The peasant princess

A LOVE STORY FROM THE

SONG OF SONGS
FALL SERMON SERIES GUIDE BY PASTOR MARK DRISCOLL

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ow does a godly, poor young woman working long hours in the hot sun to help support her single mother and brothers become the wife of a king and one of the most renowned passionate, loving, and enjoyable women the world has ever celebrated?

The answer is found in the biblical book, the Song ofSongs, where we meet this glorious Peasant Princess. She speaks first, is spoken of last, and speaks most frequently throughout this sacred love story. We also meet her friends, brothers, and mother as we follow her life through childhood, the teen years, engagement, and marriage.

God tells us that people attempt to satisfy their thirst not by drinking from his streams of living water, but insteadby drinking from man-made toilets (Jer. 2:13). This disturbing metaphor is particularly apt to describe the current thirst for smut and sin.

In Romans 1:24–25, the Apostle Paul says that people either worship God their

As we study the Song of Songs, our primary focus will be how the Peasant Princess became an exemplary wife; our secondary focus will be the intimate marital relationship sheshares with her husband. Through her example, God has much to teach us regarding his plan for sex and marriage. While the Song of Songs is not entirely about sex, the book does contain some very important lessons on the subject. In fact, this 3,000-year-old collection of love letters is extraordinary in its timeliness. In our day, people devote an extraordinary amount of time, money, and energy inpursuit of sex, making it the most popular religion in the world.

Creator and enjoy his creation—including our bodies—or people worship creation as God, and in sexual sin offer their bodies as living sacrifices (which is the definition of worship in Romans 12:1). Paul goes on to explain that those who worship creation invariably worship the human body because it is the apex of God’s creation. Inthis upending of rightful worship, sex becomes a religion and the sex act a perverse sacrament.

With my body, I thee worship.
–Traditional Anglican wedding vows

Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.
–G. K. Chesterton

More money is spent each year on pornography than country music, rock music, jazz music, classical music, Broadway plays, and ballet combined.(US News and World Report) Christianity today is comprised of three basic denominations: Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. Likewise, the religion of Sex also includes three “denominations”: Straight, Gay, and Bisexual. Like Christian denominations, the Sex denominations have web sites (social networks, chat rooms, classified ads), designated houses of worship (bars, clubs, and strip joints), andfollowers who vigorously evangelize and recruit new members. In Scripture, we see that God is our Creator and that he created us male and female with bodies created for pleasure and marital oneness (Genesis 1–2). God’s original intent was chastity before and fidelity in heterosexual marriage; we worship God in part by obeying him in pure pleasure. A fictitious demon in The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, admits the origins of sex: “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the In sum, the greatest threat to Christianity is Sex. Perversion of every sort and kind is the worship that defines which denomination of Sex one is in. In Paul’s day, he accused some people of worshiping their stomachs as their god(Phil. 3:19); in our day it appears that our god has simply moved slightly south. And everyone who settles for the worship of Sex is deep down truly seeking an intimacy, joy, and connection that is only found through faith in relationship with God. As G. K. Chesterton said, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.” Through the story of the Peasant Princess, we can learn...