Okay, you can open your Bibles
to the Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon, chapter seven. The Song of Solomon is a romantic
poem. written by Solomon, the king,
and written concerning a woman identified only as Shulamith. And some have speculated that
that could also be Shunamith, meaning a woman from
Shunam. There is no city called Shunam. Shulam, but I believe that another
explanation works better, and that is that Shulamith is simply
a feminine form of the word or the name Solomon. when you realize that we pronounce
it Solomon with just an S, but in Hebrew it's Sholomane, related
to their word Shalom, meaning peace. And this book, while it's a romantic
poem and a sort of drama, it was not written to teach us about
romantic love, but was rather written under the assumption that we
already understood romantic love, and that that was being used
simply as an illustration. In other words, the relationship
that is described here between Solomon and Shulamith is being
used to illustrate the relationship that exists between Christ, our
Solomon, In him we have peace. He's called the Prince of Peace.
So this is a, Solomon here pictures the Lord Jesus Christ. Shulamith
pictures the Lord's church, which is the object of his special
love and the object of his care and provision. Now, it might
seem odd that something about Christ and the church would be
spoken of in the Old Testament. But remember, we divide the Bible
into Old Testament and New Testament. God did not. While God revealed
himself and his plan in terms of the salvation of his people,
he revealed that progressively. What he told to Adam and Eve
in the garden about the seed of the woman, trampling on the
seed of the serpent. That was a promise of Christ
to come, but it was a very shadowy one, wasn't it? They didn't understand
all that God said about that. But then you come, and then the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is God in human flesh, he appears, and
he gives the full-blown revelation of God, and as the Christ prophet,
as the express image of God, And as the Son of God, He tells
us about God and what God is doing and shall do. One reason
we believe that there is no more revelation of God to be had until
the end of all things is because Hebrews says, ten times past,
In various ways, God spoke to the fathers through the prophets,
but in these last days, he's spoken to us in his son. And I remember my philosophy
professor saying that phrase, in these last days, could be
in the last of these days, that is, in the last of the days of
God speaking. I mean, once God reveals himself
in his son, what more is there to say? The fullest revelation
of God is not in simply words. The fullest revelation of God
is in a person. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Everything we know about God, whether it be by way of revealed
word or by the coming of the one who's called the Word of
God, all of it has come to us through God the Son. He is the revealer. And so we have here in the Song
of Songs, Song of Solomon, while Solomon may not have even understood
all that he was writing, God inspired him to write this so
that you and I Having, you know, we live in the day of the full
revelation of, that is the fullest revelation that's going to be
given to humanity, the fullest revelation of God and his program,
so to speak, his purpose. We are in that day and we can
look back on this and see many things. and concerning Christ
and what he is to us and what we are to him. And from that,
draw great enjoyment in the relationship that we have with God. Now, we
are at verse Well, last week we dealt
with verse 10 of Song of Songs chapter 7, and here Shulamith
is speaking and she says, I belong to my lover and his desire is
for me. She freely gave herself over
to him when she saw and understood his love for her. A remarkable
thing to consider, is it not? That we should love Christ makes
perfect sense. He's lovable. Everything good
is found in Him. Rebellious man doesn't like Him,
doesn't love Him. But when by the Spirit of God
we are enabled to see in Christ the love of God revealed, the
grace of God, even the righteousness and justice of God, all revealed
together in Him, in Christ, and what He did on the cross, all
there together, when we see that, It causes us to freely and willingly
surrender ourselves completely to Him. I belong to my lover. Well, she goes on in verse 11
and says, Come, my lover. Let us go to the countryside.
Let us spend the night in the villages. Now, if you look at
this from a royal standpoint, that is, Solomon's the king.
And as we noted before, this is an idealized version of Solomon. He was not as good as this book
presents him, but that's okay. He was using himself. He was the son of David, king
in Israel, the last king of the united tribes of Israel. And
Solomon pictures Christ who is likewise called the son of David,
and he is king over the entire church. Now he's king over the
entire universe, I understand that, but he's an acknowledged
king in the church. But anyway, this whole thing, this whole
story here is being given within the context of the royal family. Now remember, in the book of
Revelation, it speaks of the praise of Christ in heaven, and
they say, you are worthy, for you have redeemed us by your
blood out of every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation, and made us
kings, or that could be a kingdom, but made us kings and priests
unto our God. So even over, clear over in the
book of Revelation, It puts the church and the members of the
church in a royal court. And the same thing's being done
here. Shulamith is the wife of the king. And so she is accustomed
to the royal, you know, what it's like to live in the palace. And you know what, I think it
was said that he spent, Solomon spent, what was it, 13 years,
I think, but building the temple, but like 20 years building his
own house. You know, so it must have been
something. Quite the palace. But what does
she say? Come, my lover, let us go to
the countryside. Let us spend the night in the
villages. Now, the church is certainly
not interested in the trappings of worldly glory, palaces. One of the things that, to me,
should reveal to anyone that these super successful preachers
on television who have both, their ministries are palatial.
I remember one of the television stations that run this. They
sit there on chairs that look like thrones. kind of gaudy to
my opinion, but nonetheless they do that. All the trappings of
worldly riches, all the trappings of worldly success, big, lots
of money changing hands and all that, you know, the church of
the Lord Jesus is not interested in that. Now, let me qualify
that. Yeah, we are in the sense that
I doubt there's anybody who if you came up and said to them,
would you like a million dollars? Would say, no. We'd probably take it. I'm talking
about in our spirit, in that part of us that's been born again,
we have heard and have understood what the Lord Jesus said, or
what he meant when he said, don't treasure up, store up treasures
for yourself on earth. where moth comes in and eats
or it decays or somebody might come steal it. Instead, seek
heavenly values. And, you know, we have a nice
building. It's not a modern one. Believe
it or not, it's the same age I am. They finished it the year
I was born. And I don't have it, you know,
it's a nice building. It looks churchy, but we wouldn't
have had one. It was not required of us that
we have one with big high walls and a nice lofted ceiling and
all that. God's people have worshipped
Him, as the book of Hebrews calls it, outside the camp from the
very beginning. Think of the early church. Where
did they meet? They met in one another's houses. There were
no buildings. I don't know when the church
started owning property. That is, when various churches
started owning property. I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
I'm just saying we don't need it. Our worship is spiritual. Our relationship with the Lord
Jesus Christ is a spiritual thing. We build or buy buildings for
one reason, to keep the rain and the sun off of our heads
while we worship, to be comfortable. That's it. It's the only reason
we have them. They serve the purpose of our
comfort. Beyond that, nothing makes any
difference. But she says, Shulamith says,
come let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the
villages. She is content to be anywhere. In fact, may prefer
being with him in those places where others are not likely to
intrude. You know, We gather like this
on Sundays. Why do we do that? Well, someone
may say, well, you know, it's commanded. Well, yes, it is. So we're at least exhorted. Do
not forsake the assembling of yourselves together, says Hebrews
chapter 10, I believe it is. Fine. Is that the only reason
you come? We come together like this, as
believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may, as a single body,
worship the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I'm not going to try to explain
it, but it's certainly true in my experience and seems to be
what the scriptures teach us, that there is no worship so pure,
so powerful in our hearts, so effective in us, It's that worship
that goes on when the body of Christ is gathered. He said,
where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am. I know
He's everywhere, and He's with each individual at all times.
But he promised some kind of special presence when two or
three are gathered. And Brother Spurgeon from the
late 1800s made this comment. He said, when the Lord talks
about the church getting together as a group, he said he chose
the smallest group possible, two. We're two. You can't have a group without
two. But once you've got two, you've got a group. And that group may be Here in
a building like this, it may be at one of the regularly scheduled
meetings of the church. It may be a couple of brothers
or sisters in the Lord just, they saw one another in a restaurant
and decided they'd sit down at the same table and they're talking
with one another and the things of God may come up. Maybe a husband
and wife sitting at the kitchen table, having morning coffee,
talking about the things of God. But there is a benefit to us
in pulling away from the world and gathering with those, as
Peter describes them, of like precious faith and together seeking
a union with Jesus Christ. Let us go to the countryside. That speaks of isolation. Let's
go out where no one else is. And one of the reasons that we
come together like this, we come together like this in order to
leave all the others with whom we are required to carry on relationships
because they are our family or co-workers or whatever. It's
not that those relationships are wrong, but just think how
it is with a husband and wife. They enjoy their time with their
children, don't they? I always did. I like kids in
the house. Of course, I wasn't the one that's taking care of
them. So, of course, it was easy for
me to enjoy that. But we enjoy going to see them. Bonnie and
I, we enjoy visiting with church folk, whether it is a matter
of just typical human visiting or if it has some special spiritual
significance. We enjoy all that. I'm kind of
a social person. But here's the thing. There's
a time when my wife and I, we wanted to be just us, away from
everybody else. Why? So that we can focus on
one another. And then he says, let us spend
the night in the villages. Now, you have to understand the
significance of this, or in order to understand the significance
of this, you've got to think what it was like in roughly somewhere
between 900 and 1000 B.C. when Solomon was king. Being out in the field or countryside
at night was dangerous business. Remember, Well, you know, here
we've got Rock Valley, what is it, 3,500 people, I think. And
just, what is it, about a six-mile drive away. You've got Dune over
there and all this. And we can get from city to city
rather quickly. And we do it in automobiles.
We're somewhat protected. And we have a rather strong,
compared to back then, police presence for our protection.
But if you were out in the countryside at night, you were easy pickings
for those who had ill designs, thieves. That's why even when
traveling, they would travel in caravans, you know, a bigger
group would be harder to rob people. But anyway, so being
out in the countryside at night was not a good idea. She says,
let's spend the night in the villages. Now the interesting
thing is the word translated villages is derived from the
word translated atonement. Now these villages were called
villages by virtue of the fact these were cities that had walls
or some kind of fencing or something that provided some protection
for the people. Now the word for atonement is
basically the word for covering. Because an atonement is a price
paid to put away an offense. That is, if you've offended somebody,
personal offense against them, you would try to provide an atonement
which would satisfy the anger of the one you've offended. And
therefore, that payment, as it were, would cover up, cover up
the offense. And the Bible uses that word
to describe the sacrifice of Christ. For God is offended by
our sin. He's angry by our sin, and rightly
so, because our sin, while it may be carried out against one
another, like when David sinned with Bathsheba, and in order
to cover it up, he had her husband Uriah killed in battle. So he stole Uriah's wife, or
took Uriah's wife, and then took Uriah's life. You say, yes, he
sinned against Uriah. No, David said in Psalm 51, against
you, Lord, and you alone have I sinned and done this evil and
I sighed. You see, our sin is not just breaking a commandment.
It is to offend, personally offend God. And in order for the relationship
between us and God to be restored, that sin must be covered with
an atonement. Now, in villages, with the walls,
you can see how the word for atonement could
become applied to villages that had walls and protection. The
walls provided a cover. In fact, you can hearken back
to the cities of refuge. where if a man accidentally killed
someone, back in those days, they did have courts, but it
was also considered the right of families to avenge their murdered
family members. If you killed a man's son, that
man and all the brothers and everything, they're going to
come after you. Well, if you killed one, killed somebody accidentally,
you didn't mean to, it was just The way things work. Well, here
comes the avenger. I think that's what the Bible,
the avenger of blood. Here comes his family. They're
running after you. The Lord had told them to set up cities of
refuge where the manslayer can run. And if he gets there before
anybody catches him, he gets inside and the doors are closed.
The avenger of blood cannot come in. And so you see there's a
picture of atonement. And so she's saying at night,
when things are dangerous, let us go into the villages. And
you know, that's where we dwell with Christ, in the villages,
in the atonement. He has provided a covering for
us. His blood has so covered our sin that God, the judge of
all, is no longer offended by us. And so we see here that the church,
illustrated by this Shulamith, as she says, come my lover, let
us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages,
she is illustrating for us how our desires after Christ are
first to be with Him and Him alone. Now this is for the whole church.
The church desires to be with him. The great blessing of heaven
is not to be found in colonnaded mansions and golden streets and
pearly gates. In fact, that illustration in
the book of Revelation is really not a picture of heaven in the
first place. It's not an illustration of heaven, but even if it were,
Why would we think that the glory of heaven consists in big houses? Why would heaven be made up of
things that our Lord told us to avoid, or certainly not set
our hearts on, on earth? Do you know what the glory of
heaven is? The glory of heaven is the presence
of Christ there. That's what it is to the believer. If Christ were not there, we
wouldn't have any interest in the place. You know, my wife was raised
in New Jersey. It seems I've told this story
recently. Maybe I just told it to a single person, but I think
it's a good illustration here. And we met in college, and so
she ends up coming to West Virginia, and we're married. We moved to Eastern Kentucky
and then to Western Kentucky and then up here to Northwest
Iowa. One day I was thinking about that her being married
to me has cost her her childhood household, regular contact with
her family. She comes to West Virginia Which,
who wouldn't want to do that? It's a beautiful place. But nonetheless,
it wasn't home. And now, I'm not even home, so
far as what I'm accustomed to in my childhood. I grew up among
forests and mountains and all that, and here I am out in what
seems to me like almost barren desert with houses there. And
I said to her one day, I said, you know, I just want to let
you know, I appreciate it. I appreciate your willingness
to follow me, because I've drug you over half of this country.
And without missing a beat, she says, my home is wherever you
are. A remarkably powerful statement
to me. And I've lived on that statement
for a lot of years. My home is where you are. How
much more does the church say, my home is where Christ is? to be with Him. And the other
great blessing the Scriptures speak of, it says, how was it, there in 1 Thessalonians
chapter 4 when it speaks about the Lord's return, it ends with
this, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. That's the great
blessing of it. And then it says, we are predestined
to be conformed to his image, to be with him and to be like
him. That's heaven. And if that's
not what you're interested in, you're gonna be terribly disappointed
with heaven. Okay, want to be with him and then to dwell with
him in the knowledge of, the experience of that wonderful
atonement that he provided for us. He made atonement. And remember this, just as there's
no such thing as an unsuccessful cure, now you can have an unsuccessful
medicine. You know, doctor gives you medicine,
doesn't work. But you can't have an unsuccessful
cure. Why? Because it's not a cure until
it's successful. If it doesn't cure something, If it's not successful, you can't
call it a cure. You can just say, well, it was medicine. It
just didn't work. In the same way, you can have
an unsuccessful sacrifice. It could be that someone would
offer a sacrifice and it was not made up of, well, like with
Cain, he brought a sacrifice that didn't involve blood. Well,
that sacrifice was a failure. You can have a sacrifice that's
a failure. You cannot have an atonement that's a failure because
it's not an atonement until it's a success. It's not an atonement. Same way with a redemption. It's
not a redemption until it actually redeems. And therefore, let us
spend the night. And you know, the scriptures
sometimes refer to our present existence in this world as the
night, as the time of our sleep. David says, I will be satisfied
when I awake. I'll be satisfied with your likeness
when I awake. What do you mean? Every day you
wake up in the morning? Well, he didn't see God every
day. He was talking about when he wakes up, from this dull existence
where we cannot see God, we cannot, in a literal face-to-face way, approach Him, approach Christ. Everything now, even though we
have the fullest revelation that we can have in this world, is
still not going to be what it is in time to come. So it's dark,
it's shadowy. Paul says we see as in a mirror. Speaking about they used to take
this black stone to make mirrors, one of the ways anyway, is a
very dark stone and they polish it. And that was a mirror, and
he says, we see it as a mirror darkly. With that kind of mirror,
you could maybe tell whether your hair was basically in place
or not, but you couldn't see the details and all that. It
was a dark image. And that's how we see now. But
he said, then face to face. And so now we're spending the
night, and where are we spending it? We are under the blood of
Jesus. That chorus we love to sing here,
under the blood of Jesus, safe in the shepherd's fold, under
the blood of Jesus. What a blessed place to be. We are in the atonement, safe
from all enemies on the outside. All right, we'll pick up there
next week.