(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Alright, 1 Timothy chapter 2, the part of the chapter that I'd like to focus on is starting in verse number 9 where the Bible reads, "...in like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but which becometh women profess in godliness with good works." So this morning I'd like to preach on the subject of clothing, or what the Bible calls here apparel, and the Bible is saying that women should adorn themselves in modest apparel, modest clothing, and it says, "...with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly, or expensive array," saying expensive clothing. Now when it comes to how we dress, some people would have the opinion that God doesn't care how we dress. It's just everything that matters is what's in the heart, what's on the inside. But the Bible actually says, if we were to go to Matthew 23 where Jesus himself is preaching, he says, "...cleanse first that which is within the cup and the platter, that the outside may be clean also." So Jesus didn't teach that the outside doesn't matter. Jesus taught that the inside matters more, and that we need to start with cleaning on the inside, that the outside may be clean also. So it's not that God doesn't care about our outward appearance, it's just that God cares more about our inward appearance and how we are on the inside. So we don't want to be a hypocrite like the Pharisees where the Bible says that they appeared righteous outwardly unto men, but inside they were full of rottenness and dead men's bones, they were like a whited sepulcher and so forth. But we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater and just say, oh well, how you dress, how you look, just doesn't matter at all because it does matter. And the proof that it matters is that God deals with this subject in the Bible. And if it didn't matter, he wouldn't give us teachings on this in both Old and New Testament. Right in this scripture you see that God is saying that he wants women to wear modest apparel. Now when it comes to clothing, there are really three issues that need to be addressed when we ask ourselves what we should wear as Christians. Question number one is nakedness. The purpose of clothing is to cover our nakedness, according to the Bible. Secondly is modesty. And I'm going to talk about what that means as we get later into the sermon. And then thirdly would be our gender identity. You know, we as men should wear men's clothing and women should wear women's clothing. These are all things that are taught in the Bible and we're going to go over these things in detail. Now before we get into these things, let me say this. Outside of what the Bible commands, because the Bible has teachings on nakedness, it has teachings on modesty, it has teachings on our gender, but outside of those type of issues I think that we should dress to fit in with the culture that we live in and not just purposely try to just dress weird or different. Because the Bible talks about how the Apostle Paul, when he went to different places to try to reach different people as a missionary, he said, you know, unto the Jews I became as a Jew, unto the barbarians I became as a barbarian, he said, I've become all things to all men that I might by all means save some. So the old saying that goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do, applies. You know, if I were in Germany I would dress like a German. If I were in India I would dress like an Indian. If I were in China I'd dress like a Chinese person. Okay, but I'm not going to violate scripture though, you know, so I'm not putting on a kilt in Scotland. Okay, but anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. So the point is, you know, we want to dress to fit in and I'm going to explain that later in the sermon, but let's deal with each of these three issues with our clothing. Number one, the first thing about clothing is that it should cover our nakedness. This should be obvious because this is the original purpose of clothing in the first place. Now go back if you would to Genesis chapter two, Genesis chapter two, and while you're there I'm going to read you a series of verses in the Bible that associate nakedness with shame, okay, because remember it said that women should adorn themselves in modest apparel with shame-facedness. You say what does that mean with shame-facedness? Well we should be ashamed to be publicly naked is what the Bible is saying. It's a normal natural thing for a person to be ashamed of going publicly naked, okay. So let me give you some scriptures on that. There are a whole bunch of verses that associate those two things. You turn to Genesis two, but the Bible says in Exodus 32 25, and when Moses saw that the people were naked, and then it says for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies. He said in Isaiah 20 verse four, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, watch this, naked and barefoot even with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt. Isaiah 47 three says thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea thy shame shall be seen. I will take vengeance and I will not meet thee as a man. Micah 1 11 says pass ye away thou inhabitant of Safer having thy shame naked. Nahum chapter three verse five says I will show the nations thy nakedness and the kingdoms thy shame, okay. And if we were to go forward into the New Testament, Revelation 3 18 says I counseled thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear. Revelation 16 15 behold I come as a thief, blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame. So over and over and over again in the Bible, it talks about how it is a shameful thing for you to be out naked, okay. And that's over and over again. Now look at Genesis chapter two verse 25. The Bible says and they were both naked, the man and his wife and were not ashamed, okay. So the rest of the Bible is talking about being out in public naked and he's saying hey you're ashamed. But when the man and his wife were both naked, they're not ashamed, okay. So again we see that nakedness between man and wife is completely acceptable. Not out in the world, out in front of the opposite gender, out in front of public places, we should not be naked. We should have enough shame to cover our nakedness with clothing. But the question becomes what is the definition of nakedness? Now some people will define nakedness as the complete absence of clothing. Now if we were to define nakedness as the complete absence of any clothing, that would mean that somebody could put on a pair of socks and they're not naked, right, or they could be wearing a wristwatch or a hat. That you know, I think everyone here would agree that that person's still naked, right, if they're wearing a wristband or something. So the question is what is nakedness? Now a lot of people have different opinions about what is acceptable and what is not. But we have to go to the Bible as our final authority when it comes to the definition of nakedness. Now remember, nakedness is not the only concern when we're getting dressed. It's one of the concerns because remember there's also modesty, there's also our identity. But just talking about nakedness, go to Exodus chapter 28, second book of the Bible, Exodus 28, because the Bible actually in a few places gives a definition of what God considers nakedness. Now some people could go to extremes in either direction of how to define nakedness. Somebody could say, well hey, as long as you're wearing that wristband you're not naked. Or hey, as long as you're in that string bikini you're not naked. I mean most people in America today would think that being in the string bikini is not nakedness. But does God define that as clothing? I mean does God find it acceptable when people just have a couple of triangles of fabric on their body and say hey, I'm not naked, I'm clothed. What does God define as nakedness? And then other people in the Islamic world could go to an extreme where they literally dress women from head to toe where they just have a little slit to look out with their eyes and it's just this black parachute coming down. So we've got to go to the Bible to figure out how we should live our lives and what God defines as nakedness. Now look at Exodus 28, 42. This is actually about men's clothing, not women's clothing. It says, and thou shalt make them linen britches, and what's another word for britches in our modern vernacular? Pants, right? So it says, and so make them linen britches to cover their nakedness from the loins even unto the thighs they shall reach. Now according to the Bible here, in order for these britches or pants to cover a man's nakedness they need to span from the loins unto the thighs. Now you say, well does that include the loins and the thighs? Well if it didn't it would just be a string, okay? So what the Bible is saying here when it says from the loins unto the thighs it's obviously speaking inclusively. It's not saying don't cover the thighs, don't cover the loins, just go between the two. Well guess what? There's nothing between the two, okay? So when it says from the loins to the thighs they shall reach it's saying to cover the loins and cover the thighs. So when it comes to wearing pants as a man that would cover our nakedness they would go from the loins to the thighs. Basically everything from our waist unto our kneecap should be covered. That's how long our pants should be. Our pants need to go down to our knee in order to cover the loins and the thighs. Now you say, well it has to go to the ankle, is that what the Bible says? No because the Bible is specifically saying that the priest's garment was to go from the loins to the thighs, not loins to feet, loins to ankles, loins to whatever. So the Bible teaches that men should be covered from their waist unto their kneecaps. That is nakedness according to the Bible. Now some people will try to twist this and if you get modern Bible versions that change everything instead of the traditional King James Bible, all the other traditional Bibles, they'll change this to being a kind of underwear. Instead of saying britches it'll say, you know, make him underwear. Underwear that goes from the loins to the thighs. And they'll say well that's just underwear but hold on a second. It says it's to cover the nakedness. I don't know about you but underwear doesn't cover my nakedness because of the fact that it's under my clothing, hence the name under wear. So therefore my nakedness is not any more or less exposed by the fact that underwear is worn. Does that make sense? Because it's our outerwear that covers our nakedness, okay? So the Bible here is teaching that a pair of pants must go at least to cover the thighs in order to cover our nakedness. Go to Isaiah chapter 20, Isaiah chapter number 20. Because remember the Bible has all the answers and we're looking for clues in the Bible as to how God defines nakedness, not how the world would define nakedness. And in Exodus and whether that's the Western American culture of just bikini babes and anything goes or whether it's the Islamic culture that wants to clothe them from head to toe, you know, we need to figure out what the Bible teaches, okay? And right away we see that the loins to the thighs, that needs to be covered. Look at Isaiah chapter 20 verse 2. It says at the same time, spake the Lord by Isaiah the son of Amos saying, go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, we're in Isaiah 20 verse 2, and put off thy shoe from my foot and he did so walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot, three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners and the Ethiopians captive, young and old, naked and barefoot, watch this, even with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt. So here we see another teaching on nakedness saying having the buttocks uncovered is an exposure of your nakedness, right? And that makes sense because it's in that zone that he mentioned in Exodus from the loins to the thighs, you know, instead of the front. Now we're talking about the back and he's saying, hey, you need to have your buttocks covered in order to cover your nakedness. Go to Isaiah chapter 47 verse 1. Isaiah, you're already in Isaiah chapter 20, go to verse 1 of chapter 47. Isaiah 47 verse 1 says, come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon. Sit on the ground, there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans, for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Make the millstones and grind meal. Uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers, thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea thy shame shall be seen, I will take vengeance and I will not meet thee as a man. Now again, this is not coincidental that this scripture says that the thigh will be uncovered in verse 2, uncover the thigh, and then in the next verse it says, thy nakedness shall be uncovered. So the thigh is being uncovered and the nakedness is being uncovered and he says, thy shame shall be seen. Now if this were the only verse on this subject, you could say, well that's not a real strong verse. But when we compare it with the key verse in Exodus 28 42 that specifically says, cover your nakedness by covering the loins and thighs, then we come to this verse as a supporting passage where about a woman it says, if she uncovers the thigh, thy nakedness shall be uncovered and then we go to Isaiah 20 and it's saying, hey if your buttocks are uncovered, your nakedness is uncovered, go to Nahum chapter 3 for further support, Nahum chapter 3, we're seeing that the Bible is kind of consistent here in explaining what our nakedness is as human beings. Look at Nahum chapter 3 verse 4, the Bible says, because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts that selleth nations through her whoredoms and families through her witchcrafts, Nahum 3 verse 5, behold I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face and I will show the nations thy nakedness and the kingdoms thy shame. So again, nakedness is being associated with shame and here when he talks about showing the nakedness, he says I will discover thy skirts upon thy face. Now what are the skirts? Well if you look up this word, every single time it's used in the Bible, it's used very consistently, the skirts are any part of the garment that is below the waist. So for example, it talks about Saul wearing a coat and it talks about the skirt of his coat. What does that mean? The part of the coat that dangles below the waist, okay, because they would wear long coats and so forth even as we do, even my coat has a skirt in a sense. So the skirts of the garment. Now this could also refer to what we know in modern vernacular as a skirt because it starts at the waist and it comes down and flows down. That's why it's called a skirt. Now when the Bible used the word discover, it's an old word. Actually what it would mean in our modern vernacular is uncover. That's what it means. Whenever the Bible used the word discover, it always means to uncover, okay. So when it's saying here, thy skirts, I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, you know, this is talking about the clothing that's down here, right? Being lifted up to here, okay, and obviously what's exposed at that point? The loins and the thighs, okay, when the skirt is discovered upon the face. So therefore, the Bible's real consistent in all the scriptures we look at what nakedness is. Once you know this teaching, you have to ask yourself, okay, well, what is acceptable to wear and what is not acceptable to wear? And this is especially important around summertime because a lot of times, even people who dress modestly and cover their nakedness normally, when they go swimming, all bets are off. And all of a sudden, they just throw out all of the normal decency and modesty that they would have, and all of a sudden, they will just strip off their clothes and go in a way that the Bible would define as naked, naked, you know, because they'll basically wear a bathing suit that exposes their thighs, and in many cases, exposes their buttocks. And the Bible says that it's nakedness, and you can sit there and say, well, it's a swimsuit. No, it's nakedness. And the Bible doesn't have a clause in here, a little footnote that says, hey, you dig a hole in the ground, fill it with water, and as long as you're within so many feet of it, the clothes can come off, and you can become naked. That's not what the Bible teaches. Now, as men, we need to follow this also. We need to make sure that when we go swimming, our swim trunks go down to the knee, you know, and cover us up, and not be wearing these little short shorts, okay? Thank God those are out of style. Somebody scared me the other day. They said they're coming back. I hope that's not, I hope that's a rumor or something, you know. But honestly, when I was a kid, they were popular. When I was a kid, you know, early 80s and stuff, that's what they would wear. But thank God long shorts are in style now. But you know what? Whether it's in season or out of season, we as Christian men should always make sure that our shorts cover our thighs, cover our loins and thighs. Okay, how about the ladies though? Now, this is what women will define as modest swimwear. Here's what they'll say, a one-piece swimsuit. You know, one piece is modest, two pieces isn't modest. Well here, I've got news for you. Your belly's not the problem. Okay, that's not the issue here. I mean, is God making the belly the issue here? It's all about that belly button. No, what the issue is, is the loins, the buttocks, and the thighs. That's the biblical issue when it comes to nakedness, okay? So don't sit there and make some distinction. I remember when I was in Christian school, this is what they would say. At school, the girls had to wear knee-length skirts. Amen, you know, that's a biblical standard of saying, hey, make sure your skirt goes down to the knee. But then, when we would have summer camp, they had a different rule. They would say fingertip-length shorts. Well here's the thing, fingertip length is not a biblical standard of how long your garment should be as a woman or a man, because fingertip length is only about halfway down your thigh. So you're exposing half your thigh, unless you're an orangutan, and have arms that go down, you know, if you're like this, then maybe. And I remember the girls used to do that, you know, when they'd check them, let me make sure those are fingertip length, it was like, you know, try to kind of like, sag down. But the point is, that that didn't make sense to have one standard at school, and then when we go to summer camp, it becomes fingertip length. And then when we would go swimming with the girls, it became a modest one-piece swimsuit. You know, which, there's nothing modest about it, when you're exposing a lot of nakedness. And the fact that your belly button is covered isn't really offering a consolation here, according to scripture, okay? And the reason why they had that double standard is because of hypocrisy, because of the fact that they wanted the school to look to outsiders, you know, the pastors of the churches who sent their kids there, the parents, they wanted the parents and the pastors to see this image of a bunch of well-dressed girls and boys, but then when they go to summer camp and they're not under the watchful eye, hey, we have a different standard. And then when we go swimming, we have an even different standard. But the problem with having all these different standards and with being inconsistent with scripture is that what happens is when these kids grow up, you know what they're going to start doing? Questioning the rules. All of us question rules, don't we? When you're a kid, you're given rules, and as you get older, you start asking yourself, are these the rules that I'm going to continue to live by after I leave my parents' home? Because if my parents have an arbitrary rule that's based on their own opinion and their own preference, then I'm going to follow that rule while I'm in their house, right? But when I go have my own house, I might have a different rule, right? But here's the thing, if their rules are based on God's rules, then I'm going to say, you know what, just because I move out of my parents' house, it doesn't mean that I've moved out from God's house, and I still have to follow God's rules. But when we tell kids, oh, well, here's the rule, fingertip length, you can't find that in the Bible. So then what happens is these kids grow up, and eventually they just reject all the rules. Because they say these aren't based on anything, these are just your opinion, they're just your preference. And when you start teaching stuff that's not in the Bible, then you start basically building upon a house that's on a foundation of sand, that does not withstand the test of time. Whereas if you build a consistent set of standards based upon the rock of God's word, you can remain unchanged as time goes by, and you can enforce these things consistently on yourself, even after your parents aren't enforcing it on you, you enforce it yourself because you have the character to live for God and follow his rules on your own. And so the Bible is teaching here where God draws the line, and that's where God draws the line of nakedness. Therefore, if you wear a miniskirt, the Bible says you're showing your nakedness. You wear a swimsuit, a bikini, you're showing your nakedness. If it's a one-piece swimsuit, you're showing your nakedness, period. You say, well, you just don't want us to go swimming. Look, I have no problem with going. I love going. You don't want us to go swimming. Yeah, we live in Arizona. Who doesn't like to go swimming, right? But here's the thing. You don't have to be naked to go swimming. I mean, this is a real revolutionary idea, but you can actually go swimming without getting naked. And what's funny is that men do it all the time. Men go swimming with shorts on that go down to their knee, and they're not naked, and they do it all the time. But suddenly women, oh, we can't swim with clothes on. Well, guess what women did in America until less than 100 years ago. They swam with clothes on, okay? And I'm not saying that you just wear street clothes into the pool, but you could wear some kind of a swimming garment. My daughters and my wife wear swim dresses, and they're actually made out of swimsuit material and everything, and it's a dress that goes down to the knee. And it has like a sewn-in legging on the inside so that it's not going to come flying up. It's attached and everything so it doesn't come, you know, that way their skirt's not discovered upon their face, you know, as the Bible says. You know, it's all connected and everything like that. And so they can actually look like a lady and be dressed and have their nakedness covered and go swimming. You say, well, I'm going to look like a goofball. No, you don't. You don't have to look like a goofball. I mean, when my daughters wear these and my wife wears them, she's complimented on them. They look stylish. In fact, they look so cool, you wouldn't even have to just wear them swimming. You could wear them to the store, for crying out loud, okay? So to sit there and say, oh, well, you must put on a bathing suit or a bikini. And you know what, even some women that aren't even Christians are not comfortable stripping down to that level. You know, you'll go, if you see out in public, sometimes you'll see women who are wearing like a really long shirt or they're wearing shorts over it or they're wearing something because not every woman is just comfortable just stripping down what the Bible calls naked. It's shame. But there are some women that have no problem stripping down. But wait a minute, as a Christian lady who is listening to the sound of my voice, what are you going to do? Are you going to walk out of here and say, well, that pastor is too radical. He's the Taliban and he wants me to be covered when I go swimming. But you know what? I got it from the Bible. You cannot biblically justify exposing your thighs and your buttocks just because you're swimming. And you say, well, I want to fit in and be cool. Well, look, sometimes there are things that are more important than fitting in and being cool. And you can also be cool with clothes on. You don't have to strip down to be cool. And you know what? Fitting in is not always the best way to be cool anyway. Be a rebel. No, I'm just kidding. Be a rebel. Go to the pool with clothes on. Okay. Seriously. I mean, it's like you're being a rebel just doing what God says these days because we're living in a day where men call good evil and evil good. Okay. Now, the obvious question that would come to some people's mind when you preach this and say, hey, here's what the Bible's defining as nakedness, cover the loins and the thighs, is basically they'll say, well, what about women and their breasts? You know, what about the top, getting the top covered? You know, is that nakedness for a woman to be topless? You know, this is what people ask, right? Because you're showing them, hey, biblically defined, it's from the loins to the thighs. Now if you would flip over to Song of Solomon chapter 7. And let me make this statement. And if you disagree with this statement, don't freak out. Actually hear me out and listen to my point of view biblically before you just reject it out of hand is that the Bible does not define breasts as nakedness. Now I'm not saying, hey, everybody, go topless. You know, that's not what I'm saying because remember there are three things to be considered when we're getting dressed. You know, nakedness, modesty, and identity. But to define breasts as nakedness is false. And there's a reason why this is important because you might say, what in the world are you teaching? And let me start out by saying this. This is not some new teaching that I've come up with, okay? I've been preaching and teaching this ever since I started pastoring. In fact, Brother Segura at his old church even got a letter sent, remember this Brother Segura? He got a letter from the deacons of his church, you know, telling him that he needed to quit listening to Stephen Anderson's preaching. And what year was that, 2008, 2009? Yeah, 2009. So back in 2009, he got a letter from the deacons of his church saying, hey, you need to stop listening to Stephen Anderson's sermons because he teaches, and they were listing all my, you know, grievous teachings. And they said that I taught this morally raw teaching that breasts are not nakedness, you know? And they tried to construe it as I'm saying, hey, everybody, just take your tops off or whatever, which is not what I've ever taught. But that's how they wanted to construe. So I'm just bringing that out just to show you this isn't something new. This is something that I've consistently believed and preached and taught. I've been studying the Bible for decades and this is what I believe and this is what the Bible teaches. Now you say, well, why is it important that you say that breasts are not nakedness? Well, simply because of the fact that breasts have a very important function in life and that is to feed children, okay? The breasts are used to feed. Now even just me talking about this right now, people are becoming uncomfortable, okay? But here's why. It's because our society is weird about this. You really shouldn't be uncomfortable. In fact, the Bible, do a search on the word breast in the Bible. It talks about breasts all day long. But the reason that people are uncomfortable about it, it's not because of anything in the Bible that made them uncomfortable. It's the world that has made them uncomfortable with this subject. There's nothing wrong with talking about this subject and breasts are not biblically defined as nakedness. Here's why that's important. Because women have to breastfeed their children and God has designed them to breastfeed their children and when you breastfeed your children, you draw out the breast and breastfeed your child. Now let's say for a minute that God defined breasts as nakedness and he said, hey, your breasts are your nakedness. Let me ask you this. Would you ever want to be naked in front of your children? I mean think about it. Would you want to be naked in front of your 10-year-old son? Of course not. That would be obscene, wouldn't it? But here's the thing though. Women who breastfeed their children, guess what their 8, 10, 12, 14-year-old son is sometimes going to catch sight of? His mother's breast because she's taking out the breast and feeding the child. Now there are some people out there that would teach and say, well, any time a woman breastfeeds, she has to cover it in a blanket. But there are many problems with that and I'm going to talk about this because I think this is a real important subject. Now first of all, let me say this. The reason why our society has become squeamish about breastfeeding and about breastfeeding uncovered is because of the fact that there's been a whole generation of people who did not breastfeed. If you go back to the 1950s and 60s, there was a whole generation where literally 99% of women bottle fed, 99%. There was a time when it was just breastfeeding almost fell off the face of the United States, you know, not off the earth, but from the United States culture, nobody was breastfeeding. Even today, even today with breastfeeding making a comeback, most women don't breastfeed today. 50% of women are not even breastfeeding like six weeks after the baby's born, okay? And as far as actually exclusively breastfeeding six months after the baby's born, that statistic drops below 20%. So we're talking about the vast majority of women not breastfeeding today, but before that we had a couple generations where there was almost no breastfeeding. I mean doctors would literally hold up in the office breast milk in a bottle and formula and say, look how thin and see through the breast milk is. This is healthier. Now look, why would what man made be healthier than what God made? And the Bible even compares the Bible to breast milk. It says, you know, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. That which God has made, his word, is like under that which God made, breast milk, okay? So some factory somewhere that's churning out formula is not going to be able to produce the same thing that God has produced. It's going to be different. So number one, we had a whole generation that didn't breastfeed in this country. And number two, we have the birth control movement where people are having an average of two kids. If you only have an average of two kids, how much breastfeeding are you doing? Not very much. Even if you exclusively breastfeed, you're only breastfeeding for a few years, right? But in societies where birth control is not practiced, the average woman has nine kids. And if you have nine kids, you're going to be spending, what, you know, 15 years breastfeeding. That's a lot of breastfeeding. And if you have all these women and they're all spending 15 years breastfeeding, you're going to see a lot of breastfeeding everywhere you go. Whereas in our society, we don't see it because number one, women aren't breastfeeding. Number two, people aren't having kids. And so it has become socially unacceptable in 2015 America to breastfeed in public because of those reasons. Let me ask this question. Who here amongst us, be honest, has ever seen your mother, your mother breastfeed? Who saw your mother breastfeed? Put up your hand. Okay. Now, notice how few hands are up, okay? You know, here's somebody from Africa that's got their hand up, right? You know? Okay. Yeah. There's a few people that say, I saw my mother breastfeed. But did you notice the vast majority have never seen their brother, their brother, yeah, nobody's seen their brother do it. You know, the vast majority have never seen their mother breastfeed. Now, do you think that's normal? Look, I never saw my mother breastfeed ever. You know why? Because I have one younger sibling. And she was born when I was 20 months old. So by the time she stopped being breastfeeding, you know, that's when I started having a memory. So I can't even remember ever. Look, the first time I ever saw a woman breastfeeding in my entire life was when I saw my older sister breastfeed her child when I was a teenager. So that just shows how it's so removed from our society. It's something that you're not used to. And when you're not used to something, then it's like, whoa, what's going on? Because you're not used to it. Just like when you talk about breastfeed, whoa, because they've been brainwashed by society. Because what do we see every day? We see women using their breasts, what, to sell stuff on ads. You know, so you turn on the TV, and it's all sensualized, right? On TV, it's all sensualized. On ads, on magazines, everywhere you look, the breasts are in a sensual context. But here's the thing. That's not the way it's been throughout history, and that's not the way it is in the rest of the world. Because ask my children if they've ever seen their mother breastfeeding. You know, they've seen it a thousand times, okay? Because they live in the home. And you say, well, you know, they should be covered at all times. But here's the thing. If God said, hey, it's nakedness, then you'd have to cover it in front of your own sons. So are you telling me that God intends women to breastfeed under a blanket, even in their own house, so that the other kids don't see it? And you say, well, yeah, why not? What's wrong with that? Well, here's what's wrong with that. Because of the fact that when a woman breastfeeds under a blanket, guess who's not happy about that? The baby. I challenge you to go to lunch today and eat lunch under a blanket the whole lunch. Now here's the thing. If you were to eat lunch today under a blanket, let's say you were to put a blanket over your head and eat lunch today, you could do it, right? But here's the thing. You probably wouldn't be enjoying it, number one. And number two, you know what you're going to do? Probably eat as fast as you could. See, when you sit down at the table with your friends and there's no blanket over your head, you take your time, you eat, you talk, you relax, you shoot the breeze, right? Okay. If a blanket were over your head and they're like, you can take that blanket off your head when you're done eating, you know what you're going to do? You're going to eat as fast as you can and say, all right, get this blanket off my head. Well, that's what babies do too. Even if it's in your own home, you sit there, you put a blanket over them, you know what they're going to do? They're going to take five minutes, eat as quick as they can, and then pull off and say, okay, I'm done now. Here's the problem with that. The problem is that then women will get pregnant again way too soon. And I know I'm getting real technical and everything this morning, but I have to because this is knowledge that everybody used to have. But it's fallen off the face of the earth because we've entered this weird society where women are on birth control, where women are feeding with bottles, and it's so unnatural that basically we've forgotten how the human kind has been doing this for 6,000 some years since God created us. Mankind has always been doing it this way. And this is what it is. My wife and I don't use birth control. All of our children are naturally spaced. We don't believe in birth control. And because of that, our children are all naturally spaced. Now here's what people will say though. They'll say, well, if you don't use birth control, you're going to have a kid every nine months, Irish twins. And here's the thing. That isn't healthy. And it's true. It's not healthy to have a kid every nine, 10, 11 months. But actually if you follow the natural order of things by actually, you know, a woman gives birth to a child and then breast feeds the child, the children will be spaced about a year and a half to two years apart, which is how my family is proof we don't use any birth control and yet all of our kids are about two years apart from one another. How did we do it? The way that we did it is not by abstaining from anything. It's just simply by my wife breastfeeding. Now if you tell this to a doctor, if you walk into a doctor and tell them, oh, well, here's how our children are spaced, we just use breastfeeding, they'll laugh at you and say, that doesn't work. That's an old wives tale. Oh, really? Well, look at my family. And guess what? It actually works for 99% of women. Now it doesn't work for all women, but it works for 99% of women to naturally space the children out through breastfeeding because while a woman is breastfeeding, she's unable to get pregnant with the next child. Now the reason why this doesn't work for people is because they feed for five minutes under a blanket and that's not enough to stop them from getting pregnant. Or they'll put the child in a crib at night or a bassinet at night and so it goes hours and hours without eating. If you have the child in bed with you and feed it on demand throughout the night, feed it on demand throughout the day, that's enough suckling to where a woman will not get pregnant until the child is weaned. Where did I have you turn? Song of Solomon. Okay. Well, before we do Song of Solomon, let me read for you from Hosea chapter 1 verse 8. It says this, now when she had weaned, lo Ruhamah, she conceived and bare a son. So here's an example, Hosea's wife, when does she conceive a son? After she weans the last one. See how the Bible has all the answers in there? She weans the one, she gets pregnant with the next. That is the natural order of things in this world. But here's the thing, if you're breastfeeding under a blanket, well, it's going to hurry up and finish its meal whereas if you breastfeed without a blanket, you know what it's going to do? It's just going to chill out on the breast for like 45 minutes. Why not? Seriously, I mean, seriously, my wife will just be sitting there and he'll drag it out. Just chill out, relax, looking around, eating, happy, content. I mean, it's comforting to a child to be nursed. So he'll chill out, he'll do it for 45 minutes, he'll nurse all night, whatever, and then guess what? It keeps the mother healthy and it keeps the children spaced out naturally. So you can sit there and say, oh, well, why not just cover in a blanket? Why not just, you know, put a blanket over it for crying out loud? Nobody wants to see that. Put a blanket over it. You know, your son doesn't want to see that. Here's the problem. Now, all of a sudden, you're going to get pregnant way too soon and then you know what you're going to say? Oh, wait, we need to be using birth control and then you're going to get on birth control and then, you know, it's like a domino effect when you start, when you start making up stuff as you go along and making new rules because what does the Bible say not to do? Don't teach for doctrines the commandments of men and here's the biggest point on this subject. The Bible is 1189 chapters long. The Bible is, and I hope I haven't lost anybody yet, okay? Everybody listen and hear me out to the end. The Bible has 31,000 some verses. Now wouldn't you agree that in most societies that aren't pumped full of birth control like we are in the United States, wouldn't you agree that in most societies breastfeeding is a pretty everyday activity for a lot of people? If the average woman's having nine kids and spending like 15 years of her life breastfeeding and there are all these millions of women spending 15 years breastfeeding, then breastfeeding is a real everyday activity. I mean, ask my wife if it's an everyday activity. How long have you been breastfeeding for straight now, honey? Yeah, she has breastfed for the last 14 years virtually uninterrupted. Almost nonstop. So it's a big part of her life and she's not alone, okay? Well guess what? Wouldn't you think if God demanded that a woman cover up while breastfeeding, wouldn't there be a verse somewhere in this book that said that? I mean just think about that logically. You got 1189, I mean does God like to make rules? I mean God's got hundreds of rules, right? So why is there not a single rule that says, hey, you need to breastfeed under a blanket or under a cover or keep your breasts covered while breastfeeding? If that were a rule, it would be in the Bible because the Bible's a big long book that talks about every subject and the Bible talks about breastfeeding repeatedly many times, but yet there's never that teaching. So how could we get up and say, hey, thus saith the Lord, go put a blanket on and cover. Listen, if you go to the typical independent fundamental Baptist church, it's not even enough for them that you cover. They want to put you in another room. They say, look, we went to a fundamental Baptist church when we were, you know, in our early married years and we just had two boys. They sent home a letter because breastfeeding was just getting out of control, you know. Women are breastfeeding under a blanket in the service, you know, say it isn't so, but here's what happened. They sent home a letter and said, you can't even do it under a blanket because they said, you know, we, it makes us think about what's going on under that blanket. That's like saying, well, you can't even, you women can't even come to church cause I, you know, it makes us think about what's under those clothes. I mean, what in the world? These people are nuts. I mean, that, that leads you into the Muslim territory of just put on a black tent and then we won't think about anything. She has pretty eyes, you know, whatever. Nice twinkle in the eye. So, you know, they would sit there and say, you can't breastfeed goat, but isn't it interesting that everybody in that church is having two kids, they're using birth control, you know, so that's easy for them to say. And I remember, you know, when they'd want us to put our kids in the nursery and force us to, to, to, you know, go to some room somewhere for the child to be breastfed and all this, here's what they'd say. Oh, this is just a little short phase in your life. It's kind of tough and inconvenient. It's not a short phase in our life. It's our life. We always have a baby, you know what I mean? So it's like, it's easy for the birth control people to sit there and say, oh, this is just a little phase you go through. No, for some of us it's a, it's a, it's a real long phase, okay? But you know, we were just, in fact, a bunch of people from our church just, what, less than a year ago went to visit another fundamental Baptist church in town and a few of the, our ladies that came with us were banished into a literal closet to breastfeed. What was the size of that room? It was like, what, four by six or something? I think it was like your wife, it was Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Martinez were put in a room like four by six feet where it's like, this is where you're going to breastfeed. We went to another church where the breastfeeding room was like in the bathroom. It was like a stall in the bathroom that had been gutted out and they put metal folding chairs and you had to take a ticket on your way in and it's like, be out of there in 15 minutes. So what happens? When you discourage, listen, it's already hard for women today in 2015 to breastfeed. If it were easy, everybody'd be doing it. Why are 50% of women hardly even making an attempt? Why are only 20% or less even making it to six months as a breastfeeding mother? The reason why is because it's hard. So we can't sit there and just make it harder on women by imposing man-made rules and laws that aren't in the Bible and saying, hey, you need to go in this other room somewhere. You need to put a blanket over that. You need to do all this. And then what happens is there are far worse consequences than the so-called consequences of oh no, a woman is publicly breastfeeding, okay? First of all, a woman who's publicly breastfeeding, I'd like to know how many marriages that has destroyed. You know, I mean, I've heard about a lot of people getting divorced over a lot of things and I've heard of a lot of marriages being destroyed, but I've never heard of a marriage destroyed. It all started when I saw her breastfeeding and I couldn't control myself. It all started when my wife started breastfeeding publicly and then all these men came, you know, I've never heard a story like that ever. I mean if you have a story like that, share it with me after the service, but I've never heard of one. But you know what I have heard a lot of? Marriages being destroyed by women going to work and working with another dude all day and building a relationship on the job. I have heard of marriages being destroyed because they only have a couple kids and as soon as the last kid moves out of the home, they split. In fact, did you know that the most common time to get a divorce is in the first two years of marriage or the first two years after the child leaves the home? So I've heard of marriages being destroyed by birth control. I've heard of marriages being destroyed by women going out of the workforce and hanging around with a bunch of other men. I've heard of stuff like that, but it's funny, I've never heard of breastfeeding destroying a marriage. So what's worse, my friend, what's worse, the horrific spectacle of a woman feeding her child like people have been doing for thousands of years or the specter of birth control, putting your kids in the nursery, putting them in daycare, going and getting a job and all this stuff that our Western society embraces that actually does cause more adultery and ruin marriages and ruin lives, etc. See God always knows best if we would just follow God's word. Now some people would say, well, Pastor Anderson, are you trying to say that a woman's breasts have no sensual value, that they're only for feeding? Now look, I would not be so stupid as to make such a statement. That would be ridiculous for me to get up and pretend, hey, breasts have no sensual aspect, they're only for feeding babies. Well, we all know and the Bible talks quite a bit about that aspect too, doesn't it? The Bible will talk about the sensual aspect. I'm not foolish, okay, but let me say this though. You could sensualize a lot of other parts of the body too. Like for example, how about the mouth? I mean, kissing, right, I mean, hello. But does that mean that our mouth has to be covered at all times that we can never eat without putting a little, you know, blanket over it? Even though that could have a sensual aspect. Now look at Song of Solomon because here's the thing about Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon is a book of poetry that is between husband and wife and it goes into their love life and it's all about the love between husband and wife and he's praising her beauty and she's praising his beauty and so forth and there's something real interesting you'll notice that the Bible here never gets explicit or inappropriate in the book of Song of Solomon. It never gets pornographic, right? The Bible talks about how pure and clean the word of God is so we know that the book of Song of Solomon is not an obscene book, is it? So you know what's never described in Song of Solomon when they're sitting there going through their beloved and talking about how beautiful she is? Literally in order from head to toe the body is described but you know what's not described? The reproductive organs. You know what's not described? The thighs and the buttocks. You know, it doesn't go into stuff that's basically off limits to be outside the bedroom, something that would be shameful. So isn't that interesting? Because look at Song of Solomon chapter 7 verse 1 because we're starting at the bottom right here, okay? He's describing to his wife how beautiful she is. It says Song of Solomon chapter 7 verse 1, how beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter. The joints of thy thighs are like Jews. You say, wait a minute, thighs. The joints of the thighs are like jewels. That's talking about the kneecap being like a jewel, okay? That's the joint, all right, of the thigh. It says the feet, the joints of the thighs, which would be the knees, the work of the hands of a cunning workman, thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor. Thy belly is like a heap of wheat. Don't try this on your wife. It's not cool anymore but anyway, different culture but you know thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy breasts are like two young rose that are twins. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory. Thy eyes like the fish pools and hedgepond by the gate of Bethabarim. Thy nose is as a tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. Thy head upon thee is like Carmel and the hair of thine head like purple. The king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love for delights. Okay so look, do you notice how he went from foot to head? He said the feet are beautiful, the knees are beautiful, and then all of a sudden we jump where? We jump to the navel. You notice that? He's describing her body. Notice what he doesn't describe. That which we shouldn't be talking about, okay, in an erotic sense. So he jumps from knee to navel and then works his way back up again. He's not describing the buttocks or the thighs or anything like that or the reproductive organs. Why? That would be inappropriate to go into detail about those things that are considered shameful to be publicly revealed because they are private between a husband and his wife. So to sit there and say, well the fact that the breasts are brought up in Song of Solomon's proof that they're nakedness, well then I guess the head, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the neck, the navel, the belly, and the feet are all nakedness too. So you know, when are you going to pick up your hijab and your, you know, char dor and your, you know, burka and whatever? Because that's where that teaching would lead. It doesn't make any sense. Now I have to hurry up and move on from that point, but go if you would to 1 Timothy chapter number 2. 1 Timothy chapter number 2. So the bottom line that I'm teaching this morning here, what I've always taught for the last decade and even before, even before I started passing the church I believe this. Because you know, we had to deal with this in other churches that would persecute you for breastfeeding. And let me tell you this. You know, these churches that are persecuting you for breastfeeding, okay, that we grew up in and that we still visit around here from time to time, you know, all the kids are in the Christian school, you know, the parents are only having two kids, their kids are in daycare, the mom's going off to work. It's a whole different culture, okay? So you know, you can sit there and say, oh well they're more righteous. No they're not because that culture is a wrong culture. The natural culture of man being the provider and the breadwinner, the wife being a keeper at home as the Bible says, marrying, bearing children, guiding the house, being fruitful, multiplying, drawing out the breast, giving suck unto the young ones, this is all biblical, okay? And normal and natural. And if we lived in a society where everywhere we went every day women are breastfeeding, at the bus stop, at the restaurant, in church, we wouldn't think anything of it. It's only because we've been programmed by Hollywood, Madison Avenue, etc. where we only have a sensual connotation. And if you look back at old pictures, you'll see old pictures all the time of women breastfeeding in church. Nobody's batting an eye. Nobody cares. Because it's not that crazy of a thing. And I'll say this, if you're a woman and you say, you know what, well I want to breastfeed under a blanket, knock yourself out, go ahead. I mean if you want to breastfeed under a blanket, fine. You want to go in another room to breastfeed, go ahead. But don't try to impose your preferences upon other people because God has enough rules in the Bible without you adding rules to impose your preferences and force them on other people. Because you know what, it's not natural or biblical. So we need to be sure that we stay within the parameters of what the Bible teaches. And listen, my wife breastfeeds uncovered at home, at church, at the store, at the restaurant. She's probably doing it right now. No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, you know, does it all the time. You know, and you know what, she's not going to stop. And if somebody comes to you and harasses you at our church and says, hey, you know, get under a blanket or whatever, you know, then basically just know that that didn't come from me and that didn't come from my wife and it also didn't come from the Bible. Okay. So you know, if people are going to go around and say stuff like that. I mean listen, I can't even count how many times I've been walking through the store with my wife. My wife and I were just walking through Costco recently. And my wife is literally just baby on her left breast walking through Costco like this. And there's nothing obscene about it. She literally, this is what she did. She's got a skirt on, right? She pulled up the left side of her shirt, puts the baby on, and then the shirt kind of comes down and rests on the baby's face right here. Okay. So what you, what you see like a little sliver of the belly, you know, you see a little sliver of stomach, maybe a little sliver of skin of the breast or whatever. Because guess what? Most of it's in the baby's mouth. Okay. And then there's a shirt coming down and she literally, we were walking through Costco, oh, look at this, look at this and just natural as rain. And you know what? You aren't gawking or acting weird about it because there's nothing weird about it. It's totally normal. Now I spent way too much time on nakedness, all right? So we need to move on. Okay. Number two, I got to just blow through these last few points. Number two is modesty. Okay. Now just covering your nakedness doesn't mean that your clothing obligation is complete. Okay. Does everybody get that? So no, Pastor Anderson is not saying that women should go topless. I've never taught such a thing. I don't believe that. But what I am saying is that they should be able to breastfeed publicly because that is a normal natural activity that God created them to do that they've been doing for thousands of years without having to, you know, jump through all these weird hoops that our birth control bottle feeding society wants to foist upon us. Okay. But just covering the nakedness doesn't finish the job of getting dressed because the Bible says that we should be in modest apparel. Okay. Now, what does the word modest mean? Look down at your Bible there in 1 Timothy 2, 9. In like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shame-facedness, you know, cover the nakedness, and sobriety. Sobriety means seriousness. Does it sound like it's kind of serious how you dress? It matters. You know, dress with sobriety. He says, not with broided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness with good works. He's saying your adornment, your decoration should be your works. It should be your deeds. It should be who you are. Not a physical drawing attention to yourself with the way that you dress, but rather that people would notice you for your good works. They would notice you for your righteousness. Now, let me give you the dictionary definition of modesty. Okay. I just went to dictionary.com and just typed in modesty. Definition number one. Everybody listening? And you tell me if this matches what the Bible's teaching. First Timothy 2, 9 teaches one thing. Let's listen to the dictionary. Having or showing a moderate, notice the word modest, moderate. Having or showing a moderate or humble estimate of one's merit, importance, etc. Free from vanity, egotism, boastfulness, or great pretensions. Okay. So think about how we would use the word modest. What if I said I have a very modest home? What am I saying about my home? That it's in a black chador? With just the eyes viewing, just the window showing? No, if I said I have a modest home, what am I saying about my home? It's not expensive. It's nothing fancy. It's not something where you go, whoa, look at that house, right? It's just a modest, humble, you know, normal home. There's nothing expensive about it. There's nothing fancy. And by the way, I do live in a very modest home. Okay. But here's the thing. How would that apply to clothing? He said, you know, if modest is not boasting. What if I said, well, you know, I would show you my skills on the basketball court but I'm too modest. What does modest mean? You're not a braggart. And obviously that's an ironic statement because you're bragging by saying that. But bragging, boasting, you know, these are things that are immodest. If someone bragged, you'd say they're an immodest person because they're telling you a great deal. So how would this apply to clothing? Well, basically, clothing that draws attention to yourself is immodest. Clothing that says, hey, everybody, look at me. That's immodest, right? Clothing that's real expensive, wouldn't that be immodest also? I mean, even as a man, I mean, the Bible's telling women not to wear immodest apparel. But what about as a man, you know, putting on the Armani suit and then the woman shopping at the real expensive boutiques, real fancy purse, real fancy glasses, fancy everything. What does the Bible say, friend? Gold, silver, pearls, costly array. Does that sound like it's talking about covering your nakedness? He's talking about wearing expensive, fancy stuff, drawing attention to yourself. Now let me ask you this. If a woman goes topless, is she drawing attention to herself? Just totally top? Oh, yeah, of course. A woman with a real low-cut top, is she drawing attention to herself? Let's face it, she is, right? Okay. But what about this? An Amish person, what about an Amish woman in a prairie dress? Is she drawing attention to herself? Is she being pretentious? Hey, everybody, look at me, how righteous and holy I am. Everybody look over here. Because here's the thing, she could cover up and be just as modest and she could be just as covered and wear a stylish outfit, right? Just a normal stylish outfit. But no, they choose to wear purposely ugly floral prints, nothing wrong with floral prints, I'm saying ugly floral prints that are purposely outdated, purposely looking weird, why? To draw attention to themselves, aren't they? Everybody can see how righteous and holy thou art with your prairie dress and then the man will do the special Amish Abraham Lincoln beard and just have a real stern look on their face and it's like, we're better than everybody else. That's how they act. Look, I'm a Christian, I'm a pastor, I'm a fundamental Baptist, but I refuse to go in public walking around acting like I'm better than everybody else. And I'm not going to have my wife dressed in a way where, you know, let me turn my collar backward and have big long tail coat and show everybody how holy I am. You know, this is what the Catholic priests love to do, the nuns, the Orthodox with their weird hats and the Jews with their weird hat and everything, hey everybody, look at me, look how spiritual I am. That is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we should have modest apparel and people should know us by our works and know us by our fruits and that we should be adorned with righteousness and put on zeal as a cloak and not sit there and dress in a way that draws attention to ourselves. Now look, if you're out in a bikini, aside from being naked, you're also drawing attention to yourself. But if you're out in a prairie dress or a burka or a chador, you're also drawing attention to yourself. I mean, unless you're living in that country where they all do it, you're drawing attention to yourself. It's not modest. It is pretentious, it is boastful, you're showing egotism, vanity, okay? So when it comes to dressing modestly, and if you would go to 1 Peter 3, I'm just blowing through these last few points. Go to 1 Peter chapter 3. So again, you have to be able to differentiate what is the Bible saying here. Be in modest apparel. So when it comes to the whole breastfeeding issue, if you think about it, what's a woman's motive when she's feeding her child at a restaurant, at church, on the bus, is it egotism, vanity, you know, hey everybody, look at me. You know what, that's ridiculous. That's not what's going through a woman's mind when she's breastfeeding her kid. It's not egotism, it's not vanity, it's not hey everybody, look at me, it's actually just breastfeeding her kid because she's going to spend years of her life breastfeeding all day, it's life, okay? So anyway, as opposed to a woman who's basically wearing the low cut top or going topless or whatever, can you see a little difference there of like trying to accentuate her body and show off and point, you know, and here's the thing, you could do that without even being undressed. You could wear a dress that goes from neck to ankles, right, and just cover it in sequins like a Las Vegas showgirl, would that be modest? It doesn't matter how much you've covered. If you're walking like a disco ball through the grocery store, you're drawing attention to yourself, right? You put a bunch of necklaces around your neck like Mr. T, you're drawing attention to yourself at that point, okay? Look at 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 3, who's adorning, talking about women, who's adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel, but let it be a 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. So what's the Bible emphasizing over and over again with the way that we dress? It should be, yes, covering our nakedness. By all means, from the loins to the thighs need to be covered. The buttocks need to be covered, okay? But beyond that he says that women should be dressed in modest apparel, meaning that they should not be egotistical, vain, drawing attention to themselves in any way, shape or form. And if you stop and think about it, you know, with the different styles of dress that women wear and so forth, you know, a lot of women are dressing to draw attention to themselves even if their nakedness is covered. Think about this, what if you wore these yoga pants, right? These skin tight, ultra thin fabric pants and you say, well, my nakedness is covered, but is it modest? I mean, when you can see everything anyway? You know, this real, just real tight fitting clothes. I mean even if you wore a skirt that was just ultra tight form fitting, you know, it could be immodest, couldn't it? It's possible. So that's what I'm saying. It's not just cover your nakedness and you're done. No, no, no. You also need to dress modestly. And that also means somewhat fitting in with the culture that you live in. Not just dressing dramatically different from your culture that you're in. Because that, again, that's just all about egotistical. And isn't this how teenagers are? They always want to be different. I'm going to dye my hair green so I can look totally different than anyone else. But you know what, that's a sign of immaturity, isn't it? So we as Christians need to be mature and dress normal. I love the word normal. It's a word that people don't like anymore because everybody wants to be a freak and a weirdo. Be normal! Dress normal! Breastfeeding's normal! You know, put on a normal outfit so that you don't just stand out like a sore thumb everywhere you go. Whether you're doing it to this extreme or to that extreme, it's wrong. But you also need to stay within the parameters of what God expects. And then lastly this, the last thing, go to Deuteronomy chapter 22. The last thing is our identity. So we've got the modesty, the nakedness, and the identity that we want to deal with when it comes to getting dressed. And when we say identity is that it's not enough just to be covered, and it's not enough just to be modest, we need to also wear men's clothing as men and women's clothing as women. You know, and this should go without saying, but it needs to be preached today more than ever. It says in Deuteronomy 22 5, the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man. Neither shall a man put on a woman's garment. For all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God. And let me just point something out here. He doesn't say, as is often misquoted, he doesn't say, hey if you put on, if you put on, you know, the other gender's clothing, that's an abomination. No he says if you put on woman's clothing, you're an abomination. It's not what you're doing that's about, you're an abomination. And he says to women if they put on that which pertaineth to a man, he says, you're an abomination. Okay, now what is an abomination? It's basically something that is held in contempt. You know, like, oh man, we don't want that. Now look, if a man today were to walk in in a dress, would it be an abomination unto us? I mean, we would say like, this guy's an abomination, you know, what's he doing? He's walking in, in women's clothing, okay? But here's the thing, in our society we have no problem with women wearing men's clothing all day long. No problem with women, so it's a double standard. But does God have a double standard? Well God says it both ways right here. He says the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God. Okay? Now let's play a little game real quick, and I realize I'm almost out of time. But we have time for a little game here, okay? Let's play a little game here, okay? So I'm going over to the board here, I'm going to say the woman shall not wear blank, okay? It's like a little quiz. Kids, are you listening up? Okay? Okay? How about this? Neither shall a man put on blank, okay? Everybody see that? The woman shall not wear blank, neither shall a man put on blank, okay? Now the reason I've left that blank is because it says, in the Bible it says, a woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man. And it says the man should not put on a woman's garment. So here's what we're going to try to do, kids. Let's figure out what is a woman's garment? Because the man shall not put on blank, a woman's, so I'm going to take as many answers as you can give me. What is a woman's garment? What's a woman's garment? Tell me, what's a woman's garment? Come on, give me answers. Skirt, dress, yeah, okay. So here's the thing, does everybody here, who here does not agree that a skirt is a woman's garment? I think everybody would agree, hey, a skirt is a woman's, how about a dress? Yeah, I mean a dress is a woman's garment, right? So what's God telling men not to wear? Because we have to, look, you say, well, just preach the Bible. But here's the thing, if I just preached the Bible, then I wouldn't even be preaching if I just read the Bible and didn't expound it. The whole point of preaching is to expound the Bible, to take the Bible and apply it to the day that we live in. And to bring it, okay, how do we apply this? You know, just hearing Deuteronomy 22 5 isn't going to do us any good unless we apply it. So how do, what in 2015, America, you know, can we avoid here as men when he says don't put on a woman's garment? Dress, a skirt, that's what we're talking about. Now you say, well, he's talking about the color pink, but wait a minute, the Bible doesn't mention colors. And in other cultures, pink is not even a feminine color. In some cultures, men wear pink and it's normal in that culture. I don't, I won't wear it in America because, you know, that's not our culture. But in another culture, it could be fine. So we all know that a woman's garment is a skirt or dress. So he's saying, look, men, don't put on a woman's garment, don't put on a dress, don't put on a skirt, okay? But then over here we have the woman shall not wear blank and this just remains blank. Let's just close in prayer and go home. It's a big blank. Look, he must, would everyone agree that he must be telling them not to wear something? Otherwise the verse would have no meaning. If he's saying, hey, women can wear all kinds of clothing, but a man can't wear a woman's garment, you know, he could have said that, but that's not what he said. He said a woman shall not wear that which pertains to a man. So what article of clothing pertains unto a man? Our society would just say, well, nothing, rendering the verse meaningless, but you know what it is? It's pants. I know this is real shocking to people, but, you know, even the sign on the bathroom door shows you the difference between men and women's clothing, pants versus skirts. And did you know that in our country 100 years ago it was illegal for women to wear pants in America? Did you know that? Women were arrested for cross-dressing, literally. Look it up. There are even people that are still alive today that remember when it was considered inappropriate and considered just crazy for a woman to be going publicly in pants. It was considered a scandal. It would be like a man today going in a dress. That's how it was considered back then. It was like women don't wear pants. You know, women wear dresses, men wear pants. But see, you say, well, Pastor Anderson, I disagree with you. I think you're crazy because there's women's pants and, you know, okay, well, they're man's dresses. Men's, you know, yeah, I mean, what if I had a camo dress on? Jean dress, camo, put some chains on it or something. One time I saw a Harley Davidson biker wearing a really manly skirt. It wasn't cool though, okay? I stayed as far away from the guy as I could. So to sit there and say, well, there's no such thing as a garment that pertains unto a man, well, what's the spirit of the law? Because we not only want to look at the letter of the law, don't we also want to look at the spirit of the law? What's the spirit of the law here? He wants there to be a difference in the way that men and women dress. Isn't that the spirit of the law? If he says, hey, man, don't put on a woman's garment. Hey, women, don't put on a man's garment. You know, the spirit of the law is to say dress different. Don't look the same. So here's the thing. If we went by American Christian culture, are jeans okay on me? Yeah. Jeans okay on my wife? No problem. According to American culture, okay, hooded sweater on me, is that cool? Hooded sweater on my wife. No problem. Tennis shoes, cool with me. Tennis shoes, cool with her. Then you know what we could do? My wife and I could dress identical. And the world considers that perfectly fine. If we're both in jeans, we're both in a sweater, we're both in shoes, see, our society, listen, and I know it sounds crazy, but you thought I was crazy on the breastfeeding point. Our society has become gender neutral in our clothing, is what's happening. And look, the men in skirts is coming. The men in dresses is coming. I know, but it's coming. But what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, that's where society is headed. You know it's true. The transgender, LGBTQ, MICK, EYMOUSE, all the different letters they keep adding. But the bottom line is that, you know, God is not pleased when we all dress the same. God is not pleased if we're all like in a futuristic space movie, we're all in a jumpsuit and a space helmet or something. You know, there's supposed to be a difference in the way that we dress. And God said there's a man's garment and there's a woman's garment. I don't have time to show you all in the Bible, I have it on my notes, but all the times that pants are mentioned, it's always on men in the Bible. And it talks about gird up your loins like a man. Why? Because there's pants underneath your coat. And it talks about the fact that when men use the restroom they cover their feet, meaning that they drop their drawers, meaning they're wearing pants, britches. It's mentioned over and over, I have a whole page of notes on that, I don't have time. But the bottom line is, we need to do some soul searching and we need to do some scripture searching when it comes to this thing of how to dress. Because of the fact that what we've been taught in church may not be right. What we've been taught by the world is for sure not right. And we need to go back and think about these things and say, wait a minute, how should I dress as a woman? And you know what? I think if you study this subject, study the Bible, and just think about Deuteronomy 22.5 with those blanks there, you're going to realize that God has to be prohibiting something on women. And if it's not socks, if it's not sweaters, and it's not shirts, we all know what it is. He's telling them not to wear something and it's pants. That's what he's telling them not to wear. And he's telling men not to wear a dress or a skirt because men are supposed to wear pants. That's a man's garment. So at the end of the day, we as men need to dress normal. Don't dress like a freak or a weirdo. Dress like an American in 2015. Make sure your shorts or pants go down to your knee, right? Don't dress like a fag, okay? Then you know, stuff's real simple, you know? And then on the ladies' side, what do you need to wear as ladies? You know, look ladies, be stylish, be beautiful, okay? But you need to cover your nakedness and you need to wear a skirt or a dress that goes down to at least your knee, period. Now you know what? People can say, well, you're legalistic and you're judging and blah, blah. Look, I'm not going to be the police that comes, you know, I'm not going to catch you at Trader Joe's, you know, in a short skirt or in pants and confront you, you know. I don't care because you know what, it's your life. Now if I catch you men in a dress, you're going to get your butts kicked, okay? But you know, I'm just saying, you know, I'm just saying, look, if I see you out and about, I'm not judging, I don't care. But you know what? I will judge in my own home, you know, because I'm the boss of my home. So in my home, my wife and daughters and sons are going to dress in a way that I believe is biblical and acceptable. What you do in your home is your business. I'm not trying to lord over you. I'm not trying to tell you, hey, these are my rules, these are faithful words rules. What I am saying is this is what the Bible teaches and you need to stop just blindly, oh, society says a one piece swimsuit's modest, let's do it. No, you need to stop just blindly following the world or blindly following what church is telling you and you need to use biblical standards and you know what, whether you like love or hate the sermon and whether you agree with what I preached this morning, I've used the Bible to prove all my points. I used the Bible to prove my breastfeeding point, I used the Bible to prove my point about the thighs and the buttocks being nakedness, and I used the Bible to prove my point about gender specific clothing. He that hath an ear, let him hear. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and we thank you for these guidelines. Help us to realize that it is a sober matter how we dress, Lord. Help us to think about how we dress. And Lord, I know you don't want us all to be, you know, robots and automatons that all dress identical and wear a uniform, Lord. You've given us great freedom in what we can wear and women and men can express themselves in how they dress, Lord. But please just help us to do it modestly, help us to do it in a way that covers our nakedness and that is gender specific. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.