We're going to be considering verses 8-16 this morning. Song of Solomon, chapter 4, verses 8-16. If you're visiting this morning, we've been working through a series called A Portrait of Love on Two Horizons. It is an exposition of the Song of Solomon. And by two horizons, we simply mean that on the first horizon or in the original context, this is a breviary of poetry of love between a man and his wife. But on the second horizon, through the lens of the construct of marriage, which is instituted by God, the Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter five, that marriage between a man and a woman is a picture of the love between Christ and his church. And so we're gonna consider this text this morning primarily under that second horizon. So I hope you found the text with me this morning, Song of Solomon chapter four. Let's give our attention to the reading of God's infallible and inerrant word. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, come with me from Lebanon. Depart from the peak of Amana, from the peak of Sinir and Hermon, from the den of lions, from the mountains of leopards. You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride. You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride. How much better is your love than wine and the fragrance of your oils than any spice. Your lips drip nectar, my bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choices fruits, henna with nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon. with all trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes, with all choice spices, a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind. Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits. As far as the reading of God's word, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our Lord stands forever, and we are thankful for it. Would you bow your heads with me this morning as we ask for help in the ministry of the word? Father God, you in this section of scripture have described your people as a garden lot. And Father, we wish this morning to be a garden lot. We wish this morning to have no other lover but Jesus. that He would be our beloved, that He would be our bridegroom, that Father, any competing lover in our life, and we confess to you that we have many, would be left, that that relationship would be ended, that we would dash our idols at the foot of the cross and bow in reverence to the God-man, Jesus Christ, O Father, would you work upon our hearts this morning through the preaching of your word. Would you help your herald to proclaim in a very free manner the gospel of grace through these wonderful and potent images we pray. In Christ's name, amen. Well, on the first horizon, it's very clear that Solomon is describing his bride to be, and he describes her as a garden locked. Now, just to put it out there at the very beginning, what he is getting at is that she is a virgin. She is chased. Boys and girls, I want you to think of a garden, and some of you have a picture of that that you're coloring on this morning, and you see in that garden an array of different flowers that you're going to put colors to. You're gonna make it very beautiful, beautiful flowers, and many different kinds of flowers, and they are glorious, and in the background, you see a wall, and you see a gate, And that garden is meant to be sectioned off. On the other side of those walls are thorns and briars. On the other side of those walls are thistles and burrs. They are the wilderness of sin. But on the inside, there is this beautiful, dare we say, Edenic picture of purity. There is this picture of an untouched and an unblemished beauty. A beauty that has not been deformed or marred by the fall, but a beauty that exhibits the glory and honor of God and the goodness and satisfaction of His people. And that is how Solomon describes his bride. And I wanna go directly from the first horizon to the second horizon this morning, and for the most part, I wanna stay there, and I want us to see that we, as the bride of Christ, are a garden lot. We are a garden barred. There is the world on the outside, and there is we, the new creation that Jesus Christ has made by sending his spirit upon the church, and he has made us, beloved, a garden locked. We are, as Paul even says in 2 Corinthians 11.3, virgins betrothed to Christ. He says, I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. Now, we've already answered the question, how is it? How is it that God in Christ could speak of us this way? And we saw last week that when Jesus described the beauty of the church, he said, you are beautiful, my bride, there is no flaw in you. He was speaking of the imputed righteousness that he gives to his people as he takes upon their sin. And so as God looks at us, he looks at us in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's how he could call us perfect. That's how he could consider us a virgin. And John in Revelation takes up this same motif of, if I could put it this way, theological virginity. Forensically declared virginity. And he applies it in that super clear passage about the 144,000 in Revelation chapter 14. And he says in four and five, it is these who have not defiled themselves with women for they are virgins. It is these who follow the lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as a first fruits for God and the lamb. And in their mouth, no lie was found for they are blameless. Who is he describing? Well, contrary to your your local Jehovah's Witness friend who comes to your door and says that, well, that's a literal 144,000, and it's the people who are faithful and knock on enough doors and get enough converts. No, beloved, the book of Revelation, I've just put my cards on the table here. I take a symbolic, eclectic approach to it, idyllic approach to it. 144,000 is a number that is describing the whole church. You say, well, how does it get there? How do you get to 144,000? Well, it's very simple, really. In the old covenant, there were how many tribes? Twelve. Twelve thousand from each tribe. I'm not very good at math, but I got my calculator out and 12 by 12,000 is 144,000. You say, but what does that have to do with the church? Well, how many apostles are there? Twelve. The naysayer said 13. I'll deal with you later. 12, all right? So 12 apostles, 12 tribes. How many elders in Revelation 4 and 5? 24, which means that the covenant, the covenant people are united. It's the same people, okay? In so many words. It's the people of God, and what I love is that A, they're described as virgins, B, they're described as blameless, and I love this, I love this, C, they're described as those who follow Jesus wherever he goes. Did you catch the Belgic Confession this morning? Did you catch in there that we should join ourselves to the church even if the civil authorities tell us not to? If you did that during these last two years in defiance of Caesar, you know what you were doing? You were following Jesus wherever he goes. You were worshiping him in spirit and truth because the church is not the church unless she is gathered. The church is not the church unless she is gathered. And so you follow Jesus wherever he goes. And this morning, beloved, I wanna encourage you and exhort you and spur you on with God's help, through the help of the Spirit, to follow Jesus wherever he goes. And where he has brought us is into a garden, and he has locked that garden. What he means by that, in describing the church as a garden locked, is that you are chased, Grace Covenant Church. You are pure, you strive, listen, you strive to be what God has declared you to be in Jesus Christ. This is what we talked about last week in our home groups, right? Be who you are. Strike symmetry between your forensic declaration of righteous and who you actually are by the leading of the spirit and becoming more and more conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Be who you are. So we wanna be a garden lock. We wanna be separate from the world. It is not saying in this metaphor that you never come into contact with a non-believer. That's not what it's saying. To win unbelievers and to bring them into the garden lock, you have to interact with unbelievers. So don't take the metaphor too far. What it is saying is this. We are to be a garden lock in that we are to be chased in our conduct and in our confession, both individually and corporately. By the way, it's not an individual task. It is a communal task. We hold one another's arms and legs up. We stand shoulder to shoulder. We're lockstep and looking over the stormy banks of Jordan into the eschatological age and saying, brother, sister, I know you're tired. I know you're exhausted, but there it is, and we will get there. It's a communal project. And as we bring people into this garden locked, we must, we must look like a garden locked to the world. We must look chaste. We must be theologically pure as virgins. And that connects even to our theological purity. You know, as Reformed Baptists and those in the Reformed world in general, we're not trying to be theological pinheads when we talk about precision and doctrine. That's not what we're trying to do. Precision and doctrine comes out of love for a savior. Precision and doctrine follows the dictum of our Lord that says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Well, to know what his commandments are, we've got to ask theological questions and answer them. To know who Jesus is, we have to ask theological questions and answer them. To know what proper worship is, we have to ask theological questions and answer them. And so here we have in Song of Solomon 4, 8 through 16, a beautiful poetic description of the church that is rich with biblical theological motifs and nuances. And here's the purpose of this passage, listen. The purpose of this passage, beloved, is to remind us of who we are in the world, okay? To renew our courage to follow Christ wherever he goes, even if that means going to death. and to not be led astray by the world, but to exhibit our theological virginity in Christ as those who through faith have been betrothed to him. And I wanna consider four ways, five ways in which we do that this morning, okay? Five ways in which we embody and exhibit and exude the picture of a garden locked to the world. First off, number one, I want you to consider that this garden motif invokes images of paradise lost and restored. I want you to notice in verse 13, the ESV version says, your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates. Now, I don't want to get too involved here, but suffice it to say, I don't think orchard is the best translation, and the best translation would be something like paradise. In fact, this doesn't often happen in Hebrew, but in Hebrew, the word is an old Persian loan word from old Persian, and from Babylon, and the word is paradise. What word do you hear in paradise? Paradise. That's exactly right. And the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, they just translated that Hebrew word with what's called a transliteration. which is they just brought it over into the Greek. So the Greek word for it is paradesos. So they just took the same word. This is what we do with the word baptize. We don't translate the word baptize from the Greek, we just transliterate it. We say baptize from baptizo. And that's what he's doing here, a paradise of pomegranates. Now here's what I want you to understand. The garden motif in the Bible is a very rich and intentional motif. What do I mean by that? God presents His people, His influence, and His space as a garden. So I want you to think for a moment with me of the Garden of Eden at the very beginning. In the Garden of Eden, God and man stood in unfettered and unhindered fellowship. They walked together, they talked together. They were unhindered by sin. Adam was righteous, but he was not confirmed in righteousness. He needed to pass the probation period by being obedient. And as you know, he didn't, and he was cast out. And when you move forward in redemptive history, there's a few fascinating things to consider. Number one, when the tabernacle was put together under Moses, it's very interesting that many of the ways in which they decorated the temple was reminiscent of a garden. And when you get into the temple, okay, under Solomon, as he is constructing the temple and giving the decorum that goes along with it, which has been given to him by God, it's very interesting that on the inside walls of the temple, there are palm trees and other flora and fauna. Well, that's interesting. Not only that, but there are pomegranates around the two columns that are in the front of the holy place. It is Jacob and Boaz, those two columns. There's a circle of pomegranates, and not only that, but around the hymn of the high priest you have sown pomegranates. And so in the tabernacle, in the temple, there is this idea that where God and man meet in that holy place, it is a garden. And the idea was, That that garden, which started in a small location, through the influence of God's people in a sinful world, was meant to expand and fill the whole cosmos. The whole cosmos was meant to be a garden. It's also interesting to note in verse 11 the occurrence of milk and honey. Milk and honey are terms that are used to describe what? The promised land. A land flowing with milk and honey. You see, what Solomon is doing here, even though he did not totally recognize it, is he's describing the promises and the people that go along with it, or the people and the promises that go along with it, that where that people is, there will ultimately be a paradisiacal place that covers all the heavens and all the earth. So unfortunately, though this is the mission of the church to expand the garden, The church tends to merge with the world and its identity and message become indistinguishable from the world. And this is not the way it's supposed to be. So I want you to notice first that there is this garden motif that is just oozing throughout this passage. But I want you to notice secondly, as we descend into details here, I want you to come to verse eight. And I want you to look at this beautiful verse. Solomon says, come with me from Lebanon, my bride. Come with me from Lebanon. Depart from the peak of Amana, from the peak of Seneir and Hermon, from the den of lions, and from the mountain of leopards. I want you to consider, secondly, images of paradise restored remind us that we need not fear. Now I'm gonna need to unpack this. I want you to notice first in this verse that it's speaking of Lebanon. And you need to understand that while later after Solomon, Lebanon became a hostile enemy to Israel and to Judah. At the time of Solomon in this kind of glory age of peace, Lebanon was in harmony with Solomon. In fact, Solomon married one of the princesses of Lebanon to form a peace treaty. So Lebanon was not seen in a negative way here. Lebanon is seen with a positive connotation. In fact, many of the trees that were used to make the temple came from the northern section that was close to Lebanon, the cypresses. So Lebanon here is not a positive thing, excuse me, not a negative thing, it's a positive thing. In fact, he mentions it later in the passage, and he's not mentioning it, again, as a negative thing, he's mentioning it as a positive thing. Now why am I saying that? Well, the second thing I want you to consider is this. Lebanon was considered to be a place of high elevation. So you have this idea of garden, you have this idea of Lebanon, you have this idea of high elevation, and then we see Christ calling his bride to come with him from Lebanon, where there is what? Well, these peaks, but what's next? There's a den of lions and a mountain of leopards. Now, here's the question. Is that den of lions and mountain of leopards, is that a negative thing? Is this danger that he is calling her away from? I would submit no, that's not what's going on here. In fact, I would submit to you that in the biblical theological trajectory of paradise that was lost, Solomon is describing his bride in the midst of a paradise restored Lebanon where She can peek over all the mountains, first off, and look at all the territory that Solomon, her king, owns. He is the king of it all. And on the second horizon, Jesus takes us to that peak and he says, look over all the kingdoms, they are mine. But secondly, I think this is confirmed by the idea that the lions and the leopards are not hostile here. They sit together in harmony, not only with each other, but with the bride. And what does this hearken our minds to? It hearkens our minds to the new heavens and the new earth, where in Isaiah 11, six through nine, we read this. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw. like the ox. What is this getting at? What this is getting at is what the condition was in Eden, where all of humanity and the animal kingdom were in harmony before sin entered the world. That is what it will be in the restored paradisiacal state. And Solomon is saying, you can see that now, wife. Look at all of this. This is what I am going to give to you. This is mine. Even now I have authority over it all. And here is just a glimpse of the eschatological state. So these peaks are calling us to look at it, to believe it, and then to come down from there into the world and live like we believe it. Now what does that mean? Listen to me. What was lost in the garden with the first Adam is restored in the garden of the empty tomb by the second Adam. You see, when the second Adam came, beloved, isn't it interesting that he began his passion, as it were, in the garden of Gethsemane? The first Adam fell in a garden and the second Adam comes to do war with the world, the flesh and the devil in a garden. He's on his knees and he's praying and he's sweating drops of blood in a garden. The garden that was lost will be the garden that he will restore. And from that garden he goes to Calvary and he dies on a cross and then he is placed in a tomb. But then we see that blessed image of the stone being rolled away from the empty mouth of a tomb, and in that garden tomb we see our future. We see paradise lost as paradise restored in the empty tomb of Jesus Christ. Now let me tell you why that's so incredibly important and relevant to you right now. Because we have been promised by God an eternal state free of fear. God has promised us that he will get us there. And listen to me. God has promised to us that in this life, nothing will separate you from the God who gives you that promise. Nothing will separate you from Christ who conquers and establishes that promise. In short, we have good reason not to fear. And I want you to consider Christ's current rule over his enemies right now is meant to keep us from fretting and meant to keep us from anxiety in this world. It's meant to keep us from fear regardless of what happens. Regardless of what happens. Why? The church will prevail, beloved. The church will ultimately win. There may be laws that threaten our religious liberties. There will be wins and losses until we arrive. But we need not look at what is staring right into our eyeballs at the moment. The threat of government in the last two years. The potential threat of the government In coming months and years, the threat to our religious liberties, the changing cultural tides which make it harder and harder for Christians to live out their Christian worldview. All of these things, listen to me, are vapors that will pass. You know, three, four years ago when critical race theory hit the scene and started affecting the culture and then it crept into the church, for a moment I'm like, oh, this is not good. Is the church gonna be able to handle this? And you know what I went, I just went right back to Matthew 16. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Is this time in history some asterisk, exception to that? No. And you know what's fascinating, beloved? You know what's fascinating? Four or five years on, you know what? Even pagans are saying, wait a minute. This critical race theory, intersectionality, this is garbage. Even pagans are saying that. And guess what? People are waking up and they're starting to realize this is not a good idea, number one. Number two, it's not good for society. And then people in the church are starting to get the message, which it should be the other way around, but here we are, and they're getting the message and they're saying, yeah, wait a minute, this doesn't really square with the Bible. And what are we seeing, beloved? The very thing that the Psalms remind us of all the time, the Lord raises up kings and tears down kings. He raises up kingdoms and he tears down kingdoms. He raises up infectious ideological ideas that harm or potentially harm the church, and then he takes them away. But through it all, the church will prevail. And at no moment is your promise that God has given to you of the new heavens and the new earth ever threatened. It's never threatened. The angel encamps around those who fear the Lord and they need not fear. So beloved, why do we fear? Why do we fear when Jesus says, do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Do we believe that? Because I wonder sometimes if we do. I wonder sometimes if I do. Don't get me wrong, there are some very serious threats that some of you are facing right now. Some of you are between a rock and a hard place on whether you're gonna get the vaccine and deal with the effects that may come of that or not get the vaccine and potentially give up your livelihood. And I in no way, shape or form want to denigrate that as if it is insignificant. You've got to make that decision and the Lord will give you wisdom. But here's the thing. If you die on this side from the vaccine, or you die on this side from starvation, which you won't, okay? Will the Lord have proved to be unfaithful? Should you fear that, or should you fear the one who could throw both body and soul into hell? That's the one you should fear, and that's the one that you're good with because of Jesus Christ. So come what may, you win. You win. So we should not be like the sniveling, cowardice, fearful Israel. when the Lord told them to go into the land and take that. Remember that? To go into the land, I've given you a promise. I've given you a promise. Here's the promise, that you're gonna take conquests of the land. But now, go conquer the land. It's one of those things where I promised that you're gonna do it, now you need to go do it. Okay, now here's a promise that God gave them, and then he said, now act on this promise, right? And what did the majority of the Israelites say, boys and girls? They said, no, there's giants in the land. They're really big. They might squish me. They might eat me. I mean, I've heard stories of these giants, and I mean, there's just no way. There's no way we're gonna be able to do it. And sometimes when I think about Israel's posture toward the Canaanites and the promise of God, I kind of wonder if we sound like that sometimes. When we think about the government, when we think about what may happen, and make no mistake, I have no desire to be an ostrich who sticks his head in the sand, if that idiom is even really true, and acts like nothing is going on. I see the writing on the wall. I see where things are going. I understand that. But am I fearful of that? Am I fearful of what mortal man will do to me? Because the psalmist says, what can mortal man do to me? Given the promise that I have in the new heavens and the new earth, what can mortal man do to me? You know, I think Caleb and Joshua give us the answer. I'm gonna give you my rendering of what their answer was, but it was something like this. Oh, the giants are big? The bigger they are, the harder they fall. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. You know what? Caesar, beloved, has reared his ugly head all throughout redemptive history. Caesar has done worse things to the people of God than are happening to us now, much worse. And the people of God were not shaken, why? Because they had the promise of eternal life. Because they had the promise of the empty tomb. Because they had the promise of the resurrection. You say, well, Josh, this is different, you know? I mean, good grief, this is political stuff. Okay, then I'll give you a war psalm of Israel. Psalm chapter two. What happens? The nations are raging. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. Beloved, you could insert any Caesar in any time who is persecuting the people of God or two degrees away from persecuting the people of God, and that's the language that could be used of him. Let us burst their bonds apart. Let us put them in shackles. Let us take them into captivity. Let us oppress them. Let us put them under our thumb. Here's a political power. Now you insert your fearful political power, and then you listen to Jesus's words. The psalmist says, he who sits in the heavens laughs. He laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. That's what the Lord thinks of political leaders who want to harm his bride. He laughs at them, and the Proverbs 31 woman, she laughs at the time to come, and the church should be like Caleb and Joshua. The church should be like the Proverbs 31 woman. The church should be a garden locked with a promise in the middle and say, what can mortal man do to me? I have the eschaton. I have all things. I will not fear. Do you fear this morning, Grace Covenant Church? Do you fear of what may befall you? I encourage you and invite you to come to the peaks of Lebanon and look over all that Christ promises us and invite you not to fear. If the Lord has determined that you will lose your job, will he not provide you another one? Has the Lord not provided so far? Where is our faith, beloved? Where is our faith? The Lord will provide for his people. What is the worst that man can do to us? So now, thirdly, I want you to consider, and this is gonna seem like a really, really abrupt change in topics, but it's here in the text, I believe. I want you to consider, thirdly, that a chaste church will only marry in the Lord. Say, where are you getting that? I want you to notice in our text the language of sister. He calls his bride, my sister, my bride. My sister, my bride. Now, you need to understand in the original context, he of course is not talking about some incestuous relationship here. Solomon is following a pattern that was used by Egyptian love songs in that time. It was very common, it was in the water, literarily speaking. that two lovers would describe their love for one another as having such a close affinity, such a unity of mind, such a closeness of spirit, that it's as if they were part of the same family. He would refer to his beloved as my sister, not a literal sister. And you know what's fascinating is that in 1 Corinthians chapter nine, verse five, when Paul is defending his apostleship, he says something very interesting. He says, do we not have the right to take along a believing wife? Just says Peter, he takes along his believing wife. But the English translation's misleading there. It doesn't say believing wife in the text. It says sister wife, that's what it says. It says sister wife. What does he mean by that? He's not talking about physical blood types. He's talking about a similar faith. that these two, the most precious and intimate thing that they have in common is not found in the marriage bed. That is intimate, that is beautiful, that is lovely, and it is to be chased only for each other. But the most intimate thing that they have, beloved, is their faith in Jesus Christ. And this is why, as Christians, this is not an optional thing. We are not allowed to marry except for in the Lord. We are only to marry a Christian man or a Christian woman. Now, I want to target you young people who are unmarried at this point, and maybe even those of you who are single but plan on being married, have been married, single. I just want to reiterate this. This is not a matter of Christian liberty. People will often talk about missionary dating. Okay, I'm gonna date an unbeliever in the hopes of marrying that person. Okay, well, number one, that's a bad idea, wisdom speaking. In the category of wisdom, it's very likely that he or she will influence you more than you will influence them. But here's the other thing, let's say you go through the whole dating phase and you get to the altar and he's still not a believer. Beloved, you don't have the right as a Christian to marry that person. Now some will say, well I know, you can give me as many anecdotal cases as you want, that's fine. We don't come to truth by counting noses. We don't come to truth by counting, well I know my cousin Johnny, I don't care, it doesn't matter. If somebody married outside of the Lord, it was wrong for them to do that. Now, here's the interesting thing about marriage, once it's done, it's done. And now that marriage is holy in the sight of the Lord. That's how it works. We can't tell people to divorce them, they've married. But what I want to submit to you who are considering marriage is this. Listen, it's not enough for somebody to say, I'm a Christian. You wanna know why? I'm gonna tell you why. If it was somebody who said I'm a Christian in China, marry him. You wanna know why? You wanna know why? Because in China, it costs you everything to be a Christian. It costs you everything. You could lose your life, you could lose your job. There's teeth to being a Christian, there's consequences to being a Christian. Say whatever you will about the state of current Christianity in our country, but you must conclude this, there's still many socio-political benefits to being a Christian. You could say you're a Christian and you get a lot of good things coming your way. I mean, you know, this is petty stuff, but you join a church, you know, and you have kids, you get a meal train coming your way. That's great. Free food. It's awesome. You get people to pray for you, whether or not you actually believe that those prayers are ascending to heaven. You get people to help you. I mean, there's a lot of benefits to it. But you see, not everybody who names the name of Christ is necessarily a Christian. You must see it in their life. But here's the second thing I would say. Listen to me. When Paul says that you must be equally yoked, or he said it the other way, do not be unequally yoked. I want you to consider that a yoke that is put over two oxen, the idea is that yoke will keep two more or less equally powerful oxen to pull the cart. The idea that you would get one beefy, you know, yoked oxen and then an emaciated, you know, two-day-old oxen together, that's not the idea. That's not going to work. There's gonna be disparity between the pulling power, the oxen power, as it were. So when Paul says you must be equally yoked, sometimes I hear Christians, well-meaning Christians say, well, at a minimum, he's a Christian. Christian, that's not enough. It's not enough. And if you are a female, if you are a sister, let me say this, not only must that man be a Christian, listen to me, he must love Jesus more than he loves you. He must love Jesus more than he loves his career, more than he loves his car, more than he loves his house, and he must love Jesus so much that he is bent on washing you in the water of the word, and when children come along, and washing them in the water of the word, and leading them to the family altar and saying, man, when Sunday comes around, we're there with the people of God. Beloved, you must find that man. You must find that man because if you don't, listen to me, whatever quality he may have, he's good looking, he's yoked, he's rich, he's got a cool car, I like the way he speaks. Listen, everybody gets old, everybody gets flabby, anything can happen to money. All those things can change in a moment. But if you are married to an elect remnant of the people of God, God will preserve his faith forever. And that faith will pass on to you and your children and your children's children. And beloved, when you get into heaven, all that you care about is that you got your family to heaven. And you will not have that. You will not have that if you marry an unbeliever. So consider that A chaste church will only marry in the Lord. And now, fourthly, I want you to consider this. The church will influence the world with a distinct message and a chaste testimony through the operation of the Spirit. I want you to notice Verses 12 through 16, he says, a garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed. And then he goes on to describe the fruits and the spices and the aromas that will come from this fruit and these spices and these flora and fauna. And here's what I want you to see. If you picture the church as an enclosed, locked garden, It is, number one, producing something. It is growing something. One of the things that we as Grace Covenant Church should be doing is growing the next generation of Christians. We should be bringing them up. We should be showing them the way. And that does not happen in a vacuum. You must disciple, you must teach, you must train. You must bring your children and bring your family to the fount of the means of grace on the Lord's day, on the market day of the soul. It does not happen in a vacuum. Listen to me, especially you younger families. Do not be surprised. I say this with reverence and fear in my heart. Do not be surprised if you didn't think it was a big deal to bring your kids to church. Maybe once in a while, maybe once on Sunday, but we've got other things to do for Pete's sake. This is the day for our family. So we're going to go to the lake and we're going to do this. Don't be surprised if in neglecting the means of grace, your children grow up and they just go one step further and say, I'm getting rid of the whole shooting match. I hope and pray that that doesn't happen to any of you. But you know what? I would be remiss as a minister of the gospel if I did not lovingly warn you that that's what will happen if we do not pay diligent attention to the means of grace. You see, we are training and conditioning our children on how to think about the kingdom of God. And when we say things like, seek first the kingdom of God, we say that, we preach it, we teach it, we draw diagrams on the whiteboard, and we're like, okay, my kid's got it, I'm a good teacher. And then we don't do it. They say in their own kid terms, when's the disparity? What's going on with this imbalance? This is the language and the actions of hypocrisy. And you know what, say what you will about kids, say what you will about childhood development, but kids are no fools. They smell and see hypocrisy when they see it. We must be producing something. It must be in this garden lock. We must see the fragrances and the aromas that come out of the church, word, sacrament, and prayer, fellowship, accountability, church discipline, all these things as pleasing aromas that make us happy and content. And then, secondly, I love this, verse 16. Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind, blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. What is this a picture of, beloved? I think that this is the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, calling the spirit, which by the way, oftentimes in the Bible, wind, in Hebrew, ruach, is used, sometimes in a double meaning kind of way, to refer both to wind but also spirit. But Jesus Christ is sending his spirit from heaven to blow upon the garden lot so that all those aromas and fragrances and sweet smells that come out of our life together as a church waft out of the garden, over the walls, into the world. and become an aroma, an evangelistic aroma of the world to the world of Jesus Christ. That's what we're supposed to be. That's what we're supposed to do. This means that we will be productive. It means that the Spirit will blow upon us and out into the world, but if we are not careful, listen to me, if we are not careful, the opposite will happen. What is that, what is the opposite? Well, you see, there's also a spirit of our age, is there not, the zeitgeist? The spirit of our age is different in every age. That's why I always say, you know, he who marries the spirit of the age will soon become a widower, right? Because it's gonna change in 40 years. It's gonna change in 20 years. But the spirit of the age can have the same effect. It could blow from outside into the church, and it can have the effect of pesticides and plant killers that kill the church. Now, it ultimately will not. But if we are not careful, the spirit of the world will blow upon the garden locked. We cannot let that happen, beloved. We need to allow the spirit of God from heaven to blow upon us into the world and send out the fragrant aroma of the gospel. And when I look at this picture, you know what I see? You know what I think of? I think of, number one, the spirit works however he wants. That's why we can't manufacture revivals, right? We don't believe that we can. That's why when you drive by the churches, they have the marquee, revival this weekend. It's like, oh, cool, you've got the Google Calendar of the Holy Spirit. You know he's showing up on that day. That's awesome. No, we don't. We can't manufacture revival, right? But I love, it's Jesus Christ who is summoning the Spirit to blow upon the church. And I think of Jesus in John chapter three, he's all, the Spirit blows wherever it wants. You don't know what it's doing. He doesn't mean that he doesn't know what it's doing. Jesus is the one who sends the Spirit. We're part of the Western church, not the Eastern, right? We believe the Father and the Son, the Spirit proceeds from both. But I wanna say this about revival, listen to me. Listen to me. We want God to pour out his spirit on this country. Do we not? Do you want God to pour out his spirit on this country? Do you want God to pour out his spirit on the world? Will you listen to me? You study revivals in this country and in other countries, and here is the common theme that you will see. Revival never happens in a vacuum. Revival never happens but when the church is zealously and diligently given over to prayer. when the church gathers together and cries out with ardent cries to the Lord of the harvest saying, Father, we confess to you that we are incapable as broken vessels of taking this message in a worthy way, so will you send your spirit from heaven? Will you cause the hearts of men to be regenerated? Will you cause the hearts of men in all of this place to be revived and to open their eyes once again to see the truth of Jesus Christ? Would you do that? then the Lord tends to send the Spirit and to enact revival. But when the church doesn't care, when the church is just like, well, if I get to prayer meeting, fine, but I've got other things to do. Don't expect revival. Don't expect revival. I'm Reformed, I'm Christian, I'm a rock-ribbed cessationist, but I want revival. I want revival. And I don't mind if in our prayer meetings we get a little emotional in our prayers about revival. I don't mind in our prayer meetings if we get a little emotional about our family members, who as we sang this morning, it's always hard for me to sing these words, see our family members sinking down. I hate that verse. I hate it, but I sing it. You wanna know why? Because we must be reminded of the terrors and the reality and the horrors of hell. for us to take the message of the gospel to save them from that hell. You see, evangelicalism has become so soft that we're even beginning in some quarters or have for some time to deny the doctrine of hell. Once you throw that off, you've given over the farm, you've given it up. If there is no hell, what are we doing? What are we doing? There is a hell. and it is outside, this garden locked, and we must cause the aromas of the church to waft out from this church and let the spirit use them to revive the people around us. So I come back to Christ. The reason why Christ began his passion in the garden of Gethsemane is because he came to reverse the effects of the fall from the first Adam, and the reason he walked out of a tomb and left the mouth of that tomb open in that garden is to remind us as a place marker, beloved, that he has already conquered. He has paid for the paradise lost and he is coming with the paradise restored when he returns again. And this morning, there may be some of you who despite the fact that you named the name of Christ, you know deep in your heart you want nothing to do with this garden. You just happen to show up this morning, maybe you're hungover. Maybe you committed adultery last night. You could care less. You're here because a friend brought you here. I pray that the law of God would have its terrifying effect on your heart. If you do not repent, you will go to hell. But if you look to that garden tomb, that open garden tomb, and you repent of your sins, turn from them, and agree with God that you are a miserable sinner before a thrice holy God, and you believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ, there is a wonderful promise that you will be saved, and you will be in that new paradise, that paradise restored with Christ. You can even be this moment, like that thief, who confessed his faith in Christ and stood up for Christ against the other blaspheming thief. And what did Jesus say to him? Today, you will be with me in paradise. Who knows, friend, if this is the last moment you have and then you pull right out of Salem and some big rig just jackknifes you and takes you home. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you'll be with him today in paradise. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you that you have given us this image of a garden locked. We pray that you would help us to be this garden locked, Father. We know that positionally we are, but we also know, Father, that we fall so short of this. Help your church this morning. Help Grace Covenant Church. Would you send your spirit from heaven and cause the aromas of our works and our deeds and the articulation of the gospel to waft over these walls into the world and to save a people through the person and work of Jesus Christ, we pray in Christ's name, amen. Let's stand for the glory of patria.