I PITY THE FOOL: Beauty

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We all have a God-given longing for a standard of beauty that is more eternal, more satisfying than our personal likes and dislikes.

The world’s standard of beauty is counterfeit beauty – God’s standard of beauty is true beauty.

COUNTERFEIT BEAUTY is subjective
TRUE BEAUTY is definite

  • We don’t need to seek this beauty that is subjective, illusive, and always disappointing because there is a truth to beauty; there is wisdom to beauty and it is not found in this world.
  • “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised” [Proverbs 31:30]
  • There is a longing in the human heart for beauty but what we are really longing for is the Beautiful One, the Lord.
  • The definition of wisdom: the application of the right knowledge at the right time in the right way.
  • What is the wisdom in beauty?  This begins with the right knowledge of how and where to seek beauty.

COUNTERFEIT BEAUTY is self-centered
TRUE BEAUTY is God-centered

  • The knowledge we must find so that we ourselves may be beautiful must begin with knowing God and how He sees us; because everything less than God will continue to leave us dissatisfied.
  • God created beauty when He created us in His image. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” [Genesis 1:26-27, 31]
  • Beauty is what God is.
  • “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” [Genesis 1:1-2]

COUNTERFEIT BEAUTY brings dissatisfaction
TRUE BEAUTY brings contentment

  • God has created us just how he wants us.
  • “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” [Psalm 139:13-18]
  • When was the last time you praised God for who He created you to be?

COUNTERFEIT BEAUTY is perilous
TRUE BEAUTY is life-giving

  • When we focus on beauty outside of God it is dangerous and brings death, but our mind on God brings life.
  • “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” [Romans 8:5]
  • We can be rejoined with God as we are made into a new creation – made perfectly beautiful through Jesus.
  • “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” [2 Corinthians 5:17]
  • Though we are fully ugly because of sin, Christ came from heaven and died for us.
  • “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” [Romans 5:8]
  • Everything comes back to Jesus, for all else is loss in comparison to knowing Him.
  • “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” [Philippians 3:8]
  • “Beauty is achieved when the thing created most closely and most perfectly glorifies its Creator.” – Jonathan Edwards

COUNTERFEIT BEAUTY is binding
TRUE BEAUTY is liberating

  • The Holy Spirit breaks the bondage to be beautiful by the world’s standard. We may now see God’s standard and be transformed into His beauty.
  • “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” [2 Corinthians 3:16-18]

TRY THIS: This week sit down, in silence and solitude, ask God, “What do You think of me?” Just listen. Pray to know His beauty more so that you may be transformed to really see yourselves as beautiful creations, made in perfection and deeply loved.