Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is the Bible Anti-Sex? | The Writings | Song of Songs

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Is the Bible pro-sex or anti-sex? Is sex something you celebrate? How do wisdom and sex work together? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Song of Songs encourages us to see sex in marriage as a gift of God that glorifies Him. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Song of Songs

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Before we hop in, I want to note that we're discussing Song of Songs today, which is probably the most graphic and sensual book in the entire Bible. So if you're listening to this with your kids or teenagers, you might want to give it a listen first before you share it. With that caveat of mind, let me ask you a question. Is the Bible pro-sex or anti-sex? Is the Bible pro-romance or anti-romance. When the Bible imagines the life of righteous lovers before their marriage, do they social distance, lest they lust? Or are they overrun with overheated sexual passion?

If you answered that question based on what many Christians talk and write, the answer would be obvious. The Bible is suspicious of sex. It's suspicious of romance and even erotic passion. The best relationships before marriage follow the six-inch rule at all times. And if that's you, it might be best to turn off this podcast and go read the song of songs instead, because it's a book so shocking in its graphic passion that some Christians have tried to neuter it by saying that it is only an allegory of Christ's love for the church, and of course the church's love for Christ. We'll come back to that idea later, but on the surface, it's inescapable. This is a love poem in which two lovers praise one another's bodies. They long to touch each other's bodies. They long to kiss and reach and seek and find,

It's called the Song of Songs, which in Hebrew would be a way of saying this song is the best of all songs. And it's a song of Solomon. Now, that doesn't mean that Solomon wrote it. In fact, he probably didn't. But it does mean that it's in the wisdom tradition that Solomon started. In fact, we can be quite sure that he didn't write this because the Song of Songs is not a celebration of ancient harems. If you didn't know, Solomon wasn't always wise. He had over 900 wives.

and the couple in this song, they only have each other. And that's the way it's supposed to be. So on the one hand, this love song is a critique of its own culture. It's love between one man and one woman, but it's also not a celebration of modern culture, hookup culture, limitless, sexual self-expression. Now, those may be the things our most racy songs celebrate, but that's not what this book is celebrating. In the song of songs, there are three voices. There's a man, and there's a woman, and there's the daughters of Jerusalem. Those last voices, they're kind of like a chorus that engages with the main characters from time to time. But the man and the woman are the focus, and they're engaged to be married. He calls her his bride, and they long for their wedding day together.

Now, in the song, the man and the woman express their admiration of one another's bodies in graphic terms. They describe their sexual desire and their deep longings to run away with each other, and it's clear they want one thing to quote the song of songs, to have their fill of love together. The woman says this to the man in Song of Songs 1. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes.

Your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you. Take me away with you. Let's hurry. Let the king bring me into his chambers. She envisions him as a king. She wants to run away with him. Hearing his voice gives her flutters in her stomach.

The man says to the woman in Song of Song 7, How beautiful you are and how pleasing my love with your delights. Your stature is like that of the palm tree, and your breasts are like clusters of fruit. I said, I will climb the palm tree. I will take hold of its fruit. May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples,

and your mouth like the best of wine. Again, this song is graphic. It is passionate. It is exuberant in its erotic love. Let's keep going. We read yet again of their passion in Song of Songs 4 and 5. The man says to the woman, You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon. And this is how she responds. Awake north wind and come south wind, blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into its garden and taste its choice fruits. And he says back, I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride.

I have gathered my my my my my mure with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey. I have drunk my wine and my milk. It's enough to make you blush, isn't it? And if you've known the passion of love before marriage, then I don't doubt that you can see yourself in their reflection. In fact, when they're separated, all they want is each other. They're always seeking each other out. Their love almost drives them mad. And when they're reunited, the passion they feel is so overwhelming that almost every reader expects an immediate description of the sexual act itself, and then suddenly it will stop, and a refrain will break out. Here's one example from Song of Songs 8. The woman says, his left arm is under my head, his right arm embraces me.

And then suddenly the passion stops, and she says this, Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. So what in the world is happening in the Bible's greatest love song? Well, I think to answer that we have to go back to the beginning of the book, which remember, it says it's a song in the tradition of Solomon. Indeed, the man is compared to Solomon, a king several times throughout the book. But why is there this connection to Solomon? Well, it's because Song of Songs is wisdom literature. It's here to make you wise. And this is the shocking wisdom of Song of Songs. It is a wisdom that

contradicts both the sexual prude and the sexual libertine. To the prude, the Song of Songs says, God made sex, and he made desire and romance and passionate. It is very good. It's not something. to be embarrassed by? It's something to sing about. It's something to enjoy, something to celebrate. It says to this young married couple that there is true beauty and their passion and their erotic desire for one another. And so its wisdom contradicts the prude, but it also contradicts the sexual liberty. To that person it says that this does not mean that we can take sex lightly and make love to whomever we like, however we like. To the contrary, this song shows that sex is not merely a physical act. It is a spiritual bond. It is a powerful force. It cannot be taken lightly,

and that's why it is only for a man and a woman in marriage. That's why it says again and again, do not arouse love before its time comes. It's warning its readers, in lust, not to arouse love. The couple don't make love in the story because they're wise. They hold their sexual passion for the wedding bed. In Song of Songs 8, the singer describes love as a fire. Now think about that for a second. A fire can do great good. It can warm a house. It can cook food. But a fire can also be destructive. It can burn a house down. It can take life. And that is the message of Song of Songs. Love is a fire. And it's a fire that we can and should celebrate before marriage, but it's also a fire we must be cautious with. And pressing beyond that, I don't doubt that all of

its raciness is designed to help married people stoke the same fire in their marriage. even in their old age. In a beautiful way, it is trying to help you, if you've been married for a long time, reattached to the passionate desire of your youngest days. It's challenging you to reclaim that fire, to drink your fill of love, to enjoy your spouse's body, and to be captivated by her or his beauty. All of this takes me back to where I started, which is the idea that this book is an allegory of Christ's love for the church. Well, obviously, I think first and foremost, it is just a love song celebrating sex and sexuality and the beauty of love. But on another level, there is a deep truth. This does show us something about Jesus, because Jesus does love us with a passion that is not erotic.

It outstrips the erotic passion of the man and the woman. And just as the bride was distraught, if she wasn't with her groom in the song of songs, in the exact same way, we should be distraught without Jesus. We should seek after him. We should desire to be with him more than anyone else. And so, in a strange way, perhaps this book is telling us to love Jesus more deeply. Perhaps it's telling us how deep and how passionate his love is for us. And perhaps it's also telling us at the same time that one way we seek him in practical life is first by choosing not to awaken sex and sexual arousal in places it doesn't belong. But also, we can love him and we can celebrate him by choosing to radically enjoy the gift of sex

and erotic love in marriage. Thank you.