Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Every summer for about ten years I would take a group of high school students backpacking in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
For five days we hike up and down a mountain peak.
And for those five days we carried everything we needed on our backs.
In the backwoods of the national forests in Colorado where I would hike, there are no lodges or resorts.
There are no shelters.
There is no running water.
No showers.
No bathrooms.
Our backpacks contained tents, sleeping bags, a few changes of clothes, mess kits for cooking, dried food packets, and water purifiers to filter the mountain streams.
The basic human necessities of food, shelter, and clothing were there, and for those five days in the mountains, nothing else mattered.
There are many striking changes students experience on a trip like this.
Some of the changes that maybe I expected to be the most challenging turned out to be not-such-a-big-deal.
They did just fine for five days without a smartphone.
Despite some initial complaints, they were mostly okay without any real bathrooms.
They didn’t seem to mind the extra time it took to filter drinkable water.
And they got used to the idea that they went five days in a row without a shower—after all, each person in the group was just as dirty as everyone else.
But there is one change that happens during that five-day hiking trip which always seems to have caught many of those students off-guard—mostly because they just hadn’t thought about it much before.
They all went five days in a row without once looking at their own appearance in a mirror.
None of them thought about this or anticipated this ahead of time.
None of them thought to bring a little travel mirror (and why would you anyway?!?) Somewhere about day three it began dawning on them that it had now been several days since they had last looked at their own reflection.
That only becomes a jarring thought because it suddenly brings to mind something that every single one of us does multiple times every single day without ever giving it a second thought.
How many times in one day to you see your own face in a mirror?
Our modern bathrooms all have mirrors.
Public restrooms all have mirrors.
For most of us, we could actually accurately answer that question.
I don’t know how many times a day I see my own reflection in a mirror because I am not counting—I’m not keeping track of it.
I just take it for granted that all throughout the day I kind of have an idea of what I look like because countless times a day I thoughtlessly check a mirror.
We all do it.
We all spend time looking at our own reflection.
Here’s the other thing I often noted about the many years I took students backpacking in the mountains.
They all had several days of distraction-free thoughtful reflection.
Not mirror reflection of looking at their own image in a glass.
But the kind of reflection that is thoughtful consideration of where they had come to be at this particular moment of life.
Thoughtful reflection on examining the kind of person they had become—and are yet becoming.
A different kind of reflection, but reflection none-the-less.
This is the first Sunday of Lent.
We are now on a forty-day journey to the cross of Jesus and the open grave.
It is a time for reflection.
Not looking in a glass mirror kind of reflection.
The other kind of reflection—the kind that draws us into consideration of who it is we have become in this life—and are yet becoming.
This kind of reflection takes a different kind of mirror to help us see the image of our own soul.
And wouldn’t you know it, God has given us the very mirror we need to do this.
It is his Word.
The Bible—the revealed Word of God—is the mirror that provides us with a glimpse back into our own souls to see and consider who we really are.
This is our focus in these forty days of Lent.
This is why we are spending time every day working our way through the words of Psalm 119—a Psalm that acts as a mirror to see the reflection of our own souls.
This is why I am calling this sermon series Reflections.
Every Sunday I am going to pick a section of reading out of Psalm 119 for a little further reflection.
It will always be a selection of verses coming up in the week ahead.
So, if you are following along with our reading schedule for Psalm 119, you are going to see these words again on Wednesday and Thursday this week.
In your order of worship today there is an outline that has this passage arranged for you.
I put it that way in order to help you see the structure and pull out the main actions taking place in these eight lines of poetry.
Here is what we are going to do with the rest of this message today.
We are going to look into the mirror of these words of poetry and examine our own reflection before God.
It’s good stuff.
Let’s get into it.
Verses 25-27
I’ve marked out for you three pivotal verses in this section show us a reflection of significance.
Verse 25 begins with a reminder of the dust from which we are made.
I am laid low in the dust.
The Hebrew vocabulary is more precise.
A literal translation of this line would be something like this: my soul clings to dirt.
I am not just laid down in the dirt, I am not just covered in dust.
It’s not just that I need a quick shower; pass me a handi-wipe and I’m good.
The dirt clings to my soul.
I cannot get it off.
I cannot make it clean.
I can look around me all day long and with some kind of success I can at least find examples of other people who are worse than me.
I can see evil taking shape through other people’s action in ways that make the dust clinging to my own soul seem not-so-bad.
I can always find examples of other dusty and dirty lives.
I can always play the card that makes somebody else seem worse than me.
Problem is, other people are not the mirror I get to use when examining the reflection of my own soul.
Look at the next line.
Preserve my life according to your word.
It is only according to God’s word that I am allowed to examine myself.
Only by the perfect will of God can I clearly see the state of my won soul.
You see, I have a problem with my own standards.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I struggle with consistency.
Just ask my kids.
My older children will quickly point out that the rules somehow became way more relaxed for the youngest.
When we set our own standards of measurement and conduct, we are often dealing with a moving target.
But God’s word is faithful to remain consistent for all eternity.
This is good news and bad news.
The good news is that the standard of God’s word is secure.
I know beyond doubt that the rules will never change and leave me hanging out to dry.
I know that the standard of God’s word will never turn.
I know that if my life is preserved according to God’s word, then it is unshakably preserved for all eternity and nothing can ever take that away.
That is the good news.
That is great news.
The bad news is that—by the unshakable standard of God’s word—I can’t measure up.
The eternal and faithful righteous decree of God revealed in his word exposes the dust that clings to my own soul.
I can’t do anything about that.
I cannot scrub my own soul clean of the dirt which just won’t come off no matter what I try.
And so the poet continues in verses 26 and 27.
His only hope is for God to intervene on his behalf.
He clearly sees the reflection of his own soul according to the standard of God’s word, and he knows it doesn’t look good.
And so he appeals for God to intervene.
Look at verse 27, “Cause me to understand your precepts.”
It is a confession that his own efforts fall short.
My own attempts to follow the will of God on my own leave me right back in the dust where I started.
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