Song of Solomon chapter four.
I've titled the lesson this morning mutual enjoyment and coming with
Christ. You know, we normally think of
how good it is for us to be with the Savior, how we enjoy his
presence. We long for his presence. We
pray for his presence. And when he blesses us with his
presence, how much we really truly enjoy that. But our text
this morning, we're going to see that this is a two-way street.
The Savior enjoys being with his bride too. So he commands
her, come with him, come to him and come with him, that we can
enjoy communion with him and he can enjoy communion with us.
Look in verse eight. He says, come with me from Lebanon,
my spouse, with me from Lebanon. Look from the top of Amana, from
the top of Shinar, from Hermon, from the lion's dens and from
the mountains of the leopards. Now we know this. I try to say
this very frequently. The commandment of God is come
to Christ. Quit trusting in anything that
we do and come trust in Christ. Come to Christ for mercy, for
salvation. But here you'll notice the Savior
says, come with me. This is a call of grace to come
walk with Christ. You'll believe in Christ. It's
not just a doctrinal belief of things about him, of who he is.
Believing Christ is a walk of faith. It's walking with Christ. It's the sheep following the
shepherd. The sheep don't wander off on their own. They walk with
the shepherd. They stay with the shepherd.
walking with Christ is communion with him. It's enjoying his presence,
it's learning more of him, it's hearing his voice in the gospel,
it's hearing his voice in the word, it's communing with him
in prayer. And our Lord says, come, come
right now. Now this sounds like a sweet
invitation, and the bride is very willing to come. When we
think, Roy mentioned in his prayer, how Christ suffered, and he died
for me. And then he tells me, come to
him? Oh, I'll come. The bride is very willing to
come. But this is a commandment because
of who's speaking. And the bride obeys this call
because Christ has given her a heart of faith. He's given
her a heart that longs to be with him. He's given her a heart
that enjoys to be with him. So we're very thankful when he
calls us to come walk with him. And this is a commandment to
a specific person. He says, my spouse, he's speaking
to his wife, to my bride, come with me. He's telling his bride
to come with him, to be in close communion with him, to enjoy
that communion with him, to come be with him, be one flesh with
him and to come cleave to him, to stay with him. Now Christ
tells his people, come with him. Now, if we're going to go to
Christ or we're going to go with Christ, it's pretty obvious we're
going to have to leave where we're at and go to Christ. We're going to have to quit what
we're doing and go with Christ. If we're going to be married
to Christ, we've got to leave our father's house and we've
got to go with Christ. Well, that's not really a hard
decision to make. I mean, that's a pretty good trade to leave
the fallen house of Adam and go be with Christ, our husband.
Oh, no, well, that's a good trade. We'll go with him. So first,
the bridegroom says, no, I have to leave where we're at and go
with him. First, he's telling us to come out of false religion
and go with him. When he talks about Lebanon here,
Lebanon is where Solomon got the cedar trees to build a temple.
And sometimes when we read in scripture of Lebanon, it means
the place of Lebanon. Sometimes it means the temple.
Cause that's where they got these materials to build the temple
here. And he's referring to the temple
and he's telling us, come out of false religion and go with
Christ because there's no communion. There can be no communion. There
can be no walking with Christ in false religion. There is no
communion with Christ in the law. That's what was going on
in the temple. There's no communion with Christ in the law. There
is no communion with Christ in the ceremonies. It's not the
form and the motions of religion that gives us communion with
Christ. It's being with Him. It's being in love with the person.
It's being with Him. By the time the Lord Jesus came
incarnate and He appeared in the temple, what did the temple
become? He called it a den of thieves,
lion's dens, like what he talks about here in verse eight, come
out of false religion and come with Christ. This is a blessing
that's with him, that we enjoy with him. Second, our bridegroom
is telling us is to come with him, leave where you're at and
come with him, come out of the world. Now these mountains he
mentions here, they all are nice places. They look nice, they're
beautiful places, but we've got to come away from those places
and come with Christ. And that's the world. To the
flesh, this world looks like a nice place. There are lots
of nice things that attract us, attract our attention, attract
our desire. But now we've got to come out
of that, come out of this world and go with Christ. These mountains
look like beautiful places from a distance. But when you get
up close and you get a good close look at them, they're dangerous
places. Lions and leopards live there.
And that's what this world is. To the flesh, from a distance,
boy, it looks sweet. It looks like a nice place. But
this world, when you get up close, take a good close look at it,
it's a treacherous place, full of darkness and sin and death. It's full of predators like these
lions and these leopards. The world is where the old lion,
Satan, it roams. He's roaring, seeking whom he
may devour. But if you look over in Isaiah
chapter 35, we're to come away from the world and go with Christ
because there's none of those, none of that, that old lion,
Satan, the leopards, the predators, the danger, there's none of that
with Christ. Isaiah 35 verse eight. And a
highway should be there, and a way. Now this highway, this
way he's speaking of, it's Christ in picture. A highway should
be there and a way, and it should be called the way of holiness.
The unclean should not pass over it, but it should be for those,
the wayfaring men, though fools should not err therein. No lion
should be there, nor any ravenous beast should go up thereon. It
should not be found there. but the redeemed shall walk there,
and the ransom of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with
songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain
joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Because there's none of that danger, none of that fear in
the way, being with Christ. So come out of the world, go
with Christ. And third, our bridegroom was
telling us, now if you're gonna go with him, we've got to leave
where we're at. Come out of sin, come out of
self and go with Christ. Now to the believer, we've been
born again, we've been awakened. And there's nothing worse for
a believer than being left alone with ourself, with our sin and
our selfishness. There's nothing worse to the
believer than being left alone with our self-righteousness.
It's miserable to be left alone without Christ. So our bridegroom
tells us, leave that, leave self, leave the way of death and yourself
and come to Christ our life. Leave the way of self-righteousness
and come with Christ our righteousness. He tells us, come away from these
things and come with me. But at the same time, this is
also a promise to be believed. The Savior is promising to bring
his bride out of these things and bring her to glory with him.
Some of the writers say that the Lord is not really saying
so much, come with me away from these mountains. He's saying,
come with me to these mountains. They may be right, I don't know.
But if so, that's a precious promise. Because Lebanon, the
word means whiteness. And Shinar means a snow mountain.
So our Lord is saying, come with me and I'll make you whiter than
snow. Ammanah, the mountain of Ammanah
means support. We look at a mountain. I see
that Mount Everest. I mean, wow, the pictures of
it are beautiful. But you get up close and you
watch those guys climbing that thing. I wouldn't do that for
love or money. That looks dangerous to me. I
know this. I could not do that. Our Lord
says, I know you can't do it. I know you don't have the strength.
I know you don't have the ability, but come with me. I'll be your
support. Hermon, Mount Hermon, it means
sanctuary. You know, if you want me to go
on a mountain, I'm not going where there's lions and leopards
there. I'm just not doing it. Our Lord says, I know you're
afraid. I know you're afraid of the lions and the leopards.
You come with me. I'll be your sanctuary. I'll
bring you safely from all these things to glory. Now that's a
commandment. But that sounds like a sweet
invitation to the bride. That sounds sweet to you because
you're the bride of Christ. You love being with him. I say
with the songwriter, Jesus, I come. You call, I say I come. And Christ gives us this commandment
for our good and for our enjoyment. To be with him, that's for our
good. We enjoy that. But this commandment is also
for the enjoyment of Christ. He says come with me so he can
enjoy being with his bride. Now this is a marriage union
and a good marriage is not just one-sided. A good marriage has
mutual enjoyment of each other. Each husband enjoys the wife,
the wife enjoys the husband. Now it's easy for us to understand
how someone like us can enjoy being with Christ. It's easy
to understand. But I can't understand how Christ
can enjoy being with someone like me. But that's what he says. You come with me. He can enjoy
being with his people and he enjoys being with his people
because of what he's made us. Look at verse nine. Thou has
ravished my heart. Now that word ravished, it means
unhearted. He said, you've stolen my heart.
You've ravished my heart. And that word ravish, it also
means to make the heart beat faster. Everybody here who's
ever been in love knows exactly what that means. You see your
beloved and your heart skips a beat. What our Lord is saying
is you've stolen my heart. My heart is only for you. Now that's a statement that is
so great, we can hardly believe that it's so. But it is because
our Lord said it. God has loved his people. with
an everlasting, eternal, measureless love. Look at Isaiah 63. The very reason that God's son
became a man and he suffered and died for his people is he
loves them. His heart is just taken up with
love for his people. Isaiah 63 verse nine. In all
their affliction, he was afflicted and the angel of his presence
saved them. In His love and in His pity, He redeemed them. And
He bared them and carried them all the days of old. Why did
He put up with them? Why did He carry them so far?
Why did He suffer all their affliction? Because of His great love for
His people. You don't have to turn over here. We just have
studied this in our study in John chapter 13, verse 1. Now before the feast of the Passover,
when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart
out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were
in the world, he loved them unto the end. Christ loves his people. His heart is ravished with love
for his people. And in return, we love him, don't
we? The song of the redeemed in heaven is gonna be unto him
who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. We
sing of his great love for us. Now it's easy to see how our
heart could be ravished with love for the bridegroom. How
wonderful, beautiful, magnificent he is. Of course our heart's
ravished with love for him. But how comforting it is to know
that the heart of the Redeemer is ravished for his people. And it's his heart's ravished
by what he's made us, by what we are in him, when we're washed
in his blood and born again in his spirit. I know that's what
he's talking about. He's talking about the new man
born in the new birth, because look what he calls his bride
next in our text. You've ravished my heart, my
sister, my spouse. Christ calls us his sister. He
didn't marry his sister. He's not talking about anything
gross. He's talking about a kind of love, the kind of love a man
has for a sister. Now, a man who has a sister,
he loves his sister because it's family love. They have the same
father, they have the same blood and they love one another. Well,
how can Christ call me a sister? How can I be in the family of
Christ with the only begotten son of God? How can the son of
God be my older brother? Now, I can understand how he
could call me his little sister. You know, I'm weaker than him.
He's bigger than me. I can see how he could say he's
my big brother, but I don't understand how someone like me can be the
brother to the son of God's sister. He can be my brother. Well, he's
our older brother by incarnation. He took on Him flesh. And when
He took on flesh, He became my brother, my near kinsman, bone
of my bone and flesh of my flesh. We have the same blood. Now His
blood's without sin, but He has human blood. He's washed me in
His blood. When He became incarnate, He
became our brother. Then Christ is our older brother
by nature. Christ didn't take on Him the
nature of angels. He took on Him the nature of
human flesh. And when he took on human nature,
he became our brother. Then he's our older brother because
we've been given his nature in the new birth. When we were given
the nature of Christ in the new birth, he became our brother.
When I was born again, I was born into the family of God.
God became my father. That's what our Lord told his
disciples. I go to my father and your father. Well, if we
have the same father, he's the older brother, we're the little
sister. We're part of the same family. And a man who has a love
for his sister, it's a special kind of love. It's a protective
love. I don't care how old you get,
you always want to watch out for her. You want to do something
for her, it's the way an older brother loves his little sister.
How comforting it is to our heart to know the God of glory feels
a protective love for somebody like me. I'm thankful. I'm too weak to protect myself.
I need someone mighty to protect me. I'm so foolish. I must have someone who's all
wise to protect me from myself. That's our older brother. We
can have some confidence knowing the Lord Jesus Christ loves us
that way as his little sister. And then he says, my sister and
my spouse, the love that Christ has for his bride is so great,
it can't be compared to human love, certainly to any one kind
of human love. He compares his love to his bride
for several reasons because it's, Just one kind of human love will
not give us an understanding of the depths of Christ's love
for His bride. So He says, I love you like a
sister, and I love you as my wife. Now the love of Christ
for His bride is the love of a husband to his wife. It's a
love of union. How I long to have union with
Christ. I can't live any other way. This
is the love he has. It's a love of union where they
become one flesh. It's a love of provision. The
husband is to provide for the wife. Well, I can't provide anything
for myself. I must have the love of Christ
who will provide for me. And then the love of a husband
to his wife is a love of protection. We must be protected. What a
comfort to know Christ will protect me from evil. both without and
within. This is the love of the husband
for his bride. And the heart of Christ is ravished
with his bride. It's ravished by what he's made
us. It's ravished by his grace that's in us. He says, it goes
on here in verse nine, he says, you've ravished my heart with
one of thine eyes. Now I remember, I still remember
this vividly. I remember the first time I looked
into the eyes of Janet Connelly. I remember it. And I was raffished. I mean, raffished. I never got
over it. Now you're telling me the Lord
feels his heart is raffished when he looks into my eyes? It's
what he said, isn't it? We couldn't believe it if he
didn't say it. And the eyes that Christ speaks of here are the
dove's eyes that we looked at in our lesson last week. It's
the eye of faith. He says, you've ravished me with
one of your eyes. He didn't say both of them. He
said, you've ravished me with one of your eyes. That's the
eye of faith. The eye of faith is singular. It only looks to Christ. The
eye of faith is tunnel vision. It only looks to Christ. It's
focused on him. Now that's not our eyes by nature,
is it? Our eyes by nature are blind, cannot see, but Christ
gives his people new eyes in the new birth, and he's ravished
with love for his people. When we look at him with the
eye of faith that he gave us, he's ravished by his work in
us. Then at the end of the verse
nine there, he says, you've ravished me with one chain of thy neck.
Now I would imagine most boys are this way, When Jan and I
first started dating and then we were first married, all the
girly stuff she did fascinated me, just utterly fascinated me. The jewelry and the makeup and
the hair fixing and the picking out of clothes, you know what
I mean? Just utterly fascinating. It ravished me with all that
girly stuff. Well, that's what our Lord's
speaking of here. The necklace that he's speaking
of here that ravishes the heart of Christ. It's not gold and
silver. It's the chains of grace that
he's hung about our neck. Look back at Proverbs chapter
one. Proverbs one, verse eight. My son, hear the instruction
of my father and forsake not the law of thy mother. For they
shall be an ornament of grace under thy head and chains about
thy neck. That's what he's speaking. When
he talks about these chains here, he's talking of the chain of
grace that's around our neck. When our Lord says, take my yoke
upon you, that yoke is easy. That burden is light. That's
grace. Grace is like a necklace around
our neck. There's no weight to it at all
compared to the heavy yoke of the law. And Christ says when
he looks at us, he's ravished with his own grace that's in
us. And if you think about it, he can't be ravished by us any
other way than by his grace in us, what he's made us. Next,
our bridegroom says he's ravished by our love for him. Look at
verse 10. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse? How much
better is thy love than wine? Now, how can Christ be ravished
by my weak, cold, fickle love for him? I don't know that I
can believe that. Well, now that's what he said.
We couldn't believe it if he didn't say it. And a believer's
love for Christ is so complex, it can't be compared to one kind
of human love either. We love Christ like a little
sister loves her older brother. She admires him. She looks up
to him. That's her big brother. And we love Christ like a wife
loves her husband. She loves him deeply. She admires
him, admires who he is. She needs him to protect her
and to provide for her. She needs that communion. She got to talk to him. She's
got to be with him. Just, you know, it doesn't work
any other way because they're one flesh. That's the way a believer
loves Christ, our husband. And he says, I'm ravished when
you love me that way. Your love to me makes me happier
than wine makes the heart happy. Now the only way that can be
is by Christ being ravished by his own work in us. We do love
him, but only because he loved us first and put a heart of love
in us. And his heart is ravished by that new heart of love that
he gave us. Then our bridegroom is ravished by our smell. Look
here at verse 10, the end of verse 10. and with the smell
of thine ointments and all spices." Now, again, I keep using Jana's
example because that's the example I had of love. I read these things
and think of illustrations, I think of her. When I started dating
her, even before I started dating her, her perfume intoxicated
me. I remember she walked by me.
We were in church and she walked by. I got a smell that probably
was like that little cartoon character, you know, floating
along on the air, you know, behind the odor. Her perfume intoxicated
me. Well, all right, you can understand
that. I mean, look at her, look at me. Of course she smells better
than me. But Christ, the perfect holy son of God, being intoxicated
with the smell of me? That can't be. That just can't
be. Brent, that's what he said. He
said, I'm intoxicated with the smell of you. And he's intoxicated
with his work for us and his work in us. When we're washed
in the blood of Christ, we smell sweet. That blood has washed
away everything that's offensive. Everything that looks offensive,
everything that smells offensive, it's washed it away. And we smell
sweet. When we're washed in the blood
of Christ, you know how sweet we smell? We're a sweet savor
to God. When He's washed us in His blood,
we smell like the sacrifice. And the sacrifice of Christ,
the Father said, that's a sweet smell to me. When we're washed
in the sacrifice of Christ, we smell sweet. We smell just like
Christ. We smell, you know, when you're
around someone, maybe you hug them and you're right up next
to them, you start, you smell like them. Their perfume and
things rub off on you. Christ is ravished. because we
smell just like him. Look at down at the end of verse
11. He said, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell
of Lebanon. Now those garments, they smell
like Lebanon, like the incorruptible cedar, the trees that grew in
Lebanon. Those garments he's speaking
of there is the robe of Christ's righteousness. That's Christ's
work for us. It'll never rot. It'll never
decay. It'll never start smelling bad. incorruptible and perfect
smell. Christ, I'm ravished by the smell
of my work for you. But he is also ravished by the
smell of his work in us. When a believer comes out of
the world, we come out of false religion, we come out of self
and we go with Christ. We walk with him by faith. We
do good works and those good works smell good to our Lord. Look in Philippians chapter four. Philippians chapter 4 and verse
18. Paul says, but I have all and
abound. I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which
were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable,
well-pleasing to God. Now you know what happened here.
The church took up an offering to help their friend. Their friend
Paul was down there in prison. You know, they didn't provide
things for him in prison like we do today. So they took up
an offering, sent things to help their friend. And they did that. They took up that offering to
sin because they love Christ and they love the apostle. So
they took up this offering and sent it to him. And the scriptures, the word
of God says, that smelled good to God. That was well-pleasing
to him. How can that be? How can something
that I do be well-pleasing to God? How can something I do smell
good to him? Who put it in your heart to give?
God did. Then Christ is ravished by his
own work in us. That's what he's saying there.
Now look at verse 11 back in our text. Our bridegroom says
next, he's ravished by our conversation with him. Thy lips, O my spouse,
drop as the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under thy
tongue. Now our Savior speaks of our lips. It's just like last
week. He's not talking about the look of our lips. He's talking
about our conversation. He's talking about our prayer,
times of prayer, things we say to him, things we say about him.
The lips of a believer, when we speak of Christ, drop sweet
things, because all the things of Christ are sweet. And he compares
it to honey just dripping out of the cone. That honey, it doesn't
rush out with great force, and it's not forced out. It flows
out freely, just dripping, constantly dripping, that sweet honey. And
when we speak of Christ, those are sweet things, And those are
nourishing things. Milk and honey are nourishing. Milk and honey is what the children
of Israel, when they're down in Egypt and they're gonna leave
Egypt, what did they hear about the promised land? A land flowing
with milk and honey. It's flowing with the things
of Christ. The things of Christ are nourishing to our souls.
And it sounds awful weak to us. I mean, it sounds awful weak.
But when we talk about our Beloved, as weak as it may seem to us,
as much as we stammered and stumbled over it, it sounds sweet to Him. And He talks about the honey
and milk being under your tongue. Well, those are the secret thoughts.
They're not spoken, they're under your tongue. But they're heard
by God. Men may not hear them, your thoughts
of Him. Men may not hear them, but God
hears them. And to us, our thoughts of Christ seem so weak, Insufficient,
there's nothing, even sinful. But those thoughts of Christ
are sweet to our bridegroom. He says, I'm ravished by your
thoughts of me. They honor me, I'm ravished by
them. Now that's mutual enjoyment.
We see how the believer enjoys being with Christ, and here our
Savior tells us how he enjoys when we come with him. And here's
comfort in this. None of this can be lost. None
of it can. Our bridegroom is never going
to come home one day and say, I decided I want a divorce. He's
never going to come home one day and say, we've been married
long enough. I decided I'm not in love with
you anymore. He's never going to say that because those things,
all those things that ravish his heart are his work in us
and his work for us. will never change because he
did it. Those things will never change.
So if we have this mutual enjoyment of being in communion with Christ
right now, you'll enjoy it for the rest of your time here on
earth. And we will enjoy it eternally because all those things that
ravish his heart will never change because it's his work of Christ
for us and in us. All right, I hope the Lord will
bless that to you.