if everyone will turn to the
book of Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs of Solomon. Some
Bibles call it canticles, and that's because a canticle is
a song, an old word for song. Let's seek the Lord's blessing.
Our Heavenly Father, Thank you for this morning and the opportunity
to gather in the name of your Son and open your book and learn
of Him. May we see His glory. May our
hearts be even more attracted to Him. Lord, it is written,
there is no majesty that when we would see Him, we would desire
Him. And Lord, that was true in our natural state. but by
your grace we've seen your glory in the face of Jesus Christ,
and we behold his majesty indeed. Bless us to see it again, in
Christ's name we pray, amen. I think this is our fifth lesson,
though I'm not sure in this book. Let's read The first four verses. Solomon's
song of songs. Let him kiss me with the kisses
of his mouth. For your love is more delightful
than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of
your perfumes. Your name is like perfume poured
out. No wonder the maidens love you. Take me away with you. Let us
hurry. Let the king bring me into his
chambers. Now, so far, we have noted that
this is a book of poetry and not just poetry, but poetic drama. It is sort of a play written
in a poetic form. And to understand it, we've got
to look at it that way. It is not a, what they would
call a didactical book or a teaching book. It's like saying maybe
the Book of Romans is, which is a carefully laid out argument
for particular doctrines. Rather, there is set before us
the relationship between Solomon, or an idealized version of Solomon,
and then this woman who's referred to as the Shulamite, and Shulamite
is simply the feminine version of the name Solomon. So the name
of both of the main characters in this book are essentially
the same, and their names mean peace, but it's the Hebrew concept
of peace, which goes beyond people simply not being at war or contention
with one another, as their common greeting, which was shalom, And
that's shalomon, which is actually how Solomon's name is pronounced
in Hebrew. But when they would say shalom,
they meant, may all things be well with you. May every aspect
of your life be in proper balance. And that was all included under
the concept of peace. I mentioned the two leading characters,
and the only other character is the one in my copy of the
scriptures here. It refers to friends. I've seen
some translations just say others. Well, they serve the part of
what, at least in Greek dramas, was called the chorus. And they
are there primarily. to fill in information which
simply could not be spoken by either of the lead characters.
And so when you read this book, and I encourage you to take the
time to sit down and read it all in one sitting. Because you
wouldn't go to a Shakespearean play and say, OK, I'm just going
to do the first act today, and I'll come back later. You won't
see the whole story. And so sit down and read it that
way, because the flow of it, the timeline of it, if you will,
or the process of it, is part of the storytelling itself. Now, the woman, the Shulamite, said,
let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. Your love is more
delightful than wine. And she extols the love and the
tender affection of Solomon, who actually represents the Lord
Jesus Christ. His name means, Solomon's name
means peace, and it said of Christ, he is our peace. Being justified
by faith. Faith in who? Jesus Christ. We
have peace with God. And then she goes, speaks of his tender affections,
and says that his love is more delightful than wine. And there's
two pictures of bubbling liquids there. The word love is derived
from the word to boil, and the word wine is derived from the
word to effervesce, as when wine ferments and the bubbles come
up, and she's comparing them. And as nice as wine may be, is
what she's saying, you know, as nice as wine may be, And God
gave wine, according to the book of Isaiah, he gave wine to make
glad the heart of man. And as nice as that might be,
it's nothing compared to Christ when his love is expressed towards
us. Now, in this case, the word love,
says your love is more delightful than wine, would be a reference
not just to the abstract concept of love, but to the demonstrations
of love. And then last week, we looked
at verse 3, where the name of Christ is extolled. Pleasing
is the fragrance of your perfume. Your name is like perfume poured
out. And isn't that so? You know,
we all love the smells of perfume. Maybe some more than others,
but... Perfume was designed specifically
to be pleasing to the nose, to the sense of smell. And the thing
about a perfume is a person walks in with it and it fills the whole
room. And so it is with Christ. One reason that we preach Christ
here all the time. It is our intention in every
message to set forth something regarding the person and work
of Christ. Why? That's just like opening, maybe
we wouldn't do perfumes in our day, we would have room freshener
or something or a scented candle or something like that. But it
fills the room and it just, it makes the room a nicer place
to be. You know, in some churches they gather and the pastor stands
up and gives a message on some social issue. There's plenty
of time to deal with social issues. When the church gathers, she
gathers to be with her Lord, her master, her beloved one,
her heavenly Solomon. That's what she wants. And so we continue to preach
Christ Now, we got that far last week, didn't get the last line
of verse three. No wonder the maidens love you. Now, that word is translated
maidens there. And in our day, of course, we hardly
ever use the word maiden. In fact, we only use the first
part of a maid, and we think of a maid as simply someone who
cleans up the house. But back in older English, maiden
meant a young woman, but also, specifically, a virgin young
woman. I don't know if they had a word
for a young woman that wasn't one. They just simply expected
if she was unmarried, she was virgin, and they would refer
to them as maidens. And the word here is the word
that in King James would be translated And even in the Hebrew language,
there have been arguments made that the word simply means a
young woman. And that argument is made by
those who want to deny the virgin birth of Christ. Because when
Mary was confronted and told she was going to give birth,
she said, how can that be so? I've not known a man. And the
scriptures go on to say, but this was done that it might be
fulfilled. A virgin shall conceive and give
birth to a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. And these
who want to be skeptical about every miraculous aspect of the
scriptures say, well, that word really just means young woman.
Well, Mary made it rather clear what it meant to her. She says,
I haven't been with a man. And in all reality, while the
word does essentially mean young unmarried woman, such was the
culture of the Jews, it was just understood that meant a virgin
woman. So that's what's being spoken
of here, and it's important. It's not that virginity in and
of itself is superior to having sexual experience. It's just
what you're supposed to be before you're married. Afterwards, it wouldn't be appropriate.
But what are they saying here? What's being mentioned? Well, of course, Solomon had
many wives and many concubines. Now, that's not according to
God's way. God tolerated the doubt of him.
You know, the Lord said before Solomon ever became king, my
love will never depart from him. And a good thing he said it then.
Because if he'd have waited until Solomon had been king for a while,
he might have said, you know, I'm just going to change this.
He's not doing so good after all. He did some things well. He did other things awful. In
this thing of marriage, which was common among kings in those
days, they just amassed a huge harem. Some of these women I'm
sure he never even met, but they were part of his harem. But that's
what's being referenced here, how the virgins love you. They
may have seen him when he visited the harem, and they did. They were attracted to him. Now,
for a man to have more than one wife is not appropriate. I mean, it's just plain wrong.
It happens, but it's plain wrong, according to our Lord Jesus Christ. But God used this unrighteous
pattern among kings and other nobles who could afford it to
have multiple wives, and even men like Jacob. They practiced polygamy. But
he used that as a picture of the church, for on the one hand,
the church is counted to be one bride, one body. And yet, she is made up of many
individuals. And so here, Solomon's harem,
which according to law should never have existed, is still
sanctified to good use when the Lord through this Shulamite woman
who represents evidently the single woman of whom Solomon
was enamored of her. And if she represents a real
individual person, she was probably the chief wife among all of his
wives. But she represents the church
as a single person, you know, a single body. But then all the
others show the church to be made up of individuals, and they
are all virgins. The Bible refers to believers
as virgins. In Romans, excuse me, Book of
Hebrews, it says, let us not be like Esau, who was adulterous. Why? The adultery being spoken
of there, I do not believe he's talking about physical adultery.
Certainly we shouldn't do that, but that's not his point. Esau
married women, I believe, I may be wrong, so I'm not going
to say it, but I know, you know, they were always supposed to
marry within their clan. He didn't. He went right away
and got what you would call a Gentile wife. And eventually he settled
to the east of Israel and probably had many wives. But he was trying
to keep a foot in both worlds, of both the law world and the
grace or promise world, and it won't work. And that's what was
being argued in the book of Hebrews. He said, don't be like Esau,
who tried to be both. Those Jews to whom the book of
Hebrews was written, they were suffering persecution because
they had aligned themselves with Christ. And the easy way out
would be go back to the synagogue and say, yeah, we believe in
the law, but we believe in Jesus too. And the book of Hebrews
saying, you can't do that. That's spiritual adultery. You
come to God by your works, or you come to God purely by his
grace. completely through Jesus Christ,
but you can't have both. And this is the way in which
God's people are virgins. Spiritually speaking, they have
no other love interest than the Lord Jesus Christ. The book of
Revelation refers to God's people as virgins. Again, Not speaking
about what they are in the flesh. Speaking about what they are
with Christ. Secondly, this points out and opens the door for what
the Shulamite says in verse 4. They're virgins, which means
they belong to him, but that relationship has not yet been
consummated. That is, it's not yet been brought
to fullness. And brethren, that's us. That's
you and me here on this earth. We might say that's all believers,
no matter where they are, until the day in which Christ comes
and brings an end to all things. There's debate about, you know,
when our marriage to Christ takes place. It's kind of irrelevant. The point is, at the present
time, We love him, he loves us. He has chosen us, and through
his gospel he has proposed to us, and we have joyfully accepted
his proposal. We are his. We are his by his
sovereign choice, and we are his by our willing assent. You know, when Abraham's servant
went to get a wife for Isaac, And he saw Rebekah and found
out that's from the proper clan and all that. He showed that
woman, Rebekah, all that Isaac had sent to her. And I suppose it was something
to behold. He was the heir of Abraham, and
Abraham had become quite wealthy. But the time came, you know,
The servant of Abraham had been negotiating with the family and
all this, and they were all in favor of it. But still, they
finally looked at Rebekah and said, will you go with this man?
Meaning, will you go back with him and be married to Isaac?
And she, having heard about him, having seen something of his
riches, she said yes. And we, we've heard about him.
And by the grace of God, we have seen something of the unsearchable
riches of Christ. And it's been put to us, will
you go? We have said yes. So we are his. But we have not yet entered into
the fullness of the relationship that we shall someday have with
him. The Apostle Paul said that I
may know him. What, Paul, you don't know Christ?
Yes, I know him, and yet I would know him more. I would know him
more deeply, more intimately. And so here we are. We are the
virgins. We are the maidens. We're betrothed
to him. And it's a betrothal that cannot
be broken. He won't go back on it and God's spirit won't let
us go back on it. And we love him. Now this condition as maidens, maidens
are devoted to the one to whom they are betrothed, but it's
a waiting devotion. We don't set the date. That's not in our power to determine
when we'll be married. But oh, we look forward. We long
for that day. Paul says, to know even as we
are known. How deeply do you think the Lord
Jesus Christ knows us? Someday we'll know him like that. Now imagine that. We wait, and it is this waiting
state of maidenhood or virginity which is the expression of that
holiness that the scriptures call us to. It's the essential
aspect of it. In the epistle to the Corinthians,
the apostle says, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. What holiness was he talking
about? Well, in the previous verses, he'd been talking to
them about the fact that they were not simply buying meat that had been offered
to idols, taking it home, and eating it. They were actually
going to these idol temples and participating in the feasts that
they had where they used some of the meat that had been offered
to idols. Now Paul had said, now an idol is nothing. And if
you can go down to the marketplace and there's some meat there,
and you know it was offered to an idol the day before, but it's,
you know, the price has been marked down. It's kind of like
used meat, you know. And you can buy it fine. Don't ask questions.
Don't say, hey, has this been offered to an idol? He says,
because it doesn't matter. But it's a different thing to
go to their feast and sit down there with others who are eating
that feast as an act of worship towards that idol. To sit down
there and eat with them. And the point is, you can't worship
with those who worship another God or another Christ. You must in worship. be set apart. That's what the
word holy means, set apart. You must be virgin. Now indeed, in our earlier years,
we worshiped God, not according to truth. Even if we were born
into a church that told the truth and we were brought up and we
learned all the doctrines, in our hearts the truth was not
there until God, by his grace, performed a new birth in us.
We were made spiritually alive. And then we understood the truth,
and we believed it. And that was the moment of our
spiritual birth. And from that point on, we have
been waiting, virgins, waiting as those set apart to Christ.
And all the other aspects of what some people call personal
holiness flow from that. You know, a person gets engaged. Up till
that point, they may have dated several people. Up to that point,
they may have felt free to flirt with members of the opposite
sex. The moment they're engaged, that's over. Supposed to be,
anyway. And if it isn't, Somebody's gonna
get mad if it's found out, and rightly so. And we are espoused
to Jesus Christ. One of my favorite hymns, I am
His and He is Mine. It's based on the Song of Solomon.
Oh, having seen Him as much as the Holy Spirit enables us to
in this life, how could we want anyone else? All right, now the Shulamite
says, take me away with you, let us hurry, let the king bring
me into his chambers. This shows that evidently she
is not married to him yet either. Because what is she asking for? She has an urgent desire. to
be united to him in fullness. For this engagement to proceed
on to marriage and all that marriage means in the enjoyment of one
another. She says, take me away with you.
I'm reminded of that scripture, but I would not have you to be
ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that you
sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. For this we say
unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain
shall not proceed, shall not come before, shall not, the word
can mean come ahead of in importance, not just time. will not come
ahead of those who are falling asleep. There were some believers
in Thessalonica wondering, well, what happened to our brethren
that died? Are they second class believers because they didn't
live to see the resurrection of the dead? No, he said, we
aren't going to be in any better situation than them. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, and with a voice of the archangel,
and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first,
and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up, shall be
taken away with them, to be with him always and forever. Right now, if you could have
What you want more than anything else, what would it be? If you're a believer, and sometimes
you have to dig pretty far to find out what it is you really
want, because we've got a lot of competing interests, don't
we? To be with Him and to be like Him. That's our hope. That is heaven. People keep trying
to describe heaven in terms of worldly riches. It's not. What
use will we have of gold? What need have we, you know,
the King James says mansion, it just means dwelling place,
but when we think mansion, you know, we think the fine, huge
houses with a colonnaded front porch and all that. What need
will we have of that? We will be made. as respecting
our humanity, just what Christ is, in all his glory. And we
will be made the kind of creatures for whom God's full riches of
blessings, it's suitable for them to have it. And we will come to know him
in a way we have not before. And she says, take me away with
you. Now it's interesting, she didn't
say, I'm gonna run to you. Now, we might tell a sinner,
you know, run to Christ. And that's talking about, you
know, embracing him in faith. But we are waiting for his appointed
time. And we say, take me away. Many
a believer approaching the time of their death, knowing that
all that pertains to this life is pretty much over. Many of
them have said, take me away. Take me away. Many have said
that for years. You know, we think long life
is a good thing. And I won't say, you know, like,
well, I just soon died today. It's not really death I want. It's being with him. And until
he comes back, the only way to be with him is to leave here. But I remember the last couple
of letters I got from Henry Mahan, both times he says, Doris and
I both pray every night, Lord, don't let us wake up here. Don't let us wake up here. Take me away with you, let us
hurry. And then she says, let the king
bring me into his chambers. Now, all the king's harem actually
lived in another place. Even whatever ones of his harem
may have been considered his chief and choicest, you know. They didn't share a bedroom with
him. They came to him when they were
called, and they dare not come any other time. And she's saying,
I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Take me away with
you. Let's hurry. Let the king bring
me into his chambers. His bedrooms, what she's saying.
Let him call on me. to come and be united with him
in the most intimate of human relationships, and the picture
here for us is all Christ come. What did John say? Even so, come
quickly. Lord Jesus, take us away. Bring
us to your chamber. Bring us to where we have the
most intimate union a human being can have with his God. For remember, Jesus Christ is
our God. Oh, what a blessed thing. to
be among the maidens who love the Lord Jesus. It creates a
longing in our hearts, but it's a longing that shall someday
be fulfilled. Till then we say, take me away
with you. Let us hurry. Let the king bring
me into his chambers. All right, you're dismissed.