Title:- The Flame of Jehovah
Song of Songs 8:7 Many waters cannot quench love, Nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love All the wealth of his house, It would be utterly despised.
In M. Knight Shalyman's 2004 film, 'The Village,' the character of Mrs. Clack, an elder of the village, questions the decision of her fellow village elder, Edward Walker, in the sending of his blind daughter Ivy to get medicine for her stabbed and now dying fiancé, Lucius. Walker replies to Clack’s admonition by saying “She is more capable than most in this village. And she is led by love. The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.” I liked the film, but I was wowed by that statement, “The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe!” Solomon in our text today, depicts love as a deep and dangerous, unquenchable and unfathomable, fire of passion, even the very 'flame of Jehovah!' Love is not something that can be purchased, but something that is kindled internally, even lit deep within, internally consuming the possessor and externally enveloping in red-hot fire those who would be possessed. This is a plain reading of the text. True love is wild and passionate beyond description. Centuries of misunderstanding and more especially of manufacturing contrived excuses for sexual sin, have presented love either as a lighted spark travelling on the wind, landing where and when it will on unsuspecting sojourners, or, as unsought for and penetrating desires, delivered by a piercing and swooning arrow upon the unmatched and unsuspecting, by a beloved and fat bottomed, cheerful and chirpy and oh so slightly quirky, naughty little cherub. “Ah love!” we then say, “It's so capricious in its choice of the carnage of the heart.” May I say to that, “What a load of old rot!”
The Christian answer to such fallacy has been the presentation of love as a choice. “Love!” We say, “Is a choice,” (told you) and we are right! We choose love, rather than it choosing us. However, the problem is that such arbitrary choosing has too often been presented in such a clinical, sanitized and surgical steel kind of way, that it leaves the hearers and practitioners of such love, both cold and corpse-like. Thank goodness, that Solomon's erotic love poem, so jam-packed, peach and plump with physical and spiritual implication, presents chosen love as anything but cold and still! Chosen love is fierce and fiery hot and very, very dangerous!
Friends, when we choose to love someone, even the unlovely, we must expect our emotions to follow, eventually maybe, but follow they must! However, when we choose to love our spouse, we must demand that our emotions follow and that right quickly! We must do all we can to set the scene, provide the fuel, light the fire and fan the flame. Does this kind of love sound contrived? Well let me tell you, after 30 or 40 years of marriage, raising kids, paying a mortgage, working 60 hours a week, dealing with ill health, loss, worries, troubles, temptations and hemorrhoids , you better believe it's contrived! You'd also better believe that it is far, far better for being so as well.
Choosing to love is the most honourable and precious thing you can do. Fellowship, fondling fun and fireworks, will always follow such consistent choosing of the self-abandoned pleasing of another that is held dearly and righteously in covenant love.
If you want to make the ground shake before your spouse’s feet, if you want to rock their world, if you want to have watching angels bowed in awe before such selflessness, then choose to love purposely and choose to love most passionately. Remember today, ‘The worlds move for love and kneel before it in awe.’
Listen : - Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33
… admonish the young women to love their husbands, Titus 2:4
Pray: - Dear Lord, let my love be found on two-way streets, that passion would find its soul mate there. However Lord, no matter what the response of others, I choose to love. Awesome, Jehovah God, come and light my fire with Your passionate flame of love. Amen.
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