If you turn in your Bibles to
Song of Solomon. I thought we might just read the
first 11 verses. It's called the Song of Songs
which is Solomons. Let him kiss me with the kisses
of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine. Because of
the savour of thy good ointments, thy name is as ointment poured
forth. Therefore do the virgins love
thee. Draw me, and we will run after
thee. The King hath brought me into
his chambers. We will be glad and rejoice in
thee. We will remember thy love more
than wine. The upright love thee. I am black,
but come ye, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar,
as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me because I am
black, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's children
were angry with me, they may be the keeper of the vineyards,
but my own vineyard have I not kept. Tell me, O thou whom my
soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to
rest at noon. For why should I be as one that
turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions? If you know not,
O fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of
the flock and feed thy kids beside the shepherds' tents. I have
compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in fairer
chariots. Thy cheeks are comely with rows
of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold. I will make thee borders
of gold with studs of silver. As I said to you earlier, the
Song of Solomon exposes us to God, and it shows us how God's
children interact with Him. It's a story of love between
a bridegroom and a bride, a story of love between the bridegroom,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and His bride, the Church. And it's a
story which shows how the Lord Jesus both creates and then nurtures
and strengthens love and faith in his bride. It's a gospel story. It's a gospel song. It's a wonderful
song. But as we read it, we are exposed
to the heart feelings of this woman and we're exposed in a
sense in terms of our response to her feelings to our own hearts
again. How many of us can say as the
Shulamite said at the end of verse 6, my own vineyard I have
not kept and the verses in 7 and 8 and down to 11 are the response
to that, God's response to that cry. But this is also a book that
deals with great honesty about who God's children are. Verse 5 says that I am black. She doesn't say, I do black things. She says, I am black, darkness
and nothing but sin. And then immediately she says,
but comely, but lovely, but beautiful. She talks of her humiliation
and then she talks of her exaltation and who she is in the Lord Jesus. And such are all of God's people,
both black and comely, both humbled by sin and made to see that they
are in the Lord Jesus righteous. And again and again this woman
talks about her souls. So much of life is about our
bodies. And the Lord Jesus says, don't
fear him who can kill the body, but fear him who having killed
the body can cast the soul into hell. We all have souls. That's the essence of who we
are. And this lady, this representative
of the Church, trusted representative of us here, she has a soul love
for the Lord Jesus. And she comes as one who is sincere. She appeals to him as one who
knows her better than she knows herself. And she comes as someone
who's hungry. Where do you feed your flock?
She comes as someone who is weary, weary of sin, weary of self,
weary of the world. But that hunger and that weariness
is added to by the fact that she has fed and rejoiced. She has found rest. And all of that is in the Lord
Jesus. And she comes in these verses
before us as someone who has a godly fear. She is fearful that she might
be turned aside from God. They are some of the markers
in just this small section of Song of Solomon. The question
for us is, are they markers in our own lives? Are they things
that we see as true evidentially within us. But here in verse
7, having stated that she doesn't keep her vineyard, she prays
to the only one who can help. People run here and there looking
for help. The woman who is in love with
the Lord. She prays to him. She says to
him, you tell me. As if she is saying, I cannot
find the way by myself and by my own wisdom and by my own actions
and by my own deeds. I need him. I need him. to tell me." And she admits her
love for Him. She admits the depth of her love.
It is soul love. The love of Christ both constrains
and compels the actions of God and His people. And she knows that this flock
is feeding right now. She knows that there is a flock
being fed by the Lord Jesus. He calls himself the bread from
heaven. My father gives you the true
bread from heaven, John 6.32. For the bread of God is he who
comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. He feeds these people. He feeds them with
gospel truths about who He is. And John 6 goes on to say that
this food is eternal life. He gives them food. And He gives them food which
lasts for eternity. You might remember the story
of the Lord Jesus in John 4 as He met the woman by the well.
That woman, he said he must go through Samaria on his way. Why did he must go through Samaria? He didn't have to go through
Samaria to get to where he is going. The must was about a woman
in Samaria, a woman who had wasted her life. She had five husbands
and she was now living with another man. And the Lord Jesus came
to her and drew her out to the well. And then he said, told
her the gospel. He told her who he was. And then he said, when his disciples
came back to him, he said, this is food for him. This is his
food. It's the food of the Lord Jesus,
to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. This is what He feeds on. This
is what God's people feed on. They feed on the Gospel of the
finished work of the Lord Jesus, that all that we need to be in
right relationship with God is from Him and by Him and because
of who He is. The Lord Jesus Himself is that
food. and it's come down from heaven
and it gives life to the world. It's food that gives life. It's
gospel truths. It's the doctrines of the grace
of God. It's the covenant promises of
God. That's what God's flock feed
on. That's what we continually need
to feed on. And then in the next part of
that verse, there is something remarkable about this shepherd's
work. I don't know, I've had a bit to do with cattle and sheep
over my time. You try and get them to lie down. How do you get them to lie down? How do you get a mob of sheep
or pigs or cattle and say, now you rest? You see, They are meant
to show us, aren't they, that rest happens when wanderings
have ceased, when diseases are healed, when the enemies are
away. But rest happens most for the
flocks when they've been fed and they're satisfied. Our neighbours'
cows are coming nearby us again and you go out in the mornings
and sometimes you've got a mob of 700 cows. Almost all of them
are lying down. Why are they lying down? They're
being fed. They're at rest. They're at peace. But the thing that's remarkable
is that word that I'd like you to see there. We can't make them
lie down. What does he do? He makes his
flock to rest. And remarkably, he makes them
to rest at noon. He makes them to rest in the
midst of the heat of the noonday sun. He makes them rest at a
time of the day when there's so much that could give them
something other than rest. But also I'd like you to think
and look with me at that next word. See, she knows, she knows
that somewhere there is a flock that feeds, there is a flock
that's resting. and she knows that they are His
flock. God's people in this world are
always just one flock under one shepherd. There are many shepherds
of God's people, but there is one shepherd. there is really
one shepherd of your souls, and all the under-shepherds have
one job in hand, and that's to say, this is the good shepherd. This is what he's like. This
is what he's done. This is what he's doing. These
are the promises he makes. This is what he does in the lives
of his people. I am the good shepherd, and I
know my sheep. And he says, I'm not only known
but I'm known by them. He knew them in eternity. They were given to him by his
father. They were received by the son. And this shepherd takes them
to feed and he takes them to rest because my sheep my flock. They hear my voice and I know
them and they follow me." And he calls his own sheep by name,
by individual names, as he called you by your name. And he leads
them and he goes before them and the sheep follow him. Why
do they follow him? Because they know his voice. and he holds them in his hand
and he says, his father holds them in his hand and no one is
gonna snatch them out of Jesus' hand and no one is gonna snatch
them out of his father's hand. And he'll make them to rest.
See, he makes them to rest because he's at rest. He makes them to
share a rest that He has. The Lord Jesus finished His work
and He sat down. He's entered into His rest. And then He makes us enter into
that rest as well. Before the Shulamite, she sees
all this and she wants to be a part of it. She knows that
there are God's children who rest in peace in the love of
the Lord Jesus. They rest like John did, leaning
their heads on his bosom. They rest like Peter was caused
to when the Lord Jesus challenged him, do you love me, Peter? Do you love me? Do you love me? And Peter's rest was, Lord, you
know all things. You know that I love you. The rest of God's people is the
rest that he brings because of his activities in their lives. And then she has a plea. for
him at the latter part of that verse. For why should I be as
one that turns aside by the flocks of your companions? Why should
I? Why should I, who loves the good
shepherd, why should I, who is loved by this shepherd, why should
I be as one that turns away And it's interesting, isn't it? He
has one flock. These companions have many flocks. And I have to agree with the
commentators like John Gill and Henry and so many others who
see these as something like the family that turned her aside. People in the previous verse
who were from the one mother. as John Gilsells says, false
friends, hypocrites, heretics and rivals. Rivals with him who
set up schemes of worship and doctrine in opposition to him. You see the word antichrist That
precedent ante has two meanings in Greek. It can be one who stands
in direct opposition to the Lord Jesus, as we saw Satan do so
many times, and has stood in direct opposition to God's children
throughout time. Cain killing Abel, our brothers
and sisters being drowned and burnt and murdered throughout
history. But also Satan operates as an
angel of light, and the word anti can mean also someone that
stands in the place of, someone that says, that I am a servant
of the true shepherd, You see, there is one flock,
but there are many flocks of the companions. There is one
truth and there is one gospel. There is one declaration of who
the Lord Jesus is. There is a real Lord Jesus, who sits in heaven
now and has done a specific and certain work that God said He
would do, that He said He would do, that His prophets said He
would do, and His apostles said He had done. And any Jesus who
doesn't have the characteristics of that Jesus is a Jesus who's
been presented to you by someone who stands in the place of God's
shepherds. The longer I go on, several things
become more and more clear to me. One of them is the weight
and the burden of the responsibility that I have, and others in this
place have, for pointing each other to the real Lord Jesus. The burden of it grows stronger
day by day. The other thing that becomes
more and more evident to me is my hopeless weakness and inability
for that task. Like Paul said, who is sufficient
for these things? And the other thing I've become
more and more convinced of, as God leads us in the way that
he has, is that I cannot And I cannot think of another Gospel
that brings rest to my soul. I cannot. I've looked at the
other Gospels and every time we meet with one, Last week we
heard about another church in town and the first thing I did
was to go and see what it was like and then go home and check
on the internet to see what it said. What's it saying about
Jesus? What's it saying about you? Does
it say that you're black? But comely, does it declare Jesus
to be God? Does it declare Jesus to be God
who reigns over this universe whether men see it or not? There
is just one way. There aren't many ways up to
the mountain. He said there is just one way. It's a narrow way. It's a constricted
way. The world is full of ways to
get to heaven. But there is just one way, and
there is just one Gospel, and there is just one Saviour of
sinners, and He'll save them the way He has promised to save
them. He'll save them by blood atonement. He'll save them by eternal election. He'll save them by particular
redemption, that He really came to save these people. He'll save
them through irresistible grace. He will preserve them for Himself. You see, it's called His flock.
If He is God, then His looking after His flock is no problem
at all for Him. If you have a bunch of sheep,
if I owned a bunch of sheep and I gave them to Graham to look
after and made Graham the shepherd, and he took out 100 sheep and
brought back 85, I wouldn't go belting the sheep around saying,
what on earth are the sheep doing? I'd go to the shepherd and say,
where are the other 15 sheep? God the Father gave sheep to
his son in eternity. beautiful sheep, the fairest
in the world. And the Lord Jesus stood and
shook hands with His Father before this world began and said, I
will gather them, I will care for them, I will shepherd them,
I will bring them home, I will take them to heaven. He's a good
shepherd. He is a good shepherd. He's the
great shepherd. He's the only shepherd. He's
the chief shepherd. And if someone stands behind
one of these pulpits and opens this book and doesn't point people
to that shepherd, that successful shepherd, that substitutionary
shepherd, then they are leading people aside. They turn them
aside. And God's children and God's
sheep are vulnerable in this world. Just think about what's
happened to the church throughout history. God will lose none of
his own. But the sheep are vulnerable.
Why is the New Testament absolutely full of warnings about false
shepherds? False shepherds We're in the
name, pastor, minister, holding an open Bible and turning people
astray. Thank God for the good shepherd
who will always turn his people back to him. They hear his voice. They hear his voice and they
come. You see, that is the way, isn't
it, according to these verses before us. It's hearing the voice,
tell me. It's a matter of urgency. There
is no time to waste. This is too important for fiddling
around. The way of the true shepherd
is a way where he feeds them, feeds them with the gospel. I give them eternal life and
they shall perish, not perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them
out of my hand. The real gospel brings protection
as well as feeding. And the real gospel brings rest. God's children rest. They rest under the scorching
heat of the noonday sun of sin and Satan and this world. They have rest for their souls.
There's a wonderful passage in Jeremiah, if you could turn to
it. We'll just look at it briefly. There's a remarkable passage
of scripture. Jeremiah is warning the people of Israel. You have
turned away from the Covenant God. You have one hope for your
souls. To flee from what you think is
safety. To flee from the place where
you have made your rest and your home. And you flee under God's
direction. You flee. And you flee from people. The people who are mentioned
as the false teachers in Jerusalem. They heal the hurt of my people
slightly, saying, Peace, peace, where there is no peace. And then in verse 16, he says,
Thus says the Lord to his people. He says, Stand. Stand in the
ways. There are many ways that the
people of Israel and the people who claim to be God's servants
go all the time. Stand in those ways. God's people stand in the Gospel. You stand in those ways in the
Gospel of the Lord Jesus and you will see and ask for the
old paths, where the good way is. Ask for the old paths. Is the path that you are treading
an old path? How old is the path that God's
people tread? Our path began before the foundation
of the world. We tread the path of God's eternal,
electing love for his bride. And then we tread the path. We
ask for these old paths and we walk in those paths. God's children
walk in the ways of Abel and Enoch. and Noah and Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. They look back and they walk
in those paths, they walk in the paths of David, people who
heard God's voice, people who lived by faith, people who lived
humiliated by the world and grieved by it. And what's the end result? of walking in these paths, you
will find rest for your souls. You'll find rest the same place
that David found. You'll find rest in the eternal
purposes and the eternal love of God. The other thing is that
in this day, of so many new things, we can ask, what's the old path? Have the people that we esteem, have they trodden
an old path? Pentecostalism's great claim,
isn't it, is that about a hundred years ago God opened up a new
way. God's children don't look for
new ways. The old ways are perfectly fine. It's not for nothing that we
put articles in our bulletin from those who have trodden the
paths that we tread now. They were right, and the religious
world around them has decayed. The Gospel doesn't change. There are so many new paths,
but there is just one old path. It's a good way, according to
Jeremiah, and it's a path that finds rest. You find rest for
your souls. If the message that you hear
of the Gospel doesn't give you rest for your souls, if you go
out of church thinking about all the things that you have
to do rather than what the Lord Jesus has done, you will have
no rest. You can be very religious, but
have no rest. The religious world is really
good at keeping people busy. But God's people stand. God's people are established
in the Gospel. There are many paths. There are many paths that people
tread, but there is just one. And this one As we see in verse
8, is one where the Saviour declares what His bride is. She is hungry and weary. She hasn't kept her own vineyard.
And what's his response to her? What remarkable words, he says. If you don't know, then he describes
her as he does again and again. It's good marking them in the
text of Song of Solomon. Thou art fair. Thou art fair. Thou fairest among women. the most beautiful among women. He wants her to know that despite
what she sees in herself, she is beautiful in His eyes. And God doesn't exaggerate when
He talks about the beauty of His bride. He's just telling
the plain truth. This is the heritage of the servants
of the Lord, is that their righteousness is of Me. They are made beautiful
by Him. And then He talks about her being
His love in verse 9. compared to Pharaoh's chariot
horses. Beautiful horses. Chosen horses. Costly horses. Strong. They are beautiful. They're washed in Jesus' blood,
clothed in His righteousness. It's God who says these things
about His bride. And then he says, we will make,
God the Father, God the Son and Holy Spirit, we will make you
borders of gold with studs of silver. Blessings from God, eternal
blessings, spiritual blessings, blessings in this world. And
the author who begins it finishes the work. The borders are going
to be beautiful. The work of grace is going to
be perfect in every tiny detail, everything blessed, everything
holy, everything declared beautiful by the maker, the author and
the maker. Such is the way he speaks to
this storm-tossed woman. Isaiah talks about His people
being, how afflicted one, you tossed with tempest, not comforted. Behold, I will lay your stones
with colorful gems and lay your foundations with sapphires. I
will make your pinnacles of rubies and your gates of crystal and
all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught
by the Lord and great shall be the peace of your children. And he says to her, to go your
way by the footsteps of the flock. to go your way in faith and trust
in Him. He has led His flock as a good
shepherd, and His flock have left a trail. You follow that
trail of love and faithfulness, the old paths of the truth of
who the Lord Jesus is and what He does. and feed your kids besides
the shepherd's tents. Take your little ones, not just
little in age, but little in the Lord, and feed them at this
fountain of gospel truth. Feed them at this place. where
the Lord takes His people and feeds them and makes them rest,
makes them rest in who the Lord Jesus Christ is, His perfect
Godhead, His perfect manhood, His perfect atonement, His perfect
righteousness, His perfect justification, His perfect reigning in heaven
right now for us. To know Him is to love Him. To be loved by Him is to know
Him and to be drawn to Him. As she says, draw me and we will
run after you. Now she says, tell me. And he
says, I'll show you the way. the good way, the old way, the
way of peace, the way that declares me to be all glorious in grace
and you to be all glorious in me. As beautiful as the Lord
Jesus is to God the Father, such is the beauty of his bride. That's the place to rest. That's
the place for sinners who are dark to rest in His beauty, in
what He has done. Let's pray.