READ AND UNDERSTAND

A SERMON

Preached on Sunday Morning November 8th, 1863

By Mister JAMES WELLS

At the Surrey Tabernacle, Borough Road

Volume 5 Number 255

“I charge you, O you daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that you stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.” Solomon's Song 2:7

THE Old Testament saints, not one of them, received Jesus Christ in his eternal Deity without being led to associate with that the Sonship of Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem, or Christ in his future actual complexity. They received him in his birth, they received him in his life, they received him in his death, they received him in his resurrection, they received him in his ascension. And so, they were all made acquainted with the sufferings of Christ, that those sufferings were substitutional, and they were made acquainted with the glory that should follow those sufferings. The daughters spoken of in our text are called the “daughters of Jerusalem”, the Jerusalem of course means the Jerusalem that is above, the New Jerusalem, the spiritual, the heavenly Jerusalem; and the daughters of course mean the people of God, the churches and the people of God. And here is the church, then, giving these daughters a charge: “I charge yon, O you daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that you stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.”

There are three things I will try to bring out this morning from these words. The first is, the presence of the blessed God; secondly, the doctrine of sovereignty preached to the little ones, that there is a set time to favor Zion; and thirdly and lastly, the order of the oath by which they are charged, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field.

First, then, here is the gospel presence of God. I will so call it, in order to be clear upon it, because I want, as I go along, to know if we ourselves know anything of the experience here implied, namely, the presence of the blessed God, in the gospel sense. Not the presence of God merely in his omnipresence, for in that sense he is everywhere; nor the presence of God merely as a creator, for in that sense, also, wherever his works are there he is; nor the presence of God as a legislator or lawgiver, in the legal sense of the word, for in that sense wherever he is he is in his wrath; nor do I mean the presence of God in a broken covenant, but the presence of God in the gospel sense of the word. And there is a fourfold representation of the presence of the Lord in connection with our text. He is here present, first, in pleasantness; that is, the presence of Jesus Christ, and the presence of God by Jesus Christ; for where Jesus Christ is present God is present, for God dwells in him; and “he that has seen the Son has seen the Father.” We have then, here, the presence of Christ, first, in his pleasantness; second, in his fruitfulness; third, in his lovingness; and fourth, in his firmness. This is the fourfold representation given of his presence here, First, in his pleasantness. “I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys.” This is a gospel representation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Beauty and fragrance are the two things that are chiefly intended; indeed, the rose and the lily are both intended to give a kind of paradisiacal representation of the Lord's presence, that everything is fragrant, and everything is pleasant. And just so it is; for, my hearer, in Christ Jesus there is nothing but kindness, there is nothing but pleasantness. The Lord has not an unpleasant thought concerning the soul that loves this Jesus Christ; the Lord has not an unpleasant word to say unto such, and the Lord has not an unpleasant thing in store. It is true, in many of his dealings with us in this world he throws many bitters into our cup; but all that is done in loving-kindness. But I am not speaking now of his general dealings with us, but of his special presence in and by Christ Jesus. Christ is the representative both ways unto us. Jesus Christ thus represents God to us in all this paradisiacal attraction, to denote the absence of winter. The winter is gone, the rain is over and past, the time of the singing of birds is come, everything unpleasant is gone; sin is gone, death is gone, the curse is gone, wrath is gone, Satan is gone, fire is gone, all is gone, poverty is gone; everything objectionable is gone, and everything that is pleasant is come. Therefore, I say, Jesus Christ, as the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys, represents God to us, and at the same time does, and we may here say, “Hear, O heavens, and”, in the good, the right, and joyful sense of the word, “be astonished, O earth,” that while the Lord Jesus Christ represents God to us, he appears as the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys, that Jesus Christ represents the church in the other way, just the same; so that unto God the church is pleasant, fragrant, beautiful as the rose; unto God the church is like the lily, oh, how endearing! he loses sight of our sinner-ship, our loathsomeness, our degraded and depraved state, and holds us in all the paradisiacal fragrance, beauty, and perfection of his dear Son. And to show that I am right in what I am now saying, the dear Savior says, in connection with our text, “As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.” Are we better than the briars and thorns? Are we better than the thistles and the heath of the wilderness? By no means. Who, then, has made the difference, and what have we that we have not received? Destitute, helpless, worthless, and wretched, the Lord having raised us up into the knowledge of his dear Son, and made us one with him, we have his presence here; everything indicated that is pleasing, pleasant, and delightful. What a glorious, what a dear representative, I must use the word, is the Lord Jesus Christ, to represent God to us in this familiar, paradisiacal, attractive, summer-like, fragrant-like, peaceful-like, quiet-like aspect, neither adversary nor evil occurrent; to represent God to us in this attractive form, and then to represent the church, having cleansed her from all sin by his blood, and justified her by his righteousness, and infused, by his Spirit, into her soul all that love, and all that affection, and all that sympathy, and all that decision for him that makes her as the lily of the valleys, that makes her as the rose of Sharon; yes, my hearer, is she not predestinated, and can God's decree come to nothing? she is predestinated to be conformed to the image of Christ. And if Christ be the rose of Sharon, if this be the representation of the blessed God to us, then Christ represents the other way as well: I say he represents the church like himself, the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. Some of the old divines have called this book of Solomon's Song the most heavenly book of all the Bible; and I have often thought that its language is more like the language of heaven than any other book in the Bible; the Lord help us to enter into the spirit of it. Now then, just look at the point we are now upon; can anything be more pleasing? God Almighty, God Eternal, at whose very name all hell trembles, all heaven adores, and we ourselves have trembled to the very center of our souls, and yet that he should contrive a way, in his boundless love, to come unto us in such forms, in such familiarities, in such adapted blessedness and attractiveness, that the dear Savior says, “When you pray;” what are you to do then? To enumerate the perfections of the great God, and represent him as awful as you can, that you might stand at a distance? No. “When you pray, say, Our Father.” Say, Our Father! Why, what can be more? I say, what can be more? “When you pray, say, Our Father.” Will God respond to that? He does respond to that; I say, he does respond to that, and he says unto every one of such, “My son,” son, my son, a son of Jerusalem, a son of the free woman, not of the bond woman; a son of God, most high God. What is it, my Father? “Give me your heart?”

“You have my heart; it shall be yours,

Yours it shall ever be.”

And our hearts are in such safe keeping nowhere else as in the hands of the Lord our God. That is one form, then, in which his presence, his gospel presence, is here represented. The second is that of fruitfulness. “As the apple tree;” so you see it does not fall off; you will find that the blessedness increases as it goes on; just in contrast to this world, the more you know of it the less you like it, and the longer you live in it the less you will think of it. Not so with our God; the more you know of him the more you will love him, and the longer you live with him the more you will realize the truth of his mercy and of his loving-kindness. Now, “as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved;” easy to recognize; not by blind people, nor of course by dead people, but by people that are spiritually living, and that have eyes to see; he stands out in distinction from all the rest. We know our Jesus Christ; our Jesus Christ is not the Pope's Christ, nor the free-willer's Christ, nor the duty-faith man's Christ; our Christ is a free-grace Christ. “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight.” Now, come, are there not times when we feel that Jesus Christ is our protector, that he is our abiding-place? and are they not times of delight? Oh, how can we then glory m the pleasantness of the Lord's presence! how can we then say, “How fair and how pleasant are you, O love, for delights”! “And his fruit was sweet unto my taste.” Now the apple tree contains ripe fruit, and Jesus Christ has ripened the promises into perfection. Take away Jesus Christ, and there is not a ripe promise to be found in all the Bible; take away Jesus Christ, the promise is conditional. But let us have Jesus Christ, the promise is yea and amen, full of sweetness; it is ripe; by his wonderful work he has ripened the promises into eternal perfection. There it stands; “I will be their God they shall be my people.” “I will never leave you, never forsake you.” Whenever, therefore, any part of the scripture, or anything that is scriptural, because Satan has said to me in times past, he does not say it to me now, because he knows it is no use, Ah, you are very delighted with that hymn, but that is not scripture; ah, you were very delighted with that sermon, and delighted with some things that the minister said, but that was not scripture; he made some remarks that you considered very pointed and very beautiful, but it was not scripture. And I did not know how to answer him. By-and-bye two little letters came into my mind, a, l, and I said, Well, Satan, it is not scripture, but it is scriptural; and that al drove him off. So, I said, If it is not scripture, it is scriptural. And therefore if I can get a little sweetness from a hymn, or a sermon, or from a Christian's testimony, wherever I get it, if it is not scripture itself, if it is scriptural, then it is a stream from the fountain, then I will call it that which is of God. And so, “the fruit thereof was sweet to my taste.” I must not stop to enlarge here, or else very much might be said upon this. Here is a sinner under a sense of guilt; the word brings a sense of pardon. Here is a sinner wounded to his very soul; the word brings a sense of healing and of health. Here is a sinner cast down, bowed down, and can nowise lift up himself, heaviness in the heart making it stoop; the Lord alone can speak to the heart, brings a word into the heart, takes the heaviness away, lifts up the heart, lifts up the soul, and the soul looks up then, and says, “Lord, you are my glory, and the lifter up of my head.” Here is a soul, here is a Christian perplexed in providential matters, saying to himself, “I shall someday come not only to the workhouse, but to a jail; I shall die on a dunghill; I don't know what will become of me.” Presently a scripture comes to him, “Bread shall be given you water shall be sure. You shall dwell in the land you shall be fed. Your heavenly Father knows you have need of these things. I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, which leads you by the way that you should go. I will not leave you nor forsake you. All the silver and the gold are mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.” When you can thus sit down under his shadow, oh how sweet such fruit is to the taste. Ah, then you say, Here I am with a Friend almighty, for the eternal salvation of my soul; here I am with a Friend almighty, a Friend immutable to me in this life and that which is to come. Thus, then, here is the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ; first, in his pleasantness; secondly, in his fruitfulness. Depend upon it, if you would live well, it must be upon the “all manner of pleasant”, no unpleasant, “pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.” So that the man that eats these fruits is immortalized thereby; he can never die. “He that shall eat of this bread has eternal life and shall never die; the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.” Thus, then, there is the presence of God in his pleasantness, the presence of Christ in his fruitfulness. And third, here is the presence of Jesus Christ in his lovingness. I told you it got better as it went along. “He brought me to the banqueting house.” The margin reads it, “the banquet of wine,” and I prefer that reading, because it enables me to understand something that I could not so well understand without that reading. In ancient times, you see it in the Book of Esther, there is my authority, whenever a king condescended to come to a banquet of wine, the persons connected with the king, that were friendly towards him, were at that banquet of wine at liberty to present any petition, of course in the proper way, to ask any question, which they had not access to the king to ask, which they were not at liberty to ask, elsewhere; but at this banquet of wine they were at liberty to ask any question. Esther was well versed in this, and therefore, instead of putting the questions direct to the king, she knew what the law was, so she said, I must get the king to the banquet of wine, and she prevailed against the tide of a hundred and twenty-seven provinces that stood against her, and yet that solitary woman turned the tide of those hundred and twenty-seven provinces that were rolling in against her people. What cannot one soul do when it has access to God? Well, say you, what does this typify? Well, in order to show what it typifies, we need to have in our souls what is in this book, and that is purity of love divine holiness in its most beautiful form. Now you know that the Lord has been pleased to make use of wine in the holy ordinance of the Lord's Supper, to represent the blood of the everlasting covenant, the blood of the dear Savior. That is the banqueting house, that's the banquet of wine that cheers the heart, as Jotham has it, of God and man. Poor sinner, if you are brought to Calvary's cross, brought to where there is the blood of the everlasting covenant, there you may confess any sin, and it is sure to be forgiven; there you may present any petition, and it is sure to be regarded; there you may present any question, and it is sure to be answered; there you may speak familiarly to the king, and his very heart will be moved toward you; there, if you have an adversary, you may to the king complain of that adversary, that he is plotting against your life, and the king will rise in indignation, not in indignation to you, but indignation for you, and in love to you, and your adversary shall be put down, your enemies shall he scattered; “his arm shall rule for him then shall you know what is meant by the banquet of wine. “We have,” says the apostle, “all boldness by the blood of Jesus to enter into the holy of holies.” There we can present our petitions, and this Wonderful Person will offer the much incense, fragrance of his name, with our feeble petitions at the throne of grace. Fourth, the Lord is present not only in pleasantness, and fruitfulness, and lovingness, but also in firmness. I ought to have said a word upon the banner, “his banner over me was love.” There is nothing so alarms the enemy as this. The enemy would care not a rush for us, were it not that God loves us. He looks, and he says, Ah, God loves that man, God loves that soul; and, says Satan, everything I do against that soul, God's love to that soul will set to my account, and love is a very jealous sort of thing when it is offended, and therefore that love will set it to my account. “His banner over me was love.” Nothing so alarms Satan as this, God's everlasting love. The Lord says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” Now if the devil were an Arminian, which, with all his faults I don't think he is, though he can be anything at times he likes; but if he were, he would say, Well, God loves that man; but I will stop a few days, perhaps God will not be in love with him by-and-bye; perhaps God will withdraw his love, alter his love, and I shall be able to destroy that man by-and-bye; the Lord may not always love him as he does now. The devil is not such an Arminian as that; he knows that it is written in one place, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn you;” he knows that it is written in another place that “there is no separation from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus;” and that “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” This banner, of course I need not say, points to Calvary's cross, and to that eternal victory which we have by that cross; and what is that but a banner of love? God so loved us, Christ so loved us, the Holy Spirit so loved us. Here, then, is God in his love. And the people of God in that day were sometimes, and their sufferings were very great, and they had very thorny paths in this world, as you see; but then the Lord made it up to them, and they sometimes felt overwhelmed with the love of God; they felt the presence of God so penetrate their souls, and the glory of God so overwhelm them, that it was as much as they could bear, and said, “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples;” apples of gold; “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” And therefore, stay me with flagons of wine; Lord, do not manifest your love so powerfully, so mightily, I feel overwhelmed. Like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, they were, as it were, inebriated with God's love and God's glory, and they could simply say, “It is good for us to be here.” Ah, they were overwhelmed, and soothed their poor mortal bodies off to sleep; the body could not drink in the glory, it repelled it; flesh and blood cannot receive these things. But when the body shall rise from the grave, and shall be spiritual, like unto these things, then shall the body as well as the soul drink in these eternal things. This is a wonderful experience; but some of the old divines have left upon record testimonies of the same that they have actually been constrained to entreat the Lord to stay his hand. Lord, it is more than I can bear; the happiness is beyond what, in my present mortal state, I can endure. There is an infinity, shall I say a vitality, a wonderfulness in the love of God. And only think of it, that you are to be made happy to all eternity in love, the best of all qualities, pure love, holy love, divine love, heavenly love. Oh, what must be the happiness in heaven, the triumph in heaven, the purity, the intensity, and the greatness of the joy spoken of by the Psalmist, when he says, “In your presence is fulness of joy, and at your right hand there are pleasures for evermore”!

Well, now we want something else. Suppose we have Jesus Christ's presence in his pleasantness, it is advantageous beyond description; suppose we have him in his fruitfulness, that also is truly blessed; suppose we have him in his lovingness, that is also truly blessed; but if it stopped there, there would be a deficiency. And then mark the fourth: to my mind it is a beautiful representation; we have in the fourth place the presence of Christ in his firmness. “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand does embrace me.” There is his firmness; the same doctrine as when it is said, “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before you, and shall say, Destroy them.” The same doctrine as in the tenth chapter of John, that “No man shall pluck them out of my hand.” But without this firmness, for all his saints are in his hands, without this almighty hold of them, the devil might say, Ah, I will soon do away with your pleasantness, with your fruitfulness, with your lovingness. But in comes firmness, in comes almighty power, and on his arm shall they trust. Bless his dear and precious name, what a mercy for us that none can pluck us out of his hands! Now here, then, is the presence of Jesus Christ enjoyed in these four respects, in pleasantness, in fruitfulness, in lovingness, in firmness. And the people of God must all personally answer to these four characters. You in Christ are pleasant to God; you in Christ are fruitful to God in prayer, praise, and love, and good works; and as he is pleasant in his lovingness, so you will be pleasant in lovingness of heart to God, and you will look up and say, “I have loved the habitation of your house, and the place where your honor dwells.” And as he is with you in firmness, you are to be with him in firmness; you are not to waver, but to hold fast the truth as it is in Jesus, and to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free. And so, there is a sweet harmony and a sweet correspondence between this covenant God and his people. Had I given way to some language I might have used here, in thinking over the subject I thought, No, such would be more fit for heaven than for earth. Solomon's Song goes in language of endearment as far as it is safe to go while on earth, amidst unhallowed minds, unhallowed natures. And hence a late divine wrote to prove that this book of Solomon's Song was a carnal book. He certainly did thereby demonstrate that he was a carnal man. “Unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled is nothing pure.”

Well, our next subject is the sovereignty; “Stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.” He never did err, and never can err, and never will err; but has always done everything right, and always will. What is here, then, but the sovereignty of Christ, the sovereignty of God? What is the doctrine here but that there is a set time to favor Zion? Let us trace it out. Well then, say you if there is a set time, what is the good of praying? If the Lord will not awake to my help, for this is one of the figures of speech used in the Bible; the Lord is represented sometimes as though he was sleeping. “Why sleep you, O Lord? Awake for my help.” And again, “Awake, O arm of the Lord.” So that here this awaking up, this sleeping, is not of course to be taken literally, but it is a form of speech to denote that the Lord is not apparently doing anything; for, strictly speaking, “He that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep,” but, figuratively speaking, he is thus represented. And so there is a set time; and this is the doctrine that was taught to the little ones, that there is a set time to favor Zion, to keep them from running away. Well, what use is prayer? Prayer, in the first place, is expressive of confidence, in God. You would never pray to what you have no confidence in. Now then, prayer is to express your confidence in God. You would never ask a person anything that you had not some hope or confidence in. And so, one use of prayer is to express our confidence in God, to express our faith in Christ; hence called the prayer of faith. We have confidence in the salvation of Christ, and having confidence in that salvation, we pray.

The second use of prayer is to declare our dependence upon God. We should never pray to another if we could help ourselves. But the people of God are brought to feel their need of the Lord's mercy, their need of his arm, their need of his interposition, and hereby, by prayer, declare their entire dependence upon the blessed God. And then, third, prayer is expressive of sincerity. If you are sincere in your prayer, you will seek, and seek, and seek again. The soul may meet, like the woman you read of, that the disciples rebuked her, and the Savior answered not a word, and when he did answer her he answered her apparently in a discouraging way; but he was not awakened in the sense here intended. She wanted the mercy that moment, but no; he will defer it until the moment that it is labelled and fixed in heaven; and when the moment arrives, then come the words, “It is not meet to give the children's bread unto dogs.” She, nevertheless, could not be driven away; she was sincere in her confidence, and in her prayer to him, and he said, “O woman, great is your faith.” So, then, there is a set time to favor Zion; and all this, then, nevertheless, makes way for prayer. Prayer is not to govern the Lord, but to entreat the Lord to appear for us. And then, the last use I here name, though many more uses might be mentioned, of course, but I mention only one more, as your time is nearly gone, and that is, prayer is a very beautiful evidence of belonging to God. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Therefore, the man who has no hungering and no thirsting in his soul after God, after Christ, after mercy, has no evidence of life in his soul. Just the same as the dead man literally does not hunger and thirst, so the dead man spiritually does not spiritually hunger and thirst. But the man that is a spiritually living man, he hungers spiritually and thirsts spiritually, and seeks after these things. Nevertheless, you must wait the Lord's time, to wake when he pleases, to appear at his own time, and he will help you, and that right early. You may say, Lord, if you had been here, matters would not have been as they are; if you had been here, Lord, I should not have had to have gone to the expense of that funeral; Lord, how wrong you have done in the matter. But the Lord did not think he had done wrong; made it right. And so, it is, friends, in a great many circumstances in life. Ah, if the Lord had stepped in a little sooner, I should not have made that mistake which I have made; I should not have been such a fool as I was. Well, you were; I am not going to say you were not; but then the Lord has chosen to suffer it, and he can bring it right by-and-bye, and make that little piece of foolishness of yours of great use to you. I wish I had seen it before. Ah, so do I, a great many things I wish I had seen before; but still it is my comfort the Lord saw it before, and he could have awakened on my behalf before, but he was pleased not to do so. Now, the church saw that there was a set time to favor Zion, and, therefore, I charge you, O you daughters of Jerusalem, to await the Lord's own time, and you will find that his time is the best time; his way is the best way; his manner is the best manner; and you will find everything brought about wonderfully in your favor, and say, O Lord, you do indeed turn losses into gains; you do indeed turn curses into blessings; you do indeed bring order out of confusion, and good out of evil, and. light out of darkness. O Lord, you do still

“move in a mysterious way,

Your wonders to perform.”

Lastly, “I charge you,” the margin renders it “adjure,” I swear you I bind you by an oath to the doctrine of divine sovereignty. “Well, say you, that is pretty close work. As the Lord lives, I would say this morning from this pulpit that my soul is bound as by a solemn oath to the sovereignty of God. I am as satisfied of his sovereignty, I am as satisfied my times are in his hands, as I am of my existence, and I could not deny it without denying the oath I have taken. I feel bound, charged by the Holy Ghost to submit to God's sovereignty. I am as satisfied my times are in his hands as I am of my existence, and I bless the Lord it is so. But let us look at the order of the oath, “by the roes, and by the hinds of the field.” This is a mode of speech that is very frequently found in the Scriptures, persons taking a kind of oath, sometimes by one thing, and sometimes by another. Joseph swore by the life of Pharaoh; the captives in Babylon swore by the right hand; “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning,” or her skill. Here it is by the roes and by the hinds of the field. Now, the roe is noted for three things; and these roes and hinds of the field refer to Christ, for Jesus Christ is in this same book again and again called like unto a young roe or a hart, the same. Three things; and, say you, what are those three things? First, swiftness, that is one thing. And I am sure the Lord is swift; his word runs very swiftly. See how it reached the thief; see how it reached the fiery furnace in time. The word did not reach the fiery furnace soon enough to take the violence of the fire away to save the lives of those that cast the three into the fiery furnace; but the word arrived soon enough to take the violence away from the three that were cast in. Just while they were throwing them out of their hands into the furnace the intensity of the heat was concentrated by a divine hand, slew the men that cast them in; and the same presence took the violence away, that the three worthies felt the fiery furnace that slew the enemy as a bed of roses. Have faith in God; what cannot the blessed God do? Swiftness, then, the roes are mentioned to denote the swiftness of the Lord, that just at the moment you think all is over, in he steps. Here is the knife raised, here is Isaac bound; all hope is gone; one moment more, and his life is taken from him. But the word runs very swiftly, places itself between the knife and the lad; “Lay not your hand upon the lad, neither do you anything unto him.” Bless the Lord, then, our God is swift; the word runs very swiftly. Very near we may be apparently to fatal ruin, but in steps the Lord; he will help us, and that right early. The roe is also denoted for pleasantness, the pleasant roe; that we have dwelt upon already this morning. And I am sure that the Holy Spirit is pleasant, the Heavenly Dove; and I am sure Jesus Christ is pleasant; and I am sure God our Father is pleasant. And then, the roe is denoted for lovingness also, and I am sure our God is denoted for lovingness. Where shall we find such love as we have in God our Father? Where shall we find such love as we have in our Jesus Christ, the same love? Where shall we find such love as in the Holy and Eternal Spirit of God?

Thus, then, I hope I have given the mind of the Holy Spirit in this scripture. First, here is the presence of Jesus Christ in all the respects I have stated; secondly, here is the sovereignty of God; and, third, the order of the oath by which the little ones are bound to that sovereignty. May the Lord give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to enter into these things.