[0:00] Seeking the Lord's blessing, let us now turn to the portion of scripture that we read together in the Song of Solomon and Chapter 1, and we'll read from the beginning of the chapter.
[0:15] The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.
[0:30] The writer of this book, as the title suggests, is King Solomon.
[0:42] And it must have been written when he was in a spiritual, healthy state, for as we know from scripture that King Solomon did backslide late in his life.
[0:56] Solomon wrote, according to the Book of Kings, 1,005 songs, along with 3,000 proverbs.
[1:09] But this is the only song that has been recorded for us. This is a book that we might pass by because of the intimacy of its language, and we may feel a bit of embarrassment as we read it because of the intimacy of its words.
[1:35] However, we believe in the divine inspiration of scripture, that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
[2:01] So it is good and profitable for us to consider this book of the Song of Solomon.
[2:11] From the contents of the Song of Solomon, it is obvious that Solomon refers to a relationship between a man and a woman.
[2:26] And today it is common to claim that Solomon means only to describe the relationship between a husband and wife.
[2:36] However, down through the centuries, the church fathers saw the song as depicting the relationship between Christ and his people.
[2:50] While the song can be understood to be a theological master's people.
[3:20] One commentator says regarding marriage, that it is an earthly institution that in itself images something greater than itself.
[3:33] Another author referring to this book says, The song is about Israel's shepherd king, a descendant of David, who is treated as an ideal Israelite, enjoying an ideal bride in a lush garden where the effects of the fall are reversed.
[3:56] There are many references in scripture where the human relationship of husband and wife is taken to depict the relationship between Christ and his people.
[4:14] There is that well-known one to be found in Ephesians 5, verse 22 and 23, where we read, For the husband is the head of the church, for the husband is the head of the church, and he is the saver of the body.
[4:30] Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be subject to their own husbands in everything. Husband, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.
[4:45] John uses it in Revelation 19, where we read, And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundering, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God, O omnipotent raineth.
[5:03] Let us be glad and rejoice and give honour to him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
[5:22] The Old Testament, on numerous occasions, uses it to describe the relationship between God and Israel. And Jesus said of the scriptures, as we find recorded in the Gospel of John chapter 6, that they testify of me.
[5:42] And that, of course, would include this book, the Song of Solomon. Spurgeon preached about 60 sermons from the Song of Solomon.
[5:58] And this is what he said about this book. This book stands like the tree of life in the midst of a garden, and no man shall ever be able to pluck its fruit and eat thereof, until first he has been brought by Christ past the sword of the cherubim, and led to rejoice in the love which hath delivered him from death.
[6:22] The Song of Solomon is only to be comprehended by men whose standing is within the veil. The outer court worshippers, and even those who only enter the court of the priests, think the book a very strange one.
[6:38] But they who have come very near Christ can often see in this Song of Solomon the only expression which their love to their Lord desires.
[6:51] It is said of Robert Murray McChain that he preached from almost every verse in the Song of Solomon. And we know Hudson Taylor, the 19th century missionary to China, had a very high regard for the Song of Solomon, and wrote a small exposition of it called Union and Communion.
[7:16] And in this short book he said about the Song of Solomon, Well may this book be called the Song of Songs. There is no song like it.
[7:27] Read aright, it brings gladness to the heart, which is as far beyond the joy of earthly things as heaven is higher than the earth. It has been well said that this is a song which grace alone can teach, and experience alone can learn.
[7:48] Jonathan Edwards said about the Song of Solomon that from the time that he began to meditate on the song, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption and the glorious way of salvation, by him.
[8:12] Now like the book of Esther, in the Song of Solomon, God is never mentioned directly, although in chapter 8 and in verse 6, we have these words, Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine are, and for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave, the coals thereof are coals of fire, which have a mosquem and flame.
[8:46] Now the word translated there as flame, in the Hebrew Bible there is a suffix, Yah, which could possibly be a shortened form of the divine name Yahweh.
[9:05] So it is possible that there is mention made of God. Now as we look at the Song, there are three main speakers in the Song.
[9:21] There is the shepherd king, which depicts Jesus. There is the woman, who depicts the believer, and the daughters of Jerusalem, which depicts fellow believers.
[9:37] And the song begins very abruptly, without really any introduction. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.
[9:57] The bride seems to be in the proximity to the bridegroom. For although she is not able to see him, she can smell his fragrance, and eventually, as we see, she ends up in the king's chambers.
[10:16] There are those who regard this as the request or prayer of the Old Testament church.
[10:29] The Old Testament church lived at a time of types and shadows, and the Old Testament church desired to get beyond them.
[10:46] David wrote in Psalm 14, Oh, that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion. The Old Testament church had that intense desire and great expectation and anticipation of the days of the Messiah.
[11:06] They longed to get away from types and shadows to the fulfilment of those types. and shadows.
[11:17] Peter reminds us, and he says, of which salvation the prophets have inquired and such diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, such in what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand, the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.
[11:43] The Old Testament saints were a people who were waiting for the consolation of Israel. And so there are some who take these words to show this deep, intense desire that there was with the Old Testament church.
[12:06] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine. Praying for a fulfilment of the great types and promises.
[12:25] But may we not consider this request as that of every believer, whether in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, whether yesterday or today, because Christ's love is very desirable to believers who would always have it if they could.
[12:50] This is the beginning of glory for them and their comfort in all their troubles. And it is preferred by them above all earthly enjoyments to have a manifestation, an experience, of the love of Christ.
[13:15] So that in the opening verse we can say that it is a cry of a renewed heart to Christ. Because Christ to the renewed heart has become the great object of its love.
[13:32] The desire of a renewed heart for his fellowship and some token to be gained of the love of Christ. A desire for some manifestation of his love.
[13:49] How often we are found like this wherein we want above all other things for our beloved to manifest his love.
[14:06] How often we yearn for fresh manifestations of his love, some fresh evidence of his love and of his affection to us.
[14:22] And here we find that the bride or the wife she makes this cry with hope with expectation and with great delight.
[14:39] She cries, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. True to her senses is the experience that Peter describes for us when he says, whom having not seen he love.
[14:58] In whom though now you see him not yet believing he rejoice with joy and speakable and full of glory. And that seems to be the situation in which the bride here finds herself.
[15:19] She's yearning for a manifestation of the love of her beloved, the love of her husband, the love of the bridegroom.
[15:31] She's yearning for a manifestation of his love. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.
[15:46] Nothing could have been more delightful to the returning prodigal than the fact that his father ran to greet him and that he fell on his neck and kissed him.
[15:58] And in the original the word indicates that he kept on kissing him. We can almost visualise that every time the prodigal tried to speak and you'll recall there how we're told of the speech that he had prepared and he was going to say to his father that he was no longer worthy to be called a son but to make him a hired servant and you can almost visualise that every time he tried to speak his prepared speech that the father kept on kissing him.
[16:38] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. She was well aware of the various ways that her bridegroom has to manifest his love.
[16:58] We are well aware of the various ways that Jesus has to manifest his love. He is not tied to one way.
[17:08] And also here it speaks to us of the frequent and repeated actings of his love to us. She was deciduous of not one kiss but of many kisses.
[17:22] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. She wanted not merely one discovery and one manifestation of his love and grace towards her but a repeated discovery one after another.
[17:43] Nothing is sweeter or more precious to her souls than the kisses of mercy and the kisses of love and grace. Because a kiss from his mouth is an evidence of complete pardon forgiveness and acceptance as it was in the case of the prodigal.
[18:08] Every time he would open his mouth to speak his prepared speech of that he was not worthy his father kept on kissing him showing him the evidence of complete pardon and forgiveness and acceptance.
[18:27] And so a kiss from the mouth of Christ is an evidence to us of complete pardon forgiveness and acceptance. And we need this on our earthly pilgrimage.
[18:41] But this is also true about the bride in glory. She will be making fresh discoveries of his love continually. The church in glory will be making fresh discoveries of his love continually.
[18:58] began here on earth but it continues in heaven it continues in glory for how can we finite creatures ever even in our glorified state ever measure completely a love that is infinite towards us because he has loved us with an infinite love a love that is without measure.
[19:24] So we begin here when we are born again to make a discovery of an infinite love that shall continue forever.
[19:41] And she has tasted of this love and here she comes and she desires more manifestation of this love that she has tasted and she says let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.
[20:02] Believers are reconciled to God but there are times when we may lose the sense of that peace. Peace with God should always lead to knowing the peace of God in our hearts but sometimes although we will never lose our peace with God we may lose the peace of God.
[20:35] And it may be that that is something of the situation in which we find here when she comes with this petition with this cry let him kiss me with the kisses with the kisses of his mouth.
[20:54] The phrase could be right like this oh let him kiss me with one of the kisses of his mouth. Oh that I had but one glimpse one view one discovery more of his love and grace unto my soul oh what great satisfaction it would be to me if I had one more glimpse and one more discovery of his love and of his grace unto my soul.
[21:33] This shows us how exceeding grateful the manifestations of Christ's love is to the believer. Scripture says that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
[21:54] Here the bride shows the passion and the intensity of her affection and how much her heart was set upon and how eagerly desirous she was of communion and fellowship with Christ.
[22:19] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. Nothing else could be compared to this.
[22:34] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. This was to be for her above everything else, however good everything else may be.
[22:53] Yet when this was lacking there was something missing in her life and her experience. This was to be all and in all for her.
[23:06] Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. And she assigns a reason for this request.
[23:19] She says, for thy love is better than wine. For thy love is better than wine.
[23:29] wine. She had lost sight of him and speaks of him as at a distance from her, but it seems to be that he is now in you.
[23:41] And at the very sight of him, her faith is increased and her soul is fired with love. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine.
[23:57] It would seem that she has now some consciousness of her beloved be near to her. Oh, the love of Christ, which is so precious to his people.
[24:11] The love of Christ, which is so precious to the believer, to the church. In the Hebrew, it is in the plural, for thy loves is better than wine, which indicates the various way by which she has made a discovery of it.
[24:30] For thy loves is better than wine. Well, where has she made a discovery of it? Well, surely she made a discovery of it in his surety engagements in the covenant of redemption.
[24:48] The covenant in which he became her surety, and the covenant in which he became her mediator, and her saviour. She has made a discovery in those surety engagements.
[25:07] He has showed it in his assumption of human nature and time, and he gave a full display of it when he laid down his life for her.
[25:24] In offering himself as a sacrifice for her sins, he loved her, and he died for her.
[25:37] He shed his precious blood so that in that blood her sins would be washed away, and now he shows that he still loves her by appearing in presence of God for her, acting as her mediator, as her intercessor, as her advocate with the Father, and preparing a place for her.
[26:02] And he will come again to take her to himself that where he is, she may be also. Remember how, and we've taken this up on more than one occasion, in the ancient times, when a man became betrothed to a woman, he would go back to his father's house, and there he would put an extension on to his father's house, he would prepare a place there for himself and his bride, the one to whom he was betrothed, and then he would come back for his bride, and he would take his bride with them to be with them forever in the place that he had prepared for them.
[27:04] that is what Christ takes up as he tries to comfort the disciples. In the upper room he says in my father's house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you, but I will come again and receive you into myself, that where I am there ye may be also.
[27:32] we are betrothed to Christ, he is preparing a place for us, and he is going to come back to receive us, and he is going to bring us to be with himself forever, and there is the marriage feast.
[27:54] At the moment we are betrothed to Christ, but the marriage feast is something that is yet to come, it is to come when he takes us to come to be with himself forever.
[28:10] It is a beautiful way to think of when a believer, when a believer sleeps in death, that the believer, the betrothed one, is actually being received by the bridegroom, being received by Christ.
[28:29] Christ. So when a believer dies, remember that that believer has been received, received by Christ.
[28:40] so she made a discovery of his love, and that he gave himself for her.
[28:54] Oh, let him kiss me with a kiss that reminds me of his surety engagement. Oh, to have more knowledge of his love that is without beginning, that is without change, that is without measure, and that is without end.
[29:15] We love him because he first loved us. This is the true testimony of every true believer. His love for us preceded our love for him.
[29:31] His love for us causes our love to him. and how this can be seen in the pages of scripture.
[29:43] Remember that even in the midst of his extreme agony of Gethsemane, he was there preoccupied with love for his own.
[29:55] He was there preoccupied with his love for me and you if we are believers today. His love never faltered, and his love never gave up.
[30:09] He knew that Peter would deny him and that the rest of the disciples would forsake him and leave him alone. He knows the worst about me and you, but his love survives every discovery.
[30:26] And in full knowledge of our weakness, he submitted himself there to take the cup and to mount the cushion cross for me and you.
[30:39] He loved us to the extreme limit of what that love was going to cost. He knew that love will mean pains that we cannot even imagine.
[30:56] That it would mean unimaginable physical pain for him. But he also knew that it would mean experience the spiritual torments of the condemned and ruined man.
[31:13] That he will become sin. He will be dealt with as my sins and your sins deserved. He knew that there would be no sparing and that's the cost that his love was willing to bear.
[31:38] Having loved his own, he loved them to the end. His love never faltered and his love never gave up.
[31:53] she makes a discovery of it and the various effects of his love and all the blessings of grace that flow in it.
[32:05] What did his sufferings and death achieve? They achieved redemption. They achieved the blessing of calling, justification, sanctification, adoption, and glorification.
[32:22] All these blessings flow from the much less and boundless love of Christ. No wonder she cries out, for thy loves is better than wine.
[32:37] She makes a discovery of it in that she finds it to be immeasurable and inconceivable. It passed the perfect knowledge of man and angels.
[32:49] Even angels stand in awe and amazement at Christ's love to sinners like me and you. There is, as it were, silence in the very coats of heaven as he mounts the cross for me and you.
[33:13] love to love that has heights and depths and lengths and breaths immeasurable.
[33:26] love and this love is a love that is free and sovereign. It does not rise from anything in us or done by us.
[33:40] Nothing in us moved Christ to love us but he loved us because he would love us. Nothing outside of himself moved him to love us.
[33:54] It was not because we were better than others for we are by nature the children of wrath even as others but he loved us because he willed and purposed to love us.
[34:08] He loved us because God is love. He loves us when we are when we were unlovely.
[34:22] he died for us while we were yet sinners and ungodly and in ourselves we were enemies to him.
[34:36] Our love to him is not the cause of his loving us but his love is the cause of us loving him and she is conscious of this when she comes and she cries let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for thy love is better than wine.
[35:00] The time of the commencement of his love to us is from eternity and its duration is to eternity. Having loved his own he loved them unto the end.
[35:14] He loves us with an everlasting love and all the waters of sin and corruption cannot extinguish this love nor can anything separate his people from it.
[35:28] As the apostle tells us in his letter to the Romans who can separate us from the love of Christ.
[35:39] And he is assured that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[35:49] it is the greatest of all love. Greater love hath no man than this that a man laid down his life for his friends but Christ's love is greater than this for he laid down his life for his enemies even while they were such.
[36:13] Here is great love for great sinners shown by a great person one who thought it not robbery to be equal with God and yet he lays down his life and he showed his love by giving himself a ransom for his people his love to you is as the father's love to him as the father that loved me so have I loved you as the father loves the son as mediated with an everlasting love unchangeable and inseparable love so does Christ love his people for thy loves is better than wine wine may cheer a person of heavy heart for a moment how many people turn to wine in order to cheer a heavy heart but here we're told for thy loves is better than wine
[37:24] Christ love revives languishing spirits it comforts troubled hearts it strengthens weak soul and reverses thirsty hearts it revives and comforts and strengthens and refreshes oh let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth let me have one more discovery of this love for me dear Christian friend have there not been seasons when Christ drew near to you and gave you that inner realisation that you belong to him and that he loves you in a very special way perhaps it was when you were reading from his word perhaps it was when you were engaged in prayer or singing a psalm or listening to a sermon or perhaps while you were at worship with the people of God you felt this closeness of
[38:28] Christ maybe you were not engaged in any religious exercise when you became aware of Christ great love for you and you were overwhelmed with it you got a fresh view that Christ loved you that he died for you that he rose for you that he has ascended for you and that he is coming back to you you received a sense that you were betrothed to him and that he's coming back to bring you to the marriage supper to be with himself forever in the glory that he has prepared for you as you recall such kisses they make you decide and long for a further manifestation of his love to have him kiss to comfort you in your time of trials and to guide you in your time of confusion when you sin to feel the kiss of
[39:41] God's forgiveness and when you doubt to feel the kiss of his assurance or your future may look dark and bleak to feel the kiss of his provision he has certainly captivated her heart there is none other that she desires beside him true for her is the words of the psalm whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee do you remember such moments when these words came from a heart that was captivated by the love of Christ that you could sing these words oh whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee is that your own confession and prayer today oh let him kiss me with the kisses of mouth mouth for thy love is better than wine has he captivated your heart has he captured your heart or are you today as one who knows nothing of what we have been talking about who knows nothing about the love of Christ that captivates one's heart who knows nothing of this longing intense desire to have a view an experience a sense of the love of Christ do you know anything of that song whom I in the heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee and if you were here today and you may have been saying well the preacher is fine but his message today is for the believer well my friend if that was your verdict it is a warning to you because if you find yourself outside this experience then it is a manifestation to you of your lostness you have condemned yourself you have judged yourself and if you find yourself outside this experience my friend
[42:36] I beseech you I exhort you earnestly from my heart I exhort you give yourself no rest until you find yourself within this experience where you can say that was for me I can understand that longing intense desire to have a manifestation of the love of Christ I can recognize I can join with the church I can join with the bride I can join with the wife who says let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for thy love is better than wine may the Lord bless our thoughts let us pray eternal and ever blessed Lord we have tasted of thy love and we earnestly with our longing desire seek
[43:46] O Lord that it may please thee to manifest thy love to us afresh that we indeed may be revived and comforted and strengthened and refreshed by a new manifestation of thine own love to us we ask O Lord that thou would bless thy word that thou would impress it upon our heart that we would examine ourselves in the light of thy word whether we know anything of the experience of thy love we ask O Lord that thou would continue with us and forgive us for all our sins in Jesus name Amen we shall conclude