Rabbi Schneider - How Jesus Feels About Us
And so she had just got done speaking to Jesus about how beautiful he was. Yeshua had touched her and she was telling him how beautiful he was to her. He, she said to him, you are like a cluster of henna blossoms. He was beautiful in so many ways to her. And then Jesus responds back to her in verse number 15 and says: How beautiful you are my darling. How beautiful you are. Your eyes are like doves. I want you to go with me to the Book of John for a moment, chapter number 15, verse number 9. Once again he said: How beautiful you are my darling. How beautiful you are. You need to know, beloved, and I need to know, how beautiful we are to God. John, 15, verse number 9, Jesus said this to us: Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you.
Let me read that again. Yeshua said: Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. I'm gonna read that just one more time: Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. This is the heart that's being expressed here. In verse 15, Jesus is saying how beautiful you are. Jesus loves us. Paul tells us that we should pray to understand the, the riches of God's glory that's in us. We've been purchased by the blood of Jesus to be his inheritance. We are beautiful to him, beloved. Satan has been defeated. Jesus has openly triumphed over Satan. He's removed sin from our lives, so much so that the Apostle Paul said in the Gospel... not the Gospel but the Book of Romans, chapter 7. Paul said when he sinned it was no longer he that was doing it, but sin that indwelt him.
The Apostle Paul saw himself as a beautiful one to God. He didn't identify himself with sin. He identified himself rather as one that had been purchased by the blood of Jesus, one that was beautiful to God, one that was lovely to God, and you and I want to get this revelation in our hearts as well. Open our hearts, Father I pray, to understand how lovely and how beautiful we are to you. So once again, verse 15: How beautiful you are my darling. How beautiful you are. He said to her, your eyes are like doves. Because she had just encountered Jesus again earlier on, and when she encountered Jesus again, she pledged all her affection to him, all her eyes were towards him now. She was so in love with him now. And Jesus responds back to her, how beautiful you are. Your eyes are like doves' eyes.
And a dove, beloved, is the ultimate picture of one that's loyal. As I mentioned on last week's broadcast, a dove does not have any peripheral vision. It only sees straight ahead. And a dove mates once for life. It has single vision, and mates once for life. That's why the Holy Spirit, beloved, was manifest as a dove at Jesus's baptism. You remember the story. The Holy Spirit appeared as a dove upon Jesus as the Father spoke over Jesus, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Why a dove; because Jesus was totally fixed and focused on the Father. He came for one purpose, to do the Father's will. And the Holy Spirit that indwelt him, he is the ultimate dove. The Holy Spirit has one purpose in John, 16, and that is to glorify Jesus. And so, the Shulamite bride here, that's a prophetic shadow of you and I, the, the call is that we get so focused on Jesus, beloved, that he becomes the one object of our life and the one object of our affections.
You see, the thing that God wants, Jesus purchased us by his blood. He purchased us to be his inheritance. And the thing that he desires, beloved, and the thing that nobody can give him but you, is your affections. He desires your affections more than anything. And only you can give him your affections. He is calling you and I to become like the Shulamite bride here, to become like a dove, beloved, to get our self completely locked on him. Like the one, Jesus said, was a man that went and sold everything he had to buy the pearl of great price. And so Jesus, we pray that you would give us the eyes of a dove. We only want to be focused on you alone. We don't want to be looking to the left and to the right and all around, but we want to be locked in and centered on you. We think about the Apostle Paul and how he said he felt blest that he wasn't married because he said he was able to give all his focus to you.
Now we know that marriage is also a gift, God, and we thank you for it, those of us that are married, including myself. But Father, we're just saying that we want to be single minded towards you. Give us the heart, Jesus, and eyes of a dove, we pray, Amen and Amen.
So Jesus says you are so beautiful to me, and your eyes right now are like a dove. You're totally locked on me. Again she dialogues back to him, because, remember this is a love song. Some of us older ones remember those old Captain and Tennille love songs where one would sing one the, a line, and then the other spouse would sing the other one a line. That's what this Song of Songs is. Jesus speaks to her. She speaks back to him. He speaks to her. She speaks back to him. And what we're trying to do, beloved, is turn this into a prayer dialogue ourselves, because we don't wanna just read it, we don't wanna just study it, but we wanna become locked on these phrases, beloved, and pray them back to Jesus and turn it into a dialogue back and forth, just as is the case as it was originally given.
And so we just got done praying, Lord Jesus, thank you for giving me eyes like a dove. Strengthen my eyes, Lord Jesus, that I would be like a dove, totally loyal, Amen, to you, Amen and Amen.
So she continues. In verse 16 she talks back to him now. How handsome you are, my beloved. And so pleasant. Indeed, our couch, the King James translate it bed, is luxuriant. The King James translates it green. Now this was a bridal couch. This was the couch that the king and his bride would be carried on, on the way to the wedding. So this is all about a wedding processional. This is wedding processional language. And the reason this is so beautiful, beloved, is because this is our destiny. We are in the midst, beloved, of being married to Jesus. The Holy Spirit was giving to us as a pledge of our inheritance just like an engagement ring. And we are on the way, beloved, to the marriage supper of the Lamb, in Revelation, 19.
And so this Song of Songs is all about this beautiful romance that we have in Jesus. It's all about divine romance. And so this is a wedding term here. The couch was a wedding couch. And, and she speaks about it. Once again in verse 16: How handsome you are, my beloved, and how pleasant. Indeed, our couch or our bed, the marriage couch, or the marriage bed, is luxuriant or green. And what she's speaking of here is the rest that she has with her lover, with the bridegroom God, King Jesus, that there's rest, beloved, in feeling safe in him and knowing him. That's why Jesus said, come and learn of me for my yolk is easy and my burden is light. So she's sitting down on a, in a couch, on a bed. She's at rest in, in the arms of her bridegroom God.
Just as we enter into rest, beloved, as we begin to know Jesus in a more deep and intimate way, because we realize that he has authority over the circumstances of our life. We begin to trust him so that we're not afraid and we begin to sit with him, beloved, just as we're gonna see she is gonna do here in a second. And we continue on here. And she says: Indeed, our couch is luxuriant, which means green, meaning that her life is full. Luxuriant or green means fruitful or beautiful. Anything that's green is alive and growing. And so when you are I are walking with Jesus, beloved, we're walking in life. Remember, Yeshua said, I have come to give life and to give it more abundantly. And so as we discover him, beloved, as we give our hearts over to him and as in, in response to that he unveils himself to our hearts, we find ourselves entering into a deeper rest, sitting on this marriage couch with him of intimacy. And we find that our life, beloved, is green or it's fruitful, that it's dynamic in his love.
She continues on: The beams of our houses are cedars. Now cedar was the strongest, most expensive structure. And it was used in the building of the temple. So she's saying that what you're building our life on, not only is it restful, and not only is it green and luxuriant, but the structure of it, she said, is the strongest structure known. In other words, the internal foundations that the Lord is building into us, beloved, are strong. They are not like a person that builds his house on something and then it gets washed away. Like Jesus said, he that builds their house on me is like a man that builds his house on a rock, because when things change in life, when waves come, and when winds come, and when trials and tribulations come, you're gonna still stand cause you built your house on a rock. He said, but anyone that doesn't build their house one me is like a person that builds their house on the sand, and when life changes, when they lose their job, or when their health changes, or when a loved one passes away, whatever it might be, then all of a sudden they're gonna collapse because they don't have structure in their life.
But she's revealing to us, beloved, that as we give ourselves to Jesus, as we build our life in him, as we make developing intimacy with him, the primary focus of our life, there's a structure that's being built into our life that's the strongest structure, beloved, on the earth. In this case it's cypress, which was the most expensive, strongest structure, beloved, and the temple itself was built out of it. And so God is building something rich and powerful in you and I, beloved, that nothing is gonna be able to overturn. The Bible says, neither death, nor life, things past, things present, things to come, nothing can separate us from the love of God. But we are more than conquerors in everything in Messiah Jesus; bless the name of the Lord, hallelujah and Amen.
You're strong inside. That's why Jesus said I see within you, he said to his bride here, which is a prophetic shadow of you and I, I see in you a mare, a chariot of, of Pharaoh rather, which was a war horse, a strong war horse. This is what the Lord, hallelujah, is building in your life and in my life. And she continues on here. And she now sees herself as beautiful. She's affirming herself as beautiful. Listen what she says: I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys. Now you think about this, she's affirming her beauty now. You and I, we need to also affirm our beauty to God. We need to get Satan's shame off our life, get Satan's guilt off our life. We are the children of a beautiful God.
John said in the Book of John, chapter, 1 John, in 1 John, chapter 3, verse 1: Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called the children of God. We are beautiful, beloved. We are the children of the beautiful God. We're the bride of the beautiful bridegroom King, King Jesus. She's really identifying with this now. She's really strengthened in her identity at this point in the journey. And so she says in chapter 2, verse 1: I am the rose of Sharon. Now a rose is the chief love flower, right? If someone's in love and they want to bring flowers to their lover, what kind of flowers do they generally bring? They bring a rose. A rose is the chief love flower. So you see this bride, she is in love with Jesus. She is in love with her bridegroom king. And notice also, beloved, she also says I am the lily of the valleys.
Now as a rose is the symbol of love, is the flower of love, a lily, listen now, a lily is the flower of purity, lily white. A lily is the flower of purity and obedience. And so this, this, the, the Shulamite bride who's a symbol of you and I, she stood before King Jesus and she said, I love you and I am pure before you. She's gonna say later that I'm a locked garden, that I am, I am living without compromise. I am living pure for you. And I want to challenge some of you younger people especially that might be watching right now, some of you older ones as well, in the areas of sexual purity. Beloved, we're living in a world right now where Satan reigns and he's telling the church it's okay.
I want you to know, beloved, that the Scripture says about our sexual purity that every other sin we commit, we commit outside our own body. But when we commit sexual sin, we sin against our own body, because sexual sin is so closely connected to the inner man that it's, it's a higher degree of sinning than other sins. I want you to know, beloved, that Jesus is calling you and I to be a lily, to live in sexual purity for him. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians, 11:2, said that he was presenting us, listen now, as a virgin betrothed to Messiah Jesus. I want to challenge you if you're watching this now and you're not living in sexual purity, I wanna challenge you to recognize how serious this is.
Jesus is a jealous God and he will not share you with another. If you continue to live in sexual impurity and you belong to Jesus, I'm telling you, he will discipline you and it may cost you much. He's not disciplining you because he's rejecting you. He's disciplining you to correct you because he loves you. But the Bible says it's much better if we examine ourselves and repent, and thereby escape the pain of being disciplined by God. We are called, beloved, to live pure before Jesus, to be as a rose before him, and as a pure, obedient lily, beloved, as a, as, as a pure bride to him. A lily once again is the symbol of purity. And then Jesus speaks back to her after she says I'm the rose of Sharon, and then she says the lily of the valleys.
Let me just comment on one more thing. She says the lily of the valleys. What is the valleys here? She was living, beloved, pure before Jesus in the valley. What is a valley? A valley, beloved, is some place that goes below. A valley is some place that goes down. So what this is saying to us, what the Holy Spirit is communicating to us prophetically is that we need to be living pure as a lily unto Jesus in the valley, in the dark world of this age, in, in the sin ridden world of the age that we're living. And we're living in an age of darkness. We're living in an age of compromise. We're living in an age of cultural impurity and defilement. Jesus says you are my lily, living as a lily amidst the defilement of your age. It doesn't matter what the world does. It doesn't matter what the world says.
You and I are called, beloved, to live as lilies in the valley. We are the light of the earth. We are the salt of the earth, beloved. You and I need to be living as the light of the world and the salt of the earth. We are called out, beloved, to Jesus. Let's be a pure and undefiled bride to him. I take authority over the spirits of defilement right now that are upon the people of God, and I break you off like a razor in Jesus's name. I command you to release Satan, every child of God that you're hanging on to through spirits of defilement. I break you and I curse you. I command you to wither and be as naught, in Jesus's name, who has openly triumphed over you when he rose from the grave. And now I call those of you that felt something happen, I call you right now, to get on your knees and repent, and then get off your knees and begin to praise Jesus and confess to him that by his strength you will live as a lily in the valley in purity.
So Father God, we thank you that you have made us lilies, Father God, in the valley; that you have called us to be lilies, Father God, unto you in this fallen age. And now, Father, we ask you to strengthen us to live as lilies unto you, Father God, in this world for the rest of our days, in Jesus's name and for Jesus's fame we pray. And all God's people spoke Hebrew and said Amen and Amen.
Now Jesus speaks back to her in verse 2, and he affirms her. He says like a lily among the thorns. In other words, like a lily among sinners. Like a lily among sinners Jesus says to her, so is my darling among the maidens. And so Jesus is affirming her. You are beautiful to me. You're surrounded by darkness. You're surrounded by people that don't know me. You're surrounded by people that are thorns. A thorn, once again, if we read in the Book of Genesis, was the result of sin. You're surrounded by people that are living sinful lives, and yet you're living as a lily. And you are beautiful to me, beautiful. And now he speaks, now she speaks back to him. Verse 3, chapter 2: Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men.
Now an apple tree, beloved, is about refreshment. Look in verse number 5 of chapter 2, the middle of verse number 5. She says to him: Refresh me with apples. So what she's saying here is that he is the source of her refreshment. She has discovered Jesus to be the one that brings refreshment to her in life. Like a cool breeze refreshing her, she has discovered Jesus to be her source of refreshment. So she says, like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. And then she says: In his shade I took great delight and sat down. She had learned to be refreshed by him. She'd become like Mary in Luke, chapter 10, where Mary sat down at Jesus's feet and just was receiving from him as he was ministering. She had discovered the reality of his presence in her life in this way. In his shade, she says, I took great delight and sat down. And she said, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Notice, beloved, the type of relationship that we're being called into to really experience Jesus, to not just read about him but, hallelujah, to experience him. So Jesus release your presence by your Holy Spirit into the lives of your people. Put your hand upon their heart. Beloved, I want to encourage you, just put your hand on your heart right now. Put your hand upon your heart right now. And just say I feel you, Jesus. I feel your love for me, Jesus. I feel your nearness to me, Jesus. I have sensitivity to your nearness, Jesus.
Now put your hand on your heart still and say, thank you Jesus that you love me and that you're in me. Let's do that again. With your hand on your heart, thank you Jesus that you love me and that you're in me. So she's having this kind of experience, and you and I are having this experience too. Continuing on, she says, and his, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. And then she says he has brought me to his banquet hall, verse number 4, and his banner over me is love. She is saying I trust you. You have made yourself real enough to me that I'm gonna spend the rest of my life seeking you. I've discovered you as the apple tree among all the trees of the field. You are the one that refreshes and I've come to discover that I can trust you, because, she said, your banner over me is love.
I want you to see that again on your screen as we close out for today. Once again she said, his banner over me, the bottom of verse 4, and his banner over me is love. This speaks, beloved, a banner is the flag, or the fabric, or, or, or something similar that they would walk under in a war. And so it was the covering. So a tribe would gather together under the banner. So the banner was the identity. So what she is saying is that Jesus is leading me onward through the war of life in love. I can trust him. He is victorious over all that's on the earth. And everything that's happening to me in life, I can trust him to use for good in my life. She discovered that God is causing all things to work for good to those that love him and are called according to his purpose. The banner over your life, beloved, if you're chosen by God, is love. You can trust Jesus. Abandon yourself to him to give yourself to him. Make up your mind that you will keep pressing in, beloved, until Jesus touches your heart with his fiery love and you come to know him like never before.