We've come to a new section in
chapter 2 verse 8. We have left the scene of the
banqueting house of the Lord holding His love in His arms
and pleading with her fellows not to stir Him or awaken Him. She wants to stay there in that
banqueting house. And the times when the Lord has
come, come in power and come in love and amazing grace and
spoken to our hearts, the times that we long for. It's very interesting. It's been an interesting and
in many ways delightful exercise preparing messages on the Song
of Solomon. So much as a scripture you can
actually follow an argument that's logical and consistent and the
letters of the New Testament are beautifully structured by
God to show us who God is, how he saves his people, the wonders
of redeeming love. The Song of Solomon is the song
of songs and it's a song of poetry and so rather than having an argument laid out with
beautiful facts and history, we have presented before us in
Song of Solomon pictures, pictures of things that God's children
experience. Both pictures of His people being
captivated by his love and pictures of his people missing that love,
being drawn away into coldness and deadness and winter. But the Song of Solomon is essentially
the story of the love of the Lord Jesus for His Bride. How He creates that love, how
He nurtures that love, how He grows love and grows faithfulness. Let's read the words from the
Shulamite in verse 8 of chapter 2. the voice of my beloved. Behold, he cometh leaping upon
the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like
a roe or a young heart. Behold, he standeth behind our
wall, looketh forth at the windows, showing himself through the lattice. 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. The flowers appear on the earth.
and the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice
of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree put forth
her green figs in the vines with tender grape, give her good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away. There is in this world, there
are in this world many voices, but there is just one voice. She calls it there in chapter
two, verse eight, the voice. There is the voice of the Lord
Jesus. It's the voice of the Lord Jesus as he speaks his words which
are recorded for all of his people. It's a voice which God says is
unmistakable. It's a voice which speaks to
his people and speaks in such a way that the people who hear
the voice, who hear the voice of the One, have absolutely no
doubt that someone, the someone, that God himself in the Lord
Jesus has spoken and spoken specifically. He brings his own sheep He goes
before them, and His sheep follow Him. Why do God's children follow
Him, this Great Shepherd? For they, because they know His
voice. Yet they will by no means follow
a stranger. but will flee for him, for they
do not know the voice of a stranger. Doesn't mean they don't hear
strangers' voices, but they do not know them. They don't have
that relationship with them. He is the good shepherd. I know
my sheep, and I am known by my own. As the Father knows me,
even so I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.
And other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also
I must bring. and they will hear my voice. And there will be one flock,
and there will be just one shepherd. There is just one voice. The Lord Jesus speaks with a
voice which is unmistakable. It's unmistakable in the way
it speaks. It's unmistakable in the things
it says. It's unmistakable in the impact
that it has. One of the things that Song of
Solomon keeps asking us, isn't it, asks everyone who reads it,
everyone who listens to people reading it, is, has that voice
spoken to you? The Song of Solomon is about
the intimacy of relationship with a real living person. who is our God in human flesh. He speaks. And wonderfully it
is, isn't it, that this Shepherd should speak. And it's amazing
that we hear His voice. and we know about his character
before we actually see him. He speaks with a particular voice
at a particular time with particular words and they are the words
of this book that we have in our laps. They are the words
of this book that are made spirit. My words are spirit and they
are life. The response of those who hear
this voice is that they call him my beloved. John's Gospel is full of that
refrain at the beginning in the opening chapters, isn't it? Come
and see. Behold, he cometh. Behold, my beloved. Let me describe
him to you, she says. She calls on others, her hearing
of him Her seeing of him is always the motivation for her to say
to others, behold, look with me, all of you people, look at
him. The church calls upon others
to look at him with her. And what's he doing? He cometh. What's he doing right now? What
is the Lord Jesus doing right now? Revelation 1 verse 7, I
believe it is, says that He now cometh. He is in the process
right now of coming. He's coming. He sits on the throne
of heaven. 05. He comes leaping upon the mountains
and skipping upon the hills The coming of the Lord Jesus to meet
with His Bride again is a coming that's full of joy and full of
power He leaps upon the mountains, the mountains of sin, the mountains
and hills of unbelief. Nothing in this world stops the
coming of our Beloved. He comes with joy. He comes with
a sense of urgency and expectation. and he comes unhindered by anything
in this world and anything in us at all. He comes. My beloved, she keeps saying,
is like a gazelle, like a roe, like a stag. those flea to foot animals that
seem to traverse extraordinary terrains without any effort whatsoever. There are some pictures on television
I've seen of these mountain goats that leap from rock to rock and
down what seem like sheer precipices seemingly touching on almost
nothing and leaping and bounding. The things of this world are
no hindrance to the coming of our God. And behold, she says,
look and see with me what I see. He standeth behind our wall. And there are many ways we can
interpret that. When the Lord Jesus came the
first time, he was, in a sense, veiled in human flesh. There he was, God of very God,
the creator and the ruler and the sustainer of this universe,
and he humbled himself. became a baby in the womb of
his mother, Mary. He who gave life to Mary, he
who created and sustained Mary, was nurtured in Mary. And for those 30 years before
his public ministry began, the Lord Jesus lived for the most
part in a town of Nazareth, without anyone realising that the living
God was working in a carpenter shop down the road. And even when he began that public
ministry and he declared himself to be God's Messiah and declared
himself to be God himself, He could walk through crowds of
people unnoticed. He was standing there all the
time. He was standing behind that wall
of our nature and his deity was veiled. And there are just a
few instances where that veil is taken away And people beheld
him through the eyes of faith, through the eyes of sight on
the Mount of Transfiguration. And when Peter had that remarkable
catch of fish, he saw something of the deity of the Lord Jesus. There was a man who said, just
cast your net here. And the boat's filled with fish.
And Peter says to the Lord Jesus, go away from me, Lord. And as we know from the episode
at Caesarea Philippi, flesh and blood can't reveal those things
to people. Only God, the Father, can reveal
those things to him. He also stands behind, in a sense,
the walls that we create. They're our wall, aren't they?
The wall of our flesh, which fights against God and continually
causes us to put up a barrier, a barrier of our flesh, against
his entrance. But as he can leap upon the mountains,
and he can skip upon the hills, he can still show himself. And
even if we may not see him, he is looking. He looks forth at
the windows. We only see him through a glass,
as it were, darkly. But we do see Him. How often
our dullness, our unbelief, our sin, just our open rebellious
wickedness cause us to see Him less and less. But He is the
One. that he's looking, and mercifully,
he's the one who shows himself through the lattice. We get,
in our body of flesh, we get just
glimpses of him, but those glimpses are so sweet, aren't they? Any time the Lord reveals anything
of Himself, speaks in any way to us, it's always grace to His
people, it's always love, and it's always mercy. She calls Him still, My Beloved. And like us, we want to see more
of him. We want to hear him speaking. It's a great description, isn't
it, in a sense, that one of the things that causes the tension
in believers is that we want to see more of Him. We know that He stands, we know
that He looks, we know that He shows Himself, but we cry out
for more. He's looking continually, He's
standing there. And as we'll see, at times and
times too many. Our love for Him is cold. Our passion for His glory is
weak. Our faith is diminished and prayer
dies or becomes a burden. His ordinances and his church
and the meeting together with his people, with the people of
his choosing and his gathering become a chore rather than a
pleasure. And the sad effects of all this
are a wall, our wall, of sin. Religion without Christ is always
for the gratification of our pleasures and our flesh. We'll
turn away, we'll create a wall, and we'll delight in the trivial
things of this world more than God. Jeremiah says, of the people
in his day, my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken
me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewn themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns that can hold no water. We live so often digging
for ourselves cisterns. And then in verse 10, the beloved
will not allow her to be in that state. He knows that she's living
for a time in winter and rain and cold, but he speaks, and
what a word he speaks. It's the same word he speaks
to his children throughout this time that we live here in the
flesh. He says, he speaks and he speaks unto
me. He speaks And wonderfully, he
speaks words that are always personal. The great prayer of
any man sent of God to preach, isn't it, is that this would
happen. That we labor and we study and
we pray that God would help us to divide this word and to present
it, present He who the word is about as faithfully as God would
allow. And then we have to wait. We have to wait until He speaks. And He says to those whose hearts
are heavy, who are hanging down, arms are hanging down, are weary
from the journey, weary from the toil of this world, weary
from all of the things that we think are going to bring us pleasure
in this world, weary from the sin that entangles us, weary
from Satan and his darts. And she's cast down. and he says
to her, rise up. Just like he said to Lazarus,
come forth. Just like he said to the man
with the withered arm, stretch out your hand. Who said that
Jesus will command people to do, won't ever command people
to do things that they cannot do? He's commanding us to do
things that we cannot do all the time. We can't rise up by
ourselves. But he says, rise up, rise up,
look up, stand up. He's come. He's come leaping
and skipping. He's come now. having shown himself
and he speaks and he calls her these precious names, doesn't
he? He says, rise up my love. The only way God's children will
ever be raised up in this world is if the Lord comes and reveals
his love to them. He says, rise up my love, not
just his love for them, but his belonging to them. And because
they belong to him, he calls them my fair one, my beautiful
one. And he does it in Song of Solomon
again and again. He turns to chapter 1, verse
8. He calls her a fairest among
women. In chapter 1, verse 15, just
to make sure that she knows. He says, behold, you are fair,
my love. And just to emphasize it, He
says, behold, you are fair. Behold, you are beautiful, the
one I love. Behold, you are beautiful. And then he calls us to come
away. To come away with him. This is what the voice This is
the voice she heard. The voice of him who leapt and
skipped into her presence. Rise up my love and come away. Come away, what from? What's he calling his love and
his beautiful one to come away from? Absolutely everything. Absolutely everything in this
world. Come out from them and be ye
separate. To be holy is to be a separated
one. Come out. Does this world have
that the Lord Jesus doesn't give us in abundance more? Are there pleasures in this world?
They are. Can they be taken away like that? They are, can't they? I remember
Noah, the barbecue we had at home last year, had one of those
things that makes bubbles. And it made the biggest bubbles
I think I've ever seen, Noah. And the thing that was remarkable
about these bubbles is that not only were they big bubbles and
they sort of weren't even round bubbles, they were big bubbles
that bobbled around, but they floated up and they floated up
and you might remember the one that floated right over our house. Didn't it? So much of our lives,
isn't it, is spent just chasing after those bubbles. When that bubble burst, Noah,
was there any sign that that bubble had ever done anything
to that tree or that ground? You couldn't see it, could you? You see what I'm saying? We have
so much of our lives are captivated by so much that it's just like
chasing a bubble. And they are beautiful, aren't
they? They reflect rainbows and they look magical. And so many
things that we cling to in this world are just like the bubbles. They float up, they captivate
us, they seem to even elevate us, and yet He says, come away. Why? Why should we come away
with him? Why, will he ask us? To leave all the things of this
world. To leave all the things that
we get our pleasures from. To leave all the things that
we think are significant and important. Why should she come
away? Because of who He is. And because of who He is, it's
what He does for us. You see, we live as sinners in
this world prior to our conversion in a wintry world. For lo, winter is past and the
rain is over, and he has these beautiful descriptions. Descriptions
of the gospel. Flowers appear on the earth.
The time of the singing birds is come. The time of the gospel. has come, and the voice of the
turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth her green
figs, and the vines with tender grape give a good smell. Arise,
my love, my beautiful one, and come away. Just think back in your times
prior to your coming to know the Lord Jesus. It looked like the bubbles were
really solid and really important. And the Lord Jesus came and he
burst them. What we thought were things which
were for our gain, we found that they were for our loss. It was
a long, dark winter. I pray for you people, you young
people, that it's a shorter winter than mine was. We lay there in
unbelief, the little sun and no growth. Coldness, barrenness,
unfruitfulness, And with the soil was cold and frozen. Darkness had covered the earth,
and gross darkness the people. But God says this good news,
as Isaiah 60 says, but the Lord shall arise upon thee and his
glory shall be seen upon you. The darkness is dispelled and
the winter is put away because the son of righteousness arises
with healing in his wing. The rain is over and it's gone. That which makes it not just
cold but dreary for the flock is over. He will swallow up death
forever. The Lord God will wipe away tears
from all faces. The rebuke of his people he'll
take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken, winter
is past, coldness and deadness has passed away, and now The
flowers appear on the earth. We don't have much opportunity
to see it in Australia. But in those cold countries,
while the snow is often still on the ground, you get these
spectacular displays of flowers that come at the beginning of
spring. The flowers spring up. To show
that the sun has come and fruitfulness is there on the earth. It's not
for nothing that most of these flowers are things like lilies,
that they rise up when the cold has gone away. To show that there
is life out of deadness. that there is fruitfulness where
there was barrenness, that where there was just nothing but cold
and freezing, freezing attitudes towards God, now there's warmth
and there's new life. The flowers appear on the earth. And the time for the singing
birds is come. It's time, as we read earlier,
for God's children to sing. He's asking her to come away
and enjoy with Him this new season. Enjoy with Him the flowers. Enjoy with Him the singing of
the birds, the songs of electing, redeeming, calling, justifying,
pardoning, adopting, love and grace. Songs about Him. Come and hear the singing of
His glory. and the voice of the dove, the
turtle dove. And so often in scriptures, it's
a reference to the Holy Spirit. When he comes and shines a light
on the Lord Jesus, a new season has begun. The old has passed
away, and what is new is glorious. These turtle doves were seasonal
travelers. They didn't live in that part
of the world. They weren't around in winter. But they return with the sun. They return in the spring. Jeremiah describes them in verse
8, chapter 8, verse 7. And he calls on people to know
their appointed times. The turtle dove, the swift and
the swallow, observe the time of their coming. Observe the
seasons of the Lord. And the vines. The fig tree puts
forth her green figs. The cursed fig tree in Mark 11
was a fig tree that had leaves to show that it was alive, but
no fruit. But this fig tree puts forth
her green figs, and the vines put forth their tender grapes. The vines, the Lord Jesus talks
about us being branches in the vines. Vines are actually weak
things in themselves, but when they're supported from outside
themselves, they maintain amazing growth and they can grow to great
heights and become very productive. Remain in me, says the Lord Jesus. He is the vine. And saints are
weak in themselves, and they cannot support themselves. But
their strength is in Christ, grafted into Him. And they abide in Him, the true
vine. And then they bring forth much
fruit, this good smell, this wonderful aroma that brings glory
to God. It's His work. And then He says to her again,
in verse 13, He says, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come
away Isn't it beautiful? The Lord Jesus knows that we
are hard of hearing and that we are dull and he calls us to
come and enjoy these delights and then he calls us again this
winter season This season of winter and rain is an ongoing
season in the lives of the Lord's people. Times when we feel the
coldness of unbelief. We see no joy in the things that
He has created and done. We can't sing with the singing
birds. We take no delight in the flowers
that spring up at his command from the earth. And he calls
us to come away again and again and again. He says, come to me,
all you who are weary and heavy laden, wearied of sin, heavy
laden with efforts to create anything good of ourselves. And what's he saying? Come away. Come to me, you weary
ones. Come to me, you who have lived
in that winter season. Come to me and you will have
rest for your souls. He's the one who comes. He's
the one who calls. He's the one who prepares, as
it were, the banquet of these delights. He beckons us. He calls us. And everything's
ready. The sun drenched flowery fields,
the singing birds, the sweet and ripening figs to our taste,
the refreshing smells of the tender grapes. Every sense and
every need is there provided by him in abundance. Come, he says, but also, he says,
arise. almost everywhere in the scripture
where that word arise is, it says, to arise and to go. The Lord has called, don't stay
here, arise and go. Come with the Lord, walk with
him, talk with him. Abide in me, he says, and I in
you. He that has my commandments and
keeps them He it is that loves me, and he that loves me shall
be loved to my Father, and we will come to him and make our
abode with him. What a delightful, delightful
place to rest, to rest our souls, to rest our weary bodies. What
a delightful word from our God. Arise, come away. Come away and come to and be
with and delight in Him who makes us not just the love of His life,
that made us beautiful in his beauty. Let's pray.