Grant: Welcome to Torah Today Ministries. My name is Grant Luton.
Robin: And I’m Robin.
Grant: And this is a new episode of Breadcrumbs, something that you and I have been talking about for quite a long time. And we decided we need to quit putting it off and just do a Breadcrumbs discussion on it. So tell everybody what we’re talking about today, Robin.
Robin: Oh boy. It’s one of those subjects that is a little bit vague and difficult to articulate. So we’re just going to trust that God will enable us to communicate this, Grant, without misrepresenting him or offending anybody. So I guess we have noticed this phenomenon through the years and lately, and seen it, and we’ve probably most certainly been guilty of it, but taking the things that our Father entrusts to us in secret and assuming that it’s for public display or knowledge.
Grant: When it’s not.
Robin: When it isn’t. Because sometimes those things are for us to share. But often they’re not. And it takes a great deal of discernment to know the difference. And we don’t have this 100% right. But when we don’t use discernment, I think that we risk being off-putting to those who are watching, especially those outside of God’s kingdom right now.
Grant: And you still haven’t told everybody what we’re talking about.
Robin: Well, I’m going to let you put it. I’m going to throw the ball back in your lap, Grant, because you’re the one that came up with a phrase to describe it, because we kept trying to describe what we were both thinking and wondering how to address in our own life, and you came up with a phrase.
Grant: Spiritual modesty.
Robin: Which is probably weird to a lot of our listeners. Like, what in the world are they talking about?
Grant: Well, let’s talk about modesty itself. And usually when we discuss modesty, we have females in mind. And the Bible doesn’t give us just clear-cut rules about how a woman should dress, but somehow we discern. You use the word discernment. This takes discernment. We have to use discernment, and we can tell sometimes when a woman is not being modest in her dress. She’s showing way too much flesh. She’s sharing with the world and showing the world things that only her husband should see. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.
Robin: No.
Grant: But there’s a spiritual counterpart to that. There are spiritual secrets, spiritual discretions, things that only our heavenly bridegroom should be a part of. But we often are immature with it, immodest with it, and we share with the world things that are not the world’s business.
Robin: You know what I also think can motivate that tendency is insecurity. When I see what I call PDA, or public displays of affection, with people who are a couple, it’s funny, Grant, because I tend to just assume that that is a compensation for what they don’t share in secret, and they’re trying to make a statement because there’s an insecurity that they have in their relationship. Or if a woman is married and she has a husband who does love her, although women who feel loved don’t really need to flaunt. But when I see a married woman who’s flaunting herself, there is such an insecurity there. So obviously, there’s a lack.
Grant: She’s trying to make up for something that’s lacking in her private life.
Robin: Yes, so spiritually, if I have this drive and this need to flaunt what I have experienced with God that is maybe something even better than you’ve experienced with God, and he has entrusted me with this experience, that’s probably revealing an insecurity somewhere.
Grant: And I think this is something that goes way back to ancient times where people have genuine experiences with God, genuine experiences, and they’ve had an especially close encounter with God. And God, I think, is nudging them, saying, “This is just between you and me,” but they feel like they have to go out and shout it to the world.
You know, the two great examples in the Bible of spiritual modesty are the Tabernacle and Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) himself. Because the Tabernacle is a picture of Yeshua. But if you looked at the Tabernacle, you did not see glory. The outer covering of the Tabernacle was made of tachash (תַּחַשׁ) skins. And the only information we have about them is that they were a type of shoe leather. So the house of God was made of shoe leather. That’s what you saw. When you went inside, only the priest, and then the high priest once a year in the Holy of Holies—the glory inside was unbelievable. It was incredible.
Same is true with Yeshua. It says there was nothing externally about him to attract us. I don’t think he was a particularly handsome man or even particularly tall. He was pretty plain. But up on the Mount of Transfiguration, he took Peter, James, and John with him, and he was transfigured before them.
Robin: Right.
Grant: And they were just, their minds were blown. But what did he say to them when they came down from the mountain? He says, “Don’t share any of this with anybody else until after I’ve risen from the dead. Keep this between us.” So in other words, he’s saying, “What you saw on top of the mountain, this is who I am. And I could look like this all the time if I wanted.”
Robin: And you got to get a peek. Right. It’s for you.
Grant: But he was spiritually modest. So he just didn’t flaunt this all the time.
Robin: Well, you mentioned Peter. And when I think of Peter, I smile because I think he gives us examples in his life story of how he was so zealous and sometimes perhaps immature. And he was always kind of trying to be the exception and perhaps sucked the air out of the room at times.
I think of the time that Yeshua was just being himself, not trying to draw attention to himself, but just being the master when he was washing the feet of his followers and his friends. And when he got to Peter, instead of Peter being humble enough to just enter into that experience, he had to be outside of that experience in some way. So he says, “No, not just my feet, but all of me.” And the master says, “What? If it’s not just your feet, like everyone else in the room, just skip it.” Basically.
So I think this word modesty, Grant, has a very strong correlation with humility. And that’s something that we’re all trying to understand and experience as we mature.
Grant: Well, I think the key passage for this entire talk, and maybe we should have started with this right at the top, is in Micah chapter 6. Now, verses 6 through 8, we all know verse 8, but I want to start with 6, get the run-up to this. It’s as if someone is saying, “What grand gesture can I make to show my devotion to God, my devotion which is greater than everyone else’s devotion?” And this is how it starts:
“With what shall I come before Adonai (יהוה), and bow myself before God on high?” (Micah 6:6a)
And then he comes up with an idea:
“Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?” (Micah 6:6b)
And that would be fine. But then he thinks he gets a better idea.
Robin: Or that’s not good enough.
Grant: Oh, I’ve got a better idea:
“Will Adonai be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?” (Micah 6:7a)
I’ve got even a better idea:
“Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6:7b)
But then God answers, and this is what it says in verse 8:
“He has told you, O man, what is good and what Adonai requires of you.” (Micah 6:8a)
But here they are, three things: Do justly.
Robin: Yes.
Grant: Love kindness, chesed (חֶסֶד), love lovingkindness.
Robin: So basic.
Grant: And here’s the kicker:
“And to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8b)
Walking humbly with God. When we compare ourselves to God, we all feel very humbled. But then often when we compare ourselves with other believers, we feel like we need to let them in on just how spiritual we are.
Robin: Or how spiritual they are not.
Grant: Yeah. You know, I can think of so many examples, Robin, over the years. Especially when I became a congregational leader, it seems so often that new people would come and they felt like their first order of business was to let me know how spiritual they were. And I would often just inside kind of have to chuckle like, “Just be you, just be a friend, just don’t try to impress me with your experiences.”
I’ll never forget about 35 years ago, and this is long before I became a congregational leader, I was at a Bible study at a lovely Jewish couple’s home who were really devout believers in Yeshua, and they would open their home. And there was a gentleman there who was part of a television ministry, an evangelical ministry, and everybody had seen him on TV, and he would come every week. And again, this is 35 years ago. I’m not going to share names, and he is dead, and nobody will ever know who this person was. But he started talking about his experiences with the Lord.
Robin: That were supposed to be intimate experiences.
Grant: Yeah, physical manifestations that God had made, where the Holy Spirit would make the leaves on a tree just shake. And he would talk about other things and experiences, and then when he would share something, another person in the room would share their experiences, and he would come back and share his. It became like this competition. I felt like I was a scorekeeper—who’s had the most spiritual experience.
Robin: But let’s be honest, we’ve gotten caught up in it.
Grant: Everybody tends to, and that’s immaturity.
Robin: It’s yucky.
Grant: It is. You know, little children can run around without their clothes on, and it’s kind of cute. At a certain point, it stops being cute. If we’re spiritually mature, we need to keep covered up. Our spiritual things belong to us and to God. We need to be very careful that we don’t walk in pride, but we walk humbly with our God.
Robin: And it tends to be embarrassing to everyone in the room, as was that experience for you those years ago. We’ve all experienced that.
You know, in the word, I think of Isaac, when he first sees Rebecca, who will be his bride, the word describes them as going into the tent. And there are things that God intends to keep inside the tent to really be the encounter that strengthens our relationship with him.
So I literally for years have kind of had a phrase that I describe as “tent time.” And I’ll say to you, “I just haven’t had my tent time with Adonai and I’m suffering for it,” as you are, because everyone around us suffers when we avoid that time.
But you know, Grant, I’m also thinking of how we’re told that man, and that’s we’re humans, we’re man, cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of his mouth, the mouth of Adonai, of God. And so it doesn’t say that man shouldn’t eat bread, because we need physical bread to live because we’re physical. But we’re also spiritual.
And some people just want to live on the physical bread alone and think that there’s nothing to be gained by developing their souls. But then there’s that other extreme. It’s like, “I don’t need physical bread. I don’t need that. I don’t need physicality. I’m just a little more spiritual than those around me.”
And it’s like, to be a human, there’s a walk. Walk humbly with your God. And when we walk humbly, we use our left foot and our right foot, and then our left foot and then our right foot. And we have to walk in balance, realizing that we’re in a physical world. So be a normal person.
Grant: You know, for these people, Yeshua himself wasn’t spiritual enough. Because he ate and drank with sinners. So he was accused. He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.
Robin: And hanging out with people that he shouldn’t spend time with because they were too sinful.
Grant: Wow, this is amazing.
Robin: Right.
Grant: Yeah, you know, I remember a lady. She did come to the congregation very often before she realized we had her number and she wasn’t going to get the applause that she wanted. But when she introduced herself, when she first came in, the first thing she told me is that, “I’m a prophetess.”
Robin: Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Grant: Well, first of all, a prophet doesn’t go around saying, “I’m a prophet.” But she comes in, “I’m a prophetess,” which right away I knew, well, you’re not. And of course, she was in rebellion. She was separated from her husband. She was not under authority. Because I asked her, “Well, whose authority are you under?” “I’m under no one’s authority but God.” As soon as someone says that, they’re a rebel.
And she did everything she could over the three times she came to try to stir up stuff, draw attention to herself. She wrote out prophecies. She wanted me to read from up front. She asked if she could come up front and prophesy. I said, “No.”
Robin: And if everyone else was sitting, she was standing. If everyone else was standing in prayer, she was walking toward the front. If everyone else was quiet, she was clapping her hands. There was always something happening with her that was drawing attention to her.
Grant: And that’s what immodesty does. Immodesty says, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.”
Robin: And Yeshua, his life demonstrated, and demonstrates as we still allow it to affect us, him drawing attention to the Father and looking around him to serve everyone around him. So he was giving life to the people around him and paying attention to them and then drawing their attention to the Lord. And so that’s our model.
Grant: That’s exactly right. You know, I was thinking about the time that Yeshua sent out the 70 to raise the dead and cast out demons and heal the sick and so on. And this is in Luke chapter 10:
“And when the seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.’” (Luke 10:17)
But in verse 20 he says:
“Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you. Rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” (Luke 10:20)
Robin: In other words, it’s a quiet thing that is real. Just bask in the reality of it, but be quiet.
I want to go back to one of our favorite definitions of spirituality that we have kind of returned to through the years.
Grant: Do you want me to share that?
Robin: I do, because I’m afraid I’ll misspeak it.
Grant: Well, this is the definition, this is my definition, this may not be the best, but so far, I don’t know of a better way. But spirituality is seeing God everywhere and in everything and remaining quiet about it. Not just not being noisy. Just not being noisy about it.
Robin: And it doesn’t mean that the thing that is happening in an intimate encounter between ourselves and our bridegroom isn’t deeply affecting us. But the fruit of that union isn’t describing the union. It’s the fruit that comes as a result of that union. It’s the spiritual children and the fruit of our life that happened as a result. That’s what belongs outside the tent.
Grant: Well, you know, God created trees to teach us about people. A tree is a picture of a person. And different kinds of trees are pictures of different kinds of people.
Robin: And groups of trees are communities of people.
Grant: Yes, that’s right. But a tree is a picture of a person. Well, a healthy tree, when you see that tree, you only see half of it. Half of it is hidden. It’s underground. And that’s where the nutrients come from. It’s that secret part of the tree that makes it strong and stable and healthy. It means it’s planted.
But if you don’t have a secret life with God, in other words, every experience with God you go and share it with the world, then you have no secret life with God. You have no hidden life with him. Your root system is exposed, which means you’re going to be unstable.
Robin: And the storms are more likely to really affect you and to topple you over.
Grant: So a spiritual person, as Paul says, discerns all things. A spiritual person sees God everywhere, sees him in everything. In every situation, he perceives God’s presence in that, even if it’s something painful, something that causes grief, and it’s like God’s still in that.
Robin: And you know what I’ve come to understand, slowly but surely, is that the humility that results from that encounter with God in a secret place will result in love, and that love will not only protect my secrets, but the secrets of others.
You know, love covers a multitude. And so sometimes it’s not just my own nakedness that God wants me to be careful to cover spiritually, but the nakedness of others, even if they’re immature or they’ve made a mistake, because that’s what love does. He came to be our kippur (כִּפּוּר). He covers us.
Grant: And so… I’m not even going to share that. It’d be immodest.
Robin: You know, the Hebrew word for modesty is tzniut (צְנִיעוּת). And it’s a very common word in modern Hebrew, but it’s only found one time in the Bible, only one time. And it’s usually translated “humble.” And it’s in Proverbs 11, verse 2. It says:
“When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with the tzenuim (צְנוּעִים), these are the modest people, with the tzenuim is wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2)
So pride is spiritual immodesty.
Grant: Yeah.
Robin: Because you want people to know that you’re close to God, you’ve had experience with God, that God has used you, God’s answered your prayers, God has done these things through me, I’ve done this. But with that comes disgrace, because so many people who I’ve heard boast about what God has used them to accomplish, later on, they fall flat on their face, and there’s disgrace.
But with the modest, with the spiritually modest here, there is wisdom. Humility and wisdom go together. Humility is the beginning of wisdom. And when people are spiritually immodest, other people can see the foolishness. They might be impressed at first, but eventually the foolishness of their behavior will be seen.
Robin: So we’re kind of like the… I love the story. I think the most spiritual fairy tale out there is “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Grant: Oh, right, I know.
Robin: Oh, the Emperor, because of his pride, he believed that these two…
Grant: Fools.
Robin: Well, these two con artists came into town. They make the most wonderful cloth, but it’s so wonderful, so magical that fools can’t see it. And of course, they set up all these weaving equipment and they pretend they’re weaving cloth, but nobody can see it, but nobody wants to admit they’re fools. So they pretend they can see it. And they make new clothes for the king, and he goes parading through the city naked. But everybody’s pretending they can see the king’s clothes.
Grant: Because they were afraid to be the outlier.
Robin: To be accused of being a fool.
Grant: Yeah.
Robin: So finally a little child shouts out, “The king’s naked.” And then finally, they all had to admit he really was. They had all been fools.
Grant: Yeah.
Robin: So there was no modesty there because of their pride.
Grant: Well, something you said earlier today when we were chatting about this subject is we talked about how an exception to what appears to be spiritual modesty through the word could be some of the prophets, who had a very distinct mission in life, and their life did tend to draw attention to itself in their behavior and their dress.
Robin: Oh, very bizarre behavior.
Grant: Kind of bizarre behavior. So I think what has been tempting through the ages is for people to try to imitate the bizarre behavior, to think that is going to constitute a deeper spiritual life with the unseen. And so that is a huge temptation for people.
Robin: Yeah, you have to be a pretty foolish person to think, “Well, I’ll act bizarre like that prophet. And then people will think I’m a prophet.” And often it’s like the emperor’s new clothes. We don’t see—you’re naked.
Grant: Well, often the motivation for that in our world is “profit” like P-R-O-F-I-T, not “prophet” P-R-O-P-H-E-T. You don’t profit from being a prophet.
Robin: And the prophets were very, very physically depleted in their comforts and in their affirmation and in their just everyday life. So we need to really examine our motivations.
I think our present day religious systems set us up for terrible failure because we create celebrities out of people who may begin truly humble. And none of us, Grant, can handle celebrityism. We’re not wired for it as humans. So whenever that begins to occur, there is a downfall.
Grant: And what did Yeshua do? When the crowd started forming, he found a way to get away from them.
Robin: A quiet, secret place.
Grant: He avoided celebrityism—is that a word, celebrityism?
Robin: I just created it.
Grant: Well, okay, anyhow. He avoided it as much as he could. There’s one time we have that he gave a sermon to a large crowd, but then he dismissed them. “Go home.” And he was always avoiding the crowds. And how many times did he work a miracle? And like at the Transfiguration, he says, “Don’t tell anybody.”
Robin: And you wonder, it’s fun to think about how many secrets Yeshua held in his heart and never spoke.
Grant: Never shared.
Robin: Because once you share a secret, it’s no longer a secret. And the secrets that he never shared are the things that gave him the strength to endure what he had to eventually endure. So let’s not ruin things by making them public and revealing them, because they are immediately less special at times. We need to discern what is meant for public knowledge.
Grant: So keep your spirituality spiritual.
Robin: Yes.
Grant: And if you do that, if you have a strong hidden root system with God, it’ll become manifest through your fruit, through the quiet humility of your life, through the quiet wisdom, through your humble walk with God, because you do justice and you’re kind, you love chesed. It’s very ordinary. You walk humbly with your God. You live a very ordinary life.
You know, this may be immodest, but you and I purchased grave plots here just a few years ago.
Robin: Which might seem morbid, but we just didn’t want our kids to have to be burdened with it.
Grant: We’re going to die.
Robin: Yeah, we’re pretty sure.
Grant: So we have a headstone with our names on it. And we thought, “Well, what should we put here for a saying?” And we put down, “They sought to live ordinary lives with excellence.”
Robin: Right.
Grant: And that is my goal. I’m going to live an ordinary life as best I can with excellence.
Grant: And just up the road from us, A.W. Tozer is buried in a very modest little graveyard.
Robin: You have to search for it.
Grant: His headstone is about the size of a business envelope, which is small. It just says “A.W. Tozer.”
Robin: Yeah.
Grant: A man of God.
Robin: A man of God. But his life was his legacy.
Grant: Exactly.
Robin: Because he loved people, and he walked humbly.
Grant: Now, just up the road from us as well, between us and A.W. Tozer’s grave is another grave. There is a large church building with a celebrity faith healer who was well known back in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s. I won’t mention his name, but he had a big television…
Robin: Following.
Grant: Following. He was on the air all the time.
Robin: And I’m just going to say it. He was weird.
Grant: Well, he’s dead, too.
Robin: But he was weird. But nobody looked at him and saw a beautiful, balanced life.
Grant: But he knew how to make money, knew how to put on a show. And he’d have these faith healing services on Friday nights. People come in from all over the country. And his wife died. And so he’s got this huge marble angel. It’s got to be at least 12, 15 feet tall.
Robin: And it lights up at night.
Grant: Oh yeah. And I guess he’s buried there next to her under the big angel. And I thought, what a difference. There is this guy who was just weird and tried to make as much money as he could. And then up the road, probably not even 2 miles away, is A.W. Tozer with a little block of stone in the dirt—”A man of God.” I thought, what a difference between the two.
Robin: You know that A.W. Tozer spent a great deal of time in that inner chamber of that inner tabernacle with his bridegroom.
Robin: Well, you know, there’s this… I came across this in a book called “Outside In,” and it’s a book on modesty, and I love this statement: “God is largely unseen.” I’ll let that sink in. God is largely unseen. By choosing to reveal yourself selectively, you mirror God’s hiddenness.
Grant: I love that.
Robin: That’s so wise.
Grant: It is.
Robin: That’s so wise.
Grant: And I hope that we’ve managed to give some words to this kind of elusive idea. But it’s a beautiful thing when you can grasp it.
Robin: Yeah. So I want people to be spiritual. Paul wrote, “I wish you all were spiritual. I wish you were spiritual men.” In 1 Corinthians, he talks about the fleshly believer, and the soulish believer, and then the spiritual believer. He says, “I wish you were spiritual. I can’t talk to you as spiritual.”
But I want you, I know you too, Grant, but we want all of our listeners to be as spiritual as possible. But clothe yourselves in humility and walk humbly with your God. Be very selective in how you reveal your secret walk with God and the secret things God may have shared with you. If you have no secrets with God, you have no root system. And we want our people to be very well rooted and grounded.
Grant: And beauty is found in balance. So eat the physical bread and enjoy it. And make sure that your diet consists of plenty of invisible spiritual bread as well and walk in balance.
Robin: And the less attention you draw to you, then the more God can be seen through you.
Grant: And you know, you give yourself permission to be a human. Let’s give other people the same permission and honor them.
Robin: That’s right. That’s right.
So how did we do, Grant? We were kind of… reluctant.
Grant: Reluctant to get into this.
Robin: Because there’s so much we can say, and we don’t want to offend anybody, but we just want people to walk humbly with our God. And that’s what you and I want to do.
Grant: Right. And sometimes I allow my own fear of being misunderstood to just be the fear that holds me back from even attempting to share something that I think could be helpful. So, you know, love casts out fear.
Robin: That’s right.
Grant: And I love the fact that we have people out there that we embrace and are a community with. So I’m just not going to let my fear of being misunderstood pull me back today.
Robin: Well done, Grant. Well done. All right. Well, with that, we just want to wish you shalom (שָׁלוֹם) and may God bless you.
Grant: Shalom.
AUDIO ONLY
Join Grant and Robin for a new episode of “Bread Crumbs” in which we discuss various biblical issues that arise during our personal studies and conversations.
