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152. Re-Release Freedom In The Church - Dress Attire · 4-Freedom Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to the Four Freedom podcast.
• 0:10
  I found my freedom. In you.
• 0:14
  I found a joy. I can't lose.
• 0:19
  And thank God it's true, you wrapped your arms around me and
• 0:24
  heaven broke through from. The moment she found.
• 0:27
  Me, I found my. This podcast exists to bring the
• 0:35
  freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with
• 0:38
  everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James
• 0:42
  Seyfried and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the Four Freedom
• 0:49
  podcast. It is a blessing to be back in
• 0:52
  the hot seat. Be back in the hot chair with my
• 0:56
  man Brett and recording today and that man.
• 0:59
  These last couple of episodes have been fantastic for me.
• 1:03
  Man, who'd have thought we would have been able to interview Bob
• 1:05
  Coughlin? Man, I just thoroughly enjoyed
• 1:08
  that conversation with him and the conversations coming up in
• 1:12
  the future. We've got Marcus Merrick coming
• 1:15
  on, we've got Brian Edwards coming on.
• 1:18
  We've got a couple other guys that we're trying to work on to
• 1:21
  get in here. And we are excited about the
• 1:24
  next couple of weeks and months of this season of the podcasters
• 1:28
  we're talking through in the church.
• 1:30
  But Brett, how are you doing? How's your family doing?
• 1:33
  Good to be able to see you again and got some future things
• 1:37
  coming up as well. We had such a good response from
• 1:42
  the last episode with Bob Coughlin.
• 1:45
  And I just want to say before we move forward that, you know, I
• 1:49
  enjoyed that thoroughly. So glad we got a chance to talk
• 1:53
  to him. Brought so much to the table,
• 1:55
  gave us a lot to think about. But man, life is just life has
• 2:00
  just been good. You know, things are busy here
• 2:02
  and we're we're getting geared up.
• 2:05
  We've got some mission trips in our church coming up and then on
• 2:08
  that side and then on the other side, the kids have been busy
• 2:12
  and we've had beta club meetings and shooting sports meetings
• 2:16
  and, you know, teen activity meetings and all this stuff.
• 2:20
  So busy, busy season of life. But I would much rather be busy
• 2:24
  than sit at the house. You know, he's all doing stuff.
• 2:28
  Just went to an evangelism training last night at the local
• 2:32
  First Baptist Church in our county.
• 2:34
  Don Lom, he's the evangelism director for Mississippi Baptist
• 2:38
  Convention Board for State of Mississippi.
• 2:41
  And he came and and did some evangelism training last night.
• 2:45
  Took note to note after note after note, page after page.
• 2:49
  Got a lot of good stuff that we can apply to our church and our
• 2:52
  community. Looking forward to implementing
• 2:54
  that. But man, life's been good,
• 2:56
  ministry's been good and I've got no complaints.
• 2:59
  Love it. Yeah, and I'll echo what you
• 3:01
  said. I've loved the feedback from the
• 3:03
  last couple of episodes and continue to reach out to us on
• 3:07
  our social media platforms. If you go back to episode 30 or
• 3:11
  40 or something, I've got my cell phone number on there.
• 3:14
  You're welcome to reach out to me via that way.
• 3:16
  And it's been great. I actually had a, I'm supposed
• 3:19
  to be having an interview, a talk with a lady of a podcast
• 3:23
  that just recently started. She's been able to share her
• 3:27
  story a little bit on there and looking at people that have been
• 3:31
  out of our world, out of the ISB to be able to come on and talk
• 3:34
  about where they're at and what they went through.
• 3:37
  So excited about that. And then Brett, I didn't even
• 3:40
  tell you this. I had a guy that called me and
• 3:43
  he is starting a podcast and he just said, Hey, can you give me
• 3:47
  some help, some advice on how we can do a podcast?
• 3:51
  Like how, how not me and him, but how him and some friends are
• 3:54
  going to do a podcast and just some basic things.
• 3:57
  And this Friday coming up, man, tomorrow when this thing comes
• 4:01
  out, I'm going to be at a local high school in the area W Wilkes
• 4:06
  High. And they're having me come in
• 4:08
  and do a seminar on podcasts and podcasting, how to get a podcast
• 4:13
  started, how to, how to begin the process of all that.
• 4:16
  So man, I'm, I'm just excited. Originally it was going to be
• 4:19
  public speaking as a pastor, you know, how do you get up and do
• 4:22
  public speaking? And then it sort of morphed
• 4:24
  into, Hey, why don't you come and do?
• 4:27
  Because it's a, it's a, it's called a who world of
• 4:30
  opportunities. And so they bring in people from
• 4:32
  all different shapes and sizes and areas of expertise.
• 4:36
  And so apparently I'm an expertise in podcasting.
• 4:38
  I don't, don't know how that is, but I'm going to come in and,
• 4:42
  and bring in all my recording equipment.
• 4:44
  And so it's going to be a great time in the community of just
• 4:47
  being able to share. You know, for me, it's, it's
• 4:50
  going to be an opportunity for me to share the gospel with
• 4:52
  these kids. You know how we are able to
• 4:54
  share the gospel through the, the microwaves, radio waves,
• 4:58
  whatever you want to call podcasting these days, Internet
• 5:01
  waves, I don't know. And so it's going to be great.
• 5:04
  I'm looking forward to it. Very cool, Very cool.
• 5:07
  I lost a battle against a slushy last night.
• 5:13
  Oh, so I have a root canal and a crown scheduled for tomorrow,
• 5:19
  which yay. And then last night I decided,
• 5:22
  you know what? I'm, I've been doing really good
• 5:25
  on the diet that I've been on and I thought I'd treat myself.
• 5:28
  So I got me, went to Sonic and got me a slush with nerds.
• 5:33
  And so I'm chomping on those nerds.
• 5:36
  And then when I get down with a drink, my, I look up and half my
• 5:39
  tooth is broken off of the tooth that I'm supposed to get a root
• 5:43
  canal on. So I'm glad that's scheduled
• 5:45
  tomorrow. So, but that's cool about, you
• 5:50
  know, podcasting. I mean, you are the expert
• 5:52
  podcaster and I think that's great.
• 5:55
  But that is a good opportunity. You know, you think about the
• 5:58
  culture and this generation, you know, they're, they'd eat stuff
• 6:01
  like that up and it's, it's, it's a great opportunity for
• 6:05
  you. So that's really good.
• 6:06
  Well, I heard a stat this morning, Brett, as I was driving
• 6:09
  around listening to one of my favorite podcast that you got me
• 6:12
  hooked on. But they made a statement that
• 6:14
  said in the world of podcasting and in the world of Patreon,
• 6:23
  Patreon is a company that you can register with and have
• 6:27
  exclusive things for your podcast.
• 6:29
  Everything's, I think they said there's over 250,000 Patreon
• 6:34
  accounts. Wow, that's on Patreon.
• 6:36
  That's that's a quarter million organizations that are saying,
• 6:40
  hey, we're doing a thing and we want you to be a part of it.
• 6:43
  And can you give in this this way or that way?
• 6:45
  And so the world podcasting is huge.
• 6:50
  And so we just have a little sliver of just being able to
• 6:53
  share hope and help for the gospel and through Galatians 51,
• 6:57
  where we are able to give hope and help and freedom through the
• 7:01
  gospel because Christ has set us free.
• 7:05
  Amen. So Brett, what what we got going
• 7:08
  on? We got a couple things coming up
• 7:10
  June, we've got some things in November, we've got some things
• 7:15
  in March of next year. What's going on, man?
• 7:17
  All right. The next thing we have on our
• 7:20
  agenda is the going to the National Southern Baptist
• 7:24
  Convention, and that's going to be in Indianapolis, Indianapolis
• 7:28
  this year. And we're going to be close
• 7:31
  enough to the Holy Land to go pay homage and burn incense at
• 7:35
  the Mausoleum of Jack Hiles and OfferUp a El Amigo burrito.
• 7:39
  Shout out to my fellow Highlanders.
• 7:42
  And but no, seriously, we're going to be there at the
• 7:44
  Southern Baptist Convention and we're going to rent a house and
• 7:48
  record an episode, hopefully be able to record an episode with
• 7:51
  our wives and want to get them on there and look excited,
• 7:55
  excited about that and ready to get that done.
• 7:58
  And then after the Southern Baptist Convention, we have, I
• 8:03
  think we've got Catoosa, right? Yeah, Catoosa in November and
• 8:08
  looking forward to the RFP meet up, being able to meet more and
• 8:11
  more of the family and be able to hang out with some of those
• 8:15
  ones that were in Asheville and some of those ones that were in
• 8:20
  even Danville. And you know, every single one
• 8:23
  has been different, different people, different groups of
• 8:25
  people may have just met new people, people that I see their
• 8:29
  names, but didn't really know who they were.
• 8:33
  And so that's one of the cool things about our meet ups that
• 8:35
  we do is just being able to be around like minded brothers and
• 8:38
  sisters and be able to share our stories with each other.
• 8:41
  And so I'm looking forward to that.
• 8:43
  And then March of next year, Brett, one year away almost,
• 8:47
  well exactly 1 year to the date will be in Israel next year at
• 8:52
  this time. Man, I'm so excited.
• 8:54
  Just had my Israel interest meeting for our church.
• 8:58
  Had 10 or 12 people there, several of them interested in
• 9:02
  going, others interested in going that wasn't able to be
• 9:05
  there. But man, I'm, I'm so excited
• 9:07
  about going back. Been able to just see some
• 9:10
  things are going on. Seeing the pictures behind you
• 9:13
  as I'm sitting here decorating my office and and pulling out
• 9:16
  some of those things. Man, I'm just so excited about
• 9:19
  being able to be back in the Holy Lands, be back where Jesus
• 9:22
  walked. Man, just giving that that talk
• 9:25
  and that presentation again and just sort of reignited some of
• 9:30
  those memories that I had reignited some, some questions
• 9:34
  that was asked to me and I was able to talk through some
• 9:36
  things. Man, it was just awesome,
• 9:38
  awesome time. Man, just think about it, if it
• 9:42
  if it wasn't for, you know, unmitigating circumstances and
• 9:46
  the war and such, we would be in Israel right now.
• 9:49
  I thought about this Sunday morning as I was preaching is
• 9:52
  like we would be in Israel right this very second.
• 9:58
  So yeah, it does give me a little, you know, a motivation
• 10:02
  I'm excited about next year. I think next, then the next trip
• 10:07
  we've got planned a year from now is going to be even better
• 10:11
  than the one that we planned for this year.
• 10:14
  And I think I've already had more interest in IT.
• 10:18
  People are chomping to get back as soon as they're able, soon as
• 10:22
  they open tourism back up in the country, people are chomping at
• 10:26
  the bit to get to get back. And so can't wait for that.
• 10:31
  But I do need to address one thing before we move forward,
• 10:35
  and that is what we did have an issue with one of our episodes.
• 10:41
  We've had some criticism, we've had some pushback and it is
• 10:46
  something that I, I, you know, we do need to address and I want
• 10:50
  to publicly come on here and address it.
• 10:53
  We got some pushback because we like, because we mentioned
• 10:57
  Casting Crowns. We got some pushback because of
• 11:02
  because we mentioned Creed. 3 Doors Down Come on now I.
• 11:06
  Mean they just they just don't understand what good music is.
• 11:09
  They don't, man. I I was after that episode.
• 11:12
  We recorded it, Brett, on the way home.
• 11:14
  I've got a 25 minute ride on the way home.
• 11:16
  I listened to Creed and Three Doors Down the entire way home
• 11:19
  like it was I I was reminiscing of being back in my teenage high
• 11:25
  school years of rocking out to Three Doors Down and Kryptonite
• 11:29
  and let me be myself. Oh, man, It was, it was.
• 11:31
  I was, I was a great time. Yeah.
• 11:33
  I was. I was back.
• 11:35
  Yeah. It was great, Yeah.
• 11:37
  Well, good stuff, good stuff. So we is that everything we've
• 11:42
  got coming up? I think so, yeah, we've got some
• 11:45
  those things coming up and got some great interviews lined up
• 11:48
  for the future, but we'll let you guys be on the edge of that
• 11:52
  a little bit. So Brett, what's what are we
• 11:54
  talking about today? Give us the intro.
• 11:56
  We are in, we are still in our still in our series in the
• 12:00
  church. And the subject we're going to
• 12:03
  be dealing with today is clothing is dress in the church.
• 12:10
  And this is an area that, you know, especially for me for so
• 12:16
  many years, I was taught wrong. I was, I was taught the wrong
• 12:20
  thing and I was taught that you had to dress a certain way and
• 12:24
  you had to honor God in a certain way.
• 12:27
  And if you didn't wear these clothes to church, you know, God
• 12:31
  wouldn't approve of you and, and God wouldn't love you.
• 12:34
  And, and you didn't measure up and you didn't tick off the
• 12:37
  rules. And there were so many things,
• 12:40
  rules we had to abide by and certain ways we had to address.
• 12:45
  And we were kind of, you know, ostracized if we didn't obey the
• 12:49
  rules. And, you know, it was just so
• 12:52
  confusing for us. And my wife, for instance, my
• 12:56
  wife, you know, until just, you know, just a few years ago, just
• 12:59
  always wore dresses and everywhere she went, she had to
• 13:02
  wear skirts and, and things like that.
• 13:06
  And then a man for years, I, I didn't even wear shorts until
• 13:09
  just recently. And so we're kind of still
• 13:13
  coming out of this, you know, we were started coming out of this
• 13:16
  IFB legalistic mindset of, of the way you should dress.
• 13:20
  And we just had a wrong thinking.
• 13:22
  And, you know, as we're putting this thing together, we're
• 13:24
  thinking so many other people out there just like us.
• 13:28
  They're coming out of this legalistic mindset.
• 13:31
  They're coming out of this church culture where you have to
• 13:35
  tick off all the boxes and you have to look a certain way and
• 13:39
  you have to dress a certain way in order for God to approve of
• 13:42
  you. And we want to put some material
• 13:45
  out there. We want to put some content out
• 13:47
  there that addresses what does the Bible have to say about how
• 13:52
  you you should dress in church because it's a big issue.
• 13:56
  Our culture has made it a big issue and it's something that
• 14:01
  that's needed to be addressed and I'm glad we're addressing it
• 14:04
  right now. Yeah, I'm it's the topic, man,
• 14:07
  Brett, we have, we can see the analytics of the different
• 14:10
  episodes and the things that have been put out.
• 14:12
  And to this day, the number one episode that we've ever released
• 14:16
  is with Amy Miller on Modesty of dress.
• 14:19
  And so it's it's a topic that people want to talk about, they
• 14:23
  want to hear about. And we're going to discuss it
• 14:25
  today in a different sense of what we discussed with Amy.
• 14:29
  Amy sort of gave her testimony and, and talk through that.
• 14:32
  And you can go back and listen to that episode if you want.
• 14:34
  But man, what a, what an awesome opportunity for us to be able to
• 14:38
  discuss this because so often we have said things, we have done
• 14:45
  things that were unbiblical. We have done things that didn't
• 14:49
  line up with Scripture. And we were just saying things
• 14:52
  because people had said it before.
• 14:53
  We're going to talk through that in a minute.
• 14:55
  But I want to share just a, a personal story with me.
• 14:58
  I've shared this before when I've been preaching.
• 15:00
  And so it's nothing new if you've listened to me before.
• 15:02
  But we grew up in a moderately IFB.
• 15:08
  People today call it IFB light didn't have a big strong
• 15:12
  standard on dress. Men and women could we could go
• 15:15
  swimming together. We went to the movie theater.
• 15:17
  Like there wasn't a lot of legalism that was going on and
• 15:20
  our pastor had left. There was some things that went
• 15:22
  on. We got a new pastor in and I was
• 15:26
  AI want to say a senior in high school listening 3 Doors Down.
• 15:30
  You know, it was just just the best days of, of our lives,
• 15:33
  right? And so we, I was at football
• 15:36
  practice. It was in the summer, went to
• 15:38
  football practice, left from football practice.
• 15:41
  We were decorating for vacation Bible school.
• 15:43
  I don't know if y'all decorated for vacation Bible school like
• 15:45
  this, but we had these massive cardboard like 10 foot by 5 foot
• 15:52
  panels and we would paint them, we would put a projector on them
• 15:57
  and trace different things. And we do these massive scenes
• 16:00
  down the wall with them. As a kid, we had a lot of wall
• 16:03
  area. We would decorate the stage with
• 16:05
  them. And so as a teenager, you know,
• 16:07
  there's a lot of like prep work that needed to be done.
• 16:09
  We didn't have the money to buy these stage designs that people
• 16:13
  buy these days. And so as a teenager, I would
• 16:15
  volunteer and I was helping. And so one day I left from
• 16:18
  football practice was hot, sweaty, and I had to go to work
• 16:23
  just right down the road from the church.
• 16:25
  And so I thought, you know, I had some friends that were there
• 16:27
  painting and getting things ready.
• 16:29
  I'm going to stop in on my way to work, help give some, you
• 16:32
  know, an hour, two hours of painting and then head to work
• 16:35
  and and, you know, just keep on going.
• 16:37
  And so left football press, have my football shorts on through a
• 16:41
  T-shirt on. I knew I was going to paint, so
• 16:44
  it didn't matter what clothes I had on.
• 16:46
  And I went to walk into the church and there were two
• 16:48
  entrances. And as I got out of my truck and
• 16:51
  was walking in, the pastor came out from the front door.
• 16:54
  And you know, I was like, hey, pastor, excited about being
• 16:58
  there. And he grabbed by the shoulder
• 17:00
  And I'll never forget this as far as I can remember.
• 17:04
  He grabbed my shoulder. He looked me in the eyes and he
• 17:06
  said, how dare you think you're going to walk into God's house
• 17:12
  wearing that clothing? And I just sort of stepped back
• 17:16
  for a moment was like, pastor, I won't say his name.
• 17:21
  I said, pastor. I said, I'm just coming from
• 17:23
  from football practice about to head to work.
• 17:25
  I said, we're coming to paint, do it.
• 17:27
  I said, do you want me in a suit right now?
• 17:29
  Like I'm coming to paint and get dirty?
• 17:31
  He was like, how dare you disrespect God by walking in his
• 17:35
  house dressed like that. I was like, all right, man,
• 17:39
  well, whatever I say I got work to do, like I got I got things
• 17:42
  to be done, walked on past him, went on there and did what I had
• 17:45
  to do for a couple hours, then went to work.
• 17:47
  But but that whole day, even like after that, I'm thinking,
• 17:50
  man, it was I wrong? Like what was I should I have
• 17:53
  been dressed nicer? Like I was going for a work day,
• 17:56
  like I was going just to help. Should I, you know, as an 18
• 17:59
  year old boy, 17 year old boy, this thought of was I wrong?
• 18:05
  Was, was, was I living in sin in that moment?
• 18:07
  Was I doing something that God looked down upon and said,
• 18:11
  you're wrong, You should have been dressed like this because
• 18:13
  the pastor just told me I was wrong.
• 18:16
  And so that was one of the, the 1st and really the only
• 18:18
  experience in, in dress was that someone ever said something to
• 18:22
  me in a hard manner. And we want to address some of
• 18:25
  those things. But Brett, that's sort of where
• 18:27
  I was at. And, and like I said, our church
• 18:30
  wasn't like that, but he came in and sort of made the church like
• 18:33
  that. I can just one Your story
• 18:38
  reminded me of something not that bad that happened to me.
• 18:42
  But I remember I was at a camp and I had already started to
• 18:46
  preach by this time. And I remember one of the
• 18:49
  leaders, one of the pastors at the camp telling me that I
• 18:53
  needed as a past, as a preacher, I needed to dress a step above
• 18:58
  everybody else. He said #1 doesn't matter if
• 19:02
  everybody wears AT shirt, you should always wear a collar.
• 19:05
  If they wear a polo, you wear a button up.
• 19:08
  If they wear a button up, you put on a shirt and a tie.
• 19:11
  If they put on a shirt and a tie, you put on a suit.
• 19:14
  And you always had to be a step above the people that you were
• 19:18
  ministering to. And reading over some of the
• 19:21
  scripture we have today, reading over some of the points we're
• 19:24
  going to bring out today, That logic is so flawed and it it's a
• 19:30
  travesty what happened to you there.
• 19:32
  But it's a symptom of a bigger problem that's not just in IFB
• 19:37
  churches. No, it's not.
• 19:39
  There there's Even so many Southern Baptist churches that
• 19:43
  are very legalistic in this area and it I'm just glad we're
• 19:49
  addressing this today. Yeah, that step above reminds me
• 19:52
  of Jesus in his dress and how he presented himself here on this
• 19:56
  earth. Exactly.
• 19:57
  Yeah, so I just don't know why we don't get back to the as, as
• 20:01
  biblically historic as we can just walk around naked all the
• 20:04
  time. You know, I've got a three-year
• 20:06
  old boy turns 3 in a couple weeks and he's like, dad, why
• 20:09
  can't I be naked all the time? Like I just want to run around
• 20:11
  naked. And and you know, he's just,
• 20:13
  he's trying to be biblical. He's trying to be like his
• 20:17
  great, great, whatever Adam and Eve who ran around naked all the
• 20:20
  time. So I mean, he's he's trying,
• 20:21
  he's at least he's trying to follow the Bible.
• 20:23
  So I love it. Exactly.
• 20:25
  So. I think how we should kick this
• 20:28
  off is I'm going to ask you a question and then you bring us
• 20:34
  into our kind of comments notes that we have for today some
• 20:39
  things. And the question is, James,
• 20:41
  should we wear our Sunday best or should we have the attitude
• 20:49
  come as you are, because this is the big debate, is it not?
• 20:54
  Well, what do you think about that?
• 20:55
  Yeah, absolutely. And some of these things we're
• 20:57
  getting from christianity.com there was an article put out.
• 21:00
  So we thought some of the things were really good.
• 21:02
  But one of the things the question that that gets asked us
• 21:07
  off to my brother is going to be at church this coming Sunday at
• 21:10
  my church. He's coming in.
• 21:11
  He's bringing this camper from Charlotte.
• 21:14
  He text me yesterday Brett and said this.
• 21:16
  He said hey, jeans and a polo. Is that all right to come to
• 21:19
  church in and this is my my response.
• 21:22
  It's more than OK. I said, I have multiple men and
• 21:25
  overalls every Sunday at church. I said, I said, why does it
• 21:28
  matter? I didn't say this to him.
• 21:30
  I said, but in my mind I'm thinking, why does it matter?
• 21:32
  Like just come to church. Like I don't care what you're
• 21:34
  wearing, just come to church. And so you're wearing that.
• 21:39
  The church sort of the question that gets asked often.
• 21:42
  Children and teenagers across the world have heard the
• 21:45
  question asked them on countless times.
• 21:48
  It's one of the most common stereotypes.
• 21:50
  Well, I can't come to church because I don't have anything
• 21:52
  nice to wear. I don't have anything fancy to
• 21:56
  wear to church. My when my mom and dad got
• 21:58
  married, my mom got pregnant with my sister, my oldest
• 22:02
  sister, my dad was working at a place called Hercellanese Cosa
• 22:07
  fiber. It's been like 20-5 different
• 22:09
  names. And one of the guys, they
• 22:11
  actually their, their house, their, their trailer they lived
• 22:13
  in butted to the church. It was a fence and then the
• 22:16
  church was on the other side of the property and massive church
• 22:19
  time. And they were invited to church.
• 22:22
  And this was my dad said to my mom.
• 22:23
  My dad said to the guy that invited him, my wife's eight
• 22:26
  months pregnant, she doesn't have anything nice to wear to
• 22:29
  church. This is his response.
• 22:32
  Just put on some clothes and come to church.
• 22:35
  So he came home and he said, hey, honey, got invited to
• 22:38
  church. They're right here.
• 22:39
  Literally we can walk to it like we're not burning gas.
• 22:42
  Do you want to go? Her response was I don't have
• 22:44
  anything to wear to church. And he said, he told us that we
• 22:47
  can just come as we are like, wear whatever you got like it's,
• 22:49
  it's OK. And so they next Sunday, they
• 22:52
  put on their clothes. They went to church because they
• 22:55
  didn't they, you know, they just, they felt like they could
• 22:57
  do that. And, and all of a sudden we get
• 22:59
  to this point where we have this phrase, wear your Sunday best.
• 23:03
  Wear your Sunday best. I'm going to put on my Sunday
• 23:05
  best. This phrase is used in the
• 23:08
  culture today to athletes and basketball players in the public
• 23:13
  school they'll say, OK today me and you're going to wear your
• 23:16
  Sunday best because it's game day.
• 23:18
  What does that mean? You put on a shirt and tie and I
• 23:22
  know of lots of almost every high school that I've been a
• 23:25
  part of in, in ministry, their boys, when it's time for game
• 23:29
  day, they'll wear a shirt and tie to the school that day and
• 23:32
  they'll dress up every that they'll be dressed up for the
• 23:35
  whole day of school because it's the mindset of where the we're,
• 23:39
  we're serious today. We're not just going to be
• 23:41
  playing around. But the Bible does say a lot
• 23:44
  about what we should wear. And so where did this idea come
• 23:48
  from, Brett? Where does the idea that we
• 23:50
  should wear our Sunday best come from?
• 23:53
  Well, there's a few different areas that something like this
• 23:57
  comes from. And I think the first area we
• 24:00
  need to talk about is tradition. Now, I want to say that this
• 24:05
  reminds me a lot of a story that Nathan told on the RFP podcast
• 24:10
  about how he invited this family to church.
• 24:14
  And then when they showed up, he was wearing a three piece suit
• 24:18
  and they just like felt so out of place and never, you know,
• 24:21
  they never come back because of that.
• 24:23
  And the reason why I remember that story that Nathan told was
• 24:28
  because I've experienced that so much when I used to, you know, I
• 24:32
  used to invite people to church and then come to church and I'd
• 24:35
  come out and I'd see them and I'd be in a suit and tie and I'd
• 24:38
  get that look and, you know, so many times.
• 24:42
  So I, I felt that what Nathan experienced, I've definitely
• 24:45
  felt that so many times, people feeling out of place because of
• 24:49
  the way I dressed in church. But I think tradition is
• 24:54
  probably one of the first places that this idea comes from,
• 24:58
  because the probably the most common reason why churchgoers
• 25:01
  dress a certain way is because of tradition, because their
• 25:06
  grandparents did it, because their parents did it, because
• 25:09
  that's the way they used to do it in the 1950s.
• 25:12
  And that's the way that that they were taught.
• 25:15
  And, and it's this case, it's, it's common for no one to really
• 25:20
  know why they wear certain clothes, you know, like suit and
• 25:24
  tie for men, dresses and skirts for women.
• 25:27
  They do it just because they've always done it.
• 25:31
  It's, it's ingrained in their mind.
• 25:33
  It's how they were raised, you know, from their memories going
• 25:36
  back as kids, they just always saw people dress up.
• 25:40
  You know, we've got pictures in our Church of, you know, people
• 25:43
  that came to church in the, you know, the 30s and the 40s and
• 25:46
  the 50s. And they had the suit and the
• 25:48
  tie, the hat. The problem with this approach,
• 25:51
  you know, of tradition it do it doing it just because we've
• 25:55
  always done it this way. Is it shallow and it's
• 25:59
  superficial. And then in the cases when you
• 26:01
  have somebody that that breaks that tradition, oh, they're
• 26:05
  they're seen as a rebel. They're automatically looked
• 26:08
  down on because they're not dressed like everywhere else,
• 26:12
  even if their hearts in the right place.
• 26:16
  You know, I've seen bikers that are closer to God than men that
• 26:21
  are wearing suits and ties, you know, and anyone that break,
• 26:25
  they could break this tradition that, you know, maybe they're
• 26:28
  new and they've never been taught the tradition or maybe
• 26:31
  they don't own the right clothes.
• 26:33
  You know, sometimes you go into places and they don't have suits
• 26:36
  and they don't have ties and they don't even own slacks.
• 26:40
  And the only thing that have the, the best thing they have to
• 26:43
  wear, you know, is a pair of blue jeans.
• 26:46
  And, and in many churches, the tradition of wearing certain
• 26:49
  types of clothes to worship service.
• 26:52
  It's kind of an unspoken expectation.
• 26:55
  Like like, for instance, your pastor told you that, but in,
• 26:59
  in, in a lot of cases, just kind of this unspoken rule, you don't
• 27:03
  wear anything else but this to church.
• 27:06
  And if you do, you get the eyeballs and you get the Sinai
• 27:10
  and people are going to look at you.
• 27:12
  And so it's this unspoken expectation if somebody, you
• 27:16
  know, breaks that tradition, you know, somebody's going to call
• 27:20
  them out. Or the the pastor might sense
• 27:23
  say something passive aggressively from the pulpit,
• 27:27
  which I've seen tons of time that the pastor wouldn't call
• 27:31
  somebody out, point somebody out, but they would say
• 27:34
  something passive aggressively from the pulpit and everybody
• 27:38
  knows who they're talking about. I remember my church growing up,
• 27:42
  I used to hear all the time, oh, I was turned away at that church
• 27:46
  because, you know, I wasn't wearing a dress.
• 27:49
  I was turned away, you know, at your church because I was
• 27:53
  wearing pants. They told me not to come in.
• 27:55
  And for so many years, I, while I never personally saw that for
• 27:59
  so many years, I defended my church like, no, they don't do
• 28:03
  that. They don't do that.
• 28:04
  But over all the years and all the different people that if
• 28:09
  I've heard say that, you know, I give credit to and I wouldn't
• 28:13
  put it past them. Yeah, I've told you this story
• 28:16
  before and then we'll go on to the next one.
• 28:18
  But yeah, there was a change. This one kid, I remember there
• 28:23
  was a kid in church and my buddy had invited him on this on the
• 28:28
  church bus and been working on this teenager and working on
• 28:31
  this teenager and trying to get him to come to church.
• 28:35
  And finally this teenager decided to come to church.
• 28:37
  He goes into church, he sits in the Pew and he's got a hat on.
• 28:43
  And you know, it's, you know, the unpardonable sin to wear a
• 28:46
  ball cap in church. And there was a man in this
• 28:50
  church that went to this kid, snatched the hat off of his
• 28:53
  head, threw the hat in his chest and said, boy, we don't wear
• 28:57
  hats in the church. And you know, that's just asked
• 29:00
  me if that kid ever came to church again.
• 29:03
  The kid never did. He never darkened the door of of
• 29:06
  a church again. Then you have these traditions
• 29:09
  where the pastor has to has to wear a tie tie and if he's not
• 29:13
  wearing a tie, he's not doing his job.
• 29:16
  And and so this idea, you know, you know, wear your Sunday best.
• 29:21
  Why you wearing that to church? It a lot of it comes from
• 29:24
  tradition. Yeah.
• 29:25
  And I'll, I'll go a step further and say, you know, the church
• 29:29
  that you're talking about, in the church that I was at, they
• 29:31
  may have never preached, you know, wear a certain type of
• 29:35
  dress from the pulpit. And they may have never ever
• 29:39
  even called out one of those women or men that was dressed
• 29:42
  like that. But women have this really,
• 29:44
  really weird sense of intuition that when someone's looking at
• 29:48
  them a little weird or someone's talking about them, they can
• 29:51
  sense it. And it was often times where
• 29:54
  those women that said, yeah, it was, it was, it was preached
• 29:58
  together talking about. They just knew that they saw
• 30:02
  when they felt the women of the church were judging them because
• 30:06
  of what they were wearing. And that's the sense that we've
• 30:09
  got to break down those things We've got.
• 30:11
  Jesus didn't look at the woman that came to him with an issue
• 30:14
  of blood who had been bleeding for seven years or however long
• 30:18
  it was, and spent all of her money and went to all the
• 30:20
  doctors and came to him and and was going to reach the the edge
• 30:24
  of his garment. He didn't stop, turn around and
• 30:27
  say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait.
• 30:28
  No, no, you need to be dressed right before you can come and
• 30:30
  touch me. No, he, he's he turned and with
• 30:34
  love in his eyes. Like that's when Jesus addressed
• 30:38
  people was with he met them where they were at.
• 30:41
  He didn't say, you know, go get fixed up and and I never, we
• 30:45
  hear that nowhere ever we hear this, that, that once we get
• 30:48
  saved, we've got to begin to dress a certain way.
• 30:51
  Or, you know, we've we've heard that from people that have
• 30:53
  preached is once they get saved, they'll start cutting their
• 30:57
  hair. Once they get saved, then
• 30:59
  they'll start dressing right. I don't see that.
• 31:01
  I don't see that in scripture. And we'll talk to a bunch of
• 31:04
  scripture here in a little bit, but the next thing we look at is
• 31:07
  culture. Another reason for a certain
• 31:10
  dress code for church services is because of culture.
• 31:12
  For example, the cultural roles of the church might be a three
• 31:16
  piece suit. They might be business casual
• 31:19
  with slacks and an Oxford shirt with the robe and certain colors
• 31:24
  and patterns, might be a biker garb, a four leg dress with a
• 31:28
  bonnet, or any other specific style.
• 31:31
  Cultural standards for dress in church services are found all
• 31:34
  across the world. They often coincide with normal
• 31:38
  standards of dress and appearance of specific culture,
• 31:41
  which makes complete sense. You know, you think about it,
• 31:44
  Brett, if a woman in a certain culture always wears a dress
• 31:48
  when they're out in public, then it makes sense for them to
• 31:50
  continue that same trend while they come to church because it's
• 31:53
  out in public. It's the normal thing for them
• 31:55
  to do. However, the confusion and even
• 31:58
  frustration for someone, especially someone younger,
• 32:01
  especially someone who barely is making enough to provide for
• 32:05
  their family, they're barely making enough for them to get by
• 32:09
  comes to a church with a much different set of cultural
• 32:11
  expectations then when they are at church.
• 32:14
  Then during the rest of their life.
• 32:16
  Now all of a sudden they've got to go out and they've got to buy
• 32:18
  a whole new set of war Rd. just to come to church.
• 32:21
  They've got to sacrifice in other areas where they they may
• 32:24
  not have to find an area of sacrifice that the Bible tells
• 32:27
  us to sacrifice in for our clothes.
• 32:30
  And then all of a sudden the church.
• 32:31
  If they're not careful, this cultural reason can easily turn
• 32:35
  into pride as one of the attendees tries to out dress
• 32:38
  someone, out style someone, and even out accessorize other
• 32:43
  people because they're trying to draw attention to self of.
• 32:46
  Look at how spiritual I am. Look at how I have become so
• 32:50
  much different than the world because I'm dressing this way
• 32:53
  and the world is dressing another way and the world is the
• 32:57
  way they're dressing Monday through Saturday, but yet when
• 33:00
  they come to Sunday, they dress a completely different thing.
• 33:03
  It's almost like Jesus when he said you're hypocrites because
• 33:07
  you're like whitewashed tombs. You just get dressed up on the
• 33:11
  day you're in public, but every other day you're like dead men's
• 33:14
  bones on the inside. It's like that's what Jesus is
• 33:17
  telling the church today. Every other day of the week you
• 33:20
  dress one way, but then when it comes Sunday, you just transform
• 33:23
  into this whole different person because you want this sense of
• 33:27
  spirituality to come over you because you're dressed in a
• 33:31
  certain way. And so culture has this massive,
• 33:34
  massive influence on the way we dress.
• 33:38
  You know, you say that about, you know, spending money when
• 33:42
  you don't have the money. It reminds me that when I was at
• 33:46
  Hiles Anderson, the big thing, the big popular thing was floor
• 33:51
  shine dress shoes, black Polish to a mirror shine military,
• 33:59
  right? And that was because Jack Hiles
• 34:02
  wore floor shine. So if you didn't have floor
• 34:06
  shines, then you were, you know, you weren't cool.
• 34:11
  You had to have the floor shines.
• 34:13
  And I remember I spent my last $100 on a pair of floor shines.
• 34:18
  My buddy was so mad at me because we were driving home and
• 34:22
  we didn't have money to eat on. But I had my floor shines and
• 34:27
  those were some of the most uncomfortable junky shoes didn't
• 34:31
  even last me a year. Taught me a valuable lesson.
• 34:34
  But you know, we're growing up. We were called bapticostals at
• 34:39
  our church. Oh, that's the church where with
• 34:41
  the skirts. And there was there was a stigma
• 34:44
  about our church and it turned people away.
• 34:46
  And and you're right about especially our church.
• 34:50
  I mean, it was the thing. It was a standard once in a blue
• 34:53
  moon. My pastor would preach on it,
• 34:56
  but he would never, like preach regularly on it, especially if
• 35:00
  we had a lot of visitors in the church.
• 35:03
  I remember this one time we had, you know, we had grown a little
• 35:06
  bit. We had some families in the
• 35:08
  church, some visitors and a preacher boy got up and said
• 35:12
  something about women wearing pants and the pastor said Amen.
• 35:17
  And then after that service, like 3 or 4 families left the
• 35:19
  church. You know, it's just one of a
• 35:21
  popular thing, but it's still, they still believe to it.
• 35:24
  And part of the reason for that is our third idea where this
• 35:29
  comes from is scripture. You know, another reason why
• 35:33
  some people think that Christians should dress up for
• 35:36
  church service is because of their or understanding or
• 35:40
  misunderstanding of Scripture. You know, it's been a common
• 35:44
  approach for many years to look at, you know, the ornate dress
• 35:49
  code of the priests in the Old Testament, especially when they
• 35:52
  enter the Tabernacle. I mean, we're looking back in
• 35:55
  Exodus 28 for this. And then cook up some kind of
• 35:59
  doctrine for their church that requires everyone to wear extra
• 36:05
  nice unique clothing. And if not everyone, the upfront
• 36:09
  leaders, the leaders of the church.
• 36:10
  That's kind of where that step above thing came from that I was
• 36:14
  taught growing up. And because of this, you know,
• 36:18
  churches, some churches spend a lot of money buying their
• 36:21
  pastors design suit, designers suits, expensive shoes.
• 36:26
  You know, I can't tell you how many times I've been in kind of
• 36:29
  a larger church. And for his birthday, the church
• 36:32
  would get the pastor a suit and get him some shoes and all this
• 36:37
  kind of stuff, or maybe even unique robes in some other
• 36:40
  churches. But the problem with with with
• 36:43
  this reason, however, is that making a modern application of
• 36:47
  an Old Testament law is is out of context.
• 36:51
  It's something called Isa Jesus. And and what that is, is when we
• 36:55
  apply our own meaning to a text, OK, we're no longer in Old
• 37:02
  Testament Tabernacle or temple worship because of what Jesus
• 37:08
  did for us. We're all priests before God.
• 37:12
  And and there's no, there was no precedent set by Jesus or any of
• 37:16
  the apostles in the New Testament to dress any certain
• 37:19
  kind of way. We don't see that.
• 37:21
  In fact, it, it seems that Jesus normally dressed down to the
• 37:26
  point where he stood out in the crowd because of what he was
• 37:30
  wearing, Not because it was some ornate thing like the Pharisees,
• 37:34
  but because, you know, these, these Jesus and his apostles,
• 37:37
  they were nomads. They, they would go from, you
• 37:40
  know, place to place to place. You know, I'm, I, I know that I
• 37:45
  don't think I told you this. Maybe I have, but both colleges
• 37:49
  I went to house Anderson and tri-state, both colleges, Tony
• 37:55
  Hudson criticized me for what I was wearing in Chapel.
• 37:59
  Both times, same tan shirt. The first time I did it because
• 38:05
  I didn't know he would say anything about I'm wearing a tan
• 38:08
  beige shirt. He walks by and says, son, if
• 38:10
  you put a little bleach on that, it can turn white.
• 38:13
  Well, that was at how's Anderson.
• 38:15
  When I went to Tri-state, I wore the same shirt to Chapel to see
• 38:20
  if, if, if he would make the same joke.
• 38:22
  And while he didn't crack the same joke, he still eyeballed my
• 38:25
  tan shirt and shook his head. Just, you know, just, and what
• 38:30
  that comes from is that that priestly garb out of context,
• 38:34
  extra biblical nonsense, you know, then you know, they're,
• 38:38
  you know, they're mixing their fabrics, you know, so you can't,
• 38:41
  they're just pick and choose what verses they want to justify
• 38:44
  this kind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
• 38:47
  And and that's where the, the, the fearfulness of always making
• 38:51
  sure we're staying as close to scripture as we can is, is so,
• 38:56
  so protective to us. Because if not, we get to this
• 38:59
  point where we're able to say whatever we want and however we
• 39:03
  want and take whatever scripts we have and twist it and turn it
• 39:06
  into whatever we want. You did make one statement and
• 39:09
  you, you mixed up your words. I just want to clarify what you
• 39:11
  were saying was that it seemed that Jesus normally dressed down
• 39:16
  to the point that he never stood out in the crowd.
• 39:18
  You said that he dressed so that he stood out in the crowd, but
• 39:21
  but he never stood out. Yeah, yeah, he was he, Jesus was
• 39:24
  was they said that he would look like a commoner.
• 39:26
  You couldn't just say, oh, Yep, that's that's the Messiah right
• 39:29
  there. No, he walked with the crowds
• 39:31
  and no one noticed him until he began teaching and preaching and
• 39:35
  doing miracles and it. Was.
• 39:38
  His actions that were causing the difference, not necessarily
• 39:41
  what he was wearing. The last thing and, and, and
• 39:44
  Brad, I'm going to do the the first portion of this and then
• 39:46
  flip it over to you and then I'll get some things up.
• 39:48
  The last one here is, is respect.
• 39:50
  So we've, we've looked at tradition, culture, scripture,
• 39:55
  but then respect that. A lot of people will say, well,
• 39:58
  I'm going to dress a certain way for church service because it's
• 40:00
  respectful. It's the right thing to do.
• 40:03
  And depending on who you ask, it might be respect for the church
• 40:06
  building. In similar ways where someone
• 40:09
  might say, well it's respectful of a library when you go into a
• 40:13
  library to be quiet and then to be respectful and others will
• 40:16
  say, well, it's the same thing. I'm respectful toward God.
• 40:20
  However, while this is reasoning of respect might be noble then
• 40:25
  come from a heart of wanting to obey the church building is not
• 40:27
  just a building since the actual Church of the people that are
• 40:31
  gathering. And so you've got to begin to
• 40:33
  ask yourself the people that are gathering within is the church
• 40:38
  itself. You meet in a small group of the
• 40:41
  church in someone's house and you go over for dinner.
• 40:44
  Are you going to wear the same attire that you wore on Sunday,
• 40:47
  your three piece suit with your dress shine shoes to that
• 40:51
  person's house? Or are you going to sort of
• 40:53
  dress down a little bit? It's still the church gathering
• 40:55
  where two or three are gathered in my name.
• 40:57
  Again, that's talking about the context of, of church
• 41:01
  discipline, but it's the same context here of the church is
• 41:05
  gathering. And so when the church gathers,
• 41:07
  you should, if you're going to take the sense of respect, then
• 41:10
  you should dress in that same way anytime you're around
• 41:13
  believers of the same thing. And so of course, someone might
• 41:15
  say, for example, they, they respect the building and what it
• 41:18
  stands for, which probably takes us back to the scripture of
• 41:22
  tradition. So we've got to look at this and
• 41:26
  say maybe as we go, when we look at the respect of God through
• 41:30
  the tradition of what the priest wore and, and we're a
• 41:33
  representation of the priest now, because what Christ has
• 41:36
  done for us, I'm going to give an exterior, an external side of
• 41:41
  what's in my heart. God told prophet Samuel, the
• 41:45
  Lord sees not man, not as man sees man, but the Lord looks on
• 41:49
  the heart. And so it's not necessarily what
• 41:51
  we have on the outside, but it's how our actions are on the
• 41:54
  inside. Many times someone dresses a
• 41:56
  certain way to church and to the services because it's what
• 41:59
  others think, which can lead to a very bad reason or even a good
• 42:03
  reason. We'll explain it like this.
• 42:05
  Some pastors, God told Samuel to look at the heart.
• 42:08
  He also explained that man looks on the outward appearance.
• 42:11
  It's no surprise that why this whole issue of dress leads to
• 42:16
  tension between pride and humility standing out versus
• 42:21
  blending in the tradition versus rebellion that we just looked
• 42:24
  at. Yeah, the point that there is
• 42:26
  just dress, I'm sorry. And, and the point that here is
• 42:29
  not just dress of what people want to expect you to dress, but
• 42:33
  to begin developing environment in our churches where everyone
• 42:36
  respects each other to the point that no one dresses to offend or
• 42:41
  distract others. But I'm gonna read one more
• 42:43
  thought here and then turn it over to you.
• 42:45
  We get a a picture of this mentality from Paul's letter in
• 42:48
  Corinthians. He told the Corinthian, the
• 42:51
  Christians at Corinth to have a separate issue referring to a
• 42:56
  separate issue. And he took great care in our
• 42:59
  rights or freedoms not to call someone to be a stumbling block
• 43:04
  to the weak or to the weaker brother.
• 43:06
  And so brother truths over to you, because what does this mean
• 43:09
  to us? To be a stumbling block to a
• 43:11
  brother that's weaker than us. You know, forcing someone else
• 43:17
  to adhere to your personal conviction is it's, it's
• 43:22
  legalism, it's a violation of their soul competence.
• 43:27
  It's a violation of their soul liberty.
• 43:32
  You know you are not to Lord over somebody else.
• 43:35
  You're not the Lord over somebody else.
• 43:38
  You know you're not the their mediator between them and Jesus.
• 43:43
  You're not to you know, if Jesus is the Lord of your life, let
• 43:49
  Jesus be the Lord of their life too.
• 43:53
  They may have, you know, stronger standards than you.
• 43:56
  Well, that's not that's not for you to pass judgment on their
• 44:01
  opinions. And but you're also not supposed
• 44:03
  to wound them with your liberty at the same time.
• 44:07
  So there's a balance when it comes this thing of personal
• 44:11
  conviction. Listen, I, I was consumed so
• 44:15
  much with what everybody else was wearing.
• 44:19
  I, you know, my tie, I had to have the tie just right.
• 44:23
  I had to have the special knot. I can't tell you how many times
• 44:26
  I spent retying the same tie over and over and over where
• 44:30
  would hit in the right spot. And then if I didn't have the
• 44:34
  right kind of shirt on, my collar would flip up.
• 44:36
  And I was just so consumed with what I was wearing that that it
• 44:43
  was just taken over. And I was coming to church not
• 44:46
  concerned about worshipping God, but I was coming to church
• 44:50
  concerned with what other people saw me wearing.
• 44:55
  And listen, when it comes to this subject of, you know, being
• 44:58
  a stumbling block to the weak, if we're not careful with this,
• 45:02
  we will sin not just against our brothers or sister, but will sin
• 45:07
  against Christ as well. The idea of respect is also why
• 45:11
  Paul tells his understudy Timothy to instruct the women in
• 45:17
  his church to dress not with braided hair or and gold or
• 45:21
  pearls or costly attire and instead wear respectable apparel
• 45:26
  and dress. Dress with modesty and
• 45:28
  self-control and put the emphasis on good works instead
• 45:33
  of good clothing. You know, respecting others
• 45:36
  might mean that in some settings men wear jeans and AT shirt and
• 45:42
  in other settings they may wear dress pants and a a Sport coat,
• 45:46
  or it might mean that women wear dress and with a hair up, or
• 45:51
  they might wear normal pants with a blouse and their hair
• 45:55
  down. You know, respecting others also
• 45:58
  means that we begin to care less about style and color and fabric
• 46:04
  and what we wear, and instead care more about not being a
• 46:09
  distraction to others, not showing off our wealth, and not
• 46:13
  making others uncomfortable by dressing immodestly or sloppily.
• 46:19
  Yeah. And you know, Brett, thinking
• 46:21
  through that, a couple of things came to my mind, a couple things
• 46:24
  I shared with you before the show, but then one just came to
• 46:26
  my mind. Just a minute ago.
• 46:28
  I was listening to a podcast on John MacArthur and like him or
• 46:32
  not, has been in ministry for over 50 years at the same
• 46:34
  church. He's done.
• 46:36
  He's preached to the entire New Testament.
• 46:38
  You may not agree with him theologically or where it
• 46:40
  stands, but his faithfulness and enduring the ministry is
• 46:44
  something that I look forward to and won't in my ministry as
• 46:47
  well. But one of the things that was
• 46:50
  mentioned was, you know, he's he's an old school.
• 46:53
  He wears suit and tie every Sunday.
• 46:56
  But they said that when he was doing youth meetings and he was
• 46:59
  preaching in camps, he didn't wear those shirt and ties to the
• 47:03
  camps. He would wear a ball cap and
• 47:05
  he'd wear a polo shirt and he'd look it look like he was going
• 47:09
  on the golf course. Still nice dressed, but it just
• 47:12
  dressed down to the appropriate setting of where he was at.
• 47:15
  And a pastor, a friend of mine who would preach in Hawaii,
• 47:18
  every year when he would go to Hawaii, he would wear Bermuda
• 47:21
  shorts and a Hawaiian silks T-shirt because everyone in that
• 47:26
  culture wears that. And he said, if, if I were to
• 47:29
  wear a suit and tie, I would stand out and, and it would be
• 47:33
  to the point of detriment because people would be like,
• 47:35
  who is this crazy guy? It's 8790° with 100% humidity
• 47:41
  and he's got a suit and tie on. Like, why would he wear that?
• 47:45
  And then the, the most personal one for me, Brett, I went to
• 47:49
  Mission to India when my son was born 10 years ago.
• 47:53
  And in India, whenever they enter any type of worship house,
• 47:57
  Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple, again, they believe in
• 48:01
  reincarnation. So they would take their shoes
• 48:02
  off because if they stepped on a bug and they would be committing
• 48:06
  murder to maybe an ancestor that got reincarnated, what whatever
• 48:09
  that is. But it was their culture of any
• 48:13
  time they were in a place that was of holy reverence to take
• 48:17
  their shoes off, even though they weren't worshipping the
• 48:19
  bugs and and reincarnation, it was still ingrained in their
• 48:23
  culture. So I get there and it was time
• 48:26
  for us to go to one of the services and Justice Banwell,
• 48:30
  the the man that was in the, the guy that planted these churches,
• 48:33
  he took us into the church. When I say a church, it was
• 48:35
  about as big as my office right now.
• 48:38
  And there was no windows, no doors.
• 48:39
  It was just an open air building and we went to walk in and, and
• 48:44
  all the shoes of everyone were outside the the the walkway.
• 48:49
  And I said, justice, why do they have their shoes off?
• 48:51
  And he said, well, he says it's culture.
• 48:53
  He says what they do here. I said, do I have to take my
• 48:56
  shoes off? He said, no, no, no, you don't
• 48:57
  have to. He said, but when you get up to
• 49:00
  speak, if your shoes are on, they won't listen to you.
• 49:03
  I said what? He said, yeah.
• 49:05
  He said the culture here is that's how they show a sign of
• 49:09
  respect. That's how they show their
• 49:11
  reverence to the one they're worshiping.
• 49:13
  And of course they're worship with the ones who God know were
• 49:15
  in Scripture. So they have to do that.
• 49:17
  But it's their way of worship. And he said, so you, you're
• 49:21
  welcome to do whatever you want, he said, but just know if you
• 49:24
  want them to listen to what you have to say, you probably should
• 49:27
  take your shoes off because it's going to relate to them.
• 49:30
  You're going to show that you care about their culture enough.
• 49:33
  And I sell that to say this is not that we come in to change
• 49:37
  the culture of the people around them.
• 49:39
  We come in to share the gospel and allow the gospel to change
• 49:42
  their heart, allow the gospel to change their mindset of what
• 49:47
  they view. And it is it, is it wrong for me
• 49:50
  to take my shoes off? No.
• 49:51
  Is it wrong for me to wear a floor length if I'm a woman to
• 49:55
  wear a floor length dress? No.
• 49:57
  But it it's your own personal standard of conviction, holiness
• 50:01
  as you begin to go through your life.
• 50:05
  Practically speaking, God does care what we wear to church, not
• 50:09
  because it affects him, because it affects his other children.
• 50:13
  And he's saying here, listen, if if what you're wearing is going
• 50:16
  to cause your brother or sister to be distracted, then don't
• 50:19
  wear it. If you're what you're wearing is
• 50:21
  going to cause your brother or sister to think differently, be
• 50:25
  the more mature Christian and wear what is appropriate.
• 50:28
  I have no problem with wearing Crocs and shorts and a polo to
• 50:32
  church on a Wednesday night and most Wednesday nights I will.
• 50:35
  But if I've got a brother that comes up to me and says, pastor,
• 50:37
  I just, I can't, I can't think of you as pastor in shorts.
• 50:41
  I would probably rethink what I was doing until I can bring them
• 50:45
  along to say, listen, we're, we're just knowing people
• 50:47
  serving a God that that loves us and doesn't care.
• 50:50
  I'm going to adapt to those things because I want to not be
• 50:54
  a stumbling block. And that's what Paul was saying
• 50:56
  here. Don't do things that's going to
• 50:57
  cause yourself to be a stumbling block.
• 51:00
  Practically speaking, you know, if we're showing off too much of
• 51:02
  our, of our body or we're wearing overly tight clothes
• 51:05
  that catches attention. You know, this is even, we say
• 51:09
  that, but even in, in men's culture, you know, skinny jeans
• 51:12
  and, and different type of clothing.
• 51:15
  You know, Brad, I'm a, I'm a little bigger boy.
• 51:16
  I don't, I don't wear skinny jeans on purpose, OK?
• 51:19
  I'm not going out and buying a pair of skinny jeans.
• 51:22
  And so if we're wearing those things, we're trying to simply
• 51:25
  wear things so people will talk about us.
• 51:27
  Oh, you've got on those Air Jordans outlook at look at the
• 51:30
  money you spend on those. And all of a sudden people are
• 51:32
  talking about our clothing and they're taking the attention
• 51:34
  away from Jesus. And that's the reason we come to
• 51:37
  church is to worship him, not to bring the people back to where
• 51:42
  we're at, but to bring the people to where Jesus is at.
• 51:46
  One scripture as we go into this bread, I'll I'll share because I
• 51:50
  think it's so fitting is is James chapter 2 verses 2 through
• 51:53
  5. James says this is very familiar
• 51:56
  passage of scripture. We're going to begin looking at
• 51:58
  some scripture and talking through this.
• 52:00
  The the last part of the episode here says, if a man wearing a
• 52:04
  gold ring and fine clothes comes into your assembly and a poor
• 52:08
  man and shabby clothes also comes in and you pay attention
• 52:12
  to the one who wears fine clothes.
• 52:13
  And you say here sit in the good place while you say to the poor
• 52:16
  man, you stand over there or you come sit at my feet.
• 52:20
  You have not made the distinction among yourselves and
• 52:24
  because I'm sorry, have you not made the distinction among
• 52:26
  yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
• 52:29
  Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are
• 52:33
  poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs to the Kingdom
• 52:37
  which has promised of those who love him?
• 52:39
  James was dealing with the same thing that we deal with in
• 52:42
  today's society 2000 years later.
• 52:44
  He was saying, listen, you're giving partiality to the ones
• 52:47
  that come in and are dressed right because they look nice and
• 52:51
  you think they have something to benefit you.
• 52:53
  The church is not here to have a benefit toward one another.
• 52:56
  The church is here to glorify God, to grow together, to love
• 53:00
  Jesus supremely, and to show love towards other people.
• 53:04
  And so when we begin to think through this, it's are we doing
• 53:07
  these things to let other people think better of ourselves or are
• 53:11
  we doing them because we are simply wanted to glorify God?
• 53:15
  Brett, what's your thoughts? Well, let me say one thing about
• 53:18
  your illustration where you talked about the man you wearing
• 53:23
  shorts, the man talk you about respecting you as pastor.
• 53:26
  And so you would rethink. You know, it's our liberty in
• 53:30
  Christ as long as we're not dressing immorally.
• 53:33
  It's our liberty in Christ to you know, where you know what we
• 53:39
  want to what makes us comfortable, what what reflects
• 53:41
  culture. We'll get into that as we move
• 53:43
  forward. But when your liberty wounds a
• 53:48
  brother or sister, it becomes sin.
• 53:51
  And that that's in Romans 14. And that goes back to that does
• 53:56
  go back to this discussion on personal convictions versus a
• 54:01
  weaker and stronger brother. But when you you brought us into
• 54:04
  James chapter 2, verse 2 through 5.
• 54:08
  And you know, we see two types of people here.
• 54:10
  We see, you know, the rich get the preferred seating.
• 54:13
  They're in the fine, nice garments.
• 54:16
  Then we have the poor, they, they've got the bad seating.
• 54:19
  They're in the Nosebleed sections because they look poor
• 54:23
  and they don't, you know, don't have the fine garments.
• 54:26
  Listen, the Bible allows for people to dress down and
• 54:31
  worship. And I mean, you look in this
• 54:33
  verse and, and you know, and James and you notice that they
• 54:37
  go to worship wearing shabby clothes.
• 54:40
  And that's totally fine. In fact, James says they should
• 54:45
  be accepted. They shouldn't be rejected
• 54:47
  because of what they wear. In fact, the people who were
• 54:51
  wrong in this passage, I believe is more than just the church
• 54:55
  leadership that gave the, you know, the rich gentleman dressed
• 55:00
  in the fine clothes and the three piece suit and the floor
• 55:02
  sign sliding shoes gave him the preferred seat.
• 55:07
  But who's also in the wrongs? The rich gentleman who allowed
• 55:11
  this to happen, you know, we should never look down on
• 55:14
  somebody who comes to church and, and what we don't think and
• 55:18
  what we don't think is traditional church attire.
• 55:22
  You know what, James? A stripper visiting a church is
• 55:26
  probably going to dress like a stripper.
• 55:29
  A drug dealer visiting a church is probably going to dress like
• 55:34
  a drug dealer. But those are the people you
• 55:37
  want in the church. They're not an inconvenience.
• 55:40
  They're not an eyesore. They are the mission.
• 55:44
  They're the people we want to reach.
• 55:47
  And once Jesus is in their heart, the Holy Spirit will
• 55:51
  convict them and they'll change. Their life will change from the
• 55:57
  inside out. But here's what we do.
• 56:00
  Here's the idea that we have. We have the idea that we can
• 56:05
  change people from the outside in.
• 56:09
  It's like if we force our personal convictions on other
• 56:11
  people, we force people to wear a suit and a tie to church.
• 56:16
  And that's what we used to do. You know, when somebody gets
• 56:19
  saved, you know, instead of disciple in them, we used to
• 56:23
  take them to the Goodwill and buy them a shirt and tie that
• 56:26
  they can wear to church because we would think that is the most
• 56:29
  important thing. It's like if we force them to
• 56:32
  wear a suit and tie to church, it's going to magically change
• 56:35
  their heart. And listen, your dress code is
• 56:39
  not the Holy Spirit, right? Your dress code is not going to
• 56:43
  change anybody. The Holy Spirit changes from the
• 56:48
  inside out and as the inside changes and then the outside
• 56:54
  will begin to reflect that inside change.
• 56:57
  Now another scripture that we're going to look over in the New
• 57:02
  Testament that has to do with dress is Matthew 625.
• 57:07
  And it says, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about
• 57:11
  your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about
• 57:16
  your body what you will put on. It's not life more than food and
• 57:21
  the body more than clothing. You know, people worry too much
• 57:27
  about their clothes like it. It can become James.
• 57:30
  It can become their whole identity.
• 57:33
  You know, like I said earlier, I used to, instead of focusing on
• 57:36
  what I was preaching, when I'd be preaching, I'd be focused on
• 57:40
  worried if my tie was straight or if my, you know, if my collar
• 57:44
  was flipped up and, or if I was wearing the same clothes as
• 57:47
  other pastors. Was I wearing the popular shoes
• 57:51
  and all the other pastors were wearing.
• 57:53
  That was what my mindset was. We have to get out of this
• 57:57
  mentality that that just because you've got a pressed clean white
• 58:02
  dress shirt, bless God, Amen. You've got the floor shine shoes
• 58:07
  polished to a fine gloss that means you respect God more.
• 58:12
  Let's look at the Pharisees. OK, the Pharisees were some of
• 58:16
  the best dressed people in the 1st century, but guess what?
• 58:21
  They had the dirtiest hearts, Jesus said.
• 58:25
  They were whited sepulchers on the outside, but on the inside
• 58:29
  they were dead men's bones. And on the other hand, you've
• 58:32
  got Jesus and his disciples over here.
• 58:35
  They're nomads who didn't have a home.
• 58:39
  They were homeless. They lived in the wilderness or
• 58:42
  on the street. They were at the mercy of of
• 58:44
  other people's generosity and probably the only regular
• 58:48
  washings they had is when they had to take a ceremonial bath
• 58:52
  and a mikvah before going up to the Temple Mount.
• 58:57
  But here Jesus said, don't worry about what you're going to put
• 59:01
  on. Now the context of this verse
• 59:03
  is, you know, don't worry, I'll give you clothes to wear.
• 59:06
  But he also said, look, just don't think about it.
• 59:09
  Don't let it enter your mind. He said your life is more than
• 59:13
  clothes. Don't make clothing your life.
• 59:16
  If when I walk into a church and the first thing I'm worried
• 59:20
  about is what is everybody else wearing or how do I look and
• 59:25
  what I'm wearing, then I've I've made clothing my life and I've
• 59:30
  missed the point of this verse. Yeah, absolutely.
• 59:34
  And we often can get struggle, get caught up in those those
• 59:38
  situations so much in our day and age, which transitions into
• 59:42
  our next passage of Scripture. And I'll give some practicality
• 59:45
  to this as well. First Corinthians 11/4 and five,
• 59:48
  it contrasts men and women here says every man who prays or
• 59:52
  prophesizes. Basically, if you're speaking in
• 59:54
  public and you have your head covered, you dishonor your head,
• 59:57
  you're dishonored who you are. But every woman who prays or
• 1:00:01
  prophecies with her head uncovered.
• 1:00:03
  Dishonors her head. So, so there's this
• 1:00:05
  distinguishing here of, well, man, you shouldn't have your
• 1:00:08
  head covered and women, when you get up, you should have your
• 1:00:10
  head covered. A friend of mine was telling me
• 1:00:12
  a story at his church where he had a group of people that came
• 1:00:16
  in and they were wanting to be a part of the church and they
• 1:00:19
  joined and the, the women were very orthodox and they would
• 1:00:23
  have their head coverings on to the point where they were so
• 1:00:26
  legalistic about it that they would not go anywhere without
• 1:00:30
  their head coverings on because of this verse.
• 1:00:32
  Now the husbands were abusing their wives.
• 1:00:35
  They were being dishonored. I mean, just just horrible
• 1:00:39
  husbands to their wives. But bless God, they're going to
• 1:00:42
  wear their head coverings because that that's, that's what
• 1:00:45
  they were told. That's what they were told.
• 1:00:47
  And then they take this verse. They said, well, listen, she's
• 1:00:49
  not been dishonored because she's got her head covered.
• 1:00:52
  And I'm not being dishonored because my head's uncovered.
• 1:00:54
  Then all of a sudden we begin to pick and choose.
• 1:00:56
  We begin to take things out of context.
• 1:00:58
  And this is where it begins to say, listen, you are putting so
• 1:01:01
  much emphasis on what's covering your head, then you are what's
• 1:01:06
  in your heart. It doesn't matter what's over
• 1:01:09
  your head. Doesn't matter what what you
• 1:01:11
  have on the outside, it matters again to your heart.
• 1:01:15
  And it just begins to corrode away at these man made
• 1:01:19
  ideologies that scripture is talking about here.
• 1:01:22
  So let me say about this scripture so that I want to say
• 1:01:25
  what I get from 1st Corinthians 11 is there should be a
• 1:01:28
  distinction amongst the genders, you know, and I got to be real
• 1:01:32
  careful about when I say this because I don't want to sound
• 1:01:37
  legalistic. Every culture in society has
• 1:01:40
  what women wear and they have what the men wear in society.
• 1:01:45
  In this society, the men, you know, had head coverings in the
• 1:01:49
  church. It was, it was discouraged, but
• 1:01:51
  the women were expected to wear the head coverings.
• 1:01:54
  This was a this was a cultural thing.
• 1:01:58
  In our culture, James, women wear pants.
• 1:02:02
  OK, Women's pants are made different than men's pants.
• 1:02:07
  I mean, they're they're they're cut different.
• 1:02:10
  Some of them, the zippers are different.
• 1:02:11
  There are some shirts with the buttons are on the opposite
• 1:02:14
  sides of the shirts. You know, so I, I am not here
• 1:02:18
  saying that women should have to wear dresses and skirts, but,
• 1:02:22
  you know, wear clothes that a woman should wear.
• 1:02:25
  Like, for instance, James, you're not going to come to
• 1:02:28
  church next Sunday and preach in a sun dress, right.
• 1:02:31
  You don't think your people? Didn't plan on it, have not
• 1:02:34
  planned on that one yet. OK, but but take for instance, I
• 1:02:38
  say that they look look over in Scotland.
• 1:02:40
  OK, in their society, it's OK for men to wear kills.
• 1:02:46
  OK, So there's nothing wrong with that because that's how men
• 1:02:49
  dress in their. So the next scripture we have
• 1:02:52
  here was first Timothy 29 and 10 says likewise also that women
• 1:02:57
  should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty
• 1:03:01
  and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls
• 1:03:05
  or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess
• 1:03:09
  godliness and good works. Now I do want to take a moment
• 1:03:13
  here and and talk about modesty. This this doesn't mean that you
• 1:03:19
  know you can't wear shorts or but you can't wear shorts that
• 1:03:23
  are barely shorts at all. Now, I, I, I will admit that in,
• 1:03:29
  in one sense, lust is the problem of the person lusting.
• 1:03:35
  I am not going to blame a man's lust on a woman and say it's the
• 1:03:40
  woman's fault that the man is lusting.
• 1:03:43
  You know, we've had too much of that in the church where we make
• 1:03:48
  the man sin the woman's fault. But at the same time, in another
• 1:03:53
  sense, if you dress immodestly and you're showing too much
• 1:03:57
  skin, you're taking attention off the Lord and putting it on
• 1:04:02
  you. You know, that's why when I get
• 1:04:04
  to preach, I don't wear Bermuda shorts in the pulpit.
• 1:04:08
  You know, I don't want women in the church lest than after my
• 1:04:11
  white legs, you know, that's right, that's right.
• 1:04:13
  Now, this verse doesn't say that you can't braid your hair or
• 1:04:18
  wear nice clothes. That's that's not the point of
• 1:04:20
  it. You have to read this verse in
• 1:04:24
  context to the 1st century. These Gentile women, they would
• 1:04:28
  spend hours and hours and hours of their day weaving their hair
• 1:04:35
  into these intricate patterns. Some of them that would weave
• 1:04:39
  their hair into like the shape of a bird's nest or the shape of
• 1:04:43
  a vase. And they would weave gold and
• 1:04:46
  pearls into their hairdo. And they spent so much of their
• 1:04:50
  they do in this, their life actually became that they had
• 1:04:54
  pride in their hair because they took so much time.
• 1:04:58
  They wanted people to see it. Now you got, and that's what
• 1:05:02
  this verse is talking about. You go look at the Proverbs 31
• 1:05:05
  woman and you can see that she dressed very well.
• 1:05:09
  She she cared about her appearance, but at the same
• 1:05:12
  time, her life wasn't consumed with that.
• 1:05:16
  And I think that's what this verse is speaking to.
• 1:05:19
  Yeah, absolutely. And it continues on.
• 1:05:20
  Peter says like this, do not let your adorning be external.
• 1:05:24
  The braiding of hair to put it on a gold jewelry, men wore gold
• 1:05:28
  jewelry in this time as well. So he's not just talking about
• 1:05:31
  the women here. Men had longer hair at this
• 1:05:33
  time. So he's talking about same thing
• 1:05:35
  or the clothing you wear. But let your adorning be the
• 1:05:38
  hidden person of your heart with the imperishable beauty of a
• 1:05:44
  gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.
• 1:05:51
  He begins to say, listen here, you guys, you're, you're putting
• 1:05:54
  so much emphasis on what's on the outside.
• 1:05:56
  You don't even care about what's on the inside.
• 1:05:59
  God doesn't care about the outside.
• 1:06:01
  He cares about how your heart is.
• 1:06:03
  Are you been redemptive? Are you showing mercy?
• 1:06:05
  Are you showing love? Are you are you able to be
• 1:06:08
  corrected? Or is your spirit so evil that
• 1:06:11
  you're just covering it up and you're just trying to go out and
• 1:06:14
  you're just trying to take a card that's been beat up by the
• 1:06:17
  storm and you're just trying to put a fresh coat of paint on it
• 1:06:19
  so it looks nice? Or you dealing with the problems
• 1:06:22
  of the inside and that's where Paul's coming from here.
• 1:06:25
  Or I'm sorry, not Paul. Peter is coming from when he
• 1:06:27
  says do not worry so much about the external, but worry about
• 1:06:31
  the internal. Brett, I never heard that
• 1:06:33
  preached like that. First, Peter was never really
• 1:06:36
  used in our culture and our growing up because that goes
• 1:06:40
  against what they're trying to preach and teach.
• 1:06:43
  Exactly, We have to remember you don't worship God with your
• 1:06:48
  clothes. You worship God with your heart.
• 1:06:50
  People take this, you know all the all this time in the in in
• 1:06:55
  effort into dressing to a tee. They get their hearts are
• 1:06:59
  filthy. They're living in rebellion
• 1:07:01
  against God. They think that their their
• 1:07:04
  clothing is their righteousness and they're not concerned with
• 1:07:08
  the heart attitude because that's but that's what God is
• 1:07:11
  concerned with. The Bible over and over and over
• 1:07:15
  again says that the Lord sees not as man sees or for you know,
• 1:07:19
  man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks
• 1:07:23
  on the heart. Our next passage here is First
• 1:07:28
  Corinthians Chapter 9 and verse 20 and 22.
• 1:07:32
  And it says to the Jews, I became as a Jew in order to win
• 1:07:36
  the Jews. To those under the law, I became
• 1:07:39
  as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that
• 1:07:43
  I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I
• 1:07:48
  became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of
• 1:07:51
  God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those
• 1:07:56
  outside the law. To the weak, I became weak that
• 1:08:00
  I might win the weak. I have become all things to all
• 1:08:04
  people that by all means I might save some.
• 1:08:07
  That is one of my favorite passages.
• 1:08:09
  Of Scripture absolutely our. Clothing James should be
• 1:08:15
  missional, OK? We shouldn't try and strive to
• 1:08:20
  dress like church people. We should actually strive to
• 1:08:24
  dress like those we're trying to reach, with the exception of
• 1:08:30
  being immodest. I mean this, this means look, if
• 1:08:33
  if you're out in the country with a bunch of country boys you
• 1:08:37
  like to hunt and you're out there with a bunch of farmers
• 1:08:40
  who like to farm, or maybe that's how you should think
• 1:08:43
  about coming to church. I mean, the people in your area
• 1:08:46
  that wear boots and flannel shirts, maybe you should wear
• 1:08:50
  boots and flannel shirts to church.
• 1:08:52
  If it's jeans and AT shirt, wear jeans and AT shirt.
• 1:08:56
  Now, me personally, I don't wear ties unless it's a special
• 1:09:00
  occasion. I'll wear a tie on the Lord's
• 1:09:02
  Supper. That's about it.
• 1:09:04
  Most the time I don't wear ties when I preach.
• 1:09:07
  I just, you know, you know, especially I do wear slacks.
• 1:09:10
  I do wear a button up and most Sundays I do put on a Sport
• 1:09:14
  coat. There's one very simple reason
• 1:09:17
  for that is because I'm comfortable preaching in those
• 1:09:21
  clothes. I'm not comfortable wearing a
• 1:09:23
  tie. I'm just not going to do it.
• 1:09:25
  But if I wanted to show up next week on a Sunday morning to
• 1:09:30
  preach in jeans in a polo, I would have no issue with that.
• 1:09:34
  And I might do it soon just to prove a point.
• 1:09:38
  Now, if you have a personal conviction, you know that you
• 1:09:42
  should wear, and I want to say this, you could have your own
• 1:09:46
  personal conviction that you honor God by wearing your best
• 1:09:51
  to church and bless God. If that is your personal
• 1:09:54
  conviction, you do it to the glory of God.
• 1:09:57
  OK, I'm not going to Lord over your conscience.
• 1:10:00
  Don't violate your conscience because of what I'm saying on
• 1:10:03
  this podcast. But what I, you know, but what I
• 1:10:06
  am, I'm, I'm thoroughly personally a proponent of come
• 1:10:10
  as you are. If that is your personal
• 1:10:13
  conviction to wear your Sunday best to church, that's fine, But
• 1:10:17
  don't push that off on other people.
• 1:10:20
  Don't, you know, Lord over somebody else's conscience,
• 1:10:23
  Don't enforce your personal convictions on somebody else
• 1:10:27
  that strays into the area of legalism.
• 1:10:29
  For the most part, I promote a come as you are, you know, be
• 1:10:34
  all things that you know, by all means you may save some.
• 1:10:38
  Yeah. And then I, I love that.
• 1:10:40
  And one of the things I'll close by saying as we wrap up this
• 1:10:44
  episode is we're preaching through right now our core
• 1:10:48
  values in our church. And one of the core values that
• 1:10:51
  we're on is is going and serving.
• 1:10:53
  And one of the things I said a couple weeks ago was this,
• 1:10:56
  people should be able to tell that you're a Christian without
• 1:11:00
  you telling them. Going to go a step further.
• 1:11:03
  People should be able to know you're a Christian without you
• 1:11:04
  wearing a certain attire to demonstrate that you're a
• 1:11:07
  Christian. And I'll illustrate it by this.
• 1:11:10
  If being a Christian means I dress up and I wear my Sunday
• 1:11:14
  best and my Sunday best for a man is a suit and tie, does that
• 1:11:18
  mean every lawyer is a safe born again believer?
• 1:11:21
  Does that mean every judge? Does that mean every Senate,
• 1:11:24
  every House of Representative? That's their attire for their
• 1:11:27
  work. If that's the definition of
• 1:11:30
  being a Christian and being a being someone that's on the
• 1:11:33
  right track because of their dress, that means every single
• 1:11:36
  one of those people are born again believers and love Jesus
• 1:11:39
  because that's the standard that we've set.
• 1:11:41
  Or is it more about our actions and about our heart than it is
• 1:11:47
  about our external appearance? And we've got to ask ourselves,
• 1:11:50
  am I doing what I'm doing because it's the right thing to
• 1:11:52
  do and it's because I legitimately have a God-given
• 1:11:56
  conviction about this? Or am I doing because someone
• 1:11:59
  told me I should do it? And by doing this, I'm going to
• 1:12:02
  give the appearance that I'm a Christian.
• 1:12:06
  And that's the difference that we have to ask ourself.
• 1:12:09
  Exactly, You know, separation from the world.
• 1:12:13
  It, it means separation from the sin of the world.
• 1:12:17
  You can't, you know, cut yourself off completely.
• 1:12:20
  We're called to be ambassadors in this world.
• 1:12:25
  And what does an ambassador do that goes to another country?
• 1:12:28
  They learn the customs, they learn the culture as to not
• 1:12:32
  offend the the country that they're in, not to change who
• 1:12:36
  there are. They're still citizens of
• 1:12:38
  ambassador to China. They're going to learn the
• 1:12:40
  culture. They're not going to want to
• 1:12:42
  offend the people that they're trying to reach or the people
• 1:12:46
  that they're sin to. And in the same sense, we need
• 1:12:50
  to, you know, learn the culture of the people that we're in.
• 1:12:53
  You know, we want to change the culture, but at the same time,
• 1:12:58
  we want to be all things to them so that we can give them the
• 1:13:01
  gospel. This is all about, you know, you
• 1:13:04
  know, spreading the gospel, being a witness for Christ.
• 1:13:08
  We can do that without you know, we can do that through our
• 1:13:12
  attire and what we wear and and not ostracize people and turn
• 1:13:16
  people off from that. So I agree with you.
• 1:13:19
  Until next time, to God. Not the pastor, be the glory.
• 1:13:25
  Found my new. Name.
• 1:13:27
  Found that good grace, found that healing and the tears fell
• 1:13:32
  down my face when I found my beginning has no ending.
• 1:13:37
  Found my second chance from my best friend, from my
• 1:13:39
  forgiveness, from my happiness. I've been singing ever since
• 1:13:41
  about my. Freedom, thanks for listening to
• 1:13:57
  the Four Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do
• 1:14:01
  us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our
• 1:14:04
  podcast on whichever podcast platform you use.
• 1:14:08
  Be sure to join us next time for the Four Freedom Podcast.