We live in a crisis in our country. Nobody knows what a marriage is supposed to look like. More and more children can’t look to their parents – I’m not sure they ever could.

The Apostle Paul was aware of this problem. He did not point people back to their parents as the perfect model of marriage, he pointed them to the example of true love – Christ giving himself for the Church.

These first two weeks in Song of Songs we have focused on that perfect love. My prayer has been that God would reveal to you how much he loves you. I hope he has done that, a number of people have responded to these sermons with just those words.

This week we will turn slightly toward each other with our focus. I still want you to be overwhelmed by how passionately God loves you, and I want you to allow that love to overflow onto the people around you, most importantly to your spouse. As we look to these texts specifically, I want you to see the priority and the blessing of marriage.

Specifically I want to reaffirm that your marriage is by far your most important relationship. Second, I want to show you how to use your words to build up and beautify your spouse.

1. Your Most Important Relationship

As we read the words of these two lovers the first thing that comes rushing towards us is the importance they place on being together:

On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.

4 Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her who conceived me.

Of course this is not the only place in the Song that we see this kind of intensity. She calls out to him in Chapter 1, where will you be working today that I might find you. In Chapter 2 he calls to her in the morning, Arise my love and come with me. In Chapter 5 he comes knocking on her door in the middle of the night.

Morning evening and night, these two seek each other out and want to be together. He gives her priority over work, she takes him into the chamber of her mother – he is now her most important relationship.

These words are only a passionate illustration of the very first teaching of the bible on marriage – He shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.

Those words fall on deaf ears now, because we expect our children to leave. I have an elaborate plan of all the things I am going to do when we drop our youngest off at college. But in the culture of the bible, life was very different. You could not easily find work apart from your family. Your family owned the land, the animals, provided the protection and security. Your family remained your identity until death.

Calling something more important than your father or mother was scandalous. Yet the Bible makes perfectly clear – your marriage is your primary responsibility.

A. How Do We see that in Christ?

Okay, let’s turn to our model and see if we see that same passion. Just because we see it in the text does not mean it is right, did Christ reveal and demand that same commitment from us?

First make no mistake, Jesus has come after you with unstoppable passion. He has left his father and sought you out for years. He abandoned heaven, perfect joy for you. He left glory and the worship of angels so he could be poor and endure the scorn of men and the public humiliation of the cross for you. He left the absolute blessedness of the presence of God the father, so he could cry out “why have you forsaken me” in complete darkness and despair for you. He left perfect, abundant, complete light so he could die for you.

He has loved you since before the creation of the world, he has died to pay the ransom for your freedom, he has broken the power of death for you, he has providentially ordered every event of history so that you would be born and he has sent his Spirit to awaken you and arouse love in your heart. He has loved you so much, that not one single detail of the plan was left outside his control.

Not even your sin and utter rebellion rebuffed his love for you.

He illustrates his long suffering, pain staking love for us in the story of Hosea. Hosea married an unfaithful woman as an example to Israel. She continually abandoned him, leaving him for longer and longer periods of time. After two decades of serial infidelity, she did not come home. So we see Hosea going after her.

Hosea drives through the worst parts of town, at one in the same time hoping to get a glimpse of his wife and praying that she is not here. Finally, in the absolute worst place he sees her. He bursts into the upstairs chamber, points and says “She’s my wife.” Everyone sneers and laughs, and one nasty man stands up and says, you will pay like everyone else. Hosea squares up to him and says, how much. The man gives him a price.

Hosea pays in silver, then he pays in gold, then he pays in barley, then in oats, then in honey, then in animals. Finally everyone gets it, he is paying not for one night, but for a lifetime of nights. And the price is everything he has. Then he takes his wife home.

Do you understand who Hosea is? Hosea translated into Aramaic is Ye-sua. Aramaic translated into English is Jesus. He is your husband, he has found you a slave to your stubborn independence and has paid with his own life to bring you home. Do you see the passion with which he loves you?

Jesus then calls us to love him with the same passion. If anyone comes after me, and does not hate his own father and mother, he is not worthy of me. Will you look upon his love as pathetic, and keep living to satisfy your own greed and pleasure. Or will you call him your husband?

Some criticize our Church for being too easy and preaching too much grace. I don’t want you to do anything because you are afraid of God’s disapproval. I want to give you a new love. I want you to replace your love of money with love for Christ. I want you to replace your love of comfort with love for Christ. Replace your love of approval, of family, of success with love for Christ. Love him rightly, and everything will thrive.

B. How should we apply this priority to our marriage?

Does your spouse get the absolute best of you, or does he get what’s left over? Singles, do you treat your romantic life as a search for the best candidate for the most important relationship of your life, or do you just see who looks good and makes you laugh?

Married people. What do we see in this text? How do they love each other?

The seek each other out – time.

They celebrate each other – intimacy.

The sing to each other – words.

Does your marriage get this kind of commitment? Where does your time and money go?

A huge temptation for us is to give all our energy and money to our children. We live with a fear that if we miss seeing them do something, our children will be scarred for life. I want you to know something. I spent 11 years as a college minister and I heard many things. I heard complaints about how much parents pushed, how much parents worked, how often parents were not there, and how parents simply did not like each other. But I never heard a single complaint about how much time parents spent together.

Do you want to bless your children? Then obey the bible and treat your spouse like the most important person in your life. Get a babysitter and take your wife out for a long date. Get someone else on the team to drive your daughter home from the game and go enjoy your wife. Give your marriage the priority it deserves.

The Old Testament professor at Covenant seminary would come in every month and say, okay raise your hand if you took your wife out for an overnight date this month. You should be in a bed and breakfast at least once a month. The students would always complain, “we can’t afford that.” He would literally yell back: “YOU CAN’T AFFORD NOT TO.”

Will you please give your marriage some priority in your life? Will you please spend time alone together. Will you please look at your schedule, and find time for a date this week? Will you give it some time? Will you read a book together? Will you visit a counselor together? Will you listen to a sermon series together? Will you give your marriage some priority?

C. How does this priority apply to singles?

3:5 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

8:6 Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.

You can control who you love. It is not a trap that you fall into. You can choose not to awaken it until the time has come.

The thing that frightens me most about love is the way our culture treats it like a toy. We see people just dating anyone who interests them. You would not act that way with fire. Dating and love are a big deal. You will marry someone you date. Your wedding day will not be a first date. Don’t rush into it.

When you walk into a room do you immediately size up ten people and discount 7 of them for how they look? Some of you are in danger of basing the single most important decision of your life based on an appearance. Please, for the sake of your heart and your life, spend time finding out about a person before you discount them and before you decide to awaken love.