A fear I always have when I preach
in places other than my own congregation. Even there I worry about it a
little bit. Did I preach on something that I've preached before? I
know what I preached when I was here in June. I remember that.
I know we came through here in September. I don't even know
if I had the opportunity to preach then. But if I start preaching
a message, and you know, as last time, just let me know because
I'm already prepared, I could go to another one. And you wouldn't
have to hear the same one twice. Wise men write it down on their
notes where they've preached things, but that's something
that wise men do, not necessarily me. Would you open your Bibles
to the second chapter of the Song of Solomon? The life of faith is a matter
of objective truth and subjective experience of that truth. Now,
the truth is an objective thing. And what do I mean when I say
that truth is objective? Well, within the context we're
normally speaking, we mean this. The truth is true no matter what
we think about it. If I say to you two plus two
equals four, you may believe me, you might not. If you believe
me, well, that didn't make the statement true because you believed
it. It was true before you believed it. And if you don't believe
it, you have not changed the truthfulness of the statement.
Two and two equals four. That's just an objective reality. Likewise, when we declare the
gospel, We are declaring objective realities, not subjective possibilities. For example, in Romans chapter
five, verse one, it says, being justified by faith, we have peace
with God. Now, you'll notice it says we
have peace. That's just so. If we are believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ, God is not at war with us and we
are not at war with him. That doesn't mean it always feels
that way to us. That does not mean that we sometimes
wonder whether or not we believe and therefore wonder whether
or not there is indeed peace between us and God. But the fact
is, Being justified by faith, we do, no matter how we feel,
we do have peace with God. Romans 8 verse 1 gives us another
one of these objective statements. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them who are in Christ Jesus. Condemnation is an objective
reality. You are either condemned or you
are not. And whether or not you are condemned
has nothing to do with how you feel about it. There are many
in this world going about feeling perfectly safe and unconcerned
about matters between them and God, and yet they are under condemnation
and their lack of concern over that reality does not change
the reality at all, does it? And most of us as believers are
in a blessed condition of no condemnation, but we still go
around worried about it. But that doesn't change the reality
of it, does it? The objective reality is there
is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. God has
said it. He went to the effort of inspiring
one of his apostles to record it for us, and probably did so
because he knew it is such a hard concept for us to grasp, such
a difficult thing for us to grasp fully, so that we live our lives
completely within the freedom and joy that comes from the knowledge
that there is no condemnation for us. So there are objective
realities, but as we live, we desire that these objective realities
become part and parcel of the way we think, so much gripping
our way of thinking that we experience and feel them. I'll give you
an example or an illustration. We may firmly believe that our
spouse loves us, But are there not times when we feel it and
experience that love more than it does? Well, it's the same
way when it comes to the things of God. For you see, even though
we have been regenerated on the inner man, called the spirit,
We are alive to God through the Spirit, yet in our flesh, we're
still dead as we ever were. And those two principles, those
two natures, each setting forth a way of thinking, war in our
consciousness to such a degree that we never are settled on
either side of the issue. At least not for long. But the
Lord God knows this. And the Lord God desires not
only the objective, I hate to say the Lord God desires. Because,
you know, as culture changes, the meanings of words change.
And a culture can change so much that they don't even have good
words to use to describe God and his actions. God does not
desire anything he doesn't have. Isn't that true? I hear people say, well, God
wants. No, He doesn't. God has, God purposes, God has. If God sets His eye on someone,
He will have that person. If He has purposed their salvation,
it shall happen. The Lord will not be disappointed
in the least with the way things turn out. But we have no other
words to use, and so I'll just have to use that one And you'll
just have to understand what I mean when I say that the Lord
desires not only that we know the objective realities of the
gospel, which he has purposed for our salvation, but that we
should also live in them and enjoy them, to rejoice in Christ
Jesus, not just believe him. In the sense of, I say, okay,
Jesus Christ is my savior. I've cast my soul on him. Rather
to live in that, what the Bible calls the joy of the Lord. The
full confidence that through Jesus Christ, all my sins are
gone, that he doesn't just tolerate me, that he's not just letting
me into heaven, that I'm not simply some trophy of his grace
in which he has no personal interest. But for reasons unknown to us,
and maybe no reason at all other than he's God and this is the
way he wanted things, but for reasons known only to him, he
actually loves us, rejoices in our union with him, and delights
to hear from us, delights to look upon us. And I want you
to think of this. Our Lord in his high priestly
prayer, what did he pray? I would father that those that
you have given me would be with me. He was not content that they
merely get to heaven and live some several miles from where
he is and maybe once in a while their paths cross. You say, I
desire. Maybe you have the attitude of
Paul. I desire to depart and be with Christ. I can fully understand
that. Can't you? What believer wouldn't
want that? Think on this. According to the
Lord's prayer, he desires you to depart here and be with him.
So much so, he gave his soul unto death so that that would
happen. And you can be sure of this. it will happen. If you
are in Christ, someday you will be with Christ and you will be
like Christ. Remember that in those three
prepositions, you have pretty much the entirety of gospel truth
in Christ, with Christ, like Christ. That pretty well tells
the whole story of our experience of the grace of God. I want to
look this evening at an aspect or some aspects of this experience
of the life of faith, the experience of the objective realities of
the gospel. It says here in Song of Solomon,
beginning in verse 10, My beloved spake and said unto me, Rise
up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter
is past, The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the
earth. The time of the singing of birds
has come, and the voice of the turtle, that is the turtle dove,
is heard in our land. The fig tree put forth her green
figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away. Now words that aren't written
there, which are necessarily implied there, are this, arise
my love, my fair one, and come away with me. Now the reason
we can add those words in there without any fear of adding to
the scriptures is simply because he said come. He didn't say go. He's not sending, he's calling. Our Lord's Words to his people
are always a call. They always involve a call to
him. He never sends us, but that he
goes with us, and therefore it's not really sending in that absolute
sense of the word that we would think of it. He calls us to come
and to go with him. Now Song of Solomon's a romantic
story, and I'm a romantic at heart. I'm a pretty sentimental
fellow, actually. I love a good romantic story.
When we had DirecTV, we watched a lot of Hallmark, the Hallmark
Channel. I think it's kind of fun. Stories
that end well. People meant to be together get
together. Love finds its satisfaction. I like that. Song of Solomon
is a romantic story. Anyone who's ever been in love
will recognize its themes. I don't think that God merely
appropriated human romantic love in order to illustrate that relationship
that exists between Christ and the church. I think he invented
human romantic love in order to illustrate the relationship
between Christ and his church. From the time we enter an age
when romantic love makes sense, well, I shouldn't say that romantic
love never makes sense, but you know what I mean. When it becomes
the passion of our minds and our hearts, it utterly consumes
us, at least most of us. We set our eyes upon one, and
our affection for them grows, and virtually everything else
in our lives is set aside in pursuit of that love. The greatest stories, the most
enduring stories it seems in human literature are stories
of romance. Not everybody knows who Homer
is. And I don't mean the Simpsons
Homer. The author of the Iliad and the
Odyssey. Who here has read those? Everybody
here knows who Romeo and Juliet is. Why? It's so much a part of us and
we all understand what it means. We understand what romance is,
whether or not we've ever found our romantic inclinations fulfilled. Nearly everyone who's reached
adulthood has at one time or another had their thoughts so
thoroughly consumed by someone else. that they thought they
couldn't live without them. We make fools of ourselves for
love. Men who otherwise seem to have
their head on straight act silly when they meet someone with whom
they fall in love. Women, and this is particularly
applicable to our day, I think, you know, it's kind of funny
when you see these rabid feminists, and suddenly they fall in love.
And they start acting like girls again. Amazing, the power of
love. The Lord God invented it for
our pleasure, for our enjoyment. As one said, they referred to
it as nature, said it's nature's trick to make sure that the human
species survives, and that may be so, but it's God's way. It's
an invention of God, it's a wonderful thing. And it's used in a way,
or it's appropriated or even invented in order that we might
understand something of how Christ views his church and how the
church views him. When a man and a woman love each
other, they desire time alone. Last summer, Well, we had a flood at the church
in June, while I was here, by the way. The church flooded. And I said, well, we'll see about
it when we get back. Well, I've just about lived in
the basement of the church ever since, as we had to take everything
from about three feet up. We just took it all off down
to there and been replacing it. And while we were doing it, we've
spruced things up quite a bit. It's been quite a bit of work.
But in the midst of that, I told Bonnie one time, I said, do you
have to work Wednesday? She said, no. I said, let's go
down to Omaha and see the zoo. That sounds kind of silly. Why
do grown people want to go see the zoo? Well, you know, I didn't
suggest that. Primarily from a desire to see
some exotic animals. Well, that's kind of interesting,
but that wasn't a real reason. I wanted to go somewhere where
the only person I knew was Bonnie, where if we were wise enough
to turn off our cell phones, no one would be able to contact
us. Just go and be alone. It was as though I were saying
to her, come away with me, my love. It did not so much matter
where we were going, It only mattered that she and I would
be together without anybody else but ourselves to think about,
to relate to, to be concerned with. We don't get many opportunities
like that in our lives. Our lives are pretty busy. I'm
not saying that's not the way it should be. It's just that
is the way it is. It's amazing how much of our
lives are already scheduled up. We get up in the morning and
it's rush, rush to get ready to go to work, to go to school,
to get kids ready to go to school. And then we come home and it's
supper time. And then kids got, if they're
in school, good grief, the school certainly got them scheduled
up to the gills. And by the time everybody's done fulfilling the
schedule, there's only time enough for sleep. How precious are those
times? when a man and a woman, a husband
and a wife can be alone, just the two of them without distraction. This story, the story in the
Song of Solomon and the principles of love in it are an account
of the love that exists between Christ and his church. He loves
her and she loves him. Now those are objective truths.
Christ loves his church, and we know it because he gave
himself for it. The church loves Christ. Now, not everybody written down
on the membership list of one of the religious organizations
called Christian in this world loves Christ. We know that. It
could be that within this very assembly, not every one of you
who professes to believe truly does and loves the Lord Jesus
Christ. But Paul said this, if any man
doesn't love the Lord Jesus Christ, he's under a curse. Well, we
know the church isn't under a curse. Consequently, the only logical
conclusion we can make is this, every member of the church of
the Lord Jesus Christ loves him. But you who do love Him, can
you not see that it must be that those who believe Him love Him? Because if they believe Him,
from their heart they've seen Him, and anybody who's ever seen
Him loves Him. You've heard the phrase, to know
Him is to love Him. They say that about people as
a way to praise them, someone that's so good, that's so loving
themselves and accepting, they all know Him's to love Him. Well,
if there's anybody that applies to, it's the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is there about him not to love? We may stand in amazement
that he loves us, but we should not be amazed at all that there
are people who love him, for he is altogether lovely. There is no fault in him. It
says in verse two of chapter two, And this is the Lord speaking
of his church. As the lily among thorns, so
is my love among the daughters. Now you and I may feel more like
the thorns. We look at ourselves and we seem
to be a very thorny bunch of people, not lily-like. I'm not sure of exactly what
plant he's talking about. The lilies I've seen pretty much
have been cultured in a garden somewhere. There weren't any
thorns around. But I suppose there was some kind of lily that
grew wild and was beautiful, and yet it was commonly found
among thorny plants. But is that not the church in
this world today? Those who have been made beautiful
with the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet they live among thorns,
the thorns of the unbelieving, rebellious world? That which,
come to think of it, might have been used to wind into a crown
and be forced upon the head of our Lord Jesus Christ. That which was an example of
the hatred of the world, and yet these lilies are found among
them. I hear people, and I've even
done it, deplore the condition of the church. Saying such things,
the church is in a very low state in this world. No, it's not. It may be that professed religion's
in a very low state, but what do you expect out of worldlings? What do you expect out of thorns
trying to look like lilies? That's never gonna work out.
The church at all times and every place is glorious has been made
beautiful with the beauty of her Lord. Every believer is beautiful
on the inward man. There is no fault in them. That
which is born of God does not sin. That which was renewed in
the new birth, there's nothing wrong with it. The only problem
is, is it's got to share a consciousness with that which was born naturally,
the flesh. And there's a continual warfare
there. Therefore, we don't always do what we want doing. In fact,
no matter what we do, at least one half of us is dissatisfied
with the outcome. When we go to worship and we
enter into the worship of God from our inner man, the outer
man saying, I'd rather be fishing, or I'd rather be watching a ball
game, or I'd rather be taking a nap or something, anything
but here. I wish these pews were more comfortable
than they are. Yes, we patted them, but they
don't recline. I wish the service wasn't going
on so long. Why did we sing that song? All
the while the inner man is rejoicing in every word of praise, in every
word of prayer, in every word of preaching. That's just the
way it is. But the Lord does not look upon
the thorniness of our flesh. He looks upon the lily-like nature
of that inward man which he has created and he delights in it
and rejoices in those times of intimate fellowship. And then
the church says of her Lord, verse three, as the apple tree
among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the suns. Now, I've walked around in forests. To be quite honest, I don't ever
recall coming on an apple tree in the middle of the forest.
Apple trees are pretty much, in our day, a cultivated tree.
You find them in people's yards, or you find orchards full of
them. But you don't think of it as
a wild tree. But there is such thing. There's places I suppose
you could go, and you'd be walking through the forest, and there'd
be pines, which smelled nice. There'd be maples and such trees
as that, which maybe look pretty in the fall. You may see some oak trees from
which some sturdy timbers can be cut. But if you come on an
apple tree, you come on something that is fragrant, that is beautiful,
but what's more, has the capacity to sustain a man. It bears fruit. Pine trees are nice, but I can't
eat pine cones. At least I don't think I can,
I've never tried. Acorns, I've heard of some people eating them,
but I've never heard of anybody doing it when there was something
else to eat. Oh, but an apple. Not only that,
the apple tree has always been a tree symbolic of love. Some
of you may remember the World War II song, don't sit under
the apple tree with anybody else but me. Why the apple tree? People
regularly sit under apple trees? Not really. I guess Sir Isaac
Newton did one time and got a funk on the head and that made him
funk up something about gravity. But the idea was, sitting under
the apple tree was romantic love. And so he says, or she says,
as the apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my beloved
among the suns. She says, as I look at all the
people of the world, Remember our Lord is one of the people
of this world. I know he's of the other world
and yet he was born into this world. I hear people say, well
in the days of his flesh. What do you mean in the days
of his flesh? He's still in his flesh. He's still as human as he ever
was. In fact, for lack of a better way to put it, he's more human
than he ever was. For he is a human as humanity
was supposed to be in the first place. A glorious human being. There's one God and one mediator
between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. And she says, among
all the men, among all the sons out there, in particular, those
who have set themselves forward as saviors. He said, they're just like so
many useless trees in the forest.
And my beloved is the apple tree. I sat down under his shadow with
great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. You know, churches, particularly
young churches who are just forming, and in particular when they try
to form, and they have no experienced pastor at the helm, they'll write
up a constitution. And in that constitution will
be a significant amount of words about how church discipline will
be handled. I remember Henry's telling us
in the preacher's class in the early 80s, of some church like
that and they came in and he said it wasn't a church but about
20, 25 people. He said they had a constitution
about that big. And they said we'd like you to
look this over and tell us what we ought to do with it. He looked
at it, dumped it in the trash. He said that's what you ought
to do with it. But all this thing about discipline, which is essentially
under what circumstances and by what means do we get someone,
get rid of someone in the church that we think is being naughty.
You know something? Notice what she says here. His
fruit, now his fruit is himself. It's his truth. It's the grace
that comes by Him, all the things associated with Christ. It says
it was sweet to my taste. Brethren, do you think that you
need anything more than the gospel to handle the discipline of God's
church? People who don't love Christ
don't like His gospel either. It is difficult for them to stay
in a church where the gospel is continually preached, when
Christ is set forth indeed as the apple tree among the trees
of the wood, when his glories are set forth, when the people
gather together and sing his praises, and somehow or another,
and for reasons unknown to the unbeliever, they are filled with
an ecstatic joy even at the mention of his name. And they're thinking
to themselves, yes, but what do you have for the kids? I sure
would like to get us a gospel quartet. You think we could devote
a Sunday to some southern gospel preaching? I mean, excuse me,
southern gospel singing. Or something like that. But if
all you do is stand, and I know this is what goes on here. You
stand, the preacher stands, and he declares the gospel of Christ. The people sing hymns about the
Lord Jesus Christ. They pray to Him. They talk about
Him all the time. You know what? They lose interest.
There's nothing here for someone who doesn't love the Lord Jesus
Christ. Back in Iowa, I keep telling,
I said, we're gonna keep it real simple here. People say, what
you got down there? Well, we got one thing. We got
Christ, and we can't even dispense Him. I mean, He's not ours to
dispense. But if you want to hear about
Christ, I don't know whether you'll hear about Him anywhere
else, but you will hear about Him at our place. Well, what
else you got? Nothing. I told one of our men
early on, you know, when we were still kind of a radical church
in the eyes of the people. We were new, and they didn't
know what we were about. But they knew who went to our church,
and they told one of the members, said, you don't have any good
people down there. The member said, well, you got that right. Oh, the church has nothing for
the world but Christ. But in having that, the church
has everything the world needs. His fruit was sweet to my taste.
And so long as the fruit of the Lord Jesus Christ makes up the
ministry of the church, It will be a rare situation that any
trouble will arise that does not resolve itself. And I've
seen it happen in our church. People come, they pretend like
they like what they're hearing, but they have a false heart,
they are a Judas at heart. And if we were to pay a great
deal of attention to them, they can create trouble. But if all we do is keep preaching
the gospel to them, they eventually just get frustrated and leave.
There's nothing for them to work with. I've said before from the
pulpit, people coming to churches, they want the power. I said,
well, you want the power, you can have it. There ain't any
here. There's only one power, one authority. It's the Lord
Jesus Christ. If you can get it from him, you
know, try. Let's make some general observations
here on what the Lord says to His church, beginning in verse
10. First of all, verse 10, we actually
do have the words of the church. It says, my beloved spake, the
church and every believer in it loves the word of Christ. Now, what is the word of God?
You know, we use that phrase quite often to describe the Bible.
The interesting thing is the Bible never uses that phrase
to describe itself. I'm not saying that we cannot
call the Bible the Word of God, but it would be good for us to
understand what the Bible means when it speaks of the Word of
God or the Word of Christ or simply the Word. It's speaking
of the gospel. You see, in the religion I was
raised in, which you would have called fundamentalism in that
day, they believed so long as they
were preaching the Bible, they were preaching the Word. We preach
nothing but the Word of God. The fact of the matter is they
rarely preach the Word of God. They preach Bible. They could
tell you all about Jewish history. They would tell you all about
how much money you ought to give, and they had their Bible open
when they were doing it. But brethren, it is not the Word
of God until it's the message of Christ. And you say, how do
you know that? Because Peter says, speaking
of the word of God, which lives and endures forever, he says,
and this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
Now, the fact is, when it says this is the word which by the
gospel was preached to you, that was the best they could to try
to translate a word for which we have no verb form. The best
we could come up with would be this is the word that was evangelized
to you. It was gospeled to you. He took the word normally used
as a noun to speak of the gospel and simply formed it as a verb.
This is the word which was preached as the gospel to you. That is the word, and it says,
my beloved spake. Oh, when Christ speaks, it's
the sweetest voice ever heard. That is when he speaks to his
beloved. There's a hymn which a lot of believers have a little
trouble with. I come to the garden alone while
the dew is still on the roses. They think it's just a sentimental
song, but the fellow who wrote it said that that hymn was inspired
by Mary going to the garden tomb. And you remember she couldn't
find him and she bumps into him, thinks he's the gardener. And
when he said Mary, he spoke to her. And thus you get that line,
he speaks, and the sound of his voice is so sweet, the birds
hush their singing. And brethren, when our beloved
speaks, oh, how wonderful it is. I love
to go and preach to God's people wherever they are. I called Chris
up and asked him if I could. Would it be all right if I preached
to y'all? He consented. I hear of preachers, you know,
they get an opportunity to preach. They want to know, how much are
you going to pay me? They ought to be saying something like,
how much do I have to pay so I can come preach to you? That ought
to be how much we love to declare the work of Christ. We'd be glad
to pay for the privilege of doing it. But I love to preach, but
brethren, I can preach and nothing come of it. I can come and I
can speak to you and it won't be pretty, it won't be enjoyable,
it won't help your heart any. But if Christ speaks, isn't that
wonderful? If by His Spirit, He joins His
voice to the voice of the preacher and it's no longer the preacher
that you hear, but Him. Oh, it's the loveliest of sounds
and the most beautiful of messages, my beloved spake. and said unto
me." Our spiritual life began when he spoke to our hearts.
My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord Jesus, and they follow
me. And why do they follow him? They like what he says. It's a bafflement to me how people
could think that a believer wouldn't like something that the Lord
Jesus said. I haven't found a word in the
Bible I don't like. And since he first spoke to us,
his word, his voice has been our greatest delight. And no
wonder when we look at what his word to us is. Look at verse
four. He brought me to the banqueting
house. I don't know what the feelings were of the translators
of the King James, but strictly speaking is he brought me to
the house of wine and his banner over me. was love. I don't know for sure what imagery
is being brought up here, but I imagine a great feast being
held by the king. And he's got all his advisors
and what the president calls his
cabinet up there, the uppity-ups in his government, and they're
all seated at the head table. And their title is above them
on a banner. This would be the Secretary of
Defense, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of this and all that.
And then there's his wife, and the banner over her says, Love. Love. Let the Secretary of Defense
have his banner. You know what happens there?
If he messes up, He gets kicked out. He gets fired. If the Secretary of Defense loses
the war, he gets replaced. But the one over whom the banner
is loved can never be removed. If you shoot the Secretary of
Defense, there may be legal proceedings. You may be found guilty and maybe
even executed. And the king will say, that shouldn't
have been done. You touch that one over whose head the banner
is love and the king's own hands will be at your throat. We went through the book of Revelation
here back in 2008. One of the things that surprised
me is all those judgments that were being leveled against, visited
on the world. You know, if you ask most religions,
they say, that's because of all the homosexuality and abortion.
Well, one thing's for sure, those things do deserve judgment, and
I won't say God never brings them, but in the book of Revelation,
in speaking of his judgment, it says, he has avenged the blood
of his martyrs upon the world. Now you think about that. All
that horrible, Stuff mentioned there in the book of Revelation.
God's doing it to the world because the world reached out and harmed his church. Touched his beloved. I suppose if anyone had any evil
intentions toward my wife and certainly if took any evil actions
toward her, I do all within my power to subdue him and stop
him. My power is very limited. You who belong to the Lord, His
banner over you is love, and if anybody tries to touch you,
infinite power is engaged in your behalf, and not all the
host of hell bound together in one conspiracy. can bring you
any harm. You say, well, they might kill
me. So what? All they'll do is send
you home. Now think about it. The worst
they can do is send you to heaven. The worst they can do is open
your eyes to the face of him who loved you and gave himself
for you. That will happen in its due time
one way or the other. Let me try to hurry along. Going
longer than I planned. He says to her, arise. Christ comes to us
in our spiritual death and he often finds us in our spiritual
slumber. Certainly when he first comes
to us we are in death and he says arise just as he said essentially
to Lazarus, arise, come forth. But because we are yet in our
flesh, he often has to come to us in our slumber and say, arise. We have lives to live and there's
nothing we can do about that. And it's not as though it's bad.
We've got our jobs to go to. We got our kids to raise. We
got our houses to build and our cars to pay for. There's all
that going on. We got our sicknesses to tend
to. We got other relatives, other obligations. All that's there.
All that's necessary. Nothing wrong with it. Here's
the trouble. As we get so busy with those things, it is quite
easy to forget the things of Christ. On the night our Lord
was betrayed, he went to the garden of Gethsemane. And out
of his 12 disciples, he took three with him. And he says,
come with me while I pray. And they go a little farther
into the garden with him. And he says, all right, sit you here and you
pray. And I'm going to go over yonder and pray. And he goes
over yonder and prays for a while. And he comes back. And what are
they doing? They're asleep. Now, we might want to say to
them, what in the world are they asleep for of all the times the
Lord needs them? I mean, he could use their support
and they're asleep. I love our Lord's gracious remark. He did say, you couldn't pray
with me for an hour? I said, that sounds a little
like a rebuke. And he goes, well, spirit's willing, flesh is weak. Our Lord understands. Oh, I'd
love to pray, wouldn't you? The moment I try to pray, 15,000
thoughts come in my mind. Some of them even good thoughts.
I'll pray a sentence or two and it'll remind me of something
in the scriptures, and I go off thinking about that instead of
praying. Gotta wake us up. Arise, the
time has come. He says, let's get back to the
Song of Solomon. He says, my beloved spake and
said, rise up my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo, the
winter is past, the rain is over and gone. Winter is over. He said, to all
difficult times, there comes an end. Now, I'll be honest with you,
the end of your difficult times might not come to the end of
your time here. There are believers who suffer
lifelong trouble. Maybe we'd be more accurate to
say they celebrate death-long trouble. Because that which we
call life is nothing but a walking death, And that which we call
death is nothing other than the portal to our real life. But
speaking as we normally do, there are believers who suffer trouble
their entire lives. They have burdens upon them which
the Lord is never pleased to lift in this life. They may have
physical pains for which he provides no alleviation. They may have
personal struggles with which they struggle every day of their
lives until the end. They may have problems of the
mind and the heart, struggles that you and I don't know anything
about. But beloved, because we belong
to Him, someday all these things will come to an end. For the
unbeliever, all his joys will come to an end. For the believer, all his sorrows
come to an end. Think of it this way. For the
unbeliever, this world, no matter how bad it is, is the best he'll
ever have. And for the believer, this world,
no matter how good it is, it's the worst he'll ever have. The winter is over, the spring
has come, Positive enjoyment. He speaks of the flowers, beauty,
of singing, joy. It says the voice of the turtle
dove. The translation I normally use says the cooing of doves. What do we associate the cooing
of doves with? We're back to romance again. That noise they make is just
so pleasant. I know we consider pigeons to be kind of nasty birds,
That's because they live in the city. It wouldn't be noticed
if they were out in the country. But such a pretty little noise
they make. The cooing of doves. See what he calls her. My darling,
my beloved one. See how it describes her. My
beautiful one. My love, my fair one. Now I can
understand when believers speak gloriously of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is a wonder to me he ever
speaks well of us, but he does. We feel our sin upon us. We're
brought down with a sense of our guilt and we come crawling
to the Lord as though he wouldn't have us, but he calls us his
beautiful ones. His call, come away with me,
my love. It is always a call to him. It's
always a call away. And it's always a call of love.
I've gone a little long already, but give me just a few more minutes.
I want to tell you four times in the life of the believer when
Christ says, come away with me. This is his call of the gospel.
He says, the winter of your spiritual death is over. The rainy season. of the works of grace which prepare
our hearts to receive him. It's done its work. You know,
rain is good, but I'll tell you, spring rains can get dreary,
can't they? And the work of grace which prepares
our heart for the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ can be
a tough time, but it's good. But even that's over, and now
it is time, he says, to come away with me. Come away with
me. Secondly, this is the call to
worship. You ever had that feeling, eh,
gotta go to church? Well, if you've gotta go to church,
I don't blame you for feeling that way. But what if the Lord
called you up Sunday morning and said, come away with me,
my love? I got a day planned for us. We're gonna take the
day off, just you and me. That'd make going to church seem
like an entirely different thing, wouldn't it? Oh, we make church
into an obligation. We make church into something
we've got to do, a task to be completed so we can move on to
what is our lives. Brethren, the worship of God's
saints is the closest to heaven you get. What are they doing
in heaven, according to John? They're singing praises to Christ
for his glorious sacrifice on our behalf. Worthy art thou,
for thou hast redeemed us by thy blood, from every kindred,
tongue, tribe, and nation. Isn't that what we're doing?
We don't do it as well as they do it, but that's what we're
doing. This is heaven. Oh, our Lord says to us, come
away with me. The winter's over. That week
of you having to go out there and deal with the world, it's
over. It's done. We're gonna start a new week. And we're gonna start it off
just you and me, he says. Two or three of you will gather
together, I'll be there. We'll be alone. We can talk to
each other that kind of language that only you and I understand.
Nearly every married couple has their own words for each other.
In their own way, they talk to each other. And it seems silly
to everybody else. Seems pretty wonderful to them.
And the Lord speak to us in words that the world cannot understand
and cause foolishness. Oh, we love to hear it. Think
of this now. Another time in which the Lord
says, come away with me, my love, when we're about to die. Oh,
we hate that thought, don't we? I'm gonna be 60 this February.
Now, it seems like folks in my family live up into their 80s.
In fact, if I live to 80, I'm 75% done. And that's if I make
it to 80. What'd Moses say? Three score
years and 10. And if by strength we get 10
more, it's just 10 years of old age. We never get to add 10 years
of youth. Everybody here is gonna die. A child of God, consider this.
When the Lord comes at your time, he's gonna say, come away with
me. The winter's over. the winner of this world, living
in this mess, the winner of your struggle between flesh and spirit,
the winner of your frustrations, the spring rains of the grace
that sustains you, that was good for you, though at many times
you were dreary and weary. Oh, now tis the spring, when
all that is over, and there's nothing but the fragrant smell
of the fruit of my grace. Nothing other than the joy of
the singing of birds and the romance of cooing doves. When
I prepared this message for our congregation last July, I could
not help but think of our sister, Mary Bell. Because, humanly speaking,
the handwriting was pretty well on the wall, wasn't it? We knew
it'd be a matter of time, and not only a short time, and you
start to think about mortality. Well, here a month or so ago,
the Lord came to our sister and said, come away with me. That's
enough of this. That's enough of frustration.
That's enough of pain. That's enough of sin. Let's just
you and me go away. And then the day will come when
our Lord will return. Paul said the Lord himself shall
descend from heaven. with a shout. And what do you
think he's going to shout? Beloved! Come away. Come away. It's time to get out
of here. You've served your time, so to speak. Winter's over. I'm going to get
rid of this place. I'm destroying it. I'm destroying
everything and everyone that troubled you. including your flesh, I'm gonna
change it. You come away now with me, not
for a day, not for a week, forever. To his church, the Lord says,
it'll be just you and me from now on, no one to interfere,
no one to obstruct your view of me, no one to lie about me,
no one to make you doubt me, No sin to blur your vision, just
you and me together forever. Come away with me, my love.