Men Marked by the Presence of God — Paul Washer

Anything it takes, you have to literally be before the Lord. Lord, anything it takes, anything it takes, anything it takes to bring me down from those high places. There have been times when I have stood in the pulpit after very little prayer and preached with great power.

There have been other times when I have given myself the long times of prayer and then stood in the pulpit and preached like a babe with bricks coming out of my mouth. No power. Walked down from the pulpit absolutely humiliated.

Dependence on God's Power and Presence

And I bless the Lord for those times. I bless the Lord for everything that He has worked in my life to show me that apart from His power, apart from His grace, apart from His mercy, I'm a goner. And to be afraid, why can't I watch that television?

Do I not have a television? In that sense, because I'm more spiritual than you. No, it's because I am more afraid. I know what that thing will do to me. It will grab me. I am not strong enough. I'm not as strong as you.

I'm not as powerful as you. I can't look at even one little bit of that thing because if I do, it will grab me and suck me in. It is being afraid. As I've told you, I'm an outdoorsman and I love the outdoors.

And my little boy, he loves the outdoors. And he'll get wandering out there in the backwoods with me and he'll stray farther and farther. I tell him, come back, come back. He'll stray farther and then I'll just let him go.

I'll hide behind trees. I'll keep track of him. I'll make sure that a coyote can't get him. But sooner or later, he begins to realize he's alone. And he calls out to Dad and Dad does not answer. And he gets very, very afraid.

And you say, you're a cruel father. No, I'm a good father. I'm teaching him something. I'm teaching him what the Lord has often taught me in nights of silence. Oh, we run so bold. And then we run a little bit farther and a little bit farther because we're always thinking we can run back.

But you don't realize there is one like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And he is not afraid of the sheep. He's afraid of the shepherd. And you had better cling to that shepherd. I can recall how many times my boy, when I would finally appear behind the tree, would run up and grab me by the leg and just hold on to my pants leg.

You couldn't have pried him off with a crowbar. That's the way I want to walk with the Lord because that's the only safe place. That is the only safe place. Come down. You see, every time you think I can do this, every time you stray away, you've gone to high places.

You've become proud. You've become independent. And you're walking in a dangerous place. Do you want the power of God? More importantly, do you want the presence of God in your life? Well, then you have to come down.

How dependent are you upon God? Talk to me about your prayer life and I'll be able to tell you how dependent you are upon God. Now, there's something very important here. Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse.

“Come With Me” in Song of Solomon

With me from Lebanon. Look down from the top of Amman and from the top of Sinai and Hermon, from the lion's den and from the mountains of the leopards. If we just think of this call as separating from the world, we're going to be in trouble.

It is not that he's just saying, separate yourself from the dangerous places. But what he is saying is this, come with me. Come with me. It is easier to be a legalist than a lover of Christ. It is much easier.

Get all your principles and go to the seminars that tell you exactly what not to look at and everything else and what to wear and how to act and where to go and who to hang around with. Get all the stuff and get it right.

Boy, it's easy. It's even fun. It's interesting. But if you stop there, you know what's going to happen? Let me tell you something. Romans 7 is a frightening book. It's a frightening chapter. And I'll tell you why.

You get all the biblical principles that you need from great teachers to be holy. And if that's all you have, you will become a twofold son of hell. Because I want you to know, law, principles, and wisdom without the presence of God is legalism and legalism always ends in immorality and sensuality.

You find legalistic people in any denomination, people given over to legalism, and when you get in among them, you will find the grossest sensuality and immorality behind closed doors that you could have ever imagined.

And why is that? You put the law upon someone without the working of grace. And it will encourage them to sin. It will lead them to sin. It really will. You get all your principles, but you do not seek God.

You have all this understanding about what it means to be holy, but you do not seek the presence of God. God will leave you there with your principles and allow you to see just what you can do with them by yourself.

It is seeking Him. It is seeking Him. Now something else. Why are we so given to sensuality? Fallenness? Why are men so given to pornography? Fallenness? Well, not just fallenness, but actually it's a good thing gone wrong.

You see, and I don't know how to explain this, we were created and especially re-created to behold the glory of God. We were created with these hearts and re-created with these hearts to behold the glory of God, infinite beauty, the infinite awesomeness of God, and such beauty that it would throw us in such ecstasy that unless we were strengthened, we'd be destroyed by our own joy.

When you're not getting that from God, you're going to seek to get it somewhere. They tell me that when a man looks at pornography, there are chemicals released in his body more powerful than any type of illegal drug he could even think about getting on.

That rush, that feeling of ecstasy, that feeling of otherness, that feeling of awesomeness, that feeling, all these things that ought to be met in God, but when you've got a bunch of dead preachers preaching a dead gospel and not telling people because they themselves do not know that you actually can enter into the presence of God here on earth and you can sense His wonder and you can sense His joy and you can sense His power.

When all that's left to church is a sound doctrinal sermon, people are going to look for what they desire someplace else. They're going to take godly desires and twist them around. They really are. You know, it is such a shame.

Doctrine as a Means to Knowing God

I don't know if everyone here is Baptist. I'm Baptist or Baptistic or whatever you want to call me. Baptist theology, I'm a Baptist because of our historical theology, not so much our theology in contemporary times.

But much, some Baptist theology is reactionary. And what I mean by that is this, it's not so much biblical as it is a reaction against the heresies that we see all around us. For example, there is a doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Bible.

But because of all the wild heresies of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, sometimes you and I are afraid. You know, if a Jehovah witness or a Jehovah-less witness comes to my door and they say, we're Jehovah witnesses, I say, well, come on in, so am I.

I'm not going to let them steal that name from me. I'm the Jehovah witness. They're a liar. Charismatic? Yes, I am. Matter of fact, if you're not charismatic, you're lost because charismatic just means gifted.

Now, I don't have anything to do with what's called charismatic today, but I'm not going to let them steal that word from me. Another thing I want you to know, this God of ours, I spend hours a day studying doctrine.

I teach doctrine. I love doctrine. But I want you to know something, doctrine is not an end. It is a means. It is a means to knowing God. It is a means to knowing God. Now, I'm going to share with you something I've never shared in a conference.

It's a personal testimony. And it might cause many of you to be very disappointed in me and even not even hear anything I have to say. So be it. I preach in a lot of places once. As a young man in the ministry, I was privileged of being around a lot of very, very old and very, very godly men.

And they would talk to me. Now, these were men of God. Baptist, very staunch, reformed, some of them. People not given to enthusiasm or emotions or any other thing like that. Sound men. But they would talk to me about the power of God.

They would talk to me about the presence of God. Not as men quoting stories that they had read, but men who themselves had seen with their own eyes the working of God. And I would go out on the streets in Austin, Texas and preach.

I was afraid. There was no boldness. There was no power. There was nothing. But I would always hear the voices of these old men. And one day I decided enough is enough. I will seek Him until I find Him or until I die.

I went into a closet and I said, I'll not leave this closet until I know God. Fifteen minutes later, I fell asleep. My roommates came home and found me in the closet. So I took an alarm clock with me.

And please, I'm not saying this for any other reason except I feel like I'm supposed to. I took an alarm clock with me. Set it for every fifteen minutes. I'd pray for maybe five or ten minutes. Fall asleep.

Alarm clock go off. Set it again. This was my prayer. I didn't pray for China. I didn't pray for the presence of God. In the sense of my ministry, I asked one thing. Lord, you said if I seek you, I'll find you.

You said, you said it, Lord, that you would reveal yourself to me. You would let yourself be found by me if I seek you. Night after night after night after night for months. Two and three hours a night simply sitting there like this on my knees.

Lord, it's been four months now. It's been five days now. And you still have not come and just sit there. Lord, I've been here three hours and you have not come. Day after day and night after night. And then one day our church was spring break and all the college students were going to go on a Bible study ski trip type thing in Colorado.

And I felt like the Lord wanted me just to go out into West Texas to the hill country. Pretty barren. And I walked on top of those hills for three days like a wild man. If you would have seen me, you would have thrown me in an asylum.

I was picking up rocks and I was throwing them, literally, physically throwing them at the sky. I was screaming. I was saying, God, I must know you. You must come. You must. I can't live like this anymore.

I can't live just reading books. I can't live. I can't live just reading about revivals and about people who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew you and nothing happened. And I went home and another several weeks passed.

And one night he came. He came. I just said, oh, father, I can't please come. And he came. I was thrown down on the ground. I don't know how long in a fetal position covering my head thinking God's come to kill me.

The presence of God in a way that in one second more of my sin and my need and his glory and power was revealed. And then all of a sudden every bit of fear was taken away. And I was filled with such joy and my mouth shot open.

Don't be afraid. Verse after verse from songs and from everywhere else passages I had read just started coming forth. Praises unto him, the word of God. Such joy. And I can tell you, it has been 20 years.

A Life Marked by the Presence of Christ

The presence of Christ is more real to me in this room than any one of you. And one of the things that is so bad today is many of you men here, you also have known the presence of Christ. But now most of your prayer life is nothing but praying just a little and then just realizing he hasn't come and getting up and walking away instead of staying there until he does.

It's just prayer of going through the motions. You want holiness in your life. Run to him and stay there. Stay there. My little boy, whenever I'm putting my shoes on and he realized my bags are packed, he goes, Daddy, stay with Ian.

Daddy, stay with Ian. Or Ian, go with Daddy. I find myself even this morning in prayer going, Father, stay with Paul. Father, stay with Paul. Or Paul, go with Father. I see so many boys today in the pulpit.

They're boys. Because as those old men told me, the mark of a man of God is God upon the man. And I don't want to sound, I just want, I don't want to sound arrogant. I don't want to sound anything else.

I just want to say this, that we have the desperate need to be men marked by the presence of God. We have a desperate need. Now there are those extremes, you know. You have these men who, you know, don't care anything about doctrine and they're just all Holy Spirit.

Well, they have nothing to say. But I want you to also know that just doctrinal teaching, the presence and power of God, brings death many times. And he says, come down. But not only does he say, come down, he says, come with me, come with me, come with me.

Beyond “Quiet Times” to Continual Communion

I don't like and I don't teach quiet times. The idea of you should have a quiet time. I know that's a big part of discipleship. I don't agree with it and I don't like it. I don't see the Puritans having quiet times.

I don't. A quiet time. What? Is it like me going home, putting my wife in a closet and 30 minutes a day I pull her out and talk to her and then stick her back in there? Well, I've went through my checklist now of a good husband, therefore, now go back in the closet and here I go again.

Our entire life, every moment of our life should be one of being with the Master. It is very hard to call up pornography sites on the computer when Jesus Christ is there. It's very hard. And you need to realize, we as, well, those of us who are Baptists, we need to realize we have been so influenced by Popish, Roman Catholic ideas of piety, it's unbelievable.

There is no such thing in the New Covenant of secular and sacred. It is all sacred. Even the pots and pans are sacred. Everything is sacred. Someone asked me one time, you want to go to the Holy Land?

I said, everywhere I bow my knee is the Holy Land. Everywhere Christ is is holy. And it's not just learning things about holiness and learning things about principles, but it's also coming down and just walking with Him.

Walking with Him. I remember after I was born again and the love of God had been shed abroad in my heart. You know, there's that time that you seem to walk with God when everything is God. Everywhere you look, you just can't even stop thinking about Him.

And I remember several, well, probably two or three months went by and it was just like that after my conversion. I mean, just everywhere, all I could think about was Jesus. And then I remember one day walking into a store, thinking about buying some new boots.

And I walked out of the store. I have never been so broken in all my life. I realized that I walked into that store and Christ was not in every thought. Christ was not in just every... And I thought, what happened?

You know what's terrifying? Is when that becomes so common, it no longer even bothers us anymore. That's when unholiness and immorality and such things can creep in, when Christ is not real. Christ is not real.

I didn't even want to come out of the prayer thing, just wanted to stay there. Why? That's what we need. You men, most of you know more than I'll ever know. The thing about it is, are we seeking Him? Are we seeking Him?

Are we seeking Him? Do we pray and nothing happens and we get up and we realize, well, we've, you know, we've been obedient, we've prayed. You know, where two or three are gathered, He's here. I need more than that promise.

I want His presence. I want His presence and His power. Now, I did not mean to tarry that long on that verse. I want to go on to some other things. Look at verse 7 prior to verse 8. When He first addresses her, before He tells her to come down from those things which can hurt her, and before He says, come and follow Me, this is what He says about her.

Assurance, Holiness, and the New Covenant

Thou art all fair, My love, there is no spot in thee. Many times you come to see that you're walking in a place you shouldn't be walking or living in a way you shouldn't be living, and immediately condemnation comes upon you.

And that condemnation drives you farther away from Christ. You feel ashamed. You feel like it's a works idea of, well, I've got to, you know, get my life fixed, do this and everything, and then kind of earn some brownie points and then come back.

And we have so much old covenant teaching, and do not realize about the new covenant, some things that are so beautiful, Christ really did pay it all. He really did pay it all. And when you come to the realization the Holy Spirit has convicted you in your heart that you're wrong, you should not be listening then to the devil who begins condemnation and everything else and tries to drive you further and further away from the Savior.

When the Lord tells you, you're wrong, He says also, He says it like this, He goes, you're wrong, I love you, come back, you're wrong, you are without spot before Me, come back, I love you. We have this idea that, well, we need to be very, very careful when we start telling Christians that when they sin, their fellowship is broken with God.

You need to be very careful about what you're saying. Cliches can be very dangerous, because according to 1 John, fellowship with God is synonymous with salvation. We claim we have fellowship with Him, that's talking about salvation.

You tell a believer their fellowship with God is broken, you're basically saying you're condemned and going to hell. What you need to realize, you have taught maybe your people, and you believe yourself, you tell your people, if you sin, man, you're separated from God.

Your sins have separated you and God. Oh really? You ever thought about what you're saying? You're separated from God, my friend, you're going to hell. You're separated from God, you're condemned. Now I'm not trying to play down sin, what I'm just trying to tell you is we better clean up our language.

Do you want to know what happens when a believer sins? God continues to love them. God continues to woo them. God continues to come after them. God continues to draw them. Let me give you an example. Let's say that God wants me to fast pray and read the Word all morning, but I want to go out to my woodshop and work.

According to many fundamentalist pastors, this is what's going to happen. God's going to stand there and say, well, you just go ahead and go to your workshop if you want, but I'm not going with you. And by the way, I hope you cut your fingers off.

You know what really happens? I'll tell you what happens. I go out to that workshop, God is screaming at me, I love you, Paul, I love you. Nothing will change that. Come away with me. I'm looking for a board.

He goes over there with me and helps me find it. He said, Paul, here's the board, but I love you. Come away with me. I turn on that power saw. He guards my fingers. And when I look across that saw at the other side of it, he's standing there going, Paul, I love you, I love you, I love you.

Come back with me. Come back with me. You say, well, what about discipline? Oh, my dear friend, there is discipline. There's church discipline. There's divine discipline. There's all sorts of discipline, but it is always in love and it is always with God screaming out to His children.

I love you. I love you. I love you. And so when we talk about, well, we're here and we're in this, we're in this mess we've got ourselves into, Satan will oftentimes intervene and say, now, God don't want anything to do with you.

He's over with you. He's finished with you. He cannot do anything with you. If you're a true believer and you have fallen into some sort of sin, condemnation from the devil will be constantly coming towards you, driving you further and further from the Christ, further and further from salvation.

And what you need to hear is, son, it is finished. I've paid the price for you. Your sins have been paid for. Return to me. Return to me. Return to me. One of my favorite passages is in the entire Bible, is that a bruised reed, he will not break.

And a burning wick, he will not put out. What does that mean? It means this, my dear friend. When you've fallen and you've sinned and you're in problems, you take a cane, for example, you go down to Israel and there the children would cut cane.

There's just thousands and millions of cane growing everywhere. And they would cut cane and they would make a flute out of it. But as they were making the flute with the cane, the flute would sometimes just break because cane is very fragile.

Well, they wouldn't try to fix the flute. They'd throw it away and get another piece of cane. There's all kinds of cane where that one came from. No sense working with that. Just throw it away and start all over again.

That's not the way God works. God selects a piece of cane, begins to work with it, play beautiful music from this thing. And then for the fractures and the failure and the cane itself, it breaks. But God doesn't take that broken believer and throw him out and say, well, I can get someone else.

I got plenty where this guy came from. He'll take it and he'll mend it again, mend it again, and mend it again. How many times have I broken my own life and God has put it back together? That compels me to want to be holy.

How many times have I fallen and he's put me back up? And then again, you look in the burning wick. Have you ever been in a house where it's just lamps, no electricity? In Peru, in the jungle, that's what we had and we would have lamps.

And if that oil ever runs out of that lamp and that wick begins to burn, my dear friend, when that wick begins to consume, it will smell horribly. It begins to burn because there's no longer any oil. And it stinks.

And what you do is you just take the thing, open up the window and throw it outside. It stunk up the whole house. A thing that was supposed to give light has done nothing but stink up everything. But when Christ begins to work with a believer and fills them with the oil of His Spirit and they grieve the Holy Spirit through sin and the wick begins to burn and the Christian begins to stink and it's nothing but the smell of burning flesh, Christ doesn't take that.

Throw it out the window and say, well, I can get another lamp. But He begins again pruning and cleaning and preparing and then filling once again. So no matter where you're at in your life, there is this irresistible love of God that never gives up.

And no matter how hard He has to speak to you and no matter how hard He may have to discipline you, it is always like the case with the prophets of Israel. No matter how hard the rebuke, it always ended in hope.

It always ended in encouragement. Now, He says in verse 9, what is the motivation for being holy? The way God sees you in Christ. The way God sees you in Christ. He says, Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse.

God's Delight in His Believing People

Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes. He's talking about when you look at me, literally, my heart beats faster when you look at me. Now, do you think this is poetry? Do you think God writes this because He wants to hear Himself?

Is this true? Does it really mean that every time, Paul Washer, every time I give a heavenly glance, every time I look towards my Father in heaven, His heart beats faster? Do you see that? Does that not excite you?

Does that not encourage you to pray? Does that not encourage you to keep your eyes on Him? That every time I look to the Father, His heart is ravished. Every time I look, my little boy, when I get home, I just look and when he peeks around that door and looks at me, I am just on fire.

Every time. You see, you think most of the time you go to God and He's like, just, well, I got to listen to Him, that's the covenant, I got to stay here. Every time, my dear friend, I don't care who you are, if you're a believer, every time you turn your eyes upward in prayer, the Father's heart beats faster.

He is so full of divine joy. He is so full of divine fullness. He so awaits your glance. It makes me want to just stop preaching right now and go pray. And then He says this, look what He says. He says, ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thine neck, with a necklace, literally.

He says, when you look at me, fills me with joy. My heart beats faster in my passion for you. And not only that, I see the beauty. I'm mesmerized by the beauty of that necklace you have on. And what would that be?

But grace, what would that be? The very gifts, He says, the very gifts I gave you, when I see them, they ravish my heart. Oh, my dear friend, if you could only, I don't know if you're even, you might just totally disagree with me on this.

I don't know. But if you could only see what I'm saying here, that when you bow your knee to prayer, when you bow your knee to pray, when you look up, when you're walking down the street, when you're in Walmart, wherever, and you give that upward glance, Father, it ravishes His heart.

It ravishes His heart. And when He looks down at you, He sees only that which He has given you. Grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy. Don't you want to be holy? Don't you want to pray? If things are such as the Bible says, doesn't that change everything?

And He goes on and He says, how fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse. How much better is thy love than wine and the smell of thine ointment than all spices. Wine and spices represent the most beautiful, the most precious things that God has created.

Beautiful things of all the glory in the world, all the beauty, all the fragrances, all the flowers, all the mountains, all the sunsets, everything that He has made that is full of awesome beauty. But He says, Don, that your love towards Him is more beautiful than all those things put together to Him.

He would rather see your love towards Him as pitiful as that love might be, as small as that love might be. Your love toward Him is more beautiful to God than all the most spectacular and most beautiful things He has ever created.

Doesn't that make you want to pray? Doesn't that make you want to be holy? Doesn't that encourage you? That your love is not just ascending up, being a pitiful thing sent back down to earth, rejected?

And He goes on and He says this, He says in verse 11, Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under thy tongue, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon, the prayers of the saints.

Do you realize, brother, I am so sorry that I am such a pitiful messenger, but do you realize how precious your prayers are to Him? Compared to all the finest things in the world, compared to all the symphonies, compared to all the songs, compared to everything else, you crack your lips and speak a word to God.

And it is more precious to Him than everything else combined. Doesn't that make you want to pray? Doesn't that make you want to call on His name, knowing that in Christ it is received and it is loved and it is appreciated?

Holiness Through Consecration

And He goes on and He says this, He says, A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. I use this verse all the time to teach college students about decency, about modesty.

But this applies to you, men. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. We must be men who have shut the doors to many things. Evil things, bad things, but even good things.

We belong to Him. Oh, the Levites, you know, the Levites didn't get the land and the territory and all these things. Poor, poor Levites, but they got God. And you and I, among us as pastors and little itinerant preachers like myself in things, no, we don't go out there and we can't work with our hands and we can't amass fortunes.

And many times we spend our lives preaching in churches of 10 and 15 and 20 and 30 people. And yes, we've had to sacrifice many things. And yes, Isaiah 53 is basically a picture of our life if we're a good and godly pastor.

And yes, so many things we have missed, but what have we been given? What have we been given? Poor, pitiful pastor? Oh my goodness, I would not trade. I would not step down. I would not trade with the greatest kings and presidents of this world.

We have been given the privilege to dwell in the courts of God, to dwell in His courts, to be His ministers. How can we say anything but that we are the most privileged people on the face of the earth?

And so we must shut ourselves off from other things, other things, and live for Him, and live for Him. Now, he goes on and he says this, he says, I'm going to go ahead and time has gone by. I mean, I'm trying to find out where I want to go next.

Let's just go ahead and jump to 16, verse 16. Now, bear with me. Please bear with me. You know, brothers, honestly, I feel like I felt when I was preaching at the Baptist Seminary, Liberal Baptist Seminary in Bucharest.

When I preached on a passion for Christ, the men just sat there like this. When I started talking about Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann, and Otto Weber, three theologians whose theology closed about every church in Germany, everyone sat up and went like this.

Do we want Christ? Verse 16, this is the bride. Oh, I love this passage. Awake, O north wind, and come thou south. Blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits.

The Bride's Longing for the Beloved

Look at this, this young maiden, this spoused bee. She only has one desire. She has worked, and worked, and worked, and worked to prepare a garden, and only has one desire, that the wind would blow through that garden and send the fragrance of it to her lover.

That's all she wanted. That he would smell the fragrance of what she had done, and that he would come and receive it. Do you remember when you were a new Christian? Do you remember when, I mean, you opened the Bible and you studied it.

You just wanted to be so pleasing. You wanted God to see. You wanted God to look down on what you were doing and just give that acknowledgement that He was pleased with you. You would have done anything for His presence to come.

You would have done anything for divine seal to be upon your life and upon your work. That's all you wanted. You didn't care about your status in the denomination. You didn't care about what other people were doing.

You didn't care about how big your church was or wasn't. You didn't care about any of all that stuff, what people thought of you. The only thing you cared about was, will He see this? Will He come? Will He be pleased with me?

Your greatest desire when you were younger was just, Lord, that you'd be pleased with me. That's all I care about. I remember the first job they gave me at a church after I was a Christian. I went to the elders and I said, you know, I'm a college student.

I've been saved for a couple of months. And just, you know, what do you want me to do? And they said, well, what do you know how to do? I said, well, I was raised on a farm all my life. They said, can you build a fence?

I said, I've built thousands of fences. So they put me in there. I thought they would give me something to teach or something. They had me build a fence around the baseball field. It has the best fence anyone's ever built around a baseball field.

Why? Just, Lord, look, look at me. Lord, look, it's me. Look what I'm doing. Not to get rewards, not to have crowns in heaven, just when a little boy does everything. I'm amazed that when I go to the park and I'm there, I'm usually the only father with his child.

Usually it's mothers with the boys. And I go there and I'll start watching my boy, and my boy will say, look, dad, look, look, look. And pretty soon almost every boy in that park is around me. They don't even know me.

They're just going, look, sir, look, look, look. Because these little boys want a man to look at them and say, yes, good, go for it. Man, you're something. God has given us that so that we would learn a spiritual principle.

That's a good thing for us. Look, Lord. Never forget, sir, you're never going to be anything other than a child. Look, Lord, it's me. Look what I did. But then you get old. You get wise. You get mature.

And a very special part of you dies inside. And you begin to become a prey of things like worldly things that will excite, worldly things that will move you. Why? Because this part of your life in Christ has died.

And yet your heart yearns for more than just principles and doctrines and standards and right ways of living. And then he goes on in verse one of chapter five. I am coming to my garden, my sister, my spouse.

Christ Receives the Believer's Small Offering

I have gathered my mirth with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, eat, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. This is the spouse. This is the king.