Through the Looking Glass to Pure Religion
#6 in the Book of James Series
By Pastor Jim May
James 1:23-25, "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."
I’ll bet you looked in the mirror this morning. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it now, because we already know you didn’t. Looking into the mirror can be one of the most depressing experiences of your whole day. In your mind you think that you still look as nice as you did when you went to bed, but when you look into that mirror you think to yourself, “How can I do that much damage in six hours, just laying the bed sleeping?”
But thank goodness that you looked in that mirror because if you hadn’t then you would have subjected every one of us to that terrible sight. You look into the mirror and stand there in shock for a moment and then you realize that it’s time to go to work. You close the door and hang a sign on it that says, “No entry – Construction in Progress”. Then you wash your face, comb the tangled up chicken nest in your hair (if you have hair), cover up the blemishes as best you can, brush your teeth, or take them out of the jar where they’ve soaking all night, put some antlers on your head (Oh, I mean mousse up your hair, and then get dressed up to go out in public.
Suddenly, when you step out of the door, the world gets to see the better side of you, and you can go through the rest of your day without being embarrassed.
And all that is thanks to that old mirror that wouldn’t let you see yourself the way that you though you were.
Let me talk to you for a minute about “Your Mirror, Your Friend.”
A house with no mirrors means you’ll never know what needs to be worked on. Most of us wouldn’t want a house without mirrors. But some of us are trying to live our life without mirrors. Sometimes other people act as mirrors to show us some things about ourselves that we may not want to hear but we really need to hear.
John 8:32, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Some of us live like the truth will scare us to death or hurt too much. But it can’t hurt nearly as much as avoiding the truth about yourself that there may be some things about you that continues to poison your relationships, limit your life, and bring you down. Sometimes we run from our mirrors or even try to break them. But God put mirror people in your life because He loves you too much to let you keep running from the truth that is costing you so much.
The mirror in your life can be someone who loves you enough to tell you the truth about yourself may be your spouse, or a parent, even one of your children. Sometimes we hear the painful truth from a spiritual leader or a boss or a coworker or a true friend who is willing to stick out their neck to tell us the truth even when it hurts. The Bible says in Proverbs 27:17, "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend."
How you handle the hard truth about yourself tells a lot about your character. In Proverbs 9:8 - 9, God says, “Rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning”
So what happens when someone tries to show you something that’s bringing you down, costing you respect, hurting you and people you care about? Do you hate them for saying it? Do you continue to live in the land of lies called denial? Do you take off so you don’t have to think about it? Or do you do what a wise man or woman does - you decide to face what they’ve helped you see and deal with it so it won’t pursue you any longer?
The truth you keep running from never really goes away. Everywhere you go, you take you with you. God loves you too much to let you keep running, denying, and living a lie. So He’s put someone in your life to hold up a mirror. Don’t reject what the mirror is trying to show you. And don’t blame the mirror - it’s the message the mirror is trying to give you, not the messenger that’s the issue.
As we look at these verses in James let us begin by quoting a familiar phrase from a classic Disney Film called “Snow White”. In that film, there’s a point where the evil queen looks into the mirror on the wall and asks, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest of them All?” I think that most of us ask that same question, much like the queen, and we probably expect to hear the same answer that she did. “Why, you are my dear – you’re fairest of them all.”
We don’t want to hear bad news. We want to look at ourselves there and see perfection. There are a lot of people who think that they have all of the answers or that they have the way to Heaven all sewed up, as though they have cornered the market on interpreting God’s Word and that their perfect little formula is the only way of salvation. They look into the mirror and refuse to see anything other than their own perfect reflection and everyone else must line up with their image.
If you look into the mirror of God’s Word you are looking into absolute perfection, but even in a perfect mirror we can get far enough away to ignore the flaws that it shows in our character.
In the days of the Bible there weren’t very many glass mirrors around. The process of coating glass to form a reflection wasn’t perfected yet. What they did was to polish brass to a very high shine and that would be a mirror. Brass, in God’s Word, nearly always exemplifies “judgment”. So when we look into the mirror of God’s Word, it brings judgment, pointing out every flaw that we must either ignore or correct.
There’s a perfectly good mirror out there hanging in the foyer of the church. The light is bright enough there to see yourself just as you are. But if you don’t want to see every wrinkly, every bump and every flaw, all you have to do is get far enough away and they won’t show up too much. The closer you get, and the brighter the light, the more you can see every little detail.
That’s exactly how many people look into the mirror of God’s Word. They glance at it, look at it with their heart and mind far away, and the light of God in their hearts is very dim, so that they never get much out of it when they read it. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard a single Christian confess that they don’t read their Bible very much. All of us know how to act holy, and one of the things that we have learned to do so well is to lie about our spirituality. We don’t want others to know just how lax we really are.
But quite often our confession doesn’t match our profession and our profession doesn’t match our possession. We confess our closeness with the Lord, but what we talk about most of the time doesn’t reveal that much of a relationship with God. Then we profess that we really are Born Again, saved and washed in the Blood, and living a sanctified life, but it doesn’t take long until everyone around us knows that we aren’t all that! We simply don’t possess what we profess.
The fact is that we may not want to look into that mirror of God’s Word and see our faults but everyone around us, including God, sees those faults clearly. If we don’t confess them we are only fooling ourselves and no one else.
The Child of God that truly wants to be like Christ must learn to look into God’s Word very closely. We must learn to dwell upon that word, and meditate on that Word, and allow it to go from our head to our heart where it can truly make a difference in us. We need to invite the Holy Spirit to come and illuminate the Word to us so that we can see everything more clearly. It takes more than a casual reading like you are reading a newspaper or a novel. It takes time and hard work to really see and understand the truth.
When you finally see the truth, then you are forced to do something about it. You can never walk away and be the same again. Oh you may not make the change that is required, but you will always know that your flaws are there, and sooner or later you are going to have to deal with it because the Holy Ghost will keep bringing back to you again and again.
If you are going to be a “doer” then you must understand the Word first, then learn to gladly receive its instruction, and then, from your heart, hear and obey what the Word and Spirit are saying to you. Before you can be a doer, you have to be a hearer, and before you can be a doer, you have to submit to it. That Word must become a part of you every day. There is no other way.
James says that the Word of God is the Perfect Law of Liberty. What is that Perfect Law? Is it the moral law as set forth in Leviticus or Numbers by Moses under God’s direction? No – that Law, including the 10 Commandments, can only act as a teacher to show us our fault. It is God’s Law but it isn’t perfect in that it has no power to deliver, only to condemn. So what is that Perfect Law of Liberty?
Let me give you a clue. Galatians 5:1, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
Paul says that our liberty is provided by the Lord Jesus Christ, and it there to give us absolute deliverance and freedom from bondage. What has Jesus given to us that sets us free? The answer is that he has given us the good news of the gospel; the news that we can be set free from all bondage of sin through his sacrifice upon the cross on our behalf.
So if we look into the Mirror of the Word, and we truly see ourselves as we are, and then begin to obey that Word and allow it to change us, and do that on a continual basis, then we are obedient children and that makes the heart of our Father in Heaven glad and he is free to open the windows of Heaven and bless us.
God’s blessings are conditional upon our obedience to His Word and I want all the blessings that God has for me; don’t you?
James 1:26-27, "If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
These last two verses in James Chapter 1 are important as they take all of what we call religion and boil it down to its simplest terms.
There is a religion out there that is false; in fact there are many who claim to be Christian; claim to be saved; claim to be religious, but their life doesn’t prove their words. We can claim to be anything we want to be, but if our religion doesn’t line up with the Word of God and what God defines as religion, then we are a fake and a liar, and no liar shall enter Heaven’s gates without repenting of that sin first.
One of the clearest indicators of anyone having true religion is by listening to what they say, and how it is said. Later on in our study we will look at this issue in great detail, but let it suffice to say for now that we need to learn to put a heavy bridle on our tongue. That little bitty muscle in your mouth that helps you swallow, and to speak clearly, can get you into more trouble than you can handle, and it can do so very quickly.
Our words reveal who we really are. It doesn’t take long when you hang around people, to know just how spiritual they really are. And it certainly doesn’t take you long to find out if they are really saved or not. Is their religion for real, or is it just a show, a façade to hide the real person.
If our religion isn’t true religion, then it won’t do us one bit of good when we stand before God. We need to have a true religion. Won’t it be a terrible thing to see many people who thought their religion was right, stand before God at the judgment and hear God say, “Depart from me. I never knew you!” All of their good works, and everything they believed in and trusted in, and all the encouraging words of those who lead them in a lie, will be for nothing. There’s only one way, and that’s God’s way. To try to make our own way of salvation through any other means makes us a thief and a liar.
That man who brags of his own works and claims to be a Christian and yet backbites his brother, drags their name through the dirt, and speaks falsely of his brothers and sisters in the Lord, and who won’t guard his tongue is a man whose religion is false. He is deceived by his own heart. He is living a lie, and believes his own lies. The effect of his testimony is opposite of what he thinks it is, for his life is a lie, and everyone knows it. Therefore his life brings a reproach upon the Truth of the Gospel and a reproach on the church of God, and even a reproach upon God himself.
If you believe that your religion is pure and right in the sight of God, here’s how you can prove it. Remember that God knows all and sees all. He knows the very thoughts and intents of your heart, and it is God who will be your ultimate judge, not the preacher.
James give us two points to think about and in these points there is a lot of information that we could discuss but we will have to cover them as we study the rest of James’ epistle.
The first point that proves whether your religion is real or not is that a man of true faith will want to be about the Father’s business. He will have a genuine care and concern for those who have no father, especially those who don’t know God as their Heavenly Father, for that is the very heart of God, to see the lost won to Christ.
If you have pure religion, you won’t be able to keep silent, but you will ever be ready to give your testimony and tell others about Jesus. Also you will always be ready with an open hand to give all you can to help those who are in need.
The second point of proving your true religion is summarized as this: You will keep yourself unspotted from the world. You won’t be able to partake in the things of this world that are sin. You won’t fit in with the worldly crowd because you are a Born Again Child of the Most High and Holy God, and you life will reflect those qualities.
When a man claims to be saved, his life must reflect the holiness of God’s Word and teachings that found in it. You will be holy because God in you is holy. You will walk right because God in you expects that of you and will accept nothing less than total commitment.
Make sure that your religion is pure and undefiled. Make sure that what you believe, and how you live, give proof that the Word of God is alive in you and that Jesus lives in your heart.
Next week we will continue into James Chapter 2. Until then, may the Lord be with you.
