Blessed are the Pure in Heart

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Bill Smith; Psalm 24 Blessed are the Pure in Heart

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. And I just want to say your heart condition affects your relationship with God.
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And so I want to just do a little illustration with you before we read our passage for this morning, okay?
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So each of these represent a heart, okay?
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This one is full of stones. Can you see that? Kids, you see those stones in there?
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I was out this morning picking those out of my driveway. Maybe each stone represents some anger in your life, some jealousy, some envy, some hatred, some bitterness.
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Sometimes our heart gets so hard that there is no room for God at all in a heart like this.
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Maybe this heart has never had Jesus come and heal it.
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And so this could be the unforgiving heart too, okay? Whoa, how'd you like to take a drink of this one?
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Okay, this one represents what I call the defiled heart, okay?
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You're letting things into your life that are kind of polluting your heart. It could be things that you're watching on television.
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It could be things that you're looking at on the internet. It could be things you're reading.
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It could be what you're participating in with maybe some people you hang out with.
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There are many, many things that can make our heart kind of defiled and not so good.
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All right, what else I got in here? All right, whoa, okay.
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This one represents, well, it's rusty. It's rust water. Isn't that lovely?
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I changed my house filter this week and that's why it was in the canister. But it represents a rusty heart.
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So the rusty heart is that religious heart, okay? You're kind of going through the motions.
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Yeah, you're saying your prayers. Maybe you're even doing your Bible reading every day.
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And there's a religiousness about you, but you're stale and you're stagnant.
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You're not growing in your faith. You're not growing closer to your Savior. And your heart has got kind of rusty.
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Maybe you're not allowing, you know, things like pornography in your life and things like that.
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But you're just, you're rusty, you're stagnant. Now, this one.
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Doesn't that look good after those other ones? This one represents the pure heart, okay?
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The heart that's been cleansed and forgiven, washed pure, renewed through the
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Word of God. And it's pure, no defilement in it. And so my question to you this morning is, which heart does
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Jesus want to dwell in? Are you pointing on this one, Chris? You're right, right?
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I mean, which one would you want to dive into, right? You'd want to be in this one, right?
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Or to take a drink. And you can see the beauty of purity, right?
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Through that, after looking at these other bottles of water, the beauty of a pure heart.
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And so the question is, how can we have this pure heart? And that's really what I want to focus on this morning as we go through God's Word and Psalm 24.
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And I would ask you to grab your Bible. We're just going to read through this together. And there are
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Bibles in the chairs, under the seats. And grab one of those if you don't have one.
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And you are welcome to take one of those home if you need a Bible as well. So we're going to go to Psalm 24.
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Follow along with me as we read Psalm 24. The earth is the
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Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. For he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.
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Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.
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Who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessings from the
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Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the
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God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, and the
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King of glory, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this
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King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads,
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O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, and the King, that the King of glory may come in.
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Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.
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He who has clean hands and a pure heart. This is where the
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King of glory wants to come in. Pray with me this morning, and then we'll have our time of worship.
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Holy Father, just thank you that you love us, and I thank you that you are the best heart surgeon ever.
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That no matter what the condition of our heart is this morning, you can totally change and transform and heal our hearts,
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Lord. You are so ready and willing to forgive us, and we thank you for the precious blood that was shed for us at the cross so that we can be forgiven and be pure in heart.
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Lord, we're just asking that you would meet with us here in a special way. You know that we all need you so desperately that we all struggle in different ways.
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And Lord, so many things distract us from you. Lord, I know some people have had some tough weeks, a tough week this week.
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And Lord, they need to hear a word from you this morning. We all do. We need to hear a word from you.
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And I pray that you would speak to us, Lord, that you would speak through the worship music, and that we could worship you in spirit and truth, that you would speak to us through your holy word this morning.
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And just thank you so much for our church family, and that we are brothers and sisters, and you are our heavenly
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Father, and we love you, Lord. And thank you so much for loving us. Lord, we want to pray that you would bless
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Pastor Don and the men at the men's retreat. I'm going to guess that they're even right now gathered together for worship and looking into your word.
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And we just pray that you would speak to their hearts this morning and then bring them home safely today.
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Lord, we love you and thank you again, just that we can gather here in Jesus' name this morning, and that you are right here in the midst of us.
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And Lord, no matter where we're at, no matter what's been going on in our lives, you love us with a perfect, everlasting love.
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We thank you for that. I see things in your holy name this morning. Amen. Amen. Amen.
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Thank you, David. Thank you, everybody, for blessing us with your gifts of music.
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Go ahead and open up your Bibles to Psalm 24. So I love that I'm meeting new people every week here at Recast.
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And some of you I have not met yet. I see you coming and I look forward to being able to meet you.
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Just a little briefly about myself.
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I grew up in Kalamazoo, born and raised here. Maple Street Magnet, South Junior High back then.
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K -Central. Go Giants. Came to Christ at age 20. The Lord saved me out of a really dark place.
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And 1986, he called me into full -time ministry with Youth for Christ. And so every week and almost every day,
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I get to bring the good news of Jesus to some really hurting young people. Usually on Sunday mornings before I come here,
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I'm either at the juvenile home helping lead chapel there or at Lakeside Academy up on Oakland Drive.
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I also get to administer to some really hurting young people at a place called the Ark for Youth.
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And it's just been a privilege to be part of the ministry of Youth for Christ. And I thank
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Recast for supporting us in that work. You, Recast, is one of our supporting churches.
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And my wife and I have been a member here for about seven years now. Something like that. And we've just been really blessed to be connected with this church family.
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So being in full -time ministry, I have learned the importance of the condition of my heart.
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Because if my heart is not good, I cannot do what God has called me to do. I just can't do it.
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And so I've had to learn daily how to let the heart surgeon work on me in my heart.
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And he continues to do that. We're making progress. And, you know, it's a lifelong journey, isn't it?
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This walk with Christ and learning and growing in him. I want to start just by reading the first three verses of Psalm 24.
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We find a really important question in verse three that I want to talk about. It says,
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The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. For he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.
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Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place?
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That's a really, really important question there. And I want to think about this question.
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What is he really asking there in verse three? When he says, Who shall ascend to the hill of the
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Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? Well, for the
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Jew of the time when these Psalms were being written, they would think of Mount Zion.
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They would think of the hill of the Lord as being where Jerusalem had been built, where the temple would be built.
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The hill of the Lord, they would think of coming to their place of worship. They would think of coming to God's temple.
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And think of what the temple represented for the Jews of that day. It represented the very throne of God.
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It represented his holy, sacred presence. They would come from miles to worship
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God at the temple. And so when they heard this, they would know what the question is.
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Is that the question is, who is worthy to stand in his holy place?
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Who is worthy to come into God's sacred presence? I want you to look at verse six with me for a second.
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We're going to jump down there. And then this kind of begins to unfold what this is talking about.
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And so the question really is, who may come into God's presence? Verse six, such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the
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God of Jacob. God wants us to seek him.
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You see that? He wants us to know him. From Genesis to Revelation, God is calling us to himself, to this close, intimate relationship that Jesus paid for at the cross.
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He's calling us to seek his face. Did you see that word face? Now, you know,
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I see your faces, but I'm not kind of like right in your face. We're in each other's presence.
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But when you're just talking to someone one -on -one, you're right there. You're in their face.
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And then this is a picture of coming right into the presence of our heavenly father, where he is facing us, ready to meet with us, ready to speak into our life, ready to do something special in our lives.
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If we will give him that place, if we will give him that time. But the sad reality, especially in our culture, is that we are so busy and we are so distracted that we're not finding those quiet places to get in his sacred presence and to meet with him face to face.
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Could you imagine, parents, if your children did not want to spend any time with you at all?
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And maybe you've experienced that as your children have grown. Maybe there was a separation and it's heartbreaking.
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And in the loving heart of the father, he just longs for us to come and daily meet with him in a quiet place, one -on -one.
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Look at Psalm 27 with me. And there's a verse that has really blessed me.
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And I've actually turned this verse into a prayer. It's Psalm 27, verse 8.
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And it's an invitation that God gives us. In verse 8, it says,
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You, speaking God, You have said, Seek my face. My heart says to you,
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Your face, Lord, I will seek. I pray that prayer every day.
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I say, Father, You said that I should seek your face. Please show me your beauty and your glory.
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Help me to seek your face, O God. Help me to know you. Are you seeking him in your life?
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Are you giving this king of glory time in your life to get to know him?
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It's the only way we're going to grow closer. The only way you can get to know someone better is by spending time with them.
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Flip back to Psalm 24. So with this invitation, with this question of who can stand in your presence,
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O God, we see this continued call in verses 7 and 9.
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It says, Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.
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Verse 9, Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.
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The king of glory, that he may come in. That he may dwell in our hearts.
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He wants to live within us by his spirit. You know, we say, talk about asking
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Jesus into your heart, right? And that's what it is.
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He wants to dwell in our hearts. But he's not always at home there because, you know, we can have all those rocks, or we can have that dirt, and Jesus can never be at home in that.
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When we see this expression, lift up your heads, it helps us understand that the gate represents our eyes, and our ears, and our mind.
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It talks about lifting up your head. And so they speak of the eye as being the gate to the soul, the ears.
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It's the idea of looking for him, listening for him, of turning your mind to him.
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That is the gate. You know, what are you letting into your gate, I guess is a good question.
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You know, again, it comes down to what am I filling my mind with? And if you feel very far from God, then just be real and honest with yourself.
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What could be hindering that in my life? And then he talks about the ancient doors.
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So I want to let scripture answer that question of what this is talking about as far as the ancient doors.
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So keep your finger here, or bookmarker in your Bible, and I don't know how you do that on your device, but anyway, you probably know how to do that, don't you?
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Because we're going to keep flipping back to Psalm 24, but go with me to Revelation 3, verse 20.
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So in Revelation 3, we have Jesus speaking to the church. He's not speaking to unbelievers.
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Often this scripture is used in the context of salvation, but this isn't talking about people getting saved at all.
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This is Jesus calling out to the church in Revelation 3, verse 20.
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He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
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I will come into him and eat with him and he with me. That's a sad picture.
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Jesus is saying, I'm knocking on the door of your heart, church believer.
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I'm knocking on, will you let me in? How many of you ever seen the painting of Jesus, you know, knocking on the door, right?
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Anybody seen that before? You know, you look at it and you're like, oh yeah, that's somebody's idea of Jesus.
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He's got the long hair, right, and the robe on, and you just kind of know, even though he probably didn't look like that at all, you know,
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I know Jesus didn't look very European. I'll say that. All right, but anyway, you know the picture, right?
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And I was in somebody's home and they had that in their living room and I'd never really taken a close look at that picture before or really thought of the significance of it.
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And I was standing there looking at it and the host asked me, do you see anything unusual about that painting?
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And so I started taking a closer look and I noticed that the door did not have a door handle.
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It did not have a doorknob and doors are supposed to have that, right? And I said, the door has no doorknob.
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And he said, that's right, because that door represents your heart. It can only be opened from the inside.
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And so we have to daily, it's not just a one -time thing. We have to open the door of our heart.
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I did that when I was 20 and I was such a wreck. I was trapped in addictions and I was in such darkness and I just cried out to Jesus, come into my life, save me.
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And he did that very thing. And that was the beginning of a lifelong, eternal relationship.
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And he wants us daily, really, because we shut that door to him, don't we? Yeah, we get our heart right with him and then we get off in our day and things start coming in and it could be an attitude, it could be multiple things that we kind of shut him out again.
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And he's standing at that door knocking. Maybe that knocking is just that sense of,
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I feel so empty. I feel lost. I feel dirty.
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I don't have peace. And he's knocking and he's saying, let me in. I'm the
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Prince of Peace. I'm the healer. I'm the great physician. I can heal your broken heart.
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And so we need to let him in that ancient door. That's our heart. The gates are, I have to open my eye gates and I have to look for him in his word.
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I have to be listening in spirit to what he's trying to say to me. And I have to be thinking.
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But I ask him, help me to understand your holy word. So he is calling us.
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He is inviting us. Come back to Psalm 24 with me now. And I want you to look at this one just from this revelation, just in Psalm 24, what we can learn about this awesome
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God in 10 verses. And know that this book is the divine revelation of God and its deepest purpose is to reveal the
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Father to us, to reveal our Lord and Savior to us. That's its deepest purpose.
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Yes, it has rules that will help us live life successfully, that will protect us.
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It has wisdom, but its deepest purpose is so that we can know the Father. So who is this one who is inviting us?
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Look at verses one and two again. It says, The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.
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For he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.
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You see in verse one, the word Lord, and Don spoke to this just a few weeks ago,
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I believe, that when you see the word Lord in capital letters, that's the Old Testament sacred name of God.
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Some people pronounce it Yahweh or Jehovah. We're not even sure how it was pronounced because it was so sacred to the
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Jews that they wouldn't say it. They felt unworthy. And so they would substitute the word
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Adonai, Lord, instead of saying his sacred name. It's four Hebrew letters without any vowels.
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So the best, most Hebrew scholars kind of lean toward the translation of Yahweh. But if you want to know the meaning of the name, you go to the passage in Exodus of the burning bush, when
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Moses said, when I go back to Egypt, who should I tell them sent me? And God said,
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I am who I am. Tell them that I am has sent you. He is the
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I am. He is the self -existent eternal one. He is so real and so alive.
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And he's the life giver. He would say to you, I am your peace. I am your strength.
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I am your life. I am your hope. He's all that we need. And this word,
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Yahweh, this name, it speaks of personal relationship. Names are about relationship, right?
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If we don't know someone's name, it's hard to get to know them. One of the most important things when meeting someone is to be able to remember their name.
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And that's a challenge, isn't it? Sometimes I'll shake your hand and we'll say our names to each other.
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And then I walk away and I'm going, oh, what was his name again? But when we get to know someone, we know their name, right?
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So it speaks of relationship. And then it speaks of him being the founder of the world and those who dwell in it, the seas and the rivers.
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And this speaks of God as the owner and sustainer of his entire creation.
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That he's the sovereign Lord and creator of all things. And when you look at nature and all the life on this earth and the sun and the moon and stars, you see his beauty and his glory and his power.
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That's one of the greatest evidences of our creator. When you see a beautiful painting, you know there's an artist.
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When you see a building, you know there's a builder. When you see the beauty of creation, you know that there is a beautiful divine creator.
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And this divine creator is calling us into relationship. Look at verse five with me.
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He will receive blessings from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
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Throughout the Psalms, God is called the God of our salvation. This is one of the titles of the
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Lord. The Hebrew is Elohim Yasha.
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Elohim is the Old Testament name for God. And it's listed 2 ,570 times in the
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Old Testament. That's a lot of times, isn't it? That's because this is his revelation, okay?
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You can find him on every page. And this name God, it points to his power and it points to his sovereignty and it points to his glory.
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And this word salvation here, he is the God of our salvation, is again the
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Hebrew word Yasha. And again, I'll tell you, I don't know
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Hebrew but I have a really cool program on my computer where I can find these
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Hebrew words, click on it and it speaks it to me. So I'll just be listening until I think
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I'm saying it right. It's a really, really cool tool. Yeah, so anyway,
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I looked up the definition of this word Yasha and it said, liberty, deliverance, prosperity, safety, salvation.
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And I don't know about you, but I like those words. They are beautiful words.
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I like being free and I am so thankful that Jesus set me free. Oh, I hate to think of where I'd be today had he not rescued me at the age of 20.
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It would be bad. It would be really, really bad. That he is a mighty deliverer.
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I need this mighty one in my life. He's the one who can rescue us. He is the one who's calling us into this intimate relationship.
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He's calling us into his presence. He's saying, seek my face, my child. Here I am.
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It's up to you now. If you don't seek me, you won't find me. If we don't put the effort, if we don't set aside the time, how are we going to connect on a deeper level?
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We must give him time daily. I know every day is different. Man, this week was crazy for me.
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Like I was so busy every day, but I still got up early in the morning and I opened my
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Bible or I found that moment in my day and I opened his word and I said,
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Father, I need you so desperately. Please meet with me.
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And I talked to him and I talked to him in my car, which I'm always going somewhere it seemed like.
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That's one of my favorite prayer places. Shut the radio off or just turn it down with some music.
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And what a beautiful place to meet with God, especially if you're driving by yourself. It's a little more difficult when you're riding with someone.
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But you find those times and you have those crazy weeks where you're just...
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If you think back on those weeks, those are where you're getting frazzled, aren't they? You're getting tired, you're getting worn out, you're getting burned out.
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Could it be not because you're so busy, but because you're neglecting that quiet time with your father where he can strengthen you and renew you and help you through the busyness and the struggle or whatever's going on in your life.
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Look at what he's called in verse 7. Lift up your heads,
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O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
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In this psalm, five times, he is called the King of glory. That word glory, it means majesty, it means splendor.
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You know, thankfully in our country, we don't have a king, we have a president, which I think is a good thing when it comes to human beings.
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Okay, unless you, you know, the thing about kings, if you have a good king, then it's a good thing. If you have a bad king, it's a really, really bad thing, okay?
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But Jesus in Revelation 19, 16, he is called King of kings and Lord of lords.
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He is the ultimate ruler of the entire creation. He is the mighty king.
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If we were in a kingdom and the king invited you to come to the palace and dine with him or the queen, that would be a great honor, wouldn't it?
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I don't think you would probably refuse that. In fact, in past kingdoms, that would be a deadly thing to refuse the invitation of the king.
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But you would probably count it a privilege. Regardless of how you feel about our president, if you got invited to the
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White House to have dinner with the president, I'm gonna guess you might go. That you would count that as honor.
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That you got invited. Well, here is the king of glory. This mighty king, this mighty creator.
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And he's calling us into this intimate relationship. And this king of glory, he wants to dwell in our hearts.
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In verse eight, the question is asked, who is this king of glory? Who is this who is inviting us into this beautiful, intimate relationship?
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Well, the word defines it. One of the things
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I love about the word of God is it answers its own questions. So you may be reading and there's something you don't understand and a question comes up, you keep studying and God will show you the answer.
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Now, God is so deep, we're not gonna have all the answers, are we? I mean, God is unlimited. And so sometimes our questions may not get answered.
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And that's where trust comes in. So he asks, who is the king of glory?
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Verse eight, well, here's the answer. He's the Lord. There's that word, that name, Yahweh again.
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The Lord, strong and mighty. The Lord, mighty in battle.
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Now, I looked up this word mighty. It's mentioned twice in here. And it talks about mighty in battle.
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And you have to question, what is he talking about there? And this word mighty, it's not the normal word for strength and power.
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It was defined as a powerful warrior, a valiant warrior, a champion.
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That's who we will be in our lives. We don't have to fight the battles of life on our own.
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We don't have to fight the battles of addiction on our own. We don't have to fight the struggles that we encounter as human beings and we all have them.
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I know you do. I do too. But he is a mighty warrior and he will fight for us.
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See how important it is we have a right relationship, right? Amen. I mean,
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I want this mighty warrior by my side, right? That I can call on him in crisis.
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That I can call on him in need. That I don't have to fight alone. And man, some of you are feeling that battle.
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I know you are. And you're struggling. And you're doing everything you can in your own strength and it's coming up short.
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Remember, he is the mighty warrior. He's our champion.
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Ask him to help you in your struggles. He is the all -knowing, ever -present spirit.
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He knows me inside and out. I'm not hiding anything from him. I tell him everything.
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Why do I do? I didn't used to do that. I did try to hide stuff from him. Until I learned what this word teaches, that we're not hiding anything.
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He knows it inside and out. He sees it all. He hears it all. He knows our thoughts.
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So I'm totally honest about my struggles. I talk to him in ways that I couldn't talk to anyone else.
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Because I know that he loves me with this perfect love. And I know that he's the one that can change this.
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Whatever it is I'm struggling with. That he can heal it. That I don't have to be stuck in this mindset.
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Okay? Because he is a transformer. And he is a mighty warrior.
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Look at verse 10, what he's called. He is called the Lord of Hosts.
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And there it is again. The name Yahweh. This name for God when it says
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Lord of Hosts. You'll see this throughout the scriptures. Is Yahweh Sabbah.
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Yahweh Sabbah. The word Sabbah is the word for host. And a host means a mass of persons organized for war.
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It means an army is what it means. He is the Lord of armies. He is the Lord of the angelic army.
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Of these angel beings who are doing his work. I remember
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I used to have this young man come into the juvenile home. I always loved it when he came to share the word.
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And he kind of grew up on the streets. And been through some stuff. And he was saved.
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And he was so happy to be a child of God. And he would tell the young men and young ladies in the juvenile home.
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He would say, man, he said, we can do this. We got the Father on our side.
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We got Jesus on our side. We got the Holy Spirit on our side. We got all the holy angels on our side.
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And all of a sudden, it's like, ah, yeah. Yeah, as a child of God, yes.
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Every time he'd come, he would say that. I love that. What a great reminder. He's the Lord of hosts. I'm going to guess that maybe at some point in your life, you may have been helped by an angel.
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And you didn't even know. The scripture says, be careful how you treat strangers. You may be encountering an angel.
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You know, I can think of some incidents in my life where somebody just kind of appeared when I need their help.
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And then they left. And I never saw them again. And I'm like, hmm, I wonder if that could have been an angel.
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I thank God for his holy angels, because they are so active on this earth that we don't even realize how they are combating evil and how they are helping protect
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God's chosen ones, his sons and his daughters. He is the
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Lord of hosts. And he's calling us into this beautiful, intimate relationship.
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He wants to bless you. Look at verse 5. It says that this one who is pure in heart, he will receive blessings from the
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Lord and righteousness from the God of our salvation. I like the sound of that.
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I want some blessings. Anybody else want some blessings? Yeah, that's a beautiful word, isn't it?
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And righteousness, that just means rightness, helping us get things right in our lives, in our families, with our jobs, in relationships.
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Yes, he wants to bless us. But when you read this in its context, that if I am not allowing this
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King of Glory to do some heart surgery and helping me get this pure heart,
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I could miss this blessing of God. He longs to dwell in us.
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He longs for us to go into a deeper, more intimate relationship. This psalm is calling us to that.
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And it's such an incredible invitation that God gives. And we could spend the rest of the morning looking at other passages where Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
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Come to the waters and drink freely. And he repeatedly is calling out to us as people and to the lost.
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Come to me. I am the fountain of living waters. Well, what is the key to experiencing this intimacy?
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It's found in verse four, and I want to look at that now. So the question was asked, who can come into his holy presence?
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And it says, he who has clean hands and a pure heart and does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.
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This is talking about a pure heart and a pure life. It's pointing to someone who has been cleansed and forgiven.
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This word for clean here in the Hebrew is bar.
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And I thought that was interesting, you know, because we call a block of soap, what do we call it? We call it a bar of soap, right?
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Okay, and I wonder if that, I don't know if it came from the Hebrew, but that's exactly, this is one of the easiest
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Hebrew words to say. It's just simply bar. And it means to be clean, pure and clear.
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You know, I had those four bottles and by far the one that was clear, that's the one we want, right?
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The beauty of purity. Now, I want you to see what Jesus said about this.
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And many of you already know, you could probably say it by heart, but turn with me to Matthew chapter five, verse eight.
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And this is the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, people have called it.
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That comes from the word blessed. And so in Matthew chapter five, verse eight,
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Jesus makes this proclamation. He says,
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Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the pure in heart.
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That's what Psalm 24 four was saying. This word blessed is a really nice word.
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I like it a lot and I probably couldn't say it right because it's kind of a long one. I'm not even going to try. But it means supremely blessed.
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That was the definition in the strong skin court. Not just blessed, but some supremely blessed, well off and happy.
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Wow, who wants that? Right? Okay. What a beautiful thing. Blessed are the pure in heart.
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And remember, pure means clean. In second Timothy two 22, that word, the same word is found.
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So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the
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Lord from a pure heart. Not from a defiled heart. It's hard to call upon God from a defiled heart.
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That's where we need to call upon him for the promise of his forgiveness so that he can cleanse our hearts and make it pure.
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If you wonder why prayer is such a struggle, maybe it's because you need to get a little more honest with God in your confession and in kind of taking an honest look at your life and getting, just pleading with him for that.
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You don't have to plead with him. I shouldn't have used that word. He is so ready to forgive. You don't have to plead.
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I guess the word I was looking for is cry out to him for forgiveness. And he will forgive time and time again.
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But why, according to verse five, are they so blessed? Here's why.
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It says, for they shall see God. They shall see God. That's why they're blessed.
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As our heart gets pure, we begin to see God in our lives. We begin to see God more clearly in his word.
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We begin to see God more clearly in nature, in our lives. And this word see is not the word for a casual glance.
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Now, I'm gonna try to say this because it will remind you of another word, okay? In the Greek, this word for see is optanamahi.
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Optanamahi makes you think of the word optometrist, right? The optometrist, his job is to help us see better, right?
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Okay, well, right here it is in the word that the best optometrist is
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God and that as he purifies his heart, we begin to get this clearer vision of who he is.
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Jesus said, when our hearts are pure, we shall see God. I love
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Hebrews 11 .27 and it's talking about Moses and all that he went through and it says these words.
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He endured as seeing him who is invisible. He endured
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Moses by seeing him who is invisible. So yes, we can't see
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God with our physical eye because God is spirit and spirit is see -through, just like air, okay?
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This room is filled with air. Hopefully we're breathing, but we can't see it and that's the way spirit is and we are always surrounded by spirit.
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It says in Acts 17 that the spirit of God is our atmosphere that we live in, that he surrounds us wherever we're at.
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He is ever present and he promised his child, he said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
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Jesus said, Lord, I'm with you all the days and yet we hardly talk to him throughout our day.
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That wouldn't go so well with some people in our lives, would it? Like Cheryl and I were kind of together all day yesterday.
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We were helping our mother -in -law with her estate sale because she moved into assisted living but what if I never said a word to Cheryl all day long but we were together all day long?
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Would that go over very good? No, I'd be in big trouble. You know, you would consider that rude and yet God is ever present with us.
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He's always there. He's just listening. We can talk to him in those little breaks and those pauses that we have when we're in our vehicle wherever we're at and I just in closing,
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I wanna share with you four prayers that I pray every day that help me to have this pure heart that is helping me to have a clear vision of who
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God is and is helping God to be real in my life. The first one is in Psalm 62 .8
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and I call it a prayer of surrender. Psalm 62 .8,
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trust in him at all times. This word, I love this Hebrew word. I learned this one a long time ago.
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It means to run to for shelter. That's what that word means and then it came to the idea of relying upon having trust as we might use it.
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But it means to run to him. He is our shelter. He is our refuge. It's right there. God is a refuge to us and it says, pour out your hearts before him and so I have to, for me in the morning,
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I have to just open my heart to him and say, Father, I need you. Lord Jesus, I desperately need you.
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I open my heart to you and I pour out my heart to him.
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This word pour means to spill forth. Sometimes our hearts are so full of things, there's no room for him and it's kind of an emptying before him, kind of a surrender before him and a confession of how desperately
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I need him. It says in Proverbs 23, 26, my son, give me your heart and let your eyes observe my ways.
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God is saying, I want your heart. That's what he wants above all else and it's as we give him our heart that we can begin to see his ways.
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The second one is a prayer of confession. Look at Psalm 51, one and two. Learning the prayers in the
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Bible has helped my prayer life more than anything. Like I find prayers in the
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Bible, I use them because it's like a blank check that God gives us. He's saying, here's what I want you to pray and so I'll memorize them and I'll turn them into prayers to God.
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And this is one I've been praying for a while. In fact, I pray it every day and I pray it more than once a day.
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Psalm 51, one and two. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
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Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Look at the beautiful description in this verse and it's dealing with forgiveness.
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Look at these beautiful words. Your steadfast love. He will never fail us.
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He will never say, I'm done with you. He will never say, I don't like you anymore. I don't love you anymore.
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His love is steadfast and then it speaks of his abundant mercy. Wow, he is so merciful.
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Don't ever feel like you're beyond his forgiveness. I met a boy once at Lakeside Academy.
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Got to know him and he was always depressed and it came out that he felt like he had committed the unforgivable sin.
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He told me that I can't be forgiven for what I did. I'm thinking, did you kill someone? And I took him to the word and I showed him why
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Jesus died on the cross. That he shed his blood for all of our sin, not just the little ones.
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And I showed him God's promise in 1 John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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And Wes got it. He understood and he prayed and he asked God's forgiveness. And this weight just lifted off his shoulders.
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He confided in me. He said, you know, he said, I broke into a church and I stole from them.
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That's what he thought he couldn't be forgiven for. He stole from God's house. That's how he thought of it. And once he saw the truth, he knew he was forgiven.
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And a couple weeks later, he says, Bill, I know I'm forgiven, but I feel like there's something else I need to do. And I said, hey, why don't you write the church and ask them to forgive you?
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And he looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, well, you're still feeling some guilt because yeah, you're forgiven by God, but what about those people?
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And he's like, yeah, you're right. We got the address of the church. It was over on the east side of the state. He wrote him a letter, told him, you know,
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I'm the one who broke into your church. I'm at Lakeside now. I asked Jesus into my life and he forgave me.
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And I'm asking that you would please forgive me too. And we didn't know if they'd write him back or not.
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And oh man, about five days later, he got a letter from the church and they said, we are so happy for you.
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And we are so glad that you are a child of God. We forgive you. We love you. And we hope that when you come back home, you'll come to our church.
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And you know, he got out of Lakeside and he went back home and he started going to that church. That's the beauty and power of God's forgiveness.
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His forgiveness is complete. That's why it's talking about being cleansed from trespasses and iniquity and sin.
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Trespasses when you break one of God's command. Iniquity is more of the attitude of the heart, more of the inward sin that we feel.
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And sin is just the word for missing the mark that we come short of God's glory. And his forgiveness is so complete.
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If you are not daily searching your heart and confessing your sin, then you are telling
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God, I never sin. That's what you're kind of saying, aren't you? And we all do.
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We all come to. Do you, have you loved him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? That's where I start.
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I say, oh, Father, forgive me. I have failed to love you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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And I know that all other failures come out of that. All other sin is if I'm not loving God, then
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I'm open to everything. And I confess that. And I just named the known ones.
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And he said, if you confess what you know, I'll cleanse you from all of the others. His promise is so beautiful.
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So there's the prayer of surrender. There's a prayer of confession. And the third prayer is a prayer for renewal.
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In the same psalm, come down to verse 10. He says, create in me a clean heart,
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O God, and renew a right spirit within me. This is a prayer saying,
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God, I need you to make me new on the inside. I need you to renew me. And that, this word renew means to make new.
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That's just what it means. And God wants to do this in our lives.
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And it's only God can do this. Notice the word create. Create in me a clean heart,
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O God. Renew in me a right and steadfast spirit. It's the same word in Genesis 1 -1 where it says, in the beginning,
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God created the heavens and the earth. It's the same Hebrew word. It's God's creation.
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It's the work of God. And we have to give him the space to allow him to do that in our lives.
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And that happens in a quiet place. Or it can happen in a busy place too when you know that you said something you shouldn't have.
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And you're at work. You can talk to him in your heart and say, Father, forgive me. That was wrong. I shouldn't have done that.
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Psalm 119 -25, my soul clings to the dust. Give me life according to your word.
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Give me life according to your word. This word brings life. This, again, this is how
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God speaks to us. And that is life -giving. And the last prayer, so I've opened my heart to him.
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I've sought his forgiveness. I'm allowing him to bring that renewal. And now the last prayer is,
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Jesus, dwell in my heart. Dwell in my heart. Look at Ephesians 3 -17 with me.
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And we'll close with this scripture. Ephesians 3 -17. I love this whole prayer that we find in Ephesians 3.
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I memorized it just because it's so powerful. The prayer starts out in verse 14.
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We come down to 17. And here is part of this prayer is asking Christ to dwell in our hearts.
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It says, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
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That Christ, the Messiah, may dwell in your hearts. And this word dwell means to be at home in.
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And he's not at home in, sadly, in every child of God's heart because they're allowing things that are offensive to him.
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Just like you might leave someone's house because of something that was going on there, right? You might just say, oh,
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I just have to leave. I can't be part of this. Only he never gives up on us.
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But I say repeatedly throughout the day, Jesus, dwell in my heart. Dwell in my heart.
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I say that repeatedly, asking him to be at home in my heart.
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And sometimes I have to confess again. That's how close he wants to be, dwelling in us.
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He said, abide in me and I will abide in you. And so just in closing, this is how
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I started out. And I'll close it off this way before our communion time. The hard heart, there's no room for him, right?
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God, get rid of that bitterness, that hard heart. The defiled heart, you would never drink this water, let alone want to be in it.
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And then we have the rusty heart, which is religious but stagnant. And then we have that beautiful, pure, right?
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So the choice is pretty obvious of which one Jesus would dwell in. It would definitely be in the pure heart.
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Amen? So family, let's seek that purity of heart daily.
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Let's seek him daily. Let's get honest and real with him about our lives and confession.
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And he is so loving and tender that he, you know, until we can experience that forgiveness, he really can't do much heart surgery.
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It talks about in Isaiah that our sin can separate us. There's a separation and he doesn't want to be separated.
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He does not want that. Jesus, again, paid the ultimate price on the cross.
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And that's why we celebrate communion every week here at Recast.
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And that's one of the things I love about our church because I used to, you know, churches
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I've gone to in the past, they would only do it once a month. And I'm often doing other ministry things and I can't always be in our church on Sunday morning.
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I would miss communion for two months. I love that we do it every week here.
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This is a memorial to Jesus and what he did for us. He said, take the bread.
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This is my body broken for you. He took that whip. He endured the soldier's fist and that crown of thorn and those spikes through his hands and feet.
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And all of that was to bring us forgiveness. But that's not the deepest purpose of all he suffered.
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It was to bring us to God. It was to bring us in that close relationship. And without forgiveness, that couldn't happen.
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So the cross points to God's deep desire and longing for this intimate relationship that he so desires to have with us.
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And he said, take this cup. This is my blood shed for you. And so as you eat that cracker and as you drink the juice, you think of Jesus' broken body for you.
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And you think of his blood shed for your forgiveness. And you're reminded of how much that he loves you.
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And this is clearly in the word of God. It's for those who have made the decision to follow Jesus.
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And if you have not made that decision, I would just encourage you to just quietly think on it in your seat.
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And if any of us, if we don't get up for communion, that's, we all love each other.
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So don't feel like, oh, I have to do this, okay? But it is for believers in Jesus.
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And so I pray that he speaks to us through communion. I'm gonna say a prayer.
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And then the communion stations are in the corners. And just feel free to walk up and come take it back to your chair, okay?
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And thank you so much for coming and being part of our service this morning. Let me pray.
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Father, just thank you so much that you love us. And I know that you make that so clear in your word, but it's not just in your word.
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The cross points to your amazing love, your amazing grace. That such a price was paid.
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It says that you were not bought with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
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And so in this communion time, we celebrate your forgiveness, Lord. And I know that right now, even in this quiet moment, if someone is feeling that guilt and shame because of something in their life or something in their past, that if they just name it quietly in their heart, even now,
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Father, you will forgive it. I thank you for that. Lord, if there's anyone here that has not opened their heart to Jesus, even in this quiet moment, they could cry out to you and say,
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Lord, save me, come into my life. I need you. Please forgive me. Father, thank you for loving us.
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Thank you for your broken body, Lord Jesus, and your shed blood.