0:07 We we've been doing the sermon on the mount, the biatitudes. So today I thought I'd uh speak on the next one that's found in Matthew 5:8. It says here, "Blessed are the pure in 0:29 heart, for they shall see God." Sometime back we did the one section of it which said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." And here we read about blessed are the pure in heart. There's a difference because 0:48 to be poor in spirit, we have to be really humble. only then we'll be p poor in spirit but to be pure it's a attitude of our heart I'll tell you why because 1:03 it says in God's word that the heart in Jeremiah 17 9 and 10 the heart is desperately wicked deceitful above all things is desperately sick 1:22 Who can understand it? The Lord searches the mind and the heart. The Lord himself says the heart is desperately wicked. So to have that uh purity is really it has to come from God. That's why he says blessed are the pure 1:42 in heart and then we can see God. Um just to remind ourselves the word blessed is just not a simple word like oh I'll bless you. Blessed are people who are really happy. If you're really 1:59 blessed blessed by God we'll be happy spiritually prosperous and we'll be having satisfaction and God's favor with God's favor regardless of our outward circumstances. That means whatever we happens to us, whatever outwards, 2:17 whether we are rich or poor, whether we are sick or healthy, whatever our state is, we will be really happy and that's the position place the lord wants us to be. 2:33 So I said about the uh purity of heart there are other verses which says um now the heart which in the Bible when the lord's when we read about the heart it's not the anatom an anatomical heart the 2:49 organ in our body which pumps blood when the lord speaks about the heart it's about the in our innermost being the part of us from which our our desires and feelings and ambitions and 3:06 longings come from that's the heart and that's our real self. When we die the part of us the our body will turn to dust but the part of us which will remain forever is our heart that part 3:24 inner part of our being and that will leave us and it will live on forever and ever. That's why it says that's why we can work on that purity of our heart right now when we are on earth. When 3:39 Jesus said in Matthew 15:E 19, out of the heart comes evil thoughts, immorality, theft, false witnesses, slander. It comes from the heart but it comes manifest itself through our mouth or 3:57 through our actions. So Jesus himself pronounced the heart is desperately wicked and from our heart um come all these things all the evil thoughts our plans and and how did it become like that God didn't create us like that when he gave us a heart it was 4:17 a pure heart when the first when humanity when Adam was Eve were made but because of our fallen nature because of the sin sin entered into our heart and it's like a disease. It's like a genetic disease which we all inherited. that 4:35 deceitful heart it as we grow up the only person who had a pure heart was Jesus when he came on earth he was son of God but all the rest of us with whatever we may think like oh I'm not as bad as the other person 4:53 I've had a better upbringing but basically we've all had that desperately wicked heart and we still have it and and in 1 Samuel 16:7 says the Lord looks at the heart, the Lord can see the heart 5:11 and however much we may try to cover up with outward things and we can fool people but deep inside the Lord can see our heart and he's and he sees our true condition and but there's a way out of it. The 5:28 Lord has given us a way in which we can give get a a true heart. In the Old Testament, the Lord tried to show his people. God tried to show his people that they need cleansing. So in he instituted daily sacrifices and 5:45 cleansing and sprinkling of blood and every now and then and every day a sacrifice, every year a sacrifice, every festival a sacrifice. He tried to instill the need for that cleansing. But the true cleansing of our heart came 6:03 only after Jesus when uh in the Old Testament a lamb had to be killed and the blood sprinkled. But Jesus son of God uh came to earth. John the Baptist called him the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. when Jesus 6:21 came and died for our sins then we can get a truly cleansed heart and a pure heart and that that's the only way we lot of other religions may say if you do this you dip dip yourself in some river or you do this practice this kind of 6:39 yoga or other techniques you can improve no there's only one way for salvation and that is through the Lord Jesus believing in him asking his forgiveness and accepting his forgiveness the death of Jesus and saying Lord you 6:59 died on my on my stand and accepting that admitting that we are sinners then only we can have that cleansed heart and the Lord wants us to have that um uh purity in our heart throughout our lives 7:17 um but it's not possible ble to keep ourselves uh once and for all with that. You know many people think that once you born again then your heart is clean and you don't have to worry about it. But it's not true. We keep on sinning. So people 7:34 say okay you sin and every day you confess your sin and you ask for forgiveness and you keep on sinning but there's a way there's a better way. You say, "Lord, your death for us, I don't want to take it lightly. You died for my 7:51 sin, my sins, and to give me a pure heart. Help me to keep that heart pure. Do my best to keep my heart pure." And um and the Lord will help us. In Ezekiel, Ezekiel pro uh prophesied and 8:10 the Lord told in Ezekiel 36:20, he says, "I will give you a new heart." And that uh to replace the e evil heart. But that happened only after Jesus came and fulfilled that promise. In 2 8:29 Corinthians 5:17 says, "If any man be in Christ, he's a new creature, a new heart." God gives us a new heart. It's almost like a trans heart transplant, but he gives us a new heart, but we have to keep it clean. 8:47 And how do we keep it clean? When Isaiah he in Isaiah chapter 6 first four verses we read when Isaiah saw the Lord and saw his glory he saw he realized 9:05 Lord I am a sinful man I have a I I've got a sinful tongue until now I was saying wo is that person wo is that person but now I can see my true condition Lord I say wo is me have such 9:21 a filthy heart. And then the angel took the fire from the altar and touched his lips and said, "Lord, this is against you." We just sang the song burn fire of God. So when the Holy Spirit touches our 9:37 heart and burns up all the draws, it's only then we can get pur purified. How do we keep our heart pure? You know in the in the earthly realm we talk 9:55 about purity. We talk about pure food. Purity in the food with food which is not un which is not adulterated. Pure water, pure air with no pollution in it. But in the spiritual realm also there should be a there's a purity the Lord 10:14 wants us to have. You know in the I I remember looking at the food in the food stores it says pure ghee. Ghe ghee is clarified butter. And then the next shelf you read pure really pure ghee and ultra refined pure 10:33 ghee. So people go to more and more purification because there's no they know there's no such thing. It's not possible to have the really really pure purity in anything in this world. But the Lord can give us purity in our 10:51 heart. Real purity when we come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And uh it's a work that the Lord does. It's not by ourself by improving ourselves and say Lord next time I'll speak in a better way. It's a work. The 11:09 purity is something which starts from within. It's not from outside. We we it's not possible for us to work on outside and say I'll speak in a better way and I'll um do things better. I'll act differently. No, the purity that the 11:28 Lord wants us to give is purity from within. From within he cleanses because Jesus said from within the heart comes all this impurity. And so the cleansing starts from within. The Lord cleanses us and then it comes out in our outward 11:46 life. And what all that we have to do is to yield to him. Yield ourselves to him and say Lord I want you to do that work of purification in my life every day. I want to have that purity in my heart which you can see. You search 12:05 everybody's heart. I want you to see purity in my heart. You begin that work and I submit to you. I yield myself to you. I want to take up the cross. I want to say no to my own will. I want to deny myself and I want you to fill me with 12:24 the Holy Spirit and I want to have the power of the Holy Spirit to do that work of purification so that I can have a pure heart as we sang burn fire of God. Lord I s I want to you to pour your holy spirit into my 12:42 heart and burn up all the impurities that are there so that I'll have that purity in my heart. And um I thought of a few ways in which we can keep continue to keep that heart 12:59 pure. In the Old Testament as I said there were daily sacrifices to remind people you have to keep being cleansed being cleansed. But when after we accept the Lord we also have to do something. It says in Deuteronomy 5 uh Deuteronomy 13:18 6 verse 5 it says love the Lord with all your heart soul and mind we have to say Lord I want to love you with all my heart then my heart will belong to you. So I thought of that Lord there should be no 13:36 there should be pl place for no one else in my heart. You're supreme in my heart. I want to love you with all my heart and I want to say that to you Lord in my thinking and in my words I want to tell you when I pray I say Lord I want to 13:52 love you with all my heart and actively when every other any other temptation comes for worldly things Lord you're first in my life nobody else nothing else is first in my life and then I 14:08 thought of another uh way is in Psalm 119:1 God's I store God's word in my heart. Psalm 12:6 says God's word is pure. God's word is pure. So to have purity in 14:27 my heart, I must dwell on God's word and let God's word take a prominent place in my heart. Lord, I want to read your word, meditate on on your word. Every day I set apart some time, Lord, to read 14:44 your word and love your word and store your word in my heart. And the Lord said in Matthew 6:21, where your treasure is, that's where your heart is. Here I'm speaking about the heart. In if in our heart we have a 15:02 desire for earthly things, ambition for earthly things to get along in the world to get some benefit out of this out of people or if our mind is on any earthly thing then our and if our heart is on that then there'll be less and less 15:20 place for God and then the Lord says watch out keep your heart with all diligence. Don't let other things take the place in your heart. So we have to see where do does our heart dwell on when it comes back when we have nothing 15:38 to think of where does our heart mind come to what's deep our is there in the depth of our heart and and then um another way we can keep our heart pure is to think about pure 15:57 things. Now we think of we know people when you look at people generally you can make out those people who dwelt on impure things and read impure things watched impure mo movies and things 16:16 dwell on impure things we can see it on their face when we see some people we know yeah he's a person who doesn't have purity in his life and in their behavior or in their words. So impurity comes out in a person's face and 16:36 um it comes out in their talk also vulgar things vulgar jokes and they look at people and the impurity also we can see in the way people look at others their proud way oh I am better than that person 16:54 and they attach impure motives to other people's things So look at people and look at everybody in a pure way. That's one way in which we can have the purity of spirit. And the Holy Spirit helps us to have 17:15 that purity in our heart. It says in in Titus 1:15 to the pure all things are pure. So if we keep ourselves pure and meditate on pure things then everything outside we won't have impure we won't 17:33 think other people are have some bad motives. When we have purity in our life, there won't be any impure. There will be no hypocrisy. We'll be straightforward. We won't have 17:51 a double me. We won't be double face like we act one way and be something else inward inside. When so when when the pure when we uh submit ourself and ask the lord Lord give me purity in my life then the lord 18:10 starts working from within and takes and makes us uh better and better in a um in our lives when Jesus saw Nathaniel even from a distance he saw there's a man without guide Jesus can see through and 18:28 the lord we can say lord I want to be like that. If you can say about me, here's a woman without any gu here's a person who is pure in her heart. So daily repentance and longing for purity 18:46 and starting from within we must say Lord do a work in my life. There's a wonderful verse which I want to share, a wonderful promise which excites me and that's in Daniel 12:10. 19:05 It says about the in the last days, Daniel 12:10. It says in the last days many will purify themselves and make themselves white, white and refined. That's a promise. Daniel, he saw a lot of the Lord showed him many things which 19:24 are going to happen in the in the last days. And Daniel was so overwhelmed when he saw all these things happening and scary things happening and judgment falling. But the Lord comforted him and said in 19:42 the last days there'll be people who will purify themselves and make themselves white and refined. And that's a comfort for us. We are living in the last days and we we long we must long to be in that group of people who are 20:01 purifying themselves and and that's an encouragement for us. Keep on purifying themselves. And pure purification is in two ways I can think it's a two-fold purification. First purification which I can think of 20:20 is a purification which God does. God allows circumstances to come into our lives be through people through our health maybe through sickness through financial difficulties any many things can happen in our life 20:39 and that's God's way of refining us and purifying us we know that like gold is refined God refineses us and he and praise God the wonderful thing about refining is he knows how how much 20:59 the temperature of that fire should be. He won't let the knob go beyond that to that red level. He says, "I'll purify you. I'll allow the temperature to come to this level. It won't go beyond." So we have confidence Lord when you're 21:17 refining me when you allow sickness in my life or some um um something which I can't handle I know that it won't go beyond a certain limit you'll say thus far I know no more 21:34 praise God for that he holds the knob and also he holds the time he says only up to a certain time I'll I'll refine you. We know in Job Job's case I was reading the book of Job 21:53 God allowed him Job through go through so much of pressure first his property then his children and his own health and Job couldn't understand why all this was happening but then there came a time when there was an end to that so the 22:11 Lord knows how long it will last he won't test us forever and He'll he'll allow that testing to come and he'll say enough. Now I can see my image in my daughter's heart. That refining and that fire has done its 22:30 work. When gold has been refined and refined, he looks and he sees his image. Ah now that refining process is over. And praise and thank God there's a time and there's a limit to that refining. So we can take comfort and say Lord I 22:49 know that you're in control of every situation in my life. Whatever happens I'm not going to be discouraged because I know that you're in control. That's the the part which the Lord has. There's another part which is in our hands 23:07 refining because we said we read in this verse um we whoever has this hope in 1 John 3:E2 whoever has the hope of the Lord's 23:26 return will purify himself or herself just as he is pure. We all have the hope that the Lord Jesus is coming back soon. He's coming very soon. And we have that hope that when he comes, we'll be like him. 23:45 We'll be like him in which way? We'll be like him. I believe into the extent in which we have purified ourselves because he is pure. Because why would we say we have the hope? We purify ourselves as he is pure. 24:03 There's something in that in that word purifying. We the Lord will allow us to go through all the testings and we take it in a good way and we say Lord I want to purify purify myself. I want to change 24:21 my thinking what my heart is dwelling on not on earthly things. I want to be pure in my thought life. Whenever I'm tempted to be to think evil about somebody or judgmental about another person or their 24:37 children or blame something or somebody why this happened even in my thought life I say Lord I want to purify myself. I want I don't want to have this attitude of blaming is because he came late or because he didn't do this or 24:56 because she didn't do that or because of my children or because of my parents, because of my upbringing, because I married this person or whatever it is. Lord, I want to be pure in my thinking. I want to purify myself. And we start 25:14 with purifying. As I said, purification starts from within. We purify our hearts. We purify our hearts and say, "Lord, I don't want to have this way of thinking." Purify our motives. Why am I doing this? Am I doing this to get some 25:31 honor from the church, honor from my from my sisters, honor from this world? Oh, the world will should think that I'm a smart person and I did this and I'm clever or I'm doing this. That's so much pressure in young people 25:49 that wanting to impress others. That pure pressure Lord purify that motive also. I want to have pure motive. I don't want to take advantage of anyone for my good purity. Lord, 26:05 I wonder and uh it says that uh in Psalm 18 verse 26 there's this beautiful verse with the pure he will show himself pure with the crooked he will show himself tortures and we have if we have the 26:24 attitude Lord I want to be pure he will show more of his purity to us there's a better way of my child there's a better way. There's a purer way. Until now, you did it in this way. Maybe there was a element of wanting to please people. But 26:41 I want I'll cleanse it. I'll purify it and you can do it better. You'll become more and more like you like me and Yeah. Then um 26:58 we see God. Yeah. Then we see um how the Lord allows um yeah thank you. We see how the Lord allows the purification in in our lives through different circumstances. There's a verse in one of 27:16 the in the Old Testament where it says the wine has to be poured from vessel to vessel. Then it becomes clear and pure. And we must allow the Lord to pour us from one circumstance to another. Lord, until now it was like this, but now why 27:36 is this happening to me? Why is this challenge happening to me? This health my child has become a teenager and he's becomes she's become so different. Why is she talking that way? The Lord is saying this is the way I'm allowing you 27:55 to be poured from vess one vessel to another so that there'll be clarity there'll be purity in your in your life. So the Lord allows us to get poured from one situation to another 28:11 and the Lord refineses us that way. for for us sisters there are two special I want to think of two special uh verses which come to my mind in uh about purity in 2 Corinthians 11 verse3 there's a 28:30 verse which says just like Satan deceived uh Eve from uh to draw her away from simple and pure devotion to the Lord be careful don't allow Satan to deceive that's a warning for us sisters don't allow the 28:49 devil to deceive us from the pure simple devotion to the Lord. Here again it says about pure purity and then in Titus there's another verse for for us sisters about purity for young women 29:07 love your husbands and children be self-controlled pure and workers at home and that's also a um command for us especially which we we can underline and take for us women 29:23 um this Titus 2:4 for women be pure. It's so easy for us to for us sisters especially if we have a little time to look at social media and allow some kind of impurity to get in or even as I said 29:43 earlier some impure thought to come into us some covetous thought from some desire for anything other than what God wants us to have and we have to ask the Lord Lord Strip strip away all that desire 30:01 that longing after impurity. So much about purity. Those who who are pure will see God. Blessed are those who who are pure. They will see God. How can we see God? That's the last 30:20 part I wanted to talk about. How do we see God if we are pure? One example which comes to me is if we if our those of us who have who wear spectacles, if our spectacles are clouded and dirty, 30:39 we can't see things clearly. Everything is so blurred. Okay, for those who don't wear specks, we look out of our window panes and if the window pane is dirty and cloudy, everything is blurred. 30:57 And that's a a simple example of how it if we allow impurity to come into our lives, we don't see God. We don't see anything clearly. But when we allow the Holy Spirit to cleanse us, we see God clearly. How do we see God? Not with 31:15 these these earthly eyes, the form of God. Yes, we will see God one day just as he is. And he'll be glorious. It be so glorious that we our eyes will sm 31:46 little by little. Why he's dying doing certain things a certain way. why he's so kind to us. We see God clearly when we allow that purification to take. If our hearts are evil and taken up with 32:03 evil things, we don't see God at all. When we we are so taken up with the things which bad things or um things which we don't like to we are taken up with that we don't see God at all. We just see people. Oh, people are doing 32:20 this. But when we are cleansed and we have a pure heart, we see God. Yes, God is behind this. We see the character of God in this. God reveals himself to us. Whether whatever may happen to us, 32:38 we see his uh image more and more clearly. It says here, "Now we see through a mirror dimly." 1 Corinthians 13:12. Now we see in a mirror dimly then one day we'll see face to face when we 32:55 see the Lord face to face how will it be when we actually see him will be we be ashamed and we shrink away oh Lord I didn't know you are so pure if I had known you are so pure opportunities I had in life I would have purified myself 33:14 I'm so dirty Lord how can I come before you and stand before you even Though you died for my sins and I'm cleansed, I'm not worthy to come before you. We'll never be worthy. But what a joy it'll be for us when we say, "Lord, I took every 33:31 opportunity to cleanse myself to take every testing which you allowed in my life in a good way. I submitted to it. I humbled myself. I didn't allow bitterness to come into my life. I allowed you to purify me and I I 33:49 purified myself. You allowed the circumstances and I submitted to what you allowed Lord and whatever you allowed I I allowed you and I I see that through that I allowed uh that purifying 34:07 uh to take place in my life. That's a challenge. What when we um now we see things unclear and distorted but when we are purif when we purify ourselves and allow the Lord to purify 34:27 us we see things more and more clearly we until now we see wrongly about God wrongly about people but when we allow the Holy Spirit to purify us we see things clearly blessed the pure in heart 34:45 for they shall see God. I want to have that purity in my life. I want to have allow the Lord to purify me more and more every day. Every day God gives us opportunities to purify ourselves. I I want to read this uh verse in 35:04 closing. Uh this song the beautiful old song which we sing. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see their God. The secret of the 35:23 Lord is theirs. Their soul is Christ. The Lord who left the heavens are life and peace to bring to dwell in loneliness with men, their pattern and their king. Still to the lowly soul he doth himself impart, and for his 35:42 dwelling and his throne chooses the pure in heart. The the Lord chooses to dwell in the lowly and the pure in heart. Lord, we thy presence seek. May ask this blessing be. Give us a pure and lowly 36:00 heart, a temple meet for thee. Yes, dear sisters, our heart is a temple for the Lord to dwell. May may it be a pure temple. May it be a where a temple where he's 36:17 pleased to dwell. And that can happen when he we allow us him to purify ourselves and we ourselves we purify ourselves as two. It's a two-fold purification. The greater part is done by him where he 36:36 allows testings and trials to come and he pauses love into our heart and says my child this is for your good. I'm purifying you. One day I'll see my irreflection in you. I'll see my face in your heart. And the other the smaller 36:54 part is when we purify ourselves and say Lord I submit to you. I want to cleanse myself. I don't want to think the old way of thinking. I don't want to have judgmental thought about others. I don't want to have bitter thoughts. I don't 37:09 want to have bad thoughts about anyone. and allow your purity, your holy spirit to dwell in my heart always. So whatever comes out in my life will be pure words, good words, words which will bless others, which will encourage others and 37:29 deeds which will help others not with any motive to get anything for myself but just like how you were Lord to do good to everyone. So it all begins with the purity in our heart and throughout our life. There's no end to it. 37:45 Throughout every day, the Lord gives us opportunities to purify our hearts. And till the day when we see him face to face, we'll have opportunity. And then we see him just as he is and say, "Lord, you're so pure. And I thank you, Lord, 38:04 that you're giving me the chance to be a little taste a little bit of that purity and share with you for all eternity. I won't have to be hiding myself when I see you. Lord, I allowed that. I allowed you to purify me and I allowed the cross 38:23 to take its place in my heart, die to myself, die to my will and the Holy Spirit to cleanse me and purify me. So I praise and thank God for the wonderful opportunities the Lord has given us to have a pure heart. We can never be pure. 38:41 Um but one day when we see Jesus, he'll make us like him, his character. He'll give us more and more of his character. But it's now as much as we can hold, we can say, Lord, give me that purity as much as I can contain. I want 39:00 to purify myself and there's no limit to the purity you know just like I said about the pure ghee and the pure food we can keep on purifying ourselves now um I think of an example there was one somebody who came to our church and he 39:19 said what are you people doing sitting in your little corner in your church purifying yourself and purifying yourself look at the needy world go out into the world and preach the gospel. Then I thought yes it's not a selfish 39:33 way of purifying ourselves. It's like the eyes the tears are keeping on cleaning the eyes and cleansing but the eyes are doing a work looking and reading and doing good things for us. But and the same person who said that 39:52 some years later I saw that person he had become so sour and bitter. He was involved in some kind of ministry u some kind of ministry trying to help people build houses and dig wells and all. But the inver I could see he was so 40:12 restless. Then I thought he was judging the church for desiring holiness and cleansing ourselves. when we submit to the Lord and we say Lord I want to submit to you I want you 40:31 to cleanse me purify me then it'll come out in actions which will bless others I can see that the Lord has a lot great purpose for us but it begins within our heart and it'll go out to bless ourselves and it'll bring purity in 40:48 other people's lives also so I praise and thank God for the wonderful purpose he has may the Lord challenge us to have that purity. Purity in our heart then purity that will please God become more 41:03 and more pure in our daily life. Amen. We just close in prayer. Our heavenly father, we thank you for your wonderful plan for our life that you want us to be pure just as you are pure. Lord words are not inadequate to say the desire in 41:23 our heart Lord to be pure. We can see every day our unworthiness, our filthiness and yet we don't want to condemn ourselves. We want to look up to you in faith and we reach out to you Lord and we pray that as just as you see 41:40 our heart we pray for cleansing every day and filling of the Holy Spirit and more and more that purifying work will go on in our life so we won't be the same person that we were days back will be better and better please do that work 41:58 Lord of refining in our heart holy spirit of God work in our heart. Do the refining work and we want to cooperate with you Lord and be pure. Make us more and more. Give us that desire for purity in our heart Lord and submit to you. We 42:17 ask this in Jesus precious name. Amen.
