Rabbi Schneider - To Know and Make Known
There's no other book in the Word of God that reveals to us the emotional nature of God the way the song of songs does. Oftentimes when people think of the Lord, they don't necessarily think of God as an emotional being. But consider this: do you and I have emotions? Can we feel happy or sad? Can we feel love or hate? Of course we have emotions. Can we feel compassion? The reason, my beloved friends, that you and I have emotions is because the God, the Lord that created us in his own image has emotions. We have emotions, because our Creator has emotions. We've been created in his likeness. And so the song of songs helps move us into connecting with God emotionally.
As I've said in many of the other teachings, this is not simply a letter from king Solomon to his lover who is called the Shulamite bride in the song of songs. This is a prophetic love song from the Lord to his people. This is not some fantastical interpretation that I'm giving to you. The Hebrew rabbis have always understood the song of songs as a love letter between God and his people. So with that introduction, we're going to pick up today where we left off last time. I'm going to be picking up today in chapter number one, in verse number four. Now, this is all review from previous seasons, but we needed a review. Last time I talked about how the Shulamite bride was calling upon her lover to kiss her with the kisses of his mouth.
Let me read it to you once again, "May kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine". In other words, she longed to feel God's nearness. More than anything else she longed to feel close to God. Many of you have been in worship services where perhaps your eyes were closed, and your hands were raised, perhaps even tears came down your cheeks as you worshiped him and praised him. This is what I'm talking about. But she describes it in a way that's so intimate, it almost takes her breath away. Speaking to God in the prophetic sense of the word, she says, "Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth! For your love is better than wine".
Why would she use erotic language in her relationship to God? Because sexuality is the most intimate thing that we can experience in a relationship. That's why the Bible says that all other sins that people commit are sins outside their body, but when somebody sins sexually, they sin against their own body. In other words, when the early Hebrew patriarchs married their wife, and the marriage was consummated when they had intercourse, the scripture says that at that point the man knew his wife. So, sexuality between a man and woman in their marriage is the most intimate form of relationship. And it's for this reason, that God is allowing the Shulamite bride to be calling out him in erotic language, because he's trying to help us comprehend: how close to us he wants to be.
Now, of course we're not talking about physical sexuality. We're talking here beloved ones about intimacy. She's hungering, and thirsting, and longing for intimacy. And you know what happened? The Lord answered her prayer, because Jesus said, "Blessed are those that hunger and thirst. They shall be satisfied". If you're hungering and thirsting, I mean from the depths of your kishkas, from the depths of your being to feel closer to God. If you're knocking, and seeking, and asking, and calling out him, and drawing near him, you know what's going to happen? God's going to draw near to you. And you're going to have an experience. The Lord draws near to those that draw near to him.
Look at how it happened here in the song of songs. She says, "May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine". What happens next in verse 4b? "The king", she says, "Has brought me into his Chambers". So she's calling out, she's putting it all on the line, totally transparent, she says, "I want you more than anything in life". She said here, "Your love is better than wine". "I want you more than anything in the world. I'm willing to forsake anything for you, king Jesus, to feel you, to walk hand in hand with you, to know how much you love me. To feel our union". And you know what happened when she called out to him with all her passion? The Lord answered, and so she says, "The king has brought me into his Chambers". She had an experience, an encounter that forged her forever.
Notice also in verse number four, after she's calling out, "Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth", now she also says, "Draw me after you and let us run together". It's interesting that if she called out in desperation to feel God's love for her, to feel how intimately he loved her, as she called out him with total abandonment, she realized that this merger of the two of them together could not take place without the Father sovereignly drawing her in. And so, she says in verse 4, "Draw me after you". It reminds me of the words that Jesus said in John 6. Yeshua said, "No one can come to me, unless the Father draws him". "All the Father gives me shall come to me". The truth is: you and I can't even come to Jesus, we can't even be drawn to Yeshua unless the Father supernaturally draws us. We're not going to be attracted to Jesus unless the Father puts it in our heart to be attracted to him.
See the Bible says, "By grace we've been saved through faith", and the scripture says, "And even the faith that you have is a gift from God". By grace you've been saved through faith, and your faith itself is a gift from God. So, we see this reflected here in the Shulamite's passion. She wanted so much to enter into the heart of intimacy with the Lord, but she knew that she couldn't enter in unless the Lord drew her in. So, let's just take a second and ask the Father to draw us:
Father, we ask her to draw us into the bosom of Jesus. Father, we ask you to draw us in to the depths of your heart. Father, we ask you to draw us into your center, into the center of Yeshua, Jesus. Draws into the holy of holies, Lord. Draw us in, we pray Father God, through the blood of the lamb.
So she continues here, "Draw me after you", and she said, and notice what she says next, "And let us run together". This was her life's purpose. And I'm suggesting that this should be our life's purpose. Two things: verse 4, chapter one, get this now, her life's purpose. Number one: that she would be drawn into the Lord, that you would be closer and closer, walking with Yeshua, "Draw me after you", she said. That's her number one goal, her personal sanctification, her personal relationship with the Lord, "Draw me after you". Her heartbeat for him, that was her number one purpose in life: to know him better. Jesus said, "This is eternal life to know God and Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent". That's her first life purpose: to know him, to seek him, to be drawn after him.
And notice her second life's purpose: "And let us run together". So let's read it once again together, verse 4, "Draw me after you, and let us run together". To know him and to make him known. That should be our life's purpose. It's just that simple. Beloved, it's just that simple. It's right here in the song of songs. That's all that needs to be written about this. Our life's purpose, "Draw me after you", to know you, "And let us run together". To make him known. How do we run together with Jesus? Yeshua said, "As the Father sent me, so also now I send you". Yeshua said, "You shall be my witnesses. Go into all creation, and share your testimony with all creation".
This is why we're here: to know him, to keep discovering him, to keep drawing closer and closer to him, so that our fellowship with them becomes more and more established and secure. So that our peace grows, so that the roots of our relationship get more and more grounded. So we become more and more sturdy in our walk and relationship. So that we stand, even when the winds and ways are blowing on the surface. That were established and perfected, so that our fellowship with them is not broken. That our peace is unshakable.
Number one: to seek after him, to know him in this way, to find this inner security that comes from knowing how deeply loved we are. And then secondly: to share the beauty and the love of Jesus with everybody on earth that God gives us an opportunity to do so with. This is what the purpose of life is. At the end of the day, this is all that's going to matter. Did we seek him first and foremost for ourselves to know him, to love him, as the Pearl of great price above all else? Do we believe like the Shulamite bride declared, that his love is better than wine? What's wine wine? Is the symbol of all earthly celebration. Wine is the symbol of the fruit of the earth. The wine is the symbol of the greatest things that the world has to offer us. Remember what Jesus's first miracle was? He turned the water to wine at the wedding.
So, the first thing is that we realize that the love of Jesus is better than anything the world has to offer. It's better than all the world's wine. And so, because we realize that we seek him first above all else, we begin every morning seeking as face. And then secondly what do we do? We go about the day looking to serve him, and to extend his kingdom wherever we go. And because her heart was so aligned with his heart, because she was so in agreement with his purpose and will for her life, the Father continued to reveal himself in even greater ways. And so she says, once again, "The king has brought me into his Chambers".
She was marked. She was marked for life. You see, when you've been touched by the Lord, when you've been baptized by an encounter of how real he is, and how much he loves you, you'll be marked for life.
And so Father, I ask for everyone that's watching right now, everyone that's under the sound of my voice: television and radio, YouTube, every single person that's hearing your words, Lord, coming forth right now. I pray for everyone whose heart is open and longing after you, that you would touch them, and mark them. That you'd seal them with your Holy Spirit, and with fire. The fires of your divine love, that nothing can put out.
Let's continue on. She says, "The king has brought me into his Chambers", and then she says, "We will rejoice in you and be glad: we will extol your love more than wine". So this is interesting. She had this encounter with Jesus, and her response to that was, "That I will rejoice". Listen again, she's brought into the chamber, then she says, "We will rejoice in you and be glad". One of the things that Satan tries to do, to put the fire of God's flame out in our soul, is to cause us to enter in to what I'm going to call now a spirit of entitlement. Rather than rejoicing, and being grateful, and being thankful for all that God is, for all that he's done, and for all that he's doing. Instead we allow the devil to put within us a spirit of ingratitude, a spirit of entitlement, and a spirit of complaining.
And think about your own life, and I look at my life: how many times are we complaining about something? We didn't like what we just ate, yet there's many people in the world they have nothing to eat at all. We complain that we had a way too long in the doctor's office, but many people in the world, they have no access whatsoever to health care. We need to do an attitude check. We need to do an attitude realignment. The scriptures says that we should rejoice always, "Again I say: rejoice". One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 103, "Bless the Lord, o my soul, and forget none of his benefits".
You see, this Shulamite bride that had been brought into an experience of the Lord's love, her response was to rejoice. You and I need to discipline ourselves to form the mindset of rejoicing. Sure life is hard, I get it, we all get it. Life's a struggle. Every day, right, it's a battle, but we need to not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the enemy and the negativity. Instead we need to say, "Thank you, Father, that I'm alive today. Thank you that I know you love me today. Thank you that I can breathe today. Thank you, Father God, that I'm able to experience relationship".
And we just need to list the things that we do have, and form a habit of rejoicing. Because if we are moved to complain, and to have an attitude of ingratitude, we're not going to be able to experience the love of God in our heart. And so her response is she desired to walk with God, and partner with him in life, when she realized she needed to walk in a spirit of rejoicing, just as the Brit Hadasha or the New Testament scriptures teach us. She said, "We will rejoice in you and be glad: we will extol your love more than wine". In other words, she's going to proclaim that the glory of God's love is greater, once again, than anything that this world can ever offer us.
Now, as we proceed in the text, we're going to transition into a completely different thought. We just got done talking about how beautiful Jesus is, how she touched him, and when he did, she realized that his love is more beautiful than anything the world has to offer. But then what happens, beloved, is she begins to shrink back in self-consciousness and shame. And as she says in the next verse, "I am black but lovely". In verse number six, "Do not stare at me because I am swarthy, for the sun has burned me. My mother's sons were angry with me: they made me caretaker of the vineyards, but I've not taken care of my own vineyard".
What's going on here? She said, "I'm black and swarthy". She said, "I was a caretaker, and they were angry at me and put me out in the fields". What was going on was? She was working as kind of a minimum wage worker, and she was outside all the time, because of this being burnt by the sun. And so, what is coming forth from her is she's feeling ashamed about herself. She's struggling with self-worth, and in that struggle she begins to shrink back, and is having a difficult time receiving more of the Lord's fullness for her. She's having a difficult time receiving more of her love. She's shrinking back and running, like Adam and Eve did after they sinned. And maybe I'm speaking to you right now: I want you to join me next time, because Jesus has a cure for your shame, and he's got a cure for my shame, because he doesn't see us as inferior. He doesn't see you or I are ugly. He sees you as beautiful.