Chapter 2: God wants your Heart and your Body.
Why Dress and Appearance STILL Matter.

My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.
--Proverbs 23:26

Many of God's own have questioned the importance of how a person dresses. "This is trivial, Brother Ed," they say, "why do you bother to preach on this?" Well, actually they are right that it is trivial. This is a subject that God does not deal with in every book. Probably, because God knows that this is trivial. This is in fact so trivial that I am at a loss to explain, when everyone agrees that how you dress is so unimportant, why God's children rebel with such vigor when you tell them what to wear.

If it matters so little to you child of God, then why do you rebel against the Bible's dress code in the first place?

Many people will say, "Well, God does not care what you look like on the outside. God just looks on the heart." That is true. God does look on the heart, but man cannot see the heart. Man can only see the outer. Not only that, the outer appearance is usually a pretty good indicator of what is in a person's heart. Although it is possible to look right on the outside and be wrong on the inside, it is well nigh impossible to look wrong on the outside and be right on the inside. What is on the outside comes from the inside. That is why Jesus said, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." (Matthew12:34).

Jesus not only taught us that when we speak the contents of our hearts are overflowing out of our mouths. He took it a step farther. Jesus said that when we are judged every idle word would be held in judgment. Have you ever stopped to think about when your mouth is idling? When your car is running and it is sitting in your drive-way going no-where it is idling. When you are running off at the mouth and going no-where your mouth is on idle. In other words when you are not thinking about choosing your words carefully. The contents of your character are displayed when you smash your thumb in the door of your car by what comes out of your mouth.

These idle thoughtless expressions reveal what kind of person we are for real. Without pretentiousness or the hypocrisy that may otherwise be draped over us. The kinds of things you would ramble about to your spouse or sister. The things you know they will never repeat. Of course we forget that everything we say goes from our lips to God's ear.

Granted, a man could say the right things, and have a wrong heart, but a man who had a right heart would never say the wrong things. The application of this principle goes beyond speech. Our Lord said that we know a tree by what fruit adorns it (Matthew 7:16-20). So the outer appearance is the only indicator that man has that someone is right with God. If Jesus abides in your heart as Lord and Master then you will not rebel against Him in something as trivial as dress. God does care how we look.

Not only does God care how we look, there are rules in the Bible for both men and women that should govern our appearance. Now, whenever you start to talking about these rules, the women are always the first ones to complain, because there are more rules for the women than there are for the men. And I often wonder why the Bible has all these rules for the women and very few rules for the men. The reason why is because men and women are made differently. I know that is not a "politically correct" thing to say, but it is none the less true. God made man and women differently. Men are stimulated by sight. This is why Jesus told the men of His day, "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). Men are stimulated by sight. Men are always attracted to a lady, physically, before they are connected to her emotionally. In fact, they do not even want to pursue the possibility of an emotional relationship, if the physical attraction is not there.

Women on the other hand are stimulated by touch. It could be a physical touch or an emotional touch. So all a man has to do is look at a woman, and he is stimulated. A woman has to be talked to, and she has to be touched. And as I said, that touch can be emotional. A man could talk to a woman in such a way that she is touched emotionally. Or it could be a physical touch. He could begin to pet her or stroke her in some way and that would begin to stimulate her. That is why pornography is sold mainly to men. There is some pornography that is sold to women, but statisticians tell us that the majority of the pornographic magazines that are published for women are actually purchased by a man. This is because women are not really stimulated by sight. That is why you can go to the mall and see some of the ugliest guys with some of the most attractive women, because they know how to touch. They know how to touch emotionally and how to touch physically, so the woman is satisfied, whereas the man has to see something. He is stimulated by sight.

Therefore, God has given certain commands to women regarding their appearance, so they will not stimulate men. And God has given different commands to men, such as in First Corinthians 7:1, which says, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. And then verse two, Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." So while a woman is commanded to dress a certain way so the man is not stimulated, the man is commanded to act a certain way, to behave a certain way, so the woman is not stimulated. That is why the commands are different. That is why the man is commanded, "Defraud ye not" (I Corinthians 7:5), and also commanded not to touch (I Corinthians 7:1). The additional rules for appearance given to the lady are for the lady's own protection. They are designed to protect her from the lusts of men.

For a woman, a great motivation for dressing and looking properly should be that she is jealous for her husband. First Corinthians 7:4 says, "The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband." The Bible says my wife belongs to me. She is my property. I own her. That is really not "politically correct," is it? But it is true. The Bible says it, and I would not want another man to be taking possession, even if only in his mind, of my property. I'm very territorial. There is only one man in the world who has the right to lust after my wife, and that is Me. And when a woman dresses in such a way where she shows her form, or shows her figure, or shows her nakedness, what she is doing is taking something that belongs to her husband and giving it to another man. So you may say, "Well, I did not go to bed with him." No, lady, but you showed him something that did not belong to him. You showed him something he had no right to see. You showed him something that your husband and only your husband has the legal right to see. So a woman, for the love of her husband, should want to be modest.

And by the way, if you are not married, your body still belongs to your husband, whoever he will turn out to be. Therefore, if you go showing it all off because you are not married, you are robbing your future husband. You are taking something that will belong to him and giving it to someone else, and that is not right. So you may say, "Well, I have to show it off to get a husband." You do that, and there is a good chance that you will wind up with the wrong kind of husband. If you dress shamefacedly, then the only thing a man could be attracted to would be your countenance, your face, your character and your personality. It would take quite a man to become attracted to that, because men are not naturally attracted to those things at first. Naturally, the man is attracted to the flesh first, and the rest comes later. So if you can find a man who, without first having seen your body, is attracted to you, you have attracted the right kind of man.

Men ought to care how their wives dress. There are some who may say, "Well, I do not care how my wife dresses. If she wants to dress that way, that's fine." If you do not mind her showing her body, I guess that is your business. Personally, I do not want my wife showing off her body. If you do not care, well, I have a phone number of a pretty good divorce lawyer, and you are probably going to need him sooner or later, because I doubt if you love your wife. Sooner or later, it is going to end, if you do not care. Obviously, your affection is in the wrong place. If you really loved something, you would want to protect it. So if it is not something you want to protect, chances are you really do not love it.

Finally, If we are going to win the world, we have to be different from the world, and God wants us to have a testimony. God wants us to be different. He wants us to look different. He wants us to be a peculiar people, chosen to Himself. To please our Lord, and be more like our Father is the Greatest motivation for dressing and looking properly.