Heart Matters - Matthew 5:8 - August 28, 2011
Series: Kingdom Life – A World Turned Upside Down #6
*** Set up before hand 3 (clear glass) glasses of water. Hide glasses out of sight.
1. Glass and water are both dirty.
2. Glass is clean but water is dirty.
3. Glass and water are both clean.
Take your Bibles in hand this morning and turn with me, please, to the 5th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. We are continuing in our study of the Sermon on the Mount today, specifically of the Beatitudes themselves. Every one of those Beatitudes starts with the same word, the word, “Blessed,” which, we have learned, refers to a deep seated happiness that we can experience, that we can know, in the here and now. The world around us runs after such happiness, we chase after those things we think will bring us happiness, but Jesus tells us where true and lasting happiness is going to be found and friends, let’s be clear, if you’re looking for that true and lasting happiness in the things of this world you are going to be disappointed. You will not find what you’re looking for. Instead, turn your eyes towards Christ that you might find that which you seek!
And yet the Beatitudes are so much more than some formula for happiness. If that’s what you think they are, then you’ve missed the point of Jesus’ teaching entirely! If that’s the case then get back into the Word of God and read it again and again and again until the truth of His Word is made clear to you. For these Beatitudes reveal to us the heart of God, they unwrap for us the character of Jesus, and they unveil the work that the Holy Spirit would bring to life within us. This is what the kingdom of God is all about.
Someone asks us today what we must do to be saved and to our shame we tell them to say the sinner’s prayer. Not Jesus. Scripture tells us that when Jesus began His ministry He went forth, calling people to repentance and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He laid it on the line. He called people out of the comfort of the sin, the way of living that they had gotten used to, and He called them to put those ways behind them and to live for God. He called people to believe – not just with head – but with heart. He called not for change, but for transformation. He declared that we must be born again, not of the flesh, but of the Spirit, otherwise we would not enter into the Kingdom of God. How very empty is the message that so many preach today when compared to the life giving words of Jesus!
I read about a bumper sticker the other day with these words written upon it: “Live so the Pastor doesn’t have to lie at your funeral.” That’s good advice! But it points to an underlying reality. Many times the way we live our life doesn’t coincide with the life that Jesus is calling us to, and that the Holy Spirit has made possible for us. When Jesus preaches the Gospel His call is to repentance, it’s to new life, it’s to transformed values and realities and priorities. We don’t see the transformed lives we ought to be seeing because we’ve gotten hung up on this easy believism that declares it doesn’t matter how I live as long as I believe in Jesus. But a belief that doesn’t result in action isn’t really a belief at all! That’s why James says that faith without works is dead. We are not saved by our works – our works are the natural outflowing, result, consequence, of our salvation. If you say you believe, but that belief doesn’t touch your life – the way you live in the day to day – then you’ve got nothing!
Which brings us back to the Beatitudes. They are all about God’s work of salvation within us and the outflow of that salvation into the world around us. I invite you to hear them again as I read the Word of the Lord from Matthew, chapter 5 …
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5:1–7, NIV) And then read verse 8 out loud with me: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:8, NIV)
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. When Jesus speaks of the heart He’s not talking about the organ that pumps blood. Usually when the Bible talks about the “heart” it refers to the centre of a person’s being - that place from which thoughts, and actions, and words flow forth. That’s why Proverbs 4:23 warns us with these words saying, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23, NIV) And it’s why in Matthew 12 Jesus says, “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” (Matthew 12:34–35, NIV) The heart matters. That’s why Paul writes these words in the book of Romans, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” (Romans 10:9–10, NIV)
It’s the heart that is important! And the Scriptures tell us that “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) Those words were spoken to Samuel long ago, but it is just as true that the Lord looks upon our hearts, this day. And I cannot help but wonder what it is that He sees.
We know what He’s looking for, don’t we? Jesus lays it out for us. “Blessed are the pure in heart.” He’s looking for hearts that are pure. Folks, does the word, ‘pure,’ describe your heart? And maybe you don’t know how to answer that right now because you’re not sure exactly what that word, ‘pure,’ means in the context of your heart, so let’s consider purity itself for a few moments.
What does it mean to be pure? If something is pure, it’s clean, it’s whole, it’s not mixed with anything that dilutes it, it’s undivided. When we talk about something being, “as pure as the driven snow,” for example, we’re talking about something clean and unsullied. It’s not tainted – it’s clean – it’s pure. When we talk about pure gold we’re talking about gold that has been refined to the point that it doesn’t have any other metals mixed in with it – it’s complete, it’s whole, it’s undivided, it’s pure.
So to be pure means to be clean, it means to be unmixed, not divided. But how does that apply to the context of our hearts? Well there are three facets of purity that I desire for us to understand this morning. There is an Essential Purity – which is the work of God within us, there is a Moral Purity – that you and I are meant to live out day to day with one another, and then there is a Relational Purity - that we are meant to keep between ourselves and God.
Let’s start with that idea of Moral Purity. To live as a Christian with Moral Purity means to live with integrity between head and heart, between doctrine and daily living, between God’s word and our will. It means to have agreement between the lifestyle that God calls us to and the one we’re actually living.
This is our work. It falls on us. As Christians the Holy Spirit helps us in it but it becomes a matter of choice, of decision, of will, that only we can make. Turn to the book of 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 1. Look at what Paul writes: “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” (2 Corinthians 7:1, NIV) Underline that phrase, “let us purify ourselves.” This is the work you must do in your life. We want to purify ourselves – we want to perfect holiness if you will – out of reverence for God. This is our response to God. We seek after this holiness, why, because, as it says in Hebrews, “without holiness no-one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14) Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Blessed are the pure in heart for they will, what? They will see the Lord! To pursue purity, in this sense, is to pursue holiness.
So what’s that look like? How do we do that? Peter writes that we purify ourselves by obeying the truth. (1 Peter 1:22) So we need to discover the truth. Where’s truth found? Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) Truth is found in God. So we get into the Word of God and we uncover what the truth of God, ourselves, and life really is. And then we act on it – we obey the truth.
So men, we read that to look upon a woman with lust is to commit adultery with her. Those are Jesus’ own words. So we know that this is not what God wants for our lives, and it’s not good for us, it’s not good for our marriages, it’s not good for our families. It can lead us in directions we truly do not want to go and so we began to make choices that honor God and that are in alignment with His truth.
Job says, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.” (Job 31:1, NIV) Men, we need to do that too. As of July 2010 there were 370 million pornographic websites. (www.ilead.co.za/blog/tag/pornographic-websites) Now, more than a year later, that number has undoubtedly grown. The vast majority of them cater to males. Why? Because we men are not purifying ourselves by obeying the truth. We are not making the choices we need to be making. And because of that millions of girls and women and children are being exploited, families destroyed and countless lives ruined.
That’s just one example of many, and I singled out us men today, but the underlying principles apply to each of us whether male or female, adult or child. If you’re reading the word of God and you suddenly realize, “Hey, that’s not how I’m living my life!” then there’s a work of purifying that you need to do. Bring your life into alignment with the Word of God because God wants, and He knows, what is best for you. There’s a phrase that pops up now and again within the Scriptures. You only come across it in those places where the people of God have messed up badly. This is the phrase, “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Folks, let us not do what appears right in our own eyes but let us purify ourselves by obeying the truth.
Now I have a word of caution for us here: Doing the right things, but with the wrong motives, leads to the appearance of purity, but not the reality of it. The Pharisees were a prime example of this. They kept the letter of the law but not the spirit of it and Jesus condemned them with these words: “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 the bones of the dead 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, NIV)
Now I need a volunteer for a moment – preferably someone who is thirsty. Any volunteers? Alright, come up front here with me. You’re thirsty, right? O.K. This is your lucky day - I have a glass of water right here for you! [Hand them the glass that is filthy inside and out]. Go ahead and take a drink. What do you mean you don’t want to? Why not? Because the glass is filthy. How about this glass then? [Hand them the glass that is clean outside but the water is filthy]. Is this any better? Why not? The water is disgusting looking. I see your point. Are you still thirsty? Well how about this glass? [Hand them the glass that is clean inside and out with clean water]. Is that better? Why? Because it’s clean. It’s clean, it’s pure. [Thank the volunteer and have them be seated.]
Folks, some of us live lives that are illustrated by that first glass of water I offered to _________. They are dirty inside and out. There is sin there and it’s evident for everyone to see. The heart is not pure.
Many more of us, at least in the context of the church, would be more like the second glass. That glass was clean on the outside. It had the appearance of goodness to it until ___________ got a good look inside. Like the Pharisees there is the outward appearance of righteousness but the heart wasn’t right before God. We can go through all the motions of living a Christ-like life with none of the inner reality of transformation. Jesus says, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain.” (Matthew 15:8–9, NIV)
And then finally there are those who are represented by that third glass of water – the one that was clean inside and out. They have pursued holiness, they have cultivated purity. They are not perfect. But they are growing. They are submitting themselves to the will and to the word of God. They are walking in obedience and they are doing it out of reverence and love for God. They are co-operating with God in the work that He would do in their lives. It’s not always easy, it’s not always pleasant, but it in the end it is always worth it. These are the Morally Pure of heart and their life is a pleasing offering to God.
But folks, you cannot be like that third glass, clean inside and out, without Essential Purity. Like the Pharisees before us we can clean up our act to a degree and give an appearance of purity, but without the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus, we are just whitewashed tombs. We look good on the outside but inside we are dead and lifeless and unclean.
Genesis 6:5 states that God looked upon the human race and saw that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” That doesn’t mean that man was as bad as he could be at all times, just that the inclination of his heart was always away from God for in Jeremiah we read that “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” (Jeremiah 17:9) In our falleness the heart leads us away from God. It tries to convince us to be satisfied with something less than what we were created for. It hides the very truth of God’s love from us. Let me try to explain that a little bit.
A blind man walked into a store one day with his Seeing Eye dog. All of a sudden, he picks up the leash and begins swinging the dog over his head. The manager runs up to the man and asks, "What are you doing?" The blind man replies, "I’m just looking around." (Beatitude 6, Erik Snyder, www.sermoncentral.com)
The heart is deceitful – like that blind man we look around but we do not see. Sin blinds us to the goodness of God. It blinds us to God’s will. It blinds us to the consequences of our sin. In our fallen state we miss out on the promise of the Beatitude – that we will see God. It’s only the pure in heart who will see God – but we can’t change our hearts. We can clean up the outside – we clean up nice – but we can’t change the nature of the heart. It is beyond us – but it is not beyond God.
Listen to these words from the book of Ezekiel, they were words spoken to the Israelites but they apply to us today just as well, … God is speaking and He declares, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities ... I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. … you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.” (Ezekiel 36:24–29, NIV)
And in the New Testament, Paul writes, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:5, NIV)
In the book of Hebrews, we’re told that it is “the blood of Christ, … [that will] cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God!” (Hebrews 9:14)
That cleansing comes through the blood of Christ – blood that was shed upon the cross that our sins might be forgiven! Through faith in Jesus, we are, as it says in 2 Corinthians, “new creations; the old has gone and the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) The heart of stone is replaced by the heart of flesh and we’re renewed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That’s where we get this Essential Purity from. We cannot manufacture it ourselves.
When King David’s eyes were opened to the reality of his sin, what was his cry to God? It was this: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10) And he cried out to God for such a heart, for such a heart is the gift of God the Father, made possible by God the Son giving His life on the cross, and lived out as God the Holy Spirit indwells us. Which brings us to the table set before us this morning …
On this table are what we call the Communion Elements. We have the bread and the cup which have become the symbols by which we remember and celebrate this great gift from God. The bread pictures for us the body of Christ which was given over to death that we might have life. The cup pictures for us the blood of Jesus which was shed for the forgiveness of sins. As we take them together we remember the great sacrifice, the magnificent gift, the extraordinary price, that tremendous love of God, that redeemed us from sin, that delivered us from the wrath that is to come, and it reminds us of that great power by which we have new life in Jesus Christ. I like how Paul says it in his letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NIV) That is the Gospel message in a nutshell – that Christ died for us that we might live for Him.
I’m going to call the servers forward at this time. Please know that this table is open to you if you’ve received that new heart, that essential purity, that comes only from God. In other words, if you’re born again of the spirit, your faith is in Jesus as Lord and Savior, this memorial is for you to share in. The bread and the cup will come to you one right after another. Hold on to them until all have been served and then we’ll take them together.
[Serve elements.]
Watch video as elements served.
[Give thanks and then take and eat / drink with grateful hearts.]
When we understand what God has done for us through Jesus Christ - He who paid a debt He did not owe, for we who owed a debt that we could not pay - our response should be one of reverence, of love, of gratitude towards God. In fact if we go back to one of those verses we started with today, 2 Corinthians 7:1, we read these words: let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” (2 Corinthians 7:1, NIV) We seek purity out of reverence to God – this is our act of worship 24/7 and it leads us into what we might call Relational Purity. To be pure is to be undivided and we know that we are to be undivided in our love for God. What do the Scriptures say? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30, NIV) We cannot serve God and anything else. Those who seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness are those that are blessed for they are those who will be see God.
And the truth is that the more we pursue purity the more we see God in each day. We see His hand at work, we experience His grace, we receive His mercy, we rejoice in His goodness, we find comfort in His presence. And we anticipate that day, when we will see God face to face. For, like Job, we know that our redeemer lives and that we will stand upon the earth and we will see Him with our own eyes. Amen? Amen!
So what’s the challenge today? What’s the step of faith? Well it’s to pursue purity – purity in our day to day lives, purity in our relationships with one another, and purity in our relationship with God. The challenge is to not settle for anything less than that which God has made possible for us. And it’s not a burden because it starts with that gift of God – Essential Purity – as the sacrifice of Christ is applied to our lives, and we receive salvation and that new heart that God promised long ago. That Essential Purity makes possible the Moral Purity that’s called for day to day as we put to death the things of the sinful man and embrace the things of God, and our response to that tremendous gift ought to be a love for God that is all encompassing – heart, soul, mind and strength.
Therefore, as the author of Hebrews says, “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” (Hebrews 10:22, NIV)
Let’s pray.
