What to Wear?!

Hi, Mr. Thomas. Good afternoon, everyone. Hope you've had a good week. Seems like these weeks just blend together, but hopefully it's been a good one for everyone. I'm going to get my screen ready to share with you here as well.

Put you up to full screen.

So on a beautiful sunny Sabbath day, we will spend a little time today asking the question what to wear. And for those of you who are about to hang up and leave this sermon, know it's not going to be about what to wear to church services.

You've probably all heard the phrase or the question or the exclamation, what to wear, maybe it's I have nothing to wear, maybe it's followed by a line like, does this make me look fat, or does this make me look old? And it's a question that we often have.

Clothing is sort of at the center of what we think about, especially when we think about different events that we go to. It does seem to be a never-ending dilemma. It's interesting in the days of the pandemic and COVID, the equation has changed entirely, hasn't it? We were just traveling a bit this week as a family, and of course going through the airport, sitting on an airplane, a face mask, is mandatory. We saw some people traveling actually covered in plastic suits, some people wearing goggles, some wearing the plastic face visors over their face. What it is that we put on our bodies becomes even more important as we're worried about some of the things that are out in the environment around us. And of course, we've all experienced this now as we've gone to the grocery store, depending perhaps on the jobs that we're working. I know we have several who are working in a health care profession, and what you wear becomes very important. Sometimes a matter of life and death, actually, especially in this environment if you're going into a health care situation where there might be people who can infect you. And of course, for those who are working from home, it's also changed the equation. It's been kind of interesting watching the migration of things here over the course of the last few months. At first, for those who hadn't spent much time working at home before, you found a lot of people who, if they were on video calls, they kept their webcams off and said they hadn't taken a shower in three or four days. They didn't want to appear on camera. I can certainly recall certain people that I've come on to video meetings with who looked like they hadn't shaved in several days, and of course with hair salons closed in many parts of the country, have seen some interesting hairstyles as well. We've also seen, for those who've watched the news, we've probably seen this early on. I don't know this guy's name, but he's a reporter on Good Morning America, and he figured he'd be okay just being dressed from the waist up for his shot that he was doing from home and not realizing how wide-angle his camera was, and of course getting this reaction from the anchor. So what we wear and the situation we're in and making sure both literally and figuratively that we have our pants on is a pretty important thing in life, isn't it? Have we ever considered, though, the volume of Scripture related to how we're clothed? I don't know if it's something that most people have looked into very carefully. It's not something I spent necessarily a ton of time on before preparing this sermon, but there is actually quite a bit of Scripture that has to do with the topic of clothing. So a few references that just come to mind in general terms are here on the screen. We think about and talk sometimes at Passover time about the fact that in the Old Testament Passover back in Exodus, the children of Israel were told that they were supposed to eat the Passover with their loins girded.

They were supposed to be prepared, ready to travel, ready to be on the move. Again, their attire, the things that they were wearing, matching up with the attitude that they were supposed to have, what it was that they were supposed to be prepared to do.

In Exodus 28, we see an entire chapter devoted in the Old Testament to the garments that the priests were to wear in ancient Israel as they were moving across the wilderness. It seems maybe a little counterintuitive or unusual that of people who were living in tents and temporary structures, and even their tabernacle was something that was made of wood and animal skins that could easily be taken down for traveling. Yet here we have an entire chapter of the Bible, and not only that chapter, but many additional chapters that talk about the attire that the priests put on.

It was very important in the commands that God gave to ancient Israel how they were to be dressed, and the things that they were dressed in all had symbolic meaning. A whole sermon could be given, if not several of them, just about those garments that the priests wore and what the symbolic meaning of those things were and what they revealed about God. In Job 29, Job talks about the fact that he was clothed in righteousness, using it as a metaphor for how it was that he lived his life. In this particular section of Job, as Job was going through his severe trials, he was reminiscing on what life was like. This passage talks about all of the things that he did back in his old life, back before times got difficult. One of the things he talked about is he would walk down the street, and he was clothed in righteousness. He talked about the fact that people saw that the things that he did, the actions he took, and the way that he operated as a person, was righteous, and using the metaphor of being clothed in righteousness. When John the Baptist came, the forerunner coming before Jesus Christ to proclaim Jesus Christ's coming and to make a way for him, the Bible carefully points out the fact that he was dressed in camel hair. So he wore something that was different or set himself apart, and this also had a lot of symbolic meaning.

Camel hair was very rough clothing. We heard in the sermonette about clothing and whether clothing make the man. John the Baptist was deliberately dressed in rough clothing, and it was meant to be a contrast between the fine clothing with those who were in positions of authority and had a lot of a lot of resources we're wearing, and John the Baptist, who's coming in truth but clothed in very rough apparel and showing that it wasn't the outward things that mattered, the message that he carried. And then lastly, in Revelation, one other example where the righteousness of the saints is talked about as being white linen.

So again, clothing used as a metaphor, in this case, for sinlessness and for righteousness of those who will inherit eternal life. So how is it that a Christian is to be clothed? I'm going to spend a little bit of time in this message to talk in more detail about one specific turn of phrase that the Bible uses to talk about how we're clothed, what that means, and then delve in there a little bit further to the way that we conduct our Christian lives. So we'll use today the biblical analogy of girding the loins.

This probably sounds like a pretty strange phrase to a lot of people, and I'm not sure how many have really even thought about this phrase in recent time. It's primarily a phrase that actually appears in the King James version, and if we go to different passages that you read about girding the loins, we'll actually see that in many biblical translations, many of the more modern translations, that terminology has actually been changed.

So as we're going through some of the scriptures, you'll see how on some of the slides I refer specifically to the King James version, because in many of the situations that we'll read, this turn of phrase of girding the loins has simply been changed to something else, like being prepared or putting something around your waist or something along those lines.

It's just not something that's used very frequently in life today. If those who had kids came in and said, all right kids, gird your loins, it's time to go to school, you'd probably get a pretty quizzical look and nobody would really know what you're talking about. But in the Bible, it's something that's used repeatedly, both in a figurative sense and in a literal sense. And so before we go further in the message, I do want to spend some time just on this phrase, where it appears and what some of the meaning is.

And first, just a couple of examples. First one, literal example that's used in the Bible, and it's one that we already referred to a few minutes ago in terms of girding the loins. It's in Exodus 12 verse 11. And again, if you're reading in something like the New King James Version or the New International Version, I believe the actual phrase there will not appear.

But in the King James in Exodus 12, 11, we see that the command of the children of Israel, as they were eating this meal prior to leaving Egypt, they were commanded, thus shall you eat it with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It's the Lord's Passover. So for somebody of that time, of course, they weren't using English, but they were using a phrase that was translated this way at least in the time of King James, the King James translation of the Bible.

This was a very literal understood phrase, and it paired with shoes on your feet, staff in your hand. It was a very specific instruction, one that the people would have understood. They were literally being asked to be dressed in a certain way, along with the shoes and the staff. And it had to do with eating it in haste. Now, if we go on the figurative side of things, we also see that it was used in a figurative sense as a metaphor, if you will, to refer to other things.

And in Job 40 verses 6 and 7, again we're reading the King James version, and if you're reading a different version, you'll probably see a slightly different turn of phrase at the beginning of verse 7.

But here, we're a little bit later in the book of Job, and for those who haven't read Job recently, I think as we understand, Job goes through this time period where he goes through, he's originally somebody who's got a great deal of wealth, a very happy family, everything, if you will, that life can offer, and then he goes through some very severe trials as torment is brought on him. And at the end of the book, he's coming back to God and talking with God and learning some lessons, especially that he needs to submit himself to the will of God and allow God to lead him.

And in Job 40 is a section at the end of the book where God is speaking to Job, and he says in verse 6, he answers Job out of the whirlwind, and he said, Gird up your loins now like a man. I will demand of you and declare you unto me. So what he's saying figuratively speaking is, look, Job, man up, all right?

It's time for you to listen. It's time to deal with things. It's time to stop avoiding things. It's time to listen and have some reason brought to you. And so both figuratively and literally, this idea of girding the loins had meaning, and it was something that was done commonly enough in those times that it meant something to them. Now, of course, the question is, what in the world does it mean? What is a loin? And why do you have to gird it? I'm sure these are questions we wake up asking just about every day, aren't they?

Well, probably not. But for today, I thought it would be interesting to delve into a little bit, because it is a biblical metaphor, and it's one that we probably don't understand. And chances are we haven't spent a lot of time reflecting on it and thinking about it either. So first of all, what is a loin? Boy, this sermon is going places you guys probably never expected it would. You talk to your friends tomorrow, and they ask you what you talked about in services.

You can tell them you talked about girding the loins and defining what a loin is. That'll get a good conversation going with your neighbors, I'm sure. So figuratively, a loin refers to anything having to do with the midsection of the body. So the general region of the body, the middle portion of the body. And so we read a whole lot of a bunch of different references made to the loins. In Genesis 35 verse 11, there's a prophecy given to Abraham, and he's told that kings will come from his loins. And so there it's talking figuratively about having children, and that his descendants will include kings. Second Samuel 20, David is working together with the band of men who's traveling around with him, protecting him, and working their way across the countryside.

And as they're preparing for a battle, David says to them to gird to their loins, gird their swords to their loins. So again, talking about that midsection, you can imagine a belt that would have been worn, and the sword scrapped to that belt. Now again, going to a figurative side of things in Psalm 69 verse 23.

Here, the psalmist is talking about his enemies and praying that his enemies will be weakened.

And one of the things it's talked about is shaking in the loins. So talking about that weakness in the midsection, a week back, difficulty moving because of difficulties in that midsection of the body just having mobility, and the shaking of the loins was viewed as something that was weakness. And then lastly, we think often, probably, if we think of the word loins at all and what it means in a male context. But in Proverbs 31, which is the, we often talk about as the virtuous woman, in Proverbs 31 verse 17, again, if you went to the King James Version, you would see that the virtuous woman is talked about as somebody who has strength in her loins. So again, the loins refer to the midsection of the body, viewed in a lot of ways as the seat of strength. Because if you think of this time, the biblical time, everything that was happening happened as a result of manual labor. There wasn't a lot of machinery, carts and maybe plows that were towed by oxen or donkeys or perhaps horses or camels, would have been the main mechanized forms of work that existed at that point in time. Anything else that was heavy labor had a lot to do with lifting and moving and picking up and putting places. All of those things that have to do with the midsection of your body stress your back out. And so, a woman who was productive was also viewed as somebody who had a lot of strength in her body as well. So literally, the loins are the muscles on each side of the vertebrae in your body. I know we've got some people here who are studying anatomy right now, and they could probably explain a whole lot better than I could what all this means. But the muscles, so if you're sitting right now, just take your hands, put them behind your back right above your pelvis, and you feel those large muscles that are on either side of your spinal column. Those are the loins. And with animals, we know that a nice cut of meat is a beef tenderloin. It comes from the same place. If you look it up, you'll see that it's the muscles that are below the rib cage and above the pelvic region on a human. And similarly with other vertebrate animals, you're going to find muscles similar to that. And they're typically very strong muscles because they're helping to control the hips and the back. And most any movement that you make with the body is going to involve those muscles, which is why they're so important. Hard work or combat if you're fighting requires free movement of those back muscles. Imagine being dressed in your suit and tie like some of us are today, and having to go out and do yard work and raking and things like that. The jacket that you have on is going to restrict the amount of movement that you can make, which makes that movement more difficult. Stereotypically, if we watch movies, we see people, they're about to get in a fight. What do they do? They take off their jacket, right? And they roll up their sleeves. They're trying to make more movement in their body. So that midsection of the body, the back, the shoulders, you can twist and move and still have that dexterity and that range of motion that you need. We still refer to hard work as back-breaking work, I think for this reason. An injury in this part of the body makes it very hard to function. I know we've got some people in our congregation have lower back problems, and if you talk to them on occasion, and they'll say, boy, it's been a tough week, I've basically been flat out on my back because of lower back problems, and it causes any movement to make pain.

I've only experienced this a couple of times in my life, but many people have this where you get out of bed and you're bent over and you can't even quite stand up straight because there's so much pain in your lower back, whether it's skeletal because of something being out or because of its soreness from hard work. All of these things in that lower back proportion that is the loin can really impact your body. Whether you're sitting, standing, moving, whatever you're doing, that part of the body is involved. So now that we know a little bit about what the loins are, how do we gird them? And probably more importantly, why do we care about all of this? So we need to consider, first of all, how people at this time dressed would think about how to gird the loins. Typically, they wore a robe-like tunic with a belt. So many of us have probably seen this type of thing in pictures. They would wear this robe. It would be relatively loose-fitting and fastened at the weight, often with a relatively heavy belt. And under the tunic, it wasn't that they didn't wear anything at all. They wore loin cloths. So again, there was some type of underwear that was around the waist, and it was worn under the tunic. And of course, here in Middle Eastern society, it's not unusual still today to see people wearing those. We'll sometimes see news pictures, for example, of some of the rulers of Saudi Arabia or other kingdoms in the Middle East. And we'll see them wearing not only the headdresses, but we'll see them wearing robes from head to toe, usually with some sort of belt around them. And though people in the time of Jesus Christ or before him in the times of ancient Israel would not have been dressed quite as opulently or luxuriously, they would still have been wearing robes of that sort. Now the issue with wearing a robe like that is if you have work to do, it gets really inconvenient because it gets in the way. And that's where girding loins comes into play. So believe it or not, there was actually an article written and posted in the Art of Nanliness about four or five years ago, and it was actually reprinted into an article in the Huffington Post all about how to gird up your loins. And I thought I'd share the visuals from that article because it did about as good a job as I could find of demonstrating what it meant. And my wife forbid me from demonstrating it live on a webcam, so I'm going to rely on these pictures instead, which is probably better for all of us. So to gird up your loins, simple six-part instructions. Number one, we show someone, we see someone dressed in the typical tunic like they would have worn at this time in history. And the tunic, as noted here, wouldn't allow heavy labor or fighting in battle.

And so as a result of that, you had to gird your loins in order to free yourself up for movement.

And so the first step, as we see in number two, is you hoist up the tunic so all the fabric is above the knees. And of course, the idea here is if you've got your legs freed up, it's a lot more easy to move because you're not dragging this long tunic around that's limiting the range of motion of your legs. And then as we see in number three, the extra material that results as you gather all of that up above the knees is gathered together so the back of the tunic is snug against the back of the legs. And then in number four, we see that all of that excess fabric then gets gathered up in front and pulled underneath and between the legs towards the back. And this feels in some ways a lot like a diaper. It's like swaddling or diapering a child in some ways because you've got all this fabric that you're putting through and then you're going to tuck in. And so in number five, half of the material then gets gathered in each hand and it's brought around to the front.

And then lastly, those two handfuls of material are tied together and you're set for battle, for hard labor, or whatever it is. You've girded up your loins. And so we can see here, as it's shown in this case, the man tied those pieces together. We see other references to tucking those pieces into a belt. And so someone had a large, strong, and heavy belt. That extra fabric that was gathered up when somebody girded their loins could be tucked into that belt. And again, this is from the art of manliness. I think they did a real good job here with an illustration of this.

So like we talked about a few minutes ago, the literal meaning of girding the loins means being prepared for hard work or battle. You can see the difference between wearing that long tunic, having that robe-like garment hanging all the way down to your ankles, and being unencumbered and ready for action at the point that you girded yourself. You hiked up that robe, you tucked in the edges, whether you tied them off or tucked them into your belt, and you were really ready to move. You could bend over, you could pick up large loads, you could carry things around without having to worry about tripping over the hems of your robe. Or if you were in battle, you'd have free movement, being able to turn the shoulders, move the legs quickly in order to be able to have all the action that you needed. And this is in contrast to relaxing. Sitting back in long robes is actually a metaphor we even use today for relaxing, isn't it? We use sort of the idea of sitting back in an easy chair in a robe or a smoking jacket and being relaxed and comfortable.

And that's in sharp contrast to this idea of girding the loins, where you bring up those robes, you have them shortened, and you're ready for action, you're ready for battle.

So as Christians, we bring this all around to what this means for us, and as a figure of speech that's used in the Bible, we're to be prepared for work and battle and not dressed every day for comfort and relaxation. And this is something that's reinforced in numerous places within the Bible, as we'll look at. And how we're spiritually dressed is vital to our Christian lives.

I think we know and we've seen the passages in the Bible that talk about how important it is to take our calling seriously, and this is what it refers to. Let's look at 1 Peter 1, we'll read verses 13 and 14. Here used figuratively, and also in the New King James Version, still kept in the old figure of speech of girding up the loins. Therefore, in verse 13 of 1 Peter 1, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts as in your ignorance. So there's a contrast being set up here, and hopefully this idea and this figure of speech of girding up the loins of your mind makes a little bit more sense now after what we covered in the last 10 or 15 minutes. Not just some weird figure of speech that just doesn't make a lot of sense, but an actual activity that people in that day and time would have done perhaps numerous times a day as they were going back and forth from getting work done to relaxing over a midday meal, maybe going back out in their fields in the afternoon and working again. And we see also here in the Christian context girding up the loins of our minds, being sober, being focused, being ready for work, and not going the easy route, as we see in verse 14, of conforming ourselves to the former lusts. This is bringing out that same contrast that we talked about a few minutes ago about that difference between having the robes let down, ready for relaxation and comfort, versus having them girded up ready for action. And being ready for action is what we need to do as Christians. Looking in Luke 12, Luke 12 is Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount. We're often used to reading this in Matthew 4, 5, and 6, I believe, as the section. Here, though, in Luke 12 we see Luke's account of that time. And Jesus Christ, in his own words, tells the disciples and the others listening to him, let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and you yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks, they may open unto him immediately.

And there's a lot here, isn't there? When we read the words, wait for their lord, when he talks about the fact that their loins should be girded about, and their lights burning, the burning lights we know are similar to the analogy that we've read in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.

They needed to have oil in their lamps, and their lights burning. And likewise, now, we understand, we see that their loins should be girded about, that they should be ready for movement, ready for action. And when we read in verse 36, men waiting for their lord, we understand now that if their loins are girded, these aren't people who are waiting, sitting back, having a drink, having their robes down, and taking it easy, trying to stay awake. The situation we're supposed to be in is one that's ready for action, ready for work or battle, so that when Jesus returns, in this case talked about as the bridegroom returning from the wedding, we'll be ready and open to him immediately. So hopefully understanding this figure of speech a little better helps us to understand these verses more. Further, in Hebrews 12.1, we don't see the specifics of girding the loins referred to, but the same thought. Therefore, we also, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. And we know, of course, that wearing those robes, they couldn't run unless they had girded themselves.

So wrapping up this first section about how Christian is to be clothed, our loins must be girded, figuratively speaking. We have to be ready for action, and we've seen how this is the opposite of being dressed for relaxation or comfort. We're supposed to be ready for battle and for hard work. So let's think a little bit more about this, because being prepared for battle can mean a whole lot of things. What battle have we been, have we prepared to fight? What battle should we be prepared to fight? Let's turn to Ephesians 6, and we'll read verses 10 through 17 of Ephesians 6.

This is a verse that hopefully many of us are familiar with. It's referred to as the armor of God for reasons that it talks about our Christian lives and things that we do as Christians, and likens them to the armor that a Roman soldier would have worn. In Ephesians 6 verse 10, Paul writes, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. So Paul makes it clear before he starts talking about the armor itself that we need to know our enemy and what it is that we're fighting against. There's so many battles we could fight these days. The battles of popular culture, the battles of politics, the battles of nations against each other. There's a battle against the virus that we're all familiar with right now. But the battle that Paul focuses us on, and that our clothing, our armor that we wear as Christians, is against the spiritual battle. And therefore, in verse 13, he says, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. And then in verse 14, he goes on and says, stand therefore, having done all this preparation, stand, having girded your waste with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with preparation of the gospel of peace, above all taking the shield of faith, with which you'll be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. I want to focus on those two sections that I highlighted a bit. We talked about girding. Girding your waste with truth. You think about going into battle, we talked about the fact that you would gird things. You might take the hem of your tunic, and put those into your waist to hold it up and out of the waist so you could fight without a problem. And the other thing that would often be girded to the waist would be weaponry, for example, in this case, a sword. And that sword of the Spirit is something that would be girded to our waist, to our loins, if you will, if we use that figuratively, being tied around with truth. And you can imagine, if you were a Roman soldier, having that tied to your waist, your belt that you're going to gird yourself with is not going to be some narrow, dainty little thing. It's going to be a heavy leather belt with real strong supports to it and clasps to it, so that when you strap on that heavy sword to your belt, it's going to stay. Or if you have garments that you need to tuck into that belt, they're going to stay. And you don't have to worry about it falling off or breaking or having some sort of wardrobe malfunction. You need a strong belt in order to tie that weapon because your life can depend on it. Let's focus on the sword for a moment that's girded to our waist or to our loins, if you will. It's girded to truth. Truth is talked about as the belt. And so when we think about the sword that we carry and the battle that we're going to do with it, it has to be based on truth. It has to be tied solidly to truth. It's powered by God's spirit. It's talked about specifically as the sword of the spirit. And it's represented, as we saw in that passage, by God's Word. As some of us might have heard before, when we read the armor of God, this is the one piece of the armor that's not only a defensive weapon but also an offensive weapon.

The other parts of the armor that we see are primarily or really in their entirety defensive.

A helmet is not something we're going to fight in. You didn't see a Roman soldier going about trying to headbutt somebody. It'd be a pretty ineffective way to fight when people were coming at you with swords and other weaponry. But the important thing I think here is any tool or weapon has to be understood and practiced with to be used effectively. Some of you might have heard me tell a story before about one of the clients that I worked for years back was a company that did equipment rentals. They had several hundred equipment rental stores around the country. One of their biggest problems was people coming into rent equipment who were just going to hurt themselves with it because they didn't know how to use it. They had different rules about the combinations of equipment that they were not allowed to rent out at one time. The one that stuck in my mind was the combination of an extension ladder, an extension pole, and a chainsaw. Now, we can all imagine what any enterprising young man might do if he's got a job to get done and he's got himself a ladder, an extension pole, and a chainsaw. You mix in some good duct tape and you can just imagine somebody waving that chainsaw 20-30 feet up in the air to slice off some limbs. There's all kinds of great things that can happen when you have that combination. And so it's important that we understand tools, what they're made to do, what they're not made to do, how to use them safely and effectively, how to use them for their proper purpose. How do we use the sword of the Spirit?

What's it made to do? Let's look briefly at a defensive use of the sword of the Spirit, Hebrews 4. Here it tells us, the word of God is living and powerful. It's sharper than any two-edged sword.

Piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow. And it's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. So here we see the sword and the word of God tied together just as we did in Ephesians. And in a defensive use, it discerns what's inside of our hearts.

First and foremost, that's what that sword is for. The Spirit of God enables us to know ourselves.

It's only through God and his help that we can understand ourselves as people. We read scriptures and say, for example, that the human heart is deceitful above all things and is wicked.

And who can know it? And it's through God's Spirit that we can know that heart. We can understand ourselves. So one of the uses of the sword of the Spirit is defense. It's really understanding what's within ourselves so that as we strive to live our lives as Christians, we know what it is that we need to conquer. Those desires, the lusts of our hearts, and the things that we as human beings want to do, which are not naturally in accord with the way of God. What about the offensive use of the sword of the Spirit? Let's look at 2 Corinthians 10. We'll read verses 4 and 5.

Here we're told by Paul, writing to the Corinthians, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. So the offensive use of the sword of the Spirit, which as we saw, tied together, it's God's Word, it's tied to truth, is to cast down things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. It's fighting a battle of ideas. When we look at the defensive side again, discerning our heart, understanding what's within ourselves, how we think, why we think that way, how we're motivated, why we do the things that we do, and then, externally looking as we go on the offense, casting down the things in our lives that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God, actively, as we've burdened that sword ourselves, looking for the things that cause us to act against the ways of God and knocking them down.

Let's look a little more at the qualities of the Holy Spirit, though, as well. Again, this is the sword of the Spirit. So we need to understand what it is that powers this sword that we have, the attitude and the mind, because a sword is a dangerous weapon. You think about if somebody picks up a sword and they start swinging it around, the best thing to do is move back and they've got a sharp sword in their hand and they don't really know how to use it or what it's for.

You can often imagine, you know, a little kid that picks up something like that and just starts swinging it indiscriminately in the damage that it can do. James 3 tells us a little more about the Spirit of God, what it is again that powers this sword. The wisdom of that is from above, in James 3 verse 17, is first pure, then peaceable and gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy, and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Jesus Christ talks more about qualities of the Holy Spirit. He talks about it as the Spirit of Truth, again, tying to the armor of God and truth being girded around the loins. John 14 verse 17, if you want to look that up, it's talked about it as a helper in John 15 verse 26 and as a guide in John 16 verse 13.

And as Mr. Thomas mentioned in his sermon last week, I think it was last week, the Spirit does not compel us. It doesn't force us to do things. When we look in the Bible, it's evil spirits that take possession of a person and start to do crazy things like casting that person in the fire or casting animals off of a cliff. We see the Holy Spirit talked about in a very different way, a helper, a guide, one that works with mercy and wisdom and not one that compels.

And so it's something that we have to listen to and it takes time and it takes attention. And that's the importance in understanding the functionality of our weapon, the sword of the Spirit. The qualities of that Spirit imply time and reflection. You know, when we look at things in the Bible associated with the Holy Spirit, something it's not doesn't have the power to do anywhere that I've seen is helping us make snap decisions.

We see the spirit of patience and mercy. We see the fruit of the Spirit and we don't see as one of the fruits of the Spirit that will be quick-witted and able to quickly respond and shut people down if they come up against us. We're talking, it talks about patience and kindness and mercy, things that take time and reflection that need to work on our heart over the course of time.

We think of an accomplished swordsman if we've seen people perhaps in a fencing exhibition or competition and an accomplished swordman defends, bides his time, waits for the opening, and then makes the hit with the sword, doesn't swing it around indiscriminately, uses it very carefully as a precision weapon, using it as much defensively, maybe even more, and waiting for the weakness of an opponent before it strikes. So we're not a weapon that's looking for a fight. Unfortunately, when we look in today's world, too often we see people, we see whole organizations that are set up in order to battle, in order to have the perfect response ready to something.

All they're waiting for is the occasion to use it. Certainly, as we get into political season here in the U.S., that's what so much of our politics is about, isn't it? People are ready to make a point. They just need an occasion in order to make that point. But that's not the weapon that we carry, and it's not the battle that we fight.

We have an array of weapons available to us at any point in time. If you think about it, for example, think about some spy movie, perhaps, that you've seen where the spy is about to go out and complete a mission, and he goes into his closet, he presses in the secret code on a keypad in his closet, and suddenly this large drawer opens up, and you see this whole array of weaponry. Long knives, short knives, skinny knives, big fat swords, different types of weapons, whether they're long guns or short, tiny guns that can be hidden in a boot.

And there's just this drawer full of weapons that we see in these movies. You know, our lives are similar as well, aren't they? We wake up every day, and we've got an arsenal of different weapons that we can strap on, we can gird onto our loins. Some of those weapons can be the battle acts of our favorite all-news channel as we go out and try to whack people over the head with the latest soundbite that we heard. We have the war hammer of our preferred political party, and all the different types of political arguments and battles that are out there.

We have the flamethrower of the latest pandemic position. And for those of you who are out there on Facebook or Twitter or any of these places, we've probably seen lots of our friends turned into warriors over the course of the last while as they pull their favorite statistic or conspiracy theory or whatever it is that comes out. And then there's another weapon, one that I'll have to admit to using plenty of times myself, and that's the saber of self-righteousness.

All of these weapons are there in the drawer, and they're all waiting to be picked up. We can take the easy way without girding up our loins and pick up that weapon that just, you know, at an impulse, we're ready to pick up and start swinging around. Or we can gird our loins, we can look in there for the sword of the spirit, and we can pick up that weapon that's tied to truth and powered by God's Word and His Spirit.

So figuratively speaking, as we think through our lives and what it is that we do every day, the weapons that we pick up, what it is that we think we're around to do in terms of fighting battles, what are the battles that we're fighting? Where are we spending our attention and our focus?

What weapons are we picking up? What are we filling our minds with in order to power ourselves through a day and to react and to fight and to deal with other people? I'll admit that there are plenty of times where I've thought of writing messages on Facebook. Thankfully, the vast majority of them I delete and never post as I look at things coming up. My first reaction is just to react, to do exactly that, to react and to lash out and to tell people what I think and to set them straight. And then I usually die on my self back and spend a little more time, sometimes spend a little bit of prayer on it to make sure that I'm acting appropriately.

That's what we need to do as we think about that sword of the spirit, how it is that it works, the truth that has to be around our waist, that we tie ourselves to that and making sure that we're using our time, our minds, and God's Spirit in an appropriate way. We said earlier the fact that we gird our loins in order to dress for battle or for work. We talked a little bit in the earlier part about the sword and the battle, what we can do that way when we gird our loins.

How about when we work? How do we dress for work? Again, I'm not talking about dressing this way, but I think it's a very apt analogy, isn't it? You know, as Christians, how often do we go out as Christians to go through the day with our pants on? We have to think about that, figuratively speaking. Have we prepared ourselves for our day as we go out to work? Do we have the clothes of a Christian on us? What are those clothes? Let's look at the New Century version, Colossians 3, and we'll read verses 12 through 14. Here we read, God has chosen you and made you as holy people.

He loves you, so you should always clothe yourselves with mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive each other. If someone does wrong to you, forgive that person because the Lord forgave you. Even more than all this, clothe yourself in love.

Love is what holds you all together in perfect unity. I think the question we need to ask ourselves, especially on a weekend like this, if we reflect on the Holy Spirit when it came as a tool, as something that allowed Jesus Christ to live within us, as a part of God with us, that we clothe ourselves in these things, that we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us, that we allow Jesus Christ to live within us. And these are the things that our lives should be clothed with as we go out every day. And I think we can all admit, if we look at our own lives carefully, there are plenty of days that we go out not fully clothed. We haven't prepared ourselves for the day in the way that we should, making sure that we go to God, ask Him for His Spirit, consider the way that we're supposed to live and what it is that our purpose is, and make sure that we're living in line with that.

Appropriate dress is determined by the work and environment. We talked about that earlier, especially today as people are going into a health care situation, or people who have a lot of contact with the public. Proper dress at work can be a matter of life and death. Imagine somebody in an operating room or somebody treating somebody with COVID-19 who's there in street clothes, hasn't bothered to wash their hands, hasn't bothered to scrub down before giving care, and most importantly hasn't put on the protective equipment that's needed in order to not catch a communicable disease. We wouldn't think about doing that, and in today's environment, as we've talked about earlier, we all think a lot more carefully about what we're wearing before we step outside the house or we step into some other situation. How often do we think about that from a spiritual sense? What are the situations that we're going to go into in a day? What's the spiritual clothing? What are the spiritual qualities that we have to be clothed in in that particular day because of the situations that we know we're going to need to handle, and the situations that might just come our way in addition to those?

Galatians 5 verses 19 through 23. These are the works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit.

And again, we'd like to encourage everyone to think about this in this context of being clothed, being clothed in righteousness, preparing ourselves, not being relaxed, but being focused and ready for work and for battle. Galatians 5 verse 19, the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, and heresies.

The why is it that I highlighted those? Again, when we think about going out, figuratively having our robes down and not having them girded up, not being clothed with righteousness, what's being described here is the things that we see in our society every day. Whether we turn on the television and unfortunately see the things that are going on on the streets of our cities, I'm talking not only about the protests, but the things that spark those protests as well.

So many terrible things happening in every walk of life related to these things, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, and heresies. All of these things, we don't have to go very far in any of our media or people that we interact with before we see this.

And if we're honest and we're not careful in time, we're not careful, we see those same things coming out of ourselves. And that's why we have to gird ourselves up. Envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in time past, those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. In verse 22, we read about the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such, there is no law.

And these are the things that we need to consider and think about and prepare to clothe ourselves with. And just as we understand with that example of girding the loins, that doesn't happen automatically. The default position is those robes down to the floor and being relaxed and having things in the way as we try to move. We have to take conscious effort to gird up those loins of our mind, to be ready for spiritual action, to be able to have these fruits of the Spirit, this fruit of the Spirit, operating within us. So daily, as we think about dressing properly for our work as Christians, we have to consider the spiritual clothes that we're putting on.

Are we dressing ourselves daily for the work that God's given us to do? What inappropriate spiritual clothes need to come out of our wardrobes? We think of culling our wardrobe from time to time, looking in the closet and in a physical sense, it's going through and looking for the things that we've not really worn very much. They're out of fashion or whatever else and throwing them away. Unfortunately, if we look at it from a spiritual point of view, I think often we need to go to our closets and we need to take some of the things we've been wearing too often, and we need to throw them away. And we need to go in the back of our closet to some of those things have been stashed away. We think of some of those fruit of the Spirit as clothing that we have to put on, and maybe we haven't worn in a long time and it's gotten out of style to us. We need to go back to that back part of our closet, spiritually speaking, and start putting on the things that we know we need to be wearing. So we're not conforming to society around us and everything that's happening and the way that people are interacting with one another, but we're conforming instead to the standings that God put out for us and that He empowers us to have through His Spirit.

So as we wrap up the message today, and what to wear as Christians, we talked about the fact that we have to gird our loins. Christian has to be prepared for work and battle, and even though this analogy of girding the loin seems terribly outdated and sounds kind of weird, I think it's an important one. It's something to think about and hopefully one that sticks in our minds as we go through our days and our weeks to come. The battles we fight, we have to make sure that the time that we spend, if we're going to fight a battle, has to be girded to truth, powered by God's Word and His Spirit. And as we saw with that sword of the Spirit, it's made for, number one, defining what's in ourselves, discerning the heart and understanding what it is that's happening within us, why we're acting and reacting the way that we are, and what the right way is to do that, and then taking the inputs that come at us and slicing them up and throwing away the ones that are not in accordance with God's way of life, and making sure we're taking the right things into us. That sword helps to defend us, as well as fighting the wrong ideas that come our way every day. And then lastly, making sure we're dressed daily for works of righteousness, clothing ourselves in righteousness, as it were, so that we can have the fruit of God's Spirit live itself out in us. So as we go forward, as we look forward tomorrow to the day of Pentecost, as we go through our lives day to day, we encourage everyone to think about what it is that we need to wear, and that we gird our loins to be ready for work and for battle. Thanks a lot. Have a great second.