Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother, Pastor Jeff Orluck
Brian: Did you get all that?
Jacque: It will be on Facebook. If you didn't, you can re-watch it.
Brian: That's right, so...
Jacque: If you want to get it sent in an email, they will send you an email of it.
Brian: We are just so helpful to everybody.
Jacque: We try.
Brian: Yes. I just want you to know Jeff has not come between Jacque and I this morning.
Jacque: We are not arguing.
Brian: No, we are not. We are having a good time together. Last week, I shared a message on really, the song of Jesus and I used as part of an illustration, the story from Greek mythology of Odysseus and the sirens island and so forth, and how Odysseus, he just put wax in his guys’ ears and chained them into the bow of the ship. And then he tied himself to the mast so that he could pass by the island without succumbing to the temptation to listen to this music that the sirens would play and then crash on the rocks and die.
Sometimes that's the picture that is conveyed of holy living and righteous living. It's just this almost feeling of bound up rather than a real, complete joy. And then there is another example from a man by the name of Jason- Jason, one of the Argonauts who rather hired another musician whose name was Mesmer, where we get the word mesmerize from. He was hired to play music that would just captivate all the guys on ship. When he was playing his music, everything else just kind of got dim and dull and nobody listened to it. What ended up happening is they came by this island and Mesmer started playing. Jason and all the crew were captivated by the music and so much so that even the sirens listened to the music of Mesmer and actually turned to stone.
The whole point of the story is there is a much better way to overcome sin in our lives. It's not just to grit our teeth and to just put all sorts of restrictions on ourselves, but rather to listen to the song of Jesus that is incredibly captivating and so stimulating to us. Well, as we began to think about this, and Pastor Jeff last week, a little bit in his time of ministry time, made a small reference to the Song of Songs. Some people called it the Song of Solomon, but it's really the Song of Songs. It's one of the books of the Old Testament. This book is so full of metaphorical teaching about what it really means to be in an intimate relationship with God. Pastor Jeff has done just a lot of study in this book and teaching on this book, and I thought, you know what, I want to take a couple of weeks, at least for us to really look at this book and what God is trying to tell us about what his desire is for us in a relationship with him. So I just want to kind of give a little bit of a backdrop. You guys jump in anytime you want here, but before we kind of dive into the book.
This book is really a collection of love poems. It's called the Song of Songs. It's a Hebrew idiom, which is similar to like the Holy of Holies or the King of Kings. It's a Hebrew way of saying it's the greatest song, the greatest of all songs. There are two main characters in this particular story. They are the only ones in the world for each other. That's probably a good way to say it. They are the only ones in the world for each other. They are not married yet, but they are engaged. It's kind of like our relationship with God. I know we are called the bride of Christ and so forth, but there hasn't been the marriage supper of the lamb yet. There hasn't been that feast and wedding ceremony that is going to take place in a sense, in heaven.
In some sense of the word, even though the church has called the bride of Christ, in another sense, we are kind of just engaged at this point in time with God, but they can't wait until they can be together. They can't wait until they can be together. I know some people, most of them are more elderly like your mom and my mom, Jacque, they are saying, "Oh, I just can't wait to be with the Lord." That's kind of the picture of this book- I just can't wait until we can be together. These poems in this book kind of go back and forth between the man and the woman here, these two lovers. There are kind of two basic themes in this book. One is this incredible desire that these two people have for each other. What a great metaphorical picture of God's desire for us. We don't really think of it that way much, do we, Jeff? We often think of... Most people think of God and religion as he is angry and I've got to appease him. Yet, this book paints an entirely different picture of what God really would like to have with you and I.
Bill Johnson, you sent us a video. We watched this video. Bill said something really, really interesting in this video. He talked about how people seek revelation and understanding from the word of God and they want to get deeper insights. He said, but if the only thing we get is more knowledge and this knowledge and revelation doesn't create in us a deeper experience with God and on a relational level, it ultimately just is going to puff us up. God's purpose for this book is to paint a picture for us about just how passionately in love he is with us.
Jacque: Brian. I think a definition would help here, of the word intimacy, because I think in our culture, we can have lots of different definitions for it, but I always love... I've heard you say intimacy means into me, see. It just means being open, being honest.
Brian: Vulnerable.
Jacque: Being vulnerable. Yes. That's how our relationship with God needs to be.
Brian: It's kind of interesting. These are separate poems. So one poem, they are together and then the next poem this couple are part and they are kind of, shall we say, they are on the hunt for each other. They are looking for each other. Of course, more than once they find each other. The result of that is things can get a little passionate in this book. Of course, we have to understand that this is a metaphorical book. It's metaphorically written. A metaphor is like when Jesus said, “I am the door”. He didn't mean that he had a knob and hinges, but that he was a gateway or an entryway to go from one place to another. We see all sorts of incredible metaphorical writing in this book. Some of it can come across as somewhat sensual or even sexual. It's not intended to be taken that way. It's intended to be metaphorically understood as the passion that God has for us and the desire for him to be intimate with us. But then all of a sudden they are separated again because they go to another poem. Again, they are looking for each other. So that's one of the themes in this book.
The other theme is actually the incredible joy and attraction that they have for each other. Sometimes we would do well, if we would realize just how much joy God has over us as his children. Some of these metaphors are kind of strange if you were to try and put a literal interpretation on them. The pictures that would be drawn would be very strange indeed, but they are metaphors. If you were to think of Jesus as a door with hinges and a knob on him, he would appear very strange to you as well, wouldn't he? So this is very, very metaphorical writing here.
The book goes through these poems and then it comes to a conclusion. The conclusion basically, is the power and intensity of love. There is a great power of love. Love can conquer a multitude of sins. One of the scriptures that I'm sure you'll refer to, Pastor Jeff, is many waters cannot extinguish love. Another one says love is as strong as death. We've always said there are two things that will always be- death and taxes. But it says here, love is as strong as death. That's what God has in store for us and desires for us. Love can be very beautiful and life-giving, but in the case of Bonnie and Clyde, it was very dangerous and destructive, wasn't it? Love needs to be... We want to not just seek love. We want to seek love in the right way. We want to seek love in the right way.
One of the things this book really reveals is the longing in the human heart to know someone intimately and to be known, the longing in our hearts. This is how God has made us. He said it's not good for man to be alone. The longing that is put in our hearts to know and to be known in this loving way, and that also love is this wonderful gift that God has given to us. The book ends with the gal saying runaway with me, runaway with me, my love. The book kind of ends that way and you think, well, aren't they going to get married? Where is the end of the story? I believe the book is left open ended because love is always open-ended. There is always a deeper place to go in love. When I first married Jacque 46 plus years ago, on our wedding date, I didn't think I could ever love her any more than I loved her the day that I married her, but my love for Jacque has grown so much more deeper and hopefully more healthy than it was back 46 years ago.
I think that's why this book doesn't kind of like have like an ending to it, so to speak; ride off into the sunset, so to speak. But that's how love is. There is always more to be pursued in our relationship with God. There is always more there to be pursued in our beloved with the Lord. True love has no end, and so neither does this book. There are a couple of parallels here. One is the Jewish tradition, is the woman is Israel and the man is God. The Christian tradition is more that a woman is the church and the man is Jesus. I think one of the key features also in the book, and then I'll be done with this and you can dive into all the stuff you have for us, Jeff, one of the key features is this garden imagery that is created in the book, which kind of brings us back in a sense to the Garden of Eden. When you think of the Garden of Eden, what do you think of? I don't think of actually the snake running through the weeds, but I actually think of Adam and Eve in innocence and in beauty and even in their nakedness. That nakedness that they experienced really was a picture of vulnerability, yet safety for them. They were safe in each other's love, weren't they?
Their relationship prior to the fall was not tainted by selfishness. It wasn't tainted by sin. Some of this imagery that I think is created in this book that kind of re refers us back to the garden, brings us back to this idea that holds out hope for all who will love each other. If we will really, truly love God and truly love each other, there can be a true place of safety and yet even vulnerability with each other. With that kind of basic intro, I want to turn it to you, Pastor Jeff and let you begin. We'll kind of dive in to some of the things that this great book actually has for us to understand.
Jeff: Yeah, there is a lot here. We are actually going to look at a lot of the scriptures and the metaphors and talk through some of it. Just to key off of one of the things that you said, Brian, I think is really valuable for us to understand; western culture puts knowledge at the top of everything that we consider most valuable. That's very different than people who live in the east. They tend to put experience at the top of the things most valued. The Hebrews are an oriental people. They are not oriental in the sense of Chinese, but they are oriental in the sense that they are Eastern. So everything in the Hebrew culture is rooted in an experience as a higher value than knowledge. In the West, we tend to make knowledge the end in itself, but what happens then in the US and in Europe and in all western culture is that we take knowledge, we have this insatiable appetite for learning, which is a good thing, but in the end, what we do is we don't translate our knowledge into experience. We don't take the next step.
If you remember, a few weeks ago, I mentioned something Jesus said in John 6:23, where he said, he, who believes in me has eternal life. One of the things I pointed out at that time was that that was not a doctrinal statement. That was true. It was an invitation. That's kind of the message that you guys listen to, one of the emphasis when Jesus says something, or when the Holy Spirit opens up our understanding, it's not just to give us another level of knowledge. It's an invitation into an experience with him. And so all of these prophetic pictures, allegorical pictures, they are all intended to open up a door for us to have a greater experience with our savior. That's what we really want to get into. Christianity is an experience. It's not just a theology.
Brian: One of the things we've done as the church, historically, is that we've made, shall we say our unity based on if we agree intellectually with ideas. As a result, since the reformation and the incipient see of the Protestant movement, today we have about 35,000 separate Protestant groups or entities or denominations. They are largely in the west, of course. I think that the root of all that is the fact that we've separated from each other because we didn't always agree in what we were believing this rather than having the experience of knowing God be what we based our unity on.
Jeff: Yeah. So like in the case of John 6:23, what we do is we take, "Jesus said he who believes in me has eternal life" and we make that a doctrine. So then what we say is you have to believe in Jesus to have eternal life. That's not what he meant. He was making an invitation. If you believe in me, I'll give you eternal life. What happens is because we build these into structures of thought we end up qualifying and disqualifying everybody else based on whether or not they agree with our version of what Jesus said, our understanding of his truth. If there are 35,000 Protestant denominations, there 35,000 different versions of the things that Jesus said in terms of how we understand it. That's something that's really important. We are getting way off the Song of Songs here. Something that's really important to understand is that your knowledge of the things of God is limited by you. It's limited by your experience by your childhood, by the teachings that you've received, by the church culture that you've grown up in. All of those things become what I've always called a grid through which we filter the things that God says. So the truth of God comes into the filter, comes out of the filter different than it was intended because it has been filtered through all of our experiences.
One of the things that's really important for us to understand is that we don't understand it all. It's good for us to always seek to understand and to enter more and more and more into the experience that our understanding brings, but it doesn't do any good to disqualify everybody else because they don't think like us, because we may not actually understand it all ourselves. So Jesus ends up saying to the Pharisees, you travel far and wide to make a convert and you turn them into twice the son of hell that you are. Well, good job.
Jacque: He also said, every stream thinks they are the river.
Jeff: Yeah. Well, you know, there is... Boy, this is really crazy where are we end up.
Jacque: I'm sorry.
Jeff: No, this is all good. There is the joke about... Sorry, our Baptist friends, but there is a joke about people that go to heaven and St. Peter was taken them around. “Over here”, he says, “We have the Methodist and over here we have the Presbyterians and back over there, that's the Pentecostals.” They walked by and there is this trap door. And they say, well, what's down there. And he said, "Shhh, that's the Baptist. They think they are the only ones here."
Brian: We love Baptists.
Jeff: We love... We love the body of Christ. David said, as for the saints who are in the land, they are the holy ones in whom is all of my delight. The first time that awakened to me, I knew I had to deeply repent.
Brian: God is a supernatural God.
Jeff: He is.
Brian: God is a supernatural God and we are natural. So there is a lot that God wants us to know about him that is very difficult in a sense for God to communicate with us because we are natural and he is supernatural. Remember our dear friend, Dan Willard, his dad, when people say, how you doing? How are you today? And he would say, “I'm supernatural.” I'm supernatural, because God's grace was in him. But God really is supernatural. He uses some very natural ways in the world to reveal himself to us. Let's talk a little bit about that.
Jeff: All through the scriptures are metaphors or prophetic pictures that teach us about what our savior is like, teach us about the nature of God. Of course, when Jesus met with Nicodemus in the middle of the night... Nicodemus is a Pharisee and he needs to meet Jesus face to face. He is not quite sure that all of his Pharisaic brothers have it exactly right and he needs to have a talk with Jesus personally. Jesus says, unless you are...
Brian: Born gain.
Jeff: Born again, you can't see the kingdom of heaven. And then later on in the discussion, he says the spirit is like the wind. It comes and goes wherever it wants, but you can't see it.
Brian: Of course, Nicodemus, even though he is more experiential than we in the west, he still is trying to process the statement of Jesus…
Jeff: And he is struggling.
Brian: In an intellectual way.
Jeff: That's right. But Jesus used natural things. Jesus used things created by the father to help Nicodemus understand something that was spiritual. All that God has created really, truly everything that God has created is intended to help us understand who he is. There are so many natural pictures and you go all through the scriptures and these natural things are used to help us understand who God is. With Nicodemus, he used birth and the wind. Now Jesus, the greatest revelation that Jesus gave us wasn't in anything he said, but it was in how he demonstrated his relationship with the heavenly father. More than anything else, and probably in my opinion, the most important understanding we will ever have of God is that of a loving father who protects us, provides for us, nurtures us, teaches us and loves us with no reservation.
This is something that, I don't know about you guys, but for me, the first time I ever heard about the love of our heavenly father in sense, I mean, other than from Jesus was in the mid to late nineties. All of a sudden people like Jack Winters and some other people who had really struggled later in life, after very successful ministries, they had really struggled later in life in their relationship with God. They had seen a lot of failure, a lot of heartache, a lot of dissension, a lot of trouble in their ministries and in their lives as a result of ministry. They had tried to do everything the way they thought they should and they ended up just being disillusioned and angry and in many cases, in their own little caves, just in their basements brooding. In that place of what they felt was failure, God begun to reveal to them something new that they had never understood. It was how much he loved them.
Brian: The father's love.
Jeff: The father's love. In the mid to late nineties, this new understanding of God and begin to be permeated all through the different aspects of the church and people began to for the very first time, understand God in a different light understanding differently than the theologies we had learned up to that point. I think we always said God was loved, but this was different. This was deeper. This touched things in the core of us. For some reason at that point in my life, I got caught up with a different understanding or different allegory about Jesus. That was the one we find in Ephesians where Paul talks about how the relationship between a husband and his wife is a picture of Christ and the church. He goes through this whole litany of things that we have totally distorted in our understandings of marriage and relationships between men and women.
For the most part, for many years, we just had it all wrong. In the end, Paul goes through all these things. And then at the end, he says, "I know this is a great mystery, but actually I'm talking about Christ and the church." So this relationship between a husband and his wife, or as we get into the Song of Songs, between a man and a woman, romantic love and marriage just begin to become a real interest to me. The word that I began to use, because we understood that the church is the bride of Christ, so the word I began to use was the bridal anointing. I found this metaphor all through the scriptures. It's in the book of Esther. It's in the book of Ruth. It's in the life story of Deborah. It's in the relationship of John, the apostle with Jesus. I just found it all through the scriptures, all of these allegorical pictures that teach us about what it means to be the bride of Christ. But the pinnacle of all of them of course, is the Song of Songs. That's what we are going to dive into a little bit today, to just let this metaphor, this prophetic picture, begin to awaken us to something with Jesus that we can experience, because in the end, what we want is we want to become more intimate with him. One thing I might say, just as a little disclaimer, a little help for you men, because...
Brian: This is tough for us guys.
Jeff: This is a little hard for guys to be a bride.
Jacque: It's pretty easy for us.
Brian: For you guys?
Jacque: Yeah. This is a great point.
Jeff: One of the things that we need to understand is that these metaphors apply to all of us. When we talk about the bride of Christ, we are talking about the church; we are talking about men and women in the church. When we talk about the intimate, passionate love that Jesus has for us as his children, or as his people, or as his be trolled, we are talking about men and women. Men and women equally can experience an intimate love from our savior, Jesus. This is okay. This is not problematic because it works both ways. One of the things that we have in scriptures is we have a lot of stuff about son-ship, don't we? We need to understand that when we are talking about son-ships, when we are talking about sons of God, we are not just talking about men; we are talking about men and women. We are all sons of God. Ladies, you are sons of God. One of the things that I began to understand is that in the church, in the body of Christ, every woman is a son and every man is a bride. Just deal with it.
Brian: Just deal with it. Get over it, right?
Jeff: It's all good. Once you cross that divide you are okay.
Brian: Part of the reason that God talks like this is we are male and female on the earth, but there, Jesus makes it very clear, there is no male or female. It's a spiritual dimension that doesn't have these genders as we have here. We are very accustomed to... I'm very accustomed to thinking like a man and Jacque is very accustomed to thinking like a woman and the vernacular that we use is obviously male and female idioms and so forth. Then we come to the scriptures, and God is trying to get across a spiritual idea or a thought. We struggle because we take our filter of being a man and put it over the scriptures. So we struggle.
We struggle with The Shack, for example, the book, The Shack. That just caused so much controversy because God, the father was an African-American woman. That caused all of us guys to go tilt and so forth. Yet, the nature of God is what he is trying to get across here, not male and female-ness here. I don't think anybody would disagree that when Jesus said in the scripture, you will all be sons of God. He wasn't just talking about the men on the earth. He was including all the women on the earth. So that's not really a male delineation. It's a more of a child, the child of a father delineation type of thing.
We have to kind of... I'll be honest with you. I've always thought as a man and a groom. I've not really thought very much as a bride. Yet I know that I'm part of the bride of Christ. So I need to think about what that means and to put myself into that place. These are the things, kind of some of the adjustments that culturally we need to make adaptations to in order for us to truly get a lot of the things out of the scriptures that God wants us to get. So from that, go ahead, Jeff.
Jeff: Yeah. It's helpful for me that I'm a hopeless romantic. I cry in every movie. I cried all through The Shack from the beginning to end. It makes it all easier for me, but let's just dive in, because this is cool stuff, especially if you are at all romantic. All of us have a little bit of that in there somewhere.
Brian: Or want to be.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, maybe not your dad.
Jacque: He could have used a little more. We should be growing that way.
Jeff: Yes, that's right.
Brian: He could have used a dose of romance.
Jeff: We are going to start with the very first chapter, verse one. We open up, if you are thinking of this as a stage performance, we are opening up to the first scene and the Shulamite woman, the betrothed to the Lord is on stage and she opens up saying, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For your love is more delightful than wine, pleasing as the fragrance of your perfumes. Your name is like perfume poured out. Take me, oh… No wonder the maidens love you." That's significant for something the Lord showed me. Then she says, "Take me away with you. Let us hurry. Let the King bring me into his chambers." So she is pretty hot already. She is like, where is he? Come on and kiss me. I'm yours. And so this is...
Brian: Let me tell you something. What guy wouldn't want that?
Jeff: That's right. That's pretty appealing, right?
Brian: This is kind of... This is in the Bible, so I can talk about this. You are all listening. I can tell you are not falling asleep today. You are not falling asleep today, but listen, guys, what husband wouldn't want his wife to say that? This is what, again, metaphorically speaking, this is how God wants us to be with him, that we desire his presence, that we desire his companionship, that we desire to just be with him. This is the picture that this is trying to portray.
Jeff: Yup. That's what it's trying...
Jacque: Can I just add something about... God showed me just so recently, because somebody had said to me, "Oh, I've been so busy. I haven't read my Bibles enough. I haven't been with God. I know that God showed me because in the business of the morning, sometimes being with God can be hard to do." And the other morning recently, God just said to me, "Just come and sit and let me love you." So I said to this gal who was struggling, “Don't look at your morning time with the Lord that way. It's not a “to do”, just go sit and let him love." Gee, I love to go there in the mornings and not just be loved.
Brian: Yeah, for sure.
Jeff: I had a similar experience. This is quite a long time ago. I had a pretty profound experience with the presence of the Lord back in the late nineties. It happened actually when I was on a mission’s trip overseas. When I got back I could get up early in the morning and just sit in the presence of the Lord and the intimacy and the closeness of his presence was something I had never experienced in my life up to that point. And then I remember after several weeks of that, I kind of got sick. I had three or four days where I was pretty sick and I didn't get up and pray. I think I remember I was even in bed. Finally, after three or four days, I just dragged myself out of bed and I thought I've got to go be with the Lord. I got went out to the living room and sat on the couch. The first thing I heard was "I missed you." It wasn't like, "I missed you. Where you been?" No, no, no. It was, "I missed you." Things like that are real. This is our God.
Jacque: Come let me love you.
Jeff: He loves us this much. We are starting on the other end. We are starting on our end, but these words portray something. I'm just going to give you a few little nuggets of understanding that I've kind of gleaned as I've spent time in here. It's interesting that she compares his love to wine. Your love is more delightful than wine. If you've got an issue with drinking, you might have a problem with this, but there is something in this metaphor that's real. For those of you that do enjoy a glass of wine once in a while, don't you really like it after about half of a glass of wine how just everything kind of mellows a little bit? Come on, anybody else out there?
Voice: Just half of a glass?
Jeff: Well, that's all it takes for me. I'm kind of a lightweight. It has been a long week. It's Friday evening. You sit down to dinner, you open up a bottle of wine and you start to sip on that wine and it just like, wow. There is something about when you know what alcohol does in the very initial stages before you are inebriated, it just calms and settles your emotions, how you feel. You find yourself in a place where yeah, man, all is right with the world. And that's exactly what happens when we are in the arms of the Lord.
Brian: As a matter of fact, it says it's even more delightful.
Jeff: More delightful.
Brian: Than even this.
Jeff: Oh yeah, the presence... being in the arms of the Lord is way better than drinking a glass of wine, in terms of all being right with the world. Actually, that experience with wine is just a cheap imitation of what we really experience when we are in communion with Holy Spirit. I find that experience in worship and I find that experience in times when I'm alone. I have times of intimacy with the Lord when I'm with all of you here at church and we are worshiping. I had times when I was watching live stream in my living room. I have the same experience of intimacy, all alone, worshiping with all of you. I have the same experience when I do a one minute pause and I just stop in the middle of my day and give a few minutes to be with Holy Spirit. In those moments, all is right with the world. It's a wonderful place to be. It's an amazing place to be, but it's a place where we can dwell. That's what's really cool.
Brian: We can camp there.
Jeff: The next thing she says is pleasing is a fragrance of your perfumes. Your name is like perfume poured out. Bet you didn't know God wears perfume. Most men wear perfume. We just call it something else. We call it aftershave. It's still perfume. It's same thing. I don't so much anymore, but in earlier days, I had aftershave, but then I had cologne, but the cologne was reserved for date nights with Cheryl. That's when I put on the special stuff, because I was going to be with her and I wanted to be attractive. I put on the cologne to make myself more attractive. That's what perfume does. That's why ladies wear perfume. That's why men wear perfume, because we want to be attractive. We want to give off a scent that is pleasing to others.
I began to ponder and question, what is the perfume of the Lord? What is the perfume that he wears that smells so good? I had an experienced, I was actually at a pastors' meeting. It was like a Tuesday morning. We were there and we were starting to worship. I had already had a really hard week and I was feeling somewhat strange from the Lord as I came to that meeting. We started to worship, and I don't know about you, but when you are feeling a strange from the Lord or something has gone wrong in your life, or you've done something wrong that you feel bad about, and it comes time to worship, do you sometimes have this little roadblock, this hesitancy like, oh, can I really worship with the state of my heart right now? Can I really just... Is that okay to just leap over this problem that's inside of me and just worship, like everything is okay? Because it's not okay, because I'm not okay. So what does God think of this? I'm just pretending like everything is okay. That's kind of what happens between us. Sometimes we have little spat with our spouse and it's like, oh, you are going to act now like, everything is just okay?
Jacque: And the enemy says, “You are such a hypocrite”.
Brian: Oh, you've experienced that too?
Jacque: I have.
Jeff: That was where I was that Tuesday morning at this pastors’ meeting. We started to worship and I was in that place of struggle, trying to enter into worship and yet hindered by my own heart. Suddenly it was like the Lord just completely washed me with his mercy. Just like in a moment, it was just like whoosh. Everything was okay. At that moment I realized that the perfume. God's perfume is mercy.
Brian: [Crosstalk]
Jeff: Mercy is the fragrance that comes from him. That attracts us to him. It attracts the whole world to him because we don't find mercy anywhere in the world. In the church, we tend to really criticize ourselves for being a judgmental people. Don't kid yourself. It's not exclusive to the church. Judgment and criticism... I mean, just get on Facebook for a while. Pastor Brian has talked about that a lot and it isn’t just the church Facebook, isn’t just Christian Facebook. Just watch the politics for a while. Just say something half the world disagrees with and watch what happens. We live in a culture right now that dams you for everything you think, at least half of it.
We are desperate, desperate, desperate for somebody who will love us, just for who we are in spite of what we think or what we do wrong. It's God who wears the perfume of mercy that is available to us at any given moment that attracts us to him. So she says pleasing as a fragrance of your perfumes. Your name is like perfume poured out. The name of Jesus is like just pouring out perfume, and the whole room gets filled.
Brian: Just saying his name.
Jeff: Just saying his name.
Brian: The world says his name a lot, and maybe not with the same reasons that we would, but even when they are saying his name in the way that’s not the idea that we would, I still believe in the fact that his name is being declared.
Jeff: It's his name and it like perfume. And then she says, no wonder the maidens love you. No wonder they all love you. No wonder they talk about you the way they do. No wonder. It's because of your mercy. It's so amazing. In a moment that it gave me access to your presence. Every day it's available. Every morning it's new. Every failure experience, it's there to wash me and open up the door again into your loving arms and it's never not there. That fragrance just attracts us. It's the most attractive thing about God.
Brian: Yes, it is.
Jeff: It is.
Brian: It allows us to become vulnerable with him.
Jacque: He tells us his mercies are new every morning, always fresh.
Brian: And yet feel safe. And yet feel safe in spite of our failure.
Jeff: You feel safe. You feel safe. Do you have people you really care about who need to know Jesus?
Brian: Had a whole bunch of them here on Friday night.
Jeff: The most attractive thing they will ever see from you is mercy.
I don't know about you most of my... Well, I can't say that anymore. I'm getting to a point where I probably have longer understood fathers love than I didn't. So thank the Lord for that. But for much of my life, people didn't get mercy from me. They got a lot of self-righteousness and self-righteous indignation and judgment.
Brian: And you think of the people that were labeled sinners in the New Testament, especially by the religious leaders and how they were drawn to Jesus, the woman who poured the perfume out on his feet or the woman even at the well, or the woman caught in adultery, the demoniac of the Gadarenes, even Peter swam to shore to be with him. There was this sense of safety. I like how verse 4, what it says here, because this mercy is being poured out, this fragrance of mercy, she says, take me away with you and let's hurry. Take me away with you. Take me to a place of...
Jeff: Where we can be alone.
Brian: Where we can be alone. If you don't trust somebody, you don't want to be alone with them, but if you really have real trust in somebody, you will want to be alone with them. That's such a great picture of what this paints here. You know what I would like to do, if we could do this, I would like Jacque and I to sing a song right now that I think captivates and captures these first four verses and then we'll start with this next portion next week, if that's okay with you.
Jeff: Yeah. That would be great because this is her love for him and the next section we are going to look at is his love for it.
Brian: Yes. I want to do this song called Amazed. Lord, I'm amazed by you. It really is captured in this portion of scripture that we just read where no wonder these people love you. No wonder the young maidens love you. Jacque let's do this.
Jacque: That would be good. That was so great, Jeff. Stay right here.
Jeff: Stay right here?
Jacque: Yes, stay here because we might have something to say after. Just focus on his love for you.
[Song]
Brian: Our father, today, we just want to encounter you more deeply. Help us, Jesus to overcome our fears. Help us to know, Jesus, this mercy that flows from you every day. We would say, take us into your chambers Lord, a place where we can know your grace and your love. Whatever might be in the way of us really feeling free in your love Lord, we want to set it aside. Whatever fears, whatever doubts, maybe we know you whom to know is so life eternal. May we see you, this father who saw the far way off and came running. May we understand you to be the one who gave all so that we could be loved by you. We are amazed by you, Lord.
Jacque: Let's sing to him one more time.
[Song]
Brian: Let's raise our hands together. And now may the Lord bless you. May the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you his peace. May the Lord turn his face toward you and bless you with his mercy. May we smell the fragrance of our God and the mercy that he gives us every day. This, we pray, in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. It's great to have you here today. If this was your first time here at Hope, we have a special gift for you. So just stick around for a few moments and we'll want to get that to you. God bless you. It's great to see everybody. Thank you, Pastor Jeff.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 9-13-20. If you would like to watch the full service, click one of the links below.