Song Of Solomon 4:1-6 - Homiletics

The bridegroom with the bride.

I. HIS PRAISE OF THE BRIDE .

1 . The earthly bridegroom. The bridegroom rejoices over the bride. She is wholly his. He enumerates her beauties; they are very precious to him; his great love leads him to dwell on every point. The love of the espousals ( Jeremiah 2:2 ), the young love of the newly wedded, is a beautiful thing, very tender and touching; it leaves a fragrant memory behind—a memory treasured still after the lapse of many years, when the love of wedlock has become, not less true, not less blessed, but calmer and more mellow; and perhaps even more blessed, when no jealousies, no quarrels, have tended to put asunder those whom God hath joined together, but love has continued to increase with increasing years, with less and less of earthly passion, but more and more of holy tenderness and mutual self-denials for the loved one's sake. Such, alas! was not the love of Solomon. The fair promise, so very bright and beautiful at first, was soon blighted. Corruptio optimi pessima. Nothing in this world is more beautiful and blessed than that holy estate of matrimony which was instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, which God has consecrated to such an excellent mystery that in it is signified and represented the spiritual marriage and unity betwixt Christ and his Church. And, on the other hand, nothing is more degrading and ruinous than that sensual passion which is the caricature of wedded love. The early goodness of Solomon, the bright promise of future happiness and usefulness which gilded his youth, excites an interest in him so persona], that it makes us feel a real grief and disappointment when we read that "King Solomon loved many strange women;" that "when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart;" that "he went after Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Zidonians;" that he "did evil in the sight of the Lord." And so it came to pass that that bright beginning ended in utter gloom, in the mournful cry of disappointment. "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity." He could not find satisfaction in his wisdom when he had begun to fall away from God. He found that "in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" ( Ecclesiastes 1:18 ). And so the wisest of men betook himself to pleasure. "I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth;" "I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house;" "I gat me men singers and women singers;" "Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy" ( Ecclesiastes 2:1 , Ecclesiastes 2:7 , Ecclesiastes 2:8 , Ecclesiastes 2:10 ). He found, as they that are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God always find sooner or later, that all this was "vanity and vexation of spirit," nothing better than "striving after wind." "Therefore," he says, "I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit." And this is King Solomon, who surpassed all the kings of the earth for glory and riches; who was wiser than the wisest of his time; who had won in his youth the love of the pure and innocent Shulamite; who (and this is the saddest thought of all) once loved the Lord: "Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father" ( 1 Kings 3:3 ). While he continued to love the Lord, he was true, we must believe, to the wife of his youth. One who walks in the light of the love of God cannot love the works of darkness, cannot admit into his heart that taint of impurity which so utterly shuts the soul away from the love of God. We wonder whether Solomon repented as his father David did. We know that God warned him, and chastised him for his sins, but we know also that much will be required from those to whom much has been given, and that to fall from such grace as had been bestowed upon Solomon must be a grievous fall indeed; to disobey God who had given him such abundant blessings showed a depth of ingratitude which utterly startles us, till we learn to know in penitence and self-abasement what Solomon impressed upon others, whether he felt it himself or not, "the plague of our own hearts" ( 1 Kings 8:38 ). The pure love of wedlock is maintained in ever-growing affection when husband and wife both live near to God. "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another" ( 1 John 1:7 ). That fellowship which "is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" ( 1 John 1:3 ) involves of necessity the holiest grace of charity in our mutual relations with our brother Christians; especially those whom God hath joined together must and will, if they are living as the children of God, live together in holy love unto their lives' end. We wonder whether the fair Shulamite lived to experience the change in her royal bridegroom; if she did, the loss of his affection must have been a bitter trial indeed. Perhaps God in his mercy took her to himself before that trial came.

2 . The heavenly Bridegroom. It is the will of the Lord Jesus to present the Church unto himself as a glorious Church, holy and without blemish. The Lord shall rejoice in his works. Through the cleansing power of his most precious blood, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, which he giveth to his chosen, the Church, his bride shall at the last be "all glorious within;" for he is able "to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy" (Jud 1:24). Then shall there be joy in heaven, when the Lord, who endured for the Church's sake the great agony of the cross, sees the reward of his bitter Passion; when he looks upon the Church, a glorious Church indeed, no longer marred and stained by sin and strife and error, but cleansed and purified "even as he is pure" ( 1 John 3:3 ), made like unto him in the vision of his love and holiness. Then he will rejoice over her as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride. "In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem … The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty: he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing" ( Zephaniah 3:16 , Zephaniah 3:17 ). The heavenly Bridegroom will rejoice over his bride; he will see in her the beauty of holiness; he will rejoice in her graces. She is very dear to him, for she is the reward of that long anguish, the agony and bloody sweat, the bitter cross and Passion. And now she is wholly his; she has left all other masters, and given her whole heart to the Lord who bought her, with the fall, pure, holy love which she has learned of him—the infinite love.

3 . The bride must make herself ready. ( Revelation 19:7 .) Without holiness no man can see the Lord. The holiness of the Church consists in the holiness of its members. We must follow after holiness, holiness of heart and life; for without the wedding garment, the white robe of righteousness, none can be admitted to the marriage supper of the Lamb. We must, each one of us, make ourselves ready and prepare to meet our God. The Lord rejoices in the holiness of his people. We must learn, not to seek glory from one another, not to set so much store on human praise, but to seek that glory which cometh from the only God ( John 5:44 ). There were some who would not confess the Lord Jesus because "they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God" ( John 12:43 ). We must look onwards to the praise which the heavenly Bridegroom will bestow on the Church, his bride; then shall the true Israelite, who is a "Jew inwardly," "whose praise is not of men, but of God" ( Romans 2:29 ), have praise of God ( 1 Corinthians 4:5 ). We must seek that praise with a single heart, walking with God, living to his glory, looking for the blessed hour when we trust to see the heavenly Bridegroom face to face.

"He lifts me to the golden doors;

The flashes come and go;

All Heaven bursts her starry floors,

And strews her lights below,

And deepens on and up! the gates

Roll back, and far within

For me the heavenly Bridegroom waits,

To make me pure of sin.

The sabbaths of eternity,

One sabbath deep and wide,

A light upon the shining sea—

The Bridegroom with his bride!"

II. THE ANSWER OF THE BRIDE .

1 . She must withdraw for a while. She repeats in her modesty the first clause of her own words in So Song of Solomon 2:17 . Then, apparently, she asked her lover to leave her till she had fulfilled the routine duties of the day. He was to return when the day should be cool, and the shadows should lengthen in the evening. Now it is she who will leave her Lord for a time. Perhaps she felt herself almost overburdened by his commendations; the poor country maiden, true and simple as she was, could scarcely understand such praises from the great and magnificent king; they were too much for her; she must retire to collect herself. When the Lord commends the faithful, and glorifies their works of love as done unto himself, they seem oppressed, as it were, for a season by the greatness of his praise. They were only doing their duty; they did it, all of them, more or less imperfectly; they did not regard those poor works of theirs as so exceeding beautiful; they did not think that they had been conferring benefits upon the Lord himself, that they had so greatly pleased him; they were humble, self-distrustful; they seem almost to shrink from the praises of the King. The grace of humility is a very holy thing; it lies at the entrance of the kingdom of heaven; it is the first of the Beatitudes. "Not he that commendeth himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commendeth" ( 2 Corinthians 10:18 ).

2 . Whither the bride retires. "I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense." The words may, taken literally, signify some retired place in the palace garden, as many scholars think; but myrrh and frankincense are words of frequent occurrence in Holy Scripture, and are often used with a more or less mystical meaning. The Wise Men from the East brought gold and frankincense and myrrh as offerings to the infant Saviour; wine mingled with myrrh was given him on the cross; his sacred body was laid in a mixture of myrrh and aloes brought by the faithful Nicodemus. The mountain of myrrh seems to suggest the necessity of purification before the soul can dwell always in the presence of the Lord. The maidens from among whom the Queen of Persia was to be chosen had to go through a time of purification, "six months with oil of myrrh" ( Esther 2:12 ). It tells us also of the bitter draught, the cup of sorrows, which they who are to be nearest Christ must take. "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I must drink of?" Those who aspire to the highest places in the kingdom of heaven must learn the deepest lessons of humility, the severest lessons of entire submission of will to the holy will of God. They must get them to the mountain of myrrh, to the cross. Our self-denials are small and unworthy; the cross of Christ sets before us a mountain of self-sacrifice, a height that reaches unto the heavens. We must draw nearer and nearer to the cross in daily self-denial and self-abasement, if we are to realize at last the full, deep joy of uninterrupted communion with the Lord. And if myrrh means self-denial, the dying unto sin, frankincense means worship. The sweet odour of the incense going up from the golden altar is a meet emblem of the prayers of the saints (see Revelation 8:3 , Revelation 8:4 ). We must learn the blessed lesson of worship on earth before we can join the choir of happy worshippers around the glory throne. We must get ourselves to the hill of frankincense, to the Lord's house, where the incense of prayer and thanksgiving ever ascends, where he himself is in the midst, among those who are gathered together in his name. There we may be trained, if we come in the Spirit as Simeon came when he found the Lord Christ, in that holy worship, worship in spirit and in truth, which is the true preparation for the glad adoring worship of triumphant saints in heaven. Till the evening of life comes, till the shadows lengthen into the night, we must get ourselves to the work which the Lord has given us to do—the work of self-discipline, the work of worship here below, that we may be ready when he cometh to take our part in the never-ceasing worship of heaven, and there to be ever with the Lord.