"Blessed are the Pure in Heart"

A sermon by Pastor Volkhard Spitzer

Youth Meeting, December 28, 1974

Berlin Jesus Center, Nollendorfplatz 5.

Translated by Bill Price

Part 3

But you say: "But I can't be like God. God is perfect and I'm supposed to be perfect? The Bible says 'I am holy and you shall be holy.' I can't be holy like God." No, you really can't. Only God can. There's only one God and you're not him. You're a child of God, but you're not God. God is unlimited and is unlimited in his perfection. He is perfect in every aspect. There isn't anything about him that's not perfect. And that's why he's holy. And that's what forbids us from having this kind of "chummy" attitude with God, that we say, "Yeah, okay, God, now hop to it!" That's wrong. God loves us and we may love God. We may come to God as to a friend and come to God like a small child and say "Daddy!" But the Bible also demands respect from a child. We have to understand that God is the creator of the universe who really doesn't have to have anything to do with us. He could just go "puff" and the whole world would vanish. But because he loves us so much he says "No, I will carry out my plan with these people, and even if a lot of them won't come, even if a lot of them will hate me, even if a lot of them will go their own way, still there will be a few who come, the ecclesia, ecclesia, which means nothing more than the called-out ones, those who are singled out from the masses. A few will come out and will reach the goal. I will carry out my purpose with these few and will share heaven with them for eternity." Isn't that wonderful? And isn't it wonderful that we can be one of those who have reached God's calling, and we have answered and we have heaven and God? Hallelujah!

No, you can't be perfect like God, because God is unlimited, infinite, and you are limited and finite. And so your "perfection" is also limited and finite. And that's where it all becomes so logical. If someone demands that you be like God, then it's a lot of baloney. You can't. And God understands that, too, that you can't do things that you can't do, and so he doesn't demand them of you, but he demands from you that you be perfect in the measure that you can be holy and perfect. Do you get it now? You are to live according to what you have learned and what he has told you.

When you were a sinner, when you knew absolutely nothing about God, you couldn't live for God at all, but when God spoke to you, you came. You gave him an answer and light came into your life and he showed things to you. And then you said, "Yes, Jesus, I'll live for you. My life belongs to you." And you were happy and said, "There isn't anything bad in my life any more. He's taken everything away." And you went along for about three months living the Christian life, and then suddenly - plop - the first thing came to the surface. "What? That's still in me? Oh dear! I thought that everything was okay", and then the first disappointment comes. Who's experienced that? Oh, everybody? And then you said, "Jesus, oh," and it was a battle. And you say "Yes, Jesus, you're the Lord of my life. I'm giving it up." Maybe he applied a little pressure, too. "Here it is, it's yours. Ah, now I'm happy again! Now everything is out. Now I'm finally completely clean." Two days later: plop! "What, again?" And so it happens over and over again. It happens with me still after being a Christian for fifteen years. Plop, something comes to the surface. And I say, "Ohh..."

At first I just couldn't deal with it all. I had developed such an inferiority complex from this teaching that I have to be perfect like God, that I said, "It's no use." And that's where the devil got his hooks into me. That's where the devil got his hooks into me and said, "You'll never make it, anyway. You'll never be like God!" I said, "Yeah, devil, you're right. Yeah, I'll never make it. I'll never make it." Yes! Until one day the light came on for me and I understood that God deals with me according to the measure of my faith. And boy, let me tell you, did that ever bring a deliverance and freedom into my life, that God doesn't expect any more faith from me than what I already have. Before I always used to try to produce things artificially, you know. I produced artificial faith, plastic faith. "Okay, now we're going to pray for the sick. Everybody come on out. Everybody who's sick with cancer or ill or depressed, and I'll heal all of you in the name of Jesus!" And then nobody was healed and I said, "Oh, you've got to have faith, you've got to have faith! You don't have enough faith!" You know what I mean? [Sighs loudly]. That's so exhausting, let me tell you!

And then I heard evangelist so-and-so speak, and he said, "You have to do this and that for God." Okay, I have to do this and that for God. Roll up your sleeves and away we go. And I witnessed ten times a day and read the Bible for at least an hour a day, and so on and so on and so on! [Sputters] And nobody reacted – until one day I realized that if I've given my life to Jesus, then he's no monster or sadist, but he deals with me according to the measure of my faith. And if I only have the strength to witness once, then he expects me to witness that one time, and namely to the specific person that he shows me. And if now the Holy Spirit says to me, "Go to that person and witness to him." And I say, "No, I won't." That is sin. That is sin, because I am then rebelling against better knowledge. God spoke to me. God revealed his will to me and he also gave me the strength to do it, and now I'm rebelling. That's sin. But if I don't witness to those other nine people that the evangelist was talking about, then that's not sin at all because God didn't tell me to do it. He deals with me according to the measure of my faith. That's as logical as you can get.

My son Markus is perfect if he does what I tell him. I can't expect him to be able to do square roots and complicated math problems. I can't expect him to be able to explain to me how the TV set works. But I can expect from him to turn on the TV set when I ask him to. And if he does that, he's perfect. In his stature as a child he is perfect when he does what I tell him to do. And I'm not going to be a sadist and demand from him to do something that he can't do at his age. I'm not going to tell him,"Get into the car and drive me to Nollendorfplatz!" [Laughter] I'd be an idiot if I did something like that! But some people think that God is like that. Some people think that God is like that. And then when they crash into a tree they say, "God, it's your fault!" "The preacher told me to do it!" (Ha ha!)

Do you get it now? God wants us to be real, he wants us to do what he says. If we do that, we're perfect according to the measure of our own stature. Maybe tomorrow we're not perfect any more. Maybe tomorrow we'll have some more light. Then we should obey the light that we have. Whatever more God reveals to us, we should do. And that's where all the stress vanishes. All the stress vanishes, and we keep on growing, and one day we'll be perfect as he is perfect, namely, when we see him from face to face. Then, the Bible says, then we're not just similar to God, but we are like him. Then we are like him.

There is a difference between "innocent" und "faultless." A difference between "innocent" und "faultless." Maybe we do something and the result is wrong, but it's still right because our motivation was right. The end result is faulty but I am innocent because I have simply acted according to my best knowledge and my conscience. And God does not impute that to me as sin. God sees me as being perfect, if I act according to the measure of my faith and according to my current standing. That's how God treats me. He treats me like a child, the Bible says.

God does not expect infants to be able to feed themselves, but he feeds them himself. I know that after I was saved, the first few weeks, maybe even months, I didn't even have to walk. I just floated, ha ha ha. My place was on cloud nine. Whoosh! It was so glorious! And then one day – whop! "Hey, that's not very nice! Dear God, you're not there any more!" And he says, "Oh yes I am, you're just getting your first lessons in learning how to walk." Ha ha ha! And that's how he treats us. And so when I make my first few steps, they are perfect in his eyes, because I did everything that I could do in that moment.

Do you find that this helps you? Do you understand a little bit more about how God deals with us? Okay….

Yes, it's happened so often that people come to me and say, so sincere and honest as can be, "I want to live right, but I can't." Well now, let's take a look at this, because sometimes we have concepts that are totally wrong, especially when it comes to concepts of sin, and about maturity and what God expects from us. This is what makes problems for so many people, because they don't have any understanding about it. And there's another problem like this. The guy, for instance, who came to me and said, "I never have victory. I'm always defeated." He had a totally wrong concept of sin. He, for instance, thought that when he saw a picture at the movie theater and a bad thought came into his head, he thought that he was sinning. Hey, he got bad thoughts everywhere he went, because there are pictures around everywhere that lead to temptation. When he picked up a magazine, pop, they were there. When he saw a movie ad, pop, they were there. When he turned on the TV, there they were again. No matter where he went he got bad thoughts. "I can't live for God. It's impossible! I just get bad thoughts."

Hey, listen. That's not sin! That's not sin. That's temptation. If you see a picture and are a normal man made of flesh and blood and with five normal senses, there's going to be a reaction. You can't avoid that. It would be unnatural if you weren't like that. Otherwise you would need to go to a psychiatrist to see whether you have normal reflexes. [Laughter] Oh yes! But that's normal!

Billy Graham expressed it really well. He says, "You can't keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest on your head." Do you get it? I can't help it if a bad thought comes flying my way, but I can help it if I start playing around with this thought, and then say, "Oo la la, aren't you a doll!" [Laughter] Do you understand what I mean? That is sin. If I play around with my bad thoughts, that's sin. If I let myself get into it and let my imagination go wild, that's sin. And then the sins of thought turn into sins of action. The Bible says, "When lust conceives it bears sin, and sin brings forth death." But I can't help from being tempted.

If that were sin, if temptation were sin, then Jesus would have been one of the worst sinners, because the Bible says that he was tempted in all ways as we are. He went through puberty. Yes, a lot of people think that Jesus went around with a halo saying, "La-dee-dah, that doesn't interest me at all!" [Laughter] Jesus had normal temptations in all areas. The Bible doesn't exclude any area. It says that he was tempted in all things as we are. Jesus had thoughts of power in his head. "If you bow down before me, I will give you all of this." Jesus had thoughts of power; that came in his head. That came into his consciousness. But he didn't say, "Oh, yeah! I think I'll play king for a day!" But on the contrary, Jesus said, "Get thee hence! I won't have anything to do with these thoughts!" "But you can be famous. Just jump down from the temple. You have personality. Everybody will say that you are the Son of God!" "Get thee hence! I won't have anything to do with it!" He struck the enemy using the Word of God.

Do you see? Jesus was tempted in all things just like us. Temptation is no sin, but, you make a decision, a choice. You have the power to make a choice. You have the power to say, "Yes, I will sin." Or you can say, "I will not sin." You have the choice. No person has to sin. That is, no person who is born again. The others are under the law of sin and death. But the Bible says, we who are from Christ, who are born again through the Holy Spirit, there is no more condemnation for us. We are no longer under the law of sin and death, no longer under the compulsion to sin but under the law of freedom of the Holy Spirit.

He gave us freedom. What kind of freedom? The freedom to decide! That's exactly it. He gave us the freedom to choose. We can sin – based on our own decision - but we don't have to sin – based on our decision.

But that is one point: temptation. The second point that is often misunderstood is habits. Many people have habits. In English they say "hangovers" – like things that are still left around from the old life. For instance, you've done something for fifteen years, like smoking. And now you realize, not because the preacher said so, but because you read the Bible and then read, "Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and God, the Holy Spirit, God himself in his holiness lives in our body." And then it suddenly becomes clear to you, "Gosh! Every time I smoke I am poisoning this temple. I'm destroying my body's health. My money's going up in smoke."

That was a neat experience: over in America a businessman stood up and gave a testimony about smoking. He said "I smoked away several thousand dollars a year." And he said, "Now I've made a decision. I'm not going to smoke any more." And with some people it happens spontaneously. For others, they have "hangovers". Then it comes again and then they have to give it another try, and they have to make several attempts, but their motive and their need is to love God and to serve him. And then God doesn't smack them over the head a few times and say, "You've sinned again", but God understands. Like a child falling down when he's learning how to walk. So God knows that we fall down too. But he says to you, "Get up. Get up. I don't hold that against you. That's a part of your growing process." God allows us a time to grow up. If our heart is pure, here we again have the purity of the heart. The purity of your heart is such that you smoke, but you don't want to any more and you try to quit – and now you've lit up again but your heart is still pure because you say, "I don't want to do this!" and you put it out again. And you keep that up until you have victory. God allows you a time to grow up. That's what you allow a child, too. It's so important that we understand these things. It takes the depression out of our lives. So he says, "But the most beautiful thing about it that makes me so happy is that I not only don't smoke any more, but the most beautiful thing is that the thousands of dollars that I had been smoking away before are now going into mission work." He understood, "I am just smoking away my money and destroying my health, and other people are suffering hunger and can't hear the gospel because I'm so selfish. And I don't have anything from it. If I bought vitamin candies, then I would have something from it, but when I smoke I don't get anything from it." So it became clear to him. What a wonderful testimony. But I think that he needed a period of time to do it. He needed time. And God allowed him this period of time. He had a pure heart because his motives were pure.

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