I was just thinking as we were
sitting there how nice it would be for us to put some book together
of the bulletin articles, some of the bulletin articles. It's
amazing isn't it, I have them sort of lying around the house
and sitting in places where I sit
fairly regularly and it's amazing how sometimes just little snippets
of things can really impact you. I did want to read the one by
Bruce Crabtree because I found it amongst some other things
on Thursday evening when I was cleaning up and it was a word
of serious conviction to me. That may not mean it was a word
of serious conviction to you, but I thought it was a I came
to a message, a message that I needed to hear. We need to
hear again and again. It's dying to self, and he's
quoting that verse in Matthew 16, 24. And he says, when you
are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught, and
you don't sting or hurt with insults or for the oversight
should be, but your heart is happy being counted worthy to
suffer for Christ. That is dying to self. When your
good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your
advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to
let anger arise in your heart or even defend yourself, but
take it all in patient, loving silence, that is dying to self. When you lovingly and patiently
bear any disorder, any irregularity and unpunctuality or any annoyance,
that you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance
and spiritual insensibility, enduring it as Christ endured
it, that is dying to self. When you no longer care to hear
yourself in conversations or to record your own works or to
itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown,
that is dying to self. When you see your brother prosper
and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in
spirit and feel no envy nor question God while your own needs are
far greater and you are in far more desperate circumstances,
that is dying to self. when you can receive correction
and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, everyone
of course is of less stature than ourselves, and can humbly
submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment
rising up within your heart. That is dying to self. Of course we know that by grace
those things are the work of God's Spirit. in us. And we also know that in our
Adam flesh we would rise up against all of those things all of the
time. Let's turn in our Bibles to Song of Solomon again. Before I come to the passage
that we're looking at in Chapter 5, I think one of the things
that's really fascinating that's a recurring theme in Song of
Solomon is that there There is a description of the bride and
a description of the bridegroom and then there is an emotional
response. You see we looked in verse 4
and he says in verse 4, chapter 1, Behold thou art fair, my love,
behold thou art fair, thou hast dove's eyes. And he talks about
her teeth, he talks about her lips, he describes her in detail,
he describes her words, he describes her neck, he describes her. And then he says to her, Thou
art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee." And
then he calls her to come with him, come with me from Lebanon,
my spouse. He wants fellowship with her. So he describes her, he talks
about fellowship with her, and then he talks about the emotional
impact of that fellowship. Thou hast ravished my heart.
My sister, my spouse, thou hast ravished my heart. How fair is thy love! How much better is thy love than
wine! Her lips drop as honeycomb and
on it goes. You can see a very similar description
if you follow through Song of Solomon and look at what she
says and look at what he says. You will see she is described
again and again and she is described in great detail. And then there
is this emotional impact. How fair, verse 7, 6. How fair, how pleasant art thou,
O love for delights. It's a remarkable thing, isn't
it? There are two things that are evident in Song of Solomon.
And I think they are evident throughout all of the scriptures. And they are evident There are
two things aren't there, that the Lord Jesus is defined in
the scriptures with remarkable precision. In fact, the Old Testament
is a building and a building and a building of that picture.
It begins in the very first words of the Bible, in the beginning
God, and we have that great display of Him being Creator. We have
that great amazing marriage in the garden from which all other
marriages derive their real meaning. And then we have that great promise
in Genesis 3.15 that this son, the seed of this woman, will
crush the serpent's head and he's portrayed in that lamb that
was slain to clothe Adam and Eve from their shame. And as
we go through the rest of the Old Testament, the descriptions
of him become clearer and clearer and more detailed and more precise
and more amazing. And then when he finally does
come, Anna and Simeon hold him in the temple as a baby and they
say, now I have seen God's salvation. Thirty years later John the Baptist
says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world. But not only did they define
Him precisely, there was an emotional response. And it's what we expect,
isn't it? It's what is promised by God.
He takes away this heart of stone that I'm born with, the heart
of stone that every man except for the Lord Jesus is born with
in this world, a stone that is cold to the things of God, a
stone that is unmoving and unmovable, a stone that is dead. spiritually dead. It's a great
description of our hearts and He takes away that heart of stone
and there's a heart of flesh and He puts His Spirit inside
of people and He moves people. He moves them. He moves them
to respond in love to His love for them. And we have to question, don't
we? We have to keep questioning what's
going on in the lives of people who on those two accounts do not match up to what the scriptures
are saying. Firstly, do they define Him? Do they define Him with the precision
that the scriptures define Him? Do they define Him with that
accuracy? It's so easy, isn't it? And we've
all experienced it, that most of the people involved in religion
that we talk to, will agree with some fundamental things about
the Lord Jesus. If they have been taught well,
they'll acknowledge that He is a man, they'll acknowledge that
He is the Son of God, they'll acknowledge that He is the Son
of Man, they'll acknowledge a whole lot of the things that He does,
and they'll claim to love Him. And yet when you take them to
the Bible and you describe him as the scriptures describe him,
they find that there are aspects of his nature, aspects of his
character which are offensive to them. They find it deeply
offensive. when his sovereignty, when his
justice, when his particularity, when his purposefulness, when
his success is defined in the way the scriptures define it. And even more troubling is that
we find so sadly, so often that their emotional response to him,
is not in line with the sort of emotional response that His
Majesty and His beauty and His person are worthy of, nor the
promises of God about that blessed Holy Spirit that comes and there's
a new nature created in us. It's where our troubles begin. And people say they can't understand
us. The things that we delight in,
we delight to proclaim Him. We delight to proclaim Him as
a successful Saviour on a cross. We delight to proclaim the fact
that He and His Bride were married as one before the foundation
of the world. We delight in those things. And we find ourselves troubled
when we find people who find those things not only something
they cannot delight in, but something they are deeply offended by. And I don't like talking. about events
and involving other people much, but there are times when there
are things that are so indelibly stamped on our memories that
you are just left shocked, as it were. I remember a Bible study
that, I know Simon and Graham were there, maybe others too,
but there were certainly ten or a dozen of us, and we were
going through those discussions several years ago about the issue
of the Gospel, the issue of the importance and the singularity
of the Gospel, that you cannot be saved without the Gospel,
that salvation is dependent upon people hearing the real Lord
Jesus. And these people acknowledged
that the Gospel that they had been supporting and the Gospel
that was being proclaimed in the schools of this area was
a false Gospel. And around the table, one after
the other, they all said, it's false, it's a false Gospel. And then next week they came
back, almost the same group of men. Having seen in the Scriptures
how serious this was, and seeing in the Scriptures from God's
Word that it was untrue of the Sadhu, I turned around and said,
we are going to continue to support that. And then they had all sorts
of carnal reasons for it. I suppose my point is, that love,
love that God has placed in the hearts of His people is a love
that stirs us. It stirs us because there is
a truth that's undeniable and it's a foundational truth about
who He is, but also it stirs our hearts. And not only are
we hurt by lies about He who is our husband, about He who
has loved us so much to shed that precious blood, to suffer
that amazing wrath of God, we're not only concerned about that,
but we are hurt, in a sense emotionally hurt, when people say, As I say
over and over again, I remember saying it to an old, old man
nearly 90 at a Bible conference four or five years ago. I said,
almost everyone I meet in Christianity, almost everyone I meet tells
me, don't take it so seriously. It is not such a big deal. Don't take it so seriously. He
was shocked. I want, for your soul's sake,
but mostly for the glory of God, I want for us to look at our
Saviour in detail. I want us not only to look at
Him in detail, I want for us, as we read in Psalm 34, to magnify
the Lord together, to exalt His name. I want for it more like everyone
who stands and speaks to people on God's behalf. I want it to
be more. We want it to be more than some
intellectual exercise where people come to know a bunch of doctrines. I was caused to be deeply troubled
by that in India all those years ago by people who were well taught
and the Indians have the most extraordinary capacity for memory. And so you can teach them the
five points of Calvinism and you can teach them to memorize
maybe 15, 10 or 15 verses for each of the five points of Calvinism. And then they'll go away. and
they'll preach against every single one of them, because they've
learnt it in their minds, they've learnt it by rote. The beauty of Song of Solomon,
the beauty of Song of Solomon is that of all these books of
the Bible, it describes the Saviour in His intimate relational union
with His bride. It's love enacted. It's love that looks to him as
a person and it's love that impacts her heart. Let's read these verses again. You know the context. We've talked
about it several times. was slothful, and she was sinful,
and she was neglectful of him, and he in love came to her early
in chapter 5, and he stirred her heart, and then she went
searching and looking for him, and she was beaten by the watchman,
and she comes to the daughters of Jerusalem, and then that great
question is asked, What is thy beloved? More than another beloved? It's a great question. There
are many beloveds out there. Jesus promises there are many
Jesuses out there. There are many Gospels out there.
There are many Christs out there. There are many Gods out there.
I lived in India and there were 30-something million of them.
I don't know how they ever managed to count, but when you live there,
you don't doubt the numbers. They're everywhere. Everywhere. What is he? What is thy beloved
more than another beloved? I had a great illustration of
that this morning when I came in to get the things out of the
cupboard over there and I couldn't work out why the number lock
didn't work. And finally I adjusted my glasses properly and I realised
that what I thought was a 7, what I thought was a 2, was actually
a 7. And it's interesting, isn't it?
We actually live in a world where we like precision, don't we?
You get those four numbers right, Miss Jennifer, you can actually
unlock that number lock. You just get one little tiny
bit wrong and you cannot open the door at all. We all have
keys in our pockets to houses and to cars and things, and all
those keys are symbols of precision. And that's what Song of Soul
and that's what the scriptures and in a sense that's what church
is about. We want to define Him with precision. And if He's defined with precision
and the Holy Spirit takes that Lord Jesus and those beautiful
things that He is and those amazing things that He's done, and they
move our hearts. We'll be moved like the Shulmite. You see, here she is, looking
through the eyes of faith. She's bewildered by his absence.
She can't find him, she can't see him. She's beaten by the
watchmen of the city. She's there now dressed When
she came out of her house she was dressed as a bride with her
veil on. Here she is. The watchmen have
taken away her marriage garment and she's now like a prostitute
of the night. And she comes to these daughters,
and they ask this question. And she, through the eye of faith,
speaks so beautifully, doesn't she? She speaks of His preciousness
to her, and she speaks of His uniqueness to her, above all
beloveds. My Beloved is white and ruddy. My Beloved is divine. My Beloved is a man, a man's
man. My Beloved is the chiefest among
ten thousands. My Beloved is the standard bearer. Then she describes him in detail,
his head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy as
black as a raven, his eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers
and waters, washed with milk and fitly set. His cheeks are
as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers. His lips like lilies,
dropping sweet-smelling myrrh. His hands are as gold rings,
sacked with beryl. His belly is as bright ivory,
overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble,
set upon sockets of fine gold. His countenance is as Lebanon,
excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet. And then she has a summary. She
begins by saying, he's white and ruddy, he's the cheapest
among ten thousands. Then she says after these ten
beautiful descriptions of her beloved, he's altogether lovely,
altogether lovely. There is nothing in him and nothing
about him which is not lovely. This is my beloved. This is my friend." So the question,
she immediately goes through the eyes of faith. She doesn't
hesitate. She wants to talk about Him.
She's given an opportunity to talk about the Lord Jesus, her
beloved. This is my beloved. This is my
friend. You see it's more than just now
a description of a person, it's a person in relationship with
her. A person in relationship with
her even though he is absent, even though she is wounded, even
though she is exposed by the religion of the world as being
unmarried to him. This is my beloved, this is my
friend, our daughters of Jerusalem. I struggled as I was preparing
for this over the last month or so to sort of think, how do
you divide this up? And some commentators say, well
it's best to just look at it as a whole. And in the sense
in which that's so right, she begins with his head, she goes
down to his legs, and she describes all the parts of him. And of course it's a spiritual
view of the Lord Jesus. And twice, twice she speaks not
just of him in his person, but she speaks of him speaking to
her. Verse 13. His lips are like lilies,
dropping sweet-smelling myrrh. Verse 16. His mouth is most sweet. You see, she looks upon his person
and is delighted. She looks upon the things that
he says of her and she's even more delighted. So today, Lord willing, I'd like
us just to look at those verses, those descriptions in 11 and
12. His head. His head is as the
most fine gold. It's a great description, isn't
it? In summary, of course, it's a description of the sovereign
dominion of our Lord over all things. The sovereign dominion
over all things for the sake of His Church. It's so important, isn't it,
that we begin by understanding, we begin by delighting in the
fact that He is absolutely sovereign. She would have in her state,
she would have in her state at this time reason to question
the wisdom of His sovereignty. She might say, as the poet said,
where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where
is the soul-refreshing view of Jesus in His Word? What peaceful
hours I then enjoyed, how sweet their memory still, but now I
find an aching void the world can never fill. For those of
you who have walked with the Lord for any length of time,
that is something that you would say, I know how that feels. But she, she delightfully talks
about His sovereignty. Who is He, she's asked. He's
the divine man, He's the standard bearer. Who is He? He's the head. He's the head. He's the Lord.
He's the head over all things to the church, Ephesians 1.22. It speaks of His sovereignty. He's Lord both of the living
and of the dead. He does rule all things. He does rule all people. You have given Him Power over all flesh, says this
high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus to the Father in John 17. You have given Him power over
all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as thou
hast given Him. He is the Lord. You'll hear people
say, it's all very well for Jesus, to be Christ, isn't it? But you've
got to make Him Lord of your life. Brothers and sisters, He
was Lord of your life a long, long time ago, and mercifully
He's Lord of your life right now, mercifully and wonderfully. We delight to know and we delight
to acknowledge, even in desperate times, that He is sovereign and
He is good. And His sovereignty is a purposeful
sovereignty. He was given head over all things
to the Church. He is moving this universe. He is moving every little tiny
thing in all of this world. for the good of the Church, for
the glory of His name, because it's in the Church is the place. You can read on in Ephesians
1 and 3. It's in the Church that God the
Father has determined to get glory for His Son. Who is He? He's Almighty God. He's almighty God and He is my
husband. He is the man that God is pleased
with. He's the man who God is forever
pleased with. He is the potter. He makes all
things. This is His universe. He sits
on that throne in heaven right now. And He rules. He rules perfectly. He rules as my substitute. Isn't it remarkable? glory in the Song of Solomon
and the remarkable glory in the Gospel is that again and again
the things that she says of him are the things that he says of
her. Just read it again and again,
you'll see that he describes her and she describes him and
they use the same phrases. Thou art all fair. Where does
her fairness come from? Her fairness comes from him. She owed God a great, great debt. And He, in eternity, said, I'll
pay every last little penny of it. And as I've told you before,
there is one Greek word that I wanted my students in India
to know, and that was that word, it is finished. It's just one
Greek word, and I don't even know whether I pronounced it
properly, but it's tetelestai, and they didn't really know precisely
what it meant until they discovered a whole bunch of Greek commercial
documents in the 19th century, and there it is written across
the bottom of them. I owe Norm Day, sometime I'll
get a bill, but I owe Norm Day 30 or 40 or 150 dollars for some
bits and pieces. And when I give him the money,
not even right across the bottom of it, paid in full, what do
we owe God? We owe God a life of perfect
holiness, perfect righteousness, perfect purity in thought and
in word and in deed. He says, I'll pay it. Everything he does is done for
her. See his head is of gold, most
fine gold. This head, it's remarkable, isn't
it? They struggle almost in the Hebrew
to find a description of it. It really means he's gold's gold,
or you could put it, he's what gold says he's gold. Absolute,
perfectly pure gold, or the most fine gold, purified perfectly. I was talking to my plumber about
gold a couple of weeks ago, and he was saying, he's one of the
few people I've ever heard of that found a sovereign, and he
was digging down around Pirie or somewhere, and he was digging
a trench, and he dug up an 1861 sovereign. And I said, what was
it like, Peter? And he said it was like brand
new. And of course he was just stunned
and he, being an honest man, he actually gave it to the person
who owned the property. He said, oh no Peter, you can
have it, you found the gold sovereign. And then he tried to find out
how much the gold sovereign's worth. And unfortunately the
gold sovereign, an 1861 gold sovereign, is worth exactly what
the gold's worth in it. It's not worth any more. It's
not special because it's old. It's special because of the gold.
It is the most remarkable element, isn't it? You see those gold
domes on those churches or whatever you call them in Russia, in the
Middle Eastern places, and the Muslims do it on their mosques.
You can take one gram of gold, which is a thousandth of a kilogram,
and you can beat it out into a sheet a metre thick. square. Isn't that remarkable? You can
take a gram of gold and you can make a wire out of it 165 metres
long. It is the most remarkable element. It's just amazing. In fact, I've
got another illustration for kids. That weighs a kilo, it's
a litre and it weighs a kilogram. If that was gold, Miss Jennifer,
do you know how much that would weigh? almost 20 kilograms. Just one milliliter. It's just
amazing. Of course, throughout the scriptures,
it denotes things that are pure, perfectly pure. It denotes richness. It denotes preciousness. It denotes
uniqueness. This is gold's gold, it's the
most fine gold. It's just another beautiful way
of describing this king. So her beloved is a king. He's a white. He's white as God. He's a king and he has a crown
of gold. And his kingdom is pure. And his kingdom is a spiritual
kingdom. And it's why the people of this
world can't understand it. And it's why a lot of people,
sincere Christians, believe that the Lord Jesus really hasn't
established His kingdom because He hasn't come back, and He hasn't
reigned in Jerusalem from the temple, and He hasn't reigned
in such a way that we can all see Him. His kingdom is a spiritual
kingdom. He said He defeated Satan on
the cross. He says He reigns over all things,
and God's people see it through a veil darkly. We catch glimpses
of it. And as we read in Psalm 126,
so often when we see it, when we see God's hand upon things,
we are as people who dreamed, and yet the dream is real and
true. Gold, gold, rich gold. Endurable, precious. In Revelation
14 we have the Lord Jesus, that victorious King riding out triumphant. I looked and behold a white cloud
and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man having on
his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle. And he goes out as a triumphant
king with a head of gold to harvest this world. Remarkable pictures
of the greatness, the awesomeness of God. He is the brightness
of his father's glory. Who is he? Who is he to you? The scriptures say, the express
image of His person, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells
in a body. All of this majesty, all of that
which I have failed to describe as I ought, all of that, and in the remarkable way that
He is infinite, All of that is the power over which He rules
the universe and rules the circumstances of your life. All of that for
every individual member of his bride. Infinitely, sweetly, he
draws out her confession. His head is of most fine gold. Then she talks about his hair. His locks are bushy, as black
as a raven. There are two ways the commentators
look at this reference to his hair. It's curled and it's fitly
and beautifully put together. It may refer to his thoughts,
the purposes of God, whose head is Christ, his thoughts of love
and grace and mercy. They cannot, according to the
scriptures, be reckoned up in order to him. They are more than
can be numbered, and the sum of them is so great. They're
bushy and black. and may at times seem obscure
to us, out of our reach and beyond our comprehension. His thoughts
are higher than our thoughts and we in this state can't find
them out. But as they are revealed, as
they are opened up to us, His thoughts are beautiful and delightful. But also it might be, and most
of the commentators say, that it's a reference to His bride,
that which is joined to His head, that which is numbered, that
which is held aloft by Him in the eternal covenant of grace.
Turn in your scriptures to Isaiah chapter 46. And we'll have just
one description that suits me well at my time of life. He talks
about the religion of the world. They bow their idols, bow the
beasts that carry them, and they are a burden. They stoop and
they bow down together, and they could not deliver the burden,
but they've gone into captivity. And then he says in verse 3,
Harken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house
of Israel, which are born by me from the belly, and which
are carried from the womb. Even to your old age, I am He. Even to your hair, even to your
grey hairs, will I carry you. I have made, I will bear, even
I will carry and deliver you. God carries His bride in His
sovereignty above the things of this world. It's a beautiful
word of grace, isn't it? To the weak and the weary, the
dependent and the needy, so often not sure of which step to take,
unsure of their ways, and deeply made aware of our
weakness. our weakness to do the things
we'd like to do, the weakness to think the things that we'd
like to think. His locks refers possibly also
to that great company of the bride. They are upon the head,
they get their life and their support, from Him, the elect
are as the branches in the vine. And wonderfully if you turn a
little bit further in Isaiah, we are described as the crown
of His glory. You see in chapter 61 we have
those remarkable words that the Lord Jesus quoted in His first
sermon. The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because the Lord has appointed me to preach good tidings unto
the meek. He has sent me to bind up the
broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable
year of the Lord. It's a proclamation of who He
is. and the wonderful efficacy with
which he carries out his purposes. to comfort all who mourn, to
appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty
for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness, that all of this purpose, all
of this working of His people, that they might be called trees
of righteousness. the planting of the Lord, that
he might be glorified. he's going to get great glory
from his plenty. But over in chapter 62 he says,
for Zion's sake, for this Zion, this church, this wholly gathered
community, for Zion's sake will I not hold my peace and for Jerusalem's
sake will I not rest until righteousness therefore go forth as brightness
and salvation thereof as a lamp that burns. and the Gentiles,
us, unless you are Jewish, and the Gentiles shall see your righteousness,
and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a
new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. This is
God's description of her, and you shall also be a crown of
glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand
of your God. You shall no more be termed forsaken,
neither shall thy land any more be termed desolate, but you shall
be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah, Hephzibah, my delight
is in her, and Beulah married. For the Lord delighteth in you,
and your land shall be married. For as the young man marrieth
a virgin, so shall thy sons marry you. And as the bridegroom rejoices
over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." Right
now, right now, brothers and sisters, all of his bride, is
that crown of glory. All the heads of our heads are
numbered. He knows and He numbers and He
watches over each and every one of His own. He upholds them. He carries them as the crown
of His glory. He nourishes them. They get their
life from Him. His locks are bushy, it says,
perfectly formed. They are beautifully curled,
it means. They are united as one. Adie then to the Lord of glory. There is about God's people and
there is about God's church a beautiful ordering from the Lord. as Paul
says to the Colossians, for though I am absent in the flesh, yet
I am with you in spirit, enjoying and beholding your order and
the steadfastness of your faith. His locks are bushy, their black
as a raven, And of course we know in other parts of the scriptures
that in Revelation 1 when John meets him his hair was white
as wool and the whiteness as we saw in verse 10. refers to
purity, refers to deity, refers to his eternality, the ancient
of days, who exists from everlasting to everlasting. It's not a contradiction
to say that his hair is as black as a raven. He's everlastingly
youthful. If you were to see the Lord Jesus
in glory right now, if you had a sight of him as the angels
and the redeemed do, he would be gloriously vigorous in his
madness, wouldn't he? It's so important, isn't it,
that we ponder that there is a man like us, a man who is our
representative, a man who is our righteousness, a man whose
body we will have in resurrection glory. We will have a real body,
a physical body, and it will be eternally youthful. Eternal
Sovereign Saviour. He bears up His crown, His diadem. And He says in Malachi 3, 17
of us, we are the jewels in His crown. He never leaves us. He never forsakes us. We always have all of spiritual
life in Him. We were blessed in this swamp
before the foundation of the world. Before we fell in Adam,
we were redeemed and righteous before God in His sight, in His
dear Son. We were preserved. We were chosen. We are everlastingly secure. We are everlastingly and infinitely
loved. The precious locks. on a precious
head, beautiful as His beauty is. He sees us and He sees what
gives Him delight. And that's what the next verse
goes on to say, doesn't it? His eyes. His eyes are the eyes
of doves. He sees with perfect knowledge. He sees all of us all the time. He saw all of our sins. The knowledge of God according
to Psalm 147 is infinite. He saw all of our sins, all of
our deeds, all of our life. He saw it as one whole before
Him, before the foundation of the world. And He looked on us
then, as He looks on His bride, He says, Thou art all fair, my
love, there is no spot in you. You see, we were redeemed and
perfect and righteous in the Lord Jesus before the foundation
of the world. He says that He's acquainted
with all of our ways. He knows the depths of my weakness. He knows the personal corruption
that festers inside of me. He knew it from eternity. It's
beautiful, isn't it, that picture in John 13 where it says He loved
His own. Having loved His own who are
in the world, He loved them to the end. He loved them. What was going to happen to them
that night? Every last one of them was going to betray him.
Those that boasted most about their spiritual attainments fell
the furthest, and he loved them. He knew that Thomas was going
to spend a whole week denying what dozens of people had said,
denying what his best friends had said, denying what his saviour
had promised, denying what the scriptures had promised. And
he loved him. He loved him and he washed his
feet. I don't know about you, brothers
and sisters, I want to be loved like that. I need to be loved
like that. I need again and again, I need
Him to come and show me that His washing of those feet was
just an indication of that washing of them before the foundation
of the world and that remarkable washing of all their sins away
before all the world as He died on that cross that next day.
His eyes have perfect knowledge. His eyes in Revelation 1.14 are
as a flame of fire. You see, he is impassioned with
love for his bride. He will not see her spoken ill
of. He will defend her. As I've said
so often throughout the Gospels, you never find the Bride of Christ
ever needing to defend herself. He steps in to the breach on
every single occasion and He is the flame of fire. He has
seen, He says, in Exodus when they're in distress and in bondage,
I've seen and I have heard Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them
that fear Him, and that hope for His mercy. The eyes of the
Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears open to their cry."
See, they're the eyes of omniscience that see everything. They're
the eyes of darkness. He looks upon His bride with
His all-seeing eye, and it's the eye of peaceableness, the
eyes of affection, the eyes of gentleness and softness. We are very prone, aren't we,
in this body of flesh and in this world ruled by Satan, We
are so prone again and again to think that when we fall and
stumble that His eyes and I are a harsh and severe judge upon
His people. It's not true according to this
word, brothers and sisters. He looks upon his little ones
with the eyes of darts, affection and peace of mind. The eyes of
darts by the rivers of waters. It's a beautiful thing in the
scriptures, isn't it? how often we see His coming in
saving grace, His coming in sovereign providence as rivers that refresh
a desert place. Turn again to Isaiah chapter
43. This is the sovereign creator
that she spoke about in the previous verse, but now Thus says the
Lord that created you, O Jacob, and He that formed you, O Israel,
fear not, for I have redeemed you. He never once in all of
the scripture says that he's going to create a possibility,
that he's going to redeem people if they do something. Isn't it
a great word for sinners, brothers and sisters? Fear not, for I
have redeemed you, and I have called you by thy name. He names every one of them. If
He can name all the stars that are in the heavens and we can't
even grasp the thought of trying to count them all, He has them
all numbered, He has them all named. He names His people and
He does it with a purpose. You are mine, He says. And then
He has a promise to us. A real promise, isn't it? He
says, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they
shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire,
you shall not be burned. neither shall the flame kindle
upon you." You see, He promises here, doesn't He, that we'll
actually walk through the waters, through the rivers. He promises
that we'll walk through the fire. He's not saying the fire isn't
there. Isn't it wonderful to think that
the Lord might have laid those verses on the hearts of Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego. When you walk through the fire
You shall not be burned. The only thing that was burnt
when they were in the fire was the cords that bound them. They
didn't even smell of the flames. But more importantly, more importantly,
He named them and they were His. And there was a fourth person
in that furnace. There was a fourth person in
that furnace, brothers and sisters. There's another person right
here, right beside you, carrying you, cradling you in His arms,
holding you close to His heart since verse 4. since you were precious in my
sight. There has been honorable, and
I have loved you. I have loved you. Verse five,
fear not, for I am with you. I will bring thy seed from the
east and gather you from the west, and I will say to the north,
give up, and to the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from
afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth." You can read
on. It's the most delightful picture,
the most delightful picture of God's sovereignty over all things
for the good of his people. And before I close, I'd just
like you to turn with me for a couple of... there are some
beautiful pictures in the scriptures of these rivers of water being like the overflowing grace of
God. The rivers in those desert lands
were life. In chapter 37 of Ezekiel, Ezekiel
is given this amazing description. Is it 37? Let me find it. Can
you tell me where it is, where he walks out into the water?
Ah, 47 I think it is. Chapter 47. I'll just read the first six
or eight verses. It's just beautiful, isn't it? I think it's just a
picture of the depth and the boundlessness of grace. Afterward he brought me again
under the door of the house and behold water is issued from under
the threshold of the house eastward and the forefront of the house
that stood towards the east and water came down from under the
right side of the house and the south side of the altar. that
water that flows from that sacrifice, that flows from that temple,
that flows from the Lord Jesus. And he brought me out and he
led me, and the waters, at the end of verse 2, ran out on the
right side, and a man had a line in his hand, went forth eastward,
and he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the
waters, and the waters were to the ankles. Again he measured
a thousand and brought me through the waters, and the waters were
to the knees. Again he measured a thousand
and brought me through, and the waters were to the loins. After
he measured a thousand, and it was a river, But I could not
pass over, for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river
that could not be passed over. And when he returned, he said
unto me, Son of man, have you seen this verse 6? Then he brought
me and caused me to return to the brink of the river. Now when
I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many
trees on one side and on the other. And I know, like me, many
of you are thinking of Revelation 22. And it's worth reading, isn't
it? These eyes that he looks upon
us are the eyes of doves by the rivers of water and they're washed
with milk. His eyes look upon her and He
sees her as pure as He is pure. He sees her as white in His holiness,
in His glory. He who has purer eyes than to
look on sin and to behold evil and He can't look on iniquity.
He looks, His eyes by the rivers and waters. He looks upon His
bride. And He showed me the river, the
pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal proceeding out
of the throne of God and of the Lamb, and in the midst of the
street of it, and on either side of the river there was the tree
of life." It doesn't matter which side of the river you're on,
you have access to eternal life. Don't trouble yourself. 12 manna
of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of
the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall
be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall
be, and His servants shall serve Him. And they shall see His face,
and His name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be
no night there, and they need no candle, neither light of the
sun, for the Lord God gives them light and they shall reign forever."
And He said unto me, these sayings are faithful and true. Faithful and true. And the Lord
God and the holy prophets sent His angels to show unto His servants
the things which must shortly be done. when John met that lady
at the well in John chapter 4. He talked about that time, didn't
he, that rivers of water. Whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I
give him shall be in him. a well of living water springing
up unto eternal life." She asked for that water and she was given
that water. The water is the Gospel, the
Word of God. You see, it's all fitly set,
fitly set. These eyes are perfectly set
upon His head, upon His bride. They never waver. They never
change. They always see perfectly. What wonderful eyes are upon
us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the descriptions
you put on the lips of your bride, of your dear and precious son.
And Heavenly Father, we pray that you would work in us again
and again a reviving faith and a fresh look at the glories of
your dear Son. We pray, Heavenly Father, that
like the Shulamite, when we are wounded, when we are crushed,
by our own sin, by our own lukewarmness, our own slothfulness, our own
failings, Heavenly Father, we will be led to a place where
we are caused yet again to gaze upon Him who rules all things,
to gaze upon Him who loves His Bride with a perfect and everlasting
and unchanging love. A love, Heavenly Father, that
is an effectual love that draws us again and again back to Him,
to see Him who He is, and to cause us to see ourselves, not
in our flesh, but in His flesh, to see ourselves as we really
are. We have died. We no longer live,
but Christ lives in us. The life we live in the body
we live by the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and
gave himself for me.