Purity   by Sam Hepner

For me I think there is no subject I could speak more passionately on than this one. The concept of staying pure, of guarding your heart. I could just go so many different directions with it, but I think I'll just keep it personal. Six years ago Mashawn and I were given the blessing of our first child Monica. It was such an amazing time, and well, now having four children I look back and see it as such a simpler time. I never realized how much I would learn about myself when I became a father. Probably a sermon for another day, but isn't interesting that when you put yourself aside and serve someone with everything you've got, how much it ends up helping your personal walk as well? Well I remember it so well, I was sitting in our tiny little apartment holding Monica and just loving life. Probably watching a sporting event of some kind, and something happened that really changed the way I look at this world forever. A really rough commercial came on the tv, and I covered her eyes. Realizing she could still hear the violence I began singing to her. All the while I just stared at the tv, watching the violence unfold. I didn't even blink. The commercial was over and the game back on, I just sat there stunned at what had just happened. I was so worried about protecting her purity. Yet I was totally fine sitting there and watching that garbage and letting it into my own heart! I saw what was happening, the enemy had slowly over the years taken my soft, innocent heart and hardened it. I couldn't believe how desensitized I had become to the ways of the world. I sat there almost in disbelief of how far I had come. Why was it so important to me to protect my baby's heart, yet completely ignore guarding my own? This bothered me, I remember pulling a bible out and reading a scripture that was meant to be the theme song for our lives.

Proverbs 4:23   Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. NIV

This scripture is so huge, the most important thing I can be doing is guard my heart. Here was my realization on that day. You see I was worried about guarding the purity in my baby's heart because she hadn't yet been hurt by this world. It was almost like well, I'm an adult and I can handle more than she can. I've been through so much it just doesn't matter what I'm letting into my life, into my heart. That has to be a hard thing for Jesus to hear, don't you think? Jesus took my sin for me, died for me. I am saved by grace. The moment I let Jesus into my life, I have been cleaned, washed white as snow by the blood of the one that knew no sin, but took mine on anyway. My heart isn't carrying the past and it's sin anymore. Jesus took that from me, I have a pure heart, all over again. Thank you so much God for the amazing grace you've shown me! My heart must be protected with the same urgency that we would protect the young and the innocent! Yours too!

Proverbs 4:23-27  Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.  Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.  Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm.  Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.  NIV

Well what does this mean for me now? I think Solomon might be trying to tell us that guarding our heart matters! Well then how do we do this? How can I protect the wellspring of my life? We must begin to understand that what we allow into our homes, our eyes, and our ears matters greatly! The bottom line is that what you feed your heart with, is what will come back out of you in all sorts of different ways. Right after he tells us that we must guard our hearts above all else, Solomon is very quick to tell us two things.

What you say matters! Word matter! Check out what Jesus says about what your words.

Matthew 12:36-37 "For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."

"Words are powerful; take them seriously.  Words can be your salvation. Words can also be your damnation." MSG 

What you see matters! Check out what Jesus says about the importance of what your looking at!

Matthew 6:22 "Your eyes are windows into your body." MSG

Why is it so important to guard your heart from images, vulgarity, sex and violence. Because what you put into your heart is what comes out of your heart! I know I know, "Sam relax I don't like the message to the song, just the beat." "Sam I was just kidding - it was just a joke." Jesus and Solomon both will tell you just how important words really are. "Sam chill out it's just a movie, it's not real. It's only make up." "Sam it's just a video game." "Sam it's just my My Space page, it's a funny picture." Yet everything I read tells me just how important what your eyes see is! Let's stop giving excuses as to why it's ok, to allow impurity into our lives. There is a battle waging every moment everyday. The battle ground is unseen to most earthly eyes and to the winner goes your heart.

Remember Jesus' words, for out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks! What you put in, is what comes out! In this scripture Jesus explains this with the image of a tree. Amazing!

Matthew 12:33

"If you grow a healthy tree, you'll pick healthy fruit. If you grow a diseased tree, you'll pick worm-eaten fruit. The fruit tells you about the tree.”  MSG

It's time that we become very aware of what we are allowing into our hearts. It's time to take back our hearts. Jesus took the ground we lost through sin back for us. It's time to realize that we need to protect the place in us that our Lord calls home. Our hearts. Tell me something - when you look at your fruit, what can you see about yourself? When you take the stance that your eyes are the windows into your body, what's the view look like from in there looking out? The enemy has worked very hard to smudge out the lines between good and evil on this earth. To make things look a lot more gray than they do black and white. We must become aware that the enemy will use any and all tactics to invade and destroy us from the inside out. Check out what God tells Cain just four chapters into the bible.

Genesis 4:7  "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."  NIV

What a powerful statement and one that really sums up the battle humanity would face from here on out on this earth. Sin is crouching at the door, it wants you. You have to master it! You can't master sin and smudge the lines between right and wrong. You can't master sin and continue to feed your eyes and ears with things that do not help build you and others up! We must stand strong in purity, in a world that continues to push the boundaries of vulgarity and sexuality further and further, it's time we push back. We can master sin. We can take back our innocence. We must guard our hearts!

Through the course of this day I wanted to check out a story where King David fell to sin. It's the story of David and Bathsheba. From that story we can learn a lot about how to be prepared for the attacks of our enemy. If you'd like to check that story out you can find it in 2 Samuel (chapter 11). How does a guy who's said to be one after God's own heart, the great warrior king, called personally by God, fall into temptation like this? Well quite honestly, he didn't have the benefit of reading the wise words of his son Solomon. David got flat, he wasn't where he should have been. He was getting lazy and as God told us in conversation with Cain, sin is crouching at the door!

Well another place that we just must go today is the Garden of Eden. Specifically how the serpent tricked Eve into doing the only thing God asked her and Adam not to do. Check this out.

Genesis 3:1-6  The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal GOD had made. He spoke to the Woman: "Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?"  The Woman said to the serpent, "Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden.  It's only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, 'Don't eat from it; don't even touch it or you'll die.'"

The serpent told the Woman, "You won't die.  God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you'll see what's really going on. You'll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil."  When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it — she'd know everything! — she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.   MSG

How does this happen? David a man after God's own heart. Adam and Eve who lived in a pure relationship with God in a way that must have been just amazing, and they fell into sin. The serpent is cunning. He's crouching at the door and wants to devour that relationship we have with God. We must learn to master it!

Above all else we must guard our hearts. I think I could have helped these amazing men and women of God with a simple roll of plastic caution tape! We must set up boundaries. That is the only way to keep the cunning serpent out! What if we put caution tape around the tree? A boundary to remind them hey, you are not to be here! We'd still be running around the Garden of Eden stark naked to this day! Relax guys you wouldn't have been aware of it anyway so calm down! :) What if we put caution tape around the palace roof. David would have never seen Bathsheba! They would never have fell into the domino affect of sin! The idea of caution tape, a weak little piece of plastic just seems lame right? Go to a rock concert, it keeps mobs in certain areas. Go to a crime scene, the public dare not cross it. Go to a construction site, grown men know better than to pass under or through that tape! We must begin to mark off boundaries in our lives, so to effectively keep us away from the enemies slick schemes. Once they are in place, we must not cross them!

The three main points in finding purity.

We must guard our hearts

We must set boundaries in our lives

We must stop fitting in and start standing out!

God created us men and women to rule this world. Not to just fit into it. We weren't created to be average, to settle for less than the best. We were created to rule over this land!

Genesis 1:26-28  Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them.  God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." NIV

I believe that the time to take back what is ours can start right now. You know it just won't go anywhere though until we realize that we were made to stand out. I think it's time to let our lights shine. I pray a ton for the youth of this area, and MRC to become leaders. Why? Because leaders are doing what they want! They are making choices, not letting others make choices for them. Jesus threw down the gauntlet. We need to stand out!

Matthew 5:14-16 "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

NIV

 That's the challenge I leave you with this Sunday. It's time. Let's make 2009 the year that we take back our homes, our children, and our hearts. Lets realize that above all else we must guard our hearts. Lets set boundaries and stick to them. Let's stand out! Let's redraw the lines of purity. Let's erase the gray and get back to black and white living! Let's have the faith to let our lights shine! Like a city on a hill that can not be hidden! We believe in the crucifixion. We believe in the resurrection! The power that came from the cross means He who knew know sin and became sin, made all things new! Including your heart! Pure as the beautiful white snow.

 Proverbs 4:23  Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.  NIV

 You know it's amazing, how small sins can lead to bigger ones. You allow sin into your life, and there are ramifications to that. There is a cause and affect of your sins that can be fatal in your life, and your relationships. Believe me I know this better than anyone. Sin just leads to the dominos of pain falling one by one. Guarding your heart is just so important. Why you may ask is this so important? The repercussion of sins however small just don't go away all that easy. Let's go back to David committing adultery with Bathsheba. Lust leads to adultery. Then the cover up, lies lead to manipulation leads to murder. About four chapter later you see David fleeing for his life. His kingdom and his reign are just never the same. Solomon the man who wrote the great line we are choosing to focus on today! Dies far from God, unbelievable. How does this happen? The serpent is cunning, he crouches at the door desiring us. Did you know that at his birth, God showed so much grace. He loved Solomon right away, and actually told the prophet Nathan, that Solomon's name would be Jedidiah. It's mentioned one time in scripture and then never again. Solomon never stood in his true identity as Jedidiah one loved by God, because he couldn't heed his own advice. He couldn't master sin. Maybe he wrote this proverb from the eyes of experience. Understanding the ramifications of not guarding his own heart. His lust for foreign women led to idol worship of the pagan gods of the women he was obsessed with which led to his life ending far from God. Wow, hard to believe isn't it! I think the biggest repercussion we can see though again is in the Garden of Eden. With our first sin as humans.

 Genesis 3:16-4:1  To the woman he said,"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."  To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."  Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.  The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.  And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."  So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.  After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. NIV

 A lot happens there that we hear about a lot. Man is forced to work the land. Child birth becomes labor. I won't touch that one, other than to say I've seen four births, and my wife deserves a medal! They are banished from the beautiful garden, they would eventually now die. Most importantly though I believe is this (and not because I'm a guy) through the sin in the garden. Through the lack of boundaries they had for the tree. From the seduction of the serpent we lost the ability to grasp true, pure relationship! The world is never the same! There is cause, and there is affect.

 Genesis 3:16  "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." NIV

 I'm seeing for the first time, that through this original sin we lost the purity of relationship. I've been reading this book that really describes ‘pure relationship.’ (Specifically the trinity and how they relate to each other) It really brought a huge point out for me in my own walk. Maybe the harshest product of the original sin is that we now live in a world with the "need" for status. Constant pushing each other around to get positioned just where we need to be. Now we need roles. Now we have positions, titles and such. UUHHMM. Sorry I just threw up in my mouth a little bit but I'm alright. I'm learning that true relationship doesn't need any of that garbage.

 Guard you heart, with everything you've got! Set boundaries to keep yourself pure. Let's stand out in 2009, and let our lights shine! Like a city on a hill that can not be hidden! Why is this so important? Because when we do not master sin, and it gets into our lives, the repercussions of the sin domino its way through our lives, and affect our lives and those around us in a way that can affect years of your life! It's time to take back our homes, the innocence of our children, and our own hearts!

 Proverbs 4:23  Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. NIV