The Heart Of Happiness Series

Two soldiers were on a transport going overseas. Standing on the

deck they gazed out across the vast expanse of water. One who had

never been near the ocean said, "That's the most water I've ever seen

in all my life. Did you ever see so much water?" His companion

responded, "You haven't seen anything yet-that's just the top of it!"

Even the surface of the sea is impressive, but the depths take away

your breath in awesome wonder. The beatitudes we have looked at so

far are far from being shallow surface saying of Christ. They are deep

and challenging, but they are at least within the range of what seems

possible to us.

But in this sixth beatitude, Jesus plunges to such depths in the

ocean of holiness that we feel it is impossible to follow Him deeper,

and that up to now we have only seen the top of it. We feel we are just

not built for this kind of depth. The pressure we feel would crush us.

Both the condition of purity of heart, and the promise of the vision of

God seems so far beyond our capacity that the whole thing appears

impractical. It is like asking a man with a snorkel and swim fins to

follow an atomic powered submarine.

No one claims to be adequate for the task of even explaining this

beatitude. Preachers apologize for their audacity in even presuming

to try and preach on this text. It is agreed, however, that Jesus is not

mocking us here, but offers the hope of attaining an apparently

impossible ideal. It is agreed that Jesus gets to the very heart of

happiness in this beatitude. All else stands or falls on the basis of what

we do with this one. Matthew Henry in his commentary writes, "This

is the most comprehensive of all the beatitudes; holiness and happiness

fully described and put together. Here is the most comprehensive

character of the blessed; they are the pure in heart. Here is the most

comprehensive comfort of the blessed; they shall see God."

Hastings in the Great Texts Of The Bible writes, "If in blessedness

there be a crown of blessedness it is here." A. R. Clippinger says, "In

the bright constellation of the beatitudes this star of promise shines

the farthest and is the most beautiful." The great hope of God's people

has always been to see God and behold His presence. Moses cried out,

"I beseech Thy, show me Thy glory." (Ex. 33:18). In Psa. 17:15 the

Psalmist describes his greatest bliss: "As for me, I will behold Thy

face in righteousness." In Psa. 41:12 he expects his integrity to be

rewarded by being set before God's face forever. In Psa. 63:2 he says,

"So I have looked upon Thee in the sanctuary, beholding Thy power

and glory." Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted

up, and many are the texts in the Old Testament that refer to seeing

God, or the great hope of seeing God. This is true in the New

Testament also.

Jesus said, "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Paul holds

forth the hope of seeing Christ face to face, and no longer through a

glass darkly. In Rev. 22:4 it says of the servants of God, "They shall

see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads." In both the

Old and New Testaments the condition for seeing God is a pure heart.

In Psa. 24:3-4 we read, "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." In I John 3:2-3 we read, "We know that when He appears we

shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is, and everyone who has

this hope in Him purifies himself as He is pure." The longing of every

Christian should be for a pure heart. Walter C. Smith expressed it in

poetry:

If clearer vision Thou impart,

Grateful and glad my soul shall be,

But yet to have a pure heart

Is more to me.

Yea, only as the heart is clean

May larger visions yet be mine,

For mirrored in its depths are seen

The things divine.

The clearer the heart the greater the vision. The heart is the

telescope whereby the believer sees into the heaven of heavens, and

the cleaner the lens the further he sees. As a man thinks in his heart,

so is he. A man is what his heart is. The heart is the telescope by

which we see beyond the heavens which declare the glory of God into

the heaven of the very presence of God. A man with a telescope can

see what others do not, even though it is present to all. He can point at