How to take a selfie

Preamble

I want everyone who has a phone to take out your phone. Go to your cameras, you can use the front or back camera, now snap a picture of yourself. Are you finished? Is it a nice picture? If not ill teach you how to take a nice picture.

Tonight’s message is entitled “How to take a selfie.”

Let us pray. <Preacher should pray.>

Introduction

Everybody likes to take selfies. Older persons love to take selfies, younger persons love to take selfies. Some persons love their face alone in the picture, some persons love their upper body in the picture. Some persons smile, some persons pout.

Just in-case you are not sure about it. A selfie is a picture someone took of themself, typically with a smartphone.

v Some people take selfies in front of mirrors…

v Others in the car on the way to a destination

v Some people are unsure of how to take one

v Many like to take it with their friends, and family

v While some people, like me, just take them because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Whatever it is selfies are nice. The one setback however is that it deals with the outside, the physical. It only captures the visible, and cannot capture the invisible. We cannot take a picture of the inside of our heart.

GO with me in your Bibles to 2 Samuel 12: 1-7.

Nathan marches into the throne room where David sits high and lofty on his kingly throne.

David, I’m sure gave him a warm welcome.

Nathan begins a simple story, a parable.

Two men lived in a similar location but their economic conditions were different. One was rich the other was poor. The rich man had many flocks and herds. The poor man on the other hand had a little ewe lamb. Now note Nathan is smart, he just doesn’t say lamb, he says ewe lamb. That means its female.

Nathan continues the story. The poor man brought the lamb home, fed the lamb and grew the lamb like it was one of his own children. Whatever he ate, the lamb ate. If he ate bread… the lamb ate bread. <If he ate (add some local foods from your country), the lamb ate (local food).

Whatever he ate the lamb ate too.

This man didn’t even eat (local food from your country) by himself, he always shared his (local food from your country) with the lamb.

The lamb slept where he slept, he would hug up the lamb, play with his lamb, sing Mary had a little lamb to his lamb. This man loved his lamb (aww).

 But then a traveler came to visit the rich man who had many other flocks and herds, lambs goats, sheep, chicken, cow. However, instead of the rich man taking one of his flock, he took the one little, little ewe lamb the poor man had. He killed it, and cooked it.

David said what?  What do you mean, what are you saying? He killed the man lamb. As God liveth, he is going to die, today to day he is going to die.

David is going off, ranting and raving, very upset, already has judgement for this man. David said he has to repay the poor man fourfold, fourfold I tell you.

Nathan turns to David, while David is in rage and ready to tear this man apart, that has done this grave evil against the poor man.

Nathan says “Thou are the man”

David turned to Nathan and said hold on Let me take take a selfie. Not one with an iPhone or those other kind of phone’s but one that sees the heart.

·        David has a flash back and remembers how he had taken Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite a poor man. Even though David had three wives and countless concubines and many other women at his disposal.

·        His mind goes back to how they had made sweet passionate love.

·        After he slept with her and she came to tell him she was pregnant, how nervous he was.

·        He then devised a brilliant plan, where her husband will come home and sleep with her, but after organizing an all-expenses paid vacation for Uriah to come home from war, Uriah refused to sleep with his wife. So David’s plan was foiled and he had to come up with Plan B, so he sent Uriah back to war carrying his own execution order. (Wait you could imagine David organizing to get a man killed so he can take his wife…That’s what sin does to us!

·        Shame covered his face as he thought of how quickly he married her after the death of her husband and now even though they were married for about 6 months her delivery date is just a few days away.

·        David now takes a proper selfie, a better introspection and realizes that the rich man in the story is him and the poor man was Uriah.

How to take a selfie?

1.      You need to be in the photo

The most important person in a selfie is you. You must look at your flaws, see the errors and take action.

  When David realized that his transgressions was obvious He cried out in Psalm 51: 3,4 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

What is your transgression, what is that sin that easily besets you? Aren’t you tired of hiding it aren’t you tired of covering it up? Aren’t you tired of pretending it doesn’t exist? What are you doing about it? Haven’t you swept it under the carpet long enough? Haven’t you put it off long enough?

You know some of us put an expiry date on sin. It’s a long extended time. Umm after my birthday…month end month end. Or the biggest one, the New Year.  Yes that’s the one. You see when January morning comes, I am finished with that you know. And so we hold on to those darling sins.

Don’t be fooled friends on this waiting to get rid of the particular sin, the devil will always make you stay longer than you plan to stay and the price will always be higher than you plan to pay.

2.     Edit your errors or delete the photo

Sometimes you take a photo and it is not such a good photo. It is blurred, it does not represent you well. You didn’t make your face properly. Or maybe someone walk across in the picture (we call it photo bombing) What do you do? Yes you delete it:

In Psalm 51:1 “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.”

What is the sin keeping you from experiencing the full measure of God’s life and love in your life? Are you addicted to pornography? Do you lose the battle with the remote control when lascivious scenes of seduction and illicit encounters parade across the TV screen?

Are you eating and drinking to your own detriment instead of to the glory of God?

Does hidden rage cause you to strike out against your spouse or children?

Is it lying? Sabbath breaking? Stealing? Do you find you are attracted to someone of a similar gender?

Well tonight is the night, it expires now. It is called radical amputation.

Aaron Ralston, a 27-year-old mountain sports fanatic from Colorado in the United States, found himself in dire straits* alone in a canyon* in the desert when a 500kg rock came crashing down the canyon to smash his right hand and trap it against the canyon wall. A terrible accident, but the situation was made all the more serious because on this occasion Aaron had failed to tell anyone where he was going. At the last minute the plans for a trip with his climbing partners had fallen through, and on the spur of the moment he decided to head out on his own to cycle up a long mountain trail, leave his bike and then walk down the Blue John canyon. No one had the slightest idea where he was.

After three days of not seeing or hearing any sign of life Aaron realized he would die there if he didn't do something drastic. The course of action was horrific, but there was no other way. He would have to amputate his right hand. Fortunately, he had a small multitool knife with him and he had some straps that he could use to make a tourniquet to stop himself bleeding to death when he cut the arteries. The knife had two blades. When he tried with the larger blade he found that it was too blunt to cut the skin.

The following day he found the courage to try the shorter blade, and with that he managed to cut through the skin. Only when he had made a large hole in his arm did he realise that it was going to be impossible to use any of the little tools on his knife to cut through the bones. After another 24 hours of pain and despair the idea and the strength came to him in a flash on the sixth day. With a final burst of energy, he broke both bones in his arm and freed himself.

Radical amputation. There are things that have you pinned down, stagnant can’t move forward, crippled immobile you have to cut it off and let it go. There are some people in your life that have not contributed to your happiness or success, they are leeches, sucking you dry, boulders pinning you down, LET THEM GO in the name of Jesus.

Some persons are in relationships giving themselves to men and women who don’t care to understand your worth. They beg you if you have a son for me I’ll marry you. DON’T LISTEN TO THEM LET THEM GO.

3.     Start over or take a new picture

David found himself in a tough situation. He could let pride keep him back and say I am King I can do anything. He could have blamed Bathsheba for being so beautiful, so irresistible. In fact, he could have said why in the world God had to make her.

But David cried out, Psalm 51: 10-12  

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. 12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

He calls for mercy. He wants grace, he needs pardon. He didn’t feel so about the rich man who took the poor man’s lamb. No he said he should have died.

Some persons are so judgmental. They do comparative sinning; saying oh I am not like her I am not like him. But they have secrets.

They are hard on young people. Always talking about us instead of guiding us and advising us in love.

Someone said the only reason you are not doing plenty things is because you are too old to do it now. But if you were young like back in the day, hmmm have mercy all the angels in heaven couldn’t hold you back.

Young persons need love, guidance and role models.

Nonetheless, when David saw his situation, he cried out for Mercy. He asked God to create in him a clean heart. Delete that old way of life. Delete it so he could start over with God.

Tonight, as you replay in your head all the things you have done, as you take a selfie of your life and see your mistakes you too can cry out for MERCY, cry out for grace, cry out for second chance. My Bible says when you do, God hears and he abundantly pardons. For where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound.

Ask God to take a selfie of you.

·        Let God take a selfie of you… search me oh God and know if they be any wicked way

·        Let God take a selfie of you- because when he does, he covers our filthiness with his robe of righteousness. He allows himself to be crucified naked on a tree so that we can look gloriously

·        Let God take a selfie of you…he points out our faults, he says look at your sins they are scarlet, but I will make it whither than snow. Look at you red like crimson but I will make it as wool. This is not photo shop this is a God Shop.

·        Let God take a selfie of you, because man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.