Rabbi Schneider - In the Secret Place
We're gonna continue on now, beginning today with verse number 10 of chapter 2. She sees Jesus coming. She says: My beloved had responded and said to me, Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, And come along. For behold, the winter is past, and The rain is over. Yeshua is calling her now to come. She's been sitting in his presence long enough. It's time that Jesus wants to do something with her. Her life's vision, she stated in chapter 1, verse 4, was draw me to yourself she prayed to the Bridegroom King Jesus and let us run the race together.
Now Jesus is saying, okay you asked me to draw me to you, I've drawn you to myself, and now I'm asking you to run the race of ministry with me. Come along. Remember Jesus said go into the highways and the byways, compel them to come in and preach my Gospel to all creation. Jesus is calling us, beloved, to partner with him in ministry, but many of you have been afraid too long. You've been trapped in cowardess. If you want to grow in divine love, if you want your journey with Jesus to continue, beloved, you need to partner with him in ministry and go with him on the mountain places by being a bold witness. With that said, we're gonna continue on. He says to her: Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, verse 10, And come along. He repeats it at the end of verse 13: Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, And come along! But she's afraid to come. She's paralyzed. She's not moving.
Just as some of us, beloved, have been in a place where Yeshua's been beckoning to us to come, to arise, to conquer our own fears, to maybe speak to someone about him. And we've been unable to. We've been trapped. This is the place that she was in and we left off there last week. So what does Jesus do when he sees that she's struggling to come? Does he condemn her? Does he call her a worthless hypocrite? No, instead what he tells her to do was to lift her voice to him and to begin to cry out to be strengthened. Remember Jesus is our High Priest. He sits at the Father's right hand to strengthen us. There's no temptation, there's no obstacle, nothing that we're gonna face in life, beloved, that Jesus doesn't understand and that he won't strengthen us in. His Spirit is inside us, the Bible said, praying for our weaknesses.
So when we're weak and when we're fearful, the wrong thing to do is to shrink back and to feel like we're hypocrites and to have shame come on us. That would just separate us from him. Instead what he wants us to do, when we find our self struggling with sin, when we find our self afraid to obey, what he wants us to do, beloved, is to pray. Remember, this is what he said to Peter. He said to Peter, Peter you're gonna deny me three times before the cock crows. So what do I want you to do? I want you to pray. Remember Jesus said that we should pray daily the Lord's Prayer, and we know that one of the phrases in the Lord's Prayer is that we would not be led into temptation, but delivered from evil. What we're actually doing is we're asking Jesus to strengthen us that we won't get tempted and led into evil.
So when you're feeling tempted, when you're feeling afraid, when you feel the enemy is beginning to make an in-road in your life, I want you to know that you're still lovely to Jesus. He hasn't changed his mind about you. He's not gonna renegotiate his relationship with you based upon your temporary disobedience or sin, just as he didn't renegotiate his relationship with Peter when he called Peter and said Peter, I'm changing your name, and not only that it's because of your confession, Peter, that I'm saying this to you, on this rock I'm gonna build my church. And all the while when he said those things to Peter, beloved, he knew that it was just gonna be a little bit longer in the future that Peter would betray him.
So God does not renegotiate his relationship with you, or change the way he feels about you, or change your destiny when you're struggling with something. You're still lovely to him. Remember Jesus has taken your sin away by his blood. You'll always be lovely to God now, those of us that are his. And so what we do when we're weak and struggling is we call out to him in prayer to be strengthened so that we can receive the infusion of life and strength deep down in our kishkas, in our innermost being from him to be, to be, to be, that we might be able to rise up and overcome. So listen what happens once again. He says: Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, And come along. But she's struggling, so what does he say in verse 14? He says: O my dove.
Notice he calls her dove. Remember a dove is someone that is faithful. He doesn't scold her from her disobedience, for her disobedience, but rather he calls her forth in her destiny. Her destiny is to be a faithful one of God. Remember, God is at work in our lives, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure. And he will complete, beloved, what he started within us. This is also referred to in the Song of Songs, and he says we will make you a goal, he said. So God doesn't define us by our temporary struggles, but rather he defines us, beloved, by our calling and who we are in him. So even while she's struggling to obey him, he's saying come along. He's saying come along and arise my darling. But she is not moving. She's trapped in fear. But what does he say to her? He says to her, O my dove, in verse 14, in the clefts of the rock, my darling one, my beautiful one.
He's calling her forth, beloved, in the light of who he sees that she is, who she's gonna become. And notice he says: O my dove, in the clefts of the rock. He sees her now, what, in the clefts of the rock. Remember, beloved, the Songs of Songs, it's deeply prophetic, so what is the Lord saying to us? What's the Spirit saying to us when he says to her: O my dove, and then he says, in the clefts of the rock. Remember Scripture interprets Scripture. Where does this phrase the clefts of the rock come from? It comes from the Torah. We're gonna go now to the Book of Exodus, the Book of Shemot in the Torah, the 33rd chapter where we see this phrase the cleft of the rock. The grass withers and the flowers fade but the Word of the Lord abides forever.
I'm gonna begin in there, verse number 18. Moses is asking the Lord that the Lord would reveal his glory. So we pick up there in verse 18: Then Moses said, I pray you, he's speaking to the Lord, show me your glory. And here God said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of Yahweh before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. And I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. But he said you cannot see my face. For no man can see my face and live. Then Yahweh, then the Lord said, behold there is a place by me and you shall stand there on the rock and it will come about while my glory is passing by that I will put you, here we go, in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away and you shall see my back, but my face you shall not see.
So the cleft of the rock then is the provision that the Father has provided for us that we could experience his glory. Moses was not able to approach God and see his glory as a human being. So God said I'm gonna put you in the cleft of the rock and when I cover you in the cleft of the rock, when I put you in this place that will protect you, then I'm gonna let you see my back. I'm gonna let you see as much of my glory that I can allow you to see. What does this mean, beloved? It's a, it's a shadow or a figure of Jesus. Jesus has become the cleft of the rock. It's in Jesus, beloved, that we're accepted. It's because we're in Jesus that we can experience the favor of God, the love of God, the glory of God, the revelation of God.
Jesus is the cleft of the rock. When the Lord put Moses in the cleft of the rock, the cleft of the rock there, beloved, was a prophetic shadow of King Jesus, our Bridegroom God. In King Jesus we have forgiveness and God continues to minister his love to us, and his nourishing grace to us, even when we're weak, and even when we're bound in sin sometimes. Remember Paul said in Romans, chapter 7, that he found himself trapped in sin. He said, who will set me free from this. And he said thanks be to God that gives me the victory in Christ Jesus.
In fact, in the Book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 10:4, we see Jesus revealed there as the Rock. So I'm going now to the Book of 1 Corinthians, chapter number 10, verse number 4. And we read: And they all drank, these were the Israelites in the wilderness, of the same spiritual drink. For they were drinking from a spiritual Rock which followed them, get this now Yedidim, beloved ones, and the Rock was Christ. The Rock was Christ. And so here's the maiden, a picture of you and I, and Jesus is saying to her, when you're struggling, when you're trapped, when you're having difficulty obeying me, know that you're still my dove. I love you.
Now what I want you to do is to lift your voice to me cause you're in the cleft of the rock. You're in the cross of mine. You're covered by my grace. You're covered by my blood. You'll always be beautiful to me. Don't shrink back. Don't let Satan put shame on you, my church, because there is no condemnation for those of you that are in me. But instead, lift your voice and pray to me. I want to hear your voice. It's beautiful to me.
So let's continue on: O my dove, in the cleft of the rock, In the secret place of the steep pathway, Let me see your form, and Let me hear your voice. What does this phrase mean; in the secret path of the steep pathway. Listen again. She's in the cleft of the rock, and she's in, listen now, in the secret place of the steep pathway. What is the steep place of the secret pathway? It is, beloved, the ascension and resurrection of Jesus. We have been baptized into his resurrection. We have been baptized into his ascension. Jesus, beloved, came as a man, died on the cross for our sins, and then he arose from the grave and ascended to heaven.
That's the steep place of the secret pathway. And you and I have been baptized into him. He has become the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He has become the path for us to God. And we are covered by his blood, so even in our sin we're in the steep place, beloved, of the secret pathway. We're in the resurrection. We call out to God in our weakness, strengthen us. And the power of Jesus comes down from on high through the secret place of the steep pathway. He strengthens us and he transforms our weakness into strength. He wants us to call out to him, right here, right now while we're in the flesh.
Lord Jesus we bless you now. We thank you that you have put us in the cleft of the rock; that we are in your cross, Lord Jesus, that we are in a place that you can continue to love us, and call us lovely, and minister to us, and nurture of us because you took away our sin by your blood on the cross. And you ascended to heaven that we could enter in to the steep pathway and the secret place, that we now are partakers of your resurrection and the power of your ascension. And now you strengthen us in our weakness, and cause us to become more than conquerors in you. We give you glory, Lord Jesus, today and thank you for your victory that reigns on your, on our lives and your power, hallelujah, that's being ministered unto us.
I want to show you a couple shadows of this, beloved, in the Hebrew Bible. Again we're looking at the phrase here that Jesus was ministering to his dove, to his lovely one, as she was struggling in sin. He was ministering to her. Now I want you to think about this. He called her his dove. I want you to think about this. Sometimes sheep, which are Kosher animals, and pigs, sometimes they kinda look the same. If you think about it for a second, both sheep and pigs get stuck in the mud. The difference is, beloved, that when a sheep gets stuck in the mud, the shepherd gets his sheep out of the mud and the sheep doesn't return to it. The pig, on the other hand, as soon as you pull the pig out of the mud, he's gonna go right back to the next mud hole.
The point is, both sheep and pigs get dirty in the mud. But the sheep, beloved, is not a pig. And that's what's going on here. The maiden, the Church, sometimes we get trapped in the mud. But we're not a pig. We're God's lovely ones. And so Jesus says to her, you're my dove. I love you and I've taken care of your sin by my cross, by my blood, in the cleft of the rock. Now I want to hear your voice because you've been baptized into the resurrection and ascension. Now you have power because of my resurrection and ascending power that's being ministered unto your soul. I want you to cry out to me, and I'm gonna release power to you.
I wanna show you now, Yedidim, beloved ones, a few instances in the Hebrew Bible that are types of this. I'm gonna go first of all to the Book of Genesis, chapter number 28, verse number 10. We see this in Jacob's life, where Jacob was very, very weak, and he went on a journey. He was running for his life, most of us know the story, because he had deceived his father, and had stolen his brother's birth right. And so now Jacob had to, had to leave his home because he was afraid that Esau was gonna kill him. Imagine this, he had left everything, everything he knew. He's in the middle of the wilderness, in the desert, all alone, not knowing what his future's gonna be like. He's terrified. Here he is now in the desert, and he gets so exhausted he goes to sleep. He uses a rock as a pillow.
Imagine that, a rock for a pillow. And he falls asleep. And so I'm picking up in the Book of Bereshit, or Genesis, 28, verse 10. It says: Then Jacob, or Yaakov in Hebrew we say, departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set, and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and laid down in that place. His head's on the stone. The stone's the pillow. And then in verse 12: He had a dream. And behold a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven, and behold the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
And Jacob learned that God was with him in this place, that there was a ladder where Jacob's head was, that ascended from where his head was on the rock, beloved, all the way to heaven. And angels were ascending from his head to heaven, and from heaven back down to where his head was; that God was ministering to him, that God was with him right where he was. This was a shadow, beloved, of the resurrection of Jesus; that Jesus made a way. He's become the ladder from earth to heaven and heaven to earth. Remember Jesus said, I am the Way, I am the Truth, I am the Life, and no once comes to the Father but by me. And so Jesus said to his beautiful, virgin bride here, he said, you're a dove to me. You're lovely to me. I see that you're struggling right now, but you're saved in me. You've been purchased by me. You're in the cleft of the rock and I want to hear your voice. You're in the steep pathway of my victory.
This same truth, beloved, is alluded to in the Book of Ephesians. I want you to read this beautiful section of Scripture. Paul says in Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 18, this: I pray, he said, that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened so that you might know what is the hope of His calling, and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power towards us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might. So remember Jesus is saying, my dove, call out to me in the secret place of the steep pathway. Why? Because there's incredible power that I'm gonna release into your life as you're calling out to me. So Paul says I want you to understand this.
Continuing on, verse 19: and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might, which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, there's that secret pathway, that steep place the ascends to heaven, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. It doesn't matter what obstacle, what trial, what mountain you're facing, this secret place, this steep pathway, this ladder that goes from earth to heaven that's above every mountain and ends up at Jesus's feet, beloved, it's more powerful than everything we'll ever face.
So when Jesus says, come, we want to come, hallelujah, cause he has authority and victory over it all; far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all to the Church. And so Jesus is saying, you don't have anything to fear. I love you, but call out to me, cry out to me, because I'm going to infuse you with my victory, and you're gonna be able to follow me on top of this mountain and understand my victory in your life and what that means to you.
And so Yeshua says, in verse 14: O my dove, in the clefts of the rock. We're hidden in the cross of Christ, beloved, in the cleft of the rock, in the secret place of the steep pathway. He says: Let me see your form, Let me hear your voice; For your voice is sweet, And your form is lovely. And so Jesus says I love you church so much. I purchased you to be my bride, with my own blood. You are already mine. You are totally mine. And I want to come to your aid. I want to come to your rescue. I want to give you victory in every area of your life. You don't have to do it alone, saith the Lord, but I'm gonna change your weakness into my divine strength, for my power is gonna be perfected in your weakness. But you've got to call out to me when you're struggling.
That's why Jesus said, watch and pray. That's why Jesus said to us, beloved, pray without ceasing. The Holy Spirit, beloved, is in us to strengthen us as we yield ourselves to him, as we give ourselves over to him, beloved, in prayer. And when you combine that with fasting, it will super charge your transformation. Jesus's love for us never changes, beloved. We will always be beautiful to him; those of us that he's purchased. We are his bride.
Remember Paul said, what man hates his own flesh. Even as a man does not hate his own flesh, Paul tells us, so a man shall love is wife because she's flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones. And then Paul says, I tell you a great mystery. I'm speaking to you about Jesus's relationship with you. You, my friend, you are his bride. You are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. You are beautiful to him. He loves you. Eye has not seen and ear has not heard, never has it entered into the heart of man the things that he has prepared for you and for me.
Know that you are lovely to God. Know that you are beautiful to God. Know that you can overcome every obstacle that you'll ever face, that you can have victory over every mountain, that you are more than a conqueror through him that loved you, that he gave himself to us, beloved. If he died for us while we were yet sinners, how much more now, beloved, that we're confessing him, and that we own him. And so we say with the Shulamite bride, Lord Jesus, you are ours and we are yours. We love you today, Jesus. You are our beautiful Bridegroom King and we love you and can't wait till you come back.