First let me say I’m excited about the Digging Deep podcast. It will be this Thursday night at 7 CST. I hope you are liking the new format and I hope you can be with us this Thursday. It’s Family Bible Day prep week at West Huntsville. That means the building will be abuzz (literally) with saws cutting out props and artsy Bible backgrounds being painted. We are practicing presentations and there’s just lots of noise everywhere. Our theme this year is God’s Creation: Digging for Answers and there are rumors that the dinosaur room is pretty amazing. I know personally that the “Life” room is going to have a very special guest! Anyway, if you’re in the Huntsville area, come join us this Saturday (July 27th) from 10 to 2. You can let us know if you are coming on the West Huntsville website.
In the midst of the chaos, we are going to find a quiet room and take an hour to talk with you about Sanctification from I Corinthians. Emily Anderson, who has three little boys, has just done some major wedding participation for our great friend Heather, and is in charge of one of our Family Bible Day rooms is taking time out of a really mean schedule to co-host. I’m grateful to her for time-crunching for us this week. I hope you will join us at http://new.livestream.com/whcoc/for-women.
Speaking of Sanctification from I Corinthians, the conclusion of this month’s modesty series comes from that very book. A couple of years ago, my good friend Lindsey VanHook made this point from I Corinthians 8:13 in a West Huntsville women’s class. I’ve been sharing it since, because, to me, her perspective made a lot of sense. Here you go:
We must be concerned about modesty because of the danger of causing our brothers to sin. Matthew 5:28 makes it clear that when a brother looks on a woman to lust after her, he commits adultery of the heart. Who can deny that women who are mostly undressed in public are promoting this sin? It is ludicrous to think, in a world in which the majority of our young men struggle with pornography by the time they graduate from high school, that scantily clad cheerleaders, volleyball players, larger-than-life photographs of almost-nude women in mall stores and women in swimsuits at the beach and public pool sites do not contribute to the frequency of the sin of lust. Further, when women dress in short skirts, low-cut attire, leggings beneath short attire, and skin-tight clothing to attend services, we make it extremely difficult for men who are attempting to worship God without worldly and sinful distractions to do so.
I Corinthians 8:13 finds the apostle Paul pledging to abstain from eating meat, so long as the world stands if it offends a fellow Christian. Eating meat was a matter of judgment. The wearing of immodest apparel is implicitly prohibited by the command to dress modestly in First Timothy two. How much more should we give diligence never to offend by violating, for selfish purposes, this clear command?
Conclusion:
Because of both the command that we be modest and chaste in demeanor and dress and the seriousness of the consequences when we fail to do so, Christian women had better be “worried” about both being modest women of God and about following the Titus two admonition to teach younger women to dress and behave discreetly. May we never be guilty of being a partaker in another person’s sin of impurity in thought or action (I Timothy 5:22).
