Prepare Him Room 2021- 4

So happy new year. It's so wonderful to start out 2021 with you. I'm so glad that you tuned in to hear our last episode of Prepare Him Room for 2021.

I thought it'd be fun to do it actually on New Year's Day. So for years, actually, this is such a treat for me to be able to share something I actually have been puzzling about for years and years and years. I was puzzled until his puzzler was sore. Well, there's been a passage in the Song of Solomon that I have puzzled and puzzled and puzzled for years and years and years. God's given me glimpses of this and glimpses of that many, many times, and so he gave me another glimpse, the same verse that I always end up back at, trying to understand. I feel like I have a better understanding than ever. But so I thought I would share that for you because it seems so relevant to where we're at today. We're starting a new year.

We have a new opportunity. And I personally see so much hope in this story. But you've got to stay with me a little bit because I'm sure like me, you're going to be a little bit confused until I can kind of take you where God took me. So Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 2, a lot of people are familiar with because it's a pretty famous verse from the standpoint of you heard it.

It says, I slept, but my heart was awake. And what is going on there is the Song of Solomon, most people agree, and I certainly do, that is an allegory of Christ and the church. So the Shulamite woman, or the bride as in the story, is us.

It's the church, or it may be personally Robbie. And so I really see it that way. And so when this love story is going on, it's kind of the love story between me and Jesus.

And so it's extremely relevant to me. And one of the things that first made me fall in love with this book was in chapter 2 when the king is essentially chasing over the mountains. And the part that just hit me right in the heart was when it says he peered through the lattice at me. Now, when I was a young man and I was pursuing this young, my first love that I remember, I found out where she lived, but I was too nervous to call her and tell her I was coming over there. But I just like to, I guess you'd call it stalking now, I would just go down to her street with a hope that I would get a look at her, because I was just so infatuated. Well, the thought of Jesus actually coming into my neighborhood and peering down to find me and getting a glimpse at me through the lattice gave me a sense of how much Jesus loved me.

You know, it's encouraged me for years and years. And so as you go through the story, you get to chapter 5. And here, you know, they've had a wonderful wedding night and things are beautiful, but things go a little south here for a second because, of course, the bride is the church and sometimes we are asleep. And I've had a lot of fun through the years comparing chapter 5 to Peter's life, especially from the night of, you know, Jesus's betrayal. So when he says, you know, that I slept but my heart was awake, well, you might remember Jesus couldn't get Peter and John and James to wake up, and he actually came out there. So to get a Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 5, we're going to just give you a little context by starting at verse 2. So it says, The Shulamite, I sleep, but my heart is awake. It is the voice of my beloved. He knocks, saying, Open for me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is covered with dew, my locks with the drops of the night. I've taken off my robe.

Here the Shulamite is answering in verse 3. I've taken off my robe. How can I put it on again? I've washed my feet.

How can I defile them? My beloved put his hand through the latch of the door, and my heart yearned for him. In verse 5, she says, I rose up to open for my beloved. My hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh on the handles of the lock. And I was always intrigued. What exactly is going on with this myrrh?

It clearly is often used in conjunction with that, and it was used as part of the anointing oil, it was used as part of the sweet incense, you know, very much, you know, a part of the biblical narrative. So what exactly is going on where this happens? So to begin with, as I studied this years ago, Matthew Henry comments that in the Middle East, in those days, that doors were cut in the—you know, like you would see an old farmhouse where the top part of the door opened, without the bottom part of the door to be open so that air could flow through the building. And so for her beloved to reach his hand through to the door's bolt, in other words, you know, they use the old wooden bolts to lock the door, but it was the lower part of the door that was bolted, and so he could easily reach his hand through, because it would have been open, to try to unbolt the door. And at that point in time, she, you know, her heart's moved, and she gets up to get him in there. But when she gets up, he's gone. And she touches the lock, and she gets this liquid myrrh.

Oh, what is going on there? Well, as I really began to think about that, Jesus left, in my opinion—this is my interpretation—Jesus left his anointing at the door. In other words, at whatever point in time, because she was obviously asleep, but her heart was awake, and she wasn't engaged, like Peter wasn't engaged in prayer that night to not fall into temptation.

And then when he got engaged, you know, he chopped off the ear of this high priest, and he was just all over the place. But the point is, when you finally begin to get engaged, Jesus' anointing is waiting on you, right? So as you get up to unlatch the door to follow your lover, as this woman did here, and the rest of the chapter is absolutely worthy of reading and comparing to Peter's flight that night, and denying Jesus three times.

I think you'll see that like the bride in this one, he gets his veil torn off, which is what happens to her that night. It's just a beautiful story. But the thing that I'll never forget that I learned this week as I was preparing him room for 2021 is, Jesus knows sometimes we're going to be asleep at the wheel.

Certainly, I'm unfortunately too much. But the good news is, when we decide to engage, when we rise up, the anointing is waiting for us. And there's a beautiful passage in Psalm 92 where King David is saying, My horn shall be exalted like the horn of a unicorn, which is kind of cool. It says, I anointed with fresh oil. It's Psalm 92, verse 10. Well, that word fresh is actually similar to the word in Israel where the word green in Hebrew.

And the idea being that when something is flourishing, when something is fresh, it's green. And if you think about it, if you'll stay connected to the vine, then obviously you're going to get a fresh anointing. And what it sounds like here, because here's King David, he's clearly anointed to be king, but he's talking here about a fresh anointing.

And so it seems like as I go through my day, I sleep through most of it. But at whatever point in time that we want to rise up and we want to open the door and go chasing after Jesus, we've got to unbold it. But when we do, as you touch that lock that he stood at the door and knocked at you, remember? Well, he's going to give us a fresh anointing. We'll be connected to the vine. And once again, we'll be able to bear much more fruit in 2021. I'm so grateful that you listened to these this week with me. I've had so much fun doing them. And I do hope and I pray, actually, I pray that God would bless you immensely, plan his face upon you, that he would give you a fresh anointing in 2021. Thank you for listening.