Song of Solomon 4:10-11

How fair is thy love, My sister, My spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!

Christ’s estimate of His people

I.

Christ first praises His people’s love. Dost thou love God, my hearer? Dost thou love Jesus? Hearken, then, to what the Lord Jesus says to thee, by His Holy Spirit, from this Song! Thy love, poor, feeble, and cold though it be, is very precious unto the Lord Jesus, in fact it is so precious, that He Himself cannot tell how precious it is. He does not say how precious, but He says “how fair” Pause here, my soul, to contemplate a moment, and let thy joy wait a while. Jesus Christ has banquets in heaven, such as we have never yet tasted, and yet He does not feed there. He has wines in heaven richer far than all the grapes of Eshcol could produce, but where does he seek His wines? In our hearts. Not all the love of angels, nor all the joys cf. Paradise, are so dear to. Him as the love of His poor people compassed with infirmity. The love of the believer is sweet to Christ.

II. Do not imagine, however, that Christ despises our faith, or our hope, or our patience, or our humility. All these graces are precious to Him, and they are described in the next sentence under the title of ointment, and the working of these graces, their exercise and development, are compared with the smell of ointment. Now both wine and ointment were used in the sacrifice of the Jews; sweet smelling myrrh and spices were used in meat-offerings and drink-offerings before the Lord. “But,” saith Jesus Christ to His Church, “all these offerings of wine, and all that burning of incense, is nothing to Me compared to your graces. Your love is My wine, your virtues are My sweet-smelling ointments.” Yes, believer, when you are on your sick-bed and are suffering with patience; when you go about your humble way to do good by stealth; when you distribute of your alms to the poor; when you lift up your thankful eye to Heaven; when you draw near to God with humble prayer; when you make confession of your sin to Him; all these acts are like the smell of ointment to Him, the smell of a sweet savour, and He is gratified and pleased. O Jesus, this is condescension indeed, to be pleased with such poor things as we have. Oh, this is love; it proves Thy love to us, that Thou canst make so much out of little, and esteem so highly that which is of such little worth!

III. Now we come to the third, “Thy lips, O My spouse, drop as the honeycomb.” Christ’s people are not a dumb people, they were once, but they talk now. I do not believe a Christian can keep the secret that God gives him if he were to try; it would burst his lips open to get out. Now it is but poor, poor matter that any of us can speak. When we are most eloquent in our Master’s praise, how far our praises fall beneath His worth! When we are most earnest in prayer, how powerless is our wrestling compared with the great blessing that we seek to obtain! But Jesus Christ does not find any fault in what the Church speaks. He says, “No, Thy lips, O My spouse, drop as the honeycomb.” You know the honey that drops out of the honeycomb is the best--it is called the life-honey. So the words that drop from the Christian’s lips are the very words of his life, his life-honey, and they ought to be sweet to every one. They are as sweet to the taste of the Lord Jesus as the drops of the honeycomb. And now, Christians, will you not talk much about Jesus? Will you not speak often of Him? Will you not give your tongue more continually to prayer and praise, and speech that ministers to edifying, when you have such a listener as this, such an auditor who stoops from heaven to hear you, and who values every word you speak for Him? “But,” says one, “if I were to try to talk about Jesus Christ, I do not know what I should say.” If you wanted any honey, and nobody would bring it to you, I suppose the best way, if you were in the country, would be to keep some bees, would it not? It would be very well for you Christian people if you kept bees. “Well,” says one, “I suppose our thoughts are to be the bees. We are always to be looking about for good thoughts, and flying on to the flowers where they are to be found; by reading, by meditation, and by prayer, we are to send bees out of the hive.” Certainly, if you do not read your Bibles, you will have no honey, because you have no bees. But when you read your Bibles, and study those precious texts, it is like bees settling on flowers, and sucking the sweetness out of them.

IV. This brings us to the next topic “Honey and milk are under thy tongue.” I find it necessary when I preach to keep a good stock of words under my tongue as well as those that are on it. Very often I have got a simile just ready to come out, and I have thought, “Ah, that is one of your laughable similes, take that back.” I am obliged to change it for something else. If I did that a little oftener perhaps it would be better, but I cannot do it. I have sometimes a whole host of them under my tongue, and I am obliged to keep them back. “Honey and milk are under thy tongue.” That is not the only meaning. The Christian is to have words ready to come out by and by. Yon know the hypocrite has words upon his tongue. We speak about solemn sounds upon a thoughtless tongue; but the Christian has his words first under the tongue. There they lie. They come from his heart; they do not come from the top of his tongue,--they are not superficial surface-work, but they come from under the tongue--down deep,--things that he feels, and matters that he knows. Nor is this the only meaning. The things that are under the tongue are thoughts that have never yet been expressed; they do not get to the top of the tongue, but lie there half formed and are ready to come out; but either because they cannot come out, or we have not time to let them out, there they remain, and never come into actual words. Now Jesus Christ thinks very much even of these; He says, “Honey and milk are under thy tongue”; and Christian meditation and Christian contemplation are to Christ like honey for sweetness and like milk for nourishment.

V. And, then, last of all, “the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.” The odiferous herbs that grew on the side of Lebanon delighted the traveller, and, perhaps, here is an allusion to the peculirly sweet smell of the cedar wood. Now, the garments of a Christian are twofold--the garment of imputed righteousness, and the garment of inwrought sanctification. I think the allusion here is to the second. The garments of a Christian are his every-day actions--the things that he wears upon him wherever he goes. Now these smell very sweet to the Lord Jesus. What should you think if Jesus should meet you at the close of the day, and say to you, “I am pleased with the works of to-day? I know you would reply, “Lord, I have done nothing for Thee.” You would say like those at the last day, “Lord, when saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee? when saw we Thee thirsty and gave Thee drink?” You would begin to deny that you had done any good thing. He would say, “Ah, when thou wast under the fig tree I saw thee; when thou wast at thy bedside in prayer I heard thee; I saw thee when the tempter came, and thou saidst, ‘Get thee hence, Satan’; I saw thee give thine alms to one of My poor sick children; I heard thee speak a good word to the little child and teach him the name of Jesus; I heard the groan when swearing polluted thine ears: I heard thy sigh when thou sawest the iniquity of this great city; I saw thee when thine hands were busy; I saw that thou wast not an eye-servant or a man-pleaser, but that in singleness of purpose thou didst serve God in doing thy daily business; I saw thee, when the day was ended, give thyself to God again; I have marked thee mourning over the sins thou hast committed, and I tell thee I am pleased with thee.” “The smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)