As we come to look at God’s Word together, I want to mention the indispensable principle of all Bible study and life: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
We are coming to God’s book, and like the Lord Jesus, it is human and divine. We try, by God’s grace, not to neglect the human side, but we dare not neglect the divine side.
God longs to show Himself to those who are called babes. He hides it from the sophisticated, from the wise, from the prudent, from the worldly. He reveals it to little babes.
Let me share an indispensable principle Bible verse from the Psalms, and then we will pray together and look in His Word. Song of Solomon 2:4:
He has brought me to his banquet hall,
And his banner over me is love.
Sustain me with raisin cakes,
Refresh me with apples,
Because I am lovesick.
Let his left hand be under my head
And his right hand embrace me.
It is a great triumph of the Lord to be brought to the banquet hall. This is actually a military figure—marching under banners. His banner over us is love, and that is the triumph that has brought us to the banquet hall. It is His victory, and it is His triumph.
According to the record here, even being triumphantly led to His banquet hall, I need to be supported so I can take it in. I am ready to faint. It is so much. It is too much.
Now, commentators differ on what it means to have His left hand under you and so on. I mean, it does describe the dip, if you look at it. I do not know if that is what he is talking about here, but it also describes the way a mother would hold a little baby when that baby is being fed.
That little baby is underneath the left arm, and at least for tonight, that is what it is. He has brought us to His banquet hall, and He has a lot to say. If He does not support us, we cannot take it in.
He has called us to come as little babies. His hand is under us, and He wants to feed us. So, with that attitude, let us come before the Lord and trust Him to speak.
Our Father, how we thank You that by Your grace You have brought us to Your banquet hall. You have drawn us. You have answered our heart’s cry. You are kissing us with the kisses of Your mouth, expressing Your love to us over and over again.
Now, this evening, as we come to Your banquet hall, we would ask again, by Your grace, that You would support us in order that we might be able to take it in. Feed us.
We want to be like newborn babes, desiring the sincere milk of the Word that we might grow by it. Will You minister to us tonight and dawn Christ upon us? You know our needs. You know who we are. You have drawn us here. Now meet us.
Show us Yourself, we pray. We want to thank You in advance that, because our Lord Jesus deserves it, it is done. In His precious name, amen.
We have so much to look at in this book. I will confess to you right up front: most of what is in the Song of Solomon, I do not have a clue. I do not understand all of these word pictures. There is just so much.
That is one of the reasons my wife and I have chosen it for our yearbook. I cannot give you much. I can only give you the little bit that I have begun to see. So let me review a little bit, get us back into the flow, and then we will pick up where we left off.
It is a love story—this Song of Songs—a love story of two worlds. I believe the way God has written it, earthly love is designed to reflect, to illustrate, heavenly love. So we have the love story here of both worlds.
In our sessions together, we are looking especially at the heavenly side. I hope God helps you apply the other side so that, when you go home, you can relate that to your life partner.
The groom not only loves the bride in this book, but the groom is in love with the bride. Does your wife know that you love her? Does she know that you are in love with her? May God help us. That is what this is all about.
This describes our union with the Lord Jesus Christ in the tenderest of terms. He uses the most intimate of all relationships on the earth—marriage—and the most intimate side of the most intimate relationship on the earth to give us a passing glimpse of His heart toward us.
It is a book, as we have suggested, of progressive love. Right from the very beginning, the groom answers the sigh and cry of the bride to be drawn, that he might kiss her with the kisses of his mouth and express his love to her over and over again.
I pointed out that there are other believers in the book, but the book calls attention especially to the bride and groom. Let us look again, just to get it before us, at the three movements in the book.
Song of Solomon 2:16:
My beloved is mine, and I am his;
He pastures his flock among the lilies.
Each step, I think, shows a development—a forward step in union with the groom. In this first stage, in this first experience of union with the groom, it begins with the bride’s interest in the groom.
It also includes His interest in her, but the emphasis is, “He is mine.” It is about me. It is subjective. He is mine. Oh, yes, it is true—I am also His—but that is not the emphasis.
Then He kisses her eyes open many times, and she comes to Song of Solomon 6:3:
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine;
He pastures his flock among the lilies.
Here she expresses His interest first in her. She has not quite gotten away from her interest in Him, but at least she begins in a new direction: “I am His.” Oh, yes, He is still mine, but she begins with His interest in her.
Finally, she is drawn by His love into the very climax of the redemptive experience. Song of Solomon 7:10:
I am my beloved’s,
And his desire is toward me.
At this point, all she can see is His interest in her. She does not mention the other side at all. It has not gone away; it is just that now this is taking up the whole landscape of her life.
“I am His, and all His desire is toward me.” That is where the book draws to its close.
Although there are many other things in this superlative love song, we are trying just to trace the path that the bride has been drawn into, if we can see the big thing.
In stage one, where her interest is primarily in Him, I have tried to show you that the key idea in that section is revelation. As you go through these verses—from Song of Solomon 1:1 through 3:5—you see over and over again how He kisses her eyes open.
Every time He kisses her, she gets a new revelation. She does not really enter into it yet, but it is a brand-new world. She sees things that, some of them, are shocking. There is almost too much to believe.
When somebody gets to Song of Solomon 1:2, and they have seen this world, turned it down, embraced Christ, and breathed out a prayer—“Draw me now. Kiss me with the kisses of Your mouth. Reveal Your love to me”—when you begin there, then God begins, and He must show you these things.
As we move from stage one to stage two, from light, insight, illumination, and revelation—from Song of Solomon 3:6 to 6:10—she enters into it. That is the point: she enters into it.
She begins now to experience some of these things that she has seen, that have been discovered to her. The keyword is surrender. The keyword is submission. She surrenders; she resigns to the Lord.
Then finally, from Song of Solomon 6:11 to the end of the book, we see God flash back to the beginning of the book. Those things that she has seen and had not entered into now become hers in a wonderful way.
The keywords are rest and fruit. She is now beginning to rest in His love. Things are becoming intuitive, because life is intuitive. She is beginning to act out of a relationship and out of a union.
As you come to the end, it comes to a crescendo. I am not a musician, but I understand that every now and then in music there are written notes to the musician.
The letter F—forte, they say—means play it louder. Sometimes there is the double F, fortissimo, and then you pull out the stops and begin to really play it.
As I understand this book, it starts with pianissimo—is that the right word? It starts very softly, and it begins to move. By the time we are at the end, we are shouting. She just begins to enter into rest and live by the fruit of that union.
By God’s grace, we are tracing out that union. Let me mention, by way of review, five revelations. I do not know what else to call them—five new things she discovers in her new world as He discovers Himself to her.
Song of Solomon 1:4: her eyes were opened, and she saw not simply that the groom was the King, but that her groom was the King. What a revelation that is.
Then He kisses her again. She not only sees who He is, in Song of Solomon 1:5-6; she sees who she is. She sees herself out of Him, and she sees herself in Him.
She says, “I am dark, but lovely. I am like the tents of Kedar, but I am like the curtains of Solomon.” She sees both. She sees herself.
Then He opens her eyes again in Song of Solomon 1:6-7, and she sees how badly she has been burned—that she has been in the wrong place. She has been in a flock, but it has not been the Lord’s flock. She has been under shepherds, but they are not the Lord’s shepherds. They are the companions of the shepherd.
Her brothers have put her to work, and all she has known is this Christless activity. She just works and works and works. Finally, she is so tired. She is so hungry. He had to show her that.
My wife is a worker. Honestly, when she gets into a project, you do not see her until the project is done. Ben can back me up on this. When she gets into a project, she forgets to eat—which practically means she forgets to feed me.
She forgets to sleep. It will be three o’clock in the morning, and I will go down and say, “Come on now, put it down. You can do it tomorrow.”
She gets so busy, so involved, so occupied. When she gets on a big project, she always loses weight because she does not eat and she does not sleep.
Brothers, that happens on the level of earth. Maybe you are like that, or know somebody like that. But when that happens spiritually, it is a terrible thing.
I think the enemy uses that as one of his great ploys. He gets us so busy in vineyard work, so active, that we forget to eat. We get so involved that we hardly notice that we are hungry. We hardly notice that we are tired.
Then, when it is all over, we just think, “We are exhausted.” So she cries out in Song of Solomon 1:7:
Tell me, O you whom my soul loves,
Where do you pasture your flock?
Where do you make it lie down at noon?
She discovered she was hungry. “Where do You pasture Your flock? Where do they eat?” And, “Tell me, where do You let them lie down at noon? I am so tired. I need rest.”
Over and over again, you can tell where somebody is. God’s people are hungry, and they need rest. With that cry, God opens her eyes for the fourth time.
She saw, first of all, the King—who He was. Then she saw who she was. Then she saw the vanity of this endless labor and work. Now God opens her eyes in Song of Solomon 1:8: there is a true flock.
There are under-shepherds who are the Lord’s shepherds, and there is a pasture that is His pasture. She is told to go and follow those sheep who have found that pasture. There she becomes flock-conscious.
It is all about her and Jesus. It is all about you and Jesus. But as He reveals Himself to you, I promise you, He will lead you to His flock. You need the flock. I need the flock. We need the body.
Finally, in Song of Solomon 2:8-14, He kisses her again. With this kiss, He shows her the freedom that is available in Him.
She was behind her little enclosure, her man-made wall. She was behind the window. He was free, bounding over the hills and over the mountains.
When He came, He would not go into her little enclosure. Instead, He said:
Arise, my darling, my beautiful one,
And come along.
For behold, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers have already appeared in the land.
She struggled with that. She had the revelation. Those are the revelations that we have looked at.
I know I run a risk of neglecting some of the truth here. You do not have to worry a lot about that. I am going to neglect a lot of truth, but it is because I have not seen it yet. I can only give you as much as I have seen.
To spend more time here, if you really understand spiritual things, makes some sense, because I am more experienced with stage one than with stage three. Quite honestly, I have seen a few things, but I see a little more here. So I am going to spend a little more time here.
I pray that God will help you get further than He has taken me so far. I want to mention five more things in which He kissed her and opened her eyes, but I want to do it because I need to get to stage two tonight also.
I will just give you the revelation that she saw, maybe say a word or two about it, and then you develop it. These are things that we have to see.
You have got to see that He is King. You have got to see who you are in Him and out of Him. You have got to see that the system of works is vanity and futility. You have got to see that God has a flock. You have got to see that there is freedom out there, if by His grace you can come out of that lattice enclosure, and so on.
He kisses her again. Song of Solomon 2:7:
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles or by the hinds of the field,
That you do not arouse or awaken my love
Until she pleases.
These daughters of Jerusalem are one group in the body that appears in the Song more than any other group beside the bride and the groom. They are in the house, and they love the groom.
Notice Song of Solomon 3:9-10:
King Solomon made himself a sedan chair
From the timber of Lebanon.
He made its posts of silver,
Its back of gold, its seat of purple fabric,
With its interior lovingly fitted out
By the daughters of Jerusalem.
They are ministering to him. I tend to be hard on these daughters of Jerusalem. I think they are the legalists in the book, and they are constantly an annoyance. But they love the Lord, they minister to the Lord, and they serve the Lord.
Quite honestly, they are strangers to the groom. Later on, she is going to ask them for advice: “Help me find him.” They could not find their way to the bathroom. These daughters of Jerusalem are the wrong people to ask.
The bottom line is this: every time they appear in the book, with that one little exception, they are always trying to upset the rest that she is entering into.
Depending on which particular translation you use, there is some discrepancy in the grammar and pronoun. Some translations make it her rest: “Do not disturb her rest.” Another translation says, “Do not disturb His rest.” Another says, “Do not disturb the rest.”
But the common-denominator truth is this: over and over again, the daughters of Jerusalem are seeking to overturn rest. The groom says, “Let love alone. Stop disturbing rest.”
We just sort of read that, la, la, la, but I will tell you, it was an eye-opener to me. After I began to taste a little bit of the rest in the Lord, those who opposed me were the Christians. They were the believers. They were in the family.
The daughters of Jerusalem were all over me because they thought I had quit vineyard work. I was delivered from that system of vineyard work where I was being so badly burned. They did not understand it, and they kept trying to disturb my rest.
I am just suggesting that if you are serious about following the Lord, do not be surprised when the daughters of Jerusalem come around and disturb what you think is from the Lord. That is an eye-opener, and it is developed in the book.
Her eyes were also opened—here is the next thing. He kissed her again, and her eyes were opened to her need to be trained and disciplined.
I told you there is a lot of time between these revelations. It did not happen all at once. As far as the record goes, the last thing we had heard was, “Follow the trail. Follow the steps, the path, the fat sheep—those who have entered in, who know where the pasture is. Follow them.”
Bring your kids, bring your goats, follow them, and then camp by the tents of the shepherds. It is implied that she is camping there, with her family and with those who are under her influence.
How long did she camp there? What did she learn from the true shepherds? We are not told. All we have is the record.
What I know for sure is this: she camped there long enough, learned what she needed to learn, and fed on the pasture that was given by true under-shepherds. She camped there long enough that the groom could say, in Song of Solomon 1:9:
To me, my darling, you are like
My mare among the chariots of Pharaoh.
He is not describing her physically at this point. Do not say, “Oh, what a wonderful revelation. My dear, you look like a horse.” That is not what he is saying.
This is a special horse. This is a horse that had to be highly trained. This is a horse that pulled the chariots of Pharaoh.
A horse is a strong animal. A horse has power. A horse can run. A horse can buck. A horse can kick in a wall. A horse has a will of its own. So they train the horse. It is a special horse that needs to be trained and disciplined.
At the end, the horse still had the power to kick the door down, but it had learned to put that power under the bridle and under control. The strength of the horse was now at the beck and command of the king.
This is the horse that pulled the chariot. First Kings 4:26 says Solomon had forty thousand stalls for the chariot horses and twelve thousand horsemen.
There was a special horse selected to pull the chariot of Pharaoh. He looked at her and said, “You have been at the right pasture, under the right leadership, feeding by God’s under-shepherds, and you have been trained.”
“You remind Me of that trained horse, who is under the command of a little bridle, a little spur, and you are responding. Your will has now learned to obey.”
Her eyes were opened to the need to be trained and to be disciplined.
Let me mention two more, and we will move on to the new material. Song of Solomon 1:13:
My beloved to me is a pouch of myrrh
Which lies all night between my breasts.
As the groom drew his bride in answer to her prayer, there had to be a time when her eyes were opened. She had seen the King. She had seen who she was. She had seen the system of works. She had seen the true church, the true body, the true fellowship. She had seen the freedom available to her in Christ Jesus.
She had seen that not everybody likes that, and there is a group of people who are going to constantly disturb your rest. But now she has to see the cross—the work of the cross.
Myrrh, as you trace it through the Scriptures, is constantly a picture of suffering. The magi, you remember, in Matthew 2 brought myrrh to the infant Savior. Myrrh was offered to Jesus when He was on the cross, and myrrh was used for embalming our Lord Jesus in John 19.
She is coming to know her groom, and she says, “There is a fragrance that comes from my groom. It is like myrrh. When I smell Him, it is like myrrh.”
Then notice in Song of Solomon 1:12, she adds:
While the king was at his table,
My perfume gave forth its fragrance.
The King James Version says, “Spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.” It is the same nard in John 12 when Mary anointed our Lord Jesus.
Spikenard, from the bush before it was processed, has been called the perfume of the poor. His bride was just a humble worker in the field. She did not have any money. What could she bring to the banquet table? She said, “I will bring a fragrance. That is all I have.”
They would pick the spikenard and put it down there, nestled between their breasts. The heat of the body, after a while, would send forth the fragrance.
Worship. So Mary offered that in worship. It is almost like that is all she has to bring to the table.
Her eyes were opened to this: when I smell Him, it is the cross; and when He smells me, it is worship. Her eyes had to be opened to that great revelation—that there has to be a time and place where the cross comes into your life.
Every time, knowing Him is in terms of that. All she could bring was this worship. I think if we get praise close enough to our hearts, brothers, it will warm up and bring a pleasing fragrance to the Lord. May God teach us this.
One more thing. She saw Him. She saw herself. She saw the system of works. She saw the church. She saw freedom in Christ. She saw those who would be in the body but enemies of her rest. She saw the need for training and discipline. She saw the cross and worship.
One more time He kisses her, in Song of Solomon 1:16-17:
How handsome you are, my beloved,
And so pleasant!
Indeed, our couch is luxuriant!
The beams of our houses are cedars,
Our rafters, cypresses.
Let me read the same passage from Darby:
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, pleasant;
Our bed is green;
The beams of our house are cedar,
Our rafters are fir.
I told you that in stage one, Song of Solomon 2:16, where her interest was in Him, it centered around her. All of a sudden, we see a change. Even if you were not a believer, just reading it as literature, you would know there is a change right here.
If you count the verses—how many times the bride spoke in section one, how many times the groom spoke—she cannot shut up. She spoke twice as much as the groom. When the groom spoke, most of the time in section one, he was correcting what she said.
The bride’s comments illustrate how subjective she was in section one. It is all about her: me, mine, mine. Even the precious things: “Kiss me. Draw me. Look not at me. My own vineyard I have not kept. My beloved is to me. My spikenard went forth. Where can I eat? Where can I rest?”
But the Lord is beginning to open her eyes now. As I understand it, as they are having an intimate moment, she lies down and looks up. She has a new concept.
She says, “Look at our rafters. Look at our cedars. Our bed is green. It is alive.”
She is beginning to see, though she has not fully entered into it, her union with the groom. “I am His wife. I am His bride. He is the King.” All of a sudden, what is His is mine.
She is beginning to see her union, and that everything He has belongs to her. When they became one, He said to her, “With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.”
To be sure, she is going to go forward in that truth in sections two and three, but it looks like she sees it now for the first time. She has the boldness to say, “It is ours. Everything that is His is mine.”
When I married Lillian in 1964, everything I had—my debts—became hers. There are kids. There are debts. It is our ministry that we have. It is our towels. We do not have his-and-her towels.
The bride had her eyes opened, and as she lay there, she just said, “You know, I realize it is true. I am His in Jesus. This is my house as much as His. Look at our rafters, look at our beams, look at our house. Our bed is green.”
Our enemies are one. Get those verses: “Do not touch the apple of His eye,” and so on.
Let me tell you a little story. I will not take long on it, but do we have any chiropractors here? I probably did not even say it right. How do you say it? Yeah.
There was a day I did not even know what it was. In 1964, I married dear Lillian. We went down to Columbia, South Carolina. I was going to attend Columbia Bible College there.
We needed a rental, and we took some wedding money that we had to get a rental. We saw this place advertised behind a nice house—a little tiny house, not much of a place, but we could afford it.
The owner came and showed me around. I was there with my new bride, and we were going to school and starting a life together. It was all wonderful to me.
As he walked in the door, he put both hands on my wife’s shoulders, pulled her forward, and said, “You could use an adjustment.”
He touched the apple of my eye. I grabbed him. That was a long time ago; things have changed. I held him up against the wall and said, “I will give you an adjustment,” because he touched the apple of my eye.
That is the Lord. All things—they are my rafters, they are our rafters, they are our beams, it is our house. Everything we have is ours. It is our enemies. You do not have an enemy that is your own; it is His enemy with you.
She began to see that for the first time. Our bed is green. Our bed is alive. She had been trying to produce so much apart from that living union with Him.
That which starts in the flesh ends in the flesh. That which is flesh is flesh. She has seen now, for the first time, the fruit of union.
In Hebrew society, that was a big thing—childbearing and all. That is what she has in mind when she says, “Our bed is green.” She saw where fruit comes from.
If there are any brothers here who have opportunities to teach, let me give a little application of “our bed is green.”
Someday, God is going to call you, as He has called me many times. You have to give a message. You have to share a word, give a ministry. May God deliver you from a sermon, and may God deliver those who hear you from sermons.
Here is God’s way: it is always, “Our bed is green.” It is the implanted Word.
You are in union with Him, and He implants a word in your heart. Like a little baby, that word begins to develop in you and grow in you. There are times you do not even know what it is, but it is there, and it is from the Lord.
It is growing, and it is His word that is in you. I remember when Carrie was ready to deliver. She kept dictating to the baby when to be born. No—the baby tells you when it is time to be delivered.
I have found that when God implants a word in your heart, sometimes it is a year or more than a year. That thing develops and develops and develops, and God will tell you. That word will tell you when it is time to be delivered.
Everyone will see: our bed is green. You have got to learn, as she had to learn, that it is the fruit of a union. He implants it, then it grows, then it is delivered. That is how she needs to learn to live her entire life.
Well, that is section one. She has seen all those things. Now she needs to enter into them. With the time we have left—see, I keep pushing section one because that is all I know.
She has moved from Song of Solomon 2:16, “My beloved is mine, and I am his,” to Song of Solomon 6:3, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”
In stage one, her eyes had been opened to a whole new world. She never dreamed that that world was even out there, but it was a subjective world.
I suggested, as we closed this morning, that she was just sort of clinging to Him—but not with a good cling. It was the kind that says, “If I let go, He is gone. Our union, our relationship, depends on my holding Him.”
But now this section ends with her clinging desperately to Him. Rather than reading the entire section, Song of Solomon 3:6 through 6:10, let me just home in on what I think is the chief story in this section.
You will see in a moment why this is going to be my yearbook, and maybe longer than that. There is more in this section than the story I am about to give you.
I went through this section and saw thirty-one references to plants and animals. I have an idea they all mean something.
In this section, we read about the fragrance of Lebanon, the forests of Carmel, the pools of Heshbon, the tents of Kedar, the mountains of Gilead, the beauty of Tirzah, the crown of Solomon, and the royal bed of state.
I am jumping over all that because I have nothing to tell you. I do not know what it means. Wonderful. I know there is spiritual reality in all of that.
But there is one story in this section that just stands out. In stage two, it seems like the truth revolves around the story of the groom and his garden. Let us look at that story together.
Up until this time, the bride has been very insecure. She has had many self-depreciating comments. She keeps cutting herself down.
She thinks she has to make herself attractive in order to be accepted. She is constantly trying to beautify herself. She is always primping up, using fragrances, and trying to make herself lovable.
The groom, on the other hand, has been desperately trying to communicate His heart: “I love you as you are. You are already beautiful. You smell fine. You do not have to try to improve. I love you just like you are.”
But she has been so burned in the vineyards, and she has such a low self-image in her mind, that she thinks she has to do all of this work to make herself acceptable.
What a shock when she heard these words in Song of Solomon 4:12-15:
A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
A garden locked, a spring sealed up.
Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates
With choice fruits, henna with nard plants,
Nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,
With all the trees of frankincense,
Myrrh and aloes, along with all the finest spices.
You are a garden spring,
A well of fresh water,
And streams flowing from Lebanon.
The groom just piles it on. Up until this time, because of the vineyard work she had done, her view of herself was, “I am everybody’s gardener.”
Then, when He began to deliver her from the companions’ flock and she tasted the Lord’s flock, she said, “No, I am not everybody’s gardener. I am the Lord’s gardener.”
What a shock for her to hear this: “You are not My gardener. You are My garden.” Not the same thing. A different direction altogether.
A garden locked. A private garden. A garden locked, sealed up. A garden spring. A well of fresh water.
It is as if the groom were telling her, and as if she heard it for the first time, “I am not requiring you to labor, sweat, work in the vineyards, be sunburned, and all of that. I just want to enjoy you.”
“You are My garden. I want to enjoy you. I want to appreciate you. I love you.” See, that was brand new to her.
He satisfies me, but is it possible that you satisfy Him? That is hard to think. Only grace, only a revelation, could have us enter into this.
Now the groom is blowing our mind. Remember, it is not flattery. Flattery is an insincere comment. This is not flattery. It is a compliment, but it is true.
Song of Solomon 4:9:
You have made my heart beat faster,
My sister, my bride;
You have made my heart beat faster
With a single glance of your eyes.
Another translation says, “You have ravished my heart.” Brothers, I am asking you—and only God can help you answer it—do you believe that you make God’s heart skip a beat when He looks at you?
That is what He is saying, and it is not just poetry. He says, “I love you so much. Every time I look at you, My heart skips a beat. My heart beats fast.”
In Song of Solomon 6:5, the groom says, “Turn your eyes away from me; they have overwhelmed me.” He says, “I can hardly look at you. I get so excited.”
I have been married for forty years. I do not remember ever complimenting my wife’s temple, or her belly button, or saying, “Your feet look great in sandals.”
He loves her from head to toe. He loves every part of her. He loves her so much that He says, “Every time I look at you, My heart skips a beat.” Do you believe that?
That is what is going to lead. That is what makes it real. The revelation that God is saying all this—when it finally dawns on you—you are able to enter into all the light He gave you in stage one.
Are you familiar, brothers, with the only passage in the Bible that presents God singing? There is one place that says God sings. Are you familiar with that?
Zephaniah 3:17. Do you know what He is singing about? You. He is singing about His people. The only time God sings in the whole Bible, He sings about us. It takes your breath away.
The revelation that she is a delight to Him, and that she can bring satisfaction to His heart, suddenly dawns on her. “Hey, you know, maybe it is not about me.”
“Maybe I do not exist for myself. Maybe it is about His happiness, not mine. Maybe it is about His pleasure, not mine. Maybe it is about His satisfaction.”
You know that wonderful verse in 1 Corinthians 6:13:
Food is for the stomach,
And the stomach is for food.
What else are you going to do with a stomach? Think about it. If ever anything was made with a purpose, food is for the stomach. Then he adds: “So the body is for the Lord.”
You are as much made for the Lord as the stomach is made for food, and food for the body. She is beginning to learn that now.
It dawns on her, the wonder of it: “Are You kidding? I am Your garden? You love me?” He had been trying to tell her that, and she had been trying to get so beautiful, but now all of a sudden it hits her. He really believes this stuff.
He really thinks I am His garden. It dawns on her. When that truth broke on her heart, she broke into a song, which I think in the Old Testament is one of the finest expressions of total surrender anywhere in the Bible.
Song of Solomon 4:16:
Awake, O north wind,
And come, wind of the south;
Make my garden breathe out fragrance,
Let its spices be wafted abroad.
May my beloved come into his garden
And eat its choice fruits.
This is high ground indeed. She has accepted His view of her. He said, “You are My garden,” and she said, “If that is so, if that is true, in the light of that discovery, then I do not care anymore what happens.”
“Awake, north wind. Come, wind of the south. I do not care what comes into my life as long as it blows through this garden and brings a pleasing fragrance to the nostrils of the groom. That is all that matters anymore. I do not care about anything else.”
Awake, north wind. That represents, as you know, the chilly wind, the frosty wind, the biting wind—affliction, trials, hard times.
What she is saying is this: “Let the north wind come. I do not care what comes into my life. The only thing that matters is this: I am His garden, and He wants to smell a sweet fragrance.”
“If it takes the north wind to do that, it is not about me anymore. It is about Him now.” So she says, “Let the north wind blow.”
Then she adds, “Let the south wind blow”—the balmy wind, the warm wind, blessing and prosperity and health, the wind that brings the soft rain.
To the bride at this point, it made no difference. It was absolutely incidental whether it was the harsh north wind or the pleasant south wind.
Do you see where this surrender has taken her? She is completely delivered from outward circumstances. It does not matter anymore.
Because it has finally dawned on her: He loves me so much. I make His heart skip a beat. He is overwhelmed. He is overcome. He looks at me. He breaks into song. I am His garden.
If that is true, then let His garden breathe out fragrance to Him. What a change in the bride, whose interest was all in Him, and where everything depended on favorable circumstances. When they were not favorable, she got all upset.
Not anymore—not from this point. Now the bride can flourish in any condition.
Notice her prayer, please, because when we say surrender, we are used to what we see in the body as surrender. Many times, it is not surrender at all; it is resignation.
In other words, “I do not have much of a choice. God has brought this into my life, and what am I supposed to do? All right, I will give it to Him.” That is not surrender.
She is not just accepting any wind that blows. She is courting the wind. Did you see that? She said, “Awake, north wind. You have been sleeping.” She invites the north wind.
It is not that it has come into her life and she is finally resigned to it. She says, “I am His garden, and I want these fragrances to flow. Whatever it takes—north wind, come. Come, wake up. Blow into my garden.”
“Breathe that sweet fragrance unto the Lord.” I suggest that is surrender. I suggest it can only come when God makes it so real that He loves you so much that this is the response.
Do not answer, but do you believe that this is more than poetry, and that God actually is in love with you? That you cause His heart to skip a beat, and you confuse Him when He looks at you? Of course, that part is easy to believe.
That He sings over you. When it dawns on your heart that all He ever wanted from you was not that you would try to be beautiful, attractive, and pleasing to Him, but that you would just be who you are and let Him be who He is—you are His garden.
When you learn that and believe it, the response can only be this: “Awake, north wind. Come. Blow. It does not matter. South wind, affliction, prosperity—I do not care anymore.”
Her heart was set on something else now. “All I care about is that He is happy. It is not my happiness anymore. That is incidental. It is now His joy, His satisfaction, and His pleasure.”
She invites the winds—any wind—to blow. She desires it.
May my beloved come into his garden
And eat its choice fruits.
Let me tell you the sequel to this story in the time we have left, because it carries a very spiritual truth, a reality, and I hope God helps us communicate it.
With this new revelation, with her newfound surrender, her new direction—“It is not about me; it is about Him. I am my beloved’s. Come north wind; come south wind”—the next scene is that she is in bed.
She has entered into a rest, a wonderful, wonderful rest. When you come to that place where you surrender as a byproduct of the discovery of how much He is in love with you, and you respond, “It does not matter. It is about Him,” then you enter into this glorious rest.
Song of Solomon 5:2:
I was asleep,
But my heart was awake.
A knock comes at her door. I think, almost from the way it is written, that she got so excited about that rest that she was resting in her rest and forgot a little bit about the groom.
He comes to the door. It is her beloved, wet with the dews of the night, the dampness outside. In verse 3, she is already undressed. She is already in bed. She has already taken her shower.
It is a strange time for Him to come knocking, just when I enter rest. Her last view of Him was that He was walking in His garden and enjoying His garden. She was His garden, and it did not matter anymore. That is the last view she had.
Anyway, she delays. The Song does not tell us all the details. Maybe she fell back into stage one: “Be right there. Let me get fixed up, get dressed, put on the perfume, and all.”
But you know the story. Song of Solomon 5:6:
I opened to my beloved,
But my beloved had turned away
And had gone.
He is gone. Every Christian has experienced the absence of the Bridegroom-Lover, and many times right after the most complete surrender—when you surrender to the Lord, and it does not matter as long as He is pleased.
Then, all of a sudden, you lose—not the Lord—but the sensible presence of the Lord.
We read about her desperate search. “He is gone. He is gone.” In Song of Solomon 5:6-7, she runs out into the street in the middle of the night. “I have got to find Him. I have got to find my beloved.”
In verse 7, she is mistaken by the watchmen for one of the women of the street. She is treated harshly. She is beaten. They take her veil away. They misunderstand. She is just looking for Jesus.
She is out in the streets looking for her groom, but they do not understand. I think, once again, these watchmen represent a certain portion of the body, and they do not understand.
“If He is gone, you must be out of fellowship. You did something wrong. You messed up.” They beat you. She is mistreated. She is persecuted.
She continues her search, and then she makes a classic mistake: she finds the daughters of Jerusalem.
Song of Solomon 5:8:
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
If you find my beloved,
As to what you will tell him:
I am lovesick.
She asks the daughters of Jerusalem to help her find the beloved. They are in the family. They have lovingly worked for the groom, but they do not have a clue about it. They are strangers to Him.
They do not understand this relationship. They do not understand this union. It is a mistake to think they can help you find Christ.
They honestly ask—give them that—it is an honest question. Song of Solomon 5:9:
What kind of beloved is your beloved,
O most beautiful among women?
What kind of beloved is your beloved,
That you thus adjure us?
In other words, “Describe Him for us,” because they do not know what He is like. They do not understand. They do not know what she is looking for.
They are totally baffled as to why this girl is out in the street in the middle of the night, hunting madly, trying to find this One who is so important to her. “Describe Him for us.”
Then follows Song of Solomon 5:10-16, one of the great Christological passages in the Old Testament—this great description of Christ.
He is the One who has the whiteness of the lily and the redness of the rose. He is the chiefest among ten thousand. His head is gold. His hair is bushy and black as a raven. His eyes are pure and single like a dove’s eyes.
His mouth is full of sweetness, dripping with liquid myrrh. He is altogether lovely.
The bride begins to meditate. “What is He like? Oh, let me tell you about Him. He is this, and He is that.” She gets so wrapped up in her description of Christ, in her meditation on the groom.
It is almost like she is interrupted by another question. She is all involved: “He is this, and He is that, and He is wonderfully beautiful. You should see Him. You should know my Lord. You should know my husband. He is great.”
Suddenly she is interrupted. She forgot she was out in the street and all beat up. They ask another question—a brilliant question. Song of Solomon 6:1:
Where has your beloved gone,
O most beautiful among women?
Where has your beloved turned,
That we may seek him with you?
If I knew that, do you think I would be out here in the street? It is a brilliant question from the daughters of Jerusalem. “Where is He? We will help you find Him. Tell us where He is.”
You think if she knew the answer to that question, she would be out there? She does know. That is an amazing thing.
“Where is He?” She said, “I remember. I remember where He is.” Song of Solomon 6:2:
My beloved has gone down to his garden,
To the beds of balsam,
To pasture his flock in the gardens
And gather lilies.
Are you getting that, brothers? That ends this section:
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine;
He pastures his flock among the lilies.
He is in His garden, of course. That is where He always is. He never left in the first place.
But she had to learn, because she was clinging like Mary Magdalene was clinging—in the wrong way, to the flesh. She had to learn to cling in the Spirit and to cling by faith. He had not gone at all.
She finally discovered, “I know where He is. He is in His garden.”
May I suggest, brothers, as you move from your interest in Him to His interest in you, as you let God dawn on your heart the reality of how much He loves you, how He delights in you, how you turn Him on, how excited He is about you, how you cause His heart to skip a beat and flutter, how you overwhelm Him, and how you make Him sing—when that dawns on your heart, something happens.
When you learn that you are His garden, then you will have to respond as she responded and say, “If that is true, if that is the case, awake, north wind.”
“It does not matter anymore about me. Come on. Any trial, any suffering, any affliction, anything. South wind, prosper. I do not care anymore what wind comes as long as He is happy.”
Then you enter into rest. But now you have Him in His garden, and it looks like He is gone. So you go out and look. People do not understand, and then they beat you up, and all this.
Try meditating on Him. Try meditating on Him. As you meditate on Him, you will remember again: He is in His garden. He is in His garden.
I am suggesting that stage two—surrender—the surrender that comes as a byproduct, as a fruit, of learning, hearing, and knowing—not just hearing, but hearing when God shows you. He is the only One who can show you that.
Do you believe it, brothers, one by one? Do you believe it? He is in love with you, and you do affect Him that way. He loves you. He is in love with you.
Pull out all the stops. May God help you believe that with all your heart. That will follow. That will follow.
Someday, if you forget, just meditate. What is He like? Think about it, and you will know where He is.
Father, thank You so much for the wonderful book of Song. Take its truth, its reality, and make it real for us. We want to experience this great love.
Thank You for drawing us. Thank You for kissing us. Thank You for opening our eyes. Thank You for allowing us to enter in.
Thank You for inspiring this marvelous book that we can study. Work it in our hearts, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.