JOEL TUDMAN SERMON BEAUTY IN THE STRUGGLE : Pastor Joel Tudman preaches to us on beauty in the struggle Margaret Wolff Hungerford discredited with coining the exact phrase beauty is in the eye of the beholder in her novel, molly brown in 1878. The phrase means that different people have different opinions as to what should be categorised as beautiful. Beauty then is in the eye of the beholder and that will simply mean that beauty is subjective.
Subjective means that it’s based off of your personal opinion, all of us have our own feelings about what we think is beautiful that’s how you can have a boo and some people think they’re ugly and you think they’re just incredible because beauty is subjective.
Shakespeare wrote of beauty and love’s labor’s law saying beauty is bought by judgment of the eye, but what i think is incredible is Isaiah said in Isaiah 61 and 3 “to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion to give them beauty for ashes.
So it’s unique to me that God does not look at beauty as subjective man may look at beauty as being subjective but God doesn’t, God looks at everybody that he creates, because he said that after he created it was what it was good.
So we know that God’s not looking at your outward appearance but God is looking at your heart, which is interesting to me because now if we take a look at the text that we’re looking at, when we look at this piece of beauty, what is it that the potter is working on in this building, first of all we have to go back and look at how Jeremiah was called by God.
We look at him so we can learn a lesson as to what’s being taught to us in this text tonight, to help us understand what this movement in the potter’s house is, he calls Jeremiah in the beginning of the text he says the word which came to Jeremiah from the lord said arise and go down to the potter’s house which is really striking to me because that within itself is an issue. How do I arise and then go down, how do I get up to go down, it is this conundrum that all of us live in where we all try to figure out life up and down.
Well let’s look at the word arise itself, the word arise means to emerge, it means to come upon the scene, that is the purpose of us coming together because if you’re going to be anything in this world at some point, you’re going to have to make up your mind, if you’re going to emerge as who you’re trying to become, it may not be somebody that points you out to tell you that you’re going to be amazing, somebody may not prophesy to you and tell you that you’re going to get this or you’re going to get that, you’ve got to make up in your mind, am I going to get up, am I going to emerge and become who God called me to be?
In order for that to happen, the text says that the word of the lord came to Jeremiah, which simply means when the word comes to you, how do you respond to it? When God begins to speak to you, when God begins to talk to you, do you arise, do you emerge from the word that you hear or do you sit down and wait on somebody to pull you up to listen to what it is, that God is trying to say?
Pastor Joel Tudman wants us to know that God is looking for those of us in this room that are ready to emerge.