Good morning everybody. It’s wonderful being able to be with you folks this morning and for that, I give our Lord a hearty thank you. I’ll begin this message with the Bible text we’ve been focusing on for the past two weeks. Then we will pick up from where we left off.

14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14 (NIV)

I ended by saying, “I’m sorry but that’s all the time we have this morning and I have only scratched the surface of what holiness is. To those of you who profess to be a Christian, I plead with you to work out your salvation with fear and trembling because you may be fooling yourself! It’s a matter of eternal life or eternal death. Lord willing, I will continue this message next week. Until then, speaking as your pastor who loves each of you very much, I’m begging you to TAKE TIME TO BE HOLY!”

I hope you folks had a good week and each of you did take time to be holy as I begged you to. As I mentioned in my last message, I don’t ever want to break God’s heart again by becoming overly anxious, and committing the sin of worry, and all because I didn’t trust Him. Less than 24 hours later I almost did! I had asked you to keep me in prayer on Monday morning and plead with God to bless me with good news. Here’s what happened during the hour and a half Barium swallow test. Half way through it the radiologist assured me everything looked real good. I immediately gave a silent PTL and started to relax. All of a sudden there was a flurry of activity around the machine. I over-heard the man and his assistant speaking to one another in back of the machine saying “O no! This is a very serious colon malfunction.” To add to my tension, on and off during the test as I was twisting and turning and rolling around to change positions my ear whistles were whistling to beat the band and making me crazy. But the radiologist wouldn’t let me move to take them out of my ears. “I don’t think it can be fixed. I’m going to get a second opinion.” he said. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what my colon had to do with my throat.

I started to get anxious. Then an older man came rushing in, looked at the screen and told them it was beyond repair. There was nothing anyone could do. It would have to be replaced. All sorts of worrisome thoughts popped into my mind. I called out to the man and asked him to please come over and speak to me. He introduced himself as Doctor so-and-so. I assumed He was the head radiologist. I asked him what my colon had to do with my throat and how long I would have to wait for a transplant. He looked at me like I was some kind of a nut-case and replied: “it has nothing!” I asked them to help me understand because I heard the others say there was nothing they could do to fix it. He replied: “the cone on the machine was beyond repair. We will have to stop the test for a few seconds to change the battery.” Do you get it, cone/colon? Everyone laughed. I kinda think God laughed too.

I’m sure Jesus has a great sense of humor. I don’t believe He’s a kill-joy either. For instance, I don’t think God got all bent out of shape because some of His children watched the Super Bowl or a kid participated in a hockey tournament on the Sabbath. But He does want us to take time to be holy. He’s delighted whenever we consider Him as being the best friend we could possibly have. You and I should fellowship with Him by praying to Him often and let Him talk to us through the books of the Bible. We should try to find a quiet place away from distractions, and just keep quiet and listen to Him. In one way or another, Jesus will see to it that we will know that He there with us. For example, we may be stressed out over something and racking our brain over what we should do next. And then a thought may suddenly pop into our mind with the solution. We ought to be careful though. We must make sure it squares with what God has revealed to us in the Bible. That thought could be from the Devil, or perhaps just be our own wishful thinking.

14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14 (NIV)

On my Comfort in Suffering Web Site I mention the fact that “The more I plumb the depths of the Sacred Scriptures the more I realize how shallow my understanding of them actually is.” So today I plan to delve deeper into our study by examining “The Sermon on the Mount.” I will be quoting from “The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, by Eugene Peterson. I think this translation will be easier for all of us to understand. It certainly has been for me. I have a hard time putting it down. After the service, please let me know whether or not you find it to be helpful.

“When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said: 1-2 “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. 4 “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.” 5 “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are-no more,-no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” 6 “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.” 7 “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourself cared for. 8 You’re blessed when you get your inside world-your mind and heart-put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. 9 “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.” 10 “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom. 11-12 “Not only that-count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens-give a cheer, even! for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

Sharing his enormous insight concerning “The Sermon on the Mount”, Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: “We come now to what is undoubtedly one of the greatest utterances to be found anywhere in the whole realm of Holy Scripture. Anyone who realizes even something of the meaning of the words, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God’, can approach them only with a sense of awe and of complete inadequacy.”“It is important, I feel, to consider it in its setting, and to study its relationship to the other Beatitudes.” “…Our Lord did not select these statements at random.” “…Clearly there was a definite sequence of thought.” “…I suggest that the following is a possible way of understanding the sequence. The first question which must be answered is why is this statement put here? You would have thought, perhaps, that it should have come at the beginning, because the vision of God has always been regarded by God’s people as the summum bonum. It is the ultimate goal of every endeavor. To see God’ is the whole purpose of all religion. And yet here it is, not at the beginning, not at the end, not even in the exact middle. That, at once, must raise the question in our minds, why does it come just here? A possible analysis, which commends itself to me, is as follows. I regard the sixth verse as providing the explanation. It comes,” “…in the center; the first three Beatitudes lead up to it and these other Beatitudes follow it. If we regard verse six as a kind of watershed, I think it helps us to understand why this particular statement comes at this point.”

“Now the first three Beatitudes were concerned with our need, our consciousness of need-poor in spirit, mourning because of our sinfulness, meek as the result of a true understanding of the nature of self and its great egocentricity, that terrible thing that has ruined the whole of life. These three emphasize the vital importance of a deep awareness of need. Then comes the great statement of the satisfaction of need, God’s provision for it, ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.’ Having realized the need, we hunger and thirst, and then God comes with His wondrous answer that we shall be filled, fully satisfied. From there on we are looking at the result of that satisfaction, the result of being filled. We become merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers. After that, there is the outcome of all this, ‘persecuted for righteousness’ sake.’ That I suggest, is the way of approach to this passage. It leads up to the central statement about hungering and thirsting and then describes the results that follow. In the first three we are going up one side of the mountain, as it were. We reach the summit in the fourth, and then we come down on the other side.”

“But there is a closer correspondence even than that. It seems to me that the three Beatitudes which follow the central statement in verse six correspond to the first three that lead up to it. The merciful are those who realize their poverty of spirit; they realize they have nothing in themselves at all.” “…That is the most essential step to becoming merciful. It is only when a man has reached that view of himself that he will have a right view of others. So we find that the man who realizes he is poor in spirit and is utterly dependent upon God, is the man who is merciful to others.

It follows from that, this second statement which we are now considering, namely, ‘blessed are the pure in heart’ also corresponds to the second statement in the first group, which was ‘blessed are they that mourn’. What did they mourn about? We saw that “…they were mourning about the state of their hearts; they were mourning about their sinfulness; they were mourning, not only because they did things that were wrong, but still more because they ever wanted to do wrong. They realized the central prevision in their character and personality; it was what caused them to mourn. Very well then; here is something which corresponds to that-‘blessed are the pure in heart.’ Who are the pure in heart? Essentially, as I am going to show you, they are those who are mourning about the impurity of their hearts. Because the only way to have a pure heart is to realize you have an impure heart, and to mourn about it to such an extent that you do that which alone can lead to cleansing and purity.”

I believe the heart and soul of the woman who uttered the following prayer about sixteen years ago, is the kind of person Lloyd-Jones described. Only one other person has seen it. Her friend Kathleen looked at it once, and I’m the only person who has a copy. She gave it to me on a special occasion and I have her permission to share it with you folks this morning. Last night I gave it the name:

CRIES IN THE NIGHT

I’m sorry for the filth you see

when you look at my life.

I’m sorry for the anger,

the hatred, and the strife.

Why were you nailed upon my cross?

Why did you take my pain?

I don’t deserve your precious love;

Dear Lord, I feel such shame.

I need your love, my precious Lord,

for by my strength I’ll die,

but with your strength, my dear, dear Lord,

on eagles wings I’ll fly.

That special occasion I mentioned a moment ago was Christmas Day in the year 2000 and the copy I have was signed by my daughter.

14 “Work at getting along with each other. Otherwise you’ll never get so much as a glimpse of God.”

Lord willing, next week we will delve a little deeper in this teaching about holiness and seeing the Lord.