Stories of God’s Creativity and Love of Beauty

— God’s character revealed through stories — Andrew Fountain: Oct 31, 2021

Is God a God of order or chaos?
- So which picture best illustrates his creativity?

“Parade”

Image source: “Beijing International”

“Jungle”

Image source: “DirkvdM”

but the first is order and the second chaos!
- So what does it say about God? Is he chaos??
Actually the second is order, but much more complex, and much more diverse
What kind of order is in the second?
- Intricate food chain
- Complex web of dependencies
- Down at the level of plant and animal cells we see microscopic machines that life is based on
- At the microscopic level there is intricate order
But if you just look at it, it looks like chaos
- How do you discover about this order?
- You have to study it!

God’s Creativity

God loves Complexity
God loves Diversity
- Just look at what he has created!
God loves Beauty
God loves to hide beauty for us to find
- You can put it under a microscope and say “Wow!”
We honour him by searching for it and making it known
- Those of you who work in science are revealing this creativity and beauty
- Those of you in the arts, don’t worry, you will not miss out...

One more point: If you take something that God has made, it can be beautiful on the surface, but when you examine it there is still more beauty.
- The microscope reveals more and more levels
- e.g.

“Game Reserve”

Image source: “Josiah Townsend”

Creation

“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31)
“And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight” (Gen 2:9)
“And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there” (Gen 2:12)

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the sky displays his handiwork.
Day after day it speaks out;
night after night it reveals his greatness. (Ps 19)

So God is an artist, but is he a sculptor?
In ancient times, clay was the main medium for sculpting, and pottery was the main form
allusion to sculpting:

God’s Sculpture

The LORD God formed [lit. sculpted] the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Gen 2:7)
Every animal and bird is “sculpted” by God (Gen 2:19)
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; [lit. unsculpted, in the womb]
the days that were sculpted for me,
when as yet there was none of them.” (Ps 139:16)
“The sea is his, for he made it.
His hands sculpted the dry land.” (Psa 95:5)

Wisdom: Hokmah

Very interesting Hebrew word, hokmah, which means both wisdom and artistic skill
So in Hebrew you would say “There is such wisdom in that guitar playing, and singing”
Painting shows wisdom, and photography, weaving, and even construction/rennovation
“The Lord by wisdom founded the earth;
by understanding he established the heavens;” Prov 3:19

Exodus 28

You must make holy garments for your brother Aaron, for glory and for beauty.
You are to speak to all who are specially skilled, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, so that they may make Aaron’s garments to set him apart to minister as my priest.…
The artisans are to use the gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen.
They are to make the ephod of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twisted linen, the work of an artistic designer.

More expamples of how this word is used

Exodus 31

The LORD said to Moses,
“See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah,
and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom and understanding, with knowledge and all craftsmanship,
to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze,
in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft.

Exodus 35, 36

Every woman who was wise hearted spun with her hands and brought what she had spun, blue, purple, or scarlet yarn, or fine linen,
and all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats’ hair.…
He has filled them with wisdom to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue…
And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whose mind the LORD had put wisdom, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come to do the work.

Music

Temple worship
- Songs written
- Unfortunately we don’t know the tunes
- Probably deliberate—God wants us to create new tunes appropriate to our culture
I was going to say that they had no way of writing down the melody
- not strictly true... (we have just lost the meaning of the symbols)
Even food!
- Feasts in O.T.

Drama

Actually God is an amazing play-write
but he gets real life actors
the ultimate reality show

What stories from the Bible have become great inspirational dramatic themes
- David and Goliath
- The Exodus...
- Daniels and the Lion’s Den
- Samson betrayed by Delilah
- …
God continues with drama today, in your life and mine, scripting amazing events, cliffhangers, suspense, etc.

Poetry and Narrative Art

But is God’s love of beauty really a main theme of the Bible?
- And what about N.T.?
Actually nearly half of the Old Testament is written in poetry
- Not in rhymes, but symmetrical patterns that balance

“Love in the Spring”

and very often things that you don’t think of as being poems are intricately written
- this is part of the culture of “wisdom”
- Solomon

Hebrew Poetry: Isaiah 1:18

Other Literature
- narrative techniques

Narrative Art in Genesis

What about the New Testament?

John 4:46–54 The Nobleman’s Faith

If you are not a follower of Jesus right now, this passage is for you!

Jesus

In Proverbs 3 we read:
1. By wisdom the LORD laid the foundation of the earth;
  he established the heavens by understanding.
This and many other O.T. allusions are to Jesus, who is the full revelation of God’s beauty and wisdom.
So if this is true, was Jesus stunningly attractive physically?
- His beauty was his person, the way he interacted with people
This is another dimension to beauty:
- inner beauty —actually more important
- Jesus was the ultimate beautiful person

1 Peter 3

Let your beauty not be external — the braiding of hair and wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes —
but the inner person of the heart, the lasting beauty of a gentle and tranquil spirit, which is precious in God’s sight.

To be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with God himself
So God created humanity in his own image—we are to reflect it
- What about you?
Your work:
- science
- arts
- children
- people – If you are filled with the Spirit, your words will bring forth beauty.
  “THere is something about that person”

How to be creative like God

Concentrate on being filled with the Spirit
Allow his beauty to fill you and flow through you
Don’t look down on enjoying things. Create beautiful things!
But the most important way of reflecting God’s image of beauty is in who you are as you are filled with Jesus.

Updated on 2021-11-04 by Andrew Fountain