And unveil His Son. And so we need to trust Him.
Let me give you a Bible verse from Song itself to introduce this principle. Now, I am taking it out of the context of Song, but I am leaving it in the context of Scripture. In other words, by isolating it from this particular passage, maybe I have done a little violence to the particular context of Song, but it is true in the balance of Scripture.
It is from Song of Solomon 5:6. Remember yesterday, we discussed when the groom came knocking on the bride’s door, and how perhaps at that time she was resting more in her rest than in her groom.
Anyway, the Lord had revealed to her that she was His garden, and He would never leave His garden. He was there, but for a season she lost the sense of His presence. She learned later that she had not lost His presence, but only the sense of His presence.
And when she ran out in the dews and the dampness, to show that He was still there, He called to her. Song of Solomon 5:6. She is outside now. She is out seeking Him.
My heart went out to Him
As He spoke.
That expression—and it is our prayer this morning, as we trust the Lord to clinch the message of His heart—that our hearts would go out to Him as He speaks.
Even though at that time she lost the sense of His presence, He was still there. He was still speaking. He was still calling. And something was moving in her heart.
My heart went out to Him as He spoke.
So, with that in mind, let us pray and ask God to make that so real in us.
Our Father, we thank You so much for Your Word. We have sensed so often how our hearts go out as You speak. And so we would ask You to speak again. Continue to draw us. Suddenly come to Your temple in a life-changing way.
We desire once again to behold the beautiful face of our groom. We ask You, Lord, this morning, as we meditate again in Your Word, that You would clinch in our hearts the message that You have for us.
We know that if we see the Lord, we will be like Him. And so show us, we pray, that transforming vision of our Savior. We thank You that we can count on You for that.
We pray, as we touch on these wonderful verses in the third stage—verses that are so precious and that we know so little about—will You please speak? And we thank You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
All right, brothers, once again, I know we have been together session after session, and it is not like I am in Newport and have to give a big review. I am so used to meeting a week apart, and reviewing is a big part of my teaching. But I do think it is important to get back into the flow.
Though you have heard it, let me stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. Let me go over again the thrust of what we have been looking at.
The Song of Songs is the final book in the poetry section, and it brings us, I believe, to experience—or to see—God’s heart concerning the climactic redemptive experience. This is where He wants us, each one of us.
The climax of the redemptive experience is your love affair with Jesus. It is my love affair with Jesus. It is intimate union with the Bridegroom-Lover of your soul: relationship to Him.
That is what God is working in our hearts, and that is where He is bringing us. In this marvelous book, that is the climax of the experience.
As I suggested, this is a love story on two levels. It is a love story of two worlds. It is heavenly love illustrated by earthly love.
Although we have been focusing on the heavenly side, I pray that God in His grace would allow us to embrace these great things in our relationships with our life partners. You are the groom in your relationship with your life partner. You are the initiator. You are the one who draws her.
She is your garden. You are to enjoy her just as she is. All of these wonderful truths, God desires, not only to be true in our union with Him, but to be true on the level of earth.
The Song begins with Song of Solomon 1:2, that sigh, that desire, that longing of the bride:
May He kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.
Your love is better than wine.
She experienced this great desire. She had tasted the world. She had tasted the love of the Lord, and she had chosen the love of the Lord. Now she just desired that He would continually express His love over and over again.
She knew that, to enter into that union, it was not in her. If she was to taste of that love, she had to be drawn into it.
Brothers, realize that our running is contingent on His drawing. That is not just some pious phrase. That is a blessed reality.
What is my hope for a victorious Christian life and intimate union with Him? What is your hope for a victorious Christian life and intimate union with the Lord Jesus Christ?
I think the answer is this: I have a wooing Savior, and you have a wooing Savior. He is always wooing. He is always drawing. He never stops.
Do you not love a love affair on the level of earth where the husband never stops wooing his wife, even as that marriage gets on in years and turns gray? Even then, the husband is to draw and to woo the wife.
At any moment in your life, at any moment in my life, when you feel like your love for the Lord is growing stale or growing cold, in that moment you can look into the face of your groom and say, “Draw me, and we will run after You.”
He never stops wooing. He never stops drawing. And the bride began to experience this.
Now, in our look at this book, I have tried to point out what many commentators have seen. This is not my bright idea. God’s people through the years have seen these three stages.
Song of Solomon 2:16:
My beloved is mine,
And I am His.
In the beginning of the drawing, as we enter into union, it all seems to be so self-centered, in a sense. It is my interest in Him. She claims Him. She seeks Him. She finds Him. She clings to Him. She holds on to Him. She wants to eat in His pasture. She wants to rest.
It all seems like it is all about her. She is constantly cutting herself down in this first section. She has low thoughts of herself. She thought that she must be beautiful to be loved. She had to learn that she had to be loved to be beautiful. It is not the same thing.
God began to teach her, as He drew her, that first characteristic in the first stage is light. It is revelation. It is discovery. It is understanding. It is illumination.
Kiss me with the kisses of Your mouth.
Every time He kissed her, her eyes opened wider in amazement, and her mouth opened wider in amazement. She found a world she never dreamed was there. God kept showing her, and showing her, and showing her—kissing her over and over again. We will not review the ten ways her eyes were opened.
Stage two is Song of Solomon 6:3. It is no longer, “He is mine; I am His.” It is now:
I am His,
And He is mine.
It is His interest in me. It is no more about her interest in Him. There is a little bit there, but now it is His interest in her:
I am my beloved’s.
As revelation, insight, and light were characteristic of the first section, I tried to show you, with the light I have presently, that surrender was the great characteristic of stage two.
When we closed last evening, we were looking at the chief story in this section: the groom and his garden, Song of Solomon 4:12 through 6:10. Glance again at these verses.
A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
A rock garden locked,
A spring sealed up.
Song of Solomon 4:15:
You are a garden spring,
A well of fresh water,
Springs flowing from Lebanon.
He calls her His garden, His private garden.
I have come into My garden, My sister, My bride.
Before this, all through stage one, as her eyes were being opened, her thought seemed to be, “I am His gardener.” But now she discovers the reality. Because of His drawing, because of His wooing, by turning her away from her need to try to make herself something attractive, lovely, and beautiful, she has learned, “I am not His gardener. I am His garden.”
That revelation in the record changed her life. When that finally dawned on her, when God finally made that so real, it was not just something she knew up here; it suddenly hit her: “His garden. He loves me. He really does.”
You remember the changes in her heart. So she prays this wonderful prayer, 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.
She could only respond to such a revelation by this utter and total submission. “Come, north wind; come, south wind. It does not matter anymore whatever wind blows into my life, as long as He is pleased, as long as He is happy.”
When we closed last evening, I was showing you how He had taken her to a new level. He wanted her to know that He was there by faith. She had clung earlier by sight, but now He was teaching her, “I am there when it does not look like I am there.”
When she lost Him—you remember the story; I will not get into that—she began to meditate on Him. All of a sudden she recalled, “He is not lost at all. I know where He is. He is in His garden.”
The New Testament expression of that is His temple. That is why, when Jesus as a little boy was missing, where do you find Him? He is in His temple. He is always in His temple. He is always in His garden.
Song of Solomon 6:1 asks:
Where has your beloved gone,
Most beautiful among women?
And Song of Solomon 6:2 answers:
My beloved has gone down to His garden.
That brings us then, brothers, to the last stage of this climactic redemptive experience: Song of Solomon 6:11 to the end of the book.
The key verse is Song of Solomon 7:10:
I am my beloved’s,
And His desire is toward me.
With the light I have now, I see this as the highest cry of the book. It is all about Him. It is all about His interest in her. His desire is for me.
I told you when we began that this is very personal. It is the bride and the groom. But she is going to learn now in this section that “for me” is plural. Hold on to that, and we will develop it as we go along.
She has seen afresh how little their union actually depended on her. All she is, He has made her. All she has come to see, He has shown her. All the beauty that He was commending in her was His beauty. He had given her His beauty.
Her running was because of His drawing. Her love toward Him, her grip on Him, and her desire for Him all seem to fade away in stage three when she says:
I am my beloved’s.
His desire is for me.
In this third stage, I told you there were two words that I thought summarized God’s heart. Just as in stage one it was revelation, and in stage two it was surrender and submission, I am suggesting that stage three is these two words: rest and fruit.
Let me see if we can illustrate that. In the first section, her heart was set on her satisfaction in Him. In the second, His satisfaction in her. But all of a sudden, when you come to section three, there is this mutual fellowship.
There is this “us” in this section. Glance at these verses, please. We start reading, and we did not read this earlier. This all of a sudden comes up now.
Let us go into the country;
Let us spend the night in the villages.
Let us rise early;
Let us see if the vine has budded.
Then in Song of Solomon 8:8:
We have a little sister.
What shall we do for our sister?
And in Song of Solomon 8:9:
We will build her a battlement of silver.
We will barricade her.
In this section, there is a wonderful security. The bride is at rest in the groom. It is all “we” now. It is ours. It is union.
Let me give an illustration of this. I mentioned it earlier in passing, but let me pound it home now. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes that the preacher who preaches pure words must have goads, and they must come home like well-driven nails, and they must be given by one Shepherd.
That is how to teach. You have to make sure you have a point—a goad. You have to drive it home. And you have to make sure it comes from one Shepherd. Well, let me drive it home. I have a couple of nails here to drive home.
In Song of Solomon 3:4:
Scarcely had I left them
When I found him whom my soul loves.
I held on to him and would not let him go
Until I had brought him into my mother’s house,
Into the room of her who conceived me.
I want to compare Song of Solomon 3:4 with Song of Solomon 8:5. In Song of Solomon 3:4, she is clinging to Him. I pointed out that that clinging was not necessarily all that healthy. It was a clinging of desperation.
I know there is a right way to cling to the Lord, and God created His people, as Jeremiah says, for clinging. There is a Bible passage on that. But she was certain at this point in her experience with the groom that if she let go of Him, He would run away.
In other words, their union depended on her grip. She was holding everything together. I suggest that there is a right way to cling to the Lord, but there is also a wrong way.
Have you ever said this, or have you ever heard this? “I have got to have devotions every day, or He will be gone. If I do not have devotions every day, then my whole day is going to mess up, and I am not going to have sweet union with the Lord.”
That is clinging in the wrong way, because that is saying that your union with Him depends on your grip on Him—depends on your hold on Him.
“I have got to be faithful in my stewardship. If I fail to tithe or to be generous, I might just be cold toward the Lord.” That is gripping in the wrong way.
“I must not neglect the fellowship of the saints and the gathering together. I must not miss the breaking of bread, or the Sunday assembly, or the midweek prayer meeting, or any conference, or any gathering of the saints, or it will interfere with my relationship with Christ.”
Am I speaking against morning devotions? Am I speaking against stewardship? Am I speaking against meeting together with the people of God, the body of Christ? I am not.
I am only saying that those things do not secure our relationship with Him. My fellowship with Him does not depend on my hold on Him. It depends on His hold on me.
I remember hearing a wonderful illustration one time. I may have even passed it on, so if this is redundant, it was an illustration about swimming. It explained to me why I cannot swim and why I will probably never be a good swimmer.
My son just bought me, because he thinks I am getting fat, a membership in the YMCA so that I could swim. We go to the Y, and we have been trying to swim. I cannot breathe. I am trying to learn how to breathe, and the lifeguard there is trying to teach me how natural it is, how easy it is.
I am having an awful time swimming. I will tell you one of the main reasons: I have a lot of strokes. I stroke with my arms and kick like crazy, but I am using my strokes to hold me up.
They are not designed to hold me up. I am supposed to trust God’s finished work of creation—the water—to hold me up. The water holds me up. The strokes are designed to take me forward.
But because I am using the strokes to hold me up, I am drowning, because that is not what they are designed for. I have got to learn to trust the water to hold me up.
Brothers, the illustration is just this: the finished work of Christ will hold you up. The strokes are designed to take you forward.
Do not neglect devotions, but do not trust them to hold you up. May God use them to take you forward. Do not neglect the fellowship of God’s people, but do not trust that to hold you up. The finished work of Christ holds you up.
Trust that. Use those things to take you forward in the Lord. May God help us.
In this first section, the bride was clinging in an unhealthy way, causing the union to depend on her grip. But notice how the book ends in section three, Song of Solomon 8:5:
Who is this coming up from the wilderness,
Leaning on her beloved?
Oh, what a picture that is: leaning on her beloved. Leaning is better than clinging because she is not the least bit afraid anymore that He is going to slip away and be gone.
See that rest? She is just leaning on her beloved. She is at ease. I love the way it is worded:
Who is this
Coming up out of the wilderness,
Leaning on her beloved?
Now, I would expect—I speak as a fool—I would expect if it said, “Who is this coming out of the palace? Who is this coming out of the banquet hall? Who is this coming out of the garden, leaning on her beloved?” But it does not say that.
Who is this
Coming up from the wilderness,
Leaning on her beloved?
I think it is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to see a believer who has been in the wilderness and to watch that believer come out leaning on his beloved. What a testimony that is.
Sometimes you see a person coming out of the wilderness who has not entered stage three. They are still in stage one. They are connected to the beloved, but they are sort of hanging onto His foot as He drags them out of the wilderness. That is probably how I would do it.
The Lord has shown you brothers at Family Ministries, recently—I do not know about the rest of you and the assemblies that you represent—but I know at Family Ministries there has been some wilderness.
You have seen this. This is not just Song. You have seen the testimony of a brother, tears running down his cheeks because of a painful loss, coming up out of the wilderness leaning on the Beloved.
You have seen a whole family going through what can only be called a wilderness experience. Amazing to see what the Lord has done: the composure and the rest, as a whole family comes leaning on the Beloved.
They have been through the furnace, and there is no smell of smoke on them anywhere. Glorious testimony.
There is a dear brother in Newport that I have had the privilege of meeting with every day for many months now—every day, with very few exceptions. For thirty-seven years, he has lived in agony because of a disease.
Oh, he trusts the Lord. I cannot tell you what he and his family have meant in my life and in the life of our family as we have watched him come out of the wilderness leaning on his beloved.
What a way this book ends, because this is safety, this is security, and this is rest. The bride is not anxious, she is not fretting, she is not fearful, and everything is okay. She is leaning on her beloved.
In Song of Solomon 8:6–7, because she has learned—it has dawned on her—“I am His garden; He really loves me,” she is able to give this marvelous description of love. Commentators love these verses because they talk about love; they describe love. This is the love she came to rest in.
Set me as a seal upon Thy heart,
As a seal on Thine arm;
Love is as strong as death,
Jealousy is as cruel as the grave.
The coals thereof are coals of fire,
A most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can floods drown it.
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
It would be utterly condemned.
The seal on the arm is sort of like our wedding band. This woman has said, “Thank You for the symbol of Your love. Not the ring—make me a ring not on Your finger, but on Your heart.”
What a glorious picture of love here. In verse 6, she remembers the day when she was clinging in desperation: “If I let go, He is out of here. He is gone.” Now she thinks about His love.
She says, “Oh, now I know You have a hold on me.” Her illustration is, “As strong as death.” Death will not let go once it has hold. She says His love is as strong as death. It has held me, and I know there is no way I can ever be released.
Song of Solomon 8:7 says, “Many waters cannot quench love.” You know how we use the expression, “Boy, they have been through some deep waters,” or, “What a flood has come into their lives,” and so on.
She realizes there are no deep waters, there is no flood, that can disturb the love that He has expressed to her. She feels so safe. It is all about rest and trusting.
Now remember, brothers, I do not want to keep coming downstairs, but this is a love story of two worlds. Your bride needs to know that she is a seal on your heart. She needs to know that your hold on her is as strong as death.
She needs to know that whatever floods come in, however deep the waters get, it is not going to change anything. Waters cannot overflow it. It is not enough to think she knows that. Tell her.
The groom has to communicate these things. She needs to know that she is your one and only, and you love her with a jealous love.
But on the level of earth, pictures always break down, do they not? We can only go so far on earth, but God’s love is beyond that. There is no picture, there is no poetic expression—not even in this book of Song—that can accurately picture God’s love for us, the true Groom for His bride.
The reason is because human love, even at its best, is finite. He loves you with an infinite love. There is nothing on earth that can picture that.
So she scrapes around and tries to find the strongest expression: as strong as death, fires of jealousy. Nothing can describe infinite love. Jesus loves me with an infinite love, and only infinity can measure the intensity of that love.
Take all the loves that you can think of on the earth and put them in a pile until you have a mountain of love: the love husbands have for wives, the love wives have for husbands, the love parents have for children, the love children have for parents, the love brothers have for sisters, the love sisters have for brothers, the love neighbors have for neighbors, and the love Christians have for Christians.
Find all the loves you can find and put them in one pile. What kind of love would that be?
God loves you more this moment than every human being has ever loved every other human being in all the ages of history that have come, and in all the ages of history that will follow, all added together.
And I am sorry for not telling you the full truth. I had to be weak in that illustration because He has an infinite love for you.
John 17:23 comes as close as anything I know, where He says that He loves you as much as God the Father loves God the Son. What a love. What a love.
Doubtless we will go forward in the intensity of His love, but the intensity of His love can never increase. It is an absolute intensity. What I mean by that is God can never love you any more than He loves you this moment.
Even when you get to heaven and have been there for a billion years, He will not love you one drop more than He loves you right now. Only God can communicate that.
You start believing that, and you let God start dawning that on your heart, and it will change you. Many waters cannot quench love.
I do not want to be presumptuous—I speak as a fool—but His love is so intense that you cannot mess it up even with your sin. I tell you, amazing love that He has for us.
Let me ask you this, brother: can you lean on Him? With a love like that, can you trust Him in the wilderness? Can you lean on Him coming out of the wilderness?
I suggest that is the picture you have: rest. She is settled in His love.
Let me ask this: can your wife lean on you? May God work it in us. She is at rest. She is at peace.
Look at how the third section begins, please: Song of Solomon 6:4. It is the garden conversation of the groom and the bride. After she discovered that He is in the garden, He begins to talk to her.
This is where He says that His heart flips over her and skips a beat and all that. He is praising her, and praising her, and praising her. But something is recorded right in the middle of that praise.
Song of Solomon 6:9–13:
My dove,
My perfect one, is unique;
She is her mother’s only daughter,
She is the pure child of the one who bore her.
The maidens saw her and called her blessed;
The queens and the concubines also,
And they praised her, saying,
Who is this that grows like the dawn,
As beautiful as the full moon,
As pure as the sun,
As awesome as an army with banners?
I went down to the orchard of nut trees
To see the blossoms of the valley,
To see whether the vine had budded
Or the pomegranates had bloomed.
Before I was aware,
My soul set me over the chariots of my noble people.
Come back,
Come back, O Shulamite;
Come back,
Come back, that we may gaze on you.
Why should you gaze at the Shulamite,
As at the dance of the two companies?
In the middle of His praising her—“You are My garden. You are lovely. You are fair.”—all of a sudden people start looking at her.
Look at Song of Solomon 6:9. The maidens begin to look at her. The queens begin to look at her. All the concubines begin to look at her. So do the chariots of His people.
All of a sudden, He is just praising her because she is His garden, and everybody starts looking. Their mouths drop open wide, and their eyes get wide.
She is not trying to witness. She is not trying to tell anybody to look at her. She is not trying to be a blessing. She is not trying to have an influence on anybody.
This is what I mean when I call the key word of this section fruit. When the groom praises her and tells her she is beautiful, do not forget that this is not flattery. This is true. She is fair because she is fair.
He is not saying to her, “I know you are ugly, but I can endure it.” He is not saying, “I know you are swarthy and sin-stained, but I can be gracious to you.” He is not saying that. He says, “You are beautiful.”
Even though her beauty is a borrowed beauty, even though it is a reflected beauty, it is actual. It is real. It is there.
What a rich parable you have in verse 10:
Who is this who grows as beautiful as the dawn,
As beautiful as the full moon?
You know, the moon does not have its own light. It is reflected light. It is borrowed light. It is light from the sun.
In and of itself, the moon is just the wilderness. It is barren. It is nothing. It is cold. But the groom has transformed the bride.
When the bride was describing the groom, I jotted down everything the bride said about the groom, and I came to one conclusion: so many of the descriptions have to do with His face.
She could not have described Him that way if she had not been looking full in His beautiful face. You know where her focus is. That is why she has dove’s eyes. You have to read Watchman Nee on the dove’s eyes—that marvelous section he has.
The bride is not hanging jewelry all over herself. She is not being pierced in strange places and covering her flesh with fragrances. She is not doing that.
She is just listening to the groom as He says, “You are so beautiful. You are so fair. You are so lovely.” Everybody goes, “Wow, look at her. She is really something.” They start looking at her in amazement.
Now, what is she doing? Song of Solomon 6:11 says:
I went down to the orchard of nut trees.
Now, I know there are different views of this. Frederick Krummacher—I enjoy reading him—but I think he missed it here. He thinks that is a bad thing. According to Mr. Krummacher, she is backsliding now. I think it is a normal thing.
I think, on the level of earth, as we look at it, it is very unspiritual. If the record said she had been fasting for forty days and had just finished her fast, or she had spent one night a week for three weeks in a row in an all-night prayer meeting, or if the record had said she had just come back from her third missionary tour, then we might say, “Let me gaze at you, Shulamite. You are some person.”
Or if the record had said she had just finished writing a devotional book, or had been faithful for a year and a half in mentoring somebody who needed mentoring, then I would say, “Wow, what a spiritual person, to be able to do all that.”
But it does not say that. It says she went down to gather nuts. It is so natural. She is just living. Everybody’s eyes are open wide and amazed at what they see.
Song of Solomon 6:12:
Before I was aware.
She was not even aware of it. She did not even know it. Everybody is looking at her. Everybody has their eyes open wide. She does not even know it.
Before I was aware,
My soul set me over the chariots of my noble people.
Come back, come back, O Shulamite;
Come back, come back, that we may gaze at you.
She is just living. She is just gathering nuts. She is just His garden. She is just receiving His compliments. She is just entering into their union. Everybody is looking at her.
“This is so beautiful, pure as the sun. This is like the full moon.” No programs. No gimmicks. No “how-to” tapes. No “how-to” books. No devices.
Everything is spontaneous. She is just living, and all of a sudden, because of her union with the groom, she has become attractive to everyone.
I believe it is on purpose that God has saved verse 13 for stage three. You say, “Well, the Song of Solomon is about the king and the Shulamite woman.” This is the only time she is called Shulamite. You do not find that in the early chapters. Not until the end is she called Shulamite.
I told you that Shulamite is the feminine form of the same name. In Song of Solomon 1:3, she cried out for His name:
His name is like oil poured out.
She wanted His name, and now she has it. She is like Him, and she has His name, His nature, and His character. Now she is Solomon. She has become like Him.
She is like the moon—the full moon. There is no eclipse here where the earth gets in the way. This is the full moon.
Glance, please, at Song of Solomon 6:13:
Come back, come back, Shulamite;
Come back, that we may gaze at you.
Why should you gaze at the Shulamite,
As at the dance of the two companies?
What does that mean, “the dance of the two companies”? I have a footnote in my Bible, and it says—I cannot pronounce the word—“Mahanaim.” Do you have that in your Bible? Mahanaim.
I am glad it is there because now I have a reference. I can go back in my Bible to Genesis 32. I will just tell you the story. You will remember it.
Jacob has run from the Lord and from his brother for many years. He is about to meet Esau on the next day. He sends his family away. He is going to be alone, and while he is alone, the Lord is going to wrestle him. You remember the story.
Before the wrestling match, he camps his tent because he wants to be alone. He opens his eyes, and there are other tents all around him. He camps smack-dab in the middle of another camp.
He cannot believe it. He rubs his eyes. They are angels—angels every place, all around.
So he named the place Mahanaim, however you pronounce it: two camps. There is the camp you can see with these eyes, and there is a spiritual camp as well.
Come back, come back, O Shulamite.
Let us gaze at you.
She is so human. She is so divine. There are two camps.
They look at her, and she is just another person. But they keep looking. “There is something about you that is so different.”
It is a glorious thing, brothers, when you just live in such a union with the Lord that everybody begins to look at you, gaze at you, and say, “There is something about you that is as pure as the sun.”
“Your life—I know it is borrowed light—but you are like the full moon.” When somebody can look at you and have no other explanation for your life than God, there is something divine about you.
That is what happened to her. She has done nothing but relate to the groom, and she has been changed. She has been transformed. She has become Shulamite. She has become Solomon. She has become like Him.
She has become the moon: reflected light, reflected beauty, reflected glory. Now everybody is attracted, and everybody is looking at the mystery. They see the two camps. They see the human side, and they see a divine side.
This is the fruit of the third stage. You are in the garden, you are enjoying the garden, and all of a sudden you become an attraction. Before you are aware of it, without you knowing it, unconsciously, you are on display. People are watching you.
She is at rest, leaning on her beloved, coming out of the wilderness. She is so relaxed now. She is so beautiful now—with His beauty. She is not trying to put herself forward. She is out of the picture. It is all Him and His desire toward her.
All of a sudden, something happens in terms of testimony, and everybody begins to gaze at her. I want you to hold those two thoughts: rest on one side, and fruit on the other—being transformed into His likeness so that everybody is attracted.
I want you to notice how the book comes to an end. May God help us as we look at Song of Solomon 8. There is so much in this chapter that I am not qualified to set before you. I am only beginning to see a few things here.
But I am quite sure of this: the entire chapter is about the church. The entire chapter is about the body. The entire chapter is about the whole body of Christians.
In Song of Solomon 8:1, she talks about her mother and about Him being like a brother to her. In verse 2, she says:
I would bring You to the house of my mother
Who used to instruct me.
She is so anxious. I told you at the beginning that the mother’s house is just a picture of the church. She is so anxious to bring the groom to the mother’s house.
It is not the first time she has mentioned it. She has enjoyed such a union with the groom that she now desires it for the whole body.
The sister book in the New Testament to the Song of Solomon, I believe, is 1 John. The New Testament ends the same way with the redemptive experience—the climax, the book of fellowship, the book of union with the Lord.
That same burden is expressed in 1 John 1:3:
What we have seen and heard
We declare unto you,
So that you may have fellowship with us.
And truly, our fellowship is with the Father
And with His Son, Jesus Christ.
These things I have written
That our joy might be full.
It is this person who is so united to the Lord that he looks around and says, “Oh, I wish everybody could experience this. That would be the fullness of my joy.”
The climax of the redemptive experience is not only the book of Song, but the last chapter of the book of Song is what brings it to a climax. Commentators, as a rule—evangelical commentators—agree that the church is very prominent in this last chapter.
Probably even up to the very end, where you have those vineyards. Some are serving by duty, but she has a vineyard all her own, and she is serving out of union, and so on.
But I want you to focus, please, on Song of Solomon 8:8–9:
We have a little sister,
And she has no breasts.
What shall we do for our sister
In the day when she shall be spoken for?
If she be a wall,
We will build upon her a palace of silver;
If she be a door,
We will enclose her with boards of cedar.
As the book, as the poem, as the message of God draws to a close, you start off with all this development, drawing, union, getting closer to the Lord, entering in, and finally leaning upon Him.
Then you become a testimony by doing nothing except going down to the orchard and gathering nuts. All of a sudden, it cannot stop there.
Now she looks around and says, “You have got to come to my mother’s house. You have got to come to the church. You have got to come to the body.”
“There is a little sister. She has no breasts.” She is not mature. She is undeveloped. She has not come to know what I have come to know.
Now she is living in complete union with the Lord, and she begins to get burdened for those all around her. She does not say, “I have a little sister,” but she looks into the eyes of her groom and says, “We have a little sister.”
Her burden now is for those who have not entered in and have not experienced what she experienced. She wants to help. So she says to the groom, “What can we do?”
“I have tasted so much. I have seen so much. I have experienced so much. You have done such wonders. I am now clothed with Your beauty. I am radiating You. But what about her?”
“She has no breasts. She has not entered in. She is not developed. They are immature. What can we do, Lord? How can we help?”
Now, no matter how you interpret the wall and the door, I am not going to get into that because godly men differ. When godly men differ, I do not know what to do. I try to find common-denominator ground.
If she is a wall, if she is a door—some say it is a good thing; some say it is a bad thing. Godly men are on both sides. Forget the controversy, because the answer is the same.
However you look at it, whether she is a wall or whether she is a door, good or bad, what can we do for those who are immature?
I believe the answer is this: the only thing you can do is protect them. You cannot make an immature person mature. A program is not going to help. You cannot set up another program. You cannot do what only growth can do.
You cannot mature the immature. The cure for immaturity is maturity.
As the book closes, the bride who has come into intimate union asks the groom, “What can we do?” He gives a double answer. I want us to look at the answer, because that is how the book closes, and I am suggesting that is the climax of the redemptive experience.
So now let us try to answer the question: What can I do? What can we do? I do not mean I. What can we do—me and the Lord, you and the Lord, we and the Lord? What can we do for that sister who has no breasts?
He gives a double answer. The first answer is in Song of Solomon 8:9:
If she is a wall,
We will build on her a battlement of silver;
If she is a door,
We will barricade her with planks of silver.
Now, do not get lost in the word pictures. Do not try to figure out every little word. Get the principle. I think what He is saying is this: the only thing you can do for an immature person is protect them. Protect them.
You can guard them. You can watch over them. You can surround them. You can set up stations. You can help them. Guard them.
But until they seek the Lord themselves, they are not going to get mature. That is the first part of the answer.
What is the second part of the answer? Song of Solomon 8:13–14:
Thou that dwellest in the gardens,
The companions hearken to thy voice:
Cause Me to hear it.
Make haste, my beloved,
Be thou like a roe or a young hart
Upon the mountains of spices.
Brothers, we are coming right to the end now, and I think this is God’s final answer. Please pray in your heart that God will communicate this to you.
This is so fresh to my heart. Some of this is as fresh as this morning to my heart. But here is what I think it is saying.
I know there are differences among those who ask who is speaking. Is it the groom? Is it the bride? Is it partly the groom and partly the bride? Everybody seems to guess at that, so I have a right to guess.
I think the groom speaks in verse 13. I think the bride speaks in verse 14. What does the groom say in verse 13? Do not forget, it is an answer to the question, “What shall we do for our little sister who has no breasts?”
That is what He is answering. The first part of the answer is, “You have to support her. You have to protect her. You have to be there. You have to watch over her. You have to guard her.” That is the first part.
The second part is this. Now I am going to speak, and I pray that it will not dishonor the Lord, but I am going to speak as if I were the Lord. This is what I think He is saying.
He is saying, “My dear bride, you made a discovery because I drew you into it. You discovered that you were My garden. Do you remember that, dear bride?”
“Well now, you must learn that even though that was personal, and I said, ‘You are My garden sealed. You are My garden, My private garden, My rock garden, My only garden, My one garden, My one and only garden,’ I have got to tell you something.”
“I have many gardens.” Look at the text. “I have many gardens.” It is plural.
“You have longed to bring Me to the mother’s house. All right, I will go to the mother’s house in your person—you, My garden.”
“You are concerned about those bad brothers who treated you so poorly and made you work in the vineyard. You are concerned about those companion shepherds that were man-centered and did not feed you.”
“You are concerned about those watchmen that misunderstood you, mistreated you, and persecuted you. You are concerned about those daughters of Jerusalem that kept disturbing your rest.”
“You are concerned about that little sister that has no breasts. You are concerned about the caretakers of the vineyard who are working out of duty instead of out of union.”
“You have a burden for the mother’s house, and you are inviting Me: ‘Come to the mother’s house. You have got to come here. You have got to help these people. Some of them have not entered into this.’”
“Well, I want you to know, first of all, we have many titles in Song for the church. There are the companions, the shepherds, the guardsmen, the watchmen, the caretakers, the daughters of Jerusalem, and the daughters of Zion—so many names for God’s people.”
“But the last name for God’s people in this book—the body—is gardens. They are all My gardens, but they have not come to see it yet. They are all My gardens.”
“So, My garden, I am placing you in My gardens.”
The groom tells His bride, “You want to know how they can be helped? I am placing you in My gardens. That is their hope for maturity—that you are going to be there because you have become like Me.”
“They are now attracted to you, and they see two companies. They do not understand it, and they know that it is human, but they know that it is divine.”
“You have become a radiant picture of Me, a reflection. You are as pure as the full moon. You are My representative in the gardens.”
Song of Solomon 8:13: the groom says, “My companions are listening for your voice.”
You want to know what you can do? You have to protect them, or they will self-destruct. You have to watch over them. You cannot mature them.
You cannot do what that little kid did with the flower. It does not work that way. That is what we try to do. Sometimes I see some Christian, and I want to shake them. I want to shake them. I say, “What is wrong with you? Start seeking the Lord.” But it does not work.
So you have to protect them. You have to watch over them. You have to be there. You have to love them.
Then He says, “You are My garden, and here is My solution: I will put My garden in My gardens. You will stand there as a radiant testimony, and they will see two camps, two companies.”
“You will be the attraction. They are listening for your voice.” Then He says, “Let Me hear it. Let Me hear it. Let Me hear your voice as you talk to My garden.”
Then the bride speaks. Now, I know some have looked at this last verse and said, “This is the verse that predicts the second coming of Christ.”
Make haste,
Be like a gazelle on the mountains.
I do not have a problem with those who say that is the second coming. It would not surprise me if this book on the climactic redemptive experience ended with, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” Maybe that is in there.
But in the context, I do not think that is what this is about. I think He says, “You have a burden for those who are not mature. Well, My solution is you and your relationship with Me.”
“Now it has become so radiant, I am going to put My garden in My gardens. They are listening for your voice, and you can tell them how you got there. Remember the tracks of the roe—tell them. I am listening for you to tell them.”
Then she remembers: “I remember when I was in a box. I remember when I was behind a lattice enclosure. I remember when I did not know I was Your garden.”
“I remember what You did then. You came like a gazelle, leaped over the mountains, came up to my little box, and made a proposal: ‘Arise, My darling, My beautiful one.’”
I think the bride is saying this: “I will do it. I will be Your garden in Your gardens. I know they are Your gardens. I have looked at them harshly.”
“I have been so angry at the daughters of Jerusalem and the brothers who were angry at me. I was looking at them wrong. I never saw this motley crew as Your garden. But I know they are.”
“I know how You got to me. I know they are listening for my voice, and I will tell them whatever I can tell them. But that will not bring maturity.”
“Make haste. Come, my Beloved. Come to them like You came to me.”
I think that is how it ends. I think it is this great burden for the body, that they would all come into this relationship.
He says, “I am going to leave you there as a living witness of what relationship can do.” And she says, “You do it. I will be there. Listen for my voice. I will tell them. But, oh, make haste, my Beloved. Come like a gazelle.”
“Do for them what You have done for me.”
As I understand it, that is God’s heart. So let us pray.
Father, thank You for drawing us into union with You. We know the frustration in our hearts. We look around and long that everybody would know You as You have been so gracious to allow us to know You.
Thank You for putting us in Your gardens. Thank You that every individual Christian, in Your mind and heart, is Your garden.
Make haste, Beloved. Come as a gazelle. Come swiftly. Come surely. Draw them as You have drawn us.
Draw me,
And we will run after Thee.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you, brothers.