The Great Wedding!

Song of Songs 3:5 - 5:1

The Reformer's Fire
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Exposition by Max A Forsythe

In my ongoing participation in the consumer economy, I have become accustomed to having an operator's manual for most of the significant household equipment and appliances. I have kept the more important ones in a notebook for many years and have found that reading directions and following recommendations can really make life safer and keep expensive equipment working longer so that I can get my money's worth! It is absolutely amazing what an average person can do with a well written set of assembly instructions. Last fall, I was even able to assemble a complete satellite system which worked the first time we turned it on! Imagine my frustration when I was forced to convert computer systems a few years ago when the new equipment and software came to my other job site with absolutely no useful documentation. I was told that the reason we got such a good price for installation was the fact that we really didn't need any manuals or instructions!

Such is the modern attitude of enthusiastic managerial methods, the employees are always happy to improvise! No wonder so many computers have become glorified paper weights in so many places where the workers barely make do as they are able. One interesting observation of places that change systems in order to stay up with technology, is that about the third time the employees are required to learn a new system, they give up learning it well, because of the constant commitment to change - change - change! In an era where almost every change is worshipped as a sign of progress, it is noteworthy that those economic and political commitments have been adapted wholesale socially as well.

Friends are no longer made for life, and marriage is commonly viewed to be viable as long as the couple continues to love each other. And since change is so much in the air no real commitment is made to learning how to love, sacrifice and forgive! And since nothing is sacred in our secular environment, there is hardly any interest in things that are spiritual. Recent surveys even indicate that young people raised in and out of church have the same statistical interests in premarital arrangements in their intimate relationships. It is as if almost every Thomas, Richard & Jane has forgotten that our human bodies were born with an operating manual for health, wealth and holiness!

That of course is God's revealed Word to us in the Old and New Covenants. One of the most important instructions in that manual is that men and women are to pair off (one to another) and to be bonded in a permanent Covenant of Companionship for life.

Unfortunately, as we consider the example of Solomon in our passage from Song of Songs, we know that he went on to glorify the power and prestige of his kingdom by taking many diplomatic brides and surrounded himself not only with a court and an army, but also a harem as well. Such are the temptations of absolute power as we see enacted even in our own White House. The saddest thing about Solomon and our own imitator of Solomon's prowess is that the abuse of power plays so well in the press and to the public! Yes the years of Solomon's reign were indeed prosperous and for a time, he was popular, but upon his death, the true state of affairs became more evident and the taxes to build up the Kingdom fed enough resentment that the Kingdom became divided.

It is unwise to make predictions for the future, but given what happened to the Soviet Union almost ten years ago, I am ambivalent about the next century. I have even read in a few places about a growing League of the South whose least concern is any sports competition. I am disturbed that people who should know better are becoming a part of such an enterprise! And that political activity of people associated with our denomination could eventually cause us no end of troubles! But, I digress, and we need to return to the wedding focus of the passage before us, since it is the honor of married love that is held up before us in this wonderful song of Solomon.

Ah, but there is also something more as well as every age of orthodox preaching has perceived. There is here in this wedding celebration a glorious hint of what is someday to come. Not only is the wedding of Solomon celebrated here, but so too is the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as well. Even as we appreciate the love of Solomon here for his bride so may we know the love of Christ for His very own Church. Then in the Edenic garden scene where the wedding supper is to be played out, we get a real hint of the Wedding Supper of the Lamb at the end of the age, when Christ and Church are finally united in a heavenly paradise. Finally at the end of our passage there is personal invitation to the table of our Lord Jesus Christ:

Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers.

In spite of the human failures of Solomon and Christ's own Church, let us see the glorious beauty of the most mysterious of relationships in the coming age, and then having supped with Him in anticipation of that great Day, let us love our wives and husbands in imitation of His holy example. And may it be brethren, that by our lives - others too may be invited into the Divine relationship.

In biblical times as well as our own, serious resources are devoted to the nuptial celebrations. There is in our Presbyterian system a little known responsibility of the Pastors. That responsibility is the most neglected and ignored instruction ever to be given to serious preachers. Simply put, pastors are to instruct brides and grooms that the marriage celebration is to be accomplished without any unnecessary ostentation. In other words, the expenses are to be kept at a reasonable level! I don't think I've ever met a pastor who wielded enough spiritual authority to pull that one off! And why not, even the most hedonistic members of society realizes that there is something special about a wedding. And as long as the wedding consultants do not try to tell the Pastor what to do during the ceremony, a viable peace may be maintained! So let us look at the sumptuous imitation of the Great Day when the Lamb and Bride will finally be united for all eternity.

Look at the image in verse six, there is a hearkening back to the "Pillar of essence" that led the people forth from Egypt and to the promised land. Here however, the dust settles and only the earthly glory of Antiquities greatest and wisest king trots out of the whirlwind of dust raised by the royal entourage. Notice that the King has an escort as has every monarch of even limited means. Over 2,000 have flown off to Africa to be part of the economic and political calvacade showing the American flag in the last week. Louis Charles Napoleon III had his personal regiment of Guides, Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzolleran, his magnificent Garde du Korps and even General Patton had a squadron of mechanized cavalry whose nickname was "Patton's own"! The Marine Band and the Secret Service are merely modern equivalents of the entourage described here.

In chapter four the scene changes to the sumptuous visage of the bride. Let us be careful to not make any allegorical comparisons of the love expressed by Solomon with the greater love of Christ for His own bride the Church. We see in the singing of the King here, a sensuous description full of sights, smells and sumptuous ravishing of poetic license to celebrate the love of a man for a woman. We will hear from the bride in another week. To many humans the exquisite relationship between bride and groom is the height of human experience. While the spiritual relationship between Christ and Church can be no less, it will certainly be different.

We are to understand from the passion of the poetry here, that human experience on earth just doesn't get any better than the life long companionship of man and woman should be. And in Paradise, after our Lord has returned, only then will we realize a full relationship that is beyond our capacity to comprehend - yet different from the very best we can know. My commentator Stuart Olyott says that "The church is to Christ what the spouse is to Solomon. He will one day come for his bride and take her to his royal palace. There he will present her to himself, a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but ... holy and without blemish."

Yesterday afternoon I took some time to enjoy a Science Fiction movie. It was a typical plot of aliens coming to conquer and destroy earth. A handful of humans were kidnapped for serious study so that the aliens could make an easier conquest. However, one of the alien researchers began to admire the human spirit and eventually took up their cause and sent the invaders away because she had learned to love humanity. I know that that is a very poor example of God's great love for the elect of every nation. But it is that marvelous love that even the Angels long to look into!

Finally, paradise is realized, the marriage is celebrated and the guests are invited to participate in the wedding supper of Solomon and the Shulamite. Of course, there are many who go to weddings whose tender age or condition of relationship does not allow them to completely fulfill the wedded bliss of bride and groom which we may intimate in several of the phrases before us. However, while the bride and groom are distracted for the while, the guests are encouraged to celebrate in the sumptuous feasting. And so while we may not yet realize the real joys of the full relationship between Christ and Church at the end of the age, like the guests we are enjoined to take a foretaste of that great wedding supper of the Lamb.

So today, we come to His table, to learn of the price paid for the Bride, and to drink and eat while we remember that we are His and He is ours. Yes, there is real fruit of the vine and the unleavened bread to taste. And while it is sweet to our lips and sweeter still to our hearts, our experience this morning around His table is only a foretaste of what is to come, when He returns. Come quickly Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen.

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