Christians have always had mixed feelings about pleasure. They know God made us to enjoy many
pleasures of life, and yet there are also the forbidden pleasures. These are often just extremes of
what is acceptable. Sex is good, but immorality is bad. Food is good, but gluttony is bad.
Abundance is good, but excessive luxury is bad. Power is good, but tyranny is bad. Every pleasure
seems to have a danger zone where it goes to far and become a negative. It is like the heat gage on
your dash. It is necessary for your car to develop heat, but when it keeps rising it goes into a danger
zone, and is then a threat to your car. A good thing gone to far is a bad thing. So it is with pleasure.
Adam and Eve had all the pleasures of paradise, but when they took the forbidden fruit they went
into the danger zone, and that pleasure was very costly, for it led to great pain. Christians tend to
focus on one aspect or the other of pleasure-the fair or the forbidden. The Puritans spent much of
their energy focused on avoiding the forbidden. They even passed laws forbidding laughter on
Sunday. Their idea of entertainment was sitting on a hard wooden bench listening to a three hour
sermon. They feared pleasure lest it be taken to extremes. They felt the best way to avoid extremes
is to avoid even the legitimate pleasures of life. They found pleasure in avoiding pleasure.
Modern Christians have rejected this approach, and feel the Christians should take advantage of
the pleasures God has made available. It is obvious we are made to enjoy a great many pleasures.
God has given us taste buds to enjoy many tastes, and then provided us through nature a multitude
of foods to stimulate these taste buds. A major part of our joy in life is the pleasure of eating. God
built us with a nervous system designed to enjoy the pleasures of sight, smell, touch, and sound, and
not a day goes by in which we do not experience pleasure by our senses. These are all legitimate
and motivate us to seek ways to add to our pleasures.
This may be more healthy than the Puritan approach, but it faces the same danger of lack of
balance. Christians can get so caught up in the pursuit of pleasure that they neglect their spiritual
life. The Psalms are God's gift to His people to prevent this, and promote the pleasures of the soul,
so that we maintain a balance between the pleasures of the flesh and those of the inner man. The
pleasure we want to focus on is the pleasure of beauty, and more specifically, the pleasure of God's
beauty, or the pleasure of perfection.
Psalm 84 begins with an expression of pleasure in God's dwelling place. "How lovely is your dwelling
place, O Lord Almighty." There is a deep longing in this song to experience again the
pleasure of being in this lovely environment where the presence of God could be felt. We are made
in the image of God, and so there is a magnetic attraction to what is lovely, beautiful, and perfect.
When we see perfect beauty we are compelled to praise. Why do you think millions are spent to
make cars look beautiful, and why beautiful women are used to advertise them? It is because what
motivates people to buy things is the beauty and pleasure of perfection. We all want to own beautiful
things with perfect shape, perfect colors, perfect efficiency. The perfect price is unachievable, of
course, but we will pay the price if the beauty is near enough to perfection.
Anybody selling anything uses beauty to promote the product. Better Home and Gardens gives
you pictures of what is a perfect home and garden. This produces in people a desire to possess such
perfection. The love of perfection is built into us, for it is part of God's image, and that is why the
classics never die. They are classics because they never lose their appeal, for they are aesthetically
pleasing to our ears or our eyes. Truly beautiful music and art are permanent for they appeal to
human nature in every age, and will continue to do so for all eternity.
God expects man to have pleasure in worship, for it is to be experienced in an environment of
beauty. The Temple was designed by God to be filled with the beauty of colors, artwork, sculpture,
and gold to appeal to the eye. The vast choir was to produce music appealing to the ear. The
incense was to appeal to the nose.
The sacrifice was to appeal to the taste. Worship was to be sense oriented so that the whole body,
mind, and soul of man would experience the pleasure of perfection, and out of that pleasure praise
the God of perfection.
The reason most churches are built with an attractive sanctuary is because beauty is a stimulus to
worship. Beauty makes us feel nearer to the Creator of beauty. Ugliness makes us feel nearer to the
Lucifer, who by his rebellion brought ugliness into the perfect world of God. Disorder, dirtiness,
and anything that repulses us is a hindrance to worship. That is why we must work at keeping the
environment of worship one that appeals to our aesthetic nature. God is everywhere at all times, but
we do not always sense His presence. It is beauty and perfection that produce in us the sense of His
presence.
We may never achieve perfection in this world, and all we do may always have defects and flaws,
but it is still our duty to strive for perfection and seek to provide an atmosphere that gives pleasure to
the senses. It is possible to worship and praise God in a muddy foxhole or in a dusty bamboo hut.
From every place below the skies
The grateful song, the fervent prayer
The incense of the heart, may rise
To heaven, and find acceptance there.
There is no atmosphere where God cannot be praised, but the Bible stresses the beauty of the
house of God as an ideal environment in which to worship. Beauty is an aid to worship for God is
the most beautiful of all beings. David in Psa. 27:4 writes, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what
I seek: 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 seek Him in His Temple." You may not be aware of it, but for centuries the highest
goal of life for Christians was the beatific vision. This is the vision of God's beauty, which we will
see when we behold God in all His glory on the throne. John in the book of Revelation got a
preview of this beauty, but all Christians will get this vision and experience forever the pleasure of
perfection which will lead to perpetual praise.
Worship is to be a foretaste of heaven. It is a sip of that cup of pleasure we will drink for
eternity. If we come to church and do not get any pleasure we have not worshiped. If the truth of
God's Word does not reveal to us any beauty to appreciate; if the music does not give us pleasure by
the message or the tune, then we have missed the essence of worship, which is to praise God for the
pleasure of His beauty. If there is no pleasure in some aspect of beauty you will not be worshiping,
for worship is expressing pleasure in who God is and what He has done.
The purpose of coming to church is to experience more of the beauty of God. Augustine called
God "the beauty of all things beautiful": "The most beautiful": "The fairest of all." He said of God's
Word:" Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all." He wrote, "I was borne up to thee by thy beauty."
He came to Christ after a life of sin and he lamented, "Too late have I loved thee, O thou Beauty of
Ancient Days." Beauty is an aid to worship because it is a reflection of the beauty of the One we
worship.
Fortunately we can rise above our environment and worship God even in very non-beautiful
surroundings. Corrie Ten Boom had to worship God in a concentration camp where there was
ugliness of the physical and spiritual. The sin of man's nature was never more ugly there, yet she
worshiped the God of beauty there. But when she was asked to help develop housing for the
homeless after the war she directed the rehabilitation of old factories and buildings. One was a
former concentration camp. She ordered that the barbed wire be removed and that everything be
painted with bright colors, and every window have a flower box. She knew the awfulness of a bleak
environment, and she was determined that sorrowing families have some beauty in their lives.
Beauty is basic to pleasure, and pleasure is basic to happiness. Every realm of life is affected by
the beauty, or lack of it that we experience. That is why the goal of coming to church is to
experience the pleasure of beauty. But since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is why there is
a need for variety. Some people see beauty in old songs, and some see the beauty in new songs.
Some see beauty in the King James Version, and others see it in the Living Bible. Some see beauty
in the solo, and others in the choir. Some like hand clapping, and others prefer silence. Variety is a
part of beauty, for there are many different tastes.
The history of the church is a history of the struggle to find balance in beauty. The Catholic
Church went wild and spent fortunes in building great cathedrals with ornate art work and stain
glass windows. The Puritans rebelled against this excess, and built plain churches with no art.
Some went so far as to forbid paint. Even today some Christians refuse to wear ties because their
beautiful colors detract from the attention we should give to God.
All agree, God is beautiful, but they disagree as to how to be made aware of that beauty. Some
say use physical beauty to symbolize God's beauty. Others say ignore all other beauty so God has
no competition. Probably both work for different personalities. The Old Testament focuses more on
the use of external beauty as an aid to worship. The New Testament Christians did not have a
temple or church building and so their stress was on the beauty of the spirit. There is no escaping
the fact, however, that the environment has a powerful effect on our spirit and makes us more aware
of certain truths about God.
The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament His handiwork says Psa. 19:1. The
Psalms are loaded with references to nature being a cause for praise. The beauty of what the artist
has made makes you want to praise the artist. That is why creation is an aid to worship. It's beauty
provokes us to praise its Creator. Abraham Lincoln, one starry night, experienced what we all at
sometime have experienced. He looked into the starry heavens and said to his friend Captain Gilbert
Greene, "I never behold the stars that I do not feel that I am looking into the face of God." The
awesome beauty of the universe compels a believer to be aware of the presence of God. That is what
Psa. 84 is all about. It is about experiencing the pleasure of God's presence by means of the pleasure
of beauty.
Wherever beauty is it should be an aid to worship for the Christian who is being sensitive to all
beauty as God's gift. The problem with the pagan world was that they saw the beauty of creation as
an end in itself, and they worshiped the creation rather than the Creator. This was their folly. But
we are to get pleasure in the beauty and perfection of creation that leads us to praise God as the
author of that beauty. This is worshiping God in spirit and in truth, which Jesus said is what God is
seeking in us. God wants us to recognize that He is the author of all that is beautiful. The goal of
all beauty is the praise of God, and not the praise of beauty.
Pleasure is not perfected until it leads to praise. When it leads to praise it is the pleasure of
perfection, for you are pleased enough with something that it makes you think of the perfection of
God. If you do not get that far, but stop short by just admiring the beauty of the setting, or song, or
whatever, you have robbed yourself of the highest pleasure. You will note that the Psalmist in verse
2 makes it clear that the goal he longs for is not the beauty of the dwelling of God, but God Himself.
His heart and flesh cry out for the living God. He does not want to get to God's house merely for the
aesthetic pleasure of seeing the beauty of it. He wants the pleasure of perfection; the pleasure of the
ultimate beauty; the beauty of God's presence. The practical implications of this are clear.
We need to make a constant effort to look past both men and nature to see the perfection of God.
Man is fallen and so is nature. But man still has the image of God, and nature is still a marvelous
revelation of the wisdom and beauty of God, but both are far from perfect. The pleasure of
perfection comes to us, and makes our worship authentic, when we see all we do, and all that nature
reveals, as a sign pointing to the God of perfection. The song will not be perfect, but it can have a
degree of beauty that makes us think of the perfect beauty of God. The sanctuary will not be
perfect, but it should be pleasant enough to make us think of the perfect setting of God's presence.
The point is, as we worship we need to use the inadequate beauty of time as a stepping-stone to
the infinite beauty of eternity. This means worship takes effort. You have to love God with all your
mind, and by mental concentration let the imperfect beauty of your environment lead you to the
pleasure of God's perfect beauty. This is often forgotten in our modern culture where the focus is on
self-pleasure and entertainment. We are gluttons for entertainment because it draws the crowds.
The problem is entertainment is self-centered and not God centered. The issue is did I feel good, and
not, did I meet with God and worship Him. It is not that feeling good is bad, but when that is the
goal it takes the place of worship.
One of the leading authors on worship is Robert E. Weber. He writes in his book, Worship Is A
Verb, "We must let go of our entertainment expectations and remind ourselves that we are not in
church to watch a Christian variety show. We have gathered together in worship to be met by God
the almighty. God, the Creator of the universe, the one who sustains our lives, our Redeemer and
King, is present through proclamation and remembrance. He wants to communicate to us, to
penetrate our inner self, to take up residence within us. And as we go through the experience of
meeting with Him in this mystical moment of public worship, we are to respond." His point is,
worship is not just something that happens to you, it is something you do. You use the environment
as stepping-stones to get to God. The music and the message are not ends in themselves, but means
to the end of experiencing the pleasure of God's perfection.
I do not profess to be an expert in worship. I know for a fact that I hear many a soloist and many
a choir, and my pleasure ends with their performance. I experience pleasure in the music, but I do
not let it lift me to the pleasure of perfection. I fail to rise on the wings of the song and sore to the
presence of God, and praise Him. My worship becomes self-centered, and my focus is in how the
music is affecting me, rather than how it is lifting me to praise God. It is hard to overcome the
conditioning we develop by our habits.
I read this story that illustrates the problem. "A young family took a vacation to the South
Western part of the United States, taking along grandparents who had just retired from farming. As
they stood over looking the Grand Canyon, everyone made delightful comments about its beauty.
They were overwhelmed with the variety of colorful hues and the magnitude of this vast gorge.
They noticed that grandpa wasn't saying anything, however. They soon learned his silence was not a
result of awe when he said, "You can't grow much corn here!" An opportunity to sense the awe of
God's wisdom and beauty was lost because of a self-centered focus.
Because of this you can have the most beautiful setting possible, and be in a sanctuary that is an
architectural wonder, and still fail to worship, because worship is not a matter of state of the art, but
a matter of state of the heart. You need to come to God with a passion to praise Him, and a passion
to worship Him, and a passion to sense His presence, and then you will experience the pleasure of
perfection.
