Now this book, as we have pointed
out, is a dramatic poem or poetic drama. And its primary meaning
and application, its proper use, is to show us the relationship
that exists between the Lord Jesus Christ and his church. And this picture is given to
us with two main characters. Solomon, the Hebrews would have pronounced
that, I believe it's something like Sholomon or Sholomane, I
can't remember, but very much like that. It comes from the
Hebrew greeting Shalom, which means peace. Now, the woman in
the story is identified as the Shulamite, as though she comes
from a place called Shulam, but no such place can be found. And for that reason, some have
thought, well, maybe there's just been a clerical error in
copying, and it's supposed to be Shunam, so she's a Shunamite. But there's a much easier explanation. The pronunciation of her name
is Shulamith, And it is basically a feminine version of the name
Solomon. And so both the male lead and
the female lead share the same name. And the reason for this
is that Solomon represents the one who is the prince of peace. And then Shulamith represents
the church of the Lord Jesus, of whom it is written concerning,
you know, the fact that she is a spiritual body and that the
Spirit of God is in her, and the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace. And Paul says, the Lord has called
us to peace. Now, within churches, there's
always differences of opinion. on things that do not pertain
to the gospel of Christ. And there could be some difference
of opinion on some of the, what we might call the minor doctrines
of scriptures. There's differences among people,
true, honest believers, over matters of prophecy and what
things will come to pass between now and when the Lord returns. One reason there's differences
is because God has not made it clear. The Lord Jesus Christ
said, it's not for you to know the times and the seasons which
God has set by his own authority. Our business is to preach the
gospel till he comes back. But people think it's particularly
important to know these things, some people do, and they search
them out, and they can take some pretty powerful stands, but there
should be peace even when believers disagree over things like that. But the main thing that believers
may disagree about is just the normal matters of life. We have
different personalities, we have different value systems, and
I'm not talking about what is essentially good or bad, just
the way we live our lives, what we pursue in this life, so far
as natural things are concerned. And the church of the Lord Jesus
is called upon to be at peace despite those differences. That's why Paul says God has
called us to peace. So there should not be squabbling
among the people of God. And when there is, one thing
can be certain. It did not come from the Holy
Spirit. He did not lead us into squabbling. It is entirely a
fleshly matter that part of us that remains that we were born
with and has not been changed. But in all truly spiritual things,
and this is a very important thing to note, in spiritual things,
because every person within the church of the Lord Jesus has
been made spiritual, spiritually alive. Everything spiritual,
they agree on. The Lord Jesus Christ said, that
which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of
the spirit is spirit, the flesh profits nothing. My word is spirit. Now, when people do not agree
on the word of Christ, one or the other is lost, or
they're both lost. But if you have a differing opinion
regarding who Christ is, and what he did, and why he did it,
and what the consequences of that are to people in this world,
when there's disagreement on that, that's disagreement on
the essential truth of the gospel. And there is no disagreement
among the people of God on that matter. The Lord said, you will
know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So this woman
is called Shulamith. Now, it's not likely that either
one of them represents a real historical character. The Solomon
in this is a reference to King Solomon, but it's an idealized
version of him. And Shulamith, we cannot even
be certain that they're It represents any one of his 700 wives, you
know. It's probably his ideal version
of a wife. But God worked in Solomon, though
Solomon, just like you and me, was a man born dead in trespasses
and sins, but God made him alive. God put his spirit on him so
that he could be a good king. Even so, he brought idolatry
into Israel. But God had made a promise regarding
Solomon, my love will never depart from him. And it's a good thing
for Solomon that the Lord made that statement because Solomon
gave him a lot of reasons to displace his love. that when
God speaks of loving someone, he's not speaking of an emotional
state of mind like you and I might. What he's talking about there
is how he treats them. It is written, Jacob have I loved,
Esau have I hated. But that wasn't written when
those two boys were alive. That was written way after and
was talking not only about the two people, Jacob and Esau, but
the descendants of those people, the nation that sprang from Jacob
and the nation that sprang from Esau. And if you look how God
treated Jacob's descendants as opposed to how he treated Esau's
descendants, loving actions towards the descendants of Jacob, hateful,
destructive actions. He gave the descendants of Jacob
the land of promise. He sent the descendants of Esau
to the east, out in the sand. So God's love never departs from
his people. He always does them good. Now, we got through verses eight and nine last week, and
here Solomon is once again expressing his delight in his bride. Now this is the part of this
book that amazes me. When Solomon talks about Shulamith.
Now, if we'd seen Solomon and if there was really a woman with
the name Shulamith, who he was referring to, a historical person,
and we saw that we might understand why Solomon would speak of her
in such glowing terms. But when we bring this into the
gospel context, and I like something that I heard when I was talking
to Tanner Van Beek, and he was talking about an experience he
had going and preaching to a church in New Jersey. He said, with
regard to the Old Testament, we've got to put our Jesus goggles
on. And that's true, the Pharisees
didn't have any such goggles, and when they read the Old Testament,
all they saw was rules and regulations. Paul said the law, and by the
law he meant the entirety of the Old Testament. The law is
lawful if a man uses it lawfully. What is the lawful use of the
law? To reveal Christ. That's what it's for. It was
not given to us primarily as a guide on how to live, it was
given to us to reveal Him who is the life, who gives life to
whom He pleases. But we look here and when we
see that our Lord here is speaking to His church, people like you
and me, He speaks of us in terms of beauty, of being utterly smitten. He says in verse 9, with one
glance of your eyes, you have stolen my heart. Now, I don't know your all's
experience when you met the one you eventually married. I don't
know how quickly you fell in love with me. It was pretty quick. And the eyes have a lot to do
with it. But we do see in this how, now we know that our Lord
Jesus is the eternal word made flesh. But we can't understand things
of eternity. That's why God came in the flesh,
locked, as a hymn from my childhood said, locked in time and space. Why? So we could relate to him. Peter said, through him do you
believe in Christ Jesus. And, excuse me, through him do
you believe in God. Through Christ you believe in
God. All our dealings with God are through Christ, and why is
that? Because we can't have any dealings with a being that exists
only outside the framework of time and space. We wouldn't know
how. Any more than, I've used this illustration, any more than
Romeo can have dealings with Shakespeare. So God came into time and space,
took upon himself a physical body, complete with all the restrictions
that go with that. And it's through him that we
are able to relate to God. And here is something remarkable
to note. When we look to God, when we
call upon the name of the Lord, what are we doing? We are looking
to Christ. In Isaiah, God says, look unto
me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved, for I am God,
and there is no other. Who is it that said that? That's
our Lord Jesus. He is God. And he says, look
unto me. Now, people will look to religion. People will become very involved
and very dedicated and committed to their religion, like Saul
of Tarsus was. But that is not the same thing
as looking unto the Lord. But here's the wonder and the
marvel. With countless sins against us, chargeable to us
with one look, we captivate his heart. Now, it's not as though
he didn't love us. Again, we understand all of that
ahead of time. But this is being played out
on the stage of the love between a husband and a wife. And he's
talking about when they first met. I don't know how it was
that Solomon and Shulamith met each other, maybe it was some
royal function, and she was there with her father because maybe
he was a royal official, who knows? But Solomon's going about
greeting the people that are there, and he looks across this
room, and this woman's looking at him. And with one glance of her eye,
she took his heart. That means if we're to give this
historical significance, 699 other women were set aside. She stole his heart. And I have no way of getting
my mind wrapped around the fact that one looked to Christ and
we have stolen His heart. And he goes on to say, verse
10, how delightful is your love, my sister, my bride. How much
more pleasing is your love than wine and the fragrance of your
perfume than any spice. Your lips drop sweetness as the
honeycomb, my bride. Milk and honey are under your
tongue. The fragrance of your garments
is like that of Lebanon." Now, this fragrance that he speaks
of, the Bible speaks a lot about fragrance. He says the scriptures speak
much of using incense in the temple. But this fragrance that's
spoken of, there are two things I see in the scriptures this
could refer to. First of all, the fragrance of Christ that
the church of the Lord Jesus spreads wherever they go. Look
at 2 Corinthians chapter 2. Second Corinthians chapter two,
verse 14. But thanks be to God who always
leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads
everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of
Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one, we are the smell
of death. To the other, the fragrance of
life. And who is equal to such a task?
It means what task? Well, the task of preaching the
gospel and it being life to some and death to others. Well, there's
no one equal to that. I cannot make the gospel effective
for you either way. You do realize this, don't you?
Whenever the gospel is spoken, whenever it's preached in truth,
people are either directed to life or directed to death. The gospel plainly declared always
has an effect. That's why it's so important
that when we go and sit down and listen, we need to listen
with this in mind, that whatever God has said, we will believe
and we will follow. Doesn't mean that if we hear
something that we haven't heard before, that we don't take some
time, search it out in the scriptures, as they did to Paul. But the point is to listen to
faithful preaching of God's word and then ignore it, that hardens
the heart. Now, the heart can never be hardened
beyond the point that God would be able to crack it. God, I mean,
nobody could have a harder heart than Saul of Tarsus did. And he was allowed to go his
way, and Paul said, put it this way, until it pleased God to
reveal his son in me. When it was time, God just took
him, humbled him. But know this, we
must always come to the preaching of God's word with an open heart.
But he says, who is equal to such a task? None of us. But here's the point. The church
is an aroma. Now, in our language, we have
words associated with things that smell good and other words
for things that smell bad. For instance, if we say an odor,
we never talk about the odor of sweet perfume. We call that
a fragrance. And we never talk about the fragrance
of rotting carcasses. We talk about the odor. But I
suppose in Greek they just had one word and it meant a smell
of some sort and you had to identify. So it was considered a sweet
smelling. which takes you back to temple
worship when they had the sweet-smelling savors, the sweet-smelling aromas
that were in the incense that was used. But the church, whenever
the church goes out preaching the gospel, whether they're gathered
like this, whether they are involved in just talking to their neighbors
about the Lord Jesus Christ, whenever, if they have been called
to missions work or going other places and telling people, the
church goes out with this wonderful fragrance of Christ, and it is
wonderful to God, even to Christ. You know, the Lord wrote seven
letters to churches in Asia Minor in the book of Revelation. And
the church of Laodicea, this is often used in evangelism,
but this scripture is not talking about God's approach to those
who do not profess faith. He says, behold, I stand at the
door and knock, if any man open. I will come in and suck with
him. He was knocking on the door of a church. And imagine that
awful situation. Here's a church and Christ is
outside. And as he approached that church,
so to speak, you know, like him approaching the door of a house,
what a horrible smell must have been coming from that place.
Why? There was no sweet aroma of Christ
there. They were full of the world.
They were in the world, and the world was in them. They were
full of self-righteousness. They said, we are rich and have
need of nothing. And so this is one of the Lord's
churches, and it shows you to what a low estate one of the
Lord's churches can go. But he says to them, look, I'm
out here on the outside. You all have gone off to something
else. And it doesn't smell good to
me. I'm knocking. If any man opens, I'll come in.
And if he comes in, it'll certainly sweeten the place. But in general,
this is true of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. She exudes
the sweet smelling savor of Christ unto God. Now, not everybody
in the world thinks it's a sweet-smelling savor, but all believers do. I can say this, and I've listened
to thousands of sermons and preached, well, 35 years, roughly, yeah. I've probably preached 2,500,
3,000 times, something like that, just here. There is nothing so sweet as
the message of Christ and Him crucified. Nothing that is such
a blessing to the heart. So much so that if we come and
don't hear it, we feel as well, may as well not have come. Or if we come and we know it
was preached, but we don't feel moved by it, it's very troubling
to us. Oh, what a sweet thing is the
message of Christ. You'll notice here, he says in
the middle of verse 11, milk and honey are under your tongue.
Of course, by using that imagery, he must be referring to essentially
the most passionate kind of kiss that you might imagine between
a husband and wife. And yet what he's using here
is imagery from God's promise to his people when he said, I'm
going to send you to a land flowing with milk and honey. And what
did that milk and honey represent? The blessings of God. Paul says,
we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places
in Christ. That's divine milk and honey.
And it's under the tongue, so to speak. And it's when Christ
and his bride are engaged in times of intimacy, They share
this between them. He finds it in them. This is what we talk about. This
is what we hope in and hope for. This is the promise we rely on.
Spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. And then it being under
the tongue, of course, right there, he's already mentioned
the lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb. And now the tongue,
what are those? These are the organs of speech.
This is the glorious message of the church when she goes throughout the
world. Then he says, the fragrance of your garments is like that
of Lebanon. Now, the only thing I can get out of this is Lebanon was known for its forests, particularly
cedar. And the temple was full of that
cedar from Lebanon. And so this could be a reference
to that. After all, it was Solomon who built the temple. He knew
about all the cedar that was in there. And so the garments
of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ are fragranced with the
wood, the primary wood of that temple, making up beams, paneling. Everywhere is this cedar. Then
he says, verse 12, you are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride. You are a spring enclosed, a
sealed fountain. Now all that this means, or what
I believe that it means, is he's saying, first of all, you are
a garden. Now, Bonnie and I, we like to
watch these shows about fixing up houses and selling
real estate, you know. It's just kind of interesting.
And we discovered that the British people call your lawn a garden. Because for a while, you know,
it said, you know, we were watching a series from England, you know,
and I said, oh, that's got a nice big garden. And you'd look out
and all you saw was grass. But the concept of a garden is
not what you would consider naturally growing plants. In the creation,
it said that when God made man, he says, before any shrub of
the field had come up. Now, on the fourth day, he commanded
the earth to bring forth. I think it was the fourth day.
He commanded the earth. Where's third day? Commanded
the earth to bring forth vegetation. That takes time. On the sixth
day, he creates man. Man needs vegetation right now.
So what does it say? He planted a garden. He created a collection of all
the necessary plants that Adam would need, and need immediately. But here's the thing, it was
planted, it was purposed. It didn't just show up. And you
know, God's people, they are like a garden, a garden planted
by the Lord. They don't just spring up. They're
not natural. And then it says a garden locked
up. What's that a reference to? That is a reference to her complete
devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. She's locked up. The only one
that can get in that garden is Jesus Christ. It's a garden locked
up because she in her own heart is committed to him. And it is
a garden locked up because the Lord will protect his garden
from intrusion by anyone else. All right, we'll pick up there
next week.