Well, dear congregation, we come once again to the ministry of the word, so I invite you to take your copies of God's word and turn in them to the Song of Solomon, chapter two. And this morning, I'm gonna read in your hearing verses one through seven, but we will be spending our time, our short time together in verse seven. So I'm gonna read verses one through seven for purposes of context. Song of Solomon, chapter two, verses one through seven. Listen carefully, this is the word of the living God. I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women. As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love. Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love. His left hand is under my head and his right hand embraces me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. Thus far the reading of God's word, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our Lord stands forever, and we are grateful for it. Would you bow with me this morning, dear congregation, as we ask the Lord for help in the ministry of his word? Dear Father in heaven, we pray this morning very simply. that as you have done in the past, Father, when you awakened us through the ministry of your Spirit in the gift of regeneration, so now, Father, in an ongoing way, you would awaken us from the stupor that we often find ourselves in, that you would awaken us, Father, awaken our love once again, revive our love once again for Jesus Christ, For we confess to you, Father, as has already been stated in so many ways, that we are good at taking our eyes off Jesus. We are good, Father, at taking him out of the center and putting him in the periphery. And Father, when we do, it never fails that we are not happy. It never fails that we are displeased. It never fails that we are disappointed. And yet, as foolish animals, or shall I say like foolish animals, we go back and do the same thing and push Christ out of the center and put ourselves in the center or the world in the center or even the devil in the center. But this morning through the ministry of your word, we beg of you, dear God, that you would send your spirit and revive us once again. Just as the dew falls upon the morning grass, so Spirit of God fall upon our hearts. Refresh us with the love of Christ and may we be not simply infatuated, Father, we want much more than that. We want to be in love with our Savior. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Dear congregation, many of you are familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia. Some of you have read it a few times. Some of the children in this congregation have read it more than some of the adults in this congregation. And there is a famous scene in the Chronicles of Narnia when one of the children asks if Aslan is safe. And you recall the answer, remember? The answer is, no, he's not safe, but he's good. He's not safe, but he's good. And as we consider our text this morning, I think by analogy we could say the same thing about love. Love is not safe, but it is good. You might even put it this way, and this is what verse seven is getting at. Love is dangerous. Certainly there have been songs written to that effect. Love is dangerous. Love is like a sharp knife. It can cut, it can hurt, but if it is wielded in an efficient manner for the proper purpose, it can be a glorious thing. In fact, love is a beautiful thing. Love is a beautiful thing to receive. Love is a beautiful thing to give. There is a reason, is there not, that in the words of the Apostle John, he simply said, God is love. So this morning, as we come to the Lord's table especially, I think that it is very important that we reconsider our love, our love for Jesus, our love for God, and contrast that with the love of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And really, you could do no better. in the wisdom and poetic literature of the Old Testament than to come to Song of Solomon chapter 2 verse 7, for it is here that the wife turns from speaking to her husband and she draws her attention to the daughters of Jerusalem. And I haven't spoken much about this, and I don't want to bog down what I'm about to say this morning, but throughout the book of the Song of Solomon, there are a group of men and a group of women that serve as refrains throughout the poetic discourse in the book. And here we have such a refrain where the bride is turning her attention after she has waxed eloquently about her love for her husband, and she turns to the daughters of Jerusalem as she considers this love, and she says, O daughters of Jerusalem, I adjure you, which very simply means, She is putting the daughters of Jerusalem under oath, or trying to get them to take an oath, as it were, to do what? To not awaken love until it pleases. Why? Because once again, love can be dangerous outside its native habitat. Love can be dangerous, and let me rephrase that, love is dangerous outside of its native habitat. And as we have been saying throughout this discourse, love's natural habitat is the covenant of marriage. And outside that covenant habitat, it is extremely dangerous. So she's speaking to the daughters of Jerusalem, and we have something equivalent in our congregation. If you're a single man or a single woman, you can group yourself in this category. If you are not married and you desire marriage, you desire the kind of love that a man and a woman share in the holy covenant of marriage, then listen up. This word is for you. The daughters of Jerusalem hear as the bride says, do not awaken love until it pleases. So what we're going to do very simply this morning is we're going to consider this warning, the bride's warning, on two levels as we have been accustomed to doing. First, we're going to consider it on the level of the relationship between husband and wife, but we're going to tweak it just a little bit this morning. Instead of the husband and the wife who are already on the other side of the vows of the covenant of marriage, we're going to consider it at the level of the prospective husband and the prospective wife. Even as I was thinking of Gabe and Cora this morning as one of the pastors prayed for them, I can't remember. But hopefully your ears, wherever you are, Gabe and Cora, are especially attuned to what's going on, but not just them. All of us have been there at some point. Some of us are in that place now where we are considering the prospect of marriage. So let's consider it here on the first horizon. I want you to notice. I want you to notice that when the bride puts the daughters of Jerusalem under this oath not to awaken or stir up love until it pleases, what they're getting at is this. Look, love is dangerous and there is a physical dimension to love and then there is a psychological and emotional dimension to love. And I would submit to you this morning that the bride is not limiting her warning to simply the physical dimension, nor is she limiting the warning to simply the psychological or emotional dimension. She is taking it in an all-inclusive manner and saying, this beautiful thing of love, be careful with it. Now, let me just unpack this just a little bit more. All of us who have gone through puberty and are of age, and those of you who may be going through that time know that there comes a time in the life of a young man and a young woman, listen, where physiologically the desire for physical love is awakened. It is physiologically awakened. One day, boys, you see one of your female classmates and you think that she has cooties. And the next day you look at her and you have a different perspective. Love has been awakened inside of you. The desire for love, the tractor beam of love has been engaged, okay? But what the bride is getting at here is that even though that happens at the physiological level, what she is saying is you still have a choice to keep that thing under control. And she is saying not only do you have a choice, but I am putting you under oath that you do keep it under control until you get in that native habitat of the covenant of marriage where you can give yourself over to it freely and fully. Now the world has a different set of talking points when it comes to that. The world has a different set of talking points when it comes to that. Whereas Lady Wisdom here, personified in the bride, would say, keep it under control, even though it physically awakens, the world would say, go for it. Give in to your passions. Give in to your desires. Give in to those physiological urges and experiment. Get your feet wet. And then this is the one I hate the most. Sow your wild oats. That is horrible advice. That is horrible advice. And I want you to, listen, I'm a presuppositionalist. If you don't know what that means, look it up on Reformed Wiki, not Wikipedia, Reformed Wiki. I'm a presuppositionalist. You know what that means? I believe that all ideas are connected in some way, shape, or form. You can't have just one idea, all right? Remember that Lay's potato chip? I'm gonna date myself, right? You can't have just one, right, Lay's potato chips? Well, that's like ideas. You can't just have a brute fact. There are no such things as brute facts. Everything is connected. There are presuppositions to everything. Everything happens inside the native habitat of a worldview. And when we think of the world's wisdom that says, sow your wild oats, go for it, give yourselves over to your passion, you know what worldview is behind that? The secular and naturalistic worldview that at heart and really at its core were really just animals. were just animals. Now, next time an evolutionary, secularist, agnostic, or atheist says something like that, you should pat them on the back for being consistent, because they are being consistent, okay? And I want you to think about the animal kingdom for a second. I know some of you that watch National Geographic TV, you know that there are exceptions to this, but generally speaking, in the animal kingdom, animals don't discriminate. with respect to their love partners. In fact, they spread it all around. Whoever's willing, and whoever's ready, and whoever's in front of them. That is the natural instinct of animals, and I think for that reason, it is very interesting, it is very interesting that in verse seven, The bride adjures the daughters of Jerusalem by the gazelles or the does. Isn't that interesting? Now, there's difference of opinion on why she invokes the gazelles or the does as witnesses, but I would submit to you in line with what I'm telling you this morning, that it was over such animals, does and gazelles, that mankind was given dominion in Genesis 1-2, and animals are not characterized by human dignity. So the bride may be calling the daughters of Jerusalem to remember that they are humans in contrast to animals. Humans that have been given dominion over the animals so that they are not to act the way the beasts do with respect to physical love, but wait until love arises or is awakened within the covenant of marriage. I think that that's what's going on here. There is a contrast you see. So how should we view this on the first horizon? Well, very simply, this is a charge to prospective wives and husbands not to engage in love until it is appropriate. Not to engage in love until you get into the covenant confines of marriage. Now love is a beautiful and dangerous thing. As I've said, and I'm just gonna quote this to you, and I've already mentioned this, you could turn to it later, Song of Solomon 8.6, listen to how the author describes love. Song of Solomon 8.6, set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death. Jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Beloved of the Lord Jesus Christ, please listen to me with respect to your relationship with your future wife, your future husband, or even within the confines of marriage. That love is strong. That physical love, the culmination of that love and the physical intimacy of a man and woman is extremely strong. It is dangerous. And it got me thinking yesterday. My family and I try to always spend Saturday as family day and daddy got some new weight equipment and so I was setting up things in my garage and I got some stall mats, three quarter inch stall mats, rubber mats put on the ground to cushion the weights when they fall. But I had to cut out four spots where I was gonna put my weight rack and I had to get brand new razor blades that I would put into the box cutter. And as I was cutting through them, I told my kids and my wife, get away because if I slip and go this way, I'm going to cut somebody. To which one of my children responded, Daddy, can I do it? And the answer was absolutely not. I'm not going to give a sharp, brand new box cutter to a five-year-old. And the analogy you see is similar, nor should love, as sharp and as dangerous as it is, be engaged in by somebody who is not ready for it, you see. Sometimes I have counseled young people who are getting married, and I'm just gonna give you an example. They would ask questions like, should I be leading my wife in devotions right now? And you may have a different opinion than me. This is not thus saith the Lord. But I often counsel them against that, and here's the reason why, okay? There is a careful balance when you're courting, dating, whatever word you want. Choose your own adventure. Okay, when you're dating or courting, there's a careful balance of on the one hand, you guys are trying to figure out if there's compatibility with your roles. The man is the head, the woman is the helpmate, the man is to lead, the woman is to submit. I am not ashamed to say that. I say it boldly because the Word of God says it, and that's what all of us should be striving for. So in those preliminary stages, there is this experimentation, if I could put it this way, to see from the man's perspective, is she going to be able to submit to me? Is she going to be able to follow me as I lead? And then on the other hand, the woman is trying to ask herself a battery of questions such as, Is this the kind of man that I want to submit to? Is this the kind of man that I am proud of? Is this the kind of man that I want to exchange my last name for his?" So there is that, but at the same time, it is a tightrope walk because on the one hand, you should engage in testing the waters, but on the other hand, you should not act as if you're already there. And it is a very intimate thing for a man to lead his wife in worship, when I'm talking about devotion, washing her in the water of the Word. In fact, when that phrase comes up in the book of Ephesians, it is in the context of Paul talking about Christ washing His bride in the water of the Word, and the analogy is that husbands are to wash their wives in the water of the Word. So, prospective husbands, yes, she is to submit to you, but she does not fully have to submit to you yet, and that is a very tricky thing to do. So love is a dangerous thing, and what I would say is you need to be very, very careful about how much you give yourself over to your prospective spouse in the beginning. And I would highly encourage and exhort you to get the help of elders in your church, get the direction and wisdom of elders in your church, and other people who have been married for many years in your church to know where to strike that balance. God has designed physical love for it to give pleasure in marriage, and as I've said, outside of marriage, prior to marriage, love may give pleasure, but it comes with shame and guilt and fear and regret. But within the context of marriage, love is pleasurable. So Christians believe what the Bible teaches about sexuality, that it is to be experienced in the context of marriage, and because of this, we are often viewed as killjoys, are we not? We are often viewed as puritanical. We are often viewed as not wanting to have fun, which is such a subjective term. But to the contrary, we want people to have the most pleasure with the least regret. That's what we want. We want you to have the least shame, the least regret, the least guilt, and we want to maximize pleasure in the context of a marriage relationship. We want people to have more than physical trysts that cheapen and demean and humanize the human being because that is what they do. outside of the covenant of marriage. We want to enjoy physical intimacy within the context in which God designed it. And let me just give you another example. And this is mainly for you boys and girls who are thinking about mates in the future and those of you who are a little bit older and that decision a little bit closer to you. I want you to think of a fish, boys and girls. Think of a fish. What is the native environment of a fish? The native environment of a fish is the water. It breathes in the water. It goes about in the water. It feels comfortable in the water. Now, I want you to imagine, okay, an octopus coming alongside that fish and saying, you know, fish, you know. There is a whole world out there to be explored. And you know, the powers that be, they really don't want you to explore it. You know what they want? They want to keep you under their thumb in this water. But I'm going to tell you something. If you go to that shore and you flop right over onto the shore, there is ground there, there is earth, things you've never experienced that will just blow your mind. I mean, you'll just die of excitement. Oh, that's very interesting. You will die. You will die. Now boys and girls, if that fish followed the advice of the octopus, what would happen? It would get to the shore, it would flip-flop onto the shore, and it would soon find that it couldn't breathe. And though it was told the lie that it could have freedom, the fact of the matter is the freedom and the liberty was in the water. It was in the confines that God had intended it to thrive, and so it is with love in the context of marriage. There are octopuses in this world that will tell you, oh no, God's just trying to keep you under His thumb. No, He's not. He's trying to give you the greatest fulfillment and the greatest pleasure in the context of marriage. So I want you to listen. Satan is an octopus. Satan is that octopus. And you know how Jesus describes him in John 8, 44? He's a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. So boys and girls, teens, college age, everyone, don't be deceived by the lie that freedom exists outside the confines of marriage. Now, let's consider the second horizon, especially as we come to the table this morning. The second horizon, we've thought about this warning to the daughters of Jerusalem for prospective husbands and prospective wives. Now I want you to consider it This warning in the context of Christ in the church. What does this mean? Do not stir up love for anything or anyone outside of Christ until you have first stirred up a love for Christ who is your supreme love. Christ should be the center, the center of your love, the headquarters of your love, the ground zero of your love. All of your subsequent loves in this life should be filtered through the lens of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ gives good gifts to His children. And if a gift is proffered to you that does not come from the hand of Jesus, I promise you it is something that though will awaken love, it will awaken it in defeat and despair and shame and guilt. Christ must be the center of our loves. Why? Because love is as strong as death. Christ must be your first love to which all other loves are subjected. Love for the world, love for the flesh, love for the devil is counterintuitive and antithetical to love for God. There is no in between. This is a dichotomy of all dichotomies. It is love for the world, flesh or devil, or love for God. There is no blending of the two, and this is why John, the Apostle John, says, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, for all that is in the world, listen, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father, but from the world. But the world is passing away, along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. So beware of counterfeit loves. Beware of counterfeit loves. Those of you who are considering a future husband or future wife, if that future husband or future wife or prospective husband or prospective wife is in any way, shape, or form trying to allure you away from devotion to Christ and His bride, the church, Beware. See a red flag there. See a warning flag there. See Jesus waving his arms saying, no, this is not the way to go. Is this not what happened with Israel? Under every green tree, the prophet said, under every green tree they worshiped their Asherim. Under every green tree. Is this not why the Lord told the king that he was not to multiply wives? For many loves can crowd out your singular love for Christ. Your love for Christ, listen, must inform and shape and govern your love for anything else, whether that is a spouse, or whether that is a job, or whether that is your time, or whether that is what you put before your eyes, even your schooling. I remember going to battle for the soul of one of the people that the Lord had put under our care. He's going to the battle for his soul because he was an alcoholic and he isolated himself. He isolated himself. And that's what alcoholics do. Alcoholics isolate themselves, especially from the people that are trying to warn them of their alcoholism. and this particular person isolated himself especially from the church and then he was considering the prospect of a graduate school that would require him to work seven days a week and work and study seven days a week without rest for nine months. And he was certain that this was the will of God. And I told him emphatically, it is not the will of God. It is not the will of God for you to do that because you are already beset with a proclivity to isolate yourself from the people of God, which is the mouth and the hands and the feet of Jesus. And because you have this besetting sin of alcoholism, when you put this together with your isolation, it is a recipe for disaster. So I can tell you, my friend, I can tell you, it is not God's will that you take that position. Well, unfortunately, he didn't listen. because he wanted something other than Christ. We may say that we want Christ, we may sing that we want Christ, we may write poetry that we want Christ, but beloved, Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. That's what he says. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I get tired, I get tired when I hear people say, you don't know me. You don't know me. I was just talking to somebody the other day. They were telling me about another pastor who... I feel so much better. Because I've never had people throw stuff at me, but I've had people yell at me. I've had people rage at me. You want to know why? Because I put my finger on their idol and I say, dear friend, please, please, love Jesus more than this idol. And it is the flesh within them that rages. It rages. And I get tired of hearing from such people, you don't know me. Listen friend, I know what you say and I know what you do. I know your habits and I know your patterns. I don't need to know you very long to see and hear what you're saying and doing. And Jesus says out of the overflow of the what? The heart, the mouth speaks. Jesus says that. So be gone with this fallacy that you can have toxicity coming out of your mouth and go towards it with your feet and your hands, but your heart is pure. That is a lie from the pit of hell. What you need to recognize, what I need to recognize is what comes out of us, beloved, is what is inside of us. What comes out of us is what's inside of us. And the moment we stop raging against the people and mainly the Word of God as it comes on the lips of God's people that are trying to help us with that and make that connection and connect the dots, the moment we stop doing that is the moment we start to get help. It's the moment we start to get help. Until a love for Christ is awakened in you such that He is more beautiful than anything else, even your own pride, even more beautiful than you being right, than you winning the argument. than you being thought of highly in the eyes of others. Be gone with all that garbage. And see Christ as not only beautiful, but your teacher, your teacher who is tender and gentle with you when you sin. And when you sin, he receives you, and he cleans you, and he mends you, and he puts the balm of Gilead upon your soul, and he does not cast out his people. As we close this morning, please turn to 2 Corinthians 11, and I'll leave you with this. 2 Corinthians chapter 11. Beloved, God is jealous for you. In fact, one of the names of God is jealousy. God is jealous. And I had to explain to my kids, they're like, wait a minute, daddy, you just, you rebuked me last week for being jealous and now you're saying God is jealous. How does that work? Well, you see, here's the thing. When imperfect beings engage in jealousy that is contaminated, it's contaminated because they're sinful. But when you have a perfect being like God, and God says, I want you to desire the best and only the best, and that is God, very God, and we go after other things, it is appropriate for that perfect being to be jealous. In 2 Corinthians 11, 4, Paul. reflects on God's character and nature with his own petition to the Corinthians. He says, 2 Corinthians 11, verse 1, I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me, for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. What is Paul saying here? He's saying, beloved, God is jealous for your soul. And He has overtures of grace that you would come back to Him after your strain time and time and time again. And He will not allow you ultimately to do that. And if that means that He must discipline you to bring you back, that even though the discipline is not pleasant for the time, it will yield the perfect fruit of righteousness. but Jesus is jealous for you. You know what he says to you this morning, beloved? He says, I do not want you to sit under any old shade tree. I do not want you to sit under any old fruit tree. I want you to sit under the apple tree of Jesus Christ who gives both shade from the wrath of God and fruit that sustains the people of God through the privileges and benefits of Jesus Christ. Come to the tree that gives both shade and sustenance. and sit under that apple tree, and He will give you joy. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. And Jesus Christ laid down his life for you if you believe in him. So come this morning to the apple tree of Christ. Turn from your sins. Turn from your idols. Turn from your pride. Turn from your arrogance. Turn from all that which would draw you away from the center of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and feast your eyes, especially now as we go into the table, the time of the table, on Christ and Him crucified. Believe in Him and you shall be saved. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for Christ the apple tree. How saints have sung of that beautiful image through the ages. And I pray that this morning as we come to the table, our hearts would sing we would see Christ as He who gives us shade, that we would see Christ as He who feeds our soul, and that we would see that sustenance as that shade, as the very definition of life eternal, and that, Father, we do not have to wait To begin life eternal when we die and open our eyes in the presence of Christ, but life eternal began when you opened our hearts, when you awakened love within us. And we pray that you would once again stir up that love within us, Father, that we might love Jesus and Him crucified.