14, but I want to take you through
a text this evening to the Song of Solomon. Very often I speak
on the Song of Solomon. It's a very mysterious book. Song of Solomon, Chapter 2, Verses
3 and 4. Canticles is another name given
to it, or Song of Songs. Chapter 2, Verses 3 and 4. 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 the banqueting-house, and his banner over me was love.
As the apple-tree among the trees of the woods serves my beloved
among the suns, and particularly these words, I sat down under
his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my
taste. Well, Son of Solomon has not
been many debates over the years, probably over the centuries,
as to what it's all about really. It's obviously a love song or
a love drama. Some particularly modern commentators generally
take the view that it is a love song in the sense that it's in
the Bible because God himself has given us love. Love between
couples, love between children and parents and so on. And that's
all it is. We would see, I hope, something
deeper than that. The Bibles are about the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Word of God is about the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Scriptures are about the Lord Jesus Christ. When we come
to the Old Testament or the New, may our prayer be that of the eunuch. No, the Greeks,
sorry. The Gentiles, the Greeks that
came to see Jesus. We would see Jesus. And steal that. A great hymn
writer, I love her hymns personally. And she says in one of her hymns,
not in Gatsby sadly, but it's a great hymn on the Bible. Sorry, my mind's gone blank there. Teach me to love thy sacred word,
and see thy saviour there. Teach me to love thy sacred word,
and see thy saviour there. So we must look for the Lord
Jesus Christ in all the scriptures. It's about him. In Revelation
19, it's just come to mind. I can't quite remember the chapter
and verse, but I think it's in Revelation 19. The spirit of
prophecy is about Jesus. I can't remember the exact words
now, but it is. The Old Testament is a prophetic testament, pointing
to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. In every aspect, many
of his people of very faint shadows of the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses,
the great deliverer. The church is certainly not faultless
in many ways. But even a man like Samson, you
see, as he came to the end of his life, he wanted to pull down,
wanted the boy with him to put his hands upon the pillars of
the temple where all the Philistines were gathered on top and inside.
And he brought down, in his death, because he died on that occasion,
obviously, in his death he brought down more Philistines, more enemies
of the Lord and his people than during his life. We see there
our Lord Jesus Christ dying on the cross. We know the New Testament,
of course. And as he died on that cross,
he brought down the whole of the satanic kingdom. Still survives
in some ways today, of course, until the end of the world. but
it's all condemned. Satan's condemned. The demons
and their devils are all condemned. All who seek to follow Satan,
whether wittingly or unwittingly, are condemned. So even Samson,
who certainly wouldn't suggest that the whole of his life reflected
that of our Lord Jesus Christ, but in that, we see in Genesis
22, when Abraham thought by the Lord to sacrifice
his son. No, he didn't sacrifice his son in the end, because a
ram was found caught in a thicket, provided the sacrifice. The figure
is there, there, and was dead. And he picked up a knife to slay
him. He would be already dead in Abraham's
mind. That's surely his picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. And
so there was no ram in a thicket for him. He died to take our
place. So great was his love for his
people. There are many others as well. Many prophecies of course
in Psalms and Isaiah and so on. It's a prophetic book. It's always
pointing towards the Lord Jesus Christ. So let our prayer be
that of Anne Steele's. Teach me to love thy sacred word.
All of it. And see our Saviour there. Well
in our text, as the apple tree among the trees of the world,
we have this likeness to an apple tree. I would say, first of all,
that I believe the Song of Solomon is not just a book about romantic
love, human romantic love. I believe what I've just said.
In order to take its place in the Bible, the Word of God, it
has to be about the Lord Jesus Christ. And I believe that in
this picture is a love poem and a love drama. But it's a picture,
a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus Christ's relationship with
his church and his church with him. So don't be put off reading
it. You may find it a bit strange
reading it. You may feel a bit soppy even. I say that reverently,
but sometimes we do find things in scripture and we find that
if they're not soppy, it's some other reaction we feel. But it's
there in the Bible. One of two books that doesn't
mention the name of God, but God is there. as the apple tree. So my soul
is as the apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my
beloved among the suns. So our Lord Jesus Christ, I believe,
is representing this apple tree, by this apple tree. I love the
trees. I sometimes go and stand, well
I did last week particularly when it was sunny mornings. I
went out and stood in the porch of my, where I live, a little
lane and The birdsong was terrific. I think Henry mentioned this
in a recent sermon. The birdsong was just terrific. All sorts
of birds. You could hear a blackbird. Apparently
there's a cuckoo around. I haven't heard a cuckoo yet,
but somebody was saying they had. Somewhere around here there's
a cuckoo. There was a pheasant. I'm not
so friendly with a pheasant because he sometimes sits outside my
window about half past four or five o'clock in the morning and
chirps away at whatever pheasants do. But he's, uh, He sat on my
garden fence the other day when I was in the kitchen looking
out and the colours were magnificent. How anybody can believe in evolution
and chance? I don't know. It's beyond me.
There's an old song from the Sound of Music, secular song,
but it says one of the lines, nothing comes from nothing, nothing
ever could. It's not a Christian song, but
it's absolutely true, isn't it? Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing
ever could. Even creation, as it appears
to be coming from nothing, came from the mind and the wisdom
and the power of God. As creation came into being.
Trees are wonderful feats of creation. Some small, some large. My favorite color is green and
to look out on a spring day and see all the various shades of
green of the trees around. Magnificent. Praise the Lord
for these. creation around us. Fallen creation,
of course, suffering from the effects of sin. There's still
much to praise our Lord about, too. So to praise our Lord about,
regarding His creation. This is the apple tree. What's
so special about an apple tree? Among the trees of the wood.
An apple tree gives fruit. Now, there are wild trees that
give fruit, but more often than not, they're quite bitter. Crabapple,
for instance, just by itself. I've had crabapple jelly before
May for me, and it was very nice, but just eating a crabapple is
not very pleasant at all. But the garden apple, in its
various varieties, or the plum, or whatever it may be, are wonderful. Again, wonderful examples of
the Lord's creative powers and wisdom. So many varieties as
well. I often think of the Lord loving variety. Even amongst
his people, he loves variety. I don't know whether I've mentioned
this when I've been over before, but I was watching a few years
ago, somebody repairing a wall next door to the house where
I lived once before. It was a granite wall, because
Guernsey is basically one big granite rock. Granite, you know,
is one of the hardest rocks, so it's not very easy to shape.
But he was rebuilding this wall, chipping out bits of the granite,
managing to do it with special tools he had. And I was chatting
to him and watching him. And he fitted these various pieces
in. Sometimes he had to chip a bit off the edges. But he fit
all these pieces of stone in. Some were very tiny stones. Or
tiny bits of granite. Some were great big large, almost,
not quite boulder sized, but great big large pieces of granite. And they all fit together. The
Lord does that with his church. He calls his people. He puts
them in fellowship with one another. He says, get on with one another.
He doesn't leave us to our own devices, though. He gives us
the Holy Spirit. He gives us his word. He gives
us our own, in our own hearts, times of love and affection for
the Lord's people. So don't think that in order
to be a Christian, we have to be all in the same uniform. Well, I don't mean necessarily
clothing, but it can include clothing, loo, uniform, but also
uniform in other ways. We're all different. I often
think of Paul when I'm reading the New Testament, and the other
apostles who wrote parts of the New Testament. Paul's language,
Paul's way of putting over things, comes out in English in a different
way than Peter's, for instance. You can tell there's a difference,
even though our Bibles are English, not the original languages. The
Lord loves variety. So here's this apple tree. It has a shadow, or a shade. Surely that tree represents,
as I say, our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice the writer, Solomon, speaks
only about one tree. Not many trees, but one tree. There is only one Lord Jesus
Christ. There's only one way to the Father through him. There
is only one way to heaven and glory. It's through him. He is
the only one. That needs to be stressed again
and again in our day and age. When there's so much, so many
people wanting to mingle. People of the world, people who
are professing Christians and so on, want to mingle things
together. Who are quite happy to stand
on the same platform as a Hindu or a Muslim. and say we have
the same faith, basically. When it's pretty obvious we do
not have the same faith. There is only one tree, one saviour,
one lord, one baptism. Secondly, it's a very old tree,
this apple tree. I don't know, I didn't look up
how many apple trees we normally live to, but I did look up some
of the oldest trees in the world. There's a night oak in the New
Forest, you may have passed it, it's in one of the drives around,
Boulderwood is it or somewhere? I don't know whether I've ever
seen it actually, but it's an ancient oak. It's probably just
under 500 years old. So when you think of what is
seen in the forest there, that tree, under 500 years. In America, of course, there
are the great redwoods. Could be 2,000 years old. Some say
older. Apparently the oldest tree in the world is, I've got
to read this properly, the Great Bristlecone Pine in Nevada, America
again, which they reckon is about 4,900 years old, or possibly
older. But this tree, this apple tree
in the wood, and the superiors of the trees in the wood, is
ancient. In fact, it's eternal. Not just
500 years old, that's old. Not just a thousand or two thousand
or even four thousand nine hundred years. This tree, our Lord Jesus
Christ, represented by this tree, is eternal. And we find, well, we find some
comfort in that. As we seek to sit down in the
shadow of this tree. That he is eternal. He's changeless. He doesn't move with the times
and yet he's always up to date. People have been tested, well
tested. The tree is well tested and tried. People sat and ate fruit from
that tree since the beginning. Enoch walked with the Lord. It was not because the Lord took
him. So close did he walk with the
Lord. He found in him the Lord and his shadow as it were. The
place he wanted to be, great comfort. It's very old, as I say. It's
also unchanging. It's the same. Some of those old trees, like the
Nightingale, must have seen terrible storms sometimes. Same to some
of you. When I was just there, about
an hour ago, over here, there was a terrific wind that came
up. I could see a tree in the garden, or in the field next
to me. Quite a thick trunk it's got on it. if it wind. Then the rain came. You've had a lot of rain today
as well. Trees, in order to be firmly established, have to put
up with a lot of storms and so on. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday, today, and forever. What a comfort for us. I am the
Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are
not consumed. People have sat beneath the shadow
of this tree, and it is fruit since the beginning. They've
had fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, many in the Old
Testament did as well. It reminded me of thinking of
the unchanging nature of this tree, that we have to take him
as he is, our Lord Jesus Christ. The tree is a tree, can't be
anything else. The tree is not a cow or a horse,
it's a tree. Don't be ridiculous, but it is. An apple tree is an
apple tree. I know some people have grafted in various other
branches and so on from various other trees and made some trees
with quite a bit of different fruit on them. But by nature,
as it grows normally, an apple tree is an apple tree. The shadow
of that apple tree remains the same. I believe we have a lesson
here. God is God. I think it was Brother
Henry, actually, when I was once at Agendany, congregation, saying,
he said something like, let God be God. Let God be God. He's sovereign. The Lord Jesus
Christ is sovereign. But people, even Christians,
are always trying to modify him, discuss him. I've had calls on
the radio before, discussions, which are not very Christian
at times. They have people who come, and
they gather together, and they want to discuss the Lord Jesus
Christ. I remember reading a lot of talks about Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
who said in later years he regretted a lot of his youth, or some things
in his youth, and one of them was, he put a, he smoked at the
time, he put a bit of tobacco in a pipe, and lit a pipe, and
was in a room with several others, and they discussed God, but in
a sort of, um, not a spiritual manner, It's
almost as if he was just a subject. Like maths and so on, just discussing
things. He came to realise that it was not enough. We want to
know the Lord. People are always trying to modify
him. He's not a piece of plasticine. It's again this reverend me.
A piece of plasticine can be moulded into various shapes.
When I was a child I used to have plasticine. My mum turned
me sometimes off because I was leaving bits of it in the carpet
and so on. But he, he can be moulded. God can't be moulded. We can't have him as we want
him. We can have him as he reveals
himself. He is the same yesterday and
today and forever. Same with his word. The same when the last
times I preached at Bethesda, at Genesis chapter 1 and Creation,
that We have to take the word of God about creation at its
face value. It's not up for negotiation.
You can't say that part of that chapter is right and part of
it is wrong. Many, many years ago now, a long
time ago, I attended the Methodist Church in Hedgend up St. John's
Road in the days of my youth with my mother. I remember we
went to some Bible studies with the, or I went to some Bible
studies with one of the ministers I used to visit. And he insisted
that the first 11 chapters of Genesis were just a Hebrew explanation
attempting to explain creation. We mustn't take it as absolutely
true. You can't do that with the Bible. You can't negotiate,
as it were, with God what part we need and what part we don't
need. If God has given to us the record of creation, then
may he give us a faith to believe it as well. And there are all
other places in the Bible as well. The Bible is up for no
negotiation. Nothing is a Bible. It's commands,
it's promises are all to be taken and faced with. So there's one
tree. Now we find that the subject of the song here, Shulamite sat
down under the shadow of this tree. Sat down. That's a sign of peace. A sign
of rest. Even animals, when they're anxious,
can't sit down. Some of you know I have a cat
here. It belongs to my son next door, but spends quite a bit
of his life here. Mostly sleeping there. She's 13, so she's...
spends a lot of time sleeping. Dogs
can be restless. We once had a dog. Some years
ago when my son who lives next door now was a teenager. And
although he was a family dog, mainly Nathan's dog, he took
her out most of the time for walks. And on those days you
could take a dog on the beach in the summer, down to rock pools
and some big rock pools, he would swim with him. Spent a lot of
time with him. And when he was, Nathan was coming
home from, when he was a bit older, he was coming home from
work. The dog began to be restless. He knew that Nathan was on the
way. Now, Nathan didn't come home particularly every day at
the same time, so it wasn't the timing. It was just the nature
of dogs. They may seem fast asleep, yet
they're always aware. With us, if we're restless because
we're anxious about something, maybe we can't sleep at night,
we have to get up. We can't just lie peacefully where we are. or that we might find all we
need in our Lord Jesus Christ, sit down under his shadow. That which gives us comfort against
the heat of the day. Persecution. I don't, over here
of course, if you're on the mainland, we don't suffer persecution as
some do in some countries. But we may suffer some, the measure
of it. Or maybe we're anxious about
other things, the family. Work. There's been a lot of people,
at the present time, bothered about and anxious about work
because of this virus and the damage it's caused. There's that
beautiful word in Matthew 11, 28. Come unto me, or ye that
labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It's
because we don't really come to Him. We think we do sometimes,
but we don't really come to Him at times. I will give you rest. What a promise that is. I will
give you rest. I've mentioned before that in the English language,
to write properly or proper grammar, or speak proper grammar, it should
be I shall give you rest. First person is always shall.
Except when it needs, it's got to be an emphasis. Something
needs to be emphasized. Then it becomes I will. So there's
emphasis here. Come on to me. I will give you
rest. because we don't come to him
as often as we should. We don't always enjoy that peace
and rest. Genesis 49 verse 10 in Jacob's great prophecy. He talks
about the tribe of Judah. It says, the scepter shall not
depart from Judah, that sign of royalty, that sign of kingship,
shall not depart from Judah, nor shall the Lord give it from
between his feet until Shiloh come, and unto him means peace. It's one of the
words, there's a lot of S.H. words and S. words in scripture
and in our own language. If you say shh to somebody, S.H.,
you want them to be quiet, not to get worked up or whatever
it may be. A peer deception shall not depart
from Judah until Shiloh come. He must be the Lord Jesus Christ.
It can only be him. And unto him shall the gathering
of the people be. And there's that beautiful verse in Isaiah
26 as well. Verses three and, got two verses, three and four.
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is staid, or
rests on thee, because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord
forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. Or as
it can be translated, I believe it's in the margin, and the Lord
Jehovah is the rock of ages, from which Tom Liddy probably
got it, the first line of his hymn, rock of ages. something
firm, something immovable. Where can we find peace with
our sins causing us restlessness, even sleepless nights? Paul tells
us in Romans 5, verses 1 to 2, therefore being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
But also we have access by faith into this grace where we stand
and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And as we close
this a few thoughts but as Paul says, I rejoiced in hope of the
glory of God and the psalm of Solomon says in chapter 2 I sat
there under his shadow with great delight that's where I wanted
to be do you find that on your own heart? or has the world got
too much hold of you? questions I have to ask myself in this troubled restless world
have we peace with God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. We take all our troubles to him.
As we sit under his shadow, we can tell him all about our troubles,
big or small. John Newton wrote, Thou art coming
to a king. Large petitions would thee bring, for his grace and
power are such. None can ever ask too much. With
my burden I begin. Lord, remove this load of sin,
that thy blood for sinners spills. set my conscience free from guilt.
Lord, I come to thee for rest. Take possession of my breast.
There thy blood-bought right maintain, and without arrival
reign. Well, we're going to find a sure
hope for eternity. Something that will remove the fear of
death. Something that will give us grace to help in everyday
things. The Lord is interested in our lives, in everyday things. Is it not in the shadow of this
great ancient tree, representing our Lord Jesus Christ? The same
yesterday, today, and forever. This experience, the painting
of somebody under a tree, might be very beautiful, a beautiful
painting. The artist may have been very skillful in depicting
this. It does nothing for us. Neither
can we ask somebody else to take a, we have a lot of religion
is done on somebody working on our behalf. The Catholic Church
is one of the big, the Recall Thoughts is one of the big examples
of this. People get all their religion
done for them. They just go in to places of worship, if they
go at all, and find. They just enjoy sitting back
and letting somebody else do it all for them. Not all of them,
but many of them. We can ask people to do things
on our behalf. I no longer drive, so I'm very thankful that I have
people, my family of them, go get my shopping on my behalf.
But you can't get somebody to sit in the shadow of the Lord
Jesus Christ on your behalf. You must know these things for
yourself by experience. You must know what true repentance
is by experience. True living faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ. God-given faith. You must know
it by your own experience. There's a saying where you're
burning in the sun somewhere, your skin is shriveling up. I've
got somebody representing me under the shadow of that apple
tree. Without sense, it would be impossible. They would be comfortable, but
you wouldn't be. You must face God by yourself. You must face
to die by ourselves. The Lord, may the Lord draw us
to himself, to enjoy that peace and rest. It is a real peace
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's real rest. May we know more
of it. May we draw nearer to Him. Then
said Jesus unto the Twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter
answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life. I sat under his shadow with great
delight. And also, of course, I haven't got time now to go
on to it, but there's a bit about fruit. The fruit, that which
our Lord supplies us with, both spiritually and temporally. Really,
we've got everything we need in Jesus. Do we know that? In this present evil world, in
our homes, in our families, in our churches, everything we need
in Christ, for time and for eternity. What a friend we have in Jesus.
All our sins to bear. What a privilege to carry everything
to him in prayer. So I'll finish there and may
the Lord bless these few thoughts. Amen.