May 17, 2024 • 30 mins
episode 72
Welcome back to our journey through the Beatitudes in our quest to live our best lives. In this episode, we consider the profound meanings that Jesus has layered into the Beatitudes by exploring the concepts of being 'pure in heart' and being a 'Peacemaker.'
- Send Bibles to the persecuted church.
- Receive the Courier Update
- Support this podcast!
Come back for next week's episode on the topic- Blessed are the Persecuted. Join us as we conclude this profound exploration of the Beatitudes on The Harder Way Podcast.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:54):
Welcome back, you guys. And we're still in the same series. Where we are going
through the Beatitudes.
Yeah, which is really how to live your best life. And just to review, that word blessed,
markurios, is a word that really refers to your highest, best,
(01:15):
most fulfilling form of life.
Yeah, a true sense of contentment and satisfaction, not just,
oh, I'm in a good mood, right?
And definitely not just, I have lots of money or lots of success,
right? That's not that at all.
It's about prosperity. So, Jesus, you know, the more we get into this,
(01:35):
the more I just pressed yet again with the fact that when Jesus spoke, there were layers.
And he's laying down some deep, deep truths.
I'm reminded of an event that took place many years ago.
I used to study martial arts, and my instructor was an American guy who'd been
(01:55):
in the Air Force, and he learned Tang Soo Do from the Grandmaster of Tang Soo
Do in Korea during his time in the Air Force.
And right after he had served in Vietnam, he was in the – for a few more years,
and he learned from Tang Soo Do.
Interesting. And so he trained all the way up to the fourth degree black belt
level, which is considered a master.
Okay. And then he'd gone on and studied. He'd gotten a black belt in judo,
(02:19):
and he was a master instructor in Filipino stick fighting, and he was a master
instructor in more than one style of Wing Chun Kung Fu, which is like Bruce
Lee's original martial art.
So a real overachiever in that sense. Yeah, it was his passion.
And before he died, he actually had also earned a master in Guangping-style Tai Chi Chuan.
He was really a true martial arts master.
(02:40):
I don't believe he was saved, unfortunately.
And that was always a sad thing that we couldn't see eye to eye on that.
But he was a really good man, as men go.
And there were a lot of good people who were unsaved, as far as human basis goes.
Because remember, we've talked before about the good way and the God way,
right? That there are lots of quote-unquote good people who do quote-unquote
(03:03):
good things, but they're just not doing the God thing. And that's what we're called to do.
Right. It seems flippant to say it, but the God thing.
So the Grandmaster of Tang Soo Do came to the U.S.
This would have been, oh, I don't know, 1996, 95, somewhere in there. Maybe it's 97.
And he was doing a big thing. All the people from all over the U.S.
(03:26):
That were telling pseudo-masters were coming to see their grandmaster,
and he was going to do a demonstration, and there was testing for high-level people.
And so my instructor, Carlin, was invited to come to this event as an honored guest.
And when he came back to the school
on monday we were all those of us we were that were
(03:46):
senior students those of us who were all black belts and were you
know black sashes and come he we were
really we got our seafood in the corner we wanted to ask him all kinds of questions
about it and we were really excited to hear about it and he was really disappointed
and he said that the grandmaster put on a demonstration and he demonstrated
stuff that was at such a high level that the people who were watching,
(04:10):
didn't understand what they were seeing.
Oh, wow. They didn't get it. They didn't get the depth of what was being revealed.
He was literally laying out the deep secrets of this martial arts style.
And people didn't even understand. That no one gets taught, even at a higher black belt level.
And Karin only understood it because of all of his training in other martial
arts. He could see it. And he talked to the grandmaster about it.
(04:31):
Yes, that's what I was doing.
And other people were saying, well, what a waste of time. That didn't show us anything. thing.
And I think about Jesus giving us the Beatitudes and how much we read through them.
And we're just like, oh yeah, yeah, blessed are, blessed are,
blessed are, blessed are. I guess I kind of understand it. Sure,
I can try to be pure in heart or peacemaker or whatever.
And we don't really get the fact that, no, no, he's showing us the deep stuff.
(04:56):
He's telling us the secrets of our, for lack of a better term, our Jesus Kung Fu.
Because Kung Fu just means like lifelong endeavor. Okay.
Yeah. So our lifelong endeavor in Christ, he's showing us the deep secrets.
It's like, you want to be happy? You want to be really happy?
Because I'm sorry, I'm getting a little fired up thinking about this,
but life, life in that time was a drudge. It was drudgery.
(05:22):
It was, I mean, you didn't have, you wore sandals and your feet were dirty.
People had to wash your dirty feet because you were filthy.
You didn't, weren't able to bathe all the time. And you, so you did,
people stunk and they, hygiene was an issue and people died of things that we
cure with a pill from the, you know, from Rite Aid or Walgreens these days. Right.
(05:44):
And, or just common things like lice.
Yeah. Right. We could, we could deal with that. We get a little rid,
get a little small comb, be embarrassed or hide from our neighbors or shave
the kid's head or something.
But they dealt with all this stuff and food insecurity.
It was all about surviving, right? That your whole life was about making sure
that you had food, you had water, you had shelter.
(06:08):
You know, for most people, everything just revolved around that.
And you were intimately aware of the frailty of life because you were,
you know, you couldn't just go to the grocery store and get food, right?
You understood, hey, if we don't have the right kind of weather and these crops
don't come in or these crops die, what are we all going to eat a month from now?
(06:33):
We're not. We're going to die. And that's the thing is when crops didn't come
through, there was famine.
Famine like even right now when you look on the world stage if
if things go bad on a worldwide level
americans will suffer the third
world will die yeah they and then
that's just the fact of the matter or the you know the majority world or
(06:54):
different terms that are politically correct i try not to use politically correct
terms because i don't want to play that game but what we would call the third
world it's it's terrible right and so so their life was a drudgery and so it's
so So Jesus saying this to these
people is like going up to a person who's starving and saying to them,
you know how to have a full belly and never be hungry again?
(07:17):
I could tell you how to be pleasantly plump and fit and fat for the rest of
your life. I can tell you how to, right?
I can tell you how. And then laying that on them and, oh, wow, Jesus is saying that.
And so the next thing he says in our series is what? He says.
(07:40):
And then our next one, Matthew 5, 9 is.
All right, so let's go back. Pure in heart.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall or will see God.
I think the verb there has the strength of it to use the word shall.
(08:03):
Shall is a more forceful word. Like will means it's going to happen.
Shall means it will happen. The reason that I say shall is not even for a theological
reason or any sort of important reason.
It's just that's how it's in my head. because any of you guys who grew up on
(08:23):
the Rankin-Bass claymation Christmas specials, familiar with the little drummer boy,
that's the last line of that show is,
blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Do you know what they
told the little drummer boy?
To quiet down because there was a baby sleeping? No, that's funny.
(08:44):
I was going to say, my dad joke was going to be, come, they told him.
Oh, parumpapumpum. But yeah, so anyway, that's why I said shall.
But I think it is true if you actually look at the verb there,
there is the strength that it would probably be better translated as shall.
So they shall see God.
(09:06):
And it's so interesting because when I hear pure in heart, one of the first
things that comes to my mind when I hear this specific portion of the Beatitudes
is I think about, you know, Jesus saying, suffer the little children to come unto me.
Yeah. And the first thing that I think of is, for the heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it?
(09:27):
And what's the difference between it? Let's think about that for a moment with
a child's heart versus the adult's heart.
Oh, that's a good one. What do you think? I feel like if you're looking at children
versus adults, children don't have the same heirs, right? They don't put on heirs.
(09:48):
They don't have guile.
That's the worst thing. They don't have guile. They don't approach things with
a concept of manipulating.
They're not thinking about status. They're not thinking about how can I get
as far as I can get in this life, right?
A child's mind, a child's heart are very pure because they're very simple.
(10:11):
Not that they're unintelligent, but that they are really in tune with their
basic needs needs, and desires in a way that adults are not because it gets
clouded by so many other things.
Wow. Yeah. And I think when we look at this, don't get confused with like pure thoughts.
(10:33):
Yeah. Whatever good, noble, righteous, think on these things.
Yeah. Philippians 4, we know this. We should think about, we should do that.
And I've been thinking about that a lot this week, you know,
as, you know, just what do we look at and what are our eyes focused on?
And, you know, the importance of what we put into our eyes.
I shall set no evil thing before mine eyes. Oh, wow. That should be in the Bible.
(10:56):
But the heart is that seat of emotions and feelings and that place where it
kind of has a mind of its own.
That's where our brokenness, our unresolved brokenness can become a dominant force in our lives.
And I think the only way for us to be truly pure at heart is to have Christ
(11:17):
ruling and reigning in our lives.
What would you say? I think that's absolutely true because we can't get to that point on our own.
Where we completely remove ourselves from those things and the struggles of
this world and the temptations, right?
That's only going to come through Christ.
(11:38):
And, you know, again, seeing for they shall see God, right?
What does that mean to see God?
I mean, I think you can interpret it in a couple different ways, right?
You can think about kind of literally seeing God in the sense of,
you know, eternity, right?
You can also think about it as seeing the move of God, the hand of God in your life.
(12:03):
Yeah, if your heart's right with God, you're going to see God's hand in things.
You know, I have another thought on that, but before I make that thought,
I want to tell you about an email I got today from Persecuted Brother in Cuba.
Oh, yes. He and I keep in touch. We have kind of our own little coded way of
communicating some stuff we say very plainly, stuff about our Bible courier
(12:29):
ministry and stuff. We don't talk about that.
Yeah, we never discuss any of that kind of stuff, just about personal life.
How are you doing physically? How's your wife?
How can I pray for you? Yeah, things like that. Pajero Church, that kind of stuff.
And he messaged me today, and he said, yesterday, and he said.
(12:49):
Things are going from one calamity to the next, and misery is being compounded
upon misery in Cuba right now.
And he said, we haven't had clean water in 10 days, and we only get electricity for three hours a day.
Which is crazy if you consider the fact that Cuba has the infrastructure in place for that.
(13:11):
Right. And that it's pretty obvious that the lack of water and the lack of electricity
are something that's purposely being inflicted upon the people by the government.
And that was a communist tactic. Right, because if you cycle the power,
what you do is you make it impossible for people to preserve food.
It makes it really difficult for them to do things covertly,
(13:31):
to go sit home and get on their computer and communicate with somebody or to
learn something digitally or just to have a meeting in the light.
You know, it makes it it makes all getting around town becomes more difficult doing anything.
It just keeps you in a constant state of need of need. Yeah. And dependence.
And that's what's what a communist or Marxist communist philosophy is,
(13:52):
is to keep people in that place so they won't rise up against you.
You don't want their belly so full that they can. Well, you think about America.
We have so much abundance that we can sit around and ask ourselves,
which gender do I feel like today? Hmm.
What kind of food do I want to eat? What shall I choose? I think I'll eliminate
all of the white foods from my diet today and only eat green foods or, you know, we.
(14:12):
Yeah. No, honestly, the things that we can sit around and think about.
Right. You know, are those are luxuries. So my persecuted brother said this
to me, said this in the email. He said, but. But.
We rejoice in the Lord in this terrible circumstance because his kingdom is
(14:34):
advancing and people are running,
like running on their feet, with
their feet, as fast as they can to God because he is their only option.
Wow. Right now. So we want to run to God when we have multiple options. That's better.
Yeah. We want to do that now. Jesus even talks about that, those who have not
(14:56):
seen but yet believed. But wow.
I mean, so he sees this hand of God in this. And so I want to talk about for
a minute on this, they will see God, they shall see God.
Put it in a cultural historical context.
Most people in the presence of royalty, well, most people were never in the
(15:17):
presence of royalty. And if they were, they weren't even allowed to look at them.
Yes, you were supposed to avert your eyes. You're supposed to put your head down.
You're never supposed to look upon their face, make eye contact,
anything like that. So who got to look at royalty?
Other royalty. And who else? Family? Yeah. Friends? Close people?
So when he says, when you're pure of heart, I think that really that the things
(15:43):
that you said are there. but I think another layer that Jesus was saying to
this audience was you will be God's friend.
You will be in his inner circle. That's good. You will be in his tight, like tight community.
Yeah. Right. And I'm like, and that's, and that's a powerful thought.
That is a powerful thought. So this becomes a salvific verse.
(16:05):
This becomes a sanctification verse.
And this is a real, this is a real blessed are the persecuted precursor,
which will be next week, because part of the blessing of persecution is that
your heart is either, you're either in or you're out.
Yeah, it's like they say, like level up or leave. Level up or leave.
(16:27):
That's what's happening. Yeah.
So we'll go into that more next week. But I think that that's really part of
what Jesus is promising there is you want to have a good life?
You want to have your best life?
Have a life where you're God's homie, where you're God's friend,
where you get to hang out with the king where you are considered one of his close associates.
Wow. That's really powerful. So that's what we're talking about when we say,
(16:49):
blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
And our next one here, again, as we said a few minutes ago, blessed are the
peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.
Okay. And so again, we have that same verb.
It's a feminine, imperative, third person. I think it's It's a participle,
but I think there's, I think it's still that shall be called, shall be called.
(17:14):
I think the word is kleethesuntai. Okay.
They shall be called, but sons of God.
It says wioi, which is sons in Greek, but with that is implied daughters as well.
Yeah, of course. I mean, it's kind of like mankind and humankind, right?
(17:35):
And a lot of stuff in the Bible when it says, you know, man or man or whatever,
it's really referring to all people.
And it's obvious in the places that it's not right when it's speaking of things
that are gender specific.
But a lot of the time. New Living Translation translate that as children of God, I believe.
And it's like, so just so you know, if you're getting really into like the,
(17:57):
which Bible translation is the most literal or most correct.
If you're the New Living Translation and the NIV, those are what's called dynamic
equivalent or a functional equivalent translation.
And so they're really trying to get the thought across. cross so
children when you're going for if you're going thought in this
context we always better translated children even
(18:19):
though it means sons literally but if you're going more of
a formal equivalent which is like the english standard bible the new nasb new
americans yeah standard bible even the king james version when you're going
on those bibles then then based on that translation theory of trying to be formally
accurate then you have to translate it sons,
(18:41):
sons and then go oh but it means all of us okay so
let's so with that in mind a little theology so let's start
with the blessed are blessed are the peacemakers right so we know what peace
means yeah peace is is the absence of war yeah in the most basic sense in the
(19:01):
most in the most basic but what is it what is it more more.
Peace, on a bigger level, you can say is an absence of conflict,
and it's a state of being okay.
Like, you know, you kind of think of the word shalom, which isn't here,
(19:21):
because obviously the New Testament was written in Greek.
But when Jesus was saying this, they might have had that concept of shalom in
their minds when they're hearing about peace. And that has more to do with just
a holistic state of okayness, right?
So, but an interesting part of that word, because it's not saying blessed are the peaceful.
(19:47):
Yes, I was noticing that actually. I was thinking about that.
It's peacemakers, just the people who actually cause peace. You know, it's interesting.
I've become more of a peacemaker as I've grown in the Lord, as I've matured
in my faith over the last decades.
I remember when we first went into Afghanistan.
And my theory of war is, if you're going to go, if you're in a place where you
(20:10):
absolutely have to go to war, get it done as fast and as hard as you can,
and then say, don't make me come back.
Okay it rather than what we
did and i remember the the soldiers went
over to afghanistan the first group of soldiers and i
remember my dad saying well son your your generation's vietnam war just started
yeah and and my dad spent you know close to a decade or about a decade off and
(20:35):
on in vietnam and so he you know he was he knew what he was talking about and
he turned out to to be right. It was longer than, than Vietnam.
And, but there were a lot of young people who were really anxious to go and
make war. Yeah, that's true. And, and,
I remember the first time I was at the commissary at the Air Force Base,
(20:57):
I was getting groceries there, and I saw a young woman come in,
and she was missing a leg.
And I asked her, and she'd lost it from an explosive device in Afghanistan,
an improvised explosive device.
I was so angry about that. Because the war really hit home for me.
And suddenly, I was like, let's not go show how big and bad we are.
(21:19):
Let's not go make war. Let's make peace.
You know, but what does it take to make peace?
Well, I think in order to make peace, I think you have to be in a state of humility.
Yeah. I was going to say the same thing. You have to be in a state of humility
because oftentimes the things that cause conflict are two people's or one person's
(21:42):
pride rubbing up against someone else or against the other person's pride. Right.
And so you're in a place maybe where you're really fixated on yourself and your own rights.
And this person can't say this to me. And I need to, I need to go in and show
this person that they can't treat me this way. And dah, dah, dah, dah.
(22:03):
And again, what you're saying right now, I would have been, those would have
been bragging points for me decades ago. Yeah.
Oh, I told them this and I said that, and I did this and I, oh yeah,
I showed them and then they kept mouthing than often, so I sock them one or whatever.
But the more you become like Jesus, the more you grow in your faith,
(22:23):
the more you realize this is not the way.
Yes. I have to, and I don't just have to be peaceful, I have to make peace.
So I have to deny myself of my rights, like Jesus did.
Yeah. I have to not say the things that my flesh wants to say.
I mean, there is a time that you have to say things. I'm not saying don't be truthful or don't.
(22:47):
But when I want to tell somebody off or give them what for.
For a justifiable reason. Right. You know, we're not just talking about don't
get mad for no reason or don't be unnecessarily mean to people.
We're saying, hey, check yourself.
And maybe you are justified in the world sense and in a logical sense in causing
(23:11):
a problem with somebody and going up and giving them what for and all that.
But it doesn't mean that that's what you're called to do as a Christian,
because as Christians, we are called to make peace.
And we understand that that's not always possible.
The Apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 12, and he says,
as much as it depends upon you, live at peace with everyone.
(23:33):
And so you can't control other people. You can't control their responses.
You can't control how they treat you. That's beyond our capabilities.
But what you can control is your
own behavior and your own desires to make peace or to create conflict.
And so what we're called to do is to do whatever we can as much as it depends upon us to make peace.
(23:59):
And however the other person responds, we leave that up to God to move upon
them and move upon their heart if he so chooses.
So you're saying you do what's right in the eyes of God because it's right in the eyes of God.
Yes. Not because you're hoping for a specific outcome. I mean, it will be nice.
I had a, I, there was a guy I was talking to one time and I may have mentioned
(24:20):
this in the podcast before, but he had been arrested for drug possession.
And then he, and then he like fled the state, got saved. And it's now 15 years
down the line, 20 years down the line.
And I, and he was trying to go do missionary work and he needed to deal with
this thing before he could get his passport.
I said, it's been 20 years, man. You don't use drugs. You're on the straight and narrow.
(24:44):
Just go turn yourself in to the court. And then, and I said,
you know, they, they, he had, they had a six months in jail sentence that he was supposed to serve.
And this is during a time period when they were letting everybody out of jail
in California, everybody.
I mean, yeah, our jails were overcrowded. Yes.
So he went down to the courthouse. He went to the judge, he turned himself in.
(25:06):
The judge didn't even let him finish his sentence. He said,
fine, you remanded to county custody to the county jail for
six months and he did every second of
that sentence everybody around him had
two-year beefs and three-year beefs that's that's that's prison lingo beefs
uh i guess i don't know i just i heard in the movie one time prison but yeah
(25:27):
no exactly when i was in prison in my dreams bad dreams he did all that time
and everybody was getting let out early. And he wasn't.
Not only that, I said, oh, how was the prison food?
He goes, prison food? He goes, I ate bologna sandwiches like three times a day
for half the time I was in there.
(25:48):
That's what I got. They give you like two bologna sandwiches and that was it.
That's crazy. For a meal. Yeah, for months or- So anyway, my point being that
you don't do what's right because you get the outcome.
You do what's right because it's right. He did what was right because it was right.
And so- And that's what we're called to do as Christians, and that's what it
(26:08):
means for us to make peace.
To lay down our own rights. Being called a son of God is—the correlation,
I think, between that and being a peacemaker is that our God is the original peacemaker.
Yes. So you can't make peace until someone has tried to make war against you.
(26:29):
Ah. Even if it's a little baby war about who gets the parking space or, you know. It's true.
Someone's making war and then you make peace. And otherwise,
you can be peaceful or you can be mellow or mild.
But you're not making peace. Exactly. You could be a peaceful presence.
And those are all not necessarily bad things.
(26:49):
Those are, I mean. But making peace requires an effort and it requires a death.
Yes. Because God made peace with us through a death.
He sent his son, his son of the perfect and sinless life. He died on the cross,
crucified, resurrected. And then he says, if you come through him,
(27:09):
We can have peace because you made war against me in your father, Adam. He brought that.
And as a sinner who has a sin nature, we are born automatically in a state of war with God.
And so I don't want to get too deep into theology there because people have
different views. I'm like, you know.
So, and we can be guilty of our own sin. I'm not talking about original sin
(27:31):
or any of that kind of stuff.
Just we can, we are at war with God because we have a sin nature.
And we are trying to be autonomous.
And live life away from God. And so he made peace with us through Jesus,
through the death of his son.
And so for us to be peacemakers, it requires a death.
It might be a death of our preferences. It might be a death of our dreams.
(27:54):
It might be a death of our rights.
It might be a death of ourselves in some other way.
But it requires a death because all relationships require. Our sacrifice.
Yeah. We talked a lot about that in last week's episode. So we won't go into
that right now. If you want to hear more about that, go listen to last week.
Yeah, please do. But yeah, so blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be
(28:18):
called the sons of God, I think because we will be like God.
And that was a common phrase back in that time period.
Again, grammatical historical context, James and John were called the sons of thunder.
You could be called like, if you were very righteous, the son of righteousness.
Righteousness, you know, the son of, I don't know if you like milk and honey,
the son of milk and honey, but right.
(28:40):
Yeah. And so it was a title really that was given.
And so being called the sons of God is really like being saying,
yeah, these people are clearly embracing Godness.
They're being like God. They're doing the God thing. Godliness. Yeah.
Is that a new word? I've never heard it before. Yeah. Well, listen,
(29:02):
I think that wraps up our coverage of these parts.
And next week, we go into Blessed are the Persecuted, the last two verses of
the Beatitudes, and we'll wrap all this up. That should be exciting.
I'm excited to bring it to conclusion. I feel like I've grown through this. How about you? I do.
I think you said it well earlier in this podcast episode when you were talking
about how we can kind of take the Beatitudes at face value.
(29:24):
Oh, yeah, it says this. That's cool. well, blessed are these, blessed are that.
But actually being able to spend the time and go deeper into each of these in
preparation for these podcast episodes, I think has been really great,
even if some of it is things that we already know, it's really helpful.
Yeah. And summing them all up, I mean, really goes back to those core verses
(29:44):
from last week, love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,
love your neighbor as yourself, just be like Jesus.
There you go. So if you want to be more curious.
Yes. If you want to be truly blessed, blessed, you got to be like Jesus.
All right. Well, God bless you guys. And we will talk to you next week on The
Harder Way Podcast. All right. Bye-bye.
(30:07):
Thank you for listening to The Harder Way Podcast. If you were encouraged by
this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review.
To be the first to know when we publish new episodes, subscribe to The Harder
Way Podcast on your favorite platform. form.
Until next time, remember the words of Christ, blessed are those who are persecuted
(30:27):
for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Music.
Music.
(00:54):
Welcome back, you guys. And we're still in the same series. Where we are going
through the Beatitudes.
Yeah, which is really how to live your best life. And just to review, that word blessed,
markurios, is a word that really refers to your highest, best,
(01:15):
most fulfilling form of life.
Yeah, a true sense of contentment and satisfaction, not just,
oh, I'm in a good mood, right?
And definitely not just, I have lots of money or lots of success,
right? That's not that at all.
It's about prosperity. So, Jesus, you know, the more we get into this,
(01:35):
the more I just pressed yet again with the fact that when Jesus spoke, there were layers.
And he's laying down some deep, deep truths.
I'm reminded of an event that took place many years ago.
I used to study martial arts, and my instructor was an American guy who'd been
(01:55):
in the Air Force, and he learned Tang Soo Do from the Grandmaster of Tang Soo
Do in Korea during his time in the Air Force.
And right after he had served in Vietnam, he was in the – for a few more years,
and he learned from Tang Soo Do.
Interesting. And so he trained all the way up to the fourth degree black belt
level, which is considered a master.
Okay. And then he'd gone on and studied. He'd gotten a black belt in judo,
(02:19):
and he was a master instructor in Filipino stick fighting, and he was a master
instructor in more than one style of Wing Chun Kung Fu, which is like Bruce
Lee's original martial art.
So a real overachiever in that sense. Yeah, it was his passion.
And before he died, he actually had also earned a master in Guangping-style Tai Chi Chuan.
He was really a true martial arts master.
(02:40):
I don't believe he was saved, unfortunately.
And that was always a sad thing that we couldn't see eye to eye on that.
But he was a really good man, as men go.
And there were a lot of good people who were unsaved, as far as human basis goes.
Because remember, we've talked before about the good way and the God way,
right? That there are lots of quote-unquote good people who do quote-unquote
(03:03):
good things, but they're just not doing the God thing. And that's what we're called to do.
Right. It seems flippant to say it, but the God thing.
So the Grandmaster of Tang Soo Do came to the U.S.
This would have been, oh, I don't know, 1996, 95, somewhere in there. Maybe it's 97.
And he was doing a big thing. All the people from all over the U.S.
(03:26):
That were telling pseudo-masters were coming to see their grandmaster,
and he was going to do a demonstration, and there was testing for high-level people.
And so my instructor, Carlin, was invited to come to this event as an honored guest.
And when he came back to the school
on monday we were all those of us we were that were
(03:46):
senior students those of us who were all black belts and were you
know black sashes and come he we were
really we got our seafood in the corner we wanted to ask him all kinds of questions
about it and we were really excited to hear about it and he was really disappointed
and he said that the grandmaster put on a demonstration and he demonstrated
stuff that was at such a high level that the people who were watching,
(04:10):
didn't understand what they were seeing.
Oh, wow. They didn't get it. They didn't get the depth of what was being revealed.
He was literally laying out the deep secrets of this martial arts style.
And people didn't even understand. That no one gets taught, even at a higher black belt level.
And Karin only understood it because of all of his training in other martial
arts. He could see it. And he talked to the grandmaster about it.
(04:31):
Yes, that's what I was doing.
And other people were saying, well, what a waste of time. That didn't show us anything. thing.
And I think about Jesus giving us the Beatitudes and how much we read through them.
And we're just like, oh yeah, yeah, blessed are, blessed are,
blessed are, blessed are. I guess I kind of understand it. Sure,
I can try to be pure in heart or peacemaker or whatever.
And we don't really get the fact that, no, no, he's showing us the deep stuff.
(04:56):
He's telling us the secrets of our, for lack of a better term, our Jesus Kung Fu.
Because Kung Fu just means like lifelong endeavor. Okay.
Yeah. So our lifelong endeavor in Christ, he's showing us the deep secrets.
It's like, you want to be happy? You want to be really happy?
Because I'm sorry, I'm getting a little fired up thinking about this,
but life, life in that time was a drudge. It was drudgery.
(05:22):
It was, I mean, you didn't have, you wore sandals and your feet were dirty.
People had to wash your dirty feet because you were filthy.
You didn't, weren't able to bathe all the time. And you, so you did,
people stunk and they, hygiene was an issue and people died of things that we
cure with a pill from the, you know, from Rite Aid or Walgreens these days. Right.
(05:44):
And, or just common things like lice.
Yeah. Right. We could, we could deal with that. We get a little rid,
get a little small comb, be embarrassed or hide from our neighbors or shave
the kid's head or something.
But they dealt with all this stuff and food insecurity.
It was all about surviving, right? That your whole life was about making sure
that you had food, you had water, you had shelter.
(06:08):
You know, for most people, everything just revolved around that.
And you were intimately aware of the frailty of life because you were,
you know, you couldn't just go to the grocery store and get food, right?
You understood, hey, if we don't have the right kind of weather and these crops
don't come in or these crops die, what are we all going to eat a month from now?
(06:33):
We're not. We're going to die. And that's the thing is when crops didn't come
through, there was famine.
Famine like even right now when you look on the world stage if
if things go bad on a worldwide level
americans will suffer the third
world will die yeah they and then
that's just the fact of the matter or the you know the majority world or
(06:54):
different terms that are politically correct i try not to use politically correct
terms because i don't want to play that game but what we would call the third
world it's it's terrible right and so so their life was a drudgery and so it's
so So Jesus saying this to these
people is like going up to a person who's starving and saying to them,
you know how to have a full belly and never be hungry again?
(07:17):
I could tell you how to be pleasantly plump and fit and fat for the rest of
your life. I can tell you how to, right?
I can tell you how. And then laying that on them and, oh, wow, Jesus is saying that.
And so the next thing he says in our series is what? He says.
(07:40):
And then our next one, Matthew 5, 9 is.
All right, so let's go back. Pure in heart.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall or will see God.
I think the verb there has the strength of it to use the word shall.
(08:03):
Shall is a more forceful word. Like will means it's going to happen.
Shall means it will happen. The reason that I say shall is not even for a theological
reason or any sort of important reason.
It's just that's how it's in my head. because any of you guys who grew up on
(08:23):
the Rankin-Bass claymation Christmas specials, familiar with the little drummer boy,
that's the last line of that show is,
blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Do you know what they
told the little drummer boy?
To quiet down because there was a baby sleeping? No, that's funny.
(08:44):
I was going to say, my dad joke was going to be, come, they told him.
Oh, parumpapumpum. But yeah, so anyway, that's why I said shall.
But I think it is true if you actually look at the verb there,
there is the strength that it would probably be better translated as shall.
So they shall see God.
(09:06):
And it's so interesting because when I hear pure in heart, one of the first
things that comes to my mind when I hear this specific portion of the Beatitudes
is I think about, you know, Jesus saying, suffer the little children to come unto me.
Yeah. And the first thing that I think of is, for the heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it?
(09:27):
And what's the difference between it? Let's think about that for a moment with
a child's heart versus the adult's heart.
Oh, that's a good one. What do you think? I feel like if you're looking at children
versus adults, children don't have the same heirs, right? They don't put on heirs.
(09:48):
They don't have guile.
That's the worst thing. They don't have guile. They don't approach things with
a concept of manipulating.
They're not thinking about status. They're not thinking about how can I get
as far as I can get in this life, right?
A child's mind, a child's heart are very pure because they're very simple.
(10:11):
Not that they're unintelligent, but that they are really in tune with their
basic needs needs, and desires in a way that adults are not because it gets
clouded by so many other things.
Wow. Yeah. And I think when we look at this, don't get confused with like pure thoughts.
(10:33):
Yeah. Whatever good, noble, righteous, think on these things.
Yeah. Philippians 4, we know this. We should think about, we should do that.
And I've been thinking about that a lot this week, you know,
as, you know, just what do we look at and what are our eyes focused on?
And, you know, the importance of what we put into our eyes.
I shall set no evil thing before mine eyes. Oh, wow. That should be in the Bible.
(10:56):
But the heart is that seat of emotions and feelings and that place where it
kind of has a mind of its own.
That's where our brokenness, our unresolved brokenness can become a dominant force in our lives.
And I think the only way for us to be truly pure at heart is to have Christ
(11:17):
ruling and reigning in our lives.
What would you say? I think that's absolutely true because we can't get to that point on our own.
Where we completely remove ourselves from those things and the struggles of
this world and the temptations, right?
That's only going to come through Christ.
(11:38):
And, you know, again, seeing for they shall see God, right?
What does that mean to see God?
I mean, I think you can interpret it in a couple different ways, right?
You can think about kind of literally seeing God in the sense of,
you know, eternity, right?
You can also think about it as seeing the move of God, the hand of God in your life.
(12:03):
Yeah, if your heart's right with God, you're going to see God's hand in things.
You know, I have another thought on that, but before I make that thought,
I want to tell you about an email I got today from Persecuted Brother in Cuba.
Oh, yes. He and I keep in touch. We have kind of our own little coded way of
communicating some stuff we say very plainly, stuff about our Bible courier
(12:29):
ministry and stuff. We don't talk about that.
Yeah, we never discuss any of that kind of stuff, just about personal life.
How are you doing physically? How's your wife?
How can I pray for you? Yeah, things like that. Pajero Church, that kind of stuff.
And he messaged me today, and he said, yesterday, and he said.
(12:49):
Things are going from one calamity to the next, and misery is being compounded
upon misery in Cuba right now.
And he said, we haven't had clean water in 10 days, and we only get electricity for three hours a day.
Which is crazy if you consider the fact that Cuba has the infrastructure in place for that.
(13:11):
Right. And that it's pretty obvious that the lack of water and the lack of electricity
are something that's purposely being inflicted upon the people by the government.
And that was a communist tactic. Right, because if you cycle the power,
what you do is you make it impossible for people to preserve food.
It makes it really difficult for them to do things covertly,
(13:31):
to go sit home and get on their computer and communicate with somebody or to
learn something digitally or just to have a meeting in the light.
You know, it makes it it makes all getting around town becomes more difficult doing anything.
It just keeps you in a constant state of need of need. Yeah. And dependence.
And that's what's what a communist or Marxist communist philosophy is,
(13:52):
is to keep people in that place so they won't rise up against you.
You don't want their belly so full that they can. Well, you think about America.
We have so much abundance that we can sit around and ask ourselves,
which gender do I feel like today? Hmm.
What kind of food do I want to eat? What shall I choose? I think I'll eliminate
all of the white foods from my diet today and only eat green foods or, you know, we.
(14:12):
Yeah. No, honestly, the things that we can sit around and think about.
Right. You know, are those are luxuries. So my persecuted brother said this
to me, said this in the email. He said, but. But.
We rejoice in the Lord in this terrible circumstance because his kingdom is
(14:34):
advancing and people are running,
like running on their feet, with
their feet, as fast as they can to God because he is their only option.
Wow. Right now. So we want to run to God when we have multiple options. That's better.
Yeah. We want to do that now. Jesus even talks about that, those who have not
(14:56):
seen but yet believed. But wow.
I mean, so he sees this hand of God in this. And so I want to talk about for
a minute on this, they will see God, they shall see God.
Put it in a cultural historical context.
Most people in the presence of royalty, well, most people were never in the
(15:17):
presence of royalty. And if they were, they weren't even allowed to look at them.
Yes, you were supposed to avert your eyes. You're supposed to put your head down.
You're never supposed to look upon their face, make eye contact,
anything like that. So who got to look at royalty?
Other royalty. And who else? Family? Yeah. Friends? Close people?
So when he says, when you're pure of heart, I think that really that the things
(15:43):
that you said are there. but I think another layer that Jesus was saying to
this audience was you will be God's friend.
You will be in his inner circle. That's good. You will be in his tight, like tight community.
Yeah. Right. And I'm like, and that's, and that's a powerful thought.
That is a powerful thought. So this becomes a salvific verse.
(16:05):
This becomes a sanctification verse.
And this is a real, this is a real blessed are the persecuted precursor,
which will be next week, because part of the blessing of persecution is that
your heart is either, you're either in or you're out.
Yeah, it's like they say, like level up or leave. Level up or leave.
(16:27):
That's what's happening. Yeah.
So we'll go into that more next week. But I think that that's really part of
what Jesus is promising there is you want to have a good life?
You want to have your best life?
Have a life where you're God's homie, where you're God's friend,
where you get to hang out with the king where you are considered one of his close associates.
Wow. That's really powerful. So that's what we're talking about when we say,
(16:49):
blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
And our next one here, again, as we said a few minutes ago, blessed are the
peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.
Okay. And so again, we have that same verb.
It's a feminine, imperative, third person. I think it's It's a participle,
but I think there's, I think it's still that shall be called, shall be called.
(17:14):
I think the word is kleethesuntai. Okay.
They shall be called, but sons of God.
It says wioi, which is sons in Greek, but with that is implied daughters as well.
Yeah, of course. I mean, it's kind of like mankind and humankind, right?
(17:35):
And a lot of stuff in the Bible when it says, you know, man or man or whatever,
it's really referring to all people.
And it's obvious in the places that it's not right when it's speaking of things
that are gender specific.
But a lot of the time. New Living Translation translate that as children of God, I believe.
And it's like, so just so you know, if you're getting really into like the,
(17:57):
which Bible translation is the most literal or most correct.
If you're the New Living Translation and the NIV, those are what's called dynamic
equivalent or a functional equivalent translation.
And so they're really trying to get the thought across. cross so
children when you're going for if you're going thought in this
context we always better translated children even
(18:19):
though it means sons literally but if you're going more of
a formal equivalent which is like the english standard bible the new nasb new
americans yeah standard bible even the king james version when you're going
on those bibles then then based on that translation theory of trying to be formally
accurate then you have to translate it sons,
(18:41):
sons and then go oh but it means all of us okay so
let's so with that in mind a little theology so let's start
with the blessed are blessed are the peacemakers right so we know what peace
means yeah peace is is the absence of war yeah in the most basic sense in the
(19:01):
most in the most basic but what is it what is it more more.
Peace, on a bigger level, you can say is an absence of conflict,
and it's a state of being okay.
Like, you know, you kind of think of the word shalom, which isn't here,
(19:21):
because obviously the New Testament was written in Greek.
But when Jesus was saying this, they might have had that concept of shalom in
their minds when they're hearing about peace. And that has more to do with just
a holistic state of okayness, right?
So, but an interesting part of that word, because it's not saying blessed are the peaceful.
(19:47):
Yes, I was noticing that actually. I was thinking about that.
It's peacemakers, just the people who actually cause peace. You know, it's interesting.
I've become more of a peacemaker as I've grown in the Lord, as I've matured
in my faith over the last decades.
I remember when we first went into Afghanistan.
And my theory of war is, if you're going to go, if you're in a place where you
(20:10):
absolutely have to go to war, get it done as fast and as hard as you can,
and then say, don't make me come back.
Okay it rather than what we
did and i remember the the soldiers went
over to afghanistan the first group of soldiers and i
remember my dad saying well son your your generation's vietnam war just started
yeah and and my dad spent you know close to a decade or about a decade off and
(20:35):
on in vietnam and so he you know he was he knew what he was talking about and
he turned out to to be right. It was longer than, than Vietnam.
And, but there were a lot of young people who were really anxious to go and
make war. Yeah, that's true. And, and,
I remember the first time I was at the commissary at the Air Force Base,
(20:57):
I was getting groceries there, and I saw a young woman come in,
and she was missing a leg.
And I asked her, and she'd lost it from an explosive device in Afghanistan,
an improvised explosive device.
I was so angry about that. Because the war really hit home for me.
And suddenly, I was like, let's not go show how big and bad we are.
(21:19):
Let's not go make war. Let's make peace.
You know, but what does it take to make peace?
Well, I think in order to make peace, I think you have to be in a state of humility.
Yeah. I was going to say the same thing. You have to be in a state of humility
because oftentimes the things that cause conflict are two people's or one person's
(21:42):
pride rubbing up against someone else or against the other person's pride. Right.
And so you're in a place maybe where you're really fixated on yourself and your own rights.
And this person can't say this to me. And I need to, I need to go in and show
this person that they can't treat me this way. And dah, dah, dah, dah.
(22:03):
And again, what you're saying right now, I would have been, those would have
been bragging points for me decades ago. Yeah.
Oh, I told them this and I said that, and I did this and I, oh yeah,
I showed them and then they kept mouthing than often, so I sock them one or whatever.
But the more you become like Jesus, the more you grow in your faith,
(22:23):
the more you realize this is not the way.
Yes. I have to, and I don't just have to be peaceful, I have to make peace.
So I have to deny myself of my rights, like Jesus did.
Yeah. I have to not say the things that my flesh wants to say.
I mean, there is a time that you have to say things. I'm not saying don't be truthful or don't.
(22:47):
But when I want to tell somebody off or give them what for.
For a justifiable reason. Right. You know, we're not just talking about don't
get mad for no reason or don't be unnecessarily mean to people.
We're saying, hey, check yourself.
And maybe you are justified in the world sense and in a logical sense in causing
(23:11):
a problem with somebody and going up and giving them what for and all that.
But it doesn't mean that that's what you're called to do as a Christian,
because as Christians, we are called to make peace.
And we understand that that's not always possible.
The Apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 12, and he says,
as much as it depends upon you, live at peace with everyone.
(23:33):
And so you can't control other people. You can't control their responses.
You can't control how they treat you. That's beyond our capabilities.
But what you can control is your
own behavior and your own desires to make peace or to create conflict.
And so what we're called to do is to do whatever we can as much as it depends upon us to make peace.
(23:59):
And however the other person responds, we leave that up to God to move upon
them and move upon their heart if he so chooses.
So you're saying you do what's right in the eyes of God because it's right in the eyes of God.
Yes. Not because you're hoping for a specific outcome. I mean, it will be nice.
I had a, I, there was a guy I was talking to one time and I may have mentioned
(24:20):
this in the podcast before, but he had been arrested for drug possession.
And then he, and then he like fled the state, got saved. And it's now 15 years
down the line, 20 years down the line.
And I, and he was trying to go do missionary work and he needed to deal with
this thing before he could get his passport.
I said, it's been 20 years, man. You don't use drugs. You're on the straight and narrow.
(24:44):
Just go turn yourself in to the court. And then, and I said,
you know, they, they, he had, they had a six months in jail sentence that he was supposed to serve.
And this is during a time period when they were letting everybody out of jail
in California, everybody.
I mean, yeah, our jails were overcrowded. Yes.
So he went down to the courthouse. He went to the judge, he turned himself in.
(25:06):
The judge didn't even let him finish his sentence. He said,
fine, you remanded to county custody to the county jail for
six months and he did every second of
that sentence everybody around him had
two-year beefs and three-year beefs that's that's that's prison lingo beefs
uh i guess i don't know i just i heard in the movie one time prison but yeah
(25:27):
no exactly when i was in prison in my dreams bad dreams he did all that time
and everybody was getting let out early. And he wasn't.
Not only that, I said, oh, how was the prison food?
He goes, prison food? He goes, I ate bologna sandwiches like three times a day
for half the time I was in there.
(25:48):
That's what I got. They give you like two bologna sandwiches and that was it.
That's crazy. For a meal. Yeah, for months or- So anyway, my point being that
you don't do what's right because you get the outcome.
You do what's right because it's right. He did what was right because it was right.
And so- And that's what we're called to do as Christians, and that's what it
(26:08):
means for us to make peace.
To lay down our own rights. Being called a son of God is—the correlation,
I think, between that and being a peacemaker is that our God is the original peacemaker.
Yes. So you can't make peace until someone has tried to make war against you.
(26:29):
Ah. Even if it's a little baby war about who gets the parking space or, you know. It's true.
Someone's making war and then you make peace. And otherwise,
you can be peaceful or you can be mellow or mild.
But you're not making peace. Exactly. You could be a peaceful presence.
And those are all not necessarily bad things.
(26:49):
Those are, I mean. But making peace requires an effort and it requires a death.
Yes. Because God made peace with us through a death.
He sent his son, his son of the perfect and sinless life. He died on the cross,
crucified, resurrected. And then he says, if you come through him,
(27:09):
We can have peace because you made war against me in your father, Adam. He brought that.
And as a sinner who has a sin nature, we are born automatically in a state of war with God.
And so I don't want to get too deep into theology there because people have
different views. I'm like, you know.
So, and we can be guilty of our own sin. I'm not talking about original sin
(27:31):
or any of that kind of stuff.
Just we can, we are at war with God because we have a sin nature.
And we are trying to be autonomous.
And live life away from God. And so he made peace with us through Jesus,
through the death of his son.
And so for us to be peacemakers, it requires a death.
It might be a death of our preferences. It might be a death of our dreams.
(27:54):
It might be a death of our rights.
It might be a death of ourselves in some other way.
But it requires a death because all relationships require. Our sacrifice.
Yeah. We talked a lot about that in last week's episode. So we won't go into
that right now. If you want to hear more about that, go listen to last week.
Yeah, please do. But yeah, so blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be
(28:18):
called the sons of God, I think because we will be like God.
And that was a common phrase back in that time period.
Again, grammatical historical context, James and John were called the sons of thunder.
You could be called like, if you were very righteous, the son of righteousness.
Righteousness, you know, the son of, I don't know if you like milk and honey,
the son of milk and honey, but right.
(28:40):
Yeah. And so it was a title really that was given.
And so being called the sons of God is really like being saying,
yeah, these people are clearly embracing Godness.
They're being like God. They're doing the God thing. Godliness. Yeah.
Is that a new word? I've never heard it before. Yeah. Well, listen,
(29:02):
I think that wraps up our coverage of these parts.
And next week, we go into Blessed are the Persecuted, the last two verses of
the Beatitudes, and we'll wrap all this up. That should be exciting.
I'm excited to bring it to conclusion. I feel like I've grown through this. How about you? I do.
I think you said it well earlier in this podcast episode when you were talking
about how we can kind of take the Beatitudes at face value.
(29:24):
Oh, yeah, it says this. That's cool. well, blessed are these, blessed are that.
But actually being able to spend the time and go deeper into each of these in
preparation for these podcast episodes, I think has been really great,
even if some of it is things that we already know, it's really helpful.
Yeah. And summing them all up, I mean, really goes back to those core verses
(29:44):
from last week, love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,
love your neighbor as yourself, just be like Jesus.
There you go. So if you want to be more curious.
Yes. If you want to be truly blessed, blessed, you got to be like Jesus.
All right. Well, God bless you guys. And we will talk to you next week on The
Harder Way Podcast. All right. Bye-bye.
(30:07):
Thank you for listening to The Harder Way Podcast. If you were encouraged by
this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review.
To be the first to know when we publish new episodes, subscribe to The Harder
Way Podcast on your favorite platform. form.
Until next time, remember the words of Christ, blessed are those who are persecuted
(30:27):
for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.