Christ Methodist Church Memphis
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Christ Methodist Church Memphis
Blessed Are the Pure in Heart | Rev. Paul Lawler
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What does your heart want most? Jesus’ promise that the pure in heart will see God invites us to examine what has captured the center of our lives and discover how Christ cleanses, transforms, and gives us a heart increasingly set on Him.
Welcome to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Join us as we dive into this week's sermon that challenges our hearts and minds to grow closer to Christ. We pray that your heart is inspired and transformed by God's Word.
SPEAKER_01Love ones, as I read from God's Word this morning from the Gospels, I'm going to ask that you stand and hear God's Word. We'll go Matthew 5, 1 through 8.
Mountain Beatitudes Begin
SPEAKER_01Seeing the crowds who went up on the mountain when he sat down, the disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And may God add his blessing, as he always does, to the reading and the hearing of his holy word. You may be seated. So, loved ones, I think I've shared with you before, but I want to share this story with a slightly different nuance. When I was a child, my mom and dad divorced, and my brother and I at times would get into what I would call innocent creative mischief. And when I was, I don't know, 10 or 11, my brother was seven or eight, I learned that you could mow grass and make money. And I was one of those kids that was highly incentivized by the carrot stick, that you mean you'll pay me to do this. And so I was one of those kids who always had money in his pocket. And the kids in our neighborhood, we decided that we were going to buy a horse. We didn't tell our parents, but five miles outside of where we lived, there was a small farm, and we walked to the small farm and bought a horse and walked the horse back to the neighborhood and put it in an abandoned barn that was in the woods near the house. And I don't have time, we don't have time this morning to share how all that went, but we would literally take our wagons, buy hay, bring it, take care of the horse. We had a blast, very creative, until one day, City Animal Control knocked on the door of our house about five o'clock in the evening. My mom answered the door, opened the door. Here's this man in uniform, his animal controlled truck parked in front of the house. And he says to my mom, as my brother and I are sitting on the couch, ma'am, someone in this neighborhood owns a horse. And it's in the barn that's not far from the house, this house. We are trying to find out who owns this horse. It's illegal to have this animal within the city limits in a neighborhood. And my mom starts laughing. She just thinks that's that is so funny. And you know how a mom, some of your moms get this, can be very discerning. She turned and locked eyes with my brother and I, thinking we were going to chime in with the laughter at how ridiculous this is. Only when she locked eyes with us, her intuition went off, her discernment went off, and she looked at the officer and said, Sir, would you pardon me for just a moment? Closed the door, walked over and looked at my brother and I. What's going on level with me? And we spilled the beans. Now, about 30 years passed. They animal control took our horse. We never saw it again. 30 years passed. And one evening I get a phone call from my baby brother who lives in Dallas. He and his wife Kim are riding down the road together. And I hear, when I hello, and he goes, Hey man, how's it going? Blah, blah, blah. And I hear Kim in the background going, You're you are lying. You are you saying all kinds of sarcastic things. I can tell they're in the middle of some kind of discussion. And Patrick says, Paul, will you please tell Kim that we owned a horse when we were kids? Now I was so tempted to go, I don't have a clue what he's talking about. Just throw him under the bus. But what I ended up doing was saying, Kim, it's true that when we were kids, we bought a horse and owned a horse for a short period of time. Now, isn't it amazing that two people can know one another for over 30 years, be married, be very familiar with one another, and yet still learning new things about one another.
Familiar Words, Deeper Truth
SPEAKER_01When we get to this scripture today, you're familiar with it. You've heard it. You've heard its poeticness, you know the words, you've heard the Beatitudes, you've probably may have even heard it taught at times. But there are times, even though you're familiar with a passage, God's still revealing things about the passage that you didn't know that you need for the sake of living a vibrant, flourishing Christian life, which is what God wills for you. So when we get to Matthew 5, 8, we're aware that Jesus says these words, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Now, if we're honest, that verse can intimidate us a little bit. In fact, for some of us, it might even frighten you. Because if we're honest, when Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart, you immediately begin looking inside yourself. And as you look inside yourself, there's some things that you wish weren't there. We find attitudes that we don't like. We find motives at work that we really would not like anyone else to know about. We have thoughts we would never say out loud. We may have resentments that we've carried too long, we may have pride that disguises itself as humility. And suddenly we read words like, Blessed are the pure in heart. And we wonder, Lord, am I pure enough? But Jesus is not giving us a command to become sinless here, loved ones. He's showing us the kind of heart that God desires. It's the kind of heart, you'll understand this in a moment. It's the kind of heart that God can get a hold of and transform. And this is a great promise, promise, not only a promise that says you will flourish if you move in this Jesus-centered pattern, but this promise is that you will see God. And that's an incredible promise. So let's ask this
Pure Means Undivided
SPEAKER_01question: what does it mean to have a pure heart? Well, first let's go to the original language here, because we can miss it. We can be familiar, but miss what Jesus is saying. The pure word, the word here for pure in Greek is the word catharos. It and it literally means a purifying or unity or singleness of mind. If I wanted to be cheesy, I would say, turn to your neighbor and say singleness of mind. But I don't put you through that here. I'll do other things that may be cheesy, but not that. It literally means blessed is that which is unmixed. So think about that. So the word carries the idea of something that is unmixed, something that's undivided, something that's sincere. One of the hardest things I've ever done in my life was being a joining Jesus and planting that first church in North America. It was very challenging. I knocked on doors. I went door to door in neighborhoods. I learned very quickly that when people are out watering their yards in North America and they see you coming, that's the hardest part because they've got all these things running through their mind. Is that a cult? Is this Jehovah's Witness? Is he selling something? And I dealt with a lot of rejection. And sometimes when I got in gospel conversations, people would reject it. Sometimes there was some mild persecution. It was very difficult. But I there was a song. If some of you are old enough in this room to remember a Christian artist named Twila Paris, and she used to have a song that had a strong lyric, Give Me an Undivided Heart. I'd like to sing that for you now. I'm just seeing if you're paying attention. I would play that song every evening before I would get out of the car. I would just sit there and I would crank that up and I would go, God, give me an undivided heart to just move with you with a singleness of purpose for your glory. So really, when Jesus says, Blessed are the pure heart, he's saying a pure heart is a single heart. It's a single-minded heart. When Jesus speaks of the heart, I think most of us know this. Jesus is not speaking about your emotions. In fact, we find all over the pages of scripture in the Old Testament, New Testament, particularly in the Gospels, Jesus talks a lot about the heart. And the heart is a reference to the center of a person, the center of your life. It's where you think, it's where you desire, it's where you choose, it's where you worship, it's where you love, it's where really it's the control room of your life. And loved ones, a pure heart is like a pure glass of water, but maybe not in the way you think. And what I mean by that is that if you pour dirt into it, it's still water, but it isn't pure anymore. Something else has been mixed into it. And that's what happens to our hearts. God gets mixed with self. God gets mixed with selfish, self-centered ambition. God gets mixed with materialism. God gets mixed with caring too much about what other people think of you. God gets mixed with a heart that locks on to patterns that may be sinful, gossip, greed, or unchecked anger. And what can happen to us when things get mixed is we can say with our lips, we want God, but in our heart we want our own way. We can say, God, I want your forgiveness, but in our heart we don't want to forgive someone else. We can say, God, I want your patience in my development, but we don't give patience as a fruit of the Spirit to men and women around us. We say, God, I appreciate that you forbear, but we don't want to forbear with the weakness or weaknesses of people around us. We say with our lips, we want God's will as long as God's will comes into alignment with our own. And that describes a divided heart. And Jesus says, in effect, blessed is the person. There's a blessing, supernatural empowerment, favor flourishing on a person whose heart has been made single toward the living God. Now, loved ones, we need to pause. I need to clear something up for us. Here it is: a pure heart doesn't mean a perfect heart. That's not what Jesus is saying. It means a heart whose deepest desire is God Himself, the living God. Now, I'm going to share a childlike illustration with you that many of you are familiar with. A little boy reaches into a jar to get a handful of jelly beans. You've heard this, but he can't get his hands out of the jar because as he's clumped the jelly beans, his hands won't fit through the mouth. You've all heard that kind of illustration. And so he hears the instructions, you've got to let go of the jelly beans in order to move forward. And the little boy says, But I want all of them.
SPEAKER_02And that's the problem with many of us is that we sometimes don't let go in order to let God.
SPEAKER_01We say with our lips we want God, but we don't want to let go of anything. And what happens is we hold on to our bitterness, or we hold on to our pride, or we hold on to some secret sin? We hold on to our independence. And loved ones, I say this out of love for you. Then we wonder why why am I not experiencing the joy of the Lord? Why am I not not experiencing the peace of God that passes understanding that results from my mind and my heart resting in Christ Jesus? Why am I not experiencing empowerment in my wall with God? We wonder, but the pure heart says, Lord, I let go. The pure heart says, Lord, my plans, you can have them. The pure heart says, I'm not my own. I belong to you. The pure heart says, my possessions, you can have them. My pure heart or a pure heart says, my relationships, you can have them. My future, you can have them. Lord, everything belongs to you. That's the essence of Lordship. Single-mindedness. That's a pure heart, not a sinless heart, but that's a surrendered heart. A pure heart is a single-minded heart.
Cleansed by Grace
SPEAKER_01But secondly, a pure heart is a cleansed heart. Now, church family, I'm about to talk about the most important thing. Some of you may go mentally water skiing, but I pray, I'm praying for you. Those of you that have that proclivity, I'm praying, God deliver that person from mentally wakeboarding right now. As fun as that is, but just deliver them to get locked in. Because this is the most important thing we need to understand what I'm about to talk about. Jesus did not say, Blessed are those who have successfully made their hearts clean. He didn't say that. He said, Blessed are the pure in heart. And the gospel tells us how a sinful heart becomes pure. I don't know about you, but I notice sometimes in preaching and teaching, people will talk about what you're supposed to be without how to get there. And the Bible tells us how to get there. The Bible also tells us how not to get there. We understand that a pure heart is not cultivated simply by living an ethical life or a moral life. I know many people who don't know Jesus who live moral lives. I know that in the Bible, the Pharisees led moral lives, but that will not give you the kind of pure heart that Jesus is talking about here. It doesn't come through church attendance, even though the Bible says, let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. It doesn't come through giving money, even though the Bible talks about honoring God with the tithe and resources. That will not purify your heart. Our hearts are cleansed by the power of the grace of the living God applied to our heart, the shed blood of Jesus Christ applied to your heart. That is how our hearts are clean. Last night, I, Missy and I, we were watching an SEC football game, and I spilled something on my shirt. And you know, in order for that shirt to be clean or become clean, it doesn't become clean by hanging it in the house. It doesn't become clean because I choose to iron it. It doesn't become clean because I spray cologne on it to make it smell better. I know this is simple, but it only becomes clean when some outside agency begins to pour its effects on it. And the same is true in regard to the purity of your heart. Some outside agency needs to impart the deliverance from the stain of sin in your own heart in order for there to be purity there. Something has to happen to you. And this is why Jesus Christ came. The cross is God's answer to the impurity of the human heart. But let me remind you that the scriptures emphatically declare that he bore your judgment. God is a loving God, he's a just God. You cannot be loving and not be just. But the justice of God, the judgment of God that you and I deserve fell on Jesus. He shed his blood. The scripture says, without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sin. And I, as I've taught you many times, something of equal or greater value than your sin in your life had to be offered to satisfy the justice of God. And God so loved you that he sent his son that when his blood was shed, that that blood that had never participated in any sin was more than a sufficient sacrifice to cover and to cleanse your heart. He died in your place. Paul wrote, He who knew no sin became your sin so that you would become the righteousness of God. And he rose again and is alive forevermore, interceding for you at the right hand of the Heavenly Father. Now, loved ones, that's not preacher talk.
SPEAKER_02It's a truth. It's not my opinion. It's truth.
SPEAKER_01And it's true for you.
Trail Markers of Faith
SPEAKER_01My twins, our twins, Stuart and Laura, when they were in high school, we hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail together. And there, if some of you who have hiked the AT or parts of it, you're aware that there are all these little side trails. And there are some of these side trails, I mean, it looks just the path looks just as pronounced as the main trail. But what keeps you on the main trail, what keeps you on the main path is the AT is there's markers all along to keep you on the main trail. Jesus has given you markers, and they go like this: Blessed are the poor in spirit, a man or a woman who recognizes they need God. Blessed are those who mourn, those who mourn for their sin, and it causes their heart to turn toward God. Blessed are the meek, those who walk in God's power but under control. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. These are markers on the trail, so that you may flourish as a follower of Christ, that you may flourish as a human being, that you would flourish as a child of God. Now I want to take a moment and just rephrase what I said based on some teaching from Diane Ure. What has Jesus taught us so far in Matthew 1 through 8? Well, loved ones, he's taught us a pattern of conviction, contrition, conviction, confession, and conversion. Conviction in the context that when you feel guilty for sin, you know why you feel guilty?
SPEAKER_02Because you are. That's right.
SPEAKER_01Somebody said it. Because you're guilty. We live in, we do live in a time where people go, oh, don't feel guilty, blah, blah, blah. But the Bible teaches that God chastens you because he loves you. In fact, the scriptures teach that when you sense conviction for sin, loved ones, this is one of the proofs of God's love for you. It's one of the proofs that you're God's child. And I would submit to you that if you're participating in violating boundaries or some sin and you don't feel guilty about it, you might want to read the book of Hebrews because the scripture says that that is a very serious alarm that your conscience has become so seared and your heart has become so hard, and the truth is so suppressed in your being that your soul is in danger. Conviction is a gift from God. Conviction is God loving us and drawing us and wooing you to Himself. It's the arena where we recognize that we are poor in spirit and we need God. But then there is contrition, and that is heartfelt sorrow for our sin. This is what Jesus talks about when he says, Blessed are those who mourn. There's a blessing on you from God Almighty when you mourn the reality of your separation from God because of your sin or the hindrance of intimacy with God because of sin. Blessed are those who mourn this reality. There's confession, agreeing with God about his assessment of where we are in light of who he is. This is why the scripture teaches us if we confess our sin, the word confess literally means to come into agreement with God. When we come into agreement with God around these realities, listen to what God is like. God is faithful, he is just, and he will forgive you, forgive us, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, which brings us to conversion, which is Jesus adhering his very life to us, our moving into living, a John 15
Gospel, Not Religion
SPEAKER_01life. Loved ones, can I Remind you what the word gospel means. Remember the word gospel, Yuan Gellion? It means good news. Why is it good news? It's good news because the gospel isn't try harder. The gospel is Christ has done for you what you could never do for yourself. This is a tremendous difference in light of being religious versus knowing Jesus Christ through his gospel. Religion says, do enough and perhaps God will accept you. The gospel says you could never do enough. So Christ came to do it for you. Religion says, clean yourself up, whereas the gospel says, come to Jesus Christ and he will cleanse you. Religion says, earn it. The gospel says receive it. That's why Jesus came, and that's why he can speak in this verse with such clarity around the realness of your purity, because he purchased it for you at the cross. He isn't asking you to manufacture a purity from within yourself. He is offering purity because of what he's done at the cross through his death, burial, and resurrection on your behalf. Church family, if your face was really, really dirty, let's just say you just crawled out of a coal mine and you look in a mirror, you maybe you didn't realize how dirty your face was until you looked in the mirror. And you look there and you go, wow. You see, the law of God in Scripture, the standards of God are like that mirror. It shows us our sin. It shows us the character of God. It shows us what holiness is like. It reveals what is wrong. But the law can't save us. Only Jesus can do that. And when we come to Jesus, he doesn't merely cover our dirt, he cleanses it. He gives us a new heart and he begins a new work within us. A pure heart is a cleansed heart gifted by the work and power of Jesus Christ. Now, before we go to the third point, which will probably last several hours, here we go. I want to remind you of the life-giving nature of what Jesus opens up for you. And what I'm going to do is just a flyover of four scriptures real quick. Here they are. First of all, just be mindful that when you come to Christ and the vista of reality to live in is opened up before you, Isaiah says it like this: if you'd only paid attention to my commandments, then your well-being would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea. Think about that. Your well-being like a river. If we had journeyed down to the Mississippi River this morning and stared at it, we're aware that when you stare at the flow of the river at a molecular level, the same atoms and what's happening on a molecular level that you're looking at in that moment, you turn away for just a few seconds and look back, and it's a whole new river. And get the imagery of what the Lord is conveying to us through this passage. Your well-being would be like the flow of a living river that's constantly bringing the newness of God in your heart and your spirit. Your righteousness, which is the right way of living before Christ, would be like waves of the sea if we were to journey to the Gulf of Mexico, stand on the beach, wave after wave after wave, continually come and have been for thousands and thousands of years. And God declares that's the way I work in a life that is single-minded toward me. Notice Ezekiel 37, 14. I will put my spirit within you, and you will come to life. I think I referenced this maybe two or three years ago. And I listen to Confess My Sins. I listen to classic rock every now and then. I hope you'll give me grace. But there's a band called Evanescence. And they wrote a song years ago called Bring Me to Life. I knew some of you would know it and make me feel better. The author of that song wrote it because she was going through a period of depression. And there was a relationship that she entered into, and this person helped her work out of the dark period in her life. You may know the famous lyric of that song, Wake Me Up Inside. I think one of the reasons the song became so popular decades ago is because it's the cry of the human heart. And what God declares, I'll put my spirit in you, you will come to life. I'll animate your life. Proverbs 3 2, for length of days and years of life and peace will be added to you. Jesus, John 10 10, the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they might have life, have it abundantly. A pure heart is a cleansed and animated
Seeing God Clearly
SPEAKER_01heart. Third, a pure heart sees God. What a promise. Jesus says, for they shall see God. Now what does that mean? Ultimately, there is a day coming when God's people will see him face to face. We all know that. We know that based upon Scripture, but that's not all Jesus is talking about here. He's also saying that this is true in the present tense. And so Jesus is talking about something you can experience and know now. The pure in heart sees God working. The pure in heart tastes God's presence. The pure in heart sees God's hand at work in their life and the lives around them. The pure in heart hears God's voice through Scripture. The pure in heart sees his goodness and his faithfulness even in difficult circumstances. Now, I know you're all aware of this. I'm wearing glasses. Every now and then, glasses get dirty. But when they're dirty, you don't see things clearly. The world doesn't look the same. You need to clean the lenses. And when you clean the lenses, now you can see. That's profound. Write that down. The world has changed. Your ability to see has changed. And sometimes, loved ones, the problem in our lives is not that God has disappeared. Our problem is that sin has clouded our vision. Bitterness, the dirt of bitterness gets on the lens of our heart, and we don't see God working. Pride clouds it. We get unforgiving towards someone, and the dirt on the lens of our heart begins to distort the way that we see God. Selfishness begins to cloud. The dirt of unconfessed sin begins to cloud our lens. And therefore, our ability to see the reality of God's hand at work in circumstances become clouded. Loved ones, yesterday, right here, we had a prayer summit. There were members of the Christ Church family that gathered to pray for you. And as we were getting ready to pray, the body took a few minutes just to share things that God is doing in their lives. And one of the first things that was shared was two people who forgave one another, who reconciled with one another.
SPEAKER_02You could see God at work.
SPEAKER_01This summer, many of our students served with SOS, putting a new, putting new roofs on houses among the poor and the marginalized in our city and building relationships, particularly with widows who are living alone and living with very little financial means. And as those relationships are built and the love of God is not only shared verbally but demonstrated outwardly, we see God at work. Loved one, when your spouse was a little too harsh with something that she said or he said, and you forgive them, and then you sense an equilibrium in your heart and your spirit, you sense the smile of God, you literally say, Oh, that feels better. I'm free from the anger, I'm free from the bitterness. I've forgiven, I've chosen to forgive. You see God at work. Four or five years ago, when the Christchurch family, many of you in this room, you gave resources, uh, in fact, collectively, well over $50,000 to help reach an unreached people group called the Felani. And since that time, many of you in our church family have continued to pour in to new believers that have come into the family of God out of this unreached people group, this people group that sometimes in parts of North Africa have been very violent toward Christians and others. And we see fruit. We see God at work as this people group is being reached for Jesus Christ through this body. That we last spring we had a serve day where there were men and women, hundreds in our church family, that were serving with different partners in ministry in our city, serving the poor and the marginalized. It's beautiful, but you see God at work. That will happen again this Saturday.
SPEAKER_02And the issue is there's dirt on the lens of your heart where you're not seeing clearly. God is at work. So I was at the hospital.
SPEAKER_01This was not at this church where I was serving, but another church. And there was a lady in our church that her husband had been praying for years that she would come to know Christ. She was in church every Sunday, but did not know Christ. No fruit of the Spirit, no desire for spiritual things, never read her Bible, never served in any ministry, just a very indifferent heart. And I had prayed for her as well. But the doctors had given her a diagnosis that if she didn't have a surgery, she was going to die. And if she had the surgery, this particular surgery is highly risky. And if it was successful, it would extend her life. If it was not successful, that she could die on the table. And she knew that. And so I know she doesn't know the Lord. I many people have been praying for her. And so before she goes into surgery, I share the gospel with her again. And I just remind her, I called her by name and said tenderly, God so loves you. As many as received him, you pray to receive him, called her by name, spoke to her tenderly. I can't draw her to Jesus. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. And I said, To many as received him, he gave the power to become children of God. That's what the scriptures teach. God didn't come into the world in Jesus to condemn the world, but to but to save it. He loves you, he wants to draw you to himself. And it was like she was listening but not listening. And she drew me near. She said, I have something I want to say. And I drew near to her. And then she said in a voice near my ear, she said this.
SPEAKER_02She says, Pastor, what I really want is a new house. She wasn't talking about a house in heaven. Here she is at death's door. And her heart is still set on the world.
What Your Heart Wants
SPEAKER_02I want to ask you a question this morning.
SPEAKER_01Let me give it to you. Then I want to give you a few minutes or just a little bit of time to think about it. Here it is. Here's the question I'm posing to you. And I'm asking that every man and woman, even children, that you would ask this question. What does your heart want most?
SPEAKER_02What does your heart want most?
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna give you 30 seconds just to reflect on that. And that's awkward in a room full of people. 30 seconds.
SPEAKER_02What does your heart want most? God came to this earth encapsulated in skin. And he said, Here's a pathway to flourish.
SPEAKER_01And one of the markers on the plan pathway is blessed are those who are single-minded. They shall see God.
SPEAKER_02Blessed are the pure in heart. They shall see God. So Jesus, give us clean hearts.
SPEAKER_01We can't do it. You didn't intend for us to do it on our own. So through your shed blood, give us clean hearts. Fill us with your Holy Spirit. I'm gonna ask you, make that personal. Would you ask Him to do that? Cleanse your heart, fill you with His Holy Spirit. God, give us single-minded hearts. Give us surrendered hearts. Lord, give us hearts that love you more than anything else. This we pray in Jesus' name.
unknownAmen.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ. To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at ChristchurchMemphis.org. We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ all being used.