to get men and women to understand
the simple truth of Holy Scripture, that salvation is altogether
the work of God's free and sovereign grace in Jesus Christ. Men and
women are saved by God's election, God's redemption, and God's irresistible
grace in Jesus Christ. Nobody will ever be saved except
God Almighty stop him in his mad rush to hell and turn him
to himself. No dead sinner will ever live
except God give him life. No sinner will ever believe on
the Son of God except God give him faith. It's difficult, very,
very difficult, impossible for any man to teach another man
those things. But once men and women had been taught of God,
that indeed salvation is of the Lord, There is a terrible danger
to run in the opposite direction and get the notion in our heads
that somehow men have no responsibility. To get the notion in our heads
that somehow faith in Christ is an indifferent thing, that
faith is just something God sort of drops in you and leaves it
there and it doesn't have anything to do with your salvation. I
want you to understand clearly the teaching of Holy Scripture.
Faith in Christ is not a passive grace. Faith in Christ is not
indifferent. Faith in Christ is a gift of
God's grace that is very much full of life and transforms everything
about that person who possesses the gift of faith. I want us
this evening to take up right where I left off Sunday evening
in the Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verses 5, 6, and 7. I want
to show you four things that faith does. Here are four things
clearly set before us in this beautiful allegory, showing the
holy activity of faith. Four things that faith does. First, faith leans on Christ. What a picture! Who is this that cometh up out
of the wilderness, leaning on her beloved?" God's people are
people in a wilderness in this world. We are coming up out of
this wilderness, and the way we come up out of this wilderness
is leaning on our Beloved. The Lord Jesus Christ is described
as our Beloved in so many, many passages in scripture. And that
which makes him Beloved to us is our faith in him. Were it
not for faith in him, Christ would be nothing to us. Oh, he
might be a word, he might be a sentiment, he might be expressed
in various thoughts. But this is what the scripture
says, "...unto you therefore of which believe he is precious,
and he is only truly precious to those who believe." What is
something precious? I mean really beloved, precious. That's something you can't get
along without. That's something you've got to have. I mean precious. Gold is not really precious.
You can live without that. Rich is not really precious.
You can get along without that. What's precious? Vital food,
vital drink, vital air. That's precious. You've got to
have that. You've got to have that. Let me tell you something. The man, the woman who believes,
understands that Christ is vital. Him alone I've got to have. He is that one thing needful.
I can, I wouldn't want to, but if I had to I'd get along without
you, and you without me, but Bobby we can't get along without
Him. We got to have Him. We must have him, not just what
he gives, but him. Not just what he blesses us to
possess, but him. We must have Christ himself. He is our beloved. He is the
one who by virtue of his love for us, which he has caused us
to experience in grace, causes us to love him. Now then, we
come up out of this wilderness looking to him as the object
of our heart's love, the object of our heart's devotion, the
object of our heart's affection, leaning on him, laying the weight
of our helpless souls on Christ alone. As we go through this
world, we have great need for many things. We often stand before
men accused of this, that, or the other, stand before men with
questions that are meaningless to us, but questions that are
intended to confuse and questions that are intended to turn men
away from the faith. And we need wisdom. We lean on
Christ for wisdom. You remember how our Lord spoke
to his disciples, and he said, they will call you before the
judgment seats, and they'll bring you before courts of law? And
in that day, he said, don't take any thought what you're going
to say. He said, I'll give you the word you need to speak. He
said, you be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and I'll
teach you how to speak in my name. I'll teach you how to speak
in my honor. And when you lean on Christ in
just that way, to give us wisdom to walk in this world, this dark
wilderness, filled with hostility, filled with enemies, to walk
in this wilderness as Rex prayed just a little bit ago, honoring
him. And only he can give us wisdom
and grace to do so. We lean on him as Christ our
righteousness. He is the only righteousness
we possess. He gives us righteousness by
imputation in a legal standing before God, but he gives us something
else, Lindsay. Men and women who are born of
God have his righteousness imparted to them. So that every believer
is a man, a woman who possesses a new nature in Christ. The old
nature is still there, but he possesses a new nature. We're
made new creatures in Jesus Christ so that we walk before God in
this world with hearts serving him in true righteousness. We
lean on Christ the Lord for sanctification. God requires that we be separated
unto him. And strive as we may, we simply
cannot separate ourselves unto him. And in a real sense, we will
not. If he leads you to yourself,
he leads me to myself. we will cling to everything and
let go of him. How are we going to be sanctified,
consecrated to God, separated to God, brought finally to God,
completely in Christ, only looking to him? He is our sanctification. And he, by his grace, will see
to it that we are cut out of this world and consecrated to
him. We lean on Jesus Christ as the
Lord our righteousness, the Lord our sanctification, the Lord
our wisdom, and the Lord our Redeemer. He has bought me. He has paid for my sins. He has
earned for me a place at God's right hand. He has taken possession
of heaven itself for me by virtue of the merit of his blood, and
I lean on him alone to give me acceptance with God. We lean
on the Lord Jesus indeed for everything, in all the affairs
of our lives in this world and for the world to come. This I
recall to my mind the prophet said, Therefore have I hope.
It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because
his compassions fail not. Bless God they never fail. They
are new every morning, every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith
my soul." That's enough. That's enough. The Lord is my
portion. Therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good to them
that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good
that a man should both hope and quietly wait. for the salvation
of the Lord. All right, now that's the first
thing. Faith leans on Christ. Faith trusts Jesus Christ alone
as Lord and Savior. We lean on him. Secondly, faith
arouses Christ. Now I want you to give me attention
for a minute. Look here, verse 5. I raise thee up. I raise thee up under the apple
tree. Now, when you read that, immediately you think, well,
that's got to be Christ talking to the Bible. No, no, no. The word the, t-h-e-e, that pronoun
in the Hebrew text is in the masculine gender. So it's clearly
speaking of the bride speaking to Christ. I raised thee up. Obviously this is one of those
places where it's clear we're talking about an inspired allegory.
These things cannot in their strictest sense be true of Solomon
and the Shulamites, but they are indeed true of Christ and
his church. So here the bride speaks again,
and she says, I raised thee up under the apple tree. There thy
mother brought thee forth. There she brought thee forth
that bare thee. First, there is a lesson here
about prayer. I raised thee up. This is what she says. I have
wrestled with you in prayer. and I prevailed upon you to help
me and to comfort me." Faith rouses God. Faith moves God. You heard me right. Faith rouses
God. Faith moves the arm of omnipotence
to action. How can you say that, Pastor?
We recognize God's sovereign. Yes, sir, we recognize that God
responds to the cry of his people in faith. God Almighty says for
this, He promised that He would give mercy and grace, and He
says, for this will I be sought after. In Acts 28, is it, where
the apostle speaks of the shipwreck, and he tells the folks there,
he says, now God has promised, He's promised nobody on this
ship's going to die, but you're going to have to stay on the
ship. You jump off the ship and you're dead. God promised nobody's
going to die, but you've got to unload all their cargo. If
you don't, you're a dead man. Well, how can that, how can both
be? Because they are. And I'm telling you, God Almighty
in his glorious sovereignty condescends to believe in grace to the cry
of faith. We recognize that it's grace
that causes us to cry. We recognize that it's grace
that means our hearts in prayer to him in faith. But faith arouses
God. Let me show you what I'm talking
about. Turn to Psalm 44. Psalm 44. You remember when the disciples
came to the Lord Jesus in the hull of the ship? He was asleep
in the midst of the storm. And they said, Master, carest
thou not that we perish? And thus they roused him up.
How? By crying out in their desperation
to him, even in weak faith, they roused him up. The Lord God often
appears to be sleeping. I didn't say he sleeps. He that
keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps, but he often seems
to. He often seems to forsake us. He never forsakes his oath, but
he often appears to. He does so that we may cry to
him, and he responds this way. Look in Psalm 44, verse 23. The
psalmist says, Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? cast us not off
forever?" Now, you and I would probably never speak in exactly
that language. We'd be afraid to. If Bob heard
me talk like that to God, what would he think of me? If Bobby
heard me pray like that, what would he think? If my son, my
wife, or my daughter heard me pray like that, what would they
think concerning me? How would they respond to that?
David was speaking to God in the desperate need of his own
heart, in the hour of his great trouble, when God seemed not
to care a flip what happened to him. God, wake up! Let God awake to my help! And
he did. Look in Psalm 34. Psalm 34, verse 1. I will bless the Lord at all
times. His praise shall continually
be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast
in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof
and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, let
us exalt his name together." How come? This is one of my favorite
psalms, and here's the reason why. I sought the Lord. Have you ever sought Him? I mean
sought Him. You ever, you've all had the
experience one time or another when you, lose someone in a large
crowd, lose someone in a shopping mall, or your husband's trying
to get lost when you're in a shopping mall, and your wife goes seeking
you. Have you ever lost your son or your daughter, little
types, and you were looking for them and you can't find them,
and you begin to seek them? I mean, you're in dead earnest
now. Have you ever sought the Lord
that way? You ever sought him? Those who need him seek him. I sought the Lord, and he heard
me. All who thus seek him, he shall
hear them, and he delivered me from all my fears. They looked
unto him, and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.
This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him
out of all his troubles. When the Lord Jesus teaches us
about prayer, he teaches us that prayer of necessity involves
opportunity. True prayer of necessity involves
opportunity. Do you remember how he gives
the story? Someone came and had folks come
visit them in the middle of the night, and they didn't have any
bread, so they go to their neighbor and they knock, and their neighbor
says, I'm already in bed, don't bother me now, come back in the
morning. But I've got nothing to feed my friends with. I've
got to have some bread. And so she knocks and she knocks
and she knocks and she knocks. And he says, OK, I'll get up
and give you what you want. That's exactly how our Lord teaches
us to pray. We have just begun to see the
fruit. earnest prayer for 19 years,
some longer than that. How do you pray? We don't want
to use vain repetitions. It's not vain repetition to cry
out for water when you're thirsty. It's not vain repetition to call
for mercy when you need it. We call upon our God with earnestness,
expecting that he will arise and give us what we need. And
so faith rouses him up. You see, we speak this way and
are confident because he who is our God is ready and willing
to yield to the cries of impetuous faith. I'll say nothing much
about it now, but this is also a lesson concerning prophecy,
the prophecy of the Old Testament and of the New. She looks here
with an eye to the future prophetically. She says, I raised thee up unto
the apple tree, there thy mother brought thee forth, there she
brought thee forth that beareth thee. So how does that refer
to anything prophetically? Read the 12th chapter of the
book of Revelation. There we're told that the Lord Jesus Christ
was born out of a woman's womb, and that woman is not the Virgin
Mary, but that woman is rather the Church of the Lord God. Now,
don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting he was not
born in Mary's womb. He was. But in Revelation 12,
it's talking right about the Church, that Church that the
devil seeks to destroy from the very beginning of time. And the
Lord Jesus comes forth out of her womb, who is her Savior.
and our Lord himself in John 16, verses 21 and 22. Turn there, if you will. Here
our Lord uses this same analogy to speak of his second advent,
John chapter 16, verse 21. A woman, when she is in travail,
has sorrow, because her hour is come. But as soon as she is
delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish, for the
joy that a man is born into the world. A woman goes into labor. She has a great hard time delivering
a child. She has a large son in her womb.
But just as soon as that baby is laid on her breast and she
kisses his forehead, man, it's worth it. Trouble's over now. She's got a man-child. Listen
to what our Lord says. And you now have sorrow. As long as you're in this world,
this is a veil of tears. and sorrow is your bitter cup
here." That's just fact. That's just fact. Somebody says
to you, trust Jesus, everything will be all right. It will, sooner
or later, but I'm going to guarantee you when you come to enroll under
the banner of Jesus Christ, you come to enroll in a warfare,
and in a warfare you've got sorrow. Our Lord says, you now therefore
have sorrow, but I will see you again. and your heart shall rejoice,
like a woman who brings forth a man child, and your joy no
man takes from you." Again, when Rex prayed a little bit ago,
you heard, as I did, the quiver of sorrow in his voice, and the
anticipation of joy. Oh, blessed be his name. Soon
the sorrow is going to be over. This travail will give way, and
we will see Him who is the man-child, God the Son, Jesus Christ our
Savior. All right, thirdly, faith leans
on Christ, and faith arouses Christ, and faith begs for grace
unceasingly. I hear fellows want to argue
and debate, you know, Should we pray for forgiveness? After
all, we've already been forgiven. Should we ask for grace? God
promised he'd give us grace. Don't get involved in that silly
nonsense. Man, if you're hungry, ask for
food. If you're thirsty, ask for water. If you feel a sense
of guilt, you ask for forgiveness. You confess your sin and seek
God's mercy. Here is faith begging for grace. Believers never get above that.
Look what we read in verse 6. set me as a seal upon thine heart."
Well, he did that from eternity. I know it. I know it. As a seal
upon thine heart. That's always been so. I know
that. But this is written for a reason. We as believers constantly
desire the Lord Jesus to give us the confident reassurance
and reaffirmation of his grace and the constant experience of
it. As we make our pilgrimage through this world, the bride
prays for her union with Christ that it may be confirmed, that
her communion with him might be constant, that her fellowship
with him might be intimate. Each of us, as we believe, might
very well make these same words to express the prayer and desire
of our hearts. This is my prayer, my God. Set
me as a seal on your heart. Set me as a seal on your right
arm of omnipotence. Now, this is what it means, four
things. Let me have a place in your heart and an interest in
your love. Buddy-duddy, that's what I want
with Christ. Oh, God, give me a place in your
heart. interest in your love. The reference
is to the high priest in Israel. You remember, he wore the breastplates
that God ordained, and on the breastplate were the names of
the twelve tribes of Israel, right up next to his heart. This
is what I want. Blessed Son of God, great high
priest over your Israel, it's enough for me if you bear me
on your heart before God Almighty. That's enough. That's enough.
Give me confidence of that, and whatever sorrow, whatever trouble,
whatever heartache comes, I will rejoice in you. Number two, let
me never lose that place that I have in your heart. Set me as a seal, seal. Let your love be secured to me
as a deed that is sealed and can never be broken, sealed by
God's Spirit, sealed with the earnest, the foretaste, the damn
payment of everlasting life, but sealed, unbreakably sealed. Thirdly, let me always, O my
Savior, let me always be near and dear to you. and make me know it. The illusion is, she says, set
me as a seal upon your right arm. The illusion is, is to,
those bracelets used to be common when I was a kid, were common
in ancient days, that lovers would wear with one another's
names inscribed on them. Set me as a seal. on your right
arm. So does I look at the bracelet
and see your name, and I look on your arm and see my name. I'm constantly reminded that
everything's all right. I'm constantly reminded of your
love for me. I'm constantly reminded of the
intimate communion I have with you because of your love for
me. The Lord God indeed speaks in this way to comfort his people.
He says, Can a woman forget her sucking child? Well, she might. Yet will I not forget thee. Behold,
I have graven thee from the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually
before me. This prayer also means this. Lord, let your power be engaged
for me. as the token of your love for
me, set me as the seal on your right arm. Oh, God, make me to
know always that your arm is set for my protection, my defense,
and my salvation." All right, here's one fourth thing that
faith does. Faith leans on Christ, and faith
arouses Christ, and faith begs for grace, and faith just stays
with Christ. Look at verse 6 again. For love is strong as death,
jealousy as cruel as the grave, the colds thereof are as coals
of fire, which hath their most vehement flame. You see, all
true faith is persevering faith. It perseveres in love for Christ,
so that if ever a man or a woman comes to know and love the Lord
Jesus Christ, they continue in both faith and love toward Christ. Love for Christ is a vigorous passion in the
believing hearts. Faith is confidence in leans
on him, rouses him, begs for his mercy, confidence in him.
Love is commitment to him. Faith is not so much something
that involves passion as it is just simply facts. Whereas love
involves passion. Here it's described as love that's
stronger than death. The love of the believer for
Christ is as strong as death. Love for Christ makes the believer
dead to everything else in the world, and indeed, his love for
us was stronger than death. Jealousy. Wherever there is love,
there's a measure of jealousy. Not jealousy of a lack of confidence. Not jealousy that involves a
lack of assurance concerning the one who is loved or his love
for us, but jealousy in this regard. That dear lady sitting there,
I'm jealous of anything or anybody that in any way would come as
a wedge between us. You better not be one of them.
That's just the way it is. I'm jealous of it. I'm jealous
of it. I'd fight for it. I mean physically I'd fight for
it. I'm jealous of that. We've got something special,
and I'm jealous of it. And I'll tell you something I'm
even more concerned about. I'm jealous lest I should behave
in any way as to hinder that blessed, blessed communion myself. That's what I'm talking about
there. Love for Christ is jealous of anything and anybody that
comes between us and him. Anybody. Anything. And jealous
of anything in us that may come between us and him. There's nothing
in him going to come between us. But there's much in us that
might. Therefore we're bidden, quench
not the spirit. Love for Christ is an all-consuming
fire in the hearts of his children. It burns like a vehement flame. And love for Christ is the victorious
passion of the believing heart. Look at this. Many waters cannot
quench love, neither can the floods drown it. If a man would
give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly
contemned, utterly despised. Neither the substance of this
world nor the swelling floods of death could quench our Savior's
love for us. Nothing can separate us from
the love of Christ. And where there is true love
for Christ, it cannot be destroyed. Waters of affliction can't quench
it. They only make it grow stronger.
Floods of trouble can't destroy it. It only clings more tenaciously
to Christ. All the riches of the world can't
buy it. Even life itself would be despised
before this love would be sacrificed. May God graciously grant each
of us this holy faith, this faith that leans on Christ, arouses
Christ. Begs for grace and stays with
Christ. Amen.