Song of Solomon 6:4 The Three Ways Peter/The Church Is To Love

This is the Truth Network. Which is the first letter in King David's name, also in the Beloved that Jesus talks about when, or excuse me, when the bride talks about her Beloved, that's the Dalet Vov Dalet. And so this is very much the Dalet verse, and I think you'll see that in all so many ways, because as we've talked about so many times in Peter's story, you might remember in Peter's encounter there in John chapter 21, where Jesus asked him, do you love me? And then he says, to feed my sheep, you know, and we're going to get in a lot into that in a minute, but the idea of that is to feed, is to serve. And that's what a lover does in so many different ways is to serve, to love, and so here we have this verse on love that's really unbelievable, and all so much to do with sheep, all so much to do with Peter, and so much to do, it's just deep, that's all I can tell you.

So I'm going to read it in English and try to dig into it as we can. So thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, as comely as Jerusalem, and as terrible as an army with banners. And so you see we have three different descriptions of how Christ now sees his love, and interestingly again it has everything to do with sheep, because this is the last time that we're going to find this word used in the Song of Solomon where he says that my love is Tirzah, right? That word love, there is an extension of the word to shepherd, which has a lot to do with this verse, okay? And so when he says love, he's talking about a love with a special shepherd with a special light, and that has everything to do with what he told Peter to do that day as he was restoring Peter.

So we've talked about that through the fifth chapter we see Peter denying Christ, but then he gets restored, and then as we talked about previously in the sixth chapter, you can see that the daughters of Jerusalem have turned, and we've likened that to the three thousand that heard Peter's sermon that day in Pentecost, and then what did they do? Well if you look closely at what they did on Pentecost after Peter's sermon, they did three things, and it says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers, and so if I sort those together, you have an interesting thing that to me, as I looked at these, both the doctrine and fellowship fit together nicely with Tirzah, and the breaking of bread fit together nicely with Jerusalem, and the word prayers fits very nicely together with the idea of an army with banners. And so when we look back at what Jesus asked Peter in John 21, right, and you may have heard me talk about this before, but I think it's wonderful to consider that in the 23rd Psalm, you know, we get all this lesser than shepherding, right, on how to feed sheep, how to make sheep lay down in green pastures, which you do through feeding them. Well what Jesus does in, you know, John chapter 21 is he's giving Peter a lesson in shepherding at the same time and a lesson in love, because he asked Peter very specifically, if you look at it in Greek, but again I'm going to translate the Greek for you back to Hebrew so we can get back to what I want to talk about, but what he says is, do you agape me, he says it twice, do you agape me, and of course Peter says, you know, you know what I do, and then he says, what, feed my lambs, right, which there we're talking about baby sheep. Well the word feed is the same thing as the word to pasture, or when we see that word that he grazes among the lilies, that same word, okay, it's used throughout the Song of Solomon, is this idea to pasture, to be a shepherd, okay, and so he's telling them to shepherd the lambs. Well when you're shepherding lambs, these are baby sheep, and so when you've got baby Christians, what baby Christians have a desire, right, that is brand new, and so as you're shepherding them, it's interesting that their desires are a big part of that, and fostering their taste for their new, for the Word of God, I mean, you were dealing with discipleship of young believers, and so you feed their desires, which has everything to do with that word terza, okay, terza was a city, and I would note that all three things that, and I think it's a big thing to note, that all three things that Jesus describes as beautiful in his beloved in this, have to do with a group of believers, okay, because the first one's a city, which is terza, the second one's a city, which is Jerusalem, and the third one is an army, so you have your three fellowships, obviously, and terza being this idea of, and Rashi makes a comment of this, which I thought was wonderful, is how beautiful it is when someone desires God, and so when you're shepherding their desires, that's terza, okay, and that idea of shepherding these young sheep is what Jesus asked Peter to do, Peter do you love me, now shepherd my lambs, okay, and so then he comes a second time, and he says Peter do you love me, and he's used the word agape, but again in Hebrew that's ahav, and that idea of the father's love, okay, and he says Peter do you ahav me, do you love me, and Peter says, you know, of course, and he says I phileo you, which we're going to get to why he said that in a minute, but then Jesus said feed my sheep, now we have mature believers, and so when you think about Jerusalem, it is the word for peace, and the idea of peace has to do with breaking a bread, and eating, and fellowship, and all these things that have to do with, believe me, feeding mature believers, and making sure they have stuff to continue to, you know, grow into, and shepherding believers is very much what, you know, what we see here when it says that they continued in the breaking of bread, and then the third one, which of course, you know, Jesus himself changed and said Peter do you phileo me, do you love me with a brotherly love, and that idea is actually this riot, this is this idea of a shepherd like, do you love me as a shepherd would love me, okay, do you love me like my beloved, because that's what Jesus refers to her six times, excuse me, this is the seventh time that he refers to her in this way as a shepherdess, that he loves, okay, and so we're getting this, oh, and I failed to mention something that actually was kind of huge, that when he says, when he says in the first one, he says you're beautiful, but the second time he says you're comely, well that word comely, I'd never noticed it until now, and he uses that again throughout the Song of Solomon several times, but the word comely is the root of the word sheepfold, okay, and so, you know, what is sheepfold, what a place of rest is a sheepfold, and Jerusalem is that idea of shalom, of peace, right, of that God spark, so it's beautiful that he says, you know, to do this, and so as we're going into Jerusalem, right, this is this place of comeliness, this place of complete rest in Jerusalem. Okay, so getting back to the army with banners, right, which is really a phenomenal thing when you think about beauty, you know, that here you have this beautiful place of new believers that are seeking and excited about Jesus, and then you have the beautiful place of the sheepfold, of Jerusalem, of this place of rest, but then all of a sudden, you go to this army, and if you think about what happened the third time that Jesus asked Peter the question, do you love me, he switched again to the word phileo, do you phileo me, in other words, do you love me like my shepherdess, like my beloved, and I believe Peter even knew the term that he used in Hebrew there was the term used in the Song of Solomon for, you know, my love, is what, you know, the Jesus character in the Song of Solomon has called her now seven times, is a shepherd, and so when he says this, do you love me this time in the 21st chapter of John, he says actually, govern my sheep, he doesn't say feed my sheep like he did in the others, and if you look in the Greek word you're going to find it's completely different, and what he's actually saying here is a different kind of shepherding than the shepherding of feeding or the shepherding of working on desires, but literally governing is everything to do with this idea of prayer, right, because prayer is battle, prayer is, you know, if you can imagine the enemy, how he feels when all these saints are down on their knees praying together in unity, like man that is an army with banners, and it's absolutely beautiful when you see somebody earnestly, especially a whole church earnestly seeking the Father, so when Peter was being asked if you loved me this way, he is being told here to govern my sheep in a way that they are engaging, right, the enemy, and so as I think about these three things, right, it's just absolutely amazing to me, really amazing to me that they line up so beautifully with what happened in Peter's story, right, after Pentecost he did these three things that Jesus had asked him to do in John 21, right, he was certainly feeding and shepherding the unbelievers, he was certainly feeding and shepherding the mature believers, the other disciples, but then he was also governing this body into the prayer, into seeking, you know, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in a way that would make them powerful to the culture at the time it was absolutely unbelievable, and so as we look at that as a picture of what beautiful is to Jesus, I mean, clearly, I mean, this is really amazing stuff, and so what does that look like practically, and for me I was thinking about it and it just blew me away that I was, as I was thinking about it, that this lines up unbelievably with me with the idea of our boot camps, you may know I'm with Mask on Journey and we do these boot camps every, you know, twice a year, and usually the weekend around right before Thanksgiving and then at the end of March or April, you know, a little bit before Easter, and so, you know, as we do these boot camps, you know, we do them, they're kind of separated into shepherding people in these three areas, and so when I think about the idea of boot camp, the first, very first talk we give is called core desires, because we're trying to help people see that the desires that they have in their heart reflect God's desires, right, and as we reflect God's desires, one of those desires is a battle of fight, a beauty to rescue, and an adventure to live. Those three are the desires that we are shepherding, and because if we could get our desire for God right, if we could get our desire for these things right, our image of God, you know, as we get a better look at Jesus, a better look at what we're supposed to desire, you know, that's a great place to begin in discipleship, I mean, is to foster our thirst and our hunger, which is, you know, what that idea of core desires is. And so the second talk we give is a larger story talk, which also helps people put the story into reference, has to do with testimonies, like we talked about in the 119 Psalms so many times, that as we understand God's story, then we can begin to understand, you know, that there was a whole lot going on before we got here, and how our desires fit into the big story that's being played out here. And I think this all has to do with Tirzah, you know, this idea of this beautiful desire for God, okay?

The second place is Jerusalem, right? And we're talking about the sheepfold here, all right? And we're looking for peace. We're looking for peace.

So the three talks that go into that at boot camp, we call them the poser. So we're looking at ways to get our, you know, teach people how to have the Peter experience, how to have their veil ripped off, so that they can be, you know, able to be covered by Jesus's blood. In other words, we our whole life are looking for cover, and we hide in so many different ways. And so you can have peace if you're hiding, okay?

You're scared. There's no peace when you're a poser, okay? And then we talk about the wound, right? Every man has a father wound, and women have wounds, but in boot camp, we're going to go into those wounds and help people get healing from Jesus, why?

So that they'll replace fear with faith and pain, you know, for joy, and that whole idea of working with wounds. And the third talk that clearly has to do with this idea of peace is called the new name talk, as we ask people to go in and find out what Jesus calls them. Again, can you imagine the peace of knowing, you know, what Jesus thinks of you, you know, of what you're getting your new name, even what's happening in this particular verse, which again, the fourth verse, the dollar verse, which has to do with how to serve, you know, as Jesus is beloved.

Well, then we get to the, you know, terrible is an army, which by the way, that word terrible is very much linked to the idea of the giants, the Nephilim, you know, these giants, you know, giants like Goliath was, that's terrible, like something to be afraid of. Well, you know, if you've got a whole army of believers in prayer, believe me, that is something that is awesome. And so what is beautiful about what Jesus says, the last one is you guys are awesome, like an army of prayer warriors, okay?

And so that idea of warfare is taught. And then there's this idea of your place in the story, right? So as you come into your Jerusalem and you come into your identity, and you understand your desires and all that, you can begin to take the place as yourself as a true Son of God and moving into that place of sonship, right? So another talk that we do is this idea of sonship. And so as we move into sonship, believe me, the Lord is a warrior, a warrior is his name.

He is all these things too. And so when we're shepherding people, we're shepping them into the picture of Jesus in so many different ways. And I know I've gone fast and furious through this, but as you think about the depth of this verse, like, oh my goodness, he's giving us a picture here, in my opinion, of what he sees in a beautiful church, that they're shepherding again these desires, that they're providing a place of this amazing, beautiful peace, and then they are as terrible as an army. I love what Rashi or the way the Jews translate that army with banners, they translate that verse, if you'd read the whole verse, the way it's translated into English by the Jews, they say, you are a fair my beloved as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, and awesome as the bannered legions. I love that.

I love that. And can we be all those things like, wow, you know, that Jesus would find us that way. And it all is connected back to this idea of dalet vav dalet, like, if we truly love him, we'll obey his commandments, love well. And we're being taught how to do that here in this verse. Thanks for listening.