SOS 1:7-8 THE LEADING OF THE SHEPHERD

Chapter 1:7-8

            “Tell me, O you whom my soul loves, where do you pasture your flock, where do you make it lie down at noon? For why should I be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions?”

”If you do not know, most beautiful among women, go forth on the trail of the flock and pasture your young goats by the tents of the shepherds.”

The bride cries out to be restored to intimacy, to a Spirit-led life. She carries shame, like a veiled woman she says, who in those days tended to be a prostitute. She knows that her Bridegroom and King intends something better for her. Should she, the beloved of the King, live under condemnation and separation as if she were just some prostitute? She knows that there is a place he has for her of being personally led by him as her shepherd and given rest from the driven, performance based life, as lying down (at noon) in the heat of the day symbolizes rest. (note: the heat of the day would be the harshness of the natural world and of labor under the curse of the fall, as in “labor under the sun” in Ecclesiastes.) She loves him, why should she follow him only as an outsider, carrying shame, and only picking up the scraps from others who do have a direct relationship with him? This is something we deal with. Her example shows that it’s normal, and she will be given answers.

The King responds, “If you yourself do not know, most beautiful among women…” This is how he sees us even in our shame. We, the bride of Christ, are the most beautiful of all created beings in his eyes. In Christ, we are made of his very nature, his very likeness, he prefers our beauty above that of all of unredeemed humanity and above that of the angels and all created beings. Individually, we reflect aspects of who he is which nobody else does. We are his own literal bride. He seems astonished that she doesn’t know the answer herself concerning where he leads his flock. Really, the issue isn’t that he’s not already her shepherd, perfectly willing to lead her and actively doing so, but it’s that she is keeping herself from experiencing that more fully as a result of her shame and her unbelief and her low self-evaluation, and her lack of awareness of how he sees her and feels about her. This is the story of all of us.

Jesus said in John 10:14 & 27 “I am the good shepherd… my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”

In John 6:44-45 Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘and they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned of the Father comes to me.” This makes it clear that God is already speaking to us or we wouldn’t have come to Jesus in the first place. He is love, his words are Spirit and Life, and we live by every word that proceeds from his mouth, so of course he isn’t going to hold them back from us. It’s an issue of whether we believe he will give them or not. His name itself is The Word, and he is constantly speaking to us and giving us life, we only need to believe it to receive more fully. We don’t need some elusive “gift” that is only available to a few for us to be able to hear and be led by God. (or else we never would have come to Jesus in the first place) To be Spirit-led, according to Jesus in the scripture mentioned above, we only need to tap into that relationship with God which brought us to Jesus and which keeps us with him. We only need to believe in who he is within us already. Scripture further testifies to this reality:

1John 2:20-21 “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know, I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it…” and

1John 2:27 “As for you, the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in him,”

We truly do already know where the one we love leads his flock into his rest.

To “hear” God, we don’t necessarily need a booming voice from the sky or a certain tingling sensation in our left foot, or anything like that as “proof,” we only need faith and a surrendered soul. We don’t need him to prove that he is speaking, because he has already proven himself. We “hear” because we already believe him. You can simply quiet your mind and heart (letting go of your own agendas and worries and such, with all the internal noise that creates) and simply trust his heart and his promises, waiting and allowing him to faithfully speak in covenant response to your faith. You may want to journal to keep track of the impressions that come up inside of you at those times. He is so close to you that it can often seem like you are only hearing yourself. This is because you have been made one with him. He will put little thoughts in your head, images in your imagination, feelings in your emotions, and you will find through testing them out over time, that this is really God speaking to you from inside yourself as you are quieting your own soul and trusting him to speak. This is no less real than any booming voice from the sky or trance experience. He can use this to impact nations. He will help you to grow in learning how he speaks to you and how to tell what is him and what isn’t.

It is true that there are more dynamic manifestations of his voice and visions and experiences than those things which we could mistake as only being from ourselves, but I’m not emphasizing that because it really isn’t what is as important. People in the religious world tap into a grace in those areas and often get all puffed up, and they start strutting around as if they are more spiritual than those who haven’t tapped into those same blessings. We all tap into different things in a different order, and it isn’t about competing over whose left foot gets more tingly when they pray (or anything like that, any certain manifestation) to argue over whose the greatest among us. People can start relying on a manifestation, a certain sound of a voice, or a certain sensation, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t want as much of those things as we can get, we should, but the hard truth is that when we rely on a manifestation in the place of a relationship, deception is never far behind. I’ve known enough people who’ve had incredible manifestations; hearing an extremely distinct sound of a voice, being super sensitive to different feelings, having open visions all the time just like watching movies appearing out in thin air regularly, and I’m not taking anything away from that, but I’ve watched the same people tend to get filled with spiritual pride and then massive, obvious deception was always soon to follow. I’ve seen that so often, and even with strong pastors and such. In recorded history, William Branham is a great example of this. What happens if we aren’t careful, is that we start relying on the sound or feeling of a certain manifestation rather than relying on who we are trusting in when we pray and rather than relying on the surrender of our heart towards him when we pray, and the result is that all the sounds and feelings get counterfeited. It is said in the word that when someone comes to a prophet with idols in his heart, the Lord will allow that person to be deceived, he will answer them according to their idols. This is really how it works, regardless of manifestations; the enemy gets access to deceive when our heart is off. So it’s important to learn to surrender our own hearts and to learn to trust his heart, and to believe that God uses even the faintest senses within us. We need to not get all caught up in glamorizing and competing over dramatic manifestations as if they could take the place of a relationship, or as if they are the definite marker of a person being more mature.

We also need to be careful not to be afraid of the devil deceiving us. This doesn’t mean we don’t approach things with humility, care, and the willingness to admit it if we are proven wrong, but we need to trust that Holy Spirit is way better at leading us into all truth than the Devil is at leading us astray. We are protected from deception to the degree that we know our Father and trust him. He truly will not give us a serpent if we ask him for bread from a sincere heart. If we are afraid to pray and trust for revelation because the devil might deceive us, we are already deceived about the heart of our Father. He will lead us to the place of receiving accurately from him, he will sort out the wheat from the tares, not as we check whether what we perceive lines up with a formula, but as we trust him and continue to relate to him personally.

Psalm 23; “The Lord is my shepherd… he leads me beside the still waters… etc,” is another passage which shows this aspect of his leadership in our lives. Here is a relevant point from this: the still waters speak of a source to drink from that is peaceful and safe. Turbulent waters can actually drown a sheep even while it is only sticking its mouth and nose in to drink. Being at peace and at rest in him, having cast our cares upon his shoulders and trusting him to care for us, is the condition which allows us to accurately receive the revelation he is already trying to give us without all the noise and confusion we create for ourselves otherwise.

Getting back to the Song:

Where is the shepherd? He’s inside of us! Where does he lead his flock and make them to rest? Through his revelation of his great love and acceptance of us which tears down our shame, unworthiness feelings, and our unbelief!

He leads us directly by his Spirit who is within us already and who isn’t holding back from us as if he were playing some sadistic game. It is when we believe that he isn’t really willing to guide, or that we aren’t really worthy, even though he washed us in his own blood and made us worthy, that we block off our experience of it. We experience the realities of redemption by faith, rather than by shame and unbelief, and this includes the leading of his Spirit.

In James 1, we are told that, “if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all men and without reproach… but let him ask in faith, without doubting… he who doubts… let not that man expect to receive anything from the Lord,” and truly this applies not just to wisdom, meaning knowing what to do, but this applies to all things such as the blank check promises of Jesus to ask anything (any good thing) in faith and you will receive. This isn’t meant to isolate wisdom as the only thing you can ask for, but this is simply about God being a generous giver of all good things to all people who ask in faith.

Jesus said in the sermon on the mount that if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our heavenly Father give good things to those who ask?

As Paul told us in Romans 8, “He who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”

Jesus paid the price for all sin that was separating us from God, now the issue is that God is simply good and a generous giver to all, and whether we believe that or not is what determines how much we experience of it. He is generous in giving us his wisdom and his leading by his Spirit along with everything else. He gave us his own son!

Isaiah 42:16 is a great promise; “I will lead the blind by a way they do not know, In paths they do not know I will guide them. I will make darkness into light before them and rugged places into plains. These are the things I will do, and I will not leave them undone.”

It can be very helpful to meditate slowly and prayerfully on the scriptures and truths of God’s giving nature and of his promises to speak to and lead us, including the ones referenced here, and to allow those truths to be made alive in you as you do. Also, we need to address the arguments which come up from our hearts against these truths and to see them in light of the truth, laying them to rest as a result. Believing is more than just knowing some scriptures and mentally agreeing, but it is when our hearts, emotions, and entire being come into full agreement with the truth. It is something that needs to be developed. The seeds need to be planted and watered, and the ground needs to be cultivated, and it is an intentional process over time involving all aspects of ourselves. It can sound like daunting work, and there is work involved, but if you quiet yourself and meditate on his truths, even just for a little while, you will be amazed at how quickly your faith builds and what kind of things you can receive from him in that place of trusting him with more of your entire being rather than just your theology. It can help to look up “lecto divina” online and to practice that form of biblical meditation with these scriptures and truths.

Another more tricky manifestation of unbelief is stubbornness and self-righteousness. We cling to our own agenda as a way of making up for our lack of trusting God’s agenda, and we compensate for our lack of confidence in God with confident self-righteousness and stubbornness that we ourselves are right in our own opinions. This feels similar to faith, enough to even deceive ourselves sometimes. We can hold stubbornly to our own plans and desires, unwilling to surrender because we don’t trust his heart in that area. We are afraid of what hearing “no” might mean to us. We can presume that God is confirming our agenda when we are really just hearing our own mental and emotional “noise” which hasn’t yet been surrendered, or we are hearing other things besides God which our leaning towards rebellion is making room for. We typically need to surrender our own mind and emotions in faith as an essential part of receiving his leading by faith. He won’t force us, and it can take practical experience to know the difference.

Sometimes our lack of surrender (due to lack of trust) looks like being unwilling to walk out the process it takes to receive some things we are asking for. We just demand to get it right now and to get it in our own way. Sometimes there is a process of growth needed to steward certain blessings without bringing harm to ourselves and others, or sabotaging other things God is doing in and through us, and we almost never know what this process looks like or how much of it we need. He isn’t going to give us every blessing we want to our own destruction without any training process first, although he does give us things instantly many times. The issue is that we aren’t the judge of whether we need more of a process or not, and we need to let go of our attempts to control that. We don’t even really know what the blessing is going to look like, we may be being prepared for something bigger and heavier than we thought. Letting go of control of how he always gives, let us just trust him to give what is good. Let us also definitely not assume that he won’t give us anything instantly, or that his will is just to make us miserable.

v8- “If you do not know, most beautiful among women, go forth on the trail of the flock and pasture your young goats by the tents of the shepherds.”

She has the ability to know directly from the shepherd inside of her, but he tells her that if she doesn’t know, she can follow the trail of the flock, and pasture her “young goats,” beside the tents of the shepherds. Goats in scripture often speak of that which is rejected. Her young goats speak of the immature parts of her which are still dealing with rejection issues, the parts of her which don’t feel worthy of being led directly by God and so can’t believe enough to receive it.

Following the path of the flock and the shepherds would mean following others who are following the Shepherd and who are bringing revelation from him, or following the path of those who have followed the shepherd in the past. She can go to the time tested revelation of the scriptures, written by those who have walked with God in history under divine inspiration, and she can go to proven people who are ministering Life from heaven in more modern times, and she can use food from those sources to feed herself in the areas where she is weak and where she is feeling shameful and unworthy. She can nourish her weak areas, possibly by meditating on relevant scriptures, until those areas get strong enough in faith that she can be confident to be led directly by God.

Hebrews 10:17-23, for instance, is often a good passage to slowly meditate on and feed your “young goats” until you know where your shepherd leads his flock:

“’And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.’ Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.”

SOS 1:5-6 BLACK BUT LOVELY

Chapter 1:5-6

            “I am black but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the Curtains of Solomon. Do not stare at me because I am swarthy, for the sun has burned me. My mother’s sons were angry with me, they made me caretaker of the vineyards, but I have not taken care of my own vineyard.”

The bride is sharing the paradox here of two apparently contradicting truths. She shares that she is in a condition of brokenness and dysfunction in her outward life, even ashamed to be seen by others, and at the same time sharing the more significant truth that she is lovely and that she is pure in her innermost being. His redemption is real in us, even when it's process hasn't been fully walked out in every area of our lives. We don't come to him on the condition that we have to get our stuff all together first, but he is getting our stuff together as we continue coming to him without already having it all together. Our bridegroom’s love creates a safe environment for us to be ourselves without being punished. He has not created an environment where you have to pretend to have it all together, (or else) as religious systems and other broken groups of people can create. She also knows that even though she is broken, and even though she is ashamed of other people seeing her, she is really lovely and white as the curtains in the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s temple. Not only does this passage and the ones that follow reveal that it is part of the bride’s journey to deal with shame and dysfunction along the way, but answers to that are revealed also without any condemnation.

She is black like the tents of Kedar, which refers to a people group descended from Kedar, a people who were known for their black tents scorched by the hot sun, yet she is also like the curtains of Solomon, which are said to be white curtains leading into the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple. She tells the people not to stare at her because her skin has been burnt and scarred by the sun. Burned by the sun speaks of the scars from “labor under the sun” as the idea is used in Ecclesiastes, and as she later reveals in the song. (when she says she was made to care for other people’s vineyards instead of her own) It speaks of the scars which come from the harsh elements of life in this world, from the slavery to those elements that natural man lives under in performance orientation and seperation. She has been scarred. She has been taken advantage of and has not taken proper care of her own heart. (her vineyard is her heart, more on that later as well) Inwardly, like Solomon’s temple, she contains the very resting place of God, the true holy of holies in her core. She is still one with God, and she contains a purity that is greater than any outward brokenness and shame that is on the surface. In Christ, we are the temple of God, who lives in us, our bodies are members of Christ’s body. The OT holy of holies with the ark of the covenant is only a picture of what lives inside of us, even in the midst of our outward brokenness. He is changing us from the inside out, we don’t have to get it together first to come to him. You don't have to qualify for the gift of grace.

At the last supper, as revealed in the various accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus revealed his heart and the Father’s heart for the disciples, even though he knew that they would all fall away that very night, and that Peter would deny him despite his boasts otherwise. Jesus said “With great desire I have desired to share this meal with you,” he said that he loved them as the Father loved him, that the Father also loved them as he loved the Son, and that he had given them his glory and the love of the Father for the Son was inside of them. These things were not spoken to a group of mature apostles willing to lay down their lives in the way of the cross, but to those men who had just been fighting over who was the greatest among them, who were still filled with pride and selfish ambition, and who would even forsake and deny Jesus in a few hours. These are statements we can apply to ourselves even in our brokenness and immaturity and sin just as it applied to those men, that the Father loves us just as he loves Jesus, that Jesus loves us as the Father loves him, that he desires to commune with us with a great desire, and that the love with which the Father has for Jesus is also inside of us, as Jesus said of them in John 17. He has given us his glory that we may be one with him even as he and the Father are one, just as he gave to those men. We are lovely, even if we are black and scarred on the outside, even if our hearts are messed up. He said it. We don't need to hide from him in shame.

The bride speaks of the cause of her brokenness, “My mother’s sons were angry with me, they made me caretaker of the vineyards, but I have not taken care of my own vineyard.” Like Jesus, born of God and of Mary, our Father is God and our mother is humanity. The bride’s mother’s sons are simply human beings, children of humanity.

In this fallen world, people compete for power, control, and survival. A world system of fear and competition is also filled with hate and anger towards other competitors. The world, in a fallen state, is outwardly focused and performance oriented. This goes for the secular world and the religious world. People are assigned identities and roles according to how they can serve somebody else’s agenda. This can look like people being given an identity based on what they produce in their job/career, leading them to live life centered around that. It can look like people being centered on and identifying with what they produce in a hard driving/works based ministry that isn’t really coming from an overflow of Life from the heart, but serving ambition or selfish purposes. It can look like people being centered on and getting an identity from how they bring sexual attraction to others. (or whatever else it is that produces something for somebody and causes people to be pleased in being able to use us, and to give us a shallow form of acceptance and identity in return) We were created for much more.

She got caught up in feeling obligated to fulfill the roles assigned to her by the world’s systems, all the busywork involved in that, and she neglected her inner spiritual life. That is what it means that her mother’s sons were angry with her and made her caretaker of the vineyards, and that she neglected her own vineyard. She became one who was being used to meet the desires of others as if her own heart didn’t matter or had nothing better than that to offer. We are meant to live from the inside out, but the world (and church) pressures us to live backwards, from the outside in, and we get messed up on a deep level as a result. This is where we all come from. It can be especially tricky in religion, where we are told that we need to live up to a standard to be accepted, (just another way of being defined by what we produce for someone else’s judgments and agenda, rather than who we really are) and where we are taught to put others first and to neglect ourselves, even though we really can’t give anything to others of true value unless it comes from our own heart relationship with God, which needs to be put ahead of other people to become healthy and vibrant and a source of life to give out from. She became “scarred” and dysfunctional by living from the outside in just as sure as a car is going to become scarred and dysfunctional if you put gas where the engine oil is supposed to be and oil into the gas tank and drive it for a while.

Her vineyard, which she has neglected, speaks of her heart. In truth, our heart is a spiritual garden and vineyard. It is no coincidence that, along with this reference to "her vineyard," Christ stated that he is the vine, we are the branches, and our job is merely to abide in the vine and bear fruit as a result, as he said in John 15. It is no coincidence that love, peace, joy, patience, etc are the “fruits” of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5. This all speaks of a life of relying/centered on Christ within and fruit growing as a result, not one of trying to manufacture the fruit without the vine. Also, the fruit is not primarily successful business deals and ministry positions and popularity and all the things like that which the world seeks first and judges us according to, the fruit is primarily the things of the heart (love, joy, gentleness, etc) which God prioritizes. As we rest in him and delight ourselves in him, the fruit grows, and produces seed which can be scattered to grow fruit elsewhere, and the life centered on our heart relationship with Christ brings life to others’ vineyards as an overflow, as a byproduct.

The simple truth is that an apple tree produces apples, and a thorn bush produces thorns. No matter how hard the thorn bush tries to make apples, it can’t, it can only make thorns, but the apple tree produces apples with ease, because it is an apple tree. It takes in nutrients from its roots and the apples just happen. If you try to work your old nature into acting like Jesus, you still can’t produce Jesus, only Christ the vine can produce Christ’s fruit. So is our walk, we can’t manufacture it, we can only abide in the right vine from the heart.Let him love you, and you will love back. It's how you were designed.

Later in the song as well, her “garden” is used as a picture of her heart. Her garden and her vineyard are basically the same thing. It is also no coincidence to this that Adam was placed in a garden, (the garden in Eden, meaning garden in “pleasure,” no less) and that his job in life was to cultivate this garden which contained the tree of life, bearing fruit to eternal life. Surely, you can search the location in the middle east where the garden is said to be in scripture and you will not find a physical garden with an angel guarding it with a flaming sword and a physical tree which if you eat it’s fruit you will live forever. No, the garden is a spiritual garden. Adam’s job, which we are now restored to through redemption, was to abide in Christ, the True Vine, who IS the tree of eternal life, to delight in his pleasing and Life giving fruit, to cultivate and keep the garden or vineyard of his own heart. He was to water the earth by the river of Life which flowed through his garden, a son of God taking dominion over physical creation through that flow of divine Life. (see genesis 2) Jesus said that “he who believes in me, out of his innermost being (heart) will flow rivers of living water.” We regain Adam’s communion with the Father through our redemption in Christ, and we are restored to his place of dominion as well. We follow the pattern he demonstrated of cultivating a garden/vineyard, which is our heart, and “channeling” Holy Spirit’s river into the earth through it. This is what the bride had neglected when she was caught up in the busywork pushed on her by the world and the church and did not care for her own vineyard. She was not living her God given purpose and design from the heart, but living someone else's purpose and design for her. Sadly, everyone else has a much lower value and purpose for us than our bridegroom does.

Jesus came to deliver us from that slavery of performance driven living, but it is often like the children of Israel who Pharaoh saw as a threat and put into slavery. His was a religious kingdom also, not only a commercial one. As soon as they began responding to the call to come out of their forced labor obligations and worship God, Pharaoh called them lazy and he gave them more busywork for his own agenda to keep them from even entertaining such thoughts. When we hear the call to come out of people-pleasing bondage and learn a lifestyle of worship, and when we begin to change this pattern of being used from the outside in to one of flowing in God from the inside out, to bear fruit from the Vine, we meet much resistance from the world just like Israel did, especially from those who are used to having their way with us. (or with others) Our deliverer is faithful and he always makes a way for his will in our lives though, no matter what the resistance.