Song Of Solomon 6:1-3 - Homiletics

Dialogue between the bride and the daughters of Jerusalem.

I. THE QUESTION OF THE MAIDENS . The dream is past. The bridegroom is absent for a time, but the bride is not anxious; she knows where he is, and that he will soon return. Perhaps it was such a short absence which filled her thoughts before, and was the occasion of those narratives which are so dream-like, which recall so vividly reminiscences of dreams such as most men have probably experienced. The chorus again address the bride as "fairest among women." They recognize her beauty and graces. They do not see the bridegroom with her; they ask, "Whither is he gone?" They offer to seek him with her. So we sometimes ask others who have more Christian graces, more love of Christ, than we have, where we may find the Lord. We want to seek Christ with them; we ask for their prayers; we will join our prayers with theirs.

II. THE ANSWER .

1 . The bride knows where her beloved may be found. She has no doubts now, no anxieties, as she had in her dream. She answers without hesitation, "My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed [his flock] in the gardens, and to gather lilies." She invests her beloved with the ideal character of a shepherd, as she had done before (So Song of Solomon 7:1 -51:7). We see that the words are not to be taken literally; he is no shepherd in the ordinary sense. He is said, indeed, to be feeding (his flock), but not in ordinary pastures. He is gone to his garden, a garden of costly spices; and he is gone to gather lilies, apparently for his bride. The bride never dwells on the wealth and magnificence of her royal lover as the chorus do. Such thoughts, perhaps, were to her oppressive rather than attractive; she loves to think of him as a shepherd, as one in her own condition in life. The grandeur of the king was dazzling to the country maiden. So the Christian loves to think of the Lord Jesus as the good Shepherd. We know, indeed, that the kingdoms of this world are his; that he is King of kings and Lord of lords; that he is the Word who in the beginning was with God, and himself was God; that all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. We know that he will come again in majesty and great glory to judge the quick and the dead. But when our souls are dazzled by the contemplation of his glory; when we shrink, as sinful men must shrink, from the thought of the great white throne and him that sitteth on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven flee away ( Revelation 20:11 );—it is a relief then to our weakness to remember that the great King humbled himself to our low estate, that he was made as one of us, that he shared all our human infirmities, sin only excepted; that he who is the Life of the world humbled himself for us unto death, even the death of the cross. And of all the titles by which he has been pleased to make himself known to his people, there is none so full of comfort as that of the Shepherd, the good Shepherd, who calls his sheep by name, who guides them and feeds them, who knows his own and his own know him, who once laid down his life for the sheep. Now he feeds them in his garden, the garden enclosed (So Song of Solomon 7:1 -54:12), which is the Church, among the beds of spices, which are the fruit of the Spirit. There he gathers the lilies one by one, the souls of his redeemed, the souls which he has tended and cared for, and glorified with a beauty of holiness which is a faint reflection of his own heavenly beauty. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of those precious lilies. He gathers them one by one when they have grown into that spiritual beauty for which he planted them at the first, and carries them into a better garden, the true Eden, the Paradise of God, there to blossom into purer and holier beauty.

2 . She is wholly his. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he that feedeth [his flock] among the lilies." She repeats the happy assurance of So Song of Solomon 2:16 , only she inverts the order of the clauses, and adds the description. "He is feeding his flock among the lilies: but I am his, and he is mine." There is no jealousy, no doubt now, as there seemed to be when she dreamed of his absence. The shepherd is her shepherd, the lilies are for her, she is his. She thinks first now of her gift to the bridegroom. In So Song of Solomon 2:10 she put his gift first. He had given his heart to her in the first happy days of their young love; and that gift had won from her the responsive gift of her affection. She knew now that her heart was wholly his; she delights in owning it. And she was sure of his affection. His heart was wholly hers. "We love him, because he first loved us" ( 1 John 4:19 ). It is the love of Christ manifested in his blessed life and precious death, revealed into the believer's heart by the power of the Holy Spirit,—it is that constraining love which draws forth from our cold and selfish natures that measure of love, real and true, though unworthy and intermittent, with which the Christian man regards the Lord. At first we are more sure of his love than of ours. He loved us, that is certain; the cross is the convincing proof. But we are not sure, alas! that we are returning his love. We have learned from long and sad experience to doubt these selfish hearts of ours; we are afraid that there is no real love in them, but only excited feeling, only transitory emotion. But if by his grace we persevere in the life of prayer and faith, little by little his love given to us, manifested in our souls, draws forth the response of earnest love from us; little by little we begin to hope (oh, how earnestly!) that we may be able at last to say with St. Peter, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." But to say that, with the knowledge that his eye is on us, that he is reading our heart, involves much awe, much heart searching, as well as much hope, much peace. We can only pray that "the God of hope may fill us with all joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost" ( Romans 15:13 ). And if that love, though weak, as, alas! it must be, is yet real, we may make the bride's words our own: "I am my Beloved's; I belong to him. My heart is his; I am giving it to him; and he, blessed be his holy Name, is helping me to give it by first giving himself to me. I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine." Therefore the Christian soul may say, "I hope one day to see him face to face, and to be with him where he feedeth his flock among the lilies of Paradise."