Blessed are the Pure in Heart
Matt 5.8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God"
Purity is not very fashionable nowadays.
• Camera advert - deception is a common theme in advertising
• Free sex is an assumed part of society
• God is unwanted in public life
But Jesus says it is the pure in heart who will see God.
In fact, Psalm 24.3-7 says:
Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Saviour. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
So the question is: how can I have clean hands and a pure heart?
A DESIRE TO SEE GOD
But there’s a more fundamental question we need to answer.
Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? The person who’s serious about God!
Jesus said the pure in heart will see God. But do we want this blessing? Do we really want to see God? What does that mean, anyway?
At its heart the idea of ’seeing God’ is fellowship with Him. This is salvation, and what’s salvation about? It’s moving from a state of being God’s enemy to being his friend - it’s about relationship with God. Jesus said, "This is eternal life: that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent" (John 17.3).
Friends, do you want to know God? Do you long to see him? Do you want to know the love and joy and peace and power that comes from the fellowship of the Spirit?
If you don’t then these verses won’t hold a lot of appeal to you.
But if you do, if you really do, then everything else follows.
PURIFIED BY CHRIST
First of all, Salvation follows. Am I saying that we have to be pure to be saved? Of course not! But I am saying that we are saved when Jesus makes us pure.
Many religions place a great emphasis on ritual purity. The idea behind this is that we are unclean - tainted by sin or imperfection that separates us from God. Everyone who is spiritually sensitive feels this uncleanness.
So one of the ways that many religions seek to become ritually clean so they can come to pray and worship God is through ceremonial washing. Catholics, Jews, Hindus and Muslims all perform these ceremonies each time they come to worship.
But as evangelical believers we have only one ’ritual purification’ - baptism. One baptism once for all time, because it’s not about the water, it’s about the blood!
Heb 10.22 says, "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water."
It’s Christ’s blood that purifies us from sin.
1John 1.7 "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."
And here’s a point many Christian miss. Many people become Christians, I think, so they can stay out of hell. But actually, the point of being a Christian is relationship with God, and the way to relationship is cleansing from sin through the blood of Christ. Sin separates us from God, and that’s why it needs to be dealt with.
If you don’t want that fellowship with God and as a result you’re not serious about staying away from sin, seriously, why would you bother about this Christianity gig?
PURE DEVOTION
But it’s not just about staying away from sin. That just turns Christianity into a passive religion of rules and regulations. But if it’s about relationship with God then it’s a lot more active. It’s pressing into love and truth and justice and goodness. It’s about becoming like Jesus.
Having a pure heart begins with being washed with the blood of Jesus, and moves to having a pure devotion to him.
The Psalmist asked, "How can a young man keep his ways pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." (Ps 119.9b-11).
Do you seek God with all your heart? Do you hide God’s word in your heart that you might not sin?
ILL: When I met my wife I figured out pretty soon that she was the girl for me. I was focused in pursuing her, keeping out the competition and not getting distracted by the other options. And now we’ve been married for a dozen years, can I slacken off? No! True, I’ve snagged by catch and I’m a lot more secure in our relationship, but I still make our relationship a priority. We give time to each other, we keep the marriage bed pure, as the Bible puts it. I didn’t marry her to avoid being single. I married her so I could be with her.
That’s how it’s meant to be with God. We don’t become Christians to avoid hell, we become Christians so we can have fellowship with God. In fact, when Israel turned from God he called that spiritual adultery. They’d lost their devotion to him and turned to other things.
Friends, how’s your devotion to Christ? If it’s hot then this issue of purity is going to take care of itself, or at least be a lot easier. But if your devotion is cold - at best moral purity will be legalistic, at worst we just won’t care.
Jesus said, "Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also… No-one can serve two masters. Either they will hate the one and love the other, or they will be devoted to the one and despise the other" (Matt 6.21, 24).
Or as Qui Gong Jinn tells young Anakin Skywalker "Your focus determines your reality."
A PURE LIFE
Once we have that settled, once our hearts have been made pure by the blood of Jesus and we have decided to be pure in our devotion to him, the issue of moral purity just sort of falls into place, yeah?
Christians often ask, "If it’s all about God’s grace, what’s acceptable behaviour for a Christian? Where are the boundaries?" 1Cor 10.23 says, ""Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is constructive."
The better question is not ’where are the boundaries?’ But, ’where is your centre?’ Do you see? If we live a centred life, the boundaries start to take care of themselves. And we’ll be less concerned about being the moral guardians of other people and more concerned about helping each other see Jesus.
Of course, we will struggle with temptation. Of course, we will fall into sin from time to time. Of course, we need to be accountable to each other. But "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1John 1:9). The point is our underlying bias will be towards pleasing God.
But we do need to keep striving for moral purity. We need to avoid evil. The world sends a constant barrage of messages that seek to corrupt us, and we need practice the discipline of purifying our mind by avoiding the things that pollute our thoughts.
Am I sounding a bit extreme. Well, let’s consider some examples.
TV - what’s that doing in your relationship with the Lord? What’s that doing in regard to encouraging purity? Some things may be helpful or neutral. But if your goal is Christ, does TV generally help move you towards that or away from it?
Gossip magazines - what do they do for your relationship with the Lord? Do they move you more towards God’s heart or away from it? Do they encourage you to be more like Jesus or less like him?
The internet - a lot of stuff is clearly completely inappropriate for believers. But a lot of stuff is grey. How do you judge? How does it fit in with our Jesus centredness?
How about the way you spend your money? Or your time?
Do these things move you towards purity and conformity with Christ or away from it? Do they match up with the Word of God that we’re called to hide in our heart, or do they conflict with it?
Friends, if we try to have it both ways we’re going to end up conflicted, paralyzed and no earthly use to the Lord.
CONCLUSION
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
It’s only God’s amazing grace that allows us to see God at all. But we need to understand that his grace does it by dealing with the impurity of sin in our lives. It’s why Jesus came - to take our sin and bring us into relationship with God.
We walk in that purity as we walk with our hearts firmly set on him.
So where are you this morning?
Have you accepted the cleansing and forgiveness that come through Jesus sacrifice? Do you know fellowship with God? If you don’t then please come and accept this gift.
God’s people, are you walking in fellowship with Christ, with your heart set on him? Or are you fluffing around with faith? Make the decision to set your heart on him.
Or are you struggling with sin this morning? The tough reality is that even if we do have our hearts set on him we often struggle with sin still. If that’s you, then come again and ask for his forgiveness and deliverance. His grace is huge!
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
