Turn to the Old Testament this time for our second reading and for our text to the Song of Solomon and chapter 2. You'll find the Song of Solomon just before Isaiah and Jeremiah, so immediately before Isaiah. And we'll read in chapter two and at verse eight. And a new section begins with this verse. The voice of my beloved. Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, he stands behind our wall. He is looking through the windows, gazing through the lattice. My beloved spoke and said to 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. The time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. Oh, my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, Let me see your face. Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes. My beloved is mine and I am his. He feeds his flock among the lilies. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of Beathar. and particularly that last verse, but only in connection with the rest of the passage that we read. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of Beathar. A plea for her beloved to turn. Turn, my beloved, Now, we all know that the Song of Solomon is a difficult book, and it's especially difficult to try to understand it without having the interpretive key to unlock it. But that key isn't hard to find. In many respects, we're given the key pretty much in the opening of the book. After all, this song is called the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. The expression Song of Songs means just the greatest of all songs. We're told elsewhere in the Word of God that Solomon wrote 1,005 songs. We don't know how many of these were inspired, but we know that this one was, and out of the 1,005, this one is the most excellent of all songs. And of course, it has its place in the Bible. It has its own place in the canon of Scripture as a book. In other words, it doesn't appear as a psalm along with the other songs. but here it stands on its own. And the reason it does so, and the reason it is the most excellent of all songs, isn't really to do with the skillful arrangement of the song, or the excellence of the Hebrew, or the excellence of the poetry, or anything like that, although these things are true. The reason it is the song of songs, and has its own place in the canon, is because of its subject matter. The book is essentially a parable. It is a series of earthly stories that carry a heavenly or a spiritual meaning. The two main characters throughout the book are Solomon and the Shulamite. Both these names have the consonants S, L, and M, which you recognize in the word shalom. Solomon is the prince of peace. The Shulamite is the princess of peace. And even these facts alone are enough to tell us that These two characters are symbols, or they are symbolic. They are types. They point to a greater than themselves. In other words, we can say of Solomon here and the Shulamite what Jesus said of Solomon and of himself, that a greater than Solomon is here. Well, we can say that in connection with the book, that a greater than Solomon is in this book, and a greater than the Shulamite is in this book. They are, in other words, symbols of the glorious bridegroom, Christ, the true Solomon, and his glorious bride, who is the church. Sometimes she is seen in the singular, sometimes she is viewed in the collective. Now, I'm aware that there are people, and some of them, within the evangelical church, who deny that this book is about Christ and the church. I can only go so far as to say that I can understand their arguments, but I have to be honest and say that I don't agree with any of them. And I think, to be quite honest, it should really be as plain as day to us that this book is about Christ and the church, and that it is very much a parallel song with Psalm 45, which we know to be about Christ and the church. And really, I don't want to get distracted by that question. I hope we can all assume or take it for granted that the two characters here are the Prince of Peace and the Princess of Peace. Now, the words that we read from verse 8 down to verse 17 form the second of songs within The Song of Solomon. The Song of Solomon consists in seven or eight songs. They all stand together and they all follow the same pattern. And really, if you like, that is the other part of the interpretive key to understanding the book. Once we understand it is about Christ and the church, it all becomes a little easier. And once we understand that there are seven or perhaps eight songs, all with the same pattern, then we are 80% of the way to understanding the message of this book. When I say that the small songs follow the same pattern, the pattern is this, that they all begin in a context of separation of some kind. Christ and the soul are apart from each other. The groom and the bride are not together. And in every song, the fault lies with a woman. That should be a clue, by the way, that this is not about an ordinary marriage. It's not about an ordinary relationship between a man and a woman, because the fault does not always lie with the woman. But in this book, it does. A reminder to us that whenever there is trouble between Christ and the church, it is not Christ who begins it. So there is a separation and the woman is at fault. The Shulamite is at fault. The second part of the song involves a mutual seeking where the groom is coming after his bride. and she is looking for him. Christ looking for the soul and the soul seeking out Christ. And then the song will close with an embrace where they find each other and they enjoy each other's fellowship. Something perhaps like this, that his left hand is under my head, his right hand embraces me. I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, do not stir up nor awaken love until it pleases. That, by the way, is the end of the first song. In the verse before, where we're beginning at verse eight. Now then, we're going to look together at this second song as the Lord enables us. And although there's a change in the air at verse 8, something good is happening because the beloved is coming and he wants the fellowship of the Shulamite. And in verse 11, winter's over, The rains have come, so the flowers are appearing, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in the land, the fig tree is growing, and so on. Although that change is in the air, it's obvious that we're to understand that there has just been a long and cold winter. And during that winter, the beloved has not been present. And this is the absence. In verse eight, yes, the voice of my beloved, behold, he comes. But that in itself reminds us that he hasn't been around. And the fact that he hasn't been around has something to do with the long, cold winter that is now just about to come to an end. Now, whenever Christ and the soul are absent from each other, As I said a while ago, the fault lies with us. If you don't know the Lord's presence, it's not his fault. Yes, he may have withdrawn his presence, but that is not his fault. When we grieve the Holy Spirit so that he turns away his countenance or the divine countenance from us, that is not his fault. The grieving is yours and mine. It's not God who grieved you. And the only reason God ever hides his countenance from you is because of sin. There is no other reason. I'm not sure if I mentioned this a while back. I know I was going around this theme, but there has long been a discussion or a debate really in the church whether God sometimes just sovereignly withdraws his presence from us all. Does he do it just to test us, to see how we would respond to it? And some people have said that he does that, that he's free to do that. And the example that I've certainly heard more often than any other is the example of Job, where we're told that Job was an upright, a godly man. We're told that there was no one like him on the face of the earth, but this series of calamities befell him. And of course, you find Job in chapter 23 of the book saying, oh, that I knew where I might find him. He can't get a sense of God. He knows that God is dealing with him, but that's it. I mean, he's not conscious of God's presence. He's not conscious of his comfort, his consolation, God communicating with him, just nothing like that. Nothing like that at all, or that I knew where I might find him. And the people who say that God just sovereignly does that to test us will point to a case like that. But friends, that again is to confuse things that are actually quite different. It is one thing to be tried by God. It is another thing to be deserted by God. God will try you and he will try me for his own good reasons, but he doesn't desert us or he doesn't leave us unless we grieve him. To stick with the example of Job, Job may have been hurt. He may have been tried and severely tested, but he didn't lose a sense of God's presence. He didn't lose a sense of God's favor, and he didn't lose the joy of the Lord. In fact, even in the midst of his sorrows, he could say, Blessed be the Lord, the Lord gave, and the Lord has now taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, we're told, Job sinned not with his lips. He kept his place, and therefore he kept the presence of God. But what happened, of course, was that as the trial was prolonged, Job began to complain. He began to complain against the severity of what he endured. Now, it's easy for us to be critical of that, but can you honestly say that you wouldn't yourself? But he did begin to complain against the severity of it and what he saw as the apparent injustice of it, and then he lost God's countenance. In other words, he would never have lost it had he not grieved that countenance away. So let's be clear about this. There is no biblical warrant for saying that God will simply remove his countenance from you sovereignly. There's always a reason in the Bible. And the reason is in me or in you. Now, of course, by God's countenance or by God's presence, I mean God working in your life in such a way that you are conscious that He is with you, that He is blessing the Word to you, that He is enlarging your understanding of what He's doing and your appreciation of who He is and what He's doing, and filling your heart with love and with joy. and with peace in such a way that the other manward fruits of the Spirit like meekness and kindness and gentleness and long-suffering and self-control are flowing too. That's what I mean by the presence of God. Certainly there is a mystical element to it. The presence of God is a mystical thing, but in the way in which it works, it is in that way a felt thing, a discernible thing. It is a discernible presence. Yes, I have the light of his countenance. I know his favor. I know his loving kindness. And it fills my own heart with love and joy and peace. I'm sure, Christian friend, you know what that's like. And sadly, I'm sure you probably know what it's like not to have that. Because if I'm not mistaken, you've probably grieved the Spirit at some point in your life, quenched the Holy Spirit of God. As the prophet Isaiah says from God, your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden his face from you. That's what hid his face, nothing else. Not a sovereign decision to hide it, but he took it away because your sins have hidden his face from you. And I think we all need to remember that Sin indulged in or sin unconfessed will remove God's presence from your life. And sometimes in your foolishness, you may think that that's not a great price to pay for your sin, but it is a great price to pay for your sin. It's a painful thing to be without the presence of God. For those who have had it and who have valued it, it's painful to be without it. And here, in this song, there is a mountain of division. A mountain of division. In verse 8, the beloved is coming over the mountains, skipping upon the hills. These hills are called, in verse 17, the hills or the mountains of bethor, or the mountains of division. I'll come to this verse later, but until the day breaks, we're told, these are wonderful words, in verse 17, until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved. Be, that means really turn back. Come back to me, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of division." It's the only time the word bethor appears as a proper name. Mountains of division. Mountains that have now come in between the Shulamite. and her Solomon, the princess of peace and the prince of peace. Mountains of division. Sometimes there can be mountains between ourselves and God. Thank God that it is possible for mountains to be moved out of their place. The Lord Jesus even tells us that if we have faith like a fiery grain of mustard seed, that is a living, active faith, it can say to this mountain, be removed and it will be removed. Thank God for that. But there are often, sad to say in our lives, genuine mountains of separation between ourselves and God. Now, usually in the song or in each song within the song, We're given reasons why those mountains are there. And we have a reason in the song here. It comes out in verse 15. Catch us, the foxes. the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." Now, you'll notice, friends, above the... or at certain points throughout the song, you have headings like the Shulamite or the Beloved. And here we have an insertion by her brothers and so on. I just want you to ignore these headings, really. They are not part of the Hebrew text. That's why I'm saying that. They are not part of the Hebrew text. They are put in there by translators, perhaps to try to help us understand the song, but I just sometimes think that these things are best left out. I honestly do. I think they are best left out. I don't see any warrant for ascribing this to her brothers, whoever they are at all. So please just disregard these things. Take that as herself. The little foxes that spoil the vines because her vines have tender grapes. Little foxes have spoiled her harvest. That's why the winter has been so long, and it's been so cold. The little foxes or the little jackals were just pests, and they had to be guarded against all the time, especially in connection with the vineyard. Now, the vineyard, of course, could sometimes be ravaged by a bigger animal than that. In Psalm 80, God's vineyard is ravaged by the boar of the forest. but on this occasion, it's ravaged by little foxes. As we'll see in a moment, the vines and the figs and so on are references to our own hearts, to the fruitfulness of our own hearts. What happened here is that the church has allowed herself, or this Christian, if you like, or the church has allowed herself to be destroyed by little things, not by big things. Sometimes it is the bore of the forest that destroys the vine. David, as I mentioned, is an example of that. He sinned greatly, and he lost God's countenance. And he describes for us in a couple of places in Scripture how crushed he was by that process, how he felt his actual life was draining away from him because he was not in the light of God's countenance. In fact, what he says is that his sin was before God's countenance. In other words, instead of the sin being behind God's back, the sin is in front of God because he's having to deal with it. And he's having to deal with it because David hasn't dealt with it. He hasn't repented of it, so God is still looking at it. And God is still acting in connection with that sin in the life of David. So instead of enjoying the favor of God's countenance, all he knows is an absence of that. And he tells us graphically in Psalm 32 that he felt his bones were crushing and his life was just, well, he said that my moisture is dried up as in the summer. It's just like a tree or a plant just being dried up. I don't know if you've ever felt that in your own life, just drying out and no sense of God's presence at all because you have sinned. But that's the bore of the forest. The little foxes are something else altogether. Sometimes, and maybe this is the case, or has been the case, with you or with me, that it's an accumulation of lesser things that have driven God away. Maybe basic things like time-wasting. when you could have been doing something more profitable, or maybe inattentiveness in the ordinances, just sleeping your way either literally or metaphorically through services or through ordinances. perhaps just things like irritability, being unkind to your wife or to your husband, prayerlessness, lack of confession of ongoing sin, lack of self-examination for ongoing sin and confession of it, an accumulation of these things. And the little foxes could do their damage before people even noticed that they were let loose. And the result is that this church has lost her harvest. There has been a long, cold, and barren winter, a loss of love, a loss of joy, and a loss of peace, separation. But the second thing that we have in the song is a seeking. Christ and the soul can't stay separate, can they? Where there's union, there must be communion eventually. Communion can cease for a while, but the union between Christ and His church and the union between Christ and your soul, if you are a Christian, cannot be broken. So communion must be restored. And that's why there is a mutual seeking. And that's an interesting thing in the song. Although it's the church that always goes wrong, you will always find the church looking for him and he's looking for her. Now, praise God, theologically, we know that the initiative is always God's. Sometime in the song, sometimes in the song, it's the church that's doing the looking. Our attention comes to the church doing the looking, but we know that he's the one who's always doing the looking. Sad thing is, we'd never come back if God didn't bring us back, if he didn't draw us back, invite us back, encourage us back. But nonetheless, in the dynamics of the thing, in the dynamics of the relationship as it happens, there is a mutual seeking. First of all, there's a seeking on her part. And really, when it comes to our duty, remember, we must return before God does. Looking at it from the human perspective, from the point of view of our duty, we who have separated from God, we who have grieved the Holy Spirit, we must return before he turns back. "'Return to me, and I will return to you,' says the Lord." We looked at that during lockdown. You may remember a couple of sermons on that text. "'Return to me, and I will return to you,' says the Lord." And she's coming to life, and he recognizes it, because when he comes and speaks to her, he tells her that he has noticed that the garden is coming back to life. In verse 11, again, the winter has passed, The rain is over and gone. And that's a good thing because the rain was the sign of life. The flowers are now appearing on the earth. The time of singing has come. The voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree is putting forth her green figs and the vines with their tender grapes are now giving a good smell. So he says, This is how he began, and this is now how he ends. Get up, he says, my love, my beautiful one, my fair one, get up and come away. Now, certainly it's possible to see this as Christ inviting a particular person to share in a revival that is going on in the land. Although she doesn't perhaps feel worthy to be a part of that revival, he's saying to her essentially, look, this cold and blasted winter is finished. There's revival in the land. You come with me and be a part of that. Now I think that makes a good sense. It is an attractive thought, and I have no doubt it is a true thought. I remember once at a fellowship I was sat, not that long really after I was converted, I was probably in my early 20s at the time, but I remember an elder in the fellowship saying that he was sometimes scared if a revival came that he might be bypassed in the revival, that he might be left out of it, that he might be left feeling perhaps a bit cold and hard while everyone else was alive. Now, at the time I took rather a simplistic and naive, perhaps, approach to that. I thought it was a very logical approach, that if everyone was revived, everyone was going to be revived, why would you be left out? But I think I understand well what he means. The thought that maybe others, others could live, others could be renewed and revitalized, and you just somehow passed by. And here there's an invitation. from Christ to someone that he sees reluctantly like a dove hiding away. I'll come to that a little later on. You come too. You come and enjoy the springtime of revival in the land. So I think that's a good sense. It's fair enough. But nonetheless, I think the garden in the Song of Solomon, as it runs through the song, represents an individual soul rather than the collective church. An individual soul rather than the collective church. If you just go forward to chapter four and to verse 12, There's a kind of explicit declaration pretty much to that effect. Here the Beloved, the Prince of Peace, is describing his princess. She is a garden enclosed or sealed, shut off. walled, if you like, a walled garden. She belongs to him just as he belongs to her. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. She is a spring shut up and a fountain sealed. So everything that's required to make a beautiful garden is His spouse, she is all that. Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits, fragrant henna with spikenard, saffron, calamus, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, aloes, with all the chief spices, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters and streams from Lebanon. And she prays, in the next verse, in verse 16, When she hears him saying that, she prays, awake north wind, come south wind, and blow on my garden that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come to me, that's to his garden, let him come to me and to my soul and eat the pleasant fruits. that I am now yielding in this new springtime. Now, quite often in the Bible, our souls are compared to well-watered gardens. When Isaiah sees days of glory coming, he says that the Lord will guide you. And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Jeremiah too looks forward hundreds of years to see the new covenant that God is making with his people. And he tells us in that day that they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, streaming to the goodness of the Lord, and their souls shall be like a well-watered garden, and they shall sorrow no more at all. I will satiate the soul of the priests with abundance, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, says the Lord. So the well-watered garden or the garden coming to life is the individual Christian really here. So I don't understand this, and I don't think you should understand this, as God calling someone who for some reason is reluctant to participate or feels unable to participate. Rather, he is coming to herself and saying, I see in you life where I have seen barrenness and death. I felt coldness and decay for a long winter, but I am now coming to you because I am sensing something different. The fig tree, the vine, tender grapes, and a good smell. She's coming to life. You know, coming to life is not an easy thing. And it's particularly not easy if we have seriously grieved away the Spirit of the Lord. I think it's fair to say, as far as I can understand these things, that the harder our fall, the harder it is usually to get back. It's not easy to search your soul about what's gone wrong. To even start that process is not easy. It's not easy to confess your sin properly, even when you suspect you know what it is. It's not easy to put wrongs right, and there may be a lot of wrongs that have to be put right. Maybe you have hurt and offended other people. It's not easy to do all that. It wasn't even easy for David to face up to the consequences of what he had done. There's very little of that revealed, but it doesn't necessarily have to be explicitly told for us in order to understand it or to appreciate it, how difficult it was to get back to our right place. But we have to do it. And the minute we do put things right, the minute we turn back to God, Christ smells that fragrance. He recognizes that it's not cold in here anymore, that it's warm, that the garden of the believer's soul is coming to life. And that's why he's coming to meet her. That's how the song opens in verse eight. She hears him. And of course, when we're turning back to God, we want God's presence back in our life. We begin to want the communion we had. And she recognizes his voice. It's the voice of my beloved. And he's coming so eagerly. He's coming like somebody who didn't like being away in the first place, leaping upon the mountains and skipping upon the hills. And what he wants to do is draw her out of herself. In verse 10, he says, rise up, my loved one, and come away. Rise up and come away. Backslidden souls are a bit like the woman with the hemorrhage that we looked at a couple of weeks ago. She wanted healing followed by anonymity. And there's a way in which when we've been perhaps seriously absent from God, or God has been seriously absent from our own souls, that maybe the healing we want has a measure of anonymity connected with it too. And a lot of that will have to do with your sense of unworthiness. And believe me, that is real when you have been really sinning and God has been really absent from your life. When he returns, you'll feel this sense of utter unworthiness to be back with the people of God again. unworthy to be in the church or unworthy to be in a fellowship, unworthy for your voice to be heard, unworthy to sit at a communion table. I suppose in some respects, even talk of being unworthy like that is consigned by the people to the past, to a people who seem to be just hung up on religious experiences and who couldn't appreciate the truth as though they were that stupid. Whereas the fact of the matter is that a real sense of unworthiness comes with a people who have been really afflicted with a sense of God's absence because they sinned. because they sinned. She doesn't really want to be seen, and she doesn't want to be heard. She is hiding away. She can't but be excited at the voice of her beloved, just as that's how you feel, you see, because when you're awakening, oh, you're so drawn to him, but you can't believe that he can still be interested in you. But Christ won't have it like that. For the remainder of her time, let's look at two things. simply what he says to her and what she says to him. First, what he says to her, he compares her with two things. First of all, he compares her to the spring garden, the flowers appearing on the earth, the fig trees with the figs and the vines with the grapes. In other words, he says to her, I know your situation. I know where there was winter, there is now spring. And I know you have come to life." I'm sure she prayed for that. In the spiritual realm, that's the kind of thing we pray for when we're struggling to find our way back, when we are trying to repent, when we are trying to be sure that we have forgiveness. We pray that there would be real fruit in our lives. And we put up the prayer that she put up in chapter four, verse 16. Awake, O north wind, and blow, O south, upon my garden. I mean, let there be something in me that will waft its way to the Lord, that the Lord may be pleased with me, not because There is something in me to be pleased with in and of myself, but let there be something in me that the Lord would delight in, that he would delight in my fellowship, and so on. And he says to her, I'm seeing that. I see life in your soul. I see you as a spring garden. And when repentance is there, We are aware that these things are there. They may be in the bud, they may be green grapes, they may be just a tender growth, but they're there. Jesus, of course, stripped Peter beside the Sea of Galilee. Do you love me, Peter? Do you love me, Simon? Do you love me, Simon, son of Jonas? And when he had reached the bottom, Peter says, you know everything, and you know that I love you. And whatever I have been through in the days that have passed, and however much it may have appeared even to myself that there was no love there, you know that I love you. And if you are pleased with even the tender shoot of recovery, know that that is in my heart. It's in my heart. Maybe there's not much I can say, but you know that I love you. So he tells her that he sees her as a spring garden. He then tells her that he sees her as a dove. In verse 14, oh my dove in the cliffs of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, let me see your face because your face is lovely. Let me hear your voice. because your voice is sweet. A dove symbolizes more than one thing in the scripture. I think it just simply depends on the particular characteristic that's being highlighted. Famously, the Holy Spirit is symbolized as a dove because a dove represents white dove purity and peace But the relevant characteristics of the dove that are brought before us in this passage have to do with her eye and with her sound. how she looks and the noise that she makes. Now, the noise that she makes is a very sad noise. I'm sure you've noticed that. It sounds as though she's mourning, a mourning dove. When Hezekiah was struck with sickness and God told him that he was going to die, Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and he prayed and he looked back on that prayer later and he said, I mourned like a dove and I chattered like a corncake. That's interesting from another perspective, which I can't really go into tonight, but it's very interesting that a prayer that prevailed with God, a prayer that God actually heard, because you'll remember God sent Isaiah back to Hezekiah to tell him that he had 15 years more to live. You know, one minute he's going to die, then suddenly he's got 15 more years to live. But what God said through Isaiah was, I have heard your prayers. Prayers which Hezekiah considered to be chattering like a corn crake. Is that not interesting? There are many of our own prayers. We sometimes go home here, I suppose, after a prayer meeting, and maybe we prayed audibly and thought, well, I chattered like a corn crake. We wouldn't use that expression. We'd use a similar one, just a noise. The Lord heard it because it came from a heart It was meant, and it was sincere, which is what our prayer should strive to be anyway. And I say that to you, brothers, when you do pray in the prayer meeting, it's sincerity that matters before God. Really, sincerity of heart. Put passion into your prayer. You may sometimes feel like you've chattered like a corn creep, but if it came from the heart, and if it's offered in faith, the Lord will hear, and the Lord will answer. But I mourned, he says, like a dove, because he was in chastisement. I mourned like a dove. That's the sound she makes. And again, her appearance. Let me see your face. Why would you want to see a dove's face? I'm sure if you looked at a dove's face, you've noticed how sad it is. It's just incredibly sad. The eye of a dove looks as though it's crying all the time. And that really is the point in connection with this poor Christian, this princess of peace as God sees her. It's not how she sees herself. She's hiding away in the cliffs of the rock and in the secret places of the cliff because she's embarrassed about herself. Embarrassed about her appearance and embarrassed about her voice. Again, I am not worthy to be called your son. I am not worthy to be called your son. Again, like the woman with the issue of blood hiding away. Sometimes, friends, as Christians, you can get sick of yourselves. Don't be surprised if a day comes when you are absolutely sick fed up of yourself, sick of your failure, sick of your backslidings, to the point where you almost feel it is an embarrassment to open your mouth in praise and your face to be seen in the house of God or your face to be seen at the Lord's table. What does the Lord say to that? Oh my dove, let me see your face, and let me hear your voice, because to me that is, who cares what anyone else thinks, to me your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. Because as David discovered in Psalm 51, a broken spirit is to God a pleasing sacrifice. And he discovered that as somebody who tried to go through the usual round of offerings. He describes it at the end of Psalm 51 with the bullocks and everything that was prescribed in order to put things right between yourself and God. And of course, normally, if that was done in faith, If that was done in the heart, it would all work. But it doesn't work as a substitute. Religious performance is never a substitute for religious life. Never, never, never, never. He discovered that when he offered to God a broken heart, that God was then pleased with his worship. We can come here and say and do the right things. Doesn't mean that God is pleased with any of it. unless it comes from there. From there. It must come from there. But in your brokenness, God is pleased. He's pleased with that. Just when you thought nobody could ever look at you or have anything to do with you again, that you couldn't really be called a Christian again, God wants to see your face and he wants to hear your voice. clean slate and a new beginning. So I suppose in a way he's assuring her of her attractiveness to him. It's sometimes possible Well, I'm sure it may be possible for a husband, too, and a wife, but it's quite possible for a wife sometimes to feel that she is no longer attractive to her husband. But don't ever feel that you have ceased to be attractive to your Lord. He desires to hear her, to see her, and to enjoy her fellowship. So that's what he says to her. What does she say to him? Well, just very briefly, and I mean that, there's a threefold language that she uses. First of all, she speaks the language of assurance in verse 16. And this time the heading is certainly right. It is the Shulamite who speaks, my beloved is mine. And I am his, he feeds his flock among the lilies. That's where the rich pasture land was, where the lilies grew. She's going with him. The flock feed there, he feeds all his flock there. She's going with them, to feed with them and with him. But the critical point is that my beloved is mine and I am his. It can be a cheap thing to say, but when you've doubted for a time whether this is so, when you've doubted for a time whether you really are God's and whether God is yours, and he comes to you in such a way that you recognize his voice, And you get the sense again in the reading of the word and in the proclamation of the gospel, and even in the warmth of the fellowship of God's people, you get the sense again that God loves you. Then you mean it when you say it. It's not a cheap statement of assurance. It's something that just flows out of your heart with such a sense of gratitude that my beloved is mine and I am his. She has the language of assurance. We lose that when God is absent, at least if we're honest. The second language she has is a language of vigilance. Singulars and plurals can sometimes mislead us, but I'm not going there. In verse 15, catches the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines for our vines have tender grapes. I refer to this verse before in the context of what had gone wrong the first time. Her garden was spoiled for lack of vigilance and carefulness. But you'll notice that when the Lord comes back, she's going to be careful. We're never as dedicated as when Christ comes back. Never. We're never as dedicated as when he comes back and we have a kind of fresh assurance that he has loved me freely and graciously. That's when the resolve comes, the endeavor after new obedience, as the catechism describes, when it's describing repentance unto life, there's the endeavor after new obedience. I'm going to watch out for these things, the time-wasting, the irritability, the anger, the carelessness, the inattentiveness, the sleepiness, the lack of worship, the lack of prayer, the little foxes, I'm going to watch. Language of assurance and a language of vigilance, and last of all, and best of all, in some respects, there's the language of dependence. In these almost painful words of verse 17, until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and continue to be, can we just put it like that? Continue to be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of division. As long as we're in this world, like the Shulamite, we're going to be in a land of shadows, a land of insubstantial things, a land of declension, shadow of death. But we know, we all know as Christians that a day is coming. The Old Testament finishes with this promise. A day is going to break. And the son of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings. It's a cosmic healing that he's going to bring. And there's going to be no more shadows on that day. I mean, the night will never fall. He will recreate a new heaven and a new earth where there's no need of a sun or of a moon. Because again, the glory of God will illuminate it. No declension, no death, no grieving of the Holy Spirit, no absence of God, no separation, nothing of this kind. And what this princess says to her beloved here is just something like this. Until that day comes and until my last day on earth comes, I will probably fail you again. I'm not asking for a license to do so. I'm not asking for any kind of special dispensation. Nothing like that. No excuse to sin. but I know that perhaps I will drive you away again, and I will put mountains between myself and you, and these mountains will be of my building, mountains of my provocations. If so, I ask you even now to have mercy upon me. And just as you've come to me already, skipping upon the mountains, skipping and leaping upon the hills, please keep turning back to me, my beloved, with the agility, the enthusiasm, the alacrity of a gazelle or a young stag upon these mountains of division. I will fail you, but please keep coming back. Don't ever stop coming back. You as a Christian know what I mean when I say that that's pleading no license to sin. Simply a realization of frailty and weakness, which you will try by the grace of God to fight against, but will doubtless be there. but you please turn and you please keep turning back to me even when I seem to have no sense to turn back to you. Keep doing that until at last the day breaks and the shadows flee away because then I won't need to ask that anymore because I'll never know separation from you or you from me. Let us pray. Lord our God, we thank you for the ways in which you have turned towards ourselves so faithfully, as though you were hardly across the mountain when you were keen to turn back. And we know that the distance between us and you is always of our making, and the provocations are on our side. And how we thank you for your graciousness to overcome these things, to meet us, to clothe us with the best robe, to put a ring on our finger, and to kill for us the fatted calf. And we pray that those who are perhaps not Christians tonight would recognize that this is the Savior, that this is the Prince of Peace, that this is one well worth knowing, one well worth loving. Here as we pray in the Redeemer's great name, amen. Let's sing in conclusion in the well-known words of Psalm 23. and we'll hear the singing to the tune Cremond, which of course some we know so well. It's the loving care of God for us in life and through death and beyond. He provides our pasture land for us, restoring our souls, keeping company with us wherever there's a shadow, even the shadow of death. His rod and his staff give us comfort, prepares a table for us. We are always welcome guests there with our heads anointed with oil and our cups are overflowing. So goodness and mercy, that kind of goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. and in God's house forevermore my dwelling place shall be." Is that not a wonderful faith to have and a wonderful hope to entertain? We'll hear the whole psalm sung. Lord, my shepherd, I'll not want thee makes me down to lie in pastures. ♪ He leadeth me the quiet waters by ♪ ♪ My soul He doth restore again ♪ ♪ And me to walk doth make ♪ And in the paths of righteousness before His Holy Name stay. Oh, I hope in death's dark vale, Yet will I fear not ill, For thou art with me, and I go, and shall be come for sale. My table has furnished, in presence of my host, where joy and life and life have overflown. Goodness and mercy all my life ♪ Shall surely follow me ♪ ♪ And in God's arms forevermore ♪ ♪ My dwelling place shall be ♪ I stand to receive the blessing of God. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you. Amen.