In this message by Jeff Pollard, we learn dressing modestly is worshipful. He says that modest is not an issue of a few inches of clothing but it is an issue of the holiness GOD. He also say that modesty begins in the heart, which reflects itself outwardly.

The following message, figuring out modesty in an in-modest world, was given by Jeff Pollard at the Regional Uniting Church and Family Conference in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 2008. So, I would like to read the Word of God as we begin. Would you please stand with me as I read God's Word? And then if you'd remain standing, we will pray after we read God's blessed Word here. We're going to read 1 Timothy 2 verses 1 through 10.

Paul's first epistle to Timothy, chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. Let's hear God's holy word together. I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and to come under the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time, whereunto I am ordained a preacher and an apostle.

I speak the truth in Christ and lie not, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. I will therefore that men pray everywhere lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting, in like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness with good works." Amen. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his good word. Let's join our hearts in prayer. Father, I am so thankful for your wonderful mercies to us.

I am delighted, O Father, with You. I thank You that You have revealed Yourself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I thank You, O righteous God, that You have preserved for us Your inspired and infallible word and given it to us. What a delight, O God, to look across this room and see men and women and children holding your inspired word. Oh, may we read it.

Oh, May we hear it, Lord. May we believe it. May we apply it to our souls. Father, I do pray that you would unite our hearts in the power of your Spirit. May we hear your truth together.

And may it all be to the glory of Jesus Christ in whose name I pray. Amen. Please be seated. Now the subject that I have been asked to speak on it for this particular session is modesty in an immodest world. Modesty in an immodest world.

Normally when I teach on the subject of modesty I do anywhere between three and a half dozen messages. So it's very difficult just in one message to cover what is such an important and such a large issue. So it's highly likely that if you came expecting to hear a particular thing, you may not hear that. But I do hope that whatever the Lord has put on my heart to share with you that you will find it profitable and encouraging. Now the context in which we are speaking is crucial.

So As we work through this, I hope you will listen carefully and I charge all of you here to be Berean. I'm a fallible vessel. I am very fallible and uninspired. The Word of God is infallible and inspired, so make sure that you prove all things by the Word of God. I would not bind your conscience to mine, I would bind your conscience to the Word of God.

So, that being said, let's plunge right into this. Worship lies at the very center of life for those whom God has redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and is made alive by his spirit. Let me repeat that. If you're distracted, if your mind is wondering, you need to focus right on this because this is connected to the entire passage. Worship.

Worship lies at the very center of life for God's people. It is not something that we do simply on the Lord's Day. It is all of life. It affects us in every avenue of life. The worship is the center for those whom God has redeemed through the blood of His holy Son, Jesus Christ.

Worship is the very center of life for those who have been made alive by the regenerating power of the Spirit and brought into eternal union with the risen Son of God. Paul tells the Ephesians, by the way, as he's writing to Timothy, he's writing to the church at Ephesus. So when you hear Ephesians here, that's why. Paul tells the Ephesians a number of things throughout this first epistle to Timothy. As he speaks to Timothy, his representative, he is ultimately speaking to the congregation.

The letters of those days were normally read out loud in the congregation for all to hear. So as Paul speaks to Timothy, he is in fact empowering him. Timothy is the apostle's representative to the congregation. So as he speaks to Timothy, he's not only empowering him, but he's speaking to the whole congregation for their benefit. Now he had written earlier in his epistle to the Ephesians in chapter 1 about God's eternal purpose of saving grace in Christ.

Now at this point you may think, I thought we were going to talk about hemlines or something. We'll get there, but that's all fruit of what we're talking about now. If we don't get this, the Himalayan stuff doesn't matter. Paul wrote, chapter one of Ephesians, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. In Christ, one of Paul's favorite terms.

According as He, that is God, hath chosen us, God's people, in Him. That's Christ before the foundation of the world. Let's hear that again. Okay? According as He, God the Father, hath chosen us, God's people, in Him, Christ, before the foundation of the world.

Why? That we, God's people, should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace." Ephesians 1, 3 through 6. Now, to the praise of the glory of His grace, that's what he's driving toward in this passage. To the praise of the glory of His grace.

In other words, worship. God's eternal purpose to save His people and make them holy bears the fruit, not only of a holy life, but of worship. Worship to the praise of the glory of His grace. God lavishes His redeeming grace upon His people so that they might worship Him in holiness, purity, love, and many, many other things. Therefore, when Paul addresses Timothy and the Ephesian Church here in 1 Timothy Chapter 2, when Paul speaks to Timothy here and to the Ephesian church regarding prayer for all kinds of men, men praying and women adorning themselves modestly, he is addressing people in the context of worship.

Far too often, when we talk about things like modesty, the clothing that we wear, we can get caught up in the external aspect of it. This is very important, we'll be talking about that in a few moments. But we have to recognize that we must always begin in the most important place, who we are in Jesus Christ. God's eternal purpose is to save His people from their sins and to make those redeemed sinners trophies of His grace to a lost and dying world. And there is no greater place to see the wonder of what God does than a gathering of those that have been saved by His grace, who are joined together by the regenerating power of the Spirit, worshiping God in the beauty of holiness.

Jesus Christ, the head of the church, Jesus Christ, the head of the church, commands women through the Apostle Paul here to dress modestly in his worship. That's why this is important. It's not just a matter of opinions about a few inches of cloth. The issue is God's holiness, God's purity, and we as His people reflecting His Glory. Where is that seen?

In its most spectacular array? It should be when they gather as one, to be one voice and one heart, worshiping and adoring him. Does everybody here, I trust your pastors have taught you some things about worship, some fundamental matters about worship, but when we gather together it's not about us as such, It's not about our comfort as such. It is all about Christ. When we gather together for worship, what should be going on here should be a tiny picture, fractured, splintered, leaning this way and that way, but a little picture of what's going on in heaven.

In heaven, millions upon millions of angels are shouting the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're saying, Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy. And all the saints of God that have gone before us are fixed on one thing. They are fixed on the centerpiece of heaven. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ.

What gives them their identity? Was it that they were computer geniuses, or that they liked to fish for bass here on earth? Was it that they were male or female as such? It's that they are His people, redeemed by Him, in union with Him for all eternity. And when they gather together in that little group, shoddy as we may look to the world, there ought to be the fragrance of God's holiness all about that gathering.

Our gathering in the name of Jesus Christ should be a little taste, a little experience of heaven. And there are things that we can do that defile that. And one of them is the way we dress. That's why Paul is addressing this here. It is in the context of worship.

Paul's directive here is not a suggestion. It is not an option. To ignore the Holy Spirit's directive regarding women dressing modestly is to exit the realm of spirit and truth. To desecrate the fragrant worship of Jesus Christ with the stench of sensuality in modest clothing is no little sin. Just stop and think, and I urge all of you to do this, especially you older and younger women, but all of you.

You're young men that are going to be fathers someday. You're men that are fathers and have daughters. Far too many fathers capitulate in this realm. They don't govern their homes as servant leaders in the Lord Jesus Christ. They're either authoritarians who crush everybody with their weight or they're abdicators who let everybody just kind of do what they want to do and then point their finger at them later and say, I told you so.

But let me encourage all of you, all of you have a part of chapter 2 of 1 Timothy, and I encourage you to read it and to know it. Learn its context. Read the whole epistle over and over, and then come back and read chapter 2 consecutively, and you will begin to realize that the weight of this thing becomes enormous when you see what Paul attaches modesty to. Look, he says in verse 4, who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. He's talking about the glories of the gospel and the eternal purpose of God.

And he says, who will have all men to be saved? In verse 5, for there is one God, one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. Where unto I am ordained a preacher." What's he talking about? He's talking about the fact that the eternal God has laid hold of him by his grace and commissioned him to preach the gospel, the glories of a crucified and resurrected Christ. And it's in that very context that he talks about men praying in a proper attitude, in the worship of God, and about women dressing properly, especially in the worship of Almighty God.

Brethren, many churches once protected children from television and movies that exposed them to shameful nakedness. I'm old enough to remember pastors telling us to stay away from Hollywood. Today, anybody that says anything like that is immediately considered a crank and a legalist. To be hip, you have to interface with the culture. But the amazing thing is that, unfortunately, many of the churches are interfacing far too well.

In fact, you cannot tell the difference between the holy gathering of God's people in a group of lost heathen. And when I say the word heathen, I do not mean it very often in the pejorative way that has been used. I mean those who are outside of Christ. Now, the tragedy is that many of us today are desperately trying to protect our children from churches that expose them to immodesty and nakedness. That is astounding, is it not?

So how is it that we figure out something like modesty in an immodest world, especially when we see it in, of all places, the headquarters from heaven, the local church? This is a tragedy, and I pray that God and His mercy will raise up an entire generation of people who don't just have some legalistic formula that if you do these one, two, three, four things you're now all of a sudden a godly woman, but people who understand the sovereign saving grace of Almighty God, what it means to be born again, what it means to be translated out of the kingdom of darkness and into the glorious kingdom of Jesus Christ, to be brought into union with Him, and to live a life that just exudes the fragrance of purity and holiness, righteousness, goodness. Well, We want to understand this modesty in our immodest world, tragically even in some of our immodest churches. That's our subject. And as we embark on our consideration of modesty, we have to understand one vital principle.

Modesty is an inward principle that expresses itself in outward behavior. I'm going to talk about that in more detail. Those of you that perhaps have heard some of my messages on this subject will certainly hear echoes of them in this. There are certain principles that I must include whenever I talk about this subject because there is a great deal of confusion about what it means to be modest. So let me just say, you can be covered from head to toe and be wicked and on your way to hell.

Holiness is not, so to speak, just in the fact that one may cover one's body. But I do want us to recognize that there are two very important things that we must see in this one principle. Modesty is an inward principle that expresses itself in outward behavior. Modesty is an issue of the heart. It's not, young ladies, it's not just a matter of what my dad says I may or may not wear.

He may be saying some very clear things about that to you because he understands men and the way men think, and he has some idea of what the Lord wants for those who profess the name of Christ. But let me encourage you to realize it isn't simply a matter of something imposed from the outside, it is something that wells up and must be cultivated from the inside. This is a crucial principle for understanding the entire discussion. So with this in mind, let us consider how the Word of God defines the notion of modesty. All right?

And we're going to take our passage right here. Let's look at verse 9. Paul has spoken to the men. He wants the men praying everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. That puts us in the context of worship in like manner also, verse 9, that women adorned themselves in modest apparel.

So the first thing we want to consider is the meaning of modesty. What does Paul mean when he speaks of modest apparel. Well, depending on your background, we might all have a different illustration of how that looks. The Word of God gives us principles, not inches, so to speak, of fabric that have to be involved. I'm not saying that the inches of fabric don't matter.

What I'm saying is that what God wants us to understand is that this principle must begin in who you are. It must begin in who you are and ultimately in who God is. To understand modesty as Paul mentions modest apparel, we need some definitions. Inspired by God's Holy Spirit, the apostles selected a group of words here that precisely expresses the notion of biblical modesty, which is, as I said, an internal principle and an external principle. First is the word adorn, that women adorn themselves.

This is a verb, and it means to put in order, to arrange. Paul uses it here in the sense of causing something to have an attractive appearance, to beautify through decoration. That's an extremely graphic and helpful word, because some women tend to think that, oh, OK, I'm a woman. Men have a problem with this. I will dress like a lumberjack, and I will make myself absolutely as unattractive as I possibly can.

I will therefore be spiritual and modest. No. I mean, I hate to break it to you, but no, you're kidding yourself. Look at the splendor of the things that God has made in the way he is adorned. God made women with a sense of adornment.

Can they overdo? Sure. Can they begin to think that their beauty is wrapped up in their adornment? They certainly can And that's a false way of thinking. But adornment, in and of itself, is not wrong.

In other words, when Paul says modest, he wants women to put themselves together with common sense. He wants them to put themselves together in an attractive way. Now, the next word is the word modest, which expresses a range of meanings. Modest includes respectable, honorable, orderly, beautiful. Greek philosophers used this word to convey a sense of orderliness.

They saw the beauty of order. The Greeks examined this glorious universe that God made. They were lost in their pagan religion, but they looked at it. They looked at the things God made and they saw a stunning order in everything around them. It gripped them.

It overwhelmed them. And they saw beauty in order. And that's exactly the word that Paul uses here, a word that is orderly. It is a word that means beautiful, because it is honorable. It is something that can be respected.

Paul uses this to communicate something that's appropriate, something that is arranged with respect and honor, something that is orderly. In other words, Paul wants women to dress appropriately to the occasion, worship, and appropriately to their profession. Women professing godliness. Let's dig a little deeper in this. Women that are sloppy and slovenly, or women that are sensual and licentious, are out of order.

That's the idea. That's the idea. Christian women should adorn themselves as those who attend the holy worship of Jesus Christ. And they should adorn themselves honorably in light of who they are. In light of who they are.

They profess that Christ has given them new life by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what you're saying. If you are a Christian, you follow him in baptism. Your baptism speaks that you are dead to what you were, you are alive to what you are in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are professing that You now are in a holy and beautiful kingdom. You're a child of a holy and righteous King.

You're in union with Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Is that what you think about yourself when you dress. Let me say to you women, I cannot imagine how extraordinarily difficult and challenging it is to try to personify anything pure in an utterly impure society. You can't go to the store without having acres of flesh on magazines covered, leering at you saying, this is what's beautiful. And I grieve over that.

I grieve for you. Paul doesn't want young women to dress like sex pots. He doesn't believe that they have to be veiled from the top of their head to the bottom of their feet like Muslim women. He believes that they ought to cover their bodies in a way that speaks of purity, of righteousness, holiness, of being children of Almighty God. Women that profess godliness profess that Jesus Christ has bought them with his own life's blood.

They recognize that he has made them their own. They are his purchased possession. Now that's what you should be thinking as you think about your dress. Not what's necessarily fashionable, not necessarily what, You know, all of the wheels down at the church happen to be wearing in and of itself. The Lord gives us principles that are vital, and they must express the glory of the God who has saved those souls.

They need to dress, thinking of themselves, as temples of the Holy Spirit. They have been immersed in the waters of baptism. They profess to the world that they have died to what they were and to what the world seeks after, and that they are risen again and in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. What then would be more inappropriate, dishonorable, or disorderly in the worship of God than for a woman who professes godliness to expose her anatomy in the gathering of the Lord's people. You see the point?

It isn't just a matter of loud preachers who stomp and foam and make the women feel bad enough to go home and throw some things out of their clothes closet. The point is to get a hold of who Christ is, what He's done, and who you are in Christ, and work from there. What would be more inappropriate than women coming then in tight clothing, exposing their anatomy, exposing their flesh with low-cut blouses, or exposing their shoulders and backs, or their thighs with short skirts? It's utterly inappropriate to the context. It's inappropriate to who you are.

You're children of God in a holy kingdom. And everything about your life should exude that. How tragic that so many young women, in order to feel accepted or acceptable, and who feel weird because their parents seem to be one bubble away from being cave people, and want them not to dress like everybody else in the world. Oh, I don't want to act like the harlots. I don't want to act like I'm experienced in immorality, but I don't mind looking like it.

What would be more inappropriate in a gathering of God's people? The very opposite of the context of who and what we are. The women in Ephesus were out of order. That's why this is being addressed. They were dressing immodestly.

And so are many professing women today. By the way, one of the reasons I take this approach in speaking to this subject is because often, if I'm in a context like this, many of you are already in families that are saying, you ought to dress modestly. And in some ways, it's like just preaching to the choir. But the thing is, you can wear something on the outside while your heart is as filthy as it can be. So the point is, as we will see in just a moment, to have an inward principle that manifests itself in the life, something internal that makes an external appearance.

Well, Paul then uses the word apparel. Adorn, put yourself together in modest, respectful, honorable, appropriate apparel. Now, this is very interesting. Paul chooses a word that means clothing on one hand, yet on the other hand, it also means deportment, your behavior, the way you walk, the way you live. In other words, it appears that Paul is linking this concept that we're talking about, the internal, which is behavior, with the external, clothing.

By his choice of words, Paul very skillfully moves from the literal sense of external garments to the internal sense of modesty and self-control. Put yourself together appropriately. Adorn yourself according to who and what you are and according to what the context of your life demands. Do that with a holy self-control by faith in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit as those who have been saved by grace. The Apostle Peter says the same thing.

He says that a Christian woman's apparel should not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel. But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. Everybody see what's happening here? The inner man of the heart. Of course, that's how he addresses the women.

The inner person that You are. Now, some people have taken this to mean that if a woman were ever to put an earring on or to ever put any kind of ornamental knot in her hair that by default she's sinning. And that isn't the point. In fact, it's not even a consistent way of thinking with what the rest of the Scripture says. When you read the Old Testament, God took Israel, And he gives us a glorious picture in Ezekiel of taking Israel found in her blood, clings her up, and then adorns her gorgeously.

Now, if that were inherently sinful, what in the world would God be doing illustrating that that's how he had loved and taken care of Israel. What Peter and Paul are drawing out by these things is not that an act of braiding a hair or putting on something that is gold is by default sinful. He's saying your beauty is not in those things. Your beauty is in who you are. It is in what Christ has made you in union with him.

In other words, it's the miracle in your soul called the new birth that has joined you to the risen Christ. That's who you are. That's where you find your identity. I'm a child of God in union with the Christ that loved me from before the foundation of the world. He came into this world, became a man, he lived, he died upon Calvary's Hill, he was raised again that I might have life, And that life is manifested in the way we live, in union with Him.

A principle on the inside, the inner man, in that which is not corruptible. You have to understand, In the Greco-Roman world in which Paul and Peter wrote, the women, especially the courtesans, the very high-priced harlots, would wear their hair in these extremely elaborate hairdos. And there are some, now, some archaeological finds, both in paintings and in sculpture from the day that give us some insight into what Paul was actually dealing with in his own culture and they had these incredibly elaborate dues that would take hours to put together, and then they would sprinkle gold dust in them and knit jewels in them, so that when they walked into the room, what did you see? She was like a beacon, you know, blasting, or a lighthouse blasting over here, look, look at me. You know, I'm dressed to the nines, I don't know if they dressed to the nines back then, however they dressed.

But this is how they got people to look at them. And you see, Paul is saying to Christian women, that's not who you are. Your beauty is not in hair this high and sprinkled with gold dust. Your beauty is in shining the glory of being in union with Christ, recognizing who you are, your responsibilities to God, and your responsibilities to your fellow worshipers. Those should drive you in the ways that you adorn yourself.

We'll talk about that in more detail in just a few moments. So, I hope that makes something of a point there. What Peter is driving at is the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Hollywood doesn't teach you women to be that way. The media in our day doesn't teach women to be meek and quiet.

And meek doesn't mean milk toast, by the way. To be meek, Jesus Christ was meek, Moses was meek. Meekness is an inner strength that knows how to restrain itself appropriately to the situation it finds itself in. Meekness is a tremendous strength. Peter's not talking about weakness in you women.

He's talking about an enormous inner strength. That's where your beauty is. In the sight of God, it is worth great price. So whose sight do you dress for? Whose sight do you dress for?

Let's press on then with this idea of internals and externals. A most crucial part of the discussion, as I've been alluding regarding modesty, is internals and externals. It's been popular among modern evangelicals to say, externals do not matter. That was the generation I grew up in. All that matters is if your heart's right.

That's all that matters. If your heart's right, all the rest of it doesn't matter. Some of you may even still be being taught that. I hope when you hear that, you will flee that kind of teaching. They'll say, externals are all about legalism, internals are just about grace.

So what they do is they take internals and externals and they divide them, They separate them in a way that's not right. It's unhealthy. However spiritual that kind of talk sounds, It is contradictory to what Paul is teaching and what we just read by Peter. It sounds very liberated. It sounds very spiritual to say, God is not concerned about a few inches of fabric.

I've heard sermons that waded into that type of thing. He's not concerned. Our God's so big. He's not worried about that kind of stuff. Well, really, then why is Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writing what becomes canonized into the infallible Word of God, telling women that they should dress modestly.

If what we wear doesn't matter, then there should be no command to govern your dress. Oh, when we hear the kind of pious stuff that says, oh, God's so big, this is trifling stuff. All He cares about is your heart, if your heart's right. Everything's fine. That is deluded preaching.

I say to you with all of my heart, run away from it. Run away from it as quickly as you can. Tragically this kind of preaching is usually accompanied with a lot of very hearty amens. Amen. What does the amen mean?

We don't like those legalists. We don't like anybody that says anything about what we do. We don't like anybody that says anything about what we want to wear, what we want to watch, what we want to listen to, anybody that takes it upon himself to say anything about me and what I do is a legalist, which is very tragic. The amens there are very telling. Ironically, such responses display a heart of ignorance that seems completely unaware of being in direct contradiction to the apostolic teaching, in contradiction to Christ's will for the churches that he has purchased with his own blood.

Clothing itself isn't the issue. The heart itself isn't the issue. It is not either or. It must be both and. An inward principle that adorns itself based on the truth of who I am in Christ and what God calls me to in my relationship to His people.

Dear women of God, and this is primarily to the women because of the passage that I've spoken. Men, you have responsibilities too. I encourage you to get my booklet. When I do my revision, which God willing, I hope to have in 2010, I intend to spend more time talking to the men. But I still do speak to men to some degree in my booklet, Christian Modesty and the Public Undressing of America.

I urge you to get that. Now, I do want to ask the women though, would you be beautiful? And be honest, Isn't there something in you that says, yes, I would love to be lovely? Might be beautiful. Then Paul and Peter say that the person you are by the new birth, The new creation that you are by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit should adorn your body with clothing and your life with works that are in harmony with your profession of faith.

You should dress yourself in two ways, with appropriate clothing and appropriate behavior. You should adorn your life with clothing that speaks of purity and works that speak of transformation, of being changed. If you are a Christian, your clothing will say, I am dead to myself and alive under Christ, or I am dead to Christ and alive to me and what I want and what I think. That's a peculiar danger for many of you young people, especially you young women, that are being... Who have the blessing of being brought up in Christian homes.

Sometimes you, having only known what is right and good and pure, it is difficult for you to understand what your clothing says. It is difficult for you to understand unless you have an exceptionally good father. Dads, You're the one that ought to be helping the women in your home, in your family understand how men think. That is tragic. It is humbling.

But unless they understand how men think, You're telling them simply to put on something longer simply is one of Dad's rules. You ought to obey Dad's rules. But the point is he's wanting you to cover your body because he knows the way men think. More of that in a moment. So let me run back to this and simply say, if you're a Christian, your clothing is going to speak.

It's either going to speak that you were submitted to Christ's lordship in every aspect of your life, including what you wear. Or it speaks of your desire to look like the world. What you wear speaks of your desire to manifest purity and godliness. I have no desire for men to look at me lustfully. I'm not looking, I don't want other women to look at me and say, oh how tasteful I am or how wealthy I am.

My desire is for them to look at me and see that Christ redeems sinners. See, if you don't have that principle, we can talk inches of fabric all day long, and it ultimately doesn't do you any good, and it doesn't bring any glory to Christ. Let me run very quickly over the last few things here. Paul then uses the word shamefacedness, which means extremely modest, bashful. We don't use this word shamefacedness in our day.

However, the Greek word denotes a moral feeling of reverence. Do you dress, ladies, with reverence? Do you dress with reverence for God and reverence for who and what you are in Christ? That's the word Paul's chosen. To say that a woman is shame-faced means that she shows respect for the feelings of others or the opinions of others.

She shows respect for her own conscience and her testimony of godliness. Remember, if you say you're a Christian, you are saying, I'm not my own. As Jesus hung in agony upon the cross of Calvary, he was purchasing me head to toe, soul and body. Everything about me is his. So you dress with reverence, with shamefacedness.

By using this word, Paul wants Christian women to cultivate a character that shrinks from overstepping the bounds of what is appropriate. In other words, when a woman comes into the congregation of Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord of glory, the one around whom all of heaven is resounding with praise and shouts of glory, She should have a sense of God's holy and majestic presence in her heart. And she should shrink from wearing anything that doesn't Speak that. Sobriety is another word. It speaks of command over our bodily passions.

It can be translated good sense. Sobriety is a state of self-control when it comes to our fleshly and sensual appetites. It has different nuances and connotations. But here, Paul means the habitual inner government, which constantly reigns in the passions and desires. You hear that?

The constant work of an inner self-government. You're responsible to reign in your passions. Oh, that looks So cute. But it keeps your brethren from hearing the message when you're exposing yourself a particular way. Listen to J.

N. D. Kelly, commentator on the pastoral epistles. He says here of this passage, what is probably foremost in his mind, that's Paul's mind, is the impropriety of women exploiting their physical charms on such occasions, and also the emotional disturbance they are liable to cause their male fellow worshippers. Ladies, do you dress thinking about whether you are contributing to the worship of your brethren or defiling the worship of your brethren.

See, if you're thinking in those terms, it makes a huge difference in what you select and why. Self-control. He says this is brought out, Kelly says this is brought out by the word shame, fastness, and face-ness, and sobriety. The latter stands for perfect self-mastery in the physical appetites. As applied to women, it has a definitely sexual nuance.

So by grace through faith in Christ, a sober woman struggles to hinder the temptation to immodesty arising in her heart. In other words, what Paul is driving at is that when the attitudes of shame, faseness, and sobriety self-consciously control a woman's mind, the result is clearly manifest in modest apparel. A woman born of God's Spirit knows that the Spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit. She knows the challenge and the difficulty of wrestling with the desires that arise in her heart, the desire for men to want her, the desire to be thought of as beautiful, tasteful, fashionable, wealthy, erotic. Paul knew and understood the impropriety of women exploiting their physical charms in day-to-day life, but especially in worship.

I'm not saying it's OK, once you walk out of the church building to I won't take the time to name names but names that show up in all of the headlines of young women who wear fashions that expose their bodies. Brethren, Paul is saying to the women, by the nature of the new birth, you are new creatures in Christ. By the grace of God, you are in union with the Lord Jesus, and you have the ability to reign in by an inner self-government, trusting the living Christ, the desires to dress in a worldly way, and to put on things that would be honoring to the Lord and encouraging to those around you. I'm virtually out of time. I thought I would have a little bit more here, so let me rush ahead just to a couple of things.

Let me say this. Under the heading here of questions and magnets, One of the most frequent complaints against my booklet was that I did not tell women how to dress. I had a woman actually write me a letter and say, you coward! You, you wrote that book about modesty, but you didn't have the nerve to tell us what to wear. You don't get that very often.

But I've been called a lot of things. That was the first time I'd been called a coward for not touching this subject. But my response to this was very simple. Number one, it wasn't my purpose to sit down and say, okay, you and you and you up, okay, wait, you're all in trouble, And now go fix it this way. It wasn't my purpose.

I wanted people to understand that the Bible teaches as a principle that modesty is our responsibility. That was my purpose. I didn't want to give a long list of what you should or should not wear, because Paul doesn't, Christ doesn't. Now there are reasons for that, and we don't have time to pursue that right now. But that doesn't mean then, Sky's the limit.

Wear what you want. Okay, it doesn't mean that either. So, the second thing I want to say about the complaint about not addressing dress specifically was that I attempted to give the biblical principles and the biblical standard derived from scripture. If you read my booklet, I conclude that by all the words used regarding these matters in scripture, I believe that we can safely say that when we cover ourselves from neck to below our knees with loose fitting garments, we are within biblical standards. It doesn't tell us the colors, the patterns, and all of that kind of stuff.

And there's a reason for that. We won't have time to get into that in great detail. So here's what I want to kind of sum us up to do. I'm going to boldly venture where I have never gone before. And that is because I believe that God's people should, first of all, have the principles down.

Then you begin to start giving suggestions. This is the third or fourth time I've given a message like this at one of these kinds of gatherings. So I'm going to give some practical suggestions. This is not the law. This is not our God speaking from Mount Sinai, okay?

You shouldn't walk out of here shell-shocked. Well, you might. But let me simply say I've got four questions for fathers to ask wives and daughters, and ten magnets for men's eyes. And you don't have to do these things. These come from other men.

I have gleaned them. I've gleaned certain of these things over the years in my own studies, and a couple of men, Douglas Wilson and Albert Martin, have put together recently some things that I thought were wonderful, and I could do no better than simply to share these thoughts with you. First of all, let me hit four questions. Dads, if you're looking for something practical, he says, okay, you've told us all this stuff, you've given us some theology, you've told us about union with Christ, but what do I say when my daughter says, is this okay to wear? Well, first of all, you're a man.

You know what men look for, don't you? You know. Don't kid yourself. You know what men look for and look at. So if you know that right away she is dressing in a way that is inappropriate for the testimony of a Christian, graciously and kindly inform her.

But you can evaluate by these four questions. I've added one of my own here. The first question is, would you please turn around? Just have her turn around. Look at her in the front.

Look at her in the back. Men, you know what you're looking for, and you know what you're looking at. Second question is, would you please walk across the room and come back? How does she look as she walks? Thirdly, would you please sit down, cross your legs, uncross them, and stand back up?

If you have to do the shimmy when you're standing back up, it's too short. I mean, dads, if you would just sit down and do a few practical things like this, It would be useful. Please sit down, cross your legs, uncross them and stand back up. If she cannot do that modestly, she's not dressed modestly. If everyone in the meeting goes away knowing the color of her undergarments, she's dressed immodestly.

And number four, would you please face me and lean over. Ladies, anytime you wear something that is too low cut, when you lean over, you expose yourself. Men know this, and it is a tragedy when you're standing up and sitting down, standing up and sitting down in the worship of Almighty God and you see women doing all of this and shaking and trying to get their dresses straight, their tops are low, distracting beyond belief. This is to be a holy gathering. Now let me give you ten magnets from Pastor Albert Martin, and then we're going to have to close.

I won't have time to elaborate on these, I'm sorry. We'll perhaps do something like this in greater detail another time. But let me say quickly, first of all, now these are gathered from talking with men, discussion with other elders. These were put together with great care. Again, we're not giving you the canons from Mount Sinai.

These are suggestions. Women say, well, I don't know. Then we will be happy to give you suggestions as to things that men struggle with. OK, number one, dresses or skirts with lengthy slits. Dresses or skirts with lengthy slits.

They're very provocative to have those little glimpses of flesh from time to time. Number two, dresses or skirts that hug your backside. Harlots from the beginning have known which parts of the body to package. Backside is primary. If you think I'm being blunt, I'm being as careful and cautious as I can be.

But dresses or skirts that are too tight and that means they begin to fall down here and they come in tightly and sharply at the bottom of your bottom. All right? Whether it's jeans or tight slacks, when you are putting that out on display, I can assure you, I can assure you, it's being noticed and it's being noticed one of two ways, by those who want to see it and they're very thankful that you're willing to expose it. Number two, by those who are deeply grieved and struggling inside to keep a pure heart and a pure testimony. And the last place that ought to be going on is in the worship of Almighty God.

Thirdly, any upper garment that hugs the bosom too tightly. It's One thing for a top to come down over and to. We're not afraid of woman's shape. We know that women are shaped differently for men. But there is a difference between understanding and recognizing that there's a different shape there and giving an anatomy lesson by how tight the top is or by how low cut the top is.

To give an anatomy lesson when men look at you is not modest. I'm very thankful that the men in our assembly would rather teach their sons anatomy in their home rather than having to tell them later after they've seen it all at church. Unbuttoned blouses, low necklines, cleavage in the upper body. John Piper has a very helpful discussion of these things on his Desiring God website. I urge you to it.

Let me press on through these quickly. Sleeveless blouses or dresses with large arm holes. With large arm holes. You say, they're so cute, they're so fresh, they're so comfortable. Yes.

And when you move particular ways, men sitting at angles, especially if they're standing there and trying to hold a hymn book to worship Jesus, having to look down into your undergarments, is not modest. It isn't. Low rise skirts or pants. It is a tragedy that we now have an entire style of clothing that gives people tragically the option of two different cleavages to gawk at, but that's where we're at, unfortunately. See-through clothing of any kind.

That is extremely provocative. That which does not cover your undergarments clearly. Skirts and dresses that are too short. You are exposing one of the most erotic parts of the body. Ask any man who will be honest with you.

Ask your dad. Any garment, but especially slacks or jeans that hug your backside, your thighs, and I know of no other term to say other than your crotch. I used the medical term in my booklet, and I had people writing to me saying, you used that awful medical term. Well, I don't know what language to use then. If you're offended by medical language, I don't know what to say.

But that. And then bare midriffs or back. We had a young woman who was quite lovely who came to the assembly for a while, who delighted to display her back. And I was very thankful for our men in our congregation. It was quite interesting to watch this side of the congregation where she sat slowly move over to the other side of the congregation.

Why? Because the men did not want to be distracted by looking at her back as they're trying to sing, holy, holy, holy. Now let me do something. I've never done this before either. And ladies, I want you to watch this very carefully, and men, it's crucial for you to be honest.

As of the ten things that I have mentioned here, if one or more has caused any of you men to struggle at any time in your pre or post-conversion days, please Raise your hand. Ladies, please look around. Look around you. Look around the room. OK.

Thank you. OK, I'm out of time, and I want to sum this up carefully. So let me just say this, and thank you for your great patience. What's the important thing here? What's the important thing here?

Listen, the glory of Jesus Christ. That's what's important, the glory of Jesus Christ, especially in His worship. Our first goal must be to love God and love His glory, to be jealous for His glory, men and women, if we truly get a hold of that principle, it doesn't make another limit changes the way we view modesty, it changes the way we view everything. His glory, His glory, not my comfort, not me, but His glory, His honor. Secondly, our goal must be love for others.

Ladies, when you dress, dress thinking about your brethren and their desire to worship God without distraction. Love them in that way. As Paul said, love worketh no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Number three, love for Christ must be our motive. It's not how loud the preacher gets, or how hard he stamps, or what kind of guilt trip he can work you into.

That misses the point altogether. It's love for Christ. If that doesn't motivate you, You're not motivated by the right reason. You should want to be modest because you love Jesus Christ more than life itself. And finally, remembering who we are must be our corrective.

Remember. Remember who you are. If you are truly born of God, you are a child of a great kingdom. Jesus Christ shed His blood on Calvary. He rose again the third day.

He ascended up into heaven. He is seated in glory, in unspeakable holiness and righteousness and goodness. And you profess to be His child. He has saved you by His grace. Love him, love one another, and remember who you are in union with that resurrected Christ.

And that will give you the primary basics and foundational motives for modesty in an immodest world. Let's pray. Father, we are weak, infallible human beings and as we try to put So many things together in one discussion. We know that we can overload everyone on information. But oh, Father, I do pray that those who've, you've gathered here today will take these things and truly pray about them.

Not just move on to another session, but think about these things and later discuss them there are fathers and and and children and husband and wives that all need to discuss these matters and to discuss them in the light of Jesus Christ and his glory now father bless these precious ones that you've gathered and bless all those who will be speaking today and tomorrow in Jesus' name, Amen.