Rabbi Schneider - Jesus Working Behind the Scenes

TOPICS: Song of Songs... Journeying into Divine Love

We are in the second chapter. I'm gonna pick up now in verse number 6. The maiden, the Shulamite maiden, who's a symbol of the Church; she's lovesick for the bridegroom. She's lovesick for King Solomon. She's lovesick, beloved, for Jesus. And she's so hungry for more of him. She's so ravaged by his love. It's like a person that's in love and they can't think about anything else but the one they love. They can't work. They can't eat. They're so, just so infatuated, so in love, so fascinated with the one that they're in love with.

This is the experience that the Shulamite maiden has in this section of Scripture. And this is the type of relationship, beloved, that Jesus, our Bridegroom God, wants to bring you and I into. He wants us to become so fascinated with him, so taken by him that we become so focused on him, that we become lovesick for him. That's why Jesus said that his disciples would not fast while the Bridegroom, he said, was still with them. But the time would come, Jesus referring to himself, that the Bridegroom would leave.

Notice that Jesus refers to himself there, you'll see the reference on the bottom of your screen, as the Bridegroom. Jesus is the Bridegroom that's revealed in the Song of Songs. Jesus says when I leave, my disciples are gonna be lovesick for me and they're going to fast. As so the bride here, the Shulamite maiden, is lovesick and she says in verse number 6: Let his hand be under my head and his right hand embrace me. She's, she's almost fainting. She's so, so in love with him, and she said let his left hand be under my head. And the left hand here, beloved, it represents the unseen activity of God. If most people are right-handed, which they are, and you're gonna hold your lover, your left hand is gonna be under your lover's head.

So this is my left hand. So if I was gonna embrace my wife, my left hand would be under her head. She would not be able to see my left hand cause her head would be on top of it. So she says let his left hand be under my head. This refers to the unseen activity of God in our life. She's saying to Jesus, Jesus sustain me in every area of my life with your love, even in all those ways that I can't discern.

Beloved, think of how many things the Lord has done for us in his love that we haven't seen. Imagine how many accidents he spared us from on the road, and we didn't even know that we were spared. Jesus, we just want to thank you for your left hand being under our head from all the things that you've done in our life and we didn't even know it. You know the Bible tells us, Yedidim, beloved ones, in the Hebrew Bible, that God girds us though we know it not. In other words, he's strengthening us even though we don't realize he's the one that's doing it.

So Father, we thank you for all your unseen activity in our life. From, for protecting us for germs that try to invade our body that could have made us very ill, even been fatal, and you protected us, and we never even knew that there was a germ that tried to invade our body, because you extinguished it before it even got here. (Let's just thank him for that). Father, we thank you. Lord Jesus, we thank you for all your unseen activity in our life.

Think about all the ways that the love of God, that Jesus's love has shepherded you; shepherded you into making right decisions, shepherded you into right relationships, how he's closed doors to protect you and I, and we didn't even know that it was he that was closing the doors. I think, beloved, of, of a lesson that I learned about the unseen activity of God. I didn't even perceive it was him, and how thankful I became through revelation to be thankful for closed doors. And the situation that I'm referring to is several years' back my wife and I had been planning on moving. We, we were living in a city that was about two and a half hours away from the Messianic congregation that I pastor or shepherd. And I'd been in this congregation for ten years. I started shepherding this congregation when my children were still in school and young. And I told the congregation that when my children graduate high school, my wife and I will move here.

It just didn't make sense to me to be shepherding a congregation that was over two hours from my house. And so I didn't have any second thoughts about it. I just made up my mind about seven years ago, that when my children graduated high school that I would move closer to the congregation. So several years back my youngest daughter graduated high school and now I just didn't even take a second thought about it, I said well we're gonna be moving now. And so, my wife and I began to look for, for, for houses close to the congregation that I shepherd. And so, we found a particular home and put a contract on the home. Later that night I went back to the house that we put the contract on, and there was a little bench in the backyard.

And I sat down on the bench and I prayed. I said, Father, I said, Lord Jesus, I said, is this the house that you have for me? Sitting on the bench, I prayed that prayer. And then afterwards, I went back to the, to the congregation; I have a rabbi's quarters there where I sleep when I'm in town, and I went to sleep that night. And in my sleep, beloved, I had a one second vision of the night. The Holy Spirit appeared in a vision to me. He showed me a picture of myself sitting on that same bench that I literally was sitting on, just hours early, earlier, asking him if this was the house. So in the vision of the night I see myself sitting on that bench that I just, hours before, been literally praying to him.

And I see myself in the vision, and I'm sitting on the bench in a stockade. And some of you might remember a stockade. It's like a wooden thing where your neck is trapped in it and your wrists are trapped in it. And it was so powerful, and it was, it was an image that was so far out of my ordinary experience and it was so strong that I knew it was coming from the Holy Spirit, and that the Lord was telling me don't buy this house. If you buy this house, you're gonna be trapped. And I didn't understand why, or what that meant. I just understood that the Holy Spirit was telling me no. So on Monday when the, when the seller made a counter offer, I just let it die. I knew God's not, God's telling me, don't buy that house. But I didn't know if the Lord was telling me not to buy that house, or if he was telling me not to move to the whole area.

So I said well I'm gonna look for another house, Lord, in the area, to, and just see if you were telling me it was, it wasn't that particular house that you were not wanting me to have, or whether you're telling me not to move to this area. So my wife and I looked, and we found another house. And this house seemed like the ideal house. It was right in the price range that we were looking at. It was what we were looking for. And so we put an offer on the home. The home had been on the market, beloved, for a year and a half with no offers. So we felt quite confident that this was gonna be the home we were gonna purchase. And put the offer on the home on Friday.

Again I was in prayer. On Monday I get a call from the realtor that somebody bought that house that we just put an offer on, that had been on the market for a year and a half, with no offers, that somebody bought it over the internet for full asking price, sight unseen. And I thought, Lord, this is you. You're closing these doors. If I was to go forward, it would be complete foolishness. You showed me it wasn't just the house, but it's the area. You're telling me not to move. I don't understand why, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna disregard what your Spirit is showing me. And so I just dropped it. I said Lord, I'll revisit this again next year. Well in the meantime, we had stopped looking for homes. We thought we would just stay put because the Holy Spirit was closing the doors.

In the meantime my oldest daughter had a dream. And in the dream she saw us moving to a particular area which was just about twenty minutes from where we had been living. And based upon the dream that my daughter had, because I believe strongly that the Lord speaks to us in dreams when we're discerning and paying attention, and learn how to separate what's from the Lord and what's not from the Lord, I felt strongly that the Lord was perhaps speaking to, to my daughter in this dream. So lo and behold, we went out. We looked. We found a home immediately. And once that happened, beloved, I was, my heart was so broken because I realize the love of God for closing those doors that were two hours and fifteen minutes from my home.

I realized that if I would have ended up moving there, that I would have been separated from my children. They would have only been two hours and fifteen minutes away, cause there were gonna stay put to where, in the place that we had grown up with them at. But I realize those two hours would have completely changed our relationship. And coming to that, I didn't really think about that up to that point, because I just made up my mind, I've been pastoring this congregation for about ten years. I need to move here. It doesn't make sense not to move here. I just made up my mind I would do it without really considering everything fully. But when the Holy Spirit closed those doors for me to move there, and then I found out, then I found myself finding a home just fifteen minutes from where my daughters presently live, I almost started weeping.

I was so thankful to the Holy Spirit to be able to stay put where I was, you know just a few minutes away, and be able to see my daughters every week, several times a week, and so on and so forth. And it just is, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a indication or it's an example of how the Holy Spirit, beloved, is working behind the scenes in the lives of his loved ones, how Jesus is working in the circumstances of our life, beloved, when we don't even know it. I didn't know it was Jesus that was closing the door on that first house. I didn't know that it was Jesus, my Bridegroom God, that closed the door on the second house by having somebody buy it sight unseen for full asking price, to close the door that I wouldn't buy it.

Jesus wanted me close to my daughters. He wanted me to be able to still nurture my daughters, be with them in their adult years. What a beautiful thing that the Lord, beloved, has his left hand under our head, holding us up in life, protecting us, leading us, guiding us, shepherding us, disciplining us, orchestrating our circumstances, even when we don't know that he's the one that's behind the scenes doing it. Thank you Lord Jesus, our beautiful Bridegroom God and King for all you do for us, for having your left hand under our head. And thank you Father God in Yeshua's name. And so she says let his left hand be under my head. And then she continues on: And let his right hand embrace me.

So again in verse number 6, look with me: Let his left hand, that's the unseen activity of, of Jesus, because remember you can't, when, when, when you embrace your lover and your left hand is under their neck they can't see you hand under their neck. It's the unseen activity of God in our life. But then she also said, and his right hand embrace me. The right hand speaks of the visible manifestation of the Lord's love in our life, the things that we do see him doing. You know, if you put your hand around your lover's back, it comes around their, their, their waist area, they can see that hand embracing them. These are all the things that Jesus does for us that we can see, all the favor that he's shown us, the open doors that we are aware that God is the one that is opening those doors.

Let's continue on: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, That you do not arouse or awaken my love Until she pleases. So let's review to try to make sense of this. In verse number 5, she says she's lovesick. She's lovesick. She's so in love with her bridegroom. And then she says let him embrace me and let him hold me up with his unseen activity, under my head. And let me see your love all around my life. She's going through a very special season experiencing the Lord's love in her life. Think about it. We go through seasons in life, and during certain seasons we, that we go through on our journey into divine love, we're so aware of Jesus's love for us. We're so aware of his love surrounding us.

There are certain seasons that the Holy Spirit is doing something in our life with an exclamation life. You and I have been there, most of us. There are just unusual seasons where the Lord has stirred something up within us. He's put within us a deep passion or he's unveiled to us a new truth that's radically changing us and transforming us. The bride in this section of Scripture is going through one of those seasons. She's lovesick. And now the Holy Spirit is speaking in verse number 7. And this is what the Holy Spirit says. Remember this is prophetic now. This is the, this is the revelation of the Holy Spirit to the Church, regarding the marital intimacy we have with our beautiful Bridegroom King, Yeshua HaMashiach. This is the Holy Spirit's voice now in verse 7, and he says: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem.

Now the daughters of Jerusalem here are less mature believers, prophetically now understanding who these daughters of Jerusalem are prophetically, these daughters of Jerusalem are less mature believers that are not able to discern the spiritual activity of the deeper work of God in people's lives. Now let me pause for a second to say this. I've mentioned this in, in, in my first broadcast, this Song, beloved, was originally written by Solomon for his bride. He didn't realize that he was being used of the Holy Spirit to give us revelation of Jesus's love for the Church and the divine romance that we're being called into in Jesus.

I encourage you to get this entire series on my website to get all the foundation for how we're interpreting the Song of Songs. Solomon didn't realize he was being used by the Holy Spirit to pen this portion of Scripture to bring us into insight into the love of God. Now, in the original text when Solomon wrote it, the players were number 1, King Solomon, who is a prophetic shadow of the Bridegroom Jesus. You know Jesus reveals himself to be the Bridegroom in many places in Scripture. For example in Matthew, 25, Jesus reveals himself as the one who the ten virgins are preparing to meet. We see that John the Baptist calls himself the friend of the Bridegroom. We see other places in Scripture that Jesus calls himself the Bridegroom.

When they asked him, why are your disciples not fasting? And Jesus answered and said the disciples of the Bridegroom don't fast as long as the Bridegroom is with them. Of course he was referring to himself as the Bridegroom. He says, but when the Bridegroom leaves, then they will fast. And I've given many foundational Scriptures as to why the Song of Songs is the Holy Spirit's prophetic revelation giving us insight into the journey of divine love which culminates in Revelation, 19, with the marriage supper of the Lamb. Now in this section of Scripture here, once again, King Solomon is the foreshadow of King Jesus. The Shulamite bride in the Song of Songs is the foreshadow of the Church.

The daughters of Jerusalem here, beloved, are the foreshadow of immature believers that don't understand the bridal paradigm in the Holy Spirit. They understand that they're saved and going to heaven, but they don't understand what Paul revealed to us in Ephesians, chapter 5, that we are being called into a marriage relationship with Christ, when Paul said to us that a man shall leave his, his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. And then he said I'm revealing to you a great mystery. I'm talking to you about Christ's relationship to the Church.

And so with that foundation again being stated, I want to look once again at verse number 7. So he says: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem. This is the Holy Spirit talking to less mature believers that don't understand the deeper workings of the Holy Spirit. They don't understand the bridal paradigm. They don't understand that Jesus is their Bridegroom God in addition to being their Savior. It's, he's writing, he's writing to those people that understand who Jesus is as Savior, but they don't understand the deeper relationship that Jesus is calling us into, again that culminates with the marriage supper of the Lamb. So the Holy Spirit says: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, That you do not arouse or awaken my love Until she pleases.

What is going on here, Yedidim, beloved ones, is that the Holy Spirit is saying to these less discerning believers, he's saying I am doing something special in my bride's life right now. I am doing something very supernatural in the Shulamite maiden's life. I'm doing something very special in your life, when, when you're going through that season in life when the Holy Spirit, when Jesus is wooing you to himself. And once again when I say the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, I understand they're three separate dimensions of the Godhead, the three personalities of the Trinity, but I'm using them at times interchangeably because the Holy Spirit takes of Jesus. He reveals it unto us.

Jesus said, I am in the Father, the Father's in me. So don't get confused about the language there. I'm just referring to God. Sometimes I'm referring to him as the Father, sometimes as Jesus, sometimes as the Holy Spirit. The point is, is that God is saying when, when I am working in one of my beloved one's lives in a season where I'm calling them into deep intimacy with me, he's talking to those now that are immature. He's saying to them don't disturb this one that I'm working in. Don't distract them from what I'm doing, because gazelles, beloved, were very sensitive animals, and they could be very easily distracted or spooked.

So let's listen again: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, That you do not arouse or awaken my love Until she pleases. In other words, the Holy Spirit is saying that when I'm working in someone's life in a deep way, don't disturb them. So for example, we have in our Messianic congregation Adat Adonai, a 24/7 prayer room, where people just come and sit in the Lord's presence as they're listening to beautiful worship music. And we have a rule that no one talks in the prayer room. Why? Because we don't anyone to disturb what the Holy Spirit may be doing in someone's life while they're in there.

This is what the Holy Spirit is communicating here. The maiden is going through a deep season of feeding on Jesus's love, her Bridegroom God. And the Holy Spirit is saying do not disturb or don't distract her. Like a, like a gazelle that can be easily spooked, I don't want you to distract her, because, again, a gazelle is very sensitive, and the slightest movement can make it run. And so the Holy Spirit is saying don't distract my beloved one whom I'm working in now.

I remember years ago, when I was going through a season in life and the Lord was doing something so beautiful in my heart. And as a result of what the Holy Spirit was doing, I disconnected from as many responsibilities as I could, cause I just wanted to be able to sit before the Lord, even as Mary sat at Jesus' s feet in order for the Lord to fully do in me what he was doing. But you know, some of the daughters of Jerusalem, remember the daughters of Jerusalem are the less mature believers that don't understand the deeper workings of the Holy Spirit, they couldn't understand what was going on with me. I tried to explain to them that the Holy Spirit was doing a deep work within me and that's why I was disconnecting from some of my responsibilities, to just sit down at the, at Jesus's feet, that he could fully do in me what he was doing.

But some of the daughters of Jerusalem, some of the less mature people around me, they couldn't understand it. They said what's, what's going on. They, they started making excuses for me to people. They said, oh, he's just going through something. It'll be past, they said. Everybody goes through things. Somebody else said that I was going through menopause. They didn't understand, no I'm not going through something here that's a tremendous burden on my life in the negative sense of the word. But I'm going through a season in the Holy Spirit. And beloved, when you sense that somebody is, is, is being deeply impacted by the Holy Spirit, be careful not to disrupt what the Holy Spirit might be doing in their life.

Let's not be like the daughters of Jerusalem that don't have sensitivity. And when the Holy Spirit is doing a deep work in our life, let's not allow our self to be easily distracted, because the Holy Spirit said, let this one not be distracted until she pleases, in other words, until love pleases. In other words, the Lord is saying to us, when I'm doing something in your life, give me time. Just settle in it. Allow me to do in your life what I'm wanting to do. Allow me to finish the job. I'm speaking to some of you right now, even as this broadcast ends. I want you just to sit for a few moments at Jesus's feet. Just be in silence. Ask the Holy Spirit to continue to circumcise your heart, and to pour in to you the revelation of divine love and marital intimacy that Jesus has for you.