We now find ourselves in the great body of the Song; and the object of the Spirit of God, as I understand, in this portion is to show us the necessary exercises of heart through which the bride must pass in order to be spiritually fitted for the Lord Jesus—the King in His coming glory.
You will see at once that there is a very sensible difference from our position. The proper exercises of the Christian's heart begin when we are already in settled relationship with the Lord Jesus. It is not so with the Jew. In our case it is sovereign grace both of the deepest and of the highest character, because it is Christ on high in the presence of God—not merely the King, not merely on earth, however exalted, but in a new and heavenly glory, altogether above the expectations and hope formed by Old Testament revelation. Our relationship is of the deepest character, because it is no question of a people that had been previously chosen, and that had been the object of the dealings of God through ages, and blest because of God's love to their father Abraham.
Nothing of this appears in the dealing with the Church of God. For there it is purely and solely grace acting in view of Christ in God's presence, and expressly also gathering persons entirely irrespective of any previous connection with God whatsoever. Now, it is not so with the Jew. He is loved, as we are told, even now-loved for the fathers' sakes. They are enemies, as we know, because of the gospel, but loved for the fathers' sakes. Now there we see the ground. Although they will be obliged to own that they have lost everything, and that blessing must be on the score of mercy alone, yet there was that ground. We can plead nothing of the kind. We really have nothing save what grace confers upon us, and confers all, fresh, and pure, and simple, from Christ, and for Christ.
There may be exercises of heart in a person who is not yet brought into the proper Christian standing, and there may be a putting oneself under law. There may be a pointing out of our utter weakness. There may be discoveries of this kind, but they are not what I may call the normal exercises of a Christian's heart. They are very wholesome exercises of a heart that is not yet at rest; but a Christian, in the proper sense of the term, means one who is not merely born of God and who is just clinging to God's mercy and goodness; but a Christian is a person who is at rest. A Christian is a person who is at peace with God. There may be Christians in a very abnormal state, but we have nothing to do with that in thinking of a Christian. We may have very much to do with it in looking at a particular soul—in getting that soul into a true and healthy condition-but if we talk about a Christian, we must think about him according to the mind of God. If he is not according to that mind, one must seek to remove the hindrances; one should seek to foster what is of God, to strengthen his faith and, by the Word, to clear away and deal with whatever hinders. That is all quite right but, properly speaking, no man is yet in a healthy Christian condition until he is settled-settled, without question, in Christ, and knows that he is a new creature—knows that all the old is judged and gone before God, and the man is walking in peaceful communion on the ground of it. I say that no person is in the proper Christian condition until that is his state.
Now it is plain that this is a very different thing from the bride here. If we look at the Church in the New Testament, she is always assumed to be in that state. There may be, of course, as we know in matter of fact, things which are quite contrary to what we may call the theory of the Church, or of a Christian. That is not God's idea. But I am speaking now, I repeat, of things according to God. But God does not look upon the bride in Song of Solomon according to that idea. Here therefore we come to the exercises through which the bride who is here contemplated must pass in order to be spiritually suited to the King in His glory. And we see her here in darkness. "By night on my bed I sought Him whom my soul loveth." That is a remarkable condition. It is just what we find in the 50th of Isaiah—walking in darkness and seeing no light. But confiding, trusting; nay, more than that, with affections drawn out toward Christ.
In fact, the great point of this book is the forming the affections and the giving her who has such affections (though what are these to His?)—giving her who has real and true affections for the returning King, confidence in His affection as incomparably beyond her own. Thus she needs this; she needs it more particularly because she is obliged to look back and see and know that she was "black"—not merely comely, but "black." She is obliged to see what she has passed through, and why it was. It would not be wholesome, it would not be true, without this. For there cannot be stable blessing according to God, whether to the Christian now, or to the Jew by-and-by, or to any other soul, apart from truth. There never can be the real power of grace without the power of truth. There always must be truth in the inward parts; that is, there always must be the confessing of what we really are in God's sight, or what we have done in God's sight. It must be out between God and our own soul. She consequently has to feel this very soon indeed. In spite of all that she has been or is, she, to her wonder, learns His love. It may not have that fullness of heavenly character that we know to be our portion, but it is nevertheless most rich and wondrous, and truly divine.
Well then, "By night on my bed." There may be this darkness. He has not come. It is not a question of the Lord's being there yet. And these figures are used to bring vividly before us what she is passing through. "I sought Him whom my soul loveth"—for now she is not at all afraid to avow it. "I sought Him, but I found Him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways." Just as if that were the place to find Christ! Not so. He is not regarded as corning through the broad ways or being in the streets; He comes out of the wilderness. That is where she knows, and where she will know, the Lord as taking and identifying Himself with the condition out of which Israel must come; whereas, that is not at all the place where we know the Lord.
We know the Lord in another way altogether; we know Him in heaven. That is our proper way of knowing Him, but she has these anticipative views of Him and at the same time is trained in a deepening acquaintance with His love before He comes. "I sought Him, but I found Him not." And no wonder; she sought Him not rightly. It was not the true place. "The watchmen that go about the city found me"—the guardians of order, but what could they say? 'What could they do? "To whom I said, Saw ye
Him whom my soul loveth?" for she does confess now. It is not only that she has got the affection, but she owns it even to them, although it might seem hardly the place. But so she does. "It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found Him whom my soul loveth: I held Him, and would not let Him go, until I had brought Him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me." That is, it is her soul laying hold of His coming into a renewed connection with Israel.
There is great force in all these figures. The mother is always Israel according to Scripture. Not so the Church. The Church is never regarded as the "mother." Whom would she be the mother of? Not of herself—not of Christians. You could not have that. The Church is not the mother of Christians, still less is the Church the mother of the Lord. And there you see we at once find the importance of seeing relationship as God unfolds it in His Word. The mother, as I have said, is always Israel. The bride, the wife, is the Church. We do find a bride here, but we shall find that there is a difference. We must not confound the two. We must not suppose that the "mother" and the "bride" are the same; and it just shows the utter and dreadful blindness of system in the minds of men that the greater part of Christendom does regard the mother in the Song of Solomon and the bride to be the same identical person. Nay further, the grossness of darkness leads them to think that the virgin Mary is both. They are utterly dark, for I know nothing in paganism that is more degradingly dark than the superstition of Romanism. You would think it strange on the part of human beings who have got the Bible—who have got the New Testament—men, you must remember, of learning and ability, possibly some of them even converted to God, for I would not deny this. And yet I am telling you a plain and positive fact which it has been my experience to find out and know, when I say that these are the delusions which carry away and captivate souls at this present moment—nay, into which souls out of a certain yearning and aspiration after something better, which they cannot find in ordinary Protestantism, are breaking away. What a mercy, beloved brethren, to have the truth and the word of His truth.
Now, if you look at the 12th of Revelation, how beautiful it is, and comforting to our souls, to find that a book which at first sight might not seem to be the key to other parts of Scripture, yet indeed is so. I suppose that most people think that you want a key to the Revelation; but the truth of it is, so wonderfully is the Word of God woven together, and so surprising the mutual uses of all parts of the Scriptures, that, as we find Genesis a key to Revelation, so also we find very often that the Revelation is a key to Genesis. And this is very encouraging to see, because it is God who has trained His people not to have their favorites—always a dangerous thing. Whether it is in living people or in the Word of God, it is a great thing to be able to use without abusing—a great thing to be open to the help of all that God uses for His own glory and for the blessing of His people.
Well, the 12th of Revelation makes it perfectly plain, for there we have the woman, and the woman in remarkable glory. She has got the sun and the moon under her feet, a crown of twelve stars, etc. Now what woman is that? I need not tell you what haste always says—Oh, it is the Church. Not so; it is not the Church. For you see that the woman there brings forth the male of might; and that male of might-who is he? Surely there is no mistake. The male of might who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron—can anyone doubt who He is? It is Christ and none but Christ. Christ is the male of might. Consequently, we see at once who the woman is, because it is Christ that always determines the truth of every person and everything.
Let me bring Him into contact with my own soul's state. Let me bring Him into contact with any soul anywhere. The moment you bring Christ in, you have the truth. I learn my own state, whether it is good or bad, by bringing the Lord in. And so also you learn who or what is before you by bringing Christ in. Well then, you bring Christ into that chapter, and you will see Christ in the male of might; and the woman is His mother. Who is that? Not the Church. The Church is not the mother of Christ. Israel, "of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came," is the mother, as the Apostle Paul teaches in the 9th of Romans; so you see what Paul puts so finely in the 9th of Romans is what John teaches symbolically in the 12th of Revelation; whereas when you come to see the Church, then you have another thing—the bride, the Lamb's wife. Ah, that is the Church. Again, you find another woman (I may just say by the way), but she is neither one nor the other. She is the woman that pretends to be the Church, but it is the antichurch. Just as there will be a man that will be the antichrist, so there is a woman that is the antichurch. That is Babylon; Rome is the great center of Babylon.
Well then, the meaning clearly is that this woman in the Song of Solomon connects in her spiritual embrace, if I may say so, she associates the one that she loved, who was clearly the returning King, with the mother's house—"the chamber of her that conceived me."
"I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till He please." I have already shown the importance of this intimation that comes in now and again in the book. It always introduces a fresh view of the matter and of the Lord as anticipated by the heart of Jerusalem; for here you must remember that Jerusalem is to be the chosen bride—and I mean by that, Jerusalem that is to be. Not the Jerusalem that is on high—not the Jerusalem that now is, but the Jerusalem that is to be—the Jerusalem that is to be born of God, just as much as the Jerusalem on high is the great new creation in Christ. But this is the Jerusalem that is to be the chosen bride of the King when He comes again into this world.
"Who is this?" then is the word; "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant? Behold His bed, which is Solomon's." Nothing can be plainer. Solomon is not the figure of Christ in relation to the Church. David may be. I do not mean that David always is, but David may be so preeminently, because he at any rate knew more of the sufferings of Christ and was identified with the rejection in a way that Solomon never was. Solomon never knew anything but glory; he was the man of peace. All, so to speak, was bright and glorious as far as Solomon was concerned, and it is clear that this one that she looks for is not a suffering one.