four, what we might call beauty marks. Four marks of imperishable beauty, and we see these in verses four through six, okay? So let's unpack now what Peter is saying about beauty. The first thing we see is this. Beauty which is precious in the sight of God is imperishable. Beauty which is precious in the sight of God is imperishable. A Christian woman's main source of beauty should not be skin deep. It should not be strictly consumed with external beauty. Now, women are beautiful creatures. And I just think it's important to say at this point in all of our desires, noble desires, to be modest, to teach our young ladies and our young women how to give a Christ-honoring witness to a watching world with how they dress, all important endeavors and things that we need to remember. One pit that we can fall into, listen to me very carefully, is that we undervalue or even denigrate beauty. Beauty is something that God loves. Beauty is something that God has built into not only men, but also women. And I think we can all agree it's probably more so on the side of women, and I'll get there in just a moment. Beauty is something that God revels in. when the scriptures describe Sarah and Rachel and Abigail, they make no apologies for saying they were absolutely stunning and beautiful and discerning. The scriptures are not prudish when it comes to recognizing beauty and neither should we be. You know what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7? He says that man is the image of God and that the woman is the glory of man. Now just think about that for a moment. What does that mean? It means that she is a glorious creature. Just as you glory in the beauty of a sunset with all its majestic colors and hues, or in the grandeur of the lilies of the field, so also there is nothing inherently wrong in recognizing and appreciating the beauty of a woman. But if that woman is not yours, you should stop there and go no further. Not yours. But there is nothing wrong with recognizing the beauty of a woman. And yet, can we all be honest for a moment? All the skin creams and lotions and essential oils and hair products and manis and pedis and makeup cannot reverse or freeze the effects of time and the effects of the fall. The external beauty of a woman is going to be altered, just like it is with men. What Peter is saying is quite simple. If you put all your eggs in the basket of external beauty, you're missing something much more important. The internal beauty of a disposition of a woman's heart and soul. Another word for imperishable is incorruptible. Your body is corruptible. Yes, you will have a new body and then have new heavens and the new earth, but it's not gonna be this same body here. Same body in essence, but not same body that has been worn out and broken down. That body is corruptible, but the inner person of the heart is described as incorruptible. The soul, which together with your new body in heaven will live forever in the new heavens and the new earth. beauty that Peter commends to us is not corruptible, it's not perishable, it's not focused in a lopsided kind of way on the external, but it is not discounting the external, taking the internal as the main priority. And once that internal becomes the main priority, it has a way of fleshing itself out in the external. But now secondly, in answering the question, what is imperishable beauty? Secondly, we see this in verse four, imperishable beauty leads with the heart, not the hair. Just a nuance of a difference of the first one. Peter says in verse four, let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart. This refers very simply to the inward disposition of a woman's heart, her true personality. Not putting on airs, as they used to say in olden times, not trying to be something or someone that she's not, but being who she is in whatever context in which she finds herself. You know what that's called? That's called integrity, and integrity is gorgeous. Integrity is beautiful. Integrity is something that not only is precious in the sight of God, but man, is something that you should be looking for in a woman. It's not visible in itself, but it is revealed through words and actions which reflect inner attitudes. The inner heart is who she is when no one is looking or listening. And Peter recognizes that women are beautiful, and as a pastor, he intends only to help them see and recognize that while beauty is something to which it is appropriate to give attention, do not let it become this black hole of desire that controls everything in your life. Do not let it become the end all, be all of your identity. You are beautiful, but you are more than your external beauty. One mark of the soul in particular is the beauty, as I said, of integrity. And that's showcased for us in verse six. Look at verse six. Peter graciously gives us a concrete example of what he's speaking about when he talks about this beauty. And he says in verse six, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. What is he referring to there? you will search high and low in scripture and only find one place in Genesis 18 where Sarah actually calls him Lord. Now, she may have called him Lord more times, but we only have this recorded in scripture for us here. It's when the angel of the Lord, or God, if you will, came to Abraham and Sarah and said, at this time I will come next year and Sarah shall have a son. And Sarah was listening at the door of the tent. Nobody was there seeing her. She was by herself, but she was listening. And you gotta remember, She was beyond the ways of woman, I think is how the ESV translates it. The way of woman was no longer with her, which is a euphemistic way of saying what? That she was postmenopausal. They were both very old and the text says very worn out. And so the idea that she would have a child was miraculous to say the least. And so Sarah went inside her tent and she began to reflect on these things. And she said, will the Lord give me pleasure at this time? Will he give me pleasure through my Lord? Referring to Abraham. Now what's interesting about that? Why does Peter draw that out as an example of imperishable beauty? Here's the reason why. Is it not the case, especially boys and girls, listen, is it not the case that what you really think of mom and dad is said when you close the door after you go to your room? Mom and dad send you to your room and say, you need a timeout. And you say, yes, ma'am, or yes, sir, and then you go inside, be honest now. And what you say behind those closed doors is what you really think about mom and dad. This applies to all of us. Well, this is what Sarah was doing. In her heart of hearts, what she really felt about her husband was not that he was a domineering despot, a tyrannical ruler, but that he was her Lord. And she said that in the privacy of her own heart. And this shows the immense integrity of Sarah, and this is the kind of beauty that the Lord is pointing up. So let me come back just for a moment to external beauty. Women, you have, please listen to me very carefully, you have nuclear power in your appearance. And I think many of you know that. Some of you don't know that. There's a country song that says that, right? She don't know she's beautiful, okay? Some of you know you're beautiful, and some of you know what you can do with that beauty. Some of you know that you can, as I said, garner the attention of gawking men, and the question that I have for you this morning is, why would you wanna do that? Not saying that you do. Not saying that the temptation is not there. But the question is, why would you want to do that? You have the ability to turn heads and garner attention from people. Your clothing and apparel communicate something to people around you. It sends a message. And so the question that I have for you this morning is, what kind of message are you sending to people around you with how you wear or what you wear? What does your apparel provoke in the minds of the people who see you? Are you putting your hope of recognition and approval in what you wear? or are you putting it somewhere else? And the fact of the matter is, is when our hearts are in the right place, our external adornment is going to follow. So let me give you one more thought, and I don't want to insult your intelligence here, but if you could just fold into your consideration of your external adornment the category of appropriateness, okay? Appropriateness. Now if on next Sunday morning I came up here in my board shorts, which are about 15 years old and they're ripped and tattered and have holes in them, I came up here in my board shorts without any shirt on and I proceeded to open the word of God and preach it to you, you would say that that's inappropriate. This is not the time, this is not the setting, this is not the place. And certainly there are things that all of us wear that are appropriate behind closed doors with our husband or our wife or with our family on the couch as we're watching, I don't know, whatever, that are not appropriate in other contexts. So the question is, do we take into consideration the appropriateness of the context when we dress how we do? Just helpful things to think about. But now thirdly, a third beauty mark if you will, imperishable beauty hopes in God. Look at verse five. Imperishable beauty, hopes in God. He says, for this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands. Notice that the adornment of which he speaks is not external adornment, but he's speaking of hope as if it were a corset or a dress or something that they are wearing for people to see. Not a corset, but a dress, okay? Wearing for people to see hope. How do you adorn hope? The deepest root of Christian womanhood mentioned in this text is right here. It is hope. A Christian woman does not put her hope in her husband or getting a husband. She does not put her hope in her looks. She puts her hope in the promises of God. She's described in Proverbs 31, 25, I love this, and we read it this morning, strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. How can you laugh at the time to come? How can you laugh in the face of the uncertainties of life? The vicissitudes of life? exams college students that you have coming up, the uncertainties of whether your job is going to, or your husband is going to lose his job, the uncertainty of whether you're going to lose your job, the uncertainty of whether your children will profess Christ. How do you laugh at the time to come? The foundation of this beauty mark of hope comes in a woman who trusts in the sovereign scepter of King Jesus. And under that sovereign scepter she can, in reality, not as a religious platitude, not as putting on airs, but in reality, laugh at the time to come. She looks away from the troubles and miseries and obstacles of life, not ignoring them, Okay? We're not an ostrich putting our head in the sand, acting like a predator is not coming. We look squarely in the eyes of obstacles and troubles, and we say, the scepter of my king is greater than those troubles. The scepter of my king and his sovereignty has determined those troubles, and he has also determined that I will come out as refined gold. So she focuses her attention on the sovereign power and love of God who rules in heaven and does on earth whatever He pleases. There's nothing more beautiful than a woman who knows her Bible and knows her theology of the sovereignty of God, and she knows His promise that He will be with her and help her and strengthen her no matter what. This is the deep unshakable root of Christian womanhood. This is what gives her, listen, a gentle and quiet spirit rather than a fretting and worrying spirit. Now, gentle and quiet means a lot of things, and we touched on that a little bit last week, but I think here in the context of sovereignty, here in the context of hoping in God, how can she be gentle and quiet? How can she not nag her husband continuously on and on and on, because she recognizes that even if her nagging does get put on display, that's not what's going to change her husband's heart. What's going to change her husband's heart is God, and that's where she puts her hope. But a gentle and quiet spirit is not incompatible with boldness. And this is the final beauty mark this morning. Imperishable beauty is fearless. It is fearless. And I love this. I love that Peter put this in the text. I love that Peter put this in the text because it steers us away from conceptions of womanhood, of Christian womanhood, of the godly women that are restricted to June Cleaver and leave it to Beaver. A woman of God does not fear anything that is frightening. I think of Queen Esther here. She too, the text tells us, was a gentle and quiet spirit, but when she recognized that God had called her to such a time as this, when she was the only one who could save her people, she feared not what man could do to her, but trusted in God and marched right into the king's court. knowing that if he did not extend his scepter, she would be killed on the spot, but she didn't care. She was bold as a lion in the gentle and quiet spirit that she possessed. She was nonetheless bold as a lion to enter in for such a time as this. This, dear friends, is a portrait of a woman of God with imperishable beauty. She did this fearlessly, did not fear anything that is frightening. Teenagers? It is a fearlessness that doesn't let the kids at school intimidate you because you don't fit in, because you don't wear the right clothes, because you don't have the right hairdo, because you don't walk the way that the popular girls walk. Who cares? You don't answer to them, you answer to one who is higher, who has a scepter that is going to continue to unveil and unfold his sovereign plan for you, and those people are nothing but a drop in the bucket of God's overall plan of redemption for you. Your identity is not bound up in what those kids think about you. It's bound up, dear teenagers, in your identity in Christ. And some of you do not have an identity in Christ. Some of you are still in your Father Adam or your Mother Eve. And in that state, you will continue to be plagued by fear until you run to a refuge where fearlessness is exemplified by the outstretched arms of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So dear teenagers, run to Christ this morning. He can give you not only a refuge for eternal salvation, but he can give you a framework, a paradigm for interpreting and dealing with the criticism that we know comes in your life in school. We know, we've been there before. I know that Will Smith wrote that song, Parents Just Don't Understand, but the fact of the matter is we do. We've been there. Maybe we didn't have the apps and the phones and everything that you had, but we had 1990s versions of it and 1980s versions of it and 1970s versions of it. We had the same thing, we know. And we know how tough it is on you, we do. And the best advice we can give you is to run to Christ. Let me try to illustrate all of this this morning as I close. I was a 21-year-old college student. I was dating a girl. She was a Christian. And we were having some bumps in the relationship, so I went to one of my pastors in the church where I served, and I just asked him for some advice. And in the midst of that counseling session, I told him, I said, Dave, I love this woman. I love this woman. He kind of looked at me with that wry grin that I suppose Jesus gave the rich young ruler when he said, I've done all of these things since my youth up. Kind of looked at me in a wry grin. He said, Josh, I don't know that you understand what love is. Then he proceeded to tell me about his first wife, Sandy. Sandy was an amazing woman of God. She was one of those prayer warriors that was just on her knees all the time. She was one of those people, one of those women who reveled, who reveled in talking about the sovereignty of God. And not just as a theological category that you kind of banty about with people as you're talking about esoteric and theoretical things. She loved to bring that sovereignty into the crucible of the trials that she was going through. She liked to bring the sovereignty of God into the mundane elements of the casseroles and the changing of diapers and all the normal things that we go through as people. She loved to see sovereignty weaved throughout her life and see her Lord standing over it all commending and sending and loving and giving grace to get through it. That's the kind of person that Sandy was. But Sandy was diagnosed with cancer. And she ended up losing that battle to cancer. And Dave told me, he said, Josh, it was in the last days of her life that we were sitting in the hospital And despite all the imperishable beauty that my wife, Sandy, had, she was sitting in that hospital bed. The chemo had totally taken all her hair out. She was completely bald. She had lesions on her face and sores every which way. And she looked haggard. And she looked at me and she said, Dave, don't look at me, I'm ugly. And without skipping a beat, Dave looked at her and said, Sandy, you are more beautiful now than you've ever been to me. And he looked at me and says, Josh, that's love. What was he getting at? He was recognizing within a woman a deep imperishable beauty that does not come in the externalness of the catwalk on New York. He was talking about a woman who understood sovereignty. He was talking about a woman who hoped in God so much so that she rested under the scepter of God's sovereignty with a gentle and quiet spirit fearing nothing. That is imperishable beauty. That is the beauty young girls, young teenagers that we want to see instilled in you. And can I just say to young girls, I don't care how old you are. There is so much imperishable beauty in this congregation right here from women of God who have been walking with Jesus. And I just beg you, press into them. Press into the women in this congregation who can give you categories of wisdom to think about, who can give you categories of priorities to have in your life because we know that those teenage years are difficult. We know that those college years are even more difficult. And if you have a grounding, from women of God who have poured into you and have given you a framework for understanding what imperishable beauty is, is gonna keep you from the follies of vanity fair. And so I just encourage you to press into them. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. Scriptures tell us that our Lord Jesus had no form or majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him. Indeed, it was on the cross at Calvary where he hung bruised and battered, blood and sweat dripping from his face, unrecognizable to his disciples and even to his own mother who bore him. And yet, it was in this display, devoid of beauty, that the most breathtaking display of reconciliation transpired. In that moment, the God of the universe was reconciled to men. Dear friends this morning, do you see beauty in a crucified Savior? Looks can be deceiving. It is only in a crucified Savior that you will find rest for your soul and an end of your search for meaning and significance. So this morning that we all come to the Savior, whether you know Him and you're coming again for strength, or whether you do not know Him, come to the Savior this morning. How do I come, pastor? How do I come to the Savior? How do I come to this crucified Savior who can give me eternal life with God, who can take out the offense of my disobedience and give me reconciliation with Him? Here's how you do it. You turn from your sins. We call that word repent. Turn from your sins, recognize that you have been going in the direction of hell and damnation and turn from them. Give them up and turn instead to Jesus Christ and place your faith and trust in his perfect righteous life. A life of perfect obedience that God accepts and his death which has covered your sins and this perfect life and this sin covering atonement will give you salvation. That's how you can come to Jesus Christ this morning. and I beg you to do it by the mercies of our Lord Jesus Christ and for the good of your soul come. Let's pray. Father God, we are thankful for the beauty of the gospel. Because though it says that there was no beauty in our Savior that we would look at Him and appraise Him as such, Father, it is much more true of us. There is no beauty in us that you would look upon us and say, oh, what a beautiful creature, what an obedient creature. I'm going to bring them into the eternal splendor of the new heavens, the new earth. No, Father, there's nothing in us. All that we have in us would cause you and even demand you to damn us forever. And yet you have condescended in the person of your Son, Jesus Christ. He's given us His perfect life and sin-atoning sacrifice. Father, thank You for the beauty of the Gospel. Lord, thank You also for the beautiful women in this congregation who serve You, who hope in You, who lead with the heart and not with the hair, and who revel in the sovereign scepter of King Jesus who rules everything for their good and your glory. I thank you for their witness, Lord. I pray that husbands in this place would make much of it, commend it, encourage it, cultivate it, nourish it, so that it continues to shine as beams of light through a diamond and show all the brilliance of what the gospel can do in the life of a woman. Father, thank you for your goodness to us. We ask all these things in your son's name, amen. Let's stand for the doxology.