The Pilgrim’s Path Part-6, Mathew 5:1-12
The Pure in Heart
Introduction
In the forests of Northern Europe lives the ermine, a small animal known best for its snow-white fur. Legend has it that instinctively; this animal protects its glossy coat of fur with great care lest it become soiled. Hunters often capitalize on this trait. Instead of setting a mechanical trap to catch the ermine, they find its home in a cleft of a rock or a hollow tree and daub the entrance and the interior with tar. Then their dogs start the chase, and the frightened ermine flees toward its home. But finding it covered with dirt, he spurns his place of safety. Rather than soil his white fur, he courageously faces the yelping dogs that hold him at bay until the hunters capture him. To the ermine, purity is dearer than life! The Lord wants us to be a people who will keep ourselves “unspotted from the world.” O for a heart that would sooner face death than to compromise purity!
Transition
This morning we will take the next step in the Pilgrim’s Path as we examine the words of Christ as He says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
We will consider what it means to be pure in heart; to be of a single mindedness toward the will of God in our lives.
The theologian Søren Kierkegaard asserts that purity of the heart is to will one thing – the good as he refers to it – that is, the will of God in every area of our lives. We will also consider what it means to “see God.” At the heart of the Pilgrim’s Path, the way of the Master as He spells it out in the beatitudes, is a heart that is pure; that is a heart that strives to be singly focused upon that thing which we have been called to do; to bring glory to God in every area of our lives.
The Bible tells us to do all things as unto the Lord. In business we are to bring glory to God. In our relationships we are to bring glory to God. In all that we do we are to bring glory to God. That means that in whatever situation we find ourselves our chief purpose – the attitude of the pure heart – ought to be to glorify God in the midst of circumstances and situations in order to do the will of God.
It has been said that doing the will of God leaves no time for disputing about his plans. We are not necessarily called by God to understand His purposes in all of our lives; we are called only to trust Him with a pure heart; devoted to doing His will in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in this life.
Exposition
Later, also in the Gospel of Mathew, the words of Jesus are recorded where He delivers a series of Woes to the Pharisees. You’ll recall that the Pharisees were a group of religious leaders who, though their intentions were very good as keepers and protectors of the Old Covenant Law, had become legalistic, ritualistic, followers not of the intent of the law but of the letter of the law.
Where the law was written to encourage a heart’s devotion to God the Pharisees had taken strict adherence to the law to such an extreme that they had began to, in a very real sense, worship the law rather than the law giver. Their primary emphasis and concern was with the keeping of the law not the heart’s devotion to the God who inspired the Law.
In Mathew 23 Jesus expands the teaching of Mathew 5 as He addressed the Pharisees. In Mathew 5 Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Here, Jesus uses very similar language to expound on the same idea as He draws a contradiction between the purity of the heart that is to be sought by genuine followers of Christ and the outward purity of the Pharisees.
He also deals with what it means to “see God” as He refers to the Pharisees as blind guides, hypocrites, and blind fools. In ancient Hebrew culture to see something would have been metaphorical language expressing the idea of apprehending or grasping something. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall apprehend -grasp-know-understand-arrest true knowledge of God!
Mathew 23 Preaching Points:
1. (v2) They do not practice what they preach.
2. (v5) They are only concerned with the outward appearance.
3. (v6) They exalt themselves.
a. Luke 24:8-11
4. (v7) They love to noticed; proud; arrogant.
5. (v11-12) They exalt themselves.
a. There is a consistent theme running throughout the New Testament whereby Jesus tells us that those who exalt themselves in this life will be humbled and those who humble themselves in this life will be exalted in due time; even eternally!
b. Luke 16:19-31
6. (v16) Blind Guides.
7. (v19) Blind Men.
8. (v23) Hypocrites.
9. (v24) Blind Guides.
a. Jesus is showing us the connection between spiritual blindness; that is an inability to see-know-apprehend-arrest genuine knowledge of God and the Pharisees lack of inward purity.
b. In focusing on the outward things over the inward things the Pharisees had left themselves shipwrecked on the shores of religion rather than wading in the depths of the oceans of genuine knowledge of God!
c. They had not understood the teaching of our Lord that goodness flows from the heart. Inward purity leads to outward purity but outward purity can never replace genuine inward purity.
i. Mathew 12:34-35
I recall one sunny afternoon when I was 13 years old and had only recently moved to Butte, Montana where I lived for a couple of years during high school with my father and grandfather. One afternoon I was exploring a very old log cabin style garage on the back of the property where we lived. It was a neat old building which was just chalked full of fun things for a 13 year old kid to get into. I remember I found this old white porcelain bowel and what appeared to be a water pitcher. Both were very old and apparently stained by age. I took both of them out of the old garage and began to fill them up with water from the hose that I would then pour on my rather “originally named” little dog Bingo. After I had been at this a while, playing the old water pitcher and the dog, I overheard my grandfather telling my dad to tell me to stop messing with that pitcher and put it back in the old garage. My dad asked him why and he explained, that thing is filthy, it is an old chamber pot! Only, he had another, more vulgar name for the chamber pot.
In Mathew 23:25-28 Jesus tells the Pharisees that they have radically missed the mark. Rather than cleaning the inside of their hearts which would lead to outward devotion, they have only focused on the appearance of holiness. They have replaced the heart’s pure devotion, the heart’s pure cry to be filled with the very presence of God with an outward commitment to religious ritual, custom, and practice. They have cleaned the outside of the cup but drank up the vilest drink of pride, hypocrisy, and self exaltation.
Dear Saints of God, if we are to arrest genuine knowledge of God, if we are to have our spiritual eyes opened and cast off the blindness of the Pharisee then we must allow God to cleanse our very hearts. Our religious devotion must not be outward as we seek to appear to be people of good works, we must seek something far greater! We must allow God to work from the inside out!
Conclusion
Purity of the heart is to will just one thing; to will the will of God in our lives. Our spiritual eyes are opened when and only when we stop working from the outside in and begin to allow God to work on us from the inside out. The pure in heart are those who have allowed God to work within in them to transform them!
We will never be perfect (perfect tense) in this life but we are being perfected (active tense) at all times in this life. There is yet to be a moment in my life or yours when God was not, is not, or will not be at work within us.
But “God will not do what He has called us to do and we can never do what God alone can do.” (Elmer Towns) Ours is to open ourselves up to the transforming power of Christ through His very presence, the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.
As we open ourselves up to being transformed from the inside out the power of God is released in our life which has the power to open our spiritually blind eyes so that we might comprehend-know-arrest true knowledge of God!
Precious Saints, this day may you be reminded or encouraged anew to turn your heart toward Christ that it may be purified from within. Let us hear the words of Christ and abandon the outward commitment of the Pharisee for the inward commitment of the pure presence of God within us; transforming us into the very image of Christ Jesus through the redemptive power of His blood.
Amen.
