Song of Solomon 5:8

I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my Beloved, that ye tell Him, that I am sick of love.

Heavenly love-sickness

Sick! that is a sad thing; it moves your pity. Sick of love--love-sick! that stirs up other emotions which we shall presently attempt to explain. There is a twofold love-sickness. Of the one kind is that love-sickness which comes upon the Christian when he is transported with the full enjoyment of Jesus, even as the bride, elated by the favour, 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.” Another kind of love-sickness, 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 the excess of delight, but because of sorrow for an absent lover.

I. First, consider our text as the language of a soul longing for the view of Jesus Christ in grace.

1. Do ye ask me concerning the sickness itself: what is it? It is the.sickness of a soul punting after communion with Christ. Gracious souls 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. The heart when near to Jesus has strong pulsations, for, since Jesus is in that heart, it is full of life, of vigour, and of strength. Peace, liveliness, vigour--all depend upon the constant enjoyment of communion with Christ Jesus. The soul of a Christian never knows what joy means in its true solidity, except when she sits like Mary at Jesus’ feet. What the sun is to the day, what the moon is to the night, what the dew is to the flower, such is Jesus Christ to us. What the turtle is to her mate, what the husband is to his spouse, what the head is to the body, such is Jesus Christ to us; and therefore, if we have Him not, nay, if we are not conscious of having Him; if we are not one with Him, nay, if we are not consciously one with Him, little marvel if our spirit cries in the words of the Song, “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my Beloved, tell Him, that I am sick of love.” Such is the character of this love-sickness. We may say of it, however, that it is a sickness which has a blessing attending it: Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness;” and therefore, supremely blessed are they who thirst after the Righteous One--after Him who in the highest perfection embodies pure, immaculate, spotless righteousness. Blessed is that hunger, for it comes from God. Yet it is a sickness which, despite the blessing, causes much pain. The man who is sick after Jesus will be dissatisfied with everything else; he will find that dainties have lost their sweetness, and music its melody, and light its brightness, and life itself will be darkened with the shadow of death to him, till he finds his Lord, and can rejoice in Him. Ye shall find that this thirsting, this sickness, if it ever gets hold upon you, is attended with great vehemence. As lovers sometimes talk of doing impossibilities for their fair ones, so certainly a spirit that is set on Christ will laugh at impossibility, and say, “It shall be done” It will venture upon the hardest task, go cheerfully to prison and joyfully to death, if it may but find its beloved, and have its love-sickness satisfied with His presence.

2. What maketh a man s soul so sick after Christ? Understand that it is the absence of Christ which makes this sickness in a mind that really understands the preciousness of His presence. The spouse had been very wilful and wayward; she had taken off her garments, had gone to her rest, her sluggish, slothful rest, when her Beloved knocked at the door. Mingled with the sense of absence is a consciousness of wrong-doing. Something in her seemed to say, “How couldst thou drive Him away?” That heavenly Bridegroom who knocked and pleaded hard, how couldst thou keep Him longer there amidst the cold dews of night? O unkind heart I what if thy feet had been made to bleed by thy rising? What if all thy body had been chilled by the cold wind, when thou wast treading the floor? What had it been compared with His love to thee? So, too, mixed with this, was great wretchedness because He was gone. She had been for a little time easy in His absence. That downy bed, that warm coverlet, had given her a peace--a false, cruel, and a wicked peace--but she has risen now, the watchmen have smitten her, her veil is gone, and, without a friend, the princess, deserted in the midst of Jerusalem’s streets, has her soul melted for heaviness, and she pours out her heart within her as she pineth after her Lord. To gather up the causes of this love sickness in a few words, does not the whole matter spring from relationship? She is His spouse; can the spouse be happy without her beloved Lord? It springs from union; she is part of Himself. Can the hand be happy and healthy if the life-floods stream not from the heart and from the head? Fondly realizing her dependence, she feels that she owes all to Him, and gets her all from Him. If, then, the fountain be cut off, if the streams be dried, if the great source of all be taken from her, how can she but be sick? And there is besides this a life and a nature in her which makes her sick. There is a life like the life of Christ, nay, her life is in Christ, it is hid with Christ in God; her nature is a part of the Divine nature; she is a partaker of the Divine nature. Moreover she is in union with Jesus, and this piece, divided, as it were, from the body, wriggles, like a worm cut asunder, and pants to get back to where it came from.

3. What endeavours such love-sick souls will put forth. Those who are sick for Christ will first send their desires to Him. Go, go, sweet doves, with swift and clipping wings, and tell Him, I am sick of love. Then she would send her prayers. She is afraid they will never reach Him, for her bow is slack, and she knoweth not how to draw it with her feeble hands which hang down. So what does she? She has traversed the streets; she has used the means; she has done everything; she has sighed her heart out, and emptied her soul out in prayers. She is all wounds till He heals her; she is all a hungry mouth till He fills her; she is all an empty brook till He replenishes her once again, and so now she goeth to her companions, and she saith, “If ye find my Beloved, tell Him, I am sick of love.” This is using the intercession of the saints. But after all, how much better it would have been for her to tell Him herself. “But,” you say, “she could not find Him.” Nay, but if she had faith she would have known that her prayers could; for our prayers know where Christ is when we do not know, or rather, Christ knows where our prayers are, and when we cannot see Him they reach Him nevertheless.

4. Blessed love-sickness! we have seen its character and its cause, and the endeavours of the soul under it; let us just notice the comforts which belong to such a state as this. Briefly they are these--you shall be filled. It is impossible for Christ to sat you longing after Him without intending to give Himself to you. He makes you long: He will certainly satisfy your longings. Remember, again, that He will give you Himself all the sooner for the bitterness of your longings. The more pained your heart is at His absence the shorter will the absence be. Then, again, when He does come, as come He will, oh, how sweet it will be!

II. This love-sickness may be seen in a soul longing for a view of Jesus in His glory.

1. And here we will consider the complaint itself for a moment. This ailment is not merely a longing after communion with Christ on earth--that has been enjoyed, and generally this sickness follows that. It is the enjoyment of Esheol’s first-fruits which makes us desire to sit under our own vine and our own fig tree before the throne of God in the blessed land. This sickness is characterized by certain marked symptoms; I will tell you what they are. There is a loving and a longing, a loathing and a languishing. As the needle once magnetized will never be easy until it finds the pole, so the heart once Christianized never will be satisfied until it rests on Christ--rests on Him, too, in the fulness of the beatific vision before the throne.

2. As to its object--what is that? “Tell Him, that I am sick of love;” but what is the sickness for? When you and I want to go to heaven I hope it is the true love-sickness. The soul may be as sick as it will, without rebuke, when it is sick to be with Jesus. You may indulge this, carry it to its utmost extent without either sin or folly. What am I sick with love for? For the pearly gates?--No; but for the pearls that are in His wounds. What am I sick for? For the streets of gold?--No; but for His head, which is as much fine gold. For the melody of the harps and angelic songs?--No ”but for the melodious notes that come from His dear mouth. What am I sick for? For the nectar that angels drink?--No; but for the kisses of His lips. For the manna on which heavenly souls do feed?--No; but for Himself, who is the meat and drink of His saints; Himself, Himself--my soul pines to see Him.

3. Ask ye, yet again, what are the excitements of this sickness. What is it makes the Christian rang to be at home with Jesus? I do believe that all the bitters and all the sweets make a Christian, when he is in a healthy state, sick after Christ: the sweets make his mouth water for more sweets, and the bitters make him pant for the time when the last dregs of bitterness shall be over. Wearying temptations, as well as rapt enjoyments, all set the spirit on the wing after Jesus.

4. Well now, what is the cure of this love-sickness? Is it a sickness for which there is any specific remedy? There are some palliatives, and I will recommend them to you. Such, for example, is a strong faith that realizes the day of the Lord and the presence of Christ, as Moses beheld the promised land and the goodly heritage, when he stood on the top of Pisgah. If you do not get heaven when you want it, you may attain to that which is next door to heaven, and this may bear you up for a little season, if you cannot get to behold Christ face to face, it is a blessed make-shift for the time to see Him in the Scriptures, and to look at Him through the glass of the Word. These are palliatives, but I warn ye, I warn ye of them. I do not mean to keep you from them, use them as much as ever you can, but I warn you from expecting that it will cure that love-sickness. It will give you ease, but it will make you more sick still, for he that lives on Christ gets more hungry after Christ. But there is a cure, there is a cure and you shall have it soon--a black draught, and in it a pearl: a black draught called Death. Ye shall drink it, but ye shall not know it is bitter, for ye shall swallow it up in victory. (C. H. Spurgeon.)