Nicholson, Boyd: 1 Samuel 16 ~ Palos Hills Conf Message

Especially to share with my brother, Neil. We have had the privilege of serving the Lord together for many, many years. It's a great privilege and an honor to be here tonight. I'd like to turn with you tonight to First Samuel and chapter sixteen. First Samuel chapter sixteen. We were singing, my heart is full of Christ and longs its glorious matter to declare. Of him I make my loftier songs and cannot from his praise forbear. My ready tongue makes haste to sing the glories of my heavenly king. And so we're thankful that the Lord has, at the beginning of our conference, directed our minds to be occupied with the Lord Jesus. Samuel sixteen, reading from verse eleven. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and behold, he keepeth the sheep. Samuel said unto Jesse, send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till he come hither. And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, with all of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the Lord said, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brethren, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David. From that day forward, so Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. Verse eighteen: Then answered one of the servants and said, that is to Saul, behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite that is coming and playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him. God will bless the reading of these sacred scriptures. Adolf Sapphire, in his beautiful little commentary on Hebrews, writes in the introduction to that book these words: In every age of the church, the renewal of strength, the rekindling of love, the deliverance from languor and inertness can only proceed from a fuller and deeper knowledge of the Lord and his truth from a renewed beholding of his countenance and glory. The Hebrew epistle puts it this way, consider him, lest you be wearied and faint in your mind. The enemy is after the minds of God's people today. There was a time when he was after their bodies, and they were crucified, burned at the stake, cut in pieces, and destroyed in various ways. In these western lands, not yet has he done that. But in these lands, he is making a concerted attack against the minds of God's people, because the mind is the control room, not a new device of the devil, because Paul wrote about it in Romans seven. I find a law. The law is the way a thing works. I find a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, the way my mind works, bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. And that was a, that was Paul, the great apostle, who wrote about that conflict, and today we face the same conflict. And as we travel round, we see that the enemy is certainly attacking the minds of God's people. He gets to the mind through the members. Paul reminds us of that, as we have quoted. And remember the little chorus, I think we should sing it more often. We used to sing in Sunday school, be careful, little eyes, what you see. Be careful, little hands, what you do, feet where you go, and so on, because it is through these members that the enemy infiltrates the mind. The mind is the control room, and as thoughts enter the mind, remember they are lodged in the memory bank of our mind until the rapture. They're in there. So it is of the greatest importance that we guard the mind. The devil's masterpiece today is to distract the mind and to divert the minds of God's people away from the person of Christ. He will do it by any device, of course, by the world, the flesh, or by sin, but by more subtle means. He uses even holy things. Peter found that out on the Mount of Transfiguration as he stood beholding the blazing Christ. He started to talk, to ramble, and he said, it is good for us to be here. And it's one occasion where we read that God interrupted the speaker. While he was yet speaking, God said. In effect, Peter, he said, I didn't bring you up here for an it, not even a holy it. Holy things are still not him. I brought you here to be occupied alone with my beloved son. More and more we need to be reminded that the object of our heart, the attention of the mind, the affection of the soul must be centered in the person of the Lord Jesus. In the measure in which we as the people of God enjoy the Lord from day to day, in that measure, our lives will fulfill the reason for their existence. We may have fine equipment, grand singing, great success. We may have human wisdom, but these things do not bless. God wants the pure, clean vessel, anointed lips and true, and saints filled with the Holy Spirit to speak his message to. To protect us from this wily device of the enemy, God has filled this book from cover to cover with pictures and figures and symbols and emblems and types and allegories and parables and predictions and statements about his beloved son. And this is our album. God has blessed us with thirteen grandchildren, and that's quite a pocketful when you're carrying those pictures around. But this is what grandfathers do. Got an hour? And so we love to show the pictures of those we love. God so delights in his son, he has filled the universe with pictures to occupy our attention, and the devil hates that, and he will do everything to keep us from beholding and considering him, because it is by the considering of him, and that word is translated to perceive, to behold, to discover. The Lord Jesus held the flattering words of the Pharisees, but he looked beyond them into their hearts and perceived the meaning of what they were saying. He perceived. And so when we read about the Lord Jesus, we look behind the words he said to perceive the meaning. This is the considering of Christ. Moses saw the bush that was burning, but he turned aside to behold why it was not consumed. The beholding of Christ is the considering of the why of Christ. Why did he love me so? Why did my savior to Calvary go? Why did he love me so? The discovery of Christ and that storm, the only storm that takes a whole chapter to describe in the Bible. There must be a reason for that, but in that storm, in Acts twenty seven where they were driven up and down the coast of Adria for fourteen days, it says they found a creek or a bay. They discovered a bay into which they drove. That word discover is the word to consider. So the considering of Christ is the discovery of Christ. It is exploring the spiritual territories that God has given to us in his book concerning his son, and we did that already tonight, as we looked into this picture of Jordan and the experience of the Lord Jesus as he passed through the waters of suffering. It's the discovery of Christ, the beholding of him, the why of Christ, the perceiving of the meaning of his words and his movements. And it is this exercise of the mind that will preserve its stability and clarity in a day when the mind is under the attack of the enemy. I'm not Methuselah yet, but the older I grow, the more I see the day in which we live, God's people come un- coming under that kind of attack by the enemy. This morning, before breakfast, before seven o'clock, the phone rang. Three quarters of an hour I was on the phone with a dear brother under just this kind of attack. A few weeks ago, I had a telephone call fifteen hundred miles away from a young man passing through this kind of attack. The enemy is after the minds of God's people. So God has given to us something to help us. The considering of Christ. And among these beautiful types and pictures and representations of the Lord Jesus, here is a lovely one we have read tonight. We know there are types that are objects. We know there are types that are creatures. We know there are types that are persons and offices, and here is one of them, David. David the king. But I want to look at this little picture I've read this evening with you, not so much as to his royalty, but as to his personal beauty. The sheer loveliness of the character of the Lord Jesus that really won our hearts. And there are some very beautiful things said here about David, that we see through them the reflection of the loveliness of Christ. First of all, of course, his name David means the beloved, the beloved. I suppose there is no one in all the universe more beloved than the Lord Jesus. Untold millions love him. The Father loves him. The love of the Spirit. Three times we know of that he was attested to in the New Testament as the beloved. At the beginning of his ministry, at his baptism, the Spirit of God came softly and gently upon him as a dove. But it says the heavens were opened, and that word to open is the same word that's used to tear the veil open, to rent open the rocks. Here is the divine enthusiasm of the Father as he sees his beloved Son taking the place of the perfect submissive man before he steps out into a life of ministry in the declaration of God. And the father opens the heavens and says to the Lord Jesus, Thou art my beloved son, in thee is all my delight. And then in the midst of his ministry, when his enemies were out to destroy him, there is the quotation from the Word of God. Behold my servant, whom I have chosen my beloved, in whom my soul delighteth. Here is his, here is the son testified from heaven as beloved as the servant. As the Son in his ministry in the past, as the prophet. As the servant in his ministry now, in his ongoing ministry. There is an unfinished work that goes on now. Picture for us between John thirteen and seventeen, and there we see the ongoing ministry of Christ. And then, of course, there is in Hebrews one, he is the beloved, uh, rather on the Transfiguration, he is the beloved as the sovereign, as the king. We should love him for these same things, for these very same reasons. We should love him for what he became, the man of sorrows, submissive, obedient, beautiful. We should love him for what he's doing now on behalf of his people. We should love him for what he will yet be seen to be the sovereign of the universe. David was the beloved. He was a Bethlehemite. He came from the city of Bethlehem. Bethlehem is the house of bread. And that speaks to my heart, at least, of the fullness and the satisfaction to be found in the Lord Jesus. A man who's starving is not interested in a timbit or some little sweet little piece of chocolate. What a starving man wants is a loaf of bread. Satisfy and fill him. Bread is that which satisfies. And it speaks so beautifully of the satisfaction that is to be found in the Lord Jesus. It was the place of riches. That's where Boaz, the mighty man of wealth, lived. It's the place of refreshing. That's where the well was that David longed to drink from, and his men risked their lives to get that drink of water for him. Bethlehem, the place that speaks of abundance and satisfaction of entering into the inheritance we just heard about. Beloved, that old world out there has absolutely nothing for the child of God. Nothing. David calls it not just a dry land, a dry and thirsty land. The word really is a drying up land. It's not just that it's dry and there's no water there, but it sucks the very moisture out of the child of God. There is nothing out there, and every exploration of a child God out into the world to try and find satisfaction is a testimony against the Lord Jesus that he doesn't satisfy. Whereas we know in effect he is the bread, he is the water, he is the life, he is the way. All that we need is in Christ. There used to be a toy store in the mall nearby our home, and as our grandchildren multiplied, so did our investment in the toy store. And we used to do business in the lower level, the junior department, and there was a nice lady down there, middle-aged lady, very worldly woman, but very nice, kindly person, and always a great help to us as we were looking for gifts for our children or grandchildren. I had many opportunities to give her a tract, speak a little word for the Lord to her. One evening at closing time, I was dashing down to pick up something, and she saw me coming down the stairs. She says, oh, Mr. Nicholson, please don't preach at me tonight. I've had a very bad day and a very rough week. Well, I said I wasn't particularly planning on preaching to you tonight. Well, she says, anyway, I've made a decision. What's, what's the decision? She says, I've decided this life is all the hell I'm ever going to have. Well, I said, I won't preach to you, but I will correct your mistake. If you die without the Lord Jesus, this life is all the heaven you're going to have. Let's never forget that. This world is the only heaven the lost will ever know. Let us not begrudge their folly and their excesses. They don't have anything else, but we do. We have the fountainhead. We have the mountains and the valleys and the rivers and the streams. We have the bread and all to satisfy us in him. David was a Bethlehemite, the place of satisfaction. Satisfied with thee, Lord Jesus, we sing, I am blessed, and we sing that truthfully. David was a shepherd, so different to Saul. When Samuel was going to anoint Saul as king, he was looking for his father's donkeys he had lost. But David was keeping his father's sheep. What a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus. We know these lovely outlines of the good shepherd giving his life for the sheep, and the great shepherd imparting his life to the sheep, and the chief shepherd reviewing the lives of the sheep. He is the good shepherd. The Lord Jesus says that he knows his sheep. And all of us who were saved in this meeting tonight are part of his flock of sheep, and he knows you. It's not just that he knows your name and address. He knows you. Every bone and muscle and nerve and corpuscle and every thought and every ambition and hope and fear, he knows you through and through, and he loves you anyway. I know my sheep. Many years ago in southern Colorado, I was visiting a little place called Alamosa, and the man I was staying with had two thousand sheep, and at that time of the year, the lambing season, he had one thousand two hundred baby lambs to look after. He was really busy. He said to me one day, would you like to come out to the fold? And I sure I went out. There was a sea of gray wool, lambs, bleating sheep, and as I made my way through those sheep to get to the other side, they struggled to get away from me, scattered, because, of course, I was a stranger to them. They didn't know me. I stood watching for a while, and then the old shepherd came out of the barn. He was an old cowboy looking fellow from New Mexico, tough old fellow, been on the range all his life and looked like it, but he was a shepherd, and he came through the sheep. They didn't even lift their heads up. He had to knee them with his knees to push them aside to make a little pass through because they knew him, and he talked to them as he went by. They knew his voice. We got to the other side, and we talked about shepherding and sheep, and I was trying to learn something about this from this old timer. Over on the side, there was a wee lamb, all alone, shivering and shaking and bleating away, and I said, what's wrong with this wee fella? Oh, said the shepherd, he's lost his mother. Looking at the sea of hundreds of sheep, I said, how will he ever find his mother now? Well, he says, looking over the sheep. Here's his mother over there. I said, just a minute. He looked identical to me. I said, how do you know that's the mother of that little lamb? He says, you watch. In a minute or two, I did watch, a minute or two, that particular sheep, she lifted her head and looked around at the wee lamb, and she said, ah. That wee lamb just took off, dived into the side of the sheet, hid itself on the wool, and the mother put her head round and gave him a little dunce, as much as to say, don't run away again. I said, tell me, how of all these sheep did you know that was the mother of that little lamb? Looking out from underneath his old steps, and almost a look of reproach, he said, Mister, I know my sheep. He took that verse right out of John chapter ten and he didn't even know it. He knows you. Beloved, that used to scare me before I was saved, to think there was someone from whom I couldn't keep a secret, but now that brings me inestimable comfort. He knows you physically and all your feelings. He knows you emotionally and all your fears. He knows you spiritually and all your future, because he says, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. He's up ahead. We have to wait till the sun rises tomorrow to enter tomorrow and face the demands of the day, but he doesn't. He's beyond the sun. He's in all our tomorrows already, making sure that the road is not too steep, or the way too rough, or the test too heavy. There's a beautiful title of God in second Corinthians chapter ten, Doesn't appear in the King James, but you find it in Darby's translation. It is the God of measure. Isn't that a beautiful title? Our brother was pointing that out tonight, how he measures his universe in the palm of his hand, in the pinch of his finger, in the scales. He measures. And there are some things that he measures, we find in scripture, and one of those is the tests of life. He measures the tests of life. He will not suffer you to be tested above that ye are able to bear. Some things he does according to my faith. Some things he does in spite of my faith. But here's one thing he does according to my ability to bear it. And he measures your ability to bear the burden before he ever puts it on you. He measures the tests of life. And he measures the trivia of life, things that we don't even pay attention to, mostly. Don't you know, says the Lord, the hairs of your head are all counted? No, numbered. There's a difference, isn't there? Every printer knows the difference. If you count five hundred sheets of paper, you know there's five hundred sheets of paper. But if you number five hundred sheets of paper, every sheet has its own number. Now, what possible significance to the God of the universe could it possibly be that he knows what number of hair fell from your head this morning when you combed your hair? I really don't know what significance that is to God, but it tells me something, that there's not a detail in your life or mind of which he is unaware or uninterested in. He measures the trivia of life. And David tells us that he measures the tears of life. Are they not in my bottle? Somewhere in God's glorious universe, there is a glistening globe of the tears of the saints, into which has fallen the catalyst of the tears of the man of sorrow and made them eternally precious, so that he preserves them in his museum forever. In the bottle of God, your tears have been stored. But more than that, David says, they're also written in his book. Not only has he recorded that you have wept, but he has written down why you have wept. He knows, he loves, he cares. Nothing this truth can dim. He gives the very best to those who leave the choice with him. He is before us in the order of time. So he undertakes for us, making sure, as we have said, the way is not too steep and the path is not too rough. But he is also before us in the order of experience. There is nothing in the human experience we are called to pass through that he has not experienced sin apart. He knows about your loneliness because he was lonely. While the disciples went to their own homes, he slept on the mountainside. The foxes had holes, the birds of the air had nests, the son of man had not where to lay his head. He knows about pain as none of us will ever know. He knows about rejection by his own family and by those who have hated him. He knows. He's ahead of us in the order of experience. He's ahead of us in the order of rank, so no one can overrule him. I like first Peter three twenty two. On my email address on the computer, I have that text as my email address. If you're going to call me on the computer, my email address is JBN first Peter three twenty two. Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being subject unto him. I like that verse. Beloved, we know who's in charge of this universe. We're lamenting in the car today at the conditions of this world and the things that are going on and what seems to be coming on the horizon. Well, we just have to live ourselves, lift ourselves above all that because we're not going to change it. But things may get out of your control and out of my control, but nothing, but nothing ever gets out of his control. Acts twenty seven again, you remember the great mighty wind that drove them onto that beach? Broken ship, all safe to land. Three months they spent with the barbarians, then they found another ship with the sign Castor and Pollux, and they were going to get onto that ship, and so that says they got on the ship, and the south wind blew softly and took them to Puteoli, where we met the brethren. Same God who controlled the stormy wind blew them gently with the south wind to where they could find fellowship with the brethren. He's in charge, beloved. There's none higher, and there's none greater than our Lord Jesus Christ. David was anointed three times. He was anointed by Samuel. He was anointed by the men of Judah, and he was anointed by the elders of Israel. So if he is a picture of the Lord Jesus, we would expect the Lord Jesus to have three anointings. And we find that was so. He was anointed by the Father with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. He was anointed by Mary with the anointment, with the ointment in view of his great priestly sacrifice. He's anointed by God as the sovereign in Hebrews chapter one. He is the anointed one. Now that's the meaning, of course, of the name, the title Christ. Christ is the anointed one. In the Old Testament, there were three offices that God ordained to be anointed offices: the prophet, the priest, and the king. Why was it necessary to have three offices? Could God not have ordained just one combined office? Well, because of the fall. When man fell, we say in the garden, the whole man fell. We speak about the total depravity of man. Doesn't mean that every man or woman is as bad as they can be, but it means the whole person has been touched by the fall. And the whole person is described as body, soul, and spirit. And when man sinned at the beginning, the spirit part of him fell into the realm of the soul. The spirit is that which enables us to be conscious of God. The soul enables us to be conscious of self within. The body enables us to be conscious of the world around. The spirit fell into the realm of the soul, so that the natural man cannot distinguish between that which is of the soul and that which is of the spirit. That's why the great religions of the world always appeal to the emotions of men, the soulish part of him. And he goes home and says, I had a great spiritual experience. Didn't have a spiritual experience necessarily. He could just have had a soulish experience, an emotional experience, and many are deceived this way, thinking that what they had was of the spirit when it really was of the soul. How can you know the difference? The Bible says this is how you know the difference. The Word of God is living and powerful, dividing asunder between the soul and spirit. As we apply the truth of God to these things, we know what is of the soul and what is of the spirit. Soul is not wrong, God gave it to us. Just don't confuse them, that's all. The soul fell into the realm of the body so that the natural man cannot distinguish between the emotion of love and the appetite of lust. And the body fell under the dominion of sin, and the fall was complete. Sometimes man is described as feelings, intellect, and will. And when man sinned at the beginning, the intellect became darkened because of sin. They were children of the light, then they became children of the dark. They were naked. They ran and hid themselves because they were naked. Not naked of clothes, naked of light. They wore garment as the light. They wore light as a garment because they were made in the likeness of God, and light was his garment. As soon as they sinned, the light went out. Instead of being children of light, they were children of the dark, and they ran and hid themselves. Intellect became darkened. The feelings became unhappy. Fear and all that comes as a result of sin. And the will became evil because of disobedience. So God ordains a threefold office. The prophet to bring the light of the knowledge of God to the darkened intellect. The priest to offer the acceptable sacrifice that is sufficient to remove the unhappy feelings of guilt and shame and despair. It came to rule the will in righteousness, so that when the Lord Jesus saves a person, the whole person is saved, body, soul, and spirit. The redemption of the body is not yet, but it's absolutely guaranteed at the moment of rapture and resurrection. That's why in Romans one sixteen, the wonderful message we have to declare is called the gospel of Christ, because it meets the need of the whole person. What a wonderful message. He's anointed. But very quickly, for a few minutes, look at his description in verse twelve. David, it says, was ruddy, fair of eyes, and good to look to. Ruddy, that word comes from the root from which we get the name Adam, and reminds us of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, became a real man. Let us never forget that. With eyes that wept and hands that worked and feet that walked in the service of others. A real man. And he is touched with the feelings of our weaknesses. Fair of eyes. What a beautiful expression. The eyes are the window of the soul. Fair of eyes. That's really the meaning of the expression of a beautiful countenance. If you have a King James, see in the margin, the Hebrew means fair of eyes, beautiful eyes. The eyes are the window of the soul. And it might well speak of the inward purity of the Lord Jesus. We remember the faithful testimony of the apostles, don't we? Paul, the great thinker, said he knew no sin. Peter, the man of action, said he did no sin. John, who leaned on the breast of the Son of God and heard the very heartbeat of heaven, said in him is no sin. Fair of eyes. But what would we see if we looked into the eyes of the Lord Jesus? What would be the look that we would get back? In the Song of Solomon, his eyes are described as eyes of doves washed with milk and fitly set. The look of peace. I came across an old gleanings from Choice Gleanings Calendar the other day, written by S. Robertson. I don't know who that is, but it was a lovely little story. Story of a little girl sitting on her mommy's knee, and she's fingering the features of her mummy's face, the lips and the nose and the eyes and the ears, and she's looking in love into that mummy's face. And she said, mummy, can I look into your heart? Mummy said, well, I don't know about that, dear, but I tell you what, you can look into my eyes and tell you, tell me what you see there. The little girl climbed up, stood up on her mommy's knee, and she looked right into her mommy's eyes. She says, I see something. So what do you see, honey? I see a wee girl, and it's me. Look into the eyes of the Lord Jesus. We can see that he's looking at us because he loves us. We can look into those eyes and say, I see someone there, and it's me. Fair of eyes. Says he was good looking, good to look to, most attractive personality that ever walked the face of the earth. Can you imagine those fishermen plying their trade, a very profitable business, a number of ships with servants doing well, and as they're working there on the seashore, a lonely stranger is standing by and watching, and suddenly he says, come, follow me, I will make you fishers of men. And they left all and followed him. Would you have done that? No, I think you would have, because there was something, I am sure, so radiantly attractive about him. They were impelled to follow him. Good looking. Very quickly in verse eighteen, as I close, look at his reputation. He's cunning and playing, that is skillful in music. No one, but no one can bring forth music out of the human heart like the Lord Jesus. I stood on the banks of the Zambezi River, heard the sons of Africa lift their voices in melodious praise to the Son of God. I've been privileged to stand in Cochin in India and listen to thousands of Indians singing their praise to Christ who delivered them from paganism. I've listened to them in the Orient. It's been my privilege to travel in many, many lands. No one has been able to call forth the song of the Lord from the human heart like the Lord Jesus. Many years ago, I was in hospital for quite a while. A nephew who's now since gone to glory visited me, Lawrence. He had a beautiful tenor voice, played a guitar very nicely too, came up to visit me. I said, you brought your guitar, he said. I said, let's sing. I'm not a singer, but I thought to join in with him, might sound good that way. I said, shut the door. We shut the hospital door, the room door, we began to sing for a whole hour. We went through all the hymns we could remember, Believer's Hymn Book, Redemption Songs, all the others. We just had a great time. And he left. After he left, the nurse came in. Oh, she says, that was good. I said, what? She said, did you see us? No, I said, the door was closed. I thought maybe you'd see our feet below the door. We were all standing out there listening. Is that young fellow coming back tonight? I said, I think he is. So we'll tell the next shift. So that night he came back, my wife came back, I think some of my kids came back, and my father-in-law came back, who had the voice of a gentle foghorn. So leave the door open tonight. So we left the door open, and we sang the songs of Zion for an hour. And then we went home, and the nurse came in to fix me up for the night. She leaned on the end of the bed. She said, Mr. Nicholson, I belong to such and such a religion, and I've been a very faithful churchgoer all my life, but I have no song in my heart. Tell me, sir, what is the secret of your song? I was so happy to tell her. He was the secret of my song. He dug me out of the pit. He put me on the rock, but a new song in my mouth, even praise unto God. We may not be all great singers, but the Lord hears the crow as well as the nightingale, and one day we will sing beautifully and wonderfully to him. He is, after all, the chief musician of heaven, and he will be the one who will raise the song when all the church is home, and in chapter nineteen of Revelation, when the Hallelujah chorus bursts forth in heaven, he's the one who will raise the song like the sound of mighty thunderings in many waters, and brethren and sisters, we'll need a new body that day. These old bodies wouldn't be able to handle it. He can bring forth the song of the Lord. Very quickly, he's mighty in valor. David dealt with three notable... How did this man know he was a man of war? There's nothing before that. Goliath was after that in the next chapter. How did he know he was a man of war? I don't know. It wasn't yet evident, but he says he's a man of war. Beloved, it's not yet evident that this Jesus who was crucified is a man of war, but believe me, he is. But the next time this world sees him, he is not coming in the homespun of a carpenter. He is not coming with a cross. He is leading the armies of heaven to judge and to make war, and his eyes will be as a flaming fire. He won't need an air force. He won't need a bomb. He has one weapon, and it will come forth from his mouth as a sword. It will be one word, and with that one word, he will dispatch his enemies to destruction. I don't know all of you, of course. Maybe someone's sitting here and you're not saved. I counsel you tonight, bow the knee. Bow the knee while he will save you, for it would be a terrible thing to stand before those blazing eyes of judgment. A man of war, prudent in speech, nobody ever spoke like the Lord Jesus. The word of peace to the troubled, the pardon to the guilty, the word of provision to the needy. Nobody could speak like the Master. What words he has spoken to our heart in times of trouble. We've opened up the scriptures in our despair, and suddenly he has spoken to us just the very thing that we needed. Beautiful in person. That's what it says of him. He was a comely person, a beautiful person, beautiful to look to. The beauty of the Lord Jesus is unique. It excels every other beauty. What is thy beloved more than another beloved, is the question. So the answer then is the description of his superlative beauty. So always put the emphasis on the personal pronoun when you read that portrait in Song of Solomon chapter five. His head, his eyes, his cheeks, more than all the others by an infinite measure. His beauty is a beauty that not only ta- stands the test of scrutiny, it stands the test of time. That's different than our beauty, isn't it? Time's the greatest enemy to our beauty. That's what keeps, uh, Avon in business, or whatever these people are.