God Is Lovely

As we get started today, I want to introduce you to a guy named John Flavel (pronounced "Flay-vel"). He is someone you probably don't know. The reason for that is that he was born in England around 1627. He studied at the University of Oxford and then spent the rest of his life as a Puritan pastor and evangelist. For most of his ministry, he was affected by various penal laws against nonconformist ministers - preachers who were not ordained by the Church of England.

For instance, Parliament's Five Mile Act of 1665 mandated that nonconformist ministers like John could not be present within five miles of an incorporated town, so he had to move homes, and then he would have to covertly preach to his congregation, either in the woods or in private homes. He was also married four times, as his first three wives each died. But though he had many difficulties, both in the persecutions he faced in his ministry and in losing his first three wives, he knew the sweetness and loveliness of Jesus.

I want to share with you some insights from his sermon, "Christ Altogether Lovely." I remember I first read and discussed this sermon with my friend Evan Keller, who is a dear friend of mine and the Founder and President of Creating Jobs. We read this sermon to each other during a camping trip and one of our favorite lines was, "It is not so in our altogether lovely Christ, his excellencies are pure and unmixed. He is a sea of sweetness without one drop of gall."

"He is a sea of sweetness without one drop of gall." What Flavel is saying here is that Jesus is exclusively lovely. There's nothing bitter about him.

And Jesus is not only exclusively lovely, but Flavel points out that Jesus is also ESSENTIALLY lovely.

In his sermon, he says, "Christ is the very essence of all delights and pleasures, the very soul and substance of them. As all the rivers are gathered into the ocean, which is the meeting-place of all the waters in the world, so Christ is that ocean in which all true delights and pleasures meet."

Further, though Jesus is perfectly lovely, Flavel points out that his loveliness is uniquely safe for our souls to desire. Listen to these words:

"The beauty and holiness of creatures are ensnaring and dangerous. A man may make an idol out of them, and indulge himself beyond the bounds of moderation with them, but there is no danger of excess in the love of Christ. The soul is then in the healthiest frame and temper when it is most overwhelmed by love to Christ."

You simply cannot love Jesus too much! You can love religion, church, theology, or your self-righteousness too much. But you cannot love Jesus too much!

Of course, Flavel is not alone in seeing the loveliness of Christ as the antidote to our idolatry. As Tim Keller puts it in his book, Counterfeit Gods:

"To rejoice is to treasure a thing, to assess its value to you, to reflect on its beauty and importance until your heart rests in it and tastes the sweetness of it. 'Rejoicing' is a way of praising God until the heart is sweetened and rested, and until it relaxes its grip on anything else it thinks that it needs."

So how does that happen? How do we experience this transformation? I promise we'll get there, but first, we need to take a sobering look at our idols.