The Sifford Sojournal

Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.

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David’s Digest: Is Christ Altogether Lovely? – Part 1

Song of Solomon 5:16 – “His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

In Song of Solomon, the Bride, or Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, declares that He is “altogether lovely” to her.

But what does that look like?

In his excellent treatise on Song of Solomon 4:16-6:3 called “Bowels Opened” (bowels being inner-most self, often referencing deep compassions for others), Puritan Richard Sibbes gives his view on what it means for Jesus to be altogether lovely to a Christian.

You can read this section of the treatise here, or listen to the sermon with this part in it here, or listen to the entire treatise on our audio book page.

From Richard Sibbes, Part 1:

‘He is altogether lovely.’

Altogether desirable; as if she should say, What should I stand upon particulars? he is altogether, from top to toe, amiable, lovely, and delectable.

‘He is altogether lovely.’ Lovely to God, to us, to the soul; lovely to him that can best judge of loveliness. The judgment of God I hope will go current with us; and what does God the Father judge of Christ? ‘This is my beloved Son,’ Mat. 3:17. He is the Son of God’s love, Col. 1:13, as God cannot but love his own image.

He is lovely also as man, for he was pure and holy; lovely as mediator by office, for he was anointed by God to convey the Father’s love to us. He must needs be lovely in whom all others are loved. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; out of him I am well pleased with nobody. And indeed he was filled with all graces that might make him lovely. All the treasures of wisdom are in him, and of his fulness we all receive grace for grace. He is made a storehouse of all that is good for us.

He is lovely to God in whatsoever he did. He carried himself lovely, and pleased his Father in all his doings and sufferings. God loved him especially, ‘because he was obedient, even unto the death of the cross. Therefore God gave him a name above all names; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, both in heaven and in earth,’ Phil. 2:8–10.

As for the angels, they look upon him with admiration. They attended him, and accounted it an honour to wait upon him. He is lovely to all above us, and shall he not be lovely to us?

Obj. But you will say, Was he lovely when he was nailed on the cross, hung between two thieves, when he wore a crown of thorns, was whipped, laid grovelling on the ground, when he sweat water and blood? What loveliness was in him when he was laid in his grave?

Ans. Oh! yes; then he was most lovely of all to us, by how much the more he was abased for us. This makes him more lovely that out of love he would abase himself so low. When greatness and goodness meet together, how goodly is it! That Christ, so great a majesty, should have such bowels of compassion! Majesty alone is not lovely, but awful and fearful; but joined with such condescending grace, is wondrous amiable. How lovely a sight is it to see so great a person to be so meek and gentle! It was so beyond comparison lovely in the eyes of the disciples, that they stood and wondered to see him, who was the eternal Word of the Father, condescend to talk with a poor Samaritan woman, John 4:6, seq.

And what loveliness of carriage was in him to Peter, undeserving, after he had denied and forsworn him, yet to restore him to his former place that he had in his heart, loving him as much as ever he did before! In a word, what sweetness, gentleness, bowels of meekness, pity, and compassion did he discover to those that were in misery! We cannot insist upon particulars.

There is a remarkable passage in the story of Alphonsus the king, not very well liked of some. When he saw a poor man pulling of his beast out of a ditch, he put to his hand to help him; after which, as it is recorded, his subjects ever loved him the better. It was a wonderful condescending. And is it not as wonderful that the King of heaven and earth should stoop so low as to help us poor worms out of the ditch of hell and damnation? and that, when he hath set us in a state of deliverance, he should not leave us there, but advance us to such a state and condition as is above our admiration, which neither heart can conceive nor tongue express? Is not this wonderful condescending?

Use 1. That we may further improve this point, Is Christ altogether lovely; so lovely to us, and so beloved of God the Father? Let us then rest upon his obedience and righteousness; build upon it, that God cannot refuse that righteousness whose whole subject is altogether lovely. Let us come clothed in the garments of our Elder Brother, and then doubt not of acceptance; for it is in Christ that he loves us. In this well-beloved Son it is that God is well pleased with us.

If we put on Christ’s righteousness, we put on God’s righteousness; and then how can God hate us? No more than he hates his own Son. Nay, he loves us, and that with the same love wherewith he loves him; for he loves whole Christ mystical, Head and members, John 17:23. Let this strengthen our faith, that if Christ be so altogether lovely in himself and to the Father, then we may comfortably come before the Father, clothed with the garments of him our Elder Brother, and so rest ourselves on the acceptation of his mediation, that is so beloved a mediator.

Use 2. Again, if Christ be so lovely, ‘altogether lovely,’ then let us labour to be in him, that so we may be lovely to God; because he is the first amiable thing in the world, in whom we are all lovely. All our loveliness is in beloved Christ.

Use 3. Again, if Christ be so lovely, here only we have whereupon to spend the marrow of our best affections. Is it not pity we should lose so much of our affections as we do upon other things? Christ is altogether lovely; why should we dote upon other things so much, and set up idols in our hearts above Christ? Is he altogether lovely, and shall not he have altogether our lovely affections, especially when we are commanded, under pain of a curse, to love the Lord Jesus? Anathema Maran-atha to those that love not Christ, 1 Cor. 16:22.

Let us therefore labour to place all our sweet affections that are to be exercised upon good, as love, joy, and delight, upon this object, this lovely deserving object, Christ, who is ‘altogether lovely.’ When we suffer a pure stream, as it were, to run through a dirty channel, our affections to run after the things of the world, which are worse than ourselves, we lose our affections and ourselves.

Let, therefore, the whole stream of our affections be carried unto Christ. Love him, and whatsoever is his; for he being altogether lovely, all that comes from him is lovely. His promises, his directions, his counsels, his children, his sacraments, are all lovely. Whatsoever hath the stamp of Christ upon it, let us love it. We cannot bestow our hearts better, to lose ourselves in the love of Christ, and to forget ourselves and the love of all. Yea, to hate all in comparison of him, and to account all ‘dung and dross’ compared with Christ, is the only way to find ourselves.

And indeed we have a better condition in him, than in the world or in ourselves. Severed from him, our condition is vain, and will come to nothing; but that we have in him is admirable and everlasting. We cannot conceive the happiness which we poor wretches are advanced to in Christ; and what excellent things abide for us, which come from the love of God to us in Christ, who is so altogether lovely. Therefore let us labour to kindle in our hearts an affection towards Christ, all that we can, considering that he is thus lovely.

Continue on to Part 2!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: Surprise 6th and 7th Groups of 2024 Chicken Chicks

Group 6

Just the other day, I was walking a road here, looked left, and about 30-40 yards away….whaaaaat? A chicken hen with a whole bunch of little ones around her!

Oh boy… and Sue was in town…!

So, it was run and get a 5-gallon bucket and the fishing net to try to catch the mommy. (On an aside, farm hack: a fishing net to catch chickens, and a large one for turkeys….they work great! 🙂 ) Well, she and her babies were mostly in an agarita bush, and if you know anything about them, their leaves are very prickly.

But thankfully that didn’t end up being a real issue, as I started to gather the youngin’s and put them in the bucket. But mommy was freaking out, so I thought I should try to get her so as to lessen the chaos and potential hurt to the chicks, but when I went to try to net her, she took off like a shot. I tried chasing her, but she was really fast, and there was just no way. So, I went back and continued with the chicks.

Sue shortly arrived back from town, and soon started helping. After gathering up what we could, it was time to try to get mommy, and eventually with Sue and I working together, I was able to chase the hen down and put her in the summer kitchen.

Then back to the bucket o’ chicks. We continued looking, found a few more, and then I moved them into the summer kitchen with mama. I believe Sue ended up finding yet one more.

So, the final tally we believe was 18! Wow!

And, come to find out, it appears the hen was one that had stopped coming back at night after free-ranging during the day, so I thought she had been “crittered”. I thought it had been less time, but I guess she had been gone for at least 21 days. 🙂 And, the Lord graciously granted she sit out there all that time safely.

Sadly though, there was another young hen that had stopped showing up at night, although I saw her in the morning a couple of times. But then, I found a feather pile not far from the chicken pen area, and I believe her nest, so the Lord in His perfect wisdom decided she wouldn’t make it. We always pray they don’t suffer when this happens.

Group 7

Then, a week or so later after the 18 above, I was filling some chicken waterers in our orchard, and thought, I wonder if there are any dead chickens out here amongst things, especially this plum-tree area that has all kinds of branch-growths out of the ground, and then I saw a hen just sitting amongst them. I thought maybe she was injured, and when I circled to the other side….cheep, cheep, and a little chick in front of her!

Not what I expected, so I told Sue, and while I was prepping the summer kitchen for another set of visitors, Sue just started rounding everyone up, and we got them in there.

There were 6 chicks caught and one hatching when we collected everyone. Sadly, one died, and the hatching one didn’t make it. But the other 5 are still going!

Again, we are grateful to the Lord for bringing her and her young through those three weeks!

And now lastly, here’s the video of the two groups:

Again, we are grateful to God for the granting of these provisions, and His mercies toward them and her out there this whole time!

— David

Psalm Singing – December 2024

Sue and I have continued on with recording the Psalms so hopefully others will be able to learn them, and we just wrapped up the next set, this time starting down the Psalm 119 path, Psalm 119A-119L in our psalter.

This set is only half of the 119 Psalms, and here they are:

(If the above player doesn’t work, or if you would like to save any of the files locally to your computer, you can click the Download link below, or right click it and click Save As in the popup menu.)

Psalms 119A-119L

This Psalm focuses much on loving God’s law, statues, and commandments, and the desire to obey them.

Loving God and obeying Him are directly tied together.

Christ said:

John 14:15 – “If ye love me, keep my commandments.

John 14:21 – “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

John 15:10 – “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.

And John said:

1 John 5:2-3 – “2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.

Our church has been going through Psalm 119 in our Sunday School time, and they’re on SermonAudio as a series, if you might be interested.

May the Lord grant us that desire and obedience, and may we love His commandments because they come from Him, the One whom we love!

Psalm 119:7 – “I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments.

— David

Previous Psalms singings:

Psalms 1A-12B (minus 4B)
Psalms 4B & 13-18L
Psalms 19A-22E
Psalms 22F-24C
Psalms 25A-27F
Psalms 28A-31G
Psalms 32A-34D
Psalms 35A-37F
Psalms 38B-40F
Psalms 41A-44F
Psalms 45A-49C
Psalms 50A-53
Psalms 54A-59B
Psalms 60A-65B
Psalms 66A-68E
Psalms 69A-71D
Psalms 72A-76B
Psalms 77A-78H
Psalms 79A-84B
Psalms 85A-89H
Psalms 90A-93A
Psalms 94A-98B
Psalms 99A-103D
Psalms 104A-105E
Psalms 106A-107E
Psalms 108A-112B
Psalms 113A-118C

Cattle Update – Late Fall 2024

We just thought we’d do a catch-up on the Spanish Longhorns we raise here before we hopefully started continuing to pare down the herd, including the old girls (20 and 22 years old) out in the sun eating hay on a super-scorcher day this past summer…

As always, we are grateful to the Lord for His provisions!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: Late 2024 Goat Kids

Well, with the loss of Elvis and the gift of Reggie from the Lord via our normal goat-kid-buyer back in spring, the things that male and female goats do did take place, as evidenced by the birth of 7 goat kids!

A couple, actually, weren’t expected, as we didn’t really see the mothers being imminent. Plus, one of them has a real problem with her udder, which we’ve been trying to resolve, and just shortly after she gave birth, there was a large blister-ish bubble on the back of her udder, and I accidentally popped it internally, and I don’t know if it was related, but both her right legs started acting injured. Now, she may have injured them, maybe laying too long on that side or something, but she’s still down, and so it was bottle feeding time for the little guy, which we’re calling “Ned”, after his mom Nellie. 🙂

Also, our nanny Adeline has a prolonged udder, so for the first while, Sue “gets” to milk her and bottle feed her kids until the udder is higher and the kids figure out how to suckle her. Well, one has figured it out, the boy, but the girl Sue is still bottle feeding. 🙂 We actually are planning to keep the girl to back-fill for our buck, Shakespeare. We wanted to keep her as she comes from the line of Winnie, our original goat, as she was part Lamancha, and we wanted a little something of Winnie to continue in the herd. 🙂 And, in honor of the barbershop name of her mom (from the song “Sweet Adeline”), we wanted to carry that through, so we’re calling her “Lida Rose”, or “Lida” for short. 😀 We named her brother too as “Liam”.

One other anecdote: our nanny Lily gave birth to triplets, and we thought they were three doelings, so we named them, “Marsha”, “Jan”, and “Cindy” (think 70’s large-family sitcom; Cindy has long ears, like TV Cindy’s pigtails 😀 ). Well, come to find out later, one was a buckling….”Marsha”….so, he’s now called “Marshall”. 😀

Finally, our nanny Hassie had a little girl. 🙂 So, 3 bucklings and 4 doelings in total.

But, without further ado, here’s their video:

This is a new experience for us, having winter kids, so we’ll see how it goes through the times of bad weather. But, we thank the Lord for His provisions of the new baby goats!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: Turkey Chicks of 2024 – Update II

After our last 2024 turkey chicks update, there was some more progress on the last ones that were still growing in the summer kitchen, and then the addition of two other turkey chicks!

The video takes you through the release of the last group plus the new ones’ intro. And then to release day of those last two new ones, with sadly, the one of them not doing well…

This is the last known update for turkeys this year at this time. We are always grateful to the Lord for His provisions, and His graciousness of all the new turkeys this year!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: 2024 Goat Kid, Goodbye Elvis, Hello Reggie

Well, this kidding season was different. Elvis our buck we thought last year had gone sterile, and that was confirmed this year as his four does had no kids.

Then with our other buck Shakespeare, we believe one of his does miscarried after getting her head stuck in a gate and apparently getting beat up by other goats, because her back end was bloody and the like, and she didn’t have a kid.

But, we had one mama left — Lucy, our part Spanish, and she did. It was twins initially, but the doeling was still born, but her brother was fine, and he ended up being the lone goat kid this year. 🙂 We called him Louie because of his mom Lucy, but in the end went with Louis. He’s in the picture above.

Then, the fellow who buys our goats each year had an extra Lamancha buck in his possession and offered him to us, and we took him to replace Elvis. That was a gracious gift from the Lord, and the nice gentleman! 🙂

In Spanish, gift is “regalo”, so we decided to call him Reggie 🙂 We decided to put him in with all our females, so we’ll see if we have late fall/early winter babies this year — something we’ve never done, we don’t believe:

But then, Elvis ended up with an infection in his leg that we didn’t realize was there, and perhaps with worms we couldn’t conquer, we found him one day on the verge of death, so we expedited the matter. Always sad to say goodbye, and then having to do that to an animal stinks but does put them out of their misery.

Goodbye, Elvis. We thank the Lord for all of the kids He granted from you. And we thank the folks who gave him to us all here initially:

Lastly, here’s the video of Louis and Reggie, and a quick goodbye to Elvis. Plus, a guest appearance from a dog that comes all the way over here during thunderstorms sometimes whose owner lives about two miles away. 🙂 :

Even though it was only one kid this year, we are always thankful to the Lord for His continuing provisions!

— David

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