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Blessed Are the Pure in Heart: Matthew 5:8
October 22, 2000
Thank you for getting settled.
Friends, a day is coming, a day when we will stand bare before the judge of the earth, just us and our creator God. All life up to that point is prelude, introduction, preface.
We face at that time not just the issue of judgment in an impersonal sense - whether we will be “in” or “out”
We face the person of God – whether we will be drawn into his presence and see Him as He is, or be cast away from him forever.
The opposites grow greater. We will either see God or we will be cast from his sight
To see God is the supreme good of human life. It is the ultimate purpose for which we were created. By seeing God I mean being directly confronted and overwhelmed with His person, being bathed in His love and holiness, being recognized and known in the deepest sense by the One who made us and has been watching over us all through this life, in whose image we have been made. In seeing God will have come home.
The Scripture speaks of Moses as one whom the Lord knew face to face. Certainly Moses had an intimacy of fellowship with God that was quite out of the ordinary. Yet, even Moses longed to see more of God. He asked God, “show me your glory,” God told him “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name to you, but, you cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.”
God was incredibly kind to Moses is revealing His goodness to him in the way He did. What a honor and blessing even to see this much of God! Likely none of us will experience in this life what Moses did there on that mountain.
But one day we will. It’s coming. One day when the curse is removed God will let us see his face, revealed in and through His Son:
Revelation 22:3-4 says, “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”
How is it that we will be able to see the Lord then? Because the curse will have been removed. There will be no vestige of sin. We will have new bodies and be like Jesus.
John puts it this way in his first epistle.
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”
In a blink of an eye we will be transformed, we will be like him and we will see him. We will have come home. We will be ourselves finally. The reality of who we are now is hidden, then we will appear with him in glory.
There is then a correlation between our seeing God and our being made finally and completely pure.
The sixth beatitude says that the ones favored by God (who are also poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who hunger for righteousness, and who are merciful) are ones that are pure in heart, for they will see God.
What does it mean to be pure?
What does it mean to be pure in heart.
And does this say that we only see God if we can make ourselves pure?
The word translated as “pure” here has two general meanings.
The first and most obvious meaning is that of personal inward moral purity, holiness, righteousness.
The second and perhaps most accurate meaning is that of being single-minded of purpose, undivided, and true.
The first refers to our becoming like Jesus in every way.
The second refers to our following after Jesus in single minded devotion.
These obviously go together. To follow after Jesus means to become like Him.
The beatitude says we are to become pure in heart.
In the Bible the heart is the center of your total personality, the source of your focus and direction in life.
Purity of heart does not mean to contrast the heart with the head, feeling with thinking, being with doing, or intentions with actions. Purity of heart includes all of these – action, attitude, deed, sincerity, thinking, feeling, and willing.
In Jesus’ day this emphasis on purity of heart may have been heard as a contrast between inner moral purity and outward ceremonial purity, purity determined by observance of the Old Covenant purity laws regarding foods, contact with gentiles, dead bodies, etc.
Jesus taught that it is not what we eat and touch that makes us impure and unclean, but what comes forth from the heart – evil thoughts, murder, theft, slander, and such. These are what makes us unclean. The problem is inside.
Psalm 51:10 provides a perfect sense of Jesus’ meaning when David says “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
These are parallel statements and repeat a similar thought.
When David says “Create in me a clean heart,” he is asking God not merely to forgive him but to transform him inwardly. He knows that his sin with Uriah and Bathsheba flowed out of a heart which was impure and unclean, and he knows that if he is to be clean then God must make him clean.
When David says “Renew a steadfast spirit in me,” he is asking God to create within him a single-minded and unwavering devotion that will keep him on the right path.
The sixth beatitude says that those with such a heart will see God, and implies that only those with such a heart will see God.
So, we face the dilemma. To see God requires purity of heart. But we cannot make ourselves pure in heart? Is there any hope?
We will never be sufficiently free of the curse to see Him until we have a new body which is no longer prone to sin. Even with the present and abiding Holy Spirit we still in ourselves are not as pure as we must ultimately be to see God. The promised reward of seeing God assumes God’s intervention and work in completing our salvation. Until that time, while we remain in this body, we will in fact waver in our devotion; we are not and will not be utterly steadfast. Thus we will not see God now as we will then. Paul cried out, Who will rescue me from this body of death.” The answer, “Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ my Lord!”
But the blessing of the kingdom is not merely and only future. The kingdom of God has broken into the present.
In the beatitude Jesus is pronouncing blessed those who by God’s grace have heard the call of Jesus and responded to Him.
Congratulations to you who are and will steadfastly follow me – for you will see God! If you throw your lot in with me, if you will follow me single-mindedly and take what comes as a result then you will receive the reward of rewards - -you will see God!
Well, who are these people? To whom belongs the kingdom? Who will see God?
The poor in spirit who know and mourn over their sin and long for righteousness, these are the same who are pure in heart and who will see God.
Jesus says that as these poor in spirit look to Jesus, as they respond to Him and follow after Him and cling to Him – these are blessed, to these is the kingdom!
The pure in heart are those who believe in Jesus and His words, and who keep coming to Jesus in their need, who keep seeking from him forgiveness and comfort and rightness. The truly repentant are not perfectly pure, otherwise they wouldn’t be need to be repentant.
These who keep believing and keep repenting see God in two ways.
First, in believing in and seeing Jesus we are in fact seeing God.
Philip said to Jesus in the upper room, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
Paul put it this way: “For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
That is, as we have fellowship with the Lord Jesus and see and know Him we are seeing the glory of God.
Second, our fellowship with God through Jesus by the Spirit even now in this body opens up to us the reality of God’s presence. Through the work of Jesus we have real fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit who works faith in us and transforms us is Himself the Lord of Glory!
Third, in continuing to repent and believe, in continuing to follow after Jesus, we are being transformed into his likeness, and in this transformation more able by faith to see God.
It is true that God sometimes removes His presence from even his most obedient and passionate saints. They experience a dark night of the soul as their faith is tested in the crucible of suffering.
But generally there is a correspondence between our purity – both in the sense of our inner moral purity and our single-mindedness of purpose, and the degree to which we know the blessing of seeing God.
Entanglement in sin obscures our view. Lack of devotion to the word of God dims our sight. The pursuit of earthy treasure takes our sight off the Lord. Anger and bitterness cloud our eyes. Ingratitude pushes us far from Jesus.
When we realize this is true we will realize both that we have grieved the Lord and that we have wasted out purpose, and we will not feel great. We may feel downright terrible, even, well, pretty poor, pretty poor in spirit. And we will cry out to God as David did
Create in me a clean heart oh God.
Renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Let us pray. |
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