You Are Coming Out of Lo Debar!

A couple of years ago I posted a blog called "You Are Coming Out of Lo Debar!", which received a lot of views. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to preach the same message at my local church, and I wanted to share it with you all. Here's the link to the sermon. Hope you enjoy it! You Are Coming of Lo Debar!

Body and Soul

We have all heard statements like “beauty is in the eye of the bolder”, “beauty is only skin deep” or “beauty over brains”. Although we say them and may even agree with them, they are not Biblically sound. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God made everything beautiful. God made EVERYTHING beautiful. So beauty is in the eye of God not the beholder, and, if He made everything beautiful, that means beauty runs much deeper than the skin. If God made everything beautiful, He made us beautifully intelligent. Beauty is brains.

We have allowed the world to redefine beauty for us. A world where beauty is only skin deep. Is she pretty? She has a nice personality. Oh that means she’s ugly. Never mind. I don’t want to meet her. That means that her beautiful personality holds no value over her beautiful face.

This is a world where we, humans, spend $24 billion on plastic surgery worldwide, $55 billion on cosmetics and $1.2 trillion on fashion. We are fixated on having our hair & nails “did”, face beat and clothes slayed. This is the world’s focus and definition of beauty, but God’s focus is more holistic.

Esther 2:7 describes Esther as fair and beautiful. The Hebrew for fair used here is yapheh (YA FE), which means handsome or beautiful. The Hebrew word for beautiful used here is towb (TOVE), which means as follows:

good, pleasant, agreeable

A.                pleasant, agreeable (to the senses)

B.                 pleasant (to the higher nature)

C.                 good, excellent (of its kind)

D.                good, rich, valuable in estimation

E.                 good, appropriate, becoming

F.                  better (comparative)

G.                glad, happy, prosperous (of man's sensuous nature)

H.                good understanding (of man's intellectual nature)

I.                    good, kind, benign

J.                   good, right (ethical)

This beautiful as defined here does not once mention Esther’s outward appearance. Why? Because God does not look at our outward appearance. He looks at our hearts. Why because He already made the outward beautiful. We make the inside beautiful. The Bible says that the heart (mind, will and emotions) is deceitful because of our sinful human nature. Therefore, we must renew our minds daily. Esther had a renewed mind. She wasn’t just pretty on the outside.

In Esther chapter four Esther learns that there has been a decree to kill all the Jewish people in the Persian Empire. Her adopted father Mordecai begged her to ask the king to have mercy on the Jews. Esther responded to Mordecai, telling him that going before the king without being sent for would result in her death. Mordecai responded to Esther with a very famous Bible quote. He warned her not to think that just because she was the queen that meant that she alone would be spared. Then he said who knows you may have been chosen as queen for such a time as this.

Esther then asked Mordecai to have all the Jews to fast and pray with her for three days as she prepared to go before the king unannounced. Esther’s response was let’s fast and pray because she understood something that Jesus said thousands of years after she lived. Faith for some things can only be built by prayer and fasting. Sounds like someone who had a beautifully renewed mind to me. Someone whose spirit was in tune with God’s spirit.

Then we see how Esther strategically orchestrated everything. She does not go before the king and tells him everything. She requested two dinners with the King and Haman, the man who set up the plot to have the Jews killed. At the second dinner, she revealed to the king Haman’s plan to kill her and her people. The king ordered that Haman be hung on the gallows he had erected for Mordecai and that the Jews would be able to defend themselves when the day came when they were to be killed. Esther had a plan. She had a strategy. She used her beautiful brain.

In this narrative of Esther we saw more of her heart and intelligence than we saw of her beauty. Dressing up, wearing makeup, getting your hair and nails done are not bad. They are good things, but they are not the only thing. We must focus on making sure our minds and our emotions are as much on fleek as our hair and nails.

Forgive. Let go of baggage. Get rid of toxic relationships. Pray. Meditate on the word day and night. Fast when you need the faith for something that seems impossible to attain and fast when you don’t need anything at all. Exercise. Exercise. Exercise. Eat healthy. Put down the soda, fast food and sugary foods. Read something other than Face Book. 

We only get one body, one soul and one spirit. God has taken care of our spirit man. Our spirits are saved. Our body and soul are where the working out our salvation with fear and trembling comes in. We have to give everything we can, with the help of the Holy Spirit, of course, to make our bodies and souls beautiful.