Mirror, Mirror
Intro – Mirrors, Morning Rituals
What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? Whatever it is, it’s probably the same thing every day. Everybody seems to have their own morning rituals to get them going.
Maybe you have to have a cup of coffee before you can do anything.
Maybe you make your bed as soon as you get out of it, or you jump right into the shower.
I have to brush my teeth before I can stand to do anything else.
Some of you may start getting yourself ready for morning the night before
My brother puts coffee & water in his coffee maker every night so that in the morning, all he has to do is flip the switch
But some part of everybody’s morning ritual is coming face to face with the mirror.
Most of us probably get our first look at ourselves while we’re still pretty scary looking.
Our eyes have that bleary, dazed look
Our hair is sticking out in strange places,
Normally clean-shaven guys have some scruffy overnight growth of beards to deal with.
Facing our mirrors first thing in the morning is NOT that pleasant an experience.
Mirrors are very honest little things.
They don’t compromise.
They don’t gloss over our defects and tell us we’re better-looking than we really are.
They show us every wart, wrinkle, gray hair & zit.
In fact, the better the mirror, the more flaws we see.
So why do we all have mirrors in our bathrooms?
Well, because as unpleasant as it may be to confront our own faces first thing in the morning, we that if we don’t take a look at ourselves, and make some major adjustments, the rest of the world is going to see that morning face!
So we figure, it’s better to “face” the truth, so we can make the changes we think are necessary to make ourselves presentable to the rest of the world.
Distorted Mirrors
Of course, there are mirrors that don’t give us an accurate picture of what we look like.
If you’ve ever been to a fun house, you’ve seen how a distorted mirror can give you a distorted picture of yourself.
There are mirrors that can make you look tall and skinny or short and fat;
They can flip you upside down or twist your image until it’s unrecognizable.
If I had the engineering skills, I could make myself a mirror that would reflect an image a lot closer to the one I’d like to see.
I’d get one of the ones that would make me look tall and skinny!
Wouldn’t that be great?
If I did that, it would be easy to tell myself I’m the perfect weight!
But what’s the problem with that?
Well, obviously, the problem is that looking into a distorted mirror doesn’t change the reality of who I am.
The only person I would be fooling with that mirror is myself.
The passage I read this morning says that God’s Law is like a mirror.
Think about that picture for a minute:
You’re you, standing in front of a mirror
The mirror itself is God’s Law
And I believe that when the New Testament refers to “The Law” as James does here, we can include all of God’s commands found in Scripture.
So it includes “Thou shalt not kill”
And it includes “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
It includes, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”
And it includes “Go and make disciples of all nations…”
And we’re told that God’s Law – all of his requirements and his commands to us – are like a mirror
What do you see when you look in a mirror?
You see YOU
So James is saying that when we look into God’s Law, we see ourselves.
In what way do you see yourself when you look into God’s commands?
I see something that looks like that creature that appears in my bathroom mirror first thing in the morning!!
I don’t always like looking at what the mirror of God’s Law shows me of myself
But the only way that scary person in the mirror can be transformed by God’s grace and power is by first admitting “That’s me.”
What would you think of me if I took a look in the mirror after my lunch, realized I had 23 poppy seeds stuck in my teeth, and then just walked away
You’d probably think, “Well why did she look in the mirror if she was just going to walk away with all those black seeds in her teeth?
What you would’ve expected me to do would be to start picking the seeds out of my teeth until I could see in the mirror that they were all gone.
James says that when we read the Bible and don’t apply it to our lives, it’s just like seeing a bunch of poppy seeds stuck in our teeth and just leaving them there.
When we read the Bible, or hear a sermon, we’re supposed to see OURSELVES in it.
Often we’ll hear a sermon and think “Boy, I wish so-and-so could hear THIS! THEY really need it.”
But the funny thing is, God in His sovereignty didn’t see fit to make sure so-and-so was here, but YOU’RE here.
So maybe the message isn’t really for so-and-so.
Maybe it’s for YOU
Without a doubt, one of the most important reasons we are to read and study and understand the Scriptures is to see the dirt on our faces – or the poppy seeds in our teeth. Because if we don’t know they’re there, we’ll never get rid of them.
And the point of this whole mirror analogy is to illustrate the command in verse 21:
21 So get rid of every filthy habit and all wicked conduct. Submit to God and accept the word that he plants in your hearts, which is able to save you.
22 Do not deceive yourselves by just listening to his word; instead, put it into practice.
We don’t like to hear stuff like that
We don’t like to think of ourselves as having “filthy habits” or “wicked conduct.”
But we have them
They may not be the socially unacceptable filthy habits.
We may just like to gossip – which isn’t all that bad, right?
Even though the Scriptures condemn gossip in the same breath with murder and hating God.
It’s a filthy habit
We may stereotype people and judge them on the basis of their skin color or their nationality or on who their parents were - just as if we had the right to do it.
It’s prejudice – – and it’s a filthy habit.
Habits take a lot of work to break
But the first step in breaking them is recognizing we’re doing it.
One of my co-workers years ago wanted to lose a little weight, but she just couldn’t because she was a sleepwalker. And if she was really good and ate all the right stuff during the day, she’d sleepwalk herself into the kitchen and eat a box of cookies or half a cake. That’s tough to combat!
Sometimes I think a lot of Christians are sort of sleepwalking through their lives. We’re not spending the time with God and the time in his word that would allow us to see ourselves clearly and to act on what we see. If we don’t spend time in God’s Word, and if we don’t allow the Holy Spirit to show us ourselves and our filthy habits, then we may as well be sleepwalking through life.
A third grade boy came home from one day and said to his mom, "They told us to draw a picture of ourselves – but without a mirror, I ended up drawing a total stranger."
We all have in our minds some picture of who we are – that’s what we call our “self-image.”
And a lot of us may be using a picture of a total stranger for our self-image.
People tend to think that the Bible wants us to have a low opinion of ourselves, but what the Bible teaches is that we should have an accurate view of ourselves.
In order to live a truly Christian life, we need to have an accurate view of ourselves.
We need to see both our sins and our gifts clearly.
If we don’t see our sins clearly, we will never seek God’s help to break free of them.
If we don’t see our gifts clearly – those things God has given us to use for Him – then we won’t be able to fully use them for God’s glory.
The only way we can have an accurate view of ourselves physically is to see ourselves in a mirror that is undistorted. That’s the kind of picture God’s Law and God’s Word offer us.
We live in a world that sells all kinds of fun-house mirrors. Mirrors that offer us a distorted view of our world and ourselves
TV is one of the unavoidable mirrors.
There are an increasing number of shows that pair people up either on dates or even in marriage, like the Joe Millionaire show.
And I watch parts of these things and think, “Out there somewhere, young people are watching this stuff and thinking, ‘This is how dating is supposed to be.’”
And I know that if I were to ask our youth they’d say, no, that’s not what I think.
But where else, besides TV, do young people see dating relationships?
Statistically, teenagers are so over-programmed they almost never are spending time with their families, let alone with other adults.
They have little opportunity to learn how to build healthy relationships that will last for a lifetime.
A whole lot of these shows have to do with people throwing themselves at each other sexually within the first hour or so of meeting each other.
They don’t sit and talk or do fun things together.
They don’t learn to understand and respect one another.
Because although those things make for healthy relationships, they make for boring TV shows
If a person looks into those things as a mirror, then they’re going to judge how valuable they are by how active they are sexually.
They’re going to determine their chances of getting married or being loved on the basis of how others respond to them physically.
And that’s a distorted mirror.
Often the “mirror” we look into is the one that was held in front of us by our parents.
And if your parents held up a good, undistorted, love-filled mirror in front of you, then you’re probably doing pretty well.
But if it was filled with criticism, or apathy, or any number of other destructive things, your picture of yourself may be very distorted.
But that’s not the picture God gives of us.
The Scriptures tell us we are made in the image of God, that we have incomparable worth in His eyes and that He loves us more than we can imagine.
It also tells us that God’s image in us has been deeply marred by sin.
Being Reflective
The Greek philosopher Socrates said, “The Unexamined Life is not worth living.”
And we are urged in Scripture to examine ourselves
1 Corinthians 11:28 A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
Psalm 26:2 Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.
Lamentations 3:40 Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD.
2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine (peirazw) yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test (dokimazw) yourselves.
Galatians 6:4 Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else
Psalm 139:23, 24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; … See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
We don’t study the Scriptures just to know the Scriptures. We study the Scriptures, that we might see ourselves as we truly are
we see ourselves that we might be transformed.
Conclusion
The great 19th Century Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, said this
Possibly, much of the flimsy piety of the present day arises from the ease with which men attain to peace and joy in these evangelistic days. We would not judge modern converts, but we certainly prefer that form of spiritual exercise which leads the soul by way of Weeping-cross, and makes it see its blackness before assuring it that it is "clean every whit."
Spurgeon is saying that we may get to forgiveness too quickly. That is, those who do not accurately see their sin do not appreciate grace. If we look in a mirror that shows a single smudge on our face, we won’t be terribly impressed that Jesus died to clean us up.
“After all, it was a nice gesture, Jesus, but it was only a smudge. Let’s not make too big a deal out of it.”
But if we look hard into the mirror and see that our soul is truly stained with sin beyond what we could ever repair, then we will have a deep sense of gratitude for the forgiveness Jesus offers us.
As Jesus told Simon the Pharisee: ..”he who has been forgiven little loves little."
If we do not recognize our sin, we cannot recognize what Jesus has done for us.
The result, as Spurgeon says, is “a flimsy piety.”
And what better way to describe a nation where a large majority of people claim to have faith in Christ, but where every kind of sin can be found in every corner of our country?
It is only when we have a clear and undistorted view of our own sin that we can be overwhelmingly thankful for the grace of God.
Andrew Murray, whose devotional books are still popular nearly a century after his death, said this:
It is when we face ourselves and face Christ, that we are lost in wonder, love and praise. We need to rediscover the almost lost discipline of self-examination; and then a re-awakened sense of sin will beget a reawakened sense of wonder.
We study the Scriptures, that we might see ourselves; we see ourselves that we might be transformed.
