Spiritual Selfie

Introduction

God’s word didn’t have a PowerPoint back in the beginning, so I think we’re going to be just fine tonight. If you would go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Matthew 7, we’re going to be reading there here in a few minutes, but if you want to, go ahead and turn there, flip in your tablet, your iPad, or if you still use that old fashioned paper, go ahead and turn to Matthew 7. I’m very thankful that I do have an opportunity like this because two things. First of all, the elders have put me in charge of everyone in this room. And second of all, of all the times that I’ve preached, my mom has never heard me preach. She is the one that skips out every time that I’ve been up here in the past.

So she has finally had an opportunity to make it, which makes me very happy. We have all taken selfies in the past. We all have our phones. We all have cameras on them. We have front-facing cameras that help us take pictures of ourselves, and we get to look at them and we get to share them with others. We get to go on Facebook and Instagram and Google Plus and Snapchat. And if you’re still on MySpace, I doubt at MySpace. And then you also send them through text message and you send them through email. But you get to send pictures to people the way that you want them to be seen. And I will be willing to bet that at one point or another, anyone that’s in this room that’s taking a selfie has taken a picture or had someone take a picture of them and looked at it and said, Yeah, that one’s not going on Facebook.

And then they took it again. Click. Now that was not going on Facebook either. Because of one thing or another, you didn’t like that picture. There was something that was in that picture that you didn’t like. Whether it was your hair, the lighting, a booger hanging from your nose. There’s no telling what it was, but you did not like that picture and you didn’t want the world to see it. Case in point, just recently, which, if I had my PowerPoint, these are great pictures, but this is the only slide that I’m actually disappointed about. We recently went out to Seattle and Vancouver with some of our friends, Jay and Krista, on their 15th wedding anniversary, and we sat there in Hobby Airport, waiting for our plane to board, and Krista said those devastating words of, Hey, can one take a picture of us for our 15th anniversary?

And I said, Nope. I’m not doing that. But Ashley was so kind to get up and grab her phone and take a picture. And the first picture, which I’m not going to point at it, is had me photobombing it. And for some reason, Krista did not like that picture. She didn’t feel like that was the picture that she wanted the world to see for her 15th anniversary with Jay. So she took another picture. Click. It really doesn’t go click, it’s just tap of a screen. Ashley takes another picture. And another picture. And another picture. Try it from this angle. Try it from here. Try it from the left. Try it from the right. Let me do this with my hair. This went on for 10 minutes.

And I’m it was constant, just constant pictures. And finally we got the picture that we wanted. And we all sat down. And about five minutes passed, and you see Krista going through, and we think she’s posting on Facebook. And finally she says, I don’t like this one either. Can we stand up and take it from over here? And this was this was like if you’ve ever sat in an airport, I just found the best way to waste time, and that’s try to find the perfect selfie of Krista. It’s going to take forever, but it’s going to be worth it. But finally she got the right picture. And she posted on Facebook with a little thing that said, celebrating 15 years of marriage, going to Seattle, going to Vancouver.

And we were done with it. But there were two things about that I want to that I want to tell you about. First of all, Jay’s expression did not change from the first picture to the last picture. This was a picture of Krista with Jay photo bombing it. And I mean, every she changed in every single one of them, but Jay’s little smirk with a beard. That’s all it was. It was a smirk with a beard. But the second thing was, she chose which picture she wanted the world to see. She got to go in, she got to swipe through, she got to choose which one she wanted everyone to see. And my question to you tonight is if we had a camera that took a picture of our spiritual life, took a picture of your spiritual life, would you be willing to post that for the world to see?

If there was a camera that went out there and every time that you took a picture, it showed all the good and all the bad. It took a spiritual selfie. Would you be willing to let everyone know about that picture? Would you be proud to post that picture online? I’m a feeling some of us wouldn’t. Even, you know, there’s times that all of us say, you know what? I wouldn’t be proud of that picture. I want to fix it. I want to make sure that it’s the right one before I send it out to everyone else. So for the time that we have this evening, I want to talk about our spiritual selfies. It’s not in the Bible, so you’re not going to find selfie in the Bible.

But we’re going to throw three definitions of a spiritual selfie out there. The first definition that I have of a spiritual selfie, it’s a snapshot of your spiritual life, pointing out every aspect, both good and bad. It’s what you do. It’s what you sit there, and if you it shows your sins, it shows the things that you do right, it shows the days that you go to church, but it also shows those dark parts, those parts that sit over your head and over your shoulder that you don’t want to see. Spiritual selfie is a tool used to look back at what you have or have not done through self-reflection. We know there’s not a spiritual selfie. We know there’s not a camera that will go out there and take that picture.

It’s self-reflection. It’s a way to look at yourself and actually identify those things in your life that we have to address. And the third definition, just for reason of some of the passages that we’ll be using, it’s our modern day mirror. It’s what we use to look at ourselves. It’s what we use to identify who we are. So now, whenever I came up with this, I was listening to Tony the other day, and I heard him say something about selfish, and I heard selfie, and then it turned into this, and I got I was very proud that I came up with this really original idea of spiritual selfie, and I wrote this lesson, and then I got on Google and found out that it’s been done before.

But I didn’t look at any of those definitions. If you want to look at those, you definitely can, but I didn’t want to change what I had for this at the time, so I couldn’t tell you what Google said and what people did on that. But ultimately tonight, what I want to talk about are three things, just three points that are going to help each and every one of us in this room strive towards a more perfect spiritual selfie. Strive towards that spiritual selfie that we wouldn’t mind if there was a, I guess, a spiritual Facebook that we would be happy to post out there for everyone to see. And it takes three steps. Three steps, and then we’re going to be done for the evening.

1. Find the Flaws

The first step that we have is we have to find the flaws. See, whenever we have to find the flaws in that selfie that we took. We have to make that list of our spiritual life, and we have to find what’s negative in there. Who’s been to the doctor? We’ve all been to the doctor, right? We’ve all sat there and we went into the waiting room and you get there for at 9 o’clock for your 9 30 appointment. You’re seeing about 10 15, and then they take your blood pressure, they maybe take your temperature and a whole bunch of other things that you’re not questioning, but they’re going to charge you for. And then they put you in a room on a very questionable piece of paper on a bed, and you sit there for another hour, and then the doctor comes in and says, Mr.

Brumfield, we’ve got your gallbladder removal scheduled for 10 o’clock on Thursday afternoon or Thursday morning. That wouldn’t make any sense. No doctors are at work after that. We got your gallbladder removal scheduled for Thursday morning. And you’re sitting there going, I just came in for a physical. How do you have this set? Well, the doctor didn’t find what the flaws were before he started fixing it. He had to go in and he had to search for what the negative is. He’s not going to go in and just start changing things. Because he doesn’t know if it’s wrong or not. I told you we would go back to Matthew 7. Matthew 7, starting in verse 1. It’s a very familiar passage that we read whenever we talk about judging people, but we’re going to look at it a little bit differently today.

Matthew 7, starting in verse 1, it says, Judge not that you not be judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And what do you look at? Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye? But do not consider the plank in your own eye. Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye, and look, a plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite. First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Do not give what’s holy, what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces.

Like I said, usually we look at this verse and we say, You can’t judge me. I can’t judge you because I have the log in my eye, but I’m trying to take the speck out of yours. But what I want to point out in this verse that maybe we haven’t looked at, that maybe I never looked at is if we take out the whole judgment part, there’s still a log in our eye. There’s still a problem in our life, a flaw in our life that we have not addressed. And that’s what this is about. It’s about going in there, finding what those flaws are, finding what those logs are in our eyes before we can address the situation. Because if we go in there, if Krista went in, took all those pictures and pointed out the picture and didn’t do anything about it, she just pointed it out.

What good, what good did it do? It did no good at all. The question is, how do we do that? How do we find out what’s negative in our life? Well, it starts with this book right here. We have it on our phone, we have it in our hand, we have probably 20 copies that the kids pick up from different classes, New Testament plus Psalms. We probably have those little Bibles laying around everywhere, but it starts with this right here. It starts with actually knowing what we have to do. And a very familiar passage that we I think it was probably one of my first memory verses. We can look at it all day long, 2 Timothy 2 15. We have to study. We have to be diligent in our work towards God.

2. Correct the Flaws We Have Found

We have to be diligent in our words and the words that He has presented to us. And if we’re not diligent, if we’re not studying, then how are we going to find that flaw that’s in our life? How are we going to, how are we going to find the log that’s in our eye? If we don’t know what the word says. So it starts by studying. It starts by understanding what God wants from us. Once we find the flaw, it gets it gets a little easier because part of the problem is we don’t know what the problem is. But once we know what the problem is, going into the next step is we can correct the problem. We can correct the flaws that we have found.

Look, if Krista left me in the picture and just put it up there, I’m telling you, that would have been the worst anniversary picture that you could post online. Because it’s not, I wish I could show it. It’s me literally popping in like this. It wouldn’t be an anniversary picture. But if she had just left that in there, she wouldn’t have been happy. She would have been happy posting that. But she went through and she fixed, I guess I’m the problem. She went in and she fixed the problem. And sure, it took a thousand pictures and probably about 20 gigs of memory, but she did it. She fixed the problem. We go over to James 1. We’ll be looking there for a good majority of the rest of the night.

James 1. Remember that third definition that I said of what a spiritual selfie is? It’s a modern day mirror. And this is this is why it’s a modern day mirror, is because of this verse right here. James 1, we’re going to pick up in verse 19. It says, so then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, for wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror.

For he observes himself, goes away immediately, forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. We have to look at ourselves and we have to be honest. Now stay in James 1. We’re going to come back to that. We’re going to finish up that passage here in a little bit. But we have to be honest with ourselves. We can’t just walk up to a mirror, look at ourselves, find what all of our problems are, and just walk away. Because what good is that? What good does that do? It does absolutely no good at all.

We have to make sure that we’re we’re striving to fix the problems that we see in our lives. It’s all of us. We all have those problems. We’re a room full of sinners. We know that. But that’s not to say that we can’t fix it. We can’t. We’re striving for that perfection that God demands from us. We’re striving to be like Christ, to be like God. We see that in Matthew 5.48. Tony mentioned that this a little bit the other day. We’re not going to turn to that, but Matthew 5.48, we’re going to strive to be perfect like God. If we just go in and we look and we see and we don’t do, we’re no good. And it starts in this room. I think one of the biggest problems that we have is we’re afraid to correct what we see.

We’re afraid at the end of a lesson, whenever Tony gets up and says, if anyone in this room needs prayers of the congregation, or if anyone hasn’t, this isn’t the end. So, but usually when you hear those words, it’s almost time to pull out the songbooks. This isn’t the end yet. But usually, whenever we hear those words, what are we thinking to ourselves? Are we thinking to ourselves, I need the prayers, I need to go up front, I need to ask for forgiveness, I need to be baptized, I need to do this. Or are we saying, this is a room full of people that might judge us? This is a room full of people that they’re I’m about to take my spiritual selfie and show it to everyone in this room.

And that’s embarrassing. I think that has a lot to do with it, because we’ve all been there. We’re all our lives, if we have those flaws that God points out that we’re listing down, that we’re seeing in that selfie, that we’re seeing in the mirror, they’re embarrassing. They’re very embarrassing. And there’s things in my life, there’s things in your life that I wouldn’t want to share with other people. But the thing is that whenever that does happen, I, as Tony says, growing up among the Lord’s people, there has never been a time that I’ve ever seen anyone come up front and confess their sins and everyone shun them. I’ve never seen that before. I see hugs, I see tears, I see love and joy.

And these days, I know there’s text messages going out. Hey, we’re praying for you. We see it up on the slide. So-and-so needs our prayers. That’s what we get. We get when we fix something like that, we have I would say this is the best support group that we could ever have. Is the church that the church that God has given for us. This is the best support group that we have. And all it starts with is realizing that we have a problem and fixing it. Striving to be perfect like God is perfect. Now, if you’re paying attention, if you were paying attention earlier, you know that’s it, right? Two steps, right? Find the fall, fix the flaw. That was it? Oh, because if you were listening, you know that there’s three.

3. Protect the Image That We Have

And the third one is probably the most important. Because we can’t just find the fall fli. I didn’t think this through. We can’t find the flaw and then fix the flaw and then be done with it. Because if we went back to 2 Timothy 2 and studied, we know that now we have to live our life righteously. Because net the next step, the third step, third and final step is we have to protect the image that we have. We have to make sure that we have made all the proper adjustments, and now we have to, we can’t go back to what we’ve done. Going back to the analogy that we’re using tonight. Jay and Chris’s picture of their anniversary. If out of those hundred pictures that they took, they took the first one, and then they fixed something on the second one, which was me.

I can still admit that I was the problem. If they threw me back in there on the last one, what good is it? What good was it compared to the first one? You can’t go back and make the same mistakes that we made earlier. We put it up at James 1. Picking up where we left off, James 1 26. It says, if anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one’s religious, his religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God. And the father is this to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. The first few verses that we read now from 19 to 25, we read about the importance of figuring everything out.

And then the last two verses are so strong. It’s stay spotless from the world. Stay away from what the world does. And I said it before, I’ll say it again. This is this is the best support group that we have. I know that there’s anyone in this room that I can call on. I know there’s anyone in this room that you can call on that if you have a problem, if you have something that’s in your spiritual life that you need to address and you need help with, you can call on anyone in here. You can call on your family, your friends, your loved ones, the elders, the preacher. There’s no one in this room that would turn you down. And that’s that’s a blessing. That’s an absolute blessing to know that God has not only given us the chance of eternal salvation, but he’s given us the group of people that is going to help us along the way because ultimately we have the same goal.

Ultimately, we all want that perfect spiritual selfie. We want to be able to look in the mirror, and we want to say, I’ve done right. I’m proud of what I’ve done. And at the end of the day, that’s what we’re looking at. But after we’ve done that, we have to go back and protect it. One of my favorite verses, I think the high school class to the middle school class to the last two times I’ve preached has gone back to this verse. It’s one of my favorite passages in the New Testament, it’s Ephesians 6. And it’s one of my favorites because it has so much meaning to us with helping us through those everyday lives. And it’s talking about the whole armor of God here.

And if you haven’t read this, which I think most of us probably have, the whole armor of God is such an important aspect of our life because it helps us along the way. I say little coins. If you haven’t, if you’re not military, you might not understand this as much. But in the military, we give out these coins, they’re called challenge coins. And it’s basically a way of who’s got the best challenge coin, either from the highest ranking person or the importance of the coin. And I came across one the other day, or not long ago, and it was a challenge coin that had the armor of God on it. It had Ephesians 6 and each of it had a little knight on there, and he had a sword and a shield, and if you’re interested in a new analogy, you can ask the high school class because we have we won’t get into that.

But there’s there’s things to look at in here that can just help us every single day. And that challenge coin is something that, you know, I’ve thought about getting one, just throwing it in my pocket, because we need that on a daily basis. We need a reminder that God’s there for us to protect us, and that his word is so strong and so necessary for each and every one of us. And we’ll pick up in verse 10. Ephesians 6, verse 10. It says, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of the age, against spiritual hosts of wicked wickedness in the heavenly places.

Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Verse 15 goes back to that same thing. Second Timothy 2 15, preparing preparation of the gospel of peace, knowing exactly what it says, what we need to do. Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked ones, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Remember what we said, we talked about the Word of God.

That’s so important. I stop right there. That’s so important. The Word of God is the most important thing that we have. And that’s that’s what’s going to get us through our lives, through protecting who we are, through protecting the things that we’ve strive, you know, the flaws that we fix, is going to help us get us along the way. See, I started talking and I lost my place. And take on the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end, with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, and for me that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am the excuse me, for which I am an ambassador in change, that in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak.

What a powerful passage. Two thousand years later just means so much. We have this amazing gift from God to be able to have an understanding of what he wants from us, and then he gives us the ability the knowledge and the ability to be able to protect what he’s given to us. We just have to want to go out and do it. Proverbs 26, 11. Y’all don’t have to turn to it, but I’m going to turn to it because I don’t want to mess this one up in any way. back to the protecting the image.

It says, as a re as a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly. Why would we go back to it? Why would why would they go back to the same the same picture that they started out with when they didn’t like it? If we look at our spiritual selfie and we don’t like what we see, and we fix it, we take the time to fix it, and we work hard not to go back to it, and then at the end of the day we go back to it. What good have we done? We’ve backstepped, we’ve backpedaled, we’ve gone back to where we didn’t want to be.

We have each other for that. We have help. We have every anyone who can help you is here right now, and I mean they’re just everywhere, and it’s a it’s a great gift that we have. But when you look at a dog, if you’ve if you have a dog, you’ve probably seen your dog do it. When it vomits on the ground and then it goes back to it, you’re sitting there going, I just bed you. Why are you doing this? It doesn’t make any sense. And that’s what it’s like when we go back to our to the life that we’ve lived in the past. When we go back to the sins that we’ve worked so hard to leave behind us, just doesn’t make any sense.

One of the best examples that I think we have of a spiritual selfie is in Philippians 3. Philippians 3, starting in verse 1 is Saul. We just talked about this in the middle school class. And it’s just an amazing story. It’s an amazing account of him telling exactly who he was. And we’re going to kind of flip from Philippians 3 to Acts 26 for a brief moment from there. So if you want to put your finger on Acts 26, you can, or you can just listen to me because I’m going to flip over to it. But Philippians 3, starting in verse 1. It says, Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. For me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe.

Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation. For we are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though as I might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I’m more so. And this right here is where he gets into who he was. Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews concerning the law, a Pharisee concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. And then real quick, Acts 26. He recounts who he was. Well, starting in verse 5.

This is something that I thought about on my way here. And we’ll just stick with Philippians. But ultimately, what that says, because I can’t hunt down the exact verse right now, I do apologize. It was one of those things that popped into my head was he killed Christians. It said when he sent Christians to trial, he cast his vote against them. And he seized Christians from their house, and he persecuted them, and he beat them. And he did all these things. He describes himself as basically the an evil man. He describes himself as that.

And back to Philippians, starting up in verse 7. But what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. And found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. That’s an amazing account. To be able to look back at your life and just say, Do you know who I was?

Conclusion

I was evil. I turned my I turned my back on Christ. I didn’t believe who he was. I forced people to blaspheme him. I persecuted them. All these things I did. And yet I put it all away. I left everything behind me for one reason, and that was because Christ. Christ died for him, and he realized that. And he became one of those men that we read about on a daily basis that we hear preachers preach about. Paul’s letters. It’s just an amazing story. It’s an amazing fact that even a man like him can come back from being at the dark pits of wherever his life was and find who Christ was. That’s about it. This time we always offer the invitation. Want everyone to take a moment to just reflect on what we what was talked about tonight.

Your spiritual self.

And if you’re proud of your spiritual self, if you’re proud of what you see, if you’re proud of the things that you’ve done, then keep striving harder. Keep helping others. There’s always something that we can do better. But if at this time you’re looking at it and you’re going, you’re looking at your life and you’re saying, I’m not proud of who I am, I’m not proud of what I’ve done, I’m not proud of who I what I’ve been spiritually, then it’s time to do something about that. If you’re not a Christian, I’ll tell you this much right now. If you’re not a Christian and you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and you know that there’s something that you have to do about it, I can tell you what your spiritual selfie looks like.

It’s dark. It’s very dark. There’s negativity all over the place because you have to do something about it. You can’t just leave it, leave it behind. You have to be baptized into Christ. You have to come forward. You have to make sure that you have taken the step to wash that clean. And then whenever you do, you’re starting over 100%. You’re looking at it, and your spiritual selfie is back. You start on step three, and that’s maintaining it. You’ve got to maintain that image and make sure that whenever you come out of that water that you’re doing everything that you can, you’re using the full armor of God to protect what you just did. And it’s a blessing to have that opportunity to come forward and do something like that.

And maybe you don’t like standing in front of people. I understand. Maybe.

You know what? You can come and talk to someone on the side afterwards. You can come to me, come to one of the elders, call Tony at 3 o’clock in the morning. Let him know that you want to make the most important step of your life, and that’s baptism. And everything starts fresh. Or if you if you have been baptized and you haven’t, maybe you haven’t been maintaining it. Maybe you’ve gone through steps one and you’ve gone through steps two, but you’re struggling on step two, you’re not fixing it completely, you’re just you’re going back to it. Step three is a little wishy washy. You’ve got to do something about that. We all do. And we offer this time now to do so. If you need the prayers of the congregation, or you need to confess anything, or you need to be baptized, now’s the time to do it as we stand and sing.