A SONG OF THE BELOVED
[p. 128] A SONG OF THE BELOVED
This is a psalm for those who love the Lord. It is, as the title expresses it, “A song of the Beloved”. If you do not love the Lord Jesus you will not enjoy or even understand it. All true believers love the Lord Jesus. When Paul by the Holy Spirit said at the end of his letter to the Ephesians, “Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity”, he invoked a blessing upon every true Christian. When the same apostle wrote to the Corinthians he had to rebuke them sharply for bad doctrines and bad practices, but there is nothing like a curse in it until the very end. When Paul took the pen to sign the letter he added these solemn words, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha” — accursed before the Lord at His coming. Christianity is a vast cluster of spiritual blessings, but the brighter the light, the deeper is the shadow which it casts. This is what I may call the shadow cast by the light of grace when it is hindered from shining on the soul by enmity and unbelief of heart. God forbid that the dark shadow of that awful curse should ever fall upon your spirit!
Believers love the Lord Jesus for two great reasons because of what He has done for them, and because of what He is in Himself. I am addressing you as those who know, through grace, in some measure what the Lord has done for you. This is a psalm for the sons of Korah; and what the Lord did for them is a very striking picture of what He has done for us. Read Numbers 16: 23 - 33.
The sin of Korah was that he presumed to come near to God in a priestly way without any priestly fitness. To constitute a man a priest he must be chosen and called of [p. 129] God, and have divine title and priestly fitness to approach. Cain was the first to deny this. He presumed to come to God in his own way — in self-will and sin, instead of in the obedience of faith. Korah did the same. Hence Cain and Korah are linked together, with Balaam between them, as solemn warnings to the latter-day apostates of whom Jude writes. Korah shows us the terminus of “the way of Cain”; it leads to the pit. In plain words, the religion of man in the flesh is more offensive to God than his sins; in fact, it is but the addition of hypocrisy and presumption to his other sins, and it ends in “the pit”. So we find this guilty family doomed to destruction, and if we had only Numbers 16, we should conclude that all perished to be witnesses to the severity of the righteous judgment of God. But, blessed be God, His mercy has always rejoiced against judgment, and at the very moment of this appalling act of judgment He secured a marvellous triumph of mercy, and proved for ever that His sovereign grace, which Korah had so despised, would secure blessing for Korah’s sons. It is told us in Numbers 26: 11, “Notwithstanding the children of Korah died not”. When the pit opened her mouth to engulf the presumptuous family, the hand of God was outstretched to snatch the sons of Korah as brands from the burning. They were rescued from the very jaws of hell by the hand of divine grace. Jehovah thus became their Saviour God, and afterwards entrusted them with the charge of the gates of His sanctuary. As belonging to the family which had been doomed to perish for presuming to draw near to God without priestly title, they were the very ones best fitted when saved by sovereign grace, to see that no person approached God but such as had a proper title to stand in His presence. No wonder that the eleven psalms for the sons of Korah are among the sweetest in the book. People saved after such a fashion might well sing sweetly the praises of grace divine; they might well love the Lord for the great work which He had wrought for them.
[p. 130] Christian! behold in their salvation a picture of your own: you were a child in a doomed family, guilty of sins which called loudly for the judgment of God, and the whole course of your unconverted life was a sharp descent to the pit. There was neither eye to pity nor arm to save you until God laid help upon One who was mighty, and found a ransom in the Person of His beloved Son, that you might be delivered from going down to the pit. The hand of mercy arrested you; the Christ of God became all your salvation. And though you have not seen Him, yet, knowing Him by faith, you love Him, and His praise is really to your heart “a Song of the Beloved”.
But this is not all. Love must have a Person for its object, and always thinks more of the Giver than of the gift. Love values the benefits it receives not by their intrinsic worth, but by the affections of which they are the expression. The sinner when first awakened to a sense of his danger can rarely think of anything but his own need. And as a rule the first feeling of the soul that trusts the Lord Jesus for salvation is rather one of gratitude than of love. It is when our need has been met, and our hearts are quite assured as to the benefit, that we begin to learn that LOVE was the source of all our blessing. Behind the work that has been done and the salvation that has been secured there is something greater still, and that is the love which was the source of it all. How this attracts the heart to the Person of the Son of God! He gave Himself for me because He loved me. “Hereby perceive we love, because he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3: 16). Faith in Christ is not like the faith that people have in a bank or in a skilled physician; it is faith in One who has won our hearts. Hence the believer is also a lover. “We love him because he first loved us”.
It is thus that we are drawn to Christ. He becomes to us “THE BELOVED”, and as our affections go out to Him His moral beauties become the food of our hearts. We delight in Him as the One “fairer than the children of men”. Every moral perfection shone out in that blessed One. Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report were found in Him. The exhortation to “think on these things” (Philippians 4: 8) invites us to contemplate Christ. What a blessed study for the heart! For the One who is thus “fair to God” is the One who loves us, and has given Himself for us. The great lack with many believers is that they have not in heart reached CHRIST so as to delight in His perfections. Hence their hearts do not overflow; they are not conscious of being loved by Him.
But if we reach Christ we must of necessity reach Him where He is. It could be said of Him when here, “Grace is poured into thy lips”. There was a fulness of grace in Him to meet every need. To the sinner He could say, “Thy sins are forgiven”; to the leper, “I will, be thou clean”; to the palsied, “Rise up and walk”; to the blind, “Receive thy sight”; to the dead, “Lazarus, come forth”. Thus when on earth the all-varied grace of God revealed itself in Him. He was ever the Centre of a circle of blessing; virtue went out of Him to meet every necessity of faith. And it is not less so today. Indeed the lovely pictures which are presented to us in the pages of the evangelists are divinely illustrative of the spiritual needs of our souls and of the perfect answer to all these needs which we may find in Him. But He is now in another place. Rejected and put in the place of curse by man, GOD has blessed Him for ever in another place. God has said to Him, “Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Psalm 110: 1). And the only circle of blessing is where Christ is. We come into heavenly blessing by being associated with Christ in glory. This is plainly suggested to us by the words, “God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (verse 7).
Christ in glory has “fellows”, but it is impossible for [p. 132] us to understand this if we do not see something of the blessed truth of new creation. As in the flesh it is impossible that we could be “fellows” of Christ. According to the old creation we are “fellows” of the man driven out of Eden as rejected by God. But in new creation we are companions of Christ. “If any man be in Christ there is new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God” (2 Corinthians 5: 17). Everything in us that is not “of God” was ended in the death of Christ. It was then that the “old things” passed away. The death of Christ is the way by which divine love could bring us into suitability to itself. God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5: 21). The death of Christ has pronounced the solemn sentence on Adam’s race — “ALL DEAD” (2 Corinthians 5: 14). Man after the flesh is utterly rejected by God.
But there is new creation, and those “in Christ” are sanctified by His death, they are apart by that death from all that they were as in the flesh, and in new creation they are “all of one” with Christ, and made “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1: 6). It is evident that for the enjoyment of this there must be the appropriation of the death of Christ; we must eat His flesh and drink His blood. By the appropriation of His death we are severed in heart and spirit from all that we were as in Adam, so that we may be, by the Spirit, in association with Christ as His “fellows”. Thus we stand consciously in the place of acceptance — “in gold of Ophir” (Psalm 45: 9). In CHRIST we are in perfect suitability to divine love, and thus free in heart to enter into that love.
The effect of all this is to produce intense separation of heart from every association that is of the world or of the earth. This is brought before us in a striking way in Psalm 45: 10, “Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline [p. 133] thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house”. Separation is the natural outcome of conscious suitability to Christ. I am sure that if our hearts were conscious of being in divine suitability to Christ in glory it would make us feel perfect strangers here, and it would break the power of every old association.
We may see in Genesis 24 a picture of how the Spirit of God would detach our hearts from old associations: “And the servant brought forth jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebekah” (verse 53). No doubt the jewels and the raiment came from Abraham’s house — from the place where Isaac was; and invested with that which came from him, she was made consciously suitable for him. This is how the Spirit would work. He would invest us with conscious suitability for Christ because deriving everything from Him. Thus was Rebecca prepared to face the question “Wilt thou go with this man?” and to give the decisive answer, “I will go”. It involved breaking with her own people and her father’s house, and a journey of perhaps 500 miles across the desert, but she was prepared for all this. The attractions of Isaac had eclipsed everything else for her heart, and she was free in affection to go to him because conscious of suitability for him. Beloved brethren, are we prepared to take the moral journey of which hers was such a striking type? The Spirit of God is here to conduct us to Christ where He is. I do not mean when we die or when He comes. The Spirit would lead our hearts to Him NOW. But this involves a moral journey; it involves heart-separation from things and associations here.
And in Psalm 45: 10 this is connected with hearkening and considering. Clean animals (Leviticus 11) chew the cud and part the hoof. To hearken and consider answers to chewing the cud, and forgetting our own people and our father’s house is like parting the hoof. If there was more meditation, I feel sure there would be more separation. If we digested the [p. 134] communications of divine love into our moral being, they would necessarily lead to separation. Mary, in Luke 10 is hearkening and considering; in John 12 she forgets her own people and her father’s house — the poor in Israel. She was entirely separated in heart to Christ, and there was but ONE to approve her action. She was exclusively FOR CHRIST. She had found satisfaction in Him, and she was separated to Him.
I think you will find these two thoughts continually presented together in Scripture. If we hear the voice of the Shepherd we shall follow Him, and in following Him we shall be drawn apart from everything that is not Him. If our hearts feed on that which is of God, we shall be kept at a moral distance from that which is of man. Jeremiah could say, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart”; but the effect of this was that he also said, “I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone” (Jeremiah 15:16,17). The blessed man of Psalm 1 delights in the law of Jehovah, and meditates therein day and night; and, on the other hand, he neither walks in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. He chews the cud and parts the hoof.
It is only the satisfied heart that can be truly a separated heart. I am sure that inward separation is the great thing, and it is of special importance in a day when the principle of outward separation from glaring evils is so widely accepted. Lot was outwardly separate when he was with Abraham, but he was not inwardly separate. His heart hankered after such things as he had seen in Egypt, and as soon as opportunity offered he forsook the path of separation altogether. Swine are unclean because they part the hoof without chewing the cud. They are typical of those who, like the Pharisees, are outwardly separate without any inward assimilation of the mind of God.
“[p. 135] So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty” (Psalm 45: 11). How suggestive is this to our hearts of the fact that the church is the object of the love of Christ! He “loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5: 25 - 27). The present satisfaction of the heart of Christ is found in having the church altogether for Himself. To this end He gave Himself for it; He “sold all that he had, and bought” the “pearl of great price”; and to this end He sanctifies and cleanses it with the washing of water by the word. By giving Himself for it He secured the right to have the church in eternal suitability to His own love, and now He sanctifies and cleanses it so as to bring it into present moral suitability to Himself. His love is active to remove every blemish — every spot and wrinkle. He desires to present the church to Himself even now in the moral glory and beauty of complete sanctification from everything that is not of Himself.
It may be asserted that the church does not answer to this, and that to speak of it is to set up an impracticable ideal. I am sure that if there is true affection for Christ in our hearts we shall not think that His thoughts are impracticable, or that He is incapable of making them good for our souls. We may have to confess that we have very feebly answered to His thoughts, and that we have oftentimes hindered Him from sanctifying and cleansing us, but by His grace we cleave to Him, and we treasure in our souls the precious thoughts of His love which passeth knowledge. That there is but little answer to those thoughts in the church must be sorrowfully owned, but I cannot believe that general decline and departure from first love would have the effect of causing faithful and devoted hearts to be content with something less than what is in the heart of Christ for the church. I think [p. 136] every loyal and loving heart would rather desire to render increasingly to Him the satisfaction for which He looks in vain in those who know not the thoughts of His love.
We must connect the words, “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty” with the preceding verse. It is as we are in true separation to Himself that we minister to the satisfaction of His heart. The church’s beauty in the eyes of Christ is her sanctification. There is a day coming when she will be “as a bride adorned for her husband”, and it is a pity if we do not long to be morally adorned for HIM now. If you read John 13 - John 17 you will find how every desire of the heart of Christ wraps itself round His own which are in the world. We may learn there what we are to Him and how He would have us adorned for Him. The more we enter into what the church is according to the thoughts of divine love, the better we shall understand her attractiveness and beauty in the eyes of Christ. Her beauty is moral correspondence to Himself. May each of us covet to be invested with more of this “beauty of holiness”!.
“The king’s daughter is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold; she shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework” (Psalm 45: 13, 14). It is “within” the ivory palaces — “within” the royal courts — that the King’s daughter is “all glorious”. The beauty of the saints does not yet appear in public view. Without they may be despised as an ignorant and cursed rabble (John 7: 49), they may be reviled and cast out (John 9: 28, 34; John 12: 42), but within His pavilion, and in the secret of His tabernacle, they are “all glorious” as loved by the Father and the Son and indwelt by the Comforter. The glory of the church is hidden from the pride of man in the secret of His presence. But it will not be ever thus. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). The glorious beauty of the church will be manifested; she will appear in clothing of “wrought gold”. How fair [p. 137] the scene that lies before us! The saints in new creation beauty, and made the righteousness of God in Christ, will be displayed in a perfection that is wholly of God. “The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me” (John 17: 22, 23).
And let us not forget the “raiment of needlework”. It is blessed to know that in every one who has received the Spirit there must have been produced some of His precious fruit. The “righteousnesses of the saints” (Revelation 19: 8) can only be those things which have been wrought in us by the Spirit. Blessed be God! none of His fruit can ever perish. Nothing that is according to God’s will in the saints will ever be lost. No action, or word, or thought that was pleasing to God will be overlooked in that day when the Lord will both “bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God” (1 Corinthians 4: 5).
To the Lamb’s wife will be “granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousnesses of the saints”. She will be invested for ever with raiment which was wrought stitch by stitch in practical loyalty to Christ and to the blessed will of God here in this world. The Bride is making her wedding-dress now. I trust that, constrained by the love of Christ, we may increasingly live UNTO HIM.