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Now, I did not mean to tarry that
long.
I want to go on to some other
things.
Look at verse 7 prior to verse 8.
When he first addresses her, before he tells
her to come down from those things which
can hurt her, and before he says, come
and follow me, this is what he says
about her.
Thou art all fair, my love, there is
no spot in thee.
Many times, you come to see that you're
walking in a place you shouldn't be walking,
or living in a way you shouldn't be
living.
And immediately, condemnation comes upon you.
And that condemnation drives you farther away from
Christ.
You feel ashamed, you feel like it's a
works idea of, well, I've got to get
my life fixed, do this and everything, and
then kind of earn some brownie points, and
then come back.
And we have so much old covenant teaching.
And do not realize about the new covenant,
some things that are so beautiful.
Christ really did pay it all.
He really did pay it all.
And when you come to the realization the
Holy Spirit has convicted you in your heart
that you're wrong, you should not be listening
then to the devil who begins condemnation and
everything else, and tries to drive you further
and further away from the Savior.
When the Lord tells you, you're wrong.
He says also, he says it like this,
he goes, you're wrong, I love you, come
back.
You're wrong, you are without spot before me,
come back, I love you.
We have this idea that, well, we need
to be very, very careful when we start
telling Christians that when they sin, their fellowship
is broken with God.
You need to be very careful about what
you're saying.
Cliches can be very dangerous.
Because according to 1 John, fellowship with God
is synonymous with salvation.
We claim we have fellowship with Him.
That's talking about salvation.
You tell a believer their fellowship with God
is broken, you're basically saying you're condemned and
going to hell.
What you need to realize, you have taught
maybe your people, and you believe yourself, you
tell your people, if you sin, man, you're
separated from God.
Your sins have separated you and God.
Oh, really?
You ever thought about what you're saying?
If you're separated from God, my friend, you're
going to hell.
If you're separated from God, you're condemned.
Now, I'm not trying to play down sin.
What I'm just trying to tell you is
we better clean up our language.
Do you want to know what happens when
a believer sins?
God continues to love them.
God continues to woo them.
God continues to come after them.
God continues to draw them.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say that God wants me to fast,
pray, and read the Word all morning.
But I want to go out to my
woodshop and work.
According to many fundamentalist pastors, this is what's
going to happen.
God's going to stand there and say, well,
you just go ahead and go to your
workshop if you want, but I'm not going
with you.
And by the way, I hope you cut
your fingers off.
Do you know what really happens?
I'll tell you what happens.
I go out to that workshop.
God is screaming at me, I love you,
Paul.
I love you.
Nothing will change that.
Come away with me.
I'm looking for a board.
He goes over there with me and helps
me find it.
He said, Paul, here's the board.
But I love you.
Come away with me.
I turn on that power saw.
He guards my fingers.
And when I look across that saw at
the other side of it, He's standing there
going, Paul, I love you, I love you,
I love you.
Come back with me.
You say, well, what about discipline?
Oh, my dear friend, there is discipline.
There's church discipline.
There's divine discipline.
There's all sorts of discipline.
But it is always in love.
And it is always with God screaming out
to His children, I love you, I love
you, I love you.
And so when we talk about, well, we're
here and we're in this mess we've got
ourselves into, Satan will oftentimes intervene and say,
Now, God don't want anything to do with
you.
He's over with you.
He's finished with you.
He cannot do anything with you.
If you're a true believer and you have
fallen into some sort of sin, condemnation from
the devil will be constantly coming towards you,
driving you further and further from the Christ,
further and further from salvation.
And what you need to hear is, Son,
it is finished.
I've paid the price for you.
Your sins have been paid for.
One of my favorite passages in the entire
Bible is that a bruised reed he will
not break.
And a burning wick he will not put
out.
What does that mean?
It means this, my dear friend.
When you've fallen and you've sinned and you're
in problems, you take a cane, for example.
You go down to Israel and there the
children would cut cane.
There's just thousands and millions of cane growing
everywhere.
And they would cut cane and they would
make a flute out of it.
But as they were making the flute with
the cane, the flute would sometimes just break
because cane is very fragile.
Well, they wouldn't try to fix the flute.
They'd throw it away and get another piece
of cane.
There's all kinds of cane where that one
came from.
No sense working with that.
Just throw it away and start all over
again.
That's not the way God works.
God selects a piece of cane, begins to
work with it, play beautiful music from this
thing.
And then for the fractures and the failure
and the cane itself, it breaks.
But God doesn't take that broken believer and
throw him out and say, well, I can
get someone else.
I've got plenty where this guy came from.
He'll take it and he'll mend it again,
mend it again, and mend it again.
How many times have I broken my own
life and God has put it back together?
That compels me to want to be holy.
How many times have I fallen and He's
put me back up?
And then again you look in the burning
wick.
Have you ever been in a house where
it's just lamps, no electricity?
In Peru, in the jungle, that's what we
had and we would have lamps.
And if that oil ever runs out of
that lamp and that wick begins to burn,
my dear friend, when that wick begins to
consume, it will smell horribly.
It begins to burn because there's no longer
any oil.
And it stinks and what you do is
you just take the thing, open up the
window and throw it outside.
It stunk up the whole house.
A thing that was supposed to give light
has done nothing but stink up everything.
But when Christ begins to work with a
believer and fills them with the oil of
His Spirit and they grieve the Holy Spirit
through sin, and the wick begins to burn
and the Christian begins to stink and it's
nothing but the smell of burning flesh, Christ
doesn't take that, throw it out the window
and say, well, I can get another lamp.
But He begins again, pruning and cleaning and
preparing and then filling once again.
So no matter where you're at in your
life, there is this irresistible love of God
that never gives up.
And no matter how hard He has to
speak to you and no matter how hard
He may have to discipline you, it is
always like the case with the prophets of
Israel, no matter how hard the rebuke, it
always ended in hope.
It always ended in encouragement.
Now, He says in verse 9, what is
the motivation for being holy?
The way God sees you in Christ.
He says, thou hast ravished my heart, my
sister, my spouse, thou hast ravished my heart
with one of thine eyes.
He's talking about when you look at me,
literally, my heart beats faster when you look
at me.
Now, do you think this is poetry?
Do you think God writes this because He
wants to hear Himself?
Is this true?
Does it really mean that every time Paul
Washer, every time I give a heavenly glance,
every time I look towards my Father in
Heaven, His heart beats faster.
Do you see that?
Does that not excite you?
Does that not encourage you to pray?
Does that not encourage you to keep your
eyes on Him?
That every time I look to the Father,
His heart is ravished.
My little boy, when I get home, I
just look and when he peeks around that
door and looks at me, I am just
on fire.
Every time.
You see, you think most of the time
you go to God and He's like, well,
I've got to listen to Him, that's the
covenant, I've got to stay here.
Every time, my dear friend, I don't care
who you are, if you're a believer, every
time you turn your eyes upward in prayer,
the Father's heart beats faster.
He is so full of divine joy.
He is so full of divine fullness.
He so awaits.
Your glance.
It makes me want to just stop preaching
right now and go pray.
And then He says this, look what He
says.
He says, ravished my heart with one of
thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.
With a necklace, literally.
He says, when you look at me, fills
me with joy.
My heart beats faster in my passion for
you.
And not only that, I see the beauty.
I'm mesmerized by the beauty of that necklace
you have on.
And what would that be?
But grace.
What would that be?
The very gifts.
He says, the very gifts I gave you,
when I see them, they ravish my heart.
Oh, my dear friend, I don't know if
you're even, you might just totally disagree with
me on this.
I don't know.
But if you could only see what I'm
saying here.
When you bow your knee to prayer.
When you bow your knee to pray.
When you look up.
When you're walking down the street.
When you're in Walmart, wherever.
And you give that upward glance, Father.
It ravishes His heart.
And when He looks down at you, He
sees only that which He has given you.
Grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy.
Don't you want to be holy?
Don't you want to pray?
If things are such as the Bible says,
doesn't that change everything?
And He goes on and He says, How
fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse.
How much better is thy love than wine.
And the smell of thine ointment than all
spices.
Wine and spices represent the most beautiful, the
most precious things that God has created.
Beautiful things.
Of all the glory in the world.
All the beauty.
All the fragrances.
All the flowers.
All the mountains.
All the sunsets.
Everything that He has made.
That is full of awesome beauty.
But He says, Don, that your love towards
Him is more beautiful than all those things
put together to Him.
He would rather see your love towards Him
as pitiful as that love might be.
As small as that love might be.
Your love toward Him is more beautiful to
God than all the most spectacular and most
beautiful things He has ever created.
Doesn't that make you want to pray?
Doesn't that make you want to be holy?
Doesn't that encourage you?
That your love is not just ascending up,
being a pitiful thing sent back down to
earth, rejected?
And He goes on and He says this,
He says in verse 11, Thy lips, O
my spouse, drop as the honeycomb.
Honey and milk are under thy tongue, and
the smell of thy garments is like the
smell of Lebanon.
The prayers of the saints.
Do you realize, brother, I'm so sorry that
I'm such a pitiful messenger, but do you
realize how precious your prayers are to Him?
Compared to all the finest things in the
world, compared to all the symphonies, compared to
all the songs, compared to everything else, you
crack your lips and speak a word to
God.
And it is more precious to Him than
everything else combined.
Doesn't that make you want to pray?
Doesn't that make you want to call on
His name knowing that in Christ it's received?
And it is loved.
And it is appreciated.
And He goes on and He says this,
A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse,
a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
I use this verse all the time to
teach college students about decency, about modesty.
But this applies to you, men.
A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse,
a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
We must be men who have shut the
doors to many things.
Evil things, bad things, but even good things.
We belong to Him.
Oh, the Levites, the Levites didn't get the
land and the territory and all these things.
Poor, poor Levites.
But they got God.
And you and I, among us as pastors
and little itinerant preachers like myself and things.
No, we don't go out there and we
can't work with our hands and we can't
amass fortunes and many times we spend our
lives preaching in churches of 10 and 15
and 20 and 30 people.
And yes, we've had to sacrifice many things.
And yes, Isaiah 53 is basically a picture
of our life if we're a good and
godly pastor.
And yes, so many things we have missed,
but what have we been given?
What have we been given?
Poor, pitiful pastor?
Oh my goodness.
I would not trade.
I would not step down.
I would not trade with the greatest kings
and presidents of this world.
We have been given the privilege to dwell
in the courts of God, to dwell in
His courts, to be His ministers.
How can we say anything but that we
are the most privileged people on the face
of the earth?
And so, we must shut ourselves off from
other things.
Other things.
And live for Him.
Now, he goes on and he says this.
He says, I'm going to go ahead and
time has gone by.
I mean, I'm trying to find out where
I want to go next.
Let's just go ahead and jump to verse
16.
Now, bear with me.
Please bear with me.
You know, brothers, honestly, I feel like I
felt when I was preaching at the liberal
Baptist seminary in Bucharest.
When I preached on a passion for Christ,
the men just sat there like this.
When I started talking about Karl Barth, Jürgen
Moltmann, and Otto Weber, three theologians whose theology
closed about every church in Germany, everyone sat
up and went like this.
Do we want Christ?
Verse 16.
This is the bride.
Oh, I love this passage.
Awake, O north wind, and come thou south.
Blow upon my garden that the spices thereof
may flow out.
Let my beloved come into His garden and
eat His pleasant fruits.
Look at this.
This young maiden, this spouse to be, she
only has one desire.
She has worked and worked and worked and
worked to prepare a garden and only has
one desire, that the wind would blow through
that garden and send the fragrance of it
to her lover.
That's all she wanted.
That he would smell the fragrance of what
she had done and that he would come
and receive it.
Do you remember when you were a new
Christian?
Do you remember when...
I mean, you opened the Bible and you
studied it.
You just wanted to be so pleasing.
You wanted God to see.
You wanted God to look down on what
you were doing and just give that acknowledgement
that He was pleased with you.
You would have done anything for His presence
to come.
You would have done anything for divine seal
to be upon your life and upon your
work.
That's all you wanted.
You didn't care about your status in the
denomination.
You didn't care about what other people were
doing.
You didn't care about how big your church
was or wasn't.
You didn't care about any of all that
stuff, what people thought of you.
The only thing you cared about was, will
He see this?
Will He come?
Will He be pleased with me?
Your greatest desire when you were younger was
just, Lord, that You'd be pleased with me.
That's all I care about.
I remember the first job they gave me
at a church after I was a Christian.
I went to the elders and I said,
you know, I'm a college student.
I've been saved for a couple months.
What do you want me to do?
And they said, well, what do you know
how to do?
I said, well, I was raised on a
farm all my life.
They said, can you build a fence?
I said, I've built thousands of fences.
So they put me in there.
I thought they would give me something to
teach or something.
They had me build a fence around the
baseball field.
That's the best fence anyone's ever built around
a baseball field.
Why?
Just, Lord, look.
Look at me.
Lord, look.
It's me.
Look what I'm doing.
Not to get rewards, not to have crowns
in heaven, just when a little boy does
everything.
I'm amazed that when I go to the
park and I'm there, I'm usually the only
father with his child.
Usually it's mothers with the boys.
And I go there and I'll start watching
my boy and my boy will say, look,
Dad, look, look, look.
And pretty soon, almost every boy in that
park is around me.
They don't even know me.
They're just going, look, sir.
Look, look, look.
Because these little boys want a man to
look at them and say, yes, good, go
for it.
Man, you're something.
God has given us that so that we
would learn a spiritual principle.
That's a good thing for us.
Look, Lord.
Never forget, sir, you're never going to be
anything other than a child.
Look, Lord, it's me.
Look what I did.
But then you get old.
You get wise.
You get mature.
And a very special part of you dies
inside.
And you begin to become a prey of
things like worldly things that will excite, worldly
things that will move you.
Why?
Because this part of your life in Christ
has died.
And yet your heart yearns for more than
just principles and doctrines and standards and right
ways of living.
And then he goes on.
Verse 1 of chapter 5.
I am coming to my garden, my sister,
my spouse.
I have gathered my mirth with my spice.
I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey.
I have drunk my wine with my milk.
Eat, O friends.
Eat, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
This is the spouse.
This is the king.
Now look what's amazing here.
He says, I have come into my garden.
This is so amazing.
Why is it amazing?
This is why.
He's a king.
He has tens of thousands of people building
him big gardens every day.
Gardens that rank among the wonders of the
world.
What does he need with a puny little
garden of a little girl?
If he was a pagan ruler, what would
he do?
What is this?
Don't bother yourself with this, dear.
I've got other men that can build tremendous
gardens and break her heart in two.
Isn't that what he does?
He says, I've come into my garden.
Those were the happiest words she ever heard.
And I want you to know, you and
I work in our little works in the
corner of the world.
Little men with little ministries.
No one will ever really know about us.
And we're working and we're working and we're
working.
Some of you 20, 30, 40, 50 years
in the ministry working and preaching and everything
else and building this little garden, but you
look outside your garden, and you see all
these men that seem to be building these
great big hanging gardens and everything with thousands
and tens and thousands of plants and fruit
and everything else, and you're almost saying, what
do I even have to give this King
of glory?
What could I give Him that He would
not despise?
And yet, you say, here, Lord.
Here.
And He says, well, thank You.
Thank You very, very much.
One of the greatest burdens I have in
my heart are for pastors who have labored
for years and years and years preaching the
truth and loving their people and have not
compromised to Wall Street methodology to build Christ's
church.
And I know what a burden it must
be for them because they see all around
them little boys who know nothing of God
supposedly being kings in the kingdom when they've
spent their life praying and studying Scripture and
communicating it to people, and they're treated as
a nobody.
Well, don't worry about being treated as a
nobody on this earth because one day, somebody
is going to return and change absolutely everything.
And on that day, I look forward to
that day when I see godly men unknown
to the world who have pastored faithfully and
done faithfully and in the secret place been
faithful when no one was looking, when they
stand before Him and say, Lord, here's my
garden.
And He said, oh, what a gift.
Now it is Mine.
Everything You have done in My name I
receive.
Now we go on.
And He says, verse 2, I sleep, but
My heart awaketh.
It is the voice of My Beloved that
knocketh, saying, Open to Me, My sister, My
love, My dove, My undefiled, for My head
is filled with dew and My locks with
the drops of the night.
The Lover comes.
The Lover comes at an unexpected time to
visit the bride.
He comes at an unexpected time, not a
planned time, not something she had programmed.
He comes and He knocks on her door.
In the watch of the night when you
would least expect it, He whispers, He knocks.
Open to Me.
Verse 3, the bride answers, I've put off
my coat.
How shall I put it on again?
I've washed my feet.
How shall I defile them?
There was a time when that little girl
probably walked around the marketplace a thousand times
a day for no reason at all just
hoping she would bump into the king.
She would do anything to get his attention.
We can see that in verse 1.
She'd do anything to be partly with him.
She would do anything to be in his
presence.
She'd make up excuses to leave the house,
to wander around the town just hoping to
bump into this guy.
And when she did, her heart just beat
in such a way that you would think
it would come from her breast.
But what happens when you enter into a
relationship for an extended period of time?
Things become common.
They become vulgar.
It's just like some of you might even
know him.
An old missionary by the name of Homer
Crane.
Baptist faith missionary.
We called him the John Wayne of South
America.
He was the biggest, toughest, meanest guy, but
one of the best missionaries I've ever known
in my life.
And I remember the first time we went
across the Andes Mountains.
Homer was there just snoring as we went
across the Andes in that train.
And I was looking all around going, how
can this man be so dull in his
heart to not see the beauty of all
of this?
A few years ago, I took a bunch
of university people across the Andes Mountains and
while they were looking around, I was snoring.
And why is that?
Commonality.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
When you first met your wife, you had
no struggles with passion, did you?
Except against passion.
You didn't have to build a fire.
You didn't have to kind of muster up
the strength to be crazy about her.
Every time she walked by, your heart beat
so fast you thought she was going to
have a heart attack.
Those first years with the Lord, you'd have
done anything for His presence and His power
and His life and His approval to be
upon your life.
You'd run anywhere, pray.
Pray even when He didn't call you to
pray.
Read the Word.
Do whatever.
I want to know Him.
I want to be with Him.
I want to share His presence and His
life.
But now, you come home.
I mention television again because it's the greatest
enemy of the pastor.
Because the pastor has so many problems to
deal with, the one thing he wants to
do as soon as he gets out of
church is to shut it all off.
And the best way is to tune out
by tuning in to the television set.
And maybe you're sensing in your heart, you
know, one night, God's saying, come away with
Me.
You're tired, but this thing cannot give you
strength.
I can.
You're joyless because of what the people have
done.
This thing cannot give you joy.
I can.
You need life.
You need encouragement.
You need the balm of Gilead.
Come away with Me.
And you go, Lord, I've already done that.
I've already done Your stuff.
I need to do my stuff now.
I just need to rest.
As though He were an employer and not
the fountain of life.
Who was it telling me?
I don't know, Bro.
Don.
I don't know who it was that said
that a minister came to preach at a
church to preach a revival at a church
and the pastors and staff had already planned
a golfing thing.
Was it you, brother?
Had already planned that that first day that
the evangelist got there, they'd go out and
do a little golf.
I mean, I don't golf, but I don't
really have a problem with that necessarily.
But the evangelist said as he was golfing
to start talking about Jesus, and the pastor
looked at him and said, Brother, we're out
here playing golf.
Let's not talk shop now.
Ministers, you're in real danger of Jesus Christ
becoming nothing but shop talk.
Shop talk.
And when He comes to you and He
knocks on the door at that unexpected time,
you need to go and you need to
go quickly.
You need to respond quickly.
The moment He knocks on that door, come.
And then it says in verse 4, My
beloved put His hand to the door by
the hole of the door, and my bowels
were moved for Him.
I rose up to open to My beloved,
and my hands dropped with mirth, and my
fingers with sweet-smelling mirth upon the handles
of the lock.
I opened to My beloved, but My beloved
had withdrawn Himself and was gone.
My soul failed when He spake.
I sought Him, but I could not find
Him.
I called Him, but He gave me no
answer.
She opened the door.
But you need to realize something.
Love does not tarry long.
There's a reason why the symbol of the
Holy Spirit is a dove.
It is gentle.
It can be wounded.
Christ comes and whispers to you at times,
Come away with Me.
And you almost pretend not to hear so
as not to feel guilty.
And then you realize you're walking in your
life without the presence of God.
And what do you do?
You finally spring up and you go to
the door.
Now, when He touched the door handle, some
scholars of ancient Middle East culture say that
what He did was He had a little
pouch of mirth and other herbs and senses.
And He pulled those out and He rubbed
them all over the latch of the door
handle.
It was kind of like a calling card.
When someone came to the door and the
person they were seeking was not there.
That when the person came home, they would
smell the scent and know that that person
had been there.
Most of the time in our prayer, we
spend our time not fellowshipping with a person,
but seeking a person that seems to have
withdrawn Himself.
We catch a small fragrance of what we
used to know.
I remember when my wife, one time because
of my work in the jungle, and this
was not necessarily biblical.
Praise God, He kept us.
But I was actually about 82 days separated
from my wife while I was in the
jungle.
And I remember coming back to the apartment.
She wasn't there.
Finally.
And I remember going into her closet and
pulling out her favorite sweater and sitting there
on the bed and holding that sweater up
to my nose and just smelling her perfume.
Smelling her.
But it wasn't her.
When we are not quick to jump to
the Master's call, when we are not quick
to follow Him, when He bids us with
love to come away from Him, many of
the times when we do get up, finally,
there's nothing there but a fragrance of the
former person.
Brothers, let me ask you a question.
How many times in prayer meetings and in
personal prayer do you start off seeking the
Lord?
Maybe even it becomes a little zealous.
Lord, Your presence.
Just show up, Lord.
Break our hearts.
Do something.
But after the time is up, you just
go ahead and go.
Why?
Well, He didn't show up.
Well, He didn't show up last time either.
And instead of communing with the Lord Jesus
Christ, we spend most of our time just
calling out to Him.
Most of our time is just spent calling
out for Him to come and almost no
time at all communing with Him as a
present person.
I'm going to finish.
I know I've gone long, but I want
to read.
She goes after Him in verse 7.
The watchmen that went about the city found
me.
They smote me.
They wounded me.
The keepers of the walls took away my
veil from me.
When she went out after Him into the
world without Him, how did the world treat
her?
What happened to her?
She was treated as a woman not very
chaste.
She was treated without dignity.
So many things happened to her.
Now, if the king had been beside her,
do you think a man would not even
have looked at her?
They would have had such fear.
If the presence of the king had been
there, she could have walked anywhere in that
city and a man, every time she came
near, would have put his head down.
Remember what Moses said?
Lord, we'll not go if You don't go
with us.
We're afraid to go if You don't go
with us.
My dear friend, pastor, you need to be
afraid to go anywhere without Him because He's
the only Savior you'll ever have.
He's the only protector you'll ever have.
Nothing can protect you but Him because apart
from His grace and His power, all those
principles and all the doctrine you know will
not avail you.
You can't learn enough to be safe from
sin.
The only thing that can keep you safe
from sin is not a thing, it's a
person, it's the Lord Jesus Christ.
And they beat her.
And then she finds some daughters of Jerusalem.
In verse 8 she says, I charge you,
O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my
Beloved, that ye tell Him that I am
sick of love.
She says, Go look for Him.
She tells all these other women, Go look
for my Beloved.
Go look for Him.
I've lost Him.
And this is what they say, 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?
It's something like this.
She goes, Look, I've lost my Beloved.
Please, go look for Him.
Go look for Him.
And they say, Why?
I mean, He can't be all that.
He came to your door and you wouldn't
even get out of bed.
So why should we go running around everywhere
looking for Him?
You didn't have to look for Him.
And when He came, you didn't necessarily care.
He can't be any different than anybody else.
How many times do we stand up and
tell people, Look to Christ.
Seek Christ.
And they look at us and go, Why?
I mean, how much do you seek Him?
I mean, He can't be all that.
I mean, He's hired you to tell everybody
how wonderful He is and you're not even
that excited about Him.
I mean, why should I be?
It's not a joke.
It's a reality.
I'll never forget W.A. Criswell.
I saw him one time and he was
preaching a typical First Southern Baptist Church sermon.
That old man.
And he was in Colossians, I believe.
That book talks quite a bit about Jesus.
And all of a sudden, something happened to
that old man.
He was preaching very dignified, very Southern Baptist,
very this, very that.
And all of a sudden, he read something
about Jesus.
And the old man, he backed up like
this and he slapped down his hands like
this and he goes, Oh, folks, let me
tell you about Jesus.
And for about the next ten minutes, that
man went wild.
Tears running down his face.
I mean, he was everywhere at one time.
That right there did more.
It actually, I'll tell you, it offended some
people.
He lost his dignity.
Oh, no.
He was crowned with royal dignity when he
went wild.
We're telling people, you need Jesus.
And they're looking at us saying...
Now, I'm kind of confused.
Jesus, is that a principle?
What is that exactly?
No, He's a person.
Well, can He be all that, Pastor?
I mean, honestly, I really don't see that
much excitement in you.
I have sat with big pastors of big
churches and it is scary.
I'll start talking about evangelism or church growth
or something and they will be so excited,
it's unbelievable.
And I'll start talking about the loveliness and
beauty of Christ and they look over my
shoulder.
That's scary.
That's frightening.
Pastors that will travel everywhere on this continent
to hear a new method about how to
make their church big, but you give a
seminar on godliness or a conference on just
the cross of Jesus Christ and see how
few come.
Now, it goes on in v.
10.
My beloved...
This shocks her, this question.
And she begins to rethink.
She begins to think back on who this
is that His Savior says, My beloved is
white and rooty and chiefest among 10,000.
His head is as the most fine gold.
His locks are bushy and black as a
raven.
His eyes are the eyes of doves by
the rivers of water washed with milk and
fitly set.
His cheeks are as a bed of spices,
as sweet flowers.
His lips like lilies dropping sweet, smelling mirth.
His hands are gold rings set with beryl.
His belly is as bright ivory overlaid with
sapphires.
His legs are as pillar of marble set
upon sockets of fine gold.
His countenance is as Lebanon, and excellent as
the cedars.
His mouth is most sweet.
Yea, He is altogether lovely.
This is my beloved, and this is my
friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
What happens?
She begins to think about Him.
No more about ministry.
No more just about church.
No more about us, about our progress in
the faith or anything else.
Just about Him.
Some men will never grow because they're so
introspective.
Because that's all they think about is them,
their walk, their own failure.
That's why I told that young man.
I said, young man, you're probably more spiritual
than I am, but I'm happier than you.
You have your eyes on your works.
I have my eyes on the finished work
of Christ.
When you start going back to what I
preached yesterday, you start getting into the attributes
of God, studying the attributes of God, on
your knees, crying out to Him, and begin
to see the beauty of God, the specialness
of God, the uniqueness of God, everything about
Him.
Your heart can't help when you come to
know Him, to love Him, and to transmit
that love.
To transmit that love.
I'll never forget, I was doing a Reform
Conference in Detroit, Michigan, and we went out
to eat somewhere.
Some kind of, I don't know, Cheetos or
some kind of place like that.
And they had all these waiters.
They were all college boy waiters.
Earrings in their ears, and little flippy hair,
and everything else, the way they dress and
such.
And I was sitting there with all these
theologians.
One of them had a Bible open even.
And this kid comes walking in there with
bleached blonde hair, earrings, everything else.
He comes in and he says, can I
take your order?
Dude!
He looked at the older theologian.
Dude, you got a Bible!
And I said that pretty good, didn't I?
And the guy goes, well, yes, I do.
He goes, man, that's great.
He goes, because I was seeking Jesus and
seeking Jesus, I was seeking God, I was
seeking something, and I found Jesus.
And Jesus changing my life.
And I could see all those theologians they're
sitting there going, yeah, right.
Immediately, they were saying in their mind, no,
young man, you didn't seek Him.
No man seeks God.
God seeks men.
Theologically, you're wrong.
You can't be saved.
And I mean, this kid, he didn't even
want to do the food anymore.
All he's talking about is Jesus.
And most of the things he's saying is
wrong.
But you could tell.
I mean, God had gotten hold of this
boy.
I talked to him for a while and
everything, and then he left, and I looked
at all the men, and I said, you
know, it's a lot better to have it
and not know what to call it than
to know what to call it and not
have it.
And I said, you know, that's the work
of a theologian, isn't it?
To explain the work of God.
Not to produce it, but to explain it.
That boy was wild.
He did more good than those four or
five stuffy theologians sitting around that table.
And yeah, the Lord's probably going to change
him all over.
Give him time.
I'm working 40 years with you, and I
don't see much progress, so don't be hard
on the boy.
And then finally, when she says that, in
verse 1 of chapter 6, the girls ask,
Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest
among women?
Whither is thy beloved turned aside that we
may seek him with thee?
Oh, look at the difference.
Oh, man.
I tell you, that one, he must be
something.
If he is like this, if you're so
excited about him, if you would die a
thousand deaths just to see one glance of
his eye, he must be something.
If you talk about himself, he must be
something.
He must be something.
Now, conclude right here.
They say, Where is he?
And she comes to the full realization of
something.
My beloved has gone down into his garden
to the beds of spices to feed in
the gardens and to gather lilies.
My dear friend, when your heart grows dull
and you begin to replace the presence and
person of Christ with different things, and that
is idolatry, and you feel horrible about it,
and you feel like, how can I even
approach Him with such a dull heart?
How can I even approach Him having lived
so long not concerned about the things that
were a reality in my life when I
was younger?
How can I approach Him?
Well, just look at this.
This girl in this book had scorned the
love of a king.
She considered it as boring to get out
of bed to answer the door when he
came to her in the middle of the
night.
Any other king would have been screaming mad.
He would have said, I came to your
door.
You were nothing when I found you.
I made you my own, and then you
treat me like that, leaving me outside the
door?
And then you run around the city like
a tramp?
And then now you expect me to take
you back?
But when she comes back to the one
that she so offended, where does she find
Him?
She finds Him standing there at the door
with a bouquet of flowers for her.
He's picking lilies to give them to the
one who has offended His love.
You know why we can't understand that?
Because there's just no love like that in
this world.
There is no other example of the love
of God except God Himself.
It is so hard for us to fathom.
I talk to my Pentecostal friends sometimes and
they all say that the greatest demonstration of
faith is being able to raise the dead.
You raise the dead in a Pentecostal church,
you're upper epsilon.
They were saying that one day and I
looked at them and I said, raise the
dead?
I said, raise the dead?
That's nothing for a Baptist.
Raise the dead?
That doesn't require faith.
And they said, well, what do you guys
consider the greatest exercise of faith?
I said, for me to look in the
mirror of God's Word, see the dullness of
my heart and the many times that I
have offended the King of glory and then
to actually believe that He loves me like
He says He does.
Doesn't that make you want to be holy?
Doesn't that make you want to pray?
I wish a better man and a better
speaker had taken this text.
Let's pray.
Father, O Lord, O Lord, Your
love, Lord, is so immeasurable, so infinite, O
God, and my heart, Lord, as the song
says, prone to wander, O Lord, I feel
it, prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it.
Seal it for Thy courts above.
O God, I pray that the love of
God would be shed abroad in a new
way, Lord, in the hearts of Your men
and that that love, that presence, that person
of Yours would keep us from evil and
make things like the wickedness, the vileness, the
pornography of this world seem dull and boring
because of the grandeur and the awesomeness and
the beauty of You.
O God, in Jesus' name, Amen.