If you turn in your Bibles to the Song of Solomon, it's often interesting to ponder,
isn't it, that Solomon, our friend who wrote this most remarkable
of stories and allegory, a picture, a picture of God's church in
this world, a picture of every individual member of God's church
in this world. We're in Song of Solomon chapter
6. But as we read Psalm 34, it's
interesting to ponder, isn't it, that Solomon had these psalms
of his father before him. What amazing conversations those
two men might have had. Solomon wasn't a young man when
he became king. David had had him, he was at
least 20 years old when and he became king. Solomon would have
had these words before him and at the very least the God, the
Holy Spirit, who wrote the words we have before us would have
led him to see these beautiful things, isn't it? You see verse
5, we read, they looked to him and they were lightened. They looked to him and they were
radiant. and their faces shall never be
ashamed." So they looked to Him. They cried to Him, the next verse. Verse 8, O taste and see that
the Lord is good. The Shulamite had tasted and
seen that the Lord is good. She had been taken into His banqueting
house. She had been commanded to feast. And then verse 11, He says, come
you children, hearken unto me and I will teach you the fear
of the Lord. Then in verse 15, the eyes of
the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open to their
cry. And in this passage of Song of
Solomon we have followed the Shulamite, followed the church,
followed ourselves, as we move from that place of sin and departure
from Him, and we look and we cry and we seek His face. The righteous cry, verse 17,
and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. She's pictured as someone with
a broken heart. In verse 18, the Lord is nigh
unto them that are of a broken heart and saves such as a contrite
spirit. David knew what it was to have
a broken heart and a contrite spirit. He says in Psalm 51,
that great Psalm, of his penitence before his God, after he had
murdered Uriah, after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba,
Solomon's mother, what conversations they would have had. He says
the sacrifices of God, Psalm 51, 17, are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise. The Lord, back to Psalm 34, the
Lord is near to them that are of a broken heart and saves such
as be of a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the
righteous. Many are the afflictions of the
righteous. Someone says to you, come to
Jesus and all of your problems will be solved and your life
will be full of wealth and riches and glory and power and all those
good things that are promised by so many. They are just telling
bald-faced lies to people. It is just a lie. Many are the
afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out
of them all. At the end of that psalm, the
Lord redeems the soul of His servant. None of them that trust
in Him shall be desolate. We have in Song of Solomon the
most remarkable pictures of salvation by grace, don't we? It's called
the Holy of Holies in the Bible and set before us is the beauty
of an intimacy of a love relationship with the Lord God, the Lord Jesus
and His Bride. the bride who is his delight."
And in the beginning of chapter 6, she's asked, where's he gone? And then she knows, 6.2, where
he's gone. He's gone down to his garden.
And she says, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. He feeds
among the lilies. And these are the first words
in 6.4 of the returning Shulamite. Thou art beautiful, O my love,
as Terza, a beautiful city in Israel, as beautiful as Jerusalem,
terrible as an army with banners. She has returned, and then the
first words from him are words of love. And this verse 5, I'd
like to look at principally this morning, it is just the most
remarkable verse. He says, Turn your eyes away
from Me, turn thine eyes from Me, for they have overcome Me. And then he gives a description
of her, which is the same description he gave in chapter 4. Thy hair
is as a flock of goats that appear in Gilead. Your hair, as it falls
across your face, is like a flock of goats frisking down the slopes
of Mount Gilead. Your teeth, you are perfect in
his sight. the flock of sheep which go up
from the washing thereof. Everyone bears twins and there's
not one barren among them. As a piece of pomegranate are
thy temples within your locks. Your cheeks behind your veil
are like pomegranate halves, lovely and delicious, beautiful
and red. There be threescore queens, fourscore
concubines, and virgins without number. Though there be all of
these extraordinary women around, queens, concubines, it really
is speaking of a number of infinite proportion amongst all of these
exalted ones. You, my dove, verse 9, my undefiled
is but one. She is the chief, she is the
most glorious. She is the only one of her mother,
she is the choice of the one that bare her. The daughters
saw her and blessed her, yea, the queens and the concubines,
they praised her. Who is she that looks forth as
the morning, as fair, as beautiful as the moon, as clear as the
sun, as terrible as an army with banners? And then he says in
verse 12, I was ever aware my soul made me like the chariots
of Aminadib. And that word just means my people
are willing." My people's willingness. His soul is moved. Then he says something remarkable
in verse 13, doesn't he? He says a word which is a word
to all of us, again and again, isn't it? In fact, when God says
something once, it's important. When he says something twice,
It's incredibly important. When He says something three
times, it's remarkably important. What did the angels say to Isaiah
when they'd seen, when Isaiah saw the Lord as holy, holy, holy? But what does He say to us? Return, return, O Shulamite. Return, return. four times, He encourages us
to return, to come back, to come and delight in Him yet again. But I'd like us to go back, having
that overview in our minds, to verse 5. And it is the most remarkable
verse, isn't it? He says, Your eyes, turn away your eyes
from me, for they have overcome me. Turn your eyes from me, they
have overcome me." It's remarkable, isn't it? What
he's saying is that you, looking to me, have overwhelmed me. Isn't it a remarkable thing?
What a remarkable word from our God. You've overwhelmed me. You've made me to fly away. Oh, you have lifted me up. In a sense it can also mean that
you've taken away my strength. Isn't it a remarkable thing?
We can think of the reverse so often. But to think of what God
says about the love He has, the love His Son has for His Bride,
and the delight that He has in her looking to Him is a remarkable
thing. If God would give us the opportunity,
it would be wonderful this morning if we could just look at the
fact of it. You could look a little at the
reason for it and maybe the Lord might help us to look at some
of the implications of it. that he has said over and over
again, doesn't he, of her. He says, you have ravished my
heart, my sister, my spouse. You have ravished my heart. He says it again so that we'd
understand that his heart love for his bride is intense and
amazing. You've ravished my heart with
one of your eyes. And here he says, He says, turn
your eyes away from me. Turn your eyes away from me.
It's not that he's asking her not to do it. He's just expressing
the depth of the emotion that he feels. He's overwhelmed. He's overwhelmed by her. She's looked to Him, hasn't she,
as we've gone through this journey with her. She's looked to Him
in repentance. She's looked to Him in faith
and she's looked to Him in love. She's longed after Him. She's
longed after His presence. She's longed after His peace. She's longed after His embrace,
His understanding, His compassion, His forgiveness, His mercy and
His grace. Her eyes were upon Him, weren't
they, in all of this journey. From the time her sin was revealed
to her, her heart was upon Him. She sought Him. And she called
to him, and she couldn't find him, and he didn't answer. She was beaten, her veil removed,
and she called on others to help her find him. And all of this,
we have to remember, she was doing with no doubt tears in
her eyes. Feeling the want of her separation
from him because of her sins. And then she speaks of him through
those eyes of faith, and she speaks of him in the most extraordinary
ways. She longs for him, and she looks
to him, and she speaks delightful things about him. He's the chief
among 10,000, and she talks about him from head to foot, and all
of it glorious pictures of both him and his relationship with
her. And now she's been restored and
she hears him speak. What a remarkable returning it
is, brothers and sisters. What a remarkable thing it is
that the Lord, who superintends all things, sets a limit on sin,
sets a limit on pain, sets a limit on tears. He knows our tears. He knows our tears. He knows
what causes our tears. He actually says that he keeps
them in a bottle. Not one of them falls to the
ground from the eyes of his bride without him being deeply and
passionately aware of it. Many are the afflictions of the
righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. But what a remarkable thing,
that people like us, Sins like us can overwhelm God, but He
can be overcome, that we can win the conquest of His heart. Of course it doesn't imply any
weakness in our Lord Jesus, but it shows us again and again why
from eternity. He chose that bride, that delightful
gift of the Father. He chose her because he loved
her. And he came here and he donned
human flesh and he was afflicted as we were afflicted. in all
points as we are, without sin. He donned human flesh so that
He could be one with us. He donned human flesh so that
He could be married to us. He donned human flesh that we
might be robed in that glorious resurrection body that He now
has in heaven. that there might be an intimacy
of relationship, an intimacy that's felt, that there is a
love that's reciprocated. We've got to keep remembering,
haven't we, it's so easy for us who talk so much about God's
sovereignty to slip into an idea that God has just sort of mechanically
wound up this universe and things just roll along. without him
being intimately involved in it. Nothing can be further from
the truth. Solomon of all books of the Bible
outlines that so clearly, but so do the Psalms and so does,
if anything else, so does the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus. Just think of the intimacy of
relationship that he had with those people that he came across. the outcasts, the sinners, the
despairing, the ones that had sought help like the bleeding
woman. For all of those years and with
no help from all of those physicians or all of that religion, He comes
to her and she just touches Him and there is that beautiful intimacy. to a dead girl lying on a bed
in an overwhelmed family. The Lord Jesus comes. He comes
and it's always with His people. It's always with the greatest
intimacy and the greatest love and the greatest evidence of
His personhood. God is spirit, but in the Lord
Jesus In that great God that we love to proclaim, God our
Saviour, there is an intimacy which is so deep and it's a reciprocated
intimacy. He's overcome, He's overwhelmed,
in the sense it's almost as if He's overpowered by the faith
and love of His people. Let's look at some of the scriptures
that show God, show our great God being overcome. There are several of them in
the scriptures, we might just turn to a few. But in Genesis
32 we have a great picture of a man like we are, wrestling with God. Jacob was
on his way home to meet his brother who had sworn to kill him. And Jacob had sent his wives
and his flocks and his gifts and his men all ahead of him
and he'd gone back over the Ford Jabbok. He sent them over, verse 23,
chapter 32 of Genesis. And he took them, he sent them
over the brook, and he sent over all that he had. And Jacob was
left alone, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking
of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed
not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the
hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with
him. And he said, let me go for the day breaks. And he said,
I will not let you go except you bless me. And he said to
him, what is your name? And he said, Jacob. Jacob means
deceiver, shifty, crafty, deceitful. And he said, Thy name shall be
called no more Jacob, but Israel. Israel means Prince of God. Prince of God. For as a prince
thou hast thou power with God and with men and has prevailed. And Jacob asked him and said,
Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it
that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And
Jacob called the name of the place Peniel. For I have seen God face to face,
and my life is preserved. I have seen God face to face.
He's wrestled with God. He said to God that he wouldn't
let him go unless he blesses him. You see, there was a deep
sense as Jacob was wounded and he had no power at all with God. In the deep sense of his weakness
and in a sense his dependence, he then receives the blessing. Grace alone can save. Grace alone can give. Grace alone can bring people
to see God face to face. Imagine that, seeing God face
to face and my life is preserved, preserved by God, preserved because
Jacob was chosen, preserved because Jacob was loved infinitely, loved
eternally, loved freely, loved unconditionally. Loved by a sovereign
God of sovereign grace. You see, we've got to keep remembering
when we come to the scriptures and we see people talking to
God, when people talk to God, it's prayer. If there's one thing
I would like for the Lord to lay on our hearts again and again
this morning, is that God delights in the presence of His people.
He delights in the look of His people to Him, a look of dependence,
a look that says, I am weak and I need help. A look that looks
in faith and says, you have promised to bless. You have promised to
answer prayer. Prayer is powerful. Keep on praying. Look to God. Look to Him. Look to Him. Look to Him and honour His very
being. by looking to Him in faith, looking
to Him to do the things that He's promised to do. Why has
He raised us up as a church? I love what Paul was told in
Acts 18. There he was in Corinth and he's
had a tough time, but wherever he goes, he ends up in trouble. You cannot talk to religious
people without them being offended. cannot talk to the people of
this world without the gospel being a fence. There he is having
a tough time, and God says to him, you here in Corinth, preach
on, brother Paul. You preach on. Why do you keep
preaching? Because I have many people in
this city. One of the things that I believe
that we may in the providence of God see is that God has raised
up this church because He has people in this city. We know
He has people in this city. God has raised us up to glorify
Him, to see Him face to face and be preserved, to magnify
His name, If it's few, it matters little. What does it matter if
the Lord Jesus is here? What does it matter what people
say? What does it matter what it feels
like? What does it matter what other
people say? We can come to God. Scriptures
again and again call on us to pray, to call on Him. to come before Him with an expectation,
faith's expectation, that God will do more than we can imagine
or ask. Let's turn over to the next book
of the Bible and we'll see another man who wrestled with God. You know the story in Exodus. Chapter 32, after the days of
the golden calf, in the days of the golden calf. They couldn't
wait after God had revealed His glory, His providence, the magnificent
sovereignty He has of separating His people and preserving them
and bringing them out of the furnace of Egypt. destroying
all their enemies before their eyes and feeding them and caring
for them. And Aaron breaks off these earrings
and he says that he put it into the fire and out popped a golden
calf. Moses is on the mountain. God
says in verse 8, He says, they have turned aside quickly out
of the way which I commanded them, and they've made them a
molten calf and worshipped it. You've got to keep remembering
that they said that the molten calf was the God that brought
them out of Egypt. They weren't denying that it
was a God. What they'd done is what happens
over and over again throughout time, is that people create a
God of their imaginings and then worship it, calling it the real
God. It's happening right now in many
places around this world. And they said, These be thy gods,
O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold,
it is a stiff-necked people. Verse 10, Now therefore let me
alone that my wrath may wax hot against them, and I may consume
them, and I will make thee a great nation. There's Moses with the
most remarkable situation laid out before him. Here I am Moses,
I can start all over again and you will be like Abraham. I will make you the patriarch
of a great nation. And Moses besought the Lord his
God and said, Lord, why does thy wrath wax hot against thy
people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt
with great power and a mighty hand? Listen to how Moses prays. Wherefore should the Egyptians
speak and say, for mischief did he bring them out, to slay them
in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth?
Turn from thy fierce wrath and repent of this evil against thy
people." Listen to what he says to God. He says to God, you remember
your covenant, remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, thy servants
to whom thou swearest by thine own self and said to them, I
will multiply your seeds as the stars of heaven and all this
land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed and they
shall inherit it forever. He takes God to God's promises. and says, these are the promises
that you have made. What remarkable promises He has
made to you brothers and sisters. What remarkable promises in that
eternal everlasting covenant that He made with Abraham, Isaac
and my servants. And then in verse 14 it says,
and the Lord repented of the evil, not that the Lord's activities
are evil. Whatever God does is perfectly
righteous and just. It would have been a great evil
upon that nation if the Lord had struck them as they deserved,
which He thought to do unto His people. Moses prevailed with
God. He sought His face and overcame
Him. One of my favourite stories,
and I'm happy to repeat it again and again, is in Luke, I mean
Matthew, sorry, I beg your pardon, Matthew 15, and it's the story
of the Canaanite woman, the Syro-Phoenician woman in Matthew 15 verse 22. Jesus, verse 21, Jesus went and
departed into the coast of Tyre and Sidon and behold a woman
of Canaan came out of the same coast. So she was accursed, daughter
of accursed generation, crying unto him, saying, Have
mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David, my daughter is grievously
vexed with the devil. He answered her, not a word. And His disciples came and besought
Him, saying, Send her away. So the Lord Jesus doesn't speak
to her. The Lord Jesus' apostles say
in her presence, no doubt, Send her away. She's just bothering
us. And then He says to her, He answered
and said, I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house
of Israel. You see, the Lord Jesus never
shied away from declaring particular redemption, effective redemption. He never shied away from declaring
His absolute sovereignty in salvation. He never shied away from declaring
that He had a bride, He had a people in this world that He must save
and He would save. And those that walked away from
him in unbelief revealed that they were not of his sheep. He says, I was not sent but unto
the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But listen to this. What a great encouragement this
is to persevere in prayer, brothers and sisters. She came and she
worshipped him saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and
said, it's not right to take the children's bread and cast
it to their dogs. It's not right for me to take
the things that belong to the people of Israel and just throw
it out there to the Gentiles, the Gentile dogs. You see, our Shulamite like God
does in the lives of his people. was lost and mournful and weeping
and tearful, and she sought Him and she sought Him, and she pleaded
with others to help her. She just kept searching for Him. She didn't give up. The faith
that God plants in the lives of His people is a faith that
lives, a faith that grows, and a faith that keeps looking to
the Lord Jesus. He says, it's not right to take
the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. And she said,
truth, Lord, it's true. What you say is true. You are sovereign and I acknowledge
your sovereignty. Yet dogs eat of the crumbs which
fall from their master's table. Even though she was from Canaan,
outside of Israel, she knew her history. She may have known his
history in his very lineage was a crumb that fell to a young
girl from Moab. called Ruth. In his lineage was
a crumb that fell to a harlot in the town of Jericho called
Rahab. Crumbs had fallen, crumbs had
fallen to the Gentiles. Then Jesus answered, and said
unto her, O woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee even as
thou will. And her daughter was made whole
at that very hour. She'd come to the Lord. She'd
come looking and longing and despairing and no doubt weeping. Like the Shulamite, she had felt
His absence. She'd felt what seems to be Him
turning away and rejecting her, and yet she prevailed. You see, the Lord looks on His
people and He's just overwhelmed by them. What an encouragement
to pray, brothers and sisters. Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. How unbelieving we are of our
God so often. How often Do we pray, and we
really pray, not expecting God to answer? What a shocking thing.
It's not a wonder that God answers prayer. The wonder is that if
He doesn't answer prayer, because He's promised. He's promised. Turn your eyes away from me,
they have overcome me. God's children His beloved children
are led by His sovereignty to look unto Him and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth. In salvation we look to Him. It's a look to Him. It's a looking
to Him in desperate need. He's revealed to us that we are
sinners. He's revealed to us that there
is but one hope for sinners. And that is in Him. And we look
and He's overwhelmed. We look and He looks upon His
Bride with a sense of overwhelming compassion and love. We look to Him when we're like
the Shulamite, when we've wandered astray, when our departing from
Him has brought us into places that cause us grief and anguish. And we turn and we look back
to Him and we find Him looking upon us with the most extraordinary
delight. He looks back and says, you are
beautiful. Return, return. Don't stay out
there. Don't stay away from me. Return,
return. Come back. We are called upon to look to
Him when there's a sense of our sin that's heavy upon us. And we look to Him, we look to
our Saviour and we look to Him bleeding on that cross, bearing
our sins in His own body on the tree, bearing the infinite wrath
of God. bringing us back to God. We look to Him in that term. We look to Him dead. The wages of sin is death. He bore our sins. He bore our
death. And we look to Him in heaven
and what's happening in heaven right now. For the joy, it says in Hebrews
12, for the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising
the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of the throne
of God. We sang about it before, isn't
it? For the joy set before him in that garden when he was weeping. And he goes to his father and
he says, if you can take this cup away from me, please take
it away from me. He knew what the cup was, the
infinite wrath of a holy God upon sin. And he knew that that
sin would be laid upon him. And he turns to his father and
he goes back and what does he see? Peter, James and John. asleep. But how does He look
upon them? How does our Saviour look upon
them? He looks upon them with the most infinite love and compassion. And He goes back to His Father
and He says, Your will be done and not mine. I will drink that
cup I will drink that cup to the dregs for these." He goes
backwards and forwards from his people to his father and says,
I will bear their sins, I will bear their wrath for the joy
set before him. He endured that cross. The joy that's set before Him
is the love that He has for His bride and the love that He has
for the glory of His Father's holy name. We look to Him in
all things. We look to Him in matters of
providence. We look to Him when troubles
come. We look to Him when we're praying
for ourselves, that God might give us belief to really trust
Him, to be like a child. a dependent child that looks
and doesn't question Him, looks and expects and knows that He
loves. He loves His people infinitely. We look to Him when we're praying
on behalf of others. All of us, all of us here have
people that we love. people that we care for very
deeply, people for whom we have reason to bear the deepest concerns
that a child of God can possibly bear. But we look to Him and
He says, keep praying, keep wrestling, keep looking, keep praying, Keep
on praying until the doors of hell are shut. God's children
have every reason to pray and pray and pray. And we look to
Him and we long for His appearing. We long for Him to come back.
We long for Him to restore all things and put them right. We look to Him and our eyes overcome
Him, remarkably, brothers and sisters. She says, I am my Beloved's and
my Beloved is mine. And His first words and His ongoing
words to us, as thou art beautiful, O my love, the ones that I love
are beautiful. The ones that I love overwhelm
me with their eyes as they gaze upon me and they look to me to
provide. He will provide, brothers and
sisters, more than we can imagine or ask. May He, in grace, cause
us to be people who are looking, looking expectantly, looking
hopefully, looking to Him. Let's pray.