The Beauty of God

Now, as we think about the beauty of the Lord, we need to ask the question, "What is beauty?" That seems like an existential question. "What is beauty?" And we're led to believe that in today's definitions and in the postmodern world context which we live in today, that that can't be defined. It's like an undefinable term.

You ever hear people say, "You know, I can define it, but if you know what it is, you know what it is, but I can't put words to it?" Well, that's typically what people will say about the concept of beauty. What is beautiful? What is beauty? And it's some form of undefinable attraction.

Maybe it's some type of relative perception. It's all subjective. It's in the eye of the beholder. What may be beautiful to you is not beautiful to others, and therefore there's really no real set standard for beauty. It's just something that each of us desires or is attracted to.

But is that true? Is that true? Is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder?

Could God actually be ugly to people? Some people probably do think He's ugly.

But just because there are some who would define God as an ugly creature or ugly being, does that make God ugly? Is God ugly just because some people claim that He is?

Well, what is beauty? What is the beauty of God? Well, as we try to kind of narrow our furcless and try to get our hands and our minds wrapped around the concept, we could start to define it and give us our minds some direction by saying beauty is some form of aroma or aura or glow that comes out of somebody or some object. Maybe beauty is the aroma or the glow or the splendor or the majesty that flows or radiates or emanates out of something that is delightful to behold. We might say beauty is something that is attractive and what is attractiveness?

Whatever is attractive is that which draws your attention and causes you to look.

It kind of demands your vision. It demands you to behold it. It demands you to take it in.

The more beautiful something is, the longer you're naturally gaze and behold it.

Maybe even stare at something. You ever seen something so beautiful? Maybe it's a sunset.

Maybe it's a beautiful scene and mountain range or something, and you just hardly can't close your eyes. It's so captivating. It's so beautiful with all the settings. It's like, how could it be any more beautiful than this? It just causes you to look and you want to look at something.

You could say something that's ugly causes you to turn away. I've seen some things that made my stomach crawl. I remember one time and I don't ever advise this. I was on YouTube. You watch a video and they'll put another video right behind it. I end up watching. I won't describe it, but it was basically, well, I was deboning a human body. I didn't know that I was about to watch that.

I watched just enough that made my stomach kind of pull in. It's like, click it off. Click it off.

Turn that away. Take that out of my sight. I don't want to look at it. Think about how God, he says he's too holy to even look to behold sin. Sin is so ugly to him and so disgusting and so repulsive. God can't gaze upon it. In fact, he turns his back. That's why he turned his back on the son and the father forsook the son on the cross. And Jesus said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Well, because our sins was heaped upon Jesus and God, the father saw us and he saw all of our iniquities and sin and it repulsed. It repulsed the father. He's too holy. He couldn't look. He had to, he had to literally walk away. So ugliness is that which causes your minds to go away from it. Beauty is something that attracts us. It's a, it causes us to stare to gaze.

But beauty is not subjective as one of the things when we need to understand that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. This concept that beauty is the eye of the beholder is the beginning of relativism. You can watch this in the history of art. We've come to postmodern art because they want to tell us it's propaganda is gaslighting us. They want to tell us that postmodern art was just scratches. You know, like, it's like, let look like my kid can do that. In fact, my kid could do that.

Why is that art? Why is that selling for expense? You know, just because you have a name to yourself and you could scratch some colors on a on a canvas. Why is that considered art? Why does that consider beautiful? Why is that considered worthy of our attention? I mean, it didn't take any skill. It didn't take any effort. Why is that beautiful? Well, it is beautiful. No, it's not beautiful for and just think if we understand that, hey, art is not just how everything is beautiful. No, it's not everything is beautiful. I'll show you some. Tell me if this is beautiful.

I mean, that is that is the best I have for you. But why is that? I mean, I wish Alex was here.

He could play something beautiful.

A lot of you could play something beautiful. But what makes one keystroke beautiful or a collection of Keith Strokes beautiful and what I just did kind of like, please quit playing. You know, think of a kid banging on there and just keep on banging. You'd eventually kind of go nuts and say, stop it. Stop it. Please stop. Because it's not it's not something you want to go on a six mile journey and just listen to the whole journey. But the world is trying to tell us, you know, music doesn't have to have cadence. It doesn't have to have a rhythm. It doesn't have to have the tones blending together properly. It can just be chaotic. Well, see, beauty is not just things grouped together randomly. Beauty is the collective and this is my definition.

Beauty is the collective symmetry of all the ingredient integrated parts coming together to make the whole. We can think about the music. It's not just one keystroke that is beautiful, but when you can take multiple keystrokes of the piano and arrange them properly or the sounds go together. It's like, OK, that now that is pleasant. Art is the same way. It's not just drawing a line, but can you draw all the lines to bring symmetry? To bring all the lines together?

Think of I think of a Lamborghini because I think, well, especially certain Lamborghinis and for you who are old and not for sure. What a Lamborghini is, it's a supercar is an exotic supercar. And when I was a kid, I had posters of them in my room and I still like. I still like looking at them, but why do I like looking at a Lamborghini? I mean, we don't put ugly vehicles on our our our walls as kids. Typically, we don't. But we'll put Lamborghinis or supercars for our reason. But I remember one time buying an old Audi. I know some people that has Porsches in this in this are, you know, like think about a Porsche, but I had an Audi and I remember, you know, so excited about my Audi. I would wake up and I remember walking, you know, going out in the garage when everybody's asleep and just kind of looking at. Look at this. And I think I just remember looking at the lines, looking at the lines and the curvatures and watching is the transitions of the lines. Think about it. It's not just take the door panel off and look at the door.

That in and itself may be attractive, but it's not attractive. Just the door by itself, the human body, take the nose off. It's just not attractive. Take the ear off. This is not attractive.

You know, take anybody part apart. It's not attractive. But when you put it into the system, put the door back on the Lamborghini and look at the transition. It's not just that part, but how it transitions from from the side panel into the hood. It's like, man, that was creative.

That was elegant, and it just draws your attention to it. And you're watching the lines and you're watching the transitions. It's like, man, this is a beautiful car. Well thought out. They put a lot of engineering behind this and you study it and it causes you to study it. It causes you to be memorized with it and the more hate in the more you look at it. Oh, look at the fine stitching.

You see the details. So you stand back and see the whole thing. It looks great. And then you you go in and look at the little details. It's like, man, this is even more attractive than I originally thought. The more I look at it, the more I like it, the more I am drawn to it.

And you know, that's the way why guys like girls. Just be honest. I mean, girls are attractive.

But what makes a girl attractive? I mean, let's be honest. Guys are not attractive. And you say what you want, girls. There is a bunch of body parts thrown together randomly.

But what makes God attractive? What makes God beautiful? In fact, I will say, I'll say this.

God is the most beautiful thing. There's nothing that compares to his glory, to his majesty, to his beauty, to his splendor. And I'm using these as synonyms. It's hard to capture. In fact, you can't take it all in one glance. You have to study God and you can see the beauty from a distance. But the closer you get to the Lord and the closer you are drawn into him, the more riveting he is, the more amazing he is to behold. And what is the beauty of God? Well, if beauty is the collective parts, the symmetry of the parts coming together, we can say the beauty of God is the collective attributes of God coming together to form a perfect being. Now think about this. Just pull one of the attributes away from God and study one attribute. We can be we can look man, the power of God, the omnipotence of God. And we've done that through this series. Let's just study one attribute at a time. And then we could be drawn into that attribute. That attribute is amazing.

It's power. Think of the power of God. God is all powerful. And that concept is horned to grasp because we're only able to grasp in our minds limited power, delegated power.

But you know, all the whole sun is powering the earth. Take the sun away. There's no power on the earth. Every all your power comes from the sun. I mean, you've got power to get up out of out of bed this morning where you got that from food. And where did the food get its power from?

It's got its resources and energy. Ultimately, from the ground, where did the ground, the earth get its resources and power? It goes back to the sun. And think about all the stars in the universe, all that power is hard to comprehend. And the earth is only getting a fragment of the power of the sun. And the sun is putting out all this power. And the thing about how there's two billion stars that we know about in our galaxy and there's two billion galaxies. So how many stars are there in the universe? We just don't know. We don't have, we can, we can go well beyond our comprehension, but it's a limited amount and all this power and all these stars and God spoke it in one second and he didn't lose any power. I mean, all of a sudden he's not tired. He'd go, well, that was exhausting.

No, he just said it. It was done. This hard to comprehend the power of God. So as we look at the beauty of God's power, we go, okay, that's amazing. But it's not so much that if just looking at the power of God is looking at the power of God is attached to integrated with the patience of God.

Brother told me, talked to us about that last week, his long suffering in his patience, his faithfulness and so forth. So think about God's power. It's not just like some lunatic that has all power. He's not Zeus up there banging his hammer against the walls. And he just gets, he's just kind of a, just this elephant in the China cabinet, just kind of just got all this power.

I don't know what to do is just unrestrained energy. You know, it's just like power just flowing out of him and he can't keep it back. And it's just like, Oh, this is power and everything's being destroyed. And we like, well, that if I had power, it would just, if I had all power, I couldn't contain it. There's no way I would be able to contain it. I would be dangerous.

So if you gave me the power of God, would it be beautiful? All of a sudden his power would be ugly if you gave it to me or gave it to anyone else besides him. But why is God's power beautiful?

Because his power is not alone. See, all of his attributes are integrated with all the other attributes. You don't have a single attribute of God that stands alone. This is why God's a simple being. All the other attributes, every attribute defines the other attributes. So you can say God is love, but then take every attribute there is power, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, every attribute and put it around love and say, what is love? Well, love is all these other things.

God's love is powerful. God's love is compassion. God's love is merciful. Well, you see, God's power is patience. And so you put God's patience with God's power. Then he's able to take that power and make the pedal of a flower. I'm doing a little work. I've done. Derek was helping me do some work in my house, and I thought I'd get in there and make a shelf. It's like, okay, I can do this myself.

And I saw I kind of jumped into the middle of a project, and it was a mistake because you know, people that do construction work, they have patience and they can they know what they're doing and they're they're slow and they're steady and meticulous. And I'm like, let's get this done. Roll up your sleeve. And I'm like, I get the hammer out. And next thing I know, I'm breaking things. And then I get frustrated because it's not working. And I remember, I hate to tell you this, but I remember getting the shelf stuck up in there and I was like, uh, I'm being I'm saying it way more politely, but I got out and I was like, I'm about to break something here out of anger. You know, I'm getting frustrated. So God can take his power that's it's incomprehensible. Look at the sun and then he can take his little delicate hands. And I couldn't do this. You know, I get little tweezers and get some a little speck out of some of those. I can't, I just know I don't who I can't. I'm not that patient to do it. It I'm not that delicate.

I don't have the precision, but here God in all his power can take the little pedal of a daisy or the smallest little flower and make it so beautiful and precise because this is the beauty of God. His power is not just raw energy. It's energy control.

It's power under his the hand of patience.

And you can study study the patience of God is I mean, this is a beautiful thing, but then you look at the patience like this makes more is more beautiful when you see his power than study the wisdom of God or the knowledge of God. God's power is beautiful because it is united to his patience is not out of control. It's not raw. It's not destructive.

God's patience is beautiful because it's all powerful. It's not weak. You know, if it's just God's patience, think about it. If God was just patient, he would be one that you just walk over. You ever see a weak man whose wife rolls over him? You know, I'm talking about just he's just weak and you can't say no, and he gets bullied and pushed around and he doesn't have any strength. I mean, God says, do not be fooled. I will not be mocked. You're not going to push God around. Now he's patient. He's forgiving his long suffering, but he's not weak.

He's not a pushover. He's strong when he needs to be strong. Look at the characteristics of Jesus.

He could take the woman at the well and treat her like a delicate flower petal. Then he'd take the scribes and Pharisees as you want worse tombs. But the reason he's able to do that is not because he's just got power and he's got patience. He also has wisdom. He's got perfect wisdom to know when to exercise power and when to withhold power. He's got all wisdom and that now he's like, well, wow, I thought the power is beautiful, but now you put power with patience. Like that's even more beautiful. Then you put the wisdom in there in the equation. Like this is becoming altogether amazing. Because God is beautiful. It's like the more you study God, you don't see any spots.

You don't see any imperfections. You don't see like, well, you know, you never hear your strength is your weakness. Well, that's true. Your strength is your weakness because you're strong in this area, but you don't have the other area to control it. So you're really good in this area and where everybody's thankful for that. But because of that, you've got a weak area there.

But God doesn't have any weaknesses in his strengths because he's got the perfect attributes, all the attributes in perfection, making sure that he is perfect. His beauty is really the the arrangement and integration in the symmetry of all his attributes perfectly orderly.

Exercised. You see, God is necessarily a perfect God.

Here's the one and I got just a few minutes here that just causes me to stare at God.

And that's what I want to do. I don't want to just have this lecture where you just kind of, well, that was interesting. I want you to leave looking and beholding God.

And I want you to stare at him for a little bit. And I think God is the most demonstrated his beauty in the person of Jesus Christ. If you really want to see how his attributes in display and more of him, look at Jesus. Jesus says I am the image of God, the Father. All the deity is in me and bodily form. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And what I love about the Lord Jesus Christ is he teaches us and he's the clearest revelation of God. So if you want to behold God, behold his son. And so what we learn about Jesus and that this is what I personally, I'm not going to say this is the greatest thing about God because everything's great about God.

But this is my personal thing that I love about God is altogether glorious. And what we're talking about his beauty, we're talking about his glory. He's altogether glorious and he's majestic and all the angels behold him and recognize it. And they see his beauty and it's so blinding and it's so gorgeous that it's blinding to them and they cover their faces. They shout out honor, majesty, power, glory to your alone and they just worship him and they worship him not out of duty.

If the angels are not going, this is all a way to do this. What are you doing today? Charlie, I'm going to go and praise the Lord. That's what I was created for. No, the angels are memorized.

They're they're captivated that they enjoy this. This is their delight that they're like they're beholding God in a way that we have it yet. And they're like, this is altogether lovely.

This is their this is their glory that they get the glorified of the father and they enjoy it.

And so this is the glory of God. But God has this from all eternity. But this is to me what makes God so beautiful is that though he has that he willingly lay that aside and made himself of no reputation. He's the most humble of all beings. You know, he's like, well, if you're if you're if you're always good, you're going to be proudful. It's like you're so good at everything. You're good at school, good at sports and you're good looking and everybody loves you and everybody wants you. I mean, like this is the type of person I want to avoid because this person's air yet.

This person full of himself, but not our God. He has all that, but he doesn't have pride.

He's a humble God. He's perfectly humble. How do we know that? Because we've seen what he done in Christ Jesus. He's meek and lowly. He's humble of horror. He'll he'll receive you and I who are unworthy to be in his presence even after we shamed him and disgraced him and sinned against him and run against him. He says, come back to me. I'll receive you.

I am meek and lowly. You're finding me what you're needing. It's like, how do you have a God like this? This is beautiful. His glory attached to humility. It's perfect. Glory perfect humility. This is why Jonathan Edwards says spiritual light in God arises chiefly from his beauty and perfection, not necessarily from his blessings or gifts. You see, it's like some people want God because of, you know, God's going to help me achieve my objectives. You know, I can do all things. I can win the football game with God behind me. God's for me. He's for my purposes. He's for my my objective. I can I can become healthy and wealthy and wise. God is with me and God need God. And so they want God because God's going to help them. It's like I love God because I love myself. But if you truly see God and not just the benefits and the blessings that he bestows upon us, you say, now, I want God. I don't I don't I don't want the trinkets.

I don't want more of this world. What are you talking about? I want the creator.

I want to be old. I mean, I don't want to be all eternity staring at a Lamborghini.

Eventually, it's just not going to satisfy any longer. I'm going to get tired of looking at that thing. The problem with idolatry is not going to satisfy. It's just unable to memorize you forever.

You're not going to be captivated forever with it. I want it. If I want to be in heaven and I have an eternal gaze upon something, it's got to be God. And when you see the glory of God for who he is, the beauty of God, it brings joy in your life. In fact, there's no other joy like this in the presence of the Lord. There's fullness of joy. Jonathan Edwards says real Christians do not first see that God loves them and later on find out that he is lovely. They first see that God is lovely. Their Christ is excellent and glorious. Their hearts are captivated by the view of God and their love for God arises chiefly from this view. True love begins with God and loves him for his own sake. Self love begins with self and loves God for the interest of self.

May we behold the beauty of God. May we be like the psalmist who says one thing I've asked of the Lord. I mean, I want one prayer request. We're about to pray and I'm not going to tell Dr. Bush to tell us what to pray for, but maybe add this to whatever he has. One thing I've asked of the Lord that I will seek one thing. If you got one thing, I got one request, one request. In fact, I did this a year and a half ago. I saw in John 14 asked me anything you wish, asked me anything you will, and I'll give it to you that the father will be glorified in the sun. I said, man, this is a blank check. I spent two or three days contemplating what I should ask for. I felt like God gave me a blank blank check and I had it. I was like, what do I do with this? And I didn't want to cash it in too quick without thinking through it. And I come to the conclusion, reading the text over and over and over again that the greatest thing that John is talking about in John 14 is that he's going to reveal himself through the sun. And then this way he is glorified through the sun. It's like, this is what God is talking about. Then this must be the greatest thing I could possibly ask for.

So I'm going to ask what the psalmist asked for. Lord, show me your glory. Show me yourself through the person of your son. I want to see you. And this is what the psalmist says. One thing I've asked of the Lord that I will seek after that I might dwell in the house of the Lord all the days. It's not the house. That's that's not where I want to be. At the only zone to be in the house of the Lord, because that's where God is. So I want to be in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. Here's the reason to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.

May we long for that. And we long for that. We seek it. God is faithful and he's going to be good to us and he's going to show us himself. And though there is no greater thing than you can long for and possess than to know God.