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.

It is no easy thing for two people raised in different surroundings to marry, build a home others respect, and make a life together, because it takes a great deal of patience, effort, and time. Such a life is possible only when each comes to understand the other’s temperament, tends the other’s heart, and makes room within their own life to hold the other’s. Yet for someone other than yourself to come into your life is a heavy matter. Marriage brings with it the responsibility to keep the one you love happy and safe, and because of that it is never simple. And once children are born, the reach of that responsibility grows wider still.

So when you decide to marry, you must be ready to give up much of what you have enjoyed until now. For the home to be at peace, you must be the first to sacrifice and humble yourself, and you need a heart prepared to talk things through rather than press your own claims. You should have room enough in yourself to embrace the other person, and the character to respect their views. And only with the wisdom to find a good way through can the two of you live in peace. A decision to marry, then, calls for mature character. For one of the two always to give in is not love. An attitude that asserts only its own way and brushes aside the other’s opinion is a destructive character, one that can never build a happy home.

Husband and wife must look in one direction. If they think differently and gaze in different directions, that home can never be secure. Only when they build each other up and enjoy peace together is a home a happy one, and only then can they say their house is a place of rest. Two people who have left their parents walk the second road of life together. When they are grateful to each other, lean on each other, and know how to share their heart and their sacrifice for the other’s sake, they are walking the very road that leads to their own happiness.

I believe the relationship between God and his people is no different. God does not love one-sidedly someone whose eyes are always on the world. And because conveying God’s will to a person who lives by thoughts entirely unlike his means nothing, God shows no interest in that person. God may seem mighty, yet toward his children he is tender; he may burn with great wrath, yet when they repent and turn back, he forgives. That is what a father is. Those who know his will and take care not to wound his heart are the ones with mature faith, children who share a beautiful love with their Father.

You must now love in a way that knows how to repay grace. Only when you are people who know how to return the love God has given will he embrace you with greater grace, lift you up, and bring you to glory. Do not take it for granted that you are loved, whether in the world or in the church. When you answer the one who loves you with a thankful heart and a greater love, love reaches its completion. This is because love, as though it had a character of its own, does not forget the one who gives, and with a greater love it fills that person’s life with blessing.

Song of Solomon 2:8

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

Even as she sank into deep sleep, the Shulammite longed for Solomon, and no one else, to be the one to wake her. Waiting for the man she loved, even in the moment she drifted off, she yearned for him to come to her side. She sensed Solomon running swiftly toward her, and though half asleep, she seemed to hear the familiar sound of his voice. The thrill of knowing he would soon wake her filled her heart.

Yet for some reason Solomon, who had run until he was out of breath, did not go into the room where she slept. He stood behind the wall and looked in at the window to see how she was. He wanted to know whether she truly was waiting for him. Only after looking over the room did he shake her awake from her deep sleep, calling her his love, his beautiful one, and telling her to rise up and come away with him. The winter was past and the rain was over; the fig tree was ripening its fruit and the vines in blossom were giving out their fragrance. A lovely season had come, so he woke her and told her to leave the sleep of darkness behind and come with him.

The Shulammite had waited for Solomon with an aching heart, and now, just as she hoped, the one she loves is waking her. All she must do is follow her beloved’s voice, rise from her deep sleep, and welcome him. We too, though we love God, sometimes fall into the deep sleep of the world without realizing it. There are times when the affairs of the world are so wearying and frightening that we can do nothing at all, as though sunk in sleep until God comes to help us. There are times when the cold, bitter winter of the world plunges us into trouble, and, with no power to resolve it, we simply bear the whole of the pain.

We run after people asking for help and try somehow to solve the problem in our own strength, yet sometimes all that comes back is ridicule, contempt, and an empty heart. We do our best to live a life of success rather than failure, but life does not go as we intend. No one is poor because they like poverty, and no one falls ill because they want to be sick, for the winter of life is a suffering everyone would rather escape.

You too, I expect, have been caught in the winter rain of life even after planning well. You would have looked around for help, but it was dark and stifling, as if you were shut up in a deep cave. You cried out, yet felt so helpless, as though you alone could hear your own voice, that all you could do was weep where you stood. There must have been times, too, when no matter how you called on God, he seemed not to answer, as if he were hiding behind a wall with both ears stopped, and you did not know where to turn.

What did you do then? Did you pray until God heard your voice? Did you wander the streets all day looking for someone to help? Or did you give up everything and sink down where you were? Perhaps, hoping for an easy way out, you looked to people rather than to God. Human effort can carry us over the waves of hardship a few times. But we must understand that life is not so easily handled, because it does not end just because we have crested a few waves.

If we do not hold on to God at such a time, we will be overcome by disappointment at our own helplessness as we are pushed to the edges of the world, by financial hardship, and by fear and dread of the world itself, and in the end we will fall. Nothing frightens a person like a problem they cannot solve by their own strength. We cannot foresee what will happen even one second from now, and to carry the responsibility for the whole long course of life is far too heavy a burden for us; we ought to entrust it to almighty God. Amid such pain and fear, the Shulammite lay down to sleep and asked that no one wake her until the one she loved should come. For us, too, the wisest thing we can do is kneel and pray for God to resolve our suffering and the fires of testing we pass through.

Just as Solomon stood behind the wall and watched the Shulammite, the Lord is always looking closely at our faith. Do you truly love me and long for me with all your heart? Do you really have ears to hear my voice, and are you seeking me so that we may meet? That is what he is watching 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 you from outside the door now? Are you perhaps so busy with the affairs of the world that you do not hear him, though he calls you earnestly? Or are you fighting the deep waves of suffering and testing alone, without heeding the voice of Jesus, who tells you that if you will only open the door, he will fight in your place? The Lord is always beside you, telling you that only by holding on to him can you wake from deep sleep. If you yearn for God and earnestly long to be with him, you will be able to wake from that sleep.

What I want to tell you is this: when hardship comes, take that time as an opportunity to meet God, and even enjoy it. Each time a problem arises, if you think, ‘God wants to hear my voice,’ and go into your inner room to offer prayer and praise, you will experience astonishing grace. Of course there are times that are hard to bear, but a life shaped together with God’s grace brings spiritual abundance and growth instead. The Shulammite leaned on Solomon alone and came through her hardship well on her own; I hope you too will lean 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 clefts of the rock on a dangerous cliff, to show him her face, and tells her that her voice is sweet and her face lovely. She was in a place as perilous and lonely as a cliff edge, yet her voice as she called to Solomon was sweet and her face lovely. When people are in danger, their voices usually grow urgent and their faces twist with strain, but the Shulammite was calm and unshaken. She could be at peace like this because she trusted Solomon. We too live lives as dangerous and lonely as a ledge in the clefts of the rock, yet because God is with us, our voices stay gentle and our faces, touched by grace, remain 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 told us to go into our inner room, shut the door, and pray to our Father who is in secret. Because he told us to pray in an inner room, I sometimes see people set aside a small room at home or at church and boast of it as their ‘prayer room.’ But his words mean more than a room. They tell us to cut ourselves off from everything in the world we once leaned on and to speak with God alone, in secret. In the inner room, whatever is happening in the world, you can talk quietly and deeply with God, just the two of you, and you can lay your weary heart at the foot of the cross and rest for a while.

Those who love Jesus alone and pray to God alone in the secret place will find their prayers received by God as a pleasing aroma. Solomon peered through the window from behind the wall to see what the Shulammite was doing and what was in her heart. God, too, will hear the prayers of those who call on him in secret and wake them from the deep sleep of suffering.

When we overcome suffering by faith, we grow mature in that faith, just as the figs ripen on the tree once the cold winter has passed. Those who, like vines in full blossom giving out their fragrance, bear fruit have received the power, authority, and gifts to fulfill their calling. People matured in this way go ahead of others, helping not only themselves but the church, their families, and the souls around them.

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 plundered the vineyard. However hard she tried, she could bear no fruit because of them, but now she could ask Solomon, her steadfast husband, to catch those foxes for her. The little foxes that had been tearing down the lovely vineyard would now have to face mighty Solomon instead of the Shulammite. For Solomon, who had strength, power, and authority, catching a few little foxes was no great matter.

Now we too need only hand over to the Lord the world and Satan, the little foxes that kept us from bearing spiritual fruit. The little fox that sowed doubt to make us abandon our faith, the little fox of worldly anxiety: they will be driven out of our vineyard and will never trouble us again.

There are little foxes in the church as well.

To hinder God’s work, they endlessly stir up strife and division in the church. We must discern by the word and by wisdom; only then can we protect both the church and our own faith. A church and its people who were growing well can fall in an instant. When a little fox burrows into the ground and damages the roots, even a vine in full bloom soon withers and dries up. So too, when such people stir up conflict in the church with a false gospel, darkness will take over the hearts of the congregation. And our own laziness and sloth may be a little fox as well. The unbelief that treats God’s calling lightly is a little fox, and so is the pride that parades its own righteousness.

Those little foxes have now been placed in the hands of Solomon and of God, by the Shulammite in her prayer and by us in ours. A faith that entrusts everything to God in prayer like this is what matters. In the hours you would spend worrying, losing heart, and sighing, I hope you will pray instead. Do not be afraid as you watch the little foxes ruin the vineyard; may you call on God with a gentle voice and confess your love with a lovely face.

We complain because we have not learned to give thanks for the blessings already given and to be content. May you lay it all down at the foot of the cross and be at peace, rather than clutching the troubles of the world and its people and wearing yourself out. Just as the Shulammite was in Solomon and Solomon in her, and the two became one, we are in Christ and Christ is in us, and so no one will be able to harm you. And as the Shulammite shares her joy with Solomon, let us now rest in the peace we have in God.

May the wonderful peace of heaven come upon you, and may you live a life of continual praise. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.