Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to this program of the R. G. Hardy Ministries. I'm Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I'll be bringing you today's message entitled "The Mirror of the Man."

This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart because God's word tells us to guard our hearts with all diligence because out of it comes the issues of life. And the only true mirror that we can look into and know the truth of who we are is the perfect mirror of scripture. It reads our hearts without distortion and our hearts reflect the mirror of the man.

R. G. Hardy: I love His presence tonight! I don't know about you, but I can't make one day without the presence of the Lord. Because in Him I live and move and have my being. And that is something that I've come to live because in Jesus, in the word of God, is my very identity. This word tells me who I am.

And I mean that seriously. I know who I am by the word of God. And I just want to be saturated with His word because it's through His word that it is truly the roadmap that leads and guides me. And I don't know about you, but I'm planning on being saved all the way.

I mean, I'm planning on staying saved until the last day. I don't know how long it'll be before Jesus comes and I don't know how long it'll be before I go or which one's going to come first, but I intend to be saved all the days of my life. I tell the Lord every day, "I'm going to serve You all the days of my life. I'm going to serve You until my last breath. I'm going to serve You, Jesus, and when I leave this body, I'm going to be with You for all eternity." Hallelujah, and that sounds good to me!

But I realize that in order for that to be true, I'm going to have to stay in God's word. And I'm going to have to stay filled with the word of God and filled with the spirit of God because otherwise I'm going to fall flat on my face. But I know if the Lord upholds me, He will lift me up and He's able to make me to stand.

And I don't have to worry about stumbling and falling and backsliding and quitting because the word of God is leading me and I'm following Him. And that's what I hope that tonight, that you will draw a little closer to the Lord as you begin to see yourself in the word of God. Let's turn to Proverbs 27. I want to read one verse in Proverbs.

Proverbs 27:19 says, "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. Now, I want to tell you what it says in another version just to kind of make it a little clearer to you.

The NIV says, "As water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man." Now, of course, when the wise man wrote this, they didn't have the mirrors like we have. And if you would look into a pool of clear water, you would see your reflection. I mean, you could see it perfectly if you were looking into a perfectly clear pool of water with the sun shining down. You would see your face. You would see every detail in that water.

And so that's what he was saying. Even as you can look into water and see the reflection of your face, so a man's heart is the reflection of the man. So if you look into a mirror in a natural looking glass, you're going to see your face. You're going to see what you look like. You're going to see your complexion. You're going to see your features. You're going to see your countenance, your face in the mirror.

And just as you look into a pool of water or look into a mirror that it will reflect your face, the Bible says a man's heart reflects the man. Who you are and who I am is reflected in our heart. Whatever is in our heart, that's the person we are. And it will come forth and it will be reflected. That thing that's in our heart, whatever it is, good, bad, or in between, it's going to be reflected in the man.

The Bible says as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Jesus said out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The wise man said guard your heart for out of it come the issues of life. Everything that is known about you or will ever be known about you is in your heart. And it will come out sooner or later. All you have to do is spend a little bit of time with someone and begin to talk to them. After a while, you'll begin to see into their heart and see what kind of person they are because it's going to come out.

Whatever we are is going to come out. Our heart reflects the man. And let's now turn to the book of James, the first chapter. And we see that really the book of James is the New Testament book of Proverbs. Really it is. If you read the book of James, you'll find out that he basically gives you the same sort of Proverbs that you'll find in the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. And a lot of things will be very similar to the Proverbs. And a lot of things will match it and will give you the New Testament confirmation even though he doesn't specifically quote them.

The book of James, I love the book of James. And I think it's a book that people sort of neglect and they kind of read over. They don't really bother with it a lot. But it deserves to be looked into. It's just as powerful as all the other books in the New Testament and it's a little different than the others, but it has a lot there that we can really use to grow, that we can grow by.

And I want you to see now in James the first chapter and starting with verse 22. "But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." And let me say this: the worst thing you can do is deceive yourself. Amen?

He said, "For if any man be a hearer of the word and not a doer, then he's like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."

So we find here that actually James is going to expound on what we just read in Proverbs. He says if you look into a looking glass—as we look into, he likened the looking glass to be the word of God. God's word is a mirror.

And he said if you will look into the mirror of God's word and what you hear and read and learn from God's word, if you will not be a forgetful hearer and get up and go your way and not take heed to what you've heard, not to put it in practice, don't follow through, don't obey it, he said then you're like a man who looks into a looking glass and looks and sees his face, but he forgets what manner of person he is and what he has seen and what he has heard.

Now let's try something here for a minute. I want everybody that can, I want you to close your eyes for a moment. I'm going to keep my eyes open so I'll make sure nobody's going to steal anything or run out the door. I'm going to keep my eyes open so you close yours. Close your eyes for a moment.

Now while your eyes are closed, I want you to think of the person that's very close to you: your husband, your wife, one of your children, one of your parents, your brother, sister, or a good friend. Someone close to you. Get a picture of that person in your mind. How many are thinking of someone close to you and you can see the image? If you can see the image of that person in your mind with your eyes still closed, raise your hand.

Alright, okay, open your eyes now. Almost everybody here raised their hand. Some didn't, and I don't know if it's just because they fell asleep that quick. It doesn't take much for some people. That's all they needed was for me to say close your eyes. Sister Sharon said I could, she said to close your eyes. And some people just went automatic close your eyes, go to sleep.

But most of you raised your hand that you were able to visualize that person that's real close to you. Alright, now let's try it again. Close your eyes again. Now this time, I want you to visualize your own face. I want you to visualize your own face. See your own self.

I'm seeing these funny looks even with people's eyes closed. I'm seeing these funny looks. They're screwing up their noses like, "What?" How many are finding it harder to see your own face than the person I asked you before? You can open your eyes now. How many found it harder to see your own face?

It was harder, wasn't it? I mean, you're trying to see what you look like and all of a sudden you can't see it. You just can't see it. Well, that's because you don't look at yourself. I mean, we don't look at ourselves. Now, we look at ourselves in the morning when we comb our hair, and in the afternoon and evening we even might visit the mirror a few times a day. And some people might visit the mirror many times a day.

But even so, you're still just—you're looking in that mirror, you still don't see yourself laughing. Do you go to the mirror and go "ha ha ha" so you can see what you look like laughing? No. And I know you haven't looked in the mirror and saw yourself when you're really hot, I mean blazing mad. Because when you're blazing mad, you're not studying about going in the mirror to see what you look like, right?

So you cannot picture or visualize your own face when you're really mad. You've never seen yourself mad. You've felt yourself mad. You know how you feel mad when your neck's about this big and your face is getting all red or hot or your eyes are bulging out. But you don't know what you look like mad.

You don't know what you really look like happy and laughing and just really letting yourself go because you don't see yourself. Now, if you tried to picture that first person that the first time I told you to visualize that person, chances are if you sat there and daydreamed for a while, you could get a picture of them laughing. You could get a picture of them not laughing.

You could get all kinds of pictures of that person close to you because you're always seeing their face and their countenance. You know that look in their eye, that certain look that means "shut up, don't say anything else." Don't you know that look? You know that look that's like, "Uh oh, I pushed the button too hard this time."

You know that look when they're about ready to just let loose and get all goofy and silly because you just hit the funny bone. I mean, you know that look when they're under pressure and they're down and they're low. You know that look when they're delightful and they're happy. You know all those looks about those people close to you.

But you don't know what you look like like that. Because when you look in the mirror at yourself most of the time, you're looking with just a straight face. You might check your teeth out to see if you've got any spinach in there. You might check a few things out, but you're not standing in the mirror going through all of the different facial expressions that you make.

I mean, I don't, maybe you do, I don't know. If you do, don't admit it. Just don't tell nobody, just be quiet and we won't know. So the point I'm trying to make is we don't really know what we really look like. Because we can see ourselves.

Now, how many have ever looked at a photograph of yourself and for a minute you thought, "Oh," because you didn't know you looked a certain way? You know it's you and it looks like you, but you were surprised that you didn't think you looked quite like that. You saw yourself in a different way. Oh, I'm sorry I brought it up. I repent. I shouldn't have done that because I know the feeling.

But you know, sometimes it's good because then you'll say, "Oh, I'm going on a diet tomorrow for sure!" So the point I'm trying to make, and I think I probably over-made the point, is that you don't really know what you look like. We know what everyone else looks like around us, but we don't really know what we look like.

And it is the same way in the spirit, James said so. He said it's the same analogy we can take in the spirit. We are often like that man that looks in the looking glass, looks in the mirror, and sees himself, "Oh, that's me, that's my face." But gets up, puts on his clothes, goes on out the door about the rest of the day, and he doesn't know what he looks like.

It's the same way: we look into the word of God and we don't really realize and understand what we look at, what we're seeing when we look into that, into God's word. And that's why he told us we have got to continue to look into the mirror. The only way that we're going to continue to have a real idea of the reflection of our heart—remember, the heart reflects the man—the only way that we're going to have an accurate image of who we are in the spirit is if we keep looking in the mirror.

We have to keep looking in the mirror. The only way that I can know what I look like in the natural is to look in the mirror. And then as the day goes on, that image fades away. I know less and less what I look like. Now, if I would hand out a mirror to every person here and had you stare in the mirror at yourself for about five minutes and then close your eyes and tell you to see yourself, you probably would have been able to do it just like that. Because you just saw the image. It was right there.

And that's the same way it is with the word of God. We can't just pop in here on a Sunday morning and get a little message here and get a little sermon here and think that that's going to allow us to really know whether or not we're walking in the spirit and walking in obedience and walking in truth. We can't. We've got to keep looking in the mirror.

Because it's easy for me to say, "Oh, you got this real big fault, Brother so-and-so. Oh, Sister so-and-so, boy you need to get the victory over that." I can easily see what's wrong with everybody else. But in order to see what my problem is, I've got to keep looking in the mirror. I have to keep looking in the mirror if I want to see what I have a problem with.

And that's what James is saying. He's saying because otherwise, straightway, immediately, he gets up and goes his way and forgets. And in the Greek, the emphasis is on the fact that it's an immediate thing. He absolutely at once he forgets what he's seen. How many times has the Holy Ghost sent the word of God—and I mean, I know there have been times that the Holy Ghost has been on me really powerful on Sunday nights and I know God was talking to folks. I mean, I could just—I know who He was talking to. But they just get up and the next report you hear is worse than the last one. Why is that?

Because people go out the door and they said "Amen" when they sat in the pew and they heard that message and the Holy Ghost was pulling at their heartstrings, but they went out the door and straightway, immediately, they forgot what they heard and they didn't put it into practice. They didn't do it. And if you don't do it and you don't put it into practice, you're just a hearer.

And he said the danger of that is you deceive yourselves. You don't deceive anybody else. You don't deceive the preacher; the preacher's just the messenger. That's all, just the messenger. It's not up to the preacher to follow through to make sure you do it or don't do it. All the preacher can do is deliver the message.

But then it's up to you what you're going to do with it. And that's why Paul said take the more earnest heed, brethren, to the things which you have heard, lest at any time you should let them slip. Now that in the Greek is different than it is in the English. Because in the English, it sounds like we're letting the word slip. But in the Greek, it says lest you should slip.

Let me tell you something: God's word never slips. God's word never slips. It's always right on. God's word is always going to hit the bullseye perfectly. God's word is always on target. God never makes mistakes. He doesn't miss. Maybe I might miss, and somebody else might miss, but the Holy Ghost doesn't miss.

But when we don't take the more earnest heed to the things that we have heard, we're the ones that slip. I didn't have that in my notes because I didn't know I was going to bring that out, but Paul said that in Hebrews, you've got to give the more earnest heed. You have to give the more earnest heed, lest at any time that you should let it slip.

Because James said it's going to be the tendency for most people to get up and go out along their way and forget what they have heard and deceive themselves. Now, the Greek word there for "deceive" means to reason beside the point, to misjudge, to miscalculate, to deceive through fallacious reasoning.

Have you ever tried to get through to somebody and their reasoning's totally beside the point? And you keep saying, "That is beside the point." And they're going on making this big, elaborate argument and answer, and it doesn't have anything to do with what you're trying to get through to—the discussion, the point that needs to be made. They are constantly reasoning beside the point.

And some people have done that so long and so much that that's all they know how to do. They go through their whole life that way. As soon as they're confronted with something that makes them feel the least bit uneasy or uncomfortable, they start reasoning beside the point. Trying to get off on another subject, distract it, miscalculate, misjudge. And all they're doing is deceiving themselves and all they're doing is causing themselves to become more entrenched in a habit that's very destructive.

Because I don't know about you, but I've been saved long enough and I've been through enough trials that I just want to know the truth. I don't like those trials, you know, the fiery furnace kind. I don't like the crucible trials. I don't like those at all; they almost make me want to just die. But when you get through them, God teaches you something.

But I don't want to be one of those fallacious reasoners who's always having to go in those kind of trials because I just won't let the word of God come and wash me and cleanse me and then I can then get up and obey God's word. So what we've got to realize is we don't do anything but deceive ourselves. And humans are very adept—we've gotten to be very adept at reasoning things to satisfy our mistakes and to satisfy why we do certain things.

I'm just going to follow the Lord here tonight and I may go another way than what I have, but I'm just going to follow the Lord. But I just thought about this. My little grandson Noah was in there, and you know, I don't get to see him very much, I only get to see him a little bit. And he's quite rambunctious, as you probably have seen.

So he's in there and I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm trying to get my thoughts together and all," and he's in there and he's wanting me to fly airplanes and all this stuff. But he's a very bright little boy. He's very bright. I mean, I know I'm his grandma and I know, you know, I'm probably a little biased, but he is. When he was like five years old, six years old, he's very bright, very verbal. And he could—you could carry on a conversation with him like you could with an older person.

And I'll never forget, you know, in that room that's been the catch-all room for all the junk that you don't know what to do with, it's ended up in that room. And that room over the years, believe me: parts of plays, parts of this, parts of that. We don't even know, there's a big old brick in there, I mean this big heavy—I don't know. There's been all kinds of junk. Thank God it looks a whole lot better now because Benny and Helena got in there and they really cleaned it out when that roof fell in. They didn't have a choice; they had to do it.

But there's been this briefcase that's been in there for I don't know how many years. I'm going to assume it was one of the props for one of the plays. But it's a nice-looking briefcase, the kind that's got the combination locks. And it's been sitting in there for absolutely for years. And you know, I don't know what's in it if or whatever.

And for quite a while now, I would say that this went on for about a year: every time Noah would come and he would go over there, it would bug him to death to know what is in that briefcase. And he would say, "Grandma, what's in this briefcase?" And we would go through the same thing: "I don't know, Noah." "Well, whose is it?" "I don't know, Noah." "Well, what's it in here for?" "I don't know, Noah."

And this went on every time, like we had never had this discussion before. And he would be trying his best to pick that lock. And he'd get pens and he'd get everything and he'd say, "Grandma, how can I get in here? Don't you want to know what's in here?" And most times I would just ignore him. And so the next time, we would go through this—this has been carried on over a period of months and months.

And so one night he came in there and, true to form, he started up the same old thing. "Grandma, what's in here? Don't you want to know what's in here?" I said, "I don't know, Noah. I don't know." "Well, might be something money in there." "I don't know, it might be, but I don't know whose it is."

So he's got—and he ends up breaking all my pens and breaking all my pencils because he's determined to stick them in there and turn them and they snap and they break. So here he goes again with one of my pencils. I said, "Noah, you're just going to break another pen. There's no way you can open that with a pen. You know that by now. It's going to take somebody strong like Papa Benny. He's going to have to get a screwdriver and he'd have to come in here and maybe he could get it open, but you can't get it open."

Well, that isn't going to stop him from trying. So he's trying and he's trying. And finally he decides he takes the pen, and you know where the lip comes over? He starts taking the pen instead of trying to go in and get the lock open, he decides to go up under and push the lip. So he's pushing it and he's pushing it and pushing it, and it's starting to give a little bit.

And he's pushing it, man, he's pushing it. Finally he busted it. The seam busted. He didn't get it open, but he tore the seam. And when he did that, I just joking around, I said, "Oh my goodness, you've done it now! Oh boy, you broke it now! You are in trouble!"

He turned around and looked at me with those big eyes of his and I said, "Oh boy, you're in trouble now!" And I could just see the little wheels in his mind already turning. He says, "But Grandma, but Grandma, it's not my fault." I said, "Noah, you're the one who did it." "But Grandma, it's not my fault!" I said, "Aren't you the one—didn't you just sit there and break it open?"

He says, "But Grandma, I'm not the only one to blame." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Grandma, didn't you tell me you would like to know what's in there?" I thought, "What is—" Now he was about like six years old at the time, five or six. I thought to myself, if this isn't—that young, he already thought, "I'm not taking the blame for this."

He says, "Grandma," and he said it just like that: "I'm not the only one to blame." That's what he said in those exact words. I mean, he didn't just say it's not my fault, he said "I'm not the only one to blame." Well, then I knew that there was somebody else to blame, and I knew it probably was me because I was the only one else in there.

And I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Grandma, didn't you say you wanted to know what was in there?" I said, "Oh, I said I would like to know what's in there, but I didn't tell you to do that." He said, "But you said you wanted to know what was in there!"

So the conclusion is: he was going to do what I wanted him to do, so therefore it wasn't his fault, it was my fault. And that's funny, but the fact is people take that same type of thinking and they go through their whole life that way. And all through their life they use that same kind of thinking: "Well, so-and-so said and this one did and for whatever reason it's not my fault. I'm not to blame. I'm not the one with the problem. It's always somebody else."

But you know that if we go through life that way, we're not fooling anybody but ourselves. Now, it's cute when you're five years old. I mean, I marvel at how bright that child was; it took a very intelligent kid to maneuver all that in his mind. So I told myself, "Well, he's still little and he's real smart. After a while that'll be a good way, he'll be bright." But you don't—if you're thinking that way later on, you know what you're thinking. How many say amen?

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. I hope you're being spiritually enlightened by our message, "The Mirror of a Man." Proverbs 27:19 says that just as a mirror reflects a person's face, a person's heart reflects who he really is. And the book of James is the New Testament equivalent to the book of Proverbs and carries this metaphor over, stating that God's word is the perfect law of liberty and, like a mirror, it reveals the hidden man of our hearts.

The problem is, James said, we're prone to get up and go our way and forget what the word has revealed. It is only when we continue to look into the mirror of scripture and act on it that we are justified and blessed in all our deeds.

But most people, including many Christians, play the blame game. "It's not my fault," and they conveniently suppress any pangs of conviction. For believers, this is very serious because the Holy Spirit convicts us not to condemn us, but to bring us to contrition and confession and conversion.

Fallacious reasoning, arguing beside the point, open the door to self-deception and presumption. And many Christians are not able to differentiate between their soul and their spirit, which can lead to natural carnal remedies that will only ultimately fail when it is the spirit that is under attack and in turmoil.

When people live out of their souls instead of their spirits, they learn to calibrate everything on an emotional experience level. As believers, we must make conscious discipline not to let our souls be the boss. And as born-again, spirit-led Christians, we can.

If you are a believer dealing with emotional, mental, and or spiritual issues, or if you know someone who is, you need this message in its entirety. "The Mirror of a Man" is available on one CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request offer SK134. That's S as in Sharon, K as in Knotts, 134.

Mail to R. G. Hardy, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, or go online at rghardy.org. That's rghardy.org. Again, our mailing address is P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying Maranatha.