ENTRANCED BY GOD'S BEAUTY!

There is something about my favorite National Park:Yosemite. I guess you would have to have visited it to understand my exuberance about this magical and majestic place. If you haven't been there, make sure you do. You don't want to miss it! Yosemite National Park, in my highly subjective yet humble opinion, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I love the very first sight you get when you drive through the long tunnel and come out at the Bridal Veil Falls Overlook. You can take in the whole lower valley and see Half Dome in the distance as well as Bridal Veil Falls to your right. Ii never ceases to take my breadth away!

There is such a glory to Yosemite's natural splendor. There are sheer faced granite cliffs such as El Captian that seem to be a mile high and luminous water falls such as Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls. Yosemite is one of those rare places where words and pictures won’t do. It can’t be described. You must see it and take it in. It has to be experienced for yourself.

Psalm 19 tells me that there is not only beauty like Yosemite, but that there is a source of that beauty. Listen to what David writes:

"The heavens declare the glory of God,and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech,and night to night reveals knowledge.There is no speech, nor are there words,whose voice is not heard.Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun,which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.Its rising is from the end of the heavens,and its circuit to the end of them,and there is nothing hidden from its heat."
Psalm 19:1-6

Whenever you see water falls, mountain peaks, granite walls, and awesome sunsets, they are but a representation, a picture, a reflection of the beauty, the glory of God. The Lord has ordained in His great plans and purposes ways to express His beauty and makes His glory known. The Psalmist David, whom we learned last week had an insatiable longing to see the Lord's beauty, celebrates the fact that as he looks up in the sky, that nature is one way by which God's glory would be made known.

Owen Strachen and Doug Sweeny in their wonderful new book Jonathan Edwards on Beauty (Which I most heartily recommend!) say,

"God exists as the resplendent one, but did not content Himself with mere self-appreciation of His beauty. Instead, He set in motion an arc of glory that began with Himself, moved to creation, continued with the incarnation of Christ, moved next to the church, the bride of Christ, and is consumated in heaven,Where the Holy Trinity dwells."

But there is a greater beauty that I have seen and experienced then Yosemite and nature, as much as it echo's God's beauty. What I see in Jesus Christ and in the universe because of Him, through the lens of Scripture, is more breathtaking than anything (And that is not hyperbole)!

All study of Jesus Christ in scripture should not lead to dead end dogma but speeds us down a one way street to worship.To see Jesus Christ, after you catch your breath, is to breathe the uncommon air of the Yosemite's of revelation. John Piper says,

And the refreshment that you get from this high, clear, Christ-entranced air does not take out of the valleys of suffering, pain, and sorrow in this world, but fits you to spend your life there for the sake of love with invincible and worshipful joy.

When it comes to the beauty of Christ, who can adequately describe glory and beauty that is infinite and is therefore beyond description? There is no one like Christ in this regard. Charles Spurgeon has said it well:

Hope not, my brethren, that the preacher can grapple with such a subject. I am overcome by it. In my meditations I have felt lost in its lengths and breadths. My joy is great in my theme, and yet I am conscious of a pressure upon my brain and heart, for I am as a little child wandering among the stars. I stumble among sublimities, I sink amid glories. I can only point with my finger to that which I see, but cannot describe. May the Holy Spirit himself take of the things of Christ and show them unto you.

In his own observations and experience of seeing the beauty of Jesus and the things of Jesus, Octavious Winslow wrote:

Jesus is the most lovely, winning, wondrous object upon which the intelligent eye ever rested. Trace the points of attraction which meet in Jesus, and marvel not that when the eye fixes on them, the heart is irresistibly won, the soul is instantly dissolved, and the believer prostrates himself at the foot of the cross in the profoundest sense of his vileness before God. All loveliness, all excellence, all glory meet and center in Jesus the Crucified. He is the most wonderful, as He is the most beauteous and attractive being in the universe. All the infinite perfection of absolute Deity, all the finite excellence of impeccable humanity, concentrate in Christ.

Oh brothers and sisters. I feel like a guide on a sightseeing trip to Yosemite who knows that since people are longing to enjoy beauty, so I take them to Yosemite Falls. Once I get there I urge them to check it out, take it all in, and enjoy it.

That is why I write to you today and enthusiastically shout,

Oh Christian look up at the sky, look at nature and beauty all around you, open up the scripture and see the self-authenticating beauty of Jesus Christ. Until our hearts are freed from the blinding effects of sin,spiritual darkness, and self centered narcissism it is our duty to "Set our minds on things above, not on things of this earth" (Colossians 3:1)

If you would do this and look and reflect and enjoy the beauty of God you will experience what Jonathan Edwards so profoundly asserts:

“The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean."

Entranced by and enjoying God's beauty,
Pastor Bill