Fortunate Are The Pure In Heart
Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 25 May 2002 19:00
Matthew 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. "
Over 100 years ago Charles Spurgeon began his lesson on Matthew 5:8 with these words: "It was a peculiarity of the great Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, that his teaching was continually aimed at the hearts of people. Other teachers had been content with outward moral reformation, but he sought the source of all the evil, that he might cleanse the spring from which all sinful thoughts, and words, and actions come. He insisted over and over again that, until the heart was pure, the life would never be clean." I pulled out this 100 year old quote to prove to you that what we're going to talk about today is not new. In fact, it's much older than 100 years.
Believe it or not, the religion of Jesus is a religion of the heart. You cannot understand what Jesus teaches if you do not understand this. And the launching pad for Jesus' consistent appeal to the heart is this beatitude: "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."
Three questions command our attention based on this brief teaching. What does it mean to be pure in heart? What does it mean to see God? How are these two things related to one another?
1. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE PURE IN HEART?
In the minds of first century Jews, the heart represented the real you, the private self - the whole private self - your thoughts and desires, your dreams and your decisions. It meant more than just the emotions. In fact, when Jesus described his own character he said, "I am gentle and humble in heart ?" (Matt. 11:29) The heart is the whole, inner person, the real person. So when Jesus says, "blessed are the pure in heart," he is talking about our emotional life but he's also talking about much more. He means, "Blessed are those whose thoughts and desires are pure, and blessed are those whose willpower is focused and blessed are those who are emotionally devoted to God." Let's unpack that!
Later on in the sermon on the mount Jesus said this: "You have heard that it was said, 'do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt. 5:27-28) Clearly, having a pure heart means having pure thoughts and desires. Jesus goes way beyond external behavior. Even to entertain with delight the idea of adultery is virtually equivalent to committing it. The pure in heart do not delight in wrongdoing, even thinking about it. So those delicious little fantasies that we allow ourselves, the angry conversations when we finally tell off old so and so, all those old resentments that we nurture ? they amount to polluting our hearts according to Jesus. Having a pure heart means having pure thoughts and desires.
Secondly, pure heartedness, according to Jesus, means being willfully focused on God. In this sense, pure means undiluted, or unmixed. So pure heart means undivided attention; a willful concentration of our lives and our priorities around a relationship with God. Speaking in the same sermon again Jesus said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matt. 6:19-21) In other words, whatever is most important to you, whatever commands your attention and your time, whatever most impacts your choices the most, that's where your heart is. I like the definition that pastor and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard gave. He defined purity of heart as "to will one thing."
This is what the Psalmist sings in Psalm 27. "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple." This is what James meant when he said, "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." (James 4:8) In other words, to have an impure heart is to have a divided mind. To have your life and your energy focused on more than one thing is to invite impurity.
So, to be pure in heart means, first of all, to have pure thoughts and desires. To be pure in heart secondly means to be willfully focused on your relationship with God and to have that as central in your life. And to be pure in heart means to be emotionally devoted to God, to be in a love relationship with God.
If someone asked me if I know George Clooney or Shaquille O'Neal I could say yes according to all of the usual conversational conventions we use when we refer to famous people. But, of course, I don't have a relationship with either man. I don't really know either man. In the same way, we can say we believe in God, and most people do, but they do not have a real relationship with Him. They do not know how to communicate with Him. They have not made loving Him the organizing priority of their lives. To have a pure heart is to have this kind of a real knowledge of God and to love Him. That's exactly what Jesus meant when he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart!" In this particular instance, you may remember, he separates out just the emotional and relational aspect of the idea of heart. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," meaning love Him with your whole person.
Purity of heart means to have pure thoughts and desires, to be willfully focused on your connection with God, and to be enjoying a love-relationship with God. It means to have your whole self, your real self, your inner self transformed by an ongoing connection with God so that you fully desire to have your thoughts and motivations, your willpower and your emotions governed by God.
It was exactly the lack of purity of heart that received Jesus' fiercest criticism. "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." (Matt. 12:33-34)
He makes this same point in a later confrontation with the Pharisees. "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 will be clean." (Matt. 25:25-26) A hypocrite is someone who wears one face at work and another face at home and yet another at church. A hypocrite is someone who uses one set of words at work or with friends and another set at home. A hypocrite is someone who says they value God and their family, but their plans and their work and their dreams reveal that they value money or accomplishment. A hypocrite is someone whose family looks good at church, but they're falling apart behind closed doors at home. Hypocrites focus on outward appearance. Hypocrites focus on the form of religion. But Jesus focuses on the heart.
Dirty pot illustration
This is the point Jesus made about our lives. If we allow God to clean up the inside of our lives, what he calls the heart, then the outside will also be clean. But if we focus on keeping the outside clean while the inside remains dirty, we will work our brains out and still not be successful.
It is not that Jesus was unconcerned about outward behavior. In fact, he said, "whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me." (John 14:21) And he told his followers, to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you." Jesus was very concerned about outward behavior. But he knew that outward behavior was a manifestation of the inner life.
That's why God's blessing flows to the pure in heart! I like what John Piper said. "The heart is utterly crucial to Jesus. What we are in the deep, private recesses of our lives is what he cares about most. Jesus did not come into the world simply because we have some bad habits that need to be broken. He came into the world because we have such dirty hearts that need to be purified."
2. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SEE GOD?
Now we turn our attention to our second question: What does it mean to see God?
At its most basic level, the phrase has the same meaning that we give it when we use it. It means to be in someone's presence. So to see God means to experience God's presence.
The experience of the prophets and pioneers who wrote the Bible makes it clear that to be in God's presence is an awesome, overwhelming spectacle, which consistently seems to result in two things. It results in a clear picture of the unimaginable power and greatness of God and it results in a dreary picture of our own spiritual condition.
For example, in a vision recorded in Isaiah 6, the prophet Isaiah sees God and he is completely overwhelmed. "Woe to me," he says, "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." Similarly, at the end of his life Job encounters God and he too is awestruck. "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6)
Jeff Haney's dream - saw blackness of his own heart - freeing and overwhelming
To be in God's presence is to be awestruck by the power and greatness of God and to be overwhelmed by our own spiritual blackness. And such an experience is incredibly freeing. We don't have to maintain the front anymore. We don't have to be something we're not.
Recovery persons talk about enabling. Takes a great deal of energy to pull it off. Desperate for everything to look okay. But when we get near to God realize we're not okay, but that's okay because God loves us anyway.
Being in God's presence is a freeing and overwhelming experience of God's power and of our deficiency. But being in God's presence is also an experience of tremendous grace. Throughout the Psalms, the singers use phrases like the one we read in Psalm 27. "Hear my voice when I call, O Lord; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, 'Seek his face!' Your face, Lord I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper." In other words, to see God's face is associated with God's help and His gracious favor.
To see God is to be in His presence. This experience is an encounter with God greatness and power and comes with an awareness of our own spiritual depravity. This experience is also an encounter with tremendous grace. This encounter, this "seeing God" is available to us now through a relationship with God.
John 14
3. HOW ARE THEY RELATED?
So how are purity in heart and seeing God related? According to Jesus, the pure in heart are fortunate; they are blessed, because they will see God. Purity in heart is the prerequisite for seeing God. The impure are not admitted into God's amazing grace, nor are they permitted to see His greatness. No wonder our impurity allows us to think better of ourselves than we ought to think. In our impurity, we never get a real picture of how big God is.
I don't know about you, but this makes me feel somewhat overcome. I want to experience God's grace. I want the freedom of seeing His greatness, even at the cost of seeing my deficiency. But I don't have pure thoughts and I'm not fully focused on God and I sometimes don't feel like I love God. If you're like me, you may want to object. "Hey, Ed, I'm not perfect, but I'm not so bad." I want to read you something Max Lucado said.
All of us occasionally do what is right. A few predominately do what is right. But do any of us always do what is right? According to Paul we don't. "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10, NKJV).
Some may beg to differ. "I'm not perfect, Max, but I'm better than most folks. I've led a good life. I don't break the rules. I don't break hearts. I help people. I like people. Compared to others, I think I could say I'm a righteous person."
I used to try that on my mother. She'd tell me that my room wasn't clean, and I'd ask her to go with me to my brother's room. His was always messier than mine. "See, my room is clean; just look at his."
Never worked. She'd walk me down the hall to her room. When it came to tidy rooms, my mom was righteous. Her closet was just right. Her bed was just right. Her bathroom was just right. Compared to hers, my room was, well, just wrong. She would show me her room and say, "This is what I mean by clean."
God does the same. He points to himself and says, "This is what I mean by righteousness."
Purity of heart is doing what God would do, thinking what God would think and loving God fully. So what are we to do? We seem hopelessly destined to be denied the experience of "seeing God" because of our lack of purity.
I'm married to a woman who is very different than Max Lucado's mother. She tells her boys and her husband to help her clean. She shows them the standard and she expects them to do their cleaning. But after they're finished, she sneaks in and cleans the bathrooms and their bedrooms fully. She makes them meet her standards and little by little over time raises our sights for cleanliness to her level.
That's what God offers today.