Sermon Central
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Be-Attitudes #7 - Pure In Heart Series
Contributed by James Galbraith on Mar 6, 2007 (message contributor)
Summary: Continuing my Be-Attitudes series, focusing on the avoidance of hypocrisy and the need to focus on Jesus as the ONLY way to God.
The Be-Attitudes #7 – Pure in heart
By James Galbraith
First Baptist Church, Port Alberni
March 4, 2007
Text
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Introduction - Is anyone pure?
Charles Swindoll in "Growing Deep in the Christian Life," writes about a man who bought fried chicken dinners for himself and his date late one afternoon. The attendant at the fast food outlet, however, inadvertently gave him the proceeds from the day’s business - a bag of money (much of it cash) instead of fried chicken.
"After driving to their picnic site," Swindoll writes, "the two of them sat down to enjoy some chicken. They discovered a whole lot more than chicken - over $800! Now many people would have kept the money, and bought themselves a lunch much nicer than KFC!
But this man did something unusual. He quickly put the money back into the car and drove all the way back. Mr. Clean got out, walked in, and became an instant hero.
"By then, the manager was frantic. The guy with the bag of money looked the manager in the eye and said, ’I want you to know I came by to get a couple of chicken dinners and wound up with all this money here.’
"Well, the manager was thrilled to death. He said, ’Let me call the newspaper. I’m gonna have your picture put in the local newspaper. You’re one of the most honest men I’ve ever heard of.’
"To which the man quickly responded, ’Oh, no. No, no - don’t do that!’ Then he leaned closer and whispered,
’You see, the woman I’m with is not my wife.”
Harder to find than lost cash is a perfect heart.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Being pure in heart does not mean being perfect.
No one can attain perfection, and if they could,
they wouldn’t “see God”, they would “be God”!
In fact, there are two meanings for this phrase that deserve our attention.
Inward/Outward
The first, and more common meaning, is keeping our hearts in line with our actions, and vice versa. Being pure in heart, in this sense, means that what we do truly reflects who we are.
The second meaning of being “pure in heart” is that we are focused.
I’ll explain that later, but let’s look first at this idea that
what we do reflects who we really are.
Ulterior motives
I’m going to share with you a couple of examples that have a common theme running through them. Hopefully, they will cast light on what being “pure in heart” means.
Have you ever been helped by someone, only to find out that they helped you because they wanted to get something from you?
Sometimes we expect this, and it is perfectly acceptable. We “help” our employers so that we will be paid by them; if they didn’t pay us we would not help them for long!
But what I’m referring to is called “acting with ulterior motives”
– someone tells you that they are helping you for one reason, but they have another reason that they are keeping hidden from you.
It’s the kind of help that, offered freely at the time,
we later find out actually came with a price.
And more often than not, that price is far higher than the help given.
Not keeping promises
Or have you ever had someone say they would do one thing, and then do another? This is not always bad either.
Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons:
He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
29 ”‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
