God Is Beautiful
For many years (a phrase which seems to introduce almost everything I say or write these days), I have thought about and preached on the subject of the beauty of God. I have never heard anyone teach on the subject, but I did through the decades come across two written sermons on the topic, “The Beauty of the Lord” by J. D. Jones and “Are There Shortcuts to the Beauty of Holiness?” (the short answer is “No!”) by A. W. Tozer. More recently, I read a review of a scholarly article about the American preacher Jonathan Edwards (of “sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” fame) that mentioned in passing that the beauty of God was one of the great themes in his preaching. I was thus encouraged that I have not headed off on an unprofitable tangent. In simple terms, beauty is that which attracts, causes a favorable interest, and creates an affinity. Such real, eternal beauty is found in our God. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
As I wrote yesterday, logic is a mighty means God uses to fulfill John 6:44: “No man can come to Me, except the Father, which hath sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” We considered the cosmological argument (with elements of the teleological argument added in when we discussed design). The Bible teaches that God is Creator; the evolutionary hypothesis asserts otherwise. Four questions leap to my mind about evolution. First, where did the pre-existing material necessary for life come from? Second, what was the mechanism for inorganic (non-living) material to become organic (living)? Third, what was the mechanism for life to become more complex, especially given the fact that genetically-diverse material is decreasing in availability? (As an aside on this last question, if current trends hold, red hair in humans will vanish within the next two hundred years.) Fourth, given irreducible complexity at the sub-cellular level, how can anything other than a completed creation be possible? This last question is so important that I will deal with it separately on Monday. The words of Jesus from John 8:31-32 are applicable to this discussion: “If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” We are set free by the beautiful truth of God, including the fact of God as Creator. No opposing view is logical, nor is it beautiful.