the people would be loving and
friendly. But that's not always the case. It should be, but it's
not always the case. What is the one thing that is
characteristic of every true, bona fide church of the Lord
Jesus? They all agree on Christ. And so I've told people, I say,
don't go looking for a good church. There aren't any. We're all a
mess. I remember listening to a preacher,
and this was 30 or more years ago, but he made this comment. He said, people say, we need
to get back to the early church and be like the early church.
And he said, which one would you like? Corinth with its divisions,
immorality? How about Ephesus who'd forsaken
her first love? Laodicea? with its lukewarm,
which one of them do you want to be? The church is made up
of faulty people. In the flesh, they are like everybody
else in the world. But in the spirit, they are the
same. And so when, I've told them,
don't go looking for a good church, look for Christ. Because if you
find Christ, you have found his church. As Brother Donnie Bell
liked to say, he said, if you find the head, you can be pretty
sure the body's not far behind. And that's true. And so, you
know, you can look at these other things, but attend. Listen. See what the message
of the church is, not just the individual doctrines, what's
their message? Is it Christ? Is he being set forth? Is he
the one that eyes are directed to? So many churches direct people's
attention to themselves. Their churches are primarily
about how to live, how to be successful, how to raise your
kids. They'll mention Jesus once in a while, but that's not the
focus. Find Christ and you'll have found
the church, for they are gathered around him. But back to this,
the Shulamite represents the church as a single body. The chorus represents the church,
certainly as we experience it and as it will be in heaven,
a single group made up. of many individuals who all speak
with the same voice regarding Christ. Now, this part of the
verse that we're looking at, the last half of verse 4, we
know that this is spoken by the friends or the chorus because
it changes to plural. We rejoice and delight in you. We will praise your love more
than wine. Now, in the previous lesson that
we had last week, and as I study for this, sometimes I see things
that I didn't see the week before. But interestingly enough, you
look back at verse four, take me away with you, let us hurry. Do you see that? A change from
singular to plural. Now, it's not a particularly
good translation right there, at least it's not a very strict
one. Strictly it says, draw me, we will follow you. Now, whether it changes to the plural
for other reasons, I can't be sure. But it seems to me, quite
possibly, is what has happened here. The Shulamite says, draw
me, draw me. That's the church speaking as
that singular entity. Draw me. And then all the individuals
say, we will follow you. Because you see the church as
a singular entity. follows Christ, but it does so
because every individual follows Christ. We will follow after
you. The church says it, and every
individual in the church says that. Now, we may not do a particularly
good job of it. If you look at the church, as
I pointed out, every church has got problems in it. sometimes are acting, at least
outwardly, acting like we should, and at other times, most of the
time, we're not. Nonetheless, we do follow Christ. If a man doesn't follow Christ,
if a woman doesn't follow Christ, then there's no reason to believe
they belong to Christ. This word, draw, And this is
true both in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and in the Greek
of the New Testament, which speaks of drawing. It's not just talking
about wooing. The idea is like draft horses
that draw on a plow. This is, you know, the Lord Jesus
said, no man can come to me except my father, which sent me, draw
him. And it's not just an influence. It is a laying hold of and dragging,
as it were. Why? We're that stubborn. I mean, did you ever have to
grab your kid and make him go where you told him to go? I mean, you may have said, you
know, go here. No. You explain to them why they
need to go there. You do all this, but they're
rebels, and eventually, you grab them. My dad used to grab me
by the ear, and believe me, somebody grabs you by the ear and starts
to pull you in a direction, you're going that direction. I'm surprised
my ear's attached, because it's a painful experience. The Lord God is sovereign, even over our
wills. And when he draws us, he's not
just saying, please come. In his grace, he grabs us by
the scruff of the neck and says, you're coming. You're coming. When he does so, we become willing,
but we weren't willing until he did. And so, draw me, the church is
drawn with sovereign grace, and yet each individual follows willingly. So we could look at the first
part of this verse and saying, the Shulamite, draw me. The chorus
says, we will follow after you. And then the Shulamite again,
the king has brought me into his bedchamber. That's the singular
again. Then we go right back to the
plural. We rejoice and delight in you. Now, Here in the latter half of the
verse, the chorus speaks again with the many voices of Christ's
church, each expressing his, her overwhelming delight in Christ
and in his love for them. Now, the image that comes to
my mind is the image drawn for us, I believe it's in Revelation
5, it's in 4 or 5, but there were, it speaks of all the the
24 elders and other creatures and this, and then says, and
thousands and thousands and 10,000 times 10,000. And all of them
are saying the same thing. The same thing. It's the mighty
chorus of heaven, and here it is again. We rejoice and delight
in you. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.
Worthy art thou, for thou hast redeemed us by thy blood out
of every kindred, tribe, tongue, and nation, and made us priests
unto our God." The heart of every believer speaks
the same thing. Praise for Christ. The heart of every believer has
the same attitude for Christ. are enraptured by him." Now the first word here, it says,
rejoice and delight in you. Now this reminds me of Psalm
118.24. You see the King James Version
here, at this point it says, we rejoice and are glad, or we
are glad and rejoice. But in Psalm 118, 24, we read,
this is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and
be glad in it. It's the same two words, though
the order is reversed. Same two Hebrew words. Now, what
he's speaking of there when he says this is the day that the
Lord has made, it was likely a reference either to the Sabbath
day or even the beginning of a year of Jubilee. He wasn't
saying, you know, every day we should get up and say, this is
the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in
it. No, that's a good idea. Every day of our lives, it's
a day that the Lord has determined for us and planned out for us. Everything that happens in that
day is going to be in some way or another good for us. So yeah,
be glad and rejoice. But that's not the point the
psalmist is making. Now we know that all of those
Sabbaths of rest in the old covenant economy were pictures of Christ
who is our rest. Why is Christ our rest? Because he got all the work done. Now, I'm in the middle of a project
at home, which is pretty much the way it is all the time. But
it gets towards the end of the day, I quit. But I'm not really
resting. Why? Job's not done. Next morning,
I'm going to get up and do it again, go right back at it. And
under the old covenant, they had the weekly Sabbath. And yes,
they were not to engage in any labor, but you know something?
They never really could enter into rest. Why? Because Monday
morning they had to get up and start again. You'll notice that
Sabbath day rest imposed upon the Jews was likened unto the
seventh day rest of God on creation. But here's the thing, when God
rested on the seventh day, He didn't start creating again on
the first day of the second week. He entered his rest of creating.
He's been, you know, so far as creating things, he's been resting
ever since because the job is done. Now, when it comes to our
salvation, when it comes to manufacturing a righteousness, the work is
done. Should we live righteously? Of
course. Are we going to? No. We don't have that capacity. But that need not worry us in
terms of eternity. For the job of bringing in, and
this is from the prophet Daniel, bringing in an everlasting righteousness,
Messiah has already done that. He, Paul says, He is our righteousness. God has made Him to be our righteousness. And therefore, while I certainly
want to try to do what is right, I am at rest so far as trying
to earn anything from God by my works. And so when it speaks of this
day that the Lord has made in which we will rejoice and be
glad, it is speaking of Christ and the rest we have in him. It says he who believes has entered
his rest. We enter Christ's rest. He did the work. He's now seated
at the right hand of God. Why? The work's done. All right. The first word here now, we will
rejoice and delight in you, describes a state of ecstatic joy. It emphasizes
the effect that such joy has on a person. The word actually
implies trembling. Have you ever seen a child Christmas
morning, you know, he comes downstairs or however it is, he enters the
room. And at least it was generally speaking, when I was a kid, come
Christmas, there would always be one big gift and then a bunch
of smaller ones. That is, you know, something
that we really wanted that was meant to kind of wow us. And
usually that one wasn't, I mean, who's going to wrap up a bicycle,
you know? But when you see kids and they
see that gift, or even if it's wrapped, once they open it up
and find out what it is, they can get so happy they start to
tremble. And their legs, you know, they'll run in place and
their arms go like this. And they squeal with joy. So
that's what this is talking about. A joy that cannot be contained. Brethren, we have such joy in
Christ. When by the Spirit of God we
are enabled to see Him, who He is and what He has done for us,
the joy it produces in our heart, we can hardly contain it. Now, I kind of prefer that worship
services remain orderly. Paul said, let's not have confusion,
you know. You know, some churches, there's
so much noise going on, that is with people standing up and
shouting and all that, you know, you can hardly tell what's going
on. But I full well understand why anybody would be tempted
to jump up and shout. If the Lord opened your eyes
to see the truth, and brethren, we need our eyes opened again
and again, because this world, I mean, we get blurry eyes anyway,
and we don't see as clearly. We come in, and often we come
to church and we're down, you know, I mean, our sins have bowed
us down, the troubles of life has bowed us down, and then God
shows us Christ again. And we're filled, as Paul said,
with an inexpressible joy. Christ himself, and that's what
it says, we'll rejoice and delight in you. Now, it's in reference
to his love. In English poetry, there's a
repetition of sounds. In Hebrew poetry, there's more
often a repetition in the themes and concepts. So when it says,
we rejoice and delight in you, we will praise your love more
than wine, it's saying much the same thing two different ways. Nonetheless, let us notice this.
It first says, we rejoice and delight in you. You know, there are people who
like the blessings or what they think are the blessings of the
gospel, and yet they really don't have any heart for Christ himself.
In fact, in the preaching that I was raised in, and they would
never admit that this is what their attitude is, but the way
they preach things, this is how it came to be. Heaven's the goal. Escaping hell, gaining heaven.
That's the good thing, but if you want heaven, you're gonna
have to take Christ. Right? Christ is the price. Accepting
Him is the price. Brethren, Christ is the blessing. He's the good thing. Take Christ
out of heaven, you don't have a heaven. In fact, in Revelation
4, there is a revelation of God, a symbolic representation of
God. And it says he held a scroll
in his hand, written on both sides. And it says, there was none found
worthy to take the scroll from his hands and to open it. Meaning
there was none who was worthy And that scroll represents God's
complete plan in the salvation of His people. There was nobody
who had authority to take that scroll and make it happen. And
it says, John wept. Why does someone weep when they're
in heaven? Christ had not yet entered. But then, and if we wanted to
put a timeline on the book of Revelation, that is, it's a very
symbolic book, but if we wanted to assign any historical events
to what's going on up in heaven, it says one of the elders, I
believe it was, came to John and says, don't weep, for the
lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed, and he is worthy to
take the scroll. and open the seals, loose the
seals. And John says, I turned and I
saw as it were a lamb having been slain. What's he talking
about? Our Lord Jesus Christ is a lamb
of God slain to take away the sin of God's people from all
over the world. And John enters heaven and Christ
has not yet ascended to the throne. He's not even yet, maybe, I know
historically it already happened, but within the flow of the story
of Revelation, it hadn't happened. Christ maybe, in a sense, hasn't
even appeared as the sacrifice. And that's why he's called the
Lion of the tribe of Judah. But when John looks at him, he said,
I saw a lamb having been slain. Hebrews said, he offered himself
without spot to God. And once the sacrifice appeared,
Once this prevailing sacrifice appears in heaven, shouts of
joy. Heaven without Christ is no heaven
at all. These people here, the chorus,
they rejoiced and they delighted in Christ. And this word translated
delight here in the New International Version is a reference to the
outward expressions of joy. You could liken it to if you're
at a football game, and you're watching, maybe it's the championship,
and the outcome isn't sure, both sides, the score is really close. Maybe it looks like your team
is behind, and imagine this, as the disciples watched the
Lord being crucified, sure looked like their team was behind, right?
The one in which they hoped, it doesn't look like it's going
to work. But in the last play, someone
gets that football across the line, and the score changes,
and the buzzer sounds, the game's over, and we've won. What do
they do in the stands? That is the fans of the team
that just made the touchdown. They jump up, and they shout. They express their joy over the
victory. That's what's being spoken of
here. That kind of joy. There are some who believe that
it glorifies God most if when we gather and speak about him
and hear about him, we carry on ourselves a very sad and downtrodden
countenance. These are serious things, and
I'm such a wicked person. Yep, it's serious things, and
I'm a wicked person. But that's not the end of the
story. We don't have time to turn to
it to read. But when you get a chance, you read Nehemiah chapter
8, verses 8 through 12. And they read the law to the
Jews that had returned to rebuild the city and the temple. They
read the law. And when they heard those things written in the law,
they were full of sorrow. And it says the Levites went
out among them. to instruct them properly. And
here was their message, don't grieve. Once they explained what all
this stuff meant, yes, they heard the curses for not obeying the
law. What they were not seeing was
that in all those sacrifices and whatnot, there was the forgiveness. Their sins were national sins
against their God, and the sacrifices concern those national sins.
Spiritually, we have heard about our rebellion against God, and
if that's all we heard, yes, we should go around with our
jaw on the ground. But have we not heard that joyful
sound, that wonderful news, that wicked though we are, Jesus Christ
hath borne our sins in his body on the tree, and they are gone. There in Nehemiah, as they're
telling them, don't grieve, the last line was this, the joy of
the Lord shall be your strength. What's the joy of the Lord? That
joy that arises within us in the confident knowledge of sins
forgiven, of wrath satisfied. Goes on to say, we'll praise
your love more than wine, That word praise means to remember,
and praise is one way we remember things, or call to mind, bring
to mind, and his love is worthy of being
brought to mind. Now, the last line of verse four
says, how right they are to adore you, our translation in IV, puts
this in the mouth of, the Shulamite, there's no way to know for sure.
Because there's no way to know, you know, by plural and singular,
you can't tell who's talking. My personal opinion is that it
is in the mouth of the chorus, and here's why. The translation of the Hebrew
word strictly is this, the upright love you. That's it. And I think they've taken a little
too much liberties here, trying to paraphrase it into a nice
poetic phrase. The upright. Who are the upright? Those who have believed, and
they do love Him. So much so is it true that Paul
said, if any man does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, there
is a curse on him. And if you don't love the Lord
Jesus Christ, the curse of God yet remains on you. Not because
you don't love him. Our love for him is simply the
response of his love for us. We can't take credit for that
love. It was born in us by a work of the spirit. Nonetheless, if
it's not there, if we don't love Christ, then we have no right
to claim that we have experienced or enjoy the favor of God in
Christ. If you know who He is and what
He did and see it as for you, you can't help but love All right,
next week we'll pick up with verse 5, and we'll be able then
to go on at a quicker pace. These opening verses had so much
in them by way of introduction, but now we'll begin to pick up
the speed. You dismissed.