How Do I Look?

Video for first dart exchange night which was on Friday evening, January 10!

Start with showing the picture of the first ever selfie (Robert Cornelius) and asking if anyone knows what the picture is, specifically?

Hold drawing for those wearing camo!

Announce the next Nerf Dart Exchange is coming up on February 7th, from 6-9 pm!

Then take some older smartphones and show the introduction of the vanity mirrors and of the birth of the “selfie photo”.

Start with showing the picture of the first ever selfie (Robert Cornelius) and asking if anyone knows what the picture is, specifically?

And then, in 201

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a “selfie” is, “a photograph that you take of yourself, usually with a mobile phone. Selfies are often published using social media.”

Selfies, have become an international smash over the last 10-15 years, especially with the rise of the smartphone technology market, and it isn’t slowing down.

Years ago, when Dee and I were first married, we bought our first digital camera together. It was a Kodak digital camera and it was a whopping 3.2 MP camera!

As in, this “dedicated”, digital camera, took pictures at 3.2 MP at its highest resolution, for all of your photography needs!

Now, with the demand for the best “selfie” camera on the market, the smart phones coming out on the market, have 32 MP front facing cameras, for people to take “selfies” and up to 108 MP for the rear cameras!

That much more resolution on these front facing “smart phone cameras”, than that of my first dedicated digital camera, and all for the demand, for better self-photos!

SHOW THE EVOLUTION OF THE PHONE “VANITY” MIRRORS AND FRONT FACING CAMERAS, WITH MY THREE OLDER DEVICES!

People strive to find the perfect place for their selfies, which will draw the most attention on their social media platforms. Even at the risk of life in doing so!

Show extreme selfie photos

Why do I mention this to you this morning?

Is it because its wrong to take a self portrait and post it online? No, of course not!

Is it wrong, if you’re having one of those unbelievably rare hair days, or you like the way you did something and you want to remember exactly how you did it and so you record and document the occasion, by snapping a selfie and placing it in your storage files? NO, NOT AT ALL!

My reasoning for mentioning this, stems from a dream that I had this week, which I shared this past Wednesday evening with the prayer group.

And although this dream that I had, in and of itself had nothing to do with selfies, or social media, it did make me take another long, hard look at my life as well as the daily lives that many other people are living and examine them on the grounds of one particular word/theme.

That word/theme, is found all in the realm of “selfie” photographs and in fact, the history of the smartphone “selfie” itself has the name found within the roots of some of the first smartphones and their hardware.

In case you are wondering what I am talking about, allow me to show you three older model smartphones that I have with me this morning and on each of these three phones, there exists a particular piece of hardware that will demonstrate the very word/theme, which I am talking about this morning.

SHOW THE EVOLUTION OF THE PHONE “VANITY” MIRRORS AND FRONT FACING CAMERAS, WITH MY THREE OLDER DEVICES!

Did everyone catch the name/theme that I am speaking of this morning, because its name is built into the very hardware features of these older phones.

Right, that word, as they refer to it, is “VANITY”, and another term that parallels the word “vanity, is the word?

PRIDE!

BRIEFLY SHARE THE DREAM WITH THE PEOPLE.

Turn with me in your Bibles this morning please, to the book of Jeremiah, chapter 2. I want to read with you something that the Lord God said through the prophet Jeremiah, to the people of Judah, in this chapter.

We will be starting with verse 4 and reading through verse 13. (READ )

Jeremiah 2:4–13 ESV

4 Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the clans of the house of Israel. 5 Thus says the Lord: “What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless? 6 They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that none passes through, where no man dwells?’ 7 And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination. 8 The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those who handle the law did not know me; the shepherds transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit. 9 “Therefore I still contend with you, declares the Lord, and with your children’s children I will contend. 10 For cross to the coasts of Cyprus and see, or send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has been such a thing. 11 Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. 12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, 13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Now this is what I want you to take notice of in this passage. Listen to what God points to the children of Israel in the southern region of Judah.

God is saying to the people, “Look, I brought you out slavery and into a land of abundance and blessed you! And what did you do? You came into my land of blessing and defiled it, with your idolatry and its abominations! You pursued the things that are wrong and of NO benefit to you! Even the other nations that worship false, pagan gods, they don’t even change out their gods, for other false gods. But you.........the nation that I have chosen to be My blest people, you have exchanged the worship of Me, the one true God, for the worship of other false idols!”

And then God says this, “for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

In other words, God is saying that His people have left Him, THE FOUNTAIN, THE SOURCE of true living waters, and they had instead, carved out for themselves, cisterns, pools, to try and store, or retain some form of life and blessings! Cisterns which were in fact broken and could never hold the water for life, which was they needed!”

and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Judah, spiritually, because of their idolatry and self pride and love for the things of this world, had abandoned the source of all spiritual life and in place of God, they tried to make for themselves, false sources of life and abundance, which had NO SPIRITUAL LIFE to them!

broken cisterns that can hold no water.

In the area of Palestine, in those days, the people basically, had three sources for water: 1) Fresh running water, such as from a cool spring, which was called, “living waters” and which was most desired, 2) Ground water, as from a well, and 3) collecting runoff water collected in a cistern, (which was a pit carved into limestone and lined with a plaster, to prevent seepage).

This last form of water, was the worst, because it would become stagnate and collects silt and mosquito larvae the quickest.

God was saying that Judah’s cisterns could not even hold the stagnate water, let alone come even close to providing the fresh, cool, revitalizing waters that run from the source of the spring of life, itself, which is God.

The Lord God alone, is the source of living waters, as we find in , Isaiah and in and .

And the reason that I read this passage with you this morning, is because of the dream that I had this past Tuesday night.

I feel that the dream was given to me as a warning to WAKE UP people to the reality of what is coming, and of what is getting closer and closer.

That reality is the very one that Jesus warned us of, in His great sermon on the mount, in , verses 21-23, where we read Jesus saying, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”

There exists in the world today as well as in this country, millions, upon millions of people, who sit in church buildings, each and every Sunday, who believe that their lives are fine and that their relationship with God is fine, and yet they, themselves, will hear the Lord say those very words to them, “depart from Me, I never knew you!”

And the sickening and extremely sad, as well as extremely terrifying feeling that I felt in my stomach and heart and soul, both during, as well as after that dream, is something that I never want to experiecne again, nor would I ever want anyone to have to experience.

And yet, that is the very place that a LARGE part of this nation and of this world, are going to find themselves on that day!

Jesus stressed the narrow gate, and the difficult way that leads to life and in saying this, He also said that few would be that find it.

And one of the reasons that so many will miss the narrow gate, is because they have chosen, or have been taught and convinced, or a combination thereof, to do things their own way and by what feels and seems right in their own eyes!

Just as God said to Judah, they have rejected the true source of living water and have hewed out for themselves, broken cisterns, which hold nothing, pertaining to eternal life!

What could possibly bring people to the point that they so miss the mark of salvation, and yet feel that they are saved?

Paul mentions something to his spiritual son Timothy, in which helps us to see why this happens, he writes,

2 Timothy 3:1–5 ESV

1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

And there in this passage from the Apostle Paul, lies the answer, or at least a very key component of it; “People will be lovers of SELF!”

“Lovers of self”, becomes the antithesis of the Christian walk, because Jesus, Himself, said that we must deny “self” and take up our cross to come follow Him!

Now, before saying anything else, I am not saying that people who take “selfies”, are this group labeled as “lovers of self”. BUT, there has been a steady and prolific movement in that direction of “self” and “vanity”, over the past decades, if you trace it back.

The decades that have come and gone, since even I was a boy, have shown a marked shift in the culture and the focus of media and music and all entertainment.

The TV shows and the cartoons became very focused on the dismantling of the family unit.

If you go back and steadily watch the recurring theme that was slowly pushed into the homes, as entertainment, over the past four to five decades, you will notice a shift in the way that families were depicted.

The parents, at first gradually, and then aggressively, were shown to be these babbling idiots, who didn’t know anything and who were always messing everything up and who ALWAYS NEEDED the children and the youth of the house, to come in and save the day for the sake of the family!

Hollywood, began to mass produce “entertainment” which was devoured by the public, that showed this very thing.

It’s true, that every generation coming up, has been viewed at “self-absorbed” throughout our history, but no point in history before, has had more focus placed upon the image of “self” as the one that we are at right now!

Which is where is Paul warned us that we would end up.

Lovers of self!

To get to this place and point in time, where so many people are “self-absorbed” and “self-serving”, boastful and lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, not loving good, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power, LOVERS OF SELF, has not been an instant occurrence.

It has been, as I just stated, a gradual and progressive movement, by someone, OR SOMETHING behind the scenes, for a very long time.

When you look at the focus of so many people now and of how “self” absorbed they are, this didn’t come over just a decade or two. This has been the perfect storm that has been building for quite some time.

When the leaders of a country feel that it is to advantage of a nation, to begin to REMOVE God and His presence from within the schools and work places and the government buildings and public gatherings and venues and when the teaching of the Bible within the homes, became relegated to someone else and not to the parents, you can begin to see how this has come about.

The enemy began to minimize the world around us, through advertising agencies, through commercials and movies and music and marketing, to where this great big world was no longer that big.

When

In fact, the world has been reduced down to many people, to right in front of them within their own mind and thoughts and hearts!

And yes, to that of their own image!

As soon as social media came onto the scene, the developers of smartphone companies recognised what was happening, and they capitalized on it.

They said, “The people want to project themselves onto the pages of these social media forums, so let’s create and perfect devices that are customized and curtailed to do that very thing. Let’s make devices that will give them the best “selfies” they’ve ever seen! And all the while, offer them ENDLESS other avenues, which will capture their attention and their time and feed them right back into our pockets, as we keep producing more and more types of these devices!”

And so, the world that was once so vast and big to dream about and to explore, kept gradually and gradually, being reduced down and down and minimized, until it was reduced to, basically, THIS! (HOLD UP A SMARTPHONE!)

Watch people in general when you are out and about in the public places. Many of them walk around like programmed, mindless zombies. (MIMIC SOMEONE WITH THEIR PHONE IN FRONT OF THEM: walking, talking to others, eating dinner with their family and friends, going to bed and even talking with God.)

And whenever people go to a new place, or a new event, or meet with new people, what’s the first thing that they want to do?

TAKE A SELFIE!

We want others to see us and what we are doing, but as Christians, others should see Christ in us and what He is doing through us!

They want to be the first to get their selfies out there and into the public eye, so that they can capture the accolades and the “likes” and approval of their public social media fan base!!

Did you know that their is what is called, a Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD). It is a real thing, it is a real addiction!

Every single day, well over 240 million Americans, are checking in with Facebook throughout the day.

And even throughout the night, as they can’t sleep soundly, for fear of missing something BIG on Facebook!

Do people have the same love and fascination with the word of God?

Its like I shared with you about a year ago, when those teenagers videoed a man drowning and then uploaded the video onto a social media forum.

That was their concern, not his life!

How did we get here and to this point, to where people are more concerned with their image and their social approval, than that of the wellbeing and concern for others.

In the simplest answer, it is because of something that exists within every single one of us. “PRIDE”.

Behind every single sin that you or I have ever committed, or will ever commit, PRIDE is there prompting and driving us on!

It was because of his PRIDE, that the devil rebelled against God, it was PRIDE that the devil used to allure Adam and Eve into rebelling against God and committing the first sin and it is PRIDE that has been here ever since and prompting us to continue to seek our own will, versus that of our Creator’s will!

PRIDE/VANITY, they are complete opposites to someone who desires to serve and please the Lord God!

And people who have self-pride, many times over, do not know how lost in it they are. They only know that they are miserable and that their lives are filled with emptiness and constant strife!

And so, they complete the perpetual circle of serving and feeding that beast in their life that controls their thought and their actions; their PRIDE/VANITY!

Someone once said that, “Pride is the only disease known to man that makes everyone sick except the one who has it!”

C.S. Lewis once said, “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”

And of Pride, he also made the statement, “For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”

And that is why PRIDE is the most dangerous tool that the devil has to come against us. If used correctly, it can completely blind us to the TRUTH of who and what God is.

As a Christian, I am called to abandon SELF and follow the Christ!

As a Christian, I am believe that my life is no longer my own, that I have been bought with a price, which was the precious blood of Jesus!

As a Christian, I am reminded that I am to die to the flesh and its desires DAILY, so that I may serve God and then others.

We go through this life serving one of two masters; God or the devil, the Spirit or the flesh. And when your day begins and ends with feeding your mind, continually, the world through the filter of such things as social media, then who you are serving becomes apparent.

That doesn’t mean that if you look on some media forum that you are wrong, but which things controls your thoughts and actions: social media and the like, or reading the Word and talking with your heavenly Father.

I mean, that is, after all, why the devil loves for us to become so enamored with the stuff. Because it becomes the “go to” for us, instead of the Lord.

And you can’t substitute posting a verse on Facebook, for spending actual, dedicated time with God. For Him, we must turn off everything and everyone and engage Him and Him only!

This is why, Jesus would leave everyone and go off by Himself; to spend time with His Father, ALONE and without interruptions!

“Love the lord your God with ALL of your heart, and ALL of your soul, and ALL of your mind, and ALL of your strength!

And then, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Too many of us can’t love our neighbors as ourselves, because there isn’t any room for loving anyone else. We only love ourselves!

Here is the thing guys, and there are those who will disagree with me and that’s OK, I am just sharing with you how I read and perceive the Bible, but we MUST die to our flesh and any desire that it sets before us, that takes away from our time with the Father!

Jesus did not go to the cross, to REDEEM your flesh, your body! Jesus paid the horrible price that He paid, to REDEEM our spirit, so that we may enter with it, into the glorious presence of His Father’s kingdom for eternity!

Our flesh is condemned by sin, which is why Paul says that flesh and the spirit are constantly warring against one another.

Paul said of God in ,

Romans 8:3–8 ESV

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Your body and my body are not leaving this earth, because it was our spirit that Jesus redeemed and it is our spirit that He will call home one day!

“And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.”

Our flesh and its desires that compete with our time with God, must die daily.

It is for this reason, that the reality of that dream that I had, bothers me so much. We can become so blinded by these things that demand our time and attention, that we do not even notice that we may not even have a real relationship with the Lord.

And because so many people just check off the box each week for “church attendance”, and then back to their daily obsessions, they never even realize that they are not TRULY saved and in a real relationship with Him, because they treat a relationship with Him, just like they do with everyone else; MARGINALIZED and half-hearted.

God said that He would share that spot as Lord in and over our lives, with NO ONE, or NOTHING else!

And proof of our salvation, is that we are changed. We instantly die to this world and the desires of the our sinful past. However, it is our spirit that is changed instantly, and not our minds and our flesh.

Our mind and out hearts, are in a constant, daily process of being renewed and transformed, by the reading of His Word and spending time with Him in prayer!

And our flesh and all of the desires of this world are at war with our spirit from the day that we are redeemed, until the day that we are glorified, by being brought home!

In , where Jesus is speaking to His disciples about the last days, before His return, He says this, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.”

Now there have been some lunatics, who have actually made the claim that they are the Christ, but they are few and far between.

The thing that worries me about the statement of Jesus is that of those people who claim Him as Lord and walk as His representatives, and yet their lives and actions and words are no different than that of the world.

They will come in His name, as a believer in Him, and lead others astray from the TRUTH.

See that no one leads you astray, but also, see that you LEAD no one astray!