Blessedness of the Pure

That's what I do and love on people.

Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

We've been looking at investing in eternity.

And we've been using the Beatitudes.

And today we're going to be looking at verse 8.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

In this beatitude, we have probably one of the greatest utterances found in the Word of God concerning the life of holiness.

In fact, describing this quality of life that God expects of you and me to exhibit and to be, in order not only to be a living testimony for him, but in order to really enter into his presence one day when it's our time.

So, with that said, the apostle Paul literally said, and listen to what he said in 1 Thessalonians 4, 3, he said, This is the will of God, your sanctification.

And that word sanctification literally means to come apart and be set apart to be in the process of becoming like Christ.

See, folks, once you get saved, you begin a journey.

You begin a process.

You begin a purpose.

And that purpose is to be more like Jesus tomorrow than you are today.

Can I get an amen?

And that is the goal for our lives every day until Jesus either takes us home or he comes back personally to take us home.

So that's vitally important that we understand that.

And listen what the writer of the Hebrews said in Hebrews 12, 14.

He said, he urges us, he says, pursue holiness without which no one shall see the Lord.

Adam made this statement about holiness.

It doesn't fit any better than in this message.

Because the key right here is that we are to pursue holiness.

In fact, Peter put it this way: Be ye holy in all manner of your behavior.

Because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy.

1 Peter 1, 15 and 16.

So again, we see the importance right here and in Jesus' words of, hey, on the Sermon on the Mount, and we call them the Beatitudes.

Blessed are the pure in heart, hey, for they shall see God.

Now this morning I want us to look at three things that describes what it means to be pure in heart.

Number one, the consciousness of a pure heart.

When Jesus made this statement, he said the Bible, and by the way, and the Bible consistently teaches, and here's a great one-liner.

I always try to give Adam and the guys that do all a great job in putting out all that we do.

I'm telling you, we I don't think there's a including the Highlands is any better than we are in our outreach through media.

I'm telling you, we are fantastic.

They are just our guys here, all of them, and all that's involved.

They're just unbelievable.

I look at that stuff and I say, man, if I wasn't a member of the CCW, I'd want to go just see what they're doing.

Because everything comes on that's so exciting.

And man, I want to, yeah, my family, yeah, let's go do that.

But we always have a one-liner from the last message from the pulpit.

And here's one of the best one-liners God spoke to me in this message, and he says, This God is more interested in who you are than what you do.

Can I get an amen?

God is more interested in who you are instead of what you do.

And I thought, boy, how powerful.

In fact, we are, hey, what we are determines how we live and serve.

Do you realize that?

And I wrote another statement.

If the heart is wrong, the life will be wrong.

Amen?

Herein is the significance of what Jesus is saying here in the phrase, the pure in heart.

So let's examine what the pure in heart really means.

Two things under the consciousness of a pure heart, I want you to see.

Number one, a personal awareness of purity.

When he made the statement, pure in heart, I love what he says that the heart is not merely a seat of feelings.

I started doing a little work on my biology.

I went back.

The heart's more than just the seat of feelings, but it also encompasses our disposition.

Hello?

It really does.

In fact, it's really consists of three things that we're going to look at.

And we see that, hey, if the heart is pure, then the life is pure.

And the heart is not merely just the feelings, but it controls our actions.

In other words, the heart stands for the center of our human personality.

I got to thinking about that.

In other words, it's more than just a feeling.

It's our intellect, it's our emotion, and it's our will.

It's the whole volitional part of our life.

And this is why Jesus emphasizes right here the purity of heart.

This personal awareness is a matter of our responsibility to realize that the heart is the seat and the center and the control of all that we are.

And when you really realize that, you'll see how important it is for us to control, hey, our heart.

And to, hey, and not only control it, but protect it for what goes into that heart.

And you say, well, we know what's in the heart, it's blood, and it's a circulatorial system.

I understand that.

But the personal awareness is the key here.

We must be sensitive not to grieve and quench the Holy Spirit of God that's in our heart.

Now, I wrote this down.

And here's what we must realize.

We must be consciously pure in mind, heart, will, and life.

We must be sensitive not to grieve or quench the Holy Spirit.

And how do we do that?

Are you ready?

And here's what you got to realize: you can look clean on the outside and be dirty on the inside.

Hello, come on now.

You can be clean on the outside, but dirty on the inside.

Why do you think the Bible says the Lord said, hey, the Lord sees not as man sees?

Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.

Man, is that not powerful?

He looks on the heart.

So what you and I put into our heart, and how do we part of that consciousness and those bowels of mercies that he talks about deals with a thinking process.

What you think matters.

Because what you think and the inclinations of the heart shape the reality of our actions.

Amen?

Hey, what you think ends up controlling what you do.

Can I get an Amen?

Now this is important.

Now watch this.

Are you ready?

Sow a thought, reap an action.

Sow an action, reap a habit.

Sow a habit, reap a destiny.

So we really have to guard our hearts and our minds by what is what?

Taken in?

Because what is taken in will eventually go out.

And Jesus was very adamant about that.

In fact, he says, not only the personal awareness of purity, but notice what else he said.

The second thing, the practical awareness of purity.

The pure in heart.

Solomon said, keep your heart.

Hey, keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it flows the issues of life.

Proverbs 423.

Now, what are the issues of life?

It's your behavior, it's your thinking process, it's your actions, it's everything that you are.

And it all proceeds and pops up and grows out of your heart.

If the heart is pure, your hey, hey, well put it this way, if your thinking's pure, your heart will be pure.

And if your heart is pure, your actions and your behavior will be pure.

So that's why Solomon said, guard your hearts.

And he also said, Proverbs 23, 7, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

And I got to thinking about that.

From this organ, the heart, all the arteries arise, and in it all the veins are terminated.

Now watch this.

By its alternate, we call it circulation and circulator system.

The contraction of the heart.

The blood is received from the veins.

Now watch this.

And then it is returned through the arteries by which means the circulation is carried on and life is preserved.

Without that, there would be no life.

And then I said, how does that work with us?

Think about it.

Figuratively and spiritually speaking, the heart feels the same important place and function in our life.

It is the control point.

Now watch this.

You may want to write this down.

It is the control point for all the decisions of life.

The heart is the center, the control point of all the decisions that we make.

Wow.

Man, that's powerful.

That gives you a lot of responsibility.

And it also, our actions have a value only in as much as they flow from our hearts.

Our devotion and service to God can only be accepted if they proceed.

Now watch this from a pure heart.

So all that we do, if God's going to accept it, if all we do is going to be pleasing unto God, it's got to be pure motives.

Can I get an amen or oh me for me?

Oh me.

I mean, think a minute.

That means every thought process and every action that we contemplate needs to be with a pure heart, with pure motives.

And that means doing what God would have us to do instead of what we want to do.

It is a matter of conscious action to pursue holiness.

Listen to what Hebrews 12, 14 says.

Pursue peace with all people.

And then he says, and holiness, which no one can see the Lord.

Wow, that's another verse that we just talked about.

In other words, how important it is for us to have a pure heart.

It is the main thing that God is saying that we've got to have if we're going to be like him and fulfill his will and his purpose for our life.

We've got to guard that heart.

Steve Green, a lot of you, all the uh baby booners, we Steve Green was just one of the number one Christian artists back then, and he was just awesome, still is.

And he, one of his greatest hits was written from Proverbs 423, and it was Guard your hearts.

Guard your hearts.

What a beautiful song.

And that's what we have to do.

It is a consciousness of a pure heart.

We gotta be conscious that this heart, our heart, your heart, is the key to the whole Christian life.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Righteousness in, righteousness out.

In other words, as E.

V.

Hill said, we got to get rid of that stinking thinking.

Casting down imaginations and every thought.

Now listen, that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, but bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

2 Corinthians 10, 4 and 5.

Wow.

So it's very important.

And it's a personal awareness, and then it's a practical awareness.

Number two, not only do we see the consciousness of a pure heart, Jesus is talking about, but we see the second thing is the consistency of a pure heart.

Look at what he says.

And this is a statement blessed are the pure in heart.

It's not an option.

His saying is, blessed are those that consistently, hey, have a pure heart.

In fact, there's two ideas here, I think.

Number one, the heart that is daily cleansed.

That's what he's talking about.

The Greek word for pure is kathros.

Kathras.

And it is a term, hey, that denotes cleansing and purifying by an outside agent.

Thank God that the scriptures leave us no doubt as to how our hearts may be made clean.

Listen to this.

This gets excited.

We are told that the heart is deceitful above all things.

Now watch this.

And desperately wicked.

So we start out before we come to know Christ with a really a wicked heart.

We're born in iniquity.

We're born in sin.

Psalms 51, 5.

Behold, we're formed in iniquity and in sin did our mothers conceive us.

So until we get saved, hey, we've got a wicked heart.

But then once we get saved, 1 Corinthians 12, 13, for by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body.

The Holy Spirit comes and takes up residence.

He cleanses us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to what?

Forgive us of our sins.

And I love this next word, and we're going to use it.

You're going to see how important it is.

And cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

Guess what?

The adjective there of the verb pure, pure in heart, hey, means the same thing.

It's a cleansing process, just like the heart with the circulatory system is taking the bad out and bringing the good in.

That's what the Holy Spirit does.

And it's so powerful.

We're told that, hey, we have a desperate heart, but then Jesus taught, listen to what he said, in Matthew 15, 18 through 19, Jesus taught that those things which proceed from the heart, now watch this, defile a man.

And then he goes on and tells us what those things are.

He says, evil thoughts.

Has anyone in here ever had an evil thought?

Three of us?

We got a whole church lying this morning.

Evil thoughts.

You ever had an evil thought?

And can't you get one in the most unbelievable tide?

I've literally been sitting there before, and all of a sudden Satan would just bring a thought to my mind, and I'd say, whoa, where did that come from?

Whoa, get thee behind me, Satan.

Whoa.

I mean, he attacks us.

Hey, can I tell you right now, the first place Satan's gonna attack you every time and tempt you to sin will be in your throat process.

Every time.

That's why you have to guard your mind.

Can I get an amen?

Guard the mind.

How do you do that?

You put on the helmet of salvation.

How do you do that?

You memorize scripture.

You put the word in so he, hey, when you when you put the word in, the sin goes out.

Amen.

Amen.

Thy word of a hit in my heart.

Come on.

That I might not sin against thee.

Psalms 119, verse 11.

Psalms 119:11

So he goes on and he says, evil thoughts, and then he says, murders, adulteries, fornications, theft, false witnesses, blasphemy.

So to help us understand this miraculous and glorious process of daily cleansing, hey, hey, I got to thinking about that.

And I said, let me make it more applicable.

Let me make it more understandable.

Are you ready?

For by grace are we saved through faith.

Do we not know that?

Amen.

Hey, not of ourselves.

It is a gift of God, not of works.

Okay, that's Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

Now, you can never, most of us stop right there when we quote it, because we're talking about being saved by grace and through faith.

There's nothing you can do to earn your salvation.

But we've got to quote verse 10 with Ephesians 8 and 9.

Then it says, for we are his workmanship.

Now watch.

Created in Christ Jesus.

Unto what?

Good works that he's called us to.

So not only do we have grace, now watch this, that saves us, but we also have that same grace that sanctifies us, that matures us.

Now those are theological terms that I taught for years in seminary.

But now watch this.

How does that work practically?

All right, three things.

First of all, the at well there's four, there's four applications of grace.

Application, I don't have this, this, God gave me this after I'd already done the outline.

That's okay.

Write it somewhere.

Hey, the application of the precious blood, that is the first step of that grace.

The blood of Jesus Christ, his son.

Now watch this, cleanses us from all sin.

1 John 1, 7.

And again, the verb cleanses is basically the same as the adjective pure in our verse.

So that's what he's talking about.

He's saying as we walk in the light, as God is in the light, a purifying process takes place.

And when Jesus died on Calvary's cross, he condemned and conquered sin in order that we might know that inner cleansing.

What did he say?

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

And there's that word again, cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

To be pure from all, hey, unrighteousness.

So we see the application.

And I love this.

The blood of Christ speaks of the atoning death of the Son of God to justify us.

And then the abiding life of the Son of God to sanctify us.

Now that's deep.

But here's, let me make it very simple in the old hymn.

Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.

No other fountain know.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Amen.

That's it, folks.

It's the blood.

It's the blood.

The application of the precious blood.

The second part of this grace, the ministration of the living word.

Listen to what he says.

Sanctify them through your truth.

Thy word is truth.

Whoa.

When ministering to his disciples, the master could declare, listen to what he said.

You are already cleansed through the words that I've spoken unto you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the greatest cleansing agent you could ever have.

The word of God purifies our hearts, it cleanses us.

And that's what he's saying right here.

David put it this way in Psalms 119, verse 9.

Psalms 119:9

How can a man, he asks his own question.

Listen to what he says to God.

How can a man cleanse his way?

David said.

And then he answers it, by taking heed according to the word of God.

Man, Psalms 119, verse 9.

Psalms 119:9

Wow.

He answered his own question.

So the Bible is God's way of cleansing the believer in heart and in our life.

And then the third thing, the operation of the Holy Spirit.

In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul reminds his readers of this sinful past, and here's what he said.

And such were some are you.

In other words, we were we were caught up in this.

Remember what Jeremiah said?

That wicked heart and sinfulness?

He says, You're caught up in that.

And then he goes on, though, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

1 Corinthians 6, 11.

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

So, this cleansing process.

Remember what Paul said?

Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, whereby ye are God's.

Thank God for the Holy Spirit, who is our cleansing agent through the, hey, he's the one that grabs the detergent, and the detergent is the word of God, and it goes to work on our hearts.

You ever Susan does this to me every once in a while.

She'll say, Can you clean your mess up?

Oh, I'm the only one that has a mess.

Hello.

Come on, guys.

Help me out here now, buddies.

Don't leave, don't throw me under the bus.

I meant sometimes I'm messy.

A lot of times I'm messy.

And every once in a while she'll say, clean up your mess.

And I thought up for a minute, I thought to myself, how many times have the Lord kind of looked down at Pastor Daddy and said, Hey, clean up your mess! Is that not true?

To all of us?

And how do we do that?

Psalms 139, 23, 24.

Search me, O God.

Know my heart.

Try me.

Watch what he says next.

Know my thoughts.

That if there be any wicked way in me, that wicked heart.

Lord, lead me in the way of righteousness.

In other words, Lord, clean up my mess.

Help me clean up my mess.

Actually, he says, I've already got the agent to clean it up.

You just got to act on it.

Oh, I tell people all the time, the Lord gets a bum wrap for a lot of things.

And then the last thing, number four, the inspiration of this blessed hope.

Speaking of the coming again of the Lord Jesus, hey, and our complete conformity to his likeness in that day, listen to what 1 John 3 says.

John goes on to say, everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure.

Oh, friends, how can we live in the light of the Savior in an imminent return and not be holy?

Do you understand something?

Listen to me.

One day, one day, we're all going to breathe our last breath.

Hello.

And to be absent from the body is to be pre, if you're a Christian, is to be present with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5.8.

Or if the rapture takes place and he takes his church out.

Listen to me, ladies and gentlemen.

Listen to me.

We are going to stand before an awesome God.

See, there's one thing to know he's coming.

How many of you believe he's coming?

Come on.

Come on.

All of us.

All of us.

We know he's coming.

But there's something else to be living like he's coming.

Hello?

Oh me?

Oh me?

So the question would be asked to all of us right now.

Are we live, we know he's coming, but are we living like he's coming?

That means we have control of all our thoughts.

Hey, our will, our intellect, our emotions, and our will.

Wow.

Boy, that's good.

I just wish we could live it all the time.

Amen.

But we can.

We can.

Sadly, we don't.

But we can.

We, hey, and you say, well, well, no, no, there's no well and there's no butts.

There's no bill of goat Christians.

Button all the time.

Uh-uh, uh-uh.

We have a choice.

Can I get an amen?

For me, oh me, we have a choice.

We can get up in the mornings and do what we're supposed to do by giving our heart and our thinking process to the Lord, getting in his word so he can cleanse us.

A proverb of a day keeps the devil away.

We can get in our prayer time and do your devotion.

And let the Lord.

I've had such a sweet time the last couple of weeks in my devotion.

Not preparing to preach, but preparing the Lord to cleanse my heart.

These beatitudes have been awesome.

They make me gentle, to make me kind, to make me meek.

I'm not a very meek person.

That's why I had Rick preach on meekness.

In fact, I wouldn't be a kind person either.

The way I grew up, it was either get him before he gets you.

That was my attitude.

I started raising myself at 11 years old.

So I was I didn't I wasn't brought up in like Susan was brought up.

Susan was brought up with a home that loved each other.

I was brought up in a home where nobody was there.

So I grew up by myself.

Really.

I mean I had a bed.

My parents never fixed breakfast or dinner or lunch.

I I I grew up on cereal and pop-tarts.

I didn't have that.

So I didn't grow up understanding what love and kindness and gentleness and meekness was.

I grew up, don't get in my way.

Because I'm fighting for myself.

So I understand how hard it is to allow the Holy Spirit to control every emotion, every feeling, and intellect.

But I'll tell you what, when I got in the Word of God 40 years ago, it changed Danny Lovett.

It turned me into a kind person.

It turned me into loving more, being kinder, being more gentle, looking out for the other person instead of looking out for me.

That's what it does.

That's that cleansing process.

And that's what he's really telling us here.

He really is.

And then number two, the heart that is duly controlled.

In other words, all the time.

Let me tell you what he means here.

The idea of control in this word pure describes, here's what it describes.

Write it down.

Single-mindedness.

It means the scripture used a lot of time in the Old Testament, single eye.

A single eye devotion.

In other words, you have to constantly keep your eyes fixed on him.

Can I get an amen?

My eyes are fixed on thee, O God, in thee is my guidance.

Psalms 141, verse 8.

Psalms 141:8

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way that it goes, I'll guide thee with my eye.

You've got to stay connected to the Word of God.

You've got to stay connected to the church of God.

You've got to stay connected to the people of God because that's how you have accountability to stay pure in heart.

Do you have anybody who holds you accountable?

Do you?

Other than your wife?

Now, my wife, she doesn't hold me accountable.

She makes sure I walk straight.

No accountability to it.

Here's a way, boy, go.

No, I'm joking.

Pretty close.

But she does it in a loving way.

And I thank God for it.

I need that.

I need somebody.

See, I'm remembering I'm not meek.

You don't have to say, come here.

Come here, honey.

No, you know what it takes for me?

Bam! Wake up.

Boy.

See, I grew up in the football days where the coach, what they they can't do it today or they'd be fired, but someone that the coach would just grab you sometimes by the face, mask, and almost break your neck.

Then come in and say, Do you hear me?

Do you hear me?

Do you what are you doing?

I love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get back in there and do it right.

Oh, that's terrible.

You've been marked for life.

Probably.

But it worked.

It got my attention.

It made me focus.

Every once in a while, the Lord just needs to lovingly say, Come here, preacher.

Now get your act together.

Refocus.

You're focused on the wrong thing.

Now, how does he do that?

He does it through the word, I can promise you.

But then I need somebody like a godly, beautiful, boy, you're looking good this morning, baby.

Godly wife that'll tell me the truth in love.

Not with the wrong motive, but with the right motive.

Brings me to the third thing.

The consequences.

The consciousness of a pure heart.

We have a personal awareness of purity, a practical awareness of purity.

Then we have the consistency of that pure heart, a daily cleansing and a duly control.

In other words, we allow the Holy Spirit to control us.

We put up parameters to help the Holy Spirit control us.

Everybody needs, listen to me, you need somebody other than your wife or husband in your life that's godly, that you look up to to give them permission to hold you accountable.

Amen.

Jeff right there doesn't have a whole lot of choice.

He lives right next to me.

I mean, I know everything he does.

Guess what?

He knows everything I do.

But what I'm saying, folks, is ready?

Guard your heart.

Now look at the consequences when we do this.

This is really good.

Here it is.

There's both a present and a future blessings provided here.

Number one, the present vision of God.

We see Jesus.

Throughout the New Testament, we have references to the vision of faith.

And what is faith?

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things what?

Not seen.

But all through the scripture, listen to what the Hebrew writer tells us.

We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor, Hebrews 2.9.

And then in Hebrews 12.2, looking unto, hey, let your eyes look unto the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross and is now set down at the right end of God the Father, Hebrews 12.2.

So we're always saying, hey, by faith, we've got to, we've got to what?

Look into Jesus and believe Jesus.

Listen to what Peter said.

He wrote this.

He says, Whom having not seen we loved, though now we do not see him, yet believing, we rejoice with joy, inexpressible and full of glory.

1 Peter 1:8.

1 Peter 1:8

These are other biblical references that lead us to accept the fact that we can experience this unbelievable joy because we know and see Jesus in our lives.

And I got to thinking, how does that happen?

Here it is.

Boy, this is so good.

Number one, how do we see Jesus?

Are you ready?

How do we actually see him through faith?

All right.

Write this down, these three things down, and put a star by.

Number one, we see the glory of Christ and God's world around us.

How many of you ever been to the Grand Canyon?

How many of you ever been to an unbelievable what about Yellowstone?

We just got back from Montana, uh Glacier National Park.

When you see this creation, you can't help but know that there's a God.

You see God in Romans 1.20.

It says that you see God in all creation.

Oh, this morning, what a beautiful morning.

The other night, the sunset was absolutely gorgeous.

You cannot look at that and know that.

Can I tell you something?

Man didn't do that.

And that didn't just happen.

God created the heavens and the earth.

Amen.

Oh, the joy.

I love what he says.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows his handiwork.

Psalms 19:1.

Psalms 19:1

All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

John 1.3.

And then secondly, we see the glory of Christ in God's work within the church.

Listen to what he said.

The glory of his inheritance is in the saints.

Wow.

Ephesians 1.8.

Can I tell you, I look back, we're in our uh January 10 years, ninth year.

Can I tell you, I look back and I look and I see all that God's done here, all that he's doing here, and Wednesday night, the excitement of those 21 new people that are excited about becoming part of this church, and many of you that have been with us and hung in there and just watch God work through the church.

That's another reason you want to be a part of a church.

You want to see him work through the church.

God has ordained the church.

God's, hey, birth the church.

God, hey, we'll build the church, and one day God will take the church out.

I'm excited to see what he's done through the church, folks.

And then he does the glory of Christ is seen in God's word before us.

Listen to what 2 Corinthians 3.18 says.

We all with the unveiled face, you know what that means?

Unveiled face?

It means that we look into the word honestly.

Hello.

We're not looking into it to get an answer for us.

We're looking into it to ask God to show us how we are like him so we can be like him.

Or ask it in a different way.

Lord, I'm coming today to your word so you can, hey, change me and make me more like you.

So that's what it means when he says in 2 Corinthians 3.18, we're looking.

And then he even uses the analogy.

Beholding is in a mirror.

In other words, he says, you can't help but see who you are and what your heart is when you get into the word of God.

And then he says, What's this?

What's this church?

Being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as the Spirit of the Lord.

In other words, the Spirit of the Lord metamorphosely changing into looking like Jesus.

So we can test our present vision right now.

Hey, do we see Christ in the world?

Do we see Christ in the church?

Do you see Christ in your life?

Are you a part of an active church getting involved?

Benji, you'll be doing next week serving.

Serving.

We have a lot of servants.

We had a big group of our serving team this morning that prays right before service every Sunday.

But folks, we're going to need more.

It's coming.

It's coming.

And you hadn't seen anything when we get these goals up, hopefully soon.

And then we get this floor down, hopefully first week in November, and you start having hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that you've never even seen or know coming in here to use it for basketball and to use it for volleyball and to use it for pickleball.

I'm telling you, they're coming.

And we have the opportunity as a church to be a light, to reach out and love them and bless them and just be a part of them because they're in our community.

Man, that gets me excited.

And then the future vision.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

You know.

When I was thinking about this, I've had the privilege of standing before the president of the United States.

Ronald Reagan twice.

George Sr.

Bush once.

I've had the president sitting right by Billy Graham at Liberty's graduation when I was a dean of the seminary.

All these men.

I've had the privilege of coming before them.

Some of the highest authorities in different countries.

God's allowed me to be there and come before these men.

What a privilege.

What an honor.

But ladies and gentlemen, listen to me.

One day you and I are going to have the honor and the privilege to stand before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

And see him face to face.

Oh, you got to listen to this.

Every time I've read it, I've cried.

And I can't help it.

Fanny Crosby.

Anybody know who Fanny Crosby is?

Again, the older folks.

I know, well, that's okay.

That's okay.

She wrote over six thousand.

Are you ready for this?

Six thousand hymns.

Six thousand.

Some of them are still the peak.

You know what?

She is born blind.

Born blind.

One time a preacher approached her sympathetically and remarked, I think it is a great pity that the master did not give you sight when he showered you with so many other gifts upon yourself.

What's this?

Fanny Crosby responded quickly.

Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition, she said, it would have been that I should be born blind.

I mean, he was stunned.

He said, I don't understand, Miss Crosby.

I don't understand, Miss Crosby.

I really don't.

She said, Oh, I know you don't.

But she said, because when I get to heaven, when I get to heaven, the first person I ever will lay my eyes on will be Jesus.

Wow.

Now folks, that's the difference.

Listen to me.

That's the difference between knowing he's coming and living like he's coming.

Amen.

So don't feel sorry for Fanny Crosby.

I want to have that same desire.

I want to live.

My mentor used to say, you gotta live like you're dying.

I didn't like that at first.

You gotta live like you're dying.

And my granddaddy, I'll never forget what he used to say.

But I then I understand what my granddaddy meant when he said, Danny boy, you need to live today like it's your last day.

Think about that.

If you knew this was your last day, what would you have done differently this morning?

Hello, what would you do differently when you leave this building in a few minutes?

How would you act differently to your wife?

To your husband, to your children, to your church.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Folks, that's the way we ought to be living every day.

I am so guilty of not.

But I want to.

And the older I'm getting, the more and more I want to.

Because it won't be long.

I'm gonna see him face to face.

And I want to hear him say, Well done.

Thou good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of the Lord.

Every head bowing.