Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Song of Solomon, chapter six. That's not a reference you hear often, but it's that little book between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah that a lot of people don't preach out of. Not quite sure why, but it's a beautiful book and it's got quite a lot of truth in it that I think is very pertinent for our lives, not only for the life of the church, but also for our individual lives as well. And I was, I thought I was gonna preach on something other than this, and I sat down the other day with the thought that I had, and I just, I could never make it say anything, I guess, and I had listened to a sermon earlier last week, or the latter part of last week, and the man who was preaching it referenced some of the scriptures that we're going to be looking at and reading tonight in conjunction with what he was speaking on. And a couple of the things that he said really, really stood out to me. And I think that this song is completely relevant for your life. And the reason why I say that is because it is completely relevant for mine. And as I was studying this the last couple of days, the Lord has shown me that I've been in the exact position of this woman that we're gonna be looking at tonight. And I think that if we're all honest with ourselves as we go through and we start looking at some of these things, we're all in that same position or we've all been in this same position at one time or another in our lives. Or if you've not, you will get there at some point in your life. A lot of people avoid this book because it's hard to understand. They don't understand what it means. A lot of people avoid this book because, quite frankly, they look at it as being weird. They look at it as being almost taboo, and they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about its subject matter, and so they just they tend to stay away from it. I honestly could probably count on one hand, and I would still have several fingers left when I got done how many messages I've ever heard preached out of the book of Song of Solomon. But if you ever go through and you start looking at the book, and we're going to look at quite a bit of different verses in it tonight, and I hope that this will bless your heart, and I hope that the Lord will use this to encourage you, It may not sound overtly encouraging at the beginning But I promise it is going to go somewhere, so if you'll stand tonight out of respect and reverence for the word of God we're going to look in song of Solomon chapter 6 and we're going to read the first three verses of Chapter 6 and that's where we're going to take our main thought and then we're going to kind of go different places in the book and spend most of our time in chapter 5 and But this book is a love story between two people, a young maiden, she's called the Shulamite maiden, or the Shulamite girl, or the Shulamite woman, and Solomon, King Solomon, David's son, who was the richest, wealthiest, and wisest man, not only that ever reigned over the nation of Israel, but that has ever lived, period. And we know what Solomon was most famous for. Sadly, it wasn't his wealth. it was his wives. That's the thing that tends to kind of come into our minds when we think of Solomon. We can read the book of First Kings, the first several chapters, and we can look at Solomon's life and we can think how splendorous, how wonderful that is, and then we get to that one little part near the end of his life where it's like everything just completely fell apart. Psalms as was referenced tonight Solomon is not only in those songs but in this book as well as a Beautiful picture of our Lord and there's a reason why he's used as a picture of our Lord. No, he was not perfect But neither was David And David is a picture of Christ. Neither was Abraham. Neither was Moses. None of them were perfect. Neither was Joseph. But they're all picture types of Christ. And so if you look with me tonight, chapter 6, verse 1, The daughters of Jerusalem begin this chapter by asking a question. They say, Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? Whither is thy beloved turned aside? Notice the repeat of that question. That we may seek him with thee. And now she replies, she answers and says, My beloved has gone down into his garden to the beds of spices to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies. And then she reaches a declaration, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. He feedeth among the lilies. This is what I want to talk to you tonight about, lessons from lilies in the garden of love. Lessons from lilies in the garden of love. Father, in the name of Jesus tonight, we come to you, Lord, with just thankful hearts that you've allowed us to be here. We thank you for your rich mercy to us, Lord, as has been testified tonight, and your goodness that we've sung about in you giving your only begotten son. Father, in this special time of year that we can celebrate this and we can focus our attention, Lord, more so on this one message than perhaps we do at any other time during the year. Father, we thank you for the Word of God. We thank you, Lord, for this place that we can come and meet together. Lord, and I'm satisfied that everybody here probably believes in Christ and they've trusted in Christ. Father, but trusting in Christ is only the first step in a long line of steps that we take throughout our life. And every single one of us, Lord, is going to go through a time just like this young woman has here. Father, and as we go through and we look at this book and we look at some of the things in it, Lord, you purposefully did what you did to her to teach her a lesson and she learned it and she learned it very well. Lord, and I'm hungry to learn the same lesson because I've realized over the last couple of weeks, Lord, that as I've studied this, I have been exactly where she is. And Lord, I think if we're honest with ourselves tonight, we've all been there, we are there, or we will be there at some point in the future. Father, and I pray that tonight that you'll give all of us the wisdom to comprehend the depths of this book and the beauty of this book. Lord, please just let me say what you want me to say and add nothing to and take nothing from. Father, you, as this book says, are altogether lovely. And I pray, Father, that you will glow in our hearts and you will glow in our minds and we will see thee in thy beauty and in thy glory and in thy majesty. And Father, when we leave here tonight, may we be just a little bit more in love with Christ than we were when we came. Because nothing else is more important than that. We give you praise for your salvation. We give you praise for your mercy. And we give you praise for what you'll teach us tonight. In Jesus' name, and everybody said, amen. You can be seated. Lessons from Lilies in the Garden of Love. I wrote this down tonight, and what I want to look at first of all is an introduction to the book. And I wrote this down from Matthew Henry's commentary. He wrote this as an introduction to his commentary on Song of Solomon. And this is what he said. He says, all scripture, we are sure, is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for the support and advancement of the interests of his kingdom among men. And it is nevertheless so, for there being found in it some things dark and hard to be understood, which those that are unlearned and unstable rest to their own destruction. And he's speaking of this particular book. It must be confessed, on the one hand, that if he who barely reads this book be asked, as the eunuch was, understandest thou what thou readest? He will have more reason than he to say, how can I? Except some man shall guide me. Experienced Christians here find a counterpart to their own experiences. and to them it is intelligible while those neither understand it nor relish it who have no part nor lot in the matter." And I think he was very true and I think what he wrote was completely correct and what he was basically saying is that those who have had an experience with Christ who have grown in their faith and grown in their love for Christ will find in this deep, mysterious seven little chapter book Perfect mirror of their relationship with their Savior If you go back and you look at chapter 1 in verse 1 flip over there with me. I want to show you something chapter 1 in verse 1 The song begins like this. It says the song of songs Which is Solomon's? 1 Kings chapter 4 and verse 32 is giving a summation of Solomon's grandeur and his wisdom and his wealth. And it says in that verse that he wrote a thousand and five songs along with speaking so many thousands of proverbs. But this particular song is identified here as the greatest of the songs that he ever wrote. It is not just, it does not say this is the song of Solomon. But instead it says this song of songs. In other words, this is the greatest of the songs which Solomon is responsible for writing. And so therefore we can conclude that it must have come from the truest part of Solomon's heart. Everything, therefore, in this book is of the highest importance between Solomon and his bride, and in the fervor of their experiences, we, as Matthew Henry said, should find a mirror of our own experiences with Christ. On the surface, this book is a love story between two people, but it is only superficially a love story between two people. Beneath its surface, it is a perfect and illuminating mirror of the love of Christ to his church and the love of Christ to his individual saints. And I want you to keep that in mind as we go on tonight. In chapter one, we have an expression of desire towards Solomon from the Shulamite maiden and a description of her beauty to Solomon. In chapter 2, we have the pursual of this young woman by Solomon the king. In chapter 3, we have the grand procession of the marriage ceremony, which not only is talked about in chapter 3 of this book, but it's also talked about in Psalm chapter 45, and I would encourage you to go and read that as well. And in chapter four, we have the exchange of vows between the parties and a praising description of their individual beauty to each other. And so you might think as you go through and you summate all four of the first chapters that this is a beautiful, wonderful expression of love between two people, and it is. But then we arrive in chapter five. And in chapter five, the entire tone of those first four chapters, which were light and fair and beautiful, drastically changes with chapter five. So I want you to go to chapter four and look at the very last verse, verse 16. And this is where we're going to begin tonight on learning our lessons. The first thing that I want you to see is the complacency of our settlement. The complacency of our settlement. Look at this verse. This is the Shulamite, this is the bride speaking here. She says, Awake, O north wind, and come thou south. Notice her words. Blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden. and eat his pleasant fruits. The first thing that you need to understand about this book, like much of the Bible, is that this is written in poetry. And if you say, well, I don't like poetry, then you're going to have to not like most of the Old Testament. Because it's not poetry like we might think of it in our modern term today, where every other line rhymes, or every other line rhymes, or it has a rhyme scheme, but it is nonetheless poetry. You go back and you read the book of Job, and Job is 42 chapters of what we would in literature call an epic poem. The books of Ecclesiastes are poetry, Psalms is all poetry. Most of the Old Testament is written in a poetry form. And sometimes when we read poetry, we have to apply our minds and we have to apply our hearts to a deeper level of understanding than we might when we read something like the Gospels, where the language is more common and it's more just direct. But in poetry, it's much more flowery, to use a word or a description that's given multiple times in this book, and it's much more veiled. And you have to think about the imagery that's being given because everything that is written, as we'll see a little bit later on, is given and written for a reason to describe something of utmost importance. And so the first thing that I want you to see tonight about this bride, about this Shulamite, is the complacency of her settlement. In verse 16 of chapter 4, she is calling upon Solomon to come and take possession of his garden. And the garden she's wanting Solomon to take possession of is herself. And so if you look at what she says, she says, come blow upon my garden. The garden was hers. In other words, she was her own individual. And then she met him. And she fell in love with him. And she gave herself to him in marriage. And now she is no longer her own. And now she is no longer her own self. Look at what she says, let my beloved come into his garden. It's no longer her garden. It's his garden. The Bible tells us in Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians chapter 6 verses 19 and 20, you are not your own because you were bought with a price. Therefore, he says, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. So she's requesting of her husband to come and be with her. How often do we kneel down in prayer? Do we offer a prayer to Christ? And how often does He respond to us? How often do we ask Him to come and feast with us? How often do we ask Him to come and be with us? And He responds. How often do we sit down and, as Brother Brian testified, take of His Word, need something desperately, and ask Him from the deep, dark desperation of our hearts, Lord, You've got to give me something. And then He does. How often? Can you count the number of times that He's answered your prayers? I thought as I was looking at this of when we got the prayer chain the other day about them having to take Tray and Kristen's son Cole to Children's and how he was there and he was on oxygen and Brother Mike texted me Friday morning and he said, please pray for him, he's not doing well. And as just all throughout the day of any little time that I could get a coherent thought in amongst my students trying to remember him before the throne and I know everybody in here was doing the same. And God began to turn the tide of that situation for that little boy. How many times have you desperately cried out for something, desperately prayed for something, whether it's yourself or another person, and Christ answered you. How graciously He attends upon our call, and how willingly He condescends to our supplications. And what you need to understand about this story in these first four chapters is that this young woman was a nobody. She was a poor peasant girl that he found working in a vineyard because her family had left her in this vineyard. And yet she attracted the eye of a king. And not only did she attract the eye of a king, she attracted the eye of a king who could have had any single thing that he wanted. And if you go and read the life of Solomon and you read the book of Ecclesiastes, you can clearly see he did have everything he wanted. Nothing was withheld from him. He had a thousand wives. And yet, there was something about this little insignificant girl. that caught His attention. He could have had anyone else, and He did have anyone else. But He also had time for this young woman. Has it ever occurred to you that Christ could have had anyone else? And He chose you. And He chose me. Because we were the poor peasants left alone in the vineyard. But he made sure that he came by and caught our eye. And so chapter 5 begins with Solomon answering her request. Look at verse 1. I am coming to my garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice, I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. And so we have Solomon answering the request of her heart that she gave in verse 16 of chapter 4. And everything seems to be good. This is the culmination of four chapters worth of courtship. But then we get to verse 2. And now it's the bride talking and she says, I sleep. And on first glance, that doesn't sound too bad. That may not sound like there is a problem. But we have an indeterminate period of time between verse 1 and verse 2. And after all of the glory of the wedding and all of the glory of the love and of the courtship, now we have her sleeping. But there's a problem in her sleeping. She's sleeping alone. because the bridegroom is no longer in the house with her. And she has no idea that he has left. She has no idea that she is alone. To her, everything was good. Everything was right. She is content with the shepherd who found her. She is content with her lot. So she slumbers and she sleeps. And while she sleeps, Solomon leaves. and he withdraws himself. But because she's asleep, she does not notice. And I want to point out something that the Lord impressed upon my heart. We often quote the verse in the book of Hebrews, He hath said, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. And that is true. That is one of the main or one promise of God that Christian people lean on. But he will withdraw himself from you. Because we see a perfect picture of Him doing that here. He will never leave you. And He will never forsake you. But He will withdraw Himself from you. Flip over with me for just a moment to the book of Job chapter 23 and we'll see an example of this. Job chapter 23 and look down at verse 8. Job here is arguing, he's defending himself. He says, Behold, I go forward, but he, speaking of God, is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him. On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him. He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him. Job was a godly man, he knew God, he walked with God, he had a relationship with God, but in the midst of the worst moment in Job's life, he had to acknowledge he didn't have a clue where God was. And when this woman wakes up and realizes that she is alone, she has no idea where her beloved is at. The flesh sleeps and slumbers. But look at the rest of the verse, the next phrase. She says, but my heart waketh. What we see here is a picture of that part of God that He places into us at salvation, which is His Holy Spirit. And because God places Himself in the person of His Spirit into us when we are converted, we have part of Him now living inside of us who was once dead. And that part of Him that lives inside of us responds when He speaks. because that part of Him that lives inside of us is Him. And so it responds when He speaks to us. And our heart hears the voice of His calling. Look at what He says. He says, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled. She said, I was asleep, but I heard the sound of his knocking. My heart woke up, and I heard him say these words to me. Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled, for my head is filled with the dew and my locks with the drop of the night. We hear him, but oftentimes our flesh is too satisfied with our slumber and too satisfied with our sleep to rouse ourselves to do anything about it. And a perfect example of that is simply this. Everybody in here has gone to bed and woke up what you considered too early the next morning and knew you had to get up because your job called you. And you would have given anything you owned to just lay there another hour. Everybody's had that experience. We have it on a daily basis. Lila's wanting to shout amen so bad she can't hardly contain herself. We all have it on a daily basis. Because we're in that state of slumber where it would be so easy to go back to sleep. We want to go back to sleep so bad we can feel it because our body wants it. We feel like we need it and it would be so easy just to close our eyes again and not be bothered with that blaring noise over there on our dresser that we got to get up and turn off. Well, this is a picture of a heavenly alarm clock and he's trying to get her attention. And it would be so easy, though her heart is awakened, for her flesh to go back to sleep. And so I want you to see, secondly tonight, the conflict in our situation. The conflict in our situation. Look at verse 3. She said, I have put off my coat. How shall I put it on? I've washed my feet. How shall I defile them? These are the excuses she gives herself in her state of slumber to continue slumbering the way that she is. You know, it's just, it's, it's too hard to get up. I'm so tired. I'm, I've bathed, I'm in bed, it's warm, it's nice here. I think I will just stay because if I get up, then I've got to, I've got to robe myself. I've got to make myself look somewhat presentable. I've got to do something about my feet because my feet are going to be defiled if I walk across this house and open the door and it would be easier to just stay in bed. It would be easier to just remain where I am. But then she says, my beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door and my bowels were moved for him. She's made aware of her situation, the entirety of her situation in a moment of time. She was partially awake, wanting to sleep. The spirit within her was waking up. She could hear his voice. She could hear the words that he was saying. But she was making excuses, why I don't need to get up and why I don't need to go to the door. And then she hears him rattle the lock, if you will. And instantly, the entirety of herself is awake. And now that she's entirely awake, she looks around the house and she realizes one terrible thing. And that's that her husband that she has married is not there with her anymore. And for whatever reason, he is standing outside of the door asking to be let in. You realize that Solomon could have commanded that door be broken down and he could have just went in because he was the king. If he wanted her because he was the king, he had every right to go in and take her because now she was his. She belonged to him. She was married to him. She was betrothed to him. Christ can come into any single one of our lives any single time he wanted to. but yet he stands at the door and knocks instead, just like Solomon did in this situation. He could have commanded the door open, he could have had his soldiers break the door down, because he owned what was in that house. She belonged to him, but instead, he patiently stood at the door and not. We see this in Revelation chapter 3 of the Laodicean Church. Christ said, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man will listen or will hear my voice and hearken unto me and will open the door, I will come in and I will sup with him and him with me. We must open the door. We have to open the door. He is not going to open the door on His own. He will not force His way into your life. He will not force you to believe in Him. He will not force you to accept Him. He will do everything He can to convince you. But you have to open the door. I have to open the door. And so he rattles the door and now she's fully awake and now she panics and realizes that she's alone and she begins to yearn for him again. She begins to understand. Oh, no, this is this is not what I asked for. This is not the way this was supposed to be. He was supposed to be here with me. What has gone on? And Christ has a way and brother Mike mentioned this this morning of getting our attention when he wants our attention. And you may be here tonight or you may be in some service and somebody is preaching something and you know inside of you, you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, God is tearing you up inside. And you just say, you know what? I am not going to do it. I am not going to respond. I am not going to repent. I am not going to do this and I am not going to do that. God will humble you somewhere in your life. And guess how much power you have to stop it? None. Absolutely none. And you can shut your ears, you can close your eyes, you can stop your ears, and it will not matter. You have no power in that day to resist Him. Because He knows how to get your attention, and He knows how to get mine. And so what does she do now in this situation? Look at verse 5. She says, I rose up to open to my beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock. The imagery here that the Lord wants us to see is that she gets out of bed and she robes herself, and now she's going to go to the door, but before she goes and opens the door, she does exactly what every single one of us would do. In her mind is the thought of, I have to pacify him who I have neglected. So she reaches into the container of ointment and she scoops up myrrh to take to the door with her to anoint her beloved as he would come in. because she's got the same thought we all have when we offend somebody and it bothers us internally. I've got to get myself back in their good graces. I've got to do something to show them that I really am sorry. I have to do something to prove to them that either I didn't mean it or even though that I did mean it, I'll never do it again. I've got to do something physical to show them that everything is going to be fine. I'm here now. I've opened the door now. And not only am I going to open the door, I'm going to anoint you as well. God already knows if you mean it or not. And He already knows if I mean it. And He does not need to see one work from us to know whether we mean it or not. He's not looking for a work from you or from me when we are in the position that this woman finds herself in. All He wants us to do is throw open the door. throw open the door and cast ourselves at his feet and it will be fine. But yet we have this terrible tendency to beat ourselves up constantly over things we've done. We let Satan beat us up constantly over our past, over things we've done. And though God has forgiven us and cast those things into a sea, that he will never remember them again. We can't forget them. And we think that every time we feel like we fail him, we've got to somehow worm our way back into his good graces, where he's no longer just frowning at us, just angry at us, thinking that, you know, if I mess up one more time, if I don't get this right, he's done with me, he's just going to strike me down, and I've got to tiptoe around him. He never says that. Go throw open the door of your soul and let Him come back in and fellowship with you and your sin will be forgiven and He will never mention it again. That's all He wants. But we let the devil trick us into thinking that we have to pacify Him with something. We've got to take enough myrrh. to somehow pacify Him for how we've offended Him. There ain't enough anything in this world or in this universe that could make up for what I've done. And there ain't enough anything in this universe that can atone for what you've done to Him either. That's why He's not looking for us to atone for ourselves. Because there's nothing we can atone with. He's just looking for us to open the door. And so she opens the door in verse 6, I open to my beloved and she's got that moment of she's got the myrrh in her hand and she goes to the door and she grabs the lock and she knows everything's gonna be fine if she'll just do this one thing and she throws it open and there's no one there. And there's absolutely no one at the door. And she said my beloved had withdrawn himself. and was gone. And notice what happened to her. She said, my soul failed when he spake. I sought him, but I could not find him. I called him, but he gave me no answer. There's no service now to render. There's no one there to anoint. There's no work to be done. And she's terrified. So she calls repeatedly. She calls to him, but there is no answer. She goes out and tries to seek him, but he does not appear. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but how many of you have ever been there? You called, and you called, and you called, and you called, and there was no one. It was like you were talking to nothing. Job was there in the scripture we read earlier. He said, I know God is on my right hand and I know He's on my left, but I can't see Him, I can't find Him, I can't hear Him, I can't sense Him, I can't feel Him. And there are times when that happens. So her soul fails her for two reasons. First, she sees how she allowed her flesh and her security and her complacency to overwhelm her and put her into sleep. And because of that sleep, she failed to open the door. And she also recalls the tenderness of his words. Look back at his words in verse 2. Open to me my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled. You see how there, though she slept for however long she slept, and though the bridegroom had gotten up and withdrew himself from the house, yet how tender his love was toward her when he called to her just to ask her to open the door. She recalls the tenderness of his words and the opportunity that she had to open it while she could hear him speak to her. That's why the writer in the book of Hebrews says that today if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart. Don't harden your heart. Because we've all probably been in that situation where we're in the middle of doing something or we finally, finally, at the end of a long day, we've got a couple of minutes where we might find ourselves alone and we have this, it's like we can feel, it's not a voice, but we can feel this inclination. You know, I feel like I ought to pray right now. I feel like I ought to spend this time in prayer or I feel like I ought to pick up the word of God and I ought to read it. But then if you're like I have been sometimes, you say, that's a lot of work to do right now. And I just want to sit here. And I just want to relax. And I don't want to have to think about anything. And I don't want to have to go do something. I just want to sit here. I'm tired. My mind's tired. My body's tired. I'd rather just sit here and just close my eyes. If you've ever had that experience, that's his voice. calling to you to open the door. And all the times that I, all the times that you have said, you know what, I can pray later, I'll have some time later, I'll read later, I'll read some extra tomorrow, I'll pray tomorrow, I'll pray longer tomorrow to make up for today, that's us ignoring that voice. And that's us ignoring what he would come. and show us. How many great and wondrous things might he have came and shown us if we had just opened the door in those moments? And I will never know the answer to that question in my life. Because I can see, I can remember times that I should have done this. I should have opened. But I was too tired and I was too sleepy and I was too wore out and I just didn't. And I think we could all say that we been there. That's why there's a conflict. And so because she does not know what else to do, she chases him out into the city. Notice that. She said, I sought him, but I could not find him. I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchman that went about the city found me. They smote me. They wounded me. The keepers of the wall took away my veil from me. Notice where she went to look for him, because that's important to what we're learning tonight. She went out into the city. to try to find her beloved. But he was nowhere to be found in the city. But she did find something in the city. She found attack, wounding, harm, and hurt. She found a cold, cruel world that was ready to chew her up and spit her out. She found all of the tricks and all of the ploys of her enemy. that just feasted on her and left her wounded and beaten and sore and depressed. And look how depressed she is in verse 8. She says, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, tell him I'm sick of love. That does not mean that she's sick of this relationship and she's sick of him and she's sick of the whole nine yards. That's not what she's saying here. She means two things. The first, she wants him to understand that she loves him so much that she feels sick. And then number two, she's sick because she realizes that she loves him as little as she actually does. And if you ever get to the point in your Christian life where you, where God lets you see how little you actually love Him in comparison to how much He loves you, you're gonna be sick of love too. Because at the end of the day, you and I, the Bible tells us, are altogether vanity. And it does not matter what we do, and it does not matter what our intentions are. We've got this nature within us that all it wants to do is go to sleep. And we will fight that nature, and we will carry that nature, and we will battle that nature until the day we die. And that nature is always going to war against the flesh, or the spirit, and the spirit is always going to war against the flesh. And we'll realize at different times in our lives, and I think God lets us realize that, how little we truly do love Him. Because for the true child of God, for the person who has humbled themselves under His hand, for the person who says they love Him and really does mean it, and truly wants Him, that realization will cause them to repent further and deeper, and He will draw them further into Himself. So not only was there complacency in the settlement, and there was conflict in the situation, But lastly, I want us to see the comfort of our salvation. It's a fairly bleak picture at the moment. But I want you to go back to our text this morning. Go back to chapter 6 and look at verse 1 again. There are two questions asked by these acquaintances of the bride, by the daughters of Jerusalem. The first question they asked, they said, where is your beloved gone? Because back over here in chapter 5 and verse 8, she has charged them, if you go and find Him. In other words, what she's saying is, go out and find Him. Someone go find where He is and tell Him this for me. Because I've searched this city over and I can't seem to find Him wherever He may be. And so they ask the question, where is your beloved gone? O thou fairest among women. Now look at the slightly different way the second question is phrased. Where is your beloved turned aside? You see here we have an interest that is ignited by these daughters of Jerusalem. They now are interested in the bridegroom. In the first question. And then they ask her, well, where do you think he has gone in the second? Because they knew she couldn't find him in the city. They found her tattered, beaten, bruised, and bloody, and knew she'd been all around that town looking for him and not finding him. So they ask her, well, where do you think she's gone or he's gone? This is an altogether different set of questions than what was asked in chapter 5 and verse 9. Look back at chapter 5 and verse 9. This is them speaking after the bride's initial charge. They said, what is thy beloved more than another beloved? O thou fairest among women, what is thy beloved more than another beloved that thou dost so charge us? You wanna know what they're saying here? They're looking at her and they're saying, if he's really so great, if your beloved really is so great, why are you out here beaten, bloodied, bruised, and battered, and why is he not with you? Or why are you not with him? If he's all this, if he really is as grand as you say he is, if you're really lovesick for him, where's he at? You know, that's what the world asks the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians. If your Christ is really so great, why are you doing, why do you complain as much as you do? Why are you so joyless? Why are you so defeated? Why are you so melancholy all the time? And we do nothing but gripe and murmur and complain. We don't praise him. We don't talk him up. If your Christ is really so great, How's he better than any other God that any other religion in the rest of the world has ever preached or ever tried to get anybody else to believe in? Because if this is the way that you act, if this is the position that you find yourself in right now, why in the world would I want to go seek Him myself? You charge me to go and find Him, but yet I can't see one thing in your life that I would actually want. And that ought to make all of us sit down and go, dear God, please forgive me. Because we're all guilty of that. Last Sunday morning, Brother Mike, in his message, in the 119th Psalm, he hit a point about complaining. And if this church had a basement, and I crawled into it, I couldn't have felt any lower than what I felt sitting here in that chair. Because I've spent my fair share of time complaining about how busy I am and how tired I am and how much I didn't want to do this and how much I didn't want to do that. And I felt about this big. I realized that I've spent too much of my time at work complaining about my work. to anybody who would listen, because it wasn't going the way that I wanted it to go, or the way that I thought it should go. And I'll give you a piece of advice that I felt. We cannot witness of the glory of Christ by complaining. There is no complaint you can say that is a witness of the glory of Christ. And that's where she finds herself in this situation. But what has changed these daughters of Jerusalem's opinion of this man? Why are they now in chapter 6 in verse 1 saying, where is your beloved gone? They now have an interest they didn't have in chapter 5 in verse 9. Where is he gone? Where do you think he's gone? What's changed? Why are they now interested? Because they listened to the bride's description of him. in chapter 5 verses 10 through 16. As she begins to describe after their sarcastic reply in chapter 5 and verse 9, she begins to give an account of her bridegroom. And I want you to look at this, look at verse 10 of chapter 5. She said, my beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among 10,000. In the book of Psalms chapter 45 and verse 2, he is called the fairest among men. And yes, that is a physical, that denotes some type of a physical appearance, but there's more to it than a physical appearance. She goes on to say, she says, his head is as the most fine gold. His locks are bushy and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters washed with milk and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers. His lips like lilies dropping sweet-smelling myrrh. His hands are as gold rings set with the burl. And his belly or his body is as bright ivory, overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold. His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet." Why do you think she said that? Why do you think she saved that for the very end? She described every other part of him, but she left his mouth for the last bit. Was it because she thought he had some kind of interestingly shaped lips? No. It's because of the things he said to her. Even when he was on the outside of the door and she was in the bed, He still said open to me, my beloved, my dove, my undefiled. He never raised his voice. He never scolded her. He whispered to her tenderly. His mouth is most sweet. He is altogether lovely. Now we read a section of scripture like this, and this simple little, or this little book is full of descriptions like this. The bride describes Solomon, Solomon describes the bride, and in our simplistic minds, we think that's the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. We think, what in the world kind of a description of a person is this. I mean, his eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of water washed with milk and fitly set. What does that mean? His legs are as pillars of marble. His cheeks are as bed of spices. His hands are as gold rings. What does that even mean? Well, I'll tell you one reason why we don't know what it means. It's because in this culture, we can no longer appreciate real beauty. Because our world is so disgusting and our world is so tarnished and it is so blackened that every single thing that God ever gave us that is beautiful, Satan has twisted and turned into some disgusting, filthy, abominable picture of sin. And the sad thing is, is that the vast majority of the world glories in that filth and thinks that filth is what they need. I've tried for years to tell my students that 200, 300, 400 years ago, what people did for entertainment was not watch 30 second videos on a phone of people doing the most useless, senseless things. A colleague of mine and I were talking the other day, She had gotten so irritated at her students that day because they just kept coming in and asking her, have you heard about so-and-so? And they would name this woman's name. Have you heard about so-and-so? Have you heard about so-and-so? And she finally said, no, I have no idea who this is. Who is this? So she went and looked up this person's name, and it was a Walmart employee. It was a middle-aged lady in some state who quit her job at Walmart and had filmed herself quitting her job at Walmart. And all she did in a walkie-talkie was she said her name, and she said, so-and-so, signing out for the last time. And she clicked it off. The video was about 30 seconds long and she uploaded it to TikTok and she had millions upon millions upon millions of views in just a short amount of time. And now the world looks at her. She's an influencer. She's someone important and these kids could not quit talking about her. We can no longer appreciate things that are actually beautiful. And so I've tried for years to get my kids to understand that hundreds of years ago, what people would do that they considered entertainment, they would visit museums, they would sit in parlors or in living rooms, and they would discuss math and science and art and history and literature. They would analyze poetry together. They would read to each other. They would sit and listen to music and analyze music. And these were just common people who worked at factories for a living. These were common people who cleaned chimneys for a living. These were common people who just did day-to-day jobs. They worked in fields. They were carpenters, construction workers. These were not necessarily politicians. These weren't the artists who painted paintings. These were common, everyday people who knew how to appreciate beauty. And they knew how to appreciate something that was well done. And we have completely lost that in our society and in our culture today. That's one reason we don't understand something like this. But there is a reason why this description is given in the way that it is. She is not saying that Solomon looks like this. She is not saying that every time she looks at Solomon's face, all she can see is a dove perched where his eyes are. That is not what she is saying. She is not saying that it looks like someone took some crushed up red pepper spices and sprinkled them on his cheeks to give him a flushed appearance. That is not what she is saying. She is trying to describe him in a way that in her soul, adequately defines what he means to her. And she is using every priceless descriptor she can possibly come up with to describe him to these women. Because she has reached a place in this relationship that she feels all alone, she feels like he's deserted her, he's gone, she has no idea where he is. And so the only thing she can do is cast her mind back to what he looked like to her when she first saw him. And the more she begins to think about him, the more excited she becomes. Because to her, there was nothing on earth more beautiful than this man. And the picture that we're supposed to see tonight is that humanity does not have the right language to describe Christ and how beautiful He ought to be to us. We do not have the right vocabulary to describe the majesty He possesses. And see, things like this don't mean anything to us because we don't take time to meditate on who He is. We don't take time to sit down and think of Him in this way. Because the vast majority of us are asleep. and we've gotten content with being saved, and yeah, He saved me, and I know I'm fine, I'm alright, I'm alright, and it's just so comfortable here. I know my sins are forgiven, bless God, hallelujah, I'm going to heaven, everything's fine, and I'm just going to sit here, and I'm just going to kick back, and I'm just going to enjoy. And we give no thought to His real person, and how glorious and beautiful and holy and spectacular He actually is as an individual. When that is where our mind should be all of the time. If somebody came up to you, if somebody came up to me and asked me, would you describe Christ to me? What would you say? What would you say? Think about that for a minute. What would you say, what could you say that would perk their interest in him the way that her description perked these other women's interest in Solomon? What could you say, what would I say that would make somebody want to go find him for themselves because of the love they heard in your voice or the love they heard in mine? So she describes someone to them, two of whom to her is of incomparable perfection and unparalleled worth. And this serves two purposes. It serves one, to ignite the interest of these other women, but two, it causes her to remember the place where she first met him. And it was not the city. She ran through trying to find him. I want to say that again. It causes her to remember the place she first met him. They asked her, where do you think he is? And then if you'll look at chapter 6 in verse 2, she knows now where he's at. My beloved has gone down to his garden. to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather among the lilies. Turn over to chapter one very quickly as we wrap up tonight. Turn over to chapter one and look at verse six. This is her speaking again. She said, look not upon me because I'm black, because the sun hath looked upon me, and my mother's children were angry with me. They made me the keeper of vineyards, but my own vineyard have I not kept. Back here, when she's meeting Solomon, when she's attracted to Solomon for the first time, she's conscious of who she is as we become conscious of who we really are when Christ begins to deal with us. Tell me, she says, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest. In other words, where do you dwell? Where are you? Where do you make your flocks rest at noon? For why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions? In other words, if you don't tell me where you are, you've attracted my interest, you've attracted my attention, but if you don't tell me where you are and how to find you, then I might as well just go on over here and try this one or try that one. So Solomon responds to her, if thou know not, O thou fairest among women, in verse 8, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock and feed thy kids beside the shepherd's tents. In other words, what he's saying is he said follow the path of the sheep. Go follow the footprints of the sheep and let them lead you to where you will find me. Go to chapter 2 and look at verse 8. She's followed now the path of the sheep, and now she hears the voice of My Beloved. Behold, He cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. Notice where she is not. She is not in the city. My Beloved is like a roe or a young heart. Behold, He standeth behind our wall. He looketh forth at the windows, showing himself through the lattice. Now he's come to his garden. Now he's come to that place where she meets and she finds him for the first time. He's behind the wall of the garden. In the ancient times, gardens were, they were enclosed with either hedges or they were built up with about waist-high walls. Some of them had put up lattice work, anything they could to keep the creatures out from stealing the fruits and flowers that they grew there. She's conscious of her unworthiness, but still she inquires where she can find Him. And then we come here to verse 9 where she's found Him in His garden and He begins to speak to her from behind the garden walls, wooing her, calling her for the first time unto Himself. Look at what He says to her in verse 10. My beloved spake and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. She realizes, if you go back to chapter 6, that she has not lost her beloved. And she also realizes that he has not disappeared from her. She can find him, but she has to go back to where she first met him. Back into the garden where she saw him. He'll be there among the spices, among the sheep, among the lilies. And she realizes in verse 3 that everything that He ever promised to her in those verses we read, come away with me. Come away with me. The flowers are appearing on earth. The time of the singing of birds has come. The voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig trees putting her green figs. The vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Arise and come away with me. She realizes that everything that He promised is still hers. and she is still his. So she goes back to find him among the lilies in the garden. Now what does this all mean? What lessons are we supposed to learn from this? And Brian summed this up perfectly, absolutely perfectly. There reaches a point in all of our lives when we realize He wakes us up because we have been asleep. And we go through this exact same process that she has found herself in. When we realize what we've done, when we realize that he's gone, he's not there, he seems to be absent and we go and we fling the door open expecting to find him and he's not there either. A lot of times we rush out into the city trying to find him and we wind up wounded and beaten and bloodied and battered. Because he's not out in the city. He's not out there somewhere waiting for us to find him. We have to go back to the garden where we first met him. And where is that garden? Right here. This garden is full of more lilies than you could count in your lifetime. This garden gives forth a smell that you will never have the right words to describe to another person. But you did not meet him anywhere else. except inside of what this book says. This book is how you found Him. This book is how you believed in Him. This book is how He became yours in the first place. And when you don't know where in the world He has gone, because you have fallen asleep on Him, go back to this book and keep reading it until you get back in the garden. And He starts speaking to you again. And all of the fragrance of all of the flowers and all of the tender perfections that make up the person of Christ become real to you again. Or become real to you for the first time. If they've never been real to you before. If you want Him, He can be found. But you will not find Him apart from here. inside of His Word. Let's stand together tonight. Father, we come to You, Lord, tonight in Jesus' name. And Father, we want to thank You for this evening that You have given to us. Lord, I know this was probably a different kind of teaching Lord, out of a different kind of book. Lord, I've been asleep. I can't speak for them. But a couple weeks ago, I listened to a message. And that message was you putting your hand by the hole of the door of my soul. It is very easy to get tired. It's very easy to get complacent. It's very easy to get stuck in the same routine. It's so easy, Father, to just get so done with everything, and frustrated, irritated, that you just want to quit. And you realize that it's been so long since you've listened to His voice. And since you've smelled the fragrance He leaves when He passes by. And I determined, Father, that I didn't want to go any longer if you would not go first. As Moses said, Lord, if you will not go up, don't you lead us hence. Don't you make me lead this people. if you're not going to go before us. There is nothing in this world, there is nothing in this life, there is nothing in our lives more important than Christ. I wish we understood that. I wish I understood it. I wish that somehow my cold dead heart would just get it. But I find my love for you faltering and falling so short. And if everybody in here, Lord, is honest with themselves and with you, theirs is the same way. Please have mercy on us, Lord. Forgive us for our complaining. Forgive us for our sleeping. Forgive us for our slumber. We can go to sleep and be so busy doing things in the church, serving in every potential capacity that presents itself. We can be dead asleep in the middle of all of that busyness and have no idea what we're doing, why we're doing it, or who we're doing it for, or what it's all about. Maybe there is nobody here tonight who is asleep. Maybe this was just for me. If it was just for me, thank you. Thank you for the purpose, Father, that I feel like you've given me in my soul. And Lord, tonight this altar call, Father, is just simply if anybody here wants to come and say, Father, O Christ, Let me hear the voice of my beloved calling and say, come away with me, come away with me, come away with me. And may we find the place every day in our lives, in and amongst all the business, to steal away for a few moments with you. Doesn't have to be long. David said, one day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. One day with you is better than a thousand days doing any other thing we could possibly imagine. He said, I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. I'd rather be the lowest person on the totem pole of the church as I had dwell in the places of wickedness and have every single thing I could imagine. Forgive me for my sleeping and my slumbering, my laziness, my complaining, my grumbling, my murmuring. Forgive me for my attitude. Wash and clean. Forgive us all of our murmurings and our groanings and our complainings. And please, oh God, remember that we are but flesh. Every one of our lives, God is a wind that passes so quickly. You put this treasure, your treasure, in these earthen vessels, and you know how prone to messing up we are. Please forgive us, Father, where we've neglected you, because you can be offended. And you will withdraw yourself to teach us a lesson. I pray that if anyone here has had to learn or in the middle of learning that same lesson, let tonight be the night, Lord, they begin to hear that voice again and they chase you down into your Word. And you reveal the beauty of your heart to them again. And you reignite the love and the fire inside of their soul that once burned for you if it's never been burning before. Let tonight be the night that you kindle it. We'll ask these things in Jesus name as everyone's heads just bowed. We're going to just have a few moments if you need to come.