Chapter 2. Now, last week, actually the last
couple of weeks, we've been in Chapter 2. the woman, which some commentators
refer to her as Shulamith. It looks like Shulamith, M-I-T-H
on the end, but it's pronounced like a long E, Shulamith. And
she speaks of Solomon, of course, in glorious terms. She ends in verse 7 with saying,
do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. And her
point there was that Unlike much of what I have seen
in modern-day so-called evangelism, they try to arouse an affection for Christ. indicate, well, they normally
start out with something like God loves you, but in the process
there in verses three through seven, it is said here in verse four,
he's taken me to the banquet hall and his banner over me is
love. Now that's Christ proactively
declaring his love to his people. And he does this through the
preaching of the gospel, not through a preacher saying God
loves you. because nowhere are we commanded to tell anyone that.
But such is the nature of the gospel that when it's preached
and it falls upon the ears of one of God's elect, it is a message
of love from God to them. And then in verse five, she speaks
of being faint with love. That is, his love declared for
her made her head over heels in love with him, She was overwhelmed
by that. And then verse six is a description
of using a sexual encounter to illustrate. It says, his left
arm is under my head and his right arm embraces me. And so
she's saying, don't awaken that kind of love. Don't try to force
an intimacy between people and Christ until simply by the gospel,
by the simple preaching of the gospel, someone has been aware,
made aware of God's love toward them, displayed in Christ, and
they have become overwhelmed with a sense of his love. And
it's only under those circumstances in which one enters into an intimate
union with Christ. And then versus 8 through 13, Shulamith continues
speaking and she talks about him pursuing her with the same
kind of passion that a wild animal pursues a mate. And then she
begins to quote Solomon in verse 10. Arise, my darling, my beautiful
one, and come with me. And he speaks in terms of springtime. He says, the winter is past,
spring has come. And there's many situations which
how this could be applied to our lives. The winter of our
spiritual deadness before we knew Christ at all. Christ comes
and said, it's over. Now's the time of life. He gives
us spiritual life. And he says, come away with me.
There's the times of trial and trouble, and the Lord puts us
into these times of trial and trouble to strengthen and purify
our faith, and probably purify is the better word because the
only weakness in faith is when faith is divided between Christ
and one or more things. Its strength lies in its purity.
But he brings us into trials, showing us our weakness. We tend to think, you know, I've
arrived, I've grown, I've become stronger, this, that, or the
other. And he says, really now? And so he takes down the hedge
a little bit and lets some trouble in, trouble he's been keeping
out. And he says, well, how do you handle this? And we go through
these times. It could be outward circumstances.
It could be inner turmoil, whatever. God knows how to deal with each
of his people. But at the end of that, he says, OK, now the
winter's over. Spring has come. I've taught you the lesson you
needed to learn. Come away with me. And this could also be in
calls to worship. Whenever we gather for worship
like this, we are answering a call from the Lord So the winter's
over, that's six days you got to go out there and scratch your
living out of the world. You've got to deal with people
and societies that are opposed to me, and that's the tough times.
But now it's spring, it's time for the good stuff. It's time
to come away with me and just be with me. The church gathers
as one body and privately and intimately worships
her Lord. And then there's his call to
us when we die. This life we presently live can
be compared to winter. It's difficult. Now, I'm glad
that we've had a few hints that spring might eventually get here.
But natural spring seems to have a mind of its own. And its mind
needs some help. Like what was yesterday, we were
up in the 70s, I think. I don't think we're going to
get back to the 70s this week. Today, the high is 50. But at
least we realized that the time of winter is passing. You can
hear some birds now and you see some buds coming out. Our lilacs
have got little buds on them. It won't be long, we'll see things
like, I call them Easter lilies, whatever, that they come up. These are all signs of life. But winter is like death, and
so the Lord comes to us at the time of our death, and we should
not look at it as something to resist. We should look at it
as him saying, okay, you're all done now with the hard part,
the difficulty. Now, just come away with me.
When he returns and calls his own to himself, And so he pursues
his people with a passion that cannot be resisted. He draws
from them their love for him, and he calls them to himself. Now, people speak of the call
of God. Well, the call of God is always to Christ. Brother
Tim James and I were talking once on the subject of so-called
Christian counseling came up, and he says his counsel to anyone
is seek the Lord. People, you know, they got family
problems, marriage problems, seek the Lord. They got money
problems, seek the Lord. Why? Well, because that's what
the scriptures tell us to do. to seek Him, to follow after
Him. Everything involved in the life
of a believer should come under the category or should be able
to be put under the category of seeking Him, following the
sound of His voice. Okay, now, verse 14. She has
quoted Solomon and I thought I had my notes, and
I'm pretty sure I do. I've just got to find out where
they are. I know I printed them. Well, I don't see them, but I
think I can remember what I had. Solomon speaking for himself. He says, my dove in the clefts
of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountains, show me your
face. Let me hear your voice for your
voice is sweet and your face is lovely. Now, he calls her
a dove. And he likens his beloved one
to a dove, uses that particular bird as opposed to others because
of its gentleness. We have some mourning doves in
our backyard. They make an appearance every
year when it's time for them to grow their family. And I'll be honest, I can't remember
if they showed up last year. It could be something happened
to them over the winter. I don't remember. But I know for years
and years. had those mourning doves around. And you don't ever
see them being aggressive. They're a gentle kind of bird.
I suppose they would be a little aggressive if they thought you
were a danger to the nest. But apart from that, they are
a gentle bird. Not only this, they have such
a, all doves, have this cooing sound that they make. And it's
a pleasant sound to hear. It's a relaxing sound to hear. Not like a duck quacking away
or a, we used to get a lot of, I was going to call them starlings,
but that's not what they, grackles. We used to get a lot of grackles.
I'm glad we don't anymore. They are not a particularly attractive
bird and it's just, it's a grating noise they make. Crows. Ravens, all of them, you know,
just squawking, quacking, cawing, all of this, compared to the
dove, with that soft, gentle sound they make. Now that's how
the Lord sees his people. They are a delight to him. He
says, he calls her a dove, and then says, in the clefts of the
rock. Now turn back to Exodus. Chapter
33. I couldn't help but be drawn
to this particular scripture when I read that description,
dove in the cleft of the rock. Moses has met with the Lord up
on the mountain. And he makes three requests,
and the third request is in verse 18 of Exodus 33. Then Moses said,
now show me your glory. And the Lord said, I will cause
all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my
name, Jehovah, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
But he said, you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and
live. Then the Lord said, there is
a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory
passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover
you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove
my hand and you will see my back, but my face must not be seen."
So he talks about, Solomon says, my dove in the clefts of the
rock. And we're taken back there to
when Moses said to God, show me your glory. And God says,
I'll cause my goodness to pass in front of you. You can't see my face. No one
can see me and live. That is, no one can behold my
bare, unfiltered glory and live. Now, in the morning message,
we're going to be speaking about the fear of the Lord. And there's
kind of an example of why we are to fear the Lord. The Lord,
even as he appears in our creation, is so wondrous and so glorious,
nobody can even look at him and live. Yet, God would not leave
his people without a testimony of his glory, and so he told
Moses, I will put you in the cleft of
the rock, a split in the rock, a craggy place, And he said,
and then I'll cover that with my hand while I pass by. And
that way, Moses would be protected from that full blaze of his glory. And
he says, you may see my back. Some say that that could be rendered. You can see what's left, the
afterglow, if you will, after I've gone. Because the glory,
I mean the whole place shone with the glory of God. But that cleft of the rock is
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, the hymn Rock of Ages that we
sing is about that story. Rock of Ages cleft for me, let
me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from
your wounded side which flowed be of sin the double cure. cleanse me from its guilt and
power." And the writer there, Augustus Toplady, he wrote that
not only to speak of the power of Christ to save, to justify,
to free from condemnation, but the same blood which justifies,
sanctifies. And that's why he said, when
I stand before The throne, I'm getting two hymns
mixed up here in just a second, but Rock of Ages does contain
this. But when I draw this fleeting
breath, when my eyes shall close in death, when I fly to worlds
unknown, see thee on my judgment throne. Rock of Ages cleft for
me, let me hide myself in thee. The original title of that hymn
was the first and last cry of the holiest sinner of all. He
actually wrote that in response to the doctrine of the Wesley
brothers that says we just keep getting better and better and
better all along, you know, until hopefully we become suitable
for heaven. He said, the very holiest sinner of all, here is
his first and last cry, rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me
hide myself in thee. There are lots of birds out there,
religious birds, and they're squawking and quacking and making
a big bunch of racket. but they aren't in the cleft
of the rock. They aren't hiding. And they aren't hiding because
they don't believe in a God one needs to hide from. And so she is this dove, but not just
any dove. She's hiding in the cleft of
the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside. And once
again, we're reminded that our Lord was crucified on Mount Calvary. Now, of course, Jerusalem is
on top of a mountain, and this was just a little knoll in that
area. And the Romans would crucify
people there so that it'd be quite the spectacle. People could
see it. But nonetheless, there on a mountain is where the spiritual
cleft of the rock was. And that's where God's people
are to be found. He says, where can you find the
church of God? In the cleft of the rock. That's
where they'll always be. He says, show me your face, let
me hear your voice. For your voice is sweet and your
face is lovely. Now, the face is representative of
the whole person. People who are in the scriptures,
you hear about seek God's face. The idea is the whole person
is revealed in the face. Now, in those days, women, for
modesty's sake, wore a veil. Now, I don't know in Jewish culture
how thick the veil was, but that was common back then, and particularly
in the Mideast, and in non-Jewish countries, in the Mideast, it
still goes on. I mean, you know, you don't see
a woman's face. They think it would be immodest
to show the face. And in those societies, once
a woman has reached maturity in the age when they're required
to wear a veil, probably the only one who will ever see her
face would be maybe other women. Maybe they're allowed to take
it off in the presence when it's just other women. But the only other
man to see her face would be her husband. And so, show me your face brings
two things together. First of all, reveal yourself
to me. Make yourself known to me. And secondly, within this culture,
he's saying remove that veil. This face, our face that we show
to the Lord Jesus is a face we don't show to anyone else. Now,
we might hesitate to be completely open with the Lord Jesus Christ
because we know what we are by nature and by practice. We know
the things we have done. And we fear that if we take the
veil off, he's going to see this ugly face and he is going to
be repulsed by it we will lose his love. And so we hide. When sin lays upon our conscience,
we try to hide ourselves from God. We go to prayer and we act
like there's nothing lying upon our conscience. We don't remove
that veil we put up to preserve our so-called dignity. But he says, show me your face.
The Lord tells us to come before him in the full revelation of
what we are. And then he says, and let me
hear your voice. We love to hear from the Lord
Jesus Christ, don't we? So much so that that's part of
our prayer every Sunday. Lord, speak to us. We want to
hear from you. If we don't hear from the Lord,
you know, we've kind of wasted our time, haven't we? And, you
know, I believe it was Spurgeon at one time had made the remark,
you know, that if my voice is the only voice you hear, you
are none the better for it. Listen very carefully for the
voice of God. In the next service, there was
a little boy sitting in the pew, and he was like this. And his
mother said, what are you doing? He said, well, the pastor said
if his voice was the only voice I heard, it wouldn't do me any
good. I need to listen for God. I want to make sure I'm not missing.
Oh, we want to hear from God. What would life be like if we
didn't hear from him? The spiritual message of the
gospel and his continual reassurances to us. of his love toward us. Well, here's the wonderful thing,
he wants to hear from us. You know, sometimes we might
get the idea that when we pray, we're bothering him. That somehow or another, you
know, it's a, well, I guess we get that way, because when you
got little kids in your house, you know, little kids, they're
not the least bit worried about going to their parish with requests,
and they'll make some of the wildest requests. And, you know,
we send them away sometimes because they are bothering us. We can't
do it. Maybe they've asked us for the
same thing who knows how many times. But God's not that way. When his people come to him,
he is glad to hear from them. Christ delights to hear the voice
of his church. He loves to hear the voice of
their praise. He loves to hear the voice of
their singing. Now, I think that when we sing, whether it's in
a congregation or somebody's doing a special, we ought to
do the best we can at it. But I guarantee you, no human
being has ever impressed God with the talent that he can display
in the use of his vocals. I mean, if a person's got what
we would consider a good voice, well, the only reason he's got
it is because God gave it to him. And I know some people won't sing
at all because they think, you know, I can't carry a tune in
a bucket with a lid on it. You know, the Lord is not listening
to the music of your mouth. He's listening to the music of
your heart. Sing. And if it bothers your neighbor,
he'll just have to deal with it. He loves to hear us sing. He
loves to hear us pray. Say, oh, but my prayers are just
nothing to him. He says, let me hear your voice.
And then he goes on and says, for your voice is sweet. Remember
what I said about doves. The sound of their voice is pleasant.
And to the Lord Jesus Christ, the voice of his church is pleasant. And he says, your face is lovely. Now, you and I, when we look
at our spiritual faces, we don't see any beauty there, do we?
We see our sin. We see our fleshliness. We see our lack of devotion.
We see everything about us that's wrong. The Lord sees none of
that. He bore our ugliness, we might
say, on the tree. He put it away. He has made us
beautiful in His sight. And even if we are fresh out
of some transgression, our conscience is making us feel awful about
what we've done and we feel like how can I go before the Lord
having done this still go before the Lord let him see your face
let him hear your voice he will be delighted he'll count you
beautiful he will count your voice to be a delight and then
the Lord in the mouth of Solomon says, catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that
are in bloom. Now this word translated foxes,
we can't be sure that it means the bushy-tailed little quadruped
that we think of as a fox. The word actually means a burrower. I don't know if foxes, I don't
know enough about them to know whether they dig down and, you
know, make a den underground. Maybe they do. But there's lots
of animals that do that. Another animal that does that
is the jackal. But the word actually means to
burrow. A word closely related to it
means hollow. And when it speaks of being in
the hollow of his hand. that word is related to this
word here as one who burrows. And so whatever kind of animal
it is, we know this about them, they burrow, they dig things
up. So of course, you know, that could be dogs for that matter,
they do that, and jackals, and maybe foxes. But something else
we know about these animals that are called foxes is that they
feed on carrion. Because in another scripture,
the Lord is condemning a people and he says, I will make your
bodies food for the foxes. Now, once again, I don't know
if foxes eat carrion, dead, you know, dead, rotting things. I
know the dogs do. You know, I get a kick out of
those fancy dog shows, you know, and they're all walking around
prissy and everything, you know. And they've got these special
diets and, you know, they'll even, you know, all this fresh
meat and stuff. And there's nothing a dog loves more than some rotten
old animal. You know, you just wish you could
throw a dead rabbit, you know, one that's three or four days
in the sun and toss it out in the middle of the ring and see
how those dogs react to that. But that's the kind of animal
they are. And whatever animal's being referred
to here, That's the kind of animal it is. And they would go into
these vineyards and they would dig. Now, they weren't eating
the vines or the grapes. That's not how they destroyed
it. They destroyed the vineyard by digging it all up. Now, who
are these foxes? Well, it would be anything or
anyone that disturbs the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
tries to tear it up. The first thing to consider would
be what's commonly referred to as heretics. In Ezekiel, this
same word is used to describe the false prophets of that day. They were foxes. Our Lord Jesus
Christ referred to Herod as a fox. Now these are people who are
among the people of God and they come in there and they introduce
false teaching and confuse the people of God. A divisive person. They are like a fox. They are
like one of these diggers. They go into the church and they
just dig up and destroy things. Another that could be referred
to is those who associate with the church and like to take on
the slogans of the church But their lives are so ungodly that
even the world is offended by their activity. And this brings
disgrace upon the Lord and upon his church. And so Solomon is saying to the
woman, catch these foxes. Now, some say, well, this is
addressed to preachers. And indeed, the business of pastoring
a church is more than just preaching. It involves a defense. of the
church, which calls upon him to deal with people within the
church who begin to cause trouble and to wreak havoc among the
people of God. Now, for the most part, the simple
preaching of the gospel handles that, because goats can only
handle gospel preaching so long, but some goats are very stubborn. Some foxes, very stubborn. And
they'll put up with all of that, yet they are going behind the
back of the leadership, trying to undermine the leadership.
I had some men come to my house one time when I lived back in
Ashland, and they were upset with Brother Mahan and thought
he didn't preach the law enough. And they were really getting
on this thing about the Sabbath. And I said, well, the Sabbath
day is fulfilled in Christ. And I remember they said, well,
you know, Spurgeon believed in keeping the Sabbath day. And
I responded, just which scripture was that that Spurgeon wrote? It doesn't matter who believes
these things. I mean, I have high regard for Brother Spurgeon,
but I don't agree with him about the Sabbath day and things like
that. But they were actually going from house to house stirring
up trouble. And eventually, Pastor Mahan
had to deal with it and tell them if they didn't like the
way things were here, there's the door. And this is a work that's kind
of dangerous because if you go, even if you go in love, I mean,
you're not going there to blast fire at them or anything, just
to show them their fault, you know, and say, you know, you
need to stop that I hear you've been teaching the people this,
that's not true, let me show you in the scriptures, whatever,
you do that. Unless they are a child of God and God restores
them, if they're one of these foxes, they will use that to
further create trouble. And they'll tell lies about the
preacher. But it's a work that must be
done. The sheep must be protected from the Well, the Lord called
them wolves here at the foxes that destroy the vineyard. But
even though we might think of it as addressed to the leadership
of the church, it's also for all of us. If someone comes to you bringing
some wild idea, something they think they found in the scripture,
or some fault they believe, some deficiency in the ministry that's
being conducted at the church. What you need to do is say, now
wait a minute, the Bible says, do not accept an accusation against
an elder except in the mouth of two or three witnesses. Do
you have anybody else that will attest to what you're telling
me? No. Okay, then we're done. And if
they do say, okay, then you've come to the wrong person. I believe
the pastor's home now. Let's get in our car and go over
and talk to him about it. Most of the time you will shut
them down right there because they do not want to go to the
one they're accusing. Or if they bring up any kind
of gossip about anybody else in the congregation, just stop
it. Say, listen, I'm not interested.
Now, if they are truly involved in something ungodly, then let's
pray for them. But let's not gossip and accuse. If they bring false doctrine,
say, that's not so. All of us, and then this also
applies to ourselves, the sinful passions, the wicked thinking,
the tendency towards legalism that's in every one of us. We
must realize that, is to be the foxes that ruin the vineyard.
And he says, the little foxes. And that's an instruction to
us. Take care of these things while they're still small. I've
seen and heard from our brothers sometimes that they had a real
blow up at their church. And they'll say, I let it go
on too long. I should have dealt with that
sooner. There are things which, at the first time they appear,
they need to be dealt with. All right, you are dismissed.