If you'll open your Bibles now
to Song of Solomon, chapter six. We will attempt the miraculous
this morning and get through this entire chapter. Our Father, thank you for this
word, and we pray that we will understand it correctly, which
would be, of course, to understand it within the context of our
Lord Jesus as a revelation of him and of what he's done for
us and how that affects us. We pray this in Christ's name,
amen. Now, having heard Shulamith,
describe Solomon as she did in the, in verses 10 through 16
in chapter five. Her friends, or the friends,
have a question. They say, where has your lover
gone, most beautiful of women? Which way did your lover turn
that we may look for him with you? Now, so far as what the
church can do, and I mean by that the church as a single body
and also as any particular individual within the church, so far as
what the church can do in this world, her declaration of what
Christ means to her is the most powerful method stirring others
to look for him. Remember in the middle there
of chapter 5, it says in verse 9, how is your beloved better
than others, most beautiful of women? How is your beloved better
than others that you charge us so? She had told them, if you
find the one I love, you tell him that my heart is faint with
love. And she said, well, and the friends
respond, well, what's so much better about the one you love
as opposed to others? that you would charge us like
that. And so in verses 10 through 16 of chapter five, she gives
that beautiful description of him. And we tried to give some
significance to the individual aspects, but in reality, it may
be that it's just we take it as a whole. She's saying that
he is the superlative of every characteristic you can imagine.
And when they heard that, they said, well, where has he gone?
Which way did your lover turn that we may look for him with
you? When a believer tells others
not intricate theological systems, not arguing about church organization
or church ceremonies and the things that the world loves to
argue about, instead of that, when the church or a member of
the church goes out, whether purposefully or it just comes
up in conversation, but you get an opportunity and you tell others
what the Lord Jesus Christ is to you. Now, the good thing about this, they
can't argue about that. They might think you're foolish
to feel that way, but they can't argue with you about the fact
that that's how you perceive him. He is everything wonderful
in your eyes. He's everything good. He's all
we need, says Peter, for life and godliness. There is nothing
about our Lord Jesus that we don't like. Nothing about him
that we find objectionable. If you take every individual
aspect of his character, and once you take every individual
aspect and put them all together, it's like Shulamith says in verse
16 of chapter 5, he is altogether lovely. Not meaning just that
Everything about him is lovely, but when you put him all together,
he's lovely. You know, you can look at someone, and
the person might say, oh, they have beautiful eyes. And they
may have. But the rest, maybe not so much.
Or they may have parts, each of which, taken in isolation,
would be considered attractive. But they just don't go together.
You know, if you go to the piano, every one of the notes on that
piano is pretty in its own way. But not all of them work well
together. If you're going to play more than one note at a
time, you've got to know what you're doing and play notes that
go together. And that's what she's saying,
everything about her lover. Each part was beautiful, and
yet they all worked together to make an absolutely perfect
whole. And when she was done describing
him, the friends, which occupy the position of a chorus, what
they called the chorus in a play, the friends say, where's he gone? Where is he? Anybody like that,
I want to see them. Where has your lover gone, most
beautiful of women? Which way did your lover turn
that we may look for him with you? So I say this in truth, and I
say it to me as much as anybody else. When you're in informal
conversation, and maybe religious, matters come up. Well, what do
you believe? They may put to you. Instead
of describing what you believe, describe who you believe and
what he is to you and what he's done for you. Because as I said,
they can't argue with that. They can choose to not believe
that it's true. They can choose to believe that
you're just following a fantasy. But they can't say, no, he's
not that to you. Yes, he is. That's what he is
to me. And you know, if you deliver
something that is of personal experience to you, you have become,
as it were, a prophet. not just a bearer of particular
teachings. You know, prophets, as they are
described in the Old Testament, they weren't just men who went
out, such as I do. I open the Bible, I read what's
in it, I organize it into a message, you know, with every intention
of making Christ known, that's what I want to do and all that.
But the prophets of old spoke what God spoke personally to
them. And the people could choose to
disbelieve whether the Lord had really spoken to him, but they
couldn't dispute the fact he believed the Lord had spoken
to him. And he declared what God had
said to him. And therefore, instead of just
giving them a bunch of doctrine. Well, we're sovereign grace Baptists,
you know, we believe and go down the doctrines of grace and we
believe that only believers should be baptized. They'll argue with
you about that because their church may believe differently.
But you tell them about Christ and what he is to you. And it'll
get their attention one way or the other. So, which way did your lover
turn that we may look for you? Now, Shulamith answered, my lover
has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices to browse
in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my lover's and my
lover is mine. He browses among the lilies.
Now overall, her answer is this, he's with me. He's with me. She is that garden. I remember a garden is a tended
piece of land. You have wilderness where things
just grow as they grow, and you have gardens. It says in the
scriptures in creation, you know, that God commanded the earth
to bring forth vegetation, and it did. But it took some time. And therefore, God, since he
was gonna make a man on the sixth day, he had to have some place
for that man to live where there was already lush vegetation. And it says he planted a garden. He didn't just pick a spot and
say, okay, you grow some plants really quick. No, it was a planting
of the Lord. And he set Adam in that. And
Adam, his job was to till, that is to continue taking care of
that garden. So when she says, my lover has
gone down to his garden, she's referring to herself. And she's
saying, he has come to me. I am his work. We are all born as wilderness,
aren't we? We just kind of grow wild. Just
whatever. We're just like everyone else
in the world. But our Lord Jesus Christ, through His Spirit, has
come to us and turned us from wilderness to a garden paradise
suitable for Him. And it says, gone to his garden,
the bed of spices, to browse in the garden, to gather lilies.
One commentator said that this actually is a picture of the
activity of gazelles, because that's the kind of thing they
eat. They would browse on the lilies, which There's lots and
lots of different kinds of lilies. I don't know particularly which
lilies are being spoken of here, but I guess it made good grazing
material for the gazelles of that day. But it's a picture of his intimate
interactions with her. He found delight in her. Now again, we're brought up short
here. We understand fully why we find everything we want in
Him. We find everything we count desirable,
we find it in Christ. But you turn it right around,
and Christ finds everything desirable to Him in us. And we think, well, I can't see how that is. I can't
see that. I could describe Him in terms
such as in chapter 5 verses 10 through 16, but how could he
ever see me in a similar fashion? How could he ever look on me
and say every part is beautiful and each or each part is beautiful
and all of them together are beautiful to me? Well you see
our Lord Jesus Christ first of all he looks on the heart and
he has made our heart perfect and beautiful. I say our heart,
our spiritual nature. It's been reborn. And He also
looks to us, not as we are, but as He has made us to be through
His death, and we look at it as a hope. That's our great hope
to be like Him. But understand from His viewpoint,
it's not a hope, it's a realization. I keep being brought back to
that statement in the Lord's Prayer where it says, your will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. And the word translated done
is the word normally translated like born or created. In other
words, to make something real. And so it could very well be
that our Lord is saying, your will be realized on earth as
it already is in heaven. That's why Paul could say, we
are seated with him in the heavenly places. Say, wait a minute, I'm
down here. Yeah, down here, you're down
here. Up there, you're up there. Our experience here on earth,
will eventually catch up to what's already real in heaven, and that's
what he sees. Said, my lover's gone down to
his garden, then skip down to verse three, I am my lover's. I'm my lover's garden, and my
lover is mine. He's my garden. He browses among
the lilies. The Lord Jesus Christ dwells
among his people. He interacts with him through
his word, through the declaration of the gospel, whether it be
declared from a pulpit like this, or in conversations with one
another, or even in the meditations of your own mind. The Lord Jesus
Christ is with his people, and he is with them intimately, and
engages with them on the most personal level, you say, well,
I just feel like I don't experience that, I'm coming up short of
it. We are never going to experience that without hindrance until
we're gone from this world. But by faith, we know it is so. He said to his disciples, I will
never leave you nor forsake you. He's always present. Now Solomon speaks up, describing
Shulamith. Of course, this is a picture
of Christ and his estimation of the church. You are beautiful,
my darling, as Terza, lovely as Jerusalem, majestic as troops
with banners. Now there's a threefold description.
We might not think of those as particularly appealing descriptions,
but you've always got to read things within their context. In those days, you had little
villages here and there, you know, all over the place, just
small groups of people. And then you had the larger cities.
We have the same thing in our day. You know, you have, you
take for example the city of Alvord. You know, what's there?
Mostly just people. I don't think there's a grocery
store there. I think you can get gas, but
you can't go there or just not much by way of business. But,
you know, you can go on, what would it be, about another 25
miles, and there's Sioux Falls, the big city. Well, it was the
same way back then. They had the little hamlets,
villages, the small gatherings of people. Then they had the
larger cities, and these cities usually had some kind of wall
around them for protection. Because whenever you have a large
enough group of people that it becomes prosperous economically,
it attracts bandits, and so they put up protection. But anyway,
these cities, they would do everything they could to appear attractive. And evidently, this one city,
Tirza, was one of the beautiful cities. Now, Tirza was in the the tribal allotment
of Ephraim. Ephraim was one of the sons of
Joseph. And the word terza as a name signifies she is my delight. And so what has the Lord Jesus
said about his church here? You are my, you are beautiful,
my darling. You are my delight. Oh, what wonderful things the
Lord says to us. Our mind is full of condemnation.
It's the natural aspect of our flesh. And you know, if the devil
does anything to us, you know, everybody thinks the devil's
trying to make us commit this or that transgression. And I'm
not going to deny his part in it, but as I've mentioned before,
I can sin pretty good all by myself. I don't need his help.
What he does, is when he finds us caught up in sin, he comes
and says, you're filthy, you're disgusting. The Lord Jesus Christ
won't have anything to do with you. You're not good enough.
But our Lord says, you are beautiful. You are my darling one, that
is someone who's very dear to me, precious to me. You are the
one in whom I delight." What else would you want to hear from
the Lord Jesus? You say, oh, I fear the judgment.
I don't know what the judgment's going to be. Well, it's right
here. When we stand before the Lord, what will our Lord say
with regard to all of us whose trust is in Him? You are beautiful,
my darling. You are my delight. Lovely as
Jerusalem. Now to the Jewish mind, there
was no city greater than the city of Jerusalem. And in Solomon's
day, it had become especially glorious because he had built
that temple to the Lord. And I mean, they spared no expense. All through David's life, he
had been collecting materials to build it. The Lord told David,
you're not the one that's going to build it, it'll be your son,
but you can gather the materials. Well, you know, David was very
successful in expanding the influence of his country over the nations
around him, and they paid tribute to him. And so he was gathering
up gold, and he was gathering up the kind of timbers that might
be used in such a structure as that. And then Solomon comes
to the throne, and he is even more successful than his father
in bringing the other nations into subjection to Jerusalem.
So much gold was coming into the coffers there in Jerusalem
by the time he started building the temple. Well, they had more
gold than Fort Knox. Though, as I've heard, as I've
been told, Fort Knox doesn't have any gold now. But that used
to be where the United States stored its reserves of gold. And that temple, to give you
an idea, the Holy of Holies, that very back room, 25 foot
deep, 25 feet wide, I think I'm remembering the right numbers,
and 25 feet tall, and the walls were clad in gold. That gives
you the idea of the kind of place it was. Magnificent temple, and
the world knew it. In fact, the Queen of Sheba came
up to Jerusalem to visit Solomon because his fame had gotten down
to earth. She says, well, the way they
talk about this fella and what he's done, I've got to go see
it. It's unbelievable. And so when
Solomon compares Shulamith to Jerusalem, he's comparing her
to the most glorious city possibly on the face of the earth that
day. And then it says here, majestic
as troops with banners. Now, our translators didn't, well, they changed that
word majestic. Everywhere else, it is terrible. That's what it means. Now, not
terrible as in bad. terrible as in terrifying. It always speaks of something
that puts people in fear. Now why would he say that? He's
compared her, actually what he's comparing her to is here you
are in your city feeling safe and sound and you look out and
here comes a massive army, banners, you know, blowing in the breeze.
Maybe there's no breeze, maybe it's just the speed of the horses
causing those banners, those flags to wave, and here they
come. Why would he compare his beautiful,
delightful, pleasant wife to this? Because that's what the
church looks like to the world. You know, when the church first
appeared in its completed form. And by that, you know, Christ
had come, the Holy Spirit had come, and there's no, ever since
the Holy Spirit came, we've been in what the Bible calls the last
age. There isn't another age to come. This is it. And on earth, this is the fullness
of what the church is. But what's so interesting is,
even in the very early days of the church, when there were very
few of them, and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, God's elect
come from the ranks of the uneducated, the unsophisticated, the nobodies. It wasn't made up of the upper
crust of society, not even the middle crust. in the Gentile world, as I've
read this, it doesn't say specifically in the scriptures, but I've read
that a great portion of the members of the churches in the Gentile
nations were actually slaves. But you know what? And all they
were doing was going about their business. They'd go to their
job, they would preach the gospel, but they were law-abiding citizens.
You will not find anywhere in the scriptures a warrant for
overthrowing a government. Paul never said, you know, you've
got to, we've got to get us a new Caesar, you know, or we've got
to overthrow the Roman government and set up a Christian government
in its place. They never did anything like that, but the world
was terrified of them, so much they persecuted them everywhere
they were. killing them as though they were
a danger. They weren't a danger to anybody. But it sure looked
like it to the world. And here's why the church looks
terrifying as an army with its banners. They know who's at the
head of that army. And though they do not want to
believe that he is what he claims to be or what we tell them he
is, they think they can get rid of Him by getting rid of us. Well, in verse 5, Solomon says
to Shulamith, turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me. Remember
earlier he said, with one glance of your eye, you have ravished
me. Or it could be read, with one
eye. Sometimes they wore I don't know
all the customs, and I don't know how strictly they followed
them, but it may be that in one flirtatious
moment, this woman, you know, if she had a veil, you know,
from her brow on down, she just let down a corner of that veil
and looked at him with one eye, and he said, that one eye, it
ravished me. Or it was just a glance across
the room. You ever had something like that
happen? Back in your dating days, you're
in a room, and I have, by the way, and you look across, and
someone on the other side caught your eye, and you looked, and
it was over. It was over. And he says, turn your eyes from
me, they overwhelm me. As though the Lord were saying,
it's too much for me. And he goes on and describes
her in ways that he has described her before. And then he goes
on to say in verse 8, 60 queens there may be and 80 concubines
and virgins beyond number. Now, we've got to read this in
light of the culture of that day. Solomon had a harem that
eventually grew to include 700 wives and 300 concubines. I feel certain there are some
that he never met. But back then, a man's status
as a concubine That is, if you were at this level of society,
your status was determined by how many wives and concubines
you had. Now, we wouldn't accept that. The Lord tolerated it out
of His people. He always, you know, has joined
one man to one woman, and that was it for life, you know. he
will make use of the way we corrupt things in order to show wondrous
things. And so at this point, Solomon,
maybe 60 queens, 80 concubines, and then virgins, those would
have just been the young women who served in the court. They
weren't part of his harem, but they were around the court doing
stuff. And he said, all of these will
You're better than all of them put together." That's what he
says. But my dove, my perfect one, is unique. Among them she
stands out, the only daughter of her mother, the favorite of
the one who bore her. The maidens saw her and called
her blessed. The queens and concubines praised
her. Again, I've not done a lot of
study on polygamy and how these harems operated, but I feel quite
certainly there was a great deal of jealousy among them as to
who would be considered the chief among them. Well, this woman
is so beautiful and appealing that everyone else in the harem
also said she's the best. Who is this that appears like
the dawn? This is the friends, the chorus. Fair is the moon,
bright is the sun, majestic as stars in procession. Now this
is exactly the same line as earlier when it says terrible as an army
with banners. And once again I figure our translators
were doing a little interpreting, figuring well he talks about
the moon, the sun, he must now be referring to the stars. But
all that the friends are doing here is saying this is the one
that, you know, this one that Solomon describes with these
three characteristics. Who is she? And let's skip back now, or skip
down to verse 13. Come back, come back, O Shulamite,
come back, come back, that we may gaze on you. Now, she is
evidently gone to be with her lover. She said, he's beautiful,
he's wonderful, you know, so she's going to be with him. And
the friends say, come back, come back, that we may gaze on you. And she says, why would you gaze
on the Shulamite as on the dance of Mahanaim? Now, there's a lot
of difference of opinions of what's meant by the dance of
Mahanaim. Whether that word Machanaim means
a city, there was a city named Machanaim, or whether it refers, as it could, to a
city. two companies of people, and
maybe then they were referring to a kind of dance where the
people were divided into two groups or whatever. But here's
the point, says, why would you gaze on me like you would gaze
on a performance or on a beautiful city? And why would she ask something
like that? Because beautiful as she is,
she is not what the people are supposed to be looking at. She in a sense is saying, don't
look at me, look at him. You want something to gaze on,
don't gaze on me. You know, we look wondrous and
beautiful, as Solomon describes Shulamith. We look that to the
Lord Jesus Christ. We don't look like that to the
world. We do the best we can, but they see us as we presently
are. And we should not be trying to
advocate for our gospel by saying, you know, well, at our church,
we blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, no. Don't gaze on us. Gaze on Him. Look at Him. There's where the glory is. Well,
I kind of got the whole chapter done, but I had to skip two verses,
but that's okay. You can read them in there. Actually,
I read when the commentator says verse 12, it is the most enigmatic
verse in the whole book and didn't even offer an explanation for
what it meant. So we'll pick up with chapter 7 next week,
Lord willing. Oh, and one thing. Today's the 11th. Two weeks from
today is Christmas Day. Christmas falls on Sunday. And
I remember as a child, I always thought that's kind of the worst
kind of thing that could happen. We'll not have Bible class on that
day, because usually there's stuff for the families to do
in the morning, and that way nobody will have to be in a rush.
But we're going to count who shows up at 10.30. We're giving you a little break
here, but just to give you a little heads up on that.