The sermon on modesty by Scott Brown discusses the biblical principles that guide how we dress, defines modesty, and addresses tensions that may arise in families or churches regarding the topic. Brown emphasizes that Scripture is sufficient for guiding how both males and females dress and that having a standard about clothing is not legalism. Legalism consists of creating laws foreign to Scripture and believing that outward compliance with these laws makes a person more acceptable before God. Modesty, as defined in the sermon, is an inner self-government rooted in a proper understanding of oneself before God, which outwardly displays itself in humility and is not just about clothing but also about actions and speech. The sermon also highlights that modesty is typological, meaning it points to something greater than just clothing, such as holiness and the Gospel. Brown encourages believers to view their clothing as a profession of faith and godliness, and to resist the pressure from the fashion industry to identify with certain brands or styles.

I really want to talk about some of the fundamental principles. I'd like to speak about why we're delivering this message. I'd like to speak about some of the questions that are on the table, what some of the tensions might be in families particularly or in a church. I'd like to define modesty. I'd like to speak about really what it really, really is about.

And I want to break my comments into two sections. One, what the Bible says about clothing. And I want to give you a number of passages of Scripture. And then I want to speak about some practical matters. I want to talk about male modesty.

I want to talk about, what about rules? I want to talk about how these things should be handled in a local church. I want to talk about you know what our prayer is for the culture of this church regarding this matter and I want to speak a little bit about beauty and the implications of the gospel. So that's kind of the range of what I want to try to cover here this afternoon. Now one of the reasons that we're delivering this message, quite honestly, is there actually have been several men who have come to us as elders and have said they're struggling because of immodesty in our church.

Yes, our little sweet church, You know, we've had people come to us and they've told us that they don't believe it's an isolated problem with, you know, one person or something like that. And also, I think as elders, we want to be clear as well, is that we're not only giving this message as a result of a request, but also that I think it would be helpful to walk through, you know, various passages and to try to itemize the different categories of problems and considerations and principles that need to be dealt with. So the fundamental principle, of course, in everything is that Scripture is sufficient. And scripture is sufficient for how you dress, how both males and females dress. And there are principles that are meant to guide us in this thing that we do every single day.

Every day we rise up, hopefully it's early, yes we're advocates of early rising, and that's a joke. I'm an advocate of early rising. And we do the same thing every day. We put on clothing and some stare into the closet blankly, others aren't exactly sure what they should get. They might have just, you know, gone to the store to try to find clothing and fail to try to find anything that had any semblance of modesty to it.

But this is something that we do every day. And it's something that everyone sees every day. So it's actually a significant thing. And a number of questions are really on the table. Should there be a dress code in your family?

Should there be a dress code in your church? What is your dress code? Everybody has a dress code. I think we should be clear about that. Either that code, you know, is personally created, it's defined by the culture, it's developed out of your own conscience, it may actually even be governed by Scripture.

In other words, you may have thought, yes, all of my clothing should be considered, you know, in the light of godly principles. I should think about everything that I do in terms of Scripture. One of the questions that always comes right to the top of a discussion like this is what is legalism? Legalism has two elements. First of all, legalism is creating laws that are foreign to Scripture.

That's the first element of legalism. The second element of legalism is thinking that in your law keeping, in your outward compliance with whatever thing that you might be trying to apply in Scripture, that somehow it makes you more acceptable before God or actually might save you or it might make you more righteous. In other words, so there would be one person more righteous than another because of their outward appearance. That's legalism. But, having a standard about clothing is not legalism.

I hope we can all agree about that because the Bible does bring standards to us and that means that it's not legalistic to talk about standards of clothing because Scripture has spoken clearly about it. Paul said to the Colossians, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. And that includes clothing. But it doesn't just include clothing, it includes everything. How we walk, how we talk, how we worship, how we work, how we relate to one another.

Everything is meant to be assumed under this great heading of the glory of God. So clothing was meant for the glory of God. And so when we think about legalism and trying to define Christian liberty, I want us to acknowledge a reality about modern life in Christian circles, and that is this. In today's Christian world, Christian liberty actually includes the liberty to take off almost all of your clothes and go to the beach. That's what Christian liberty includes.

And, you know, today Christian liberty is defined by girls dressing like boys and boys dressing like girls. And so we have to ask, is this a proper application of the principle of Christian liberty? And of course, I think we would say no. We also have to consider how we're going to apply something like this. And I want to say this, you know, kind of at the outset to help us sort of calibrate our consciences, our brains, our attitudes now because I want us to work really hard at not thinking about anyone else but yourself, okay?

We should be applying this to ourselves. So I hope we can do that successfully. It's a very important subject because out of the meditations of the heart come many, many things, including the kinds of things that you choose to put on. And there are many tensions that arise in this whole question. Here's tension number one.

Fathers are not biblically informed and therefore they're ill-equipped to think biblically and therefore unable to act appropriately and with leadership on the matter. Attention number two, passive fathers who have delegated the matter to the crowd. Attention number three, wives that just do not understand. They're clueless about various things that the Bible has said. Number four, wives who are rebellious and they don't have submissive hearts toward their husbands.

Tension number five, fathers who are afraid of conflict and therefore they don't take responsibility. Tension number six, friends and outsiders that just don't agree. Tension number seven, Onlookers who do not like it when you dress modestly. When they see a group, they sneer. This happens very often to my own daughters.

People say things about the way they dress. Sometimes it's positive, but most of the time it's actually not. Here comes the dress brigade. That's what happens to my daughters all the time. But onlookers aren't always the most helpful in dealing with it.

There's also confusion in the church. There are a number of problems that most churches experience, and our church experiences it to some degree as well. One, there are people who haven't just thought about it clearly in terms of Scripture. They haven't systematically gone through Scripture and really looked carefully at the matter. Even though it's something they do every single day, they just haven't looked carefully at it from a biblical standpoint.

They may not understand history. They may not understand the season of history in which we live today and comparing it to other trends and other times of history when things might have been a little bit different. If you don't understand history, it's very difficult for you to understand how you fit in it and even how your apparel works in the midst of the historical moment that you're living in. And we have to acknowledge there's always a cultural element with this whole subject of modesty and dress. But hey, one of the most important questions is this, you know, for you husbands, do you know your Bibles well enough that you can lead your wife and your daughter to the biblical texts that instruct them.

Like do they know exactly where to go? Here's just something I want to challenge you with. If your daughters don't know where to go, shame on you. You need to teach them because they're dressing every day. They need to know and they need someone to teach them.

So I would just encourage you, fathers, to make it your business to bring out the passages of Scripture that that relate to this matter. I'm going to deal with seven passages of Scripture this afternoon. Another question is daughters and wives, can you defend the way that you're dressing from Scripture alone? Wives, the same thing. Do you have in mind what is an explicitly biblical position using biblical language and biblical texts in order to defend and communicate what you believe about this?

I think that you should be able to do that. And these are just various problems that we have have in churches. I'd like to give a definition of modesty. Webster's dictionary has a fantastic definition of modesty. You can find it in this book, The Beauty of Modesty by David Vaughn and Diane Vaughn.

This is a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. It really dances around the subject in a lot of really helpful ways. I think it's properly nuanced and it gives a really helpful takedown of the whole subject. So here's the definition of modesty.

I'm just going to take this from my friend Jeff Pollard. Christian modesty is the inner self-government rooted in a proper understanding of oneself before God, which outwardly displays itself in humility from a love for Jesus Christ, rather than in self-glorification or self-advertising. So according to that definition, and I like that definition because I do believe it it collects up a lot of the biblical categories, you really just sort of come to the conclusion modesty is not just about clothing. It's about far more than that. It begins in the heart.

Modesty is something that resides in the heart of a man or a woman and it's expressed in the way they dress, the way they talk, the way they act, the way they walk, the way they work, everything. So according to this definition, it really brings forth sort of a broader subject than just how are the ladies in our church dressing. Because I really don't want this discussion to just exclusively focus there while it is included. But that we understand that the way that the Bible speaks about apparel and particularly modesty that there are bigger issues involved. And I mean there are gigantic issues involved.

Something greater is here than just what you do with your clothing. Modesty is typological. When we talk about modesty, we're talking about something earthly that points to something spiritual. You know, a type is a picture or a condition or a person of something smaller that relates to something greater. And I want to suggest that all this talk about modesty, it has to do with a number of things, one of which is just holiness, that we are a people set apart, that we think differently, we walk differently, we talk differently, we dress differently.

We are distinctive in the world. And it's not for us to learn the way of the Gentiles, but to learn the ways of God. And so it's typological in terms of holiness, but also too in a deeper way. I mean, in the same way that we think about adoption, you know, earthly adoption is something that points to something spiritual. Many of you have adopted children, but the very act of your adopting children, it tells a bigger story.

That God is a Father who adopts children. We adopt because God has adopted us. We are adopted and called sons and we cry out, Abba Father. So Adoption is a picture, earthly adoption is a picture of something greater in the same way that marriage, Christian marriage is a picture of something greater than just marriage itself. It's a picture of Christ's love for the church.

And so it's the exact same thing with our clothing. We should have a far greater vision for our clothing than, hey, just what style appeals to me. Because our clothing is typological in the sense that it tells something, it tells of something far greater. And it really tells of the Gospel. And that is that our clothing is a picture of our salvation.

That we have been clothed with the robes of righteousness, that our nakedness has been completely covered by Christ. And I'll trace this back as we get further along, particularly, We're going to have to go back to Genesis to understand what this means, but we need to understand that when God gave clothing, He gave clothing for a reason. He gave clothing to declare the glory of the Gospel. Something so simple, something that's done every day. Here's what I pray for, for us, that all of us, including me, including all the men here, when they wake up in the morning and they think of what they're going to put on, they think, oh Lord, help me to glorify the salvation that you brought to me by the very way that I cover my body.

The very first clothes were given in order to cover shame. We'll get to that in a minute. But modesty is typological. Therefore, it's meant to demonstrate everyday glory, demonstrate everyday the glory of God that our nakedness has been covered. And it's meant to serve as a witness that we have been redeemed and we have been completely covered by the robes of righteousness.

If we go to Isaiah chapter 61, we learn much about this and what robes of righteousness are really all about. Remember how the prophet Isaiah has divided the message? Chapters 1 through 59 are speaking of the coming judgment. Chapters 60 to the end speak of the coming Messiah and the glory of salvation. So there's been a change in the message beginning in chapter 60.

And of course Matthew has taken us back to Isaiah 60 and 61. But chapter 60 verse 1, arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Behold, darkness shall cover the earth, deep darkness, the deep darkness of the people, but the Lord will arise over you. Here, a people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. That's how it begins in 60.

And then in 61, we begin in verse 1 with a passage that Jesus quotes in Luke chapter 4, but when you get to the end of chapter 61 verse 10, here's what you read. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, as a bride adorns herself with jewels. For as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes its things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before the nations." So notice that this salvation is spoken of in terms of robes of righteousness and notice it's not just female that is the subject here.

It is the bride and the bridegroom and they're big And they are clothed in a certain way. So this theme, this typological principle has to be understood when we think about clothing. OK, let's just stop there before we go into these passages of Scripture. I just hope that we can have a different vision of our clothing. However you attempt to apply the way that you dress yourself every day.

Let's hope for a passionate spirit among all of us where we are very self-consciously clothing ourselves for the glory of God. That we know that our outward appearance is a testimony of something inward. And that whenever we put on clothing, our minds somehow short-circuit back to the Garden of Eden where God made clothes to replace the clothes that man made for himself. But that we would have a grand vision and it would be all about rejoicing and being joyful before God and displaying the beauty of the robes of salvation. So I pray, you know, however you apply this, however this offends you, however this disturbs you or you disagree with, I hope that at least we can come down to this one thing, and that is that God has designed clothing for something greater than just clothing.

Can we agree on that? With this introduction, I want to just move into what I'm going to call part one which answers the question what are some of the things that the Bible says about clothing? What are some of the things that the Bible says about clothing? And I'm going to give you seven things. First of all, from 1 Timothy 2, 9 and 10, we learn that clothing is actually a profession of faith.

It's a profession of godliness. 1 Timothy 2, 9 says, In like manner also that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but which is proper for women, professing godliness with good works." So a number of things that we encounter from this passage, one is that God does speak to clothing. American Christians don't want anyone to talk about how they dress because it's legalistic, but here what's happening is God is actually telling the women in the church of Ephesus, of which Timothy was a pastor, about how they should dress. He's telling them how to dress. And he uses this language to help them understand this.

And he's really wanting to encourage the Ephesian women to reexamine their dress according to other categories and other language. The Greeks were known for the exposure of the body. This was the religion of the Greeks to glorify the body. When you look at Greek art, when you look at Greek philosophy regarding clothing, you have to understand you're looking at paganism. Paganism almost always expresses itself in nakedness.

There are a number of things that seem to be characteristic of paganism wherever you find it. We could talk about that, but one of the things that characterizes paganism is an obsession with the body and nakedness. And so here the Apostle Paul is speaking to young Timothy the pastor there to help the Ephesian women understand how to be a holy people in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. They were in a culture much like ours. Theirs actually might have been worse than ours.

When I read about the Greeks, I don't think the Greeks were even dressed as well as the people on our main streets of our culture. But if you go to Greece today, you'll find I think they're probably still dressing about the same way because there's much less modesty in those places. So there's there are particular words that are that are being used here. The term Cosmeo for order or orderly clothing is the term for adorn in here. And it's a verb.

It signifies action, that you adorn yourself and you bring order. That means that women should take action to bring order to their dress. They should not neglect themselves. The desire that women have to order their clothing in a proper way is a good desire. It's a desire that God put there.

It can run amok, but the whole idea of bringing order to your clothing and not looking rumpled and sloppy and just whatever, you know, is being challenged here. And then the term modest, modest apparel, cosmios, it's an adjective for orderly. Again, there's beauty and orderliness to the universe. It's the word we get our word, cosmetics, from, and it means to adorn and arrange and to bring kind of a harmonious mixture of things together instead of just chaos. So it implies beauty and functionality at the same time.

So it's appropriate for women to dress with beauty. This is not a prohibition against beauty at all. And then, propriety is another word that's used here. And this term is translated shame-facedness. Shame-facedness is a really, I think, is a helpful word to understand what the Apostle Paul is asking for here.

It's the term hadios, and it includes thoughts of reverence, you know, almost a sense of bashfulness. It's the opposite if you've got it flaunted. It's the opposite of that. It backs off from exposure. It covers rather than reveals.

Instead of pushes the limits, it moderates itself back. That's this term, modesty. And it understates rather than tries to be in your face. And then there's another term, sophersonies, understatement, moderate clothing. Moderation is the word that you see there, moderation.

It's a word that calls for soundness of spirit, self-control, the passions and the desires, under control, holding the reins on propriety. It's a little bit like meekness. It has some of the same connotations, that it's under the government. It's not just out there doing whatever it wants. In other words, neither men nor women should just dress any way they want.

They should dress with sort of the idea of moderation. And so that would include it's not flirtatious, it's not silly, it's not ostentatious, with its primary purpose to get attention, to get people to look at you, which is very very contrary to to the whole you know milieu that we live in. You know the whole fashion industry is built around the idea of attracting attention, to get someone to look at you and to gawk at you so that you are noticed, so that you can be someone, so that you can be someone unique, some very special you that you have designed, that you've collected all these things together and now You have your design. It's all yours. It's very personal.

No, the Bible actually doesn't have that for us. It's moderated, and it's not for ourselves. It's not for our own image. It's not for our own look. It's for something far greater than that.

And then lastly in this in this in this these verses there is the the idea of professing godliness and you know this brings us back to the profession of the gospel. Paul uses the term for professing that means like making a public announcement. So if you're going to profess anything, you're professing godliness. You're not professing your own style, you're not professing the glory of this age, You're not professing getting attention to yourself, but you're professing godliness. You're making actually an announcement about godliness.

So when you stand in front of the mirror and you think, what am I going to wear? You should ask yourself, is this a profession of godliness? Have I self-consciously worked to do that? Now, will our clothing ever be some kind of perfect profession of godliness? I don't think so.

But God is talking to us about how we govern ourselves in the whole process of selecting what we wear. We say actions speak louder than words. And there's a sense where clothing speaks louder than words as well. Because the clothing is meant to be a profession. It's supposed to be a kind of message, a preaching in a way.

So you should be preaching with your clothing about something very, very wonderful. The clothes, the hair, the jewelry, they all have a purpose to profess godliness. Now When we think about that our clothing is meant to be a profession, we have to acknowledge that there's a pressure upon us by the fashion industry and that pressure is the pressure for identification. And, you know, The big clothing manufacturers and marketing organizations, they want you to identify with their clothing. They want your identity to become their identity.

And they're trying to build their brand by connecting your personality with their personality so that their personality would become your personality. That's actually the intent. And so the clothing designers want you to identify with it. That's why there's such an emphasis on branded clothing. We've all seen numerous examples of branded clothing.

You could talk about Calvin Klein. What does the Calvin Klein brand mean? What came to your mind when I mentioned the word Calvin Klein? My guess is that it was not a profession of godliness that came to your mind, but actually something else came to your mind. And that's intentional.

Calvin Klein wants it that way. They want you to identify with that. And when you wear that brand, they want you to represent that culture, that epistemology, that morality, everything. And so when you put on certain kinds of clothing that are branded, you are taking on that brand. I mean, I just want to ask you to consider the whole matter of branding.

Abercrombie and Fritsch is another one. There's a very intentional branding strategy so that when people wear that, there's a connection and things happen. And actually they do. If you're wearing that kind of clothing, people will either think one of two things. They'll either think you're identifying with them and you're drawing the onlooker into that or you're just clueless.

You're an idiot. You have no idea what you're doing. You just threw on those clothes. You had no idea what they meant. But branding matters because a profession of godliness matters.

And we should be very careful what we wear because we are being branded and the question we have to ask is, am I branding a profession of godliness or someone else's profession? So it's a profession of godliness and then good works. So clothing is also designed to declare the glory of good works. And so that clothing should cry out godliness, profession of faith, humility, purity, robes of righteousness, the gospel. Okay?

Now often, often clothing isn't that way. It can cause others to stumble. And when clothing is too tight or too exposing of your figure, then you draw attention to that area. Women are typically less sensitive to men about that. So there are actions, there are words, there are postures, and then there are robes that speak of a profession of faith.

John Angel James, the pastor in the 19th century, said this, study your profession and thoroughly understand what it implies and enjoins. Consider well what sanctity and conduct, what spirituality of mind, what separation from the world in spirit and taste, what devotional feelings, what faith, what hope, what love, what humility is communicated in your clothing. That's John Angel James in this passage of 1 Timothy 2. Now, okay, so what is immodesty? Immodesty is an expression of self.

Immodesty is drawing attention to yourself. It is identification and association with sinful cultures. It is an obsession with legitimizing oneself through hair or through jewelry or through apparel. Immodesty is often the result of insecurity or arrogance or worldliness externalized. Immodesty is insensitivity to the temptations of men.

Immodesty is lack of love for your brother. Immodesty makes you less of a person and more of an object. Immodesty destroys love and it inflames lust. Those are some of the things that are collected up in this whole question. So modesty is though, modesty is a profession of faith.

It's an external expression of affections. It's a reflection of holiness. It's a proclamation of the Gospel. It's a demonstration of humility. It's a display of self-control.

And it's an And it's an acknowledgment of sin, and particularly of Adam and Eve's need to be covered. And It's a means to declare that God has single-handedly covered the nakedness of sinful mankind. So here's the question. Do you testify to your need to be covered by the blood of the Lamb or that you are good enough? Are you testifying that you are fallen or not?

That you are depraved? That you are or are you testifying that it's your intention to cause others to stumble? Those are some of the big questions that arise out of the text of 1 Timothy chapter 2. So that's text number one. This is a text you need to understand.

Every word in that text has meaning for us. Here's another text, 1 Peter 3, 1 through 6. An expression of the hidden person of the heart. Now we've touched on this, but I want to elaborate on it a little bit more. First Peter 3, 3 through 6, do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel.

Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is very precious in the sight of God. For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands. As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are If you do good and are not afraid of any terror So Peter starts with a prohibition do not Do not let your adornment be And then he gives a list. So there are prohibitions. The sky's not the limit.

It begins with the prohibition. And then there are three categories that are given, hair, jewelry, and clothing. So one thing that we learn here is that, you know, contrary to what some people might think, Modesty is achieved not only by just wearing a dress. Actually, modesty isn't so much about wearing dresses. It's about something much more significant than that, and much more nuanced than that.

And it's more than wearing understated clothing. It's more than wearing a clothing that is not alluring. It's way more than that. And so for example, according to what is said here, he's talking about the hidden person of the heart. A person can wear what everyone else would declare to be modest clothing and be arrogant and be self-righteous and be proud.

So it's not enough. It's not enough to have the right shirt or top or dress on. That's not enough. That's not the primary issue. The primary issue is the hidden person of the heart.

So modesty calls for an attention to every area of life. It begins in the heart and then it expresses itself on all in all the other all the other areas of outward appearance. Now I mean what what Peter is saying is it really is that everything everything is an expression of something and he's saying here that that hair and jewelry and clothing are an expression of something. So we don't start on the outside. We start on the inside.

This is a distinction between Christianity and other major religions and true Christianity and legalism. Legalism and other religions, they start on the outward. But Christianity starts inside. And that's where you have to start with the discussion of modesty. And so here he's speaking of the hidden person of the heart.

And he's saying here that apparel and hair and jewelry is the fruit of a godly heart because all clothing is an extension of something. So here's how it works. Let's say your heart is craving applause, then it'll work itself out in what you put on. Let's say you're craving a relationship with someone, then your outward appearance will reflect the trying to attract someone into a relationship like that. If your heart desires to glorify Christ, then you will moderate all your clothing according to that principle.

Isaiah captures the problem in Isaiah chapter 3 where he speaks of the daughters of Zion, how they walk haughtily and how their necks are outstretched and they walk mincing as they go, jingling with their feet. And they have all kinds of different things that they're using to try to allure. The opposite here are holy men who adorn themselves with submission and obedience and Fearlessness there's a contrast here and You know here what? You know this this principle of inward and outward is so clearly played out. Now, one thing that we have to say is that this is not a prohibition of arranging your hair.

It's not a prohibition of wearing gold, and it's not a prohibition of wearing fine apparel. It's a prohibition of taking those to an extreme. And the reason we say that, there's so many places in scripture where it's a godly practice to wear jewelry and to have hair arranged. The daughters of Zion are beautiful and there are many, many places where you see the proper adornments of women. So this is not a prohibition of adornment, but it's a moderation of it by what is incorruptible and it's the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and a quiet spirit.

So that should be the heart of apparel. See, apparel doesn't start actually at the wardrobe. It starts in the heart. So it's never enough to say this kind of clothing is wrong or that kind of clothing is right. It's never enough to say that because it doesn't get to the foundational principle.

And if all you're thinking about is the top-level outward appearance, then you'll never get to the place that Peter is speaking of here. And then the third passage of Scripture is Deuteronomy 22 verse 5, that clothing is meant to distinguish between manhood and womanhood. Clothing is meant to distinguish between manhood and womanhood. Deuteronomy 22 5 says, a woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord. So women are not to wear anything that pertains to a man, but the admonition to men is a little bit different not to put on the clothing of a woman.

And there's a little bit of a difference here. Anything that pertains to a man, the word that Moses is using, has to do with the apparatus of a man. So it's not exclusively about clothing. It's about the things that manhood needs to do what manhood does. So women should not be putting on what manhood needs to do what manhood does.

And that can include various kinds of things. So it's a little bit broader With women than it is with men. With men it's just men do not put on a woman's clothing. Women are not allowed to put on a woman's clothing. They're to look like men.

There should be something distinctively manly and womanly. That's what pertains to a man has to do with. Now, this passage of Scripture, Deuteronomy 22, 5, exists in a context. And if you were with us, you know, many months ago when I preached on this passage, you'll remember that Deuteronomy is divided in several subsections that include expositions of each commandment. In Deuteronomy chapter 5, the Ten Commandments are delivered, and then from 6 through 11, the First Commandment is, there's exposition on the First Commandment.

All kinds of explanations of what the First Commandment looks like, obeying the first commandment looks like. And then Moses continues on. When you get to Deuteronomy chapter 22, you find this same thing. Now Moses is doing exposition on the commandment, thou shalt not murder. And he's giving lots of different examples of what it means and what it doesn't mean to murder.

And that's a really long discussion, but here this verse is stuck in there of his exposition of thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment." Now, he's been speaking about what murder is in wartime. And so he's now speaking about how men and women operate and that women are not to be putting on the apparatus of a man in times of war, that women are women and men are men. And they should dress like that and they should use apparel and effects that reflect that. So that's the whole context there.

He's speaking of the sixth commandment. So for example, he speaks about removing the ancient landmark. That's also like committing murder. If you move an ancient landmark, it's like you're killing a man's inheritance. So there are things like that.

Here's what it means to kill. Killing is not just stabbing someone. That's what Jesus said. Murder is not just stabbing your neighbor, it's actually hating him. And Moses is doing the same thing.

He's explaining different ways that murder happens. And what I believe what Moses is doing here is He's saying that there's an aspect of manhood, there's an aspect of murder that includes the killing of manhood and womanhood. And you put to death manhood and womanhood when women dressed like men and men dressed like women. And the the consequences are enormous. And so there's this whole aspect of putting something to death.

Now when you put to death manhood or if you put to death womanhood, what do you get? Well if you put to death womanhood, you get a lot more than just, you know, fewer children or you get a lot more than just working women When you put to death manhood You get you get things that are very terrifying and extreme like for example when you go down to the abortion clinic, what you're seeing are women who have put to death womanhood. They are putting motherhood to death. When you put motherhood to death, You get something way more than just fewer children. You get murder.

That's what you get. So when you put to death man and woman, you get way more than just what it seems to be on the surface, in the same way with homosexuality. If you put to death manhood in a man, what do you get? Well, you get what you see today. You get the homosexual community where the average age of a homosexual male is 42 years old.

Where the suicide rates and the depression is beyond imagination. It is so terrifying. But really, all you had was just a man dressing like a woman. What's the big deal about that? Well, the big deal is when you put to death manhood and womanhood, you get way more than you bargained for.

Does that make sense? And our culture is reaping what we have sown in the destruction of manhood and womanhood. And so when you go down to the abortion clinic, I think that you should acknowledge that What's happening there is also related to women who dress like men and men who dress like women. Now, Some years ago, our family, it was a little over a decade ago, our family was reading some of these passages. And we came to Deuteronomy 22, 5 as we read through the Bible together and this this verse stuck out and when we read it it was like it was like a light had gone on in our living room a really bright light and we all looked at each other.

We realized that there were two issues that we had to grapple with when we read this. One was we had to ask ourselves, and I have three girls, right? So this issue is on, I have three girls that were just entering into their teen years or getting ready to. We had to ask, what is distinctively manly dress and what is distinctively womanly dress? And so, we ended up concluding that we had to look a lot more carefully about the way we were dressing than we were before.

And one of our conclusions was this, that the pants that my daughters were wearing were distinctively manly and they were meant to facilitate manly work. And we determined that there was so much blurring of manhood and womanhood going on around us, there had to be some distinction. And the line of distinction, in my mind, was not clear enough. God means that there's a very clear line of distinction. When you blur that line, you have to understand what you're doing because you're not just getting a little blurring on the middle.

You're getting something far greater than that. So, we ended up thinking blurring the lines is actually pretty significant. And so, we determined if it meant sticking out, then it's better to stick out than just to fade into the blur that was all around us. And we were asking the question, should a Christian look like everyone else? My daughters recognized they didn't look like everyone else.

That was hard. But we had to ask ourselves, how blurry did we want to be in this matter? And so we determined not to be blurry. The other issue that we had to grapple with is that these pants that my daughters were wearing revealed parts of their body that we ended up believing should be concealed. And so what became a source of irritation and difficulty and tears turned into a source of joy as they began to be more satisfied with the principle.

And so, we found ourselves in a world just continually spinning further and further toward androgyny. The lines, the acceptability of the blur just seemed to be all around us and we determined that as far as the Brown family was, we were going to start spinning in the other direction. And then I began to grasp something that I didn't understand at all before, and that was history, the history of clothing, specifically the history of pants. And I learned some things that I just wasn't aware of. How could I be so old and then not know certain critical things about something so common and something so commonly known?

Something that, you know, you couldn't Google it back then, but you could Google it today because it didn't exist. Google didn't. Now we ought to be a people who understand history. We ought to be a people who know where we fit in history and how it compares with Scripture and with other things that have happened so that we have a capacity to see what is going on around us. And history is important.

Now, pants were first worn by women in America and when they were, they were instantly considered by the church to be androgynous. And Women started wearing pants when they went off to the factories in World War I, and then it accelerated in World War II. And then as the 20th century progressed, they were designed to be intentionally alluring. So what started out to be intentional androgyny shifted to be something more than that. And, you know, pants were originally promoted by feminists to get women into the workplace.

And then with the rise of Hollywood, They were used for seduction because they expose the female form. So that's why if you look at what the fashion designers say about blue jeans, it's clear that they are intentionally promoting androgyny and seduction. And they're just at war with God's order of man and woman. They want to blur those lines of male and female, but they want to push the limits and draw attention for seduction, for the purposes of seduction. And so what the Bible says about about modesty can really be summed up in some pretty easy easy terms.

Purity, role distinction, and moderation. Those are the three things. Now the reason the church in the 20th century, at the turn of the 20th century, thought pants were sinful is because they violated all three of those principles. They violated purity because they revealed female anatomy. Specifically, they violated purity because They exposed the buttocks and the crotch like hadn't been before.

And they violated moderation because they drew attention to the physical areas of a woman's body instead of the hidden person of the heart. The pants were speaking louder than the heart could and they violated the role of distinctiveness. Now, just, we have to understand that we live in a time that's different than time past. You might find it astonishing that California didn't make it legal for women to wear pants in the workplace until 1995, when Governor Pete Wilson signed a bill ending the no pants rule for women wearing pants at work. That was California.

I mean, we just have to understand we live in a certain... I just want us to understand we live in a historical moment. You have to know where you live and evaluate it carefully. Don't just accept whatever the culture throws over the wall and say, it must be okay for us. That's a mistake for Christians to do in many, many areas.

Now, if Dan Horne were here, he would say something I've heard him say before. And here's what he has said. For a woman to dress like a man is to kill in them the role that God has created for them. I mean, the majority of women today now, they put on pants and they go to work every day, and somebody else raises their children. Today, women put on the apparatus of a man and they go into the battlefield.

We have major corporations aggressively endorsing sodomy today. And the fact that over 50 million women have marched to the abortion clinics is related to the exact same reason that women started wearing pants at the beginning of the 20th century. They're related. They're not exactly the same thing, but they're part of the same epistemology. You know, you might have to ask, well how do you define pants?

If you were with my wife today at the hospital, you would see that she is wearing something that might be called pants. They're called culottes. They're very loose fitting, but they don't expose her form and they're not alluring and they're distinctively female. So in our in our weighing of the balances they were appropriate even though someone might say technically those are pants. The issue is not pants.

The issue is far deeper, far more important than that. But hey, as a husband, as a father, You have to figure out whether or not your version of pants exposes the crotch or the buttocks or draws the eye of a man in the wrong place. You just have to figure that out yourself. When my wife left my house today, I figured it wasn't doing that. But you better ask that question.

And most men know, all men know whether it does or not. And they have to counsel their daughters and their wives on that matter. When discussing things like pants, considerations of culture are important. I don't think it's just as simple to say, you know, pants are manly. Clothing has a cultural element.

This has to be considered. I mean, there have been times in history where men wore robes. So, are we supposed to be wearing robes today? What about sandals? You know, there was this dark age in Scotland where men wore kilts.

You know, and you can make an argument that culture has to be considered. You know, what about kilts? Well, I've actually known some men that have worn kilts, and they say that they're actually not only drafty, but they're more than just drafty. In fact, you might be curious, there's a company that has just come from the United Kingdom and the United States called Men in Kilts. And this company, this is a real company, their whole shtick is they send men in kilts to pressure wash your house and do your windows.

And the motto is, and I'm not joking, is don't peek. So, kilts, you know, have their own compromises and difficulties with them, right? So, it's not enough to just say it's all about pants or it's all about a dress. A dress can be just as immodest as a pair of pants. So, I think we have to be mature about it and consider the broader principles and ask ourselves the real questions.

There are modest pants. We'll get to that later. So I don't believe that the Bible teaches, and I want you to hear this very clearly, I don't believe that the Bible teaches that girls have to wear dresses and men have to wear pants. But I do believe this, that men and women should be dressed distinctively and boldly for manhood and womanhood. And I really do hope that we can agree on that.

So in the Brown home, the girls wear dresses and the men wear pants. And I'm not willing at this point to draw a fuzzy line on what God says is an abomination. I'm just going to say that again. I don't think we should try to draw a fuzzy line on something God calls an abomination, as He does in Deuteronomy 22.5. So you're in a battle, you know, where good is called evil and evil is called good.

And you live in a world where women dress sort of like women and men dress sort of like men. And that's the culture you've been born into. And you've been called to be a light to the world. And it's your responsibility to live as salt and light in this world. So that the way that you dress is a proclamation of the gospel.

So let's agree on this. Should girls dress like boys? No. Should boys dress like girls? No.

There should be a clear line of distinction. And so it matters how women dress and how men dress. But hey, I want to go back to a time when we used to say, hey, who wears the pants in this family? I want to go back to that time because that's not the time we're in right now. Okay, so that's Deuteronomy 22.

Next passage is Proverbs 7 10. It can be an allurement, an allurement. Now we're talking about the sexual aspect of it, the power of the visual of a woman's dress. In understanding temptation, Proverbs 7, 10, I think is helpful. And there a woman met him with the attire of a harlot.

So this is a certain kind of attire. It was the attire of a harlot. It was the attire of a woman who wanted to do something and wanted to draw, you know, immoral results as a result. And so there are two things here. First of all, women need to understand that they have a responsibility before God to protect the eyes of the men that are around them.

They have a divine responsibility not to wear the clothing of a harlot so that the eyes are drawn in the wrong place. Women must understand that. They need to understand the role of a man's eyes that the role of eyes play major roles in scripture. David quote saw a woman washing herself and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. The Apostle John describes our sinful existence in this world as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.

So There are two things. One, men are responsible. They need to learn how to guard their eyes and their hearts. And they need to teach their sons how to do that as well. That's one thing that men have to do.

Everyone has a responsibility in this. It's not enough to say if the woman only dressed modestly everything would be fine You also have to say no when men have a responsibility as well to guard to make a covenant with their eyes as job did But a woman is responsible for what she incites in a man and there should be a sense of shame for distracting someone from purity, there should be a sense of shame for distracting appearance and I'm going to talk about what that is specifically. There are certain things that draw the eyes that cause men to stumble. This is actually why there were some men in our church who came to the elders. So low tops, tight tops, straps across the chest, under clothes exposed, tight pants, short skirts that draw above the knee while sitting.

So I think a list like that should make it clear that it's not enough to say Dresses are modest and pants are immodest. Okay, it's a much much more detailed more nuanced discussion So, I mean a woman who a woman who hates sin Should understand her responsibility here Jesus is very clear about this He says whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses for offenses must come but woe to that man by whom the offense comes. That's why Jesus says if your eye causes you to sin pluck it out. That's why the writer of Hebrews says, let us consider one another on toward love and good deeds.

So this has to do with allurement. So, not only do we have to consider a profession of godliness, number one. Not only an expression of the hidden person of the heart, number two. Not only a distinction between manhood and womanhood, but also that it can be an allurement. And then next, it's a covering for nakedness.

Genesis 3 21 makes it very clear what clothing was meant for, and what you find is that clothing was meant to cover the body and Scripture tells us that sin is the reason that we clothe the body. Adam and Eve sinned and they made clothes for themselves. And I liken what Adam and Eve did to what we often do when we are not clothing ourselves self-consciously. They made clothes for themselves and they were inadequate. So God killed animals and covered them.

And that really became the really the beginning of a vision of the Gospel. That God, there's a sacrifice for sin. Something has to die. An animal dies and the very skin of that animal becomes the clothing of the sinners. That's how you get to the idea that clothing is all under the category of robes of righteousness according to the gospel.

So why clothing? To cover nakedness and to remind of the sin of mankind. The clothing that God made for Adam and Eve was a symbol of their shame and his mercy and his sacrifice in order to cover that shame. And God had to intervene and give them different clothes than they had for themselves. So it's shameful to reveal the naked body, but in our culture it is a virtue to reveal it.

The Bible says that nakedness should be covered. Our culture says something completely different. Now There are all kinds of places where we have to make decisions about how much we're going to cover ourselves. I mean, some of you might be asking, does it mean do I have to close, does every single piece of skin have to be covered? Well, the Muslims say you have to cover your face.

That's not actually our position. But at least at least be informed by the principle that you are covered in robes of righteousness. You are completely covered. Do you want to be partially covered by the blood of Christ? Do you want to be partially made righteous?

Or do you want all of it? Do you want your clothing to reflect that? Now, I don't happen to believe that You have to cover every single piece of skin. But I think you better grapple with the principle of clothing and why it was created and what it means. But it's meant to explain the comprehensive covering in righteousness, of the righteousness of God toward a sinner.

So we should at least evaluate it. We should at least ask the question. The seventh issue of clothing is that it can include an obsession with outward appearance. It can include an obsession with outward appearance. It can include an idolatry.

And you know Matthew 6, 28, we read, so why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field. There's this worry about clothing that people have. And a number of commentators dealing with this passage of Scripture apply it to the subject that we're dealing with here. Richard Baxter says this of ostentatious apparel.

He says, when you wear it, it's a sign of the emptiness of your soul. You tell all that see you that you are empty. You are a silly soul. You openly proclaim yourself to be a person of foolish, childish temper, of poor understanding. He believed that obsession with outward apparel was like a megaphone that says, I'm a fool.

I'm just focused on outward appearance. Forget the hidden person of the heart. I'm all about me and my image. But often that just betrays an idolatry. We have to ask ourselves that question.

How much of our clothing is connected to an idol that we might have? John Bunyan said the same thing. Often our clothing is just a reflection of our sin, the fear of man, the distrust of God, the fear of obedience, discontentedness, making a God out of fashion as a result of a desire to be liked by people and fitting in. Often clothing is just an expression of an obsession with outward appearance. So those are seven passages of scripture to help us just think about clothing.

And while all of them have something different to say. They all really call us to come back to the heart of the matter. And that is the hidden person of the heart and the expressions of it. Now, I want to get to some practical matters here. I, first of all, want to talk about male modesty.

It would be wrong to assume that the requirement of modesty applies to only women. And so we want to make sure that it's understood that we don't believe that this is just a female issue, that the sword cuts both ways for both genders, and that the heart of modesty is humility and shamefacedness and really meekness, what we were speaking of, the desire to be under the authority of one greater. I'll give you an illustration of a different time in history and how male modesty was thought of differently than it is today. When Dan Horn's father got his first job as a CPA at Arthur Anderson in the 1940s, there was something you could get fired for at Arthur Anderson. Can anyone guess what it was?

If you were ever seen outside in the open air in public without a hat on, Arthur Anderson would fire you and you'd be out of a job. They viewed that a man wearing a hat in an open-air public was an act of modesty. That was just a blast from the past. We don't believe that today if men go out there without a hat on. Today we don't fire them from the church.

But I just want to harken back to an era where there was an era where men believed that modesty, principles of modesty, applied to them. Whereas today we just don't. It's just not even on our radar screen. And There are many examples of this in the Bible. Joseph in his robe, taken by potter for his wife, Absalom in his hair.

The priests were required to cover their legs when they went up the steps of the temple. David's men had experiences like this. The stripping of Christ, part of the shame of the nakedness of Christ, his suffering for our sins, even our sins of immodesty, the chastisement that we deserve was laid upon him. He was made naked. He was made totally shameful and exposed.

He did that, I believe, partly, so that all of our immodesty, all of the sins that we've committed in this area, were also absorbed by Jesus Christ in his own immodesty. You know, there are some interesting stories about nakedness in the New Testament. In Mark, we find that in the Gospel of Mark, there's a young man who ran away naked. But actually, the term that's used is naked, but he still had his undergarment on. Nakedness in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ was defined about of having your inner garment on, which was a long, robe-like inner garment.

That was called nakedness. So what we call nakedness today is different than what was termed nakedness in other cultures. That also should just help us understand the drift that we have in our own culture. God uses covering as a sign. Men need to be covered by the same principles that women need to be covered.

I mean you have, you might actually find a man who wants to show off his muscles and wear and wear a very tight tight shirt. I don't think it's that much different than a woman wearing a too tight top. They want to show their stuff and they shouldn't deceive themselves that only women have this inclination. It's not just a female gender problem. And so men have to pay attention to the same principle, too tight, too skimpy, shirts or pants.

I've actually seen pants that I felt were immodest on men. I don't think modesty is just a woman thing at all. Okay, what are the rules? Let's talk about rules. What are the rules going to be in this church?

Now while Scripture is sufficient for knowing how to dress, what you don't find in Scripture is a detailed line-by-line dress code. What do you find? You find principles. God has given us principles. And that's true of many areas of life where we're not given rules but we're given principles about how we ought to how we ought to live.

So you have to You have to look at what God has said and then with all of your heart before God, attempt to apply it the best way that you know how. And to take them seriously, to consider them in the depths of your heart, because It's not first a matter of rules, but it's principles that govern every single piece of clothing, every attitude, every word, every move, the way you stand, the inflection of your voice, everything. The way you put your hair and the way you either make yourself buff or not if you're a man. If your heart is not modest, you probably won't dress modest. So the questions that we have to ask in terms of rules.

I think really the only rule that I want to present today is the rule of the question. Ask the questions. Is it extravagant? And does that extravagance reflect your own insecurity or your vanity or desire to be noticed, your desire to be somebody all of your own rather than Christ's? Is it alluring?

Is it too tight? Is it too skimpy? Is there too much skin? I think those are the questions that I would just have us ask individually. So how should this be handled in the church?

What do different people do? So let's just say you're a young man, right? And you're in this church and you're being stumbled. And what should you do? Should you go to the girl?

Should you go to her father? Should you go to her mother? Should you go to the elders of the church? You might think this is just pure pragmatism, but our counsel is don't go to the girl. Don't go to her father and don't go to her mother.

If you're a man, a husband, and there's another woman in the church that's dressing immodestly, our counsel is don't go to that woman and say, you're stumbling, please dress differently. And don't go to her husband and say, your wife is causing me to sin. Our counsel is don't do that. I hope that makes sense to you. Our counsel is rather that if someone feels that there is immodesty, then they should, if they are a woman, particularly go to an older woman and ask her opinion.

Ask an older, godly woman if there's anything to this. Or go to the elders of the church. Come to us and ask us. It's appropriate for older women to counsel younger women on this matter. In fact, Titus 2 explicitly exhorts older women to teach the younger women regarding chastity.

So older women actually should be doing this and they should be doing it wisely with you know with all the principles of Scripture guiding them looking to themselves lest they to be you know be tempted so it should be a normal part of church life where an older woman would be counseling a younger woman. Now, let's talk about the culture of this church. Number one, that our church would be a place where manhood and womanhood are clearly defined. It's not a blurry place. I don't think it's a blurry place here, by the way.

I'm certainly not making the case that we're all that blurry out here. But as far as the culture of our church, and as people are added, we want them to understand that manhood and womanhood ought to be clearly defined in the way that men and women dress. Secondly, that the older women are coaching the younger women kindly and graciously and helpfully. Thirdly, that temptations are minimized. We live in a hyper-sexualized culture.

And there really ought to be a safe haven in the church. There's no safe haven out on the street or in the schools and often there's no safe haven in many churches. But the church ought to be a place where there is a safe haven in this hyper-sexualized culture. The next aspect of the culture of this church should be as follows. It should be a place where the immodestly dressed are not treated wrongly or unlovingly.

So that we're a church that is willing to fight for these things. First of all, that the unconverted can come dressed immodestly and not be condemned for their dress. I pray we have this straight together. People who come to this church and they're unconverted and they're dressing just like they always have, for them to be made to be isolated or felt guilty or chastised is something we do not want happening in this church. Second, that the immature can come to this church and receive counsel being offered by older godly women with mercy and with humility.

And that there's a self-consciousness of our fallenness. Because if you just fix that one thing, you're still a million miles away from righteousness. All your modesty doesn't get it. We often put the wrong names on Christian modesty. Because just because someone dresses what others might say is modest does not mean that they're not full of the devil inside of them.

And We have to understand that. One of the reasons that Christ has established his church is so that he would save those who would need to enter into a life of sanctification for the rest of their life. They're brought into the church and they have time. They have time to change. And fortunately, hopefully, they have loving people to help them along the way.

So that's the kind of culture that we're praying for. A place where Sunday is not the only day of modesty. A place where Sunday is not the only day of modesty. A place where godly and patient correction can be given. And a place where the gospel changes everything, including the way we dress.

So none of these things are arguments against beauty. But the way to modesty is the way of the gospel. And the heart of modesty in both men and women is a heart that's transformed and a mind that desires to please their master, to put on the mind of Christ and set affections on things above. And it's exemplified in a man and a woman, and they glory in the fact that their nakedness has been covered by Christ. And even their apparel affects that wonderful reality.

So my prayer is that as as our wives and our daughters and our sons and we ourselves consider how we ought to dress, that we ought to understand that God has given us a new name and He's put a crown upon our head and He's given us robes of righteousness and He has called us to rejoice. I will great really rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness. As the bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels, for as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes things that are sown in it to spring forth, So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. And I pray that will be the final result of all of our peril and how we present ourselves before the world.

Let's pray. Lord, we all fall short in so many ways and have and have been put on a course. Oh Lord, we pray that the heart of modesty would be ours. In Jesus' name, Amen.