As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my Beloved among the sons.
The apple tree in the wood
The point of the metaphor is this. There are many trees of the forest, and they all have their uses, but when one is hungry, and faint, and thirsty, the forest trees yield no succour, and we must look elsewhere: they yield shelter, but not refreshing nutriment. If, however, in the midst of the wood one discovers an apple tree, he there finds the refreshment which he needs; his thirst is alleviated, and his hunger removed. Even so the Church here means to say that there are many things in the world which yield us a kind of satisfaction--many men, many truths, many institutions, many earthly comforts, but there are none which yield us the full solace which the soul requires; none which can give to the heart the spiritual food for which it hungers; Jesus Christ alone supplies the needs of the sons of men.
I. First, then, our text speaks of the tree which the fainting soul most desires. Suppose you appeal to yonder stately tree which is the greatest of them all, the king of the forest, unequalled in greatness or girth; admire its stupendous limbs, its gnarled roots, its bossy bark, the vast area beneath its boughs. You look up at it and think what a puny creature you are, and how brief has been your life compared with its duration. You try to contemplate the storms which have swept over it, and the suns which have shone upon it. Great, however, as it is, it cannot help you: if it were a thousand times higher, and its topmost boughs swept the stars, yet it could minister no aid to you. This is a fit picture of the attempt to find consolation in systems of religion which are recommended to you because they are greatly followed. Suppose that in your wanderings to and fro you come upon another tree which is said to be the oldest in the forest. We all of us have a veneration for age. Antiquity has many charms. I scarcely know, if antiquity and novelty should run a race for popular favour, which might win. There are some things which are so old as to be rotten, worm-eaten, and fit only to be put away. Many things called ancient are but clever counterfeits, or wherein they are true they are but the bones and the carcases of that which once was good when life filled it with energy and power. It may be that in the midst of the forest, while you are hungry and thirsty, you come upon a strangely beautiful tree: its proportions are exact, and as you gaze upon it from a distance you exclaim, “How wonderful are the works of God!” and you begin to think of those trees of the Lord which are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon Which He hath planted. But beauty can never satisfy hunger, and when a man is dying of thirst it is vain to talk to him of symmetry and taste. He wants food. We will pursue our investigations in the forest, and while we are doing so we shall, come upon some very wonderful trees. I have seen just lately instances in which branches are curiously interlaced with one another; the beech sends forth a long drooping bough, and lest it should not be able to support itself, another bough strikes up from below to buttress it, or descends from above and clasps it, and the boughs actually grow into one another. Strange things may be observed in the undisturbed woods, which are not to be seen in our hedgerow trees, or discerned in our gardens; trees have odd habits of their own, and grow marvellously if left to their own sweet wills. I have stood under them and said, “How can this be? This is singular indeed! How could they grow like this? What wondrous inter lacings, and intertwinings, and gnarlings, and knottings!” Yes, but if a man were hungry and thirsty, he would not be satisfied with curiosities. You remember when you first came to that precious tree whereon the Saviour died, and found that your sin was blotted out, and that you were accepted in the Beloved, and were made to be henceforth an heir of heaven. Oh, the lusciousness of the fruit which you gathered then! Oh, the delightful quiet of the shadow under which you sat that day; blessed be His name! You had searched among the other trees, but you found no fruit there: you tried to rest in the shadow of other boughs, but you never rested till on that blood-stained tree of the cross you saw your sin put away and your salvation secured, and then you rested and were satisfied. But the Lord Jesus Christ has not only satisfied us as to the past, see what He has done for us as to the present! Why, I know sick people who are far more happy in their sickness than worldlings are in their health; and I know poor men who are infinitely more at peace, and more contented, than rich men who have not the Saviour. Jesus Christ alone satisfies us for the past and delights us for the present. And then as to the future. The man who has found Christ looks forward to it not merely with complacency, not simply without a dread, but with a joyous expectancy and hope. Those things which make others tremble make us glad.
II. The spouse spoke of the tree which she most desired; the wonder was that she found it. It was an apple tree, but it was not in a garden; a fruit tree, but not in a vineyard; it was “among the trees of the wood.” Who would know of so great a rarity as an apple tree in a wood if he were not first told of it? So Jesus Christ at this present day is not known to all mankind. Even in our own country you will not find it a difficult thing to meet with persons who are totally ignorant of Christ. Where the greatest light is, there the shadows are deepest. Men nearest to the church are often furthest from God. You cannot easily find an apple tree in a great forest. If you were put down in the middle of a forest and told there was an apple tree there, you might wander for many a day before you discovered it, and often go over your own footsteps, lost in endless mazes, but you would not find the object of your search; and so, though there be a Saviour, men have not found the Saviour, and there may even be souls here present who long for that which Jesus is able to give, and yet have not discovered Him. You know all about Him in the letter of His Word, but you cannot find Him spiritually, and I hear you cry, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him.” Now, is it not a strange place for an apple tree to be found in- in a wood? We seldom hear of such a thing; an apple tree should grow in a garden. How should it be found in a forest? And is it not a strange thing that a Saviour should be found for us among men--not among angels? Ye shall search for a Saviour amongst “the helmed cherubim and sworded seraphim” as long as you will, but there is none there. The Saviour is found in a manger at Bethlehem, in a carpenter’s shop at Nazareth; amongst the poor and needy is He seen while He sojourns amongst the sons of men. Not among you, O ye cedars, not among you, O mighty oaks, but amongst the bushes of the desert, amongst the trees accursed was Jesus found. “He made His grave with the wicked.” Now, there is some thing very sweet about this, because a wood is the very place where we most love to find Christ growing. If I had come the other day upon an apple tree in the forest, and it had happened to be the time of ripe fruit, I should have felt no compunction of conscience in taking whatsoever I was able to reach, for a tree growing in the forest is free to all comers. Should there be a hungry one beneath its bough, he need not say, “May I?” when his mouth waters at the golden fruit, he need not say, “It would be stealing; I am unfit to take it; I am unworthy of it.” Man, if there be an apple tree in the forest, no man can keep it for himself or deny your right to it, for each wanderer has a right to what fruit he can gather. Christ has no barriers around Him to keep you from Him. If there be any they are of your own making. Whoever shall come shall be welcome to this priceless apple tree. There is some comfort, therefore, in thinking that He grows among the trees Of the wood.
III. It was little wonder that when the spouse, all hungry and faint, did come upon this apple tree in the forest she acted as she did. Straightway she sat down under its shadow, with great delight, and its fruit was sweet unto her taste. She looked up at it; that was the first thing she did, and she perceived that it met her double want. The sun was hot, there was the shadow: she was faint, there was the fruit. Now, see how Jesus meets all the wants of all who come to Him. Is it not delightful to sit down beneath the scarlet canopy of the Saviour’s blood, and feel, “God cannot smite me: He has smitten His Son; payment He cannot demand the second time: if Jesus suffered in my stead, how can God make me suffer again for sin? Where were the justice of the Most High to punish an immaculate, Substitute, and then punish men for whom that Substitute endured His wrath I This is the cool, calm, holy shadow under which we abide. But then, the spouse also found that she herself was thirsty, and that the fruit of the tree exactly met her case. Our inner life wants sustenance and food; now, in the Lord Jesus is life, and the bread of life. One thing more is to be noted: the spouse, when she had begun to enjoy the provision and the shade, and had sat down under it as if she intended to say, “I never mean to leave this place; in this delicious shadow I mean to repose for ever,” then she also began to tell of it to others. In the text she describes Christ as the apple tree, and gives her reason for so calling Him--“I sat down under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet to my taste.” Experience must be the ground upon which we found our descriptions. Now, I beseech you who have found the Saviour to be telling others what you know about Him, and try to lead others to look at Him. You cannot make them feed upon Him, but God can, and if you can lead them to the tree, who knows but God will give them spiritual hunger, and will lead them to feed as you have fed. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I sat down under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet to my taste.
The Church’s experience
I. what it is to sit down under the shadow of Christ with great delight.
1. A shadow is not prized by men, till some heat scorch them. The Church is here represented as faint and parched with heat. Our addresses to Christ always begin with a sense of our own want and misery. Ease is sweet to the burdened soul, and none seek rest in Christ to any purpose, but those that feel the load of their own sins (Matthew 11:28).
2. That which scorcheth poor distressed souls, is a sense of God’s wrath: observe how fitly God s wrath is set forth by the scorching of the sun. God’s goodness is exceeding great and large; yet this good God hath His wrath, which is set forth to us by the notions of a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29), and a burning oven (Malachi 4:1). The wrath of the living God is a dreadful thing, which consumeth and drieth up all, without recovery, unless we get a shelter from it.
3. Scorched souls can find no shelter nor refreshing shadow among the creatures; but only by coming to the spiritual apple tree, who is the Lord Jesus Christ.
4. Christ is a complete and comfortable shadow, the only screen between us and wrath. In Him alone we find refreshing, ease, and comfort.
5. Faith is necessary, that we may have the comfort of our shadow; for we make use of Christ by faith. There are three acts of faith:
(1) They choose, consent, and own Christ as the only shadow.
(2) They earnestly run to it. And
(3) compose and quiet their hearts under it.
6. They meet not only with coolness, but fruit; as an apple under an apple tree to one that sits under its shadow in a great heat.
II. What these fruits are. They are the benefits and privileges which we have by Christ.
1. Here is fruit. Christ received of the Father the fulness of power and of the Spirit, for the benefit of the redeemed, that He might shower down the streams of grace on all that repair to Him for relief and succour. Now, what these fruits are; in the general, we may tell you, all that is worth the having; we have from Jesus Christ: all the blessings of this present life, and of the world to come. More particularly. There are many choice and excellent fruits which believers receive from Him.
(1) The pardon of all our sins (Ephesians 1:7).
(2) Peace with God (Romans 5:1).
(3) Adoption into God’s family (John 1:12; 1 John 3:1).
(4) The heirs of glory (Romans 8:17).
(5) The Holy Ghost is given, not only to sanctify us at first, but to dwell in our hearts, as a constant inhabitant, as in His own Temple (1 Corinthians 6:19).
(6) Peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost: for this is a great privilege of Christ’s kingdom (Romans 12:17).
(7) Access to God, with assurance of welcome and audience (Psalms 50:15; Hebrews 4:15-16; 1 John 5:14).
2. His fruits: for a threefold reason: Because purchased by Him: all these privileges were procured for us by His blood, death, and sufferings.
3. These are sweet unto a believer’s taste. Believers have a taste of the goodness of Christ. They do experimentally find a great deal of comfort and sweetness in Him (1 Peter 2:2-3). Christ’s fruits are very sweet to their taste, because of the suitableness of the fruit to the prepared appetite: they have a hungry conscience, and so can sooner taste that sweetness. A Christian hath another spirit than the spirit of this world. A sanctified soul can taste the sweetness of spiritual things, word, sacraments, graces, hopes. Yea, the way of obedience is sweet to them (Proverbs 3:17). It is wonderful, comfortable, and filleth their hearts in a satisfying manner, when they can have any experience of God’s love in Christ, in the Word, or meditation, or prayer, or sacraments (Psalms 63:6). Besides the attractive goodness of the object, there is inclination in their own souls to it.
I. Here is an invitation to draw us to Christ.
1. As He is a shadow. This notion is like to prevail with none but those who are scorched with God’s wrath, or loaden with the burden of sin; with them that are either of a troubled, or of a tender conscience. They long to sit down under His shadow indeed, and to get a taste of His pleasant fruits. Yet I must speak to all to begin here. The fruits are neither eaten, nor the sweetness of them felt, till we come under His shadow, and delightfully sit under His righteousness.
2. With respect to pleasant fruit (Psalms 34:8). We entertain black thoughts of the ways of God, as if religion were a sour thing, and there were no pleasure and delight for those that submit to it. O taste and see I You will find enough in Christ to spoil the gust and relish of all other pleasures.
II. Do we ever sit down under His shadow, so as to find His fruit sweet unto our taste? You may try your state, and discern it by your relish of spiritual things.
III. Direction to us in our special addresses to God. The practice of the spouse is then in season. Come and sit down under His shadow, and eat of His fruits. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Suitable improvement of Christ the Apple Tree
I. The way of relief for poor sinners, under all scorchings to which they are exposed, is to sit down in, and by faith to repose themselves under Christ’s shadow.
1. Show what need sinners have of a shadow to cover them. The world is turned a hot country all over to the sons of fallen Adam, witness the spiritual blackness upon all faces (Amos 9:7). Adam’s fall has changed the temperature of the air which we breathe. God Himself, the sun of the world, whose influences were enlightening, cheering, comforting and warming to innocent men, is become a consuming, fire to the workers of iniquity.
2. Show how Christ became a shadow for poor stoners in this ease.
(1) He was fitted to afford a shadow from that heat, by His assuming our nature, in that He being God was incarnate and became man. Good news to poor sinners in this weary land. There is a root sprung out of the dry ground, and it is become a tree of life; the name of it is the tree of life; and it casts a shadow, a defence, for guilty creatures under it, from the heat of wrath from Heaven.
(2) He actually affords a shadow for needy sinners by virtue of His complete satisfaction to law and justice.
(a) He received all the scorching beams of wrath on Himself, that so He might keep them from His people.
(b) He exhausted them. He drank the cup of wrath from the brim to the bottom.
(c) And now through Him, the comfortable influences of Heaven are bestowed and conveyed to those under His shadow, through Him as the channel of conveyance.
(3) He is by Divine appointment made a public shadow for all the inhabitants of the weary land; so that it is lawful for them and every one of them to come in by faith and take shelter under, it, whatever they are or have been.
3. Show what it is to sit down under Christ’s shadow. It is the soul fleeing to Jesus Christ for a refuge, coming unto Him on the call of the Gospel, and receiving Him and uniting with Him by believing on His name. And this notion of faith bears,
(1) The soul being sensibly scorched and uneasy in itself. Though all may, yet none will come under Christ’s shadow but sensible sinners.
(2) That the soul finds no shadow anywhere else.
(3) A discovery of Christ’s shadow to the poor outcast that can get lodging nowhere else.
(4) It imports that the soul goes under Christ’s shadow for shelter and rest. This is the renouncing of all other refuges, and betaking oneself to the covert of blood alone.
(5) It imports the soul abiding under Christ’s shadow.
II. Christ’s fruit relisheth well with those who, by faith, sit down under His shadow.
1. Show some things imported in this doctrine.
(1) It imports that there is in Christ Jesus a suitable fulness for the soul.
(2) They must put themselves under the covert of His blood and righteousness, who would partake of His fruits.
(3) Those to whom Christ is a shadow and defence from the wrath of God and curse of the law He also feeds. There is no separating of the justifying blood and sanctifying Spirit.
(4) When we sit down under Christ’s shadow by faith, it corrects the vitiated taste, cools the distempered heat of the soul, and brings it to a holy temperature; so as spiritual things which before were tasteless as the white of an egg, become sweet to their taste.
(5) Faith, trust, and confidence, in the Lord Jesus Christ, produce sweet experiences at length of the Lord’s goodness to the soul. This is the way the soul sucks the sweet and nourishment out of the precious promises, while unbelief as it expects nothing from Him, gets as little.
2. Show what are Christ’s fruits which are so sweet to the taste of those that sit under His shadow. These are all the benefits, privileges, graces, comforts, and fulness of the covenant, making His people happy here and hereafter.
(1) There is an inexhaustible fulness of them that will serve to feed all the saints, in time and through all the ages of eternity. Therefore they are called the unsearchable riches of Christ (Ephesians 3:8).
(2) There is a variety of them, suited to all the possible cases of those that are under Christ’s shadow.
3. Show why Christ’s fruit relisheth so well with those who by faith do partake of it.
(1) Because it is suitable to their case, which drove them under Christ’s shadow.
(2) Because this fruit is proper food for their new nature.
(3) Because the real experience of Christ’s fruits communicated to the soul, always leaves a sweet relish of them behind it. (T. Boston, D. D.)
His fruit was sweet to my taste.--
The fruitfulness of Christ
The fruit borne by Christ, the Tree of Life, the Living Vine, “the Apple Tree among the trees of the wood,” may be regarded under three aspects, relating to His character, work, influence.
I. Character. The Lord Jesus possesses excellence in Himself, apart from the relation in which He stands to us. His own personal nature preceded and qualified Him for His entire mediatorial work. The manifestation of this excellence shone forth in His earthly life. Words, acts, miracles were but the outward exhibitions of what He was within. He was hidden, concealed from earthly gaze, visible only to His Father. As seen thus, however, He was spotless, and Divine Omniscience declared itself “well pleased” with Him. The soul of Christ, that human spirit, which, in its powers and faculties, was like ours, and which became “an offering for sin,” was most holy. And His life! this was the embodiment of His pure spirit, its outward working, the channel through which its sympathies flowed out upon the world around. How perfect this; recollect it was life like ours; in the same world, subject to the same laws, physical and mental, as our own. It was far less favour ably circumstanced than ours. It was the first of its kind; there was no previous example for Christ to imitate, no perfect model to copy. It was also surrounded by sin. It was without sympathy too. The “loneliness of Christ” in these respects was most painful, and itself a test of virtue. That virtue had no external support from custom, habit, friendly countenance. Not only Scribes and Pharisees sought to ensnare, entangle, and catch Him in His talk, the prince of the world came. And how He did resist! What conflict in doing this He had to pass through, how sorely He was tried, what strong “crying and tears” were wrung from His mighty spirit,--is what none of us can know; but He did resist all; and spite of all there shone forth a character the most radiant earth has ever exhibited, and one which now fills heaven with light and lustre superior to all else which it contains.
II. Work. One of the names by which prophecy foretold the Messiah was “Emmanuel, God with us.” One of the expressions by which the apostle declares the purport of His work, is in the corresponding sentiment, “He was made sin for us.” What tongue can express, what imagination conceive, the grandeur of this work I It spans eternity, past and to come. It rescues humanity, and makes it Godlike. Nothing nobler, grander, purer, has been devised, even by God Himself. It is His chief work, His masterpiece, His last and greatest conception; and of it all, Christ is “the Alpha and Omega, the beginning, the ending, the first and the last.” It is His operation, His fruit, that which here we may find most delectable, which through eternity we shall feast upon and find sweet to our taste.
III. Influence. By this I mean not so much what the Saviour is in Himself, nor what He is for us, though there is influence from both, as the power which He exerts upon us. How vast the influence the Saviour has been ever exerting in our world! Kings, emperors, dynasties, mighty forms of government, have risen and decayed, apparently subject only to natural laws of progress and dissolution. The Saviour has been guiding all. They have been His servants; and although they thought not so, nor did their hearts mean so, He has by them been working out His purposes, and using them as His agents. While His general influence has thus been exerted on the world, its choicest modes of operation have been reserved for the Church. What streams of Divine influence, like waters from a fountain, or beams from the sun, have ever been flowing from Christ. As there is no diminution in the sun’s power though it has been pouring forth its radiance for six thousand years; as the ocean is to-day as mighty as ever, though it has been ever diffusing freshness and health, so, and far more certainly, is there no diminution in Christ. (J. Viney, D. D.)