“Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Well, as a means of beginning our look at
this Beatitude, let’s do a bit of word study here shall we? We’ve said that the word blessed means to be content, happy, or fully and greatly filled by
God. Next, the word pure; it means to be clean, unstained, undivided, guiltless,
innocent, or upright. We all know what
purity is. Purity is the presence of
only what is supposed to be there and no trace of anything else. If we were to drink completely pure water
(which oddly enough cannot be achieved), then it would be water that is
completely made up of water molecules with nothing else in it. The next word that I want us to see is the
word heart. Now, the Greek word for heart is kardia, which we can easily connect with
the word cardiac. However, in the Greek
world of this time, the heart was something much more than an organ (actually a
muscle) that pumped blood to the rest of your body. This word kardia
meant not only heart, but mind, character, inner self, will, intention, or
center. In essence, the heart was seen
as the central character of a person.
Their heart was who they were at their core, in every fiber of their
being. So, Jesus is saying here that
“greatly filled by God are those who are completely guiltless and undivided in
their core, in all that they are, because they will see God.” Well, what does that mean?
I
want to take a moment and speak to the severity of this Beatitude. You know, it’s one thing to be outwardly pure
and to always make the right external choice, but it’s a whole different matter
to be pure of heart, to be completely undivided between obedience and sin. Mind you, this Beatitude, this statement from
Jesus on how to live a Godly life, doesn’t say blessed are the pure in public,
but blessed are the pure in heart, where we can’t see. It’s not about just doing the right thing,
following God’s will, but it’s about not even considering the wrong thing. It’s about sin and disobedience to God never
even being entertained in our minds; not even for one second. I want to make my job this morning a little
more difficult and I want to take you back to the prophet Jeremiah, to Jeremiah
17:9. The prophet says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately sick; who can understand it?
‘I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man
according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.’” Now, let that sink in for just a moment. Jeremiah is telling us that off all the
things of this world, the heart, the center of a person, is the most deceitful
and corrupt thing there is. Also, that
God can see through all things to find what is truly in someone’s heart. Now, how in the world can we read here that
the heart is so wicked and deceitful and divided and sinful and yet be told by
Jesus that it ought not to be? How can
we reconcile the notion that Jesus calls us to be completely pure and obedient
in our hearts with the fact that Jeremiah says that the heart is the thing most
incapable of such obedience and purity?
I mean, surely Jesus isn’t telling us to do something that we can’t do
is he? That would be a pretty lousy
thing to throw out there wouldn’t it? To
set a standard that is not just seemingly unattainable but literally unachievable
in order for us to see God.
I
want you to listen to some of the words that David puts forth in Psalm 51. He says, “Have
mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your
abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse [purify] me from my sin
(1-2)…Create in me a clean [pure] heart and renew a right spirit within me.” Now this call of David to create within
himself a pure heart uses the same word used in Genesis 1:1 of the creation of
the heavens and the earth. In other
words, David was acknowledging the truth of Jeremiah’s statement (obviously
well before Jeremiah himself spoke it) and saying that he needed God to create
something in him that he was incapable of creating himself. He didn’t just need God to come in and help
him straighten up a bit, but to create something new that didn’t exist within
David. He knew that no matter what
practices or habits he had in place or how noble his efforts, he could not
create for himself a pure heart. He
could create something that on the outside looked pure, but he couldn’t change
the inside. So, I ask again, what hope
do we have today of having pure hearts ourselves? And again, surely Jesus wouldn’t set a
standard that we can’t achieve? Of
course not, that’s what David just made clear.
He knew that God alone was capable of creating this pure heart within
him.
I
want you to hear again the words of our call to worship, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul
to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.” Being pure of heart means that you are in
essence single-minded (and I don’t mean that in a bad way). Being pure in heart means that you don’t
lift your heart up to vain, fleeting things.
It means that you don’t lift your heart up to both God and something
else. The pastor of Redeemer
Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, Tim Keller, says that “If you need something
in addition to God to make you happy, that is your true King.” You see, Keller, in this statement, is
getting to the heart of what it means to be pure in heart. If there is one thing that we say that we
can’t worship God without, then that one thing has (consciously or
unconsciously) taken the place of God in our lives. Look, I know it’s hard to say that we’re
going to focus upon Jesus no matter what.
If you’ve had a chance to read the newsletter for this month already,
then you probably can tell how much I’ve been wrestling with this notion all
week. I, like David in Psalm 51, know
that I can’t do it. I simply cannot
create in myself a pure heart that seeks only God and the righteousness of his
kingdom. That’s why I have to cry out to
him and beg him to come, send his Holy Spirit, and rip away all of the
double-mindedness within me. I have to
ask God to strip away the things in my heart that cause me lose sight of him;
both good and bad. I have to ask him to
not let my security and my selfish desires get in the way of obeying him just
like I have to ask him to not let my love for my family and friends get in the
way either. Look at what Paul says in 1
Corinthians 7, “I want you to be free
from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how
to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to
please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed
woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and
spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please
her husband (32-34).” Paul isn’t
calling everyone to a life of singleness, but putting forth the truth about
just how hard it is to serve and seek God alone. We know it’s a tough thing; a thing that is
only possible through Jesus Christ.
Now,
hoping that we’ve done a fair job of creating a vision for what it means to be
pure in heart (or at least having seen how all-encompassing it is for someone
to be so single-minded), I want to turn our attention to the blessing or
promise of this Beatitude. We are told
that the pure in heart, “shall see God.” Now, this word see could actually mean a
litany of things. It can be translated
as to see, to look upon, or to experience.
Can you imagine such a reality?
To get to see, look upon, and experience God. In other words, the pure in heart get to
enjoy God, know God, and eventually be like Him (to a certain extent) forever
in heaven. You see, the heart that wants
only for God will find Him. The life
that truly places God above all other things is a life that not only weathers
all other storms, but is almost oblivious to them because they are so fixated
upon God that everything else around them is of no consequence almost.
The
first time I met my mother-in-law was a bit of a disaster. I was working at a church camp for a weekend when
I was in college and my mother-in-law just happened to be with her church as a
volunteer leader for that weekend, mind you that Amy was nowhere to be found. We had only started dating a few weeks prior,
but word had gotten out about our blossoming relationship. Amy’s youth director from high school, a
mutual friend, decided to call me over to introduce me to my girlfriend’s mother. So nervous and so affixed upon getting to my
destination and planning out all of the things that I wanted to say (or not
say), I didn’t even notice the gigantic hole that was directly in my path. I don’t have to tell you what happened other
than I managed to walk away embarrassed but not injured. You see, I was so focused upon getting to my
now mother-in-law that I didn’t notice anything else around me. When we fixate ourselves upon God and our
obedience to him, we’re oblivious to the things around us. We may walk away embarrassed or injured, but
we won’t be worried about it. The world
may leave it’s scars, it may beat us up, but it is nothing compared to what our
Savior endured.
I
don’t mean to make light of the single-mindedness that we are to have when
follow Christ. However, are we ever
fully fixed upon him like we should be?
I don’t have time to go into like I would like to, but Romans 7 is a
wonderful chapter for anyone to read who is struggling with the Christian
life. In Romans 7, the Apostle Paul, who
many of us rightly look upon as the giant of biblical truth and Godly living,
goes through and talks about his struggles.
He talks about how despite his wishes and desires, he finds himself in
the midst of sin. He finds himself
unable to do what he wants to do and incapable of not doing the things he
doesn’t want to do. However, I want you
to hear the final words of this chapter of Romans, “Wretched man that I am! Who
will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ
our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my
flesh I serve the law of sin (24-25).”
You
see, there it is. How do we become pure
in heart? We cry out to God how wretched
we truly are. We thanks God for Jesus
Christ. We thank him that through his death
and resurrection that we are able to have the mind of Christ. We thank him that we have been given a gift
that is above anything that we could ever ask for. We pray that we would be give minds that seek
Christ and Christ alone. That’s not to
say that there cannot be enjoyment and satisfaction and contentment with many
of the things of this world. It is
merely to say that the thing that drives us must be Christ, it must be God’s
kingdom, the spread of the gospel, and the glorification of His name. To give you Tim Keller’s statement again, “If
you need something in addition to God to make you happy, that is your true
King.” Does that describe you? Are their things in your life (family,
financials, comfort, security, occupational struggles) that you have to have
resolved in order to feel true happiness and joy? If so, there is no way that you can become
pure in heart, single-minded towards God, until you cry out to God to remove
them from His rightful place in your life.
However, all of these things ultimately end with the passing of this
life, but our being single-minded for God ends in our experiencing Him for all
eternity. Doesn’t seem like a tough
choice does it? Then what’s stopping us
from seeking only God this day?
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