Address—Stephen Rule
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Perhaps a brother could start Number 83. Begin the meeting this afternoon, Number 83.
Dear Lord Jesus, we just do ask.
That the effect of the next hour would be to make each of our hearts drawn out to thyself.
That we would look through the eyes.
See from thy perspective and think forever.
And to the riches of that love we've just sung about. We do ask it, Lord Jesus.
In thy name, Amen.
Turn with me to a verse that was read in the.
Reading meeting, the last meeting we just had and 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3.
And verse five gives the.
Could say burden.
It's more like a pillow that's on my heart this afternoon.
And so let's read it together, Second Thessalonians chapter 3 and verse 5.
And the Lord direct your hearts, and to the love of God.
I was going to read the second part of the verse, but it was able to explain in the last meeting, so you've already had a chance to enjoy it. I'll stop with that first part because it's the primary pillow on my heart. The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God. That's comforting because I don't think any of us here have the power to properly express.
What that love is, the Lord direct your hearts into it. It's been my prayer for quite some time.
My prayer for a number of years for certain ones there was a.
Intractable situation. An impossible situation. A situation with all kinds of things.
Going on, on the surface and in meditating on it this verse.
Was what was impressed on my heart. There were all kinds of things on the surface. There were all kinds of things that needed correction, that were done wrong, et cetera.
But what was missing for this individual was this.
Since deeply in the heart that God.
Was love toward them. And you know, that's the need of everyone of our hearts here.
The Apostle Paul had and did love these Thessalonians Saints. He spent some time with them, just a few weeks perhaps, according to Acts.
And then he'd gone away. There had been tribulation troubles come in. He'd written to them here in this second epistle. There was some wrong teaching that had come in and needed to get corrected so that our hope could be restored. And so he leads them back and he draws them out, and he restores that hope. And at the end of the second chapter, he's restored their hope.
But it's almost like he the the ship that they were on was was drifting.
And it had left the dock and it was going, and he swam out and he got it and he brought it back.
That wasn't enough. He wanted it anchored so they'd stay there in the safe harbor. So what does he do? He says the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God. We all need it. And so he anchors. We sang it last night. So those that were here last night and him saying we sang anchored firm and deep.
And the Savior's love. So I want to give one more by way of introduction.
Image perhaps the stick in your mind. I grew up in Columbus, OH until I was nine. Then we moved to the Addison, IL area. But my grandparents lived just a couple miles from us and they had a ravine out in back of their house and it was beautiful tree ravine, nice and wide, no trash back in that era is just was just lovely and so sometimes when we went over to grandpa and grandma's we could go out in the back and.
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This There was a stream that ran through that ravine and it was always flowing.
At least when we went down there and the thing made a tight bend, the bottom of the Cliff, my grandparents property ended in a kind of a Cliff down to this ravine. There's this big Cliff, the stream took a turn, so there's a nice great big pool there and it was a rocky shale.
Rock bed for that stream. So there are all kinds of these wonderful flat rocks and I have no clue how many I picked up and slung at that stream trying to get it to skip along.
In the stream had an awful lot of fun as a little child doing that, but as those rocks skipped along and pick up a little bit of water and then they're airborne and they lose energy and gradually they sink down.
Into that water. And sometimes our experience of the love of God is like that.
They pick up a little bit at a conference like this, have a nice little reading. Somebody gives you a little uplift and bounces up a little bit, and then the water sprinkles off. It dries out, and then it hits the water again. But the when the natural energy that's behind that dies out, the rock sinks into that water and it stays there. My desire for every one of our hearts this afternoon. We're just going to spend some time. The Lord has to direct your heart into it, just as He has to direct mine into it. But that love.
That's going to you're going to have to apply it. I don't have any exhortation on my heart this afternoon. I just want to present.
His heart. You can apply it in your marriage, you can apply it to your children, you can apply it in all kinds of ways.
There's something more fundamental than that, and that's his heart. Just simply his heart and his person. And when we know it and we sink into it, we have what we need.
Let me turn to I'm going to turn not spending the majority of our time. We'll spend in one chapter of Song of Solomon. I'm going to turn here to Ephesians chapter one.
To make a point.
And in one sense, I apologize for what I'm about to do. I'm going to tear the heart out of this portion.
I'm going to do it in a way that leaves you remembering it, and that's the purpose behind it. I don't think that you're going to walk away remembering the wrong thing. Sometimes when something's read wrong, that's what you remember. I don't believe that will be the effect of what we're about to do. I'm going to read Ephesians chapter one, verses 3 to 14, and I'm going to leave out 13 phrases.
They're all themed in the same way and you'll catch the theme quickly, but.
Feel this passage without this phrase.
Ephesians, chapter one.
Verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.
According as He has chosen us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame and love having predestinated us, and the adoption of children by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He hath made us accepted, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us.
The mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times you might gather together in one all things both which are in heaven and which are in earth. Also. We have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things, after the counsel of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory, Who first trusted.
He also trusted after that he heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.
Also after that she believed you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance.
To the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory.
I ripped.
One of the most wonderful things out of that passage.
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And if you'd never heard it before, you might have nodded your head and said, well.
Then you weren't following along in the Bible. You might have nodded your head and said that sounds pretty, but what did I tear out of it?
13 expressions, 11 of them all have the word in. I'm going to use it in a way to help us remember. But I tore out the in Christ, in him, before him, to himself, in the beloved, in whom? In himself, in Christ, even in him in whom? In Christ, in whom? In whom?
We can't have the blessings without the blesser.
And they're anchored there. I don't know. I forgot to ask her. I didn't forget. I just didn't get the opportunity. I assume most of the homes around here are wood frame homes. Hey, ho, homes. Most of your family dwellings, aren't they wood frame? You don't do concrete and Adobe around here, right? I thought about reading this passage without one other element. It would have been like what I did was I took the house and I lifted it off its foundation and I set it on the side. And it still might have looked OK if you hadn't.
Seen this passage before, but imagine now we tried to go back and reread this passage and pull out of it every, every single he, his, and him. There's fifteen of them. If you took that out, that would be like taking the wood frame out of the house and then you couldn't even read the passage.
This passage is God expressing who he is. Period. And you and I come into it. There's you, you and you, and so on in here. There's the ye and the you throughout the passage. There's another a dozen or so he his and hims at the end and the apostles prayer. But the heart of it is God expressing who he is.
And he starts with individuals, he begins this chapter and he deals all the way down. You don't get the there's this Saints mentioned as a collective group. When the inheritance comes in, the church isn't mentioned till the next to last verse.
It's made-up of individuals and individuals who have the immense privilege of being taken out of in Adam and put in Christ in him, and we can't have his blessings like the Amazon drone delivery. Drop it on your doorstep and get a little image on your phone that it's there.
Well, maybe it's not drone delivery, whatever kind of delivery you want, that would be no person involved.
But God doesn't deliver his blessings to us and then leave and say enjoy them.
They're in him.
This is love and it can't be understood without that. I've sometimes said and it's and it's an exaggeration and meditating on it in the last few days, I realized it's an oversimplification. But I'm going to give it to you as an oversimplification because it captures the thought. There's a bunch more in him in Christ in the next couple chapters of this book, the 1St 3 chapters of this book of Ephesians.
You'll see more of them. We've read the biggest concentration of them in the foundation here at the beginning.
But there's more in those first three chapters. In the last three chapters, the expressions vary a little bit.
But there's a bunch of As, and I'm going to read a few of them in Ephesians chapter 5. There are several in Ephesians 4. There's another one in Ephesians 6. But to get the flavor of it, in the second-half of the epistle, there are some ***** just a few of them. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse two and walk in love.
As Christ.
A little further down.
Just to get several to get the flavor, uh, verse 22. Why submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord?
The little further down verse 25 Husbands love your wives even as Christ. And there's more later on this epistle to the Ephesians could be oversimplified into the north and the as.
There's other similar expressions in the second-half.
This is what I want my heart to always remember. I want to share it with you.
You can't have the as if you haven't spent time at the inn and if there's no as in your life.
The solution to it is to go back to the inn and spend time there.
There's 13 Inns to choose from. It's a full resort, you can go to anyone of them and spend time there.
But if you spend time at the end, there's no choice but to have the As, and if you're not in the in and you're acting like you can get the *** it's not going to work. I don't know who told the story, but I read it recently in the last few weeks. There was, I think it's from the 1800s in England. The author I read it in wasn't, but I think he was looking back and quoting someone else. There was some factory in London.
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And someone was walking down the street with a local.
As they walked down the street with the local, a whole bunch of people came pouring out of that factory and crossed the street to buy their lunch and the guest to London commented. They said wow, you know, in the middle of this dirty industrial part of town, it really smells beautiful.
And their guide, their local guide said that's a perfume factory. Those people have spent their time inside that perfume factor. They're going out to lunch. They can't help but smell beautiful.
If we have spent time in the end, we can't help but smell beautiful in the ***.
Let's turn to where we'll spend a little longer.
And Song of Solomon chapter 4.
My burden is not to.
Take this and apply it to your life. My burden is to present.
The heart of a person.
The heart of the Lord we are going to look in Song of Solomon chapter 4.
Before I do, just want to set a little context here.
Before I was married, I had quite a bit of time to get to know my wife. We lived in the same city, we knew each other. As I was finishing my college education, felt I needed to do so to be able to support a family. So we had two and a half hour, 2 1/2 hours, no about that each day. We had about 2 1/2 years.
To get to know one another and as we got to know one another.
I was fascinated with all of it. In fact, my sisters and others put together a song for the.
Rehearsal dinner and they set it to popular Christmas music and the line repeated at the end of it was and a long talk. You can sing it. I'm not going to and a long talk in the driveway. I had a lot to know get to know about my wife and a lot of what I wanted to get to know was what her life had been like up to that point.
And in fact, I have a T-shirt I use it for.
Uh, pajama shirt and it has a picture of a 12 year old girl on it. And I, I liked that picture. I never knew that person as a 12 year old. I know them a whole lot better. Now. What we're about to look into is something akin to that. We're going to look at the picture of the Messiah and his Jewish bride, but it's the same person.
I heard stories from those times when I was getting to know my wife.
About how she liked the animal behavior class at school and how to sit and watch the ducks.
And we spent time at the end of our street, just a few blocks down, watching together, enjoying together flights of ducks come in and land on the water. That's the same person. That's the point. So as what we pick up here is going to be not directly written to you and me, but it's the same person with that same heart. A second piece of context here as we take up the some detail in Song of Solomon Chapter 4, that second piece.
As this bridegroom speaks to his bride, he tells her in this book.
Eight times.
You're fair 8 times, he repeats. You're fair. Four of them are in this chapter we're going to go through and he gets to Chapter 7 and in Chapter 7 is the last of Nate one in Chapter 7, verse six. And he says, and I'll read it just as part of setting the context.
Chapter 7. Verse 6.
Let us go up. I'm sorry I turned so far over. I'm in Isaiah, Song of Solomon, Chapter 7 and verse 6. This is the 8th. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love for delights? I think it's just, it's just precious that God wants to express himself. He wants so much that his heart be known. They'll repeat it over and over and over and over again.
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As probably husbands here in this room have told your wife that she's beautiful.
And she hasn't, really.
Agreed with you.
So you quit because she didn't agree with you?
I doubt it. I doubt it. You're probably There's a couple seated here that are.
Past 70, they're in there, OK, one of those past 70 and the other ones in the decade beyond that and they've been in our home and there's probably this, OK, not probably the discussions still going on. He's still telling her that she's beautiful and she's still not convinced. So he's still telling her. And that's how it is with us. When God says this is my heart for you, we have a hard time believing it. We think I need.
More as so that I can be more loved. We can't be more as to be more loved. We're loved and that's why. And we'll see it at the end. That's why there's the as because he set his heart upon us. And you know, it says here, and I'll read it again, how fair, how pleasant art thou, O love for delights. And then she says.
Verse 10. I am my beloveds, and his desire is toward me.
You've probably enjoyed that trilogy of verses, so I'm not going to go through it where this is the culmination of it. She gets up to it and she says, Oh yes, he loves me and God wants us to live there. Oh yes, he loves me. Just live there. And we can't help but be like him. So let's look at this 4th chapter. It's part of how he builds that.
Picture.
Of what his heart is toward his bride. Again, it's Jehovah with primarily Judah.
What we'll look at is the bridegroom with the bride, and you'll have to make your own applications.
Verse one. Behold thou art fair, my love, Behold thou art fair. He anchors the start of what he has to say by saying it twice. And then then at the end of the the section he says it again. And then in the next part of the chapter he says it again a fourth time, Thou art fair. And then he says, Thou hast doves eyes within thy locks, or within the veil.
I suppose there are a lot of thoughts on Dove's eyes, but I like the fact that this dove here in this verse.
Is the same one different than many other doves that are mentioned in the Old Testament, but it's the same one?
That you get in Genesis chapter 8, that's the same dove. And so I'm going to read it because of.
Keeping my thoughts straight, you could probably quote it, but Genesis chapter 8.
And.
Verse.
7.
He stayed yet another, yet other seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And then the dove came into him in the evening. Lower mouth was an inner mouth was an olive leaf. Lucked off so no one knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. Sent out the Raven, and as you know, the Raven didn't come back.
Probably found a lot of dead stuff to feed on. Send out the all of I'm sorry, Send out the dove and back it came.
It came back to the person who sent it because that's where it's, if I can apply it, that's where its heart was. It wasn't looking for anything but what satisfied the one that sent it. Then it sends it out again and it finds something, the olive branch, and that's the verse we read, and it comes back with that olive branch to where it was sent.
I'd like to think of this these doves eyes as this their eyes that look for and return to the one that satisfies it was that Israel was that Judah. He could turn to the prophets and see them looking for other lovers all over the place. Their eyes were roving everywhere but what he says to this one because he's put his beauty on her and he's restoring her and she'll be fully.
Later in the book, but he's restoring her and so in a sense, she has this new, new life and.
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He looks and he says this because what I've made you, you have doves eyes.
You look for food that's pleasing to me. It's beautiful. She might have argued with them. And in fact, in the next chapter you see failure in her. But he says, this is what I see because I put it there. That's his heart toward his people. And more than that, just by the way.
A dove can fly along at.
I read, I think it's accurate. I can fly along at around 90 kilometers an hour.
That's above the posted limit between London and Saint Thomas. So if you were driving from the hotel to here today.
At least that much.
Close to the posted limit.
You were driving around the speed that a dove, this kind of dove, can fly. And as I understand it, a dove like that can spot at that speed a grain of food on the ground nearby. Isn't that beautiful? He says. You have eyes to go through this world with the ability to spot a grain of food as you blast by at 90 kilometers an hour and you can spot it and eat it. That's what I see.
And then it says.
The next expression, thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead. You know, the Eastern way of poetic way. It's kind of different than ours. I doubt there's any husband here that's turned to his wife and said with affection, Your hair, this is a flock of goats.
It just wouldn't convey.
Quite the message.
That this program is conveying.
But if you lookout at that.
Mount Gilead, the mountains of Gilead, they lay to the east of the Jordan. I'm sorry. They lay to the Yes, they lay to the east of the Jordan. And so you could look out at those mountains, those hills, that's where the 2 1/2 tribes settled. They settled there because of their cattle. And so you have rich cattle there and the.
The goat that the Syrian goat, that's common I guess in that region even to this day, has a very long haired goat.
So if you can see a whole flock of them just flowing smoothly down the hillside together, you can draw different things from the figure of it. But he's describing her beautiful, luxuriant hair. And I'd like to give a thought that the heart of God would look down and see like the hair of a Nazarite, not an Absalom, the hair of a of a Mary.
It was there in full.
Consecration to him. It was given over to him and here he says you feed on what's clean and pleasing to me. Not only that, he says you're consecrated. You belong in your submission and your consecration and your devotion, they're mine and it's beautiful. I look on it and I see beauty in it. That's what he says.
We're not supposed to argue with him, are we? You wouldn't if he were in the room, and I wouldn't either. But I must confess that my heart frequently.
In practice argues with these things, but he set his love on us, He's put his beauty on us. And this is this is his heart and he wants to express it to his people.
And then she says, Then he says All but the last verse of Song of Solomon 4 is the bridegroom speaking, I believe.
Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are shorn.
Which came up from the washing or of everyone bare twins.
And none is barren among them.
As a teenager.
Brother Norm Wood was in the assembly where I was at the time and still AM, and he loved the Song of Solomon, at least sure seemed to me as a teenager that he loved the Song of Solomon. Somebody can correct me later if you didn't, but I wouldn't believe you anyway. He spoke on it with affection and love.
Because.
He loved the Savior, but he's the one that explained this verse to me for the first time. To me, this was just a strange Eastern poetry and he, he said, well, those.
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The the teeth there that are twins, everyone, they're twins. Well, obviously there's a an upper for every lower. I said leave it to a dentist. That's what I got out of it at the time, but I remembered it.
Sure, they're matched because there's no teeth missing. And that's beautiful, isn't it?
But there's there's more than that. They were.
Come up from the washing.
Nope, that doesn't take a dentist to tell you that if your teeth have come up from the washing, you're in good shape. And.
That says none is barren among them because they're twins and they're even shorn. You know, when I was.
I don't know.
1819 Somewhere in there I was at a young people's get together. We're playing football in the snow in the state of Michigan and it was touch football. So what can go wrong, right? I was blocking. I wasn't carrying the football or anything. And in my mind at the time, doing such a good job that the person on the other side just couldn't get at the quarterback. And I was kind of, kind of pleased with the quality because he was probably twice my size.
But I fancied myself to be a little quicker than him in the snow. And it was all real nice. And then he lowered it. He got, he was very determined and he lowered his head and he charged and he was twice as big as I was. And that head went right into my top lip and cracked the bone, shoved the front 2 teeth in. And I was writing to some emergency dentist in Michigan and he patched it all together and he said you need to talk to your dentist when you get home.
College and allegedly.
The.
Scholarship I had should cover the dentistry, so I went to the.
Dentist and on campus, they have a whole Medical University campus there in Dennis and whatever and the supervisor looked me over and said.
Go to your regular dentist. I didn't have one. Go to your regular dentist and I'll let him take care of this. I've got to coordinate the surgeons because we're going to have to redo this and I'm going to get the orthodontist and I've got to get a dentist. And then to put it all together to be so far out into the future that we're not going to service you. That's, that's great.
Thanks so much. So we found somebody that would take care of it and they put a little appliance in and I was supposed to clamp down my teeth on this appliance and just shove those teeth back up where they belonged. They went part way back up, but now you're going to look at my teeth when I clamp down. And here's the point of the story. When I clamp down, the nothing lines up the way it's supposed to line up.
So when I eat, it just doesn't put pressure on teeth where they're not supposed to put pressure on. Now one of my teeth is no longer a twin toward the back and.
A peanut. I'll get caught in there if I'm eating peanuts. And here's the point.
When your teeth are beautiful and they all line up nicely and they're all twins, you chew your food and you chew it well.
He says to his bride, not only do you eat the right food, but you chew it well. You take it in, you get that full value out of it. You get everything out of it that I put there for you in it. Isn't that beautiful? He doesn't say you should be doing this.
It's not like going to my dentist who always is ready to offer me teeth whitener.
They'll be happy to offer me that so that they'll be nice and pure and.
I say no, but there's other things that I have to say yes to because when you go, there's stuff to get fixed.
He's not fixing her here. He's saying this is what I see in you, what I've put in you. If it were addressed to Christians, it would be addressed. That eternal life that you have loves to meditate on my food.
It's beautiful to me because I put it there and I see it there and it's a delight to my heart.
Then he says verse 3.
Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet in my speech is coming.
King Solomon is writing this.
You remember who his great, great grandma was, right?
We know a lot more about Solomon's family tree than we know about one another's family tree here, probably in many cases.
You know his great, great grandma.
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That was Rahab.
Solomon also wrote the book of Proverbs, right? And when he wrote that book of Proverbs, he wrote about a strange woman who, with flattering lips, lured Proverbs 7A young man.
She was plowing the trade of his great great grandma.
But his great great grandma Rahab.
Took a threat of scarlet, she hung it into her window, hunting in her window. And she says this is what I am now. This is everything to me. Now that threat of Scarlett hung in the window. You know, the threat of scarlet here is the exact same words is what she hung in her window. And that's what we hang in our window. That's what our lips express and our speech is comely when we're feeding on.
When our food is getting properly digested.
Well, I shouldn't turn it in exhortation. This is what happens when the new life is being expressed.
This is what I've made you, the bridegroom says. In a sense, this is what I see in you. I see speech that's comely.
Then he says thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks. Piece of pomegranate maybe it says a piece of pomegranate, right, Not the whole pomegranate fruit. So I take it that this is the pomegranate cut open. And if you've cut open a pomegranate or had it on your table, you see that red and white mixture?
So perhaps it's an expression of the health of this individual.
But the temples?
And.
Mr. Darby's translation, The King James agree on it.
And trying to get a better handle on it. I looked on a number of modern translations. Most agree that it's the temples actually up here, but one of them, probably trying to understand it a little better, set it with the cheeks. But really one of the few places where temples are mentioned. We already had in this prophecy meeting earlier this afternoon. Sisara put her nail. Not through the cheeks, through the temples.
Of Cicero, and have done much good to put it through the cheeks.
But she put it through his temples.
And.
Clamp down your jaws here for justice a second.
Please fix me afterwards, those doctors that are sitting in the room, but clamp down your your jaws here. And I did look it up. Can you feel it up there? Feel that muscle tightening up there? That's your temples chomping down and affecting the muscle up here. And I wonder if that's why the figure wasn't chosen, because here's his bride.
With beautiful teeth, eating clean and beautiful food.
In perfect consecration, submission to him with a desire that everything that comes out of her mouth.
Is something that goes with that threat of Scarlet and now the mind.
The mind is affected, right? You can feel that the temple is affected. Right now there's the figure carrying you up to the mind. Her mind is beautiful, healthy, probably. Why the pomegranate, the red and the red and the white, But healthy. A healthy mind, guarded, kept.
By what she was doing.
And then verse four, thy neck. It's like the Tower of David.
Builded for an Armory.
Once again, enjoy it as Eastern poetry.
And you're not so foolish as to go home and say to your.
Well, I saw a young couple having the Bible reading together this morning and I will guarantee you he did not say to the young lady that he was sitting there reading their Bible together this morning. I guarantee you he didn't say your neck. Is this the tower of David this morning? So what's being expressed here? Remember the Messiah with.
His earthly bride. I want to read you a verse about the same people.
And Isaiah chapter 3.
In fact, maybe we'll read a couple verses here.
Isaiah chapter 3 and verse 16.
I'm moreover, the Lord said, because the daughters of Zion are haughty.
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And walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet.
Let's turn over also to Ezekiel chapter 16.
Ezekiel 16 and verse 11.
1St I'm going to back up verse 9. Then washed I thee with water, yeah.
I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil. I clothed thee also embroidered work, and shod thee with Badger's skin. And I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered the silk. I decked the also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon my hands and a chain on my neck. I put a jewel on my forehead, and earrings in thine ears. And he goes on.
And verse 15 without its trust.
In thine own beauty and play it's the harlot because of thy renown. And he continues on. The Lord had brought up his people Israel out of Egypt, and he set them in that land and he gave them everything. And you could loosely correlate it with their in atom condition. They set them there in responsibility in that land. And he decked them and he put that chain around their neck and he made them beautiful.
And they squandered it all. So here he is in the Song of Solomon.
And he's given them a renewed heart and he's bringing them up. Did he give up on that chain about their neck? No, he didn't.
I need to back up for a moment. I missed a piece. Remember what happened with Joseph when he was in the dungeon? And he's brought up out of the dungeon and he washes and he comes before Pharaoh, and what's Pharaoh do?
Puts the chain around his neck and he makes him a ruler. That beautiful expression of his favor.
We still do it to this day. Sometimes husband may buy a necklace for his wife and put that expression of his love on her. And so back in Song of Solomon Four, I believe this is what he's expressing. My neck is like the Tower of David builded for an Armory.
More than one thought here. I'm going to give you one of them.
He says now for your defense and your beauty, you're not going to stretch that neck out in self will. The neck is a figure of self will in many places in the scriptures. Steven says in Acts 7 stiff necked and adulterous generation, that stiff necked set will that stretched out and expressed itself and he says no, that's not it.
Your neck is a beautiful expression.
With my strength and my victories.
It's no longer an expression of you.
It's an expression of Maine and I find it beautiful. He looks on her and he says this is beautiful to me.
And then he says thy 2 brass, and there are three things.
Are like two young rows, it's the 1St that are twins.
That's the second which feed among the lilies. That's the third three compliments, 3 expressions of the beauty that he sees in her.
Two young Rose.
Freshness there isn't there.
He says every time you have your heart turned toward me.
It's fresh.
Have you ever, if you're older, thought when you were 10 or 12 or maybe 20 or a year ago? You know, when I get to heaven, I wonder if it's going to be the same old, same old.
Because don't we come to the end of it?
She's a bride to him in the Book of Revelation. She's still a bride at the end of the Millennium. She's a bride forever. Her affections are fresh, and that matters to him. They're fresh. They're young. They are what they were when they were young. They're too young, Rose.
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And they're twins.
If you ever had affections that go.
Like my the skipping stone I mentioned at the beginning and it goes up and it goes down and it goes up and it goes down and it comes and it goes and.
Everybody has right affections. They come and they go.
But he says their uniform, they're unchanging. That's what I put in you.
You now have a heart with affections for me and it's steady. It's not going to change. It's fresh as uniform. And he goes on and he says which feed among the lilies, they feed what's pure and fresh. Your affections are feeding on me and it's pure and it's fresh.
Isn't that beautiful? That's what he sees in her.
And he says, Until the Daybreak, and the shadows flee away, and I will give thee to the mountain of Myrrh, to the hill of Frankincense.
Thou art all fair, my love. There is no spot in the.
How can he say such a thing?
Doesn't he know better?
How can the Lord make an expression like that?
About his bride, this is going to go through something in the next chapter and it's maybe.
Our human habit to take a compliment, to take an expression, and because it's made by another human, we slap a 90% discount on it.
Haven't done that to some expression. A husband and a wife and the husband says to his wife you're all fair to me or you're beautiful. Calls her beauty or something like that and slaps a 90% discount.
Well, you say that because you're you. That's the point. In that particular case, that is the point. But it's more with the Lord. He's made us like Himself.
He's brought us to the end. We are now in Christ every.
Movement of our hearts that renewed Newman. All of it delights just like Christ delights in everything that he delights in were anchored there, were brought back to that harbor, were put at that end. If you can say it that way, and that's what I've made you. That's what you are.
Last half of the chapter.
Shows how it comes out.
That's the end. The last half of the chapter shows how the AS is brought out.
We won't have time, nor did I intend to, to go through all the details of it, but I do want to touch on a few of them.
And verse eight he says, come with me from Lebanon.
My spouse with me from Lebanon looked from the top of a manna, from the top of Sheener and Herman, from the lion's den's, from the mountains of the leopards. Now he's going to work to bring out the ***. He's described the inn. He's going to bring out the ***. And when he does it, he starts out by saying those beautiful Robert referred to this afternoon.
This morning I guess 3 words.
Here's 3 come with me.
He doesn't say get out of there, it's dangerous. Leave.
Go get. Be gone, he says. Come with me.
Ephesians one and all that we are is it's like tearing out the foundation to remove the in him, the in the beloved, the in whom.
The come loses all its force and lets us come with.
Me. He's drawing her out. And what's he drawing her out?
He's drawing her out from a place of danger and it's a little hard to see here, but it's clear in the first phrase. Come with me.
From Lebanon, my spouse with me from Lebanon. But then he says look from the top of a Manor.
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And from the top of Sheener and Herman struggling with this verse, I looked at four different commentators, all the ones that probably are at the back here on the side, and they all agreed that this was a dangerous thing. And keep reading this and say, look from the top of Amana and they're saying this is dangerous, but he's telling her look from there. But if you look up that word, I guess in its root sense.
It's travel away.
And that's what he's telling her. He's telling her travel away from what?
North of the Land of Israel is the is a range of mountains in southern Lebanon.
That range of mountains is a manna. That's the range of the mountains, and in that range of the mountains there's a highest peak, Mount Hermon.
And Mount Hermon has multiple peaks. I understand one of them.
As sheener, I assume it's the tallest one. You can correct me later if you look it up and find out it isn't. I couldn't, I didn't see that detail.
What he says is something similar to the following.
When the Lord was tempted.
Tested and proven.
In the Gospels, the devil took them up into a high mountain and he showed them the kingdoms of the world. And we've already had exhortations here about some of the dangers that are there, and we've already had that exhortation that what will keep us from that world is the love of the Father.
That's what he's doing here and it's fully relational, he says. Come.
With me, this is my heart for you. So when I draw out the as in your life, when I bring it out, you need to know my heart 1St. And then as I bring out the sweetness of that character that I put there, you're going to feel some things and they're not all.
Without pain in the next chapter shows some of that, but he goes on. He warns her the dangers, the lion's den, the mountains of the leopards.
He says, come with me from that. And then he says, Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse, those ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.
You know that.
One of the things I'm looking forward to the most about the glorified body is that it doesn't meltdown when it gets hooked up to the beauty of the Lord. You know your body of glory is going to have a full.
Adequate wiring to take in the fullness of that glory. These bodies of clay don't, and they sometimes when you're enjoying them.
It comes short.
Before I come pick that verse back up, I want to tell you something that gives a little context.
My wife and I lived for six years in Ecuador. I taught high school there and my high school science.
My boss was named Batcha. She had a beautiful home. I was there at least once. So it was part of a ten story roughly, I don't remember exactly, 10 story, beautiful high rise condo building, building that her husband had been the contractor for there and her husband was an engineer there. An engineer kind of functions as a contractor as well as an engineer. And he built bridges in the country. It was important and wealthy and it was in her home. Her home was built. Quito comes.
The slopes of Mount Pichincha and there's a shelf and then there's a valley and then you can lookout at the eastern Ridge of the Andes Mountains. There's two gorgeous snow capped peaks there. Her home was a two-story penthouse condo at the top of this building her husband built. And you can look out the the living area. I didn't go up to the upstairs in the bedrooms. You could see there's a beautiful balcony up there and you could look down on the entertaining area. And we sat some of us teachers with her one time in the area. You could look out those.
Windows over them over the valley, there's 1000 foot drop. The mists fill the valley and you can look on two snow capped peaks.
Mount Kiamby to the north, Mount Auntie Sana to the South and it was gorgeous.
I was with Batcha. I was her nickname. That's what everybody called her. I was with bots at the coast on science field trip, a couple other teachers.
And we're ready to go back up to Quito in the mountains. And she got a little fidgety.
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And she started to get her makeup on just right. She called herself more of a tomboy. Her children had given her a pocket knife.
And she was fidgety and she was putting on.
Her makeup.
And I asked why and I found out that that's the way her husband liked her and so she was preparing to go home to him. I found out later from others that her husband had left her for some period of time, had an affair, had returned and what she was doing.
Was trying to hold on to him.
By being something.
That she thought he wanted her to be.
She was trying to do so that his heart would be toward her.
Now let me read this verse again.
This is the heart of our heavenly Bridegroom, expressing itself to His earthly bride.
It's the heart of the same person. Thou has ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. Those ravished my heart. With one of thine eyes, with one chain thy neck. What's he saying? He's saying?
You are beautiful to me.
And then he says, how fair is thy love, My sister, my spouse? Two more details.
Verse 11 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb.
We're getting into the as here, we're getting into what comes out and I looked up this fact. I'm not a not a beekeeper. There are beekeepers here.
So they can fix the fact if I get it wrong, but I read it from a it would look like a reputable Canadian source so I hope it's accurate. They estimated that there were. The bees on average travel 90,000 miles to make 1 LB of honey.
The Gaza up the pollen and nectar, and there's a place near us where you can go and the beekeepers will lead you through the whole process and you have ones here who can bring out some far more.
But this is what I enjoy. They go out more than three times the circumference of the earth.
To bring in and produce that honey and what he says is all that sweetness that's coming out of your lips.
There's 10s of thousands of trips to the nectar and pollen that I put there for you. 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands. I don't know. It depends on how close the flowers are to the hive. And you've gone back and forth and back and forth, and this is what I see coming out of your mouth, those thousands of trips in secret.
And now your lips are dropping as a honeycomb.
Isn't that beautiful? Now the response, the only thing the bride has to say in this chapter.
That's what she says, verse 16. I believe the whole verse is her. You can meditate on for yourself. Some split it up, but most give it as as all her. And she says, awake, O North wind, and come thou S blow upon my garden. The spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat.
His pleasant fruits. What's she saying?
I believe she's saying. I've spent so much time hearing what you see here.
And maybe I don't see it and maybe my eye can't pick it up, but you do what you need to do to bring it all out and enjoy it.
And wouldn't that be the response of spending time at the end? The in the beloved, the in him, the in whom of Ephesians one the expression of the heart of our God for sitting there can't say anything. But I don't know what's coming. Maybe a north wind from Mount Hermon coming down from those snows in Mount Hermon and blowing through my orchard, and maybe a S wind coming off the desert. But whatever it takes, you know what's needed.
If you bring out those sweet spices, because I know your heart and I know you're going to do it right, and we sit down in his presence and feast on anchor, have our hearts directed into the love of God, thank him, dear Lord Jesus, we just ask the effect of picking up that word, considering it, but draw our hearts to thee. That would anchor our hearts, Lord Jesus.
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And I love.
Thy heart, thy thoughts, we'd ask him, Lord Jesus, in thy name, Amen.