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Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to Gospel and Life. There are lots of things the Bible is pretty clear about. Don't steal, for instance, or don't commit adultery. But no single Bible verse will tell you exactly whom to marry, which job to take, whether to move or stay put. We need God's wisdom to make good decisions in every part of our lives. Join us today as Tim Keller explores how we can cultivate wisdom with God at the center of all life's choices. ♪
Tonight's scripture reading is taken from Proverbs chapters 5, 11, and 30. Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares, let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.
May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer, may her breasts satisfy you always. May you ever be captivated by her love. Beautiful women obtain wealth, and violent men get rich. A woman who is beautiful but lacks discretion is like a gold ring and a pig's snout. There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand.
We're looking at the book of Proverbs, at the subject of wisdom. In 1 Kings 3, it says,
Solomon asks for wisdom, and by that he means he asks for a heart that can discern right from wrong.
And the question comes up, well, if he's the king of Israel, he has the law of God, why would he need a heart to discern right from wrong? Doesn't the word of God tell you? And the answer is that wisdom is not less than being moral and good, but it's quite a bit more. It's knowing the right decision to make, the right course of action to take in the vast majority of life situations that the moral rules don't address.
Last week, we saw that one of the ways, one of the critical important ways to develop a heart of wisdom is to understand and manage the power of anger. This week, we see in the passage here in front of you that we also, in order to be wise, have to learn how to understand and manage the power of sexuality. And if we're going to be wise with regard to sex, we have to know three things.
First of all, why and how we tend to undervalue sex. Secondly, why and how we tend to, at the same time, this takes talent, overvalue sex and how we can solve that. Why we and how we undervalue sex, why and how we overvalue sex, and the solution.
Okay, now let's take a look at how we undervalue sex. Let's take a look at chapter 5, the section at the top, verses 15 to 19. Now, let me start off by reminding you of something we've mentioned a couple times, and it's especially important this week. Let's not forget that the book of Proverbs, from what we can tell, was a manual book.
for boys schools. It was a manual for teaching wisdom to young men, and that's why you have the preponderance of references to men and young men and your wife, and there's no addressing of women. And that's just, don't forget, I mean, if you found a Boy Scout manual, you wouldn't be saying, where's the Girl Scout perspective? It's a Boy Scout manual, that's why. But it doesn't take that much work to understand how this applies across the board. Now, in the beginning here,
The sages, the teachers, the mentors are telling these young men what marriage should be like. See verse 18, this is how your marriage should be. This is how your relationship with the wife of your youth should be. And it's described, marriage is described in terms so erotic that it actually is kind of hot to handle even now.
Okay? So let me show you what I mean. Verse 15, drink water from your own cistern, your well. Now the cistern and the well in Hebrew poetry was an image for female sexuality. You have to enter into the cistern. You have to go down into the well in order to get the water. It's an image of female sexuality.
On the other hand, in verse 18, we have, may your fountain be blessed. Now, this isn't water that you go down in to get. This is water that spurts out, and this is an image of male sexuality, a very vivid image of male sexuality. And then you get to verse 19, where, again, you see how erotic this is. It said, may her breasts, may your wife's breasts, this is in the Bible, by the way, satisfy...
May your wife's breasts satisfy your desires and may you ever be captivated by her love. And the word captivated is a word that literally means to stagger because you're drunk. The sage just says, let me tell you what marriage should be like. You should be absolutely crazy, intoxicated, drunk in love.
But then in verse 16, the last of the images, notice that verse 16 is a very strong statement, as the whole book of Proverbs is, where it says, should your springs overflow in the streets and streams of water in the public squares? That's talking about his male sexuality. You don't just put it out there. He's saying casual sex is out. Sex with people outside marriage is out. Now, what do we have here? Here's what we've got. We have a combination of attitudes that
that in our day and age we think couldn't be combined. They're both what we would associate with liberal attitudes and conservative attitudes all rolled up in one. See, if on the one hand, this is an incredibly positive view of sexuality, this is barefaced rejoicing in sexual pleasure. And there isn't the tiniest little bit of prudishness to it at all.
In fact, you know, verse 18, which is asking a divine blessing. Listen, actually, no, don't think about this because I wouldn't want you to miss the rest of the sermon, which you might if you think very much about verse 18, which is a request for divine blessing on the fountain.
Now, you know, don't think about it too much. This morning, one of my morning services, when I said this, several people put their face, put their bulletin over their face, which showed they were doing exactly what I told them not to do. But you see, there's no prudishness here. This is very explicit.
There's a joy about it. There's a celebratoriness of sexuality. But on the other hand, not only is this an incredibly high view of sexuality, it's an incredibly high view of marriage itself. Unbelievably high. See, you must remember that in that time, and it's still in parts of this world today, but at that time, there are only two reasons that a man got married.
One was you had to marry to secure the best economic and social status possible. That is, you married whoever you could marry from a family that was as well off as possible. And you chose somebody on the basis of that. The second reason you married was fertility to have children. And back in those days, in any culture, nobody got married for love.
That was nuts. You had to get married to the person that you could get married to that would help you economically and socially and bear your children. Nobody got married for love. Nobody got married because you were in love romantically. If you wanted romantic love, you've got that somewhere else. And secondly, nobody got married for companionship. Nobody got married for friendship. And the book of Proverbs, first of all, says right here, you're supposed to be crazy in love, intoxicatedly in love with your spouse.
And secondly, I didn't write it down here. I didn't put it here. But in chapter 2, verse 17, the book of Proverbs says your spouse is your halup. And it's a word that means your most intimate friend. It's a word that means your best friend. Now, this is right in the teeth of every culture on the face of the earth at that time. And it's in the teeth of a lot of cultures today, too. And I'll tell you why.
If your wife is someone you are crazy in love with and is your very best friend, that implies and entails equality.
Here's the book of Proverbs written at a time in which there wasn't a culture in the face of the earth where men thought that they were equal with women. And here's the book of Proverbs talking about romance, saying you need to be in love with your wife and she has to be your absolute best friend. This is the most lofty view of marriage possible. This is the most lofty view of sexuality possible. Contrast that with this other view. At the end of the passage that we just had laid out for you, chapter 30 says,
Verse 18 to 20, we have a poem. It's a three and four poem. You see, it starts, there are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand. Now, that was a literary device, literary convention by which you were talking about wonder. You were saying there's three, no, four things that I do not understand. And he compares three, four things. The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, the way of a ship on the high seas,
And so quite a beautiful poem. First of all, of course, the eagle, the snake, and the ship are all images of one being coming into, penetrating into the realm of another. So they're erotic images. And yet, notice, the eagle doesn't just simply cut through the air, but the eagle rides the air. The eagle enters the air and yet is supported by the air. It's quite fascinating, and I don't have time to go into it.
fascinating set of images and says, though, the beauty of nature, the beauty of creation, the climax, the fourth, the most beautiful and wondrous of all is simply the simple act of human sex, a man with a maiden. This is lofty. Sex is likened to soaring. Sex is likened to sailing, to propulsion. Suddenly, verse 20,
It's totally jarring, and it's meant to be jarring. It's deliberately jarring. It's a didactic device. First of all, it's jarring in terms of image. Here we don't have sexuality likened to soaring or to sailing, but to sloppy eating. See? And not only do we have a contrast in image, we have a contrast in attitude. There's no wonder. There's a, well, what is it? What's the problem here? Sex is appetite. Sex is consumption.
Sex is routine. The person's attitude is, well, sex is just an appetite. Hey, what's the big deal? I feel hungry, I eat. I feel sexy, I have sex. What is the big deal? No wonder. Sex is consumption. Now, what is Proverbs telling us about sexuality here? For the last 30 years, sociologists have talked about something that's often called commodification.
Commodification. I just got this out of a glossary of sociological terms. Commodification is a process by which social relations are reduced to economic exchange relations. Commodification is a process by which social relations are reduced to economic exchange relations. Well, what's all that about? Well, here. An economic exchange relation is a consumer-vendor relationship. A consumer only stays in a relationship with the vendor if the product...
comes to you at a cost that's acceptable. So for example, you might go to your grocery store and you might know the grocers, right? And they may not know you and you say hi and you get to know them personally and that's nice, you know, that's nice. But if the produce, if the groceries go down in quality or if the prices go up too high, in other words, if the product is not coming to you at an acceptable cost, you're out of there. It's nice to know them.
But you have a consumer relationship with them, which means that you're there for the product, not the person. And your needs and your rights are more important than the relationship. That's an exchange relationship. That's a consumer relationship. Now, throughout history, social relationships were not run on the same basis. They were not consumer-based. Social relations were commitment-based.
Your relationships with your neighbors, with your friends, certainly with your family, with your children, with your spouse, were commitment-based relationships. Why? Well, in a social relationship that's commitment-based, the relationship is an end in itself. You stay in the relationship whether it's meeting your individual needs or not. And even though, of course, that can be costly at times, all cultures have always understood that a life filled with only consumer relationships is a lonely life.
And a life filled with commitment relationships is the most fulfilling and rich and happy life possible. Now, what observers have been noticing about our modern culture for the last few years, though, is, and they're absolutely right about it, is that the model of the market is that the, is that commodification, the model of the market is,
is now being applied by so many people in our society, most of it, to more and more of our relationships, so that almost all of our relationships now are consumer-based rather than commitment-based. Almost all our relationships, even our relationships with our family to some degree, and in some cases to a complete degree, are consumer-based. That is, we are in them as long as they're meeting our needs. Otherwise, we're out of there. It's the product, not the person, that matters.
And of course, now this actually affects lots of things, a whole lot of things. And we could go into a lot of areas, but we're not because tonight we're looking at one area. And that is this has led in our society to the commodification of sex. Now, what do I mean by that? Just this. The Bible says you must never commodify sex. You must never abstract sex from the whole person.
Or put it this way, you must never give somebody your sexuality. You must never give somebody your body without giving them your whole self. And you must never receive sexuality. You must never receive someone's whole body unless you receive their whole self. You must not abstract the product from the person. You must not commodify sex. Well, somebody says, well, what do you mean receive the whole person? I'll tell you what I mean. You need to be married. That's what the Bible says.
If you're not married, if you're having sex with somebody, but if you're not married, you've held on to your life. You're still in control of your life. You're not sharing control of your money. You're not sharing control of your space. You're not sharing control of yourself. You have the right over your own decisions. And not only have you not given yourself if you're not married, but you haven't not only haven't you given yourself, but you haven't received the other person.
You're receiving the other person's sex, but not all their problems, all their flaws, all their needs. They're not completely, you haven't sworn to make them your responsibility. In other words, when you have sex outside of marriage, it's an exchange of products, not an exchange of selves. You're saying, I want the pleasure. I want this from you. I want the product, but I don't want you. It's sex as groceries. It's sex as consumption. It's sex as commodity. According to the Bible,
Sex is not a means of self-gratification. It's not even a means of self-expression. It is a radical, unconditional, deeply personal means of self-donation. And if you use it like that, that is, you only ever give your sexuality with your whole person. In other words, as long as you understand that sex needs to go in marriage, if you use it like that, there's soaring
If you don't use it like that, you turn it into a commodity. You turn it into groceries. You turn it into just an appetite, and it will be routine. It'll be boring. There'll be no wonder left. Now, I'm living in New York, and I'm talking in New York, and therefore I know something about somebody here, and that is some of you are offended because... I don't have anybody in mind, but some of you are offended because some of you are saying...
I'm offended because I am committed and I do love the person that I am with sexually right now. And I'm offended by what you're saying. Well, listen, I'm not saying you don't love the person. There's levels of love, but would you please admit something? You have not given yourself. You're in a consumer-based relationship because you are retaining the right to get out of there if your needs are not being met at acceptable cost. And if it's not a consumer relationship, why in the world aren't you married? You haven't given yourself.
You've commodified sex, and there won't be any soaring in a life like that. So first of all, the Bible shows us why and how we undervalue sex by turning it into just an appetite, just a product. We did it back then. We do it now. Secondly, however, and I'm not kidding when I say this takes real talent, but our culture and that culture too, at the same time that we undervalue sex, we also overvalue it.
We overvalue sexual attractiveness and physical beauty. Let's take a look at these middle two verses. Beautiful women obtain wealth and violent men get rich. A woman who's beautiful but lacks discretion is like a gold ring in a pig's snout. Now, you know, I read these to my wife this summer when I was working through the book of Proverbs. And that last one, verse 22, I read this and Kathy says, I hope you're not going to preach on that.
And I said, why? She says, that's disgusting and offensive. I don't even know what it means, but it's just disgusting and offensive. And the more I read it, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it's supposed to be disgusting and offensive, and that's its value, and that's its point. And this morning, Kathy, on the way home from work, I mean, on the way home from church, said, yeah, it's all right. It wasn't so bad after all. So I can proceed.
What is the illustration? Well, it's like this. If you reach for a ring, you see a beautiful ring? Oh, it's a beautiful ring. Oh. And when you see a beautiful thing like that, you just want to reach out and grab it. And you pull it to yourself. But if it is attached inextricably and inseparably to a pig that rolls around in the dirt and in the mud and in its own feces and eats slop.
Then when you pull the ring to yourself and you don't notice the pig, suddenly you have this rather big mess in your lap. You know, you reached out for beauty, but you've got just a mess, okay? Now you say, what idiot would do that? Well, the sage is saying, if you look at someone's physical attractiveness, somebody who's pulled together, someone who's so sleek, so polished,
you know, brilliant, beautiful, just, you know, striking, and you pull that person toward yourself and you don't notice whether that person's shallow, whether that person's selfish, whether that person is foolish, whether that person internally is a mess, you're just as much of an idiot.
Because you see, it's the inside that counts, not the outside. It's the person's character that is going to determine what that person's life is like and what the life of everyone around him or her is like. And you're just as silly to be distracted by what's on the inside or not even care about what's on the inside. It's the person who pulls the ring and doesn't happen to notice that there's a hog attached to it. In the midst of life's uncertainties, where do you turn for wisdom?
The book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom to help guide us in all aspects of life. In Tim and Kathy Keller's devotional book, God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, you'll get a fresh, inspiring view of God's wisdom each day of the year from the book of Proverbs. This devotional book will help you unlock the wisdom within the poetry of Proverbs and guide you toward a new understanding of what it means to live the Christian life.
This resource is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's love with more people. You can request your copy of God's Wisdom for Navigating Life when you give today at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Now, what does this mean? The idolatry, the obsession, the overvalue of physical beauty and sexual attractiveness...
what amazes me about these two verses is that it actually is showing how both men and women back then and especially now are guilty of it. Verse 22, which we're looking at, is actually a slam and a critique of men. That's the reason why the beautiful person in this proverb is a woman.
Why? This is saying that the habitual and widespread habit of men to objectify, dehumanize, and commodify women by evaluating them almost strictly on their looks is destructive foolishness. When men evaluate women almost strictly on their looks, when men differentiate their regard for the woman and the way in which they treat the woman on the basis of where they are on the look spectrum, it's destructively foolish.
Men, let me just suggest that if you don't think this is true, you're probably not going to see it in yourself. So watch the other men. Look around you for two days and watch. And you will see it. It's enormously obvious. Now, why have I asked you to do this exercise and not the women? The women already know it. They've seen it. And it not only erodes their trust of us, it not only has damaged terribly the relationships between the genders, and it continues to,
but it also terribly, as I'm going to show you in a second, damages their own self-image and self-regard. It is psychologically and socially destructively foolish. That is how the male idolatry, obsession, overvalue of sexual attractors and physical beauty is played out. But the women, it plays out in women's lives too. And the example there is verse 16.
Beautiful women obtain wealth and violent men get rich. Now, the word wealth is the translation of the Hebrew word kabod, which is the word that means glory, and that means a lot more than wealth. As I've often mentioned here, the word glory literally in the Bible means importance, significance. And notice what it's saying? Men, not all men, but men habitually use coercive power in order to get prestige. And
And women, not all women, but many women, use looks to get what? Significance. And here's how it works out in women's lives. Too many women tie their self-regard almost completely, but to too great a degree, to their looks, to how their face looks, to how their body looks, to how their shape looks, to how they dress.
Now, and you realize that if it's true that women have their own particular form of this pathology and may have their own form of this pathology, but the pathologies interlock. The pathologies are interdependent. The pathologies, you know, aggravate one another and they fuel one another. So it gets worse and worse and worse as the years go by. This is serious. Let me meditate before we talk about the solution. Let me meditate for a minute about how serious this really is.
When we undervalue sex by making it into a product or an appetite, we dehumanize the other. But when we overvalue sex, when we overvalue physical beauty and sexual attractiveness, we dehumanize ourselves. Let me show you for a minute how women and men do that. How does it dehumanize women? Well, we've already talked about it, and maybe it's kind of obvious. But it's obvious that even back then, there was a peculiar temptation for women to
to just tie their self-worth to what's on the outside. You know, and instead of caring about your character, why should you, you know, this is, I think, how women, why should I care about my character when nobody else in the world does? I mean, it's always been a huge temptation, but there's something particularly poisonous and pathological in this regard about our own culture. And here's what I, here's all I know. Eating disorders...
are three to five times worse, higher amongst women, the rate is three to five times higher, in industrialized nations than poor nations. And it's twice as high amongst college-educated women as against non-college-educated women. And what this seems to mean is the closer you get to the heart of Western civilization, the closer you get to the heart of Western culture,
The more successful you are, the more, in fact, from what I can tell, is the closer you get to Los Angeles and New York and London and Paris, the closer you get to the big cities where the culture, the culture-forming wombs of Western society, the more women are bombarded with a sense that they're fat and ugly almost no matter who they are. It's devastating.
On the other hand, it's dehumanizing to men. And it's dehumanizing to men in two ways. And four, I guess I could say, in two ways. First of all, it's dehumanizing because of this addiction, well, because of this addiction to beauty, we have pornography. Now, it's almost impossible for me to talk about pornography without sounding like a minister. And who in the world wants to hear a minister?
So don't. Don't listen to me. Here's what I suggest. It's online. Go to the October 20, 2003 edition of New York Magazine. What astounded me about that edition...
was New York Magazine, if you know anything about it, it's slick, it's glossy, and it's after the hip. It's after the young New Yorker. It laughs at anything that even looks like sexual self-restraint. It's liberated. It wants you to think it's liberated. It wants you to be liberated in every way. And that's why it astounded me that when they actually turned to the subject of pornography, even they had to be realistic. There's story after story in there about guys who are admitting that they are hooked, that they're spending hours on the internet. They're spending hours on the computer.
They know it. They know this isn't right, but they can't stop. And it's utterly damaging male-female relationships. And here's the reason why. To get intimacy with a woman, a real woman, it's complicated. I mean, you know, they're complicated. It's scary. You don't know what you're doing. Why do it when you've got this? It's the escape. It's the false intimacy. It's the poisonous intimacy.
So it's really, it's just undermining the incentive. It's undermining the ability. And then if you do move out into a relationship with women, real women aren't like that. They don't look like that. They don't act like that. You're not ready. And women, if you don't know that the men are being damaged by pornography for relationships, then you're being naive yourself. You're not being wise.
It's serious. But there's a second way in which this addiction to sexual beauty and physical beauty is hurting men, and that is the way in which they determine who they're going to date, the way in which they determine who they're going to mate with and who they're going to marry. What they do, okay, is they go by 80% of the women. They don't even think about them. They're just not pretty enough. They just go right by them. They don't even think about it. They don't look at their... They don't look.
And then they narrow down to 20% that they'll even think about. Now, when you're talking to some of the 20% that they think are pretty enough to consider, and they find a shallow person, they say, oh, I'm not interested in her. She's shallow. Oh, she's shallow. You see, in other words, I have just gone by 80% of the women in the world. I haven't even looked to see what their character is like. I'm not even thinking about them. Oh, that's really deep. You know? Yeah.
That's not shallow? In other words, you're saying, oh, I've rejected her because she's shallow. I want someone who's beautiful and deep. Well, here's the problem is you're not deep because what you've done, and this is creating a great deal of alienation and a tremendous amount of isolation. There's all kinds of people that would be wonderful dates and wonderful friends, wonderful mates, but
for you, that you're not even thinking about. And no wonder you're finding it so hard and you're so scared. And of course they're also isolated because they know they're being passed over various ways. Listen, this is serious. This is creating isolation. It's creating alienation in our Western culture at an enormous rate. Well, somebody says, okay, you're a minister and it's your job to alarm me. Well, I'm alarmed.
And so I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to be a shallow person. I'm not going to look just at the skin. I'm not just going to look at appearance. I'm not going to over obsess on beauty, my own beauty or other people's. I am going to change. How? I'm going to try. I am going to leave here and I'm going to try harder. It won't be enough. And I'll tell you why it's not going to be enough.
Even minister, I don't need just to go look to the Bible. Let me tell you why the psychologist and even the evolutionary biologist will tell you, you will never break this enormous power that beauty and sexual beauty and physical beauty has on us in our culture today just by trying. First of all, the psychologist will tell you one of the reasons we're obsessed with beauty, we either need it in others or
I need to be beautiful or I need to be with the beautiful. One of the reasons why psychologists say we're so obsessed with outward beauty is because we don't like what's inside. We know we don't like what's inside. There's a shame or there's a guilt or there's a feeling like I haven't lived up. And if I'm really great looking on the outside or if I'm really with somebody who's great looking, then somehow that feels like it covers me.
The unsightliness on the inside. Now, you know, that's what the psychologist will tell you. The obsession with beauty comes from not feeling all that wonderful about what's on the inside, not all that confident that you're lovable. And, of course, that's what the Bible says anyway. Genesis 3 says the minute we experienced alienation from God, the minute we experienced alienation
a sense of shame we needed to cover up. We needed something to cover that sense of nakedness we felt. We needed cosmetics. We needed a great outfit. We needed beauty. But you see, until we are radically sure that we're loved and lovable, we're not going to be free from this desperate need to be with or to be beautiful, to be with or be the beautiful.
Secondly, the evolutionary biologists go even further, and I think they're right about this. They say, why do you think that we're obsessed with beauty? Why do men dump their wives for younger women? Why do women desperately try to continue to look young? You know, why are we so obsessed with beauty? It says, because we want to survive, and we don't want to admit that we're going to die. This is a way of denying that.
We don't want to admit our mortality. And until we're completely free of fear of death and completely fear of any inner shame or feeling of spiritual inadequacy, you're never going to overcome this obsession, this overvaluing of physical beauty and sexual attractiveness. So you need a power coming into your life if you're going to overcome it. Where do we get that power? It's not going to work just by trying hard. Here's where we get that power. Let me tell you where to get the power. At the end of Proverbs...
The sage says something beautiful. He says, I look at the wonders of creation, the eagle soaring, the ship sailing. I look at the beauties of creation and I see them all reflected in human sexuality. He says, you don't understand human sexuality unless you see in human sexuality the glories of creation. But Paul, the apostle, the New Testament goes one up on the sage and
and says you do not understand sexuality unless you understand the glories of redemption. And Paul says in Ephesians 5, Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her by washing with water through the word to present her to himself a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any blemish.
Paul says, husbands, you're never going to understand. Wives, you're never going to understand married love and sexuality unless you understand that God himself is your lover who has died to make you beautiful. That's what that verse says. What is that all about? Ah, just this. God made us not just to be his subjects, not just to be his sheep, but to be his lovers.
When you're in love with somebody, you can't not think of them. You think of them all the time. You're reading a book, you think of them. You're going someplace, you think of them, even if they're not around you. You know, when you're in love, you're thinking of them all the time. Look at what God said he wanted in his relationship with us. He wanted us to center everything on him. He wanted us to do everything in the name of his glory.
He wanted us to be obsessed with his glory. He wanted to be preeminent in every area of our lives. He said, oh my goodness, is that overdoing it? Is that overbearing? No, he wanted us to be in love with him. He just wanted us to treat him the way we treat people when we fall in love with them. He wanted us to see him as the ultimate beauty, which he is. But we turned, the Bible says, and gave our heart to other things.
Well, says God in the beginning of the book of Genesis, in the beginning of human history, I will get you back. I love you, but I've lost you, but I'm coming to get you back. And so he comes in the person of the Messiah. He comes in the person of Jesus Christ. But here's what's so interesting. Here's our lover come back to win our hearts.
And yet, we're told in Isaiah 53, which describes the Messiah, he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Now, there's two Hebrew words that are used there, beauty and appearance, which can also be translated shapeliness, that are the same two words that describe Rachel, Jacob's wife Rachel, who was one of the great beauties of the Old Testament.
It's almost like Isaiah is saying something about Jesus in terms of Rachel. Now, do you remember the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel? Jacob was a typical guy. He had a messed up life, didn't like himself. And when he was working for Laban, and Laban had two daughters, and one of them was gorgeous, Rachel. The same two Hebrew words. She was beautiful and shapely. She was one of the most incredibly beautiful women the Bible talks about.
And Jacob said, if I could have her as my wife, then my life would be healed. I could merge with the beauty. Then I wouldn't feel so bad about myself. Then I'd feel good about myself. And he wanted Rachel, but he didn't want Leah. Leah, the other sister, was the girl nobody wanted. Her father didn't want her. Laban tricked Jacob into marrying her.
And then Jacob didn't want her because even though he married her, he had to marry her, he spent all the rest of his life ignoring her. She was the girl nobody wanted. But get this, God chose not the beautiful Rachel, but the girl nobody wanted, the homely girl, the cross-eyed girl, the overweight girl, to be the one through whom the Messiah came into the world, to be the one who brought the Messianic seed into the world. Now, Jesus Christ...
The Lord, the lover of our souls, who has come back to get us, deliberately comes not as Rachel, but as Leah. Deliberately comes as the un-Rachel. That's what Isaiah 53 is saying. The un-beauty queen. The one who didn't even get invited to the prom. The girl or the boy who nobody wanted. Why would he deliberately come? Externally, unsightly. Why would he come like that? To show you real beauty.
The only way you're going to be, I'm going to be, the only way we're going to be shaken out of the illusions that are distorting our lives if we see this. Jesus Christ was beautiful. He had all the glory, but he emptied himself of his beauty and came to earth to die for our sins. He came into a world that's obsessed with power. He had no power. With beauty, he had no beauty. With credentials, he had no credentials. And so we cast him aside. We rejected him. We killed him. Why? Why?
Paul says so in Ephesians 5. He lost his beauty and became the ultimate person of character, who on the inside was gorgeous, on the outside wasn't, to die for us, not because we were beautiful, but to make us beautiful. It says he died to make us radiant and spotless and without blemish. Jesus Christ shows us real beauty, sacrificial love, character, even though you're unsightly on the outside, and loving unlovely people in order to make them lovely.
beautifying people with your love. Why did he do it for us? It says in Isaiah 53, it says the results of his suffering he will see and be satisfied. What's the results of his suffering? Us. See, here's how I use beauty in my life. I use it when I'm exhausted, when I can't go on. That's when I go to the ocean and listen to the waves. See, that's when I go north and look at the leaves.
That's when I put on my favorite movies and watch the most beautiful passages. That's when I put on the music that I find the most beautiful. And beauty is what gets me to keep on going. What kept Jesus going? Through the cross, what kept him going? You and me. The prospects of us in his arms was the beauty that kept him going. When you see that, then finally your heart will be melted out of all of its distorted understandings of beauty because that's beautiful.
See, when you see an ugly man, Jesus Christ, but who is beautiful on the inside, coming to love us, not because we were lovely, but to make us lovely, to the degree that sinks into your heart, to the degree that you finally see, I am loved, that's the end of your shame and your spiritual inadequacy. To the degree you see, I am going to be resurrected, that's the end of your fear of mortality. Only that will ever break the hold that beauty has got on you and me.
He had no beauty or majesty that we should desire him externally, but he had the only beauty that will transform your life if you merge with it. So do it. Let us pray. Thank you, Father, for giving us what we need to overcome some of the distortions that our culture gives to us, that our own hearts bring to us. We want to be wise. We don't want to be stupid about sex and about beauty. And we pray that you'd make us wise by looking at your son, Jesus Christ.
who though he was beautiful, lost his beauty, that we could become beautiful in your sight and get the only beauty that will last forever. We ask that you would change the way in which we deal with one another because we know that. Make us a community of people who look to the heart and not on the outward appearance. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, please rate and review it so more people can discover this podcast.
This month's sermons were recorded in 2004. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. ♪
