Whatever is pure…

How joyful people think that is our series for the new year. Good morning! My name is René, another one of the pastors here, and what the series is all about. Let me just kind of give you a brief catch-up on what the series is all about. What we get fed to us from our culture is making us angry and anxious and envious, nervous and scared. In fact, I just saw another study this week from some guys at Yale that a study of a whole bunch of people showed that those who say they use social media for quote most of the day scored three point three seven points higher on the irritability scale. And I didn't know there was an irritability scale, but apparently you don't do well if you're on your phone all the time. But the good news is you don't have to think like this. You can learn how joyful people think.

We're basing this series on one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Philippians 4:8, and we're trying to memorize it as a church in this series. So let's read this out loud together. All right, here we go: Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Amen. How many of you have memorized that already? Wow, really good! Good for you. We're all gonna be raising our hands in three weeks, right? Right!

You know, I love to go to San Francisco, and I have my whole life, and I love to ride the cable cars. But when I went there when I was younger, I kind of had a problem when it came to riding cable cars. I couldn't figure out which cable cars went where, and that's a particular problem because there's one intersection up by Nob Hill where all three cable car lines cross. Depending on which one you hop onto, you could end up at Ghirardelli Square or Fisherman's Wharf or the Ferry Building. Yet I used to just hop on the next cable car that had a space free, with no idea where I'd end up at all. Anybody else ever do that? Really? Okay. I'm not the only idiot.

So then somebody explained to me that they each have signs on them with their final destination. Somehow I had never noticed this before. Like this one ends up at Haydn Beach; that's down there by Ghirardelli's. This next one ends up at Bay and Taylor; that's close to the Boudin bakery. This one has no sign—that's how you can tell it's going to the Ferry Building. This was a revelation to me! And so now I just started hopping on whatever cable car happens to be rumbling toward me. I look to see its final destination to see if that's where I want to go that day. Does that make sense?

But I'll even bring this up so you will have a fun time the next time you visit the city. And to remind you of what Carol, Kevin, and Gerald said, we looked at this our first week: thoughts are like trains; they take you somewhere. And consequently, you shouldn't just kind of board any train of thought. Before you board a thought train, you gotta see what direction it is headed. Don't just hop on whatever thought happens to be rumbling toward you that the algorithm wants you to think or that the AI wants you to think or that some other writer wants you to. Here's a thought: I think I'll just jump on board. Ask first, is it going somewhere that I want to go, or is it headed toward the discouragement district or to Anger Alley or someplace else that I don't really want to end up?

That's kind of the point of this whole series. You can direct your thoughts to a better destination, in fact, to these destinations. So each week in the series, we're looking at another one of these words to see what they mean. I've really been enjoying this. It's really been affecting my own spiritual practice so far in the series. We've looked at whatever's true and noble and right or just, and today I want to look at whatever is pure. Say pure with me: pure! And so let's think about, let's talk about the concept of purity.

Now, I think most of us agree that generally speaking, we like purity, right? Purity is a good thing. In fact, did you know that there's an entire department of the federal government devoted to purity? The purity of what you eat. It's called the FDA. But in John Ortberg's book, The Life You've Always Wanted, he points out that its standards may not always be as high as you'd want. Let's just look at a couple of examples. Let's start with mushrooms. The FDA says mushrooms cannot be sold if there's an average of 20 or more maggots per 15 grams. You gotta draw the line somewhere; 20 maggots is too many.

How about coffee beans? They cannot be sold if there's an average of 10 percent or more of the containers are insect-infested, or if the inspectors find two live insects per container. Just as an FYI, we have far higher standards at Loft. We only allow one live insect per day—that's it! Fig paste, for example, like in Fig Newtons, if they find more than three insect heads per 100 grams, the FDA just ruthlessly tosses the whole batch. And what's intriguing here is why specify insect heads? Apparently, every other part of the insect is okay, right? George, that's just a thorax; send it on through!

Apple butter: if it averages four rodent hairs per 100 grams or five dead insects per container, it's gone. For dead insects, it's on your toast, friend! Hot dogs—you don't even want to know! My point is this: you know, purity is such a good word for most things. We love pure water, pure air, pure juice, but somehow when someone religious says purity, you think of uptight, unhappy Victorians or the church lady. Right? We need a culture of purity.

So what I want to do today is to capture the beauty of purity. If the idea of purity in a church context makes you want to run like, "No thanks," or makes you feel guilty or heavy, like, "Why am I even here? I'm not pure. Are you just gonna make me feel even guiltier than I already feel?" I think you're gonna love this today. I believe some of you will be set free today. So I want to talk about three things: What is purity? What is it not? And how do I get it? What is it? What is it not? And how do I get it?

So first, what does the word pure even mean in the Bible? In the original Greek, this is good: the word hagnos. Let me try to give you a sense of what this means. Experts say it has different kinds of aspects, nuances to it. First, it means uncontaminated, like pure snow. We used to live up at Lake Tahoe, and I loved freshly fallen snow. Don't you love that? But now I can tell you that same snow about a week later? Nothing more gross than slush! In fact, you want to see something really gross? Like you haven't had enough of that already this morning? Here's some New York City snow about a week after it fell—just disgusting! Thickening, right? Because the pure snow got mixed in with all kinds of other stuff. And the Bible says this is what can happen to us.

James 1:27 says, "This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God: to take care of the orphan and the widow and to keep yourself from being polluted by the world." But listen, here's the thing: when most religious people think of the world, right, the culture polluting you, what they think of is, you know, stuff you can see online or on TV. And so for them, what's in that polluted snow is sexual immorality and all of the anger and hate and greed and all the vices that are out there. And that is true. Christians, we need to get serious about not allowing our brains and our souls and our lives to be polluted by these things.

But when the Bible talks about purity, it actually gets even more challenging than this. Check this out. The Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 11: "I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted." By what? In context, is he talking about your pure faith being corrupted by immorality or some vice? No! He says, "Because you happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different kind of gospel than the one you believed." See, the biggest danger to purity is delusion, right? And contamination.

So when you go to a church and instead of being focused on the gospel of Jesus Christ, the church has added in all kinds of culture war issues and partisan politics, it's polluted. It's deluding the simple gospel message with some other gospel, which is really not good news at all. So often what passes for Christianity today, I'm sad to say, is slush. The original snow was beautiful, but now it's mixed up with all kinds of cultural stuff. And Paul is saying, let's bring the beauty back and get the slush out. Let's keep our faith pure and focused on Jesus Christ, and everybody wants that, right? Keep it uncontaminated.

Then there's another aspect to purity: being undiluted in the sense of undiluted focused vision. Again, James writes, "Purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world." The values of our culture. Kierkegaard said purity of heart is to will one thing. The call to purity is a call to be undiluted and focused, to have totally clear mission and vision. And then there's one more angle to biblical purity: integrity. And I love the word integrity because it comes from integer, meaning whole number. Integrity is what it feels like when you are whole inside, the same inside as you are outside.

The opposite of integrity is a related word: disintegration. Psychologists talk about this in terms of cognitive dissonance. When you feel like you're being pulled apart inside because you really, really, really do believe one thing, like Jesus is Lord, I really believe that, yet you're also behaving in ways opposite to that that you know Jesus wouldn't approve of. And so inside you feel like you are disintegrating, being pulled apart. And nobody can stand that feeling for very long. So pretty soon, what most people do to get away from the cognitive dissonance is they either say, "Well, I don't believe all that Jesus stuff anymore," so they can keep doing this stuff, or, "Man, I'm gonna stop my behavior and run to Jesus," because we all long for integrity, wholeness.

So all of that is wrapped up in this word for purity: being uncontaminated, undiluted, and having integrity. Doesn't that sound refreshing? Who doesn't want to live a life like that, right? Security is your soul drinking pure water, your mind breathing pure air, your moral compass always pointing to true north, internal consistency, peace. So it's beautiful. And now whenever Paul says think about whatever is pure, in this series we've talked about the power of the divine whatever. Think about whatever is like that; move toward that.

So for example, this week when I thought about, you know, what comes to my mind when I think about whatever is pure? I think of pure water. Just even imagining crystal clear Lake Tahoe water is inspiring to me. Or I think of places that exude purity—kind of a primeval purity to me, like the redwoods. Or I think of the innocence of a sleeping baby. Right? And I think of stories of people who showed integrity, like Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner featured in the movie Chariots of Fire. Fastest man on planet Earth in his day. Here's how fast he was: he set a world record for the hundred meters in 1924 that stood until 1967. I mean, and this is a hundred-meter race! You know, in a hundred-meter race, usually the difference between first, second, and third is like this, this, and this. Look how far ahead of the next guy he is. He's just a blazing leaf. There was nobody in his category.

But when the hundred-meter event at the 1924 Paris Olympics was scheduled on a Sunday, he said, "Well, I can't do it." Why not? "Well, I have a personal principle that for me, Sunday is for rest and for worship, and so I'm gonna stick to that principle with integrity." He was running for Scotland, and the Scottish people turned against him. He was called a traitor, a Bible thumper. But he said, "No, I'm not gonna do it." Instead, he entered the 400-meter race, a race he did not normally compete in and was not expected to even place in. And not only did he win gold, but he set a new world record in the event! It was unbelievable.

And then just one year after his gold medal-winning fame, he went to China as a full-time missionary, and he never came back. Because a couple of years after he went, the Japanese attacked China. Christian Chinese people and Westerners were rounded up and put in concentration camps. In fact, this is the camp that he was in with about a thousand other people. And the Japanese knew of his celebrity, and so they gave him the option to go back to England. But he said, "No, I'm not abandoning my people here." And he stayed until he died of a brain tumor just months before the liberation of the camp. Man, that is a life of integrity! I want to be like that.

And we're gonna get back to his story in just a second, but whenever Paul says whatever is pure, those are some of the things that just pop into my mind. Those are some of my whatevers. When you think about those things, you go that direction. You see, your thoughts are taking you that direction—those ideas, those pictures, those images, that story. That's aspirational, isn't it? And this is important: he says think about whatever is pure, not think about whatever is impure that you want to avoid. So often, and this is a pet peeve of mine as a pastor in churches, when we talk about purity, we actually talk a lot about impurity.

I'll never forget when I was in youth group growing up. I bet 75% of the talks that I heard about purity for a teenager were about all the stuff that we shouldn't do, and half of that stuff I'd never even thought of before! So I was like, "Whoa, gotta try that!" But I want to wave you off a danger when it comes to purity. See, there are two different concepts of spiritual purity in the Bible represented by two different people in the New Testament: Jesus and his theological opponents, the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the leading religious group of his day, and both Jesus and the Pharisees really talked a lot about purity. They both groups talked a lot about purity and holiness and godliness, but they had two completely different views of this. And those two views persist to this day.

In fact, you could say that every single confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees was really over a conflicting definition of purity. And this is so important. This is so important because so often—and I've done this myself—when people of faith want to be pure, they can start out with the Jesus way and slip very quickly into the Pharisee way. So what's the difference? Well, Jesus himself contrasts these in Matthew 23. The first difference is this: the Pharisees were focused on secondary issues; they majored on the minors. Jesus focused on the primary issue. Jesus says this: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!" And that word means actors, phonies, posers. "You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill, and cumin." Stop right there. The Pharisees had over 2,500 rules to keep people pure, and one of those rules was to tithe on everything. And that was a legit rule in the Old Testament. God had said to the Israelites, "Give one tenth of all your crops to the Lord." But these guys had lost all proportion and had taken this to a ridiculous extreme.

These are just their herbs used in their kitchen. And so they would go, "Okay, one mint leaf for God; here you go, God! One tiny seed for God; nine leaves for me, nine seeds for me." It was just ridiculous! And Jesus says, "You guys are real good at counting out your dill weed, but while you're taking all your time doing that, you've missed the whole point of the Bible, which is justice to the poor." We talked about this last week: mercy to those who are failing and faithfulness to everybody in your life. "You've got this all out of proportion, Pharisees! You're majoring on the minors!" It's so easy for religious people to do this.

Back to the Eric Liddell story: there were 150 kids in the concentration camp, and the captors allowed them to play soccer, but only on Sundays. Meanwhile, on Sundays, Eric Liddell was trying to lead Bible studies and church services. Remember, he held Sunday sacred. But when he heard that the kids were literally beating each other up because they were just wildcatting it—they had no refs, and so they just wailed on each other, right?—he made a decision. This man who wouldn't run for a gold medal for himself on a Sunday said, "No problem! I'm gonna ref the kids' games on the Sabbath. We can do our Bible studies on Sunday night or some other day. And in fact, I'm gonna organize a scout troop. I'm gonna organize a soccer league for them." And he did! Why? Because he had Jesus' purity, not Pharisee purity. He wasn't a legalist. He saw this as a more important matter: teaching the kids justice and honor and about Jesus. His was not a wooden legalism.

That's Jesus' purity: understanding what's most important. The second difference between Pharisee purity and Jesus' purity is they start outside; he starts inside. Jesus says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will also be clean." I mean, what a vivid picture! Imagine only cleaning the outside of your coffee cup. That would just be grotesque, right?

When I was a youth pastor in San Diego, sometimes parents would talk to me, understandably, and they would say, "I'm so concerned about my teenager. They're not acting like a good Christian." And I would be sympathetic, but I would always ask, "Well, are you sure they are a Christian?" I mean, don't just make a mat good; make sure they know Jesus! Because if their motivation is not internal, then it won't be eternal. It's gonna fade as soon as they go off to college or something. "First clean the inside of the cup, and then the outside will be clean too." And then there's a third difference: looking good versus actually being good. You can see how these are all related, right?

Jesus says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!" I mean, he is just making his opinion clear. What do you really think, Jesus? "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." You know, I read this and I think Jesus hated the same things about church and churchy people that everybody hates about church and churchy people: when it's fake, when it's phony, when it's self-righteous, but hypocritical.

And you know, if you're watching online or you're here in the room, and there have been times in your life that you kind of de-churched and deconstructed your faith because all of the hypocrisy doesn't appeal to you, well, you'd find an ally in Jesus. But what he's saying is there's a way to eliminate the pollution and bring the purity back. There's a woman named Holly Christine Hayes who grew up here in the Bay Area. She wrote a book called From Basement to Sanctuary, and her story is this: she spent her teen and young adult life mired in alcoholism and drug addiction, and she was just in a downward spiral that led to a life of trauma and even homelessness for a while.

Holly finally got sober through an AA program in a church basement, as is typical that recovery programs so often meet in church basements. But when she, after many years, finally ventured upstairs to try to go to the church where she'd been meeting for years, she says she was put off by how perfect everybody else seemed up there. She said, "I found myself wishing"—and she's probably not the last person to wish this—"I wish church was more like AA." Because in recovery, people introduce themselves with, "Hi, I'm Holly; I'm an alcoholic," right away, no pretense. The upstairs people all seem to be pretending to her that they had no problems.

You know what? Jesus hung out with the basement people. And what he's saying to the Pharisees is, "You upstairs people need to be more like the basement people! You know, just admit it; you're a hot mess! You need God!" And what does all this lead to? Fourth: Pharisee purity feels heavy; Jesus' purity feels light. Jesus said about the Pharisees, "They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them." Heavy and cumbersome! But of himself, he said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Hey, everybody, say three words with me: rest, easy, and light! Rest, easy, light!

If your pursuit of faith, if your pursuit of purity isn't characterized by these words—rest, easy, light—by Jesus Christ's own diagnosis, that's a symptom that you're drifting from Jesus' purity into Pharisee purity. And this got me personally right between the eyes when I was a pastor at Tahoe. As a pastor, I realized my joy was gone in my pursuit of personal righteousness. It was draining me. It was making me, ironically, self-centered—like toxically introspective. All I saw was impurity—not purity, impurity in me and impurity in the people around me. On the contrary, here is the effect of Jesus' style purity: the Bible says, "To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure." In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.

Every minute, anybody who is almost innocent in the way they look at the world, they just see the best in the world around them, the good in everybody they meet. They don't live lives of suspicion and resentment. But to the impure, nothing is pure because they see the world through a filter of lust or greed or grievance, and so everybody's out to get them, or everything's a double entendre. They're smirking at everything. Right? That's how the impure see the world. But to the pure, all things are pure.

When I think of this, I think of Bethany Hamilton, who we've had share here on this platform at this church. Bethany, of course, the famous surfer who had her arm bitten off by a shark. So, I mean, she's got something to complain about in life, right? But here is how she sees the world: "God gave us the land filled with beauty and the ocean filled with wonder. I find so much happiness surfing. The ocean is my family's joy-filled playground. We love to sneak away to the mountains. The earth is our oyster, and we can take joy in what Jesus has done for us." Wouldn't you love to see the world like that? To the pure, all things are pure.

What I'm saying is Jesus' purity is not a narrowing of your life experience. Jesus' purity actually opens your eyes. It opens your eyes to the wonder of life and not only to beauty in landscapes. Imagine this: imagine if each time you saw another human, you saw the best in them, and your first thought was to pray for them. Imagine, men, if every time you looked at a woman, your reflex was not to objectify her but to see her as a sister in Christ. Or imagine in our polarized world, anytime you thought about an ideological enemy, your first thought was to pray a blessing over them, like Jesus told us to. That's not impossible! That's purity!

And so I hope I've made purity appealing to you—Jesus' purity. And now let's wrap this up with, "Okay, how do I get there? How do I start my path to purity?" Because maybe inside you feel about like this right now, and you've almost given up hope that you could ever be clean again. But God says, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow." How? First step: trust Jesus. Admit you're not pure and let him cleanse you. And then what happens? Look at this: the Bible says God loved us and shows us in Christ. Think about that! God knows everything about you. He knows everything about your impure deeds. He knows everything about your impure thoughts, and yet he still loves you. And in fact, he still chose you!

And when you trust Christ, when you're in Christ, you're holy and without fault—completely pure as the driven snow in his eyes. This is how God sees you in Christ. He's not saying you get pure before you come into my presence. He makes you pure when you come into his presence through Christ. Amazing! And then once you've trusted Jesus, then you ask him for a pure heart on the daily, like David prayed, "Create in me a pure heart, O God; renew a righteous spirit within me." In recovery, they say you humbly ask God to remove your character defects, and he starts to change you.

But you're not just a passive participant; you have a role too. And it's this: to focus on the pure, not the impure. I mean, so many verses in the Bible, like this one: "Set your minds on things above and not on earthly things." Not even on the earthly things you want to stop! You shift your whole focus to developing, as they say, a conscious awareness of God in every moment, and that purifies your vision. So what is contaminating you? What's the slush in your snow right now? Jesus can purify you! He really, really can! Millions of people—millions and millions and millions—have gone from impurity to purity. You're looking at miracles all around you in this building, in this church this morning, including me.

I can tell you empirically from my own life: when I admitted I am NOT living a pure life and I humbly, desperately begged Jesus to change my heart, and then I began practicing all these ways of focusing on him—praying, memorizing scripture, hanging out with his people, serving—it works! It really works. There is hope for you! You know, maybe your impurity isn't obvious; you've been whitewashing the tomb for decades. But inside, it is dark, and you're exhausted by Pharisee purity. You can have Jesus' purity; you can be transformed.

You know, I started by talking about cable cars. Well, maybe you're thinking, "For years, my train's been going to dead ends or just going around in circles, or I'm on a train to hell and I need to get off this train. It's not heading to a destination I want to go, and I need to get on another train going somewhere good. I need to grow in purity and get new life." You can! You can just switch trains right now. The only ticket you need to get on board that train is to admit you need it.

So let's pray together right now. Would you bow your heads with me? I want to give you a chance in prayer to start by just praying this Bible verse in your mind silently: "Create in me a pure heart, O God." Create in me a pure heart, O God. Are you desperate enough for that prayer? Lord Jesus, you said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." I want that! I want a pure heart, unpolluted. And so I admit my impurity; I surrender to you now as Lord and Savior. Help me to see that I'm pure in your sight because of what you did through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And when my thoughts turn dark, may I think about whatever is true and noble and righteous and pure and beautiful. Lord, enact that change in me; that's what I want, and I know you want it too, Lord. So do that in me today by the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, Amen.