Preached by Rev. M. Gillies at Inverness Free Presbyterian Church on
Monday 26th January 1942
This book is a spiritual book. It speaks of the salvation that the Lord Jesus Christ bestows upon sinners in every day and generation and of the effects, or the fruits that follow Christ being made precious to a poor sinner — the fruits that follow in a sinner being closed into Christ and in the Saviour being made all and in all to him.
The book opens with the kindness and the love bestowed upon a lost, ruined, hell-deserving sinner described under the analogy of King Solomon bringing home to himself one who was as the tents of Kedar, one who was an outcast — yet he brings such an one home. Dear friends, when the Holy Spirit shows to us what we are before God we shall find that we are as black and as sooty as the very tents of Kedar, that there is nothing in us that can commend us to God. Yet it is to such a sinner that the Saviour is made known in His kindness and in His love. It says here, “the king hath brought me into his chambers.” “We will be glad and rejoice in Thee.”
There is no experience comparable to the experience of a poor lost and fallen sinner exposed to the wrath and the curse of God, lying in his own blood unwashed, uncared for. The Son receives such a one and brings the poor sinner “to taste and see that God is gracious”, to see Christ as His own personal Saviour. We find here a new song in the mouth of the Church as it says the ‘Song of Songs’ and it is just according to the analogy of the 40th Psalm “He took me from a fearful pit, and from the miry clay, and on a rock he set my feet, establishing my way. He put a new song in my mouth, our God to magnify.” And once the Holy Spirit, or once the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit, puts the song of salvation in the mouth of the soul, that mouth will not be altogether without that song in time or in eternity. You see, it is the Lord who puts that song in his mouth. I think — if time would permit — that the mournings that God’s people have in this vale of tears, and their groanings are connected with the grace of God in Christ, for they have tasted that the Lord is gracious. The bewailings and the groanings of the believer are that of a soul who has tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and who wants to receive again in some measure that which it has received already. He has put the new song in his mouth. Oh! when the believer is receiving nearness and when he is in the banqueting house, when he is receiving nearness to the Lord — and most of the Lord’s people had such a season as that when the Holy Spirit says “He took me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love,” — when one has that fellowship it is easy to sing that song, the new song, “to the praise of all grace” to the One who has manifested the gift of His own Son to be the Saviour of poor lost men and women in the world. And if we would get our choice, that would be the condition in which we would go through this world, enjoying nearness to the Lord and having a good persuasion that we were Christ’s. Let me have more of the consolations, consolations and consolations. That is what the creature would choose — to pass his days basking in the sunshine of Jesus’ love in a way that would satisfy and give joy to the heart. You read the song, and study the banquets, and the wine, and pomegranates, and all the rest we have in the book, and then you come to the very last chapter — the very one who began that verse with the banquets — you have that very person and now everything has been made a wilderness to that creature, but the Son remains the same. Although all the comforts one had at the beginning seem to be altogether gone and he finds a wilderness round about him — the world has become a wilderness and he has got a wilderness in himself — all the beauty, all the nourishment, all the sweetness, seems to have gone all away. It is wonderful what beautiful prayers and what beautiful meditations some of God’s people had at the beginning of their career and how time would pass in contemplating His beauty and glory. But all these beautiful things that the believer has at the beginning, they are like Jonah’s gourd. If God were to leave all those things you would just make a Saviour of them. And if the Lord would give peace, as we in our wisdom think would be good for us, oh friends, there would be danger that we would rest on these things and would not appreciate, as we must appreciate, that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the soul. We must be emptied. We must be brought down in ourselves. That is why the Lord leaves his people poor and needy. The Lord leaves them poor and needy simply because there is in them a carnal nature, and that carnal nature must be crucified, and the soul must be made completely dependant on the Saviour alone in his feelings without a vestige of anything we can lay hold on ourselves. We must be saved by “free and sovereign grace”.
“Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness” Oh! she is leaning on her Beloved. That is to say — she would fall altogether, she would never come out of the wilderness without her Beloved. But ah! there is strength in Him. What do you think of this? Does the sinner appreciate the Saviour more when he is enjoying the sweetness of the Gospel, than when he is nearing the end of the journey, when he has had experience of what the world has been, what the world itself is apart from Christ? Why you are never more vile than when you are on your two knees in secret. It is there you see what you are, in departing from the living God. I find a law when I would do good, when I would withdraw from the world and shut the door of my room in order to deal with God, for my own soul and the soul of others, I find that there is another nature. Thus the pricelessness of being often in secret prayer. That is where the Lord’s people saw their need of grace and to be dependant on Christ. Very well, the most of the Lord’s people had nearness and fellowship to the Lord in a way that their cup was overflowing. Let me spend my days like this. But ah! there is a more important thing than that. What is more comforting than that? Sure, when you get to Heaven you will get an Eternity of assurance of faith.
One can, through the grace of God arrive at a comfortable assurance that the Saviour of sinners is theirs.
But just now, what do you mean by borders and studs? “We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.” Your walk and your conversation must be within certain limits in order that you will prove that you are the Bride of the King. The King’s daughter is certainly all glorious within. But she must behave herself as the daughter of the King and she must wear borders of gold. Dear friends, there is the border of gold there which you must wear if you are to glorify Christ in the world, and there is for instance the ten commandments. You see you are not under the law as a covenant. The law cannot curse you and bless you. “By the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified.” You do not look to the Law in order to save you. If you did, then how could you make out that you belong to Christ and neither should you look to the law to curse you. “But we are under the law to Christ.” Dear friends, what did Jesus do for you? He went under the law in order to satisfy the law in your stead. But in the day in which your soul was married to Christ, what was in the hand of Christ that day? If you married the Saviour, I tell you what was in the hand of Christ that day — it was the ten commandments; in order to walk accordingly — not to obtain life. He saved you for life. There was the present the day Christ was married to you. He gave you the ten commandments with the other presents He gave you, and do not think for a moment that you are not honouring your Heavenly Husband when you seek to keep the commandments of God, and Christ is honoured in midst of all the dishonour that is done to Him in this world, by those who seek to keep the commandments of God. Well, the Bible is first of all an exposition of the moral law — the law of the Bible, and secondly, an exposition of the Gospel, and this is the duty of those who look to Christ for life, this is how they adorn the doctrine of God the Saviour; to set it forth first of all morally.
But then again you have the borders of gold in connection with the proclamation of the Gospel, the relation of the Persons in the Godhead in the economy of grace and the nature of that Gospel with which we are confronted, by which we are to be saved. You see there is the great commandment and this is His commandment “That we believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ” and it has to be a life of faith upon the Son of God as poor needy sinners all our days. This is the commandment “That ye believe on the name of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ.”
And then there are the duties connected with the Gospel. “A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” Heaven does not exist in feelings — very far from it. Salvation is not altogether receiving out of Christ’s fullness. Salvation is a walking in a godly walk, and conversation, whereby we are witnesses in the world, whereby we grow in grace.
“We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver,” — studs of silver. May we not take those to illustrate the exhortations and consolations of the Word, “exhorting one another while it is today.” Not only the exhortations but the invitations. It is very wonderful that the invitations that the child of God will be able to receive are those that are condemned by the world.
But then there are the promises — studs of silver.
Oh!, we need it all. Oh! dear friends the great matter just now is holiness, holiness of heart, and holiness of life. According to His Word, “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” Indeed the gracious life becomes that more and more. It is striving after holiness. There is this striving to keep within the borders of gold, through the revealed Word of God in law and gospel, in order that our union to Christ might be proved thereby and might be illustrated.