LOVE AND JEALOUSY
[p. 41] LOVE AND JEALOUSY
Song of Songs 2: 8 - 14; Song of Songs 8: 6 - 10
My thought in reading this scripture is to dwell on the love of Christ. This scripture forms an opportunity for presenting the love of Christ. This song is a love song — Christ’s love song.
There are many different songs in Scripture and there is great interest in them. A song is a celebration of God’s intervention on their behalf; a psalm the means by which we express our experiences; every believer should have a song and a psalm. You are in the full light of the intervention of God in Christ, outside of yourself, and you celebrate this before God; then what follows on that is the wilderness, the divinely appointed place for experience, which is just as much a divinely appointed place for you as the land. It is a place appointed for us of God, so that we may prove what He is to us. That is where you learn your psalm — you give voice to your experiences. The Psalms are the experience of the soul with God. The Scriptures abound with songs and psalms, and they should abound in the assembly; and we are exhorted to sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”.
This Song is a love song — composed by Christ in Spirit. The Old Testament abounds with evidences of the workings of the Spirit of Christ; the Spirit of Christ appears wherever faith appears. Noah was formed in measure by Christ, and his preaching was by the Spirit of Christ (See 1 Peter 3: 18 - 20). No other spirit is of any interest to the one who knows Christ. This is specially so in the Psalms. We are not wanting in that kind of poetry in the Scriptures and it was the Spirit of Christ in David that wrote the Psalms. A man is what his spirit is. We read of [p. 42] the spirits of just men made perfect, made perfect through the Spirit of Christ, and we are called to drink in the Spirit of Christ, which is so different from the spirit of the world, which is characterised by selfishness. The Spirit of Christ lifts you to God’s world, which is characterised by love, the love of Christ.
Now the Song of Solomon is Christ’s love song; it is a composition of the Spirit of Christ. Solomon was a peculiar vessel in the Old Testament. Every Old Testament saint portrayed Christ in some peculiar way. David was a man of experience; he experienced life, and went through things, and hence he was the “sweet psalmist”. Now Solomon is not a man of suffering; he was marked by affection, he was born into affection; his name (Jedidiah) signified, ‘Beloved of Jehovah’, a name divinely given. He says, “I was my father’s son”, as though David had not another, “I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother”, Proverbs 4: 3. Now you are entitled to take that place before God. He loves you as though there were not another beside! David mourned for the loss of the first child of Bathsheba, but David bowed to the judgment of God, and God gave him Solomon, and Solomon was beloved of his father, and he responded to his father’s affection. Absalom was also beloved by his father, but he did not respond to his father’s affection; he was like the apostate world.
“I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother”. Now you are entitled to take that place. John speaks of Him as He was here, in the affections of the Father, the peculiar place He had with God while down here. “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”, and “We have contemplated his glory ... an only-begotten with a father”, John 1: 18, 14. Divine love had that testimony.
[p. 43] Three things characterised Solomon, wisdom, sonship and affection. Solomon is a type of Christ in that way from the affection side, so that you have a suited vessel in Solomon for the Spirit of Christ to take up to sing about love, to make a love composition. The great end in view is that, if you learn the song, you learn what love is, and you learn also what jealousy is; there is no love without jealousy; if you know the love of Christ you must have jealousy, or else you do not know christianity. Jealousy is necessary for our safety, and the bride understands love and jealousy. “Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave ... Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it”. As strong as death, there is nothing to be compared with it. “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned”. “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead”, 2 Corinthians 5: 14. There is no moral force in the world compared to the love of Christ, and under its influence you are able to judge things here, and to see that there is not one pulsation in this world for God! “Then were all dead”. He died, and everything is under death, “that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again”, 2 Corinthians 5: 15. What a practical thing the love of Christ is! How it enables you to form a judgment of all things here! All is dead for God. He has done with the world, which is but a scene of death. But God can speak of things that are not as though they were, “That they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him that died for them, and rose again”. There are people who are living, and the only people who are living are the people who are loving — love is the evidence of life. “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren”, 1 John 3: 14, “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth”, 1 Timothy 5: 6. You have passed out of a world of selfishness and are brought into a world of unselfishness, for love is unselfish and thinks of others. Christ has established a claim over our hearts by dying, “that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves”. “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned”. There is nothing like it in the world.
Jealousy saves you. You know the love of Christ, and you know jealousy, and, if you apprehend the jealousy of Christ, it will save you from the idolatry around. “Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?” 1 Corinthians 10: 22. The outlook of the present christian world is terrible. “Jealousy is cruel as the grave”. If He loves you, He will not allow your heart to be captured by another. Satan desires to entice your soul away from Him. Paul was jealous over the assembly with a jealousy that is of God. Satan diverts hearts from Christ, but Christ will not suffer it, and Paul says, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men”, 2 Corinthians 5: 11. He was in earnest lest the saints should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. What is Satan using to divert your heart from Christ? It is a wholesome thing to know the “terror of the Lord”. Woe be to the influence that diverts from Christ! He will not allow it. At the end of the Song the bride appreciates love and jealousy. The Lord triumphs.
This Song is Solomon’s masterpiece, because he celebrates the great triumph of the Lord. Solomon composed a thousand and five songs, but this is the “Song of Songs” — the masterpiece. In chapter 2, the Lord is seen setting Himself to gain your heart. Every christian should know something of that.
Christ expresses what is in His heart; He begins by [p. 45] telling her what goes on in her heart — all her experiences, the bright and dark, the ups and downs. He gives the bright side first. The Lord knows your experiences. He knows what you go through, and He takes special interest in recording where He looms on the horizon of your soul, “The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains; skipping upon the hills”. See how swift the Lord is! You see the way He meets a soul. It is the swiftness of love — she appreciates his agility to draw near to her, “He standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice”. The Lord has got walls to overcome to reach you. He has put no restriction on man, we put up the barriers. How many barriers do you put up between you and the Lord? Walls and lattices are fixed things; such was judaism — that which is stationary. But the Lord is there. He would reach the soul, and He says, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock”. The Lord would have movement, “Rise up”. He says, ‘you are in a dangerous position’. “Let me see thy countenance”. A man’s countenance is for God — it is the best part of man. A beast looks down, but man was made to look up. Man was made in the image of God, to be the reflection and glory of God. The thought is, that God would look into the countenance of man. The woman who had been bowed down eighteen years, the Lord bade her look up. It is a matter of the attitude of your soul — He wants to see your countenance and hear your voice, “Let me hear thy [p. 46] voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely”. “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm”. All that is brought to pass by the knowledge of His love.
Then in chapter 8, “We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts, what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver, and if she be a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar”. This is practical. Typically this refers to the ten tribes of Israel; historically the Jews are the most grasping and selfish nation in the world, but the Lord shall triumph over that people. Judah (the two tribes) will then be no longer selfish as they are now; they will be saved from the greed, avarice and selfishness that marks them now. The two tribes will then think of the ten tribes, Ephraim (the little sister) the very best of thoughts. No breasts is deformity; deformity in Scripture is want of affection, to be undeveloped in affection.
“I am a wall, and my breasts like towers”, fully developed in affection, knowing His love and responding. “Then was I in his eyes as one that found favour”. Judah does not vex Ephraim, but thinks of her with affection. All this indicates how completely the Lord will triumph in the day that is coming; Judah will then be wholly unselfish.
I hope you will see in this a little of what love is. We learn the love of Christ through His dealings with us. The Lord’s love was measured by His death, “For love is strong as death”. Jealousy saves you from the idolatrous world. Christ is jealous over you. May you be fully conscious of what you are to Him, then you will have power to help others.