Destined for Beauty: Mosaix Message
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I want to talk with you this evening about beauty. Not beauty that’s only skin deep, but the picture of beauty we see in the Bible that promises a day when nothing that’s not beautiful will every exist again.
Everyone loves a good wedding, and it should amaze us that the Bible opens and closes with a wedding! A statement of beauty and simplicity from Moses in Genesis 2:24-25
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
And a statement of extravagance and joy from John in Revelation 21.2-3
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
We are destined for beauty. The beauty of intimate eternal communion and fellowship, unity in diversity under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Why is this our destiny? this is our destiny because of what God says in Genesis 1.26
26 Then God said, “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.”
Who is this God that we image? He is the perfection of beauty. He is beautiful community in his eternal life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is absolute unity in diversity and diversity in unity. This means that we are created by God to glorify him as beautiful community, unity in diversity. This is our destiny.
It’s crucial for us to always reorient ourselves to this truth because the question is, “In a climate of deepening polarization along lines of class and culture, along lines of partisan politics, even in the church, why should we continue to press toward the embodiment of unity in diversity in the local church?” I have one passage and one point, and two applications to share with you. Listen to the words found in Isaiah 61:10-62:3,
10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. 1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. 2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. 3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Who is the one speaking here? This is the voice of the same one who said in Isaiah 61.1-3
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
This is the voice of the Anointed One, the Messiah. The Savior shouts with joy! What’s the reason for all this joy? It’s because his God has dressed him in salvation’s garments. He’s wrapped him in the cloak of righteousness. He’s not wearing the garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness for his own sake. He’s wearing them for our sake!
And he gives us a guarantee of beauty; personal beauty, collective beauty, where nothing that is not beautiful will ever exist again. This guarantee sounds like a fantasy, but it is backed by the full faith and credit of God himself. In spite of the way we often don’t trust one another, in spite of the fact that we’re not always magnificently merciful, or we’re often not lavish with our love; in spite of the fact that the people of God are sometimes ugly toward one another and our neighbors, God himself promises that he will make us beautiful.
How are you to believe the promise at a time when your experience tells you that things are frail, fragile, and seem to be hanging on by a thread? How do you not scoff at the notion of a promise of lavish beauty at a time when things seem so desolate?
The answer, family, is that it must be by faith. This isn’t news, but the Lord always calls his people to apprehend his promises primarily by faith and not by sight. To put it another way, family, we always live as those who are waiting for the fullness of the promise.
I love the stanza in the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling where he writes,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating
Can we wait, holding to the promise, and not be tired by waiting? Can you wait and not be tired by waiting as even the church in the US still wrestles with issues of race, and class and culture? Can you sing the words of that old Spiritual by James Cleveland,
“I don’t feel no ways tired. I’ve come to far from where I started from. Nobody told me the road would be easy. I don’t believe he’s brought me this far to leave me.”
Do you have room in your heart to sing that refrain? Because the time of the promise always calls for an exercise of faith in the face of life.
Notice the imagery of beauty here in 62.3, “You will be a beautiful crown in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”
We’re not going to wear a beautiful crown, we’re going to be a beautiful crown. We won’t be wearing a royal diadem, we’ll be a royal diadem. In Isaiah 61:10 the Anointed One rejoices in the Lord because he’s clothed in the garments of righteousness and salvation. He wears those clothes with joy because he can see the end. He can see the fulness of time and the royal beauty of his people. This is the vision of the full number of the redeemed shining together in radiant regal beauty.
When we’re in the middle of the mess, when we are struggling in the church and in our communities can we have the kind of vision that looks at image bearers and sees the end? Sees the reunion and reunification of humanity brought together in the royal beauty that the Anointed One promises?
As we work for beauty in church and in our world can we find amazing rest in this vision of what the Lord promises to do?
We can shout for joy because we can rest, sisters and brothers, we can rest in the Lord’s promise to beautify his people. We have no power to stop the beautification process because it’s not based on us. It’s based on God’s promise.
Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.