The Song

This year I’m reading through the Holman Christian Standard Study Bible. It’s a great Bible, full of commentaries, cross-references, word studies, maps, charts, etc. In fact, it is so full of study aids and helps; I don’t think I’ll make it through the entire Bible this year.

Last week, in my reading, I came to the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon. It is a very short book but it is accompanied by tons of commentary in the HCSB Study Bible. But still, I dug into it and came away with a revelation I had not noticed before when reading through the book. God is so good and I’ll get to that part of the story in just a moment.

As many of you probably know, the Song is a love poem between Solomon and the Shulamite maiden, who was believed to have been Solomon’s first wife. The Song is a celebration of romantic love, as God intended it to be. Much later the writer of Hebrews, in chapter 13, verse 4, would pen these words: “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”

Also, from the New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her”, NKJV. In the same vein, the Song of Solomon is thought by many to be an allegory of God’s love for Israel and/or Christ’s love for the church. The HCSB Study Bible comments in the introduction of the book say that it “reflects God’s desire to form within us a pure and a devoted love…that there is a bliss in married love that is reflective of the greater love believers experience as the bride of Christ”.

Reading all this has given me a new appreciation for the Song of Solomon. However, what touched me greatly when reading through the book this time that I had never noticed before was the revelation that the Shulamite maiden who married the great King Solomon, was a commoner, an obscure nobody. The maiden worked in the vineyard for her brothers who had rented the vineyard from Solomon (1:6 and 8:11).

Why is this so exciting and beautiful to me? You think I’ve lost my mind don’t you? But dear friends, this is a reflection of us—Christ reaches out to us in divine, perfect love. We are nobody! We have nothing with which to recommend ourselves to the King of Heaven! Yet in His grace and mercy and love, He seeks us out; He reaches down to us in the muck and the mire; our own righteousness as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).

Who am I that Christ would notice me and love me? Who am I that God would love “the world in this way: (that) He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life”, John 3:16, HCSB.

Dear friends, I am nobody but somebody that God loves and furthermore, “We love Him because He first loved us,” 1 John 4:19. Is that not beautiful? Now can you get excited with me about that? I am nobody but somebody that Christ loves and so are you! If you haven’t already done so, open your heart to Christ today. Confess your belief in Christ; repent of your sins; invite Him into your heart to live forever and become a child of the King.

If you do know Christ as Lord and Savior, then celebrate with me that, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved,” Ephesians 5:4-6, NKJV.

God bless!

The Prayer of Jesus

Recently I was reading John 17, which I absolutely love. This is the real “Lord’s Prayer” as opposed to the model prayer which Jesus taught His disciples (Matt. 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4). Jesus’ prayer in John 17 can be divided into three parts—Jesus’ prayer for Himself in verses 1-5; His prayer for His disciples in verses 6-19 and His prayer for future believers in verses 20-26.

In verses 17-19, Jesus is praying about the disciples and speaks of sanctification. "Sanctify them (the disciples) by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth."

John MacArthur's commentary (The MacArthur Daily Bible) on the verse 17 says sanctification means the setting apart for a particular use or purpose. Jesus was set apart—He was in the world but not of the world. And if the disciples hadn’t realized it before, they would learn quickly following the death and resurrection of Christ that they were in the world but not of the world too. They would learn the world hated them just as it had hated Jesus.

Believers learn through the process of sanctification that we are in the world but not of the world—Jesus says we are set apart by the truth of the word of God. The apostle John would write in chapter 20, verse 31, “but these (words) are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” Yes, set apart because of grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Of course, I love the verses in John 17 where Jesus is praying about me—verses 20-26. Just think, all those many years ago, Jesus prayed about me—and not only me but also about all future New Testament believers. He prayed, "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word (the disciples—re-read John 20:31 above); that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have love Me."

Wow; perfect unity with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and other true believers. Now that makes my heart sing with joy! And I sincerely pray that it makes your heart sing too!