If you turn with me to Song of
Solomon, we're now in something of a great rush. We've reached
chapter 2. And we might just take our time
here for a little while in some of these verses. I'll just read
those first opening section of Chapter 2, verse 1. It says,
I am the rose of Sharon. I believe this is the Lord speaking.
The lily of the valleys. As the lily among the thorns,
so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees
of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under
his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my
taste. He brought me to his banqueting
house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons,
comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love. His left hand is
under my head, and His right hand doth embrace me. I charge you, O ye daughters
of Jerusalem, by the rows and by the hinds of the field, that
ye not stir up nor awaken my love till He please. It's just full of the most delightful
imagery about our Saviour and about us as His children, as
His bride, as His beloved. And as we saw in our previous
weeks, He speaks in remarkable ways about the love of His life. And then she speaks in remarkable
ways about Him that always leads to communion and to fellowship. It's one thing to know about
a sovereign God. It's another thing to experience
His sovereignty. It's all very well to know that
God is love. It's another thing altogether
to know that love and to feel and experience that love. It's
all very well to know from the Bible about His providential
working of all things for our good. It's another thing, like
the Shulamite, to actually experience grace. Christianity is an experience
of a real and living person. Just before church this morning,
a lady was outside looking for the Christian Spiritist Church. Meets once a month in Nowra,
has a church that meets in Wollongong, has a lady minister And it was
just extraordinary to try and talk to her about the Lord Jesus.
And there they are at the church with the minister, and she seriously
doubts whether He even exists at all. And not only is His presence
not a reality, His words are not a reality. And of course,
what is she doing? She has discovered new spiritual
experiences and the result of those new spiritual experiences
is that she's working even harder than ever before to make herself
good and to make herself better. The religions of this world have
many names and we'll probably discover many new names amongst
them. But as Deuteronomy says, their
rock is not as our rock. The place that they rest is not
a person. They rest in human wisdom. They may have spiritual experiences,
but if they're not grounded in the reality of who the Lord Jesus
is, then they are just wandering in the dark. And here the Lord,
in verse 1 of chapter 2, commends himself, as he does so often
in the scriptures. It's not something that man is
to do, but the God-man calls himself the Good Shepherd. He
is the door. He is the light. He is the way,
the truth, and the life. And here, in his capacity as
someone who has come into our world and into our lives, he
dons the garments of humanity for a purpose, so that he can
have real, meaningful, physical relationship spiritual and physical
relationship. And here he describes himself.
I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. The rose of Sharon are roses
that grew on the coast of Sharon, which was between Caesarea and
Joppa, so it was down on that coast where you might recall
Cornelius met with Peter and Dorcas and others lived. Protected
by the mountains of Jerusalem from the hot desert winds and
nurtured by the cooling breezes from the Mediterranean. It was
a place of great fruitfulness And the rose of Sharon is a red
rose. And the roses are those plants which are just emblematic
of love itself. I prefer to plant flowers for
my wife and to give them to her. One of the great things about
India is that, I don't know why, but for some reason I had rose
gardens up the town that we lived in and two or three times the
year the kids would get for some fundraising thing they would
get roses and you could buy great big bunches of yellow roses and
red roses and so two or three times a year while I was in India
I made up for all of my slackness in the previous years and I'd
buy like everyone in school would end up all the ladies would end
up with bunches of roses and I would make sure that Lisa got
a big bunch but they are symbolic aren't they we use them today
they're not only beautiful to behold they have a beautiful
perfume they are the old roses that have that perfume are delightful
and remarkably too for roses they thrive best in poor lean
soils and they thrive best in drier places. They are just remarkably
emblematic of our Saviour. In 5 verse 10 she calls Him white
and ruddy, white and red. He also describes Himself as
the lily of the valleys. These lilies were renowned for
their whiteness, and so you have the beauty of red mixed with
the wonder of white lilies. Of course, signifying the purity
of Christ's nature. absolutely pure. On that Mount
of Transfiguration, the Lord stood there with Moses and Elijah. He was transfigured before them,
and His clothes became shining, exceeding white like snow, such
as no launder on earth can whiten them. And these lilies are lilies that
just grow wild in the valleys. They're grown without human assistance
or anything. And the Lord Jesus talked about
the beauty of the lilies and he said Solomon, when he was
arrayed in all of his beauty, was not as beautiful as the lilies
of the valley. The things that God creates and
are grown by God are beautiful and delightful. So often we pass
by so quickly in this world the things that God creates that
are there to take our breath away so often if we actually
spent time to look upon them. And of course, the lilies, this
lily is a lily in a valley, in a place of humility, a place
of vulnerability where it can be trodden down and eaten and
washed away. But like the rose of Sharon,
it's also a place of fruitfulness. I am the rose of Sharon, and
the lilies of the valley. And then the Lord Jesus speaks
of his bride. He describes himself as those
things, and then what does he say of her? He says, As the lily
among thorns, so is my love. among the daughters. He's describing her in exactly
the same terms as he describes himself. So often we'll find
that in Song Solomon. As I may have already told you
before, she actually bears his name. Shulamite is just the feminine
word, the feminine version of Solomon. She bears his name. We bear his image. We wear his righteousness. We have the same spirit. As the lily is beautiful, She
is beautiful, and her beauty is a beauty that comes from Him. If you have your Bibles out,
let's turn in our Bibles to Ezekiel 16, and we have a wonderful description
in Ezekiel 16 of the children of God. Children of God born into this
world. As the Shulamite said, she says,
I am black, but I'm comely. Son of man, caused Jerusalem
to know her abominations, to know her blackness, and say,
Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, Your birth and your nativity
are from the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite, and
your mother a Hittite. As for your nativity, on the
day you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you
washed in water to cleanse you. You were not rubbed with salt
nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. No, I pitied you to do any of
these things for you, to have compassion on you, but you were
thrown out into the open field when you yourself were loathed
on the day you were born. But, and when I passed by you
and saw you struggling in your blood, I said to you in your
blood, live. I said to you in your blood,
live. I made you thrive like a plant in the field, and you
grew, matured, and became very beautiful. Your breasts were
formed, your hair grew, but you were naked and bare. When I passed
by you again and looked upon you indeed, Your time was the
time of love. So I spread my wing over you
and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and
entered into a covenant with you and you became mine, says
the Lord God. Then I washed you in water. Yes,
I thoroughly washed off your blood and I anointed you with
oil. I clothed you in embroidered
cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin. I clothed you with
fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments,
put bracelets on your wrists and a chain around on your neck
and I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears and a beautiful
crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold
and silver and your clothing was a fine linen silk and embroidered
cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour,
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. All the beauty of the Shulamite
is from Him. It's the reflected beauty and
the real beauty of what He creates in her and what He creates her
to be. He who knows the end from the
beginning says on that great day that we will be like Him. because we will see him as he
is. She's conformed to him and her
likeness is his. She bears his name. We've looked at it many times,
but when God speaks of himself, he calls himself, this is the
name in Jeremiah 23.6, in his days Judah will be saved and
Israel will dwell safely now this is the name by which he
will be called the Lord our righteousness and if you turn over to Jeremiah
33 verse 16 in those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will
dwell safely And this is the name by which she shall be called,
the Lord our righteousness. She is a lily, but she is as
the lily among thorns. She is exposed to the same hatred,
malice, persecution and she's wounded with the same thorns
as he is. Of course the thorns we've seen
in earlier passages in Song of Solomon. My mother's children
were angry with me. They made me the keeper of the
vineyard. They are called the flocks of
thy companions." So the thorns, of course, are the result of that curse,
the curse that fell on this creation. Thorns and thistles it will bring
forth for you. And the remarkable thing about
thorns and thistles is that you don't have to do a single thing
to get them. They'll come up all by themselves
and they come up continually and they grow vigorously and
there's a special one for every environment on this earth. It was remarkable when we were
Our children were little and we didn't have any money and
we used to sell our front lawn. We used to sell Simon's front
lawn as well. We sold all that we could get our hands on to
sell. And when they of course came in those days, they didn't
have all the rules and regulations about it as they do now, but
they used to take not just the kaikiu off the top, but they'd
actually take as much good terraria dirt as they could possibly manage.
So they'd dig down at least half an inch and off and further and
they'd take the whole lawn and it would just look like this
bored floor and it hadn't been ploughed probably for a hundred
years and what grew up in that soil? Just weeds everywhere Mercifully,
the kaikuyu came back and within a matter of weeks it started
to look like a lawn again. We did it several times, but
it was remarkable each time. You'd take even more soil, go
down even deeper, and what were there? Thorns and weeds, prickles. They are just all around us,
aren't they? We are, as God's children in
this world, we are lily, lilies among the thorns. What a remarkable
contrast to actually think of the softness of lilies, the softness
of the foliage of a lily, the softness and the beauty of a
flower, a lily flower, compared to the sharp pointed abrasiveness
of thorns. God's children in this world
have hearts of flesh and we are vulnerable in ways that the world
out there will never know. We suffer hurts that they never
understand until God opens their eyes and gives them grace. We
are vulnerable to being damaged. Damaged by what's on the outside
and damaged by what's on the inside. And only, only God in His good
grace and His love and His care, and the exercise that He reveals
of His providence to us, can take those wounds and bind them
up, and like the calluses on our hands, like the bones that
are broken at that point, they become actually stronger. They don't cease to have that
tenderness, but they do become stronger. We are vulnerable. That's why God says of his preachers,
you are to comfort my people. Comfort my people, because my
people are like the Shulamite. My mother's children, verse six,
were angry with me. They made me the keeper of the
vineyards. And because of that, because
of our flesh, but my own vineyard, I have not kept. The job of people
who stand where I stand is to know that God's children are
hurt and wounded in ways that I don't always know about, but
in ways that we have together experienced. Your hurts are our
hurts, so says the Lord Jesus. the wounds and the reproaches
which fall upon him, fall upon us, fall upon him. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute
me? So we live as vulnerable, soft,
Christ displaying lilies amongst the thorns. As I said earlier,
the thorns can refer to wicked and ungodly men. And they are to be thrust, these
thorns will be thrust away because they cannot be taken with hands. They are unfruitful in themselves
and they're hurtful and grieving to the saints. Righteous lot. was grieved, was pricked in his
conscience by the wickedness of the people that he lived with
in Sodom. And the reproaches and the revilings
and the persecutions of wicked men afflict the saints, as I
just said, all according to God, I promise from him all who desire
to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. The Thorns also refer to heretics
and heretical doctrine which pierce and prick and wound the
children of God. Do men gather grapes off thorns
or figs off thistles? By their fruit you shall know
them, by their declaration of who the Lord Jesus is and who
they are. And also, as I said earlier,
the corruption of our nature. The thorns grow naturally. They need no cultivation, they
need no fertilizer, and they are there all the time. Paul called this messenger from
Satan, this thorn in the flesh, and wonderfully in 2 Corinthians
12, The reason that God gave it to him was to humble him and
to make him know that God's grace is sufficient for him. And in
our weakness, when we are like lilies, we are strong. not when we are like thorns. The thorns will be gathered and
bound together and they will go to a place of everlasting
destruction. And the thorns are our worldly
cares, aren't they, which choke the good seed of the Word. We have so many good inducements
in this world, family cares, financial cares, all sorts of
cares, which choke the Word of God. How quick and easy is it
for us to find an excuse, to find our comfort in something
other than God and His Word. One of the very few things I
love watching on television is the US Masters Golf. It's just
been amazing how much of a temptation it's been in the last couple
of hours. I could have spent all morning watching that. Isn't
it ridiculous? A bunch of rich people watching
a bunch of rich people hitting a little white ball around a
golf course to get even richer. And there I am with this most
precious word before me. There are thorns, aren't there,
all around me. Ah, the lily. We are lilies among
thorns, but we have a husband and he describes her beautifully
in that middle phrase there, isn't it? As the lily among the
thorns, so is my love. My love. God's distinguishing love for
his bride. She's distinguished from all
others among the daughters. And here it's a reference to
other daughters of Adam. Other daughters even of Abraham. She's chosen out. to be a lily
amongst the thorns. She dwells among the briars,
but she is in his eyes still the lily. Even in her state, even as she
is, black and living amongst the thorns, He sees her in her
beauty, bearing his image. It doesn't detract from her beauty,
but in fact, compared to the thorns, it increases her beauty
and increases her love for him. She's still the object of his
love in the midst of a wicked and ungodly world, men of unclean
lips, people who hate God, hate His godliness that He brings
to His people. And though she was reviled and
persecuted by them, that she was loved, she was valued, she
was esteemed by Him. He knew all of her sins. He knew
she was black. He knew her corruptions. He knew
where she lived. He knew the sins that grieved
her and dishonored him. Yet none of these, nor anything
else, could ever separate her from his love. What does Paul
say in Romans 8? Who shall separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus? You see, she's His lily. She's His love. She's my love. She's distinguished
and she's owned among the daughters of God. Then in verse 3, we have this,
as we've seen before in Song of Solomon, and we'll see again,
when he raises her up and says, she sees herself black, he says,
that she is beautiful. There is no spot in you, no blemish
in you whatsoever. You're not just a lily, but you're
a perfect lily, and you're a perfectly preserved lily growing amongst
the thorns. Every time she is given this
beautiful name and these beautiful descriptions, how does she respond? She immediately turns back and
says, no, it's not me, it's not me, it's him. Let's read verse
three. As the apple tree among the trees
of the wood, so is my beloved among the suns. I sat down under
his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my
taste. Her beauty comes from Him and
she wants to gaze upon His beauty. Our peace and our rest and our
comfort comes from the beauty of His person. And that's where
we want to gaze. Fix our eyes. Gaze upon the Lord
Jesus. see him as he's described in
his word and just rest and gaze upon him as the apple tree among
the trees of the wood. So she's described in terms of
being a beauty amongst the low growing plants of this world.
a lily amongst the thorns. He's compared to an apple tree. Apple trees which are fruitful
and delightful amongst all the trees of the
wood. All the men of this world all that humanity has ever offered
in terms of greatness of men. Every one of them pales into
insignificance beside the Lord Jesus. Just think of the great
leaders that are esteemed by men. 2,500 years ago, what did Buddha do
to gain enlightenment and to lead people to nirvana? He left
his palace, and he left his wife, and he left his child. Our God doesn't do that. Muhammad,
that great leader of world today had many wives, some
of them very young. The Lord Jesus says, My love. He's typifying that He has a
love that's not like the love of men. It's a beautiful love,
a love that is generated purely by Him and His grace which He
gives to others. There is no one, there is no
one nor will there ever be, there is no one that compares to the
Lord Jesus. These apple trees It's said that
there's a variety of tree called an apple citron which grows big
and has fruit, as you might understand from Revelation 22. It has fruit
that grows all year round. It has flowers and green fruit
and ripe fruit. And it's wonderful for feeling
and wonderfully refreshing. And the fruit hang down so much
that they hang down to the ground. He is an apple tree among the
trees of the wood. He is the tree of life. In the middle of the street on
either side of the river was a tree of life, which bore twelve
fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves
of the tree were for the healing of the nations, and there should
be no more caught curse. No more thorns, no more thorns
on the outside, no more thorns on the inside. But the throne
of God and the Lamb shall be in it. And he and his servants
shall serve him. They shall see his face. and his name shall be on their
foreheads. There is no other like our tree. There is no other rock like our
rock. Apple trees are beautiful in
flower, they're beautiful in fruit, and they're beautiful
in autumn when their leaves change. And the Lord Jesus is more beautiful
than all the others. He's more beautiful than the
angels. He's above angels and principalities
and powers. Let all the angels of God worship
Him. But in His human nature, He was
made a little lower than the angels. Yet in that nature, united
to His deity, to His Godhead, The Bible says he's crowned with
glory and honor. He is the tree among all the
trees of the woodland. So is my beloved among the suns. But as I said earlier, to gaze
upon the Lord's beauty and to see it described in the scriptures
is one thing, But it's another altogether, and it's the work
of the Holy Spirit altogether, to take you where the Shulamite
went, to take you into a place not just of communion, but delightful
communion with Him. See, the believer's joy in this
life, our peace and our hope and our security and our comfort,
it's Christ in us. It's knowing the Lord Jesus Christ
in his true character as he's revealed in this word. And it's
to delightfully enjoy him, to enjoy him as he manifests himself
in you and to you personally. And when he does that, like the
Shulamite, we'll be happy to sit down under his shadow with
great delight. And his fruit was sweet to my
taste." So she sat down I sat down, she said. She rested from
the heat of the day, she rested from her labours, and her pleasure
and her delight were in His presence. As the scriptures say, in His
presence is the fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures
forevermore. She sat because of her need,
a place of rest from the storms. She sat because he was sufficient
to her. She sat because of her faith
and her confidence in him. She sat because it was a place
of security, peace, quietness, and satisfaction. She sat saying
that she wanted, in a sense, to stay there. See, like this
lady I was speaking to this morning, people have their shadows that
they take rest in. Isaiah describes them in 4 verse
13 They offer sacrifices on the
mountaintops Verse 11, he says, harlotry, wine, new wine, enslave
the heart. People ask counsel from their
wooden idols and their staff informs them, for the spirit
of harlotry has caused them to stray. They have played the harlot
against their God. They offer sacrifices on the
mountaintops and burn incense on the hills. They still do it
in India, on the top of every hill. is a place of sacrifice,
a place of incense, a place of worship. Nothing has changed. And under the oaks and poplars
and terebinths, because their shade is good, they find a place
where the shade is good for them. And there they commit harlotry. The people will find shade and
shadow for rest in idolatrous harlotry religions. And also they will find trust
in this world. The people of God were a rebellious
people. who take counsel, Isaiah 30 verse
one says, but not of me, who depies plans, but not of my spirit,
that they may add sin to sin, who walk to go down to Egypt,
they've not asked my advice, to strengthen themselves in the
strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt. There are many places, aren't
there? Isaiah talks about them finding refuges. A place where they feel at peace
and at comfort. There are lots of shadows. God's
children will find that those shadows don't do as this shadow
does. The Shulamite was burnt by the
sun. The sun has looked upon me. And shadows are simple things,
aren't they? Shadow requires just three things,
doesn't it? It requires an object, it requires
a source of light, and it requires a place for that to be revealed. And so God's children find Him
to be a shadow. to not, to be in the sun, to
be under the gaze of God Almighty and to not be protected by the
reality of the person and the impact of that person in his
shadow as it rests on this world, is to be a place where, like
the sulamite, you can be burnt. We need a place of refuge. We need someone to stand between
us and God, to shadow us under his wings. Christ is signified in scriptures
as many things, isn't he? He's that rock that was broken
and cleft. And what does it provide? It
provides a place of shadow, a place of protection from the storms. Christ is a shadow of a great
rock in a weary land. And he talks about He's covering
protection of his people. In Isaiah 49 verse 10, he says,
neither the sun, neither heat nor the sun will strike them. They shall neither hunger nor
thirst. neither the heat nor the sun
shall strike them. For he who has mercy on them
will lead them, even by springs of water he will guide them. We saw that he takes his flock,
and he makes his flock to rest at noon, when the sun's rays
are at their brightest and their hottest. God's children have
a place of refuge. It's a shield to defend, a place
to escape, a place to take rest. And isn't it interesting? He
sits down underneath his shadow with great delight. So the beginning
is to find a place of rest and a place of great delight. And
then in that place where she is sitting and delighting in
him and the shadow he provides, then his fruit is sweet to my
taste. The question that Song of Solomon
asks all the time, isn't it, is that the Shulamite has entered
into these experiences. What of God's fruit have you
found sweet to your taste? Let's just look. at some of them
as they've been described in this opening chapter of Song
of Solomon. Firstly, it's all about intimate relationship. Let him kiss me with the kisses
of his mouth. His fruit is love. And it's not just a meaningless
love, it's distinguishing love, it's passionate love, it's love
that's better than wine. His fruit is his name, the savour
of your good ointments. The name is the character of
our God, who he is and what he's done. The fruit of his activity
in verse 4 is a drawing activity. Like a magnet, he draws his people
to himself. And it's a powerful, discriminating
work. He draws and his people run after
him. And he draws and he brings his
people to a place there is gladness and rejoicing. He brings his
people into his chamber to have communion with him because he
has made them beautiful. He's made them holy. And he speaks and answers prayer. Tell me, she says in prayer to
him, And he responds with words of wisdom. He speaks words of
grace about where he feeds his flock. He speaks words of comforting
grace where you make your flock rest at noon. He speaks words
of directing grace. Go your way in the footsteps
of the flock. and you will find rest for your
souls. It's completing grace, isn't
it? He calls her beautiful, she wears his names, and we will
make, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we will make the borders of gold
and the studs of silver. And it's communing grace. It's the grace of communion with
Him. He shall lie, verse 13, all night
betwixt my breasts. We talk often about the doctrines
of grace, but the doctrines of grace are just descriptive of
the person of grace. They're just descriptive. of
who He is and how He works in this world. The fruit that is
sweet to our taste is a fruit that is sweet because He has
made it sweet to us. It's not a fruit that is sweet
to the natural man. It's sweet to His people. That's
why the Holy Spirit says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste and see that he's gracious. Pray that he'll take you under
the shadow of his wings. And you will find it delightful. And you will find His fruit sweet
to your taste. Let's pray.