What Jesus really looked like

 From last night’s Q & A study at my church:

“Song of Solomon is a conversation back and forth between a groom and his bride and you understand the book as a picture between Christ and the Believing remnant in Israel and the seduction policy of the Adversary to try to draw her away from him. The key for her in waiting for her departed but soon-returning groom is to keep her mind fixed on him.

Isaiah 26: 3-4: [3] Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
[4] Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:

“That’s saying, ‘Keep your mind on Him and you can endure all things.’

“This is the last one of the books of the wisdom literature. As you study Job, you see there’s the Believing remnant suffering under the satanic captivity that Israel will be under (42 chapters for the 42 months and the half of the Trib).

“Then you have the Psalms, which is a mandate for how the Davidic Covenant is going to be put into place. Proverbs is the wisdom that the Believing remnant is going to need to have to resist the woman there who’s the harlot, Mystery Babylon the Great.

“When you get to Ecclesiastes, you have Solomon, who once was a faithful guy, but now he’s turned into a worldly man, out seeking answers, not in God’s Word, but in the things of the world. You see there the things the Believing remnant are going to have to resist.

“There’s a place in II Chronicles 9:13 where Solomon transitions from being the son of David to literally being a picture of the Antichrist.

“When you get to Song of Solomon, you’re seeing Solomon seek to seduce the groom’s bride and carry her away. So there’s this picture of the seduction that’s going to be aimed at the nation Israel; that Believing remnant in the tribulation.

“In chapter 4, her groom describes her and in chapter 5, she describes him. Now the description is the only physical description in your Bible that would be of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 5:9: [9] 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?

“So they’re challenging her, ‘Who is your guy and what makes him so important to you?’ What you’re going to read here is a description that she’s giving and sort of prophetically of who she sees in the Messiah; who she sees in Christ.

“Verse 10: [10] My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.

“ ‘He’s the fairest among 10,000 to my soul,’ we sing in that old song. When it talks about him being ‘the rose of Sharon,’ that comes out of Song of Solomon. ‘He’s the top; He’s the best.’

“When it says he’s ‘white and ruddy,’ if you look at chapter 1 . . .  you know, in this day and age when you say someone’s white you’re almost saying there’s something wrong with them—at least with the current political structure.

“By the way, for me to be white I’d have to be dead. But when you’re Caucasian, really your skin is more pinkish-brown. When it says he’s ruddy, the ruddy part is reddish-brown. That’s the color that Adam was.

“Adam was not a Caucasian. Adam was not a person with completely black skin; he was made out of the dirt and he’s like reddish dirt. He was a person of color.

“In verses 1:5-6, the bride says ‘[5] I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
[6] Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

“What she’s talking about is, ‘I’ve gotten sunburned and my skin is colored.’ When it says he’s white, it’s in contrast to her color, but the issue of the coloring is the ruddy.

“If you see pictures of the famous drawings of Christ, He’s got long reddish-blond hair, blue eyes. He looks like a strawberry-blond Irishman. He wasn’t that and He wasn’t the Italian rendition of what the painters did. That’s all Catholic mythology. He was a Jew; He had a Jewish complexion.

“Verse 11: [11] His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.

“So He had black hair and it wasn’t long and stringy. One of the ways you know that is if you see sculptures, busts, or paintings of 1^st Century people--Romans. They don’t have long hair. The way people looked and dressed in the 1^st Century is not the way these effeminate-looking Jesus’ in the pictures are.

“One of the ways you know that, for example, is when Judas is going to betray Him. Judas couldn’t just say, ‘He’s the long haired straggly-looking guy in the crowd.’ He looked ordinary; He looked like anybody else. So it wasn’t His hair that stood Him out, which is artists trying to make Him look like an ancient hippy. But He had a full head of hair that was black and bushy.

“Verse 5:12: [12] His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.

“Have you ever seen a dove’s eyes? Their color is gray. But when a dove looks at you, he looks at you like he’s going to go right through you. They have this piercing stare. And they’re washed—they’re clear, they’re sparkling and they’re fitly set. In other words, they were properly set in His head. His figure of looking at it was balanced.

“Verse 13: [13] His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.

“You see the figures of speech that she’s using? When you get that kind of description, that’s the thing about, ‘The Lord will keep in perfect peace those whose mind is stayed on Him.’

“She’s examining him; she’s looking at him closely. She’s captivated by him. She says, ‘His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers.’ He says, ‘When I look at your cheeks it’s just like looking at a beautiful flower garden.’

“When it says ‘his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh,’ that means his lips are moist; not dried out and parched.

“Verse 14: [14] His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.

“That’s a green color. When you wear a ring, especially a gold ring, it’s like a signet; it’s a sign of love. It’s a sign of ownership. You remember the prodigal son when he came home? The father put the ring. ‘This is my son.’ So he has that kind of bearing about him.

‘It says ‘his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.’ Every time I read that I think, ‘He’s got the original six-pack abs.’ Ivory, strong in strength in His core.

“Verse 15: [15] His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

“His legs are as marble. Marble is stronger than granite. His legs can hold him up and he can stand there on them without falling down; without giving way.

“ ‘Set upon sockets of fine gold’ is talking about the ankles, the feet. When it says ‘his countenance is as Lebanon,’ the idea there is the cedars of Lebanon—they’re strong and they’re straight and the way he looks at you, the way he appears, is someone with strength and character and he’s able to look straight on.

“Verse 16: [16] His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

“That’s more talking about what comes out of his mouth. You know all the verses about the Word of God being like honey and the sweetness of it. John says, ‘I ate it and it was in my mouth sweet as honey.’

“And then she says ‘This is my beloved, and this is my friend. This is the one in whom I find all my delight and he’s my friend; he sticks with me and he’s not going to forsake me,’ and in this context he might be gone but he’s coming back and, ‘I’ve just got eyes for him; he’s the altogether lovely.’

“Now there’s a passage that kind of calls all of that into question if you go to Isaiah 53: [1] Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
[2] For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

“When they looked at Christ in His humanity, the Word became flesh, He was not some supernatural standout; He was a normal human being. When Judas had to identify Him, He had to go and kiss Him. He had to single Him out of a crowd and say, ‘This is Him and I’ll give you the signal.’ And he didn’t just say, ‘You’ll see Him when you see Him and He’ll have hair walking around like some fairy-looking guy.’ He was a normal-looking person, nothing special, nothing particular about him.

“Well, Song of Solomon is not describing what men see in Him. Song of Solomon is not describing what anybody sees; it’s what the Believer, what this woman who is, I mean, he’s her altogether lovely; he’s the one who her heart is fixed on. When she looks at him she sees something different.

“So what you’re reading in Song of Solomon is a description of his love; of the Believer looking at him. ‘He’s my beloved, my friend.’

“But you can see the difference of what He was like as opposed to what religion makes Him out. So if you can jettison all the pictures in children’s bibles and listen, these are pictures by the master painters of the world, but they’re infected with a bunch of religious nonsense and they paint their concepts of that.

“You see very few pictures of Christ—it’s actually not necessary to see pictures of Him, but if you do, very seldom do you see any that are actually depicting Him as a Jewish man. He worked for two decades in a carpenter shop. He didn’t have hands that were made to handle laced panties. He was a man; He worked and worked with His father the carpenter and He had working hands and a working man’s body.”