And I want to turn to the song
of songs which is Solomon's.
In the fifth chapter of that little classic,
beginning of verse 8, I charge you, O
daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved
that you tell him that I am sick
of love, then they ask, what is thy
beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest
among women?
What is thy beloved more than another beloved
that thou dost so charge us?
She replies, my beloved is white and ruddy,
the chiefest among ten thousand, his head is
as the most fine gold, his locks are
bushy and black as a raven, his eyes
are as the eyes of doves by the
rivers of waters, washed with mint and fitly
set, his cheeks are as a bed of
spices, the sweet flowers, his lips like lilies
dropping sweet smelling myrrh, his hands are gold
rings set with beryl, his belly is as
bright ivory overlaid with sapphires, his legs are
as pillars of marble set upon sockets of
gold, his countenance is as Lebanon excellent as
the cedars, his mouth is most sweet, yea,
he is altogether lovely, this is my beloved,
this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
Now this song of songs is a song
of love, it's the song of the shepherd
and his fair young bride-to-be, and
it's complicated, as things often are, by a
rival.
And this rival is a rich and worldly
king, and this rival is seeking all the
way through this book, the song, to win
away this fair young bride-to-be bride.
And the story then is, the song has
to do with the bride being swayed a
little, ruled by this rich and worldly king,
who is always pushing himself upon her, and
then getting a glimpse of the bride being,
occasionally, the shepherd, the young shepherd whom she
really loved and was waiting for.
But he was hard to pin down, he
was here and he was gone, but he
was always somewhere within distance, and she was
always looking for him.
Now at last the story ends with the
two of them together, she coming leaning upon
the arm of her beloved, and everything turns
out all right.
Now that's the story, and it has been
during all the centuries, held to be a
story of our Lord Jesus and his church.
Our Lord is this shepherd, and the redeemed
church is the fair bride.
And in an hour of distress, where we
break into the story, in an hour of
distress, she tells the daughters of Zion, the
daughters of Jerusalem among whom she lives, she
said, I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, if
you find my beloved, that you tell him
that I am sick with love.
And then they naturally inquire, they say, now
why all the excitement, everybody's got a boyfriend,
everybody has somebody that they like, and why
are you so worn and pale, and so
wrought and distressed, and why are you sending
out your friends to look for your beloved,
and sending a message to come that you're
sick of love?
What is your beloved more than another beloved
that thou dost so charge us?
Now the world has a perfect right to
ask that question of the church, a perfect
right.
If the church is going to say that
the Lord is worthy, that he is a
worthy lover, then the world has a right
to say, what kind of lover is he,
and why should you be inviting us to
come to him?
Why should you be promoting him, what is
thy beloved more than another beloved?
And she answered him, and you know that
in the book of Psalms, David also, I
began with the book of Psalms, the 45th
Psalm, David was also talking about this.
He said, My heart's inditing wood matter, and
I speak the things which I have made
touching the king.
My tongue is the pen of a ready
writer.
And he says, Thou art fairer than the
children of men.
Grace is poured forth by thy lips.
And he says that all thy garments smell
of myrrh and aloes and cashew out of
the ivory palaces for a prescription of this
shepherd king, who is a shepherd and is
to be a king, and who is wooing
the young bride to himself.
And then if you will ask Peter that
question, what is thy beloved more than another
beloved, he will say that he is Lord
of all.
So I want to talk tonight about the
object of our worship, which is none other
than the Lord himself, the Lord our righteousness,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the Lord of all.
And just in order that we might get
it before us, I want to talk to
you a little bit about what he's Lord
of and why you should love him.
Now I have said, and I repeat now,
that we can worship Jesus Christ the man
without idolatry because he is also God.
He has united mankind to deity by the
mystery of the incarnation, and he has taken
humanity up into God so that he himself
is God.
He has joined in the beauty and wonder
of the prophet human God and man in
one, so that whatever God is, Christ is.
He that has seen me has seen the
Father.
And when you worship the Lord Jesus, you
are not displeasing the Father, for you are
worshiping the Father in him and through him
you are worshiping the Father, so that you
worship the Lord himself.
What is this Lord, and who is he,
and what is he Lord of?
It is written that he is Lord of
all, but I say that we will divide
it a little bit so that we can
understand it better.
I can say that he is the Lord
of all being.
You know that song that says, Lord, and
this Lord of all being is more than
Lord of all beings.
I want you to get the distinction here.
The hymn writer did not say he's the
Lord of all beings, but he is the
Lord of all being, which is something else
and something more.
But he is that, and that is he.
He is the Lord of all actual existence.
He is the Lord of all kinds of
being.
He is the Lord of all being.
And when we worship him, then, we encompass
all being.
I wish that all young people might see
this.
Some argue they give themselves up to science,
and some to technology, and some to philosophy,
and some to art, and some to music.
But when we worship the Lord Jesus Christ,
we embrace and encompass all possible sciences and
philosophies and arts.
We encompass it all because he is the
Lord of it all.
So he is the Lord of all being,
and the enemy of all not being.
He is the Lord of all being, and
he is the Lord of all life.
These are elementary, but they are fundamental to
any right understanding.
He is the Lord of all life.
It is written in 1 John 1, the
first chapter, that that word of life which
was with the Father, he is of life,
the soul fountain.
What was it that Charles Wesley said?
Thou of life, the fountain art pretty, let
me take of thee, spring now up within
my heart, rise to all eternity.
He is the Lord of all life, so
that as the Lord of all essential possibilities
of life, he is the Lord of all
kinds of life.
You know there are many kinds of life.
Pretty soon the buds will be coming out.
Some of them are already out up our
way.
That is, they are pushing out and extending
themselves, though they have not burst yet.
But they are pushing themselves out, getting ready
for the spring, and pretty soon there will
be flow.
He is the Lord of that kind of
life, and that will bring back the birds.
I have never forgiven the birds.
They are such fair-weather friends.
When we need them to rest, they are
in Florida.
And when we don't need them, they are
singing all over the place.
They will be back anyway, and that is
another kind of life.
And the rabbits will be out, and you
will see the animals.
Well, that is another kind of life.
And he is the Lord of that kind
of life.
And then we have the intellectual life, the
life of imagination and reason, and he is
the Lord of that kind of life.
And we have the spiritual life, and he
is the Lord of that kind of life.
He is the Lord of angels, and he
is the Lord of the cherubim and seraphim.
So he is the Lord of all life,
and he is the Lord of all sorts
of life, I say.
And he is that, this Jesus, who, what
is thy beloved more than another beloved me?
And he is the Lord of all wisdom.
I want to tell you, and I hope
that you will let it enter your heart,
that all deep eternal wisdom lies in Jesus
Christ as a treasure hidden away, and there
isn't any kind of wisdom outside of him.
All the deep eternal purposes of God are
in him, because his perfect wisdom enables him
to plan ahead, and all history is the
slope of doubt.
Today all we see is the laborers at
work.
We see the rough, the external scaffoldings, and
things don't look very good.
And they're bringing things about, even the devil's
righteousness, and all concepts of righteousness, and all
possibilities of righteousness.
I want you to see that he is
wisdom and righteousness.
And as wisdom and righteousness, there
isn't any book that can tell you anything.
In the Old Testament, when the high priest
went into the holy of holies to offer
sacrifices once a year, he wore a holiness
unto the Lord.
And this Jesus Christ, our Lord, is righteous.
Then he is the Lord of all mercy,
for he establishes his kingdom upon rebels, but
first he renews the rebels, and
he is the Lord of all beauty.
God put something in the human breast that
made it capable of understanding and appreciating beauty.
He put in us the love of harmonious
forms.
He put in us the love of an
appreciation for.
He put it in us.
It's in everybody.
And he put in us also the love
of moral forms.
For remember that all beautiful things that are
beautiful to the eye and to the ear,
are only the external counterparts of that internal
beauty which is moral beauty.
There is such a thing as moral beauty.
Jesus Christ, our Lord, it was said of
him physically that there is no beauty in
him that we should desire him.
The artists have painted Jesus as a very
pretty man, a very pretty man, with a
tender, feminine face, and clear, beautiful eyes, and
an open, delightful countenance, with curly hair streaming
down his shoulders.
They had completely forgotten that there was no
beauty in him that we should desire him.
They had forgotten that when the high priests
would crucify him, they had to have an
arrangement to betray him.
And Judas Iscariot, to get his dirty pieces
of silver, didn't say, when that company comes,
pick out that beautiful one with his back
and the light on his face.
Pick him out, and he is the one.
They were all together there with their typical
Jewish haircuts and their typical Hebrew garments, and
all looking a good deal alike.
So he said, The one I kiss, that
will be the one.
They didn't know.
The one I kiss, that will be the
one.
So when Jesus came, Judas passed by Peter
and John and Philip and the rest, and
he went to this man and kissed him.
He said, That's the man there, the one
he's kissed.
Now, if he had looked as beautiful physically
as they painted him, why would it be
necessary that he had to be betrayed with
a kiss?
He simply didn't look like that.
There was no beauty in him that we
should desire him, and he was another man
among men.
But the beauty of Jesus that has charmed
the centuries is a moral beauty.
Even his enemies admit his moral beauty.
You have never heard Khrushchev say anything against
Jesus.
You've never heard Stalin, at least I never
had a quotation against Jesus.
Nietzsche, the great German philosopher, perhaps he's a
great nihilist, one of the greatest antichrists that
ever lived in the world, who died finally
beating his forehead on the floor of itself.
He said, That man, Jesus, I love.
So there was a moral beauty, of moral
form and liniment and moral texture.
He is the Lord of it all.
Now, sin has scarred the world, poor old
world.
Sin has scarred it, made it inharmonious and
unsymmetrical and ugly, and filled hell with ugliness.
If you love beautiful things, you'd better stay
out of hell, for hell will be the
quintessence of all that is morally ugly.
And I believe also that it will, because
usually the spirit of things determines the external
manifestation of that spirit.
And I believe that hell will be the
ugliest place in the world when rough men
say something is as ugly as parison, because
hell is that against which all ugliness is
measured.
But heaven over against that is the place
of supreme beauty.
Heaven is the place of harmonious numbers.
Heaven is the place of loveliness.
Heaven is the place of beauty, because the
one who is all beautiful is there.
He is the Lord of all beauty, and
earth lies between all that is ugly in
hell, and all that is beautiful in heaven.
Earth lies between it, and you see the
ugliness set over against the beauty.
I suppose we'll have it like that as
long as we're living in this world.
Some of you may wonder why it's like
that.
Why it's light and shadow?
Why it's ugliness and beauty?
Why there's so much good and so much
bad?
Why there is that which is present, and
that which is tragically bad and hard to
live with?
It's because the earth lies halfway between heaven
and hell.
It's because the earth lies halfway between heaven's
beauty and hell's ugliness.
You say, why are people capable of doing
what they do?
The answer is, because they lie halfway between
heaven and hell.
A man called me recently and said, Mr.
Tolger, do you think that a Christian can
hurt another Christian?
And I said, I certainly do.
Yes, but he said, do you think that
a Christian, who is a Christian, can hurt
another Christian?
And I said, yes, I do believe a
Christian can hurt another Christian.
Is there anybody listening to me that has
not been hurt by some other Christian, and
maybe a real Christian too?
And why is it then that a man
will be on his knees praying earnestly on
one day, and maybe another day he'll hurt
another Christian, because we're halfway in between heaven
and hell.
And the shadows in the light fall upon
us.
We are being saved out of all this,
and the Lord of beauty is saving the
people from the ugliness of sin, saving them
from the great old terrible, terrible sin.
We go down, as I am forced to
do sometimes, into some areas of the separate
North American continent, which is so large, but
so really old, but it really, truly, truly,
truly, truly, truly,
truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly,
truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly,
truly, truly,
truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly,
truly, truly, truly, truly to
come to follow him, and she is caught
between the bandages of the rich and grassy
old thing who comes and rules her with
his curse-talk and her gifts.
But her heart still remembers the one black
-haired shepherd boy who gathered mills in the
dew of the night.
And she cries for him, and misses him,
and goes looking for him, and doesn't call
his name.
This is the picture of the Christian living
in the world, tempted by the devil in
the world, and tempted by the riches of
the world, and tempted by sin, tempted by
ambition, and all the rest.
Now, as the true bride of Christ, the
woman number one, she is called to worship
and love.
And she keeps her eyes on the holy
gifts, even if she thinks that sometimes they
will disappear from her sight for a moment.
It's all a matter of a moment, but
she must love him at last.
Even when he wrote me, from nowhere he
came to me, and even when he took
their blessing, he kept it near me, and
we had lunch together, and kept it over.
He wrote me and said, Have you ever
been somewhere and had a marvelous spiritual experience?
He said, You just don't know what God
did for me.
He told me that he loved me, and
he did a light in my soul, and
lifted me up, everything was all new.
The Bible became new, my teaching became new,
and everything was wonderful and different, and I
literally roared like heaven and the child of
God.
Then he said that all the dreams of
God came to me and disappeared.
Now, he said, I find myself pinching and
difficulty in the heart of heaven.
What's happening to me?
Well, I heard him, and told him, and
then I could get a chance to talk
more at length with him, and I said,
You know, your trouble was that you were
blessed, and you have fallen in love with
the blessing.
Instead of the blessing, the blessing of the
blessing.
This is what he said, and I listened
to it all the time.
He told me, God, the blessing, and the
blessing of it, and then he fell in
love with the blessing and said, That's the
one you're meant to get.
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