If you have read the Gospels you have heard Jesus rebuke the Pharisees, the upstanding religious leaders and lawmakers in Ancient Israel. Well, we don’t know the half of it. They weren’t just talking about the 10 Commandments when they spoke of the laws. Here are some of the over 600 man made rules the Jews had to live by, or else:
• A new lamp could be moved from one place to another on the Sabbath, but not an old one.
• Hot food could be kept warm on the Sabbath by covering it with clothes, feathers or dried flax, but not with damp herbs or straw, which might generate some fresh heat (and therefore “work”).
• Someone with a sore throat could swallow liquid to ease the discomfort, but was not allowed to gargle, which would count as work on the Sabbath.
• Not many years ago in a Dear Rabbi section of a Jerusalem newspaper a person was told they could open a refrigerator on the Sabbath if it did not have a light in it. If it had a light it would be an infraction of the Sabbath law because it would be causing the electricity suppliers to work on the day of rest. Does that mean you couldn’t use lights at all on the Sabbath?
As ridiculous as these sound, the Pharisees and lawmakers had convinced people that these were necessary to be right with God, to be pure. That’s why Jesus responded in Mt 23, “Woe to you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you 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.”
I agree with Martyn Lloyd Jones that the perfect seven beatitudes are placed in an intentional order by Jesus. The first three are about right self-awareness and our need, which then leads to the hunger and thirst that promises us to be filled, then these last three are the results of this filling. Kind of like walking up the mountain in the first three, reaching the summit in the fourth, and coming down the other side in the final three.
Being merciful last week corresponded to being poor in Spirit. When we see how much mercy we needed and got, we extend that mercy to others. Today being pure in heart corresponds to mourning over the state of our heart and desiring it to be purified by God so that we may one day see Him. Every Christian who sees themselves as they truly are, will crave for:
I. A Heart Transplant
And God is the master cardiologist. The heart is the seat of emotions, reason, conscience, understanding, desires, will and intention, decision making, and faith. The centre of our being, our personality.
It’s also where our sinful nature resides. Where the conflict between our new heart in Christ and our old heart in sin takes place? This doesn’t happen on our shoulders, but in our heart.
As Paul was well aware, the Christian life is an unrelenting conflict between our sinful nature and this spirit or heart that God puts in us at our conversion. So the questions are not which church should I attend, am I doing the right religious things? But, is God changing my heart, are my motives and desires different from what they were, is everything I do driven by a love for God?
Christian conversion is not about rearranging the external parts of your life, but a transformation of the heart which inevitably leads to an equal transformation of the outer life.
Now the word pure in this verse is the word used for the grain after the chaff had been removed. In our day it would be what’s left in the combine when you go empty it into the truck. Basically God sends the combine over our hearts, spitting out a heart that is sincere and has integrity and fervency.
David was called by God “a man after His own heart”, so let’s look at some of the Psalms to get an idea of this. From Psalm 17, “You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night, you have tested me, and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress. 4With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent. 5My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped.”
Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.”
Why was he asking for a clean heart? Ultimately, so that his witness would cause sinners to return to God.
Psalm 119, “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in His ways! …I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.”
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. I will run in the way of your commandments for you set my heart free.” It goes on, and in fact this is the longest chapter in the Bible, and it’s all about God’s word and how to respond to it with your whole heart. How do we stay pure in heart, by continually filling it with His word?
Finally in Psalm 139, “Search me O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts.” David gave his whole heart to God.
The heart in the Bible is basically the centre of our being including our thoughts, feelings, and will. It includes our mind and the source of everything we think and do. The first place God works is in our:
A. Thoughts
Pure can also mean innocent, and I think this is especially relevant in our thoughts. “Finally brothers and sisters, Paul says in Philippians 4:8, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable… think about these things.”
2 Corinthians 10:5, “Take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
In Romans 12:2, “be transformed by the renewal of the mind so that you know what is good.” This is the purity of thought that Jesus is talking about in this beatitude. A pure mind is partly our effort to keep the garbage out and discipline our minds, and partly the Holy Spirit and God’s word which fills it with the good. The more we are in the Word, the more garbage will be pushed out.
One of the best things to ask ourselves with regard to this is, “what occupies my mind when I am alone with nobody to impress or be accountable to?” These private thoughts will always inevitably be revealed in our lives. We are to have the thoughts of God through absorbing his word. …Then there’s:
B. Feelings
One of things a counsellor learns very quickly is the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and actions or will. Did you know you can’t have an emotion without a thought? We’re not talking about biological instinctual responses like hunger, hot, cold, startle, and so on, but emotions like anger, sadness, loneliness and the millions of others we experience in response to things that happen in our lives or minds. This is what distinguishes us from animals.
The feelings come from our thoughts about things, and our actions and will come from the feelings combined with the thoughts. We often say “that was a thoughtless action, or I wasn’t thinking when I did that”. Well it might seem like it because you were just reacting to an emotion, but the emotion had to have a thought before it came to be, and once it does, you don’t have to think consciously to have the emotion anymore, it just comes in the moment, but it’s connected to a previous thought or event.
So then we act on the feeling and it creates a consequence that again we think about and feel something about, and that leads to another action, and so on. It makes sense then that you can’t change a feeling without changing the thoughts behind it.
For example, you’re angry with a friend because they didn’t call you when you were sick to see how you were doing. The event is the person not calling you when you expected and wished they would or should.
What are the thoughts? Probably something like: “How inconsiderate, they must not care about me. I would have called them and probably even brought over some flowers or a card if they were sick. How could they do this to me?”
If we pick that apart the first thing to do is ask yourself, “have I ever once in my entire life neglected to call someone when they were sick?” If so why did I not call or bring flowers etc. Suddenly you may start to realize that your thinking about the situation is faulty and based on assumptions rather than truth.
You’re absorbed with yourself and not considering what legitimate reasons the person might have had for not calling. You start assuming negative intent on their part or you think negative things about yourself. What do you think would happen to your feelings of anger if you started thinking about the potential good reasons they may have had?
I get tired of people using their emotions as excuses for their sinful actions, especially Christians who should know better. Look at your own thinking and see where it is assuming things that may not be true. And even if they are true, you can choose to think differently about a situation or person, so that the emotion changes to one that is more pure and helpful for you and others. Modern humanism has crept into the church saying that I have a right to express and act on my feelings. The Bible says otherwise.
This is a natural outcome of the last two beatitudes, hungering and thirsting for righteousness and being merciful, you find yourself forgiving all people so that impure feelings and desires are not present. In fact over time you find that you can’t even be offended anymore.
Impure, ungodly feelings will lead to ungodly behaviour and words, so we must work on the source of those feelings which is our thinking, and ask God to change our mind. …As I said thoughts and feelings lead to:
C. Will
This beatitude really addresses hypocrisy – saying one thing and doing another. If there’s anything that non-Christians will jump on, it’s this. And Jesus jumped on it with the religious people of his time too, because it was true. There was rampant hypocrisy.
It’s not enough to know doctrine, to be able to memorize scripture, to live a good life and know all the Christian jargon. Those things can be done with improper motives. It’s about the heart, about having integrity, so that no one can hold anything against you. A Christian should be a person with no hidden agenda who like God is always the same.
Our hunger and thirst for righteousness should create a desire for holiness, and the ability to be holy through the Holy Spirit, to be like Christ. If we still desire the things we did before our profession of faith, if we still react the same way to things, it’s important that we stop when we feel the urge to respond and take a look at whether this is the old reaction or a new word and spirit guided one, especially if there’s not purity and other fruit of the Spirit in the response. In other words don’t react.
The more our mind is filled with God’s word, the more our feelings will be in line with God’s, and the more we will desire and act upon His will in any given situation. That is the goal, that is a pure heart refined by Christ with the chaff burned away.
In this beatitude we not only get a heart transplant, the blessing is that we also get:
II. An Eye Transplant
This is one of the most marvellous sayings in the entire Bible. Who would like to see God? See, here means to gaze in wonder, but interestingly in Paul’s native Hebrew language it also means to experience.
Why will the pure in heart see God? Because in one sense God is pure and holy and cannot be in the presence of defilement. But also because the purer in heart we get, the more Christ-like we become, and the more we will see God doing things in and through our lives. …So we will see:
A. God in the World
When a non-believer looks at a sunset, they may sense the awe of it, and in some ways acknowledge some kind of transcendent power. But it’s only believers that see the true creator God in it. When we look at the beauty and intricacy of God’s creation it causes us to worship him, not mother earth or the spirit pan.
Not only do we see God in his creation, we also see him more and more in circumstances, both positive and negative. We begin to see the sovereignty of God in all things that happen in the world and even throughout the history of the world. Then we begin to see:
B. God in Us
We see God in many ways now, but as our hearts become purer we even see God in ourselves. This is not blasphemy for Jesus says the Holy Spirit lives in you when you give your life to me. We become temples of the Holy Spirit. So we should be seeing God in ourselves, and more importantly, others should see God in us. After all, are these beatitudes not about a change in our character?
We will see God in pure in heart churches, the body of Christ. Christ is the physical manifestation of God, if we see him, we see God. We should as temples of the Holy Spirit look like God, and the church should look like God.
So not only will we see God in the world in all these different ways, we will actually see him in our brothers and sisters and therefore in our churches. That’s when others will be attracted to the church.
Do we have to be perfectly pure in heart to see God? Of course that’s not possible, but people who are pure in heart are most likely to see their imperfections and seek to change them, desire to be purer and more Christ like.
James says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”.
Finally, we will see:
C. God in Heaven
First of all Jesus was very clear that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father. Makes sense, Jesus is the material incarnation of God. We are told in Revelation that God himself will dwell with us in the New Jerusalem. Nobody who is not pure in heart will see that because nothing impure or unclean will ever enter that place.
Satan “has blinded the eyes of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor 4:4). Paul also said that “now we see but a poor reflection … then we shall see him face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). Remember David said, “And I, in righteousness will see your face when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your presence.” (Ps 17:15).
But here’s a wonderful description of seeing God in Psalm 24, “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 make promises deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.”
And of course from 1 John and Revelation 22, “at the second coming of Christ we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:2). And “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (Rev 22:4), meaning we will know him more fully and will not only see him, but will be like him.
But again what is the condition? That we will have hearts that when exposed for all to see, there is nothing ulterior, nothing false, nothing devious, or immoral. God is saying in essence when everyone can see your heart and find it pure, then you can see me. When your heart is sincere, single-minded, and your whole life public and private, is transparent to all, you can see me clearly, but until then you will only see me as through a dirty windshield.
Will we actually see God the Father after this life? No one can answer that, we will definitely see Jesus in all his glory which is the glory of God, we may have the spiritual eyes that allow us to see the invisible Spirit God. But all we can do is wait and see. The point here being, let’s focus on being pure in heart now, having pure motives in everything we do so that we don’t miss the viewing whatever and whenever it is. One thing we do know, seeing him will fulfill every desire we ever had.
