Now, I've entitled this lesson, Christ's
Pursuit of His People. Beginning in verse 8, we'll just
read through verse 13. And this, it begins, well, actually
all of this is the woman speaking, but a lot of it is her quoting.
the man. But she begins, listen, my lover. Look, here he comes leaping across
the mountains, bounding over the hills. My lover is like a
gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind
our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the
lattice. My lover spoke and said to me,
arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See, the winter is past. The rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth.
The season of singing has come. The cooing of doves is heard
in our land. The fig tree forms its early
fruit. blossoming vines spread their
fragrance. Arise, come my darling, my beautiful
one, come with me." Now these verses give us a picture of the
intensity with which the Lord Jesus pursues his people. Now, the religion, the form of Christianity
in which I was raised, would have us think that Jesus Christ
came and did what he did and then went back to heaven, and
then he sent preachers out, and he hopes that someone will believe
what the preacher has to say. And as they have, I mean, using
their own words, let Jesus into their heart, or let him be Lord,
this sort of thing. But the fact is, our Lord did
not come for everyone. He said to the Pharisees, He says, you don't
believe me because you are not my sheep. And notice he did not
say to them, you're not my sheep because you don't believe me.
He says, you don't believe me because you're not mine. There
was a people chosen by God, chosen in Christ before the foundation
of the world. And the Lord Jesus was sent to
get them. He said in the high priestly
prayer in John chapter 17, he says that all that you have given
me, I have lost none. And then he said this, they were
yours, you gave them to me. And so our Lord Jesus in his
work of salvation was not going out on a venture He was going
out with absolute determination to seek, find, and save every
one of his sheep, every one of his people. Now, notice the imagery
that the Shulamite uses. She says in verse eight, listen.
My lover, that is, listen, that's my lover. Look, here he comes
leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. My lover
is like a gazelle or a young stag. Now, with a lot of words
in the Old Testament describing animals, particular jewels, particular
trees and stuff like that, they're doing their best to identify
exactly which animals are being referenced. The fact is, don't
always know. Not only that, they didn't always put animals in the same groups
that we would nowadays. We have this scientific classification,
and we say this is of this family, of this species, and all that. They didn't have all of that. Consequently, the words by which
we describe animals will not necessarily fit into the categories
that they used. But here's what we do know and
can tell from what's being spoken of here. Speaking of, shall we
say, deer-like animals. Whatever classification you would
find deer in, these would fit in there. And they're obviously
male because she mentions a young stag. And what she is envisioning
is not just when any of these male deer-like animals are just
bounding around for no reasons. It's mating season. That's what
she's speaking of. And if you know anything about
the mating habits, of wild animals, there's a couple of things that
stand out. During mating season, the drive
to find a mate is absolutely irresistible in the male of the
species. They will do anything. Some of
them die in battle with other males. There is no barrier that they will not
try to overcome if they believe that there's a female on the
other side. And so that's how she's describing,
the Shulamite is describing Solomon. But of course, whereas a deer
or something like that, they pretty well wouldn't care That
is, a stag would not care just which particular does on the
other side. They're making difference to him. With the Lord Jesus,
he's only coming for one, his church. He already knows them that are
his, and he comes for them, but with the same intensity of purpose
and the same irresistibleness of power He seeks them, and He
finds them, and He will not fail to make them His own. And so, this makes what we do here as
worshipers of the Lord Jesus, as those who testify to His gospel,
The more we're involved in that work of testifying to his gospel,
the more this aspect of our Lord's work of salvation means to us
because what it says is we cannot fail. We cannot fail because he cannot
fail. And even if we fail to be diligent
or faithful or whatever, our failure will not result in his
failure. I know I've told you this story
before, but it's just one that stands out from my college days. And a fellow that was an evangelist
at the time later became president of the college that I attended.
He was preaching during chapel. And being a traveling evangelist,
he was trying to get us all to go out and witness and quote,
get people saved. And he ended his message with
this illustration. He said that when the Lord Jesus
Christ went back to heaven, ascended on high, that the angels all
gathered around him and said, are you ready for us to go down
and preach the gospel? He said, no, no. And they said,
well, why not? He said, well, I chose 12. One of them betrayed me, leaving
11. And I've sent them out to preach. And the angel said, well, what's
your plan if they fail? And I'm not lying to you. This
man said, and Jesus hung his head and said, I have no other
plan. That does not match this picture. Not mountains, not hills, not
bushes, nothing is going to stop this deer-like animal and nothing
is going to stop our Lord Jesus Christ from laying hold of every
one of his people. Brother Spurgeon once said, words
to the effect, I would have no hope whatsoever of any fruit
to my ministry if I believed that it depended upon the free
will of man to respond to my preaching. The only reason I
preach is because I know that God has a people. that he will
save them through the preaching of the gospel. Paul, outside
the city of Corinth, full of fear and trembling, he
says, but God says to him, Paul, don't you be afraid to go into
that city, for I have much people there. Wait a minute, nobody
preached the gospel to him. How could they be his people?
Nobody preached the gospel to him, nobody given an invitation,
nobody raised their hand, nobody prayed the sinner's prayer because
they were his people before he made the world. That's why. And so when we go out to preach,
we're not going out trying to make God's people and We're really not even essentially
the ones who go out and find them. The Lord said, I have come
to seek and save. He's the one who does the seeking
and all that. But the method he uses is the preaching of the
gospel. And that's the only method he
uses. That's why we keep it so simple here. That's why we don't
try to entice people into our worship by anything fleshly,
anything that would appeal to their flesh, because the gospel
does not appeal to the flesh. The gospel is offensive to the
flesh. So there's no use even trying to use anything appealing
to the flesh in order to get people to, quote, make a decision
for Jesus. If the gospel will not convince
them, if the gospel is not powerful, if the simple preaching
of it is not powerful enough to change them, they're not going
to be changed. Now, there's no essential power
to the gospel in my preaching of it, but God says to all whom
he sends, preach the gospel And he adds his power to it. For Paul says that the gospel
is the power of God and salvation. He adds his power to it by making
it effective in the hearts of those whom he has chosen and
for whom Christ died. And the Spirit is sent to give
them life, give them the new birth. And once they've been
born again, that is made spiritually alive, they can hear that gospel. Nobody else can. One of the things that is kind
of gratifying, the stories you hear about when people give their
account of God's saving grace for them, many have been, you know, quote,
Christians all their life. That is, they were born into
a supposedly Christian family, went maybe to a conservative
church, and they memorized, you know, went to Sunday school,
memorized lots of verses, And even maybe through their adulthood
were faithful members of the church for quite a while and
then all at once, oh, that's what it means. The light comes
on. And that is the powerful working
of the Holy Spirit called the Spirit of Christ coming after
his people. And there's nothing that can
stop it. and there's nothing that can force it. Just like
the wind, the spirit goes where it will. You can't tell where
it's coming from. You don't know where it's going. The only thing
you can see is where it's been. Because wherever the spirit goes,
the gospel is preached and people believe it. Now, she goes on to say, Last half
of verse nine, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through
the windows, peering through the lattice. Now, she uses two words there, gazing
and peering. And they're good translations. I mean, there's nothing wrong
with the translation. But I always like to go back. when I look
at the original languages, find out what is the essential meaning
of a word that is to be found in all the different ways that
it might be used. And this second one in particular,
I think, gives us the sense of what is meant by this, this word
that ours translated peering. Its essential meaning is to flourish,
to shine, gleam, blossom, or sparkle, like the eyes sparkle. And so I think here, you know,
it's showing a picture of our Lord. Well, here she's describing
Solomon looking through the windows of the latticework. And I don't
believe that at this time glass, like we think of in terms of
windows, had been invented. Windows were essentially latticework. And maybe they would put a cloth
over it, you know, like a screen to keep bugs out or something.
And then if they had to keep wind out, they had shutters and
things like that. So by windows and latticework,
she's probably speaking of the same thing. But when he peers
in, when he looks in, when he's coming after one who is his, His glory, his sparkling, his
flourishing are what we perceive. And, you know, I tried to figure
out, you know, what's this business about behind the wall? Because
the way she's describing things, she's the one on the inside and
she's looking out. And she says, look, here, I love
her. He's like a gazelle. He's like a stag, or whatever,
like this, you know, bounding over the hills. And then she
goes, he's behind the wall. And I don't know which side of
the wall you call behind it. So I just assume he's outside
looking in. What it is, he's revealing himself.
And especially when you consider this from an old covenant perspective,
such as the time when this was written, Christ had not been
fully revealed. They just got glimpses of him
in those old covenant practices. But yet, even now, we who have
been given all the revelation that God's going to give until
Jesus Christ returns, even we, Paul says this, we see as in
a mirror darkly. Now by mirror, back then they
would use a piece of, I think it was black quartz, I'm not
sure, but very polished. It was a very dark thing. Well,
you could see, you know, you could look in that thing and
you could see whether your hair needed combed or something like
that, but details, a lot of the details could not be detected
in the image that would be reflected in that polished stone. And even
us, that's the most we can get. But here's the thing. In this
business of Christ pursuing His people, we must keep in mind
He's the one that does the pursuing. And it's the outgoings of His
glory, the outgoings of His looking that bring about the salvation
of His people. And they see Him after He's found
them. And then she says, my lover spoke
and said to me, the Lord finds his people and he speaks to them. And it's his voice, his word
that attracts them. He says, arise, my darling, my
beautiful one, and come with me. The Lord's call in the gospel
is a call to himself. It's not a call to heaven. It's not a call to a higher standard
of living. At least that's not the essential
aspect of it. It's a call to himself. Notice he says, arise. So obviously
she's been asleep. And we are in a state of spiritual
sleep, even spiritual death, until he says, arise. My darling, my beautiful one.
And this is how our Lord calls us to himself. Yes, he may send
conviction. Yes, he may use the various portions
of the scriptures to convince us of sin, only that it may convince
us of our need of him. But when he brings that call
that causes us to arise from our slumber, to arise from our
deadness, It is that voice of sovereign love that speaks and
calls her, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. He doesn't speak to her in terms
of any blemish. any defect. And in the gospel,
when that moment comes, the moment he's determined for the foundation
of the world, the moment when he is going to bring one of his
own to himself, he calls to them in tones of grace and mercy and
love. And he says, see, the winter
is past. The rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth,
and so forth. All of this is pictures of spring
and the fertility of spring. And I was thinking somewhat sardonically, I think is the
right word there. If this was in Iowa, it had to
be written at least as late as May, because you can't guarantee
anything, as we well know until then, anything like this. But
here's the point. When Christ comes to us, what
he's saying is the bad part's over. It's over. I'm calling you away from that.
Now has come the time of life. Now has come the time of joy. Now has come the time of singing
and the sounds of beautiful things." And then he repeats, arise, come
my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. Now, there are
four or five occasions in which I think this call can be applied. First of all, when he initially
calls one of his people to faith. It's a call to one of those whom
he loves, whom he describes as a darling. I mean, you know, we don't use
the word darling much. Well, if you're from the South,
you might still use it. But I don't know that darling
is a common word all over the United States, but we do know
what it means, a particularly precious one. Something that is so valuable
to you, someone so valuable to you, you cannot bear to be without
them. My darling, my beautiful one. How are we beautiful? We are
beautiful with his beauty. He has robed his people in his
own righteousness. He has put away their sins. In
time to come, when his work of salvation is not only complete
for us, but complete in us, we will be like him, glorious, faultless. So his initial call to faith
is a call to come away with him, to come away from all the false
hopes we had, all the fleshly religion we've been following,
all our attempts to make ourselves beautiful, all our attempts to
attract his love. He said, leave that. That's winter.
That's deadness. Springtime has come. I am here. I am your life. I am the way. I am your righteousness. I am
your holiness. I am your redemption. Come with
me." And we do. It's also the way he calls his
people to worship. We often speak of going to church.
And I realize that's just a phrase we use, and we know what we mean
by it. But we aren't going to church. We are the church. But when the Lord calls his people
together for worship, he's saying to them, come with me. I think in the King James, it
says, come away with me. The idea is, and this is one
reason we worship as we do like this. We gather like this, and we're
going away from everything else. So it's just him and us, as much
as is possible for us. We try to put aside every distraction. We try to drive out of our minds,
our worldly cares, and all of that, and spend time with him. This could be his continual persistent
call to us that keeps us following after him, because we're still
dumb like sheep, we're his sheep, but we're still sheep. And if
it were not that the shepherd keeps calling, the sheep would
just wander off. We talk about the perseverance
of the saints, and I believe that, and I understand what they
mean by that, but that's not really the root of the doctrine. It's the persistence of Christ,
excuse me, the perseverance of Christ. It's not as though he
calls one time and then from then on he just turns around,
walks, and assumes that you're following and that you'll never
wonder. He's continually calling his sheep. My sheep hear my voice
and they follow me. This is his call to each of his
people when it comes time for them to die. Now being in this flesh, we look on death as a bad thing. And the death of a person, death
of a believer, it's tough on those that are left behind, but
it's not tough on them. The process of getting there
can be pretty hard. They may go through a great deal of pain. But it is So far as our experience
in the flesh is concerned, it's a complete unknown to us. But if we would learn that the
death of one of God's people is not the end of all good things,
but the beginning, and nothing more or less than our Lord coming
to one of his precious ones and say, all right, winter's over. It's, you're entering spring,
come away with me. It's not as though, and it's
like some of the pagan religions, when you die, you gotta get in
a boat and go across a river and, you know. He comes for his
people. And he calls them to himself. And then lastly, this is the
essence of what our Lord says when He
returns, the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout. And what will that shout be? Arise, my darling, my beloved
one, and come with me. All the blessedness of being
one of the Lord's people. He has set His affections on
all of His people, and He will have them. And every call He
makes to them is a call to Himself, ever nearer, ever closer, ever more enjoyable, until finally
it is completed and we are with Him always and forever. All right, you're dismissed.