Midwest Message 2026

Main Theme

Delighting to Behold the Beauty of Christ

Prayer

In Jesus name, amen!

Welcome

Main Passage

Psalm 27:4 KJV 1900

One thing have I desired 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 behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.

Title

Behold the Beauty

Introduction

Story

My attention and desire for Mihret December of 2017 in Los Angeles.

Explanation

My desires drove my attention for Mihret and my attention revealed my desires for Mihret.

What does your attention reveal about your desires?

Illustration

Psalm 27:4 KJV 1900

One thing have I desired 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 behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple

Application

For David’s, his one desire provoked his attention on what was truly worthy: To behold the beauty of the Lord.

Sadly, and it grieves me to say this, I have fallen into this trap more times than I care to admit: we may be genuinely saved, yet not fully satisfied in God.

Hence why we have an attention problem on who is truly worthy.

See, if our attention reveals our delights, satisfactions and desires, I’m curious to know where most of our attention is on?

Because what we think about most reveals what we idolize.

Our generation has a problem.

We live in what is called an attention economy.

Our ability to stay focused on one thing is decreasing at a rapid rate.

We are more distracted than we’ve ever been.

Everything is fighting for our attention and appealing to our desires.

We are at mercy of the enemies schemes and this generation is falling for it.

The enemy does not have to destroy you if he can distract you.

Martin Luther

“You cannot keep birds from flying over your head but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”

In other words, I may not be in charge of everything that flys through my mind or is trying to distract me but I am in charge of my attention.

My prayer is for God to regenerate or reignite a conviction, desire, and passion to behold his beauty.

For our desire to behold him to realign our attention on Him.

Context

Transitional Sentence

Today my assignment from the Lord is to discover:

Why we delight/desire to Behold Christ?

Prayer

In Jesus name, Amen!

Points

1: Healed our humanity.

John 19:5 ESV

So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!”

Explanation

We delight to behold the man because he Healed our humanity.

One of the greatest miracles that we often don’t talk about besides the death and resurrection of Christ, is the incarnation.

It was St. Gregory, an early church father who said

“That which He has not assumed He has not healed”

Because the whole human has been corrupted by sin and death in the first Adam, God became human so that every single component of human existence could be healed and restored to God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ.

The incarnation was not God lessening his deity but adding his humanity.

He joined himself to humanity but was not corrupted by the human plight.

That’s why the author of Hebrews calls Jesus our great and ultimate high priest.

Illustration

Hebrews 2:17–18 NLT

Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people. Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested.

Application

St. Athanasius said:

“He became what we are so that we can become what he is.”

Why is that encouraging?

Because it means that, in Christ, we can share in His life and be restored to reflect His image.

Yes, Jesus became fully human to heal our humanity, but He did so so that we might become like Him; not that we become God, but that we become true image bearers, reflecting His character and likeness.

Today, Jesus, our great High Priest, is still healing, helping and restoring us so that our lives increasingly reflect Him.

So let me ask you: What area of your life is not yet reflecting the image of Christ?

This is why we delight to behold the Man, Jesus Christ. Because when we behold Him, He heals us. As He heals us, He transforms us. And as He transforms us, we begin to reflect Him more and more.

2: Washes us afresh

John 19:14 ESV

Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”

Explanation

Yes, Pilate: He is King. Christ is king over all things. He is the sovereign God and sits on the throne above all rule and authority.

That at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

However, this is not an ordinary King.

In Rome and every other civilization and monarch at this time, kings and rulers dominate over their people but not in the kingdom of God.

Whoever wants to be a leader must be a servant. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:42-45)

That our Jesus, our God, is the humble king who serves.

Illustration

John 13:5 ESV

Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

Application

This moment is revealing three truths:

Jesus is setting an example for us on what it means to be image bearers of God: We serve from love (John 13:15)

Jesus’ says to Peter after he rejects Jesus invitation to wash his feet that unless he washes Peter, he won’t belong to Him.

This is foreshadowing what Christ would do for Peter on the cross: Unless he receives his work on the cross to wash him of all his sin, he has no part in Him.

iii. Lastly, it speaks of Christ’s continual service to wash us. Our body may be clean (salvation) but our feet along the journey may get dirty, so we go to the Lord to wash us afresh (sanctification).

This is why we delight to behold the King, Jesus Christ: because He is worthy, He has washed us, and He continues to cleanse and transform us.

3: Sets us Free

John 19:25–26 ESV

but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”

John 19:28-30.

Explanation

We delight to behold the Lamb because he set us free.

Christ dealt with sin therefore he set us free from our bondage.

Illustration

John 1:29 ESV

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

Colossians 2:14–15 ESV

by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

NT WRIGHT

“The root of all human sin is idolatry, worshipping something other than the creator. What happens when you worship that which is not God is that your humanness, your God reflecting image bearing vocation, starts to fracture; and the name for that is sin, missing the mark of genuine humanness. We humans are endowed by God with the glorious task of reflecting God‘s power and love into the world. But when we worship idols, we give those idols a measure of that power which should be ours, and we reduce and distort our human vocation in consequence, and our sin thus becomes the chain with which the idols we have worshipped hold us in their grip. So here’s the point: for the idols to be defeated and overthrown, the chain must be cut —  sins must be dealt with… this is what the gospel is telling us.”

Application

By dealing with our sin, Jesus broke the chains of our bondage and set us free from the power of our idols.

This is the victory Christ won on the cross.

Now what

We can hear this message and think to ourselves: Okay, so behold Christ so that we receive healing, washing, and freedom.

But that’s not what I am saying, that would make Christ the means and the promises of God, the end.

No, Christ is the means and he is the end.

What I am saying is that: healing, washing, and freedom happens as a result of beholding the beauty of Christ.

Without beholding Christ there is no transformation.

2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV

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.

Prayer

In Jesus name, amen!