Modesty in a World of Nakedness

Good morning. Well, I have a little thought experiment for you. I'd like everyone this morning to think about somebody that you really love.

Think about somebody that you really love right now. Just come up with a name in your mind, somebody you really love. I can tell who Roger's already thinking about.

And what if there was something, what if there was something you knew they really wanted? What if there was something, just think something, you know, maybe there was something that you could do in their life and that would be very special. Would you want to know what it was? And then would you want to do it? Now I want you to take that same person you've been thinking about, and I want you to replace that with God. What if there was something extremely valuable to God? Very costly.

It was worth a lot. It was very precious. Would you want to know what it was? And if you would, if you were told, would you want to do it? Turn to 1 Peter 3, if you would.

And I want you to look at verse 4, the very latter end of the verse, the last after the comma there. It says here, Whatever this thing is that Peter is deciding to talk about, it's very valuable. It's very special.

It's very costly. Let's back up a little bit in the sentence. What is this thing that is very valuable to God? It says here, So Peter is telling us here that God has something that's very valuable to him.

And it is a lady who has decided in her heart that the glory is about him and about his kingdom and has decided to decorate inside of her heart a spirit of meek and quietness. Notice it says it is the hidden man. Verse 4, the beginning of the hidden man of the heart.

We're not talking about the outward. We're talking about the inward. The hidden man of the heart, a meek and a quiet spirit.

Meek means gentle. In fact, I don't know how many of you remember years ago, the little horse sermon. I had that little horse up here.

A lot of you would have been very young children. But this word meek, prowess, I believe it is, is an equestrian term. It means it would have been what they would have used back in the day when they used horses in war and when they would get the horse to a place that it go into battle and it could stay under control with its master sitting on top of it and take it through all of the scenes of a battle.

And that horse, when it was at that point and could keep itself under control, it was meek, it was prowess in Greek. And so it's the idea of power under control. Jesus was the perfect personification of meekness.

And it's also a quiet spirit, tranquil, peaceful, trusting. And this spirit is in your heart. The opposite ideas of meekness is impatience, assertive, overbearing.

And the opposite of quiet would be loud, assertive, and boisterous. Let's see, as Peter wrote this letter, let's back up a verse. He obviously has some thoughts on what the opposite may look like.

Verse 3, it says, It's interesting to me that Peter decides here to explain the opposite of a meek and a quiet spirit with some outward expressions. He decided to say somebody who's concerned about how they decorate themselves externally, whether that is a hairstyle, whether that is different jewelry they put on, or even the clothes they wear being an opportunity for decorating. So he says that he wants women to focus on their inward spirit.

He wants women to focus on decorating the hidden man. And that decoration, if you look in verse 5, he gives us an example. Notice the adornment that they are putting on.

They were adorning themselves with a quiet spirit that's trusting God. And he gives an example of Sarah, verse 6. This quiet, trusting faith in God. Let's back up to verse 2. Now this is being spoken to wives, especially wives that are married to husbands who are not Christians.

And Peter is admonishing them to win their husbands by this same spirit. And in verse 2 he says, Chaste means, I looked it up, it has two meanings. The first one would be not having sexual nature or intention.

The second would be without unnecessary ornamentation, simple or restrained. I find it interesting that as Peter is thinking about writing this letter, and as we've been studying, actually, 1 Peter and 2 Peter, he's trying to give what he feels, especially, I think it was in 2 Peter, we were just reading, he said, I need to stir you up and remind you these things because I'm going to be putting off this tabernacle, I'm going to be dying soon. And these are the important things to Peter.

These are the things he feels he needs to leave the church with. The things that he's learned through his lifetime, walking with Christ physically, then walking with Christ after the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And as he sits down to pen his letter and he gets to this place of speaking to women, these are the thoughts that flowed from him.

And I think we do well to take them seriously. Now there are some do's in here and there are some don'ts. Just like with any teaching, Jesus teaches us to not resist evil.

And we could take that and go halfway with it, not resist evil and obey that much of it. But Jesus has the do. The do is love your enemy and bless them and pray for them.

That's what God is really looking for. The heart of not why we don't resist them. And the heart here of Peter is the don'ts are, don't decorate yourselves with these things, but do this.

Have a meek and a quiet spirit. I have been thinking for about a year now and just praying about the idea of bringing a sermon on modesty. And every time I've come to do it, it just didn't seem like the right time.

One time I actually got sick. So I figured the Lord was telling me pretty clearly not to preach on it. The night before I came down with a fever.

But I do feel like it's time. It's time to talk about this. And this sermon is not at all to... The goal, the intention is more along the lines to talk about why we do what we do.

I don't know if you've ever noticed, but we kind of dress a little bit odd and a little bit strange to the rest of the world. I don't know if you've ever felt like that when you've gone to Walmart or Costco. You feel a little bit strange walking around the way you're dressed.

And if we never address it, if we never talk about it, we can slowly just get in the mode of checking the box. Somebody asks, why do you do that? Well, I don't know, because my church told me I need to do it. And we never want to get there.

We want to understand the heart of God. And that's my goal this morning, is to explain. It's more of a teaching why we believe and practice the way we do.

Now, how many of you believe that Peter, when he wrote this book, was filled with the Holy Spirit? Think so? So is it safe for me to connect this thought of what we just read with the Holy Spirit? Is it safe for me to say that when we want to talk about the Holy Spirit, which Brother Bob just preached two weeks on, that modesty is something that God wants to create in us through the work of the Holy Spirit. That when we receive the Holy Spirit into our lives, He wants to work this out of us. I don't think... I think if you're honest with yourself, sometimes we're tempted to disconnect the thoughts between the Holy Spirit and something like modesty.

We think of the Holy Spirit and all these gifts and all these things, and then modesty just seems like this thing we don't know what to do with. But it's a work of the Holy Spirit. Peter wrote this under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

So I want to talk about that elephant in the room. Why do we wear what we wear? And why do we do what we do? I found this interesting that the word modest means... It comes from the Latin word modestus, which means to keep within measure. So it makes sense when we talk about the subject that there's a measure, and we want to keep within that measure.

We want to keep within what's right and what's wrong. In Greek, it means well-arranged. It's actually the word that we get our English word cosmos.

And we look out at night, we see the stars, we see how beautiful God decorated. And we look at that, we say, that's the cosmos. That's what God did.

The antithesis, the opposite of the Greek word cosmos is chaos. Everybody knows that word in English. You know what it's like when something's chaotic versus when something's well-arranged, right? And that's the idea here.

When we talk about modest, it's well-arranged versus chaos. Now, that brings us to a question. Keeping within the measure.

Well-arranged. We may go out and look at what the world calls well-arranged, and, you know, they look pretty beautiful. They put a lot of makeup on, and they arrange themselves pretty well.

In fact, they may spend an hour arranging themselves each day. But the question I have to ask this morning is who is going to define this word for us, modest? Are we going to let the culture define modest, or are we going to let God define modest? Who is the person that defines modest? And I hope today we can answer some of those questions. Here is a quote that I found, and I don't remember where, but I'll read it slowly.

Basically, Christian modesty is the inner self-government, so it's inside of you. It's this self-control, self-government, rooted in a proper understanding of oneself before God. So when you, like when Isaiah saw the Lord, and he said, woe is me.

When we get a vision of who the Lord is, outworks from that is this self-control, this self-government of modesty. It is outward displays itself in these things, humility, purity, and it comes from a genuine love for Jesus Christ, rather than in self-glorification or self-advertisement. So the opposite of Christian modesty would be self-glorification and self-advertisement.

And it goes on to say, Christian modesty will not publicly expose itself in sinful nakedness. Now, to be honest, not many people, or even me, feel a little bit intrepid to bring up this subject. If we're honest, is the gospel all about modesty? Is it all about rules, do's and don'ts? No, but modesty comes out of that heart of one who has seen Christ.

One who has decided to follow him, to deny self, to take up the cross, to walk with him each day, to allow his abiding Holy Spirit to lead him. This outflows from that. That's what the gospel's about, but this is an outflow from that.

I found this interesting in Wikipedia. Here's how they define modesty. They said, modesty is a mode of dress and deportment.

That means your manner. It's a mode of the way you dress and the way your manners are, which intends to avoid encouraging of sexual attraction in others. So I want to talk about four categories, and I know I'm not going to get through all of these today.

I already know it. So I called Trevor this week, was talking to him a little bit, and I told him what I was thinking about preaching on, and I told him I've been thinking about it for a year. And he said, well, Jeremy, if you think about it for a year, it's definitely going to equal more than one sermon.

So I guess I have that reputation. But number one, I would like to look at modesty in sexual attraction. Number two, I would like to look at it, and we may not even get to number two today, but maybe, we'll see.

Probably not, though. Don't get your hopes up. I would like to look at it in, how did I write it? I wrote it, fashions and excess.

Are there two Cs? No. Number three, I would like, and this is a big one. You know, 20 years ago, probably wouldn't even have thought about preaching this, but I want to talk about gender identity.

And number four, belonging to a people. And I'm hoping through these four points, we can maybe answer the question, why we do what we do. And like I said, I primarily wanted to talk to maybe even some of you young ladies who have grown up here and wonder, why do we do what we do? Is this how you spell identity? Is it an I, or what is it? Oh.

Oh, indentity. Is that better? I don't want you all to sit there the whole sermon, just that bothering you. Did I miss anything else? Is it good? Okay, good.

Okay, so those are four categories. We're going to start off with the first one. Now, I don't know.

Caleb Gussie sent a very interesting Anabaptist perspectives. Why do communities come up with ideas and practices that they do together? I very highly recommend it. I think it was Anabaptist perspectives.

But in it, he talks about taking the simple commands of Christ and then trying to put shoe leather on it, trying to come up with practical ways we can walk this out together as a group. And Jesus himself, the founder of who we call Lord, said that if a man looks on a woman to lust, he commits adultery with her in his heart, thereby implying that this is a serious, serious sin. He goes on to say that if we cannot get this under control, it would be better to gouge out our eye.

This is an intense statement. I know we're all used to this. But it's a very intense statement when we think about it, that we would be better to gouge out our eye to get control over this problem of lust than to be cast into hell.

It'd be better to go into life without an eye than to be cast into hell. And so we want to take this teaching and we want to be serious about it. We want to be serious about lust.

We want to be serious about sexual sins. Sexual sins are serious. In fact, in every place Paul puts a list of sins that keep you out of the kingdom of God, those make the top.

And I think there's a reason for that. Dennis, I enjoyed his lesson this morning. And if you notice, there was two things that God said he will most certainly judge, and that was their sexual sins and their despising of authority.

Also, along with that, Jesus says this. He says, both in Matthew 18 and Luke 17, he says, Woe to the world that temptations are going to come. But then he goes on to say, But woe to the man through whom they come.

So first of all, God's going to hold people who are lusting, he's going to hold them accountable one day, but he's also going to hold accountable those who are becoming a target for lust, who are becoming a target for temptation, are being used by the devil to tempt others. Whether they invent terrible dress or whether they invent things that are like pornography, for example. All kinds of things, but woe to the man by whom temptations come.

The Lord will hold people accountable. I was trying to debate what is the best way to share some pictures with you, but I remember about a year ago, I saw some of these, I saw this picture. I was at Costco and this picture here, I'll make it a little bit bigger.

This is a picture, it actually is called Price Club. It used to be down in San Diego before it was called Costco. I remember going as a kid to this, it was called Price Club.

And this picture was actually right here in the Albany, up in the Albany store. And I was just sitting there one day looking, it was posted on the wall, and I was shocked to see as I panned through here how many women were in dresses. This was only 40 years ago.

This was in the 70s and 80s. I mean this, sorry I'm clicking everywhere. This lady is in a dress.

Now there are others in pants, but what I found very interesting about this picture, here's posted at Costco. I then panned away from the picture and looked out, you know, Costco of today. I didn't see one lady in a dress.

Except my wife, I think, somewhere walking around. But I was shocked to think that just 30 to 40 years ago, it was normal. It was normal for women to wear dresses.

Back in 1907, there was a swimmer from Australia. And she showed up, came to the U.S., and she wore a fitted, sleeveless, one-piece bathing suit that actually were more like shorts. They came down near the knee.

And she was arrested for wearing that. This was just a little over 100 years ago. In this country, she was arrested for indecency because she was in this bathing suit that didn't seem right to society.

Shocking. Shocking that just a little over 100 years ago, that would have been thought of as indecent. And people would have been arrested and taken to jail for it.

I'm primarily trying to do this to show you that we have been desensitized. We are not, we can't expect to live in a godless culture like we do today and it not wear down on us. It says about Lot, it vexed his righteous soul.

And I think we've become numb at times. And sometimes we may even question, why do we wear dresses anymore? I mean, nobody does. And that's what I'm trying to talk about this morning some.

In fact, young men, if you would have gone out on the Atlantic City beach back in the same time frame, you would have been required to wear a shirt. In fact, here, I'll just show you some pictures. See if I can do this.

Here's a picture of a beach back in like 1900 or 1910. Hang on, give me a second. What stands out to you in this picture? What stands out to you in this picture, first of all? Somebody say it out.

Yeah, even the guys, I mean, you can see his arms there. But look at these girls back here. They're in, and they seem to be concerned about the sun, too.

Didn't you say something about that with Bangladesh? Yeah, even in Bangladesh today, you could be arrested for dressing immodestly. If you go to Bangladesh, you know, you go to a tourism site, it'll tell you, this is how you should dress, Americans, because it's a modest country. You should not dress like you do in America.

I mean, it's shocking to see that 100 years ago, this is what women would have looked like on the beach. Here's two young girls, you know, just standing in the water, playing around. Those were bathing suits.

Those were bathing suits. In fact, let me prove my point. I don't know if you can see this work.

Sorry, I didn't realize I had problems with this. I don't know if you can see this. This is from an ad.

Bathing suits. Do you see that? Look at all the styles. They have so many styles to choose from.

They've got this style, and this style, and this style, and then over here on this side, we have this style, and this style, and this style. Lots of variation. Modesty was a thing of this culture at one point.

In the beginning of the 1900s, the first thing that happened was they started removing the sleeves. And that seems laughable to us today. That seems almost laughable that anybody would care.

But it was a major shift in thought. Women's arms and shoulders were usually covered in public, but this was just the beginning. The controversy of whether you should conceal or you should show off raged in the 1920s when, as everybody knows, the swimming suits and things came up, and the legs were shown, then low necklines in the 1940s, two-piece bathing suits, and it just goes on.

We're in a mixed crowd, but this thing goes on and on, and I don't want to read it here. But you can only imagine what we see today. By the 1980s, 1990s, everything's pretty much gone, and that's what we're left with.

Today, our society is saturated, and it's overstimulated with sexuality and immodesty. Nakedness, which was once a shame in this country, is no longer. Magazines, I'm sure you've seen it.

Magazines, billboards, you can practically go nowhere. You get on the internet. It's everywhere.

It's on the side. It's over here. As you're scrolling, it's at the bottom of an article.

It's everywhere. I find myself going like this on my screen constantly. Have you ever done that? You're scrolling down, and there's that.

What do you do with it? The first thing to do is just put your hand up because it's indecent. I already mentioned this verse, but Lot was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct, it says. That's the ESV rending of 2 Peter 2. If you looked up this Greek word for sensual, it means unbridled lust, excess, and shamelessness.

We're told that as the days were back then in Noah, as the days were in Lot, it will be in the last days. We're facing that today. What's especially grieving to me is churches today have taken the culture to define modest instead of God.

What has happened is because whatever the culture defines as modest, we've slipped and slipped and slipped. Now, I read this somewhere, churches are debating in their churches, are yoga pants modest? That's where we've come in this society. We've come to a place because we've become more and more numb to it that now churches are taking up this.

They're taking up whether or not homosexuality is allowed. I'm sure they'll be taking up the gender confusion. This has all been sprung on, honestly, by the women's liberation movement.

What that means is, as I studied, I could feel the pressure. Girls would be writing like, who do you think you are to tell me what I can do with my body? That's the pressure we are under in this society. That the feminism movement has wanted, the devil has used it to bring in a non-distinction between sexes.

To tear down at God's authority. They despise authority. To tear down the authority structure that God set up.

And has left us with a shell of families. And now even preachers are concerned to share these topics. Because the world doesn't want to hear it.

So what I want to do to answer that question is, let's start off with, let's let God and his word define some of these things. I'd like everyone to turn back to Genesis chapter 3. And I want to talk about, first of all, nakedness. Actually, sorry, Genesis 2. There's a little bit there I want to look at first.

Verse 25. So this is after the Lord has created everything and found that it was good. And it says this, in verse 25, And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

It's hard for us to imagine that, a time that somebody wouldn't be ashamed. Sometimes you see little children, right? You see little two-year-olds run through the house and they don't seem to care. But they're totally naked.

I wonder if maybe in some ways that's how Adam and Eve were. They didn't have that conscience level. As God said, their eyes would be opened the day they ate the fruit.

They would know the difference between good and evil and they'd become like God. And I wonder if that's how they were. Now jump down to chapter 3, in verse 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, remember she had been commanded not to eat, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired, to make one wise, she looked at the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. I find that interesting that the two are connected. As soon as she ate the fruit, it says her eyes were opened, and then the scripture goes on to say, and they knew they were naked.

To me that seems to put a connection between sin and nakedness. Sin and the shame of nakedness. Notice what they went after they realized they were naked in verse 6. Sorry, in verse 7. What was their response? It says, they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

This word also is translated loincloths. They took leaves from fig trees, and they attempted to make some sort of clothing, some sort of cover. They were ashamed.

Let's keep reading verse 8. And they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord called unto Adam and said, Where are you? And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. Notice how God clues into that.

He said, Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat of the tree? Notice the connection here with the shame of nakedness to sin and God's command. Did you eat of the tree that I commanded you that you should not eat? And he said, sorry, I want to draw out a couple of thoughts here. Number one, the first thought I'd like to draw out is that man's first attempt to clothe himself was not good enough for God.

Notice that. He realized he was naked. He immediately got, I need to be clothed.

He went out and found fig leaves and clothed himself. But his first attempt, apart from God. Remember, he's now like God.

It wasn't good enough for God. And I'll tell you why. Look at verse 21.

Same chapter. I think it was 21. Yes.

21, it says, Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin and clothe them. So the first attempt that man made wasn't good enough for God. That's the first lesson we can learn.

That God rejected their own form of self-clothing. Now, I'd like to put this out for you a thought. Do we feel we can do any better of a job without the Lord and without the Holy Spirit? Do we feel that we can clothe ourselves any better? And I would like to answer that and say no.

That what we can learn from this is without God and his Holy Spirit, we will fail too at attempting to clothe ourselves. Notice that God, second thing here we can see is that God clothed them with coats of skin. They made aprons, loincloths.

It's, I think, the word for girdle, so it has the idea of like a belt. Very, very basic, let's just say, without me pulling out pictures. God made coats, tunics.

Okay, that's a big difference. He made coats from animal skins. I don't know, I mean, let's just have a little brain experiment.

How many of you girls would be excited to show up in animal skins next Sunday? It kind of just makes you think for a moment how basic clothing is. Like how easily we can make clothing into something that it wasn't really designed to be. It was to meet a specific need.

I'm not asking anybody to show up next week with animal skins, but we can at least learn from it. So let's learn some lessons. Let me ask this question.

Who defined modesty in this situation? Did the culture around them, did the world around them define it or did God define it? As I see, God did. He said your own modesty attempts weren't good enough. I will do this.

So the lessons we can learn is that after man's sin, nakedness became a shame. Man attempted to cover his nakedness, but it was not good enough for God. And we must seek God with sincere hearts to clothe ourselves properly.

Now I want to think about something else from this lesson. Every time you go to your closet and you put on your dress, your shirt, your pants, you are confessing that you are not what you're supposed to be. Think about that.

Clothes were a direct response to sin, to the shame and the fall of sin. Clothes should be a reminder to us every time we see them that we fell, that we sinned. Think about that.

And look what the world has turned clothes into when you think about it. They've turned it into fashion. They've turned it into design.

They've turned it into ways to attract. And God made clothes to confess that we fell, that we fell into sin. God ordained clothes to witness the glory we lost.

That's just a powerful thought to me. And it's added rebellion to throw them off. So let's take a little time now and do some definitions of nakedness.

Because we see here in the story of Adam and Eve that they were naked and they were ashamed. So how does God define nakedness? If everybody could turn to Exodus 20, sorry, verse 26. He's talking to the priest here and talking about how he wants things done, how he wants the temple set up.

You can see in the same chapter before, he talks about the Ten Commandments. And he's giving instructions for how everything should work in the temple, sacrifices, all these things. And he says this in verse 25.

We're in Exodus 20, 25. And he says, And it will, sorry. And if thou will make me an altar of stone, thou shall not build it on hewn stones.

For if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shall thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon. Okay, so these priests were wearing some sorts of robes.

And he said, don't make steps up to the altar because we don't want to reveal something underneath. And that's nakedness. Also jump to Exodus 28, please.

In verse 42. Now he's talking about the clothes that they should make for the priests. And he says this.

And thou shall make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness from their loins even to their thigh. Their loin is about the hip and their thighs are the area between the knees and the hip. Shall they reach.

This was an undergarment. This was something that went under the tunic, the robe to be modest, it says. And notice what he says about it.

It's a big deal. In verse 42. To cover their nakedness.

And I think. Oh, yeah, it's in verse 43. A little bit down there.

It says that they bear not iniquity and die. It says they shall be upon Aaron and on his sons when they come in the tabernacle. And then he says that they bear not iniquity and die.

This is a big deal to God. Make these shorts. Wear them.

Because I don't want nakedness exposed. And if they don't do it, they will bear their sin and die. Do you think nakedness is a big deal to God? Can I ask that? According to just God's definition of modesty.

Okay. We'll look at one other. Isaiah 47.

Verse 2. Isaiah 47. We'll read one for context. Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughters of Babylon.

Sit on the ground. There is no throne, O daughters of the Chaldeans. For thou shall no more be called tender and delicate.

Take the millstones and grind meal. Uncover thy locks. That's your hair.

Make bare your leg. Uncover your thigh. Pass over the rivers.

Thy nakedness shall be uncovered. Okay. We can learn from here simply that nakedness is to uncover the thigh and to uncover the leg.

I don't have time to read all the others, but I'll just tell you quickly. In Isaiah 20, it talks about the King James. I'll just say it in my own words just so that it's not so indecent.

But they're backsides. When that is uncovered, it is called nakedness. If you're a note writer, you can look that up in Isaiah 24.

It's interesting that when Moses came down off the mountain, after he was up receiving the Ten Commandments, he came down off the mountain. He says Aaron had caused them to sin. They up, let us play.

They did all kinds of evil things. When Moses gets down, what does it say? It says in Exodus 32-25, and when Moses saw the people were naked, Aaron had made them naked to their shame, it says. Notice that the direct connection nakedness has to idolatry.

Also, in Luke chapter 8, the demoniac, it says, this is in Luke chapter 8, 26-35. It says, Jesus went forth to a land and he met a man which had longtime devils and did not wear clothes. Notice the connection to nakedness and demon possession.

And it says the town came to see what happened. They found the man whom the devils were departed sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed and in his right man. Notice once the demons were cast out, the demoniac man began to wear clothes.

And it says he was in his right mind. I'm trying to show you that by the scriptures, wearing clothes is the proper response and is a shame to reveal our nakedness. Even Jesus, I believe it's Jesus in Revelation 16 says this, Blessed is he that watches and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.

I believe it's probably a spiritual concept, but may I say this to our church, blessed are we if we can walk according to God's rule of modesty and keep our garments and not walk in that shame that the world is falling apart around us. So the question may be, well, if clothing was given to cover my nakedness, if it was given to cover skin, is that all that we need to worry about? And I would say I do not think so. I believe that clothes still communicate something.

In fact, when we read in Peter, notice it's not just nakedness. It's not even mentioned. It's more gold, which would be jewelry.

It's hairstyles and it's attire. It's apparel, decorating with apparel. And so clothing can still communicate.

Here's something to think about. You ladies were built by God to be attractive, to even think that way. Men were programmed in their hearts to be attracted to something, and women were programmed to be attractive.

I think that's why Peter wrote what he did, that this is how we are. In fact, in Job, it says, Job said he made a covenant with his eyes not to look upon a maid. That shows you that a man has a struggle.

A man has a struggle, and that is, well, I don't know how many of you old men notice, so I'll be honest. We were on the train yesterday, and a girl comes walking in, and she had these short shorts with these straps going down to some kind of shoes or socks. I'm not sure what.

But as soon as I saw her, how many of you saw that? Anybody saw that? Just me? You saw it. Okay. As soon as I saw that, I had to make a covenant with my eyes not to look.

She had, as the scripture says, the attire of a harlot. I mean, she looked that way. And I had to be, and all men here that would see something like that would have a struggle in their heart to have to fight against that.

Women, on the other hand, as far as I understand, they have a desire to be attractive, to look cute, to look nice. Is that right? Do you have that desire? I'm just making this up. I'm not a woman, so you'll have to tell me.

But I did ask my wife. In Proverbs, it says that, and I just mentioned this first, but there was a woman. A young man came.

He was just kind of witless, just walking around, not thinking. And it says, there was a woman who came with the attire of a harlot. Now, I'd like to make the point that she wasn't, it didn't say she was necessarily naked.

Maybe she was, but clothes still communicate. Clothes still communicate. And your clothes communicate a message.

I remember years ago, I was getting up at night to use the restroom for something, and I came into the bathroom, and it was very dimly lit, and there was a hanger on the ground, and I jumped because I thought it was a snake. Now, this is how bad I am as a guy. I went and used the restroom and never picked up the hanger.

Well, for whatever reason, a couple hours later, I had to come back, and I jumped again. And I did this three times over this hanger. And I tell you that story to say that we are affected by shape.

We are affected by shape. And so I think every man, if I would have you raise your hand, would testify that men are attracted to shape. And so guys are attracted to the shape of a woman's body.

I don't know how else to say it, but that's the truth. Am I right, George? Thank you. I need some amen from back there.

And I honestly don't think our young ladies sit at home thinking about how can I look like a harlot. As I think about that, I don't think that's your heart at all, and I'm thankful for that. I'm blessed because I think there are women that do have that thought.

But one thing the devil can do if we're not careful, and this is what we need to watch for, is he can bring in, since guys are programmed to be attracted and girls are programmed to be attractive, he can bring in small thoughts that maybe seem harmless, but that can affect the way we decide to dress. For example, he could say, you could think in your heart, well, I want to look cute. I don't want to look ugly, right? Seems like a harmless thought.

Or I don't want to look fat. I want to look skinny. And if we're not careful, if we don't keep these things in tension, we want to look clean, we want to look neat.

In fact, I was looking over Valley Christian Fellowship's Statement of Faith. Right in the Christian Appearance it says we would like to look clean and neat. That's part of it.

That's intention. With, over here, if we're not careful, if we let these thoughts of I want to look cute and I want to not look fat, we can end up allowing our sewing machines and allowing the way we even pattern our dresses to become tight. It's true.

And so, let me just give you a little thought here. I want to talk about how, we've only got a couple more minutes, but I want to talk about how finicky our culture is, and different cultures, about what is beautiful. And I want to quickly read you something.

But, actually, let's read you this first, and then I'll show you the pictures. Okay, so in the U.S., we've all been raised with the Barbie doll. Who knows what a Barbie doll is? Does anybody know what a Barbie doll is? Okay, good.

I don't have to explain. I read this article, and this is about the Barbie doll. Bones so frail it would be impossible to walk and room for only half of a liver.

Shocking research reveals what life would be like if a real woman had Barbie's body. Did you hear that? Her bones would be so frail, and she'd have room for half a liver. A disturbing chart that converts the doll's body scale into a real-life human being reveals the outrageous proportions that transforms her into something out of a sci-fi movie.

Starting from the top down, Barbie's head would be two inches larger than the average American woman, while resting on a neck twice as long and six inches thinner. From these measurements, she'd be entirely incapable of lifting her head. Her 16-inch waist would also be four inches thinner than her head, leaving room for only half of a liver and a few inches of intestine.

Like her fragile 3.5-inch wrists, her six-inch ankles would prevent her from heavy lifting. Then as far as holding up her entire body, despite so much as it missing, it'd be an entirely impossible feat requiring her to walk on all fours. Now, we think that's funny, and it is, but what we need to realize is that this is what the marketing Mattel, the toys that they've come up with for our little children to play with and idolize and think this is what beauty is.

No wonder we've had problems in the past with anorexia. Now, once again, we need to keep this in tension. There's a real reason to fast.

There's a real reason not to overeat. But if we're motivated by today's society of skinniness and so I can look cute, that's also dangerous. We need to keep these two thoughts in tension.

Let me show you a couple pictures. Well, in Africa, fat is actually beauty. They send their ladies off to fattening farms.

I'm not joking. They send them off, and they feed them nothing but olive oil and corn so they can become fat, and it's considered beautiful because they have money. Interesting.

And so I'm not trying to say we need to be fat. What I'm trying to say is if we allow beauty to be defined by culture, in our local culture instead of God, it can get us in wrong places. In Africa, this would be considered beautiful.

This is called scarification. This young girl has taken and punched little holes all through her face and created these terrible scars, and this is considered beautiful. Can you all see that in the back? Okay.

In China, they did a thing called foot binding. This is considered beautiful in this culture. You take somebody's normal feet and you bind them up to where the foot goes like this, and all these toes are curled under like this.

I'll try to make it big. And this is what we get. This is considered beautiful.

What I'm trying to make my point is if we're not careful and we let culture define what beauty is, this is what we could end up with, thinking about making our feet teeny-weeny and binding them. In Iran, they want to be like you Westerners. They don't want their nasty nose.

In their mind, that big bump right there is ugly. So get this. They go for surgeries.

It's the in thing to do, to go for surgeries and to have that nose bump removed. And so guess the in thing to do, even if you never had a surgery, is to wear this bandage on your nose. Yeah, it is.

Just wear that bandage because it communicates you have money. In fact, people go get the surgery and then they just don't take the bandage off because it tells everybody I had the nose surgery. So the concept here is that if we're not careful, we can let society become our definition for beauty.

I had a little bit more I want to talk about, but I'll have to finish it another time. But let me just return back to one quick thing here. I want to read you a quote somebody I read.

And remember what Peter said about having a meek and a quiet spirit. This is the quote. To any woman or man who dresses inappropriately, I say this.

Until God has become your treasure, until your own sin becomes the thing you hate the most, until the word of God is your supreme authority, that you feel to be more important than gold, sweeter than honey, and until the gospel of Christ's death in your place is the most precious news in the world to you, until you've learned to deny yourself short-term pleasures for the sake of long-term joys and holiness, and until you've grown to love the Holy Spirit and long for His fruit more than man's praise, until you count everything as loss compared to the supreme value of knowing Christ, your attitude toward your clothing and your appearance will be controlled by forces that don't honor Christ. And so I challenge us this morning to what is the heart of the gospel? The heart of the gospel is His glory, is being mirrors reflecting Him, not our glory, not turning what God originally designed clothes to be a reflection of our own shame and turning it back on ourselves to bring attention to ourselves. I hope to finish some of these thoughts another time, but thank you for your patience.

And if you have anything else you want to challenge me on, if I got it wrong, feel free to come to me and talk to me about it. Lord bless each one.