“Can't Put God in a Box” – FBC Morning Light (5/31/2024)

Well, good Friday morning to you, coming up on the weekend and looking forward to gathering together on the Lord's Day to worship and serve Him, having the Lord's Supper this Sunday for Sunday of June, and boy, we're getting to the halfway point in the year, aren't we?

But month of May is about over, Sunday we'll be gathering to worship the Lord and commemorate the Lord's table. But today, again, I'm not up with you on the Bible reading plan today, I'm still in Song of Solomon, and I wanted to point out a feature, a key feature of chapter 6 and the first part of chapter 7, and that is the idea of beauty.

Beauty in Song of Solomon 6–7

And the groom is looking at his bride and he says, Wow, you're beautiful, you're beautiful. So, verse 4 of chapter 6, he says, Oh my love, you are as beautiful as Terzah, lovely as Jerusalem. And at the beginning of verse 7, he says, How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O prince's daughter.

Clearly, and in between there, there's a whole bunch of other stuff he's going to talk about that is, to him, so beautiful. But what this tends to do is maybe make some Christians a little uncomfortable.

I mean, should we really talk about the body as being beautiful? Isn't that a little bit idolatrous, you know? Like, doesn't that kind of lead someone to lustful thoughts and all that kind of thing? Well, I want us to have a corrective view regarding this.

This is the Bible. This is God's Word. And the groom is speaking under the inspiration of the Bible, I mean, the author of the poem, Solomon. And he's putting words into the mouth of this groom that are supposed to, in a big-picture way, image the relationship between Christ and his Church.

This is what every good marriage is to do. And the groom looks at his bride, and he's looking at her physically, and says to her, You are absolutely beautiful. And so here's the corrective idea, and it's not mine, it comes from Doug O'Donnell again.

He says, All of creation, especially the beauty of the human body, points to the beauty of the Lord, our Creator. So let me say that again. All of creation, especially the beauty of the human body, points to the beauty of the Lord, our Creator.

Are we to worship the body? Absolutely not. But the beauty in the human body that we see in our spouses is to point us to the worship of our God. Now, when it comes to beauty in the Bible, there's a little bit of a tension, isn't there?

Because on the one hand, the Bible warns about it. It warns about the demise of beauty. So, for example, Proverbs 31, verse 30 says, Beauty is passing. It fades away. I'm reminded of a church I served at many, many years ago.

I was an assistant pastor, and I'd just gotten there. I hadn't been there long. And I don't know why this one particular church member came up in conversation. I think it was a woman who was having some challenges with her young person who was in a youth group.

And the pastor mentioned to me that the mother had actually, in her younger days, won a beauty pageant, a major beauty pageant. And his comment was this. He said, She won a beauty pageant when she was younger, and you can still see some remnants of why.

Okay?

So now she was probably in her mid to late 40s, and he was expressing the fact that the beauty that is there now is not the same beauty of when she was 20 or 21 and won the beauty contest. Beauty is passing away.

The Bible warns about the demise of beauty, but it also warns about the danger of beauty. So Proverbs 6 .25 says, Do not lust after the evil woman's beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelids.

I find that interesting because in Solomon 6 .5, the groom is smitten by the eyes of his bride. He says, Turn your eyes away from me, for they have overcome me. So the Bible warns about beauty, but it also makes note of it, and does so in a context of favorability.

So, for example, Sarah is spoken of in Genesis 12 .11, the bride of Abraham, as a woman beautiful in appearance. She was very beautiful, Genesis 12 tells us. Isaac's wife Rebecca is spoken of as being very beautiful in Genesis 24 .16.

And there are other women in the Old Testament specifically mentioned as being beautiful. Rachel, Abigail, Tamar, Esther, the daughters of Job. So the conclusion of the matter is this, and I share this from O'Donnell again.

He says, Biblically speaking, beauty is like a cut rose. It's worth beholding, even though you know it's withering away. It's worth beholding, even though its thorns can prick. It's worth beholding because the flower's beauty in that moment, here's the point, points to the beauty not of Mother Nature, but of Father God.

The Groom’s Full-Body View and Sensory Imagery

So, in the context here, in Song of Solomon chapter 6, there are some observations we can make regarding beauty in this passage. The word itself occurs four times. It occurs in verse 4 of chapter 6, also in verse 10, when he says, Who is she who looks forth as the morning fair or beautiful as the moon?

In chapter 7, verse 1, how beautiful are your feet? And then again in verse 6, how beautiful and how pleasant you are, O love. So this is the word that the groom uses to describe his bride. And there are three observations that O'Donnell helps us see.

One of them is that the groom gives a full body view. Now, that's his prerogative. She's his bride. Only he has the right to such a view. But as he views her, he praises everything about her from head to toe.

Her feet, her thighs, her navel, her waist, her breasts, her neck, her eyes, her nose, her head, her hair. You can read it in chapter 7, verses 1 to 7. But he places special emphasis on her face in chapter 6, verses 5 through 7, and in chapter 7, verses 4 and 5.

Why? Well, because the face is the most distinctive feature about you, and it represents your whole personality. So the groom gives a full body view. Second thing we can observe is that the groom's imagery is sensory and symbolic.

I mentioned something of this the other day, where in chapter 7, verse 4, for example, he says, your nose is like the Tower of Lebanon. What he's not saying here is that, man, you got a Pinocchio nose.

That's not what he's saying. To an Israelite, the Tower of Lebanon was a symbol of excellence. It was a recognized standard of value. So he's saying that your nose is a symbol of excellence. It's excellent.

Verse 1, he speaks of her thighs as being like jewels, perfectly cut and shaped. In verse 2, he speaks of her waist or belly as a heap of wheat set about with lilies. What he's talking about there is that she's got an hourglass figure.

And in verse 5, he says, your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel was a mountain noted for its striking majestic beauty. And the third observation is simply the groom's point, and that is his bride is unique and awesome.

Unique and awesome. As he says in verse 8 and 9, there are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number, but my dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only one of her mother, the favorite of the one who bore her.

She is the grandest. She is the grandest. And it seems everybody agrees. And he's overwhelmed with her beauty. He's overwhelmed with her beauty. And what should all this do? It should point us to the Creator, to our Creator.

Christ’s Body, Isaiah’s Prophecies, and Beauty That Points to God

Why? Because humans are the pinnacle of God's creation. Only humans are made, soul and body, in the image of God. And furthermore, what did God become to redeem us? He became man. And he became man in a specifically prepared body.

Remember Hebrews 10 .5? It says, therefore, when he came into the world, he said, Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. And God, who became flesh, took on a body.

He became beautiful to make beautiful. Let me explain by quoting O'Donnell. He says, According to Isaiah. He was so beautiful and glorious, according to Isaiah 4 .2, upon that tree. Behold the king in his beauty, Isaiah 33 .17.

How great is his beauty, Zechariah 9 .17. A marred beauty that has made many marred sinners beautiful through faith in him. Beauty should point us to our beautiful Savior, and to our glorious, majestic creator.

Our Father and our God, I pray that it would be to you, to whom we look, as most beautiful and most glorious. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, listen, have a good rest of your Friday, and a wonderful weekend.

Trust the Lord to bless you in it.

Good day.