Song of Solomon 3:10 - The Daughter of Jerusalem's Paving

This is the Truth Network. Hidden treasures of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. Oh my, I kind of hate to finish up on the tenth verse of the third chapter of the Song of Solomon.

I've enjoyed it so much and wow, he kind of saved the best for last and as good as the other two have been. Oh my goodness. What we have in store for us today. So we've been talking about this tenth verse, which you know, as we have discovered, I believe that this is the heart that Jesus has prepared for us for each of us and a collective heart for the church. And here we're describing these different elements that he has prepared for us. And as we've dug into each one, it just seems like more and more jewels. So today we're going to get to the next two building materials, which we need to describe.

So he again is building this heart. And we've talked about the pillars of silver and we talked about the bottom of gold. And today we're going to talk about the covering of it is purple and the midst thereof being paved. It says in the King James version with love for the daughters of Jerusalem. But clearly as you really research that it's from it's, it's paved from love for the daughters of Jerusalem. And, you know, if you look at Jewish translations of that verse, you know, that's clearly the way they translate it.

And there is a Mem in front of that word, Ahav, which is love. And that means from just what it is. And so it's critical understanding to know that this love that's going to be paid is from the daughters of Jerusalem. We're going to get to that in a minute, but first we got to talk about the covering of purple. And as we described, if you go into the first chapter of Esther and you see there, she describes the same kind of thing, these beds of gold and silver, and they're inlaid and paved with these different embroideries and they're absolutely beautiful.

So we get this picture of this. And the thing that, that Matthew Henry pointed out, which I think is spectacular is notice the way that things go as they often do in the Bible, is you start out with silver and it goes up one to gold. And then the purple, obviously, which the purple is clearly the blood of Christ, which has us covered in the covering of this sedan chair that is our heart. And if you even think about your own heart, probably looks pretty purple. And the idea is that clearly what a spectacular thing is the blood of Christ.

I mean, way more valuable than gold, right? And is what, that's what covers us that we may be in his presence, that we may be in the presence of the father. And this is what, you know, is the, is the stuff. It's just absolutely spectacular that, that that is the cover of this chariot. And then this last very cryptic part, which is, you know, I've, I've studied it and looked at it and it says, essentially it's being inlaid or paved from the daughters of Jerusalem with love from the daughters of Jerusalem.

And, you know, you can think of maybe these daughters who are quilting. It's really interesting that paving has to do with using hot rocks. And I couldn't help but note that in the, uh, uh, letter to the church last ideas. And so much of this has to do with that, that, you know, if you're not hot or cold, he's going to spit you out of them out of his mouth. And clearly, you know, he wants us to be hot with love.

I mean, he, he, that is, that is how things get paved. And, you know, when you look at roads of old, they believe it or not asphalt has been around, um, really since Bible times, and they would take these cobblestones or whatever, and then they would put asphalt between the hot rocks, literally in order to get the union of these hot rocks together. And so there's a picture there of, of what this is put together with, which is love from the daughters of Jerusalem. Now, if you think about that, like, I'll bet you anything that there's been daughters of Jerusalem that had a critical part in your, um, faith walk. In other words, part of our hearts are, are, are inlaid with these hot rocks of all these saints that have come before us.

Matthew Henry's perfect example in my life. I can't tell you all the ways he spoke to me, Spurgeon, you know, pastor courts, all these different people that God's put in my heart, you know, just, and, and really, as, as you think about things that they said, there's, it's paved with love and it's, and it's United as the church. And that's a big part of what's going on there, but I don't want you to miss something I found out this morning about, you know, it's very interesting to me that if you look at the way Solomon wrote in Hebrew, if you look at any, um, of the actual writings of a Torah scroll of the song of songs, when he says the daughters of Jerusalem, he combines the last two letters of Jerusalem, which are, uh, a Lamed and a Mem, and he puts the Lamed inside the Mem, which is very unusual because you won't, even when he wrote the word Jerusalem in the book of Ecclesiastes, he didn't do that.

And you don't find it anywhere else. So I thought, this is very interesting to me. Why, when he wrote out the song of Solomon or why, when they, you know, as transposed it over the centuries, do they always put the Lamed inside the Mem on Jerusalem? Well, part of the understanding of that, that I never really knew, which is absolutely beautiful is the word Jerusalem is a combination of words. You may hear that, that the first set of it is, is from the word Yireh, which is the word is from the word Yireh, which means like the fear of the Lord. Yireh is fear and it has to do with awe.

And so when you talk about the fear of the Lord, it's always that Yireh word. And so the first part of Jerusalem is Yireh. And the second is, is, you know, Salem or, you know, like the King of Salem.

And it gets back to the, what the Jews have taught for centuries on this, which is spectacular in my opinion, is that Abraham had two encounters in Jerusalem. The first one was when he, you know, broke bread with the King of Salem, right? That's the first time that he was in that place. And it was after his battle. He was, he was in a war and then he has communion with McKisick.

And like, how cool is that? And so that's his first encounter, which has to do with peace, right? Because, you know, when you think about it, that, that McKisick is the King of, of peace. And then obviously Abraham is now at peace because he just finished this war. But the second time that, that, that Abraham would encounter, um, Jerusalem was on Mount Moriah. And so that particular encounter is the other part of Jerusalem, which has to do with obviously Isaac being sacrificed and God providing the lamb. And so a lot of people say that, that it's a combination word that has to do with two different Hills in Jerusalem, right? You got like the Mount of olives, and then you have like the Mount Calvary.

So just saying that there's, there's, there's a combination here that is very significant. And so the daughters of Jerusalem are like Abraham in our own way, right? That, that we have been born out of all, like, like because of what Jesus did on Mount Calvary, right? Then we can have peace.

And, and that's kind of how that works. And so those of us who have through the centuries and on my heart, as I was thinking about this, really think of the Jews who kept the Torah before Jesus came and all those that loved God, they're all daughters of Jerusalem. And then ever since the, you know, obviously Peter and James and John and all these were daughters of Jerusalem as well.

And I don't know if you knew this, I think it's cool that all human beings are born female and it's only later that their male parts begin to appear. And so we are the bride of Christ. And clearly we are the daughters of Jerusalem if you are in Christ.

And the cool thing is, is that as you love one another, you're making hot rocks and you're paving not only your own heart, but you're paving the heart of others as, as, as, as a critical understanding. I think that, that this, that this heart that is being described was paved from the love of the daughters of Jerusalem. Well, the love from the daughters of Jerusalem is a reflection of Jesus's love and that's clear.

And so how spectacular is that? So a story along those lines, I remember, um, I had a good friend who I would consider certainly one of the daughters of Jerusalem. John Quartz was our pastor's son, Mark Quartz, just a wonderful Saint. And he would often come visit me, especially when I was going through a lot of stuff. And the one time he came and he shared this verse, which I really had no understanding of at the time. Um, but the more I have thought about this verse, the more I have loved it over the years, but the verse he shared with me in second Corinthians, second Corinthians chapter 12, verse nine, where Paul was struggling with his thorn in the flesh. And God says, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect and weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. And, and I have found it's, I talk about my struggles and certainly I was struggling at this point in time with all sorts of financial issues as we were losing the dealership and I was losing everything. And it's kind of cool that, that through all those weaknesses, God made a beautiful picture that a lot of people saw that his, his, his power was made perfect through my weakness. And I, you know, all the different things I did that led up to the catastrophe, but that I was living, you know, God, God came through in such amazing ways. And he, he has for my family in so many amazing ways and, and time and again, as I'm struggling, even today with a lot of things in my family that are, you know, are weaknesses. We had to struggle. My daughter totally car over the weekend and we're trying to figure out all that stuff, but it really is reassuring to me to know that as I'm struggling, that that's a really good thing because Jesus's power is going to be manifest in my weakness. Right. And so even this versus I think about how my heart is inlaid with these hot rocks from the daughters of Jerusalem, you know, John quartz, that trip that day to share that verse with me is so critical to one of those places in my heart that I needed and continue to need. So as you have a verse for somebody today, or you, you share Jesus's love in any way, shape or form, just think about you and laying in their own, in your own way, their heart, that, that Jesus could rest with them and they can rest there in that beautiful paving of love from the daughters of Jerusalem.