In Episode 11 of Journey Through the Song, Sam and Debbie shift from the beauty of intimacy to the reality every marriage faces—conflict. As they walk through a powerful scene in the Song of Solomon, they uncover how small frustrations, unmet expectations, and poor responses can quickly create distance between two people who deeply love each other. This episode begins to reveal God’s pathway for addressing hurt, pursuing reconciliation, and restoring connection when relationships are strained.

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Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.

It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.

And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

We want to welcome you back to our journey through the Song of Songs.

And boy, it's been a fantastic journey.

We have covered 10 sessions now.

And we looked last time at a very intimate, romantic scene in the bridal chamber in chapter four.

And it just ceases, never ceases to amaze me that God, how he instructs married couples how they're to approach and to enjoy each other sexually.

And obviously this is important to God.

He wouldn't include it and talk so much about it in the word of God.

And especially and this little book called the Song of Solomon.

And we saw last time, as we concluded the session in chapter five and verse one, that God even pronounced his blessing upon their sexual union.

Ian Dugat comments that the story could have ended there as a fairy tale ending.

And I believe it could have.

And they lived happily ever after.

That's the kind of endings we like.

But the story doesn't end that way.

And we might ask why.

And I think God wants us to understand that every marriage is includes two sinners.

And when you got two sinners, you got to deal every day with each other's selfishness.

So we pick up the story again in chapter five.

Solomon and the Shulamite have been married for a while and they're facing something that every married couple faces, marital conflict.

I mean, we've faced it and we faced it many times.

Every couple does, because again, you got two sinners living together in the closest possible relationship you can have.

That is to be one flesh in marriage.

And how we resolve conflict, marital conflict is vitally important to the health of a marriage.

It's so, so important.

Not.

Maybe that's why God takes time to give us these insights in the word of God about how to resolve marital conflict.

So through the next two sessions, we're going to investigate the way God reveals that Solomon and his bride actually do resolve their marital conflict.

Now we pick up the story in chapter five and verse two, where the bride is having a very poetic dream.

Now, before you get into that, though, we have to remember dreams can be a little fragmented.

And parts of dreams, sometimes they're even nonsensical.

But often dreams are driven by the thoughts and imaginations that have just weighed heavily on us during the day and our Minds seem to process these thoughts.

And in the middle of our dreamland,.

Well, song of Psalm in chapter five and verse two, she says, I sleep, but my heart waketh, or she's having a dream.

As we stated, it's the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, open to me, my sister, my love.

I love this language.

My love, my dove, my undefiled.

For my head is filled with you and my locks with the drops of night.

So here's the scene.

Solomon comes home.

Obviously it's very late at night.

He said his head is filled with the drops of night, the dew and night.

And he's tired.

He wants to come inside to the bridal chamber, to the bedroom.

He wants to snuggle up and make love with his wife.

Now that's fine if you're married, right?

The door is obviously locked since he calls out to his wife to let him in.

He's knocking on the door, let me in.

And we know from how he addresses her, he says, my love, my dove, that he suspects, well, she might be a little bit irritated because he's coming home or getting home so late at night.

And look at verse three and we actually see how she responds.

She says, I put off my coat.

How shall I put it on?

I've washed my feet, how shall I defile them?

How am I going to get them dirty?

I don't want to take my sandals off.

Put my sandals back on.

I don't want to put my robe back on.

Where in the world have you been?

Obviously she's upset.

He's come home late, evidently, again and.

Again, many times and again.

And she feels like he taking her for granted.

So she acts somewhat snobby to him.

He's failed to meet her expectations.

So like most of us, she's processing the event through a self absorbed heart.

Now some of you might be thinking, did this conflict start at this moment or did it start sometime before this?

And I think that Danny Akin is correct when he stated most problems in marriage do not begin in the bedroom, but most problems in marriage end up in the bedroom.

I think that's so true.

We know from our previous concerns about his occupation in the previous chapters that the Shulamite most likely already had resentment built up because Solomon's job as a king of Israel took him away from home a lot.

He wasn't there a lot.

And the problem they had was one that many couples have.

And it really leads to a lot of marital conflict and that is they just aren't spending time enough time with each other.

Yeah, I get this because I can think back to a time when Sam hadn't been in full time ministry very long.

He was juggling a theater ministry and he was interim of a pastor at a church in Tennessee.

We had four children.

The oldest one was five.

We had an extremely limited income, so I couldn't get out much.

We had no family nearby to help.

And every meeting, every.

I'm sorry, every evening, it's like Sam couldn't come home.

He had a deacon meeting or a pulpit committee meeting or he had to work at the theater.

And I felt like I was raising those four boys all by myself.

And.

Sorry.

In order though, to justify my irritation, I got out.

I'm ashamed to say this, but I got out a calendar.

And I marked on that calendar every time Sam was gone during the day and the night at the same time.

And what happened?

I was just feeding a pity party and I ended up in a downward spiral.

I was just feeding my mind with thoughts of how unfair it was.

And this opened me up for a spiritual attack.

And I got scared and I called a friend over and she came and prayed with me.

I never told Sam about this.

I mean, hey, till a few years back, for over 20 years, I never even told him about this.

Even when we were doing conferences, right?

But I understand what was going on here in the passage.

Shulamite was.

She was intently focused on how unfair it was to expect her to adjust to his schedule when he was gone all the time.

And she did do one thing that was right that I didn't do.

She expressed her feelings.

She let him know something was wrong.

But in expressing her feelings, she didn't speak the truth in love.

She was snobby and she was sassy.

Do you think I ought to get.

Up and put my robe on?

My feet will get dirty.

No.

She drove the dagger in his heart by rejecting his sexual advances.

And ladies, this is the most common threat that wives make.

Withhold sex and affection.

Physical intimacy for a man is part of his significance as a man.

And rejection is an attack to his manhood.

But let me remind you guys, you husbands, that the problem here stemmed from him not being at home.

He wasn't spending a lot of time with her.

And I just remind you, I think of first Peter, chapter three and verse seven, where it says husbands are to live to dwell with their wives according to understanding.

And what that really means.

You're to spend time with them, that you might have an understanding of them.

So I just want to admonish you husbands, if your Job requires you to be away from home a whole lot.

And you have to say you're driving a truck or some other job that you might have, then you need to make a very special effort to spend a lot of time with your wife when you are home with her.

And it's wonderful in this digital age that we live in that if you are away, not like Solomon's situation, you can use your phone, your iPhone, you can text, you can FaceTime every day.

You can still be in touch with your wife, let her know what you're doing, tell her you love her, and you can stay in touch with her, which is so, so important that you do that.

So I just want to remind you also, and stop and remind you wives of something too.

And that is one of the greatest desires a man has is to be respected.

And that's why it says in Ephesians 5,33 that about in the Bible that a wife is commanded to show respect, reverence to her husband.

In fact, in the little book For Women Only, it states, men had rather feel alone and unloved than inadequate and disrespected.

Let me just say that again.

Men had rather feel alone and unloved than inadequate and disrespected.

That's so true.

It's very hard for a man to feel disrespected by his wife.

And girls, let me just say wives, men have a very frail ego.

You probably already know that.

You've lived with your husband.

They can take rejection in the workplace, they can face business reversals, they can face all kinds of other problems.

But at home, they want it to be a safe haven where their wife shows them he's the man, shows him reverence, shows him respect.

So it's hard when she doesn't.

Yeah, Solomon, he wanted to hear how his bride admired his work ethic.

He was working hard, how the sound of his voice inspired her and how she's turned on at the thought of him.

He was not expecting rejection, and her sassy reply communicated contempt and disrespect.

He had been inconsiderate, but her reaction cut him to the core.

You know, so we see a situation with Solomon and the shunamite where she feels neglected and.

And he feels disrespected.

And from a lot of counseling in past years, we've seen this is a common cause of many conflicts in marriage relationships.

Now, although Solomon feels hurt, he feels rejected.

He's going to make one last effort.

So look at verse four, says my beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door and my bowels or my feelings were moved for him.

So he, here it is.

She says, he puts his hand in the hole of the door.

Now you might ask what in the world does she mean by that?

There's no hole in my bedroom door.

Well, in that day there was literally a hole in the bedroom door or bridal chamber door where the husband could leave a gift for his wife maybe to entice him to let him in.

Taste, sir, to let him in.

Now ladies, don't go out and get a carpenter to cut a hole in your bedroom door.

This was just a custom in that day.

But you know, I think back a couple years when we were in Kenya and I actually saw an example of this practice in a building in the Rift Valley in Kenya.

And when I saw that, I said, debbie, look at that.

That's exactly what it says in the Song of Solomon.

There's a hole with, in that door with a place to catch what was put in that hole.

You know, And I don't know if we can get a picture of that up on the screen while we're talking right now, but we can, we'll try to do that.

So you can see that.

But it's pretty, pretty neat.

Now what happens after that?

Says, I rose up.

She says, I rose up to open to my beloved and my hands dropped with myrrh and my fingers were sweet smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock.

Now notice that when she arrived at the door that her hands dropped with myrrh.

That's very significant because myrrh is a symbol of forgiveness and Solomon is asking for her forgiveness.

He leaves this myrrh through this hole in the door.

And at this moment, when she sees that she's really got a choice to make, you know, will I close the latch and say, forget him, he, he can sleep outside tonight like some wives might do.

Or will I have a, maybe a change of heart and doubt of myself and really try to reconcile the relationship to my husband?

What will she do?

Well, in verse six it tells us, I opened my beloved, but my beloved hath withdrawn himself and was gone.

So she goes to the door, she opens up the door and she's going to let him in.

But now he's gone.

Now ladies, let me pause and share something that you need to understand about men.

Men usually respond to conflict in one or two ways and I've done a little bit of both.

Probably Debbie's just shaking her head.

Number one, they all, they fight.

Okay, now when I say fight, I mean Usually verbally say things that are harsh, that are cruel, that are mean sometimes.

But even sometimes physically, which certainly we hope that never happens.

So sometimes men respond by fighting, sometimes men respond by taking flight.

That is, they do like Solomon did.

They run.

They leave.

Many will run away and have a pity party or have a pouting bout.

And Solomon chose just to leave.

He decided, like many men, just to leave the situation at that time.

Now, some men, when they leave, go get in the car and they drive away.

They may go down to Starbucks, they may go down to Mama's house, because Mama will console them, you know, But Solomon leaves.

But look how she responds.

And in the verses that follow, we really see how the conflict is resolved.

And I believe this really gives us a helpful biblical model of how to resolve conflict in our marriages now.

So I'm going to ask David to kind of go through this, since this is her doing this, and show how that the woman responds or how the Shulamite responds in this situation.

Well, first of all, she goes after him.

She pursues him.

Solomon had just left Shulamite, that really thoughtful gift that eloquently said, I'm sorry, forgive me.

And she just crawled out of bed to let him in.

And disappointment, he was gone.

And in verse six, she continues, my soul failed when he spake.

And right here she's admitting that when he spoke to her, her attitude was totally wrong.

Her soul within her had failed.

And this is really strong language here.

She is totally devastated, or she feels like now that she's just destroyed everything because of how she had responded so disrespectfully.

And he left.

She says, I sought him, but I could not find him.

I called him, but he gave me no answer.

Can you see she's getting desperate?

She fears losing him, and she's not content just to leave their marriage in this state of conflict.

So she goes out looking for him.

She correctly desires resolution and reconciliation, so she goes looking for him.

You know, it kind of reminds me when you say that of what Jesus instructs us to do In Luke chapter 17 and verse three, he says, take heed yourself, if thy brother trespass against thee.

He says, rebuke him, and if you repent, forgive him.

That word rebuke is.

Sounds very strong in our English language, but really what it means is, go find them, pursue them like she's doing, and hear their side of the story.

Present your side of the story with the intention of reconciling the relationship.

And Paul even says in Ephesians, chapter 4 and verse 26 and 27.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, and neither give place to the devil.

And that's very interesting verses there, because when we don't resolve conflict, we're giving place or foothold to the devil to wreck our marriage.

That's what happened to me.

Yeah, I never told you what I was upset about.

Yeah, I opened the door for spiritual warfare.

And it's so important that God says we ought to resolve anything like this before we go to bed at night.

Don't let it fester, don't let it grow where you get better bitter.

So, husbands, let me just admonish you again that since you are designated to lead your wife and to be the leader of the home, then you need to lead in making sure that conflict is resolved.

You might say, well, I'll wait till my wife comes to me.

No, you ought to be the one who's taking the steps to make sure that it's resolved.

You have listened to the first part of a two part message by evangelist Sam Wood.

Thank you for joining the Fortifying your family podcast.

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