This sermon emphasizes the importance of having a deep, intimate relationship with God, focusing on being engaged to Jesus as the bridegroom. It explores the concept of singing songs that reflect the unique connection between the bride and the bridegroom, highlighting the hunger for Jesus and the need to keep our hearts full of the Holy Spirit. The speaker encourages a life of simplicity and purity in devotion to Jesus, seeking a bridal relationship where we share secrets and burdens with our bridegroom.

I try to see this more and more as an opportunity for me to serve my God. I speak to you but I want to have more of a sense that I have an audience much more important who looks far deeper than my words to see if my heart will be pleasing to him. Because he is altogether lovely, he's altogether worthy, he's altogether beautiful to me. I want that more and more. I'm amazed how he loves me. I'm always amazed, I'm constantly amazed. How does he love you family of God? How does he love you? I don't want to say how do you feel his love, how do you know his love? That's what I want to talk about today. I titled my sermon, Songs that David Couldn't Sing. I got that, got down this track when I read something in Luke chapter 19 where Jesus is having his triumphal entry what we call today Palm Sunday and that's one week before he was crucified and all the disciples are praising him and the Pharisees are not appreciative of it and says, hey why don't you rebuke your disciples and Jesus said this in Luke chapter 19 verse 40. He says, but Jesus answered, I tell you if these become silent the stones will cry out. If we don't praise God it's not a big deal for God. God will get stones to cry out, he'll get the chairs to cry out, he'll get buildings to cry out. Is my praise completely expendable then? No, all of us creatures have been given breath and lips to praise him, must praise him. However, what that got me thinking is whether there were songs that I could sing that the stones couldn't sing. I was going to title my song the stone, the songs the stones can't sing, but I didn't know if you would think that you were trying to compete with the rolling stones. We must pray for them, but I think most of us here can, most of us can easily sing songs to God that are better than the songs they would sing, but we're not competing just with inanimate stones. I also feel that there are songs that David could not sing that we can sing. Why do I say David? David is one of the most gifted, if not the most gifted song Christian songwriter who has ever lived. He's written most of the Psalms, he even wrote 176 verses just on the Bible. That's how much he loved it and how much he was able to creatively come up with it, but there are songs that he cannot sing that we can sing, and the reason is not because he was not gifted enough, it wasn't because he didn't love God enough, it was because of where he stood in history. He stood on one side of Calvary, he looked at Calvary prophetically and said it's in my future, it's in our future. We stand on the other side of Calvary, we don't have to prophetically look at Calvary, Calvary is in our past, but because of what has happened at Calvary and what God has given us through the Holy Spirit, we must have songs that we can sing that David could not sing, and let me take it one step further. There are songs that we alone can sing that the angels cannot sing. The angels stand before God's throne and say, holy, holy, holy are you God almighty. We must sing those too. The angels stand and sing, hey worthy are you the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world, and we must sing that too, but there are songs that the angels cannot sing that God says I want you to sing, and I don't know if we've thought about it, but that is something that I want to talk about today as that being the songs that must always bubble out of our hearts, and I call these songs of the hearts, not songs of the lips. You don't have to find a song that you have to sing with your lips. I'm talking about primarily a song in your heart. It's a song in your heart that is effortless, and there's music to the ears, not a command you have to obey. Do this, do that. No, it's a song that comes up. It's a song you have to sing, not a mantra you have to chant. You have to chant. You don't have to repeat it 10 times. You don't have to repeat it 100 times for you to get it. It's a song that bubbles up because it's effortless, because that's the way you are at, and it reminds me of that verse that a lot of us probably know in Philippians chapter 4 verse 4. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I will say rejoice. Now for a lot of us it's probably easy to memorize, difficult to obey some of the time, and really really difficult to obey always, but yet that is the command of God. Rejoice in the Lord always, not once in a while, not some of the time, not most of the time, always. How do we do that? Do we walk around with plastic smiles on our faces? No, that's ridiculous. That's not what we're supposed to do. You'd be locked up in a mental asylum I think if you walk around with a plastic smile all over the time. No, it's a song in the heart. It's a song in the heart that must come out of our hearts, that finally comes through to our lips once in a while, because we have trouble in this world, we have trials in this world, we have tribulations in this world, we have sorrow, but how can we still have joy through all of it? This is how I find I can have joy, because I always weigh the blessings that I have been given, and that I have already constantly in Christ, and I always find them much greater, and far greater than whatever trials I'm going through, and all I have to do is do the math, and if I constantly do the math of the blessings I have received, and that I am receiving because of who I am in Christ, and I compare it to whatever grief I'm going through, I find that I have a reason to rejoice. So it's not like you won't go through trials, it's not like you wouldn't go through troubles, you won't go through trials, of course you'll have that, but in your heart you're doing the math, and you say God your blessings, all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, far outweigh what are the things I'm going through here. So that is the songs in the heart that we must also have. These are by far the most beautiful songs that we can sing, these are songs we sing to God, not to one another primarily, we sing this to God, and we learn them by talking to God, and listening to Him sing it over us. These are the songs about God, and that we learn from God. But I want to impress on you that this is your birthright, it is your inheritance. When I say it's your birthright and your inheritance, I mean it in the sense that it's not given to the stones, it's not given to David, it wasn't given to the angels. David and the angels would have loved to have been this side of Calvary. All the songs David would have written, given his gifts, and having seen Calvary in the past. He would have put all of us to shame, but he couldn't because of where he is, we can, and more importantly than what songs we write externally, it's the song in our heart that we can create, that blesses God. Let me give you three songs that I always try to remind myself of, songs that we must have in our heart, that must always bubble up. You can't stop something that's just bubbling up. That's the kind of songs that I'm talking about that must always come from our heart. The first song is the song that I think of to the Holy Spirit, which is the song of resurrection, because He brings life to me. See this verse in Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 and from 4 onwards. And you were dead in your trespasses and sin. You were dead, going down to verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And I don't know if we have lost, sometimes lost sight of the fact, among all the other words we use about what we were when we were in before God, before we were with Christ, I don't know if we lose the fact that we were dead. We use the word that we were lost, and that's definitely true. It's, we say that we were rebellious. We say we were doing our own thing, but I wonder how many of us in our minds, and when we really are honest with ourselves, look at ourselves and say that we were dead without Jesus. Yes, it's a wonderful thing if somebody is lame and gets to walk. Yes, it's a beautiful thing if somebody was lost and now is found, but it is an incredibly wonderful thing if somebody was dead and was resurrected. So what do you think about your past spirituality, past life before you met Jesus? Do you think you were a bad person who Jesus was trying to make a good person? Do you think you were somebody who was sleeping in a deep coma and needed to be resuscitated? Do you think you were just a rebellious person that needed to find his way back to God? They may be all true, but the wonder is greater still when you see that you were a dead person, three days dead like Lazarus, 50 years dead like some of us, number of years dead without a chance of life. What medicine helps bring people back from the dead? You have no hope. Did you see that as your prior condition, that you had no hope and Jesus made you fully alive and took you to the heavenlies and placed you in Christ? A song should start to bubble up. If I just think I was just resuscitated or somebody found me, that song may not be as easy, but as I meditate that I was dead and now I've become alive, a song is easier to come through. What about your present condition? What about, you know what made you dead was not anything else but your sin. Jesus has come to save us from our sins. What about our present sins? How do we think of them? Do we look at them as weaknesses? Do we look at them as just things we've got to deal with because that's the way my father was, that's the way my mother was, that's where my grandmother was? Or do you see it as death that's paralyzing your right arm? You need life to come into that arm, it's just hanging limply. You need the Holy Spirit not to give you some medicine, he needs to give you life. Do you see that? That sin doing that to you, that pet habit of yours that's keeping you away from God, it's death. If we see it as death, we can ask the Holy Spirit who's a life giver to come and help us. There's no salve for it, there's resurrection power for it, but no just some kind of ointment or medicine. If you think you're dead, the Holy Spirit can help you. Romans 8, see this beautiful verse in Romans chapter 8, verse 10 and 11. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. And grab a hold of this, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, who dwells in you? The spirit. What spirit? The spirit that came from the very God who raised Jesus from the dead. Any of us want to volunteer saying maybe we could have done this with science and technology and modern medicine, raise Jesus from the dead? Only one thing could have done that, God. Only one person could have done it, God did it. And he sent that from him, that very spirit of his, so that he may dwell in me. And he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. What kind of Holy Spirit dwells in you? Do you know the incredible gift that you've been given? You know we come on Easter morning and we come with our Easter best outfits and we are so filled with joy that Jesus was raised from the dead. And the pastor stands up here and says he is risen and we shout back with elation, he is risen indeed. And it is true, but when we shout that the Holy Spirit is groaning inside of us saying, I'm the very spirit that came from the God who raised Jesus from the dead and I've come to live in you. So that you can fulfill the command to rejoice always. So that you can walk as Jesus walked. I think we sometimes can put Jesus on an unholy pedestal so far above us that we refuse to think that Jesus actually had a command where he said, follow me. And Apostle John said, walk as Jesus walked and live as Jesus lived. Peter said that too. He isn't talking about that you have to be a carpenter like him or grow a beard like him or go to Israel and see how he lived 2,000 years ago. That's trivial compared to overcoming sin like he did. That's what the Holy Spirit came for you to do. Not so that you can have enough money to become a carpenter like him or to go to Israel like him. No, but that you could overcome sin like him. That we could walk like Jesus walked, as Peter says, who committed no sin. 1 Peter 2 and 21, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his lips. That's how we have to follow in Jesus' footsteps. We can't do that. Yes we can, not without the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit is a person who's been given with an incredible power. He was the only one who could raise Jesus from the dead and I want you to rejoice over the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well that same Holy Spirit's available to you and has been given to recite in you. A song should bubble up. So I hope every day of our lives we can go to God and have a song in our hearts. I don't know what your trouble might be. I don't know what your sorrows might be, but he's given you the Holy Spirit that is promised to bring life into death. And so we may be a pile of bones, useless, of no good to anything, anybody, and the Spirit has been given to breathe into those life of bones to become an exceedingly great army for God. That's the picture that Ezekiel paints in the Old Testament of the very Spirit of God. If you look at your life and you see a bunch of dead bones, the Holy Spirit has been given to you, to quicken you. That's the first song. The second song is the song of the Father, to the Father, the song of Abba Father. Later on in Romans 8, Paul says, for you've not received a spirit of slavery, but you've received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba Father. He teaches us to cry out, Daddy. The Holy Spirit brings us from death into life. That's what we may call the born again experience, that we have life where there was death. But the first thing the Holy Spirit does after he does that is he introduces you to who's sitting at the head of the table. And it used to be a creator, it used to be somebody who was far away, but the Holy Spirit now introduces us this side of Calvary. Now that the Holy Spirit has been given, he introduces us to a dad. And I think some of us have become such experts in Christian theology that we've forgotten to interact with God as a dad anymore. You think that's possible? You think some of us may have become so grown up in the faith that we don't know and we don't think it's possible for us, we don't need to go and crawl onto daddy's lap and feel his embrace. We're too grown up for that. Too grown up in the faith. There's no place for grown-ups, unless you become like a little child. You can't enter the kingdom of heaven. Tell me some of you, some of us veterans in the faith, can we honestly call God our daddy? Do we call him dad often? Do we approach him, do we interact with him as our heavenly father? We may know the ins and outs of the theology, but do we have the reckless abandon and the reckless wonder of being a small child who has a daddy? If not, we must humble ourselves and become like little children again. Or God might have to humble us. So that we could become like little children to enter into his presence again. But I'm not talking only about such of us, I'm thinking also about the people who've never interacted with God as a father. The young lady sitting in the back, maybe, who thinks God's mad at you. He's not mad at you. He's giddy with excitement that you're here. He's excited that you chose to spend time to listen to him. You must see this as your God. As your God, this one who you have to interact with, that's your dad, who loves you unconditionally, and accepts you the way you are, and gives you the power to change. And the guy sitting in the back who's dealing with drugs, and the pulls, all these fatal attractions that keep you down. The father's waiting at the porch, waiting for you to come home. He's not sitting in the back room in his study saying, let the son humble himself, and come all through, and let him come all the way through all the houses. I'm going to sit in my chair and wait for him with my arms folded. No, he's sitting at the porch, in the very front, waiting for the sight of you coming down the road. And the moment he sees you coming down the road, he'll run out to meet you. Have you met this God? Do you interact with this God all the time? Why would you not hang out with him more often then? Why would we not spend a lot of time with this dad who's running out to meet us? Yes, we know it all up here, but we act and live as if God is so far away. So for those of you who've got beat up with sin, who've got a bad habit that you can't, just can't kick. For those of you who your track record again is woefully inadequate, before you go and listen to some sermon series, before you go and buy some Christian book on how to overcome sin, before you do that, do all of that. But before you do all of that, get on your knees and cry out for the Holy Spirit to give you the cry of Abba, Father, that can come in from within you. He is a holy God that doesn't like the sin in you, but he's also a perfectly loving Father who embraces you the moment you think about turning back to him. He is the source of my freedom. The Father is the source of my freedom, not my best efforts, not my best intentions. Those come afterwards, but that all comes sitting in the Father's lap. Let's not reverse the order. Let's get the Father first. So before you clean up your act, come home. Sit on the Father's lap and let him tell you that he loves you. That's what God always tells me when he speaks to me. He always tells me, first of all, I love you. You're my child. Now let's get to everything else that may be wrong with you, but you're my child. I love you. You must hear this God who's speaking to you, and that will give you a song. And this is the proof of a song, is that it's so easy to get it in my head, but how do I know I have it in my heart? Here's the trick I use. Not the trick. Here's the litmus test I use. I must believe it just like I believe in the law of gravity. Do you believe in the law of gravity? If you don't, I'll take you to the balcony. You'll very quickly prove to me that you believe in the law of gravity. I didn't ask you, can you explain the law of gravity? I can't. I know G, that's about it. What it stands for, how it works, no idea. I believe in it though. Righteously believe in it. Fully believe in it. Embrace it. Do you believe God is your father? You don't have to explain it to anybody. You don't have to stand up on any pulpit and describe it, but you have to live it. You have to live like that's true. And after this service, you're going to go out and the devil will take you to some virtual balcony. And he's going to say, do you really believe in the love of God as a father? It's going to be a bill. It's going to be some broken relationship. It's going to be some trial. And that's when we are going to prove whether we have God as our father in our hearts. That's where we need God as a father in our hearts, not in our heads. But that's a song that must come up in our hearts at all times. God, you are my father. We must sing this every day. He sings it over us. The song of the father towards the child, that he loves us, that I am his child. But I can sing it back to him. It's just a simple response back to the father who says, God, I'm your son. I'm your daughter. I'm just repurposing Matthew chapter six. How can you be anxious about anything? Don't you know God cares for sparrows? Don't you think you're worth more than a sparrow? Also, if you have the love of God, it will put to death every single insecurity. I mean that. I don't know what your insecurity is. You're not tall enough. You're not short enough. You're not dark enough. You're not light enough. You're not rich enough. You only have four bedrooms and your neighbors have six bedrooms. They are building their third floor and I just got my second floor. I've only got two cars. Everybody else has five, three cars. I don't know what your insecurity is. I didn't have parents like that person. I don't have children like that person. My children don't have the genes that other children have. I can't buy my children stuff. I don't know what your problem or insecurity with God is, but all of those insecurities meet their death when you step into the door and sit on God's lap. I hope the clapping means that we're going to live this way. That we're going to be people who are not insecure about anything. We can't move very forward in this Christian life if we are insecure. Even in the natural world, we see that. How children who have such insecurities, it keeps them from moving forward. It's the same in the spiritual realm. You will not move forward in your spiritual life if you are insecure and God says you have no reason to be insecure. You've got a father. I hope that this will be a word that frees many of us who deal with insecurities and insecurity is not something that you put to death once and for all. They keep coming up. It's like temptation, but we must know where it meets its death. We must know unequivocally where we have to go to deal with every single insecurity. It's the father's lap. That's the second song you must sing often to God and tell me if that doesn't drive away a lot of insecurities, but this is the third song and definitely my favorite and what I want to underline to all of you. It's the song of the bridegroom by the bride. It's a song to Jesus who's supposed to be our bridegroom. There are many Christians who can sing a song that to the Holy Spirit that you give you bring life with me with you. You bring life to me. There are some of us who can sing honestly God you are my Abba father and I've been learning to deal with insecurities that way, but there are lesser of us among us who can honestly say Jesus I want to sing to you because you are my bridegroom. Read this verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 2. 2 Corinthians 11 verse 2. For I am, this is Paul speaking to the Corinthians, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. Why? Because I betrothed you. I engaged you to one husband that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. Wait God wasn't it good enough that you brought me from death to life? Wasn't it amazing enough that you call me your child? No the wonder is greater still. He says I'm engaged to you. You're engaged to me and I want to push that picture a little bit more so that you understand what I'm talking about. Do you walk your life knowing that you've got a ring on your finger? Do you know that there's a person you're engaged to? Do you walk your life knowing that there's an affection that you now have in your heart that puts every other affection aside and we walk around saying I'm taken? You can't hit on me, devil, temptations and when they do come I know what I'm going to do. I'm taken. The world, the things of the world, the lust of the eyes, doing whatever I want, I'm taken. Family of God we need a new spirit in our church. We need a new spirit among us and it's a spirit and I want you to hear me carefully because I believe I have the mind of Christ when I say this. Are there people among you here who want to have Jesus as the only thing that matters? That who want more than just making Jesus a great thing or Jesus the main thing? Then begin, this is my only answer to you, begin by treating your relationship with Jesus as someone who is engaged to Jesus. I've got a ring, I'm taken, I've got to check with my bridegroom to be before I do anything. How can we do our own thing, family of God? How can we do our own will? We're engaged. We've got a bridegroom who's round the corner. Apostle John said in 1 John chapter 2 this is the last hour. That's 2,000 years ago. These are the last seconds. The wedding day is approaching. The wedding day is just around the corner. Are we going to live our lives as if we're so afraid of Jesus coming back because this man is going to judge us and point out all our sins? There's no reason to be afraid when you're a bride waiting for your bridegroom to get married to him. Are you afraid? Do you want to live this life some more so that you can live for yourself? Or do you have the spirit of the bride who's saying, God, I can't wait for my bridegroom to come home. The wedding day is what the engaged woman looks forward to. She goes to work, she does all kinds of things, but she's looking forward to the wedding day. Is that how you've been living your life? Or does corporate success and a bigger house seem to be more important than being engaged to the king of kings? That sinful lust that plagues you is like a strange suitor that's trying to draw you away from your bridegroom. All these sins trying to attack your relationship, that singular relationship. Song of Solomon says, it was a book written in the middle of the Bible. It's written by King Solomon towards his bride. It's a beautiful picture of the way a man and a wife, a husband and a wife can interact with each other, even in the physical realm. But it is also a beautiful imagery of the way Jesus interacts with his bride and the way the bride of Christ interacts with the bridegroom, Jesus. Let me read with you one verse from Song of Solomon, chapter one, verse four. And listen to this. This is the bride speaking to the bridegroom. Draw me after you and let us run together. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will rejoice in you and be glad. Dear Jesus, draw me after you and let us run together. Where are we going to run? To the chambers. God, I don't want to go to the public courts where everybody sees me on your right eye and I'm going to judge the whole world. Yeah, I'm the bridegroom's bride. No, I don't need to go to the orchards and taste all the fruit of the vine just yet. No, God, I don't need to go to the banqueting table even though we know we'll get there. God, take me, draw me, and let us run together first to your chambers of intimacy with him. Has that been your life with Jesus lately? Or has it come down to a few more Bible studies, a few more sermons, a few more classes where you learn a little bit more theological information about God? Or do you have the spirit of the bride? And we have busy lives, and I'm not talking about quantity of time. I'm not talking about a fixed time. I'm talking about the heart of the bride that says, God, in spite of all the busyness of my life, I just need five minutes. And if the bathroom is the only place where I can have five minutes of privacy away from the noisy children, I'll go there to spend five minutes with you. I'll lock the door in India. That's the way it was. The bathroom was the only place you could get privacy, in the small houses. What are you going to do? That's no problem. God, I want five minutes with you. Draw me after you, dear Jesus, and let us run together. Share with me your secrets. One glimpse of your face and all the other beauties of this earth will grow strangely dim. Let me share with you this poem that I love. Just one verse from it. Show me thy face, one transient gleam, one fleeting glimpse of loveliness divine, and I shall never think or dream of other loves save thine. All lesser light will darken quiet, all lower glories wane. The beautiful of earth will scarce seem beautiful again. What's beautiful to you? Is it that house? Is it that girl? Is it that guy? Is it that promotion? The beautiful of this earth will scarcely look beautiful if you have one glimpse of the bridegroom. Not just any old God. This is your bridegroom. And we must get, especially us guys who deal with this, we must get over the simplistic notions of bridegroom and bride being something trivial and sexual. No, we must get past that in our consciousness to realize that a bridegroom and bridal relationship is fundamentally one of a heart of intimacy where you are known and you are fully known and you know. You know and you're fully known. That's what the bridegroom bridal relationship is available to men and women. But this is the place where Jesus can become the only thing. And if you have any doubt whether God feels this way about you, Isaiah 62 verse 5, as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you. How does God rejoice over you? Like what kind of love as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride? Have you seen this bridegroom? Do you interact with this God? I think we would be a lot quicker to go to him if we understood that this is the God we are meant to be worshiping. And this is the God we're supposed to be engaged to, who rejoices over us. And I speak passionately about this because I see what Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 2 where I just mentioned that. Where he talks about Jesus being our bridegroom and Paul betrothing us to Jesus. And he says right after that, but this is Paul's fear, but I am afraid just as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus. The devil is craftily trying to drive us astray. But he's not trying to draw us astray into some gross sin or some gross indiscretion. That's the final stop on a train that's gone derailed long ago. The first moment the train gets derailed and becomes a runaway train is when we lose our simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus. So tell me, family of God, how are we doing with simple pure devotion to Jesus? The devil wants to deceive you craftily. And he's not going to get you to do that by going and killing somebody or by committing some great unethical thing at your work. He's going to cause it by making you to just lose your simple pure devotion to Jesus. Is that your litmus test on how you're doing spiritually? Or is it whether I know Calvinism and whether I know premillennialism and all these secondary topics to simple pure devotion to Jesus? What should we do? We must have the heart of the bride. What does the heart of the bride look like? Let me give you two little points. The bride hungers for the bridegroom. Jesus called himself the son of man many times. Jesus called himself the son of God once, a few times, but only once he called himself as the bridegroom. And that's in Luke chapter 5, verse 34 and 35. It says there, can you make the sons of the bride chamber fast while the bridegroom is with him? But the days will come and when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, then will they fast. And the context of this is the Pharisees are saying, hey, your disciples don't fast like we do. And Jesus said, well, the bridegroom's here. But when the bridegroom is taken away and goes back up to heaven, then they'll fast. And he was talking about a new kind of fasting. And I'm not saying that in order to become the bride, you have to fast a lot and you have to deny food and hunger. No, it's the concept of fasting in your spirit. One saint calls fasting as a homesickness for God. Do you have a homesickness for Jesus and the place of God? You always have that hunger. You know, when somebody's fasting, they feel that hunger and that thirst. It's a craving. That's what a bride has. And that's how physical brides are towards their bridegroom and their betrothed. They can't wait to spend time with each other some more. We've got a desire that we've got to crave that we've got a hunger for that. God will give us the Holy Spirit that satisfies that hunger and will continue to make us hungry. The heart of the bride is somebody who's always satisfied with Jesus, but always hungering for more of Jesus. It's that balance of always being satisfied and always being hungry. If you don't know what I mean, you've got to just try it. You've got to hunger for him and be fully satisfied with him, both at the same time. The second thing is the bride keeps her heart full of oil. The other place where Jesus talks about the bridegroom and the bride is Matthew chapter 25, where it talks about the 10 virgins, five of whom were wise and five of whom were foolish. The difference between the wise and the foolish virgins were not that they didn't have oil. All 10 of them had oil. Five of them had it in their lamps, but the other five had it in their lamps and in their vessels, which was in their pouch. Speaking to the lamp being a picture of an external life and the vessel being a picture of your internal life. And the wise virgins are the ones who had oil not only externally, but internally as well. Jesus said, clean the inside of your cup. He who has this hope that we will be like Jesus and we'll be connected like bride and bridegroom are two equals. John says in 1 John 3, 3, he who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself as he is pure. We've got to keep our vessels full of oil. That means our hearts have to be full of the Holy Spirit. Our hearts have to be cleaned by the Holy Spirit of all the junk that's in there. So the father is especially interested with that judgmental attitude you have towards somebody else at your work, more than what you're doing for him. And God is especially scrutinizing the attitude of superiority you have towards somebody else who's lesser in the faith. He's really bothered about that. Trust me, he is. He wants to clean the inside of your cup out so you could have oil in your vessel. Let me conclude with a beautiful picture in Revelation chapter 14 verse 3. We see a picture of Jesus standing with the bride on Mount Zion. Usually we see the saint standing before Jesus and the father, but in Revelation chapter 14, we see Jesus standing next to the bride. And verse 3 of Revelation chapter 14, it says there, and they sang a new song before the throne. And no one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been purchased from the earth. What I think is referring to the bride of Christ. This is a song of intimacy. I'll tell you something, I do not want to be in heaven singing praises to God and then the next song comes up and I'm like, I don't know that song. That song, I don't know. I never learned that song while I was here on earth. That's a new song that no one could learn except the bride of Christ. This is the song of intimacy between the bride and the bridegroom. This is a song of deep intimacy that the bride and the bridegroom share only among themselves. I want to be among that number of people who will sing that new song, not just sing some of the songs, but will sing that song of intimacy. Look, family of God, let the others run after the pleasures of this world. Let the others also run after the secondary benefits that come from being a Christian. But I hope that you and me will be among those people who will not settle for anything less than a bridal relationship with Jesus, where we are the bride and he is the bridegroom. He will share his secrets to us. The secrets he doesn't share with other people. His heart he will share with us. His burdens he will share with us. That's what the bridegroom does to his bride. Let me close by reading a song that has become very special to me. It was written by an Indian woman about 100 years ago. She was a Hindu convert and back then when you converted from Hinduism, you lost everything. Your parents ostracized you, your family ostracized you. In some cases your family tried to kill you. Your friends deserted you. You had nobody except Jesus. And this is what one woman wrote 100 years ago. She was a high caste. I mean she gave up a lot of perks from her Hinduism to become a Christian. This is what she wrote. In the secret of his presence, how my soul delights to hide. Oh how precious are the lessons which I learn at Jesus' side. Earthly cares can never vex me, neither trials lay me low. For when Satan comes to tempt me, I'm not going to grit my teeth. I'm not going to try harder. I'm going to go to the secret place. When my soul is faint and thirsty beneath the shadow of his wing, there is cool and pleasant shelter and a fresh and crystal spring. And my savior rests beside me as we hold communion sweet. I love this line. If I tried, I could not utter what he says when thus we meet. He sings a new song over us. The song of the bridegroom towards the bride. I can't tell you what it was. I couldn't utter it. I couldn't explain it to you. What the bridegroom tells me when we thus meet. Only this I know. I tell him all my doubts, my griefs and fears. Oh how patiently he listens and my drooping soul he cheers. This is a real woman's testimony. I hope you remember that. A woman who had lost everybody has found a friend in Jesus. But do you think he never reproves me? What a false friend he would be if he never never told me of the sins which he must see. Would you like to know the sweetness of the secret of the Lord? Go and hide beneath his shadow. This shall then be your reward. Is that your reward? What reward are you looking for in life? To hide beneath the shadow? You know, Paul said, I consider everything as filthy garbage compared to knowing you and to be found in you. Where's Paul, guys? Where's Paul? Everybody, has anybody seen Paul? Yeah, he's in Christ. He's hidden in Christ. To be found in him. Go and hide beneath the shadow of Jesus. Become a spiritual nothing. Become what, as the psalmist says, a worm. God, what do you, who am I that you should take notice of me? Go and hide beneath his shadow. This shall then be your reward. And whenever you leave the silence of that happy meeting place, you will mind and you will bear. You don't have to work it out. You don't have to press something like a rag dripping water. You will just reflect. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, you will bear the image of the master in your face. What an unbelievable relationship we can have with Jesus. Let's bow our heads. Father, my deepest fear is that after having preached to others about such a beautiful love, I myself might be disqualified. That I might speak about a love that a bridegroom has for a bride, but that I might one day be found not knowing that new song. Father, I pray for myself that I might reflect that bridal relationship in my life. And I pray for these people here, Lord. So many hungry people who want more than just what they've had so far in Christianity. Father, I should pray through your Holy Spirit that you will reveal to them the truth that you are their bridegroom. That you've slipped a ring on their finger. That they're taken. They are yours. Lord Jesus, I am yours. I fully surrender everything to you. I want to live another day for myself. I want to live for you and you alone. Give us grace, Lord Jesus. Amen.