Song of Solomon 8:12 - At Last I see The Light

This is the Truth Network. Hidden treasures of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. Oh, there's nothing like a story that has a happy ending, right? And we find as we are coming in for a landing in the Song of Solomon in Chapter 8 that this happy ending is really spectacular. We are in the Lamed verse, or verse 12 of the 8th chapter of the Song of Solomon.

And the Lamed has to do with your heart. It also has to do with learning and loving. And so how wonderful is it that we may have a giant clue in this particular verse to how to abide or apply John, Chapter 15, right? Because, you know, Jesus is like, abide in me.

Well, how do we do that? Well, here we're being told in our own way that the entire Song of Solomon is teaching us a whole lot about that subject. And so, this verse has just got all sorts of stuff for your heart.

It certainly does for my heart. Well, we'll jump into it. So verse 12 says, My vineyard, which is mine, is before me. Thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred. And so there's some immediate mysteries, I'm sure, like me. You immediately wonder, well, who are these people that are the keepers that get two hundred?

Why do they get two hundred? But before we get to that, and we're going to get to that, you can't help but note, or I think we should note, that that word keeper is an unusual word. Solomon loved unusual words. But we find it at the very beginning, in the very first chapter, you know, when he said, or where she said, you know, my brothers made me the keeper of their vineyard. And so here we find that she has remembered that she used to be a keeper of her particular vineyard, and what all happened there, because this is the exact same word again, and you might remember she said she didn't keep her own vineyard, but here she says my vineyard is before me. And I really think that's where you land on the idea of before me has all sorts of implications that Jesus is now in her vineyard with her, right? That they are now together in their vineyard, and so she is literally abiding, and because she is abiding, you can see that she's been extremely fruitful, and so thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand.

So there's the thousand of pieces of silver from last verse, which again is the support of the crown, and she of course wants him to have everything that he's got coming, as is always, you know, that Jesus says that this is what's required. And we talked a lot about that thousand in the last time, but then those who keep the fruit thereof, 200. Well, that 200 is one fifth of the thousand, which is a significant number, in that there's a Jewish law that says that, you know, that when you are in charge of something of the devoted things, you're to get 200. And so it's almost as if when you are perhaps a pastor, you're to get 20%, but I do know that that number is extremely significant in the car business. You know, and my father was literally what a lot of people would consider a business management guru. In other words, he was a management consultant, got paid many, many years, lots and lots and lots of money to tell dealers the percentages they were supposed to pay for certain things. And one of the magic numbers my father held was that the salespeople were to get 20%, one fifth of what it is now. If you think about it, if you're a car dealer, your fruit is car sales, right? And the keeper of that fruit, you're a salesman, because if you don't sell cars, you've got no cars to service. In other words, the whole operation runs on the idea that you've got to sell cars.

And so those keepers of the fruit have got to be happier, otherwise you're not going to keep them. So my father's point had always been that that number should be an actual real live 20%. Well, all the shenanigans that went on, and I'm using this as an example of what happens when people don't pay fairly, right? So the dealers came up with a scheme many, many, many years ago, GM dealers did, that they wanted to cheat their salesman on it through 2%, originally was the number, so that they only have to pay their salesman 18%, but they wanted them to think that they were still getting 20%. So they made an arrangement with the factory that they would hold back, that was the term that they used, that they would hold back 2% of the price of each vehicle and pay the dealer in one great big lump sum at the end of every year. Oh, what a genius idea they thought they had, cheating their salespeople out of 2%.

The factory, you know, obviously looking at this going, oh, let me understand this. You want me to hold 2% of the sale price of every single car for a year. In other words, you want me to hold your money and let me make interest on your money for an entire year, and I can't tell you the billions and billions and billions of dollars that the factories made off this brilliant scheme to cheat out of salespeople money, because the factories were making money on the dealer's money that they've been holding for all year, and what's even crazier than that, originally the imports didn't do that, but the dealers of the import cars got jealous of the domestic dealers and said, oh, we want that same deal too, and so obviously it didn't take long for a Honda and Toyota or whatever to say, oh, yeah, we'll give you that deal if that's what you want.

I mean, the insanity of the whole thing is crazy that the dealers would have made the interest on their money had they actually had it to use rather than cheat the salesman out of it and the salesman being responsible for the ones that were blessing them. In other words, oh my goodness, oh, the tangled web we weave when first we start to deceive, and the point that I think at the end of this, you have to go, wow, God has been unbelievably generous with me, right? If he's given her this vineyard, he's given you a vineyard. I mean, how could we not be generous? I mean, as we are reflecting Jesus, right, we talked about that, that he couldn't be more generous with us.

You know, how could we not reflect him and be generous with our keepers, right? And she is remembering here that she used to be a keeper and her brothers were mistreating her. She wanted to make sure that her keepers were well taken care of and got what they had coming to them.

Like this is a significant thing. And you can see that she is reaping, because again, it's the heart of the law, but is she, her heart is what this whole thing has been about to some extent, that she would have her beloved there in her heart. And then she would begin to see the fruit of that. And in that fruit, as we're going to see in the next verse, there's so much about this that has to do with drawing more people to Christ.

And how do we do that if we're trying to cheat him out of 2% here or there, right? And, you know, it's just so applicable to this particular verse. Like, man, just think about what we have an opportunity to work in his vineyard, which has a whole much to do with learning and loving and things that have to do with our heart. And so as we abide, hopefully, as a result of understanding how much Jesus loves me and how much we can enjoy this adventure together, then how can we not be generous with those that are waiting to be like the younger sister that we talked about, that we could build on her these palaces of silver?

How can we do that if we don't give him any silver? And that would be the case, you know, you think about, I don't know what pastors get paid, but I would certainly think they're the keepers of the fruit, man. They should at least get 20%. You know, it's a significant number. And I think that it didn't just happen by accident that that one fifth is there and it's something to think about. I don't know how to apply that in your life, but I certainly know how it applies to mine. And I want to continue to process that and pray for it. And most of all, I am grateful for all of us that are in this particular vineyard. And may the Lord continue to bless us this year as we come in for a landing. Two more verses to go in what has just been a delightful year. I just can't believe that God timed this, that I could actually finish the Song of Solomon. And I think I will have it memorized.

I actually did it for the first time today. But I wanted to play something for you at the end of this particular podcast. I do a radio show with my buddies that are actually the wall, from my standpoint. That, you know, if they're a wall, we build on them palaces of silver.

It's called The Band of Brothers that we hang out with. And last night we were talking about our Word of the Year. And my Word of the Year wonderfully has been the word delight.

Okay. And that is a lot to do with your heart, by the way, and the llama. And I have delighted so much in this year.

And so I had a clip to play that I thought really spoke to where I was. And so I want you, those that have heard these verses and spent the time with me in the Song of Solomon, to see how that when we get to heaven, it has all to do with these walls and gates we've talked about, that we talked about in recent verses. That, you know, the walls, like, you know, our Band of Brothers, these people that are in our community, are very much, you know, as it says in Revelations 21, there's names of the 12 elders that are on these and the different gemstones that are these walls. But then interestingly, the gates are pearly, right? They're one pearl. And pearls, as you may know, also are layers upon layers of light, so to speak. And so, you know, the built on these foundations of these jewels and a pearl being, if you think about how a pearl is made, you know, something horrible happens to it.

It gets a piece of sand in it that's irritating and it makes it beautiful into a pearl, right? And so that's what we do with our lives as we gather light, both as a wall or as a gate, as the case may be. So those have layers. And as we get more and more light, as we study more verses and get more understanding, we're building layers of light like these pearly gates or like the foundations of the wall. And so as I've gone through this year, it seems like I've seen more and more and more light. And so I've got this clip that starts out with Shrek talking about, you know, how ogres have layers. And so I think as we went through this year, we hopefully put on some layers of light where we can see Jesus more clearly than we ever could. And then the clip ends with the movie Tangled and the girl that is talking about how she was blind. And now she can see because she can see you.

And so I don't want anybody to know the you that I'm talking about here because that I can see you would mean Jesus. So I'm going to end this podcast with a clip I didn't get to play last night. But I think it's so perfect for those of us who have put on these layers of light this year, whether that was through however Bible study that you've enjoyed putting on layers of light this year. Thanks for listening. We both have layers. I see standing here. It's so clear where. The sky is. Once everything.