This message was given at the Building Strong
Families Conference held in Dallas, Texas, March 20th
through the 22nd of 2000.
This conference was sponsored by the Council on
Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Family Life Ministries.
Following the message, there will be information on
how to order additional materials on building a
strong family.
Thank you, Margaret.
That was very kind of you.
Well, as Margaret said, our topic is Rediscovering
Femininity and Modesty.
Now, I need to just point out something
from the outset.
Considering that I have 15 minutes to speak,
there is no way I can possibly cover
this topic.
When I was first beginning to prepare on
this topic, the question that kept coming to
my mind was, where do I come in
for a landing on this one?
Femininity is a very broad topic.
And, I mean, femininity alone is huge, but
we're supposed to rediscover femininity and modesty in
50 minutes.
Well, I think you'll agree with me, it
just can't be done in this brief amount
of time.
However, there is time to consider a small
part of this great topic, and it's that
approach I'm taking this afternoon with respect to
all the valid ways to survey this wonderful,
great topic.
I would simply like to consider it from
this one aspect, and that is, as women,
we can enhance our wonderful gift of femininity
by cultivating inner beauty.
So will you pray with me before we
begin?
Father, we just thank you so much for
this privilege to gather in this context.
And, Lord, we have just been partaking of
a feast.
And we just thank you for all that
you have imparted to us thus far.
And, Lord, we just continue to look to
you for your help and your direction and
your guidance on these issues.
And so, Lord, I just ask this afternoon,
I ask personally for your help.
I ask that you would enable me to
impart your heart on this topic.
Lord, I just acknowledge my need for you,
my dependence upon you.
And I thank you that you will help
me.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, what is femininity?
Well, to answer that question, we need to
go back to the story of creation, as
we've been doing again and again in all
these different seminars, because it's there that we
discover the inauguration of femininity.
Its origin is recorded in elegantly simple language
in Genesis chapter 1.
So God created man in his own image.
In the image of God, he created him.
Male and female, he created them.
In Genesis 2, verses 21 and 22, we
are given a more full and vivid description
of woman's origin.
The Lord God caused the man to fall
in a deep sleep.
And while he was sleeping, he took one
of the man's ribs and closed up the
place with flesh.
Then the Lord God made a woman from
the rib he had taken out of the
man, and he brought her to the man.
Now, we see from these scriptures that woman
was the beautiful handiwork of the Lord God,
our creator.
Woman was God's idea and his invention.
In fact, as we read the whole account
of Genesis, of his brilliant creation production, we
discover that woman was the finishing design of
all he created.
She was the last act of God's creation.
Dare we say that God left the best
until the last?
I don't think we can take too much
pride in this when we remember who it
was to first eat the forbidden fruit.
The important point here is God created woman.
Being the creation of God determines everything for
us as women.
This means in order to learn what it
means to be a woman, we must start
with God.
In order to determine our purpose as women,
we must start with the one who made
us.
We don't look to our culture to find
our identity.
We don't look to our feelings to discover
our purpose.
We are to look to God because it
is he who made us.
Therefore, everything that we are and everything that
we do must be rooted in him.
May I also point out from this passage
that our being born a woman wasn't accidental.
It was not mere chance.
We were intentionally and purposefully created.
Our birth was the plan and for a
foreordained determination of an all wise, all powerful,
and all loving God.
Have you ever stopped to consider the marvel
of your birth?
Years ago, I read a magazine article that
contained an interview with Edith Shaffer.
She was telling about the biography she had
just written entitled The Tapestry.
Listen to this excerpt from the interview.
She said, In the first chapter of The
Tapestry, I begin with a subject that has
always held my attention.
The mystery of being.
I have often felt that we concentrate on
how people die.
Yet the fact that any of us could
have been born and survived is really more
amazing.
It is probably true for most of us
that if we had not been conceived in
the particular month in which we were conceived,
our parents would have conceived another child in
the following month or two.
But the fact is that in that period
of conception, that fantastically limited moment, those particular
chromosomes came together and we came into being.
Other chromosome combinations could have taken place, but
they didn't.
Ours did.
It leads me to ask, why me?
Why this particular combination that is me?
The answer is that God had a reason
for creating me.
God does have a reason for creating you
and me.
And he does have a purpose in making
us woman.
And Genesis provides us with a beautiful picture
of that purpose.
Now I'd like to make one final observation
about our origin as woman.
And that is God created male and female.
Not male and male.
Not female and female.
But male and female, he created them.
God made man and woman different.
When God created us woman, he made us
a fully feminine creature.
We did not become feminine.
We were born feminine.
You and I did not become feminine because
someone gave us a doll and put a
dress on us.
We were created feminine.
See, the feminist doctrine of our society upholds
the notion that femininity is all a matter
of cultural conditioning.
Many feminists argue that the only essential difference
between men and women is our anatomy.
They claim we weren't born differently.
It was just our upbringing that created the
differences.
Genesis 1 teaches otherwise.
God created male and female.
As women, we are distinctly female.
Innately feminine.
Not because of the way we've been trained.
Not because of the culture.
But because God created us that way.
Our femininity is a gift of grace from
a loving God.
Now, there is just so much more wonderful
truth that is contained in these first few
chapters of Genesis regarding our femininity.
However, I'm not going to take any more
time to elaborate on the creation account, because
given the audience I am speaking to, I'm
confident you know the story well, not to
mention that you're already receiving excellent biblical teaching
on this topic and all the other sessions
from teachers far more gifted than I am.
So, it would only be redundant to continue.
However, I would like us to turn our
attention now to the subject of cultivating our
femininity.
See, we've stated that God created us feminine.
It is the essence of our nature as
women.
However, we can also enhance this wonderful gift
of femininity that God has given us.
In fact, our femininity should grow with the
passing of time.
It should actually improve with age.
Our femininity should be even more wonderful when
we are age-minded.
How do we cultivate our femininity?
How do we enhance this gracious gift that
God has given us?
Now, I have labored over how to best
answer this question, because there are so many
valid and important points that could be made.
However, I have chosen one section of Scripture
that I think best captures a godly pursuit
of femininity, and it's found in 1 Peter
3, beginning in verse 3.
Peter's exhorting the women, Your beauty should not
come from outward adornment, such as braided hair
and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine
clothes.
Instead, it should be that of your inner
self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and
quiet spirit, which is of great worth in
God's sight.
For this is the way the holy women
of the past, who put their hope in
God, used to make themselves beautiful.
Now, to summarize this, we could say our
femininity is cultivated by the pursuit of inner
beauty.
Pursuing the unfading beauty of a gentle and
quiet spirit is what enhances our femininity as
women.
Therefore, I would like to spend the remaining
time discussing the subject of beauty.
We're going to first look at the beauty
which our culture esteems, physical beauty, and then
we're going to consider beauty as God defines
it.
What is a cultural perspective of beauty?
Well, needless to say, physical beauty is very
significant for women in today's society.
However, I don't think it has only been
important to women in our culture.
I mean, isn't it interesting to note in
the passage that we just read that Peter
needed to address the topic of beauty for
the women in his day, way back when?
I think it's accurate to say that women
have always been concerned about their physical appearance.
Recently, I read a fascinating article that illustrates
this very point.
It's entitled, The Price of Perfection.
And in this article, the author gives an
overview through the centuries of the dangerous and
mutilating procedures women have undertaken with their bodies
in an attempt to pursue beauty as defined
by their cultural standards.
Let me just read to you a few
of the illustrations.
In China, almost up until World War II,
upper class girls had their feet bound, crippling
them for life, but ensuring the three or
four inch long feet that were prized as
exquisitely feminine.
In Central Africa, the Mangbetu wrapped the heads
of female infants in pieces of giraffe hide
to attain the elongated, comb-shaped heads that
were taken to be a sign of beauty
and intelligence.
During the Renaissance, well-born European women plucked
out hair, one by one, from their natural
hairlines all the way back to the crowns
of their heads to give themselves the high,
rounded foreheads thought beautiful at the time.
The author goes on to communicate some of
the highs and lows of fashion regarding a
woman's breasts.
He said, In ancient Greece, and again in
14th century Europe, breasts were hidden and tightly
bound.
The ideal torso was a flat torso, an
ideal that reemerged for the flappers of the
1920s and the mod models like Twiggy of
the 1960s.
When stylish women put their breasts under cover
in the 1920s, they used constricting devices like
the one from the boyish form brassiere company
of New York, guaranteed to give you, quote,
that boy-like flat appearance.
Some women actually folded their breasts, squashing them
as close as possible against the rib cage
and holding them there with elastic bindings.
Then the pendulum sprung once again.
By the 1950s, breasts were back.
And this time, 20th century technological know-how
was able to provide far more sophisticated solutions
for those who didn't measure up.
At first, the only women who surgically enlarged
their breasts were professional entertainers.
Carol Dada, a topless cocktail waitress from San
Francisco, was one of the pioneers.
In the late 1950s, she became an instant
celebrity when she boosted her bosom to a
size 44DD with 20 shots of liquid silicone.
The author said, Despite the vagaries of vanity
which changed the notion of ideal breast size
every few decades, one factor has held relatively
constant.
Most cultures through the centuries have wanted their
women to be slim.
In England in 1665, a health pamphlet titled,
To Reduce the Body that is Too Fat
to a Mean and Handsome Proportion, noted that
one handy technique for losing weight was bloodletting.
Overweight women, according to this pamphlet, should be
bled largely twice a year, the right arm
in the spring, the left in the autumn.
In the 1930s, desperate women actually swallowed tapeworms
to lose weight.
The opera diva Maria Callas is said to
have been one such reducer.
The article also highlighted measures women have taken
to erase facial imperfections.
Listen to this.
In the Elizabethan age, many women, in search
of skin that looked like porcelain, whitened their
faces using ceruse, a potentially lethal combination of
vinegar and lead.
Queen Elizabeth I used ceruse so consistently that
it eventually ate pits into her skin, causing
her to pile the paint on in thicker
and thicker layers in hopes of camouflaging the
growing damage.
This, in turn, only led to more corrosion,
and the virgin queen's face was ultimately so
ravaged that she ordered all mirrors banned from
the palace.
It is reported that Elizabeth's servants exploited the
ban on mirrors in a wickedly mischievous way.
Every morning, they painted the queen's face white
with ceruse, but they painted her nose a
cruel crimson.
Now, this article contains many more illustrations that
describe the dangerous and drastic measures women have
taken in their quest for beauty, which I
will not take any more time to read.
However, we see from the few that I
have read, the temptation for women to be
preoccupied with their physical appearance has always existed.
Women have always been susceptible to becoming absorbed
with the pursuit of the physical ideal as
defined by the time and culture in which
they live.
However, in our present-day culture, I think
it's accurate to say that women are driven
in their pursuit of physical beauty more than
ever before.
See, given the impact of modern-day technology
and the blitz of media influence, we are
bombarded continuously with voices and images that define
what we are to look like.
Whereas a hundred years ago, women might have
compared themselves with the other ten women in
their village, today, women compare themselves with pictures
of the supermodels put on display by the
worldwide fashion industry.
And what ideal image has the worldwide fashion
industry put forth as the standard of beauty
by which every woman is to measure herself?
Well, for starters, we must have bodies that
are perfect and without defect.
Well, that eliminates the majority of us right
at the outset.
If we have an unwanted scar or an
undesired birthmark, if we have a skin disease
or walk with a limp, if we have
varicose veins or stretch marks from having babies,
if our nose is too big or our
hair is too thin or our ears are
too pointed, these features and many more are
considered defects defined by our society.
I personally have half of the defects on
the list I just mentioned to you, so
obviously I'm disqualified.
Usefulness is also a beauty standard that our
culture promotes.
We are bombarded with the message, to be
beautiful, you must be young.
The selling of youth is inflicted on us
everywhere we turn.
If we are over the age of 35
or 40, most likely the look of youthfulness
has passed us by.
And for those of you who are still
youthful by our society's standard, can I remind
you of something this afternoon?
It's going to be short-lived.
Someday, every one of us in this room
who live long enough, we will resemble our
grandma or our great-grandma.
It is the destiny of us all.
Having the perfect figure is another mandatory requisite
to be beautiful by society's standards.
We must have the perfect height.
We must have a large bust, a skinny
waist, shapely legs, all neatly packaged in a
thin body in order to be beautiful.
Again, most of us do not measure up
in this category either.
And then finally, we must have that cover
girl face in order to be beautiful.
We must have a face that looks like
the ones we see splashed across all the
covers of the magazines on display.
We must look like whoever is this season's
glamorous model.
It is a standard that is not reachable
for the majority of us.
So there we have it, ladies.
In order to be beautiful in our society,
we must have no defects.
We must remain forever young.
We must maintain a perfect figure and possess
a cover girl face.
Anybody here measure up?
The fashion industry of our society puts forth
an image of beauty so narrow in its
range that most women feel unattractive in comparison.
And what is even worse is the deception
in this industry.
Did you know that most of the models
we see in the magazines do not even
look like their pictures?
Fashion magazine editors have finally admitted that almost
every photograph of a model that we see
in a magazine has been altered by computer
graphics.
So think about it.
The next time you look at the picture
of a model in a magazine, this woman
has had her hair done by a professional
hairstylist.
She has had her face painted by a
professional makeup artist.
She has had her picture taken by a
professional photographer who knows how to work perfectly
with lighting to get the best possible picture,
not to mention how many hours she has
probably spent working out with her personal trainer
every day.
And after all of this, if the model
still doesn't look good enough, they just rely
on computer graphics to create a perfectly beautiful
woman.
It is ludicrous.
It is preposterous, the standard that our society
puts forth as the measurement for beauty.
And yet, how have the women in our
society responded to this ideal female image?
Well, just like in past centuries and in
other cultures, women in our century have gone
after it with a fury.
Be it breast implants, tummy tucks, liposuction, facelifts,
cosmetic surgery, excessive dieting, compulsive exercising, anorexia, bulimia.
These are just some of the ways that
women have abused their bodies and harmed their
bodies in a desperate attempt to make themselves
beautiful.
This begs the question, why?
Why are women so obsessed with physical beauty?
Why would women go to such extremes to
try to make themselves beautiful?
The answer is actually very simple.
It's the evil desires and sinful lusts resident
in the human heart.
See, the message that accompanies this perfect female
image that our society puts forth is, if
you are beautiful, you will be happy and
successful.
You will be popular among the women.
You will be desirable to the men.
You will know lasting intimacy and true love.
You will be confident and secure.
You will be important and significant.
Now these are all the things that our
evil heart craves.
The sinful heart lusts for success, significance, recognition,
importance, approval.
Therefore, women become obsessed with making themselves physically
beautiful in an attempt to satisfy these sinful
cravings.
And yet, the message is a lie.
Physical beauty doesn't ensure happiness, fulfillment, and success.
We can validate this fact by just observing
some of the most physically beautiful women in
the world.
I mean, consider the sad life of Princess
Diana.
She was physically beautiful.
She was the most photographed woman in the
world.
She became a celebrity of unprecedented magnitude.
Yet, she lived a very unhappy life.
Her fairytale marriage to Prince Charles ended in
divorce.
Her subsequent relationships with other men all ended
unhappily.
She admitted to persistent bouts of depression, recurrent
loneliness, ongoing bulimia, and even several suicide attempts.
She went through a number of psychotherapists seeking
help, all to no avail.
And then her life ended with her tragic
death at only 36 years old.
Physical beauty does not deliver as advertised.
Physical beauty does not produce the happiness and
success that the beguiling voices in our society
have promised.
Our culture puts forth a false standard of
beauty.
Our culture puts forth a false message about
beauty.
And it is the wickedness already resident in
the human heart that motivates a person to
pursue such a standard and believe such a
lie.
And this is so important for us to
understand as Christian women.
Because we all live in this society.
And given our own sinful heart, we are
all potentially influenced by our society.
And we are challenged in Romans 12 too
to not let the world around you squeeze
you into its own mold.
See, the reason for that warning is because
of the tendency for that to happen to
all of us.
Therefore, the appropriate and necessary question we need
to ask ourselves is, Has my heart been
captivated by our culture's definition of beauty or
God's definition?
Does the way I think about and attend
to my personal appearance reflect a cultural standard
or a biblical standard?
In order to answer these questions honestly, we
need to understand God's perspective of beauty.
To be able to accurately examine our hearts
and assess our behavior in this area, we
need to have a biblical perspective of beauty.
And what does God's word say about beauty?
Well, for starters, Proverbs 31.30 reveals the
falsehood and the futility of this whole quest
for physical beauty.
This verse reveals the end result of such
a pursuit.
It says, charm is deceitful and beauty is
vain.
Now, it's interesting, the word charm in the
Hebrew means bodily form.
Now, form and beauty are the two things
that our culture esteems and pursues with fervor,
is it not?
And yet God's word exposes our pursuit of
the perfect figure and the beautiful look to
be worthless.
It's interesting, if you should ever do a
study of women in the Bible who were
physically beautiful, you will discover that their beauty
was far more often connected to trouble and
temptation than it was to blessing and goodness.
You will find many stories in the Old
Testament of lying, cheating, stealing, murder, adultery, and
idol worship all linked to the physical beauty
of women.
Nowhere in the Bible are women instructed to
wish for, ask for, or strive for physical
beauty.
Instead, it warns us of the futility and
deceitfulness of such a pursuit.
Neither does the Bible portray physical beauty as
a blessing for those who have it.
It alerts us instead to the greater potential
for snares and temptation that come with having
this trait.
However, coming back again to our 1 Peter
passage, we discover that there is a beauty
that we are to pursue.
There is a beauty that will enhance our
femininity.
Let's look at these verses one more time
to examine them more closely.
Starting again in verse 3.
First we read what true beauty isn't.
Your beauty should not come from outward adornment
such as braided hair and the wearing of
gold jewelry and fine clothes.
And now we discover the beauty we are
to pursue.
Instead, it should be that of your inner
self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and
quiet spirit which is of great worth in
God's sight.
And then in verse 5 we're given role
models.
For this is the way the holy women
of the past who put their hope in
God used to make themselves beautiful.
We see from this passage that God's definition
of beauty stands in stark contrast to how
our culture defines beauty.
Our culture defines beauty by how we look
on the outside.
God defines beauty by how we look on
the inside.
Our culture puts forth a standard of beauty
that is unattainable by most.
God puts forth a standard of beauty to
which we can all attain if we but
surrender to his work of grace in our
lives.
Our culture encourages women to cultivate a beauty
that is fleeting.
Elizabeth Taylor will never again look like she
did when she was 16 years old and
starring in National Velvet even in spite of
all the cosmetic alterations she has undergone.
She'll never look that beautiful again.
Our culture encourages women to cultivate a beauty
that would only last for a brief amount
of time.
God encourages women to cultivate a beauty that
will never fade and it will only grow
more attractive with the passing of time.
See, our culture seeks to entice us to
cultivate a beauty that is for the eyes
of all to behold and to impress everyone.
God summons us to cultivate a beauty for
his eyes only.
A beauty that is of great worth in
his sight.
Our culture solicits us to aspire to the
beauty of the latest glamorous model or this
season's most popular actress.
God bids us to aspire to the beauty
of the holy women of the past who
put their hope in God.
The beauty our culture esteems, it may turn
some heads.
But the beauty God calls us to cultivate,
it will make a lasting impact.
I mean, think about it.
When someone physically attractive walks by, we notice.
Men in particular notice.
But that's the end of it.
It makes a brief, momentary impression.
But a woman who cultivates inner beauty, who
fears God and lives to serve others, makes
a difference in people's lives.
Her beauty makes a lasting impact on the
lives of those she touches.
Think about the ones who have affected your
life.
You'll never forget them.
They don't make a brief impact.
They make a lasting impact on your life.
Physical beauty may turn some heads.
But inner beauty leaves an indelible mark on
the lives of others.
Our culture's pursuit of beauty can be summarized
with this definition.
A love of self.
God's definition of beauty can be summarized with
this definition.
A love for God.
Which beauty are we seeking to cultivate?
Are we intentionally and actively cultivating an inner
beauty?
Or do we give more attention to our
outward appearance?
See, the way we think about and attend
to our personal appearance is really a mirror
on our hearts.
It shows whether our priority is to cultivate
inner beauty or outer beauty.
It actually reveals either a love for God
or a love for self.
It either reflects godly motivations or selfish motivations.
I have provided on your outline a little
heart check test for the purpose of self
-examination.
These are ten questions to help us discern
our thoughts and motives and goals regarding the
issue of beauty in our lives.
And I would encourage you to go through
these questions on your own time.
Hopefully they will be useful for you to
help you determine what is in my heart
regarding this issue.
I know for me, questions such as these
have helped me to see the pervasive selfishness
that can be in my heart.
It's questions like these that have helped me
to see that all too often my desire
is for self-glory rather than desiring God's
glory.
Yet, 1 Corinthians 10.31 calls me to
an altogether different standard.
It says, whether then you eat or drink
or whatever you do, do all to the
glory of God.
Everything we should do, everything we do should
be for God's glory, not our own.
We are to pursue holiness in every aspect
of our lives, including our beauty pursuit.
How is this possible?
How can we possibly please God in our
pursuit of beauty?
How can we cultivate a beauty that reflects
a love for God rather than a love
for self?
How can we put to death those evil
desires in our heart that result in craving
attention from others, that lead us to comparing
ourselves with others, evil desires which tempt us
to be absorbed with ourselves, evil desires which
tempt us to be preoccupied with our personal
appearance?
How can we deal with these evil desires
in our hearts?
How can we cultivate biblical thoughts?
Biblical motives and biblical actions in our quest
for beauty?
Well, I believe it begins by setting our
hearts and minds on things above.
Let's read Colossians 3, verses 1 through 5.
It's printed on your outline.
And as we read this section of scripture,
I want you to note a natural progression
in these verses.
Pay close attention.
Since then you have been raised with Christ,
set your hearts on things above, where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on things above, not on
earthly things, for you died and your life
is now hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is your life, appears, then
you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your
earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires,
and greed, which is idolatry.
Did you catch the progression?
See, before we are told to put to
death our evil desires, we are told to
set our hearts and minds on things above.
This is such an important point.
The key to putting to death our evil
desires, the starting point for any repentance, is
setting our hearts and minds on things above.
So what does that mean?
What does it mean to set my heart
and mind on things above?
It means to direct our attention towards Jesus
Christ and his finished work on the cross.
To set our hearts and minds on things
above means to aggressively focus on Jesus Christ
and continually remind ourselves that because of his
death on the cross, we are forgiven of
every evil desire, we are justified from every
evil desire, and we are no longer enslaved
by any evil desire.
Jesus died to redeem us from both the
penalty and the power of sin in our
lives.
May we revel in his grace.
May we marvel at his mercy in our
lives.
See, to set our hearts and minds on
things above means to be taken up with
the beauty of his amazing grace and his
undeserved mercy in our lives.
And do you know what?
As we devote our attention to his beauty,
we will only grow more beautiful.
In fact, the more we seek to know
him, the more beautiful we will become.
Robert Murray McShane says, Take ten looks at
Christ for every look at ourselves.
We need to ask the Holy Spirit to
give us eyes to see the beauty of
the Lord.
Beholding his beauty is what makes us beautiful.
Now let's consider some practical changes in our
thinking and our behavior that we may need
to make in order to develop biblical beauty
goals.
What objectives must we incorporate into our lives
so that we will be pursuing a beauty
that enhances our femininity as women?
Well, first, we need to resolve whom it
is I am to please in my beauty
pursuit.
Single women, you have only one to please.
1 Corinthians 7.35 points an unmarried woman
to the Lord as the object of her
beauty pursuit.
All your thoughts, motives, and actions related to
beauty should be for the eyes of one
and one only, God alone.
Married women, we have two to please, God
and our husband.
Now that may sound like heresy that I
should say we are to please someone besides
God in our beauty pursuit.
But let me explain.
See, God calls us in Scripture to please
our husband.
So therefore, we are pleasing God when we
seek to please our husband.
We need to find out our husband's preferences
with regards to how we care for our
appearance.
How does he want me to dress, style
my hair, wear or not wear makeup?
And as a way to honor and serve
and please our husband, we need to take
care of our physical appearance.
Now I must interject here that seeking to
please the Lord in our beauty pursuit will
not result in trying to look ugly or
appear unattractive.
I am not advocating for a moment that
we neglect our personal appearance.
Pure devotion to God will produce a woman
who has an appropriate concern about her physical
appearance.
She will want to present an outward appearance
that honors God and attracts others to her
life in a right way.
She will want to care for her outward
appearance in a way that heightens her chance
to share testimony about the Christ who dwells
within her.
Looking like a slob does not reflect the
beauty of our Creator.
Neither does it increase our effectiveness in sharing
the gospel.
It is not wrong to seek to enhance
our own appearance.
It is not evil to wear stylish clothing
and an attractive hairstyle.
It is not sinful to wear makeup and
jewelry.
We see in scripture where the Proverbs 31
woman wore colorful, high-quality clothing.
The bride in Song of Solomon adorned her
appearance with jewelry.
We are told that Esther underwent 12 months
of beauty treatment, 6 months with oil and
myrrh and 6 with perfumes and cosmetics.
The Bible does not condemn the wearing of
these things.
It is wearing them for the wrong motives
that God's Word forbids.
However, when the Lord is the object of
our beauty pursuit, we will have a proper
concern about our physical appearance.
As John Piper said in his book, A
Godward Life, With God at the center, like
the sun satisfying a woman's longing for beauty
and greatness and truth and love, all the
planets of food and dress and exercise and
cosmetics and posture and countenance will stay in
their proper orbit.
Another beauty objective we need to cultivate is
we need to acknowledge God's providence and receive
with gratefulness the body and appearance that God
has given to each of us.
God determined what we would look like.
We were not presented with an array of
options.
We were not given a choice.
He decided our body shape, how tall we
would be, the color of our eyes and
all the unique features that make up our
body type and appearance.
God determined that.
Now we can either spend our lives pining
about the result of God's determination, or we
can receive with gratefulness His design, knowing that
He does all things for His glory and
our good.
I love the story that Elizabeth Elliott tells
about Gladys Allward in her book, Let Me
Be a Woman.
She says, You have heard me tell of
Gladys Allward, the small woman of China, whom
I heard speak many years ago at Prairie
Bible Institute in Alberta.
She told how when she was a child,
she had two great sorrows.
One, that while all her friends had beautiful
golden hair, hers was black.
The other, that while her friends were still
growing, she stopped.
She was about four feet, ten inches tall.
But when at last she reached the country
to which God had called her to be
a missionary, she stood on the wharf in
Shanghai and looked around at the people to
whom He had called her.
Every single one of them, she said, had
black hair.
And every single one of them had stopped
growing when I did.
And I said, Lord God, you know what
you are doing.
Are we able to say the same about
our own appearance?
Lord God, you know what you are doing
and you do all things well.
David said, I praise you because I am
fearfully and wonderfully made.
When was the last time you worshipped God
for the way He created your body?
You don't have to answer that.
Anything less than a heart filled with gratitude
and praise to God for our physical appearance,
it's sinful and it grieves the Lord.
It shouldn't be so.
Another essential beauty objective, we need to recognize
our body is not our own.
1 Corinthians 6 says, Do you know that
your body is a temple of the Holy
Spirit who is in you, whom you have
received from God?
You are not your own.
You were bought at a price.
Therefore, honor God with your body.
Are we treating our body as if it
is not our own?
Are we caring for our body as if
it belongs to another?
Do we take special extra care because this
body doesn't belong to us?
Don't we usually take extra special care of
something that doesn't belong to us, that belongs
to another?
I remember on one occasion after a special
event at our church, a very kind woman
came to me and gave me the centerpiece
from her table.
It was a beautiful flower arrangement that she
had created.
It was displayed in this china teapot.
She graciously told me to enjoy the flowers
and that I could return the teapot to
her at my convenience.
I did enjoy that flower arrangement, but you
can be sure I took special care of
that china teapot as well.
I made sure to keep it out of
the reach of my little boy, who was
three at the time.
I exhorted all of my daughters to be
very careful with this because it belongs to
so-and-so.
Now why?
Why was I being so careful with this
china teapot?
Because it wasn't mine.
It belonged to someone else.
I wanted to be able to return the
teapot to her undamaged in the same way.
Our bodies are not our own.
They belong to God.
Therefore, we should be careful how we treat
our bodies.
We should treat them with special care.
We should not neglect them.
We should do nothing to abuse them.
We are not to overlook and ignore what
the Bible has to say regarding how we
are to view and care for this body.
We are not the owner of this body.
God is.
It is the temple for the Holy Spirit.
We house the Holy Spirit in our very
own body.
That makes all the difference how we should
treat it.
And finally, we need to replace the vanity
in our lives with the pursuit of godliness.
Try as hard as we may, we are
not going to find any verse in the
Bible that encourages pursuing a body that is
perfectly thin, always tanned, and completely toned.
It is not a godly pursuit.
Now, let's consider this pursuit for just a
moment.
Is it not self-glory rather than God's
glory we are pursuing when it is our
goal to be thin, tanned, and toned?
Doesn't the pursuit of a perfect figure lead
to a preoccupation with self rather than a
preoccupation with God?
Listen to this woman's confession.
I'm feeling fat and can't keep my mind
off my weight.
All day long I think about food, avoiding
food, eating certain kinds of food, cooking diet
dinners, feeling ashamed if I overeat, feeling great
if I don't.
Food has become my daily focus even though
I'm trying to lose weight with God's help
and first glory.
I exercise, shop correctly, and snack on baby
carrots.
Every time we go out to eat, I
ask the waitress or counterperson about the number
of calories and fat grams, complaining about diet
coke tasting like chemicals.
While getting dressed in front of my husband,
I point out my burgeoning waistline and inquire
about his opinion of my wide behind.
I talk constantly about this struggle.
Doesn't this woman's confession reveal a preoccupation with
self rather than a preoccupation with God?
The pursuit of a good figure is vanity.
We are seeking our own glory rather than
God's glory.
God's Word condemns such a pursuit.
We are not to be conformed into the
image our culture worships.
We are to be conformed into the image
of God.
We need to replace the vanity in our
lives with the pursuit of godliness.
Therefore, our eating and exercise habits should reflect
goals such as these.
I am developing the fruit of the spirit
of self-control in my life.
I want to treat my body as not
my own.
I want to strengthen my body for effective
service to the Lord.
Those should be the kinds of goals we
have.
When is the last time you heard a
woman say that she needs to be more
disciplined in exercise for the purpose of strengthening
her body for the Lord's service?
Do not women normally lament their lack of
discipline in this area because of the negative
effects it has on how they look rather
than the negative effects it has on their
body's health and strength?
Are they usually not more concerned about thighs
that are too big and a stomach that's
no longer flat than they are concerned about
the health and strength of their body?
When is the last time you heard a
woman grieve over the fact that she has
dishonored God by overeating?
Isn't her sadness about her sinful eating habits
usually because of the negative consequences it has
on her appearance rather than a godly sorrow
for disobeying God?
Are we pursuing vanity or are we pursuing
godliness in our eating and exercise habits?
Are we seeking our own glory or are
we seeking God's glory in the way we
care for our body?
We need to realize God is not going
to bless our vain pursuits.
He's not going to honor self-glorification.
He's only going to bless the pursuit of
godliness in our lives.
We need to settle that once and for
all.
How about the area of our dress?
Are we seeking the approval of others or
are we seeking to impress?
Or worse yet, are we seeking to allure
men by the way we dress and care
for our appearance?
Again, these are vain pursuits and the Bible
strongly forbids such attitudes and behavior.
The Bible provides very specific and clear instructions
on how we are to dress and care
for our appearance.
1 Timothy 2 lays out the guidelines for
it.
Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with
proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided
hair and gold or pearls or costly garments,
but rather by means of good works as
befits women making a claim to godliness.
I'm sure everyone in this room make a
claim to godliness.
Then it's very clear from these verses how
we are to dress and care for our
appearance.
It is characterized by three distinctives.
It is to be proper, modest, and discreet.
Does my clothing, my jewelry, my hairstyle, and
my makeup that I use stay within the
boundaries of these three definitions?
Is it proper?
Is it modest?
Is it discreet?
I want us to consider the word modest
for a moment.
Some time back I did a word study
on this word in 1 Timothy and discovered
from the commentaries that it has a very
interesting meaning in the Greek.
It means shamefacedness or shamefastness.
The root idea is a sense of shame.
It raises the question of what are we
to be ashamed?
It refers to a sense of shame in
the sense of we should be ashamed if
we ever contribute to a man being tempted
to lustful thinking by our dress.
We should be ashamed if we ever cause
a man to stumble by our clothing.
Do we carry a proper sense of shame
in the way we dress?
I don't think any of us are ignorant
that the more of our body is exposed
the more of a temptation this provides for
men.
Therefore, we should carry a sense of shame
to ever cause such a distraction.
We need to make an effort to serve
men and not to be a source of
temptation by the way we dress.
If we are wondering if we are dressed
properly, modestly, and discreetly we simply need to
check our heart.
We need to do a motive check.
We should ask ourselves, why am I dressed
this way?
What is my intent?
What is my goal?
Am I trying to draw attention to God
or to myself?
Am I seeking to glorify God or to
impress others?
John MacArthur said, You show me a woman
with a beautiful character.
You show me a woman with a meek
and quiet spirit.
You show me a woman with an incorruptible
heart.
You show me a woman who comes to
worship God.
And I will show you a woman whose
wardrobe you don't have to worry about.
May the Lord help us to be that
kind of a woman.
I want to close this afternoon by reading
a little story that John Piper included in
his book, Future Grace.
And it's about a woman who abandoned the
physical beauty quest in pursuit of true beauty.
Evelyn Harris Brand, the mother of Paul Brand,
the world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist,
grew up in a well-to-do English
family.
She had studied at the London Conservatory of
Art and dressed in the finest silks.
But she went with her husband to minister
as missionaries in the Kalimalai Range of India.
After about 10 years, her husband died at
age 44, and she came home a broken
woman, beaten down by pain and grief.
But after a year's recuperation and against all
advice, she returned to India.
Her soul was restored, and she poured her
life into the hill people, nursing the sick,
teaching farming, lecturing about guinea worms, rearing orphans,
clearing jungle land, pulling teeth, establishing schools, preaching
the gospel.
She lived in a portable hut, 8 feet
square, that could be taken down, moved, and
erected again.
At age 67, she fell and broke her
hip.
Her son Paul had just come to India
as a surgeon.
He encouraged her to retire.
She had already suffered a broken arm, several
cracked vertebrae, and recurrent malaria.
Paul mounted as many arguments as he could
think of to persuade her that 67 years
was a good investment in ministry, and now
it was time to retire.
Her response?
Paul, you know these mountains.
If I leave, who will help the village
people?
Who will treat their wounds and pull their
teeth and teach them about Jesus?
When someone comes to take my place, then
and only then will I retire.
In any case, why preserve this old body
if it's not going to be used where
God needs me?
That was her final answer, so she worked
on.
At the age of 95, she died.
Following her instructions, villagers buried her in a
simple cotton sheet so that her body would
return to the soil and nourish new life.
Her spirit, too, lived on in a church,
a clinic, several schools, and in the faces
of thousands of villagers across five mountain ranges
of South India.
Her son commented that with wrinkles as deep
and extensive as any I have ever seen
on a human face, she was a beautiful
woman.
But it was not the beauty of the
silk and heirlooms of London high society.
For the last 20 years of her life,
she refused to have a mirror in her
house.
She was consumed with ministry, not mirrors.
What are we consumed with?
Ministry or mirrors?
Which beauty are we seeking to cultivate?
The beauty that is of great worth to
God or the beauty that our culture worships?
Like Evelyn Harris Brand, if we pursue true
beauty, our femininity will only grow more beautiful.
Like Evelyn Harris Brand, if we seek to
please God in our quest for beauty, our
femininity will even be more beautiful at age
95 than it is now.
Let's ask our Lord to help us cultivate
such a beauty.
Father, we do ask that you would help
us to set our hearts and minds on
things above, to be women who gaze upon
your beauty, to be women who develop and
cultivate an inner beauty.
Father, help us to not be consumed by
the beauty that our culture worships.
Lord, that we would be women who pursue
true beauty, that we would receive with gratefulness
the bodies that you have given us, that
we would take extra special care of this
body, that we would not pursue vain for
sins, Lord, but our quest for beauty would
be one that honors you and brings glory
to your name.
Father, we just ask that you would help
us as women to do that.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
This concludes the message.
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