Let's open our Bibles to the
Song of Solomon's chapter 7. Now, I'm going to try to do as
I did last week and cover the entire chapter. At this point
in the book, there is a good deal of repetition. That is,
they are describing one another and they are using many of the
same likenesses that they have before
and there's no use spending time with them again, but we will
take note of the things that are different maybe than any
other descriptions, but let's seek the Lord's blessing first.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to meet
and We pray we've met in the name of Christ and that the name
of Christ will be uplifted. And it's in that name we pray
these things. Amen. Now let's read the first nine
verses. Again, since this is a poem,
sometimes you need to read the whole section at once and just
try to absorb the general view of it, rather than try to look
at it piece by piece. I think it was last week I made
the remark, if you went into a museum, you would not make,
you know, because there was a famous piece of artwork, you would not
go there several times and look at, you know, the upper right
corner of that painting, and then another time go and look,
you know, one section over, and then sometime look at the bottom.
You would look at the whole thing at once. And, because sometimes
Artwork, well, it's pretty much the nature of artwork. It's not
to be looked at piecemeal. So let's read this part, and
this is spoken by Solomon, and therefore is spoken by Christ. How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince's daughter. Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of a craftsman's hands. Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies. Your breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are the pools of heshbon
by the gate of Bath-Robin. Your nose is like the Tower of
Lebanon looking towards Damascus. Your head crowns you like Mount
Carmel. Your hair is like a royal tapestry. The king is held captive by its
tresses. How beautiful you are and how
pleasing. Oh, love with your delights. Your stature is like that of
a palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said I will
climb the palm tree, and I will take hold of its fruit. May your breasts be like the
clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and
your mouth like the best of wine. We have run into many of these
likenesses that Solomon has used to describe Shulamith. But this
first one, how beautiful your sandaled feet, oh prince's daughter,
your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of a craftsman's hands. Now if you would turn with me
over to Romans chapter 10. Now, we will repeat that while
Solomon no doubt wrote this with a woman in mind, whether
it was a real woman, a totally fictional woman, or an idealized
version of one of his wives, he was describing her and yet
Solomon, whose name means peace, is one of the Old Testament pictures
of our Lord Jesus Christ. So as we read these things, when
Solomon speaks to Shulamith, Shulamith represents the church,
and so we take these as words of Christ to the church. And
it says in verse 14 of Romans chapter 10, how then can they
call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they
believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they
hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach
unless they are sent as it is written, how beautiful are the
feet of those who bring good news. And it's in the book of
the Ephesians that Paul speaks about the armor of the believer,
the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness,
shield of faith, sword of the word. But it says, having your
feet shod, with preparation of the gospel of peace. Now, Solomon has said of Shulamith,
how beautiful are your sandaled feet, your shooed feet. And I believe it's certainly
no stretch to speak of these as picturing the church as the
one who goes out delivering the good news of the kingdom of God
in Christ Jesus. Now when our Lord was present,
gospel preaching was often described as declaring the good news, which
is the word gospel, the gospel of the kingdom. Now, you could
do at least a several Sunday set of lessons on what is meant
by the kingdom, but let's just say for right now, the primary
issue, the good news of the kingdom. Whatever the kingdom is, it's
good news. when the apostles went out. They went out preaching the good
news. They went taking good news. Now,
the world didn't see it as good news. The world saw it, the Greek
world primarily saw it as foolishness. And the Jewish world saw it as
weakness. The Greeks said it's foolishness
because they preached the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which to a Greek,
and I say a Greek often. the New Testament uses the word
Greek to describe all the Gentiles, even though it was talking about
the Roman Empire. After all, the Greek Empire,
for all intents and purposes, was gone. Rome had defeated it
and overcome it, and the Roman Empire included Greece and all
of that. But they still referred to them
as Greeks And it's not surprising because the Romans, even though
they defeated those Greek areas, they absorbed Greek culture. They were enamored of Greek culture. And if you have studied much
on mythology and the gods of ancient cultures, you will discover
that the Greek gods and the Roman gods are one and the same. It's
just when the Romans absorbed Greek culture, they gave those
gods Latin names. For instance, Greece had the
god Zeus. I can't remember the name of
this particular form of polytheism. They were polytheists, many gods,
but there's some kinds of polytheism where all the gods are roughly
equal or whatever, and it's pretty much a chaotic arrangement among
the gods. Then you have the polytheistic
view that there are many gods, but there's one God who rules
over all of them. Well, in the Greek culture, That
was Zeus. Well, the Germans... I almost
said the Germans. The Romans took over, and they
brought in all those gods with them, and Zeus became Jupiter. I'm trying to make sure I get
it right here. I think Mars is Roman, and I'm
trying to remember what the Greek name for it was. But, you know, Venus had different
names, but still, it was all exactly the same gods. And so, when this good news went out
to the Greeks, that is, went out to the Roman Empire primarily,
which had absorbed Greek gods and Greek philosophy. One of
the aspects of Greek philosophy they had absorbed was that which
was first put forth by Plato officially. And he believed that
there is spirit reality and then there is material reality. And he believed that all of us
are essentially eternal spiritual beings And when we were born
into the world, the shock of being born into a material existence
made us forget our previous purely spiritual state. And to them, to live in this
condition was worse than to go back to our original completely
spiritual condition. give you an example of that.
Socrates, who I believe was a student of Plato, but he believed that. And when Socrates was executed,
and I don't know all, I know what they charged him with, but
often people who are outspoken, they are executed The people
who have them executed are motivated by one thing, but they've got
to come up with another justification for it, because their motivation
would never sell to the public. They said he corrupted the youth
and all this kind of stuff. But Socrates believed that, and
they executed him by making him drink hemlock, which slowly paralyzes
you from the feet up. And he did not oppose it in the
least. And his disciples were around
him, you know, and they were, he said, weeping and all that.
He said, why are you sorry that I'm going? He said, I'm leaving
this material existence, going back to what I was. A pure spiritual
being. Well, you take people that believe
that, and then you take the God you worship, and claimed that
this God who was completely spiritual became flesh, material. Died in the flesh, they would
have said, okay, that's fine, he goes back to what he was.
No, he raised from the dead with a human body. and ascended to
the right hand of the majesty on high. And, you know, Paul
says there's one God and one mediator between God and man,
the man Christ Jesus. He's still a man. He is still
in the flesh as well as this eternal spirit. When the apostles would go out
and preach, when they mentioned the resurrection from the dead,
they were often mocked because of that. The Greeks thought,
that's stupid. Who wants that? And then the
Jews. They see the gospel as weakness
because their concept of Messiah was of a mighty warrior who would
come. And in that day, they thought
a mighty warrior who would come and conquer Rome, deliver them
from their bondage to Rome, set up Israel as this magnificent,
powerful, maybe worldwide ruling nation. And what did the Lord
Jesus Christ do? He came, lived in relative obscurity
until the last three years of his life. People began to know him. His
fame was spread abroad primarily because of the miracles that
he was able to do. If all he had been was a preacher,
They'd have just dismissed him as one of the many other preachers
that were out there. Had he merely been claiming he
was the Messiah, they would have ignored him because the scriptures
tell us in that day there were many who were claiming to be
the Messiah, the Christ. But there was something unique
about Christ. He came and he healed the sick. He gave sight to those who were
born blind. He spoke into Lazarus' tomb.
Lazarus, dead four days. I've heard, you know, people
say, well, he really hadn't died. Come on. He'd been wrapped up
pretty much like a mummy for four days. And he'd been very
sick up to that point. You wouldn't survive four days
in there. He'd been dead four days. They rolled away the stone,
and he didn't go through any wild ceremonies, you know, and
he didn't swing a censer. He didn't sprinkle water on Lazarus'
corpse or anything like that. He simply stood outside that
tomb, and he said, Lazarus, come forth. And Lazarus came forth. Someone
once commented that he said, Lazarus, come forth, because
if he had just said, come forth, everybody would have come out
of their graves. So he specified who was to come
forth. And Lazarus came forth, bound
in his grave clothes, which must have been a sight, because their
legs were wrapped up, too. And he could probably just barely
shuffle along. But he came out, and he told
the disciples, now, unwrap him. And there's a good lesson in
that, but I won't take the time. Well, that didn't look like weakness. But you know, the raising of
Lazarus from the dead is not the primary message of the gospel.
And what happened to our Lord Jesus Christ looked like weakness. He was crucified. Now, that's
not merely executed. We've got to look at this through
the eyes of the people who lived in that time. Roman execution
was reserved for the worst of criminals. Of course, they thought
a lot of people were the worst of criminals. They were all that
hesitant to use it. But in particular, it was used
against those who were considered guilty of insurrection. In other
words, they had stood up to the Roman government. And this crucifixion
was designed not only as a way to kill them and get them out
of the way so that they can't do anything, but it was a humiliating
experience. They were crucified naked, their
bodies displayed for everyone to see. They hung there. Some
took days to die because It's horribly painful to have nails
driven through your hands, which my understanding is, it was actually
what we would call wrists, but that would have been called hands,
part of your hands back in those days. And evidently, I read this
recently, because they have found you know, the bones of some who
have been crucified, you know, when it says that they nailed
his feet to the cross, it wasn't like you normally see in the
pictures where they folded his feet across each other and put
a nail through it. They actually put one foot on
each side of the cross and they nailed right through the heel
bone. You can imagine the horrid agony of such a thing. And most
people don't realize this, but crucifixion is not death by bleeding
to death. The wounds are horribly painful,
but they don't bleed that much. Of course, our Lord had been
whipped within an inch of his life, and he had a crown of thorns
in his head. There was more blood in his crucifixion
than normal. But crucifixion was designed
specifically to take a long time to make it absolutely horrible
as a deterrent to anyone else. And what they actually died of
most of the time was asphyxiation. Because if you're hanging by
your arms, you can't breathe. And so what they would do is,
you know, when they really needed a breath, they would lift themselves
up on their ankles, nailed to the cross, which was horridly
painful to do. Take a gasp of air and then slump
down again. And they would kind of go up
and down the cross like that for however long their bodies
could tolerate that experience. That's why when they were going
to hasten the death of the Lord Jesus and the two criminals,
if you remember on the day that he was crucified, it was considered
a Sabbath day, or the next day would be a Sabbath. And by law,
the Jews said, you know, they've got to be off that cross and
buried before sundown. And the way they would hasten
death then is to break the legs of those that were crucified.
That meant they couldn't lift themselves up to take a breath. And when they got to the Lord
Jesus, they found out he was already dead, and it surprised
them. Why? Well, you're not supposed
to die in six hours. You're supposed to die after
several days. Well, anyway, to be crucified
in this way, it was a shame. To have someone in your family
that had been crucified would be something you kept under wraps. You didn't advertise that. It was not only an agonizing
way to die, it was a cursed way to die. Paul applied that Old Testament
law to our Lord Jesus, saying that, as it is written, cursed
is everyone who is hung on a tree. So Christ was made a curse for
us in order to deliver us from the curse of the law. So he was
hung on a tree, and not a living tree, but nonetheless a cross
made out of pieces of a tree. And the idea was if someone was
executed, and then their bodies hung out for public and humiliating
display, they were considered not only rejected by men, but
rejected by God as well. Remember our Lord said, my God,
my God, why have you forsaken me? And to the Jew, that was weakness.
What kind of Messiah ends up on a cross? Now Paul went on to say, he said
to the Greek, Christ is weakness. to the Jew,
I mean his foolishness, to the Jew his weakness, but to us who
believe, he is the wisdom and power of God. So we go out and
we preach good news, the world will not receive it because it
sounds stupid. Victors don't die. Victors are
the ones who survive the battle. The winner is the one who's left
when the battle's done. Well, indeed, that does apply
to our Lord. But they don't believe that anything
happened to him beyond his death. They saw him die. The Romans
saw it. The Jews who were standing around
saw it. They knew he was buried in a
tomb. They knew the tomb was sealed because he had claimed
he would raise again. They wanted to make sure it couldn't
happen so that he could not make the boast or no one could make
that boast about him. But lo and behold, he did raise
from the dead. And here's an interesting thing
about our Lord's raising from the dead. He never appeared to
anyone. after his resurrection other
than those who already believed him." I remember hearing a preacher
one time saying, if I'd have been the Lord Jesus, I'd have
done it a lot different. He said he remembered when he
was a kid, you know. You'd fall off a bike and there's
all your friends around, you know, and they'd probably laugh
at you, you know, particularly if it's guys. That's the way
we guys are. You know, when we're around buddies and one of them
gets hurt, we laugh at him. You know, we don't express sympathy.
But he said, if I fell down one time, he said, and I jumped up,
I'm not hurt, I'm fine. He said, if I'd have been the
Lord Jesus, I'd have come out of that grave and I'd have gone
right to Pilate. He said, didn't hurt me, I'm
fine. Said, I'd have gone to the temple. I'm fine. You didn't do a thing.
He never did. Why? Because his vindication, it is accomplished by the Spirit
of God. In, I think it's 1 Timothy 3,
great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh.
And one of the lines in the King James, it says, justified in
the spirit. And I like the way our translation
handles it because I think it catches the sense better. Vindicated
by the spirit. And when the spirit vindicates
him, to whom does the spirit vindicate the Lord Jesus Christ? God's elect. He doesn't show
it to anyone else. I was thinking about holidays
this morning, just as I was musing. And you know, one of the problems
with the way that holy days are observed in our culture is, generally
speaking, we are observing events, not the person. We're celebrating what here in
Christmas? The birth of Christ. And I'm
not saying the event's not important. But there's a bunch of births
went on that night. What made that birth important? Who it
was. It's not even particularly notable
that he was born of a virgin. I mean, you know, that's a curiosity. How'd that happen? And it has
some significance in the gospel. But the issue of, that the issue
is, who is that? That's God in human flesh, but
that's not really what most Christmas observances are about. It's about
the event, and they talk about the shepherds, and they talk
about the wise men, and they talk about Herod's reaction and
all of that. I hate to say this, but the star
of the story is not Joseph and Mary and all these other guys.
It is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And then they talk about Easter,
or Good Friday. What's that about? It's about
the crucifixion. Well, the crucifixion is part
of the history that had to be taken care of. But the issue
with the crucifixion, remember, two other people were crucified
that day. We don't celebrate their crucifixion.
Why? Because their crucifixion was
insignificant. But the crucifixion of Christ
was significant not because it was a crucifixion, it's who is
it that was crucified? And then Easter we celebrate
the resurrection, but it's not the resurrection that is the
issue, it's who raised from the dead and why? So we go out preaching the gospel,
and we're preaching things that look like weakness to some. A
Savior who dies. You know, a Savior who died,
if you had a rescuer, and I realize we're not making much progress
here in Song of Solomon, but I think these things are important
with regard to her feet and legs, you know, the things that carry
her about, expressing a gospel preacher going hither and yon,
telling the good news. And this is wonderful to Christ.
He delights in it. But when we go out like that, the
only ones who look upon the feet and the legs of the church of
the Lord Jesus Christ and counts them to be beautiful are first,
the Lord Jesus himself. And secondly, those who by grace
recognize their message as the good news, the gospel. They look at the church and say,
That's a glorious thing. People say, I want to live a
life that glorifies God. I want to live a life that pleases
my Father. Good. You ought to want that. If you've been saved, that should
be the highest ideal you could imagine in this life. But what
do we do to glorify Him? Do we glorify Him by going, you
know, getting us an extra big Bible and always carrying it
around? Had a fellow like that in college. And even by then, you know, and I
graduated at 22 years old, even by then I was able to discern
those who were being overtly religious primarily as a show. And they may have been as deceived
as they were deceiving. I'm not looking down my nose
at it. I did some of the same stuff.
But this guy, no matter where he went, man, he had this big
Bible tucked up under his arm everywhere he went. And my history
professor related this story about him. And he saw the guy
and he said, And the guy goes, just praising the Lord. And the
professor said, for what? And it brought the guy up short.
What was he doing? He was being religious. Just
repeating words that supposedly sound good. If you want to honor
God, if you want to honor Christ, if you want to be pleasing to
the Father and a delight to the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ,
use those feet and legs to carry you places to tell the good news
about Him. And the world will think you
have ugly feet and bow legs, But it doesn't matter what they
think, their eyes are messed up. The Lord delights in the
spread of His gospel. Well, it had been my intent to
get through the whole chapter, and we got through verse 1. So
this series may go on longer than I thought, but you are dismissed.