The Beatitudes Pt. 4

Well, we're back to the Beatitudes. Last time we did something on prophecy, we want to get back to the Beatitudes. I originally planned three sermons on the Beatitudes. This is number four, and we're not done yet. Because as I started to get into it, I thought, we really need to take the time. One of the things we learn when we go through this is that we cannot feel happy 100% of the time. It's not possible. If you don't believe that, just get up in the morning, eat two donuts, and drink three cups of coffee, and see what you feel like later. I mean, just physically we can't feel happy all the time, let alone mentally, emotionally, spiritually what we go through. But happiness is an important part of life. It is a very important part of life. What we find in the Beatitudes, which is in English, perfect happiness, we find the exact opposite explanation from Jesus of what we think would make us happy. It's the exact opposite. This isn't what we think would make us happy. And it's always aimed also towards a future, that you're going through things now so that your future is beyond happiness that you can even experience now. So far, we've gone through the blessing for those who are poor in spirit. As we go through these, the thing that's so remarkable, because the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, they just open this whole new viewpoint of what God wants. We have the Old Testament that keeps leading us to what God wants, and then all of a sudden, Christ comes along and says, now let me explain this, and He just opens it up. It's just all of a sudden, it's like we got to see this huge expansion of what He wants. So He talks about how blessed are those who are poor in spirit, which we show just means poverty, spiritual poverty before God. We will never be rich in spirit until we're changed. And we have now been poor in spirit, where we absolutely understand without God we're nothing. We have nothing without God. The life we have is something He gave.

And He has a purpose for it. And the purpose is for us to become His children. Being poor in spirit sometimes is not comfortable. So how could that be happy? When you're actually poor in spirit, you find some happiness. You find joy. You find purpose. Something happens in us. And those moments, in those times, we're actually aware of our poverty before God, and we go to God, and we cry out, and He gives us something. We talked about how Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn. What we want is a life blessed are those who never mourn. And then we lose something all the time, don't we? A loved one, a job, friends. You know, through death or moving or just people who turn their backs on us. I mean, there's all kinds of things that happen to us as we lose things. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. In other words, in this life, we will suffer mourning. You can't change that. But if we have a right relationship with God, we receive comfort. And in doing so, we find joy. Blessed are those who are meek.

Oh, man! We spend our whole lives trying to force everybody to do what we want, being tough and strong and hard on everybody and get what I want, make everybody do what I want. And He says, blessed are those who are meek. The way we treat other people. Because the opposite of meekness is a life filled with strife and anger and arrogance and a need to control others. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. If you've ever been really hungry or thirsty, it doesn't feel like a blessing. He says, you will be filled. In other words, the blessing of being filled only happens because you go through the hunger and thirsting, which is uncomfortable. So this is the exact opposite of what we think. If you give me this, I will be happy. And God says, no, if you endure this and become this, then you will be happy. Happiness is an inside out issue, and we see it as an outside in issue. And so the Beatitudes I've heard it said, well, that's sort of the meek of the word. I tell you what, there is nothing in the Bible more difficult than the Beatitudes. There's nothing in the Bible more meatier than the Beatitudes. I mean, it's like when Paul wrote, if I have a know all prophecy, prophecy is important. It's a third of the Bible. But if I know all prophecy, I don't have a God basis. It's meaningless. It's nothing. Because we have to be converted. Prophecy only really has meaning when you have a relationship with God. So these Beatitudes are some of those important things we can study.

The next one is in Matthew 5.8. Well, let's just go there. Matthew 5.8. Read the one sentence.

Well, we also talked about, blessed are those who are merciful, and then talked about how they receive mercy from God. As God gives us mercy, we are to share that with others. We all are going to be abused by people, mistreated by people, and that doesn't mean we have to have a relationship with them, but we should be very quick to forgive. Because if we never forgive, we'll never be happy. We'll just be filled with angst and anger over what somebody else did, and we just can't forgive them. Because whatever sins we commit, if we don't repent, there's terrible penalties in people's lives. There's eternal penalties in some people's lives. So we are quick to forgive. And then he talks about, because of that, God gives us more mercy. God gives us mercy because of our quickness to forgive. Verse 8 says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

He says, you really want to know what real happiness is? Wait till you actually see God. Now, like all these blessings, they're not just the future. There's immediate benefits too. Every once in a while, we all get a little glimpse of who God really is. And when you do, there's a very positive experience. A little glimpse, oh, I understand. And in that glimpse, there's happiness.

In that glimpse, there's joy. And someday, we get to know God and see Him as He is. We get to talk to Him and interact with Him and interact with Jesus Christ. He says, blessed are those who get to do that. Okay. So how does this blessing work? Well, you have to have a pure heart. You have to be blessed with a pure heart.

So what in the world is a pure heart? Remember, we've talked about this before, but the word heart in the Bible, unfortunately, we use it to use, I mean, just emotions. The heart in the Bible means your thoughts, your emotions, your motivations. It's the core of who you really are. Okay. This is the inside core of who we really are. It's how our emotions, our thoughts, our motivations, our values, how they all work together to be who we are. At that core level, we have to become pure.

Well, how do we do that? Well, let's start where Jesus talks about this in Mark 7. So let's go to Mark 7. Mark 7. Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes came together to Him, to Christ, having come from Jerusalem. Now when they saw some of His 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 the tradition of the elders.

And when they come in from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches. Now what does this mean? This was not because of germs. Hygiene wasn't the issue here. I mean, if a man came in and he was covered with mud, he'd wash his hands before he ate. The issue here is the idea of ceremonially being clean. Think of it this way, and there are Orthodox Jews who do this today.

There are Orthodox Jews who get up and wash their hands first thing in the morning, not because they're washing because they're dirty, because they're washing them as part of a ceremony. That I wish to be clean before God. It's a reminder to be clean. So in the home during that time, and still in some Jewish homes today, you washed your hands before you ate your meal because the husband, the man, was the priest of his own home, and the dinner table was his altar. So he would wash his hands as a ceremony as I'm the priest of my home. And this is the altar, because I wish to be clean before God. I want God to look at me as clean.

It was a type of baptism. You know, I'm going to be washed and therefore be clean before God. The marketplace washing that he talks about here at Mark is very interesting because that was just in case something really bad happened. Like, say you were buying a vase, and the person you were buying the vase from who made the vase, what if he was an adulterer?

That would mean if he sold you the vase when he touched it, it was unclean, and you were now unclean because of his sin. So as you left, you would wash your hands with a prayer and you're now clean, and you can take the vase and go home. Or what if someone you bought some food? What if you bought some some bread in the marketplace and didn't realize the person who made the bread wasn't Jewish but a Gentile?

Well, I'm now ceremonially unclean, so I'd leave the marketplace, they would leave it, and they washed their hands. So I am now washed before God. So that's the purpose here. That's what they're doing. And they come to Jesus and say, don't your disciples feel like they need to be clean before God? So this has anything to do with hygiene. So let's go down to verse 5. Then the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?

Of course, the tradition of the elders is what we now call the oral law, which is basically the 30-some volume Talmud. And he answered and said to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and in vain they worship me, teaching us doctrines, the commandments of men. He uses here the word hypocrites. And hypocrites in Greek, because this was written in Greek, is actually similar to the word hypocrite in English.

Now I'm going to tell you one of those useless, meaningless facts that I find interesting. The Greek word hypocrite, if you read it, you'd say, Oh, that looks sort of like the English word. Well, what happened was the Greek word for hypocrite became adapted into Latin. You know, we borrow words. I mean, you've all had tacos, right? We take words from all different kinds of languages and merge them together. It became a very similar word when you see it in Latin. And the French who have a language that's a derivative Latin, they took it and merged it into their language, and it's very similar.

Well, when the French conquered England for a couple hundred years, and all the aristocracy of England spoke French, that became the English word. And so now we say hypocrite or hypocrisy, which isn't a lot different than the way it was pronounced in ancient Greece. So there's a little meaningless fact that I just find fascinating. See, here we're using this word hypocrite. And we know that means that someone who's trying to act differently than they really are.

Well, in Greek, because it was, you know, in the Greek or Roman world, it had a very distinct meaning. The hypocrite was a stage actor, and they didn't have women actors. And how would you know the good guy from the bad guy, the man from the woman, they would put up a mask. If you wore that mask, okay, you could be the woman, or you could be the good guy, you could be the bad guy.

Whatever mask you held up is the character you were playing. And if it was a comedy, you would be the funny person, and the mask would show that.

The hypocrite was the person who wore the mask. They were play acting. There was somebody else behind the mask who's the real person. He tells them, you have a mask on. You're wearing a mask. You want to please God. You want to be seen as righteous before God. You want other people to see you as righteous, but you're wearing a mask.

Notice what he says next. Oh, by the way, he quotes here from Isaiah. This is Isaiah 29.13. What's very interesting is if you go—we won't do it now—but if you go to Isaiah 29.13, it's slightly different. It's one of those things where, oh, why is he quoting it wrong? He's not. He's quoting the Septuagint here. He's not quoting the Hebrew version of the Bible. And you'll find Jesus and Paul both would go back and forth between the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and Paul's some—as I've said before, because this is important to understand. Paul just liked to paraphrase. And so, as you know, it says—he doesn't tell you where it says, because sometimes he's taken from two different verses and merging them together into one. You can find this sentence here and this sentence there. He paraphrases all the time. It's just—you know, and we do that in sermons. We'll paraphrase a verse. You know, Jesus said this, if you went and looked it up, it'd be slightly different, but you understand what we're saying. Well, that's Paul. And so here Jesus is—so, never get confused about—he's just quoting the Septuagint. So, he tells them now in 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 tradition." He says, these traditions are supposed to draw you closer to God—that was their purpose—but they actually, in what you're doing, is disobeying God.

The programs we did this month, the Beyond Today programs, Steve hadn't done a program in months. He just doesn't have the time. But he came and he did one on Easter. And the whole first part of the program is, I used to keep Easter. He showed pictures of him keeping Easter and what it meant to him as a child, how he thought it brought him closer to Jesus, and how hunting for eggs and doing all the stuff. And he really thought that tradition brought him closer to God as a child. And somewhere in his late teens, early 20s, he said, he realized, this is not biblical at all. And all of a sudden, he said, all those traditions are meaningless. Similar thing here. Traditions that seem to help you understand God actually draw you away from God. And that's what the Pharisees specifically and the whole Jewish culture at the time had done, created all kinds of traditions. But in the end, they didn't draw people to God. So he uses another example. He says, verse 10, for Moses said, honor your father and mother, and he who curses father and mother, let him be put to death. But you say, if a man says to his father and mother, whatever prophets you might have received for me is Corbin, that is a gift to God, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother. Here was the concept behind the Corbin vowels. It was literally Corbin means sacrifice. What it is, you go to God and you say, you actually go into the temple and you would declare, I give everything I have to God. Not just a little bit, not 10 percent, everything. It's like a will. I give everything I have to the temple for the service of God. And when I die, everything I have belongs to the temple. Now, you still had to live. See, you got to live off of it. You got to live in the house you lived in. You got to use your money to buy food. In other words, you still used your wealth. But, you know, someone said, I'll give alms to the poor. Sorry.

My wealth is Corbin. It's a sacrifice to God. And what Jesus says, you actually won't take care of your own parents because you say, oh no, my wealth has been sacrificed to God. And it's His upon my death. As He says in verse 13, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you have handed down and many such things you do. Here is the heart and core of wearing masks. A person who would do a Corbin vow felt very, very righteous. Probably his neighbors thought he was very righteous. His kids probably didn't because they realized that when the old man dies, I don't get anything, right? His parents didn't think he was very righteous because, hey, I know you need stuff, Mom and Dad, but I'm sorry. My wealth belongs to God. And he's telling them, don't you get it? You've created this. And the reason he calls him hypocrites, he says, because you're play acting. And we're going to talk a minute about the great danger in play acting. Because you do it long enough, and you can't tell the difference between the play actor and you or the real you. You can't tell the difference. Who are you, who are you really? What is really your identity?

Pureness of heart means that the actions come from a pure motive.

Our actions come from a pure motive. The most dramatic incidents in the New Testament about a impure motive is in Acts 5. I'll just talk about it here, but where Ananias and Sapphira.

I mean, they were members of the church. You know, we think of God killing people and sodding them, or New Testament comes along, he never kills anybody. Ananias and Sapphira, why did God punish them? They were members of the church, and he did a public execution. He killed two Christians. Why would he do that? Well, you look at the story, it's because the church in Jerusalem had grown, just exploded in numbers. And in this explosion, people were staying there that weren't originally even from there. After the Holy Spirit was poured out in Pentecost, people just stayed. There were 3,000 people baptized in one day. This church is just growing and growing and growing, and there's no way to take care of people. Lots of people don't have jobs, and it's just a real problem within the church. And they really have a problem in Acts 6 because they're not even taking care of their widows properly. It just grew too fast. There was no organization to do things. And so, certain people started to sell lands they had, take assets and liquidate them, and give them to the church so they could take care of people. And of course, we know the story of Barnabas. Barnabas went and sold a big chunk of land and gave all the money to the church and said, okay, let's take care of each other. And Ananias and Sapphira saw that, and they wanted a piece of that acclaim.

They wanted to be seen as somebody important. They wanted that the rest of the church would see them as somebody as important. So they put on a mask. They put on a mask, and they went in, they sold some property, and took some of it, and went in and basically said, we're giving all that we have. We're doing a great sacrifice here for God and everybody, and we wish everybody to know, look what we're doing. We're giving everything we have. And Peter said, no, you didn't. He said, but you didn't have to. You didn't have to give anything. This is free will. You didn't have to give anything. You can give it a little bit. Everybody would have been impressed with a little bit. But you come in here with a mask on, and God killed them. You come in here in this mask that, look who I am. I'm an actor, and underneath this mask, I'm somebody else. I don't need this mask. I'm somebody else. This is hard for us as Christians. We're going to look in a minute, because in reality, we are two people. And the question is, who's winning?

We are learning to be somebody other than we originally were. So we are in some ways, like we're two individuals.

So the problem with hypocrisy is it's a double-minded person where we are trying to fulfill two desires at the same time, but they're opposite desires. You know, that's what Jesus talked about when he said, you can't serve two masters. You can't dedicate your life to money and dedicate your life to God. It won't work. He didn't say there's anything wrong with money. He just said, you can't dedicate your life to one, because you will give up the other. See, if you're going to dedicate your life to God, you have to give up dedicating your life to money. It's that simple. And he said that.

Some people followed him, didn't like it, but he's making the point. We can't be double-minded. And here's the reality. Every one of us are double-minded. And some way or another, there's part of us that wants to do something different than what God wants us to do. It's different in all of us, but it's true. It's absolutely true. There is a double-mindedness in every single one of us.

And we have to be aware of that double-mindedness. Or we will be hypocrites. We'll simply change one mask. In fact, you know, it's interesting in those ancient plays, one person could play two or three people. He could be the good guy with one mask on, take it down, be the bad guy over here, take the mask down. He could be all kinds of people. Change his voice a little bit. Just put on different masks. So when you look at the original context of the Word, when Jesus says you're a hypocrite, he means, yeah, you put masks up. And that's who you are today. Well, who are you tomorrow? Well, I'll sort through my mask and see who I am tomorrow. When we're supposed to have no masks at all, there's the double-mindedness we have. And blessed are those who are pure in heart.

Man, don't you wish that we would have never started to be attitudes? You thought, oh, wow, we're going to go through this and I'll find the secret to happiness every day. And the secret to happiness every day is spiritual and hard, and at times makes us unhappy. But as we do it, we become actually happier and happier until there's some day we actually experience perfect happiness. When we're changed, and that's a goal that we have to see all the time. God is taking us someplace. And in that goal, he's going to actually give us perfect happiness. Right now, we learn it. And we can't be double-minded. James 1. James 1, verse 5.

James says, in verse 5, if any of you lacks wisdom—now, this is real important that he's talking about wisdom. We're going to see this in another verse later. Wisdom is the ability to make decisions, and in this case, it means having spiritual wisdom. The ability to make the decisions God wants you to make. The ability to make the decisions God wants you to make. This is spiritual wisdom. 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. He says, if you want to learn from God how to make decisions, what life is all about, how this works, how we act, how we talk, how we think, how we feel, if you want to know all that, he said, go ask God for it. And as we go through this, you're going to see that asking God becomes the key to all of it. So what do I learn? Well, ask God. So you go ask God. But, verse 6, you're asking God for wisdom. You're asking for God, the ability to make decisions and do things right. But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven, tossed to and thrown in the wind. He says, but you know what? It's so hard to ask for wisdom and mean it because God's going to say, okay, take the mask off. Okay. Here's some wisdom. Oh, I'll put that mask back on. I'll put another mask on. I don't want to do it that way. I want to be this person. And God says, I don't care about your mask. I care about the real person you are because that's my son and that's my daughter. And I'm going to take that real person and I'm going to help you become my son or daughter. But you keep interfering by play acting. That's what hypocrisy is. We just put up a little mask. I'll see I'm somebody else today. God, you can't see me. Right? My grandkids, the two-year-olds do that all the time. You can't see me, people! Okay.

Yeah. Where are you? Where are you? No. We put up masks. He says, for let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. So what's the point? We can ask for God's help and God's direction and what God wants in our lives. But if we don't have the faith to do it and follow, we're double-minded. And this is what hypocrisy is. And this is why it's so hard. Because the moment you receive God's Spirit, you're double-minded. Actually, you're double-minded before that, as God works with you to bring you into repentance. And then you receive God's Spirit, it's like, oh good, I'm perfect now, but I'm not. Why am I not perfect? Because you're double-minded. We're all double-minded. To be pure in heart, we have to be singular-minded and singular in heart. And that means everything we are has to come in a line with what God wants us to be.

And none of us are there yet. Okay, he's just like, oh, this is discouraging. Well, nobody's there yet. And anyone who says they're there, you're double-minded. Because nobody there is there yet. Because that would mean you're perfect. And nobody's perfect. So welcome to the human race, folks. Welcome to Christianity. This is what it is. This is the heart of Christianity, a pure spirit, as we learn to deal with our double-mindedness and take the masks off. We wear one mask at school and one mask at work and one mask at church, right? We can take those... We can be alone, right? You wear a mask when you go to the bar. You wear a mask when it's 10 o'clock at night and you decide, I am going to watch a porn film. And you put a mask on pretending like, I'm not a Christian, I'm not a Christian, I can do this. We wear these masks and God says, take them all off. Let's be real. Let's be who we are.

And then when you take the mask off, it gets a little hard because it's like, yeah, I messed up too. Yeah! Until we take the mask off and say, I messed up too, by the way.

I want our mask up here, I could tell you. Oh yeah, I got it all together. Then you go talk to my wife and think, what a liar. Actually, my wife never says anything bad about me. She's pretty amazing.

We take the mask off. We become who God wants us to be. James 4, he talks about this a little later in the same chapter. He says, where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members you lust and do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain, you fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask. And then when you do ask, you do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your own pleasures. We fight, we war, we struggle, we're constantly putting on different masks. So why? So we can get what we want. And then we finally go to God and say, this is what I want. And if he doesn't give it to us, we say, God, you failed me. And God says, no, no, no, no. If I would have given you that, it would have ruined your life. Sometimes God does give us stuff and it ends up being a curse. And then we say, why did you do that? And he said, well, you asked for it. He kept begging, so I gave it to you. I kept saying, no, okay, well, go ahead. Now you wonder why you have a problem.

He says, adulterers and adulterers says, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And this is what we do. We have our church mask and we have our world mask and we switch them. Now it's true. You don't talk to people in the world about the things you talk to a person that, you know, believes what you believe. It's the moment it wanted me to be on her webcast. She, our podcast, I couldn't explain the second resurrection to her. It would mean meaningless. So I had to use a term she'd like when she said, do you believe in the total depravity? I said, I don't believe in Calvinism. Oh, she said, you're Wesleyan. I said, yes. She says that because I understand what Wesleyan means. And actually, I agree with most of the Wesleyan viewpoint of predestination. So I said, yes, that's what I mostly what I believe. Oh, good. We can discuss this because I am too. I know what do you do? You can't just throw everything out there. And I wasn't going to spend the next half hour explaining the flaws in Wesleyanism. We found something we agreed on, and that was good enough for the time being. You don't cram down your neighbor's throat why they don't have an immortal soul, especially if they're an agnostic and don't care. That's not putting on a mask. That's learning to deal. Jesus did that all the time. He answers people where they are. But it's when you pretend. You put on the mask so that I'm just like you. No, no, we can find common ground.

But I'm not going to pretend to be what we aren't. And it's so hard for us to learn that. He goes on. He says, do you think that the Scripture says in vain, the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously? No, in other words, God is actually jealous for us. He doesn't want us to put on the mask. Don't put on that mask. That's not really you, but I don't like the me. He says, okay, I could change that, but I can't change you if you wear the mask. Take the mask off. But when I look at the mirror, I think I'm pretty ugly. God says, but I can change that. Just don't put the mask on. Don't be hypocrite.

It's interesting in 1 Kings, I won't go there, but Elijah is talking to Israel, and he says, how long will you dalter or just, how long will you just stand in between, it's seriously in different ways, different places, in between two opinions? How long will you just go back and forth and back and forth? Either God is God or Baal is God. How long will you do that? How long will you do that? Back and forth, back and forth. We have to make sure that we're not doing that. So what do you do? Okay, what do I do now? Two things. They're simple, but they're very difficult. And we're talking about the heart. Guess where we'll find this? Psalms. We'll find it in Psalm, because this is where David was. Why is it that David failed so many times and was still a man of God? Because he understood this. When God pulled the mask out of his hand and he saw himself, he always responded with not giving my mask back. And all David wore masks just like everybody does. And God would just rip them out of his hands and he'd have to see himself. And that's what made David so remarkable. Oh, that's not what I should be. And that's not what you want me to be. And he could see that. So Psalm 139, our first step, Psalm 139. Two simple steps here, but they're so hard to do. Psalm 139 and verse 23.

David prays, search me, O God, and know my heart. You realize to go to God and say, I want you to look at my heart, look into everything I am at the core of who I am. And I want you to take a good look at it. He says, try me. In other words, see what's not right that's there. And know my anxieties. I love that little phrase. And know that I'm really messed up. Know that I have fears and worries and don't know what to do. He says, I want you to look at that part of me right in there that I don't let anybody else see that. I wear a mask. So nobody ever sees my worries and anxieties. I'm tough.

Just, just trip it all away and let me stand before you search me and see if there's any wicked way in me. Find out where I'm wrong and lead me in the way everlasting. Search me, teach me, lead me, love me. That's what he's saying. And we have to go to God and say the same thing. To search me, try me, know how weak I am. And if there's something wrong, help me. And then lead me, love me, take care of me, take me where I'm supposed to go. Help me to be who I'm supposed to be and not wear all these masks. And sometimes the mask we're wearing is actually who we are in certain circumstances. And God says, no, that's got to change. That's part of the problem. We put all masks in times because that's what we really are. You know, I, well, I got this mask. You know, there's the great danger. We can play the part so much. We can't tell the difference. We actually become so double-minded. We can't tell what's God's way and what's not God's way. We can't. We really are double-minded or triple-minded or quadruple-minded. We're just different people in different circumstances, and that's who we are. And that's not real. That's play acting. We're just doing a play. It's a one-man play, right? With five characters, and we just have five different masks we put on. And after a while, we don't even know which one's us. God says, I want you to be real. I want you to be authentic. And David said, I mean, how authentic is this? I mean, David says, rip me apart and heal me. Take care of me. Love me. Make me what I'm supposed to be. Because he knew he would experience perfect happiness if God did this. And someday, he'll see God. He talks about seeing God a lot in the Psalms. I will see you. I will know you. I will talk to you. And he believed it. And he was driven by it. So you have to go pray for God to search you. Oh boy. Oh, two simple things to do. Yeah, try this for six months and see what happens to your life. It'll be good, but it's not going to be easy. Psalm 51. The second thing. So search me. Notice the mercy that's in there when he's asking search me. He's not saying search me and beat me up. Search me, help me, find out what's there, deal with my weaknesses, my anxieties. And if there's something wrong, lead me. He didn't say beat me. He said, lead me towards the right way. I mean, God beat David a lot because David was so stubborn. So he didn't ask to get beaten there. He just asked me, lead, take me where you want me to go.

Psalm 51. We know this is his great Psalm of repentance. But verse six says, behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. There's a place where he says, if you wanted a thousand animals sacrificed, I could do that. I'm rich. He's maybe at this point the richest man in the world. He's got an entire kingdom. He's over. He's got anything he wants. And he, you know, if you want a thousand sacrifices, I'll do it. He said, but that's not what you want. If you want washings, I'll do all the washing so I've scrubbed down. I have no skin left. If that's what will make this right, I'll do it. But that's not what God wanted. Those are just symbols of things. He knew what God wanted was in him, in the core of who he is, to stop being all these other people. He says, purge me in the inward parts. And in the hidden part, you will make me to know what? Wisdom. It's what James said to pray for. The ability to spiritually discern to know how to make decisions. He says, I'll know that, but it's got to be in here. It can't be just something external I do. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter as snow. Make me hear joy and gladness. What did he want in all this? I want perfect happiness.

But all I do is destroy my own life. I don't want to destroy my own life anymore. That the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. And then here's the other thing we have to pray for. Search me and create in me a clean heart, O God. Between now and Passover, our prayer should have a lot of emphasis on search me and created me. A pure heart, this beatitude. Search me and created me because you and I can't do this. We'll just play act at being clean. We'll just become good actors at being clean. We'll just switch. Oh, look, I used to be the bad guy in this play. I'm now the good guy in this play. And we'll just hold another mask up. He says, Create me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me, and this is real important, restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. Your generous spirit. You give out your spirit. Holy up. Just give me all that I need, all that. Just give it to me. We're back to being poor in spirit. You see, you take all these beatitudes and they start to fit together piece by piece as a puzzle. And now he says, Create in me what I cannot have, what I cannot do, that only you can do. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. I sometimes I'll meet people that are in just terrible parts of their lives. I remember one time a man who, I don't know, I think he'd be in the World Wide Church of God, I don't remember, and he had left. He was just messed his life up. And he said, Oh, there's all these other churches of God. What should I do? I said, You really want to know? And he said, Yeah. I said, Ask God to restore to you the joy of his salvation.

Everybody else says I should go to their church. I said, I don't know what church you should go to. I'm telling you, go ask God to restore to you the joy of his salvation, and then he'll take care of the rest of it.

See, we're looking for the mask to put on. And the joy comes from the relationship with God, and the salvation was restored. The man became, I think he became part of United. I don't remember so long ago. I do know whatever church he went to, he became a solid member of that church. It wasn't one of the ones that are filled with craziness. I mean, there are some churches of God, they're nuts. I'm sorry. Please edit that out, Matt. Every once in a while, I'll ask him to edit something else. But you understand what I'm saying. If we don't have restored to us the joy of salvation, what does it mean to play act? What does it mean? It's God in us. It's God working in us. The opposite of pure in heart is to be motivated by hypocrisy, which means a divided heart, divided double-mindedness. And you'll never find contentment. You know, sometimes when people leave the truth, they'll say, I'm so contented. Yeah. Because you've got a mask up and you're content at play acting.

Or the real person is such that they refuse God. That's a scary thing. The contentment comes with us in this constant spiritual battle. And those moments are we connect with God. That's when it happens. And it brings us together, by the way. We're here as a bunch of desperate people saying, at least I can go with a bunch of other desperate people. And there I can try to become pure in heart like they're trying to be pure in heart. So, two things to do now over the next two months. Spend some time asking God to search your heart and tell you and reveal to you what you need to know. And then asking God to create in you a pure, clean heart. You say, that's hard, but what is the reward? A pure heart is that you get to see God. And yes, that's a future event. When Christ returns and you're resurrected, but it's a present event because of these little glimpses God gives us where we literally get to understand Him. And there's no more joy in life than that. So I ask God to give you a pure heart and you'll get to see God.