Mike Bickle emphasizes the profound beauty of the bride, representing the people of God, as depicted in the Song of Solomon. He explains that God sees His people as beautiful and beloved, regardless of their flaws, and that this beauty is rooted in His grace and love. Bickle encourages believers to embrace their identity as beautiful in God's eyes and to reject the lies of the enemy that suggest otherwise. He highlights the transformative power of recognizing one's beauty in Christ, which leads to a deeper relationship with God and a more fulfilling life. Ultimately, he reassures that this beauty is eternal and will be fully realized in the resurrection.

Summer on the Song of Solomon and I want to talk about the beauty of the bride or the beauty of the people of God and In the Song of Solomon, you can read this book for those that are just joining us two different ways Both of them are biblical and right. It's a story of the beauty of married love. It's a natural love story It's a love soul That magnifies the beauty of married love and it's a wonderful interpretation to take it at face value This poem but the other way is to interpret this as King Jesus Speaking to his bride the body of Christ This is one of the most powerful declarations That the Holy Spirit makes in the life of a believer You don't have to use this exact language. There's a lot of New Testament language For this what this poem how it conveys God's heart But let's look at it Song of Solomon chapter 1 verse 15 I Can't imagine the fullness of what this declaration really means I mean it is one of the most powerful things in my life when I interact with the Lord according to this truth He says in verse 15 Just imagine the declaration from the throne of God by the Spirit over you behold pay attention Good news behold Announcement from heaven behold You are beautiful in the eyes of God Behold You are the one I love that's what it means when he says you are fair. You are beautiful my love Verse 15 he declares it again Pay attention behold announcement You are beautiful in the eyes of God then in chapter 4 This declaration breaks out again, and again, I imagine the throne and the Majesty of God and the glory of King Jesus Saying if you knew how I saw you You would never be the same You would see yourself differently You would live differently you would feel differently if you could see what I see When I look at you through the lens of the grace of God He says it again behold You are fair and most Translations English translations will put the word beautiful the King James uses the word fair I prefer the word beautiful. I asked my wife once do you want me to call you fair or? beautiful Well she answered it real clear okay, she gave me an option I won't go in there okay verse 7 Verse 7 it goes up a notch you are all together beautiful This is the Lord seeing the end from the beginning. He sees the end of the finished product You are my love you are the one I love There's no spot in you. That's where this thing is going Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4 said he predestined us That we would be Perfected in love is what it means at the end of the day that his people those that say yes They would end up he predestined it to be mature in love and in holiness, which is the same thing Well these two foundational truths You want to declare them over your own life and over those that you love? Again, I can't imagine any declaration more powerful More significant in my own personal growth in the Lord than this one right here though You might use different Bible verses into different terminology these two truths overlap But they are yet. They have a distinct dimension to each one of them. They're different facets of one diamond. I like to say First that the people of God They are beautiful to him now not just in the resurrection But the very seeds of that beauty are in us right now the moment We said yes to him in the grace of God He gave us beauty for ashes. We don't see it like he sees it but we take his word at face value and We say what he says The most natural thing to do is to say what the devil says We're losers we're failures nothing matters our life is wasted we're forgotten The Lord says no say what I say You're beautiful what you do matters to me. I esteem it. It moves me your life is important You're dear to me. You're not forgotten. I've written you on the palms of my hands The second he says you are the one I love or he calls her a her my love. He has great affection He delights in the relationship Paragraph C God created the human spirit with deep longings. He put various longings in us I And Deborah Hebrew one of our main leaders here We wrote a book together called the seven longings of the heart and we identified seven longings that God put in us by his creative design and these are longings that We'll never be able to repent of we can repent of seeking to fulfill them in a wrong way But these are longings God put into us that would draw us near to him And one of the longings that he put into us is the longing for beauty the longing to be beautiful the beautiful God Created you with a longing to be beautiful. You can't ever get free of that longing Now we repent of seeking to fulfill it in a wrong way Because the enemy wants to exploit that longing and destroy our lives with it The enemy has a number of very dark insidious strategies To take that longing in our heart and to twist it so he breaks our life By us pursuing the longing to be beautiful in a way that's outside of the will of God Now this longing to be beautiful Now guys, we don't really like the word beautiful. We kind of like cool or something, but it's the same thing It's that longing to have Beauty to have fullness of that which is attractive Now the glorious thing is that longing is going to be answered It's going to be answered fully and it's going to be answered forever. This is such good news That's why behold You are beautiful. The Spirit of the Lord is saying to people in the grace of God paragraph D one of the primary descriptions of Salvation and redemption of how it's manifest Describing the ministry of Jesus the glory of the grace of God Isaiah 61 verse 3 To console those that mourn to give them beauty for ashes One of the primary things on God's heart in redemption Was to take the ash heap of our broken lives He goes I want your ashes and I'm gonna give you my beauty Now the ashes are all that's left When our passions have burned For wrong things and our life has been broken and burned out. All we have is ashes We have nothing to show many people have nothing to show For those earlier years of their life or for decades of their life nothing they Engaged in passions that burned them out and broke their lives and all they have is ashes. Nobody wants them They don't want themselves. They despise themselves and the Lord comes along with Indescribable good news because I want your ashes Nobody wants my ashes. He goes I want them and I'll give you beauty the very beauty he possesses is The beauty he imparts and when he imparts beauty, it's not just an external attractiveness though. He does that Beloved you will have an external beauty For billions and billions of years that you nor I can even begin To imagine the height of it When he imparts this beauty to us He's imparting to us that which is valuable that which is beautiful to him that which he esteems That's what she values and beloved that beauty began On the day that you were born again. You were three years old or 80 years old the beauty He gave you and he wants your ashes David spoke of this truth and psalm 149 He says let me tell you how the Lord feels towards his people. Number one. He has pleasure in relating with them David I call him the theologian of the beauty of God the theologian of God's emotions David came along says let me tell you what. I know that you don't know God actually delights. He has pleasure in the relationship Even in your weakness not just when you're perfect in the resurrection He actually in delights in the relationship while we're growing. That's a remarkable truth That one truth set my life on a whole different pathway so many years ago When it began to dawn on me just a little bit God actually Enjoys and delights in relating with me even in my immaturity and brokenness He delights in the relationship throughout the process of growing. He disagrees with various things I've done but he delights in the relationship itself But it's not only he delights in us He finds pleasure in relating to us He will beautify your life with salvation Beloved the very work of the Spirit there's things you're doing and there's decisions you made You don't necessarily remember you don't think about them that much because they were maybe some years ago They were beautiful to God And he says I'll never forget them the seeds of the beauty of even choices. You've made I will remember forever We forget them and we don't esteem them as that big a deal He says it's part of me beautifying you with salvation Paragraph E Psalm 90 90. This is the prayer of Moses Moses wrote Psalm 90 He prayed Let the beauty the Lord be on us Wow, what a statement Now that prayer is a prayer you can pray for your life even in this age That Lord let the beauty of the Lord let the processes the decisions My cooperation with you my relationship with you result in things that enhance Beauty being manifest in my life It's a prayer that the Lord would touch us and we would respond to the grace of God in a way Where his beauty will enhance our life? Now our life can be enhanced in beauty externally in part in a measure in this age But the primary enhancement of beauty is internal But it's eat, but it's not just internal. It's eternal The seeds of it are forever and God sees them now and he relates to us in Light of the beauty that we overlook or we don't esteem because the devil lies to us Beloved I love this verse I say it so much that when you give somebody a cup of cold water in his name He remembers that Matthew chapter 10 It moves him it's beautiful to him we think well, there's nothing he goes nothing to you, but it is to me And that's part of the beauty of the Lord even being worked into our life now in ways. We don't fully perceive But it's also let us see What God sees now in our life and let us see what God? sees in our life in the resurrection because when we see what he sees related to beauty it Changes the way we feel about ourselves it changes the way we process our life I Have paragraph F There's a physical beauty There's a spiritual beauty There's a temporal beauty There's an eternal beauty There's an emotional beauty. There's the beauty of your works and your deeds again the cup of cold water You never remember given to somebody years ago He says I'll never forget it ever and I remember it when I look at you I see the value of the small things you do when you obey me Now this is a new idea to some people or maybe they never think about it. I think about it a lot You will possess Incredible beauty physical beauty Forever and ever I know you're pretty cool right now, but you're really if he's gonna go up Not a notch or two it's gonna go way up and you are gonna get the shock of your life When you look in a mirror in the age to come Are there mirrors up there? Yes, there are mirrors up there because the sea of glass is like crystal when we come before the Lord and worship and we see the Reflection of the Lord on that massive sea of glass that we look down go. Oh my goodness. Did he do a good job? And it will be to the glory of his own grace The beauty he has worked into you in this age and it has and it's carried over He doesn't forget it, but he magnifies it in the age to come Now paragraph G this isn't my point tonight, but I think it's worth mentioning That some of the beauty touches is physical. I mean there is a gift of physical beauty That's in this age But I tell you the enemy is always standing at the door to corrupt that at every angle it is a It is glorious and dangerous but I want to mention the glory but the enemy is always wanting to twist it and Pervert it and capture the person even through the net of their own duty You know, you know, I've met a few people a few ladies That were won awards in the beauty queen world. I've met a few of them over the years and One thing that struck me How beautiful they were is that how fearful they were everyone? I've met several of them how fearful they were of losing their beauty. They couldn't even enjoy their beauty They were absolutely captured in a snare of fear and anxiety about losing it It's like well just enjoy it for a few years like and they all I do I do glory to God But I mean believers even they just couldn't get out of that vortex. They were caught in I believe you can't get out of it But don't imagine that the enemy's not coming after this issue the longing and even the external possession of Beauty, it's a glorious thing, but I tell you it is a thing. The enemy is targeted but even in our life There's a physical beauty that's even enhanced when you look at person that has a free spirit and a Happy heart because God's touched them. It literally impacts the way they look their whole countenance change So there's a dimension of that and that's not a small thing I've seen people with the joy of God. I don't mean just they're just bouncing around. You know laughing all the time I mean something more than that. They have this free spirit and this Interaction with God in this lively way with God and I tell you they're they are Clearly more beautiful their countenance and to behold them and it's a wonderful thing that even happens even in this age Now paragraph H We don't merely want to see beauty Meaning I've been talking the last couple weeks on seeing the beauty of the Lord I mean that's ultimate to see his beauty I've talked several weeks on Friday night as well as on Sunday morning as well on that theme But we want to do more than see beauty. We want to be united with it We want to be immersed in it. We want to be swallowed up in the beauty not just a spectator of it Which is awesome But where we want to be a participant Being caught up and clothed in it because that's what God's ordained for our life And we want to rejoice in the seeds of God's beauty working in our life now We want to reject consistently radically Consistently the lies the enemy is trying to light everyone Telling you again. Your life is wasted Telling you again that you're you're ugly you have lost it There's nothing meaningful. Nobody cares and the Lord says no. No, don't go there. Say what I say about you let's go down to Paragraph I our heart chases hard after beauty because we're built that way We're built that way. But the thing I'm highlighting here Because we're created that way by God to long to be beautiful We feel unsettled We feel unhappy those more than that. We feel anguish When we don't feel beautiful if we feel ugly, I'll just say it kind of in a like a role way it's nicer to say when we don't feel beautiful, but Most human beings struggle with that feeling. I mean most in the whole earth Even some of those physically beautiful people they feel ugly again. That's part of the enemy's attack. They can't see what God sees Now this isn't something that is Particularly male or female it's both I grew up in A home with five sisters. Can you imagine how blessed that is that five sisters? Five quasi moms no, no, no, we're not going there and they're all involved in our ministry and our spiritual family here and it's glorious But Anyway, I would go home and we were There were seven kids in nine years. So we're all kind of right the same ages one after the other I'd go home there's always a whole group of girls in our house and I tell you one thing I used to always wonder they would get ready to go out They'd fix their hair a hundred times They would go and say what do you think they'd go and work on her 20 more minutes it's exactly the same They say yeah, and then a minute later go fix it again It changed eight or nine times from blue to blue to blue to blue Now I'm not picking on girls I just saw so much of it because guys are exactly the same way guys are exactly the same way It's human to be that way to be really captured with it In a way again the enemy wants to take this longing and destroy us, but the Lord wants to Bring the fullness of what he's after through this long. He wants us to believe what his word says about it To take our information from his mouth and not from the enemy's mouth and to live in that trajectory Because we believe what the Word of God says I'm gonna talk to the young ladies here. Just one short little paragraph The Lord is the only one Who can tell us who we are well? I'm say this to men and women this part, and why we're beautiful This is to everybody But I think of young ladies in our culture and some of them think they're only beautiful if a man tells them they're beautiful and And Normally when they hear it from a man, it's through a sexualized paradigm. There's a sexualized dimension to it not always but many times and our culture has taught a woman you're beautiful when a man tells you you're beautiful and that is That is a horrible paralyzing lie a very destructive lie You're beautiful men and women. I'm talking male and female because God says you are Because God defines it Because he's the only one qualified To define what beauty is Not only because he is the ultimate beauty and he's the giver of beauty. He lives in eternity so he's the only one who grasped what beauty really is and we want to take our We want to take our definitions from him. We don't want to have a sexualized Paradigm of what beauty is and it's not just women that are Caught in that men are as well But I'm just thinking of the culture. The enemy is so after the young ladies in our culture Because the Lord's calling upon them. I believe that when I look back at church history, I believe that women devoted women have had the most Incredible impact in church history far more than men men write the history books That's why they get all the stories all the big headlines But when we look back Church history we are going to be Really amazed at how women have carried So many things for so many generations in the kingdom and the enemy says I'm gonna destroy you I'm gonna absolutely wipe you out and I got a strategy to do it and we're gonna use the Word of God to expose that Strategy and to move in the opposite spirit of what the enemy wants How blessed I have here in paragraph J here is the person male or female who knows Who knows their true beauty? They know that it's eternal beloved when you know, it's eternal You know It's sure to come Meaning the seeds of beauty that are in you right now that you can't even see By the acts that you do the mindset you have the choices you make that God calls beautiful You can't really see those and we're only trusting that the Word of God is true because God calls it beautiful say, okay We're gonna see the fullness of that but not only that Beloved you're gonna dwell in Indescribable beauty for billions and billions and billions and billions of years you are It is who you are It's how God made you and the enemy wants to he wants to absolutely destroy you in the moments We have in this age our 70 year internship in this age He wants to destroy us So we never ever live in the reality and the joy of how he sees us and how everyone will see us in just a minute We what I mean by just a minute David said his 70 years on the earth was a moment. It was a vapor It was a minute of time when he looked back over it But if you know if you have that anchor in your heart, like the beautiful God has given me beauty for ashes I got it made, you know I don't have to get caught up in the narrative of our culture and get caught into the net and Paralyzed and captured and ensnared by so many lies related to my longing to be beautiful top of page two Well in the Song of Solomon and I'm just gonna barely mention this It mentions the fragrance that emanates out of the bride in The eyes of the king which is the bridegroom King which spiritually the spiritual interpretation of this love song is it's Jesus Well, it begins Paul makes it clear. It's the very fragrance that Christ Possesses eternally it's his fragrance that he puts in us that he sees that his father sees and It's this fragrance That isn't just in us in the resurrection It's in us now and one of the verses and there's quite a few verses on it in here in the Song of Solomon But that's not my point to do a whole study on fragrance. Maybe we'll do one of the sessions on that It's a wonderful truth But here she says while I sit at the king's table his spikenard his perfume his fragrance His fragrance or the fragrance of my worship it emanates before him it rises before him This is one of the seeds of beauty beloved when you worship tonight You go. Well, you know, I didn't feel that much and you think because you don't feel much Some of you felt a lot tonight, but I'm saying there's always a few times I feel much that other night, whatever Because you don't feel something you think God doesn't feel something. I got good news for you When you don't feel something doesn't mean God doesn't feel it We could lift the veil and you could see what the angel saw when you worship tonight fragrance I Mean, it's in seed form, but it's real to God it emanates out of your spirit. It's real. It's not poetic or imaginary It's real I want to enjoy what the Lord enjoys Someone says well, how was the worship service tonight? I go. I don't care what time what meeting you pick? It's amazing The fragrance of Jesus emanated out of my spirit because I said to God I love you I Set it off key. I set it out of tune The people around me put earplugs in their ears, but it was fragrant It's not about how good the band is. I love the good band We got lots of great bands and I love a good worship team, but beloved there's a fragrance Emanating out of you to God in the presence of angels Unrelated to the songs that were sang or the music style Let's go to a Roman numeral three Well in her journey She begins I call this eight chapter love song I call it the progression of holy passion in a believer's life the way that I interpret the song spiritually She begins a journey and it's a progression Chapter one. She's immature and it starts chapter two She's had some challenges chapter three some more challenges and one by one She goes through the seasons and in chapter eight. She's in full maturity There's different ways to read this love song, but I see it as one progression of a believer's life starting sincere and immature but sincere starts in chapter 1 verse 5 and She ends up in the full maturity in chapter 8 Now that's interesting to you. I got a lot of teachings on this on the website You can follow it rate it if you want and there's lots of books out there in the market on it as well But here's my point She begins her journey with this confession very Significant confession really important. She goes I'm dark in my heart But I'm lovely to God what an incredible statement. I'm dark in my heart But I know I'm lovely to God the enemy Will do just about anything to keep that confession out of your lips Most people are Captured by their failure, and that's the way they read their life that's how they view that God sees them only through their failure and Their their life is Weighed down with the spirit of condemnation. They're very sincere But they failure failure. I don't pray like I said I didn't obey like I said I don't follow through I don't serve I don't attend to him. Like I said, I don't do anything. Like I said, I'm a failure. I'm a mess I'm a wreck and the Lord says yeah, you do have a dark heart But that's not the whole truth about you Look at you all the way through you're saying Oh God. I love you. I want to be yours. He goes that's beautiful to me Hello, that's nothing. That means nothing goes It ought to mean a lot to you because I'm the sovereign king and it means a lot to me Beloved I remember when in my early days in the Lord when I got a hold of this truth that In my immaturity, but sincere a sincere believer, but immature Failing stumbling not following through on a number of things like I wanted to I'd read the missionary books You know a 17 18 19 our youth group God was all these mysterious books and we all wanted to be the most anointed evangelist and go to some faraway country and die That was kind of our goal to go get killed somewhere and they'd write a book about us or something We don't we never really figured it out. We just wanted to go do it that kind of stuff We all I read lots of them man, I mean I was on fire for the Lord 17 18 19 I wanted to go But I could the biggest challenge was so many things. I didn't follow through on with the Lord I look at this area that I go. Oh Lord, I love you. I really do love you I I don't like prayer. I don't like talking to you. Don't take don't be offended. God. I really love you. I just don't like talking to you I don't like reading the bible. I love you. I just don't like you talking to me I really love your leadership, but I don't totally like holiness. I like these a couple of these other areas a little better But I love you and I meant it and it was true Yeah, I did love him And he broke through in my young heart of those early days and this was the transforming moment When he let me know He delights in me. I wrote a book many years ago called passion for jesus where I tell the story Where it because passion for jesus the real That's the title of the book But the real title of the book is jesus's passion for you even in your weakness and when I figured out he liked me In my weakness. It was like wow Wow, that changes everything That means I run to him and open my heart instead of run from him and try to hide and make excuses and Try to get cleaned up before I actually enjoyed him Now i'm i'm really into saying yes to his leadership as a sincere believer when I said and I said a lot Over the years. I did lots of things that I wish I would not have done And I but if you call it sin Don't make up some find some bible verse where you twist it call it sin Repent of it declare war on it and just start receiving god's enjoyment of your life and jump right back in the relationship Wholehearted you might even do it again tomorrow. You say wait, this isn't a game lord. I'm really against this My flesh is weak, but I really love you beloved. It's real You're dark But you're lovely paragraph c God's I remember uh Reading this. Oh, I loved it. Matthew 26 when I saw this that before peter denied the lord Well, all of them denied the lord the apostles He said every one of you will stumble tonight But here's what he told him right here in this same passage. We are all going to stumble tonight I mean jesus's closest Friends they all but you know ran away He says but I want you to tell I want you to know this Your spirit is willing But your flesh is weak and what peter heard is Peter looked at jesus says i'm not gonna deny you and he says lord says he actually are No No, you don't get it. Jesus. I know I know you're really something special, but you don't get it You don't get how committed I am to you The lord says well peter. You don't really get how committed I am to you And you have more confidence in your commitment to me But you need more confidence in my commitment to you That's what's going to save you peter is your commit your confidence that i'm committed to you I know you're committed to me, but you got weak flesh He didn't really pay much attention that then when he stumbled he was so overwhelmed by his weak flesh But he lost the first part of the sentence the lord said to him, but peter you got a willing spirit There's a yes in your spirit. It's real Yeah, you are going to stumble but the yes isn't false because you stumble you really do love me the yes your spirit is willing paragraph e We grow And our confidence with god we grow. I mean we grow spiritually when we have confidence The enemy does not want you to have confidence That god delights in you that he sees beauty in you that he's ordained fullness of beauty for you He doesn't want you to see this the enemy because he wants you Condemned accused running away hiding from god like adam did when he said he went under the fig tree, you know Trying to figure it out, you know trying to hide under his own fig his own religious fig tree, so to speak Many believers paragraph e they only see their sin. They love jesus. They see their sin. They don't see their love They go. I know I love you, but that doesn't really matter I tell you this i've learned this over the years as a pastor been a pastor 40 years If a believer feels dirty, they'll live dirty And they come before god and say i'm a failure. I'm a hypocrite. I'm a fake anyway They will live dirty if they feel dirty in god's presence But they'll come by the truth of the word Take what god says Reject what the devil says and feel loved even in their weakness. I am dark In my heart, but i'm beautiful to god beloved He'll run to him not from him malachi chapter 3 He says they're mine He's talking about you Talk about his people. They're mine And on that day I'll make them my treasure. I'll make them jewels What a statement That one day he's going to openly manifest the diamond that you are Again the enemy tells you You're average you're mediocre On a good day And you're a failure on a usual day That's his storyline. It's so effective. He didn't have to change it He gets the most brilliant people the most dedicated people and that story worked so well He goes, why should we change it? It's like wiping out so much of the body of christ over the over centuries I have good news for you You're his You're his He's not just yours. Not just that you committed to him You're his he says you belong to me And i'm gonna make you a jewel i'm gonna manifest you as a diamond as a treasure That's what I love so much about the group we prayed for Who turned the hearts of the children This malachi 4 6 the turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children. It's the believers who see jewels when they see children They see what god sees I tell you when the enemy comes and says give up give in Tell the enemy it is written I am his And i'm a jewel. I'm a treasure to him. He's not just a treasure to me. I'm a treasure to him Top of page three Well, you say how could this be? I mean, come on How people say this and I understand it Really? I don't really yes, really really. Yes, it's true How could? I have god's beauty. How could he possibly see beauty in me? Well, I have four reasons not that there's not a few more But i'll give you four to start with number one god's personality He's so kind He is the kindest one you will ever know he is the embodiment of kindness He sees us through his generosity I mean if I evaluated me i'd be in trouble If I gave myself a full evaluation i'd go Tell the kid to start start over. I mean no way lord looks at my life through the grace of god through his generosity Beloved beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and the beholder is god and he's a beautiful god and he sees beauty when he sees you He sees you through the grace of god paragraph b paragraph b Through the gift of righteousness He gives you the gift of righteousness And he sees you through the beauty of the lord jesus The day you said yes to him The day you said yes to him. He gave you his own righteousness as a free gift And look what he said in isaiah 61 That righteousness that robe Is as beautiful as the garments a bride puts on herself on her wedding day Because you think of a bride adorning herself in the most beautiful way that she could within her means Her wedding day is she uses all of her all of her resource To beautify herself the best she can and the scripture says here That that robe of righteousness The lord has adorned you In the same intensity and the focus and the fullness that a bride adorns herself on a wedding day That's how beautiful the gift is The gift of righteousness is that he gives to you he sees Paragraph c the yes in your spirit. He sees the willing spirit Again, we see our dark heart. We see our failure. He sees even our intention Our intentions matter to him The fact you're crying out god, I want to know you I want to go forward. I don't want to be like this I want he says that I love that. That's beautiful to me. Look what it says here first peter It's an incorruptible beauty what an amazing phrase The beauty Of the yes in your spirit And that yes is eventually walk out. It takes a while sometimes for the yes In our spirit the intention to become full follow through But I tell you the beauty starts with the yes, and the beauty is magnified in the follow-through But look what peter calls it. Well, it's the lord calling it Incorruptible beauty It's beauty that time can't erase It's beauty. The grave can't erase It's beauty that weakness in your life can't cancel out there's weakness in our life, but it can't cancel out the Incorruptible beauty of when you say yes, and then when it's magnified when you follow through fully And look what peter says it's very precious to god not just in the resurrection. It's precious to god now Oh, I love this verse because natural beauty Is corrupted It's corruptible meaning you can have beauty at one age and then eventually when you get to be 120 You don't have the same beauty you had when you were 20 It says that beauty physical beauty is lost in those later years But this beauty that god gives no time can cancel it out Nothing can even failure in another part of your life that you're working through doesn't cancel out the beauty. It's incorruptible paragraph d God sees this as beautiful because of our eternal destiny See god doesn't only see you as 20 years old or 50 years old God sees you as a billion and 20 and a billion and 50. He takes a step back He sees you from the end He sees the beginning. I mean he sees the end from the very beginning. He knows where you're gonna be He already knows For billions and billions and billions and billions of years you're gonna walk in perfect love And he looks at you just like a parent looks at the child the two to three year old The 10 or 12 year old acting in this way verse that way But the parent says oh I already can see where this is going in the positive sense I'm, not that short-sighted and I can see they're not going to always be doing this or that The lord looks at you do you know that 99.99999999999999999999 percent of your life. You're going to walk in perfect love and righteousness billions of years and god looks at you and he says I'm a generous God, I'm a beautiful god. I I see with generosity I see you through the gift of righteousness That's as beautiful as a bride on her wedding day. I see the yes in your spirit and I see your destiny 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% 99% you walk in perfect beauty. I get it and he relates to us Through the grid of beauty right now My love this this reality has radically shifted my life over the years of where I would have been. I enjoy this so much. I wanna enjoy it more. I wanna see it more. I wanna live in it more consistently, but I see it a lot more than I did years ago. And I go, oh, I love this truth. I love this. Jesus, I love the way you love me. I love the way that you made me. I love your plans for me. I love me. I love the whole thing. No, it's a great way to live. It's called loving who God made you in the grace of God. We don't, we deny ourselves and we hate our own lives in as much as our lives are out of the will of God. That's the part we deny. But we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We love who we are in the grace of God. And we enjoy the way God enjoys us. I'd rather be me than anyone. I see so many weaknesses in my life, but I get the big story of who I am to him. And it's the same with you. Beloved, you are the best you imaginable. And you are the only one that can give him all of your love. Nobody else can give him all of your love. And he wants your heart, makes your life so powerful. So you're beautiful for those four reasons, if not more. Let's look at Roman number five. Just take a minute on this. I mean, we could go on and on and on. I love this. It's the beauty of the resurrection because it is the beauty you will have externally for billions and billions and billions of years. So we, why do we not think about this very much? Why are we so focused on how we're gonna look in the next three to five years, the next three to five weeks, and we don't think of how we're gonna live and look the next billions of years. And it really matters because if we can only see a glimmer of a little bit of beauty now and we get frustrated by it, and then if we get it, then we get fearful we're gonna lose it. That's all we can see. We're just in this tailspin going downward, trying to get out of this vortex sucking us down. I want beauty, but I can't get it, and if I get it, I can't keep it, and it's gonna be gone in a minute, and all my, and the Lord says, wait, wait, wait, wait. Do you know who you are? Do you know the beauty in you now? Do you know the beauty you're gonna have billions of years? Do you get the storyline of your life? He says in Philippians three, Paul says that he's gonna transform our lowly body. I don't care how gifted your body is, how beautiful it is, how strong it is. It's lowly and it's weak, and all of its virtues will be gone, its strengths, in one day. Unless you are alive when the Lord appears and you're caught up to meet the Lord in the air, that's a different story for another day, okay. You're gonna be conformed to his glorious body. Put the word instead of glorious, put the word beautiful, because glory and beauty are oftentimes interchangeable concepts in the Scripture, not every time, but many times. You will be conformed to his beautiful body. Paragraph B. John said the same thing. When you see him, you'll be like him. God the Father designed a custom-made body for Jesus. I mean, here's God the Father. Here's the Son in heaven before the incarnation. Son, you're gonna become a man, okay. Okay, what am I gonna look like? Father, I'm trusting you with this. What am I gonna look like? He goes, well, Isaiah 52, 53, it says, he didn't have any comeliness or beauty that made him stick out. He looked like a common man. He didn't have beauty where he stuck out in a crowd. You wouldn't have noticed him in a group. He goes, that's the front end, 33 years. You'll have beauty that nobody even recognizes, okay. And that's how I'm designing the human race. Most of the human race, they don't have any external beauty that most people recognize, and you're gonna be like that, but I've designed a body for you. That's what it says in Hebrews. God designed a body, prepared one for him. He goes, what's it look like, Father? He goes, you're a human body. It's gonna be raised from the dead. He goes, oh, you're really gonna like it. I'm making up this conversation, of course. Well, like what? Like, oh, well, son, you're gonna like it. You'll be common for 33 years. You're not gonna stick out at all. You're gonna blend the crowd. No one's gonna look a second look at you, but when you get that new one, you're gonna have a beauty and a glory in your eyes, in your face, in your voice. You're gonna pass through walls. You're gonna fly through the sky. You're gonna love everything that tastes good. Everything sounds good. Your voice will be beautiful. Everything will be amazing. Wow. How about her? Will I be beautiful in her a little bit? Challenged? No, no. The most beautiful man in the age to come will have the most beautiful eternal companion. The angels will be awestruck by the Lord and his eternal companion. And the beauty that he possesses is the beauty that he imparts. Oh, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. Look at this, paragraph C. The body, verse 42, here's what Paul says. It's sown in corruption. Sown means it goes to the grave. When it goes into the ground, when they bury it, the last story was about that guy's life. His body wasn't that strong. It gave in to decay, disease, death, and failure. It broke down. It's gonna be raised incorruptible. Won't ever wear out. Disease will never touch it. The beauty will never fade. Never ever will the beauty fade, ever. Like in Isaiah 40, it says, the beauty fades in man in this age, but it won't fade in the age to come. It's sown, verse 43, in dishonor. When the body goes to the grave, boy, it sure didn't do that well. When it was on the earth, it goes down in weakness and dishonor. But it's gonna be like the Lord. It's gonna be raised in glory. Put the word beauty there. It's gonna be raised in power. It's gonna be raised incorruptible. The incorruptible beauty that's in them in this age will be fully manifest externally in the age to come. And the two dimensions of incorruptible beauty will be fully joined together, internal and external incorruptible beauty. I put just a few things there just to kind of stir you up there. The supernatural beauty that you'll have in the resurrection. Your eyes, your hair, your face, your skin, your fragrance. The light of the glory that emanates out of you. The color, all the dimensions involved in it. Your voice. Oh, well, I'll sing better than Misty. Well, I'll sing better than Misty does now, but she'll get a resurrected body then, so we'll be in the same dimension that we are in now. But I'll sing better than she sings now. Now, can't wait. Strength. I mean, endurance. You'll be able to pass through walls. You got a body like he does. The angels, they go right through the walls. They don't knock on doors. You'll have a body far superior to angels. Paragraph two, your sight. You'll be able to see so clear, so far. Oh, it goes on and on. Let's go to page four. It's beautiful. We don't wanna sell out for a temporary fading, corruptible beauty and sell out our walk with God to try to get beauty on man's terms. The devil's counterfeits, many of them are clever, sell out for a beauty that's fading, that's momentary and superficial. When we have beauty that's unfading, that's eternal, that's incorruptible. Beloved, we don't have to sell out. Beauty is our destination forever and forever. Well, let's look at this. Just real quick here, just a little bit of page four. Well, we know that we are Jesus's inheritance, right? Ephesians one says that. But note, look what it says in Ephesians one, that the father of glory would give you insight. That's what the spirit of wisdom and revelation means, insight. You would know the riches of the glory of being that man's eternal companion. You're his inheritance. Beloved, the riches of the glory. We live in the poverty of though we've been rejected by him and Paul says, I'm praying that the fog would lift, the lie would lift. You would see the riches of the glory of belonging to him, of being who he wants. And so in paragraph B, one of my favorite verses in the Song of Solomon, I got a bunch of favorite verses, but this is one of them. She stands before the Lord. In chapter two, she's still in weakness. She's still in her immaturity. It's an eight chapter love song. She's not mature yet. She started off, remember a minute ago in chapter one, verse five, I'm dark of heart, but I'm lovely. Now she's chapter two. She's still weak. She's still new in the Lord. She's still got unsettled issues. She stands and she says, I am the rose. I am the rose of Sharon. I am the lily of the valley. I am the rose you want. I am the beautiful flower that you desire Jesus. And I'm the lily of the valley. That is her confession. She saw herself through his eyes. She could have said, I'm the broken weak one. She goes, no, I'm the rose. And the rose, paragraph one, the chief of flowers, it spoke of mature love, the fragrance and the beauty of love in this poetry. I am the one that loves you. But she's not only a rose that loves, she lives in the purity of the lily. She goes, I've committed myself in the valley of this fallen world, this dark world. I will stand out like a lily before your eyes. I will choose light instead of darkness. Lily speaks of purity. She says, I'm committed to purity. I'm committed to loving you. I know who I am. I have failures. I have weaknesses. I know who I am and I know who I belong to. I know my identity. I know where I'm going. I'm the rose. I am the lily. I am the one that loves you. My love is weak, but my love is real. Worship team, go ahead and come on up. Do you know that weak love is not false love? The fact that my love for the Lord is weak doesn't make it false. It's still real. I love to stand before the Lord. She says, I'm the rose. I'm a rose before you. I'm one that responds in love. I'm one that moves your heart. My love moves your heart. And I'm a lily. I've chosen purity. I stumble and I fall, but I've chosen purity. I am a lily. This is my confession. This is my identity. This is my purpose. This is who I am before you. Some people think it's the king calling himself the rose of Sharon. The Lord, that's not what's happening. If you read it carefully, it's the bride's confession of her identity and her purpose. And then I'm just gonna leave you with this little teaser in paragraph F. And then he speaks back to her. Oh, my love. Chapter six, verse four. You are as beautiful as Tirzah. You are as lovely as Jerusalem. He's looking at her and says, your beauty moves me beyond what you know. Verse five, one of the most glorious passages in this whole book, this love song. He says, turn your eyes away from me. This is in poetic language. For your love has overcome me. He's not really saying turn away. He's going, oh, your heart has moved me the most poetic way. He goes, your beauty moves me more than you will ever understand. Beloved, the devil is a liar and we're not selling out for a counterfeit beauty or a counterfeit pleasure or a counterfeit anything. We're going for the whole thing that we were created for. Amen, let's stand before the Lord.