Often when we get together and
we have people like Jerry come and others and they remind us
that God's people travel in some sense as wilderness wanderers.
in this world, and we keep saying, why? Why don't more people delight
in the things that we delight, that are on the surface of the
Scriptures? They're not hidden things that
we delight in. The majesty and the glory of
the triune God, the wonders of redeeming love, the beauty of
the fact that our Saviour cannot fail in His work. what God purposed in eternity
must come to pass. His love doesn't change. His redemption is perfectly complete. He loves his people with an everlasting
love. And Song of Solomon is one of
those beautiful portions of the scriptures. And we might think
that we live in a desolate time, for the gospel. There were no good old days.
The days have always been days like the days. Anyway, Joseph
Irons said, this dwarfish age is not likely to esteem this
book as it ought to be esteemed. Then he says, only those who
have lived near Jesus, have drunk out of his cup, have eaten his
flesh, drunk his blood, only those who know the fullness of
the word and communion can sit down to this book with delight,
and pleasure, and to such men these words as are wafers made
with honey, manna, angels' food. Every sentence is like gold,
and every word is like much fine gold. Spurgeon said, let me prefer
this book above all others for fellowship and communion. And
then he said, when the Christian is nearest heaven, when the Christian
is nearest heaven, this is the book he takes with him. This is about the only book he
could sing in heaven. He could sing this through, still
praising him who is the everlasting lover and friend. And so this is a much maligned
book in our world. If you go, as I have been to
the Bible colleges of this land, you are taught that it's a fair
possibility that Solomon was not saved, and that this is a
book that is most likely just about the love between a husband
and a wife. Earthly, carnal love between
a man and a wife. They might then go and say, well
Solomon is writing about his marriage to Pharaoh's daughter. And yet the one animal the Egyptians
despised were sheep. And yet she is reflected upon
as a member of a flock, and sheep are spoken of often. She's told
to come away, in these verses that we read just a little while
ago, come away from Lebanon and from Amarna, from those hills
that separated God's land from the Gentile world. She would
not have known of them, Pharaoh's daughter, and she wouldn't have
been delighted in them. She's compared to Pharaoh's horses. It would be a pretty poor comparison
for someone who lived in Pharaoh's temple. It's a book. It's very plainly a book about
that deep and abiding love relationship between the Lord Jesus and his
bride. And in 4 verse 9, which is the
verse we're going to talk about most this morning, we're looking
at some words of scripture which are just remarkable. We can imagine, can't we, that
when we gaze upon the Lord Jesus, we can be just overcome overcome
as those men were on that Mount of Transfiguration, just overcome
by His Majesty, as John was, as Isaiah was, as Ezekiel was,
as Job was. When man comes face to face with
God, he's just overcome. And for those who are God's children,
we can understand why He would ravish our heart. But just read
what God says here. This is the Lord Jesus speaking
of his bride. Thou hast ravished my heart,
my sister, my spouse. Thou hast ravished my heart with
one of thine eyes. This word ravished is a remarkably
difficult word to translate. It's almost as if a new word
has been created to somehow illustrate how much the Lord Jesus is overcome
by the beauty of his bride. It means to be beheartened. In
a sense, you have stolen my heart. You have heartened me. And only
the grace of God, working powerfully, can help us to enter into something
of the truth of these remarkable words of our Saviour. wonderful
words of truth, he speaks to his bride. Only divine revelation
from heaven can make these realities our realities. These are the
words of our Saviour, our God who cannot lie. Thou hast ravished
my heart. This is what church, what real
church gatherings are about. We're not here to entertain.
We're not here to put on a show. We are here to lift up the Lord
Jesus, to see Him exalted, just to look afresh upon Him. to turn our eyes away from the
things of the world, to turn our eyes away from ourselves,
to turn our eyes heavenward, to turn our eyes Godward. These words are spirit and life. May God make them spirit and
life. These words that God uses to
call out his people. Jerry and I were talking this
morning about how he was called out. You hear the gospel and
there's a certain sound that allures you. What attracts us
to the gospel? It's just the reality of the
beauty of who God really is. And also the reality of who we
really are. This word that calls us out.
calls us out of darkness, transfers us into a kingdom of light, the
kingdom of His dear Son. It comforts the hearts of God's
people. It establishes our hearts. It stills the gnawing consciences. that God's people who have hearts
of flesh have. We are more aware of our sin
and our weakness than the people of this world. And it causes
us to know that the reality that matters, the only reality that
matters is the reality that God speaks into existence. The truth
of my life, is not what you see about me or what I see about
myself. The truth of who we are is what
God says about us, not about our feelings and our experiences,
good and bad. It's about His Word. His word
of reality. And as He says earlier on in
chapter one, He takes His flock and He makes His flock to rest
at noon, to rest from the heat, the burning heat of the midday
sun. This is a remarkable verse. to
rest in. This is a wonderful verse, to
rest in. It's the work of grace. Thou
hast ravished my heart. He says he's overcome with joy
and delight. And as I said, for us who know
that we are but black and we are but sin, and it's all we
do in our flesh is sin, We see the beauty of His perfections
and we are amazed. But here, the Lord Jesus looks
upon us and His heart is ravished. We love Him because He first
loved us. And this verse gives us something
of the depth of that love. In a sense, the Word says that
He is wounded in heart with the arrow of love. that he sees in
his people. Hebrews 12.2 talks about the
joy that was set before him. What joy was set before the Lord
Jesus? What joy caused him to do what
he did and to go through what he did? There are many things
that you can think of that bring joy to him. The joy of magnifying,
the character of his father as holy and just and righteous in
saving sinners and condemning unbelievers. But here we know,
and the Bible tells us again and again, that the joy that
was set before him was the joy of beholding his bride. This bride given to him by his
father. This bride betrothed to him. In verse 11 of chapter 3 we see
that this is the day of his espouses. It's a reference to that day
of marriage and the consummation of marriage. He looked upon her
and he set his heart like a flint to go to Calvary's tree. The thought of spending eternity
with her, in a sense it heartened him, almost burst his heart. You've ravished my heart. He
has made his spouse to be particularly and perfectly beautiful in his
sight, robed with the robe of his imputed righteousness. His imparted righteousness He
robes us with. His joy and delight is to look
upon her. He has been ravished by her beauty. Altogether she is lovely in Him
and only in Him. just with one glance of her eyes,
you have behearted me, you have stolen my heart, he says. As
we know, in chapter one the bride says, I am black. I am black. In fact, we can leave
the italicised am out, and it just says, I black. Nothing in the Bride by nature
is lovely, but only in His creation. He made her, He adored her, He
adorns her, and He washes her. How does Isaiah chapter 1 put
it in talking of our sins? He says, Let us reason together,
says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson,
they shall be as wool. He's washed her. She's now robed
in His righteousness. This is love. This is real love. Herein is love, says the Apostle
John. Herein is love. Not that we loved Him, but that
He loved us. What shall he not do for the
one he loves? As we spoke a while ago, God
moved nations to get Isabel to Australia to hear the gospel. God moves all things in this
universe He moves all people so that they will come under
the sound of His words of love to His bride. He moves everything
for His people. He has loved us, says Jeremiah
31.3, He's loved us with an everlasting love. Therefore, what does He
do? He draws us. draws us. He keeps saying in
Song of Solomon, doesn't he? Come away, rise up my love, my
fair one, come away. Come with me, he says. He lures
her, he draws her. He's made us to be beautiful
in the Lord Jesus. We have a new heart, given by
the Holy Spirit. And that heart really does love
God. That heart really does serve
God. That heart really does worship
God. He beholds that love, the love
that is His to create and His to give. He beholds that heart
of love and his heart is ravished. You see he took on flesh and
blood, didn't he, so that he could have the closest possible
communion with his bride that this creation knows. That's how
much he loves us. He sees in us and He gives us
His Spirit, and we see it again in 1 Corinthians 2.16, we have
the mind of Christ. We have, in a sense, given to
us through His Spirit taking these words and making them real,
we have the communications from God, and they become real communications,
and they're revealing to us again and again. What are they revealing?
They're revealing Him and His work. That's what delights the
believers, isn't it? We delight to talk about Him
and what He's done. What indescribable love and mercy. You think back on your life,
my brothers and sisters. You think back on your times
of wickedness and unbelief. And for those of you like me
who have been converted late in life, it's a sorry, sorry
tale. And yet all through that time,
My God never stopped loving me. He hedged me about, says Hosea. He hedged me about with thorns,
and I fell on them many times. But they drove me, and He drew
me to Himself. What remarkable mercy and love
from our God! And who is it that He loves? We spoke when we last looked
at Psalm Solomon about what it is to be the sister and the spouse. It's good to be reminded, isn't
it? By divine election chosen by the Father in the Lord Jesus. And he says in Hebrews that he's
not ashamed to call us brethren. He that sanctifieth, and he who
is sanctified, are all of one. We have the same Father, and
in regeneration we have the same nature, His righteousness. 1 John 3 What are we called? Behold, what manner of love The Father has bestowed on us
that we should be called children of God. Therefore the world does
not know us. It cannot understand us. It cannot
understand what we delight in. because it did not know him. We are a separate people, a called
out people. We predestinated to the adoption
of children by Jesus Christ to himself. Jerry has two delightful
adopted daughters. What great love drew he and his
wife. What great love sustains that
adoption? What remarkable adoption we have
as the children of God. In ourselves, nothing but sin. But 1 Peter says that we are
made partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption
that is in the world through lust. And the Lord Jesus saw
his bride in the fall of Adam, he loved her. Ephesians 5.26 talks about how
God's children are set apart, I know. We are sanctified, called
out. loved by Him as He loves His
Church as one. We're set apart, we're called
out to be holy, to be used by no one else for His pleasure. and for His delight. We are not
our own. We've been bought with a price. And every moment, every tiny
moment of every day, we are continually cleansed, cleansed from the defilement
of sin. We have our consciences washed
clean. We grieve over the sin that we
are and the sins that we do. And yet our Saviour says, you
have rubbished my heart, my sister, my spouse. To remind us continually
of His great love, that everlasting love, that unchanging love, that
love that is pure, that love that sees all and loves and forgives. because those sins have been
taken away, as Jeremiah 50 says, they'll be sought for, but they
won't be found, brothers and sisters. What great love, what
powerful and effective love. Whoever does the will of my Father
in heaven, This one, says the Lord Jesus, is my brother, my
sister, and my mother. And then we are called to say,
how can that be of me? How can that be of me? We have, according to Romans
7, that law of sin. that works in our lives. But
we have also a law of God that we delight in. And in Ezekiel
36, we are reminded again of what's going on. He takes us
from the nations, Ezekiel 36, 24, and he sprinkles clean water
on you and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your
filthiness and from all your idols. And then he says, I will
give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone
out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put
my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and
you will keep my judgments and do them. That's how God's children
do the will of the Father. We do the will of the Father
because of the grace of God in the Lord Jesus in our lives. He says that we are God's workmanship,
a new creation. In fact, it's a bigger word than
workmanship, isn't it? God's masterpiece is what it
means. Does he make any mistakes, brothers
and sisters? Can he err in anything he does? In his bride, he sees the real
love of God in the new heart. That new heart that's written
in their heart by the words, by the hand of God himself. A
new creation. A new heart. A new heart that
really loves God. See, as I said earlier, the real
reality is the reality that God describes and God seals in the
blood of His Son. We are what God says we are. As I've enjoyed telling you several
times, that beautiful verse at the beginning of the Scriptures,
which is repeated in a sense in terms of the new creation
in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 6, isn't it? Let light shine where there
is darkness. And all of a sudden a light shines
and what do we see? We see the glory of God in the
face of the Lord Jesus. But in the beginning, in that
Hebrew, it says, Light be, light was. When God speaks, creation
happens and reality comes into existence. He said, let there
be lights in the skies. And all of a sudden, how many
billions of suns were created? Our moon and the sun, how many
were there? A hundred billion times a hundred
billion, they keep on counting as they get better ways of looking
at them all. Just a reality, isn't it? We touch this reality
and this reality reminds us that this reality is here because
God speaks. And so it is in spiritual life. He says that this new heart loves
Him and He's ravished in His heart by that love that He sees. He says that this new heart serves
Him. It says in Philippians 3 that
we worship Him. And He says that we do. It says
that we love Him. It says that we look upon Him.
It says that we trust Him. And the reality is that that
is truer than what I see in myself. That's God's love. That's God's truth. You have
ravished my heart with one of your eyes, almost with one glance. But what are these eyes that
cause his heart to have been stolen, my sister, my spouse? You have beheartened me, he says,
with one of my eyes. And of course, it's the eye of
faith. Just turn in your Bibles to Ephesians
chapter 1 and look at some of the things that the eye of faith
beholds. Let's just go back to verse 15
and get some context. Therefore I also, after I heard
of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,
did not cease to give thanks to you, making mention of you
in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him, that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened,
being given light by God, and it's a remarkable word in Greek. I don't know enough Greek to
talk about it, but that word is a word that astounds the scholars
because it's a word that says that this is something that God
has done and even God can't undo it. It's just the most remarkable,
strong word and so many translations reduce it down to something that
might possibly happen. It's a strong, strong expression.
So what do these eyes see? They see the hope of His calling. He calls His
people in hope and to hope. And as we saw last week, that
the only real hope that a person on this world can have is a hope
that comes from the gospel of the truth in the Word of God. You can read about it in Colossians
1, verse 5 and 6. She knows the hope of this calling.
She knows What are the riches of the glory of His inheritance
in the saints? What else does this eye behold? The exceeding greatness of His
power toward us who believe. And how does this all come about?
How does she have this sight? according to the working of His
mighty power. These are things that God's children
see by faith. In John 14 verse 20, the Lord
Jesus talks to His disciples about that day. You will know
You will see, you will know in that day, you'll know these two
things. That I am in my Father, and you,
these three things, that I am in my Father, and you in me,
and I in you. What remarkable union. What remarkable communion and
a holy, unchangeable God has that union with us. Why? Because we must be as holy as
He is holy. Because He is a consuming fire,
brothers and sisters. He makes his people to see that
as he is, so are they in this world. He clothes them, he loves
them. Here we see grace and mercy working
so effectively. With one glance of her eyes,
with one chain of her neck, It says in Proverbs 1.9, they
shall be as an ornament of grace unto the Lord and chains about
the neck. In Ezekiel 16, that passage that
we've read often, which talks of God adorning this one that
was abandoned and was made to live again. I adorned you with ornaments,
put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck and
I put a jewel in your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful
crown on your head. You were adorned with gold, And
silver your clothing was of fine linen, silk and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour. Think of the sacrifices at the
temple. Honey and oil. You were exceedingly
beautiful and succeeded to royalty. Your fame went out among the
nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect. through my splendor which I bestowed
on you, says the Lord God. If you ever want to read a chapter
in the scriptures about the grace of God to sinners, keep reading
on in chapter 16 to be more and more horrified and then to be
more and more amazed at the end. It's a great picture of God's
everlasting love for His bride. One chain at her neck. The neck,
of course, is what joins the head to the body. It's emblematic of the graces
of faith. The gift of the Father, those
graces which join us to Him. You might think that I'm going
too far in saying what I'm saying about these words, but they're
repeated so often in the scriptures, and they are repeated so that
we would know. But it's not just a verse taken
out of context, but it's the theme of the scriptures. It's
what drives this universe to roll on. It's God's everlasting
love for His elect. His everlasting delight in them. He moves nations, He moves people. He comes and moves the hearts
of people. Proverbs, Psalm 16, 3 says, before
all worlds, he's delights with his own gift from his father.
He's delights with them. In Proverbs 8, he's rejoicing
in his inhabited world. My delight was with the sons
of men. In Malachi, he talks about these
jewels that make up his crown. His people adorn him. He looks on them with love and
delight. In Zephaniah, he says, let me
turn to it, 17. The Lord your God is in your
midst. The Mighty One will save. He
will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with His love.
He will rejoice over you with singing. that we are God the Father's
gift, a treasured gift to His darling Son. Can you imagine
this Father giving to this Son anything that doesn't perfectly
complement His nature and being, anything that doesn't perfectly
satisfy Him? anything that doesn't perfectly
honour Him, anything that doesn't perfectly delight Him. Such is the redeeming love of
our great and triune God. Just let me read a few words
of application. Romans 8.35 Who shall separate
us from the love of Christ? Don't forget whose love it is,
the love of Christ. Ephesians 3.19 To know the love
of Christ, which passeth knowledge. And if you want a verse about
human obedience and things to do, what constrains God's people? What motivates the activities
of God's people? 2 Corinthians 5.14, for the love
of Christ constrains us. The love of Christ. And there's
one beautiful word that we mustn't miss in this remarkable verse. It says, thou hast ravished my
heart, my spouse. Thou hast ravished my heart with
one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. We are His. We are bought with a price. He delights in His bride. He has never ceased to delight
in us from before the foundation of the world. His love to us
works love to Him, and if His love is not the motivation and the
strength and sustaining of our love, then nothing will ever
make it happen. He must do this. We greatly rejoice, says 1 Peter. We greatly rejoice. Though even
now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by
various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, that which joins
us in our understanding to Him, being much more precious than
gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found
to praise and honour and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,
whom, having not seen, you love, So now you do not see Him, yet
believe Him. You rejoice with joy inexpressible
and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the goal
of your faith, the salvation of your souls. What a great day
it will be. When all of this becomes so real,
may God make it real to us. May He take His words and make
them our reality and remind us again and again that His reality
is the reality, the only reality that matters and it is the reality
of all of His people. Let's pray.