We have been to the summit of the Song of Songs, the peak of the poem’s chiastic structure. He saw her coming up from the wilderness and then delighted in her as with a garden paradise. She then invited him into her garden, and their friends rejoiced over them. That was the very center of the poem, 5:1.

Before that central unit of the Song, we had another section that ran from 2:8-3:5. In that section, the beloved came leaping over the mountains and stood outside the wall of her garden, announcing that winter had passed and spring had come. Then, in 3:1, it was almost as if the woman woke up from her dream and discovered that her beloved was not in bed with her. So, she went into the city and finally found him.

On the other side of the chiastic mountain of the Song of Songs, we now have a parallel passage. While reading, we will almost immediately notice the similarities, which are certainly intentional. But the differences are just as important. In fact, the point of the similarities may be to highlight the differences.

Our text, 5:2-6:3, is one large unit with three big scenes that are separated by questions from the daughters of Jerusalem. As I have noted before, the Song is fundamentally hopeful. It is about glimpsing Eden again. But the wilderness and chaos keep lurking in the background. And here, they break into the garden of love, creating trouble in paradise.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE // VERSES 2-8

I slept, but my heart was awake;
A sound! My beloved is knocking.
“Open to me, my sister, my love,
my dove, my perfect one,
for my head is wet with dew,
my locks with the drops of the night.”

Commentators are divided on how exactly we should read this passage, but I think that this is a dream sequence, perhaps even a nightmare (though it does have a happy ending!). The sequence of events seems very dreamlike to me, moving one thing to another in a connected but also disjointed way.

Of course, if it is a dream, that should not downplay its significance. After all, dreams often intensify real emotions or are exaggerated replays of real situations. So, we should take what happens here seriously, for both the emotions and the lessons are real.

She hears him knocking, and notices that he addresses her with the same epithets as earlier: my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one. He clearly desires more than simply coming into their room. He longs to be with her.

Verse 3 tells us her rather shocking response:

I had put off my garment;
how could I put it on?
I had bathed my feet;
how could I soil them?

She does not get up.

She does not open the door.

She effectively declines his invitation to intimacy.

Yet notice that the text gives us no indication of anger or that he has offended her in some way. She simply does not want to deal with the inconvenience. She is comfortable in bed and doesn’t want to get up, get dressed, and dirty her feet.

This is quite a realistic portrait of how intimacy and connection often die away in marriage. Of course, it can happen through sudden, large sins like adultery. But typically, the fire of eros fizzles out because of inconvenience and apathy.

Is this not what we were already warned about? Storms and earthquakes can certainly destroy a garden, but so do the little foxes when they are ignored. Small, subtle things can become destructive when they are neglected. Indeed, Proverbs tells us that the complacency of fools destroys them. And, if we are honest with ourselves, complacency is always creeping into various aspects of our life. We adjust to new normals very quickly.

That is especially true in marriage. At first, there is excitement and infatuation. The honeymoon phase is a blast. But things start to settle, and we find our daily rhythm. After a time, it is all too easy to wake up one day and realize that you and your spouse are little more than roommates.

A flame can die by being put out all at once or by simply being left unfed and untended.

Verse 3 is a little fox that has snuck into the vineyard. The same woman who once longed for her beloved, who said that his love was better than wine, is now unwilling to rise from bed to receive him.

Complacency destroys fools, but so does the love of comfort and ease. Indeed, ease and love rarely go hand-in-hand. Love of God and of neighbor leads to life, certainly, but it is narrow and difficult road to walk. All relationships are hard and require sacrifice. If personal comfort and ease are a person’s highest values, every relationship will suffer. Love, after all, often expects us to do what we would rather not do for the good of another person.

The woman of the Song is not hostile, nor is she bitter. She is simply complacent and comfortable.

But something begins to change in verse 4:

My beloved put his hand to the latch;
and my heart was thrilled within me.

Her desire now begins to awake. Her apathy is cracking. Her heart quickens at the thought of him at her door.

I arose to open to my beloved,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with liquid myrrh
on the handles of the bolt.

She responds to his invitation and gets up to open the door.

But it is too late:

I opened to my beloved,
but my beloved had turned and gone.
My soul failed me when he spoke.
I sought him, but found him not.
I called him, but he gave no answer.

This is the great tragedy of the passage. By the time her complacency fades and she responds, he is gone.

Here again is a lesson for all relationships. We often act on our own time, assuming there will always be another moment or opportunity. But sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes the moment of connection or reconciliation passes and cannot be reclaimed.

That is one reason why Scripture so urgently calls us to reconciliation. Jesus said that even if you are making a sacrifice at the altar and remember that your brother has something against you, leave the sacrifice and be reconciled. Reconciliation is more important than any offering.

Indeed, delay can often deepen the problem and compound the damage.

Notice that she says, my soul failed me when he spoke. Earlier she called him ‘him whom my soul loves,’ but now, when he called her, her soul failed her. In that moment, her love did not prove as great as she believed it to be. She thought she loved him with her entire being, but she would not dirty her feet for him.

We also find an echo of the earlier passage: I sought him, but found him not. Yet there is now an added layer: I called him, but he gave no answer.

The watchmen then appear again but in a much darker role:

The watchmen found me as they went about the city;
they beat me, they bruised me, they took away my veil.

In the previous passage, she asked the watchmen if they had seen her beloved, and even though they did not respond, we assumed that they did not know. But now, in this dream, they find her and beat her. The removal of her veil likely means that they mistook her for a prostitute. Earlier in the Song, she feared being seen as a veiled woman, and now she is seen as exactly that.

Again, this is very dreamlike. She is likely having a nightmare, where what she feared begins to happen. She rejected her beloved, and now he has left her. Ironically, by locking her beloved out of his garden, she is now outside their home and in the city, which is rather like the wilderness that she was called out of. And with her provider and protector gone, she is already being abused and violated. Real life typically does not have such a steep escalation, but it expresses her deep fears of being vulnerable and forsaken.

In verse 8, she turns to the daughters of Jerusalem:

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
if you find my beloved,
tell him I am sick with love.

This is her second time calling herself sick with love. The first usage was while the couple was lying together on the grass under a canopy of trees. It was romantic, even playfully over the top.

It carries a different tone here. Now it sounds broken and desperate. Almost like true anguish.

RECALLING THE EXCELLENT // VERSES 9-16

The daughters of Jerusalem give their first question:

What is your beloved more than another beloved,
O most beautiful among women?
What is your beloved more than another beloved,
that you thus adjure us?

Many commentators take this as sarcasm, that they are mockingly calling her the most beautiful among women and laughing at her love for her husband. While that is possible, I think it much more likely that they are prompting their friend. They are hoping to stir her memory toward remembering what makes her so madly in love with her husband.

As we have said and will say again, marriage is intimate and exclusive but also public. There is a communal dimension to marriage. It is the foundational unit of the society, and the daughters of Jerusalem are here to represent the community that surrounds and supports marriage.

In a sense, then, we all belong to that group because we are all surrounded by marriages. Are we the kind of people who help or harm the marriages around us?

Now, husbands and wives should take great care how they speak to others about one another, especially in moments of conflict. Arguments should not be shared or processed publicly. Even close friends should not be involved. If something serious needs to be addressed, that’s what pastoral or even professional counseling is for.

But when we notice a marriage that appears to be strained or when someone vents about their spouse to us, we should not be the kind of people who pour cold water on an already struggling relationship. We should not reinforce any bitterness or division but encourage reconciliation. And perhaps help them remember what they first saw in their spouse.

Their question does exactly that for the bride of the Song. She begins to recall the loveliness of her beloved and goes into a wasf of his body.

My beloved is radiant and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.
His head is the finest gold;
his locks are wavy,
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
beside streams of water,
bathed in milk,
sitting beside a full pool.
His cheeks are like beds of spices,
mounds of sweet-smelling herbs.
His lips are lilies,
dripping liquid myrrh.
His arms are rods of gold,
set with jewels.
His body is polished ivory,
bedecked with sapphires.
His legs are alabaster columns,
set on bases of gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
choice as the cedars.
His mouth is most sweet,
and he is altogether desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem.

We will not walk through every detail in these verses, so let us take note of a few points.

First, this is remarkably unique in both Scripture and the ancient world. Again, many other ancient texts contain wasfs that describe the beauty of the female body but rarely of the masculine figure. While the male form has a more commanding and powerful beauty than the tenderness of the female form, both reflect our Creator.

Her beloved is strong and noble. His features are described with gold, ivory, and precious stones, which were (and still are) symbols of royalty and dignity.

But though she describes him as mighty, he is also tender. His eyes are doves, like her own. Gentle, soft, innocent. His mouth is sweet. Indeed, she focuses on his mouth at the center of the wasf and at the end. Her desire is clearly being rekindled. She is returning to where she was at the beginning of the Song: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!”

She concludes: This is my beloved, and this is my friend.

That is a crucial statement.

Passion is beautiful in marriage, but it cannot sustain a marriage on its own. The foundation of lasting marital love is friendship. Duguid captures this in the subtitle of his commentary: Friendship on Fire. That is what every Christian marriage should be: a friendship fueled by the fires of eros.

GATHERING THE LILIES // VERSES 1-3

Her desire for her beloved has now be reawakened, but there is still one problem: where is he? That is what the daughters of Jerusalem now ask:

Where has your beloved gone,
O most beautiful among women?
Where has you beloved turned,
that we may seek him with you?

And here is the resolution:

My beloved has gone down to his garden
to the beds of spices;
to graze in the gardens
and to gather lilies.
I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine;
he grazes among the lilies.

There is an abrupt shift here, almost like a jump cut. We don’t see reconciliation happen. We don’t hear an apology or any kind of conversation. Suddenly, everything is restored. Everything is okay.

Her friends asked where her beloved was, and it is as if she looks over and finds him standing beside her. He is in his garden, which is her.

They are together again.

Notice that she repeats her declaration from 2:16: I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. Yet the wording is not exact. In 2:16, the order was reversed: My beloved is mine, and I am his. Again, the difference between the passages matter. Before she began with the fact that he belonged to her, but now she begins with her belonging to him.

This is the proper orientation because it shows that she is no longer thinking about her own ease and comfort. She thinks of herself first as belonging to him, and then how he belongs to her. She is dying to her own self-sufficiency and selfishness.

Thus, the text ends with him once more grazing among the lilies and delighting in his garden. The nightmare that began the dream has passed. Though she felt alone and forsaken, her beloved did not vanish entirely. The covenant still stands. Her fears of abandonment are put to rest. Their love still endures.

OUR ONLY COMFORT IN LIFE AND DEATH

Let us now reconsider the passage in light of Christ and His bride, the church.

Our text began with the beloved knocking on the door and calling for his bride to open to him. This, of course, parallels with the words of Christ in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

It is also worth noting that Jesus spoke these words to the church of Laodicea, which was a comfortable and complacent church. Jesus rebuked them for being lukewarm, which does not mean that He would have rather them been either completely for Him or completely against Him. No, the point is that both cold and hot water have uses and can be beneficial. Lukewarm water is useless.

But why were they lukewarm? Because they believed that they were self-sufficient. They said, “I am rich. I have prospered. I need nothing.” Yet Christ says that they were “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” Again, that is the danger of complacency and a love of ease. The Laodiceans were not hostile to Christ, nor had they openly rejected Him. Yet they had quietly drifted away from Him. In their physical comfort, their desire for Him faded. They forgot their need of their Beloved.

That is exactly what we see in the Song. She rejected her beloved out of inconvenience, because intimacy required effort.

Like the bride and the Laodiceans, we do the same with Christ. He summons us to come to Him in His Word and in prayer each day. How do we answer? What excuses did you use this week for why you missed time in the Scriptures and in prayer? Did they resemble the bride’s excuses?

In His mercy, our Lord still knocks. He still calls.

But we should take the warning of this passage seriously. When the bride finally rises to open the door, her beloved is already gone. Although Christ stands at the door and knocks, He will not do so indefinitely. Isaiah urges us to seek the Lord while He may be found because one day the opportunity for repentance will be sealed. That will certainly be upon either our death or Christ’s return. But even while we still live, repentance is a grace that we should not presume to receive tomorrow. Therefore, if you find yourself in that place of spiritual complacency, turn to Christ. Seek Him today.

Of course, the bride does end up reunited with her beloved, but only after she is beaten and bruised by the watchmen. Yet it was her vulnerability that awakened her need of him. And that is very often how God uses affliction in our lives. C. S. Lewis famously called pain God’s megaphone for awakening a deaf world. And we see that pattern quite frequently in Scripture. The LORD allows His people to suffer to wake them up to their sin and to show them their need of Him.

Hebrews 12 calls this the discipline (or the education) of the Lord. It is painful, but it is ultimately a sign of His love. A father who neglects to discipline his children hates them, according to Proverbs. But a loving father wants the best for his children, even when that means painful discipline for the moment.

Indeed, God must discipline us because left to our own devices, we would constantly drift away. We would settle into comfort. We would sleepwalk through life and be like the Laodiceans.

God very often uses suffering to open our eyes so that we notice our complacency. In fact, He may even let us feel as though we are distant from Him to cause us to long for Him. The bride did not remember the loveliness of her beloved until she could not find Him. So, it often is with us. When Christ feels most distant is when we often begin to truly understand His beauty, that He is the King whose kingdom and glory surpasses all others, that He upholds all things by the word of His power and still calls us His beloved.

Christ is certainly mighty. His eyes blaze with fire, and His voice is like the roaring of many waters. The word of His mouth is like a sword that cuts down all of His foes before He bathes His feet in their blood.

Even so, the Almighty looks upon us with eyes like a dove, tender, compassionate, abounding in steadfast love. And His words to us are sweet, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. A greater pleasure than anything this world can offer us.

And as we see Him, we begin to say again: This is my beloved, and this is my friend. Did not Jesus say so?

We can also take a lesson from the bride’s answer to the first question of the daughters of Jerusalem, when they asked what made her beloved more special than any other beloved. We too must be ready to answer a similar question: What makes Christ any better than any other religion? Most often we think that we should have strong logical answers to that question, and that is certainly the case. But the honest reality is that while logic helps to cement a belief of truth, it does not convince people to believe it as much as we might think. Formal propositions do not change minds as much as experiential stories.

Again, I am not saying that apologetics is unimportant. But the kingdom of God does not triumph by our ability to argue for the existence of God but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. Be encouraged, brothers and sisters, you do not need a degree in apologetics to share the gospel. You just need to be able to say: This is my beloved, and this is my friend. Describe Christ’s beauty until it becomes undeniable.

But where has our Beloved gone? Where is He?

He is here.

He has not abandoned His people. Even when He feels distant, He is never truly absent, for He Himself promised: “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

You see, the problem is not His absence; it is our dullness of sight. It is our lack of desire. It is our failure to look for Him, to open the door to Him.

But when the Spirit awakens us, we discover something astounding: He was there all along. Even while we are wondering how we could ever return to Him, how He could ever receive us back after our coldness of heart and neglect, we turn, and there He is beside us.

Because Christ has made a covenant with His people. And unlike us, He does not break His covenant. He is faithful and true, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Here His promise to us in John 10:27-29:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

When He makes us His, He keeps us. Eternally.

And that is our great comfort.

The first question of the Heidelberg Catechism puts it beautifully:

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

It is same idea as the Song: I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.

Do you know that comfort of belonging to Christ?

As we come to the Table before us, let us come confessing how prone we are to negligence and complacency in our pursuit of Christ. Yet the bread and cup testify to the glorious message of the gospel. Even though we failed (and often continue to fail) to seek after Christ, He came to seek and save the lost. In Him, this bread and cup are for the repentant, for those who open the door to His knocking.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• The sermon highlights the parallel between Song of Songs 2:8–3:5 and 5:2–6:3. What similarities stood out to you? What differences seemed most significant?
• In 5:2–3, the bride delays opening the door. What reasons does she give? Why do those reasons feel so relatable?
• Why is spiritual or relational complacency often harder to notice than more obvious sins?
• Why do you think the text doesn’t describe the reconciliation conversation itself?
• The sermon connects this passage to Revelation 3:20. In what ways do we sometimes respond to Christ like the bride responds to her beloved?
• Where are you most tempted toward complacency right now—spiritually, relationally, or elsewhere?
• How does the promise in John 10:27–29 shape your understanding of Christ’s faithfulness, even when you feel distant?