Song of Solomon 2:17

Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.

Darkness before the dawn

The spouse sings, “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away,” so that the beloved of the Lord may be in the dark. A child of God, who is a child of light, may be for a while in darkness; first, darkness comparatively, as compared with the light he has sometimes enjoyed, for days are not always equally bright. Yes, and he may be in positive darkness. It may be very black with him, and he may be obliged to cry, “I see no signs of returning day,” Sometimes, neither sun nor moon appears for a long season to cheer the believer in the dark. This may arise partly through sickness of body. But yet it can be only temporary darkness. The same text which suggests night promises dawn: “Until the day break,” etc.

I. First of all, let us consider our prospect. Our prospect is, that the day will break, and that the shadows will flee away. We may read this passage ill many ways, and apply it to different cases. Think, first, of the child of God wire is full of doubt. He is afraid that, after all, his supposed conversion was not a true one, and that he has proved it to be false by his own misbehaviour. He is afraid, I scarcely know of what, for so many fears crowd in upon him. His eyes are looking toward the cross, and somehow he has a hope, if not quite a persuasion, that he will find light in Christ, where so many others have found it. I would encourage that hone till it becomes a firm conviction and a full expectation. The day will break for you, dear mourner, the shadows will yet flee away. This expression is equally applicable when we come into some personal sorrow not exactly of a spiritual kind. I know that God’s children are not long without tribulation. As long as the wheat is on the threshing-floor, it must expect to feel the flail. Perhaps you have had a bereavement, or you may have had losses in business, or crosses in your family, or you have been sorely afflicted in your own body, and now you are crying to God for deliverance out of your temporal trouble. That deliverance will surely come. Yes, in the darkest of all human sorrows there is the glad prospect that the day will break, and the shadows will flee away. This is the case again, I believe on a grander scale, with reference to the depression of religion at the present time. We want--I cannot say how much we want--a revival of pure and undefiled religion in this our day. Will it come? Why should it not come? If we long for it, if we pray for it, if we believe for it, if we work for it, and prepare for it, it will certainly come. The day will break, and the shadows will flee away. I believe that this is to be the case also in this whole world. It is still the time of darkness, it is still the hour of shadows. I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, and I cannot foretell what is yet to happen in the earth; it may be that the darkness will deepen still more, and that the shadows will multiply and increase; but the Lord will come. That glorious advent shall end our weary waiting days, it shall end our conflicts with infidelity and priestcraft, it shall put an end to all our futile endeavours; and when the great Shepherd shall appear in His glory, then shall every faithful under-shepherd and all his flock appear with him, and then shall the day break, and the shadows flee away.

II. Now consider our posture, “until the day break, and the shadows flee away.” We are here, like soldiers on guard, waiting for the dawn. It is night, and the night is deepening; how shall we occupy ourselves until the day break, and the shadows flee away? Well, first, we will wait in the darkness with patient endurance as long as God appoints it. Whatever of shadow is yet to come, whatever of cold damp air and dews of the night is yet to fall upon us, we will bear it. What next are we to do until the day break? Why, let there be hopeful watching. Keep your eyes towards the East, and look for the first grey sign of the coming morning. Then, further, while we maintain patient endurance and hopeful watching, let us give each other mutual encouragement. What further should we do in the dark? Well, one of the best things to do in the dark is to stand still and keep our place. We are not going to plunge on in a reckless manner, we mean to look before we leap; and as it is too dark to look, we will not leap, but will just abide here hard by the cross, battling with every adversary of the truth as long as we have a right hand to move in the name of the Almighty God, “until the day break, and the shadows flee away. What else ought we to do. Keep up a careful separateness from the works of darkness that are going on all around us. If it seems dark to you, gather up your skirts, and gird up your loins. The more sin abounds in the world, the more ought the Church of God to seek after the strictest holiness.

III. Now notice our petition: “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved,” etc. I am not going to preach about that part of our text, but only just to urge you to turn it into prayer. “Turn to me, O my Beloved, for Thou hast turned away from me, or from Thy Church, Turn again, I beseech Thee, Pardon my lukewarmness, forgive my indifference. Turn to me again, my Beloved. O Thou Husband of my soul, if I have grieved Thee, and Thou hast hidden Thy face from me, turn again unto me! Smile Thou, for then shall the day break, and the shadows flee away. Come to me, my Lord, visit me once again.” Put up that prayer, beloved. The prayer of the spouse is in this poetic form: “Come over the mountains of division.” As we look out into the darkness, what little light there is appears to reveal to us Alp upon Alp, mountain upon mountain, and our Beloved seems divided from us by all these hills. Now our prayer is, that He would come over the top of them; we cannot go over the top of them to Him, but He can come over the top of them to us, if He think fit to do so. Like the hinds’ feet, this blessed Hind of the morning can come skipping over the hills with utmost speed to visit and to deliver us. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Things to be awaited

We can speak confidently of such things only as we now know in part, beginnings that here have no completion, germs that come to leaf and bud, but not to fruit, in the soil of this world; processes that have promise of great results but are cut short of them, desires and aspirations that now have no full satisfaction.

I. We wait for rest. If the question were raised: Is man made for toil or for rest? the answer would be a mixed and qualified one. He is appointed to toil, he is destined to rest; one is his condition, the other is his end. If man is made in God’s image, he is made to share in God’s condition; and both Christian revelation and heathen conjecture unite in conceiving of Deity as in repose, eternally acting yet in eternal rest. If it be said that man can never attain this repose because he can never reach the eternal perfection and power, it may be answered that it does not depend upon the proportions of the being, but upon the harmony of his powers and upon his adjustment to his external condition. One whose nature has been reduced to perfect harmony may have perfect peace within, and also without, if also he is in a world entirely adapted to him. But we have not this rest at present except in some foretaste of it in our spirit. Unceasing toil is the largest feature of human life. It is divinely appointed, but it is painful; it is a blessing, but also a suffering; an evil thing, but with a soul of goodness in it. It is wise, for, if remitted, vice creeps in, but it is no less a bond that chafes, a burden that weighs down, a trial that wearies the spirit. Some morning, this shadow will flee away. In the church of St. Nazaro in Florence is an epitaph upon the tomb of a soldier, as fit for the whole toiling race as for his own restless life: “Johannes Divultius, who never rested, rests,--hush!” We say of our dead, “they rest from their labours.” Whatever the future world may be to us or require of us, it is not clothed in the guise of toil, but offers seats of eternal rest; it is the contrast of earth, the other side of mortal existence as spirit is the other side of matter.

II. We wait for the renewal of lost powers. However we answer the question, if life is a process of loss or gain, it cannot be denied that real or apparent loss is one of its largest features, even when life is at its best. Is this loss absolute, or do we regain that which seems to pass? Shall I never,--so we are forced to ask ourselves,--shall I never have again the buoyancy of youth, the zest, the innocence, the unquestioning faith, the ardent desire and unconquerable will, the bounding vigour of body and mind, with which I began life? We do not get halt: way through our allotted years before these riches are gone from us. If they are gone for ever, one half of life, at least, is spent under an ever-deepening shadow. It is difficult to believe that existence is so ordered; that God’s increated gifts are annihilated; that the impress of His hands, the similitudes of Himself, are blotted out for ever. St. Paul speaks of the redemption of the body as something that is waited for. He means no narrow doctrine of a physical resurrection, but a renewal of existence,--a restoration of lost powers. It changes the whole colour of life, and its character also, if we take the one view or the other,--if we regard existence as a dying-out process, or as passing into temporary eclipse, to emerge with all its past glories when the shadows of death flee away.

III. We wait for the full perfecting of character. I do not mean, of course, that we are to wait in the sense of relaxing effort after perfection--such waiting may end in an eternal failure of character, but rather that the effort that now only partially succeeds will finally reach success. There is nothing that weighs more heavily upon a right-minded man than the slow progress he makes in overcoming his faults. There is nothing a right-minded man desires so much as entire right-mindedness. Will it never come? Yes--but it must be awaited. Entireness is nowhere a feature of present existence, else it could not be a world of hope and promise. On no thing can we lay our hand and say, Here is finality and perfection. The adamant is crumbling to dust; the orderly heavens oscillate towards final dissolution, and foretell “new heavens”; in every soul is weakness and fault. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the hope of it by struggle towards it. And it is this struggle, and not the attainment, that measures character and foreshadows destiny. Character is not determined by faults and weaknesses, and periodic phases of life, nor by the limitations and accidents of present existence, but by the central purpose, the inmost desire of the heart. If that be turned towards God and His righteousness, it must at last bring us thither.

IV. We await the renewal of sundered love. When love loses its object its charm is interrupted, for love is oneness and cannot brook separation. It is impossible to believe that God has organized into life an incurable sorrow; that He has made love, which is the best conceivable thing--being the substance of Himself,--the necessary condition of the greatest misery. Love may suffer an eclipse, but it is not sent wailing into eternal shadows. It is as sure as God Himself that human love shall again claim its own. But this eternal union must be awaited. It begins here, springing out of mysterious oneness; it grows up amidst unspeakable tenderness, rising from an instinctive thing to an intellectual and moral union, losing nothing, and weaving into itself every strand of human sympathy till it stands for the whole substance of life, and so vanishes from the scene. If this prime reality is an illusion, then all else is. If it does not outlast death, then all may go. But love is not a vain thing, and God does not mock Himself and us when tie makes us partakers of His nature.

V. We wait for the mystery to be taken off from life. The crucial test of a thoughtful mind is a sense of the mystery of life in this world. This highest order of mind is not antagonistic to faith; it is simply conscious of the incomprehensible range of truth. None but an inferior mind has a plan of the universe; it is to the thoughtless that all things are plain. What is life? What is matter! What is the relation between them? What is creation? Granting evolution, what started the evolving process? Assuming God, what is the relation of creation to Him? What the relation of man? What is this that thinks and wills and loves--this I? And then, what is it all for? Is there a final purpose and an order tending to it, or is it but the whirl of molecules, the dust of the universe circling for a moment in space, of which we are but some atoms? Is there a bridge between consciousness and the external world, or a gulf that cannot be spanned or fathomed? Is life a reality, or is it a dream from which we may awake in some world of reality to find that this world was but the vision of a night? It is useless to deny that this mystery carries with it a sense of pain. It is alien to mind, a condition foreign to our nature. And the more thoroughly mind is true to itself, the more painfully does it feel the darkness. When Goethe, dying, said, “Let the light enter,” he uttered, not the highest and best hope of the heart, but the dearest satisfaction of the intellect. He felt that lie was going where the shadows that hang over this world would flee away, and he could find some answer to the questions that had vexed him here. So, too, those commoner questions, Why does evil exist? Why do the innocent suffer? Why does one suffer on account of another? Why does life end untimely? Why is man so subject to nature? Why is the experience of life so long in ripening the fruit of wisdom? Why are the chances so against man that he spends his days in sorrow and evil? Why is there not more help from God? Why does life gradually assume the appearance of a doom, spent in vanity and ending in death? We get no full answer to these questions in this life. Shall these questions never be answered? It is not easy to believe that mind will for ever be harassed by an alien element; it may always require something other than itself to stand upon, or as a toil like that which the jewel-merchant puts under precious stones to reflect their colour, but it will not for ever wear this other as a clog and burden. The mystery of the present life is due to the fact that it is so heavily conditioned by its material environment; matter contends against spirit. But as existence goes on, if it is normal, it throws off these conditions and presses towards absolute action and full freedom. This is the eternal state, and this action is eternal life, and the world where it is achieved is the eternal world.

VI. We wait for full restoration to the presence of god. There are hours when the whole world, and all it contains, shrivels to nothingness, and God alone fills the mind; hours of human desolation, seasons of strange, mysterious exaltation, times of earthly despair, or of joy; the height and excess of any emotion bears us away into a region where God Himself dwells. But even if we have taught ourselves to make the impression of these hours constant, there is still an unsatisfied element in the knowledge. We long for more, for nearness, for sight or something that stands for sight, for the Father at hand, and the home of the soul. I know that in many and many of God’s children there is a longing for God that is not satisfied, because they are children and are away from the Father’s house. And I know still better that the unrest of this weary world is its unvoiced cry after God. This full, satisfying presence of God, must be awaited. It is contended against by sense, by the world of things, by the limits that shut out the infinite, and by our own slow and hesitating departure from the evil and the sensual--a muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close us in; hut when this falls off, and these earthly shadows flee away, we shall see face to face, and know as we are known. (T. T. Munger, D. D.)

The saint’s might and day

I. A soul once truly married to Christ, will from thenceforth look on the lifetime in this world as a night-time, a shadowy one, as indeed it is.

II. To those that are truly married to Christ, the day will break in the other world, and the shadows flee away; and they should live in the comfortable expectation of it. Consider the day’s breaking, and the shadows fleeing away thereupon. I am to speak of the day’s breaking in the other world to those that are married to Christ. And here I shall show what a day will break to them there. A clear and bright day (Isaiah 60:1). A fair day and calm. There are no storms nor tempests, no blustering winds nor rains in Immanuel’s land (Revelation 21:4). A glad and joyful day (Psalms 126:5). An eternal day. Let us next see how this day will break there to those who are married to Christ. As coming near their night-journey’s end, they enter the passage betwixt the two worlds, the darkness and shadowiness of the night will come to a pitch. For as the darkest hour ordinarily goes before daybreak, so is it here, the hour of death is so in a signal manner, “the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalms 23:4). As soon as they are got over to the other side, immediately the day breaks, and it is fair daylight to them. I proceed to consider the shadows, upon this breaking of the day, fleeing away. What is that fleeing away of the shadows? The utter removal of everything interposing betwixt God and them, and intercepting the light of His countenance (Revelation 21:3). The removal of all dark, gloomy, and melancholy things out of their condition (Matthew 25:23). The removal of all imperfection of light, and whatsoever gives but a faint and shadowy representation of Christ and the glories of the other world (1 Corinthians 13:12; Revelation 22:4). What are the shadows that will flee away when that day breaks? The shadow of this world will then flee away (1 Corinthians 7:31). The shadow of sin (Hebrews 12:23). The shadow of temptations (Romans 16:20). The shadow of outward troubles will flee away, of troubles on your bodies, relations, names, affairs, etc. (Job 3:17). The shadow of inward spiritual troubles, through desertions, and hidings of the Lord’s face. The shadow of ordinances will flee away (Revelation 21:23). The shadow of all manner of imperfections (1 Corinthians 13:12). I shall now confirm this point, That the day will break, and the shadows flee away, as to those who are married to Christ. It was so with their Head and Husband, and the procedure with them must be conformable to that with Him (Hebrews 12:2). The nature of God’s work of grace in them; it cannot be left unperfected (Psalms 138:1.). The bounty and goodness of God to His people. God is essentially good, and He is good to them in Christ His Son. It is inconsistent with the goodness of His nature to keep them always in the darkness of the night, and horror of shadows. The nature of the covenant, which is everlasting, and cannot be broken. Consider believers living in the comfortable expectation of the day’s breaking to them in the other world and the shadows fleeing away. It implies these following things:

(1) Their looking on themselves as travellers only through this world, who are not to stay in it (Hebrews 11:13).

(2) Their laying their account with the continuance of the night and gloomy shades, while they are here.

(3) A contentedness to leave this world, and go to the other (Luke 2:29).

(4) A faith of the day, the clear and bright day that is in the other world (Hebrews 9:13).

(5) A desire to be there in the other world, where the day break, s and the shadows flee away (Philippians 1:23).

(6) A hope and expectation of the day s breaking to them there, and the shadows fleeing away (Romans 8:23).

(7) A comforting themselves in this world with the prospect of the other world (2 Corinthians 4:17).

III. It will be the great concern of those married to Christ during their night-journey in this world, that he may turn and come to them, till the day breaking and the shadows fleeing away, they get to him in the other world.

1. I am to show what is Christ’s turning and coming to those married to Him, that will be their great concern to have.

(1) His affording them His presence. That will be their great concern to enjoy during their night-journey; that if they must have a dark and shadowy night-journey of it through the world, He would not leave them, but be with them in it (Exodus 33:15).

(a) His seen or sensible presence with them, of the want of which Job complains (Job 23:8), and in the enjoyment of which the Psalmist triumphs (Psalms 23:4).

(b) His operative or efficacious presence in them (Philippians 3:8; Philippians 3:10).

(2) His affording them His countenance, the shining of His face, and the manifestation of His favour (Psalms 6:6).

2. The import of this concern of those married to Christ, that He may turn and come to them, till the day’s breaking and the shadows’ fleeing away, they get to Him in the other world.

(1) That during the night-journey in this world, Christ sometimes turns away and withdraws from His people; so that seeking Him they cannot find Him (Song of Solomon 3:1).

(2) The travellers to Zion, when Christ is away, though it be night, they readily miss Him (Song of Solomon 3:3).

(3) A holy dissatisfaction with all things while He is away.

(4) A holy resolution to give Him a welcome reception, if He will turn and come again; then the doors should be cast wide open to receive Him (Song of Solomon 8:1).

(5) Earnest outgoings of the heart after Him in desires for His return (Isaiah 62:1).

(6) A holy restlessness in the soul, till He turn and come again (Song of Solomon 3:1).

3. The reasons of this concern in those married to Christ, that He may turn and come to them.

(1) Their superlative love to Christ (Song of Solomon 1:3).

(2) Their comfort in their night-journey depends on it; without it they must go drooping, for nothing will make up the want thereof.

(3) Their experience of the desirableness of His presence and countenance in their night-journey (Psalms 63:1).

(4) Their felt need of it; they know not how they will ever make out the night-journey without it (Exodus 33:15).

(a) The sense of their liableness to mistake their way, that they need Him for their direction and guidance (Jeremiah 10:23).

(b) The sense of their weakness for the journey, that they need to go leaning on Him, as a weak woman on her husband (Song of Solomon 8:5).

(c) The sense of the great opposition and difficulty to be met with in the way (Ephesians 6:12).

4. We shall now confirm this point, That it will be the great concern of those married to Christ, during their night-journey in this world, that He may turn and come to them till the day breaking and the shadows fleeing away, they get to Him in the other world.

(1) Christ their Lord and Husband has got their heart above all other, and it rests in Him.

(2) They are partakers of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), partakers of Christ, of His Spirit, His grace, His image; and like draws to like; the carnal worldling to the world, and the Christian to Christ.

(3) All believers may be observed to be great miscounters of time, when Christ is turned away from them in their night-journey (Isaiah 54:7).

(4) When they are themselves, they are resolute for His presence and countenance (Ephesians 6:15.) (T. Boston, D. D.)

In the shadow

To all the light is very dear, and more so perhaps because this life is a twilight season to all of us, we are all in the shadow. It is not all dark, neither is it all light, but it is full of shadows, shadows of sin, shadows of sorrow, shadows of sickness, of want, of disappointment, of death. The brightest life cannot be all sunshine, over rich and poor alike the shadows fall. The brightest eyes must be dim with tears sometimes, the gayest voices must turn to mourning sometimes, the merriest Church bell must toll sometimes.

1. The Church on earth has ever been in the shadow of trouble, its holiest members have had to suffer many things. In the Jewish Church there was the shadow of idolatry and unbelief, the shadow of self-will and bad government, ending in the darker shadow of captivity and exile. In the Christian Church there have been shadows of persecution, of division, of false doctrine, of lukewarmness, of tyranny.

2. So with ourselves, the individual members of the Church, we are all more or less in the shadow.

(1) Some of us perhaps are under the shadow of a great sin, repented of, and so pardoned, but not forgotten.

(2) Some of us perhaps are under the shadow of worldly loss.

(3) It may be the shadow of a great bereavement which has fallen upon us.

(4) Over some of us again the shadow of a great illness may have fallen.

3. We cannot make the darkness light, or scatter the shadows, or hasten the daybreak, Jesus alone can do that. He who once said “Let there be light,” will say so again in answer to our prayers. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.).