How does a godly, poor young woman working long hours in the hot sun to help support her single mother and brothers become the wife of a king and one of the most renowned passionate, loving, and enjoyable women the world has ever celebrated?
The answer is found in the biblical book, the Song of Songs, where we meet this glorious Peasant Princess. She speaks first, is spoken of last, and speaks most frequently throughout this sacred love story. We also meet her friends, brothers, and mother as we follow her life through childhood, the teen years, engagement, and marriage.
As we study the Song of Songs, our primary focus will be how the Peasant Princess became an exemplary wife; our secondary focus will be the intimate marital relationship she shares with her husband. Through her example, God has much to teach us regarding his plan for sex and marriage. While the Song of Songs is not entirely about sex, the book does contain some very important lessons on the subject. In fact, this 3,000-year-old collection of love letters is extraordinary in its timeliness. In our day, people devote an extraordinary amount of time, money, and energy in pursuit of sex, making it the most popular religion in
the world.
God tells us that people attempt to satisfy their thirst not by drinking from his streams of living water, but instead by drinking from man-made toilets (Jer. 2:13). This disturbing metaphor is particularly apt to describe the current thirst for smut and sin.
In Romans 1:24–25, the Apostle Paul says that people either worship God their Creator and enjoy his creation—including our bodies—or people worship creation as God, and in sexual sin offer their bodies as living sacrifices (which is the definition of worship in Romans 12:1). Paul goes on to explain that those who worship creation invariably worship the human body because it is the apex of God’s creation. In this upending of rightful worship, sex becomes a religion and the sex act a perverse sacrament.
