(“Beautiful” Music Video by Christina Aguilera)
In her song, appropriately titled “Beautiful”, Christina Aguilera sings all the right words:
Now and then, I get insecure
From all the pain, I’m so ashamed
But I am beautiful no matter what they say
Words can’t bring me down
I am beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can’t bring me down
In fact, the second verse does a great job describing a struggle so many people face:
To all your friends, you’re delirious
So consumed in all your doom
Trying hard to fill the emptiness
The piece is gone left the puzzle undone
That’s the way it is
Yet then again, she attempts to convince us, and maybe even herself, of her point:
You are beautiful no matter what they say
Words can’t bring you down
You are beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can’t bring you down
Don’t you bring me down today.
But I gotta say, and I grew up with three sisters. I have a wife and daughter. We have three different hair conditioners in our shower. I get that women like to change their hair color, and try different looks from time to time. And maybe that doesn’t mean they are obsessed with outer beauty, or that they find their identity in their external appearance.
But when I look at the drastic transformations of Christina Aguilera through the years. I’m not sure that she has convinced herself of her own words. I’m not sure that she truly is able to block out the words of those around her, and simply buy that she is beautiful.
In fact, she looks more like someone stuck in verse two – trying hard to fill the emptiness, with a puzzle piece missing and leaving things undone. She strikes me as someone experiencing the results of attempting to fulfill an internal longing through a source other than God.
There are just 35 more shopping days until Christmas. Black Friday is this week. Have you figured out what you are wanting yet? What you truly desire in your life?
A great deal of shopping time and energy will be expended this year, like every year, on the pursuit of beauty. The longing to be beautiful. Each year there are more than $8 billion of cosmetics sold in the United States. Compare that to the annual expenditure in our country for basic child education at $6 billion.
We spend $2 billion more dollars every year trying to look beautiful on the outside than we do trying to educate the inner minds of our children. And we spend even more trying to smell beautiful. The US and Europe combine each year for $12 billion in perfume sales. Do you even realize how many zeros that is? $12 billion!
Some of us get even more drastic in the pursuit of this longing of our heart. Each year there are 3.5 million cosmetic surgery procedures completed. And less we wonder who this longing may tug at more. 700,000 of those surgeries are done on men. The other 2.8 million on women.
But men have this same longing. It might be labeled differently. In my life it has taken on many labels. The longing to be “cool”, “hip”, “rad”, “sick”, “bad”, “righteous.” My gosh, in 38 years this longing for men has been called so many things, I can’t even figure out which one it is now.
And we even pursue beauty in more “natural” ways. For example: dieting. I love to see those diet commercials on TV while sitting in my Lay-Z-Boy downing a big ol’ bowl of ice cream. The diet industry now has a gross annual income greater than $50 billion. We will spare no expense in our search to fulfill this longing to be beautiful.
But often once we probe a bit deeper. A bit beyond the surface beauty. At the end of the day, we look in the mirror are disappointed with what we find in others, and ourselves.
There was a woman who went on a short term mission trip to Kenya. Before she left, she stopped at a remote village where she attended a medical clinic. As the native women outside the clinic began to sing together, she found herself deeply moved by their beautiful singing.
She was so moved she began to cry. Since she wanted to capture the moment in her memories, she turned to her bi-lingual friend and queried, "Could you please translate the words to that absolutely beautiful song?"
Her friend stared at her and respectfully replied, "If you boil the water, you won’t get dysentery."
Beauty definitely has the ability to be only skin deep. Yet there is something in the human spirit that detests feeling ugly. So we powder, primp, comb and cover whatever we can to look our best. And when it is all said and done. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next week. But eventually we all look in the mirror and find that we too are “Trying hard to fill the emptiness. The piece is gone left the puzzle undone.”
What does the Word of God have to say about this longing for beauty? It is a lesson of logical progression. Walk through these steps with me. First. . .
1. GOD IS BEAUTIFUL
The Psalmist declares such in 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.”
Isaiah prophesied:
“Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty;
they will see a land that stretches afar.” (33:17)
Zechariah declared:
“On that day the LORD their God will save them,
as the flock of his people;
for like the jewels of a crown
they shall shine on his land.
For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty!
Grain shall make the young men flourish,
and new wine the young women.” (9:16-17)
The Bible describes God as beautiful. But of course, in our natural American culture we ask, “So what does God look like then.” That’s defining beauty by our culture, rather than the word of God. God is beautiful, and we also see in the Bible that. . .
2. GOD SURROUNDS HIMSELF WITH BEAUTY
Psalm 96 says –
“For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.” (5-6)
It is very interesting that in Isaiah 60:7 the Lord declares that He will “beautify His beautiful house.” The house of the Lord is beautiful, but He will continue to be about the process of beautifying it. Surrounding himself with beauty.
Some theologians examine the book of Esther with an eye towards the relationship between Esther and the king being a type, an example of the relationship between God and His bride, the church. And in the book of Esther you read that once she was brought into the palace, she underwent a period of 12 months preparation. The word tells us it was a year of being beautified before she came into the presence of the king. Because the king would only be surrounded by beauty.
Likewise, under that paradigm, the church undergoes a period of beautification. Of preparation so that when we enter into the presence of the King, we are beautiful. Because God surrounds Himself with beauty.
Thus comes the next step. . .and our predicament.
3. OUR HUMAN EFFORTS TOWARDS BEAUTY ONLY CREATE ASHES
In all of our efforts to answer this legitimate longing, our culture has managed to cultivate destructive, unhealthy habits and obsessions with physical appearance. In the very effort to become beautiful, we are physically destroying ourselves. Anorexia and bulimia. Excessive financial sacrifices for clothes and cosmetics. Imbalance of time invested in physical appearance while our emotional and psychological well being is neglected. This burning passion to be beautiful literally is burning us out, and leaving in its wake a pile of ashes.
But this is where it gets good. Because the prophet Isaiah tell us that there is a Messiah coming who will take those ashes, and exchange them for beauty.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor. . .
To give them beauty for ashes.” (Isaiah 61:1-3)
Ashes are good for absolutely nothing. As much as I enjoy the fires we burn during the winter at our home. They constantly leave me with the mess of ashes to clean up. They can’t be burned again. If they stay in the stove, it hampers my ability to create another beautiful fire. Ashes are worthless. Dirty. Dusty. Clog up my breathing. And they are the result of something good having been completely burned out.
And when we have exhausted all of our efforts to be beautiful, and are left with nothing but a pile of ashes, God steps in with the redemptive plan of His Son not simply to make us beautiful, but to exchange those worthless ashes for His beauty.
4. GOD EXCHANGES OUR ASHES FOR HIS BEAUTY
And like I said, this is where it really gets good. God takes that mess that we have made of our lives, and gives us the very thing that our hearts have been longing for. Beauty. But instead of it being the temporary beauty that we thought we were after, He gives us His very eternal beauty.
So when we get saved, we not only are saved from hell, great as that may be. But we are made beautiful so that we can display God’s beauty to the rest of creation. To those around us.
Psalm 90:17 reads, “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” And. . .
5. THE BEAUTY GOD PLACES UPON US, IS PLACED WITHIN US
I Peter 3:3-4, “Do not let your adorning be external — the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear — but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”
Now that’s a tough challenge to live out. There are not many women. . .even Christian women. . .who are going to be satisfied with hearing their husbands say, “Don’t worry about your outside. It is your inner beauty that I am drawn to.”
Husbands, go home today and try that one out. It is a bit more dangerous than the Revelation 4 challenge of last week. But give it a shot. Go home and look your wife in the eye and say, “Don’t worry about your outside. You’re beautiful on the inside.” And see if you don’t get a, “What’s wrong with how I look?” “Are you saying I’m not beautiful on the outside?” “Don’t you think I’m pretty?”
We have this earthly definition of beauty so engrained in our minds and our culture that we see a compliment of inner beauty as a back-handed slap to external beauty. When which beauty should we be most desirous of?
Folks, I don’t know how else to say it. We have bought into the world so hook, line, and sinker, that I’m not sure some of us even have it within us to be satisfied with God’s fulfillment of our longings. For some of us, I’m not sure we can even say with any degree of confidence or sincerity, “I don’t care what I look like because I have the beauty of the Lord placed within me, and if I am beautiful in His sight, I don’t give a flip what the world thinks.”
Let’s just be honest with ourselves. This isn’t 25 minutes of pastoral entertainment between music. This is a practical, everyday, life challenge. Can we find a place of warmth, and peace, and contentment at knowing that we have been beautified by the beauty of God so it really doesn’t matter whether others agree or not? Can we reach a place of spiritual depth where our wives, our husbands, our friends can look us in the eye and tell us that we have an inner beauty that radiates to the world around them, and not wonder if that is a slight to our outer appearance?
Because if we can’t. We will destroy ourselves. And in our efforts to attain beauty in the eyes of the world, we will burn ourselves out to a pile of ashes.
You see. . .I believe. . .
6. THERE ARE REAL MANIFESTATIONS OF GOD’S BEAUTY
DWELLING IN US
And that should cause us to live differently. It causes us to see things differently. There are some very practical, life demonstrated, changed behaviors that will take place when we receive the beauty of the Lord into our lives and allow it to fulfill this longing of our heart.
a. OUR COUNTENANCE WILL CHANGE
Did you know that many sicknesses are related to a fearful and angry disposition as well as the ugliness of bitterness and pride. And what happens is that these negative attitudes actually reach a point of affecting our bodies physically and changing our expressions. I have seen people more than once walk into the doors of this church, where a quick look at their countenance told me, “Keep your distance from them today.” Right?
Some days when I walk into the house at the end of the day, a quick look at my face can tell my family more about my disposition than 30 minutes of interaction and discussion.
But when the beauty of the Lord, this inner beauty is dwelling in us, there should be a change in our countenance. And while that change maybe limited in this life, when our spirit is beautified, even our outward person is touched by the power of God’s beauty.
A second very real, practical change that should happen in our lives is that. . .
b. WE WILL FEEL WANTED
Psalm 149:4 says, “For the Lord takes pleasure in His people;
He will beautify the humble with salvation.”
So this is how it works. We humble ourselves before God. Receive His gift of salvation. And that gift beautifies us in a way that enables God, who is surrounded by beauty, to take pleasure in us as His children.
And when we get in our heads that God takes pleasure in us. That He desires us. That He wants us, it fundamentally changes how we interact with Him and with other people.
Psalm 45:11, “The King will greatly desire your beauty;
because He is your Lord, worship Him.”
Song of Solomon 7:10, “I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is toward me.”
Follow this with me. If God surrounds Himself with beauty. And God desires us. The logical sequence is that we are beautiful. A + B = C. For God to desire us. God, who surrounds Himself with beauty. We must be, in His eyes, truly beautiful. So when we receive Him into our lives as our Lord, we have attained what we have been longing for. It’s just a question of whether we know it or not.
And then what happens is. . .
c. THE ASHES OF OUR LIVES WILL BEGIN TO BE SWEPT AWAY
Not in some spiritual, meta-physical, mystical sense. In a very practical sense. Churches are filled with testimonies of restored marriages, prodigals come home, people that can give testimony to the ash heap that was their life, and is now a place of beauty.
You see, I have really been wrestling with a thought throughout the past week. It is this, “A gospel without any life change, or outward manifestation, isn’t really a gospel at all.”
If all this stuff we talk about, read about, sing about, doesn’t change anything about who we are and how life is lived. . .I’m not sure there is really any point to it. If you have been coming to church year after year after year, and there is nothing different in your life today than 6 months ago, 12 months ago, 2 years ago. . .then either God isn’t true or it is time for us to stop pursuing the world’s longings and allow God to really exchange our ashes for His beauty.
(Prayer Time w/ Song Background - Utilized "Beauty for Ahses" by Shane & Shane)
