(Through The Bible) –Song of Solomon: Zac Poonen (Transcript)

Full text of Zac Poonen’s teaching on ‘Book of Song of Solomon’ which is part of the popular series called Through The Bible.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Zac Poonen – Bible Teacher

Now we come to the third book that Solomon wrote, The Song of Songs, or Canticles as some people call it. And some people are embarrassed to read this book, but I believe that that is because we have got so many wrong ideas of the place of sex in marriage from the world.

This book, as I see it, basically teaches two things. The first is that the sexual relationship in marriage is essential. God created it and He said after creating it and telling Adam and Eve to multiply, He said it in Genesis 1: It is very good. And if God says it is very good, I don’t want to listen to any second opinion on the sexual function that God created and pronounced very good in Genesis chapter 1.

But we also see here, this is the first thing I am trying to emphasize, is that love must be coupled with that sexual relationship, otherwise it is not right. Any sexual relationship without love is demonic, satanic, belongs to hell. And that is unfortunately what we see a lot of in the world. That is completely evil.

You see, God has created something and the devil has misused it. God created the atom, but the devil can use it to make a bomb to destroy people. And whereas it can also be used to give electricity to a whole city. God created that from which dynamite is made. But you can use dynamite to kill people or you can use dynamite to blast a rock to build a foundation for a house.

Many things, a knife, a knife can be used to cut meat or vegetables, it can be used to kill a person. So what God has created sex can be used in a bad way or a good way like all the other things God has created. And we shouldn’t think that it is always bad, that a knife is always used only for evil purposes. No, a knife is a very useful instrument in a kitchen.

And when God has created something, you remember when Peter saw that vision of a sheet coming down from heaven and God had to tell him one word three times: ‘what God has cleansed, don’t call unclean.’ And I would say that to you also that when God has created something and says very good, we have no business to say it is unclean. What the world does with it is unclean. The murderer taking that knife and killing somebody, he is unclean. The knife itself is not unclean. He has used that knife for a wrong purpose.

And when the world uses the sexual function wrongly, then of course it is evil. But otherwise it is very holy. It is not only good, I would say it is holy, pure and binds a husband and wife together.

And in this section, I mean, I would really encourage husbands and wives to read this to each other. The Song of Solomon, it is a wonderful book. You know, it expresses appreciation. In our Indian culture, unfortunately, husbands and wives don’t appreciate one another. They just take each other for granted.

And of course in India also, husbands and wives have sex as we all know. But they don’t appreciate one another sufficiently. It is a very sad thing. And Song of Solomon or Song of Songs teaches the necessity of appreciating one another. Very, very important. And the importance of communication, of speaking to one another in marriage in a loving way. All these things are in this book. And very practical advice.

And also it is a very realistic book. It shows that there are times when there are ups and downs like in marriage, feelings will go, but the love remains and how these up and down feelings can be overcome and how revival can come in a marriage. Very, very down to earth, realistic, practical.

The second thing about, the first is as I said, marriage relationships and sex in marriage and communication and love and all that. The second thing that Song of Solomon pictures is Christ and the Church. And I would say we must see both as we read this book. You can read it through in one way as a husband-wife relationship and then you can read it through another way as Christ-Church relationship and in both cases you can get a lot of profit. And I would encourage you who are married to read it through husband and wife as a husband-wife relationship story.

And all of us, married or unmarried, can read it through as Christ and the Church story. And there is a lot in that. I remember it is one of the first books I studied in my Christian life when I started studying the Bible. And I was alone on a ship, just baptized a few months earlier, far away from all contact with believers for weeks on end. And I studied this book about forty years ago and it deepened my devotion to Jesus immensely. And I learned in those days, because I didn’t have contact with believers, to trust in the Lord and to love Him and to rest in His love for me and that deepened my walk with the Lord. And I have always valued this book since that time. It is a picture of Christ and the Church.

It is called a Song and I want to point you to a verse in Revelation 14:3 in this connection.

Revelation 14:3 says about those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes — And those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes, it says about them: ‘they sang a wonderful new song and no one could learn that song except this group of people, this 144,000, the bride of Christ, those who follow Him.’

See, like a bride who follows the bridegroom wherever he goes, they are the only ones who can learn this song. You can follow this Bible study for the next fifty minutes or so, but you won’t learn the song until you follow Jesus. If you follow Jesus, you can learn the song and you got to learn it on this earth. It says they learned it on earth before they reached up.

They learned it on earth. Now is your time, brother, sister. Ministry is not everything. Let me give you my testimony after preaching for thirty-eight years at least and serving the Lord full time for thirty-four years, my devotion to Christ is the basis of all my ministry. My ministry would be zero the moment my devotion to Christ goes down.

This relationship with Christ described in the Song of Solomon is the basis on which your service for the Lord, whether evangelism or teaching or whatever you do, social work in Jesus’ name, medical work, planting churches, whatever it is, this relationship with Christ should be the basis of your ministry. This is a song we got to learn. It is a song that Jesus sings to us, the bridegroom singing to the bride, and it’s also a song that through the Holy Spirit in us we sing to the Lord.

It’s the opposite of Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, it’s knowledge, knowledge. Here it is love, love, and many seek knowledge. But the Lord seeks for those who love. It’s only then that our knowledge is useful.

And in the Song of Songs, we see there’s a growth of love. In the first chapter we see the beginning of love. We could say it’s like infatuation. A lot of young people today when they say they are in love with each other, it’s actually not love. It’s infatuation. Love is very selfless. If you want to see the purest expression of love in the world, it’s not what you see in the cinema screen. It’s not what you read in the romantic novels. It’s not even what you see in a boy and a girl who so-called love each other.