Beatitudes 6

We've been going through the Beatitudes, and how God was supposed to bless our lives. So we've been going back—another sermon here and there—but Beatitudes and Prophecy back and forth over the last few months. We've gone through and realized that absolute happiness, feeling happy 100% of the time, is not possible. There are lots of people who feel happiness 100% of the time. That's not possible. That's not even physically possible. All you have to do is drink too much coffee, right? And all of a sudden you're not happy. So it's not possible to be happy all the time, but happiness is part of what life is all about. And what we have is Jesus explaining, here's what happiness in this life you can have that will lead to eternal happiness, which is a totally different thing. Eternal happiness is a joy that we only understand on a very small way now. And so he's telling everyone in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, these are the Beatitudes, as we call them in English. This is the way to perfect happiness. And it's not what we think at all. We waste our lives trying to find happiness when Jesus gives us a different way to happiness that actually goes against the way we think. It goes against the way we think. We've been through a number of them. We went through the blessing of those who pour in spirit. They're blessed because they'll receive the kingdom of God. Pour in spirit means you understand you, before God, you have spiritual poverty. Before God, you're absolutely worthless without Him. And in that poverty, you find happiness because God interacts with your life. And that's where our happiness comes from. That's where our joy comes from. We waste our blessed are those who mourn. See, what we want is the blessing to be, you will never mourn. And that's not what happens in this life. He says, blessed are those who mourn because they will be comforted in this relationship with God if we're poor in spirit. And it's interesting, I saw one time where someone took all these and you almost have to have one to have the next to have the next to have the next. If we're poor in spirit, when we are mourning, we will find comfort because that comfort will come from God.

We went through blessed are the meek because they'll inherit the earth. When we're not meek, we're just filled with pride. And when we're filled with pride, we have lives of strife and anger and arrogance and a constant need to control other people. We have to be in control of everybody and everything. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

As I said when we went through that sermon, that one's fascinating because the very hunger and thirsting is very uncomfortable. He says, blessed are you when you're uncomfortable because you want the righteousness of God. That's when you're blessed because God will give you righteousness. God will teach you. God will help you. And only then will the hunger and thirst go away. But you know, until we're changed, we will always hunger and thirst for righteousness. We're always supposed to be at times uncomfortable in our need for God and our need for change, our need for His way. And then we went through, blessed are those who are merciful, who they shall receive mercy. Now we showed how we receive mercy from God and that gives us the impetus to show mercy to others. And if we aren't merciful, there are certain scriptures that say God will not show mercy to us. So receiving mercy from God is a blessing and we are to pass that blessing on to others by being merciful. We went through what that meant. It doesn't mean bringing a doormat or letting people abuse us. But it does mean easily forgiving others. Easily forgiving.

And it just goes against human nature. That's not what we think and yet it's what Jesus taught here. I've heard people say, well, you know, the beatitudes are the milk of the word. I'll tell you something. There's nothing more difficult and nothing more meaty in the Bible than the Sermon on the Mount.

There's nothing more meaty than that because we'll never be converted without it.

We'll never be converted without it.

So now we're to Matthew 5 verse 8. So let's go to Matthew 5 and read. Once again, just one verse, where he explains what he's talking about. He makes these incredibly broad statements that it's just enormous. It's like he's opening up. Okay, you want to know what the New Covenant's about? Let's open it up and take a view of it.

Because the Old Covenant was about obey God, keep the letter of the law, and you will have rain-induced season, and your foot will be on the enemies of your, you know, next to your enemies, and you have no diseases.

The New Covenant talks about changing the inner person, and it has a whole new set of promises.

It's just, um, and they're so huge.

So he says in verse 8, He doesn't say, they shall have land.

He says, they shall see God. The blessings here are absolutely mind-bending. And what he says, this is the blessing. This is what happiness is. Happiness is that you have a pure heart, and there will be blessings in this life because you have a pure heart, but eventually you get to see God. That's the blessing. That's the happiness that goes beyond anything you could have in this life.

You get to see God.

What does it mean to be pure in heart?

Remember, the use of the word heart, I mentioned this many times, means the innermost thoughts and emotions and motives. It puts all these things that your thoughts, your emotions and motives are all put together into, this is who you really are. This is who you are on the inside.

This is your heart. So this is where we must be spiritually changed.

We can learn a lot of things that are commanded by God. You can not commit adultery, and that's blessed by God, but there are lots of people who don't commit adultery and aren't converted.

They're keeping the law and they get a blessing from it. Anytime you keep any law of God, there's a blessing from it, and you're not being cursed. But you know, I've known lots of people who don't commit adultery, and they think it's wrong, and are basically agnostics. They believe in God, but they don't really know what they believe.

So that proof is that you're obeying God. Is it proof that you have this change in your inner heart? No.

So we have to keep those laws. If we don't, we could actually destroy our relationship with God and lose our salvation by throwing out the Ten Commandments. Does keeping the Ten Commandments in the letter prove that you're converted? No. There are Jews who keep the Sabbath, and they're not converted. They deny Jesus Christ. So we must go beyond that. And that's where Jesus starts this. That's why if you go deeper into the Sermon on the Mount, he says, Yeah, you've heard, don't murder. I'm telling you, you don't hate. He's saying the law is way bigger than you thought. It's way bigger than the letter. Now, can you... it's okay to murder people you don't hate? I actually had a Baptist give me that argument once. Well, yeah, you don't... okay, that's the letter of the law, but there's people who love somebody and a fit of anger murdered them, and they don't hate them, so... I said, I don't even understand this. This is bizarre. He was some lay preacher in these Baptist Church, you know. It's like, oh man, sorry, we don't have anything to talk about. If you can't even get past murder, there's no way you can get into the spirit of the law that Jesus teaches. You just can't even get there. So, how would we describe someone being pure in heart? Let's go to Mark 7. So we're going to look at sort of the behavior of someone who's impure in heart, and then we're going to end up talking about what you and I must do to explore whether our heart is pure enough. And I will just tell you this, there's nobody in this room, including myself. I mean, none of us are absolutely pure in heart. We're not.

So we all want this blessing. We all need this blessing. So we need to figure out what it is, and we need to figure out what we must do to have God give us a pure heart. Mark 7. Verse 1 says, And some of the scribes came together to Jesus, having come from Jerusalem. Now when they saw some of the disciples eat bread with defiled, that is, with unwashed hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they came from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash.

There are many other things in which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups and pitchers and copper vessels and couches. Now, understand how important this is in their environment, and still it's important in Orthodox Jewry today.

The idea, there's two things here. One is a man is the priest of his own home.

And when you sit down at the dinner table, you must be ceremonially clean as you make your offering to God. You praise God and thank Him for your food.

This has nothing to do with hygiene, by the way. I mean, they knew to get dirt off your hands, but the understanding of germs was not around.

So this has to do with, in my home, I'm the priest of my home, and I wash my hands. There's Jews today, they get out of bed every morning, and the first thing they do is they wash their hands. Not because they're dirty, but because they wish to symbolize to God, I am spiritually washed before you.

In the marketplace, you wash your hands because you might have touched something that was ceremonially unclean. What if you were buying a pot and it was made by a Gentile?

Well, you'd want to make sure you washed your hands so that now you were ceremonially clean before God as you took your pot home.

So the marketplace was a place where public washings took place.

So He's dealing with an issue that is very common in His day, and as you come from an Orthodox Jewish background, you wouldn't even know what this means.

So they wash their hands to make sure they were right before God, that they were clean before God, because they may have been corrupted by who knows. Maybe the person, you know, maybe I bought, because they had little restaurants, you could buy food and stuff, you know, oh, I just bought some bread from a baker. Maybe that's an adulterer in there.

Maybe it's not a very righteous person. I better wash my hands to make sure that I'm clean from that person's sin.

So this is a major issue, and they approach Him about this.

And so Jesus says, verse 5, Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?

It's not like they're coming in after digging ditches, and they're filthy and sweaty, and why are you people eating without washing? If they were filthy and dirty, they washed.

This had to do with the tradition of the elders, which was the oral law, which was still expanding at this time.

And He answered and said to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, The people honours me with their lips, but with their heart as far from me, And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

So He quotes from Isaiah.

Now, remember I tell you, sometimes Jesus and Paul like to quote from the Septuagint, the Greek version. Let's go ahead and go back to Isaiah 29, because this is a more exact Hebrew translation. And of course, Paul likes to sometimes just paraphrase verses. Yeah, as you know, as the Bible says. I mean, we do that all the time, right? But he would do that. He just paraphrased. And you go look it up and think, well, he's got the meaning of it, but it's not how he was exactly written.

Well, it's the same thing here.

Isaiah 29, verse 13, Now that's slightly different, right?

This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, and in vain they worship me, teaching his doctrines the commandments of men.

The meaning is the same, but people get all bent out of shape.

Well, why is he misquoting Isaiah? Actually, he's not. He just happens to be quoting a different translation.

That's all. He's quoting from a Greek translation. That's what it says. This is how it would be translated in English if you were reading the Septuagint.

So, his point, though, is you have the commandments of men.

Now, it's funny. He's not against all traditions.

There's some traditions he actually says that he's not.

He's not against all traditions.

He's not against all traditions.

Now, it's funny. He's not against all traditions.

There's some traditions he actually supports in his ministry.

Anytime a group of people get together, you have to have a tradition.

We have a tradition here that our church service starts at 10.30.

That is not a holy tradition, it's just a tradition.

It's what we do. If we don't have a time, no one knows how to show up. No one knows how to show up. So he's not against all traditions. He's against making traditions an absolute measurement of holiness. Now, we have traditions in the church. We say when you come to church, you should wear the best you have. If someone walked in here and they just, you know, a bum off the streets, we wouldn't throw them out because of the way they were dressed. But we would teach them, you're coming before God, let's go buy you some at least clean clothes. We would raise that standard to say, we're coming before God, let's do the best we can here.

Now, that's a tradition, but that's a good tradition because what we're doing is trying to help people have a standard with God, but we're not kicking them out because that's all they have either. We work with them. This is different than that pharisaical tradition. If you don't wash your hands, you're rejected by God. You have no place with us. So he reads this and then he explains what he's saying here.

Now, remember he used the word hypocrisy. Now this is very important. Hypocrisy, the word in English hypocrisy means basically, in principle, exactly what the Greek word meant. In fact, the word hypocrisy and the Greek word for hypocrisy are very similar. The reason why is the Greek word for hypocrisy was absorbed into Latin.

And so the Latin word for hypocrisy is very similar to the Greek word. Just slightly different. Well, the French language is based on Latin. And the French took that word and it sort of morphed into a French word, but it's even spelled.

You say, well, that's sort of like the Latin. And it's sort of like the Greek. Well, these are useless facts. When the French invaded England in 1066, conquered them, and for about 200 years, the English aristocracy spoke French. And so the English word hypocrisy is almost exactly like the Greek word. And it's because it kept being traded or moved down through languages. There's a useless fact, but I find it fascinating that we speak a word that is actually attached back to the word that is used in the Bible. So hypocrisy comes from the Greek and Roman concept of a stage actor. Stage actors were men, so they had to play women, or they had to play the villain or the good guy.

And you would know by the masks, and they would put a mask on. And so a hypocrite was a stage actor who wore a mask and pretended to be somebody else. So that's where hypocrisy comes from. It's trying to pretend to be something you're not. You may be somewhat sincere. Many times the Pharisees were, but they were still pretending because the inner person hadn't changed.

And they could make their religion more and more and more strict. And if the inner person didn't change, in the end, the inner person wasn't changed. And so that's why he called some hypocrites. He says, you keep trying to create things, but you're not dealing with the real problem. And that's why he says, verse 8, For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups and many other such things you do.

And he said to them, all too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your traditions. He says, let me give you another example that you do this one very well. For Moses said, honor your father and mother. And he who curses his father and mother, let him be put to death. He said, we know what came from God, honor your mother and father. We even know what in the Mosaic law was if a child was brutal against their parents, that could be the death penalty.

There weren't too many death penalties. But a child was absolutely brutal against their parents. Now there's no case in the Bible, it's interesting that anyone had their child put to death. So I'm not sure that was ever carried out. But this would be like if your child became a criminal, if they became violent, they were beating their parents. Yeah, they could be put to death for it. He says, but you say, if a man says to his father and mother, whatever profit you have received from me is Corbin, that is a gift to God, then you no longer let him do anything for his father and his mother, making the word of God of no effect.

Though through your traditions, which you have handed down, and many such things you do, Corbin just basically meant sacrifice. In other words, I have sacrificed, it's like creating a will, I have sacrificed my life's work for God. So when I die, everything goes to the temple. From that point on, you were under no obligation to help the poor. You weren't even under any obligation to help your mother and father if they were in need. Why? What's God's money? But under this sacrifice, the sacrifice given is committed but not given until I die. So it'd be like saying, I'm going to the temple in three days and I have this lamb I want to sacrifice, and someone says, wow, I'll buy that lamb from you.

Oh, I can't sell that lamb. It's dedicated to God. But I could eat it. I could give that lamb to somebody who's hungry, but I could eat it. So I dedicated in this sacrifice, it was a public sort of sermon, I dedicated everything I have to God at my death. Everything goes to God. Wow, what a wonderful person. Well, Mom and Dad are really suffering.

Sorry, Mom and Dad, but I've given a greater sacrifice. Everything I have goes to God. And he says, in doing so, you would absolutely destroyed the actual commandment from God. And that was the problem with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy wears a mask so that underneath that mask is someone who's actually disobeying God, and finding ways to do it, but appears very righteous. I'm going to read the rest of this from Matthew's account because he makes, he says something here that's very important that Mark does not.

Let's go to Matthew 15, because this was a total end of the story. Because Jesus now makes this very, very clear what he's saying. Matthew 15 verse 10. So this is after his confrontation here with the Pharisees, which people have seen. So it says, when he called, because the first part of that, chapter 15 is basically what we just covered. So when Jesus had called them all to himself, he said to them, hear and understand.

Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth defiles a man. I'm telling you, all these washings so that you somehow don't eat something and become unholy from it, isn't what this is all about. It's what you say. It's what's coming out of you that matters. Then his disciples came and said to him, do you not know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard you say this?

You just offended all the great leaders of the religious leaders. Why did you do that? They truly did not understand what he meant. And he answered and said, every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.

He said, let me tell you something. Many Pharisees are not planted by God. We know somewhere because they came into the church. But he said, many of them are actually not planted by God. They're missing the point. Remember what Paul said? He said, I kept the law.

I never committed adultery. He never worshiped an idol. He always kept the Sabbath. And then said, then I realized when I actually was confronted by Christ, I found out I hadn't kept the law. The law condemned me and now I was doomed. He didn't say he did away with the law. He said, once I stood how he magnified it, I realized I was a dead man. And then he forgave me.

So the law is good and just. But it can't save you. It ends up showing you where you're wrong.

And when you do something right, it shows you it was right. It's a dictionary.

It's a dictionary of God's will. It's an explanation of God's will. So he says here, let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leaves, the blind both will fall into a ditch. And Peter said to them, I have no idea what you're saying.

Would you please explain this parable to me? The Pharisees are blind and they're leading other blind people into a ditch. I have no idea what you're trying to tell me.

So Jesus said, are you still without understanding?

He says, you really don't get it, Peter. You don't understand what I'm trying to say.

Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? For those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart. Okay, a pure heart. They come from the heart and they defile the man.

For out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.

He said, don't you understand, sin comes from it within. And washing your hands, because you may have touched a pot that was created by a sinful person, doesn't change who you are.

And God is concerned with what's coming out of you, who you are as a person. That's what He's concerned with.

Now some will stop here and say, see, He was doing away with clean and unclean meats.

Or they'll take Matthew's or Mark's account and read it and say, oh, He's doing with clean and unclean meats. Well, we just read what caused this, right? But let's just let Matthew explain it.

Verse 20, these are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man. He wasn't doing away with the principle of clean and unclean meats. What He is saying is, we can create all the traditions we want. If the inner person isn't changed, then the inner person isn't right with God. If you don't have a pure heart, we can't be right with God. Remember the blessing from a pure heart. We get to see God.

I'm excited about that, but it scares me too. That scares me. What do you say? I think the best thing is say nothing. I guess the best thing. And wait until He calls your name and hope it's a nice thing. Hope it's not with thunder and lightning and come here. Oh, no. Because I think when we see Him as He is, we will understand how much He loves us. We will be there to receive and become His child forever. That's what we'll be. That's what He wants. That's what He wants.

But we have to have a pure heart. When you look at hypocrisy, the greatest act of hypocrisy, I think, that we see in the New Testament is in Acts 5. And I'm just going to tell the story there. You know Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias and Sapphira saw that people were selling what they had and giving it to the church to help each other. Because what had happened after Pentecost, thousands of people who had come from all over the Roman Empire were there. They saw the Holy Spirit poured out. Three thousand people were baptized in one day. I mean, the church was just expanding. And people didn't go home. The church was just expanding and growing. And people were staying in Jerusalem. And the church got bigger and bigger and bigger, and it was not able to take care of itself. I mean, the first controversy in the church in Acts 6 is, how do we take care of all our widows? And they were arguing over how to take care of their widows. So they had these problems from a fast-growing church. And so people, Barnabas specifically, sold a bunch of land he had and gave all of it to the church to help everybody. Ananias and Sapphira saw that.

Now Ananias and Sapphira had been baptized, we assume. They're considered members of the church.

But they saw the acclaim the Barnabas got. They saw everybody. They even changed his name.

His nickname was the Son of Encouragement. They changed his name. So now Barnabas, he's known throughout the church. And when you read the life of Barnabas, he's a very humble man.

And they want a piece of that acclaim. They want to be famous. They want everybody to look up to them.

They had a mask on. So they sold some property and brought part of it, gave it to Peter, and said, this is all of it. This is everything we have. We're giving everything we have to the church.

And Peter knew it was a lie. Peter said, basically, I'll put some words in his mouth, you're play acting here. You got a mask on. It upset God so much. He killed them both.

You know, we think about God killing people in the Old Testament. He killed Christians here.

Members of the church! Because their heart was so impure that they were lying to him.

They were lying to the apostles. They were lying to the entire church. Lying to the church in order to have a claim that they were somebody special. It was a mask. And God stripped their mask off by killing them. Now, God doesn't go around killing hypocrites all the time. But it is a warning. And all of us wear a mask sometimes. All of us don't want everybody to see us how we really are at times. Because none of us are righteous all the time, are we? I mean, if you are, please tell me how you do that. So all of us want to put this mask on, and we have to keep it off. Pure in heart means we never wear a mask. What you see is what you get.

And we're honest about our strengths, and we're honest about our weaknesses. That doesn't mean we have to go tell everybody our sins, but it's we're honest about them to ourselves.

That means we can't be double-minded. To be double-minded means you literally try to be two people. The masks become so real to you that you... well, I like wearing the mask.

You know, I like wearing the mask when I'm with my friends after work.

You know, and three days a week, you know, after work, I go out to the bar with my friends, and we we stay there for three or four hours, and we drink too much, and every once in a while I go home with a girl I shouldn't have. But I try to be a good Christian. I'm at church every single week, and I keep the Sabbath, so I just wear a mask three days a week.

See, we put these masks on, and the double-minded person can't say what to tell sometimes after a while. When am I wearing a mask, and when am I real? They can't tell what's happening. They really don't know who they are. We become like two different people, and that's the great danger of living a life of hypocrisy. It reaches a point. You can't tell who you really are.

You're trying to be two people at the same time. Look at James chapter one.

James chapter one.

And let's start in verse five.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. So, asking for wisdom and asking for God's wisdom, give me the ability to make right decisions, to see what's right and wrong from God's viewpoint. Give me that wisdom. And then he says, but let him ask in faith, because here's the problem.

We want wisdom from God unless it goes against what we want, and then we have the problem with being double-minded.

Give me understanding. Give me understanding of prophecy.

Give me understanding of, you know, all these different things that we want and we should have, but that doesn't change the behavior. Sometimes the truth that God gives us can become almost like the traditions of the Jews. We hold them as, I know this truth, therefore I am superior, but when we take the mask off, we're not like it. We're just like everybody else.

Of course, like I said, in some ways we are still like everybody else.

That is part of understanding what it is to be a pure heart, is to recognize, yeah, I am not as righteous as I sometimes like everybody to think I am.

And you understand that.

He says, let him ask in faith with no doubting. No wonder what he'll be asking for here, wisdom. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea and driven tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He's a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. So when we ask God for wisdom, we ask God for truth, we ask God to reveal the scripture to us, but then we pick and choose, or we say, oh, I know that's right, he's revealed that to me, but we don't respond to it.

We wear the mask. We wear the mask.

And we put the mask on.

Maybe when nobody else is watching, we put the mask on.

So you only watch a pornographic movie at 10 o'clock at night when nobody else is around. You can put the mask on. See what God is saying is, the mask is the mask.

It's not who you're supposed to be. We can't play act through this.

And this is hard because we are two people. Every one of us have a corrupted human nature, which means that every side of every one of us is two people at war, the old nature and the nature of Christ. That's what Christianity is. It's choosing between the two. And that means when the mask comes on and the old nature comes out, it's letting God take the mask off. So we have to see ourselves in the mirror. That's pure of heart. Well, that's not comfortable. Welcome to the beatitudes. There's nothing comfortable about any of them. Being pure in a heart is not comfortable because you and I are pure in heart. We're learning to be pure in heart. And it hurts sometimes. And it's uncomfortable sometimes. And we have to see ourselves sometimes in ways we don't want to see ourselves. And God says, oh no, I'll do this work. I'll change you. I'll help you. I love you. But you can't wear the mask. See, he's going to rip it off every once in a while. And it's hard. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, listen to what I say at the end.

Okay?

Because I think almost all of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The mask we put on, which means we're not pure in heart.

Verse chapter four here, he says in verse one, where do wars and fights come from among you? Or do they not come from your desires for pleasure and war in your members, inside yourself?

You lust and do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask. He's not talking to the world here. He's talking to the church.

James didn't write to the world. He wrote to the church. And you ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your own pleasures.

Adulters and adulteresses do not you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God. It makes you the enemy of God. Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealousy, the spirit of God in us is jealous for us. There's a war inside of us because he wants to create in us a clean heart. It's his goal. I mean in the in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about you know you can't have two masters, right? You can't be split in two. But all of us are split in two. That's his point. You have to learn not to be split in two. We have to learn integrity, which in the Hebrew integrity means that it's whole. There's no parts to it.

It's whole. We have to become whole as we struggle to have developed in us the blessing of being pure in heart. That's the blessing he wants to give us.

It's not the new car. Although he gives us new cars sometimes. There's a robot. God's given me blessings at times of cars. I've also bought junkers before. I thought, uh, maybe that's not what I should have done. God doesn't make every decision for us. He doesn't want to. Can you imagine? All my grandkids are here. I wouldn't want the 12-year-old to say, grandpa, you have to make every decision for me. No, I shouldn't have to. Now, some decisions as adults we still have to make for them, but there's other decisions they make, right? At the two-year-old, their decision-making process is we make most of their decisions. But as they get older, they make more and more of their own decisions. We keep control over the decisions that can hurt them, you know, but at the same time, they're learning how to make decisions to be a whole person.

God's not making every decision for us because we have to learn how to be whole people.

Being pure in heart, not wearing a mask. It's interesting in 1 Kings, Elijah's before Israel, and he actually says to them, how long will you halt between two opinions? Either God is God, and Baal is God, or Baal is God, and God is God. You can't be in the world and out of the world at the same time. You have to decide where you are. And what's very fascinating is in that one verse where he says that to them in 1 Kings, the answer to the people was silence, like, but we sort of like that. We like having one foot with God because we need him, and one foot in the world because we like it. And they're absolutely silent. And he says, how long will you halt between two opinions? Become pure in heart. We have God's Holy Spirit, which gives us the power to become pure in heart. They did not. And only through that can we learn contentness.

The more pure we are in heart, the more content we can be. Because the war going on inside of us. Now, some people will give up God's way and just become like the world, and they say they will find contentment. Wow, they will! You know, when you just keep the mask on and you never take it off, and that becomes who you are? You're content until you experience the penalties of it.

The consequences of that are terrible. But for a while you can be content. The more we become pure in heart, the more we become content with God. Our contentness comes from God because we're going to get to see him. And he's interacting with us right now, and that's more important than everything else. That's more important than everything else. So how do you, how do I, what are our steps in having a pure heart? Well, you're not going to be surprised, but there's two steps, and they're both in the book of Psalms. Because it's David who was always struggling with the mask. And God always kept taking it off, and he was like, he was horrified. And then he tried to put the mask back on, and God would take it off. So let's go to Psalm 139. Here's what you must do.

Oh good, he's going to talk more about perfect happiness. And then we're going to go to Psalm 139, and this is the first step in having a pure heart.

Sorry, I could never, let's just say, Joel's never going to say, come here, let's have a picture with me and Gary. Okay, that's never going to happen because of this.

Because he would not say this.

139 verse 23.

Search me.

You know, it's a very brave thing to go to God and say, take the mask off of me and search me.

Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me. Go ahead. I went, now he's not saying, just give me all the trials. He's saying, check me out. Check me out.

And know my anxieties. Know the conflicts I have, the anxieties I have. Why I do things wrong sometimes is because I'm afraid. Why I do things wrong sometimes is because I think I'll lose my friends. We have all these reasons we do what we do. He says, search me. Try me. Give me a test so I know where I am. Help me to understand and help me to even know my anxieties and see if there's any wicked way in me. It leads me to the way everlasting. He said, if there's anything in me that's going to keep me from you, show it to me and lead me in a different way. That's your first step. Our first step in a pure heart is to go to God and say, you have to give me a pure heart because I can't have one. I have corrupt you in nature.

What I need from you is that you search me and you treat me gently. I mean, it's amazing. He says, look at my anxieties while you're at it here. Treat me gently as your child and show me how to someday be able to see you. I really want to be before you and see you. I really want to meet Jesus Christ. I really want to be your child. That's what I want.

That's the heart of repentance. I really want to be your child.

And you have to search me and you have to show me because I cannot.

We're back to poor in spirit. See, as you go through all these beatitudes, they all become attached to each other. Remember we went through agape and how each one is attached to the other one. This is the way the beatitudes are, too. It's the same thing. They're all parts of the mind of God. He says, this is what will make you happy. But I know God don't search me. It's painful. That's me, anyways. Maybe you're all not don't have that problem, but I have that problem.

Don't only search part of me.

Help me with my anxieties. Help me with my fears and my worries. Yeah, I like that part.

But the whole prayer there is pretty encompassing, but that's David. That's why David committed great sins and still was accepted by God. This was not Saul. Saul could have never prayed this. He was a hard man. Jesus prayed this. I mean, David prayed this.

So that's the first thing. We have to ask God to search us and show us where we have a mask on and where we're being practicing hypocrisy and where we don't have a pure heart. And then Psalm 51, a Psalm that we quote quite often, we have to pray this also. This is part of the prayer of David when he repented for his sins. Verse 6 says, Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. This is why one place in here, he says, I could kill a thousand animals and sacrifice them to you. I'm rich enough to do that. Besides, as king, everybody donate animals. We're going to kill a thousand animals of God today and that way I'll show you how righteous I am. And he said, it won't matter to you. Because if it doesn't change the truth in the inward person, in the inward parts, he says it doesn't change. It doesn't create what you want created.

Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. And in the hidden part, you will make me to no wisdom. He says, I have sinned. I've done terrible things. I've worn a mask and I've worn a mask here for a long time, pretending to be king, murdering a man, seducing a woman against her will. I mean, all the things I did, I've worn this mask and I'm taking the mask off and you have to teach me wisdom. It's interesting he uses wisdom when in James he says, what? Pray for wisdom. But if you're double-minded, you're going to have a hard time praying for wisdom. Because the wisdom from God and what you want is going to conflict all the time. And so the battle begins for a pure heart.

Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

Make me hear joy and gladness that the bones you have broken may rejoice.

Hide your face for my sins and blot out my iniquities. So we ask God to search us and then we find out we're like David here in another psalm. He says, okay, I see it. And I need you to give me truth. It has to come from you. It has to be in me.

I could go to the temple and I could do all kinds of things. Remember when we brought the tabernac or the Ark of the Covenant back and I danced? Remember that? Yeah. He says, you know, that seems pretty silly now compared to what I've done. See, God said it was okay for him to dance. He was happy. But he didn't say, remember when I danced? That seemed pretty trite at this point.

But he could have. I remember all the things I've done right? He didn't. He said, when I had the mask off, I did what was right. I put the mask on and I play acted because I gave into what I wanted and look what I have done. He's not double-minded anymore. This is David struggling with the fact that he realized how double-minded he had been.

And it was absolutely overwhelming to him.

Verse 10, create in me a clean heart, O God. You have to pray for a pure heart. You and I can't develop a pure heart without God.

We cannot. It is not possible. We have to ask to be searched and then we have to have him asking to create it in us. Come in me and do this. And we submit to it.

And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast away from your presence. Or do not cast me away from your presence. And do not take your Holy Spirit away from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit.

Now I want you to notice he touched on joy. We've been going through the beatitudes of happiness.

And he said, I realize my happiness didn't come from women.

Because I had a bunch of them. Now good marriage brings happiness. But he's realizing something here. If that's all life is, we're missing something. It didn't come from wealth. He was incredibly wealthy. He may be the most wealthy man in the world at the time. It didn't come from a lack of power. He was the king over Israel. The first king, or the second king, the first one failed, over a united Israel. He had power. He had wealth. He had women. He had clothes. He had everything. And he said, what I really want is the joy of your salvation.

What he really wanted was the joy from seeing God.

As messed up as he was at this point, God saying, son, let me teach you what a pure heart is.

And for this brief moment here, the mask is off, and he has a pure heart before God.

That's what's so remarkable about Psalm 51. I just want that joy that you're with me, that I see you. And then we'll take care of all the other mess.

The generous spirit of God. The opposites of being pure in heart is being motivated by the hypocrisy of a divided heart and being double-minded.

All of us have divided hearts, and all of us are double-minded.

It is what it is to be called by God. If you're not called by God, you're pretty single-minded, right? To be called by God and be introduced to God, it's like, oh, there's a whole new way here. A whole new way of thinking.

I remember my parents, you know, giving up Easter and Christmas and Sunday, Sabbath and the Holy Days. Oh, you know, oh, wait a minute. I got to do this.

It seemed perfectly fine. Then they did this. I've seen lots of people struggle for 30 years and be double-minded. Eventually you have to choose. But see, that's the way in the inner person we start with those things. And then in the inner person, we have to be changed.

That's what Christianity is. It's becoming the children of God. So that means you have to do a very, very difficult thing. And before Passover, this is a good thing to do. Go ask God, read Psalm 139, those two verses, read what we read in Psalm 51. Go ask God to search your heart.

Ask Him to search your heart, to know your anxieties. Okay, God, look at me. I'm a mess.

And understand how not to be double-minded. And then you actually have to go to God like David did. And you have to say, you have to pray, create in me, create it in me. Because I can't create it myself. Create in me a clean heart. And as you submit to that creation thing that God is doing, that process of God creating in us this pure heart, as you submit to that, you will actually, in a very small way, compared to the future, begin to experience the beatitude of seeing God.

In a small way, you'll begin to see and understand the beatitude of seeing God, knowing that the future, the future completion of that is that you will actually see Him face to face.