The song of Solomon, chapter 2, verse
16. I've been reading this over and
over and over again this week, and I've come to the conclusion
that these have got to be the happiest words in the Bible. My beloved is mine. and I am his, he feedeth among
the living. Those words reflect a heart full
of peace, assurance, contentment, joy, happiness. My beloved is
mine, and I am his, and he feedeth among the living. And it seems
so strange that those happy, happy words should be followed
in the very next verse with a cloud. The next verse seems to blot
out the sun. It seems to be a cloud that just
comes right over at noonday, as it were, just turns the whole
sky into darkness. Until the daybreak and the shadows
flee away, turn, my and be thou like a roe or a young
heart upon the mountains of Bethlehem." Now looking at that, I think
the text probably is intended by God the Holy Spirit to reflect
a state of mind with which many of you, myself certainly, are
familiar. You don't doubt your salvation. You know upon good grounds, on
the grounds of this This and this alone, because you trust
Christ, you know he's yours. Because you trust him, nothing
else. I wish I could make everybody
hear that. This is the ground of our assurance. I trust Christ. Therefore I can
say, my beloved is mine and I am his. I don't doubt that. But
my soul doesn't always feel nearness to him. I don't always
feed with him and upon him. You are in your heart assured
that you have a vital saving interest in Christ, but you don't
sense his left hand under your head and his right hand embracing
you all the time. There are times when the believer
sings in tenor and bass at the same time. We sing with delight
and with joy, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste
of glory divine, heir of salvation, purchased of God, born of his
spirit, washed in his blood. And yet we turn right around
and sing, as Judy just did, how tedious and tasteless the hours,
when Jesus no longer I see, sweet prospects, sweet birds and sweet
flowers. have all lost their sweetness
to me. It may be, I don't know, it may
be that there are some of God's saints who never lose sight of
the Savior's face, whose communion with him is always undisturbed. There may be some who always
walk continually on the mountaintops with him, maybe so. I'm not sure
that such persons exist, but I wouldn't be so bold as to say
they don't. But those believers with whom
I am most intimate and familiar have a different experience.
And those that I know who always boast of their constant peace
and satisfaction and delight, who boast of always walking on
the mountaintops, are not the most reliable folks. They're
not the kind of folks I'd want to lean on very much. But for
myself, speaking from my own heart's experience, I've always
had a mixture of joy and sorrow. Every year of my life has its
wintertime as well as its summer. Every day has its night. I've
seen the clear shining of the sun of righteousness and walked
in the blessed, blessed joy of it and I felt the heavy, heavy
rains and the storm and walked in the field. I've walked in
the warm breezes of summer evening, and I've made my way through
the snowy blizzards of winter night, and I expect many of you
the same. We're kind of like the oak tree,
but I believe the sap's always there, but not the leaves. We
go through terrible, terrible seasons of not seeing his face,
not knowing the kisses of his mouth, and not knowing the warm
embrace of his grace. We're not always rejoicing. We
have our downs as well as our ups, our valleys as well as our
mountains, and sometimes we're in heaviness through manifold
pride, grieved by the fact that our fellowship with Christ is
not always full, not always clear, not always intimate and sweet. Grieved by it, but that's just
the way it is. The Lord Jesus ought to be constantly
our soul's rapturous delighter. He ought to be, ought to be. And it's our fault that he's
not. Not his, it's our fault. But the fact is, he's not always. We ought to always rejoice in
the Lord. We ought to always walk in the
joy, the joy of his presence. But we don't. That's the fact.
At times we have to seek him, crying, oh that I knew where
I might find him. Now if I understand it correctly,
that's the sense of this text here in the Song of Solomon chapter
2 verses 16 and 17. It is both a song of joy and a song of sorrow,
the sweet song of assurance and yet an earnest longing for fellowship
and communion with Christ. Does that make sense to you?
I believe that's exactly what we see here. This is the thing
I want you to see this evening. Though we may experience times
of spiritual trials, when our fellowship and communion with
Christ is broken, there is no reason for our assurance of acceptance
with God in him. Our assurance that my beloved
is mine and I am his to be interrupted at all. I've heard fellows talk
about assurance and they talk about assurance in such a way
as to say well you know if you're not walking with him in just
confident joy and peace and contentment then you don't have any assurance. That's false assurance. That's
not it. Our assurance does not depend
on us but him. Now we change, but he doesn't.
Assurance is based upon Christ's finished work for us. Fellowship
and communion with Christ may vary greatly by our daily experiences. I don't always enjoy my wife's
company. I was away from her a couple
of days this week, but I always enjoy the assurance of her love.
I don't have any question about that. I'm not worried about somebody
else being over here taking my place when I'm gone. I'm just
confident the woman loves me. And though I do not see her face
and do not feel her embrace, I enjoy the blessed assurance
of that relationship. And that's about nearly as certain
and sure and stable as this. My Lord, for reasons wise, good,
and gracious, because of my need will often hide his face from
me, but he never forsakes me. You got that? He often, he often
appears not to hear me, but he always does. He often appears
not to watch over me, but he always does. And the reason he
appears not to hear me, he appears not to watch over me, is that
he might draw out my heart after him so that I might be maintained
in love for him. Now this evening I want us to
look at three things. The first will be the most important. First,
I want to show you that it is possible and profitable for believers
to enjoy the assurance of salvation, a personal interest in, yes,
the possession of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's profitable and it's
possible for believers to walk in the assurance, Paul puts it
this full assurance of faith. Now, I don't suggest that every
believer does. I know better. I just, I know
better. Peter sometimes had some problems
with that. You read the Gospels, you see.
Paul appears at times to have had problems with that. Some
folks say, they try to get everything fit into a box, you know, where
if you don't, doubt your damn. Another fellow says, if you do
doubt your damn. Well, sometimes believers doubt, sometimes they
Sometimes believers walk as they ought with confident faith and
sometimes they don't. But I do know this, every believer
can and should enjoy the blessed assurance of a saving interest
in Christ. These are the words of confident
faith and blessed assurance. My beloved is mine. And I'm here. He right now there
the shadow is between us and there he hides his face right
now. My beloved is mine and I am his. Most people you see look in the
wrong places for assurance. They seek it on the wrong grounds. People seek assurance either
by remembering something or feeling something or doing something.
That's almost always where folks look at it. You say, well how
do you know that you're a believer? Well, I remember. When I was
a boy, when I was a young man, when I was an older man. I remember
yesterday or I remember this morning. If you've got to look
back to this morning for assurance, you're looking at the wrong place. It's not a remembrance of some
experience we've had. It's not a remembrance that happened
to us yesterday. Our assurance is sitting on the
right hand of God. He is God himself sitting on
his throne. Jesus Christ, the God-man, our
mediator. He's our assurance. Other folks
say, they say, well you know what, I feel so close to the
Lord. I just had such a change in my
life. I just, I feel like I walk with him all the time. Your feeling
is not it, Linda. That's not it. feelings come
and feelings go and feelings are deceiving. I trust the living
word of God, naught else is worth believing. Other folks say, well
I'm confident that I'm the Lord because my life has been so changed
and now I serve him and I do this and I do, oh no, that's
not it, that's not it. If you want assurance, if you
want to walk before God, continue while you're While you're sitting
here in his house, or I'll show you out there, on your tractor
planting the tobacco, or you're sitting in your living room,
or you're sitting in the funeral parlor. If you want to walk before
God with the peace that he's yours, quit looking to yourself. Look to him. Look to him. Look not to your experience but
to his expiation. Not to your repentance but to
his ransom. Not to your faith but to his
faithfulness. Not to your works but to his
works and his works. Look not to your feelings but
to his fullness. Look not to your prayers but
to his promises and his prayers who sits yonder on the right
hand of the majesty on high. Look not to your righteousness
but to Christ the Lord our righteous. Look to Christ alone. Hold your
hands here in Song of Solomon and turn to Colossians 2. It's
a text of scripture I frequently quote, but I want you to read
it. And at your leisure, read it in its context. Paul is urging these saints of
Colossae to let no one beguile them with the subtleness of vain
philosophy and religious tradition. And he says to them as they make
their way through this world, and what he says to them, Bob
Pontius says to you and says to me, look what it says, Colossians
2 verse 6. As you have therefore received
Christ Jesus the Lord, as you have received him, how have you
received him? I came to Christ empty-handed. filthy, polluted, guilty, depraved,
lost, helpless, and dead. I didn't have any of that. I
didn't have any of that. Nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to thy cross I cling, naked come to thee for dress,
helpless look to thee for dress. How did you come to that? That's
how you came to this. Don't ever outgrow Don't, if
you go a hair above that, you got too big. As you have received
Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. Just tell him, Lord,
I trust you for everything, for everything, everything. I trust
you for everything God requires of me. I trust you for righteousness
and redemption. I trust you for my next birth.
I trust you. That's all. That's where it's
at. Now then, the Lord Jesus says,
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth
not shall be damned. I believe it. That's all. That's all. Mark these words
in this text, my beloved. Will you delight to call Christ
your beloved? Now, I can almost hear somebody
start sitting at the table now and trying to talk pious and
use this kind of language. I'm not talking about that, I'm
talking about in your heart, my beloved, my beloved. Certainly,
he should be beloved by you and by me. He's done so much for
us. Who ever lavished such gifts
upon us? Who's ever shown us such indescribable
love? Indeed, if you do not love Him,
and you listen to me, if you don't love Him, you're lost.
You don't know Him. You don't know Him. If any man
loved not the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul said, let him be damned.
It is not our love for Him that gives us a saving interest in
Him. It's faith in Him. But faith in Him loves Him. Believers love the Son of God.
All who are redeemed by His precious blood and saved by His matchless
grace can say with the Apostle John, we love Him because He
first loved us. Now, I don't want you to be presumptuous. I don't want to be presumptuous.
But if you know Him, you love Him. You know the Lord Jesus
Christ, call him in your soul by the law. Look at it that way. Your man and woman married to
one another have special terms of endearment with which they
speak to one another in private that they never use in public.
And I don't suggest, as I mentioned earlier, that you use these words
with an air of piety But that's the last thing I suggest. What
I am saying is in your soul, speak to Christ as you'll be
loved. Call him such. He deserves such
a title. Child of God, he redeemed you
with his blood, adopted you into his family, saved you by his
grace, keeps you in his love, for he loved you with an everlasting
love. There was a time when he became
the beloved one of your heart. He came and made himself known
to you and conquered your heart by the revelation of himself
so that you could not resist loving him. And it's true today
more than ever. We do love him. Oh my Lord it's true. Peter spoke the truth. He spoke
the absolute truth. embarrassed as he was because
he spoke the absolute truth, humbled and broken as he was,
he said, I can almost see the quiver in his lips and the tears
in his eyes and the shake in his voice because he said, Lord,
you know everything. You know everything. You know
that I love you. It's just that. It's just that. Virgin said, every heart that's
been renewed by sovereign grace takes Jesus Christ to be the
chief object of its love. My beloved is mine. Is he or
is he not your beloved? Is he or is he not? My beloved
is mine and I'm here. I'm here Because in eternity,
he looked on me and said, I love him so much. He chose me and
he purchased me with his blood. Like Hosea said to Gomorrah,
I bought you with the silver of my sweat and the gold of my
blood and you're mine. And he called me by the power
of his irresistible grace. And he's mined by the most deliberate, calculated, willful choice I've
ever made. Now, just the choice I made 30
years ago, the choice I make right now, willfully, deliberately,
no matter what I have to give up for. He's mine, but I'll choose
him to be mine. That's exactly right. Say, well,
you folks don't believe that. Oh, we're the only ones who do. Believers constrained by his
love are overcome in their hearts and cannot resist choosing him
as the highest object of their affection. Are you a believer? If souls in Christ is yours and
you're his, you're his sheep of his pasture, partners of his
love, members of his body, branches of this vine, you belong to him
on the hills. Totally, unreservedly yours. And Lord, that means You can do with me whatever you
will. I want you. I want you. Spoke to Bob earlier this morning,
chatted with him a little bit. He said, I'm not concerned about
this surges. I'm in the Lord's hands. He'll do what he will.
That's what I'm talking about. He'll do with me what he will.
And I'm glad for him to do with me what he will. Are you? I'm his. How can you
have such assurances? How can you speak like that?
Peter says, thank the Lord God in your heart and be ready always
to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the
hope that's in you. Well, preacher, how can you speak
like this? How can anyone speak like this
with such confidence and deliberate forthrightness on this reason
or on this ground? He's revealed himself. And because he has revealed himself
in me, I rest my soul on him alone. I trust Christ alone. I keep my flesh, just like yours,
I keep wanting to find me something in me. You know, surely I can
get something in the spine I can hold on to. I can find some feeling
or some work or some deed or some thought, some imagination,
some aspiration and say, now there, there, there I've got
something I can hold on to. Oh, when you find it, throw it
away like you had hold of a hot piece of iron. I cast my soul
on Christ alone, nothing else. And now, just as in the past,
I've not yet been moved away from the hope of the gospel.
Paul said, I present you perfect in Christ if you continue in
the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the
hope of the gospel. This is it. How can you say my
beloved is mine and I am his? Because it's the truth. I love it. I love it. Now then,
here's the second thing. It will be wise for us to know
where Christ is and where he makes himself known. If a woman wants a happy marriage,
She would be wise to know her husband, know his habits and his ways,
and put herself in his way. You'd be wise to do that. I watched
Bobby and Judy, and she has a chance to, she just gets out and rides
in the hot sun on the side of that tractor with him, because
she loves him, puts herself in his way. And if you want a happy
marriage, you find out You find out who you're married to, find
out his habits, find out his ways, and put yourself in his
way. He says, my beloved is mine,
my dear. Now, where is he? Where can I walk with him? Where
will he be this morning? Where will he be tonight? He's
seated among the lilies. I suppose there's a sense in
which you could say he feeds himself, for there he takes delight
in that which is the prevail of his soul, which he sees with
satisfaction. But I'm certain the text means
that he feeds his saints, and he feeds among the living. That is, he feeds among the saints
of God in the house of God. He comes here and This is where
he feeds his sheep. He feeds his saints with the
ordinances of the gospel. As we sing his praise, as we
worship his name, as we call on him, as we observe this blessed
ordinance of the Lord's table, he comes and feeds among the
living. There's something special, something special about the assembled
body of believers. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter
3. You're familiar with that text in In Matthew 18, our Lord
said, where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them. Look here in Matthew, or in 1
Corinthians chapter 3. The apostle Paul is talking here
about those who would disrupt, disturb, divide, destroy the
church of God. And here he says in verse 16,
know ye not that ye are the temple of God? and that the Spirit of
God dwells in me? If any man defile the temple
of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy.
Which temple you are? Now that's not talking about
your physical body, that's not what it's talking about. That's
talking about the assembled body of believers. When we come together,
Ron, in the name of Christ, as he promised to meet with us,
gathered in his name, not the building, That's irrelevant. But when we come together in
His name, the Church of God is His temple and God the Holy Spirit
resides in it. That's what the temple was all
about. That's what it portrayed. It portrayed this temple, which
temple we now are. Oh yeah, there's something special
about the Assembly of God thing. Folks think without, I'd get
along without that. Ask somebody who has to do with
that. He's asking about it. Where does he feed? Oh, he feeds
among the lilies of these pages. I'm not a counselor, I don't
pretend to be. I'm not a psychologist, don't want to be. But every now
and then, I meet with one of you or a preacher friend, somebody
else, a believer going through trouble. and heartache, sorrow. And they, you know, come and
walk from the basement. What, what do you, what do you
do for us? How am I going to handle this?
And this is my counsel. I give it to you now. And when
you come to me in the middle of the night, I'll give it to
you then. Bury yourself in this place. Just bury yourself in
this book. Your tendency is to walk to the
floor and ring your hands, that's what I'm going to do, I'm going
to get out. Your tendency is to neglect the word, neglect
the worship of God, the house of God and the people of God,
that's the worst thing to do. Bury yourself in this book where
he is among the living. And one last thing, it's the
desire of every believer to know the conscious presence of and
fellowship of Christ. Look at verse 17, Until the day
breaks, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, be thou
like a roller, young heart, upon the mountains of Bethlehem. For
this is our night, soon daybreak will come, When our Lord Jesus
came and the gospel day broke forth, the shadows of the law
fled away. And when our Lord comes again
and takes away this veil of flesh, then the day shall shine brightly
and we'll walk in everlasting day. And when our Lord comes in our night of trouble and takes
away our cloud, then we'll walk again in the day and the sunshine
of the beams of the sun of righteousness. The mountains which separate
us from our Lord, mountains of our making, are no trouble for
him to overcome. Turn, my beloved, be like a row
or a young heart on the mountains of Bethlehem. Come after me. But you'll have to do the turning. Turn to me. I just can't turn
to you. come to me. Oh, God, come to
me, clutch, try as I will. I can't come to you. The mountains
are too high for me to overcome. I can't, I can't tear them down. That's no trouble to you. So
turn, my beloved. Come across the mountains like
a roe or a young heart. As the heart panteth after the
water books, so panteth my soul after thee. Oh my God, now come
to us. We break this bread and drink
this wine in remembrance of our Savior. Blessed Savior, turn
and come swiftly across the mountain to your beloved. Amen.