Song of Solomon 4:16 The Power of The North And South Winds

This is the Truth Network. Hidden Treasures of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. And today we come to the final verse in the fourth chapter, which is so unbelievably sweet, but a little bitter because I don't want this chapter to be over with. But nonetheless, it is the ION verse of the, which is the 16th verse of the fourth chapter.

And like many of the verses, in fact, all the verses in the 119 Psalm, it begins with the letter for which it is representative, begins with an ION. And it says, Awake, O north wind, and come now south. Blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits.

Oh my goodness, did everybody. It was interesting to me that on this verse, everybody waxed completely eloquent that I could read. In other words, Rashi, he, you know, Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, and interestingly, the takes on it that Matthew Henry had and Spurgeon were so similar.

It was interesting. I can't help but wonder if Spurgeon hadn't read Matthew Henry on the whole subject because he noted this, this gigantic thing that I think is absolutely beautiful that I think anybody can see is at the beginning of the verse, when she says, this is the beloved now speaking, this is us, this is the bride of Christ saying to wake O north wind and come down south and blow upon my garden. But notice that after the wind blows, then she says, let my beloved come into his garden. And so the point being that what happened between the beginning of this verse and the end of the verse, that it started out to be her garden, and now it's his.

And of course, there's so much about marriage that we have to understand that what is ours is now his. Rashi's take on it is very interesting in that he sees this as the north and south wind bringing back all the exiles from Babylon to the kingdom, which is certainly giving Solomon this prophecy of what's going to happen. And of course, anybody looking at it can see that it's obviously the Holy Spirit and who can't think of the book of Acts when the north wind came and obviously all the spices of the church were blown upon the world, right?

In that big day, the day the Holy Spirit came, and that's certainly a prophecy that's here as well. But very neat, just you know me, I love to study. And so I really wanted to try to get in my mind, you know, what's going on here, awake O north wind and come now south blow upon my garden. So interestingly, in Hebrew, when you look at the word north wind, or you look at this word south, that the idea of a north wind is a zaddy, which means kind of righteousness, certainly does. And then a pay, which is, you know, sort of this righteous face. Well, if you face north, if you think about it, you know, it's always been considered that north is like looking up.

And so you're kind of facing God. And if you look south, interestingly, according to the Hebrew, it's a tav, right? The last letter, the seal of the end of the book, which means truth. So you kind of got like, here we have righteousness at the beginning of the word north, and you got truth at the beginning of the word south. It's like truth, justice, and the American way.

It's all coming. So that's one idea of north and south is just to look at the letters and ponder, how is this right that, you know, if, and interestingly, they say, if you turn east, right, and you're facing east, then interestingly, your right hand goes to the south and your left hand goes to the north. And thus they say that the enemies of Israel always come from the north, which is just a beautiful thing I've taught before on the 23rd Psalm, that he prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemy. The table in the sanctuary always faced north because that's where the enemies would come from.

And there's the table in front of the enemy is a big deal. So it, you know, then by the same token, the left hand or the south wind is a warm wind and it brings prosperity. And of course, a lot of people, I mean, it doesn't take anybody to know much about weather to know the north wind brings cold and the south wind brings hot. And quite often the north wind brings storms, right? And the south wind brings prosperity, right?

It brings this warm air that is coming that obviously everybody can get out and do stuff. So, you know, with that in mind here, we see that our graces, which is all these spices, which I love both Spurgeon and Rashi and Matthew Henry all agreed that these are our graces, these spices, right? That the amazing favor of Christ that we have, which is, you know, when you think of the word grace, you think of this het, which is the, you know, the whole idea of the statutes, right? And that we've been studying and studying and that union, that union with God is what gives us the ability to have these fruits, you know, love, joy, peace, patience, all those things, as well as our own, you know, grace that we show to other people. Well, when you think about this couple now or any couple, as the winds of life blow upon you, right? Those, the north winds are often adversity.

And I, you know, can't help but think of all the different adversities that my wife and I have had in 35 years. I've had in 35 years that often people see your suffering and they see your faith, right? So many of those spices had to do with faith and union and delight and those things. So those, those spices so much as the faith that people see through adversity. And then of course, you know, as we are prospered, you know, through the south wind, you know, the graces that come from the generosity of a saint, you know, when he's been blessed, he blesses others with all those different things.

And so, you know, and I, I love how Spurgeon took this to the whole church of Laocidea that, you know, they had been stagnant. They weren't cold or hot, you know, that, that their winds didn't blow there, right? And since there was no wind, you know, their graces never went forth.

And so he was going to spit them out of the mouth and he bowled, he stood at the door and knock, right? And if he came in, then he would sup with him, which is where this verse goes, because the good news is Jesus is going to come into his garden here in a minute. But as just, we're talking about this, as we do life in the church and they, the world sees, you know, adversity come or they see prosperity come, it should be our, that makes our graces go forth. And even in the book of Acts, as the persecution came, you know, clearly that spread out God's love across the world in so many different ways. So there's no doubt the north wind does it.

And there's no doubt that south wind does it. It's just, you know, a practical thing. And then how beautiful is it that we get to the part where it says, let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant or sweet or delicious fruits. You remember, I mentioned the letter I N at the very beginning of this verse, because it is the I N verse. And I would be remiss if I didn't also tell you that the idea of the letter I N is both sort of a, you know, vision, it's two eyes. So without a vision that people perish and, and the idea of being yoked and the servant are all have to do with that letter I N. If you look at the verses in the 119 Psalm of the letter I N, you clearly get this picture that this is what's happening.

And it's like the two eyes of the I N, because it looks like a Y come together to create one vision. And this is so beautifully what happens in this verse from my perspective is you have the, you know, that is her garden and is his garden, right? So you have this vision that comes into focus here as this, this letter is brought to life in this verse of the bride being yoked to Christ and having his vision can now send out, right? Into the world, Christ's vision.

So as, you know, we've overcome whatever obstacles or we've overcome whatever prosperity, which is as big a test often as the, as the, the north wind and the south wind. And, you know, I wonder if you look in your own life, how much you can see that, but I can't help but note that it, it was after I got cancer that I began to get all kinds of speaking engagements. People wanted to hear me talk about the adversity, what, what happened, how I, how God came through for me through, you know, my cancer. And then, you know, through my brain abscess and, and later on through the loss of the dealership, all those things blew, you know, things around, but then the prosperity of the radio show allowed us to have the Jesus labor level almost 10 years old now to help single moms, widows, and families in crisis. As, as we live life, you know, the winds blow, thank goodness, because as that blows, it blows those graces, his favor, you know, all around.

And, and I heard this story that I want to relate really quickly, actually in the pastor's sermon on Sunday of this monk, this, this monk that came from Asia Minor, uh, to Rome in, in 400 AD. And he was just one man. He was just one man, but sometimes one man can make the wind change directions because when the Holy Spirit comes in, I don't want anybody to miss that the idea of this verse is revival.

Okay. Like if the Spirit of God blows, it really can blow hearts towards him. And that's obviously what we want, but there was a monk, his name was Telemachus, I think is how it was pronounced. But anyway, he was in Asia Minor and he was a Christian monk who felt God call him to Rome. He, he felt God say there was a fire in Rome that needed to be put out. And so once he got to Rome, you know, this huge crowd kind of just swept him into the Coliseum, all going to the fights of the gladiators. And so as he came into the, the Coliseum that day, these gladiators were, if you can imagine murder as entertainment, in other words, these two men fighting to the death. And every time somebody would get stabbed, the people would just scream and yell.

And of course, you know, Telemachus was just horrified at this thing. He was like, stop in the name of Jesus Christ, stop, stop, stop. But as he hollered in the crowd, nobody heard him, you know, they were just screaming at the death and the murder. And so he made his way down onto, you know, the, the floor of the Coliseum there, which would have been sand and actually ran out between the two gladiators there and said, stop in the name of Jesus Christ, bring peace, you know, stop, stop, stop.

And there's two different accounts of what happened. Either way, he died very quickly. Either he was stoned to death or one of the gladiators pierced him immediately.

As it was, what happened at that point in time was the wind changed because, you know, Telemachus was here. He, he had all those graces in his gardens. He was willing to die for it, right?

He, he was taking this whole idea of, in order to gain your life, you may lose it. But nonetheless, he knew what he had to do. And he stepped into that Coliseum that day, and he was also murdered. However, then the wind of God changed and they, and he blew the graces of his church through Telemachus through that crowd that day and one headed for the exit ashamed and another headed for the exit ashamed. And as the people piled out of the Coliseum, it caught the entrance.

I mean, it caught the emperor's notice, like what has happened. And he stopped the games. There was no more sword fighting.

There was no more gladiators in the Coliseum after that day. In other words, one man, his garden, right? When the wind blew across his garden, it was so delightful that it changed everything. And so it is with Jesus.

He wants to come into our garden. You know that Jesus was delighting in the garden of Telemachus that day, right? I mean, and, and how many times throughout history in the time of martyrs or, you know, Steven, you know, that particular day, the wind changed, you know, when changed big time for, for Paul as a result of seeing the Stevens' graces wafted across, you know, all of, of, of Israel or Jerusalem at that time. You know, the deal is that we don't know, you know, whether it will be a north wind or a south wind that will stir up our graces, but the idea is beautiful, isn't it? At the end of this chapter that here comes revival, like there's the idea as we fall more in love with Christ, as we are united more with him through faith, right? Because the whole thing, the idea of, of the nun that we've talked about so privately throughout this, the idea of faith and union, the het and the nun and the, and the kuff, which means, you know, being as close to Jesus as we could be, all those things bring revival, right? And so I hope you see the fourth chapter, a spectacular, spectacular picture of how we see, you know, Christ is describing his bride and all the possibilities of the wind blowing these graces to the world. Thanks for listening.