The Necklace Treasure

As I've tried to explain in The Treasures series, I have strong opinions on the matter of God's emotions. I think that it is impossible to overstate how intensely God expresses His love for His people.

As I complete this series, I want to draw your attention to the ESV translation of Zephaniah 3:17: "The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." (I added the italics.) Part of the note in the ESV Study Bible on Zephaniah 3:17 contains these thoughts: "This verse remarkably adds that God himself will rejoice over you with gladness, indicating that when God's people seek him and follow him, and rejoice in him and trust him, then God personally delights in them. This is not an aloof, emotionless contentment, but it bursts forth in joyful divine celebration: he will exult over you with loud singing."

I can hardly imagine it. God wants to sing His love song over me. Just the thought of it leaves me breathless with amazement.

No wonder we have an empty hole in our hearts before we find Jesus as our Lord and Savior. He created us to experience His pure, intense love expressed as His delight in our actions as we seek and follow Him and as love songs from His ravished heart as we rejoice in Him and trust in Him – and Him alone – to lead us. We can know nothing of that until we have repented of our sins and accepted His sacrifice on our behalf.

If you are like me, the first question that pops up in your mind is, "Why don't Christians experience these all the time?"

In order to give some of the answer to this question, I want to look at Song of Solomon 4:9 again. It says, "You have ravished my heart, My sister, My spouse; you have ravished My heart with one look of your eyes, with one link of your necklace." (NKJV) (I added the italics.)

The Bible is full of symbols. For me, this necklace symbolizes my obedience to God. Let me show you how I got there.

The neck can represent a person's will. The term "stiff necked" speaks of a resistant will, someone who will not submit. Isaiah 48:4 speaks of this: "…I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew…" (ESV) When someone bows in submission to a king, the most vulnerable part of the body is exposed – the back of the neck.

So, for me, this necklace represents the activity of my will. When I willingly, eagerly, and lovingly obey God's guidance, I add a link to this spiritual necklace. Sometimes the link is fashioned in the heat of heartache, other times in the sparkle of joy, but always in the absolute trust that my Master knows best. In order to experience the reality of God's love and delight, we must know God's ways and obey His will.

In my jewelry box, I have a necklace made of small oval links. In the center of each link is a tiny precious or semi-precious stone: sapphire, ruby, topaz, emerald, citrine and others. When I waver in my willingness to obey God in all things, I look at that necklace and remind myself that God and I are creating a spiritual necklace much more beautiful than the one I have now. Each link of that necklace is a remembrance of a time when I ravished the heart of God with my loving obedience. I hope to wear that priceless necklace on my wedding day, at the wedding feast of The Lamb of God. I want it to be a sparkling witness to the glory of my Lord.

Now you know the treasures of my heart and the way I experience them: God's powerfully passionate love for me, His delight in me as I turn away from sinful ways, my desire to ravish God's heart as I keep my life focused on Him, the protection I have from the Holy Spirit, and the necklace I'm designing with my joyful, loving obedience. My prayer is that you will find these treasures as valuable as I have. I pray that God would always fill your heart with the joy and peace that comes from loving Him, the source of all treasure.

Treasure #3: Ravishing God’s Heart

I trust that, by now, you have meditated on how God's love for you is His infinite, all encompassing, enveloping love that can never be destroyed. I hope you have experienced the feeling of God delighting in you as you work in the power of the Holy Spirit to remove sinful actions and attitudes from your life. Now I want to share with you another special treasure.

My third treasure: I have the ability to ravish God's heart.

"What!" you say, "Does the Bible say that?"

Yes. In the beautiful love song called the Song of Solomon, chapter 4 verse 9 says, "You have ravished my heart, My sister, My spouse; you have ravished My heart with one look of your eyes, with one link of your necklace." (NKJV)

Ravish is not often used in today's vocabulary. In the few times that modern translations of the Bible include the word, it has the general sense of doing violence, humiliating, and oppressing another. Most often, it refers to a man forcing a woman to have intercourse.

In the eloquent declaration of His bride's affect on Him, the Bridegroom (Jesus) twice says that she "ravishes my heart." This is violence, all right, but not violence committed against another. It is the expression of such an overwhelmingly intensely loving emotion that all other emotions seem colorless by comparison.

A strongly intense emotion of the heart is seldom described in the Bible. Proverbs 5:19 gives one example. It states that a husband should be intoxicated with the love of his wife. A second example can be found in Luke 24:32, where the two disciples stated that their hearts burned within them while Jesus walked with them.

Two other examples include God in text. Genesis 6:5-6 show God looking at the continuous evil of man's life and the end of verse six states, "…and it grieved him to his heart." How the sinfulness of man pierced the heart of God!

The last example comes from Ephesians 5:25, where Paul commands husbands to love their wives. This love is not just the insipid love we associate with modern-day romance. Paul told the husbands to love their lives as much as Jesus loves the church.

How much does Jesus love the church? This overwhelmingly intense emotion caused Jesus to give up equality with God, to become a human being, to take on all the sins of the world and to die a shameful death on the cross. Here is a Heart that is waiting to be ravished.    

I, who have never ravished anyone's heart, am able to fill God's heart with overwhelming love. That is so amazing to me.

God tells us what causes His heart to be ravished. The verse says that I ravish His heart when I look at Him with my eyes. As the old hymn says,

            "Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
             Look full in His wonderful face,
             And the things of earth
              Will grow strangely dim,
             In the light of His glory and grace."

When I turn my eyes toward Jesus, He is already looking towards me, wanting me to see the love in His eyes. With one look from my eye, God's heart is filled with an overwhelmingly intensely loving emotion, His heart is ravished. How awesome is that?

Treasure #2: God’s Delight

Before you read about the next treasure, would you please review the first treasure? Has the knowledge that God sets your value in the amazing measure of His love penetrated your heart? Unless you are anchored in the richness of God's unsurpassed love, the rest of the treasures in my box will be as meaningless as the toy in a child's fast-food meal.

So, here is my second treasure: God delights in me, even though I am not perfect.

When I accepted Jesus as the One who redeemed me from my slavery to sin, I became a member of His family and nothing – nothing! – will ever separate me from His powerfully passionate love. However, receiving God's love and knowing His delight are two different experiences.

Think about how you experience love and delight in your family. You love your family because they are family, but you delight in them for what they do. I have wonderful daughters and adorable grandchildren whom I will always love, but when they do things that display the values by which I live, I delight in them. The same is true with God. He loves me because I am in His family, but He delights in me when I obey Him.

Consider a time when He alerts me to something that I have been doing – say exaggerating the truth. When He shows me that exaggerating the truth is lying, I delight Him as I begin the process of removing that sin. Proverbs 12:22 states, "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight."

Now here is the most precious part of this treasure: God does not wait until I am completely free of this sin to delight in me. As soon as He sees the sincere change in my heart, He delights in me. I may battle that sinful habit for years, but God is delighting in me all the way, because He sees my heart. He knows that even if my sincere repentance, obedience and love for Him are flawed, they are real and He delights in them.

The Bible has two beautiful examples of this truth. The first example is from the Old Testament: In 2Chronicles 12, God sent word to the kingdom of Judah that He was abandoning them to the Egyptian army. King Rehoboam and the leaders, however, humbled themselves before God and God changed His mind. The Pulpit Commentary describes God's reaction this way: "So God delights to meet the first advances of returning penitents with such foretastes of mercy as will lure them on to desire its full fruition."

You are probably more familiar with the example from the New Testament. In Luke 15, the prodigal son repents of deserting his father and returns home. Here is what Luke 15:20 says about his return, "And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him." The son had done or said nothing – just shown up – and the father delighted in him.

I love the idea of delighting God. When I feel discouraged or too weak to resist the sinful habit I am removing from my life, I take out this treasure and let God's delight give me the confidence to resist the temptation and to draw nearer to God so that I might experience more of His love and delight.

Now what do you think, treasure or trinket?