Dominion – Arise and Reign

Week 1: Dominion Within

During this study, we will be doing a ‘deep dive’ into a scriptural passage. It is strongly encouraged that you study the passage and entire chapter ahead of the study. Also be prepared with your research tools, for example Google or your study Bible, as you will need to reference it during the study. Spend time answering and discussing each question with the intention to gain sufficient understanding to help your own private Bible study as you further explore these topics.

Study Chapters: Song of Solomon 1-8 

Read Song of Solomon as a complete story of love, desire, belonging and growing security. While its immediate setting celebrates human love, it also gives us language through which we can explore the wider biblical themes of covenant love, belonging and devotion, while allowing the New Testament to reveal their ultimate fulfilment in Christ and His people.
Give particular attention to:
1:2–4, 8–17 Attraction, desire and being drawn
2:8–17 The invitation to arise and come away
3:1–5 Longing, searching and finding
4:7–16 Being seen, known and valued
5:2–8 Distance, longing and pursuit
6:1–3 Growing assurance and belonging
7:10–13 Secure love producing willing response
8:5–7 Mature, powerful and unquenchable love
Watch particularly for the development in the language of belonging across the book.

Pilot text

SS 8:5-10
5 Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?
I awakened you under the apple tree. There your mother brought you forth;
There she who bore you brought you forth.
6 Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm;
For love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave;
Its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame.
7 Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it.
If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house,
It would be utterly despised.
8 We have a little sister, and she has no breasts.
What shall we do for our sister in the day when she is spoken for?
9 If she is a wall, we will build upon her a battlement of silver;
And if she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall, and my breasts like towers;
Then I became in his eyes as one who found peace.

SS 2:10-13
10 My beloved spoke, and said to me: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
11 For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away!

SS 7:10
I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.

Introduction:

Welcome to October, our month of Dominion: Arise and Reign!
There are things God intends us to rule over that have spent too long ruling over us; such as fear, rejection, insecurity, the need to prove ourselves, and sometimes even our own desires. When we hear the word dominion, our thoughts naturally move outward. We think about authority, influence, territory, overcoming opposition and changing circumstances.
But Scripture repeatedly brings us elsewhere first: the heart. Before asking what we have authority over, perhaps we should ask:
“What currently has authority over me?”
Song of Solomon may initially seem an unexpected place to begin a study on dominion. Yet throughout this extraordinary celebration of love we encounter desire, vulnerability, longing, pursuit, identity and increasingly confident belonging. And into that story comes an invitation:
“Rise up… and come away.”
The deepest desire in man’s heart is to know that we are loved. The person secure in love does not have to beg the world for validation, or manufacture identity from possessions, position, relationships or applause. The person established in God’s love can face rejection without becoming rejected, encounter opposition without surrendering identity, and experience difficulty without allowing it to become lord.
This week, expect to challenge the things that have quietly been exercising dominion over your heart, because our journey into dominion begins with discovering God’s dominion within us.

Discussion Point

• Where do we see Christ? Song of Solomon is first a celebration of human love, and we should allow it to speak in that context rather than forcing every detail into an allegory. Yet the wider biblical story repeatedly uses the language of marriage, covenant and faithful love to describe God’s relationship with His people. The New Testament ultimately presents Christ as the Bridegroom and the Church as His bride.
  Further reading: John 3:28-30; Ephesians 5:25-32; Revelation 19:6-9; Revelation 21:1-3
  Ephesians 5 presents a Saviour who loved the Church and gave Himself for her. His love initiates. His love sacrifices. His love cleanses. His love establishes relationship.
  
• Where do we see salvation foreshadowed? Song of Solomon 8 describes a love that overwhelming waters cannot extinguish. The gospel reveals the ultimate demonstration of such love.
  Further reading: Romans 5:6–8; Romans 8:31–39; Ephesians 2:1–10; 1 John 4:9–19.
  Salvation begins with God’s initiative. God did not wait for humanity to become worthy of love. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And Romans 8 takes this assurance even further: neither trouble, hardship, persecution, danger, death nor anything else in creation can separate God’s people from His love in Christ.
  That is extraordinary dominion.
  Salvation does more than rescue us from the consequence of sin. Grace brings us into a new life and teaches us how to live. We are saved by grace, not by becoming wise enough to earn God’s acceptance. Yet the grace that saves us also transforms our thinking, desires, decisions and direction.
• Where do we see ourselves? Song of Solomon contains several voices: desire, admiration, insecurity, searching, invitation and eventually increasing assurance. Dominion begins when God’s voice in our hearts becomes greater than the competing voices attempting to define us.
  Further reading: Romans 8:14–17; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:1–4, 12–15.
  Discussion: Consider how something apparently good, such as achievement, relationships, financial security or reputation can begin to rule the heart. What does it mean to live from an identity established in Christ rather than one continually negotiated with circumstances and other people?

Closing thoughts:

Dominion often makes us think about what must change around us. Song of Solomon invites us to begin with what is happening within us. Its movement from desire and searching toward increasingly confident belonging provokes a powerful question: what has been allowed to determine our identity and security?
The gospel gives the answer its proper foundation. Our confidence is not created by repeatedly telling ourselves that we are powerful. It comes from Christ. He loved us and gave Himself for us (Ephesians 5:25). Through salvation we are brought into God’s family, and the Spirit testifies that we are His children (Romans 8:14-17). This is not manufactured confidence but received identity, which changes what is permitted to rule us.
Romans 8 does not promise the absence of trouble, distress or opposition. It declares that none of them can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Circumstances may affect us without possessing us. Rejection may hurt without defining us. Failure may teach us without naming us. This is Dominion Within.
Before David ruled a kingdom, God had already been forming something in David. Before Joseph exercised authority in Egypt, God had sustained him through places where he appeared to possess very little authority at all. And before believers are called to exercise influence in the world, we must first understand that we belong to Christ.
Our first territory of dominion is not the workplace, neighbourhood, ministry or nation.
It is our heart.
———————–
Here is an invitation for you:
This week, hear the invitation of Song of Solomon:
“Rise up… and come away.”
Come away from identities built on achievement, the exhausting pursuit of approval; from allowing rejection to have the final word.
And come again into the security of Christ’s love.
Ask God to expose anything that has quietly acquired more authority over your heart than His love.
Dominion begins within.
And from that place, we can arise and reign.

Application Questions (use scriptures to support your position):

• A senior Christian professional has built an impressive career and is widely respected, but criticism from colleagues affects him disproportionately. He frequently changes decisions after receiving negative feedback, not because the criticism is necessarily correct, but because being disliked or misunderstood makes him deeply uncomfortable.
  What is exercising dominion in this situation? How could security in God’s love and identity in Christ change the way he receives criticism without becoming either defensive or controlled by approval?
• A sister has experienced several significant relational disappointments. Although she is gifted and actively serves others, she increasingly interprets new relationships through previous rejection and withdraws quickly whenever she feels that someone may not value her. She describes this as protecting herself from being hurt again.
  How might Song of Solomon’s themes of love and belonging, together with Romans 8:31-39, help distinguish healthy wisdom from allowing past rejection to exercise dominion over present relationships?
• A Christian parent has watched an adult child make several decisions that conflict with the values in which they were raised. Concern has gradually become anxiety, and anxiety has become an attempt to control the child’s choices, relationships and future. The parent argues that this behaviour simply demonstrates love.
  In what ways can love become distorted when fear exercises dominion? What might trusting God’s love and sovereignty change about the way this parent responds while still remaining prayerful, truthful and appropriately involved?