Have you ever let a little kid drink out of your cup? I was brave one time. One time. Years ago we were driving down to Indiana to see Annie’s parents. We only had Evan and Reese at the time and they were little. Evan kept saying he was thirsty and so – fully informed of the risks – I reached behind my seat and handed him my water bottle. With the energy of any OT prophet I warned him not to backwash. I knew as the words were coming out of my mouth I was wasting my breath. As I heard him take that big breath that kids take after a big swig he said, “Here Dad” and handed my water bottle back to me. But what he handed back to me was not what I handed to him. I took one look at it and said, “Keep it.” I handed him clear, pure water and what he returned to me looked more like a lava lamp.
Our study today is on Matthew 5:8, where Jesus is teaching the beatitudes. In this verse he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” What a wonderful promise! I want to explore three points: 1) God’s Focus On Our Hearts, 2) Pure Of Heart, 3) Seeing God
GOD’S FOCUS: OUR HEARTS
Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in HEART.” As long as there have been men God’s priority with men is the condition of their hearts. The greatest command is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” (Mk 12:30). Loving other Christians is to be sincere from the heart, like 1 Peter 1:22 teaches, “Now that you have been purified by the truth…have sincere love for each other and love one another deeply from the heart.”
Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah when he criticized the Pharisees, “These people honor me with their lips but their HEARTS are far from me…” (Mk 7:6). God is not a God of ceremony and outward pretending towards Him. God is a God first of our hearts. God is not pleased with outward faking. He sees through it.
David said in Psalm 51, “You desire truth in my inmost being.” Jesus said it wasn’t what goes into a man that makes him unclean (he was talking about food), but instead what made a man unclean was what came up out of his heart – things like evil thoughts, adultery, greed, sexual immorality, arrogance, slander….” (Mk 7:20-22).
See the concern for the heart? There has never been any time in history where God’s focus was not man’s heart. He rebuked the Israelites for their hard stubborn hearts of stone. He promised to give them new hearts of flesh. He didn’t want mere outward compliance, but he wanted obedience from the heart.
APPLICATION: The focal point of our christian life everyday is the condition of our hearts. Not our outward performance. If you want to grow out of your weakness for pleasing others turn your attention to your own heart and growing there. Live to please God with your heart and you won’t live to please people with appearances.
APPLICATION to the APPLICATION: There is no real Christian growth if there is no consistent, meaningful attention to our hearts.
APPLICATION: Be concerned about God’s heart. Its an outgrowth of being concerned God is pleased with our hearts. Being concerned about our hearts will make us concerned about God’s heart. God prizes someone when they are a person AFTER HIS OWN HEART. God praised David as “a man after my own heart.” (Acts 13:22). God promised in Jeremiah 3:15 to bless Israel with “shepherds after my own heart who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.”
PURE OF HEART
Jesus said, “Blessed are the PURE in heart…” Pure. The word Jesus uses means “clean,” or “clear,” or “pure.” One description I read said, to be “free from admixture or adhesion of anything that soils, adulterates, or corrupts.”
Basically it means having an honest and sincere heart. That within our hearts we have thoroughly true motives and our motives aren’t mixed with evil thoughts, selfish gain, and so on. Pure of heart means that when we act we act with a clean conscience – that there is nothing we secretly are condemning ourselves for and that there is nothing we’re trying to hide. Pure means that our thoughts back up what we do and say rather than hide behind what we do and say. Pure means our hearts are not polluted with the backwash of the world and sin.
What does pure look like? How does the bible give us examples?
- It means that we don’t have a divided heart. Instead we “love the Lord our God with ALL our heart….” (Mk 12:30). All our heart means that we don’t let our heart have divided devotions. Who or what so successfully competes with God for your heart’s devotion?
- Pure means what we do we are sincere about. David said in 1 Chronicles 29:17, “I know my God that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent.” Are our actions hiding our true intentions or are our actions displaying our true intentions? What does James 4:8 say? “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
- Pure in heart produces real love. First Timothy 1:5 says, “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a PURE HEART and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” This is what 1 Peter 1:22 says too, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.”
- Pure means holding onto sound doctrine. First Timothy 3:9 says deacons “must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear (PURE) conscience.”
- Pure means sincere worship. Second Timothy 2:22 says, “Fleeing the evil desires of youth and pursuing righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” Hebrews 10:22 says, “Let us draw near to God with a SINCERE HEART and with full assurance that faith brings, having our HEARTS SPRINKLED TO CLEANSE US from a guilty conscience….”
- This is contrasted with the rebuke Jesus gave to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-28
- This is contrasted with the rebuke Jesus gave to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-28
- Pure means understanding your freedom in Christ from the law, and not demanding more restrictions of yourself or others than Christ does. What do I mean? Turn to Titus 1:15….[READ]…. This verse is saying that there are Jewish influencers who are trying to bind people’s consciences and actions to follow a bunch of man-made rules. But they do not believe and they are corrupted in their minds and consciences. But we who believe in Christ are now purified, and our hearts are now pure, and so all the things these strict teachers and influencers are trying to restrict us with have no effect on us, because “To the pure all things are pure.”
- I’ll add one more application and take it in a little different direction. “To those who are corrupted [*not pure*] and do not believe, nothing is pure.” They soil everything. They treat everything as impure, they talk about everything in an impure way. I’ll leave that right there for you to consider.
- I’ll add one more application and take it in a little different direction. “To those who are corrupted [*not pure*] and do not believe, nothing is pure.” They soil everything. They treat everything as impure, they talk about everything in an impure way. I’ll leave that right there for you to consider.
- Purity means pursuing the perfection of holiness. Second Corinthians 7:1 says, “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us PURIFY ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” Getting rid of anything and everything that pollutes us, because we have reverence for God and desire to be holy like He is holy.
A pure heart is something that God creates. “Create in me a pure heart, O God,” David cried out in Psalm 51, “and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Jesus told the disciples, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” God’s word makes us clean of all our sinful filth when we believe it with all our hearts. “God did not discriminate between us Jews and the Gentiles,” Acts 15:9 says, “for he purified their hearts by faith.”
APPLICATION: Put your faith in Jesus Christ so that you can have a truly pure heart.
SEEING GOD
Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will SEE GOD.” Hebrews 12 says “And without holiness no one will see God.” Turn with me to Psalm 24:3-4
Seeing God is the ultimate experience. Paul said in 1 Timothy 6, “God who is the blessed and only ruler, the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom NO ONE HAS SEEN OR CAN SEE.” God told Moses in Exodus 33, “No man can see my face and live.”
Yet men have seen God! When Aaron and Miriam were opposing Moses God came down and said in Numbers 12, “With Moses I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD.” Paul said he was taken up into the 3rd heaven and was prevented from being able to speak of what he saw. In Genesis 32 Jacob had an experience with God and he named the place “Peniel,” which means “face of God.” He explained why he named it that by saying, “It is because I have seen God face to face and yet my life was spared.” (Gen 32:30)
It is the desire of the creature to see the Creator. Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” Job said, “After I am dead I will see God in my flesh, with my own eyes I will see Him.” (Job 19:26-27). See in part now, fully later (1 Cor 13:12)
Its not only our desire to see God, but it is the desire God has – to be seen by us. Seeing has in mind fellowship. “I want them to see me in my glory” Jesus prayed in John 17. God says in Revelation 21:3, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people and He will be their God.”
But those who reject him and do evil will not see him. Second Thessalonians 1:9 says, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the LORD…”
But we will see Him, and we look eagerly for the day. Turn to first John 3:1-3 with me….
We can understand “seeing God” as pertaining to both now and later. Those who are pure in heart will see God now by faith. Seeing here means understanding and believing. We don’t see him yet like we will see him in the future. But we see him by trusting everything we are told about Him in the Scriptures.
Do you trust what the Bible tells you about Jesus? It is by your faith that God will purify your heart. And if He purifies your heart then you will see him.
CONCLUSION
Humanity started out seeing God in the Garden. But when sin came, man became alienated from God, separated, and fell under His judgment. But Jesus came from God to bring man back to God, to see Him and fellowship with Him.
Speaking of Himself, Jesus said in John 6, “No one has seen the Father, EXCEPT the one who is from God.” Jesus saw the Father, not a glimpse, but in full eternal fellowship. And He came to speak of God the Father to the world, and to speak for Him, to reveal Him. Anyone who has seen the Son has seen the Father then, because Jesus was the perfect image of the Father. But Anyone who wants to see God must go through the only One who sees God continually. That One is God’s Son, Jesus Christ.