Why Dress Standards

And turn over to 1st Thessalonians chapter 5, First

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

Thessalonians chapter 5. And I'm going to introduce what

I really want to talk about next week.

And I'm going to lay some groundwork here with some

passages from God's Word. And, and hopefully this will be

something that you understand a lot of you have asked questions

about our dress standards. Why do we have dress standards?

Why? And, and, and by the way,

everybody has dress standards, right?

And not just standards of dress, but standards across all, you

know, all areas of life. We have standards in music, we

have standards in, in our behavior.

We have standards in so many different things, right?

And for our, for our church, we have come to the conclusion, I

guess if you want to call it that, that, that to be involved

in, in ministry here in our church, that we have certain

dress standards that you have to uphold.

And we ask that men dressed in a way that looks masculine.

And certainly, you know, when, when you're serving in a

position of ministry that you wear a suit.

Ladies, obviously we ask that ladies wear a skirt that falls

below the knee when they're serving in ministry.

And of course, then as, as far as that goes, and, and, and this

is not something that you have not heard before, most of you

know this, but we ask that you hold that standard at any church

function as well. And then I highly recommend and,

and highly suggest that you keep that standard across all areas

of your life because it's the matter of consistency and what I

want to do tonight. I've, I've had a lot of you that

have asked questions about this. Why do we do this?

And I think it's only fair that I give you from the Bible why we

have this standard, right? By the way, you know, we say

dress standards and everybody automatically thinks, oh, you

know, pants and everything else, every church has dress

standards, right? No matter where your dress

standards fall, that's the question where do, where do you

draw the line on those dress standards?

Right. But I don't think that most

churches would have somebody up singing in front of the church

in a bikini, right? Because they have a standard of

what is allowed in dress. Now, their standards are very

low in a lot of other ways, right?

We've chosen to to raise our standard a little bit higher,

not because that makes us better or we look down our nose at

everybody else, but because I think that's what we find in

God's word. So there is, there is a constant

assault on what I believe to be an important expression of

Christianity. I'll tell you this, my wife was,

this was a few years ago now, but my wife was walking into

Walmart and of course she wears skirts everywhere.

And so another lady was walking out of Walmart and she was in a

skirt and she looked at my wife and she said, I know my girl's

Pentecostal. And my wife was like, no, I'm

not, I'm not Pentecostal, but you know, but what, what I mean,

what is, what does that say about the Pentecostals?

Everybody knows that they have a certain standard.

And when she looked at my wife, the first thing that she thought

was that that lady's Pentecostal, right?

Not I bet she, you know, you know, works, you know, in the

red light district or something like that.

It's not what she thought when she saw the way my wife was

dressed, right? She thought that Lady goes to

church and I'll bet because she's wearing a skirt, she's a

Pentecostal right? Now obviously that wasn't the

case, but our appearance as Christians matter and it's part

of our testimony. It's part of the representation

of who we are to the world. And I want to give you the a

reason from God's word rather than just an emotional

explanation of, of our dress standards, but of dress

standards in general. That's that's necessary to help

us stand against the spirit of the age.

There's no doubt that that that most of Christianity is moving

away from Christ, not closer to him, right.

And I want to help you formulate your standards related to your

appearance standards that are not driven by me or standards

that are driven by you and your fear or your carnality or even

your pride. I want to help you formulate

standards that are driven by your desire to reflect the

holiness of Christ and your love for him.

That's that's where all of this comes down to.

And along with that, I want to make sure that you understand

that how we look is not an isolated thing.

It, it, it does not make a spiritual in and of itself.

I think there is a, there was a mindset maybe even 2034 years,

40 years ago in independent Baptist circles in particular,

that if you dressed a certain way that you have yet you had

attained to a certain level of spirituality.

And that's not the case. It's not the case.

But I also want to help our young people in here because

when we go on our youth activities and things, we, we

require that our young men and our young ladies dress modestly.

And, you know, I mentioned this to our young men, Hey, when we

go, you know, we were, we stayed in an Airbnb together.

Yeah. And not running around in the

house with no shirt on, right? Not running around in your

little short shorts, right. Same thing for the girls, but

that they'd be modest, right? And and everything that we do,

we ought to be modest. So what I want to do is lay out

some of these these principles tonight.

And I want you to, I want you to understand these things, OK,

Obviously it's required to serve in ministries of our church, but

I want you to understand why we have these standards, not just

that. Well, the pastor said we have to

do it. So that's what I'm going to do

if I want to serve in the ministry, I want you to

understand it. I want you to come to those same

conclusions yourself. This is not, I'm not preaching

at you tonight, all right? I'm just giving you an

explanation of why we hold to the standards that we hold to.

I found this on Facebook a while back and I saved it because I

wanted to use it with this, with this lesson, with this message.

But a girl bought an iPhone and when her father saw it, he asked

her what was the first thing you did when you bought that phone?

And she said, well, the first thing I did was I put an anti

scratch screen protector on the front of the screen.

And he said, well, why was that? Did somebody force you to do it?

And she said no, nobody forced me to do it.

He said, well, don't you think it's an insult to the

manufacturer for you to put a anti scratch sticker on the

front of that screen? And she said, no, I'm doing it

to protect it. In fact, they actually recommend

putting a cover on the iPhone. And he said, well, did you cover

it because it's cheap and because it's ugly?

And she said, no, I covered it because I didn't want to get

damaged and I and I didn't want to decrease the value of it.

And she said, in fact, I actually bought a case that goes

around the entire phone. And he said, well, did you buy

that? Did you buy that case for it

because you thought your iPhone was ugly and you wanted to cover

it? And she said, no, I didn't do it

because it was ugly. In fact, I like the case.

I think it makes the phone look better.

And the father looked at his daughter and he said, Yet if I

had to ask you to cover your body in the same way, would you

have just as readily done that? And she was silent.

I saw I found this Dear girls, always do remember that indecent

dressing and exposure of your body effects others perception

of your great value and in many cases causes them to lose

respect for you. I did a, I did a big series, a

long series on this back in 2022 and 2023.

I think I did 15 messages on this.

It was the first time I'd ever taught through it.

So I went all the way back to the beginning about why we do

this and I talked about a lot of different principles that we

find in the Word of God. And then in 2024, I did this

again. I took the same series and

instead of doing 15 messages, I think I did 5.

All right. And I'm going to take that same

exact series and I'm bringing it down to 2 messages.

I just want to give you the explanation of the brief

explanation of this tonight. If you want more understanding

of these things more in deep principles from the Word of God,

and certainly I'm going to give you some of those tonight and

next week, then I highly recommend you go back and do it.

I got with brother Josh. I made sure that that was in a

in its own folder, if you will, or in a playlist on YouTube so

you can find it easily. But if you want to go back and

watch that, I think would be helpful to do that.

But I'm going to summarize those lessons tonight.

And you know, the purpose of this, of doing this is certainly

not to make you mad. I hope you'll listen to this

with an open heart and an open mind.

And I know this is one of those things that gets people upset

for some reason. I don't know why when you start

talking about people's wardrobes, people get mad and I

don't know why. I don't know why.

Because the whole purpose of why we have the standards that we

have when it comes to dress, when it comes to music, when it

comes to everything, is because we are just trying as much as

possible to be as close to the word of God as we possibly can

be. And this lesson tonight and next

week is simply meant to help you understand why we have the

standards addressed that we do. Many of you have asked about it,

and so I want to give you an explanation from the Bible.

Now, there's a couple of things that you need to understand as

we get into this. And the first one is that your

appearance does matter. Your appearance matters 1st and

simplest. We have to accept that our

appearance is addressed in Scripture, and this is maybe in

a very, very Broadway here in First Thessalonians, chapter 5,

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

I had you turn there. The Bible says in verse #22

abstain from all appearance of evil, abstain from all

appearance of evil. That means there are things that

you can do that may not be evil, but they look evil, right?

And so if we're to abstain from the appearance of evil, then

appearance does matter whether that is is your dress, whether

that is you're holding a can of non alcoholic Bud Light in your

hand, right? Oh, I can drink this.

It's not alcoholic, but it looks like it.

It's got the appearance of evil, right.

I can do a lot of things that may not necessarily technically

be wrong, but it has the appearance of evil.

All I'm saying is our appearance is addressed in in God's word.

Turn over to First Samuel chapter 16.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

If God speaks about it, then we should study it, we should learn

it, we should try to understand it, and we should apply it to

our lives. So we should realize that our

appearance is the way that others see our Christianity

first. Now you can have a woman who is

as modest as could possibly be and is not even saved, has no

desire to live for the Lord. And you can have a lady who is

not modest who has a desire to live for the Lord.

It's the heart that matters the most.

But the Bible says this in First Corinth.

Sorry, First Samuel chapter 16, verse #7 The Lord said unto

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

Samuel, look not on his countenance or on the height of

his stature, because I've refused him.

For the Lord seeth not as man seeth.

For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh

on the heart. Now that's an important

principle there. God's looking at our heart, and

the heart is what matters the most.

But what does man use to judge what's in our heart, the way we

look, right? Like it or not, most of the

world makes a judgment call on the basis of how people look,

how they act, how they behave, what's visible to them prior to

actually getting to know that person in question.

Right? If I don't know, who should?

Who should I pick on tonight? Josh.

Josh came in dressed in all black with black eyelids and

combat boots and wearing leather straps down his arms that were

tied up tight, right? And he had a leather vest on and

everything else was black. You could reasonably assume that

Josh was a goth, right? Or trying to dress as a gothic

person dresses right now. You don't know that Josh

actually serves in the sound booth and that Josh actually

sings in the choir, and that from time to time Josh gets up

and preaches, right? You wouldn't know that just by

looking at him because he's a goth, right?

I mean, he's got, he's got everything black, right?

And I may find out later on. Wow.

I didn't realize that Josh serves in the sound booth and

Josh sings in the choir and Josh does all of these things at

church. I just didn't.

I didn't know who Josh was when I first met him.

But what did you judge him by when you first saw him?

The way that he was dressed, right, And his outside

appearance. And so as a Christian, I should

not be primarily concerned with what people think, but I should

be aware that how I look and how I act and how I sound and how I

behave does produce an effect on those people around me.

And I want that to be a godly effect.

I want people to look at me and I get this a lot.

I've been in, I've been in, I, I grew up in church, so I, I've

got the Christian look down, I suppose you could say, but I get

all the time people ask me if I'm in the military, you in the

military. I want to say yes so I can get

the discount, but I don't. I try not to lie too much, but

I've never actually said yes, I'm in the military just to get

a discount. But, you know, people expect

people in the military to look a certain way, right?

And they expect Christians to look a certain way.

If I came in with long shaggy hair, right, or maybe a Mohawk

with long shaggy hair, and I am, and I am just, you know, wearing

anything and everything, nobody's going to look at me and

say, I bet you that guy's a Christian, right?

I want people to look at me and I want them to think that when

they see me, right? And it's different guys, you

know, guys dress, you know, I mean, listen, for the most part,

men are not running around in skirts yet, all right?

It's not going to be long. Mark my words.

It's not going to be long. It's not societally accepted

yet. But it will be the same way that

society has accepted women wearing pants when it

traditionally belonged to men, right?

But I want somebody to look at me and say, I bet you that's a

Christian. My wife wants somebody to look

at her and say, I bet you that's a Christian, right?

Now you speak without saying a word to somebody.

So when you come up, all right, listen, you see somebody tell me

who I'm talking about. Black pants and shoes, white

shirt, black tie. You didn't even have to think

about it because they represent the Mormons well, right?

The the girls do the same thing. They represent the Mormon shirts

well, but you don't even have to think about who they are.

That's a Mormon, or in some cases that's a Jehovah's

Witness, right? That's what everybody thinks

when they see people who are dressed up.

It's sad that nobody thinks. I bet you that's a Baptist,

young lady, right? Or I bet you that guy's a

Baptist. Nobody thinks that anymore.

They used to. They used to.

We've moved away from it, but all I'm saying is your

appearance does matter and God looks on the heart.

Yes, and the heart is the most important, but you are judged by

what you look like on the outside before somebody gets to

know you. Turn over to Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

I I want to reveal Christ in me the hope of glory, but before I

ever get a chance to do that with my words, I have to be

conscious that I can either help or hinder that based on what

others see when they look at me. And I believe that addressing

the Christians appearance is needed now more than ever in our

country. It's very evident that in

America we have a declining Christianity paired with a

growing paganism. And the Bible says in Mark

Mark 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 and verse #15 And they come to Jesus and see him that

was possessed with the devil and had the legion sitting and

clothed and in his right mind, what happened when this guy was

walking through the tombs, cutting himself?

Did I give you the wrong passage?

I don't know. I have Mark 115.

Somebody can find it. Was it Mark 515?

Mark chapter 5 and verse 15? I'm sorry about that.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

I'll read it again if it's the same.

And they had come to and they come to Jesus and see him that

was possessed with the devil and had the legion sitting and

clothed. And in his right mind, this is

the story of the the maniac of Gedera.

He's walking through the tombs, cutting himself.

But the amazing thing to me about it, the Bible says that he

was naked. He was running through the tombs

naked. And what is one of the first

things he did after he got saved?

He put his clothes back on, right?

He covered himself up. What's one of the first things

that Adam and Eve did after they realized that they were sinners?

They covered themselves up. They realized that they were

naked, right? And so when a person

individually or a society corporately is operating under

the influence of the devil or the effect of or the effect of

Christ, it's evident in their appearance, right?

I don't understand how a Christian could go down to the

beach and take all their clothes off and think that God's going

to be pleased with that, right? I think inherently, I think

inherently, you know, as a Christian, that is not right to

do that, right? And why is it that you have to

get all the way down to the beach before you take your

clothes off, right? I say this often, you know,

it's, it's accepted for you to go down and be practically naked

on the beach. But if I walked into somebody's

bedroom and they were dressed the same way, they would scream

and call the police and call me a pervert and everything else,

right? Because it's not normal, just

because it's accepted does not mean that it's normal.

And just because society says it's OK to go to the beach and

take all your clothes off does not mean that it's OK to go to

the beach and take all your clothes off.

It's the devil's influence, and it's a lack of influence of

people who know Christ as their savior.

And what do we find in America today?

A lot of that exact same thing. Undeniably, we are growing

weaker as a society when it comes to a sense of modesty,

right? It used to be that women would

very rarely never go out of the house in something that was

revealing, or if they did, you know what part of society they

belong to. Right now, they wear yoga pants

that leaves very little to the imagination.

And everybody's OK with it because everybody does it.

And even Christian ladies run around in these yoga pants with

every outline of their body visible for everybody to see.

Those are not things for the world to see.

Those are things that were designed for your husband.

And that's it. You shouldn't even be running

around in those things in the home.

Your kids don't need to see those things either.

And so these activists that are that are increasingly advocating

for the right for women to run around topless and everything

else. And it's going to happen.

It's going to happen if God, if God does not intervene and send

a revival or if God doesn't come back first.

It's going to be OK in society. It's not yet, but it's getting

closer and you're seeing it. It's all, it's all starting with

your Hollywood people and your, you know, your award shows and

all of these other things. They're getting more and more

naked with all of those things. And it's not going to be long

before they have no shame doing it period in society and Walmart

and everywhere else. I don't know what we're going to

do when we get to that point. But the way Christianity is

following the world, it's not going to be long before

Christians are doing the same thing, right?

And you think, oh, no, that'll never happen.

It's happening, it's happening. Local governments, these pride

parades where everybody goes out there and the whole crowd's full

of people are literally completely naked and they look

the other way because, well, this is just their expression of

who they are. That's it's OK for them to do

that, right? That's what society is doing.

That's where society is going. And obviously they could go on

and on. But I want you to see this turn

over to Ezekiel chapter 22. What we see is the cultural

Ezekiel 22 · chapter mention

captivity of American Christianity.

That's what we're seeing. Contemporary Christianity to

contemporary American Christianity, which is by far

the largest faction of Christianity, has been built to

be like the world. And so it is.

They might be a few steps behind where the world is at, but they

are following the world straight to hell.

And the Bible says in Ezekiel chapter 22 and verse #26 her

Ezekiel 22 · chapter mention

priests have violated my law and have profaned my unholy things.

They have put no difference between the holy and profane.

Neither have they showed difference between the unclean

and the clean. If that does not sound exactly

like where we're at in America, well, you look at what goes on

in most of these large. Contemporary Christian churches

and you can't tell the difference between the clean and

the unclean. Listen, that's why we have

standards in music, right? Unless you pay very close

attention and try to hear the word Jesus, or try to hear the

word faithful or some of these other Christian terms that we

throw around, you can't tell the difference between the holy and

the profane. You can't tell the difference

between the clean and the unclean.

And when we follow the world in the way that we dress, because

this is the is what the world is saying is acceptable.

And when we follow modern contemporary Christianity into

what they say is acceptable as they follow the world, then we

are There is no separation between what's holy and what's

what's profane and between what's clean and what's unclean.

There ought to be something different about us.

If there's nothing different about us, then what are we

offering? A lost and dying world?

Why would they want what we have if we are just the, the, the

awkward backward, you know, brother, that's, you know,

younger brother. Why, why would, why would they

want that? Right?

You're weird to them because you're 2 steps behind where they

are. They don't want what you have

unless you're very different. And the Bible says they're

peculiar does not mean that you have to be weird.

It means that you should be different.

We ought to be offering the world something different in the

way that we look, in the way that we talk, in the way that

our music sounds, in the way that we do church, in the way

that we do everything. There ought to be something

different about us. And as American contemporary

Christianity gets closer and closer to the world, and as we

get closer to the time of Jesus Christ coming back, there ought

to be an even more marked difference between us that is

not Christianity. And just because they call it

Christianity does not mean that we have to keep following them

in that direction. Oh, you guys are still.

You're still back in the 1950s. You're still in the old blah,

blah, blah. I'll take it.

You know what? You're the one that's changing,

not me. God didn't change, the Bible

didn't change. The world changed, and

Christianity changed to follow the world.

I don't need to be like you to feel accepted.

I have one person that I'm looking for, for his acceptance,

and if he's not pleased, then I'm not pleased.

If he is, then I am, and that's all that should matter to us.

But something's changed in the last 30-40, fifty years, because

we certainly don't dress modestly like we used to.

And believe it or not, it wasn't the Bible that changed.

And I think what's happening as a result is that the American

church looks more and more like the world, all with barely a

blush that anything is amiss. And it's sad that we've gotten

to that point, but it falls on us then to change back into the

conformity with the word of God. I don't care if I'm conformed to

the world. I don't care if I'm conformed to

American Christianity. I want to be conformed to the

word of God. That is my standard.

That's my standard. So there's been a turn over to

Proverbs chapter 4. This is I think where things

Proverbs 4 · chapter mention

have gotten off a little bit in the last 30-40, fifty years

because there's been an incorrect, or maybe I should say

an over emphasis on dress standards and past generations

in some churches and some Bible colleges and schools.

And what's happened then is there's been an overcorrection,

if you will, and many of the younger people that grew up

often in the independent Baptist movement and the Bible says in

Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 23, Solomon told us, keep thy heart

Proverbs 4 · chapter mention

with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life and God.

As we, as we read through Matthew chapter 567, the

Beatitudes and, and all of the Sermon on the Mount, the whole

emphasis that that Jesus was emphasizing was the heart.

And the heart matters first, foremost and always, but not

necessarily how long your skirt is.

But God tells us that and God does tell us that some things

are weightier than others, right?

How you, how you share the gospel, if it's a genuine gospel

presentation or just a shallow quick prayerism is different

than if your skirt is long enough or not, right?

There are some things that are weightier than others, and when

colleges and ministries made conformity to outward appearance

equivalent to good Christianity, they were wrong.

But what that did was it produced an overreaction the

other way that says that appearance does not matter at

all. And all the sudden people are

getting grace and they're finding out that there's grace

with Christ and I can do whatever I want to because all

of it is covered under grace. That's a ditch on the other side

of the road, but both of them are ditches, right?

We need to bring it the car to the middle of the road, if you

will. The solution to an incorrect or

wrong emphasis is not no emphasis.

We still need to teach what the Bible says about our appearance,

even if somebody else previously or presently in some cases, miss

applies and misuses it. Turn over to second Timothy

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

chapter 4. I'll tell you this, most pastors

in most churches are afraid to discuss this idea.

Anytime pastors are afraid to touch an issue, there's a

problem. And I'll be the first to say

that this is not an easy thing for me to do.

Most people don't want to hear this today.

So the natural thing is to attack the messenger.

And I don't particularly care to put myself in that position.

But pastors, the Bible says in Second Timothy chapter 4 verse

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

#2 are called to preach the Word, be instant in season, out

of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering

and doctrine. I've told you this many times

before, I'm going to answer to the Lord for what I preach and

I'm going to answer to the Lord for what I don't preach.

I'm going to answer to him from my silence.

And as the statement goes, silence, silence is golden, but

sometimes it's just yellow. And that's what that's that's

what's happened in a lot of places.

Well, I just, I can't touch that issue because people are not

going to like it and I'm not preaching it or teaching it.

And that's really what I'm doing tonight is teaching this.

I'm not teaching it because I'm trying to make you mad or trying

to make you upset or anything like that.

But I have to be willing to lose friends no matter what.

It doesn't, it doesn't mean it just has to be standards.

I have to be willing to lose friends.

I have to be willing to lose even people in this church.

And I would, I, I hate the thought of that, but I have to

be willing to do that if I'm going to preach what God wants

me to preach and if I'm going to teach the things that God wants

me to teach. And so before we get into the

details of what a conviction and what a standard is, and that's

kind of your base. That's, that's, that's what you

determine where you draw those lines, how we apply those

things. I, I, I want to just conclude by

saying a couple things. Number one, this, this subject

needs to be studied. It needs to be taught, it needs

to be discussed, it needs to be applied.

And maybe this is the first time that you ever heard or this idea

of dress standards, or maybe you've heard that concept, but

you've never heard an explanation of why it's

necessary to follow modesty in this way.

It's not the end all be all of Christianity, but it's an

important issue that needs to be studied.

And I believe that that we as a church, we've, we have, we have

set this as our standard. And I believe that if you're

going to follow that standard in order to be able to serve in the

ministries, you need to understand why we have the

standard that we have. And so as the Lord sees my

heart, my desire is just simply to edify and simply to teach and

simply to help you understand why we do these things.

Our, our goal ought to be to love the Lord supremely with all

of our hearts and, and, and then to embrace the importance of

making that visible in our appearance.

If you love the Lord with all your heart, number one, you're

going to have a desire for the appearance to match what your

heart is. But #2 you're going to want to

be as close to, to, to what a Christian should do and, and be

and the way a Christian should dress as you possibly can.

And so I want you to listen as we go through this to what the

Bible has to say before you draw your automatic conclusions.

It's the next step in in getting closer to the holiness of God,

closer and as close as we can get to his word, as we possibly

can get. And I believe I know your

hearts, you would say that you want to be as close to God as

you possibly can be. So I'm not saying that this is

when you finally get this idea of dress standards down, that

you finally arrived at what a good Christian really ought to

be. But my whole point is our goal

ought to be as close to Christ and as close to his Word as we

possibly can be. And when you find out that maybe

there's some things that I can do that maybe some things that I

can change to get a little bit closer to him, I think that your

desire ought to be to do that. So let me jump into this

tonight. I'm just going to touch two

quick things tonight. And then I'm going to talk in a

little bit more deep detail about this next week, about what

what the, what the applied convictions and what the applied

standards are. But I need to, I need to take a

step back and talk to you about what a conviction is, because a

conviction is how we arrive at anything that we do, what we

wear, what we listen to, how we speak, right?

You have convictions against cursing, most of you, right?

You don't curse because you believe that it's wrong to

curse, right? Those are just words that

somebody made-up, right? But you have a, you have a

conviction against saying those words, right?

Why? Why don't you curse?

You have a conviction against drinking alcohol, right?

You don't drink because you know it's wrong.

But why? Why do you?

How did you arrive at that conviction?

And then what's your standard? There are some people who say,

well, a little bit of wine is OK or a little bit of beer here and

there is OK as long as I'm not getting drunk.

But that means you may or may not have a conviction.

But no matter what, you've set your standard very, very low

when it in relation to that conviction.

So I want you to understand tonight what what a conviction

and what a standard is and how we get to that that spot.

So let me give you just a quick definition of what a conviction

is. Very Simply put, it is something

that I am convinced about. That's what a conviction is.

The dictionary defines the word conviction as quote, a strong

persuasion or belief, the state of being convinced.

So conviction applies to something that is firmly and a

seriously held belief. When we're Speaking of the

things that we're convinced about, we're speaking in the

context of our doctrines and our practice.

But what becomes important then is how you arrive at the things

that you become convinced about, right?

A conviction. That's the line that we've

drawn. And that's honestly how some

people have come to different conclusions about convictions

and ultimately standards that arise from those convictions.

There are a few right ways and there are a few wrong ways to

arrive at those convictions. And I'll say this, first of all,

you're a pastor ought to be respected, but you should not

let your pastor form your convictions.

Now, my job as your pastor is to help lead you toward those

convictions and help lead you toward the word of God.

But if your conviction is only, this is what my pastor says we

do, then you don't have a conviction.

Your pastor has a conviction that you follow.

You need to have your own convictions because there may be

a day when I'm no longer the pastor of this church.

God could move me somewhere else.

God could Take Me Home. I don't, I don't know.

But if there's ever a day when I'm not the pastor of this

church, if those convictions were not yours, then the moment

I'm gone, all of those things go away, right?

You ought to have a conviction against contemporary Christian

music. That whether I'm here to enforce

the standard that we have with contemporary Christian music or

not, this church ought to go forward singing the old hymns,

singing about things that are pleasing to the Lord, not

contemporary Christian music, Not because I said it or that

was the standard that that pastor had.

He's gone. Now we've got a new pastor in

here. You ought to do it based on

conviction because you are convinced that contemporary

Christian music is against the word of God.

That's that's why you hold those standards.

That's why you have that conviction and you ought to have

your own convictions. Now, I hope you'll listen to the

things that I have to say about it.

I hope you'll follow me as I follow Christ.

And I hope that that you'll be convinced of the same things

that I am convinced of from God's Word.

But my point is, is if all you're doing when it comes to

your convictions is listening to what I say you should do and

listening to the what I say you have to do in order to serve in

one of these ministries, then you don't have a conviction.

And you're going to flop and, and, and flail around the second

you're no longer in this church or I'm not here.

And you need to have convictions for yourself.

If the reason you have that conviction is because your

pastor told you to have it, then you've arrived at your

conclusion for the wrong reason. And you don't have, you don't

have convictions. You need to be in the Word of

God. You need to be following up with

what's taught from the Word of God to make sure that you're not

just convinced by my words, but that you're convinced by the

Holy Spirit. And that's what I've said from

the beginning and probably will say many, many more times that

it's, it's, it's not my job to convince you and to try to teach

you, convince you of what I'm, what I'm trying to teach you

here. It's my job to present what I

see in the Bible as leading us toward more Christ likeness,

toward more allowing the Holy Spirit to do the work in our

lives. That's my job is to lead you to

those things. But the Holy Spirit has to be

the one that convicts you, because if the Holy Spirit

convicts you, it's very different then somebody

convinced, you know, convincing you of an argument.

Somebody, if I can convince you to change because of what I said

and it has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, then somebody

else can come along behind me and convince you of something

else. If the Holy Spirit does the

convincing and the Holy Spirit does that convicting, then it

doesn't matter who's here in this spot.

You're going to do what's right because the Holy Spirit gave you

that conviction. So just because the world

changes the standard does not mean that my convictions change

to match that standard. A conviction is something that

does not change. That's a hard and fast line that

you come to from God's Word. Society has changed dramatically

in the last 50 years, maybe a little bit longer, maybe 75.

I don't think that people who are alive 100 years ago would

recognize this country if they came back.

It's so different and it's changed dramatically, even even

over the last 10 or 15 years. And yet the Bible has not

changed. In 2000 years.

We have the same Word of God, the word of God that they had

100 years ago and 200 years ago and 500 years ago.

We still have today. Nothing has changed in God's

Word. So why are we moving away from

it? Why is society changing?

Why is Christianity changing? It's not God's word that

changed. It's us.

We're the ones that have changed.

Just because the world says something is acceptable now that

50 years ago was not acceptable does not give us the license to

change our convictions. A conviction is something that

does not change no matter who says it or no matter what the

world, what the world says. By the by the very nature of

what a conviction was, if it changes, it wasn't a conviction,

right? A conviction is a hard and fast

line that does not move. And if my conviction is based on

what the Bible says, and it doesn't matter what society says

is acceptable, it doesn't matter what my thoughts are or anything

else, my convictions and therefore my standards are not

going to change. I mentioned this a little bit

ago. You would probably, First off,

think I was joking, but secondly, probably be appalled

if I came in here dressed in a dress with makeup on and high

heels and prancing around the stage, right?

You would think it was a joke. And when you realize that I

wasn't joking, you would probably have a cow, right?

And, and, and most of you would probably get up and leave

because society has not said that a man prancing around in a

dress is acceptable yet, right? But 50 or 100 years ago, there

were things that were not acceptable that are acceptable

now that all the sudden the goal posts moved and now we've

changed it and now it's OK for a woman to put on a skin type pair

of jeans when that wasn't acceptable 50 years ago because

society said it wasn't acceptable, right?

All the sudden the goal posts moved.

Did the word of God change in those last 50 years?

Did your conviction change in the last 50 years?

Wasn't a conviction if it did, or have we moved closer and

closer and closer to the world because that's what they're

saying is acceptable? I think that's the case.

So it becomes ultimately important that we read the

Bible. We can't just use ignorance as

an excuse for a lack of conviction, right?

If a police officer pulls you over and he says any, any

particular reason why you ran through that stop sign back

there and you say, oh, I didn't realize that a stop sign meant

that you had to stop. Nobody's ever told me that

before. Well, you know what he's going

to say? Well, sorry, that's the rule of

the road. That's an easy ticket, right?

Because it's a rule. Just because you don't know that

the rule exists does not mean that you get a pass.

The police officer's not going to say, OK, well, I'll give you

a pass this time. But when you see a red, a big

red Octagon sign that says stop on it, you have to come to a

stop. All right, I'll give you a pass

this time. No, ignorance is not an excuse.

So when you say, well, I didn't realize that I shouldn't be

doing that or I didn't know that I shouldn't be doing that.

God, sorry, I just didn't know. He's going to say, I gave you

everything that you needed to know about how to live the way

that is the most pleasing to me. Just because you ignored it or

just because you didn't know it was there, because you never

read it, does not mean that you get a pass.

And so when it comes to our convictions and all of those

things, it's absolutely necessary to study the word of

God so we can arrive at the right principles, so we can

arrive at the right doctrine, so we can arrive at the right

convictions and therefore have the right standard.

So it becomes important to be in a church that holds to the word

of God regardless of political influence, regardless of

political correctness or influence by culture or, you

know, whatever they're trying to set as the standard today.

The convictions that we arrive at based on the word of God are

extremely important because that's how we arrive at our

standards. Now, let me tell you what a

standard is, and we'll be done. Turn over to Proverbs chapter 4.

Proverbs 4 · chapter mention

In the typical dictionary, there's as many as 10

definitions on what a standard is.

But in the context of what we're talking about here, I think the

most appropriate one, the most appropriate definition that we

find in the dictionary is something set up and established

by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight,

extent, value, or quality. A pound has to stay within

certain boundaries, right? A pound has to be 16 ounces or

it's not a pound. If it's 17 oz, it's not a pound

anymore. It's a pound in an ounce, right?

Or maybe there's another unit for it, right?

There's, there's 12 inches and a foot.

If it's thirteen, it's not a foot, it's bigger, right?

They don't make some rulers that have 12 inches and some that are

12 and 1/4 and some that are 12 1/2 and some that are 11 3/4 and

just as long as you get close to that.

No, there's a standard, right? That's what a standard is.

It's a hard and fast measure, if you will, A guideline that's

going to help me judge or determine whether or not

something is acceptable. All right, If I'm trying to get

something that's exactly 1 foot long, I'm going to get a

yardstick. I mean a ruler.

And if I lay that ruler down next to that thing, if it's

longer than that, it's not a foot.

If it's shorter than that, it's not a foot.

Only when it matches up exactly to that standard is it a foot,

because a ruler is a standard measurement, right?

So in this context, then, here is what I would give you as a

definition of standards. They're rules that I institute

in my life that help me abide by my convictions.

And if you think about it like this, your conviction is a line

that you're not going to cross, right?

If I were to cross this line, I am convinced that I would be

sinning, right? I'm convinced that I would be

sinning if I crossed this line. So I don't think anybody that's

in here would disagree that the Bible says that women in

particular is who it's addressed to should dress modestly, right?

Modesty is that conviction. A woman ought to be modest.

So how do I define what modesty is?

There's people who define modesty in different ways,

right? Some would say that you have to

wear a skirt that goes down below your knee to be modest.

Some would say that as long as your pair of pants that you're

wearing is a little bit loose, then it's modest.

Right. So what's modest?

How do you define that? Well, we have that conviction.

Women are to be modest. Women are to dress modestly.

So I set my standard far enough back from that conviction so

that I don't break that conviction.

Right. OK.

The Bible tells men that they should have short hair, right?

If a man have long hair, does not nature itself teach you?

The Bible says that if a man have long hair, it's a shame

unto him, right? So my conviction is that a man's

hair should be short. What is short, right?

What's short? I mean, my hair is short, right?

But so is Brother Paul's, right? I can go shorter.

Yeah, he can go shorter, right? Is it long?

Only if it's down to the middle of your back or if it's resting

on your shoulders. What's long?

Right? Where is that?

Where is that? Where do where do I cross that

line? And that I break that conviction

and it becomes a sin. You know what I do?

I set a standard to keep me from crossing that conviction.

So the standard is for men, especially in our church, we

have the standard that your hair should be off your ears and off

your collar. If your hair creeps down a

little bit farther and it's a little bit lower than your ears,

or if it's sitting on your collar just a little bit, are

you in sin? Well, I don't know.

It depends on what long is, right?

That's the conviction. So I set a standard, and the

higher I set my standard, the farther away I get from that

line. So that even if I were to give a

little bit on that, I'm not going to cross that conviction

and be in what I would consider to be sin, because I've set that

conviction line based on the word of God, right?

So I have my standard here. And if I'm talking about my

line, I don't put my standards right on the line of conviction

because then to break that standard just a little bit would

be to fall below that conviction line.

And then I believe that I'd be in sin.

So I set my standard higher than my conviction so that I have a

little bit of room to play with in there, right?

And if somebody has hair that's a little bit longer than mine,

I'm not going to go up to them and say you're in sin, cut your

hair, right? My standard is high when it

comes to the way that I cut my hair, right?

I want to be as far away from that line as possible.

That doesn't mean I need to go shave my head and be bald in

order to not have long hair, right?

But I do have standards that I've set so that I don't cross

the thing that I'm convinced that if a man has long hair,

it's a shame unto him, right? So standards are what I set to

help me keep from breaking my convictions.

Think about it this way for just a minute.

Let's say that I believe with with all my heart that high

fructose corn syrup is bad for you, right?

It's bad for your body. If you believe that, if you're

convinced of that, we could label that as a conviction,

right? High fructose corn syrup is bad

for you. That's my conviction.

So it would make sense then that I would institute in a rule in

my life that I'm not going to drink Coke or Doctor Pepper or

Mountain Dew or any of those other thousand carbonated

beverages that have high fructose corn syrup in them,

because my conviction is that that stuff is bad for you.

So the standard is that I'm not going to drink any of that pop

soda, whatever you want to call it.

I grew up in the Midwest. I call it pop, but most people

don't have any idea what that is.

By the way, if you go into a store, if you go into a

restaurant, the menu says pop on it.

By the way, it doesn't say soda or coke or whatever you want to

call it. But that's, if that's my

conviction, then I'm going to set a standard that I'm not

going to drink any of that because I don't want to.

I don't want to break that conviction.

Think about it like this, all right?

I've climbed the Grand Canyon, I've been to Pikes Peak, I've

climbed Pikes Peak a couple different times.

I've been to Niagara Falls a couple times.

I've seen some of these really, really dangerous places, right?

Do you know what they have everywhere?

Fences that keep you from walking over the edge of that

Canyon, right? So why did they set a fence?

Why does it matter? You should be able to get all

the way to the edge of that thing, and you should be able to

dangle your feet over the edge if that's what you want to do,

right? Well, they are setting the

conviction for you, right? So what they're doing is they

are here's the line. OK, This is the Canyon.

This whole center thing is the Canyon.

Do they put the fence right on the line?

Because you know what stupid tourists do all the time?

I got to get the best shot possible.

Look at me right. And they have to get that

selfie. No, they set the fence back away

from the edge of that Canyon because they know that people

are going to be stupid and they know that they're going to step

over that boundary and they're protecting you from yourself,

right? And that's exactly what we're

doing here. This, this is the conviction to

step over. This would be spiritual death,

right? I'm stepping into sin if I step

over that conviction line. But I would be really foolish if

I put my fence right on the edge of that line so that if I just

stepped over a little bit to try to get a better view or

something, I'm going right over the edge, right?

I want to be as far away from that edge as I possibly can be.

Now, I could also, you know, if the Grand Canyon's in Arizona, I

could put my fence in Indiana, and that'd be kind of dumb,

right? Which is where you get your

Amish and all of those kind of things, right?

I mean, those are standards that they've said they've just set

the standard so far back that it doesn't even make any sense to

have them set where they are, right?

But I'm going to set my standard far enough away from that

conviction line that if I were to cross that line even just a

little bit, I'm OK, right? And here's what you have, OK?

I said every church has a standard, right?

With everything, some churches take their music all the way up

to that edge. Now most of them are in the

Canyon and they're in. The reason that sounds like it

does is because the drums and everything else are bouncing

down the Canyon. That's why it sounds like that,

right? But at the same time, there are

some music that we wouldn't do in our church.

But I wouldn't necessarily say that it was wrong if somebody

else was doing that. That's just closer to the edge

than I want to be because I don't want to cross that

conviction line. I don't know exactly where that

is. I don't know exactly where you

crossed the line. And now that music is wrong.

But I'm going to set my standard way back here just to make sure

that I'm safe. Because the last thing that I

want to do is cross over that line and sin and do something

that's displeasing to the Lord. Do something that's not holy, do

something that's not Christ like, because I wanted to get as

close to that line as I possibly could.

So I set my, I set my, my convictions.

These are all based directly on the word of God.

And then based on what I read in God's word, I set my standards

farther back away from the edge of that thing just to make sure

that I'm not getting anywhere close to that edge.

And that's what I'm saying. Every church has their standard.

Some have their music standards right here.

Some have them here, some have them here.

We set ours a little bit higher. I'm we're back here doesn't make

us better. It just makes it more safe.

And that's exactly what we're talking about when it comes to

dress standards too, right? Some people put their dress

standards right in that line. You step over that, now you're

in sin because it's immodest. Now you're in sin because you've

crossed that biblical line of modesty.

I don't know where exactly that line is, but I set a standard

because I want to make sure that I don't cross that line.

I want as a man and, and, and I want from my wife and for my

daughter and for the ladies in this church to be modest.

I don't want you to cross that line and end up in a place where

you're disappointing your Lord, where you are, where you are

crossing that line from holy to profane, where you're crossing

that line from clean to unclean. So do we have some room to give?

Probably we do, right? I don't want to get into the

weird territory where I'm setting it on the other side of

the building just for the sake of setting a standard so high

that it's impossible to reach right.

But I want to set, I want to set my standard far enough back from

that edge that I don't want to cross that modesty line because

that's my conviction. And to cross that line of

modesty would be a sin against God because it's in His Word.

And that's why I set that line where I did.

So are our standards higher than a lot of other churches?

Yes, they are. It's not set higher than other

churches so that we can say, look at us, look what we're

doing. It's set higher than other

churches because they've decided that that's where they're going

to set their standard line. And they're allowed to do that

because they're their own individual church.

But for us, I want to be as far away from that line as I can be

while also being in a in a realm where I can actually talk and

work with people, right. I mean, most people don't give

the Amish the time of the day because they're their own little

entity way over here somewhere. And by the way, they're, they're

totally different because they're depending completely on

their works and everything else for their salvation.

But I'm just saying, if we took a, if we took a standard of the

Amish when it comes to our dress, we have to wear a bonnet.

And you can only wear black and you can only do this and you can

only do that. And, and I'm saying that you can

get to the point where you are regulating the Holy Spirit right

out of everything, right? And then you're no different

than the Pharisees and the Sadducees and everybody else in

the Old Testament where they were doing it just for the sake

of being able to say, look what we're doing, right?

That's not why we do it. We do it because there's the

conviction line. I'm setting my standards back

here because I don't want to cross that.

I don't want to be immodest. I don't want to be displeasing

to the Lord. Proverbs chapter 4 and verse #14

Proverbs 4 · chapter mention

enter not into the path of the wicked and go not in the way of

evil men. Avoid it.

Pass not by it, turn from it and pass away.

Now let me bring up one point. As we close tonight, we have our

conviction line, right? This line is a conviction that

is based on God's Word. This is God's line, right?

This fence back here is a man made fence, right?

Those are those are fences that we put there as a way to keep

ourselves from crossing over that.

But I'll tell you this, if you never go over the fence, then

you certainly can't go over the edge of the Cliff.

And I want that line to be as far back as it can possibly be

so that I'm pleasing to the Lord in every aspect.

And and I'm bringing very general tonight because I'm

trying to explain to you what a conviction is and a standard is.

I'm going to get a little bit in more detail when I'm talking

about our dress standards next week.

And there's a lot more to this. There's a lot of principles that

we find in God's word and I and if you're, if you're interested

in, I would be, I mean, I think it would be very helpful for you

to go and watch some more of that series that I did before.

I'm I'm only kind of touching the surface with a lot of these

things. But all of that to say that

there are times when the deceitfulness of sin is so

strong that we've got to set that fence farther back because

it's deceptive and it and it and it looks maybe not so dangerous,

but it's very dangerous. And it looks like maybe we could

get a little bit closer to that. It would be fine.

But then somebody steps over that line and they disappear

down that precipice. Set that standard far enough

back from the edge and make a make a decision not to step over

that line. And there's no way that you can

fall down into that Canyon. That's that's my whole point

when it comes to this thing. So the next week I'm going to

discuss 2 aspects of dress that help us define our standards.

And ultimately it's the reason why we have the standards that

we have in our church. I'll just give you those two

principles that we're going to talk about next week.

It's modesty and distinction. Those are the two principles

that we find in God's word that help us to define where we put

our standard. You've got the conviction.

We know that women should be modest.

We know that even men should be modest.

And there's, by the way, there's, there's principles for

men too when it comes to the way that we dress, right?

These skinny jeans and these tiny little shorts that

everybody's wearing. And you know, those are not,

those are not that's, that's not modest.

Doesn't matter. I mean, oh, men can be mod.

Men can't be modest. Men can't be immodest.

That's only for the women. No, men can be immodest.

And we ought to be modest too, right now, where we draw that

line, where we draw that line is what our standard is.

How do you arrive at that standard?

That's what we're going to talk about next week when it comes to

dress. The two principles that we

follow when it comes to where that standard is, is modesty and

distinction, and we'll talk about that next week.

All right, let's pray. Father, again, we thank you so

much for your goodness to us. We thank you for an opportunity

that we've had to to discuss some of these things tonight

from your word. I pray that it's been a help.

I pray that that that nobody's confused.