The Little Foxes That Ruin the Vineyard

8The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping on the mountains, skipping on the hills. 9My beloved is like a roe or a young deer. Behold, he stands behind our wall! He looks in at the windows. He glances through the lattice. 10My beloved spoke, and said to me, “Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. 11For, behold, the winter is past. The rain is over and gone. 12The flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 13The fig tree ripens her green figs. The vines are in blossom. They give out their fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.” 14My dove in the clefts of the rock, In the hiding places of the mountainside, Let me see your face. Let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. 15Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that plunder the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom. 16My beloved is mine, and I am his. He browses among the lilies. 17Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young deer on the mountains of Bether.

For two people who grew up in different circumstances to marry, build a home others respect and live together takes a great deal of patience and effort and time, so it is genuinely hard. It is possible only when the two understand each other’s character, hold each other’s hearts gently, and can take the other person’s whole life into their own vessel. But it is hard work to have someone other than myself come into my life. Marriage brings the responsibility of protecting the life of the one I love, keeping it happy and safe, and that is never easy. And once children are born, the range of it widens further.

So when you decide to marry you must be prepared to give up much of what you have enjoyed until then. For the home to be at peace I must sacrifice and go low first, and I must come ready in heart to share opinions rather than press my own. You must have room enough to take the other person in, and the character to respect the other person’s view. And two people can be at peace only where there is wisdom enough to find a good solution. So anyone deciding to marry ought to have a mature character. One of the two giving in unconditionally is not love. An attitude that pushes only its own view and stifles the other person’s is a destructive character that cannot build a happy home.

A husband and wife must look at one place. If they think separately and look in different directions, that home can never be safe. Only when the two build each other up in their persons and can enjoy peace together inside it does the home become a happy one and the house become a place you could call comfortable. Two people who have left their parents and are walking a second stretch of life together — living as a couple who thank each other, rely on each other, and know how to share their hearts and their sacrifices for each other — that is the road that makes a person happy.

I think the relationship between God and believers is no different. God does not love one-sidedly a believer who spends the whole time looking only at the world. And because there is no point in passing God’s will to a person whose thinking runs entirely counter to his, God shows no interest in that person. God seems strong, but the Father is weak toward his children; even in great anger he forgives when a person repents and turns back. A believer who knows his will and works at not wounding his heart is one with a mature faith, a child sharing a beautiful love with the Father.

You must now love in a way that knows how to repay grace. Only when you become a believer who knows how to return the love God has given will he hold you in a greater grace, lift you up and make you glorious. Do not take being loved, in the world or in the church, as a matter of course; love is completed when you repay the one who loves you with a greater love, out of a thankful heart. It is as though love had a character of its own — it does not forget the one who gave, and it fills that person’s life with blessing out of a greater love.

Song of Solomon 2:8

8The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping on the mountains, skipping on the hills.

Even as she was falling into a deep sleep, the Shulammite longed for Solomon and no one else to be the one who woke her. Waiting for the one she loved, right up to the moment sleep took her, she longed for him to come to her side. She felt Solomon running quickly toward her, and half asleep she seemed to hear his familiar voice. Her heart filled with the thrill of knowing that he would wake her at any moment.

But for some reason Solomon, having run until he was out of breath, did not go into the room where she slept; he stood behind the wall, looked in at the window and peered through the lattice to see what she was doing. He wanted to see whether she really was waiting for him. Only after he had looked over the room did he shake the deeply sleeping Shulammite awake, saying, my love, my beautiful one, rise up and come away with me. He woke her saying that winter is past and the rain is over, the figs are ripening on the tree and the vines are in blossom breathing out their fragrance; the season is beautiful, so wake now from the sleep of darkness and come away together.

The one she loved is waking the Shulammite, who had been waiting with an aching heart out of longing for him, exactly as she had wished. What she has to do now is wake from that deep sleep at the voice of the one she loves and welcome him. Believers, too, love God and yet fall into a deep sleep of the world without knowing it. There are times when the affairs of the world are so hard and so frightening that a person can do nothing, as though sunk in a deep sleep, until God helps them. There are times of meeting the world’s cold, bitter winter and falling into suffering with no power to solve it, and taking the whole weight of that pain.

There are times of chasing after people to ask for help, of trying somehow to solve the problem by my own strength, and getting back nothing but mockery, contempt and an empty heart. People do their best to live a life that succeeds rather than fails, but life does not go the way we intend. Nobody is poor because they like being poor, and nobody is ill because they wanted to be ill. The winter of a life is a pain everyone wants to avoid.

You too will have had times when your plans were good and still the winter rain of life fell on you. You will have looked around to ask for help and found it as dark and stifling as being shut in a deep cave; you will have shouted and then simply wept where you stood, in a helplessness that felt as though you alone could hear the sound. There will surely have been times when it seemed hopeless, when however much you called on God it was as though he were hiding behind the wall with both ears covered and would not answer.

What did you do then? Did you pray until God heard your voice? Or did you wander the streets all day looking for someone to help? Or did you give it all up and sit down where you were? Perhaps you even wanted a person rather than God, to settle it more easily. Human effort can carry you over the waves of suffering a few times. But you have to know that life is not so easily managed, because it does not end with a few waves crossed.

If you do not take hold of God at this point, you will not overcome your disappointment with a powerless self pushed out to the edge of the world, or the financial hardship, or the fear and dread of the world, and in the end you will fall. Nothing frightens a person like meeting a problem they cannot solve by their own strength. A human being who cannot predict what will happen one second from now is carrying too great a load in taking responsibility for a long life, so it must be handed over to Almighty God. The Shulammite, having gone to sleep in that kind of pain and fear, asked that no one wake her until the one she loved did; and in the same way, kneeling to pray that God will settle the suffering and the fire is the wisest thing you can do.

Just as Solomon stood behind the wall and looked the Shulammite over, the Lord is always looking our faith over. Does this person really love me and want me with all their heart? Do they really have ears to hear my voice, and are they searching in order to meet me? That is what he is looking for.

Revelation 3:20

20Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.

Can you hear the Lord’s voice calling now from outside the door? Or are you too busy with the affairs of the world to hear him, though he is calling you earnestly? Or are you fighting alone against the deep waves of suffering and of the fire, without listening to Jesus, who says that if you will only open the door he will fight in your place? The Lord is beside you always, saying that you can wake from this deep sleep only by taking hold of him. If you long for God and want to be with him with all your heart, you will be able to wake from the deep sleep.

What I want to say to you is this: when hardship comes, treat that time as an opportunity to meet God, and enjoy it. Every time a problem arises, think, “God wants to hear my voice,” and go into your inner room to pray and to sing; then you can know an astonishing grace. There are times it is hard to bear, of course, but a life built together with the grace of God brings spiritual abundance and growth instead. The Shulammite relied on Solomon alone and came through her hardship well on her own; and I hope you will rely on God alone and overcome the world and Satan.

Song of Solomon 2:14

14My dove in the clefts of the rock, In the hiding places of the mountainside, Let me see your face. Let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.

Solomon asks the Shulammite, hidden in the dangerous clefts of the rock on the cliff, to show him her face, and he says her voice is sweet and her face is lovely. She was in a place as dangerous and lonely as a cliff, yet the voice with which she called Solomon was sweet and her face was lovely. In danger a person’s voice usually turns urgent and the face twists, but the Shulammite was calm and unshaken. She could be this much at peace because she trusted Solomon. We too are living lives as dangerous and lonely as the clefts of a rock on a cliff; but because God is there, the voice stays sweet and the face that has received grace stays at peace.

Matthew 6:6

6But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

Jesus said to go into your inner room, shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. Because he said to go into an inner room and pray, you sometimes see people who have made an inner room in the house or at the church and boast of it as their prayer room. But rather than seeing it simply as a room, it means cutting yourself off from everything you were relying on in the world and holding a secret conversation with God alone. Go into that inner room and you can hold a deep conversation with God, just the two of you, no matter what is happening in the world, and you can lay a weary heart at the foot of the cross and rest a while.

God will take in the prayers of believers who love Jesus alone and pray in a secret inner room toward God alone. Like Solomon peering through the window from behind the wall to see what the Shulammite was doing and what was in her heart, God will hear the prayer a believer makes in secret and will wake them from the deep sleep of suffering.

Once the cold winter has passed, the figs ripen on the tree. In the same way, a believer who overcomes suffering by faith grows mature. Believers on whom the vine blossoms fully, giving off its fragrance and bearing fruit, have been given the power, the authority and the gifts to carry out their commission. Believers as mature as this become those who go ahead, helping not only themselves but the church, their homes and other souls.

Song of Solomon 2:15

15Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that plunder the vineyards; for our vineyards are in blossom.

Until now the Shulammite had suffered because of the little foxes that were ruining the vineyard. However hard she worked, the little foxes kept her from bearing a harvest; but now she can ask Solomon, her strong husband, to catch those foxes for her. The little foxes that were tearing down a beautiful vineyard will now have to deal with a powerful Solomon instead of the Shulammite. For a Solomon who has strength and ability and authority, catching little foxes is no great problem.

Now believers, too, have only to hand over to the Lord the little foxes — the world and Satan — that were obstructing them from bearing spiritual fruit. The little fox that planted doubt so that they would abandon their faith, the little fox that was the world’s anxiety, will be driven out of the believer’s vineyard and will never trouble them again.

There are little foxes inside the church as well.

They keep making strife and division in the church in order to obstruct the work of God. Only by telling them apart with the word and with wisdom can believers protect the church and their own faith. A church and a believer that were growing well can fall in a moment. When a little fox digs the ground and damages the roots, a vine in full flower soon withers and dries up; in the same way, when those foxes stir up conflict in the church with a false gospel, darkness will take over the hearts of believers. And a believer’s laziness and slackness can also be a little fox. The unbelief that treats God’s commission carelessly is a little fox, and so is displaying one’s own righteousness and being proud.

Those little foxes have now been handed over, by a praying Shulammite and by praying believers, into the hands of Solomon and of God. A faith that hands things to God in prayer like this is what matters. In the time you would spend worrying and losing heart and sighing, pray. Do not be afraid as you watch the little foxes ruin the vineyard; call on God with a sweet voice and confess your love with a lovely face.

People complain because they do not know how to be thankful and content with the blessing they have already been given. Do not hold the world’s problems and the world’s people in your arms and struggle under them; lay them all down at the foot of the cross and be at peace. The Shulammite was in Solomon and Solomon was in her, and the two became one; so also we are in Christ and Christ is in us, so no one will be able to harm you. As the Shulammite shares her joy with Solomon, I hope you will now enjoy peace inside God.

May the astonishing peace of heaven come upon you, so that your life is always one of praise. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.