I know not when the Lord may
come at night or noonday fair, nor if I walk the vale with him
or meet him in the air. And then our hymn writer gave
us those words which you probably recognise which are out of 2
Timothy chapter 1. And Paul talks about his appointment
as a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. And he talked
about himself as a person who suffered and he says, nevertheless
I'm not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded
that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him
against that day." That is the big question, isn't it? That
is the one big question that lies before all of us. The Lord
Jesus said it as plainly as it could possibly be said in John
17. He says, this is eternal life. This is eternal life, that they
might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou
hast sent." Knowing God, knowing Jesus Christ, is the one essential,
necessary thing If you turn in your Bibles to Song of Solomon,
we have spent some time in this most delightful of books. And
we've come to the verse where finally, after a
long time, she gets to speak. He has spoken of her for a chapter. A chapter and a half he has spoken
of her. Twenty different descriptions
he gives of her. She who had fallen. She who had
rejected him. She who had searched for him
and couldn't find him. She who had suffered abuse in
her searching for him. She now says these remarkable
words. These are her first words. She says, I am my Beloved's and
His desire is toward me. I am my Beloved's and His desire
is for me. What a remarkable statement,
brothers and sisters. I just have a simple aim with
this message, that all of us who are the children of God here
might join with the Bride of Christ, the Church, as she's
outlined here in Song of Solomon, and just say those wonderful
words. May her words be your words. May her words be your
words that you can say from a heart like her heart that was a broken
heart. You might be able to say them
as a wandering person like her who has wandered, like her in
chapter 5 who had treated him when he came to her with nothing
other than what could be described as contempt. And yet, such is
the greatness of the glory of the grace of our God in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Such is the magnificence of His
sacrifice that has put away her sins forever by His death upon
the tree. He can come to her, He can take
hold of her, He can feed her, He can cause her to see what
He says about her And in the previous verse, she says, causing
the lips of those that are asleep to speak. I am my beloved and
his desire is for me. Why don't we pray and ask God
the Holy Spirit to help us. Heavenly Father, we pray that
the best wine, that good wine of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus
would go down and become life for us, that we would find ourselves,
our destiny, our eternity, things of our life here, Heavenly Father,
wrapped up in who He is, and what He has done and what He
is doing now and what He will do in the future, all so perfectly
complete. Heavenly Father, help us, like
the Shulamite, to be able to say these remarkable words, that
we belong to Him and His desire is for us. Help us, Heavenly
Father, to be like Paul, to commit everything, absolutely everything
into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved his bride and
gave himself for her. Heavenly Father, if you grant
us the grace to see something of the glory of your Son today,
We will go away from here a blessed people, Heavenly Father. We pray
for your spirit to work and to take these words and to take
the words of this scripture and make them life for us. And take
the stammering words of this vessel of clay, Heavenly Father,
and make your words become life for us. That we might find ourselves
knowing that we have eternal life because of something someone
who has done these remarkable things for us. Glorify your son,
we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. For the benefit of our newcomers,
I might go back a little bit in Song of Solomon and paint
something of the picture. It's an enormously misunderstood
book. and it's misunderstood because
of the essential things that Song of Solomon is outlining. The great covenant love relationship
between the Lord Jesus and His Bride. She was the gift of the
Father to the one the Father loved with an infinite love. And she was the desire of the
son, the desire of his heart. And he entered into that covenant
relationship before the worlds began. And he promised. He promised to take care of her. He promised to take absolute
100% responsibility for her. He is the great shepherd. took the sheep the father had
given him, and he took 100% responsibility to bring those sheep into that
sheepfold to the delight of his heart, to the glory of his father,
and for the extraordinary good of his people. She is described
by one word in Song of Solomon. In herself, she says, I'm black. That's a good description of
humanity, isn't it? Black. No light, no white, no life. Black. And then she says, but I'm beautiful. That's the wonder, isn't it?
That's the extraordinary thing, isn't it? That we are sinners
in Adam, sinners by nature, sinners by practice. And yet, describing
ourselves as black, God's children can describe themselves as beautiful. And Song of Solomon pictures
the dynamic relationship that real dynamic relationship between
the Lord Jesus and His bride. She wanders and He, like a great
shepherd, gathers and restores and brings her back. He takes
her into a banqueting house and His banner over her is love. and she finds herself sleeping,
she finds herself wandering, she finds herself wayward, and
he comes and he gathers her again and again. And then in chapter
5, after magnificent emblems of his grace and descriptions
of her, in chapter 4 he says, You are all fair, you are just
perfectly beautiful, my love. There is no spot in you." And
he says, you have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. He's delighted in her. And he
comes, he creates a garden, he separates her from this world
and he makes a place for her. And he comes into that garden
where she is. He says, I've come into my garden,
my sister, my spouse. Chapter 5, verse 1. I have gathered
my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with
my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. He says, eat, oh
friends, drink, drink abundantly, oh beloved. And there in chapter
5 she, after all of those remarkable things in chapter 5 verse 2,
she finds herself sleeping. And her heart is woken by His
voice and He calls to her. He calls to her, My sister, My
love, My dove, My undefiled. He calls to her with His head
filled with dew and His locks with the drops of the night.
And then she says, I'm too busy, thank you very much. I'm too
busy. I've put off my coat, I've washed
my feet, how shall I defile them? And then in Chapter 5 and Chapter
6 we have her searching for him. She searches and she can't find
him. She calls and he gave no answer. The watchman wounded her, beat
her, took her veil, the sign of her marriage covenant with
him. And then she calls on the daughters of Jerusalem in 5 verse
8, tell him that I'm here, that I'm sick with love for him. And then they ask this question,
these daughters of Jerusalem, what is he? What is thy beloved
more than another beloved? What's he been to you? What is
he? What is he to you, that you ask
us to go and find him for you? And then she describes him. She describes him as the chief
among ten thousands, white and ruddy, his head is as most fine
gold, his locks are bushy, black as a raven, his eyes are as of
doves by the rivers of water, washed with milk and fitly set.
His cheeks are as bed of spices as sweet flowers, His lips like
lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh, His hands are as gold
rings set with the 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, as excellent as
the cedars, His mouth is most sweet, Yes, he is altogether
lovely. This is my beloved and this is
my friend." And then she's asked, where's he gone? You describe
him so beautifully, where's he gone? And she knows. She's still not there with him. She says, I am my beloved's and
my beloved is mine. He feeds among the lilies. He's
there with his flock among the lilies. He was where he always
was. It is she who's turned away from
him. Then in chapter 6, he just gives
this remarkable description. He starts in chapter 6, verse
4, and he describes her in her beauty. And he calls her in verse 16
of chapter 6 to come back. He says, return, return, return,
return, O Shulamite, that we may look upon you. And what will
we see in the Shulamite? What we see in the Shulamite
is, as it were, the company of two armies. She is both wayward. She is both black. and she is
most beautiful in the grace that he brings upon her. Such is the
battle that we have while we live on this earth. We are, as
it were, the company of two armies. He describes her and continues
to describe her in her beauty. And he describes her in not just
the beauty of her being and the beauty of her stature, he describes
her in verse 6 of chapter 7, how fair and how pleasant art
thou for love, O delights. It really says you are made beautiful
and you are made pleasant, O love for delights. And then he describes
her stature, and finally in verse 10 of chapter 7, the verse that's
before us, she gets to speak again. And she speaks these remarkable
words, which are like Paul's words in 2 Timothy, and like
words of the saints throughout the scriptures. God's children
have a right to assurance. I am my Beloved's and his desire
is toward me." And that's my topic today, this
amazing grace gift of assurance. And I trust the Lord might help
us. For most people I know and most
questions I deal with for those who are concerned in any serious
way about their souls is, am I the Lord's? Am I His? Am I saved? It's a big question. It's the
best question that you can ask. It's the most important question
in all the world. There'll come a time, won't there?
I'm over 60 years old now. I just worked it out a little
while ago. And if I live to my 3 score and 10 years, that's
3,500 days minus the bumps that I've had this year. And they
go. Like this, 300 of them go. Peter, you will confirm it, won't
you? They go. Not very long. There will come
a time in your life and mine where the only thing that will
matter, the only thing that will matter is do I know the Lord
Jesus Christ? When I meet Him in His true character
on that day, will that be a day of great delight? For God's children,
it's a day that God's children look forward to. They long for that day. In fact
John says in 1 John 4 that he's confident, he has boldness on
that day. Peter asked people to speed the
day of the Lord's coming, they wanted it to come. Why, the psalmists
are asking, why Lord are you waiting so long? And yet I find
myself Maybe you do as well, thinking that I wish it were
a long way off. I find myself like the shulamite,
comfortable on my bed, not wanting to get out and get my feet dirty. May the Lord prepare us for that
day and cause it to be a day of delight for us. A day when the troubles of this
world will be behind us. A day when endless glory. We'll see Him, brothers and sisters
in Christ, we'll see Him as He is. says John, and we'll see
him as he is because we will be like him. You see, the scriptures say,
that assurance is something that we should find delightful now. And the scriptures warn us that
if we don't find assurance now, we need to give no rest until
we have found it. Nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. So let's
just look together with me, if you can, through some of these
previous verses in Song of Solomon and we'll look and see what brought
her to this remarkable statement. He's come to her, he's expressed
his love for her, he's expressed his delight in her beauty, her
stature and her company. He says, how beautiful are your
feet with shoes, the feet that she didn't want to defile. He
finds delight in restoring her in her eyes as well. And then in verse 6 of chapter
7, he finds delight in her beauty, the beauty that he's made. He
says, how beautiful are you made, how fair are you made, and how
pleasant are you made, O love, for delights. He takes delight
in her stature, how she stands in this world, tall, erect, fruitful,
evergreen, like the palm tree. And He takes delight in verse
8, in her company and her fruitfulness. He goes up to the palm tree and
He takes hold of the boughs thereof. He takes delight in her prayers
and her praises, and he takes delight in that wine that he
has made, his sweet wine that not just touches her lips but
goes down sweetly. And it's wine that causes her
lips, the lips of her who was asleep in Chapter 5. She now
speaks. What wonderful things she says.
I am my beloved's and she is mine. Assurance is the greatest
gift and privilege of the Church. The saints spoke of assurance
again and again and again. Paul described his own experience
in Galatians 2. He says, I am crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live, and yet
not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me." Peter, after his great fall, After the resurrection, the Lord
Jesus meets with him and he says to the Lord, after those three
questions, do you really love me? Do you really love me? And
Peter says, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love
you. Peter took Jesus to what Jesus
knew about himself. The Gospels are written so that
God's people would find peace and find rest and comfort in
the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus. Again and again they write
and they pray that you will know, that you will know, that you
will know. Pope John finishes his first
letter in Chapter 5 by saying, talking about the witnesses,
they have borne witness to who the Lord Jesus is. They bear
this witness on earth. The witness of God is greater,
because it's the witness of God about His Son. And he that believes
on the Son of God has this witness in himself. He that believeth
not God has made him a liar, because he believed not the record
that God gave of His Son. And this is the record, that
God has given us eternal life. and this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has life. He that has not the Son of God
has not life. These things I have written unto
you, that you believe on the name of the Son of God, that
you may know that you have eternal life. and that you may believe
on the name of the Son of God. And this is the confidence that
we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will,
He hears us. And for those who are struggling
because of sins and other things, He hears us. sins and the trials
of life, and we know that He hears us. Whatsoever we ask,
we know that we have the petitions that we desire of Him. God's people know. was taken
by Satan under the sovereign hand of God to a place where
he'd lost his family, he'd lost his reputation, he'd lost absolutely
everything. There he was, a man sitting in
an ash heap, covered with sores and scraping the sores, the scabs
of the sores, with a piece of pottery. And then he says, I
know, I know, And that one day upon this earth,
with these eyes, I will see Him." The circumstances drive people
to look even harder. They're God's circumstances.
So as I said, assurance is a grace, a grace, gift, of God. And this is the third time that
these words are repeated in a similar fashion in Song of Solomon. In
chapter 2 verse 16 she says, My beloved is mine and I am his
and he feeds among the lilies. In chapter 6 verse 3 she says,
I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine and he feeds among the
lilies again. But here she has something more
special to say. There she is describing relationship
and describing where he is. Here she is saying, I am my beloved's
and his desire is towards me. Assurance, as I've said, is a
grace gift of God to His children. And people might say, well, it's
presumptuous of you. It's presumptuous of people not
to believe God. What a shocking thing to presume
that God, who has written these words, signed and sealed them
with the blood of His precious Son, might offer a hope might
offer an assurance that's just a mirage. It's presumptuous of
people not to believe. May God help us to believe Him,
to rest and to find ourselves trusting Him. Let's look back
just one verse and we'll see what was the immediate cause
of her making these remarkable statements. She talked about
the roof of her mouth, what she tasted, her palate. And then
we talked last week about this best wine. It's like the best
wine that goes down for my beloved, that goes down sweetly. That
is what has caused her lips to speak. As we read earlier in
chapter 5, he says, he describes the best wine. The best wine
is my wine. And we looked at it last week,
isn't it? Last week. That's the immediate source of
her speaking, was his wine. His wine going down sweet. the wine of who He is. That's
just the fundamental issue, isn't it? Saving faith is the heart
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ in His true character as it's
revealed in the Word of God. There are many Jesuses. There are many Gospels. The Bible is abundantly and plainly
clear about who Christ is. He is sovereign over all flesh. It's His sovereign right to give
life where He wishes to give life, to give it freely to whom
He will, even to the chief of sinners. For the Gospel is a
declaration of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It's who Christ
is. It's why Christ Jesus came. It's what Christ Jesus accomplished. It's where He is now. It's what Christ is doing right
now and what He shall do. I love what an old preacher who's
long dead said. My subject is always the Lord
Jesus Christ. My proof of truth is the written
word of God. My method is always preach the
word and leave the results, whatever they may be, to the Lord. We just want to preach Him as
He is. That's the sweet wine, isn't
it? That's the wine that goes down sweetly, the wine that declares
who He is. You see, assurance is a standing,
isn't it? Assurance is a settledness. Assurance is a confidence. Paul described it to the Corinthians.
in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, Moreover, brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have
received and wherein you stand, by which you are also saved,
if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed
in vain. For I delivered unto you first
of all that which I also received." Paul didn't make this up. It
came directly from God. How that Christ died for our
sins according to the Scriptures. Christ came with a purpose and
His death was a purposeful death. He died for our sins according
to the Scriptures and that He was buried and that He rose the
third day according to the Scriptures and He was seen. He was seen
by them. He was witnessed by them. They
bore witness to who He is and what He has done. Accomplished
that work and seated now as Hebrews describes Him so beautifully.
He's finished His work and He's now sitting. Is your Christ finished
and is He now sitting? He has in these last days spoken
to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, by whom He
also made the world, who being the brightness of His glory and
the express image of His person, upholding all things by the word
of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat
down on the right hand of the Majesty on High." What a remarkable
picture of our great Saviour. He came with a purpose. He did achieve that purpose perfectly
and completely. And now He's sitting So many
people have a God who is frantically running around desperately trying
to get everyone saved. We are told again and again how
much He loves everyone and He proved His love for everyone
because He died for everyone and now the Holy Spirit is sent
to this world to try and save everyone. The scriptures talk about a Christ
who is God. God who is absolutely and perfectly
sovereign, and that God is Jesus Christ. He came with perfect
knowledge. Did He know about your sins,
brothers and sisters? 2,000 years ago, the psalmist
says in Psalm 147, he says, the knowledge of God is infinite.
What knowledge did the Lord Jesus have when He came to this earth? His knowledge is absolutely infinite. Did He know? Did He know that
you, like the Shulamite, was black? Did he know that you,
like the Shulamite, having received the most abundant grace that
God could pour out, would turn and then treat him in a way which
could only be described as contemptuous? Did he know all of those things?
Did he deal with all of those sins? Has he put them away? When he by himself purged our
sins, They are gone, brothers and sisters. You see, he comes
to his bride and he takes hold of his bride. How can he take
hold of her? He is of too pure eyes to even
look on sin, and yet not only is he in this extraordinary relationship
with her where his heart is ravished by her beauty, He comes and He
takes hold. He takes her to Himself. Like
Isaiah says, He takes His lambs in His arms and He takes them
up above this earth and He holds them close to His heart and holds
them closer to heaven. How can He hold something that
is nothing but sin? He can hold something that is
nothing but sin, because the sin is perfectly put away, completely. That's the best wine, isn't it?
That's the best wine. You see, you're like me, brothers
and sisters. We're like the Shulamite, aren't we? We're in this world
and we have struggles. struggles with our flesh, struggles
with sickness, struggles with anxiety and being down. We have struggles with sins of
omission and struggles with sins of commission, co-omission. And then we look to ourselves
and we see that not only do we sin, but we have absolutely nothing
on the other side of the register at all. Not one good deed ever
done. None. Sins and no good deeds. And then the question is, how
can you have hope when all the presenting evidence is so clearly
against your profession and against your assurance? The answer is
a simple one, brothers and sisters. The evidence is not in here.
The evidence is not on this earth. The evidence sits in heaven right
now. I'm seated in heaven, brothers
and sisters. I have access with boldness to
the throne of God, like the Shulamite, a sinner like the Shulamite,
having been taken hold of. and that wine of who He is, that
wine of His absolute deity, that wine of the perfection of His
sin-bearing death. He's put away the sins of His
people perfectly, that wine which is that robe of righteousness,
that robe that He robes her with to say that she is beautiful,
that she is beautiful again and again. He says she's beautiful
eleven times. He says how beautiful she is. That wine, that wine goes down
sweetly. That wine that says that I have
absolutely no righteousness of my own. That wine that says the
Lord Jesus is all and in all. The immediate source for her
to say these words of assurance is the declaration of who He
is, the wine of this Word, the wine that represents that sin
bearing death of His, that wine that represents in scriptures
His blood that was poured out in great depths, great drops
in the garden and poured out to the end of His life upon that
cross. The wine of who he is goes down
sweetly, becomes one with us. So assurance, assurance comes
to the Shulamite because he comes to her and he brings with him
his wine, the wine of who he is, the wine of what he's done,
the wine of what he's achieved, and that causes the lips of those
who are asleep to speak. God's children speak back to
Him the words that He speaks to us, because they are His words. All of what she is, all of what
she is in Song of Solomon is but the outworking of His activities
in her. And like us, so often we need
words of comfort after we have fallen into a trial. Peter fell
into great trials, Paul and Job, and all of the people of God
fell into trials when they looked around with their eyes aflesh
and took their eyes off Him who was sitting on the throne. and
they fell, and then God comes and restores them again and again,
just like the Shulamite. Christ Jesus comes and restores
them. That's why he says in Isaiah,
doesn't he, to his people, Isaiah 40, he says, Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people. If they are my people and they
live in this world, they are struggling. If they are my people
in this world, they have afflictions. If they are my people in this
world, they have experienced things that bring them grief
that the world never knows about. If they are my people, they will
be caused to stand and suffer. for the sake of the gospel. Everyone
who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Comfort my people, says God to
his preachers. Speak to the hearts of my people. My son, says the proverb, give
me your heart. He wants to speak and He does
speak to the hearts of His people. It goes down, this wine, it goes
down sweetly. And as the Lord Jesus said in
the Sermon on the Mount, He says, where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also. And in the Song of Solomon we
see that His words of assurance and His coming to her and bringing
from her words of assurance brings with it not only a public confession
from her, but a longing desire for more fellowship. She says,
the next words are, come my beloved, let us go forth into the field,
let us lodge in the villages. God's people. hunger and thirst
for Him who is righteous. They are not satisfied. They
are not satisfied until He comes. And let's just look again at
what she says. She says, I am my Beloved. She doesn't say, I was my Beloved. I will be my Beloved. Her words
of assurance are that I am my Beloved's right now. She is His possession. She is His by creation. She is
His by that union that they had in eternity, when He has surety
for her. Garantor is not a good enough
word. If you go garantor for someone,
go garantor for your child to buy a car, and you garantor for
a thousand dollars, and he can only pay 800, you're responsible
for the other 200. When a surety makes an agreement,
the third party is irrelevant. The surety is 100% responsible. That is the responsibility that
the Lord Jesus took in eternity. And as a good and a great shepherd,
he's not going to lose one of his sheep. Not one. He knows exactly where they are.
He knows exactly what's happening to them. He knows exactly what
they need at that time. And he's watching over them as
a jealous husband. We are His, aren't we? She can
say she's His by redemption. She is black, but she's made
beautiful. She's His by regeneration. She is His as a new creation. Verse 6 says how beautiful She's
made and how pleasant She's been made. She is His in regeneration. She is His personally by the
conquest of Her heart. He has stolen Her heart and She's
delighted that He's done so. She's His by the operations of
His grace. We are, as Ephesians 2.10 says,
all of God's children. But we are His workmanship. The word workmanship means masterpiece.
He doesn't do any work that's not perfect. He doesn't do any
work that's not holy. He doesn't do any work that is
not perfectly suitable for heaven. We are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained
that we should walk in them. And here she is, what good works
of these. She speaks of him, just read
it in chapter 5. She starts at his head, perfectly
sovereign. She talks of him even when he's
absent from her. She speaks beautifully of him
from his head to his feet. Perfectly sovereign in that golden
head, set on a perfect golden foundation pillars. She's saying,
as it were, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 10, by the grace of God. I am what I am. That's assurance, brothers and
sisters. I am what I am by the grace of God and His grace is
not ineffective. His grace is powerful grace. His grace is distinguishing grace. His grace is effectual grace. Her assurance comes from her
acknowledging her ownership. She's owned by him. She's not
her own. She's been bought with a price.
I am my beloved. And then she says, his desire
is for me. His desire is towards me. I think one of the things that's
so hard for us to grasp is that we can read this book and we
can study doctrine and we can study the great truths of the
scriptures. and we can tick the boxes on
a whole lot of them. They're not very hard to read
in there. But the scriptures go a step
further, don't they? They actually talk, and Song
of Solomon is remarkable, but the rest of the scriptures reveal
the same truth, that there is not just an acknowledgement of
truth, but there's an emotional reaction to truth. It talks about
his desire. He has created a desire in her. God talks in 2 Thessalonians
in the most remarkably stark words about those who acknowledge
something of truth and they refuse to love the truth. So it's all
very well to tick the box on the sovereignty of God, and tick
the box on election, and tick the box on a whole bunch of other
incredibly important doctrines. And we ought to stand for them,
we ought to defend them with all of our passion. But we must
love them. See, God's children, that sweet
wine is the love of the truth. He talks about the deceivableness
of unrighteousness in them that perish because they receive not
the love of the truth that they might be saved. You see, this
is more than just a cold doctrinal issue. It's a desire that he
has. His love relationship creates
love in his people for him and love for his truth. And what
does he say? Just listen to some of the words
of his desire. He says, but to the saints, to
the holy ones that are in the earth, to the excellent, Psalm
16 verse 3, in whom is all my delight. Psalm 45.11 says, So shall the
king greatly desire thy beauty, for he is the Lord, and you worship
him. Psalm 132 verse 13 says, For
the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it for his habitation. This, he says, this, this church,
This church is my rest forever. Here I will dwell, for I have
desired it." You see, God's desire, the desire of the Lord Jesus,
is not separated from all of His other attributes, is it?
His desire is a desire that is accompanied by perfect, absolute,
sovereign will. He always gets His desire. What
did he pray on that last night he spent on this earth? He was about to go to the garden. He says, verse 24 of chapter
17 of John's Gospel, Father I will. that they also, whom Thou hast
given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory,
which Thou hast given me, for Thou loves me before the foundation
of the world." Do you reckon the Father granted
that request? Yes or no? I think he did. That's what the
resurrection is all about. Of course he did. Thou be with
him. and what remarkable promises
go along with that desire. And he says, the glory which
you have given me, I have given them, that they may be one even
as we are one. I in them and you in me, that
they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that
you have sent me, and has loved them as you have loved me." It's very
simple, isn't it? What he's saying is that the
Father has these people and He loved them exactly as He loved
the Lord Jesus. What's Colossians 3 says? Our
lives are now hidden with Christ in God. That's a place of assurance,
brothers and sisters. That's a place of comfort. That's
a place of rest. His desire, his desire is towards
her. His desire fixes itself on particular
people. It's efficacious. It achieves
exactly what he desired in eternity. He gets His will and He gets
His way. That's what it is to be God. You see, that's why this Gospel,
this Gospel which is a declaration of Christ Jesus God, Christ Jesus
sovereign, Christ Jesus ruling, Christ Jesus successful, Christ
Jesus the substitute for sinners, When this Gospel comes, when
Paul brought this Gospel to the Thessalonians, he says, this
Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in
the Holy Spirit and in much assurance. If you read the rest of 1 Thessalonians,
you'll see the impact that that Gospel had on them. He goes on
to say, he says, brothers and sisters, knowing your election
of God, They knew. They knew that they were chosen
of God. So real assurance, just to summarise,
real assurance comes from the Lord. It is He who came to her. It's He who spoke words to her. It's He who spoke her new creation
into existence and sustained it. It's He who comes and speaks
words of promise. It's resting in promises of God,
not in man's activities, but in what the Lord Jesus has done. It is, real assurance is something
that comes from Him doing that work, which is a pruning work,
sometimes the chastening work. But it's always a work, isn't
it? It's always a work that's perfect. He says, I will heal
their backslidings, Isaiah 14. I'll heal their backslidings,
I'll love them freely. I love them without cause in
them." I want to be loved like that, brothers and sisters. I
see nothing in me. I see nothing in me that warrants
anything from God. You see, He creates this desire
in her heart and then He comes and wonderfully fulfills it.
He comes to reassure her that despite her wanderings, despite
her failings, she is his bride still. She is his spouse. She is the Prince's daughter. He creates a hunger in her and
he feeds it. He's wounded her and he heals. He's hidden his face from her
and he's come and he revealed his face to her. and she can
say these remarkable words. He set a limit to how far she
can fall, the righteous fall again and again and again, and
they are restored. As he says in Psalm 18, for you
will save the afflicted people. Any afflicted people here? but
will bring down the high looks. May God give you real genuine
low looks of yourself. You can't think too lowly. For
you will light my candle. The Lord my God will enlighten
my darkness. Jenny might have forgotten, she
gave me a little plaque and it's on my desk. We need our darkness enlightened
by our God. And finally, assurance is personal,
isn't it? She says, I am my beloved's,
and his desire is toward me. She acknowledges that she's his,
personally, effectively. And it's a rightful blessing
of every child of God to know their assurance. It's a rightful
grace gift of God for him to come to those he's loved and
shed his life's blood for, to remind them of who he is and
what he has done. It's a right and proper thing
for him to reveal himself in his true character to his bride,
to take her to himself, to hold and to have from this day forth. May God cause us to have those
words that she says as our words. I am my beloved's and his desire
is toward me. And may those who don't know
him and can't say those words, may you be like Jacob. Don't let him go until he blesses
you. May the Lord bless us and keep
us. Let's pray.