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The Ugliness That Is The New Beauty and In Stark Contrast to the True Beauty of the Throne Room of God
One could call the throne room of God the operations center for all the universe. It is also a model or paradigm for man for beauty, truth, and goodness. Hebrews calls it the “true tabernacle” (Hebrews 8:2), an example for the earthly one (Hebrews 8:2). Just like man was made in the image of God or in His likeness, the earthly tabernacle mimicked the heavenly tabernacle as seen in Hebrews 8-9.
The throne room of God is visited or mentioned several times in the Bible and it is where the special presence of God is. Since beauty is the glory of God or the beauty of His holiness, then the throne room of God is a template for an understanding of beauty.
The beauty is the coherent wholeness of the throne room, the composition or symphony of all of the parts, but also the individual aspects making up that whole. God is beautiful, which is to say that His holiness, majesty, and glory are beautiful. However, as beauty relates to the aesthetic of God’s holiness, it is the order, symmetry, proportion, brilliance, harmony, arrangement, splendor, accuracy, and completeness of it. These qualities are beautiful and then beauty is found in the imitation of these qualities.
Objective beauty is that the object is beautiful in itself. It isn’t based upon the perspective of the subject either seeing, hearing, or experiencing the qualities of it. It doesn’t matter what you feel. It is beautiful if you never existed. God’s throne room existed before man existed. Beauty existed before man could have a perspective, a like or a dislike.
When the taste of the subject determines beauty, it elevates the subject. Value comes down to what someone thinks or feels. The subject becomes the measurement. The true beauty starts with God. All beauty is judged based upon God. Taste should conform to God. If not, then the subject becomes the basis of value and in the way the creature is worshiped, not the Creator.
To rebel against God is to rebel against the nature of God, which is beautiful. Ugliness is both rebellion and a symptom of a rebellious heart. It violates the nature of God. It is a characteristic of this world.
Someone whose taste clashes with the beauty of God wants something different than God, therefore, a different god. He may conform his god to what he likes or wants, but it isn’t God. He’s not worshiping God. His rebellion against the nature of God manifests itself in his taste. He doesn’t like what God likes. This will not be hidden. It will be seen.
If your taste doesn’t fit into the throne room of God, it’s not going to be there in the future either. You don’t live a life congruent with the ugliness of this earth and have any kind of yearning for the actual throne room of God. You won’t bring anything you like there. If you don’t like the taste of heaven, then you should consider whether you are going to be there. Why would you want to be there?
In scripture Jesus Christ is in the throne room of God in many instances. He’s the one on the throne for Isaiah in Isaiah 6. He’s in the throne room at the Father’s right hand in Psalm 110. He’s in the throne room, of course, in Revelation 4-5. Jesus is in that throne room right now as you read this. You can say that you follow Him, but when your life wouldn’t and so doesn’t like Who He is, His beauty, because you choose the ugliness of this sin-cursed world, then you aren’t following Him. You can attack me about that, as the messenger, but that won’t change it either. Even though Jesus isn’t in His heavenly throne room in Revelation 1, John describes what He would be like there.
12 And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; 13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. 14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. 16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. 17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Beauty is to be beheld, but what makes it beautiful is not based upon the response of the one seeing or hearing it. What is beautiful is beautiful no matter what the acknowledgement, but the response is informative. In verse 17 John says that when he saw Jesus, He fell at His feet as dead. John fell prostrate before the Lord in great fear. Jesus’ “countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength” (v. 16). He looks into the eyes of the Judge of the entire earth, which were like “a flame of fire” (v. 14). Awe and reverence are the appropriate responses to the beauty of Jesus Christ. He was in the presence of the glory of Jesus, and his penetrating judgment, the beauty of his purity, justice, and truth.
I included back to verse 12 in this description because Jesus is in the midst of His assemblies, His churches, which are the seven golden candlesticks. A Christ follower doesn’t arbitrarily follow Jesus on the earth, but in one of His churches. You aren’t following Jesus outside of a true church, which today is His earthly temple (1 Cor 3:16-17), symbolized by a golden candlestick, one of the pieces of the temple in the Old Testament to imitate the shining light of God in the heavenly temple. A true church shines with the doctrinal and moral light of Christ.
At no time does He or would He ever appear like anyone either attending or performing at a popular music concert, and at no time would any true believer treat Him like that. It is not appropriate. Jesus can and does condescend to us, but our responsibility to Him is reverence as God. The coarsening of the imagination of beauty has been a major cause for the profaning of Jesus Christ, treating Him in a common or casual fashion, which is not how John treats Him and partly because of how Jesus appears in His glory. In Isaiah 6, totally holy angels cover their faces and feet in reverence of His holiness. Jesus Himself is dressed in a garment down to His feet, much like ones God fashioned for Adam and Eve, and immodesty of any kind is not compatible with His holiness.
I understand that the throne room of God is unlike any place on earth. It is the most beautiful place anywhere, more beautiful than anything or anyone, but one we can only attempt to imagine by reading what scripture says about it. Still, however, it is a model for imitation for the earthly temple, something that Solomon understood when he built his temple in Jerusalem, but also what God designed into the tabernacle in the wilderness. Much was put into the beauty of the entire structure and its parts.
One can also read the beauty of the text of the songs sung to God the Father and the Son throughout scripture, but including in the throne room of God in Revelation 4-5. George Frederick Handel used that text for the lyrics of his oratorio, the Messiah. It too is a model to imitate for beauty, since beauty is imitative.
The effervescent light at the throne of God is the red jasper stone, the translucent white sardine stone, and an emerald light rainbow round about it. Men in pure white robes and crowns of gold sit at every one of twenty four of their own thrones encircling the throne. There are seven lamps burning before the throne and lightnings and thunder proceeding from it. Before the throne is a sea of crystal like glass from which would bounce reflections of all the other colors and hues. Four awesome beasts are too before and behind the throne in the likeness of four different creatures with six wings apiece, flying and chanting or singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
In this description of God’s throne room are many varied aspects of the beauty of God at their most resplendent in a symphony of color, light, creatures, and sound, all of which speak of the majesty of a holy God. Many chapters are given to the building of the tabernacle and then the temple of the Old Testament to imitate this scene. This is the nature of beauty. A departure from that is the on ramp to the broad road to destruction and the fastest lane from any way back to the narrow road that leads to life eternal. Anyone reading this should be warned about the fascination and allurement of this world’s ugliness, drawing them forever astray from the presence of God.
The ugliness of a sin-cursed world and cooperative false religion stands in stark contrast to the overall beauty and the beautiful aspects of the throne room of God and then its imitation on earth by those truly God’s people. In my second post, I compared true beauty on earth, mimesis, imitation, with poiesis, the expression of self, but also with diegesis, in which so-called beauty is revealed through the perspective of the narrator or storyteller. Men love themselves. What else occurs though is men who love themselves conflating their desires or taste into what God wants. What makes something beautiful to them in their own imaginations is their taste, what they like.
The center of the universe isn’t in the belly of a man (read here and here), but in the throne room of God. Beauty doesn’t start with a perspective ruined by sin or even from the experience of a professing believer. Man’s heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). At best, he sees through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). He should doubt his own perspective. Imitation is a matter of faith, which pleases God (Hebrews 11:6).
Millennial, who ghosts his parents, because your own taste supersedes all other, consider that you perhaps will continue to ghost them right into eternity. The boundaries you set up to protect your own lifestyle will still be a boundary, much like the one between the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. You want a great gulf and a great gulf you will get. Hell is the ultimate in ugly, but it will be for everyone who prefers his taste above God’s.
The world is not intended by God to mirror the imaginations of men’s hearts. It should look like the throne room of God and then a Paradise regained. With that in mind, the church turns the world upside down, not the world turning the church upside down. Churches have capitulated to the world, using its allures to conform to the belly of man, bringing the uglification of the church. It not only is not acceptable to God, but it is the further downfall of man.
The Command to Worship the LORD in the Beauty of Holiness
Without doubt, scripture teaches that worship of God must be regulated by what God says. The point of this post comes from Psalm 29:2
Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.
I’ve seen this verse many times. Many. Yet, something occurred to me when I read it in my Bible reading this year that really struck me. Since true worship of God is regulated by scripture, then worship should be regulated especially by this verse. There are not many verses as stark as this one on worship of the LORD. The teaching is also repeated three times. It’s not a stand alone.
1 Chronicles 16:29, “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.”Psalm 96:9, “O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.”
God the Highest and Its Ramifications
Our Father, Which Art In Heaven
The model prayer of Matthew 6 and Luke 11 begins with the words: “Our Father which art in heaven.” Very often, I will follow this model and pray something like the following: “Dear Father, I ask that you will be praised. You are high and far above us.” What does this describe?
Separate from Sin
That God the Father is in heaven says that He is separate from sin. He is far away from anything sinful, because the third heaven, the location of His heavenly throne room, is at least as far away as the furthest space, which we know is many light years away.
The Highest
That God the Father is in heaven says that He is the highest. “Highest” is a scriptural name and description of God the Father.
Psalm 18:13, “The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire.”
Luke 1:32, “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David.”
Authority
God the Father’s highness relates to His authority. He is over everything. Numbers 24:7 says,
He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted.
“His king shall be higher than Agag.” He has greater authority than Agag. Psalm 89:27 also states this truth:
Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth.
He is better. He has greater authority than the kings of the earth. Highest means the highest authority.
Immutability
That God the Father is in heaven reflects James 1:17:
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Nothing can effect God the Father’s perfection. Without anything able to effect Him, He is immutable. Everything is relative to Him, but He is absolute. Whatever comes from Him is good. It is untainted.
Majesty
That God the Father is in heaven reveals His majesty. Majesty relates to His holiness. He is separate by being the highest. However, He is not common or profane. God the Father is distinct. He shows forth the perfections of all His attributes, manifesting His glory. Everything about Him is greater.
Judgment
God is judge. That God the Father is in heaven gives Him a vantage point. He can see everything. God perches above all. If God is higher and better, than something can be judged to be so. With things higher, better, and distinct, God requires judgment. He will judge, but so should we.
The Ramifications of God, the Highest
When God is highest, He is higher than anything. That is the automatic enemy of egalitarianism. God is of the highest value. Nothing is better than Him. He is far above anyone and everyone.
For people to do what they want to do, it helps if no one or nothing is above them. It is a Satanic version of utopianism. Every man is his own god. No one is better, greater, or higher than anyone else. No one wears a different uniform. Gender or sex doesn’t exist.
Karl Marx said, “Religion is the opium of the people.” God is incompatible with communism, because He is the ultimate authority, higher than everyone. When people judge according to God, this act overthrows communist thinking.
If one individual cannot be better than everyone, then he at least wants no one to be better than anyone else. Everyone has his own truth, his own goodness, and his own beauty. Every standard is relative to himself. Nothing is absolute. Of course, all of this is a lie.
The “Tabernacle of Witness” and Objective Aesthetic Meaning
In Stephen’s sermon to the Sanhedrin in Acts 7, his theme is that God speaks and Israel’s leadership and predominately Israel doesn’t listen. They “do always resist the Holy Ghost: as [their] fathers did, so do [they]” (7:51) and “they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers” (7:52). The evidence in Old Testament history is Abraham and Joseph (7:9-16), Moses (7:17-37), the law (7:38-43), and then the tabernacle or temple (7:44-50). Their not listening to Stephen was now a long line of not listening to God, which was not listening to God-ordained authority.Israel didn’t listen to Joseph, Moses, the law. And the tabernacle or temple? What was the tabernacle saying that wasn’t being heard by the people? By the time of Stephen’s day, it was a veil rent and shortly before, a few cleansings by Jesus and the threat of destruction. The temple was still testifying. Stephen said the temple was talking too, a “tabernacle of witness” (7:44). Moses made “it according to the fashion that he had seen” (7:44). “Fashion” is tupon, which is transliterated “type,” but BDAG says it is “a mark made as the result of a blow or pressure,” “embodiment of characteristics,” and “technically design, pattern.” All of this says language, like something that expresses a message.God through the human author of Hebrews says in the first verse (1:1, 2):
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past. . . . Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.
The tabernacle and temple were two such diverse manners by which God spoke. And God’s people didn’t hear, according to Stephen’s assessment. Even when the greatest manner, His Son, spoke, they took the same tact. As much focus the leaders of Israel had on the temple, they disrespected it even as they eliminated its witness or testimony in its type of Christ. They disregarded this divers manner in which God spoke to them through its objective aesthetic meaning.Stephen contrasts the Lord’s tabernacle in 7:44 with the tabernacle of Moloch in 7:43. The two could be distinguished, and the Lord’s was set apart by a pattern that was revealed in God’s Word. The two, although both tents, were antithetical. God’s tabernacle was a witness to God’s presence with His people, His gracious willingness to forgive as testified by the connected sacrificial system, and it foreshadowed the heavenly realities of Christianity as a type of Christ in His incarnation (John 1:14, Hebrews). Each piece of the tabernacle had layers of meaning to portray the Lord and His relationship with men. Moloch was a cheap knock-off, a reprobation that presented an entirely different message from which was borrowed later by Jeroboam in Israel’s downward trajectory.The nature of God receives characteristic expression in the arrangements of the tabernacle, the perfection and harmony of the character, the symmetry and proportion. God created within man, made in His image, the qualifications to enjoy these attributes. The harmony of the tabernacle design is shown in the balance of all its parts and in the choice of the materials employed. The three varieties of curtains and the three metals correspond to the three ascending degrees of sanctity: the court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies, all related to the proximity to Jehovah. So much more could be said about the mathematical precision of the rooms and the craft and coverings and furniture. The aesthetics of the tabernacle point to the perfection and character of God. Edmond de Pressensé writes on the temple of the Lord in the Pulpit Commentary:
This idea of consecration ran through the whole plan of the building. Without having recourse to a minute and fanciful symbolism, we see clearly that everything is so disposed as to convey the idea of the holiness of God. In the Centre Is the Altar of Sacrifice. The holy of holies, hidden from gaze by its impenetrable veil, strikes with awe the man of unclean heart and lips, who hears the seraphim cry from beneath their shadowing wings, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!” (Isaiah 6:3.) The temple of holiness is not the temple of nature of colossal proportions, as in the East, nor is it the temple of aesthetic beauty, as in Greece. It is the dwelling place of Him who is invisible, and of purer eyes than to behold evil (Habakkuk 1:13.) Hence its peculiar character. It answers thus to the true condition of religious art, which never sacrifices the idea and sense of the Divine to mere form, but makes the form instinct with the Divine idea. Let us freely recognize the claims of religious art. The extreme Puritanism which thinks it honours God by a contemptuous disregard of the aesthetic, is scarcely less mistaken than the idolatrous materialism which makes beauty of form the primary consideration. It was not for nothing that God made the earth so fair, the sky so glorious; and it was under Divine inspiration that the temple of Jerusalem was reared in such magnificence and majesty as to strike all beholders. Only let us never forget to seek the Divine idea beneath the beauty of the form.
The meaning to which I’m referring in the tabernacle and the temple of God are not communicated by means of words, but the message was still necessary for Israel to inculcate. Israel’s resistance to the Holy Spirit was also contention with the declarations or articulations of the tabernacle, its testimony or witness.God reveals to Moses in Exodus 28:40:
And for Aaron’s sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make for them girdles, and bonnets shalt thou make for them, for glory and for beauty.
Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
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