What is beautiful to God?
Psalm 29:2 Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. (NKJV)
What is beautiful to God? Holiness! Why is holiness so important? Because God is holy (1 Peter 1:15-16)! We get a tiny glimpse of the holiness of God in Isaiah 6.
Isaiah 6:1-8 1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (NIV)
In the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah was invited into the Holy, it was the day of His commissioning into the office of prophet, it was the day that Isaiah was swept up into God, and it was the day God’s beauty left His mark upon Isaiah. Isaiah saw the King in all His glory, Isaiah told of the throne, the height of His glory, and the vastness of His robe’s train but the brilliance of the King Himself was beyond his words. The description of the King escaped him. This is the loftiest of all subjects – God Himself. How do you describe the greatness and glory, unending majesty, self-replenishing beauty and grandeur? Isaiah was beholding something so beautiful and terrifying that he could only describe the surroundings. Words failed him. The seraphim were constantly crying out, “Holy, Holy, Holy”. Not just Holy, not just Holy, Holy but THREE times they uttered it. “Holy, Holy, Holy”.
After seeing the King, the Lord, Isaiah saw his own sinfulness and the sinfulness of his people. He knew that this sinfulness was not consistent with the Holiness of God. He saw the beautiful Holy One and he realized that his paltry, famished theological prayers, songs and sermons were lace with price, accusation and unbelief. He had not given the beautiful Holy One the witness due His name. Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me!” He is saying I’m destroyed; I’m dead, consumed by the holiness of God. Then a seraph took a coal from the altar and touched Isaiah’s lips – his sin was atoned for, He was not destroyed. Divine love kept him alive.
Isaiah saw the beautiful Holy One, He glimpsed at the King in all His majesty, and he witnessed the unfallen, uncompromised testimony of Heaven. He saw the depths of humanities iniquity, their absolute inability to see God in all His greatness and beauty. He discovered the kindness of the beautiful Holy one as the gap between God and man was closed through atonement. What we need in our culture is a greater revelation of the beautiful holy One, we need a glimpse of Him, when we get it, it changes everything. That was the cry of David’s heart…is it the cry of yours?
After seeing the King, the Lord, Isaiah saw his own sinfulness and the sinfulness of his people. He knew that this sinfulness was not consistent with the Holiness of God. He saw the beautiful Holy One and he realized that his paltry, famished theological prayers, songs and sermons were lace with price, accusation and unbelief. He had not given the beautiful Holy One the witness due His name. Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me!” He is saying I’m destroyed; I’m dead, consumed by the holiness of God. Then a seraph took a coal from the altar and touched Isaiah’s lips – his sin was atoned for, He was not destroyed. Divine love kept him alive.
Isaiah saw the beautiful Holy One, He glimpsed at the King in all His majesty, and he witnessed the unfallen, uncompromised testimony of Heaven. He saw the depths of humanities iniquity, their absolute inability to see God in all His greatness and beauty. He discovered the kindness of the beautiful Holy one as the gap between God and man was closed through atonement. What we need in our culture is a greater revelation of the beautiful holy One, we need a glimpse of Him, when we get it, it changes everything. That was the cry of David’s heart…is it the cry of yours?
Psalm 27:4 One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. (ESV)
You can be Beautiful
In our quest for beauty we must remember that we are diseased by sin. We have learned to live with sin and unholiness and have come to accept it as the norm. God is holy with an absolute holiness that knows no degrees and this He cannot impart to us but there is a holiness God can and does impart to His children, He makes it available because of the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. No honest person can say, “I am holy” yet God requires holiness – what are we to do? We must hide our unholiness in the wounds of Christ, as Moses hid himself in the cleft of the rock while the glory of God passed by. We must take refuge from God in God. Above all, we must believe that God sees us perfect in His son while He disciplines and chastens and purges us that we may be partakers in His holiness. By faith and obedience, by constant meditation on the holiness of God, by loving righteousness and hating iniquity, by growing in relationship with the Holy Spirit and through fellowshipping with each other we are beautified and prepared for the eternal companionship of a holy God.
Psalm 149:4 for the Lord takes pleasure in His people, He will beautify the humble with salvation (NKJV)
God’s holiness is the source of beauty for all humanity. What we need in our culture is a greater revelation of the beautiful holy One, we need a glimpse of Him, when we get it, it changes everything, it changes us from people who are living under a hard yoke of slavery to a people who are free to live as real, authentic Christians. Let me show the difference between real Christianity and slavery:
Slavery – look you people, you need to get right with God, you need to be Holy, you need to stop doing all this bad stuff, you need to get right with God and if you don’t you are going to go to hell
Real Christianity – if you could catch just one glimpse of how beautiful He truly is, how Holy He is, you’d have no problem with the rest, seek His face, and seek His beauty, seek His holiness…
Real Christianity isn’t motivated by a bunch of rules and regulations; it’s motivated by catching glimpse after glimpse of the beauty and holiness of Jesus Christ. Every greater glimpse will lead you to greater levels, greater degrees of devotion and holiness. Once you experience it you don’t need a bunch of rules and regulations to follow, you yourself will do anything to catch another glimpse…you’ll give up worldly pleasures, you’ll work through your sin issues, you’ll deal with your junk because those things are preventing you from getting the next glimpse…you’ll seek His face, you’re ache for His holiness, and for one more glimpse…And in the process, you’ll see yourself as beautiful!There’s no ten step program for feeling beautiful, only you can get into His presence and seek His face for yourself, I can’t do that for you, I can’t show you God’s beauty, just like I can’t tell you you’re beautiful in a way that you would believe me. I can only encourage you to seek Him, I have and it has changed me forever. Because of our beautiful holy Jesus, you can be beautiful too, if you choose to reflect His beauty and holiness in your life. As Christian women, it’s time to stop faking beauty and embrace real beauty!
References:
The Seven Longings of the Human Heart by Mike Bickle
The Excellencies of Christ by Allan Hood
The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
The Beauty of Christ by Paul Washer
No comments:
Post a Comment