First or Second Love?

Song of Songs 5:2 - 6:3

The Reformer's Fire
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Exposition by Max A Forsythe

Years ago, right after I had settled into my first charge, I began to learn about the Holy Spirit. For a short while when I would wake up late at night, I could pray without thinking and forcing the words. At that time, it was unheard of for Presbyterian pastors to be "filled with the Spirit" and being limited by the character of my ethnic stock, I was not overly thankful for the experience nor did I seek to have the minimal gift continued.

Of course there was more to it than that. We were in the midst of a "revival" in the county and the more "spiritual element" of the ministry were using every opportunity to steal sheep from the obviously more liberal flocks in the area. Even though I had participated with the evangelical wing of the county and had met and prayed with them, my little flock was also raided for lambs to enfold into the more charismatic crowds. The distress of this sheep stealing even in the midst of a modest revival within the congregation that I served has set my heart against much of the fundamentalist and charismatic crowd, and I didn't want any experience that might indicate I was as dishonest and devious as they had been.

Of course I learned within a year of that revival that liberals were far far worse skunks in the stench of their false piety than the machinations of the evangelical crowd. Yet in spite of every sorry excuse with those who claimed to be the representatives of Christ, I was called and ordained into the ministry fifteen years after ordination. Sometimes, the experience of the church is indeed like a bad bad dream

With all of that said, we can begin to comprehend the dream sequence reported by the Shulamite in the passage before us. The sequence is simple. In her dream she hears Solomon at the door of her chamber door and while he has traveled long and hard to be with her, she is tired and a little cranky at being awakened. "Must I get up and put on clothes to answer the door", she wonders in her sleep filled trance? What a bother!

How often after the glow of a first love, habit and real character kick in and the new spouses find themselves very different people than those they fell in love with? It usually takes two years for the married lovers to come to this point. Then you have to learn to love all over again in a different more mature way. Sometimes couples are unwilling to make the effort and continually cling to those desperate aspirations of the first love. And there they remain continually for life set in a pattern of being in love with love instead of growing and maturing into a love of the spouse they have been arranged with in a life long Covenant of Companionship.

In the passage before us, we see that the Shulamite does indeed get up, dresses and hurries out into the streets to seek the one she dreamed had come to her. She realizes that her own reception was cool in the least if not downright cold! How much do these verses describe my own experience and that of the Church as a whole. Just as the feminist crowd has encouraged a whole generation of young women to be stand offish, to maintain an independent spirit and to refrain from submission to any male - so too have we as members of the Bride of Christ caught the same bad habits. And like the Shulamite, the church has wandered through the dark and dreary streets seeking a lord worthy of worship. Going places that are dangerous and also dark and dreary where He cannot be found.

Providentially this is a dream for the Shulamite and even as her heart is quickened to desire His presence - He comes again to her in the eternal garden of delightful fellowship. My commentator Stuart Olyott describes this scene in the life of the church in this way: "Sometimes Christ withdraws his presence from his people. This is because they lose their first love. ... Once he has gone, the believer realizes that he cannot live without him and repents of the unworthy treatment that he has shown him."

What indeed will bring Him back? Even as the Church awaits His second coming, we may have certain spiritual hints that He is not far away. And like the loving Shulamite, if we can begin to describe His excellencies and talk of His greatness - if we continue to worship and exalt Him - if we meditate on His names, titles, beauties and graces then we know He is still with us. Oh how much is our spiritual life like this great love poem of our God and King! When we recite David and Solomon's verses to and for our King, we know Him even as He has known us.

If Jesus Christ seems so very far away and only a dream to you, it is good to remember your first love for Him and meditate upon the reasons that you love Him truly. This is why in centuries past, that the psalms were so often sang at work in the home and fields, as well as at worship. In the act of worship we may know Him again as He draws close to us in the Spirit, and this is the particular joy of worship that we do indeed sense His face until that great day when we shall see Him for eternity. May the Spirit of Christ fill you richly today and all days even as you remember Him and draw closer to Him.

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