Pastor Tim Keller does a great job of showing us how Jesus fully satisfies our need for beauty.

A Sermon on the power of sexual/beauty’s attraction in our culture.

I. What you must do: The power of physical beauty over us must be broken. Look at the devastation in our society and in our lives.

1) It distorts women’s view of themselves (add eating disorders)
2) it demoralizes aging people,
3) it distorts men’s lives, by making them reject great spouse-prospects for superficial reasons (add pornography).

What must we do? Don’t judge a book by its cover. Be deep. Don’t be controlled.

II. But you can’t: You know quite well we won’t be able to. Why?

1) First, we desire physical beauty to cover our own sense of shame and inadequacy (Genesis 3). “When you look good you feel good about yourself” really equals “…you feel yourself to be good.”

2) Second, we are afraid of our mortality and death. Evolutionary biologists and Christians together agree that the drive to have physical beauty is a desire for youth. We’ll never overcome our problem by just “trying”.

III. But there was one who did. There was one who was beautiful beyond bearing yet willingly gave it up (Phil.2). He became ugly that we might become beautiful (Is.53).

IV. Only now we can change. Only as we see what he did for us will our hearts be melted and freed from the belief that we can judge a book by its cover. Only when we can be in him will we be freed from our sense of shame and fear of mortality.

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