Peter's School of Divine Cosmetology

Driving home: And what they do to make themselves attractive is what is called in the Bible adorning themselves. The action and the result of that action called adornment, adornment. What is seen and observed by others.

Used to establish that the desire for attractiveness in women is an obvious, universally recognized truth, not needing proof.

As we come to the study of the word of God this morning, I would not waste your time or insult your intelligence by seeking to prove to you what is obvious and recognized by every one of you. For example, I think most of you children would think I had something less than a full load or a few screws loose upstairs if I were to take time this morning to try to prove to you that water is wet, or that snow is wet. Or that water is cold, or that fire is hot. That's obvious, understood, accepted by all of us.

1:37 - 2:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And what they do to make themselves attractive is what is called in the Bible adorning themselves. The action and the result of that action called adornment, adornment. What is seen and observed by others.

Illustrates the lifelong, pervasive desire for women to be attractive, from childhood play to the billion-dollar cosmetics industry.

Well, into that same category, I would put the statement that women and girls ordinarily, and don't forget my qualifying word, ordinarily desire to be attractive or beautiful. From the time they are little girls and engage in dress-ups, to that mingled awkwardness, and thrill of the first touch of modestly applied makeup that caused them to sense somehow I'm on the threshold of womanhood, to the billion-dollar businesses of cosmetics with Revlon producing 177 different shades of lipstick. That's not an exaggeration, that's a fact. To hair salons, to designer clothing, I think it's...

2:21 - 3:16 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Peter specifies three expressions of misplaced priority: ostentatious hair braiding, excessive gold jewelry, and preoccupation with apparel. Martin clarifies these are not…

Explains that Peter's condemnation of 'braiding the hair' refers to showy, time-consuming, gaudy displays of hair, not simple braids.

And when one reads it, one reads those who have acquainted themselves with the customs and the social mores of that particular point in human history and that particular part of the world, women who wanted to use their hair as the basis for a show to others would pile up their hair in a showtime, time-consuming, breathtaking, eye-catching display of gaudiness. They would use their hair in the way in which they piled it up and stuck it with combs and jewels to be a symbol of their preoccupation with the outside.

18:30 - 19:17 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Peter specifies three expressions of misplaced priority: ostentatious hair braiding, excessive gold jewelry, and preoccupation with apparel. Martin clarifies these are not…

Used to show that Peter is not condemning all use of gold jewelry, as even holy women in the Old Testament wore it, but rather excessive, showy display.

Secondly, the wearing of gold. The verb literally means the placing around, the picture of hanging gold ornaments all over the place. Now again, he is not referring to the modest use of gold, rings, chains, earrings, bracelets. And I may, in the course of tonight's message, at least give you a couple of illustrations where some of the very holy women who are commended to us in the Old Testament, were women who, to the glory of God, wore not only bracelets and earrings, but one of them, Rebecca, even had a nose ring put on her.

19:37 - 20:14 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Peter specifies three expressions of misplaced priority: ostentatious hair braiding, excessive gold jewelry, and preoccupation with apparel. Martin clarifies these are not…

Describes someone excessively adorned with gold as looking like a 'gold vendor out ready to hawk his wares,' emphasizing the showy preoccupation Peter condemns.

In this vivid contrast, let it not be a preoccupation with the external, piling up your hair in a gaudy, showy, ostentatious way. Having bangles and earrings and nose rings and chains and bracelets and necklaces so that from a hundred yards away you look like a gold vendor out ready to hawk his wares. Showy, preoccupied. Anyone could tell you took so much time just to hang your gold on you.

20:34 - 21:06 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Do not let your preoccupation be one that focuses upon physical bread, temporal bread, but let your primary concern be spiritual labor for eternal bread that does not perish, an absolute for the relative. That's exactly …

Illustrates the kind of 'preoccupation with one's wardrobe' that Peter condemns, highlighting the vanity of constantly needing new apparel.

Desiring to stun and to dazzle and to impress with the fact that one never appears in the same place, in the same company, with the same dress. It is this preoccupation with one's wardrobe. You remember the wife of a certain man a certain public leader in the Far East with her hundreds of pairs of shoes. What a horrible thing to be known for, that you had two to three hundred pairs of shoes.

21:51 - 22:22 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Do not let your preoccupation be one that focuses upon physical bread, temporal bread, but let your primary concern be spiritual labor for eternal bread that does not perish, an absolute for the relative. That's exactly …

Jesus' teaching in John 6 is used to explain Peter's 'absolute for the relative' principle: not an absolute prohibition, but a reordering of priorities from temporal to eternal.

He's concerned about things that would have been a tangible expression of those women who were preoccupied with the outward. As I've already alluded, this is not an absolute prohibition of or concern for and attention to an attractive arrangement of your hair, a modest use of jewelry and good taste in clothing. This is an absolute for the relative. You remember in John 6, Jesus said, do not work for the bread that perishes.

22:42 - 23:18 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Do not let your preoccupation be one that focuses upon physical bread, temporal bread, but let your primary concern be spiritual labor for eternal bread that does not perish, an absolute for the relative. That's exactly …

Modern examples of bizarre, attention-getting hairstyles are given as contemporary equivalents of the 'outward adorning' Peter condemns.

Furthermore, these three things were not intended to be an exhaustive list of the specific things that can be the concrete expressions of too much concern for the outward in every culture, at every time, and in every set of circumstances. That's not what Peter is giving us here. The Spirit of God is not giving us a wooden list that from the time Peter wrote to the time the Lord comes, that's all we need to do is address the gaudy, piling up of the hair, the excessive wearing of jewelry, and this preoccupation with a massive, impressive wardrobe. If Peter were speaking today in twentieth-centur...

23:45 - 25:09 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Do not let your preoccupation be one that focuses upon physical bread, temporal bread, but let your primary concern be spiritual labor for eternal bread that does not perish, an absolute for the relative. That's exactly …

Modern examples of preoccupation with outward appearance (plastic surgery, body modification, unrealistic body ideals) are given as contemporary equivalents of the 'outward adorning' Peter condemns.

Perhaps Peter would address facelifts, tummy tucks, body piercings and silicone implants, all of the symbols of twentieth-century American preoccupation with the outward adorning, the striving for a Barbie doll figure, the ballet gym ads that'll make you look like a woman with a man's body. Preoccupation with face and form and tight skin. These are the things that Peter is addressing when he says, not with the outward adornment. And furthermore, Peter's words were not intended to create a society of frumpish or dowdy women who would be an embarrassment to their husbands and a reproach to the n...

25:09 - 26:37 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Drawing a parallel with 1 Timothy 2, Martin connects the 'quiet spirit' directly to a woman's internal embrace of her divinely appointed place in subordination to male authority…

A story of a Quaker child who outwardly sits but inwardly stands illustrates the difference between external, grudging submission and internal, heart-felt embrace of God's will.

These misogynist apostles, they're women haters. Oh, bite the bullet. Oh, beings. Now you're being in subjection, all right, you're like the little Quaker kid.

42:49 - 42:59 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Drawing a parallel with 1 Timothy 2, Martin connects the 'quiet spirit' directly to a woman's internal embrace of her divinely appointed place in subordination to male authority…

Illustrates the foolishness and restiveness of a woman who resents her God-given role, just as a bird would be foolish to envy a fish's ability to swim.

Redemptive privilege is gender blind. And when a woman embraces her true identity in Christ and is grateful, then she's in a posture to joyfully embrace her place as a woman in relationship to male authority and not to be restive. Imagine, as I was preparing, I looked out my, study window and we have all kinds of birds in our backyard and some lovely trees. And I thought, suppose someone put a fish in my neighbor's swimming pool.

44:14 - 44:46 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It's incorruptible. Neither age nor the throes of death nor the worms in the grave can touch it. It is imperishable. It is incorruptible because it is an expression of the very work of God upon the human soul in fashioni…

A vivid, stark image of physical decay is used to emphasize the perishable nature of outward beauty, contrasting it with the imperishable inner beauty.

When I see these so-called beautiful women of the world and everyone bowing down and worshipping their face and their form, I hope I'm not cynical. I hope it's thinking like a Christian man when I say to myself, Dear, quote, beautiful woman, if the Lord Jesus tarries in a short time, you're going to be eaten by the worms. Maggots are going to crawl over you.

49:24 - 49:52 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't fashion yourself after Barbie dolls or popular magazines; ask God to soak your soul in His Word and make biblical women your beauty models.

Quoting Proverbs 11:22, this metaphor powerfully conveys God's view of a woman who possesses external beauty but lacks internal discretion and godliness.

If you should attain to beauty that would cause every man or woman who walked within 20 feet of you to turn ahead and hold their breath at your stunning beauty, but you had no heart beauty. You know what God says of you? God likens you to a pig with a gold ring in its snout.

55:05 - 55:20 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't fashion yourself after Barbie dolls or popular magazines; ask God to soak your soul in His Word and make biblical women your beauty models.

Used as examples of worldly standards of beauty that young girls should not emulate, contrasting them with biblical models.

Don't fashion yourself after Barbie dolls. And don't fashion yourself after the so-called popular magazines that glut the market. Don't sit and let your eyes and your soul absorb the world's standards of beauty and Seventeen or the other teen magazines that are supposed to tell you what beauty is. You ask God to soak your soul in this book, as we'll see tonight, God willing.

56:10 - 56:37 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't fashion yourself after Barbie dolls or popular magazines; ask God to soak your soul in His Word and make biblical women your beauty models.

Biblical women are presented as models of true beauty for Christian women to emulate.

And you make Sarah and Abigail. And Esther and Mary and Elizabeth and Rebecca. You make them your beauty models. And you pray God will bring you to know God as they knew him and cultivate that inner beauty that is in God's sight of great price.

56:37 - 57:01 Read in full sermon

The point: Continue to abound yet more and more in the grace of a meek and quiet spirit, pleading with God for its internalization.

The 'meek and quiet spirit' is described as a perfume, a fragrance of Christ that will naturally 'leak out' and be sensed by others, even with individual personality differences.

Plead with God that that grace of a meek and quiet spirit will be more and more internalized. And you don't need to be asking others, am I showing it? It will leak out. There will be a fragrance of your spirit picking up the peculiar odors of your own, your own particular personality.

58:55 - 59:16 Read in full sermon