More Than Skin Deep, Part 2

Make sure we're modeling the heart of God.

Make sure we're attaching the same price tag to the things he says are valuable. Let's make sure we communicate a reformed mind. Let's make sure the way we talked to our sisters in the assembly, that we communicate by the way we look and talk and act, that we're more interested not so much on their face or their figure or their fashion. We are interested in encouraging their faith. We live in a culture that often seems to value beauty over character. That world view, if we adopt it, can be difficult to live as God intended. God never commands that we neglect our appearance.

We should take care of ourselves. But he's very clear that it's the heart that really matters. True beauty, as God defines it, is more than skin deep. That's the title of Stephen's message today.

We're continuing through a series on marriage entitled, For Better or For Worse. Today, Stephen has an important message for women and men called, More Than Skin Deep. There are people that go to this text. There are denominations that go to this text and come to the conclusion that a woman cannot let her hair down in public, either braided or loose.

They take their cue from this text. Others take from this text the fact that a woman cannot wear jewelry in public. Well, if we apply this verse consistently as Bible students, if Peter is forbidding a woman from braiding her hair and wearing jewelry, he's forbidding a woman from wearing a dress, which I doubt he's doing, right?

I think the words are telling. The word Peter uses here for braiding occurs in the New Testament only in this verse. It is not a reference to hairstyle as much as it is a reference to the activity of braiding, of the time that it took.

This isn't just a couple of pigtails and you're out the door. Just look at some of the pictures that come from the first century of the braiding, the extensive braiding. This kind of braiding Peter refers to took hours of time each day, hours of attention. And in Peter's day, it had become a public iconic statement of leisure and wealth. It was a way of sort of showing off.

It set you apart. Again, Peter's not forbidding it. He's not concerned about pigtails. He's concerned with priorities here. Notice further the word he uses for wearing gold jewelry, the word for wearing again is rare, found only here. In fact, it could be translated putting around.

It's a broader picture. This isn't just a gold ring. This is actually an ostentatious display of wealth.

In fact, Isaiah, we won't turn there for the sake of time. But in an earlier chapter, he gives us kind of a rare look into the use of jewelry and other ornaments women wore in the early centuries. He talked about the practice that included wearing expensive bells, jewels on their sandals. Women wearing jewelry around their ankles, wearing multiple bracelets on their wrists and upper arms and necks, wearing finger rings, nose rings, dangling earrings. In other words, you don't just see this woman coming. You hear her coming. Isaiah's description and Peter's description as well is of a woman who loads it on to get attention.

Men do the same, don't we? Now, the jewelry might change through the centuries, but the principal warning remains the same. Women, be careful what you wear. Be careful how you gain attention.

Be careful in what you might be communicating through what you wear. Don't wear your wealth on your sleeve, so to speak. Don't show off, especially in the church. We're not here to tell everybody how much money we've got, especially outside the church. Then, as you represent the gospel, don't demonstrate to your world that you're all about the stuff they're after. So be careful.

Don't focus on the physical. Now, the third adornment mention you notice in the text at the anniversary is putting on dresses. This doesn't mean you can't wear a dress. Doesn't mean you can't wear beautiful clothing. In fact, Peter, by the way, let me just say this as an aside, is not telling Christian women to look unkempt. Do your best to look unattractive, plain. And there are churches that believe that.

And so everybody wears one or two colors, and it's as plain as it can be. He's not suggesting that. He isn't forbidding braiding hair, jewelry, and nice clothes. But what Peter's going to do, and he's kind of setting it all up, is he's going to redefine beauty. He's going to tell us what true beauty is. He's going to tell the women in the assembly that true beauty is more than skin deep. The world never gets past the skin. True beauty is beneath that. Now, Peter moves on to tell us what and how. Look at verse 4. But let it be the hidden person of the heart.

Before we dive in, let me just make a comment or two. The word for heart here is cardia. It gives us our word cardiology. It's the seat of who you are. As a man thinks in his heart, your heart doesn't think.

Your heart's a muscle that's pumping. But it represents the seat of who you are. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. There's a lot of debate about asking Jesus into your heart. A lot of people say that's a terrible expression.

I think it's a great expression. You're asking Jesus to come into the very seat of who you are, represented by your heart. In biblical terms, the heart for the believer represents the regenerated nature. That's the place where the Holy Spirit, in his inner private work of grace, is bringing about what we call the fruit of the Spirit that demonstrates itself outwardly. One author writes, it is in the heart where true beauty becomes real and long-lasting.

Now, Peter's contrasting, and he's doing a play on words. He's contrasting the physical world, the cosmos, with the spiritual world, the cardia. He's drawing a contrast between cosmetics and the cardia, that which is external and that which is internal, that which is physical and that which is spiritual. He's basically telling women to focus on their heart, to get dressed up from the inside out, first and foremost, to spend more time grooming their heart than they groom their bodies, to spend more time spiritually than physically.

Just what should we be developing in the privacy of our hearts? Peter is giving these women two qualities. Notice in verse 4, a gentle and a quiet spirit, a gentle spirit. This is a word that could mean gracious.

You might write that in the margin of your Bible or consider it. It's a word that refers to kindness as opposed to being demanding. By the way, gentleness is in the list of one of the fruits of the spirit, right? Galatians chapter 5, the fruit of the spirit includes this word, which means this isn't for women only. This isn't just a feminine quality but a masculine quality.

We'll get to men eventually in this text, and the audience will be packed with women, I'm sure. Sometimes the word gentle is translated meek. You might pick that up in your memory. And you might remember that Jesus is called meek, Matthew 11 29. Meekness doesn't mean doormatness. This word, gentleness, does not mean weakness. It's actually a word that refers to power under control.

It's emotion under control. So Peter isn't recommending that women become doormats at best or open to abuse at worst. He isn't suggesting that women can't share their minds or their opinions. In fact, Jesus was known by the same quality. He definitely spoke his mind and shared his opinion. But the Lord was never out of control.

He was intentional. Let's go on to the next. Peter adds the second quality. He adds a quiet spirit. She's quiet.

And all the men said, wisely, nothing. Is that what this means? Especially in church, come in, be quiet.

No. It doesn't mean she never makes noise. The word Peter uses is a word that relates to peace.

She is literally at peace. This is a unique Christian distinctive. Out there in the world, a woman is not at peace with who she is. The Gospel allows you to understand your identity is in Christ. And when you understand who you are in relation to the Gospel of Christ, that can give you a settled confidence. You belong to him. He's made you the way he's made you.

He's crafted you uniquely by his creative hand. And you're at peace. In a multi-volume Greek dictionary known to seminary students in here, simply as kiddel, it describes this word as someone who calmly bears the disturbances created by others without creating disturbances themselves.

That's good. Someone who calmly bears the disturbances created by others without creating disturbances themselves. And when you think of the immediate context here, this inner quality is critical and totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit. I mean, here's a believing wife. She's married to an obstinate man who cares nothing about the Gospel, as we've learned.

He wants nothing to do with it. And in the midst of that obvious distressing turmoil, she has a sense of peace. Things around her are like war at times, not to mention the culture. But she has settled confidence of her acceptance with Christ. This is an undeniable work of God's Spirit. It's going to be so unusual that Peter implies that the unbelieving husband won't be able to ignore the fact that there's something different about her. He's caught up in the war.

She seems to be at peace. There's turmoil everywhere, and she has this sense of graciousness and confidence. Especially critical in this immediate context.

Why? The unbelieving husband isn't going to take note of how many times you go to church, how many times you pray, how many verses you memorize, how many chapters you read. He's going to notice the demeanor in how you go about the routine drudgeries of life, and how you handle the turmoil and difficulties around you. You talk in terms of these qualities, and you're talking about attention-grabbing for the right reason. You're talking about different. You're talking about unusual. And in his vocabulary, you are talking about beautiful, truly beautiful. An old proverb puts it this way, a woman whose smile is wide and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears or how she looks.

This beauty is more than skin deep. He can't buy these qualities he defines for us here. They aren't sold over the counter. You'll never find them on sale.

In fact, they can't be purchased. They are developed by the Spirit of God down deep below the skin in the heart. Now, I want to point out quickly there are two qualities about these that he mentions, gentleness, quietness, that makes them unique.

Notice earlier in verse 4, Peter writes these qualities are imperishable, imperishable. In simple terms, he's saying this stuff lasts. What's in fashion out there will go out of fashion. You've noticed that, haven't you? If you've lived long enough, I mean, girls are wearing the same shoes you wore in high school, made out of cork. That was in the 70s, tie dye. I went to the Volkswagen dealership the other day to get some repairs done on my daughter's bug and they're all wearing tie dye t-shirts and they think they're cool. We know they look stupid, but don't say a word to them. They're going to look at pictures one day, I wore that. Those of you that wear neckties, all two of you, you've noticed that they get wide and then skinny and then wide and then skinny. Just don't throw any of them away.

You will be in style year-round. It's going to fade away. It's imperishable. It means literally unfading.

These qualities never go out of style, graciousness, quiet confidence. That's never yesterday. It's always fresh. Even though everything about us is getting older, even though we might try to deny it, the temporary is fading away no matter how young we still see ourselves. If you're older, if you're past 35, you realize you sort of stopped at 35. You still see yourself as younger and that's why you avoid the mirror at all costs, but it's really strange.

I was talking to somebody about this the other day and I had this sent to me in an email where a woman illustrated it perfectly humorously. A woman was sitting in the waiting room for her first appointment with a new dentist and she noticed his diploma hanging on the wall that had his full name and she recognized that name and then she remembered. It could be that handsome young man with the same name who had been in her high school graduating class so many years ago and she wondered, could this be the dentist?

Could this be the same guy, my new dentist that I had a crush on way back then? Then she discarded those thoughts when he walked in. He was slightly bent over, balding, gray-headed, deep wrinkles in his face and she thought he's way too old to have been my classmate. Still, after he examined her teeth, she asked, did you by any chance attend Morgan Park High School?

He said, yes, and with pride he said, I'm still a Morgan Mustang. Well, she asked, when did you graduate? He said, I was in the graduating class of 1959.

Why do you ask? She said, I knew you looked familiar. You were in my class. Really, he said, looking at her closely.

Then he asked her, what class did you teach? Peter, back to the text, is reminding his audience, you know, you're focusing on stuff that's fading away, it's fading away. In fact, if you try to keep up, it's just going to require more and more help. Cosmetics, focus instead on dressing your heart. Allow the inner working of the Holy Spirit to produce character. Character like these attributes never fade away.

They never go out of style. Then he adds, verse four, the last part, these qualities are precious in the sight of God. Now that word precious, at least in my translation, doesn't mean, you know, isn't that sweet? That's precious. Now, this word means valuable, costly, even priceless.

And again, this is a play on concepts. The world lavishes money on expensive stuff. It's precious to them. It's costly. It's valuable.

God says, no, no, no. This is valuable. This is costly. This is precious.

A gentle, gracious, quiet, calm, confident spirit. And he stamps on those a price tag of the highest value. And let me, before we get too far here, let me just encourage the men, the brothers in this assembly. Make sure we're modeling the heart of God.

Make sure we're attaching the same price tag to the things he says are valuable. Let's make sure we communicate a reformed mind in the assembly especially, certainly out there in the workaday world. Let's make sure the way we talk to our sisters in the assembly, that we communicate by the way we look and talk and act, that we're more interested not so much on their face or their figure or their fashion. We are interested in encouraging their faith and their faithfulness to Christ. Let's allow them, especially in the church, to get off that wheel that just keeps spinning. This attitude, this obsession which has brought such a terrible cost, especially for women, this sense of never looking good enough, never being pretty enough, never measuring up, feeling ugly, inferior, unlovable. I want you to know as your pastor teacher, I have had women come to me and say, there is a man or there are men in this church, I don't know how to respond, they treat me.

Obviously, in relation to my figure and my face, like I told one after the first hour, give me their name and I'll call them up. Let's not do that in here. Let's model what God considers valuable, priceless. What matters most about you, ladies, will never be hanging in your closet.

It'll never be tucked inside a jewelry case. What matters has nothing to do with style. Even though you have a style, we like that. Everybody has a different style.

I've got daughters. What matters most is spirit. It has nothing to do with less wrinkles or less weight or newer clothes or shinier, more expensive jewelry. That stuff isn't eternally valuable.

Guess what? It's fading away. I've seen first century jewelry and none of you would wear it. None of you would wear it. What God is doing in your heart is priceless.

What impacts your husband, for those of you who are married, especially those of you who are married to unbelieving husbands, what brings God great glory will not be your appearance, but your attitude, that graciousness and calmness that the Spirit of God is developing in your heart. Let's be careful that we avoid the obsession of our world. I've got a little time here. I know we're going to get close here to overtime, but maybe you've noticed the natural inclination.

We all do it. We try not to be obvious, but when we meet someone for the first time, we have this mental inventory. We kind of size them up.

It's unconscious. We're not writing things down, but you notice the color of their hair and their complexion and their clothing and maybe even their accent or their shoes, their fashion, whatever. We sort of size them up. That really started young. It started very young. In fact, I've talked to elementary school teachers in our assembly who said, in the first grade, everybody in the class is rated by the backpack they have, even by the food in their lunchbox, the name brands on their clothes. I mean, first grade. In fact, I had one teacher tell me, if in the third grade you don't have a smartphone, you are a nobody.

We're supposed to grow out of that, aren't we? That kind of inventory. That's the way the world sizes everybody up. You notice, however, as you get to know somebody, you really know someone, that early inventory really doesn't matter, does it? The accent, you might not even hardly notice. The clothing doesn't define who they are.

In fact, as you get to know them, you measure their value by personality and work ethic and faithfulness or spirit. What kind of shoes are they wearing? What kind of car are they pulled up in? Have you ever thought about the fact that the world out there never gets past that initial inventory? They never get past the face and the fashion. That's why when you pull up in that grocery store aisle to buy that stuff and I'm looking at the magazines, guess what it's all about? The face.

The fashion. Who's in? Who's out? Who has the most stuff? Who's the most popular?

They never get past the physical. It is Jesus Christ that wants to take us deeper than skin deep. To take us to matters that matter most. To the heart, to character and spirit. Peter writes to women in his culture and to women today in this culture who are enslaved to their bodies, bound up with the physical, focused on the temporary and says, let me define for you what's really beautiful. And if no one else in your world and in this context, your husband, seems to notice, let me just remind you, God does and he considers you precious as you pursue those things. That was a lesson called More Than Skin Deep here on Wisdom for the Heart.

It comes from the series For Better or For Worse. Stephen is the pastor of the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. In addition, Stephen is also the president of Shepherd's Theological Seminary. Shepherd's Seminary is equipping and training pastors and Christian leaders for a lifetime of service. But even if you don't feel called to full-time Christian ministry, Shepherd's Theological Seminary can equip you to better understand God's Word.

You can study online right where you live. There's also a very unique one-year program where you can relocate to this area for a year. During that time, you would study God's Word, experience authentic community, grow in discipleship, take a trip to Israel and do some study there, and earn your master's degree in theological studies.

You can do all of that in one year. If something like this sounds interesting to you, we'd like you to learn more. If you navigate to our website and then scroll to the bottom of the page, there's a link to Shepherd's Theological Seminary where you can learn more. You'll find us online at wisdomonline.org. Once you go there, you'll be able to access the complete library of Stephen's Bible Teaching Ministry. We also post each day's broadcast, so if you ever miss one of these lessons, you can go to our website and keep caught up with our daily Bible Teaching Ministry. You'll find each day's broadcast right on our homepage.

You can also navigate to the previous broadcasts as well if you want to go back a little bit. The Library of Stephen's Teaching Ministry is available on that site. Stephen has been teaching the Bible for over 35 years, and in that time, he's preached hundreds of sermons. All of those are posted to our website. You'll find that collection of sermons organized by Book of the Bible. If there's a particular book you want to study, and if Stephen has preached through it, you can listen or read each message. All of that content is available to you free of charge. You can access it anytime at wisdomonline.org. Join us back here next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. .