kiss, and this is true in the spiritual realm as well.  Faith comes by hearing.  It is by means of the ear that we receive the good news, and the sound of that kiss of reconciliation whereby we are united to Christ.  This kiss is the means by which we become a part of His bride. 

     The sense of taste is also involved.  The Shulamite girl says, "Your love is better than wine."  We will look at love and wine in greater detail in another message, but we just want to point out here that love and kissing like all enjoyable things should taste good.  Psa. 34:8 says, "O taste and see that the Lord is good."  Psa. 119:103 says, "How sweet are thy words unto my taste."  Romantic and religious love is to be sweet to the taste, and be sweeter than wine. 

The poet writes,

O lady, there be many things

     That seem right fair, below, above;

But sure not one among them all

     Is half so sweet as love.

     The fact is, if we had more loveaholics in the world there would be fewer alcoholics, for true love is always better than wine.  The intoxication of love is delightful rather than disgusting.  Dante wrote about the first time that Beatrice spoke to him.  "Because it was the first time any words from her reached mine ears, I came into such sweetness that I parted thence as one intoxicated." 

     The sense we want to focus on in greater detail is one that we seldom think of, but it is a primary factor in both romantic and religious love, and that is the sense of smell.  Your nose has much to do with love.  Even taste is largely a matter of smell.  Some of you may recall that when you first began to kiss the one who is now your mate that there was a distinct smell involved.  A kiss, like food, is not as good when you have a cold, and it is because smell is cut off or diminished.  Even wine is enjoyed, not just for the taste, but for its smell.  In Hos. 14:7 God promises this blessing to His restored people.  "...they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom as the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebonon." 

     References to the fragrance of love run all through the Song of Songs. Here is verse 3 in the Amplified Version. "The odor of your ointment is fragrant; your name is like perfume poured out; therefore do the maidens love you."  Then in verse 12 to 14 we read, "While the king sits at his table, she said my spikenard (my absent lover) sends forth his fragrance over me.  My beloved is to me like a scent bag of myrrh that lies in my bosom.  My beloved is to me a cluster of henna flowers in the vineyards of Engedi.  (Famous for its fragrant shrubs)."  The Bible is literally filled with references to perfumes, aromatic gums, oils, and woods.  Two of the three gifts the wise men brought to Jesus as the new born king were frankincense and myrrh, which were two of the oldest and most expensive perfumes in history. 

     We need to remember that the biblical world was a hot world.  The climate was one in which perspiration would be a daily problem.  The result was that they were even more concerned about perfume and deodorant than we are today.   The Shulamite girl said her Shepherd lover smelled so fragrant that he was a real hit with all the girls.  If you attract the attention of the nose and nose is given pleasure by what it smells, you have begun the first step in kindling the flame of romantic love.  Studies show that a man notices a woman's perfume even is he doesn't notice her dress or hair.

     Fisherman are using a type of bait that attracts the fish by odor.  Women have been doing this for thousands of years with men, and men likewise with women, for in the ancient world perfume was used as much by men as by women.  Never underestimate the role of the nose in love.  In many parts of the world lovers actually kiss with their nose.  This is not just among the Eskimos, but it is a custom in other parts of the world as well.  In these cultures they do not say give me a kiss, but they say, smell me.  Their very word for kiss means smell, and they get great pleasure in breathing in the odor of those they love.  Visitors to  Madagascar laugh at this custom, but there is a very refine idea behind it.  They believe that every soul has its own unique perfume, and when they kiss they breathe in the odor of their loved one, and they are mingling their souls.  This is to them a very intimate experience by which they achieve a oneness that is more spiritual than that which comes by the mere physical touch of the lips.

     In the Philippine Islands the sense of smell is so refined that by sniffing a pocket handkerchief they can tell if it belongs to their lover.  When they are separated they send bits of their linen to each other so they can keep each other in mind by inhaling each others scent.  This is far more meaningful to them then an x on a piece of paper, for the odor of a lover is a real part of the lover.  What appears foolish to us is really not so foolish after all, but a rather refined romantic use of the nose. 

     The Bible gives evidence to support the idea that each person has a unique odor.  In Gen. 27:27 after Jacob put on the clothes of his brother Esau, he went to deceive his father Isaac.  Isaac was somewhat skeptical, but finally he called him closer and sniffed him and said, "The smell of my son is the good smell of the earth and fields that Jehovah has blessed."  By tricking his nose Jacob got the blessing. Smell plays a greater role in life and love than we realize. There is even a science of smell called Osmics. This is a vast and fascinating  subject, and so I have a more complete study of the Fragrance of Love in another message.  Hopefully this brief introduction will make you want to sniff out the deeper message and get a more powerful whiff of the perfume of love.

11.   ROMANTIC AND RELIGIOUS LOVE  Based on Song of Songs 1:1f

    Love makes the world go round, says the one time popular song, and there are very few who will deny it.  History reveals that one of life's greatest tragedies is to die unloved.  During the Civil War, Charles Sumner was assaulted in the Senate chamber, and was seriously ill for months.  He regretted he had to leave his battle against slavery unfinished, but this was not his deepest pain.  He wrote, "But in the midnight watches, my keenest heart‑gnawing regret was that, if I were called away, I had never enjoyed the choicest experience of life, that no lips responsive to my own had said, I love you." 

     He expressed the minds of millions who would agree.  It would be terrible to live and die and never hear anyone say to you, I love you.  Love may not make the world go round, but it makes men happier as they go around with it.  Love has enabled men to die with heroic valor.  During the great battle of Gettysburg, Pickett was ordered to charge the Union artillery.  As he went to the head of his lines, Wilcox, another commander, rode up to his side, and taking a flask from his pocket said, "Pickett, take a drink with me.  In an hour you will be in hell or glory."  He refused the drink saying, "I promise the little girl who is waiting for me down in Virginia that I would keep fresh upon my lips until we meet again, the breath of the violets she gave me when we parted."  Faithful to his love, he rode off to die without whiskey on his breath.  No one can calculate the power of human love in overcoming evil. 

     Love is the major theme of the Bible.  The two great commandments that sum up the whole Old Testament are love commandments.  Love of God and love of man are the highest values of life.  In the New Testament love is not only the highest virtue and the first fruit of the Spirit, it is the very foundation of the Gospel.  God so loved, is the beginning of the Gospel, and the end result is, we love Him because He first loved us.

     It is of interest to note that love is the greatest theme of man's songs whether they be sacred or secular.  The world revolves around romantic love, and the church around religious love.  The one appeals to the flesh, and the other to the spirit.  It is a serious mistake, however, to conclude that the two are opposed.  They are not necessarily in conflict, for spiritual people also enjoy the experience of romantic love.  In fact, it is only as Christians that we can experience the best of both worlds.  The Christian can love one the physical level and the spiritual level.  In Scripture the two become one, and are linked as closely as the body and spirit.  Each affects the other, and, therefore, romantic love is everywhere in Scripture used as a symbol of religious love.  In other words, God has taken the most common and universal experience of mankind and used it to illustrate the ideal relationship He desires to have with man.

     The Song of Songs is a great love song that deals with love on the level of the physical. All the delights of an ideal romance and marriage are dwelt with in beautiful poetic language.  The Bible would be sadly lacking if it had nothing to say about one of life's most important realms‑the realm of romantic love.  Few, however, have been content to leave it as a romantic song.  It is true that God is not mentioned in the song, and there are no religious words.  Yet, Jews and Christians alike have always seen the secular language of the Song as symbolic of the sacred.  Just as the physical Temple was symbolic of the heavenly Temple, so earthly human love is symbolic of the eternal love union of God and man.  It is no mere accident that eternity begins with a marriage banquet of Christ and His bride.  Heaven is seen as an eternal honeymoon. 

     This is the Song of Songs, that is, the supreme Song, like the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.  The ultimate in songs does not deal with romantic love only, but with the love of God and man.  Religious love does not eliminate romantic love, however, but exalts it.  According to I Kings 4:32 Solomon wrote 1,005 songs.  No doubt many of them dwelt with the theme of love, but this one is the Song of Songs and became a part of Scripture because it deals with love on all levels.  It is the worlds greatest love song.

     Some Christians have been embarrassed by the romantic and physical love of the Song of Solomon.  They have attempted to explain it away as if romantic love was the devil's invention.  The New Testament says in Heb. 13:4 that marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled.  If the Song of Solomon is seen as a pure and honorable love relationship, there is no reason whatever to be embarrassed by its frankness. It is true that the language of the Song is usually reserved for the privacy of the lovers and is not uttered in public, but the fact that the Bible makes it public shows that true and honorable love if God ordained. Man's big problem is he cannot adequately distinguish between love and lust and the result is confusion. Love words can make us think lustful, for they both use the same language and this can be shocking to our minds.

     If there is great confusion over love and sex, then it would be tragic if the Bible did not give us a description of what true love is all about.  It does, however, and we have it right here in this Song of Songs.  Like most poetry dealing with love it is not always easy to  understand.  In fact, sometimes it is very difficult, just like real love in real life.

Poetry tend to lend itself to a variety of interpretations, and there has been a great deal of variety in interpreting this book.  Most everyone agrees it is hard to expound on this

Song, but Bernard of Clairvaux, in the middle ages, preached 86 sermons on it, and this two monks who could never marry.

     From the more liberal perspective, the Interpreter's Bible says, "Of all the books in the Old Testament  none is so difficult to interpret as the Song of Songs."  From the conservative side we read from Dr. James M. Gray, for many years president of Moody Bible Institute, "Of all the books of the Old Testament, I feel myself least competent to speak of the Song of Songs.  I am not ignorant of what others have thought and written about the book, but personally I have not grasped it's contents...." Only a person who has done little study, or who has a great deal of pride, would claim to fully grasp this great love song.  My own approach will be eclectic.  It will attempt to see the truth and the values of the different interpretations held by men of God, both ancient and modern. 

     The most commonly held modern interpretation is that the Shulamite is a beautiful shepherdess girl in love with a young shepherd.  They are engaged to be married, but one day King Solomon traveling by spotted this lovely creature.  When he inquired and found she was not yet married, he ordered his noblemen to bring her to the royal pavilion.  Solomon woes her and treats her like a queen, but all the glory and splendor of Solomon the mighty king could not take the place of her love for her shepherd.  She longs to return to her true love, and forsake the riches of Solomon's palace.  This view is spelled out in detail in the Amplified Bible. 

     The Song is largely her song of love, and her desire to be true to her shepherd lover, and him only, inspite of all the appeals to forsake true love.  She urges the ladies of Solomon's court to stop trying to divert her love from the shepherd to the king.  She is persistent in resisting the charms of Solomon, and dreams only of her lover.  When the ladies of the court ask why she is so loyal to her shepherd, she describes him in eloquent poetry.  Finally, true love triumphs, and she is released, and goes to meet her shepherd lover.  In 8:7 she sums up her experience with these words:  "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.  If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned." 

     True love is permanent and cannot be bought.  She would rather be the wife of a simply shepherd she loved, than number 701 among the wives of King Solomon.  Here was a girl who could say no, even to the king, because she had surrendered herself to her one and only love. 

I love thee‑I love thee!

Tis all that I can say;

It is my vision in the night

My dreaming in the day.

     It is not difficult to see how this interpretation has a spiritual application.  Love, loyalty, and faithfulness to the Savior is what the Christian experience is all about.

As part of the bride of Christ, every Christian goes through what this young girl of the Song goes through.  Every Christian is tempted by the glory of the world to be unfaithful to Christ.  Israel was lured away time and time again by other lovers than her husband Jehovah.  She became an adulterous wife and the whole book of Hosea is about how God in His great love sought her out to forgive and restore her.  The Song of Solomon, however, is a song where the ideal love is maintained.  The bride does not go astray, but remains faithful, and that is why it is the Song of Songs. 

     Paul LeBotz wrote, "The Song of Solomon is the world's greatest love song, because it is an allegory of the world's greatest love story, that of Christ and His Bride."  The romantic experience of falling, and growing in love is the most intense and interesting experience of life.  It is the nearest thing to a religious experience, and that is why romance and religion are linked all through Scripture.  Paul used the language of love to describe the relationship of Christ and the church.  He says that every Christian is engaged to be married, and it is his hope that they will be virgins when the time comes, and not be unfaithful to the Bridegroom.  Listen to II Cor. 11:2‑3 in the New English Bible.  "I am jealous for you with a divine jealousy; for I betrothed you to Christ, thinking to present you as a chaste virgin to her true and only husband.  But as the serpent in his cunning seduced Eve, I am afraid that your thoughts may be corrupted and you may lose your simple‑hearted devotion to Christ." Paul fears they will follow false Christ's and be untrue to their true Lover‑the Good Shepherd. 

     Sex and satisfaction go hand in hand.  The Bible makes it clear that  your sex life can either help or hinder you in your spiritual life.  If you are loyal in your love to your mate, the chances are very good you will be loyal to Christ in the spiritual realm.  If you allow Satan to lure you into an immoral relationship, the chances are very good he will succeed in luring you into spiritual infidelity.  Romance and religion are as close as body and spirit, and what happens in one realm affects the other.  In the final analysis of life, according to the closing chapters of Revelation, every person will fit into one of two categories.  They will either be a part of the Bride of Christ, or part of the Great Whore, who is judged and condemned.  God uses sex symbolism to describe the ultimate destiny of men.  It will be an eternal marriage or everlasting divorce. 

     If Christians ever needed to stress the importance of, and the beauty of, a pure sex life, it is today.  We live in a world where the greatest competitor with Christ is sex.  The world does not have idols of wood and stone, but living idols which seek to lure us from our Lord. It is a constant repetition of the story of the Song of Songs.  Romance, love, and sex need to be diligently studied from a Christian and Biblical point of view, if we expect Christians to be faithful to Christ, as the Shulamite was to her shepherd lover. 

     Even a pure and noble sex relationship can be embarrassing, however, because we are stuck with a fallen nature which is far short of the ideal.  Adam and Eve could look upon nakedness, before the fall, and feel no shame.  This is no longer the case, and the result is,

not all of the Song of Solomon can be expounded in public.  There are many things that are pure and beautiful between mates that are inexpressible in public.  Some of these intimate things are found in this great love song, and should be read in the privacy of your home.

     Someone may object, and insist that all Scripture is given by God, and is profitable, and therefore, all Scripture should be publicly expounded.  This objection fails to take in consideration the fact that the Bible was written for adults.  There is no part of the Bible, to my knowledge, that was written for children.  The Bible is an adult book, and some parts of it are such that only an adult can handle it without being affected in a negative way. Remember, the devil used the Scripture to tempt Christ, and he continues to do so, and an immature person could even be led into immorality through the reading of some Scriptures. I do not say this as a theory, for I have read the history of how the Bible has been used for the promotion of immorality. 

     Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, preached many sermons on the Song of Solomon, but he said, "The song is, in truth, a book for full‑grown Christians."  It was one of his favorites, but he recognized it would be a blank to many Christians who had not gone far nor deep in their love for Christ.  He said, "It's music belongs to the higher spiritual life, and has no charm in it for unspirited ears.....The historical books I may compare to the outer courts of the temple:  The Gospels, the Epistles, and the Psalms, bring us into the holy place or the Court of the priests;  but the Song of Solomon in the most holy place: The holy of holies, before which the veil still hangs to many and untaught believer." 

     Many Christians fail to grasp the beauty of this Song because of personal problems in their own lives.  These make impossible for them to link the sexual and spiritual.  The great expounders of the book were men who loved their wives and their Lord, and could see the beauty of both, and how one illustrated the other.  G. Cambell Morgan wrote,

"It is, first, a revelation of the true nature of human love.  It is, secondly, an  unveiling of the highest religious experience."  Then he said, "The cool, calculating, mechanical man who dislikes this book has never been in love, and probably never will be."  According to Morgan, the reading of this part of Scripture can be a good test of your capacity to love.  If it is disgusting to you, you are wired wrong, and could use some counseling.  If it is delightful to you, you have the capacity to attain to God's ideal for both romantic and religious love. 

     The value of studying this book is that it can lead us into the depths of the two most important love relationships of life:  Love of a man and woman, and love of man and God.  We will better grasp the intensity of Christ's love for us as we see how it relates to the passionate love of human lovers.  Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  And here is the part of the Bible that tells it in powerful romantic poetry.  All love songs are an attempt to express the inexpressible.  There are no end to them, for none ever succeed in saying it all.  The Song of Songs says it better than any other, however, and gives expression to numerous values we will be considering.  We need to keep in mind that we are dealing with the love of Christ, the most intense love that can be known.  The poet put it‑

One there is above all others,

     Oh, how He loves!

His is love beyond the brother's,

     Oh, how He loves!

Earthly friends may fail or leave us,

One day soothe, the next day grieve us;

But this Friend will ne'er deceive us,

     Oh, how He loves!

     If we expect to inner into the experience of this Song of Songs, then our prayer should be that which Dr. Chalmers prayed when he began his study of this book:

"My God, spiritualize my affections, give me intense love to Christ." 

12.   ROMANTIC AND RELIGIOUS KISSES  Based on Song of Songs 1:2

The story is told, and it could very well be true, of a Danish couple who decided to break off their engagement. "It is best I suppose that we give back each others letters," he said. She agreed, and replied, "We should at the same time return each others kisses." By the time they had finished their exchange, they agreed to renew their engagement. There is something about a kiss that does more than merely bring about a union of the lips. It has the power to also bring about the union of lives. Kissing is a matter of the spirit as well as of the body, and that is why kissing is never to be taken lightly. Treating the kiss as a minor matter has led many into relationships where they very carelessly tamper with the deep inner being of others.

The Italians say, "A kiss is like a grain of dust which anyone who would be rid of it can wash away." The Germans looking deeper respond, "A kiss may indeed be washed away, but the fire in the heart cannot be quenched." Kissing is so directly linked with love that to engage in it without love is certain to open the door to lust. A kiss awakened Sleeping Beauty, and it can awaken sleeping lust in anyone. There are many different kinds of kisses, and we will be looking at the most significant of them. The true romantic kiss is to be reserved for that one you desire to one with you on all levels.

What is a kiss? Why it is this‑

It is the cement, it is the glue

Of love that makes me one with you.

There are all kinds of definitions of a kiss. Scientifically it is the ovicular juxtaposition of the oral protrusion of the outer cavity. From the negative view, it is the mutual interchange of salivary bacteria. More romantic is the view that a kiss is a secret told to the mouth instead of the ear. More passionate is the definition of Paul  Verlaine who defines the kiss, "As the fiery accompaniment on the key board of the teeth of the lovely songs which love sings in a burning heart." However you look at it, one thing is sure, kissing is a pleasant reminder that two heads are better than one.

The Song of Songs begins with the problem of a deep desire for kissing, but only one head. The Shulamite girl longs for the kisses of her lover, but she is separated from him. The Song does not begin calmly and build to a climax, but it begins with a burst of passionate frustrated love. "O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth!" When people have been separated for a long time, and then reunited, the first thing they do is kiss. Lovers often take the kiss for granted until they are separated, and then they realize how much they long to embrace and kiss the object of their love. The Shulamite can think of nothing better than the kisses of her lover. She dearly misses her lovers kisses.

With kisses of his mouth, said she,

Let him, now reconciled, kiss me.

Thy love, said she, when it is mine,

Is better than the choicest wine.

Anyone who has ever been separated from a loved one can enter into the intense craving of this young girl, but the question is, what is the spiritual significance of her longing? There is a direct parallel to this romantic longing in the realm of the spirit. Many times the believer's soul feels separated from God, and longs for the good old days of close and loving communion. We sing, everyday with Jesus is sweeter than the day before, but in reality we know this is not so. Many days we can look back and long to return to a former day when our loves seemed sweeter and stronger, and when we sense the presence of Christ more intimately in our lives.

From a spiritual perspective this Song begins with an intense need for the lover of our souls to draw near, and give satisfaction to the longings of our heart. It is a lovers cry which reveals a desperate need to be loved. It is appropriate that this opening cry for love should come from the girl. Studies indicated that women feel the need to be loved more than men. Spiritually it is fitting as well, for the church, the Bride of Christ, feels the need for love more than does Christ. He is self‑sufficient, and does not feel the loneliness or the hunger for love that we do as believers.

Believer's, like this lonely shepherd girl, cannot be happy and satisfied until they experience the kiss of the Shepherd. This was true for the Old Testament saints who looked for the coming of the Messiah. They looked at this lovers cry and said, that is us, Israel crying out to God to come down. We have been kissed by the mouth of Moses and the prophets, but we want the Messiah Himself, for this would be the very kiss of God.

A lady took her nephew to her church one Sunday. He had not been in church before, and was very observant. When the service was over, he was busting with excitement. He said, "Auntie‑did you see God's kiss?" "Whatever do you mean by that?" she asked. "I saw it‑God's kiss‑on the window of the church. I make my kisses crooked when I write my letters, but God's kiss is straight up." Then she realized he was referring to the cross. It was no childish mistake. It was a profound theological insight. The cross was indeed the kiss of God. A kiss is a means of reconciliation, and that is what the cross was in God's plan of redemption. Is it just a coincidence, or is it providential that our symbol for a kiss is a cross? God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, is equivalent to saying, He so loved us that while we were yet sinners, He kissed us. He came to us with a kiss of peace and reconciliation. The cross is the greatest love symbol in the world, and to the Old Testament saints it was the fulfillment of their desire for the kiss of God.

For New Testament believers, the longing is for the Great Shepherd and Lover of our souls to come again. We can look back to the incarnation and the great love of Christ, but, like the Shulamite girl, it is the very love of the past that makes her long for more. One who has never known the joys of love, and the kisses of a lover, cannot crave for them, as can those who have already enjoyed them. The New Testament believer, therefore, has a deeper desire for union with Christ than did the Old Testament saints.

Religious love, like romantic love, varies in it's intensity from day to day, depending upon health, energy, and many circumstances. But when a Christian is feeling his best,  he should long to be possessed by the love of Christ, and kissed into ecstasy by His indwelling presence. He should feel something of what the poet expresses:

Jesus, Thy boundless love to me

No thought can reach, no tongue declare;

Oh, knit my thankful heart to Thee,

And reign without a rival there!

Thine wholly, Thine alone I am,

Lord, with Thy love my heart inflame.

Oh, grant that nothing in my soul

May dwell, but Thy pure love alone!

Oh, may Thy love possess me whole,

My joy, my treasure, and my crown!

The kiss has been called love's great artillery, and by the kiss of the cross our Shepherd lover defeated the divorce plan that Satan had set in motion, and He reconciled God and man. Sin still separates us, however, and we can still have lover's quarrels, and division, which leaves us feeling cut off from the love of Christ. In the spirit realm, as in the romantic, we need to learn to kiss and make up. In fact, Psa. 2 ends with this verse, "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye parish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him."

The kiss had a very religious significance all through Bible times. To kiss can mean to acknowledge one as Lord. The picture of kissing the Pope's foot, and kissing idols, goes way back in history, when the kiss had a religious meaning. Listen to what God said to Elijah in I Kings 19:18, "Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him." To have kissed Baal was to have submitted to him as Lord. And so, to have kissed Christ is to have submitted to Him as Lord. Kissing the Son, therefore, is the only way to escape the wrath of God, and enjoy the romance of eternity. Kissing is a very serious religious matter.

Kissing and idolatry went hand in hand all through the Old Testament. Worshippers of the sun and moon would express their loyalty to these false deities by kissing their hands and pointing to the sun or moon. Job refers to this practice, and he denies he was ever guilty of it in Job 31:26‑28. "If I have looked at the sun when it shone, or the moon moving in splendor, and my heart has been secretly enticed, and my mouth has kissed my hand; this also would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges, for I should have been false to God above." If men do not kiss the true Lover of their souls, they will be kissing some deceiver. Idolatry is simply kissing a false lover. It is a giving of your souls affection to something, or someone, who cannot love and save your soul. The point is, religious kisses,

like romantic ones, must be kept exclusive.

Men have always gone astray when they kissed any other than the one and only Lover of their soul. It fits the whole pattern of Old Testament history that Judas should betray Jesus with a kiss. God's people have always betrayed Him with a kiss. They offered their love to Him, but then went after other gods and kissed them as well. That is what Judas was doing. He kissed Jesus, but then longed to kiss the thirty pieces of silver that he got for betraying Him even more. True love keeps its kisses exclusively for the lover. Spurgeon wrote, "The kiss is a mark of worship; to kiss Christ is at the same time to recognize Him as God, and to pay Him divine worship." Those who never kiss the Son in this religious sense will never experience the love of God, and the salvation that comes because of it.

Because kissing had such a religious significance in ancient history, and in Biblical culture, it became a part of the every day life of the early Christians. Peter closes his first Epistle by writing, "Greet one another of the kiss of love." Paul in Rom. 16:16 writes,  "Greet one another with a holy kiss." He says the same thing in I Cor. 16:20, and in II Cor. 13:12. Then in I Thess. 5:26 he writes, "Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss." There was obviously a lot of kissing going on in the early churches, which is foreign to us to day. We still kiss in the church, but only after weddings, and even there you had better be careful. One guy said to another, "How did you get that black eye?" He said, "I kissed a bride after the wedding." "Why everyone does that," the other guy said, mystified. "Yeah," responded the injured man, "But this was two years after the wedding." Kissing the bride has to be timed right, or else. The New Testament seems to indicate, however,  that the Bride of Christ was to be almost continually engaged in kissing one another as a form of greeting.

This practice has had quite a history. In the 13th century it was practiced in France where women kissed women, and the men kissed men. It developed in many areas that men would kiss women on the hand as a greeting. In England, in the 13th century, a special instrument was used to help the faithful obey Paul's command. It was a metal disc with a holy picture on it, and it was passed around the church for all to kiss. This did not prove to be very helpful as a kiss of peace, since it started a lot of quarrels as to who deserved the honor of kissing it first. It also led to youthful shenanigans in church, for the boys tried to sit next to pretty girls and kiss it after them. And old poem says,

I told the maid that she was fair,

I've kissed the Pax just after her.

The reformation abolished all this type of thing. The Greek church still practices the kiss of peace on Easter Sunday. Kissing as an act of respect and reverence was common in days past, but this is no longer the case. Men kissed each other all the time in Biblical days, and it was a normal part of life. In the middle ages, knights kissed before a duel,

just as boxers today shake hands before a fight. The hand shake has become to us what the kiss was to the early Christians. A hand shake today is equivalent to a holy kiss.