Okay, Song of Solomon, chapter
7. The God, the popular God of our
day, and pretty much most every generation, the one who is popular
even among those, a lot of people who call themselves Christian,
is a God of unfulfilled desires. He's a God who wants to save
you, but he can't unless you cooperate. He's a God who wants
to bless you, but he can't unless you do your part. He wants to
give you a good life, but he can't. And it seems like every
turn he's hindered or stopped because people just won't do
what they're supposed to do. Well, I have no qualms, no misgivings
about telling you that that God is an idol. That's not the God
of the Bible. The God of the Bible is not a
God of unfulfilled desires. In other words, what I'm telling
you, the God of this book here, from Genesis to Revelation, what
he wants, what he desires, he gets. Bible says he does what
he will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth. He works all things after the
purpose of his own will. The Bible says that he's not
willing that any should perish. Well, whoever he's talking about
there, which I know it is, the elect, they're not gonna perish. They will come to repentance.
He's gonna give them repentance. And if any of that depended upon
people doing what they're supposed to do, then that would doom every
one of us. None of us would be saved. And
so with that in mind, I want you to look at this first verse. In verse 10 of Song of Solomon,
chapter seven, he says, this is the church, the bride of Christ
speaking, and she says, I am my beloved. I belong to Christ. I am His, His bride, I'm His
child, I'm His sheep, He owns me. I was given to Him before
the foundation of the world by God the Father. He was made my
surety, my sins were charged to Him, laid upon Him, imputed
to Him. And He willingly, out of His
desire, became responsible to save me from my sins. An unworthy
bride, a lost sheep, a sinner, saved by the grace of God. I
am his and I'm his by right of redemption. He paid the price
of his own blood to buy his people, to satisfy justice. And I'm his
by adoption. God adopted me into His family
and took care of all the legal requirements and then lovingly
brought me into His family. And then I've entitled this lesson,
Hearing His Love. And you know, that's taken from
1 John 4, 10. Hearing His love, not that we love God, but that
He loved us and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our
sins. Well, look at this next line in verse 10. And His desire
is toward me. That is an awesome thing when
you consider that there is nothing about any of us to recommend
us unto God. We are the most undesirous people. By nature and by practice, even
the best of us should be a stench in his nostrils. And yet the
Bible says his desire is towards us. And I put in your introduction
here in the lesson that this is an assurance, a confident
yet humble assurance that God through his word in the Lord
Jesus Christ has given to us. That we can say confidently,
but yet humbly, his desire is toward me. His desire. Who are we talking about? We're
talking about a holy and a just God who must punish sinners to
whom sin is imputed. I mean, it's not, you know, somebody
says, well, God is not... Let me put it to you this way.
God is not an arbitrary God. It's not that He simply chooses
or desires this one and not that one. He does it for His own purposes. There's a purpose. There's a
reason. We don't always know the purpose and the reason except
what the Bible tells us, and this is the umbrella that you
put over all that God does. It's for His glory. However, that's what, you know,
Everything, you know, Christ, when he was teaching and preaching,
and some rejected him, a few received him, not because of
their goodness or their free will, but because he brought
them, he drew them with cords of love. And he said, he made
this statement, he said, he said, I thank thee, O Father, that
thou hast hidden this from the wise and the prudent, those who
are wise and prudent in their own eyes, and revealed it unto
babes. And who are the babes? They are
those who have absolutely no power, no goodness in themselves. But his desire is toward them.
I think about Ezekiel's picture of the outcast infant laying,
polluted in its blood, with the umbilical cord uncut, dying. What is there to desire about
that? Somebody said, well, we would
have compassion on that. We would, we would, because we're
fellow human beings. But in our case, when it comes
to a relationship with God, the only thing we deserve is damnation. We're sinners. And so I entitled
this lesson, Herein is Love, because what I see in these last
few verses is the greatness and the power and the awesomeness
of God's love towards his people. She says, I am my beloved's and
his desire is toward me. What a bold statement to make.
How do I know that his desire is towards me? I'll tell you
how you know. Is your desire toward Him? Because
if His desire is towards me, then my desire has been made
to be towards Him, and that's not natural. That's not a natural
thing. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. Why? Because his desire is not
towards God. Now, people's desire is towards
the God of this idol God that I described before. Oh, they
want a God like that, whose desires are unfulfilled. They don't want
their own desires to be unfulfilled. They don't mind having a God
whose desires are unfulfilled. He's at my whim, he's at my beck
and call, he's my genie in the bottle, so to speak. And if I'll
clean myself up and do what I need to do, then he's obligated toward
me in some way. But that's an idol. The natural
man desires that God, but that God's like himself. That God's
an idol. The natural man desires a Christ
who loves everybody and who died for everybody, and that's an
open-ended show of love, but it's an unfulfilled love, an
unfulfilled desire, unless you do what you're supposed to do.
And what you're supposed to do, the Bible says you cannot do.
Think about that. So what I'm saying is this, is
my desire towards the God of this book, a just God and a savior,
a sovereign God, a God who saves sinners in spite of ourselves,
who gives us life from the dead, gives us faith to believe, repentance,
makes our desires. His people shall be willing in
the day of his power. The God who saves whom he wants
to save. Damn's who he wants to damn.
I know people don't like to hear that, but is that God your desire? Is it my desire? If he is, as
we stand before him, washed in the blood of Christ, clothed
in his righteousness, believing in him, realizing that we're
nothing, we're an unworthy bride, and he's the worthy bridegroom. If that's our desire, then we
can confidently yet humbly say, I am my beloved's and his desire
is towards me. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed and I'm persuaded that he's able to keep that which
I've committed unto him against that day. Do you know everything
that we have and are in salvation is in spite of ourselves. And
if you're a believer, you know that even now because you're
in a struggle. I know I am, I'm in a struggle
every day between the, it's a struggle, a warfare between the flesh and
the spirit. And if the spirit of God who
resides within us didn't keep us and keep pointing us towards
Christ, giving us that desire towards him, the God of this
book, the Christ of the Bible, we'd leave him in a second. So we say it, yeah, we say it
confidently. I know whom I have believed and
I'm persuaded that he's able to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day. How do you know that? You're
not worthy of it. How do I know that? I haven't
earned any of it. How do I know that? Because the
word of God tells me that that's the kind of people he saves.
And he brings us to desire him. His desires toward me. That word
desire in the original language is the idea of the longings of
a man for a woman. And there is an intimacy here.
It's not a sexual thing here. But he uses that kind of desire
to describe the intimacy and the desire of Christ towards
his people and his people towards him. Think about, and this desire
has never changed. He desired us before the world
ever began. You believe your name was written
in the Lamb's book of life? When was it written? Now you
know that's metaphorical language. It was written by God, my name,
your name, if your desire's towards him, your name, written in the
Lamb's Book of Life. Somebody said, well, you know,
I'm trying to make a name for myself. Well, go ahead. We who
are believers really don't have that much of a name when it comes
to religion because we just don't fit in. And we don't have any
desire toward the God who is a God of unfulfilled desires.
I don't desire that, do you? I know there's some who claim
to believe this God but have the desire towards that other
God too. That don't wash. That'd be like adultery, spiritual
adultery, spiritual fornication. He desired us in eternity past,
He chose us, He gave us to His Son, and made Him our surety,
and it was the Son's desire to be our surety. To come to this
earth and die for our sins. John 13 one, He loved His own
unto the end. To the finishing of the work.
His desire was toward us before our conversion. Before we were
ever reconciled to Him, His desire was toward us. And He even appointed
the time when He would bring us and change our desire in the
new birth and bring us to desire Him in faith and repentance. He brought us to desire Christ
and to not desire any other Savior. any other ground of salvation,
desire his righteousness. We long for his righteousness.
We hunger for his righteousness. Well, that's not unfulfilled,
is it? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled. Well, he's filled it. He's filled
it full with Christ. Not with us now. I don't look
to me, but I look to Christ. His desire is toward us even
after our conversion. Because we see as we look in
his word that he desires our fellowship. He desires our obedience. He desires our love. And he gets
it. Not because it's in us naturally,
not because we're better in some way, but because he's given it. It's what he's made us. We are
his workmanship. created in Christ Jesus unto
good works which he hath before ordained that we should walk
in them. And then his desire toward us will be finally fulfilled
when he comes again to gather us unto himself. And we'll all
be changed in the twinkling of an eye. And think about that. In that day we'll desire only
him and we won't even have the flesh to hinder us to desire
other things. That'll be a day. Well, look
at verses 11 and 12. She says, come my beloved, let
us go forth into the field. Now some commentators interpret
the field here to be the word of God. And I read like two gospel
commentators who said that. I'm not sure where they get that,
but okay, I mean, if it is the word of God, what he's saying, well, let's
go to God's word. This is our field, and we go there with Christ. If you read the word of God,
study the word of God, memorize the word of God without Christ,
what's it going to do? Nothing. It'll do you no good.
Eternally. Spiritually. You remember the
Pharisees? They studied, they read, they
wrote commentaries. Christ said in John 539, he said,
you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal
life, but they are they which testify of me. And he says you're
depending upon your works. He says Moses, in whom you depend,
he'll be your judge. He said, if you read Moses, you're
reading of me, he said. Moses wrote of me. So if this
field is the word of God, we go there with Christ. This is
the idea, verse 11, come my beloved, let us go forth. We don't want
to go anywhere without him. I've referenced in your lesson
Exodus 33 where Moses talking about leading the children of
Israel to the promised land. He said, he said, if I have found
grace in thy sight, and he says, if I go, I don't want to go there
if you don't go with me. That's what Moses said to God.
And the Lord said, I'll be with you. And so we don't want to
go anywhere without Christ. Certainly we don't want to go
into the scriptures without Christ, without the knowledge of who
he is and the glory of his person, God in human flesh, and without
the knowledge of the powerful redeeming work that he accomplished
on Calvary to save us from our sins and to bring forth an everlasting
righteousness of infinite value whereby God could be just and
justify the ungodly. So it could be. But I tend to
believe that the field that he's speaking of here is the same
field that he mentioned in John chapter four and verse 35 that
I have referenced. You remember he told his disciples,
he said the fields are white already with harvest. In other
words, what he's saying, it's time in this gospel era, the
new covenant era, to go out into the world, because God has a
people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation, and that's
the field, and we go out to preach the gospel. It's like the Great
Commission, going into all the world and preach the gospel.
Why? Because God has a chosen people,
and he intends to bring them into the fold, his lost sheep,
And so the field there would be the world wherein we go preach
the gospel, seeking his sheep. Paul talking about going out,
trying to find God's elect. How you gonna find them, Paul?
Well, I look for moral people. No. I look for people that have
a glow around their head. No. How do you find them, Paul? You preach the gospel. And God
the Holy Spirit does the work, brings them in. Faith in Christ. And then she says, come my beloved,
let us go forth into the field. Verse 11, let us lodge in the
villages. I believe that's talking about
the churches that God raises up as lights in their respective
communities where the gospel is preached. Christ said, for
where two or three are gathered in my name, there I'll be also. So we don't want, where do we
want to go to church? We want to go where Christ is.
We don't want to go where Christ is not. Well, how do you know
a church where Christ is? How do you know the difference
between where Christ is and where Christ is not? What gospel is
being preached? Do they preach the word of God
and not the word of men? You go into a religious group
and they give you a moral pep talk. Or they make you feel good
about yourself. Or they lay salvation solely
in your hands, conditioned on you. I'm gonna tell you, Christ
is not there. He's not there. He's where he
is preached in the glory of his person, and in the power of his
finished work from the Bible. That's where he is, and that's
how you know the difference. And so when we lodge in the villages,
that has to do with his ministers going out, he established churches,
local bodies of believers. And so we are here, Christ is
among us, we feed the sheep. I've got a little thing, I heard
a preacher years ago, he's talking about evangelism and the importance
of evangelism, going out and preaching to the lost. And certainly
we're to do that. were commissioned to do that.
And that's a major portion of the ministry of the church here
in this world, to support and to actively engage in the preaching
of the lost, to the lost in the world. And this preacher made
a statement, he said, God has called us to be fishers of men,
not keepers of the aquarium. Well, here's the thing. Yes,
God has called us to be fishers of men, but he's also called
us to be keepers of the aquarium. We're also to preach to God's
people in the body of believers for our edification, for our
growth in grace and in knowledge. That's just as important. How
are you going to be an able minister to the lost if you're not schooled
in the word of God made, you know, when he talks about being,
Loving the word of God, believing the word of God, becoming skillful
in the word of righteousness. That's what we need. And so,
lodges in the villages, we don't want to go into the church without
Christ. In verse 12, she says, let us
get up early to the vineyards. That has to do with his ministers
being proactive, being ready early. Don't be late. Don't be sleeping on the job.
Let us see if the vine flourishes. Let's just sit back and watch
the work of God. The vine's flourishing. Who's
the vine? That's Christ. The fruit of the
vine. That's His people. And let's
just watch. And it's not numbers. You know? I mean, we don't have numbers,
do we? We don't outnumber the world. We don't outnumber false
religion, but we see it in the salvation. You know, the Bible
says there's joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. And 99 that need no repentance,
that's flourishing. When God saves a sinner, that's
flourishing. And to see growth in grace and
in knowledge of God's people, that's flourishing. She says,
whether the tender grape appear, I believe she's talking about
young believers there. The tender grape. Here's a young
believer that God has brought into the fold. And here they
appear. And it says in verse 9 or verse
12 there, that word appear, if you look over in your concordance,
it says open. It's kind of like a blossoming.
We want to see the young believers blossom and grow in the grace
and knowledge of Christ. And he says, And the pomegranates
bud forth. I believe that's talking about
mature believers. The pomegranate's used quite often. It's a very
rich fruit. It's a red fruit with a crown
on top. Everything about it is a picture
of a sinner saved by grace, Christ and his people, one in the eyes
of God's law and justice. And it says, there will I give
thee my loves. Now this is the bride speaking
to the bridegroom. It's there in the lodges, in
the assemblies of the church, that we are reminded of His love
for us, but it's here where we show our love for Him. Now we're
to show our love for Him seven days a week, aren't we? This, in this place, gathered
together with the people of God, is one of the main ways that
we express our love for Him. Now our love's not perfect, I'm
not saying that. His love for us is perfect. But
we do love Him, and that's a grace of God. He shed abroad His, and
this is one of the main ways we express that love, in public
worship, in fellowship with the people of God. Remember over
in Hebrews chapter 10, He says, let me just read this to you.
Hebrews 10, 23. He says, let us hold fast the
profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful
that promise, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love
and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together
as the manner of some is. So in this corporate area here
of worship, this is one of the main ways we express our love
to our Savior. Who loves us? And then, I've
got in your lesson, I put this little segment in the bulletin,
I think for next week. In talking about expressing our love and ministering
to the saints, even preaching to lost people. And I put down
here, I said, when I prepare a gospel message, when I sit
down each week and I study God's word and I prepare a message,
for the people of God. I have four goals in mind, and
here they are. That God be glorified, number
one, that God be glorified both as a just God and a savior. The
sovereign who chose his people in Christ, who sent Christ into
the world to save his people from their sins, who has justified
the ungodly by his grace based on the blood of Christ, his righteousness
imputed. The God who gives spiritual life
to spiritually dead sinners. I want God to be glorified. I
want to tell the truth about God. Secondly, that Christ be
exalted in the glory of his person as God manifest in the flesh
in the power and success of his finished work by his death on
the cross for his people as their surety, substitute and redeemer. Christ who was made sin that
we might be made the righteousness of God in him who was raised
from the dead and ascended into heaven to be our intercessor
and our Lord. I wanna honor Christ. I wanna
tell the truth about him, who he is and what he did and why
he did it. My third goal is that lost sinners be saved by God's
power and grace in giving them life and bringing them into faith
in Christ and repentance of dead works and idolatry. I can't do
that. But I pray God uses the message
of his grace to do it. And then fourthly, that God's
people, sinners saved by grace, be edified, unified, inspired,
and guided by the Holy Spirit through the word. That's my four
goals in every message right there. Well, let's read the last
verse. Now, he brings in here in verse
13, he talks about the Mandrakes. Now, you know the Mandrake was
a, the family of plants called nightshade. They used to call
it a love apple. It was an aphrodisiac, actually,
is what it was. And he said, the mandrakes give
a smell, a pleasant odor, and at our gates are all manner of
pleasant fruits. The relationship between Christ
and his church is not an unfulfilled desire. It's not an unfruitful
relationship. All pleasant fruits, the salvation
of God's people, the graces and the gifts of the Spirit. And
he says, new and old. Now that could be talking about
new believers, old believers, it's a continual fruitfulness.
And she says, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved. In
other words, I present these things not as something to give
me glory. but something that glorifies
God. They're laid up for thee. In other words, they redound
to God's glory in Christ and not to our own. We don't have
anything to brag about in our own, do we? We brag about Him
who is our Lord and Savior. Okay.