Christ the Apple Tree

Song Of Songs 2:3 "Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, So is my beloved among the young men. In his shade I took great delight and sat down, And his fruit was sweet to my taste. 4 "He has brought me to his banquet hall, And his banner over me is love. 5 "Sustain me with raisin cakes, Refresh me with apples, Because I am lovesick. 6 "Let his left hand be under my head And his right hand embrace me."

To see this song as Christ the beloved and the Shulamite the Church or a member of the church is, to may people, going too far and is a spiritualising of the text. I am not convinced and after hearing Rev Dr Iain D. Campbell give a talk on the covenantal interpretaion of this song I was given a solid biblical foundation for the above understanding of the passage. Yes, it is a love song, a very intimate one. However there are greater purposes to scripture in always pointing towards Christ our covenant King, such as the Book of Ruth also intimates.

Enjoy this poem which I heard recently and which lifted my failing spirit.

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
1

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.
2

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell,
His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.
3

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.
4

I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.
5

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

I then went and found this version as a song, often sung as a Christmas Carol.

Warning: There are two images of Christ. If you think this is a breaking of the second commandment please do not watch.

Listen and enjoy.

When music becomes an idol.

This news article highlights a subtle deception that can occur in the hearts of those who worship. The woman interviewed in the church says that numbers have dropped from 100-150 to about 15 plus children, becasue they have had to quieten the music. She says, 'the music is not lifting them up.'

This is the deception - the music is lifting them up, the power they need is in the music and its style, whereas Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that the power of God is found in the gospel and its proclamation. They thought they were being strengthend by Christ when it was the music.

Jerusalem the Golden by Bernard of Cluny 1146, Sung to Ewing


Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest,
Beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed.
I know not, O I know not, what joys await us there,
What radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare.

They stand, those halls of Zion, all jubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel, and all the martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them, the daylight is serene.
The pastures of the blessèd are decked in glorious sheen.

There is the throne of David, and there, from care released,
The shout of them that triumph, the song of them that feast;
And they, who with their Leader, have conquered in the fight,
Forever and forever are clad in robes of white.

O sweet and blessèd country, the home of God’s elect!
O sweet and blessèd country, that eager hearts expect!
Jesus, in mercy bring us to that dear land of rest,
Who art, with God the Father, and Spirit, ever blessed.

Brief life is here our portion, brief sorrow, short lived care;
The life that knows no ending, the tearless life, is there.
O happy retribution! Short toil, eternal rest;
For mortals and for sinners, a mansion with the blest.

That we should look, poor wanderers, to have our home on high!
That worms should seek for dwellings beyond the starry sky!
And now we fight the battle, but then shall wear the crown
Of full and everlasting, and passionless renown.

And how we watch and struggle, and now we live in hope,
And Zion in her anguish with Babylon must cope;
But he whom now we trust in shall then be seen and known,
And they that know and see Him shall have Him for their own.

For thee, O dear, dear country, mine eyes their vigils keep;
For very love, beholding, thy happy name, they weep:
The mention of thy glory is unction to the breast,
And medicine in sickness, and love, and life, and rest.

O one, O only mansion! O paradise of joy!
Where tears are ever banished, and smiles have no alloy;
The cross is all thy splendor, the Crucified thy praise,
His laud and benediction thy ransomed people raise.

Jerusalem the glorious! Glory of the elect!
O dear and future vision that eager hearts expect!
Even now by faith I see thee, even here thy walls discern;
To thee my thoughts are kindled, and strive, and pant, and yearn.

Jerusalem, the only, that look’st from heaven below,
In thee is all my glory, in me is all my woe!
And though my body may not, my spirit seeks thee fain,
Till flesh and earth return me to earth and flesh again.

Jerusalem, exulting on that securest shore,
I hope thee, wish thee, sing thee, and love thee evermore!
I ask not for my merit: I seek not to deny
My merit is destruction, a child of wrath am I.

But yet with faith I venture and hope upon the way,
For those perennial guerdons I labor night and day.
The best and dearest Father Who made me, and Who saved,
Bore with me in defilement, and from defilement laved.

When in His strength I struggle, for very joy I leap;
When in my sin I totter, I weep, or try to weep:
And grace, sweet grace celestial, shall all its love display,
And David’s royal fountain purge every stain away.

O sweet and blessèd country, shall I ever see thy face?
O sweet and blessèd country, shall I ever win thy grace?
I have the hope within me to comfort and to bless!
Shall I ever win the prize itself? O tell me, tell me, Yes!

Strive, man, to win that glory; toil, man, to gain that light;
Send hope before to grasp it, till hope be lost in sight.
Exult, O dust and ashes, the Lord shall be thy part:
His only, His forever thou shalt be, and thou art.

Free from sin and all corruption that we may at last glorify and love him as we should.

Unless the Lord builds..........

It has long been my thinking that unless the people of God hear and are enthralled by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of Jesus himself each week then the very fuel that enables them to live for him and serve him in the kingdom is lacking. In DeYoung's post he touches on this busyness for God. His last sentence picks up on my thoughts.

"They need to hear the old, old story once more. Because the secret of the
gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for
God and hear more about all that God has already done for us."

I have often noticed this in my own walk with the Lord. When I hear of what Christ has done for me, the riches of his grace, then I enter a period of self-forgetfulness, and total abandonement to the God who created and redeemed me. It is a case of 'Here am I, send me.'We need to heed the passage of Mary and Martha and choose the good part.

Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the
LORD guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you
to rise up early, To retire late, To eat the bread of painful labors; For He
gives to His beloved even in his sleep.

Psalm 127:1-2

What is our measure for .......?

When putting up wallpaper you need to make sure that the first hanging is vertical. It is not advisable to use the corner of your room as this, in most cases, is not absoulutely vertical. What do you do? You snap or hang a plumbline. This gives a measure for the vertical with which you can succesfully hang your first piece of wallpaper. Notice, you need something that is constant and does not change and can be used anywhere at anytime. The plumbline hangs vertically due to the gravitational pull of the earth in whatever country you are based. So we can always hang wallpaper and even erect a building. Some of the great Cathedrals with spires still have the mark where the plumbline was centred.

Just as we need some external measure to asisst us to find the vertical so also we need a measure in our society to determine what is right and wrong. It cannot be left to individuals because we all have a different understanding of what is right and wrong. That understanding varies between age, demographic group and country. This dilemma was higlighted to me in this news article BBC News . How do we measure what is dishonest? You can see from the clip that people have different ideas of what is dishonest behaviour. Moreover, when this is in the context of a court of law where people could be condmened to prison on the jury's subjective opinion of dishonesty, it becomes vitally important we have a true measure, that is universal, and span's time.

Why have we reached this dilemma in our society and legal system? I suggest that it is becasue mankind has over the past years been steadily erasing from its general consciousness the knowledge of God and particualrly the knowledge of his revealed will for all mankind as contained in the Ten Commandments.
These Ten Commandments used to be taught in our schools and generally their influence affected the society as a whole, whether it be the family, the playground, the workplace or our Parliament. People may not have believed in Jesus, as their Saviour, but still the Ten Commanments acted as a rule which governed beaviour in society. Preventing people from doing certain things becasue it was deemed as wrong but also condemning everyone for their inability to keep them.
This is why we cannot now decide what is dishonest behaviour, we have lost our rule or measure our plumbline. We don't know whether someones actions are right or worng and we have nothing to compare them to.

It is not an honesty website we need where people can give their opinion as to what is right or wrong. That would need to be changed every generation and will ultimately lead to a worsening of the situation. For without God to lift our eyes to true right behaviour, we will descend ever further into a moral blackhole. No, what we need is a return to the teaching of the Ten Commanments as the rule for all mankind created in God's image, yet unable to live up to the glory of that image becasue of inherent wickedness. The Ten Commandments act as curb on the inevitable decline in society becasue we all chose disobedience rather than obedience. But also to show us that in truth our hearts are evil, as Jesus told his disciples, and that through turning to him in faith as the only saviour for mankind we can be given a new heart, a spiritual life, leading to joyful obedience of those self same commandments and live the life of love to God and all around us.

"Rejoice in that day and leap for joy."

John Piper in his book 'What Jesus Demands from the World' looks at Jesus' command to Rejoice and leap for joy. The full verse in its context is as follows.

Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man."Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets. Luke 6:22-24

John Piper writes and I quote

"When Jesus demands that we rejoice, he has not forgotten the kind of world we live in. If is filled with suffering... Therefore the joy he demands now is not chipper. It is not joy-lite. It is not superficial or marked with levity. This is the mistake of too many people and too many churches. They think that Jesus' demandf for joy is a demand to tell jokes or weave slapstick into Christian corporate life. I don't smell the Jerusalem-bound Jesus in that atmosphere. Something has gone wrong."

Suffering is missing that is what has gone wrong. How I rejoiced when I read this. I thought I was all alone in my disatisfaction with the humour that is found in some services these days. Was I joyless I thought? However this article has satisfied me that I am not. My chiefest joy is God and it is his son who brings me joy. I do not need such wordly methods to win the 'audience' and it frustrates me when folk leading at the front think that we need such entertaining to make our time of worship before God Almighty acceptable. Roll on the day when we bow before the throne in awe and cry aloud, "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord' and do not do what I say?"

These words form Luke 6:46 came up as our reading for a sermon on this and the following verses - you know the ones - building houses on rock and sand. However it was these verses that challenged me.

We call Jesus Lord of our lives, the one who has saved us and is changing us from one degree of glory to another through his presence, God's presence in us the Holy Spirit. And yet if we do not do what he says we show scant regard for his position as King of the kingdom and we his loyal subjects. The words cut right across our own wills and confront us with the stark reality of our Saviour's authority. He calls us to follow, and do what he says. We need have no fear but yet there is that defiance. That Romans 7 - I want to obey but yet sin dwells in me. Oh who will redeem me from this body of sin - thanks be to God for Jesus Christ. Lord grant that I may put to death that sin which causes my disobedience and walk in the power of your spirit.