A Catechism on Christian Attire — Mike Avery

Christian Attire as a Biblical Catechism

Come to me and talk to me about this in an inquisitive sense, older people come and talk to me about it in a sense of burden. I'm going to speak to you this afternoon on a catechism on Christian attire.

A catechism on Christian attire. Just selecting this one passage in Timothy, I'll be referring to many others. Paul wrote Timothy, saying, I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.

And like men are also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness with good works.

Father, bless our words this afternoon. May they be your words. Let the Holy Spirit of God grant the anointing and grant a sense of balance in what I want to say today. Help us in Jesus' name. Amen. I don't know how many of you have seen Wendell Taylor's book on a theology of adornment.

I had not seen it. I was in a camp meeting with him. Someone mentioned the book. I bought a copy. I stayed up into the night to read the book right through, hoping it would be something I could just heartily recommend to everybody.

Well, I heartily recommend it. The only problem is, I just don't recommend it to everybody because it is extremely weighty. It's difficult to read. The average gum-chewing Janet Oak reader is not going to read this book.

You're going to lay it aside. It's too heavy. He wades into it deeply. So I don't think I can just recommend it broadly. You're welcome to try to get a copy. You ought to try to wade through it. But I do want to read something from the front, the introduction that he says that I think is extremely important for you and I to hear.

Historical Holiness Teaching on Adornment

He contends that, and rightly so, that modesty, sobriety, and holy adornment has been in keeping with historical Methodism. Our good Methodist brother, Brother Smith, would concur that it is the people called Methodists that, from the Word of God, have created a form, a system, a catechism to promote a holy attire.

We've not always understood that. He goes on to say, this position and practice had its source in dynamic revival light. Many of the issues that we embrace today were not formulated by men and women who were spiritually dead and half-blind.

They were born out of dynamic revival light, vibrant holiness, growth, and victory. It appears, however, that Christian bodies can sometimes be practically correct while failing to be doctrinally clear, and that the Church may sometimes spontaneously do what is right, but in some measure fail in scripturally supporting that right.

Positions and practices that are not adequately supported in the childhood of the Church will not suffice for the day of its manhood. And I think we would all agree that we're out of our childhood as a movement.

We've grown up. So there must be someone to comprehensively cultivate and communicate the doctrine of adornment. In the midst of the winds of change regarding adornment, God has been teaching me that mere resistance to change and contending for customary practice will not meet the need of questioning pressured and confused hearts.

Some may think that the question of adornment, which this book addresses, lies in the unbiblical traditions of our founding fathers and mothers. If that is true, in the unbiblical conditions, did you catch that?

If they lie in the unbiblical traditions of our founding mothers and fathers, then they ought to be respectively dropped. However, the truth seems rather to be that the foundations of adornment have existed eternally in the nature and in the mind of God and deserve to be carefully explored and faithfully expounded.

So if you're one of those that basically believes the things that you and I embrace and we refer to as holiness standards, our standards of dress, were just somehow created in the board meeting in the early part of this century, you're just only testifying to your shallowness and your ignorance of not only the Bible, but of good historical theology as well.

The Need for a Biblical Apologetic

In these days we have allowed the world to set the agenda for how we talk about dress. We allow the world to literally take pages in the newspaper and in catalogs to set the agenda for dress. But as soon as a man of God would dare rise and raise his voice on this subject of how the children of God should attire themselves, we become terribly offensive, we sharpen our sword, we cry legalism, we cry foul play, and we just get all bent out of shape about it.

And we've almost found it customary to lay to the root of biblical lifestyles the problems for everything we've got. We've somehow made that the chore boy or the whipping post of all of our problems. On the other hand, the truth is that our society's false and distorted messages on clothing and appearance have left a devastating effect on the Church that's become silent about the matter.

It is also clear that the feelings held by the previous generation of holiness people are not being passed on and shared by today's generation. And a generation without clear beliefs and values about these particular issues will be a generation that will crumble under the pressure of a secular society's imposing views, and it will embrace theirs and not ours.

History teaches us that when a generation fails to know why they believe what they believe, their basic convictions are in danger of being totally lost. That's why they say it only takes one generation to go from a holiness Church to a non-holiness Church.

It only takes one generation. And more than ever, we lack a clear, sound, believable, apologetic for what we believe to be a biblical statement on how a Christian ought to dress. This would enable us to teach these disciplines instead of just taking pop shots at them.

Now, I want to put some of you on notice. I embrace the basic values of the biblical lifestyles of the holiness movement. I do my best intellectually and hopefully anointedly defend them. But I try to do it with some sanity and sense.

It wearies me with people who just want to take an empty-minded pop shot about them. They want to stand up somewhere and testify and take a pop shot at somebody sitting over here. Or they get in the pulpit and they run down through their retinue of hair and hose and t-shirts and toeless heels and TV and blah blah, and never give any basis for their machine-gun tactics.

It's those sort of things that have turned people off while we are lacking a clear statement on dress. We've moved into a generation that no longer feel loyalty to denominations. I don't know of a single conservative holiness denomination that's growing.

Every one of them are declining in their membership. Every pastor is wringing his hands and telling you this. He says, it's not that I can't get people to church. I can't bring them to the place of full membership.

Many have drawn the false conclusion that the reason we can't bring people from conversion to basic membership is because of some antiquated, old, worn-out, foggy standards that have been passed down that nobody in his right mind would ever believe.

I don't think that's true. I think the reason we can't bring them from here to here is that we do not have an intellectual, believable, apologetic for what we say we believe. I've yet to meet a group of people, when you clearly explain and intelligently explain why you believe what you say you believe, that did not at least give you the time to listen to you, and many of them say, well, that's right.

But instead of presenting a strong apologetic, most have just hunkered down, shot from the hip, pitched out a few ill-advised statements, and when people don't swallow it up, they say something like this.

They say, well, if it really got saved and sanctified, they would agree with the old-fashioned standards. Or they'll shoot something out like this, well, they're just a compromiser looking for an easy way.

Well, that's probably true in some people's cases. But in many of the cases I meet, they're not a bunch of half-hearted summertime saints. They do want to serve the Lord and give God everything in their lives, but they're not about to embrace something they cannot understand as biblical any more than you're going to embrace speaking in tongues.

They want to know why. They want to let it rest on the Word of God. And that's true. Then why shouldn't they want it any other way? I'm not about to swallow some of your pet ideas and thoughts if I can't anchor them to truth.

Truth isn't going in this direction or truth isn't going in that direction. You don't get any closer to truth by being more to the right or more to the left. Truth's right here. And going in an extreme position either way will never get you closer to truth.

To make this worse, we have tended to compensate for our lack of outreach by declaring it's our standards. Having a standard isn't the problem, but it's our manner of emphasizing them and implementing them.

Furthermore, we vary greatly by inadvertently placing standards on the same level of doctrines like the Atonement and the Deity of Christ. Let me tell you something. Any man who puts biblical standards, and I'm using that term simply because that's the way we know them, on the same doctrinal level as the Atonement and the Deity of Christ is committing heresy.

You cannot place them there. On the other hand, we've also taken the Bible principles for outward attire and encircled them with so many rules that we've forgotten what the original principle was. That's what you call legalism.

Then on the other hand, there's a group of people saying, it doesn't matter at all. It's all of grace. It's all of freedom. It's all of just what's ever important to you. They don't matter at all. That's licentiousness, and it'll land you in hell.

I weep. I weep this afternoon that we've made standards the ultimate test of true Christianity. We've made it the point upon which fellowship is extended or withheld. We've become so caught up in it that in some places we have actually created subcultures that unless you share our point of view, you can't exist.

And part of the unfortunate baggage that comes along with a subculture is intellectual polarization. You shut out everything, almost. Furthermore, our isolation has tended to attract those that are almost non-functional in society, and hence they feel comfortable in retreating into our ranks in order to have a place to minister.

This has often meant attracting those with inferior minds and skills, which has clearly brought about a demeaning to the professional aspect of the ministry of our people. Yet on the other side, for those who have thrown overboard and done so on the grounds of intellectualism as unimportant and useless scriptural disciplines for dress, it is wrong, it is unscriptural, and it will be their undoing.

To say it doesn't matter what I wear and I can wear what I want, again I say, is licentiousness. We must articulate a philosophy, a principle that comes from the Word of God on this matter of dress. I want to speak three words to you this afternoon.

A Word of Caution About Approaching Scripture

First of all, I want to give you a word of caution on how we approach it. First of all, a word of caution on how we approach the Bible as to the standards of dress. I know there are a lot of well-meaning preachers who really don't think what they're saying sometimes.

But I want to warn you how you approach this book. This is God's book. This is the revealed Word of God. And when we come to this book, there are some preachers, when they come to this book as far as standards are concerned, they stand over it to manipulate it.

They get on top of the Bible and just twist it and manipulate it to make it say whatever they want it to say, totally disregarding the truth of what it does say. I gave you an illustration of that about the Holiness Preacher.

He said, Well, I know the book doesn't say it, but it sounds good and it works, I'm going to preach it anyway. I pray God that man finds mercy before he stands in judgment. On the other hand, there are some who stand alongside the Bible.

In other words, their opinion or their view is equal to the Bible. No, I can't rest it on the Bible, but it's my opinion. They have been assisted while they preach it just like it was the Bible. I heard a preacher some time ago in a camp meeting refer to his church manual.

He said, Oh, you could get to heaven without believing this church manual, but you can also swim the Atlantic Ocean, too. Did you hear what it said? He put his church manual right up there alongside the revealed Word of God.

He said, Oh, you could get to heaven, I suppose, without going by this manual, but you can also swim the Atlantic Ocean and laugh. I said, Smith, that sounds like heresy. Then you can take a position underneath the Bible, and that's where every one of us better be.

When you come to the Word of God, you better take a position beneath it. This book is the ultimate rule of my life. This is the final answer. This is God's Word, and I'm coming under it. I'm going to stand beneath it and, by the grace of God, try to articulate what it says.

Interpreting Scripture in Context

Secondly, not only how we approach the Bible, but how we interpret the Bible. E. R. Troughton said the new cult of our day is proof-texting. He said that's the most recent cult that we have now in the Holiness Movement, is trying to proof-text everything.

When we come to the Word of God, we better come to the Word of God understanding not only it speaks directly, but we better come to the Word of God realizing that we better discern its intentionality, what it is inferring, rather than its coming from a sense of autonomy.

Or, do I seek to know what it says, or am I just trying to look at a few words to find out something that I want it to say? Do I earnestly want to know what it says? We also need to come to it and interpret it in the proper cultural, historical, and contextual basis, rather than just picking and choosing.

One of the greatest dangers in preaching is this pick-and-choose stuff. A word of caution. Am I willing to let Scripture impact my life? It just amazes me how we pick and choose. We Holiness people, many who have held to the conservative position, we will, with all defiance and fervency, defend a position on biblical modesty.

But somehow we totally shut our eyes to the words that are right next to it, the words simplicity and frugality and economy. They're all there, too. So we'll dress very simple, very modest, and then we'll get a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz or the latest Cadillac, build the biggest house we can, cover it with interior decorated.

If you sold it, you could build two or three churches on a mission field. They're just as important as one. We love to pick and choose. We love to pick out the ones on the love, not the world. But somehow we forgot about those that all whispers and God-haters and back-biters are going to have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.

I'm illustrating what I'm saying. You can't pick and choose. There's got to be a consistency when you come to the Word of God. A word of caution. But next let me speak a word of counsel by giving you some significant propositions concerning dress.

Clothing as a Message of the Soul

I believe one of the strongest arguments that flows out of the Word of God, and quite frankly this afternoon I'm not going to take the time to go through a long exegesis of those passages, but I can rest on a strong exegesis of those passages.

And I know great scholars who can take us to those passages and give us a strong scholarly exegesis, and it's going to come out on the side that I'm comfortable with. We don't have to hang our head about anything, friend.

We don't. We don't. But let me give you some significant propositions about this matter of dress. You know, some people believe it's just all in proof-texting, and that's why you run, find a little verse of Scripture in the Bible, you hand it to your teenager and say, Well, here it is.

And then they explain it away right in your presence and you don't know what to do about it. This biblical doctrine for adornment and dress doesn't rest on a few isolated verses of Scripture. You can go there if need be to anchor it.

But out of the revealed revelation from the Word of God, from the very beginning to the very end, there is a flow of biblical logic that rises to say this. It says, the clothes you wear communicate the message of your soul.

Clothes are not only given for a covering, they reveal holy character. Now, if you won't misunderstand me, that's as important as covering up your nakedness. Not only do they cover our nakedness, they're to reveal our character.

I don't know why we can't see it. The business world sees it. Some of you people think it's only the holiness conservative movements that are a bunch of wacko nuts that talk about this sort of stuff. Do you realize that companies like IBM spend millions of dollars to train their people on how to dress?

Big companies send their people all over the world to teach them how to dress. They ought to send them to a holiness class meeting on Christian adornment and they'd end up with the same results. It would be a whole lot cheaper.

Dr. Litvin, president of Wheaton College, said this. He said, contrary to the popular notion that clothes don't matter, research indicates that most people form an opinion based on appearance, and that opinion usually turns out to be morally right.

Bob Jones had a woman come into their school. This is what she said to those student girls. She said, a man's eye travels from the floor up. A Christian woman wants to do everything she can to draw his attention to her face because that is where character is revealed.

That's exactly what the Bible says. To be modest comes from the Greek word open-facedness, which means that you and I should never wear anything that distracts from our face because in our face and through our eyes are the windows of our soul and our character is revealed.

So I should not put anything on my body that makes people look there before they look here. And I should not wear anything on my face that points to my lips, to my ears, to my eyes. I shouldn't wear my hair down in my face like this or like this or like this.

I should have an open-facedness so they may see my character. Dress is a symbol of moral character. If modesty is absent in one's dress, it indicates a similar absence in the heart. If in our dress we should demonstrate the modesty of our soul.

Vance Havner said this, Paul saw the practice of dress not just as customs that merited obedience and respect, but customs that had moral significance. John T. Malloy, in the book, The Woman's Dress for Success, he said, everything a woman wears sends a message.

The fallen world knows this. Somehow while we sit around and slap one another and fight with one another and excommunicate one another and bicker at one another over these matters, the fallen world is in high gear promoting it.

They know that dress sends a message. And so they have cultivated basic principles to guide the fashion industry. Now, I'm not going to give you all of those principles, but I can sum them up in four very quickly.

Fashion's Principles of Pride and Seduction

The utility principle, by what they call the hierarchical principle or the principle of pride, in other words, the tendency in whatever you wear, they try to cultivate a style of clothing that makes you have a sense of pride in yourself.

Have you ever seen a little girl, when you put on that Easter dress with all of its ruffles, how she walks so haughtily and sometimes turns her neck so stiffly? As soon as she gets out of that thing, she goes and jumps in a mud hole.

I remember buying up, my wife found a pair of those duck head pants at the thrift store for one of our boys. It was just a good pair of pants. Brought it home. He was just about three years old. She put those on him one Sunday morning.

She put his belt on in that kind of trouble. And he slipped up to me and he said, can you still see that duck back there? A sense of pride. Oh, it's, I'm not saying it's malicious or intentional in children.

I'm not saying dress them in Easter dresses. I'm saying clothing will tend toward pride. And you know it. They know it and they cut it that way. Then the autonomy principle. They will cut garments in order to have a sense of self-expression.

They want something that is rebellious and radical within mainstream society. They want something that literally is an expression of a radical autonomy. And they cut clothes to design. That's why you see some of the wildest garbs you could ever imagine.

And wonder why anybody in his right mind would put one on. And then the seduction principle, which is the most powerful principle the fashion industry has. They want people seduced by clothing. Now, I don't have to give you a lesson in biology 101.

I think we all know that the male species is stimulated by sight. You see, they know that too. And it's the woman that stimulates them. Hence, they build things into fashions to stimulate the opposite sex.

Some of you think I fell off planet Mars, but I didn't. I'm still, I'm just talking to you from the fashion world right now. I go shopping with my wife. She's not, she's a real Vernon. They came up, they came up on the poor side.

Daddy Vernon didn't waste any money. A lot of her dresses came out of a missionary barrel or hand-me-downs. So after we got married, she just wouldn't go out and buy things. And I had to push her to do it.

I'd go out and I'd say, here's a beautiful dress. Plenty of, plenty of cloth here and plenty long enough. Let's buy this one. She'd walk around to the back and have a split in it that long. Anybody put a big long split in the back of the dress?

The fashion industry calls it establishing an erotic zone. Because if a woman walking down the street with a split up the back of her dress, exposing her leg and thigh, and a man coming behind her, if he's a man at all, and if his eyes move in that direction, he stops and works his way up.

And that's what they want. They want, they also call it a catcher, an eye catcher. Well, after everybody gets tired of looking at the back of a leg, the next year you go out to buy a dress. It's plenty of cloth in the front and the back and, but on the side, lo and behold, both sides are split.

Or it's the front is split. Well, when everybody gets tired of splits, they shift it. And they make long A-frame dresses, long ones with plenty of material. And I'll say, honey, here's a beautiful dress, plenty of A-frame, plenty of, plenty of material down here and loose.

And then you go up to the top and I found out where they got the material to go down here. They got it from up here. Establishing an erotic zone. And when they don't have it there or down there, the miniskirt comes back in.

And then when the miniskirt fades out and they don't have it here and they don't have it in the splits, they make them so tight, they look like they've been wrapped in glad wrap. So you can see every varicose vein in them.

I'm telling you, the fashion industry knows that. And we act so, so air-headed about it and quibble and fuss around about it. I don't have any girls, but I can assure you if I had any girls, they would not be strutting across these grounds or any other grounds or anywhere else in this world with big splits in their skirts.

I'm not about to have my, my, my daughter parade around creating erotic zones and catchers to portions of her body for some man. It's not right. It's not right. I was in an airport. I was in an airport waiting for a plane and the news was on and I was watching the news.

And all of a sudden a commercial flashed and it was a scene in a grammar school. There was a teacher. She was teaching a group of children. I looked at her and I thought to myself, that's the epitome of modesty.

I wish she taught my boys. She had long hair and it was done up like this with a little bone through it in the top. You know how women wear. She had on a long wool skirt, appeared to be. She had on a business jacket.

She had on a nice blouse right up to the neck. She was the epitome of modesty. She had on a little pair of round glasses, no jewelry, no earrings, nothing. So the bell rang and all the little kitties ran out the door.

She reached over, picked up her briefcase, started towards the door. I thought to myself, that woman could fit in any hole in this church in the country. She got to the door and then all of a sudden you saw a picture.

There was a man driving up in a little red Ferrari. Top was off. You could read his face. He looked up the steps to where she was. When she saw him, she sat down the briefcase. She took off her jacket.

There was a sleeveless blouse. She took that little thing out of the top of her head and shook her hair. Pulled off her glasses and in two seconds she went from giving you the image of absolute modesty to giving you the image of absolute seduction.

Your clothes send out a message. The way you wear them, what you wear, the way you adorn yourself, the way you fix your hat, everything sends out a message. It does. The fallen world knows it and they pick up on it.

Biblical Principles of Covering

Now let me tell you something. You can't run around proof texting everything I said this afternoon. You can't. But I want to tell you what you can do. If you've got any spiritual sense at all, you can go to the Word of God and it just flows out of it.

There's a spiritual logic and a sensibility that flows from the Word of God. It does. And it's there. Let me give you, secondly, some scriptural principles concerning dress. What does the Bible say? Well, first of all, the Bible gives us a group of principles that deal with covering.

In other words, covering up the nakedness of your body. I'm not going to get into a long exegesis. If you don't want to take my word for it, I'll give you the exegesis on a piece of paper. The Bible talks about covering our nakedness.

Everywhere nakedness is used in the Word of God, it's always used in a negative connotation, except when it's used in a neutral sense. As in the case of Job, naked came I into this world and naked shall I depart.

It's neutral. That has no connotation whatsoever. Every place else in the Scriptures, it's negative. It's never looked upon by God in a positive sense. It's always in a negative sense. Always. Something he doesn't like is exposing our nakedness.

Well, what is nakedness, preacher? The Hebrew concept for nakedness that comes from the Hebrew words taken from the book of Genesis when he made them coats, and also from the book of Job and other books in the Old Testament.

And by the way, anybody who thinks you can throw out the Old Testament, oh, that's just the Old Testament. That doesn't matter anymore. Let me tell you something. If that is true, then the Old Testament contains no truth, because truth is eternal and never passes away.

Truth is eternal and never passes away. So before you pitch it out, you better remember that. God revealed Himself in the Old Testament. He revealed Himself, His character, and that is truth. And it's always applicable.

But the Hebrew concept of nakedness is any exposure from my neck to my knee. That's what it means. It means any exposure of my upper torso from my neck to my knee, making sure the thigh, which runs from the hip to the knee, is covered.

God says, if your nakedness is exposed, it is a shameful thing. He abhors nakedness. When Adam and Eve tried to make a covering, a fig leaf covering, and the word literally is an apron, sort of like a G-string, God stripped it away and made them a coat.

And that coat comes from the Hebrew word, which means a covering, which means covering from here to here. So how do I know when I'm covered? How do I know when I'm modestly attired? When I am appropriately covered from my neck to my knee.

And I assume that means my knee is covered and my thigh is covered in all positions that I may find myself. You say, well, that leaves these two arms over here. What do you do about them? It may come as a shock to some of you, but the Bible doesn't say where the material ought to stop.

I challenge anybody here who wants to argue that point, just show me. What it does say, though, if I am to be covered in the upper torso from here to here and the exposure of that body is wrong in the sight of God, the length of my sleeve has to be adequately long enough that in lifting and moving or whatever I do, I do not expose myself.

That's right. It's got to be long enough not to expose myself. Now, where are we going to draw the line on sleeve length? Well, that's up to you and your denomination. That's just up to you. All I'm telling you, the Bible draws the line is it's got to be long enough to cover the upper body.

When you move around or lift or whatever you're doing, your upper body is not to be exposed. You say, well, preacher, that gives me grounds then. I like that. I'm going to go back. My church manual says three-quarter length sleeve.

I'm going to go back and tell them that's not biblical. Number one, check your attitude. Number two, check your ethics. If per chance, the way I explained it, and I think it's the only true truthful way and the ethical way to explain it, I try to be honest as I understand the Bible where it says the line ought to be drawn.

And I just explained that to you. Then I go on and say, now, if you've joined a denomination, which most of them do, say it's a three-quarter length sleeve, you cannot retreat and say, ha ha, Bible doesn't say three-quarter length sleeves.

No, the Bible doesn't say thou shalt not wear bikinis either. The Bible doesn't say thou shalt not smoke marijuana either, but there's biblical principle against all of those things clearly. You say, well, it still doesn't say you ought to wear a three-quarter length sleeve.

Well, no, but Asbury himself said, there are some things in our Methodist teachings that may not be completely rest on scripture. He said, but however, it has been proven that these particular issues do help us to maintain piety.

Hence, I will embrace them constantly. If you join a group that has that, it doesn't matter if you believe it or not. You told them you would keep it and you're ethically obligated to do it. And if you don't do it, you're a liar.

I told you we weren't too hot on ethics around here. We're not. If you don't want to keep it, disjoin. Disjoin. Don't tear up the patch. Just disjoin. You say, if you're promoting back doors, I will know.

I'm just trying to be ethical. I'm not saying you've got to believe it. I'm saying you've got to stand underneath this book. And this book teaches covering our nakedness. And then it teaches obeying those in authority over you.

It teaches being truthful. You give your word, you keep it. Oh, Brother Smith, I thought everybody'd be shouting, having a great time this afternoon. Then there are the group of principles that deal with economy.

Economy and Stewardship in Dress

There are those that talk about we are not to wear costly attire. What does that mean? We don't even like to talk about that when we rant and rave. And I got so tickled. Well, it's not funny. It's funny now, but it wasn't then.

I graduated from college. My wife and I were married. We were as poor as Job's turkey. I needed some clothes, didn't have a lot of clothes. And so when I graduated, my dad came up and took me to a fancy men's store suit and bought me a botany 500.

That's a nice set of threads. Then my sister came up and bought me a brand new pair of wingtips. Somebody bought me a brand new white-on-white shirt. And then somebody gave me the money or bought me a Christian Dior tie.

Boy, I was sparkling like a neon sign. I was a sharp customer. So I put together my new set of threads and go marching to my church the next Sunday morning where I had a lot of Bible school students that went to school with me.

And I got up and preached that Sunday morning on materialism and sacrifice. I mean, I made them feel awful if they had carpet on their floor and a shingle roof. When I got through raking them over the coals, my dear friend Guy Rocker jumped up out of his seat and I gave the benediction.

He marched down the aisles. He didn't even go around the altar. He stepped right over the altar. Grabbed my tie. I said, nice tie. What'd that cost, 20 bucks? Nice suit you got there. What'd you pay, $500 for that?

Hey, nice set of shoes there. What'd you pay for them, 70, 80 bucks? Then he looked at me and right in the dead of the face said, great message on sacrifice, preacher. Nevertheless, I got the point. Hold steady.

I believe in being a good steward too. The other day I was able to buy a 100 worsted wool suit, a $250 suit for $79. I'd have been stupid not to buy it. I could have gone to Walmart and bought a cheap one for $89.

Do you understand what I'm saying? We must be good stewards. There's nothing wrong with buying good clothing, but I want to tell you something. When you invest in a sense of proportion more on your clothes than you are in the work of God, you're violating the biblical principles.