We're going to be looking at
Song of Solomon, chapter five. And I've entitled this lesson,
as you can see, Christ Waking His Sleeping Bride. Let me just
go into the first verse here to begin with, because actually,
the first verse probably belongs more with chapter four, because
it's speaking of Christ coming into his garden. And that's what
The last verses of chapter four were about, as you know, in the
original text, there were no chapter or verse divisions. And
sometimes I wonder what led the King James translators to divide
it where they did, but that's okay. It starts off with such
a positive note. Verse one, Christ says, I am
come into my garden. My sister, my spouse. And so
we see the metaphors here that are used that Christ describes
and identifies his bride, his wife. The church is his garden,
planted. You know, a lot of times in the
Old Testament, Israel was called God's vineyard. And that's what
the church is. He planted it, he waters it with
his word, he causes it to grow. And he keeps it, he maintains
it. And so he says, I am coming to
my garden, my sister, the church is his sister, he is our elder
brother, scripture says. And then my spouse, so again,
we see here that this is showing that Christ and his church are
wedded together. She is my spouse, he says, my
wife. And of course, he is in charge
of her. He's the head of her. He is her
sustaining. She is his responsibility to
save us, to keep us, and to bring us unto glory. It's all by God's
grace. I have gathered my myrrh with
spice, myrrh with spice I believe is indicative of his suffering
unto death for our salvation, to bring about righteousness
for his people. Myrrh and suffering, especially
myrrh is the suffering and the spice is the result of it, the
sweet odor that God accepts sweet savor, a sweet smelling savor
unto God. That's the sacrifice of Christ
on behalf of his people as our surety, our substitute, our redeemer. And then he says, I have eaten
my honeycomb with my honey. That's the good fruits, the good
taste of his word. I have drunk my wine with my
milk. It comes through him. All of
this. stands for the precious Word
of God. We feed upon the milk of the
Word. We have the joy, the wine of
the Word, the joy of the Spirit, all of that. And he says, he
says, eat, oh friends. There's another term for the
church. We're his friends. Moses spoke to God face to face
as with a friend. Abraham was called the friend
of God. And so, in other words, what
the point there is, is that by nature we were enemies, Colossians
1 tells us, in our mind by wicked works, but he's reconciled us
to him and made us his friend. And so we have nothing to fear
from him as long as we are with the bridegroom, as long as we
are in Christ. And he says, eat, oh friends,
eat his word, drink his word, yea, drink abundantly, oh beloved. And so what's brought to the
forefront in this first verse here is our need of Christ, our
need of his word, our need of his grace and mercy and power
and goodness at all times. There's not one time in the life
of a believer that we can say, even this second, I'm on my own. I can do it all by myself. No.
There's not one time that we're not totally dependent on Christ.
Now that may have been why they put this verse with the next
verses. Because the next verses show
the church, we might say, in sort of a pitiful state. Where
she has gone to sleep when she should be awake. And you know
sometimes when you go through scriptures like this, it's a
little difficult to understand exactly what the lesson to be
taught is. But we stand on the shoulders
of godly men who have studied. I look at commentaries from gospel
commentators, and I try to learn from them and check them out.
They're not the authority. Their word is not infallible,
obviously, as no man's is. But obviously, when you go into
passages of scripture like this, you want to see the glory of
Christ and the good of his people. You want to see that. And so
I don't think that what I'm going to say this morning is shoving
into the scripture something that's not there. And I thought
about this, and let me start these verses this way. You've
heard the term high maintenance? You ever heard that term? I heard
that term early on in my life because the first car I bought
was high maintenance. It spent more time at the mechanics
than it did on the road. High maintenance. And have you
ever heard somebody say, well, he married a woman who's high
maintenance, or she's married a man who is high maintenance?
All right. Well, when it comes to Christ
and his church, we're high maintenance, aren't we? Each individual, I'm
high maintenance. The whole church is. And we need
to see it that way. You know, I've tried to emphasize
throughout these lessons to understand as we go through that Christ
is always the worthy, the righteous, the powerful, the good husband. And we're always the unworthy
bride. Sinful. Sinner saved by grace,
but yet sinful. And if you look at our history,
the history of redemption, you think about this. God chose us
before the foundation of the world and gave us to Christ,
betrothed us to him, putting all the responsibility of our
complete salvation upon him, made him our surety. Whatever
debt we had in sin, it was put upon Christ. It was imputed to
him and gave us his righteousness that he would come in time and
work out on the cross. And so here we were. Here's his
bride. who was deserving of condemnation and death, and yet he took that
upon himself as our substitute, and redeemed us from our sins,
and worked out a perfect righteousness, so that the righteousness in
which we stand before God, it is ours only by imputation, and
we receive it by God-given faith, but it's his work. Our works
didn't enter in one thread of that beautiful white robe. And
if our works would enter into it, it would defile it. Isn't
that right? And so then, here we are, we
come into this world born, fallen in Adam, born dead in trespasses
and sins, with no life spiritually, but he gave us life. He gave
us the faith to believe. We, by nature, we were unbelieving.
unbelievers, but he gave us faith to believe in him. By nature,
we actually hated him, but he gave us a heart to love him.
And so he gave us all that would bring us into the union of our
marriage to Christ. But now, here's the thing again.
He has to keep us. He has to maintain us. Because
we're still sinners. Again, sinners saved by grace.
To whom God does not impute iniquity, but we're still sinners. And
if left to ourselves, if he doesn't maintain us, what's going to
happen? We're going to fall. But he won't let us go. But now
here, look at verse two. Now here's the bride speaking.
I sleep, but my heart waketh. You know, we need sleep for our
physical bodies. But the worst thing a person
can do is go to sleep on the job. And I believe that's what
this is talking about. We all need rest. Our spiritual
rest is rest in Christ. Come unto me, all you that heavy
laden. But she says, my heart waketh. Now, she's asleep, but
it's not the sleep of death. She's not dead. I believe this
is talking about, as most commentators would say, that this is talking
about a coldness or an indifference that she's fallen into for a
little time, which we all do. We've done that. I've done that.
Sometimes I get upset and I say, man, I just want to quit. You
know, like beating my head against the wall. Or sometimes I just
get lazy in my studies. dealing with the word of God.
And it's our lives as believers here on earth. In the struggle
of the flesh and the spirit, sometimes our lives are marked
with times of fervent joy and praise and thanksgiving to the
Lord. And we just want, we can't do
enough. And then there are times that we go to sleep. and we kind
of become a little indifferent, kind of numb to things. And what
we see here is the bride asleep when she should be awake and
ready to hear the voice of Christ, the voice of her husband. But
again, she's asleep, but she's not dead. She says, my heart
waketh. A sinner saved by grace can never
be totally deaf to the voice of the Savior. And Paul dealt
with this condition in Ephesus. I've got in your lesson here,
Ephesians 5.14, where Paul told the Ephesians, he said, wherefore
he saith, awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light. It seems that many people in
the church at Ephesus had gone to sleep. And you remember in
Revelation chapter two, the church at Ephesus, they had lost their
first love. And I believe that means they
had lost that fervency, that zeal, that hunger and eagerness
that a person has like when we're first converted. We just can't
get enough. We can't get enough preaching.
We can't get enough reading of the word and all of that. And
then we, you know, I remember when I first came into a knowledge
of the truth, savingly, I really thought, naively, Everybody would
want to hear this. Man, this is the greatest news
I've ever heard. I never heard it before. Everybody
would want to hear it. But I found out pretty quick,
no, they don't all want to hear it. I mean, I got some really
bad vibes from people. You probably did, too. And it
kind of dampens your spirits. But this sad state of mind may
show itself in many ways. It may show itself in neglecting
the means of grace, the hearing of the word, the reading of the
word, the fellowship of God's people. But here's the thing,
even in these times of indifference, these coldness, this sleep, We
who believe really even in those times have reason for encouragement
because the bridegroom will not let us go. And I want you to
turn to Psalm 121. Now this, as I said, if salvation
were ever conditioned on our works, our zeal and our fervor
and our doing, we'd be lost. We'd be lost. But it's not. It's conditioned on Christ. And
let me show you what Psalm 121 says about him. Look at verse
one. He says, I will lift up mine eyes into the hills, from
whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord,
which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to
be moved. He that keepeth thee will not
slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel
shall not slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper, the Lord
is thy shade. Upon thy right hand, the sun
shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night. When I read
that, I thought about somebody, if you go to the beach and you
be laying on the beach and you go to sleep and wake up with
a big old sunburn, something like that. The sun shall not
smite thee by day, the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve
thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul. The
Lord shall preserve thy going out, thy coming in from this
time forth and even forevermore. What's that telling us? Our savior,
our bridegroom, he never goes to sleep on the job. He never,
and that's our hope. That's our assurance. That's
our footing right there. So go back to Song of Song, verse
five. She says, verse two, I sleep,
but my heart waketh. It is the voice of my beloved
that knocketh, saying, open to me my sister, my love, my dove,
my undefiled. Think about that. Think about
how he describes us. His sister, his church is his
bride and his sister, just like you couples who both believe
the gospel. Your husband is your brother
and your husband. Your wife is your sister and
your wife. And so we see that relationship
is described in so many ways. He says, my love. His people,
his bride, his church is the object of his love. He gave himself
for his bride. John 13, one, he loved his own
unto the end, which means the finishing of the work. My dove,
we're at peace with him, pure in him, my undefiled, Christ
calls us undefiled. Now think about that. You say,
well, that can't be so, I know myself. It's so if he says it's
so. And what does he mean? Does he
mean that we're sinlessly perfect in ourselves? No, absolutely
not. We're nothing but sin in ourselves.
We do have the spirit of God, we do have new life, but we have
a battle every day. I'm telling you now, this battle
is every day. It's not going to let up. It
may even get worse. as we grow in grace and knowledge
and realize our utter sinfulness, but at the same time realizing
His greatness, and that's our salvation. Looking unto who? Me? No, Jesus, the author and
finisher of our faith. And so we're undefiled. That
means who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It's God that justifies. Who can condemn us? In Christ,
by the grace of God, based upon his blood, his righteousness
imputed, we're undefiled. And he says, for my head is filled
with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. That's the
word of God, that's the water of life. That's what he's telling
his bride who's asleep. I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. And notice all that he says of
her, the word of God itself revealed here says of him that he's beautiful,
he's powerful, he loves his bride. Verse three, the bride says,
I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on? I have washed my
feet, how shall I defile them? Now most commentators claim that
these are the words of the bride who has lost sight for a while
of the beauty of God's grace and the beauty of that salvation.
In other words, she's so comfortable, and this is what I put in your
lesson, she's so comfortable in her bed of indifference that
she makes excuses for not responding to the voice of her husband,
not responding in a positive way. And so, what's she saying? She's still the unworthy bride. I've had brothers in Christ,
sisters in Christ, who have maybe gone off the way a little bit,
not lose their salvation. You can't do that, but just get
indifferent or something. And you try to call them up,
and basically they give you the impression, leave me alone. Just
leave me alone. And I think that's what you've
got here, a picture of the bride doing that. You know, I've put
off my coat. I've lost sight of it, is what
she's saying. You know, the robe of Christ's righteousness cannot
be removed. That's God's work. Cannot be
defiled. Cannot be contaminated. But we
can lose sight of it, and I think about, I think I've got this
in your lesson down on end. You know, when David, King David,
when he got into that awful, awful mess with his adultery,
his conniving to commit murder and all of that. He didn't lose
his salvation. I know there are preachers who
don't want to hear that. Oh, don't tell people that. They'll
go out and commit adultery and murder. No. Those things aren't
given for our example. As far as, you know, it's okay
for you to do that, no. But David didn't lose his salvation,
but in Psalm 51 in his prayer of penitence, you know what he
said? Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. That's what he lost. And we can
do that. Lose the joy of it. Restore unto
me the joy. And what is the joy? It was joy
and peace in what? Believing, looking to Christ. That's what it's all about. Look
at verse four, he says, my beloved put in his hand by the hole of
the door, like in the latch of the door to open it, and my bowels,
my compassion, my feelings were moved for him. And so she's being
stirred up by the voice of her husband. You see, she hasn't
lost her salvation. She hasn't lost her ability to
hear the word. You know, when the Bible talks
about meekness, what does it talk about? What does that mean?
It means submission to God, submission to his word. So she hasn't lost
that. And so it says in verse five,
I rose up to open to my beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh,
and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the
lock. See, she's coming to herself. She's coming to see the reality
of the grace and the love of God, the sweet effects of His
grace moving her, awakening her to the reality and the joy of
salvation, of being married to such a husband, to such a one
who maintains us because we're high maintenance. And here he
is, this is a picture of believers laying hold of Christ. My hands
drop with myrrh. That's a picture of believers
laying hold of Christ, who is our sin bearer, who suffered
in our stead, who took away our sins, who redeemed us by his
blood, in whom we are justified in his righteousness. And all
of this, look, and all of this is a picture of grace, is a picture
of the bride suffering long and dealing with the bridegroom,
rather, suffering long and dealing with his bride in a way of grace
and in a way of wisdom. Look at verse six. I opened to
my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn himself. That's strange
language, isn't it? He's gone. And he was gone. And my soul failed when he spoke. I sought him, but I could not
find him. I called him, but he gave me
no answer. How in the world do you reconcile
that kind of language with Christ? Didn't he say he would never
leave us or forsake us? Well, he meant that, and I believe
it's true. Now here's what I believe we
see here, that Christ, he withdrew himself from the bride for a
time, But he's not abandoned her. He's not written her a bill
of divorce. He would never do that. What
he's done is withdrawn his comforting presence temporarily from his
bride. Why would he do that? I'll tell
you why. It's because we're high maintenance. He's teaching us a lesson. It's
part of the chastisements. the loving chastisements of God. And when we think, you know,
when we get to thinking that God has forsaken us, read the
Psalms sometimes. It's almost like some of those
Psalms, the Psalmist is saying, God, where are you? Why have you left me like this?
What are you doing? This is not my plan. You seem
to be blessing the heathen. There's a song like in Isaiah,
it says, it seems like those guys have it easy. And you're
blessing them, they're rich, they're healthy. And look at
me, poor, poor, pitiful me. You ever heard that song? Poor,
poor, pitiful me. And we get into these pity parties,
don't we? Why does he do this? He does
this to show us our frame. Who we really are. He does this
to show us that we need him and his word and his spirit. That without him we are absolutely
nothing. Less than nothing. He's teaching
us that and he'll teach us over and over again. You know over
in Hebrews chapter 12 where it talks about the chastisements
of the Lord? Well, chastisements are not fun
times in the park, folks. He said they're very grievous.
They're a burden. But they're not God's condemnation
or wrath upon his people because Christ has taken that. They're
not God just being a sadist and wanting to hurt us. These are times which God uses
to drive us back to Christ, to looking to Christ, to drive us
to his word. And he makes a statement in Hebrews
12, 11, that it's only afterward that we come into what he called
the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Now, what is that peaceable fruit
of righteousness? Well, it's not a sinner coming
out of the chastisement, proud of himself, saying, look at how
good I did. Look at how I acted. God's rewarding me because I
did so well. That's not the peaceable fruit
of righteousness. I've told you all once, and I
believe you can identify with me here, that when God chastises
me, I never come out of the chastisement
feeling good about myself. But I do come out of that chastisement
with the peaceable fruit of righteousness, and what is that? Looking to
Christ even more. Resting in Christ even more.
Rejoicing in Christ even more. Thanking God even more for his
grace and his power to save and to maintain and keep a sinner
like me. That's it. And that's why he does this.
Listen to it again. He said, verse six, I opened
to my beloved, but my beloved hath withdrawn himself. He was
gone. My soul failed when he spoke. I sought him, but I could
not find him. I called him, but he gave me
no answer. Now God's gonna answer his people,
but he may not do it right this second. So look at verse seven. The watchman. that went about
the city found me. Now listen to this. They smote
me. They wounded me. The keepers
of the walls took away my veil from me. What's going on there? Well, who are the watchmen in
the scripture? They're God's preachers, God's witnesses, who
are to watch for our souls. And what does he mean that they
smote me? They wounded me, the keepers
of the wall." Well, what I believe it's talking about is this. It
doesn't mean that they, you know, whenever these times of our neglect
or coldness or times of where we fall into particular errors
or whatever, I don't believe they're getting out the black
whip of the law and going to town on us. You better straighten
up or you'll go to hell. What is this smiting? What is
this wounding? What is this taking away? They
tell you the truth. That's what it's talking about.
You're not doing right. And we're not to do that proudly
as if we're not subject to the same problem. Remember Galatians
chapter six, you that are spiritual, you go to that one who has fallen
in meekness and humility, knowing that As the old pilgrim said,
if it weren't for the grace of God, there go I. We don't condemn the person.
You know, somebody said, well, we don't judge our person. Listen,
a sinner who knows Christ is safe and secure from the wrath
of God. Certain for heaven's glory. But
that doesn't mean that at all times in their life, they're
gonna do what's right. And when they do things that
aren't right, God's preachers, God's witnesses, even our brethren,
it's all right to say, that's wrong. Look, if you saw me walking
down the streets of Albany, drunk as a skunk, as they say, wobbling
around, what would you do? Well, he's saved by grace, let's
just let him go. No, he is saved by grace. You'd say, pastor,
you're not doing right. Brother, come back. Pray for
him, that the Lord would convict him, bring him out of this, because
of the grace of God. You see what I'm saying? And
I believe that, and when it says remove away the veil, in other
words, remove all excuses. Everything you can hide behind,
everything I can hide behind, we remove. There's no excuse
for it. I had a preacher friend who was
committing adultery. And I tried to talk to him, and
I'd say, listen, you're bringing reproach upon the kingdom of
God, and you're giving the enemies of God reason to blaspheme. You know what he told me? He said, well, if you were going
through what I went through, you'd do the same thing. You
know what I told him? I said, you may be right, but
it's still wrong. If I do it, it doesn't make it
right. Maybe I wouldn't. I read of a man named Joseph
who was tempted by a temptress and he ran. I read of a man named
David who was tempted by a temptress and he gave in. Both were sinners
saved by grace. One did right, the other did
wrong. The one's right didn't make him any more righteous before
God because his righteousness is Christ just like ours. The
one who was wrong didn't relieve him of the saving grace of God
in salvation, but he was wrong. We'll look at verse eight and
we'll close. He said, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
that's the people of God, our brothers and sisters in Christ.
If you find my beloved, that you tell him that I'm sick of
love, that means I'm sick for his love. I long for His loving
hand, His loving word so much that it's making me sick. I cannot
live without that. That's what she's saying. Pray
to the Savior, knowing that He always hears our prayers. And
I'll tell you where you're gonna always find Him. You're gonna
find Him where His word is preached and believed and honored. Okay,
we'll quit there.