Last week we were looking at
the second half of chapter three of Song of Solomon and we saw
this thing, I call it the palanquin, that old word, this marriage
carriage, if you like, a chariot which is a bed bedecked with
gold and silver and a purple covering over the top of it.
And this gospel carriage is taking the bride in the arms of the
bridegroom to the marriage supper. The vows have been exchanged
and they're on the way to the marriage supper and it's a picture
of intimate love. but the reality is that it's
the believers experience the true believers experience in
this life is a progressing from the moment you knew you were
wed to this glorious bridegroom to that consummation of it in
eternal glory at the marriage supper of the lamb now this week
we're moving on and we're looking in chapter four at the groom's
words to his bride he calls her my sister my spouse so it must
be a spiritual picture because it can't literally be true of
Solomon that he married his sister that would be abhorrent in the
word of God It's a spiritual picture. But what relevance has
this message got to you? What relevance? Does it matter?
Does this message matter to you and anybody else that ends up
listening to it? If you're a believer, if you truly believe that you
are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, then these words in this
message will be the greatest comfort and the greatest assurance. I remember once thinking that
I was a true believer and having absolutely no assurance because
I was constantly plagued with doubts about things that this
chapter puts absolutely beyond question. Beyond any question
of doubt. So it's potentially the greatest
comfort and assurance for you believer. Are you one who thinks
you're a believer, but you're a mere professor, a mere professor
of religion? Well, I tell you, listen, because
if you know nothing of this experience, you're not just a mere professor,
you're nowhere in the kingdom of God. You have no standing
in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is nothing
to you. And when it comes that day of judgment and you stand
there and say, didn't we believe these things? Didn't we do these
things in your name? The Lord Jesus Christ, the great
judge will say, depart from me. I never knew you. It's an alarm
call if you're a mere professor. And what if you're an unbeliever?
Well, there's one of two things. You will either continue in your
unbelief and your utter rejection of this message, and that's for
you to determine, or perhaps what you hear will stimulate
you to inquire further. What is there? What have these
people got? What is there in these words?
What am I missing? Now, I want to focus our thoughts
around verse 12. Verse 12, a garden enclosed is
my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. But
we refer to the whole chapter, so really the text is the whole
of chapter four. And I've got three main points
this morning. Three main points. Unity. Security. and separation. Or privacy, if
you like. Privacy. Unity, security, and
a private separation. So first of all, unity. Look
at verses 9, 10, and 12. 9. Thou hast ravished my heart,
my sister, my spouse. Thou hast ravished my heart with
one of thine eyes, with one chain of thine neck. In verse 10. How
fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is
thy love than wine, and the smell of thine ointments, than all
spices, even verse 11. Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as
milk. Verse 12. A garden enclosed is
my sister, my spouse. My sister, my spouse. This is
the Lord Jesus Christ, in allegory, speaking to his people. He speaks
to his church, which is his bride. What is his church? His church
is that company of all true redeemed people in all ages. What unites
them together is this. They were chosen in Christ, by
the Father, in sovereign grace, from before the beginning of
time, according to the good pleasure of his will. They were redeemed
by Christ who came to be their substitute and their surety,
the messenger of the covenant, the Messiah, the Christ, he came. to stand in the place of those
people the father gave him before the beginning of time. And why
did he come? He came to pay their law debt.
He came to pay their sin debt to the law. He came to satisfy
the demands of God's justice, that the soul that sins it shall
die. How are we going to satisfy that
without being annihilated? He came in the place of his people,
and he died. the just for the unjust to bring
us to God. He came for his church, and his
Holy Spirit, each one of them, individually, calls them out
in time. gives them the gift of faith, to believe, and trust,
and to see, and the perception, to know and understand the things
of the gospel. This is what the church is. It's
those people. There's a whole load of people
that think they look like the church. We saw in Revelation,
didn't we, in the later chapters of Revelation, we saw when the
angel showed John the truth about the woman. And he looked and
he saw a woman. Ah, the church, because the woman
was always a picture of the church. But that woman was a whore. She was a prostitute. She wasn't
true. She was false religion. She was Babylon. Her name was
Babylon. There's so much of that about
that calls itself the church but is in truth adulterous from
the true faith of the living God. So Christ speaks to his
church. It's about Christ and his church,
his true believing people. And he calls his church, which
is individuals, you individually. If you're a member of his church,
it's speaking to you and me individually, and to the church corporately.
And he calls us his sister. and his spouse. His sister and
his spouse. In what sense? In what sense
does he call the church his sister? What's a sister? I've got a sister. Some of you have got sisters.
Some of you have only got brothers. What is a sister? A sister is
a sibling. A sibling? Born of the same parents. One by birth. United in the fact
that you were born. You came from the same womb.
And by the same nature, you've got the same pack of genes just
shuffled in a different way. And there's something that is
particularly strong. You can have really good friends.
And if a friend is exceptionally strong, you'll say, oh, he's
as good as a brother to me. Because by nature, by blood,
by birth, by your origins, a brother is born for adversity. A brother
is born for adversity. Where am I going to go and get
help when things are really bad? Where's my brother? Let me go
to my brother. A brother is born for adversity.
So Christ, the God-man, is his people's brother. in that sense. He's our brother, in that our
God is our brother, in that he is, as we just sung, a real man. A man there is, a real man, with
wounds still gaping wide. This man, this real man, is our
God, and he's our brother. Hebrews 2.14. For as much then,
as the children, the church, You and me, individually, are
partakers of flesh and blood, that's what we exist in. He,
our God in Christ, also himself, likewise, took part of the same
flesh. He became us, that's why he's
our brother, we are his sister, he's our sibling, because he
came and possessed the same flesh that we have. We have not an
high priest. which cannot be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities. Being our brother, he knows what
it's like to wear this flesh. He was tempted in all points,
like as we are, except he didn't sin at all, yet without sin.
The same nature of flesh, the same fleshly infirmities and
temptations, he knows what it is to inhabit this flesh. We
have a unity with him by birth and by nature. But he extends
the same sympathy to us now. He walked this earth 2,000 years
ago, and then he went to glory, and now he's in glory, and we
know him by his spirit here amongst us. But nevertheless, from that
throne of glory, that heavenly throne, he has that same heart
of human sympathy towards his people. He knows this high priest
of ours. He's touched. to take away the
double negative from Hebrews 2.14. He is touched with the
feeling of our infirmities. He knows what it's like to inhabit
this flesh. He called us his friends in the
Gospels. In John 15 he said, you're no
longer servants, but friends. Friends. He's our friend. And
Proverbs tells us there is, of all the friends you might have,
there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. And we
know who he's speaking of in Proverbs. That friend who is
closer than a brother is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's our God. This is the lesson. believer,
your God, your sovereign, your king, your judge, that one who
is over all, who sees all, to whom we must give account, in
whose presence we must stand, that one knows what it is to
wear our flesh. And he calls us his sister, his
sister. Is that not amazing? our sibling. The eternal God, dwelling in
an unapproachable light, to which no man can approach, in the person
of the Son of God, is the sibling of his people. He calls us friends,
not servants. Friends. We willing servants.
But he calls us, you're my friends. You're my sister. Not distant. Not unfeeling. Not unsympathetic. But the kind of man that he is.
You know, you can have friends that you greatly admire, you
can have people that you really look up to and respect because
of their integrity and because of their wisdom and because of
their resources in different situations, but think of the
kind of man this one is. Never man spake like this man,
but the ordinary common people who heard him, you know, when
they gathered round because his words were so powerful, the words
of eternal life, and they said, never man spake like, why do
you go after him, asked the Pharisees, and they said, never, never,
we never heard anybody speak like this. He's truly unique,
truly unique, in everything that he did, in every word he spoke. He is the second Adam, in the
sense that as Adam was created perfect in the garden, the first
Adam fell, and the scripture tells us about the second Adam
who would come. He is the second Adam par excellence. He is perfect. He is exalted. He is high. He is the sibling
of his people. We're in union with him. What's
the unity that the people of God have with their God? were
of the same flesh. He became flesh. Just as the
children, so he became flesh. But more than that, more than
just being of the same nature and therefore united in that
way, he calls us his spouse. His spouse. His betrothed bride. His wife. This is closer than
a sibling, isn't it? The sibling is one by birth and
by nature. The spouse is one by choice. and by love. Isn't that true?
You think of it, you know, you who are brothers, you know, you
didn't really have any choice in the matter. But you are husband
and wife. Oh, yes, you did. And there's
a unity there. And a kinship. There's a kinship
of sovereign choice in God's choice of his people. And it's
everlasting. If God chooses a bride, God never
changes his mind, never changes his mind. And There's an actual
union between his people and their God. their Lord Jesus Christ,
the bride and the groom. There's a union of name. I know
I've told you this many many times and I love to refer to
it because I think it's so vivid, the wisdom of the scripture.
In Jeremiah 23 verse 6 we see the Lord Jesus Christ in prophecy
and it tells us there what his name is. This is the name by
which he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness. That
is the name of our God, the Lord our right, you won't want any
righteousness, you need the righteousness of God in him, the Lord our righteousness. But then go on 10 chapters to
chapter 33 and verse 16, and there it's speaking of the church,
the people of God, and it says, and this is the name by which,
not he, but she shall be called. This is the name by which the
bride of Christ shall be called, the Lord our righteousness. the
Lord our righteousness. The church, as it were, has become,
this sounds so colloquial, but I'm just trying to get the point
across. She has become Mrs. the Lord our righteousness in
that marriage union. She has become what he is. It's
that nature of union between husband and wife. The twain shall
be one. For this cause shall a man leave
his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, shall
cleave to his wife. They shall be joined together.
in union, in legal standing. Two become one. His bride made
the righteousness of God in him. So how does he describe his spouse? How does he describe? How does
he describe you, believer? Look at verses one to seven.
This is our God describing his bride, his spouse, who is his
sister by nature, but look, This is how he describes her. Behold
thou art fair, my love. Behold thou art fair. And then
there's all sorts of analogies or similes with nature, with
things that were beautiful in the eyes of these people. Beautiful flock of sheep. You
might think sheep are just smelly animals in the Lake District
that get in the way and make the grass look nice and neat.
But no, there was an element of great beauty in seeing these
things, because there was value there, and they were good to
behold. All of this, down these seven
verses, is a description of beauty. delight in looking at this. Look at verse seven. This summarizes
it. This is still the Lord Jesus
Christ speaking to his church. Thou art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee. But what does the Shulamite say
in the first chapter? What do the true people of God
know they are by nature? She says, I am black. In other
words, in my flesh, in my sinful nature, as Job said of himself
when he saw God and saw what he was really like, he said,
I am vile, I repent in dust and ashes and sackcloth. In my flesh,
in my sinful nature, I am vile. And so the legalist religionist
says this, and oh, how many of them there are. The legalist
says this, well, well, you'd better strive to make yourself
better because you're not fit for heaven. God's not going to
let you in like that. You know, you've all got to give
an answer for everything that you've done. You better make
yourself better. You better strive to become more
holy by living by the law of Moses as your rule of life and
get ready for heaven. And gradually it is to be hoped
that by church discipline and all of these other things gradually
will get you to a state where God will consider you fit to
be taken into heaven. And he'll give you a reward depending
on how good you've been. You know, there'll be more or
less jewels in your crown. depending on how good you've
been. That's what the religious legalist says. What does our
God say? To the lawn, to the testimony.
If they speak not according to this word, there is no light
in them. What does this word say? What does our God in Christ
say to his people? Thou art a bit fair, no, thou
art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee. If God looks and judges that
there is no spot in thee, who is anybody else to judge that
there is? What God has made his people in the Lord Jesus Christ
by the doing and dying of the Lord Jesus Christ Who is anybody
else to say that they're not that? God pronounces, you are
all fair, my love, by virtue of unity. Unity as sibling and
unity as spouse. In the relationship of spouse,
he's taken legal responsibility and done everything that is necessary.
So this isn't an academic unity. This isn't just one of those
things that you file in the pigeonhole and say, okay I know about that,
yeah that's great, yeah. I know how to repel the religious
legalist when he tells me that I need to be obeying the law
of Moses, I need to do that, so I'll file that away in my
little pigeonhole of responses to people who disagree with me.
No, no, no, it's not academic. Look at verse eight. Because
of this, come with me from Lebanon, my spouse. With me from Lebanon,
look from the top of Amarna, from the top of Shenear and Hermon,
from the lion's dens, from the mountains of the leopards. Thou
hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. Thou hast ravished
my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thine neck.
Can you see here that the concept here that the Holy Spirit reveals
to us in these words, is the feelings of the living God for
his people. Thou hast ravished my heart. Ravished my heart! Overcome with
joy and delight and love for these people. You've ravished
my heart, my sister, my spouse. What a declaration of heart love. and a call to communion. That
call of verse eight, come with me, what a call to communion.
Can we sit silently? Can we sit silently? You know
a marriage is in real trouble when one partner is striving
for passionate delight in one another's presence and the other
one rejects it or ignores it or pays no attention to it. We
need to respond to this. This is our God calling us with
calls of love. Well then the second point, security. You see this union is precious,
is it not? Is there something I need to
do to maintain this union? What do I need to do? You know,
in modern marriage, the marriage of the last, well, I suppose
it's always been the case, but you know, it's been very, very
much the case in the last 50 years or more. You know, now
people don't get married on the basis of a promise, they have
prenuptial agreements which say this is what happens when it
all falls apart. I could tell you, this isn't by any way of
bragging, but I can just tell you what our marriage was like.
In the eyes of the world, it was a marriage that never should
have happened, from different situations. We were 19 years
old. And I remember when we took our marriage vows. Now, 19 years,
would you trust a 19 year old? You know, oh, they're so fickle,
aren't they? They just change their mind at a moment's notice.
And I distinctly remember to this day that when I said, I
do, or I will, or whichever it was, I remember saying to myself,
that's it now. Whatever, for better or for worse,
I mean this. And here we are. I think, you
know, here's testament to it. 47 years this year. She's getting embarrassed, isn't
she? But, you know, it's so different to the flippant, you know, people
go into marriage as if, oh, it's a fleeting thing. It's something
that can be broken. It's something that can be picked
up and put down. No, it isn't. Not true marriage, not marriage
as God intended. Christ here assures his church,
his church corporately, the whole, and individually because the
church is made up of individual believers like you and me. He
assures us of the security of the union. Look in verse 12.
A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. A spring shut up,
a spring of water that is, a fountain sealed, a spring and a fountain,
a private water supply, a secret personal water supply, a walled
garden, enclosed with a wall. Nothing can scale the wall. Have
you been to some of these English country houses and you go into
their walled garden? They're lovely places. Beautiful
walled vegetable garden. And the walls are about 12 feet
high in many cases. Huge great walls to make it a
kind of a little gentle climate in there. Protected from the
strong winds from the outside. Walls that absorb the sun and
so at night the walls keep it warmer in the garden. It's a
garden enclosed. Nothing can scale the wall that
is the relationship between Christ and his church. It's secure.
Nothing can uncover the seal of the spring or undo the seal
of the fountain. None of Satan's devices can upset
these things. God has promised. He has, as
Hebrews says, he's sworn, because he couldn't swear by any greater,
he has sworn by himself. What has he sworn? I saith the
Lord, Zechariah 2 verse 5, I saith the Lord will be unto her, unto
his church, a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory
in the midst of her. A wall of fire, of protection,
round about. Jesus promised security, underpinned
with the Father's strength to his people, in John's Gospel,
chapter 10. Let me just read that to you,
just now. John's Gospel, chapter 10, and
verse 28. I give unto them, his people,
said Jesus, his sheep who hear his voice and follow him, I give
unto them eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall
any man pluck, well it doesn't even say man, it says neither
shall any pluck them out of my hand. Any, spirit, devil, whatever,
nothing. My father which gave them me
is greater than all and no man is able to pluck them out of
my father's hand. I and my father What a word of
confidence. We've got the underwriting of
the living God. Nothing can affect this. If you're
in Christ, you're in Christ for all eternity. Nothing can affect
it. In a world of such turmoil and
uncertainty, what a blessed state to be in, united with God as
brother, united with our God as spouse. But then, in this
verse 12, there's also the idea of a private separation, a private
separation, a garden enclosed. What is a garden? It's a place
of fruitful life. You know, you start out with
barren ground, and I can tell you there's some pretty barren
ground down at the end of our garden, which, for those listening
online, you can't see it, but it stretches down about 130,
140 feet, I guess, something like that, and it was very barren
ground down there. But after 15, 16 years of working
at it and digging in manure and tilling the soil and taking the
stones out and the weeds, you put the spade in there, you only
have to lean on the spade and it goes in the full depth. It's
now good ground, barren ground made fertile and fruitful. But
that's what the church is. The church is a garden, barren
ground, made fertile and fruitful by God. We'll have more of that
next time in the next message, which will be in two weeks. But
it's an enclosed space. It's shut up. It's sealed. It's
a walled garden, separated from the outside. And it pictures
the separation from the world, of the true church from the world,
from the religious world in particular. Contrast it to the spirit of
the last 20 years, where what looked like it was the true church
has increasingly, I could take you to too many examples to count,
up and down the country. Let's make it easier for the
world to come in. Let's remove the barriers that
the world seems to perceive, or we think the world has, to
coming in. And so, I tell you what, let's
change the version of the Bible that we use, and we'll have this
one, because it's easier, the doctrines are easier for people
to get their heads around. I'm not saying there's anything
wrong with trying to make the language the language of the
people of the day, but you know why we stick to this good old
King James Version? It's not because we like archaic
language, it's because the doctrine is true. And without exception,
every modern translation in some respect has diluted the truth
and the purity of that doctrine. They've introduced modern music.
It's not that we like singing old dirges, I think some of our
tunes are lovely tunes, but what they've introduced is a set of
songs and hymns that again dilute the doctrine and compromise it.
and teach the wrong message. And then they've started to use
the gimmicks of the world, the gimmicks of marketing. Marketing's
great for marketeers to sell business. It's completely wrong
in the context of the church. God does not extend his church
by the gimmicks of the world. No. Churches that once stood
in the good old way with the gospel waymarks they've allowed,
now I'll just use one example that I know some of you know
exactly what I'm talking about, but associate membership for
example. What does that do? It dilutes
the doctrinal stance of the church. It's, do you know what gerrymandering
is? We're coming up to a general
election and you know you might start to hear talk of gerrymandering.
I'll explain it to you. Gerrymandering is where politicians
with the power to do so, for one reason or another, change
the nature of the electorate in a constituency. and there
was a case in Westminster some years ago where due to the housing
policy the local council changed the nature of the electorate
and thereby they guaranteed that always the person elected to
represent that area would be of a particular political stance.
It's gerrymandering, right? They've done the same sort of
thing in the churches. With their associate membership
they let in a more liberal electorate. And guess what they vote for?
Things which are contrary to what this word teaches. Not so,
I'm not going to labour it, I think I've said enough. Not so God's
true church. Not his true sister, his spouse. His true church is a separated
garden. A separated garden. Not in league
with the world. Look at John 15. Let me read
John 15 verse 18 to you. If the world hate you, gosh in
the church we don't want to talk about hate do we? What a terrible
thing. This is Jesus speaking. If the
world hate you, in other words when the world hate you, Because
the world for sure will hate you. If you declare the gospel
of sovereign grace and particular redemption, the religious world
will hate you. And what will they do to you?
Well, hundreds of years ago, they put people to death, burned
them at the stake. No, if the world hates you, you
know that it hated me. before it hated you. If you were
of the world, the world would love his own. But because you
are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said
to you, the servant isn't greater than his Lord. It's going to
happen to you. Yes, we're hated. We're hated
by the world, his people. God never told Israel to dwell
and intermingle with the Canaanites, did he? Always the opposite.
They did, by sinful nature, they did intermingle, but God never
told them to. He always told them to keep themselves
separate. Jesus never ever said Try to
make an alliance with the world in order to win it for me. Did
he? He never ever said that. His apostles never ever wrote
that. The epistles never ever suggest
that. Try to make an alliance with
the world in order to win it for me. Not at all. And yet how
many churches are attempting to do it? Because they're flying
in the face of this, that the true church of God The sister,
the spouse of the Lord Jesus Christ is a garden enclosed,
a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Because every attempt
at making an alliance with the world in order to win the world,
you know what it results in? Always, without fail, the church
crosses over that barrier into the world, not the other way
round. Don't misunderstand me. the true church is to be separated
the true church is not of the world but it exists in the world
and religion religion contrives all sorts of artificial distinctiveness
this is not what I'm talking about we don't want to be distinctive
in dress we went to a meeting some years ago up in the north
and it was a little meeting and we looked it up somewhere and
we thought oh let's go and try that There were probably about
20 to 25 people in the meeting, men and women. All of the men,
without exception, every single one of them, was wearing a jet
black suit. with a brilliant white shirt
and a jet black tie. It was as if they'd all lined
up in uniform that morning before coming out. And all of the women
were likewise dressed in very dull clothing with each one with
a knitted beret on their head. No, we don't want to be separate
in that way. We don't want the world to look and say, oh, look
at that blimey. You can't go to that church unless
you buy a jet black suit and a white shirt. You just can't
go. What does James say about things like that? We haven't
got time. Nor do we adopt a particular mode of speech. I know sometimes
we tend to be influenced by using the King James Version, and so
we use figures of speech that are much older perhaps, but it
isn't intentional. We don't walk around talking
in a way that the rest of society doesn't talk like. We don't try
to be like the Amish in the USA, you know, they ride around in
horses and carts. I mean, what the people Hundreds
of years before that, before they'd invented the wheel, would
have thought about them driving around in horses and carts. I
don't know. But it's a kind of an isolation. No, that's not
what it's talking about. That isn't the enclosure or the
separation meant here. Jesus was a man of the people.
He readily related to them and them to him. yet they could see
that he was without sin. Now, as we live in this world,
we're to seek to be good neighbors, to live at peace with all men,
to cause no offense other than the offense that people will
take when they ask us the reason for the hope that's in us, the
offense of the gospel. But just one more thought. One
more thought about this garden enclosed, my sister, my spouse. One more thought. It's a separation
from the world, but there's a privacy in there. There's an intimate
privacy. Imagine two married couples living
next door to each other in two houses. And in one house, the
couple, the man and the woman, they hardly speak. There's no
love. There's no intimacy. Oh, they
share the same space. They make use of one another's
money. They eat the same food. They
possibly even sleep in the same bed, but it's a cold, cold relationship. In the house next door, there's
a relationship of heart love between the man and the woman,
a unity of purpose, a desire to please one another. to protect
one another, to love and show affection to one another. Both
houses are enclosed from the outside world. The outside world
can't readily see what goes on inside. But which would you prefer? True believer? True church? That exists. You exist as a true
believer and a member of the true church. You exist for Christ
alone. that he might accomplish his
eternal purpose. And therefore, it calls for complete
consecration. Not a relationship of convenience,
but complete, intimate consecration. A closet. You know when Jesus
said, when you pray, don't pray publicly in a religious place.
No. Go into your closet. And he who sees in secret will
reward you openly. It's a closet relationship with
Christ. protected from the world's interference. Is that what you have? Is that
what you have? You say, well I have it to some
extent. Do you want more? Do you want more? Be conscious
of it. Think on it. Nurture it. Guard
it when the world attempts to jump over, climb over the wall.
Guard it. The secret of the Lord, says
Proverbs, is with them that fear him and he will show them his
covenant. John 15, 15 All things that I
have heard of my father, said Jesus, I have made known to you. We're in the world, we're not
of the world. We're separated from the world
in a private, intimate relationship with Christ, the lover of the
believer's soul. Amen.