Dave preached from Song of Songs 3:1-4 last night, looking at the relationship between the church (the Bride) and Christ (the Bridegroom), a relationship based on love.
Song of Songs is a love story, telling how King Solomon finds a country girl with whom he falls in love. Although King, he doesn’t reveal his identity to her and returns from his country estate to Jerusalem, urging his beloved to wait for him and to prepare for the wedding feast. It is also an allegory, mirroring the church’s relationship with Christ, which is frequently pictured in the human terms of marriage.
Christ is our Lover, our Bridegroom. He came to earth to suffer and die for us, a ‘joy set before Him’ (Heb 12:2), the joy of welcoming His Bride, ‘spotless and without blemish’. We are currently in the position of waiting for His return and there can be doubt and fear in our hearts at times, just as there was in the Beloved’s. Sometimes, like her, we miss the intimate presence of the Lord and need to seek that afresh. We need to seek Him in church, where He has promised to meet with His people, but we need to seek Him everywhere, abandoning our pride to ask those who know Jesus to help us find Him.
How do we hold on to the presence of Christ? We do this by faith, trusting in Him even when we don’t feel His presence. We need to rest on Him, letting our whole hearts go out to Him. We need to pray constantly and urgently, showing our love through our obedience. We keep close to God by ‘prayerful, holy, careful living and loving.’
Ultimately, Jesus asks us the simple question, as He did Peter, ‘Do you love me?’ Only we can answer that.
As we wait for Jesus to return for His Bride, let’s ‘hold on’, for there is ‘mercy in the morning light’:
Phil Wickham, ‘Hold On’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9DUKJEYd6Q
We also had an upcoming birthday to celebrate: