(Please note the following transcript was partly automated transcription and therefore has not been reviewed for errors.)
Brethren, if you have your Bibles, please open them to James chapter one. One more message, I believe. Before I went to Manchester, we dealt with the first part of James 1:27, and I would like us to take a look at the last part of that verse. James 1:27.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
I just want to bring out those Greek words, but it’s those three words that I want us to train in on: pure, undefiled, unstained. Now it’s true that pure and undefiled also modifies visiting orphans and widows in their affliction, but we already dealt with that. What I’m wanting us to focus on is that aspect of pure and undefiled religion before God: to keep oneself unstained or unspotted from the world.
Father, I pray that you be a help to us now. In Christ’s name, I ask. Amen.
I just want to do a bit of a theology of purity, because that’s what we’re dealing with, keeping oneself unstained. I recognize pure and undefiled is at the beginning, pure and undefiled religion. And it’s got these two aspects. You visit the orphan and the widow in their affliction, and you keep yourself unstained from the world. It’s the unstained aspect…
Let’s just think about visiting the widow and the orphan. That doesn’t really, in and of itself, have this purity aspect to it. It is pure and undefiled because that’s how God defines it for us. But the purity aspect doesn’t immediately jump out like it does in “unstained from the world.” Unstained, there’s a purity aspect. So what do you, what’s purity? What are we talking about there?
We see pure as gold. I’m trying to think what kind of colloquial expressions we get. Pure is gold? I thought. Not that I have any gold. Well, I guess I have this. I don’t think that’s very pure. Pure is the driven snow. But we don’t get snow very often. But the idea of, like, a virgin on her wedding day in a white dress, white.
You know what, Daniel? Daniel is looking to our day at people just like us. And here’s what he says. You’re going to get three terms here, just like James gives us three terms: pure, undefiled, unstained. Listen to Daniel.
He sees us Christians. He says this in Daniel 12:10, “Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined.”
What I’m doing by going here is just collecting synonyms: purify, undefiled, unstained. Here you have white, you have refined. What’s refined? What do you do when you refine something? We refine gold or silver. What do you do with the impurities? Let the impurities out, slag. You basically heat it up until it becomes melted, and then impurities have a tendency to rise and they float on the surface and they can be skimmed off. And so if you refine it and you refine it and you refine it and you refine it, what you’re doing is you’re creating purity.
Now think about it. When you have pure gold, what do you have? What’s absent? You basically have anything that’s not gold, right? Here’s the thing. Now lay this down, just like Ryan gave us Stewart’s thing. One, two, one to two, three. Just get this: purity equals singularity. Now, that’s important as we seek, when we say undefiled from the world, we’re talking purity here, there is a singularity. Now singularity… You can probably start to imagine, undefiled from the world, you get unspotted from the world, you, your mind can grasp these things. Water’s pure if it’s singularly water and dirt; it’s not pure, it’s contaminated.
Here’s the thing. You take a woman, pure, a virgin. She gets married. We count her pure even when she loses her virginity to her husband, as long as she is a singular lady devoted to that man. See, this is the idea of purity. There is an aspect of singleness in it, singularity.
Now listen. Listen to this, because I’m going to introduce another word here, and it ought to make sense to you. We use this word, but do you recognize what it really has to do with, what the meaning is behind it? The Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich lexicon defines purity this way: “Being clean or free of adulterated matter.” To catch that: adulterated. If something is impure, if a woman is impure, she’s an adulteress. She’s not singular in her affections. Or the sacred Greek lexicon: “Free from anything that soils, adulterates, or corrupts.”
Okay, you’re in James. Turn to chapter four, because this isn’t the only place in this letter where James is going to speak to us about the world and about the impurities associated with it. Notice James 4:4. So here’s the thing. When James says, how does he start it? What’s the first thing you heard? “You adulterous people.” Now, is he saying about these people that he’s writing to that they’re not being faithful to their spouse? Is that the issue? That is not the issue. You see what he’s saying? “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”
Now, here’s the thing. James 1:27 says, “unstained from the world.” You think maybe friendship with the world and being stained by the world are the same thing? I think there’s a good chance that’s reality. It’s so, what happens when you get spotted by the world? It’s adultery. And you know, God uses the same kind of terminology in the Old Testament. I’ve been reading Jeremiah. When the words “adultery,” “adulterous,” or even “whore” and “whoredom” are used in the prophets, oftentimes, folks, it’s not because they were unfaithful to their spouses, they were unfaithful to their God. They were not singularly devoted to him. This is, brethren, this is spiritual adultery. It’s it’s called adultery. Why? Because it’s like giving to the world the sort of thing that a man detests, that his wife should give to somebody else. That’s the idea here.
Now check this out. Go to James 4:8, because James isn’t done talking about purity here in this context. And he’s going to bring out two purity realities in here in verse 8, 4:8. And you see them: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” And here we get our purity terms: “Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
Now here’s the thing. The first thing I want to draw out of this is, one, it’s a heart matter. In other words, you’ve got to look deep within for the purity on the level that God desires. And you remember how it was. What do you, scribes and Pharisees? And Jesus called them hypocrites, for they cleanse…what did they cleanse? The outside of the cup. And they neglected, they avoided the inside. That’s the issue. Jesus said it in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure in heart.”
Now it talks about cleansing hands, but you got to believe that that cleansing of the hands has to do with the cleansing of the actions. And, of course, everything in the actions and everything from the tongue, it all flows from the overflow of the heart. We recognize that at the deepest level.
So there’s the first truth from verse eight that I want to draw out. But there’s another one here. Do you see the word “double-minded”? And that’s called “purify your hearts, you double-minded.” But remember I said to you, purity has to do with single polarity. You know what this literally says? You double-headed. When you’re double-headed, you need to purify. There’s no purity in double-headedness.
And he’s talking to religious folks here. He’s not talking to the worldly guy out there. He’s very specifically writing to his brethren. And the thing is, he’s not talking to the guy out there in the world that is absolutely committed to the world, singularly devoted to the world. He’s talking about people like, right in here, in this context, we’ve got some double-headed people.
You know what double-headed is? It’s like a Siamese twin. You ever remember there was a classic, like, Guinness Book of World Records picture of the Siamese twins? You know, the one, it’s black and white, and he’s got these two guys, and they’re kind of joined like, right? And so you got heads going both ways. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine if you’re joined with somebody else? What’s the problem? What if one head wants to go that way? There’s only two sets or one set of legs. One head wants to go that way, one head wants to go that way. That’s the kind of double-headedness. When you’re double-headed, you’re not pure. And that’s the kind of thing that we have here: these double-headed religious people, torn between two opinions.
Can you think of somewhere in Scripture where religious people are torn between two opinions? It seems like we might have heard it referenced sometime today. Anybody think of it? Who is limping or halting between two opinions? Anybody know? Hey, if God is the Lord, if the Lord is God, if Baal is God, it’s like, stop limping, stop halting between two opinions. That’s being double-headed. And you know what? If the world is going where it’s going, go after it with your whole soul. Stop being lukewarm. Stop being halfway, half committed, half in, half out, stuck between two opinions. See? That’s impurity. This is the kind of thing the world affects us. It’s like the other woman, the world, limping. Limping.
How long do you halt? How long do you limp between two opinions? You see, the thing is, people that are stuck between two opinions end up doing nothing. Well, they don’t follow the world. Well, they don’t fit in exactly. And they don’t, they don’t do well among God’s people. They don’t do well in the church. These people that are trying to go both ways here, they’re said, faltering and stumbling.
Listen, the fight, get this. The fight to stay unstained from the world is mainly a matter of not being double-headed. That is the kind of thing it’s singular. It is a singularity that we’re fighting for.
Now let’s listen. Remember, Paul comes along and he looks at the Corinthians, and he says this. He said, this battle that we fight, we don’t use weapons of the flesh. We don’t. Our weapons are not carnal. The weapons of our warfare, they’re spiritual, and they have divine power. And you know how he says it? To pull down strongholds, to destroy. What are these strongholds? They are arguments. They are opinions. You know what they are? They’re mindsets.
So you have this double-headed thing, and what is the contamination? It’s being spotted by the world. On the one hand, what do we have? On the one hand, we’ve got Scripture. On the one hand, we’ve got what Christ desires. We’ve got the will of God. On the other hand, we’ve got the what? The world is trying to sell us a bill of goods. And that’s where the spottedness comes from, is double-headedness, it’s double thinking. It’s it’s I’m thinking, I’m trying to think biblically, but I’m also thinking the way that the world thinks. And the great battle, folks, is that there are these, there are these strongholds. There are these embankments. There are, there are, it’s like these great fortresses, stone edifices. And what are they? Their mindsets, their worldviews, their ways of thinking. They’re psychologies. They’re ideologies that this world has. And they come at us, and it’s hitting us. It, brethren, this hits us through all the media out there, through all the mindsets, through the people you come across. The devil is the head of this whole thing, that the devil is guiding this.
But, brethren, listen, you can’t use human weapons here. Unspotted by the world is mainly a mind thing. Listen to what Paul says. “Do not be conformed to this world,” okay? I mean, that’s the issue. Don’t be swallowed by it. Don’t be conformed to it. But what? What’s the issue? “But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” You see where the battle is, brethren, to be unspotted from the world. This is largely for us to be unspotted by the ways that this world thinks, its theories, its belief systems. We’re talking strongholds of thought.
And brethren, you know what? You had a world out there, and it’s like they have this fortification around their head, around their thoughts, around how they think, and they live in it, and they’re trapped in these things. And our, our responsibility is to seek to come and do these things. John MacArthur says, I’ve heard him say, that these things become their tombs. They die in their… Oh, they appear so lofty, scientific, intelligent, intellectual. They, these, this all seems good. And you know what it… You know what Paul said? Listen, you know what he said? “Every lofty opinion we destroy, arguments, every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.” It’s all against the knowledge of God.
You see what people are for? Define themselves with systems that are anti-God, anti-Christ. And if you listen, to the degree you imbibe this, the way the world thinks, you’re stained by it, you’re adulterated by it. This is what, folks, are we going to get the world’s ideologies out of our minds? Stop being double-headed, stop being adulterated in the mind.
You know what we’re striving after, Virginia? “Be of the mind…” I came across this in the past, but I just came across it again recently. That 0.0% of young people in Iceland, 25 years or younger, believe that God created the world. 0.0. According to, you know, Paul, verse 12, chapters of Genesis. Now, not just all Icelanders, apparently, but many here, many Americans. The idea that the first 12 chapters of Genesis are myth and superstition, not to be taken seriously.
Brethren, the thing is, you look around, what drives people? What are the viewpoints out there? I mean, come on, you’re good. You got guys, you’re going to the college campuses. Get out there. You got people going out on the streets on Friday night. You get out there, you get among people. You start having conversations with people, just at work, the places you go, get among people, find out what they’re saying, what they’re believing. I mean, they have viewpoints. They have viewpoints about evolution. They have viewpoints about how it all started.
They have viewpoints about gender, about sex. They have viewpoints about marriage, about what’s important in life, about what you ought to be striving after, living for, what the meaning of life is. I mean, you tell the world out there, they, they’ve got all sorts of ideas about politics and about what sin is, or sin isn’t, or who God is, or about abortion, or brethren, it’s all hostile to God and Christ and to the gospel, and to the truth, and to whatever is good.
And you know what? John comes along and he says this. He says, “Whatsoever is of the world, all that, all that is in the world, the desires or the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father but from the world.”
You see, it’s all dominated by lust. These mindsets that the world has, these great, these great embankments, these castles, these strongholds of thought, they’re, they’re driven by men’s lust. That’s what, that’s what Scripture says, by carnal ambition and by greed and by self-pleasure. The whole thing is just in rebellion against God. And the thing is, it’s this, it’s operated and energized by the devil himself.
Because you know how it says there in Ephesians chapter two, “You, if you’re following the course of this world,” how does it go? “Following the prince of the power of the air.” Don’t think you can go get stained by the world and the devil is not involved, or he’s got, he doesn’t have his fingers in this thing. He’s got his fingers right in there. And here’s a… remember, it’s how we think, it’s how we think.
And so Paul then comes out in the same Second Corinthian letter where he talks about what the nature of our battle is. You know what he says in chapter four? He says that the devil, “the god of this world,” he blinds the minds of unbelievers. What does he keep them from seeing? The truth. Do you remember what it is? Oh, glory, somebody said, glory. Keep them from seeing the glory, from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.
You just imagine. It’s like the devil, you imagine him out there and he’s pulling along this cartload of all these ideologies of the world. He pulls it along, making everybody think it’s so great and it’s so smart and intellectual and scholarly, and it’s, it’s really living. And this is the way the world thinks. And he’s, he’s got one primary mindset. And I’ll tell you what it is. It is to keep people thinking that the gospel of the glory of Christ is empty. It’s ugly. It’s devoid. It’s nothing. It’s undesirable. That’s what he’s seeking to do.
You know what? You know what the world’s telling you all the time? “You got to have looks. You got to be athletic. You got to be rich. You get to wear the right clothes. You got to have the right car. You have to be involved in sports and all the right hobbies and all the stuff. And you got to have that, you got to have that, because that stuff is glorious. That stuff is great. That stuff is beautiful.” Jesus? “What’s that?”
And you know what Paul says in that same Second Corinthian letter? “I’m afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts…” See, it’s a mind thing. It’s a thought thing. “Your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure…” This is how the ESV reads, “a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” Purity, purity. When it’s all for Christ. All. All. There’s a reason why I wanted to sing that, because that’s where the purity is. That’s where it’s found.
And you know what? The devil doesn’t want us to see the end of this. Recently, I came across a little snapshot of a video, and I was looking at it, and it was the words of all these atheists, famous atheists, on their deathbed, kind of stuff. The devil, the god of this world, who wants to shield you from seeing the glory, young people, listen to this. Some of the champions of this world’s ideas.
First one, I don’t know the guy, but Cesare Borgia, he was an atheist. Anybody know that name? Yeah, he’s an atheist. And listen, these are his last words: “While I lived, I provided for everything but death. Now I must die, and I’m unprepared to die.”
Sir Thomas Scott, some of you have heard that name undoubtedly. Taken suddenly ill, he cried out, “Until this moment, I thought there’s neither a god nor a hell. Now I know and feel there are both. And I’m doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty.”
Voltaire. Anybody recognize that name? On his deathbed, “I’ve swallowed nothing but smoke. I’ve intoxicated myself with the incense that turned my head. I’m abandoned by God and man.” To his physician, he said, “I’ll give you half of what I’m worth if you’ll give me six months of life.” The doctor told him it was impossible. He responded with, “Then I’ll die and go to hell.” Last words. Very last. I don’t know, but he said that on his deathbed.
David Hume, you may know that name, on his deathbed. “I’m in flames.” Period.
Sir Francis Newport, head of English atheist club.
“You need not tell me that there’s no God, for I know there’s one, and that I’m in His presence. You need not tell me there’s no hell. I feel myself already slipping. Wretches! Cease your idle talk about there being hope for me. I know I’m lost forever. Oh, that fire! Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell! Oh, that I could live for a thousand years upon the fire that’s never quenched, to purchase the favor of God.”
He’s wishing it could be purgatory, where he actually could pay for his sins and be united to God again. But it’s a fruitless wish. “Millions and millions of years will bring me no nearer the end of my torments than for one hour, poor, than for one poor hour. Oh, eternity, eternity! Forever, forever! All the insufferable pangs of hell.”
The French King Charles the Ninth massacred the Huguenots. He said, “Asleep or awake, I see the mangled forms of the Huguenots passing before me. How will all this end? And what shall I do? I’m lost forever.”
Anton LaVey. He’s the Satan worshipper. On his deathbed, “Oh my, oh my, what have I done? There’s something very wrong. There’s something very wrong.”
Young people, where’s your mind? You see, the world and the devil, the god of this world, he wants your mind. He wants you to think that that religion of your parents is awful. It’s boring. Oh, Christianity… You know what the truth is? There is a glory that’ll blow your socks off. Honestly, there is a beauty. There is a ravishing of the soul. If you heard what I read that Mack Tomlinson has been experiencing in the middle of the night, brothers, just a foretaste of heaven.
What are you after? Young people, popularity? Is that what it is, escaping that stale religion? Is that what it’s all about? Money, sports? Is that it? Science? Oh, safety. Have we fallen into that as Christians? “Give us safety, Lord. Give us retirement. Help us to store up and and build up and be safe and secure. And we got to have all the right insurance in place. So, so we’re safe, our house is safe, and our car is safe, and our health is safe.” Safety is at it. Is that what Jesus said? Is that being fully devoted to him? Is that the way he said to go?
Brethren, we can become so much a part of this middle-class American sanity that we hardly even recognize how much of it is just the world. It invites us. It sucks us in. And brethren, I’ll tell you this. The thing is, the world’s opinions and their fantasies… They say Genesis is fantasy. It’s what they believe, its aims. What are the aims of this world? Are selfish, its pleasures. You think about it, they’re sinful, its influences. They adulterate us. It’s politics, brethren. It’s all a false hope. Trump is not your hope. He never will be. It’s advertising. Think about the advertising of this world. It’s just empty. It’s applause. We don’t applaud you for a moment, and then you’re done. It’s like, it’s just the world chews us up and spits you out.
Young ladies, you might be pretty right now. The world spits you out. You got to get old. It’s just the devil blinds the eyes from seeing what? From seeing this glory of Christ.
Now listen. When we talk unspotted from the world, we’re talking mindset. We’re not talking about initiating a list of rules. Listen to what Scripture says. “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?”
Okay, you want to be stained by the world? Just live your life where it’s just a set of rules and regulations. To live by a set of rules and regulations is to be worldly. That’s, that’s how the world thinks about religion, is a set of rules. You don’t go down that path. That’s basically, you got to look what’s in here. Not, not the rules, not what, what’s mechanical, not what I do. It’s got to be, it’s got to do with what I love. What do I think about? What do I live for on the inside? What have I seen? What have I experienced?
I mean, look, look, the truth is, we know that a list of rules as to what’s proper when we walk into this place on Sunday, we all got that figured out. That’s not the issue when we’re talking mindsets here. We’re talking about what’s, what’s essential at the deepest level.
Brethren, I’m afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere… Keep your thoughts from a pure devotion to Christ.
Now here’s, here’s something worth considering. Listen to this. James 1:27, where we started. Notice the emphasis: “keep oneself unstained from the world,” oneself. Did you catch that? Keep oneself. You know what they call that? You know what that word is in the English? It is what is called a reflexive pronoun. You know what that means? You do it to yourself.
Listen to this. James 4:8, “Purify your hearts, you double-minded.” If you’re double-headed, who’s got the responsibility of purifying the heart? You do. I’m supposed to do certain things to myself so that I’m not double, but singular. That’s the idea.
Listen to this. Remember I read from Daniel? The ESV reads this way: “Many shall purify themselves.” There’s that reflexive pronoun again. Now, in other translations, you’re not going to find that. If you look at Young’s Literal, there’s something that Young saw and the translators of the ESV, and they, “and they make themselves white,” themselves. Got that reflexive there. Or you got Second Peter 3:14, “Be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish.” Or Revelation 22:14, “Blessed are those who washed their robes.”
Do you recognize how Scripture speaks? They washed their robes. They have a right to the tree of life. We don’t tend to talk this way, but our Bibles do. We like to think, “Well, Jesus washed us. Jesus cleansed us.” And when it comes to justification, that’s absolutely true. But we’re talking purity. We’re talking a practical cleansing, a practical reality in our lives.
Listen, we don’t talk this way, but we need to talk this way more. Second Timothy 2:20, “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore,” catch these four words, “if anyone cleanses himself,” himself, there’s that pronoun again, reflexive. That’s an action you do to yourself, “from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.”
Now look. I recognize that our Heavenly Father often has used us when we felt dirty and unclean and unusable. And we’ve had a bad day. God is very gracious. But there’s a reality here, and you can’t get away from it. What’s the reality? God’s servants can remain shelved because of what? What is it? “If anyone cleanses himself, they’re a vessel fit for the master’s use.” So what makes us unusable? Dirt. We haven’t cleansed ourselves. There’s impurities.
Listen, what you’ve got to grasp is that… And we’re not talking activity here. Somebody can be very active but not being used of God. Activity isn’t the issue. A man can be very involved in the ministry, and God is not using him. What does it mean for God to use somebody? Well, the high God… God’s usefulness. What’s essential to that? Well, it’s God coming. It’s God helping. It’s God empowering. We need God’s empowerment to truly be used of Him.
You see, the idea is He’s not using us. We may be active, we may be up there on the shelf and bouncing around this way and that. But we got dirt and dust in our cup, and He’s not going to pull us off. We can bounce around up there and do all of our little activity.
Listen to this. I want you to turn to this one. Second Corinthians.
Turn to Second Corinthians seven. Brethren, “if any one cleanses himself…” Look at this. Second Corinthians 7:1 says, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves.” Everybody see the pronoun again, that reflexive pronoun? “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, inside and outside, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
Ladies and gentlemen, you never want to read a verse like that that starts the way it does without backtracking. “Since we have these promises.” What promises? Because obviously, what Paul is saying is there’s a motive here. There’s a motive for you to want to cleanse yourself. What is it? Okay. Let’s backtrack. Go to Second Corinthians 6:16.
Here’s the promises. “We are the temple of the living God.” I heard my daughter praying this morning, “a living hope.” We have a living God, folks. Christianity is a living thing because our God, who inhabits this true Christian, true Christianity, he’s a living God. There it is. He’s living.
But notice this word, “the temple.” He lives… I mean it. Our God indwells this temple. As God said, “I will make my dwelling among them,” mine. There’s a possessiveness here, “my dwelling among them, and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be,” again possessive, “my people.” They will be my dwelling. They will be my people.
Notice this, verse 17: “Therefore go out from their midst,” who’s? “Be separate from them.” Who’s? Well, it’s the idea of that which is unclean, “touch no unclean thing.” Now notice this, “Then I will welcome you.”
Listen, what you’re going to see from this is that our relationship with God is based on your purity, not just your forgiveness. Let that sink in. There are Christians that run around like, “Well, I’m justified by faith, and so everything is good.” Listen, there is a truth being set forth right here.
Look, look, certainly impure sinners… God justifies the ungodly. You can come with all your dirt and all your filth and all your sin, and you can come to Christ to be saved, trusting Him. Certainly impure sinners can come to God through Christ, and they find that they’re going to be justified immediately. But listen to what Paul is saying here. “Then I will welcome you.” Then when we keep reading, verse 18, “I will be a father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
“Since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves.” You see what the promises are made to? The clean. God dwells among us. He walks among us. He’s walking, He’s moving, He’s acting. It’s personal to God. My dwelling, my people, sons and daughters. To me, this is a personal God.
But what you want to watch are those words, “and I will welcome you,” brethren, because of that promise, “cleanse yourself from every defilement.” Do you recognize what this is saying? This is a promise that is conditional on… This is, we have a welcoming God.
Brethren, have you ever been there? You wake up at 3 a.m., and suddenly God is there. He’s on your mind. You wake up in that welcoming. God says, “Welcome.” You go to prayer, and there’s a sense that He’s there. There’s a welcoming God. You open your Bible, and He’s there. There’s a welcoming. You come into a place like this. Oh, brethren, the fact that our singing, the singing has produced some transformation over the years in people, you come in here, you come into the midst. We have a welcoming God.
Some of you, because of the dirt, because of the filth, I know we come back. We, we break that bread. We’re wanting to remember something. We want our faith to come back to something. But, brethren, it’s because of these promises right here that he says, “Therefore, you should cleanse yourself from every one of these defilements.”
Brethren, this is, this is how Scripture speaks. Promises, it’s all conditional. Or if there’s ever a verse that connects my purity with a welcoming God, it’s certainly this: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for what? They shall see God.” Is this? “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart,” that’s what. “Oh Lord, show me your glory.”
I mean, brethren, seeing the glory of God, isn’t that the biggest? That’s the most momentous. That’s the most monumental. That’s the most tremendous thing. Isn’t that the biggest thing of all? We want to see God. We want God to welcome us. We want to see his face. The whole, that’s the whole object of Christianity. And who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Brethren, it’s those that have a pure heart.
The living God is the greatest imaginable reality of all. Brethren, man little realizes what he lost there in the garden. And God is not saying that my welcoming is just based on you being justified by faith, nor is he saying your usefulness is based just on that. You can’t escape this. You can’t. You just can’t. You can’t escape this.
Folks, listen to this. “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.” You see that drawing near there needs to… what a motivation to purify oneself.
You want another motive? Listen to this one. How many of you know this? This First John 3:2. “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” Don’t you like that? We’re God’s children now. “What we will be has not yet appeared.” Somebody comes telling you that they know what it’s going to be like, and they got all this picture and they do. They create this. They don’t know what they’re talking about because we don’t know yet. It’s, it’s not appeared yet.
But we do know this. “When Christ appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Listen to this, “Everyone who thus hopes in him,” you know what it says? “Purifies himself as he is pure.”
When the kingdom of heaven is consummated and it’s all over, and there’s this new heaven and there’s this new earth, and we’re there, Christ appears in all of his glory. What’s going to happen? The Christian is going to behold that and become it. That’s the promise of Scripture, and that’s our hope. And you know how John is arguing here? He’s arguing from this stance, from this standpoint, that everyone who has that hope acts in that hope. That’s what he says. You can’t get around it. If you have no desire for purity, and you’re just entertaining the ways of the world and the thoughts of the world and the brethren, it says something about where your hope is. That’s what John says.
It’s: “My present effort at purity is consistent with my future hope.” That’s, that’s how he reasons. “Therefore, Christ, who looks forward to this, is already determined to prepare for it.”
Brethren, our time is short. You don’t have long to prepare. We await… what? An audience with the King, to stand before Him. And what is He looking for, brethren? He wants His people to be truly saints, not just in word, to be holy people, to be pure people, to be refined people. What an incentive! Are you living in anticipation of that? Are you preparing?
Well, brethren, the question now is, where are we at? How long I’ve been going? Brethren, you got to get to the place where it’s like, okay, I got to reach in the heart. How do I get there? I mean…
Brethren, we got to talk about, like, Daniel sees many making themselves white. “Blessed are those who washed their robes.” But remember, this is not a cleansing from guilt. In somewhat this is… this is a cleansing from the pollution of the world.
What helps me to think about how do I do this? How do I reach my heart? It’s a verse like this. “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.”
Brethren, when you take your Bible in your hand, when you lift this up, when you go into this word, brother, there is, there’s nothing more purifying. This is altogether the purest material. Do you recognize? Not a single verse, not a single verse in this book, not a single word in this book will taint you. This is pure. This is… Brethren, this is exactly what Paul was talking about when he says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”
For you see, this is a sanctifying cleansing. This is not the cleansing of justification.
This is a sanctifying cleansing. And he says, “The washing of water by the word.” Not a single verse here will lead you into any kind of filthiness or contamination or impurity or adultery. Nothing, nothing of that sort.
Brethren, we want, we tend to want this easy fix, you know, get up in the morning and give me this little, you know, this little devotional where there’s a verse at the top. We, we want, we want to move through this. How do I, how do I reach in here?
Listen, I’ll tell you this. The spiritually soft aren’t going to do well here. This is something that takes… This takes an effort. Remember, this is a battle for the mind. We are battling against cosmic powers, against following the course of the ruler of this world who is… brethren, this is no small thing. And it doesn’t… You can’t do this with carnal weapons. These are great battlements that are brought down through not fleshly weapons. It’s brought down through divine power. And if there’s anything, it is the sword of the Spirit that God divinely charges so that, so that there can be purity, the renewal of the mind. That’s what we’re after. Not conformed to this world, but there’s a renewal that takes place. The mind of Christ controls us. That’s what we’re after. When every thought is held captive to Christ.
Well, how does that happen? Where are Christ’s thoughts? Where are Christ’s ways? Where are Christ’s words? There, in this book. Brethren, this isn’t just some… This is some great battle.
You remember what? Behind the whole world is pride. The pride of life. You think, you think He killed pride in your life through seven easy steps? And, brethren, it’s like… It’s like, you know, we want to go to the moon, and we want it to be easy. It’s like, brethren, this, this… There’s a battle here. There’s a fight. Pride. Selfishness. Unbelief. Love of looseness. You want an easy fix for all that? I mean, brethren, and here’s the thing. You know the verse. The verse that says that as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are transformed from one degree of glory to… You know what? If you do not take the time to get into this book and meditate and chew on it to the point where you see the glory, you will not be changed. That is what Scripture tells us. You can’t get beyond that, brethren. You got to camp here. If you don’t behold the glory, you won’t become the glory. That’s what Scripture says. Beholding the glory of the Lord, you’re being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
This comes from the Lord. Who? Who’s the Spirit? Brethren, you got to soak in it. You got to bask in it like it’s liquid glory. We’re washed by the water of the word. This is an H2O. This is the glorious living water of a book. Imagine just glorious, glowing water that flows out of this.
But brethren, it’s a mind thing. Your mind has to engage the glory of this book. You’re not going to do that in five minutes. Brethren, it is not shocking that when you find people in the church that are double-headed, impure, and worldly, that they spend very little time, very little quality time in this book. That is not a surprise, folks.
So listen to this. Remember how Peter said, “If, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…” How do you escape the defilements of the world? It’s finding the knowledge of the Lord and Savior…
Brothers and sisters, never, never, never, never underestimate what is accomplished in your life when you take this book, this Word of God, in your hands, and with discipline and deliberateness, you put yourself in this book on a daily basis. Each time you dive into it, you’re getting into the spiritual bathtub full of glowing waters of glory, the glory of the Lord. The knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. It comes out of this book. It comes into your head, and the Spirit… This happens by the Spirit, who is the Lord. He sees to it. God Almighty sees to it that there is a purifying benefit.
And, brethren, we’ve experienced it. Remember, we’re destroying strongholds. Now, I’m just going to end with this. You got a, you got to recognize that surrender… And one of the things, if we’re not going to be spotted by this world, here is purity. It was what? The words from Bob Jennings, “All for Christ.” That is purity. That we not be led away from that pure devotion to Christ. All for Christ, brethren.
Jesus said in Scripture to be the treasure that we should sell all else for, to be valued above ease and above pleasure, comfort, safety, above friends and profit, my own life. Mary, you remember, she chose the best part.
You remember what Scripture says? “If, therefore, any of you who does not renounce all that he has, he cannot be my disciple.” You see, the idea of purity is singularity. When you abandon all for Christ, that is singular. Any protected area of your life, anything un-abandoned, anything unsubmitted, anything unsurrendered, you don’t have singularity.
I mean, you have to ask, “The world or Christ?” Safety. What does Jesus say? “I have no place to lay my head. They may kill you. They, they hated me. They’re going to hate you.” Does He promise security? Does He promise us it’s going to be comfortable? He doesn’t promise that. Retirement. The world likes to talk retirement. You got, you got that area of your life protected. How about your amusements? How about the, the, the ways you play, the ways you relax? Or do you protect that part of your, your life from the Lord?
All for Christ. Unless you forsake all, your money, how are you going to use that, brethren? You see, a singularity. Singularity?
Are you committed to this true biblical purity? I’m just going to… Brethren, I want you to say this. If you are committed to this, and you’re not going to allow the stains in your life, you’re going to go to battle against this. You’re going to go to battle against the mindsets of this world. The things that they think are important, the things that they value… Then say it: “All, Lord, I forsake all to follow you.”
Say it in your mind. “I am not going to follow the world. I’m going to fight it. I’m going to resist it where it comes at me through media, where it comes at me through the TV, through the computer, through my phone, where it comes at me through worldly people, where it comes at me by my neighbors, by the things I expose myself to, the music I listen to. I am all out for Christ. I surrender. I am submitted. I’m for that. That is purity. Lord, I’m following you. Yes, for you, I give up everything. Total, pure devotion to you.”
Paul feared lest you be pulled away from that pure and sincere devotion alone to Christ. “Accept my surrender to you in all things. I want to live for you, all out for you, and that you will find purity.”
Folks, give everything. You know what little quoted verse? “Give Him arms, those things that are within. And behold, everything is clean for you.” Do you know what that means? That means within everything is laid on the altar. And everything… There’s our word. Everything is clean. Everything is pure. But you hold back. It’s not pure. You adulterers and adulteresses. These are the ones protecting a part of your life from Him. Impurity, brethren.
“Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father.” This is His estimation. Is this… it is that you keep yourself unstained from this world. You have to do it. Those reflexive pronouns mean your responsibility. God doesn’t do it for you. You do it. The person sitting next to you, your spouse, doesn’t do it for you. Your friends don’t do it. You need to be determined and deliberate and intent. And this is a battle, and we are up against these great strongholds of thought that the world and the god of this world bombard us with. This is no easy thing.
And, brethren, be committed. Be determined. Say it, “All to you, Lord. All to you. Nothing held back.” And live in this book and wash in this book. Die reading this book.
Father, I pray. My desire is that Grace Community Church would be pure. Lord, help us to reach greater degrees of this glorious purity, greater degrees of a likeness to Christ, more and more. Help us, Lord, to advance, to be victorious. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.
