Nearer and Dearer 2

"My LOVE," Jesus calls us what we profess to be. We say we love him; yes and unless we have been dreadfully deceived, we do love him. It brings the water into my eyes to think of it that I should so often be indifferent to him, and yet I can say it as before him, "You know all things, you know that I love you." Men and brethren, if we love him, let us crave his presence in our souls. How miserable must it be to live as some do day after day, without a real soul-stirring heaven-moving prayer. Are there not some who continue week after week without searching the word, and without rejoicing in the Lord? Oh, wretched life of banishment from bliss! Dear hearer, can you be satisfied to go forth into the world, and to be so occupied with it, that you never have a desire towards heaven? If so, mourn over such backsliding, since it exiles you from your best Beloved's bosom.

The Bridegroom adds another title, "my UNDEFILED." There is a spiritual chastity which every believer must maintain; our heart belongs to no one but to Christ. All other lovers must be gone; he fills the throne. He has bought us; no other paid a part of the price; he shall have us altogether. He has taken us into personal union with himself; of his mystical body we make up a part; we ought, therefore, to hold ourselves as chaste virgins unto Christ, undefiled with the pollution's of the flesh and the rivalries of earthly loves.

To the undefiled Jesus says, "Open to me." Oh! I am ashamed, this morning, to be preaching from such a text, ashamed of myself most of all, that I should need to have such a text applied to my own soul. Why, beloved, if Christ condescends to enter into such a poor miserable cottage as our nature is, ought we not to entertain the King with the best we have, and feel that the first seat at our table is all too poor and too lowly for him?

What if in the midst of this dark night our Beloved comes to us who profess to love him, shall he have to knock and speak and plead by every sweet and endearing title, and yet shall we refuse to arise and give him the fellowship he craves? Did you notice that powerful argument with which the heavenly lover closed his cry? He said, "My head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night." Ah, sorrowful remembrances, for those 'drops' were not the ordinary dew that fell upon the houseless traveler's unprotected head, his head was wet with 'scarlet dew', and his locks with 'crimson drops' of a tenfold night of God's desertion, when he "sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."

My heart, how vile are you, for you shut out the Crucified. Behold the Man thorn-crowned and scourged, with traces of the spittle of the soldiery, can you close the door on him? Will you despise the "despised and rejected of men"? Will you grieve the "Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief"? Do you forget that he suffered all this for you, for you, when you deserve nothing at his hands? After all this, will you give him no recompense, not even the poor return of admission to your loving communing?

I am afraid some of you believers think it a very small thing to live a day or two without fellowship with God in prayer. Probably you have fallen into such a sleepy state that you can read your Bible without enjoyment, and yet you do not feel it to be any very remarkable thing that it is so. You come to and fro to the Tabernacle and listen to the gospel, and it does not come home to you with the power it once had, and yet you do not feel at all alarmed about it. My Master does not treat your state of mind with the same indifference that you do, for it causes him pain, and though as Mediator his expiatory griefs are finished once for all, yet he has anguish still over your indifference and coldness of heart; these sorrows are the drops that bedew his head, these are the dewdrops that hang about his raven locks.

O will you grieve him, will you open all his wounds and crucify him afresh, and put him to an open shame? Doors of the heart, fly open! Though rusted upon your hinges, open at the coming of the sorrowful Lover who was smitten of God and afflicted. Surely the argument of his grief should prevail instantly with every honest heart: he whose head is wet with dew, and his locks with the drops of the night, must not be kept standing in the street, it behooves that he be entertained with our warmest love, it is imperative that he be housed at once.

IV. Yet the spouse hastened not to open the door, and I am afraid the like delay may be charged upon some of us. Our shame deepens as we pursue our theme, and think how well our own character is photographed here by the wise man; for notice, in the fourth place, that after the knocking and the pleading, the spouse made A MOST UNGENEROUS EXCUSE.

She sat like a queen, and knew no sorrow. She had put off her garments and washed her feet as travelers do in the East before they go to rest. She was taking her ease in full security, and therefore she said to her Beloved, "I have put off my tunic, I cannot robe myself again. As for my feet, I have washed them, and to tread the floor to open the door would defile them; therefore, I ask you have me excused."

A bad excuse was in this case far worse than none, because it was making one sin an apology for another. Why did she put off her coat? The bridegroom had not come; she should have stood with her loins girt about, and her lamp trimmed. Why had she washed her feet? It was right to do so if the emblem had indicated purity, but it indicated carnal ease in her case. She had left holy labor for carnal rest. Why did she so? She thus makes her wicked slumber and inaction to be an excuse for barring out her Husband.

My dear brethren and sisters, there is a temptation which is very cunning on the part of Satan, and perhaps he will exercise that upon some of you this morning. While I have been preaching, you have said, "Well, that is just like me. The text fully opens up my experience;" and the devil will then say, "Be satisfied; you see you are just in the same condition as the spouse was, therefore it is all right."

Oh, damnable temptation! what can be more vile than this, that because another has sinned against the Beloved, I am to be content to sin in the same way! Perhaps you will turn this sad course of conduct in the ancient spouse into an excuse for your own negligence. Shall I English the excuse she made? it is this: "O Lord, I know that if I am to enter into much fellowship with you, I must pray very differently from what I have done of late, but it is too much trouble; I cannot stir myself to energy so great. My time is so taken up with my business. I am so constantly engaged that I could not afford even a quarter of an hour for retirement. I have to cut my prayers so short."

Is this the miserable excuse in part? shall I go on? Shall I tell out more of this dishonorable apology? It is this: "I do not want to begin an examination of myself: it may reveal so many unpleasant truths. I sleep, and it is very comfortable to sleep; I do not want to be driven out of my comforts. Perhaps if I were to live nearer to Christ, I should have to give up some of the things, which I so much enjoy. I have become conformed to the world of late. I am very fond of having Mr. So-and-so to spend an hour with me in the evening, and his talk is anything but that which my Master would approve of, but I cannot give him up. I have taken to read religious novels. I could not expect to have the Lord Jesus Christ's company when I am poring over such trash as that, but still I prefer it to my Bible. I would sooner read a fool's tale than I would read of Jesus' love."

How ashamed I feel this morning, to have to put it into words like these, the sins of some of you, but my words are literal truth. Do not many of you live as if you had a name to live, and were dead? Jesus Christ comes, and knocks this morning, and reminds you that the happiest life is living near to him; that the holiest, purest, sweetest hours you ever had were those in which you threw yourselves upon him, and gave up all beside him. He reminds you of your better days,

O I beg you, do not offer him frivolous and vexating excuses. O despise not your Lord who died for you, in whose name you live, with whom you hope to reign forever, who is to wrap you about with glory in the day of his appearing. Let it not be said that he is pushed into a corner, and his love despised, while the vile painted-faced world takes up the love of your life! It should not be so! It is baseness itself on our part when it is so.

Still as a wonder of wonders, although shamefully and cruelly treated, the beloved Husband did not go away. We are told that he "put in his hand by the hole of the door," and then the affections of his spouse were moved for him. In the Eastern door there is generally a place near the lock into which a man may put his hand, and there is a pin inside which, if removed, unfastens the door. Each one of these locks is different from another, so that no one usually understands how to open the door except the master. So the Master in this case did not actually open the door- you notice the spouse did that, but he pulled out the pin, so that she could see his hand, she could see that the door was not fast closed now he had removed the bar.

"My Beloved put in his HAND by the hole of the door." Does not this picture THE WORK OF EFFECTUAL GRACE, when the truth does not appeal to the ear alone, but comes to the heart, when it is no longer a thing thought on, and discussed and forgotten, but an arrow which has penetrated into the mind, and sticks fast in the loins to our wounding, and ultimately to our spiritual healing?

No hand is like Christ's hand. When he puts his hand to the work it is well done. He "put in his hand:" not his hand on me to smite me, but his hand in me to comfort me, to sanctify me. He put in his hand, and straightway his beloved began to pity him, and to lament her unkindness. She thought as she looked at that hand pierced with the nail mark, "O Jesus, have I no love for you? Have you done all this for me, and have I been a transparent hypocrite after all, and locked you out when I ought to have admitted you? I have used no other friend so badly. I should have been ashamed to have thought of such conduct even to a foe. But you, O you who has done more for me than mother, brother, husband, friend, could have done- to you I have been an ingrate most base and willful." Her affections were moved with repentance; her eyes gushed with tears, and she rose to let him in.

As she arose she first buckled on her garments, and then she searched for the alabaster box of precious ointment, that she might anoint his weary feet and dewy locks. No sooner did she reach the door, than see the love of God to her! Her "hands dropped with myrrh, and her fingers with sweet smelling myrrh." Here is the Holy Spirit come to help our infirmities. She begins to pray, and the Holy Spirit helps her. She begins already to enjoy the sweetness, not of communion, but of the very desire after communion. For, beloved, when our tears begin to flow because we are far from Christ, those holy drops have myrrh in them.

When we begin to pray for grace, there is a blessedness even about our yearnings, and longings, and sighings, and pantings, and pinings; our fingers drop with sweet smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock. An unction from the Holy One descends upon the soul when it is earnestly seeking for its Beloved. But that ought never to satisfy us. Behold another temptation of the devil- he will say to you, "On this very morning you felt some sweetness in hearing about Christ, your hands have evidently dropped with myrrh upon the handles of the lock." Yes, but still it is not the myrrh that will content the loving heart, it is Christ she needs; and if not only hands, but lips and feet and her whole frame had dropped with myrrh, this would never have contented her until she could get the Lord himself.

I beg you, beloved, if the life of Jesus be in you of a truth, rest not satisfied with all the graces, and the promises, and the doctrines, and the gifts of the Spirit of God, but seek alter this most excellent gift- to know Christ, and to be found in him, to say of him, "He loved me, and gave himself for me;" and, yet more, "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me." It was that effectually putting in of the hand that moved her. O Lord, grant the like unto us.

VI. But now, in the sixth place, observe THE DESERVED CHASTISEMENT which the Bridegroom inflicted.

When her spouse was willing to commune, she was not; and now that she is willing, and even anxious, what happens? I wish to describe this to you because some of you may have felt it, and others of you who never have, but have preserved your intimacy with Christ up until now, may be warned by it. The newly awakened one went to the door, and opened it to her Beloved, for though he was gone, she did not doubt of her love to him, nor of his love to her. "I opened to my Beloved, but," says the Hebrew, "He had gone, he had gone."

This is the voice of lamentation, the re-duplicated cry of one that is in bitter distress. There must have been a sad relief about it to her sinful heart, for she must have felt afraid to look her dear one in the face after such heartless conduct; but sad as it would have been to face him, it was infinitely sadder to say, "he is gone, he is gone." Now she begins to use the means of grace in order to find him. "I sought him," said she, "and I found him not. I went up to the house of God; the sermon was sweet, but it was not sweet to me, for he was not there. I went to the communion table, and the ordinance was a feast of fat things to others, but not to me, for he was not there. I sought him, but I could not find him." Then she betook herself to prayer. She had neglected that before, but now she supplicated in real earnest, "I called him; I said to him, Come, my Beloved, my heart wakes for you. Jesus, reveal yourself to me as you do not to the world.

"I thirst, I faint, I die to prove
The sweetness of redeeming love,
Your love, O Christ, to me."

Her prayers were many; she kept them up by day and by night. "I called him, but he gave me no answer." She was not a lost soul, do not mistake that. Christ loved her just us much then as before, no, loved her a great deal more. If there can be any change in Christ's love, he must have much more approved of her when she was seeking him in sorrow, than when she was reclining upon the couch and neglecting him. But he was gone, and all her calling could not bring him back.

What did she do then? Why, she went to his ministers, she went to those who were the 'watchmen of the night', and what did they say to her? Did they cheer her? Perhaps they had never passed through her experience; perhaps they were mere hirelings. However it might be, they smote her.

Sometimes the truthful preaching of the gospel will smite a child of God when he gets out of his walk with God, and it is right it should be so. But they did more than smite, they "wounded" her until she began to bleed from the wounds given by the very men whom she hoped would have comforted her.

"Surely," she might have said, "you know where the city's King is, for you are the city's guards!" but she received no comfort. When a poor soul in this case flies to an unsympathizing minister, he will say, "Well, you say you have lost the presence of Christ, you should bestir yourself to find it." "Yes," says the spouse, "I rose up and opened to him." "You should use the means." "But I have used the means; I sought him, but I found him not." "You should pray." "I did pray; I called him, but he gave me no answer." "Well then," perhaps they will add, "you should wait patiently for him." "Oh, but," she says, "I cannot! I must have him; I am sick with love." And then perhaps the minister will be sharp, and say, "I do not fear are not a child of God." Now what is that? Why, that is taking away the veil from the mourning seeker; plucking away the insignia of sincerity from the benighted seeker.

No woman went into the streets of Jerusalem without her veil, except she was of the baser sort, and the watchmen seemed to say to this woman, "You are of ill name, or you would not be here at this time of night crying out for one you have lost." Oh, cruel work to pull off her veil and expose her, when she was already wretched enough! Sometimes a sharp sentence from a true minister may set a poor soul in the stocks who ought rather to have been comforted. I hope these hands will never pull away the veil from any of you poor mourning lovers of Christ. Far rather would these lips tell him when I speak with him, that you are sick of love.

But it cannot be helped at all times, for when we are dealing with the hypocrite, the tender child of God thinks we mean him. When we are speaking against the formalist, as we must do, the genuine believer writes bitter things against himself. When the fan is in our hand, and we are seeking thoroughly to purge the floor, it sometimes happens that some of the lighter wheat gets blown a little away with the chaff, and so distress is brought to weak but real children of God.

If so, recollect it is not our fault, for we would not intentionally grieve you; but it is your fault for having lost your Beloved, for if you had not lost him, you would not have been saying, "Tell me where I shall find him!" but you would have been rejoicing in him, and no watchmen would have smitten you, and no keepers of the walls would have taken away your veil from you, for Jesus would have been your Protector and your Friend.

VII. Now, to close. As the poor spouse did not then find Christ, but was repulsed in all ways, she adopted A LAST EXPEDIENT. She knew that there were some who had daily fellowship with the King- daughters of Jerusalem who often saw him, and therefore she sent a message by them, "If you see my Beloved, tell him that I am sick with love."

Enlist your brother saints to pray for you. Go with them to their gatherings for prayer. Their company will not satisfy you without Jesus, but their company may help you to find Jesus. Follow the footsteps of the flock, and you may by-and-by discover the Shepherd. And what a message it is to send to Christ! Do not send it by other people's lips only, send it by your own. Tell him, "I am sick of love." This is of all things the most painful, and the most happy thing in all the world. This is a sickness that I should like to die of, but I should like to feel it in rather a different shape from this.

There are 'two love-sicknesses' in Solomon's Song. The one is when the spouse longs for the presence of her Lord. The second is when she gets that presence, he is so glorious to her, that she is ready to die with excess of joy, and she exclaims, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick with love."

If you cannot get the second, recollect that the first is the clear way to it. Resolve in your heart, my brother and sister, that you never will be happy until you win the face of Christ. Settle it in your soul that there shall he no end to your cries and tears until you can say with all your heart, "My Beloved is near me; I can speak to him; I am in the enjoyment of his love."

If you can be content without it you shall go without it, but if you must have it you shall have it. If your hunger will break through stone walls to reach your Lord, no stone walls shall keep him from you. If you are insatiable after Christ, he will feed you with himself. If you bid good-bye to all the dainties of the world, and all its sweet draughts and its delicacies, and must have Christ, and Christ alone, then no hungering soul shall long be kept without him. He must come to you. There are cords that draw him to you at this hour- his love draws you to him, but your love draws him close to you. Do not be afraid, your soul shall be like the chariots of Amminadab; perhaps even this morning, and you shall go on your way rejoicing. The Lord grant it may be so for his love's sake. Amen.

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