Song of Solomon 2:15 - False Comforters

This is the Truth Network. I spent hours and hours and hours trying to understand it, and boy, the more I understand it, the more I like it, and it is just spectacular and a commandment that I think we could all use this wisdom anyway. Verse 15 in English reads, "'Take us the foxes, the little foxes, "'that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.'" And so, clearly, one of the questions I always had was what are these little foxes?

It's translated in different translations, different creatures, and I can't picture foxes eating grapes or whatever, but all that aside, I think that the reference is clearly two foxes which are wise, which our enemy has great wisdom, and even the little ones have great, great wisdom, and I know it's gonna take a second to explain this part, but the Jews, Rashi, has long taught on this verse that, again, they're telling the story of the Exodus and all this kind of stuff, and so from their perspective, when they talk about these little foxes, back in the time of Moses and Miriam, the Egyptians were killing the firstborn, right, which were clearly these buds on the vine, and from their perspective, one of the ways that they did that was what they called little foxes, because what they would do, because the Jews were obviously hiding their male children, and they couldn't find them, so what they would do is they would walk into a Jewish home with another baby, because if one baby cries, it makes another baby cry, and so they would walk into these homes with an Egyptian baby, pinch the baby, or do whatever they need to do to get that baby to start crying, and of course, this would cause the Jewish baby to cry, and thus, they would destroy that baby before it ever had a chance to become the deliverer, which obviously, Moses got past all that, God got past all of it, but the idea here is still that here's this false thing that's happening, and so when you look at the word foxes in Hebrew, like you might imagine, that it has to do with something false, because it begins with the letter shin, and you might know the word lie, as we talked about in the 119th Psalm, I hate and abhor lying, because lying begins with that shin, because it means the word shekerer in Hebrew, which has to do with something false, and so what this is, in my opinion, is all sorts of things that we would call in the masculine journey, agreements, right, that Satan plants this little bitty lie in there, like one of the lies that he planted in my life was that you're never gonna be able to learn a foreign language, I mean, I struggled in school with both Spanish and French, never could figure it out, but I really, really, really wanted to learn Hebrew, I mean, it was something I just, my heart wanted to do, and so I didn't take a course in Hebrew, I just began to study the alphabet, and the more I studied the alphabet, the more God pointed me to this, that, and the other in the scriptures, and then obviously, our study of the 119th Psalm is still me trying to get into the actual building blocks of the Hebrew language, but if I had just gone along with that agreement that I made, I'll never be able to understand foreign language, agreements are like that, they're things that Satan slips in there, you know, I never wanna talk to that person again, any time you hear never or always, you know, that stuff does not come from God that way, and it's a good example of the little foxes, and of course, there's all sorts of little foxes, but agreements are really something that we do every single day that take, you know, a bud that's forming and just kills it, so had I taken the bait on I'll never be able to, you know, think of a foreign, learn a foreign language, oh, oh, the fruit that would have been killed out of my life, if I'd have gone along with that agreement, and there are so many little agreements like, you know, that we just make, oh, here it comes again, you know, my wife is gonna be in this, in other words, every single day, there's little little foxes that come in that destroy the vineyard, but, you know, so I was thinking about this, and, you know, we really, and if we go back to the masculine journey, the idea of false comforters, right, that we seek life in all sorts of false ways, we get it in food, you know, and so I thought I could just sort of organize these in three different categories, because the masculine journey, we know, at least in the masculine heart, has got a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue, well, think about all the false battles that Satan gets us involved in, and how many tender grapes were destroyed, because we get into a stupid battle over predestination, or all sorts of other things that will certainly destroy some young grapes, and I've been involved in some of that, and it's just horrible, or, you know, an adventure to live, what are false adventures, oh my goodness, how many hours and hours of video games are our young people playing on a false adventure, or even TV shows or movies, to some extent, are false, they're not our adventure, we're living somebody else's adventure, whatever that may look like when our hearts were meant for real adventure, which happens out there with God, walking with him, pretty hard to walk with God through a video game, although I imagine somebody could do that, but again, the idea is he wants us to come away, he's been asking us twice, you know, to come away with him, and now he's saying, don't go to the false, go with the real deal, you know, don't take the fox's bait, and end up in this trap, and so the third one is false beauties to rescue, right, and they're false rescues that we get involved in. Again, the idea is, unless we walk with Jesus, we don't stand a chance against the fake, against the false, and so we need his discernment, what is true here, what is the truest thing about us, and you know, even when you think back to the shin section of the 119th Psalm, what does it say? I hate and abhor lying, but thy law do I love, right? I mean, what a beautiful, beautiful thing to have down in your heart, to say, wow, I hate and abhor lying, I hate the false, false masks, I hate the false, and put this way of truth in our way, so you know, when it comes to these little foxes, oh my goodness, they're all over the place, and I don't think I could spend too much time just going through all the different agreements, and all the false comforters, I mean, all the pornography, addictions, alcohol, food, I mean, I can't even begin to think of all the little foxes that are just false ways of getting life, because what we need is life and love, and what we need is Jesus, right? And spending time in the word, oh my gosh, what an adventure is that?

As you are doing today, right? You're on a real adventure, try figuring out some of these passages. I mean, there's some adventure for you, and out on adventures with your family, and all that kind of thing, you know, I was very, very fortunate that my father always took us on real adventures. He would take us up to the mountains, he would take us hiking, he would take us camping, he would take us fishing. In other words, all those things meant so much to a young boy's heart, and I know it meant the same to my sisters. In fact, my daughter Tess went with my dad and I one time fishing up in Colorado. She will tell you, it's one of her favorite trips of all time, one of her favorite memories was going on a real adventure with her father and her grandfather. Oh man, how fun is that? So don't go for the falls, go for a real walk with Jesus in a real battle to fight, a real adventure to live, and a real beauty to rescue. Of course, those are all in John Eldridge's book, Wild at Heart, that's where I got that, but you know, we teach this all the time in A Masculine Journey, masculinejourney.org if you wanna join us at a boot camp sometime. But anyway, thank you for listening and enjoy your adventures today.