Happy Are The Holy - Part 2

Audio on demand from Vision Christian Media.

If you're a believer, your heart belongs to God. The problem is that Satan keeps trying to get a foothold there. So how can you stop him and keep your heart pure? Today, a Turning Point doctor over Jeremiah shares some biblical strategies for keeping the enemy on the run and keeping your heart clean before the Lord. Let's listen as David introduces the conclusion of his message. Happy the whole.

Thank you so much for joining us. We are studying the Beatitudes, the and the teaching of Jesus on the Mount of the Beatitudes and told you before I actually been where this was taught. And I've had the privilege of teaching some of these principles on the mountain where they were first time. What a great experience that was. I also remember it was very hot today. I did that. But we had a great time just trying to imagine what it would have been like when this material was taught for the very first time by the son of God. Well, today we're going to finish up what Jesus said about purity and holiness. And you may wonder how that can make you happy. But if you wonder that you need to keep listening because we're going to explain it and hopefully motivate you to make that one of the goals of your life. You know, the world's pretty dark these days. That's all the more reason for practicing righteousness. You you shine as never before in the darkest of night, the brightest of the light. These are really practical and important principles for us to learn. Jesus wanted us to know this. He went out of his way to make these available to us, these principles, these attitudes of life. And we're glad that you're joining us as we study them together. Well, let's get back to our study from Matthew Matthew, chapter five and verse eight. Happy are the Holy.

You know, we live in a world that's pretty dirty, not easy to be holy in this world, is it? I don't know if you've ever read any of his writings, but Robert Fulghum is one of my favorite writers because he's a pastor a long time ago. He's recovered and he's got a wonderful book out in which he talks about the occasion when he went to speak at a graduation exercise in his own quiet way. He stood up in front of these graduating seniors and he said, how many of you would like to be an adult? Every single kid raised their hand.

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

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

But you know what? What he was talking about is kind of like what it is to be a person in the world today. You know, you're just dealing with dirty stuff all the time. How do you deal with it? How do you deal with the issue of practical holiness? How can I be pure in my life so that I can see God? We know I'd like to take a few moments and talk about some practical things, and they're going to be a little bit maybe naive to some of you, but I know this is an issue with a lot of folks. It's an issue with a lot of young men. It's an issue a lot of people struggle with. And I think there's some help in the word of God that we don't want to pass over quickly. How can I, as a person who wants to be pure, live a pure life in the world in which I live today? I'd like to suggest two or three things. Number one, I love what the Book of Job tells us in Job Chapter 31, in verse one, where we're told that Joe made a covenant with his eyes.

He made a covenant with his eyes. What a wonderful suggestion. It's sort of like this. You say eyes. You and me have to talk. We have to make an agreement. I want to make a covenant with you eyes. We're not going to look at stuff we shouldn't look at because you see the eyes are the windows of the soul. It's through the eye gate that impurity enters into the soul. Do you remember the little chorus we used to sing when we were growing up in Sunday school? It goes like this. Oh, be careful, little eyes. What you see.

Oh, be careful, little eyes. What you see for your father up above is looking down in love. So be careful, little eyes. What you see. Whenever I would hear that, I wasn't sure he was looking down in love, but I knew he was looking down, you know, purities.

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

Number two, consecrate your mind.

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

Continually your mind consecrate your mind. You say, Well, Pastor Jeremiah, how do I do that? Well, let me give you the third thing, which is a good way to do that. And this is going to sound like a foreign language to this world. This used to be pretty common among us as Christians in another generation, but in this generation, it is really like a foreign language. So, you know, I'm really serious about this. And I want to tell you. Here's the third thing. Commit yourself to Bible memory.

What's that?

While you take the Bible and you read a verse and after you get done reading it several times, you see if you can say it back out loud without looking at the Bible.

And then you do it again. Then you put your Bible away and you think I can say that verse without reading it. That's Bible memory.

When I was a young person, there was an organization called the Bible Memory Association, and I was enrolled in that as a young person. And we used to get a book. And it had the Bible memory versus in. And we'd have to memorize those Bible verses. And then every week we had a listener. You'd go and you'd recite your versus to the listener and they'd check to see whether or not you set him right. And, you know, you think that's rote. And that's the old classical way of learning. And nobody does that anymore. Except I got to tell you, those are the versus I still remember. I'll never forget them. They are etched in my young soul and they'll be with me all my life. And I'm not just giving you some homespun counsel about the importance of memory. That's exactly what the Bible says. Listen to this.

Where with all shell, a young man cleanse his way by taking heed there unto thy word, Psalm 119 says thy word. Have I hid in my heart? What's the rest of a class that I might not sin against the. You see, the problem with life and the problem with the battle for purity is you never know when the attack is going to come. You never know when the pressure is going to be there. And you don't always have time when you are tempted or when the pressure comes. You don't always have time to say, hold it. I've got to get my Bible.

You're gonna have the word of God available to you in your heart.

Memorize the word of God. You say, what should I memorize? All kinds of ways for you to get involved. One of the greatest memory programs I know of is the navigators topical memory system. And if you don't know what that is right. To the Navigators Home Office, they'll be happy to send you information about it. And you can get involved in a program of hiding the word of God in your heart. You know what that does? It begins to replace the other things that come into your life to destroy your purity. The Bible says that as Christians, we are responsible to bring into captivity. Every thought to the obedience of Christ. That is a challenge. But through memorizing the word of God, it is a possibility. Let me give you the fourth thing I want to say, and that is you have to learn how to counteract Satan strategy in your life. Did you know that Satan has a strategy for you? Oh, yes. He knows you. He sure does. And he knows all your weaknesses and all the ways he can get you. And he knows me like a book. And he knows that one of the things I can be tripped up with often is discouragement. Sometimes when I just get overwhelmed with everything and, you know, it's usually not the big thing that ultimately gets me some little crazy thing that happens. And all of a sudden. And, you know, Satan sitting back there laughing. Gotcha. That's where I gotcha the last time. But do you know what his strategy is for you? Did you know that he has a plan to subvert you?

He wants to drown your influence. The Bible says that the enemy of our soul, Satan, goes around like a roaring, lying, seeking whom he can devour. And I studied that text one time in depth that I found out that what he wants to do. He wants to drown your influence. He wants to destroy your ability to serve God and to be of any value to anyone by just subverting you and trapping you and destroying you.

And I want to say something to you, and I hope you'll listen to me, especially you guys. The thing that is so amazing to me is how easily we fall into his trap and how we keep getting caught at the same place.

Every time I had a man come to see me many years ago who was struggling in this area of his life, and he told me that he always seemed to have a hard time when he first got home from work. So I don't have a problem when I'm at work and said, you know, after a little while when I get home from work, I seem to be okay. But he said when I get home from work, he said, my mind is just filled with all. And I said, Well, where do you work?

And he told me he lived downtown and he lived in a condo. I said, well, how do you get home from work? He said, I walk. I said, Well, what's it like to walk home from work to where you stay in your condo? He said, you know, I have to go through the worst part of town. He said, I walked through all the section of the adult bookstores and all of the peep shows and all the things that I have to walk right down to. And he said there on both sides of the street. I said, that's where you go home every day.

He said, Yeah. And when you get home, you find your mind's kind of messed up. I said, well, why do you do that? He said, well, it's the shortest way home. I said, take the long way.

I mean, I'm not real smart, but I can figure that one out. He said, take the long way. Take the long way, because in reality, the long ways, the short way. Now that's just a simple little story, but it could be repeated over and over again in years of talking with people who struggle with this. I find out that most of them have problems in the same places over and over again. You know, where a lot of guys get messed up on trips away from home. They get messed up in the airports or in the hotel rooms where they don't get the X rated movies shut off and they can't understand why they keep falling.

You know, if there's a hole in the middle of the road and you walk down that road five times and you fall in the same hole, don't do it. Go somewhere else. Find another way. You say, Pastor, that's the most naive thing I've ever heard you say. But it's the fact is Satan mesmerizes us. He puts us into a trance and we keep falling in the same trap over and over again. So if you struggle in the area of mental purity, you should at least ask the question, does this seem to happen at any certain time in my life under any set of circum circumstances?

And maybe I could change some of that to protect myself from temptation.

Counteract Satan's strategy in your life. Paul said to the Corinthians that he was not ignorant of Satan's devices. Don't be ignorant of Satan's devices. I've told you before how much I love to read Philip Yancy's writings. I don't think he must do anything but write because he just writes prolifically and he's a wonderful, wonderful communicator. And the reason I like him is because when I read what he says, I feel like I'm talking to an honest man. He doesn't say all the easy things, the things you want to hear, the things you would expect to hear from an evangelical writer. He gets to the point of the issue and he talks about the real thing. The book is a wonderful new treatment of the life of Christ called The Jesus I Never Knew. I read that during the Priester season and around the resurrection. And I just found that God used it to just encourage my heart. He's got a little section in that book where he talks about the Beatitudes and when he's talking about this particular beatitude where Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. He has an insight to me that's really at the core of what we're talking about. How do you see God? He said during a period of his life when he was battling sexual temptation, he came across an article that referred to him. It was a book called What I Believe by the French Catholic writer France while Mauriac.

And Philip Yancey said it surprised him that Mauriac, an old man, devoted a considerable period of time in his book to the discussion of his own lust. And he explained, he said old age risks being a period of redoubled testing because the imagination in an old man is substituted in a horrible way for what nature refuses him. He said, I knew that Muriatic understood lust, his vipers tangle and a kiss for the leper novels which helped him win the Nobel Prize in literature. Portray lust and repression and sexual anger as well as anything I have ever read. Muriatic knew what he was talking about. And this French Catholic writer said he had dismissed most of the arguments in favor of sexual purity that had been taught to him in his Catholic upbringing. For instance, marriage will cure lust is what he had heard. It did not fear Mauriac, as it has not done for so many others, because lust involves the attraction of unknown creatures and the taste for adventure and chance meetings with self-discipline. You can master lust. He had been taught muriatic found that sexual desire is like a tidal wave. Powerful enough to bear away all the best intentions. True fulfillment he had been taught can only be found in monogamy. This may be true, but it certainly does not seem true to someone who finds no slackening of urges, even in monogamy. So he weighed the traditional arguments for purity. And while he knew they had value, there was something more. Mauriac concluded that self-discipline and repression and rational argument are not adequate weapons to use in fighting the impulse toward impurity. In the end, he could find only one reason to be pure, and that is what Jesus presented in the Beatitudes.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God in Murie acts words. Impurity separates us from God and the spiritual life that wants to know God in an intimate way. We'll discover that impurity gets in the way of that intimacy. And so when we cultivate a love for God and we have this deep desire to know him, our love and desire to know God will develop an intolerance for anything that gets in the way. And so it is appealing to a higher love to destroy the impurity of life in the practical realm.

We all understand what he's talking about.

You can't really be intimate with God when there's impurity in your life. How do you get to a holy God when you have unconfuse sin and there's rottenness in your heart? You can't know God like that. But if you want to know God and I hope in your heart there is that desire. If you want to really know God, the desire for intimacy with God will begin to purge the impurity of your heart. And that's what Jesus meant when he said Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God in a way that you cannot see God if your heart is not pure.

And so the issue is, do you want to know God? Do you want to see God? Do you want to walk with God? That motivation will drive purity into your soul and impurity away. You will not want anything to get in that process. Isn't it interesting? We can spend all of our life with the defense mechanisms which are important. But the real issue is to want to know God, to want to see him, to want to be friends with him. I'm understanding that in a better way this time in my life. How wonderful it is not just to know God, to be his friend, to be a servant. To hear his voice and to find the joy in that process to be so wonderful that you won't want anything to get in the way. That would keep it from being what you've known it to be. Blessed are the pure in heart for they. And they only will really see God. Let's pray.

Father, there's so much wonderful truth in your word. We spend our whole lives learning it, trying to understand it, most of all, trying to apply it to our hearts. I thank you so much for your precious word and for the wonderful men of God that you have given to to write about it and teach us what it means so that we can apply its truth to our hearts. Dear Lord, would you take what we have heard today from your spirit sorted through in our computers? Lord, help us to retain that truth that you are going to use in these days ahead to cause us to know you.

Lord, I love these people here. I want to be an encouragement and a help to them. I want to strengthen them as I have opportunity to teach your words. I am strengthened by it myself. And I pray that you will cultivate within all of our hearts this hunger and thirst for righteousness, which we've already spoken. That drives us to want to know God in such a way and then help us to realize, Lord, that when the impurities of life began to get comfortable in our hearts, it destroys the intimacy with the Lord, for he is holy. And he wants us to come lifting up holy hands to him. So I would ask you, Lord, that you'd put within our hearts this deep desire to know you, to have oneness and fellowship with you. And through that Lord cause us to be pure. I pray for those here today, Lord, who may be struggling in this area. Surely there are some. Help them to understand that you've given them everything they need for life and godliness in your word.

Lord, we thank you so much that what we cannot ever perfectly be in practice. You have made us in position. And someday all that we are in position, we shall be in reality for we shall see you. And we shall be like you. And for these things, we give you praise in Jesus name. Hey, man, thanks for listening.

The message you just heard came from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Is God touching your life through Turning Point? Write us about it at a Turning Point. Post office box 38 38. San Diego, California, nine two one six three. Visit our Web site at David Jeremi dot org forward slash radio. Ask for your copy of David's new Bible study. John The Divinity of Christ. It's part of the Jeremiah Bible study series and yours for a gift of any amount. You can also download the Free Turning Point mobile app for your smartphone or tablet or search in your app store for the keywords Turning Point ministries to access our programs and resources. With just a tenth visit. David Jeremiah dot org for two radio. For details, I'm Gary Whoot Flint. Join us tomorrow as we continue how to be happy. According to Jesus, that's here on Turning Point with Dr David Jeremiah.

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