ALTOGETHER LOVELY – Charles Spurgeon
Altogether Lovely
Introduction to the Text
“Yes, He is altogether lovely.” – Song of Solomon 5:16.
When the old Puritan minister had delivered his discourse, and dwelt upon firstly, secondly, and thirdly, and perhaps upon twenty-fifthly, before he sat down, he usually gave a comprehensive summary of all that he had spoken. Everyone who carefully noted the summary would carry away the essence of the sermon. The summary was always looked upon by the Puritan hearer as one of the most valuable helps to memory, and consequently a most important part of the discourse.
In these five words, the spouse here gives you her summary. She had delivered a tenfold discourse concerning her Lord; she had described in detail all His various beauties, and when she had surveyed Him from head to foot, she gathered up all her commendations in this sentence: “Yes, He is altogether lovely.” Remember these words, and know their meaning, and you possess the quintessence of the spouse’s portion of the Song of Songs. Now, as in this allegorical song, the bride sums up her witness in these words, so may I say that all the patriarchs, all the Prophets, all the Apostles, all the confessors, yes, and the entire body of the Church have left us no other testimony. They all spoke of Christ, and they all commended Him. Whatever the type, or symbol, or obscure oracle, or open word in which they bore witness, that witness all amounted to this—“Yes, He is altogether lovely.”
Yes, and I will add that since the canon of Inspiration has closed, the testimony of all saints on earth and in Heaven has continued to confirm the declaration made of old; the verdict of each particular saint, and of the whole Elect host as a body, still is this, “Yes, He is altogether lovely.” From the sighs and the songs which mingle on the dying beds of saints, I hear this note supreme above all others, “He is altogether lovely”; and from the songs unmingled with groans, which perpetually peal forth from immortal tongues before the Presence of the Most High, I hear this one master note—“Yes, He is altogether lovely.” If the whole Church desired to say with the Apostle, “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum,” she need not wait for a brief and comprehensive summary, for it lies before her in this golden sentence, “Yes, He is altogether lovely.”
Humbling the Spirit and Engraving the Message
Looking at my text in this light, I felt much humbling of spirit, and I hesitated to preach upon it, for I said in my heart, “It is high, I cannot attain unto it.” These deep texts show us the shortness of our plumb line; these ocean verses are so exceedingly broad that our skiffs are apt to be driven far out of sight of land, where our timid spirits tremble to spread the sail. Then I comforted myself by the thought that though I could not comprehend this text in a measure, nor weigh its mountains in scales, or its hills in a balance, yet it was all my own, by the gift of Divine Grace, and therefore I need not fear to enter upon the meditation of it. If I cannot grasp the ocean in my span, yet may I bathe in it with sweet content; if I cannot describe the King in His beauty, yet may I gaze upon Him, since the old proverb says, “A beggar may look at a prince.”
Though I pretend not so to preach from such heavenly words as those before us, as to spread before you all its marrow and fatness, yet may I gather up a few crumbs which fall from its table. Poor men are glad for crumbs, and crumbs from such a feast are better than loaves from the tables of the world. Better to have a glimpse of Jesus, than to see all the glory of the earth all the days of our life; if we fail on this subject, we may do better than if we succeeded upon another, so we will pluck up courage, seek Divine help, and draw near to this wondrous text with our shoes off our feet, like Moses when he saw the bush aglow with God.
This verse has been translated in another way—“He is all desires.” And so, indeed, Jesus is; He was the desire of the ancients; He is the desire of all nations still; to His own people, He is their All in All; they are complete in Him. They are filled out of His fullness. “All our spacious powers can wish, In Him does richly meet.” He is the delight of His servants, and fills their expectations to the full. But we will not dispute about translations, for, after all, with such a text, so full of unutterable spiritual sweetness, every man must be his own translator, and into his own soul must the power of the message come by the enforcement of the Holy Spirit.
Such a text as this is very like the manna which fell in the wilderness, of which the rabbis say it tasted after each man’s liking; if the flavor in a man’s mouth was very sweetness, the angel’s food which fell around the camp was luscious as any dainty he had conceived. Whatever he might be, the manna was to him as he was. So shall this text be. To you with low ideas of Christ, the words shall but glide over your ears and be meaningless; but if your spirit is ravished with the precious love of Jesus, there shall be songs of angels, and more than that—the voice of God’s own Spirit to your soul in this short sentence, “Yes, He is altogether lovely.”
The Character of the Text
I am an engraver this morning, and I seek some place where I may engrave this heavenly line; shall I take unto me ivory or silver? Shall I borrow crystal or gold? These are too common to bear this unique inscription—I put them all aside. Shall I spell my text in gems, with an emerald, a sapphire, a ruby, a diamond, or a pearl for each single letter? No, these are poor perishable things—we put them all away. I need an immortal spirit to be the tablet for my writing; no, I must lay aside my engraving tool, and ask the Spirit of God to take it; I need a heart prepared of the Holy Spirit, upon whose fleshy tablets there shall be written this morning no other sentence than this, and this shall suffice for a right royal motto to adorn it well—“Yes, He is altogether lovely.” Spirit of God, find the prepared heart, and with Your sacred hand write in eternal characters the love of Christ, and all His matchless perfections!
Three Points of Character in the Text
- Overwhelming Emotion
The first point that suggests itself in these words is that they are evidently uttered by one who is under the influence of overwhelming emotion. The words are rather a veil to the heart than a glass through which we see its emotions; the sentence labors to express the inexpressible; it pants to utter the unutterable. The person writing these words evidently feels a great deal more than any language can possibly convey to us. The spouse begins somewhat calmly in her description—“My Beloved is white and ruddy.” She proceeds with due order, commencing at the head, and proceeding with the various parts of the Person of the Beloved, but she warms, she glows, she flames, and at last, the heat which had for a while been repressed is like fire within her bones, and she bursts forth in flaming words! Here is the live coal from off the altar of her heart—“Yes, He is altogether lovely.”
It is the utterance of a soul that is altogether overcome with admiration, and therefore feels that in attempting to describe the Well-Beloved, it has undertaken a task beyond its power. Lost in adoring wonder, the gracious mind stops from description, and cries with rapture, “Yes, He is altogether lovely!”
It has often been thus with true saints; they have felt the love of Jesus to be overpowering and inebriating. Believers are not always cool and calm in their thoughts towards their Lord; there are seasons with them when they pass into a state of rapture; their hearts burn within them; they are in ecstasy; they mount up with wings as eagles! Their souls become like the chariots of Amminadab; they feel what they cannot explain; they experience what they cannot express, though the tongues of men and of angels were perfectly at their command.
Favored believers are altogether enraptured with the sight they have of their All-Beauteous Lord. It is to be feared that such raptures are not frequent with all Christians, though I should gravely question his saintship who has never experienced any degree of holy rapture; but there are some saints to whom a state of overwhelming adoration of their Lord has been by no means an unusual thing. Communion with Jesus has not only entranced them now and then, but it has perfumed all their life with holiness, and if it has not caused their faces literally to shine like the face of Moses, it has made the spiritual glory flash from their countenances, and has elevated them among their fellow Christians to be leaders of the host of God, which others have admired and wondered.
Perhaps I speak to children of God who know very little of what I mean by the overwhelming emotions created by a sight of our Lord; they have not so seen the Lord as to have felt their souls melting within them while the Beloved spoke with them. To such, I shall speak with sorrowful sympathy, being alas, too much like they, but my prayer shall go up all the while, “Lord, reveal Yourself to us, that we also may be compelled to say, ‘Yes, He is altogether lovely.’ Show us Your hands and Your side till we exclaim with Thomas, ‘My Lord and my God.’”
Ignorance of Christ and the Power of Meditation
Shall I tell you why it is, my Brothers and Sisters, that many of you but seldom enjoy the exceeding bliss of Jesus’ presence? The cause may lie partly in what is, alas, too common among Christians—a great degree of ignorance of the Person of the Lord Jesus. Every soul that sees Jesus by faith is saved by the look; if I look to Christ with an eye that is ever so weak and clouded with tears, and if I only catch a glimpse of Him through clouds and mists, yet the sight saves me; but who will remain content with such a poor glimpse of His glory as that? Who wishes to see only “through a glass, darkly”? No, let my eyes be cleansed till they become as doves by the rivers of waters, and I can see my Lord as He is seen by His dearest friends, and can sing of those beauties which are the Light and Crown of Heaven itself!
If you do but touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, you shall be made whole, but will this always satisfy you? Will you not desire to get beyond the hem, and beyond the garment to Himself, and to His heart, and there forever take up your abode? Who desires to be forever a babe in grace, with a half-awakened, dreamy twilight consciousness of the Redeemer? Brothers and Sisters, be diligent in the school of the Cross where is enduring wisdom; study your Savior much; the science of Christ crucified is the most excellent of sciences, and to know Him and the power of His resurrection is to know that which is best worth knowing! Ignorance of Jesus deprives many saints of those divine raptures which carry others out of themselves; therefore, let us be among those children of Zion who are taught of the Lord.
The Robbery of Spiritual Wealth
Next to this, you shall find the lack of meditation to be a very serious robber of the wealth of renewed hearts. To believe a thing is as it were, to see the cool crystal sparkling in the cup; but to meditate upon it is to drink it. Reading gathers the clusters; contemplation squeezes forth their generous juice! Meditation is of all things the most soul-fattening when combined with prayer; the spouse had meditated much in this chapter, for otherwise, she had not been able to speak in detail concerning her Lord. O saintly hearts, imitate her example! Think, my Brothers and Sisters, of our Lord Jesus; He is God, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Ever Blessed, yet He became Man for us—Man of the substance of His mother, like ourselves! Meditate upon His spotless character; review the sufferings which He endured on Calvary; follow Him into the grave and from the grave to the resurrection, and from the resurrection up the starry way to His triumphant throne! Let your souls dwell upon each of His offices, as Prophet, Priest, and King; pore over each one of His characters, and every scriptural title; pause and consider every phase of Him, and when you have done this, begin again, and yet again! It is good to chew the cud by meditation—then shall the sweetness and fatness of divine truth come to your soul, and you shall burst forth with such rapturous expressions as that of the text—“Yes, He is altogether lovely.”
“I know them to be right, and yet they are not pleasant—but Jesus is as lovely to my heart as to my head, as dear as He is good! He is lovely to my hopes—are they not all in Him? Is not this my expectation—to see Him as He is? But He is lovely to my memory, too—did He not pluck me out of the net? He is lovely to all my powers, and all my passions, my faculties, and feelings; as David puts it, ‘My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God’—the whole of the man seeking after the whole of the Savior; the whole Savior sweet and inexpressibly precious to the man’s entire being.”
May it be so with you and with me; but is it so? Do you not set up idols in your hearts? Men of God, do you not need to take the scourge of small cords, and purge the temple of your souls this morning? Are there not buyers and sellers where Christ alone ought to be? Oh, to love Him wholly, and to love Him only—so that we have no eyes for other beauty, no heart for other loveliness since He fills our souls—and is to us “altogether lovely.”
Three Characteristics of the Text
- Overwhelming Emotion
The third characteristic of the Text is that to which I desire to draw the most attention, and that is ardent devotion. I called the Text a live coal from off the altar, and surely it is so. If it should drop into our hearts to set them ablaze, it would be an unspeakable mercy of God. Ardent devotion flames from this sentence. It is the language of one who feels that no emotion is too deep when Jesus moves the heart.
Do any chide you, and say you think too much of your religion? It cannot be, it cannot be! If the zeal of God’s House should eat us up until we had no existence except for the Lord’s Glory, we would not have gone too far! If there is corresponding knowledge to balance it, there cannot be too much of zeal for God; the utterance is that of one whose heart is like a furnace, of which love is the fire. “He is altogether lovely”—it is the exclamation of one who feels that no language is too strong to commend the Lord.
The spouse looked through the Hebrew tongue to find an intense expression, and our translators ransacked the English language for a forcible word, and they have put it in the weightiest way—“He is altogether lovely.” There is no fear of exaggeration when you speak of Christ; hyperboles are only sober truth when we depict His excellence.
We have heard of a portrait painter who owed his popularity to the fact that he never painted truthfully, but always gave a flattering touch or two. Here is one who would defy his art, for it is impossible to flatter Jesus! Lay on, you men of eloquence; spare no colors, you shall never depict Him too magnificently! Bring forth your harps, you seraphs! Sing aloud, you blood-washed ones! All your praises fall short of the glory which is due Him! It is the language of one who feels that no service would be too great to render to the Lord.
I wish we felt as the Apostles and martyrs and holy men of old did—that Jesus Christ ought to be served at the highest and richest rate. We do little, very little—what if I had said we do next to nothing for our dear Lord and Master nowadays? The love of Christ does not flow in us as it should; but those of old bore poverty and dared reproach, marched weary leagues, passed tempestuous seas, bore perils of robbers and of cruel men to plant the Cross in lands where as yet Jesus was not known!
Feats like these nowadays could not be expected of men, and yet they were performed as daily matters of commonplace by the Christians of the earliest times. Is Christ less lovely, or is His Church less loyal? Would God she estimated Him at His right rate, for then she would return to her former mode of service. Brothers and Sisters, we need to feel, and we shall feel, if this text is deeply engraved on our hearts, that no gift is too great for Christ—though we give Him all we have, and consecrate to Him all our time and ability, or sacrifice our very lives to Him! No suffering is too great to bear for the sake of the Crucified, and it is a great joy to be reproached for Christ’s sake! “He is altogether lovely.”
Then, my Soul, I charge you to think nothing hard to which He calls you; nothing sharp which He bids you endure. As the knight of the olden times consecrated himself to the Crusade, and wore the red cross on his arm, fearing not to meet death at the hands of the Infidel if he might be thought a soldier of the Lord, so we, too, would face all foes for Jesus’ sake! We need the chivalrous spirit once again in the Church of God! A new crusade gladly would I preach! Had I the tongue of such a one as the old hermit to move all Christendom, I would say, “This day Christ, the altogether Lovely One, is dishonored—can you endure it? This day idols stand where He should be, and men adore those—lovers of Jesus, can you tolerate it?”
Practical Uses of the Text
Thus, I have shown you the characteristics of the Text, and now I desire to use it in three ways for practical purposes. As time flies, we must use it briefly. The first word is to you Christians. Here is very sweet instruction! The Lord Jesus “is altogether lovely.” Then if I want to be lovely, I must be like He, and the model for me as a Christian is Christ.
Have you ever noticed how badly boys write at the bottom of the pages in their copy-books? There is the copy at the top, and in the first line they look at that. In the second line they copy their own imitation. In the third line, they copy their imitation of their imitation, and so the writing grows worse and worse as it descends the page! Now, the Apostles followed Christ; the first fathers imitated the Apostles; the next fathers copied the first fathers, and so the standard of holiness fell dreadfully. And now we are too apt to follow the very lees and dregs of Christianity, and we think if we are about as good as our poor, imperfect ministers or leaders in the Church, that we shall do well, and deserve praise!
But now, my Beloved, cover up the mere copies and imitations, and live by the first line! Copy Jesus! “He is altogether lovely.” And if you can write by the first line, you will write by the true and best model in the world! We need to have Christ’s zeal, but we must balance it with His prudence and discretion; we must seek to have Christ’s love to God, and we must feel His love to men, His forgiveness of injury, His gentleness of speech, His incorruptible truthfulness, His meekness and lowliness, His utter unselfishness—His entire consecration to His Father’s business! O that we had all this, for depend upon it, whatever other pattern we select, we have made a mistake! We are not following the true classic model of the Christian artist; our master model is the “altogether lovely” One.
How sweet it is to think of our Lord in the double aspect as our Exemplar and our Savior! The laver which stood in the Temple was made of brass—in this, the priests washed their feet whenever they offered sacrifices. So does Christ purify us from sin, but the tradition is that this laver was made of very bright brass, and acted as a mirror, so that as often as the priests came to it, they could see their own spots in it.
Oh, when I come to my Lord Jesus, not only do I get rid of my sins as to their guilt, but I see my spots in the light of His perfect character, and I am humbled and taught to follow after His holiness!
Gentle Rebuke for Those Who Do Not See Christ’s Beauty
The second use to which we would put the verse is this—here is a very gentle rebuke to some of you. Though very gentle, I beseech you to let it sink deep into your hearts. You do not see the lowliness of Christ, yet “He is altogether lovely.” Now, I will not say one hard word, but I will tell you sorrowfully what pitiable creatures you are.
I hear enchanting music, which seems more a thing of Heaven than of earth—it is one of Handel’s half-inspired oratorios. Yonder sits a man who says, “I hear nothing to commend.” He has not the power to perceive the linked sweetnesses, the delicious harmonies of sounds. Do you blame him? No, but you who have an ear for music, say, “How I pity him—he misses half the joy of life!”
Here, again, is a glorious landscape, hills and valleys, and flowing rivers, expansive lakes, and undulating meadows. I bring to the point of view a friend whom I would gratify, and I say to him, “Is not that a charming scene?” Turning his head to me, he says, “I see nothing.” I perceive that he cannot enjoy what is so delightful to me; he has some little sight, but he sees only what is very near, and he is blind to all beyond. Now, do I blame him? Or if he proceeds to argue with me, and say, “You are very foolish to be so enthusiastic about a non-existent landscape—it is merely your excitement,” shall I argue with him? Shall I be angry with him? No, but I shed a tear, and whisper to myself, “Great are the losses of the blind.”
Now, you who have never heard music in the name of Jesus, you are to be greatly pitied, for your loss is heavy; you who never saw beauty in Jesus, and who never will—you need all our tears. It is Hell enough not to love Christ! It is the lowest abyss of Tartarus, and its fiercest flame, not to be enamored of the Christ of God! There is no Heaven that is more Heaven than to love Christ and to be like He is; and there is no Hell that is more Hell than to be unlike Christ, and not to want to be like He is—but even to be averse to the Infinite Perfections of the “Altogether Lovely.”
The Lord open those blind eyes of yours, and unstop those deaf ears, and give you the new and spiritual life, and then will you join in saying, “Yes, He is altogether lovely.”
Tender Attractiveness of Christ
The last use of the text is that of tender attractiveness. “Yes, He is altogether lovely.” Where are you this morning, you who are convicted of sin and want a Savior, where have you crept to? Are you hidden away where my eyes cannot reach you? At any rate, let this sweet thought reach you; you need not be afraid to come to Jesus, for “He is altogether lovely.”
It does not say He is altogether terrible—that is your misconception of Him! It does not say He is somewhat lovely, and sometimes willing to receive a certain sort of sinner, but “He is altogether lovely,” and therefore He is always ready to welcome to Himself the vilest of the vile! Think of His name. It is Jesus, the Savior. Is not this lovely? Think of His work. He is come to seek and to save that which was lost. This is His occupation; is not that lovely? Think of what He has done; He has redeemed our souls with His blood; is not that lovely? Think of what He is doing. He is pleading before the Throne of God for sinners! Think of what He is giving at this moment—He is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins. Is not this lovely?
Under every aspect, Christ Jesus is attractive to sinners who need Him. Come then! Come and welcome! There is nothing to keep you away, there is everything to bid you come! May this very Sunday in which I have preached Christ, and lifted Him up, be the day in which you shall be drawn to Him, never again to leave Him, but to be His forever and forever. Amen.
Portion of Scripture Read Before Sermon—Song of Solomon 5