THE CHRISTIAN DRESS CODE
#1 – Putting on Faith
2 Peter 1:3-9
by Rev. John R. Hannem, Calvary Baptist Church, North Sydney, NS January 13th 2008
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We all realize that there are certain dress codes that are appropriate for certain situations. Some places you go to eat and you have to wear formal clothing, some places require men to wear a tie …. We’ve all seen the summer time sign that says no shirt, no shoes, no service.
I bring this up because the Bible repeatedly uses “proper clothing” as a word picture to help us understand the kinds of virtues that should be seen in the life of every believer. For example,
Ephesians 4:22-24 says, “Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires and put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Romans 13:14 says, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”
Colossians 3:12 says, “As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience.”
1st Peter 5:5 says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
For the next couple of months we are going to be examining “The Dress Code of a Christian.” Our main text will be these verses in 2 Peter where the big fisherman talks about eight attitudes that we are to wear or “put on” as disciples of Jesus Christ.
In his commentary on this text Jerry Bridges refers to these attitudes or virtues as “garments of grace.” And I want us to think of this “dress code” in that way, because these various “garments” are indeed undeserved gifts of God—precious attributes that help us to stand out as God’s children. I also want us to understand that we must learn to “wear” or “put on” these various virtues because they help us to experience the abundant life that Jesus promises in much the same way that wearing a great suit makes you feel good.
I remember of working at Whitman’s mens wear and hearing Keith tells customers as the were on their way to try on a new suit, “You’re gonna like the way you look in that! I guarantee it”. And in essence this text is saying, “Put on these things—‘wear’ these attitudes and you’re going to like your life! You’re going to enjoy your walk with Jesus. I guarantee it!”
Before I go any further I want to let you know that, other than the Bible, I’m relying on two books to help compliment my study of this topic: Mark Buchanan’s newest book, Hidden In Plain Sight and Jerry Bridges book, The Fruitful Life.
Sermon
The women here this morning will all tell you that every outfit, whether it’s for work, or casual wear, or formal wear begins with a foundation—a place to start—some basic garment that you build upon. I guess that’s why they call other things “accessories.” And this is true of the dress code of a Christian as well. Our foundation—our basic “garment of grace”—is faith—and at the onset of this study of our spiritual wardrobe, I want you to note that everyone—even non-Christians—build their “wardrobe of life” beginning with faith. Everyone has faith in something. John Bisagno once put it this way,
“Faith is the heart of life. Think of it. You go to a doctor whose name you can’t pronounce. He gives you a prescription you cannot read. You take it to a pharmacist you have never seen. He gives you medication you do not understand—and yet you take it.”
That’s living by faith isn’t it?! The truth is, none of us can get through a single day without living by faith. When you flip a light switch you put faith in the electrical wiring. When you turn the ignition in your car, you trust the starter and the motor. When you snail-mail a letter you have faith in the Postal Service. When you punch in a number on your cell phone you put your faith in Aliant or Rogers. When you sit in those pews each Sunday you have faith that I’m going to stop preaching in time for you to eat lunch. Everyone has faith in something. But of course these verses in 2 Peter do not refer to these everyday varieties of faith. No, the Christian is to live every day of their lives by faith in God.
With that in mind, let’s begin our study of this foundational garment in the dress code of a Christian by looking at what faith in God is not.
(1) First, Biblical faith is not faith in faith.
I say this because many times in Christian circles we link the effectiveness of our faith to how strongly we can convince ourselves that there will be a positive outcome to a particular situation. We decide to exert our will power such that no doubt will enter our minds. We convince ourselves that if we pump our faith up enough, God will honor our desires. We sing, pray, read Scripture, scold ourselves for any second thoughts—and try to convince ourselves that if we can believe enough we can get God to do what we want.
But that is not biblical faith, because it’s not trusting in God’s wisdom and power, bur rather it is confidence in ourselves and the amount of belief we have conjured up in an attempt to control God. This is the kind of false faith that fuels the ‘name it claim it’ or ‘blab it and grab it’ philosophy that so many television preachers proclaim. And this flawed kind of faith will not outlast the first major disappointment of life. When we can’t claim what we name or grab what we blab, when a loved one is not healed or a promotion does not come through or an unforseen tragedy strikes, false faith like this will crumble like a stack of cards in a gentle breeze.
In their book, We Let Our Son Die, Larry and Lucy Parker recount the tragic story of the way they embraced this kind of misguided faith. In painful and painstaking detail, Larry and his wife paint the picture of how they had come to believe that if they just had enough faith, God would heal their diabetic son. Eventually, their son Wesley got ill and needed insulin. Believing that God would heal Wesley, they withheld the insulin and, predictably, Wesley lapsed into a diabetic coma. The Parkers, warned by some about the dangers of not having enough faith, believed that God would heal Wesley. Unfortunately, Wesley died. But even after Wesley’s death, the Parkers, undaunted in their “faith,” conducted a resurrection service rather than a funeral service. In fact, for more than a year following his death, they refused to abandon their firmly held faith that Wesley, like Jesus, would rise from the dead. Eventually, both Larry and Lucy were tried and convicted of manslaughter and child abuse.
Their nightmare is the result of faith in their own faith—not faith in God. Theirs was not Biblical faith, but rather a warped form of religious positive thinking. It was faith in faith rather than faith in Him who is faithful.
The late Ron Mehl, who endured Leukemia by embracing a Biblical faith in God and who finally succumbed to that disease a couple of years ago, wrote a book for his sons to read after his death. He titled his book After Words and in it he says, “Faith isn’t trying to manipulate God or circumstances to get what I want. It is resting in Him so that I can have what He wants.”
And Mehl was right on the money! Genuine faith—Biblical faith—does not believe that God will do what we say. It is a faith that knows and trusts that God will do what He says. It is a faith that acknowledges God’s limitless wisdom and knowledge and goodness, a faith that says He knows more than we do and that He is always working out His absolutely perfect purposes. Genuine faith is resting on the promises of God, no matter what happens. Scripture assures us that we will encounter hardship and heartache in this life, but that God is with us and is working in all things for our good and His glory, and that when this life ends we’ll enter that perfect world where everything will be set right. Biblical faith is a relationship of trust in God. It’s an experience-built confidence in the character of our Heavenly Father. Faith in and of itself is worthless. The value of faith is rooted in the soundness and worthiness of its object. Buchanan says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God but without God it is impossible to have good faith. Faith like that has no where to lay its head.”
(2) This leads to a second thing Biblical faith is not. It’s not a blind leap in the dark.
Some people think faith in God means you ignore logic and reason. For example, many ridicule Christians for their faith that God exists, saying that kind of faith makes no sense. But the truth is, believing there is no God requires an unreasonable kind of faith. If atheists, agnostics, or secular humanists put their faith into words it might sound like this: “By faith we believe that this amazingly intricate universe evolved from mindless matter. We believe that order accidentally emerged from chaos.” Of course, they are hard-pressed to find any evidence for this “statement of faith” because true scientific observation consistently proves that order does not grow from chaos and that design points to a Designer.
I don’t know about you, but I find my faith more logical, more reasonable. When it comes to my statement of faith, I look to Hebrews 11:3 where it says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
Do you see what I’m saying? Both creeds require faith. But only Christian faith is actually compatible with logic and reason. Ours is a faith that is based on historical evidence. It is supported by the Biblical record, by personal testimony, and, as I inferred a moment ago, by our own experiences. We can look up and down and all around and see the fingerprints of the Creator. And as Christians we can also look back and see evidence that God is worthy of the trust and faith we put in Him. The longer we walk with God, the more we know Him, the more we know that we can trust Him.
Author Tim Hansel tells the story about the day he and his son Zac were out in the country, climbing around in some cliffs. Hansel says at one point in the day he heard a voice above him yell, “Hey Dad! Catch me!” He turned around to see Zac jumping off a rock, flying straight at him. Apparently, Zac had jumped first and then yelled, “Hey Dad! Catch me!” Hansel became an instant circus act, instinctively twisting to catch his son in mid air. They both fell to the ground and for a moment Hansel could hardly talk. When he found his voice again he gasped in exasperation: “Zac! Can you give me one good reason why you did that?” Zac responded with remarkable calmness: “Sure! Because you’re my dad!”
Zac’s whole assurance was based on the fact that he believed his father was trustworthy. He’d no doubt experienced his dad’s quick instincts and firm grip in the past. His relationship with his father deepened his faith and enabled him to live life to the hilt. He could risk the joy of that jump because he was confident—he rested in—the strength and love of his father that he had experienced every day of his life.
This is a great story. I think it illustrates my point well. But I must point out that Biblical faith is faith in God even if He doesn’t catch us ….. even if He doesn’t heal our children. Genuine faith says, “My understanding of the Bible and my life experience has shown me that I can trust God’s goodness even if I can’t see it from my perspective.” It’s the faith of Job who said, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” (Job 13:15) In any case—faith is not a blind leap in the dark. It makes sense to trust in the character of God.
Okay, enough of the negative. What is faith? What is this foundational garment in the dress code of the Christian? I want to answer this question in two ways and the first flows logically from my last point.
(1) You see faith is believing in what we can’t always see.
As Hebrews 11:1 puts it, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” The phrases “being sure” and “do not see” seem to contradict each other, but people who practice genuine faith know that there is no contradiction because the Bible teaches us that real faith anticipates. It visualizes the future in the present. It sees in advance. It believes God’s purposes will prevail somewhere out there over the horizon—so it is being sure even of what you don’t yet see.
Noah embraced this aspect of faith. Remember? He was warned about an impending flood. He had never even seen rain before, much less enough water to flood the world, but he was so sure of this future event that—in faith—he built the ark as instructed by God. When we accurately understand God’s character we can embrace a faith that does not see and then believe—it believes and then it sees. It is believing in a future that you cannot see. Matthew Henry put it this way. “Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of these things which cannot be discerned by the eye of the body.”
The musician Ray Charles went blind at age seven. He lived his childhood in rural poverty in a one-room shack at the edge of a sharecropper’s field. In the popular film about his life there is a scene from this chapter of his life where Ray runs into his house and trips over a chair. He starts to cry for his mother. She stands at the stove, right in front of him and instinctively reaches out to lift him. Then she stops. Backs up. Stands still. Watches. In a moment Ray stops crying. He quiets. He listens. He hears, behind him, the water on the wood stove whistling to a boil. He hears, outside, the wind passing through the corn stalks. He hears the thud of horse hooves on the road, the creak and clatter of the wagon they pull. Then he hears, in front of him, the thin faint stretch of a grasshopper walking the worn floorboards of the cottage. He inches over and, attentive now to every sigh and twitch, gathers the tiny insect in his hand. He holds it in his open palm and says, “I hear you too, Mamma.” She weeps with pride and sorrow and wonder. Later in the film Ray explains to someone, “I hear like you see.”
As Buchannan puts it, “This is faith’s motto: I hear like you see. I trust in God—in what He’s done and is doing and will do—as much, even more than others trust in what they touch and taste and see.” Faith is believing in that which we cannot see with the eye or the mind limited perspective.
(2) And then second, faith is acting on what we can’t always understand.
You see, faith is not only a way of seeing—it is also a way of living. Genuine faith is more of a verb than it is a noun. Hebrews 11:8 says: “It was faith that made Abraham obey when God called him to go out to a country God had promised to him. He left his own country without knowing where he was going.”
Abraham’s faith motivated him to obey God even when it meant leaving his homeland and heading off for some unknown destination—a trip that must not have made much sense to him. And the truth is many times God’s commands don’t make sense to us. As it says in Proverbs 3, faith often requires us to “lean not on our own understanding.” The fact that God’s instructions didn’t make sense to Abraham didn’t stop Him from acting on his faith. And his example teaches us that authentic faith is always characterized by action.
Look at the men and women of faith listed in Hebrew 11—that Hall of Heroes of Faith. Their faith in the future made them act in the present because genuine faith is not passive. No, it is dynamic and forceful. Truly faithful people actively obey God day in and day out.
In H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man. If you read it or have seen movie adaptations of it, then you know that the only way you can tell if the invisible man was in the room, was if things were moving. There would be a teacup and a saucer going across thin air about this high. Or a hat would be hanging in thin air with nothing underneath it—or a door would slam. So, the only way you could tell the invisible man was there was by his actions—the effect that he had on the things around him.
And in the same way we see genuine faith in people who claim to be Christians by their actions. One way to put it would be to say that faith is a belief in the unseen that can be seen by others. The truth is, people know what we believe by the way that we behave. So let’s ask ourselves this morning: What would people who know us and work with us—people we socialize with—what would they say we believe? What would they say about our faith?
This is an important question for us to consider because genuine faith is visible. One of the reasons many churches don’t grow is because their members don’t wear this kind of faith. Instead, they dress themselves in a faith that is without deeds. [As Buchannan puts it] their motto is, “believe but carry on as usual.” You know, when it comes to belief in God we often put people in one of two groups: theists and atheists. We group them according to those who believe in God and those who don’t. In Our Daily Bread, Vernon Grounds points out that we need a third category: apatheists. Apatheists believe in God but don’t really care. They’re glad God is out there, somewhere doing something, hearing prayers and spinning planets but they really couldn’t care less. It doesn’t guide their actions, shape their decisions, and correct their attitudes. God is not a present, urgent reality to them. Instead He’s a distant, occasionally interesting idea. Their belief is such that it doesn’t prompt them to do anything.
In 1959 the USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev made an unprecedented visit to America. This was right after the death of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev was his successor and he had already caused a global stir in a speech he gave in which he had denounced Stalin’s many atrocities. Khrushchev criticized Stalin for the way he ruthlessly killed anyone he didn’t trust, which was almost everyone.
Well, Khrushchev was scheduled to appear at the National Press Club in Washington and every newspaper and magazine of any standing made sure they had at least one reporter present and the room was packed.
Khrushchev did not disappoint: he delivered a shortened but potent indictment of his former boss, complete with corroborating evidence. When he finished heopened the floor for questions. Someone called out from the crowd, “Mr. Khrushchev, you have just given us an account of Mr. Stalin’s many crimes against humanity. You were his right-hand man during much of that time. Well, what were you doing while all this was going on?” The question was translated to Khrushchev and when he heard it he exploded in anger, “Who said that!?” he demanded. No one answered. “Who said that?” he bellowed at the audience. There was only silence. “Who said that?” Again there was just silence. Everyone present just looked at their shoes. Then Khrushchev calmly said, “That’s what I was doing.”
Unfortunately his inaction illustrates the faith of many Christians—a workless faith characterized by looking at our shoes and doing nothing while a lost world slips further and further from God.
Well, is your faith the kind that makes you an expert on the state of your footwear, or is it the kind that makes you wear your shoes out as you obediently allow Jesus to use your feet and your hands, and your voice to share His love with those who desperately need it?
BIBLICAL FAITH ……..