Immanuel Church Brentwood
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Immanuel Church Brentwood
Song Of Songs Part 3 - Separated… Then Reunited
Andrew Grey talks on the next part of Song of Songs 5v2 - 6v12.
This set of talks was given at Immanuel Church Brentwood’s weekend away at Ashburnham on 19th, 20th and 21st Sept 2025.
So our passage this morning, Song of Songs, chapter 5, verse 2, down to chapter 6, verse 12, which is a story of separation and reunion. So let's listen to the words of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01:I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound, my beloved is knocking.
SPEAKER_02:Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one. For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.
SPEAKER_01:I had put off my garment. How could I put it on? I had bathed my feet. How could I swill then? My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me. I rose to open to you, my beloved, and my hands dripped with mine. My fingers were picked with mark on the handles of the boat. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had child of God. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not. I called him, but he gave no answer. The watchmen find me as they went by to in the city. They beat me, they bruised me, they took away my veil of those watchmen of the walls. I enjoy you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my woman, that you tell him I am sick of the blood. My word is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among temperatures. His head is a fine soul, his locks are riny, like as a rain. His eyes are like dust beside fruits of water, bathed in milk, sitting beside a football of the water. His cheeks are like birds of spices, mines are sweet as a lips are less driven liquid mark. His arms are rose of gold set like jewels. His body is polished iron, decked with sapphires. His legs are colour set and bases of gold. His appearance is like leavened, choice as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, the daughters of jewels.
SPEAKER_00:Where has your beloved gone? Where has your beloved died?
SPEAKER_01:My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine. He grazes among the lilies.
SPEAKER_02:You are beautiful as Tears, my love, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners. Turn away your eyes from me, for they overwhelm me. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of ewes that have come up from the washing, all of them bear twins, not one among them has lost its young. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. There are sixty queens and eighty concubines and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only one of her mother, pure to her who bore her. The young women saw her and called her blessed, the queens and concubines also, and they praised her. Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?
SPEAKER_01:I went down to the nut orchard to look at the blossoms of the valley, to see whether the vines had budded, whether the pomegranates were in bloom. Before I was aware, my desire sent me among the chariots of my kinsmen, a prince.
SPEAKER_02:Well, thanks be to God for his word to us this morning. Song of Psalms, chapter 5, verse 2. I slept, but my heart was awake. So in our story, the bride, she is asleep, albeit her heart is at work. And what comes in the first part of this section, it's not real action. It's not like a historical account. It is a dream, it is vivid, it's strange, it's a bit nightmarish, in fact. And what the bride's dream depicts, sings to us of, is separation. It's what happens when fellowship is broken. So here is the scenario. Remember that the bride and the bridegroom, they are now married. And here in our passage, her husband comes and knocks at the door. Verse 2, a sound, my beloved is knocking. And he speaks, open to me. So in this in this dream, in this slightly strange fantasy, we're to imagine that he has been away somewhere. And he's now come from a long journey home, his head is wet with the dew, he's shut out of his own house. So he says to her, open to me. And it's a request not just to open the front door, but actually to open herself. And in the story, he is an ideal husband, this man. There are no ideal human husbands, but in this story, he is an ideal husband. He is always constant. Comes to his wife, and she is to him his perfect one. So he loves her faithfully, he desires her. And she keeps the door firmly closed. Verse three is what I think you could call a flimsy excuse. I can't be bothered to put my dressing gown on. I don't want to dirty my feet and go to the front door and let you in. What's in that verse is, I think, a kind of bored indifference. And it is a sign of broken fellowship. Now, this verse here, where the bridegroom comes to the door and knocks, this is the verse in the Song of Songs, which is most directly alluded to in the New Testament. I wonder if you can remember where that is. It's in Revelation chapter 3, verse 20, where the Lord Jesus comes and he says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. Now Jesus, in those words, he's talking to a half-hearted church. He's talking to a bunch of people who profess faith in Christ. It's the church in Laodicea. He knocks, he seeks an open door because he wants to come in and join and enjoy fellowship with the people he loves. So that's where it comes from, the Song of Songs. Back in the song, in this strange dreamlike sequence, something then suddenly shifts in the bride's heart between I can't be bothered to come and open the door, and actually I really want to. So verse 4, her heart is suddenly warmed up to him. So he moves to open the door, her heart is suddenly warmed. You know, verse 4, the sense of the Hebrew is my insides were in uproar. And she verse 6, she opens the door to her beloved, and he is not there. It's like he's evaporated. He's gone. Now remember, this is like a dream or it's a fantasy, but it's intended by the Spirit of God to instruct us. So, in other words, you you couldn't actually film this, I think. It's not some kind of marital hide-and-seek that is going on. It's something that should play in our minds and our imaginations. And the bride's heart, then, it goes from indifference, shrug, to desire, to despair. She says, you know, I sought him, but I found him not. I called him. Do you remember? He loves to hear my voice. I called him, but he gave no answer. Verse 7. Uh it is a strange verse, this one. We are in her dream, remember. Uh we're in a dream. Either in her dream, she kind of goes down to this city where she was once before, and she is actually beaten. Not sure why. Or she feels kind of metaphorically beaten in her experience. I actually don't know which it is. But either way, she is left sick with love. And the question that puts before us is this. What do you do as a Christian when it feels like Christ has gone? What do you do when it feels like Christ has gone? This is an unwelcome part of Christian experience. But it is part of Christian experience. Need to be really clear that the Lord, when he draws a person to himself, a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, and he binds them to his son, he never abandons them. He will never leave or forsake those whom he has given to his son. The Christian cannot lose Christ. The Christian cannot lose his or her salvation. Our union with Christ is utterly secure. Yet, our communion with Christ, what you might call our exercising, our daily exercising of that relationship, our experience of that union, it's a dynamic one. It is genuinely like a marriage. There are times of greater closeness and there are times of distance. So, what do you do as a Christian when it feels like Christ is on the outside of the door? And maybe when you then open the door, Christ isn't even there. Now the Bible speaks about and speaks to this experience in lots of different ways. In the Psalms, for instance, so Psalm 88, 14, O Lord, this is a believer. O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? And he does sometimes. Our fathers in the faith, particularly the Puritans, including people who wrote the Westminster Confession, they taught and thought and pastored about this Christian reality really quite a lot. And they teach us things like this. Sometimes we neglect to pursue Christ. That's a bit like the bride at the start of this story, isn't it? Or the church in Laodicea. Shrugged. I'm a Christian. We don't actually pursue Christ. Or maybe there is a particular sin which overcomes us, in response to which our communion with the Lord is diminished or interrupted. Or maybe there just is some other reason which is not ours to know, for which the Lord chooses to withdraw the light of his countenance from a believer. Now the Lord never gives his children up, ever. Now underline that. And our experience of God, this side of glory, will even on its best day have a frustrating aspect to it. We live by faith, not by sight. And that kind of sucks, doesn't it? But sometimes the Lord does seem to make it like we cannot hear his voice or see his face or sense his love with a clarity with which we could, or we did once, or we long to. Now back in the song, the daughters of Jerusalem, they are very wise in what they do to help the troubled bride. So she goes to these women and they say to her, chapter 5, verse 9, tell us about him. What is your beloved among more than another beloved? What's the big deal with your bridegroom? Tell us. Proclaim to us. And that's what there then follows in the next section of the psalm. It's this proclamation. And this is not the only part of seeking a closer communion with Christ, but it is an essential part of it. And what the bride then does, she proclaims the excellencies of the bridegroom. She sings of his beauty, she sings of his loveliness. And again, it is a very significant description. So these words they work on two levels, like the whole song. They are words sung by a woman about her husband, the human marriage. She describes her beloved from head to toe, and then back to his mouth, which is the place of tender words and passionate kisses. He is uniquely lovely to her, all of him, his face, his head, his body, but it is a double-layered song of praise. Lots of loaded words and phrases here, which are actually not answered by a human bridegroom. They are found, this portrait is found only in the person of Christ. So really, this carries us upwards, and we listen to the church sing here of the loveliness of Christ. And that's why, Christian, when we are in our right minds, we will get out of bed to open to Christ. We will get out of bed to worship him. Because, well, let's just look at this description. He shines. Verse 10, he shines. He is ruddy in appearance. That is, he is like King David. He is golden, he's of infinite worth and value. There is a whole field of whiteness in his eyes. He is pure. He is strong, his arms and his legs to carry and to bear up. He is sweet smelling, he's full of fruit and fragrance. He's like a walking, talking tree of life, this man. Verse 15. She looks at his whole appearance. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as cedars, these great tall, strong, aromatic trees, trees that were used to build the temple, the meeting place of God. Verse 16. His words, his kisses, they are sweet to the taste. Now, this is not a description that we are meant to draw. And if you went away and tried, please don't try and do this. This is not a challenge. It's quite the opposite. If you went away and drew this, you would get something really quite strange, almost ludicrous. But in scripture-infused minds, what we have here is a picture of the bridegroom. He stands before the bride like the temple. He's like Eden. We come to him, I come to him to meet with God, to find life and joy and lasting pleasures. This is my beloved. This is your beloved. This is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. And so this is another part of Christian experience, and this is the job of the church. And this is something we do with and for one another. To proclaim the excellencies of Christ, you know, to say, to sing how lovely he is. And, and this is the hard bit, to do it when he feels furthest away. And could it be, could it be that the Lord uses that sense of absence? That he's the other side of the door, or actually he's not even at the door. The Lord uses that sense of absence to move us, to move us, to praise him, to seek him, and thence to grow in our communion with him. In the Psalm, as the woman ends her praise of the beloved, the daughters of Jerusalem pipe up again. Chapter 6, verse 1. Where is he? Have you found him? And the answer is yes. Yes. And the words we next hear of, they're words of reconciliation for communion, is now renewed. And this is the final twist in the dream. And again, this is this, I think this helps show this is this is something of a fantasy playing out in uh in our imaginations. He's not lost at all. Chapter 6, verse 2. She knows exactly where he is. And again, the flow is significant, isn't it? She lost him, she's praised him, she knows exactly where he is. Chapter 6, verse 2. My beloved has gone down to his garden. The garden in the song, remember, the garden is the bride, it is her body in which her husband delights, and he is there with her. The shepherd is grazing in this delightful garden. He is gathering in the gardens his most beautiful fruits. So the two they are rejoined. Communion is renewed. The action of praising him has created this renewed communion. And we hear again of this covenant unity, covenant relationship. I am my beloved's, and my beloved's is mine. So I am his. That is, I belong to him. My beloved is mine, he is mine, he belongs to me. And this is the very heart of what covenant means. I am Christ's, and Christ is mine. And then he turns to sing praises of her, you know, to praise his bride. And this is the dynamic of the covenant, isn't it? The church loves Jesus. We praise him, we adore him, and the church is loved by Jesus. He delights in us. Notice in these words that follow, there's no reproach. There's no kind of dragging up of the past. Remember when you left me out in the cold? There's none of that, is there? It is a lovely model of forgiveness and grace. There's no unnecessary dragging up of past sins. Very simply, he declares his love for her. In chapter 6, verses 4 to 10, he praises her beauty. Now, these praiseworthy attributes of the bride, some of these things he has sung of before. We've heard these lyrics before. Others are new and are also loaded with significance. Overall, this description, it is less sensual, it is more warlike. Did you notice that? You are like Terza and Jerusalem. So Terza was the first capital of the northern kingdom. You are like the places from which the land is ruled and governed. You are awesome, you are terrible. That's an extraordinary thing to say to your bride, isn't it? Well, you're terrible like an army with banners. In the Old Testament, that word, you know, for awesome or terrible, it is used only of the Babylonian army and of the bride. So think here of a city with walls that are flying with battle standards. It is a strong city withstanding a siege. And to the bridegroom, she is beautiful, she is overwhelming. You cause me to tremble. That's what verse 5 says. Then he boasts of her. You are my only one. And we find ourselves here for a couple of verses in the world of ancient kings. Ancient kings had harems. They should not have done, but they did. Just think of Solomon's terrible sins. But this husband has only one bride. You are pure, you are perfect, you are exalted. Verse 10, you are like the sun and the moon. How Jesus loves his bride. You know, the bride for whom he gave himself. That is the story of his love for us, isn't it? And this is the foundation of it all. His loves begins our love story. It does not begin with us loving him, it begins with him loving us. You know, this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. And then what blessings the Lord lavishes on his church, his bride. We become the place where he rules, we become the place from which he fights, a bride whom he protects. Then the bride responds at the end of our passage, verses 11 and 12. And there's a really lovely play on words here, and it works nicely, it rather works in both Hebrew and in English. He had gone down to his garden to graze. She goes down to gaze. That is to look upon, to behold, to enjoy this blossoming and this fruitful union. He grazes upon her, she gazes upon him. It's like two sides of their communion. And before she knows it, her passion is kindled, and in her mind, she finds herself taken up, seated in her beloved's royal chariot. It's either she's ready to battle alongside him, or this is a royal, stately procession, don't know which. But either way, her shepherd is also her prince. One challenge of the Song of Songs is the chasm that exists between my experience of Christ and what we hear sung about in the song. And I guarantee for all of us, we will be feeling and experiencing this. A sort of sense of maybe wistfulness and longing. There is an intensity of desire here, isn't there? Christ for his people, his people for Christ. We do not always, we do not often feel like this. Now, it's worth acknowledging that, I think. Remembering that progress in communion with Christ, well, it is a gift and a work of God. We seek the Holy Spirit to warm our hearts, to grow in us this communion. It's why Paul in Ephesians 3 longs and prays as he does that together with all of the saints, we would grasp the dimensions, the bigness, the height, the depth, the breadth, the width of the love of God for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We need the Spirit of God to move us in our loving, in our experience of covenant life. That's true in human marriages, by the way, as well. And it's true mostly in our relationship with Christ. But this passage before us this morning, it does show to us, as I've just said, one key ingredient for growing in our communion with the Lord, which is speaking and filling our minds, meditating upon Christ. And what I'm going to finish by doing this morning is by reading a little bit of John Owen. He was a theologian and pastor in the mid-late 1600s. And he often would write or speak about and from the Song of Songs, even in the course of some of his most complex works on theology. And the extract, I've printed it in the handout. He has been talking for several pages in this book called Communion with God about the pain and the reality of being distant from Christ. Then in this extract, he does what the bride does in the song. And he considers and he turns over in his mind and then he puts pen to paper to describe how it is the Lord Jesus is altogether lovely. So how is the Lord Jesus lovely? Tell us, tell us why your bridegroom is so special. Well, he is lovely in his person, in the glorious all-sufficiency of his deity, gracious purity and holiness of his humanity, authority and majesty, love and power. He is lovely in his birth and incarnation, when he was rich, for our sakes becoming poor, taking part of flesh and blood, because we partook of the same, being made of a woman, that for us he might be made under the law even for our sakes. Lovely in the whole course of his life, and the more than angelical holiness and obedience which in the depth of poverty and persecution he exercised therein, doing good, receiving evil, blessing and being cursed, reviled and reproached all his days. Lovely in his death, yea, therein most lovely to sinners, never more glorious and desirable than when he became broken, dead from the cross. Then had he carried all our sins into a land of forgetfulness. Then had he made peace and reconciliation for us. Then had he procured life and immortality for us, lovely in his whole employment, in his great undertaking, in his life. Death, resurrection, ascension, being a mediator between God and us, to recover the glory of God's justice and to save our souls, to bring us to an enjoyment of God, who is set at such an infinite distance from him by sin. Lovely in the glory and majesty wherewith he is crowned. Now he is set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, where, though he be terrible to his enemies, yet he is full of love, mercy, and compassion towards his beloved ones. Lovely in all those supplies of grace and consolations, in all the dispensations of his Holy Spirit, whereof his saints are made partakers. Lovely in all the tender care and power and wisdom which he exercises in the protection, safeguarding, and delivery of his church and people, in the midst of all the oppositions and persecutions whereunto they are exposed. Lovely in all his ordinances, that is, communion and baptism, and the whole of that spiritually glorious worship which he hath appointed to his people, whereby they draw nigh and have communion with him and his father. Lovely and glorious in the vengeance he taketh, and will finally execute upon the stubborn enemies of himself and his people. Lovely in the pardon he hath purchased, and doth dispense, in the reconciliation he hath established, in the grace he communicates, in the consolations he doth administer, in the peace and joy he gives his saints, in his assured preservation of them unto glory. What shall I say? There is no end of his excellencies and desirableness. He's altogether lovely. This is our beloved, and this is our friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. Why don't we spend just a few moments in silent prayer? I will sing in response to God's word in just a moment. Why don't we bow our heads and in our minds, perhaps with halting words, let's let's do what John Owen and the scriptures encourage us to do. Come before Christ and silently praise him.