2025-01-24A
A. THE GROOM ENJOYS WHAT HIS BRIDE OFFERS HIM.
THE GROOM: 5:1 I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my balm; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat, my friends; drink, and be drunk, my lovers.
In the previous verse (4:16) we read how the Bride prayed to the Holy Spirit to awaken her spirit to produce the fruit and fragrance of love so that her beloved could be attracted to the garden of her heart and be refreshed.
Now we see that her prayer was answered to the letter. Her Bridegroom perceived the sweet fragrance, went to her garden and enjoyed to his heart’s content the abundance that was there. Notice however that He calls all that He found there, His own: “My myrrh, my balm, my honeycomb, my honey, my wine, my milk.” This is of course so because all of this is the fruit of His work on the cross. The Holy Spirit took what He had acquired and consequently belonged to Him and adorned, fertilized and filled His Bride’s heart garden with it. Referring to the Holy Spirit, He Himself had said:
He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:14).
All spiritual gifts and fruit come from the Father (James 1:17) but He gives them to us through, and by virtue of, His Son’s merit. Then they become a reality in our lives by the working of the Spirit.
But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Therefore he says, When he ascended on high he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men (Eph 4:7,8).
We also note that the Bridegroom invites his friends and other loved ones to come and celebrate with him. They do not have access to the garden of his Bride’s heart, but are invited to gather around the garden and enjoy the fragrances of love and fruits of the Spirit from the hand of the Bridegroom.
B. THE BRIDE IS SLEEPING AND THE GROOM IS EXCLUDED.
THE BRIDE: 5:2 I slept, but my heart was awake. My beloved knocks: Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one! For my head is full of dew, my locks of hair with the drops of the night.
Oh no, just now the Bride was flowing and blooming in all that is beautiful, lovely and praiseworthy, and now, away from her garden and Bridegroom, she lies sleeping behind a closed door. What has happened?
In natural life, sleep is a God-given blessing, provided to give the physical body a break. (Interestingly, there is a species of ant of which the entire nest stops working for 8 minutes every 12 hours to enjoy a well deserved ant break. The Lord, of course, never slumbers nor sleeps (Ps121:4). In this respect, we are not created in the image of God.
Now it is interesting to note what the Bride says: “I slept, but my heart was awake”. From this we may perhaps deduce that the reborn child of God’s quickened spirit, is indeed created completely in the image of God and never sleeps? The dark side of this is, however, that as long as man is in the body, like the rest of creation, he is subject to futility (Rom 8:20) and that the spirit, although awake, is confined by the sleeping body and cannot remain in conscious contact with its Creator. (The Lord can of course come to him by way of a dream. A person who is asleep, as we know, is totally unaware of whoever is standing by his bed and watching him. Sleep transports him to a complete other world. Even if you were to speak softly to him, he would not perceive it. Something must happen to awaken him from his sleep.
And this is exactly the spiritual state in which the Bride of our story finds herself. The sleep in which she is, however, is not wholesome to allow her to rest spiritually; no, it is a deathly sleep that has come upon her because she yielded to her old nature (the flesh) which is constantly trying to regain the upper hand it lost in her life when she got born again. The apostle Paul writes about this as follows:
For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells nothing good; for to will is present with me, but to carry out what is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not do, but the evil that I would not, that I practice. (Rom 7:18,19)
Where the Bride of Christ only occasionally sinks into such a sleep, the unregenerate are constantly in it. That is why Paul also warns in Ephesians 5:14:
Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon you.
Back to the verse before us. The poor Bridegroom probably sat outside her chamber all night, waiting for her to emerge. We come to this conclusion because it is usually when an object is not moving that dew falls on it. For dew to form on a person’s hair is especially unusual.
How could his Bride have fallen into such a sleep? In Matt 26:38-40 we also read of such an incident where Jesus’ chosen ones fell asleep and left him alone in the garden of Gethsemane in the dark of night.
Then he said to them, “My soul is deeply sorrowful, even to death; stay here and watch with me.” … And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “So you could not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
The disciples fell asleep physically because they were already asleep spiritually and had not heeded his earlier warnings that He would be arrested, condemned to death, and crucified that night. They were so accustomed to being constantly under his protection that they failed to pray to God the Father for their own spiritual protection. As a result, they were caught asleep when the enemy’s guards suddenly arrived to arrest their Master and they shamefully fled from their Bridegroom.
When the Bride is at the height of her spiritual victory, she is often unaware of the danger that constantly threatens her. Therefore, the Bridegroom warns:
Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:11,12)
The Bridegroom warned his first two created human beings right from the start, not only to cultivate their garden, Paradise, but also to guard it. Because they relaxed their vigilance, they lost their Eden and the gate was closed behind them. The serpent watches us every moment for an opportunity to recapture our heart garden. Slumbering Bride, the more beautiful your garden, the more desirable it is to him who sneaks around at night to rob and steal.
C. THE BRIDE IS AWAKEN .
Back to our text. Tired and cold from his nightly vigil, the Bridegroom decides to try to wake her. He gets up, walks over, and knocks on her door. He hears her move. She seems to have woken up, but doesn’t respond to his knock. Perhaps she thinks it’s just a stranger wanting to borrow something and hopes that he will think she didn’t hear, leave and return later, at a more convenient time.
But, there at the door, her Lovers’s heart yearns for her, so he calls out:
Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one! For my head is full of dew, my locks of hair with the drops of the night.
She recognizes his voice. His words are wonderful: no reproach; as always, only praise. Now she can no longer pretend not to have heard. But she did not feel like getting up at all because it was still deep in the night and she wanted to enjoy her sleep to the fullest, so she answered listlessly:
THE BRIDE: 5:3 I have taken off my garment, how can I put it on again? I have washed my feet, how can I defile them again?
Her words hurt but his longing for her overrules. What can He do? He will never turn the doorknob and just walk in. She is his betrothed, not his wife. Her privacy is very, very important to him. She must, by her own choice, continue to love him for the rest of her life, prefering him to his rival, who constantly offers her all kinds of gifts and pleasures.
What now? If his long night’s wait in the cold does not touch her heart, what more can He do? A thought crosses his mind; He will not, like his opponent, just make promises of what He will do for her, but rather provide proof of what He has already done. He pushes the upper door slightly open and puts his hand through so that she can see it. Why his hand? In it, the scar of the nail by which He was pinned to the cross for her, can still be clearly seen. He hears a sobbing exclamation:
THE BRIDE 5:4 My beloved put his hand in at the door; then my heart was moved for him; 5 I rose up to open to my beloved, my hands dripping with myrrh, and my fingers with flowing myrrh upon the handles of the lock.
In the blink of an eye, He had gained access to her heart, waking her from her soul’s sleep, regaining her focused love.
D. THE GROOM DISAPPEARS.
THE BRIDE 5: 6a I opened to my beloved, but my beloved turned away, passed by; …
What a totally unexpected turn in this exciting story! One would have thought that the next moment they would be in each other’s arms in passionate embrace and “kissings of the mouth”, as in 1:2, but no, He had quickly left; completely disappeared, without exchanging a word. Was He suddenly angry with her? Did He want to get her back, hurt her, retaliate, punish her for her coldness towards him? Oh, no, love is not petty, it:
… does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, … 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1Cor13:5,7) .
So what is the reason? Divine love sometimes has to withhold something precious from someone so that he may come to realize how precious the item he lost is; lost by not taking care of it. Then he will guard it more carefully in future. The Bride had come to take for granted her Groom’s passionate love for her. And, He still loved her just as much, but she first had to learn, in a painful way, to appreciate his love so that she would not grieve Him and His Holy Spirit again.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption ( Eph 4:30 ).
His action of walking away from her, is well thought through. It is not punitive but corrective: the ultimate goal being that their love relationship be deepened by it:
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. (Heb 12:11) .
E. THE BRIDE IN SEARCH OF THE GROOM.
THE BRIDE: 5:6b … I was astonished when he spoke; I sought him, but I could not find him; I called to him, but he did not answer me.
( … My very life went out when he departed. I searched for him, but couldn’t find him. I called out to him, but he didn’t answer. (ISV translation)).
For anyone who once tasted the presence of God, it is an unbearable, painful experience to be forsaken by him. The Bride says that she lost her senses or sense of being alive. David also experienced this when he committed adultery and then murdered a righteous man. Listen to his sad, desperate, searching prayer:
Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. 14 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. (Ps51:13,14)
Jesus also experienced this on the cross when our terrible burden of guilt rested on him and his Father turned his face away from him. In anguish, he cried out loudly:
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? That is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46) .
F. THE BRIDE SUFFERS BY THE HANDS OF THE GUARDS OF THE CITY.
THE BRIDE: 7 The watchmen who go about the city found me; they struck me, they wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took my cloak from me.
The Bride is back among the guards of the city we came across in 3:3. Let us first take a look at physical guards, such as police or security officers. They are appointed by the city authorities to ensure that law and order is maintained according to the regulations set by those authorities. A woman wandering the streets alone in the early morning hours would be suspected of being a prostitute and (in earlier years) would have been arrested and put in jail.
In our story, however, the city is the city of God, Jerusalem, where the Bride should have been welcome and safe. The Law that applied there was, after all, given by the Lord himself. It was intended as a signpost to Christ. The problem, however, arose that, from the earliest times, the leading citizens and religious leaders applied the Law unlovingly, harshly. They used it as a whip instead of a shepherd’s crook. Under their hand it became a formidable set of exacting regulations regulating every detail of human life.
In the text under discussion (5:7) we see how the guards wound the Bride of Christ, strip her of her garment and leave her half naked. That is what the preaching of the Law did. It caused the Bride to feel increasingly guilty and broken. The preachers did not recognize or heed the Robe of Righteousness that Jesus had earned on the cross and himself hung around the shoulders of his Bride during rebirth (Zech. 3:3,4). They tore it from her by their accusations, causing her to even doubt whether her guilt had ever been forgiven.
(Here we need to explain that during Solomon’s rule the Lord Jesus had not yet been crucified but God the Father already saw it as having been accomplished. The element of grace inbuilt into God’s Word pointed forward to what the Son would definitely do and all Old Testament saints were thus saved by grace on account of the to be completed work of Christ.)
G. THE WAY BACK TO HIM
God is Spirit. Man consists of spirit, soul and a physical body. We are used to living in a physical world. Therefore it is easier to look for my lost penknife than to look for Him in the spirit, although He is not far from us:
For this commandment which I command thee this day is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and shew it us, that we may do it? 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and shew it us, that we may do it? 14 But the word is very nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. (Deut. 30:11-14)
The commandment of God is in the Word and Jesus is the Living Word who came down from heaven to us. In the hearts of those who opened up their lives to him, He came to live. We need therefore not to go around “in the city” like this Bride, looking for him. When we miss him, He is still in our hearts but has only withdrawn the manifestation of his presence to teach us not to be careless with this precious gem of eternal life and of his presence. By doing so, we not only grieve him, but also block further, deeper communion with him. When searching for his felt presence, we must therefore not look upwards or outwards, but inwards; into the garden of our hearts.
During his stay on earth, the Bridegroom personally promised that no one would seek in vain.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (Mat 7:7)
When the Bride wanders away, her faith fades and when she later wants to return to him, she tends to seek Him in a carnal way. James warns us against this:
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind (James 1:6).
All fleshly efforts to find the Bridegroom and draw Him closer to Him by “good works” are fruitless. Such searching and efforts will lead you into one dead end street after another. efforts of self-transformation only leads you further and further into the mazes of the city.
The root cause of spiritual decline is the fleshly urge to live independently of God. To return to a heart relationship with Him, the Bride must follow the Scriptural path of confession of sin and quiet childlike faith.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
And the LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and make strong your bones; and you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. (Isa 58:11).
He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arm and carry them in his bosom; he will gently lead the lambs. (Isa 40:11)
The secret to finding the Bridegroom, or finding Him anew, is to place your hand in the hand of the Holy Spirit. His function and task is to glorify the Son by leading man to Him and transforming him increasingly into His Image. The Spirit dwells in the heart of the Bride, so she needs only to look inward, confess that she has gone astray, and ask Him to complete His task in her.
MAY WE LEARN TO SIMPLY RELAX IN THE ARMS OF HIS SPIRIT.
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