Mike Bickle emphasizes the importance of delighting in the beauty of God, urging believers to awaken a deeper revelation of Christ as the glorious God-man. He highlights that many Christians experience spiritual boredom due to a lack of fascination with God's beauty, which is essential for spiritual vitality. Bickle encourages the congregation to actively seek and behold God's beauty in all aspects of life, as this pursuit will empower and motivate them in their faith. He draws from the Song of Solomon and the Psalms to illustrate the connection between beauty and delight, asserting that true fulfillment comes from a deep relationship with God. Ultimately, he calls for a renewed commitment to seek God's beauty as a source of strength and stability in a troubled world.

Awaken a new revelation, a deeper revelation of the man Christ Jesus, the glorious God-man, fully God, fully man. Let us see and behold his beauty. We would delight in it, we would rejoice in it, we would be motivated, empowered by it. We thank you in the name of Jesus, Amen. Well one of the distinctives of the Song of Solomon is the reality, the spiritual truth of seeing and being fascinated with the beauty of the Lord. As I just mentioned, God created us intentionally. We were designed to have a longing for fascination, to long to delight, to feel pleasure in encountering him. If we live bored, we live spiritually vulnerable and many believers are spiritually bored because the mandate of serving and reaching out and bringing the gospel to others, it doesn't have the same kind of a zip that it had when they did, when they first began years ago. Or they're getting weary through setbacks or delays or disappointments or temptation is proving too intense and they don't have anything to draw on besides just a kind of a teeth-gritting resolve to try to stay steady and beloved that's not enough. And in this hour of history, as offense is increasing in the culture, Jesus said that in Matthew 24, he said in that day that many would hate one another, betray one another and be offended. And we're watching right now today offense in the culture, not just the Western culture, the whole earth is increasing so dramatically that there isn't enough ability in our own resolve to get over it. And the culture, the temptations of the culture are escalating, the troubles, the fear that's in the culture is growing. But in the midst of all of that, Song of Solomon chapter 1 verse 16, here in the ESV version, the bride declares to the bridegroom King, you are beautiful, you are my beloved, the one I love. I'm not just serving you out of duty, you're beautiful to me and I love you, it awakens love in me. And it goes on with the second declaration, you are truly delightful. The other translations say it's pleasant to behold you. It brings pleasure to my heart to discover who you are, in your grandeur, in your power, in your majesty. Here in this verse, Song of Solomon chapter 1 verse 16, the bride puts together beauty and delight. And those themes need to be joined together in our understanding. The beauty of the Lord and our delight, what we experience on the inside as we encounter the beauty of the Lord. And we encounter it little by little, just over the months and years it grows and it increases. Paragraph C, Psalm 27, David was the one that put together these two themes, beauty and delight, before anybody else did. And David's life vision, he states it here in chapter 27 verse 4, Psalm 27 4, his lifelong goal was to encounter the beauty of the Lord. This was not only his goal, this was the paradigm for which he looked at life. It's a very important statement. See a lot of people have in a general way their goal, I want to behold your beauty. But that's a, and they mean it, but they don't put on a new set of glasses so to speak, meaning when they look around life and they look at creation and the stars and just what's happening, they're not looking for traces of God's beauty. They're just kind of enjoying life or they're just observing it. But David connected the beauty of the Lord with many things that were going on around him. He said all the days of my life, I've set my heart to behold the beauty, to encounter it, to look for it, to have a paradigm. And that's my goal tonight, to challenge you to have a paradigm, a perspective where you're looking for traces and tokens of God's beauty. Not just in the created order, not just and remarkably in redemption, the beauty of God is seen best in the face of Jesus, but also in how human life unfolds and interaction and the design of the human heart and the way God made us and how our emotions and our mind and our interaction and how love works that we see traces and echoes of the beauty of the Lord everywhere that we look. You know it was 33 years ago, I've told this story many times, but I'll just say it real briefly. May 1983, when the Lord spoke this verse, Psalm 27 4, he spoke it audibly. And in terms of the ministry that I was to be focused on, I didn't really understand it, but he said Psalm 27 4 and it would be related to 24-hour prayer with singers and musicians. And 33 years ago, I couldn't understand what that meant. How did beholding beauty and people singing and praying all day, how were they connected? But the Lord, and I don't want to tell the whole story, but he showed his zeal in terms of my personal experience saying, I want you locking into this. And this was the first time this verse ever struck me. And I began to go on a journey and say, Lord, I don't really know what it means to behold your beauty. And I don't know how it relates to singing night and day. That doesn't, I don't even know. I mean, yes, we worship you, we worship you, we love you, okay, we said that. But now we got 23 hours and 58 minutes to go. We got to do this every single day. I remember when the Lord first spoke that 33 years ago, I was not excited about 24-7 prayer. I mean, I'm glad it happened in heaven. And I was happy if it happened somewhere in the earth, but I, myself, I thought, man, I don't know. I just, I saw myself more as an evangelist than somebody being involved in a night and day prayer ministry. Of course, I'm still got my love is souls to come into the kingdom. But it was 12 years after that in November, 1996, 12 years after the 1983 encounter with the Lord when he said Psalm 27. Twelve years later, I was right in this, in this very auditorium here. And we were in an all-night prayer meeting. On a Friday night, we would pray Friday night from 10 o'clock to 5 in the morning. I remember, I was right over there. It was 12 years after this encounter with Psalm 27, and I was just saying it to the Lord. I said, Lord, I want to behold your beauty. I remember I was just pacing, because the way I would do it, the only way I could stay awake all night is if I paced most the night. You know, I'd get tired after an hour and sit down for 15 minutes, then I would pace. Coffee and pacing is what helped me. I know that's not great, but that's true. But anyway, I made it through the night, and I would do that every week. And, and this one night, I was there, and I said, Lord, I was quoting Psalm 27. I want to see your beauty. I said, your son is beautiful. When I said that, the most unusual thing happened. The Holy Spirit rested on me in a observable, tangible, discernible way, like three, four seconds. I went, whoa, just the power of the Holy Spirit. That was exciting. It was about midnight, and then I said, Lord, you know, you're beautiful. And the Spirit rested on me again for three or four seconds, just like that, just came all over my shoulders in a very distinct way, and I went, wow. I said, you're beautiful, Jesus. It happened a third time. I've never said something three times in a row and had the Holy Spirit do that every single time in a, in an overt, strong way. I said, I think the Lord's talking to me. And so I went on and continued. I said, you're beautiful. You're beautiful, Jesus. And the Holy, I said this phrase, or some version of the phrase, many different iterations of the same phrase, for five straight hours. And every single time I did it, the Holy Spirit came on me. I mean, it was, it was so, I mean, it was so cool, but it was, I was so intrigued by it that a number of times, I, I wouldn't say I was trying to trick the Lord. That's not what I was doing, but I said, Lord, release your power. I didn't feel anything, although the Lord, He's really into that. Lord, revive the church, which is an amazingly important, nothing. You're beautiful. I went, oh my goodness. Lord, beautiful. Heal the sick, nothing. Give me a million dollars for the harvest, of course, nothing. Actually, I believe that kind of stuff, actually, to be honest. For five hours, every single time, 100% of the time, it was the straight, I've never had that happen in 40 years of ministry, that one night. Well, 5 a.m. came, and I went to bed. Then I woke up a few hours earlier, later, and just kind of woke up excited by that. I came back again at 9 in the morning. Came back to the same spot. Don't go over there. It didn't work. I tried it again later. It didn't work. I went right back over there. I said, Lord, you're beautiful, and for two hours, every time I said it, it happened again. I went, this is the bizarrest thing. I didn't tell anybody, but I was so struck by it. The Lord was saying Psalm 27, and it wasn't so much saying night and day prayer like He did 12 years earlier when He said Psalm 27. He said, it's beauty. It's the subject of beauty. That's going to be your deliverance. That's going to be your salvation. That's going to be your power. That's going to be your victory, encountering my beauty. It was becoming clear to me. This is not just a passing cool thing. This is a matter, an issue of life and death in the end-time church, discovering the beauty of the King, and not just serving Him, hoping to experience His power and His resources and His finances, but actually encountering Him while we're serving Him, and discovering His beauty as we're going. I mean, I'm really big into experiencing His power and receiving His resources to get the job done, but that's not enough. We can't just work for Him. We've got to work with Him in this deep interaction of the heart while our hands are engaged, and we're laboring hard. Our heart is growing stronger and richer in the knowledge of God. Well, a week went by. I didn't tell anybody this on that night. So a week goes by, and I get a letter in the mail. And the lady from the north part of the city, she said, I had a dream last Saturday night. Saturday night's when I was doing it. It was the whole time. It was a Friday night prayer meeting, but all Saturday, you know, 1 a.m. and Saturday morning, all through the night. And then the next morning, she goes, last Saturday night, early in the morning, I had a dream and the Lord told me He was gonna visit you related to His beauty. She goes, I was a little embarrassed to send a prophetic dream like that to somebody. I mean, the beauty of the Lord, that doesn't seem like that's your big thing. And the Lord says He wants you to focus on this, and this is a very important thing. And so, my goal tonight, just as we're looking at some of the themes of this theme in the Song of Solomon and other places in Scripture, is that you would make a determination that serving the Lord, as important as it is, that's not enough. Being blessed with resource is not enough. Kingdom relationships is not enough. All of those things are critical, part of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom. But you're gonna make a determination, I'm gonna behold the beauty of the Lord, I'm gonna declare it, I'm gonna communicate it, I'm gonna delight in it, I'm gonna be empowered by it in the midst of these other aspects of the grace of God. Well, David, the same man who said, I'll behold your beauty, in Psalm 27, in Psalm 37, he said, delight yourself in the Lord. And I'm sure there's a connection. He's exhorting people to find delight in their spiritual relationship with the Lord. This is a new idea in Israel. And the reason David was exhorting them to delight in the Lord, because he discovered delight when he was encountering or focused on seeing the beauty of the Lord. And it's not when this focus isn't a one-time deal. Again, it's a new paradigm. It's a perspective. We're gonna look for it everywhere. And there's tokens and hints and echoes of it. I mean, it's not like everywhere, because there's evil and darkness in many places. But I mean, it's in many parts of creation in life, there's that reflection of the grand, ultimate source of beauty, God Himself, the Lord Jesus. Well, David was called, at the end of his life, the sweet psalmist of Israel. He sang the sweet psalms of God's heart. And he brought this sweetness to the body of Christ. I love to say this about David. David, the warrior king of Israel, was a lovesick worshiper. And we don't want to separate that warrior spirit from that lovesick encounter of the heart. Because beloved workers, lovers, will always outwork workers. You get somebody connected with love, they will always outwork a worker. I remember I spent a lot of time in hospitals many years ago, in the 70s and 80s, because I had a brother who was totally paralyzed. He went on to be with the Lord some years ago. But he was in and out of hospitals, and I was with him. And one of the very remarkable things to watch, I watched it several times, because again, he was totally paralyzed in a high school football game. And so he was in this trauma unit for months and months and months. And I mean, it was just really a very, very challenging life for many years for him. I was one year older than him, so I was with him in many of these years working, I mean, being right next to him. And in the hospital, there was always this strange thing, I mean, not always, I discovered it occasionally, when the nurse became the wife. The nurse meets the patient, and they don't know each other, and she's doing the checklist, the nurse checklist. And every now and then, the nurse fell in love with the patient, and the nurse became the wife. And as the wife, she didn't need a checklist. Because when you have love, you don't need a checklist. And a lover will always outwork a worker. And David, his heart was lovesick. He was moved. He was touched with divine delight. He had delight in his encounter with the Lord. Now again, I don't want to exaggerate this to where you think, you know, you're just gonna live in this state of ecstasy, like, oh, the Lord's overwhelmed me. It's, I think, you know, when I look at my own life, it's just moments, brief moments here and there, where I gain understanding, a new perspective of the Lord's glory and His power, from the Scripture, in creation. Again, looking through the lens of the grace of God, through the leadership of Jesus in Scripture. I don't, I'm not, I don't buy the, you know, some of those false religions, where everything in creation is God, and all that kind of stuff. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about seeing the handiwork of the Lord Jesus in creation. And these momentary glimpses, where you see just a little whisper of His beauty and His grandeur, and in these various areas, and your heart is touched a little bit. Well, those add up over time. Those begin to have an accumulated effect in your life, and it begins to shift the way you feel, the way you look at life, and carry yourself. And I have a long way to go. I mean, the angels, the seraphim around the throne, they are so overwhelmed by the beauty of God, they have to cover their eyes, because they're overwhelmed, and then they kind of come up for air again, get another fresh look, and they cover their eyes again. It says in Isaiah 6, that with their wings, they cover their eyes. They're gazing on the majestic splendor and beauty of God Himself. It's overwhelming. We'll never exhaust it. But I don't want to wait till the resurrection to go deeper in it. I'm on a journey, and I tell you, I think this is the only safe way forward. When I look at the violence that's increasing in the culture, when I look at the perversion that's increasing in the culture, just the sexual immorality at every turn, and where it's going to be in 10 and 20 years. I look at the offense that's increasing in the culture, how easily people are offended in this hour, like 20 years ago, it was not near as intense as this. I mean, believers with believers, churches with churches, businesses and leaders, people in the culture, political leaders, I mean everywhere. Family members are just so hypersensitive and easily offended. The cultures of the earth are. I look at this, and I say, Lord, that darkness is increasing, but there's a light that's increasing as well. And that light is the power of God, but it has a dimension of beauty in it. It has a dimension of delight that's going to be the very safety and the very strength of the people of God. The book of Isaiah makes that very, very clear. Paragraph D, Isaiah chapter 33, verse 17. Now this is a passage, a prophecy about the generation the Lord returns. When you read Isaiah 33 in context, it's about the generation the Lord returns. And there's a promise that the Holy Spirit is going to emphasize the beauty of Jesus. He said, your eyes will see the King and His beauty. Not only in His power, and I don't want to put power against beauty because part of the beauty of God is the power of God, but I mean some people, they're just activity oriented, disconnected from the person they're doing the activity with. I mean the Lord Himself. And our inheritance is to see the beauty of the King. The King speaks of His power. So while we're operating in the power of God, we're encountering beauty. That's what Isaiah said. And then you can look at the chapter 33 later, but in verse 6 of this chapter, it says, this will be the stability of your times. This encounter with His beauty and the fear of the Lord, the majesty, that will be the stability of the people of God. Isaiah says it again in chapter 4. This time he refers to the Messiah as the branch of the Lord. That was a well-known term in the Old Testament for the Messiah, the branch of the Lord. They said, in that day, it's talking about the generation the Lord returns. In that day, that phrase almost always in the scriptures talking about the end times related to the second coming of Christ. The branch of the Lord, the Messiah, we know now it's the Lord Jesus. He'll be seen. It's beautiful. Throughout church history, the beauty of Jesus has not been the predominant understanding of the people of God. They're glad for salvation. They want to get out of hell, go to heaven. They're really into that. They want their life to get enriched in this age. They want to go to heaven when they die. But there's a bigger theme that the Holy Spirit is going to be emphasizing. That's the King that's beautiful and glorious. Beautiful and glorious. Paragraph E has already said that without a sense of this delight and awe in our walk with God, we live spiritually bored. That's one of the great problems in part of the church today. They're spiritually bored. Another part of the church all over the world is becoming spiritually invigorated, spiritually fascinated with the Lord. And the church is moving in two different trends. We want to make sure that we're moving in the pathway of being invigorated and fascinated with this man and with his father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because a bored believer is very vulnerable to Satan. A bored believer that's not preoccupied with God is going to find it far easier to yield to the growing temptations of the culture, the offense of the culture. When persecution arises, they'll be far more timid and fearful if they don't have something strong on the inside that's more powerful than sin or fear or temptation or offense. One preacher said, I love this phrase, he goes, I don't want to simply live the Christian life, I want to love living the Christian life. I would say that again. I don't know who said it, but he said, I don't want to just simply live the Christian life, I want to love living the Christian life. And I say, Lord, that, I want my heart branded with that cry. Paragraph F, I have the quote of a famous Russian novelist from the 1800s. He said, beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend for the hearts of men. Beauty is the battlefield for where Satan and God fight for the souls of men. They contend for men's hearts. And of course this will intensify more and more the closer we get to the Lord's return. And that could be some decades down the road, maybe further, maybe sooner, we don't know. But we know that we're getting closer and closer to it. And I I think that's very possible that some of you in this room might see it in your own lifetime. You might not, but you really might. And I think that there's evidence in the scripture that lets us know we're getting closer and closer to that time. But if that's true, the revelation of His beauty is going to be more, it's going to be magnified, but it's going to be more essential. It's going to be life and death issues, spiritually speaking, because of the temptation and offense in the culture. Paragraph 2, Roman numeral 2. Now, I'm not going to go through this Roman numeral A and B, just except for ever so brief. I just want to give you some tracks to run on. Some of you may say, well what do you mean, beauty of God? Like, like what? What sense? Well, the beauty, paragraph A, speaks of what is attractive about God. It's how He thinks. It's how He feels. It's what He does. It's how He looks. His beauty is displayed in creation, in redemption, in His leadership over history, in many human dynamics that are motivated by His design of the human heart and His inspiration in human life, and the dynamics that happen between humans where genuine love comes forth, and the beauty of courageous living and sacrificial giving. Those are all expressions of the heart of God. Paragraph B, I say the same thing, but I use a little bit different language, because I'm just wanting to give you some tracks to think on, because you think, well beauty, that's an abstract idea. Paragraph B, it's His personality. It's His power. The subject of His knowledge, His leadership, His appearance, His very being. Every one of these are vast subjects, but again, I'm just giving you some tracks to run on. You can think, okay, okay, I don't have a lot on those, you might think, but at least I know where I'm going to be aiming at. Okay, that gives me some tracks to run on. Top of page two. Now there's a strong relationship between the beauty of the Lord, delighting in God's beauty, and glorifying God. I mean, you talk to a dedicated believer today, you say, what's your life vision? They'll, many of them will have something about, I want to live to glorify God. I want to see the glory of God somewhere. Glorifying God will be in the sentence of the paragraph when they're describing what's important about their life. Boy, what I want to do here, is I want to connect an often abstract idea, living for His glory. I've asked people over the years, what does it mean to live for His glory? They go, you know, glorify God, you know. I go, I want to break it down. It's your life goal. What does that mean to you on Monday morning, on Thursday night? What does that mean? To live for His glory. And I just want to connect that glorifying God and delighting in His beauty are dynamically connected realities. We glorify God, paragraph A, when what we know about Him awakens delight in us about Him. It's not just we know things about Him, it creates delight and desire for Him. It gives us a desire to imitate it. I mean, to see it and to just rejoice in it, to savor it, to delight in it. Like, God, I love the way you are. That's one aspect of the glorifying God. And then in wanting to embrace it, and then wanting to proclaim it to others, through song, through word, through conversation, proclaiming it through acts of kindness. We proclaim it in many ways. So we glorify God when what we know of Him creates this savoring, this rejoicing, this delighting in Him, and this desire to imitate it, and then desire to proclaim it by our words and deeds to other people. We want to embrace that which we desire that's in God's personality. We want it in our personality. Paragraph B, I say it again. I just want to give you some different terminology just to look at it. We glorify God by delighting, finding joy, delight in what He does. When I look at the stars at night, and I think about a real person who created them, and I go, I love you. This is amazing. I don't hardly understand anything up there, but I like the person behind it. This is cool. This is not just a great night, it is, but there's a person, there's an artist, and an architect behind the stars up there. A person, and he wants me in his family. He wants me to be his son's eternal companion, part of his bride forever. I go, man, I got it made. This is awesome. I love being alive. I love this age and the age to come. I just love being with you and understanding you. Beloved, that is one of the foundational ways we glorify God, by delighting in who He is. Of course, we got to discover it. We got to slow down. We got to look at life and creation and the Word of God slowly through the lens of the beauty of the one behind it. And it takes time to do that. You know, you've heard the phrase, you know, when you go through life, you got to slow down and smell the roses. And what they mean is, don't be so, you know, active, so action-oriented, so active you don't see what's around you that's beautiful. Well, let's take it up a notch. We want to slow down to behold the beauty of a real person who really loves us, and He really gave His life for us. We want to more than smell the roses. We want to be captured by the fragrance of that King. Oh Lord, this is beautiful. So I just give up a few more phrases on that, just so you can look at later. Well tonight, I want to look at a look at paragraph E. We're gonna look at the beauty of God a little bit, just ever so slightly, in creation. I mean, we can look at the beauty of God in redemption. I mean, what a glorious subject. The beauty of God is never so clear as it's seen in the face of Jesus. We can look at the beauty of God in His leadership over history, His leadership over your life, where He's leading the nations by His sovereign power. I mean, the big picture, you know, we read the Word of God from Old Testament, back with, start at the very beginning with Adam, and we see God's powerful intervention and wisdom. There's beauty behind His architectural plans of history, so to speak. Then we look at His beauty, and again, the design of the human frame, the human spirit, and how we interact when under His inspiration. It's beautiful. Courage, selfless sacrifice, generosity, tenderness. These dimensions of human life that were created and built for, and inspired to flow in, are tokens of His beauty. I like a paragraph F. I like John Piper. Of course, John Piper is one of my favorite, so I quote him a bit in some of my handouts over the years, but I love this. Paragraph F. The source of our lasting joy, by John Piper, is the beauty of God. Well, that, the source of our lasting joy, or you could say the motivation for our obedience as well. You could add that to that phrase. The motivation for our joy, or the motivation for obedience, that's the same thing, is the beauty of God. Well, John Piper's, he's hitting it. He's completely right on that, but here's the phrase I wanted to focus on tonight. In all of His gifts, and in seeing the natural world, the created order, I love this phrase, we are to let our eyes run up the beam of beauty to the original. That when we see the natural world, it's like a light beam, you know, just figuratively speaking, leading us, the beam of His glory, the beam of His beauty, leading us to the original, to the source Himself, which is the Lord Jesus. Paragraph G, I just put some more categories of how life works, human dynamics, there's, and creation itself, the, I mean, you, you, we could put paragraphs and paragraphs behind each one of these, but I just want to give you some tracks to run on tonight. There's sights, colors, brilliant sounds, smells, knowledge, paragraph five, life stories. I mean, beautiful stories, life stories of God's handiwork and gifting in people. There's character, physical abilities with such beauty in them. How society, whenever justice prevails and reconciliation and love conquers where there was strife and hatred, it's beautiful. There are these marks of beauty, and in them, again, if we're intentional about it, and that's the paradigm that we're intentionally putting on, we're not just running through life serving the Lord, you know, doing our prayer meetings, then doing our outreach, then doing our friendship group meetings, you know, our fellowship meetings, and then doing this over here, and then resting a little bit, and go doing it all again, but we're actually looking for beauty in every one of these exchanges and encounters in life. And I don't know that you'll see it in every one, but you'll see it more and more if you look for it. But many sincere believers never think to look for it, or they don't slow down enough to look for it. Paragraph H, I have to mention two books. I've been greatly blessed by these two books. By Sam Storms' book called One Thing, Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God, we have in our bookstore. I tell you, I love that book, and some of the things I have in the next couple pages, I took right from that book with this other, Thomas DuBay, The Evidential Power of Beauty. There's quite, there's several good books out there on the beauty of God, but these are the two I recommend highly. We have them both in our bookstore. They're a must-reading. They all take, again, in the next few moments, I'm going to look at the creative, oh, we got them right up there. There you go. Wow, that was, they're pretty books too. Oh, it's so beautiful. Anyway, top of page three. Let's look for just a moment. Again, I've taken some of these facts from Sam's book and Thomas DuBay's book, and Sam's a long-term personal friend of mine. I've heard him talk on this subject many times, and I, I mean, not many, but a number of times, and I love it. I took notes on it, and they're fantastic. And the Elegant Universe, I mentioned that by Brian Green, a world-known physicist. It's not from a scriptural point of view, but it's just the facts of the universe, the elegant universe. There's so many scientific facts that shout the beauty of God. Top of page three. God's beauty is seen in the heavens. Psalm 19. Here's David again. I mean, David's the one that's gazing on beauty. He tells us, hey, the heavens declares the beauty of God. Whenever you see glory in this context like this, you can often put the word beauty. The heavens declare, or you can put the word majesty if you want. It's the same general idea. I'm not saying it's the same Hebrew word. It's the same general practical response. The heavens declare the beauty of God. Now this is David, the man who gazed on beauty, the man who knew what it meant to delight in his relationship with the Lord. We're getting clues that, about his inner life. He goes, when I look up, he goes, I see beauty. He says, the firmament, the sky, shows the handiwork, the artistry, the beautiful artwork of the great master architect himself, the master artist. His handiwork, his artwork. When we look up, this is what Sam, I've heard say before, that we see God's heavenly art gallery up in the sky. But if you stop to look at it, I mean, we get so used to it. It's the most remarkable art gallery. You know, I was just recently, had a tour of the Vatican art museum and the Sistine Chapel just recently. I mean, the art is unbelievable. I mean, it's unbelievable and it goes on and on and on and on. This magnificent art, much of it's even focusing on the Lord and redemption and salvation. It is fantastic art. Beloved, far more beautiful than the Sistine Chapel or the Vatican art museum. There's an art museum, an art gallery in the sky and most people are not even, are oblivious to it. I mean, they know it's there and every now and then, over the course of 70 years, maybe a few moments here and there, they're caught up. Beloved, we want to study that art gallery often and not just gazing at it, but we want to see the knowledge that God has allowed scientists to capture because that's the handiwork of God too, that he framed the human mind to grasp it and it's in this hour of history where so much information has been grasped. So we study that, then we look up. It's like, wow. And the Lord might say, you don't even begin to understand what you're going to see fully one day. But this will whet your appetite and I tell you, it is exciting. But just a few statements about the beauty of God that surround us in creation. This is only to whet your appetite. This is the beginning of the beginning. But those books that I've mentioned and there's others that they'll develop them far beyond this. Paragraph B. Now we all know this. We learned it in elementary school. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. That's fast, right? Light goes 186,000 miles a second. That I got the stats here. That's 6 trillion miles a year. In one year, light travels 6 trillion miles. That's a light year, 6 trillion miles. Well, here we are in our solar system and our star is the sun. Now, you know, the sun is one of many, many, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and, you know, created in the universe. But it's the sun is the star in our solar system. And man, we love our sun. Do you know that the star closest to us, to earth, besides the sun, which is 93 million miles away, which again, you learn in elementary school. The star closest to us is four light years, 24 trillion miles. The closest star to earth besides the sun, 24 trillion miles. Now the point of this is like, and there's a person, he's a man, he's human, he's fully God, but he became human. Before the incarnation, back in Genesis 1, before that, that man created that second star from us, 24 trillion miles from here. And there's billions and billions and billions of stars that this man created. Who is he? Light travels so fast, it gets to the moon in less than two seconds. The time it takes a flash of light from here to the moon is less than two seconds. And to the next star, it's 24 trillion miles, four light years. Paragraph D, our solar system, I don't mean the Milky Way galaxy, just our solar system inside of it, is a hundred thousand light years the diameter from one end to the other. That means moving at the speed of light, it'd take a hundred thousand years to get from one end of our solar system to the other. That's just our solar system in our galaxy. This is mind-boggling. I've looked at several sources, because of course I'm no scientist. I'm just taking what scientists say, and they don't all agree with each other, but on some of these big facts, they're pretty close to each other. The Milky Way galaxy, again, our solar system is part of that, and it's a hundred thousand light years in our solar system. There are, Milky Way galaxy is one, a hundred billion galaxies in the known universe. Not a hundred million, a hundred billion. Now your mind just went on tell, you said, you know, you lost me at the hundred million mark. I mean, that number is so big, a hundred millions, a million galaxies, a thousand galaxies, one galaxy is too big for my brain. There's a hundred billion in the known universe. They have scientific ways, and again, scientists in different camps will ascribe to that number. Some of them make it the number a little smaller, some a little bit bigger. There is a person behind this who knows your name. He knows the name of every star, but he knows your name and every hair on your head. He has it numbered like he has every star numbered. There is a person you're related to that you're serving, that the devil's telling you it's not worth it anymore to serve him. It's better just to go slow down and give in to sin and give in to discouragement and give up and give in and back away. I tell you, the devil's a liar because this creator has a hundred billion galaxies, has your name written on the palms of his hands. He loves you, and he wants you and his family forever to be his eternal companion with his son. Beloved, this thing called salvation is indescribably glorious. Paragraph E, I already said this, when the Milky Way galaxy has a hundred billion stars, but don't mix it with the next fact, but there's a hundred billion galaxies. So there's a hundred billion, I'm using it in two different ways. There's a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and there's a hundred billion galaxies. And some scientists say 200, but I just, I'm stopping at one. I don't care what the facts are. I'm just shutting down at 100 billion. Paragraph G, the galaxy closest to us, it's 2 million light years. That's 15 with 18 zeros behind it. Two billion light years away is the next galaxy, our neighboring galaxy. And Jesus of Nazareth walked the streets of Jerusalem. And the scripture says, he came into his own and they did not know who he was. He looked around, he created the galaxies. Paragraph I, the sun, 800 miles in diameter, 800,000 miles, 15 million degrees Celsius at the center. The largest star in our solar system, 4 million times brighter than the sun, 4 million times brighter than our sun. And our sun is 15 million degrees Celsius at the center. I'll just move on. I mean, to look at, again, how God framed the human mind to be able to grasp this information and then has given technology and science the ability, we can study the power and the beauty of the one that loves us. David said, the heavens declares beauty. He goes, if I was you, I'd start focusing on it. Let's not just go through life and not smell the roses. Let's not go through life and not engage with the fragrance and the beauty of the king himself. I mean, day in and day out. Well, I don't have enough money and so-and-so's mad at me and this thing's not working and people said mean things to me. And I don't like all that stuff. I don't like it when money doesn't work and I feel bad people say mean things. I get that, but there's a bigger storyline about your life. There's a bigger narrative that you and I are a part of. Paragraph N, Isaiah 40. Isaiah says, the Lord says to Isaiah, the prophet, to whom will you compare me? Because in this hour of Israel's history, they were being tempted with the gods of the nations because the gods of the nations, the idolatry, they had this idea that they would get more blessing and more protection if they were friendly to these idols of these four nations, these false gods. I mean, it sounds insane to us, but it was really real because there was really demonic power involved in some of these false religions and deities. So there were really circumstances that look blessed, but it was demonic powers of some of these neighboring nations. And Israel said, hey, we want the power they have. It looks like it's going good for them. The rains are coming and their nation is prospering. And Isaiah said, thus says the Lord, you're going to compare me to them? Verse 26, look, lift up your eyes and look at the sky. Isaiah says what David said, look up, see who created all those stars up there. And you know, by the naked eye on a clear day, you can only see less than 5,000 stars. There's a hundred billion in the Milky way galaxy. You only see 5,000. It seems like a lot. We're looking at the corner of the corner of the corner of our galaxy. And our galaxy is one of a hundred billion galaxies. So, I mean, we're looking at this, such a small fraction of stars, but the Lord says, look up and you'll get a glimpse of who I am. He goes, did you know verse 26, I bring out every one of them, every one of the hosts speaking of the stars, all the constellations. I aligned them and I set them in order and I call them by name. And by the greatness of my power, not one of them's missing. Everyone is in place and every one of them is sustained by my power. That's who I am. Beloved, that's who we just worshiped a few moments ago. Top of page four. Well, let's go the other direction. And again, these books that I recommended and some other ones as well, they'll break this down so far beyond this. I just want to stir you up a little bit tonight. Give you a little taster just to whet your appetite. The subatomic world. First we looked high. Now we're going to look low. We're going to look real low. The subatomic world says that verse Colossians one, verse 16, that by Jesus all things were created, heaven and earth and heaven and earth, visible and invisible. It's the invisible realm, the subatomic world, the invisible, the invisible world could be the angelic realm. The invisible world is Adams. That's what we're looking at here for a moment. The invisible world, our atmosphere. I mean, you can't see a handful of wind or heat. You feel a heat, but you can't get a handful of it in the air. A lot of things are invisible that have a powerful effect on us. Emotions. You can't get a handful of emotions, but God created them. The invisible, there's many dimensions to the invisible world. It's not just angels and Adams. It's more than that. All of these were created by him. They were created for him. They were created to magnify his love for us, to magnify his beauty that we would be delighted in them and delighted in the relationship and happy in the relationship with him. He's happy and we're happy. We're walking together in love. He says, I built all of this so that my people could see and interact with me in love and with delight forever. We're in this together forever. Verse 17, it says, in him all things consist. Now that word consists, other translations say he holds all things together. He holds the Adams together. And the reason he did this, that he would have preeminence. That when we see this, we see his preeminence. There's none like him. There's no rival to him. And that gives us security and that gives us affection and adoration. And then he says in his preeminence, I want you near me with me where I am. When he went to the cross in John 17, right before the cross, he goes, father, that they would be with me where I am. They would be with me together forever. That's why I'm doing this. It's fantastic. Well, just the next two or three minutes, but I want you to look at the sub atomic world. It's as, it's as small as the galaxies are large. I mean, you, this will blow your mind if you've never gone here, but the infinitely small universe of atomic part of a particles is comparable to the vastness of the universe above us. The sky, paragraph B, each atom has a nucleus obviously. And in the atom in the nucleus, there's these elect electrically charged particles, protons and neutrons. We'll throw in the electrons too. You got it there. Now here's paragraph C. Here's what I want you to see. There are proxies. If you take one inch, let's take an inch of matter of wood, there's a hundred million atoms in that inch. If you broke it down, put them line side by side, a hundred million atoms in an inch, a hundred million. That's a lot in a hundred, you know, in a inch, there's a hundred trillion nuclei in every atom, a hundred trillion nuclei in every atom, but a hundred million atom in every inch. A nuclei, a nucleus is so small compared to an atom, but the analogy that Sam storms, I don't know where he got it. I didn't read the footnotes, but if the atom was a football stadium, a neutron would be a piece of grain sitting on a 50 yard line in a football stadium. That's how small a neutron is to an atom. And there's a hundred million atoms in an inch. And I got it all written here. How many electrons and protons in an inch is like 50 zeros. I mean, it's the, the smallest world. Here's the point. There is a person behind all of this. He is as intricate and wise and detailed in the subatomic world as he is in the vastness of the cosmic world. Well, Roman numeral six, Roman numeral seven, Roman numeral eight, how do we behold his beauty? How do we encounter it? Well, it's, it's not hard. We look at the word. The word will tell us about redemption and redemptive truth. The word will tell us about his leadership in history too. The word will tell us about the human makeup and the glory of God in the human design. And then the impact of the grace of God on that human design, the word of God will tell us that as well. The word of God will tell us a bit about creation, but then we go outside of the word, not contrary to it ever, but we take the scientific mathematical breakthroughs that have happened by the gift of God. And then we see that. And then we look at the natural world. And then again, we look at the social dynamics of how the human design is made and under the inspiration of the grace of God, how we interact with each other, the nobility. Psalm 145, David said this, this is David again. I meditate. I'm intentional about this. I meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty. You could say on the splendor of your beauty, I meditate on it. He goes on your works. He goes, I don't just kind of run by quick. It's not a drive by, you know, a quick drive by shooting. You know, the one preachers talked about one in an analogy I heard once it says it's like a drive by shooting the way some people do these horrible things. Some people live life that way. There's this drive by and encounter all the violence of life. No, we slow down. We meditate. David says, I'm intentional. I gaze on beauty. Psalm 27. He goes, I delight in the Lord. I look at the beauty in the heavens. Psalm 145, I love it. I meditate on beauty. Psalm 16, I set the Lord before me. Not just his promises to help me when my life is hard. Yes, I've used that verse for years. I set the promises of the Lord before me always. When my life is hard I put his promises in front of me. But it's more than his promises. It's his beauty and it's his grandeur and it's who he is. Paragraph B, but the beauty of God is more than delightful. The beauty of God is transformative. It transforms. The beauty of God is not just delightful. We go, wow, I love the way you are. When we see it, what we behold we become like a little bit now, just little by little. Our inward life is strengthened. Our perspective is changed. We're actually changed by encountering these little moments and encounter these moments of inspiration, of insight. What God gives when he reveals his beauty is usually very just smallest little, new little angles but added up together with the Holy Spirit's grace over time it makes a huge difference. I have the worship team come up. Paragraph C, delighting in God is not something we do in an intellectual vacuum. Meaning you can't stand in awe. You can't delight in somebody you don't know anything about. And the more that we know about his personality, the more that we know about his power, his redemption, his leadership, the more we know, the more that our delight deepens. The more the transforming impact happens inside of us. The more equipped we are to look at difficulty and setbacks and temptations and challenges and persecutions and we can stay steady because we're connected to a different narrative, a bigger storyline, a grander beauty, a grander pleasure, a bigger purpose. And what Proverbs 2 says, you want to know the knowledge of God, let's talk about the knowledge of God here. The knowledge of his beauty, the knowledge of his power, his wisdom, seek for it. Don't let it just like fall on you just kind of randomly. Search it out. Search for it. Study. Read the scripture. Read different facets about the beauty of creation. Look at life. Look at life as an observer that's eager to see beauty. I have a promise for you. You search for it like silver. You'll find it. That's what it says in the next verse. Verse 5, Proverbs 2 says, you will discover the knowledge of God. You will find it. Little by little, but it will add up and it will change your life. Amen. Let's stand before the Lord. I would like tonight for us to make a new resolve. Maybe you've made it before, but to renew it. Or if you haven't, it's the first time. I'm going to, all the days of my life from now forward, Psalm 27, 4, I'm going to gaze on your beauty. I'm going to go after it. I'm going to look for it. I'm going to search for it. I'm going to open my eyes. I'm going to be an eager student of the beauty of God, an observer, consciously, intentionally. Let's just ask the Holy Spirit to come and touch us. Lord, here we are. Here we are created for beauty.