Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 539
“I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my Beloved, that you tell Him that I am sick of love.” Song of Solomon 5:8.
SICK! That is a sad thing. It moves your pity. Sick of love—lovesick! That stirs up other emotions which we shall presently attempt to explain. No doubt certain sicknesses are peculiar to the saints—the ungodly are never visited with them. Strange to say, these sicknesses, to which the refined sensibilities of the children of God render them peculiarly liable, are signs of vigorous health. Who but the Beloved of the Lord ever experience that sin sickness in which the soul loathes the very name of transgression, is unmoved by the enchantments of the Tempter, finds no sweetness in its besetting sins, and turns with detestation and abhorrence from the very thought of iniquity?
No less is it for these, and these alone, to feel that self sickness whereby the heart revolts from all creature confidence and strength, having been made sick of self, self-seeking, self-exalting, self-reliance, and self of every sort. The Lord afflicts us more and more with such self sickness till we are dead to self, its puny conceits, its lofty aims, and its unsanctified desires. Then there is a twofold lovesickness. Of the one kind is that lovesickness which comes upon the Christian when he is transported with the full enjoyment of Jesus, even as the bride elated by the favor, melted by the tenderness of her Lord, says in the fifth verse of the second chapter of the Song, “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.”
The soul, overjoyed with the Divine communications of happiness and bliss which came from Christ, the body scarcely able to bear the excessive delirium of delight which the soul possessed, she was so glad to be in the embraces of her Lord that she needed to be stayed under her overpowering weight ofjoy. Another kind of lovesickness, widely different from the first, is that in which the soul is sick, not because it has too much of Christ’s love, but because it has not enough present consciousness of it. Sick, not of the enjoyment, but of the longing for it. Sick, not because of excess of delight, but because of sorrow for an absent lover.
It is to this sickness we call your attention this morning. This lovesickness breaks out in two ways and may be viewed in two lights. It is, first of all, the soul longing for a view of Jesus Christ in Grace. And then again, it is the same soul possessing the view of Divine Grace and longing for a sight of Jesus Christ in Glory. In both these senses we, as accurately as the spouse, may adopt the languishing words, “If you find my Beloved, tell Him that I am sick of love.”
I. First, then, let us consider our text as the language of a soul LONGING FOR THE VIEW OF JESUS CHRIST IN GRACE.
1. Do you ask me concerning the sickness itself—What is it? It is the sickness of a soul panting after communion with Christ. The man is a Believer. He is not longing after salvation as a penitent sinner under conviction, for he is saved. Moreover, he has love to Christ and knows it. He does not doubt his evidence as to the reality of his affection for his Lord, for you see the word used is, “My Beloved,” which would not be applicable if the person speaking had any doubt about her interest.
Nor did she doubt her love, for she calls the spouse, “My Beloved.” It is the longing of a soul, then, not for salvation, and not even for the certainty of salvation, but for the enjoyment of present fellowship with Him who is her soul’s Life, her soul’s All. The heart is panting to be brought once more under the apple tree. To feel once again His “left hand under her head, while His right hand does embrace her.” She has known, in days past, what it is to be brought into His banqueting house, and to see the banner of love waved over her. She therefore cries to have love visits renewed.
It is a panting after communion. Gracious hours, my dear Friends, are never perfectly at ease except they are in a state of nearness to Christ. For mark you, when they are not near to Christ, they lose their peace. The nearer to Jesus, the nearer to the perfect calm of Heaven. And the further from Jesus, the nearer to that troubled sea which images the continual unrest of the wicked. There is no peace to the man who does not dwell constantly under the shadow of the Cross. For Jesus is our peace and if He is absent, our peace is absent, too.
I know that being justified we have peace with God, but it is “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So that the justified man himself cannot reap the fruit of justification, except by abiding in Christ Jesus, who is the Lord and Giver of peace. The Christian without fellowship with Christ loses all his life and energy. He is like a dead thing. Though saved, he lies like a lumpish log—
“His soul can neither fly nor go To reach eternal joys.”