And turn over to 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, First
Thessalonians chapter 5. And I'm going to introduce what
I really want to talk about next week.
And I'm going to lay some groundwork here with some
passages from God's Word. And, and hopefully this will be
something that you understand a lot of you have asked questions
about our dress standards. Why do we have dress standards?
Why? And, and, and by the way,
everybody has dress standards, right?
And not just standards of dress, but standards across all, you
know, all areas of life. We have standards in music, we
have standards in, in our behavior.
We have standards in so many different things, right?
And for our, for our church, we have come to the conclusion, I
guess if you want to call it that, that, that to be involved
in, in ministry here in our church, that we have certain
dress standards that you have to uphold.
And we ask that men dressed in a way that looks masculine.
And certainly, you know, when, when you're serving in a
position of ministry that you wear a suit.
Ladies, obviously we ask that ladies wear a skirt that falls
below the knee when they're serving in ministry.
And of course, then as, as far as that goes, and, and, and this
is not something that you have not heard before, most of you
know this, but we ask that you hold that standard at any church
function as well. And then I highly recommend and,
and highly suggest that you keep that standard across all areas
of your life because it's the matter of consistency and what I
want to do tonight. I've, I've had a lot of you that
have asked questions about this. Why do we do this?
And I think it's only fair that I give you from the Bible why we
have this standard, right? By the way, you know, we say
dress standards and everybody automatically thinks, oh, you
know, pants and everything else, every church has dress
standards, right? No matter where your dress
standards fall, that's the question where do, where do you
draw the line on those dress standards?
Right. But I don't think that most
churches would have somebody up singing in front of the church
in a bikini, right? Because they have a standard of
what is allowed in dress. Now, their standards are very
low in a lot of other ways, right?
We've chosen to to raise our standard a little bit higher,
not because that makes us better or we look down our nose at
everybody else, but because I think that's what we find in
God's word. So there is, there is a constant
assault on what I believe to be an important expression of
Christianity. I'll tell you this, my wife was,
this was a few years ago now, but my wife was walking into
Walmart and of course she wears skirts everywhere.
And so another lady was walking out of Walmart and she was in a
skirt and she looked at my wife and she said, I know my girl's
Pentecostal. And my wife was like, no, I'm
not, I'm not Pentecostal, but you know, but what, what I mean,
what is, what does that say about the Pentecostals?
Everybody knows that they have a certain standard.
And when she looked at my wife, the first thing that she thought
was that that lady's Pentecostal, right?
Not I bet she, you know, you know, works, you know, in the
red light district or something like that.
It's not what she thought when she saw the way my wife was
dressed, right? She thought that Lady goes to
church and I'll bet because she's wearing a skirt, she's a
Pentecostal right? Now obviously that wasn't the
case, but our appearance as Christians matter and it's part
of our testimony. It's part of the representation
of who we are to the world. And I want to give you the a
reason from God's word rather than just an emotional
explanation of, of our dress standards, but of dress
standards in general. That's that's necessary to help
us stand against the spirit of the age.
There's no doubt that that that most of Christianity is moving
away from Christ, not closer to him, right.
And I want to help you formulate your standards related to your
appearance standards that are not driven by me or standards
that are driven by you and your fear or your carnality or even
your pride. I want to help you formulate
standards that are driven by your desire to reflect the
holiness of Christ and your love for him.
That's that's where all of this comes down to.
And along with that, I want to make sure that you understand
that how we look is not an isolated thing.
It, it, it does not make a spiritual in and of itself.
I think there is a, there was a mindset maybe even 2034 years,
40 years ago in independent Baptist circles in particular,
that if you dressed a certain way that you have yet you had
attained to a certain level of spirituality.
And that's not the case. It's not the case.
But I also want to help our young people in here because
when we go on our youth activities and things, we, we
require that our young men and our young ladies dress modestly.
And, you know, I mentioned this to our young men, Hey, when we
go, you know, we were, we stayed in an Airbnb together.
Yeah. And not running around in the
house with no shirt on, right? Not running around in your
little short shorts, right. Same thing for the girls, but
that they'd be modest, right? And and everything that we do,
we ought to be modest. So what I want to do is lay out
some of these these principles tonight.
And I want you to, I want you to understand these things, OK,
Obviously it's required to serve in ministries of our church, but
I want you to understand why we have these standards, not just
that. Well, the pastor said we have to
do it. So that's what I'm going to do
if I want to serve in the ministry, I want you to
understand it. I want you to come to those same
conclusions yourself. This is not, I'm not preaching
at you tonight, all right? I'm just giving you an
explanation of why we hold to the standards that we hold to.
I found this on Facebook a while back and I saved it because I
wanted to use it with this, with this lesson, with this message.
But a girl bought an iPhone and when her father saw it, he asked
her what was the first thing you did when you bought that phone?
And she said, well, the first thing I did was I put an anti
scratch screen protector on the front of the screen.
And he said, well, why was that? Did somebody force you to do it?
And she said no, nobody forced me to do it.
He said, well, don't you think it's an insult to the
manufacturer for you to put a anti scratch sticker on the
front of that screen? And she said, no, I'm doing it
to protect it. In fact, they actually recommend
putting a cover on the iPhone. And he said, well, did you cover
it because it's cheap and because it's ugly?
And she said, no, I covered it because I didn't want to get
damaged and I and I didn't want to decrease the value of it.
And she said, in fact, I actually bought a case that goes
around the entire phone. And he said, well, did you buy
that? Did you buy that case for it
because you thought your iPhone was ugly and you wanted to cover
it? And she said, no, I didn't do it
because it was ugly. In fact, I like the case.
I think it makes the phone look better.
And the father looked at his daughter and he said, Yet if I
had to ask you to cover your body in the same way, would you
have just as readily done that? And she was silent.
I saw I found this Dear girls, always do remember that indecent
dressing and exposure of your body effects others perception
of your great value and in many cases causes them to lose
respect for you. I did a, I did a big series, a
long series on this back in 2022 and 2023.
I think I did 15 messages on this.
It was the first time I'd ever taught through it.
So I went all the way back to the beginning about why we do
this and I talked about a lot of different principles that we
find in the Word of God. And then in 2024, I did this
again. I took the same series and
instead of doing 15 messages, I think I did 5.
All right. And I'm going to take that same
exact series and I'm bringing it down to 2 messages.
I just want to give you the explanation of the brief
explanation of this tonight. If you want more understanding
of these things more in deep principles from the Word of God,
and certainly I'm going to give you some of those tonight and
next week, then I highly recommend you go back and do it.
I got with brother Josh. I made sure that that was in a
in its own folder, if you will, or in a playlist on YouTube so
you can find it easily. But if you want to go back and
watch that, I think would be helpful to do that.
But I'm going to summarize those lessons tonight.
And you know, the purpose of this, of doing this is certainly
not to make you mad. I hope you'll listen to this
with an open heart and an open mind.
And I know this is one of those things that gets people upset
for some reason. I don't know why when you start
talking about people's wardrobes, people get mad and I
don't know why. I don't know why.
Because the whole purpose of why we have the standards that we
have when it comes to dress, when it comes to music, when it
comes to everything, is because we are just trying as much as
possible to be as close to the word of God as we possibly can
be. And this lesson tonight and next
week is simply meant to help you understand why we have the
standards addressed that we do. Many of you have asked about it,
and so I want to give you an explanation from the Bible.
Now, there's a couple of things that you need to understand as
we get into this. And the first one is that your
appearance does matter. Your appearance matters 1st and
simplest. We have to accept that our
appearance is addressed in Scripture, and this is maybe in
a very, very Broadway here in First Thessalonians, chapter 5,
I had you turn there. The Bible says in verse #22
abstain from all appearance of evil, abstain from all
appearance of evil. That means there are things that
you can do that may not be evil, but they look evil, right?
And so if we're to abstain from the appearance of evil, then
appearance does matter whether that is is your dress, whether
that is you're holding a can of non alcoholic Bud Light in your
hand, right? Oh, I can drink this.
It's not alcoholic, but it looks like it.
It's got the appearance of evil, right.
I can do a lot of things that may not necessarily technically
be wrong, but it has the appearance of evil.
All I'm saying is our appearance is addressed in in God's word.
Turn over to First Samuel chapter 16.
If God speaks about it, then we should study it, we should learn
it, we should try to understand it, and we should apply it to
our lives. So we should realize that our
appearance is the way that others see our Christianity
first. Now you can have a woman who is
as modest as could possibly be and is not even saved, has no
desire to live for the Lord. And you can have a lady who is
not modest who has a desire to live for the Lord.
It's the heart that matters the most.
But the Bible says this in First Corinth.
Sorry, First Samuel chapter 16, verse #7 The Lord said unto
Samuel, look not on his countenance or on the height of
his stature, because I've refused him.
For the Lord seeth not as man seeth.
For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh
on the heart. Now that's an important
principle there. God's looking at our heart, and
the heart is what matters the most.
But what does man use to judge what's in our heart, the way we
look, right? Like it or not, most of the
world makes a judgment call on the basis of how people look,
how they act, how they behave, what's visible to them prior to
actually getting to know that person in question.
Right? If I don't know, who should?
Who should I pick on tonight? Josh.
Josh came in dressed in all black with black eyelids and
combat boots and wearing leather straps down his arms that were
tied up tight, right? And he had a leather vest on and
everything else was black. You could reasonably assume that
Josh was a goth, right? Or trying to dress as a gothic
person dresses right now. You don't know that Josh
actually serves in the sound booth and that Josh actually
sings in the choir, and that from time to time Josh gets up
and preaches, right? You wouldn't know that just by
looking at him because he's a goth, right?
I mean, he's got, he's got everything black, right?
And I may find out later on. Wow.
I didn't realize that Josh serves in the sound booth and
Josh sings in the choir and Josh does all of these things at
church. I just didn't.
I didn't know who Josh was when I first met him.
But what did you judge him by when you first saw him?
The way that he was dressed, right, And his outside
appearance. And so as a Christian, I should
not be primarily concerned with what people think, but I should
be aware that how I look and how I act and how I sound and how I
behave does produce an effect on those people around me.
And I want that to be a godly effect.
I want people to look at me and I get this a lot.
I've been in, I've been in, I, I grew up in church, so I, I've
got the Christian look down, I suppose you could say, but I get
all the time people ask me if I'm in the military, you in the
military. I want to say yes so I can get
the discount, but I don't. I try not to lie too much, but
I've never actually said yes, I'm in the military just to get
a discount. But, you know, people expect
people in the military to look a certain way, right?
And they expect Christians to look a certain way.
If I came in with long shaggy hair, right, or maybe a Mohawk
with long shaggy hair, and I am, and I am just, you know, wearing
anything and everything, nobody's going to look at me and
say, I bet you that guy's a Christian, right?
I want people to look at me and I want them to think that when
they see me, right? And it's different guys, you
know, guys dress, you know, I mean, listen, for the most part,
men are not running around in skirts yet, all right?
It's not going to be long. Mark my words.
It's not going to be long. It's not societally accepted
yet. But it will be the same way that
society has accepted women wearing pants when it
traditionally belonged to men, right?
But I want somebody to look at me and say, I bet you that's a
Christian. My wife wants somebody to look
at her and say, I bet you that's a Christian, right?
Now you speak without saying a word to somebody.
So when you come up, all right, listen, you see somebody tell me
who I'm talking about. Black pants and shoes, white
shirt, black tie. You didn't even have to think
about it because they represent the Mormons well, right?
The the girls do the same thing. They represent the Mormon shirts
well, but you don't even have to think about who they are.
That's a Mormon, or in some cases that's a Jehovah's
Witness, right? That's what everybody thinks
when they see people who are dressed up.
It's sad that nobody thinks. I bet you that's a Baptist,
young lady, right? Or I bet you that guy's a
Baptist. Nobody thinks that anymore.
They used to. They used to.
We've moved away from it, but all I'm saying is your
appearance does matter and God looks on the heart.
Yes, and the heart is the most important, but you are judged by
what you look like on the outside before somebody gets to
know you. Turn over to Mark chapter 1.
I I want to reveal Christ in me the hope of glory, but before I
ever get a chance to do that with my words, I have to be
conscious that I can either help or hinder that based on what
others see when they look at me. And I believe that addressing
the Christians appearance is needed now more than ever in our
country. It's very evident that in
America we have a declining Christianity paired with a
growing paganism. And the Bible says in Mark
chapter 1 and verse #15 And they come to Jesus and see him that
was possessed with the devil and had the legion sitting and
clothed and in his right mind, what happened when this guy was
walking through the tombs, cutting himself?
Did I give you the wrong passage?
I don't know. I have Mark 115.
Somebody can find it. Was it Mark 515?
Mark chapter 5 and verse 15? I'm sorry about that.
I'll read it again if it's the same.
And they had come to and they come to Jesus and see him that
was possessed with the devil and had the legion sitting and
clothed. And in his right mind, this is
the story of the the maniac of Gedera.
He's walking through the tombs, cutting himself.
But the amazing thing to me about it, the Bible says that he
was naked. He was running through the tombs
naked. And what is one of the first
things he did after he got saved?
He put his clothes back on, right?
He covered himself up. What's one of the first things
that Adam and Eve did after they realized that they were sinners?
They covered themselves up. They realized that they were
naked, right? And so when a person
individually or a society corporately is operating under
the influence of the devil or the effect of or the effect of
Christ, it's evident in their appearance, right?
I don't understand how a Christian could go down to the
beach and take all their clothes off and think that God's going
to be pleased with that, right? I think inherently, I think
inherently, you know, as a Christian, that is not right to
do that, right? And why is it that you have to
get all the way down to the beach before you take your
clothes off, right? I say this often, you know,
it's, it's accepted for you to go down and be practically naked
on the beach. But if I walked into somebody's
bedroom and they were dressed the same way, they would scream
and call the police and call me a pervert and everything else,
right? Because it's not normal, just
because it's accepted does not mean that it's normal.
And just because society says it's OK to go to the beach and
take all your clothes off does not mean that it's OK to go to
the beach and take all your clothes off.
It's the devil's influence, and it's a lack of influence of
people who know Christ as their savior.
And what do we find in America today?
A lot of that exact same thing. Undeniably, we are growing
weaker as a society when it comes to a sense of modesty,
right? It used to be that women would
very rarely never go out of the house in something that was
revealing, or if they did, you know what part of society they
belong to. Right now, they wear yoga pants
that leaves very little to the imagination.
And everybody's OK with it because everybody does it.
And even Christian ladies run around in these yoga pants with
every outline of their body visible for everybody to see.
Those are not things for the world to see.
Those are things that were designed for your husband.
And that's it. You shouldn't even be running
around in those things in the home.
Your kids don't need to see those things either.
And so these activists that are that are increasingly advocating
for the right for women to run around topless and everything
else. And it's going to happen.
It's going to happen if God, if God does not intervene and send
a revival or if God doesn't come back first.
It's going to be OK in society. It's not yet, but it's getting
closer and you're seeing it. It's all, it's all starting with
your Hollywood people and your, you know, your award shows and
all of these other things. They're getting more and more
naked with all of those things. And it's not going to be long
before they have no shame doing it period in society and Walmart
and everywhere else. I don't know what we're going to
do when we get to that point. But the way Christianity is
following the world, it's not going to be long before
Christians are doing the same thing, right?
And you think, oh, no, that'll never happen.
It's happening, it's happening. Local governments, these pride
parades where everybody goes out there and the whole crowd's full
of people are literally completely naked and they look
the other way because, well, this is just their expression of
who they are. That's it's OK for them to do
that, right? That's what society is doing.
That's where society is going. And obviously they could go on
and on. But I want you to see this turn
over to Ezekiel chapter 22. What we see is the cultural
captivity of American Christianity.
That's what we're seeing. Contemporary Christianity to
contemporary American Christianity, which is by far
the largest faction of Christianity, has been built to
be like the world. And so it is.
They might be a few steps behind where the world is at, but they
are following the world straight to hell.
And the Bible says in Ezekiel chapter 22 and verse #26 her
priests have violated my law and have profaned my unholy things.
They have put no difference between the holy and profane.
Neither have they showed difference between the unclean
and the clean. If that does not sound exactly
like where we're at in America, well, you look at what goes on
in most of these large. Contemporary Christian churches
and you can't tell the difference between the clean and
the unclean. Listen, that's why we have
standards in music, right? Unless you pay very close
attention and try to hear the word Jesus, or try to hear the
word faithful or some of these other Christian terms that we
throw around, you can't tell the difference between the holy and
the profane. You can't tell the difference
between the clean and the unclean.
And when we follow the world in the way that we dress, because
this is the is what the world is saying is acceptable.
And when we follow modern contemporary Christianity into
what they say is acceptable as they follow the world, then we
are There is no separation between what's holy and what's
what's profane and between what's clean and what's unclean.
There ought to be something different about us.
If there's nothing different about us, then what are we
offering? A lost and dying world?
Why would they want what we have if we are just the, the, the
awkward backward, you know, brother, that's, you know,
younger brother. Why, why would, why would they
want that? Right?
You're weird to them because you're 2 steps behind where they
are. They don't want what you have
unless you're very different. And the Bible says they're
peculiar does not mean that you have to be weird.
It means that you should be different.
We ought to be offering the world something different in the
way that we look, in the way that we talk, in the way that
our music sounds, in the way that we do church, in the way
that we do everything. There ought to be something
different about us. And as American contemporary
Christianity gets closer and closer to the world, and as we
get closer to the time of Jesus Christ coming back, there ought
to be an even more marked difference between us that is
not Christianity. And just because they call it
Christianity does not mean that we have to keep following them
in that direction. Oh, you guys are still.
You're still back in the 1950s. You're still in the old blah,
blah, blah. I'll take it.
You know what? You're the one that's changing,
not me. God didn't change, the Bible
didn't change. The world changed, and
Christianity changed to follow the world.
I don't need to be like you to feel accepted.
I have one person that I'm looking for, for his acceptance,
and if he's not pleased, then I'm not pleased.
If he is, then I am, and that's all that should matter to us.
But something's changed in the last 30-40, fifty years, because
we certainly don't dress modestly like we used to.
And believe it or not, it wasn't the Bible that changed.
And I think what's happening as a result is that the American
church looks more and more like the world, all with barely a
blush that anything is amiss. And it's sad that we've gotten
to that point, but it falls on us then to change back into the
conformity with the word of God. I don't care if I'm conformed to
the world. I don't care if I'm conformed to
American Christianity. I want to be conformed to the
word of God. That is my standard.
That's my standard. So there's been a turn over to
Proverbs chapter 4. This is I think where things
have gotten off a little bit in the last 30-40, fifty years
because there's been an incorrect, or maybe I should say
an over emphasis on dress standards and past generations
in some churches and some Bible colleges and schools.
And what's happened then is there's been an overcorrection,
if you will, and many of the younger people that grew up
often in the independent Baptist movement and the Bible says in
Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 23, Solomon told us, keep thy heart
with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life and God.
As we, as we read through Matthew chapter 567, the
Beatitudes and, and all of the Sermon on the Mount, the whole
emphasis that that Jesus was emphasizing was the heart.
And the heart matters first, foremost and always, but not
necessarily how long your skirt is.
But God tells us that and God does tell us that some things
are weightier than others, right?
How you, how you share the gospel, if it's a genuine gospel
presentation or just a shallow quick prayerism is different
than if your skirt is long enough or not, right?
There are some things that are weightier than others, and when
colleges and ministries made conformity to outward appearance
equivalent to good Christianity, they were wrong.
But what that did was it produced an overreaction the
other way that says that appearance does not matter at
all. And all the sudden people are
getting grace and they're finding out that there's grace
with Christ and I can do whatever I want to because all
of it is covered under grace. That's a ditch on the other side
of the road, but both of them are ditches, right?
We need to bring it the car to the middle of the road, if you
will. The solution to an incorrect or
wrong emphasis is not no emphasis.
We still need to teach what the Bible says about our appearance,
even if somebody else previously or presently in some cases, miss
applies and misuses it. Turn over to second Timothy
chapter 4. I'll tell you this, most pastors
in most churches are afraid to discuss this idea.
Anytime pastors are afraid to touch an issue, there's a
problem. And I'll be the first to say
that this is not an easy thing for me to do.
Most people don't want to hear this today.
So the natural thing is to attack the messenger.
And I don't particularly care to put myself in that position.
But pastors, the Bible says in Second Timothy chapter 4 verse
#2 are called to preach the Word, be instant in season, out
of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering
and doctrine. I've told you this many times
before, I'm going to answer to the Lord for what I preach and
I'm going to answer to the Lord for what I don't preach.
I'm going to answer to him from my silence.
And as the statement goes, silence, silence is golden, but
sometimes it's just yellow. And that's what that's that's
what's happened in a lot of places.
Well, I just, I can't touch that issue because people are not
going to like it and I'm not preaching it or teaching it.
And that's really what I'm doing tonight is teaching this.
I'm not teaching it because I'm trying to make you mad or trying
to make you upset or anything like that.
But I have to be willing to lose friends no matter what.
It doesn't, it doesn't mean it just has to be standards.
I have to be willing to lose friends.
I have to be willing to lose even people in this church.
And I would, I, I hate the thought of that, but I have to
be willing to do that if I'm going to preach what God wants
me to preach and if I'm going to teach the things that God wants
me to teach. And so before we get into the
details of what a conviction and what a standard is, and that's
kind of your base. That's, that's, that's what you
determine where you draw those lines, how we apply those
things. I, I, I want to just conclude by
saying a couple things. Number one, this, this subject
needs to be studied. It needs to be taught, it needs
to be discussed, it needs to be applied.
And maybe this is the first time that you ever heard or this idea
of dress standards, or maybe you've heard that concept, but
you've never heard an explanation of why it's
necessary to follow modesty in this way.
It's not the end all be all of Christianity, but it's an
important issue that needs to be studied.
And I believe that that we as a church, we've, we have, we have
set this as our standard. And I believe that if you're
going to follow that standard in order to be able to serve in the
ministries, you need to understand why we have the
standard that we have. And so as the Lord sees my
heart, my desire is just simply to edify and simply to teach and
simply to help you understand why we do these things.
Our, our goal ought to be to love the Lord supremely with all
of our hearts and, and, and then to embrace the importance of
making that visible in our appearance.
If you love the Lord with all your heart, number one, you're
going to have a desire for the appearance to match what your
heart is. But #2 you're going to want to
be as close to, to, to what a Christian should do and, and be
and the way a Christian should dress as you possibly can.
And so I want you to listen as we go through this to what the
Bible has to say before you draw your automatic conclusions.
It's the next step in in getting closer to the holiness of God,
closer and as close as we can get to his word, as we possibly
can get. And I believe I know your
hearts, you would say that you want to be as close to God as
you possibly can be. So I'm not saying that this is
when you finally get this idea of dress standards down, that
you finally arrived at what a good Christian really ought to
be. But my whole point is our goal
ought to be as close to Christ and as close to his Word as we
possibly can be. And when you find out that maybe
there's some things that I can do that maybe some things that I
can change to get a little bit closer to him, I think that your
desire ought to be to do that. So let me jump into this
tonight. I'm just going to touch two
quick things tonight. And then I'm going to talk in a
little bit more deep detail about this next week, about what
what the, what the applied convictions and what the applied
standards are. But I need to, I need to take a
step back and talk to you about what a conviction is, because a
conviction is how we arrive at anything that we do, what we
wear, what we listen to, how we speak, right?
You have convictions against cursing, most of you, right?
You don't curse because you believe that it's wrong to
curse, right? Those are just words that
somebody made-up, right? But you have a, you have a
conviction against saying those words, right?
Why? Why don't you curse?
You have a conviction against drinking alcohol, right?
You don't drink because you know it's wrong.
But why? Why do you?
How did you arrive at that conviction?
And then what's your standard? There are some people who say,
well, a little bit of wine is OK or a little bit of beer here and
there is OK as long as I'm not getting drunk.
But that means you may or may not have a conviction.
But no matter what, you've set your standard very, very low
when it in relation to that conviction.
So I want you to understand tonight what what a conviction
and what a standard is and how we get to that that spot.
So let me give you just a quick definition of what a conviction
is. Very Simply put, it is something
that I am convinced about. That's what a conviction is.
The dictionary defines the word conviction as quote, a strong
persuasion or belief, the state of being convinced.
So conviction applies to something that is firmly and a
seriously held belief. When we're Speaking of the
things that we're convinced about, we're speaking in the
context of our doctrines and our practice.
But what becomes important then is how you arrive at the things
that you become convinced about, right?
A conviction. That's the line that we've
drawn. And that's honestly how some
people have come to different conclusions about convictions
and ultimately standards that arise from those convictions.
There are a few right ways and there are a few wrong ways to
arrive at those convictions. And I'll say this, first of all,
you're a pastor ought to be respected, but you should not
let your pastor form your convictions.
Now, my job as your pastor is to help lead you toward those
convictions and help lead you toward the word of God.
But if your conviction is only, this is what my pastor says we
do, then you don't have a conviction.
Your pastor has a conviction that you follow.
You need to have your own convictions because there may be
a day when I'm no longer the pastor of this church.
God could move me somewhere else.
God could Take Me Home. I don't, I don't know.
But if there's ever a day when I'm not the pastor of this
church, if those convictions were not yours, then the moment
I'm gone, all of those things go away, right?
You ought to have a conviction against contemporary Christian
music. That whether I'm here to enforce
the standard that we have with contemporary Christian music or
not, this church ought to go forward singing the old hymns,
singing about things that are pleasing to the Lord, not
contemporary Christian music, Not because I said it or that
was the standard that that pastor had.
He's gone. Now we've got a new pastor in
here. You ought to do it based on
conviction because you are convinced that contemporary
Christian music is against the word of God.
That's that's why you hold those standards.
That's why you have that conviction and you ought to have
your own convictions. Now, I hope you'll listen to the
things that I have to say about it.
I hope you'll follow me as I follow Christ.
And I hope that that you'll be convinced of the same things
that I am convinced of from God's Word.
But my point is, is if all you're doing when it comes to
your convictions is listening to what I say you should do and
listening to the what I say you have to do in order to serve in
one of these ministries, then you don't have a conviction.
And you're going to flop and, and, and flail around the second
you're no longer in this church or I'm not here.
And you need to have convictions for yourself.
If the reason you have that conviction is because your
pastor told you to have it, then you've arrived at your
conclusion for the wrong reason. And you don't have, you don't
have convictions. You need to be in the Word of
God. You need to be following up with
what's taught from the Word of God to make sure that you're not
just convinced by my words, but that you're convinced by the
Holy Spirit. And that's what I've said from
the beginning and probably will say many, many more times that
it's, it's, it's not my job to convince you and to try to teach
you, convince you of what I'm, what I'm trying to teach you
here. It's my job to present what I
see in the Bible as leading us toward more Christ likeness,
toward more allowing the Holy Spirit to do the work in our
lives. That's my job is to lead you to
those things. But the Holy Spirit has to be
the one that convicts you, because if the Holy Spirit
convicts you, it's very different then somebody
convinced, you know, convincing you of an argument.
Somebody, if I can convince you to change because of what I said
and it has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, then somebody
else can come along behind me and convince you of something
else. If the Holy Spirit does the
convincing and the Holy Spirit does that convicting, then it
doesn't matter who's here in this spot.
You're going to do what's right because the Holy Spirit gave you
that conviction. So just because the world
changes the standard does not mean that my convictions change
to match that standard. A conviction is something that
does not change. That's a hard and fast line that
you come to from God's Word. Society has changed dramatically
in the last 50 years, maybe a little bit longer, maybe 75.
I don't think that people who are alive 100 years ago would
recognize this country if they came back.
It's so different and it's changed dramatically, even even
over the last 10 or 15 years. And yet the Bible has not
changed. In 2000 years.
We have the same Word of God, the word of God that they had
100 years ago and 200 years ago and 500 years ago.
We still have today. Nothing has changed in God's
Word. So why are we moving away from
it? Why is society changing?
Why is Christianity changing? It's not God's word that
changed. It's us.
We're the ones that have changed.
Just because the world says something is acceptable now that
50 years ago was not acceptable does not give us the license to
change our convictions. A conviction is something that
does not change no matter who says it or no matter what the
world, what the world says. By the by the very nature of
what a conviction was, if it changes, it wasn't a conviction,
right? A conviction is a hard and fast
line that does not move. And if my conviction is based on
what the Bible says, and it doesn't matter what society says
is acceptable, it doesn't matter what my thoughts are or anything
else, my convictions and therefore my standards are not
going to change. I mentioned this a little bit
ago. You would probably, First off,
think I was joking, but secondly, probably be appalled
if I came in here dressed in a dress with makeup on and high
heels and prancing around the stage, right?
You would think it was a joke. And when you realize that I
wasn't joking, you would probably have a cow, right?
And, and, and most of you would probably get up and leave
because society has not said that a man prancing around in a
dress is acceptable yet, right? But 50 or 100 years ago, there
were things that were not acceptable that are acceptable
now that all the sudden the goal posts moved and now we've
changed it and now it's OK for a woman to put on a skin type pair
of jeans when that wasn't acceptable 50 years ago because
society said it wasn't acceptable, right?
All the sudden the goal posts moved.
Did the word of God change in those last 50 years?
Did your conviction change in the last 50 years?
Wasn't a conviction if it did, or have we moved closer and
closer and closer to the world because that's what they're
saying is acceptable? I think that's the case.
So it becomes ultimately important that we read the
Bible. We can't just use ignorance as
an excuse for a lack of conviction, right?
If a police officer pulls you over and he says any, any
particular reason why you ran through that stop sign back
there and you say, oh, I didn't realize that a stop sign meant
that you had to stop. Nobody's ever told me that
before. Well, you know what he's going
to say? Well, sorry, that's the rule of
the road. That's an easy ticket, right?
Because it's a rule. Just because you don't know that
the rule exists does not mean that you get a pass.
The police officer's not going to say, OK, well, I'll give you
a pass this time. But when you see a red, a big
red Octagon sign that says stop on it, you have to come to a
stop. All right, I'll give you a pass
this time. No, ignorance is not an excuse.
So when you say, well, I didn't realize that I shouldn't be
doing that or I didn't know that I shouldn't be doing that.
God, sorry, I just didn't know. He's going to say, I gave you
everything that you needed to know about how to live the way
that is the most pleasing to me. Just because you ignored it or
just because you didn't know it was there, because you never
read it, does not mean that you get a pass.
And so when it comes to our convictions and all of those
things, it's absolutely necessary to study the word of
God so we can arrive at the right principles, so we can
arrive at the right doctrine, so we can arrive at the right
convictions and therefore have the right standard.
So it becomes important to be in a church that holds to the word
of God regardless of political influence, regardless of
political correctness or influence by culture or, you
know, whatever they're trying to set as the standard today.
The convictions that we arrive at based on the word of God are
extremely important because that's how we arrive at our
standards. Now, let me tell you what a
standard is, and we'll be done. Turn over to Proverbs chapter 4.
In the typical dictionary, there's as many as 10
definitions on what a standard is.
But in the context of what we're talking about here, I think the
most appropriate one, the most appropriate definition that we
find in the dictionary is something set up and established
by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight,
extent, value, or quality. A pound has to stay within
certain boundaries, right? A pound has to be 16 ounces or
it's not a pound. If it's 17 oz, it's not a pound
anymore. It's a pound in an ounce, right?
Or maybe there's another unit for it, right?
There's, there's 12 inches and a foot.
If it's thirteen, it's not a foot, it's bigger, right?
They don't make some rulers that have 12 inches and some that are
12 and 1/4 and some that are 12 1/2 and some that are 11 3/4 and
just as long as you get close to that.
No, there's a standard, right? That's what a standard is.
It's a hard and fast measure, if you will, A guideline that's
going to help me judge or determine whether or not
something is acceptable. All right, If I'm trying to get
something that's exactly 1 foot long, I'm going to get a
yardstick. I mean a ruler.
And if I lay that ruler down next to that thing, if it's
longer than that, it's not a foot.
If it's shorter than that, it's not a foot.
Only when it matches up exactly to that standard is it a foot,
because a ruler is a standard measurement, right?
So in this context, then, here is what I would give you as a
definition of standards. They're rules that I institute
in my life that help me abide by my convictions.
And if you think about it like this, your conviction is a line
that you're not going to cross, right?
If I were to cross this line, I am convinced that I would be
sinning, right? I'm convinced that I would be
sinning if I crossed this line. So I don't think anybody that's
in here would disagree that the Bible says that women in
particular is who it's addressed to should dress modestly, right?
Modesty is that conviction. A woman ought to be modest.
So how do I define what modesty is?
There's people who define modesty in different ways,
right? Some would say that you have to
wear a skirt that goes down below your knee to be modest.
Some would say that as long as your pair of pants that you're
wearing is a little bit loose, then it's modest.
Right. So what's modest?
How do you define that? Well, we have that conviction.
Women are to be modest. Women are to dress modestly.
So I set my standard far enough back from that conviction so
that I don't break that conviction.
Right. OK.
The Bible tells men that they should have short hair, right?
If a man have long hair, does not nature itself teach you?
The Bible says that if a man have long hair, it's a shame
unto him, right? So my conviction is that a man's
hair should be short. What is short, right?
What's short? I mean, my hair is short, right?
But so is Brother Paul's, right? I can go shorter.
Yeah, he can go shorter, right? Is it long?
Only if it's down to the middle of your back or if it's resting
on your shoulders. What's long?
Right? Where is that?
Where do where do I cross that
line? And that I break that conviction
and it becomes a sin. You know what I do?
I set a standard to keep me from crossing that conviction.
So the standard is for men, especially in our church, we
have the standard that your hair should be off your ears and off
your collar. If your hair creeps down a
little bit farther and it's a little bit lower than your ears,
or if it's sitting on your collar just a little bit, are
you in sin? Well, I don't know.
It depends on what long is, right?
That's the conviction. So I set a standard, and the
higher I set my standard, the farther away I get from that
line. So that even if I were to give a
little bit on that, I'm not going to cross that conviction
and be in what I would consider to be sin, because I've set that
conviction line based on the word of God, right?
So I have my standard here. And if I'm talking about my
line, I don't put my standards right on the line of conviction
because then to break that standard just a little bit would
be to fall below that conviction line.
And then I believe that I'd be in sin.
So I set my standard higher than my conviction so that I have a
little bit of room to play with in there, right?
And if somebody has hair that's a little bit longer than mine,
I'm not going to go up to them and say you're in sin, cut your
hair, right? My standard is high when it
comes to the way that I cut my hair, right?
I want to be as far away from that line as possible.
That doesn't mean I need to go shave my head and be bald in
order to not have long hair, right?
But I do have standards that I've set so that I don't cross
the thing that I'm convinced that if a man has long hair,
it's a shame unto him, right? So standards are what I set to
help me keep from breaking my convictions.
Think about it this way for just a minute.
Let's say that I believe with with all my heart that high
fructose corn syrup is bad for you, right?
It's bad for your body. If you believe that, if you're
convinced of that, we could label that as a conviction,
right? High fructose corn syrup is bad
for you. That's my conviction.
So it would make sense then that I would institute in a rule in
my life that I'm not going to drink Coke or Doctor Pepper or
Mountain Dew or any of those other thousand carbonated
beverages that have high fructose corn syrup in them,
because my conviction is that that stuff is bad for you.
So the standard is that I'm not going to drink any of that pop
soda, whatever you want to call it.
I grew up in the Midwest. I call it pop, but most people
don't have any idea what that is.
By the way, if you go into a store, if you go into a
restaurant, the menu says pop on it.
By the way, it doesn't say soda or coke or whatever you want to
call it. But that's, if that's my
conviction, then I'm going to set a standard that I'm not
going to drink any of that because I don't want to.
I don't want to break that conviction.
Think about it like this, all right?
I've climbed the Grand Canyon, I've been to Pikes Peak, I've
climbed Pikes Peak a couple different times.
I've been to Niagara Falls a couple times.
I've seen some of these really, really dangerous places, right?
Do you know what they have everywhere?
Fences that keep you from walking over the edge of that
Canyon, right? So why did they set a fence?
Why does it matter? You should be able to get all
the way to the edge of that thing, and you should be able to
dangle your feet over the edge if that's what you want to do,
right? Well, they are setting the
conviction for you, right? So what they're doing is they
are here's the line. OK, This is the Canyon.
This whole center thing is the Canyon.
Do they put the fence right on the line?
Because you know what stupid tourists do all the time?
I got to get the best shot possible.
Look at me right. And they have to get that
selfie. No, they set the fence back away
from the edge of that Canyon because they know that people
are going to be stupid and they know that they're going to step
over that boundary and they're protecting you from yourself,
right? And that's exactly what we're
doing here. This, this is the conviction to
step over. This would be spiritual death,
right? I'm stepping into sin if I step
over that conviction line. But I would be really foolish if
I put my fence right on the edge of that line so that if I just
stepped over a little bit to try to get a better view or
something, I'm going right over the edge, right?
I want to be as far away from that edge as I possibly can be.
Now, I could also, you know, if the Grand Canyon's in Arizona, I
could put my fence in Indiana, and that'd be kind of dumb,
right? Which is where you get your
Amish and all of those kind of things, right?
I mean, those are standards that they've said they've just set
the standard so far back that it doesn't even make any sense to
have them set where they are, right?
But I'm going to set my standard far enough away from that
conviction line that if I were to cross that line even just a
little bit, I'm OK, right? And here's what you have, OK?
I said every church has a standard, right?
With everything, some churches take their music all the way up
to that edge. Now most of them are in the
Canyon and they're in. The reason that sounds like it
does is because the drums and everything else are bouncing
down the Canyon. That's why it sounds like that,
right? But at the same time, there are
some music that we wouldn't do in our church.
But I wouldn't necessarily say that it was wrong if somebody
else was doing that. That's just closer to the edge
than I want to be because I don't want to cross that
conviction line. I don't know exactly where that
is. I don't know exactly where you
crossed the line. And now that music is wrong.
But I'm going to set my standard way back here just to make sure
that I'm safe. Because the last thing that I
want to do is cross over that line and sin and do something
that's displeasing to the Lord. Do something that's not holy, do
something that's not Christ like, because I wanted to get as
close to that line as I possibly could.
So I set my, I set my, my convictions.
These are all based directly on the word of God.
And then based on what I read in God's word, I set my standards
farther back away from the edge of that thing just to make sure
that I'm not getting anywhere close to that edge.
And that's what I'm saying. Every church has their standard.
Some have their music standards right here.
Some have them here, some have them here.
We set ours a little bit higher. I'm we're back here doesn't make
us better. It just makes it more safe.
And that's exactly what we're talking about when it comes to
dress standards too, right? Some people put their dress
standards right in that line. You step over that, now you're
in sin because it's immodest. Now you're in sin because you've
crossed that biblical line of modesty.
I don't know where exactly that line is, but I set a standard
because I want to make sure that I don't cross that line.
I want as a man and, and, and I want from my wife and for my
daughter and for the ladies in this church to be modest.
I don't want you to cross that line and end up in a place where
you're disappointing your Lord, where you are, where you are
crossing that line from holy to profane, where you're crossing
that line from clean to unclean. So do we have some room to give?
Probably we do, right? I don't want to get into the
weird territory where I'm setting it on the other side of
the building just for the sake of setting a standard so high
that it's impossible to reach right.
But I want to set, I want to set my standard far enough back from
that edge that I don't want to cross that modesty line because
that's my conviction. And to cross that line of
modesty would be a sin against God because it's in His Word.
And that's why I set that line where I did.
So are our standards higher than a lot of other churches?
Yes, they are. It's not set higher than other
churches so that we can say, look at us, look what we're
doing. It's set higher than other
churches because they've decided that that's where they're going
to set their standard line. And they're allowed to do that
because they're their own individual church.
But for us, I want to be as far away from that line as I can be
while also being in a in a realm where I can actually talk and
work with people, right. I mean, most people don't give
the Amish the time of the day because they're their own little
entity way over here somewhere. And by the way, they're, they're
totally different because they're depending completely on
their works and everything else for their salvation.
But I'm just saying, if we took a, if we took a standard of the
Amish when it comes to our dress, we have to wear a bonnet.
And you can only wear black and you can only do this and you can
only do that. And, and I'm saying that you can
get to the point where you are regulating the Holy Spirit right
out of everything, right? And then you're no different
than the Pharisees and the Sadducees and everybody else in
the Old Testament where they were doing it just for the sake
of being able to say, look what we're doing, right?
That's not why we do it. We do it because there's the
conviction line. I'm setting my standards back
here because I don't want to cross that.
I don't want to be immodest. I don't want to be displeasing
to the Lord. Proverbs chapter 4 and verse #14
enter not into the path of the wicked and go not in the way of
evil men. Avoid it.
Pass not by it, turn from it and pass away.
Now let me bring up one point. As we close tonight, we have our
conviction line, right? This line is a conviction that
is based on God's Word. This is God's line, right?
This fence back here is a man made fence, right?
Those are those are fences that we put there as a way to keep
ourselves from crossing over that.
But I'll tell you this, if you never go over the fence, then
you certainly can't go over the edge of the Cliff.
And I want that line to be as far back as it can possibly be
so that I'm pleasing to the Lord in every aspect.
And and I'm bringing very general tonight because I'm
trying to explain to you what a conviction is and a standard is.
I'm going to get a little bit in more detail when I'm talking
about our dress standards next week.
And there's a lot more to this. There's a lot of principles that
we find in God's word and I and if you're, if you're interested
in, I would be, I mean, I think it would be very helpful for you
to go and watch some more of that series that I did before.
I'm I'm only kind of touching the surface with a lot of these
things. But all of that to say that
there are times when the deceitfulness of sin is so
strong that we've got to set that fence farther back because
it's deceptive and it and it and it looks maybe not so dangerous,
but it's very dangerous. And it looks like maybe we could
get a little bit closer to that. It would be fine.
But then somebody steps over that line and they disappear
down that precipice. Set that standard far enough
back from the edge and make a make a decision not to step over
that line. And there's no way that you can
fall down into that Canyon. That's that's my whole point
when it comes to this thing. So the next week I'm going to
discuss 2 aspects of dress that help us define our standards.
And ultimately it's the reason why we have the standards that
we have in our church. I'll just give you those two
principles that we're going to talk about next week.
It's modesty and distinction. Those are the two principles
that we find in God's word that help us to define where we put
our standard. You've got the conviction.
We know that women should be modest.
We know that even men should be modest.
And there's, by the way, there's, there's principles for
men too when it comes to the way that we dress, right?
These skinny jeans and these tiny little shorts that
everybody's wearing. And you know, those are not,
those are not that's, that's not modest.
Doesn't matter. I mean, oh, men can be mod.
Men can't be modest. Men can't be immodest.
That's only for the women. No, men can be immodest.
And we ought to be modest too, right now, where we draw that
line, where we draw that line is what our standard is.
How do you arrive at that standard?
That's what we're going to talk about next week when it comes to
dress. The two principles that we
follow when it comes to where that standard is, is modesty and
distinction, and we'll talk about that next week.
All right, let's pray. Father, again, we thank you so
much for your goodness to us. We thank you for an opportunity
that we've had to to discuss some of these things tonight
from your word. I pray that it's been a help.
I pray that that that nobody's confused.