Pure Heart, Pure Church - Part 6

Two seminary students in my office the other day and I said, what seminary go to, they told me. What church do you go to? I go to so-and-so. Oh, I go to another one.

Oh, I said, your church has 26,000 members. How many come to the prayer meeting? We don't have a prayer meeting. I said, that's like me saying give you my Cadillac.

It was given to me, but I'm not giving it to you. But it's like me giving you the Cadillac and say, take it friend. There's only one thing wrong with it.

What is it? It has no motor in it. A church without a prayer meeting has no motor. There is no more precious thing in the whole world as for I've preached in some of the greatest churches in the world, preached with some of the greatest preachers, and prayed with some of the finest men I've ever met.

Sometimes people say, you've talked about prayer this week, can we have a prayer meeting? Yeah, we'll have it Friday night after the meeting. Tell all the preachers in town to come, and all the deacons and all the other needy folk, bring them to a prayer meeting. All this section is reserved for preachers.

We're not down on our knees ten minutes for what they get up and actions speak louder than words. They're not used to praying. Five minutes on their knees? Hmm? What was it, something we heard the other day, Martha, somebody who'd given what, 30? What was it? A period of time for what was it? I've forgotten.

Something that was said in the news. Well, one thing that was said in the news was that some of the athletes in the Olympics had trained for eight years, some of them just to run for a matter of seconds down the track. One of the girls on the basketball, what is the other ball? Volleyball team was asked, don't you have to discipline yourself? Yes.

Do you practice a lot? Yeah, six to eight hours every day, six days a week. Doesn't it involve sacrifice? Yeah. You have to leave home? Yeah.

What else? Oh, this girl said, I haven't seen my boyfriend for nine months. Supposing you tell our students on our campuses, you can't go home for nine months, boy they'd cry their eyes out. You have to discipline yourself for six to eight hours every day in the presence of God.

Remember those gold medals were already tarnished. They asked one young fellow, what are you going to do with the gold medal? Do you know what he said? Have it bronzed. It shows the value we put on it, but that's all it's worth.

That Paul says they do it for a corruptible crowd. Remember the Olympics were there 400 years before Christ was born. And they were more strenuous than even they are today.

They didn't have vitamins and all the other things that we have. But getting back to it, we're living in a day when there's little, if any, discipline. Come on, go to bed at the same time every night, get up the same time every morning.

Take time to be holy. Forget your friends. If they want to be skeletons spiritually, let them be skeletons.

If they want to be poor spiritually, let them be poor. You're not going to be judged for their lives, you're going to be judged for your life. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.

He uses different words here now. Blot out my transgressions. Blot out means like, here, I erase this thing here.

It's completely gone. There you are, now it's gone. Okay, that's what the word blot means.

To blot out means to erase. Wash me. If you've been in oriental countries, you've seen people, women go down to the river, they put clothes in the river, and then they put them down and they tramp them out.

They're tramping the dirt out. And that's exactly what that Hebrew word wash means there, trample me. If need be, crush me to get this thing out of me.

Then he uses an amazing word, cleanse me. There was a great Hebrew scholar years ago, some of you must have read, he has two great volumes, Dr. Idersheim on Idersheim's study of the life of Christ. It's the greatest classic ever, you can still buy it.

Dr. Idersheim, a Hebrew scholar, says you cannot translate this word cleanse into English except this way. You can see that at four. Unsin me.

Isn't that beautiful? Cut me loose away from my sin. I say again, the normal Christian life is a life of holiness. We like to sing holy, holy, holy.

And then we go on and sing toward the end, only thou art holy. That's not what the scripture says. Holiness originates with God.

Only he is originally holy, he always was and always will be everlastingly holy. Our holiness is borrowed from him. The command is to be holy, which literally means be healthy in your spirit.

That's why the word holy comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word, halig, which means health. Or again, it means purity. There used to be a great preacher in England, of course there have been a lot of great preachers in England, but anyhow, this old preacher used to preach in Wesley's Chapel on City Road, London.

Mercy for the life of me, I can't think of his name at the moment. He wrote a great book called The Burning Cataracts of Christ. But I remember his phrase, he said, the man that only wants his sins forgiven is toying with religion.

The aspirations of the human heart naturally, I mean, when God has come to deal with them, is as David cries here, create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me. And then he says in the twelfth verse, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Let me give you one of my latest quips.

The more joy you have in the Lord, the less entertainment you need. Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. There's a king in America, do you know who the king is? McQueen? The king is sport and his wife is called entertainment.

And they're devouring not only the man in the street, they're devouring people in the pews, not only that, they're devouring preachers. Ask your preacher, what time do you go to bed at night? If he says it's none of your business, say it is, I want to know what kind of a man you are. Ask him what kind of a prayer life he had.

I don't ask people if they're saved anymore. Who isn't saved? From the White House to the jailhouse. I look a person in the eye and say, does Christ live in you? I was saved, I didn't ask you that.

I'm asking you, does Christ live in you? Christianity is the only religion in the world where a man's God comes and lives inside of him. A Chinese scholar was given a copy of the New Testament. He'd read the Quran, he'd read the Vedas and all the sacred books.

The man said to him, did you read the New Testament through? He said, I did. What's the most amazing thing? He thought the man would say, the most amazing thing I read was that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. That he died and physically rose again from the dead.

Instead of that, he said, the most awesome thing is in Philippians chapter 2.