Somebody Loves You

Raul Ries: Look what God already has done with this bride. You and I are the bride of Jesus Christ. And even though sometimes we feel alone, the presence of God is always there.

And many times the reason we feel alone when we feel alone is because the Lord wants us to act upon faith. He wants you to really trust Him.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Somebody Loves You Radio, the Bible teaching ministry of Raul Ries in Diamond Bar, California. We’re glad you’ve joined us this New Year's Eve for our continued series in the Song of Solomon, a book painting a beautiful picture of the love found between a husband and wife.

Today, Raul will celebrate the closeness we can have with Jesus. As members of His church, we are the bride and Christ is the groom, our source of strength and companionship. Keep listening for encouragement to first embrace Christ's love and then share it with others. Here’s Raul Ries in the Song of Solomon.

Raul Ries: Now in chapter five, the bridegroom, notice responding to his bride, he says, "The beloved, I have come to my garden and my sister, my spouse." Notice the deep affection that he has for his bride. Deep, deep affection.

Here we have a beautiful picture of the bridegroom saying that he has great affection for his bride, "my spouse." And then he says, "I have gathered my myrrh with my spices and I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey." So here he’s indicating that it’s a picture of celebration, a feast, a banquet.

It is fellowship with Jesus. The bride is in deep fellowship with Jesus Christ. He’s called us to fellowship with Him fully and completely. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man open the door, I'll come in and fellowship with you and you with me," Revelation 3:20.

And that's something that I think in a marriage many people are lacking in: that fellowship that we need to have with our wives and with husbands. Fellowship with one another. And again, when he talks about this garden here, it's the joy and communion that he has for his bride. Communion, which means you’ve got to communicate and love your wife in order to keep what God says.

Then he says again, he says, "I have drunk with my wine and my milk to his friends, eat, oh friends, drink, yes, drink deeply, oh beloved ones." So here the word is found here nine times just in verse one, nine times to appear. And then it has been interpreted that referring to the angels here, but here the real interpretation is concerning the husband and the bride, Christ and His church.

Notice now as we move forward in verse two. He says the Shulamite, he says, "I sleep but my heart is awake." So here "I" is the bride, the church on the alert. He knocks, notice it is his voice of my beloved, he knocks saying, "Open for me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is covered with dew, my locks with the drops of the night."

So here the bride is the church. What he's doing is the call to the Lord to spend time with Him. The bride is calling to the bridegroom, "Look, I want to spend time with you." And I think sometimes that's a real problem because we get so busy doing so many things that we lack in time with who? With our bridegroom Jesus.

We need time to be with Him. You need time to be with your wife, with her husband. You need to make time. Because what goes on here, which is really cool here as he's talking about this, she's fearing that the Lord is not there. He's not there. How many times have you felt like the Lord is not there?

And the Lord has not departed, the Lord is there, but what happens, maybe you've fallen into sin. And when you've fallen into sin, Paul says in Ephesians 4:30, "grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." We grieve the Holy Spirit of God. The word to "grieve" means to bring pain to the Holy Spirit, why? Because He's a person.

And because He is a person, we need to be careful how we treat the Holy Spirit of God. He's the one that convicts people. He's the one that brings comfort to us. And somehow here she's actually fearing that the Lord has departed from her. It's a moment of loneliness. She's calling out.

Notice again, "He knocks saying, 'Open for me, sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is covered with dew, my locks with drops of the night.'" So here it's a picture also of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane in typology. Remember when Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemane?

This is what Watchman Nee breaks up here. That Jesus, when He came to the garden of Gethsemane, He separated Himself from the disciples, remember? And He says, "I'm going to pray." And the disciples were getting prepared for the Lord not only to be killed, but that they were going to be now the apostles of Jesus Christ and they were going to go out and preach the gospel because they would become the bride of Jesus Christ.

And when you read that story, it says that when Jesus went out to pray, He came back and He found them sleeping, sleeping. And when He came back the second time, they were sleeping. And then He said this to them: "Could you not watch for one hour? Now, continue your sleep." And then right as He said that, 500 people were coming across and Judas leading the pack with torches and swords to come to arrest Him.

But check this out: if they would have been praying, they would have never denied the Lord. And Jesus said what? "Pray that you enter not into temptation." What did Peter do? He denied the Lord.

Think of how many times, like the bride here, when we feel alone, maybe because we're in a life of sin or maybe because we haven't really got close to the heart of God that we're not hearing the heartbeat of God. Because when you have your wife and your wife leans into your breast and into your chest, you could hear that heartbeat. But it's a sign of affection, a sign of love.

And that's something that he's bringing up here about the bridegroom and the wife. Look at verse two, the bottom part there, "For my head is covered with dew and my locks with the drops of the night." So here he's calling out. Notice verse three, the bride's response to the bridegroom, "I have taken off my robe, how can I put it on again? I have washed my feet, how can I defile them?"

So this is the bride's response. She can't find Him, she's feeling alone because His presence is not there. Verse four, the response, Jesus, "My beloved put his hand" notice, my beloved is Jesus, the bride, "My beloved put his hand by the latch of the door and my heart yearned for him." So here it's expressing our love for Jesus Christ.

She's saying, "I really look for him and when I heard the door, I loved him so much that I wanted to get up and open the door." So here when it talks about my heart, he's speaking of the feelings, of the feelings that she had for Jesus and the feelings that you and I can have for Jesus all of our lives because we really truly love Him.

To me, it's important to love Him because He loved me before I loved Him. And you can't buy off Jesus by doing works. I really believe that the only way to fall in love with Jesus is a full surrender. A full surrender like your marriage.

And when you fully surrender to the Lord, then the Lord not only can communicate with you, the Lord can work in and through your life. And then if you love the Lord, guess what's going to happen? You're going to love others. You can't hate others if you love the Lord because He loves you so much.

That's why John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave." What have He given? He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Look what God already has done with this bride. You and I are the bride of Jesus Christ.

And even though sometimes we feel alone, the presence of God is always there. And many times the reason we feel alone when we feel alone is because the Lord wants us to act upon faith. He wants you to really trust Him. When you first get saved, you have all these experiences with emotion and feelings.

And then when you start developing in the Lord, you start finding out that you don't have any more feelings and there's no more emotion there because the Lord now wants you to trust Him by faith. He wants you to develop, He wants you to grow in Him through the word of God.

This is why Paul in the book of First Corinthians chapter two, 14 and 15, and then chapter three, one through four, he says there are three types of people in the church. The natural man which does not know God, the heathen. And then you have the spiritual man, and the spiritual man is the one in submission to God the Father, to the Holy Spirit, to Jesus Christ.

And then you have the third one, the carnal Christian, the one that is divided between the world and between Christ, and they never develop and they never grow. They stay like little babies, immature people. They never come to that experience like the bride and the groom: loving each other, having great affection for one another, getting to know each other intimately.

That's what Christ wants in each one of our lives. Not just to say His name, not just when we come to church, but He wants 24/7 our love for Him because He loves us so much. And this is why He died for the sins of the world. And think how many times you and I have missed the mark and yet He loves you.

If we see our wife or husband, if we see somebody do something wrong to our wife or husband, what do we do? We get down on them. We start judging them right away. Or other people. When is the last time the Lord judged you for treating your wife wrong?

For treating your husband wrong? Or treating other people wrong? And yet you're calling yourself a Christian, you call yourself the bride of Christ, then why is it that as the bride of Christ you're being a bad witness? To your children, to your neighbors, to your employer, employee, wherever you are.

We have to be a witness of the bride of Jesus Christ. And people when they see the bride, humble and in obedience to God, guess what happened? They're going to ask who the bridegroom is, and you can tell them Jesus. He is the bridegroom. "I am the way, the truth, the life," He said.

Guest (Male): This is Somebody Loves You Radio with Raul Ries. Visit SomebodyLovesYou.com for resources to encourage your heart and direct your steps in God's ways. If you have prayer requests that you'd like to share with Raul, he's happy to respond. You can email him at PastorRaul@SomebodyLovesYou.com. Now back to more with Raul Ries.

Raul Ries: Verse three again, "I have taken off my robe, how can I put it on again? I have washed my feet, how can I defile them?" And then Christ, "My beloved put his hand by the latch of the door and my heart started yearning for him. I rose to open to my beloved."

So she gets up, goes to open the door, "and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh and on the handles of the lock." So here we see that the presence of Jesus is sweet. The presence of Jesus is sweet.

It's so neat when you not only understand who Jesus is, but the sweetness as we have fellowship with Him, the joy that it gives us when we're in the word of God and we're praying, we're fellowshipping, we're being obedient to the word of God. If we're not doing those things, then we're miserable people.

There's no joy. There's no sweetness, but bitterness. Think of people in the church that instead of having sweetness for the Lord, they have bitterness for other people and bitterness for the Lord because they didn't get their way.

And the closest thing here that I see is that the purpose of Christ is to draw His bride in with all of His love and to love her so that she can love Him back fully and completely. And then check this out verse six, the bride, "I open for my beloved" Christ.

And the bride says, "My beloved" Christ "has turned away and was gone. My heart leaped up when he spoke, I sought him but I couldn't find him. I called him but he gave me no answer." You ever feel like that? That Jesus is not talking to you?

This is a time for as the bride is feeling alone, separated from the bridegroom. And yet Jesus not only wants to have fellowship with one another, but fellowship seems to be broken here. What breaks fellowship? Sin. Sin breaks fellowship with God.

And the bride somehow is not connected to the bridegroom here. She's feeling lonely. She feels like the bridegroom has departed and she's left alone. But I think that sometimes when we're alone this way and the Lord leaves us alone is because He wants us notice to look to Him not only as our confidence in Him, but He's speaking to our hearts in such a way, being alone, that He is going to do something in my life.

And who knows what He wants to do in my life? But He wants to have fellowship with you, but fellowship here was broken. And then verse seven, he says, "The watchmen who went about the city found me," finds the bride. "They struck me, they wounded me, the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me."

Think of the bride of Jesus Christ, how the bride has been treated by the world. Think about it. Here the bride is being taken advantage of by the world, the watchmen should have warned. The watchman was the one that goes up into the city, he would have a shofar, he’d have a sword, and he would stand there at night looking for the enemy to come.

He was to give warning. Here he gives no warning at all to the bride, notice that. "The watchmen who went about the city found me and they struck me." Instead of defending her, what does he do? They strike her, they wound her and the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me. She was treated bad.

The church has gone through a lot. You go back to the early church and you think about how Caesar Nero took the church and not only persecuted her: they would take Christians and they would put them in the lion's den, but also they would take them and they would cut off their heads, or light them up in a cross and light them in fire and burn them alive.

And they did so many other things. So the bride of Jesus Christ has been wounded. Wounded. But this is why Jesus Christ is coming for His bride. He's coming for His bride one of these days. And the reason: to have fellowship with the bridegroom. To have fellowship with Him.

Then he says in verse eight, now notice he's turning to the young daughters now, "I charge you oh daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved," notice if you find Jesus, "that you tell him I am lovesick." The daughters of Jerusalem. Now look what he’s saying here, are you lovesick for Jesus Christ?

You ever get lovesick for the Lord? We should get lovesick every morning. Every morning for Him. The first thing when we get up in the morning, we should say, "Lord, I love you so much." Love you so much. Think as husbands and wives, when do we say that to each other when we get up in the morning? Some do, some don't.

But I mean think about how people that are like that. And yet here the Lord says when we wake up in the morning, He should be the first in line to say, "Lord, you gave me another day to live." Think about that. During the night, do you have to control your breathing? No, God controls your breathing. How do you know you’re going to wake up?

Think about it. Go to hospitals, they have people in machines controlling their breathing. And yet every single night we go to bed, when do you go before to go to bed, when do you tell the Lord, "Lord, hold my breath overnight, give me another day to live"? Another day to live. And the reason is because the bride has to be close to the heart of God.

Look at verse nine, "What is your beloved more than another beloved, oh fairest among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved that you so charge us?" So we notice here that he’s just a man here, and a lot of times what we see here is the liberals like to change.

They don't like Jesus. They say He's not the Son of God, He’s not deity, He’s not God. And liberals are always putting down the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet we as the bride of Jesus Christ, we see that everything He does here, He does it not only to bring glory to Himself, but He wants to do what?

He wants to touch the heart of the church. He wants to touch you, He wants to touch me. Jesus, the lover and savior of the world. Here she makes Him so wonderful and so great to her. He is so wonderful, He's so great to me as a bride of Jesus Christ.

And yet why is it that so many people are bummed out, so discouraged when God has given us everything: His love, His grace and mercies, and all you have to do is close to His heart and hear His heartbeat. That's all you have to do: to come to Him by faith.

And then he gives the description here of the beloved from verse 10 to 16, the Shulamite, notice, the bride answers, "My beloved is white and ruddy, chief among ten thousands." Notice this. First he speaks His purity, "My beloved is white and ruddy."

The white garment that Jesus is coming back with at the Second Coming to judge. First time He came, born of a virgin, 33 years He died on the cross, He came as a servant, the savior of the world.

The next time He comes, from heaven on the clouds with all the angels and His bride, He's coming in a horse, in a white horse, and we on white horses in a white garment, in brilliance, to bring judgment upon the world.

Notice what he says again, "My beloved is white and ruddy, chief among the ten thousands." That's His position. He's the chief of all things. And then notice His person in verse 11 through 16, "His head is like the finest gold." Notice that speaks of His sovereignty.

"His locks are wavy and black as a raven." Speaks of His position. Position of the bridegroom. And then in verse 12 he says his sight, "His eyes are like doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk and aptly set."

And then in verse 13 his sweetness, "His cheeks are like a bed of spices, banks of scented herbs. His lips are lilies dripping liquid like myrrh." Notice when He speaks, He builds up, He doesn't put down, He doesn't destroy. He's always building up. Always comforting.

And that's something that we as a church need to learn also. If He does that and we are to mimic Him, then we're supposed to do that to other people too. We have to do that. And then he says verse 14, notice here his skills, "His hands are rods of gold set with beryl."

The hands that are used to do the work of God. And notice he speaks of his skills here. He says, "His body is carved ivory inlaid with sapphires." This sounds like the book of Revelation when we see Jesus coming back in all brilliance.

And then he says, "His body is carving ivory inlaid with sapphire." And then his stand, "His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of fine gold." I mean look at the picture of the bridegroom: strong, steady.

Notice, "his countenance is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars." Here speaks of His splendor as the bridegroom. And then he says, "His mouth is most sweet." That's His smile when He smiles. He says, "Yes, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved" Christ "and this is my friend" Jesus, "oh daughters of Jerusalem." She’s telling the daughters of Jerusalem who her husband is.

Guest (Male): Well, we've seen today that Jesus is our bridegroom: strong, steady, and compassionate. You’re listening to Somebody Loves You Radio with Raul Ries. If you’d like to hear today's lesson from the Song of Solomon chapters five and six, we'll be happy to send you an unedited version for a donation of five dollars or more. Just call us at 800-634-9165.

And as you consider the joy of walking in daily communion with Christ, we’d like to offer you the autobiography of Raul's late wife Sharon. Titled "My Husband, My Maker," this honest yet uplifting testimony illuminates how God transformed the Ries's marriage following Raul's dramatic conversion and how He graciously led them into a rich life of ministry together.

Act now to receive encouragement from Sharon's firsthand account of Jesus' enduring patience and faithful redemption. Visit SomebodyLovesYou.com or call 800-634-9165 to order "My Husband, My Maker." We'll send your copy for a donation of ten dollars plus shipping and handling. That's 800-634-9165.

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