1 Timothy 2:8-10 "God's Design For God's People

Church, I have a question I want to ask you, and think about this for a moment.

If you were to map out, if you were responsible for mapping out the best way to fulfill the Great Commission, what would be your strategy?

Someone came to you or God came to you and said, okay, you've got to figure out how do we do this Great Commission thing?

How do we get the gospel to all nations, to all people?

Come up with a strategy for that.

What would you come up with?

You know, we got to get everyone to take a discipleship, an evangelism class, get everyone to wear a WWJD bracelet, get everyone to read the same translation of the Bible.

Like what method would you come up with to see the gospel taken to every nation?

And taken in a way that's compelling, that is commending to Christ, and points others to Christ.

The Holy Spirit, through Paul's letter, gives the church this method.

And it's rather different than we might think it would be.

The method we're given in the text is unity and modesty.

And Lord willing, in a couple weeks, we'll deal with verses 11 through 15 with talk about women's role in the church.

But here in verses 8 through 10, the small little chunk of 1 Timothy chapter 2, we're given this idea of how the gospel is then going to be promoted in the church and then be compelling to the nations.

1 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

This is God's design for his people.

That's the sermon today.

God's design for God's people.

And the main idea is this that God's plan for reaching the nations is men who seek unity and women who seek modesty.

Men who seek unity and women who seek modesty.

This is the passage.

First Timothy chapter 2, beginning in verse 8.

1 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works.

We're just kind of halfway into chapter two, and Paul in this letter to Timothy is just kind of pulling out all the punches.

False teachers, kicking people out of the church.

He then gets into praying for leaders and praying for government officials and people over us in authority.

Then he's telling people how to pray and now men how to behave and women how to behave and people's roles in the church.

You know, one of the blessings of being a church that values expositional preaching is we're going to take a book of the Bible, we're going to preach through it, is you can't avoid these kinds of texts.

You know, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, this wasn't really a thorny text, how men should pray, and women seeking to be modest.

But anytime in today's culture you bring up modesty or how what are people's roles in the church, and it just becomes quickly, people have opinions, people have thoughts, people have experiences.

So it's difficult.

So we want to approach the text, one with humility, saying, okay, this is God's word, it's supreme, it trumps me and you.

We're to follow and submit to this.

So how do we rightfully understand it?

How do we apply this to our lives?

The first call is for men.

Seek unity.

I desire then at every then every place, verse 8, that men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or quarreling.

Now, this instruction for men how they're to pray does not mean that women are exempt from praying.

We know that, right?

Paul's not saying, Well, men, you pray, women don't worry about those things.

But he's giving specific instruction to the men on how they are to conduct themselves and how they're to pray.

We're given a model here, as something to follow.

Men first are to lead.

They should lead the efforts and praying in their families and their homes and their communities and the church.

Men are to lead in this way through prayer.

With holy hands.

We know that in verse 1 of chapter 2, Paul's already talking about prayer.

He talks about praying for our leaders and those in authority over us, so that the gospel will be promoted and go forth to the nations, so that those who are lost will be found.

So we pray.

Likewise, to continue in that effort, men are to pray.

It's interesting.

We live in a day and age where many people in positions of authority or power, civil leaders, social leaders.

There's so much confusion, not even around gender roles, around gender.

I don't need to tell you guys anything you don't know.

We live in a society that they're just accepting the confusion and the ebb and flow of gender.

And you just think, man, how did we get here as a culture?

How is it, not that we were differing over the roles of men and women, we're differing over what is a woman, what is a man.

Well, we get here by stop, when we stop believing the Bible.

When we stopped believing the Bible was authoritative and it was God's word, and we stopped submitting to it and obeying it.

So it's super helpful that Timothy, Paul's letter to Timothy, is helping us understand God's design for men and women.

And I just want to press, and I say this a lot, but if if we believe God's word, we believe that he wrote his word for us, and God did create us, wouldn't God know the best way for us to live?

Wouldn't he know the best way for us to interact and to do life together?

We want to acknowledge God as creator, and then we want to kind of take all the authority from him and give it to ourselves to live and do as we see fit.

God has designed for men and women to serve him and unique capacities and unique abilities.

Men are to lead.

I said this a few weeks ago when we were working through this other passage on prayer in chapter, the first part of chapter two.

That prayer reveals where we're at spiritually.

It's just a revealer.

If you take account of your prayer life, it's a kind of a thermometer, a gauge, if you will.

You can say all kinds of nice things in your prayers.

And those things could be true.

You can spend a long time praying or a short time praying.

You can use big words or small words.

And I would argue that all those things are important and they're good, they're helpful.

But what really matters is are we earnest in our prayers?

Pray long prayers, pray short prayers, pray as you travel, when you're in a car, pray when you're at your home, pray on your knees, pray as you're walking.

Do all those things and do those earnestly, with intent and with purpose.

See, Paul is laying out, he's getting ready to go into a passage about women's role in the church.

He's gonna go in and talk about eldering and what it means to be an elder and a deacon and other church matters.

But he's setting the church up to say, listen, we we want to talk about all these things and we want to figure all those things out, and we should do those things, but we need to be a praying people.

If we have right doctrine and we have right understanding and we know what to say and make a good confession, but we're not communing with the Lord, we're not praying with him, we're not seeking him in prayer.

What good is all the right understanding, but yet having a wrong relationship with God?

See, we look at a text like this and we think, man, this is about men and how they're supposed to pray, and women and how they're supposed to dress.

Although those things are true, that stuff is down here.

What this is really about is our relating to God.

How do we obey Him?

How do we follow Him?

What's our affection toward Him?

All those things are fleshed out just in how we go about our life.

In prayer reveals these things.

Do we desire to pray?

Are we genuine?

Do we even pray when we don't feel like it?

Sometimes there's this idea in our Christian faith that we can just do the spiritual disciplines when we feel like it.

And if we don't feel like it, then we probably shouldn't do it because our heart's not in it.

And that's a lie.

I just want to tell you right up, that's just not true.

You are a human, your emotions are gonna ebb and flow.

If you only love your spouse when you feel like it, you only show up to work when you feel like it, you only do the things you know you're supposed to do when you feel like it, you're gonna live a very empty, shallow, very disappointing life.

It's not how this thing works.

But we do strive to pray with earnestness and passion.

So we seek the Lord.

Men are to pray, lifting up holy hands.

And we know there's lots of different postures of prayer in the Bible.

We there's a posture of humility with our heads bowed and kind of face to the ground.

We see, and Ezra, that there's a posture of kind of looking to the sky, looking up at the Lord.

We see David at times kneeling.

There's these different postures that we're to, we can take.

And the goal of that is simply we want, sometimes it's helpful, I should say, for our bodies to be postured in a way that our heart should be postured.

Humility, openness, receiving from the Lord.

There's an element of holy hands that we're not practicing sin.

We're not indulging in sin.

I mean, how delightful it is to pray when you have been repentant of your sin and there's nothing between you and the Lord.

It's a joy to pray, lifting up holy hands because God is gracious and kind and forgives, and we walk in his grace and his mercy.

Or to pray with hands lifted.

I think it's more symbolic than a literal instruction.

But it's good for our bodies to posture the way our heart should be postured.

And then men should pray without anger or quarreling.

Isn't it fascinating that Paul gives this instruction to men?

Pray, but don't be angry and don't argue.

This is what quarreling is like intense arguing that's neither loving nor productive.

We tend toward anger or quarreling.

People, this is where people are like, well, we can't make distinctions among men and women.

I don't know, like I just want to say, if we're honest, there's a difference.

Men, as Paul's clearly just telling us, and as we know through experience, tend to be more angry, to have difficulties, to want to quarrel with one another.

And he's saying, listen.

It's interesting, because remember back in chapter one, what was Paul doing all in chapter one?

Rebuking false teachers, giving instruction, and disciplining people out of the church.

So Paul isn't saying, just be a pushover and just don't say anything that's gonna be offensive.

He's not saying don't stand up for truth and don't say hard things.

But what he is saying is live and pray in a way without anger or quarreling.

How is it that you're gonna come and seek the Lord in prayer while you're angry and holding anger and these arguments with another brother or sister in Christ?

You know, we live in a society that's relatively civilized.

And when I say relatively, I mean we we kind of take the things that are very barbaric that we do as a culture, slaughtering babies and mutilating children, and we kind of put those under the guise of medical stuff, and we kind of put it behind us.

We don't look at that or kind of uh acknowledge those things.

So in some senses, we're we're very barbaric as a culture.

And then we're also kind of polite and nice and civilized.

But our hearts, so often our hearts, we get angry, we quarrel.

So we might be polite to one another as we're talking.

But in our hearts, what's going on in our hearts?

Because that's what God's after.

Not that we're polite face to face, or that we can kind of gather and pray and seem to put a smile on, but that our hearts are striving for unity, that we would love one another well.

Not that we wouldn't have differences, but that we would work on those and find that we can love one another through those differences.

If there's sin, we're gonna deal with it.

Sin isn't something we just accept.

All of Galatians, all of the book of Galatians, essentially, is Paul rebuking the churches for tolerating sin.

The whole letter.

Just, why are you doing this?

Why are you allowing sin?

So we don't tolerate sin, but even with that, we deal with sin graciously and kindly, and we seek to not have anger in our hearts.

Quarreling, stirring up these things with each other.

It's interesting as you try to lead.

If you're someone in a position of authority, whether it's official authority or just a position of authority just based on social setting or whatever, there's opposition to leadership.

You say, hey, I think we're gonna go this way.

And people are like, well, I just don't think we should go that way.

I think we should go this way.

You know, and and and whether you're right or wrong doesn't really matter, but how quickly anger can come.

It just comes up in quarreling.

I well, we're gonna kind of work that, we're gonna argue about this, we're gonna kind of be at this, and this person said this thing, and this person said that thing, and it turns into a whole thing.

And the unity, the unity in the church that is supposed to be a beacon of light to those around us, is destroyed.

It's done away with.

Because men are more concerned with their own reputation or what people think of them or their own offenses, being offended at their own ideas than they are about the glory of God.

They're more concerned with their own reputation than they are about the glory of God.

So we see, this is true even for those who who aren't necessarily in leadership or even men.

I mean, I think about if you're a mother, you're leading your children.

How often, maybe this doesn't happen in your home, maybe it does.

You're trying to get your kids somewhere.

We have little kids trying to get them out the door, trying to get them to the table, trying to get them away from the table.

And just like they don't listen, and you begin to quarrel.

You're, you know, you're a full-grown adult, you've gone through life, and you're you've had these kids, you know what maturity is, and now you're arguing with your three-year-old.

Right?

And you're like, what this doesn't make sense.

I think that's kind of what Paul is saying is arguing, quarreling.

It's one thing to say, we have a difference, and we need to work out this difference.

We're gonna do that with grace and charity.

It's another thing to quarrel and contend and fight over these things.

But yet, when we give in to the sin, then we we do quarrel.

It is much like me with one of my boys when I'm arguing with them and they're they're so little, and I'm the one who's angry that they're not listening to me.

Why am I angry?

Because they're not, because they're making my life inconvenient.

I just want to get the thing done.

I just want to get in the car.

Aye, aye, aye.

And here I am frustrated.

And so anger just begins to can quickly seep into our hearts.

Now, I mentioned this, and I just want to be clear.

There is a place for a righteous kind of anger.

We see that in chapter one.

When someone is violating God's law and they are hurting other people, there's a there's a righteous anger.

That's not what Paul's talking about here.

We're talking about a pattern of living that is not seeking to be angry or quarrel, but rather to commend Christ and to seek unity through prayer.

Now, I know I have not arrived at this.

You can just ask my family.

They can attest to these things.

Men, we are to seek unity with one another and as a church with those around us.

We should be people of prayer who are striving to honor the Lord through our prayer, through our desire for unity, leading well, working to seek the unity of the church.

We have in our church covenant as a member, we we recite this line that we're gonna seek the unity of our people, of our church.

We strive, we work for those same those things.

So let us sacrifice our own pride, our own positions of authority where we want people to think we're right, and let us follow God's leading by walking in humility and praying for one another.

And I just want to tell you, in case you don't know, you can only do this through God's word and God's spirit.

You will never be able to just control your flesh enough, get yourself under control enough.

The more you try to just manage your emotions and be a better person and just think better thoughts and do all these things with your own strength, the more you will see the anger build up and the frustration.

Why?

Because you're building your pride up, you're making it about you.

So you're trying to do the right thing and be the right person and just get everything kind of squared up and good.

And guess what you've done?

You've made yourself this king or this queen in your mind.

You're the model citizen, you're doing it right, and pride has just built you up so much.

And then when someone disagrees or someone points something out, you're just so quick to be offended or to point out whether wrong because you've you've built your pride up.

You've made us about you.

So men are going to lead in prayer of hearts seeking humility and unity to God.

And women seek modesty.

Look at verse 9.

Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works.

So Paul's giving instruction to the men in these things.

Likewise, women also giving this specific instruction to women on how they are to live and conduct themselves.

It's interesting.

He's talking about respectable apparel and modesty and self-control and good works.

And men aren't exempt from these things.

Just like women are not exempt from praying, men are not exempt from these things, but he's addressing issues that are going on, one in this church in Ephesus, but also to all the churches.

This is how women are to live.

As we've been preparing this passage several times, I've heard people say, it'll be interesting to see what Rick has to say about the text.

Looking forward to this sermon.

Why do we joke about that?

Well, because if you've grown up in the church, you've been in the church, you know the whole modesty thing is like kind of a hot topic.

It's a hot button issue where people have been offended and really hurt by people.

They've been hurt because, you know, people have told them, like, if if a man lusts, it's your fault.

So you're responsible for their wickedness.

And then, you know, there's so much just hurt and baggage from also not being taught anything.

Churches have abdicated and said, well, we're not going to teach on this, right?

We're not going to touch that uh because there's so much, there's so many issues.

But in all honesty, speaking as our culture, our culture does not have hardly any grasp on modesty.

Right?

It's not something that people are thinking about and really asking the question.

You just kind of go to a mall and a shopping center or go out in public on a on a summer day, and you realize the standard for modesty in our culture is that you're not naked, right?

So if you're not naked, you're like, you're okay.

It's acceptable, apparently.

But it's such a hard thing to teach on because the moment you bring it up, and I Then I I know it's m much more of a struggle for for women than for men, but the moment you bring it up, people in the ladies in the room, you start thinking, Well, am I what am I wearing right now?

Is it and if you feel bad, then you start thinking, Oh, I feel bad about this, I, you know.

And then if you feel good about it, you're like, well, yeah, I feel pretty good.

And just you just be quickly becomes uh fleshly and appearance-based.

And you start scoring, like, am I getting an A in modesty or am I getting a C?

You know, it's like that's although it's important to draw lines and understand, like, I think this is within the realm of modesty, and I think this is out.

Let's not do that.

What Paul isn't getting after is just checking boxes.

He's not saying, make sure you wear this and don't wear that, make sure you do this and don't do that.

Even his list here braided hair, gold, pearls, costly attire.

This right here is it has a similar passage in 1 Peter.

Don't even be adorning yourself with these.

Well, we live in a culture where braided hair doesn't symbolize anything.

Jewelry, people, you can go to Dollar Tree and buy jewelry.

Like these aren't expensive or lavish things anymore.

So contextually, he's just saying, listen, make sure that what you're wearing isn't drawing, seeking to draw all this attention to yourselves and commend yourselves.

But again, it's a difficult topic because you bring it up and people have these feelings.

And I just want to say a few things.

I'm gonna say a lot of things, but a few things I want you to hear me as we work through this.

A lot of churches have not done a good job of teaching or modeling this.

A lot of churches, because it's so personal, it's so just out there right there, you can tangible, they don't teach well or model well.

And I'm thankful for godly women in our church who who do model this well, who seek to be modest, who seek to think about what they're gonna wear.

Am I seeking to draw all this attention to myself?

Or am I just seeking to look nice and presentable and then commend Christ?

The way that God has made things, we are not to buck up against.

There's something wonderful that God has made men the way He's made them, and that God has made women the way He's made them.

God made women beautiful, very beautiful.

So, congratulations, ladies.

You're beautiful.

Praise God for that.

That's not something you should feel ashamed of.

That's not something you can feel like you need to hide or kind of stow away.

This is God's gift, it's God's design.

So enjoy that.

Praise God for that.

Again, my hear my heart.

I hope you hear my heart.

We're seeking to be gracious and serious.

And as we work through these things, we're not looking, saying, okay, am I just, do I make the cut of modesty?

Does my attire, is it, make, does it pass the standard?

We know that God, this is when David was, when David was called, David was the last one.

And he's like, well, surely it's not this guy.

He's like, no, it is this guy.

You're looking on the on the outward appearance, I'm looking in the heart.

And God is much, much, much, much more, eternally more concerned with your heart than he is with the clothes that you put on.

You need to hear that.

You need to understand that, you need to believe that.

He is more concerned, eternally more concerned with your heart than he is with the clothes you put on.

Amen.

But there's an element of the way we live reveals what we worship.

We say this a lot here at Proclamation.

You're worshiping something.

You cannot not worship.

Everyone is worshiping something.

And the way we spend our time, the way we spend our money, the way that we spend things we wear, the things that we give ourselves to, things we seek entertainment from, they just reveal.

Now, we're not saying, you know, get rid of all these things, and we have to live in this world, right?

We have to drive cars or work jobs, and it's good to keep up with the news, and you have to have a phone to call people.

All those things are wrong.

We're not saying banish or kind of a let's do a compound.

No one's saying let's do a compound.

But we are saying let's be mindful.

Let's be mindful of how we're living.

Our clothes do reveal those things.

Our prayer life reveals these things.

Women adorn themselves with respectable apparel.

We want to be, women, you want to be respectable in what you wear.

And just specific, general, specific comments here.

Make sure that your motivation, this is it right here.

This is the whole modesty conversation in a nutshell.

Make sure what you're wearing is you're seeking to adorn Christ.

Commend Christ.

It's fine to look nice, it's fine to look good.

All those things are wonderful.

Put yourself together.

That's wonderful.

God's made you beautiful.

Enjoy that.

But are you commending Christ with what you're wearing?

Or are you seeking to get attention yourself?

Are you seeking to get men's attention?

Which is often the case.

I want people to look at me, to notice me.

What's more often the case, which is you women know this, you're seeking other women's attention.

Right?

Your dress, you put yourself together primarily for other women that you might impress or they might be thought well of or all those things.

Or you want to just be unique.

You know, you just want to be someone who's who stands out.

And I want people to notice me.

Maybe you're not dressing in a way that's revealing a lot of things, but you're just going about your attire and all these things, trying to seek this unique, like, look at me, draw attention to me.

As women, you want to be commending Christ.

You want attention to go to him.

He knew what he was doing when he made women beautiful.

God didn't make women beautiful and think, man, that's going to be a distraction for a lot of people.

They're going to have a hard time seeing me.

He's made women beautiful.

That's a wonderful thing.

It attests to him.

His creation brings him glory when we rightly praise him for his creation.

Do you understand that?

His creation brings him glory when we rightly praise him for his creation.

So, women, seek to commend Christ, to point attention to him with your apparel.

Then it says, be modest and self-controlled.

Modesty is much, much more than what we wear.

It's an attitude and a posture of the heart.

Being modest in speech is very important.

Do your words build up?

Do they tear down?

Do they promote unity or charity?

Is there self-control?

Is there respectability in your desire, in your manner of living?

Are you seeking to do these things?

Not giving in to gossip or to slander, not allowing your emotions to drive your behavior.

Modest and self-controlled.

It's interesting how difficult it is.

Even uh young, I see this with young girls.

Young girls, and this isn't a rule, this is an observation.

Even from a young age, they just have a way of cutting with their words.

That it seems young boys don't.

And tell me that the boys and girls are the same.

They're not the same.

Just there's a they have a way, generally speaking, of cutting with their words that boys just don't.

Boys will just punch you, right?

They're different in that sense.

But there's something that women have this ability to with their words.

Be mindful of that.

Be modest with your speech and be self-controlled.

This is the instruction Paul is giving so that the world would know that we are Christians.

That they would say, what's different about these people?

There's something different.

Not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire, but what's proper for one who professed godliness with good works.

This idea of good works that Paul lays out.

It's from a person who claims to be saved.

Not from someone who's trying to earn salvation.

Right?

We get that.

We just gotta make sure we get really clear on that.

He's not saying, do good works, be a good person, then you might be saved.

He's saying, as someone who's been saved, regenerate, live in this way.

Good works.

I just want to pause here and say, you know, we sometimes we get frustrated with people who are not Christians and their lack of modesty and all those things.

And I agree with that, but it's also, they're not Christians.

We shouldn't be letting non-Christians set the standard for how we dress and how we talk and what we watch and what we are attained by.

Men and women all across the board, they're not believers.

We profess to be believers.

And what comes with that is a manner of living that commends Christ.

A manner of living that says to those who are lost around them that we have a Lord, a savior, and a master, and we follow him.

And there's joy in that, there's hope in that, there's life in that.

So are we, ladies, are you followers of Christ?

There should be this good works that follows.

Again, doesn't mean it's not that way for men.

Paul's addressing ladies.

The way you live should resemble your confession.

What you profess to believe as a Christian, what you profess to believe, the way that you live.

Should align.

Now, we know, I know, you know, we're sinners.

And if you didn't know that, just want to tell you this morning, you're a sinner.

You have sin in your heart, you're in rebellion to God, that's the way you came into this world, and you need Christ to save you, to free you, that you may walk and obey Him.

So we're gonna fail at this in a sense.

We're never gonna be, until we're with Christ, we're never gonna be perfectly living out the thing we profess.

We'll never be perfectly in alignment with our confession and our walking.

But we're always seeking to do that together, to bring those into alignment.

I profess to be a Christian, okay.

Do you forgive people?

I profess to be a Christian, okay.

Do you hold to your convictions?

I profess to be a Christian.

Okay, are you loving toward outsiders?

I profess to be a Christian.

Okay, are you thoughtful with how you spend your money?

So we're always trying to bring those things into alignment.

And this reality that God has called men to live a certain way and women to live a certain way.

That he has made them both equal in value and ability, but he's given them different roles to play in his creation.

If you just, we're going to talk more about this when we get to the next passage, but creation is screaming this.

It screams out that men are made a certain way, different than women who are made a certain way.

No matter who's telling you that you can blur these things or cover these things up, creation attests through childbearing, through our physical bodies.

This just isn't a reality.

But as we talk about leadership and how men are to behave and talk about modesty and how women are to behave, I want to just close with a thought that gives us hopefully a heart of charity in these things.

There's this idea that I think has fallen on hard times recently, just due to our culture, our political climate.

And the idea is reasonableness.

Is something reasonable?

It makes sense.

If something's reasonable, it makes sense.

It seems to follow sound judgment.

So there's things going on in our lives where it's like, I don't know that I would do that, but that's reasonable, right?

I don't know that I wouldn't make that choice or do that with my children, but that's reasonable.

That's reasonable.

And there's a lot of things that are not reasonable.

And we need to be clear and confident in kind of pointing those things out as well.

And to give you an example, uh, in recent history as a society, there's a thing called COVID-19 that came around, and there's this thing called vaccine that came out.

And early on, there was a lot of opinions.

You know, Donald Trump made the vaccine, Joe Biden distributed the vaccine, you should get the vaccine.

If you take the vaccine, you know, you're taking the sign of the enemy or whatever.

It's like all these opinions.

And when it first came out, though, it seemed like, man, this is I got your attention now, right?

This is reasonable.

You don't want to get the vaccine?

That's reasonable.

I get it.

You want to get the vaccine, man?

That's reasonable.

I get it, right?

Would I do it?

No.

Should I be forced to do it?

No.

But is it reasonable that you want to do that?

Yes.

I think that this category of reasonableness should work back into our own lives and our thinking.

As a church, we have, as a culture and as a as a church, I'm speaking broadly, as a Western church, we have a lot of, we have allowed a lot of things that are not reasonable.

And we've said, oh, that's reasonable.

That's reasonable.

That's reasonable.

But at the same time, there's a lot of things that we don't that we don't allow.

It's like, well, that's reasonable.

You want to homeschool your kids, okay.

You want to send your kids to private school?

Well, okay.

Yeah.

You want to send your kids to public school?

That's reasonable.

Like, we just have to be able to have this thinking, church, where it's like, reasonable.

You you wear that?

I wouldn't wear that.

I might not let my daughter wear that, but that's reasonable.

Okay, you're wearing that?

That's not reasonable.

Like we need to have a conversation, right?

So there's reasonableness in this ability to say, I don't think I would fully do it that way.

But is there sin?

Is there wrong intent?

Are you seeking to be destructive?

Are you blind?

Are you are you being ignorant?

Okay, it's reasonable then.

Is it making sense what I'm saying?

Like having this ability to say, man, I I just don't, I think I would do it differently, but it's reasonable.

And why this is so important?

And this is news to you, or I mean this is it shouldn't be news to you, but is you are not infallible.

You're not perfect.

You get it wrong.

I get it wrong.

You're never gonna get it right.

So until that time comes, you need to have a capacity, an ability to say, I could be wrong on this.

I might be taking the wrong stance, I might be too conservative, or I might be being a little bit too liberal on this.

But being reasonable.

Because the way that we live, church, the way the clothes we wear, the way that we talk to one another, the way that we pray should commend Christ.

Because we live in a world that is dying and going to hell, that they need Christ.

They're created for him, they're longing for him.

So Paul's instruction for how the church is to behave, how they are to conduct themselves, so that the lost might be found, so that those who are found might grow in holiness is as basic, simple instruction to live this way.

Men pray, men everywhere pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

Women, be uh respectful and modest and have good works.

Christ alone can change our hearts and desires.

He came and lived a perfect life and died on the cross, paying for our sin, so that we would live a different kind of life.

Not so that we would follow the ways of the world which lead to death, but that we might follow Him and have eternal life.

And in that, in our obedience to God, even though culture is telling us it's wrong, even though you might even feel like it's wrong, in that obedience to God, there is life.

There is joy, there is satisfaction, and there is life for eternity.

And that includes today.

Let's pray.