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 saw a television program about an old couple who had settled at the foot of Mount Jiri.
The camera followed the unchanging love of a husband of ninety-seven and a wife of ninety-four quietly; I do not know whether they are still living. Even now, a good while later, their unchanging love stays in my memory. They said that seventy-one years had passed since they married, and their first love still had not cooled. When the old man recited a poem carrying a message of love, the old woman answered with a song, and their love was a very good thing to see. Unlike young couples today who cannot get over the rough patches of life and divorce, that old couple’s love was a deep love worth taking as a pattern.
The feeling of love between the old man and the old woman who lived as husband and wife seems to have been love at first, then affection, and now something like friendship. But that old couple too would have quarreled and pulled against each other when they were young; and when some time had passed, affection grew and they understood each other with considerate hearts, so that now they have become people neither can do without. They trained themselves endlessly to set themselves aside for a husband and for a wife, and as they came through many years together they grasped that the husband and the wife at their side are better than any friend. Neither of them waits to be waited on. He lights the fire under the floor because he is worried about his wife; she brews the medicine because she is worried about her husband. Now they are husband and wife in the real sense, and they seem to think of each other no longer as a husband and a wife, but as their own self.
For the two of them to have lived seventy-one years inside the fence of marriage, loving each other, is not an easy thing at all, and that time is no short stretch of years. The old man still says that his wrinkled ninety-four-year-old wife is the prettiest woman in the world, and that he gives her whatever she wants.
May you too grow old finely, like that old couple who treasure and love each other as friends. To love this beautifully you have to let go of the greed filling your heart, give way for what the other person wants, treasure and help them without change, and be able to cover each other’s faults. And to cover the other person’s faults and carry that love through to the end, there has to be an absolute love in which the two trust and rely on each other.
Solomon lifted his wife up in front of people regardless of her rank, and he was a shield for her against everyone who mocked and despised her. That is because inside the fence of marriage the only person who can protect a wife is her husband. You too, if you have something you treasure and hold precious, will not let other people handle it carelessly. And other people will not handle carelessly what you treasure.
It is the same in a marriage. Only when you treasure your husband or your wife will people treat them accordingly; and as your partner is valued, your own standing rises with them. So husbands and wives must live rightly for the sake of each other’s standing as persons.
When they met in chapter 1 of *the Song of Solomon*, one was a king’s son and one was a vineyard keeper. Seeing the love of two people so far apart in rank, the people of the world would have whispered — that the Shulammite wanted to rise in rank using Solomon’s standing as a prince. She was suffering because of people’s prejudice, and she had no way of showing her true love. That is why she laments that if only Solomon had been a brother who nursed at her mother’s breast, there would have been no one to mock 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.
This passage shows how great her inner suffering was. But the love the two of them had was not what people saw. Solomon loved the woman as a man, regardless of his rank, and she received the heart of the one she loved truly; so the love between them was not a love that calculates.
In the same way, Jesus, God the Son, left the glory of heaven, put on the body of a sinner and came to this earth himself, and that is why love with believers was possible. Just as the love came about because Solomon took on all the Shulammite’s conditions, we could become his bride because Jesus, the Son of God, bore every sin and held us in his arms. Without a love this great, sinners fallen into eternal death could never have become children of God. Believers who know this love ought to hold 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 had become the king’s wife and came home with her husband. The women there were astonished at how splendid the procession was, and asked who this happy woman was, coming up with Solomon.
She was able to show the people of her home town, who had despised her when she was a vineyard keeper, how happy a woman she had become, loved by the king, and how high a standing she now held. No one will be able to mock her any longer as the Shulammite who lived poorly under her brothers’ mistreatment, and they will not dare look at the king’s wife. She received a love from the king that the women of the world cannot easily receive, and now she stands boldly toward the world with that love.
The women may well have mocked the Shulammite as she loved Solomon, saying she would soon be abandoned, and they would have tried to stop her, asking why she was taking a hard road instead of living an ordinary life as they did. People of the world, too, look at believers who keep the world at a distance and keep their faith, and ask why they live so stiflingly instead of comfortably as they do. Believers look tied to God, so they seem to be fools who have given up the world’s freedom and pleasure.
But however much the people of the world mock you for choosing a foolish road, you know how the world ends, so pay them no attention and walk steadily on the road of Christ alone. The world was made in the end for the saving of souls, so I hope you will not stop the steps of faith for the sake of a salvation you cannot see, rather than for what can be seen.
When you are filled with the Spirit more fully, spirit sees spirit, and they will know about the blessing and grace you have received without your having to tell them. The spiritual authority God allowed becomes visible, and the day comes when they see it with their own eyes, like a light shining into darkness. People of the world who are in darkness can never understand love with the Lord, the King of kings; but believers who are loved by him know what an astonishing blessing that love is, and so they do not give it up.
Sinners in agony who could not throw off sin and death by their own strength have become children of God through Christ — how could anyone give up so precious a place of blessing? As the world cannot grow bright without the sun rising, we can never see the kingdom of God, bright as day, unless Christ, who is the light, shines into a dark heart and a dark soul.
On the day we become the bride of Christ and attend the wedding feast, the world will weep under the anger of God and will envy the believers at the feast. People ignore God and mock believers because they do not know how fearful and how terrible the judgment God sends down is; but on that day they will all know.
Had the Shulammite given up loving Solomon out of fear of people’s eyes, she would still be living as a vineyard keeper. Her sunburned face would have been something for people to mock, and her life, tormented by her evil brothers, would have been no different from hell.
In the same way, if believers could not shake off the temptation of the world and gave up their faith out of fear of people’s judgment and mockery, they would fall into death together with those who trembled in fear and wailed and beat the ground under the anger of God. They could have been the bride of Christ, and a wrong judgment brought them under judgment instead.
Arriving in her home town, Solomon told her that under the apple tree, in the place where the one who bore her labored, he woke her. What this means is that when the Shulammite, worn out by her brothers’ mistreatment, had fallen asleep under the apple tree, Solomon woke her, and that is how there came to be the Shulammite there is now. He loved her first while she was sleeping, and called her.
Believers are creatures God made. Because of the sin Adam committed by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they were sleeping the sleep of spiritual death. While they slept that sleep of death they all lived with the same thinking, the same plans and the same greed as the world, and had no passion for God, no zeal and no faithfulness. People who live having forgotten God sin by human righteousness alone and do not know they are sleeping the sleep of death. Jesus came and woke believers who were sleeping that spiritual sleep, sunk in sin under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Holy Spirit is whispering to believers who sleep the spiritual sleep under the apple tree.
“Will you sleep, forgetting the pain of a Father who hung his Son on a cross to make you his child?” he asks, waking them; “Will you sleep the sleep of death, when Jesus bore the suffering of the cross with joy for the sake of one person — you — who would be saved?” He says, “I will help you so that you do not sleep the sleep of death in this rough world, and I will keep you walking the road of Christ; so be faithful to the death.” Because the Holy Spirit has become a fence that never falls, you exist now under the name of believer. I hope you will always be filled with the Spirit, so as not to soil 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.
The Shulammite knew that Solomon’s love was a love that gives life, and that is why she asked him to protect her. She wanted to be with him always, like a seal set on her husband’s arm. Like Tamar, who could save her life because she held Judah’s signet and staff as a pledge, the Shulammite wanted a love that lasted forever, like a seal set on Solomon’s arm.
As a letter is closed with a seal, Jesus Christ protects believers with certainty. The Lord is always a shield for believers, keeping off Satan’s attacks, and he gives them power so that they can overcome the world. The Lord’s love is a love that gives even his life for a believer; but when a believer betrays him, his jealousy is as cruel as the grave. Its flashes are as fierce as the fire of God, and no one can put it out. That is how great his wish is to save souls and share his glory with them. It is a sad thing to see believers who receive a love the world cannot possibly match, and do not enjoy that love. If you trust God alone and keep your faith whole, God will keep off and protect you from every problem you meet and from the powers of the world.
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 threw his only Son into death in order to save sinners, and his anger toward those who abandon that great and deep love and choose the world is as fierce as the fire of hell, with no one to put it out. The love of God you are receiving now is this great. Abandon that great love of God and follow a world as empty as fog, and you are a fool and a sinner with no claim on love.
We must listen to God’s word saying that he will blot the name of a sinner who has abandoned his love out from under heaven, and add to that person every curse written in the book. Only by grasping how fearful and how terrible that judgment is can a person turn. On the last day, thrown into the fire of hell under judgment, no one can help you, and that time is forever; so you must live in faith without fail.
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.
The fire of Solomon’s love was a burning love for the Shulammite alone, which the waters of the sea could not put out and the rivers could not quench. The love the two of them made as husband and wife is a true love that nothing can cut. Like this couple, if you are certain that the love you are receiving will never change whatever suffering comes, you will be happy just as you are.
Are you certain that the love you receive from your husband, your wife, your children and your brothers and sisters in faith is an unchanging love? Is the love you are giving a true love? Rather than wanting your partner or your family or your brothers and sisters in faith to love you, look back and ask how deep the love is that you are giving. The love God gives believers is an astonishing love that nothing can cut, so we too ought to learn that love.
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 cut the love of Christ toward believers or the love of believers toward Christ. The love with which God protects believers is a love that gave life, so the world and Satan have no power to block it.
Only if the cord of love joining Christ and believers is cut can souls be dragged into death, and that is why Satan uses every method there is; but he cannot block the faith of believers who set their hope on heaven. He may persecute them into abandoning faith, give them the pain of poverty, and put them in danger as they preach the gospel, and still Satan cannot bring down a believer who has known the deep love of Christ.
The last means Satan chose is money. Jesus said that no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other; you cannot serve both God and wealth.
But once Satan put into people the thought that money is strength, and the notion that with money they can be as happy as they like, the world naturally abandoned God and began running toward money. We know how hard it is to turn that thinking back to God, because Satan is holding people captive like a net so that they cannot get out of the world.
In Acts 8, Peter and John went to Samaria and preached the gospel, and while they were praying earnestly to God that the Samaritans would receive the Holy Spirit, the Spirit came upon them although they were foreigners. Simon the magician saw it and told Peter he would give him money if he would give him the power to send down the Holy Spirit. When Peter heard this he grew very angry and cursed him, saying, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money, may you perish with your silver.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit that believers receive cannot be bought with money. And yet Christianity now has become something like believing in God for the sake of money, and it teaches that if you give a great deal of money under the name of an offering you can receive the Holy Spirit and the gifts as well. It has come to the point where positions are bought with money, so everyone has become Simon the magician, trying to buy the Holy Spirit with money. It is the victory of a Satan who has worked steadily to corrupt believers.
The love of Solomon and the Shulammite is not a love that came about because of money. Solomon held a great deal of wealth, of course, but his love toward her was the love of a man rather than a king, and it was not a love bought with money. She too did not love him because he had much wealth; she loved his character, and she loved a man. A love joined by wealth can never last long, because if the money is lost there is no cord to join the two of them, and it collapses.
What God wants from a believer is nothing but a true heart that does not change. And what believers must rightly understand is that the Shulammite, whose love was pure, lived enjoying King Solomon’s wealth and honor as though they were her own. She did not love him for his wealth and power; but once he became her husband, all his ability became hers. In the same way, believers who love God, if they only keep the faith, share in all the glory God the King of heaven holds.
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 rather than burnt offerings. What he is saying is that he wants children who love God with a true heart and show him honest acts of faith, rather than a formal worship. To hold a true faith you must first let go of the world; and when you live the life of a bride inside Christ, God will grant you both the glory of heaven and the blessings of the earth.
I would like now to close this exposition of *the Song of Solomon*. You have looked at the love of Solomon the king and the Shulammite the vineyard keeper, and you will have learned how beautiful their love is and what a true love really is. In *the Song of Solomon* the word Yahweh is not written down even once. But we know clearly that it is a story of love between God and believers.
You have seen Solomon’s love; now love beautifully, without falsehood, lifting the other person up as a person. The fence of love built under the name of marriage is not kept by other people; the husband and wife have to keep it themselves. Putting your husband or your wife down is behavior that lowers your own worth. Put God and family and brothers and sisters in faith into the vessel of love, love them without conditions, and live as one inside a stronger fence.
I hope all of you will be a Shulammite who received a husband’s absolute love. Like that beautiful woman, may you be a wise Shulammite who tends and shapes herself and is deeply loved by God. As the love of Solomon and the Shulammite is forever, may the love between God and you be forever, and may you be blessed with eternal life.
May you sing a song of joy inside the love of God always. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.
[Appendix] You Whom I Love
The Crown of Thorns
The powers of darkness thought that if they put a great crown of thorns on me
it would shame me more, it would hurt me more.
That was their thinking when they crowned me with thorns, but
when I rose again in glory
the crown of thorns became forever a symbol of great glory.
Just as they obstruct my work of salvation,
will Satan leave a growing church or a child of mine alone?
Once this testing is past, every one of them will come to maturity,
and grow strong, with joy.
[Appendix] You Whom I Love…
As I carried the cross without a word,
you too must obey in stillness.
The whole work of the powers of darkness
is to make my children angry.
Suffering Is a Wind Passing Through
You are a tree that has put its roots down deep.
Being that, you have no need to fear a wind
that shakes the branches and passes on.
Do not complain that the wind is a nuisance.
Suffering is only like a wind passing through.
[Appendix] You Whom I Love
Just as no one complains
while watching the back of a wind that has passed,
whoever complains while watching the back of a suffering
that has passed is a fool.
That wind has to be there before you can grow,
and do not forget that what you most need in order to grow
is the hard wind that drives the rain in.
Without Prayer
Whoever does the Lord’s work without prayer
puts out leaves of pride;
whoever does the Lord’s work without prayer
becomes, through endless complaining,
an instrument of the evil spirit
and bears the fruit of unfaithfulness.
You Whom I Love
You whom I love,
the sea you are crossing is so blue and so deep
that I was afraid the one I love would be frightened,
and so I laid flower petals over the water to cover it.
Have you smelled the fragrance of the petals
riding in on the waves?
Every one of those petals
is my love.
You were walking on my hands.
You said the road you had come was far too rough,
and you wept and struggled.
You complained that it was a road of thorns,
you suffered, saying the stony ground was hard to walk on.
But, daughter whom I love,
look down for a moment at the road you are walking.
You have never once walked a road of thorns,
you have never once walked on stony ground.
You were walking on my hands, and nowhere else.
Every time you set your foot down, the pain that reached me
was very great; but for your sake
I prayed, and bore it and bore it again so that you could walk on my hands,
and I loved you.
If You Were Satan
Do not be proud that you are praying, that you are fasting.
Could you defeat Satan?
If there were many apples hanging on an apple tree
and you were Satan, which one would you pick?
Would you not pick the biggest and prettiest apple, the one with the best color?
And even if you did not take the big apple off the branch,
if you bit into it once — no, if you left even a small blemish —
that apple would lose its worth.
However much a damaged apple shows off its other side,
who could treasure that apple?
You must gain a deep wisdom.
Satan makes people stumble with a small blemish rather than a deep wound,
and then puts them forever far from God.
But the farmer too guards the sound apple;
he is guarding the apple that makes his work worth it.
Be humble always, like ripe grain,
and keep your soul from Satan the way you would keep
a single drop of water in the middle of a desert.
The Story of the Dandelion
She held them further in, further in, so they would not be taken from her.
Afraid she would look poor and ashamed if she let them go,
she held them further in, further in.
But a warm wind whispered small and soft:
Let them go…
Then they will fly far, far away, and wherever they land
life will break through.
The dandelion thought about it for a long, long time.
Yes — let me open my heart wide and send these seeds off on the wind.
The moment she made up her mind, the dandelion seeds
that had wrapped her round rode the wind and flew far, far away.
But the dandelion already knew that the seeds she could no longer see held life,
and would break through as prettily as she had.
Faith Is the Fragrance of Jesus
Do not plate your faith with gold
to make it look splendid;
do not plate your faith with silver
and boast of it;
clothe your faith with Jesus alone,
and inside and out
it must give off the fragrance of Jesus Christ.
Keep Your Faith
Faith is not something anyone else keeps for you or makes for you.
You think God will keep my faith for me,
that somebody will pray for me,
that they will lead me into faith;
but faith is something you have to keep at the risk of your life.
If, when I was to carry the cross,
I had gone to it with an easy thought like this —
he will let me avoid it, since I am the Son of God,
he will keep the nails from hurting when they go in —
could I have kept faith at all?
Never.
Do you know how much I prayed
for fear of bringing God’s command and God’s plan to nothing?
Pray.
Rely on the Holy Spirit in order to keep the word of truth.
People See Me as a Rainbow
People see me as a rainbow hanging in the sky.
They think of me as a rainbow that appears
only when their own hearts are refreshed after the rain.
Do you think of me that way too?
No — I am not a rainbow that vanishes when the sun comes out;
when the sun is burning,
when the rain is pouring down,
when you are adrift on the open sea,
I am the Jesus who is always beside you.
People look at me and are glad and rejoice
only after they have had their answer,
or when they are talking about their dreams in rainbow colors.
But they do not know that the one who turns the bow of the boat
toward land on the open sea is me.
They look only at their own suffering;
they do not look at me, holding the bow and answering.
Rather than looking for the me who leads them
to an oasis under a burning sun
and leads them to shelter in a downpour, they think
I am there only when a rainbow appears.
People in the middle of pain do not listen well
to my words guiding them along the road;
those who worship idols in their hearts do so all the more.
But you, even in the middle of suffering and of the fire,
must always keep your ears open and listen to my words.
A Young Sapling
He is a very young sapling.
If, wondering whether that young tree has taken root,
you keep pulling it up, and when the roots have not grown
you plant it in the ground again, and when you wonder again you pull it up,
and when the roots have not grown you plant it again,
will that tree not dry up and die?
Is that the only thing you can do for him?
When the wind blows you should be a windbreak;
when heavy rain comes you should dig a furrow;
you should pray that the insects do not get in
and heap the earth up around it — and yet to that weak heart
every one of those words you say without thinking
becomes a very deep wound.
Wait more quietly and be patient.
When the measure of your prayer is full and the time comes,
he will put roots down himself and come into flower.
The Pastor Who Must Become Good Ground
The pastor is the ground and the believer is the tree.
If I call the believers entrusted to a pastor sheep,
there is the excuse that the sheep would not listen
and went somewhere else;
that is why I look at them as trees.
Just as the trees dry up when the ground dries up,
if a pastor cannot become good ground,
in order to save the drying tree
I will begin the work of moving it to good ground.
Forgiveness Comes with Pain
The reason forgiving is painful
is that it is not pulling a thorn out of my body
but driving a thorn into it.
When one person forgives another,
how could there be no pain?
But do not forget
that the pain is the pain of victory.
Only the one who has won and knows the pain of forgiving
can smile.
The One the Lord Truly Loves
The Lord loves the one who obeys,
he loves the one who does not put himself on display,
he loves what is not showy.
People think Jesus wants
a great deal,
but Jesus is fond of those who are pure and bright,
who are glad and full of joy.
That is because such people never put down roots
anywhere other than the rock that is Jesus.
What True Love Is
Have you ever polished a jewel?
The world’s jewels shine when you polish them.
When you confess that you love me,
I ought to shine like a jewel —
and it is a truly strange thing,
for I am the one who receives the confession
and you are the one who shines.
Is this not what true love is,
a love that gave its life?
A Small Boat on a Storm
Your faith
is a small boat afloat on a storm.
When the waves are lower than you, you are afraid because they are low;
when the waves are higher than you, you are afraid because they are high.
Your faith is a small boat
afloat on a storm.
That the little boat does not turn over
is because I am the one holding it.