2. We're going to be looking at
verses 4 through 7, and this lesson is entitled, The
Proper Order. The Proper Order. Let's read
beginning in verse four. He has taken me to the banquet
hall, and his banner over me is love. Strengthen me with raisins,
refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love. His left arm
is under my head, and his right arm embraces me. Daughters of
Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the
field. Do not arouse or awaken love
until it so desires." Now, the key verse in this passage is
that last verse, which seems rather strange. This is the woman speaking, and
she makes this exhortation, do not arouse or waken love until
it so desires. And while it seems an unusual statement to
make. Why wouldn't we want to arouse
love? Why wouldn't we want to waken
love? Why would we hesitate at all? Yet, this same phrase is repeated
twice more in chapter 3, verse 5, we find it. Daughters
of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does
of the field, do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. And then over in Chapter 8, we find even more of it. More quoted because we also see
in verse three, his left arm is under my head and his right
arm embraces me. Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge
you, do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires. Now, we have made a point in our studies that this is poetry
and a kind of poetic drama. But even in poetry, in order
to understand something, you have to take note of its context.
And as I was preparing for this, it wasn't until really I kind
of understood or believe I understand what is meant in verse seven,
that I began to see the significance of verses four through six. But
let's begin here with verse four, He has taken me to the banquet
hall, and his banner over me is love. Now that translation,
banquet hall, that's one of those times that
they have translated a Hebrew phrase into an equivalent English
phrase. That is, that tells us what kind
of place it was, but strictly speaking, it says he has taken
me to the house of wine. That's the way it appears in
the Hebrew. And while it might be good to
note that that is a way of describing a banquet hall, once again, we
are confronted with this concept of wine. Remember how she said
earlier that his Outgoings of love toward her were better than
wine. And even though many churches,
much of the Christian religion, takes an ill view of wine, wine
in and of itself, there's nothing wrong with it. Like anything
else, it can be abused, but God has given it for man's proper
use. It says he created wine to make
glad the heart of man. We have plenty in this world
to make us sad, to burden us down. And wine is one of the
things that is in this world that we can use if we use it
appropriately, which means specifically that you use not too much of
it. And it can relax us some, ease
our minds, but this house of wine. Consequently, we are seeing
that she's saying, he's taken me to a place of gladness, a
place of joy, a place where, of course, it would be a banquet
hall. Wine wouldn't be the only thing
that was there, but that's how it was described. It was a place
where people would go as it were, to shield themselves. When you
have a gathering like that, you kind of just block out the rest
of the world. You're at a banquet, you're at
a festival of some kind. And that's one thing that's so
nice about them. Oftentimes we come home from
work or something and we just can't leave work at home, excuse
me, at work. We bring it right into the house
with us. It's our nature. And so these celebrations are
helpful to us as human beings, because when we go to them, normally
there's enough going on to push the world out. And in all reality,
the gatherings of the church are somewhat like that. There's
a reason that the Lord, well, he inspired the apostles to use
a word for the church that means assembly. Because when we come
together like this, we cloister ourselves from the world. And
if a worship service is conducted appropriately, and I don't mean
with the lavish productions that so many churches put on, we're
not trying to drive out the world by just being loud enough. We
come here and we open the scriptures and we drive out the cares of
the world by trying to fill our mind with what God has recorded
in his book. We sing hymns. And there is a,
you know, the Lord gave us music, that's another way. that another
thing that can be used that helps calm the mind and allow it to
focus on things if it's so distracted by many other things. Now, I've
spoken before, and I don't think that there's one style of music
that's more godly than another. Music is just music. That's all
it is. Now, what is said, what is sung,
the words, That makes a big difference. You don't sing what is useless. You don't sing what is wrong.
Remember Brother Mahan saying, I'm not going to sing error any
more than I would preach error. That's why there's a lot of songs
in our hymnal that we don't use. Because they at least imply things
that are not to be found in the scriptures. Nor do we sing hymns
that are merely sentimental and not based on objective truth. about the gospel. But it is by
these things, this wine of, we could say, the new covenant of
the gospel. Here is where our banqueting hall is. Here is our
house of wine. And she says, he has taken me
to the banqueting hall, and now notice this, his banner over
me is love. Now, I'm speculating a little
here, but I would imagine that whenever a king holds a banquet
that, you know, guests, specific guests are invited. And he may
honor particular guests by having a banner over top of them that
describes either who they are or what relationship they bear
to one another, you know, father, mother, whatever. But this was, she's saying, he
takes me into his banqueting hall, his house of wine, and
the banner that he puts over me is love. This is the one I love. I'm reminded that in one of the
letters written to the churches in Asia in the book of Revelation,
It speaks of those who are persecuting the church. And it says, and
they will be forced to acknowledge that I have loved you. And you
know, the world has contempt for believers. And if we proclaim God's love
for us, they scoff. They probably might not believe
in God at all, or they think we're just, you know, kind of
fairytale believers. And so we make our way through
this world as those that the world thinks are contemptible,
and also they think God thinks we're contemptible. But after they have done all
that they can do, and all of time is wrapped up and all are
before God, They will see us as He makes us, as we are made
like Christ. And in that process of the ultimate
blessing, to be made perfect, they will have to confess, He
loved them. He loved them. For all that I
thought I was doing for Him, He didn't love me. I was trying
to work for his love. He freely gave his love to these
people. And so the first thing here,
and I call this the proper order, the first thing is the revelation
of his love to her. strengthen me with raisins, refresh
me with apples, for I am faint with love." Now, the King James,
and this shows you why things should be updated from time to
time, it says, for I am sick of love. And, you know, in our
day and age, that's kind of, all right, I've had all the love
I can take. I'm just sick of it now. But that's not what this
means. This is good. I'm faint. In other words, When
he revealed his love for her to her, it overwhelmed her. The hymn says, I stand amazed
in the presence of Jesus, the Nazarene, and wonder how he could
love me, a sinner condemned unclean. We have so little understanding
of the greatness of the love of God toward us in Christ. Paul's prayer, and I believe
it was for the Ephesians, he says, I would that you knew the
height and breadth and width and depth of the love of God. What's he saying? You don't know
it yet. And yet what we already know
is overwhelming when we're given the opportunity and the grace
to actually think about it and grasp something of it. Think
about this, if you are in Christ Jesus, God loves you. Now I know this, those who are
the objects of my love, I will do whatever I can to make things
good for them. If I fail to do something, that
would advance their cause or advance or be to their benefit. If I fail to do it, it's because
I was unaware that it would be good or I didn't have the capacity
to do it. That's the way love is. But imagine
this, if you are in Christ, God loves you and there's nothing
beyond his wisdom and nothing beyond his power. And if you do good for those
whom you love, think what good must come upon those who are
loved by God. Now it's unfashionable to say
that God doesn't love everybody. It's become part of the given
in most of so-called Christianity. And our message really isn't,
you know, God doesn't love you. I mean, we don't go out telling
people that. But there's another thing I do not tell people in
general. I don't tell people in general that God loves them,
because I don't know. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. You know, that's what God said. And he says in another place
regarding those who work iniquity, he said, my soul hates. That's some pretty strong anti-love
statements. So believe it or not, the word
of the gospel is not God loves you. Now when you preach the
word of the gospel as it is revealed in the scriptures, it will fall
upon the ears of God's chosen and they will hear God say in
it, I love you. But I have no authority to tell
anyone that God loves them. But I can say this, if you are
a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, God loves you. He doesn't
love you because you believe Christ. You believe Christ because
he loves you. Remember the old hymn, and I
don't remember all the lines of it, but it begins with, O
love that will not let me go. Brother Rolf Barnard started
off a message one time with four or five statements similar to
this. But he said, if God loves everyone equally, What does the
love of God have to do with whether or not I'm saved? He went on to say things like,
if the blood of Christ was shed for everyone equally, what does
the blood of Christ have to do with whether or not I'm saved? If God's will is the salvation
of every individual in the world, what in the world does the will
of God have to do with whether or not I'm saved? People want
all these characteristics of God to be universal. They're
not. Once again, that's not the glory
of our message. But in this world that is, you
know, the devil is very subtle in the way he deceives men. And
you can go among people and they say, oh, you know, no, we don't
believe in salvation by works and I wouldn't ever think that,
you know, there's anything special about me. But they go on and
believe that God loves them because that's what the preacher said.
And that's what made them think that it was appropriate to, quote,
make a decision for Jesus. That's how they put it. But the
love of God, I do not find in any of the apostolic messages
when they were preaching to, you know, taking the gospel out,
I never find one of them talking about the love of God for the
people that were listening to them. Now when they wrote letters
to the churches, they wrote them with the presumption that it
was believers listening, and they would say, God loves you. Behold what manner of the love
the Father has toward us, we believers. Well, this amazing
love overwhelms us when we are made to hear it. And I mean not
just with the ears, but I mean it penetrates our hearts. And
I wish, certainly for me, that that message could penetrate
my heart more often and more deeply than it does. But, you know, and when I say
that, when I say my heart, I'm not talking about my spiritual
nature, just the whole of me on the inside. All my thoughts
and everything. But you see, it's just in my
nature to not think that I am loved. Now, other people, they
don't have that particular difficulty in their mind, and they more
easily grasp or accept the fact that they're loved by their families
and spouses and friends like that. That never was a part of
my makeup. And the same, shall we call it,
psychological aberration afflicts my understanding of the gospel
and God's love to me. Thankfully, my apprehension of
the love of God towards me is not what saves me. It's his love
towards me that worked my salvation. But all the blessedness when
we can enter into that and realize with a certainty, heart, mind,
and spirit, God loves me because Folks, if God loves you, everything's
fine. Really. And so she says, I'm faint with
love, but how is she then to be strengthened? Strengthen me
with raisins, refresh me with apples. Now, raisins were a treat. You know, they didn't have candy
bars and such like, you know. I tell my wife sometimes, I gotta
go to the store and do something, and really it's just an excuse
so I can stop off at Pump and Pack and get some cookies or
something, you know? But that wasn't common. The only way they got sweets
was with fruits, and they would preserve them by drying them.
And that's what raisins are. Take a grape and leave it out
long enough, you got a raisin. Of course, that means that these
little raisins, they're full of sugar, and so they're sweet,
and you know what our body does with sugar. That's where we get
our energy. So strengthen me with raisins,
and then she mentions me with apples. Once again, she's back
to that fruit, which has for a long time been the symbol of
love, love between a man and a woman. I think it was last
week I mentioned that. And yeah, in verse three she
says, like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my
lover among the young men. Well, why an apple tree? Well,
it's the old World War II song. Don't sit under the apple tree
with anybody else but me. And I guarantee you that that
soldier going off to war really didn't care if someone sat under
a literal apple tree with his girlfriend He would say, don't
get romantically involved with anybody else. And so she's saying
here, strengthen me with raisins, that which is full of energy,
and then strengthen me or refresh me with apples. What is it that
strengthens her when she is faint with love? More demonstrations
of love. When we are overwhelmed by the
sense of his love, it is actually more revelations
of it that give us strength. The word of the Lord is our strength
like those raisins. The word of the Lord, you know,
and Peter tells us that's the gospel. Does it not strengthen
us? That's why Sunday's my favorite
day. I come here and, you know, I'm
strengthened with the raisins of the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And then refresh me, refresh
me with apples. Now, once again, this is the
gospel, because what is the gospel if it does not involve God's
communication of love to his people? Behold what manner of
love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called
the children of God and that is what we are. God commends
his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died
for us. Now I stand up here and preach
the gospel and I tell you about Christ coming into the world,
who he is. and why he came, he came to save his people from
the sins. I tell you how he did it, by his suffering on the cross
of Christ, which involved more than the suffering of his body,
as Isaiah 53 says, that he poured out his soul unto death, and
his soul was made a sin offering. I tell you all of these things, and if you belong to God, They
will fall upon your ears and enter your heart as a testimony
from God of His love for you. And boy, we need those, don't
we? Let's face it. We go out and
we look at the world. Seems like there's not very much God out
there, is there? I said, that's what it looks like. God's everywhere
and He's in everything. You know, we've said that over
and over. I hear people say, well, you know, God wants this
man to be the president. Well, if he does, he will be
the president. Now that doesn't mean that God approves of what
the man's going to do. Every war that starts, starts
because God ordained it. Every war that ends, ends because
he ordained it. but the testimony of the love
of God towards its people, it's not seen out there, it's seen
and revealed in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then verse
six, his left arm is under my head and his right arm embraces
me. Now, this is obviously an episode of sex. There's no
other way to describe or no other kind of scene that can be described
this way. She is saying that she is now
involved in a sexual union with her lover. And then that brings us to verse
7. Now, I said verse 6. Let me apply
that to the church. That's the most intimate of unions
in human relationships, and it signifies the intimacy of the
union between Christ and his church. So much so that the Apostle
John says in his first letter, as he is, So are we in this world. We are one. Now, we may not experience the
fullness of this because we're, you know, Paul said, who's going
to deliver me from this body of death? You know, he, He was
a believing man, but he struggled with sin. And he said, the things
I want to do, I don't do that. And the things I don't want to
do, that's what I end up doing. Oh, wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from this body of death? And so every aspect of our relationship
with Christ, so far as our ability to experience and appreciate
it, it's hindered by the fact we're yet in the flesh. But understand
this, brethren, you are the Lord's, and He is yours. He holds you
tight, such as is expressed in verse 6. He is delighted in you,
and from your spirit you are delighted in Him. And now, she
says, daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles
and by the does of the field, do not arouse or awaken love
until it so desires. What's she talking about? She's
talking about the kind of love that she just described, sexual
love. She says, don't stir that up
until the proper time. Now, what will we compare that
to? Well, you know what the common dating habits are in our day
and age. Well, it's always been this way.
But women, when they have in mind to attract a husband, generally
speaking, will put on sexually attractive clothing. Now, it's
simply a fact that men are attracted to women regardless of what clothing
they're wearing. And kind of proof of this, you
know, you go over in those Middle Eastern countries and the women
are just about completely covered up. Somehow or another, they
still fall in love and they're still attracted, you know. But
we also know that the more exposure there is and the way a woman
carries herself, if she goes out there using her sexuality
first, if she tries to gain herself a husband by becoming an object
of sexual attraction to him and maybe sexual fulfillment, if
she goes that way first, she's probably not going to get what
she wants. And that's one reason there's
so much divorce, because they've got this out of order. I mentioned last week I wish
I could, in one of the lessons, I wish I could talk to adolescent
girls without sounding creepy so that they would understand
the effect that they can have on guys without putting themselves
out there like a prostitute does to attract business. And if they'll do it that way,
they don't have to hide the fact that they're female, They don't
have to look dumpy, but then they don't have to wear things
that are so revealing that virtually nothing's left to the imagination. In fact, as Solomon says later
to the Shulamite, with one look of your eye, you ravished me. And so what is she saying here? Don't go out and try to lure
in a man. with this kind of love. The sexual
part is the end game, not the beginning. It's the consummation
of true love. Love is expressed in many ways.
Among human beings, the sexual expression of it is the end,
the last part of it that should be expressed. Before that, before
a woman ever offers herself to a man, she must first hear from
him of his love. She should not present herself
as an object of his sexual passions. until he has declared he loves
her. He took me into his house of
wine and his banner over me was love. And then don't, this would be,
you know, now this is just taking this on the face of it. A woman
should not give herself physically to a man until his love has been
communicated to her strongly enough she's swept away by it.
Why? If love is like that, it's going
to last. Love can wait. Passion doesn't. Love does. Now, then you can
get to verse 6, the act of marriage. Now, how does that apply to people
with regard to the gospel? There are a lot of people who
act like prostitutes. or just, you know, what we might
call loose women, trying to gain the love of God. They dress themselves
up in their gaudy righteousness, which the Bible calls filthy
rags. They parade before God about how good they are. And
what they're doing is trying to attract Him with something
that they think will appeal to Him and kind of force Him to
love them. They're going about it the wrong
way. We don't choose God. God chooses
us. Now, I'm not saying that a person
should not seek the Lord. He should seek the Lord with
all his heart. But you seek him in the way that he says to seek
him, and we always seek him by grace and mercy. There's never
anything about ourselves which we present to him, lay before
him and say, hey, wouldn't you like to have this? Because if
we do, he'll say, no, not interested. Not interested. And even as believers,
we have that still running within our flesh, that if we feel alienated
from God by our sin, we try to get back in his favor, so to
speak, or, you know, remove that alienated feeling by acts of
our own goodness. Or, okay, I'm going to start
reading my Bible every day. No, no. Do you want union with
Christ first? ascertain from his gospel that
his love rests upon you. Just be who you are. Just be who you are. You listen to gospel preaching,
you seek the Lord in your heart, and his preaching or the preaching
of his gospel will be a message from him to you, not from me,
but from him to you of his love in your heart. And then this
love can be aroused and awakened. Because you see, when his love
is demonstrated to us, we find that
he already sees us as perfect. He already sees us as beautiful
because by the work of Jesus Christ, we have been made beautiful
in His sight. We didn't have to do anything.
He loved us before we thought about Him. He loved us before
we were interested in His love. But at the appointed time, the
gospel fell on our ears and penetrated our heart by the power of the
Holy Spirit. And it was made known to us that God was saying
to us, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore,
have I drawn you with cords of loving kindness. And we're overwhelmed. And we enter in then to that
union with Christ. which is available only to those
who know His love." So do not arouse or awaken love. Don't
try to stir up God's affections for you. You can't do it. Instead, look for testimonies
of His love to you. And the way you find those testimonies
is through the hearing of the gospel. All right, you are dismissed.