Leaning On Her Beloved

[0:00] that we read, Song of Solomon, chapter 8, the final chapter, and particularly verse 5, beginning of verse 5.

[0:14] Who is that, or who is this, coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree I awakened you, there your mother was in labour with you, there she who bore you was in labour, and so on.

[0:32] But particularly the first half of the verse, who is that, coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? I'm sure many of you will remember previous sermons on the Song of Solomon, and will be well aware that the question that is asked here is a question that is asked in other parts of the Song as well.

[1:03] Who is this, or who is that? You find it particularly in chapter 3 and verse 6, but it's referred to there.

[1:15] Just have a quick look at that. Funny how pages always stick together when you want to turn to something. In chapter 3 and verse 6, what is that, coming up from the wilderness, or who is that, coming up from the wilderness, like columns of smoke?

[1:32] And that, of course, is answered later on in verse 7, behold, it is the litter, or the bed, the couch, or whatever way you want to translate it, of Solomon and those who are carrying him as he arrives for the wedding.

[1:51] And we see it again in chapter 6 and verse 10. Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?

[2:04] And we see it again in chapter 6 and verse 10. Now, in order to understand the questions and in order to understand the answers, we have to have an overall picture of what the Song of Solomon is about.

[2:20] And I'm sure, of course, that many of you will be perfectly familiar with that. But nevertheless, just to go over it for a moment or two, to see what we see here, this is a book that is, it used to be preached on very often, but you very rarely hear sermons on it nowadays, which is a great pity because it is one of the most beautiful parts of the Old Testament.

[2:46] But nevertheless, it does require a certain skill, shall we say, in order to be able to understand it. And that skill only comes from the Holy Spirit.

[3:00] It's not the skill of commentators or the skill of preachers, but as the Holy Spirit opens out the meaning of Song of Solomon, then we start to see things in it that on our first reading we do not notice at all.

[3:14] Initially, if you were just to read it as a piece of poetry, and we have to remember that it is, of course, in the Hebrew, in the original Hebrew, it is one long piece of poetry.

[3:27] Then it is one of the most erotic love poems that has ever been written in any language. But it is far more than that. It is far more than just a poem about love, about the love between Solomon and his bride.

[3:44] And it is interesting that the bride is not named anywhere in the song. We are told in chapter 6 and verse 13 that she is a Shulamite.

[3:55] Return, return, O Shulamite. Return that we may look upon you. But rather than seeing it as a poem, it is much easier to understand if we see it as a little play.

[4:09] Almost like a series of five or six different scenes in the relationship between Solomon and his bride. And the opening scene is described in chapter 1 and 2 and so on, and that is the betrothal.

[4:27] And then we come into the wedding in chapters 2 and 3. And then we go through a part of the relationship, and a part of the relationship, particularly in chapter 5, where there is a cooling of the relationship.

[4:41] Something perhaps that happens in every marriage, I suppose, that there is a period of cooling down, you know, where the first flush of the honeymoon, etc. and love is beginning to die down, and the cold reality of what you've got yourself into is now with you.

[4:58] And that is quite normal in human relationships. But you notice that that doesn't happen so much in our relationship and the relationship that we see here. There is a period in chapter 5 where the bride, the Shulamite, and Solomon appear to distance themselves from each other, but it's not for very long, and they come back together fairly quickly.

[5:21] And by the time we go through chapter 7 and chapter 8, we are into the full maturity of the relationship between the two. And by the end, towards the end of chapter 8, we are beginning to see that this relationship is coming close to its final stages before, as in all relationships, will end in death.

[5:46] Now, that is a superficial look at Song of Solomon. But there is much more to it than that, because this is a Song of Songs, which is Solomon's.

[5:57] And we are told, way back in the book of Kings, in 1 Kings 4 and verse 32, we are told that Solomon wrote 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs.

[6:15] We don't have very many of them recorded for us. We have quite a lot of the proverbs. But in terms of the songs, there's only one psalm that is attributed to Solomon, if my memory is correct.

[6:28] You can check that later and tell me off if I'm wrong. And this particular song here. But you see that this song is referred to as the Song of Songs.

[6:39] Than-nan-nan, as it is in Gali. The song that is above any other song. Why is that? Because it's not just about the relationship between Solomon and the Shulamite, between the groom and his bride, but it's the relationship between what those two symbolise.

[7:02] The groom, Solomon, as he appears in the song, is the Lord Jesus Christ. And the bride is the church.

[7:13] Now, there are various points at which we can see this. And we can see this throughout the song. How this relationship develops. How it happens.

[7:25] First of all, the first flush of love. That there exists between the couple. You remember how it was when you were first converted. It was as if it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to you.

[7:39] And your heart was almost on fire. And what has happened in the years gone by, as you walk through life, in your relationship with God, some of that fire has died down a little bit.

[7:54] It doesn't mean that you've lost your love. It's just that your love has gone from immature love to mature love. It's a process that takes place in every relationship. And that is something that happens between Solomon and the Shuramite.

[8:10] And it shouldn't surprise us that there are others looking at this in the different scene. Depending on what version of the scriptures you're actually using. Some Bibles now divide and show you where the different speakers are.

[8:26] And one of the difficulties that we have in chapter 8 is that it's not clear who is asking the question in verse 5.

[8:37] Who is that coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved? You see that there is nothing there that says others or daughters of Jerusalem or anything like that.

[8:50] Nevertheless, it would appear that it cannot be either the beloved or the one who is leaning on her. Because they wouldn't be asking the question. But some think that it is.

[9:02] That it's a rhetorical question. I tend to disagree with that. But again, you can look at different commentators and see. Who is that coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?

[9:14] And in order to understand what the question is referring to, we need to see, first of all, who is it that is leaning on her beloved? It is the bride.

[9:27] And the bride has described herself in chapter 1. You remember that we've seen there. She had said in verse 5 onwards, I am very dark but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedah, like the curtains of Solomon.

[9:41] Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me, etc., etc. And that description of the dark bride of Christ, or the black wife of Christ, as Samuel Rutherford calls it in his letters so often, he refers to her as the black wife of Christ, the Shulamite.

[10:06] Why? Because the blackness reflected the sin that was still dominant in her. And that is one interpretation that we can take of it.

[10:17] But nevertheless, as we see, that the love of the groom is not affected by the colour of her skin. In fact, for many people, it's curious, isn't it, that darkness and the colour of the skin is something to be desired.

[10:32] Otherwise, why would you see so many thousands displaying their fat on beaches everywhere all over the world in order to get a darker tan, etc., and so on.

[10:43] And it's a curious thing, isn't it, that those who are white want to be darker, and those who are black very often would prefer to be a slightly little bit lighter. But that's getting into things that have nothing to do with it.

[10:55] But these are merely symbolic, metaphorical terms that are being used for the relationship between Solomon and the Shulamite, between the Lord Jesus Christ and his church.

[11:10] And as we see, as we come through this stage of the relationship, who is that? The question being asked, perhaps even a rhetorical question, coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved.

[11:23] Who is doing the leaning? It is, of course, the Shulamite, the church.

[11:34] The church has to lean on Christ, on the bridegroom. It is unable to progress unless it is leaning on the bridegroom.

[11:48] And this is one of the things that is expressed at the beginning of the chapter. Oh, that you are like a brother to me. And you notice there's a series of wishes, of if clauses after that, who nursed at my mother's breasts.

[12:03] If I found you outside, I would. I would kiss you. I would lead you. I would give you. All conditions. Oh, that you are like a brother.

[12:14] What is the wish there? If the groom was like a brother to the Shulamite, then he would take human flesh on himself.

[12:27] And there you can see the wish looking forward to the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as would come a thousand years later for the salvation of his church.

[12:40] But having thought about that, she steps backwards a little bit. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

[12:52] And then it seems as if they go on this journey. We're not told details of the journey, but we're told very clearly where the journey is coming from.

[13:05] Who is that coming up from the wilderness? And if we look at these three parts of it. First of all, the identification of who this is.

[13:16] Secondly, that it is coming up. And thirdly, where is it coming up from? Coming up from the wilderness. Now, there are many things, of course, that we can see immediately in this connection.

[13:36] The wilderness should be very familiar to us. Last time I was here, we were dealing with the fiery serpents in the wilderness. And we saw so often, did we not, through the journey of the children of Israel through the wilderness, of the difficulties and the trials and the tribulations, that that involved over the 40 years that the children of Israel were struggling in many ways to come through the wilderness.

[14:08] And you remember that we looked again, that this was a metaphor, it was a symbol of the Christian's journey through the world. You and I are journeying through a wilderness.

[14:23] And in the course of our journey through this wilderness, we are looking forward to our final destination. And our final destination is, of course, the promised land.

[14:36] Not the land of Canaan that the Israelites were going to, but the promised land that the covenant relationship that Israel had with Jehovah God, the Lord God, that he would bring them into a promised land flowing with milk and honey, that that is the same promise that the church has from its king, that you will be brought eventually into the promised land of heaven.

[15:09] Now, one is not going to go into it at the moment to speculate on what exactly heaven means, because there are so many different interpretations that we could take. But the simple definition of heaven is that the church, the bride, will be with the bridegroom for all eternity.

[15:30] We see that sort of covenant theology phrase or terminology used throughout scripture again and again. How often is Israel, the people of God, referred to as the bride of Christ?

[15:48] The Lord himself is your husband, it says in Isaiah. And it is the equivalent, the marriage bond is like the equivalent of the covenant relationship between God and his people and the bride and the groom.

[16:03] And how often did Israel break that covenant? Which is why so often they are referred to as an adulterous people.

[16:14] That's the symbolism that's used time and time again throughout the Old Testament. So that as you and I are going through the wilderness, we should expect that we are going to find many, many things that are going to cause us difficulty and going to cause us pain.

[16:34] And in many ways impede, not destroy, but impede our relationship with our beloved. The wilderness is a place of great difficulty.

[16:48] There are hills in it. There are mountains in it. There are all kinds of perils in it, as we saw with the fiery serpents, etc. and so on. And were it not for God's restraining grace, we would be so much more affected by many of the difficulties of the wilderness.

[17:12] Where do these come from? If you remember again the example of the fiery serpent, we can see that this is the effect of sin. Throughout our journey through the wilderness, our sinful nature and the sinful nature of the world that fell will lead us again and again into places of thorns and thistles.

[17:36] Remember that's what was promised to Adam after the fall. And remember how you see that linked to the cross of Calvary. Perhaps you'd never wondered, why was Christ crowned with a crown of thorns?

[17:53] Why specifically thorns? If you ask most people, they'll say, oh, it was because the thorns stuck into his head and caused more pain and bleeding, etc. and so on. No, it wasn't.

[18:04] It was because the thorns represented sin. That was the promise in the Old Testament, that the land would bring forth thorns and thistles.

[18:17] And the crown of thorns shows it, being crowned with sin at our expense. And this is what we see in the wilderness experience.

[18:29] But nevertheless, as you and I go through the wilderness, how often are you given a foretaste of the heaven that is to come. You find it sometimes in your own private meditation, sometimes in your reading of scripture, sometimes in sermons that you hear preached, sometimes as the word of the Lord speaks to you through different agencies, and sometimes in those quiet periods of meditation where the Holy Spirit is opening up to you words that you are meditating upon.

[19:04] There are moments where you are given a foretaste of heaven. But it's only a foretaste. And it reminds me so often of a story, I don't know if I told it to you before, maybe I did, but if I did, please forgive me, but it's worth telling again anyway.

[19:24] An American minister who was summoned by a very old lady who had been a Christian for many, many years, and she wanted to talk to him about her funeral.

[19:38] She knew that she was terminally ill, but that she had no problem with that whatsoever, but she wanted to arrange how her funeral would be.

[19:49] And after going through with the minister, the details of the funeral, she said to him, she said, I want at the lying in, the equivalent of a wake, this was in America, she said, I want my hands crossed like this, and I want a fork in my hand.

[20:08] Have I told this before? No? I want a fork in my hand. And this was a bit sort of taken aback by that request.

[20:20] And he said, you want people to see you lying in your coffin with a fork in your hand? And she said, yes. May I ask why? Well, she said, I have been in this church for so many, many years, and I've come to so many dinners and functions and all sorts of things, et cetera, fundraisers, fellowship meetings, and all the rest of it, and every single time after the main course, we were told, keep your fork.

[20:52] The best is yet to come. And that's exactly what I want people to see. That here we are in the wilderness, but the best is yet to come.

[21:06] Now, that is a theme, of course, that we can open out on so much. What is to come in heaven? But it's not within the text here. Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved?

[21:21] And you notice the second thing, that the church is in the wilderness. The bride is in the wilderness, but she's not there alone. By this time, she is the wife.

[21:34] She is in the wilderness, but she's not there alone. She is with her beloved. But nevertheless, even in spite of being with her beloved, the journey is still upwards.

[21:48] It's still an upwards journey. In many ways, it's an uphill journey. It's got its difficulties. It's got its struggles. There is a difficult ascent before her as she goes up, out of the wilderness.

[22:07] And for many of us, and perhaps for you as well, you and I as well, it seems that the longer we go on in this life, that the more difficult our journey becomes.

[22:21] The first, how can one put it, the first great joy that we had when we were converted seems in many ways to have gone.

[22:33] It's not that we've lost the assurance of faith, but we seem to be finding things more and more difficult all the time. It may be because of health.

[22:45] It may be financial difficulty. It may be difficulty in our relationships with our children, with parents, etc., with different things. But it seems as we go on in life that sometimes, instead of becoming easier, things seem to become difficult.

[23:05] And very often, of course, there is the pain of separation from loved ones with death and other tragic things that may happen in the course of our life.

[23:19] These are all things that happen to all the saints. It is part of the lot of the saints in the process of sanctification.

[23:30] That's something that you should always remember. You are a saint in the process of sanctification. You are not fully sanctified until you cross, again to use the same language, until you cross the Jordan into the promised land.

[23:49] And it is there that your full sanctification will actually take place. But you see, the fact that the bride wishes to come up out of the wilderness is the desire that she has, along with her beloved, to be more holy, to be more like her beloved.

[24:15] It's a desire for holiness that every believer has. And yet, the more you try, the more you seem to fail.

[24:26] Don't be surprised by that. You see, because there is one who is trying to drag you back down into the wilderness all the time.

[24:38] Even although he knows that you are walking with your beloved, nevertheless, he is trying to take you away from your beloved's embrace.

[24:49] He is trying to stop you leaning on your beloved so that you fall back down into the depth of the wilderness. The wilderness was a place of sand and perhaps mud and sharp stones and so on.

[25:08] And you cannot walk through the wilderness without some of that sticking to your feet. And again, if you take the same image that the children of Israel would have had as they walked through the wilderness in their sandals, how often, perhaps, they suffered from sharp stones or sharp plants like gorse bushes and so on.

[25:32] Not the same gorse bush as we know, but spiky bushes. or perhaps insects or various other things biting them. The difficulties of walking through the wilderness.

[25:46] Now, each one of us will have different difficulties. But nevertheless, many of our experiences in those difficulties will be very, very similar.

[25:58] But who do you turn to in your difficulties? Isn't the advice of today's world that you are in self-control, you are self-able, self-this and self-that?

[26:18] For us, you and I, as believers, have to remember that we should be Christ-centered, not self-centered.

[26:29] That our dependence is entirely on the Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing that you and I can do to get through this wilderness by ourselves.

[26:45] we can plod forward, we can struggle, we can try and climb the hills, but remember what Jesus said to the disciples. Without me, you can do nothing.

[27:00] And that's exactly the picture that you get of the Shulmite leaning on her beloved. She has to lean on him.

[27:12] You see, this is the picture where the church militant becomes the church triumphant. I'm assuming you're familiar with those terms.

[27:24] The church militant, the church here on earth, the believers on earth, looking forward to becoming the church triumphant, the church in glory, the church in heaven.

[27:35] There are very few places in Scripture where we see a meeting of the church militant with the church triumphant. John's visions and revelation. But specifically, we see it at the Mount of Transfiguration.

[27:51] We see Peter, James, and John meeting the church triumphant, the church militant, meeting the church triumphant of Moses and Elijah along with the Lord Jesus Christ, along with the bridegroom.

[28:08] Many interesting things about the Transfiguration. Remember, of course, that Moses stands for the law and Elijah for the prophets. One had seen death on the top of Mount Pisgah, alone with the Lord.

[28:27] The Lord took him and the Lord buried. It doesn't tell us how he died. It doesn't tell us anything about his death except that he died. And yet, we're told that at 120 years old, his eyes, his vision had not abated, nor was his strength diminished in any way.

[28:47] But the Lord took him to be with himself. And yet, on the other side, talking to him, is Elijah. One who never died. Quite amazing that when you think about it.

[29:01] The two on the top of the Mount of Transfiguration, along with the Lord Jesus Christ. One who had died and one who had never died. What kind of body did he like to have in heaven?

[29:14] That's a fascinating question. But again, we would simply be speculating on that one. He was, of course, transformed in some way. Many think transformed in the same way as the Lord Jesus Christ himself is at the resurrection.

[29:29] But again, of course, we are entering simply into speculation on some of these things. But there is the church triumphant with the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking about his death that he would accomplish at Jerusalem.

[29:44] while the church militant here on earth, Peter, James and John, are looking on, not really understanding what is going on and certainly not understanding the significance of it.

[30:01] And that is very often the case as we come to Scripture, that we don't understand the significance of many of the details that we read. Who is that coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?

[30:16] She can't manage by herself. The church has to lean on her beloved. And this is the description that we see the Shulamite giving of Solomon, figuratively speaking.

[30:34] If you look back chapter 5, verse 16, just across the road, this is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

[30:45] After she has given a long description of the beauty of her beloved. I wonder how you would describe, if you were asked to describe the Lord Jesus Christ as your beloved.

[31:04] Would you be able to describe him in some of the terminology that is used here? Or would you dare to make a description at all?

[31:18] There are some who think that we shouldn't be trying to describe the person on whom we depend. But that's not scriptural. The Shulamite does it.

[31:30] And there are many other places in the prophets, in the prophecies of Isaiah, where we are given descriptions of the Lord Jesus Christ. But notice that the only description that you can give of anyone is if you know them personally.

[31:51] And you can only give a really deep description of someone, what that person is like. Not what he looks like, but what the person is like if you know them intimately.

[32:04] And you see, the whole of the Song of Solomon has been about this intimate relationship between the bride and the groom.

[32:17] That's what marriage is. It is an intimate relationship. It is the most intimate of all relationships. And it is the relationship in which the bride and the groom get to know each other in ways that they will never know any other person.

[32:35] Body, soul, and spirit. A relationship on three dimensions, one can put it that way. And this is what the Shulamite is leaning on here.

[32:48] Leaning on her beloved. She can't manage by herself. She doesn't have enough energy to get up the hill as if it were to come up out of the wilderness.

[33:03] She doesn't have the necessary strength to do so by herself. And doesn't that remind you of course that that is the way it is with you and I and our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

[33:22] If it wasn't for what he has done for us, we would have no strength of our own to even think of coming up out of the wilderness.

[33:35] Nor would we perhaps even be willing to come out of the wilderness. You remember how often the children of Israel had complained in the wilderness and had wanted almost to be back in Egypt.

[33:49] Oh that we were back in Egypt once again for the cucumbers and the melons and etc. etc. etc. Look back in your own experience.

[34:04] What was what was it that brought you to want to come up out of the wilderness? It wasn't anything in yourself.

[34:15] It was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit drawing you to himself. you had no desire like Isaiah 53 says there was no desire or comeliness in him.

[34:29] For years you and I wandered in the wilderness and we had absolutely no desire to come out of the wilderness until what happened?

[34:42] Until this man came in love to us. And you remember that at the heart of Song of Solomon is a story of love. And at the heart of the relationship between Christ and his church and Christ and the individual believer it is a relationship of love.

[35:05] Isn't that what Jesus tells us for in John 3 16 the famous word for God so loved the world that and then what follows.

[35:16] Isn't that what John then goes on about in his first letter? This is love. Not that we loved him but that he first loved us.

[35:28] You see we did not initiate the relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ but he initiated the relationship with us.

[35:42] That's quite amazing when you start to think about it. What was it that he saw in you that he actually loved you?

[35:54] I've often sort of wondered about this even when one looks at a marriage, a relationship in a marriage. And I've often said to my wife, I said, what did you see in me that you fell in love with me?

[36:10] I'm not going to tell you what she said because that would be breaking confidentiality. But very often if you start to think about it, what was it that you saw in your husband or your wife that first attracted you to?

[36:25] Now for many, the initial thing that attracts is the visual image, what you see. And very often the first attraction that we have towards someone is what we actually see.

[36:39] And then perhaps the minute the other person opens their mouth, you're away like a shot because that's the end of it. But sometimes it goes deeper than that. The more you get to know the person, it's not just the visual, you start to know the actual person.

[36:55] And as you get to know them deeper and deeper, so the relationship develops. And as the relationship develops, it goes from something that is just not a superficial attraction to something that becomes deeper.

[37:09] And if it progresses through eventually into marriage, then it goes into the deepest and most intimate relationship that there can be. What did you see in the Lord Jesus Christ that attracted you to him?

[37:28] And the answer, again, if you go to Isaiah 53, you have to look and see that there was no attraction in him. There was nothing in him that we saw that would have made us desire.

[37:43] So where did the attraction come from? And of course, this is the most amazing story when we come to look at the love of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for his people.

[37:57] Why were you drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ? And the answer is simply because of his electing love.

[38:10] There is no other answer. Because of his own good pleasure, Paul tells us, why would God find anything in your eye that he would take pleasure from?

[38:23] That was what he did with the children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham. How much pain did they cause? At times, some of them would have caused him pleasure in seeing him actually thrusting in him.

[38:41] But many times, they grieved him. That's what the psalmist says. And isn't it the same exactly with you and I? He has drawn us to him in cords of love.

[38:54] But nevertheless, there are so many times when you and I try to break these cords. How we backslide. How we fail them in thought, word and deed.

[39:07] How we fail in our behaviour towards others. others. But nevertheless, you are leaning on your beloved because you have nowhere else to go.

[39:21] And you have no one else to lean on. Isn't that what Peter said? And the Lord asked him, who do you say that I am?

[39:33] You are the Christ. To whom else shall we go? To whom else can you go? And yet there are so many who will not come.

[39:46] So many who will not come. Why? Because they see no beauty in him. Isn't that exactly what Isaiah said in chapter 53? There is no beauty, no form, no comeliness.

[40:01] But yet he drew you to himself in cords of love. And ever since then you have been leaning on your beloved.

[40:13] You are leaning on him day by day. It is from him that your strength comes. Because you don't have enough strength by yourself. You can't manage by yourself.

[40:26] It is from him that your holiness comes. Because you can't be holy by yourself. it is impossible for you to keep the commandments, to keep the law of God.

[40:43] Oh, you try. I'm sure we try more and more every day. But yet we know that we fail. And there are so many times that you fail that you don't want anyone else to know about.

[40:59] Especially in your thoughts, in your mind. God. But he knows. He knows. And he has told you that his grace is sufficient for you.

[41:13] It goes before you. It upholds you. It's by grace that you are what you are. And this is what you see as our Lord teaches his disciples in John 14, that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, is with you at all times.

[41:33] He is upholding you. He is teaching you. He is guiding. Isn't that quite amazing when you think of it? You have the Holy Spirit not only guiding you here, but as Paul tells us in Romans 8, he is the one who very often guides you in prayer and interprets in prayer, as Paul puts it with groanings that cannot be heard.

[42:04] He is interceding for you here on earth. But the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, is interceding for you at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

[42:19] That's what you see in the high priestly prayer, as he prays for those who will believe in the future on the things to come. Quite amazing, isn't it?

[42:30] Two persons of the Trinity interceding for you. Because you and I are incapable of interceding, we need a mediator, we need someone to lean on, we need someone who will help us through this.

[42:47] And we can only do it by leaning on our beloved. perhaps you are here this evening and you are just not very clear about what leaning on your beloved actually means.

[43:03] Or perhaps you are here and you haven't yet come to see this figure as beloved. You know about him, you have heard about him, you have read about him, but to you he is not yet beloved.

[43:20] Why not? you can only love someone when you see desirable qualities that you want to love.

[43:35] And if you are not yet seeing the Lord Jesus Christ as your beloved, it's because you see no beauty or no form in him. But if you get to know him more and more and to see what he's done for you, then your love starts off as a tiny spark but eventually becomes a flame.

[44:01] And it's a flame that never dies. It may diminish in its intensity at times as you go through the wilderness, as you go through struggles, struggles.

[44:13] But it is never, ever going to die. It's like the old figure, I think it's in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, is it, of Satan who is pouring water on the fire to try and put it out.

[44:27] But he doesn't see that behind the fire there is another who is pouring oil on it to keep it burning all the time. That's how the Lord Jesus Christ, through the work of the Spirit, will uphold you, will strengthen you, will guide you day by day.

[44:51] Sometimes you are very conscious of it, and at other times not so conscious. But the Holy Spirit is there with you. He is with his people at all times.

[45:04] The Holy Spirit dwells in your heart. And sometimes, as Paul says, do not quench the Spirit.

[45:15] Sometimes you and I try to quench the Spirit. We're too busy with other things to have time for the Spirit, to have time for the one who has our beloved, who is fairest among ten thousand.

[45:30] May the Lord bless to us these thoughts this evening. let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that we can come to your word and meditate upon it, and meditate upon the immensity of the love that was behind the gift that was given to us, to be sons and daughters of the Most High, and adopted in as children and brothers and sisters in the kingdom of heaven.

[46:01] We thank you for that, that you would teach us to look more and more at the beloved, and to feel his love and the everlasting arms that uphold us and guide us day by day.

[46:14] Go with us now as we conclude our worship, and pardon sin through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Let us conclude then by singing Psalm 133, In the Scottish Psalter on page 424, it's a wonderful Psalm of Unity, Behold, how good a thing it is, and how becoming well, together such as brethren are in unity to dwell, like precious ointment on the head that down the beard did flow, even Aaron's beard and to the skirt did of his garment go, as Hermon's Jew, the Jew that doth on Sion Hills descent, for there the blessing God commands, life that shall never end.

[47:06] Psalm 133, Behold, how good a thing it is. Behold, how good a thing it is.

[47:22] Sons are becoming well. Together sons of God's breath and are in unity to dwell, in unity to dwell, in unity to dwell, together such as brethren are in unity to dwell.

[48:11] Like precious ointment on the head, that done the beard did blow, in air on spirit unto the shirt, head of this garment go, did hop this garment go, did hop this garment go, He led on spirit unto the spirit of this charmed soul.

[49:12] That there once you thou, to the dove on Zion hills descend.

[49:28] For let the blessing not come, life that shall never end.

[49:43] Life that shall never end. Life that shall never end.

[49:58] For let the blessing not come, life that shall never end.

[50:16] The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all now and forever. Amen. Thank you.

[50:30] Fear of God. For all you in this power andile, rule the divine삶 begins.