Morning Light – December 28, 2016 – Song of Solomon 3: The Bride Seeks the Bridegroom

Morning Light – Song of Solomon 3
Today: [Song of Solomon 3] The Bride Seeks the Bridegroom. Song of Solomon 3 describes the quest of the bride seeking out her beloved. Just who is the bride anyway? Is the bride Israel? Many believe this is so. Is the bride the Church? This is a common believe but did you know that you in your soul are a member of the bride of Christ? You are the body of Christ in your human spirit where God lives, and the bride of Christ in your soul (mind, will and emotions). Do you understand the difference? In this chapter the bride seeks the bridegroom in her own bed (place of rest) and cannot find Him. She goes out into the streets and cannot find Him there either but she does find the watchmen who point her to where He may be found. All true leaders do not point to themselves but to Him, the lover of your soul.
[Sng 3:1-11 KJV] 1 By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. 2 I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. 3 The watchmen that go about the city found me: [to whom I said], Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? 4 [It was] but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. 5 I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake [my] love, till he please. 6 Who [is] this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant? 7 Behold his bed, which [is] Solomon’s; threescore valiant men [are] about it, of the valiant of Israel. 8 They all hold swords, [being] expert in war: every man [hath] his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night. 9 King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. 10 He made the pillars thereof [of] silver, the bottom thereof [of] gold, the covering of it [of] purple, the midst thereof being paved [with] love, for the daughters of Jerusalem. 11 Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.
In chapter three we find the bride seeking the one that she loves but finds Him not. Remember that in the Song of Solomon the bride is the church collectively and your soul individually. In your soul you are the bride of Christ, betrothed to Him. In other words the bride of Christ is a corporate, or collective bride as a whole and we individually make up the bride of Christ constituting idea of marriage as a metaphor for union with Christ in our hearts, specifically the soul part of our make up. What is the difference between being the body of Christ and the bride of Christ. When you ask Jesus into your heart – your human spirit becomes His dwelling place. Just as your body is the house for your soul even so your spirit becomes the habitation of Christ by faith. Your body is external to your soul even as in the person of Christ your spirit external time Him as He resides on the inside of you. He resided in your human spirit, inhabiting it and causing you to be one with the Father. Immediately adjacent to your human spirit is your soul. Your soul is wrapped around your human spirit just like your body enshrines or encases your soul (mind, will and emotions). Therefore your spirit as God’s habitation is quite literally the body of Christ upon the earth. Part of the work of Christ in coming to earth was for Jesus as God to inhabit a human body, offer it up on the cross in order to make of Himself a many membered body to dwell in.
[Heb 10:5, 7, 9 KJV] 5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: … 7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. … 9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
We are then the body of Christ in our human spirits, but the body of Christ in our soul. When God made man’s soul He did not create an automaton or living mannequin to live in. In order to marry your soul He in some way had to make your soul something other than Himself. This is why we read in creation that God did not directly create the soul. Read the following:
[Gen 2:7 KJV] 7 And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
The soul was not directly created by God but rather sprang into being when God put something of Himself called the “breath of life” in the physical body He fashioned from the earth. In this way He has in your something uniquely external to Himself to betroth Himself to as the Eternal son to a bride prepared for Him from the foundation of the world. Therefore again we see that you are the body of Christ (a member in particular) in your spirit and a bride in your soul. In that sense your soul is feminine spiritually speaking in relation to Christ. This is why Peter in referring to the human spirit of a woman refers to it in 1 Peter 3:4 as the “hidden man” of the heart. In Christ – in your human spirit indwelled by God there is neither male nor female status in terms of our relationship to one another, but in our relationship to Christ in our soul He is the bridegroom and we are the bride.
In verse 1 again the bride seeks the bridegroom in her own place of rest and finds Him not. What is the problem? The rest of man is a state of half-heartedness. How can we say this? By letting scripture interpret scripture:
[Jer 29:13 KJV] 13 And ye shall seek me, and find [me], when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
Not being able to find God is a heart issue. Have you ever looked around you and questioned “where is God in all of this?” The implied challenge is that it is up to God to clear up your misunderstanding. Nothing could be further from the truth. Through the lens of Jer. 29:13 when you cannot find God it is an incitement of your own heart’s condition that YOU must address lest you be in danger of your soul. The bride in her bed is akin to the person who sits back in the seat of self-appointed authority and expects God to meet them on the terms of their incredulity and prove Himself to them. You won’t find Him in the seat of the scornful. You cannot say in yourself in effect “go ahead God impress me I dare you…” Many people do this in the prophetic and they refuse to believe the prophet unless they conduct themselves like a psychic or clairvoyant. In other words they demand that the prophet speak in such a way that it requires no faith to believe what he says – “tell me my social security number” and I will believe. As the Shulamite in her bed in verse 1 you will never find God in this dysfunctional manner. You will not find Him in YOUR bed or place of human rest but in HIS bed in the rest that He has prepared that is not the rest of unbelief demanding to be satisfied but in the place of faith’s expectation knowing that the cross is the only satisfaction that meets the needs of your struggling, searching soul.
When the bride arises from her bed she goes out into the streets – into human society to find her beloved but doesn’t find Him there either. What she does find are the watchmen. These represent pastors and leaders that you will encounter when you are looking for God. Notice that the search doesn’t end with the watchmen. Just because you find a pastor or a leader you have not “arrived” in your quest for deep intimacy with God. Verse 4 says that when the bride got past the watchmen she found the one whom her soul loved. That is a real problem for many Christians. They never get past the watchmen. They get born again, the get an experience with God and they find an anointed pastor or leader and their search ends there. They camp right there the rest of their lives. They don’t realize that they have to get PAST THE PASTOR (or leader) to truly find the one whom their soul loves. Every TRUE pastor will GET THIS. Every hireling will find you on your spiritual quest and make demonstration of their anointing and say YOU HAVE ARRIVED – LOOK NO FURTHER and, “please give me your credit card number”. They then lead you back to YOUR BED in the pew, in a place of passive serving in a religious expression and you never go on to find the rest of God where your beloved waits. This is what Eph. 4:11-15 refers to when it states that the watchmen (the 5 fold ministry) are appointed that you would GROW UP into HIM in all things – not THEM.
Verse 4 goes on to say that the bride found Him and would not let Him go. She got passed the pastors and leaders and found a relationship with Him that no delegated representative could give her. She found something that can be expressed within the infrastructure of religious culture. Let me ask you – have you gotten past the pastor? Have you found the watchman that doesn’t point you to himself but rather points you to Christ? These are few and far between. Paul was such a leader. He understood His role:
[2Co 11:2 KJV] 2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present [you as] a chaste virgin to Christ.
Make it your concern to take care that you do not look to your leaders for what you ought to look to the Lord for. The leader at best is merely that one who (should rightfully) espouse you to Christ. Many people get hurt and offended at leadership because they want the leader to become their dependency rather than looking to Jesus Himself. The true shepherd, and faithful pastor will be the pastor that espouses you in your heart and soul to the Lord Jesus Christ.