Let's continue to worship our God this morning by turning to His Word. Let's open up our Bibles to the book of the Song of Songs. Song of Solomon chapter 3. I'm going to read in your hearing verses 1-5. Song of Songs chapter 3. verses one through five. I'll give you a moment to find that and while you're finding that just want to bring our visitors up to speed on the series that we find ourselves in. We have been working through the book of Song of Songs and the series title is A Portrait of Love on Two Horizons. And what that means very simply is that we're looking at this book with sort of two lenses. One lens is what we can glean from it, what it says about the love between a husband and a wife, so in the context of marriage. But then that second horizon or second lens is what we can glean about it concerning the love between Christ and his church and the church's love for Christ. So we're continuing on in chapter three this morning and hopefully by now you've found it. So let me draw your attention once again to the Song of Songs, chapter three, verses one through five. Listen carefully, this is the word of the living God. On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves. I sought him but found him not. I will rise now and go about the city in the streets and in the squares. I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him but found him not. The watchman found me as they went about in the city. Have you seen him whom my soul loves? Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother's house and into the chamber of her who conceived 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 God stands forever, and we are grateful for it. I invite you to join with me this morning, dear congregation, as we ask the Lord for help in the ministry of his word. Would you bow your heads? Father God, what a wonderful time of worship we have had this morning in invoking your name and singing of the love of Christ, singing of our blessed union with him and the benefits that accrue in that covenantal interaction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit on behalf of the elect. Father, we thank you that we are here this morning. We thank you that we are reminded of these things. We thank you, as we sang, that there was one and is one worthy to open the scroll of the book that the deed of this earth has been reclaimed by Jesus Christ and he will one day come and take it to be his own. We thank you, Father, that what was lost by the first Adam has been found and reclaimed by the second Adam. Father, as we open up this word this morning, we pray that your spirit would guide us into understanding, and more importantly, Father, that understanding would give way to application, and application would give way to conviction, and that your word and spirit would collide to minister to our souls this morning. We ask these things in Christ's name, amen. Well in this poetic section of love we find the Shulamite, the bride, on her bed at night and what is she doing? Well she is longing for her beloved. And this longing is so great that she rises up to search for him, even risking great danger, going about at night, passing by the watchman, a woman who went about at night, boys and girls and adults in the ancient Near East, was not seen as a noble woman. She was seen as a lady of the night, a woman of questionable character. But this woman did not care, you see. In fact, she cared not about what others thought about her because she had one single focus in mind, and that was to find her beloved. Now, this is not, I just want to remind you, necessarily a historical account, although this may have happened. This is not even necessarily, as some commentators have said, a dream. What this is is a poetic and symbolic expression of the lover's incompleteness without her beloved. Let me say that again. This is a poetic and symbolic expression of her incompleteness without her lover and the great joy that it is to find him and to cling to him and yet as we're going to find in the course of our study this morning, it is a sufficient but incomplete satisfaction. Let me say that again. It is a sufficient but incomplete satisfaction. Now, I want to go directly this morning to the first horizon or how this applies to our marriage relationships. And I'm just going to tell you, I'm not going to stay very long there. I want to get right to the second horizon this morning. But as we think about this poetic description of the lover's longing for her beloved, this Shulamite episode reminds us that in the absence of our lover, we feel a legitimate and real sense of incompleteness. I mean, I think that these words apply to the majority of mankind. In fact, they do because they were given to us in scripture. God says it is not good for man to be alone. Now you could talk about all the exceptions, the eunuchs, the single people, all that kind of stuff, but the fact of the matter is the core of humanity needs companionship. God made the core of humanity to crave companionship. It is not good for man to be alone and God's solution to that is that he makes the two one flesh. He brings man and woman into a marriage relationship that is at once poetic and at another glance symbolic of something else. Now as applied to singles, there's an incompleteness there. You long for your lifelong companion. I think of those who are searching for spouses. and you want to be joined together. You do not have the gift of being a eunuch. You do not have the gift of celibacy, and you want to be with your future spouse. I think that that is a longing that God has encoded into humanity. But even in the midst of marriages, think of this. Think of the times that you have gone on a business trip, right? And whether you were the husband or the wife, there's also the one that's staying home from that business trip, right? And you think about the time that you're sitting alone in the hotel room and you miss your beloved, you long for your beloved. I was talking to a minister the other day who has an amazing relationship with his wife. And he told me, because he travels a lot, he said, there are times when I'm traveling and I'm away from my wife that I literally sit on my hotel room bed and I cry because I miss her so much. What a beautiful relationship. I know that in my own life, the longest I've been away from my wife was 14 days at an academic conference, two in fact, back to back. And after about the fourth day, I didn't care about scholarship, I didn't care about academia, I didn't care about the next presentation, I didn't care about the next restaurant I was gonna eat at, I just wanted to get home. I wanted to be with my wife. And even in our own congregation, I think of the military couples who I think among all of us know this probably better than any of us. When that husband deploys and you're separated for months at a time, in some cases a year at a time, you can identify with the Shulamite on her bed as she is thinking about her husband who is gone and is longing for him and feels incomplete without him. But not only singles and not only married people, but what about this? What about in the context of marriage when death separates? When death separates. I've been in the houses of men and women who have lost their spouses, and they all really say the same thing. They say things like, you don't really know what you have until it's gone. And we know that that's a song, and we know it's a cliche. There's a reason, beloved, that cliches are cliches. They strike at the heart of experiences that so many of us feel. You don't really know what you have until it's gone. And I think if I could just say as an aside, one of the biggest mistakes we make in our marriages is that very thing, to take for granted the blessings and the benefits and the love that our spouses show to us, and the people that they are to us, the gift that they are to us. You remember those early days of wooing. You remember those early days of Twitter-patient. You remember those early days of courting, when all you thought about was your spouse, and you couldn't even eat because you were just so taken up and smitten with them, and then, of course, that dies off as time goes on. And any marriage counselor will tell you, any man or woman who is in a healthy relationship with their spouse after 25, 50, 60 years will tell you that that feeling doesn't have to go away, but you must fight for it. You must fight for it. If you think, as we are accustomed to think and experience in our day of immediate gratification, that Friday night's going to come after a long week of work, and you're tired and you're exhausted, and then going out on the date with your wife or your husband, that that feeling is just going to automatically come, it doesn't. You have to work for it. And I think one of the biggest things we can do is to take our foot off of the gas, as it were, of working toward that mutual expression of love. In fact, oftentimes the heart of marriage strife is that one or both have given up on this battle. They've given up. And they've taken for granted the things that they should not take for granted. The reason the Shulamite and you and I may find ourselves searching for our beloved and feeling quote unquote incomplete without him or her is because that's exactly how God intended marriage to be. We don't feel complete when we are not in the arms of our spouses. And this is to be expected if the marriage relationship is, as God intended it to be, a one flesh unit. That is what marriage is, Ephesians 5.31. Paul says, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast, cling. That's the same concept, the same idea that we see the Shulamite, the same verb that we see her using. I got up, I saw him, I found him, and I clung to him. This is what a man should do. He should leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and the wife should leave her father and mother and cling to her husband and the two shall become one flesh but. It is also crucially important to remember that God's design in marriage, listen, was never, nor is it an end in itself. You see, marriage, the problem that pagans run into is that all they can conceive of because of their spiritual deadness is marriage in a vacuum, marriage for marriage sake. They do not see. The profound mystery that Paul tells us in the very next verse, Ephesians 5, 32, that the marriage is meant to refer and point to and display the love between Christ and his church. And at once, beloved, when we realize that, when we realize that as a husband, I am, in some sense, analogically speaking, Christ to the church in how I love my wife and care for her and how I am compassionate with her and even how, if I have children, I am communicating gospel principles to my children in how I speak to my wife it gives you a radically different perspective on how you love your wife. And not only that, but wives on the other side of the ledger, if I could put it that way. If you think and realize and grasp that you in that analogy are Christ to the church, and you are teaching your children gospel principles and how the church is to submit to her covenant head, that is a very weighty thing. And it radically transforms the motivations that drive us in the marriage relationship. It's with this very thought in mind. that the marriage is a model of the love between Christ and the church that I want to take us to the second horizon, and by doing that, I want you to turn very quickly to Psalm 63. Because there's something fascinating here that I want you to see, and I want you to make a connection between the Shulamite on her bed at night, longing for her beloved, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, King David, doing the same, but it is not for his wife. It is for the lover of his soul. Psalm 63, and we read this in the response of reading this morning. Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory, because your steadfast love is better than life. My lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. Look at verse six. when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night. For you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me." Look at the parallel here. The Shulamite longing for her beloved on her bed at night and wanting to rise up and find him. And David longing for the lover of his soul, Yahweh, the God of Israel, and wanting to cling to him in the same way. Do you not see in the genius of scripture, in the genius and ingenuity of the Holy Spirit, how God is giving for us, beloved, a picture of the love relationship between God and his people? And so as we come to the second horizon this morning, I would submit to you this, the search, the search that we have as Christians is marked, the search for God is marked for incompleteness in the heart. And we see this on the second horizon. I want to unpack for you this morning that in the same way that the Shulamite feels incomplete without her beloved, we should and oftentimes do feel incomplete without Christ, our covenant head. But there's even a sense, listen to me, there's even a sense in which even clean to Christ in this age, in broken vessels, in a broken world, in a church rent asunder by schism and heresy, that we still don't have the completeness that we long for. There is a completeness that is yet to come. There is a completeness that resides and is reserved in heaven waiting for us that we will not taste in this age. And so there is, as the title of the sermon suggests, A sufficient but incomplete satisfaction for the people of God as we strive after and cling to Christ. I want you to notice before I get into the meat of that this morning, the amazing analogies that we have in scripture of this searching, this searching, constant searching to find our beloved. It's interesting that in John chapter 20, Mary Magdalene, what is she doing? She's searching for Jesus, right? She's searching for Jesus in the garden at his first resurrection appearance to her. And like the Shulamite, Mary's search initially was unsuccessful too, or so she thought. She came across one who was a gardener, but it was really Jesus. And just like the Shulamite, coming to the watchman, have you found the one whom my soul loves? Couldn't find her. And yet just like the Shulamite, she too asked the whereabouts of where her lover was. and she loved in return. Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away. And like the Shulamite, when Mary realized that she had found Christ or that he had led her to find him, she clung to him. You remember that episode? Mary clung to Jesus. But not only that, I think in all of scripture, theologically, we can say this. Why is it? Why is it that we as Christians seek God? Are we the first seekers? Are we the first movers? Are we seeking God because it was in ourselves to seek God? No, no, no. Scriptures make it plain, 1 John 4, 19. We love because what? He first loved us. You see, God is the first mover. Our salvation is, as the theologians say, monergistic. The energy, the working, the activity of one. We would not seek God had he not made us alive inside. We were dead men and women walking spiritually, but he made us alive with Christ and all of the sudden there was within us a desire that was not there before. Even a moment ago it was not there, but then it was there and we could see Christ like we had never seen him before. We longed and yearned for Christ like we had never longed and yearned for Him before. And it's because God first sought us. And we must understand that in all of our seeking it is initiated by God Himself. But life in Christ is a sufficient but incomplete satisfaction. And the Shulamite search in verses one through four is really a vivid depiction of a lifelong experience that the Christian has. I do not mean by a lifelong experience that we're always seeking for God even though we don't find him. Well, we find God. It's not that we find God, it's that often we lose hold of God in our hearts. We lose hold of God with our minds. We lose hold of God in the paths that we tread. And what we need to do, like the Shulamite who has wandered away, is to come back. And so all of life, according to the Christian, is really depicted in this longing that the Shulamite has. And I was trying to think of how to explain this, and so I went to C.S. Lewis. I want to read you a few quotes from C.S. Lewis. I think he nails this concept of longing for something and getting it in some sense in this life, but still having that nagging feeling that I don't quite have it all. There's something, there's whispers from another world that keep calling to me. He says this in Mere Christianity. If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. Isn't that beautiful? Now let me read you a longer one. This is from The Weight of Glory, and I don't usually do this, but it's so good. And it's C.S. Lewis, so it's okay. This is what he says in The Weight of Glory. And speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you, the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like nostalgia and romanticism and adolescence. The secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent. We grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves. The secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it. And we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if it had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past, but all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it. What he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we put too much trust to them. It was not in them, it only came through them. And what came through them was longing. These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire. But if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself, they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Now what is C.S. Lewis describing here? Well, in our reform circles, we would call it the tension between the already and the not yet. The yearning for the not yet. The yearning that we have as Christians to have complete redemption. We often talk about redemption. We often talk about salvation. But what I always remind you of and remind myself of is right now we don't have complete redemption. Redemption comes, the full package comes when God resurrects our bodies and gives us all things new. This is why, this is why even the creation groans to be set free from its bondage to corruption and to obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. You want a proof text for a yearning for the already not yet? Then consider the hurricanes and the natural disasters that take place on our globe. That is the creation groaning for something more. There's something more that this now time has not given to us. And this is why even Christians groan inwardly, as Paul says, as we await eagerly our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. And this search in Song of Solomon, chapter three, one through four, is a vivid picture of the tension of the already not yet. But somebody will object, but we have Christ. Yes, we have Christ, but we have Christ in broken sinful bodies. We have Christ, yes, but we have Christ in a body that is constantly fighting between the old man and the new man, the flesh and the spirit. They're both pulling and warring within us. We have Christ, yes, but we have Christ in a world shot through with the devastating effects of the sin of the first Adam. We have Christ, yes, but we have Christ in a church. that by schisms is rent asunder and by heresies distress, a church that so desperately, so often wants to be like the world, and when Christ, her lover, is calling her to find her joy in greater and higher and eschatological bliss, she doesn't hear that voice. And the defect and the sufficiency is not Christ. The defect is the broken jars of clay, us, we, who are holding the treasure of Christ. So this eschatological tension, this tension is what we're sensing here. Jesus is absolutely sufficient for the soul, but on this side of heaven, the soul of the Christian insufficiently clings to the whole of Christ and must therefore await the time when all of Christ will be all of the believers for all eternity without interruption, corruption, or distraction, world without end, amen. And this passage shows us the tension between the already and the not yet. It shows us the yearning in the already for the not yet. Through faith, we have him, but through our remaining sin, he does not have all of us. And yet, there are times when he has more of us through our obedience, and we should not neglect that. Be careful, Christian, not, when you're struggling with sin, and when God doesn't seem near to you, just say, well, everybody's a sinner. That's not helpful. You know that there are times in your life, through obedience and submission to the Lord, that you do feel closer to the Lord, and I'm not saying it's because of your righteousness. I'm saying it's because you have a greater and clearer vision of the glory of God in your own heart and your own soul, and you delight in it. But you see that vision is clouded when sin creeps in and starts to rip apart and dismantle that holy, eschatological longing and desire for Jesus. In some seasons we feel as if nothing can tear us away from our love for Christ and vice versa. In other seasons we feel apathetic, we feel like He's not there. And on the one hand, the vicissitudes, the ups and downs of our feelings and emotions are not and never should be an indicator of our standing with Christ. Rather, Christ's person and work and our faith is the sole ground of our forensic justification and yet, Our emotions and experiences don't always feel that way, and we should be honest about it. So I want to show you in this text, very briefly, five components of this lifelong search, okay? They're very simple, I'm just gonna rattle them off, listen. Five components that explain this lifelong, ongoing, eschatological, tension-filled experience that the believer has to cling to Christ, and not just cling to him, but to hold on to him. Number one, that we seek Him. The Shulamite says, I sought Him. And all our longing and desire begins with a desire to seek Him, to want Him, to be close to Him. This is a longing for something more. And if you're here this morning as a confessing believer in Jesus Christ, it's because, among other things, God has placed within your heart, through the benefit of the new covenant, a longing for something more than this world has to offer. And so number one, I sought Him. Number two, I found Him. And that is the conversion experience, isn't it? We sought Him, but not only that, we found Him. But number three, I clung to Him. I sought Him, I found Him, I clung to Him. We are not the kind of Christians who see salvation as fire insurance. I got my fire insurance, so I'm good. No, we're the kinds of Christians that say, I'm saved and I want more of this God. Not that having more of this God gets me more saved, nobody even knows what that means. But it does mean this, the one who is truly saved, been radically transformed from the inside out, is one who seeks after God with all his or her heart. Yes, it will dissipate through seasons. Yes, it will be shot through with sin. But that driving motivation, that driving force is always there. I sought Him, I found Him, and I clung to Him. You see, Jesus is much more to me than popular religion. Jesus is much more to me than a curse word to be uttered at work. Jesus to me is life, breath, and meaning. Jesus to me is my very significance. That's what it means to cling to Jesus. It's such a beautiful term. I sought Him, I found Him, I clung to Him, and then number four, I would not let Him go. You say, isn't that the same as cling? No, we can cling. Cling to hold on for a season. Cling to pull out God as a spare tire when things get tough. But there is an overriding desire that the Christian has to not simply cling to him, but to cling to him and not let go. And I would submit to you that that is sanctification. Sanctification is the school of Christ where we learn not only to cling to him, but to not let go. And then finally, and I brought him into my mother's house. You know what that is, beloved? That is evangelism. When I get saved, it's not enough that I'm saved and I go along my way. I want to bring him to my family's house. I want to introduce Christ to my family, introduce Christ to my friends, introduce Christ to my neighbors. An evangelist was once asked, as he finished preaching a powerful sermon on Song of Songs, and gave a gospel call, somebody came up to him afterwards and said, how do you know that the people who respond to that call through repentance and faith are truly believers? He said, well, that's a difficult question, but I can say this, I can say this. The people who are truly saved are always marked by a desire to bring Christ into their mother's house. They always want to evangelize. That is an overriding desire and passion that they have. They want to tear down the obstacles that stand in their way and they want to evangelize and let people know about Christ. So listen, having established this tension between the already and the not yet, how can we keep grace? How can we keep our ears tuned to the whispers of another country? And how can we keep our eyes focused on what really matters rather than being led astray by counterfeit lovers? And how can we keep our love for Christ central and kindled above all else? Let me give you five ways, five ways to mitigate tension and exalt in the satisfaction of Christ that are based on these five components, okay? Very quickly, number one, you must find him. I sought Him, the Shulamite says, I sought Him and found Him. You may be here this morning and not understand what's going on, but maybe one of the reasons you as an unbeliever came here this morning is because your life is chaos. Your life is chaos, things are tumbling down, your world is falling apart. Well, let me tell you, number one, the fact that you're here this morning is not an accident. In fact, the more you get to know this group of people here, you'll find out we don't believe in things called accidents. We call them providential occurrences, okay? We believe that everything is for a purpose. And I would also encourage you to take this into consideration. The kind of God that you may be seeking and may not understand that you're seeking is the kind of God that in the midst of the chaos of nothing spoke and brought the order of everything. And he could do the same thing in your life. He could bring order to the chaos of your life, but you must first seek him and find him. Secondly, you must be more than an occasional Christian. You must be more than an occasional Christian. And I think that this is what is the heart of when the Shulamite says, I clung to him. I clung to him. See, an occasional Christian sees Jesus as a spare tire. You just pull him out when things get hard, and then that's it. But the Christian who feels the pool of eternity in his heart sees Jesus as the very air he breathes. Jesus is the sin qua non. He is the without which there is nothing else. Jesus is my life. Jesus is my song. Jesus is my deliverance. Jesus is my salvation. The true Christian can't but incorporate Jesus into every area of his or her life. The occasional Christian says, there's some areas, Jesus, where it's off limits. You don't get to come in here. It's sort of my area 51. But then the true Christian says there are no Area 51s, because Jesus, you are King and Lord of all things. So number one, you must seek him and find him. Number two, you must be more than an occasional Christian. And number three, you must let the eschaton, the new heavens and the new earth, pull you through the occasional silence and coldness of a dark providence. Let me say that again. You must let the new heavens and the new earth, the whispers from another country, pull you through the occasional silence and coldness of a dark providence. I think that when we listen to the Shulamite, when she says, I clung to him and would not let him go, that's this. Beloved, there are times in your life, some of our brethren in this congregation are going through this right now. There are times in your life when the unthinkable happens. There are times in your life when death comes to your doorstep. There are times in your life when cancer rattles your body and takes your joy and takes your health. There are times in your life when the unthinkable happens, and we call this, in our circles, a dark providence. And in fact, our Baptist forefathers have a wonderful paragraph explaining this in the 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter five, paragraph five. Let me read it to you. Framers say, the perfectly wise, righteous, and gracious God often allows his own children, for a time, to experience a variety of temptations and the sinfulness of their own hearts. He does this to chastise them for their former sins or to make them aware of the hidden strength of the corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts so that they may be humbled. He also does this to lead them to a closer and more constant dependence on him to sustain them, to make them more cautious about all future circumstances that may lead to sin and for other just and holy purposes. So whatever happens to any of His elect happens by His appointment for His glory and for their good. Now what happens often in these dark providences, beloved, and I've seen it a thousand times, is that we are pulled away by the world, the flesh, and the devil by the things that God is doing that we don't understand. I don't understand why God would take a beloved. I don't understand why the Lord would cripple me with this disease. I don't understand why I could lose everything. Why and what is God doing? But you see, it is the whispers from another country that allow us through the work of the Spirit to cling even when we do not see the smile of God. Because behind every frowning providence, God hides a smiling face. And we need to remember that. God is good, even when we don't see that he's good. A fourth thing is this. You must fight against the tendency to be a neglectful Christian. Again, I clung to him and would not let him go. I clung to him and would not let him go. Beloved, Christ is not physically with us, you know this. He's ascended at the right hand of the Father. But the closest, listen, the closest approximation of Christ and his benefits are realized in the corporate assembly of God's people. When we gather together and we hear Christ speaking through the ministry of the word, when we gather together and we taste the powers of the age to come through the sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, beloved, those are things that no earthly institution, no YouTube video, no work Bible study can substitute for. You must come to the means of grace week in and week out. And the problem is that we as Christians sometimes get neglectful. But listen, God has attached promises of goodness and kindness and comfort, loving, kindness, and certainty to the means of grace, word, sacrament, and prayer. He's attached promise, he's attached benefits to them such that the taking of the means of grace is the experiencing of the promises that he has given us in the beloved. So we must not be neglectful Christians. We must be those who cling to Him, to the means that He has given, and not let go. But fifth and finally, fifth and finally, you must not be ashamed of Christ and His soul satisfying gospel. You must not be ashamed of Christ and His soul satisfying gospel. This is what the Shulamite means when she says, I brought Him into my mother's house. You must let the message of the gospel be let loose from your lips. What does Paul say? I'm not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. You know, we as a people, we share about everything, don't we? If you're on social media, you share all kinds of things. You share news articles, you share Studies about essential oils. You share studies about COVID. You share all kinds of things, and you're not ashamed to do so. But having found Christ, I can't help but share Him. I can't help but share Him, not simply on social media, but in the flesh and blood relationships that I have throughout the day. I must share Christ. I must bring Him in to my mother's house. And so I leave you this morning, dear congregation, with verse five, and it is very important. And this applies to all of us, whether you are a believer or an unbeliever. The Shulamite gives a solemn adoration in verse five. That means she is pressing upon the daughters of Jerusalem a solemn oath. She's saying, pay heed to this, pay attention to this, and what is it? 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. What does that mean? You go through this life, whether you're a believer or unbeliever, and all kinds of lovers are jockeying for position to hawk their wares to you. All kinds, it could be power, it could be status, it could be money, it could be sex, it could be drugs, it could be lust, it could be passion, it could be whatever, but all of these are lovers that do not satisfy. All of these are like Madame Folly in Proverbs who's standing out in the streets and even going in a prowling manner at night To take advantage of the naive man, they are like Madame Folly who makes all these promises but they are broken promises and they do not fulfill. And so the Shulamite says, I put you under solemn oath. Love is as strong as death, jealousy as fierce as the grave, it's flashes or flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. If you're going to give your love to anything or anyone, give it to Jesus Christ. Give your devotion to Jesus Christ, give your commitment to Jesus Christ. And I think of you young people, you young people who are not yet married, you young people who have your whole life before you, trust me. Go to any saint in this place, any saint in this place who has sought all of their life to be under this oath and to flesh out this oath and has seen Christ as better than anything else. You go to them and you ask them the question, do you regret it? Do you regret making Christ your sole love? And they will say no. They will say no because they love Christ and Christ loves them. They will say no because Christ has been good to them. They will say no because Christ can and will and has given them things that these disparate lovers cannot give. So give your love to Christ. Turn from your sins. Turn from going after dumb and deaf and mute idols and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Let us pray. Father God, we thank you that you had given us this picture of this lifelong yearning for the eschaton, and I pray, Father, that we would seek Christ while he may be found. I pray that we would seek Christ while our hearts are leaning in that direction, Father. For this is the day of salvation today. and if we hear his voice, we should not close our ears to it. We thank you for the ministry of your word, and now, Father, help us to respond with hearts of gratitude, we pray, in Christ's name, amen. Let us stand this morning.