Jesus is the chief among ten
thousand, the altogether lovely one, Christ the chiefest, or
better than the rest. His love is unknowable, His riches
unsearchable, His joy unspeakable, His ways untraceable, His grace
inexhaustible, His peace unfathomable, He Himself is unsurpassable. His character is beautiful, with
holiness in every detail. His love was pure and faithful
in all its affection. His service was true and beneficent. beneficial in all its workings.
His words were tender and true in all their utterances. His
life was consistent in every department. His aim was single
and concentrated in glorifying God. His mission was to the benefit
of all who would have him in dying a death. which they deserved. Christ is Christianity. The best evidence of Christianity
is Christ. It goes on to say, I think, doesn't
it, that believers are not soon satisfied in expressing Christ's
worth. And so, if you turn in your Bibles
to the Song of Solomon, we will rejoin will rejoin that Shulamite,
the one who represents the Church, will rejoin her in her journey. And what a remarkable story it
is in Chapter 5. What a remarkable situation that
I hope echoes the situation that you have found yourself in again
and again in your life. When you have enjoyed sweet communion
and then for a variety of reasons and hers are that she in a sense
really couldn't be bothered. I've put on my coat, I've washed
my feet, how should I defile them? And yet this great lover
of the souls of these people comes and puts his hand in the
hole of the door. And she was moved for him. And
then she rose and he was gone. He had withdrawn himself and
was gone. And her soul failed for a sixth. I sought him, but I could not
find him. Has that been your experience,
brothers and sisters? I sought him, but I could not
find him. I called him, but he gave me
no answer. The watchmen that went about
the city found me. They smoked me. They wounded me. The keepers
of the walls took away my veil from me." They took away what
signified her marriage to her beloved. Then she meets the daughters
of Jerusalem. I charge you, O daughters of
Jerusalem, if you find my Beloved, tell him I am sick with love. Verse 9. What is thy Beloved
more than another Beloved, O thou fairest among women? What is
thy Beloved more than another Beloved, that you do so charge
us? Then she describes him. Verse
10 she describes him, my beloved is white and ruddy, the cheapest
among ten thousands. And then she has ten descriptions
of his person and at the bottom of verse 16 she says, this is
my beloved, this is my friend, our daughters of Jerusalem. and she describes Him in great
detail and she's delighted to so describe Him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
will You please cause us to see the Lord Jesus as our Beloved. And if there are people here
for whom He is not their Beloved, may this be the time and the
day of love when He reveals Himself, reveals Himself in His glory,
shows us what we are, shows us that we are sinners and that
He is a friend of sinners. Heavenly Father, it is Your delight
to reveal your son to your children in this world and it is your
delight heavenly father to cause your children in this world to
delight themselves in him who suffered and died and now reigns
and rules for them. Heavenly Father we pray that
in Your mercy and Your grace and Your love to us here You
might cause us to walk away from our service this morning knowing
that You have ministered to us, that You have revealed Your Son
again to us, Heavenly Father, and that we might go away rejoicing
to call Him my Beloved. We pray this, Heavenly Father,
that Your Son might be glorified amongst us and in us. We pray
in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, before we move into verse
10 and these wonderful descriptions of our Saviour, it is good to
just sort of note some things in the context. Firstly, Of course,
we find that the daughters of Jerusalem see that she is beautiful. O Thou fairest among women."
I love that section in the scriptures in Acts chapter 4 where the apostles
are suffering that first wave of persecution and they have
a beautiful description of God's children, a beautiful description. They see these wise and learned
men They saw the boldness of them. This is after the man had
been healed at the gate to the temple. And then they brought
them in and Peter spoke boldly to them. When they saw the boldness,
verse 13 of Acts chapter 4, when they saw the boldness of Peter
and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men,
Isn't it amazing when you think that that's the description they
have of the Apostle John, and you read his writings in his
Gospel, you read those magnificent words that he was led to write
in Revelation, and yet the religious men of the world, the most astounding
religious men, most esteemed in their knowledge and in their
righteousness. They say of these men, they were
unlearned and ignorant men. And they marvelled and they took
knowledge of them. And this is what they noticed
about them. They had been with Jesus. Christianity is about meeting
the Lord Jesus. Eternal life is knowing Him,
knowing Him and meeting Him and never being the same again. And so there is in the eyes of
the daughters of Jerusalem, there is something transformed and
something different about God's people. The world won't understand
us. In fact, we'll be often a mystery
to ourselves in so many ways. But God, God looks upon his bride,
those that are espoused to him, those that are engaged, those
that are married to him. He calls them, my love, my dove. She calls him the fairest. They
see that she is the fairest. The Lord Jesus and his bride
are one. The other thing of course is
that this This amazing description that starts in verse 10 and goes
down to verse 16, amazing description, a tenfold description with beautiful
bookends, a completeness of the description of the Lord Jesus,
is something that she sees by faith. If you look at verse 8,
she says, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my
beloved, she hasn't found him." And you tell him, she can't speak
to him. So here we have another beautiful
example that through the eyes of faith, God's people really
see. I love those amazing words at
the beginning of Hebrews 11 where we've had chapter after chapter
the magnificence of the Lord Jesus outlined for us, better
than, better than, better than, the greatest, perfect in His
work, perfect in His sin-bearing death, perfect in His sanctifying
work, perfect in His ruling and reigning work, perfect in all
things, completing all those Old Testament pictures, they're
all yes and amen. And then verse 39 of chapter
10 he says, but we are not of them who draw back into perdition. To draw back into perdition in
that day was to go back to something that in the eyes of the world
looked magnificent. There was a temple, there was
a book of the Old Testament that said you go to this temple, you
worship and you sacrifice and you honour God by going back
to that Old Testament law. That is drawing back. That is
drawing back and drawing back into perdition, telling people
to live by the law, pretending and believing that you can do
something with these hands that can somehow add to the perfect
finished work of the Lord Jesus and cause it to be more efficacious
in your life. that you can somehow sanctify
yourselves. And what a great way of sanctifying
yourselves. Go back to Moses. Draw back into perdition. We're
not of them, but we're of them that believe. to the saving of
the soul. And then we have these wonderful
words in the beginning of chapter 11. This is the hall of faith. Now faith is the substance. of things hopeful, the evidence
of things not seen. It's a wonderful word, isn't
it? A wonderful description. Faith is actually a substance,
a real substance. It has something substantial
about it. The word means lots of things. It means trust, confidence, undergirding. It is what a building is built
upon, what a contract is established upon, what a promise is made
upon. It means assurance, steadfastness
of mind. It's that substance of things
hoped for. It's the evidence. It's the evidence. It's a substance and it's an
evidence. Now under in Romans we're told,
without faith it is impossible to please God. Without faith
it is impossible. So here we have, in the words
of the Shulamite, in the words of the Church, we have faith
speaking, if you find him. And she answers in a most remarkable
way. She answers that most searching
of all questions. What is thy beloved more than
another beloved? He is absent. He has withdrawn
himself from her. And she's in a state where she's
lost from him, as it were, and can't find him. She's also in
a state where she's been wounded for seven. She's been smitten. She's been beaten. She's been
wounded. And she's had her veil taken
away from her. There she is in that state, brothers
and sisters. If you have not been in that
state as a believer, you will. And you will be in that state
many, many times. But how does faith, how does
God-wrought faith respond in that situation? What wonderful
words she says. He's absent, she's wounded. He's withdrawn, she's shamed
in the eyes of these religious leaders. And she says, my beloved. What a wonderful word. What a
wonderful word. He's my beloved. All this book
is about Him. He's Jesus Christ. He's Saviour,
Redeemer. He's Prophet, Priest and King.
He's all in all. He's Lord. And as we read in
Hebrews chapter 1, He is God. Therefore He rules all things,
all the time, always, purposefully. Nothing happens in this universe
by accident. And the scriptures talk about
a people again and again who've come face to face with Him. They
have really met Him. They do really know Him. They've met Him through His amazing
sovereign grace. and they've never been the same.
He was touched with the feeling of our infirmities and then He
touches us and now that personal pronoun, that personal possessive
pronoun is ours. He's my Saviour. He's my Redeemer. He's my Prophet. He's my Priest. He's my King. Matthew Henry said
these wise words, to see Christ and not to see Him as ours would
rather be a torture than a happiness. But to see one that is this lovely
and to see Him as ours is complete satisfaction. My beloved, Mine because He made me mine. Mine because He was given to
me in eternity. Mine because we are one with
Him, perfectly united to Him. And He's mine in a love relationship. He is my beloved. He loves me,
says Paul. The Son of God loved me and gave
himself for me. His love is particular. His love is purposeful. And for those who dare go to
hell, I imagine you could spend all eternity interviewing people
in hell, and I don't think you'll ever find one who would say Galatians
2.20, in hell, the Son of God loved me and gave himself for
me. Woe to those people that go around
and make this love of the Lord Jesus as common as the dirt of
this earth. a common thing for all humanity,
as if it has no power, as if it has no purpose, as if it has
no effect. Our love, if we call it love,
as weak and pathetic as it is, has all of those elements and
yet in this religious world we talk about the love of God as
if it is less meaningful than the love that we profess to have
for one another. My beloved, beloved of my heart,
friend of my soul, loved by Him, therefore we love Him. Isn't that how John puts it in
1 John 4, 19? We love Him because He first
loved us. And God's people love all that
He loves. He loves His Father. He loves
His Father's name. He loves His Father's honour. He loves to see His Father glorified. What remarkable things that we
don't very often enter into, that remarkable love, that real
love relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit. What remarkable love they have. As we read in Hebrews, He loves
righteousness. He loves holy things. For Him to love someone is for
Him to see that one as holy as He is. You can read it. It's not my words, is it? These
are the words of our Lord Jesus, that great prayer that He prayed
in John chapter 17, that prayer that God the Father answered
so beautifully and answers again and again throughout the ages
of time in the lives of His people. Father, I will, I wish that they
also whom you have given me, John 17, 24. Given me, be with
me where I am. True love doesn't want to be
parted. Her love motivated her desire
to go after him, to seek him, to search him. She was wounded
but she still sought him and she still searched him. Father,
I will that they also whom you have given me be with me where
I am, that they may behold my glory, which you have given me,
for you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father,
the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these
have known that you have sent me. And I have declared unto
them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou
hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. They are loved according to verse
23. They are loved in exactly the same way and for exactly
the same reason that the Son is loved. They are seen as one
perfectly united to Him. The word sanctify is the word
holy, isn't it? He's made them as holy as He
is. God loves holy things. The holy things love Him who
makes them holy. What a wonderful word, beloved. My Beloved. Isn't it remarkable? You would think that that word
would be scattered throughout the scriptures and yet in Song
of Solomon over a quarter of all the references to the word
Beloved are in this beautiful book, this beautiful book which
pictures the intimacy of that relationship. And she goes on
to describe him. You see, she doesn't hesitate.
She doesn't say, I think he is like this, well let me go away
and think about it, I need a theology book. She just comes out with
this beautiful, beautiful description of him. And she starts by saying,
my beloved is white and ruddy. The cheapest among ten thousand. In fact that word white can actually
mean dazzling. It's the excellence. He's white
in all of the divine glory as God. He's white and dazzling
in all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. in all the perfections
of eternal God are manifest in the flesh. He is white as the
glory of God. And you know well those remarkable
events that the apostles witnessed. John and James and Peter, when
they were taken up onto that mountain, you can read of this
three times in the Gospel writings. And it says in verse Chapter
9 of Mark, and after six days Jesus took with him Peter, James
and John and led them up into a high mountain apart by themselves,
and he was transfigured before them. He really showed them who
he is. And his raiment became shining,
exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can whiten
them. And there appeared unto them
Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus." They were
talking with Jesus, according to Luke's account, about the
crucifixion. They were talking not only about
the crucifixion, they were talking to Him about the accomplishment
of the crucifixion. All of these Old Testament prophets
pointed forward to this One who was to come and what He was to
do. And Peter answered and said to
Jesus, Master, it's good for us to be here. Let us make three
tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
For he didn't know what to say, for they were sore afraid. And
there was a cloud that overshadowed them, and a voice came out of
the cloud saying, This is my beloved son. Hear him. And with due reverence, to the
glory of the sun, Moses and Elijah disappear from the scene. Their
job is done. Here is the one that they spoke
of. Here is the one who is their
beloved. was only Jesus with them. We don't need to go back to Moses
and Elijah. We can go back there with delight
as long as we see that all of what they pointed to was this
One who is white. He is white in the beauty and
the perfections of His humanity. He is white in his tenderness
toward his people. He is dazzling. He is dazzling
in that remarkable way that John, an old man, an apostle for a
long time, met with him in Revelation and he saw him. And in the midst of the seven
candlesticks, he heard this voice, didn't he? He heard a voice that
spoke with me and he turned. and was one like the son of man,
clothed with a garment to the foot, and girded about the paps
with a golden girdle. His head and hairs were white
like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame
of fire, and his feet like undefined brass, as if they were burned
in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. And
he had in his right hand the seven stars, and out of his mouth
went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the
sun shining in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at
his feet as dead. Just like Paul, just like all
of God's children, I fall at his feet and then what does he
do? And he laid his right hand upon
me and saying unto me, fear not. I am the first and the last.
I am He that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And have the keys of hell
and of death." Remarkably he goes on to say
that in those hands, in that right hand of omnipotent power
and authority, are actually the ministers, the servants of His
churches, and His churches. See, He rules sovereignly. He rules wonderfully. And He rules purposefully. And He rules as a beloved. He rules for the sake of His
church. He rules this world that His
glory may be seen in the church. What a remarkable thing it is,
brothers and sisters, if God would continue to cause us to
be faithful to this Gospel, if God would continue to cause us
to be faithful to the testimonies we heard last week, the testimony
of God, the testimony of Christ, the Gospel, that we would describe
Him in the details. We would delight in describing
Him in the details that the scriptures describe Him in. So often people
are prepared to say, oh yes I love Him, I know He is a man, I know
He is God and they will say a few things about Him, all very true
and all very important. But do they really love Him? You see, the more we look into
the Lord Jesus, the more we look into the scriptures, the more
glorious and the more beautiful He becomes. He becomes more beautiful
in the details. Most things we look into in this
world, the more detail we look in, the more we know about them,
including, sadly, the likes of us. There's an awful lot about
me that you are best not knowing. I don't want to pry into your
life. and you don't need to pry into
mine. We gather together because we
can look at someone and the more we look at him, the more beautiful
he becomes. The more detail we see of him,
the more profound the picture becomes. He becomes more and
more and more beautiful. That's why we don't want to skim
over the scriptures, because the beauty is in the detail. I remember with horror some years
ago being in a creationist sort of movie show, they had an electron
microscope and they were looking at various things that we think
are sort of perfect, and one of them was, I think it was a
needle. And you actually sort of examine
this needle under a microscope and you get to some extraordinary
magnification. And this thing is pitted and
ugly as anything. It looked beautiful from the
outside. The thing that horrified me and I've never forgotten it
was they actually showed a picture of someone's teeth before they'd
cleaned them. And you had this remarkable picture
of this colony of bacteria. living there, millions of them,
almost so many that they could hardly sort of get together.
They were sort of standing cheek by jowl on this tooth. And then
they had another picture of that tooth after it had been cleaned.
And lo and behold, what was there? Still more little bacteria, not
quite as many as before, but they are there. With our Lord
Jesus, we look into Him. and we gaze upon Him as His Spirit
shows us Him in this word and that we find that He becomes
more beautiful. And the descriptions of Him,
the remarkable descriptions of Him in the scriptures just are
adding layer of beauty upon layer of beauty. I don't know how Mehran
does her painting, But in painting there is a layer and then another
layer and another layer and I love going down and seeing Turner
paintings because he was remarkable at painting layer upon layer
and then on the top of it he put these remarkable splashes
of some yellow that he'd discovered. But the beauty is in the depths
of the layers. In the Lord Jesus we have these
amazing descriptions in the scriptures of Him. He is dazzling. He is the cheapest among ten
thousand. He is both white but also He
is ruddy. That word ruddy has two connotations. One is redness and the other
one is Adam. Adam, the name Adam, means red
earth. It's a description of him as
a man. In fact what it's really saying
is that he is a man's man. He will stand and be counted
as a man. He's not a pathetic wimp. The
longer you go on and the more you see these pathetic statues
that hang around on these obscene buildings they call churches,
these pathetic pictures of this pathetic Jesus. looking like
a girl, with his hands out pleading for people to come to him, where
in India they just had millions of them, where he was just a
baby, a pathetic little baby in his mother's arms, exactly
where they wanted him, that he was dependent upon them. Every time you see a picture
of the Lord Jesus painted by men, you are seeing something
that is profoundly deceitful. There is a new movie coming out.
I don't recommend you see it, just like I don't recommend people
see the other ones. Every picture of Jesus is deceitful. Every picture that man has made
of him. It's not for nothing that we have all of this book.
And we had that 33 years of the early church history, we had
all of those people who saw him, 500 saw him, and yet we have
not one description of what he looked like. And when in the
4th century they decided that it was best if they had pictures
of him, they actually, so the story goes, took a nice beautiful
young woman and dressed her up as a man. And that was the model
for all of those subsequent pictures. What terrible blasphemy. He was a man's man. It's a description of the excellence
of his manhood. It's the word that is used in
1 Samuel 16 to describe David. You know the story well. Samuel,
despite the evidence that he had of Eli's poor fatherhood
and the fact that his sons weren't worthy of the office to which
they were born to. Samuel had sons as well, but
Samuel's sons weren't like Samuel. Grace does not run in bloodlines. Grace is sovereign grace. And
the people chose Saul in rejection of God, and then eventually Saul
is rejected. And Samuel goes off to Jesse's
house, appointed and anointed by God to anoint the new king. And all of these men, these wonderful
sons, pass by handsome, were there in Samuel's eyes and
the Lord says, not this one, I haven't chosen that one, I
haven't chosen them and he finally turns to Jesse and says, is there
another one? And Jesse says, well he's just
the youngest one and he's out looking after the sheep. Samuel
says, bring him in. We won't eat until he's here.
And then we have this description of him, that David, that great
king, that great one who typified and sung about the Lord Jesus. Now he was ruddy. and had beautiful
eyes and was handsome, and the Lord said, Arise, anoint him,
for this is he, this great son. He's white in his divinity, he's
ruddy in his manliness, and he's red and ruddy in the bloody sufferings
of his death. He's ruddy in his incarnation
as a man. And he will, when he comes again,
be ruddy in the terrible vengeance he takes upon his enemies. He's
white, he's dazzling, he's ruddy, he's manly, and he's chiefest
among ten thousand. He's the outstanding one. He's
the one, this word means, He's the banner. He's the one who's
lifted up for all to see. He is the object of every love
and affection to God. Everything else, everything else
in this world is, as Philippians 3 says, just done. He's the cheapest. He's the outstanding one. As
the S�ma said, I have exalted one chosen out of the people,
S�ma 89 verse 20. And verse 27 says, I will also
make my firstborn higher than the kings of the earth. He shall choose our inheritance
for us, the excellency of Jacob, whom he loved. He is the outstanding
one. There is no man to compare to
the Lord Jesus. You look into other men that
have walked on the face of this earth, even the great ones that
we read about in Hebrews 11, honours because of the Lord's
work in their lives. And you look into them more and
more and we see faults. and we see failings from a human
perspective. You look into the Lord Jesus
and you see nothing but perfection and you look deeper and the perfection
becomes more beautiful. The deeper you look and the closer
you look and the more you look, the more beautiful He becomes.
When it says 10,000, that was the highest number that they
had in Jewish poetry. It's saying no other man could
possibly be compared to Him. As if we were in a group of an
infinite number of people, and there He is, He stands, head
and shoulders above them all, in all of His perfections, in
all of His glory. He is the standard bearer among
10,000. He is the one who holds up the
banner, the banner to which God's people are gathered. As Isaiah
11.10 says, and in that day there shall be a root of Jesse. Isn't it remarkable that the
Lord Jesus' lineage is taken back to Jesse. Jesse talked about
himself being the most insignificant one, an insignificant family
in an insignificant part of that country. But there shall be a
root of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign of the people,
a banner for the people. And to it shall the Gentiles
seek, and listen to these words, and his rest shall be glorious. his rest, the finished work,
that rest that he entered into. Isaiah 53, after the suffering
of his soul, my servant shall see the light of life and he
shall be satisfied. A satisfied saviour. a glorious
saviour, a dazzling saviour, the one who is the cheapest among
10,000, the one who is outstanding, the one who is the banner, the one, as we go down and finish
in verse 16, the one who is my friend. What a friend we have in Jesus. What a friend. A friend of sinners. Are there sinners here? He's a friend of sinners. This
is my beloved. This is my friend. Our daughters
of Jerusalem. We might finish there. Lord willing,
next week. we might be allowed to go and
look into the detail of it. But the scriptures give us so
much detail of Him, so much is written of Him, so many pictures
and so many names and so many titles. The brightness of His
Father's glory, the Creator of Israel, the I Am, the King, Eternal,
Immortal, Invisible, the only wise God, Emmanuel, God with
us, everlasting Father, the faithful witness, the first and the last,
the most highest, the most high, the Holy One of Israel, the Living
God. He's life. He's the truth. He is the way. He is the Lord
of Lords. May He work in our hearts as
we take these emblems in the Lord's Supper that remind us
of what it cost Him, that broken body, that shamed body in the
hands of wicked men, that blood that was shed, that blood that
is precious, the most precious thing ever spilt on the face
of this earth, that blood that was shed with purpose for a beloved. May he cause us to call him my
beloved. May he cause us to see him as
the chiefest among ten thousand. as white and ruddy, may he cause
us to see him as our friend.