Song of Song 2:11 - The Purpose of Winter

This is the Truth Network. Hidden treasures of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. So a verse to make us go deeper today, and deeper we will dig. So it's an interesting verse, very short, but you know, the digger you deep, the richer it may become, and I think it's meant to be. So, you know, the last verse, verse 10 and 11 definitely go together because, you know, the beloved, Jesus is asking us to come away with him, and now he's going to begin to give us reasons for that, so in verse 11 it says, For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. So, short and sweet, and again, he's telling us why it's time to go because the rainy season's over and it's going to be easier to travel, but there's more to it than that for, you know, it makes you just ponder what is the purpose of winter?

You know? There obviously have four seasons and each has a very specific purpose, and so I just, you know, winter and rain, you know, those are things that all have their, you know, pretty much rainy season in life. I'm sure you've experienced that, and so it's really neat if you study, and I went and did all the reasons for winter. One that shocked me one time, we had a doctor that came and spoke to our class in our Sunday school class, and he was talking about how he was really hoping for a really cold winter because really cold winters kill germs, and actually out there farmers love really cold winters because they kill the certain bugs and certain bacteria, you know, that won't invade the crops, and so, you know, as the growing season, you know, continues, things continue to grow that are bad, and so the winter is partially designed in order to kill off some of the baddies, as the idea would be, and if you think about that in your own spiritual life, you know, I think as we, you know, grow in Christ or we feel like his favorite, he shows us some really cool stuff, the natural result of that is pride, and, you know, sometimes things go a little darker, you know, as that's an idea of winter, there's less light, and there's colder weather, and so as you get less light, that is actually what leads it to being colder, obviously. You know, you're a little less proud, which makes you do some things, and so in the case of plants, when winter comes, they actually go dormant, and it's an interesting thing, I guess most gardeners would tell you that you know, you plant, like, if you live in North Carolina, I guarantee you, you plant your grass seed in the fall, so that it will grow roots, it won't necessarily grow up, but it'll grow roots all winter long, so it can take the heat when the season finally comes for the heat, right? And so when we come into these darker times, and we're not receiving as much light, it does kind of force those roots to grow, and I think it's really neat that unless the ground is frozen, you know, the roots in those plants are growing deeper into the soil so that when the, you know, season comes to grow, they're deeper in, but there's other things that go on as there's less light, and rain, and snow, and all those things are hitting the ground, but since the plants are dormant during this time, they're not using the energy, so the ground is storing up nitrogen, it's storing up the things that it needs in order to produce the plants during, you know, the growing season, especially snow, which, if you live in one of those climates, you know, the people love the snow, and it's great for the plants as they absorb these different energies and whatever, and so, you know, such is the case with our lives spiritually as that we're not able to absorb all the light that we're getting at times because of the season, it's just the season that we're in, and it's another interesting thing that I would note, you know, being that I'm in my later 60s, I realize that I've entered into winter to some extent, and I heard this once Morgan Snyder talked about the beauty of the sage stage, which is what you, once you head in past 55, you kind of go from the king stage in your journey into the sage, and the idea of the sage is that their internal life becomes more than their external life. In other words, once again, we're sending our roots down deeper because, and there's a lot of light that's falling on us, it's storing up energy because we got a really cool spring that is coming our way, so all these things point to the fact that winter is really a critical part of our growth period, and one other note that I would make on it is the word winter in Hebrew is really one of those words that just makes me go, oh man, I'm just like, wow.

So to describe that to you as best I can, and I know for some of you I lose you here, but I don't want to lose you because I just want you to see what I see with this. So the first letter in winter is a Psalmic, and you might remember in the next section of the 119th Psalm that it has much to do with the idea of cycles, and so yeah, winter's definitely a cycle. And it has great power, as you may note that winters generally have great power, and a power over judgment.

In other words, a lot of folks die during the winter of their lives, in fact everybody does. And winter kills off some things, it just does, and it's part of the judgment process of what's going on with winter, and so the fact that that starts with the Psalmic, and you can see in the Psalmic section of the 119th Psalm, you want to spend some time there, that it says that I was trodden down, I am thine enemy, for their deceit is falsehood. And all these things that are talked about with the Psalmic, and he even said, my flesh trembleth for fear of thee, for I'm afraid of thy judgments. That's the last verse in the Psalmic section, and so you get this idea of like, oh my goodness, there's something to be reckoned with here, a power that's really, really cool. But the other thing is that it is a circle, and the idea of cycles being in circles, but also a wedding ring is that it goes on and on.

In other words, this season is coming, but there's more to come. So the last, excuse me, the second letter in the letter Psalmic is a tav. And that tav, you might remember, is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and it is also generally connected to the idea of the end, and it is the last season, so that makes perfect sense, that the tav would be the one for the winner. But it also is, at the end of the story, we'll know what the truth is, and so the tav is quite often related to the truth. And so, you know, again, as we see what springs up in the spring, we can see what the truth actually was, you know, so to speak.

So the tav is the second letter in the word winner, but the third letter is the one that just kind of shocked me, but it's just like, oh my goodness, I'm so glad that letter's there. The last letter in the letter in the word winter is a vav, and you might remember that the vav is just a beautiful idea of the continuation, and it's like Jacob's ladder. In other words, Jesus is coming, and the light is still coming down from heaven, but it means that this is going to go on and on, right? Because every verse, if you look in the vav section of the 119th Psalm, every verse is a continuation on the previous verse. Even the first verse says, Let thy mercies come also unto me, O Lord, even thy salvation according to thy word. Which if you're in winter, you're kind of wanting that. But notice the word also, because it's saying there's going to be more, and you might even remember it's in the 119th Psalm in the vav section, it says, And so I shall keep thy law continually forever and ever.

And this idea of the vav is so much of this idea of continual. So it's kind of neat to know that there is an end coming to winter, and here we have it, right? Because here Jesus is coming, like he will at the end of the winter of my life, right? He's going to say, Come away.

I am really looking forward to that. So, you know, here Jesus is coming, and he's telling us the rain is over, and the winter is past, and so here we go. Well, I don't know if you've had, you know, obviously the winter of our lives come, but other seasons that you may have entered in that clearly knew were winter, and there just seems like a darker time, and one where you're not getting as much light, however that works. I certainly remember 1996 in my life was the year that I first got cancer, and that happens to be the same year that I got crushed by the Jeep right after I finished my chemotherapy, and there's no doubt it was a dark, dark time, and many of those times I wasn't able to keep my normal precepts or the times that I spend with the Lord, I was too sick. You know, I was just simply, you know, in a bad way.

I wasn't able to work much, which really affected my career. In other words, it was a season in all sorts of ways, but there's no doubt, no doubt in my mind, that during that time he killed off some pride, and during that time he sent my roots deep, not only into his word and into my relationship with him, but into my relationship with my wife and my family and my true friends, right? The ones that came alongside me as I was really going through some difficult things, and so there's no doubt that God had that winter for me in 1996 in my life that he knew I needed to send my roots deeper and store up some energy because there were great, great, great growing seasons headed my way, so maybe you're in a winter or something lately. You know, it's a season, and Jesus is coming, you know?

And they'll say, come away, it's time to go again. But in the meantime, you know, keep sending your roots down deep and realize that there's a vav at the end of that word, winter, that means it's coming. It's Jesus is coming. As we can see, the winter, you know, it was 400 years of silence before Jesus came in the New Testament, and we don't know how many more years of silence we have, but we've got some winter as we're growing our roots deeper, and then oh my goodness, he's coming and it's going to be spectacular. Thanks for listening. Thank you.