What makes a woman beautiful? There is a way of beauty that God describes. He wants to take charge of the kind of beauty you have. Romans 12:1, speaks, in an introductory way, how God creates beauty. It all hinges upon the matter of transformation from worldliness.Further, how women conduct their daily lives exerts enormous power for good or for ill in the world. God established womanhood for His glory and it is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It cannot be underestimated. The Bible makes it clear that how a woman views beauty is at the heart of her influence. John Adams captured this when he said,

"From all that I had read of history and government, of human life and manners, I had drawn this conclusion, that the manners of women were the most infallible barometer to ascertain the degree of morality and virtue in a nation...The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Dutch, all lost their public spirit, their republican principles and habits, and their republican forms of government, when they lost the modesty and domestic virtues of their women." 

I. What does God say about beauty 

1. Psalm 149:4, Salvation beautifies
2. Isaiah 61:3, The spirit of the Lord beautifies
3. Ps 96:9 Holiness beautifies 
4. 2 Cor 3:18-19, Beholding the face of Christ beautifies
5. Matt 23:27, Mere outward beauty will be exposed
6. Isaiah 3:24, Disobedience strips beauty away
7. Proverbs 11:22, lack of discretion destroys beauty 
8. Isaiah 3:16-4:1, Pride destroys beauty 

II. Examples of two of the most beautiful women in the Bible 

1. Sarah, 1 Peter 3
2. The woman in Proverbs 31

III. The example of Christ demonstrates true beauty, Isaiah 53:2

Well, welcome. I'd like to just give a brief introduction to our time. Not of this world is the theme that we're going to try to draw through everything that we say. Of course, it's a pivotal matter for everything, but when we think of fathers and daughters and how they live. We have to recognize that there are ways of this world for fathers and daughters.

There's a way, there's a path, and it's a very clear path. And if you get off that path, you are going to have trouble. People won't like that. People don't like it when you get off the path of this world for fathers and daughters. I think many of us have experienced that.

I'd like to use a text to begin here with and you can see this text in your program on page 2, Romans chapter 12, 1 and 2. So if you could take a look at Romans 12, one and two. This is sort of the heart beat that we want to continue to discern as we go through our time together. And verse one in Romans 12, I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Let's pray before we begin. Oh Lord, we thank you for the beauty of your word, how insightful it is, how it shows us the way, it exposes who we are, it explains to us the path of life, the path of beauty, the path of joy. Lord, we thank you for giving such a treasure, and we pray now, Lord, that you would help us to remember and to savor and love these words of scripture that we'll be covering tonight and tomorrow. Amen. So this matter of not being conformed to the world is communicated in other places.

As you can see, John 15 speaks of it, that loving the world, being of the world is a critical matter for the Christian. 1 John 2, 15 through 17, where we read those words, do not love the world. And that really frames what we want to say. I think all the different messages that will be given are going to end up being really summarized by these phrases here. But this passage in Romans 12 brings us to a definition of the purpose of our lives.

It's the purpose, really, of this father-daughter retreat, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God. God has a will, he has a way, and it's so important that we understand what that means for us as fathers and daughters. The father-daughter relationship, the relationship of women to the world is really a critical one. So we're here to really consider that. Now, there are a number of things that are defined here in Romans 12.

First of all, there's a presenting of the body. There's a command regarding your body, and you present your body as a living and holy sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. This has to do with the reality that people who've been justified, they present their bodies differently. They literally present their bodies to different things than the people of this world. But there's a danger to be avoided and that is being conformed to this world and do not be conformed to this world.

And here we see how the conformity to this world endangers the glory of God and the expressions of his beauty and his goodness in the world. And you see this in the institutions, in the fashions, in the ways of spending our time. There are ways that we can be conformed to this world. And then we also see that there's an internal change that's required. And it's explained in these words, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

This is how we are changed, so that we find ourselves not having loved the world. Our minds change, and that sets off a trajectory of life that is so critical. And then there's a command regarding the body, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And here we come to the whole matter of how important it is that we understand to what are we presenting our bodies. This is a critical matter in this whole passage of scripture.

The things that we present our bodies to casts us in a direction and it affects us dramatically. But here's a reality. We are always presenting our bodies to something. There is not a nanosecond of the day or the night that you are not presenting your body to something. There's never a moment to which we are not a slave to something.

We are always making our slaves a servant of something and we do that by the way that we present our bodies. And so the Apostle Paul here is urging the church in Rome to enter into a new kind of slavery. It's a slavery to God. To present the bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to God. And it's a voluntary slavery.

You present yourself. And as we begin this journey through these various subjects that we'll be being led into, I want us to always just consider this matter that we're always presenting our bodies to something. And we're gonna deal with specific areas where this is happening. You know, when you open up a magazine, you're presenting your body. When you turn on the radio, you're presenting your body.

When you click on an Internet site, you're presenting your body to that site. This is just a reality of life. And so the Christian presents the body to different things for a very different purpose. The Christian sees the beauty and the glory of heaven. The Christian sees how good Christ is.

The Christian understands what a good father he is presenting himself to. And so that's the issue here. There's so many ways that we present our bodies. And there's the presenting of the mind. There's the presenting of the eyes.

There's the presenting of the ears. All of these members of our bodies are meant to be consecrated and to be presented before God, every single part of your body. There are many places in scripture where you hear about Jesus Christ or even prophecies of Jesus Christ as we've seen in Isaiah, where the blind see, the lame walk, the death hear, the hands are strengthened, the knees are strengthened, all these parts of the body, well these are just figures of this very text here, that the Christian presents every part of his body, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, you present to God. So Romans chapter 12 really helps us to see this. And what we need to recognize is that What we present our bodies to makes all the difference in the world.

What you present your mind to is going to wag your tongue. What your eyes to will move your affections. What your ears are turned to will move your heart. Nobody can beat the system. We're wired this way.

It's an incontrovertible, unbreakable law of nature that what you present your body to, you become like. This is such an urgent matter. And here we have these two great propositions, light and darkness, bread, poison. I mean, this is the proposition that God brings to us. You know, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

You present your body to the devil, you get no rest. He'll tear you apart and you'll have sleepless nights and angst and trouble in your life. It's just the way it is. Nobody ever beat that system. You know, when you're young, you know, often you think you can beat that system, but it's unbeatable just to let you know.

And so this whole matter of presenting your body is really critical. And so I hope as we go through these various messages on this matter of presenting your body, that we can see the reasonableness and the wisdom of the command to present your body. And this is what we'll be considering. Every woman wants to be beautiful and every man wants to be handsome, and every man wants to marry a beautiful woman, and every woman pretty much wants to marry a good-looking man. So beauty is a big deal.

It's a multi-billion dollar industry. I think we all understand that. There are pains and sorrows that come from the idea that we might not be as beautiful as we wanted to be. So what we do is we focus on beauty in different ways. Paint it up, we fix it up, we dye it up, we surgically cut it up and tuck up the tummies for the beauty.

We think of beauty in a wrong way, and so I want to bring what the Bible speaks of when it speaks of beauty. This is a challenge in every culture. Understanding beauty in a culture is critical because every culture of the world calls evil good and good evil. And that has to do with our whole vision of beauty. And it's so easy to misunderstand beauty and to call ugly what is beautiful and what's beautiful ugly.

That's the great problem that we have in our culture. There's so many things that people say about beauty, truisms that everyone understands. You know, beauty is only skin deep. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Those are things that we think about when we talk about beauty.

The Bible speaks of inner beauty, it speaks of outer beauty, but beauty really ought to be defined by the Lord, and that's what I really want to do here. Now, the way that women see beauty is one of the most influential aspects of their whole life. And I don't think we could ever underestimate the power of womanhood in a culture. But what women think is beautiful is the hinge point upon which womanhood moves. And so it's critical that women understand this whole matter of beauty, because their whole Life really is a journey in search of beauty of some kind.

I'm very struck with just how critical it is that womanhood is working in a biblical way in the church. And you can lose this in one generation. And you who are really young, you know, almost all of you grew up in homes where your mothers were at home. They were keepers at home. They raised you.

They taught you. They opened their Bibles before you. They read to you. They taught you math. They were there.

And I don't want us to miss how pivotal that is, how important it is for a woman to actually be a keeper at home the way that God has defined it. And I think we should recognize that we're surrounded by almost every church you find the opposite of that. The churches have their women in the working world. In almost every church you'll go in, most of the women, they're not at home raising their children. It's something that needs to be recovered.

You know, what is the value of a woman who devotes her greatest energies to the raising of the next generation, rather than dispersing her energies abroad into the ranks of industry, as you spoke of, you know, at the beginning? It's so dramatically influential what women do. And what women do is always a result of their perception of what is beautiful. And so that's what we're going to talk about. I'd like to just walk through here nine things that the Bible speaks about beauty and the first is in Psalm 149.

In Psalm 149 we learn that salvation beautifies. For the Lord takes pleasure in his people. He will beautify the humble with salvation. Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let them sing aloud on their beds." Now, what he is saying is that there's a beautification that takes place.

And the word that's used here in the psalm, it has to do with glorifying or adorning, vaunting. And he's speaking of this matter of beauty that comes from salvation. Salvation beautifies. Interesting, the word that David uses for salvation is the word Yeshua. You recognize that word Yeshua.

It's the word for Joshua in Hebrew, transliterated, and Jesus in the Greek language. He will beautify with salvation, with Yeshua. And I think the double meaning is intentional here in the Holy Scriptures. You know, what is the power of salvation? What happens to a person when they are truly saved?

There's peace, there's consolation. There's the happiness that Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount, where he said, Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. This is a picture of true salvation. And salvation beautifies.

In Matthew 5, you learn that salvation doesn't just make you happy. It makes you salt. It makes you light in the world. Salvation beautifies. It preserves on the one hand, and it also shines a light so that things can be seen as they really are.

And this is the way that salvation beautifies. It beautifies by something that happens at the very beginning of salvation. When a person believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God, When that person submits his will to God and says, not my will but thine be done. When that person says, Lord, I want to be your disciple, I want to follow you, I want to throw away the idols that I've loved all my life, I want your will, not my will. Something happens, a miracle happens.

You receive a new heart. Your heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh. And God breaks the power of sin. And from that time on, when a person is born again, because the power of sin is broken, there's this blooming, this blossoming that Isaiah speaks about that takes place in your life. You begin to open up the way that flowers open up as they're blossoming.

And there's just an increasing beauty and glory of the flower. But this is how salvation beautifies. Secondly, the Spirit of the Lord beautifies. Isaiah 61, verse one through four speaks of it. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified, and they shall rebuild the old ruins.

They shall raise up the former desolations. They shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations. Here's a picture of how the Spirit of God, having been out poured into the heart of the sinner, begins to beautify. And there's this wonderful language of, you know, the prison doors opening and these marvelous things that are taking place. Beauty for ashes, the ashes of your life begins to be replaced with beauty.

And you have a garment of praise. These are matters of the beauty of the Lord. It's the Spirit of God that beautifies. If anyone wants to understand true beauty, then they would have to remember what the Apostle Paul said, be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the matter of the Holy Spirit's work in beautification.

The third thing about beauty that the Bible speaks about is that holiness beautifies. Psalm 96, verse 9, Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples. Give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering.

Come into his courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Tremble before Him, all the earth. Say among the nations, the Lord reigns. Here we learn that holiness is a beautifier.

And The message of this psalm, at least in this verse 9, is that beauty comes out of holiness. We think of various paths to beauty, from physical matters of beauty to matters of beautifying your personality. But here, what we learn is that holiness is a power for beauty in the life of a Christian. Holiness changes everything. Holiness is beauty.

Beauty is holiness. And to help your mind to think straight about beauty, this matter of holiness is so critical. If you would want beauty, then recognize that there is one central location of that beauty, and that is holiness. The beauty that comes from holiness. This is why we should be a holy people.

And this is why we never lose anything when we seek holiness. There's only gain, and one of the great gains is beauty. And then number four, 2 Corinthians 3, 18 and 19. Beholding the face of Christ beautifies. Verse 18, but we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

So here the Apostle Paul is teaching that we're beautified by His beauty, by this progression that's unleashed in our lives as we're being changed by His beauty. As we behold His face, we're changed into His image. We become like Him. This is true of everything in life. You become like the thing that you're with.

Whatever you spend time on, you become like it. There's just no avoiding it at all. And here we find this picture of looking into a mirror, the mirror of the glory of the Lord, and then being transformed into the same image from one glory to another. And it's the Spirit of God that brings this about. It's God's desire to make His children beautiful.

And He does it when they look at Him, when they behold His glory. There's really nothing more beneficial in life than to behold His glory. It's strange how it is that we short-circuit it and we get so distracted, We get so busy in this life when we're missing such a great treasure. And God is in process of making everything beautiful in his time, everything holy. This is the final end of all of history where God sums up all things in Jesus Christ, where his beauty is magnified and there's no challenge to it anywhere in the universe, where every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

This is the moment in history, the pinnacle, really the end of history, where Jesus Christ makes all things beautiful. And you know, at that time, if you're a Christian, you look back And you'll see how God was beautifying everything, how He used everything to magnify His beauty and His glory. But this happens in the world as we behold His face as in a mirror. And this capability was unleashed when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. And from that time, a human being was able to behold the beauty of the Lord and to be beautified by it in a way that no Old Testament saint ever had the capability to do.

It's a new covenant. There are better promises. And here, there's more beauty. This is the way it is of the kingdom of God. God continues to improve from one year after another until he finally brings all history together in this absolute improvement of everything where tears are wiped from eyes and everything is under his his authority and there's more happiness than you can even imagine.

And this matter of looking into the holiness of the face of the Lord Jesus Christ is the gateway, really, to every good thing in our lives. These words, holy, glory, beauty, happiness, all of them are so interconnected, it's very difficult to untangle them. And then number five, Matthew 23, 27. Mere outward beauty will be exposed. Here we find that there is a way that man can put on an outer beauty which is not reflected in the heart.

And this is always the greatest danger to the soul. It's so easy to put on an outward beauty. You can say all of the right words. You can go to all the right places. And you can have an outward beauty, an outward conformity, and yet there's no inward beauty.

And that's what the Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes about. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. This is a critical matter to recognize, especially, especially when you're young. You grow up in your parents' house and you, you, you do what they tell you to do, and you can mouth the words, and you can do the things that make it seem like you're holy, when in fact there's rebellion, there's hatred, there's deadness in your soul, and you know that, but you continue to go through the motions.

Now it is right that every unbelieving child should obey their parents and to honor their father and mother. This is just a requirement that parents should strive for in their families. But one of the reasons it's so critical that parents do this is so that children understand who they really are, whether their beauty is only outward, or whether it's inward as well, whether they are whitewashed tombs, or whether they really are fountains of life, and genuine hunger for God and love for God, hoping in God, desiring the things of God. This is the great danger that there always is in every church where you have people who are beautiful outwardly and yet inside they're full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. It's really interesting that two people doing the same thing can be living in two completely different kingdoms.

You can have two girls dressing modestly. One is of the kingdom of darkness and the other one is a kingdom of light and that's just the way it is. You know, look at what the Lord Jesus says that can happen in a heart and ask yourself, who am I? Is my beauty simply outward? Am I full of dead men's bones and uncleanness?

Or does my heart long for the worship of God? Does it desire to obey my father and mother? Does it love beautiful things or is it just constantly attracted to ugly and sinful things. This is the greatest question that any person can ask. Number six, Isaiah 3.24, disobedience strips away beauty.

Isaiah 3.24 says this, and so it shall be instead of a sweet smell, there will be a stench, instead of a sash, a rope, instead of well-set hair, baldness, instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth, and branding instead of beauty. And here, this is a word of the prophet Isaiah to the women in his day who had turned away from the Lord, they had turned to triviality. They had turned to outward appearance. Isaiah chapter three is such a brilliant description of what can happen to a woman and how she's drawn into irrelevancy. But that irrelevancy leads to something far worse.

While she's irrelevant in this world because of her vanity and her triviality because she's only caring about her outward appearance. There's something worse ahead and that is that God judges her severely and he takes everything away. And Proverbs chapter 3 is such a devastating picture of how triviality gets a hold of a woman, how it makes her think only about how she looks on the outside. This is her focus. This is her obsession.

And her obsession leads her to the pit, to darkness, to chains, and to troubles that are hardly imaginable. And then number seven, Proverbs 11, 22, lack of discretion destroys beauty. Lack of discretion destroys beauty. Proverbs 11, 22, as a ring of gold in a swine snout, so is a lovely woman who lacks discretion. Now here's a picture of a woman that has outward beauty.

It seems to be some kind of inherent beauty. But she has beauty outwardly, but she has no discretion. And we're going to speak of this matter of discretion in the next session on the use of the tongue and edification. But this passage speaks of a woman without discretion and lack of discretion expresses itself in many ways in all of us. One way it expresses itself in the use of the tongue.

James said that the tongue is a little member, but it boasts of great things. He says the tongue is a fire, and the use of the tongue and the use of a woman's ways and all the things that we're gonna speak of is either for discretion or the lack of it. But outward beauty is often a great falsifier of what's going on on the inside, of the discretion that's on the inside. And often women are so taken with outward beauty that they lose their discretion. And that's what this proverb is about here where you have a ring of gold and a swine snout.

So is a lovely woman who lacks discretion. You know, I read an article about this verse and the author spoke of what pigs do because this has to do with a gold ring and a pig's snout. And the author, she said, first, they root around with their noses. Second, they eat pig slop. Third, they roll around in the mud.

Fourth, they laze around in the sun. They grunt and roll around and nap in the sunshine. I think that's basically what this proverb is speaking about here. That where there's lack of discretion, there's a destruction of beauty. You know, men and women underestimate the power of their tongue and the discretion that it bears witness to and the lack of it.

Number eight, Isaiah 3, 16 through 4, 1, pride destroys beauty. In Isaiah chapter 3, There's such a critical description of what happens to a woman who is full of pride. And I think it's right to say that so many of the problems that women have in marriage, and not just women, but men, they're traced to pride. And, you know, you young girls now have such an opportunity to deal with your pride. God has given you parents and their very leadership in your life is really designed to deal with your pride.

So that when you go into marriage, your pride has been dealt with in a way that'll be a blessing to your children and to your husband as well. But Isaiah chapter three is a picture of proud women and what will happen to them. In verse 17, it says that the Lord will uncover their secret parts. He will expose them. He will show them who they really are.

God will uncover those secret things. In verses 18 through 23 In Isaiah 3, he says that their finery will be taken away. The jingling anklets, the scarves and the crescents, the pendants, the bracelets and the veils and the headdresses, the leg ornaments and the headbands, the perfume boxes, the charms and the rings, the nose jewels, the festal apparel and the mantles, the outer garments, the purses and the mirrors, the fine linen, the turbans and the robes. All of these are just expressions of pride. When a woman stands in front of the mirror and the only thing she can think of is herself, this is pride.

If the only thing she can think of is how she will be perceived by others, it's pride. But if she stands in front of the mirror and she says, how can I glorify my Father in heaven? How can I declare his beauty? How can I declare his purity? Rather than how can I have the look that I want to project?

These are two completely different worlds. One woman stands in front of the mirror and she's seeking to please the Lord. Everything she puts on, she's hoping will be an expression of godliness and beauty and purity. The other just desires to make a name for herself, to create a certain kind of look so that she can get what she wants in this world. But what Isaiah is saying, that all of these things will be taken away, all the jingling anklets, all the jewels, all the apparel, it'll all be stripped off the prideful woman.

This is the end of the story for the woman who stands in front of the mirror and all she cares about is herself. And Isaiah is very explicit about it. He says that the beauty is replaced with ugliness. In verse 24, from a pleasing aroma to stink, He says, and so it shall be instead of sweet smell, there'll be a stench. Instead of a sash, a rope.

Instead of well-set hair, baldness. From luxury to deprivation. He says instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth, and branding instead of beauty. This is a picture of what happens when pride drives a woman, when her desire for acceptance takes her over. And her outward appearance is really her only hope in this world.

So these eight things are so critical to understand about beauty. This is a testimony of scripture on beauty. Psalm 45 says something very interesting and I think it's very striking. And that is that the Lord desires the beauty of his daughters. Let me read it, Psalm 45.

Listen, oh daughter, consider and incline your ear. Forget your own people also in your father's house. So the king will greatly desire your beauty because he is your lord, worship him. This is the heart of God toward daughters. He desires their beauty.

It says He greatly desires your beauty. It's something that He longs to create and to see. And the result of it, If you go to verse 17 in Psalm 45, he says, I will make your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore, the people shall praise you forever and ever. God desires to see beauty in his daughters.

Now I'm going to give you two examples of beautiful women in the Bible. The most beautiful women in the Bible are the holy women in the Bible, and scripture makes it very clear that there are beautiful women in the Bible. It's possible that Sarah was one of the most beautiful women in the Bible. Sarah was a truly beautiful woman. 1 Peter chapter three speaks of it.

He speaks of it in terms of the life of a wife and how she conducts herself with her husband and with her family. In verse 1 in 1 Peter 3, he says, wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives. And when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear, do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, and putting on fine apparel." Here we learn there's nothing wrong with outward arranging of your hair or wearing of gold or putting on a fine apparel, but he's saying do not let this be your only concern. There's a greater concern. He says, rather, in verse 4, let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is very precious in the sight of God, in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror.

Here's a picture of Sarah. Sarah was one of the truly beautiful women in the Bible. And she was beautiful because she had that inner beauty. And her inner beauty caused her to be a certain way. And that way had to do with the way that she treated her husband and the hidden person of her heart.

He calls it the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. And here we have a picture of a holy woman. This holy woman is a beautiful woman. And she's beautiful because of her holiness. And in verse 6 it's so critical in understanding this whole idea.

As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good and are not afraid with any terror. Sarah was beautiful because she trusted in God, and she believed in God, and she obeyed God, And she treated her husband and her outward appearance in a proper manner. But I think we can say that Sarah was a beautiful woman. And because she was being beautified in the same way that all women are beautified, and that is by being holy. Holiness is always the pathway to beauty.

There's another beautiful woman in the Bible. She's known by the name of the Proverbs 31 woman. In Proverbs 31, 30, we learn that there is a secret to her beauty. There's a reason for it. Verse 30 speaks of it, Charm is deceitful, and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.

Here we learn that there are two kinds of beauty that is praised. One is a beauty that's passing. That can be praised. People will praise you for your beauty, but if that's all you have is an outward beauty, it's a passing beauty. And while it will be praised momentarily in this life, there is a woman who fears the Lord and she will be praised.

And I take that her praises will continue on because they go deeper than just the outward. He says, charm is deceitful, beauty is vain. What does that mean? It means that outward beauty can be fake. The word that he uses is breath, vain, worthless.

It's the same word that Isaiah uses when he talks about idols, worthless idols. They're nothing. They're less than nothing. And so he's saying charm is deceitful. Beauty is vain.

But the fear of the Lord preserves beauty. And I think what we learn here from the Proverbs 31 woman is that there was a secret to her beauty. And that secret was the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is not a slavish fear. The fear of the Lord does recognize the absolute authority of God and his vanquishing judgment, it recognizes that.

But those who fear the Lord, they run to him for his mercy. They love him because he first loved them. And they fear him, but they also hear the call, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. So it's a fear that draws you into mercy. That's what the fear of the Lord is.

And here the Proverbs 31 woman is a picture of someone who fears the Lord, but the key to her beauty is the fear of the Lord. It's the fear of the Lord that preserves beauty. It's the fear of the Lord that will ensure that your beauty is not fake. It's just put on in the outside. And then finally, the example of Christ.

We've seen a few things of what the Bible says about beauty. We've looked at two examples of Sarah and the woman in Proverbs 31. But I think we have to consider Christ when we think of beauty. I don't know if we could complete our understanding of Christ without understanding the beauty of Christ. And Isaiah chapter 53 speaks of Christ.

But Isaiah 53 speaks of something that's kind of startling. He says, for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The Chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

Now here we learn that Jesus Christ was not beautiful. What does that mean? It says here that he has no form or comeliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. So how is it that Jesus Christ has no beauty that we should desire him? Now there are some words that we need to understand to grasp what is being taught here.

It says he has no comeliness. And he's speaking of outward adornment, of glory. The word has to do with ornament, it has to do with outward things. So he has no outward adornment. The same idea is spoken of in Proverbs 31, 25, where it says, an elderly man's gray hair is his glory.

Well, it's his outward appearance. What this is saying is that there's nothing outwardly majestic, there's nothing of beautiful adornment on the outside of Jesus Christ. There was really nothing glorious about his life anyway. You know, someone said of him, you know, can anything good come from Nazareth? He didn't come from a good part of town.

He was a tradesman and there was nothing about his outward life. There was nothing about his reputation or his occupation or his outward appearance that was beautiful at all. There was no outward beauty. That's the point here that he's making. Nothing extraordinary about his appearance.

What we need to recognize is this whole quest for beauty is a is a quest to be extraordinary outwardly. But with Jesus Christ, there was nothing extraordinary about him outwardly. It actually says that he had no beauty. No beauty. And this has to do again with outward appearance to look upon, to observe with the eyes the outward appearance.

What this means is that the Lord Jesus Christ did not have outward beauty. You know, it's interesting if you've seen advertisements for any of the films about Jesus Christ. The films about Jesus Christ in my generation all portrayed him as kind of effeminate, you know. But now the pictures of Jesus are that he's this hunk of a man kind of a thing. They portray him with really an interesting level of external beauty.

The Lord Jesus Christ was not striking at all in his outward beauty. What's being communicated here in Isaiah 53 is that the world was blind to his true beauty. He had no beauty to those who were blind to his beauty. He veiled, he veiled his glory to those who were perishing. And when a person's mind is blinded by sin, it cannot see true beauty.

And that really is the problem with those who looked at Christ and there was no beauty. They could not see His glory. They were stopped by His outward appearance. His beauty was inward. His beauty was composed of his heart and his words and his life and his sacrifice.

His beauty had to do with things that could not be seen outwardly. And the whole world missed that. And this is the problem with mankind. It cannot discern true beauty. And because of that, we are duped into thinking that if we produce outward beauty, we will be beautiful.

But that's not the case at all. The Bible does say that Jesus Christ was beautiful. In Zechariah chapter 9, verses 16 and 17, we learn that the beauty of Jesus Christ was great. In Zechariah 9, there's this messianic chapter and this passage was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, I believe when he entered Jerusalem in the triumphal entry. But here's what we read in Zechariah, the Lord their God will save them in that day as the flock of his people.

For they shall be like the jewels of a crown, lifted like the banner over his land. For how great is its goodness and how great is its beauty." The Lord Jesus Christ is beautiful and his beauty was inward. And this is how a person is truly beautified. It's by beholding the face of Jesus Christ. What girls need to understand in a generation that is so obsessed with outward beauty is that Jesus Christ is the key to all true beauty.

But it is a beauty that is inward. It's eternal. It is truly beautiful And it cannot be taken away. This is why David said in Psalm 27, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek. To behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.

This is beauty. The people of the earth are beautified by the beauty of Jesus Christ, by beholding Him, by seeking Him, by reading of Him, by praying to Him. This is how a person is beautified in this world. The world will give you a completely different path to beauty than that. And when you stand in front of the mirror, remember, remember that true beauty is produced only by Jesus Christ and by beholding him, by seeing his glory, by adoring him, by loving his ways.

This is the path of beauty. One of the most pivotal moments in the day of every girl in the world is when she stands at the mirror at the beginning of the day and she looks at herself in the mirror. And what does she see? Does she see through the outward shell of beauty that is passing away? Does she love the outward beauty?

Is she more concerned about the outward beauty than she is the inward beauty? Does she take so much more time considering her look than she does considering her heart? That is the key to everything. Pride manifests itself in outward appearance, but humility manifests itself in that it beholds the beauty of the Lord. It inquires in His temple.

It seeks His face. This is the way of beauty that the Bible communicates. One last thing. In the Song of Solomon in chapter one, we see the heart of Christ for His bride, and He speaks very tenderly to His bride, whom He's beautifying, And here's what he says, behold, you are beautiful, my love. You are beautiful.

I pray that will be the legacy of the women of our church, that the Lord will see them and he will say to them, behold, you are beautiful, my love. You are beautiful. Would you pray with me? Lord, I praise you for how you show us a way that is right and true, a way of life, a way to life. Oh, Father, I pray that you would give our daughters here such a clear understanding of the beautification of their souls and how important it is to know what true beauty is and how one acquires it.

Amen.