PTB01wdrawme

The Word of God Prayer Meeting 9/21/03

Preparing the Bride:
"Draw me after you and let us run together"

Ephesians 5:25-30
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife lives himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just a Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.

Promise of the prepared bride
Promise fulfilled in Rev 19, 21
Look at us now – we need preparation!
Coming out of Jesus’ nourishing & cherishing, not his exasperation

As key to the preparation we need:

Revelation of the way Jesus sees us
Revelation of who he is to stir us to trust and love
Act of God to move us to love him

This is what we want to talk about this fall.

Talking, even studying not enough.
Needs to get into our prayer

Song of Songs 1:1
The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s

Song – poetry, imagination, multi-leveled, stir the heart
Best of Solomon’s songs

He wrote 1005 (1 Kg 4:32)
Lover, lots of wives
Wise – supernatural gift of wisdom. Not fool’s song. Inspired insight
Jedidiah – beloved of the Lord (2 Sam 12:25)
No wonder he wrote of Lord’s love & loving Lord
John the Apostle, ‘the one Jesus loved’, also wrote most of God’s love

We know he falls away from Lord at end of life, so this is not just human insight, but the Holy Spirit speaking through him
Best of all songs?

Rev 15:2 the Redeemed (the Bride) are standing sea of glass mixed with fire singing 2 songs: Song of Moses & Song of Lamb
Is Song of Songs better than the Song of the Lamb? Maybe it is the Song of the Lamb? Certainly is song of the Lamb & his Bride

Song of Songs 1:2
May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!

For your love is better than wine.

Basic level is human love song – husband & wife

Realistic, even erotic
That is why some have stayed away from it, especially those who view the physical as evil
It is celebrating married love and that is OK with God!

Uses the type / allegory / parable / symbolism of marriage to try to begin to describe the relationship of the God of all the universe with us

Don’t let our imagination get dragged into foolish & profane view of this relationship
Connect up what is being revealed here with rest of Scripture

This is the heart cry of those who have encountered Jesus as savior
‘Kiss me’ – cry for intimacy
‘Kisses of the mouth’ – deep intimacy vs. kiss on hand or cheek
No intermediary – Heb 1:1 God, after He spoke long ago to the father in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son…

This is the joy we talk about as ‘entering into a personal relationship with Jesus’
Other Kisses

Ps 2:12 – kiss his feet, homage, duty, submission due to Him
Lk 15:20 – kiss of father for the prodigal – kiss of grace from God
This combines all these in deep mutual devotion & partnership

Kisses of his mouth connects this up with God’s word

Not talking about amorphous religious experience
Dt 8:3 God humbled Israel that ‘He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything the proceeds from the mouth of the Lord’

Uncomfortable with ‘Kissing’, try ‘place your hand on my heart’, ‘open my heart and feed me on everything that proceeds from you’

Why is the Bride asking for the kisses?

Your love
Your fragrance
Your name

Song of Songs 1:2b
For your love is better than wine.

Experience of your love for me is more exciting, enjoyable than the best wine; the best life has to offer. Wine was given to ‘gladden the heart’ (Ps 104:15)
Better than all the physical, natural, emotion, and even other spiritual blessings
Eph 3:17-18 breadth and length and height and depth… to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God

Jesus’ love is for weak, carnal, yet sincere believers.

Jn 15:9 Just as the Father has love Me, I have also loved you…

They have been arguing about who is the greatest
Knows Peter will deny him and all will desert him

Ps 63:3 David said ‘your lovingkindness is better than life’

This is lovesickness – I will die if I am not with you

This is where the Bride starts, where the newly redeemed start
Not going to be prepared by cooling off from here
We joke about married couples cooling off in their passion over time
Sometimes we expect ‘mature’ Christians to be less fervent, like lava from a volcano cooling – getting hard?
Promise of Jesus is that he will bring us back to this, and more
By SS 8:6-7a the Bride cries ‘Put me like a seal over your heart, Like a seal on your arm. For love is a strong as death, Jealousy is a severe as Sheol; Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it…

What does lovesickness look like 20, 40, 60 years on?10 billions years ?

This is the work of God – it takes God to love God

Jn 17:26 ‘… the love with which You love Me may be in them…’

Measure of the love poured in our hearts is Father’s love for the Son
Response to the revelation of the Son’s Love for the Bride seen throughout the Song: My darling, My love, most beautiful of women, the ‘O’ of SS 6:1

This is the First Commandment restored to first place.

I love to love you, I love having you love me.
Leads to an affection based obedience – 2^nd commandment

Song of Songs 1:3
Your oils have a pleasing fragrance,

Your name is like purified oil [or like perfume poured out].

Fragrance is a powerful communication

Essence, interior beauty, character, person, presence
Plural ‘Oils’ – manifold wonderful aspects of the Bridegrooms character
Bridegroom has an aroma
2 Cor 2:14 he manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of him in every place’

Heb 1:9 You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions

Speaks of his anointing a prophet, priest, and king & his sacrifice
As we get to know him, be near him, his fragrance is pleasing
And we begin to smell like him! 2 Cor 2:15

Perfume poured out, not bottled up – like bottle of nard broken at Bethany
Name speaks not only of his person, but of his acts – public person
Acts done ‘in his name’ , his deeds ‘for my name’s sake’
His is the name above all names
Jesus’ inward nature and outward acts are pleasing, beautiful, wonderful, this is why the Bride loves him.
More we meditate on them, extol them, deeper the love grows

Song of Songs 1:4
Draw me after you and let us run together.

The 2-fold response, the life mission of the Bride. Draw me, let us run
Draw me after you

Pull me out of where I am now
Not just out of the muck, but to you
This is God’s work. It takes God to love God!
Jn 6:44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him

Phil 1:6 for I am confident of the very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus

Bride’s heart cry is for help to go after God. Jesus is preparing her by making this her prayer.
Let me Love the Lord my God with all my heart and soul mind and strength Mk 12:30

Let us run together

The drawn heart prepares the Bride for obedience

When the 1^st commandment is first, then the 2^nd commandment follows

Ps 119:32 I shall run the way of Your commandments, for you will enlarge my heart

Paul experienced this 2 fold life of drawing and running

Phil 1:21-24 For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.

Run together

Jesus is preparing a Bride to be a partner – a help mate fit for him
Loving others is not just duty, it is the life work of the Bridegroom
As our hearts are tenderized by his love we not only deeply enjoy it, but we are moved by it to join with him
1^st commandment, 2^nd commandment lead to the Great Commission – go and make disciples! , But not alone ‘I am with you’. Run together.
This issue of being willing to run together with the Lord is a tension that runs through the Song of Songs. A basic issue in Bride’s preparation.

Song of Songs 1:4b

The king has brought me into his chambers.

Bridegroom is ready to answer the prayer – it is one he has put in her heart
Bridegroom is a king!
Not waiting for Bride to reach some level of perfection. This isn’t just for the ‘really holy’

Mt 22:2-10 Parable of the King giving wedding feast. Gathers both the ‘evil and the good’ which he prepares by giving them the wedding garments

Chambers

Ps 45:15 enter the king’s palace
Enter into his courts Ps 100 and many others
Jn 14:2 many rooms/mansions in Father’s house
Heb 4:16 throne of grace
Place of God’s presence, his rule, his dwelling
Point is to be WITH HIM, not just in a nice place called heaven

We will rejoice and be glad

Ps 84:10 a day in his courts better than 1000 elsewhere

We extol your love more than wine

It’s not the courts, it’s the King! And his relationship, his love for the Bride that is better than everything
Now plural. This passion for the Bridegroom has been infectious and now ‘the maidens’ have caught it too.

Conclusion

Jesus wants a Bride that is red-hot in love with him – because that is the way he feels about her! More on this as we go on.
Jesus is not expecting us to get our act together, he is preparing his Bride to be red-hot

Putting the prayer to ‘draw me after you and let us run together’ in her heart
Restoring the 1^st commandment to first place and stirring an affection-based obedience to the 2^nd commandment and the great commission because we understand it to be the life work of our beloved and we want to be with him in it.
Putting a desire for intimacy with him through his Word and Spirit, the kisses of his mouth
Getting wooed by him until we experience his love being better than wine, than life itself.