In the third chapter of 1 Peter, 1
Peter, 3rd chapter, the first seven verses.
Likewise, ye wives be in subjection to your
own husbands, that if any obey not the
word, they also may, without the word, be
won by the conversation of their wives.
Conversation here meaning conduct and not talk.
While they behold your chaste conduct coupled with
fear.
Who's adorning?
Let it not be that outward adorning of
plaiting, if you're American, plaiting if you're English,
patting the hair, and the wearing of gold,
and the putting on of apparel.
But let it be the hidden man of
the heart, in that which is not corruptible,
even the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit, which is in the sight of God
of great price.
For after this manner, in the old time,
the holy women also, who trusted in God,
adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own
husbands.
Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.
Whose daughters ye are, as long as ye
do well, and are not afraid with any
amazement.
Likewise, ye husbands dwell with them according to
knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto
the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together
of the grace of life.
In this view, let your prayers be not
hindered.
Now through all history, of course, the biological
positions of the two sexes have remained unchanged.
But the psychological attitudes and the social relations
have been altered very radically from time to
time.
And there has occurred in recent years, very
much all over the world, having its origin
in the United States, a psychological and social
revolution with respect to the relation of the
sexes.
And this has amounted to a positive and
radical revolution.
Now, I'm not going to go into that.
I'm not prepared to do it.
And I would be very unwilling, because the
topic would be extremely distasteful.
But I can only say this much.
That for the Christian of either sex, there
is only one rule to settle the problem.
And that is, what does the Bible say?
We have been committed to the word of
God.
We have been committed to a man and
a book.
The man being the man, Christ Jesus, and
the book being the holy scripture.
And when we have discovered on any subject
at all, when we have discovered what the
Bible says, and what pleases the man in
the glory, then there is no place for
argument.
He said it.
And if he said it, that settles it.
There is no place for argument.
And certainly there is no place for numerous
remarks.
It is my belief that in dealing with
the touchy subject of the home and the
relation and proper position of the husband and
the wife and the child in the home,
a great deal of damage, damage that can
never be repaired, has been done by public
speakers, particularly the preachers, who deal with the
subject as though it were humorous.
It is anything but funny in the light
of the coming judgment and the presence of
the Lord at his coming.
Now it says here, ye wives, being subjecting
to your own husbands, and here is what
the Bible would seem to teach, that the
man is the head of the race and
the home.
Go back to Genesis and you will find
that God made Adam out of the dust
of the ground, blowing to his nostrils the
breath of life.
And then because man was not good being
alone, God made the woman of the heart
of the man.
And the woman must understand this and accept
it.
But on the other hand, there is never
any authority in the Scripture, neither precept nor
biblical example anywhere, for the brutal Lord who
rules his home with an iron hand.
That is completely unknown in the Scriptures.
Read the story of Abraham and Sarah.
You will find there the noble leadership of
the man Abraham.
But he never ruled with an iron hand.
Go on to poor old Jacob with all
his domestic difficulties.
There was always a graciousness and a kindness
in the family.
Come on down through all the Old Testament
history, even though it was a bit in
the shadows compared with the brilliant light of
the New Testament.
Still and nevertheless, there never was any brutal
domination.
The Bible seems to teach that the husband
and the wife should supplement each other, being
together what neither one would be apart.
But on the other hand, the dominant and
rebellious wife is unknown in the Scriptures.
Or if she is known in the Scriptures,
she is never approved.
The idea is never approved.
The dominating wife is the product of sin
and unbelief and has no place whatsoever in
the will of God.
So that there is not to be rivalry,
according to the Scripture, there is to be
cooperation.
There is to be understanding that there are
two people, by force and circumstances and their
choice, living in the same home, and that
the husband, being in the Scripture and according
to the will of God, the head of
the race, or of the home and the
man, the head of the race, and which
yet be according to Peter's remarks here, notice
it how very gently he says, the husbands
dwell with them according to knowledge.
It is usually the head.
Give them honor unto the wife as unto
the weaker vessel, as being heirs together of
the grace of life.
That is, they are children of God together,
and are equal heirs of the grace of
life.
And remember that.
I think chivalry was born here, Christian chivalry,
as we understand it.
The weaker vessel, it says, and there is
an awful lot of joking about that in
Cartoon's love of this passage, to show the
great large bicep woman leading a meek little
lamb of a man down the street.
They love to play on this weaker vessel
business.
But the Scripture says that they are heirs
together of the grace of life.
The husband and the wife, if they are
both Christians, are Christian heirs.
Together they are brethren in Jesus Christ the
Lord.
Then he says, this doing in order that
your prayers be not hindered.
I suppose there are many a praying husband
whose prayers are not being answered, and he
blames it on Malenkov or Cardinal Spelman, when
the fact is he is simply a great
big overbearing baboon when it comes to his
wife.
And if he would straighten out and live
with her according to knowledge, and put her
with the chivalry that belongs as being the
weaker vessel, and remembering that she is his
sister in Christ, his prayers would get answered
in spite of the devil and Malenkov.
The trouble lies not in the Kremlin or
the Vatican, but it lies in the heart
of the man who just can't resist the
temptation to growl and dominate.
Well, there is no place for it in
any home.
There is place for recognition of the proper
relationships and positions, but there is no place
for domination.
Now, it says that the Christian wife who
has an unsaved husband, what about that?
And I suppose that if I were to
ask what the greatest problem is, even in
a congregation as modest as this one, there
would be many who would say, well, how
to adjust my Christian life so that I
am obedient to the scriptures when I am
living with a man who hates God and
who allows me to go to church only
reluctantly and with much grumble.
Well, the Bible deals with that, too.
And it says, in effect, that the quiet,
cooperative Christian wife is a powerful instrument for
good in the home.
But she is, without saying much, an evangelist
hard to resist.
And the man, though he may reject her
doctrine and laugh at her faith, in his
deep conscience he is badly smitten by the
evidence of her meek and quiet spirit and
her chaste conversation coupled with fear.
And there is many a woman who prays
about her husband's conversion who will never live
to see her husband convert because she refuses
the scriptural position that God has given her
and because, bluntly, the husband doesn't see anything
there that he wants.
Now, in between, I've mentioned the dominating gorilla
of a husband whose prayers aren't answered because
he's just too much of a man.
Now, I mentioned the woman whose life does
not show godliness.
But in between those two, thank God, there's
a whole world of good, decent Christian people
that try to do the best they can.
And if there are any irritations, they try
to overlook them and get along the best
they can.
Thank God for that great mass of believing
men and women who get along together and
who manage somehow to set a fairly good
example to the neighborhood and to their friends.
Now we come to a problem that would
be very distasteful to me, but I may
die tomorrow, and I wouldn't want to die
knowing that the day before I had cowardly
run out cowardly is an adverb in spite
of what you'd say that I had cowardly
run out on a text of scripture that
I was too timid to deal with.
I'll read it again, Peter help me here.
Who's adorning?
Let it not be that outward adorning of
ladding of the hair, plaiting if you like,
and of wearing of gold, and of putting
on of apparel.
Let it be the hidden man of the
heart.
Peter's all mixed up here, talking about a
woman and then says it's to be the
hidden man of the heart.
Because he lifts, he's not mixed up of
course, he lifts the whole thing off of
the plane where there's division between sexes and
puts it up on the spiritual plane where
there is no such division.
And says it's the hidden being of the
heart that matters.
Now, not that outward adorning.
What does the Bible teach here?
It says that the woman is not to
be, seek to be attractive by outward adorning
of the plaiting of the hair, of the
wearing of gold, and of the putting on
of apparel.
Now, does this passage forbid these things?
Let's say yes, and then go on from
there and see where we land.
About the plaiting of the hair, now I
used to call that braiding when I was
a boy, and every little girl had a
pigtail that came to her hips, and the
longer the prouder they were of them, with
ribbons on the end.
And very carefully braided, plaiting is a word
that's used in America, plaiting in England, but
braiding we always called it.
My sister used to wear braided hair, and
that's what it means.
Does it say, don't be adorned with braided
hair?
If we say yes, that's what it says.
All right, that rules out the braiding of
your hair.
Okay, it's out.
Now, whose adorning let it not be the
wearing of gold.
Does that mean that there's not to be
gold ever worn by a Christian woman, if
we say, and we're agreeing for the moment,
okay, all right, that's out.
Nor the putting on of apparel.
Now, wait a minute, we're in it here,
because it certainly doesn't mean that the woman
is not to put on apparel.
So what does it mean if it doesn't
mean that she's not to plait her hair
ever, nor wear gold, nor put on apparel?
If it doesn't mean that, what does it
mean?
It means your true attractiveness is not outward,
but inward.
And that therefore, as a Christian woman, you
should remember that you cannot buy true attractiveness.
That it is of the heart and not
of the body.
Now, there's what Peter meant, and anything we
read further into that is fanaticism and narrow
private interpretation.
For that's exactly what he said.
There is not one line here that would
lead us, not one common or semicolon that
could lead us to believe that Peter had
said that it's wrong for a woman to
braid her hair.
Yeah, do something with it.
Nor is there anything in the scriptures that
would lead anybody to teach that it would
be unscriptural and wrong for a woman to
wear gold.
God Almighty made gold and strung it all
around us, put it to look at, and
it's an element in itself, and it's all
that, and if we can afford any of
it and have any of it, nothing in
the scriptures says don't wear it any more
than it says don't put on apparel.
It says don't let your apparel be your
true attractiveness, nor your gold.
Now, I can see where when Peter smiled
a wry smile when he wrote that, because
I suppose, I'm quite sure that history would
bear me out in this, that they had
customs in those days, vogues, and I suppose
the vogue was to make the braided hair
a ruling somewhat, and the wearing of gold,
of course, I suppose, was carried to ridiculous
extremes, and no doubt women were lowly, unsaved,
pagan women, were being seen on the streets
dressed like the reverberant Christmas tree.
So Peter rather dowrily says, you Christian women
are another kind of person altogether, and you're
invested more in character than you are in
your clothing, and therefore you Christian women shouldn't
seek to adorn yourself and make yourself attractive
by the use of gold and hairdos and
apparel, but your true attractiveness is inward, not
outward.
Now, I may get in trouble here, but
not with anybody in this congregation, of course,
and it wouldn't be too desperately serious if
I did.
But while true attractiveness never is outward, yet
no Christian woman ever can be a slugger.
You ask me, a woman who is proverbial
about and who lives and moves around, carries
her big Bible, and yet is a slugger.
And I see them sometimes, oh, tell it
not in gasp, on buses and streetcars, on
their way to church, with the big Bible
on their lap and the Sunday school quarter,
they're evidently a teacher.
And you would shrug, you'd say, did that
woman go to the old barrel in the
attic and just pull it out and put
it on, or how did it get on?
Did she sleep in it?
I see them like that.
Well, now, they can't impress me with their
spirituality.
I don't believe in that kind of spirituality.
There's no place in the heart of Jesus
Christ, There's no place in that artistic, tender,
poetic, whole ghost for doubtiness, or dirt, or
sluggerness.
I remember the old Quaker brother that went
to visit a Quaker sister, making a call
of some sort.
And after they had stood off to know
how they did and boxed, shadowboxed very properly
and talked a while in a very dignified
manner about the things of God.
Why, she said, Bubber, would you care to
pray with me before you go?
He said, no.
She said, why?
He said, your house is dirty.
He said, God Almighty never told me to
get down on my knees in that dirty
house.
Clean up and I'll come back and pray.
I believe that he had more of the
spirit than she had.
She probably was too busy praying to clean
up.
But I believe that if she had cleaned
up, perhaps she could have prayed better.
Now, I say, that this gives no room
whatsoever for the female doubt.
There are four words.
Many of you wouldn't care to take them
down.
Not my address, please.
Just these four words.
But if any of you ladies care to
take down here are the words.
Clean, neat, modest, and appropriate.
Now, that's the outward adornment.
Now, there's got to be some kind of
outward adornment.
But you're not to depend upon that, and
you're to remember that apart from the hidden
man of the heart, there never can be
any lasting beauty.
First of all, clean, everybody understands that.
However poor we may be, we can still
be clean.
That's all we water build.
Neat.
Nobody ever needs to look as if she
had been in a cyclone and hadn't got
accumulated yet.
And the word modest.
I think everybody knows what that word modest
means.
We can laugh that off if we want
to, but those are words we'll face in
that great day.
And the fourth word is appropriate.
Appropriate to two things.
Every Christian woman.
Now, if you want to know, if you
don't want to know, it's all right.
But if you want to know, every Christian
woman should dress appropriate to the circumstances and
to her income.
A Christian woman giving out cracks, loudly dressed
or inappropriately dressed, or badly dressed or unneatly
dressed, is a very, very bad ad for
the gospel that she is talking, or trying
to talk to the public.
Now, what do I mean by appropriate to
the circumstances?
I can only give you a grotesque illustration
of what I mean.
A few, some time ago, I saw on
a streetcar one day.
That's a wonderful place to go.
Some of you people that never get in
a streetcar, just ride one.
It costs you seventeen cents to observe human
nature in the law.
And you'll get a lot out of it
if you're alert and watchful.
I saw a lady, now here was the
way she was dressed.
She had on high heels, slacks, a great,
heavy, and rather lovely fur coat and babushka.
And I looked at this woman and thought
to myself, how did they ever let her
get out that way at all?
Why didn't somebody stop her at the door
and say, Hey, mama, please, don't go out
like that.
People will think you've escaped.
Now, she wasn't dressed appropriately.
You say, oh, but boy, we have just
a little money and all that.
But we don't have to be grotesque, even
if we only have a little bit of
money.
So there's no excuse for that.
And the woman, if that woman, I don't
know that she was a Christian at all,
but if she was, she'd have had some
explaining to do if she tried to talk
Jesus Christ to anybody.
Second is, appropriate to the income.
Now, I mention this because of two reasons.
One is that a great many single women
are working so hard they're making themselves old
in order to get money enough to buy
clothes to make themselves look young.
And the contradiction is grotesque.
It doesn't reflect any credit on the common
sense of spirituality of any woman who goes
out of her financial bracket to decorate herself
for the sake of appearances.
She lives and comes from a home where
those things are taken for granted, all right,
but always dress according to the circumstances appropriately,
neatly, modestly, and of course, plenty.
Now, I'd rather sound like Mr. Anthony or
Albert B.
Wiggum here, but Peter said that I didn't,
and it's before us.
Now, what is the true adorning of the
Christian woman?
The true adorning is the inward adorning.
That lasting beauty which is within.
The hidden being of the heart, which is
more conspicuous, though it is hidden, than all
the jewels that one can buy.
A meek and quiet spirit always makes a
woman attractive, be she young or old.
In our conclusion, Christian women, take not as
your models the wrong people.
Take not as your model Mrs. Roosevelt, Claire
Booth Luce, Jane Russell, et al.
Take for your model Sarah, the princess.
For it says here, even as Sarah obeyed
Abraham calling him Lord, as holy women in
olden times, who trusted in God, adorned themselves.
So take Sarah.
You don't know how she dressed, of course.
You only know that her adorning was inward.
Susanna Wesley is a woman whose name is
golden in the annals of the Church of
Christ.
Yet nobody knows how she dressed.
I never heard of her having...
I know she dressed, but I don't know
how.
I don't know what she wore.
I don't know a thing about that.
I only know she had seventeen children.
And the two of them were Charles and
John Wesley.
I'm glad she went on to have seventeen,
because John was the last.
And if she hadn't had seventeen, we'd never
have had John Wesley.
Now, could she have added anything to her
glory if she had been known as one
of England's ten best dressed women?
Never.
That would have passed away and been forgotten
or put in a footnote at the bottom
of the page.
But that she brought into the world those
princes of song and theology, John Charles Wesley,
and taught them herself, has placed her name
high in the hall of God Almighty's everlasting
fame.
So if you want to take models, don't
take the models of the globe-trotting females
making gravely voiced speeches about things of which
they know nothing.
Nor quip artists, but take Sarah, and Susanna,
and Florence Nightingale, and Clara Barton, and Mary
Fuller.
There are plenty of good examples.
Take them.
Remember in the last word, this is shoes.
And the great day of God will declare
all our work, yours and mine.
So we'd better take it seriously.
It can neither be shrugged off nor laughed
off, for the judgment shall declare every man's
work.
But we should reverently obey both the woman
of verse 1 and the husband of verse
7.
And if we do this, and if we
remember that there should be no domination, no
rebellion, no iron hand, but Christian understanding
and fellowship.
And when it comes to adornment, let it
not be out of the ladies' room journal,
but within circumstances, decently, modestly, practically, but appropriately.
Yes.
I don't think we can ever have a
revival in the Church of Christ until these
things that have been laughed off by evangelists
are brought back before our gaze and reverently
considered, not humorously, but seriously, in the light
of judgment.
When that time comes, and we begin to
take God seriously, maybe God will begin to
take our plaintive prayers for revival a bit
more seriously than he's taking them now.
But until that time comes, we can go
on beating the bench asking for revival.
But we'll get revival when we begin to
obey reverently in the will of God and
not make quips out of texts or subjects
for funny stories out of holy writ.
So God help us all, men and women,
whatever marital, social, or domestic status, in order
that we might do the will of God
and thus win our crown.