In Episode 13 of Journey Through the Song, Sam and Debbie bring the conflict story to a powerful turning point as they continue in the Song of Solomon. After hurtful words and distance, the focus shifts to how love responds when reconciliation finally comes face to face. (Song 6:4-12)

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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 their journey through the Song of Solomon.

And we're continuing from our last session on talking about resolving moral conflict.

And we in the last session saw how hot.

Solomon had come home late at night and he knocked on the bedroom door.

He wanted his wife to let him inside so he could make love with her, snuggle up with her.

She had a lot of built up resentment because he'd been coming home so repeatedly for late at night so much because the king's business required him to be gone so much.

So she responded to him in a very defensive way.

She was very sassy to him.

When Solomon responded in humility and kindness with a gift that symbolized, that is the myrrh, a request for her to forgive him, she had a change of heart.

She went to the door, says her feelings were deeply moved for him.

But when she got to the door, she discovered he was gone, he wasn't there.

And so she then admits her attitude was wrong, goes into the city searching for him so they can reconcile in their relationship, which is what she should do.

And it's important for married couples to understand that no matter how compatible we might think we are when we first get married to each other, that all of us will face marital conflict.

Because again, we're living as two sinners together in a very close space.

And we're very selfish people.

We're two imperfect people living together.

So we all will experience marital conflict.

And if we don't have some means of resolving this conflict, our marriages are really headed for a lot of trouble.

In fact, facing conflict and understanding how to resolve conflict actually will make our marriages even much stronger.

In the beginning of chapter six, the wife search ends in the garden where Solomon is.

She finally finds him in the garden.

Okay, she was out looking for him in the last session, but now she's found him.

And I'm sure she's filled with a lot of apprehension.

Oh, that feeling when you know you've blown it and you really, really want to make things right.

If I were her, my mind would be all over the place wondering, you know, how my husband might respond.

What's he going to do?

How's he going to handle this situation?

It's going to be angry.

Is he going to be bitter.

Is he going to leave again?

Does he still love me?

Or did my reaction permanently damage the relationship?

I'm sure she's wondering all these things she might be wondering, you know, is he going to give her the silent treatment?

What's going to happen now?

When you talk about silent treatment, I can't help but throw this in because I heard about a man and his wife who are having a little misunderstanding and they were giving one another silent treatment, you know, not talking to each other.

And it suddenly dawned on him that he needed to get up early on Monday morning and catch a plane to Chicago.

And he didn't want to ask her to wake him up because he would lose this little pout bout that they was having with each other.

So he just wrote her a little note and said, please get me up at five o' clock on Monday morning.

Monday morning at seven o' clock he woke up and he was just furious.

He rolled over and on the table there was a note she had written to him.

It's five o'.

Clock, Wake up.

One way to handle it.

Yeah, but you know, she was.

I'm sure she was standing there with him now.

She'd been looking for him.

She responded badly to him.

Now she's there with him.

She's probably nervous, apprehensive.

How's he going to respond?

Is he going to tell her how awful she acted?

Is he going to tell her how she mistreated him when he came to the bedroom door?

How insensitive and selfish she was?

We see from the passage that Solomon does two very significant things.

Now look at it first.

First he praises her.

Look at verse six.

Thou art beautiful.

Oh, my love.

And my love.

He could be paraphrased also.

My darling, which he likes to call her.

My love and my darling.

Then he says, as Terza, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.

He praises her by once again proclaiming his favorite words to her.

You're beautiful, baby.

You're so beautiful.

Oh, my love.

Oh, my darling, you're beautiful.

He immediately reminds her that his love.

Listen.

He reminds her his love hadn't changed one bit.

And it will never change for her.

How comforting that would be when you have blown it and you come up to somebody, they say, listen, you're beautiful.

I love you like I've always loved you.

But the specific phrase my love or my darling is not just a term of endearment, but a word that speaks of friendship and it speaks of companionship.

He reminds her that she is his forever friend.

She is his companion he's in covenant with.

He then compares her beauty to Tirzah and Jerusalem.

In terms of.

Jerusalem are known as the two most beautiful and majestic cities in that time.

Now, a lot of wisdom here, guys.

A good way to start making up with your wife is to tell her how beautiful she is, okay?

The reference to being terrible as an army with banners seems to say, you're majestic, but you're strong enough not to be afraid.

To be open and express your feelings to me, which he admired.

Now, Solomon next gets much more specific about her beauty.

In verse five, he says, turn away your eyes from me, but they have overcome me.

One commentator says that the verb used here means to make someone tremble.

Or if as he looks in her eyes, it makes him tremble.

Or to make bird feathers stand on the end like hair on your neck.

You know, he says, when I look in your beautiful eyes, you know, it just melts me.

I'm reminded of the song by Rascal Flats.

You probably heard it.

I melt when you look at me that way.

It just reminds me of that.

When I read that verse.

I'm not going to sing.

Don't worry.

But it does.

Hey, baby.

It melts me when you look at me that way.

Those big blue eyes.

But he's not thinking obviously now about how she rejected him.

He's concentrating on her beauty.

How beautiful she is.

On her features he finds attractive.

And when he looks into her eyes, he melts inside.

Now, guys, let me stop and remind you that your wife is your standard of beauty.

Not some other woman.

You chose her.

You married her.

She is your standard of beauty.

Solomon says, no other girl around here is going to turn my eyes away from you.

You and you alone are my beauty queen.

Of course, I remind you of the very famous statement of Job when he said, I've made a covenant with my eyes.

Why then should I look at another woman?

Hey, listen, I've got a wife.

I made a covenant with her.

I'm not going to look at any other women.

But Solomon doesn't stop there.

He continues.

In verse five, he says, your hair is like a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead.

And again, just to remind you, we went on these verses earlier in chapter four.

But that is a compliment.

It's not something mean.

It's a compliment.

The ghost from Mount Gilead had long, black, flowing hair that glistened in the sun.

He says, you've got beautiful hair, baby.

And then he goes to her teeth and says, thy teeth.

There's a flock of sheep which go up from the washing where every one bear twins and not one is barren among them.

He looks at her hair and says, you got beautiful hair.

Then he looks in her, he's already looked at her eyes and looks at her teeth, says, baby, you got a beautiful set of teeth.

They're even all the way across.

They're white, they glisten, you know.

And it's none of them missing, you know.

And then he goes, in verse seven, it says, as a piece of pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.

And you know, pomegranate, if you cut it open, it's rosy inside.

Honey, you've got rosy cheeks.

So he's really concentrating, specifically different aspects of her beauty.

Her eyes, her hair, her teeth, her, you know, her temples.

And, you know, all of this should sound very familiar because he describes her physical features in a way that's very similar, as I said, I mentioned a while ago, as he did in chapter four on their wedding night.

And that's very significant, you know, it's.

A solid, solid confirmation that every wife desperately longs to hear.

He's not just saying, I still love you, but I still love you every bit as much as I did on the day I said, I do.

And my love for you has not changed and it never will.

And he's offering proof for all the reasons why he loves her, you know.

But there is a distinct difference in this description he gives here and the description he gave in chapter four on their wedding night.

He ends the description here with her face and her hair.

In chapter four, he kept going down her body, but here he purposefully omits the erotic parts of her body.

And that is from the neck down, you know, we could say, why?

Well, I believe because he wants her to understand that this expression of love to her as she shows up in the garden, and she has treated him this way, this expression of love was not just to get back in bed with her.

That's huge.

Yeah, that.

That's what every woman wants to hear, is, you love me for who I am.

And.

And he does, he truly loves her and is attracted to her for who she is.

And so that's so significant.

He continues with this praise in verse eight where he says, there are three scored queens, you know, there's 60 queens, four score concubines, 80 concubines and virgins without number.

All these women all around the palace, but my dove, my undefiled is but one.

She is the only one of her mother.

She is the choice one of her that bear her, the daughters saw her and blessed her, yea, the queens and the concubines.

And they praised her, you know what Psalm?

And he's saying, honey, listen, out of all the women in the world, you're the most influential, most beautiful, the choice one for my life.

You are my one and only.

You are my companion.

You're the one I choose.

And there's no other woman, nor the combination of women that compares to you, you know?

And he even adds more proof that he considered her as unique and intriguing by declaring the admiration that those ladies of the royal court felt towards her.

And.

And he continued, and he said, who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?

That's what those ladies were saying about.

Her and their reference to the moon and the sun as a way of saying that her presence and beauty appears as divine as the heavenly bodies over us to all those who are around her.

I mean, that's tremendous praise.

Yeah, I feel like he's going to the nth degree to prove he still values her, and he's backing it up with all these specifics to prove it's true.

And she wasn't expecting such loving treatment after the way she treated him, you know?

And I think we.

We ought to ask ourselves, how could Solomon praise her in that moment so passionately the way he did?

And I believe the reason he could do that is because he had already forgiven her.

He had all.

When he left that door, he had forgiven her.

He had asked her.

In chapter 5 and verse 5, Solomon left Myrrh at the door, which was symbolic of saying, forgive me.

I know I'm home late.

I know I've been home late a lot of times, but I want you to forgive me.

But when she didn't respond, he left.

But when he left, he left forgiving her even for how she responded to him.

Now, I think this is so significant because when we forgive the other person before we reconcile with them and as he walked away, we avoid approaching them later in anger or with the intent to make them suffer in some way which he didn't do when she showed up in the garden.

Solomon's forgiveness is Christlike, and According to Ephesians 4:32 should be the pattern for every Christian.

Let me just remind you what it says in Ephesians 4:32, and be kind, one to another.

I love this verse.

Tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you.

From this verse we see that our forgiveness is to be modeled after God's forgiveness.

And this brings up a very important question I think every married couple needs to understand the answer to, and that is, what is forgiveness?

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

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