Song of Songs 2019

So the readings from starts in Song of songs chapter 2, verse 3, which is page 681 in the Church Bible. Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade and his fruit is sweet to my taste. Let him lead me to the banquet hall and let his banner over me be love. Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples for I am faint with love.

His left arm is under my head, and his right harm embraces me. Daughter of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the doze of the field. Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. Listen. My beloved, look, here he comes leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills.

My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice, my beloved spoke and said to me, arise my darling, my beautiful 1, come with me, See the winter has passed, the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth. The season of singing has come. The cooing of doves is heard in our land the fig tree forms its early fruit.

The blossoming vines spread their fragrance, arise, come my darling, my beautiful 1, come with me. My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside, show me your face. Let me hear your voice For your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. In chapter 5 verse 2, I slept but my heart was awake.

Listen, my beloved is knocking. Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless 1. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night. I've taken off my robe. Must I put it on again?

I've washed my feet must I sto must I soil them again? My beloved thrust his hand through the latch opening. My heart began to pound for him. I re I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands drip with my fingers with flowing my on the handles of the bolt. I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left.

He was gone. My heart sank at his departure I looked for him, but did not find him. I called him, but he did not answer. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me they bruised me, they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the wars, daughters of Jerusalem.

I charge you. If you find my beloved, what will you tell him tell him I am faint with love. And chapter 7, verse 9. May the wine go straight to my beloved flowing gently over lips and teeth? I belong to my beloved and his desire is for me.

Come my beloved. Let us go to the countryside. Let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyard. To see if the vines have budded if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in blue.

There, I will give you my love. The mandrake send out their fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for you my beloved. If you only you were to me like a brother who was nursed at my mother's breasts, then if I found you outside, I would kiss and no 1 would despise me. I would lead you and bring you to my mother's house. She who has taught me.

I would give you spiced wine to drink the nectar of my pomegranates. His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you, do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. Well, if you wanna keep song and songs open, we're gonna, jump, jump all over the place, in those readings. Someone likened marriage to a warm bath. Any of us of marriage must think who who is this idiot?

A warm bath. It it sounds it sounds it sounds very nice because all you gotta do with a warm bath is to step in it let it flood over you, and then you do nothing. That's what a warm bath is about. Last week, I was likening marriage to a mission There's quite a difference, isn't there? A warm bath or a mission?

Which 1 do you want? A warm bath or a mission? Now in a mission, obviously, there's comradeship, there's heartfelt devotion, there's times where you're coming very close together. There'll be times of joy and times of laughter, but in a mission, there's sacrifice. There's hard times.

In a mission, it's not about my happiness, like, in a warm bath. It's about something bigger. So we're looking at lessons, from song of songs. I did a series on song of songs, and the whole idea of that series was to think about Christ and the church, and I wanted to show you the love of Christ. And that's why I wanted to do that series.

But we're just doing 2 Sundays last Sunday and this Sunday on application, particularly into marriage, but it really is about any relationship in many ways. Marriage is a mission we saw last week, and there were a whole load of things that, you can listen to if you wanna go back and hear that sermon. This week, I want to deal with conflict and a few other things, but conflict. The problem with seeing marriage as a warm bath is, warm baths go cold, and no 1 wants to stay in a cold bath. You have to get out of it quickly.

But if you see marriage as a mission as a calling, as god's calling to you, then even in conflict, you're gonna stay there. Because it's an opportunity to grow. Conflict is an opportunity to grow. Marriage is not a warm bath where you just relax. Marriage is a place to work at.

Marriage is a battle sometimes. Marriage is a place where you will grow. And in any growth, there is always pain. You wanna build your muscles up? You have to have pain so you have bigger muscles.

Marriage isn't a warm bath. Marriage is a mission of 2 people who are not compatible, becoming 1, 2 sinners becoming like Christ declaring in their mission the love of Jesus to the world. And therefore, in any mission, in any relationship, in any intimate relationship, like a husband and wife, There is need for change. And if there's need for change, there will be conflict, and conflict is good to help us change. To make us more like Christ.

So conflict is an inevitable thing. It's unavoidable but it's not an end. It's an opportunity to grow. So here's my first point then conflict It's not long in any relationship before there is some kind of conflict that goes on. And we saw that in our series in song of songs.

We're not long into their relationship, before there's there's conflict. So in chapter 2, they're not even married yet, but there's trouble in their relationship. Actually, I think what the trouble is, and I'll I'm not going into that particular thing because we've looked at this. I think the trouble particularly is that he that she's not trusting him. So he wants her to go into areas that are really scary for her, and she won't trust him.

So that there's the conflict. And in chapter 2, in verse 15, there is this wonderful little line that I want us to think about. Catch for us, the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, are vineyards that are in bloom. Now this is poetry. This is a song.

It's put in terms of poetry. So we've got to sort of explore what that means. But what he's basically saying is that it's very clear that in the relationship, and they're not even married yet, there's conflict going on, and there are things that are gonna do harm in the vineyard, in their relationship. And, we're in a world where to keep a good thing good like marriage is hard work. It's hard to keep a good thing good.

It's not like a warm bath. It doesn't stay warm. If you want the bath analogy, you've gotta keep letting water out and putting more in. It's hard to keep a good thing good, and Solomon is saying, that's what we've got to work at. Are vineyards that are in bloom.

Do you see that? They haven't borne fruit yet. There's flowers on them. Yes. There's potential for growth.

There's potential for fruit in this relationship. But, it will all go wrong at this tender stage where the flowers are just in bloom. It will all go wrong if we allow these little foxes to run riot. So verse 15, catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyard, the relationship. Our vineyard, our relationship in Bloom, but we haven't got the grapes yet.

Now these little foxes that Solomon talks about are more like little rats They're little rats that burrow under the ground, and they eat the roots and destroy, the harvest, the grapevines. What are the things that ruin any relationship? Could be relationship in church, could be marriage? Often, it's the little things, isn't it? It's often the little things.

A great, big bushy, tailed fox, you can see a mile off. It's often the tiny little rats that are underground. That you can keep out of sight, actually, that there are things that gnaw away at relationship. Solomon said, come on. Let's round up the foxes.

Let's go fox hunting. We we this relationship is so important. We've gotta do something and go fox hunting. Now what is it? Well, it could be it can be anything.

It could be uncontrolled desires that 1 of the partners have. That that that sort of drive a wedge of guilt in a relationship. It could be gambling, an uncontrolled desire where you where you're taken up with money could be materialism. Where the big thing in your life is money, and ease, and a nice house. And it it it's a it's a fox snoring away.

It could be pride. It could be selfishness. It could be the refusal to say, oh, I'm really sorry to the person because of your pride. That could be a fox. It could be tensions in the family.

You know, suddenly when you're when you get married, you suddenly got a whole sort of family you didn't want and a whole history of a family you don't care about, and you've suddenly got a mother-in-law for goodness sake. My mine's mine's dead. See, I took care of the little foxes. And, but, you know, you've suddenly got this whole family that maybe judging you and looking down on you and saying, well, if I was you, I wouldn't do it that way. You know?

There are pressures. Whatever it is. You need to deal with it. And sadly, there are lots of people that want to cover up the fox hole. Fudge the whole thing, pretend there isn't a problem.

Don't go fox hunting. Let's make fox hunting illegal in relationships. Let what be will be whatever it is. But Solomon says, no. Catch for us the foxes.

Why? Because they're gonna ruin our relationship. And that's important. Relationships are important because god is the god of relationship. So catch these little bastard things.

Catch these nasty little things that are gonna do great harm. Get into the habit of catching them. They're nasty. They're horrible. They'll destroy us In his book, 12 rules for life, Jordan Peters, it's a really good book.

Actually, it's largely a a self help book, but it's it's more than that and better than that. He has some really good advice stuff because he's a clinical psychologist, a practicing 1, and, he's, he gives a lot of good illustrations and also about marriage. He, he talks about a children's story which is called there's no such thing as a dragon. Some of you probably have read it. There's no such thing as a dragon by Jack Kent.

And, he writes this. He says it's a very simple tale at least on the surface. It's about a small boy called Billy Bixby, who spies a dragon sitting on his bed 1 morning. And it's about the size of a house cat. So it's a smallest dragon, and it's very friendly.

He goes and tells his mother about it, but his mother says there's no such thing as a dragon, w sister's stupid. And, because she doesn't believe in it, the thing grows. It eats, Billy's pancake, he complains to the mother, but the mother doesn't believe in dragons. And then, but eventually it grows so big it fills the whole house. So that the mother when vacuuming the house has to go around it, but she doesn't believe in it.

In fact, she has to go out the door and in a window to order a vac to to vacuum because the thing's got so big. At 1 day, it gets so big, it's oozing out of the house, its head coming out of the chimney pot or whatever it is, it picks up the house and moves it. The dad comes home from work, and there's no house. And the mailman says, oh, it's it's moved off. So he goes to find it.

He jumps on the dragon's head and goes into the window, and, starts to say we need to deal with this dragon, but the mom says there isn't such a thing as a dragon. Don't talk about dragons. They don't exist. And in the end, Billy, the little boy so fed up, he says there is a dragon, mom. And he insists that the dragon, and as he insists there's a dragon, the big dragon begins to shrink to cat's eyes.

And then everybody agrees that the dragon exists, and it's much prefer favorable to have a small dragon than a big 1. And then mum suddenly reluctantly opens her eyes and says, okay. Yeah. There is a dragon. Why did it get so big says the mum?

And Billy says this, maybe it wanted to be noticed. This is where Peterson is brilliant. He says maybe it wanted to be noticed. That's the moral of many, many stories, chaos emerges in a household bit by bit. Mutual unhappiness and resentment pile up.

Everything untidy is swept under the rug where the dragon feasts on the crumbs. But no 1 says anything as the shared society and negotiated order of the household reveals itself as inadequate or disintegrates in the face of unexpected or the unexpected and the threatening everybody whistles in the dark instead. Communication would require admission of terrible emotions, resentment, terror, loneliness, despair, jealousy, frustration, hatred, boredom, moment by moment. It's easier to keep the peace. In the background, in Billy Bixby's house, and in all that w like it, the dragon grows.

1 day, it bursts forth in a form that no 1 can ignore. It lifts the very household from its foundation, then it's an affair or decades long of custody disputes. Do you see how it gets worse? Then it's the concentrated version of acrimony that could have been spread out toller tolerably by issue by issue over the years of the pseudo paradise that the marriage was. The emission of of recognizing problems.

It's brilliant, isn't it? And that's what happens. People come to you with marriages where there's a dragon bursting out of all all all the windows and all the doors, it's almost too late. You need to deal with it. You need to deal it's not too late.

Is almost too late. You need to deal with these issues. You need to confront them and deal with them. So what are the little foxes in your life? What are the little things burrowing in your life, in your marriage in your relationships in the church.

It's extraordinary, isn't it how suddenly someone busts out and said, I'm leaving the church. And you think, sorry, why? And then you find out there was something that happened, like, 10 years ago, and they'd never sought forgiveness or an opportunity to share with the person that they thought hurt them. What are the dragons in your life? Now where the dragon needs to be dealt with and when it's dealt with gets smaller, Jesus needs to grow.

Jesus needs to grow. Jesus is is the 1 that will keep your relationships pure, and you're being able to forgive each other. And have delight in your relationship. Jesus is the good shepherd that leads you through the valley of the shadow of death those hard times in a relationship. Jesus is the good shepherd.

He's the 1 that has come to give you life in all its abundance. He's no spoil sport. He's no killjoy as you trust in him. He cleanses you. He deals with the dragon.

He deals with the monster. He is the resurrection and the life. He can bring a difficult marriage with monsters back to life if you both look at him. He's the best 1 to have in your relationship to deal with all of these problems. So are you fox hunting, and are you fox hunting with Jesus?

But I need I I need to I need to give a bit of balance here, I need I need to I need to say something about the Fox hunting a little bit more. Because there are people who talk about they love the Fox hunting thing, and they have attitudes like no stone unturned. I knew I knew a couple like this, where the the wife was saying no stone unturned. She was a nightmare to live with. She was a nightmare to know.

She she was absolutely a nightmare. I've gotta turn over every stone. No stone unturned. I want to say that that's a fox that needs dealing with, because that's a wrong attitude. So when it says deal with the little foxes, I'm not talking about turning over every stone.

It's foxes that are digging and hiding away and gnawing, but actually the stones in the soil actually help the, the, the, the vine to grow because the roots grow around the stones and grow into the stones as it, as it were, the stones become part of their whole root system. And so it actually has a a strengthening effect. So I'm not talking about little niggles that we have with each other and disappointments and annoyances, we need to learn in any relationship to turn a blind eye to loads of things. So you gotta learn, and you gotta learn wisdom, and you learn it from Jesus. There's a time where love covers a multitude of sins of errors.

It's an attitude thing, isn't it? Is based on love and service and sacrifice and giving. You've gotta learn what is a fox and what is a stone, and you leave the stones alone, and you deal with the foxes. And that's wisdom, and that's getting into the wise word of god to understand what is what, talking to wise people. Back to song of songs then.

So there was a conflict, even before they were married, It doesn't take long in a relationship before there's conflict, but there's conflict that rears its ugly head again when they're married. As I say, it's not long before their mar long long into their marriage before there is a conflict. The first form that we've just seen is dealing with those underlying lurking things that can destroy relationship, the foxes, but the second is when conflict is now in the open. So look at chapter 5 and verse 2. Solomon comes home late at night.

He's a king. He may well have been working, late at night. And he comes home to his wife. He's actually showing her love He's, he's he's coming home, but it's just late. And look at verse 2, of chapter 5, I slept, but my heart was awake.

Listen. My lover is knocking. Open to me, my sister, my darling. This is what he says. Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my florist 1.

My head is strange with you, my hair, with, dampness of the night. Now, again, we've seen this and applied it to Christ. But here is here is this king coming home through the night, and she's got do not disturb gone to bed, go away. Yeah? Look at verse 3.

I've taken off my robe. Must I put it on again. I've washed my feet. Must I saw it again. Okay.

Don't mean bad for goodness sake. And I've locked the door, you know? They're not good excuses. They're terrible excuses. She's not willing to make a sacrifice to get out of bed and open the door for Solomon doesn't accept that.

He puts his hand through the door and tries to rattle the rattle the door and rattle the lock and so forth. But in the end, He feels rejected as he is, and he goes. He's a newly married man. He wants to be with his wife, He was showing love by coming through the night, and he's been rejected. And so he goes.

Now that's their conflict. But conflict in marriage could be anything, but it's the same basic principle as going on here. The man wants something, and the woman wants something else. She's dismissive of the way he's trying to show love to her and he feels rejected and dejected, and it can happen the other way around, of course, and so he goes. And that's a kind of scenario.

That's going on here. And, of course, that situation of rejection and dejection actually can escalate very, very quickly as it does. Because the time she comes to her senses and gets up and opens the door, he's gone. Then you suddenly find in the story that she's out looking for him at night And the police think she's a prostitute, and, and there's all this disaster going on. She's beaten up and all of that sort of stuff.

So what we've got here is estrangement, an escalation of rejection, And it can be caused by a number of things in marriage. She's shut him out, and so he's gone. And marriage runs into these type of things. All kinds of reasons, there are different expectations in a relationship There are different schedules. In this case, Solomon's working very, very long hours at this time in his life.

And she doesn't quite understand the heaviness of the workload in this case. There are different energy levels people have. He obviously has quite a high energy level. She has quite a low 1. There's different libidos.

It's it's, you know, 1 partner has a higher libido and another, you know, a lesser 1, and they often don't happen at the same time. There's tiredness going on here. There's the stage of life that you're in in marriages, particularly if you've got small children, It's a really hard thing. You never think you're gonna get through it. So there's all kinds of difficulties in marriage that can cause conflicts.

Now what does the conflict do? A conflict here is dividing the 2 that should be 1 that they're moving apart. And it's expressed spatially here. He goes off, but is expressed emotionally as well. And that's what conflict does.

It divides that which is 1 into 2, and they separate. Now in this case, we're talking about an intimate life here. But it's a great illustration of what happens in all kinds of areas. It doesn't have to just be the intimate life. Here it is.

Solomon's coming late at night, looking to make love to his new wife, and she's not interested. But I I just wanna show you the separation. I mean, sex, which is to is a picture of the 1 flesh, which which brings the 2 separate people almost indistinguishable so close together to be 1. Well, that's not happening here. And so there's a division going on here.

Now what's the root of the conflict? That's the question. But, basically, nearly always, it's selfishness. Misunderstandings. Solomon may well, perhaps have been selfish thinking as he's coming through the night.

I wanna make love to my wife. You know, he's got all of the romantic songs on as he's driving through the rain because he's obviously got wet and everything. And, he's thinking and the every, you know, every beat of the horse in front of him and every pounding horse is pounding his heart for what he's looking forward to. And then he comes home and she's in better sleep. And can't even be bothered to open the door and doesn't understand his physical, emotional, and psychological needs, and how much he's expressed love got out of his way to express his commitment to this relationship by coming through the night, and now it's shunned.

Do you see all the stuff that's it can happen the other way around? But self self is here. She doesn't wanna put herself out for him. He doesn't understand why she's so tired. And in this, is a very good picture.

Because Jesus says if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. The shadow of the cross falls on every area of our relationship, and this is why it's a good picture because it even falls in the bedroom. In the area of the intimate life. Listen to Paul. Listen to Paul.

Paul's pastoral advice in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 7. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife and likewise, the wife to her husband. The wife's body Wife's hear this. The wife's body does not belong to her alone. But also to her husband.

Now listen, in the same way the husband's body does not belong to him alone, but also to the wife, do not deprive each other. Except by mutual consent and for a time so that you may be devote yourselves to prayer, then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self control. The shadow of the cross even falls in the intimate life even falls in the bedroom. And so now you can apply that illustration to every other area of your life. When we're so self occupied, so preoccupied with our comfort, not giving to our husband or our wife or in a relationship in church, When it's all about me and my comfort, then things go wrong.

If anyone would come after me says Jesus, he if anyone would be my follower, in any department of life, in all the relationships you die to self and live for him, and therefore you serve. Sacrifice is the key to passion. It's the fertilizer where passion will grow where love will grow, where marriages are bound together, sacrifice is the soil, self giving. And that doesn't come easy to us. And so we have to work at it.

We have to die to self. Someone wrote this. When an argument occurs, I become defensive. Do you see how how just listen to how self takes over here? And I if you don't know this, I'd I don't know where you are because this is me.

When an argument occurs, I become, defensive and self preoccupied. I see the situation from my perspective, Anne is definitely wrong. I see the wrong done to me. Why are you hurting me? I see my hurt, my embarrassment, my disappointment.

Whether I hit out at the other or I'm being hit out at, I protect myself, and as a means to an end, my heart begins to harden. This is the point of maximum danger. Once my heart has begun to harden, it has its own momentum It will only be stopped by specific intervention. Within 24 hours, my heart may have become so hard toward the other person that marriage is effectively over. It's all about me, isn't it?

And that's not Christlike, and that's not our mission. Our mission is to be Christ Light. And what we're doing is being led by self rather than Christ. Led by my own desires and comforts rather than laying my life down for someone else. John Piper writes this, focus first on your own need to change, not hers or his.

It may be that your spouse is sinning against you far more than you are sinning against him or her, but you will not give an account for that to the lord Jesus Christ. You will give an account for your response to it That is the great bet battle. Will you change? Yes. Your spouse should change.

No doubt about that. But I promise you it will not bear the fruit you want if that is your main focus. In other words, if your main focus is that he changes, she changes. It's me changing. All conflict is an opportunity for for forgiveness It's a soil where I can change and grow and love and be Christlike and deny myself.

It's an opportunity for me to fulfill my mission. It's an opportunity to remind myself that he forgave me my sin and so much more than the sin that's being when you see red in a relationship. When you are angry and blaming someone else in the relationship, when you see red, let it remind you of the blood of Christ who died for you, all your sins, calm down. What is the conflict in your marriage? Is it money?

Is it communication? Coming on to that? Is it relations? Is it values? Is it sex?

Is it materialism? They're so worldly. Someone said, good couples seek out resolution to their fights. Bad couples seek out victory for themselves. So there's communicate there's conflict.

Got it? I've got 2 more points here. Here's the second. Communication. Communication.

I think we've noticed that throughout our song of song series, they're always talking to each other. There's a lot of praise going for each other as well, which is very important. They're always talking, and they talk about all kinds of things. And the heart of a good deep, lasting relationship in church, in any relationship, in marriage, particularly is good communication. If there's a communication breakdown, then there will be problems.

And they're communicating all the time. I I think I you've heard me say of you have heard me say this many times, and some of you have heard him say it when we had Hans Kelder come and do a marriage weekend for us. I asked him. He he he's counselled over 600 couples. And, I asked him, what's your number 1 tip?

That saves marriages. What's the number 1 thing, and he talks about communication? He says this. Usually, when there's an argument going on, between the husband and the wife, the husband's voice goes high. What are you doing?

Men can't cope with it. We look at a mouth and see a motor mouth. The noise is something that we just can't he he's serious about this. We want to either run away back off and go down the shed or start watching football, or if we're brutish and caveman like, we attack it to destroy the thing. And all all it does is if you if you're like this, stunned by this mouth that's going at hundred miles an hour, and the voice is going higher that we can't cope and we're going down the shed, all it does is make the voice go higher.

He says what I do is I teach the husbands. I say to the husbands, you've gotta look at the eyes, not the mouth. You've got to you've got to calm that thing down in front of you. Now don't do what I do with Anne, which a patter on the head and say, calm down. Calm down because that stirs her up for some reason.

But, what you've gotta do is to show that you're listening, and that's part of communication. You're showing that you're hearing you might ask, sorry, what did you mean by that? And that automatically when she thinks you're listening brings her voice down. Which in turn makes you less I've gotta get out of here. He says that's his number 1 advice.

You see, what's going on, if you look at song of songs and read it through, is massive communication. It's not just talk. It's communication. And he understands her. And part of our job as men is to understand women.

And there is a real truth in men are from Mars and women are from Venus stuff. This is why all this nonsense about, you know, there's no gender differences. It's just just the nonsense, just in the fact of communication and the way people hear things. There is a difference, and we have to learn the language of the 1 that we love so that we can speak into it. And so, and so this is what goes on here in, song of songs.

So look at chapter 7 and verse 1, see what he calls her. In verse 1, a prince's daughter equals her. How beautiful your sandaled Fito Prince's daughter your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of a craftsman's hand. He knows that in the setting that she's in, that she's worried about being very insecure about her body and how she looks like and all that sort of stuff in the palace. She's a country girl, and now she's in the palace.

And so he knows how to speak to her. You're beautiful. He deals with her insecurities. He speaks into her life He communicates, not just words, but he communicates so that she is hearing that he's there. He's listening.

He understands her insecurities. He he's not just dismissing. Oh, don't worry about it. You'll be alright. I don't even like those women anyway.

You're beautiful. You're my princess. Beautiful sandal feet. You're graceful legs. You're jewels of a craftsman.

Gosh. I'm taking up with you. You're the 1 I'm looking at. I read a love a lovely thing in a book. This week, where a husband a husband wrote this he he put this letter in the glove department, and she had had an accident.

And he put this letter in with the insurance papers, you know, where you when you've had an accident, you get your insurance papers out. And, attached to the insurance papers was this letter which she opened. Her name was Mary, dear Mary, When you need these papers, remember it's you I love, not the car. Isn't that lovely? Isn't that lovely?

He knows that at the point of curty, and pressure, and tears, and she needs that little reassurance because he knows his wife. I think, to be fully care about the car. I'm not gonna be angry about the car. It's you I love. So talk learn to communicate, and listen.

Can I say this? It sounds like I'm denying everything I've said before, not just about the little foxes, and not just about the conflicts. The problem is those things become the all embracing, you know, cloud over everything. I think if you're wise, you say, let's give it a slot. Let's give it a time period.

Okay. Okay. At T time, we're gonna talk about our conflicts and our foxes. But at other times, we talk about other things. Speak about bigger things, grander things, so that the conflicts become smaller.

Men learned to communicate the gospel of the lord Jesus to your wives. Learn to read the scriptures with your wife. Get something that helps you every morning or evening or whenever so we can read a passage of the scriptures, and there's a bigger picture, something else to look at, see your marriage as the mission that it is. So it's not all the time conflict, conflict, cloud, cloud. There's a bit of sun coming through.

Learn to communicate so that you're not constantly going on about the negatives. So communication, conflict. Here's my third bit of advice, and then I'm done, and then I'm on holiday. So great. Creativity.

Be creative in your relationship. As a church, we need to be creative. Churches get into ruts marriages get into ruts, relationships get into ruts, but she's flipping creative. I mean, seriously creative. Now she's creative in the sexual area.

I'm not gonna deal with that, so don't panic. I'll show it I'll show it to you, but I'm not gonna go into that. But look at chapter 8 verse 11, see what's going on here. Come my lover, let us go to the countryside, Let us spend the night in the villages, away from those horrible palace people. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded.

This is very sexual language. If the blossoms have opened and if the pomegranates are in bloom, There, I will give you my love. The mandrakes send out their fragrance. And at our door is every delicacy, both new and old. And I have stored them up my lover.

It's very high charged sexual language. You see what she's doing, though? I mean, I could imagine it. He's king. He's busy.

He's about his work. She says, come on. We need to go away on a holiday. It's the holiday springtime. That's when they got married, you know, so she's reminded.

She's like a second honeymoon. She realizes that something needs to happen in their relationship and he's hardworking, getting on with the work, and it keeps she keeps saying, she could just nag him. We gotta go on holiday. We gotta go on holiday. We gotta go on holiday.

And he's saying, I've got so much work to do. I've got so much work to do. I can't come home. But look, I'm gonna book up a holiday. I can't.

I've gotta work late Friday again. So she rings up Friday morning. He's there working. And she says, now look my love. Let's go to the countryside.

I booked up a nice place. Let's go out into the open. And, to be quite honest, the mandrakes are gonna be, open. The mandrakes are an Afrodisiac, and she says, look, to be honest, I've I've got the mandrakes ready. And, I'm suggesting some old stuff and some new.

And he says I'll be there in an hour. And they're off on their relationship. Now you can apply that in that area of intimacy, which I'm not going to do. But listen, The point is that in our relationships, we can become so dull and boring, that we need to be creative. It was interesting that that I I actually had this down to say, but I didn't because, so Phil Cooper was talking about being with Catherine at at the London Museum.

That's creative, isn't it? It's different, isn't it? In other words, sometimes you have to get out of your cloud atmosphere of conflict. And you have to go and do something different so that you begin to see things together and you apply the gospel to the things that you're seeing, and it's fresh and new. Be creative.

Do you see that? Don't be dull. Yesterday was a it was it was a great joy. We did, contagious training And then we went I'm just giving this as an illustration. I'm sorry if this embarrasses you, but this this would have happened many times in Cornerstone.

That's why I love Cornerstone. But we went round after, after, after a contagious to the Canary's house. And Suzanne wasn't there. Where she then? Why won't she look it after the kids?

Because she was doing the nearly new thing. There was it was just an amazing thing, and I thought about the canaries. And this could I could say this about lots of others, so please don't be jealous here. But it was a wonderful thing that that I suddenly realized that Steve had been up. He's got 2 young kids.

This is a hard stage of life. That's a hard stage of life. He was up doing football, evangelistic football, then came and looked after the kids, and Suzanne was then doing nearly new, Then there was a whole load of people looking after the kids. That's what church is like, chucking them up in the air, laughing at them, making them cry. It was a lovely act of a little thing within a church life of lots of uncles and aunts looking after the kids, and then you see they've got experiences.

Now I don't know. They may well have had a massive argument in the evening. I guess they did. But but the point is that the argument is only a little tiny bit of something bigger where they've experienced serving the lord. Do you see what I'm trying to say here?

It's creative. It's alive. It's not just about what's going on with our little family and how we argue. There's bigger things, new things, old things, You could do it with the Aronson's. You know, Richard has to look after the kids because, because Naomi is on a a training week.

It's a so when they come together, it's not just the argument. How did you get on? No. They may have had an argument. I don't know.

Did you? No. But, you know, how did you get what what did you say? Oh, I haven't seen each other yet. Oh, god.

My goodness. Well, you know, get the mandrakes out tonight. But, you know, so but did she say they've had experiences, and they come together. How was your day? Well, it was horrific says, Richard, these nasty little children that you produce.

How was your day? It was terrific. You know, we heard about the church and got Do you see what I'm trying to say? There's creativity, there's thinking, there's energy into it, and there's church working together where brothers and sisters come in and uncles and aunts come in. And this all works together in connecting creativity.

So that we're gospel people bigger than ourselves, bigger than our upsets, bigger than our disappointments. That's what marriage is. That's what church is. All of this applies to all our relationships. So marriage, is it a warm bath?

Sometimes, but it goes cold. But it is a mission, and it's a mission worth growing in the conflict with dealing with those issues. Not hiding them, covering up others, of course, communicating and learning to communicate and being creative. And actually churches like that as well, we're to deal with conflict, we're to communicate with each other and learn that. Sometimes we upset people, and we gotta learn how to speak, and we wanna be creative.

Churches go dull and boring like marriages when there's no creativity. Father god, help us learn these things we pray in Jesus' name, amen.