The God in the Details

Have you ever seen something that was expensive and rather than thinking it was beautiful you just thought that it seemed a bit over the top? For example, did you know the most expensive ice cream in the world is topped with Italian truffles, Iranian saffron, and gold shavings. It costs $817 a scoop. The most expensive pizza in the world is topped with 3 types of caviar, 8 types of cheese, Australian pink salt, shrimp, and lobster. I can understand putting bacon on everything, by why are we putting gold on food? That doesn’t even sound good! Or did you know that the most expensive coffee is eaten by a small mammal, they pass through the animal, and then they are cleaned and processed for coffee. It costs about $600 a pound.

The design of the tabernacle in many ways seems over the top, it seems excessive. It can also seems counterintuitive to what God asks in other places of His Word. That God cares about our heart, He doesn’t care about what we bring. We can think of the woman who brought her two coins which was all that she had left, which Jesus says is more than what the Pharisees give. So if it is about the heart, then why such ornate design? But it can also feel like that was a different time, a time where sacrifice was necessary and God called His people to extraordinary levels of obedience where those rules don’t apply to us today.

But what is behind the tabernacle is more than God wanting to feel like a king. And it certainly isn’t because God “needs” gold or silver or precious gems. No, our God is not in need of any of that. He owns all of it! So why then, does God call them to not just build Him a house, but to build him a house adorned with the beauty of earthly things?

But what we need to see these commands in light of is “truth, goodness, and beauty”, often called the transcendentals. These are the timeless and universal truths that inhabit the value given to any being or property. If you think of a building. Truth is the soundness in the idea and the structure, that it works out in reality. When you build the structure it is able to hold up when the wind blows and the rain falls and over the course of time. Goodness is that the final product relates to the purpose that it holds. It not only has a good purpose but that it fulfills the purpose. You don’t build a church like a coffee shop or like a Walmart. A coffee shop would be too small and a Walmart doesn’t have the right acoustics or the right proportion of space you need for worship and for a nursery and for classrooms. But it must also have beauty. And God delights in all three of those things. So we are going to look at how God has called His people to desire truth, goodness, and beauty in the construction of the tabernacle. God has called His people to exemplify His nature of truth, goodness, and beauty. We are going to start with beauty.

God delights in beauty

What does beauty have to do with truth and goodness? As philosopher Graham Carey states, it is the “radiance of perfection in a thing, a perfection which the mind may understand directly through the service of the senses. If a thing is what it should be, true and good, it will appear as it should, beautiful, to anyone who has a mind capable of receiving beauty…The beauty of architecture is a direct result of the truth and goodness of architecture.” If we have have truth and goodness without beauty what we get is pragmatism. You get something that doesn’t draw people in, you have something that is boring, that has no character, it is not inviting. You decorate your house so that it invites people in. Beauty is why we worry about the dirty dishes, the clothes on the floor, the bed that isn’t made. Because we are drawn to a space that has been intentionally formed.

Beauty is not a human construction either. God shows us beauty in many different ways. He shows us beauty through the world that God created, He shows us beauty in the story of the world and the story of redemption. He shows us beauty in His inspired Word and through His Son. Each speak to God’s divine glory.

So if we must have truth, goodness, and beauty, it means the truth that God’s Word tells us is beautiful. Therefore our presentation of truth should be beautiful as well. Truth should reflect the beauty that is present in it. When we are trying to show people the truth of who God is, what better way to do it than with beauty? The beautiful picture of the story of Scripture pointing to Christ, the beauty of God’s creation revealing who HE is, the beauty of God’s character throughout Scripture. This is why stories catch our attention more than just a statement of fact, we are drawn to beauty.

Philip Rykien in his book “Art for God’s sake” says “Art is the incarnation of the truth. It penetrates the surface of things to portray them as they really are.” In his book he uses the tabernacle as the example of how art incarnates the truth. In fact, how the entire tabernacle and every furnishing in it communicate truth about God and about His relationship to His people. In fact, he says “in order to fulfill this purpose, the artistry that went into the tabernacle had to be true. It had to be true to nature.” We talked last week about how the tabernacle represented God’s ordering of the universe and His creation of the Garden. Everything in the tabernacle was a beautiful symbol. That behind the visible was an invisible, spiritual world that was far greater than just that which was visible. While idol worship turns us away from God, these symbols drives us to worship. The beautiful art of the tabernacle honored the Lord. How the lampstand represented the Tree of life with buds and flowers and limbs. The table of the presence reminded them of the abundant food that He had provided for them continually and He always supplies for their needs and how in the Garden all of their food was provided for them. We talked about the Ark last week. The ark symbolized God’s throne room with the cherubim on top of the Ark as if it is the footstool of God’s heavenly throne with the angels bowing before Him. Each part of the tabernacle had to be true to God’s character while also showing the beauty of His creation. Both reflecting who He is. But in order to communicate something it must accurately represent them. If it is too obscure then they would lose the symbolism, it had to tell the truth. As Rykien puts it, “art was in the service of its truth.” But the most important truth that the tabernacle pointed to was the true and beautiful story of salvation. God’s creation, the fallenness of man, and the salvation that comes through sacrifice. Through animal sacrifice in the OT and through Christ now.

But because art and beauty conveys truth in some way because art is “an interpretation of reality”. The art from any culture, from any age, from any city is telling you something about how those people view the world but also seeking to encourage you to view the world through their lens. You can imagine the reasoning behind the beauty of the tabernacle. First, it was counteracting the idols of the pagan cultures around them, but in the beauty of the tabernacle it was a reminder that God was far greater than those other idols, that He was worth more. So we must be careful to hear what the art of our culture is telling us, because it will never grasp the whole picture. See, the true and beautiful story of Scripture gives us a full grasp of reality. It reminds us that there is sin and there is suffering, it shows us that there is beauty in the world that God created for us, and it shows us the hope and redemption that comes to the world through His son. Therefore, it gives us the full picture rather than just saying “we live in a broken world” or “the world is a collection of cells and matter that just happens to be beautiful” or “people are good”. Only through the lens of the Gospel do we get a full and complete picture of the beauty, truth, and goodness of God’s creation. More than this, “we should see beauty as celebrating the truth of the goodness of God’s creation.” And as Christians we seek to celebrate this truth that harbor in us a desire of the glory of God that is to come. Our art should be a reflection of God’s glory, but more than just reflect, it should glorify God. It glorifies God by being good, and true, and beautiful. The entire tabernacle represent God’s beauty, the gems, and the gold coating for the elements, for the perfect measurements laid out for the tent of meeting and the holy of holies, the fabrics that were used for each space and for the priests, the detail added to each element. God calls for His tabernacle to be beautiful, it was beautiful. In fact, as we will talk about in a few weeks, God even gave the main artists His Spirit to complete the work. Because God takes so seriously beauty, God loves the beauty in His creation so much, that He gave His Spirit to complete the work. In fact, this by itself tells us that God himself IS beauty, He is the fullness of beauty and His Spirit is used to create beauty.

Jesus drew our attention to the beauty of the lillies that surpassed all of Solomon’s splendor. The beauty of God’s creation in many ways amazes us and declares God’s glory (Psalm 19:1). In fact, Romans 1:19-23 tells us that the beauty of God’s invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, are revealed through His creation and proclaim His glory. God has created in us a sense of beauty and to create beautiful things. In fact, even in the description of God as “glorious” describes the highest form of beauty.

Psalm 50:2 CSB

From Zion, the perfection of beauty, God appears in radiance.

Psalm 96:6 CSB

Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Glory is the consummation of beauty. We can see in the descriptions of heaven gold and pearls. Not that this means those will literally be those, but God’s glory is described in terms of beauty, but beauty that is too great for us to imagine or for us to look upon.

But God had shown his beauty now in His Son, Christ. God shows that His beauty was not just in His creation but in Himself. He reveals this through His Son and through His Word. Jesus is the perfection of the beauty of the tabernacle, God gave us His Son as the expression of the divine Word which brings us to worship.

Therefore beauty is not just a human creation, it isn’t just subjective, it isn’t something separate from the work that God has called us to as believers. But, as Rykien says, “We are always drawn to the beauty that endures the truth of what we were, what we are, and what we can become in Christ…in a world that has been uglified by sin, the Christian artists show the plausibility of redemption by producing good work that is true in its beauty.”

Now, one question you may ask. What does that mean for me? How do I play a part in this? Well, one influence that has grown in our churches is pragmatism. The idea that we only need something that is practical. What matters is how we can have a building that is structurally sound and fulfills its purpose, but is not as worried about the beauty. If we were to return 1000 years ago to the Cathedrals that were assembled it is very easy to see the beauty of what they created. The stained glass windows, the paintings reminding us of the stories of the past, the beautiful brick or stone construction. But as we have moved into this new era we often think that all we need is the Bible, all we need is a place for us to worship and whatever is the cheapest is what works. We have become pragmatic in our approach to our places of worship. In doing so we moved away from the value of the three-fold truth, goodness, and beauty. But this does not mean that we need grand cathedrals and stained glass windows. But it does mean that we seek to reveal God’s beauty through the way we care for His sanctuary and for what He has given us. A phrase you may have heard before is “good enough for government work.” Which loosely translates to, “as long as it holds up and fulfills its purpose who cares if it is a little flimsy or not the most beautiful.” But we should be saying “good enough for God’s work.” We seek to bring beauty to the spaces we worship in, when something is broken we fix it, when paint gets old we touch it up, when furniture has warn out its welcome we bring new life to the space. We do what is within our means, but the problem is not usually the financials as much as the necessary effort to care about beauty.

It means that we seek to have our worship done well, that we spend money to make sure we have good sound and that the visuals are done well, and that we have a worship team that glorifies God with the music. I am certainly thankful that we have an incredible worship team, and a dedicated sound booth and computer team, and a church that recognizes the value of having high quality technology. But we continue to find ways to improve.

It means that when we have art in our home, when we watch a movie, or when we listen to music we ask two questions. Does it glorify God and is it beautiful? Beauty does not have to be at the cost of modesty or shame with nudity or with vulgarity or with excessive violence. Art is not separated from moral law, but art is to the worship of God. “Art is designed to be an instrument for making access for the Spirit of the Lord, for inspiring the holy and high ideal, and thereby for glorifying God the Creator in all art.” Because if it is art that tells a different story that what God’s Word says than we are speaking to our family and to our guests about what we believe to be true. We are saying that all that matters is that it is beautiful not that it glorifies God. I think we can often make excuses for explicit art or for vulgar art in the name of beauty but we forget that it should also be in the name of the Lord. But if we have art that is Christian but is not beautiful than we are saying something about our God as well. We are telling our guests that our God doesn’t care about beauty. We are saying that God only cares that we bring something before Him but it is not about what we bring. But God certainly cares about what we bring.

But this begs the question, if God is a God of beauty how can we ever meet the standard of the tabernacle? In other words, how does God define beauty in terms of His glory? Well this is where the good and the true comes into play.

When we look at creation we see that God is diligent in His work. It is made in both truth and goodness. He doesn’t miss a single detail. Everything has a purpose and is created to fit the purpose that He has given it. One of the amazing things to me is the the more science teaches us about the world we are able to see the truth of how God made things. For example, for thousands and thousands of years we did not know that protons, and neutrons, and electrons held together everything around us. That humans have cells that reproduce every minute that allow for our bodies to function properly, or that humans have DNA that give us the exact details of how God has created us. It is both true and good.

If you have ever played any type of video game you know that the parameters for what you are able to do in the game hits a limit. There are doors that you can’t open, there are actions you can’t take, and there are details that you are unable to get a closer look at. There may be trees off in the distance but as you get closer you see that there are not trees but just the resemblance of trees, that you aren’t able to go into the trees and see what is behind it because nothing is there. Or there are glitches where the programming isn’t just right and you have now confused the game and your character is not making unnatural movements. Your character gets stuck in mid-air or they start spinning in circles and you are unable to stop the movements so you are forced to restart the game. God’s world is not like that. Every detail of the universe, not just the world, but the universe is perfectly in place and performing its function. There are parts of the deep sea, there are parts of the amazon forest, and there are parts of the universe where humans have never laid eyes on yet God is perfectly performing the functions for all of those beings and particles to exist and move.

So when God called the Israelites to build the temple he was calling them to the order that He had prepared in all of creation. That they were to remember every true and good detail. But if you look at Exodus 25-31 and then look at Exodus 35-40 you may notice that you get an almost word for word repetition. Why does Moses repeat himself? Couldn’t he have said something easier like “and they completed all that God had commanded”? What was the purpose of this repetition of what has already been said. In fact, to us it makes it more difficult to read a section that seems the same to what we already ready, and most likely we will just skip over it. One reason is that it was a common practice in literature during this time as a way to make apparent that the instructions that were given are carried out to the T. It highlights the importance of the command and the precision with which it was obeyed. Therefore, we should see the repetition as highlighting something incredibly significance, that we shouldn’t just glance over it. It was also to remind the priests to not forget a details, to remember everything they were commanded and to show, as it was written down, that they had completed it to God’s exact specifications. He is calling them to be diligent in the task that He had given them. To be perfect in it. It represented that God had blessed this work and that He would fill the tabernacle. Like any parent might repeat the instructions to a child to make sure that they are known and that they are carried out correctly.

But he was not calling them to be perfect so that he could bash it over their head when they didn’t do it the right way, rather He was calling for their heart to desire that which is good and true. If you notice in 35:21 it says “everyone whose heart was moved and whose spirit prompted him came and brought an offering to the Lord for the work on the tent of meeting”. And it says that every woman “whose hearts were moved spun the goat hair”. See, it wasn’t forced on those who didn’t have a heart for it, they desired to serve the Lord in this way. It was about the beauty but it was also the heart behind the ones bringing their offerings and their time.

Think about a child or grandchild who sits down and has their crayons and draws a picture. And if you are being honest, the drawing is not great quality, in fact, you can hardly tell what was drawn. But they give it to you and they say “this is for you, it is a picture of you and me in the park”. And you gladly say “thank you for drawing this for me” and you put hang it on your fridge because you know that it will make them happy and because you love that they desired to do something beautiful for you. See it was not about the beauty of the painting, it was about the diligence of the one who brought their offering. That is why God loves our singing, not because we all have perfect pitch, because He sure knows that many of us do not. It is why God calls us to pray, even when we don’t always know what we are praying. Because He wants our heart and He enjoys spending time with His children.

It says in Psalm 51 that God does not desire sacrifice, He desires a humbled heart and a contrite Spirit. That’s what God says in Exodus, “if your heart is moved to do so, come and give your time and energy.” Because in the context of the living God nothing compares to His glory, so we give what we can. That which is true to our heart to praise Him and that which expresses the purpose we intended, to glorify God. When your child brings that painting they want you to know that they love you, and the painting fulfills that purpose.

In Matthew 26 there is the story of the woman who pours a jar of expensive perfume on Jesus head. In fact, this perfume would have been about a years wages. And the disciples say, “couldn’t we have sold that perfume for a great deal of money and given it to the poor?” But Jesus says that she has done a “noble thing”, because she was diligent and she was willing to offer that which was hers in order for Christ to be glorified.

Some of us are excellent painters, and musicians, and writers; others of us, like me, are not good at those things. Like me, my drawings are pretty much stick figures. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t seek to uphold the beauty. When we prepare to have VBS, it means that I lean on our excellent members who are incredibly creative to make this space look beautiful and it means I am willing to invest the resources necessary for it to look good. It means when I try to do something beautiful in my home, I am probably looking at pinterest for ideas, not creating my own.

But this doesn’t mean that because we are bad at art we do not try and represent His beauty by painting or taking a photograph. It doesn’t mean we stop singing to our God, because we aren’t the greatest singer. it doesn’t mean we don’t tell the Gospel to our children because we aren’t the best story teller. No, it means that we seek to exemplify the beauty in each of those in the way we best know how. We are diligent to reveal the beauty of God’s creation as His image bearers, as those reflecting His glory. It doesn’t mean we leave our house a mess, or that we sing poorly on purpose, or make a joke of a story rather than seek to tell it well. We diligently seek to glorify God. As it says in Colossians 3:23 “whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people, knowing that you will receive reward of an inheritance from the Lord.” Like the woman who poured all of the perfume on Jesus feet, it was not about the perfume, but it was that she did a beautiful thing and that she sacrificed her own money in order to bring it before the Lord. Because you never know how the story you tell, how your desire to worship, how your love for art may speak to another person about the beauty of God’s creation. Because even if it isn’t perfect it can still be good and true and beautiful. It can still tell the story of the Gospel and tell it in a beautiful way.

We are clothed in the beauty of Christ

In Hebrews it tells us that Christ reveals the glory of God and that we now exemplify that glory.

Hebrews 1:3 CSB

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Hebrews 2:10–11 CSB

For in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was entirely appropriate that God—for whom and through whom all things exist—should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters,

But if you notice, this glory only comes through sacrifice, it only comes through dedication. It isn’t an easy thing to bring. Therefore we bring ourselves to worship and we sing, we give our time and our resources to make this place we worship in beautiful to God’s glory, and we sacrifice our own desires so that others may see the beauty of our God who loves them.