The Mirror
(Working With the Light, the Sword, and the Mirror)
Pastor Eric J. Hanson
February 3, 2013
Introduction
People have an amazing ability to see themselves as basically good. This ability is deeply engrained in us. We start very young to justify our choices and to make excuses for our sins. Any experienced parent can attest to this. How often do we hear children, when they get into trouble for fighting with each other, make classic excuses such as the following?
“He started it!” “No I didn’t! She started it!” This exchange usually goes on until Mom or Dad stops it. What each child is really saying is this: “I am innocent. I have been sinned against. I didn’t do anything wrong. Johnny did something wrong.”
When a 14 year old is caught shoplifting, they often say something along the lines of “It’s not my fault. Somebody else put me up to it! She has taken lots more stuff than I ever have; in fact this was my first time!”
On into adulthood go the excuses, becoming ever more sophisticated. “Well sure my girlfriend and I are living together, but God understands, so it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong about it.”
We excuse deceitfulness as little white lies, or as just being kind, or simply getting along. We break the laws of the land if we happen to think that they cramp our style. If we don’t like the laws, we proclaim them to be “unimportant ones”, such as the speed limit, or the prohibition against marijuana possession and use.
We speak unkindly to our spouse, parents, or children, and excuse it by thinking something such as “She’s far from perfect herself. It’s not as though she never says anything wrong.” We also seek to justify ourselves by comparisons. “It least I don’t lie like politicians and lawyers! I get up and go to work! I don’t try to live off the system like half the people in this county.”
There is no end to the ability of people to fool themselves into thinking that they are righteous, or that they are at least righteous enough; certainly more righteous than most people. In spite of all self justification, the fact is that each person falls far short of the standard God gave us in His moral law.
Now let’s see what God has to say about this. (Read Romans 3:19-20)
Main Teaching Body of Message
The average person in the street believes in God and an afterlife. 50 Years of shutting God ever more tightly out of the schools has not been able to crush this basic instinctual knowing out of the Human heart in our land. Gallup poles as recent as 2011 show that 80% of Americans believe that a supreme creator God exists. Unfortunately, that same average person, who believes that God exists, also has no clue as to His standards, His requirements, His holiness. Only God’s own words, found in the Bible, can cause people to understand these things. Only God’s words can act as a spiritual mirror in which we can see ourselves as we truly are.
In the Gospel of John, chapter 16, Jesus was speaking ahead to the time that He would be back in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit would be here on Earth living in believers. Jesus told us that once the Holy Spirit was living in God’s people, He would use them to convince others of three important things regarding their spiritual condition. The three are important things are sin, righteousness, and the Judgment to come.
That important convicting work began on the Day of Pentecost, when Peter opened the scriptures to the crowd that had gathered. He, being empowered by the Holy Spirit, used the scriptures, the Word of God, to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews, and the Savior of the World. Furthermore, it was their sin which had caused Him to be crucified. The mirror of God’s word caused them to realize their sinful condition.
Psalm 119:130 tells us “The entrance of God’s word gives light!” Nothing else but God’s word can cut to the very core of the soul and reveal the heart’s true condition. Hebrews 4:12 opens this essential truth up further by stating: “The Word of God is alive, powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit.”
The raw material for convicting people of sin, for the big majority of people, who at least believe that God exists, is the Law, given by God to Moses. By the Law, I am not referring to all the regulations governing how this or that needed to be done in the Tabernacle, or dealing with civil matters in ancient Israel. I am speaking of the moral Law, specifically the power of the Ten Commandments to reveal the sin hidden deep inside of people.
James 1:23 assures us that hearing the Word of God expounded properly has the same effect on our inner self, as looking intently into a mirror has on our outer self. The truth is revealed and made clear!
James makes it clear that the person who has his or her life opened up by the sword of God’s Word, and then observes their soul condition in the mirror of God’s Word, had better do something about it, or they will soon forget the truth, and their heart, that is to say their spiritual center, will grow a little harder with fresh spiritual scar tissue. (Recite James 1:22-24.)
Life Application
Now let’s consider the Ten Commandments. They are found in their full length in Exodus, where they were originally given to Moses; and in Deuteronomy, when they were being stressed to the next generation, just before those people prepared to enter into the Promised Land under Joshua.
(Read Exodus 20:1-17)
I want you to consider the sin revealing ability of just one of the commandments. What is coveting? It is desiring that which belongs to someone else, desiring to have it yourself. Basically, it is envying.
In our day, a man could certainly still covet his neighbor’s wife, or a woman, her neighbor’s husband. It probably would not be his donkey we would covet in our culture, but it could well be his new 25 horsepower John Deere tractor with mowing deck, 2 stage snow blower, and tilting trailer; not to mention his spanking new pickup truck that shares space with it in his three car garage. (Can you tell I am male?)
Hey young guys! Do you become envious when your buddy tells you that his new high end gaming computer, with 10 gigs of RAM, just arrived at his house? How about that new 60 inch 3D television?
Working people, how do you feel when your co-worker is promoted and praised ahead of you, when you know that he or she is not all that diligent, and that you sometimes have to fix things she did wrong? Do you then covet the recognition or the raise that is your neighbor’s?
How did any of us feel, when we played our very best baseball during spring training, but on opening day, we were on the bench and some other guy was fielding our position?
People can and often do covet anything that is their neighbor’s, even stuff like smooth skin, a full head of hair, or clear speaking ability.
Coveting runs deep in every heart. The love of the Lord flowing in the life of a maturing believer, changes that person’s perspective, and they grow away from raw coveting by the grace of God.
But the unbelievers, who think that they are good enough to merit inclusion in Heaven, cannot know that this sin, or any other sin, by itself, is enough to disqualify them from God’s household, unless they see the condition of their souls in God’s mirror! Only the word of God, powered by the Spirit of God, has that ability. Romans 3:10-26 lays it out clearly. (Read the passage.)
Only the Word of God can point the person, who now realizes that they are a sinner after all, to the only savior, who is Jesus Christ.
Romans 10:9-11 brings home the solution. (Read.) John 3:3 gives a name to this transaction of faith believing which must take place in order for anyone to know God and gain citizenship in Heaven. They must become Born Again!
As God’s soldiers, in the war for people’s souls, for people’s future in eternity; let us be sure, that we are able to be used by the Holy Spirit, to wield God’s word, in order to make sin clear, the penalty of being excluded forever from God’s presence clear, and the only solution clear.
Let’s Pray.
