The sermon titled 'God Loves Beauty, Part 2' by Scott Brown explores the topic of clothing and its connection to God's zeal for beauty. The sermon emphasizes the importance of modesty and the role of clothing in pointing to the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It discusses various biblical passages that highlight God's appreciation for both inward and outward beauty. The sermon also addresses the potential dangers of focusing solely on external rules and appearances, emphasizing the need for a heart transformation and a genuine desire to please God in all aspects of life.

As we continue this series on the whole doctrine of clothing, we come now here to the second of these messages on the doctrine. And of course, we're attempting to fix our minds on Scripture as much as we're able in this subject, and I'm bringing various biblical texts to try to explain the doctrine. The first that we brought this morning was centered around the whole idea that God has zeal to cover the shame of sinners, and He clothes sinners in robes of righteousness. And then this evening we're gonna talk about beauty, God's zeal for beauty. But there's more, there's God's blessing of humility and God's care for unfading adornment and God's passion for purity and God's design for gender distinction and God's favor for nonconformity that we be not conformed to this world.

So that's where we're going in this series and we'll try to cover these. What we spoke about in the first message is that the devil hates modesty because he hates the robes of righteousness of Jesus Christ. And the great slanderer slanders the righteousness of Jesus Christ and becomes the accuser of the brethren. He is the great disfigurer, he's the great smoke machine, He is the distortion machine to make good things bad. That's what the devil does.

He takes the good things that God creates and he turns them the wrong direction. He does that with everything. And he has done it with clothing just as much as he's done it with everything else. We can make a long list of what good things the devil corrupts. Well, clothing is one of them because he hates the idea that clothing would point to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And so therefore, he's the great slanderer of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And what we said this morning was that physical garments are a type of spiritual garments, and we need clothing because of the covering of shame from sin, and that God desires to cover our nakedness, and that God gave clothing to conceal, not to reveal, that there is acceptable and unacceptable clothing in the eye of God. And we asked the question, who is your fashion designer? Is it God or is it some other force of work in your heart? So that's what we dealt with.

Now we turn to God's zeal for beauty, and there are many passages of Scripture that we could go to. We just read one that relates to the glory and the beauty of the garments of the priests. And that really coalesces a number of the things that God says about clothing. And what we find is that God praises not only inward beauty, but he praises outward beauty. And there's nothing in Holy Scripture that argues against outward beauty.

The inward beauty of Jesus Christ produces an outward beauty, which points back to the beauty of Jesus Christ and his robes of righteousness. As we learned in Isaiah 161 he gives beauty for ashes and the idea of a Christian who is unkempt and without style or unattractive or old-fashioned is a foreign idea in the Bible And clothing is not just simply for function, it's also in order to communicate beauty. And the Bible does speak of clothing as functional, but it's not only functional, it is also designed for beauty. John Calvin speaks of the importance of the beauty and the danger of beauty and focusing on it. He makes it clear that Clothing is not only for necessity but also for the declaration of beauty because God is a God of beauty and He designs everything in His creation for beauty.

And even the aroma of the flowers and all the things that you see are signposts of God's zeal for beauty. And you cannot walk outside without seeing the beauty that came out of the mind of God. Calvin talks about a double, it's sort of a double danger. On the one hand, God has created a clothing for beauty and he says in grasses and trees, the beauty and of their appearance and pleasantness and odor is so obvious. He says, has the Lord clothe the flowers with great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet Will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty and our sense of smell, by the sweetness of that odor?

In other words, God has put beautiful things in the world to give you thoughts of God himself. You know, perhaps, you know, this is why the Lord Jesus Christ himself, he said, don't worry about your clothing. Don't you see how he arrays the grass, the flowers of the field? They're beautiful. He's gonna array you as well.

Calvin also speaks, so here's how Calvin communicates this, away with that inhuman philosophy which while conceding only a necessary use of clothing for creatures, That he deprives us of the lawful fruit of God's beneficence, but cannot be practiced and unless it robs man of all his senses and degrades him to a block and then he turns to the other side and he says but on the other hand we must resist the lust of the flesh and overemphasize the beauty. So he brings both of those together. We'll find the same principle when we get to the New Testament on the matter of clothing. Now I want to give you four representative examples of the declaration of beauty and clothing in the Bible and the first is the example of the priests and in Exodus chapter 28 verses 2 through 8 we see that the garments of the priests had a very specific message to them for glory and for beauty and so when we when we read of the the Old Testament priests as good interpreters of the Word of God, we should think of everything in the Old Testament pointing to Jesus Christ. And, you know, these things were written for our instruction that we might not be idolaters, but that we might love Jesus Christ with all of our hearts.

So the clothing of the priest is a type of the Christian in the New Covenant era. And they point to what the apostle Paul referred to, or Peter referred to, as a royal priesthood. And how the whole message of the New Testament is that is that God has given us a better covenant with better promises and it's better clothing by the way and RC Sproul comments on this matter of the priests clothing a utilitarian robe for Aaron would not do God wanted him to minister in garments that were skillfully woven and beautifully adorned. Simply put, the God of heaven and earth is deeply concerned and appreciative of beauty." And he continues, The Christian faith is like a stool with three legs, but we have a tendency to make our stools with only one or two legs. The three legs that properly belong to the Christian faith are the three elements of faith that are good, the true, and the beautiful, those three, the good, the true and the beautiful.

He says, those are three legs to a stool. He says, it's obvious that God is concerned about goodness for he's the fountainhead of everything that's good as his people were called to mirror and reflect who he is, which means that we are called to reflect the good. Likewise, God is deeply concerned about truth, for he himself is the essence of truth. He says, therefore, we are to be a people who love and practice truth. Finally, he says, as we have seen, God is highly concerned about what is beautiful.

As we read and study the scriptures, we have come to the conclusion, we have to come to the conclusion that there is an ultimate source of beauty, the character of God. Just as the normative standard for goodness and truth is God, so the ultimate standard of beauty is God, and he is very interested in beauty in his creation. And so you see that even in the clothing of the priests. And you see this in a number of places. The woman in Proverbs 31 who makes beautiful clothing that is perfect for the weather and it's exactly what her children need.

It's utilitarian but it's also beautiful. So you find this matter of beauty in the clothing of the priests. The second example that is representative that I'd like to bring out is the example in Psalm 45 in verses 8 through 17 And this is the beauty of the Church of Jesus Christ. And so he's, the psalmist is speaking about the daughter here, the royal daughter, and she is a picture of the church because God desires his church to be a beautiful church. And what we find in Psalm 45 is that the church is clothed in beautiful garments.

And we learn that Jesus Christ, the coming Messiah, is the robe of righteousness that the psalmist is referring to. He speaks of Jesus garments. He says this, all of your garments are scented with myrrh and aloes and Cassia out of the ivory palaces by which they have made you glad. And then David turns to the church and her adornment and he says, So the king will greatly desire your beauty because he is your Lord. Worship him, and the daughter of Tyre will come with a gift.

The rich among the people will seek her favor. The royal daughter is all glorious within the palace. Her clothing is woven with gold. The princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes. In many colored robes she is led to the king with her virgin companions, her escort, and her train.

With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. Instead of your fathers you shall be called, your fathers shall be your sons. You will make them princes in all the earth. I will cause your name to be celebrated in all the generations. Therefore, the peoples will praise you forever and ever.

And so in this passage of scripture, the church who's the king's daughter is clothed with grace and clothed with beauty. She's all glorious within. John Gill says, she enjoys such communion with him as reflects the glory upon her. In his banqueting house, where his banner is over her, is love, and where her members enjoy fellowship with one another, and in harmony, unity, and love, which make her look amiable, pleasant, beautiful, and glorious. Or within the hearts of her members, through the internal graces of the Spirit wrought there, the work of grace is an inward work." And that inward work, of course, in this Psalm shows itself in an outward beauty as well.

In Isaiah chapter 52, God commands his church, put on your beautiful garments. God is calling the church out of her groggy and out of her unkempt state, and he commands her, put on your beautiful garments. You know, she's been in captivity in Babylon, and she's being called out of Babylon to throw aside the clothing of Babylon and to put on her beautiful garments and to demonstrate the changes that have taken place. And so he says, awake, awake, put, oh Zion, put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city, for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you. So she's awakened to this new condition and the Lord commands her to put on her beautiful garments.

And it's a call for her to display her inner beauty outwardly. She shows how she's set free by the garments that she wears. And then in the following chapter in Isaiah 53, we learn what it cost God to beautify Zion. What was the cost of those beautiful garments. Well, it was the suffering servant.

He is the one who paid the cost. It was the blood of his son. It was very costly. Beauty always costs. And if you see outward beauty, that's a representative of inward beauty, you can note that it costs something dear.

Well, it costs the blood of Jesus Christ. So as the Church of Jesus Christ is filled with the Holy Spirit, she bears beautiful fruit." And I think that's why the Apostle Paul, when he exhorts the Ephesian church to put off certain things and put on others, he speaks of it this way. He says, that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on the new man, which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness." This is Ephesians 4, 21 through 24. And so the apostle gives a picture of a people whose garments are deteriorating, but those who are saved, they put off those old garments, and they put on new garments, and they're beautiful garments. So we see this represented in the church.

Also in the Bible you see this beauty represented by brides and there are several places that we could go for there. But I think Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 10, I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk. It's the bride of Jesus Christ, the church that's described in Ezekiel as a beautiful woman. She's decked with fine clothing, with pearls and jewels, just like what we see in Revelation chapter 19, when we read these words, let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him. For the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready.

It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. In this passage, we actually find the righteous acts of the saints being the clothing of Jesus Christ. His clothing becomes our clothing in this scheme that God has played before us. In Revelation 21, two, we read these words, And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband." So you see this theme of beauty in the language that's used to describe a bride. And then fourthly, another example, and that's Joshua's filthy garments replaced with beautiful garments.

That's in Zechariah chapter three. You remember this scene in Zechariah, There are three people in this scene. There's the angel of the Lord, and there's the devil, and there's Joshua the high priest. And the devil is accusing Joshua the high priest about the filthiness of his garments. And the angel of the Lord says, the Lord rebuke you, Satan.

And so this is the scene that is there. Satan is accusing the high priest of his filthiness and the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments. And then he answered and spoke to those who stood by him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him.

And to him he said, See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes." And I said, Let them put a clean turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him, and the angel of the Lord stood by. And so there's just another picture of this replacement of clean and filthy garments, ugly garments and beautiful garments. This is how God explains salvation through this whole matter of beauty. Now I think one of the things that Christians need to somehow go through is a transition in their thinking about their clothing.

They need to think completely differently about their clothing. Clothing is a type, clothing is meant to point to something greater. And clothing actually has an elevated importance in the Bible. And I think What Scripture does is it gives a very balanced view of clothing. When we get to the New Testament, we'll talk about how wrong it is to traffic an overly expensive clothing.

So there's this balance that Scripture brings to us. It's beautiful, but it's not ostentatious. So you have this tension that the scriptures bring to the discussion, but clothing is designed to glorify God. And so there's this physical beauty and there's this inward beauty as well. So the essence of modesty in this category of beauty is this, Jesus Christ delights in the beauty of his bride and and how does he do it?

Well he he clothes his bride in robes of righteousness and he decks her out with all of his beauty. And the Apostle Paul saw this very clearly when he spoke to the Colossian Church and he said, you have put on Christ. You put on Christ. There's no more greater beauty in the world than Jesus Christ he is the most beautiful being that the earth has ever seen And so not only has God created clothing to testify to his zeal to cover our shame, he's ordained clothing to testify to beauty. And so I want to give you some applications.

I'm going to give you five applications. And the first is this, recognize the simplicity of modesty. Recognize how simple this really is. When you think about clothing, think about what it means to be a Christian, because modesty is just one small piece of what it means to be a Christian because modesty is just one small piece of what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to have your whole heart dedicated to the Lord.

It's a heart that says, I delight to do your will. It's a heart that says, not my will, but thine be done. It's a heart that says, I'm about my Father's business. I'm not about my own business. I'm not about my own glory.

I'm about my Father's business. That's what a Christian does. The non-Christian is looking for ways to get around God and ways to justify himself and to see how close to the line he can get. That's the heart of a non-Christian. The heart of a Christian is to come back and to pursue the Lord with all of the heart.

And it includes a recognition that you've been bought with a price and your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, that you are not your own and that God has saved you, that you might glorify God in your body in everything that your body represents. And what it means to be a Christian is really nothing short of what the Apostle Paul spoke about in Ephesians chapter five verse 10, where he says that the Christian is always finding out what is pleasing to the Lord. That's what a Christian wants to do. He wants to find out what's pleasing to the Lord. He doesn't want to dodge what's pleasing to the Lord.

Now in our flesh, in our sanctification, you know, we do struggle with this, but the true Christian's heart continues to be inclined toward the things of the Lord instead of running in the other direction. So we should consider just the simplicity of this matter of modesty in the sense that it is as simple as salvation in that sense. And the Apostle Paul, I think, stated it very, very clearly. Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, as he said in 1 Corinthians 10, 31. Now here's a reality.

If Jesus Christ is not the Lord of your clothing, He might not be the Lord of anything else. Because the Lord Jesus really has called every part of us to follow him, every single part. And so this matter of modesty is as simple as real salvation. Here's a second application. Consider the impact of making rules about modesty.

You can create modest dress in a family or in a church just by creating rules, but you cannot create Christian culture that way. It's very difficult to create modesty from the heart when you start with the rules. Now, There must be definitions, there must be ways that we dress, and there are guidelines and rules. But when you start with rules, you've started in the wrong place because you don't primarily create Christian culture through rules. And starting with rules makes life actually very easy because they can be obeyed by anyone and can bypass the heart, which nullifies the importance of it.

Unless a person dresses the way they dress because they treasure Jesus Christ above all else and they desire to do His will and they long to glorify God with their bodies and whose greatest grief it would be to displease God, then they have become external legalists. They are putting on a show that's not connected to the heart. And so true modest beauty is not skin deep, it's deeper. It's far, far deeper than the outward clothing. Because modesty that is pleasing to God arises out of the hidden person of the heart.

We'll learn that when we get to the New Testament. But everything regarding modesty must begin with the adoration of God and His Word and a happy embracing of His purposes for everything, including clothing, or it's not worth that much. You can be a Muslim and dress modestly. You can be a Hindu and dress modestly. So the outward appearance is proper to consider, But it certainly is not the objective.

And I'm just going to list three problems of starting with the rules. And really, I think you've noticed we're really speaking, we want to lay down the doctrinal foundation and then consider applications as we move ahead. But here are three problems with starting with rules. First, when you start with rules, it's easy to bypass the central biblical message and even to add to it. You know, many, over the last couple, three months, I've listened to many messages on modesty.

Most of them cut straight to the applications and even some rules. And while we have to have a discussion about definitions and categories and rules, we have to do that. The church needs their conscience to be shaped by the Word of Scripture and the Word of Scripture alone and to apply the Scriptures with a modest heart. And so The danger of starting with rules is that you can end up bypassing the biblical message. I've heard many messages that really spin, they quote a verse and the rest of it is rules.

Now think of modesty a little bit like what the Bible says about the Sabbath. And I'll take you back a few years when I was preaching on the Ten Commandments and the Doctrine of the Sabbath. And After I gave that first message in Exodus 20, or Deuteronomy chapter 5, what people were most interested in was, what can't we do on the Sabbath? What is not allowed to do on the Sabbath? Well, we refused to answer that question.

We said, look at the scriptures. The scriptures are very simple. There are two basic things. First of all, it's very clear that doing business and getting involved in financial transactions on the Sabbath is unlawful. That's very clear.

That's one thing you should stop because the scripture says stop doing that. But then the rest of the teaching on the Sabbath really is, You know, don't do your own thing in the Sabbath. Worship God. Focus your whole day on God. Meditate on the beauty of God.

Delight in the Lord. Do that. And so people would say, well, what can't we do? And we would say, well, you go figure it out what you can't do? There it is, it's right in front of you.

God has left that up to the heart that stands before God. He has given one explicit thing that you cannot do, but the rest of it must arise from a heart that loves Jesus. And modesty is a little bit like that. If you read the scriptures you do not get a laundry list about how long, how tight, and how low. You don't get that.

You get general principles that are designed to guide a true Christian. That's what you get. So the first mistake is if you start with rules, you can bypass the biblical message. Here's one of my great objectives for this series. I'm walking through probably dozens of passages of Scripture.

When you think about modesty and clothing, I want you to think about the words of God and exactly what Scripture says. Now you can apply that in your life. You should apply that. There should be some rules and some categories that you make. But if they don't arise out of this desire to obey the Word of God, it's not worth that much.

So the second trap is that when you start with rules, you create, you can easily create a people who are just fixated on the rules and they lose their focus on God and His Word and they've reduced Christianity to their set of rules. And the problem with this is it causes people to be focused on outward conformity. And the shift from a heart that loves Jesus Christ can easily take place. And you're now locked on to a set of rules. And that's when you start with rules without the heart of the matter.

If you don't start with the doctrine but go straight to the applications, It's easy to create a people who are fixated on the rules. Thirdly, it can easily create people who just reject or write application for modesty because their hearts aren't fixed on Christ. And so, you know, making too many rules about modesty is like making unbiblical rules about the Sabbath. The Jews created all kinds of rules about the Sabbath. How long you could walk, whether you could pick up your bed.

These were unbiblical rules. They were applications. And would it be right for a man to say, I don't think I want to pick up my bed on the Sabbath? It might be right to do that. But to make that a rule for the church is very inappropriate, because the Bible just gives these general principles for this matter of modesty.

So when a church starts With rules, it can easily create a worldly culture with a thin, Christian-looking veneer. And one of the manifestations of that is people will become judge and jury of people who are blood-bought. And that's really a tragedy. And you and based on an external rule. Now I think one of the things that needs to be recognized in the church is that there are different church cultures regarding modesty.

There are true churches that have different cultures of modesty. And You will have people in churches who've received instruction on modesty, and they're applying it with a faithful heart, but it might look different in their church as it does in another church. And so we have to be very careful with that when you have different church cultures. Now, the truth of the matter is that every church is gonna end up creating some kind of a look. It will happen.

But it's important to understand that you might see a woman or a man that you feel is immodestly dressed, But she really has faithfully attempted to obey what her pastors and her father and her mother have designed for her. But it might look different, and you really need to understand that. Lest we become, you know, the modesty police. It makes, you know, making an application, a test of fellowship, you know, is a mistake in the Church of Jesus Christ. And so, as a result, you can end up with a modest-looking church with very little heart-borne modesty.

And you can have the outward look of modesty and have immodest, proud, judgmental hearts according to a standard that causes you to reject blood-bought children of God whom Jesus Christ has embraced. And you just have to be very careful with the consciences of other people. Those people have fathers and they have pastors and They have they they have a real Important influence in their lives and it might be a little bit different than what you might experience so Starting with rules can can cause problems I think you know for our church we we want hearts of modesty that result in beauty and all the things that scripture calls for. And we want to be on that journey. But the scripture is the thing that should bind our conscience, not your personal set of rules.

It's dangerous to do that. Now, the third application is this. Be sensitive to a problem with modesty at our church. Hope Baptist. Now your elders believe that the women here dress modestly.

We're very grateful for that. This set of messages isn't designed to correct everybody in this church, but it's really to lay a foundation for the hearts that are here. Now I also realize that our church appears to be different compared to other churches. And you know, when people come to our church, they immediately notice that the women dress differently. And it's sometimes disturbing and offensive to people who come in to our church.

And I think that we need to realize that some people are going to come here and they may be disturbed and concerned. When that happens, what do we do? What we do is that we love them. We recognize that there are different modesty cultures that exist in the Church of Jesus Christ. On the one hand, a church with a modest culture, which I believe we have here, can become proud and unnecessarily divisive toward others who are different.

That's a danger. On the other hand, visitors from the outside, from a different culture in the church can be just as just judgmental and just as divisive when they see something that's different from their experience. And I'm aware of some who've come here and they've left expressing concern for the church and they've even slandered our church because of the way that women dress. Here's what you learn from that. There's plenty of judgmentalism to go around for sure.

But let's be very clear. Everybody has a dress code. And it's our job to make sure that in the ways that we apply these matters that God has spoken clearly about, that our hearts are humble, that we're broken for our own sin, that our clothing is not a source of pride and self-exaltation, and that it's not a cause of division among people who might come in. It doesn't bother me that our church looks different in terms of modesty. I think it's a good thing.

But it really depends on how we handle it. It depends on how we treat people and how we talk to them about it. And there's probably much to say about that because it is appropriate to talk to one another about it, but it really matters how that happens and the spirit with which it happens, and the relationship that exists when it happens. But everybody has a dress code. The only question is, where did it come from?

What does it communicate? And what is the effect of that dress code? Those are really important things. So on the one hand we have to be very careful not to not to relax our devotion to the hidden person of the heart and the creation of true beauty and and recognizing the various issues that need to be recognized about modesty and the distinctions and even the rules that we might have for ourselves. We have to maintain that, but on the other hand, we have to be very careful that we don't end up with a person who's just checking a checklist with every Christian in Christendom.

It's very dangerous and it's very harmful. So I don't want us to do that. A person who seems to be immodestly dressed should be able to come into this church and be a part of this church. If they're true Christians, if they're not Christians and they're dressed really immodestly, we should not be correcting them. The Lord will work with them.

If they have the Holy Spirit, the Lord will work with them. He'll take them where He wants them to go. And He may use the modest dress of some of the women in this church to help them get there. How about that? I've seen that happen.

But It's not so healthy if someone comes into this church and they just start dressing modestly because everybody else is dressing according to the standard. That's a wrong reason to do it. It's got to come from the hidden person of the heart. So there are dangers, aren't there? Either way, whatever modesty culture you have, there's danger.

Whether it's, you know, on the right or on the left or in the middle, there's a danger wherever it is because the human heart is sinful. Okay, the next application, the fourth application, is as we go through these things about modesty, take the teaching on modesty and apply it to yourself. You know, as you listen to the messages about modesty, as you read about it, read the scriptures, don't make the error that's so common because of the work of the devil. Hearing the word of God and thinking about other people, that's really a danger. James says it well, receive with meekness the implanted word.

Apply it to yourself. And if in God's leadership and in His kindness that He would have you speak to someone, there's there's nothing wrong with doing that, but recognize this, it's a sinful pattern to sit there and listen to the scriptures on something like modesty and just be check listing everybody else in the room. Because sin runs really deep in all of us in matters of outward appearance. It runs so deep. Is there anyone here who has achieved, you know, some level of purity on self exaltation or pride?

Anybody here? Anybody here has nothing in their life externally that comes from sin in their heart? Is there anybody here like that? There isn't anybody here like that. So take the teaching on modesty and let's apply it to ourselves.

Number five, let modesty flow from the inside out. Resist the temptation to just create a shallow veneer of modesty because, you know, the other person dresses this way. In Christianity, the power of God works from the inside out. False religions always work from the outside in. This is how legalism operates.

It begins with that word, appearance. The fashion industry always works from the outside in. It is legalistic. Absolutely it is. Christianity is different.

It works from the inside out. It's real. It comes from a well-spring of something good and beautiful. And it comes from the hidden person of the heart. So Christianity expresses itself outwardly, but it begins inwardly.

And so, you know, modesty is something that really should be not from the top down, but from the inside out. And You know, when there's this focus on those outward manifestations, you can so easily end up with a cold, lifeless, dry, prideful legalism that just judges everybody according to their little checklist that they figured out worked for them. And again, I'm not arguing against a checklist for yourself. I'm not at all. But it matters how you handle that checklist in the Church, because anybody can operate with an outward standard.

Even the Muslims can do it, even the Hindus can do it. And it can become a source of pride and self-righteousness that causes unnecessary and unprofitable divisions between people. So we have to be careful judging one another on the basis of the nuances of their outward appearance. And again, this is not to say that they don't matter, but it is to say that It is something deeper than just outward appearance that's going on in all of our outward appearance. Okay, so not only has God created clothing to testify to His zeal to cover shame, He's also ordained clothing to testify to beauty.

God does praise outward beauty. That's an expression of inward beauty. So there's the section on beauty. We'll proceed next week. Would you pray with me?

Lord, we thank You for the remarkable testimony of Your Word to reveal how things really are and how they ought to be. We thank You, Father, that You don't create fake people, but that you create people who are real from the heart, that it's grounded in something true, it's grounded in something real and genuine, that it's grounded in your kingdom and it grows and it's real and it's eternal. Lord, we thank you that you're that kind of God that doesn't just cause us to put on outward appearances, to create outward performances that don't have any ground in anything truly good and beautiful. But you, you Lord, are the God of all beauty. You create beauty from the heart and you grow it and it's observable.

We pray Lord that you would give this church such beauty like that. Amen.