Feminine Beauty in God’s Eyes

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:05.000 | >> Andrea, a podcast listener, writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I struggle a lot with

00:00:09.560 | having a negative body image based on an internalized cultural ideal that I've had ever since I

00:00:15.480 | can remember.

00:00:16.920 | What does inner beauty really mean from a Christian perspective?"

00:00:21.840 | >> She's so right to represent thousands of women who I think are hurt and infected by what they

00:00:31.680 | see on endless advertisements, endless TV shows where women are presented with amazingly

00:00:42.160 | consistent expectations that external savvy, external strength, external cool, external beauty,

00:00:53.440 | external sexiness are the norm, and oh, how we need to help these women fight the fight of letting

00:01:02.520 | God speak to them as powerfully as the world speaks to them.

00:01:06.760 | So the Bible really, really does address this question, cares a lot about it.

00:01:12.480 | And let me just take one passage and answer her question, "What is inner beauty?"

00:01:17.360 | from it.

00:01:17.800 | This is 1 Peter 3, 3 through 6.

00:01:22.400 | Pretty clear answer, I think, in these four verses.

00:01:25.840 | So let me just start reading and make some comments.

00:01:28.360 | "Do not let your adorning be external."

00:01:31.080 | Talking to the wives here.

00:01:33.400 | "Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair, the putting on of gold jewelry,

00:01:38.040 | or the clothing you wear."

00:01:40.920 | Now, stop right there and notice this is really crucial.

00:01:44.080 | He's not talking about particular kinds of hairdos or particular kinds of jewelry being the

00:01:51.840 | problem.

00:01:52.920 | We know that because he says, "Don't let clothing be your outer beauty."

00:01:58.120 | Well, he doesn't mean don't wear clothing.

00:02:01.280 | You've got to wear clothing.

00:02:04.400 | So when he says, "Don't let your adorning be the clothing you wear," he doesn't mean

00:02:11.080 | stop wearing it, like you'd stop wearing a certain hairdo or certain jewelry or clothing.

00:02:16.240 | He means, "Don't let your clothing be your focus here.

00:02:22.200 | Don't put your main energy there on the clothing.

00:02:26.000 | Put your main energy inside."

00:02:28.920 | So I would love to free women from this.

00:02:32.800 | It seems to me that some put so much energy and so much time into their hair and their

00:02:38.720 | eyes and their clothes, and it seems very sad to me.

00:02:43.480 | And I think I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty, it isn't worth the effort.

00:02:51.000 | Simple hair, simple makeup or none, and simple clothing are generally more attractive than

00:03:00.320 | heavily made-up faces and hair.

00:03:04.360 | But let's go right to the heart of the matter.

00:03:05.760 | Verse 4, "Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable

00:03:12.980 | beauty of a quiet and gentle spirit, which is in God's sight very precious."

00:03:20.400 | Now notice, let me just draw out four things from that amazing sentence.

00:03:24.640 | Verse 4, 1 Peter 3, "Let your adorning be the hidden person."

00:03:29.160 | So this means hidden from men, but open and clear to God.

00:03:35.960 | This means that your concern should be with, it should be how you appear to God, not to

00:03:41.040 | people.

00:03:42.040 | Excessive concern with outward beauty means that we're enthralled with the wrong audience.

00:03:47.320 | Hidden.

00:03:48.320 | It's supposed to be hidden, only seen by God.

00:03:51.760 | Now it's going to bear external fruit.

00:03:54.600 | Behavior will be affected by these inner qualities, but that's not the focus.

00:03:59.720 | It will bear fruit, but right now it's hidden.

00:04:02.480 | That's number one.

00:04:03.480 | Notice number two, "Let your adorning be the hidden person."

00:04:07.880 | What you want to pursue, what we all want to pursue is being a kind of person, not presenting

00:04:14.160 | a kind of persona.

00:04:16.360 | What a tragedy to give our lives to painting a mask, a persona, and neglect the person

00:04:24.040 | that's inside and real.

00:04:26.160 | The persona is just, it's artificial.

00:04:27.960 | It's only what people see on the outside.

00:04:30.160 | The real you is not your face.

00:04:33.280 | The real you is the hidden person.

00:04:35.660 | It's being a person.

00:04:37.800 | It's an awesome thing to be a person, person in the image of God, a person, not a mannequin,

00:04:43.600 | a person, not a model, a person, not a doll.

00:04:47.800 | We shouldn't treat ourselves like dolls and mannequins.

00:04:50.840 | It's a glorious thing to be a person.

00:04:53.800 | That's where our energy should go.

00:04:55.320 | That's number two.

00:04:56.320 | Number three, "Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart."

00:05:00.880 | What's the heart?

00:05:02.680 | The heart is the seed of the affections and the will.

00:05:05.960 | That's who you are most deeply.

00:05:07.720 | The body is always a presentation of the heart, never the other way around.

00:05:12.920 | God has a heart that is affections and will from all eternity.

00:05:17.460 | God never had a body until the incarnation.

00:05:19.640 | He was glorious because he had a heart that was perfect and beautiful.

00:05:24.960 | So when we have a heart and we cultivate a heart, we're akin to ultimate reality.

00:05:30.520 | Bodies came later.

00:05:31.960 | They're not the essence.

00:05:33.120 | They display the essence.

00:05:34.520 | So the heart is the essence.

00:05:36.360 | That's number three.

00:05:37.360 | Here's number four.

00:05:38.360 | "Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty."

00:05:44.440 | One of the reasons God prizes this beauty so highly is that it lasts forever.

00:05:50.000 | It's called imperishable.

00:05:51.320 | The body, it gets old.

00:05:54.720 | All the makeup we work on, it's just not going to work eventually.

00:05:58.200 | Our beauty is going to fade away, whereas the heart can get more and more beautiful.

00:06:02.800 | God delights in it because it lasts forever.

00:06:06.400 | And I guess I said there were four.

00:06:08.480 | Here's one more.

00:06:09.680 | "The imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit," which in God's sight is very

00:06:17.080 | precious.

00:06:18.080 | Now, why is gentleness, meekness, tranquility, quietness, why is that so precious to God?

00:06:27.600 | And I think the text tells us why.

00:06:29.720 | I mean, if I could just think of it out of myself, I would say, well, it's because it

00:06:33.520 | reveals that we're restfully trusting in God.

00:06:37.320 | We're hoping in God, not in man.

00:06:39.640 | We're trusting in God, and that's why we have peace and we can be meek and tranquil and

00:06:45.000 | quiet and not troubled, not anxious, not fretful or frantic.

00:06:49.580 | So it's beautiful to God because when a woman has a peaceful soul, not fretting about how

00:06:55.600 | she looks, it shows that God is her portion and she's banking on God.

00:06:59.980 | And that's right there in verse five.

00:07:03.120 | It says this, "For this is how the holy women of old hoped in God and used to adorn themselves."

00:07:11.960 | So hoping in God produces this quality, and that's why God finds it so beautiful and so

00:07:17.800 | precious.

00:07:18.800 | And that's the audience we really, really want to please.

00:07:21.720 | And here's one more word from the text.

00:07:26.040 | The reason meekness and quietness and serenity and these hope-filled attributes of inner

00:07:32.800 | beauty count so with God is because they make a woman fearless.

00:07:36.960 | See, I don't want to close, Tony, in leaving the impression that these words meekness and

00:07:44.640 | quietness and tranquility somehow produce a pansy.

00:07:49.140 | These women are lionhearted because this is what it says.

00:07:52.640 | You are Sarah's children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

00:08:01.160 | I mean, that's the kind of woman you want, right?

00:08:03.360 | A kind of woman who's quiet, peaceful, serene, meek, fearless, bold, not frightened in anything.

00:08:12.060 | My guess is the woman who gets up in the morning, spends endless hours on her face and worries

00:08:18.000 | about her figure is frightened all the time.

00:08:21.360 | She's very insecure.

00:08:23.320 | But we want mighty women of the Word, mighty women of God who are fearless.

00:08:27.840 | And that comes from hoping in God, and that comes from cultivating this inner beauty.

00:08:33.560 | And so I just would love to be a means of rescuing people from, I mean, women from a

00:08:38.480 | lot of wasted time and wasted effort.

00:08:41.040 | Excellent.

00:08:42.040 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:08:43.560 | And while we're on this topic, we have two Ask Pastor John episodes from last spring

00:08:46.700 | that are both worth noting here.

00:08:49.440 | Episode 65 is titled "What is Strong Feminine Womanhood?"

00:08:53.400 | And episode 66 is titled "Wimpy Theology Makes Wimpy Women."

00:08:57.860 | Both episodes celebrate strong, godly women who fear God.

00:09:01.160 | And in both episodes, we relive a couple of classic John Piper sermon moments.

00:09:04.900 | So be sure to check out episodes 65 and 66 in the Ask Pastor John podcast archive and

00:09:10.280 | listen all the way to the end of those episodes for the good stuff.

00:09:13.120 | Those episodes and 268 others can be found in the free Ask Pastor John apps for the iPhone

00:09:17.920 | and Android, and be sure you've updated your app in the last month to get all the new features

00:09:22.400 | that make it really easy to search and browse those episodes.

00:09:25.520 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:09:27.120 | Have a wonderful weekend.

00:09:28.720 | [END]

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00:09:34.220 | 6. What is Strong Feminine Womanhood?

00:09:35.220 | 7. What is Strong Feminine Womanhood?

00:09:36.220 | 8. What is Strong Feminine Womanhood?

00:09:37.220 | 9. What is Strong Feminine Womanhood?

Feminine Beauty in God’s Eyes

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