Well, let us turn to the Song
of Solomon in chapter 4 and the verse we were considering last
Lord's Day. The last verse of that chapter,
Song of Solomon, chapter 4, verse 16. Awake, O north wind, and
come thou south, blow upon my garden that the spices thereof
may flow out. let my beloved come into his
garden and eat his pleasant fruits. I want us to consider really
the latter part of the verse made up of these two sentences and last time we were looking
at the opening sentence now we look at the last sentence let
my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. And what we have here, of course,
is a request, a prayer that is being made to the beloved, to
the Lord Jesus Christ. In the first part, we observed
last time that it is really a prayer there addressed to God, the Holy
Ghost, the North Wind. I remarked on how this expression
to the north wind and the south wind is really an allusion to
the spirit. The word that we have, wind,
is the same words that on other occasions here in the Old Testament
might be rendered by the word breath or the word spirit. The context indicates which word
is preferable. And we read last time that remarkable
passage at the beginning of Ezekiel 37, the vision of the valley
of dry bones that represents the children of Israel taken into captivity, languishing
there in Babylon. Jerusalem deserted as it were.
And yet, God is going to revive his people. And of course, Israel
is a typical people. They're a type of spiritual Israel,
the church of Jesus Christ. And remember in that vision of
the Valley of Dry Bones, as the Prophet speaks, so the bones
come together, then they're covered with muscles and sinews and flesh. And then, we saw how he is commanded
to speak to the wind, or to the breath. In verse 9, God speaks
and says, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say
to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds,
O breath, and breathe upon this slave, that they may live. So
I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into
them, and they lived. and stood up upon their feet
an exceeding great army. All God had said that he would
be inquired of to do this for the children of Israel. There
at the end of that previous chapter, verse 37, Thus saith the Lord
God, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to
do it for them. I will increase them with men
like a flock. They are to pray. And here the
prophet prays, and he prays really I know it says he prophesied,
but it's a prayer to the four winds, it's a prayer to the Holy
Spirit. And that's what we were considering
then last time, from the first sentence of the verse, Awake
O North Wind, and come thou south, blow upon my garden, that the
spices thereof may flow out. Now, when it comes to prayer,
we know that the usual way of prayer is that we approach by
and through the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is
our great high priest. He has made the sin-atoning sacrifice
here upon the earth in the fullness of the time. He came and at the
appointed hour he offered himself And now risen from the dead,
ascended on high, he ever lives to make intercession. He's our
interceder in heaven, our advocate with the Father. And so we come
through his mediation, we come by that gracious ministry, the
help of the Holy Spirit. There's not only one in heaven,
to intercede. There's the Spirit who helps
us in all our infirmities, as we read there in Romans 8, and
makes those intercessions in us with groanings that cannot
be uttered. So we come through the Son, we
come by the Spirit, and we come to address God, and we call upon
Him as our God and our Father, which is in heaven. That is the
normal way when we think of prayer, but we're not to imagine that
it is not proper therefore to address prayers to God the Son
and to God the Holy Spirit, because here in this verse we clearly
have a text that speaks of prayers being addressed to the Spirits
and to the Son. In fact, when Christ gives instruction
to his disciples in that pattern prayer, he says, after this manner,
therefore, pray ye, we're to say, our Father. Now, we're not
to think there that our Father is simply an address to God.
The Father is the Father. He is the Father of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Eternal Father. Christ is the Son of the Father
in truth and love. But isn't the Lord Jesus himself
also spoken of as a father? We are familiar with that text
in Isaiah 9 and verse 6. Unto us a child is born, unto
us a son is given, the government shall be upon his shoulder, his
name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. All we think of him
as the Prince of Peace, he's also the mighty God, he's the
everlasting Father. We're addressing Christ. And
then of course also, if I remember right, I think it was Cliff who
brought this out in his prayer only a week ago, there's that
sense in which the Holy Spirit is the Father. Because we're
those who must be born again, and except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit, says Christ. Or we're born from above. It
is the Spirit who comes and works mightily in us. And so we can
address God the Holy Spirit as our Father. We address then all
of the persons in the Godhead. And we come tonight to think
especially of what it means to address our prayers to the Lord
Jesus Christ. We see how in the Gospel those
who came to Him would make requests of him, and they ask him to do
the mighty works of God, that Canaanite woman who comes, what
does she do? She worships him. And how does
she worship him? By making her request and saying,
Lord, help me. All that is worship, and Christ
doesn't rebuke her, he accepts of her worship, and he does the
very thing that she requests, he grants that healing that she
desires of him. She worshipped him. And she worshipped
him in prayer by the request that she made. And so, here we
have this request, let my beloved come into his garden and eat
his pleasant fruits. And then immediately after that,
at verse 1 in the next chapter, I am come into my garden, my
sister. my spouse. I have gathered my
myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with
my honey. I have drunk my wine with my
milk. Eat, O friends, drink, yea, drink
abundantly, O beloved." Here is the response of the Lord Jesus
Christ then to that prayer. Remember the whole of the context
here, the previous verses at the end of this fourth chapter.
We have that description that the Lord gives of his church,
and the church is spoken of under this figure of a garden. A garden
enclosed, he says, is my sister, my spouse. A spring shut up,
a fountain sealed, thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates
with pleasant fruits, campfire with spikenard and saffron. Calamus and cinnamon, with all
trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all the chief
spices, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters and streams
from Lebanon, all the richness of the language, the figures
that are being used. That's the description. And what
does the church do? The church is moved to pride.
That's the remarkable thing. The church prides. the wake,
O north wind, and come thou south, blow upon my garden, that the
spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his
garden, and eat his pleasant fruits." But then when we come
to the opening verse of chapter 5, the Lord says, I am come. He speaks in the past tense.
He's already come. Or before they call I will answer.
While they are yet speaking, I will hear all the gracious
ways then of the Lord. Well, let us turn and consider
something of what we have here in this last sentence of the
chapter. prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, to say
something of the believer's relationship to Christ, the believer's relationship
to Christ. And we see it, of course, in
the way in which she addresses Him. She calls Him, My Beloved. Oh, that's the relationship.
She loves Him. She loves him. Let my beloved
come into his garden, she says. Now, what's the basis? What's
the reason for this love? John tells us we love him because
he first loved us. We're never beforehand with the
Lord. The Lord is first. There is that
great love of the Father, of course. Here in His love, says
John, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His
Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Oh, the love of the
Father, sending His Son to make that great sacrifice, propitiation. to satisfy all the holy and righteous
justice of God. God can by no means clear the
guilt. God is angry with the wicked every day. But how Christ
has come to make that sin-atoning sacrifice, the propitiation for
our sins. Scarcely for a righteous man
will one die. yet for adventure for a good
man some would even dare to die. But God commended His love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Here is the reason then, the basis why she loves Him, because
she has been loved by Him. Christ also, we're told, loved
the Church and gave Himself for her. And
it's a church that we see here in the Song of Solomon, in all
this imagery. Solomon, the type of Christ Solomon
and his bride, is a love song. It's a love song, and it really
speaks of all that is best in human love, but there's more
than that in the Song of Solomon. Surely it's a spiritual book.
It speaks of that great love that God has towards his people. And that love of the Lord Jesus
Christ, What do we read there in the opening verse of John
13? "...having loved his own which were in the world, he loved
them unto the end." What is it that moves and motivates him
to that obedience? Obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross? He loves the Father. He is that one in whom the Father
daily delights. He's the Father's beloved. but it's not just the love that
he has towards the father it's that love that he has toward
all those that the father has given to him all the reasoning
for this relationship and the intimacy of it she loves him because he has
first loved her and so we have the response here it's a language
of appropriation isn't it? It's my, it's my beloved. Or think of Thomas. He was not there, was he, when
the Lord appeared to the disciples that evening of the Day of the
Resurrection? But when on the following first
half of the week they were together, and Thomas was present there,
and he had doubted when they told him of the Lord's appearance
and the manner of it, And the Lord stands there and reveals
himself to Thomas. Thomas utters those words, my
Lord and my God. Oh, it's the language of appropriation. What a blessing when we can use
that little word, my, and address God as our God. We love him, says John, because
he first loved us. Yes, he loved us. But what is
the response to that love? We're to love him also in return. And then here we see what the
request is. This prayer is very much pressed on the basis of that
relationship. Let my beloved come into his
garden. It's because he's her beloved. and she's his beloved, that he
will come. There's that word that we have
in the 119th Psalm at verse 94. The psalmist says, I am thine,
save me. And you see the significance
there, the basis. He wants to be saved. Why? What
does he press that request on? I am thine, because I'm thine
Lord, come and save me. And here we have something similar.
Because I'm beloved, the request is that the Lord will come. Because she loves Him, because
He has first loved her. Or when we pray to God and address
Him as Christ tells us in that patterned prayer and say, Our
Father, what's the basis of that? Well, we're told, aren't we,
in the 103rd Psalm, like as a father pitieth his children. So the
Lord pitieth them that fear Him. He knoweth our frame, He remembereth
that we are His. All we can address Him as our
God and our Father. It is He that hath made us, not
we ourselves. We are His people. We are the
sheep of His pasture. And He will come, and He does
come where His people are. But I want us to consider the request a little
more closely. What is actually being asked
of the Lord Jesus here? Well, the request is for Christ
coming. Let my beloved come into his
garden. And then after that, and eat
his peasant fruits. So there's two aspects really.
to the request that is being made. First of all, the prayer
is that Christ will come. And we can think of the coming
of the Lord Jesus in a number of ways. First of all, of course,
there is His first coming, the Incarnation. And we know
that that came as it was ordained from of old. The great eternal purpose of
God, when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth
his Son. And it's so emphatic, we have
those two definite articles, it's the fullness of the time,
the precise moment that God had ordained from all eternity. God
sends forth his Son, made of a woman. He comes as that one promised
right at the beginning in Genesis 3, the seed of the woman, made
of a woman. He has no human father, of course. He has a human mother. He's made of a woman, he's made
under the law. He comes to stand in that law
place of all his people. And he will answer the law for
them both in respect of its precepts, its commandments, and also in
respect of all its dreadful penalties and punishments. He'll honour
it in the life that He lives, He'll accomplish all righteousness,
He'll magnify it by the obedience of a life that is perfect in
every part, that robe of righteousness with which He will clothe His
people in their justification, He is the Lord our righteousness.
Oh, but He'll also honour it in dying, He'll be obedient to
that death of the cross. He's made of a woman, He's made
under the law. And what will He do by that death?
He will redeem them. He'll pay the great ransom price. This is the wonder of His first
coming, isn't it? Without controversy, Paul says,
great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. He comes in that appointed time
then. and he comes to accomplish that
great work. And here he is, as it were, requested
to come into his garden. Let my beloved come into his
garden. Now what really is the garden
of the Lord Jesus? In a sense, can we not say that
Gethsemane was very much his garden? Certainly, he oft times
resorted thither. That's why Judas knew where he'd
be able to find him. There in the opening part of
John 18, when Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples
over the brook Cedron, where was a garden. into which he entered,
and his disciples, and Judas also, which betrayed him, knew
the place. For Jesus of times resorted thither
with his disciples." Oh, that's his garden, the garden of Gethsemane,
and all that Gethsemane speaks of the agonies of his soul, all
those wrestlings that we read of in the Gospel, as he contemplates
what lies before him. It was not the first time he'd
been in that garden. All but the significance gets seminal.
The name means the olive press. It was there at the foot of the
Mount of Olives. There was some sort of press where they would
obtain the oil from the olive. But his soul was like a great
heaving press, the agonies. His sweat was like drops of blood
falling to the ground as he agonizes in real prayer to God. or he has come into his garden.
Let my beloved come into his garden. This is the reason for
his coming then. Now once in the end of the world
he hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. There's that coming, there's
that first coming, but we also of course read in scripture of
the second coming. He is to come again. He is to
come again, but He'll come then not to accomplish salvation,
He'll come to make that final judgment and the final separation
between the sheep and the goats. And even there in the opening
chapter of the Revelation we read, Behold, He cometh with
clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced
Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen. Oh, there at the
beginning then, John, of the Revelation, John speaks of that
coming. And what a coming it will be
when He'll make that final separation. Why, He is that One who is to
sit as the Judge. The Father judgeth no man, He
says. The Father judgeth no man, but
hath committed all judgment unto the Son, and hath given Him authority
to execute judgment also because He is the Son of Man. The Lord
Himself declares it there in John chapter 5. And then when we come to the
end of the book of the Revelation, He says, surely I come quickly.
Oh, He's coming. He's coming. Surely I come quickly. And the church's response, even
so come Lord Jesus. Oh, are we those who are looking
and watching and waiting and longing for His appearing. Unto
them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, we're
told, without sin unto salvation. Yes, there'll be wailings. All
the lost then will call upon the mountains to fall upon them. But what a blessed thing it is
for the Church of Jesus Christ. In that first epistle to the
Thessalonians doesn't the apostle speak of that coming? At the end of chapter 4 1 Thessalonians 4 Verse 15, he says, This we say
unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain
unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent, shall not go before
them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and
with the trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall
rise first, the general resurrection, and Christ the first fruits of
that resurrection. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Oh,
there is that coming. And then he says, "...wherefore
comfort one another with these words." It's a blessed prospect
that the Lord is going to come again the second time without
sin unto salvation. But then, there's also, surely,
a coming in this day of grace, a present coming. Doesn't the
Lord come to us in His Word? He is the Word. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was
in the beginning with God, we're told there in the opening words
of John's Gospel. He is the Word, He is the Word
incarnate, and we have the Word of God here before us in Holy
Scripture and I love that hymn of hearts
the Scriptures and the Lord bear one tremendous now the written
and incarnate Word in all things are the same all we have Christ
Word here on the page of Holy Scripture and doesn't he come
and speak And when we come under the sound of His Word, when we
gather together and we hear the public reading of the Word, and
we hear the expounding and the preaching of the Word, are we
those who are listening for Him, listening for His voice? Does
He not come in His Word? Or hear in chapter 2 and verse
8, the voice of My Beloved, Behold, He cometh, His voice is here
in Scripture. We can read it for ourselves,
and when we read it in the privacy of our own homes, we can then
be listening for His voice, He'll come then. But He has ordained
the means of grace, and we're not to despise what God Himself
has appointed. We're not to forsake the assembling
of ourselves together, and all that God has given to us in the
ministry of His Word. Or do we listen to his voice?
My sheep hear my voice, he says. Or they know not the voice of
strangers, they can discern his voice. They hear my voice. And I know them, he says. And
they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall
never perish. O the Lord comes, and O He comes
with gracious words, how He comes with all these exceeding great
and precious promises such as we find many a time those Theanots
in the book of the Prophet Isaiah. There in chapter 35 for example,
Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees,
say to them that out of a fearful heart be strong, fear not, behold
your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense, He
will come and save you. Here is the promise you see,
your God will come, He will come. All these promises of God in
Christ our God and in Him, Amen. He does come. he comes where his people are
and he ministers to them even when they feel themselves to
be in those low low places he comes in his word and he comes
doesn't he by and through that ministry of the spirits when
he's about to leave the disciples there in John Remember what we
have in chapters 14 and 15 and 16, the promise that He will
send another Comforter. He's not going to leave them
comfortless, He says. I will pray the Father, He shall
give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever,
even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because
it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him, but ye know Him. for He
dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you
comfortless. Or as the Margin says, I will
not leave you orphans. I will come to you. Oh, let my
beloved come into His garden. Doesn't the Lord come? And He
comes by that gracious ministry of the Spirit. He's not only
given us His words here in Holy Scripture, but He's given us
the best of all donations. He has sent God the Holy Spirit.
And now it is the Spirit who comes to apply the Word to us.
That was the experience of those Ephesians. The Lord Jesus had
never gone to Ephesus there in Asia Minor in Turkey. He was
sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. His ministry
was confined there to Palestine. And yet the Apostle says to those
at Ephesus who had come to faith in Christ, ye have not so learned
Christ, if so be ye have heard him and seen him, as the truth
is in Jesus. How did they hear? How were they
brought to see these things? It was by that spiritual ministry,
by the Holy Ghost Himself taking the Word and applying the Word. Yes, we look for His coming at the end of the ages. He's
to come again, but all we long that He will come to us time
and time and time again, and so He does. He hears our prayers. He answers our prayers. Let my
beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. Oh, there's a feast. There's a repast here. Eat his
pleasant fruits. They're his pleasant fruits.
They're his. Why are they his? Because they're
his own. What is the church? The branch
of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. It's all his own work. It's all
his own work. And how he graciously condescends
to come. He comes down. My beloved has gone down into
his garden. to the beds of spices, to feed
in the gardens, and to gather lilies. I am my Beloved's, my
Beloved is mine, he feedeth among the lilies." There at the beginning
of chapter 6. Oh, he comes down. He condescends
to men of low degree. We have to humble ourselves before
him. are to receive with meekness
this word, this engrafted word that's able to save our souls.
He condescends to come down. He came down, of course, when
he came the first time to accomplish that great work of redemption.
Oh, he thought it not proper to be equal with God, but he
made himself of no reputation. He took upon him the form of
a servant. how he humbled himself, and he still humbles himself
to come just where his people are. And what does he do when
he comes? He comes with gracious words,
he comes even with words of invitation. Here in the opening verse of
the next chapter, I am coming to my God, and he says, my sister,
my spouse, He says, I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O
friends. Drink, yea, drink abundantly,
O Beloved. He invites them. There's a sharing. Isn't that the joy, really, of
inviting friends to come to our homes and to share a meal with
them? It's a mutual thing, and it's so with the Lord. Now, He
has made provision Again we have the word of Isaiah 25 and verse
6 in this mountain. Shall the Lord
of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast
of wines on the leaves, of fat things full of marrow, of wines
on the leaves, well refined. Oh, the Lord has made such a
provision And what is it that he feeds his people with? He
feeds them with himself. He feeds them with himself. I
read again that 6th chapter, or part of that 6th chapter of
John, where he speaks of himself as the bread of life. And how
we have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. That's how he
feeds his people. And he's given us, hasn't he,
that holy ordinance, the Lord's Supper. and he invites us there
to partake of the broken bread and to drink of that cup of communion,
the blood of Christ or how we come there and we eat and we
drink with him. Eat, O friends, he says. Drink,
yea, drink abundantly, O Beloved. And how he speaks to his church. We see it there in the Revelation
when he addresses those seven churches and he speaks to the
Laodiceans in that much abused text in Revelation 3.20. So many want to make it, as it
were, some sort of evangelistic text as if it's an invitation
to sinners to open the door of their hearts, they say, and let
Christ in. You know all the nonsense that
people come out with. They refer to that picture by
Holman Hunt, a Pre-Raphaelite artist. Christ knocking at the
door, and they say, look, there's no candle on that door. The Lord
can't open the door, you've got to open the door and let the
Lord in. And so that text is so abused, Revelation 3.20, but
really it's addressed to the church. The church at Laodicea. Behold, I stand at the door and
knock. If any man hear my voice and
open the door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with
me. or that we might be those who
would indeed pray to Christ and call upon Him to come. Let my
beloved come into His garden and eat His pleasant fruit. Oh, this is the man, you see.
He does receive sinners, and He eats us with them. It's a
mutual feast. He delights in it, and they delight
with Him in all that gracious provision laid up for them in
His person and in His work. Well, the Lord help us thus to
call upon the name and to pray to our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.