It had been a dreadful week mixed with big failures and discouraging sorrows. There I sat in church listening to the Sunday sermon. My pastor was amid a series on the Psalms and that week he preached on lament. I don’t remember what he said about the cultural milieu or the meaning of the Hebrew words, but I remember that tears came to his eyes as he pleaded with us to see God as the one to whom all our sorrows can be brought. In that moment, I saw not just a truth to believe but something of God’s character at which to marvel.
Teaching is a critical part of preaching God’s Word. We lay open the text and what it means. But if we stop there, we’ve failed to preach faithfully. As John Piper writes,
The faithful preacher exults over the beauty of the truth he is explaining. Christian preaching is expository exultation. If we are not expositing, we are not making the truth clear. If we are not exulting, we are not making the value of the truth clear.
Every faithful sermon will seek to communicate this truth. Life can be ugly, but Jesus is beautiful. Behold him!
Pastor, You Need to See God’s Beauty
Those of us who labor in preaching and teaching have a deep love for God’s word. But the pressure of deep study and preaching weekly is hard work. Moreover, if we enter our study feeling the weight of an impatient moment with our family, a heavy meeting with a church member, or unwanted jealousy toward the successful pastor down the street, seeing God’s beauty in the text can be difficult. For those of us in smaller churches in smaller places, the potential to be distracted or discouraged only increases. We can often feel like we are in a "wilderness" with meager resources, time, or visible fruit to our labors.
In our preparation, we don’t just need to write a sermon; we need to behold God’s beauty. Ministry is often messy. The world is often ugly. The only way we’ll endure with joy is if we come to God’s Word looking for treasure. The Lord meets us in his Word. We need the beauty of God to shine into our souls, as preachers. How can our hearts endure otherwise?
As you open your Bible to study, pray that God will show you his beauty. Look for God’s beauty in the text: his greatness, holiness, compassion, uniqueness, and love. Meditate on how Jesus fulfills and displays God’s revealed beauty in the gospel. Pause for moments of worship, confession, and gratitude. Invite God’s beauty to transform you as you study.
In the best moments in my study, I’m like a hiker who discovers a hidden valley. The beauty of the brilliant colors of the flowers, the glass-calm of the lake, and the towering mountainside takes my breath away. I grab my sketchbook and try my best to draw the beauty that lies before me. I return joyfully to my friends and show them my pitiful sketch, trying to explain the beauty I saw and pleading with them to come see it too. When preaching is like this, it is joyful and life-giving.
Pastor, Your People Need to See God’s Beauty
Pastors only know a microcosm of the ugliness our people experience each week. Those who live in ugliness need to see God’s beauty. Their souls are thirsty for him, even if they don’t realize it. The world feels like a dry and weary land. Our people need the experience of David in Psalm 63:1–2:
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Notice that David doesn’t say, “So I have learned about you in the sanctuary.” He says, “I have looked upon you in the sanctuary.” When David entered the sanctuary, he needed more than intellectual knowledge that God was powerful and glorious. He needed to commune with that powerful and glorious God. Spurgeon described David’s experience as “looking through the veil of ceremonies to the invisible One.” He needed to understand that the God who is the source of all goodness and life would meet with him and was enough to satisfy his aching heart.
The way our people become “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10) is by encountering the beauty of God. The way our people face the ugliness of life with joyful singing is when they are helped to see the beauty of Jesus Christ as greater. Our people don’t simply need the truths of God’s Word. They need to see why those truths are beautiful.
We Need God’s Beauty, and It Is Endless
God is a God of beauty. This is undeniable. Consider taste buds which allow us to enjoy food. Consider the vast nebulae and deep sea creatures human beings have never observed, yet God has long enjoyed. God is a God of beauty. He has made us in his image with an insatiable need to make and marvel at beautiful things. We make and enjoy songs, poems, and paintings. We design architectural marvels and cultivate gardens. All these beautiful things, however, are only shadows of the infinite beauty of God.
We might get tired of a type of food or looking at a particular painting, listening to the same song or smelling a particular scent. Every beautiful thing in this world is finite in its glory; however, the beauty of God is without end. This is what the psalmist exults in when he says:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
–Psalm 27:4
The beauty of God will never bore us. Gazing on God’s beauty, in his presence, is an experience that could captivate us all the days of our life, and we ought to seek after it. If we are not captivated with and rejoicing in the beauty of God, it’s not because he’s not beautiful enough. It’s because we are not looking. Pastor, behold the beauty of God in his Word. Then offer up your highest and most zealous effort to show that beauty to your people.
Micah Lang
Micah is a pastor at Redemption Hill Community in Lewiston, Maine and has a passion to see healthy, gospel-centered churches multiply and flourish in New England. He and his wife Felicia are parents to Ada and Judah. He regularly writes at Gospel Matters.