Verse 8, Song of Solomon 2, verse
8. 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. He looketh forth at the windows,
showing himself through the lattice. My beloved spake and said unto
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 of birds
has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with
the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair
one, and come away. Oh, my dove. that are 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. Take us the foxes,
the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender
grapes. My beloved is mine and I am his. He feedeth among the lilies until
the daybreak and the shadows flee away. Turn, my beloved,
and be thou like a roe or young heart upon the mountains of Beather. Our winter hasn't been terribly
cold. It hasn't been terribly, it hasn't
been snowy like the winter before was, but we have experienced
a little bit of a few spring days. And so then they went away
and we've had some cooler days and some cloudy days and I think
we're all ready for the spring to spring and stay sprung. So
I came across this passage this week and it really spoke to my
heart and it's a message about how that our Lord Jesus Christ
revives and brings the precious presence after the long winter
of a trial and he causes us to to have sweet communion with
him again after a long time of separation, what seems like separation
from our viewpoint. Now the Song of Solomon is a
beautiful song. It's a song of Christ's love
for His bride, His love for His church, the elect of God, and
of His bride's love for Christ. But I want to look at this passage
this morning a little more personally than that. I'll look at it as
the reviving that Christ brings to the believer personally. And
I think you'll get the picture when we start looking at it.
Our trials are very often dark, and they're cold, and they're
long, just like a winter is. And we feel separated from our
Redeemer. And then as these wintry trials come along, we're longing
for Christ. It really sets in and we really
are chilled by the separation from him. We long for him. We
really realize that we have made a big error. We have grown cold
and we long for his presence again. We long for communion
with him. And then something happens. And
here's where we see the first thing happens. We hear the voice
of Christ. It says in verse 8, this is an
exclamation, this is the bride, the believer speaking, the voice
of my beloved. She hears Him, His voice. She
hears Him. It's been a long wait. You've
been longing to hear His Word. You know how you start listening
more intently. You start looking and searching
more diligently. You start trying to hear a Word
from Him and get a Word from Christ. And sometimes you can't
get it. Sometimes it's long and it's and you think you won't
ever hear from him again and you're seeking for that word
from him and you don't hear it. But then all of a sudden the
Holy Spirit pierces through the chill and right into your heart
and you hear his voice speak, you hear Christ speak. Not audibly,
it's not, I want to say that for our young people, it's not
an audible voice, it's a voice in the heart. You hear his voice
speak in the heart and you know his voice because you're his
sheep. and his sheep hear his voice, and they know him, and
you hear him, just like if your husband's been gone, ladies,
for a long time, and you hear him out in the yard, and you
just faintly hear his voice, but you know as soon as you hear
it, that's my beloved, that's him. Well, she hears his voice,
and speaking to her personally, and notice how he approaches.
And verse 8 says, Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains,
skipping upon the hills. My beloved's like a roe or like
a young harp. He's coming across those mountains
like a young deer, just skipping right across those mountains.
Now, the one to whom the Lord's coming is His. This is His beloved. This is one who's been given
to Him. This is one who He's had from
everlasting. This is one who He came to this
earth and went to the cross and laid down His life for and redeemed
from all sin. This is His beloved. And He's
coming to her speedily. He's coming Now, across those
mountains, and He's coming speedily, and those mountains and those
hills that He's coming across, they're the mountains and the
hills of division. They're the mountains and the
hills that have separated us from Him. And they're mountains
we couldn't conquer. They're mountains we couldn't
get over. They're mountains that we couldn't move because of our
coldness of heart and our unbelief. If you've got faith, you can
move mountains. But when you don't have faith, when it's just
become so cold that you can't even, you got so many doubts
and fears, or it's your sin and your temptation, or whatever
it is that's caused these mountains, but they're not too much for
our Lord. They were put there on purpose so you couldn't get
over them. to show you He can, and to show
you without Him you can do nothing. We have to have Him. And He comes
across those mountains like a young heart, like a young roe, like
a young deer comes across the mountains. Let me ask you a question. Are you in love with Christ? Really in love with Him? When you're in love with somebody,
you want to be with them. You don't want to be separated
from them. When they go away, and you know this, husbands and
wives, you're separated from them for any length of time,
you want to get back to them. You want to see them. You don't
want to be separated from them, because you love them. You love
them. You've got a son, a daughter. You're their mother, their father.
And you know when you're separated from them for a long time, you
want to be with them. You want to see them. You want
to hold them. You want to be next to them.
Well, if that's the case with you, with anybody here, it's
because God loved you first. If that's the case with anybody
here, it's because Christ set His affection on you long before
you set your affection on Him. It's because that He set His
affection on you when as yet you weren't even lovable. in
ourselves. When we were just enemies in
our minds by wicked works, had no strength, had no power, had
nothing. And He yet came and He put away
all our sin and did everything necessary to reconcile us to
God. We saw this the other day, just like it was in that first
winter blast that came that caused you to see your need of Christ
in the day of conversion, just like it's been in every trial
since then. When our Lord comes, He makes you to know this, that
if when we were enemies, He reconciled us, made us friends to God, by
his death. If he did that when we were enemies
and made us friends, much more than being now his friends, being
much more than now reconciled and Christ being risen, we'll
be saved by his life. Is there anything that can separate
us from the love of Christ? You see, we can be separated
from our loved ones here below, but we can't be separated. A
believer, the elect of God, chosen and put in Christ, can never,
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be separated from the love of
Christ. It won't happen. There's not
a... There's not a winter that's cold
enough. As the old song says, there ain't
no mountain high enough. There's nothing that can keep
us separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing
can do it. He can overcome those mountains.
So that first thing we hear is for us and we see Him overcoming
these mountains and then He reveals Himself to be very near to us. We hear His voice first. It's
faint. We think it's Him. We think He's
near us. But then He lets us know He's
near. Look at verse 9. Behold, He standeth behind our
wall. He looketh forth at the window,
showing Himself through the lattice. He's near. He makes His presence
known. He lets you know He's near. He
lets us know that in our hearts. But we don't see Him without
something between us. There's something between us.
already, or still here. He standeth behind our wall,
showing himself through the lattice. You ever look through lattice?
You know, you can see whoever's standing behind it, bits and
pieces of them, but you can't see them completely, can you? You can recognize who it is,
but you can't see them fully. Well, That's how we are in this
flesh. We still have this flesh. That
wall is the wall we built. That wall is the wall that is
our making. It's our wall. And we can see
Him. We see Him by faith. We see Him
in providence. He's working, but we see bits
and pieces. We see His hand here and there.
a foot here and there, but we can't see completely what He's
doing. We see Him in the Word, and even
when we see Him as fully as we can see Him, we're still looking
through a glass darkly. We're still just seeing a little
bit of Him. But in these trials like this,
in this cold winter, and when these mountains of division have
separated us from Him, and He makes Himself known to us, That
wall is between us still because there's something there that
separated us from Him. He's come through the mountains
now. He's come near. We know He's near. But there's
still a wall that's got to be removed. There's still something
that's got to be taken down. And we can't see Him fully, but
here's our consolation. We can't see Him fully, but He
sees us clearly. It says here, He looketh forth
at the windows. He's looking through the windows.
We can't see him because we're trying to look through the lattice,
but he's looking through the windows and he sees us clearly.
You know, whenever he came to Peter and he said, Peter, do
you love me? And Peter said, Lord, you know,
you know. He puts the love in the heart. He creates the heart, and He
puts the love in the heart, and the longing in the heart, and
that desire for Him in the heart, so that He sees clearly. He knows
it's there. He won't let it die. He won't
let that fire go out. He put it there, and He's going
to keep it going. Whenever we We are so broken down, and we
go into our closet, and we just fall down, and we're mourning,
and we're weeping, and nobody knows it. Our dearest loved one
doesn't know it. He sees it. He sees in secret. He sees in secret. He knows,
he put that longing there. He put those tears in our heart.
And he knows that, he knows, he knows the heart of the one
that he's, where he's put that. And when we grow cold and indifferent,
He's the one that puts all these secret longings back in our hearts
with His secret workings that we don't even know about. And
He sees everything. He sees the whole thing, what's
going on when we're crying out to Him and longing for it. He
sees us. And then thirdly, here's what
we see. Now He's made us hear His voice. He's made us know
that He's near. And then again He calls to us.
But this time when He calls to us, He calls us to Himself. Before, he was just calling as
he came across the mountains and we could hear him. Now he
calls us personally to himself. Look, verse 10. My beloved spake
and said unto me, rise up my love, my fair one, and come away. Rise up. You've been in this
house of mourning now for way too long. You've been hiding
in this bed of your own making for way too long. You've been
trying to warm yourself and comfort yourself under these blankets
and these quilts of carnal quilts and blankets for way too long.
Time to rise up now, he says. The trial has come to its purpose. It's fulfilled its end. It's
time for you to rise up now. He says, rise up, my love, my
fair one, and come away. And you think to yourself, surely
he can't be talking to me. He calls me my love and my fair
one, surely he can't be talking to me. You've been feeling that
stormy wind of the law and your guilt and all that you are and
all that you've done. You've been feeling the icy sleet
and the snow of the winter and all of your coldness and your
dullness and your neglect of the means of His grace and attending
and hearing His Word and reading His Word and all of those things. You know all of those things.
You think to yourself, surely He's not calling me my love.
Surely He's not saying of me that I'm His love. You ever been
there? You ever felt like that? That
Lord, Lord, I can't possibly be yours. I can't possibly be
somebody that you love. The seasons change and the weather
changes and the climate changes, but the love of Christ for his
beloved never changes. He said, The Lord hath appeared
of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love, and therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. He not only
expresses into your heart that He's calling you My love, but
He expresses it into your heart and spreads that love abroad
in our hearts through the Holy Spirit in such fullness that
He makes us to know that we are His only one and only. He says, my love, my love. And he says, my fair one. And you think, surely he can't
be talking to me. It's been that through this trial
the ground is covered over in snow and it's covered over in
ice and I've lost my footing and I've slipped down and I've
gotten dirty and defiled and filthy in all of this. Surely
He can't be calling me my fair one. Surely He can't be saying
I'm fair after all that I've fallen and done. What tongue
will condemn you? Your righteousness is of me,
saith the Lord. Christ fulfilled the law for
His bride. Christ satisfied justice for His bride. Christ has come
to every one of you who know Him by the Spirit of His grace
and given you faith to believe Him. And He's clothed you in
the snow-white garments of His righteousness. And they can't
be sullied. They can't be defiled. That inward
man that He's created is created in righteousness and true holiness.
And He's righteous and holy even though that outward man is defiled
and polluted. And if any man sins, we have
an advocate with the Father. If any man, we come to him and
confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
Because he's the propitiation for our sins, the atonement for
our sins, satisfaction for our sins. And he comes to us and
he speaks to us and he says, Thou art all fair, my love, there
is no spot in thee. You see what he's doing? He's
speaking to you in ways to where you know, I don't deserve to
be spoken to this way. But he's wooing you by his sweet,
sweet good news in your heart. And he's letting you know, I
know what you've done. But I remember it no more. You're
my love. You're my fair one. Come away. Arise. Come with me. And then
he comforts us so much that we can't do anything else but willingly
arise and follow him. and latch on to Him with everything,
with the heart of faith. Watch what He does, verse 11.
He says, For lo, the winter's passed, the rain's over and gone,
that long winter trial, it served its purpose. You know what Paul
said in Corinthians? He said, God's faithful. He will
not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able. but
will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you
may be able to bear it. Just as He did when He first
began to work a work of grace in our hearts, where we thought
we were just going to just crush under the load of guilt and sin
and just seeing what we are in light of His glory and His goodness. Just when we thought we were
about to wilt and fade, just as He did in every trial since
then, just at the right time, just when he's brought us right
to where we're supposed to be. The Lord Jesus Christ, who is
the way, he comes with healing in his wings, and he whispers,
rise my love, my fair one, come away with me, for lo, the winter's
past, the rain's over and gone, I've brought forth the fruit
in you that I purpose to bring forth by that long, cold winter.
I've brought forth that fruit, verse 12, the flowers appear
on the earth, the time of the singing of the birds has come,
the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land, the fig
tree put forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender
grape give a good smell. Arise my love, my fair one, and
come away. All that's fruit that he's produced
in his child, that he's produced in you as you've been going through
that long trial of winter. And you think to yourself, but
all I did was cry just like a lonesome turtle dove because I just wanted
to be safe in the arms of Christ, my beloved rock. And he says
there in verse 14, oh my dove, thou art in the cliffs of the
rock. And you say, but my beloved,
all I did was go away to my closet beneath the stairs and I just
mourned for you like a dove for her mate. Night and day. And I didn't find any rest. I
longed for you like Noah's dove, longed to return to the ark.
And Christ says, oh, my dove, you are in secret places. I've
hidden you in my heart of love. I've hidden you. Let me see thy
countenance. Come out here. Let me hear your
voice, for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely
to me. Brethren, the trial is always to turn us to Him. The
trial is always to make us long in our hearts to be hidden in
Him. And when He's brought that longing into our hearts, that's
the flower of spring that He has produced. The trial is always
to bring us to mourn for Him in the secret place of the heart,
in secret prayer, in all honesty, in spirit and in truth. And that's
the voice of spring. That's the fragrant fruit which
our Redeemer produces by His power and His grace through these
trials and these tribulations. That's when we have sweet communion
with our beloved. That's when we know sweetheart
love. That's when this book becomes a love song. and we hear him
speak, and that's where the all-wise lover of our souls keeps his
pride. That's when we have a communion
so real, it's like he's standing right here with us and he's saying,
let me see thy countenance. Let me hear thy voice, for sweet
is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Now, let's learn from
our beloved what his loving admonition is to us. He says now, verse
15, take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for
our vines have tender grapes. He's telling us now that you've
been brought back to communion with Me. Now that you've got
this fragrant fruit abounding in your heart and this sweetheart
communion between yourself and your Redeemer, your Beloved,
He says, now guard and watch against the little foxes. Because
they come along and they destroy the tender vines and they'll
destroy the tender fruit that He's produced. Let nothing disturb
the peace between you and Christ. Let nothing disturb the peace
between Christ and His bride. Let nothing disturb the peace
between you and your brethren. Those little foxes. that creep
around in that old man with his deeds in our flesh. Those little
foxes of evil, inordinate, unclean, covetous desires. It's all idolatry. It don't matter if it takes the
form of fornication or if it takes the form of a covetous
money hoarder. It's all idolatry. And those
little foxes of anger and wrath that starts breeding malice It
just starts out as little foxes at first. Filthy communication
of every kind, especially that little fox that wants to just
say a little something about one of these brethren that's
sitting right here. Oh, we'll say it in humor. Bless their
heart. But that's still a little fox.
And I'll just come up and take a little bite out of that tender,
those tender fruit. Watch for that little fox that
genders into that big bad wolf called pride. and every little
fox, they'll spoil the tender grapes." Now he says to us, the
winter's past, the rain is over and gone, Christ's come across
a deer, come across those mountains like a deer, come across all
those mountains of division. He's made us enjoy sweet communion
once again. He says, cherish and guard the
springtime of this communion, the fruitfulness that we have
in our beloved. And so He makes us to say this,
as long as we are waiting for that eternal day when we'll be
with Him, when we see what He's done and when He does this all
over again and we see how He's produced this fruit in us, this
is what we say. This is our desire, this is our
prayer, and this is our confidence. Verse 16, here's our rejoicing.
My Beloved is mine and I'm His. I know He will not leave me.
He feedeth among the lilies. He walks right here where I am,
right here where I am. And here's our prayer. Until
the daybreak, until that day when you return, O Lord, and
all the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like
a roe or a young heart. Be thou like that deer that comes
speedily to my rescue and come across those mountains of bither,
those mountains of division. Amen.