February 19, 2025 • 26 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
If you're a believer, your heart belongs to God. The
problem is Satan keeps trying to get a foothold there.
How can you stop him and keep your heart pure?
Today on turning point, doctor David Jeremiah shares some biblical
strategies for keeping the enemy on the run and keeping
your heart clean before the Lord. Listen as David introduces
(00:27):
the conclusion of his message, Happy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Are the Holy, and thank you so much for joining us.
We are studying how to be happy according to Jesus
from his teaching we call the Bayatitudes, and these are
the blessednesses of Jesus. And here we are talking of
blessed are the Holy, and we're talking about what it
means to be holy in our individual lives. Before we
(00:51):
get into our study today, let me remind you that
this coming year, in twenty twenty five, will be sailing
on Hollan America's You're a Damn July twelfth through the
nineteenth to Alaska. Our favorite and most responded to venues
are on the Alaska Tour. Everybody loves Alaska. Many of
(01:16):
the people that go with us have been with us
two or three times. I have been to Alaska thirty times.
I always look forward to going back every year. It's
a beautiful part of God's creation. It's something you can't
find anyplace else in the world. Alaska is a very
special place. We're going there this July. We'd like for
you to go with us, and you can find out
(01:37):
more about it at David Jeremiah dot org. Well, let's
open our bibles today and continue our discussion of what
does it mean to be holly?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Happy? Are the holy? You see?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
The problem we have is that the Bible says in
order for us to see God, we have to be pure.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And what is the standard?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know what Jesus said, He therefore holy even as
I am holy? How can I be like that? I
cannot be holy like he is holy. If he doesn't
do something to fix that problem, I will never see God.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And I'm not alone.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
The whole world is like that, for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. And one
day God said, I know what I'll do. I'll solve
that problem. And he looked around heaven for someone who
could do it, and he chose his only son, the
Lord Jesus, who was absolutely perfectly holy.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
He sent him to this.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
World, embodied him in the flesh, had him walk upon
this earth through his adult life to prove what a
holy man does when he lives his holy life. And
then one day, in obedience to his father, he went
to a cruel Roman cross, and hanging between heaven and
in earth, he died in payment for all of our sin,
(03:05):
and the greatest exchange the world has ever known took place.
I cannot fathom it, even though I have studied it
for years. God, through his son, took my sin upon himself,
and in exchange for my sin, he gave me his righteousness.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
He put a cloak over David.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Jeremiah, and that cloak is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
It covers all of my failures and my flaws, so
that now when God looks at me, be holy. Even
as I am holy, he sees the holy Son of God,
and I am pure in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
(03:48):
Whenever I tell that story to people who don't know
the Lord, and they don't rush right up and say
how do I get in on this, I always feel
like I must not.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Have told it right.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That is the greatest good news I've ever heard in
my life, because It takes me off the tram. It
gets me out of the pressure of trying to measure
up to a standard that is absolutely impossible for me.
And in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, I am accepted.
That's positional purity, just as righteous as Jesus Christ, because
(04:26):
He's given me his righteousness. That's what the Book of
Romans is all about. But those are two theological truths.
That's not where the issue is, is it. The issue
is in the third kind of purity. It's the issue
of practical purity, trying to live every day in this
world so that I'm living up to the standard of
(04:50):
who I am in Christ. Somebody told me a long
time ago that sanctification is simply living in practice what
you already are in position. Here's Jesus Christ saying, Jeremiah,
you're holy in me. Now I want you to live
like you're holy in me. I like this part. This
part here's tough.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
We live in a world that's pretty dirty. Not easy
to be holy in this world, is it. I don't
know if you've ever read any of his writings, but
Robert Folgan is one of my favorite writers, and he's
got a wonderful book out in which he talks about
an occasion when he went to speak at a graduation
exercise in.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
His own quoint way.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
He stood up in front of these graduating seniors and
he said, how many of you would like to be
an adult? Every single kid raised their hand. He said, well,
let me tell you what adults do. They clean the
sink strainer, They plunge out the toilet, They clean up babies.
They wipe runny noses, They clean up the floor when
(05:49):
the baby throws strained spinach. They clean ovens and grease
traps and roasting pans. They empty the kiddie box and
scrape up after the dog. They carry out the guard,
They pump out the bilges. They bury dead pets when
they get run over in the street. How many of
you want to be an adult? He said, No takers. Well,
you know you'd probably laugh at that, but every adult
(06:11):
here knows what we're talking about. You don't ever get
the kids to do that stuff. You know, you always
get stuck with it yourself. What do you mean you
want me to clean up the mess. But you know,
what he was talking about is kind of like what
it is to be a person.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
In the world today.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
You know, you're just dealing with dirty stuff all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
How do you deal with it?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
How do you deal with the issue of practical holiness?
How can I be pure in my life so that
I can see God? Well, you know, I'd like to
take a few moments and talk about some practical things.
And they're going to be a little bit maybe naive
to some of you, But I know this is an
(06:53):
issue with a lot of folks.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It's an issue with a lot of you men. It's
an issue that a lot of people struggle with.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
And I think there's some help in the Word of
God that we don't want to pass over quickly. How
can I, as a person who wants to be pure,
live a pure life in the world in which I
live today?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
I like to suggest two or three things. Number one,
I love.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
What the Book of Job tells us in Job chapter
thirty one, in verse one, where we're told that Job
made a covenant with his eyes. He made a covenant
with his eyes. What a wonderful suggestion. It's sort of
like this, you say, eyes, you and me have to talk,
(07:37):
we have.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
To make an agreement.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I want to make a covenant with you eyes We're
not going to look at stuff we shouldn't look at,
because you see, the eyes are the windows of the soul.
It's through the eyegate that impurity enters into the soul.
And do you remember the little chorus we used to
sing when we were growing up in Sunday School. It
goes like this, Oh, be careful, little eyes, is what
(08:00):
you see?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Oh be careful, little eyes.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
What you see for your father up above is looking
down in love.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
So be careful, little eyes what you see.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Whenever I would hear that, I wasn't sure he was
looking down in love, but I knew he was looking down.
You know, purity is not something that will happen in
our lives as Christians, without a strategy, without a purpose.
It's surprising to me how many of God's people have
fallen into the trap of believing that they can bring
(08:37):
into the windows of their soul any of the garbage
of this world and not be affected by it. They
think that they're sophisticated, that they're cool, that they can
handle it, they can sort it out. But the windows
of the soul don't have a filter. The windows of
the soul take in whatever anybody else's eyes take in
(08:57):
and it has an impact and effect upon a person's life.
And I just need to tell you. You can talk
about being pure if you want to, but if you
really mean business, you're gonna make a covenant with your eyes,
and you're going to say, by the grace of God,
I'm not going to watch some stuff and read some
stuff and look at some stuff that maybe the rest
of the world looks at, because I know it will
(09:17):
have an impact on my life. Make a covenant with
your eyes. Number two, Consecrate your mind. Paul urged the
Romans to present their bodies as a living sacrifice. We
know that part, but do you remember the next part?
He says, We're to do that by the renewing of
(09:37):
our mind. The Bible warns us to keep our hearts pure,
for out of the heart are the issues of life.
Our thinking determines our character. The battles in the mind.
It's not in the heart that's the visceral part of
man as we often think of it.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
It's in the mind.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
And you have to determine to consecrate your mind for
or from within.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Out of the heart of.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Man proceed evil thoughts and adulteries and fornications and murderers,
and thefts, and covetousness and wickedness, and on and on
the list goes in Mark seven, the mind is the
battle ground upon which every moral and spiritual battle is fought.
As far back as Noah in the Old Testament, this
(10:23):
has been true, for when God saw the great wickedness
of Noah's day, he perceived that every intent of the
thoughts of man's heart was only evil. Continually, your mind,
consecrate your mind, You say, well, pastor Jeremiah, how do
I do that? Well, let me give you the third thing,
(10:44):
which is a good way to do that. And this
is going to sound like a foreign language to this world.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
This used to.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Be pretty common among us as Christians in another generation,
but in this generation it is really like a foreign language.
So you know, I'm really serious about this, and I
want to tell you here's the third thing, yourself to
Bible memory.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
What's that? Well, you'd take the Bible.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
And you read a verse, and after you get done
reading it several times, you see if you can say
it back out loud without looking at the Bible, and
then you do it again. Then you put your Bible away,
and you think I can say that verse without reading it.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
That's Bible memory.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
When I was a young person, there was an organization
called the Bible Memory Association, and I was enrolled in
that as a young person. And we used to get
a book and it had the Bible Memory verses in
and we'd have to memorize those Bible verses. And then
every week we had a listener. You'd go and you'd
recite your verses to the listener, and they'd check to
see whether or not you set them right. And you know,
(11:45):
you think that's wrote and that's the old classical way
of learning. And nobody does that anymore, except I got
to tell you those are the verses I still remember.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I'll never forget them.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
They are etched in my young soul, and they'll be
with me all my life. And I'm not just giving
you some homespun counsel about the importance of memory. That's
exactly what the Bible says. Listen to this, wherewithal shall
a young man cleanse his way by taking heed? Thereunto
(12:16):
thy word. Psalm one hundred and nineteen says, thy word
have I hid in my heart? What's the rest of
a class that I might not sin against thee. You see,
the problem with life and the problem with the battle
for purity is you never know when the attack is
going to come. You never know when the pressure is
(12:37):
going to be there, and you don't always have time
when you are tempted or when the pressure comes, you
don't always have time to say, hold it, I gotta
run and get my Bible. You got to have the
word of God available to you in your heart. Memorize
the Word of God. You say, what should I memorize?
All kinds of ways for you to get involved. One
(12:58):
of the greatest memory programs I know is the Navigator's
Topical Memory system.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And if you don't know what.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
That is, right to the Navigator's home office. They'll be
happy to send you information about it. And you can
get involved in a program of hiding the Word of
God in your heart.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
You know what that does.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
It begins to replace the other things that come into
your life to destroy your purity. The Bible says that
as Christians we are responsible to bring into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ. That is a challenge,
but through memorizing the Word of God, it is a possibility.
(13:35):
Let me give you the fourth thing I want to say,
and that is you have to learn how to counteract
Satan's strategy in your life. Did you know that Satan
has a strategy for you?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yes, he knows you, he sure does. And he knows
all your weaknesses in all the ways he can get you.
And he knows me like a book, and he knows
that one of the things I can be tripped up
with often is to discouragement sometimes when it just get
overwhelmed with everything, and you know, it's usually not the
big thing that ultimately gets me, some little crazy thing
that happens and all of a sudden, and you know,
(14:09):
Satan's sitting back there laughing.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Got you.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
That's where I got you the last time. But do
you know what his strategy is for you? Did you
know that he has a plan to subvert you? He
wants to drown your influence. The Bible says that the
enemy of our soul, Satan, goes around like a roaring
lying seeking whom.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
He can devour.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And I studied that text one time in depth, and
I found out that what he wants to do he
wants to drowned your influence. He wants to destroy your
ability to serve God and to be of any value
to anyone by just subverting you and trapping you and
destroying you. And I want to say something to you,
and I hope you'll listen to and especially you guys.
(14:52):
The thing that is so amazing to me is how
easily we fall into his trap, and how we keep
getting caught at the same place every time. I had
a man come to see me many years ago who
was struggling in this area of his life, and he
told me that he always seemed to have a hard
(15:17):
time when he first got home from work. But he said,
when I get home from work, he said, my mind
is just filled with all he told me. And he'd
lived downtown and he lived in a condo. I said, well,
how do you get home from work? He said, I walk.
I said, well, what's it like to walk home from
work to where you stay in your condo? He said,
you know, I have to go through the worst part
(15:38):
of town. He said, I walk through all the section
of the adult bookstores and all of the peep shows
and all the things that I have to walk right
down through him. He said, they're on both sides of
the street. I said, that's the way you go home
every day, he said, yeah, and when you get home
you find your mind's kind of messed up. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
I said, well, why do you do that?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
He said, well, it's the shortest way home. I said,
take the long way. I mean, I'm not real smart,
but I can figure that one out. He said, take
the long way. Take the long way, because in reality,
the long way is the short way. Now that's just
a simple little story, but it could be repeated over
and over again. In years of talking with people who
(16:19):
struggle with this, I find out that most of them
have problems in the same places over and over again.
You know where a lot of guys get messed up
on trips away from home. They get messed up in
the airports or in the hotel rooms where they don't
get the X rated movies shut off, and they can't
understand why they keep falling. You know, if there's a
hole in the middle of the road and you walk
(16:41):
down that road five times and you fall in the
same hole, don't do it. Go somewhere else, find another way.
You say, Pastor, that's the most naive thing I've ever
heard you say. But the fact is, Satan mesmerizes us.
He puts us into a trance, and we keep falling
in the same trap over and over again. So if
(17:06):
you struggle in the area of mental purity, you should
at least ask the question, does this seem to happen
at any certain time in my life, under any set
of certain circumstances, And maybe I could change some of
that to protect myself from temptation, counteract Satan's strategy in
(17:29):
your life. Paul said to the Corinthians that he was
not ignorant of Satan's devices. Don't be ignorant of Satan's devices.
I've told you before how much I love to read
Philippiensi's writings. I don't think he must do anything but write,
because he just writes prolifically, and he's.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
A wonderful, wonderful communicator.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And the reason I like him is because when I
read what he says, I feel like I'm talking to
an honest man. He doesn't say all the easy things,
the things you want to hear, are the things you
would expect to hear from an evangelical writer. He gets
to the point of the issue and he talks about
the real thing. The book is a wonderful new treatment
of the life of Christ called the Jesus I never knew.
(18:15):
I read that during the pre Easter season and around
the Resurrection, and I just found that God used it
to just encourage my heart. He's got a little section
in that book where he talks about the beatitudes, and
when he's talking about this particular beatitude where Jesus said,
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
He has an insight to me.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That's really at the core of what we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
How do you see God?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
He said, during a period of his life when he
was battling sexual temptation, he came across an article that
referred to him.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
It was a.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Book called What I Believe by the French Catholic writer
Francois Murrayac and Philippi Enci said it surprised him that Muriac,
an old man, devoted a considerable period of time in
his book to the discussion of his own lust. And
he explained, he said, old age risks being a period
(19:12):
of redoubled testing, because the imagination in an old man
is substituted in a horrible way for what nature refuses him.
He said, I knew that Muriac understood lust. His Viper's
Tangle and a Kiss for the Leper novels, which helped
him win the Nobel Prize in Literature, portray lust and
(19:34):
repression and sexual anger as well as anything I have
ever read. Muriac knew what he was talking about, and
this French Catholic writer said he had dismissed most of
the arguments in favor of sexual purity that had been
taught to him in his Catholic upbringing. For instance, marriage
(19:56):
will cure lust, is what he had heard. It did
not fear mere, Biac, as it has not done for
so many others, because lust involves the attraction of unknown
creatures and the taste for adventure and chance meetings. With
self discipline, you can master lust, he had been taught.
Muriac found that sexual desire is like a tidal wave,
(20:18):
powerful enough to bear away all the best intentions. True fulfillment,
he had been taught, can only be found in monogamy.
This may be true, but it certainly does not seem
true to someone who finds no slackening of urges even
in monogamy. So he weighed the traditional arguments for purity,
(20:39):
and while he knew they had value, there.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Was something more.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Muriac concluded that self discipline and repression and rational argument
are not adequate weapons to use in fighting the impulse
toward impurity. In the end, he could find only one
reason to be pure, and that is what Jesus presented
in the beatitudes. Blessed are the pure in heart, for
(21:05):
they shall see God. In Muriac's words, impurity separates us
from God, and the spiritual life that wants to know
God in an intimate way will discover that impurity gets
in the way of that intimacy. And so when we
cultivate a love for God and we have this deep
(21:26):
desire to know him, our love and desire to know
God will develop an intolerance for anything that gets in
the way. And so it is appealing to a higher
love to destroy the impurity of life. In the practical realm,
we all understand what he's talking about. You can't really
(21:50):
be intimate with God when there's impurity in your life.
How do you get to a holy God when you
have unconfessed sin and there's rottenness in your heart?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
You can't know God like that.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But if you want to know God, and I hope
in your heart there is that desire. If you want
to really know God. The desire for intimacy with God
will begin to purge the impurity of your heart. And
that's what Jesus meant when he said, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God in a
(22:26):
way that you cannot see God if your heart is
not pure. And so the issue is, do you want
to know God? Do you want to see God?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Do you want to walk with God?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
That motivation will drive purity into your soul and impurity away.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
You will not.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Want anything to get in that process. Isn't it interesting?
We can spend all of our life with the defense mechanisms,
which are important, but the real issue is to want
to know God, to want to see Him, to want
to be friends with him. I'm understanding that in a
(23:09):
better way at this time in my life. How wonderful
it is not just to know God, but to be
his friend, to be a servant, to hear his voice,
and to find the joy in that process. To be
so wonderful that you won't want anything to get in.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
The way that would keep it from being what you've
known it to be.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they and they
only will really see God.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Amen.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Holiness is a pursuit, and while we will never arrive
at it in perfection on this earth, we surely can
make that our goal to walk in holiness with the Lord.
It brings honor and glory to his name, protects us
from all kinds of harm that goes along with evil,
and brings joint happiness to our hearts. Happy are the
(24:08):
Holy Well Tomorrow here on turning Point, we're going to
talk about what it means to be a healer. Happy
are the Healers Tomorrow and Monday here on this series
how to be Happy according to Jesus. Our resource for
the month of February is a very special book that
I have kind of placed my blessing on in a
(24:28):
very unique way.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
For seventy years I've been a Christian.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
In this book on the basics of the Christian life,
Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians has blessed my life.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I know it will do the same for you.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Send a gift of any size and ask for your
copy of the Twelve Habits.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
We're grateful for your.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Support and continue to count on you to make it
possible to do what we do.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
The message you've just heard came to you from Shadow
Mountain Community Church, your pastor, doctor David Jeremiah. We'd love
to know how this ministry encourages you, so write to
Turning Point po Box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California,
nine two one sixty three. Visit our website at Davidjeremiah
dot org, slash radio, or call eight hundred ninety four
(25:18):
seven nineteen ninety three ask for your copy of David's
valuable book, Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians with Jesus
Prescription for Happiness. It's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app
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store for Turning Point ministries. To access our content, visit
(25:41):
David Jeremiah dot org slash radio for details. This is
David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue how
to be Happy according to Jesus on Turning Point with
Doctor David Jeremiah
If you're a believer, your heart belongs to God. The
problem is Satan keeps trying to get a foothold there.
How can you stop him and keep your heart pure?
Today on turning point, doctor David Jeremiah shares some biblical
strategies for keeping the enemy on the run and keeping
your heart clean before the Lord. Listen as David introduces
(00:27):
the conclusion of his message, Happy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Are the Holy, and thank you so much for joining us.
We are studying how to be happy according to Jesus
from his teaching we call the Bayatitudes, and these are
the blessednesses of Jesus. And here we are talking of
blessed are the Holy, and we're talking about what it
means to be holy in our individual lives. Before we
(00:51):
get into our study today, let me remind you that
this coming year, in twenty twenty five, will be sailing
on Hollan America's You're a Damn July twelfth through the
nineteenth to Alaska. Our favorite and most responded to venues
are on the Alaska Tour. Everybody loves Alaska. Many of
(01:16):
the people that go with us have been with us
two or three times. I have been to Alaska thirty times.
I always look forward to going back every year. It's
a beautiful part of God's creation. It's something you can't
find anyplace else in the world. Alaska is a very
special place. We're going there this July. We'd like for
you to go with us, and you can find out
(01:37):
more about it at David Jeremiah dot org. Well, let's
open our bibles today and continue our discussion of what
does it mean to be holly?
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Happy? Are the holy? You see?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
The problem we have is that the Bible says in
order for us to see God, we have to be pure.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And what is the standard?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
You know what Jesus said, He therefore holy even as
I am holy? How can I be like that? I
cannot be holy like he is holy. If he doesn't
do something to fix that problem, I will never see God.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And I'm not alone.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
The whole world is like that, for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. And one
day God said, I know what I'll do. I'll solve
that problem. And he looked around heaven for someone who
could do it, and he chose his only son, the
Lord Jesus, who was absolutely perfectly holy.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
He sent him to this.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
World, embodied him in the flesh, had him walk upon
this earth through his adult life to prove what a
holy man does when he lives his holy life. And
then one day, in obedience to his father, he went
to a cruel Roman cross, and hanging between heaven and
in earth, he died in payment for all of our sin,
(03:05):
and the greatest exchange the world has ever known took place.
I cannot fathom it, even though I have studied it
for years. God, through his son, took my sin upon himself,
and in exchange for my sin, he gave me his righteousness.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
He put a cloak over David.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Jeremiah, and that cloak is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
It covers all of my failures and my flaws, so
that now when God looks at me, be holy. Even
as I am holy, he sees the holy Son of God,
and I am pure in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
(03:48):
Whenever I tell that story to people who don't know
the Lord, and they don't rush right up and say
how do I get in on this, I always feel
like I must not.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Have told it right.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That is the greatest good news I've ever heard in
my life, because It takes me off the tram. It
gets me out of the pressure of trying to measure
up to a standard that is absolutely impossible for me.
And in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, I am accepted.
That's positional purity, just as righteous as Jesus Christ, because
(04:26):
He's given me his righteousness. That's what the Book of
Romans is all about. But those are two theological truths.
That's not where the issue is, is it. The issue
is in the third kind of purity. It's the issue
of practical purity, trying to live every day in this
world so that I'm living up to the standard of
(04:50):
who I am in Christ. Somebody told me a long
time ago that sanctification is simply living in practice what
you already are in position. Here's Jesus Christ saying, Jeremiah,
you're holy in me. Now I want you to live
like you're holy in me. I like this part. This
part here's tough.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
We live in a world that's pretty dirty. Not easy
to be holy in this world, is it. I don't
know if you've ever read any of his writings, but
Robert Folgan is one of my favorite writers, and he's
got a wonderful book out in which he talks about
an occasion when he went to speak at a graduation
exercise in.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
His own quoint way.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
He stood up in front of these graduating seniors and
he said, how many of you would like to be
an adult? Every single kid raised their hand. He said, well,
let me tell you what adults do. They clean the
sink strainer, They plunge out the toilet, They clean up babies.
They wipe runny noses, They clean up the floor when
(05:49):
the baby throws strained spinach. They clean ovens and grease
traps and roasting pans. They empty the kiddie box and
scrape up after the dog. They carry out the guard,
They pump out the bilges. They bury dead pets when
they get run over in the street. How many of
you want to be an adult? He said, No takers. Well,
you know you'd probably laugh at that, but every adult
(06:11):
here knows what we're talking about. You don't ever get
the kids to do that stuff. You know, you always
get stuck with it yourself. What do you mean you
want me to clean up the mess. But you know,
what he was talking about is kind of like what
it is to be a person.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
In the world today.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
You know, you're just dealing with dirty stuff all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
How do you deal with it?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
How do you deal with the issue of practical holiness?
How can I be pure in my life so that
I can see God? Well, you know, I'd like to
take a few moments and talk about some practical things.
And they're going to be a little bit maybe naive
to some of you, But I know this is an
(06:53):
issue with a lot of folks.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It's an issue with a lot of you men. It's
an issue that a lot of people struggle with.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
And I think there's some help in the Word of
God that we don't want to pass over quickly. How
can I, as a person who wants to be pure,
live a pure life in the world in which I
live today?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
I like to suggest two or three things. Number one,
I love.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
What the Book of Job tells us in Job chapter
thirty one, in verse one, where we're told that Job
made a covenant with his eyes. He made a covenant
with his eyes. What a wonderful suggestion. It's sort of
like this, you say, eyes, you and me have to talk,
(07:37):
we have.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
To make an agreement.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I want to make a covenant with you eyes We're
not going to look at stuff we shouldn't look at,
because you see, the eyes are the windows of the soul.
It's through the eyegate that impurity enters into the soul.
And do you remember the little chorus we used to
sing when we were growing up in Sunday School. It
goes like this, Oh, be careful, little eyes, is what
(08:00):
you see?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Oh be careful, little eyes.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
What you see for your father up above is looking
down in love.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
So be careful, little eyes what you see.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Whenever I would hear that, I wasn't sure he was
looking down in love, but I knew he was looking down.
You know, purity is not something that will happen in
our lives as Christians, without a strategy, without a purpose.
It's surprising to me how many of God's people have
fallen into the trap of believing that they can bring
(08:37):
into the windows of their soul any of the garbage
of this world and not be affected by it. They
think that they're sophisticated, that they're cool, that they can
handle it, they can sort it out. But the windows
of the soul don't have a filter. The windows of
the soul take in whatever anybody else's eyes take in
(08:57):
and it has an impact and effect upon a person's life.
And I just need to tell you. You can talk
about being pure if you want to, but if you
really mean business, you're gonna make a covenant with your eyes,
and you're going to say, by the grace of God,
I'm not going to watch some stuff and read some
stuff and look at some stuff that maybe the rest
of the world looks at, because I know it will
(09:17):
have an impact on my life. Make a covenant with
your eyes. Number two, Consecrate your mind. Paul urged the
Romans to present their bodies as a living sacrifice. We
know that part, but do you remember the next part?
He says, We're to do that by the renewing of
(09:37):
our mind. The Bible warns us to keep our hearts pure,
for out of the heart are the issues of life.
Our thinking determines our character. The battles in the mind.
It's not in the heart that's the visceral part of
man as we often think of it.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
It's in the mind.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
And you have to determine to consecrate your mind for
or from within.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Out of the heart of.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Man proceed evil thoughts and adulteries and fornications and murderers,
and thefts, and covetousness and wickedness, and on and on
the list goes in Mark seven, the mind is the
battle ground upon which every moral and spiritual battle is fought.
As far back as Noah in the Old Testament, this
(10:23):
has been true, for when God saw the great wickedness
of Noah's day, he perceived that every intent of the
thoughts of man's heart was only evil. Continually, your mind,
consecrate your mind, You say, well, pastor Jeremiah, how do
I do that? Well, let me give you the third thing,
(10:44):
which is a good way to do that. And this
is going to sound like a foreign language to this world.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
This used to.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Be pretty common among us as Christians in another generation,
but in this generation it is really like a foreign language.
So you know, I'm really serious about this, and I
want to tell you here's the third thing, yourself to
Bible memory.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
What's that? Well, you'd take the Bible.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
And you read a verse, and after you get done
reading it several times, you see if you can say
it back out loud without looking at the Bible, and
then you do it again. Then you put your Bible away,
and you think I can say that verse without reading it.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
That's Bible memory.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
When I was a young person, there was an organization
called the Bible Memory Association, and I was enrolled in
that as a young person. And we used to get
a book and it had the Bible Memory verses in
and we'd have to memorize those Bible verses. And then
every week we had a listener. You'd go and you'd
recite your verses to the listener, and they'd check to
see whether or not you set them right. And you know,
(11:45):
you think that's wrote and that's the old classical way
of learning. And nobody does that anymore, except I got
to tell you those are the verses I still remember.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I'll never forget them.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
They are etched in my young soul, and they'll be
with me all my life. And I'm not just giving
you some homespun counsel about the importance of memory. That's
exactly what the Bible says. Listen to this, wherewithal shall
a young man cleanse his way by taking heed? Thereunto
(12:16):
thy word. Psalm one hundred and nineteen says, thy word
have I hid in my heart? What's the rest of
a class that I might not sin against thee. You see,
the problem with life and the problem with the battle
for purity is you never know when the attack is
going to come. You never know when the pressure is
(12:37):
going to be there, and you don't always have time
when you are tempted or when the pressure comes, you
don't always have time to say, hold it, I gotta
run and get my Bible. You got to have the
word of God available to you in your heart. Memorize
the Word of God. You say, what should I memorize?
All kinds of ways for you to get involved. One
(12:58):
of the greatest memory programs I know is the Navigator's
Topical Memory system.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And if you don't know what.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
That is, right to the Navigator's home office. They'll be
happy to send you information about it. And you can
get involved in a program of hiding the Word of
God in your heart.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
You know what that does.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
It begins to replace the other things that come into
your life to destroy your purity. The Bible says that
as Christians we are responsible to bring into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ. That is a challenge,
but through memorizing the Word of God, it is a possibility.
(13:35):
Let me give you the fourth thing I want to say,
and that is you have to learn how to counteract
Satan's strategy in your life. Did you know that Satan
has a strategy for you?
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yes, he knows you, he sure does. And he knows
all your weaknesses in all the ways he can get you.
And he knows me like a book, and he knows
that one of the things I can be tripped up
with often is to discouragement sometimes when it just get
overwhelmed with everything, and you know, it's usually not the
big thing that ultimately gets me, some little crazy thing
that happens and all of a sudden, and you know,
(14:09):
Satan's sitting back there laughing.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Got you.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
That's where I got you the last time. But do
you know what his strategy is for you? Did you
know that he has a plan to subvert you? He
wants to drown your influence. The Bible says that the
enemy of our soul, Satan, goes around like a roaring
lying seeking whom.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
He can devour.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And I studied that text one time in depth, and
I found out that what he wants to do he
wants to drowned your influence. He wants to destroy your
ability to serve God and to be of any value
to anyone by just subverting you and trapping you and
destroying you. And I want to say something to you,
and I hope you'll listen to and especially you guys.
(14:52):
The thing that is so amazing to me is how
easily we fall into his trap, and how we keep
getting caught at the same place every time. I had
a man come to see me many years ago who
was struggling in this area of his life, and he
told me that he always seemed to have a hard
(15:17):
time when he first got home from work. But he said,
when I get home from work, he said, my mind
is just filled with all he told me. And he'd
lived downtown and he lived in a condo. I said, well,
how do you get home from work? He said, I walk.
I said, well, what's it like to walk home from
work to where you stay in your condo? He said,
you know, I have to go through the worst part
(15:38):
of town. He said, I walk through all the section
of the adult bookstores and all of the peep shows
and all the things that I have to walk right
down through him. He said, they're on both sides of
the street. I said, that's the way you go home
every day, he said, yeah, and when you get home
you find your mind's kind of messed up. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
I said, well, why do you do that?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
He said, well, it's the shortest way home. I said,
take the long way. I mean, I'm not real smart,
but I can figure that one out. He said, take
the long way. Take the long way, because in reality,
the long way is the short way. Now that's just
a simple little story, but it could be repeated over
and over again. In years of talking with people who
(16:19):
struggle with this, I find out that most of them
have problems in the same places over and over again.
You know where a lot of guys get messed up
on trips away from home. They get messed up in
the airports or in the hotel rooms where they don't
get the X rated movies shut off, and they can't
understand why they keep falling. You know, if there's a
hole in the middle of the road and you walk
(16:41):
down that road five times and you fall in the
same hole, don't do it. Go somewhere else, find another way.
You say, Pastor, that's the most naive thing I've ever
heard you say. But the fact is, Satan mesmerizes us.
He puts us into a trance, and we keep falling
in the same trap over and over again. So if
(17:06):
you struggle in the area of mental purity, you should
at least ask the question, does this seem to happen
at any certain time in my life, under any set
of certain circumstances, And maybe I could change some of
that to protect myself from temptation, counteract Satan's strategy in
(17:29):
your life. Paul said to the Corinthians that he was
not ignorant of Satan's devices. Don't be ignorant of Satan's devices.
I've told you before how much I love to read
Philippiensi's writings. I don't think he must do anything but write,
because he just writes prolifically, and he's.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
A wonderful, wonderful communicator.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And the reason I like him is because when I
read what he says, I feel like I'm talking to
an honest man. He doesn't say all the easy things,
the things you want to hear, are the things you
would expect to hear from an evangelical writer. He gets
to the point of the issue and he talks about
the real thing. The book is a wonderful new treatment
of the life of Christ called the Jesus I never knew.
(18:15):
I read that during the pre Easter season and around
the Resurrection, and I just found that God used it
to just encourage my heart. He's got a little section
in that book where he talks about the beatitudes, and
when he's talking about this particular beatitude where Jesus said,
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
He has an insight to me.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That's really at the core of what we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
How do you see God?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
He said, during a period of his life when he
was battling sexual temptation, he came across an article that
referred to him.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
It was a.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Book called What I Believe by the French Catholic writer
Francois Murrayac and Philippi Enci said it surprised him that Muriac,
an old man, devoted a considerable period of time in
his book to the discussion of his own lust. And
he explained, he said, old age risks being a period
(19:12):
of redoubled testing, because the imagination in an old man
is substituted in a horrible way for what nature refuses him.
He said, I knew that Muriac understood lust. His Viper's
Tangle and a Kiss for the Leper novels, which helped
him win the Nobel Prize in Literature, portray lust and
(19:34):
repression and sexual anger as well as anything I have
ever read. Muriac knew what he was talking about, and
this French Catholic writer said he had dismissed most of
the arguments in favor of sexual purity that had been
taught to him in his Catholic upbringing. For instance, marriage
(19:56):
will cure lust, is what he had heard. It did
not fear mere, Biac, as it has not done for
so many others, because lust involves the attraction of unknown
creatures and the taste for adventure and chance meetings. With
self discipline, you can master lust, he had been taught.
Muriac found that sexual desire is like a tidal wave,
(20:18):
powerful enough to bear away all the best intentions. True fulfillment,
he had been taught, can only be found in monogamy.
This may be true, but it certainly does not seem
true to someone who finds no slackening of urges even
in monogamy. So he weighed the traditional arguments for purity,
(20:39):
and while he knew they had value, there.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Was something more.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Muriac concluded that self discipline and repression and rational argument
are not adequate weapons to use in fighting the impulse
toward impurity. In the end, he could find only one
reason to be pure, and that is what Jesus presented
in the beatitudes. Blessed are the pure in heart, for
(21:05):
they shall see God. In Muriac's words, impurity separates us
from God, and the spiritual life that wants to know
God in an intimate way will discover that impurity gets
in the way of that intimacy. And so when we
cultivate a love for God and we have this deep
(21:26):
desire to know him, our love and desire to know
God will develop an intolerance for anything that gets in
the way. And so it is appealing to a higher
love to destroy the impurity of life. In the practical realm,
we all understand what he's talking about. You can't really
(21:50):
be intimate with God when there's impurity in your life.
How do you get to a holy God when you
have unconfessed sin and there's rottenness in your heart?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
You can't know God like that.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
But if you want to know God, and I hope
in your heart there is that desire. If you want
to really know God. The desire for intimacy with God
will begin to purge the impurity of your heart. And
that's what Jesus meant when he said, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God in a
(22:26):
way that you cannot see God if your heart is
not pure. And so the issue is, do you want
to know God? Do you want to see God?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Do you want to walk with God?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
That motivation will drive purity into your soul and impurity away.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
You will not.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Want anything to get in that process. Isn't it interesting?
We can spend all of our life with the defense mechanisms,
which are important, but the real issue is to want
to know God, to want to see Him, to want
to be friends with him. I'm understanding that in a
(23:09):
better way at this time in my life. How wonderful
it is not just to know God, but to be
his friend, to be a servant, to hear his voice,
and to find the joy in that process. To be
so wonderful that you won't want anything to get in.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
The way that would keep it from being what you've
known it to be.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they and they
only will really see God.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Amen.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Holiness is a pursuit, and while we will never arrive
at it in perfection on this earth, we surely can
make that our goal to walk in holiness with the Lord.
It brings honor and glory to his name, protects us
from all kinds of harm that goes along with evil,
and brings joint happiness to our hearts. Happy are the
(24:08):
Holy Well Tomorrow here on turning Point, we're going to
talk about what it means to be a healer. Happy
are the Healers Tomorrow and Monday here on this series
how to be Happy according to Jesus. Our resource for
the month of February is a very special book that
I have kind of placed my blessing on in a
(24:28):
very unique way.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
For seventy years I've been a Christian.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
In this book on the basics of the Christian life,
Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians has blessed my life.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I know it will do the same for you.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Send a gift of any size and ask for your
copy of the Twelve Habits.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
We're grateful for your.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Support and continue to count on you to make it
possible to do what we do.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
The message you've just heard came to you from Shadow
Mountain Community Church, your pastor, doctor David Jeremiah. We'd love
to know how this ministry encourages you, so write to
Turning Point po Box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California,
nine two one sixty three. Visit our website at Davidjeremiah
dot org, slash radio, or call eight hundred ninety four
(25:18):
seven nineteen ninety three ask for your copy of David's
valuable book, Twelve Habits of Truly Happy Christians with Jesus
Prescription for Happiness. It's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app
for your smartphone or tablet, or search in your app
store for Turning Point ministries. To access our content, visit
(25:41):
David Jeremiah dot org slash radio for details. This is
David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue how
to be Happy according to Jesus on Turning Point with
Doctor David Jeremiah
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