Book of 1 Timothy - Ch. 2, vv. 9-10 | Part 3

Exhortation to Modest Apparel in 1 Timothy 2

For our visitors, I'll say this, we've been going verse by verse through 1st Timothy. And so, hitting up all of the various themes and doctrines and things that the Apostle Paul is bringing to the table here.

But, we're specifically in chapter 2 and verses 9 and 10 at the moment. And if you're familiar with this passage, you know that verses 9 through 15 in this day and age are somewhat controversial. Not because there's anything too crazy going on in this passage, but because many modern, perhaps you could say more liberal theologians want to take a different approach than what this specific text prescribes.

And so, what do you do with the text that you're presented with? And so, there's where all the controversy comes from. But as we read it, it's very plain. And not only is it plain, but there is a lot of beauty within it as well.

We haven't even really gotten to some of the quote-unquote controversial stuff just yet. But in verse 9, you can see where this begins to unfold when the Apostle Paul says, in like manner also, so he ties it back to verse 8, where he just exhorted men in the church to pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.

And so, what Paul is saying there is that men have a particular sin proclivity toward losing their self-control with regard to anger, and then that turning into quarreling and wrath and all of these types of things that can happen.

Wrath and doubting, doubting could be translated a number of different ways there. Essentially, very contentious argument, but not from a point of trying to come to truth necessarily. More so to try to maybe win an argument or something like that.

And so, men have a tendency to fall into that particular sin pattern somewhat easily. And so, he just gave that exhortation. You get into verse 9 and he says, in like manner also, so in the same way that men need to be on guard about this, he says 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.

So, that's what we've been talking about probably for about three weeks at this point. We've been breaking this out a little bit into a topic on what biblical modesty even is. Because as we have addressed up to this point, it is a topic that is either neglected outright so as to not offend anyone's specific preferences, or it is kind of inappropriately brought to the table in a very legalistic fashion where all of the sudden very stringent dress codes are brought to the table and things like that that can start to feel a little bit off at the same time.

So, what do we do with all this? How do we get back to the straight and narrow path and ensure that what we are doing is God-honoring and not falling into either ditch? So, that's where we've been. And we ended last week, we took kind of a brief survey of the Old Testament.

And we looked at a number of passages that demonstrated what does Paul mean when he says to adorn? What are the assumptions of Paul when he tells women to adorn themselves with modest apparel? Is he now exhorting women to dress in a way that is consistent with his own preferences?

Or are there some biblical assumptions built into what he's saying that can inform us on what he meant? And so, of course, the answer is the Apostle Paul was completely consistent with the other scriptural testimonies.

And we looked at a number of them last week. We looked at Exodus chapter 3. We looked at Ezekiel 16. Isaiah 61. We looked in Genesis. And then we ended by looking at the very famous passage on the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31.

Verse 22 says,. So, if we were to summarize all of the Old Testament passages we looked at, there's a pretty good summary of it right there. And that is that obviously, biblical modesty and biblical adornment is not anything that will ever subtract from the God-given femininity of women.

It is nothing that will ever take away from her unique glory, her unique femininity. It will elevate it, is the word we've been using. And things like that. And so the virtuous woman, she maketh herself coverings of tapestry of silk and purple.

These are fine materials. This is nothing that, again, is going to subtract from her beauty, from her glory, and things like that. And so, that's kind of where we ended last week. The modest apparel of a Christian woman that is complete with high-quality materials, fine jewelry, these are things that we learned from all of those passages we looked at last week.

It will always be consistent with feminine strength and dignity. The internal dignity of a virtuous woman will always be displayed outwardly in the apparel that she has. And it will always be dignifying.

That's kind of where we ended last week. So now, that was brief review. Let's just pick it up where we left off, and hopefully we'll finish this section before we run out of time. Take a look at 1 Timothy 2.

We'll pick it up at verse 9. Let's get into the specifics a little bit of what the Apostle Paul means when he starts saying things like shamefacedness, sobriety, and then on the negative side as well, when he says, don't do this.

We'll look at all of that at this point. The women adorn themselves in modest apparel, shamefacedness, and sobriety. I have to give you all a very interesting little parenthetical here. You all know that in this church we have a penchant for the KJV.

We love it for a number of reasons. And so, because of that, I want to throw in this little parenthetical if you're reading along with me in the KJV. This is just an interesting note more than anything.

But in the original 1611 that was done originally, the translators translated the Greek term here where in our English version we see shamefacedness, kind of a weird old English word here. The Greek term in the 1611 was translated shamefastness.

Not shamefacedness, but shamefastness, an even older English word. And as the years went by and new editions of the KJV were published, the old English word was edited to a slightly more contemporary, which is funny because to us it's very old at this point, but a more contemporary word from shamefastness to shamefacedness.

And the problem with that is, number one, we've got to remember it's the Greek that was originally inspired, not the English. So there are times in which we look beneath our translation to get a better sense of what the apostle was trying to convey.

And what's sad about the introduction of shamefacedness over the original translation of shamefastness is that our word right here in the KJV, it carries a totally different connotation than the even older English word.

Shamefacedness here is an old English word that implies, it implies a behavior after someone has done something wrong. Does that make sense? So shamefacedness, the old English word, it carries the connotation of a person that is now kind of coming to the table with a contrite heart, with a repentant heart because they have done something wrong.

But the reason why that isn't quite an appropriate translation at this particular point, and why the older English word was a little bit better, it kind of correctly implied what the Greek word is telling us, and that is what?

It's telling us that the person, the woman in this case, it's not that she's coming repentantly because she did something wrong to begin with. What it means is that she is preventing herself from acting foolishly.

That's what the Greek term means, and that's even what the really, really old archaic English word shamefastness implied as well, is that she is behaving in a way that is preventative of foolish action.

It's not a matter of she acted foolishly and now she's regretting it in doing the various things that she needs to after the fact, which is what shamefacedness implies. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there.

What the word means is it is acting with a sense of decency, with a sense of propriety. They are not shameless women. These are women with a lot of dignity. And that's what the original Greek term implies here in chapter 2, verse 9, when you see that very old English word shamefacedness used there.

And so I just had to throw that out there. I thought that was a fascinating historical note. With that slight editing done to the original 1611, the original translation was quite good. Okay, so let's move on now that we have that as an aside.

He goes on to say, he puts some things in the negative now. He says, not with breaded hair, or with gold, or with pearls, or with costly array. Now when you read that verse quickly and you move through it, you might get to this point and you think, well, it really sounds like Paul is saying that women just shouldn't dress nice.

I mean, he's saying jewelry out the window. Hairstyles out the window. Costly array, you can't do that. That's what it sounds like when you're moving quickly. But the problem is, he just finished saying the exact opposite of that in the same exact verse that he ends with those exhortations.

And so we have to understand that he is trying to make a specific point here. And the point that he's making isn't to come up with an arbitrary list of do's and don'ts that Paul is saying meets my personal preferences.

What he's trying to do is, he is saying that women are not to display themselves in a haughty or an ostentatious way that is inappropriately kind of putting themselves out there for attention in a negative sense.

He's saying that despite what people try to say about what they're actually doing, you have to understand this is an issue that begins in the heart and is now displaying itself outwardly in this ostentatious way.

Now, despite what people want to say about this verse today in our current culture, this is not a matter of cultural context. So what they'll do, what a lot of modern day theologians will do at this point, is they'll say, ah, well Paul is saying you can't braid your hair, you can't wear gold, you can't wear pearls, you can't wear nice clothes.

And so obviously, and by the way this kind of touches on one of the arguments that is made for discounting this entire passage all the way through verse 15, not just this verse. But they'll say obviously this is all contextual to where the apostle Paul was living in his day.

These exhortations were for ancient women because obviously it's totally fine for women to braid their hair for crying out loud or to wear a nice gold bracelet every now and then or something of that sort.

So obviously this had to have been contextual and contextual only. Here's the problem that they miss and we'll try to work through this a little bit more as we go. And that is that we are, even in a 21st century cultural context, 2 ,000 years removed from the apostle Paul writing these verses here, we are just as averse today as people of the book, as people, as Christians that read their Bibles, take it seriously and want to apply it consistently across the board.

We're just as averse today to kind of a haughty public display as Christians in the 1st century would have been as well. And that's the point that Paul is trying to meet here. He's trying to bring to the table.

The specific choices of vanity that Paul picks may be somewhat cultural and actually I believe they were. And I'll explain why here in just a moment. We have things that can spell this out. In some of the contemporaneous literature of that time, Philo, Pliny, men like that described prostitutes as displaying themselves, go figure, in the same way that Paul is here saying don't do that.

So there is a sense in which you had a contextual manifestation of a particular sin in Ephesus at the time that Paul was writing this. But we can't lose sight of the principle that is beneath the specific thing that Paul is dealing with that we now have a slightly different variation of.

And so the principle is the same across generations and that's namely this, that when a woman is showy or ostentatious in her outward appearance for the sake of vanity, and that's the key, for the sake of vanity, it's a really bad thing.

And that obviously is no different for us than it was for the Apostle Paul. And that's why when we see arguments that try to limit the context of what Paul is saying here to 2 ,000 years ago and that only, it begins to fall apart when you really start to break down the passage as we go.

There was a tension in the region of Ephesus that Paul was trying to address head-on with zero equivocation, so he didn't want to be ambiguous at all with the way he was bringing his exhortations to the church at this time.

And that's why he got as specific as he did. You had women that were literally immersed in pagan culture that exalted a form of ostentation that intentionally brought attention to the female in a way that commodified her beauty rather than elevating it.

And there was a number of different ways in which they would do that. They would commodify it in the sense of prostitution, like I mentioned a second ago, but you even had the aristocracy, or women, even the wives of the emperors themselves, who would commodify their beauty in a sense of reputation or in a sense of political showiness or whatever it may be.

There was an allurement to it that was intended to subvert, but it would obviously play out differently depending on the social classes we were talking about. Regardless of the social class, you could have been the wife of an emperor, or you could have been a slave, or you could have been a prostitute, or anything that you could list.

The thing that Paul is trying to spearhead here was the same, and that was the commodification of beauty rather than the elevation of beauty. Philo described it, Pliny described it, and so those are some historical accounts that we can use to back up why Paul was so concerned with the specifics that he was.

And so what Paul found himself with here was a church in Ephesus, and he's talking to the young Timothy here on how to disciple this church. Just picture it. Just put yourself in the same situation. As a pastor, you can imagine some of the concerns that he had.

This is a church that was filled with fresh converts coming out of that culture that I just described. They were immersed within it just like a few hours, a few days, a few weeks prior to becoming converted to Christianity just within decades of Jesus Himself ascending back to the throne of power.

And what do you do with that? What does someone like Paul do with that? He knew that to have women of the church in the church, women who were supposed to be the embodiment of godliness and the glory of the church itself, he knew that for them to come in from their pagan culture as fresh converts, maybe not even knowing any better yet, to appear like prostitutes or maybe even coming in intending just to draw attention to themselves in a worship service, that would have essentially been to blaspheme God in His own house.

Because even though churches were meeting in the private homes of Christians at that time, they didn't have the blessing like we have today of local church bodies being able to meet in a dedicated building and things like that.

Even though they were meeting in the living room of people's private homes, it was still God's house on the Lord's Day when the congregation and the assembly met to worship Him and to open the pages of scripture and all of these types of things.

And so Paul didn't want any form of blasphemy to occur. He didn't want the outside world to see the women coming in dressed just like the pagans that are around them going into the worship service of the one true God.

He wanted them to understand the same assumptions that he had coming from Ezekiel, coming from Isaiah, coming from the Old Testament as to what real adornment looks like, as to what the elevation of beauty looks like as opposed to the commodification of beauty.

And so what does Paul do with all of this? With this concern, this great concern, this serious concern? He gives us seven ways for women of the church to dress. Three of them are positive. Four of them are negative.

So you could say he gives three specific ways to dress and he gives four specific things to avoid in these verses that we're in. So first, in verse 9 again, he says modest apparel. And that's a reference, of course, to dressing in a respectable way, in a way that is dignified.

We've talked about that quite a bit in weeks past. So this is a form of dress that is consistent with the dignity within a Christian woman. It doesn't reduce her femininity. It doesn't subtract from her beauty.

In fact, it actually adds to it. But it is just as dignified as her regenerate heart. And that's what the Greek terms there for modest apparel are referencing. We talked a little bit about the word shamefacedness already, but another way that could be translated into more modern English would be, interestingly enough, modesty.

So kind of a double entendre there. Or decency. So you could translate verse 9, you could say somewhat like this, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with decency and sobriety is one way that you could say that.

And then of course you have your next word there, sobriety. Now that's interesting because now we're talking about something that goes beyond mere physical clothing that we put on. He's now talking about character and virtue.

And so to adorn oneself with sobriety, as it puts it in the KJV, it's essentially to say that they are to dress themselves with self-control or with discreteness. The Greek term carries the connotation that you have when you're talking about a person that has a fitting sense of shame for the setting that they are dressing themselves for.

What do I mean by that? When you picture yourself you're in the privacy of your own home and in that particular context you have a number of options and a number of different contexts in which you can step into to apply the adornment of verse 9.

We're talking about Christian ladies here. So one example would be in a particular outfit that would be more than appropriate for perhaps going out into the garden and working the garden and harvesting and all these types of things may not be appropriate to go to church in.

Was that because they were being just immodest in the garden? Not necessarily. What it means is that you understand the principle we've talked about at length already and that is clothing communicates and you want your clothing, you want your outward appearance to demonstrate the reverence that you have when you walk into the Lord's house is one example.

You might, you know, what would be appropriate for the garden may not be appropriate or wouldn't be appropriate to go to church in. Does that mean that you have to be thinking through strategically how do I dress in order to keep up with the Joneses or something?

Obviously that's not the case. That kind of thing can start to go on the other ditch that we're trying to avoid. We don't want to reduce femininity by going the frumpy route that we've talked about in previous weeks or the more legalistic route or anything like that.

But at the same time you don't want to go over here to the other side and slip into the ditch of trying to keep up with the Joneses, keep up with the fads, keep up with the specific styles of the day just for the sake of being able to say that I am being stylish in the moment.

The reason why we go with a different apparel between garden or being in the house or going to a family reunion and church is because what we're doing is we understand that we are stepping into once more the Lord's house to worship the living God with the heavens open and on a day that is set aside specifically for Him and we want our outward appearance to speak the same way that we are verbally speaking.

We want our outward appearance to display what our inward hearts feel but that the world can't see. Now what's cool about it is that you can take snapshots of every Christian culture that has existed for 2 ,000 years and you can set them all side by side by snapshots, I mean literal photographs of let's just say churchgoers men and women alike.

What you will see is you will see very distinct a very distinct evolution in things like style and the way that they appear the specific auxiliary pieces they may be wearing whether it be maybe it's a necktie now but maybe in the past it was something completely different and you go back further it was something completely different.

You go back further it's not to say that there is a static dress code for God's people. What it is is it's principle and it's a principle that is applied and has been applied for 2 ,000 years. It's the idea of modesty which biblically speaking begins in the heart and works its way out.

So one of the things that Ash brought up at the end of last week's lesson which was very important is that you can dress as as frumpy as you possibly can imagine. So something that again is as far from the egregious immodesty that our culture sees today as possible.

It can still be a form of immodesty in the heart. It can still be haughty. It can still be prideful. It can be completely missing the point. Biblical modesty has to begin in the heart first and that works its way out in a reverence toward God which is why we don't come to church wearing the same thing we might in the garden or do a family reunion or mow in the lawn or something like that.

It doesn't mean we were immodest in those moments. What it means is that we understand and we have a sense of shame to put it to go back to the Greek term that we're talking about here for sobriety. It's a sense of shame in knowing that the context that I am now entering has an appropriate setting.

We are dressing ourselves for the setting we are stepping into. That's what the Greek term is talking about. It has a fitting sense of shame for that person. Of course in verse 9 we're talking specifically about women here.

What may be appropriate in one setting isn't for church and you could come up with a number of different hypotheticals of that would be true. You're not going to dress the same at a wedding as you would to go run your errands throughout the week or you're not going to dress the same to go watch the kids play ball as you would to a nice family dinner or something like that.

You can come up with innumerable examples of what we're talking about here and the principle is the same in every single one of them. That's why you don't have to worry about very specific dress codes because all of a sudden a dress code is no longer transcendent whereas principles are.

So the negatives to get into those now. He then gets into after all of this. So at this point he has said to dress yourselves or adorn yourselves in modest apparel, shamefacedness, sobriety, all of these things.

And then he gets into these, the negatives which you can essentially kind of bring together into three main categories here. He says avoid broided hair. That would be kind of the category of hairstyles in general.

Gold and pearls, so you could throw that into a category of jewelry. And costly array which of course would be clothing. Okay, so this raises the question that we've already alluded to, we've already answered I feel like and that is what Paul's saying here mean that it's sinful for a woman to braid her hair or to wear gold or to wear nice clothes.

And we've already answered the question and of course it's no because we learned previously that these very things can be used in a dignified way, not a sinful way. What Paul is wanting to avoid here is the way in which haughtiness and gaudiness was displayed by women at the Church of Ephesus at the time.

But that's remember, it's a hard issue. It's not about the gold necessarily. It's not about the braided hair per se. It's about the intent behind all of it. Turn with me really quick to a passage that I think Robert actually brought this up last week.

But take a look at 1 Peter 3. And there's a very important and a very important angle that the Apostle Peter now brings into the picture that solidifies kind of what I'm saying here which is this reality that Paul is not making it all about the external and listing out do's and don'ts just for the sake of it.

He is hitting something very important here consistent with all of Scripture, not just an isolated passage. He had a very specific concern in mind that he was trying to address and that's why we see what we see in verse 9 and in verse 10 here in a second.

The Apostle Peter, who was encouraging Christians in a different context was able to shade in a specific thing for us here that helps. Look at 1 Peter 3. I'm going to start in verse 3. Well, I'll start in verse 1 because you need to see who he's talking to.

He says, Likewise ye wives, so these are women who are married, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may be without the word, be won by the conversation of the wives.

Unbelievable passage right there because it tells you the power that you have in living your life according to the Bible even when your spouse doesn't want to. It is such a strong and such a potent gospel presentation lived out that it could be the very instrument that leads to the conversion of your spouse if they're not saved yet.

Yeah, Yannick? Oh, I'm sorry. It's 1 Peter 3 and I'm starting in verse 1. Sorry, I said verse 3 and then I went up. Anyway, I tend to do that sometimes. Okay, so that's an amazing verse in and of itself.

In and of itself, but look at verse 2. While they behold your chaste conversion, or conversation, sorry, coupled with fear, so they see your chaste behavior, they see it coupled with the fear of the Lord, which of course is the foundation for all Christian living, men and women alike.

They see that and they could even be converted by it. And then look at verse 3. This is where it gets into what I wanted to look at. Who's adorning, so it's talking about the wife, the godly Christian wife, who's adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel.

I want you to notice here that there's no qualifier for apparel at this particular point. The Apostle Paul says costly array, so that seems to invoke a sense of, well we don't need to be dressing, you know, too nicely.

We've got to draw some lines that you would, if you took Paul in isolation, and by isolation I mean pretty much that one verse by itself, you might come to that conclusion. That's not what he was saying though.

And the Apostle Peter here helps us out because he doesn't give a qualifier for the type of clothing, he just says the putting on of apparel. Let's keep going and then we'll readdress that in a second.

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 a great price. For after this manner in the old time, the holy women also, who trusted in God adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are, as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement.

And we could go on, and I would love to spend more time in this passage, it's wonderful. But here is the main thrust of it, and how it directly applies to our passage in 1 Timothy. The issue is not primarily external.

That is what Peter is talking about, that's ultimately what Paul is talking about too, but Peter can be helpful here. It's always an internal issue primarily working its way out. So what Peter is simply saying is that if the external is made primary, it's all wrong.

And how does he do it? Well he does it in an even more exhaustive sense than Paul does because he just simply says in the clothes you put on, well obviously we can deduce that the Apostle Peter was not implying that you shouldn't put on clothing.

What he's saying is you shouldn't put on clothing with the motivation of being haughty, of being ostentatious, of being all of these things that the Apostle Paul is preaching against himself in 1 Timothy.

If the external is made primary it's all wrong. He doesn't give a qualifier as to the types of clothes, like I said, that he's even talking about. What he's doing is he's giving us a principle. He's giving us a principle here.

And if we apply that same principle to 1 Timothy 2 .9, our main passage, you can figure that the issue isn't about the pieces of clothing per se, but about modesty. That is the thrust of Paul's argument going back to 1 Timothy 2.

It's not about gold, it's not about braided hair, it's not about a costly array or nice clothes. That's not what it's about. It is about a hard issue working its way out in an immodest way, but he's saying the immodesty starts long before you step out the door in whatever it is that you're wearing.

The Historical Context of Ephesus and Pagan Ostentation

Okay, so all that is great. All that makes sense. The Apostle Paul, we can see the principle, or the Apostle Peter, rather. Obviously we could consistently say that Paul is wanting to stay in line with these exact same principles, and he is.

He has the whole Old Testament to back him up. So we can agree with all that, but we still need to ask the question, why does Paul go after these specific pieces of cosmetic contribution? We've alluded to it already.

You know, there is to a degree an historical context at play. We have record that these were the very, when he says the broided hair and the golden pearls and the costly array and things like that, we actually have secular, contemporaneous record, historical record, that those were the specific ways that pagan women acted in a flamboyant and gaudy way.

So all the Apostle Paul is doing here as he is approaching the women at Ephesus is he is pointing out, point blank, here is what you are used to. Don't do that anymore. This is the way in which a Christian woman adorns herself.

And then he unfolds the argument from there. If he wrote, or let me put it this way, if we wrote this particular verse today, we could insert a lot of different placeholders at this point, but the principle would be exactly the same.

So we could replace braided hair with something different. We could replace gold and pearls with something different without ever changing the thrust of Paul's argument or the principle within it. Now, here's another aspect of the principle that I think is worth throwing out there really quick is we can now gather that good things, or I should say things that are intended for good, can be abused and exploited.

So, we'll actually look at a passage here in Isaiah that demonstrates this, but I'll go ahead and cut to the chase a little bit. We saw passages last week in Ezekiel, I'll just use that as the example, where we see God himself adorning his bride with gold, with fine linen, with earrings, with nose rings, with bracelets, with all kinds of wonderful things as he is in the process of basically bringing the glory back to her after her harlotry, and of course it's all an analogy of Israel and what they did, specifically Jerusalem, in that context.

And, per the echo principle that Dad has taught us before, we know that to use a natural analogy to describe a greater spiritual truth tells us that the natural analogy is just as true. So when we see that God, kind of metaphorically if you will, is dressing his bride in this way, we know that he thinks these physical pieces of jewelry and clothing and things like that are meaningful.

That in an earthly sense, you could, a bridegroom could adorn his bride in the same way and it would be God-honoring. That's what we learned last week. And now here we are with Paul, giving us a context in which gold and pearls and all this kind of stuff is used in a negative context in a dishonoring way.

Here's the principle. Good things, or at least part of it, good things can be abused. It can be used in a God-honoring way, and a way that is not. Let me give you some modern examples. Think about plastic surgery for a second.

It's a God-sin in the sense that imagine what people have gone through in car accidents, in war, in terrible accidents that we could hardly ever imagine, and what doctors have been able to do in order to essentially bring them back.

We know of many different examples where it's just unbelievable the day we live in and the grace of God as it plays out through modern medical advancement, things like that. Now we typically call that a specific subcategory of plastic surgery.

We would refer to it as reconstructive surgery, and it's a wonderful thing. Again, you can go back in time just a little bit without some of the advancements we have, and you had people that were either burned or in car accidents or things like that that were never able to feel the same or look the same again because they didn't have what we have now.

It's a wonderful thing. It's a beautiful thing, but at the same time we can all know and recognize that the other subcategory of plastic surgery, that being cosmetic surgery, is something that can be egregiously abused that plays into the immodesty of our culture today.

Does that mean that plastic surgery in and of itself is bad? No, just for the same reason that gold and pearls and braided hair and costly ray are not bad in and of themselves. It's all about what's going on in the heart.

It's all about what am I trying to tell the world right now? Do I want all their eyes on me for provocative reasons or do I want to display the glory of Christ's bride? In the context of women of course.

What is going on in the heart and how is that working its way out? So you have things like plastic surgery, you have things like cosmetics in general, clothing, jewelry, all of these things even today can either be used for good or bad.

And so we have to remember these types of things and we learn the theology of this directly from the passage we're in and from parallel passages like what we just looked at in Peter. So the nutshell version of what Paul is arguing for in 1 Timothy 2 verse 9 is especially with the negatives that he's presenting is that you shouldn't dress in a particular way in order to get the attention of others as the motivation.

Now you can't help it whether you get the attention of others. You can be doing everything perfectly appropriately according to God's word and you may still get attention from others. You can't control that.

But if your motivation is to get attention from others, that's where the game starts to change and that's what Paul is arguing against. In the brief amount of time we have, turn with me one more time, just one more quick passage to demonstrate some of these things to Isaiah chapter 3.

I just want to color in a little bit with using a biblical example of when you don't do what Paul is saying to do here. In other words, when you take the otherwise neutral things, such as the outward apparel, the clothing, the jewelry, the hairstyles, all this type of stuff, when you take an otherwise somewhat neutral thing and then you apply a sinful motivation behind it such as the haughtiness and all that sort of thing, then you can see a picture of how it can be abused.