The Way Back Home: The Pure in Heart | Part 6

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Good morning, Awakening family.

I have to respond to that last fun fact that after that game against Pastor Ryan, I retired.

No, I love basketball, and I um was a scrappy little point guard.

My dad put in the Harvard Alumni Journal when I was 12 years old, he said, Charlie is a fiery humanist and a repressed basketball star.

Too short.

So, but how many of you know that whatever are both limitations or skills, God has a place for us in his family?

And I want to thank you, Awakening Family, for being a family of faith to us.

We're really happy to be with you.

It's a great memory to be in this theater when we first started coming and then started encouraging, we were here, and then to watch it grow into the uh to the cafeteria and other locations.

Very exciting to be a part of this.

And I love the series we're in.

And I think I want to thank you for your warm welcome.

Can we just give God praise for our pastors and for the series speakers so far of the goodness they've brought to us in this series?

Can we just do that for right now?

Praise God for that.

I had a chance to listen to some of the messages, and it just increases the intimidation factor to come and join you.

But we've been well taught that we're finding home.

We're finding our way back home through a very countercultural set of teachings that our Lord Jesus gave to us.

And what I'm excited about, how many of you agree in our world we need to move from anger to advocacy?

We've got enough accusation out there.

How about some advocacy?

How about some affirmation?

Or moving from hatred that is so easily stirred up to holy love?

I want to thank you for embodying that today.

And then, am I the only one that reacts at times to what I read or see or hear online?

Or am I the only one?

There are people that open their mouth and I have a reaction.

By the way, it's not always sanctified.

And when we're going to be talking about the pure in heart today, how do we move from reaction to real righteousness?

Not self-righteousness.

And so this important series that we're in.

And the other thing I want to just remind you of is Matthew's gospel itself is pretty amazing.

The opening chapter of Matthew, you might remember this when you've heard a Christmas message.

Jesus is called Emmanuel.

That means, help me out, God with us.

Or as Dale Brunner says, the with us God.

I really like that emphasis.

And then at the end of the book, Jesus says to his followers, I'm going to be with you always to the end of the age.

Matthew is a book of the presence of Jesus and the authority of Jesus.

And then he organizes the teachings of Jesus in an extraordinary fashion.

This Sermon on the Mount is a beautifully crafted set of chapters, and these beatitudes from the lips of our Lord, brought by Matthew, really help us see a different way of living.

And I want to remind us that these beatitudes fit together.

The blessed follower of Jesus, that wonderful word, makarios, to be congratulated, happy, blessed, joyful, exuberant.

The first and the last beatitude fit together.

It's a beautiful structure.

Blessed are the poor in spirit and those persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

How many of you know it's okay to be persecuted for obedience but not obnoxiousness?

Big difference, right?

But blessed are you when you are challenged.

But are you humble?

And then blessed are those that mourn, the mournful.

They're mourning over both life and sin.

But also, blessed are the peacemakers.

You know, I have friends over the years who declared to me, I'm called by God to agitate.

And I said, well, there are moments that we need to raise consciousness, moments we need to expose things that need to be changed.

But how many of you know agitation that never stops never goes anywhere?

How many of you know we need more peacemaking?

We need more women and men engaged in bringing reconciliation and shalom and comfort and help.

And then Jesus puts together the meek and the pure in heart.

And today we're going to look at the pure in heart.

And as we find out, meek is this unbelievable self-emptying, this beautiful sense of the absence of self-centeredness, the absence of focus on ourselves and humility, and then the pure in heart, and the meek inherit the earth, and the pure in heart have their eyes transformed to be able to see God in ways they wouldn't otherwise.

And then he says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they'll be filled, and the merciful, for they'll obtain mercy.

So this beautiful set of Beatitudes, these are starting points for our walk with God and their attributes that we're always working on as well.

So today we want to look at purity of heart.

So why don't you just help me and let's say the verse together just to kind of remind our minds blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Can we do it again?

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

The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in the 19th century was coming up against a lot of hypocrisy, religiosity, a church that was stale.

And he wrote a little book in preparation for the cross and for Easter called Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.

The title is profound, the book is profound, but the sentence alone is enough to meditate on.

Lord, how can I be at a point where I'm not double-minded, where I'm not conflicted inside?

Peter Crieft is a great philosopher from Boston College, and he said the pure heart means a single heart, a heart in which only one desire lives, and that's love.

And then C.S.

Lewis, if these names are new to you, take a moment this afternoon and tomorrow, please not during the service, but take a moment, look them up.

But if C.S.

Lewis is new to you, welcome to a wealth of wisdom and joy.

It's safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.

Do we want to see God as God, or humans that we are, rebels that we are at times, do we want to sort of manufacture a deity to our own liking?

And so a pure heart challenges us to go a step further.

And I'm grateful that God can be at work.

So what is a pure heart?

Well, it's both a process and a state of purification.

So blessed are the pure in heart.

It's who we are to be, but it also, the text there implies that there's an ongoing surgery in the soul.

There's an ongoing, the literal word there is catharsis.

And this sense of impurities being removed, but not only something being extracted, but something being developed.

I want to say that again.

I think that's so important.

A pure heart is not only where something is the absence of impurity or mixed motives, but it's also the presence of the motivation of love for God and for our neighbor.

And the heart in the Bible is the seat of all of our inner life.

Our affections, our dispositions, our emotions, our intentions.

It's where our thoughts start and begin to be ordered.

And so when Jesus is calling us to this, what a process he's calling to us.

What a beautiful thing he's called us to be.

I had the privilege 36 years ago of making a phone call to a church in Maryland, and a pastor named Eugene Peterson picked up the phone.

And he's the translator of the message Bible, some of you might be familiar with.

A wonderful pastor to pastors.

And I had a chance to go be with him and hear about his ministry and learn from him as a young pastor myself.

But he said, you know, the real job of pastors and the real job of the work of the Spirit in the life of God's people is to keep us attentive to God.

Aware, attentive, thinking about how to please and respond to God.

And he put it this way in the message Bible.

He said, The inside world is put right so that we can see God on the outside.

Would you join with me and could we just ask the Holy Spirit to do a work this morning in our hearts by his grace?

Would you join with me in prayer, Father?

In the name of Jesus, we come to you.

And we come to you with hearts of love for your goodness and grace, hearts of gratitude and thanksgiving for all you've done, for who you are.

And we come to you, Lord, as fragile and finite human beings, often full of feelings and too often so full of ourselves and less full of your grace at times.

And so, Lord, we come to you and we offer our hearts to you today and ask that you would do a work in us.

You would do a deep and lasting work in us because we've been exposed to your word.

And Lord, we not only pray for ourselves, we pray for our sisters and brothers on our right and our left and in front and behind.

With no judgment toward ourselves or others, only you know everything about us.

We just bless one another right now with a work of the Spirit in our hearts, in Jesus' name.

Would you say amen?

What a good God.

What do you say if we go to lunch now?

I think we're done.

Well, let me share a couple insights that I hope will be helpful.

Um in our hearts, the Bible gives warnings and promises that we just need to be alert to.

And I'm just putting a few scriptures here to anchor what's behind this beatitude.

In Psalm 24 and in Matthew 23, the writers tell us that we need to have clean hands and a pure heart if we're going to come before God and enjoy God.

Now, just to remind our own souls here, there's no way we ever earn the right to be in God's presence.

How many of you know Jesus paved that way and gives us grace to be able to enjoy God?

But to enjoy God, it's hard to enjoy Him when our minds and hearts are in a hundred places and divided and divisive.

And so clean hands and a pure heart.

And then in Matthew, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders, and he's telling them that you appear to be pure on the outside, but inside, you've really got some problems.

Now, Matthew 23 is a passage we could spend another talk on.

But when I was a young pastor, I joined with Jesus.

Jesus, get those hypocrites.

Boy, go get them.

And I was just with Jesus, right?

Against all those hypocrites.

And then one day the Holy Spirit said, What makes you think you're not one?

Uh, Lord, um, I'm on your side, remember?

And by the way, Jesus was not coming with accusatory or condemnatory words to me.

He just said, Charlie, you're equally suspect to hypocrisy.

You're equally tempted by the things that I rebuked those leaders for.

Bring your heart to me.

Bring your heart to me.

And by the way, now I join with Advocate Jesus praying for the people that are struggling.

How many of you know that's a lot better than accusation?

We join with him.

Proverbs 4.23 and Matthew 12.34, the Proverbs says, Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

And Matthew's text, the mouth declares what's in our hearts.

Now that doesn't mean we don't let words slip or make mistakes.

It doesn't mean if we verbally fail at a moment that we're evil.

It just means that we, this heart kind of matters.

And therefore we want to open ourselves up to God and to really let him do the work in it that he needs to do.

And as I do this this morning, can I just share?

The last couple years have been challenging for Kathy and me.

We've had some amazing blessings and ministry opportunities, and we've had we've got an amazing growing family.

I know I look 39, but my son is 39.

And uh and uh we love our grandkids, and we've had some wonderful times, but we've also had am I the only one that's had people promise things and not deliver?

Am I the only one that's had an expectation or two not met by institutions?

Let's all smile politely.

So we we've had we've had this joyful lament going on, this mixture of sweet and salt.

And almost every time I go to the Lord and say, Lord, they didn't do what they said.

God, when are you gonna break through?

And and then the Holy Spirit keeps saying, Um, while you trust me for the future, do today well.

Oh, you mean I gotta grade those papers?

Yeah, do today well.

Oh, I've got to forgive that driver.

How many of you know we're sanctified as much on the Silicon Valley Highways as anywhere else in the world?

You see, God's working on our hearts.

So let me share four insights that I hope will be helpful as we try to kind of unpack this and apply it together.

Number one, we need to be people of focus.

Purity of heart begins with an essential focus, and it's this: our entire Christian life is a thank you to the grace of God.

You see, Old or New Testament, Hebrew or Greek scriptures, the story of Israel or the story of Jesus is not a story of religious people climbing a mountain and hoping to make it to the promised land.

It's a story of the grace of God delivering, making a covenant, making promises, and then asking us to say thank you.

And if you're newer to faith, or maybe you're wrestling with what this Christian faith means, maybe the rules seem a little bit difficult.

By the way, they are.

The Bible's not unclear about things.

G.K.

Chesterton said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it's just been found hard and rarely tried.

So, yeah, it's life isn't easy.

But you know what happens?

We forget that while we while we were rebels, he reconciled us through the cross.

While we were far away, he comes near.

He pursues us.

And then he says, I want you to obey me, I want you to follow my ways as a thank you, not trying to earn your way.

When I first heard this message as a teenager here in San Jose, not only did I respond to the grace of God, but can I just thank you, Awakening Church, for being the church?

Next year will be 50 years that I followed Jesus.

And it was in a church like this, where the gospel was shared, and I said yes, and then people surrounded me and cared.

They didn't ask me what my GPA was or what my scoring was on the basketball court, which was minimal by that point.

They didn't ask me what clique I was in or group I came from.

They were just glad I was there.

And a couple of years later, when my family went through crisis, sisters and brothers, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, they were all there.

I had to take my maroon-checked coat to the dry cleaner.

Come on, do you see you see the bell bottoms and the platform shoes?

Come on.

There was a uniform back then.

Because of all the pancake of the hugs of the mothers of the church.

Thank you, awakening.

And if you're feeling like God might be distant, let me just tell you, he's as close as your breath, and he's as close as the smile of a sister or brother right next to you.

Our life is a thank you to God.

So, what does Satan want to do?

He wants to either make us careless, oh well, I've got grace, doesn't matter what I do.

By the way, God still loves you, but it does matter what you do because am I the only one that's experienced a few consequences of my stupidity?

It does matter what we do.

He loves us.

Or the devil wants to make us hyper-scrupulous.

Oh, I didn't get my full Bible reading in before I left home for work.

I must not be blessed today.

Or am I the only one that kind of checks locks three times?

Folks, let's have the focus of a thank you to Jesus as how we shape our lives.

Billy Graham puts it better than I can.

It's impossible to live pure lives until we have pure hearts.

Many people are trying to put the cart before the horse.

Purity of motives, desires, actions to old, deceitful hearts.

No wonder we've ended up with such moral failures in spite of our vaunted knowledge and psychological approaches.

Guard the heart.

Lord, help me to remember that I'm saying thank you to you.

Number two, I can't wait for the party here.

We got to celebrate our dear friend.

So just a couple more points before we are blessed and respond to his presence.

We need to be people of faith or faithfulness.

We have to reject fatalism and fantasy.

Now, I know this is an old reference because I'm an old guy, okay?

But if you've ever heard of Winnie the Pooh, I think there's too many Christians with the spirit of Eeyore.

Oh well, it'll never change.

It'll never work.

And then there's too many people with a kind of Winnie the Pooh, it's okay.

Somewhere between it's okay when it's not, or it'll never change, is faith.

We must reject fatalism and fantasy.

We can make real progress in purity of heart and in our life without perfectionism.

How many of you know the return of Jesus is when it's all done?

And until that time, until we see him face to face, God's at work.

We can't go back in time and change the past.

But we can repent.

By the way, I'm really good at wulda, coulda, shoulda.

Anybody else in the room?

But we can repent.

The Savior can wipe away our tears of regret, remove the burden of our sins.

His atonement, his cross allows us to leave the past behind and move forward with clean hands, a pure heart, a determination to do better.

This is what the Lord has for us.

He wants us to be focused on saying thank you.

He wants us to have the faith that we can make progress without extremes.

A third thing that I think will be encouraging to us, and I hope it'll encourage your heart and your faith as we go forward, and that is this that as we live a life of focus, and as we live a life of faith, we need to be fearless.

Unafraid to let the Lord all the way in to do surgery.

In one of C.F.

Lewis's children's books called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there was a boy he said deserved his name, and it was Eustace Scrubb.

Self-centered little kid, just the kind of kid that irritated you on the playground, and the kind of kid that was just a problem.

And his consequence, Was he turned into a dragon?

Well, slowly the work of repentance happens.

And then Eustace is finally ready not to be a dragon.

He's finally ready to let the Christ figure, Aslan, change him back to a boy again.

But here's the challenge: he has to let Aslan all the way in.

And the way Lewis describes it is when Aslan's claw reached into the dragon skin, nothing had ever felt more wonderful and painful than that moment.

When we're fearless, when we invite God into our hearts, it will be the most wonderful surgery and it will be life-changing.

It won't always be fun or easy, but it'll be life-changing.

Because we're secure under Jesus Christ, we can let Him come all the way in.

How many of you are glad that He actually can heal the hurts of our past?

He can actually deliver us from hurts and hang-ups and habits that impede our walk.

And I'd like us to do one more pause for prayer before I bring the final point.

I'd like us to bring something from our past to the Lord that's still in our minds and hearts and welcome the Holy Spirit in.

Would you join me in prayer just for a few seconds?

Lord, we come to you today in the name of Jesus.

And Lord, there are still regrets or mistakes or even deep wounds of abuse.

There are still parts of our past that impinge on our hearts today.

Holy Spirit, would you come and would you market redeemed, forgiven, being healed and delivered?

It's a process, Lord, and we submit ourselves to you.

Lord, those wounding words that came to me as a young man, I bring them back to you and thank you that your words of grace overtake them.

That moment of rejection or abuse we bring to you, and we thank you that the counsel and encouragement and help that you're bringing through others and bringing by your spirit helps us live a hopeful future.

Lord, we bring that past moment to you and we declare that our identity and our hope is in your grace.

In Jesus' name.

Would you say amen again?

Amen.

As we're fearless before the Lord, I love what Sunday Adala says that no matter how little it might seem, if you're doing whatever you're doing, you're doing it for the Lord, and you're doing it with a pure heart, it's no longer a waste of time.

Finally, number four, it's great to have focus, it's great to have faith, it's great to have an openness, a fearlessness to God's work, but we need to do this with friendships.

Purity of heart is a personal thing, but our personal growth doesn't happen in isolation.

We walk in humility, we walk in community, learning to have critical minds but not critical spirits, learning to think deeply and wisely and at the same time become innocent again in our hearts.

This is the wonderful paradoxical power of Jesus that we're called to think with greater maturity, to provoke one another to love and good works, to encourage us.

I had a Sunday school teacher who was a very well-known business person in the Silicon Valley, and he was a very good communicator.

Four times a year, he would have a speech coach anonymously listen in on a Sunday school class and critique what he did in order to get better.

By the way, please please give me praise afterwards.

Don't critique.

No.

But I I want to just I'm saying this because I want to admire the humility that guy had been teaching for 30 years, and he still wanted to get better.

But friendships help us, they encourage us, they challenge us.

By the way, there's some here that you can even feel anonymous in a crowd.

Please know there will be a friend in this community that will walk with you.

They may not have all the answers.

There may be other people that will help, but no one needs to feel alone.

What does Satan try to do?

He wants us to be isolated or proud.

He wants us to think we don't need anybody.

That terrible Frank Sinatra song, I did it my way.

Oh, what an awful song.

You know what our song is?

We're learning to do it his way together.

That's our song.

But I think Mark Hart's correct.

Love is messy.

Love involves hardship, demands patience, requires forgiveness, tests maturity, strain friendship, challenge priorities, refine character, ignite the heart, unleash the soul.

Love is not something you sing about, it's the reason you sing.

Love is not something you write about, it's the reason we write.

It's not something you live to find, it's the reason that you're alive.

Can we do a little humor here as we prepare for a commissioning prayer?

I'm just a little tired of cliches on posters and sweatshirts, aren't you?

I love it.

Be a good person.

I want to just go to everyone with that and say, duh.

But the question I have is, where's your goodness coming from?

Or the worst one.

Love is love.

Okay.

White is blanco.

I mean, what what do you say?

You know, gray is gri in French.

I mean no, love.

The love that sent Christ to the cross for us.

The love that created space-time in the first place.

The love that has protected us and carried us.

That love is seeking the highest good of another person.

And that's why our friendships are so important.

They provoke us to have our motives and our methods do well.

You know, in a world of idolatry, we need to serve God on God's terms, not create a God that serves our terms.

In a world of immorality, we need to aspire for the virtues of Jesus Christ, not reduce virtue to niceness.

In a world of injustice, anybody aware that there are some injustices in the world?

You're all saying you're going, yeah, right at my workplace.

And there are.

God calls us to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God.

And as the worship team comes and we prepare to respond to God, we prepare for saying yes to Christ to work in our hearts, I'd like us to, I'd like you to receive a commissioning prayer and a benediction that I trust will be a blessing as we seek to be pure in heart.

Would you bow your heads with me?

Thank you, Lord.

Awakening church, may we be commissioned to live focused lives of gratitude.

Honoring God with our obedience, loving Him because He first loved us.

And Lord, we ask now, as we receive this benediction, that you would help us grow in gratitude for grace, grow in a thank you for undeserved mercy.

Awakening Church, in the name of Jesus Christ, would you receive the call to faithfulness?

Receive the call to grow and to progress in holiness and maturity.

Lord, we ask in Jesus' name that you would keep us from laziness and legalism, keep us from no expectations and from perfectionism, and allow us to grow in grace together.

Examine our hearts.

See if there's any way in us that needs to be changed.

And we come to you in humility and thank you.

It's a sign of your love that you want us to grow.

Keep us from the wrong kind of scrupulosity, the wrong kind of self-condemnation.

Lord, we thank you that your self-denial is not our self-destruction, but rather the emptying of ourselves to be filled with your spirit.

And then, Lord, we ask you to give us friendships and to be friends with one another so that we can grow in faith, hope, and love.

Praise your holy name.

Awakening Church, would you stand with me in the presence of God?

And would you just receive now, as we prepare to respond in worship and continue in prayer, would you receive now the blessings of God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who is also Abba?

Would you receive the blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of Lords, and He calls us friends?

Would you receive the blessings of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, whose power animates all creation, who raised Jesus from the dead and lives inside of us?

Would you receive the blessings of a pure heart coming from the one who is pure and would rather die than live without us?

Lord, we give you praise and we give you thanks.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Saints, would you say amen?

Could we give him praise right now?

He's worthy.

Go ahead.

Give him praise.

He's worthy.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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