Let's pray.
We heard about it in the song;
we heard about it in the first hour -
the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.
Grace and truth.
Lord, we pray for that.
Please deal with us in a way
that is not according to our sins.
Grant us grace.
And truth - sanctify them with Thy truth.
Thy Word is truth.
We pray for that cleansing,
purifying, sanctifying reality
to be in this place today.
Father, please.
You sent Your Son to this earth.
The Word became flesh
and He dwelt among us.
And because He did and because He has
and because He died
and because it is finished,
because there is salvation to be had
and there is a room full of saved people in this place,
we would appeal to that blood by which we were saved
and that cross work that was finished
and made complete,
so that we don't have to stand here
in any of our own doings or works
or accomplishments or merits.
We stand here based on that sacrifice -
the Lamb of God,
who, we thank You, has put away -
many of this in this place can say
You've put away our sins.
And we stand here forgiven - a forgiven people.
And Lord, because of the kindness that You've shown to us,
we pray, Lord, we want to appeal
to Your past mercies to give us fresh ones.
We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
The love of Christ.
I would take you once again
to the Song of Solomon.
This is a little bit of an aside
for a number of weeks
to the Song of Solomon.
But the purpose is to keep
in the spirit of Ephesians 3,
"and that we would have the strength
to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length
and height and depth
and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge."
And as we're seeking to explore
that love of Christ
and to span some of the depths of it,
as I told you last week,
my thoughts have come back
to the Song of Solomon
again and again and again.
The Song of Solomon.
It's in your Bibles right before
the major prophet Isaiah.
Isaiah's typically easy to find
even though the Song of Solomon
may not be so easy.
The Song - Solomon's Song.
The old preachers called it: Canticles.
Found right before the prophet Isaiah.
I want you to look at 2 verses
in chapter 1 of the Song of Solomon.
Verses 15 and 16.
Some of your Bibles don't supply this.
Some do.
The ESV has actually separated
this letter into parts.
And you can tell in the original language
there are indicators as to who is speaking.
You can see it in the flow
of the song as well.
But in v. 15, it says,
"He."
And He says,
"Behold, you are beautiful, My love.
Behold, you are beautiful.
Your eyes are doves."
V. 16, she says,
"Behold, You are beautiful, my Beloved,
truly delightful.
Our couch is green."
Now, I am not going to preach on "our couch is green."
You can take your own meanings with that one.
I don't know what that means
and I haven't really thought about it.
But hear me.
Look back at v. 1.
The Song of Songs.
This is a song.
Yes, we say, the Song of Solomon,
but it's a song.
It's meant to be sung.
God gave it to us to sing it out.
This is inspired. Don't miss that.
This is in your Bibles.
This is inspired.
God gave a song for us to sing.
And I can tell you this,
that if you went up and down this road
singing a song about Solomon
and one of his harem,
I would think you were pretty weird.
That is not the kind of song He wants us to sing from this.
That is not the song of songs.
"Holy of holies" is used for the most holy.
"King of kings" for the greatest King.
"Lord of lords" for the highest Lord.
And so this is the song of songs,
being the most excellent of songs.
You know what that means?
Never has man spoken or written
a song to excel this song.
It surpasses all others.
Not only human songs.
Remember, if Solomon was simply saying this;
if a man walked in here and said:
of all the songs that I ever wrote, this is the song of all my songs.
But you have to hear God's voice.
This is inspired.
The Holy Spirit is saying, Christian,
this is the song of all songs
not only humanly speaking,
but divinely speaking.
Again, if you were to say that's simply
Solomon and one of his harem,
that is not an impressive song.
And remember just how fitting
the placement of this book.
You come out of vanity of vanities
into song of songs.
The emptiness, and then,
Solomon turns us to the fullness.
And as I reminded you last time,
this isn't one woman
with one she loves.
If you look at chapter 1, v. 3,
"Your anointing oils are fragrant.
Your name is oil poured out.
Therefore, virgins love you."
Or you look at v. 4.
"Draw me after You..."
Not, let me run, let us run.
As I said before,
there's no woman who glories
in the love other women have for their own husband.
But if the virgins are those
in the spirit of 2 Corinthians 11:2
where Paul says that he's betrothing us
as virgins to Christ,
the whole thing makes sense.
Each of us as individuals can glory
in the love of Christ,
but we can glory in the fact that other people
run after Him as well.
That's the flavor of the Song of Songs.
Now, when we come to v. 15 and 16,
the reason I want to take you here
is you have mutual expressions.
What jumped out at me first
was what He says to us,
we say to Him.
What we say to Him, He says to us.
It's the same language.
Do you see it there?
"Behold, you are beautiful."
Both say that to each other.
There's a mutual expression
of admiration and attraction.
Now, we know how we feel about Christ,
because the truth is, we feel it.
We know the attraction.
What makes the Song of Songs so precious
is that we hear God-inspired words
as to how Christ feels about us
and the attraction that He has for us.
And the truth is
it's something we would hardly believe
unless it was written here.
And watch this, in v. 15,
"Behold, you are beautiful, My love."
She never calls Him by that terminology.
Those are His words for her.
"My love."
As you go through here,
do you know what He calls her?
My beautiful one,
My perfect one,
My dove,
My bride,
My sister.
And that possessive pronoun: Mine.
You know what that reminds me of?
You kind of come across this
and you must maybe shoot past it.
You're reading Revelation.
You know when Jesus is speaking
to the churches in Asia Minor?
Chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation?
He says something.
He gives a promise to the people of God
who overcome.
Listen to what He says.
He says, "I will give you..." if you overcome,
"I will give you a white stone."
What's that?
Well, it's not so much the stone
as what's written on it.
Do you know what's written on it?
A name.
Does anybody remember what name?
What was it?
A new name. And listen to how it says it.
"A new name written on the stone
that no one knows
except the one who receives it."
Jesus has personal intimate names
just between you and Him,
and no one else knows it.
He says these names,
"My love," "My dove."
Mine - not just love - My love.
"My beautiful one," "My bride," "My dove."
So what are we talking about?
We're talking about the love of Christ for His people.
A love that surpasses knowledge.
And as we're looking at these two verses,
v. 15 and 16 of chapter 1,
I want to say something that might
at first not register with us.
If I were to ask you,
which of these two verses
seems to most capture Christ's love for us?
Which one would you pick?
You'd probably say that's easy.
Yeah, v. 15.
And undoubtedly it does express His love for us,
but you know what?
As I looked at these
and I read through the whole book again,
I found myself struck
by how much v. 16 reveals His love to us.
And yes, you heard me right. V. 16.
V. 16 expresses Christ's love to me.
Think what Christ has done for you
that such expression should ever come
from people like us.
Think about the expressions here.
Think about what Christ has done
and how He's responsible
and what expressions of love it is
from Him to us that out of our mouth
should ever come such expressions as these.
If you think about where you have come from:
the miry clay, the pit -
if you remember the things you've done,
if you remember the things you've thought,
if you think about the stock.
Look at chapter 2:3.
2:3, "With great delight, I sat in His shadow."
Now, here's what I want you to feel.
I want you to feel the expressions
of the church to Him.
Think about these.
I find the most amazing expressions.
She is saying,
"Behold, You are beautiful."
In 2:3, she says,
"With great delight, I sat in His shadow."
Now see the delight.
Look at 2:5, she says,
"I am sick with love."
Now think.
We're talking about the Christian.
Think about the Christian.
Think about you.
Think about you going through this life,
living in this world.
We heard "love not the world,"
but you're actually going along
and your mind is working
as you go through your day
and go through your life,
and such feelings well up in you
that you could say I find beauty in Him.
Or that you're even speaking to Him
on an intimate level.
You are beautiful, my Beloved.
Not just that: truly delightful.
"With great delight I sit in His shadow."
I'm sick with love.
I mean there's an ache to have more of Him,
to see more of Him,
to hear His voice more clearly,
to have a visitation.
Look at chapter 5:9-10.
Here you have others in v. 9.
Others say to her,
"What is your Beloved more than another beloved?"
I mean who is this?
Who is this that you talk about Him like this?
"O most beautiful among women,
what is your Beloved more than another beloved?"
And in v. 10 she says,
"My Beloved is radiant."
The NAS says "dazzling and ruddy."
"Distinguished among 10,000,"
or "Chief among 10,000" in KJV.
Or the New American Standard,
"outstanding among 10,000."
Look at v. 16 of Song of Solomon 5.
"He is altogether desirable."
Or as the KJV says,
"He is altogether lovely."
And here's the thing.
I would say to you, Christian,
when you have felt the most,
when you have seen Him most clearly,
when you've heard His voice
with most audibleness,
when you've smelled the fragrance of His presence,
when the power of the Word has opened up,
when He has come across most beautiful to you,
I would say where's the pen?
Where are the thoughts?
Who is the poet? Where is the songwriter?
Some of the songwriters are fantastic
in the way they're able to bring out
what we feel,
but who can put what a Christian feels into words?
But the Song of Solomon
seems to capture it oftentimes.
And look, right now,
I am not speaking to everyone.
I'm speaking to you who know what I'm talking about.
You who have felt this.
Have you ever considered
what Christ's love has done for you
that you could even be delighted in Him?
I mean, do you hear what I'm getting at?
Christ finding me beautiful?
I mean, that should blow us away.
What sort of expression of love is that to me!
But here's the thing, me finding Him beautiful,
that too is a massive expression of His love to me.
All these, I mean, they are vehement
expressions of affection to Christ.
Look, think with me.
If you go looking around the world,
go looking on the Internet,
go through the channels,
do whatever,
do whatever gives you a picture into this world.
Go through the radio stations.
You know what?
To find men who are attracted to women
on the computer screen,
that's common.
To find young men attracted to computer games,
that's pretty normal.
To find young ladies that are interested
in being attractive,
addicted to their cell phones,
trying to make themselves pretty,
that's average.
To find people grasping for money,
movies, popularity, clothes, food, fame, power,
there's nothing unusual about that.
You think with me here.
To find a man, a woman, or a child
whose heart jumps
when they hear the name of Christ,
that is rare.
That is special.
That is a mark of God at work in somebody
in an absolutely miraculous way
because that is not common.
Not at all.
The thing to ask is this:
Where do such people come from?
Go back there.
Go back to Song of Solomon 1:16.
Now I recognize that for a man
to actually speak
with some of these words
and speak them about Christ -
I don't know, maybe it would cause some people
to be uncomfortable.
But I can tell you this,
the manliest of men -
and Christians should be men.
"Quit you like men."
Be men.
But you know what?
The purest men in this world,
they may not walk around using
terminology like this,
but God's man, he feels this in his heart.
He feels v. 16.
When he feels the realities of Christ,
he can say,
"Oh Christ, You are beautiful.
You are truly delightful."
He feels it in the very fabric of his soul.
And the thing to ask is where do they come from?
Where do people who truly feel
in the depths of their being
that Christ is beautiful and desirable -
where do they come from?
Seminaries don't make them.
The truth is churches don't make them.
None of us have a mother that makes people like these.
Listen - in fact, turn there.
You're very close to it.
Turn to Isaiah 53.
Isaiah's right after Song of Solomon.
Go to the well known Isaiah 53.
All I have to do is take you here
and take you in your mind
back to former days.
And here we are.
Isaiah 53:2.
"Like a root out of dry ground..."
A root sticking up out of dry ground.
"...He had no form or majesty
that we should look at Him,
no beauty that we should desire Him."
That statement right there
given the chapter of Scripture that it's in,
man in his fallen state is so backward.
"No beauty..." and look at v. 3.
"Despised, rejected by men,
as one from whom men hide their faces,
He was despised
and we esteemed Him not."
Do you remember?
Pilate said to the Jews,
"Behold your King."
And they did.
They looked. They beheld Him.
See Him standing there
with His crown of thorns.
His robe of purple.
I mean, never, never had they stood
in the presence of one pure
or more beautiful or more pleasing to God
or more willing to save,
and they cried out.
You know what they cried out.
"Away with Him! Away with Him!
Crucify Him!"
You know what that songwriter said.
"Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers."
Do you remember?
Do you remember those days?
That was your voice.
That was my voice.
Ashamed.
Ashamed. I can hear my voice
in that crowd.
I can listen for it.
Clint was telling me
that when he's over on the oil rigs,
he sometimes watches us livestream.
I said you listen for Caroline's voice
in the singing, don't you?
And he said, yeah, I do.
But you listen for your voice
in this crowd because it's there.
We didn't esteem Him.
We despised Him.
Despised Him.
That any of us should find Christ attractive
is only shocking to the degree
that we realize it is not natural,
it is not normal.
Do you know what normal is?
"They hated Me without a cause."
You know what normal is?
"He came to His own
and His own received Him not."
You know, we get these guys.
They want to write these stories
about the end times;
tell us about the antichrist.
You know, he's going to come from the European Union.
He's going to have 666 stamped on his forehead.
You don't have to look to Europe,
because the reality is all we had to do
is walk into the bathroom
and look at ourselves in the mirror.
You know what John said?
He said, "Now many antichrists have come."
We were the antichrists.
Anti means to be against.
We were them.
We would have never admitted it,
but that's precisely...
Man's natural disposition is such
that the Song of Songs
is a foreign language.
The lost man - it is unintelligible.
It's basically a parable.
And you know how in the New Testament,
the disciples asked,
why do You speak to them in parables?
And Jesus said this is why I speak to them in parables:
"Because seeing they do not see, hearing they do not hear,
nor do they understand."
You see, that's the thing with this.
The Song of Solomon to the unconverted:
what's that?
It is in a foreign language.
But I know we have a whole number
of people in this room
that do have eyes to see and ears to hear
and you do understand.
And when you hear these expressions
come from her to Him,
something jumps inside you and says,
yes, that's how I feel.
You see the thing is
Christ is not ugly.
He is not unkind. He is not cruel.
He is the Savior of the world
and robed in the beauty of holiness.
He's altogether lovely, altogether desirable.
Man's great problem? Newton said it
in his most famous song:
"I was blind, but now I see."
Do you recognize
that when Adam took that fruit
and he brought it up to his mouth,
you can just imagine two daggers right there.
The moment his teeth
broke the skin on that thing,
those daggers took his eyes out.
And the problem was they took
all of our eyes out as well.
They were gone.
We could see the ground,
the fields,
the weeds that now were in the world.
We could feel the pain that came,
the age.
We could see the sun, the moon, and the stars.
But we couldn't see.
Our eyes had been put out.
We sang this too:
"Something lives in every hue,
Christless eyes have never seen."
Beloved, do you remember
when you carried around in your head
Christless eyes and Christless ears?
I remember it.
You remember how it was?
Jesus said it.
Jesus said it this way,
"those who are well
have no need of a physician."
Do you know how it was?
No need.
We didn't need Him.
We were okay without Him.
We could walk around. We could smile.
We could joke. We could laugh...
without trembling.
We could casually sin without screaming in terror.
We could go to sleep each night.
We could talk about death and hell
as if they were fairy tales.
I mean, here we were walking through life,
this great big mouth of hell
underneath us waiting to swallow us.
And we were so casual.
So careless. So confident.
No thought ever crossed our minds:
"Oh, may He kiss me
with the kisses of His mouth."
Things like that - what? Christ?
We sang "Joy to the World."
He's a little baby in a manger.
I would see it.
Yeah, that crucifix up on the wall.
Yeah, that's Christ.
For me it was a word of cursing
and swearing in my mouth.
Some effeminate looking picture
of probably some Catholic priest.
Isaiah is spot on.
Look at it.
V. 2, "No beauty."
Isaiah 53:2, "No beauty
that we should desire Him."
What Christless eyes we had!
"One from whom men hide their faces."
We don't want to look at Him.
We hide our faces from Him.
We don't want to look His way. We don't want to look at Him.
We don't want to regard Him.
We don't want to esteem Him.
And just see where Isaiah takes us.
Look at v. 4.
This is what's so amazing about it!
It's not as though you continue reading here
and you look at it and you say,
oh yeah, yeah...
yeah, there was no beauty.
He was ugly.
Listen to it.
"Surely He has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows."
V. 5, "He was pierced for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities.
Upon Him was the chastisement
that brought us peace.
With His wounds we are healed."
Or v. 6, "The Lord laid on Him
the iniquity of us all."
V. 8, "Stricken for the transgression of My people."
V. 11, "Out of the anguish of His soul,
God shall see and be satisfied.
He shall make many to be accounted righteous.
He shall bear their iniquities."
V. 12, "He poured out His soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors,
yet He bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors."
What Christless eyes!
Do you remember?
Well, I have no memory of these verses
because I doubt I ever saw them.
I didn't care.
In the midst of my life,
if somebody would have read those verses to me
it's like clear them aside.
I lived for the weekends.
I just existed during the week.
I lived for the weekends.
Make money during the week to live it up.
Words like this meant nothing.
Don't bother me with that religious nonsense.
We had it figured out, right?
I mean, most of us,
we kind of come from the same stock.
A bit of religion - that was me.
Just a bit.
A lot of superstition.
A good dose of self-love.
A portion of self-righteousness.
We were good. We were good!
Jesus? We had a manger thing growing up.
Or my dad had a crucifix on the wall.
Yeah, He's either a baby or He's dead,
but don't bother us with that.
We're pretty good.
We esteemed Him not.
And that is the world around us.
This idea, this Song of Solomon
is so foreign to this world.
People - yeah, show me how to miss hell.
But the idea,
this is what it means to be saved.
So often, people just think
no lake of fire in the end.
That's not really being saved.
Yes, yes, that's not suffering
the consequences and the punishment
that our sins deserve.
But to truly be saved,
to truly have life
is to know God and to know His Christ.
To know - intimacy - to have this love.
We know this.
Listen, the greatest thing
about the way God has designed us;
the thing that causes the greatest joy
and expression in who we are as human beings
is when we are madly in love.
There's no getting around that.
This is what we find here.
Brethren, how did we ever come
to esteem Him?
What happened to us
that we looked up one day?
I can remember that time in my life.
It's like suddenly the fog was gone.
How did I never see Him before?
Who is this?
I was stunned.
(incomplete thought)
How did this even happen?
John tells us.
We love Him because what?
You see, the thing is, we're incapable of loving Him -
and you say, I didn't get that. What did he even say?
1 John 4:19,
"We love Him because He first loved us."
What John is teaching is this:
The one has to come before the other
because the one is responsible for the other.
The one produces the other.
We're incapable of loving Christ
apart from what He does to us.
Left to ourselves, the reality is,
there's nothing in us to call forth love for Him.
I loved everything else.
Many other things.
What did our Lord teach us?
He said this -
He said one day after He had fed
those 5,000 people,
He was talking about the true bread.
He said, "No one can come to Me
unless My Father who sent Me draws..."
What sort of drawing was that?
It wasn't chains of a slave.
It's something else.
Something pulled us to Christ.
This is how He saves.
He saves by causing us to behold Christ.
Christ asked the question:
What think ye of Christ?
How you answer that
says everything about you -
not about Him.
What you say positive or negative
doesn't change Him.
But how you answer that question
says everything about you.
And it says everything about the love
that Christ has expressed to you,
what He has done for you,
what He has done in you.
And we can go back to Song of Solomon now
if you're in Isaiah.
Song of Solomon - you remember this.
Chapter 1:4 - I mean, yes, you have
there in John 6,
"No one can come to Me
unless My Father draws..."
Here it's the church herself saying -
she's coming to that recognition.
"Draw me. Draw me."
We will run. Let us run.
Draw, draw, draw.
(incomplete thought)
Look, this is appealing to Him
to do something to us.
Pull me.
We are so willingly hard,
so willingly blind, so willingly do we not
want to find anything beautiful in Christ
that unless there is this powerful,
effectual drawing of the soul to Christ,
both at conversion and afterwards,
we will gladly run right into hell.
We will.
A soul's coming to Christ for life
is not the product of any power
or free will of man -
power found in man -
it's the result of Christ giving us life.
Have you ever read this?
"Whoever does not love
abides in death."
Think about that.
To love is to live.
To live is to love.
We looked up one day
and we can't explain how it happened.
But Christ was increasing.
He was growing brighter.
And everything else was growing pale.
Everything else was decreasing.
You know.
The Apostle Paul comes along
to the Philippians and he says,
there was a day my circumcision,
my Jewishness,
my belonging to one of the premier tribes -
the tribe of Benjamin -
that was one of the two tribes
that stayed loyal to the Southern kingdom.
A Hebrew of the Hebrews.
He says but I saw Christ.
I saw Him.
I mean, the Christless eyes were taken away.
And what does he say?
I count it all loss
that I might have Christ,
that I might know Christ.
For the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything as loss
because of the surpassing worth of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord.
We looked up one day
and we began to have such thoughts
as like we find in the Song of Solomon.
Do you notice?
Do you remember how that happened?
Out at Community, we used to sing a lot -
we sing it sometimes here,
but from Revelation 5 -
4 and 5, they both have the words:
Worthy.
Can you remember when you were lost,
you never, unless you were lost
and your parents made you go to church
where they sang Revelation 4 or 5 -
you never put the word "worthy"
in the same sentence with Christ.
Ninety-nine percent of the time
when His name came out of my mouth,
I was simply cursing and swearing.
Never did the term worthy
fall in the same sentence with Him.
Or the term "precious."
Or the term "beautiful."
Therefore - this is the KJV, the New King James Version,
but you know this from 1 Peter 2:7.
"Therefore to you who believe,
He is precious."
And the thing that was amazing
is that once you have the eyes to see -
because I remember this -
I could see and I suddenly looked around,
and all my friends -
all the comrades that I hunted with
and drank with
and lived my life with
and my co-workers,
my family -
and you look around,
and they're like the deer caught in headlights.
I had such revelations to my soul.
I said oh, I am certain
that once I tell them,
they are going to see what I see
and they are going to jump on board.
And one after another,
they looked at me like I had three heads.
Unwilling to come to Christ for life.
But this is what He says,
"You refuse to come to Me that you may have life."
All day long - the book of Romans -
"I have held out My hands to a disobedient
and contrary people."
But here's the thing,
those Christ sets His love upon
are made willing in the day of Christ's power
by some secret, invisible power.
He slays that enmity that was in us.
That that despised Him; that that didn't esteem Him;
that that was repulsed, that hid our face.
We didn't want to see. We didn't want to know.
Give me a small christ, a weak christ, a dead christ -
not the Christ of Scripture.
I can't tolerate Him.
Not the one that says that I have to die to self
and carry my cross and follow after Him.
And unless I forsake all that I have, I can't be His disciple.
And unless I repent, I'm going to perish -
not that Christ. I don't want Him.
Not the Christ that deals with me about my sin.
Not the Christ that's going to make me holy.
Not the Christ that's going to love me so much
that He's going to remove every single idol from my life.
I don't want that.
But we were made willing.
Christ exercised such a power on us.
He killed that enmity that was in here.
It was in the heart, in the brain,
in the thoughts, in our discernment.
(incomplete thought)
Something way beyond our power.
But we weren't forced.
It was like it was a sweet drawing.
It was us beholding that He was desirable
that makes us run.
He captures us by capturing our affections,
changing the desire.
That's precisely what happened.
I was thinking as we were listening to Jeff
in the first hour.
Those words:
We have seen His glory.
But you know, what glory?
He didn't walk around shining.
I know on the Mount of Transfiguration,
but I don't believe that is at all
what John is talking about.
His glory - we have seen His glory.
But that "we" right there,
that is not everybody.
There are many people who with their eyes
they saw Christ do His miracles.
They didn't repent.
They didn't believe.
Jesus appeals to them in John 5.
We'll see that when our brother gets there.
He says they bear witness.
My works bear witness that I am Him.
It is a gift of all gifts
that you stand in the crowd
and Christ does His miracles
and you say,
I need Him more than I need anything else.
I've got to have Him.
There's a beauty, there's a power,
there's forgiveness.
This is what my heart has been looking for forever.
When the crowd is big
and you look around and most in the crowd:
what's for dinner?
And away they go.
This is a phenomenal gift.
Brethren, do you count it
one of the greatest gifts of Christ's love to you
that your heart aches for Him?
Because it is. And it's special.
And He doesn't just haphazardly
and randomly throw that gift around.
They are for His loved ones.
He said this, that drawing -
He said you lift Me up
and I will draw all men.
That doesn't mean all without exception.
It means men from all the nations.
There were Greeks there.
That's the context in which He said that.
The thing that is so beautiful about Christ
is not like the beauty that we would find
in a woman necessarily or in a sunset.
Actually, that which Christ Himself says
has that drawing efficacy
is lift Me up and I will draw.
Do you realize His death, His blood,
the gore, the agonies,
the shame of that cross,
that's where so much of His beauty is found.
It's found in those words we read in Isaiah 53.
That is the most precious thing imaginable.
"The Word became flesh
and He dwelt among us."
But He took His humanity - the God-man,
to do what He did.
Would you not say it is one of the greatest gifts
He has ever given you
to find Him whom you have never seen -
this is what Peter says.
Peter says though you have not seen Him, you love Him.
I mean, can you imagine it?
Can you imagine that you have been given a gift
to ache for, to worship, to long after,
to feel the need of, to have a love for,
to find desirable this Christ.
And you love Him more than anything else.
More than father or mother or husband or wife.
And you've never seen Him.
That is a miracle.
That is a gift.
And that is altogether an expression of His love
that you can look up and say,
You are beautiful, my Beloved.
Altogether desirable and precious.
That is a manifestation of His love.
Now next week, what I want to look at
is Him looking at her -
looking at us;
looking at His people and saying,
"You are beautiful, My love."
"You are beautiful."
Because we often don't feel it.
But I want you to see His heart
expressed to you, Lord willing, next week.
Father, I pray,
help us just to delight
in the fullness, the realities
of what it means to be loved by Christ.
This love that surpasses knowledge.
Help us, give us according to the riches of Your glory,
Lord, enable us to comprehend
with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth.
We ask this in the name of our Savior, Amen.