That Great Love of God
5Who is this who comes up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree I aroused you. There your mother conceived you. There she was in labor and bore you. 6Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death. Jealousy is as cruel as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a very flame of Yahweh. 7Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned.
I once watched a television program about an elderly couple who had made their home in the foothills of Mount Jiri.
The camera quietly followed the unchanging love of a ninety-seven-year-old husband and his ninety-four-year-old wife. I do not know whether they are still living. Quite some time has passed since then, yet their steadfast love has stayed with me. Seventy-one years had gone by since their wedding, they said, and still their first love showed no sign of cooling. It was a lovely thing to watch: the old man would recite a poem that carried a message of love, and his wife would answer him in song. Many young couples today cannot make it through the hard stretches of life and end in divorce. The love of this old couple was different — a deep love, and one worth following.
The bond between them as husband and wife seemed to have moved from romance at first, to a settled affection after that, and now to the companionship of old friends. Yet when they were young they too must have wrestled for the upper hand and quarreled. With the years, affection would have grown, and with it a considerate heart that understood the other, until each grew into someone the other could not do without. They never stopped practicing laying themselves down for each other, and as a result, making their way together through so many years, they came to see that the spouse at their side was better than any friend. Neither now waits to be served. Out of worry for her, he tends the fire that warms her room; out of worry for him, she brews his medicine. It seemed to me that this is what a true husband and wife are, and that each no longer thinks of the other as husband or wife but as no one other than themselves.
Seventy-one years of living in love within the fence of marriage is no easy thing, and it is no short time either. Even now, the husband still said that his wrinkled ninety-four-year-old wife was the prettiest woman in the world, and that he gave her whatever she wanted.
I hope that you, too, will grow old as gracefully as that couple, cherishing and loving each other like friends. To love this beautifully, we must cast off the greed that fills our hearts and yield to what the other wants. Caring for and helping each other without wavering, we must be able to cover each other’s faults. And if we are to go on covering those faults and carry that love to the very end, we will need an absolute love, one in which each trusts and leans on the other.
Solomon honored his wife in front of others regardless of her station, and he stood as her shield against all who mocked and despised her. He did so because, within the bounds of marriage, no one but her husband can protect a wife. You, too, if you own something you treasure and hold dear, will not let others handle it carelessly. And others, in turn, do not treat lightly what you value.
It is the same between husband and wife. Only when we cherish our husband or wife will others give them the respect they deserve, and the more our spouse is honored, the higher our own standing rises. So a husband and wife must live upright lives for the sake of each other’s dignity.
When they met in chapter 1 of the Song of Solomon, one was the king’s son and the other a keeper of vineyards. Seeing love between two people so far apart in rank, the world would have whispered that the Shulammite was using Solomon’s position as prince to raise her own. She was suffering under people’s prejudice, and she had no way to show that her love was true. So she lamented that if only Solomon had been a brother who nursed at her mother’s breasts, no one would have despised this true love.
Song of Solomon 8:1
1Oh that you were like my brother, who nursed from the breasts of my mother! If I found you outside, I would kiss you; yes, and no one would despise me.
Here we can see how much she had suffered at heart. But the two of them loved in a way unlike what people saw. Solomon loved her as a man, apart from his royal rank, and the Shulammite received her beloved’s heart in all sincerity. Because of this, theirs was no love of calculation and gain.
So it was with Jesus, God the Son. He laid aside the glory of heaven, took on the body of a sinner, and came to this earth himself, and that is what made love between him and us possible. The love of Solomon and the Shulammite came about because he took on everything she was and had; so too, Jesus, the Son of God, bore all our sins and gathered us into his arms, and that is how we could become his bride. Without so great a love, sinners sunk in eternal death could never have become children of God. Those of us who know this love should have a faith worthy of the bride of Christ.
Song of Solomon 8:5
5Who is this who comes up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree I aroused you. There your mother conceived you. There she was in labor and bore you.
The Shulammite, now the king’s wife, came back to her hometown with her husband. The women there were amazed at the splendor of the procession and asked who this happy woman was, coming up with Solomon.
Now she could show the people of her hometown, who had despised her when she was a keeper of vineyards, how happy a woman she had become as the one the king loved, and how high a station she now held. No one would mock her again as the Shulammite who had lived a shabby life under her brothers’ harsh treatment; now that she was the king’s wife, no one would so much as dare to look her in the face. She had won the love of a king, a love the women of the world could not easily win, and now she stood boldly before the world with that love at her side.
Perhaps the women had mocked her as they watched her love for Solomon, saying she would soon be cast aside, and they likely tried to hold her back, asking why she would take a hard road instead of living an ordinary life as they did. The world, too, watches God’s people stay apart from its ways and keep their faith, and often asks why they live such a stifling life instead of taking it easy like everyone else. To the world they seem bound to God, and so it takes them for fools who have thrown away its freedom and pleasures.
But however much the world mocks you for choosing a foolish road, you who know how the world will end must pay it no mind and walk steadfastly in the way of Christ alone. I hope you will never stop walking by faith, setting your eyes on the salvation that is unseen rather than on what is seen, because this world, in the end, was made for the saving of souls.
As you are filled more and more with the Holy Spirit, others can know what blessing and grace you have received without your having to tell them, for spirit discerns spirit. The reason is that the spiritual authority God has granted you will show itself, and the day will come when they see it with their own eyes, like a light shining into the darkness. People of the world who live in darkness can never understand a love shared with the Lord, the King of kings. But those whom the Lord loves know what an astonishing blessing that love is, and they will not give it up.
Sinners who were in anguish, unable to throw off sin and death by their own strength, have become children of God through Christ. How could anyone give up so treasured a place of blessing? Just as the world cannot grow bright unless the sun rises, so no one can ever see the Kingdom of God, bright as day, unless Christ, who is the light, shines into their darkened heart and soul.
On the day the saints come to the wedding feast as the bride of Christ, the world will lie under God’s wrath, wailing and envying those who share in the feast. Not knowing how dreadful and fearful the judgment God brings is, people ignore God and mock his people, but on that day everyone will know.
Had the Shulammite given up loving Solomon for fear of what people would think, she would still be living as a keeper of vineyards. Her face, scorched dark by the sun, would have made her a laughingstock, and her wicked brothers’ torment would have made her life no different from hell.
It is no different for us. If we failed to shake off the world’s temptations and gave up our faith for fear of people’s judgment and mockery, we would sink into death along with those who tremble under God’s wrath, wailing and beating the ground. We could have been the bride of Christ, yet a wrong decision would have brought us to judgment.
When they reached the Shulammite’s hometown, Solomon told her that he had awakened her under the apple tree, in the place where the one who bore her was in labor. He meant that when she fell asleep under the apple tree, worn out by her brothers’ harsh treatment, he woke her, and that is what made her the woman she now was. Solomon loved her first, while she lay sleeping, and so he called her.
We are creatures God made. Because of the sin Adam committed when he ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we were sleeping the spiritual sleep of death. While we slept that sleep, we all lived with the same thoughts, plans, and desires as the world, and we had no passion, no zeal, and no loyalty toward God. Those who live forgetting God go on sinning, relying on nothing but human righteousness, and never know that they are asleep in death. It was to us, lying like that, sunk in sin and sleeping a spiritual sleep beneath the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that Jesus came, and he woke us.
To us who lie spiritually asleep under the apple tree, the Holy Spirit is whispering these words.
“How can you go on sleeping,” he asks, “and forget the anguish of the Father, who hung his Son on a cross to make you a child of God?” And he rouses you: “Jesus endured the suffering of the cross with joy, thinking of you, the one he would save. How can you sleep the sleep of death?” He tells you, “I will help you so that you do not fall into the sleep of death in this harsh world, and I will watch over you so that you walk the way of Christ. So be faithful to death.” The Holy Spirit has been a fence around you that will never give way, and that is why you stand here today bearing the name of saint. May you always be filled with the Holy Spirit, so that you never defile that name.
Song of Solomon 8:6
6Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death. Jealousy is as cruel as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a very flame of Yahweh.
Because the Shulammite knew that Solomon’s love gave life, she asked him to protect her. She wanted to be with him always, like a seal set on her husband’s arm. Tamar’s life was saved by the seal and staff of Judah that she held as a pledge. So too, the Shulammite longed for an everlasting love, like a seal stamped on Solomon’s arm.
As a letter is closed with a seal, Jesus Christ keeps his people safe and sure. The Lord is always their shield, turning back Satan’s attacks, and he gives them power that makes them more than able to overcome the world. The Lord loves his people so much that he gives even his life for them, but when they betray him, his jealousy is as cruel as Sheol. Its force blazes like the very flame of Yahweh, and no one can quench it. That is how great his longing is to save souls and share his glory with them. It grieves me to see those who have been given a love too great for the world to bear failing to enjoy it. If you trust God alone and keep your faith whole, God will stand between you and every trouble you meet and every power of the world, and he will keep you safe.
Deuteronomy 29:20
20Yahweh will not pardon him, but then Yahweh’s anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book will fall on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under the sky.
God gave his one and only Son over to death to save sinners. Toward those who cast away that great and deep love and choose the world, his wrath burns like the fire of hell, and no one can put it out. So vast is the love of God that you now receive. Anyone who forsakes so great a love to follow a world as fleeting as a mist is a fool, a sinner with no claim to be loved.
A sinner who has forsaken the love of God must listen to what God has said: he will blot out that person’s name from under the sky and bring on them every curse written in this book. We must heed it because only when we grasp how dreadful and fearful that judgment is can we turn back. On the last day, when the judged are thrown into the fire of hell, no one will be able to help them. Since that time will never end, we must live by faith.
Song of Solomon 8:7
7Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned.
Solomon’s love was a fire that neither the waters of the sea nor the rivers could quench, a burning love for the Shulammite alone. What they shared as husband and wife is true love, and nothing can sever it. If you, like this couple, are confident that the love you receive will never change whatever hardship comes, that in itself will make you happy.
Are you confident that the love you receive from your husband or wife, your children, and your brothers and sisters in the faith is a love that will never change? And is the love you give a true love? Rather than hoping that your spouse, your family, or your brothers and sisters in the faith will love you, I hope you will look at how deep the love you give them runs. God’s love for us is a wondrous love that nothing can sever, and that is the love we too must learn.
Romans 8:35
35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
The apostle Paul said that nothing in the world can break Christ’s love for his people, or their love for him. God protects his own with a love that gave life itself; because of that, neither the world nor Satan has the power to stand in its way.
Satan can drag souls into death only once the cord of love that binds Christ and his people is cut, so he uses every means he has. Yet he cannot hold back the faith of those whose hope is set on heaven. He persecutes them to make them abandon their faith, he inflicts the pain of poverty, and he puts them in danger as they preach the gospel, but he cannot bring down those who have known the deep love of Christ.
The last weapon Satan chose was material wealth. Jesus said that no one can serve two masters: you will either hate the one and love the other, or hold to the one and despise the other; you cannot serve both God and wealth.
Yet once Satan planted in people the idea that wealth is power, and the belief that with money they can be as happy as they please, the world naturally abandoned God and is now racing after possessions. We know how hard it is to turn that thinking back toward God. Satan’s net is the reason: he has caught people in it so that they cannot get free of the world.
In Acts 8, Peter and John went to Samaria, preached the gospel, and prayed earnestly to God that the people there would receive the Holy Spirit; and though they were Gentiles, the Holy Spirit came upon them. When Simon the sorcerer saw this, he told Peter that he would pay him if he would give him the power to bestow the Holy Spirit. Peter was furious when he heard it, and he cursed him: may his silver perish with him, because he had thought he could obtain the gift of God with money.
The fullness of the Spirit we receive cannot be bought. Yet Christianity today has come to look like faith in God for the sake of money, and it teaches as though giving large sums under the name of offerings will win both the Holy Spirit and every spiritual gift. Now that even church offices are bought and sold, everyone has turned into Simon the sorcerer, trying to purchase the Holy Spirit. It is a victory for Satan, who has labored tirelessly to corrupt God’s people.
The love between Solomon and the Shulammite did not come about through money. Solomon certainly had great wealth, but he loved her as a man, not as a king, and his love was not something bought. Nor did the Shulammite love Solomon because he was rich; she loved his character, and she loved the man himself. A love held together by wealth can never last; with nothing left to bind the two together once the money is gone, it falls apart.
What God wants from us is nothing but a true heart that does not change. Yet there is something we must understand rightly: the Shulammite, whose love was pure, lived enjoying King Solomon’s wealth and honor as her own. She did not love him for his riches and power, but once Solomon became her husband, everything in his power became hers. So it is with us who love God: if only we stay faithful, we share in all the glory that belongs to God, the King of heaven.
Hosea 6:6
6For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
God is a Father who desires mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. He wants children who love him from the heart rather than with formal worship, and who show him the deeds of an honest faith. To have a true faith, we must first forsake the world, and when we live the life of a bride in Christ, God will grant us both the glory of heaven and the blessings of the earth.
Now I would like to bring these sermons on the Song of Solomon to a close. As you have watched the love of King Solomon and the Shulammite, a keeper of vineyards, you will have learned how beautiful their love is and what true love is. The name Yahweh does not appear even once in the Song of Solomon. Yet it is clear to us that this is a love story between God and his people.
Having seen Solomon’s love, I hope you will now love beautifully, without falsehood, honoring the other as a person. The fence of love built in the name of marriage is not kept by others; husband and wife must protect it themselves. To belittle your husband or wife is to lower your own worth. May you hold God, your family, and your brothers and sisters in the faith within the vessel of your love, love them without conditions, and live as one within an ever stronger fence.
My hope is that every one of you will be a Shulammite who has received her husband’s absolute love. May you become, like that beautiful woman, a wise Shulammite who tends and refines herself, and be deeply loved by God. And just as the love of Solomon and the Shulammite lasts forever, I hope the love between God and you will last forever, and that you will receive the blessing of eternal life.
May you always sing songs of joy in the love of God. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.
[Appendix] You Whom I Love
The Crown of Thorns
Satan’s hosts thought that if they set a great crown of thorns on me,
I would be shamed all the more, I would suffer all the more,
and with that in mind they crowned me with thorns;
but when I rose in the glory of the resurrection,
that crown of thorns became forever a great sign of glory.
Just as Satan tried to hinder my work of salvation,
will he leave a growing church, or my children, alone?
Once this trial has passed, everyone, with joy,
will ripen and grow.
[Appendix] My Beloved…
As I bore the cross in silence,
you too, be still and obey.
The task of Satan’s hosts
is to stir my children to anger.
Hardship is a wind that passes by.
You are a tree with deep roots.
Such a tree as you has no reason to fear
a wind that shakes the branches and moves on.
Do not complain that the wind is a nuisance,
for hardship is only like a passing wind.
[Appendix] You Whom I Love
As no one, watching a wind move away,
ever complains of it,
so whoever complains, watching a hardship move away,
is a fool.
Only with that wind can you grow,
and do not forget that what you most need in order to grow
is the fierce wind that drives in the rain.
Without Prayer
Whoever does the Lord’s work without prayer
puts forth the leaves of pride;
whoever does the Lord’s work without prayer
through endless grumbling
becomes a tool of evil spirits
and bears the fruit of unfaithfulness.
My Beloved
My beloved,
the sea you are crossing is so blue and so deep
that I feared my beloved would be afraid,
so I floated petals over the sea to cover it.
Riding in on the waves —
have you caught the scent of the petals?
Each and every one of those petals
is my love.
You Were Walking on My Hand
You thought the road behind you far too rough,
and you wept and found it hard to bear;
you fretted that it was a path of thorns,
and you suffered, saying the gravel made it hard to walk.
But, my beloved daughter,
look down for a moment at the road you are walking.
You have never once walked a path of thorns,
and you have never once walked on gravel.
You were walking only on my hand.
Each time you stepped, the pain that reached me
was very great, but for your sake I
prayed, and bore it again and again so that you could walk on my hand,
and I loved you.
If You Were Satan
Do not be proud that you are praying, that you are fasting.
Do you think you can defeat Satan?
If an apple tree were heavy with apples
and you were Satan, which one would you pick?
Would you not pick the biggest, the loveliest, the best-colored apple?
Even if you did not pluck the big apple from the branch,
if you took one bite — no, if you left even a small blemish —
that apple would lose its worth.
However much a bruised apple may show off its other sides,
who could ever treasure it?
You must gain deep wisdom.
Satan makes you stumble with a small blemish rather than a deep wound,
and then draws you away from God forever.
Yet the farmer, too, keeps watch over the faithful apple,
the apple that makes the farmer’s labor worthwhile.
Be ever humble, like ripe rice bowing its head,
and keep your souls safe from Satan, as one in the middle of the desert
keeps a single drop of water.
The Dandelion’s Story
The dandelion held them in, closer and closer, so they would not be taken.
Afraid that, stripped of them, it would look poor and ashamed,
it held them in, closer and closer still.
Then a warm wind whispered, small and soft:
Let them go…
Then they will fly far, far away, and wherever they land
life will spring up.
The dandelion thought for a long, long time.
Yes, I will open my heart wide and send these seeds off on the wind.
The moment it made up its mind, the seeds that had wrapped the dandelion round
caught the wind and flew off, far, far away.
But because the unseen seeds carried life,
the dandelion already knew they would sprout as beautifully as it had.
Faith Is the Fragrance of Jesus
Faith must not be dressed in gold
to show off its splendor,
nor dressed in silver
to be boasted of;
faith is to be dressed in Jesus alone,
so that, inside and out,
it gives off the fragrance of Jesus Christ.
Guard Your Faith
Faith is not something anyone else guards or builds for you.
You think, God will surely keep my faith for me;
someone will surely pray for me;
someone will lead me into faith — but
faith is something you must guard with your very life.
If, when I bore the cross,
I had thought, I am the Son of God, so he will make a way for me to escape;
he will make the nails painless when they are driven in —
had I come to it with such easy thoughts,
could I truly have kept faith?
Never.
For fear that I might bring God’s command and plan to nothing,
do you know how much I prayed?
Pray.
Lean on the Holy Spirit to keep the word of truth.
People See Me as a Rainbow
People see me as a rainbow hanging in the sky.
Only when their hearts feel fresh after the rain
do they think of me, as of a rainbow that appears.
Do you think of me that way too?
No — not a rainbow that vanishes when the sun comes out, but
when the sun beats down,
when the rain pours in torrents,
when you are adrift on the open sea,
I am Jesus, always at your side.
Only after their prayers are answered,
or when they speak of their dreams in rainbow colors,
do people look to me with gladness and joy.
But they do not know that out on the open sea
it is I who turn their bow toward land.
They only stare into their own pain
and do not look to me, the one holding the bow and answering them.
I lead them to an oasis under the burning sun,
I lead them to shelter in the driving rain,
yet rather than seek me, they think a rainbow must first appear
before I am there.
The words by which I guide those in pain along the way
they seldom heed,
and those who worship idols in their hearts, all the more.
But you, even amid hardship and the refiner’s fire,
must always open your ears and listen to my words.
The Young Sapling
This one is only a young sapling.
Wondering whether the young tree has taken root,
if you keep pulling it up, and when the roots have not grown
plant it again, and pull it up again whenever you wonder,
and plant it once more when the roots have not grown,
will the tree not wither and die?
Is that all you have to do for this young one?
When the wind blows, you must be a windbreak;
when heavy rain falls, dig a furrow;
pray that no pests settle on it;
and mound up the earth around it. But to that fragile spirit
every word you speak carelessly
leaves a very deep wound in that young one.
Be still; be patient and wait.
When your prayers have filled their measure and the time has come,
the sapling will put down its own roots and bloom.
The Pastor Who Must Become Good Soil
The pastor is the ground, and God’s people are the trees.
When the people I have entrusted to a pastor are called sheep,
the excuse is that the sheep would not listen
and went off somewhere else,
and so I see them as trees.
Just as trees wither when the ground goes dry,
if the pastor does not become good soil,
then, to save the withering trees,
I will begin moving them to good soil.
Forgiveness Comes with Pain
The reason forgiveness is painful
is not that you are pulling a thorn from your flesh;
it is that you are driving a thorn into it.
When one person forgives another,
how could there be no pain?
But that pain —
never forget it is the pain of victory.
Only the victors who know the pain of forgiveness
are able to smile.
Those the Lord Truly Loves
The Lord loves those who obey,
loves those who do not put themselves forward,
and loves what is not showy.
People think Jesus wants
a great many things,
but Jesus delights in those who are pure and cheerful,
glad and full of joy,
because such people will never put down roots
anywhere but in Jesus, the rock.
What True Love Is
Have you ever polished a jewel?
The jewels of this world shine when they are polished.
When you confess that you love me,
I ought to shine like a jewel;
how strange it is:
I receive the confession,
yet it is you who shine.
Is this not true love,
the love that gave its life?
A Little Boat on a Stormy Sea
Your faith
is a little boat afloat on a stormy sea.
When the waves are lower than you, you fear because they are low;
when the waves are higher than you, you fear because they are high.
Your faith is a little boat afloat
on a stormy sea.
That this little boat does not capsize
is only because I am holding it fast.