Blessed Are The Pure In Heart For They Will See God. Series

That is why Jesus’ most scathing rebuke was reserved for the scribes and Pharisees, who thought themselves the purest of all people. They were extremely careful to keep their outward appearance clean before men, but they did not worry about their relationship with God. Jesus told them:

“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 also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:25-28).

“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).

Quoting Isaiah, Jesus said,

“‘These people honor me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain;

their teachings are but rules taught by men’” (Matthew 15:8-9).

Explaining to the disciples, He said,

“Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’…” (Matthew 15:19-20).

This is the impure heart.

However to have a pure heart means to have a heart that is committed to living a life that is totally pleasing to God, because “… the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” (1 Chronicles 28:9). That is why David’s prayer was:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24).

The Greek word employed in our text today carries with it the idea of cleanliness or purity, in the sense that we would commonly understand it. It means to be genuine, free from things that would adulterate something and make it impure; as in the purity of gold. It is similar to the concept of holiness.

When we think of purity of heart, perhaps we think of someone whose motives are pure, who possess no guile or malice. Within the context of what our Lord is saying, He is speaking about the heart of someone whose sins have been forgiven and whose heart has been made new, whose purity comes, not from themselves, but from the presence of Jesus in their lives.

Whenever I think of purity, I always think of milk. Just think about it, a tall glass of clean, white creamy milk; its color testifies to its purity. Now you let some foreign object falls into the milk, say, like a fly and it becomes readily noticeable that this impurity has contaminated the entire glass of milk. Nobody I know wants to drink milk that has had a fly in it. But let someone remove the fly and once again the milk appears to be pure, although there are now impurities in it you cannot see, unseen contaminants that make it impure.