Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 This area before we come to God's Word, let's pray together. Holy Spirit, come and breathe fresh into each of our lives. We pray. Receive the Holy Spirit of fresh. Receive him in your thinking, in your vision, your hearing, your heart and Holy Spirit. If the Bible was an academic book, we would just bring an academic to teach it to us, but it's a book of the spirit of life. And holy Spirit, you are our teacher. So we invite you to come and teach us from your word now in Jesus name.
Speaker 2 00:01:23 Amen. Amen.
Speaker 1 00:01:25 We are in our series looking at the revolutionary words of Jesus in what we call the be attitudes. Jesus gathered with his disciples of many other people and he gave what we call the sermon on the mountain. The very early part of that was what we call the be attitudes. They're among some of the most revolutionary words that have ever been uttered in any nation, any culture across society. They revolutionize the understanding of any hero that will take these words on board. And we've been looking at this, this is our fifth week of looking at this series. And let's look at all of these be attitudes in one go before we zone in on just one of them. Today they found in Matthews Gospel chapter five, and they say these words, blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the humble for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. For the kingdom of heaven is theirs
Speaker 1 00:02:58 We're Look at verse eight today. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. We may find it challenging if Jesus had used some softer words here, but we'd still find it challenging if he said blessed are pure in speech. That would be pretty challenging wouldn't it? Every word to come out of our mouth, to be pure every accent, every um, emphasis to be something that we could highlight as pure. That would be a challenge. But pure in heart is even more challenging than that. Maybe if he said blessed are the pure inactions, have positive affirming actions in our life that will be challenging. Never do anything that's not pure, that will be really difficult. But Jesus goes way beyond that and he says, blessed other pure in hearts. It's more complex than any of these demonstrations of that that we could look at together.
Speaker 1 00:04:02 We could try our best and we would find that we would fail in each of these areas. Jesus always lifts the benchmark. Jesus always causes people to a higher plane than you and I would tend to live on if it wasn't for his words. Purity. Purity of heart. It means to be absolutely clean. It means that your motives, your thoughts, your desires, your aspirations, your assessment of yourself is pure undefiled, not a speck or a stain. Perfect inside and out. Now before we look more about what this purity means and what it means to see God, let's look at something that I've mentioned before but just look at it in a little bit more context. And that is that the order that Jesus gave these be attitudes is incredibly important. So there are some things in life that the order doesn't matter. What do you say?
Speaker 1 00:05:06 Crackers and cheese or cheese and crackers. It doesn't matter. Do you say Mark, Anita or Nita and Mark? It doesn't matter. But if you use these be attitudes in an order that's different to the order that Jesus gave them, it matters because they are like a staircase. They're like a journey, like a pilgrimage that Jesus is leading us on. And if we don't get the first few in the right order, we can't step into the others. The order is important. The first three be attitudes. Bless blessed other poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meekle, the humble. These are the attitudes that talk about our need, our desperate need, our bankruptcy. We have nothing. We have no claim. We have no resource that we can draw upon. There's no reserve account we can pull from. We are absolutely bankrupt. Then the next be attitude, be attitude.
Speaker 1 00:06:08 Number four says, blessed are those who hunger in first after righteousness. You see, following our bankruptcy, this now becomes our satisfaction. Though we will be filled. And when we are filled with the result of God, when we are deeply satisfied by him, we are then able to overflow with his mercy and purity in our hearts. We cannot get to four unless we know our bankruptcy and we can't go beyond four unless it's the fillin of the Lord that causes them to happen. So let's come back to this be attitude in verse eight. Blessed other pure in hearts for they will see God. What does it mean to be pure in heart? And what does it mean to see God? Well, I've discovered over the years that if we talk about cleanliness, that there are different standards of cleanliness, aren't there? So sometimes if you go on holiday somewhere and they say you'll find the place clean and tidy, some of you here probably have got accustomed to taking some of your own cleaning stuff with you and just using it before you can relax and settle in the holiday place.
Speaker 1 00:07:33 And I know that's our practice also. Um, I I, I cannot say that this relates to my teens in any way whatsoever, but sometimes I've found or I've heard stories or read things in books of people who've got teenagers, um, where they've said, um, or we cleaned the kitchen up after us. And it's, and you say, really <laugh>, this is clean. And as I say, I've never experienced it, but I've read about it in books <laugh> and I've discovered over the years cuz it's not that they haven't cleaned it, it's just people have different standards of cleaning, don't they? Different levels of cleanliness and expectations around that. But this doesn't say blessed or clean in heart. There's no debate or discussion as to what the level of cleanliness is here. It doesn't say clean, it says pure, blessed or pure in heart. You see, you could get a bar of gold.
Speaker 1 00:08:41 Well I, I say that like this is an easy thing to accomplish. Just imagine you've got a bar of gold and I also give you some antiseptic wipes and some cleaner materials and you polish this gold and you wipe it down. It's definitely been clean from any germs that might come as a result and it's nice and clean but it may not be pure because the purity of the gold is about what's inside, not what's external. Yeah. So to have a gold bar that's pure, it needs to be refined. And that's often a process where they heat the gold up, gold melts, gold melts in a very high temperature and other impurities often melt before that. So it rises to the surface and then they skim off the impurities and they keep doing that until this goal is more refined and pure. And this verse has blessed are not the clean of hearts but the pure of hearts where all the impurities are to be removed.
Speaker 1 00:09:54 A pure heart is an unmixed heart where the impurities come out. And it's important that we have purity. For example, if after the service you are able to stay behind and join us for coffee. And I say we've got some lovely fresh coffee beans that have been ground and made into, into this lovely coffee. We've also got fresh spring water that's been put into the kettles in order to add to this lovely coffee. And by the way, I've just put a little drop of arsenic in them as well, just a little bit. You know, just a little bit is okay. 99.9% of it is pure. Just this little bit of arsenic. You're okay with that, aren't you? Of course you're not. Because purity matters. Yes we want it undefiled unmixed, clear and clean. And Jesus is saying here, blessed are the pure in heart, not the external but the content for they are the ones who will see God.
Speaker 1 00:10:59 Now just to unpack this a bit further, let me take you to a story. In the early church in the Book of Acts, how often you hear people say, wouldn't it be lovely to live in the days of the early church? Well let's read this together cause I don't think you like this. Acts chapter five, verse one to 10 and we're gonna read this together. This happened. But a man named Anais with his wife Zafira, sold a piece of property. Okay, stop there. Let me explain some context here. That when people were given their lives to Christ, many of them were choosing to sell their possessions and their belongings and to put it into a communal pot. And it said that none of them had any needs. They looked after each other. It's wonderful, it's beautiful, it's revolutionary. And they, they all um, were able to be a part of that.
Speaker 1 00:11:56 But there was no obligation to do that. It wasn't a rule of becoming a Christian that he had to do that. It wasn't a requirement to become part of the church. Many of them chose to do it and that's what this couple was selling their property for. But it says in verse two, however, he kept back part of the proceeds with his wife's knowledge and brought a portion of it and laid it at the apostle's feet to become part of this community pot. Now I suspect it was probably a large sum of money because in any context that you're in property is always one of the most expensive assets that people hold onto and they'd sold it. So this wasn't given out their spare change in the back pocket. This was sacrificially removing the biggest asset in their life and bringing the proceeds. Now we have read that he kept some of it back.
Speaker 1 00:12:56 We're not told the proportion of the percentage, but I would suspect that even if it was 50% that he'd given, it was a significant sum of money. So surely at that point the apostles they get in our terms today, let's say an average house price in the UK is around 280,000 pound. If it was 50% and one of you this morning came forward and said, here's 140,000 pound for the wellbeing fund. I wonder if you would expect the next answer that the apostle Peter gave Cuz let's look at what he said. It wasn't amazing. Wow, it's incredible. He said Anais Peter Ost, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? Wasn't it yours? Why do you possessed it? And after it was sold, wasn't it at your disposal? Why is it that you planned this thing in your hearts? You have not lied to people but you have lied to God When he heard these words, an Anais dropped dead and a great fear came over overall. Who heard? I bet it did. The young men, they got up wrapped his body, carried him out and buried him.
Speaker 1 00:14:39 Often when I see old churches with the graveyard outside, I often think of that it'd be quite convenient in that circumstance to have somewhere to bury them right outside the church building. About hours later, his wife came in not knowing what had happened. Tell me, Peter asked her, did you sell the land for this price? Yes, she said For that price. Then Peter said to her, why did you agree to test the spirit of the Lord? Look the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out. Instantly she dropped dead at his feet. When the young men came in, they found her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And then the under exaggeration of the wor of the the time it says, then great fear came on the whole church and all Who heard these things that happened? That was early church. That was the spirit of God moving. That was generosity. That is more than bringing your whole 10% tithe into the storehouse. This was a generosity that was beyond that. And yet why has Satan captivated your heart? What's going on here?
Speaker 1 00:16:23 Because this is not about money. God doesn't need your money or my money. God is looking for our hearts. Finance often becomes a manifestation of our hearts. You know what you believe in what you're passionate for, you sign checks for. So it's not like it's absent from money. The money is a great illustration, but there's something deeper going on here. There's something about the heart. It wasn't a lack of generosity as we've seen. It was about the purity of their heart in given this gift. You see, they were pretending to be more generous than they were. They had decided that they were going to live for the audience of those around them, that they were prepared to lie to the spirit of God for the sake of the acclaim of those around them. There was compromise in their faith. They were more concerned about their appearance than they were their honesty with God.
Speaker 1 00:17:42 Number of years ago, Nita and I and family, we lived in north of England. We lived just south of Manchester near Cheshire. And I would often be traveling around the country and we lived fairly close to crew train station, which is a great train station. Lots of lions go through there and you can get trains most places. And so I had some meetings in London and I planned to um, travel down on the train to these meetings in London for the day. So I went through all of the efforts of phoning a call center in India to book my tickets to get on the train down to London. And I booked my tickets and I made sure that my tickets had a seat reserved with a seat number that they had a table. And I'll tell you why. And it also had an electric plug socket that I could plug my laptop in because at the time I was writing a monthly column for a Christian magazine and I had a deadline.
Speaker 1 00:18:40 The next day I needed to submit the latest article for this magazine. And so I planned that my three hour plus journey on the train to London would be at a table with my laptop plugged in and I would spend that three hours writing in my article and send it to the publishers in order for her to get there before the deadline. So I received my tickets in the post and I go to crew train station and I'm stood early in the morning on this crew trace, uh, train station platform edge. And I look around and there's a lot of people beginning to gather at the station because this was a popular train to London. And as more and more people arrived at the station, I began to think, well you know, it's gonna be a busy train today. It's gonna be a lot of people on there.
Speaker 1 00:19:29 And and I saw people doing something where they were trying to muscle their way forward but trying to do it while looking polite, you know what I mean, that just gently nudge your way forward, squirm your way through the crowd, get to the front and I just let them do it because, not because I was being a particularly good Christian, but I let them do it cuz I knew that I had a ticket with a reserved seat. So I didn't need to join their arguments and their muscle in their way through. I knew that there was a seat waiting for me. So I just, hey go in front of me <laugh>. And I stood at the back of this large gathered crowd and then this train pulls into the station. As I look through the windows of this arriving train, I see that there are lots of people already on the train. The doors open as the train comes to a stop and it seems like this busy train hardly anybody gets out on the platform. But this throng of people now begin to squeeze in through the doors. But I didn't join them cause I got a ticket. I phoned another part of the world to get this ticket and I was very relaxed. Hey, going in in front of you. Go in front and it's fine, you go
Speaker 1 00:20:49 And I find the carriage that my ticket's for. I walk along the rows to find the row that my ticket's for and then I look at the seat that I've reserved my ticket for and sit in on the seat of my reserve ticket was a lady that I guess was probably over a hundred years of age
Speaker 3 00:21:10 <laugh>. Wow.
Speaker 1 00:21:15 And my backpack with my ruck sack and my unwritten article is still burdening on my shoulder. And I lean over to this lovely lady who's eating salmon sandwiches in my chair. Hope she didn't make a mess. And I say, excuse me, have you reserved this seat? I knew she hadn't cuz I
Speaker 3 00:21:43 Hadn't.
Speaker 1 00:21:44 She said, oh no, no, no I haven't. Um, but it's okay, I'll stand.
Speaker 3 00:21:49 I'm thinking, oh <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:21:52 It could have been a fit 20 year old guy or something, couldn't it? You know, why is it someone that looks like she, you know, remembers the war of 10 66, nevermind the first World War hang. I say
Speaker 3 00:22:07 It's okay
Speaker 1 00:22:08 You
Speaker 3 00:22:09 Sit there, I'll be fine <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:22:14 I had this lovely smile. I could have offered to pray for her at that moment in time and she would've felt greatly blessed. But I have to let you know in my heart I was thinking she's nicked my seat <laugh>. So I stand for a few minutes and then a ticket conductor walks through the carriage. He says, excuse me mate, she's sitting in my seat. Leave her alone. You know, <laugh>, is there any more seats on this train? And he says, there are two in the very end carriage. Fantastic. So I enthusiastically walk through the carriage, pressing the buttons to the doors going from one carriage to the next, make him my way towards the final carriage on the way I see another passenger stood and I say, Hey mate, follow me. There's two seats at the end. So we make our way. He's now gone in front of me and we are in the final carriage. He finds a cd, sits down looking all smug. I look for the second seat, it's not there. I've now got a problem with this guy and I've got a problem with that woman
Speaker 3 00:23:16 <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:23:18 I don't let him know I'm Christian. You know, we just smiled, don't we? We just let it go. And you, we just hate them inside, don't we? So, uh, it's okay you sit there mate. You said I was going to anyway, okay, alright, I'm gonna argue with you. You're a fit young, 20 something year old and I'm not gonna kick you out your seat. So I honestly did this. I went back to the carriage where the original seat was and I stood opposite this woman the entire journey.
Speaker 3 00:23:46 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:23:48 Comfortable, eh? Yeah. My article didn't get written. She would never have known what was going on in my heart because I'd learnt to create a persona that made it look like I was a good Jesus follower. But my heart wasn't doing too well. The train arrived in London, the doors opened, I stepped onto the platform and the Holy Spirit convicted me. Blessed Arthur Pure in heart. They will see God. No one knew that I'd done anything wrong but Jesus did. And the Holy Spirit convicted me. And there on that platform edge, I repentance, said God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that my heart is so different, the appearance that I was able to give off there Lord have mercy on me. And it's a bit like Psalm 24. We read these words, verse three to five it says, who may ascend the mountain of the Lord who may stand in his holy place. It's the one who has clean hands and a pure heart who has not appealed to what is false and who has not sworn deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Number of years ago I was speaking at a conference and also one of the other speakers at this conference was a very, very well-known preacher from America. And the session that I was sharing in, he came and sat in and listened to me.
Speaker 1 00:25:49 At the end of a service, he came and hugged me, introduced himself and said, I'd love you to come across to my really famous church over in the US and come and preach. I thought, wow,
Speaker 3 00:26:04 That's, that's nice.
Speaker 1 00:26:07 That'll be a great experience.
Speaker 3 00:26:10 Wow,
Speaker 1 00:26:12 You see something you need to understand about me that I've learned to feel enormously blessed and privileged by the role I serve. But I've never desired this. I've never really felt I particularly have much to offer if I'm honest. So I've had to work through inadequacy, I've had to work through insecurity in order to be able to present confidently the things of God. And when somebody comes up to someone who's got that tinge insecurity and say, I'd like you to come and preach at the church where David Beckham sometimes sits in the congregation, this church that's well known all across the world, I'd like you to come and speak. There was nothing wrong with his invitation, but I have to let you know the spirit of God revealed to me there was something wrong about my heart. Cuz I'm thinking wow, maybe I'm not as bad as I thought I was. Wow, wait till my friends see the Instagram picture <laugh> this moment, this selfie moment in this large auditorium, in this wonderful church with this great reputation. Wow. Do you know what the spirit of the Lord said to me? You can't accept. I didn't say that at the time. It was over the next few days after the invitation, I began to see how this was making my heart impure. Pride was at work.
Speaker 1 00:27:57 I contacted and said, thank you for your kind invitation, but I'm really sorry but I can't accept. Maybe God will open the door in the future when I'm all ready for it. But it's never calm. But I don't care because I'm not living for the audience that Anais and Safara lived for, which was the applause of people I'm living for the obedience of towards the Lord. I want to see God and I don't see God by speaking in places or I don't see God by looking like a kind generous person on a train. I see God by the purity of heart, unbelted, uncorrupted.
Speaker 1 00:28:56 And I've found over the years there are regular moments in church life when there may be an appeal given for purity and an appeal given to come and lay your life at the altar of the Lord and come and repent. And there's nothing wrong with those moments, but I found that if we truly want to be pure in hearts, it's every hour of every day listening to the gentle whispers of the Holy Spirit. And when he speaks and says, don't accept that invitation, it re, it involves us saying whatever you say, Lord, I will do it. Whatever you say,
Speaker 1 00:29:37 See cuz the spirit is always bringing impurity to the surface in our lives. And the more we hunger and thirst for righteousness, the hotter his purifying flame becomes in our lives. I'm sure many of you have seen on social media this week that 10 days ago in a university campus in the states group of people gathered in there for their devotions like they did most days. But on this occasion it never stopped. They have now been worshiping around the clock 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We've gotta be honest, earlier on when Sean said, ah, it's a penny, we gotta finish this. I think we can go on for hours. I'm thinking if we announce that this morning, I don't know if there'd be many people here in a few hours time.
Speaker 1 00:30:30 And that's not condemning on you cuz you've got plans and ideas. But revival is deeply inconvenient. Yes, surrender to the Lord is deeply inconvenient. Purity of heart is deeply inconvenient. So the patterns that we create in our life and you know I've, I read a couple of days ago that there have been famous worship leaders and preachers from all over the world that have contacted that college where there have now been worshiping 24 hours a day for the last 10 days. And they've said, Hey, can we come and help? Would you like us to come and lead some worship? Would you like us to come and preach? Now I don't know about the hearts or the conditions of those who've made that offer, but I do know, I suspect it's probably a better way of putting it more acqui. But I suspect there are some who would love that selfie moment.
Speaker 1 00:31:19 Hey, I've just preached at the revival and the organizers that no one knows their names. No one knows who's in charge of this. There's a group of young 20 somethings and they've said to these big name worship leaders know if you want to come and queue up with everyone else and come and be a part of the service in the congregation, then we'd love you to come. But no, we're not going to ask you to come and lead or preach. And you know what they've been doing? They've had over I think a hundred worship teams over the last week and they do two hour sections. And what they've been doing, they've been looking around those who are part of the student body and they've been saying, Hey, would you like to come and lead some worship? I haven't got particularly a lot of experience in this.
Speaker 1 00:32:11 That's okay cuz it's about the Lord not about you. And then when they say yes, they say Okay, we've got a consecration room. They call it the consecration room. We're gonna take you into the consecration room and you are gonna repent and you're gonna get yourself right with the Lord. You're gonna get humbly on hi on your face before him and you're gonna make sure that your clean hands and pure heart cuz it's only those who can ascend the hill of the Lord. And then they say, now when you've done that, go and spend a few hours in the congregation and then you might be ready. I love that. It's nameless, faceless and there's a lot of excitement brewing around the world. Could this spread? And it already is to other universities and some places in the US and there are people now beginning to fly from over the world to go and see what's happening. But there's no quick fix to this. If your heart is impure and you fly across Torey and you spend a week there and come back with an impure heart, you're carrying nothing, come
Speaker 2 00:33:21 On.
Speaker 1 00:33:22 But you don't pick this up, you pray this in,
Speaker 2 00:33:27 Come on, come on.
Speaker 1 00:33:30 And I believe the Lord is inviting his people to a whole new level of knowing God. Yes,
Speaker 2 00:33:40 Come on.
Speaker 1 00:33:42 Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God if there are toxins, impurities, if I stand on that platform E and say, I think I got away with that. God, I think I blagged it okay there. If we take that approach, you've just created a ceiling for yourself. That's
Speaker 2 00:34:08 Right.
Speaker 1 00:34:09 But if every moment, every day you say, I want what the Lord wants, I thank God for alpha and I want to encourage you to take those invitations and invite people. But in some of our lives and our relationships and our circumstances probably might, what might be a bigger witness to some of your friends and work colleagues is actually apologizing for your bad behavior, for your bad attitude. Last year, Jason's always enthusiastic, isn't he? Morning everybody at seven 20 in the morning, welcome to Die Daily. Yay <laugh>. It's nine o'clock at night and I'm full of energy and life. He's amazing. And last year, probably around March, April time, Jason said, let's have a meeting to plan Christmas. Christmas 22. So Jason goes for it like there's Christmas music in the background, there's mints, pies. And that meeting had been shedding the diary for a few weeks. And I had had a really busy week and I was a bit grumpy. And I remember thinking, I really could do with not being in this meeting right now cuz there's some pressures of some things I need to deal with. And and E, every time Jason turned the Christmas music up, my A, my grumpiness increased
Speaker 1 00:35:45 To such a point. We're at the end. I think the next day I went and Jason said, Jason, I'm sorry I was grumpy yesterday. Now I don't know if he was being polite or not, but he said, oh I didn't notice nose. Maybe he didn't, but I felt the spirit whisper. That's not good Mark. And in some of relationships, friendships, workplaces, there needs to be some apologies. Don't go in and sell 'em your beliefs, introduce them to the spirit of God that works on your heart. Let there be a humility to your life. Christians haven't got it all together, we just know someone who's with us. So as we conclude our time together, there's a prayer. The first part is made up of a song that I used to sing in the nineties and the second part has been bolted on to extend into a prayer. And it says this, purify my heart. Cleanse me Lord I pray. Remove from me all that is standing in the way. I'm gonna ask us to pray this prayer together. Not so that those around you will hear, although they will, but so that the spirit of truth will be with you and will hear you.
Speaker 1 00:37:24 If you can make this a sincere prayer, things will rise to the surface this week and you're gonna have to say, holy spirit, I don't want that. Take it away. Please remove it from me. I don't want that. And it'll be painful cuz there's some things you're attached to but blessed other pure in heart for they will see God. Can we pray this together? Purify my heart, cleanse me, Lord, I pray. Remove from eat me all that is standing in the way. Holy Spirit, help me live every moment of my day sensitive to your purifying flame. Purify my heart that I may see you more clearly in my life. Ah man, let's pray together. We long to be holy, to be pure. Forgive us for our pride that has worked to the audience of those around us. Holy Spirit, may we relive our entire days and lives sensitive to your voice, to be purified by your fire, your refining fire, and to follow you in every way. And Lord, I pray that we will see you more clearly. So draw us closer to you. May that fervor and passion that's causing people to step out of convenience in the us may that captivate our hearts. We pray may nothing else matter as much as drawing close to you
Speaker 1 00:39:35 In the name of Jesus. Amen man.
