Now, I lied to my wife yesterday.
I told her, I said, now that we've gotten through chapter
one, we can pick up the pace because there's a lot of repetition. But as I got into studying it
more, We aren't going to get much faster, at least not yet.
But I don't know why we feel like we have to get done in a
hurry. And maybe you all don't. Maybe that's just me. Heavenly
Father, bless our study here in this song of songs. May we
see You, and may we see us, and the great love that You have
toward us. And may we return that love with
as ardent a love as we are capable. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Now actually, we know that chapter
and verse divisions are not part of the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. The Bible wasn't divided up like
that when it was originally written. I'm glad that someone took the
time to do that. And a lot of times they put those
chapter divisions in a good spot. This was not one of those times.
Either they should have started chapter two after verse 8 of chapter 1, or they
shouldn't have started chapter 2 until verse 8 of chapter 2. This little section, verses 1
through 7 of chapter 2, actually is a continuation of what I have
called a mutual admiration society, as Solomon and the Shulamite
express their affections and admiration toward one another. But it starts out here. It says,
I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. Now it's difficult
to determine with absolute certainty who said that. And the reason
is the way they figure out whether it's Solomon speaking these words
or the Shulamite or the friends, they go by the gender of the
pronouns. And in this case, The word I
is what's called the common gender. In other words, it was a grammatical
gender they could use for either male or female. So we can't identify
from that just who said, I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the
valleys. However, the context gives us
some evidence because we do know in verse two, who is speaking,
it says, like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens. Well, that's obviously Solomon.
And he is following up with what was said before. She says, I'm
a lily of the valleys. And he says, well, you're like
a lily among thorns. You know, he takes what she said
about herself and raises it by way of comparison even to a higher
level. So we're going to take these
words in verse one as spoken by the Shulamite. Now she refers
to herself by two different flowers, the rose of Sharon and the lily
of the valley. We're confronted with some difficulty
here because We aren't really certain which flowers these are. When you read in the Bible, like
when you get to, when it talks about the high priest's breastplate
and it had 12 different stones on it, they do their best to
guess which stones are being referred to. Same thing in the
book of Revelation, it refers to some various precious stones. The truth is we don't know for
sure. And with plants, it's the same
thing. They give it their best guess.
Now, it says here the rose of Sharon. It's probably not a rose
in the sense we speak of it. In one of the places I was looking
this up, it says that the word indicates a bulbous plant, and
a rose is not one of those. So it's things like daylilies,
someone mentioned the crocus, tulips, which of course I imagine
the Dutch would be glad to think that the church is tulipy. Nonetheless, we should not be
thinking of it as a rose such as we normally think of a rose.
Excuse me. One of the things about these
bulbous flowers is that they are, normally speaking, at least
in my experience, they're among the first to respond in the spring. I mean, they come up quicker
than any others, and they are tough. Because they come up early,
and then they sometimes get snowed on. And yet they keep on going. They're easily transplanted.
You know, you dig up the bulbs and just You know, you put them
in a bag and sometime later you come and plant them and here
they come as though nothing happened to them. And that does picture
something of the church of the Lord Jesus because the church
quickly responds to what the scriptures in other places call
our Lord, the son of righteousness. As he rises, they quickly respond
and they bring forth flowers and they are tough. Of course,
this is all by the grace of God, but they're tough because there
are times when the sun of righteousness is very warm in the sky. There's other times, in our experience,
it's more like a blizzard, and things come, things go. But the
church, true believers, they survive these things. And then when it speaks of the lilies
of the valley, It's speaking there just of very
common multicolored plants that would be seen in a valley. It wasn't a specific plant. They just would look out there
in a valley and there's all kinds of little plants coming up with
colorful flowers and they referred to them as lilies. But seeing
that we cannot specifically identify the flowers that are referenced,
I believe the more important issue is not what the flowers
were, but where they were. The rose of Sharon, the lily
of the valleys. Now that word Sharon can refer
to a particular portion of the land of Israel. But it was called
that because the word essentially means a plain. You know, a flat
place. Not hills, not valleys, a flat
plain. And so the word could just be
translated, you know, the flowers, tulips or whatever, of the plain. Now, compare this to these scriptures. In Proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6
we read this, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not
lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge
him and he will straighten your path. Now that word translated
straighten In the King James, it says he will direct your paths,
but it's derived from the same word here as the word sharing.
And what it's talking about is making a level path. You trust
the Lord, in all your ways, in all your
decisions, you acknowledge him. You understand he has the right
to determine your path. He'll make level paths. for your
feet. The church walks a path made
straight and level by the Lord. Now, the religions of men have
paths that are up and down, twisting this way and that. But the way
of the Lord is straight and level road, well-suited to provide
safe and efficient passage to those who walk on it. Now, understand
here, the road we're speaking of is, shall we call it, the
road of salvation, the road to God. Now, religions make it a
very complicated thing. That is, man-made religions.
They multiply rules. And if you manage to keep them,
they'll find some way that you weren't perfect in it because,
you see, the best way to rule people is through guilt. I shouldn't
say the best, the easiest way. And many who are in religion,
the majority who are leaders in religion, they use guilt and
forgiveness, they say the carrot and the whip, but they're doing
it to control people. And it's surprising to me to
see the amount of work that people will do trying to gain what God
gives away for free. Spurgeon says the legalist has
for his goal what the believer has as his starting point, acceptance
with God. So when it speaks here about
that God shall straighten or level our path, it's meaning
that the way to God is not difficult. It doesn't mean there aren't
difficulties in our lives. It doesn't mean that there aren't
those who will try to throw obstacles in the way. But the way that
the Lord has prepared, the way the Lord has made, and the way
every member of his church walks is a straight and level path. Consequently, if we find that
our way becomes very complex, the way we're walking is difficult,
the way we're walking puts burdens upon us, we need to ask ourselves,
am I on the right way? In Isaiah 45, God says to Cyrus,
I will go before you and level the exalted places. Now, there
again, another example. These roads that he's speaking
of are not so much that they don't go right and left, he's
talking about up and down, they're level. And then in Isaiah chapter
40, Verses three and four, a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare
the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God. Every valley shall be lifted
up, every mountain and hill made low. The uneven ground will become
smooth and the rugged land a plain. Here the level path is for the
Lord himself in the person of Jesus Christ. This is a prophecy
of John the Baptist's ministry. He preached repentance, and the
message had differing effects on people, depending on whether
they were, what we might say, those who were valleys and those
who made up the hills. The hills were those who, in
pride, declared themselves righteous and acceptable to God. The valleys
were those who were living under the judgment of those people.
Now, they weren't. relying on their righteousness
as much as the folks like the Pharisees were, they just realized
they were failures at it. You see, both the person who
proudly thinks that by his deeds he has made himself acceptable
to God, and that person who perceives his sin in such a way he thinks
that there is no way for him to find acceptance with God,
both of them are operating under the same error. And that is that
acceptance with God is found or gained by acts of our own
righteousness. It's just the ones we normally
call self-righteous are those who think they've accomplished
what God requires. While those who are going around,
you know, moaning about how sinful they are, or living a life trying
to forget about God because they think they can't find a way of acceptance with
God, they're thinking the same thing. They've just given up
because they realize they can't do it. But when The gospel is
preached as John the Baptist did. What does it do? It tears
down those who exalt themselves. And like in a typical highway
building, and I come from West Virginia, so I've seen this done.
If they want to make a level road, they take off the top of
a mountain and fill the valley with it. And that's what John the Baptist
did. He called on repentance. Some
needed to repent of the confidence they had in themselves. Others
needed to repent of their unbelief that God is gracious and forgiving. But in so doing, the way of the
Lord was made level. And that's where the church dwells. The church is made up of those
who grow up or grow upon such a level way. Then the church
is called a lily of the valley. Again, we don't know for sure
what it is, but we know where it is. It's in the valley. And
we read in Psalm 23, yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are with me, says
that Psalm. The valley of the shadow of death
does not refer to a particularly difficult episode in a believer's
life, nor does it refer to the end stages of his life, nor even
does it refer to him dying. The entire life of a believer
is spent in the valley of the shadow of death, because that's
what this cursed world is. It's the valley of the shadow
of death. Death has been passed upon it.
Death's passed upon every man. Everyone is there. But there
are some in this valley of the shadow of death who are the Lord's
sheep and he is with them and we need not fear. Even as we
walk through this world and we see all the evidences of divine
judgment and divine curse, we don't have to worry about it.
And even as we approach the end of this existence, we don't have
to fear that. Because once we're done walking
through the valley of the shadow of death, we go into a place
and a condition where there is no death whatsoever. And as someone once said, the
shadow of death, or the shadow of a sword, cannot kill, and
neither can the shadow of death. It's a shadow upon us, but it
can do nothing to us. So the church is those who grow living in this valley of the
shadow of death. All else around is death. Well,
Solomon responds by saying, like a lily among thorns is my darling
among the maidens. Now, we can't always figure out
who everybody is in these illustrations. The word translated maiden, we
would use the word virgin in modern English. In older English,
maiden carried that sense. But it could have referred to the
other women in Solomon's harem whom he had not yet been with.
After all, he had 1,000 of them. Therefore, he could be He would
be exalting her beauty above all the other women which made
up his harem. But I doubt he would call the
other women in his harem thorns. It's more likely that the maidens
refers to other unmarried young women in Israel. They would illustrate
those whose status as maidens was the result of their being
protected or their own virtue in keeping themselves chaste. These are, once again, the self-righteous. It is not as though keeping oneself
sexually pure is somehow or another a bad thing. It's always good
to do good. It's always right to do right.
But if we look upon whatever good or right
we may do and take pride in it, or trust in it to make us acceptable
to God, it becomes what Isaiah called filthy rags. Our righteousnesses
have become as filthy rags. And so these maidens, though
they were, you know, keeping the law with regard to their
chastity, yet they trusted in it, they counted themselves better
than those who had not kept themselves pure. Therefore, their purity
was nothing but impurity, a spiritual impurity. Now, Solomon says of
the Shulamite, you're like a lily among the thorns. Those other
maidens are the thorns. Thorns are almost always, if
not always, a symbol of the curse. All those who are not joined
to Christ, by union of grace are under a curse. They are thorns. But the church of the Lord Jesus
is like the lilies. Galatians 3.10 says, for all
who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is
written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things
written in the book of the law to do them. Well, that's everybody. Nobody has ever done everything
God has required in the law. None of us is perfect. So we
are all under a curse by nature, but there are those who by God's
sovereign grace have been chosen out from eternity, made to be
his, and he has borne the curse for them. As it is written, cursed
is everyone who is hanged upon a tree. And in being made a curse
for them, he redeemed them from the curse. They're no longer
thorns, they're lilies. Beautiful. Let us live in the glorious truth
that despite what we see in ourselves, despite the fact that we know
that in our flesh we are just like the cursed people of this
world, spiritually speaking, God has made us blossom with
the beauty of his righteousness. Let us not overburden ourselves
with what sin we see in ourselves and go around thinking that we
somehow or another show how humble we are by always beating on our
chest and say, oh, I'm such a sinner. Yeah, but let's get past that.
God's grace has declared us to be righteous. Let us rejoice to know that our
Solomon Our King of Peace sees us as beautiful in this world
of ugliness. Now verses 3 through 7 are a
flood of loving adoration and praise from the Shulamite concerning
Solomon, and we'll just be looking at the first part of it. In verse
3, We read this, like an apple tree among the trees of the forest
is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade
and his fruit is sweet to my taste. The Shulamite compares
Solomon to an apple tree among the other trees of the forest.
Now the other trees of the forest may represent the young men who
were in the court Often you read about David and the
young men with him, and generally that was referencing men of military
age. It could represent all the young
men in Israel who are yet possessed of the natural beauty and strength
of youth. But strictly speaking here, the
word means son, You've heard how Jewish names often begin,
or last names, they often begin with B-E-N, Ben. The Apostle Peter was called
Simon Bar-Jonas, that's another version of Ben, but it means
son of. My oldest is named Benjamin, in
Hebrew, Binyamin. the son of Yaman, means son of
my right hand. But nonetheless, this is just
in reference to the sons. So it may be that she is comparing
Solomon to David's other sons, at least the ones that were still
living because some had opposed his kingship and ended up dead. This is not the only time she
will make a comparison. If you look at chapter 5, verse
9, the friends say to her, how is your beloved
better than others, most beautiful women? How is your beloved better
than others that you charge us so? He's saying, she's told him,
help me look. And if you find him, tell him
I'm faint with love. She says, what's so great about
your lover as opposed to others that you should give us such
a charge? And she spends the next verses of this chapter describing
What she sees in him that's so wonderful. Well, she's doing
the same thing here. She's saying, among the others who might be
suitors to me. Well, they're just trees. Solomon
is an apple tree among them. Now, in the fact that she calls him
an apple tree, She's making reference to a symbol, an ancient symbol
of romantic love that actually at least lasted till World War
II. Apple trees and apples were always
associated with romantic love. In World War II, there was a
very famous song, don't sit under the apple tree with anybody else
but me. And this was a man, he's going
off to war and he's telling his girlfriend, While I'm gone, don't
you get involved with anybody else. Don't sit under the apple
tree. And she's saying here, my lover, he's like the apple tree. He is the object of my romantic
love. And there is none to compare
to him. You know, the church sees the
Lord Jesus Christ. And, you know, when you've been
given eyes to see him, you cannot imagine loving anyone like you
love him. You know, when people use his
name as cursing or whatever, or they mock believers, because
of their love and trust in Jesus. It's because they've never seen
him. They have never experienced his love. She says, I delight
to sit in his shade. The shade represents protection
from excessive heat. Recall that the Shulamites first
description of herself was that she was dark, but comely. And her darkness had been the
result of being forced to work in her brother's vineyards. In
other words, she was tanned. While our culture finds beauty
in tanned skin, in most ancient cultures, even into modern times,
a fair complexion was preferred among those whose natural skin
color was white. And women were always, you know,
they'd go around with their parasols and wide-brimmed hats and everything. their skin from the sun because
they didn't want to be tanned and eventually look rather weathered. She sits in his shade, protected
from that which had previously made her dark. Now, when a person is made to
work in his religion, that is made to work in order to gain
the blessing of God, Such a person becomes dark and eventually weathered. But once they are brought into
the dominion of grace, once they are brought to Christ, they are
seated under him and he shades them from all that abusive sunlight. And so she says she delights
to sit in his shade And then the fruit of the apple tree,
she says, I delight to eat of his fruit. The apple tree would
be all the ways in which Solomon's love was expressed to her. Nothing
was sweeter to her than his loving speech, his kisses and caresses,
and all the other many ways he expressed his love for her. And
the love of God in Christ is no small thing. Those who claim
that God's love is on everyone cheapen his love for his people
because they're saying that his love, for the most part, goes
unanswered and doesn't produce anything good for people. One
of the aspects of marital love that makes it stand out among
all other forms of love is that it is confined to one person.
A husband's I love you would be meaningless and even hurtful
were it followed up with, in fact, I love all women. Well,
that would take all of the value of I love you to his wife. Just
get rid of all of it, wouldn't it? It's the very specificity
of marital love that makes it what it is. And it is for this
reason that marital love expressed beyond the boundaries of marriage
is counted to be such a destructive betrayal, causing grief that
often can never be assuaged. But the expressions of God's
love toward his church, those expressions in Christ were for
her alone. Now, when we go out and preach
the gospel, we tell people, whoever wants this may have it. But we
do know this, God's love does not rest upon every individual.
His purpose of grace is not extended to every individual. His works
of grace are not extended to every individual because His
love and His grace are unstoppable. God does not bow to the will
of men. He has chosen a person. As that
person rebels against the preaching of his gospel, God will eventually
come and change them to where they love the things they're
hearing. Christ came into this world with
a hot and passionate love for his bride, determined to have
her for himself. He released her from all legal
claims against her by his redeeming sacrifice, and he rescued her
from her enemies by disarming them through the cross. Christ
loved the Church and gave himself for her, says the Apostle Paul.
And it is this giving of himself for her that is the fruit that
is sweet to her taste. The Church of the Lord Jesus
loves the gospel of God's grace. performed by Jesus Christ. When
she gathers for worship, this is the message that delights
her. This is the food that sustains her. As the gospel of God's Son
is preached, the church sits in the shadow of Christ's love,
protected from the heat of a cursing sun, resting in the knowledge
that his love for her cannot fail to bring her every good
thing. And we'll pick up there next
week.