Sunday, July 20, 2025
Sermon: “Reflecting on Mirrors”
Randall VanderMay delivers the message “Reflecting on Mirrors” with music from Kathleen Sieck and the music team.
SCRIPTURE
I Corinthians 13:12. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
Psalm 17:15: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.”
Psalm 94:11: “The Lord knows our thoughts, that they are but an empty breath.”
Hebrews 5:8-9: “. . . you have become dull in understanding. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.”
Romans 3:10-12 (Paul quoting Psalm 36:1): “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
I Timothy 6:16: “It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see . . .”
Ezekiel 1:26-28: “And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. Upward from what appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all around; and downward from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendor all around. Like the bow in a cloud on a rainy day, such was the appearance of the splendor all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 11:1: Paul: “. . . do everything for the glory of God. . . . Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”
II Corinthians 3:17-18: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
Ephesians 1:20-23: “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named. . . . And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for athe church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
Ephesians 5:1-2: “. . .. Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
John 1:16-18: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”
Ephesians 3:18-19: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians. 4:13: “. . . until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”
Colossians 1:15: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation . . .”
Colossians 1:18-19: “He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
Colossians 2:8-9: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler.
Dante, Paradiso XVIII: 13-21: “This much only of that moment can I tell again, that, when I fixed my gaze on her, my affections were released from any other longing as long as the eternal Beauty, shining its light on Beatrice, made me content with its reflected glow in her fair eyes. Conquering me with her radiant smile, she said: “Turn now and listen: not in my eyes alone is Paradise.”