The Bible has been put together by the authority of God and the authority of the church. And it's wrong to say that God is not in this book clearly because his name is mentioned. But if we understand the rest of scripture we'll see how appropriate it is that this song of Solomon is placed in the Bible as an inspired song written by Solomon who wrote, the Old Testament tells us, 1,005 songs. 1,005. Now, I don't know if he actually wrote exactly 1,005. What I think the reference there is, is that all of his other songs were collected together and they were counted and so on, and they said there was about 1,000 of them. And I think the five, is perhaps a reference to this book itself. This is not one song, but is five songs blended together into one overall song. There are roughly five sections in this song. But Solomon didn't write these things as a normal human being, but was endowed with a special anointing of the Holy Spirit, unparalleled in most eras of Old Testament history with an immense wisdom, an immense depth to his heart and mind, and he could conceptualize and write in a way that no one else could. He understood plants, he understood animals, he understood the sciences as they were at that time, he understood architecture, and most of all, wisdom itself. Wisdom is just the ability to take what is known and to use it rightly in life. And apart from Christ himself there is no one in scripture that had that amount of wisdom. And Jesus mentions it in spite of Solomon's later failings and adulteries and so on. Jesus said that the Queen of Sheba came to hear the wisdom of Solomon and he compares himself with Solomon and says but a greater than Solomon is now here but you will not listen to me. So even in the mind of the Lord himself, Solomon clearly had this special wisdom and a special place in God's plan. And the song is called, in the very opening verse in chapter one, the song of songs, the song above all songs, the song to end all songs, the song, the greatest song of all the ones he wrote. And if we had all his other songs, we could compare them to this song, and maybe we would find it strange. This isn't the longest song, probably. There's lots of things. Our natural wisdom would say, well, is this really the greatest song? But that's why we're not involved in the writing of Scripture and its understanding. We come to God humbly, and he calls it the greatest song, Solomon wrote. And our first question should be, well, why is that so? Why did the Holy Spirit see fit to include this in the Old Testament. Why was it so precious to the Jews as they read this song at the close of every Passover. What is it about this song that makes it the song of songs. Well there's things in it. that we need to know to interpret it and understand it properly and for it to be a blessing in our lives. Its twin is Psalm 45. We use scripture to help us understand areas of scripture that aren't as clear. We take the key the Holy Spirit has given us that's safe, that we know is the right key. And Psalm 45 helps unlock this song. Psalm 45 was written at a similar time And Psalm 45 is clearly about what this song is about and the way we should interpret it. For although Psalm 45 is also a psalm, a song about a human relationship, we are told immediately in Psalm 45 that there's something else going on, that a noble theme inspires the writer's heart, that he's moved literally in the Hebrew like a like a stream, like a bubbling fountain, to bring forth words about the king. You see the comparison here, this is about a king and his bride. And then we're told marvelously in Psalm 45 that the throne of that king is the throne of God. Not the throne of the father, who is God and king, but the throne he has given to his king, his representative, is the throne of God itself and the New Testament the book of Hebrews tells us that Psalm 45 is about God the father bringing his son as a bridegroom and giving the son to a bride. The bridegroom is perfect but the bride is not perfect and she takes her beauty and her glory and her life and her perseverance from him. In most weddings, we give the bride the prominence, don't we? We do everything we can to make sure the bride is happy, and it's her day and so on. And there is a special place for the bride in our weddings, that the father gives his daughter to this man, that the father brings his daughter and gives her away to this man, and her dress and so on. is prominent, it is the focal point. And the man can just wear a suit and so on, but it's very special for the woman to be given in that way. But Psalm 45 does this strange thing where it says the bridegroom is the beautiful one. And then she is beautiful, but the bridegroom is given prominence. And we say that's strange, but the Psalm immediately tells us it's because the bridegroom is God himself. It is the Son of God, the Messiah. Now that Psalm helps us unlock this song of Solomon. As Solomon may have been given in Psalm 45 to a bride, that certainly happens here in the song of Solomon. Solomon's name is a royal title. It's not really his name. Shalom, Solomon, is his king name. It's his position and what he is to do as king to bring peace and so on. But Solomon's actual name was Jedidiah and that name means beloved of God. And that is the title of the name that's given to the bridegroom throughout this song. She is constantly calling for her beloved and what her beloved is to her and how beautiful and comely her beloved is and how strong and powerful that he protects her, that he leads her, that he loves her and shows her mercy. My beloved is mine, she says, and I am his. And the marriage that takes place in this song is a type of the marriage of the Messiah to his church, that as she courts this man, As she marries this man and learns to trust him and love him in the way that she should, we see a picture of Christ in his church. And it's not that this song is about marriage and we can take a few things and apply it to Christ. That's not the way the figure works at all. It's that marriage is actually about Christ anyway. When Paul says that marriage is about Christ and his church, Behold I speak a mystery, I speak of Christ and his church. Paul isn't saying we can learn a few things practically from marriage and apply them to our relationship with Christ. Paul is saying that marriage itself was created and built by God to tell us from the very beginning of what Christ's love for his bride is like. So that's the way round it is. It's not that we learn something about Christ and his bride from marriage. It's that the very reason marriage was even created was for that very purpose in the beginning anyway. So if marriage is all about Christ and his church then when the Holy Spirit puts a song about the marital love right in the heart of the Bible it must follow that it has something to do with Christ and his church. And we know it because the bridegroom here is always faithful. Always perfect. He's the one who saves her. He's the one who forgives her. She is the one with the hard heart. She is the imperfect one. She is the one that always falls away. He does not. Solomon would never have written it that way if it was about human love. Solomon knew his faults. David knew his faults. Every Jewish prophet knew his faults and would never present themselves as not making these errors and fallings away and so on. So when the husband is presented as perfect and the bride is presented as weak and needy and foolish often, that clearly must be about the Messiah and his bride. You'll know throughout the Old Testament that the church is frequently presented as a failing and weak bride and that God himself is the faithful, unchanging husband. That's throughout the Old Testament and most of the prophets use that figure. Isaiah does, Jeremiah does, Hosea does, most of them do. And we have here it put in a song form that sings to us, that speaks to us, and comes to our souls and says to us, you are a Christian. You have entered into a marriage relationship with Christ. You have failings, you have weaknesses and contamination in your heart. Christ does not. How is your relationship with him? And throughout the song, there is a pattern of distance and kind of falling out, followed by reconciliation and closeness and a strengthening of the relationship. They begin in love and then there's a distance caused by her, a distance, and then they come together and they're stronger. But then there's a distance again and they come together and it's stronger still. And it culminates through the five or six songs to a point where they're together in a way that there isn't that same amount of failure and immaturity and so on on her side. So do you see how that works? When you read this song, and the five or six songs here, always look for that distance at the beginning, and then him calling her back, and then the coming together, and notice how each time the love becomes more mature and more mature. Now at this point in the song, Things are reaching a climactic point, and this is the final song in the collection. And the song here, the final part of it, describes for us her matured love and her closeness to him. And it opens by describing in a question how she is close to him. You'll see in verse 5 who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning upon her beloved. You'll see the closeness there that it's reached that stage. He's finally learned to lean upon him constantly and to trust him and so on. And the verse before it verses 3 and 4 are that marker that we look for at the beginning and end of each song. within this collection. And you'll probably know it if you know the book well, that this is used several times. His left hand is under my head, his right hand embraces me. That's them coming together at the end of an alienation in the previous song. And then there's this charge to the daughters of Jerusalem. Do not stir up or awaken love. It says until she pleases. It's not a good translation, it's just it. Until it pleases. So it's talking about the love there. She's saying, I've been alienated from him. We've been reconciled. The relationship is good. I am close to him. He's holding me. His hand is under my head. He's embracing me. And she's saying, don't wake us up unnecessarily. Don't break this closeness. Do not awaken my love. Do not awaken me. Leave us where we are because we are close. That song then closes. and we're given this climactic point in verse 5. Now let's try and understand some things from verses 5, 6, and 7 that I hope will help us in our Christian lives this morning. That the bride is upheld, that the bride is born, that the bride requests something and then says something about the beloved's love. The bride upheld is in verse 5. The bride's birth is in 5b, the bride's request is in verse 6, and the beloved's love is also in verse 6. So what can we see here? Who is this that comes up from the wilderness, leaning upon our beloved? We see that the bride is upheld, and that's you in Christ. You know and love him. You've entered this relationship. It's often a complicated relationship. You wonder maybe right now, at the beginning of a new year. How is my relationship with him? I've been on the road for many years. I'm at this stage of my life. I wonder where I am and I wonder where this is going. And God comes in and you don't need to define the relationship. God can tell you what's going on. Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved. The wilderness here is a description of the world of them not being at home together. but the fact that she has been on a journey since chapter one, or since she was born again, since she met him and first loved him. And that young, almost teenage excitement and emotion and attachment, the excitement that often accompanies a new birth, that accompanies conversion and salvation, an excitement about Jesus, but then matures over time, but she finds during that time when she thought, when the Christian thought, things will always be well between me and him because I do love him and I see what he's done for me and I'll always love him, as Peter said, though everyone else will deny you, never me. I cannot conceive. And Peter wasn't making that up. He believed that, he felt that. That's what his feelings told him. I could never deny you. I will go with you to death, he said. And we feel that at the beginning. But we find that this life is more complicated than that. And our relationship to God is not like that. And we discover the real way that the human heart works in its depth. and its multiplicity and all that it's capable of, and we end up finding out that we are actually quite unpredictable ourselves, and we cannot predict that, as Peter found out. He made a prediction, but he found later that his heart was actually very unpredictable. She has found it difficult. She's looked and realized that she's been going through a wilderness, that this world is not the place of home and closeness and fellowship in the house of the Lord that is above and where sin never comes in. It's not the place to recline and to embrace your beloved and to not work anymore and so on that that's not the Christian life that the Christian life actually is out there. It's fought in the wilderness. It's a journey and it's hard that we are brought through the wilderness. that this world does not have growing out of it, out of its ground, spiritually, the things we need to be nourished and to be kept healthy spiritually and so on. That though, like God's people learned, the manna does fall from the sky and that the rock is often struck and water comes out of it so that we do not die spiritually, yet the wilderness is no place to set up home. The wilderness is hard, and we're tested in the wilderness. And like the people of God in the wilderness in the Old Testament, when the water doesn't come immediately when we think it ought to come, or when we are thirsty, we begin to say what they did, that God brought us out here to kill us, and that this is not possible, and we should go back to Egypt where we had food and so on. That I had things when I wasn't a Christian. Things went well and I had what I needed and I had the things of the flesh and the money I needed and the friends I needed and I chose to be a Christian and I thought things would go really well and I would be in the palace with Christ. But I found out that it's actually very hard being a Christian. I'm more alone. I am in more need than I was before I was a Christian. And like the Hebrew people, we say, he brought us out here to kill us. We were going to die of thirst and our children. It would have been better if we'd never left Egypt. Maybe we can be Christians in Egypt, but why are we in this stinking wilderness? And then when he throws manna down from heaven and we rejoice and take it up as his grace, as the word of God, And we gather it each day and beat it together and cook it so that we have something to eat. And we say, this is sweet to my taste. And this is good for me in the wilderness. But after a few months of that, we say what the Hebrew people said, I'm sick of this manna. We had leeks, we had garlic, we had melons, we had fish, and we had meat in Egypt. And now all we have is this manna. Lord, give us meat to eat, because we don't like the wilderness, the fallen world that is against us. We don't like not having all that we want, and we don't like relying on the Lord and eating what he says is pure and good for us to eat, and we long for the fleshly things of Egypt. She's found all this out. I think this is probably why the Jews use the Song of Solomon at each Passover because of references like this to the wilderness. That makes them think about how they were brought through the wilderness to the promised land and that Jehovah kept them and so on. If only the Jews would see Christ as their husband in this. But they certainly recognize that the world is a wilderness and we need to do that too. We are going through a wilderness, my dear friends, an alien place that doesn't satisfy or nourish us and take it that as a Christian even when you are being faithful and you recognize this is a wilderness and you look for your satisfaction in God sometimes you'll take up the manna and it will be what you need. But your heart will still say I don't know if this is enough. Is Bible reading really enough. Is daily prayer really enough. Is looking for Christian fellowship really enough. Is my church really enough? Is this enough for me? Jesus says, well, I give myself to you in these things and in their own way they are enough, but they themselves are not enough considered on their own. But I am enough. If you can find me, I am enough. Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? She has learned to lean on him, not just these things she finds in the wilderness, but him, the one who she frequently became distant from, that she was slothful about, and then had to search through the towns and cities looking for and could not find him earlier in these songs. By the end of the song, she's learned that if she's not going to fall into unbelief and so on, she needs to focus on him, that he is the loved one, he is the beloved. Not these things that we can have, but him. And she has learned to lean on him. Not to be slothful when he knocks on the door, and to not answer. Not to turn her eyes away from him and become consumed with some other things for a month, and then I'll come back to him. Because he knows I'm busy. But she learned that whenever she did that, that she neglected him because there were other things to be done. legitimate things. She turned around thinking, oh, he'll still be there because he loves me. He wasn't there. And she found that then she would have to begin again and go and seek him out. Christ never takes second place. Ever. Don't listen to anyone or any minister who tells you that it doesn't matter what you are or what you do. Jesus will just love you anyway. There is a way in which That is true but we bring that attitude to Christ at our peril. Christ doesn't say oh oh yeah put me as number seven for a few months. We're going to see in a little while that he never does that. She learns to lean on him finally and I must learn that and you must learn that. That everything he's done in our Christian life since our new birth and everything he's doing in our life right now has a design in it to show us that we can't lean on anything else apart from him. And Christian maturity is directly connected to that one truth that we must learn to love and rely only upon him. To learn to lean upon and hold on to his strength as he stands and as he walks through the wilderness with us. We cannot walk in our own strength and make it. We will fall over. We will become dehydrated. We don't know where all the right food and nourishment is. Our husband knows. He is our provider and our protector. He knows. She has had to learn to lean upon him. I wonder if you are leaning upon him or maybe there was a time in your life where you leant upon him with more closeness and more trust and determination. And now you're not really leaning on him in the right way. It happens to us all, and it happens frequently. But we learn again, the only safe and fulfilling place to be is next to him and leaning. And just before I leave this, although she has had to learn to lean upon him, He is the one who is supporting her. She is not leaning on him in her own works and supporting herself by leaning on him. The image here says that she's weak he's strong and that he is the one who has embraced her and brought her and walking with her and he is allowing her to lean on him. And in our Christian lives as much As you know I often emphasize to you I often emphasize to you what we must do as Christians because it's so neglected today. There are lots of things we must do and not be presumptuous that he'll do it all. We must pray. We must repent. We must change our minds. We must be transformed. We must take him more seriously. We must be horrified by sin. There are lots of things that the word of God says we must do. But there is another time where we need to put those things to the side and dig to the roots of this and say yes there's a lot we must do. But Christianity does not flow from what I do and you do. It is not my own industry and determination that will make me supported. That is not the gospel. Jesus Christ is the one supporting your soul. And he loves your soul. If you've turned to him and you're his, he loves your soul. And the picture here is not of you being smart enough and wise enough to lean on him. It's you being held by him and he wouldn't let you go and wander off. And as we look at our lives now, remember that for this year that's coming the basic foundational truth is that you are coming up from this wilderness towards heaven leaning upon your beloved because he is the one supporting you and holding you. As Moses says in Deuteronomy underneath are the everlasting arms. The eternal God is our refuge. He is carrying her. He is embracing her because he loves her and he's responsible for her. She is his wife. And he is the true perfect husband. And he is the one who supports his people. He says it in John's gospel. None, he says to his sheep, can snatch you out of my hand, and there is none who can snatch you out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. None, not even Satan, can snatch or pull down or destroy a truly born-again soul whom Christ loves. He will protect you from being snatched. He will protect you from destructive falling. He will protect you from ever turning away and renouncing Christianity. He will protect you from utter despair. He will not allow it to happen. The Psalms say, the righteous fall, but God will not allow them to utterly fall. And Jesus may allow us to fall down and damage our knees and break a couple of bones now and again but he will never allow us to utterly fall. What a comfort going into another year on God's earth. What a comfort in Christ coming up from a hard wilderness that you're not alone and that the one who's with you is the support. He is the one who empowers and sustains your faith and your faith cannot die as long as Christ himself is protecting it. So we see the bride upheld. We also then see the bride's birth. Verse five, I awakened you under the apple tree. There your mother brought you forth. There she who bore you brought you forth. Now it seems strange that we're talking about a husband and a wife that she's brought as an outsider to marry the king of Israel and then all of a sudden it speaks about her birth. But you're allowed to do that in poetry. This isn't one of Paul's letters that has to follow perfect logic. A plus B equals C. In poetry you can switch a figure immediately for the use you need it and then switch back. It is about a bride. and a bridegroom, but then all of a sudden she is pictured as being born by this person. And you'll know immediately that that's how the gospel works. There is a way in which we are the bride of Christ, but we're also born by that person. He is the one who even gives us birth and life. So it's not like a human marriage. There is a good argument there for the fact that this is not about a human marriage, because this bride not only marries him, It says that she was awoken under the apple tree, and there your mother brought you forth, there she who bore you brought you forth. She goes from being a spouse to being born somewhere. And I think the reason her birth is immediately brought up here is that God is saying to her and it is God speaking here it's not her or the daughters of Jerusalem it's the beloved himself. I awakened you he says to her under the apple tree and there your mother brought you forth. I think the reason this is brought up all of a sudden is that he's saying as you are amazed that you've been kept through this whole wilderness. As you come to the edge of the wilderness to your home and the daughters of Jerusalem are in the town and they can see this couple coming over the horizon almost home to Jerusalem and the daughters of Jerusalem say who is that coming up from the wilderness. She should never have made it. All the mistakes she made. Who is that. She's leaning upon her beloved as the bride. is in awe and overwhelmed at how much the husband has loved her, God says to her, this is the reason that that happened. This is the origin and the reason that you can give for why this husband does this for you, no matter how many mistakes and failures you have had. Why? Well, because he's not just dating you or something. He actually gave you birth initially. He's responsible for the fact that you exist as a Christian. He's the one that gave you the new birth and he didn't give you birth to then cast you away. He gave you birth to nourish you and raise you and to make sure you made it through this wilderness. And that is the same for us. As you look at this year coming and you anticipate maybe with hesitation and worry and fear and you look at how the past year has been for you spiritually, perhaps you are quite discouraged, and you say, well, I know these things in my mind, and I know that I'm told Christ loves me, and I think I believe that, but this is just hard, and I want to lean on the beloved, but what can stimulate me to see the glory of what that means, and that he will do it well? He says, well, I awoke you under the apple tree, and that is where you were brought forth. Did I give you spiritual life a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago? Did I do that to then let you die? Did I do it to be passionate about you for the first five years, but then go a bit cold towards you for another period and to not be near you? Am I that kind of God? Am I that kind of savior? No, he says to her, I was the one who loved you as Ezekiel says when Ezekiel saw that baby. Ezekiel 16 when he saw that baby in its blood lying on the side of the road abandoned by its parents. Its umbilical cord had not been cut. An extremely vivid image in the Old Testament. And God says to Israel you were like that child. And I. I pitied you. And it was the time of your love. And I came to you. I cut the umbilical cord. I cleaned you. I freshened you up. And then I raised you as my daughter in my home and I put ornaments upon you and fine clothing and jewelry. And you became my daughter a daughter of a king. That's the way God is with us. When we ask why would he do this in 2020. He says to us, well, I did it, and you fill in the blank, in such and such a year, when I gave you birth, and I brought you to Christ. I brought you to myself through my son, and I pledged myself to you. I pledged my son to you. And at that moment, you were born. You had never really been alive before that. It was really then that you were born, with life and knew your God. And I didn't say, I'll work with you for a few years and see how it goes. No, he came to you and he married you. He entered a covenant with you. Are you not amazed by that? That he entered in a pledge into a marriage with you and gave you life. And he says that that happened under the apple tree, that she woke up there, which is what a new birth is, that a person finally wakes up. Because they have been in a spiritual coma their whole life, but when they're born again, they truly wake up. And he says it's the apple tree, and the song itself gives us the key to understanding what the apple tree is. In chapter two, verse three, the bride says this. Like an apple tree among the trees of the woods so is my husband among the sons. I sat down in his shade with great delight and his fruit was sweet to my taste. And he says to her like a lily among the thorns so is she among all the daughters like a lily among the thorns. But she says he is the apple tree among all the trees of the wood. And that tells us here that when the father is saying here, I awoken you under the apple tree, it's probably a reference to Christ himself, the beloved himself. That no one is ever born again unless it happens underneath that apple tree, that citrus tree, where there's fruit and life, the tree of life, Christ himself. No one's ever born again in other religions without knowing Christ, without coming to Christ, without having God display himself in the death of Christ. It's only through Christ and his stimulation and his presence and his spiritual life that someone can be born again. And people may say, I've come to know God, I know something about God, but they never say anything about Christ. No, only under this apple tree, under this beloved, under his shade, are people born again. And the father is reminding us of that kind of truth here for each of us. When we are struggling to walk with the beloved he says I came and gave you new birth. I awoken you. I brought you forth. And I did that under the fertile life giving shade of this tree. And that's where your life came from. from being near Christ and feasting upon him and his fruits. Souls are only born again as much as they are brought into contact with this apple tree, the tree of Christ and his gospel. So the song is poetically calling us to remember that, me and you. Do you remember your new birth? not asking the date, I'm asking do you remember when that happened in your life or when you saw the fruits of it happening? When you became aware of a radical difference in your desires, that you were thinking very differently to who you were, that you began to take a completely different direction and you found this excitement and joy and desire for things about Jesus Christ, for things about his cross for things about holiness and so on. Do you remember being that birth when your whole understanding and outlook changed? Well, you can look at that birth knowing it happened, knowing it's reality, as much as Satan would ever make you question it, you know that happened, that is in me. And the song says to us, well, the basis of your relationship to Christ is not how determined you are to lean on him, although I implore you and myself to be determined to lean on him, but the basis is not that. The basis of your walking and leaning on Christ is the fact that you can see that he had come into your life and that he has made you born again and that you are now his. and that in marriage and in birth, he is committed to you. It's right for us to ask, how committed am I to him? But her focus here is his commitment to her. I wonder how often you think of that. Just meditate on it prayerfully. How committed is he to me? That will make you more committed to him. How committed? is he to me, that's the foundation. He says he's my husband. The father says he's my father. And for your spiritual condition in 2020, brother and sister, your husband is responsible for you and providing for you and upholding you and loving you The Holy Spirit is responsible for breathing that life continually into you and making Christ attractive to you. As much as we must say this is what I must do and this is what is wrong with me and this is where I'm going wrong. Always have that foundation stone as a Christian that the basis of all this is that he is committed to you. because he is your beloved and he awoke you under the apple tree. There your mother brought you forth." The mother there may be a reference to the church itself. Obviously in a song there are characters like this. She has to have a mother in the song and so on. But it is strange that it's almost like the father says here, I awakened you and you would expect him to say, there I brought you forth. Do you see that? I awakened you under the apple tree, there I brought you forth. But he says, your mother brought you forth, she who bore you. He's saying, I'm the one that gave you life, I awakened you, but there's this figure of the mother who is giving birth to you. I awakened you, but so did the mother give you that life too. And that may just be a reference to the church. There are definitely corporate things going on in this song that are daughters of Jerusalem, bridesmaids and so on. And this is not only about one single believer all the time. The church is pictured here. The church is pictured as the bride of Christ. For the bride of Christ is not only one person, it is the church, isn't it? We'll hear the figure changes for a moment, and this bride is brought forth by her mother. Calvin himself had no problem calling the church our mother. It was obviously a huge error in the Roman Catholic Church that they believe, and still believe, that the church is our mother, but they believe that in the wrong way, and to such an extremity and so on, and then they introduce Mary into the picture as a mediator between us and Christ and so on, and that the church is the infallible mother and you don't question the church ever, and you certainly don't question the papacy, for the church is your mother, and you obey your mother. Obviously, that's not the truth. That's an error. But that doesn't mean we should shy away from the fact that the church plays a huge role in salvation. There's no point being pious about these things and saying, well, the church is full of faults, and I don't need the church. It's about me and God. That's one of the most foolish things a human being can ever say, and it means they've learned nothing at all. about spiritual matters. For someone to say I don't need the church is one of the most serious things a person can ever say. We should not have these negative views of the church. Of course the church has faults, of course. But would you rather be in a synagogue? Would you rather be in a mosque? Would you rather be in a secular humanistic temple? The church is Christ's presence on earth. The church is his ordinance, the church is his government, and so on. And the church is where Christ is pleased to go every Lord's Day, and to make himself among his people, and to deliver the word, as he's doing right now. This is his word, fallibly preached, with error and so on, with human beings involved. But this is where Christ does most of his work. If you think you're going to find Christ all the time walking down by the lake and not interacting with other Christians and not hearing preaching and so on, that's very wrong. The church, as fallible as she is, keeps the gospel pure and preaches it. Yes, in weakness, but she preaches the Savior. She administers the Lord's Supper and baptism. The church is the home for every believer who loves the Lord, and the church is his bride whom he loves. And Calvin had no problem saying that God the Father is our father, but the church is our mother. God the Father uses the church as his bride to bring forth life. There, under the apple tree where Christ is, there your mother is. Near Christ, the mother goes under the apple tree where she should be and brings forth children where there is fruit and provision. And I just want to say something about that, that the mother must be under the apple tree. Hagar was out in the wilderness with her son, and it was very dangerous, and they almost died had God not intervened. because she was not under the apple tree in the covenant near to Christ. The church, the mother, must make sure that if she is to be healthy, she's eating properly, and that she's in shade and not being scorched by the sun, and that she has something to eat, and once she gives birth, that she is healthy so that she can feed these children. If she's not under the apple tree and eating properly herself, then her body will be affected and she will not be able to care for these children. When the church wanders from the apple tree and is not a church that fellowships with Christ and that is alive in his ordinances and is not praying for revival and is not sticking close to Christ they put it all over their websites how focused they are on evangelism and that they need to spread the gospel and they need more people to come because that will bring life. That doesn't bring life. What brings life is that the mother knows you need to be near the food source. You need to be near Christ. You need to love Christ. God will not allow the mother to bring forth children if she's neglecting this health and this apple tree. For what will the children eat? She'll run out of milk. She'll be dehydrated herself. There, your mother brought you forth. There, she who bore you brought you forth. Hezekiah says this in the Old Testament, when he's warned that Zennacherib is going to come and just destroy Israel. But God says, it will not happen in your lifetime, Hezekiah. And Hezekiah foolishly says, well, at least there will be peace in my lifetime. But then Hezekiah correctly diagnoses the condition of the church as he sees it at that time, in its weakness away from the apple tree, Hezekiah says, this is a day of blasphemy and a day of rebuke, for the children are brought to the point of birth, but there is no strength to bring them forth. That's a parable Hezekiah says. And how true it is. This is happening everywhere today. It may be happening in me and in you, It's certainly happening throughout the Reformed churches. Lots of studying, lots of Westminster Confession, lots of Pilgrim's Progress, lots of studies and discussion and the sharpening of the mind. But we are living in a day of blasphemy out there and sometimes in here by refusing to do what God is calling us to do. We are blaspheming him. A day of blasphemy and rebuke we live in. And the children are brought to the point of birth but there is no strength to bring them forth. The mother can't give birth. She's in danger. There's no strength. And have you seen that? Have I seen that? Yes, we have. I see it fairly frequently. Someone takes an interest in the gospel. There's promise and so on. And you really think they're on their way. And it's almost like they come to the point of birth but it's like the church is too weak to bring them forth, to look after them and feed them and raise them properly. And God sees his church and says, I can't leave children with these people because the children will starve and not be raised properly. So you see, I mentioned China before the service, you see this strange paradox of the persecution in China And the Chinese people, under huge opposition, and there's just birth after birth after birth. The Chinese famously had a one-child policy for a few decades. The Reformed Church in China doesn't have a one-child policy when it comes to new births. There is strength to bring them forth, and God honors that, and he is using his covenant there in great blessing. And once upon a time, the Reformed and Puritan churches in the Western world were giving, they didn't know what to do with all of these new births. There were so many of them. What was the key? Under the apple tree, your mother brought you forth. So in this portion of the song, we see someone leaning upon their beloved and discovering this world as a wilderness and discovering that as important as her leaning is, he is the one ultimately that supports her and he will never stop doing that and what a comfort that is. And that he calls upon her to remember her birth and you must remember that. And today, my friend, give praise to God for it. that you were born in Christ that you have the new birth and that you have this husband though other husbands fail you and fathers and brothers and friends fail you. You have this husband that he is a fruitful fertile apple tree citrus tree where all your nourishment can be taken from and that you have a mother and that the mother brings forth the children in God's hand and that the mother must be careful to be near the apple tree. We still need to look at the bride's request in verse 6 and the beloved's immense love in verse 6 and 7 but our time is gone and we may just return to these things this evening as the Lord wills. May God bless these things to our needy souls. Let us pray.