Conflict With Your Mate "Song of Songs 5:2-16, 6:1-13"

We have seen this couple date and court......, we have seen them intimate in marriage......., tonight let’s rumble. We have 8 chapters in this book, and their conflict takes two chapters.  That's about right, because conflict can take up about 25% of your time in marriage. 

There are 4 significant milestones in marriage:

1-    Honeymoon - a sweet month (that's what it means).

2-    Then disillusionment - the illusion is gone.  You though you married Denzell Washington, but you got Jimmy Walker.

3-    Conflict – you resist the truth, by trying to change your mate, substitute your mate, or lose yourself in something else.

4-    Commitment - where you discover your mate, flaws and all, and you commit to loving them in a biblical manner, regardless. 

As our marriage matured, my wife realized that I didn’t have all the answers to her questions.  So she grew more self assertive.  Initially, her self assertiveness had a defiant flavor, until I convinced her not to make a social statement in an intimate relationship. The fact that I didn’t have all her questions was not an indictment of me, but her inflated hope.  I was no Denzel, but instead I was Dy-no-mite (J. J). She had the right to be more self-assertive, and I had a right to innocence (I was not the one who raised her to be less assertive)

No Fighting Toward Resolution? Then, No Progress!

All couples fight.  Good couples fight clean, bad couples fight dirty. 

-         Good couples press towards resolution,

-         Bad couples press for a victory. 

-         Good couples when they conflict, it exposes their character, 

-         Bad couples when they conflict, it exposes their immaturity.

All couples have conflict.  Here's a great scriptures on marriage, read Proverbs 14:4 Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest. What in the world does any of this have to do with oxen, barns and harvest?  Well, if you have no oxen, then no work gets done.  And if work is not getting done, then the manger will be clean.  Therefore, since you aren't making a mess trying to plow the ground in order to plant crop, then you won't have a mess storing your harvest. But on the contrary, if you have oxen, that means you intend to work.  And if you intend to work, then the oxen you’ll need will stink and mess the barn up.  If you have oxen, they are going to do what oxen do. 

Imagine me saying, "I need to earn some money from my vineyard.  Let me get some oxen to plant and to harvest.  But I don't like what comes with oxen."  If I want one, I've got to have the other.  No oxen, clean barn.  No work, no money and no food.  With work, there are oxen along with a smelly barn.  But with a harvest that brings money and food.  We do not live in a Burger King universe.  We can't "Have it our way!" all the time.  We can’t have it both ways – a fresh smelling clean barn and an abundant harvest.  I love my wife with the depth of my heart, but also my deepest hurt in life has come from her.  With love comes the vulnerability to be hurt – a recipe for conflict.

You are going to have conflict.  And you can't have everything your way.   If you don't have conflict in marriage, then you either have no sin nature, or you are not growing. You’re like a maid married to a butler.  You just perform functions, boring each other to death and rarely communicating.  Or, you have one dominate person married to a passive person.  Where there is really no peace.  And the passive person has actually surrendered, waved a white flag and gone underground.

A Healthy Way To Conflict

There's a way to fight clean, there's a way to fight dirty.  We are going to see this couple having conflicts.  I'm going to show you 6 different steps.  At the last step this couple will be portrayed as two companies having a party.  Their marriage is going to deepen as a result of conflict, and take us to the most physically passionate text in the Bible.  But first, lets look at what may be the most important text about marriage that we will ever learn from the Bible. Vs 5:2a - I slept but my heart was awake.  Listen! My lover is knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one..... 

"my heart.. " that's Solomon at the door"

What do you think was on his mind?  Well, for some reason they had slept in separate rooms.  When he came home, he knocked on her bedroom door, and said, "open up", because he wants sex with his wife.  The rest of that verse (2b) tells us that he has been out all night working (shepherds).  He's been out in the hard cruel world and comes in at night and longs for the intimacy of his wife.  .....My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night."  Some of you wives already realize this.  You are the most powerful influence in helping your man being more tender and considerate towards you. 

One of the joys of a husband, is to come out the hostile and prejudice world of work, into a peaceful home, locked in the bedroom, under the sheets, with your wife, who can embrace and love you.  This man has been at work and longs for emotional and physical intimacy with his wife.  And he needs her.  What do you think she is going to say?  We already seen her sexually passionate twice. 

Vs 3 I have taken off my robe- must I put it on again?  I have washed my feet- must I soil them again?  In other words, “I have a headache. I don't care how hard you have worked, or how much you want me,  I ain't getting up.  "I am more important than you."

We have a conflict folks!

He longs for his wife to meet his physical and emotional needs; but she's not opening the door (neither one).  Fellas, what would you have said, if you were Solomon? 

·        Look woman, I was a king, and you were working in a vineyard, when I met you.

·        I took you in, I gave you the check book.

·        You trifling woman, you're trying to play me like this?

Nope!  This smooth dude makes us all look bad.  vs 4a - My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; He doesn’t even go in.  He does not press her for sex.  He merely opens the door and slides his hands in, then slides it out.  Because he did something.

It is Not the Wrong that Devastates, It's How We Handle The Matter

Look at her response to the way he handled the matter.  Vs 4b-5 - my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock.  The very thing that kept her from him (the door handle), he put liquid myrrh on it..... In Hebrew culture that was like a calling card meaning "I love you".  So what does this tell us about the first thing we should do when you have a conflict?  Not if, but when..... Do not react!  This also means, you do not re-enact to what your mate did.  She says, “I'm not getting out of bed to have sex with you.”... he leaves an "I love you!" calling card on the door handle. 

Husbands, just because she did it, doesn’t mean we have to do it.  Paul put it like this in Romans 12:17-19 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. Also, when Joseph's (son of Jacob[Israel]) brothers came to him, after their father died they asked him if he was going to kill them, now.  Joseph replied, “Am I in the place of God?” The point is this, if there's revenge to be had, it's God's place to get it...not ours. 

In marital conflict, neither husband nor wife is obligated to mirror the actions of the other.  Two wrongs still don't make a right.  That is how marital problems begin.  The “volleying over the net” after a conflict starts.  He yells, she yells back... she throws the cushion, he throws the chair.  She cuss his mother, he cusses her father.  When we are hurt, there's something about being the image of God that kicks in.  We demand justice! That's what's operating in us.  But it is a self-centered justice, not marital justice.

·        We feel the need to correct the injustice, and really don't feel out of place in doing so. 

·        We feel right, we feel holy, we feel just.

·        We feel we have weighed out the problem of good versus evil in the universe and have solved it. 

While the truth of the matter is, we have taken a prerogative that's not ours.  It's God's... we are not to don't react.