I’m going to ask this: How many did not look in a mirror today? Look at that. Everybody look around. We all know why we looked in the mirror, right? Why do you look in the mirror? I was pointing over the top of you, but I know I look in the mirror because when I don’t, I end up with sideburns that are way down here. You know, I shave in the shower and I can’t see where. And so, stuff… You got to look in the mirror because stuff is out of place, stuff is wrong, stuff’s messed up.
Ladies, you’re looking for where the makeup goes. You’re looking for the blemishes and the wrinkles, and you got some wild hairs coming out of your ears, and you got to deal with it. Why? Because you want to be presentable, you want to be beautiful, you want to be pretty, you want to be handsome. You just don’t want to… You know, my wife is going to say, “If you go up to the pulpit with that thing or this or that…” She was fixing my hair last night and cutting it. Why does all that happen? Well, when you look in the mirror, we’re trying to fix the things that are wrong and the things that are out of place.
That’s exactly it. Is everything in order? Is my hair brushed? Yes, it’s falling out, but you try to deal with what’s left. Is there food in my mouth? My wife asks me if there’s food in my teeth. She needs me because she doesn’t have a mirror at the moment. But we look in the mirror for a reason.
Why are you here today? You see, when you come and sit under this in a spiritual sense, it’s exactly the same. That’s what he says. It’s just like that. You come and you sit under the word to have your defects brought out and revealed in order to be a doer. Are you here for other reasons? I mean, that’s the issue.
Then look at this, James 1:22: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” You never know what is… How often the Bible warns us about being deceived. It’s deceiving yourself. Self-deceived. That means you deceive you, or you deceive. What’s that mean? Well, you believe you’re a Christian. You hope you’re a Christian, and you’re not a Christian. You believe that you’re on your way to heaven, and in the end, it’s not going to prove true. You hope to miss hell, but you’re wrong. That’s the idea in all of this.
The defect is evident right at the point where your life meets this word. That’s the issue. That’s what’s happening in this place. It’s not implemented in your life. Well, how is that like the guy that looks in the mirror and forgets what he looks like? Well, it’s obvious. It’s the idea that you go to look in the mirror and you see your hair needs brushing. But the moment you look away from it, you don’t go for the brush or the comb. You just forget.
Well, how’s that? That’s like the guy that comes in here, the gal that comes in here, and they sit under the word, and they hear it, and there’s some tinge of conscience. There’s some stirring. The Spirit begins to speak. They feel it. But then what happens? They walk out of here and it’s gone. There’s no change.
Do you recognize that doing that on a regular basis… You see what it says? There’s the idea of deception. What are we supposed to do when we look in the mirror and see things aren’t right? We, brethren, we’re supposed to fix it. And that’s the idea when you come under this word.
I mean, this happens to some. Some of you sit here, and the word comes, and you walk out, and there’s a fair level of conviction. Your conscience has been stirred. The Spirit of God is working. And you go out and there’s confession. Or even as you’re sitting here, you’re like, “I’m the man.” You’re not fighting. You’re not resisting. “I’m the man.” And you recognize something’s got to be changed.
And then what happens? See, if you’re a doer of the word, you come under it, and you go out, and change has happened to your life after having been in the word. Your life… We thought, we sang, “the beauty of holiness.” Brethren, you go to the mirror on the wall because there’s an idea about beauty. You can’t… to this because there is a spiritual idea of beauty.
Brethren, do you realize that Jesus Christ saved us to beautify us? Yes. That’s the picture of how Christ loved the church and the washing with this water. And he’s taking out all the wrinkles and all the defects. He’s beautifying us. That’s what this is meant… That’s what his word is for.
Brethren, don’t see this as torturous. Don’t see this as burdensome. This is Jesus who promised to save us from all his people, from all their sins. And that’s the pollution of it, to make us beautiful. There’s a beauty in the holiness, and that’s what’s happening. Scriptures, that spiritual mirror that reveals where I lack in holiness, where my righteousness is defective, where I’m not like Jesus as I ought to be.
So, brethren, just remember how beautiful you recognize. You heard it today. Jesus was talking about you carrying that cross and we follow him. We imitate him. Think. Don’t you find Christ altogether beautiful? You see what Jesus is doing? He gives us the word not to be some torturous thing. Brethren, we’ve got the spirit of adoption, not the spirit of bondage.
This is… His commandments are not burdensome. Hasn’t somebody said that somewhere? Brethren, not burdensome. This is for the beauty. Remember how beautiful Christ is. He… Don’t you find him glorious? His perfections. When you think about him dying on that cross as he walked through this life, and he’s bidding us carry our cross and come after him.
This all has to do… I mean, he is the most gloriously beautiful being of all. And what he’s doing, his words to us are words meant to bring us into conformity to his beauty. That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s what mirrors are all about. Scripture is a mirror to look into that we might see what we need to correct, that we might be beautiful.
And remember, this whole thing is backed by promise. Brethren, what are the promises of the New Covenant? Let me just give you a couple of them. “I will put my law within them” (Jeremiah 31). “I will write it on their hearts.” This is promise. You see, brethren, when you sit here and you come unto the word, listen up. The promise is a promise of help. It’s a promise of power. It’s a promise that God is going to give you the ability. It’s not going to be an impossibility. God has put his own word behind it. His own promise. He’s backed it by his own name. “I will put my law within them and will write it on their hearts.”
And then Ezekiel 36: “I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules.” You like that? That word “careful.” This isn’t sloppy, where we just sit under the word and then we’re sloppy in the way we are. Careful. That’s what God’s promising, that in his people he’s going to put a carefulness.
And then I know I think of this verse all the time: 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you’ve been healed.” You see the kind of healing he’s talking about? It’s not just in a legal forensic fashion. There is a healing where I die to sin and live to righteousness. That’s what he hung on that tree for.
So, brethren, when we hear and don’t do, we need to recognize we are rigid in the most glorious being ever seen, the most glorious being in the universe.
