Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2360
“Make haste, my Beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.” Song of Solomon 8:14.
THE Song of Songs describes the love of Jesus Christ to His people and it ends with an intense desire on the part of the Church that the Lord Jesus should come back to her. The last word of the lover to the Beloved One is, “Speed Your return; make haste and come back.” Is it not somewhat singular that, as the last verse of the Book of Love has this note in it, so the last verses of the whole Book of God, which I may also call the Book of Love, have that same thought in them? At the 20th verse of the last chapter of the Revelation, we read, “He which testifies these things says, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” The Song of Love and the Book of Love end in almost the same way—with a strong desire for Christ’s speedy return.
Are your hearts, dear Friends, in tune with that desire? They ought to be, yet have not some of you almost forgotten that Jesus is to come a second time? Refresh your memories. Others of you, who know that He will come—have you not thought of it as a doctrine that might be laid on the shelf? Have you not been without any desire for His glorious appearing? Is this right? That Song of Solomon is the central Book of the Bible. It is the innermost shrine of Divine Revelation, the Holy of Holies of Scripture. And if you are living in communion with God, you will love that Book, you will catch its spirit and you will be inclined to cry with the spouse, “Make haste, my Beloved.” If you have no longings for Christ’s appearance, no desires for His speedy return, surely your heart is sick and your love is faint! I fear that you are getting into a lukewarm state. I believe that our relationship to the Second Advent of Christ may be used as a thermometer with which to tell the degree of our spiritual heat. If we have strong desires, longing desires, burning desires for the coming of the Lord, we may hope that it is well with us! But if we have no such desires, I think, at best, we must be somewhat careless, perhaps, to take the worst view of our case—we are sadly declining in Divine Grace.
I. Well now, to come to our text, I want you to notice, first, WHAT THE CHURCH, HERE, CALLS HER LORD—“Make haste, my Beloved.”
I will have only a few words upon this point. I am hardly going to preach, tonight, but just to talk familiarly to you, and I want you to let your hearts talk. Observe, the spouse first calls her Lord, “Beloved,” and secondly, “my Beloved.”
Christ is our “Beloved.” This is a word of affection and our Lord Jesus Christ is the object of affection to us. If you read the Bible, especially if you read the New Testament and study the life of Christ and yet you only admire it, and say to yourself, “Jesus Christ was a wonderful Being,” you do not yet know Him! You have but a very indistinct idea of Him. If, after reading that life, you sit down and dissect it, and say to yourself, coolly, calmly, deliberately, “So far as is practicable, I will try and imitate Christ,” you do not yet know Him—you have not come near to the real Christ as of yet. If any man should say, “I am near the fire,” and yet he is not warm, I would question the truth of his words, and though he might say, “I can see the fire. I can tell you the appearance of the coals. I can describe the bright flames that play about the stove,” yet if he were not warmed at all, I would still think that he was mistaken, or that there was some medium that interposed between him and the fire at which he said he was looking.
But when you really come to see Jesus and to say, “I love Him! My heart yearns toward Him. My delight is in Him. He has won my love and holds it in His own heart,” then you begin to know Him! Brothers and Sisters, true religion has many sides to it. True religion is practical. It is also contemplative, but it is not true religion at all if it is not full of love and affection. Jesus must reign in your heart or else, though you may give Him what place you like in your head, you
have not truly received Him. To Jesus, beyond all others, is applicable this title of the Beloved, for they who know Him love Him. Yes, if ever love had emphasis in it, it is the love which true Believers give to Christ! We do well when we sing—
“I love You because You have first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
I love You for wearing the thorns on Your brow—
If ever I loved You, my Jesus, ‘tis now.
I will love You in life, I will love You in death
And praise You as long as You lend me breath!
And say when the death-dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved You, my Jesus, ‘tis now.” We may also go beyond that point, as the hymn does, and say—
“In mansions of glory and endless delight, I’ll ever adore You in Heaven so bright; I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow; If ever I loved You, my Jesus, ‘tis now.” Our love to Jesus begins with trust. We experience His goodness and then we love Him in return. “We love Him because He first loved us.” They say that love is blind. I should think it is, from what I have seen of it in some people, but love to Christ might have ten thousand eyes and yet be justified in loving Him. The more you see Him, the more you know Him! The more you live with Him, the more reason will you have for loving Him. There will never come a time in which you will have to question whether you were right to surrender your heart to Him, but even throughout the eternal ages you shall, in the happinesses of His blessed company, feel that you were, in fact, more than justified in calling Him your Beloved!