Tonight we’re going to look at the next attitude Jesus said we’re to have as His disciples. – “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” I wonder what that means, for they shall see God.
Remember we said that “Blessed” means happy. We sometimes think of happiness as an experience fueled by feelings and circumstances, but Jesus says that it is – to have an inward contentedness unaffected by surrounding conditions. It’s to be graciously approved by God and to receive the applause of heaven. To be blessed isn’t a superficial feeling based on circumstances, but a deep supernatural experience of contentedness based on the fact that your life is right with God.
So we receive the CALL to Purity. The Greek word used here in the NT for “pure” means to cleanse your mind and emotions. Scholars suggest the word has (2) meanings. (1) To make pure by cleansing from dirt, filth, or contamination—like metals being refined by fire until they are free from impurities. (2) It refers to being unmixed, having no double allegiance. I think this is where this beatitude affects us.
Purity isn’t just being clean; it’s being single-minded and intentionally focused. In this instance, God wants us to be focused on His kingdom and righteousness.
He reminds us in Matt. 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”
Put these (2) definitions together. A person who is pure is one who has been cleansed in his character so that the way he looks in public is the way he is in private. You’re just like Jesus even when no one is watching.
Story: A deacon and son were driving down a country road and saw a watermelon patch a little way off the highway. The deacon told his son to keep a lookout while he went to get a melon. He snuck into the patch, took a melon and called to the boy, "Is anyone coming? Look both ways." The boy wisely responded, "But Daddy, shouldn’t we look up too?"
Having a pure heart is to be so close to God that we don’t have to look up to see if He’s watching. It means we have a personal relationship with God and we only have to look within our heart to see Him. ”Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Jesus didn’t say, “Blessed are the pure, for they will see God.” If he had, then the religious would’ve been happy because they were experts at outward purity. They had all sorts of rules on what to eat, wear, and how far you could walk on the Sabbath. They did everything trying to make the outside look good, but they were covering up the inside.
They were covering up their heart. This is where this series began on Oct. 12th when we talked about guarding your heart. The religious forget that God already knows the CONDITION of the Heart. Jesus reserved his harshest words for those who knew how to mask their true heart.
A Pharisee is nothing more than a religious pretender – someone who outwardly portrays faith but inwardly is far from God. And let me assure you – there are more Pharisees today than there were in Jesus’ day. Jesus warned in Matt. 23:
”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 also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you’re full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Mt. 23: 25-28
They thought their religious acts made them pure but they were wrong. And if you think that your religious acts make you pure, then you’re wrong, too. Jesus saw through their pettiness and looked right into their hearts – In Mt. 15:8, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
Did you know that when God looks at you He pays little attention to your outward appearance? That might be hard to hear because some of us spend so much time on what we look like. But ultimately, this doesn’t matter to God as he looks past what we look like and how we behave, and He focuses on our heart – because that is who we truly are.
”All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart.” Pr. 21:2
“As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.” Pr. 27:19
In other words the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. The Lord said through Jeremiah in Jer. 17: 9-10. “The heart is deceitfully wicked above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”
Jeremiah says the heart is desperately wicked and beyond cure – terminally diseased. The heart is so sick that no medication can heal it. The Reformers in Christian history called this disease total depravity because it affects every part of us – what we think, how we feel, and how we behave.
I think it was Billy Graham who said, “We’re suffering from only one disease in the world. Our basic problem isn’t a race problem. Our basic problem isn’t a poverty problem. Our basic problem isn’t a war problem. Our basic problem is a heart problem.” The problem of sin isn’t the world around us, but rather the world within us.
Make whatever excuses you wish to protect or hide your sins and carnal attitudes – not one of them will stand up in the face of God’s holiness. God will never accept anything less than total purity within you and me. We don’t sin because of our surroundings; we sin because of what’s in our heart. That’s why God is so consumed with the purity of our hearts. He wants His best in us!
If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel of wine, you still get sewage.
The Bible clearly explains that a little bit of sin taints the whole life. So the question at hand is how can I have a life free of hypocrisy? How can I live my daily life in the purity God has placed in me? Let’s see what the Bible says.
”Since we’re surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race marked out for us. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Heb. 12:1ff
How can we LAY aside the Sin that Besets Us? Realize your sin and its cost, confess it, fight the temptation, and put it behind you. In other words, REMOVE the obstacles, weights, and excuses and follow God.
A couple from Bakersfield, CA purchased a new boat, but it had some serious problems. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get the boat going. It was sluggish no matter which way they turned or how much power was applied. After an hour of trying to make it go, they putted to a nearby marina, hoping someone could tell them what was wrong. A thorough check on the topside of the boat revealed everything was in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the out drive went up and down, and the propeller was the correct size and pitch. Then, one of the marina guys jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking with laughter. Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer!
Ridiculous! But not more ridiculous than the many believers that are puttering around wondering why their Christian life isn’t working – it’s simple, they have sin attached beneath the surface of their lives that needs to be removed.
”If you confess your sin, He is faithful and just to forgive of your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.” 1 Jn. 1:9
The next thing we need to do is RUN with Endurance the Race Set Before us.
ACCEPT the challenge or call of God to seek first His kingdom and righteousness. Realize that the Christian life is serious – it’s not a game – it is a divine call.
Next we have to FIX our Eyes on Jesus. CONCENTRATE on knowing and obeying God’s Word and becoming just like Jesus. Don’t take your eyes off of the prize. Jesus is our hope and example. He models how we are supposed to live.
”Set your mind on things above and not on the things of earth.” Col 3:1
But probably the best thing we can do is REMEMBER Jesus When You Want to Give Up. Be willing to ENDURE difficulty and opposition in view of the cross. When the going gets tough… The tough (faithful) remember Jesus and put their trust in Him.
Paul said, ”Be steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord knowing that your labor is not in vain.” 1 Cor. 15:58
So it’s time to get into the RACE – REMOVE the obstacles, ACCEPT God’s challenge, CONCENTRATE on Jesus, and REMEMBER what He did for you.
And then we have God’s PROMISE. Those who possess purity within their hearts will receive a wonderful blessing – they will see God.
They shall see God – future tense – meaning that people with a pure heart shall be continuously seeing God at work in their lives. That is, the pure in heart shall experience intimate fellowship with God on a moment-by-moment basis. When we walk in purity, God will give us spiritual sight to see Him at work in you.
In 1982 the LA Times carried the story of Anna Mae Pennica, a 62 year old woman who had been blind from birth. At 47 she married a man she met in Braille class, and for the first 15 years of their marriage he did the seeing for both of them until he completely lost his vision.
Mrs. Pennica had never seen the green of spring or the blue of a winter sky. Yet because she had grown up in a loving, supportive family, she never felt resentful about her handicap and always had a remarkably cheerful spirit.
Then in Oct. 1981 Dr. Thomas Pettit of the Jules Stein Eye Institute of UCLA performed surgery to remove the rare congenital cataracts from the lens of her left eye – and Mrs. Pennica saw for the first time ever! The newspaper account doesn’t record her initial response, but it does tell us that she found that everything was “so much bigger and brighter” than she ever imagined.
While she immediately recognized her husband and others she had known well, other acquaintances were taller or shorter, heavier or skinnier than she had pictured them. Since that day Mrs. Pennica has hardly been able to wait to wake up in the morning, splash her eyes w/ water, put on her glasses, and enjoy the changing morning light. Her vision is almost 20/30 – good enough to pass a driver’s test.
Think how wonderful it must have been for her when she looked for the first time at the faces she had only felt, or when she saw the Pacific sunset or a tree waving its branches or a bird in flight. The gift of physical sight is wonderful. The miracle of seeing for the first time can hardly be described. Yet there is a seeing that surpasses even this – and that’s seeing God.
The irony of Mrs. Pennica’s “miracle,” according to Dr. Pettit, was that “surgical techniques available as far back as the 1940’s could have corrected her problem.” Mrs. Pennica lived 40 of her 62 sightless years needlessly blind.
Now hear this: The technique for curing spiritual blindness has existed for 2000 years. The procedure is radical and 100% effective because God is the physician. To become “pure in heart” you must receive a new heart.
”Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Mt. 5:8
There’s an animal in Minnesota called an ermine. An ermine is a short-tailed weasel with the unique ability to change its fur to a snow-white in the winter. God created this animal with this feature to protect it from predators. The ermine instinctively protects his white coat against anything that would make it dirty.
Fur hunters try to take advantage of this unusual trait. So they don’t set a snare to catch them, but instead they find the ermine’s home, usually a cleft in a rock or a hollow tree, and they smear the entrance with grime. Then the hunters set their dogs loose to chase the ermine. The frightened animal flees toward home but refuses to enter because of the filth. Rather than soil his white coat, the ermine is trapped by the dogs and captured while preserving his purity. For the ermine, purity is more precious than life.
For the Christian, purity ought to be more precious than life, because without purity we can never really have life. Without a pure heart, we can never see God.
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
