The statement, gird up thy loins now like a man.
Now what does that mean, to gird up your loins like a man?
This would be similar to when we would say, you know, to roll up your sleeves.
It basically is an action that denotes that you're about to perform some kind of a task
or do some kind of a work, you know, and before you get to work, you know, you might unbutton
your cuffs, roll up your sleeves just to not be encumbered by a long sleeve garment.
You know, this might be a taking off your coat, you know, before going to work and doing
something.
This is talking about the fact that in those days, they will wear long and flowing robes.
You know, they would wear coats and keep in mind, the Bible uses these words often interchangeably.
Robe, coat, mantle, garment, you know, whatever it calls it and it's something that goes over
your clothing.
Now, a lot of people have this bizarre doctrine that men didn't wear pants back then but that
rather they just wore just a coat and you say, where do they get this idea?
From every single piece of Sunday school literature that's ever been produced on the planet?
I mean, when was the last time you saw Sunday school literature with a guy in pants?
You never see it and this has led people to the bizarre stupidity that pants weren't even
invented.
I've even had people say, you know, pants weren't invented back then.
So basically the people who built the pyramids, the people who built the aqueducts, you know,
the people who built these great walled cities and the people who came up with all these
steel weapons and stuff, they just, pants never occurred to them.
You know, and here's how pants, by the way, I know how pants were invented.
This is how pants were invented.
One day a guy accidentally grabbed his shirt and he started putting it on, he accidentally
put his legs through the arm holes of his shirt.
And then he realized, wait a minute, I might be honest, because some of the greatest inventions
have been, you know, if I could just get rid of this hole in the middle, you know, maybe
change this.
But you know, that's how some of the greatest inventions have come about, through accidents
like that.
But I mean, how bizarre of a teaching, hey, pants didn't exist back then.
But then I noticed somebody sent me a news article recently, they dug up some fossilized
thing of somebody wearing pants like, you know, 5,000 years ago.
What a shock.
Amazing.
I mean, this is a game changer, folks.
They had pants back then.
But honestly, someone believing that pants weren't around back then, that's just ignorance.
I mean, even just reading any secular history book, you know, for example, a famous example
is the Battle of Thermopylae where you have the Greeks facing the Persians and the Persians
made a mockery of the Greeks because the Greeks wore so little clothing.
And they considered the Greeks to be effeminate because they were long haired and they would
comb their hair and make themselves real pretty and they're pretty much in their underwear.
Whereas the Persians wore pants down to the ankles.
And this we're talking about hundreds of years before Christ.
And even a secular history book will talk about the difference in clothing between the
two sides.
You know, I mean, you just have to be pretty foolish to think that pants weren't around
back then.
And let me tell you something.
The working man has always worn pants because of the fact that, you know, it's not practical
to go to work in a toga.
You know, that works great for some kind of a beer drinking college party to put on
a toga or some stupidity like that, but, you know, people who actually have to work for
a living need garments that are a little more practical than that.
So this idea of just, oh, they just wore togas because they have pictures of some just really
royal Caesars and everything.
Because guess what?
There aren't a lot of pictures from back then.
So we don't know what they wore except for what we read in the Bible if we really want
to trust something.
But they'll have a picture of some Roman Caesar in a toga with an olive leaf wreath.
That's not how the common man dressed.
Now look, I'm not saying that everybody always wore pants that go down to the ankles.
The Bible talks a lot about pants that just go to the knee.
We would call those shorts, but the Bible calls them britches or pants.
You know, pants that could go down to the knee, pants that might go mid-calf, pants
that might go down to the ankles.
But the point is, men have worn pants throughout history and the Bible five times talks about
men wearing britches, which are pants.
That's just another word for pants.
People talk about being too big for their britches.
I mean, that's a word that we still would even use today.
But people still say, no, no, no, Pastor Anderson, they didn't wear pants.
You know, I said, Jesus wore pants.
They say, no, no, no, you're crazy.
You're, you know, you're a radical, you know, for teaching that.
They want us to believe that these guys just went around in like a trench coat with nothing
else.
I mean, that's just ridiculous.
It's bizarre.
You wouldn't be able to work effectively.
And here's what's funny.
The reason why people want to do that is because they don't like the teaching that men and
women should dress differently, that men should wear pants and that women should wear skirts
and dresses.
So they just have to say, oh, everybody was in a dress back then.
Everybody was in a dress.
Jesus was in a dress.
You know, they're all in a dress.
But, you know, in reality, the Bible says a woman should not wear that which pertains
to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment for all that do so are an abomination
to the Lord thy God.
And you say, well, you know, that was back then, that was in the Old Testament, we're
free in Christ.
But, you know, when Jesus died on the cross, there were a lot of things that changed about
the law.
Cross dressing wasn't one of them.
You know, Jesus didn't die on the cross to liberate women from feminine clothing.
He didn't die on the cross so that men could wear dresses.
I mean, what kind of a bizarre doctrine?
You know, yeah, he fulfilled the Sabbath, he fulfilled the dietary laws, he fulfilled
the Levitical priesthood in the temple.
He didn't die for people to be able to all dress the same now.
You know, the, oh, thank God we're living in the New Testament where my wife and I can
just both throw on a pair of coveralls and just be dressed exactly the same as one another.
No, the Bible's real clear.
There's a principle of saying, hey, you know, men have short hair, you know, women have
long hair, men wear pants, you know, women don't.
And you say, well, where does the Bible say that women don't wear pants?
Well, here's what the Bible says.
The Bible says that a woman should not wear that which pertaineth to a man, neither shall
a man put on a woman's garment for all that do so are an abomination to the Lord thy God.
Let me ask you this.
Isn't that saying that there's some garment that's a man's garment that a woman shouldn't
put on?
There's something, I mean, let's not argue yet about what that is.
There's some kind of clothing that pertains to men that women should not put on according
to that, right?
And then there's some kind of a woman's garment that men shouldn't be putting on.
Now if I came to church in a dress, would you say I'm in violation of that standard?
Would anyone doubt that I'm in violation of that standard?
You say, well, you're putting on a woman's garment.
Now what if I said, well, it's a really manly dress?
Camoed out, you know, or, you know, maybe it's denim, you know, or whatever.
Okay.
You'd still say you're in violation.
You're wearing a woman's garment.
You're wearing a dress.
Okay, but here's what's funny then.
But then if you say, well, pants are a man's garment, it's like, whoa, no, no, no, that's
not true.
Pants go both ways.
But here's the thing.
Okay, let's, I'll give that to you.
Pants go both ways.
What's a man's garment that women can't put on?
See, you have to use the process of elimination.
If there's something that God says women shouldn't be putting on, because according to the, if
you say, well, it's okay for women to wear pants, then here's what you're saying.
Women can wear everything.
They can wear pants.
They can wear skirts.
They can wear dresses.
Women can wear everything.
Nothing's off limits for women.
But for men, it's only pants that are allowed.
Pants only.
No skirts.
No dresses.
You say, well, it's based on culture.
It's based on society.
Well, our society is getting pretty weird, so if you want to base it on that, you know,
you're in for a wild ride, because, you know, our society has some pretty weird standards
that are constantly changing.
Now there, like I said, there are five times that pants are mentioned.
It's always associated with men wearing pants.
You know, you don't see a mention of women wearing pants.
The thing is, to me, if you just look at the universal sign for a man and a woman,
just look at the bathroom door, and it's clear.
You know, one of them's pants, one of them's a skirt, you know.
So that's where this derives from, this idea that, you know, men wear pants and that women
wear skirts and dresses.
And in the United States, everybody agrees.
My dad, listen to this, my dad was a teenager in the 1960s in Los Angeles, California.
Now does that sound like a Christian stronghold of the Bible Belt?
Eight sixties, Los Angeles, California, and women were not allowed to wear.
You couldn't wear to the public school.
Girls could not wear pants to the public school.
So I mean, it was completely just accepted in our society that that's just the way things
are.
Men dress like men, women dress like women.
You say, well, time's changed.
But you know what, if anything, in 2014, we need more distinction between the genders,
not less.
Why would we sit there and get all unisexed out in our attire with all the weird stuff
that's going on?
If anything, we need more distinction between men and women, not less.
And when you think about it that way, you know, you can see that obviously there's something
that God doesn't want women to wear that pertains to a man.
And there's something that God doesn't want men to wear that pertains to a woman.
And you know, shirts, it's not a shirt, you know, it's not a sweater, it's not a jacket.
I mean, those things all are just basic pieces of clothing.
The difference between a man's clothing and a woman's clothing is pants versus a skirt.
I mean, it's pretty obvious, but people who don't like that are going to resist that,
even though it's just kind of common sense in my opinion.
But here's what people will often say, and this is what I think is so funny.
They'll say, well, wait a minute, Pastor Anderson, women can't always wear skirts and dresses
because it's not practical, they'll say.
You know, there's so much that they couldn't do unless they wore pants.
I mean, it's just not practical.
And then these same people will turn around, oh, everybody wore a skirt and dress in the
Bible.
So on one hand they're like, well, how's a woman going to go horseback riding in a skirt?
But then it's like, oh, every person in the Bible, all those millions of people who rode
horses in the Bible, they were all on skirts.
It's like, well, which one is it?
You know, like either it's possible to do stuff in a skirt or it's not.
If it's impossible to ride into battle in a skirt, then why are you telling me that
all the people in the Bible did it?
You know, and if it's possible to do all that, then why are you complaining about wearing
a skirt or dress if you can do everything?
I mean, everything that happened in the Bible, if you're claiming that everybody was wearing
a dress, well, they could do all the same things.
You know, and honestly, you can do everything that you need to do in a skirt or dress if
you want to.
You know, my wife only wears skirts and dresses, my daughters only wear skirts and dresses,
and honestly, they've gone to, you know, they've gone horseback riding, for example.
You know, yeah, you can't wear a tight skirt, you know, horseback riding, but if you have
a long, flowing, full skirt, you can actually ride that horseback riding, you can go on
a roller coaster, you can do whatever.
You know, my family, even when we go swimming somewhere, my wife and daughters, they all
wear swim dresses.
You're not going to believe this, but they don't show their naked rear end to the whole
world when they go swimming.
Isn't that radical?
We're like the Taliban over here.
We're like radical Islam.
I mean, they actually don't show their naked rear end publicly.
They actually wear clothing that covers their body.
What a concept.
You know, and guess what, they actually look pretty cool.
They don't look like, you know, oh man, it's embarrassing.
Actually every time my wife and daughters go anywhere publicly and go swimming somewhere
in their swim dresses, they get compliments on them every single time, because they look
very good.
They look nice, but they're modest.
They're not revealing of their bodies.
So again, the reason I'm bringing all this up, you say, what in the world does this have
to do with Job 40?
I want to hear about Behemoth.
Well, hold on, you know, we'll get to Behemoth, okay, but first of all, let's talk about the
elephant in the room, you know, no, I'm just kidding, but anyway.
He says, gird up thy loins like a man.
Why would he say gird up thy loins like a man?
Because here's the thing, if you're a woman and you're wearing a skirt or dress and you
were to gird up your loins, what does it mean to gird up your loins?
The girdle or the girding would be some kind of a belt or a sash, you know, something around
the waist.
So if you were to gird up your loins, what you're basically doing is taking some fabric
from down here and sticking it in your belt or in your girdle.
Well, here's the thing, if you're a woman, you're not going to do that because there's
nothing underneath.
Because you're wearing a dress or a skirt, you're not going to be able to gird up your
loins like a man.
Whereas if you're a man, you have a pair of pants or britches or what we would consider
long shorts on, then when you go out to work, let's say you're going to go running, you
know, you don't want your robe or your coat to be flapping everywhere.
So you're going to basically gird that up.
You know what I'm saying?
And you'd basically grab the tails of your robe or your coat or your garment and you'd
shove them into your belt.
Basically that's what they would do to get it out of the way.
So they would gird up their loins in preparation for doing something.
See, the Bible is clear.
You know, Jesus had a coat because if you remember Jesus' coat, they wanted it after
he died because it was kind of an expensive coat because it was all made of one piece
of fabric.
It didn't have any seam.
So that coat was something that Jesus wore.
But here's where the Sunday school literature gets it wrong.
That's not all he wore.
You know, I wear a coat too.
And when I lived in Chicago, I would wear a big long flowing coat that went down, you
know, close to my ankles.
Big woolen overcoat because it was cold.
But I never went out of the house.
I didn't even go to Walmart at 2 a.m. with just that wool coat on.
Because you know what?
As a man, you wear pants.
Why?
Because you say, well what's the difference?
Well because you know with women, they wear skirts and dresses and everything, but they're
not doing the same type of things that men are doing.
And so therefore it's easier for them to be modest and everything like that.
That's why it doesn't just say gird up your loins, but it says gird up your loins like
a man.
Okay.
And again, you say, well I disagree with you Pastor Anderson.
You know what?
That's fine if you disagree with me, but you're wrong.
And the bathroom door proves you wrong.
American history proves you wrong.
You know, and honestly, if you walk away from this sermon saying that I'm wrong, that's
fine.
But I just want to tell you one thing.
If you walk away from this sermon saying, you know what, I still think it's okay for
women to wear pants, then here's what you're going to have to work out for yourself in
your own mind.
What is the men's apparel that God's telling women not to wear?
You know, and if you decide that it's something different than pants, then that's fine.
That's between you and God.
But you know what?
I think you're going to have a hard time thinking of anything that's off limits for women.
Well, you know, you've got to wear women's pants they say.
Well, you know, what's the difference between women's pants and men's pants?
It's a little more tighter and form fitting.
That's not modest anyway.
So again, by the way, most churches, you won't hear this anymore because it's unpopular.
But honestly, you know, my goal is not to be popular.
My goal is to tell you the truth, you know, and then don't get mad at me and don't kill
the messenger.
This used to be even believed by the public school system.
Even in the United States, less than 100 years ago, it was illegal for a woman to go in public
in pants.
Did you know that?
There were women arrested in the early part of the century for cross-dressing because
they were wearing pants.
They were arrested and booked under cross-dressing because of the fact that our society has always
recognized pants as men's clothing and skirts and dresses as clothing for ladies.
And so I'm not going to change on that, you know.
And even if I'm all by myself in the wilderness, even if a lot of the pastors that I know now,
you know, their whole family, their wives and children are all, you know, poured into
a tight pair of pants, you know what?
I'm not going to change because I don't believe in it.
I don't think it's right.
I think that there should be a difference.
By the way, I just like the way my wife looks in a skirt better than she looks in a pair
of pants.
Why would you not want your wife to be feminine?
You know, why would you want your wife to, you know, I mean, I'd rather have a feminine
wife.
It's more attractive, you know, and by the way, manly men are more attractive too than
queer little sissies, right?
Okay.
So anyway, you know, that was just kind of a little commercial break there on the part
about girding up your lines like a man.