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Chances are this morning that the name David Ludwick doesn't mean much to you.
Chances are also that you have heard the news story in recent weeks that have at least
temporarily made him famous, or I should say infamous.
Richard Ludwick is the 18-year-old Pennsylvania youth who shot and killed Michael and Kathy
Borden, the parents of his 14-year-old girlfriend, Cara Borden.
Story goes like this.
Apparently, David and Cara were carrying on behind her parents' back, her parents disapproved,
and on the morning of Sunday, November 13th, this led to a confrontation with David after
their daughter had been dropped off at home at 5.30 in the morning.
And in that confrontation, Michael Borden told David that he could no longer see their
daughter Cara, and then he pulled out a gun that he carried with him and shot dead first
Michael and then Kathy, and then took off with Cara in his parents' family car, a red
ejecta, and managed to travel 600 miles to the west before they were spotted, pursued
by police, and then arrested after crashing into a tree in of all places, Belleville, Indiana.
Interesting, is it not?
So they were taken back, of course, to Pennsylvania, where David has been arraigned on two homicide
charges, as well as a charge of reckless endangerment, because in being chased by the police,
he ran a lot of other cars off the road.
And his preliminary arraignment or hearing, I believe, is set for December 16th.
First, he was charged with kidnapping, but it is now evident that Cara went with him willingly
and not by force, though she has not been charged.
Now, the reason I share that story with you this morning is that interestingly enough,
both Cara and David professed to be very committed Christians.
Cara was recently baptized.
The T-shirt that you see her wearing on that picture, you won't be able to read it,
but that says pillar.
She got that at a Christian rock concert that she and David attended on October the 6th.
And if you look at her web blog, then you will discover that besides all the normal teenage
girl interests that she has, her first priority is Jesus, and her youth group.
Here is a quotation that is taken from her web blog before the authority shut it down.
Because she starts listing under her interests, Jesus, church, my youth group, other youth
groups, family friends, my doggy, kids, babysitting, soccer, basketball, football, talking on
the phone, and so on.
Perfectly natural, normal teenage pursuits, but you will notice how Jesus heads the list.
She was active in church.
She was active in her youth group.
And David, well, he's a little confusing to figure out because when the police raided
his house, they found 54 guns.
They also found that his computer a videotape where he and his friend Sam Law were planning
and trying to execute a break-in or a robbery of somebody else's house.
And yet David, on a web blog that is attributed to him, talks about a place called The Bard.
How seven years earlier he had received a division from the Lord to set apart the barn as a place
of prayer and worship.
In fact, here is what his web blog says, "Here is the scoop."
Basically, about three weeks ago, Sam Law, that's the other guy that was involved in that
strange videotape, and myself, David Ledwick, felt led to clean up the upstairs of my that
is the Ludwig's barn to create a place that we could come to after our Monday night and
Friday night youth meetings or any time to worship and diligently see God's face.
God has enabled far more to be completed than any of us ever imagined.
Glory.
See, here you have two kids.
Two kids who not only grow up in Christian homes, two kids who have been homeschooled
which is how they met by the way, two kids who both profess to be serious followers of
the Lord Jesus and yet they got caught up in a crime that is so heinous, that is hard
to imagine.
And the question, of course, is how can that be?
How do you square those two kinds of lawyers?
Well, I don't profess this morning to have a full answer to that question for you, but
here's what I do now.
Their lives are a good illustration of how you can be raised in a good Christian home.
You can know the Bible and the Bible stories.
You can go to church.
You can be active in church.
You can profess Jesus. You can be actively involved in the service of Jesus.
And yet have whole areas of your life that remain in darkness, that have not yet been brought
under the authority of God's Word.
And that, of course, is what James talks about in this passage that we have read when
he says in verses 22, 23, and 24, do not merely listen to the Word.
And so deceive yourselves, do what it says.
Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at
his face in a mirror.
And after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
And clearly the picture here is that of a person looking into a mirror, mirror, mirror
on the wall who is the fairest of us all.
And the purpose we look, the purpose for which we look into the mirror is to get a reflection
of our image, so that we can not only see what's right about our image before we go out
the door, but more especially what is wrong about our image with a view to taking corrective
action is my hair right, is my makeup in place, do my clothes look good, am I presentable?
Can I go out into the world with confidence?
All Scripture says in the words of James, that's precisely the function of God's Word.
God's Word is a mirror.
It is a mirror in the sense that it gives us who God is and what God wants us to be.
And then as we stare into that mirror, what reflects back to us is who we are.
What is good about us in Christ, and that which is not so good about us, and the purpose
of that then is to equip us to make the changes not to our outward appearance first and
foremost, but to our inward heart so that we can be a fitting first fruit of the harvest
that God is creating.
Here is how Paul puts it, writing to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3 16 and 17, all Scripture he says
is God breathed or inspired by God.
It's useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for trading and righteousness,
so that the man or the woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The Bible was never intended as a mere resource for history or for intellectual stimulation
or sophisticated theological debate.
The Scripture was given to us as a mirror of who God is and what God is looking for in
your life and in my life, so that by obeying the Word through faith in Jesus, we might indeed
be a kind of first praise of all of creation.
Do not merely listen to the Word.
Do what it says for anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like
a man who looks at his face in the mirror and after looking at himself goes away and
immediately forgets what he looks like.
Now what I further want us to note this morning is that this process of life transformation
by staring into the mirror of God's Word is not a process that takes place automatically.
It takes deliberate action for notice how James goes on in verse 25, but the man who looks
intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this not forgetting
what he has heard but doing it, he will be blessed in what he does.
For Scripture to do its transforming work by pointing us to Jesus, there are at least
according to this verse three things that you and I need to take seriously.
Number one, we need to look at God's revelation, God's Word intently.
The man who looks intently into the perfect law will be blessed in what he does.
Have you ever watched a very image conscious person?
That's around in front of a mirror.
I mean, really, if image is important to you and if looking good is important to you,
then you don't just casually glance at your image in the mirror, you stare at it intently.
My goodness is that a gray hair?
Is that a new wrinkle?
I didn't see that wrinkle last night.
Did I get it overnight?
Or is that a zit on my face?
My social life has ended.
I can't possibly go to the party because my life is falling apart.
And those clothes, they look terrible on me and all those body parts are...
We won't go there, but you know.
And so you stare intently with a view of making changes on your outward appearance.
And I sometimes think if we spend half as much time on our inward attitude before God
as we do on our outward appearance, what a different place this world would be.
But if the Word of God has to do its job, we need to stare at it intently.
That means at the very least we need to be familiar with Scripture.
One of the reasons the world is making such inroads into North American society, including
the Church, is because our knowledge of Scripture is next to nothing.
And so things sound good, things sound true.
We have lost our sense of discernment.
The antidote to that is to read Scripture and to study it from one end to the other.
Not simply to fill our minds with intellectual tidbits, but to know the Word of God.
So that when we find ourselves in a crisis situation, the Holy Spirit can come along, take
that Word, make it alive, and we will know intuitively what it is that we ought to do and
what it is that we ought not to do.
Told you last week about that church that Michelle and I attended two weeks ago where they
had the drama based on the games of the Game of Scruples.
You'll remember that, and the question was when you and a coworker are both called upon
to make a presentation that could significantly advance either of your careers, and you know
your opponent has overlooked something so big that he will fail to your advantage, will
you tell him, or will you keep quiet?
Now, put yourself in that situation, what would you do?
I said the whole purpose of the drama was in the exchange of conversation.
This young woman was trying to justify how that was not her responsibility.
She wasn't doing anything wrong.
She was merely looking out after herself.
Now, remember later on coming away from that reflecting on it, what would be the right
thing to do when the words of the golden rule popped into my mind from Scripture, do one
others as you would have them?
Do one a year.
And there's a lot of situations that you and I will find ourselves in in the course of
life, whether it's in dating relationships, whether it's in marrying relationships, whether
it's with raising kids, whether it's in how we manage our business, how we occupy our
time, if we but know the Scriptures and have studied and read them intently, we will
in the words of the Psalmist, we will be wiser than our teachers.
We need to take seriously the role of Scripture in our lives, we need to look at it intently
not only, but we need to look at it persistently.
For notice, how James goes on, the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives
freedom and continues to do this, he will be blessed in what he does.
And therein of course lies the problem with the mirror.
The mirror not only, as I said earlier, tells you what's good and right about you, but
it also tells you what's wrong about you.
And we've all seen movies or television shows in which somebody has been in an accident
or has had facial reconstruction surgery and they're all bandaged up like a mummy and
then comes the big day when the bandages come off and the big question is, what will
I look like and many a movie moment has been made out of that first glimpse into the mirror
while I still recognize myself, well I like myself.
Well that's how it is with God's word.
We'd all like the mirror to tell us how good we are, but fact of the matter is once we
stare intently into the mirror of God's word and God begins to give us his view of who
we are.
We see all kinds of things that are not pleasing to him.
Paul said he thought he was the Pharisee of the Pharisees, the best man going until the
law of God came along and God showed him what he was really like.
And you and I, we've had that experience, we think we do pretty good.
We think we love God, we think we love our day, but we think we're just as good as somebody
else.
But then God's word comes along and tells us not only that our outward behavior is falling
far short of the glory of God, but our inward behavior, our inward attitudes that we stand
there as condemned men and women, we stare into the mirror and we say, I don't like what
I see there.
And when that happens, we can do one or two things.
We can punch the mirror or turn away from it or kill the messenger who brings us the message
of what we see in the mirror.
And many of us have had situations like that, haven't we where?
We just caused the Bible because we didn't like what it was saying to us or we ran into
a passage that we didn't like very much and quick turn the page until we find something
a little more comforting.
Or you go to church and it's one of those days where it sounds like the preacher's been
listening in on your conversation and you say to yourself, who told him about me?
And you want to close off your heart, you want to leave, you want to never come back because
the light is too bright and it hurts too much.
I'll never forget years ago and some of you have heard me tell this story, good friend
of ours, we were in a Bible study.
Studying one Corinthians chapter 13, the great love chapter and we were talking about what
the love looks like in the real world, not just idealistically, but how do we really
love each other?
And we were in the midst of the discussion what she did was all of a sudden slammed her
Bible shut burst out into tears and said, I don't like this.
At least she was honest.
Because you see her relationships were not where they ought to be.
And the Word of God was convicting her and she knew that the image in the mirror was
a far cry from what it ought to be and for her it led to repentance and the faith.
But for a lot of us it leads to killing snow white.
It leads to turning away from the mirror and it turns to embracing our darkness.
Now you listen to me real well because if you learn nothing else in this church than this
you need to understand that when we do that consistently and persistently knowingly and
deliberately over a period of time then God will give us over to our darkness and we end
up in deception.
When you deliberately close your heart to what God is convicting you of and deliberately
decide you're not going to listen to him then your heart gets harder and harder and colder
and colder until you end up in a situation where black is white and white is black.
That's why James starts this passage with the words don't merely listen to the word and
so deceive yourselves but be doers of the word.
God has an incredible patience with all our weakness with all our shortcomings and with
all our sins.
He does not have very much patience with a deliberate stubbornness that says you can tell
me whatever it is that you want but I choose to be God in my life and I'm not going to
do it.
You end up shipwrecking your faith and God will no longer speak to you and you will think
you are merely sailing along life is good but you're on your road to destruction.
Whatever you can say, Lord I don't like what I see in the mirror.
I don't like how you reflect me back and I don't know what to do about it.
I don't like my shame.
I don't like my sin.
I don't like seeing who I really am and I don't know how to change but Lord I cast myself
upon your mercy because of the purpose of the law you see is always to point us to
Jesus and Jesus not only forgives but he has enough power to heal and to restore and
to make us a new creation.
So we need to look intently into the mirror of his word.
We need to look at it persistently even when it keeps telling us things we don't want
to see.
Things we don't want to hear because God is not out to destroy us.
The law is a perfect law that gives freedom.
He wants to restore us.
He wants to liberate us and then says James we need to go on and we have to do what it
says for he says the man who looks intently into the perfect law and continues to do this
not forgetting what he has heard by doing it he will be blessed in what he does.
He will be blessed in what he does.
And earlier of course in verse 22 say Memphis's don't merely listen to the word and so deceive
yourselves do what it says.
Faith without works is a major theme in the book of James and faith without works is dead.
If really we believe that there is a God.
And if we really believe that he sent his son to redeem us from sin.
And if we really believe there is a day coming when every tribe and tongue and nation will
be gathered before the throne of God in judgment.
If we really believe there is a heaven and a hell and that being joined to Jesus makes
all the difference for time and for eternity then your life cannot remain the same.
It is inconceivable that true faith will not translate itself into a deeper conviction
of sin, a deeper hatred of it, and a greater longing to be more and more like Jesus.
It's not a question of being perfect, it's not a question of being without sin.
But it's very much a question of am I going to embrace increasingly what in Christ?
I already and really am.
And the great tragedy of North American Christianity is that while we abound in Christ professors,
we do not abound in serious disciples who take seriously the practice of God's word.
George Barna, you've heard me quote him before, he is a Christian researcher who goes
around finding out not only what Christians really believe but how they put their Christian
beliefs into practice and repeatedly the results that he comes up with in North American
society are extremely disheartening.
He says four out of five people in North America profess to be Christians but he says only
about 16% will honestly confess that their faith is the most important thing in their lives.
In fact here is what he says in his report, he says it appears that most Americans like
the security and the identity of the label Christian but resist the biblical responsibilities
that are associated with that identification.
For most Christians being a Christian is more about image than action.
It's not good enough to look in the mirror.
It's not good enough to look intently into the mirror.
It's not good enough to look persistently into the mirror.
Once we see what God wants us to see, we need to take action whether that is positive
action or negative.
And so when we come to Scripture and Scripture convicts me that there's something I have
done in my past that is not in keeping with God's will for my life, then I need to get
down on my knees and I need to confess to God that he's right and I am wrong and will
you please because of Jesus forgive me.
When I look in the mirror and I see the mirror reflecting that my attitude towards my spouse
or my attitude towards my children or my attitude toward my coworkers is not up to the standard
of the life of Jesus then instead of justifying my behavior and saying, "Well, okay, Sarasara,
we're all sinners and don't you expect me to try to be any different because you're
no better.
We need to get down on our knees and we need to cry out and we need to say, "Lord,
I don't know how to change this.
I don't even want to change this.
But help me to be convicted, help me to see how my sin offends you and hurts all the
significant people in my life and then help me through faith in Jesus to turn my back
on all of that and to be more and more what you want me to be.
It's not a question of perfection, but it is a question of humility and ownership."
See, Christians can do this.
Why?
Because in Christ they are already secure.
In Christ they are already perfect before God.
Their standing has been obtained.
And so they can allow the Word of God to shine and to expose all the flaws because God
already knows all of those anyway.
He's not surprised by that zit in my face.
He's not surprised by my hair that's out of place.
He's not surprised by my body that is going places where it ought not to go spiritually,
as well as physically.
He's already accepted me as part of his family, a wise old woman talking about the doctrine
of elections at the Spurgeon one time.
God must have loved me before I was born because He would have never loved me after.
Good reflection, good insight in a human nature.
And what happens when we stare intently, when we stare persistently, when we don't forget
what God has said, when we start to practice what God has said, James goes on to say, "We
will be blessed in what we do."
The man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom continues to do this,
not forgetting what He has heard but doing it, He will be blessed in what He does.
See Satan's deception is that somehow God is trying to restrain our freedom.
And wouldn't you have a lot more fun if you could just be what you wanted to be and to
do what you want to do?
That's part of the deception.
There is a way, says the book of Proverbs that seems right to a man, but its end is death.
God on the other hand gives us the perfect law because it is a law that brings freedom.
And when instead of turning away from the mirror, we embrace it, and we do it persistently,
and we allow the Lord to speak into our lives, then God begins to change us and He enables
us to experience the blessings of His presence and the blessings of His redemption.
And just to show you this morning, what that looks like in the real world, I want to tell
you a little bit with their permission of Ann and Peter Ingallsman's story.
Those of you that have been in this congregation for a number of years will know them.
And you may know that their marriage has been a difficult journey for many, many years.
And for many reasons, one reason being that Peter was raised in an orphanage.
His father and his mother had difficulty bringing up the children.
His father was a skipper, it was gone from home all the time.
His mother, so the story goes, was unable to raise the children.
And so the father and I think Ann took the six children, passed them on to some children's
aid society in the Netherlands, shortly after or during the war, and they ended up at an
orphanage.
Now orphanages are not good places to develop personality because they are the kind of places
where you either kill or be killed.
Well, Peter made very sure that he wasn't killed, and he learned how to beat off when
he learned how to be strong, and he learned how to build walls around himself.
Later on, his father and his mother tried to reconcile, they had two more children.
That was equally disastrous.
They tried at one point to get them out of the orphanage system, but it didn't work.
And that's how he grew up, and as you could imagine, had a huge impact on his relationship
with Ann and on his relationship with their children.
So much so that a number of months ago, Ann came to a point where she had enough and
she left him.
She left him because she saw no change in his life and no interest in changing.
A significant part of this story is that up until a couple of years ago, Peter came
to this church very regularly, but then turned away and disappeared for a number of years,
tried some other churches, and eventually I think ended up staying home.
So when this whole thing came down and he came to see me because Ann had left him, I asked
him, "Peter, what happened?
Why did you leave?"
And he said, "Well, you hurt me."
And I said to him, "How did I hurt you?"
Well, he said, "Every time you spoke a message, it cut me to the quick."
I was starting to feel bad about that until he told me Valerie had the same effect on him.
And then I felt considerably better because I knew instantly then what was happening.
The word of God, you see, is that mirror, and that mirror was showing him the deep painful
and hurt places of his life.
And when he told me that story, I got kind of excited and I said to him, "Peter, here's
what I want you to understand.
You can be thankful that the word of God is hurting you the way that it is because that
means two things—number one, you are not yet dead because if you were dead, you wouldn't
feel a blooming thing.
Number two, it means God has not yet given up on you and he is still after you.
And with tears streaming down his face, I tell you it is no exaggeration.
The pain of being abandoned by his wife was finally greater than the pain of having
to look in his mirror.
And for the first time in his life, he could begin to own how much hurt he had caused to
ear, how much hurt he had caused to his children and how much he needed Jesus.
And that was an incredible moment of grace because while there are still lots to be worked
out and a whole lifetime of patterns, they don't just drop away, I believe, with all my
heart.
A significant transformation began to take place at that hour, because you see, instead
of turning away from the mirror, he allowed the mirror to speak and to lay bare his soul.
The word of God is living in act of sharper than a two-edged sword.
It cuts to the dividing of bone and marrow, soul and spirit, it lays bare the thoughts and
the intentions of our hearts.
They were here at nine o'clock, they allowed me to share the story and they're back together,
working stuff out to be sure.
But God has been gracious in meeting an incredibly deep place in their life and in their relationship,
but there's more to the story.
Twenty years ago, when I first came here, guess who was the very first counsely that came
to my office?
It was Anne.
She then shared already the struggles in their relationship and she owned her stuff,
if you will, the places of brokenness in her life.
She called me up, so months after that first meeting, as I recall, she had fallen out
of the pear tree and she had to be hospitalized and God spoke to her in that situation and
he said to her, "I am going to save Peter."
That's twenty years ago and here we are today bearing witness to the saving power of Jesus
who is the Christ the Son of the Living God.
He's in glory, people.
Some of you are saying, "I don't want to wait twenty years."
Isn't that right?
What's the alternative?
God is not slow about His promise as some kind of slowness.
People often ask me, "Why does it take so long?
There is God when you need Him the most."
Well, God can do His own defending and He can do His own explanation, but I've learned
over the years that seldom does the problem lie with God.
Most commonly the problem lies with us because we have our defenses up.
We put all our guards in place.
We keep turning away from the mirror and unless God holds onto us and the pain of dealing
with the de-places in our lives becomes less than the pain of not dealing with those places.
No lasting or significant change can ever take place.
So here's my challenge to you as we wind this up this morning when God speaks to you.
When you sit here and you say, "I don't want to hear this anymore."
When you read the Bible and you say, "I don't like what it says when your friend speaks
into your life and you don't want to hear what it's God to say."
You can walk away and harden your heart or you can look at it persistently, recognize
that God still loves you.
He hasn't given up on you and you can let Him do the kind of surgery that He wants to
do in your life.
You don't have to make it happen.
You don't have to earn it.
All you have to do is heal to it, allow Him to speak to you in the places where He is
speaking and He will do the changing because you see in Christ we are His workmanship created
in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared that we should walk in them.
And I believe the Lord gives us stories like Peter and Anne's.
Not to put the spotlight on them, not to put an undue burden of responsibility upon them
to try to leave this out in our sight, but to show us that it doesn't matter how broken
we are, it doesn't matter how long it has lasted and doesn't matter how deep it goes.
God is bigger because His grace is amazing.
With our hearts in your hands, bowed at your throne we surrender, all to you you alone.
You are God.
When we are weak, we fall at your feet and cry holy.
You are the giver of life, all that I need.
Jesus, you are Lord of the healer, friend and savior redeemer.
Jesus, you are Lord of the healer, friend and savior redeemer.
Ancient of days.
With the hearts in your hands, bowed at your throne we surrender, all to you alone.
You are God.
When we are weak, we fall at your feet and cry holy, because you are the giver of life,
all that I need.
And Jesus, you are Lord of the healer, friend and savior redeemer.
Ancient of days.
Jesus, you are Lord of the healer, friend and savior redeemer.
Ancient of days.