Now if you would take your copies of God’s Word and turn with me to the Song of Songs that is Solomon’s, chapter 3. You can find it on page 561 if you are using one of our church Bibles.
This morning we are considering the first five verses of chapter 3. You may remember in the previous chapter, it was all about Solomon’s initiative in overcoming distance between the lovers. He came to his bride, the Shulamite, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. It’s his initiative. In the five verses that are before us now, however, our attention falls on the woman and they offer us her point of view. It’s her turn as she now searches for him. You’ll notice, if you’re using an ESV or one of our church Bibles, ESV editors call this passage, most unhelpfully in my view, “The Bride’s Dream.” Do you see that heading provided by the translators and editors in your Bibles? Other than the fact that it all begins with her in her bed at night, there’s really not hint at all in the text that this is an account of a dream that she is having. So much better, I think, to take it at face value. She is longing for her beloved and she can’t find him, and so she seeks for him diligently until eventually she does find him. And having found him, she won’t let him go.
Unsurprisingly, given that storyline, two key words repeat all the way through the passage. Do you see the words “seek” and “find”? They’re everywhere in the text, and they provide a convenient way to summarize the message. First, there is seeking, verses 1 through 3, and then there is finding, in verses 4 and 5. Now over these weeks that we have had in the song together, we have been arguing from various allusions and Biblical connections in the text itself, that the song was always meant to be read as more than a mere love song celebrating human marriage. It is a Gospel song, singing of the love of the Lord for His people, of Christ’s love for His bride, the Church. And since that is true, following the Shulamite, the lover of Solomon, as she seeks for her absent lover and eventually finds him, ought to be deeply instructive for our Christian lives because seeking and finding Christ, the Lover of our souls, is a central promise of holy Scripture held out to all of us in God’s marvelous grace.
All of that to say, this part of the song teaches us about what it means to seek for an absent Christ and how He is to be found. This part of the song is about what it means to seek for an absent Christ and about how He is to be found. What should we do when Jesus, the Bridegroom, is far away? Haven’t you ever felt like that? You love the Lord Jesus, you’re confident in His love for you, but for whatever reason, you find yourself in a season when, even though you are seeking Him, He is distant from you. You can’t find Him. He’s not close by, as it were, in the comfort of His felt presence as once He was. It’s a very common, although oftentimes a very distressing experience in our Christian lives – no sense of the nearness of Jesus; no comfort from His Word; no awareness that He is listening when you pray. You feel weak. You feel abandoned. Where is He? Why can’t I find Him?
“What should you do when you feel that way and Jesus, the Bridegroom, seems so very far from you?” That’s the question these verses help us to answer. Before we look at them together, let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord’s assistance and blessing on the ministry of His Word. Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, Lover of our souls, we bow before You and we would, as it were, rise now and seek You, the one our souls love. Grant that as we seek You in Your Word we might find you for the joy of our hearts and the comfort of our souls and the great glory of Your name. Amen.
Song of Songs that is Solomon’s, chapter 3 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not. I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not. The watchmen found me as they went about in the city. ‘Have you seen him whom my soul loves?’ Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. 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 who conceived me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.”
Amen.
Seeking, first of all. Seeking. Look at verse 1. “On my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.” She is home alone, it’s the middle of the night; actually, the text uses plurals here – “On my bed in the nights” is what she says literally. So possibly this is a sustained, nightly experience for her, repeated over many days. Or more likely, actually it refers to the various watches of the night in one single, turbulent, restless night in her life. Either way, she is thinking about her fiance, and his absence is breaking her heart. She can’t sleep. He’s gone. It’s upsetting her. “Where is he? I found him not,” she says. And then she repeats it again, doesn’t she, in verse 2. “I found him not. He’s not with me. I feel like half a person without him.”
That’s how I feel when I’m away on a trip without Sheena, my wife. Don’t you feel that way, husbands? Half a person without her? Just a bit lost really. I don’t really work all that well without her. When God knits your heart to a Christian man, ladies, or to a Christian woman, men, you know this experience don’t you? I don’t sleep well when I’m away from her. “On my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.”
But if that’s true in loving, human relationships, it’s certainly also true of our Christian lives. In those seasons when it seems that Jesus is far from us, we have that same sense of soul restlessness. Don’t we? Our peace is shattered. Our equilibrium is disrupted. Sometimes that happens because we’ve sinned against Him and spurned His love and He has withdrawn His felt presence from us for a time in order to discipline us and get through to us and bring us to repentance. We see something like this, actually, happening in the song when we get to chapter 5. At other times, it’s because we have grown complacent. We have a nice, steady routine. We have a regular, orderly quiet time every morning. We give, we pray, we serve in the local church. All of that is good and right; I hope that is true of you. But we’ve fallen into a bit of a rut. We’re following all the rules; all the boxes have been ticked. And we begin to tell ourselves we have this Christian life thing all sewn up. And the Lord Jesus, in His love and wisdom, withdraws from us the sense of His nearness to awaken us to the dangers of presumption, presuming upon Him, so that we might seek Him with our whole hearts and kick out of the rut and pursue Him with new earnestness.
And at still other times, our Christian lives are healthy, we are growing, we are bearing fruit, all is well under the blessing of heaven, and then as Jesus puts it in John 15, the vinedresser comes and prunes the fruitful vine that it might bear more fruit. And suddenly, inexplicably as it seems to us, right in the middle of blessing, we find ourselves in a season of spiritual dryness. As if heaven had turned to brass, the Lord seems to have hidden face. It can be bewildering. Any of this sound familiar to you? “I sought him whom my soul loves and I found him not.”
Perhaps you are here this morning and you can say the same thing. If you are saying the same thing today – “I sought Him and found Him not. He seems to have withdrawn from me. I can’t find Him. Where has He gone?” – if that’s you, I want you to understand that it is not that Christ has abandoned you. This is really important. It might feel that way sometimes, but if you are a true Christian, Jesus says to you, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” He says, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” A Christian is a person, after all, who has been united to Christ by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in the heart. “You have been made alive together with Christ,” Ephesians 2:5. And that means now “nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord,” Romans 8:39. So if you are Christ’s by faith in the Gospel, you are Christ’s forever. Praise the Lord! What a relief! Right?
But, but our enjoyment of His presence, our sense and awareness of His love, our feeling Him to be near, to support and keep us by His Word and Spirit, these things can be and often are withdrawn from us for a time. And so like the Shulamite we cry, “I sought him whom my soul loves, and I found him not.” By the way, that expression, “him whom my soul loves,” appears, do you notice, in every verse in this section except verse 5. This is how she thinks about him. He is “him whom my soul loves.” This is what it’s such a painful experience for her; she loves him so very profoundly. She loves him from her soul, from the core of her life, from the very center of herself.
Is there perhaps an allusion here to the command of Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5 and Matthew 22:38? Jesus called Deuteronomy 6:5 “the great and first commandment.” The Lord tells Israel, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” There is in the Shulamite’s whole soul love for Solomon an echo here, isn’t there, of the “love with all your soul” that the Lord requires of His people. We are to love Him like this – from the core of our being and the very center of ourselves.
And if you know anything of the love of Christ filling your heart, the pain of the absence of Christ, if you don’t know anything of that love rather, the pain of the absence of Christ will be a complete mystery to you. If your soul loves another – you love yourself, you love the world and the things of the world, you love your riches, you love your pleasure – if your soul loves another, you can know nothing of the ache of longing for the presence of Jesus. And if that is you, I have to say that I very much doubt that you will be able to make much sense at all of what we are talking about here this morning. But once you have tasted His love, once the Holy Spirit, as Paul puts it in Romans 5, has “poured out the love of God into your heart,” nothing else can satisfy. No other substitute can compare. Friends, what is there in you – look at your heart now – what is there in you of a whole soul longing for the presence of Jesus? Is He “Him whom your soul loves”? Does it make you glad to have a sense of His presence near to you? And does it break your heart like the Shulamite’s heart is broken here when He feels far away?
If it does break your heart to be without Him – I hope it does break your heart to be without Him – what should you do? What does the Shulamite do? Well, she’s not content to remain in her bed, is she? Verse 2, “I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves.” She isn’t passive. She doesn’t stay where she is, where it is warm and safe and comfortable. She doesn’t simply presume that Solomon will take care of everything and she need do nothing. No, she rises and goes into the city at night and begins to search for him in earnest. I’m pretty sure that none of the young ladies of our congregation will set off on foot to roam the streets of Jackson at night like this. I wouldn’t roam the streets of Jackson at night like this, would you? It’s not safe, is it? We get that.
And actually, at her time and cultural context it wasn’t safe for the Shulamite either as she sets off to scour the streets of Jerusalem in search of her beloved. But she has no thought for her own security here, does she? No care in this moment for her own comfort. She inconveniences herself significantly here because she desperately wants to find him. And that’s the point. You’ll notice she puts herself in all the places she knows it is most likely she is going to finally run into her beloved. She rises and goes about the city and seeks him in the streets and in the squares.
When Jesus is distant and you feel His absence, what should you do? You must rise and seek Him. “I will rise now,” she says. She doesn’t shrug and sit back and wait passively for her beloved to chase her. She goes and searches for him. And she looks in all the ordinary places where he might be found. If you are a Christian in search of the felt presence of Christ in your life, rise and seek Him diligently. Spare no effort as you look for Him in all the places He ordinarily is to be found. If you really want to find Him, you’ll conclude there is no inconvenience too great to endure if, by enduring it, you might have His presence with you again at last once more. The worst thing a despondent, discouraged Christian can do, the worst thing you can do if you feel the lack of the presence of Christ, is to stay home on the Lord’s Day. The worst thing you can do is to leave your Bible closed on your bedside table every morning. The worst thing you can do is to tune out the ministry of the Word of God.
The Shulamite, she’s not looking for some extraordinary invitation to come and turn her world upside down while she sits back passively, twiddling her thumbs in perfect seclusion. Not as she’s sulking, wallowing in self pity. She is searching through the city, in the streets and in the squares. My friend, Jonathan Master, is currently preaching through the Song just as we are here. He’s preaching in the chapel of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary to the students there, and he says of these words, “I will rise now” – “It is a useful sentence for a Christian who has spent too long intending to obey.” That’s good, isn’t it? “‘I will rise now’ is a useful sentence for a Christian who has spent too long intending to obey.”
Are you stuck in a dark night of the soul, wondering where “Him whom your soul loves” has gone?” Well why not take the words of the Shulamite here for your own and take yourself in hand and say, “I will rise now and go in search of my Savior.” Merely intending to obey isn’t going to work. Making a plan to turn over a new leaf tomorrow won’t help you. You’ve spent far too long intending but not doing. You need to seek your Savior now, today, with determination and diligence and with persistence in days to come. Seek Him! Seek Him until you find Him! And so she seeks for Solomon here throughout this city, thus far, you notice, she seeks for Him in vain. “I found him not,” she says again.
But then in verse 3, if you’d look there please, the watchmen of the city find her, and so she asks them if they have seen “him whom my soul loves.” The watchmen are the city guard. They are the people to whom someone in the Shulamite’s situation would naturally, instinctively turn for help at a moment like this. They patrol the city; that’s their job. If anyone knows where to find him, surely, she reasons, is these guys. But as it turns out, they are no help at all, are they? They have no answers for her. They don’t seem to say anything. So far as we know they don’t say a word to her. She is looking in all the right places, all the places one might expect to look to find someone – in the streets, in the squares, in the city. She asks the watchmen, the people in authority, who are best positioned to help her, and still, she says, “I found him not.”
When Christ seems distant and His presence far away from us, we do have a duty to perform. We must rise and seek Him. Seek Him in all the places He will ordinarily be found. Seek Him in His Word. Seek Him by prayer. Seek Him in church. Seek Him from people in authority who have experience, whose role it is to help. Seek Him from pastors and elders and mature Christians who know Him and love Him and who know and love you. Seek Him. Are you seeking Him? We must seek Him.
But the experience of the Shulamite here also cautions us to remember while we must seek Him by all the ordinary means by which He is typically to be found, He is contained within none of them. Ministers and elders can’t give Jesus to you. Sacraments, as we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper next Lord’s Day evening, God willing, sacraments can’t overcome automatically, mechanically, the sense of His absence. Our prayers, sometimes they feel like lead balloons, don’t they. As soon as we utter them they fall with a clang to the ground and they seem to go nowhere. The very great and precious promises of Scripture sometimes do nothing to chase the fog that hides the warm rays of His sunshine promise.
And when that happens, we need to remember that the means of grace – the Word and the sacraments and prayer – they are not levers to pull on the side of a cosmic slot machine, and if you just use them correctly blessing will come your way automatically, inevitably, routinely. No, the Shulamite is seeking a person, not a feeling. She’s seeking Solomon, not an experience. She is looking for “him whom my soul loves,” not a therapeutic reward that will make her feel better about herself. And precisely because it is a person that she is seeking, she must seek him in all the ordinary places where he will be found, but she must never allow herself to imagine for a moment that her search cancels his agency or removes his freedom.
Discouraged Christian, rise and seek Him. Use the means of grace diligently – the Word, the sacraments, prayer. Go to all the places He has appointed for your fellowship with Christ. Typically that is where He will meet with us, where you will find Him. Seek Him in these places, and it is neither right nor safe for us to neglect the means of grace, but as you use the means of grace, never allow yourself to think that Christ is somehow locked up inside those means. He remains the free and sovereign King, and He comes to His people in His time and in His own way. Seeking – that’s the first theme of this passage. Can you see it? Are you seeking Him? Are you? Are you seeking Him?
Then secondly – finding. Look at verse 4. “Scarcely had I passed them,” the watchmen, “when I found him whom my soul loves.” As she leaves the watchmen, was she discouraged that not even they can help her? She has exhausted all the obvious means of finding her lover. Was she about to head for home, her head drooping, crestfallen, defeated? And then, without warning, almost abruptly, Solomon is simply there. In verse 1 she has said, “I sought him whom my soul loves, and I found him not.” In verse 2 she says it again, “I sought him; I found him not.” Again in verse 3, “I found him not.” And now suddenly, “I found him! My beloved is here now, standing suddenly before me!” Her seeking has become finding at last.
And this, let’s remember, is the great promise of Scripture for everyone who seeks for the greater than Solomon who is here. God told Israel, Deuteronomy 4:29, “You will seek the Lord your God and you will find Him if you search after Him with all your heart.” In Jeremiah 29:13, the promise is renewed – “You will seek Me and find Me if you seek Me with all your heart.” And Jesus said, Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Have you been seeking Jesus, the Lover of your soul, and finding Him not? Has the dark night of the soul stretched on and on for you? Let the experience of the Shulamite and the many promises of Scripture encourage your heart not to quit the search. “You will seek Me and find Me,” He says to you.
I like how the great Puritan theologian, John Owen, puts it commenting on this verse. He said, “It often so falls out in our communion with Christ when private and public means fail and the soul have nothing left but waiting silently and walking humbly that Christ appears, so that His doing so may be evidently of grace so that you don’t think you made Him appear by something you did. He often does it that way,” says Owen. “Christ often manifests Himself immediately and apart from ordinances to those who wait for Him in them.” And here’s the line I want you to think about and remember. Owen says, “Let us wait as He hath appointed, and let Him appear as He pleases.” That’s part of the lesson here, isn’t it? We have a duty to perform, and He has free agency and comes to us in His time and in His way.
Remember that Jesus, the heavenly Bridegroom, isn’t like us merely earthly husbands, is He? Husbands in the room, admit it now – we get our feelings hurt, sometimes far too easily, don’t we? And we sulk and we withdraw and we go cold and we back off. That’s not what’s happening here between Solomon and the Shulamite in the song. It is never what happens between you and your Savior, the Lord Jesus. Jesus is not a moody, petulant husband, pouting and sulking some place in a corner. When He withdraws His felt presence from us, it isn’t because He is insecure or needy or feeling neglected. And if I may say so to all the moody, insecure, needy husbands in the room, we need to learn from Christ the heavenly Bridegroom and get over ourselves and stop being so terribly fragile. That’s not what He’s like; it’s not who we ought to be. When He withdraws, it’s because He wants us to seek Him. He wants to stir up in us a longing for Him, to search for Him until we find Him. They say, don’t they, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” That’s what He’s doing in your heart, in my heart. He withdraws for a season to make our heart grow fonder. He wants us to take Him at His Word and begin to ask and seek and knock. He says to us, “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. So seek Me, why don’t you! I want to be found by you. You will find Me!”
Could the reason be that you languish so long in the “slough of despond,” as Bunyan describes spiritual depression, you languish so long in the dark night of the soul, could the reason be you have forgotten His promise and you’ve stopped seeking Him long before you found Him? He wants you to find Him. He promises you will find Him. “Everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. Everybody, even you, even you.”
Perhaps you are here and you are not a Christian this morning and you are waiting for something to happen, some experience to overtake you and sort of sweep you up and overwhelm you and, in a sudden ecstasy, make you into a Christian, and you’re wondering why it’s not happened yet. But have you sought Him? He invites you to seek Him, to call out to Him, to confess your sin to Him and your need of Him. Wait on the Lord and seek His face. He promises if you will, you will find Him. Isaiah 55:6 that Dr. Wingard read as our assurance of pardon says, “Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord that He may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will, He will, He will abundantly pardon.” Are you seeking Him? If you seek Him, you will find Him.
And when the Shulamite does find him, notice how she reacts in verse 4. “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 who conceived me.” Bringing him into her mother’s house and chamber is likely a reference to part of the marriage ceremony, so I think she is saying something like, “Now that I have found him, I’m not going to let him go ever again, certainly not until we have tied the knot!” There is a determination to keep what she has found. Having been restored to fellowship with him, she does not want to lose it ever again.
And that is an instinct that we all need to cultivate in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t it? If after a season of dryness and spiritual desertion, the felt presence of Christ is restored to you, it is your duty, my duty to do all that we can never to allow anything to come between us again. This is the posture we need to maintain. Hold onto Him, cling to Him, and never let Him go. How easily our modest gains in the Christian life can be lost by our lack of tenacity in clinging to Jesus Christ in His holy Word.
And then finally in verse 5 we have another adjuration, another demand for an oath from the daughters of Jerusalem. Do you see that? In verse 5, she uses exactly the same words that we met with back in chapter 2 verse 7. It is a call to sexual purity outside of marriage and to wait for God’s timing for marriage. “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” Sex is a gift of God made for joy and intimacy between husbands and wives alone. In context here in chapter 3, the emphasis on exclusivity and patience and commitment fits perfectly with the drama unfolding in the preceding verses, doesn’t it? She has found him whom her soul loves and now she clings to him exclusively and intends to marry him and bring him into her mother’s house.
And the adjuration in verse 5 is another way of calling the daughters of Jersauelm to the same exclusive commitment. The bride belongs to the bridegroom alone. The bridegroom belongs to the bride. “My beloved is mine and I am his,” she says. If we are to cling to Jesus and not let anything come between us, don’t we need to hear again the words of this solemn adjuration and oath in verse 5? It’s really spiritual impatience and a desire for other lovers for soul satisfaction found elsewhere than Jesus Christ that will spoil our communion with Him. And so if verse 4 is a declaration of her total commitment to Solomon – “I held him and would not let him go” – verse 5 is a warning about the danger of straying.
And both of them, verse 4 and verse 5, they belong together. We need to hear both in our marriages – total commitment and the danger of straying. And we need to hear both in our fellowship with Jesus Christ. Seek Him. Seek Him until you find Him. Seek Him where He has promised to meet with us. Seek Him in His Word. Seek Him by prayer. Seek Him in the assembly of God’s people on the Lord’s Day. If you seek Him, you will find Him, and when you do find Him, as our wedding vows put it, you must “forsake all others and cleave only to Him.”
So, seeking – are you seeking Christ today or have you given up? If you will seek Him, He promises you, you will find Him to the comfort and joy of your soul. Won’t you take Him at His Word and seek Him again? “I will rise now and seek Him whom my soul loves.” Make that your commitment today. And finding – you will find Him. When you find Him, when He comes to you by His Word and Spirit, will you resolve like the Shulamite to cling to Him and never let Him go? Seeking and finding.
Let’s pray together.
Lord Jesus, we do acknowledge that there are times, perhaps for some of us here today this is one of those times when You have felt and feel very far away from us. We know things to be true and we believe them – we trust the Gospel, we do love You – but our hearts are cold and dry and You seem to have withdrawn from us. And we don’t always understand why or what has happened. And yet we confess to You when that has overtaken us, we have quickly given up, far too quickly given up seeking. We’ve simply resigned ourselves to this sense of spiritual dereliction. But Your Word urges us to seek You with all our hearts and promises us that we will find You when we do. So Lord Jesus, we will rise now – that our new resolve – and go to all the places You have ordained to meet with us, and we will seek You until we find You. May we all, each of us, find You. And for those here today who are utter strangers to Your love, not yet born again by Your Spirit’s mighty work, grant that they may not sit back and wait around passively, as though to say, “Well, if this is all real, Jesus will have to come and do something before I’m willing to seek Him.” Instead, help them to hear You talking to them today from the Scriptures and grant that they might seek Your face and begin to call out to You. And as they call out, would You answer them and break into their hearts and rescue them? For we ask this all in Your name, amen.