Thou Shalt Not Lie To Thyself!

THOU SHALT NOT LIE

INTRO:

Everyone looks really good from up here this morning. But did you look this good when you woke up this morning?

You have that morning dazed look

· Your hair is sticking out in strange places,

· We men get to shaven that rough looking over night growth of beard.

· You lovely women look like your wired for a 2-20!

· We wipe the sleep from our eye while we face the mirror.

That bathroom mirrors is an honest little creature isn’t it?

· The mirror doesn’t stretch the truth

· The mirror doesn’t protect our feelings and pretend to tell us we look better than we really are.

The mirror does not discriminate. It shows every wart, wrinkle, scar every blemish, every gray hair

· Have you heard someone say, I don’t take good pictures?

· That is like saying I just don’t look good in the mirror –so I don’t look.

· Maybe you don’t look good in the mirror because you simply don’t look good!

So why do we all have mirrors in our bathrooms?

Because as unpleasant as it may be especially the first thing in the morning,

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.

That’s the thing about GOOD mirrors, they always tell us the truth, even if we don’t like what we see!

Mirrors let us know the real self or person we are.

Have you ever met someone that always tried to be something they are not?

A man was looking for a job and he noticed that there was an opening at the local zoo. He inquired about the job and discovered that the zoo had a very unusual position that they wanted to fill.

Apparently their gorilla had died, and until they could get a new one, they needed someone to dress up in a gorilla suit and act like a gorilla for a few days.

He was to just sit, eat and sleep. His identity would be kept a secret, of course.

Thanks to a very fine gorilla suit, no one would be the wiser.

The zoo offered good pay for this job, so the man decided to do it. He tried on the suit and sure enough, he looked just like a gorilla.

They led him to the cage; he took a position at the back of the cage and pretended to sleep.

But after a while, he got tired of sitting, so he walked around a little bit, jumped up and down and tried a few gorilla noises.

The people who were watching him seemed to really like that. When he would move or jump around, they would clap and cheer and throw him peanuts. And the man loved peanuts.

So he jumped around some more and tried climbing a tree. That seemed to really get the crowd excited. They threw more peanuts.

Playing to the crowd, he grabbed a vine and swung from one side of the cage to the other. The people loved it and threw more peanuts.

Wow, this is great, he thought. He swung higher and the crowd grew bigger. He continued to swing on the vine, getting higher and higher—and then all of a sudden, the vine broke!

He swung up and out of the cage, landing in the lion’s cage that was next door. He panicked. There was a huge lion not twenty feet away, and it looked very hungry.

So the man in the gorilla suit started jumping up and down, screaming and yelling, “Help, help! Get me out of here! I’m not really a gorilla! I’m a man in a gorilla suit! Heeelllp!”

The lion quickly pounced on the man, held him down and said, “Will you SHUT UP! You’re going to get both of us fired!”

· Are you like this man pretending to be something you’re not?

· Or have you been deceiving yourself for long that you actually believe your own lie?

We don’t talk much about lying do we?

· Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Leviticus 19:11

· No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence. Psalm 101:7

· The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. Proverbs 12:22

· You destroy those who tell lies; bloodthirsty and deceitful men the LORD abhors. Psalm 5:6

· Better to be poor than a liar. Proverbs 19:22

· He whose tongue is deceitful falls into trouble. Proverbs 17:20

· Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. Ephesians 4:25