If you turn in your Bibles to
Song of Solomon, last week we looked at verses 8, 9, 10, 11,
12 and 13 in chapter 2, and it's all of one piece in a sense. And of course in verse 8 of chapter
2 we have this beautiful description. The voice of my beloved, behold,
he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. He comes
with anxious delight to his people. My beloved is like a roe or a
young harp. Behold, he stands behind our
wall. He looks forth at the windows,
showing himself through the lattice. And then he speaks, my beloved
spake and said to me, rise up my love, my fair one, and come
away. For lo, the winter is past, and
the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth,
the time of the singing birds is come, and the voice of the
turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree pulleth forth her
green figs, and the vines with tender grapes give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away. O my dove, Thou art in the cliffs
of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs. Let me see Thy
countenance, let me see Your face, let me hear Thy voice,
for sweet is Thy voice, and Thy countenance is comely. As I've said before, Song of
Solomon is just a wonderful book of poetry and in your bulletin
is a magnificent poem by Mary Winslow which describes in better
words than I can describe what's happening between the Shulamite
and her lover, her beloved in these verses before us. O my
dove, thou that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places
of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy
voice, for sweet is thy voice and thy countenance is comely. So before us we have two descriptions
of the fair one, of the beautiful one. two descriptions of her
and her experience, and then two requests from him who loves
her, from him who calls her beautiful, two requests for communion. He begins, oh my dove, the church
is his dove. Psalm 74 19 talks about the church being his turtle dove. Do not deliver the life of your
turtle dove to the wild beast. Do not forget the life of your
paw forever. It's remarkable, isn't it, to
think that why do we have doves? Why did God make doves? God made doves so he could write
about doves in the Bible, so that we would understand something
of the Lord Jesus. Why did God make rocks? So that we could talk about God
being a rock. Why did God make anything in
this creation? All of this creation is laid
out before us and one day we will see it that way. All of
this creation is laid out before us because it is there to reflect
the glory and the faithfulness, the holiness and the justice
of God. It's there to magnify Him and
to show us who we are, to show us what we've done, and to show
us what God has saved us from. Doves are special to me. When
I was about the age of Sam and Noah and maybe Jennifer, I used
to do something which is illegal and now very, very naughty. I
used to collect bird's eggs. And there weren't very many trees
at Terraria in those days, almost no trees at all. So you had to
go far and wide to find birds' eggs. And for a little bloke
like me, I knew every tree and every hedge, every bit of bird
nesting territory within miles of our place. Anyway, one day
at the bottom of our farm, way down at the bottom of our farm,
there was a hedge. I went down there and there I
found a darkness nest. and doves have beautiful nests
because they're so pathetic. The dove's nest is just a bunch
of sticks really and you can see the eggs through it underneath
and you think why are these beautiful birds making such a pathetic,
but they are so faithful and they care for their babies and
they lay beautiful white eggs and they're more round than pointed
dove's eggs and they're just beautiful snowy white. I didn't
do what other bird egg collectors do, which is they take the whole
lot so they can sort of have a nest full of eggs. I just took
one. So I carried this egg all the way back up to our house. And as I got near the house,
the egg started doing things. There was this tapping noise
on the inside. I was trying to work out What
on earth? I did know what was going on.
You know what was going on with that egg. You dumb butch who
wouldn't have seen this happen, haven't you? Anyway, there I
was hundreds of yards from the nest with this little bird, peckity,
peckity, peck on the inside. And I had to hurry, scurry all
the way back down there hoping that it wouldn't sort of break
and get damaged. And I managed to get this now broken egg back
into the nest. Doves are special birds, aren't
they? They're known in history, they're known in
the scriptures. They're known for their peaceableness,
for their meekness, in a sense for their innocence, for their
harmlessness, for their quietness, for their faithfulness to their
mate. They are clean birds, and they're
sociable birds, and they're very faithful. The two of them, I've
told you often about the ones that sit on our lawn, and often
you can see two of them sitting underneath a tree, snuggling
up next to each other for ages. But also, they are weak, and
they are birds that are easily frightened. and seemingly easily
fearful. We've got a hawk that comes to
harass our chooks now and the hawk just loves catching birds
like doves because when they're on the ground they're such easy
prey because they have to get moving and if the hawk is quick
enough it gets them. And they fly really swiftly and
they fly really straight and fast and direct to a place of
refuge. And of course, they have a mournful
voice. It's not for nothing that God
created doves. And it's not for nothing that
God says that his church, his bride, is like a dove. The church is harmless. The true church is harmless and
inoffensive in most of their conversations. The church is
beautiful, robed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. The church
is made beautiful and fruitful by the grace of God's Spirit
in their lives. The church is made clean through
the word that the Lord Jesus has spoken of her. The church
has her heart, the hearts of all of her members, they're purified
by faith. They are chaste virgins, espoused
Christ. They belong to Him and they long
for Him. Their love is single, has one
object. They cling to Him. The church
is made fruitful in grace. They delight to be like the doves. They delight to worship together. They find delight in each other's
company. But they are often weak and often
fearful, often persecuted and oppressed by the men of the world. And like a dove, often their
cries are mournful cries, mournful cries for the sins that they
see in themselves. and mournful for what they see
as their sin in this world around them and in the lives of others. And particularly they are mournful
when Christ's evident presence is taken away from them and the
Shulamite is again and again taken into these places of great
delight and then she finds herself asking where he feeds his flock. Where do you make your flock
rest at noon? She would only be asking the
question because for just that little while she didn't know
where he fed the flock. in the previous verses he's taken
her into his banqueting hall and he's banner over her is love. And now he says to her, come
away, come away with me. And he calls her here, oh my dove,
my dove, the dove that belongs to him. Like Noah's dove, It
left the ark, but returned again, and returned again until there
was good news, and God's promised fruitfulness had come, and the
flood had gone. The wrath of God had been satisfied. So this is a new title in this
book that Christ gives his church. And it's a title to express his
affection for her, and it's a title to express his understanding
of her. He calls her earlier a lily among
the thorns. Now he says that she is a dove. She's a dove that's in the clefts
of the rock. And for all of us, it immediately
draws us back to that remarkable smitten rock, that remarkable
open rock in Exodus, where Moses pleads with God, please show
me your glory. Please show me your glory. Please let me see that you are
glorious and you are faithful. I need to see. It sounds presumptuous unless
it comes from lips of someone who had experienced it and wants
reassurance again. And God said, I will make all
my goodness pass before you. I will proclaim the name of the
Lord before you. I will be gracious to him. I
will be gracious and I will have compassion on him. I will have
compassion. But he said, you cannot see my
face for no man shall see me and live. And the Lord said,
here is a place by me. You shall stand on the rock. Just listen to this. You shall
stand on the rock and so it shall be while my glory passes by that
I will put you in the cleft of the rock and will cover you with
my hand while I pass by. Now the Lord descended in the
cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the
Lord. And the Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, The Lord
God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and
truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression
and sin. and by no means clearing the
guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. So Moses made haste, bowed his
head to the earth and worshipped. As I reminded you as I was reading
it, he was asked to stand on a rock and then he was asked
and told that he was going to be hidden in the rock. And what's the rock? We don't
have any doubt in the scriptures about the rock, do we? 1 Corinthians 10 verse 4 talks
about all of these people of Israel. They all drank the same
spiritual drink, for they drank from that spiritual rock. that
followed them, and that rock was Christ. The rock is the Lord Jesus. It's a place where men, sinners
like Moses and sinners like us, a place of safety. a place of safety created by
God, where we can see the glory of God and see all of his goodness. And it's lovely to note that
in this rock, in this one rock, his dove finds herself in the
clefts, plural, of the rock, singular. The rock, of course,
is the Lord Jesus. God describes himself, or names
himself in Habakkuk 1.12 as, O God, O God, O rock. He says again and again, there
is no rock. There is no other rock. There is no place of safety. There is no other place of security. There is no place of strength
or durability. We either build on the rock,
but we build on the sand and there is no in-between ground. If you turn in your Bibles to
Deuteronomy 32, we'll just look at a few descriptions of the
rock. He is the rock. There is that
hymn that people sing, isn't it? Ascribe greatness to our
God. He is the rock. You see, he's rock, he is the
rock, and then he describes some of the aspects of what it is
for him to be the rock. His work is perfect, for all
his ways are justice, verse four. A God of truth and without injustice,
righteous and upright is he. He is the Rock. He sets the boundaries, verse
8, of the peoples according to the number of the children of
Israel. Humanity is distributed throughout
this earth because God, who is their Maker, God, who is their
Creator, God, who is the Most High, He's divided people and
set boundaries for them according to the number of the children
of Israel. Because, verse 9, the Lord's
portion is his people, Jacob is the place of his inheritance. And he talks about what he's
done to Jacob. in the same sort of terms that
he talks about his love for the Shulamite. He found him in a
desert land and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness. He encircled
him, he instructed him, and he kept him as the apple of his
eye. He has people he delights in. This is our God. There is no other rock. There is just one rock. There is just one set of clefts
in that rock made by God the Father. And the dove, his dove
finds herself there in this cleft of the rock. Then he says, in the secret places
of the stairs. She's hiding, as it were, in
the cleft of the rock and in the secret places of the stairs. And it has, as poetry does, reference
to many things, doesn't it? It might just be her retiring
to a place where she may be alone and undisturbed. It may be her
going to a secret place to hide her head, being discouraged,
feeling shame, even possibly hiding from her beloved. conscious of sin, unworthiness,
she may, as many of us do, have drawn back, drawn back away from
Him. The flesh fights against the
Spirit and we cannot do what we want to do. Life outside of
the garden is full of trials and full of difficulties and
it's full of discouragements. It's full of times when we feel
not like a dove but like an eagle, proud and strong and able to
tear and able to soar above things. But as life goes on for Christians,
more and more, I think, we feel ourselves more akin, more often,
to being like a dove. Timid, fearful, fretful, needing
to, in a sense, find a secret place. Also, the secret places
may refer to those places where God takes his children. The secret of the Lord is with
those who fear him. He will show them his covenant. You see, there are so many things
that happen in the lives of true believers, of God's doves, of
God's fair ones in this world, which are unknown to the people
of this world. They cannot understand us. They cannot understand what motivates
us. They cannot understand what we
think, and why we think it. They cannot understand what we
are saying about the Lord Jesus and why it is so significant. There are secret things of the
Lord which he shows to his people. They see their sins like no one
else ever does. They see sin as horrible and
they see sin to cause them to mourn for their inability. They
are left in situations where they are continually made to
feel their utter dependence upon God and His grace. These secret
things are unknown to people who feel their own strength and
feel their own worthiness. See, the delightful, intimate
relationship that God has with His Church is a secret thing,
unknown to many other people. I'm often caused to wonder as
I study Song of Solomon and read it and read the beautiful things
that are written by our forebears about Song of Solomon. And I'm
often wondering why, in this modern age, it is almost impossible
to find people who say the things that I'm saying now about Song
of Solomon. If you go to Bible College, go
to the conferences that I've been to, you will find that almost
universally Song of Solomon is a story about the relationship
between a man and a woman. It was as if when the Lord was
on that road to Emmaus and He opened up the Scriptures, And
he got to Ecclesiastes and said, we'll just leave this book, Song
of Solomon out, and we'll start again in Isaiah. But he didn't
do that, did he? He said, these scriptures speak
of me. All of the scriptures speak about
him. And I wonder sometimes whether
all the study and all the learning, rather than driving people into
closer and deeper and more intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus
allows them to rest in something other than the cliff in the rock. They can rest in knowledge, rest
in the wisdom of making a right decision, rest in the fact that
they have a multitude who believe the things that they believe,
and their comfort and security in other things. And maybe rather
than feeling like doves, they are continually told they have
to act like eagles. to show how strong and how righteous
they are. The Bible is honest, God is honest
about us as his children. Also the Bible is remarkable
in the way it describes his view of his bride and if his love
is a universal love, then Song of Solomon loses its power and
its glory. You see, He calls her My Dove. Just read it sometime and look
at the personal pronouns that our Saviour used. Again and again
He says, My Love, My Fair One. There are things that happen
in the secret places, the secret places where we go, the secret
places to be just quiet, away from everything else with God. It may be on your pillow at night,
it may be in all sorts of situations, but there is a secret relationship
that goes on between God and His people. And sadly also, there is often
in God's working in our lives, we see Him, as it were, through
a glass darkly, or we see Him behind the wall, or we see Him
through a lattice. And often we find that He seems
hidden from us and we cannot trace out the workings of His
love in our lives. She says, Where do you feed your
flock? Tell me where you feed your flock,
where do you make them rest at noon? She would be asking because
she needed to know for a time her love had led her, her lack of love and afflish had led her
into a place where she needed again to have His guidance as
to where to go and what to do. And He gives her not just advice,
but He takes her and shows her. The secret things that God's
children delight in are things that the world knows nothing
of. We delight in God's absolute sovereignty. We delight in His
perfect, extraordinary predestination. We delight in particular redemption,
that our Saviour came as a mighty King to this earth and saved
all of His people from their sins. They seem like they are
secret things to us. We want to proclaim them boldly
and loudly, but we find they are treated as if they are secret,
and God's children are discouraged. when they find that the things
that we most delight in, the eternal covenantal love, the
marriage of the Lord Jesus to his bride before the foundation
of the world, and then the working of all things for God's glory
and the good of that bride throughout all time, the things that delight
the dove. ultimately are things that seem
secret to others. But God has promised, hasn't
He? The secret of the Lord is with
those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. Then He says to her, He says, Let me see thy countenance. The sin And the wintry seasons
and the time of rain have finished. The flowers appear on the earth.
The time of the singing birds has come. He calls his bride. to himself. Arise my fair one
and come away. Arise my fair people and come
away. Come and let your face be seen. Come I want to see your face. I want to see your face because
it is beautiful to me. Come, come away and come and
worship in his house. Come and worship in his court. Come and worship and rest with
his flocks. Come to the banqueting house
and look him full in the face and with open face see his glory. No longer is a timid fearful
dove, but God calls us to come boldly to the throne of grace. Winter is past, the rain is over
and gone, the flowers appear and the time of the singing birds
has come. Come away, hear and delight in
the gospel. You see it's he who calls and
his call reminds her of his love and his delight in her. Let me
hear your voice. Let me hear your voice in prayer
and in praise for the blessings of grace. Let me hear your voice
as you talk amongst the other members of the flock about how
amazing, saving, grace and redeeming love really are. Possibly she was mourning as
a dove when the Lord Jesus calls her. The cries and the mournings
of his people for sin are noticed by God and they come up before
Him acceptably. He loves to hear the voice of
His children. You remember, most of you, those
early blooms of amazing love with your bride. And the phone
would ring, and there'd be a voice on the other end. And the whole
world lit up, and you were excited. You heard that one voice. There
are billions of voices in this world, but you hear just this
one voice that makes all the difference to you. And he gives the reason. He says, for sweet is your voice. It means your voice is pleasant
to me. It pleases me. Your voice is
melodious. It has a mixture of notes in
it. Hebrews 13, 15 says, through
Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise,
the fruit of lips giving thanks to His name. See, He loves to
hear the voices of His people's praises. Praising His name, praising
Him for His grace, for his goodness, for his truths, praising him
for his gospel ordinances. Let me hear your voice. Your
voice is sweet to my ears. Let me see your face. Your countenance
is comely. Your countenance is beautiful. Behold, he says in 4, verse 1
to 5, behold, you are beautiful, my love, he says of his bride. And to make sure that she understood
what he was saying, he says again, behold, you are beautiful, oh,
most beautiful of women. You see, God's description of
His bride is never her description of herself. It's only God. It's only God in the person and
work of the Lord Jesus that stitches that row of perfect righteousness. Our beauty, our perfect beauty
is from Him. It's a beauty that causes him
to delight in her voice and in her presence. The best thing
to do is just to read some scriptures. It's very hard in our flesh for
us to understand how God speaks to us who know that we are nothing
but sin and do nothing but sin. But God in the Lord Jesus has
made us holy, spotless, and blameless, and perfectly fit objects of
His special love. As for the saints in the land,
says Psalm 16.3, they are the glorious ones in whom is all
my delight. Isaiah 62 verse 4 says you shall
no longer be termed forsaken your land shall no more be termed
desolate but you shall be called my delight is in her and your
land married because for the Lord delights in you and your
land shall be married. Malachi at the end of the Old
Testament talks of them. They shall be mine says the Lord
of hosts on that day that I make them my jewels my special treasure. Psalm 149 verse 4. For the Lord takes pleasure in
his people. He will beautify the humble with
salvation. Oh, what it is to be called a
dove by the Lord Jesus. Oh, what wonder of wonders that
he calls his church my dove. Let's pray.