Song of Solomon, chapter four.
I want to talk to you about prayer
as something more than intercession, even something more
than getting grace, but prayer as communion.
Song of Solomon, chapter four, verse seven.
You are altogether beautiful, my darling.
There is no blemish in you.
Do you know why you can come into
the courts of God?
There's only one reason.
The blood of the lamb.
The lamb went to the tree and became
accursed of God and his father turned away
and all the wrath of almighty God that
should have fallen down on your head throughout
all of eternity fell down on the lamb.
And when the lamb died, he satisfied justice
and appeased the wrath of God.
He paid for every one of your sins,
past, present and future.
They were all imputed to him and he
took them away.
He paid for them.
And now, therefore, there is no condemnation like
Esther, who wanted so much to walk into
the throne room, but she had to do
so with fear, because if the king did
not extend the scepter, she would die.
In Christ, to the believer, the scepter is
always extended.
Always.
He always sees you as you are altogether
beautiful, my darling, and there is no blemish
in you.
Now, I want you to understand something, the
justification that will really, really help you.
You see, you've got to understand this.
If there was just one blemish in you,
you would go to hell.
You see, God doesn't see you as sinful
enough to go to hell.
And then a little bit better, so sinful
enough, but still you can be kept and
better than that so that you can come
a little closer and not quite as many
sins so you can get a little closer
and not quite as many sins so you
can get a little closer.
You go to hell if you have one
blemish in you, which also must show you
that if you are invited into the throne
room of God, it's because there are no
blemishes in you, that you are altogether lovely,
altogether perfect.
And that's why you can come to him
even on that day when you commit sins
and the dullness of your heart does not
even allow you to see those sins.
You are still forgiven and can still come.
Yes, there is a need to deal with
that sin.
But what I want you to see is
this.
Because of Christ, you are altogether beautiful.
There is no blemish in you.
And if there were one blemish in you,
you could not come.
That should give you great encouragement.
When God looks down at you, you know,
we have this almost mechanical view, you know,
this legal view, and it is a legal
thing, justification.
But we almost have this thing of God,
because of what Jesus did, he must accept
me now.
And it is not because of what Jesus
did.
God looks at you and says, you're altogether
beautiful, my darling, and there is no blemish
in you.
Do you see the passion?
Can you see the love that's there?
Can you see the desire and the wanting?
You see, you can't because you've never seen
it in anything else.
We live in a conditional world.
You meet all the conditions, you get in,
you fail at some of the conditions, you're
out.
But Christ has met all the conditions, and
therefore, when God looks at you, he says,
you're altogether beautiful, my darling, and he must
see you that way or you go to
hell.
But he does see you that way because
of Christ and he always sees you that
way.
His disposition toward you does not change.
That is so wonderful what Christ has done
for us.
You are altogether beautiful, my darling, and there
is no blemish in you.
That should be the greatest encouragement for you
to pray.
That should be the greatest encouragement for you
to ask God, examine me, oh, Lord, show
me my ways.
That should be the greatest encouragement for you
to confess your sin.
Because it is not a judge who comes
to you and a judge will never come
to you again.
Only a father, only I believe it was
Brother Mike Morrow that was telling me about
this, that that you're not just justified, you're
adopted.
You know, when someone goes before a judge
and a judge acquits him, the judge then
doesn't invite him to go home with him.
You know, God's not only justified you, he's
adopted you and he looks at you with
such love, with such endearment.
With such joy at what he has made
possible, that because of the power of the
blood of the Lamb, when he looks at
you, you're altogether beautiful and there is no
blemish.
Then he says in verse eight, come.
Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, may
you come with me from Lebanon, journey down
from the summit of Amman, from the summit
of Sinai and Hermon, from the den of
lions, from the mountains of leopards, come.
God is always calling his people to come.
And Satan is always telling them you can't
go.
Look at you.
I mean, how can you go?
He knows what you've done.
He knows your sins.
He knows how vile you are.
He knows the dullness of your heart.
Don't go to him.
But those are the words of the liar
and the deceiver, and oftentimes you believe him
because it is so hard to believe God
with regard to his love because his love
is so great.
It's like I'm fond of telling people this,
who doubt the love of God.
I always my charismatic friends, they're always telling
me that the greatest act of faith is
being able to raise the dead.
I tell them for Baptists, that's nothing.
We do that every Sunday.
They say to raise the dead that man,
anybody who can really raise the dead, they've
got so much faith.
I said, no, that's not the greatest act
of faith.
Do you want to know what the greatest
act of faith is?
I'm going to tell you, the greatest act
of faith for the Christian is to look
in the mirror of God's word and see
all their failings and then to believe by
faith that God loves them as much as
he says he does.
That is faith, because you have to believe
something you've never even seen anywhere else in
the world.
No one is like God and no one's
love is like God's love.
When he tells you to come, don't you
know the one who just spoke the word
knows everything about you?
He knows everything.
You've done everything you're going to do.
So if he says come, then the invitation
is come.
So many believers are constantly staying away from
God, or you've done this, haven't you?
You've really blown it.
You've really sinned.
You're convicted about it.
And that's good.
You confess it.
That's good.
And then you realize that you need to
stay away from God for several days until
you win enough brownie points to get back.
That's a lie.
He says, come, come.
One of the most beautiful things in my
life was when one day in Peru on
the third floor of a house in Mia
Flores.
I came to believe that God really loved
me, all my spot, all my blemishes.
All the things I've done that before him,
they were removed in Jesus Christ and that
he could only love me and would only
love me and never stopped loving me.
And that I did not know enough, I
did not know as much about myself as
he knew, and yet he still loves me.
Jude says this to keep yourself in the
love of God.
Now, many preachers will turn that around and
turn it into legalism.
You need to keep loving God.
That's not what it means.
I don't know anything about plants, but if
you told me you had a dying plant
and I said, well, let me take a
look at it.
And I went to your house and you
took me to the inner room in the
closet of the inner room, which is pitch
dark.
And you open the door and there was
the plant.
I would say to you, well, I don't
know much about plants, but I can tell
you this.
You need to keep that thing out in
the sunshine, because the further you get that
thing away from the sunshine, the more it's
going to wilt.
I'll tell you that, believer.
That's a problem.
You need to keep yourself in the love
of God.
And how do you do that by faith?
How do you do that?
The word of God.
One of the things that would one of
the things that would probably help most people
in this room right now is to find
every verse in the Bible that talks about
God's immeasurable, unconditional love, memorize it, meditate on
it until you believe it.
Keep yourself in the recognition, keep recognizing, keep
believing that God loves you as much as
he says he does, and you'll not fear
to come into his presence.
He says, come with me.
But also look what he says, journey down,
journey down.
We're so full of pride.
We're so full of vanity.
We're always walking in high places where we
don't belong.
Vanity Fair is where our flesh wants to
live, mesmerized by trinkets and things that sparkle
and make noise, mesmerized with things that don't
matter, worried about clothing and little signs on
them, worried about the kind of car you
drive, worried about whether or not your kid
gets to enough soccer games during the week.
You spend every bit of your life on
that which does not matter, and you end
up ruined and broken and distraught and weary.
And God is saying, come by for me,
come, come down, come down from those places
that cannot feed you, come down from those
places that can do you no good and
come down from those dangerous haunts.
Look what he says.
He says from den of lions and mountains
of leopards come down.
Those are dangerous places.
Dangerous fear is a good thing.
You should fear what this world can do
to you.
You should fear what sin can do to
you.
You should fear what self can do to
you.
Come down, get away from it and get
away from people who are mesmerized by it.
You say, well, I want to be with
them to save them.
Save your own self now.
Get away.
Walk with people.
People who have eyes that are not evil,
that are not full of darkness, people who
are always directing you towards eternal things.
The problem is that's the way the church
is supposed to be, but because gospel is
so weak and no church discipline is practiced,
the church is filled up with wicked people
who love wicked things, and it's hard to
find anyone in the church who'll direct you
towards something eternal.
It's almost as though in Wesleyan Whitfield's day
when you got to go within the church
and make a holy club, come down from
those things.
Don't you know that inside you and your
flesh, your flesh has the keenest ability to
make an idol out of absolutely anything your
flesh can take the Bible and use it
and create an idol out of knowledge, create
an idol out of ministry, create an idol
out of almost anything, even that which is
good and holy and right.
He says, come down.
And look at this in verse nine, you
have made my heart beat faster, my sister,
my bride, you have made my heart beat
faster with a single glance of your eyes.
Now, if that won't get you praying, I
don't know what will.
What does that tell me?
I go like this and you can hear
the divine heart beat faster.
With a single glance of my eyes.
Guys, you remember when those of you who
are married, your spouse, before you married her,
she just kind of cut her eyes over
at you while you're sitting there in church.
From across the room, you felt like you're
just going to faint right over, remember that?
Well, you ought to remember what's wrong with
you, you ought to still have it.
Amen.
She looks at, you know, it was the
power of that it's spoken of as a
dangerous thing when it's a foreign woman, but
when it's the woman God has for you
and she cuts those eyes at you and
your heart falls out on the floor and
rolls down to the aisle, down to the
front of the church.
Man, that's a good thing, the power of
it, God loves us so much, just a
glance of our eyes upward in prayer, his
heart beats faster.
His heart beats faster.
I'll never forget after my little boy and
was born, I had a very difficult childhood,
to say the least.
And but when my little boy was born,
I'll never forget he was old enough, finally
got to the point where he could smile
and hug and lift his arms up in
the air.
And I'll never forget he was laying there
on our bed upstairs and I walked around
the corner and came into the room and
when he saw me, you got to understand
my boy could have a heart attack.
He gets so excited looking at a blank
wall that he he looked at me and
the moment he looked at me, he went.
There was not one doubt in that little
boy's mind that his father was going to
run over there, grab him, pick him up
and hug him.
There was not one doubt, I mean, you
took a self-esteem or self, he had
no doubt that he was loved, he knew
he just had to cut those eyes at
me and I was a goner.
Oh, gosh, I hope my wife doesn't give
birth to a girl, I'll be dead.
But what I want you to see is
how do you think those things happen?
Do you think that they come out of
creation or they're birthed out of human nature?
Why do those things even exist in creation?
Have you ever wondered about that?
God put them there.
And why did he put them there?
To tell you about him.
How can you love a child?
How could you dare think that you love
a child more than God loves you?
You can't even begin to look upward.
He said, oh, brother Paul, you don't understand,
son, you don't understand how powerful is the
blood of Jesus Christ.
It's one glance.
See, the fear of the Lord, you have
to understand this.
A little boy can fear his father because
one day he runs to his father with
a picture he drew and says, look, dad,
and his dad grabs the picture and says,
oh, that's absolutely wonderful.
And the little boy goes on, plays, everything's
happy.
Next day, the little boy comes, same dad,
same different picture, gives it to his dad.
His dad's in a terrible mood.
He grabs the picture, slaps the boy around
and sends him across the room.
The little boy trembles.
Why?
He fears his dad.
Why?
Because of the inconsistencies in his father's character.
That doesn't happen with your heavenly father.
His character is set in perfection.
Because of the work of Christ, he cannot
love you more, will not love you less.
One glance of your eyes, you've got him.
You've got him.
One glance of your eyes and his heart
beats faster, look what he says, you have
made my heart beat faster, my sister, my
bride, you have made my heart beat faster
with a single glance of your eyes.
Now, look at this with a single strand
of your necklace.
Let me ask you this.
Where'd she get the necklace?
She got it from him.
You see all that beauty you've got.
It's a gift.
You see, your elder brother.
He's not like Joseph, he's one greater than
Joseph.
Joseph had a coat of many colors that
he would not share with his brothers.
But our Joseph.
Our Jesus has a coat of many colors.
A righteousness upon him that is his own
by his own doing, and he gives it
to you.
You see, he looks down at you and
sees no spot, no blemish.
He sees these beautiful adornments hanging all off
of you.
They're the very things he gave you.
It's what grace is all about.
And it's so wonderful.
So wonderful.
He has saved you and not only cleaned
you.
He's dressed you up with his own grace
and every time he looks at you, this
is what he sees.
You say, well, Brother Paul, now hold on
for a second, what about all the sin?
You know, Brother Paul, there's just as much,
you know, adultery in the church is outside
of the church and there's just as much
lying and cheating and stealing and fornication and
pornography and everything in the church is outside
of the church, because that's what our evangelical
leaders tell us.
That's a lie.
That is a lie.
There is not as much pornography, fornication, adultery,
lying, cheating and immorality in church is outside
of the church.
Your problem is you don't know what the
church is.
The church is not made up of all
the people who are going to gather together
tomorrow morning.
No, the church is not perfect, but she
is being perfected and sanctified.
He who began a good work in her
will finish it.
And he guards her zealously in the spirit
that is within her, guards her zealously and
he disciplines her zealously because he loves her
zealously.
I'll tell you what, a lot of men
are going to have to answer for what
they've called the Church of Jesus Christ.
So they've looked at a bunch of unconverted,
lost, carnal people who happen to be members
of the church and identified them with the
church and in so blaspheme their God by
talking so harshly against his bride, his bride's
beautiful.
She's not perfect, but she's broken and she's
walking and she's growing and she's changing and
he's making something of her.
So he says, how beautiful.
Is your love in verse 10, how beautiful
is your love, my sister, my bride, how
much better is your love than wine?
Now, I want you to look at something.
I find it very hard sometimes when everyone
is singing, oh, how I love Jesus.
I find it very hard to sing along.
I do.
I look at my love and I don't
see a whole lot we're singing about, to
be honest with you.
I look at a heart that's sometimes cold.
I'd rather sing, oh, how Jesus loves me
than know how I love Jesus.
And in a sense, that's very, very good.
But we have to be very careful here
because look what it says.
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my
bride, brother Mike again this morning was talking
to me about the how the high priest
sanctifies our holy things.
Jesus shared that with me this morning.
Fits right in here, our priest, our mediator,
our intercessor, our Christ, our captain.
The man before God for us.
Seems that he sanctifies and makes holy all
our offerings to God.
Even that love that is so dull and
so impure and it passes through him.
It is lovely.
Don't you see, saints, what he's done for
you?
He's done so much, he's done it all,
he's he do it all things well, he's
left not one part out.
So he says.
How much better is your love than wine
and the fragrance of your oils, then all
kinds of spices I want to drop down,
I'd like to preach through all of this,
but look at verse 12, a lot of
garden locked is my sister, my bride, a
garden locked, a spring sealed up.
Now, what does this mean?
She's chase.
She's a garden locked up.
I tell young ladies that I that I
teach when I'm teaching university students and such,
I said this is the text for you
and for young men, it's the same.
You should be a garden locked up.
Young people, they've got the idea that they're
sexually pure if they've never had intercourse, if
they've had everything else, no, to be chased
is to be a garden locked up.
No one's touched the fruit, much less tasted
it.
No one's even looked at it.
It's a garden shut up.
And in the same way, the Church of
Jesus Christ, we should be a garden shut
up, a garden locked up, close our doors
to all other lovers.
They only want to hurt us anyways.
They only want to tear at us like
wolves and lions.
And for those of you who are pastors
out there, let me let let me tell
you something.
Learn this.
Your number one job as a pastor, God
has entrusted his bride to you.
You protect her.
That's what's wrong with church growth.
That's what's wrong with dropping the bar to
get as many people in as possible.
That's what's wrong with not practicing church discipline.
Your main job is to protect the bride
of Jesus Christ and to present her before
him, a pure and a chaste virgin.
You can't make a bride.
He makes it.
So stop trying to make one and start
doing your work of protecting her and feeding
her and guarding her and loving her and
presenting her one day before him.
But look at this, this is the way
we're supposed to be, church.
You have been invited to have communion with
the living God.
Why would you seek to other things?
Why would you seek to give your wares
to other things, to give your very being
to other things, close yourself off from everything
else and give yourself to him, to Christ
alone, to God alone.
It's wonderful.
Give me give me a young man who
is shut up.
So many men, so many young men, they're
all about fellowship and group hugs and getting
together and singing Kumbaya and trying to look
radical.
Give me a man who break away from
all of them, shut himself up to God.
Friend of mine was talking to Leonard Ravenhill
one day and he told Brother Ravenhill, he
says, Brother Paul Washer, a dear friend of
mine is really going through some struggles and
some terrible times.
And Leonard Ravenhill sent me a little track.
It's got written on Brother Paul and the
track is Others Can, But You Cannot.
And what it says is simply this, OK,
let everybody else go walk through the mall
all day long.
Let everybody else watch television.
Yeah, let everybody else go to some silly
Christian concert God's not in.
Let everybody else go on Christian retreats and
ski trips, but if you really want to
be God's man, they can, but you cannot.
When I was called into the ministry, I
went and told my pastor.
In Texas and very, very, very, very used
man of God, and he looked at me
and the first thing he said is, boy,
can you be alone?
And I thought he meant that if I
preach the truth, I would be alone.
That's not what he meant.
What he meant was, can you break away
from the rest of these boys and go
see God?
Can you shut yourself up to him?
We can spend time learning how to crochet,
we can spend time sitting in a tree
stand, you can spend time on a golf
course, you can spend time fellowshipping and eating
doughnuts and doing everything.
But why is it so hard to spend
time?
To shut yourself up to the one who
loves you most.
It does show that although we have been
thoroughly redeemed, there is an aspect of us
called the flesh that has not been redeemed.
Now, I want to skip through that and
I just want to go quickly to 16.
The bride is speaking and she says, Awake,
O North wind and come wind of the
South, make my garden breathe out fragrance.
Let its spices be waved abroad.
May my beloved come into his garden, eat
its hoist fruit.
Now, here's a young lady who has done
all this work, all this preparation, and there's
only one reason for it.
Her only desire is that the wind will
come and blow the fragrance of what she's
done to the one that she's loved and
that he getting a whiff of that fragrance
would come in and take from her the
gift she has prepared.
It's her greatest desire.
I remember when I was like this.
I remember first saved.
Hopefully you remember the same.
The only thing you wanted was his eye.
The only thing you wanted was his attention.
You pray, read the word, be half crazy
most of the time.
Overzealous, wild, no theology, no anything, but the
only thing you wanted, you go out soul
winning, knocking on doors, read your Bible, stand
upside down on your head and quote the
Westminster Confession.
Anything it would take to the Lord.
Look at me.
Oh, Lord, be with me.
Lord, do anything to have your Lord just
come into this room.
Don't leave me this way.
Take my life, but give me your presence.
Is he looking, is he looking to remember
when you were that way?
And then it says in verse one of
chapter five, I have come into my garden,
my sister, my bride, I have gathered my
mirth along with my balsam, I have eaten
my honeycomb and my honey, I have drunk
my wine and my milk.
You know, it's so wonderful.
This king has has no need of a
garden of a little girl.
He has 10,000 men working around the
clock to make him gardens, hanging gardens, flower
gardens, vegetable gardens, every kind of garden you
could possibly imagine.
He's the king, but this king.
Comes to Zion riding on the foal of
a donkey.
This king is a humble king, this king
is a loving king, and this king gives
her the very desire of her heart, her
greatest desire, her heart's desire is that he
simply take from her what she offers and
he does.
I've come into my garden, he says.
My sister, my bride.
We're always saying I want to be his.
He says, you're mine.
I want to give him this, he says,
I'll take it.
The boldness of his love is just unbelievable.
People.
He says.
All of it, I've come into my garden,
I've gathered my mirth, my balsam, eaten honeycomb,
honey, drunk wine, milk, everything you offer me,
I give it to you.
This is so amazing.
I'm never going to be Charles Spurgeon.
I'm never going to be George Mueller.
I'm never going to be anything but just
who I am.
Some guy who's going to live and die
in that sitting.
You know what?
It doesn't matter.
You don't have to be John Piper.
You don't have to be Jonathan Edwards to
be in the inner circle, because if you're
in Christ, you're in the inner circle.
We live in a world where Christianity has
such a pecking order, it's unbelievable.
It doesn't exist in the kingdom of heaven.
All your life you've been shut out.
You have this place.
You don't have enough money to go.
There's places you don't have enough brains to
go.
There's places you're not good looking enough to
go.
Trust me, there are places all over where
you're shut out.
There's inner circles you can't be a part
of.
You walk by them, you see them, you
drop your head, you keep walking.
Some of you, you go to pastors conferences
and you see quite clearly pastors.
They don't have signs.
Pastors of churches of over 5000, please stand
over here and talk.
Pastors of churches from twenty five hundred to
five thousand.
You're assigned this section from from 2000 on
down.
You must go here.
Guys with 50 to 100.
The bathroom is right around the corner.
Pecking orders.
And what's amazing, the guy with 50 in
his church has never asked to preach in
a conference, unless, of course, it's a heart
cry conference because that pecking order doesn't exist.
It doesn't exist.
He's not saying, well, why should I?
I mean, I've got Spurgeon over here and
I've got this over here and that over
here.
What?
I need you.
He doesn't need anybody.
He never says he does, but he loves
you.
He loves you, you say, but I've done
so much.
You don't even know half the much you've
done.
He loves you.
I love that passage, a bruised reed, he'll
not break smoldering wick, he'll not throw out.
Make a reed breaks in your hand, it's
a delicate thing.
It's got a flaw.
Throw it out.
There's all kinds of cane everywhere.
Don't work with that thing.
Throw it away.
Jesus doesn't.
You're breaking his hands.
People look, say worthless.
No music's coming out of that.
He says, just watch me.
Mends you back up and plays the most
beautiful music you could ever imagine out of
the most broken reed.
Smoldering wick, a little boy and the lights
would all go out, ice storm.
We'd have all these kerosene lamps and since
we didn't use them very often, we would
always forget.
You don't want to let one of those
things run out of oil because once they
run out of oil, the wick starts burning,
stinkiest thing you've ever smelt in your life.
Open up the window, throw it out.
Jesus doesn't.
You grieve the Holy Spirit.
You stink.
Make a mess of everything.
Everyone stands there and says, throw him out.
Christ takes the lamp, holds it to his
chest, cleans away the wick.
Fills it with oil, sets it on fire.
You got a God, you have a savior.
So he says, I come.
What's amazing here is what's been happening to
me these last few days.
It says, eat, friends, drink and imbibe deeply.
Old lovers.
I've heard men, very imperfect men, get up
in this pulpit and preach something of the
anointing of the Holy Spirit upon their lives.
And I've just eaten along with them.
It's amazing when someone falls in love with
Jesus Christ, it just sets a banquet table
for everyone else around them.
Have you ever noticed that?
Just everybody, let's eat, let's just eat.
It's an absolutely wonderful thing.
And then he says in verse two, we
come down and we see something.
I was asleep, but my heart was awake.
A voice, my beloved, was knocking open to
me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my
perfect one for my head is drenched with
dew.
My locks with the damp of the night.
Here comes here comes this wonderful lover.
Here comes this wonderful spouse.
Here comes the king.
And something that only one thing I want
to point out, even though there's seven lectures
in this verse, there's only one thing I
want to point out.
And it is this.
He comes unannounced.
He comes at a time not expected.
And why would he do that?
Because love is audacious.
Is there an angel standing behind me singing?
I mean, whoever is in charge of.
Please shut that guy off.
He's still going.
You know, if we were in Peru, I'd
just get a rock and my one chance
to have an angel appear.
Tom Clay's a really small guy.
Is he hiding up there somewhere?
Someone says, oh, brother, Paul, you shouldn't have
done that.
God was working and he's, you know, now
you listen.
If God's working, he'll continue to work when
I get back to this sermon.
OK, someone told Spurgeon you need to strike
while the iron's hot.
And Spurgeon said, well, if it's God heating
up the iron, it'll stay hot.
That comes on again.
I'm shooting somebody, Lord.
Yeah, you can't have church without all this
multimedia stuff.
He shows up unannounced, completely unannounced.
Why?
Because love believes it can.
You need to take Jesus at his word.
But make no mistake, he's going to take
you at yours.
I love you, Lord.
You know what that means?
He's just.
Believing enough to say, OK, that means I
can come by at two in the morning,
knock on your door.
That means, Pastor, when you've got all kinds
of stuff to do, you can come by
and knock on your door.
And Sam here.
Terry with me a while, that's what it
means.
Now he comes by unannounced and she says,
I've taken off my dress.
How can I put it on again?
I've washed my feet.
How can I dirty them again?
Now, here was a girl who literally would
go to the market 37 times a day
for no reason at all for her mother,
just the hope that she would bump into
this guy.
This was a girl who just would do
absolutely anything to get his attention.
But here's what happens when you get someone's
attention, when you've won someone's love, love often
becomes quite common.
I remember going through the Andes Mountains the
first time in my life over the highest
railroad pass in the world, and I'm sitting
there marveling at all the beauty of the
Andes Mountains and the old missionary Homer Crane
is sitting there snoring.
I thought, how can he be so dull
a heart not to see all this beauty
of God's creation?
A few years ago, I took a group
of college students across that same place, and
as they were oohing and aahing, I was
snoring.
Why?
Because when you see something over and over
and over because of sin, it no longer
is special.
Husbands, this is a rebuke for us and
our wives.
That same glance that stopped your heart should
stop your heart today.
It's not that her glance has changed, your
heart has changed.
But we look at this and he says,
she says, it seems like a drudgery now
to love.
It seems like a drudgery to love.
Do you remember those times, Saint?
Do you remember those times when you would
pray, when you would call people and they
would pray with you and you'd read your
Bible and you'd want to walk in the
truth?
And if you had thought that you grieved
the Holy Spirit, it would break your heart.
You'd cry out for God and you'd just
do anything.
You'd seek him, you'd plead for him.
You want his presence in everything.
But now he shows up at 10 o
'clock tonight and you go, Lord, I mean,
what do you want?
I've been in a Bible conference for three
days.
Haven't I given you enough?
Look how terrifyingly sad that is.
Lord, I'm tired, I mean, and pastors are
the worst.
That's why pastors should not have televisions, because
it's literally, Lord, I'm mentally and everything else,
I'm just totally and completely drained.
I mean, you feel that nudge that the
Lord says, slip away with me.
I know it's Sunday night and I know
you're drained.
Slip away with me and let me fill
you and give you peace to that mind
of yours that's so tired.
Oh, Lord, that'll never do.
I mean, I should just sit here and
just watch something for what really, please, Lord,
I've paid my dues, haven't I?
There was a time when, oh, it's so
funny, you know, when you're a brand new
Christian, I mean, everywhere you look, you see
the face of Jesus.
Every, I mean, you eat too much pizza,
you have a dream at night, you're trying
to interpret the thing.
It's Jesus.
Everything is Jesus.
You're just wanting to see Jesus.
I mean, wind blows against the back of
your neck, you know, Jesus.
You just make up things.
All you want is just Jesus.
Now, Jesus truly comes as a lover in
your maturity and tugs on your heart and
says, slip away with me.
And you deny that it's him.
You don't want it to be him.
Oh, that wasn't him.
That wasn't his voice.
That's just my imagination.
There was a time that even if it
was your imagination, you would have gone and
prayed.
You'd have used it as an excuse.
Oh, did you call me?
Look how cold the heart can become.
And so he says, well, we read in
verse four, my beloved extended his hand through
the opening and my feelings were aroused for
him.
I arose to open to my beloved and
my hands dripped with my and my fingers
with liquid myrrh on the handles of the
bolt.
I opened to my beloved, but my beloved
had turned away and had gone.
My heart went out to him as he
spoke.
I searched for him, but did not find
him.
Do you know what happens?
Jesus is always the God who is passing
by.
You're out there struggling in a storm.
He walks on the water.
He walks as though he's passing by.
You must call to him the road to
Emmaus.
He's going to keep going.
You have to call him back.
No, Lord, carry with us a while.
I want you to know something.
True love is very sensitive as a Holy
Spirit.
The symbol of the Holy Spirit is a
dove, the sensitivity of the love of God.
Love of God will tug and by grace,
tug again and by grace, maybe tug a
few times more.
But sooner or later, the tug will cease.
And you know what you're left with, don't
you?
What many of you have.
Most of your prayer life is nothing but
getting down on your knees and praying as
though there were brass over your head and
you're crying out the whole time.
Oh, God, give me your presence, your presence,
your presence.
Oh, Lord, I want your presence and the
presence never comes.
And then you get up and you just
go to bed.
You see, love can be quickly offended.
It will tug and it will tug.
You know what I'm talking about, don't you?
There were times when you would stay with
him.
And then it got to the point where
that became common and he would call you
and you would not come.
And then he stopped calling you.
And you remembered you went for him.
He looked for him, but you didn't find
him.
I'll never forget when Charo and I did
something very unbiblical one time.
She went to the States for about 82
days to finish her classes.
And I stayed in Peru.
I was in the jungle most of the
time, came out of Peru.
I was like, I don't know what day
it was.
It was long into those 80 days.
And I was sitting there in this little
apartment we had and she wasn't around and
everything else.
And I was missing her so terribly.
And I went over into the drawer there
and I pulled out a sweater of hers.
It smelled like her.
So I sat there on the bed and
I just held it up to my face.
I don't know if it helped or hurt.
Because all there was was a lingering fragrance,
the person was no longer there.
It's the same way in most of our
prayer lives often.
Just a lingering fragrance of love denied.
Christ came by.
And one too many times we said, oh,
Lord, I'm in bed.
Oh, Lord, I've been ministering all day.
And I said, oh, Lord, I've been ministering
all day.
You know, the offense to know, do you
know how offensive it is for love to
be rejected, what a hurt it is, it's
better that a lover be a bull in
a china shop, as long as that lover
be passionate, but dullness of heart towards another
person is the very thing that kills that
person.
We talk about offending someone because we sin
against them.
Yes, I sinned against God.
I shouldn't watch that television program.
I sinned against God.
I shouldn't have spoke that way to my
brother.
I sinned against God.
The thoughts in my heart aren't right.
Well, try this one on for size.
God comes around to visit you and you
say no.
And talk about offense that is an offense.
So she goes and searches for him and
something terrible happens.
She calls out for him.
But he did not answer her seven, the
watchman who make the rounds in the city
found me, they struck me and wounded me
in the guardsmen of the walls, took away
my shawl for me.
I want to tell you something.
These fellows are acting pretty cocky, aren't they?
If the king had been walking beside her.
They would not even have dared to look
her in the eye.
They would have dropped their heads and trembled.
You see, my dear friend, we're not a
whole lot.
We've been cleaned off by the king.
We've been dressed by the king.
We constantly need the king's presence.
The devil out there is not afraid of
sheep.
Many TV evangelists ought to learn that.
Devil's not afraid of sheep.
He's afraid of the shepherd standing over them.
Watchmen on walls are not afraid of little
girls.
They're afraid of kings.
When the church leaves her king, when her
love towards her king becomes dull and she's
mesmerized by all sorts of stupid things, because
anything other than the king is a stupid
thing.
When she's turned her eyes towards anything but
him, she puts herself in a very precarious
position.
The high mountains of her pride, they're filled
with lions and wolves, leopards, the streets where
she must walk are not safe places.
She needs the presence of her king.
Verse eight, I adjure you, O daughters of
Jerusalem, if you find my beloved as to
what you will tell him, for I am
lovesick.
Verse nine, what kind of beloved is your
beloved?
Almost beautiful among women.
What kind of beloved is your beloved that
thus you adjure us?
I wonder if they're saying this.
Well, why should we go look for him?
I mean, he can't be all that, can
he?
He came to your door.
You couldn't even get out of bed.
You want to walk us to walk around
this city at night and look for someone
that came to your door and you wouldn't
even open it to him.
I mean, obviously, the way you're acting, he
can't be all that.
I'm not one of those people that say
if we would just live like Jesus or
live for Jesus, the whole world would be
converted.
If we did that, we'd be crucified.
World hated Jesus, and if we start living
like them, they'll hate us, too.
But at least they'll know something's going on,
won't they?
We go out there and say the world
needs Jesus.
And they say, now, does the world need
him as much as a three car garage
or an SUV or soccer?
Does the world need him as much as
this in your life and that in your
life?
Because obviously there's a lot of things in
your life you need more than Jesus.
So would you please just help me understand
just how much the world does need Jesus
and how special Jesus is?
Well, would you please explain that to me?
I'm rather confused at looking at the lot
of all of you because it doesn't seem
like you need him much.
It doesn't seem like he's that special to
you.
So why should I even give this a
second thought?
It's a very hard rebuke, but it opens
her.
It cuts her heart.
It makes her see.
Rebuke is a wonderful thing.
It is a wonderful thing because all of
a sudden she comes to her senses.
And really, that's what repentance is all about,
isn't it?
Coming to your senses, coming to your senses.
What's wrong with you?
Either you have lost your mind or you
have forgotten him or you have never seen
him.
It can only be one of the three.
Now, have you never seen him so that
he's never been delightful to you?
Have you forgotten how delightful he is because
you filled your life with so many other
things that it's dulled your heart?
Or have you absolutely lost your mind that
you would turn away from the living God
and communion with him in order to have
fellowship with things that made out of wood
and steel and plastic?
And she comes to her senses and she
said, my beloved is dazzling and really outstanding
among ten thousand.
His head is like gold, pure gold.
His locks are like clusters of dates and
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves beside streams of
water bathed in milk.
She goes on and on and on.
And in verse 16, she says his mouth
is full of sweetness and he is wholly
desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my
friend.
Oh, daughters of Jerusalem.
She goes wild.
She just goes wild.
And that's a part of Christianity, I believe,
that apocalyptic literature, I guess you're all familiar
with that term, but the Book of Revelation,
some of the things in Ezekiel, apocalyptic wheel
within a wheel, all of these frightening and
amazing symbols that make no sense.
I have a theory about all of that.
I believe that these things occur when the
following happens, when a man is so engulfed
in a revelation of God that it goes
so far beyond his mind to comprehend and
so far beyond his ability to communicate that
he comes to the very point of breaking
the very point of losing his mind.
He sees what his mind cannot comprehend.
He tries to tell what even his mind
does not know.
He seems almost like a madman.
Shouldn't that be the way our Christianity dwells
in this world?
We are those who have seen what our
mind can't even comprehend, what to speak, what
we can't even tell is what she does.
His head's black as a raven.
It's gold.
It's all these things, all these contradictory terms.
The woman is at the point of breaking.
She's trying to describe a beauty that is
so great.
It almost drive a person to the end
of madness.
I believe that to be in heaven, I
believe even to be saved and to have
the Holy Spirit dwelling within you, you must
be supernaturally strengthened, because if not, the very
glorious presence of his beauty would drive you
mad.
This takes me up on another topic.
I am so sick and tired of hearing
proper, theologically correct reform preaching.
Well, we're all amazed at dotting every I
and crossing every T and explaining everything coldly
and calculating as though God were a mathematic
formula.
Listen to me, the worst thing that can
ever happen to a preacher is for him
to become civilized and respectable.
There ought to be a sense that any
man who proclaims God ought to be somewhat
of a madman because he's speaking about the
glories of God, us, our lives.
We should be enthralled.
We should be obsessed.
We should be engulfed.
We should be besot as John Piper says,
with God.
And then what happens?
Verse one, a chapter six.
Where has your beloved gone?
Oh, most beautiful of women that you where
has your beloved gone that we may seek
him with you when the church goes wild
about Jesus Christ?
It'll cause a ruckus when the church turns
her eyes away from all that cannot delight.
And in the church, his eyes fall upon
Jesus and the church becomes just emboldened and
maddened by his love.
I don't know exactly what will happen, but
something will happen.
Now, here's the wonderful thing.
She has scorned his love.
She has treated it as common.
She's been soiled by the hands of another.
She's been mocked by others.
She has hurt him in every way that
she can possibly hurt him.
Now, what kind of reaction do you think
she deserves?
Well, I don't know exactly what kind of
reaction she deserves, but I know what kind
of response she's going to get.
You would think that her beloved has gone
to where?
Well, to get a good attorney, divorce court.
I've had enough with you, I'll write you
off.
Or maybe he's gone to gather arguments against
her, to put her down, to manipulate her,
to prod her, to show her just how
displeased and disgusted he is with her so
that she'll start walking the straight and narrow
like she ought.
Well, she goes back.
Verse two, my beloved has gone down to
his garden, to the beds of balsam, to
pasture his flock in the gardens and gather
lilies.
What has he done?
He's gone to pick flowers so that when
his erring, cold hearted bride returns to him.
He can give her a gift.
You see, the devil, my dear saint.
Well, so lie to you.
You've done it now.
Yeah, you've done it now.
I knew this day would come sooner or
later.
He's had enough of you.
What you can really need to realize is
he can never get enough of you.
A single glance from your eye and his
heart beats faster.
And when you've done all you can do
to come to him or run from him
with a cold heart, you're looking for ways
to flee and then ways to make excuses.
And as soon as you depart.
He's looking for gifts to give you, and
that's hard to believe.
But then again, this whole gospel thing is
hard to believe.
Let's pray.
Father, I hope I hope that
I will never.
I would wish that I would never hear
your voice.
I sense a tug on my heart.
That I would not run joyfully knowing that
I have been summoned by the king, and
I hope that this will lead us to
pray to recognize that prayer is more than
work.
It is more than intercession.
It is more than gathering grace, it is
delighting in you, how delightful you are.
Open our eyes, Lord, in Jesus name.
Amen.