you you Well, dear Grace, I invite you to take your Bibles this morning and turn to a seldom read and exposited book, the book of the Song of Solomon. This book goes by different names. You may have in your Bible a Song of Solomon, Song of Songs. Some of you may even have it as Canticles. That's my favorite. But please turn to Song of Solomon, Chapter 2, and I'm going to read in your hearing this morning, verses 8 through 17. As you're turning there, because I know that it'll probably take you a while to find it, it's not a book that we go to a lot, I just want to make a few introductory remarks. You know, I feel compelled with the pastoral burden this morning to address marriages, address husbands and wives, and the first thing I want to say about that is, You know, the Lord gives us so much in His Word about all of our relationships, whether it is worker to superior, or child to father, or to mother, or father to child. Every relationship we have insight from the Word of God, and that's why Peter says in 2 Peter 1, 3 and following, that God has given us everything we need to know for life and godliness in the knowledge of Christ, which is the Word of God. But within that span of wisdom and commandments and revelation that the Lord gives us, he gives us prose and he gives us poetry and everything in between. And sometimes it's good to step out of the prose, to step out of the, what we might call didactic passages, passages that are just teaching. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's everything wonderful about that. And think of our marriages in more of a poetic scheme. And that's what I would like to do this morning. When you think of romance, romance, which is what should be at the heart of a marriage, is not about primarily propositions. Thou shalt not commit adultery. That's true, but it's not very exciting. But the Song of Solomon gives us the other side of that coin, the poetic, imagery of what a marriage should be and what we should always be striving for a marriage to be in our own marriages. Now the second thing I want to say is that Some of you who are not married or all of you that are not married, whether you are young children or whether you are teenagers or whether you are later in life and you have never married or are divorced or whatever the case may be, I just want to say to you that everything that we talk about today or that I talk about has general application in other relationships that you have. So be listening with that ear, if you will. But I would also say there's some of you that are toward the beginning of life that are single, but you're looking for a spouse, you're looking for a partner. And what I want to say to you before we get into this is that I would encourage and exhort you to listen very carefully because as anyone in this congregation will tell you, anyone who is married, or has been married, marriage is one of the great sanctifying tools of our God. Marriage and child rearing, marriage and parenthood. It's no joke. It is the real deal Holyfield. I mean, if you think as a single person that, man, God is really sanctifying you, he's got a crucible waiting for you. It's called marriage. And it's a beautiful thing. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I am a better man today because of my wife. And I don't say that in a cliche way. I say that from the blood and the sweat and the tears that has been poured into our marriage and continues to be poured into our marriage to make it blossom into the poetic romance that it should be and that we want it to be. So young people, listen. Listen to what Solomon and his lover have to say about one another. Listen to what marriage is. And remember, oftentimes in our reformed tradition, you'll find Puritans who will say that the Song of Solomon is really just about Christ and his church. I love the Puritans, but they got some things wrong. It is about Christ and his church, but only secondarily. It is primarily, in its first horizon, about the love relationship between husband and wife. And only by analogy can we say that it has application to Christ in the church. So now with those introductory remarks being put forward, I wanna draw your attention to the text. I want you to look at Song of Solomon chapter two. I am gonna read in your hearing verses eight through 17, but our time of exposition is really going to focus on verses 14 and 15. So listen carefully. This is the reading of God's word song of Solomon Chapter 2 verses 8 through 17. The voice of my beloved. Behold, he comes leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me, arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come. and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom. They give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. Oh, my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face. Let me hear your voice. For your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom. My beloved is mine and I am his. He grazes among the lilies until the day breeze and the shadows flee. Turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains. Thus far the reading of God's word. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our Lord stands forever and we are grateful for it. Would you bow your heads with me and let's ask the Lord this morning for help as we sit under the ministry of the word. Father God, we would see Jesus this morning, we would hear Jesus this morning, specifically, Father, in this trope, in this motif that you have given us in your word. Father, we are so accustomed to hearing as evangelicals in the Reformed world that there are propositions that God has given us, and certainly that is true, but Father, we pray that you would stoke the romance and the poetry of our marriages this morning. Because after all, Father, it is not simply about practicality. It is not simply about when mama ain't happy, nobody's happy. It's not simply about convenience. It's not simply about recognizing our roles. All those things are important, but Father, we are reminded this morning from your servant Paul that our marriages are a picture of the gospel. And Father, if there is decay, if there is breakdown, if there is friction without lubrication, as it were, in our marriage relationships, that projects itself onto the world and gives them a glimpse, a foggy glimpse, a dirty glimpse. It is a dirty window, as it were, into what the gospel is. Because as Christ loved the church, so husbands are to love their wives. As the church submitted to the Lord, so wives are to submit to their husbands, we are to display the gospel in our marriages. And Father, we confess to you right now, because we do not look at these things with Pollyannish lenses, we confess to you, Father, that we need help in this area. Not we generic Christians, that is certainly true. We here at Grace Covenant Church, we need help, Father. We confess to you as fathers that sometimes we are weak. Sometimes, Father, we have wet, noodled spines rather than steel spines. We confess, Father, that when the preacher and the elders and the leaders in this place call men to be men, we get offended and we get our feelings hurt, and we're not acting like the warriors that we ought to be for Christ, laying down our life for our wives and for our children. Instead, Father, we run to the idolatry of our smartphones and immerse ourselves in it. Father, forgive us. Forgive us, Father, of the wives in our midst who have been smitten inadvertently by the cancer of feminism and think that because they disagree with their husbands, they have the right to dishonor and disrespect him. Father, forgive them for when they do not honor and respect their husbands as they ought. Father, we have so far to go. We pray that you would give us grace. We pray that you would give us instruction, and we pray, Father, that you would help your servant this morning who is guilty of the very sins that I have confessed to you this morning on behalf of our people. Take a broken vessel, Father, and speak through him, and let us all hear the voice of Christ, we pray. In Christ's name, amen. Many of you have heard this passage of scripture. I want to focus on verses 14 and 15 this morning. When Solomon, and really this is the voice of the bride, so this is the voice of Solomon, excuse me, voice of Solomon's wife speaking to Solomon, and she says, as she's speaking of what Solomon says to her, what her lover says to her, so there's two narrated levels here. In verse 14, oh my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face and let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. I want you to think of that approach, that disposition, that attitude where either the spouse, the husband or the wife, number one is saying as he looks to his wife or the wife as she looks to her husband, he or she is saying, listen to me, I want to see your face. I want to hear your voice. I don't want your face or your voice to be mute in my life. There are many things that are jockeying for position in my life. There are many challenges, many siren songs that are calling me to their shores. I am a husband, I am a father, I'm a worker, I'm a Christian, I'm a church member, I'm a voter, I'm all kinds of things, but first and foremost, I am your lover. First and foremost, I am the one who wants to see, above and beyond all things, under my priority to Christ, your face and hear your voice. So I'm going to be a man, if it's the husband speaking, listen to me, and I'm gonna ask what can possibly be, listen, a very dangerous question. My beloved, do you feel like I see your face? Do you feel like I hear your voice? Or on the other hand, do you feel neglected? I'm now gonna shut up and I'm gonna listen to your answers and I'm going to try to take the posture of a student so that I could be the best student in the class of my wife 101 and meet your needs. In fact, not just meet them when you ask for them, but know you so well that I finish your sentences and anticipate your needs." And all the women say, Amen. That's what they want. This is the ideal marriage. Verse 14 is the ideal marriage. The wife is asking that of the husband, the husband is asking that of the wife, and not annually, not just once a year. We have our shop talk session on December 31st before we go into the next. No, no, no, this is a constant thing. This is the ideal marriage. Now what happens is that the real life marriage goes something like this, verse 15. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards for our vineyards are in blossom. What is the vineyard here? The vineyard is a metaphor for the marriage relationship. The vineyard is a metaphor for this covenant relationship that we have entered into where we stood before God and man and we said I do to a series of vows that was given to us by the minister. And that vineyard, that marriage relationship, listen to me, can be destroyed by big things or little things. Oftentimes we think of the big things, right? We think adultery, infidelity is gonna destroy a marriage, abandonment's gonna destroy a marriage, lying and manipulation and so on and so on, that'll all destroy a marriage, yes and amen. But what we often give short shrift to is that sometimes just as lethal as the big things are the little foxes, as Solomon says here, the little foxes, the little things, that accumulate. It's like Chinese water torture, right? If you know what that is, the idea is that you're strapped to a board or whatever, and then just a drop of water comes on your head, just boom, boom, and you're thinking, oh, this is fine. I mean, it's only been three seconds, but it's kind of like it's raining. I could get used to this. But within 10 minutes, you're about to go crazy. It's the little things, the little things, the little things, the accumulation of the little things that, you know, on the first time, the second time, the third, we can overlook them. But after a while, when they're not dealt with, when you're not having that question come to you, beloved, do you feel like I see your face and hear your voice? They become torturous, and it is the little foxes that spoil the garden. Little things in marriage, right? Breakdowns and failures in the marriage relationship. Things like husbands leaving the toilet seat up, things like wives putting their cold feet on their husband's legs, okay? That's not a little fox, that is a gargantuan bear, okay? Husbands through lack of physical touch and words of affirmation gives wife the impression that she is a maid or a mother rather than the wife of his youth. I'm guilty of that. Wife constantly interrupting her husband when he talks. not recognizing that there is an order of things that God has given. And as I said in my prayer, I think that this is something that happens to many of our sisters. Well, I shouldn't say many. That happens, that is a temptation, shall I say, to our sisters in the congregation is that the cancer of feminism is in the water, okay? It's just in the culture that we breathe and drink in. And I think inadvertently women can get the idea that disagreement with her husband means that I could transfer that over into the tone with which I speak to him about that disagreement, and that is a lie from the pit of hell. Because Paul says, and I'll get to this later in Ephesians 5.33, he says, see to it that husbands love their wives and that women respect their husbands. Respect, honor, it is a big deal. It is not something that is to be jettisoned because of some anecdotal story that some female blogger has in the evangelical ghetto of the blogosphere. You don't say, well, she had the, yeah, that's what Black Lives Matters and Antifa does too. That's what post-modernity does. There is no meta-narrative, there are only small narratives. And truth, if we can call it that, is predicated on individual experiences. Well, that's the problem, that's not the solution. And so we don't say, well, this woman had an experience of an abuse of complementarianism and headship and therefore casting off all restraint is the way to go. No, you know whose voice that is? It is the voice of Satan. And we need to identify it as such and remember that there is a sweet spirit that God has given to the daughters of Abraham with which they are to approach their husbands because that is what characterizes daughters of the king. Husbands looking at their phone while their wife is talking. You say, what's the big deal with that? Well, you're clearly communicating to her that you're not paying attention to her. Whatever is on your phone seems to be more important than what your wife is having to say. And by the way, did you notice she has tears in her eyes? These are the little foxes, beloved. These are the little foxes, and I want you to notice what he says in verse 15, that Hebrew verb. This is how Hebrew works. It is a V-S-O language, verb, subject, object, where the verb is fronted. The verb is in the beginning, okay? And that is for a reason, because it gives emphasis. Catch the foxes. Catch the foxes. You see them going about the vineyards. Don't sit there and be a slouch. Catch the foxes. Don't say, wife, go get the gun. There's a fox in the vineyard. You get the gun. You go get the foxes. You blast them. You catch them. And you suffocate them. And this is not an occasional need. This is not an occasional necessity. This is a perennial necessity. It's a perennial necessity that needs to be instigated and directed and led by the husband, not the wife, by the way. If your wife is doing that, God bless you for having a wife that is as committed to the marriage as she needs to be, that in your lack and in your failure, she's trying to do it for somebody, but she shouldn't be doing that. She should be the one being led by your hand with camos on as you go into the vineyard to go blast some foxes. So men, if you like to hunt, there's a few of you hunters in here. or you fancy yourself as a hunter, the primary hunting ground you should be concerned with is your marriage, your family, your sphere of influence. And this morning I want to talk about some common foxes that are running amok in the vineyards of the marriages here at Grace Covenant Church. I am not saying that everybody struggles with this. I am simply, out of a pastoral concern, desirous to address a few things that I think are foxes. So I wanna give you this morning, I wanna give you this morning six loose foxes that may be running around in the vineyard in a homework assignment for how to attack them. So let me give you six loose foxes. And yes, I'm talking to both husbands and wives, but I wanna make something very, very clear when I say this. While I am talking to both husbands and wives, so if I could put it, I talk about this a lot in counseling. We talk to both sides of the ledger, okay? It takes two to make a thing go right. It takes two, all right, to make a marriage work. It takes two to make it break down, okay? While that is the case, I want to reiterate, men, that it is your job to lead your wives in this. And I'm gonna give a homework assignment at the end of this sermon, and I cannot bind your conscience, husbands, and make you do it. That would be to abuse Christian liberty. But I highly exhort you as your pastor to undertake this assignment with your wives. So here's six loose foxes. Number one, the foxes that spoil communication. the foxes that spoil communication. Most collisions in marriage relationships are not a matter of the thing about which we are speaking, they are a matter about the breakdown in communication that we're trying to accomplish in speaking about those things, if that makes sense. Oftentimes marital conflict is a result, listen, of myopic self-interest and self-vindication. And we'll get to that in just a moment. Okay, but what does it mean to see me and hear me? It means that you genuinely, when you ask that question, you are genuinely trying to see them and hear them. Let me just read a few Proverbs, just a few Proverbs. And by the way, this again applies to everyone in any relationship that you have. If you are one of those conversation rhinos, If you are one of those narcissistic people who every time somebody speaks, you see it as a boomerang to talk about your experience, about that thing that they were saying, because you think you're so important, please listen to these Proverbs. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, Proverbs 18, two, but only in expressing his opinion. Proverbs 18, two. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding. but only in expressing his opinion. Listen to Proverbs 18, 13. If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. If you cut somebody off before they finish, you are acting as a fool. You say, that's a cultural thing, Josh. Okay, well fine, it's a cultural thing of the Bible because the Bible just said that. One of the things I constantly deal with in marriage counseling is just acting as a referee. Sometimes I think I should come in with my striped shirt on and a whistle and just say, nope, because somebody will start talking, they need to get it out, and the husband or wife wants to jump in and put them in a headlock, metaphorically, and wait a minute, just let them finish. And one of the reasons, you wanna know why, one of the reasons, because the person who's listening That attitude can be described this way. While the spouse is talking, what are you doing? You're loading your gun, right? You are loading your gun. You're not thinking of anything that they're saying. Coming back to Proverbs 18.2, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding. All you want to understand is how quickly you can get those shells into the revolver so that when it's your turn to speak, you could blast them out of the water. Can I remind you, we're not blasting our spouses, we're blasting the foxes. Proverbs 18.15, unintelligent heart acquires knowledge and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. The fool is only interested in expressing his opinion And sometimes people, that person will ask of another quiet person in a group of people, you're so quiet, why don't you talk? Well, because you won't let me get a word in edgewise, that's why. And I see this sometimes in our, well, in high school age folk and even young adult age folk where there's a group of people talking and all the young men wanna do is talk about themselves. That's a very dangerous thing, ladies take note of that. That is Narcissism 101. Please do not be fooled or bamboozled by the lie from the pit of hell, men and women, that when you get married, everything changes. Right? Well, I know that this guy never lets me talk, and I know that when I do talk, he takes my words, he douses them with gasoline, he sets them on fire, and he gaslights me. But, you know, when we get married and we give our vows, all of that will change. There is no pixie dust at the altar in a marriage ceremony. Who you are before marriage is who you will be after marriage. You say, well, you're discounting sanctification. Oh, no, I fold that into my understanding, but I believe in progressive sanctification. which means that sanctification oftentimes in most of us, okay, happens painfully and slowly. Can I get an amen? Painfully and slowly. You got a guy that's a narcissist, ladies, before marriage, he's gonna be one into the marriage, and it may be 15 years before the shoe drops. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion. This isn't limited to young men and women. It's really a habit that some of us have when we're in any public conversation. But we're prone to reload our guns. We're prone to think about what we're gonna say. We're also prone to defend ourselves. because we innately think that our cause and our agenda and our ideas are the wisest and best, but the problem is, a healthy marriage has no room for such hubris. Such hubris is the opposite of what these texts teach us. We so often miss what our spouse is saying or feeling or struggling with, not because they're not telling us, but because we're not listening. So number one, listen to me. This is just a very, very simple tool, husbands and wives. If your husband or your wife is talking, let them finish and listen to what they're saying. Take the posture of a student. Don't jump on the bandwagon of automatic defense, which is all of our inclinations, stronger in some rather than in others, but nonetheless, it is there. For years, my wife was trying to tell me a number of things. I don't want to get too transparent here, but for years my wife was trying to tell me a number of things, and it's not that she never told me. It's that she did tell me, but I just wasn't listening. And it grieves me to think of some of those lost years, and yet the Lord can restore what the locusts have eaten, can he not? So here's the second fox. The first fox is the fox that spoils communication. Here's the second one. The fox of tailor-made entertainment and mindlessness. the fox of tailor-made entertainment and mindlessness. And yes, hide your phones, because I'm coming after them, okay? I meet with a number of men for discipleship purposes, and last week I met with one man, and we made an agreement, a pact of sorts, that when we go to get into bed with our wives, we will put our cell phone on the other side of the room. We will not have it on our nightstand. We will not have it in our bed because that cell phone tends to be an object of temptation that sucks my attention and my focus and my joy and my pleasure and my inquiry into my wife's thoughts and heart. It draws it away from my wife, and guess what? If she has it, so does it with her. I found it to be the case about a week ago, and this has happened in and out, but I would get into bed, and my wife would be over here, and I would be over here, and she'd be on her phone, I'd be on my phone, and we were probably three feet away from each other, but spiritually, we were thousands of miles apart. Thousands of miles apart. And so in this discipleship relationship, my friend and I, we said, let's make a pact. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna put the phones away. And I was thinking about this. I don't want you to turn there. Listen to me. I was wondering if this might give a different angle or a fresh take on Hebrews 13, four. Listen to me. Where the author says, let marriage be held in honor among all and let the marriage bed be undefiled. For God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Now I know that literally what that means is, you know, keep the marriage bed pure. Don't fornicate, don't commit adultery, okay? But I think, brothers, we can also add to that, it should be undefiled in another way. We don't simply say, well, you just cut off sin when it comes. You say, you cut off any temptation that would lead to that sin, right? So guess what? Guess what? It's been more than one occasion when a woman in my office has been with tears in her eyes and even convulsing saying, I get neglected so much that I fear that the sensual touch and words of affirmation and time and attention and direction and leadership, I might find those in another man and my heart might be drawn away from my husband. It's been more than once that I've heard those words. You wanna keep the marriage bed undefiled, brothers? You keep everything out of the literal bed that would lead to your wife running after another man. Now you say, well, that's not my sin, that's hers. It is, it's her sin. And if she actually pulled the trigger on that, she's guilty of the seventh commandment. But we all need to remember that we condition one another as husbands and wives, do we not? We condition one another to respond in different ways. Just like the absence of food in our bodies physiologically conditions us to be hangry, okay, and to want, but thank God not carry out this act, to put somebody's head in the deep fryer if they're not getting us our drink quick enough. We are conditioned by our wives and our husbands, and we need to be aware of that. The marriage bed should be held sacred, not just with respect to intimacy, but also with respect to intention. Thirdly, a third fox is the fox of convenience and complacency. And you can just write as a proof text down here, Ephesians 5, 33. It's really 533 and following. I don't wanna spend too much time unpacking that text. I really wanna get to the point, but there Paul says, however, let each of you love his wife as himself. Let me underline those words. Husbands, we are to love our wives as ourselves. Now what does that mean? Men, were you in the gym this week? Men, did you run this week? Men, did you clip your nose hairs this week? Men, did you brush your teeth this morning? Men, did you look in the mirror before you left and went to look good? Men, do you have a diet? I know some of you, some of you, some of you food prep, okay? Sometimes you food prep in your cross-fitting ways, and you don't come to service on Sunday night. I know, and so does the Lord, okay? You take that very seriously, because you care about what goes into your body, because what goes into your body affects your physique. You want to look good. You want to be strong, bigger, fatter, faster, stronger. I get it. But what Paul says here is such a simple analogy. Let each of you love his wife as himself. If you spend all that time on yourself, Paul's just saying, look, I've got a category for you in your life that if you just put a bridge from this category to loving your wife, he's gonna say, bingo, there it is. If you spent as much time in intention thinking about what your wife needs and what she craves and how she needs to be led, even against her best wishes, I'll bet that the friction that is in your marriage wouldn't be as animated as it currently is. Husbands and wives, we get very comfortable in our rhythms and schedules, especially with kids, and we just start expecting and depending on the little things. We expect and depend, for example, the work of the wife. whether she is working outside the home or in home cooking and cleaning. We just like, we husbands, we just kind of expect that, right? Well, you know, we get done with dinner and we get up and it's like, well, I'm gonna leave my plate on the table because the maid will get it. I mean, that's what you think, your maid will get it, you know. Well, is she your maid? And even if that is her custom in your household, she does take your plate from the table and she does cook your dinner and that's a beautiful thing. Do you tell her thank you? Wow, dear, what a delicious meal this was tonight. Some of you say, well, my wife's not a good cook. Okay, listen, there's a spectrum, okay? I can remember one meal in the life of my marriage, that's the famous clam chowder story, okay? One meal that my wife like royally botched. I mean, like it was white clam chowder with chunks of black, because she had burned it in the stove, and I try, I tell you what, there's a country song about this, I can't remember what it is, but you just eat it even though it's not good. I was trying to do that, and then my eyes started watering, I'm like, I can't, I can't do this, this is horrible, I'm sorry. Okay, and now we laugh about it, you know, some 15 years later. But if there was one morsel of pleasure that a tastebud on your tongue had, you tell your wife. You tell your wife. You don't make her think that that's just what you do, mate, that's your job. Get in the kitchen, barefoot, go get it done. No, you give her words of affirmation. You tell her thank you for cooking, thank you for cleaning. Boy, on Saturday my clothes were so dirty, you washed those clothes, thank you. I appreciate, coming back to Song of Solomon 2.14, let me see your face, let me hear your voice. When you say those things to your wife, you know what message is communicated? He sees me and he hears me, he sees what I'm doing. Husbands, you need, especially husbands who have wives with children that are younger, you need to remind her of the nobility, the nobility of what she's doing as a young mother. She's raising little children. As Pastor Ken prayed in his prayer this morning, Lord, that you would not only save them, but make them mighty servants of the kingdom. Well, who do you think has the most time, the most face time in their life that is going to most likely contribute to that happening? It's your wife. It's your wife. And so at the end of the day, husbands, when you come home and you're tired and you're angry because of traffic and you're hungry and all those types of things, you get your food, but then keep the TV off until you've engaged your wife. Tell me about your struggle. Maybe this is later in the evening when the kids are in bed. Tell me something that was good today. Tell me a success that you had. Tell me a victory that you had. Now, tell me something else you're struggling with so that tomorrow I could pray for you on that topic, or even right now. But tell me, what's going on in your life? I want to see your face. I want to hear your voice. But if you're just going through the rhythms, guys, you're just going through the rhythms. She cooks, she cleans, that's what she does. I got other things to do. I gotta go play online blackjack poker or whatever the case may be. I gotta play solitaire. I gotta look at my newsfeed again. Really, do you really need to? Why? Why? It's the same thing, rehashed. Husbands keep things up around the house, they pay bills, they keep lights on, they put food on the table, and they need to hear a word of affirmation from their wives. The wives should not, likewise, get into a rhythm where they just expect these things. I thank God when my wife tells me, thank you for working and providing for our family. Thank you, I'm proud of you. See, that's a weird thing to, isn't that something that like a father says to a child? Well, yeah, but it's good to tell your spouses that too. I'm proud of you, I'm proud of you. You are faithful. We don't affirm because we get into this habit of thinking, well, that's just what you're supposed to do. But like I said, she's not your mom, she's not your maid, she's your queen. We need to pay attention to these foxes. We need to blast them. And then I wanna say this, to the degree that we men and women are intentional about blasting these foxes in the vineyard and paying attention to the needs and wants and desires of our husbands and wives, you know what it's gonna do? It is going to serve as lubrication in the marriage so that when the friction does come along, and friction's always gonna come, there's lubrication there to offset the friction in the marriage. But if you withhold the lubrication, if you withhold the question, do you think that I see you and hear you, and if not, what can I do? If you withhold those honest conversations to where you're not hitting the hot spots in the marriage, you're not gonna have lubrication, and the friction is gonna be such that things are gonna blow up. There's gonna be blood on the walls. Sometimes if a wife doesn't naturally feel heard, what does she do? What does she do? She turns up the volume, and in some cases, she turns up the spice. You know what I'm talking about. Don't act like you haven't dropped an F-bomb. Maybe you haven't. You're a better Christian than I. When wives don't feel heard, they turn up the volume and they turn up the spice, and on the one hand, What that should signal to the husband is, husband, you're missing something, and because you have not received it in the subtle ways in which she's tried to communicate to you, she's trying to get louder so that you'll hear her. So you're missing something. But on the other hand, does that justify that method? No, it doesn't. When I was a missionary in Mexico, we used to have these Americans come through and do these short-term mission trips, right? And this would happen every single time. Americans that didn't speak a lick of English except for like, you know, Nacho Bel Grande and Burrito Supreme, they would try to talk to one of the native Mexicans and they would always do this. They would get in front of them and say, Hi, my name is Josh. What's your name? And I'm just thinking like, do you think that turning up the volume and speaking in a language that they don't understand will magically give them the gift of tongue so that now they understand that language? No, they don't understand English. So turning up the volume and speaking slowly is not going to do the trick. I would say the same thing whether it's husbands or wives, turning up the volume, turning up the spice. You may get your point across, but what it may also do is it may add insult to injury. Fourthly, the fox of disrespect and honor. I've already addressed this, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time, but in the same verse in Ephesians 5, 33, where Paul says, husbands, see to it that you love your wives, he says, at the tail end of that, let the wife see that she respects her husband. I've already spoken on that, so I'm not gonna spend more time on it. Finally, the fox of arrested romantic development. Arrested romantic development. I'm gonna try to be as tasteful as I can here, but I wanna communicate something. Listen to me, especially you men, okay? And no, men, I don't think that you're all the problem. Trust me, I don't, okay? I don't. If you feel like I'm speaking more to you, the main reason I'm doing that is because it is your responsibility to lead in these areas, and that's the fire that I'm trying to light under you with the word of God so that you will take these roles seriously and perennially. But physical intimacy, men, well, let me say this. As you know, later in the book of Song of Solomon, he gets into some sexual things, okay? But he's euphemistic. He doesn't say it explicitly. He says it in a indirect way so that they can understand. But I want you to know, there's sex in the book of Song of Solomon. And it's good, because we need that. Okay, we're not Puritan in the sense that we think sex is prudish, okay? We love our sex just fine within the covenant boundaries of marriage. But one of the traps, one of the foxes men that we often fall into is that we begin the aphrodisiac of physical intimacy right when we get into the bedroom. You know what the best aphrodisiac is, if I could put it that way? the words and the tone with which you speak to your wife at the beginning of the day as you're going to work. When you get home, just the unannounced, it's not on the Google calendar, unplanned coming by and just caressing her arm, kissing her forehead, kissing the back of her head, and telling her that you love her, just because, not for anything she did, just because, I just love you, and then that's it. Not expecting anything in return. That will get your wife to where when the moment comes, she's ready. Now, I've tried to be as tasteful as I possibly can, but the aphrodisiac doesn't begin in the bedroom, it begins at the beginning of the day, it begins at the beginning of the week, it begins with your tone, it begins with how you say what you say, it begins with you showing her your pearly whites as you speak to her, showing her love and affection and care. And I guess this is finally, the fox of miscommunicated love. I've talked a lot about this, but men and women, somebody wrote a book called The Five Love Languages, and it's exceedingly helpful because what it does is it highlights that everybody has a particular way in which they receive love, receive the message of love, and not everybody's the same. So some people receive love primarily by touch. Some people receive love primarily by time, the time you spend with them. Some people receive love more vibrantly by words of affirmation, others by gifts, and others by acts of service. Husbands, when Peter tells you in 1 Peter 3, 7, that you are to live with your wife according to knowledge, one of the things he's telling you is you need to know how she most loudly receives love. because the mistake we fall into as men, and women do this, by the way, too. is we do this, the way we most vibrantly receive love, say it's touch, we think that that's what our spouse wants, right? And once in a while, the combination of a marriage is such in which it's touch both ways. They both want touch. But usually it's not the case. Usually, whereas the, let's say the husband receives love mostly by touch, the wife receives it more by a combination of words of affirmation and time. So you have to know what their love language is. You just have to know. And I would be willing to bet, in fact, I submit this to you, in my experience of counseling, some of the biggest areas of friction is the husband or the wife either don't know, or they do know, but they're not lifting up a finger to do something about it. It's not enough to know, as Jesus said to the apostles in John 15, you know these things, what? Blessed are you if you do them. So here's my homework assignment that I wanna humbly submit to you, husbands and wives. I want you at least once a week to read this passage, Song of Solomon 2 verses 14 and 15. I want to see your face, I want to hear your voice because your face is lovely and your voice is sweet, okay? And you're gonna do two parts, right? The husband is gonna read it and then he's gonna say, wife, do you feel like in this season of life I see you and I hear you? And then this is what you're gonna do, husbands, listen. You can do four things. Number one, you're gonna close your mouth. You're gonna stay silent. You're not gonna say anything. Because you know what your proclivity is and my proclivity is? The moment she starts giving that criticism, what do you wanna start doing? You wanna start defending. Wait a minute, let me clarify things. I've got my legal pad right here. And you come at her like a prosecuting attorney. Well, on the night of February, just shut up. Just shut up. Secondly, the only time you could speak is to ask questions of clarification. So you're not asking, you know, sometimes people in a class, they'll raise their hand, they have a question, it's not a question, you're pontificating, that's what you're doing. But you can cast it in a interrogative form, grammatically speaking, right? But it's a loaded, no loaded questions, just sincere, honest, knowledge-seeking, unlike the fool who's not interested in knowledge, he just wants to express his own opinion. You are asking a question to better understand where she's coming from. Thirdly, so number one, you're silent. Number two, you speak only ask questions. Number three, You take the posture of a student. I officiated the marriage of my sister and brother-in-law, and I told him in the marriage ceremony, his name is Josh, too, and my sister's name is Janie, I said, Josh, you are a student in Janie 101. And your job for the rest of your life is to graduate, first off, to be top of your class, And secondly, to graduate from the undergraduate level to the graduate level, you're still studying Janey 101, and then it's 201, and then 301, you're learning about her, her ways, how she ticks, okay? And then you go to Janey doctoral studies, okay? And then after that, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Janey, okay? And then you just keep going. You've got postdoctoral fellowships all over the world studying your wife. You're a student of your wife. Wife, you need to be a student of your husband. And then finally, write down what he or she says. Why is that important? Because when you come back to do it again, Lord willing, next week, you start with those things that you wrote down. You say, now dear, here's the things that you spoke to me last week. How am I doing in these areas? How am I doing in those areas? So the husband does that, and then the wife does that. Beloved, if you do that once a week, a simple biblical homework assignment, I assure you that by the grace of God and by the leading of the Spirit, areas will, foxes will come to the fore, and it'll be like shooting foxes in a barrel, if that's a thing. I just made that up right now, okay? But if you think about it, that's easier than shooting fish in a barrel. And if there's water, you could drown them and shoot them. So like the analogy just really works well. But now finally, finally, Solomon spoke to his wife and she spoke to Solomon. But beloved, there is a greater Solomon in all of this, and his name is Jesus Christ. He is our husband. He is the husband that never fails. He is the husband that in the analogy is not just ladies' husband, but he's the men's husband. Men, in the analogy of Christ and the church, were the church, were the feminine counterpart in that relationship. And we are looking to the greater Solomon. We are looking to the one who impeccably cares for us, nourishes us, comes alongside us when we are in despair and downcast, and He lifts up our countenance. We do not have an unsympathetic high priest, but we have one who is able to sympathize with us in every respect because He has been tempted and yet He is without sin. So let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace. He cares for you. He cares for your husbands. He cares for your wives. And that's why Peter says in 1 Peter 5, 6, and 7, because He cares, you cast your cares on Him. So let us all this morning come to the greater Solomon, Jesus Christ, the husband, the head of the church, and beg of him that he would give us the grace and the grit, the self-control and the purity and the poetry of romance in our marriages to make them pictures of the gospel. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for your word this morning. Thank you, Father, that you do not leave us in our marriages without direction. And Father, we thank you that even as we've considered this text, there are so many things that have come up that perhaps husbands and wives have thought, oh, God does speak to that. There is an anchor in the Word of God that gives me handles on how I can love my husband, respect my husband, love my wife, give myself up for my wife, and Father, we pray that you would take this word and that you would send your spirit to come together in conjunction with the word, that there would be such a symbiotic relationship of word and spirit in our hearts, that Father, we would be the men you have called us to be, the husbands you have called us to be, the wives you have called us to be, the parents you have called us to be, the Christians you have called us to be, for your honor and your glory we pray, amen.