The Pouch of Contentment

1I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Friends Eat, friends! Drink, yes, drink abundantly, beloved. 2I was asleep, but my heart was awake. It is the voice of my beloved who knocks: “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is filled with dew, and my hair with the dampness of the night.” 3I have taken off my robe. Indeed, must I put it on? I have washed my feet. Indeed, must I soil them? 4My beloved thrust his hand in through the latch opening. My heart pounded for him. 5I rose up to open for my beloved. My hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the lock. 6I opened to my beloved; but my beloved left; and had gone away. My heart went out when he spoke. I looked for him, but I didn’t find him. I called him, but he didn’t answer. 7The watchmen who go about the city found me. They beat me. They bruised me. The keepers of the walls took my cloak away from me. 8I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, If you find my beloved, that you tell him that I am faint with love. 9How is your beloved better than another beloved, you fairest among women? How is your beloved better than another beloved, that you do so adjure us?

The economy is poor these days and many people are in difficulty. I think that the harder things get, the more people lose confidence, so a greater fear builds up and the pain that comes with it is greater too. The goal many people set in order to escape hardship is money and nothing else. In an anxious state of mind, feeling that money alone would make them happy and that every worry would vanish in a moment, they come to see only what is directly in front of them.

Believers, too, abandon the God who has kept them and led them until now and throw themselves into the middle of a world like the pool of Bethesda, all to make money. When they fail in the world they cut off their own lives without hesitating, and when they make money they grow proud, leave God and bury themselves inside the world. The conclusion is that a life spent chasing money never gets back to God, whichever choice it makes.

While a family lived in a small house they were happy, because however hard things were they became one and covered for one another, and they encouraged each other to work hard. But once they moved to a big house, the family stayed in their separate rooms and lost interest in each other. The heart that was thankful for small things disappeared, and greed for more began to settle in. How did that person make his money? Which district should I move to in order to make more? Greed like that made him restless. Once that small happiness goes — being thankful that the children are healthy, thankful that the whole family can sleep under one roof — a person will come to resent the God who does not give what they want. A heart like this is already hell, without going to hell, because a life without contentment is itself a torment.

The people of Israel were freed from slavery because of God, lived on manna because of God, and were safe in the middle of attacks from foreign nations because of God. They had relied on God alone; and when they entered Canaan they saw foreigners who served Baal and lived well. Then God seemed powerless, like a dead god, so they served Baal. They had forgotten who really loved them. That is what people who have forgotten to be thankful look like. That happiness of giving thanks in all things is perhaps something they will never taste again.

Matthew 5:3

3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Living as one who knows contentment is a blessing, and the person who knows how to be satisfied is a believer who tastes heaven even on this earth.

How contented are you with the life you have been given? The very rich wanted money more desperately than they wanted God, and they got it. Why is it not enough for them? Why do they kill themselves? Because for anyone at all, this world can never fill the pouch of contentment. To a person who knows how to be satisfied, that pouch is beautiful just as it is; but for a person with greed it never fills, and it wears them out. In the end the only thing a person who lives having forgotten to be thankful can choose is death.

When the Shulammite’s life was hard, just seeing Solomon made her thankful, and being able to love him moved her deeply. When he came to find her she was so glad she could have jumped, and she promised herself she would live in earnest if only they could always be together. Now she has married him as she wished, and she can love him as much as she likes without minding what people think.

The day after their first night together she called her friends and held a great feast. Food overflowed every day and she had servants and lived at ease, and pride began to sprout in her heart while thankfulness began to disappear. She forgot the time she had worked until she was sunburned like a tent of Kedar, and the pain of working in the vineyard under her brothers’ mistreatment. An easy day was a matter of course, and Solomon’s love began to seem like something she was naturally owed.

Song of Solomon 5:2

2I was asleep, but my heart was awake. It is the voice of my beloved who knocks: “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is filled with dew, and my hair with the dampness of the night.”

Solomon’s love for her had not changed in the least, because he had made her a perfect one and had won her the love of everyone. But the Shulammite had grown proud, and though her husband called for her desperately from outside in the night dew, she would not get up quickly from her bed. Putting her clothes back on and washing her feet again were both a bother.

Yet since she says that she sleeps and her heart is awake, she seems to know quite well what she ought to be doing. She should have leapt up to welcome a husband standing in the night dew; instead she lay there thinking that even if not now, Solomon loves her and will come back at any time. This laziness and pride are what pushed the two of them apart.

Believers, too, when they go on enjoying the grace God gives, stop being thankful even when they hear the honeycomb-sweet word of truth. That word that was so precious no longer matters to them, and though they know they should get up now and devote themselves, it feels like a bother and a small thing and they are not faithful.

But we must not forget that there is a time for reading and hearing the word and for faithfulness and devotion, and a time for working hard, and that those times are given separately. Once the opportunity has passed, the work of God is something you cannot do however much you want to. A person who has forgotten their first love has taken off the clothes of devotion and so is not qualified. Once darkness has taken over the heart, a person hears the voice of God and ignores it. They hold a position now that nobody can treat lightly, they know the word after a fashion and devote themselves after a fashion, and so they close their eyes and their ears. This evil is in the end a dangerous sin that pushes a person away from Christ. Throw away all that burning zeal and the fear goes, and the sense of sin goes with it. However hard Christ knocks at the door of the heart, the feeling that it is a bother has grown larger. In the end the door of the heart stays shut and the answer is, a little more sleep, a little more slumber. It comes from the Shulammite’s assumption that Jesus can be met whenever she wants and will answer whenever she calls.

To carry out the commission God gave, we have to put on the spiritual clothes of faith however hard it is, and we have to make the effort of washing feet dirtied by sin every day. Jesus loves believers no matter what, so when they pray desperately he grants every request. He settles their problems, heals their diseases and lifts them out of poverty. But a person who has had their answer and now has what they wanted no longer needs Jesus, and so they did not bring in the Jesus who stood knocking in the night dew. The world is far more interesting and enjoyable than church work or living according to the word of God, and so they did not want to put on the clothes of faith and wash the feet of sin.

Song of Solomon 5:4

4My beloved thrust his hand in through the latch opening. My heart pounded for him.

When there was no answer however often he called the woman he loved, Solomon put his hand through the opening of the door and struggled to open it. Only then did she feel sorry toward him and get up; but by then he had already gone.

Solomon is the man who changed her whole life. Having been careless with a husband like that, she may lose him. If you have received even a little grace from God or from a person, you must never act as though it were a bother or do anything that costs them. Believers too will hesitate when Jesus knocks and asks them to open, because it means letting go of a heart set toward the world. Like a hand pushed through the opening of a door, he shakes believers’ hearts hard with suffering and with the fire and urges them to repent, and still they do not easily turn. For a person, the affairs of the world can be handled as their own thoughts and inclinations go; but the work of God means letting go of my own thinking and moving according to the word, and that can be hard.

But Christ is not someone who comes because a person calls, so if you do not turn when he urges you to repent, what is left is regret and nothing else. By the time a person decides and turns, Christ is already doing the necessary work through someone else.

The Shulammite ought to have lived humbly, always remembering that Solomon had a very great many wives. If she had been a little wiser and had thanked him for a love that never changed and served him well, this couple would have been very happy.

You have to know how many people love Christ. If you look for the Lord only when you need him, as though you were indispensable to him, you will be abandoned, because he is already with many believers who are faithful with their whole lives. There are believers preparing in faith to carry out their commission, and people who look for God’s work and throw themselves into it eagerly. Because there are such people, you must let go of human righteousness, of lust and of pride, and prepare a new wineskin.

Song of Solomon 5:7

7The watchmen who go about the city found me. They beat me. They bruised me. The keepers of the walls took my cloak away from me.

Once she was up, the Shulammite repented of what she had done wrong and went looking for Solomon, and what came back to her was the scolding and the pain the watchmen of the city gave her. Had she got up a little more promptly and welcomed him with a smiling face, there would have been no need for this suffering in the middle of the night.

What I always say is this: treasure people while you have them, and be good to them while they are good to you. Be good to Jesus, who gave his life for your soul, and to the people who give you a true love, while they are beside you — not with a love that calculates. When the other person is good to us, we assume it is because we deserve it, we grow careless in word and in action, and once the opportunity has passed we regret it without fail.

And you have to know that if you are careless in word and action until the other person is wounded, and only start working to restore the relationship after you have damaged it, it costs several times the time and the labor. Laziness. Slackness. Pride. Indifference. Vanity. Discontent. Every one of them will stop you answering the voice of God, and you must throw them out and mean it. Fail to throw them out and you will live a life of constant regret, and you will lose heart because of an emptiness that never fills.

A soul that has lost God and wanders will certainly meet trouble: beaten by those who patrol the roads and stripped of its clothes. What strength has the Shulammite, alone in the pitch dark without Solomon? Only then would she have grasped that Solomon being beside her was itself her strength. Without him she is nothing but a fledgling that has lost its mother. To Satan, a believer alone in a dark world having lost Christ looks like a fledgling that has lost its mother.

Be better to Christ now, while he loves you. Lift up Jesus Christ more, love him more and thank him. You must cut away everything that obstructs your faith and obstructs a holy life, because human effort and human plans and human righteousness that get in the way of lifting up the Lord are all tools Satan gives.

Suppose you had a friend who holds the world’s power.

That friend simply does not know God; he has a good heart and real ability, so many people want to be close to him and receive his help. He sometimes criticizes God and is thoroughly worldly, but he is particularly fond of you, and if he wanted to travel with you even on the Lord’s Day, what would you decide? Two minds would be in conflict — the temptation that being with him could bring a great deal of worldly help, and the knowledge that he must be cut off because he obstructs a life of faith.

“In order to believe in God, do I really have to push away a person as good as this?” The conflict will trouble you. But what you must consider first is whether this time and this person help you receive eternal life. If you are wise, then until you stand on the rock of faith, until you have the spiritual authority to lift that friend out by the power of the word, you must hand everything over to God and run quickly along the road of truth; only then can both he and you live. Many believers wrestle with a problem like this; but if they rightly know what the order of priority is, they already know the answer, and it is not a problem to wrestle with at all.

But if love and friendship and closeness keep you from deciding in faith and you are dragged along, that person and you die together. When you meet God later, he will require that friend’s blood at your hand, so you must make the spiritual choice before the physical one. Handle wisely every human relationship that obstructs faith like this, and lock and cover and seal the holy temple so that the world cannot get inside.

Song of Solomon 5:9

9How is your beloved better than another beloved, you fairest among women? How is your beloved better than another beloved, that you do so adjure us?

The women of Jerusalem asked the Shulammite, who was wandering in search of Solomon, what her husband had that theirs did not, that she should search so hard. It is a strange question to hear, but believers are often asked it too. She is looking for him because he is her husband, and the world asks what is so remarkable about him that she is looking.

The world holds a wish to run Christ down like this. That is why you have to live in earnest, so as not to fall behind the world. If you do not live in earnest and fall behind the people of the world, those people will mock God rather than you. They will mock our bridegroom, asking why people who say they believe in God live in poverty. They will criticize him, asking whether an almighty Creator cannot heal even that illness. Because of Christians who have abandoned a moral life and behave without decency, people are frantic to drag Christ down to the ground.

Because of whom? Who has caused our bridegroom Christ — who threw his own life away to save us when we had fallen into a death as filthy and ugly as the tents of Kedar — to be mocked? Is it not because of us? They dare to ask, what does Jesus have that is better than the world we love, that you gave the world up? When a Shulammite who had looked so happy wandered the night streets, the women seem to have felt a certain satisfaction, thinking that perhaps their own husbands were better than Solomon after all. Because of foolish believers, a holy God is being mocked.

And the reason the Shulammite is hearing the women’s mockery now is that she was proud and lazy and sent away the Solomon who came to her through the night dew. Satan wants to mock Jesus to his heart’s content, and that is why he showed believers the world’s ability and strength and people, to keep them from opening the door of the heart. As I said in the illustration, he attaches a friend to them, shows them power, and arranges circumstances in which they can hold a great deal of wealth, so as to make a believer fall.

You must be able to see Satan’s purpose rather than the world you can see. Know his purpose of obstructing eternal life, and the world will look small. God is showing you the Shulammite’s sin now and urging you not to let go of his love. When you hear the Lord’s voice, leap up and throw open the door of your heart.

While she is with Solomon the women cannot speak carelessly to her and those on patrol cannot attack her; and no one can touch a believer who is with Christ. Being with Christ is itself strength and power. That is the blessing, and it is the spiritual authority Satan cannot dare approach. I hope you will always be ready, so that Christ does not turn back.

May you receive an astonishing blessing inside Christ, and enjoy it always. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.