09/06/2018 DAB Transcript

Song 1:1-4:16 , 2 Corinthians 8:16-24 , Psalms 50:1-23 , Proverbs 22:22-23

Today is the 6th day of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you. Hard to believe we’re like almost a week already into September, but we are and it wouldn’t be right to go through this day without taking the next step forward. So, that’s what we’ll do. We’re reading from the Modern English version.

Introduction to the book of the Song of Solomon:

We’ve come to a special point in the year, a point at which my wife joins me in a reading and that is the Song of Solomon. So, today and tomorrow we’ll be reading at the Song of Songs, which is a radical departure from the territory we’ve just completed in Job and Ecclesiastes and all that we’ve been considering there. And if it is the song of all songs, then human sexuality is indeed a celebrated part of the biblical narrative but it has many layers. It’s short, but it’s potently beautiful, a beautiful book of poetry considered to be Old Testament wisdom literature. But like I said, it has many layers. For millennia the correct way to interpret this lovely but rather graphic poem has been debated. So if we take the poem literally, from a literal perspective, it’s the story of the passionate consummation of love between a man and woman who are utterly lost in one another. And Song of Solomon stands on its own as a witness to marital love and the bliss of a passionate relationship. The ancient Jewish tradition looks at the poem allegorically. I mean, it’s poetry after all. And, so, from this perspective, the story being told reveals God’s passionate love for his children, the Jewish people. And this view is completely supportable in other areas of Scripture both in the old and the new Testaments. And then in the Christian tradition, the book is an allegorical look at Christ’s passionate love for his church and a foreshadowing of his deep desire for his bride. But we don’t have to just pick one. I mean, in this case, all three of these can be true. And as we approach the song of songs we have a number of lenses that we can view it through. And so,  let’s invite God into how we hear it. But no matter how we approach the Song of Solomon, we’ll find a short, meaningful portion of Scripture because it does speak on these different levels into our hearts. So, let’s drink deep of the beautiful and eloquent poetry of the song of Solomon. Today we’ll read chapter 1 verse 1 through 4:16.

Prayer:

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for bringing us into this month, almost a week now. And we continue this journey, step by step, day by day, and we see how quickly it goes and how deeply we have gotten into your word. And, so, we invite You Holy Spirit. Come, plant the words that we’ve read in our lives today as they touch us on so many different levels. We pray this Father in the name of Jesus, our beloved Savior. Amen.

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And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.