Watch the short video or read the notes or both.  The longer video is at the bottom of this page.

Lesson 1 

Never stop asking God to experience His Love through Christ!

Song of Solomon 1:2  “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth for you love is more delightful than wine”

Doctrine:  Experiencing God’s love through a mediator of transcendent excellency is better than any other experience.

The context:

1. The Song as a whole is about growing in our Love for Jesus Christ as we experience His love through greater and greater degree’s the outpouring of His Spirit in our hearts.
2. The Song of Songs starts off with the bride thirsting for greater experiences of God’s  Love through king Solomon in Song 1:2-4 to a position of overwhelming satisfaction in his arms Song 2:5-6!
3. She has tasted and experienced His love and now she desires to live in an abiding sense of His Love.  She wants Solomon to kiss her over and over again.  Meaning she wants to experience his affection over and over again.  Throughout the Song she experiences God’s Sweet Flame of love Song 8:6 through king Solomon who possessed unmeasurable wisdom.

Simplified truth:

1. God let me experience your love over and over again, more and more because experiencing your Love and loving You and others is better than anything other experience.
2. Let me experience your love in purifying me and making me more holy. Romans 8:28-29 and Song 1:10-11
3. Let me understand that He loves me the sinner, let me have the signs of His Favor and Grace.  Let Him show me His love and me return my affection.  Hallowed be thy Name!
4. As the Father kissed the returning prodigal son, so “Kiss me as I return to you”
   1. Here we experience the love of Christ in that
      1. It doesn’t require us to be perfect, we go to Him as sinners and accepted by the Father not because we are good but because Christ covers us with His righteousness, we are accepted in God’s beloved Son.
      2. “We all like sheep have gone astray” like the prodigal son but since God’s love is a Gracious, Tender and Merciful Love it draws us nearer and nearer to Him (Jer. 31:3) and experiencing that love in marriage to the greatest type of Christ to have ever lived is “more delightful than wine” better than any other experience.
5. Let me experience your love in knowing my sins are forgiven.
   1. You can think of all your sin then think of Christ paying the penalty for them all.  In this way we understand Christ’s love for us in forgiveness.  Love overlooks a multitude of sins.  Intimacy in marriage can’t happen if either spouse can’t forgive.  Its as if the bride knows she is sinful and will sin and knows her own rebellious heart and wants to experience love, grace and forgiveness from someone able to overlook the worst sinner.
6. Let me know and give thanks for all the physical and spiritual good you do for me.
7. Let me be thankful over and over again for you loving hand of discipline.
8. Show me what you are like because I am happy and joyful when I know you better.
9. Let me experience your covenantal promise keeping love.
   1. God makes promises of Answering prayer, forgiveness, making us more holy.  Think of all the ways God has been faithful and remember He is faithful because of His Love.
10. Let me experience what God sent His Son to do for His bride for Christ works all things together for the salvation and sanctification of His bride by the experience of His Love over and over again to greater heights, depths, breadths and lengths.
    1. Here we think of God’s love in Sending His Son to die for sinners.  Who does that who sends their son to die for sinful evil people? God does!
    2. Also out of Love He works all things for their spiritual good.  God intents to draw everyone closer through the Good times and the bad.
11. Let me understand and feel the Love Christ has for me over and over again at greater heights, depths, widths and lengths as His Name becomes more precious, delightful and valuable to me.
12. Let me behold You more and more beautiful by seeing you greater and myself as I ought to, because you revealing yourself to me is more delightful than any other pleasure.  Psalm 27:4 and Psalm 63:1-5
13. Psalm 136  Helps us understand how God loved Israel
14. Let me experience Your Love, Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness because You made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that He might become the Lord our righteousness.

 

Notes:

Love desires affection from and the strictest union with the object of it’s affection.

In the text we see her:

“Desire for closer intimacy expressed in prayer.”

The lowliest unworthy slave girl is asking the greatest Most Glorious King of King to kiss her.  Normally the servant kissed the feet of the Sovereign.  And it was a great honor to kiss the hand of the Sovereign.  But for a King of Kings to kiss an enemy slave girl needing redemption would be the greatest act of Love, humility and condescension!  See the height or greatness of His Love.  See the depth of it!  She could ask for no greater undeserved gift of love.  And she wants it over and over again! A kiss on the lips is a personal relationship. Friends may get kisses on the cheeks, but a kiss mouth to mouth is in a one to one personal relationship.

The sinful enemy slave girl was asking Solomon to show her affection over and over again.  Solomon will love her and in so doing she will experience the Love of God through him, the mediator and king to whom peace belongs.  Jesus Christ is the Mediatory between God and man, we experience the Love of God through Christ!  So ask for it always, seek the experience and knock and the door will be opened to you!

Application:

1.  For the sinner continuing in sin.
2.  For the saint fallen back into sin.
3. For the believer continuing in obedience.

1. To the sinner continuing in sin.  I urge you by the tender mercies of God to beg God to forgive you for your sins.  Know that you deserve Hell the lake of fire, the second death.  Know that you are a lowly unworthy sinner asking the Greatest King of Kings to demonstrate His Love to you by forgiving all your sins, no matter how bad or how long you have continued in sin, the blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient enough to cover all of them and cast them away as far as the east is from the west!  Confess your sins to God.  Tell Him all your sins and believe God would be just to punish you.  Then think upon Jesus and know that the Wrath of God was poured out on Him instead of you.  He bore your sins in His body on the cross for 3 dark hours and then said “It is finished”  he felt the punishment you deserved.  Then trust that God gives you the perfect righteousness of Christ as a gift so that He can treat you as if you lived the life of Jesus the Son of God.  Repent of the old life and draw near to God.  He will draw you by His love as you ask Him to reveal Himself to you in His Son.  Ask Him daily to show you His love over and over again!  And never stop asking!

2. 

    

   To the saint that has fallen back.  Confess your sin.  Think about how far you have fallen, go back to the works you did at first!  Repent for Jesus is coming soon, be ready like a bride waiting for her groom.  Christ cleansed the feet of the disciples, so He also desires to clean your heart.  You know better, you have had light and truth.  Strengthen the truth that remains in your heart by obeying it.  What you had was taken away, and you have fallen.  Jesus came to save sinners like you!  Go to Him, His Name is Savior, he will save you from a life of backsliding and sin.  He will save you from your sin.  Jesus saves sinners.  He came to heal the sin sickened soul!

3. To the obedient Christian.  Thank Jesus for forgiving you!  Glorify Him now.  Had it not been for Him showing you His Love and grace you would still be continuing in sin.  Thank Him! and then ask for more and greater experiences of His love.  Do not stop but run all the more faster.  Be unstoppable in your pursuit of an even more closer relationship with Christ you Lord.  Help others who have fallen!  And when you don’t sense His Love open your mouth all the more wider begging for a greater experience of His love.  And if you are abiding with joy and delight then ask for even greater than you can think or image.  He is a great God, all you need is a little faith in a great God!

To all, we must learn this lesson:

Never stop asking to experience His Love through Christ!

Practice asking God daily to reveal His love to you and for you to experience it in greater degree’s.  Both understanding His love by thinking of all the ways He loves us and delighting in Him for who He is and how He loves us.  This is experiencing His Love.  As you ask for this you will get convictions of things you need to do or things you need to repent of.  Do them and you will experience His love like never before.  Keep asking until it has become part of you and your daily life.  Once this asking and receiving has become a habit then move on to experiencing the Love of God in the next verse of the Song.  You must do the asking and receiving always and never stop.  Get more and more hungry for the experience of His Love, this will honor Jesus Christ!

 

 

 

Longer video on lesson 1

 

Commentaries for further understanding on Song of Solomon 1:2

Watchman Nee

THE INITIAL PURSUIT AND SATISFACTION
(1:2—2:7)

This section is the key to the whole book. All the spiritual principles are contained in this section. It foreshadows all subsequent experiences. The lessons that follow are not new; rather, they are old lessons repeated in a deeper way.

The spiritual experiences in the first section are smooth and easy. The first consecration and revelation always appear to be smooth and easy. However, this consecration and revelation may not be very dependable; there is the need for these experiences to pass through the fire. This section foreshadows the spiritual experiences that are coming. After this section, everything will be tested until it becomes real. The first time a person experiences something, the impression may not be very deep; the second time, the experience may be more advanced and more sure. Yet the second experience may not be as sweet as the first. In the end the experience is the same as that which was encountered at the beginning; the banner is still love.

The experience in this section is equivalent to the “Path of Light” in the book Spiritual Torrents; it is also equivalent to the “revival stage” in the book Four Planes of Spiritual Life. Our personal experience can surely testify to this.

I. YEARNING for Christ (1:2-3)

Verse 2 says, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” The kisses that one seeks after here are different from the kiss of the Father upon the neck (Luke 15:20). That kiss was a sign of forgiveness, and everyone who belongs to the Lord has received that kiss already. The emphasis in the Song of Songs is the love relationship between the believers and the Lord. As such, forgiveness is an implicit fact. Therefore, there is no mention of forgiveness. The Song of Songs does not speak of how a person turns from the position of a sinner to the position of a believer; rather, it speaks of how a believer turns from a position of thirst to a position of satisfaction. We must remember this fact before we can understand the way the book begins.

After a person is saved, we do not know how long it takes before there is a longing within him. However, we do know that a longing arises when a saved person is awakened by the Holy Spirit and begins to seek after the Lord.

Because the seeker is full of hunger and thirst, her mouth spontaneously utters, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” She does not say who “him” is. But in her mind, there is only one “him”; it is the One she seeks after. Prior to this, her relationship with the Lord was general, and she was deeply dissatisfied with it. Now she hopes to have a more personal relationship with Him. Therefore, she longs for a “kiss,” which is a personal expression of love. No one can kiss two people at the same time. A kiss is an expression of a personal relationship. Furthermore, these kisses are not on the cheek, as were Judas’s (Matt. 26:49), nor on the feet, as were Mary’s (Luke 7:38, 45). They are the “kisses of his mouth,” a sign of personal affection. A general relationship can no longer satisfy her. She wants a personal relationship which no one else has. This inward urge is the beginning of all progress. Spiritual edification can never be separated from a pursuit that is based on hunger and thirst. If the Holy Spirit has not put a real dissatisfaction with a general relationship and a pursuit for personal affection within a believer, he can never expect to have an intimate experience of the Lord. This pursuit is the basis for all future experience. If we do not have such a hunger and thirst, we will only have a poetic song, and it will not be the Song of Songs.

 

 

Henry Law

1:2. “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth; for Your love is better than wine.”

These opening words are abrupt, and presuppose that the aspirations of the Church are not unknown. They evince fervent longing for closer manifestations of the love of Christ. Evidence of its nearness is sought. A familiar term gives reality to the desire. “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.” This act is the outbreak of the warm feeling of a loving parent–of an affectionate brother–of a tender spouse–of a devoted friend. Where love is ardent it thus finds vent. The Church pants to be assured that she has a saving interest in Christ; that His feelings are real and strong, and seeks delight in manifested proofs. She desires to live in the abiding sense of this interest.

Many are the methods of this revelation. In the hours of meditation the Spirit withdraws the veil, and exhibits the Redeemer’s heart. In the pages of Scripture He leads to persuasions of this love by the lessons of indisputable facts. Why does Christ assume our nature, put on the rags of mortality, condescend to represent us as bone of our bones, and flesh of our flesh? Why does He lay down His life to buy us from perdition? Why does He work out a perfect obedience to be our robe? Why does He reign at God’s right hand, causing all things to work together for our good? Revelation gives the reply. Love prompts Him–love carries Him through the whole work. On every step is inscribed, “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Clearly to see these blessed truths is to receive the kisses of His mouth.

 

Matthew Henry

Verses 2-6 

The spouse, in this dramatic poem, is here first introduced addressing herself to the bridegroom and then to the daughters of Jerusalem.

I. To the bridegroom, not giving him any name or title, but beginning abruptly: Let him kiss me; like Mary Magdalen to the supposed gardener (Jn. 20:15), If thou have borne him hence, meaning Christ, but not naming him. The heart has been before taken up with the thoughts of him, and to this relative those thoughts were the antecedent, that good matter which the heart was inditing, Ps. 45:1. Those that are full of Christ themselves are ready to think that others should be so too. Two things the spouse desires, and pleases herself with the thoughts of:—

1. The bridegroom’s friendship (v. 2): “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, that is, be reconciled to me, and let me know that he is so; let me have the token of his favour.” Thus the Old-Testament church desired Christ’s manifesting himself in the flesh, to be no longer under the law as a schoolmaster, under a dispensation of bondage and terror, but to receive the communications of divine grace in the gospel, in which God is reconciling the world unto himself, binding up and healing what by the law was torn and smitten; as the mother kisses the child that she has chidden. “Let him no longer send to me, but come himself, no longer speak by angels and prophets, but let me have the word of his own mouth, those gracious words (Lu. 4:22), which will be to me as the kisses of the mouth, sure tokens of reconciliation, as Esau’s kissing Jacob was.” All gospel duty is summed up in our kissing the Son (Ps. 2:12); so all gospel-grace is summed up in his kissing us, as the father of the prodigal kissed him when he returned a penitent. It is a kiss of peace. Kisses are opposed to wounds (Prov. 27:6), so are the kisses of grace to the wounds of the law. Thus all true believers earnestly desire the manifestations of Christ’s love to their souls; they desire no more to make them happy than the assurance of his favour, the lifting up of the light of his countenance upon them (Ps. 4:6, 7), and the knowledge of that love of his which surpasses knowledge; this is the one thing they desire, Ps. 27:4. They are ready to welcome the manifestation of Christ’s love to their souls by his Spirit, and to return them in the humble professions of love to him and complacency in him, above all. The fruit of his lips is peace, Isa. 57:19. “Let him give me ten thousand kisses whose very fruition makes me desire him more, and, whereas all other pleasures sour and wither by using, those of the Spirit become more delightful.”