Song of Solomon 5:2 - Sleeping Beauty

So, today we get to dive into the verse that put me on a month and months and months of study in the Song of Solomon back the first time I went through the book. I don't even know, it might have been six months based on where this verse takes you, which is a completely different turn in the book so far, as I'm sure you will see.

And let's just read it in English and maybe I'll get more into that. So, chapter 5, verse 2 says, I sleep, but my heart waketh. It is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled, for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. Sleeping beauty, right, is the stuff of many a fairy tale as we listen. You can't help but think, wow, true love's first kiss would awaken many a sleepy bride.

And that's what we're looking for. But unfortunately, this is going to take a different turn. But, you know, before you get there, just think about how many times throughout fairy tales that this is, you know, whether it's Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or some other fairy tale you may be familiar with like Shrek where, you know, they're asleep but something needs to make them come awake or there's something that they're waiting on true love's first kiss. And so the kiss has already happened here.

And unfortunately, we still have sleepy beauty or sleeping beauty as the case may be. And wow, what a turn this story takes right here as it is taken in all our lives, in my opinion. So, you know, I can tell you that immediately when I read this the very first time, I could see that I couldn't help but think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and he was sweating great drops of blood. And somehow or another, I knew in my spirit that that clearly was like something that Solomon was seeing, a prophecy of what would happen that night in the Garden of Gethsemane and how the disciples were asleep but their hearts were awake.

And of course, they should have been like we should have been so many times in prayer with the Father as Jesus said instructed them, you know, could you not watch with me for one hour? Clearly, you know, he said all those things. I mean, it's just fascinating to me that he describes his love, you know, more here as far as he gives her all these different titles, right?

He says, open to be my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled. In other words, he gives a fourfold explanation of who we are and how important we are to him and how important we were to him that night that we could just watch with him for one hour. And as we get into this, I finally, through all those months or however long I wish I'd written it down exactly when it started and when it ended, that I finally had a resolution to where all this was going in my mind.

And I think it's really fun the journey that this begins today. But I think that it starts here in the Garden of Gethsemane and it certainly started, it clearly is taking us to what was probably the greatest spiritual battle in all of history is the night, you know, where we all know that he sweat great drops of blood in prayer that night before his crucifixion. And so, it also obviously, you know, applied to Solomon's life from my perspective in so many ways.

He knew that much of his days there he was sleeping but his heart was awake and, you know, Jesus clearly wanted to have fellowship with Solomon when he was doing things that essentially looked like he was asleep. And so, you know, maybe you've got this in your own life in some different way. But what's cool is that, you know, you have all these beautiful things that are mentioned throughout the Bible. It's just amazing to me that you got the hair drenched with the dew of the night, you've got this idea of him knocking at the door which we see again in the Book of Revelation and, you know, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled.

We have all those things we've already talked about. And the idea of head is that idea of the letter Resh in the Hebrew alphabet and you can't help but know that this verse is kind of the head or the beginning of a new direction for the couple as he is going to go away for a period of time and it was clearly the head or the very beginning of the night of his betrayal and the beginning of the process that would be Good Friday. And so it's interesting to me that he started out here with that idea of these are the headwaters of, you know, what would transpire in their relationship there with the disciples as well, right? That they had been in fellowship all this time but everything changes right here that night.

And how that works out in your life, you can think about it. For me, as I've been praying actually trying to think when in my life did I know he was knocking and I did not answer and it was a life or death kind of thing and I can't help but think and I've told this story in the 119th Psalm but I'll tell it again briefly in that I think it's so important because it's a night or a time where everything just changes, right? That something you weren't aware of all of a sudden becomes highlighted and so I had, you know, ran the dealership in Mocksville for some period of time, maybe three years and my best salesman there was named Johnny Hendricks. He was a wonderful man and but I never could seem to in the previous years I knew him ever get him to talk about his relationship with God. Even though I invited him to many Bible studies, he always would politely, you know, decline and he actually even paid, gave me a bunch of money for the first Christian Businessmen's meeting there in Mocksville prior to the incident that I'm going to describe so I really did not know where he stood.

I knew a lot of his friends were very devout Christians but I knew Johnny didn't go to church and I knew he wouldn't come to Bible study and it was really hard to get him to talk about in that stuff. And so the day came, we were in the middle of building our new building and I was very predisposed with all sorts of things I thought were important which they I know now were meaningless but at the time I thought they were important and he came and he knocked, not unlike this picture here, he knocked on my door and he, I said, come in and he said, Robby, I need to talk to you and he went on to explain that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and honestly at that point in my life I was very familiar with my own cancer story and familiar with the fact that I had been healed but I had no idea how severe pancreatic cancer is and how difficult that diagnosis was and honestly didn't take it the way I should have that day. And so my immediate response was oh well, you know, Johnny, I'll pray, you know, you're going to be fine. You know, I was cured from cancer and I'm sure you're going to be fine rather than getting into the conversation I'm sure that Johnny wanted to have that day. You know, I could tell when I kind of brushed him off that day in my office, you know, I slept but my heart was awake, right?

As he walked out the door I felt like, man, that might have been an opportunity but I didn't think much more about it, honestly. Unfortunately, about ten days later I got a call from his wife that he was in a coma, that he was in the hospital and they didn't think he was going to last another hour or two. And so I rushed down to the hospital and when I got there in the room, you know, there were his brothers and sisters and all his friends and, you know, they told me that, you know, the doctor had said that, you know, it didn't look like he was going to make it and, you know, that only one person could go in there with Geraldine, his wife, and she asked her to be me because she knew I would pray, she said, which, you know, as I was going to do that, I was kind of ashamed because I didn't really know where Johnny stood so I asked him before we went in the room, I said, do you all know, is Johnny a Christian?

Does he know Jesus? And even his best friend Bruce Rollins said, I really don't know, I don't think so and Geraldine says, I really don't know and so then I was in a spot because here Johnny may be facing the last few hours of his life and it looked like he was facing the last hours of his life and, oh my goodness, he didn't know Jesus and I'd worked with him all these years and I hadn't done anything about it so at this point in time, you know, that knock on my heart definitely came through so I actually left the hospital after I went and prayed with him and went out and prayed myself, I went out in my car to a place where I would normally pray and on my way, you know, praying, praying, praying, I was like, God, if you'll just give Johnny more time, I promise, promise, promise you, I will either introduce him to you or, you know, help him to get to know you better. Now, you know, at the time, I was just desperate, I didn't think about, wow, you're making a deal with God here? Well, that's what I was doing. Well, when I got back they, you know, he did manage to hang on for a few more hours then they started talking about pulling the plug and I kept saying, no, I feel like God is going to do and I really did, I had faith that God was going to do something.

I said, don't pull the plug and this went on for actually four days that, you know, they were arguing the family, should we pull the plug, what should go on? And then all of a sudden on the fourth day, Johnny just sat up in the bed like he had never been in a coma, he just sat up and when he did, he was wide awake and totally himself, you know, he had his Davie County ball cap on and there was Johnny and I went into his room and I remember thinking, oh, my goodness, looky here. You know, obviously God did something miraculous here and so I actually went right back out and prayed again and drove to the same place because I had to admit, Lord, this is hard because you did your part, now I need to do my part but I need wisdom. I mean, tell me, how do I do this? How do I tell Jesus about you? I mean, how do I tell Johnny about you? And the Lord just put it on my heart real simply. He said, you know, Robbie, Johnny's a car salesman and being a car salesman, I have some understanding that a car to a car salesman who's been, people have backed out on him so many times, it's really important to a car salesman that a deal is a deal, right? And a deal is a deal and so I thought, oh, oh, oh, I did make a deal. So I went back in Johnny's room and you know, when everybody cleared out, it was just me and Johnny, I looked at Johnny and I said, Johnny, I need to tell you, I made a deal with God. And he was like, well, Robbie, what kind of deal did you make with God? And I said, well, I made him a deal that if he would give you more time, that I would either introduce you to him or help you to get to know him better. And Johnny said, well, you better get to it. And he said it with just a Davie County attitude.

You know, it wasn't like he was laughing. He was like, you better get to it. And so he still didn't tell me whether he knew him or whether I would, you know, but I was just like, okay, well, we're going to get to it. Let's start in the Gospel of John. And actually after, you know, two or three weeks in the Gospel of John, he got out of the hospital. I was going to his house and one day we were doing, you know, the I am statements, you know, I am the bread of life and I'm living water. When we got to I am the resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, um, that that particular day I left. And when I came back the next day, the, the, the street was lined with cars and I thought, oh no, you know, Johnny's head is, you know, when you see a lot of cars in the street, it's, it's often means a funeral or something.

And, but, um, it, it wasn't that at all. It was actually a pastor that I knew very well was there that actually had worked for me at one time and a lot of Johnny's friends. And as soon as I walked in, that pastor said, uh, Robbie, I mean, Johnny, tell Robbie what's happened. And he went on to share the story that after I left of sharing Lazarus, that his sister came in and she put in a CD by the gators called four days late, but right on time.

And as he heard that song, he realized that was him that, that he was four days in the, in the coma, but right on time, you know, there he was with an opportunity to meet Jesus. And so he had asked the pastor to come over, asked Jesus in his heart and they were all celebrating what Johnny had been quickened. And it was an amazing thing is Johnny was now her brother in Christ in the last few weeks of his life, which he only lived probably two or three weeks after that. He truly was a brother completely different. I have an article he wrote in the paper that's in my, hangs in my office, um, that I often look at and think what a change there was in Johnny because, you know, Johnny was always the kind of person you could talk to, but he never went deep. Well, the Johnny after his conversion, all he wanted was deep. And it was a miraculous thing that we got to see because at first I slept, but my heart was awake. Um, and then, you know, God made a way where there seemed to be no way.