Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2294
“We will remember Your love more than wine: the upright love You.” Song of Solomon 1:4.
I Do not think I can preach tonight. I feel so weary, and worn, and ill. Still, I can talk to you a little concerning the great love of Christ. If I were dying, I think I could speak upon that theme, and oh, when we rise again, how we shall talk forever and ever about Christ’s love! This will be our endless theme throughout the eternal ages, “His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins.”
I have taken for a text the last two sentences in the Song of Solomon, the first chapter, and the fourth verse—“We will remember Your love more than wine: the upright love You.”
This is a night for remembering Christ’s love. The Communion Table is spread before us, the sacred feast to which we are about to come is meant to recall to our minds our Savior’s words, “This do in remembrance of Me…This do you, as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” But, while we remember Christ, the central thought in our minds shall be that of which Paul wrote, “who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” We will, above all other things, tonight, remember His love. Have any of you been forgetting it? Is it long since you had an hour’s real enjoyment in meditating upon the love of Christ? Then, Beloved, come tonight, and renew your vows! Begin, again, your fellowship, and make this firm resolve, “We will remember our Lord; we will remember His love tonight!” May the Holy Spirit, who brings everything to remembrance whatever Christ has said to us, help us now to remember Him! For Him to remember us when He comes to His Kingdom, will be our Heaven. For us to remember Him, though He has gone away to His Kingdom, shall be a little Heaven to us tonight.
As I am able, I will talk with you briefly, first, upon the preparations for the holy memory mentioned in our text. We shall find them in the verse in which the text is embedded—“Draw me, we will run after You: the king has brought me into His chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in You.” When we have considered the preparations for the holy memory here referred to, I will speak upon the Divine subject of this holy memory—“We will remember Your love more than wine.” Then, thirdly, we will meditate upon the Divine product of this holy memory—“The upright love You, love You because they remember Your love.”
I. First, then, dear Friends, as I may be helped by the Holy Spirit, I would remind you of THE PREPARATIONS FOR THIS HOLY MEMORY. Here they are.
The first word is, “Draw me.” Lord, I would gladly come to You, but like Mephibosheth, I am lame in both my feet. I would gladly fly to You, but my wings are broken, if, indeed, I ever had any. I cannot come to You. I lie inert, and dead, and powerless. So the first preparation is, “Draw me.” It is a sweet, gracious, efficacious exercise of Divine power that I need and entreat. I say not, “Drive me,” but, “Lord, draw me.” I say not, “Throw me there, or force me yonder, but, “Lord, draw me. While You draw, I shall have liberty left to run—draw me, we will run after You.”
We do not need to be born again—we who are believers in Christ have had that miracle worked upon us already. We are not now asking for pardon and justification—as believers in Christ, we have these priceless gifts already. What we need is the gentle influence of the Holy Spirit to attract us nearer to Christ—so each one cries to the Lord, “Draw me.” We are not dead. We are quickened and made alive. Our very pain and anguish, because we are not able to come to Christ as we would, prove that we are alive. I commend this prayer to you, “Lord, draw me; draw me.” It is the work of Christ to draw. “I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” It is the work of the Father. “No man can come
to Me,” said Christ, “except the Father which has sent Me draw him.” It is the work of the Spirit of God to draw a soul towards Christ. I pray this for myself and, I trust that you will pray with me, “Come, Sacred Spirit, and draw us nearer to Christ! Enliven our hopes; incline our hearts; awaken our desires and then help us to yield our whole being to Your gracious influences!”—
“If You hare drawn a thousand times, Oh, draw me, Lord, again!”
That, then, is the first preparation for the holy memory mentioned in our text, Divine drawing—“Draw me.”
Notice, next, that this verse says, “Draw me, we will run after You.” I like the change in the pronouns, as though I should pray tonight, “Lord, draw me; I am the most weighted, the heaviest of all Your children in this congregation; but draw me, we will run after You. All my Brothers and Sisters will run at once if You do draw me. If You draw the most burdened one towards Yourself, all the rest will come to You at a rapid rate,” Do you not feel, my dear Brother or Sister, as if you could use this expression? Lord, if You will draw me, all my fellow members will be running with me; yet they will not outstrip me in their eagerness to reach You, for we will together run after You. Do, therefore, draw me, my gracious Lord!