Knocks Me Off My Feet

Introduction

Illustration: Memorable Love Songs

A House Is Not A Home by Dion Warwick

Love Is A House by Force MD’s

Forever My Lady by Jodeci

On Bended Knee by Boys II Men

Weak by SWV

Caught Up In The Rapture by Anita Baker

Always And Forever by Heat Wave

Here And Know by Luther Vandross

My, My, My by Johnny Gill

Anniversary by Toni! Tony! Tone!

When A Man Loves A Woman Percy Sledge

(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman by Aretha Franklin

No One by Alecia Keys

Make It Last Forever by Keith Sweat

Love And Happiness by Al Green

Let’s Chill by Guy

My Girl by The Temptations

Mine is:

Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder- Knocks Me Off My Feet

see us in the park Strolling the summer days of imaginings in my head And words from our hearts Told only to the winds, felt even without being said

I don't want to bore you with my trouble But there's somethin' 'bout your love That makes me weak and Knocks me off my feet Yes, somethin' bout your love That makes me weak and Knocks me off my feet Knocks me off my feet

I don't want to bore you with it Oh but I love you, I love you, I love you I don't want to bore you with it Oh but I love you, I love you, I love you More and more

We lay beneath the stars Under a lover's tree that's seen through the eyes of my mind I reach out for the part Of me that lives in you, that only our two hearts can find

Illustration: Very Public Split of Kimye

5 Reasons Why Kim and Kanye are a Match Made in Heaven BY DAMON YOUNG APRIL 12, 2012

Their absurdly peculiar personalities suggest that they were pre-destined to be together.

The arrangement fulfills Kanye’s dark fantasies about “fat booty Celine Dions.”

The arrangement also fulfills Kim’s fantasy to be a pseudosexual cultural cipher of hyperfamous anti-matter

They make all the sense in the world

It assumes that “talented musician” = “deep thinker”

It assumes that Kim is completely vapid

It assumes that celebrities are like us

Because 808s and Heartbreaks Part II is gonna be awesome

Transition To Body

Song of Songs- the Book of love, the book of our God of love

Concerning the taboo topic of love & sex within the church

The least talked about subject or topic within the church is sex and intimacy between a man and a woman.

Or when discussed would be talked about in such a manner that makes it seem like it’s not holy and pure as if it is dirty and nasty.

Body

Beauty And Exclusivity Of Godly Physical Attraction

Song of Solomon 2:1–2 ESV

1 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. 2 As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.

Rarity of the woman’s beauty

Illustration She is a lily among thorns (the unprofitable plant of Job 31:40)

Job 31:38–40 ESV

38 “If my land has cried out against me and its furrows have wept together, 39 if I have eaten its yield without payment and made its owners breathe their last, 40 let thorns grow instead of wheat, and foul weeds instead of barley.” The words of Job are ended.

If there is any hint of concern in her statement in 2:1, then, that she is only one among many and therefore that her beloved might fall for one of the others who are pursuing him (cf. 1:3–4), he is quick to reassure her. This woman is the only one he thinks of as a beautiful flower (2:2). The others are a bramble patch, which only serves to highlight her uniqueness.

Sees more in you than you see in yourself

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This affirmation from her beloved now leads the woman into an extended reflection on her love for this man who chases after her, woos her, and delights—but exhausts—her (vv. 3–13).

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Experiencing The Pleasures Of Protection And Provision

Song of Solomon 2:3 ESV

3 As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

More important than identifying the tree, however, is to understand the imagery, which speaks of both protection and pleasure. This is a tree that offers “shade” (ṣel) from the harsh sun (which an apple tree in truth does not)—protection from the outside world analogous to that provided in political terms by those with power, including God (cf., e.g., Heb. ṣel in Judg. 9:15; Ps. 17:8; Lam. 4:20). This tree, while it provides shade, also provides delightful sustenance. Its fruit is not only nourishing but also sweet to the taste. The woman thus feeds from the man, while sitting in the safety of the orchard.

Defining Activity Done Together Is Loving One Another

Song of Solomon 2:4 ESV

4 He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

Our interpretation should be guided by these other occurrences as well as by the material in chapter 1 that makes it clear that other men find this beautiful woman attractive and by the language of protection in 2:3. The man sustains the woman with wine, as he has in 2:3 with food, but he also offers her military protection, as in 2:3 he offered her “shade.” The “military force” that looks after her is his love.

His protection of her is attentive, committed, and prepared for trouble,

in the manner of a royal bodyguard looking after a well-loved king or queen.

Necessity For Love’s Continual Sustenance And Satisfaction

Song of Solomon 2:5–6 ESV

5 Sustain me with raisins; refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love. 6 His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me!

The beloved thus experiences overwhelming, overpowering love and finds herself faint or ill when confronted by it (v. 5). She seeks sustenance—more food to give her strength to meet this power and to heal her lovesickness.

Certainly it is more of his fruit that she asks for (NIV “apples” in v. 5). This suggests, of course, that although she is overwhelmed, she has no desire that his attentions should cease. There is some evidence, in fact, that the “raisins” or raisin cakes (cf. NIV in 2 Sam. 6:19) she requests were associated with ancient Near Eastern fertility cults (e.g., Isa. 16:7; Hos. 3:1; cf. also Jer. 7:18; 44:19, for “cakes” offered to the Queen of Heaven) and may more generally have been considered to possess aphrodisiac qualities. We note the association of “apples” with love and fertility in Song of Songs 8:5. If so, she asks for food that, while strengthening her, will also heighten her experience of love. Verse 6 finds her lying still in her lover’s arms, his left supporting her head and his right embracing her (note the same phrase in 8:3; Heb. ḥbq refers to sexual embrace also in Prov. 5:20).

V6- Intimacy Of Loving Embrace Verse 6 finds her lying still in her lover’s arms, his left supporting her head and his right embracing her (note the same phrase in 8:3; Heb. ḥbq refers to sexual embrace also in Prov. 5:20).

(So you cannot rush this kind of holy & Godly love)

Practice Patience Before Experiencing Love’s Pleasures

Song of Solomon 2:7 ESV

7 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

Luke 23:26–28 ESV

26 And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. 27 And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him. 28 But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

As the lovers embrace, the woman (or possibly the man)4 addresses the puzzling aside in verse 7 to the “daughters of Jerusalem” (cf. also 3:5; 8:4). They are asked to swear an oath that they will not “arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” If “love” is taken to refer to one of the lovers themselves, this is then a request from either the man or the woman that their beloved should not be disturbed as he or she sleeps and should be left in peace until eager to arise. But if love is understood more abstractly as the power that has just been described in verses 3–6, the request becomes more of a warning to these other girls. Because of the devastating and overpowering results of love, they should ensure that it is awakened only when the timing and circumstances are right. There is, in effect, “a time to embrace and a time to refrain” (Eccl. 3:5), and it is as dangerous to awaken love when it does not desire to be woken as it is to rouse the sleeping animal of modern proverbial tradition (e.g., the English dog or the Korean lion). The terrible power of love is indeed well expressed in Song of Songs 8:6–7, which follows closely on a similar aside to the daughters of Jerusalem in 8:4; this latter passage above all tips the balance in favor of interpreting the aside as a warning. The oath laid on the Jerusalem girls refers, appropriately, to “gazelles” (ṣebaʾot) and “does” (ʾayyalot; see also 3:5). The man himself is portrayed as a gazelle (ṣebi) or young stag (ʾayyal) in 2:8–9, 17; 8:14, while 4:5 and 7:3 compare the woman’s breasts to two fawns of a gazelle (ṣebiyya; cf. Prov. 5:18–19, where the woman is “a loving doe, a graceful deer”). The emphasis of the imagery falls, among others things, on grace and beauty (underlined by the fact that ṣebi also means “beauty,” cf. Ezek. 7:20; 26:20).

Transition To Close- Satisfaction & Mystery

Satisfying/gratifying the desires of the Spirit

Galatians 5:6 ESV

6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

Galatians 5:16–21 ESV

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:22–25 ESV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

The profound mystery of Christ & the Church

Genesis 2:18 ESV

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Genesis 2:21–25 ESV

21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Proverbs 18:22 ESV

22 He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

Ephesians 5:22–33 ESV

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Close- So there was another banquet which the LORD brought disciples

Matthew 25:1–13 ESV

1 “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ 10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Matthew 26:26–29 ESV

26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

Luke 22:14–23 ESV

14 And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. 15 And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. 21 But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. 22 For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!” 23 And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this.