Post-Fight Delight

And if you have a copy of the scriptures, Song of Solomon, chapter 7 is where we're going to be for the second to last message in this series. That means we're going to land this plane next year, next week, rather. We're going to take a long time in chapter 8. One of my favorite stories that highlights how things can go awry in relationships is the story of a woman who was headed out for work, big meeting, had specifically picked out a special dress she was going to wear for this day at work, had had it dry cleaned for the occasion. And she needed help, as sometimes wives do, getting the zipper up. So she went to her husband on the way out the door with her coffee already in the tumbler, whole day in front of her. And she said, could you please zip up my dress? And the husband grabbed the zipper, as sometimes husbands do, and sort of went up a little bit, but then back down, and up a little bit, and then back down. And she said, quit it. I'm late. Quit it. He was kind of taking it as a moment to be flirtatious a little bit. Zipper up, zipper down, zipper up. She said, stop it. She was not in any kind of mood, had no kind of time

for this behavior. And so she went to say, stop it, quit. But as she did, he held onto the zipper and the dress tore. She was not impressed. She was not pleased. And she let him know it, and she had to rush off to find something else to wear, and didn't even say goodbye as she left. She was steaming mad. How insensitive, how thoughtless, how careless of him. And so she went to her work in her second best choice for outfits. And when she came home, her husband was under the truck working. All she could see was his legs sticking out from the truck working. And still not over this, when she saw his zipper, she thought, two can play at this game. And so she went up, and without a word, grabbed the zipper, and zipped it up, and zipped it down, and zipped it up, and zipped it down. And then up, and down, up, and down, up, and down. And thinking she had made her point quite clear, she went into the house, where she was shocked to find her husband standing in the kitchen. And she said, what are you doing here? And he was surprised. He said, I live here. She said, who's under the car?

Who's under the car? She said, the next door neighbor's under the car. He was helping me with the muffler. It was coming off. And she explained what she had done. And so together, they went outside. He's still holding the iced tea that he had gone inside to get for his friend. And they went out, and man was lying motionless. The legs were just like a cadaver, you know? And they called his name, no answer. Called his name, no answer. Finally, they grabbed his legs, pulled him out. Man was unconscious. When he came to, he explained that he did exactly what you would do if your legs were sticking out from under a truck, and someone started playing with your zipper. You sat up as quick as you could, and he did. This is not a true story. All right, so the point is conflict is inevitable, and getting even seldom works to your advantage in relationships. When we last looked at the Song of Solomon, we saw them have their first significant marital spat. We saw a massive fight. It ended with him rushing off, angry and sulking and not getting his needs met, so retreating, and her having not gotten her needs met, clamping down and not giving him any love because she hadn't felt love.

And it was just so relatable. If you've been married for any length of time, you're like, I feel completely seen. And not even just for marriage. I mean, just any relationship that you've been in that's worth having is going to have conflict. We said that you cannot get relationships right if you get conflict wrong. And we wish there was no conflict. Some of us, from our pattern of origin, what we saw in our parents was they just didn't admit to having conflict. They didn't talk about having fights. They would just keep calm and carry on and move past it. And so in our minds, sometimes we're like, oh my gosh. Things are going bad because there's a fight. No, listen. The Bible says that if there's no oxen, the trough will stay clean. Imagine how clean your barn would be if there are no animals in it. Imagine how great this church would be if there's no people in it. Imagine there'd be no problems, but there'd be no power either. And so how are we to think about conflict inside a relationship? It's the table stakes for intimacy. It gives the capacity and the possibility for there to be something to be treasured, for there's something to be valued. So we're not to be afraid of conflict,

but we are going to need to know how to navigate it, which we had a whole message just about how to fight fairly. If you missed it, check it out. And in front of us today, we see the reward for handling conflict well. And that is, well, makeup sex. That's what we get in Psalm of Solomon chapter 7. Makeup sex, a whole message on makeup sex. Now, that might feel like more like something you'd see on HBO Max than something you're expecting to see Sunday morning in church. In fact, while preparing this message, a friend texted me and said, what do you got for us this weekend? I was like, where are we going? I can't even, where are we going? And I said, well, basically, makeup sex. He said, makeup sex as a sermon? I said, well, what do you call intimacy after an intense conflict? He wrote back one word, unlikely. Too good, too good. And yet, that is exactly, oh man, that is exactly what's before us on the heels of a crazy fight. We find, in the title of my message, a post-fight delight, a post-fight delight. And I would never advocate getting into a fight on purpose. And yet, the joy of what can come after working through conflict in a way

that you both feel satisfied, where you've not just prioritized being right, but the relationship, getting right. And there's a huge difference there. There is such a sweet cherry on top that sexual intimacy comes when you've fought to maintain oneness inside the relationship. So what we find is they've made up, and now they're about to make out. And I want to point four things out to you that really can help anybody in any marriage of any length of time keep that spice, keep that tender-loving feeling going on inside your relationship over the long haul. The first thing is creativity. I want you to jot these four things down. They're elements we're going to see in their embrace. Verse 1, how beautiful are your feet in sandals. Look at her. Oh, prince's daughter. The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a skillful workman. He basically is giving God a compliment here. You did good when you made her. Now, your attention, please. He begins here the exact opposite of how he started in Song of Solomon, chapter 4, which was their honeymoon, because then he started with her hair. Remember, he called unfortunate compliments from the Bible, Bob. He said, your hair reminds me of a flock of goats

or a herd of goats going down a mountainside. You're like, that's crazy. And yet here, he's not starting with the top of her head working down. What is he starting with? He's starting with the bottom of her feet working up. And he will do the exact same thing he did the other time, only now it's in reverse. Now, you go head to toe, toe to head. What difference does that make? And I would say to you, the fact that there is a difference is the difference that it makes. He's seeking to change things up. He's seeking to mix things up. And that is a passion enhancer, variety being the spice of life. How do you keep the spice in marriage? Well, you've got to keep there being variety. Now, with that being said, I think sometimes routines or going through the motions gets a bad rap, right? Or going through the motions, right? Well, hold on a second. There is something really powerful and, indeed, sexy about discipline when it comes to a schedule. There's something really intensely intimate about there being a predictability to it that you can count on someone. So when we talk about our relationship with God being intimate or our relationships with each other being intimate, a daily time in the word

that's predictable, a daily time as a family having dinner that's predictable, regular date nights that you can count on that go into the schedule, these things actually safeguard a relationship. I think sometimes in the name of spontaneity, we're actually praising just being flaky, right? I just do it when I feel it. And there's something to be said for there being a routine. But if that's all that there ever is, then you can, indeed, get stuck into a rut. And so what you need to do is have the safeguard of the normal. And then you have the exceptions to the rule here. And so it's him saying, what is going to be counted on is I'm going to praise you. Now, how I'm going to do it, I'm going to keep you guessing. I'm not going to get lazy and lethargic in how I approach what is comfortable and safe to me, and that is our sexual love, OK? So if he did it every single time, she would expect it exactly as it would come. And what you, this is an important principle, what you expect, you can easily come to neglect. And if something's just always going to be this way, it's easy to not even care. You can see it anymore. So creativity keeps you on your toes. And I see this in the life and ministry of Jesus. When you look at the ways that he heals people in the New Testament, one of the things that's

interesting about it is it's almost never the same way twice. Even when he does do it a way that's similar, there's differences to it. There's like the toe to head, head to toe kind of things. Like he might use mud, but he might make the mud on the guy's eyes versus making the mud in his hands. There's things that cause Jesus to keep those around him leaning into him in faith. That's why C.S. Lewis, by the way, chose getting into Narnia can never happen the same way. Sometimes it's magic greens. Sometimes it's the wardrobe. You have to sort of stay on your toes. And I think creativity inside a sexual relationship is no different. All right, so creativity is so important. What are ways, now we're putting application, that we can be creative? Maybe if you hate moving, like rhythm, sign you and your spouse up for dance lessons. Or if you love dancing, you do something different. The point is you're mixing it up. You're proposing things to get you both out of your comfort level. So be creative. Second thing we're going to see is sensitivity. They are sensitive to each other's needs. Did you know it used to be that when a divorce happened,

you could almost always assume infidelity? Because when divorce lawyers were surveyed, and they would say, what's the reason for this marriage breaking up, it was almost always that adultery was the top of the list. But it's not the same anymore. Now, 67% of marriages in this country that end cite the breakdown of communication as the factor that led to the divorce. So that goes to show that communication is incredibly important. And why am I telling you that? Well, you can't very well be sensitive to someone's needs if you're not aware of what they are, can you? And so it is when it comes to ideas and dreams and expectations and wants. But I would say the same is true in the sexual side of the relationship. You need to be able to speak to each other about what is working and what isn't working, what you like, what you don't like, so that you then can do more of what they enjoy and less of what they don't. You don't want either of you to be tolerating it. So you need to, as hard as it can be and as foreign as it might feel, to talk about these things. And as we've highlighted throughout the series, the needs and the desires and the turn-ons and the turn-offs of a man and a woman can be very different. In painting with a broom, men tend to be wired visually, where women respond to words,

to things being spoken to them, to things that they read, which goes to show what we both need to be very careful about what we're taking in, what images we're taking in and what words we're taking in. When we ended chapter six, we saw them working through the fight, and as the fight ended, the word was repeated four times, return, return, return, return, return to the dance. Okay, and so we're talking about the give and take of a marriage being very much like dancing with someone. And if you thought you were dancing salsa, but they were doing the waltz, you'd be stepping all over each other. So there needs to be a unity of purpose and a clarity of direction in order to be able to dance with someone, to move with someone. Theologians describe the Trinity as the divine dance, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, moving, flowing, just a constant, lively relationship. And what an honor it is to be invited into that as being one with Christ, as being in Christ Jesus, participating in the divine life, the dance of God. So in a marriage, if we think about it as a dance, we're talking about them now being in unity. They've worked through the conflict, the thing that had caused them both to wall up and to stand with their back against the wall. They're no longer dancing. Now they've returned to the dance, okay? And they're not just dancing any dance.

As the fight ends, literally, theologically, almost every commentary says, there's no easy way to put it, so we're just gonna say it. She's doing a sexual dance for him. He's sitting in a chair in the room. They've worked through the fight, right? People in this world will go into a building and pay for strangers to dance for them. But here's the right use of that appetite, right? We talk about sin as a disordered love. Why would it be that you have athletes and rappers singing and smirking and posting about, with relish, going to the strip club, right? Because it's a disordered love of the righteous use of being visually turned on, which God gave you not for another image bearer, someone else's daughter, someone else's sister, someone else's mom, but for God to have. All of those gifts functioning and the juices flowing within the marriage. So we shouldn't find it at all weird that she leads Solomon to a chair, and now she's doing the dance for him, OK? And as he's watching her dance, he starts with her feet. He moves his way up to her thighs, and then he jumps to her belly button. Verse 2, your navel is a rounded goblet. It lacks no blended beverage. You thought body shots came from your fraternity. No, they came from the Bible.

That's what's happening here. Who needs a red Dixie cup when I got your belly button, girl? That's what he's saying to her. He then says, whew, your waist, this part's wild, is a heap of wheat. Just what every girl wants to hear, right? Set about with lilies. Waist like wheat? Stomach like a wine glass? What is happening here? He's basically saying, I want to eat and drink you up. I love you so. And you have to think about how the Jewish year was framed. They had the early and the latter rain. And you have with wheat and with wine, you have a fall crop and a spring crop. So in him pulling these illusions in, as she in her negligee or whatever is dancing for him, he's saying, you are mine all year long. I want you in every season. I want you. I want you when it's wine time. I want you when it's wheat time. I want you, girl, all year long. And I will also just point out he's going slowly because he started with her toes. Then he got to her thighs. And now you'll notice he's at her waist. He's at her belly button, which there's some parts of the anatomy that he chose to skip.

Why? Because he's allowing the anticipation to build. He's not going for the gold. Men, take careful attention, right? He's building desire, taking his time, teasing her by skipping. What he skips as well as what he selects is all part of the experience. Continuing his journey upwards, verse 3, your two breaths are like two fawns. This is language he has employed before. Apparently, it's sort of a nickname for them, the twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes like the pools in Heshbon by the gate of Beth Rabin. Your nose, this one I know I would hard pass if someone ever said this to me, is like a tower, a tower of Lebanon, which we said last week was the Paris of the Middle East. And that day was a city of light, city of love. And that tower apparently looked towards Damascus. All right, now, obvious cultural barriers for our flowing with this. What he's saying to her is, you are royalty. You are royalty. And if you were here at the beginning, we anchored our time by the biographical detail that's necessary for the context to come springing to life. And that is the fact that he is a king and queen's son, and now the king.

And she's a peasant. She's a farmer, right? She said, I feel like I don't make sense in the big city. I'm insecure about my looks. I'm insecure about my place here, right? So now she's thrust into this royal life, living out a Cinderella story. And you better believe she's got some imposter syndrome. She's got some, he'd be happier with a true royal woman. He'd be happier with a real queen. I don't fit here. I don't make sense here, right? I can't handle his schedule. That's how they got in the fight in the first place. She didn't realize how intense state dinners were going to be, and all these expectations, and butlers, and this outfit, and which fork do I, all that. She's basically, what is he doing? He's being so sensitive, not only to her needs for him to be slow and to speak praise, but also to speak to her core fundamental insecurities. He's like, you are regal. You are elegant. All the language pieces that he used basically just say, you're stately. You're majestic. You carry yourself so well. Everyone's eyes in the room at that banquet, they're on you. This is vital. Some language that has helped Jenny and I over the years

because it's so easy to bag on your own body. We all see our own imperfections. We all see our own flaws, things we could change. Jenny and I are really quick to catch each other because we're better at helping each other than we are our own selves at times, which is, hello, the point of marriage, to be strong where someone else is weak. And whenever Jenny is bagging on herself or vice versa, what we'll do is we'll say, don't talk about my wife that way. Don't you talk about my wife that way. No one gets to talk about my wife like that, not even you. And if you stop for a moment being your spouse's cheerleader, the devil will find someone who will fill that vacancy. The devil will find someone who will come in and speak to that that you're not to. So don't leave that position of encourager vacated for a moment. Don't let anybody else fill it. Continue to do so. And as he does, he says, verse 5, your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. And the hair of your head, what is it like? He says it's like purple. A king is held captive by your tresses. He's noticing she did something different with her hair because now it's not a herd of goats. Now it's like it's purple, which is the royal color. Maybe she had it dyed.

Who knows? The king is basically, I'm hypnotized by your hair as she dances. How fair and how pleasant you are, oh, love, with all your delights. Mount Carmel, I will tell you in passing, was widely considered the most beautiful mountain in all of Palestine. And he says, I'm delighted by it. You light me up in every possible way. The message translation of the verse 6 is this, your beauty within and without is absolute. Your beauty inside, your beauty outside, it is absolute. Now just pause right there, your attention, please. She is dancing seductively, this sort of striptease dance for him. She's being sensitive to his needs. He is being sensitive to her needs and giving her this verbal encouragement, overcoming her insecurities. She's being coaxed out, coming alive. His words are literally giving her life. And I'll just have you note that if you add up every compliment he's given to her during this time of intimacy, you will come up with the number 10, a perfect 10. And if you'll remember back to the honeymoon message where we talked about them coming together in marriage, we chose to just highlight the fact that he had picked seven in that time.

Which seven is the number of completion or the number of fullness in scripture, seven days to a week. So many times, seven signs in John's gospel, seven spirits before God's throne is a picture of the Holy Spirit. So seven is used all over the place. And so he gave her seven compliments on their wedding night. And yet, what is he doing here? He's saying, I thought you were perfect when I married you, but I've found more to love. I've discovered more. I just keep discovering the longer I'm with you, the more there is to love. These curves and perfect imperfections, he's singing John Legend to her. He says, I'm more obsessed with you now than I was the day that I married you, which, of course, is the goal. They're both taking steps to meet each other's needs with sensitivity. And it leads to an intensity. That's our third thing we're seeing. There is an intensity as they were slow with it. They're not pouring lighter fluid on here. This is there, getting the raging inferno, the embers of this night to a boil. We're going to see a boil. Verse 7, this stature, he's still speaking, of yours

is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I said, he's speaking to himself, now I will go to the palm tree. I will take hold of its branches. Let your breasts now, in my imagination, be like clusters of the vine, which is a big imagery piece for Israel, because when they went into the promised land for the first time, you'll remember what they had to come back carrying, a cluster of grapes between a pole. And it became the logo of the Israeli Department of Tourism to this very day. And it's the two spies bringing back the produce, saying, look at all the produce in the land flowing with milk and honey. This is, again, allusion back to the garden. And so he, in describing her love and her anatomy, like grapes that are so large you have to carry between two shoulders on a pole here, that means exactly what you think it means. Then he says, your breath, your breath, girl, the fragrance of your breath, it's like apples. And the roof of your mouth is like the best wine. The wine goes down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of sleepers. Verse 10, she speaks, I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me. Most commentaries will see the climax for the couple after verse 9, and then the lips of sleepers being now them satisfied and curling up together,

holding one another. No one is getting up to rush out. No one's going to check Tinder to find who's next. You cannot compare this, even to put this up against a one-night stand. It would be like going like, you want a day-old cheese burger from McDonald's versus like a Michelin star rated meal. bar? There's no comparison. And she's so safe in his arms, so satisfied. They're both so happy to be each other's, to be seen, to be loved, to be held, to be safe, to feel secure. What does she say? She says, I'm my beloved's. And her last waking thought as she drifts off to sleep is his desire is for me, toward me. There's a beauty and a safety to that that you will not read in the English. But if you look at the Hebrew word for desire, we don't have a lot of time on this, but it's significant. That word desire is only used three times in the entire Hebrew Bible. Desire, three times. It's used twice in the book of Genesis and once here. The first time is in Genesis 3, when God is doling out the consequences and suffering that are unlocked as a result of sin. Because remember, whenever we choose to sin, we're always choosing to suffer. We're moving ourselves away from God's best.

And a function of the disordered love that had kicked in at the fall was to Eve, God said, your desire is going to be to rule over, to reign over your husband. You're going to have desire for him. Now there's a lot to that, but a part of that, an aspect of that, is that he's saying the woman in sin, in disordered love, is always going to look to her husband to give her something only God can and he won't be able to. And it's going to be frustrating. And then she's going to want to just, well, then I'll just run the show. And she'll look to other things, thinking, well, this isn't working. Well, then I'm going to do. And so desire, the first time that word desire is ever used, it's marriage gone wrong. It's marriage with sin at the table. It's marriage with selfishness at the table. The second time desire is used in the Bible of 3 is Genesis 4, when God's warning Cain, who's about to kill his brother in cold blood, sin's desire is to wipe you out. You need to rule over sin in this moment to reorder your loves, because if you do not, sin's desire is to eviscerate you. And the third and only time that word desire is used in the Bible is as Solomon and Shulamite embrace each other.

And she is not saying, I desire to be over you. I desire. They both are mutually submitted to one another here, focused more on each other's needs than their own. They're enjoying the gift. It's hearkening back to the garden. And what happens? She just falls asleep going, I can rest because I'm left. I can rest because his desire is for me. The point is, if we see, this is Page Patterson in his commentary, where there is a holy love, the effects of the fall will be minimized. And where we get this love right, this desire right, where we're not controlled by desire, controlled by our sexual appetites, but where we're subordinating them to God's will, where we're not saying, it's my will. I should get to do whatever I want to do, watch whatever I want to watch, sleep with whoever I want to sleep with, be pleasured how I want to sleep. That's only going to lead to death. And downstream, that will rot out families. That will rot out futures. That will rot out successive generations. Because what we let run in our hearts will run roughshod in future generations. So you see Adam and Eve, this little compromise with taking, it leads full-blown murder just one generation later. First sin, taking fruit. Second sin, murder in cold blood.

So it is. The enemy's desire is to just completely destroy. He's a thief. He's a killer. He's a murderer. But where we can get things, this is why we're taking the time this spring and early summer to focus on relationships week after week after week. Why? Because if we get this right, imagine downstream the future generations, what they can have right, what our feeling can be their floor, what God can build. If we get this desire right, it matters greatly. Save the home, save the world. Rocking sex life, rocking marital life, beautiful family. This can change as goes the home, so goes the city, as goes home to city, so goes the, you see what I'm saying? This is how we change the world. We love our wives. We love our husbands. We raise our kids to look forward to God's plans for sexuality. We teach them how to work through conflict. And they can come together in unity as one. All right, so there's sensitivity. There's intensity. There's creativity. And then we'll close with proactivity, proactivity. At this point, they're good. Are we agreed?

They've worked through their fight successfully. They had a fight. They were through their fight. And so they were one, but then they pulled back to their respective corners and they were two. That's what the devil wants, division. God wants unity. Live as one. When we pull away, there's two visions, division. There are two ideas. That's how it should go. But now they've come back together emotionally, mentally, socially, and also physically, which is always meant to be a promise with your body that you're going to fight to do so in every other way to live as one. So there's unity once again. And we could think, well, they're good now. But no, no. They are proactive at getting more margin, not just solving this fight and then being on fumes so the next fight's almost inevitable. Look what they do. It's proactive to stave off future fights. Verse 11, she's speaking. Come, my beloved. Let us go forth to the field. Let us lodge in the villages. OK, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl, right?

Shulamay is and remains barn hair don't care, right? She might be a queen, but she's like, get me on that John Deere and see what happens, right? She says, let's get out to the hillside. That's where I'm from. That's where we met. You own vineyards there. We were there kind of being a pretend rancher on vacation. That's how we fell in love. So take me away, she says, on a little romantic getaway. It's amazing what a romantic couple days, even if it's a staycation, can do for your marriage, so long as the kids aren't welcome, OK? They're not welcome here. They need to be so horrified by any of the things that would happen, right? This is why you should not let your kids sleep in between you, right? Nothing should be in between you. If the kids are in that room, they should haunt their dreams for an eternity, what takes place. Keep them out. Keep them out. Have a nightmare, bring them in for a minute, pray with them, get out. Back to your respect. Get into your bunk bed. All right. It's going to fill up the account. You see what I'm saying?

That's what these little trips do. But she doesn't just propose it. She knows her man. She's learned some things. Watch how she proposes it. Verse 12, let's get up early, OK? If we don't get out of town early, all of a sudden all the retinue of assistants and staff members are coming in with all the fires. If we let it be 9 AM on the East Coast, everything's going to start flooding in, and pretty soon it's going to be the end of it. Let's go early and be gone by the time they're looking for you. She's not stupid. Let us see if the vine has budded, whether the grape blossoms are open, and the pomegranates are in bloom. OK, listen. She knows that what she is proposing will be enticing to him, because she's saying we can mix a little business with a little pleasure. Don't you need to go check on your holdings up that way? Don't you need to see how these things are going? It all becomes a write-off. Listen to me. Business trips, listen, you've got to be savvy and smart. Jesus said the sons of this kingdom are sometimes more savvy and shrewd than the sons of the world's kingdom

versus God's kingdom. When you take a business trip for your company or whatever it is, that is one of the times that you are opened up to. Many people are opened up to unfaithfulness inside of a relationship. You've got all these people from all these companies that are cutting loose in the Marriott ballroom or whatever it is for this pharmacy tech conference or whatever, right? But listen, listen, listen. You already got your airplane, and you already got your hotel paid for, and your rental cars are already paid for. So you add one more plane ticket that you purchase, and bada bing, bada boom, you go to your boring meetings, they go to the spa. You go to your boring meetings, they go to golf. And then there's no temptation in the ballroom because the real party's up in room 722. You see what I'm saying? Just throwing it out there if you haven't connected the dots yet. That's what she's suggesting. And if you're like, well, Levi, you're reading that into the text, read the rest of verse 12. She says, if we go check on the vineyards, then I will give you my love. She's making the boy an offer he can't refuse. Because not only is his pragmatic side, well, yeah,

it is a good use of my time to go check on these things. So remember, their fight was her resenting his job. Now she's learning how to leverage it. She's using jujitsu and using the force that was against them now. And she said, you get a little work done, then I'll get a little work done on you, homie. She said, you can check on the fields, and I'm going to jump your bones. And to seal the deal, she says in verse 13, the mandrakes give off a fragrance. You're like, mandrakes, mandrakes. That is what they believed to be Viagra. All right, that is what they believed to be this perfect timing. At our gates are pleasant fruits. She says, all men are new and old. All men are new and old, which I have laid up for you, my beloved. She says, I got tricks. I got things I want to try out. She says, there's going to be a familiarity to our loving that we both. have come to enjoy, but I want there to be something new to it. And then they go on this trip, and look what she says, verse 1 of chapter 8. Oh, that you were like my brother. You're like, well, that killed the buzz. In that day, you were considered inappropriate for holding hands with your spouse in public.

But if you're brother and sister, you were allowed to kiss on the cheek, hold hands. There are parts of the world to this day where grown men will just walk around holding hands, right? But the norms for PDA are different culture to culture. In that culture, you could hold your hand of your brother, but not your husband. So she says, I wish you were my brother, so I could just walk down the street holding your hand. Who nursed at my mother's breast, if I should find you outside, I'd kiss you. I would not be despised. Then that leads her down a rabbit trail of like, oh, I wish we were young together. And she says, I would lead you and bring you into the house of my mother. She who used to instruct me, I would cause you to drink of spiced wine. We'd have Capri Sun together. She's like, in her mind, like, but then that gets her wheels turning about like the kind of like, in her mind, kind of like the hot prospect of being with her husband now in the home she grew up in and taking him into her childhood bed. And it gets a little weird because she says, she says, if I could do that, I would cause you to drink of spiced wine. And then I would give you the juice of my pomegranate, which means exactly what you think it means.

His left hand's under my head. His right hand embraces me. When I dip, you dip, we dip, she says. And then they give this advice to single people. And she's like, I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, don't stir up nor awaken love until it pleases. She says, don't settle for some counterfeit version. The real thing is where it's at. And she says, I would take you to where I first learned about the birds and the bees. And then together, we would get our PhD in lovemaking. That's what she is basically saying to him. And I think you'll agree, putting this up against chapter 4, which is their honeymoon, this is hotter. This marital sex, which has been going for a while, because of the way they've stewarded it, it hits at every level. Now, I also understand this is hard to hear for some of us as we close, because you're like, Levi, you're telling me how I could have rocking sex in marriage. I would settle for a civil conversation at this point. And I understand. I get it. We're all at different places when it comes to relationships. And this can be off-putting if this is not where you're at, if you feel like your marriage is holding on by a thread. But I will tell you, in Jesus' name, dead things can come to life.

And our God is a God of the impossible. But you have to keep it fresh. And let me close with this. Everything that I've taught you today about keeping a marriage hot is also true about every relationship, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. You can let a relationship get stale. You can let your walk with Jesus be stale. Or you can fight to keep it fresh. But just like you're never going to find time for your marriage, you have to choose to make time. You have to do the same thing in your walk with God. And so, Father, we thank you, aware of the fact that, for some, this is a needed message for us. Wow, I want to try that. I want to work on that. But for others of us, God, we don't need the weekend getaway. We need almost the resuscitation. We almost need the paddles to chalk us back to even having a heartbeat at all in our relationship. But God, thank you that small things over time can pull us away from intimacy. But small things added up over time can also bring us towards it. And so I ask and I pray for your strength, your power, your hand to bless the efforts of every married couple within the sound of my voice to fight for, to grow together, to enjoy each other, to be creative, to be faithful, to be spontaneous, to enjoy the passions of marriage,

God, knowing that will be a furnace that will heat up a home and propel children toward their own marriages, to raise their own children headed towards their marriages. And then we'll see thousands of generations ringing out on fire for God and in love with their spouse and raising kids to do the same. And I pray, God, we would just really see the power of generational legacy and be a part of it. If as we're praying, as we're considering where we're at, for some of you, the first step today may not be to do something to work on a marriage or a future marriage. It might be you beginning a relationship with God today. It goes without saying that it doesn't matter how you're doing or not doing when it comes to a human relationship if we don't first address the most important and significant, and that is our relationship vertically with God. And if we'll seek God first, he'll add all these other things to us. And so Lord, we pray and ask for you to help us to see for some of us the most important decision is to get right with God today. That's why Jesus. Jesus came. That's why Jesus died on the cross. That's why he rose from the dead. So we could be saved. So we could be forgiven. So we could be healed and whole.

Then we could begin to approach human relationships from a place of being right with you. If that's you I'm describing, and you would say, well, I don't know where I'm at with God. I don't know if I were to die today that I would go to heaven. I don't know. I try to be a good person, a religious person. But listen, it's not about all that. It's about you being a saved person. And Jesus said, if you have the Son, you have life. If you don't have the Son, you don't have life. But you can have Jesus, and you can have salvation today. I'm going to pray a prayer. I want you to pray it out loud after me, your way of saying, God, this is my new beginning. This is my turning point. Today I'm choosing a relationship with Jesus and becoming a child of God. Church, no one prays this alone. We're praying this together for the benefit of those making this decision. Say this after me. Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner. I can't fix myself. But I believe you can. Thank you for sending Jesus to die and rise from the dead. Please come into my heart. Make it your home. In Jesus' name.