“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” Did you hear that last phrase? That is so good and so needed in our culture, especially today, at least where I live in the world. “I adjure you to not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.”
– Song of Solomon 3:5
So as we read Song of Solomon, we see a celebration of love in marriage and physical pleasure in marriage but we also see cautions against seeking that physical pleasure outside of marriage, between a husband and a wife. We live in a world, this is such a different message than what we hear in the world. This world says, any time, any place, any person. Whatever for you desire, fulfill that desire. And God is saying, “No. No, in my timing. In the place I have ordained, with the person I’ve given to you in the covenant marriage relationship.” This is where God has designed physical, sexual pleasure to be enjoyed in the context of marriage.
Song of Solomon 3:5 is a Powerful Depiction of Marriage
This is where we, you realize yes, Song of Solomon is a powerful depiction of the beauty of the marriage relationship, but it’s also a warning, certainly to single men and women, not to seek that physical pleasure outside of a covenant marriage relationship with a husband or a wife, and to caution every single person who is married, to pursue that pleasure only in the context of your marriage; in your thought life, in your desires, and in your actions.
Song of Solomon 3:5 Leads Us to Run from Sexual Sin
And so we pray, God, help us not to stir up or awaken love out of the good boundaries you have given us in marriage. We know your repeated commands all across the New Testament, to flee sexual immorality, to flee sexual thought, desire, deed, action, outside of marriage, between a husband and a wife.
So God, help us to do that because everything around us in this world contradicts what you are saying in your word, so we pray that you would help us to heed your cautions and to obey your word and to be pure and holy in this way, to experience all that you’ve designed for marriage, as a husband or a wife, and to refrain from, flee, run away, from sexual thought, desire or action, outside of marriage.
This Verse Helps Us to Trust the Lord
God help us to trust you on this. Not to trust ourselves. Not to trust the world around us, but to trust you and your word and in the process to experience the good, full, abundant life you have designed for all of us when we keep this kind of love in the proper place, at the proper time, according to your wisdom. God help us, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
