Rabbi Schneider — Mountain of Spices
Are you familiar with the Jesus that's coming back to earth from the Mountain of Spices? Beloved, you're not gonna want to miss this climactic episode of A Baptism of Love right here on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.
God bless you and Shalom, beloved ones. My name's Messianic Rabbi K.A. Schneider. Welcome today to this edition of Discovering the Jewish Jesus. I am on one of the most important themes that I've ever preached on. I'm unveiling to you the love of God through the Song of Songs. I'm calling this series A Baptism of Love.
It's a very short synopsis of the major themes in the Song of Songs. Perhaps some of you heard me preach the longer series on this which was episodes some years ago. What I'm doing in this series, A Baptism of Love, is just highlighting the main themes. Last week we left off in chapter number 6, verse 5.
This is one of the most mysterious verses. Let me say it again. This is one of the most profound verses and revelations in the entire Word of God; that the Lord has voluntarily placed himself in a position whereas you and I can either wound him or bring to him intense pleasure. Many of us don't relate to God in this way.
We only think of God as the all-powerful, Holy God in heaven that can answer our prayers or judge us. We don't understand that God created us to be a partner with him in love. And this is why Revelation, chapter 19, verse 7-9, says that our salvation experience culminates with the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Listen what Jesus says prophetically through King Solomon to the bride who's a shadow of you and I in chapter 6, verse number 5. He says to her: Turn your eyes away from me, For they have confused me. I know this is so difficult for you and I to comprehend how God could say to us, turn your eyes away from me, for they have confused me. Some translations read overwhelm me.
But I want you to stop with me for a second. I want you to put this in perspective. I want to try to frame it for you in a way that hopefully you can digest. Once again, the Song of Songs is written in poetry. Poetry is the language of love. Poetry shares with us deep insights into love in a different form of language that is able to move man's heart like no other language.
So when the Lord is speaking this way, once again, he's communicating deep truth through a spiritual poetic language. He said: Turn your eyes away from me, For they have confused me, or they have overwhelmed me. You and I sit here and we think that can't be God.
How can my eyes ever overwhelm God? How could little puny me overwhelm God? How can my looking deeply into his eyes confuse him, that he would ask me to turn my eyes away from him? I know how hard it is to receive that. And I know that many of you are thinking no way, and are perhaps even upset with me for sharing this.
That's why John the Baptist introduced Jesus as, listen now, the Bridegroom. John the Baptist referred to himself as, get it now, the friend of the Bridegroom. Jesus is the Bridegroom. Paul said that he was presenting us to Jesus as a pure virgin. Jesus told many parables about the Church and in the parables the Church is referred to as his Bride, or as the ten virgins.
And once again, Revelation, 19:7-9, says that the end of our salvation experience culminates with what Scripture calls the marriage supper of the Lamb.
So if we're in a marriage with Jesus, doesn't it make sense that your heart has the ability to deeply move and affect God? Who would be married to somebody that couldn't move them? Who would be married to somebody whose love didn't affect them?
No, God has voluntarily humbled himself and placed himself in such a position of vulnerability. Get it now, he voluntarily has put himself in such a posture of vulnerability with you that your love can deeply move him, even as our heart can grieve him, as the Scripture teaches.
Let me give an example of this to try to illustrate the poetry of this. Have you ever looked into somebody's eyes and their love was so powerful or so strong you literally had to look away from it? Or you saw such beauty in their eyes that you didn't feel right staring into their eyes; that it was almost disrespectful to do it because it's so sacred?
That's kind of what the Lord is responding to here. There is such beauty, such love, such a sacredness coming from our love to him that comes from a voluntary, free act of our will, that he responds to it in his extreme posture of sensitivity and humility by sharing his heart with us in this poetic language form.
I hope that the Lord has gripped your heart through this because nothing can make you more powerful than realizing that you, beloved one, have the ability to move God. Even as the ancient proverb says, greater is he that rules his own spirit than he that rules a city. In a similar sense, greater is our power when we realize that we literally can move God, the Creator of the universe, than our power is to be able to move a thousand people standing on a stage.
Oh Jesus, this is so far beyond us to comprehend. I can talk about it. I can try to describe it, but Jesus, I pray that by revelation you would break into our hearts to help us to understand how deeply loved we are, and how we've been created in your own image, and that we have become, Father, those that have the ability to move you in love, God, to add to your experience as God by choosing to love you out of our own will.
Oh I know it's a paradox that God's complete in and of himself, and that he needs nothing. And yet somehow God is looking to us to be an equal partner with him in love.
You are, as Scripture says, the Bride of Christ. You're the Bride and the wife of the Lamb, according to the Word of God. As I said, this has nothing to do with gender. This is not about male and female. This is language, beloved, that describes intimacy.
Well, as Jesus continues on to just tell his bride how much he loves her and how beautiful she is, I love this particular element of this posture that he takes with her. And I want to apply it to you and me.