First Timothy lesson 12 continued
1 Timothy · Mike Doyle · Oct 20, 2024
1 Timothy, No. 36
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261936578090

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, we're in 1 Timothy, and this is lesson 12, and we're just working on two verses, nine and 10. And they have to do with the behavior within the body of Christ. At this point, we're talking about women. So I was thinking last week, we were going through specifics, and we were talking about how modesty and clothing and that kind of stuff. So this is the question for the day.

Would a tattoo be OK? I'm serious, would it be? I don't think so. Okay. Now that I've got one. You've had that tattoo since you were 12. I know. So really, would a tattoo be okay? Would it be something that fits under this heading or not? Having gone to the gym all the time, I'm the only person in the gym without a tattoo. I'll go with you someday. There'll be two of us. Though culturally, today, it's acceptable.

I was raised that tattoos are for sailors and rough bikers. Don't mess with me. So, I mean, that was what I always thought. It was, you know, it was the rough people who he didn't want to hang around with, who had tattoos, and, you know, sailors, and rough people, you know, this, that. So, I have a bias that, but now it's like everybody, literally, I'm the only one at the gym who doesn't have a tattoo. And so, culturally, it's acceptable. And does that make it acceptable in the body of Christ?

You know, and this gets into the whole rationale behind this section is, and we kind of said that last week, who determines that? Who determines what is in this section modestly? What is modestly? Who determines that? And what is modestly? And is it cultural to his time when Paul wrote this? And what does that mean versus today? I think that's a lame argument, totally lame. And the reason I say that is one thing, a believer's body doesn't belong to him. These abortion people say, well, it's my body, my choice. No, it's not. No, it's not your choice. So do you have pierced ears as a woman? You see, I mean, there's a whole, you know, litany of this that, oh, I can remember with Pierce Sears was, oh. For gypsies. For gypsies. For gypsies. Yeah.

There's an Old Testament law against tattoos, but that's Old Testament. So I don't think we're under that law. I don't know. I think there's freedom in some of these things. It's not being modest. I think the Lord is so gracious that he lets you do stuff. Like we ended up last week, didn't we? Question five says, does Paul give the woman here the freedom to choose their own clothing? Yeah, he does. Was he given the freedom to go get a tattoo? Sure.

But the issue is why you do it and why you dress the way you do. Same thing with men. Why you do what you do is really the question. And so he tried to define how In this case, a woman should dress by using words like discreetly, modestly, moderation. So let's look at those words. It may help us. Question six says, the word discreetly or decency or propriety adds more to the understanding. Do you see it?

And so I wrote down, In earlier Greek, it was sometimes blended with the sense of, it's A-L-S-C-H-U-N-E, which means shame, though it was used also in the feeling of respectful timidity in the presence of superiors, or of a penitent respect towards one who has been wronged. It is the feeling of a suppliant or an unfortunate in the presence of those whom he seeks to aid of a younger towards an older man. It is a feeling based upon the sense of deficiency, inferiority, or unworthiness. The word is a blend of modesty and humility. That's Kenneth Weiss. So, I think what this tells us is that the word discreetly or decency or propriety is, coalesces into one question.

Does the Lord want me to do that or not? It's okay to look at the Lord and say, well, can I do that? You're not gonna hammer me if I do, or there's no specific thing against it. I have the freedom to do what I wanna do, but I don't ever wanna do anything that somehow takes away from the glory of the Lord Jesus. And if my body belongs to him, do you agree with that?

I do. I think the motivation behind the way you dress, the motivation behind your tattoo, all of those things have to do with what you just said. Am I maintaining who I am before the Lord Or am I misrepresenting who I am before the Lord by doing said thing, whatever that thing is? Yeah. Yeah.

I think there are times when, well, I think I'll go get a tattoo, but I'll put it someplace in my body where nobody can see it. A little bit of rebellion there. I can't speak to all of those things, but I can say that the modesty in this culture, as Courtney was saying, and then also Ingrid added some thoughts there too, we're not under a law system, but we do have to maintain our position of who we are and what the Lord wants us to do. and how we communicate that to the world around us, because this is really about the body being represented in the world, and not being conformed to the world, but being a light in it. And so, we're getting really specific about some of these things, but the motivation and the, you know, if you're in a rebellious stage, in the sense that you, and you mentioned the word, is the Lord going to hammer you? I don't know what you meant by that. I mean, I know it was just a, you know, kind of a phrase. That's a Marine term. Yeah. He's not going to hammer you, right? Again, to Courtney's point last week, these are not salvation issues.

These are, how are you representing your outward self, in this case for women, in a way that is consistent with who you are in Christ, right? My comment was, is that I think particularly in these areas, we tend to be much more motivated by the people around us rather than our relationship with the Lord Jesus. And I think in the majority of churches, even, if there's not an intimacy taught that you can actually know the Lord Jesus and have a relationship with him, then how are you going to know how to dress?

Especially if you're under a law system. Yeah, and you're always going to go there. So what is he really teaching us here? It's not law. I think it's principles. We live under the principle of grace, the principle of faith. And those principles teach us things about how we should function. Well, and I don't think that we should be in a position to judge. I mean, do I look at Mike and say, well, you've got a tattoo, so I must be more spiritual than you are.

Well, I don't know. It might offend people, you know. Sure. But probably for the wrong reasons. Yeah. One of the guys at church here, I forget his name, but he said, oh, you got a tattoo. So the minute he mentioned it, you know, I knew what he was saying. Yeah. Sure. Well, you know, the other thing is, and you can get them removed now.

You may buy a tattoo for 50 bucks, but it'll cost you 1100. So the, the, uh, uh, So, a younger son of ours had a massive tattoo on his chest, but it's a verse. It's a cross. It's a cross and a verse. Yeah. My son's got this tattoo on his shoulder that looks like a stop and go sign. It's just big. And it's got a bunch, like it's got Greek words in it about the Lord Jesus. Right, so it's that bad. You said tattoos are bad. Yeah. So, and what you're doing to your body. So how do you reconcile that?

Well, you know, I think it comes down to as a person grows spiritually, they really do begin to listen under the Lord. You know, I love that term, listen under. And there really is a communication of, Lord, what would you have me do rather than I'm going to do this, and I'm not even thinking about the consequences as to whether God would have me do it or not. So a lot of what Paul's talking about here is as you mature, you probably won't do some of the things of the world that you would have done if you didn't grow. And I think that's what the principle is. And especially next week when we start talking about teaching, you know, who can teach and who can't. A couple of more thoughts.

Modesty, sobriety, moderation, soundness of mind, self-control, sobriety, the words speak of an entire command of a passion and desire, a self-control which holds the reins over these. So a quote from Euripides, a Greek writer, calls it the fairest gift of the gods.

Vincent remarks that the fact that it appears so rarely in the New Testament as its trench remarks not because more value was attached to it in a heathen ethic than the Christian morality, but because it was taken up and Transformed into a condition yet still higher in Which a man does not command himself Which is well, but which is better still he is commended by the Lord and And I think that's a principle of an attitude as you grow spiritually that I'm not around to aggrandize myself. If that's ever going to happen, the Lord's going to have to do it. It's a change of view, you know, that God is the one who gets the glory, and rightfully so, and I'm okay with it. in a mode of dress or anything like that that somehow takes the focus off of him and puts it on you, well, as a young believer, it never even enters your mind. But as you grow, you really sort of think about, well, is what I'm doing glorify God or not? You know? That's really, I think, where the principle is. You all right with that? No? It's interesting that the fruit of the spirit is temperance, self-control, the virtue of one who masters his desires and passions, especially his sensual appetites. Maybe you can help me.

I never understood why anybody got a tattoo in the first place. I don't know what the motivation is. It was the guys around me. Everybody's getting them. It was B.C. I remember being in the Marine Corps, guys were getting tattoos, and I thought, I couldn't afford them. When you're an E2 out of boot camp, it's a good thing they're feeding you and taking care of you, because you can't afford to do anything. So if I would have spotted you at 50, you would have gotten a tattoo? I might have. Go ahead.

And Mike, I was just going to say, you know, whenever different groups of believers get really focused on some legal standard of outward appearance, it's amazing how much our attention gets drawn to that. It's all about you know, the earthly mode of living and self, really. And kind of back to Donna's point, they really draw their attention away from Christ and intimacy with Him, and keeps their attention purely on physical, outward, earthly things. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those issues, I think, that really show up over time, how much the world controls me.

Like you said, my buddies all got them, I better get one, or everybody in my class has one, or I'm sure that John got his tattoo because his two best friends had them. One of them was in the army and that's where he got his, and the other one had two or three of them. And John told me an interesting thing. He said, you know, Dad, he said, once you get one, There's this real desire to get another one.

I said, really? I said, it's like sinning. Once you sin, you want to do it again. It's so true. My cousin that I grew up with, we played in a rock band together. He was the first guy to get a tattoo. His last tattoo was just the words, nothing left. He's literally got no room left. That's it. I think, Miles, you're right.

Having come out of the Brethren Church, that's why this is decades of this, and it comes up every so often. And there's such, unfortunately, nebulous terms. What is modesty? Well, if you look in the 1920s, should women be in swimming gear of the 1920s.

I remember actually playing in soccer in high school, the South Baptist cheerleaders were in dresses down to cover their ankles. Sure. They're cheerleaders. Oh, sure. And it's like, what? And it becomes such a distraction. And it should. Really, we came down to it's an individual decision or a family decision.

And what you before the Lord feel comfortable. And the other is you shouldn't judge anybody else. It's like when we taught in whatever, Grace and that, about the authorities. I can't tell you what to do in your family, because that's not my authority. And elders have authorities. Families have authorities. Families have structure.

And that's where it should be. And it shouldn't be where I look at you and, boy, you have a tattoo. Oof. That's your decision. And it becomes a distraction more than anything. And exactly what Miles said, it becomes law-based or a lot of things that are off things of the Lord. And that's why this becomes such, when people make this a big thing, it's a total distraction from focusing. Yeah, and I probably shouldn't have brought up the idea of a tattoo. It just hit me the sweetest. It's a cultural thing.

Well, the other cultural thing that's really interesting is I invite you to go to the King Soopers in my neighborhood at about two o'clock in the afternoon, which is a block from Cherry Creek High School, and just look at the girls and how they dress. Would you want them coming to church dressed like that? Or not dress? Or how about Christian television?

There's a vision. The guy that comes to mind, everybody knows who Jelly Roll is. He's got tattoos all over his face. He's preaching the gospel, you know, because he got saved out of that environment. You know, when you said, what I don't understand is, you know, when you say you get one tattoo, you want more. And I see these guys at the gym. I mean, their entire body is tattoos.

I don't know how you go, evidently, it's very painful. How do you do that? I mean, you know, over your eye, your ear, your face, your back, your every, and it's like, I couldn't, evidently, I couldn't stand the pain of that. If I got one, I'd never want another one after the pain. I'm a wuss, I guess. Well, and I think they're, aren't they, like you don't get, like your son didn't get that tattoo all in one sitting. Yeah, I don't know if he did or didn't, but yeah.

He said it was very painful. Very painful. So we're chicken. Yeah, we're chicken. Maybe that's it. I'd get a tattoo if I wasn't such a wuss. Yeah. Anyway, you know, I think there are standards. And I think Paul uses the standard not illegally, but a principle. And really what words like modesty, sobriety, moderation, they're all principle words. Yeah. Great point. Great point. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, When I say this, some women, like when I met you the first time, I couldn't take my eyes off you, but you were modestly dressed, and you were put together, so to speak, no chaos. It was all cosmos kind of thing. And so, I don't really understand if you, as a man, woman that sort of is flaunting her sexuality is a turn-off to me, you know, but that's just me.

I think being in Mexico and a couple of those guys with those thongs with the big belly, yeah. Well, we were in Mexico one time at Playa Car, and when we were there, there were a lot of Europeans there, and the women don't wear tops at the beach, right? So the American women that flew down with us, we noticed that most of them, it took them about three days to take their tops off. Okay, but then one day we're walking up the beach and there's this old couple in launch chairs with the newspaper, right? So I said to Donna, I said, which one's the man and which one's the woman? You couldn't tell.

And so, you know, the world system is the world system and we live in it and among it. One of the great things about being a believer and being indwelt by the Holy Spirit is he slowly but surely frees you up from all that, which is really great. Okay, if you put all these words together, what kind of instruction and balance does the Lord leave with us? First thing is, a believer is a free moral agent. So, I mean, has the Lord ever prevented you from sinning? Well, maybe, but usually not. Free moral agent, and we're not machines. We're not robots. is expected by God to exercise self-control by a free act of your will. You decide. You decide how you're going to dress. One of the problems I had as a new believer when I first started teaching the men's group is I used to cuss once in a while. Before that, I was still smoking. And I had the marbles in my shirt pocket, and Betty Sundine's husband drove him nuts because he could see them.

But he never said anything to me, right? But every once in a while, I'd come out with Navy Marine Corps language, right? And finally, Mal Stanford called me and sent me a letter. and a little track. You know what the track said? Others can, but you can't. And it talked about language and how important it was not to use profanity to emphasize your point. And he did it very softly, and boy, did it have an impact on me. I still cuss, though. I want you to know.

But I can't do it teaching, you know? So is that a law? It's not a law. It's just a principle. If you're going to teach God's Word, you can't throw in a few expletives. Delete it just to emphasize. It doesn't work. Yeah, not to offend others. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Completing the sentence, doing this, however, in the energy which the Holy Spirit supplies, to the yielded Christian, it is a happy combination and interworking of the free will of the believer and the grace of God." That's a really interesting statement because there's lots of things a young believer would entertain and probably do that he wouldn't do as he grows under grace.

Because grace, as we learned in the grace class, is the greatest motivator there is, way, way above law. And so when you begin to realize the grace under which you live, you don't want to do anything to offend the one who exhibits that grace towards you. And it isn't because somebody has to tell you, you know. You know, I don't ever want to do anything that would somehow belittle or cause any sort of shame to the one who is so gracious to me.

See that? So now you have an attitude and a viewpoint of listening under and listening out. the individual thing itself, like tattoos or dress or anything like that, it doesn't become the issue anymore. The issue now is, Lord, would you be pleased with this or not? See? Because he's so gracious. He's so gracious. Okay? Question eight. What is a Christian dependent upon for her adornment? Read the verse. And I'm laughing because you read a verse like this and you think, well, that doesn't big deal.

But it must have been a big deal in 60 AD. Not with braided hair, gold and pearls, and costly garments, but rather by means of good works is proper for a woman making a claim to godliness. What was the deal with braided hair? You know, culturally it must have been a problem. Okay, I mean, and gold and pearls and costly garments.

So I read this and I was thinking to myself, well, if I have somebody in the church that I go to that's really wealthy, And they wear designer clothes all the time. Do they have to stop wearing designer clothes? Same thing with men, you know? And men know, trust me, just like women know. But men know if a guy walks in and he's dressed and took him a thousand bucks to put this together, a man knows. And you know how you tell whether a man is really a stylish guy or not?

By the shoes he wears. That's how you know. It's a really expensive shoes. Tell the whole story. So, or cowboy boots. Boy, you buy a pair of Lucchesi. It gets to be winter. I'm back in my cowboy boots. You know, They're the most comfortable Jew there is. You don't have to tell me. Wear them for comfort. Okay, we're getting short of time.

The one last thing I wanted to talk about is in verse 10 where he says, but rather by means of good works as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. What does he mean by good works? I can tell you what my research tells me, but what do you think? Good works. That means you have to be a Sue Anderson? Or a singer? What are good works? Good works are from the cross, not to the cross.

That's pretty good. I also think this has to do a lot with your character, who you are. The word does include like your disposition, your quality, the way that you carry yourself, the way that you interact with others. Now, it doesn't mean that you don't make mistakes. Again, this isn't salvation. These are not salvific verses, if I can say it that way.

But the things that you go about and you do represent the character of who you are and they make a claim. And that claim is to, I belong to some, I belong to someone I've, I've been I've been changed. I'm not just following my worldly desires. I have a character claim to godliness because I've been placed in a person and I know that person and that person is more important than what I would want to do if I were following the old man. It's not a law, it's a character, it's who you are now. And you have to learn that. I say that a lot. But you do have to learn that character. That applies here too, right?

You can take somebody on the other end of the spectrum, clothing that's out of style and drab and that draws attention to itself is inappropriate. If you get up in the morning and put on clothes that you've been wearing all week, and they're, you know, they're really for doing housework, and you come to church in those, those aren't appropriate. Yeah?

Yeah, I think it, I mean, here, it has to do with verse 10, specifically, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women, making a claim to godliness. I think that's really the important part, is that What are you claiming by the behavior that you're presenting out there in the world? If the clothing is an issue, then if you're trying to rebel and you're wearing certain things that are rebellious in nature because that's your character, well then you're missing who you are as a believer. And this only applies to believers here.

I'm going to close up with three verses that I looked up. One is from Romans 16, one and two. I commend you to our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church, which is at Censurea, that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints and that you help her in whatever manner she may have need of you, for she herself also has been a helper of many and of myself as well.

Next one is Romans 16.6. Mary, greet Mary who has worked hard for you. And then Dorcas, what a great name.

Dorcas left a legacy of good works from Acts 9.36. Now in Joppa, there was a disciple named Tabitha, which translated the Greek word Dorcas. This woman was abounding with deeds of kindness and charity, which she constantly did, continually did, and it happened at that time. that she fell sick and died.

And when they had washed her body, they laid her in the upper room. And since Lyda was near Joppa, the disciples, having heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him, imploring him, do not delay in coming to us. So Peter arose and went with them. And when he arrived, They brought him into the upper room and all the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing all the tunics and garments that Dorcas used to make. And while she was with them, and Peter raised her from the dead. So here is this woman that had died and everybody there that was weeping for her, all had garments and tunics that she made for her.

That's kind of cool. Just a couple that, you know, from Matthew 5, 16, Christ speaking, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. That's the good works. That's the principle. There it is. To glorify God. But also in John 10-32, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that He would walk in them. He's prepared the good works for us. And they're to glorify the Father.

Yeah. That's close. Father, how are we? Thank you. how we thank you that your influence in your life, the new life we have in the resurrected Christ, does manifest itself in a certain way. And we need to learn as we grow how your spirit would manifest the life of the Lord Jesus through us, no matter how, what vehicle he's gonna use. So we thank you for that. We pray in your son's name, amen.