LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Beautiful for God
Much has been said and written about Moses, God's faithful servant; however, there is one trait, perhaps secondary, that catches our attention.
Scripture says that when Moses was born, he was hidden by his parents (from the wrath of Pharaoh) for three months, "because they saw him a fair child, and feared not the king's decree". The parents were enraptured by the child's puerile beauty, and devised a strategy to save him from death. Then, elsewhere, Scripture says that Moses: "was pleasing to God" (Or, rather, "beautiful to God").
That parents find their child beautiful, and seek to save him, is normal, but that testimony is given that the child was beautiful to God, is a remarkable fact.
Such a thing has no parallel, except of David, of whom it is said that, being already a boy, "he was ruddy, and fair of eye, and of good looks". Yet from this same passage we know that the Lord "seeth not what man beholdeth: for man beholdeth what is before his eyes; but the Lord looketh on the heart". So it was not physical beauty that God appreciated, but the beauty of a character, which God's foreknowledge saw already "made conformable to the image of his Son".
Is it not the beauty of the heart that is of great esteem before God? Was not David a man "after God's own heart"? Was not Moses himself "faithful in all the house of God as a servant"?
If it were a question of physical beauty, then the Lord Jesus would have been not only beautiful, but perfect, and without equal in physical beauty, but the Scripture, in advance, bore witness through Isaiah: "There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness; we shall see him, but without beauty that we should desire him".
True beauty is an inner beauty that appears in a face (no matter if it is graceful or not), and that leaves in it the imprint of its heavenly origin.