In this sermon, the speaker discusses the concept of purity of heart and its importance in the pursuit of happiness. He emphasizes the need for genuine sorrow and mourning over sin in order to attain purity. The speaker also shares personal anecdotes, such as working at Jack in the Box, to illustrate the challenges of maintaining purity in everyday life. He relates the Beatitudes from Matthew chapter 5 to the pursuit of happiness, highlighting the connection between being poor in spirit, mourning, and meekness with purity of heart. The sermon concludes by mentioning the importance of being merciful and peacemakers in order to attain true happiness.

Tonight, Matthew chapter 5, as we continue on here, and the secret of happiness, the reason we all get up every day, and the driving influence in our life, it isn't for most people, I think, to be rich, or to be famous, or to be great in other people's eyes so much, is that that is merely the superficial reasons that people think, if I accomplish certain objectives and goals, I assume I will be happy. Tragically, though, we don't seem to be very wise, because most of the people that have those very things that we wish, that we thought would make us happy, it hasn't worked for them, but we think, well, I'll defy the odds, and it just doesn't work. Here, Jesus says, here is real happiness. And once again, as we're looking at the Beatitudes, just to bring us up to date here, because actually, I remember, I was here last week, and Raul Reis was here, it was so wonderful that Raul would come, I had promised him also that I would be back to give an interpretation of what he had to say, so we'll do that tonight, but anyway, but anyway, back here to the Beatitudes tonight, though, they all work collectively as a whole. They all work together. None of these in and of themselves constitute happiness. The truly happy person is the one that all of these things are assembled together within one heart and with one life. And hopefully, as we look at this, our cry of our heart, our desire is, Lord, I want to know this joy. I want to know this happiness in my life. And here is just to back us up a little, Jesus said, oh, how happy are the poor in spirit. Oh, how happy are they who mourn. Oh, how happy are the meek. Here as he looks there, that person there, that there's an utter poverty of strickenness, of his own spirit, that he has come to a realization. I was created in the image of God and I have been robbed. Something has stolen my identity. It's gone. I was made in his image, made in his glory, made to share his love and his life and his majesty and his power. And it's gone. And here as we find ourselves, Jesus said, the person that's ever truly going to be happy, they are going to at the very fundamental root of their being. There's going to be a poverty of stricken, spiritual poverty stricken state they realize they're in without God. And that gives them a longing for God. It gives them a heart for God, a need of God. But then as they begin to move there, he says, oh, how happy are they who mourn. It's not just enough to realize there that I have fallen and I have lost my identity. But there is a genuine grief. There is a genuine mourning as at the death of a loved one. And in this case, it's ourselves, the one that we love most in all the world. Ourselves is the one that we ought to be mourning over. God, what has happened to me? Here, the standard of life that you created me to know and I've lost it and God, I grieve. I mourn. I have carried a tremendous sorrow over it. And then he says, oh, how happy are the meek. You take that poverty stricken, spiritual condition. That produces a mourning in a heart of sorrow for sin. And that produces a meekness before God. Somebody that now doesn't come in their arrogance and their pride and their you owe me and I want this. But rather than that, they're coming before God in a meekness and saying, oh, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I, it isn't you. You've done nothing wrong. I've done it all wrong. I failed. And they cry out to God that God would forgive them. And then they're humbled. And there, at that point, God begins to open up heaven to them. For then, Jesus said, oh, how happy are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness. They'll be filled here. Jesus could look. He says, now, if a person can get there and it produces this tremendous insatiable hunger within their heart for God, for the righteousness of God, the right nature and the right living, the right power, the right glory that only comes from God. And they hunger for it. They, they thirst for it. They long for it. They desire for it. As David said, as the deer paneth after the waterbrook, so paneth my soul after thee. That somebody now there's, there's this, there's this failure and this weakness and this sinfulness as produced a wonderful compulsion for God, a wonderful longing for him, a hunger for him, and a thirst for God. David in Psalm 63 said, oh God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth and my heart paneth after thee, or longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land. So I look toward thee in thy sanctuary to see thy power and thy glory. And because thy loving kindness is better than life, thus while I live will I praise thee. I lift up my hands to thy name, the sign of absolute yielding and surrender. David said, God, you're it. I hunger for you. I long for you. I thirst for you. As the deer paneth for you. And when somebody, Jesus said, this is the person that's going to know a joy like anybody that pants after anything else, that hungers and thirsts and longs and pushes their heart for anything else. It'll all like, like Solomon one day, vanity, vanity, all is vanity. But to the person that longs for God, there won't be vanity. There'll be an unbelievably wonderful happiness. He then goes on. And then after he says, they who hunger and thirst after righteous, he's blessed of the merciful. And that's the one that we looked at last time. And tonight we want to look at blessed of the pure in heart. But a person there that is indeed, uh, you know, being filled with God, they shall be filled. And in being filled with God, the deepest attributes of God will become theirs. And the deepest, I suppose of all attributes, perhaps of God is his mercy. In a sense there of God is graceful, but even grace is motivated by mercy. Grace is unmerited favor. God has chosen to favor us. But the reason he has chosen to favor us is because he's had mercy upon us. There is something deeply longing within his heart. He looks at us in our sorrowful state, in our lost condition. And, and there that produces their God. Now this grace is being poured out. This love is being made known. It's such a wonderful attribute of God. And now God wants to put it within us. And there, he says, when a human being begins to be filled with love, be filled with God, be filled with his spirit. They'll be filled. The great evidence of it is that they will be merciful. And, and then he goes on as we look at tonight. And oh, how happy or blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And here, I suppose on one hand, to see God, of course, is the, the object of all religion. It's the, it's the object, the whole purpose for which religion seems to exist and is, is to see God. The word religion, English word religion comes from the Latin word relingare, that means to relink. By definition, the word religion, it is a confession of a broken link between God and man. The very word itself, religion, relinking. The differences, of course, between, you know, Christianity and all other religions is that basically all other attempts to relink start with man, require man. They're founded upon man's efforts, his promises, his commitments, his something. Which is the most ridiculous, futile thing in all the world. The Bible says the wage of sin is death. Now, what good is a dead man going to do? Try to figure that one out. You go by a cemetery, I think you can sit there for a week on, on end and wait for one good thing to come out of the ground and you're not going to find anything. Dead men can't do good things. They can't raise themselves. They can't redeem themselves. There's nothing left in them. But the wonderful thing about Christianity is that Christianity, it's all of God. He's the one there, you know, that he, that he raises us. He regenerates. He restores. He resurrects. It's his power and it's his work. But here to the person there that has been poor in spirit, they've been, they've mourned over their sinful state. They become meek. They're hungry and thirst for God. Then God does raise them and he raises them in the most powerful way, pouring his love and his life and his spirit into them. And there is a merciful heart and there's a pure heart. There's a heart there now for the first time in our life. There's a sense and a concept of, of what purity is all about. What it, what, what it is made and designed by God to be. It's interesting, as I look at the Beatitudes, I think that the first three, which lead us to blessed are they who hunger and thirst, are followed by three others that correspond to the first three in the sense that blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are they who mourn and blessed are the meek. Then in between, there's this, there'd be hunger and thirst for God and then you're filled. But then after that, blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers. Now, I believe that the second three actually work in direct relation to the, to the degree that the first three have worked. Now, what I mean by that is that a person that is poor in spirit, the gray, the, the one that is as the, the, the greater realization of a poverty stricken spiritual condition. I believe also ends up to be a person that'll be the degree that they will know mercy. The person there that mourns over their sin, the most is also going to be the person that is going to end up having the purest of hearts. And the person there to the degree that they know what it is to become meek before God is going to be one that's going to be the greatest of peacemakers. And these are things that all through our life, this never just happens once and it's over. I believe the Beatitudes are continuous, unending cycle of growth and that we're poor in spirit at one time, but where it's constantly learning more and more of our spiritual state in, and we only become more poverty stricken as we grow in Christ. We only become a greater, a greater is the awareness of God's mercy and his grace and his goodness to us. When I first became a Christian, I thought, you know, I almost thought I'd done God a favor by becoming a Christian in a sense that I don't know how you think that, but almost, you know, God wants you. He's looking for you. God needs you. Heaven needs you. I was almost recruited in the sixties into a great campus ministry to go for the work for the kingdom of heaven. And if I would give my life to Christ, God would use me to build the kingdom. And he was, he was short on workers. And so I could help heaven out by giving my life to Christ. And I didn't want poor God to go without the needed help. And so I gave him my life figure. Well, I'll throw in with him and see what I can do to help the kingdom as if I was ever going to do a thing at all. But that's, I honestly thought, and I was actually involved with the campus ministry at the time. They'll never get one time. The leader speaking to a group of us on staff and telling us, I'll never forget. This is in the sixties. There isn't a one of you that isn't a $20,000 a year man on the sixties. That was a lot of money today. I think welfare gets that. I'm not sure, but it's something to where, uh, but at the time, I mean, that was like, we've got the cream of the crop when we've got our leaders and you're one of them. And with them, yes, sir. You know, or whatever else, whatever you say. And there's this, and I, when I was first a Christian, I also thought sin was essentially, you know, things that you did. It's just, you and I did, I did a bunch of sin. I, I'd, I'd trained heavily at it and I was pretty good at sinning, but I just thought, see, you stop sinning. And then one day you begin to realize that, no, it isn't the things that you, that you simply do. It's some of the stuff you say. And so, Oh, I got to clean up the vocabulary and you got to work at that. And then sin gets a little deeper. And then I find out that sin is the stuff you're thinking. No, no. Now we're, now we're opening up a whole new world here. God, I don't think we want to get into this one. Sort of a thing is it gets more revealing. And then one day you come across Romans 14, 23, that says whatsoever is not of faith is sin. I mean, now, oh, any time I'm not trusting you, I've, I've sinned. Oh man. And you only get, the longer you become, the longer you've been a Christian, the more you sin. In a sense, even though you think you sin less, now you realize, man, I'm doing it all the time. And, uh, and, but, but that's the person that opens the door for a greater sense of poverty stricken state. God, I just thought it was kind of a sinner when it was stuff I did. But then when I realized it was what I said is what I thought. And there was what I wasn't thinking that I should have been thinking, you know, whatever all the other stuff is, you keep on going. And I ought to be doing that. I'm not doing the realization of God's love and his mercy and his grace. Then one day you come across the realization. I was made in his image. I was to reflect his nature and his character and his glory. And at that point, anybody can look and say, I don't see that. You know, you, you may have brushed your teeth and comb your hair, but I do not see his glory when I look at you, you know, or something. But it's something to where when we realize that is what it ought to be, that is the design and the desire of God. And I believe that's what God longs for us. I'll tell you, there's some people that I do look at, one of which happens to be my own mother. I look at her and I see God's glory. She just shines it. She radiates it. She's one of the most awesome women to me on the planet. And of which personally, by the way, I take great credit for. Under my ministry, she became that because she was a Christian a long, long time before I was, don't get me wrong. I didn't lead her to Christ, but I did the next best thing any child could do. I drove my mother to a deep relationship with God. But the. But now, but the reflection of Christ just sitting there, that God longs for somebody to know in that poverty stricken spirit there that happens with one there that it begins to mourn over its sin and its meat before God and it's hungry and thirsty for God and God fills them. And it begins to flood their heart, begins to flood their soul. And then out of that, there is a, a merciful spirit. And then there is somebody that there is a heart that is just becomes pure. It's one there that we long, you know, God, you know, give me a pure heart. And to the degree that, as I said, somebody mourns over sins is the degree that they find themselves with a purity of heart. The degree that I look at maybe today and say, you know, there's a lot of stuff that I do. I don't think it's sin. I just say, all right, maybe I shouldn't do it. You know, maybe other people think it's not best, but it's not really bad. Maybe there's stuff I can, you know, watch on TV that maybe I suppose if, if, you know, Chuck and Kay came over for dinner, I wouldn't say, hey, what do you think? Or if Billy was there saying, hey, and you may, you may sit there and think, well, maybe I wouldn't watch that if somebody, you know, like that was there. And, uh, you know, and, uh, or if Jesus came by and said, hey, let's watch a little TV or, hey, let's, you got any good videos? Uh, no, no. Got videos. Oh, venture of faith. I do have that. It's back there somewhere, you know, or whatever else. And, uh, is there something where we're scrounging through looking for something that would suggest we have a purity, but until I mourn over things, until there's something that there is a sorrow to the degree that there's sorrow and the degree there's a mourning over sin is the degree that there will be emerge a purity of heart. That there'll be something there that if somebody says, well, I can do things and I can talk this way and I can, you know, have this kind of humor and this kind of vocabulary. And after all, I mean, I don't think God expects us to be perfect or whatever else. And the issue isn't so much of what God expects. It ought to be what I long for. The issue shouldn't be so much the law, which ought to lead me to Christ. It tells me I failed, but it ought to be something now that I've come to Christ through the awareness of my sins. It ought to create a hunger to say, I can't believe I'm it. I can't believe I have an opportunity to spend the day with. I can't believe who wants to come along and spend his time in his heart with me. And when somebody finds there within their heart that longing. And here Jesus says, he says, they're blessed are the pure in heart. Now the heart, therefore, what is it? If he says you got to have a pure one, what is it? Well, first of all, the heart is essentially the place that God looks at. Tonight is God looks across this room, you know, we, you know, brush your teeth and comb our hair and do all the things we do to walk in here. But God doesn't see that. And God sees the heart. It's the seat essentially of all of life. It's the reality of who I am. And the first Samuel 16, seven, you know, the story when God sent Samuel there to anoint one of the sons of Jesse, and he came there and he saw the eldest. And there he is just about to do this. God taps Samuel on the shoulder. And he says, wait a minute, Samuel man looks at the outward countenance. God looks at the heart. I don't see the outward. I don't know what you think you see. When you see the biggest or the oldest or the strongest as you perceive them. And God looks upon the heart. Jesus, as well as Proverbs 23, we both say as a man thinketh in his heart. So is he God looks and that's what he sees tonight. He sees the heart. Because as far as God's concerned, the heart is where behavior really takes place. In first John, John tells us that if we hate our brother, we've committed murder. Jesus in this later on the Sermon on the Mount, he says, if a man look at that a woman with lust after in his heart, he's committed adultery. There, as far as the mechanism of the soul, the heart there, when something happens in the heart where somebody or hate happens now, all of the fundamental internal ingredient for murder has happened. Now it just needs time and opportunity. But the place you deal with it isn't when now I have the opportunity. Now you look there at the root cause within the heart and say that is where it starts in the heart. And therefore, you know, when somebody begins to lust and they open up that door of lusting, they may think, well, it's okay to do this and that, but they're embedding things within their heart. They're now just waiting for the opportunity to destroy them. But it's already destroyed their heart, their life, their relationship with God, because God's sitting there with somebody watching them in their heart to where they're committing adultery or they're hating. And it's something there as far as in fact, as far as the Bible is concerned, our exterior behavior may be entirely different than a heart. And, you know, we, so often we, we work on the external behavior, the vocabulary and things like that. David, one time in Psalm 55, 21, evaluating somebody he's dealing with. He says, the words of his mouth were smoother than butter, yet war was in his heart. They were softer than oil, yet they were as drawn swords. There, David, he's talking to somebody and he says, oh, the words of his mouth, smoother than butter, softer than oil, yet war was in his heart. They were as drawn swords. While he's sitting there smiling, carrying on with me behind himself, he's pulling the sword out. He's ready to implant it in me. The guy, you know, the hypocrisy, the capacity we have, we can be doing something with our body. We can be behaving in a way that suggests everything's fine. But yet our heart can be, you know, totally different than that. And tonight you may feel like you're getting points, you're in church, you know, something, this is real good. Here I am in church. And yet at the same time, your heart might be in San Francisco, Packed Bell Park, where the angels and the giants are playing game three, you know, or whatever. And you're sitting here in church meantime, and you're sitting there singing thy loving kindness or whatever. But God's also looking at your heart while you're, we're doing all the spiritual stuff on the outside. But heaven looks there and says, why don't you just sing? I left my heart in San Francisco. You know something? You're not here. You're there. Real behavior. You know, you can be anywhere on the planet right now. As far as heaven's concerned, you can be doing anything. But when we find ourself asking God to bring every thought into captivity, to bring it before him, and there with my heart, because you see, as far as God's concerned, heart is everything. Heart is everything. That's the true you, the true me. And when we find ourself there in a matter of heart, because man looks at the outwards. God looks at the heart. You see, as far as God's concerned, you know, wherever man's treasure is, there his heart is. And I'm thinking, I want this, or I got to have that. You know, we can be sitting there in an entirely different world. Because, you know, when we treasure God, though, and we treasure a pure heart, we treasure to be in his presence. That's what God longs for with us. And it's what he desires for us. You see, Christianity is not a behavior. Real Christianity, it's a condition of human experience. And fortunately, of course, with Pharisees, they were around. They didn't get this, did they? They didn't understand this at all. I mean, they oftentimes seem to be very good in their conduct, in their behavior, in their ethics. And yet, as far as the Bible is concerned, and Jesus was concerned, their hearts were internally rotten. He looked at them, and in Matthew 23, Jesus said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but they are within, full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. He looks at them. He says, You've got to down pat the religious behavior, and values, and structure of life. But God does not have your heart. There isn't something within you longing to be with him, and to be in his presence, and to share his righteousness, and his life, and his love. Matthew 15, 8, Jesus said, This people draws nigh unto me with their mouth. They honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. He looks at them and says, You've got the words down. They've got the song down. They're all singing on cue, but they're not here. And the reason is, is because the heart is where we live. It's the center of our being, of our identity, of our personality. It is the well, essentially, out of which everything else proceeds. Jesus said in Matthew 15, 18, He says, Those things that proceed forth in the heart. And he says, They are they that defile a man. He says, You know, out of the heart proceedeth evil thoughts, and murders, and adulteries, and fornications, and thefts, and false witness, and blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man. And Jesus looks there and he says, This is the heart. I don't know about you, but I'm grateful that on one hand, Jesus tells me that he says, I'm going to tell you who you are, and I'm going to tell you what kind of heart you got. As a natural human being. And it's somewhat comforting to tell me the truth, that he doesn't say, you know, that I was a pretty good guy. Because if he did, I'd think, I don't think he knows me very well. I'm so grateful that he looks and he says, No, I know what's going on in your heart. I know you've hated. I know you've murdered. I know you've committed adultery. I know you've done blasphemies. I know that you've treasured other things more than me. You've murdered yourself. You cut yourself off from God. You've committed adultery. You've given your heart to others than me. But I love you. I can fix all those things. That's not the problem. The problem is, do you want it fixed? The problem is, do you want to deal with it? The problem is, do you mourn over it? Is there a hunger and thirst for what is right? Is there a longing for a purity of heart that would come through fellowship and communion with me? And when we begin to realize that, Jeremiah said, he says the heart, the human heart, all of hearts, every one of us, didn't say some, you know, Jeremiah didn't say, you know, I've run into a few people that have a heart that's deceitful above all things, desperately wicked, nasty, nasty thing. You know, he looked at it, the human heart, all of us, all of us, we can dress up and we can look nice. Paul says, if I've sinned in one, I've sinned in all. If I failed in one thing, I have failed in everything. And my heart is no different than anybody else's. We look around and we think everybody else, we look at all these wonderful spiritual people here. My, oh my, look at them. While we sit here under our own skin and think, what am I doing here? In the meantime, they're all looking at us thinking the same thing. We're all lying, you know, about it in a sense, because we're all sinners. As far as the Bible is concerned, we're all made in the same mold. Some of us might be a little moldier than others, but we're all in the same mold. We all came out of the same thing. Nobody had to train us. It was there in birth. It was there naturally within us. I remember just a little kid realizing, I look back, what a wicked heart. Just as Jeremiah said, the human heart's wicked. It's deceitful. All the things that I remember doing just as a kid and yet realizing now at the time it was just being a kid. It was fun stuff. Stuff everybody ought to do. Just a little kid. We used to go out and we'd get these thimbles. You know, the wood thimbles is big. They're different sizes. We'd get the biggest ones we could. We'd get a thimble and we'd get a knife and we'd actually cut it out, you know, notch all the way around the thing. Then we'd get a coat hanger and stick it through so we could. And then we'd put thread all the way through the thing. And so the coat hanger with the wire, we could put it against somebody's window and their house and with thread on it. And if you put, you put, take that thimble and then you get three or four kids together and you go around somebody's house and here's some sweet little lady in there reading her paper, quiet little evening. And you go pull that thread and that thing starts going around inside the house against the glass and it magnifies through and it's coming through every window. We watched little old ladies. We thought it was the funnest thing. Jump to the floor. Think the roof's coming in on them and we go, did you see how fast she went down? Boy, I didn't know she was going to get up, you know, or something. And here's somebody frightening them to death. Now, who taught us to be like that? I mean, from the littlest things you could do. I got a little, you get bored with that for a little while. So there was down the street from us at Mrs. Tisdale's house at the corner, this huge oak tree, gigantic oak tree that went way out over the tree, over the street. We didn't have street lights in our neighborhood. And so we'd go and we would get every, we also, our house we lived in, the tract area used to be an orange grove. So everybody had six, eight, ten orange trees in their yard. And we'd get all these old rotten oranges. And then we'd get tomatoes and we'd get anything we could sneak out of our parents, you know, refrigerators. And we'd go climb out in this oak tree. Us, there was three boys across the street, three boys in our family, all the year apart. We'd sit up there in this oak tree. You couldn't see a thing, it's pitch dark. We'd see a car coming down there and we would just wait for it to come. And we would drop an entire grocery store on the car coming down. And they would, as this thing would hit. It was the funnest thing as a kid, you know. And then they'd slam on the brakes and people would come out, you know, and jump there. And we'd just be, nobody'd say a word. They'd go running and jumping and they never saw what hit them. And we did, you know, their entire car. It was the greatest evening you could ever have as a kid. Unless you were the person in the car. One night we did it, we, there was a convertible coming. We didn't know it was a convertible. We did it and we let that thing go. And we heard a blood-curdling scream like you'd never heard. We didn't know it, but the couples just, fortunately they were just coming from and not going to a wedding, but they'd just come from. She had on this whole outfit, you know, and he's in a tux. And he's about, he's in college age or something. And when we hear this scream, one of us, we'd always just sit there, never utter a word. But one, when they heard that scream, dropped out of the tree and started running. Well, then we all jumped and we're all running, scurry. Next thing we know, he gets one of us. This kid, he's, and then I'm under the car. I'm under the, Tisdale's car. I'm laying there, just my heart just beat like crazy. And all of a sudden, a hand grabs onto my ankle and I go out and I'm hanging up. And this guy wanted blood. This guy and his gal there, she's crying and she's screaming and she looked pretty bad. But the, but face it, most of those gowns look pretty bad to start with. But anyway, the thing, but this guy was so mad. He wanted us dead. And he was so upset that we were too little to kill, you know, sort of a thing. That's all I remember. And he said, where did you finally, where do you live? I turned to him. I said, 8415 Clarence, because the kids were with, their parents were out that night. And that was their address. And so he's going down there and he's hauling us there. And he's there and I'm telling him. And by the time we get there and they're not, we said, well, they're out. They all went out to dinner and they're, you know, and we're, they're just, we're dead. Meantime, they look right across the street at 8422 where I lived. And there is a light on the front door. And he says, you know, maybe your parents aren't home, but maybe the people across the street will be nice enough neighbors to take care of you and tell your parents. No, no, no, no, no, no. But the things that we would do that seem to be, and then they just get worse with time. Get older, go to work for Jack in the Box. What's the course shift do they give you to start? You got the 10 till 2 in the morning, you know, Friday and Saturday night. Worst job in the world. About midnight, these guys had come driving through. Half drunk after a party. And there's that big, ugly Jack in the Box. They're talking into you. Remember those things if you run. Hey, Jack. Anybody in there? And of course, yes, we're right here. And we were so bored. I hated that job. But then you had to be nice to them. And they get a Jack. I want a Jack. I want it to be good. And we'd sit there inside. We'd say, no problem. Would you like a little extra secret sauce? Yeah. Jack, give me some. I will not tell you what we did to those burgers. I will tell you to this very day. Anytime I go through a Jack driving by, always some nice. I'm the nicest guy. Take your time. How are you? Nice day. I said burger, not booger. You know, or whatever. The things we would do. When you're on one side of it, it seems fun. Until now, you're older. And now people are doing stuff to you. But you're a sinner. You know, one time we built a car. Helped my cousins with it. Believe it or not. Remember the Austin Healy Sprite? The littlest, teeniest thing. We got a 426 in that thing. How we got in there. We had to cut everything out you ever saw. But we decided we wanted the fastest car in the world. But then the big problem was that so much power in this teeny little Austin Healy. That the wheels, you could never get them to stay down. So one night we get an idea. Where could he get a lot of weight in a small area? And we realized manhole covers. Those things are heavy. And we start driving around town, pulling off all these manhole covers. Putting them in. Seeing if we can get this thing to work. And then one moment we realized, you know, we got about 10 or 12 manhole covers. And people are driving down dark streets without manhole covers. Did we take them back? No, no. There might be cars all over the street. They're down in holes. But who taught me to do that? Where did that nature come from? Well, I'll tell you. My parents. Yes. They're in Hawaii with the couples conference right now. So I have the thing. But that came from their parents and their parents and their parents. Bible says it came from Adam. All of us. And when one day we all have to come to grips with that is what we have. That's what was put within it. We started with that. Absolutely the most selfish human beings in the world. All of us. Could care less about anybody else. You know, when we realize how impure. We come into this world, the most selfish thing that there is on the planet. Fortunately, we were maybe cute when we were born. But at the same time, we are absolutely entirely the most selfish things in the world. I've been into a lot of maternity wards. I've seen a lot of new babies. But I'll tell you, I've never seen one that isn't absolutely selfish. I have yet to meet one little baby there. That's sitting there and thinking to itself, you know. My mom just went through an unbelievable experience bringing me into this world. She is in so much grief and pain. Right now, I'm going to let her sleep. I'll bet she's tired. They could care less. They know less. They are entirely unaware of anything in the world but themselves. I want, I think, I'll have. All they do is scream. I don't even know what's wrong. You figure it out. You brought me into the world. You figure it out. Burp me. Change me. Feed me. Walk with me. Sing to me. And I'll let you know when you strike it. You know, or whatever. But that's our nature. And it's the most impure heart in the world. But when something happens where we realize, God, I don't. Could you imagine going to heaven? And heaven was full of these type of hearts. Everybody's around. I want, I think. Now, you know, it's not bad when something's 5, 6, 7, 8 pounds. It's a little manageable in that way. The tough thing is when it gets up to about 150, 200 pounds. And it's the same thing. It walks in and it's still selfish. It still, you know, walks in the door at the end of the day. Yeah, you know, and mom's running around. Oh no, here's, here it is. The biggest baby in the world, you know. Doesn't know, she starts rubbing her feet. You close, you rub your feet. You want to change the channel. Get the kids out of the room. What do we want to do? Let's find a way to burp you or make you happy. But how selfish we can be until something happens. We say, God, change me. Transform me. I want a heart that is pure, changed, different. The wonderful thing is, is that when we realize that is exactly what Jesus looks at. And he says, oh, how happy is the man whose heart is pure. It's refined. That word pure, it has two suggestions to it. One is, is that it's clean. It's pure in the sense that it has been cleansed. There's something, you know, in Jesus, you know, the night before he was crucified and he's up in the upper room with his disciples and he takes a bowl and he begins to get down there and he girds himself with a towel and he begins to wash the disciples' feet. And you know the story, he came to Peter and Peter looks at him and says, Lord, you'll never wash my feet. Jesus looks up at Peter and he says, Peter, if I don't wash you, you have no part of me. He looks there and says, Peter, I know who you are. I know everything about you. And I know that unless you let, that you're left to your own filth, you're, you're hopelessly lost, Peter. If you will not let me wash you. And then of course, Peter did the next, you know, then he turns, he says, well, wash me all. Pour the bucket on me, you know, or whatever. And Jesus said, no, no, that isn't what I want to do either. I want to wash your feet. That's what's got dirty today. Sometimes we look there and we have this great way that we camouflage things. God comes and he, he starts touching an area of our life that's impure and wrong. And then he says, let me cleanse this. And we say, you know, God, you'll never cleanse that. And he says, I don't cleanse it. We're done. God, I'm just a terrible sinner. I'm a miserable sinner. Wash me all. She says, no, don't give me that stuff. I want to talk to you about this area right here, right now. Not all of you. This is what I want to talk to you about now. You know, your, your, your, your covetousness, your hostilities, your frustration, your inadequacies, your unbelief, your temper, whatever it may be. God looks so often. He says, let me cleanse this. Let me wash your feet. Let me wash this area of your heart. Let me, let me help make it pure. He loves to do that. And when he knows, the wonderful thing is, is we'll never surprise God. And we say, God, I got some really bad news for you. My feet are dirty. He says, I've been, I've, I've, I've been amazed you've been able to live with the stink as long as you have. I knew they were dirty. I know everything about you and I love you. And nothing I can't cleanse. The only thing I can't cleanse is what you won't let me cleanse. And she said, oh, how happy the pure in heart, the person there that comes and says, God, give me a pure heart. Give me a clean heart. You know, the wonderful thing to me, even David, after he had sinned. And then, you know, with Bathsheba and he cries out to God to have mercy upon me. He begins, as he realizes the sin had finally hit David. There, the, the, the sin of his own life, the corruption of his own life. And he asked God, according to your, to your tender mercies, blot out all my transgressions. My iniquity is ever before me. He looks there and he sees the impurity of his heart. He then does one of the most amazing things. He looks and he says against thee and thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight that thou mightest be justified. But he looks there and he says, God, my sin is against you. Now, I think Bathsheba could say, well, hello. I think it was me. I think, I think, you know, her husband Uriah might say, you didn't kill me. I think that's a little bit of a sin. You know, and there, and the others that died with him. Joab could say, well, you know, you lied to me and you, or you had me go set him up to get him killed. What do you mean? That's a really simple thing to say against thee and thee only. Have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight? But you see, David took it all the way back to the heart. Not the, even the external behavior. And he says, God, my sin was when I stopped watching my heart. My sin was against you. And once I sinned against you and letting you work within my heart and yielding my heart to you and letting you fill it and control it and govern it. As soon as that opened, then the floodgates of the rest of it happened. But then after the terrible sin, he could look there and he says, God, create in me a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within me. David, he said, God, this is one of the most wonderful things. The word David used for create is used in Genesis 1.1. It's a word, bara, yamno, you know it. It means to create out of nothing. In the beginning, God created out of nothing the heavens and the earth. David now looks within himself. He has said, he realizes I have nothing good in me. And God, if there is going to be a heart ever again in me, then you will have to create it out of nothing. I have nothing to offer, but you can create, bara, out of nothing, a clean heart. And the wonderful thing is Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God. The one there that is going to have the greatest fulfillment and all of longing in life. The one there that they watch God take and cleanse their heart and fill it and give him a merciful heart and a filled heart with his love and his spirit. Other people wonder what God looks like. This person sees him. This person looks there and says, you know, I see him. I experience him. I know him. First Corinthians 13 says, now we see darkly, you know, but then face to face. But the one who sees in the best is the one that finds their God cleanse me. And so the issue to me had nothing to do with what kind of a heart we came into this world with. The kind of a heart we developed growing up and what we did with it. How raunchy we could be with it. Believe me, I told you the stuff I could tell in church tonight. And I don't even, Kay Smith probably doesn't like the booger joke and I'll hear about that one. But anyway, consider it said. But anyway, but thank God for what you did in here. Just consider that said too. But the thing is, the wonderful thing is he forgives. He looks at you and I tonight and he says, I see your heart. And I can make it clean, pure, pure. If you'll just let me wash your feet. And if you will, Jesus said, I'll tell you, you'll have the happiness that the world longs for. If you let me make you pure. Father, I thank you and I praise you that you look at us and that you have a desire and a longing for us for purity in life and fullness. Lord, we cannot do it. Our heart is wicked and deceitful. You tell us. Lord, myself, I'm a Christian now over 35 years. And yet, Lord, you know perfectly well my heart hasn't changed in a sense. My natural man, it is capable today of anything that ever was. It's no different, it's no better. The only thing that's different is it's you're here to replace it with your love and with your spirit, with your life. All these years that maybe I'd somehow another Christianized the flesh. It might be nice and behave itself, be better. Stop being so selfish or hostile or frustrated or inadequate. It's never changed. Hasn't got any better. But the wonderful thing is, is that you have offered me more and more and more as I get more and more tired of my nature. And you offer me yours. And Lord, tonight as you come to each one of us and you say, let me wash your feet. Lord, may we not either say, no, never can't be done. And may we not go to the other extreme and just say, I'm just a terrible sinner. Just forgive me, God. I'm sorry about it all. But rather than that, we say, Lord, wash my feet. Watch this area of my heart or my life. Something of my selfishness, something of my immaturity. Lord, if you can clean that area, I know I'll see you. And I'll be the happier for it. The joy I'll have won't just be one day when I wake in heaven and in your likeness. But Lord, even to be able to wake tomorrow and seeing something of you and your love and your mercy and grace that I hadn't seen quite yet before. But no better and better. And so, Father, we just thank you and praise you for your love in Jesus name. Amen.