This last couple of weeks we
have been looking at the love of the Lord God for his people. We saw that she comes out of
this wilderness, she's leaning. A great description of Christians,
they are people who are leaning and she wants to be set, as verse
6 says, set as a seal upon his heart, to be held close to him,
to be taken by him into the holy of holies. where God dwells in
all of his glory and splendour. And then she says, the reason
is that love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the
grave, the coals thereof are coals of fire which has a most
vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can Can floods drown it? If a man would give all of
the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly content,
treated with contempt. Then she goes on, the love that
is set, love that leans, love that cannot be quenched, love
that's shared, the love that God's children have for him because
he first loved them, is a love It is insatiable in its desire,
isn't it? Love shares. Love gives. Love longs for others. Love longs to share its desire,
its desires. a little sister, and she hath
no breasts. What shall we do for our sister
in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall,
we will build upon her a palace of silver. If she be a door,
we will enclose her with boards of cedar. I am a wall, my breasts
like towels. Then was I in His eyes as one
that found favour." Let's ask the Lord to help us. understand
and apply his words. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank
you that you are a God who speaks and speaks in ways which are
beyond the imagining of man, Heavenly Father. You speak to
the hearts and you transform the hearts of your people. You speak life into what which
was dead. You speak and things are created. You speak, our God, and things
are established forever. Help us to be amazed, Heavenly
Father, at the depths of Your love for us, a love that sent
The Lord Jesus to this earth, a love for His bride that took
Him to the cross caused Him to bear your infinite wrath on all
of the sins of all of your people. Oh, Heavenly Father, how little
we contemplate it, how little we know it, how little we appreciate
the glories of Your dear Son and what He suffered. And because
we so little appreciate those things, Heavenly Father, so often
we so little appreciate that He sits in Heaven and He intercedes
right now for us and He pleads His life and His blood and He
clothes His people with His righteousness. Heavenly Father, in Him the Prince
of Peace is our peace and we pray, Heavenly Father, that You
would take Your words today and set them in our hearts and that
they might be life to us yet again. Heavenly Father, we commit
ourselves into Your hands. We thank You that You remind
us again and again without You we can do nothing. We thank You
that we are nothings. can be blessed by You and be
people who find favour in Your sight. We pray You would bless
us with those things this morning, Our Father, for Jesus' sake and
for His glory. Amen. For any of you who have
been in love, will remember, won't you, when
those first sparks of love came along, you couldn't shut up. In fact, every conversation somehow
was steered so you could talk about the object of your love.
Someone might want to talk about politics or football, but you'd
manoeuvre the conversation so to be talking about the one you
loved. Such is something it's just but
a pale reflection isn't it of the love of the Lord Jesus for
his people he finds it unquenchable and it's a love that must and
will be shared. It wants others to know about
it. It wants others to join in. She is taken into a banqueting
house and she finds herself with his banner over her of love and
she wants others to join in the feast of delight. She wants others
to join in the comfort of assurance that she is a garden enclosed
by God, a garden of His planting and His choosing and His separating
and a garden of His enclosing. The comfort of assurance is what
the shulamite finds, isn't it? She's now leaning. No independence. She leans and she's comforted
by His love. And of course, ultimately the
leaning implies that she now has this closeness of fellowship.
She leans because He's near her. She leans because He is strong. She leans because of this mutual
love and our love for Him. is a love which he brings into
the hearts of his people. And it's his gift, and it's the
result of his working in his grace in the lives of his people. And like his love, ultimately
our love for him can never be destroyed. It cannot be quenched. You think of the floods of sin,
the floods of the lukewarmness and coldness of our hearts. Many waters have tried to drown
that love. If you now love the Lord Jesus
and you can look back, you can see time and time again where
He has fanned that love into flame and it's burnt with the
most vehement flame. And we are thankful to our God,
as we saw last week, that you cannot buy, you cannot purchase
this love. And so here we have in these
verses 8, 9 and 10, we have, as it were, the bride, Christ
and his bride, and like a loving husband and his wife, they're
talking together. They're talking about their affairs,
they're considering what they are to do. They've laid, as one
of the commentators says, they've laid their hearts together and
now they put their heads together and make plans about their relations
and their property. She says we have a little sister. She's saying there's not a possibility
that there might be a little sister, but she says we have
a little sister. and the commentators are divided
that it seems as if the little sister is probably seeing Solomon
was writing a thousand years before the Lord Jesus, probably
in reference to the Gentile church, but also it may be in reference
to all the elect of God, unconverted, unborn, insignificant in this
world, those for whom the Lord Jesus is their elder brother. We have We have, she says. God has visited the Gentiles
and taken from them a people for himself. Paul had several
great tasks in his Gospel ministry, wasn't it? Proclaiming the Gospel
and then defending the Gospel against the Jews. And one of
the things he does again and again is he wants to show the
Gentiles that they are fellow heirs with the Jews, heirs of
God, and he piles Old Testament scripture upon Old Testament
scripture again and again to show that the purposes of God
were always beyond just nation Israel. And again and again that
causes the ire of the Jews who think that salvation is all about
them. that he has a people scattered
throughout this world. We have, he said, she says, we
have a little sister. We have a little sister and she
has no breasts. It means that she has no scriptures,
she has no prophets, she has no ordinances, she has no promises,
she has no instruction from God. She is, as it were, in a wilderness. Paul describes them, these Gentiles,
all of us here are Gentiles. We were, as says Ephesians 2,
at that time, at that time you were, without Christ, being aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants
of promise, having no hope and without God in this world. The elect of the Gentiles were
brought in in little bits and pieces to remind us Solomon's
great great grandmother was the daughter of Moab, a cursed people. Ruth, Rahab was brought in out
of the Gentiles. Again and again we see glimpses
of this little sister in the Old Testament, a reminder to
the Jews that God has a people scattered throughout this world.
They were aliens, but they are elect. How did the Lord Jesus
describe them? He says, other sheep I have which
are not of this father. So he has them. They've always
been his. They are children of the same
father and children of the same mother, the Jerusalem above which
is the mother of us all. That's why she's called a sister.
At this time they had no affection for the Lord Jesus. They had
no grace that operated in their lives and they had no word of
God in their hearts. But now that the Shulamite has
his love confirmed. She's seen herself in her sins
and now she's seen herself in his company and he has her back
into his fold. completely forgiven, completely
restored, not a mention of sins that she's done from him. The
Prince of Peace has spoken peace to her heart and he speaks lovingly
to her. His love is confirmed, his love
is promised, his love is given and now she rests. She's sealed
and she's set and she's leaning and this in a sense is love's
response and it's love's prayer. What shall we do? What shall
we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
She's our sister. The Lord Jesus Solomon in this
beautiful book, calls her again and again, my sister. Four times
he calls her my sister, my sister, and eventually he says, my sister,
my love, my dove, my undefiled. She is considered a sister and
she says, we have a little sister, a little sister as I said in
predestination, a little sister in the everlasting covenant,
a little sister in those promises which are yet to now mean. And
now leaning, she prays. You see she says, what shall
we do? She's been made to see. As the
Lord Jesus reminded his disciples, without me you can do nothing. Unless the Lord builds a house,
the labourers labour in vain. Paul planted, Apollos watered,
but it was God who gave the increase. Love leans, love desires, love
acts. It can't be passive. We are compelled
by love. We are constrained by love. And we know that we have sisters
out there in this world, all over this world. We don't know
where they are. People say that if you believe
in election and predestination and preach God's eternal covenant,
then you only want to preach to the elect. But we don't know
who they are. If they had a marker, if they wore hats or something,
we'd just go and gather them all together and preach to them.
But we don't know who they are. We preach the Gospel indiscriminately. We preach the Gospel to all the
Lord will bring along and the sisters. will be gathered together,
won't they? The sisters will be gathered
by the Lord. They've never been out of His
sight. They've never been out of His hands. They've never been
out of His love. That's why they say, we have. The Lord Jesus says, I have.
They do belong. They are His. And She is calling
on Him. Look at my little sister. Where
is she? What shall we do? What shall
we do in the day that she shall be spoken for? What shall we
do on the day that she might be spoken to? The day when the
Gospel comes, that acceptable time, it's called that day of
salvation. It's an allusion to parents talking
about the arrangements for marriage. What shall we do on that day
when she is married? What shall we do on that day
when she is spoken of? That day when the Gentile Church
is spoken of throughout this world, it turned the world upside
down. Isn't it remarkable? It turned
the world upside down 2,000 years ago when the Lord Jesus died
and He showed His glory and He showed the victory of His Resurrection,
the victory of His work on the cross by the Holy Spirit coming
and they preached Jesus as Sovereign Reigning Lord and it turned the
world upside down. The Roman Church was spoken of,
says Paul, was spoken of throughout the world. We've been looking
at 1 Thessalonians and Paul goes down to that place and he's persecuted
in Philippi. He's beaten and cast out of town
after town. He ends up in Athens, quite some
distance from Thessalonica and he says, what's happened? What's
going on? in the work of the Gospel and
these people and he sends Timothy back and Timothy goes all the
way from Athens up to Thessalonica it is, as it is in Greece today.
And he comes back and he tells Paul not only what's happening
in that city amongst those believers, how they've stood firm for the
faith amongst the opposition that came when Paul came with
the Gospel, but they were famous. As he went up there they were
all talking about this Thessalonica. believers, turned from idols
to serve the living God. They are turned from the idols
of their religion. They are turned from the idolatry
of Jewish religion. They are turned and they are
spoken. What will we do in the day she
will be spoken of or spoken for, or even it might be that she
might be spoken against? God's children in this world
will be spoken against as he was. Christ was set as a sign
which will be spoken against. What will we do? What will we
do? We preach the Gospel. Paul writes
to those believers in Thessalonica, what does he do? He preaches
the Gospel again to them and he encourages them and he encourages
them all the time. Throughout his letters his encouragement
has the same form. He encourages them for what he
sees God doing in their lives. He encourages them by encouraging
them that he sees God graciously working in their lives. What
shall we do? We'll preach the Gospel. What shall we do? We'll pray
for them. What shall we do? We'll bring
them before the Lord as the Shulamite does. We'll talk to God about
the people that we love and the people that we care for. Love
acts. Love responds. Love can't be
quiet. Love can't be passive. We have sisters all over this
world, little sisters at the moment, all over this world. God has them. We will have them. They will be our family. It is fascinating just while
we're on this business of being sisters that the Church is attacked
in this day and age, isn't it? One of the attacks that comes
upon it is that we're attacked for being misogynists. The word means that we hate women,
that Paul is a woman hater, that the whole Church's business is
to suppress But here in Simon-Solomon is a great answer to that, isn't
it? The church is pictured as the bride. She has his name. She has his name which means
peace. She is his bride. She is called his sister, his
love. She's dove, she's undefiled,
he sees no spot in her. She's continually pictured in
the scriptures as a woman, as a bride. The world and the religious
world has relationships built on power, structures and institutions
of power. But the Gospel brings a different
spirit into the hearts of God's chosen people. They are brought
like the Shulamite to see what they are and they go off in their
own strength and do their own things. You see, Christian life
in the Christian church under God's direction is built on love
and service and faithfulness. It's built as people lean on
the Lord Jesus, lean on Him and lean on His Word. They are pictured
as a bride, leaning on Him, needing His love, His care, His protection. It's a refuge for for the weary
and the heavy laden. It's a family for the orphans. And in the church, rather than
structures being based on power, the structures are built around
love and service. The structures are built, built
by God in such a way that He, our Lord Jesus, our Husband is
seen. It's not about building up men,
it's about building up people in their living in the Lord Jesus
and living in Him. And the organisation of the church
is in such a way that the Lord Jesus is seen, the Apostle is
seen in the things that God's people do. Man builds, man builds,
but unless the Lord builds a house, they labour in vain. And this
is his response. She prays, what shall we do?
She prays, what shall we do for our little sister? And then he
says, if she be a wall, seeing she be a wall, seeing she be
well walled, seeing that she be built on a sure foundation,
strong and stable, firm and established in the faith. That's what Paul
was looking for, wasn't he? He was longing for when he sent
Timothy back to Thessalonica, and what he was excited about
as he saw evidences of their faith and their love, evidences
of them standing as one for the Gospel. You see, if she be a
wall, we will build. What a great word. If she be
a wall, we will build. Built, as I said, Ephesians 2.20,
upon the foundation of the apostle and the prophets with Jesus Christ
as the chief cornerstone. The Lord Jesus said, didn't he,
I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it. That was his declaration before
he left this earth after his physical ministry. I will build
my church. It's remarkable, isn't it? He
says the gates of Hades. You've got to remember that gates
are not attacking weapons, they're defensive weapons. He's in effect
saying that Satan has this world in his hands, he's like a strong
man. But someone so much stronger has come along and he doesn't
have to knock on the gate to get in. He comes and he knocks
the gate down, he knocks the wall down and out of that city
he takes his bride powerfully. Satan is no threat to the Lord
Jesus' power and authority, neither is the wisdom and the strength
of men. He will build, he will build
his church and the gates shall not prevail against it. God plants
the heavens and he lays the foundation of the world, that he may say
to Zion, the city of the living God. He says, Thou art my people,
Isaiah 51, 16. He plants the heavens and he
lays the earth. All of this is laid out that he may say to Zion,
You are my people. We have a little sister. I have
other sheep, we will build." The Lord Jesus is both the author
and the finisher of faith. He wrote it out, signed it, he
finished it and he completes it. The Holy Spirit is that same
spirit of faith. Jesus Christ is plainly set forth
in the Gospel as reigning, as crucified, as God in human flesh
ruling over all. He's called the God of all grace. What do you have, says Paul in
1 Corinthians, Paul said, what do you have that you haven't
received? What have you earned? What have
you achieved? Nothing. All that we have is
by grace. So we have nothing. There's not
a single thing that you have that you can say, I'm not bound
to God for it. Where did it come from? Where
did the breath come from? Where did those abilities come
from? Everything that you have, you
owe Him for. We will build, we, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit, we will build upon her a palace of silver,
or a tower of silver. A palace, of course, is a dwelling
place for a king, and a dwelling place for a king and his family. A dwelling place of silver. Silver is pure, and it's valuable,
and it's durable, and it says this is precious, and this is
special, and this is going to last. As it says in Zion 48,
you walk around Zion and go about her and tell the towers thereof,
mark well how Zion is built, mark well her bulwarks, consider
her palaces that you may tell of it to the generations following. God builds a house and when the
house is built as Zechariah Fuller says, grace. Grace is proclaimed. God's free sovereign grace. He loves His people with an everlasting
love. He loves His people everlastingly
and He loves them because He loves them. He doesn't have to
give an explanation for His love. His love, as we saw last week,
is like Him. It's sovereign and infinite and
unchangeable. If she be a door, if she be a
door, we shall enclose her with balls of cedar. And we looked
at Nehemiah. We saw how when God sent those
people back there to restore His worship in that land, He
built those walls and then He built those gates, and when the
walls are built and the gates are there, they signify that
the job is finished and completed. Now we have a wall city, now
we have an enclosed garden, now we have a protected city. Isaiah speaks of it. In that
day, that great Gospel day, that day, this song shall be sung
in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. Salvation will God appoint for
walls and bulwarks. You can take out the italicised
words and it reads even better. In that day this song shall be
sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. Salvation
will appoint walls and booklets. There is salvation in the scriptures. When they read that word in Hebrew,
they read the word, the name of Jesus, they read the word
Joshua. Salvation will appoint. And then he says, Open ye the
gates that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter
in. And then he makes this promise,
Thou will keep him in perfect peace, His mind is stayed on
Thee, because He trusts in Thee, because He believes, because
He has faith in Him. Trust you in the Lord forever,
for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. He will build, if she
be a door, that door of the gospel is opened, open the gates to
heavenly Jerusalem. And Paul spoke again and again,
he says, the gate, the door of the Gospel has been opened to
these Gentiles. When he comes back from his first
missionary journey in Acts Chapter 14, he says, when they came and
they gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had
done. They told others what God had
done. That's so much what church is
about, isn't it? We're just telling people what
God has done. And when we witness to people,
we are rehearsing what God has done in our lives, what God has
done with them and how He opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles. He speaks in 1 Corinthians, He
says, A great door and effectual is open to me And even though that door is
open, the wall and the doors in Nehemiah, the walls that were
built that actually protected God's people and enraged the
people outside and they plotted and schemed. He says a great
door and effectual is open for me and there are many adversaries. It didn't affect Paul in proclaiming
the Gospel. We have a little sister. He said,
when I came to Troas to preach Christ's Gospel, a door was opened
unto me of the Lord. He talks about that door being
the door of the hearts of people. He's opened. He opened. If she be a door. She should
be, she shall be, enclosed with boards of cedar." The reference
of course in so much of this building is to Solomon's building,
that temple. What magnificent foundations,
what amazing walls were built there. The foundation stones
are still there, the Jews go and pray to them again and again.
The Romans left the foundations of those Solomon's walls there
to remind people, even though they had levelled the 25 acres
at the top of that place so it looked like a ploughed paddock.
God was so clearly destroying the Jewish nation and the Jewish
religion. But the Romans left those foundations
there as a reminder to people, look how great and mighty a city
we have destroyed. They thought they had the strength
to destroy that city. It was only given them by God
himself. We will, if she be a door, we
will enclose her with boards of silver. We will enclose her,
we will adorn her. When she's gathered together,
when the door is open, when she's built as a wall on the foundation
of the apostles and the prophets, she becomes a temple. That temple in all of Solomon's
glory was a magnificent building, but the most magnificent thing
was that when Solomon dedicated that temple, God himself showed
himself in that temple and God himself lit that fire on the
temple and consumed that offering which represented the Lord Jesus.
What's the church called? little gatherings scattered throughout
this world of people who just trust what God has said, whose
hearts God has opened. They've been gathered together
like the Philippians, a wealthy woman like Lydia, an old Roman
jailer, all sorts of odds and sods. What do they become? The house of God. The house of
God. The Church of the Living God
is God's house. It's where He, as a Father, gathers
His family together. It's where He reveals Himself
as He opens up His Word and shows his people his will and his character. He reveals himself as we do.
We are most clearly revealed when we are at peace and at rest
in our own homes. God reveals himself in his house
and in that house that family is gathered. In that house his
dear and darling son and his son's bride. have that sweet
communion, a warm city and enclosed garden adorned. The house of
God, the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground
of the truth, foundation and a bulwark. See where God comes,
And God comes in His Gospel and God gathers His people together
and God blesses His people with the knowledge of His Son and
He opens hearts and He transforms lives. Where He brings one grace,
He brings all of His graces. What does John say? We have received
of His fullness. We receive grace upon grace. Wherever God has raised up a
house, wherever there is a church of the Living God, there is nothing
ever lacking. There is no gift lacking, brothers
and sisters. If we have the Lord Jesus for
our brother, if we are made by His grace to lean on Him, he
promises, doesn't he, Philippians 1.6, the good work that he has
begun is a work that he will complete and on the day of salvation
he'll take and gather these little sisters from all over this world.
He will have gathered them together in his churches and he'll gather
them together and he'll present them holy, spotless and unblameable,
which is why the church so often is seen as battered and insignificant
in the eyes of the world. Why? Because God's going to get
much more glory. At the end of the day God will
get much more glory. The whole purpose of this creation
is that the glory of the grace of our God will be revealed and
it will be revealed in the saving of his people, the caring for
his people, gathering them together, no enemy can stand against it. One of the most remarkable speeches
from any of the Jews is in Acts chapter 5 and it's Gamaliel speaking
and he's a Pharisee and he was Paul's teacher, Paul's professor
in Judaism. And when these people are brought
in, the apostles are brought in, And he says to them, he gives
them their history, he says, in this last memorable history
of your time you have seen these people rise up and claim to be
Messiah and they have died and nothing has happened. Another
one has risen up and he has claimed to be something and people have
gathered to them and followed them and they have seen to be
something. And then he says, Now I say to
you, for Acts 5.38, now I say to you, refrain from these men,
leave them alone. They had beaten them, they had
put them in prison, they were going to continue persecuting,
but here's a word from Gamaliel, leave them alone. For if this
council or this work be of men, It will come to naught. It will come to nothing. That's
what men's work in this world comes to, absolutely nothing. But if it be of God, you cannot
overthrow it, lest happily you fail even to fight against God."
Now one day she says earlier on, many waters and many floods
will come upon this love and nothing will drown it. If she
be a door, we will build, we will enclose her. Doors and gates
signify the finishing of the work. And these cedar boards
he's talking about, like the cedar boards that were built
as lining in that temple and then covered with gold, and cedar
is mentioned as the rafters in her house in Song of Solomon
117. See, it was strong and it was
durable and it was incorruptible and it was fragrant. Walls and the doors will be adorned. strong and durable, incorruptible,
and the gates will be opened. She will be an enclosed garden,
a walled city, and that great city in Revelation 21 comes down
out of heaven as a bride beautifully adorned for her husband. And then the Shulamite, I believe,
says, I am a wall, my breasts like towers. Then was I in his
eyes as one that found favour. One day the Gentile church and
the elect will all be saved and they will be built into that
wall. Living stones will be put together in this city, this wall
city, a wall city to keep out, a wall city to keep in and to
secure. Gates, to allow people to come
and go, but to protect his people. But here the Shulamite acknowledges
the favour shown to her. She says, I am a wall. She entrusts her little sister,
the sister that she knows she has, the sister that her bridegroom
her Saviour has in His hands. She knows now as she rests and
she leans that she's been made a wall. She's been made to have
breasts of consolation and comfort and feeding upon the milk of
His Word. He's spoken to her. He's responded
to her. Her strength is His promise,
His covenant, His faithfulness. and breasts like towers. Earlier
on in Song of Solomon she talks about those towers being as the
towers on that mountain that looked over Damascus where the
enemies of God's people were. God sent his people as a tower
looking out to this world. And as we close, She's resting
in His promises. He's promised to do things for
her. As Nehemiah said, God has performed
His works, His words, because He is righteous. Turn as we close
to Isaiah 66. It's interesting how the Bible,
so many of the books of the Bible, Isaiah and Ezekiel, you think
of the others, whereas the book is finishing, they look ahead,
they look over the horizon of time and they look to the coming
of the Lord Jesus and they look beyond the coming of the Lord
Jesus to the coming of the Lord Jesus in glory. They look to
the new creation. Let's just read some of these
verses. I shall bring to birth, and not
cause to bring forth. He's brought them to birth. He'll
bring them to bring forth. He'll bring them to a marriageable
place. They might have no breasts, but
He'll bring them to that place and time of marriage, says the
Lord. Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and
be glad with her, all you that love her. Rejoice for joy with
her, all ye that mourn for her, that you may suck. and be satisfied
with the breasts of her consolations, that you may milk out and be
delighted with the abundance of her glory. And this is the
reason why we drink His Word, that pure milk of His Word. For thus saith the Lord, Behold,
I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the
Gentiles like a flowing stream. Then shall you suck, then shall
you be born upon her side and dangled upon her knees, and as
one and his mother comfort us, so I will comfort you, and you
shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And when you see this, your hearts
shall rejoice and your bones shall flourish like an herb,
and the hand of the Lord shall be known towards his servants
and his indignation toward his enemies." And it goes on, it's remarkably
gripping finish to Isaiah's prophecy. The question is, she says, then
I was in his eyes as one that found favour. What remarkable
favour. What remarkable grace. I was in his eyes as one that
found peace. Peace like a river. Peace flowing from the throne
room of God. Peace flowing into the hearts
of His people. Peace flowing into their hearts
and gathering together so that they not only have peace with
God, they have peace with one another. God's children. see each other as families, and
as much as God gives us the grace to do so, let us try to look
at our brothers and sisters in Christ through the eyes of the
Lord. He sees no sin in them. He sees
no sin in them. He sees them as perfect and spotless,
holy and blameless. We lean and lean hard, brothers
and sisters, but we lean on One who is strong and mighty. Let's
pray.