(The Chief End of Man - Part 9): The Object of Worship — A.W. Tozer

The Beloved in the Song of Songs

And I want to turn to the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. In the fifth chapter of that little classic, beginning of verse 8, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I am sick of love.

Then they ask, What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? What is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us? She replies, My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.

His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, the sweet flowers, his lips like lilies dropping sweet-smelling myrrh.

His hands are gold rings set with beryl, his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of gold. His countenance is as Lebanon excellent as the cedars.

His mouth is most sweet, yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. Song of songs, song of love, it's the song of the shepherd, his fair young bride to be.

The Shepherd, the Bride, and the Rival King

It's complicated, as things often are, by a rival. And this rival is a rich and worldly king. And this rival is seeking all the way through this book, the song, to win away this fair young bride to be bride.

The story, then, is the song has to do with the bride being swayed a little, ruled by this rich and worldly king, always pushing himself upon her, getting a glimpse of the bride being occasionally the shepherd, the young shepherd whom she really loved, and was waiting for.

But he was hard to pin down, he was here and he was gone. But he was always somewhere within distance, and she was always looking for him. At last the story ends with the two of them together, she coming leaning upon the arm of her beloved, and everything turns out all right.

Now, that's the story, and it has been, during all the centuries, held to be a story of our Lord Jesus and his church. Our Lord is this shepherd, and the redeemed church is the fair bride. And in an hour of distress, before we break into the story, in an hour of distress she tells the daughters of Zion, the daughters of Jerusalem, among whom she lives, she said, I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I am sick with love.

And then they naturally inquire, they say, now why all the excitement? Everybody's got a boyfriend, everybody has somebody that they like. And why are you so worn and pale, and so wrought and distressed?

And why are you sending out your friends to look for your beloved, and sending a message to come that you're sick of love? What is your beloved more than another beloved that thou dost so charge us? Now, the world has a perfect right to ask that question of the church, a perfect right.

If the church is going to say that the Lord is worthy, that he is a worthy lover, then the world has a right to say, what kind of lover is he? And why should you be inviting us to come to him? Why should you be promoting him?

Christ the King in Psalm 45

What is thy beloved more than another beloved? And she answered them, you know that in the book of Psalms, David also, I began with the book of Psalms, the 45th Psalm, David was also talking about this.

He said, My heart's indicting good matter, and I speak the things which I have made touching the King. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. And he says, Thou art fairer than the children of men. Grace is poured forth by thy lips.

And he says that all thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cashew out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad. This 45th Psalm is a rhapsodic description of this shepherd king, who is a shepherd and is to be a king, and who is wooing the young bride to himself.

And then, if you will ask Peter that question, what is thy beloved more than another beloved? He will say that he is Lord of all. So I want to talk tonight about the object of our worship, which is none other than the Lord himself, the Lord our righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Worshiping Christ as God Incarnate

He is the Lord of all. And just in order that we might get it before us, I want to talk to you a little bit about what he is Lord of and why you should love him. Now, I have said before, and I repeat now, that we can worship Jesus Christ, the man, without idolatry because he is also God.

He has united mankind to deity by the mystery of the incarnation, and he has taken humanity up into God so that he himself is God. And he has joined in the beauty and wonder of the prophet human God and man in one, so that whatever God is, Christ is.

He that has seen me has seen the Father. And when you worship the Lord Jesus, you are not displeasing the Father, for you are worshiping the Father in him and through him you are worshiping the Father, so that you worship the Lord himself.

What is this Lord, and who is he, and what is he Lord of? It is written that he is Lord of all, but I say that we will divide it a little bit so that we can understand it better. I can say that he is the Lord of all being.

Christ as Lord of All Being

You know that song that says, Lord of all being, twain to fire thy glory flames from sun and star, and this Lord of all being is more than Lord of all beings. I want you to get the distinction here. The hymn writer did not say he is the Lord of all beings, but he is the Lord of all being, which is something else and something more.

But he is that, and that is he. He is the Lord of all actual existence. He is the Lord of all kinds of being. He is the Lord of all spiritual being and all natural being and all physical being. He is the Lord of all being, and when we worship him, we encompass all being.

I wish that all young people might see this. Some give themselves up to science and some to technology and some to philosophy and some to art and some to music. But when we worship the Lord Jesus Christ, we embrace and encompass all possible sciences and philosophies and arts.

We encompass it all because he is the Lord of it all. So he is the Lord of all being and the enemy of all not being. He is the Lord of all being, and he is the Lord of all life. These are elementary, but they are fundamental to any understanding that he is the Lord of all life.

Christ as Lord of All Life

It is written in 1 John 1, that that word of life which was with the Father and dwells in us, he is of life the soul fountain. What was it that Charles Wesley said? Thou of life the fountain art, pretty, let me take of thee.

Spring now up within my heart, rise to all eternity. He is the Lord of all life, so that as the Lord of all essential possibilities of life. He is the Lord of all kinds of life. You know there are many kinds of life.

Pretty soon the buds will be coming out. Some of them are already out up our way. That is, they are pushing out and extending themselves. They have not burst yet, but they are pushing themselves out, getting ready for the spring, and pretty soon there will be little floral life all over.

He is the Lord of that kind of life, and that will bring back the birds. I've never forgiven the birds. They are such fair-weather friends. When we need them to rest, they are in Florida. And when we don't need them, they are singing all over the place.

They will be back anyway, and that is another kind of life. The rabbits will be out, and you will see the animals. That is another kind of life, and he is the Lord of that kind of life. Then we have the intellectual life, the life of imagination and reason, and he is the Lord of that kind of life.

We have the spiritual life, and he is the Lord of that kind of life. He is the Lord of angels, and he is the Lord of the cherubim and seraphim. So he is the Lord of all life, and he is the Lord of all sorts of life, I say.

Christ as Lord of Wisdom and Providence

And he is that, this Jesus, who is thy beloved more than another beloved. He is Lord of all, says the Holy Ghost, and he is the Lord of all wisdom. I want to tell you, and I hope that you will live it into your heart and remain there, that all deep, eternal wisdom lies in Jesus Christ as a treasure hidden away, and there isn't any kind of wisdom outside of him.

All the deep, eternal purposes of God are in him, because his perfect wisdom enables him to plan ahead, and all history is the slow development of his purposes. Today all we see is the laborers at work.

We see the rough laborers working, and we see how all the external scaffoldings and things don't look very beautiful, but they are doing, whether they know it or not, the will of God, and they are bringing things about.

Even the devil, God harnesses him and makes him push a wheelbarrow. God is making all evil men as well as all good men and all adverse things, as well as all favorable things, workfully bringing forth of his glory in the day when all shall be fulfilled in him.

Christ as Lord of Righteousness

He is the Lord of all righteousness and all concepts of righteousness and all possibilities of righteousness. I want you to see that he is wisdom and righteousness, and as wisdom and righteousness there isn't any getting around him.

There isn't any book that you can read on Christian ethics or any other kind of ethics, which is another way of saying righteousness. There isn't any book that can tell you anything that he doesn't already know, and that he isn't already Lord of it.

It's written, but unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore God thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

In the Old Testament, when the high priest went into the Holy of Holies to offer sacrifices once a year, he wore a mitre on his forehead, and on that mitre there was engraved in Hebrew, the words in English, Holiness unto the Lord.

This Jesus Christ, our Lord, is righteous, and he is the Lord of righteousness. Then he is the Lord of all mercy, for he establishes his kingdom upon rebels, but first he has to redeem them and win them and renew a right spirit within them.

Mercy, Power, and Beauty in Christ

And this he does. He renews the rebels and gives them to himself and makes them right and gives them a right spirit. And all this he did and all this he is doing, so he is the Lord of all mercy, and he is the Lord of all power, and he is the Lord of all beauty.

God put something in the human breast that made it capable of understanding and appreciating beauty. He put in us the love of harmonious forms. He put in us the love and appreciation for color and beautiful sounds.

He put it in us. It's in everybody. And he put in us also the love of moral forms of line and color. Remember that all beautiful things that are beautiful to the eye and to the ear are only the external counterparts of that internal beauty which is moral beauty.

There is such a thing as moral beauty. Jesus Christ, our Lord, it was said of him physically that there is no beauty in him that we should desire him. The artists have painted Jesus as a very pretty man, a very pretty man with a tender, feminine face and clear, beautiful eyes and an open, delightful countenance, with curly hair streaming down his shoulders.

The Moral Beauty of Jesus

They had completely forgotten that there was no beauty in him that we should desire him. They had forgotten that when the high priests would crucify him, they had to have an arrangement to betray him.

And Judas Iscariot, to get his dirty pieces of silver, didn't say, when that company comes, pick out that beautiful one with a feminine face and curls down his back and the light on his face. Pick him out, and he is the one.

They were all together there with their typical Jewish haircuts and their typical Hebrew garments and all looking good deal alike. He said, the one I kiss, that will be the one. They didn't know. The one I kiss, that will be the one.

So when Jesus came, Judas passed by Peter and John and Philip and the rest, and went to this man and kissed him. They said, that's the man there, the one he's kissed. If he had looked as beautiful physically as they painted him, would it be necessary that he had to be betrayed with a kiss?

He simply didn't look like that. There was no beauty in him that we should desire him, and he was another man among men. But the beauty of Jesus that has charmed the centuries is a moral beauty. Even his enemies admit his moral beauty.

You have never heard Khrushchev say anything against Jesus. You've never heard Stalin, at least I never had a quotation of Stalin ever saying anything against Jesus. I never knew Hitler to say anything against Jesus.

Nietzsche, the great German philosopher, perhaps he's a great nihilist, one of the greatest antichrists that ever lived in the world, who died finally beating his forehead on the floor of his cell. He said, that man Jesus, I love.

He said, I don't like Paul. He didn't like theology, and he didn't like to hear how he had to be saved for a new birth and justification for faith. But he said, there was something about Jesus that he couldn't help but love.

So there was a moral beauty in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is the Lord of all beauty, of moral form and liniment and moral texture. He is the Lord of it all. Now sin has scarred the world, poor old world.

The Contrast Between Hell’s Ugliness and Heaven’s Beauty

Sin has scarred it, made it inharmonious and unsymmetrical and ugly, and filled hell with ugliness. If you love beautiful things, you'd better stay out of hell, for hell will be the quintessence of all that is morally ugly.

I believe also that it will, because usually the spirit of things determines the external manifestation of that spirit. I believe that hell will be the ugliest place in the world. When rough men say something is as ugly as hell, they are using a proper and valid comparison, because hell is that against which all ugliness is measured.

But heaven over against that is the place of supreme beauty. Heaven is the place of harmonious numbers, heaven is the place of loveliness, heaven is the place of beauty, because the One who is all beautiful is there.

He is the Lord of all beauty, and earth lies between all that is ugly in hell and all that is beautiful in heaven. Earth lies between it, and you see the ugliness set over against the beauty. I suppose we'll have it like that as long as we're living in this world.

Some of you may wonder why it's like that, why it's light and shadow, why it's ugliness and beauty, why there's so much good and so much bad, why there is that which is pleasant and that which is tragically bad and hard to live with.

It's because the earth lies halfway between heaven and hell. It's because the earth lies halfway between heaven's beauty and hell's ugliness. You say, why are people capable of doing what they do? The answer is because they lie halfway between heaven and hell.

Christians Hurting One Another in a Fallen World

A man called me recently and said, Mr. Tolger, do you think that a Christian can hurt another Christian? And I said, I certainly do. Yes, but he said, do you think that a Christian, who is a Christian, can hurt another Christian?

And I said, yes, I do believe a Christian can hurt another Christian. Is there anybody listening to me that has not been hurt by some other Christian and maybe a real Christian too? And why is it then that a man will be on his knees praying earnestly on one day and maybe another day he'll hurt another Christian?

Because we're halfway in between heaven and hell. Because the shadows and the light fall upon us. We are being saved out of all this in the Lord of goodness, saving the people from the ugliness of sin.

Saving them from the terrible, terrible, terrible sin. We go down as I am forced to do sometimes into some areas of the sickness of the earth and the open continent. We say, well, what's so really beautiful?

It was he who was coming to receive me when his soul was lifted up. He came and he touched me. He guided me to his heart. It was only then that I saw how beautiful he was. And now what's the meaning of the Lord has opened his goodness on my sin.

Crucifying Sin to Worship the Lord

Second World Testament. Second World Testament tells the story of a man in the house of a holy God. He was perfectly willing to allow no ugly things to be crucified, that we might worship the beautiful Lord.

I believe we should allow all good works to be crucified, that we might worship the Lord of life. I believe that we ought to allow all foolish things in us to be crucified, that we might worship the Lord of all of this.

I believe that we ought to allow all evil in us to be crucified, that we might worship the Lord of righteousness. And all we think that we might worship the Lord in power. And this is my beloved, and this is my friend, O God who is in Jerusalem.

The Church Tempted by the World

And this that I'm giving you is not extreme, it is not all of me, all of me. Come out of here, you holy person of experience. This is Christianity, ladies and gentlemen. This is how it is. He will come to you as you are set forth in the song of Solomon, the beautiful shepherd priest who willed himself a bride to come and to follow him.

And she is caught between a band of sheep of the rich and grassy old field. He comes and weaves her with his coarse talk and her gifts that her heart still remembers them. One black-haired shepherd boy who gathered the millers in the deal of the night.

And she cries for him and graces him and goes looking for him and doesn't always find him. This is the picture of the Christian living in the world, tempted by the devil in the world, and tempted by the riches of the world, and tempted by sin, tempted by ambition, and all of this.

And all of the true God of Christ is in the name of one called to worship and love. And she keeps her eyes on him and he keeps, even if she's tempted sometimes and he disappears from her sight for a moment.

Worshiping Christ Rather Than His Blessings

It's all a matter of what she might love him less. And then he wrote me from over in Pennsylvania, even though it was Pittsburgh last week, he kept with me and we had lunch together and kept it over. He wrote me and said, have you ever been somewhere and had a marvelous spiritual experience?

He said, you just don't know what God did for you. He told me that he had made me and he had enlightened my soul and lifted me up. Everything was all new. The Bible became new. My teaching became new.

There was a new teaching. And everything was wonderful. And this is when I literally roared like heaven and the child of God. Then he said that all the burdens of life from the beginning would disappear.

Now, he said, I find myself twitching and difficulty in the heart of heaven. What's happened to me? Well, I heard him and told him, and then I could get a chance to talk more at length with him. And I said, you know, your trouble was that you were so inclined to Christ, that when the Lord blesses us, we become an animal of the blessing.

The Lord won't allow you to become an animal of the blessing. He is thy Lord. Worship thou him. He is thy Lord. Worship thou not his gifts, but worship thou him. For remember that human in all heaven and earth was simply Jesus Christ, that all in all beings are born of him.

And he is not going to allow you to be coming in with that which is not himself. Himself is the blessing, I told you, I think, about that will be seen. Some of you have heard it, some of you haven't heard it, but I can assure you that he was invited to be in the picture the Bible comes from.

He said there are three men to preach that day. I like that myself. I often do it, preach whatever man says he will preach, and then follow the other, but that's not the best. But here is what he said about it.

He said there were all to preach on sanctification. And one man there was, he said, Sanctification, there were all to preach on. The sanctified man was not the old kind of matured man from the misery and misery of his garden.

He was cold-hearted as you already know. The man was perfectly clean as you already know. He sat down. The other man there, he said, Sanctification is the suppression of the old man. You must suppress him.

He will be reborn as all you already know. But there is a thing there, sit on the lid, and keep him in there, and keep him down, and beat him at his knees, and he will rise above you and keep down your door.

We call that suppression. You, Dr. Simpson, have to preach following that. You have to preach following that. So a person told about it very, very much. And he got up and took one word, he said, and he told his testimony about how he was simply exposed to being sanctified.

He said he thought he would get it and he would know it was exactly what my own teacher told him to do, because that's what he knew it was. Sure as you knew it. But he said, I said to him, he took the same.

Jesus Christ said he was sanctified. He was sanctified. He was all we know. And so God wants to get our eyes off of the goods and the techniques and get them on the person. He is our Lord, worshiped by him.

Christ as the Center of the Spiritual Life

He is the Lord of all beings, and the Lord of all life, and the Lord of all love, and the Lord of all things, and the Lord of all beauty. And he wants you to worship him. And therefore the spiritual life is not one or another.

These are the physical, psychological techniques that you call eradication, or suppression, or displacement, or whatever. The spiritual life is when you find the Lord living within your heart. If you will have him living within your heart, you have all this.

Revival as the Coming of the Sun of Righteousness

Is it going to be a new prime minister of God? Is it going to be a law passed in the parliament? Is it going to be a queen or whatever it may be? What's it going to be? Is it going to be the new hats women are going to wear?

Is it going to be the baton of power that has come out in Christ? What will be the spring to untold? Is it the new God? Is it the new hat? Sure, is it? Is it the bird that will come back in the spring?

No. They'll come back because the spring has come. They're going to bring the spring. What is it that's going to bring the spring back, and drive away the cold, and incur the wrath, and shut the trees, and melt out the sea, and cause the rains to fall?

What is it? Oh, goodness. Here's the sun of the early midday, and here the sun comes up from the south. And they will think that all the things have grown to be not straight down again. They'll think that all is in joy, and neither the sun nor any rain.

The moon shines down, and then the birds will come back, and the flowers will come out, and the grass will grow green, and the streams will flow. But they didn't do the sun. The sun, that moon, will be invited back into his church again.

He can come back like the sun of righteousness. He will be free. He comes to have a full life. Then there will be testimony. Then there will be joy. Then there will be delight. Then there will be freedom.

They thought, what is it? What is the revival? Freedom and delight and joy? No. No. No. No.