HIS HEART SONG…Part 7



HIS HEART SONG…Part 7

“His Thoughts Toward ME…”

• Song of Solomon 4:1-8, remind me of this song we sing…”His thoughts toward me, a melody…strong and clear…and reaching me….”

• Before we can really understand the beginning of chapter 4…we really need to understand the thoughts of God toward us…

• Sooooooooo….that’s where we are going to start!

• Psalm 139:17 “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!”

• In a way…we are completely surrounded by the thoughts of God…all of creation tells us about the incredibleless of God’s thoughts…

• John MacDuff…way back in 1864 said this about God’s thoughts:

• The world of nature is a majestic volume of God's thoughts:

His sublime thoughts — are the everlasting mountains;

His lofty thoughts — the distant stars;

His dreadful thoughts — the lightning and tempest, the earthquake and volcano;

His minute thoughts — of discriminating care the tiny moss and lichen, the tender grass, the lily of the field, and pearly dewdrop;

His loving thoughts — the blue sky, the quiet lake, the sunny glade, the budding blossoms and beauteous flowers;

His joyful thoughts — the singing streams and sparkling waves;

His unchanging thoughts — the rock in mid-ocean, on which the waves are in vain spending their fury.

• But not even these thoughts really convey the thoughts of God towards us!

• Hebrews 1:2 “And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe.”

• It is IN CHRIST that we know the thoughts that God has for us…just as the Shullamite is about to discover…the incredible thoughts of God toward her, spoken to her by her Bridegroom, Jesus Christ…

• Isaiah 55:9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

• Here on the earth…we care about what great men think, what celebrities think, what our kids think, what our family thinks, even what total strangers think…..don’t you think it just makes sense then…to care about what our GOD thinks about us!!!!!?

• We write about what WE think in diaries, in journals, in letters, on FACEBOOK, in texts…because it is important to us to let others know what WE THINK….same is true of God…He wants us to know His thoughts toward us…so He wrote them down in His Book….it’s all there for us to dig out and discover!

• When we open His Book and read it…we discover that the One who created the universe…LOVES us!!!!! He THINKS about us all the time!!!

• As we read this next verse….THINK ABOUT what this verse is saying…

• Isaiah 57:15 "For this is what the high and lofty One says — He who lives forever, whose name is holy: I live in a high and holy place — but also with him who is contrite and humble in spirit; to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite."

• This verse is telling us that God actually dwells in two different places…He inhabits ETERNITY….and He inhabits the HUMAN HEART…..now, how WOW is that!

• He is ETERNAL and INFINITE….yet He lives in us little FINITE beings to “revive the heart that is contrite”….contrite means “repentant…deep and genuine feelings of remorse for sin”

• THINK on THAT for a minute……do you realize how deep His love and His thoughts for you are????!!!.....He is the ETERNAL OMNIPOTENT EVERLASTING GOD…and He lives with YOU……that’s just wow….THAT is a precious THOUGHT of God….

• John 14:23 “Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

• Psalm 8:4 “what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

• Psalm 113:5-6 “Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? “

• This amazing God who is madly in love with us…loves us with an EVERLASTING love…

• Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you with an EVERLASTING LOVE! Therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn you!”

• The little bride is about to find out how much her Bridegroom loves her and that there is NOTHING…not even her disobedience…that could cause Him to stop loving her…because His love is an EVERLASTING LOVE!!!!

• The definition of EVERLASTING is “never failing or coming to an end”

• It’s all because of His GRACE and MERCY that He loves us…not because of anything WE did…

• Ephesians 2:4-5a “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ…”

• Even in our stubbornness….even in our pride…even in our rebellion…even in our hatred toward God…….even in all of that…He LOVED us

• Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

• You see….He doesn’t love like we do….we love CONDITIONALLY….here today, gone tomorrow…but not Him…He loves EVERLASTINGLY…ETERNALLY

• THINK about it this way…..the Scriptures say that He loves with an everlasting love…everlasting has no beginning….so that would mean that even before you existed here on this earth…He knew you from EVERLASTING and He loves you from EVERLASTING…and now that you exist here on this earth…all of this love He has amassed toward YOU…He now wants to LAVISH on YOU!!!!

• God even makes sure that we understand that this LOVE is completely EVERLASTING…check out this verse…

• Jeremiah 33:20-21 "This is what the Lord says: 'If you can break My covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time — then my covenant with David my servant — and my covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before me — can be broken, and David will no longer have a descendant to reign on his throne."

• Can YOU change day and night????.....nope…you can’t…..and NOBODY can….that’s what God is saying here…..YOU can’t stop day and night from coming just like they always do…and YOU can’t stop Him from keeping His covenant of love with us!

• Jeremiah 31:37 “This is what the LORD says: "Just as the heavens cannot be measured and the foundations of the earth cannot be explored, so I will not consider casting them away for the evil they have done. I, the LORD, have spoken!”

• DO YOU GET IT!!!!!????....even “day and night” are there to remind us of the EVERLASTING LOVE He has for us…..and that even SIN and the EVIL that we have done does not cause Him to break His covenant of LOVE with us!

• Psalm 113:11 “But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. “

• Little bride…have no fear…your Beloved LOVES YOU WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE!!!! He knows your beginning from your end…He knows the plans He has for you, plans to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future! Even before you were in your mother’s womb, He KNEW YOU!!!!

• John 3:16 “For God SO LOVED….”

• We can’t even BEGIN to measure that LOVE!!!!!

• In the very next verse He makes sure that we know that He didn’t send His Son to earth to CONDEMN us…but to SAVE US!

• John 3:17 “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

• He did it because He loves us and He knew that there was nothing else that could save us…

• Isaiah 63:5 “I was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So I myself stepped in to save them with my strong arm, and my wrath sustained me.”

• “God IS LOVE”…..and He showed us plainly and clearly that LOVE when blood and water flowed down from the cross for us!

• Just like the song we sing…”See His Love”… See His love nailed onto a cross

Perfect and blameless life given as sacrifice…See Him there all in the name of love

Broken yet glorious, all for the sake of us…This is Jesus in His glory, King of Heaven dying for me…It is finished, He has done it…Death is beaten, Heaven beckons me…..Greater love no one could ever show, Mercy so undeserved, freedom I should not know…All my sin, all of my hidden shame Died with Him on the cross, eternity won for us….Such love, such love…Such love is this for me

• Why do we complain as the bride did in chapter 2…afraid to come out from behind the lattice…? HAS SHE NOT HEARD!!!!!!........

• Isaiah 40:27-28 "Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, 'My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God'? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God — the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary — and His understanding no one can fathom!"

• We forget about How deep His love is for us…we instead start complaining and griping…we say things like “If God really cared about me, He would have come to help me by now”…

• He knows how crazy our thoughts get…after all…He wrote in His Book about Gideon…Gideon and all the Israelites had been oppressed by the Midianites for 7 years…when Gideon said in Judges 6:13 “If the Lord is with us—why then is all this happening to us?”

• David probably thought the same thing when he was supposed to be king…there he was running for his life from King Saul…”Where are you in this, God?!”

• Mary and Martha probably thought the same thing about Him when they sent for Him because their brother Lazarus was dying…but Jesus didn’t come for two days…and by that time, Lazarus had died…

• In Psalm 77…Asaph is thinking the same thing about God…he is looking around at all the wicked prospering and the righteous people suffering and he asks God…”Have you forgotten to be gracious? Have You in anger shut up Your tender mercies?

• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…..remember….His ways and His thoughts are not anything like ours! He does not change and He does not grow weary….

• These must have been the same thoughts the bride was thinking in chapter 2….so now, here we are about to start on chapter 4….it will be the first time her Beloved has spoken in the Scripture since their time together in her mother’s chamber…is she still thinking these thoughts?...is she scared about what He might say????....or will she now TRUST in Him…?

• Especially after all He has just shown her…maybe she HAD to go through that season of testing earlier so that she would really understand just how much He truly does love her?.....

• She had thought that her Beloved had forsaken her….but He promises “never to leave us or forsake us”

• Isaiah 40:28 “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.”

• Another thought that God has toward us is one of PITY…

• You might be thinking….what?????

• The definition of PITY is the…feeling of sympathy: a feeling of sadness because of another person's trouble or suffering, or the capacity to feel this and…mercy: a willingness to help or to forgive somebody

• Psalm 103:13-14 “As a father PITIES his children—so the Lord pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are but dust.”

• Just like we PITY our children…we feel a sadness…when our children go through troubles or anything that causes them harm….heck…even when Adi or Cohen get a mosquito bite…we coddle them and love on them and hug on them….and that’s just for a little MOSQUITO BITE…how much more does our Heavenly Father hug and coddle us and pity us!!!?

• God IDENTIFIES with us in our sufferings……God’s THOUGHTS toward us are of LOVE….

• You know how irate you get when someone messes with your kids!???....that’s just how God feels and thinks about US…

• He IDENTIFIES with the sufferings that we go through…..He went through suffering too when His only begotten Son was tortured and crucified on the cross…when all the sin in the world was placed on His Son and the Father had to turn away….that is ULTIMATE SUFFERING….

• He pities us even BEFORE we REPENT…even BEFORE we turn back to Him…even when we “backslide”….

• Look what He says to Israel…

• Jeremiah 31:20 “Is not Israel still my son, my darling child?" says the LORD. "I often have to punish him, but I still love him. That's why I long for him and surely will have mercy on him.”

• He loves us EVEN while we are being total TOOTS!

• Look how the Bridegroom addresses His bride at the beginning of Song of Solomon 4:1…

• Song of Solomon 4:1 “Behold, How beautiful you are, my darling! Behold, how beautiful!...”

• Read this next verse and be amazed at His thoughts toward us…

• Isaiah 43:25 “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and will not remember your sins!”

• DO YOU GET THAT!!!!!????....God’s thoughts are definitely not like our thoughts…..He FORGIVES and FORGETS….how many times do we hold a person’s sins over their heads…never forgetting…never forgiving…

• Maybe…just maybe…our little bride had those thoughts running through her head?....that she had turned away from Him…”how could he ever forgive her now?”….

• But after she heard those first words out of His mouth toward her…all doubt must have just washed right away!

• Remember that covering of purple that she had just rode under…that incredible ROYAL BLOOD that covers us…THAT is how He can forgive us from our sins!

• His THOUGHTS toward us are so amazing in this area that His Word tells us that He even removes them as “far as the east is from the west…that’s how far He has removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12)

• He doesn’t forgive us like this because we deserve it…or because we repented “real good”…it has nothing to do with that…He does it FOR HIS OWN SAKE according to Ezekiel 36:22

• His THOUGHTS toward us are His FULL, FREE, UNCONDITIONAL, EVERLASTING LOVE and forgiveness of us guilty and undeserving people…..

• THINK on that for a minute…at how awesome that statement is…

• His thoughts toward us are also ones of LEADING and GUIDING us…

• Proverbs 16:9 “The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.”

• Psalm 32:8 “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”

• His thoughts toward us are of GOOD…notice that He trains us in the way we SHOULD GO…not necessarily the way WE think we should go…HE knows best!

• Sometimes…He has to prune us…PRUNING involves: cutting, shaping, sometimes mutilating, and reducing to unsightly shapes…..WOW….been there….all to encourage NEW GROWTH!!!!!

• While we are being pruned my Him…He is also watching over us…

• Psalm 33:18 “But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love”

• Are you ready for this next verse….?????

• His thoughts toward you are of HELP WHEN YOU NEED HIM…

• Isaiah 41:14 “Do not be afraid, worm Jacob; I will help you! Says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.”

• WORM JACOB….WOW…..why would the God of the universe care the slightest bit about “worm Jacob”????.....but it is exactly this….us…as little weak, insignificant, unworthy little worms….that occupy His THOUGHTS!!!

• As beaten down as you might feel at this moment…..feeling full of condemnation and guilt from all your sins…or maybe you’re feeling cold when it comes to your faith….maybe you are lukewarm in your love toward God…EVEN IN ALL THIS WORK-LIKE STUFF…..YOUR GOD DRAWS NEAR TO YOU and LOVES you!

• Even though you may feel like a WORM…His thoughts toward you according to Jeremiah 29:11 are of PEACE and not of evil!!!!

• He PROMISES to help you!

• Psalm 72:12 “For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.”

• Lamentations 3:55-57 “I called on Your name, O Lord, out of the lowest pit. You have heard my voice, “Do not hide Your ear from my prayer for relief, from my cry for help.” You drew near when I called on You. You said, “Do not fear!”

• In chapter 3 the bride was HUMBLED…she searched and looked for Him with all her heart…and she FOUND Him…..

• We have to remember that it is the HUMBLE that God gives this grace to….it is in our WEAKNESS that we are STRONG…

• Zephaniah 3:17 "The Lord your God in the midst of you is mighty! He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing!"

• Isaiah 62:5 “…as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”

• In the story of the Prodigal Son….its not so much the son that is overcome with joy….it’s the FATHER…REJOICING over HIS son that was lost and now is found!!!!!

• In the Parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15….verse 5 says that “ when he has found it, he will JOYFULLY carry it home on his shoulders.”

• WE are the JOY set before Him!!!!

• Can you SEE the THOUGHTS He has toward YOU!!!!!!

• Can you imagine what must be going through the bride’s head in Song of Solomon 4 as her Beloved opens His mouth to speak to her……

• SUCH LOVE HE HAS FOR HER!!!!

• His promises of LOVE are forever…

• Psalm 33:11 “The counsel of the LORD stands for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.”

• Psalm 103:17 “But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children—“

• His thoughts TRULY are not our thoughts…if they were…..there would be a ton of us that would have already been “given up” on….BUT He has NOT given up on us….instead He stretches out His hand of MERCY towards us!

• Exodus 34:6-7a “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin…”

• HE IS JUST so GOOD!

• Back to our little bride…last week we had her coming up out of the wilderness…the palanquin and the chariot awaited her…a ride of REST and SAFETY…

• She came upon this ride after her STUBBORNENSS had caused her to lose her Beloved…but then she had searched for Him and found Him….and He had not ONE SINGLE ANGRY THOUGHT toward her….it was only thoughts of LOVE….He led her into the wilderness and then ALLURED her right back out of it…just like what happened to the children of Israel after they had backslid away from God and had turned to IDOLS……

• Hosea 2:14-15 "Therefore, behold, I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her!"

• This is STILL how He deals with us!!!!.....He gives us revelation….he gives us a “strong house made of cedars and firs”…He gives us “henna blossoms” and “perfumes” and brings us to the “banqueting table”, we sit “under His shade tree of protection”…….He gives us all this and more…and we walk away from Him…..JUST LIKE THE SHULLAMITE WOMAN DID when she wouldn’t obey Him and “Arise and Come” as he asked her to…

• But instead of anger and wrath…He brings her into the wilderness and speaks words of comfort and safety to her…and the next thing we know…she is coming up out of the wilderness in a SAFE chariot….guarded on all sides by 60 valiant men…with swords on their thighs….

• His thoughts are FOR me…not against me…His MANY thoughts toward me…

• Psalm 40:5 “Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, And Your THOUGHTS toward us; There is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, They would be too numerous to count.”

• Are you getting the big picture here????....are you understanding His thoughts toward you….

• Malachi 3:17 “And they shall be mine, said the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son that serves him.”

• Did you get that GOD THOUGHT....WE are His JOY!!!!! THAT is how much He loves us!!!!!

• Just like at the end of chapter 3...His JOY is US crowning Him with our OBEDIENCE….WE are His most prized possession!!!!

• __________________

• I said allllllllllllll of that so that you would understand the INTENSITY of His love for us in the first part of Song of Solomon 4:1….

• Song of Solomon 4:1 “Behold, How beautiful you are, my darling! Behold, how beautiful!....”

• Why did He have to say it TWICE…because she found it so difficult to believe the first time…..He sees us as His bride…we tend to see ourselves as failures…because we know of our former disobedience….

• We wonder how He could ever use us again after what we have done (or didn’t do)….so He tells us TWICE how beautiful we are to Him…just to reassure us!

• He sees us as growing in perfection when it comes to serving Him…nothing had changed when it came to His INTENSE love for her…or for us!

• Lord, help us to see ourselves as You see us!...this is why the Song of Solomon is so important to understand…when we are surrendered to Him…and then we fail Him…the pain is excruciating….we immediately want to shut down because we see ourselves as spiritual failures…

• But the Song of Solomon helps us to see us as HE sees us….

• BEHOLD, thou art fair, my love, behold, thou art fair…”

• Ephesians tells us that Jesus CHERISHES and NOURISHES us…

• Ephesians 5:27-29 “…that He might present her…a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle…that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives…NOURISHES and CHERISHES…just as the Lord does the church.”

• Through this whole study today….you can see that the method that God chose to change us…the weak, stubborn, sin-filled Bride into the mature Bride is to NOURISH and CHERISH us…He doesn’t condemn or scold or yell at us….

• He LOVES the sin right out of us! That’s how He disciplines us!!! HOW AWESOME IS THAT!!!!

• As we continue next week into the rest of verse 1 and on through verse 8…we will see just how Jesus AFFIRMS us!

• She DESIRES to walk in victory with Him….so He AFFIRMS that!!!!

• There are certain character traits that Jesus wants to come out in His Bride…so He calls them forth! He AFFIRMS them as though they are already there….after all….He knows the end from the beginning!!!

• His THOUGHTS toward me….a melody…sustaining all my hopes and dreams….

• Even in our weakness…we are beautiful in His sight…

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