Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

If everybody would take your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter five. Good morning, grace and peace to each one. We're gonna stand for the reading of the word, but if you know it by memory, then I hope you'll just say it.

We're gonna say it, and then after that, we're gonna all sit down, and those of you who know the song are gonna try to sing it. We're trying to memorize this passage, the greatest sermon ever preached. Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew five, we'll say verses one through 12. If you would stand. And seeing the multitude, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which do hunger for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you, falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Thank you, you may be seated. Now we're gonna try singing it. See how well this goes.

And if you feel really bad for me singing this up here, then maybe you could help memorize it next time to help me out. All right, those of you who know it, help me out. And seeing the multitude, he went up into a mountain, and when he was said, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of, just repeat that again, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

All right, thank you. I had somebody strongly encourage last night, please sing that and I kind of given up on it, but now that a bunch of you are here this Sunday, we can at least do it some service. In the summer of 1854, a terrible sickness swept through the Soho district of London.

People were healthy in the morning and dead by nightfall. Within just a few days, hundreds were dying in the crowded neighborhood streets. Families fled their homes, businesses closed and fear spread almost as fast as the disease itself.

No one knew exactly why it was happening. Many believe the sickness came from bad air, poisonous vapors rising from the filthy city. But one Dr. John Snow suspected something different.

He went to the neighborhood and began asking questions of the families who were sick. He carefully recorded where people lived and made a map of the wells in the area alongside the homes and those who had fallen ill. As he studied the pattern, he noticed that many of the sick lived near the Broad Street pump.

Yet there were some curious exceptions. A nearby workhouse housed 535 people, but none of its residents had died. When he investigated, he discovered they had their own private water supply.

At a local brewery, they told him that their men drank nothing but beer. Of the 84 deaths he recorded, only eight occurred outside the area he marked around the Broad Street pump. But when he inquired on those cases, he found three were children who attended school in the area and drank from the pump on their way.

Three others were workers who regularly stopped there to draw water. John Snow concluded that the pump was the source of the disease and persuaded the local health board to remove the handle from it. Once the handle was taken off the pump, the outbreak quickly began to subside.

Here's some minutes I found out of, I don't remember what year it was, but minutes of the proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 27. It says this, during the cholera epidemic, a lady becoming alarmed, removed from the neighborhood of Westminister to Hampstead. But unfortunately, being fond of the pump water, she had been in the habit of drinking, she went for water, she sent for water from the celebrated pump in Broad Street.

And she was the only person in Hampstead who died of cholera. This was a real problem in those days. I even read about another pump nearby, somewhere in that area called the Allgate pump.

There was a hot headline at some point, the pump of death. Same minutes from Volume 27. It says the Allgate pump in the city, the water of which was much sought after for drinking purposes because it was bright, sparkling and cool and of agreeable taste.

But the coolness and brightness were both derived from decaying organic matters by which the water was impregnated while percolating through the adjoining graveyards. The water was bright, sparkling and green gold, but it derived from the decaying organic matter that you could not see. People kept drinking it because it didn't appear something was wrong with it.

And it even tasted good, but they couldn't see the bacteria. The bacteria was invisible. And one single well could infect hundreds of people.

This well that was on Broad Street, there was a house nearby later when they went to investigate. And they found that these houses would have these things called cesspools. You probably heard the term before.

Well, it's kind of like we would think of a septic tank under the house. And after getting down there, the very first outbreak was a baby. And as they got down there in that cesspool under the house, they found that some matter from the baby was in there.

And there was cracks and holes in the cesspool. And it was only two feet away from the well that people have been drinking from. We're reading this morning and studying the Sermon on the Mount.

We're in verse eight. And it says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And I wanna think about that this morning.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. What does Jesus mean when he says the pure in heart? The Greek word there for heart is cardia. We get our English words cardiac, cardio.

You've probably heard all of those before. And to the Jew, when he heard this in Jesus' day, as he heard Jesus say, blessed are the pure in heart, they would think of the heart, we might think of the heart today as maybe a place of emotion. But they thought of it as a place, a center of their thoughts, where they made their decisions.

In Genesis 6, five, as an example, it says that God saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth. And that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Think of that.

When they use this word, and this was the Greek word cardio. And in the Septuagint, we use the same word in this verse. The thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

The heart is where sin begins. It's where our thoughts are. It's where nobody else can see.

The heart was the center of thought. Number two, the heart also determines our moral character. Proverbs 4.23 says, out of our heart, same Greek word, are the issues of life.

It's like a spring that springs up. It comes from our heart. And so whatever's in our heart determines how our character is.

Number three, the heart is where we make decisions from. Out of Exodus 25.2, it says this, every man that giveth it willingly with his heart, ye shall take my offering. So as you can see, there's a willing heart, a decision that's made in a heart that says, I want to do this cheerfully.

So we make our decisions from that place. We also learn in the Bible, number four, that our hearts are deceitful. In fact, it reads like this, the heart is deceitful above all else.

So the place where we make our decisions and our thoughts abide, we need to start off right away understanding that it is deceitful. And not only is it deceitful, but it's deceitful above all things. And the verse goes on to say it's desperately wicked.

Who can know it? Not even our own selves. It deceives us. It lies to us.

It tells us what we really want in our lusts and makes excuses. That's taken out of Jeremiah 17, nine and 10. You know, there's a thought out there that people are inherently good, but the Bible teaches it the other way around.

It says there are none good. And it says here that our hearts are not good. The default position of our heart is deception.

In fact, in Deuteronomy, it says that God humbled them. He proved them to know what was in their heart. You know, sometimes we can think that our hearts are good.

We can think that our hearts are right. And then a circumstance comes into our life and it proves where is our heart. Number five, the heart can become hardened, Exodus 8, 32.

We all know the story of Pharaoh. It says his heart was hardened. Number six, the heart is you.

It's the whole inner person. So when we read these verses, blessed are the pure in heart, we're talking about you. We're talking about how you think when nobody's looking.

As the Proverbs says, for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. That's what determines what you are. Thoughts, your wills, your desires, your motives and your emotions.

Whatever's in your heart is how God sees you. And lastly, I have here, your heart can be influenced. And therefore in Proverbs 4, it says to keep your heart with all diligent, for out of it are the issues of life.

Keeping, guarding with all diligence. So just in summary of what our heart is, it's our mind, it's our reasoning and our thoughts. It's our moral center, our integrity and our character.

It's our will, where we make decisions and choices. It is the seed of our devotion to God. You may say right this morning, I love God and you may sing some beautiful songs about loving God, but God knows the truth.

God knows what's really in your heart. And lastly, it's the inner person that God will examine. So Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart.

Let's look at this word pure for a little bit. This word pure is the Greek word katharos. We get our English word catharsis, sorry.

I've never used this word before, but I guess there's a whole thing out there called catharsis and it's the idea of you having all these inner emotions and a way to purge them out, to get them out in some kind of way. And so it comes from the same idea, getting those bad things out, a pure heart, a purging of bad thoughts and emotions. This word means primarily, it just means clean.

It just means blessed are the clean in heart. It's used all over the Old Testament, New Testament with this idea, clean water, clean garments. It's meaning free from what pollutes it.

And when it's applied to your heart, it means without hypocrisy, without defilement like sin and without hidden corruption. So it means clean, free from contamination or impurity. Number two, it means genuine, not mixed.

It's used all over in the Bible like this. It was pure gold, overlay the ark with pure gold. Same word for pure, catharsis, however you say it.

Pure olive oil, pure incense. So whenever you see that in the Old Testament, it's talking about pure, it's unmixed. When we say pure gold, that means get all of the, heat it up and get all of the impurities out.

Pure olive oil. If somebody was selling olive oil that was only 2% olive oil and the rest of it was some other oil, some oil that you didn't want, it wouldn't be pure. The Bible says the words of the Lord are pure as silver tried in a furnace.

So it's the idea of not mixed. So first of all, this idea of a pure is to mean clean, but it also means genuine. It means not mixed as impurities are gone.

And James used it in a third way, an undivided heart. He says this, purify your hearts, you double minded. Now this is an interesting word here.

Double minded is actually a composition word made up of two Greek words, two souls, two hearts, two lives. And so when James is saying, you have this hypocrisy going on, I heard some people talking about it this morning, you live one way during the week and then you come here and act another way, or you love one way in front of your parents, but then when you're with your friends, you live another way. You live one way when you're at your job or wherever you do here, but then when you're with these people, you live another way.

That's two lives. That's double minded. And James uses this, purify your hearts, you double minded.

And that's why God says he wants you to love him with all of your heart, not some of it. He doesn't want you to love with half your heart. He wants it as an allegiance to God.

So purity is not only clean, it's not only genuine, but it's also allegiance to God. It's kind of like a husband who has a wife and he finds out she has a boyfriend on the side he didn't know about. That concept of a double life.

And that's why David calls out in Psalm 51, he says, created me a clean, same Greek word, heart, oh God. Same word as Jesus used, blessed are the pure in heart. I think when Jesus was preaching this, he must've been thinking of Psalm 24.

We can turn there. Psalm 24, we'll just look at this together. Three and four.

He asked the question, who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place? You know, what is the hill of the Lord? What is his holy place? I think that is referring to his presence. Who shall be able to come near you, Lord? Who shall be able to be in your presence? Who should be able to commune with? And then he goes on and answers the questions. He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to vanity or pride, nor sworn deceitfully.

And he goes on. This is the person James says, or not James, David says, that can come into God's presence, that can know God, that can commune with him and is somebody who has clean hands and a pure heart. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, James says it later, talking about to clean your hands and to purify your hearts, you double-minded.

So not only is it about your hands, your actions, the things you do in your life, but it's also about your heart, you know, and Jesus is more interested, I would say, in our hearts than our actions. I know it sounds bad. We've heard that and it's been abused.

And so we sometimes cringe at that. But at the end of the day, he cares more about where your heart is than he cares where the actions end up. The actions need to come from the heart.

Case in point, look at the Pharisees. Over and over, they had probably lived more holy lives than you or I at times, but they were hidden. They were hypocriticals.

At least they appeared to live that way. And so Jesus is not only caring about your actions, cleans your hands, but he's caring about your heart. Now, Christianity is a heart religion.

I'm just gonna listen. I just want you to listen to these verses. I'm gonna run through them really fast.

But you just listen to all of the popular verses every one of you know about the heart. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, committeth adultery with her already in his heart. A good man out of the good treasures of his heart bringeth forth that which is good. And an evil man out of the evil treasures of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil.

For of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. For out of thine heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, and it goes on. Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

You shall seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. For with the heart man believes to righteousness.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and a contrite heart.

The Lord is nigh to them that are a broken heart. They honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me and they come unto me as a people cometh and they sit before me as a people and they hear their words but they will not do them. There's your actions.

For with their mouth they show much love but their heart goeth after their covetousness. Jesus said that the Pharisees appear outward, beautifully outward, but within are full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Outwardly you appear righteous to men but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. And David cried, create in me a clean heart, same word. And so we can see here, Christianity is a heart religion.

It's about our hearts. So the condition of our heart is very important. What is the reward? Back to Matthew five.

The reward is they shall see God. Now this idea, see, is the idea. Jesus could have used any of these words for see but he didn't choose the most common see word as in like eyesight, just casually looking over there.

He used the one that is talking about glorious appearings, things that are unheard of. It means to gaze. You know, you ever see something so amazing that your mouth kind of hangs wide open and you just are staring at that? And so it's different than the other words that could have been used.

It's frequently used with divine encounters. For example, here, I have some written down. When the verse, when Peter and James and John are up on the mountain and it says, and there appeared unto them Moses and Elias, the peered word is see.

They all shall see the son of man coming in the clouds of glory. Once again, an amazing event. Zacharias, he's standing there in the temple and he's doing his duties and all of a sudden an angel appears, it says.

Same word. Your younger men shall see visions. You see what I'm saying? Seeing God in the word he chose to use is something more than just a casual observance.

It's being revealed God. It's having to see God with our eyesight, like it talks about anointing our eyes so that we can see in Revelation. So not only is this word the idea of something glorious, but it's the idea of a future tense is the word and a middle tense, which means you get to participate in it.

You get to participate in knowing God and it's something he will reveal to you. I ran across this in another sermon that I was listening to and I thought it's really good. He said this, the pure in heart will see God in everything.

He said, you'll see God in your circumstances. You get up and you go out for the day, things happening, whatever's happening, good or bad, you'll see God in it. You'll see God's directing your day.

You'll see God when people help you. You'll see God when people hurt you. You'll see God when people curse you.

But the impure heart will see that brother, that sister, that wife, right? The impure heart doesn't see the greater picture, but the pure heart sees God. He's in relation with God. So I'm gonna go back to my opening story.

Those people in those days thought that cholera was from what they thought of as miasma, which is bad air. When John Snow would go around and try to convince them, no, it's water, he tried over and over, even with earlier epidemics. No, John, you don't know what you're talking about.

And he tried to prove to them because some people would die from this water source. He even found that one side of the street, the water, the sewage flowed toward this well on the one side of the street, and all these people died. And on the other exact side of the street, the water flowed away from the well, and all of them lived because they had different wells.

And they still didn't believe him. But when he finally took off that handle off that pump, they decided he must know something. He found out that it was in the water.

Clear, cool, fresh glass of water. Anybody thirsty? I see some interesting faces. It's good, it's healthy, right? Water is good.

We talked about it actually, maybe it was, oh, I think it was last week, when we talked about hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Now here, I went in to my toilet and I got a little out of the bowl. I'm just gonna put one drop.

Caleb, would you drink some? It's just one drop. Anybody here wanna drink? No, I won't ask, and that might be some strange person. You think it's contaminated now? I heard a story.

I heard a story. We used to be in a home fellowship. And years ago in the same home fellowship, everybody was around, you know, having their home fellowshiping time.

And it's a bit more of a casual environment, by the way. Anyway, somebody, little boy became very merciful and he wanted to give everybody a drink of water. And so he went around, was handing out these little glasses of water to each person in the group.

And he finally came up to his mom and he said, mom, it's all gone. And she said, what's all gone? He says, the bowl is empty. And he took her into the bathroom and he had gotten his cups out of the toilet.

So my question is, I can't imagine being one of those persons that morning and thinking about what happened. Does anybody wanna drink this water? I mean, it's a lot less than the little boy served. Probably not.

I don't think anybody in this room really wants to drink that water. Oh, so I could drink some? But you have a filter on it. Maybe it took the chlorine out.

I am actually kind of thirsty, but. I wanna ask the question this morning, what in your life represents even just one drop of that sewage? What in your life represents just one drop of that sewage? That verse we read said, keep your heart with all diligence. Think of the words it's using there.

Keep, guard your heart with everything you have. Above all else, why? Because it says this, it determines the course of your life. Or as another translation says, for everything you do flows from it.

I think we all wanna believe that we're better than that. That we can watch the filth, listen to the filth, talk the filth, and somehow it won't affect us, right? It won't be like that one drop of sewage in my life. It was for that guy over there, but not for me.

But it says out of it are the issues of life. And ultimately your actions. I was going to bump it purposely, but then I thought the rest of you would be thinking all the service long how the bacteria is sitting on the floor.

But you might be able to put on a good show on Sunday morning. You might be able to put on a good show on the people you wanna put a good show on around. But you know, once in a while, you're gonna get jostled, right? Something's not gonna go right in your life.

And what's gonna happen? That's gonna come out. And it's gonna infect. The Bible says out of it are the issues of life.

Out of your heart, it will ultimately come out. So Solomon says we need to guard it with everything we have. And that's your choice daily, to decide what you put in it.

Not just, I don't wanna let it come out. What's going into it? What are you allowing in to that of your heart? The Bible tells you what to do and what to allow. And it says whatsoever things are.

What is the first one? True. True. Whatsoever things are honest.

Whatsoever things are lovely. Whatsoever things are pure. Whatsoever things are just.

There be any other virtue and think on these things, right? It tells you what to do. Only allow these things into your heart. I wanna get real practical.

Later today. Oh, thank you. I was getting thirsty.

I hope it's clean. I trust you. What if later today, you pull out your phone and you're looking at it and you're scrolling through it.

Now, let me ask you this. If I came to you right now and said, can I have your phone? Any one of you. And I said, can I just come up here right now? And can I scroll through the memes, the jokes, the texts, the shorts that you've been watching this last week? Would you be absolutely horrified? Would you be ashamed? Because if you would be, then God already is, right? God already sees your heart.

If I would be a fly in the car and listening to the conversations and I could hear everything, what would I come away and say? Do we think that we're better than what the scripture says? Whatever you fill your heart with eventually will come out. And that's why the Bible says to keep it. Listen to this verse out of Ephesians.

But fornication, okay, I think we all agree with that. We all know that that shouldn't be around. Uncleanness, covetousness, let it not be once named among you as becometh saints.

And then he couples right with those three things. He couples this, neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which is not convenient, but rather giving of thanks. Let me give you those three words in modern English.

First of all, filthiness. Some translations put it as obscene stories. What are obscene stories? Something deliberately designed to stir up shameful or impure thoughts, especially sexual ones, by treating what should be modest or sacred in a crude, vulgar, or degrading way.

Another definition of obscene. Speech, images, or behavior that make light of sexual purity and stir up impure thoughts through crude or shameful expression. Let me just say in a really basic way.

It's talking, taking, sorry, what God made honorable and dragging it through the mud for entertainment. That's what filthiness is. Obscene stories, you know, and why is it? Why is it that those are the funny things, right? Does anything go off in your heart when somebody tells a funny story and it's crude, it's obscene, does anything go off in your heart like this little feeling that something's being quenched? It should, and if it isn't, your heart's becoming heartened, which is a very dangerous thing to happen.

The second one is foolish talk. That means speech that comes from a foolish mind. Empty, senseless talk that treats serious or moral things lightly.

It actually comes from two compound words, moro, like we get moron, like the one, and if anybody calls him a fool, in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says, if you call your brother a fool, that Greek word is the same thing, moros and logos, your words, like we say the word of God, it's the logos of God. So you put fool and talk together. It's literally saying to speak like a fool.

And then lastly, the King James says jesting. Jesting means vulgar joking. It's humor that makes light of sinful or shameful things, especially sexual impurity, by turning them into jokes and meant to provoke laughter.

Ephesians says this, neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting, which are not convenient. These are not things we should be, it's like dropping sewer water into this cup and then thinking I won't be affected. Ephesians four, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.

But that which is good to the use of edifying, that means building up, that it may minister grace to the hearers. Colossians, put off all these, and then at the last there, filthy communication out of your mouths. Proverbs says, put away from thee a froward mouth and perverse lips, put them far from thee.

So I think we understand filthiness is open, dirty speech, foolish talking, senseless, morally careless speech, and jesting is clever humor that turns impurity into jokes. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks at our heart. God knows this morning where each one of our hearts sits and how much sewage is in it versus not.

God is more interested in your heart. I remember two years ago, Roger preached a sermon. It was called, I wrote it down, the most dangerous influence in the world.

And if you remember, he went through this, it could be money, it could be this, it could be lost, it could be the internet, it could be all these things. And if I'm not mistaken, the very end, it was your own heart. Is that correct? Your own heart is the most dangerous influence in the world to you.

It's deceitfully wicked above all else. Do we really believe that this morning? Now, maybe you're sitting here thinking like, yeah, get them, get those young guys on their cell phones. You know, I don't have that problem.

I don't deal with all the jesting. Well, what, you know, your heart has stuff in it too. Maybe it's just pride.

Maybe it's reputation. Maybe it's lust. These are all things that we can store in our hearts and that Jesus does not look at as pure.

So the question then is how do we have pure hearts? Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart, but they shall see God. I think if I asked this morning, how many of you want to know God? How many of you want to see God? How many of you want to be in his presence? You would all raise your hand, right? The qualification here is that we have to have pure hearts. How do we have pure hearts? We just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

What do we do? Well, I would say the first thing, James, we already read the verse. He says, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. The first thing I think we need to do is to repent, according to James.

We need to repent. We need to be honest, as Roger said earlier in this service. We need to be honest that we are putting filth into our heart.

We're allowing bacteria to grow by the thoughts that are being allowed to be had. James gives us this whole line of thinking. He says, submit to God, resist the devil, draw near to God, and humble yourselves.

The whole concept of truly repenting. Number two, I think we have to have faith. In Acts, it says this, God put no difference between them and us.

Talking about the Gentiles and the Jews, he said, purifying their hearts by faith. So number two, the first is we have to have faith. First repentance, number two is you have to have faith.

You have to have faith that Jesus is what he said he is. And two, he can help purify your heart, right? You have to believe that he can help you if you cry out to him. He purifies our hearts by faith.

Remember that old time promise back in Ezekiel, it says, I will put a new heart in you. I will take the old stony heart out and I'll put a new heart of flesh within you. So there's a promise there.

God can do it. We have to have faith that he can, but we have to repent. Number three, obedience through the spirit.

I like that. First Peter one says this, seeing you have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the spirit. If you, as it says in Romans, if we deny our flesh through the spirit, we shall live.

And so the idea here is we need to obey. Like this morning, maybe the Lord's tapping on your heart, saying, you know, you're putting some sewer in there. You need to obey.

You need to do what he says. You need to cry out for his help. You need to have faith that he meant what he says.

You need to repent, but then you need to obey. You need to do what he tells you to do. You purify your souls through the truth by obedience through the spirit.

Number four, you need to fill your minds with what is pure. We already read the verse. Think on these things, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are just, whatever things are true.

Colossians says it like this, set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth. Psalm 1, 2, and his law that they meditate day and night. And then number five, you need to read the Bible.

It says here that the word of God discerns our thoughts and the intents of our heart. And so I think it's not just about reading for the knowledge but it's about letting it discern and tell you if your thoughts and your intents are wrong. If you going back to it for a reset to say, Lord, do you see any sewage? Cause you know, I don't see any, it looks like a good drink of water to me.

And then Lord shows you right there. Do you see that thing floating around right there? That's actually from the toilet bowl. The Bible says that without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.

And I think everybody here wants to see the Lord. Not only do we wanna see him today, not only do we wanna see him in all of our circumstances in life, but we wanna see him someday too. We wanna see him as the last verse of that Greek word for see is in revelation as it says, we shall see his face.

You wanna see his face. We need to have purity of heart. He can do it in us if we will let him, but we must guard our hearts.

We must, as James says, purify our hearts, he double-minded. And so my encouragement this morning, the most important sermon ever preached, and we might've read these words a thousand times, blessed are the pure in heart, but go home and think about that this week. How are you doing with your heart? How are you doing with guarding it? How are you doing with the thoughts that go around, the thoughts of pride, the thoughts of lust, the thoughts of reputation? Are you asking God to discern those thoughts and those intents in your heart? Or are you just flippantly going through life, jesting and joking and just putting more and more poison into there, which is just quenching the spirit like cholera killed all of those people in London.

God bless you.