Rabbi Schneider - Experiencing God's Love
The book the Song of Songs is often referred to as the Song of Solomon, however I'm gonna show you in just a few minutes, that the correct title to this book is actually the Song of Songs and not the Song of Solomon. Beloved, this is one of the most beautiful, sacred, books in the entire Word of God. Many people have not studied it, but did you know that when the ancient sages of Judaism were looking at what to put together in what is called the Old Testament, it's referred to in theological terms as the canon of the Tanakh. In other words, they studied and they said, "What books do we have that we know are inspired by God"? And then they took those books and they put them into what is called in Judaism, the Tanakh.
The church has done the same thing. We have the New Testament and the ancient leaders of the church had to get together and decide which books should be included in the New Testament. There are other books that are out there that never made it into the New Testament. For example, the Gospel according to Thomas and there are others as well. But when the leaders of the early church got together, they looked at all the manuscripts, they looked at all the documents, they looked at all the books, and they agreed which ones they knew were from the Lord Himself. The same thing happened in the Jewish tradition.
And so when the ancient leaders of Judaism decided which books should make up what we call the Old Testament and what the Jewish people call the Tanakh, there was a question as to whether the Song of Songs should be included in the Old Testament. But one of the leading figures of the day said, "Not only should the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs be included in the Hebrew Bible, beyond that," he said, "this is the most sacred book in the Hebrew scriptures". And why did the ancient leaders of Judaism believe that the Song of Songs was the most important book in some respects in the entire Tanakh? Because it contains, beloved, the revelation of how much God loves us.
Now just for clarification, I'm not saying that the Song of Songs is more important then the Torah. I'm just trying to make a point that the ancient leaders of the Jewish world considered the Song of Songs the Holy of Holies of the Bible. Why? Because in the Song of Songs we find a revelation of God's heart and His emotional nature, that is found no where else in the Hebrew Bible. This book personally moves me like no other book in the Old Testament. Every time that I get into the Song of Songs my heart just melts, it makes me feel beautiful, it lets me see how beautiful God is. Beloved, I want to encourage you, expect something from the Lord.
Father we love You today and we need You today. Father we want to be touched by Your love. Draw us to Yourself we pray, in a mighty way, through the written word of the Song of Songs.
Now, there's been some controversy concerning what this book is actually about. Some of you have had some teaching on the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon. And some of you may have been taught that what this book is about, is what a marriage relationship should look like. However, I believe that the interpretation of simply applying the Song of Songs to earthly marriage relationships, falls completely short of what the intended purpose is. That's why the ancient leaders of the Jewish world said it was the Holy of Holies of the Bible, because they didn't see it just as a paradigm to view earthly marriage. They saw it and the way that I'm gonna be teaching it, is that the Song of Songs is actually a love letter between God and His people, it's a poetic love story, a poetic dance, that communicates to us the type of relationship that Father God wants to have with you and me.
After all, the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs was written by King Solomon, who had 1,000 wives and concubines. So there's no way that God would want us to use Solomon's life as a paradigm or to take advice from, in terms of what it should be like in an earthly marriage. This is not, beloved, about an earthly marriage, although there are principles that we can take out of it and we can apply to our earthly marriage. But this is about the Lord's love for us, listen, how He feels about you and I, how beautiful we are to Him, and how we can move His heart. Beloved, I want to begin today, once again, I just feel inspired and led in my spirit, I want to pray one more time with you today.
In Jesus name, Father God we worship You today. We bless You today. And Father God we ask You to come and fill us with Your mighty love. Father may the winds of Your Spirit blow through us today as we're in the Song of Songs. Baruch Hashem, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Now as we begin, let's go verse by verse. I'm not gonna go through every verse. I'm gonna be going to highlighted verses, but you'll be able to understand the full story through the scriptures that I pull out today. We have in verse number 1, the name of the book. "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's". So notice in verse number 1 the book is actually named, it's called the Song of Songs. When we think about songs, songs move our hearts, don't they? I mean have you ever watched a movie and there's something really dramatic that's taking place in the movie. And as that drama scene begins to unfold in the movie, there's music that starts to play. And when the music starts to play you feel the drama of what's happening. Songs move the heart.
Some of you, for example, can think about a song that reminds you of your husband, or your wife, or brings you back to when you were a teenager, or even in high school; How certain songs just moved our heart and made such an impression on us, they gave such a feeling to us, that we remember those songs for years and years and years and where we were when we first heard that song, or when we were experiencing that song, that season of our life. So this is a book, beloved, that is designed to move the heart. You know it's interesting as we get into this book, as I indicated this is one of my favorite books in the Bible, it's because it's so unique. In other words, no other writings in the scripture, no other book in the Bible is like the Song of Songs. It's kind of like you have light. All light begins simply as white light, but when you put white light through a prism, that prism will divide that light into all the different colors of the rainbow.
Now it's still, it starts as just white light, but then it's divided into blues and greens and purples and yellows and oranges. And again, it just comes out showing different elements that are included in that white light. All those colors of the rainbow are in that white light. You could apply that same concept, beloved one, to the Word of God. The entire Bible comes from the throne of the Lord. The Bible says, "No scripture is from one's own interpretation, but men that were moved by the Ruach Hakodesh, they wrote and spoke from God". So the entire Bible comes to us from the Ruach Hakodesh, the Holy Spirit. However, when you look at the Bible and look at the different books of the Bible, you notice that there seems to be a different color, or a different type of anointing on different books.
First example, when you go to certain books in the Torah, for example the book of Leviticus, we have a strong anointing, a strong emphasis on the holiness of God, the laws of God, the justice of God; How the holy is separated from the profane. And then you go for example to the book of Revelation and we have a strong anointing, or the strong color of what's gonna be happening in the future. And then we go for example to the Gospel of John, the mystical Gospel. There's something so super spiritual in the most positive sense of the word from the Gospel of John. There's another color, or shade of the anointing. Then we go to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're more historical in nature. So every book in the Bible is coming from that white light, which is Hashem, God's Spirit. But different books in the Bible have different colors, or different types of anointing. The Song of Songs is so unique, because more than any other book in the Word of God, listen, it reveals to us the emotional side of our Creator.
We have two primary characters that we're gonna be focusing on as we go through the study of the mystery of the Song of Songs. Although there are other characters in the Song of Songs, we're gonna be focusing on the two primary characters, which are the king; which in the initial historical context was King Solomon. And then the other person we're gonna be focusing on is the Shulamite bride, which was the woman that King Solomon was gonna marry, his bride. But again, this is a prophetic book. It had application in the initial historical context. But there were something far bigger that God was communicating here and what He was communicating, was His love for His people. This the way the ancient Rabbis, beloved, have always understood it and this is the way we as the church understand it today.
The church is what? The bride of Christ. Revelation 19, where are we going beloved one? We're going to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And so to apply this book as a paradigm to understand God's desire for His people, His desire to marry us, is not far fetched at all. It is completely down the center lane of what the heart of God is and what His Word reveals. And so the primary characters are number one, the king, which originally was Solomon, but in reality is the King God Himself, the Creator. And then the second primary character in the book is the Shulamite bride, who is a shadow of you and me. So we're gonna be focusing on the prophetic, the Father's love, Yeshua's love for His people and our response to His love and loving Him back and who we are to Him and who He is to us.
So let's continue with verse 2. The Shulamite bride who is a shadow of you and I, she cries out, "May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth"! Think about this. She's crying out to God. She's crying out to Father. She's crying out to Hashem. "Kiss me," she's saying, "with the kisses of your mouth"! What does this mean? What's beyond the poetic language here? What's beyond the poetic language is that she's desiring, listen, the deepest type of intimacy with God. She's just longing for His presence. She's longing to feel close to Him. She's longing to be surrounded by Him. She's longing to feel Him. She's longing to feel complete in Him. "May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth"!
I want you to understand, put away any type of sexual imagery here. This is just simply what we call anthropomorphic language, meaning that God is using human language to convey something that's far greater. And in the earthly realm, the closest type of intimacy that two people can have is sexual intimacy in a marriage relationship. But this is not about something sexual. The Lord is just communicating His love for us in sexual language, because sexual language in a monogamous marriage communicates to us the closest intimate relationship that two people on earth can enjoy together. So she cries out, "May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth"!
I want you to understand and I speak to myself as well, we search for satisfaction in so many things. So many people are believing that if they had a different house, if they had a different spouse, if they had a different job, if something was different in their life, that they would somehow feel complete and it would make them happy. And I'm not saying that earthly blessings can't add to our life, they certainly can. But at the end of the day beloved, everybody discovers that there's nothing in this world that completely satisfies. There's nothing in the earth that satisfies. I know of people that have mansions, beautiful homes, you could, famous paintings in the homes. And you know what? Sometimes in those homes there's just an emptiness there. Why? Because things can't satisfy the soul. Why? We were made for God. In the beginning God created male and female in His own image, He created them. We were created in God's image, because the purpose for which we were created is to know Him. I mean it's so simple, but that should be our objective on earth. Our primary objective on earth should be to know Him.
That was the passion of the Shulamite bride, as she cried out, "May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth"! More than anything else in life we're gonna see, because she compares His love to everything else in the world and she said, "There's nothing in the world that compares to knowing Father's love. There's nothing in the world that compares to knowing our Creator. There's nothing in the world that compares to knowing the intimacy that we have in Hashem, with God in our life". And so I want to just encourage you and I right now. We need to get a focus we call in Hebrew kavanah, kavanah focus. Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God".
We need to understand, beloved, the only thing that is gonna ever make you and I feel complete is when God is first in our life. We keep building that relationship. We keep working on that relationship. We keep developing that relationship. We keep talking to God. We keep talking to God. We keep talking to God like He's our best friend. We wake up in the morning and the first thing we do, we talk to God. We talk to God all day long about everything, whether it's out loud, whether it's in our mind, whether it's in our heart. We keep on reaching out to God. We should be continuously the scripture says, in a spirit of prayer. What does that mean? We're always talking to God. We make Him our closest friend.
You see God wants to come close. He stands at the door and knocks, but He can't come in unless we invite Him in. Jesus said, "He that opens the door, I will come into him and sup with him". So she's opened her heart. She's calling out to God. "Come" she said "and kiss me with the kisses of your mouth"! Let's continue on. Then she says, "For your love," I'm at the bottom of verse 2 now, chapter 1. "For your love is better than wine". Listen once again. "Come and kiss me with the kisses of your mouth! For your love is better than wine". She had a couple times in her life she tasted it. She knew that when she tasted it, it was more satisfying. It felt better than being intoxicated. "Your love," she said, "is better than wine".
I want to encourage you beloved ones. I want to encourage you to know that if you will put God first in your life, He will reveal Himself to you and you will taste Him. Now we can't always control when we're gonna feel the Lord, because He comes to us in seasons where we can emotionally feel to Him, when He feels it's best. We don't always walk around you know feeling great. It's just not reality. But yet God, when He chooses to reveal Himself to us, He comes to us and He literally allows us to taste Him. And the experience that we have is the same experience that the Shulamite bride had. It's better than wine.
I remember some time ago, I came home from work one day. I was just tired. I felt weak in my body. I was struggling. I just felt weak and tired and my body was run down. And I laid down on my couch and I was listening to some beautiful worship music. And beloved one, the Spirit of God came to me. I mean it was so, it was such a conscious experience of the Spirit of God. I mean I knew as I was laying there on my couch, I knew I was experiencing the love of God. There was no mistaking it.
And I remember talking to God during the experience and I was just saying, "God this is so much better. This is so much better than wine. This is so much better than anything the world has to offer. This is so beautiful. This is so precious". I mean the Lord just came to visit me and bathe me in His tender love. It was such an incredible experience and that's what the Song of Songs is about. It communicates to us that we can experience God. "Come and kiss me with the kisses of your mouth". She said, "For your love is better than wine". She had experienced and she wanted it back. She wanted more and more of it. She was calling out to Hashem to experience His beauty and His love.
And so as we get ready to close today's episode, we're just beginning this series, I want you to know beloved church, God is real. We don't have a religion. We've been called into a relationship. The Bible says that God is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. Yeshua said in John 14, that if we would love Him, He said He would come to us and disclose Himself to us and that He and the Father would make their home in us, so we can experience our lives being in Him. He's in us and we're in Him. Now on next week's broadcast I'm gonna be speaking about a deep mystery that I'm sure some of you have never thought of before, as we venture into the depths in the Song of Songs.
Father I just pray that You would breathe Your beauty over Your people. Father I just ask right now that You would send Your Spirit in waves of glory, beauty, and love over Your people. Hashem I ask that You would bless us by allowing us to feel You. Breathe upon us Holy Spirit. Yeshua I think at the end of the Gospel of John, how You walked into the room where Your disciples were and breathed on them, saying, "My peace I give to you". Father breathe on Your people right now, cause them to know that they can experience Your love, that they can experience Your reality in their lives. Father we bless You today in the name of Yeshua Hamashiach. And beloved one that's watching, God bless you and shalom.