“You remember the movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’? That
was a dangerous movie to go see because it puts in your mind, as a
Bible-believer, scenes, impressions and views about what happened at Calvary so
that when you read the Bible, you see those pictures.
“When Israel went into Canaan, one of the things God told
them to do was destroy the pictures of the Canaanites. They had pornographic
pictures all over the land and He said, ‘Destroy the pictures because they put
images in your mind and when you think about that topic, that image comes up.’
You know how your mind works that way.
“If you watch ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ what happens is when
you think about the Lord Jesus Christ going to the Cross, or being on the Cross,
you think of the Roman Catholic version of those stories.
“You think of the ‘Stations of the Cross’ because the guy
who did that movie, Mel Gibson, was a radical fundamentalist Roman Catholic. He
actually imported his own priest and set up his own church in California in
order to promote this real strict view of Catholicism.
“To see the movie ‘Noah’ is not going to do that to you
because it’s not trying to be the Bible. What I remember about the book (the
movie was adapted from) was right in the beginning, Noah’s dad comes in and
he’s got the skin of a snake around his arm.
“What do you reckon a snake represents? Where’d the snake
come from? Genesis 3. There’s all this symbolism that, unless you’re familiar
with the occult world, you wouldn’t catch it, but it’s there, and that movie’s
full of that stuff.
“As a Bible student you’re not going to think that stuff is
the way it really happened, but the world out there—you think of the 30-somethings and
younger that don’t know anything about the Bible story and that’s what they’re going
to think the Bible’s all about. That’s where the slippery slope is.
*****
"The story of Noah and the Flood resides in every culture of
the ancient world. That’s one of the things that tells you the Flood was a
historic reality because every culture still has a remnant of that story in
their past.
“When Noah gets out of the ark, he replaces Adam. Genesis 9.
He’s going to give Noah exactly the same commission he gave Adam, so you’ve got
a renewed situation here. Noah goes out and has a problem with the grape, just
like Adam and Eve had a problem with the grape (as the forbidden fruit from the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil).
“Genesis 9:20-21 says, 20] And Noah began to be an
husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
[21] And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
[21] And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
“Every time you see nakedness in the Scripture, the Bible
wants it to be covered up. So when we’re talking about the issue of clothing,
it has to do with covering up the nakedness. The animal creation has its own
built-in clothing but man doesn’t, and since we lost the original covering we
have to devise our own garments.
*****
“I Timothy 2:9 says, ‘In like manner also, that women adorn
themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with
broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.’
“That passage is easier for a woman to understand than a man
and it’s the silliest thing in the world for a man to be the one who dictates
what modest apparel is. But here’s what people do and I’ve always loved this
one:
“Deuteronomy 22:5 says, ‘The woman shall not wear that which
pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all
that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.’
“That’s the verse that’s been used for the last 50 years to
say women shouldn’t wear pants. The problem with that is look down at verse 12:
‘Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith
thou coverest thyself.’
“Tell me something, if you’ve got on a pair of pants, how in
the world are you going to get four corners to make fringes on it?! You’re not. You
know what you make fringes on the four corners of? A skirt! Did you know that’s
what men wore back here in the Old Testament?
“Look at Ruth 3:9: ‘And he said, Who art thou? And she
answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine
handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman.’
“There’s Boaz, a type of the Kinsman Redeemer, wearing a
skirt! Now, if a woman’s not to wear ‘that which pertaineth unto a man,’ what
shouldn’t she be wearing?
“You see, people use verses the way they want to use them to
prove what they want to prove, whether or not they’re what the Bible says. There’s
not a verse in the Bible that says a woman can’t wear a pair of pants. The verses
say she can’t wear a skirt!
“You can go on and on with this. Look up the word ‘skirt’
in your concordance and you’ll find a bunch of guys wearing skirts.
*****
“If you’re trying to use Deuteronomy 22:5 as a good verse,
wouldn’t 2-3 more be better? Look at verse 8: ‘When thou buildest a new house,
then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon
thine house, if any man fall from thence.’*****
“How many of you have a fence around the top of your house
so nobody falls off? Well, that’s as much a commandment by Moses to Israel as
verse 5 was.
“Verse 9 says, ‘Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers
seeds: lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy
vineyard, be defiled.’
“You can’t plant two different kinds of seeds in the same spot. Down
South you’d plant pole beans with
the sweet corn so the beans could run up the corn stalk. That way you didn’t have to put up a fence to run the pole beans. Deuteronomy 22 says you can’t
do that.
“I knew preachers back in the ’70s who were doing just what I
said in their garden, preaching that women can’t wear pants. Grace
preachers were doing that; not just denominational preachers.
“Verse 10 says, ‘Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass
together.’ You can’t take an ox and a donkey and plow with them together. Now maybe
that means if you got a John Deere tractor you can’t pull an Allis-Chalmers
trailer? Well, you know that’s silly, but that’s as much a law as verse 5.
“Verse 11 says, ‘Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers
sorts, as of woollen and linen together.’ Well, I’d wind up in bad shape here
because I’ve got on a coat made of about three different kinds of garments. I’ve
got a shirt made out of two. I’d be like the Naked Cowboy in Times Square if
I was going to obey that.
“You see, if you’re going to take one verse and run to the
hill with it, you ought to take all of the verses and run to the hill with them.
*****
“Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves
aprons. The old Geneva Bible said they made themselves britches and that’s why
it’s called ‘The Britches Bible.’
“The apron is like the one the priests had in Exodus and so
forth—it’s not like when you think about a little apron to wear in the kitchen.
It was a covering garment and there are some doctrinal issues about the apron
and the priesthood, etc. They were establishing their own righteousness. They
were attempting to make a religion; make themselves acceptable to God. But the
point is they knew they needed a covering.”
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