Matthew chapter five is where we'll be at today. I already read the first 12 verses there. Now this is a famous sermon. We'll do some participation here. What sermon is he preaching? What's it called? Oh, very good. Sermon on the Mount. Sermon on the Mount. And at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, he starts out with a list of the blessed are the, for they shall, you know, that list there. And we call those the Yeah, that's it, that's it. I taught the teens that, I don't know, it was about a year ago, we went through a series on the whole three chapters. We went verse by verse through the whole sermon on the mount. And I don't know if this is why we call it the B-Attitudes, but this is just how I remember it. It's just the attitude to be. Hey, how about that? So that'll just kind of help you out there. That's the way we should just be. And I like the sermon. Obviously, greatest preacher ever is the one that preached it, Jesus Christ. A little bit of background. If you look at the end of chapter four, he says who he's actually speaking to. It's a mixed multitude of people. Chapter four, look at verse 24, his fame went throughout all Syria. They brought unto him sick people that were taken with diverse diseases, torments, and those which were possessed with devils and those which were lunatic and those that's palsy healed them, verse 25. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee and from Decapolis and from Jerusalem and from Judea and from beyond Jordan. So he had quite the wide following, quite the diverse following. People knew who he was by this point. These were people already following Jesus. That's just something to keep in mind. So they're already there to hear from him. They're already following him. They've seen him do some things and now he's going to speak to them. He's going to tell them the way he expects his followers to live. That's what the Sermon on the Mount is. All kinds of good stuff in there. It really is. The golden rules in there. you know, do unto others, that thing. So, I mean, there's all kinds of good stuff in here. If you look at chapters six, seven, you know, the chapter five here, he's just, the first 12 verses, he's really just kind of summarizing what he expects from his followers, the different attitudes he expects them to have. You know, and this sermon is where we get, you know, if someone hits you on the cheek, turn your other cheek to him, I'm misquoting it, but you know what I'm talking about. And then if someone compels you, if a man compels you to go a mile, go with him, Twain. All that comes from this sermon that he preaches. He has high expectations for his followers, really. But really, it's just to live like he would have us to live, live like he lives. And he sums it up here with the Beatitudes. Verse three, blessed are the poor in spirit. Obviously, a staple in our Christian life should be that of humility. God wants us to be humble. God wants us to have humility. You know, God, he resisteth the proud. You give grace to the humble. Jesus is telling his followers that the poor in spirit are the ones that are blessed. They that mourn. When we mourn, there's a correct way to mourn. It's not a self-centered mourning, and I'm not going to preach on each one of these, but he says how he expects us to live, the attitudes he expects us to have. Verse four, I just read that one. Verse five, blessed are the meek. You know, we're not supposed to be weak and timid, but we're supposed to be able to control our strength, have meekness, have some temperance about us. And that's how we're supposed to live as Christians, as disciples of Christ. Blessed are the merciful. Verse seven, verse six, blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness. We talked about that quite a bit in Sunday school this morning with the teens, being hungry for God's word, being hungry to know what's right, know what God says. And he says that those that hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled, they shall be filled. So if you saturate your mind, like what I told the kids this morning, if you guys saturate your mind with the word of God, you'll get the results of that. You'll be filled. You'll get what you're looking for. Verse seven, we should be merciful. God expects us to live that way. Verse eight is really, we're going to spend the whole morning though. Verse eight, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. That's where we're going to spend most of our time. I'm going to pray and then we'll have the message here. Lord, I thank you again for the day you gave us. Thank you for the opportunity just to be here in your house. I pray you'd be with the service now. This morning be with me as I preach, Lord, as if there's anything that I'm about to say that would go against your word, I pray you'd keep me from saying it. Lord, I just ask that you would fill me and I just want to surrender myself over to you. And I pray you would teach us this morning, just as we look at your words here, just as you taught your followers that day, I pray that you would use the same words to teach us, and it's in Jesus' name. Amen. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. What a promise. They shall see God. I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be cool. You know, now are we the sons of God. It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. That's cool. That's exciting. A little bit scary, not going to lie. If you look at some of the, I was reading through some of the Old Testament, I mean, God is so holy that, remember when Moses went to have the meeting with God and his face shone and they put the veil on him. Wow. And we're going to see him as he is. That's cool. That's exciting. I'm looking forward to it. So what a blessing there. And we'll talk more about that here in a little bit. But man, what a blessing and what a challenge. He wants us to live a pure in heart life. We're struggling, I think, with purity in our culture. And a lot of times when we talk about purity, we only think of the one thing, you know, saving yourself for marriage, which is good, that's in there, that's included. But there's a lot more to purity than just that. I'm talking pure motives, pure intentions, you know, pure minds. Purity is not just one thing, you know, that's included in there, like I was saying. But bluster the pure in heart. What does it mean to be pure? If you look at the dictionary, it'll say free from moral defilement, without spot, not sullied. Don't know what that means. Probably means pure. Not sullied or tarnished, incorrupt, undebased by moral turpitude. I'll just say pure. This is big words, right? Then it says holy. Then Webster actually quoted James 1.27. Pure religion in undefiled before God is this, to look after the fatherless and the widows. I should be reading it because I think I'm misquoting it. But he's talking about what pure religion is, looking after those that are less fortunate than yourself. That's pure. James quoted that. He said, real, true, unadulterated, pure. We had a lot of snow this year, which is wonderful. And we love it. And we're grateful for it. Because just a few months before, we were all saying, drought, no moisture. What are we going to do? God said, I'll take care of that. And it's great. So we got snow. And what I like is right after it snows, and you can just see people's yards, and there's no footprints, and there's no dog droppings, and there's no Nothing. It's pure. It's just white. It's just pure. It's pretty cool. Or you're driving along and you see a field that's just untouched. Not even any deer have gone through there yet. I think that's pretty cool. It's pure. But then as soon as something drives through it, visits or something. It's never going to be that again until the next snow, but it's different snow. And you know what I'm trying to say. That's pure. That's, it's not untouched. It's nothing's, nothing's touched it. Pure. So then he doesn't say, he doesn't just say here in verse nine, blessed are the pure. He says, blessed are the pure in heart. So what's our heart? Well, I got one. I really do. I really do. You know, it's an organ that pumps our blood and yeah, there's that. But when we talk about it in this sense, what are we talking about? We're talking about the seed of our emotions, right? You might even say our feelings. I am not on the bandwagon that says we should trust in our heart because the Bible says not to. The Bible says if you trust in your heart, you're a fool. If you trust in your heart, you're a fool. In fact, it says to lean not on your own understanding. But that's just something to keep in mind. That's not the point of the message this morning. But the heart is our affections. It's our emotions. It's our feelings. When you suffer from a broken heart, when someone rips your heart out, you have a broken heart, that's your emotions. That's your feelings. Let's be honest. We've had our feelings hurt, right? Maybe in different ways or whatever, but we know what we're talking about when we talk about our heart, when we talk about heartbreak, when we talk about a joyful heart. Something brings joy to our heart. I think about John in one of his epistles said, I have no greater joy to see my children walk in truth. He had joy that was brought to his heart. He was experiencing that emotion of joy. because he was seeing his children, people that he decided would walk in truth. So that's good. We're looking at our emotions. The heart is the seat of our emotions. It's the seat of our passions. If you're passionate about something, you might say that you have a heart for that thing, or a heart for that person. You have a heart for a ministry, a heart for a nation. You have a heart for a calling that you have. That's your heart. That's where your heart is. Pastor has a heart for missions. He's passionate about that. He's preaching a missions conference this week. Missions is in front of our face all the time. Why? Because he has a heart for missions. He has a passion for that. He's passed on to us as the church. That's his heart. He shares his heart. The hearts are emotions. Our hearts are passions. Our heart is where we experience things like love and joy and grief, enmity, even jealousy, courage. These are experienced and our emotions are experienced in our heart. And so he doesn't just say, I find this interesting, Jesus doesn't just say, blessed are the pure. He says, blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the pure in heart. So what is our heart? It's our emotions, our passions, like we said, and Jesus is saying, blessed are those that have those things pure. Your affections are pure. Your emotions are unadulterated. Your feelings aren't tainted by other things, aren't corrupted. Your emotions, when you have grief, it's the way it's supposed to be. It's pure. It's a grief, it's sad, but it's good in the way it's supposed to be. Well, and he references that in verse four, blessed are they that mourn. Right? That's a feeling. That's an emotion. That's in your heart. There's a correct way and an incorrect way to experience emotions. Is there a correct way to experience jealousy? Yeah. Who's jealous in the Bible quite a bit? God. Sure. Sure. See, our hearts are emotions. The question isn't, are we going to be emotional? We're all emotional. God created us to have emotions. The question is, are they pure emotions? Is the heart pure? We have a heart. I've met people that claim to be heartless. But there's something they're passionate about. There's something they'll get emotional about. There's something they'll get excited about. I'm going to pick on him because he's not in here. And no one in this room is going to tell him about it. But Dave Heath, he claims to be a more stoic person. And he is, for the most part. You just mention anything to do with firearms, and all of a sudden, he's real passionate. Right? He can tell you the trajectory of just about any caliber coming out of any barrel that you want. He's got it memorized since he was three and a half years old. He's very passionate about it. Am I right? People that know him, he has a heart for it. He has a passion for it. That's great. We all have things that we're emotional about. We all have things that we're passionate about. That's not a bad thing. In fact, that's a good thing. But the question is the purity of it. Not are we all pure. Of course, we want to strive to be, but he says, blessed are the pure in heart. And the other thing about the heart, if you want to turn there, you can. Proverbs 23, verse seven. I'm going to turn there real quick, just because I don't want to misquote this one, like I have everything else so far this morning. Proverbs 23, verse seven. As a man thinketh in his heart, whoa, so is he. So the heart is your emotions, it's the seat of your emotions, your feelings, but it's also your passions, the things that you would be into and passionate about regardless. You know what I'm talking about. What's your thing? It could be a hobby. It could be a person. It could be whatever. The thing you're passionate about that you're into, the thing that gets you excited, but it's also your emotions. Is it good to have emotions for say your spouse? Yeah. Is it good to love your spouse? Yeah. Is it possible to have the wrong motive to love your spouse? Well, sure. Sure. Is it correct to have good emotions? Yes, but can we have them maybe with impure motives? Maybe we can have some impure reasons for why we're doing what we're doing. I'm just throwing some stuff out there. But then the one more thing about the heart that I find very interesting is 1 Samuel 16, 7. You know the story. All of Jesse's boys are lined up. Samuel's there to anoint the next king. Remember this? He goes from the biggest and the strongest and the oldest or whatever, all through all of them. And I'm summarizing here. I apologize. But Samuel's like anyone else. I know there's someone else. He's like, yeah, David. You know, he's with the sheep. He's just a Rudy guy or a Ruddy guy. Rudy, Ruddy. Rudy was the guy that played for Notre Dame. Sorry about that. My dad was at that game, by the way. He was, yeah. Totally unrelated. But he, remember David, he was just a little, you know, he's whatever. So he goes and he gets him and he, what's the statement that he makes here is in 1 Samuel 16, seven, the Lord said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance or on his height of stature, because I refuse him for the Lord seeth not his man seeth. Of course, he's referring to the older brother here. For the Lord seeth not as man seeth, for the man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. So the heart is our emotions. The heart is our passions. The heart is when we experience jealousy, grief, love, any feeling, the things we're passionate about. And it's who we really are. For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. That is who you are. Your heart. Your heart is the real you. Now, just like our physical beating organ is inside of us and you can't see, I've never seen my heart. I guess I have one, okay? There's evidence of it. The fact that I'm up here moving around is evidence that I have the organ and it's working. Your heart, your emotions, the real you, is you, and it is going to be evident who you are. Who the real you is. Sometimes we can hide it, sometimes we can fake it, sometimes we're good at it, at concealing who we are, what's really in our heart. But God sees it. And not only does he see it, that's the first place he looks. The first place God is looking is not on whether or not you're in church today. Of course, he wants you to be. Not on whether or not you've tithed. Of course, he wants you to, right? That's cool. That's good. Not on whether or not you give the missions, but you should. But he's looking at your heart. He's not looking at your height. He's not looking at your stature. He's not looking on the outward appearance. He's looking on the heart. So back in Matthew, Chapter five, blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the pure in heart. Pure intentions, pure affections. What I love, the thing that I love, is that pure? Am I in love with someone or something that is pure? Is the way I love pure, pure in my, not just my affections, but pure in how I implement that, pure in my passions, the way I express joy, the way I express grief, the way we could go on down. Is that what's pure? Again, pure, the unadulterated thing, the untouched thing, the thing that's clean, the thing that's innocent. You look at a kid, When they have emotions, they're generally pretty pure. You don't have to wonder. When they're mad, you know it. You know the little kid's mad. He'll tell you, I'm mad at you. OK. Or if he's happy, you know it. You know it. When there's a little child, that pure emotion, it's untouched. He hasn't learned how to hide emotions yet. which some things we need to figure out. But you know what I'm trying to say, that pureness to that. That's what Jesus is saying here is blessed. Those that are pure in heart. The reason I'm here in church today, is it because I have to be or because my intentions were pure? Well, if I don't show up at church, man, they're gonna know. And I better, we better just go. Come on, let's go. OK, right action, but it wasn't a pure intention. You with me? Man, it's Valentine's Day. I guess the right thing to do is just to buy my wife something. Not, she's going to give it to me. Here you go, honey. I love you. Have some. I got a rose bush this year. I didn't get rose, I got a bush, and it's dead. It wasn't when I bought it, by the way. But pure, why? Why am I doing that? Because, well, if I don't, no, it's because my intention was pure. I love her, and because I love her, I'm gonna buy her something that's gonna last longer. That was the thought process. Didn't work. And then I knocked it over just the other day. I'm like, I go to open the blinds so I can get some sunlight on it, I've told you before, I don't really work very well in the morning. If I ever said that, if I wake up at 3 in the morning or if I wake up at 9 in the morning, doesn't matter. I'm not functioning until around 11 or 12. That's just how it works. Anyway, so in the morning, before I've been caffeinated yet, I'm trying to open the blinds and I knock it over with my feet somehow. Anyway, I'm glad I got that off my chest. But pure in heart, pure in pleasure, pure in expression, pure in everything. Why am I doing the thing that I'm doing? Why am I buying her the rosebush? Why am I doing the right thing? Is it possible to do the right thing with impure motives? Sure. Is it possible to have impure thoughts while you're doing the right thing? Sure. Sure. So, Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart. I don't know about you, but I want to be blessed. Sounds like a good deal to me. Especially when I see what the blessing is. That you'll see God. That's pretty awesome. So how do we become pure in heart? If this is such a big deal, and it is, I think, well, how do we become pure in heart? The first point is just obvious, and you've probably already got there yourself. I didn't have my sins forgiven. I'm a sinner by birth, I'm a sinner by choice. I have sinned, and because of sin, I was separated from God. I was. Christ died for my sins, was buried, he rose again. God, he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Whosoever shall call upon him shall be saved. That's how you have a pure heart. That's the first point I wanted to make. If you don't know Jesus Christ as your savior, you cannot have a pure heart. And the reason He died for your sins was so that you could be purified. That's the biggest application that I can see here. And if there's anyone listening, if there's anyone in this room that you don't know Christ as your Savior, you can, and you can be blessed, and you will see God. If you accept Christ as your Savior, you will get that blessing of seeing God. You'll see Christ when you get to heaven. It'll be great. I'll be there with you. Of course, you won't want to see me. You'll want to see him. And that's the blessing, right? That you won't have to see me. You can, anyway. Well, the bodies will be glorified. So I might not be quite this hideous looking, right? But anyway, moving on. I want that blessing. So I want to accept Christ as my savior. I did that as a kid. We could go around the room and you could all tell me stories of when you trusted Christ as your Savior. And one thing that a lot of you will probably have in common in your testimony is how clean you felt, how pure you felt. That's what that is, the pure in heart. Okay, so then we move on from that. After we get saved, what are we probably going to end up doing within a few minutes? Sitting. We'll end up doing something wrong. We shouldn't, it's unfortunate, and it's not an excuse to sin, it's not a license to sin, you know, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein, Romans 6. Right? But then that newness, that freshness, we're still saved, we still have a relationship with Christ, we're still saved, it's just that relationship has been strained, and we don't feel that brand new cleanness, even though our position is still secure. Is everyone with me on this? Am I the only one that's ever felt this way? You know? And so you do, you break one of God's laws, you sin, you say something you shouldn't say, you look at something you shouldn't look at, you think something you shouldn't think, you do something you shouldn't do, you fill in the blank. We can be purified. Verse John 1, 9 is the verse for us. Right? And I think about Psalm 51. In fact, let's go there. Let's go to Psalm 51. You know what this is. You know what this is. David saw him after he was caught after Nathan confronted him with his sin with Bathsheba. Of course, he had Uriah killed, committed adultery. And you read through some of this. Some of the things he says here, verse 10, created me a clean heart. a clean heart. Well, that's who Jesus said would be blessed, the pure in heart. And David wants that back. He wants the clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. How does he get to, how do we get that clean heart back? If we back up verse Let's look at verse, just say verse two. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. Verse three, for I acknowledge my transgression. That's how you get the clean heart back. I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me against thee, thee only have I sinned. What's he doing? He's doing the first John 1, 9, only it's in Psalms. He's confessing his sin. He's acknowledging what it is. God, I did this thing. I committed adultery with Bathsheba. This was sin. This was a sin in your sight. Against thee have I sinned. Thee only have I sinned. Lord, renew a right spirit within me. Create in me a clean heart. Verse seven, he says, Purge me. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. What's he asking for? He's asking for that pure heart to be restored. The way you get that pure heart to be restored is by acknowledging your sin, coming clean with that. Here's the problem, brother. This is what happens. This is what we think. We think, oh, I sinned. God forgive me of my sins. We're not looking at it the way he looks at it. We're not looking at it with the seriousness with which he's looking at it. We're not looking at our sin and acknowledging what it is. Oh, that was bad. I shouldn't have done that. Okay. Well, I won't do it again until I do. Right? Oh, well, I'll just ask God to forgive me again. And we've heard people say that. Well, if we say, I'll just ask God to forgive me again. You're not having the attitude that David is having here. That's not the pure heart. That's trying to work the system is what that's doing. Well, all I have to do is say, sorry, and then I'm good. That's not what's going on. In fact, if you do a little study on this, if you look at the beginning of Psalm 51, the first few verses, he uses three different words for his wrongdoing. The same wrongdoing, by the way. He's talking about the same sin, his adultery here with Bathsheba. That's what he's talking about. He uses three different words to describe it. Transgression, sin, and iniquity. We won't get too deep this morning, but sin is bad, right? Transgression's bad, iniquity's bad. One has the idea of willful disobedience. You told me to clean my room, I ain't gonna do it. Okay, willful disobedience. The other is the idea of premeditated sin. In other words, what David is saying, it doesn't matter the angle in which you look at it, it was wrong. Yes, I planned it ahead of time. Yes, I disobeyed. Yeah, so it's not like he was saying, okay, it was bad, but man, it really caught me off guard. And, you know, I was in a weak moment. No, it doesn't matter the angle you look at it, it was wrong. from your perspective, from my perspective, from Bathsheba's perspective, from Uriah's perspective, most importantly when he says, against thee have I sinned. So there's no excuse, if we sin, if we get something in our heart that separates our fellowship with God, still have our salvation secured if we know him as Savior, we praise the Lord for that. But if there's something there impure in our heart that's straining that relationship, You're not going to get it fixed by dancing around it. The way to get that cleaned up is to acknowledge it the way God sees it. To see it the way God sees it. You know what I'm saying? Right? So, Psalm 51 is a great example for how the believer gets that pureness back. Again, not talking about our relationship with God as far as our standing. Once we're saved, we're saved and we praise the Lord for that. But that is not an excuse to continue to sin. And in fact, that's very much frowned upon. Read Corinthians, right? And again, I quoted before Romans 6, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Right? So anyway, back to my outline here. How do we become pure in heart? Accepting Christ as our Savior, obviously that's the first one. And then if we sin, man, look at it the way David looked at his sin, right? Look at the way God looks at it. And then I think there's this too, regularly examining ourselves. One reason I, I like communion so much when we have communion, Lord's Supper, it's because we take time there to examine, to check on the purity of our heart. It's a good thing. I won't spend too much more time on that. But living with integrity, living the way Jesus called us to live. Once we have that, we're saved, we have no sin between us and the Lord, we have that confessed, we have that right, live the way he instructs us to live there in Matthew chapter five. So going back over there, Matthew chapter five, Blessed are the pure in heart. What is the promise? Sorry, that's exciting. They shall see God. I want to see Him. I want to see Him. I'm looking forward to it. And I don't mean for that to sound like a disrespectful thing, because I understand how holy He is. Because no man can see God and live. So that's kind of a big deal. He's holy. But we're going to see it. We're going to be up there. When Christ comes back, we're going to see him. But we can see some things now. Now, I haven't seen him face to face yet, but boy, I've seen him do stuff. I see my relationship with him. I see some of the things just recently he's done in my life. I can think back. You know, some things he did years ago as well, you could too. We could all talk about things that God has done in our life, where we've seen him work. There's no other explanation for it, other than the fact that that's God. We see him. We see our own relationship with him. You know how I know that? Because I know when my relationship with him is not right. You know, you have a relationship with someone in your family, maybe a spouse, maybe kids, something like that. You have a relationship, you know when it's strained. Does that mean it doesn't exist? No, then it's very evident that it does exist. Right? We can know him now. We might not see Him face to face yet, but one day we will, but we can know Him now. We can have a personal relationship with Christ. And if you don't know Christ as your Savior, you can know Him like today. You can know Him. You can see Him work. You can see the effects of him coming into your life. You can see the effects of not just a changed perspective that you have, but other people around you will see changes in your life. It's evidence. He's there. He's real. We talked to him a little bit a while ago. I just did a little while ago. We can see God now, not with our physical eyeballs, but we can see it. Just like you can't see the wind, but you can see it. You know what I'm talking about. So that's awesome. We can see His hand at work, but of course the highlight will be when we actually do see Him. What a blessing. The blessing of the pure in heart. By the way, blessings that we don't deserve, but the blessing that the pure in heart get is when I trust Christ as my Savior, He purifies my heart, I get to see Him one day. That's a pretty good deal. Then after that, one day I see him, I know that, but here, while I'm on this earth, I have a relationship with Christ. If that gets strained and things aren't the way they're supposed to be, if I get my heart right with God, I can see that. And that's awesome. I highly recommend it. If you're here this morning and there is something in your heart that is impure, it might be a thought, it might be an intention, it might be a sin that you think no one else knows about, I don't know. But if there's something in your heart that's not pure, I highly recommend acknowledging it, confessing it to God, letting Him purify you so that He can bless you. It's awesome. It's cool. So, Few things to bring home and then I'll be done here, okay? With all this in mind, we should live the pure in heart life God called us to live so that we can be blessed. We should confess our sin when it comes up and allow God to purge us and create in us a clean heart. I think this is amazing. It's God doing all the work. because we're letting Him purify us so that He can bless us. That's kind of cool, isn't it? It's not like Zach's like, oh no, I did this thing, I gotta work really hard so God's happy with me. Or, you know, Austin's like, oh man, I did something impure, so now I've gotta work really hard so that God's happy with me. No. You acknowledge it, you get it right with God, you press up, and then He does the purifying, and then He does the blessing. Again, pretty sweet deal. The only thing that I have to do is acknowledge it, confess it. And not just, oh, okay, well, then I'll just do whatever I want. And so I can just, you know, why stop sinning if he keeps forgiving, right? Hey, that's great. No, that's not acknowledging our sin. That's not the attitude that we see in Psalm 51. That's not what he's talking about in Matthew five. It's, I acknowledge my sin from every angle, no matter how you look at it, this thing is wrong, it was not right. God, I need you to clean me up. Please fix me. And he will. It's great. It's actually pretty awesome. And I lost my spot in my mind. That's why I have notes, you know. If I didn't have notes, I wouldn't even know what day it is. It's bad. So we should focus, and this is kind of the last big point I wanted to make. If the heart is the seed of our emotions, seed of our passions, the pure in heart are the ones that are blessed. God looks not on the outward appearance, but looks on the heart. And as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. If all of those things are true, and they are, what should be my primary focus in my Christian life? My outward actions or my heart? Oh, good. That's good. I'm glad someone answered that. I was worried about that. My heart, if I take care of my heart, the rest will take care of itself. It will, it will. So if I focus on the outward appearance, I got to put on a good show. We fight all the way to church, but then when we get here, we look good, right? You know what I'm talking about? Anyone? No? Okay. Or you don't pick up your Bible all week, but boy, when you come to church, you let everyone know it's there, right? we look the part, that's the outward. Take care of the heart and you know what'll happen? The outward will take care of itself. If my heart is right with God, then I'll do the things God wants me to do. If my heart is right with others, then I'll treat others the way I should. Not out of duty, not out of guilt tripping or anything like that. It's just because that's what my heart wants. You see that? Sorry, that was bad. That was embarrassing. My voice has been cracking a lot today. I'm struggling with this. Please pray for me, okay? This morning I was preaching to the teens and it cracked bad. It went way up. And so I had to correct it and drop in my masculine voice. It was good. It was good. I was like, yeah, okay. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Pure in heart. Let's be pure in heart. Let's, let's be pure in heart. Let's, if you, again, if you haven't trusted Christ as your savior, that's kind of the first step, right? Okay. Once you've trusted Christ as your savior, if you sin, man, get that thing right. Let God purge you. Let God clean that out of your life. Let God take care of that. And then he'll bless you for it. The Pharisees appeared, appeared, appeared pure. Say that five times fast. The Pharisees appeared pure. I can't do it. The Pharisees looked pure, but inwardly, they were not. I think, did Pastor recently preach on that? I think he did. He had a cup in here, right? Yeah, and it was like really nasty on the inside or something like that. I wasn't in here. I was downstairs preaching to the teens, but someone said something about it. Oh, not to the teens, to the kids. But inwardly, they were not pure. You focus on the inside, the outside will take care of itself. And then this really is my last thing. I forgot about it, but this really is my last thing. Go to Proverbs chapter 4. I'm going to leave you with this thought. Proverbs 4 verse 23, Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. If our heart's the seed of our emotions, the seed of our passions, if our heart is the real us, as we think in our hearts, so are we. If the heart is the first thing that God looks at, maybe we ought to pay attention to what we put in it. I'm just brainstorming here. Maybe we should pay attention to what goes into our heart. Maybe we should pay attention to maybe guarding our heart, maybe being diligent about it, like it says here. Keep your heart with diligence, because there's a lot of issues that come up in life. And this is what it says here. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. And then how do you do that? How do you keep your heart? Verse 25, what are you looking at? Let the eyes look right on. Verse 26, ponder, think about it. Just protect what goes in. Protect what you're watching on your phone, computer, TV. Protect what you're talking about amongst yourselves, peers at work, whatever. Be careful what you're listening to while you're driving down the road in your car. Be careful what you entertain, because if it gets in your heart, it'll affect your heart, and a pure heart, a pure heart's the way to be blessed. An impure heart, though, if you allow that to get in there, you're missing out on some blessings. I think I'm done. I think I made the point. Blessed are the pure in heart. We can see God, and we can see him now. Heads bowed, eyes closed. No one looking around for just a moment. Is there anyone here this morning? This is just between you and me and God, no one's looking around. Is there anyone here this morning that says, you know what, Pastor Matt, you're talking about being forgiven of my sins, having a home in heaven, seeing God one day. I'm not sure if I'm headed to heaven. I don't know that I've ever trusted Christ as my Savior and had my sins forgiven. If I died, I don't know if I'm going to heaven. But I'm concerned about that. I'm not going to point at you or make you give a speech or anything like that. I just want to pray for you. I won't even pray for you by name. I just want to generally pray for you. Is there anyone here that says, Pastor Matt, that's me. I am not sure that I'm going to heaven when I die. I'm not sure. that my sin is forgiven, but I'm concerned about that. Would you just slip your hand up so I can pray for you? Anyone like that? I see your hand, thank you. Next question's this. I see your hand, thank you. Next question's this. Those of us who are saved, is there something between us and the Savior? Is there something in our heart that's impure? Is there a motive, an intention, something that we're passionate about maybe? Maybe we've just been letting some trash into the heart. We gotta get that right so that we can be blessed. Is there anyone here, and by the way, I'm gonna raise my hand on this one. Is there anyone in here that says, Pastor Matt, that's me. I got some stuff in my heart I gotta fix. You pray for me. Could you raise your hand? Amen. You pray for me too. Heavenly Father, I thank you again for the day you gave us here, Lord, in your word. Lord, we want to be pure in heart. We want to be clean before you. I pray you'd help us with this, Lord. You said that you would, you said that, or David said he asked you to create a clean heart in him and asked you to purge him, Lord, and that you would restore his joy. And that's what we're saying this morning, Lord, for any of us that have that, I pray that we would get that right today. whatever it may be. Pray you bless now the invitation and it's in Jesus' name.