If you turn in your Bibles to
the Song of Solomon, we are in Chapter 5 and the context is
a remarkable one. She has been given this remarkable meeting with her Lord and Saviour
and he's spoken to her and he's called her to him in verse 8
of chapter 4, come with me. And then he says these remarkable
things about her, that she's ravished his heart. Verse 9,
my sister, my spouse, you have ravished my heart with one of
your eyes, one chain of your neck. Then he describes her. in the most beautiful way. Describes
her love. Describes the smell of her ornaments. He describes her lips, drop of
honeycomb. Describes her thought, milk and
honey are under thy tongue. He describes, again, the smell
of her garments. All of these things, of course,
are things that she's arrayed with because she has received
his beauty and he describes her as a garden enclosed. She's separated
from the world. She's a spring shut up, a fountain
sealed. And he talks about these spices
that are in this garden and he describes her as a fountain of
garden, verse 15, streams from Lebanon, a well of living waters.
And then he says those words that Simon probably alluded to,
he said, let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant
fruits. And he comes into that garden
and then he says to her, to all of us, he says, eat our friends,
drink. Don't drink sparingly. Drink
abundantly. Eat abundantly. Feast abundantly, he says. As we've seen in chapter 5, this
same bride who's had these remarkable privileges has been in this state
of slothful slumber. And she's treated him appallingly. And then, because of His work
of grace, she's been caused to go searching for Him. And in
this state that we find her in, Chapter 5, she's wounded. She's
wounded and she's shamed. But then she's caused to answer
this question, What is he? What is he to you? Can you describe
him to us? You're going to all this trouble."
There she is, beaten and shamed, treated as a harlot rather than
an adored wife, a queen no less. And then she answers this question,
and when we're looking at the answer to this question, she
talked about Him being the chiefest, the banner. Him being both white
in His divinity and ruddy in His manliness. He was a man's
man and He was God's God. His head, His sovereignty, His
locks, His eternal youthfulness. And we looked last week at the
fact that these are representations of Him in His eternal youth,
but also of Him as He looks upon her. His eyes are as the eyes
of doves, by the rivers of water washed with milk and fitly set. And then in verse 13 she describes
His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers, His lips like
lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. What an amazing description. He is of course unique and she
is wonderful in her readiness and her willingness and her delight
to define him with great clarity. You see, it seems so often in
our experience, doesn't it, that the Lord has actually left us
and abandoned us and we can't find Him and we wonder what's
going on. But all of the Lord's acts towards
all of His children are bathed with love, sovereign love, knowledgeable
love. I love the way in Hosea we have
this beautiful picture of the relationship between the Lord
Jesus and his church, and the critical verse in Hosea. And you know something of the
story, that he was asked to go and marry this woman from the
red light district, as it were. And she, after having some children
with him, went back to her lovers. And she lived with her lovers.
She lived as a harlot before her lovers. And all of that time,
Hosea went to her and outside of her door were all the provisions
for her life. He fed her every day. He made
sure that she had all she needed for life. And yet she attributed
all of that She said, my lovers have given me these things. How
much she is a picture of us is that we think that we've achieved
things in the world because of our activities and we forget
so easily. Unless the Lord gives us eyes
to see, we forget. so quickly, that it's He who
provides all things. It's He who makes the difference. We have this wonderful, this
amazing verse that says, Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet
and love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress. And then these remarkable words.
This is love. This is God's love. According
to the love of the Lord towards the children of Israel. That's how God's love is pictured,
isn't it? We know, we talk so much and
we hear so much about it. But it's a remarkable, remarkable
thing to contemplate the intimacy of that relationship that we
are drawn by Him, we are shepherded by Him. And in verse 14 of Chapter
2, He says, Therefore behold, I will allure her I will cause
her to come after me because of the attractiveness of her."
He doesn't say, I'll beat her and make her follow me or I'll
drag her. He says, I will allure her and bring
her into the wilderness which is where we find the Shulamite
in this Song of Solomon. and speak comfortably
unto her." You see, it's His sovereign promise, isn't it?
He will allure her. He will draw His people to Himself
by the beauties of the Lord Jesus being displayed. The truth of
who he is is endlessly attractive to God's people. See, he will
do the alluring. He will do the bringing into
the wilderness and he will speak comfortably unto her. That word
comfortably means that he will speak friendly words to her heart. He will speak a word to her. You brothers and sisters are
among the bride of the Lord Jesus. Isn't that a great delight that
God draws us with the attractiveness of the person of his son. We
are drawn to him We are drawn to see how beautiful He is. And here is this Bride, like
so many of us here in so much of our lives, we feel that He
is distant. We feel that we have damaged
the relationship in some way by our sin and by our slothfulness,
by the fact that we ignore Him and we treat Him with contempt. But what does he say? He says,
I've loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, this love of
the Lord Jesus, this real everlasting love, is an effectual love. This idea that God loves everyone
and He's done His best is such a blasphemy. It is such a blasphemy
against the character of God. And because it's a blasphemy
against the character of God, it does damage to all people. It does damage to the perishing,
giving them peace that they do not deserve and never will have. and it does harm to God's children
because it takes something which is precious, this precious pearl,
and it's cast out into this world to be trodden on like mud in
the streets. God's love in Jeremiah 31.3 that
I just quoted. He's loved you with an everlasting
love, brothers and sisters. Therefore with loving kindness
will I draw you. You see, she's drawn to this
stage, isn't she? She's drawn, and He has sovereignly
been there when she's been beaten. He's sovereignly been there when
she's felt wounded. And then he sovereignly calls
this question to be asked. It's a great question, isn't
it? What is thy beloved more than another beloved? It's a
question that this book asks in the most remarkable ways,
isn't it? And Song of Solomon especially
asks that question and draws the most beautiful answers out
of the Shulamite. at these things that are before
us today. It says that his cheeks are as
a bed of spices, as sweet as flowers. There are just two headings
in a sense in this sermon, isn't it? His cheeks, Christ looked
upon, is lovely. And then she says, His lips,
like lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh, Christ listened to, Christ
being heard from, is very, very precious. Let's look at them
just briefly. Looking upon the Lord Jesus,
she's actually recalling, and this is by the eyes of faith,
isn't it? He's not there in her presence.
But she says that His cheeks, His face, God says, in Isaiah
42, look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. See, salvation is in a look,
isn't it? Looking unto Jesus. Salvation
and sanctification is a continual look, isn't it? Fix your eyes
upon the Lord Jesus, the author and the perfecter of faith. And
in heaven's glories, They will see His face. His cheeks can represent so many
things, can't they? They can represent how God sees
things. Our cheeks reflect our feelings
and our emotions more than many other parts of our face. It reflects
what He thinks. It reflects His attitudes, It
reflects in a sense His manifestation. We beheld His glory, they said,
the glory of the only begotten of the Father. You see one of
the great things about this book and about this particular passage
is that the Lord Jesus is defined in detail. And Norm did a great
job explaining how the wisdom of God is revealed in the person
and work of the Lord Jesus. And it's a detailed description. It's a precise description. We
want to say that the Lord Jesus is as He is, described in this
book. We pray that the Lord would cause
us to be faithful witnesses, that when we describe Him and
describe His character, we would just be faithful to who He is. It speaks of His revelation,
it speaks of the way He is, it speaks of His countenance, His
face. Proverbs 16.15 says, in the illumination
of the King's countenance is life. Unless He reveals His face, we
cannot see Him. Unless these words become life,
we cannot see. We do not have eyes. The hearing
ear and the seeing eye, both of them are from the Lord. As Job said, if he hides his
face, who then can behold him? God's face. is going to be beheld
by everyone. In Psalm 34, 16 it says, The
face of the Lord is against them that do evil. Let the Lord our God comes in
the person of His Son, and we can touch Him, and we can feel
Him, and the Scriptures say that in 1 John they actually examined
Him. They had opportunity as Moses
did. The Lord spoke to Moses as a
man, face to face. It means that He revealed Himself,
revealed His heart to him. But these cheeks, speak of something
else, don't they? In that part of the world and
in our world, the cheek is the place upon which people are kissed
and greeted. It's the softest part of the
face. It's the place where face to
face there is fellowship and there is meeting and there is
intimacy. when we are called upon to greet
each other with a holy kiss. It was a kiss upon the cheeks. The cheeks are the place where
we can express love in return. The cheeks are the place that
represent the intimacy of communion. He is, as a man, our brother. He's one with us. He's bone of
our bones and flesh of our flesh. He's our next of kin. It's a remarkable thing, isn't
it, to think that this God who reigns over this universe is
yet revealing Himself in an intimacy of communion and union with His
people. The Holy Spirit that was poured
out on Him and descended upon Him descends upon us. We are one with Him. As He is, so are we in this world. You see, these are just pictures
of the delightful truths about the Lord Jesus, which invite
and bring delight in communion and fellowship with Him. But
it was a union and a communion which cost Him dearly. If you turn in your Bibles to
Isaiah chapter 50, The Lord Jesus is spoken of here
as that servant, that willing and obedient servant who for
love for his family and love for his Master took on that place
of the servant that we read about in Exodus 20, verse 5 of chapter
51 of Isaiah. The Lord God has opened by an
ear. The opening of the ear is a sign
of His commitment, his covenant to his father and to his bride. He won't go free. He won't go
away on his own. The Lord God has heard my ear.
I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back
to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the
hair. I hid not my face from shame
and spitting. For the Lord God will help me,
therefore shall I not be confounded. Therefore I have set my face
like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. The Lord Jesus set his face like
a flint. In eternity he set his face like
a flint. On this earth he set his face
like a flint, as hard a stone as you can find, and he determinedly
and purposefully went to Jerusalem." Sometimes these verses just Weigh
heavily on you, don't you, when you realise that there He was,
this God-man. And I know that the blood shed
on the cross and the doctrine of the cross is critical, critical
to our salvation and critical to God's people being justified
and washed in that precious blood. But that blood was shed in Gethsemane. It began to be shed in Gethsemane
and it was shed again as he gave his backs to the smiters. They took their whips and they
furrowed his body and blood poured out. That's why he was so weak
on the way to Golgotha. He had been beaten within an
inch of his life. And he gave his back to the smiters,
and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. To pluck off the
hair meant that they literally skinned his face. You can't pluck off the beard
of a man without tearing the skin away. When you think of
what he looked like, when you think of what was happening,
He gave his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not
my face from shame and spitting. He hid not his face from shame
and spitting. I love Spurgeon's comment about
that. He says, infinite loveliness
was insulted with inconceivable contempt. Infinite loveliness
was insulted with inconceivable contempt. These cheeks which were the delight
of this bride, He gave them to them that plucked off the hair.
And He hid not that face, that face of beauty, those lips of
love were covered with the spittle of men. It is just extraordinary, isn't
it? It is just extraordinary how
we need to be reminded again and again of the physical sufferings
of our Lord Jesus. We won't know and we won't appreciate
Him until the reality of what happened to Him at that time
becomes a living reality And the Lord Jesus stooped so
low. He stooped to the very depths
of ignominy. There is no more insulting thing
you can do to a person, and especially in the Eastern world, but no
doubt in our world as well, than to spit upon them. It's a shocking,
shocking thing. and the punishment for it, in
the Old Testament law, was as severe as the most heinous of
crimes. To spit on someone is to bring
upon them the most extraordinary shame. I think one of the things
that's remarkable is that in the in the Gospels, in the New
Testament and in the Old Testament. Everywhere we have in the Gospels
we have this wonderful picture of substitution. The Lord Jesus
standing in my place. The Lord Jesus bearing what I
deserved, what I earned. The Lord Jesus carrying my sins
as his own. But not only did he carry the
sins, he carried the shame, he carried the ignominy of what
we had done. And Hebrews says that He has
cleansed our consciences. It's a remarkable thing, isn't
it, that the Lord Jesus suffered all that our sins deserved. And He suffered it bearing the
wrath of His Father and bearing the shame The shame of the ignominy
of being treated with contempt. That God's children would never
feel shame. He bore not only our sins, but
He bore the guilt of them. Hebrews 9.14 says, How much more
shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit had
offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience,
what it is to lie down on your pillow at night after a day of
sin and wickedness, and seeing that you've done nothing, and
have nothing and are nothing, to lie down on your pillow at
peace with God. Have you sinned? Absolutely. Are the sins grievous and hurtful
and are there consequences? Absolutely. But the Lord Jesus
has put them away and God will never remember them ever again.
God has borne the shame of your sins. God has purged the consciences
of His people. He's purified our consciences
from dead works to serve the living God. These cheeks, no
wonder she says, these cheeks, as a bed of spices and sweet
flowers. These cheeks that were so shamed
in this world are a bed of spices and sweet flowers. There is in
the cheeks of the Lord Jesus both sweetness and beauty, spice
for fragrance and flowers for loveliness. There is in the Lord
Jesus, in those cheeks that were plucked of their hair, there
is the smell of redemption, and there is in the Lord Jesus the
savour of life. I love the way she talks in the
plural so often, in verse 12, it talks about His eyes are the
eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, His cheeks are as a bed
of spices, as sweet flowers. There is a beautiful, bountiful
plurality in the things of God, aren't there? The sweet flowers
means in the Hebrew, towels of perfume. It probably refers to
raised gardens. And so there is an infinite abundance,
an infinite variety. In Christ there is something
for every spiritual sense. And for every need that we have,
there is delightful and complete satisfaction. One of his names
is, he is all desires. What a beautiful name for him. It is good to know, isn't it,
as we saw last week. It's good to know that our Lord
sits and reigns over this universe, over the thoughts and the activities
of men, as a sovereign for the good of His people and the glory
of His name. It's good to know also that our
God is involved in an intimate union with His people. He never
leaves them nor forsakes them. Has He abandoned Isabel? He can't. He can't leave the ones He loves. Is there pain? Is there real
suffering in this world? There is indeed. But He, He provides A beautiful
balm and a suitable balm for every wound. See there's a bed
of spices. It's a bed of all of these spices.
For you who have had spices around your houses, it's a delightful
thing. We walk out along our veranda
and occasionally you tread onto a leaf of a mint bush and you
crush it and the smell just pervades. the whole area and people have
made lawns out of chamomile and things and you have spices and
herbs like lavender and things and you brush against them and
this beautiful aroma comes out. So it's infinite abundance is
what's being talked about, infinite variety and yet all beautifully
arranged. It's like the flowers in the
garden, isn't it? They seem to entangle themselves together
so often. And they just are beautiful in
the way they grow together, in the way they send out their little
flowers. And all the little flowers want to look at the sun to reflect
the glory of God. It's often amazing to think,
isn't it, how the Lord views this creation of His. And you
think of those deserts in Western Australia, millions upon millions
of acres, hectares, square miles, huge areas, and then they blossom
when the rains come. And who sees the blossoms? Almost
no one, but one. I've often told you of the delight
I have swimming around in coral, and it's just amazing. The water
just looks like very ordinary water on top, and then you have
to put goggles on to see it properly, but if you put goggles on, you
go down there and you have this world which is just remarkable. Your eyes get sore from staring
at it, and you think you've seen it all, and you turn a corner
and there's something even more magnificent. Some remarkable
fish. Flesh this long, and blue, the
most beautiful blues, and these huge things, and these little
things, and skulls of fish that might half fill this room, and
they all move, and they all shine in different ways. It is just
remarkably beautiful. No one else sees it, do they? There is one person that looks
on all of that with delight, and it's our God. There is just
an overflowing abundance. There is an infant variety. So the herbs speak of usefulness. We use herbs for all sorts of
things, for preserving and embalming and for flavouring and savouring. And we've looked again and again
at how they were used in the temple. So they speak of usefulness
in so many ways. And flowers are there just to
delight us, aren't they? Just to cause us to say, isn't
this just amazingly beautiful? So all we need, and all we need
for our delights are in Him. That's why He says, eat abundantly,
drink abundantly, O Beloved. Look at Him, and not man, for
beauty, for usefulness, for balm, for every occasion. And we can
see his delights, we can see the things he does in the way
he works in the lives of other people. He works amongst his
church, he works amongst his people to gift them, to carry
them through. And I think of some of the pains
the people that we love, have had to bear and continue to bear
and bear on an ongoing basis and you think, isn't it amazing
to see God holding that person up. I think of our friend John
at the moment and when you meet him, so often you hear from him,
I am just so thankful, I am just so thankful. I think it was Scott
Richardson who said, he said, ever since I've heard the good
news, there's never been any bad news. If you have the Lord
Jesus, you have everything. His cheeks are a bed of spices,
and they're sweet flowers. And also, secondly, in this verse,
Christ, listen to, is very precious indeed. His face reveals His
compassion and His love for His bride. His face can be against
evildoers and it will be. His words, His lips, this language
of His, this language of Zion is a special language. And there's
a remarkable verse in John 12, 48 where the Lord Jesus warns
the people who heard him and for whom his words had no place
in their lives. And he said to them remarkable
things. He said, if any man hear my words
and believe not, I judge him not. For I came not to judge
the world, but to save the world. He that rejects me and receives
not my words has one that judges him. The word I have spoken,
the same shall judge him on the last day." See, the Lord Jesus
pours forth words from His lips. These words have infinite and
eternal and deeply serious consequences. Those words of the Lord Jesus
will be raised up against people on that day. But the Lord Jesus' words to
His bride are sweet. They are sweet and they are precious.
Just let me put you in the context of Song of Solomon. It's remarkable,
isn't it? We've had that feast, drink abundantly in this garden
that's been blown upon and then she goes wayward and He comes
and allures her to Himself. And the very next words, He speaks,
you would think, wouldn't you? The next words that he would
say to her are words of rebuke. Now look here, darling, this
is what you should have done and this is why I've done this
to you. What's he say? His very next words to her are
in Psalm Solomon, chapter 6, verse 4, and he says, Read it along with me. Thou art
beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible
as an army with banners. You see, his words have allured
her. She's been caused to see the
things that he does are things of great graciousness. Righteous
lips, says Proverbs 16, 13, are the delight of kings, and they
love him that speaketh right. We know. I pray that God would
make it more and more real to you. You have no righteousness
of your own. You've never done a righteous
thing. You never will do a righteous thing. You have no meritorious
works. You will not get to heaven and
parade your good works around and expect God to reward you
for the good things you've done. No one is righteous. No one. Righteous lips speak of the Lord
Jesus, don't they? They are the delight of kings. God's children in this world
according to Revelation chapter 1 verse 5 and 6, God's children
are made to be kings and priests. They delight They delight in
the words of God. They delight in the word who
has made flesh. And they delight in the word
that He speaks to them. And they love Him. They hear His words. They follow His voice. They love
Him. The lips of the wise dispense
knowledge. His lips speak our pardon. They speak of our acceptance
before God in heaven and how delightful it must be for the
father to see his son right now in heaven, carrying his people
as one with himself and interceding before the throne. pleading his
righteousness, pleading his sin-bearing death. And heaven sings, heaven
sings, and the earth shakes at the words of the Lord Jesus.
He spoke, right words. He spoke the words of God. He
says, I have given unto them the words that you gave me, and
they have received them, and have known surely that I have
come from you, and they have believed that you did send me. No one who has ever walked this
earth has spoken like the Lord Jesus. No one ever spoke like
this man. His lips are pure. His lips are
gentle. His lips are tender and kind. That's what it means when she
says his lips are like lilies. The lilies there is a reference
to those red lilies, those crimson lilies that grow in that part
of the world. His lips speak beautiful words,
beautiful words of redemption. of salvation, beautiful words
of acceptance and satisfaction. They wondered as they heard him. They wondered at the gracious
words that he spoke. His word is full. of wonderful, mysterious and
blessed influences. See, they're like lilies dropping
sweet-smelling myrrh. Lilies don't drop sweet-smelling
myrrh. Myrrh is a gum that comes from
a tree that's been wounded and it has the most beautiful smell,
but it has a bitter taste. It's emblematic, of course, of
the sufferings of our Lord Jesus he suffered in his flesh he suffered
in this world but his sufferings were as sweet smelling savour
under his God his bitterness ultimately was
sweetness to his body God's holy name honoured and esteemed, his
law upheld as glorious, the name of God honoured. And he went
through agony, he went through bitterness, he went through all
of that to create this sweetness. He speaks these words. He speaks these words that drop
into our hearts, don't they? Sweet smelling word. I don't
know about you, but the number of times you've been in the company
of the Lord's people, you've been in a place where He meets
with His people and speaks to His people and we come with a
heavy heart and we go away and it's just a word. It might be
just a sentence, it might be just another sweet picture of
the Lord Jesus and we go away from our time of fellowship with
a spring in our step, with a sense of hope, with the bitterness
taken away and the sweetness carrying us on to the next trials
and the next activities that the Lord will have laid out for
us. See we need this myrrh. We need this myrrh for the healing
of the wounds that this flesh and body of sin that we carry
about has made. We need this myrrh in our spiritual
worship that we may offer it up to God. We need this myrrh
to perfume us and to make our lives fragrant. washed in His precious blood. We need this myrrh to kill the
putrefying diseases of this world. And all of this comes to us through
those lips, the lips that He speaks, the lips that I pray
you will hear Him speak to you. There's a story told in the days
of a man called Ebenezer Erskine, and the woman went to her normal
church service, worship service, and he spoke so wonderfully,
expressively, and delightfully about the Lord Jesus that her
heart was warmed, and she was just overwhelmed and overcome,
and she thought it was just the most wonderful message. She found out where he was preaching
and she left her fellowship and she went to hear him again. And she came away from the service
being very disappointed. It was dry and it was dull. And she went to Ebenezer Erskine
after the service and said, last week you spoke so beautifully. And this week it was dryness
to me. There was nothing in it that
was a savor to me. And he turned to her and he said,
last week you came to worship God. This week you came to hear
a man speak. It's a great lesson, isn't it? My prayer always is that God
would speak to your hearts. Imply in your ears and come to
me. Here and your soul shall live. Look unto me, look unto the Lord
Jesus and be you saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God
and there is none else. What an amazing privilege that
He might reveal His face to sinners like us, and that we'll see that
he is sweetness and a bed of spices, but also isn't it amazing
that he might speak? He might speak words to your
heart, and that might his lips to his people be like lilies. And there would be a sweet-smelling
myrrh that drops, that just drops, that flows. It's not forced. It comes from a heart of love,
a heart of infinite love for his bride. Let's pray.