Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 364
Delivered on Sunday Evening, February 24, 1861, by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, at New Park Street, Southwark
“Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench Your love, nor can the floods drown it.” Song of Solomon 8:6,7.
THIS is the prayer of one who has the present enjoyment of fellowship with Christ. But being apprehensive lest this communion should be interrupted, she avails herself of the opportunity now afforded her to plead for a something which shall be as the abiding token of a covenant between her and her Beloved when His visible Presence shall be withdrawn. You will notice that this is not the cry of a soul that is longing for fellowship, for that cry is—“Tell me O You whom my soul loves, where You feed.” It is not even the cry of the soul that has some fellowship and needs more, for then it would say, “Oh that You were as my brother!” Nor is it the cry of a soul that has had fellowship but has lost it, for that is, “Saw You Him, whom my soul loves?” And she goes “about the streets and in the broad ways” saying, “I will seek Him.” But this is the prayer of the spouse when she has been coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon His bosom. The thought strikes her, that He who has sustained her is about to go from her, to depart and leave her for a season, because it is expedient and more useful for her, and she prays that since He is no more on the earth, but has entered into the ivory palaces where her God dwells, that He would be pleased to make a covenant with her never to forget her, and that He would give her some sign and mark by which she might be assured that she is very near to His heart, and still written upon His arm. I take it to be the prayer of the Church at the present day, now that Christ is before the Father’s Throne; the Bridegroom is not with us; He has left us; He has gone to prepare a place for us, and He is coming again. We are longing for His coming; we are saying in the language of the last verse of this Song of Songs, “Make haste, my Beloved and be You like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.” Yet before He went, it seemed as if His Church did pray to Him, “Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm.” And this is the cry of the Church tonight, and I trust your cry, too, that while He is not present but is absent from you, you may be near to Him, and have a sweet consciousness of that blessed fact!
Now without further preface, let me first notice, the prayer, and secondly, the reasoning with which the spouse argues her suit The prayer is, “Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm.” The argument is four-fold. She pleads thus, “Love is strong as death.” She waxes bolder—“Jealousy is cruel as the grave.” She wrestles again—“The flames thereof are flames of fire, a most vehement flame.” And once again she brings forth her choice words, “Set me as a seal upon Your heart, for many waters cannot quench Your love, neither can the floods drown it.”
I. THE PRAYER, you will notice, is two-fold, although it is so really and essentially one—“Set me as a seal upon Your heart, as a seal upon Your arm.”
Now I think I can perhaps explain this text best by a reference to the high priest of old. You know that when he put on his holy garments—those robes of glory and beauty—he wore the breastplate of cunning work in which four rows of precious stones were set. If you will turn to Exodus, the 39th Chapter and 14th verse, you will read, “And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet, everyone with his name, according to the twelve tribes.” How suggestive of this prayer!—“Set me as a seal or as an engraved signet, as a precious stone that has been carved—set my name upon Your breast.” Let it be always glittering there. But beside this breastplate, there was the ephod, and we are told that, “they made shoulder pieces for it, to couple it together; by the two edges was it coupled together.” Then in the sixth verse we read, “And they set onyx stones enclosed in settings of gold; they were engraved, as signets are engraved, with the names of the children of Israel. And he put them on the shoulders of the ephod, that they should be stones for a memorial to the children of Israel. As the Lord commanded Moses.” So that it was set as a signet upon his shoulder, or upon his arm, as well as upon his heart. I think these were to indicate that the high priest loved the people, for he bore them on his heart; and that he served the people as a consequence of that love, therefore he bore them upon his shoulders. And I think the prayer of the spouse is just this—she would know once and for all that Christ’s heart is entirely hers; that He loves her with the intensity, and the very vitality of His Being; that His inmost heart, the life-spring of His soul, belongs to her. And she would also know that that love moves His arm. She longs to see herself as supported, sustained, strengthened, defended, preserved and kept by that same strong arm which put Orion in its place in the sky, and holds the Pleiades that they should give their light forevermore. She longs that she may know the love of His heart, and that she may experience the power of His arm. Can we not, each of us, join the spouse in this prayer tonight? Oh, Lord, let me know that my name is engraved on Your heart not only let it be there, but let me knowit. Write my name not only in Your heart, but may it be as a signet on Your heart that I may see it.