My Brother's Keeper

Series: Modesty: Does God Really Care What I Wear?

Leslie Basham: Cain was the first to ask the question and many have used it as an excuse ever since. "Am I my brother's keeper?"

It's Monday, May 30th, and you're listening to Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Cain mouthed this question back to God because he knew he had done wrong. Guilty people often try to shirk responsibility for their actions. But the truth is, we are our brother's keeper. We do have an obligation to watch out for one another. Here's Nancy to explain how this truth applies to ladies and the way they dress.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: As I was preparing for this series, I sent an e-mail to a number of my women friends and I said, "Just share with me your thoughts about modesty, and about clothing issues." I invited them to share with me any personal illustrations about how their lives had been affected by this whole issue. I got a very touching response from a friend who is a wife and a mom.

She began her response by saying this, "Five years ago I learned about my husband's failures with his thought life which led to an affair with a woman at work who dressed very sensually. My heart was broken."

I am going to come back before we finish today and tell you the rest of that story. But let's just take that much for the moment, and let me ask you this question: who was responsible for this affair?

Was my friend's husband responsible for his sexual failure? Absolutely, no question about it. He was completely 100 percent responsible for his sinful choices and responses to that woman at work. However, let me ask you this question: was the woman at work who dressed sensually, did she have any responsibility in this affair? Absolutely.

Richard Baxter was a Puritan pastor back in, I think, the seventeenth century who gave what I think is a profound word picture that applies to this whole area of modesty and clothing. In this context he's talking about how women sin when their clothing ensnares the minds of the men around them.

He said, "If they did not do their best to avoid being a snare, that they are somewhat responsible." And here what he goes on to say, he says to women, "You must not lay a stumbling block in their way nor blow up the fire of their lust. You must walk among sinful persons which all men are and all women are."

He says to women, "you must walk among sinful persons (here's the word picture), as you would do with a candle among straw or gunpowder or else you may see the flame which you did not foresee when it is too late to quench it."

Now that word picture has really stuck in my mind. He said to women, "as you live in this world" and this is hundreds of years ago. He was saying to women, "you need to walk on this planet in the course of your everyday life as if you were holding a candle in your hand and you were walking into a room filled with straw or gunpowder."

"How careful would you be?" He said, "If you weren't careful, you would find out that there was a flame that you had not foreseen when it was too late to quench it."

Now let's look at a different situation, one that comes out of the Scripture. 2 Samuel, chapter 11 illustrates this principle as does the principle of my friend whose husband became sexually involved with the woman in the workplace. 2 Samuel 11 tells us the story of David and Bathsheba. You're familiar with it, but let me read just a couple of verses.

Verse 2, "It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful."

Verse 4, "So David sent messengers, and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness)."

Now what this means in plain English is that she had just been through her monthly cycle and she was going through the ritual purification that was required for Old Testament Jews, so she would be free to have sexual relationships with her husband at that point.

David looks down from his roof, he sees this woman who's bathing in this ritual purification. He sees that she's beautiful. He sends messengers; he brings her to the palace. She comes, and he is sexually intimate with Bathsheba who is another man's wife.

Now, in this case, we don't know for sure how responsible Bathsheba was. We don't know how she responded to David's advances. But let me ask this question just based on what we do know. Who was responsible for David's sin? Was David responsible? Absolutely.

David's sin in this case is obvious. But the sin of the woman involved is not so obvious. We don't know what her motives were. We don't know if she was aware of what she was doing. We don't know if she went to David's palace willingly or under coercion. One commentary I read this morning suggested the fact that it says, "she came to him," suggests that she did not go there against her will, but we don't know that.

But what we do know is that she was careless, that if nothing else. She unintentionally exposed her body to a man who was not her husband and that when she did, she became a cause of David's great sin.

And not only the cause of David's sin, but ultimately of the murder of her husband and the death of her child. Bathsheba did not necessarily intend to cause this evil. She did not necessarily foresee the evil, and yet, in some sense, she was the cause of the evil, if only through carelessness.

One writer said, "David's sin was clearly his fault but Bathsheba's carelessness certainly fueled the fires of his lust. Bathsheba failed to govern her modesty, and David failed to govern his eyes."

Candle, gunpowder, put them together and what do you have? An explosion. You see, she could not be responsible for governing David's eyes, and you cannot be responsible for governing the eyes of the men around you. But ladies, we can be responsible, and here's the challenge. We are responsible for governing our modesty.

So how much responsibility do we have as women? Well, the Scripture teaches us that we are responsible for one another's well being.

Romans chapter 14, verse 13 says it this way, "Therefore let us resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way." Wouldn't that be a great resolution for all of us as Christian women to have? You know what? It's not an option.

The apostle Paul says to the Romans, "Let us resolve this, let us be determined about this." It does take a determined effort. It's a principle of deference. What does deference mean? It means the willingness to limit our liberty for the sake of others who are weak, others who may be caused to stumble or to fall.

Listen there is nothing necessarily inherently sinful about certain articles or items of clothing. What makes it sinful for us as women to wear is if in so doing we are taking our candle and throwing it into the gunpowder causing an explosion. If we're putting a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way.

Let me go back to my friend who learned five years ago that her husband had had an affair with a woman at work who dressed sensually. She said, "My heart was broken." And I want to go on and read to you the way that this woman responded to that heart-breaking situation. She said, "At the time I would have considered myself a modern Christian woman who for the most part was very modest."

However, after learning about her husband's affair, she said, "I immediately began to see the clothes in my own closet with new eyes. With tears streaming down my face, I began pulling every immodest item out of my closet."

"I suddenly saw things that were too tight, too short and too low cut. I wanted to get rid of anything that would cause another woman's husband to fall into that same pit."

"I carried bags of clothes to the trash can and spent the next day buying modest skirts and feminine tops that would honor God but still look stylish. I had never noticed those kinds of clothes before because I was not looking for them. I was looking for things that promote the world's philosophy. Unfortunately, my husband's coworker had bought into a lie, and so had I."

"Our marriage has been restored," she says. I know this couple, and it is really true, "but I often cringe as I sit in church and see the way some women still choose to dress."

Candle, gunpowder.

"When I talk to teen girls," she says, "I challenge them to dress for Jesus and to look in the mirror and ask, 'God, is this all right with you?' I also plead with them not to make my husband or my sons fall morally because of their pride. Please ask the women you speak with to consider how they would feel if it was their husband, their brother, or their pastor."

Therefore, let us resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way.

Leslie Basham: We easily forget how the way we dress can affect the men around us. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has given us a good reminder, and she will be right back to pray with us.

If you've been challenged by something you have heard today, we encourage you to do some further study in the area of modesty. We designed a booklet called The Look to help you dive deeper into the subject and find out what the Scripture has to say. It will help you make some applications to what you heard today, to make it personal.

It comes in a package along with a booklet called Becoming A Woman of Discretion and both booklets come in a tote bag printed with Colossians 3:12. This verse tells us the qualities we should put on as godly women.

To order, you can call us at 1-800-569-5959. You can also order online by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

The reason we've been able to bring you important teaching on modesty today is because listeners like you give. Would you consider helping us speak to our culture about much needed topics like this one? You can donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com. Have you ever misinterpreted something someone said and reached the wrong conclusion about them? On tomorrow's program we'll learn that sometimes the way we dress causes people to be confused and to misunderstand our heart. Now, here's Nancy to close our time.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Let's bow our hearts in prayer. I just wonder how many of you would say as the Lord has been speaking to you, "I want to make that resolution. I don't know all of what it will mean, what changes may be necessary, but by God's grace I resolve not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in any brother's way, not knowingly to cause a brother to sin with the way that I would dress or would conduct myself. That's the resolution of my heart."

And Lord, that is the resolution of my heart. Show us, Lord, help us to be willing to take, if needed, drastic measures as my friend did to be the kind of women who help and lift up and encourage and strengthen the men around us rather than in anyway pulling them down. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is a ministry outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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