Song of Solomon 7:5a The Mountain of Prayer

This is the Truth Network. Hidden Treasures of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. Amazing, amazing stuff. We finally get into verse five today in the seventh chapter of the Song of Solomon. And the fifth verse would be the hey verse, which often the hey has to do with expression.

And so, what a cool expression we get today. We'll read it in English, and it says, Thine head upon thee is like caramel. And so, wow, it's just a few words, no doubt, but it's certainly a mouthful. And you may know, caramel is a mountain, and it is throughout the Bible, and some spectacular things have happened there.

But just to begin with, the idea of your head in Hebrew is the Rosh, actually very much the letter Resh. And it has to do with the beginnings of something, or the start, like the head of a river. And like thy word is true from the beginning, so if something starts out well, it finishes well.

Or if it starts off on a good foundation, it finishes on a good foundation. And the idea of caramel is, that word actually means a very fruitful vine. And so, you can imagine a head as a very fruitful vine.

You know, what could be better than that? If you were connected to the vine, you certainly are going to be fruitful. And so, you can see, you know, how Jesus would see us as this. And also, when you think about the history of caramel is where my mind went with this, and what's really cool, I think really cool, is, well, I'll just go through the stories in order. The first story that comes to my mind is the story of Abigail, right? And you might remember, and Solomon would know her as, I guess, one of his step-moms. But anyway, Abigail was from Mount Carmel, and that whole story I've always loved about how King David was persuaded by Abigail. And that was there at Mount Carmel, and so you can see she was definitely fruitful, and you wonder about that. And then, we begin to see the adventures of Elijah and Elisha, depending on how you want to say it.

Elijah and Elisha is how I usually say it. But anyway, Elijah the prophet had two gigantic events on Mount Carmel, one of those, of course, being the, you know, slaying the prophets of Baal. You know, that's an amazing story that happened, very fruitful, up there on Mount Carmel. But, you know, one of my most favorite stories in the Bible is when Elijah got on his knees and he prayed for the rain, and he prayed and prayed in faith, and then had his servant go up and look, remember, and he didn't see anything, and he went back and kept praying.

And of course, it's this picture of great faith, because eventually the cloud came about the size of his fist, and the next thing you know, it was a downpour. And the beauty of that, Mount Carmel, is it is pushed up to where you can have a wonderful vision of the sea, and the clouds, and heaven. And so that's what Matthew Henry said about this idea of our head being as Carmel, that it was like you get a beautiful vision of both heaven and earth from Carmel. And what a neat thing that as we go on this adventure with Jesus, that we would be there, right?

With our faith, looking upward towards God, but at the same time being able to see what's going on as we would take on the prophets of Baal. And then there's another amazing story about Mount Carmel, which actually connects to me to the Song of Solomon. And you might even remember that Elisha met a woman who was not the Shulamite, but the Shunammite, which the words are almost identical in Hebrew, with the difference being the Shulamite that we're talking about here, we just finished talking about in the sixth chapter, has a lamed, that L sound in it, and that lamed would be a heart that leaned towards Shalom. But the Shunammite woman in the Elisha story, she was the one who recognized Elisha was a man of God, and made room in her house in the upper room for him to come stay and rest. And you might remember, gave him a lamp, and a table, and a bed, and it's a beautiful story of then, you know, she blessed her and she had a son, and then unfortunately that son died. And as a picture of Christ, he's one of the few people in the Bible that raised somebody from the dead. And this is what Elisha did for her when she came to Mount Carmel. And very beautifully, right, when Elisha spots her on Mount Carmel, he says, oh, it's the Shunammite.

And so you can't help but see, for me, it clearly is a prophecy that we're having here that Solomon knew that on Mount Carmel here would be this, I guess, event, this blessed thing that happened for this lady that her son would be raised for the dead, that she would be the Shunammite, which has to do with faith, and she would be with Elisha, who in so many ways is a picture of Christ. So, you know, really, really neat that we have that. And, you know, I don't know about you, but again, how does this apply? I mean, how is it that your head is this fruitful vine? And we've talked about many times that, you know, we process language and all that stuff with our head. To get it to our heart, you know, we've got to go through our throat, as we just talked about the ivory tower, you know, a few episodes ago.

But undoubtedly, in order to get that information to our heart, we first have to process it, and we have to process it with our head, and hopefully we are connected to that fruitful vine. I hope you are so that we can begin to see as we unpack these verses, you know, the faith that's involved in it, right? And I don't know about you, but, you know, it's really hopeful when you hear stories of this woman who even lost her son and remembered this man of God, and God remembered her, and her kindness to Elisha, and away you go. And so, one of the great joys Elisha had that I, you know, can't imagine, you know, being asked to do such a thing and then actually allowing or being part of when God raises somebody from the dead, but, you know, just how many times do people come to you and ask that you would pray for them, right? What an honor, honor, honor, honor that is. And one of your kids, one of my daughters came to me yesterday and asked me to pray for her.

She was going through a difficult situation. And I thought, man, you know, what an honor it is to intercede actually with the Lord for somebody that you dearly, dearly love, especially when they ask you to do that. And in other words, they recognize that you have a relationship with God and that prayer is a connection between you and them, that they know you're praying for them. And what a neat, neat thing. And so, you know, as we realize that our heads are caramel, you know, the thing of it is, other people see that same thing, that your head is up there in the clouds and close to God, but at the same time connected to earth and loving on people like Elisha did for that poor woman who'd lost her son. So, you know, it's pretty neat that God is reflected by our heads in this way and that in some ways people look at us as mountains. And of course it's God that did that, but still it's a beautiful thing to behold. And I hope someone asks you to pray for them today. Thanks for listening.