Would you turn in your Bibles, please, to the gospel of Matthew, to chapter 5, to the Sermon on the Mount, and look with me as we continue to study the Beatitudes. These blessings, these happy fortunes that God in Christ brings upon those who enter the kingdom of God through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, of all the Beatitudes. I think the one is the most beautiful and tender, and perhaps the most amazing is this one. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. One an amazing promise, they shall see God. We live in a world that is broken, it's fallen, corrupted by sin, people of evil men who do evil things. As a result, most of us tend towards epistemism about the human race as we get older, and some of that is somewhat wanted. We believe in our own theological statements in what we call the total property of mankind. Our Westminster Confession of Faith introduces humanity to our doctrinal statement with these words. Our first parents being seduced by the subtly and temptations of Satan sinned and eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased according to his wise and only counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory. By the sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so it became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of body and soul. This defilement that runs through the whole of humanity, theologians have called total depravity. R.C. Sproul in his book about the reformed faith says that this term total depravity is distinguished from utter depravity, meaning that the effect of sin and of its corruptions are on the whole person to be totally depraved. It's a suffer from corruption that pervades the whole of the individual being. Sin affects every aspect of our being, the body, the soul, the mind, the will, the affections, and so forth. The total person, the whole person, is corrupted by sin. There is no vestigial island of righteousness that escapes the influence of the fall. Sin reaches into every aspect of our lives, finding no shelter of isolated virtue. We are totally depraved, but not utterly depraved. When we talk about total depravity, we mean that the sinfulness of mankind has permeated every facet of his being. But that doesn't mean he's as bad as he can get. He can always get worse. Imagine if I had a little vial of crystal clear water up here, and I had one of those little squeeze bottles of red food dye, and I took one drop of the dye and just one drop I released into the water, and I shook the water up, how many particles of the water would be tainted by sin? But what if I dump the whole red bottle into it? What color would the water then be? Crimson. Crimson for Alabama. Not scarlet for the buck-eyes. Crimson red. It would be utterly saturated by sin. But what if I dump the whole red bottle into it? What color would the water then be? Crimson. Crimson for Alabama. Not scarlet for the buck-eyes. I'm not so saturated with sin so that I am totally depraved. But I'm not as utterly depraved as Adolf Hitler. Total depravity doesn't mean that we're as bad as we can get. It just means that we're completely tainted by sin. Probably a better word to use is what theologians are now using when they talk about radical corruption. We are at the very root of our being corrupted by sin. And therefore we can do nothing good to earn our salvation apart from the grace and help of God. God announces this in Genesis 6, he first talks about total depravity. When the Lord said, I saw the wickedness of mankind and it was great upon the earth and every intention of their hearts was on evil, only evil and continually. We are corrupted to the very core of our being, this lost condition, this radical corruption of the human nature, this pervasive effects of human depravity or basic tenets of the Christian faith. Paul when he introduces the great gospel of God in Romans says, none is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God, all have turned aside. Together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one. There is not one person, Paul says, who is a basically good person. By the way, it's not just Presbyterians who confess this truth. This is a basic tenet of evangelical Christianity. It's what leads to the gospel mission. If people were not utterly in desperate need of the grace of God because of their total or radical corruption, then there would be no need to engage in world missions. J. I. Packer and Thomas Oden, written a book called One Faith, the Evangelical Consensus, where they gather together all of the doctrinal statements and the misogynological statements and the vision plans of evangelical Christianity over the decades and each one of them confesses our radical corruption in our total depravity. Listen to just a couple of these statements. We affirm that human beings, though created in the image of God, are sinful and guilty and lost without Christ, and that this truth is necessary as a preliminary to gospel ministry. We affirm that the gospel diagnosis, the universal sinful condition of mankind's rebellion against God, which if unchanged will lead each person to an eternal loss under God's condemnation. We deny any rejection of the fallenness of human nature, and we reject any assertion of the natural goodness, divinity, or superiority of the human race. Both the law and the gospel uncover a lost human condition that goes beyond any feeling of pain, misery, frustration, bondage, powerlessness, and discontent with life. The Bible reveals that all human beings are constitutionally in a state of rebellion against God who made them and whom they remain dimly aware of, although they are alienated from him and cut off from all of the enjoyment of knowing and serving him, that true fulfillment of human nature because they are radically corrupted by sin. That would discourage anybody. But there are some other things that we affirm and deny in the Christian religion. We deny that men are worthless. We think they are of great value. For God so loved the world that He gave us only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on them should not perish but have everlasting life. We believe that because man is made in the image of God, he is of inestimable value. And we also deny that fallen man can do no good whatsoever. That is not true. Sinful people who are unconverted often do good things because there is in their broken humanity still a vestige of the image of God, they can do beautiful things. They can do just things. They can do kind things. Even though they cannot do anything to merit or earn forgiveness from God, they are capable of great and noble things because there is a vestige of the good and noble way implanted in Adam and Eve in the garden that still remains in every human soul. So that the Bible talks about men moving from glory to one glory to another glory as they move from sin to Christ and to heaven. Paul says that we all with unveiled face be holding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another and this comes from the Lord who is the Holy Spirit. There is a glory in a natural man's image of God. There is something that makes him light years superior and more wonderful than the lower creatures called the animals and there is even a greater glory to come in that image of God into a relationship with Jesus Christ and be redeemed. He becomes a new creature, a new creation the Bible says and the old things have passed when there is an ultimate glory. When we go to heaven and we behold Jesus Christ face to face, John the Apostle says that we will then behold him and we will be as he is for we will be just like him. And it is looking out on that massive crowd of humanity preaching his servant on the mouth that Jesus Christ was able to see the radical corruption of every single person and the image of God in every single person and the potential for glory in every single person. I am not giving you some health and wealth, human potential pep talk. I am talking about the doctrines of the image of God, the fallenness of mankind and the power of Christ redeeming blood. That God can take us out of radical depravity into a fundamental relationship with Jesus Christ and move us progressively through the Holy Spirit's sanctifying work into greater levels of glory until we are glorified and perfected in a sinless, wonderful, glorious state in the kingdom yet to come. You know, J.I. Packer likens the human being to a great cathedral that has been bombed into a shell during World War II. You step into that cathedral and the first thing you say is, oh my, this is really damaged. Why it would take a massive rebuilding program to ever restore this cathedral to its original glory. But then as you walk around, you gain a sense of how marvelous, how expansive that glory once was and you say, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could rebuild this house of God again and fill it with the glory of God's people worshipping their Creator and Redeemer? Packer says that's what the human being is. He's a bombed out corrupted shell of what he used to be, but once you become acquainted with him, you say, my, what glory he once must have had and what potential there is for God to do a rebuilding work in him and return him to his original glory in Jesus Christ. And that is exactly what Jesus Christ came to do. He came as God to intervene in our lives, to grab whole of us individually one at a time, to enter into our souls to the indwelling Holy Spirit, to cause us to come to life in regeneration, to impute his righteousness to us, the beginning of that rebuilding, restoring process called redemption. That very word means to buy back and restore something and he continues to work in our life. Jesus says, you know, this wonderful rebuilding project can only be accomplished through the radical, the total, the utter grace of God for where sin abounded, grace did thereabound all the more. And Jesus Christ has come and welcomed us into the kingdom of God where that transformation, that redemption, that restoring work of the Spirit of God takes place. And so, as he welcomes people, coming to him in their broken humanity, he's one of them having a unique package of total depravity, of radical corruption, of utter fallenness. This one of them is met by Jesus Christ with the promise, happy, will you be in me? Blessed will you be when these needs of yours are met. Glorious will be your transformation when you repent of your sins and put your faith in Christ and enter the kingdom of God. Now he works his way through the continuum of humanity, those spiritually who come to him the most leading, the spiritual heroes who have nothing to bring, but who would someday become significant in the kingdom of God, blessed are the poor and spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The melancholy and depressive, crushed and beaten by life whose comfort would make them a comforter of others in the kingdom of God, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. The lowly and the downtrodden who would rise to level of spiritual riches and great significance in the kingdom of God, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. The social activist whose cause would finally find its end, its culmination and fulfillment in the cause of the kingdom of God, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied, the compassionate and bleeding heart who would find great mercy in Jesus Christ and be a merciful fountain of love and encouragement and affection for those who enter the kingdom of God with him, blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. And he's working his way in groups of three, I think, the first three gutted souls, the second three good souls, but without the resources to do what they want to accomplish, the last three godly souls who are up against enormous and overwhelming opposition, and to each one of them he offers a blessing, a happiness of fulfillment, a transformation to entering the kingdom of God and he comes finally to the sixth one he looks at, those who have eyes only for God, those who are pure and heart, blessed are the pure and heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the pure and heart for they shall see God. Who are these people who are pure and heart, and why are they coming to Jesus Christ? What are they wanting out of the kingdom of heaven? Well, I need to remind you, you probably already know this, but Jesus did not preach in Greek, he preached in Aramaic, and I don't know the Aramaic word for pure, but the word that Matthew places in his mouth is the word Kaffirras in Greek. It's used 28 times in the New Testament, 16 times it means pure, 10 times it's translated clean, and once each it's translated clear or innocent. These people are pure and heart, clear of conscience, clean in living, and relatively innocent about life and its fallen underbelly compared to the rest of us, and they are pure, clean, innocent, clear in their heart, not as we use the word, the seed of emotions, but in the Hebrew way of thinking, in the Jewish way of things, the heart is the seat of a rational being, it's where he makes his decisions and where he orders his affections and where he prioritizes the things are important to him, it's the heart that causes a man to speak and a heart that causes a man to think and a heart that causes a man to choose, and that heart is also the fountain of his total and radical corruption. Jesus would say, do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth is passed out through the stomach and is expelled, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles a person. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness and slander, these are what defile a person, what proceeds from the heart. You know, I've done this perhaps a dozen times. We've said when we were children after our parents distanced, oh, I nodded my head, but in my heart, I was saying, no way, Dad, oh, I told the boss, yes, but in my heart, I was locked and loaded to oppose him at every step, it's what's in the heart that Jesus is dealing with here. In the inner sanctum of the soul, we're only two people are ever allowed to go, you and Jesus Christ. John Calvin says, purity of heart is universally acknowledged to be the mother of all virtues. And yet there was hardly one person in a hundred who does not put craftiness and deceit in the place of this greatest of all virtues, true, not one in a hundred, but there is the one in a hundred. There is the pure of heart looking back at Jesus Christ when He preaches. And His spiritual extravision is able to beam into their soul. He senses what they need from God and being God in the flesh. He offers it to them in the kingdom of heaven. What are these pure and heart like? They're in this sanctuary today by the dozens. Well, there are four things, I think, that describe them, that characterize them. First of all, they are people who are morally innocent people. These are the children who grew up keeping the rules. Now, you know them. You hated them in elementary school. They sat in the front with their hands folded. They smiled the whole time. They always raised their hand. They had the right answer. They got straight A's. And if you did something wrong, they tattled on you because that's what the rules said to do. They went to college and they remained relatively pure. They never got drunk. They did new drugs. They never cheated, skipped church, watched pornography. They don't cuss. They don't like television. They are honest. They are people who were virgins when they married, faithful to their spouses, sexually pure all their lives. They take life seriously. And people and sin seriously. They are earnest people. And although we are irritated by them, we often say, oh, you know so and so, she's pure as a driven snow. We acknowledge the relative moral innocence of their lives. Secondly, they possess relational integrity. They are good people who make for good friends. David describes them. These pure and heart people in Psalm 15, O Lord, who shall so journey in your tent and who shall dwell in your holy hill. He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart and does not slander with his tongue nor does evil to his neighbor. Nor takes up a reproach against his friend and whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, who swears to his own hurt and does not change, who does not put out his money in interest, nor take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be shaken. These are people who are honest and kind and truthful and guileless in their relationships. You like them. You trust them. You want them to be your friends. They're good spouses and sincere parents and loving neighbors. They volunteer for the PTA. They serve on church committees. They help out with charities. They're always praying for somebody they never let you down. They have relational integrity to the hilt. Thirdly, they are spiritually naive and this is their downfall. Their view of life is simple. You put in good and you get back good. You put in bad and you get back bad. Do good. God will do good. Do you? Be bad and suffer the consequences of your bad. Religion is often for them, therefore reduced to keeping the rules. They are obsessive, compulsive about sin. It is incomprehensible in their mind that a human being could on one moment do something horrifically evil and turn the next moment and do something wonderfully good. Doesn't compute for them. It doesn't fit the formula. That's not the way things should work. And if something goes wrong, they're the first ones to say, well, who's responsible for this? Who's to blame? Who broke the rules? You want to find them? You want to find them in the book of Job, his friends, were these kinds of people. Ellie Faz and Bill Dad and so far, and Elihu, they were pure naive souls and their approach everything was, bad things should happen to you, therefore you did bad, it's that simple. If you do good, you get good, you do bad, you get bad, that's the way of life, keep the rules. And therefore, life for them and a relationship with God for them is reduced to a formula. That leads to the fourth dimension of their heart and their life, the dark side. They can be, and often are, very self-righteous, very critical, and very judgmental people. Their formula of life comes from Psalm 24. Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in this holy place, he who has a pure heart and clean hands and does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteous does from the God of his salvation, such as the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. They're not very far from the truth, you know? If they go overboard, they can search out sin like a metal detector in a junkyard. And they're especially good at coming down hard on moral impurity and relational sins and spiritual slippage. It leads them to be harshly judgmental. One commentator said, now we come to the pure and heart. And once for whom nothing is good enough, not even themselves, they are the perfectionists. They are a pain to everyone themselves most of all. In religion they will certainly find the error in your doctrine and your practice and probably your heart and your attitude, but they will be even harder on themselves. They will endlessly pick over their own motivations. Their food is never cooked right, their clothes and their hair always are unsatisfactory. They can tell you what is wrong with everything, how miserable they are. And yet the kingdom of God is even for these souls. And there at last they will find something that satisfies their pure heart. Heart on themselves, heart on you, heart on sinful mankind, sometimes hard to live with. On top of all of this, you haven't been convicted by this yet that you're one of these, then listen to this, they are the people most prone to jealousy. Why did you get an office, you don't have seniority here? How could those kids turn out so well, they wouldn't even go to church. Why was he favored? Well, I know things about him, but if God knew, you see, when someone who doesn't deserve it is blessed, it just doesn't fit the formula. And it bothers them, bothers them a lot. And so Jesus Christ looked into their eyes and said, I have something for you. By the way, folks, we tend to be hard on these people. I want to warn you not to do that because they seem to be the favorite of Jesus Christ. He really loves them. And the proof of that is that he surrounded his life with them. Peter was like this. So were James and John and most of the apostles, Simon the Pharisee, Nicodemus, Joseph of Avermothea, Martha the Sith of Lazarus, his brothers, his mother, and the Apostle Paul. There's something about these people that Jesus likes. I think it's because once he takes their sincerity and recalibates it with grace, that obsessive compulsive desire to do what is right, dries them forth in King to ministry like nobody else in this whole list of humanity. Jesus sees something in them that can be reoriented, not towards performance of rules, but the obedience of faith that comes from relationship with Christ. Do you want to meet one of them? Turn to John chapter 14. A little guy named Philip, one of the obscure apostles among the twelve. Philip. We don't know anything about him except what's told in this little prickly, this little section here of the gospel of John. Jesus had just said to them, he was going to a place they couldn't come, but don't worry. He's coming back to get him so there always be with him. And Thomas the downer said, Lord, why can't we go with you? Show us the way and he said, I am the way, the truth in the life. No one comes to the Father except by me. And Philip says, verse 8, Lord, show us the Father and it will be enough for us. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me or else believe on account of the works themselves. Now here's a little guy, pure and hard who says, you know, Lord, why don't you just give us the one thing we all really want? Why don't you just let us see God one time? If we could just see God one time, then our hearts would know that everything was going to be okay. And Jesus said, Phil, maybe you missed something, but I have been showing you by my works and by my words these last few years, that when you see me, you see God. I am God in your flesh. Look at me. That was hard for Philip because Jesus was too easy on people. Jesus was too meek when he should have been strong. He was too gracious when he should have been tough. Sometimes he was one who even flaunted the rules. That's when he rotated the Pharisees. And so he says, could you show us God and Jesus said, I'll do you one better than that. I'll put God inside you, Philip. And you'll never lack a vision of Him again as long as you live. That you see is the essence of purity of heart. It is what we call single-mindedness. This desire to have one thing to see God's sworn cooker guard said, purity of heart is to will just one thing and only that one thing relentlessly. Robert Tasker says, the pure in heart are the single-minded who are free from the tyranny of a divided self. And John Stott says, the primary reference to pure heart means to be single-mindedly sincere. I want one thing I want to see God. And Jesus says to the year in heart, okay? You will. Paul would say later, for God who said light shall shine out of darkness has shown in your hearts to give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ looks from that mountain down on these pure in heart says, you will see God. You will see Him today but you will never find God through rules and regulations. You'll only find God in my face in me. You'll look to the cross to see the face of God or you'll never see God at all. And that is the blessing He offers them. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. It's a promise, not they could or it's possible or whenever they shall see God. There they are bent over their desk working for another A. On their knees scrubbing the forehead because they know that cleanliness is next to godliness. They read that somewhere in the Bible. They're on their faces crying out in the earth for old God. Where are you? We've been seeking you all of our life and things are not right. Let me tell you another guy who was like this is a guy named Moses. When at his hour of most frustration, he's been up on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. His life has flashed before and he's probably aged 40 years in the presence of God giving the commandments and he comes down in what are the people doing? They're worshiping an idol and engaging in an orgy. And in his righteous indignation, he lifts up these tablets because they've broken the law and he crushes them. The earth opens up and swallow us half a minute. It's a bad day in Israel. And then he says, God, I've had enough. These people can't keep rule number one. I am the Lord, your God, you shall have no other gods before me. We'll never get there if they don't know how to keep the rules. Lord, if you send me forth from here with this people, listen to this request, show me your glory. And in one of the most tender moments of God interacting with sinful humanity in the Old Testament, God says, Moses, you can't see my glory. You can't see my face and live. No one can see me and live, but this is what I will do. I will put you over in this rock, in this crevice, in this cleft, and I will put my hand over you. And you will see all my goodness pass before you, but you will not see my face. For no man can see me and live. Do you know that the most popular, most published, and most sung hymn in the English hymn that he was written about that moment, God and Moses, and the cleft of the rock, written for the pure in heart, like a gustous top lady, rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee, let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed before sin the double cure, safe from wrath, and make me pure. Not the labor of my hands, can't fulfill by just commands. Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, thou must save, and thou alone, all for sin could not atone. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to this cross I cling, naked come to the fordress, helpless, look to the forgrace, foul, I, to the fountain fly, wash me savor, or I die. When I draw this fleeting breath, and my eye will close in death, when I soar to worlds unknown and see thee on thy judgment throne, rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. When I fly to worlds unknown and I see thee on thy throne, that's all that Moses wanted, that's all that Philip wanted, that's all the pure and hard ever want, they just want a vision of God's glory, just one time, just once, and they'll keep them going towards the right way for the rest of their life, or so they think. You know when Martin Luther talks about Jesus Christ in his Heidelberg disputation, he calls Jesus Christ with no disrespect intended, the backside of God. He says that it's Jesus Christ on the cross, the man we least expect to be the powerful and glorious God, who is indeed the one we see as God passes by in the cleft of the rock, all God's goodness passes before us, and we see the glory of God in the broken and bleeding and dying flesh of Jesus Christ, for God is never better, never more glorious, never more great than when he is dying for mankind, and that is Jesus Christ's message in the Sermon on the Mount, do you want to see God, we'll take a look here I am, I who speak to you, I am he, as he would say elsewhere, so he blesses these pure and heart in four ways, one, they see the grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ, see the pure and heart only want to see four things, they want to see grace and goodness and greatness and glory. We all do, but the pure and heart are just honest about it because they're guileless, they're an open book, they want to see the grace of God and they see it in the face of Jesus Christ when they repent, and they give up their idea that they can find God through formulas of obedience, when they repent of their works righteousness, then they find the smiling face of God in Jesus Christ, see the pure and heart think that God is like they are, overly serious, overly sensitive, almost obsessive compulsive about sin, and yet that's not what they find in Jesus Christ, and it blows their mind, this is what God is really like, he was seeing me, has seen the Father, David comes to this realization, and there was ever a man who was pure and hearted today, but he's the perfect son, he's the perfect subject, loyal to the king who tries to kill him a dozen times, he's the king who everybody thinks is the king of righteousness, that's what they call him, he's pure and heart until he drives himself into his own adultery, his own murder, and his own lying, and then he has to face God, face to face, and here's what he writes, purge me with his up and I shall be clean, wash me and I will be wider than snow, let me hear the joy in gladness, let the bones which you have broken rejoice, hide your face from my sins and blood out all my iniquities, create to me a clean heart, oh God, and renew our right spirit within me, cast me not away from your presence and take not your spirit from me, restore to me the joy of my salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit, it's only folks, it's only after we see ourselves and our sin and our total depravity or radical corruption, it's only them that we can ever see Jesus Christ for who he really is, and there are people here today who simply will not understand what I'm saying, they will not see that cross and they will not see the smiling face of God through Jesus Christ on them because they will not face their own corruption, I'm telling you this, not to rebuke you but to help you until you see yourself as not as pure as you thought you were a person corrupted by sin, you will never see God smiling on you in the face of Jesus Christ, never, God will always be that harsh taskmaster who says you get an a or else and you will not know God because you'll never know God until you know yourself and you'll never see Christ until you see your sin. Here's the second thing he helps them see, they see the goodness of God in the ways of Jesus Christ, they come to realize that Jesus Christ is much more concerned about right relationships with Him than about doing things right, that He's more concerned about their person than their performance, that He's more a loving God than the God who wants you to live the right way, now He wants all those things but He is a person who wants to bring you first into an uncompromisingly dedicated relationship with Him so He can begin to work in your life. Thirdly, they will see the greatness of God and the great things that Jesus Christ is doing in His kingdom. They're yearning for something larger than life and greater than self and lasting forever this place where everything will be the way it is, they'll come to realize it's only in the kingdom of God that that's ever going to happen and all of their moral energies that were marshaled to follow the rules to get good grades to do the right thing to never break the law, but all of a sudden be recalibrated and they will say as Paul another one of these pure and heart people, I have become all things to all men so that I may my all mean save some. He doesn't change the personality, he changes their direction so that they pursue gospel ministry with the same obsessive devotion that they once pursued a legal righteousness. Finally, He gives them a foretaste of glory. He lets them see that there's an eschatological end days dimension to this promise of seeing God. He tells them that someday they will see Him face to face and they will be just like Him. Listen to John, beloved we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared to us but we know this that when Christ appears we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is and everyone who has this hope purifies Himself just as Christ is pure. You see it's no longer the drive to get good grades and to keep the rules it's the joy of knowing Christ and experiencing Him face to face in heaven that drives them forward in obedience. None of the sudden these laborious souls, these simple sincere hearts, these people tortured by jealousy on one side and legal judgmental harshness on the other all of sudden all of that dissipates because they've been reborn, they've been redeemed, they've been recalibrated and they look to Jesus Christ and they see the smiling face of God and their souls rest. Back in 1985 a man named Anthony Burgess and his partner Vincenzo Lebella did a wonderful TV miniseries called AD about the Apostles and they pegged Paul as Paul was from the very beginning this pure devoted radical fundamentalist soul pursuing God and how Jesus Christ met him face to face on a Damascus road one day and didn't change Paul's personality but he reoriented his life and in the final scene of this miniseries Paul has led outside the city of Rome hands tied behind his back he kneels down and he lays his head gently on a stump as a man with a sword stands behind him and waits from the order of the captain of the Victorian guard to chop off his head and in the final scene of this series this look of serene joy satisfaction comes across the face of Paul and he says oh Jesus and the screen goes black and Paul the next moment sees Jesus in his glory as he steps into his own and he is satisfied the pure in heart has seen God but love it that's what Jesus Christ is offering you this morning
the opportunity to release all the burden of self-righteous performance to turn to the cross and see God smiling at you from his backside Jesus Christ and for you to find rest in relief that God loves you and that he will be righteous for you and you you can see God let's pray father in the end I think that's what every human soul really wants that is why we make idols so that we can have something to look at to remind us of you it's in our DNA from where our parents used to walk with you in the garden of Eden and they saw you every day now we're on this long mission in life laborious and and this directed and torturous in an effort to see you as you really are not to be consumed in the process for there is both in us a desire to see you and a fear of knowing you and that is the state of a corrupted soul we therefore thank you for Jesus Christ who steps into our flesh and into our lives and enables us to look at him in the face and live but the promise that we will see his grace and his goodness his greatness and his glory all through our life in ways we never imagined if we will just give ourselves to him and do repentance from sins and faith in him enter your kingdom I do pray today for those who've come in this church one more Sunday weighed down with sins and frustration and yet whose pure hearts are belonging for relief and wanting to find a way to you a way that is safe where they might see you and live and I offer them today Jesus Christ and I pray that you would work in their hearts to cause them to put down all of their righteous works and cling to Christ and the before they leave this place you will open their eyes let them see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ given for us purify us make us wider than snow help us to see Christ that we might live we ask all these things in his precious name the name of Jesus our Lord amen