Happy Are The Holy - Part 1

Audio on demand from Vision Christian Media.

Keeping your mind pure in today's depraved world is like trying to stay clean while swimming through a swamp, it's virtually impossible to do on your own. Today, I am Turning Point. Dr. David Jeremiah offer some proven pointers for maintaining a clean mind even in the midst of our corrupt culture. From his series on the Beatitudes, here's David to introduce today's message. Happy are the Holy.

And thank you for joining us. This is a Turning Point. Hey, we're studying the Beatitudes, the teaching of Jesus on the Mount of Beatitudes to his followers, giving them the principles of life.

So far, we have talked about humility. We have talked about hurting. We've talked about meekness and hunger for God's word. And we just finished up yesterday, a discussion on mercy. And today, the Bible is going to talk about how blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are those who have holiness in their life. Don't let it frighten you. God wouldn't tell us. We could be blessed by it. If it were out of our reach. You can do this. This can be yours by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's Matthew, chapter five and verse eight. Well, let's get started. Happy are the holy. Blessed are those who are pure in art. These are the words of Jesus.

Several years ago, I was preaching on the subject of purity on the Turning Point, and after the program aired a few days later, I got a letter in the mail was from a very distressed young man. I kept the letter because it spoke so poignantly of the struggles so many have these days with this issue of purity of heart. He wrote, Dear Pastor Jeremiah, I was sitting here in my room contemplating going out and having a beer and maybe looking at a porno flick or whatever the night might bring. As I was getting ready to go out, I turned on the radio and your program was on. I listened with great interest as you uncovered my life story. It seems almost as if you received your sermon from the files in my mind. Deep down, as I search myself, I know I am doing wrong. I at times feel guilty about the things I do. I cannot honestly say that I enjoy getting drunk or enjoy subjecting myself to the filth that is associated with the sex market. From time to time, I find myself getting up in the middle of an X movie out of sheer disgust over what I see on the screen. I am a happily married man and I have three beautiful children. I know my wife would flip if she knew what I do when I am away from home. I feel so dirty and I hope somehow you can make sense out of what I've said. I have turned my back on God and sometimes I feel as though he has given up on me. You spoke of being saved. How do you really know? Tonight I sit here with tears in my eyes and I don't know why. Please help me if you can. And I remember I shed some tears when I read that letter because I felt the hurt in that person's life. And I know that he represents a lot of folks who have struggled and hurt as he does. I never answered a letter so carefully as I answered that one with the encouragement of God's word, to let him know there is hope and there is help. And you don't have to live your life the way he was living his. The problem he had, you see, was he was looking for happiness in all the wrong places. And he had been searching long enough now to discover that he was on a call Izak. And it was taking him nowhere. In fact, if you heard the letter, you heard him say twice that he hadn't found Joy, that he wasn't enjoying. In fact, he was miserable. All the things that somebody told him, we're going to make him happy. We're destroying his very life. And then comes Jesus. And Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. And I have to tell you, it sounds strange to us. The saying of our Lord, we have been talking about all these sayings.

We began by saying that the humble are happy. And then we said, no, not only are the humble happy, the hurting are happy. That sounds like an oxymoron if I ever heard one. And then we said those who are harnessed in the power that they have. Those who are me, they're happy.

And then we said the people who are hungry and thirst after righteousness, they're happy. And the last time we met, we said, blessed are the merciful or the helpers. They're happy.

And today Jesus said, blessed are the holy for they shall see God.

And I have to ask, as we begin today, what he was talking about, what is purity when he says blessed are the pure in heart? What was he talking about? Well, Webster defines purity like this. Webster says purity is freedom from foreign mixtures of matter, cleanness, freedom from foulness or dirt. The word in the text of the Greek language that is translated here in Matthew is a very interesting Greek word. It's the word catharsis. It is the word from which we get our word catharsis. When a medical person uses a cathartic. It is an agent that is used to cleanse a wound or an infected area so that it is pure. It is a cleansing agent. You live in the world of psychology and psychiatry. You go to a psychologist or psychiatrist and they may say that you had a catharsis.

What that means is that while you were there talking to this counselor, you told him everything that was down in your soul and there was a cleansing of the soul. You got it all out. You cleanse your soul of the things that were troubling you.

It is a word that is very poignant in the scripture to speak of purity. But Jesus is not just talking about any kind of purity. He says blessed are the pure of heart.

What does it mean to be pure in one's heart? Well, if you've ever read the words of Jesus very carefully, you know that he was not into the outward purity that so caused the Pharisees to rival in all of their glory. Jesus went after the Pharisees, in fact. I don't know if you remember this, but on one occasion he told them they were like a bunch of sepulchers that were painted all white on the outside, but inside they were full of dead men's bones. He never did have any trouble getting to the point, our Lord. He always seemed to be able to say what he wanted to say. But Jesus is not talking about the outward kind of purity that we so often parade in front of our peers. And we do it better on Sunday than perhaps any other day of the week. We want everybody to believe that we're OK, that we're clean, that we're pure. Jesus is not talking about outward purities, as blessed are the pure in their heart. And when he's talking about the heart, what does he mean?

Is he talking about that organ that beats within your breast pumping blood throughout your system? I remember when we first had heart transplants. Do you remember that? You would not believe the people that would come to me and say, Pastor Jeremiah, what if a person who is an unbeliever has a heart transplant and his heart is placed in a believer? Does that person have to get saved again? I wanted to say, have I been so long with you and you do not know these things? It's not your heart. The organ that pumps your blood. In fact, it's not even your emotions which often you hear taught. When the Greek writers wanted to talk about the emotions, they talked about the belly. They used words that were visceral. But in the Greek language, when the heart is used in the way that Jesus used it, it's a reference to the thinking process to the mind. Blessed are the pure in their minds, in their thinking process, for they shall see God. It is what the Proverbs is talking about in Proverbs twenty three, verse seven, when it says as a man thinketh in his heart. There you have the heart thinking as the man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Or another verse from Proverbs verse twenty three of chapter four says Watch over your heart with all diligence.

Far from it flows the spring of life.

The Old Testament writers and the New Testament writers agree that it is in the mind, sometimes referred to as the heart that purity resides or impurity resides in. Jesus comment here in the fifth chapter of Matthew is happy are those who have purity in their heart, for they shall see God.

One of my favorite stories of the Old Testament is the story of David Priest all through his life and love to go back and do it again. What a rich and wonderful story in the life of this man. But do you remember how David became the king of Israel? His predecessor was a man by the name of Saul, who was the first king in Israel, and Saul got selected as King in a rather strange way. He was the tallest man in Israel. I think that was one of the things that got him elected. He just stuck out. You know, he stood up above everyone.

And the Bible tells us that Saul was tall, dark and handsome.

But he wasn't much else. In fact, after he got to be king and got in a position of power, it became evident that while he was outwardly OK, he had some really deep inward problems. He was disobedient to the Lord. On one occasion, when he couldn't get his way, he took over the role of the priest, which he should not have done. He even consulted with a witch because he couldn't get an answer. And one day God had had it with him. Tall, dark and handsome or not. He was finished. God said, I'm not going to put up with this anymore and you're not going to be king anymore. And none of your sons will ever sit on the throne in Israel. I'm going to get me a new king. And the scripture says it this way.

The Lord sought out for himself a man after his own heart, and he went and got David and several times in the story of David's life.

You have this comment that David was a man after the heart of God. His thoughts were the thoughts of God. And how do we know that he wrote them down there in his journal called The Book of Psalms. And we can tell how intimately he loved God. Was he perfect? No. But he had a heart for God.

Blessed are the pure in their heart, for they shall see God. I want to talk to you for a few moments about three kinds of purity that the Bible teaches.

The first kind of purity is what may might call perfect purity. Now, if it's pure, it's pure. Unless it's ivory soap. And then it's what did they say? Ninety nine and ninety nine, 100. But, you know, I always wondered about that little part that wasn't pure. I wonder what that is.

But I want to talk to you about perfect purity because the Bible says and I get so excited when I think about this. The Bible says there is coming a day when everyone who has put their trust in Jesus Christ is going to go to be with him. And I don't know if you ever thought of this verse in this way, but listen to what the scripture says. In First John three and verse two, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Do you know that one day men and women, every one of us here who know Jesus Christ in a personal way, no matter who we are, how long we've been Christians, how difficult our life has been when we go to be with the Lord and we are glorified. We are going to be as holy as Jesus Christ is. That's perfect holiness.

Ultimate sanctification. That's purity.

Well, you say, pastor, that's great. That's the more of your pie in the sky buying by theology and I love. That's a wonderful thing to look forward to, but I'm living down here now. What do I do? Well, let me talk to you about a second kind of purity. I'll call this positional purity.

You see, the problem we have is that the Bible says in order for us to see God, we have to be pure. And what is the standard? You know what Jesus said, be therefore holy, even as I am holy.

How can I be like that? I cannot be holy.

Like he is holy.

If he doesn't do something to fix that problem, I will never see God.

And I'm not alone. The whole world is like that for all.

Have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And one day God said, I know what I'll do. I'll solve that problem. And he looked around heaven for someone who could do it.

And he chose his only son, the Lord Jesus, who was absolutely perfectly holy. He sent him to this world, embodied him in the flesh, had him walk upon this earth through his adult life to prove what a holy man does when he lives his holy life. And then one day, in obedience to his father, he went to a cruel Roman cross and hanging between heaven and earth. He died in payment for all of our sin and the greatest exchange the world has ever known took place. I cannot fathom it, even though I have studied it for years. God, through his son, took my sin upon himself, and in exchange for my sin, he gave me his righteousness. He put a cloak over David Jeremiah. And that cloak is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It covers all of my failures and my flaws so that now when God looks at me, be holy even as I am holy.

He sees the Holy Son of God, and I am pure in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Whenever I tell that story to people who don't know the Lord and they don't rush right up and say, how do I get in on this? I always feel like I must not have told it right. That is the greatest good news I've ever heard in my life. Because it takes me off the tram. It gets me out of the pressure of trying to measure up to a standard that is absolutely impossible for me. And in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, I am accepted. That's positional purity. Just as righteous as Jesus Christ, because he's given me his righteousness. That's what the Book of Romans is all about.

But those are two theological truths, and you can just put them in your notes and think about them later. That's not where the issue is, is it? The issue is in the third kind of purity. It's the issue of practical purity, trying to live every day in this world so that I'm living up to the standard of who I am in Christ. Somebody told me a long time ago that sanctification is simply living in practice. What you already are in position. Here's Jesus Christ saying, Jeremiah, your holy in me. Now I want you to live like your holy in me. I like this part, this part here stuff. You know, we live in a world that's pretty dirty. Not easy to be holy in this world, is it? I don't know if you've ever read any of his writings, but Robert Fulghum is one of my favorite writers because he's a pastor a long time ago. He's recovered and he's got a wonderful book out in which he talks about the occasion when he went to speak at a graduation exercise in his own quiet way. He stood up in front of these graduating seniors and he said, how many of you would like to be an adult? Every single kid raised their hand.

He said, well, let me tell you what adults do. They clean the sink strainer. They plunge out the toilet. They clean up babies. They wipe runny noses. They clean up the floor when the baby throws strained spinach. They clean ovens and grease traps and roasting pans. They empty the kitty box and scrape up after the dog. They carry out the garbage. They pump out the bilges. They bury dead pets when they get run over in the street. How many of you want to be an adult? He said no takers.

Well, you know, you'd probably laugh at that. But every adult here knows what we're talking about. You don't ever get the kids to do that stuff. You know, you always get stuck with it yourself. What do you mean? You want me to clean up the mess?

But you know what? What he was talking about is kind of like what it is to be a person in the world today. You know, you're just dealing with dirty stuff all the time. How do you deal with it? How do you deal with the issue of practical holiness? How can I be pure in my life so that I can see God? You know, I'd like to take a few moments and talk about some practical things, and they're going to be a little bit maybe naive to some of you, but I know this is an issue with a lot of folks. It's an issue with a lot of young men. It's an issue a lot of people struggle with. And I think there's some help in the word of God that we don't want to pass over quickly. How can I, as a person who wants to be pure, live a pure life in the world in which I live today?

I'd like to suggest two or three things. Number one, I love what the Book of Job tells us in Job Chapter 31, in verse one, where we're told that Joe made a covenant with his eyes.

He made a covenant with his eyes. What a wonderful suggestion. It's sort of like this. You say eyes. You and me have to talk. We have to make an agreement. Want to make a covenant with you eyes. We're not going to look at stuff we shouldn't look at because you see the eyes are the windows of the soul. It's through the eye gate that impurity enters into the soul.

And you remember the little chorus we used to sing when we were growing up in Sunday school. It goes like this. Oh, be careful, little eyes. What you see. Oh, be careful, little eyes. What you see for your father up above is looking down in love. So be careful, little eyes. What you see. Whenever I would hear that, I wasn't sure he was looking down in love, but I knew he was looking down, you know, purities.

Not something that will happen in our lives as Christians without a strategy, without a purpose. It's surprising to me how many of God's people have fallen into the trap of believing that they can bring into the windows of their soul any of the garbage of this world and not be affected by it. They think that they're sophisticated, that they're cool, that they can handle it, they can sort it out. But the windows of the soul don't have a filter. The windows of the soul take in whatever anybody else's eyes take in, and it has an impact and effect upon a person's life. And I just need to tell you, you can talk about being pure if you want to, but if you really mean business, you're going to make a covenant with your eyes and you're going to say, by the grace of God, I'm not going to watch him stuff and read some stuff and look at some stuff that maybe the rest of the world looks at, because I know it will have an impact on my life.

Make a covenant with your eyes. Number two, consecrate your mind.

Paul urged the Romans to present their bodies as a living sacrifice. We know that part. But do you remember the next part, he says, were to do that by the renewing of our mind? The Bible warns us to keep our hearts pure. For out of the heart are the issues of life. Our thinking determines our character. The battle is in the mind. It's not in the heart. That's the visceral part of man, as we often think of it. It's in the mind, the battles right here. And you have to determine to consecrate your mind for from within. Out of the heart of man proceed. Evil thoughts and adulteries. And fornications and murders. And thefts and covetousness and wickedness. And on and on. The list goes on March seven. The mind is the battle ground upon which every moral and spiritual battle is fought. As far back as Noah in the Old Testament, this has been true for when God saw the great wickedness of Noah's day. He perceived that every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. Your mind.

Well, that's not a very pretty picture of Noah's culture and her. It's not a very pretty picture of ours either. But in the midst of all of that, in the darkest of the night, there is the bright light of holy living.

And God has made it possible for us, as we have been talking about recently, to be different. We don't have to succumb to the pressures of the meanness and nastiness of the world in which we live. We can be God's people. And when we are, we find happiness happy. The Holy. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

For more information on Dr. Jeremiahs series, How to Be Happy According to Jesus? Visit our Web site where we offer two free ways to help you stay connected. Our monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily e-mail devotional. Sign up today at David Jeremiah dot org slash radio. And when you do ask for your copy of David's new Bible study, John The Divinity of Christ. It's part of the JEREMI Bible study series. Perfect for group or individual study. And it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiahs study Bible and the English standard and new international versions, as well as in standard or large print in the new King James. In your choice of several attractive cover options, visit. David Jeremi dot org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Whoot Flint. Join us tomorrow as we continue to be happy. According to Jesus, that's here on Turning Point. But Dr David. Jeremiah.

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