Drawn By Beauty

Today I will be speaking about how objective beauty points us to the Creator God. We’ll be looking at Psalm 27:4 and Psalm 96:6.

One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple (Psalm 27:4).

Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty fill His sanctuary (Psalm 96:6).

There are three things we are going to look at today:

1. Objective Beauty

2. The Pursuit of Beauty

3. The Source of Beauty

Let’s look at the first point:

1. Objective Beauty

Aesthetics involves the study of beauty, taste, and art. It asks questions like: What defines beauty? Is it only subjective or is there an objective basis for determining what is beautiful? Sean McDowell contends:

To deny the objectivity of beauty is to deny that we have the ability to perceive anything as beautiful. In other words, the recognition of beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but not beauty itself. Objective beauty is beauty that exists outside of ourselves, independent of what we think.

Why do you think we place so much value on beauty? I think we all agree about the reality of what is and isn’t beautiful and that we are naturally drawn to beauty. The question is: Where does beauty come from and why are we attracted to it? Why do we as human beings desire to make beautiful creations? The best possible explanation for the origin of beauty is God. God was the originator of beauty in the account of creation in Genesis and delivers the final act of beauty in Revelation 21 (when God restores everything back to its original state of beauty). The existence of objective beauty points to a God of beauty who loves His creation and desires to give us joy and pleasure. Anthony O'Hear wrote:

In experiencing beauty, we feel ourselves to be in contact with a deeper reality than the everyday.

In the Old Testament, “beautiful” is, first of all, a visual term - usually referring to something that we can see. For example, the word is used to describe Job’s daughters as the best-looking women in the country (Job 42:15). In time, however, the word took on a wider range of meaning where beauty is further defined as something good; right, perfect, pleasing, and appropriate. Beauty goes way beyond what we see. In the OT – The Hebrew word kabod or glory is used to describe the personal beauty of the Lord.

The Psalmist said:

The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands (Ps. 19:1).

David was saying that the heavens reflect the personal beauty of God. And because of His personal beauty, everything He made in the heavens is beautiful.

The Christian worldview affirms that God is the source of all beauty either through direct creative acts or through men and women, created as divine image bearers (Latin: imago Dei). So God, as the Creator, is not only a Designer and Engineer of the world’s intelligibility but He’s also a creative and skillful Artist.

What are some of the things that the Bible defines as beautiful? God Himself is beautiful, why? Because everything about God is infinitely good and perfect and right including His love, mercy, grace, wisdom, and kindness. His ways and plans are perfect and past finding out. The psalmist talked about the beauty of God’s holiness, the beauty of His dwelling place (Psalm 27:4). Jonathan Edwards wrote that God is: “...the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty.” Gregory of Nyssa, just like a poet, sings praises to God for how He shows His own beauty in the wonders of the created order. He describes the beauties of both: (1) the natural realm, and (2) those of the human person, all of which reflect the splendor of the triune God.

The beauty of His creation includes you and me. When He made us He said it was very good! Yet the beauty that Adam and Eve shared with God in the garden was short-lived as they were deceived by the beauty of the serpent and by the beauty of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was the introduction of sin that brought death and devastation into the world (cf. Gen. 3 and Rom. 5:12-21), which caused the marring of humankind’s original beauty both within and without.

But the good news is that this disintegration and decay of the beauty of God’s creation will one day be reversed. One day all of God’s redeemed and all of His creation will be restored (Rom 8:21). Creation looks forward to the day when it will be freed from death and decay (v. 21). Even though creation has been marred by the ugliness of sin, Jonathan Edwards believed that both bodily beauty and beauty of soul within humanity still reflected something of the perfections of Christ. And one day we will experience our adoption as sons and daughters of God and the transformation of our bodies into perfect resurrected bodies (Rom 8:23). We look forward to that day because we were created by God to enjoy Him and to appreciate His beauty and the beauty of creation. We see this appreciation of beauty in our...