Sermon on the Mount: Seek the Kingdom of God—Clothes and fashion
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Hymn 318
Suffer the children to come to me,
This was the Master’s tender plea;
Gentle and loving, they are mine,
Ah, will not ye who see this sign
Come unto me?
He who receiveth the Word as they,
Teachable, ready to choose my way,
He shall have peace of sin forgiven,
He shall in this wise enter heaven;
Come unto me.
See ye the lilies, how fair they grow,
Clothed in a glory kings ne’er know;
They, like the sparrows, praise the Lord,
Publish my call with clear accord,
Come unto me.
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THE HOLY BIBLE
Matthew 6:25, 28-29, 31-33 [NLT]
I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have . . . enough clothes to wear. . .. Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘. . . What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
Deut. 8:2, 4, 11-14 [NLT]
Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness . . . For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell. Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey his commands, regulations, and decrees that I am giving you today. For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, and when your flocks and herds have become very large and your silver and gold have multiplied along with everything else, . . . do not become proud at that time and forget the Lord your God, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt.
Luke 7:24-27 [NLT]
After John’s disciples left, Jesus began talking about him to the crowds. What kind of man did you go into the wilderness to see? . . . were you expecting to see a man dressed in expensive clothes? No, people who wear beautiful clothes and live in luxury are found in palaces. Were you looking for a prophet? Yes, and he is more than a prophet. John is the man to whom the Scriptures refer when they say, ‘Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare your way before you.
Luke 8:26-33, 35 [NLT]
They arrived in the region of the Gerasenes, across the lake from Galilee. As Jesus was climbing out of the boat, a man who was possessed by demons came out to meet him. For a long time he had been homeless and naked, living in the tombs outside the town. As soon as he saw Jesus, . . . he screamed, “Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? . . . ” For Jesus had already commanded the evil spirit to come out of him. This spirit had often taken control of the man. Even when he was placed under guard and put in chains and shackles, he simply broke them and rushed out into the wilderness, completely under the demon’s power. Jesus demanded, What is your name? “Legion,” he replied, for he was filled with many demons. . .. There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby, and the demons begged him to let them enter into the pigs. So Jesus gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the entire herd plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned. . . . A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been freed from the demons. He was sitting at Jesus’ feet, fully clothed and perfectly sane.
James 2:1-5, 8 [NLT]
My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? For example, suppose someone comes into your meeting dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes. If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, “You can stand over there, or else sit on the floor”—well, doesn’t this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives? Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters. [I]t is good when you obey the royal law as found in the Scriptures: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
I Tim. 6:6, 8, 10-11; 2:8-10 [NLT]
True godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content. Some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. . . . so run from all these evil things. Pursue righteousness and a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. In every place of worship, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from anger and controversy. And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do.
Gen. 24:2-4, 7, 9, 10, 15, 29, 50-51, 58, 64, 65, 67 [NLT]
One day Abraham said to his oldest servant, the man in charge of his household, “Swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not allow my son to marry one of these local Canaanite women. Go instead to my homeland, to my relatives, and find a wife there for my son Isaac.” So the servant . .. went to the town where Abraham’s brother Nahor had settled. Before he had finished praying, he saw a young woman named Rebekah. Now Rebekah had a brother named Laban, who ran out to meet the man at the spring. Then Laban and Bethuel replied, “The Lord has obviously brought you here, . . . Here is Rebekah; take her and go. Yes, let her be the wife of your master’s son, as the Lord has directed.” So they called Rebekah. “Are you willing to go with this man?” they asked her. And she replied, “Yes, I will go.” When Rebekah looked up and saw Isaac, she . . . covered her face with her veil. And Isaac brought Rebekah into his mother Sarah’s tent, and she became his wife. He loved her deeply.
1 Peter 3:3-4 [NLT]
Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.
I Cor. 7:31 [KJV]
The fashion of this world passeth away.
I John 2:15-17 [NLT]
Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
II Cor. 5:2-8 [KJV}
For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. . .. whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: . . . We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
Col. 3: 12, 14 [NLT]
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.
Rev 12:1 [NLT]
Then I witnessed in heaven an event of great significance. I saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.
Matt. 6:33
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
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SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES by Mary Baker Eddy
SH 507:3-6
Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the fatherhood and motherhood of God.
SH 68:2-4
At present mortals progress slowly for fear of being thought ridiculous. They are slaves to fashion, pride, and sense.
SH 212:17-18, 22
Mortals have a modus of their own, undirected and unsustained by God. God alone makes and clothes the lilies of the field, and this He does by means of Mind, not matter.
SH 510:2-4
How much more should we seek to apprehend the spiritual ideas of God, than to dwell on the objects of sense!
SH 260:24-1
Selfishness and sensualism are educated in mortal mind by the thoughts ever recurring to one’s self, by conversation about the body, and by the expectation of perpetual pleasure or pain from it; and this education is at the expense of spiritual growth. If we array thought in mortal vestures, it must lose its immortal nature. If we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain; for Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; for Spirit, we find its opposite, matter.
SH 277:29
Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immortal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous.
SH 532:31-1
The first impression material man had of himself was one of nakedness and shame.
SH 263:11-14
Carnal beliefs defraud us. They make man an involuntary hypocrite, — producing evil when he would create good, forming deformity when he would outline grace and beauty, injuring those whom he would bless.
SH 57:15-19
Beauty, wealth, or fame is incompetent to meet the demands of the affections, and should never weigh against the better claims of intellect, goodness, and virtue. Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love.
SH 60:6-8
The beautiful in character is also the good, welding indissolubly the links of affection.
SH 247:10-15, 19 (only), 21-24, 28-2
Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief. Custom, education, and fashion form the transient standards of mortals. Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its own, — the radiance of Soul. Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. . . Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color. The embellishments of the person are poor substitutes for the charms of being, shining resplendent and eternal over age and decay. The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony.
SH 62:13
Taking less “thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink”; less thought “for your body what ye shall put on,” will do much more for the health of the rising generation than you dream. Children should be allowed to remain children in knowledge, and should become men and women only through growth in the understanding of man’s higher nature.
SH 248:8-11
Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images of thought and destroying the woes of sense which each day brings to a nearer tomb.
SH 485:24-27
If thought yields its dominion to other powers, it cannot outline on the body its own beautiful images, but it effaces them and delineates foreign agents, called disease and sin.
SH 62:20, 29-30; 63:1
We must not attribute more and more intelligence to matter, but less and less, if we would be wise and healthy. The divine Mind, which forms the bud and blossom, will care for the human body, even as it clothes the lily; but let no mortal interfere with God’s government by thrusting in the laws of erring, human concepts. . . . Our false views of life hide eternal harmony, and produce the ills of which we complain. You would never think that flannel was better for warding off pulmonary disease than the controlling Mind, if you understood the Science of being.
SH 146:13-14, 18-20
Material medicine substitutes drugs for the power of God — even the might of Mind — to heal the body. [T]ruth divests material drugs of their imaginary power, and clothes Spirit with supremacy.
SH 135:12-15
This is “the beauty of holiness,” that when Truth heals the sick, it casts out evils, and when Truth casts out the evil called disease, it heals the sick.
SH 476:21-22
Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood.
SH 527:1
God could not put Mind into matter nor infinite Spirit into finite form to dress it and keep it, — to make it beautiful or to cause it to live and grow. Man is God’s reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete.
SH 560:6-9
Revelation xii. 1. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
SH 561:8-13, 22-25, 26-27
The Revelator beheld the spiritual idea from the mount of vision. Purity was the symbol of Life and Love. The Revelator saw also the spiritual ideal as a woman clothed in light, a bride coming down from heaven, wedded to the Lamb of Love. The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man, the spiritual idea of God; she illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea. The spiritual idea is clad with the radiance of spiritual Truth, and matter is put under her feet.
SH 267:25-28
The robes of Spirit are “white and glistering,” like the raiment of Christ. Even in this world, therefore, “let thy garments be always white.”
SH 76:22-26
The sinless joy, — the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness without a single bodily pleasure or pain, — constitutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual.
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Hymn 442
Here, O God, Thy healing presence
Lifts our thoughts from self and sin,
Fills with light their hidden places,
When Thy love is welcomed in.
Here Thy tender sweet persuasions
Turn us home to heavenly ways,
While our hearts, unsealed, adoring,
Pour the fragrance of Thy praise.
Reverent lives unveil Thy beauty,
Faithful witness bear of Thee;
Binding up the brokenhearted,
We reflect Thy radiancy.
So may deeper consecration
Show Thee forth in healing’s sign,
Till through joyful self-surrender
We in Love’s pure likeness shine.
Hymn 455
Seek ye first the kingdom of God
And His righteousness,
And all these things shall be added
unto you.
Allelu, alleluia!
Ask and it shall be given unto you.
Seek and ye shall find,
Knock and the door shall be opened
unto you.
Allelu, alleluia!
DESCANT
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Alleluia!