Pure is More!
Matthew 5:8
Introduction:
Kent Hughes, in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, relates the story of Anna Mae Pennica, a sixty-two-year-old woman who had been blind since birth. At age forty-seven she married a man she met in Braille class; and for the first fifteen years of their marriage he did the seeing for both of them until he completely lost his vision to retinitis pigmentosa. Mrs. Pennica had never seen the green of spring or the blue of a winter sky. Yet because she had grown up in a loving, supportive family, she never felt resentful about her handicap and always exuded a remarkably cheerful spirit.
Then in October 1981 Dr. Thomas Pettit of the Jules Stein Eye Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles performed surgery to remove the rare congenital cataracts from the lens of her left eye-and Mrs. Pennica saw for the first time ever! She said that she found that everything was “so much bigger and brighter” than she ever imagined. While she immediately recognized her husband and others she had known well, other acquaintances were taller or shorter, heavier or skinnier than she had pictured them.
Since that day Mrs. Pennica has hardly been able to wait to wake up in the morning, splash her eyes with water, put on her glasses, and enjoy the changing morning light. Her vision is almost 20/30-good enough to pass a driver’s test.
Can you even imagine? Oh how many graces of God we often take for granted. Think what it must have been like for a 62 year old lady to watch the sunrise for the very first time? To enjoy the sunset on the ocean as birds fly by? Or to gaze into the eyes of your lover, to wink at your child or watch a football game?
Seeing is glorious, it is a miracle really.
With this story and thought in mind, let us read our next beatitude from Matthew chapter 5 verse 8 where Jesus says:
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” –Mt. 5:8:
There are only three points that I want us to consider this morning as we look at this verse: A devotion to purity, the depth of purity and our desire for purity, first:
1. A devotion to purity: First of all, what is purity? The original root word used here for purity conveyed several meanings: removing bacteria from water and alloy from metal, getting rid of unmixed feelings to achieve clarity and to banish evil to enjoy freedom.
So, purity would be getting to the point in your life where you have achieved clarity and focus on the things of God by banishing evil from your life to enjoy the freedom in Christ He longs for you to have. Do this and you will be assured a power-filled victorious Christian life that will make a difference in this world by bringing the glory of God to this world!
I know what you are thinking, “Oh, is that all Pastor?” You don’t know the boss I have to work for. Or the issues we are battling at home, or the pain I experience every day of my life.
Wouldn’t we all like to get our flesh (feelings, emotions, desires, temptations, sins, aches, pains, scars, hurts, baggage), wouldn’t we all like to put all of those things on the altar, kill them, put them in a locked box, bury them deep in the ground and be able to walk away and live for Christ unhindered?! THAT is exactly what the Bible tells us to do every day! Look at Galatians 5:24 “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” –Gal. 5:24 What does this mean? It means you have to get to the point where Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” is prevalent in your life! Remember, when we fall in love with THE LOVE (Jesus Christ), our lives are marked with love for that KIND of love. And, when He hurts, we hurt and what hurts Him the most is when our disobedience (sin) stops our lives from bringing Him glory. So, we must get angry at our sin, take it out to the woodshed, beat it down, stand over it and declare “Today I will be serving MY Lord and there is NO room for you”, then turn around and walk away in victory!
D.L. Moody listened to a revival one night and heard the evangelist make this statement “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him.” Later, Moody travelled back to the states and when he took that first step off the ship onto the dock he said repeated that line “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him.” And then he added, “by God’s help, I aim to be that man.”
You see, we are not the only ones that desire to be THAT “man, woman, boy, or girl”, and we are not the only ones that struggle in making it happen. Even when everything lines up (great service, powerful sermon, music, fellowship…first time someone cuts you off and gives you a hand gesture that does not mean you are number one, you lose it!/youth group, “I’d punch them in the face!”…HOW then? I believe the answer is found in the kind of purity we have a devotion to. There are six types of purity:
1. Primal: That is the purity only held by God. (Hinduism (third largest religion) tells of their god Shiva who is living on a holy mountain in Asia, doing Yoga, smoking marijuana and having sex…and millions worship him!) Thank God that our God is pure! What does it mean that our God is pure?
a) It means He is: mercy, justice and love.
b) It means that He will never go back on His word.
c) It means He will never get so fed up with you that He takes out His eraser and blots your name out of the Heavenly roll.
d) It means that His love never fails, never gives up and never runs out.
e) It means that nothing catches Him off guard or by surprise.
f) It means there will NEVER be a time when you can look up into heaven and find God pacing the halls of glory, wringing His hands, wondering what to do next because He did not see THAT coming!
g) It means that He knows you better than anyone yet chooses to love you more than everyone.
h) It means when you get to Glory and see God face to face, He will be everything and more than you have ever read and heard about Him, and on that day you will declare, it has been worth it all. –That is primal purity.
2. Created: This was the purity enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the fall. Being able to walk and talk with God through the garden without temptation and distraction. To really look into the eyes of God without fear and live without guilt.
3. Positional: This is the purity achieved through salvation. When we make that decision to “confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead” we become pure in position. In other words, as dark, evil, wicked and unworthy as you are, after salvation, when you stand before God He no longer sees that sin, but sees His Son our Savior!
4. Imputed or Actual: This is the purity spoken of by Paul when he stated in 2 Cor. 5:17 “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away: behold, all things are become new.” –II Cor. 5:17 I LOVE this text. I can now go back to my family and friends who knew me before I met Christ and say, “remember that sinful, rebellious and angry Tom that you used to know? The one that you tossed aside, predicted would end up dead or in jail? The one that you said would never make anything of himself. Well, have I got something to show you now! BEHOLD ALL THINGS HAVE BECOME NEW! Come and see the great things that Christ has done!
5. Practical: This is how purity is played out in the everyday, mundane, routine life of the believer. This is the purity that we need a devotion to, it is also called SANCTIFICATION. We need a devotion to setting our lives apart for the glorious purpose of making Christ known to this world through a life dedicated and consecrated to and for HIM.
6. Ultimate: This is the heavenly purity that all born again believers will one day enjoy. This is the aspect of salvation I am most looking forward to. (Gold, angels, greats, family…NO SIN-Total focus on Christ giving Him unadulterated worship from a completely pure heart of integrity! A future where I will be able to walk and talk with Him without distraction. I so long to be able to look into the eyes of God without fear and live without guilt. THAT is heaven! The Garden of Eden restored! That is the ultimate purity we will one day enjoy but for now, our devotion needs to be aimed at practical purity.
Most scholars believe that Jesus is pulling from Psalm chapter 24 verses 3-4 where David declared “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.” –Psm. 24:3-4
Who can ascend into the hill of the LORD or stand in his holy place? Those with clean hands AND a pure heart! If you desire more from your relationship with God, you must realize the scope of this purity, or:
2. The depth of purity: Although works are important in the believer’s life, remember last week “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy”?, we must: clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and provide for the orphans and widows remembering that God has not called us to ENABLE THE GREEDY BUT EMPOWER THE NEEDY. Having clean hands is not enough, those clean hands MUST come from a pure heart.
The depth here is to go past the WHAT and focus on the WHY. To go deeper than what we are doing and hone in on why we do what we do. How is this done? Through the Word of God.
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of the soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” –Heb. 4:12
Simply put, while other books may speak TO us the Word of God has the ability to speak THROUGH us. It is the only book that is supernatural as it was breathed by God so it is alive, active full of energy and power and able to discern not just the things people do but why they do the things they do! What drives, motivates, and compels you….what you desire, hope for, search for, long for, dream of, and aspire to. The Word of God has the power to recognize the outside actions and reveal the inward attitudes.
This is why I am so thankful for a church where the Word of God is at the core of all that we do. So many that come through these doors proclaim that the one very evident thing about our church is the importance of and focus on the Word of God. I am with John Stott when he declared “The less the preacher comes between the Word and its hearers, the better.” And with Charles Spurgeon when he stated “No man who preaches the gospel without zeal is sent from God to preach at all.”! Oh, while I might have some great things to say, teach and preach based on my experience and education, only God’s Word has the supernatural ability to change your very life.
And, for the Child of God that is in the will of God, doing the work of God studying the Word of God, this two-edged sword, or truer to the original language, “surgeon’s scalpel” is quite the blessing! Because the Word of God is able to know your thoughts like no one else, to understand what you are feeling like no one else, to hear your silent cries like no one else and to see the internal struggles like no one else, means that this Word is able to bring you comfort, peace, joy, love, power, and victory like no one else.
It is through the Word that we can achieve this depth of purity. That is why the preacher at the Wildfire Men’s conference kept telling us “Get your head in the _______bread!”
So, what then? It should all be about:
3. Our desire for purity: Why should we seek purity? What happens to the owner of a pure heart? You see God! You SEE God!
And, this is something that is available:
a. Now: I remember my salvation as if it happened yesterday. Sitting in the very back of that church so that I could arrive last and leave first: in and out just checking church attendance off of my “to do” list. Something unexpected happened to me:
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul, when at the cross the Savior made me whole, my sins were washed away and my night was turned to day, Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. I will never forget leaving that sanctuary that day! As I walked outside it was as if God had repainted the landscape of the world: trees looked greener, the sky bluer, the sun brighter and my burdens lighter. From that moment on I could see God!
a) I see Him in the gentle breeze on a fall day.
b) I see Him in every tree that seems to reach up into the sky praising their creator.
c) I see him in the ant crawling on the ground and in the bird flying in the sky.
a) I see Him in the bright eyes of a newborn baby.
b) I see Him in the longing gaze held by the wheelchair bound senior in the nursing home, looking for Christ and longing for home.
c) In my life now, everything and everyone I see I am reminded of a gloriously powerful and loving God that creates and sustains all life.
Praise God I can see Him NOW! But even greater still, that I will see Him even more clearly later! The Apostle Paul speaks of this “seeing God”, for he states in I Cor. 13:12 “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”-I Cor. 13:12
b. One day we will check in our faith for sight and see God face to face! Oh what a day that will be! What sight we will have!
a) Think bigger than the streets of gold, the walls of jasper, the foundation of precious stone, the gates of pearl.
b) Look beyond the friends and family enjoying their new bodies, and the greats and saints from the Bible.
c) Look deeper than the peaceful and still river and the tree of life replanted in the Garden of Tomorrow described in the book of Revelation.
For eternity, you will be able to gaze into the eyes of the One that set you free and loved you with an everlasting love with a clear focus not tainted by the effects of sin nor ravished by age. Finally, for the first time in your life you will be able to see, really see, your Savior, our Father, Jesus Christ. Now that is a purity worth desiring.
Having a heart that is pure and being rewarded with seeing God is so pleasurable and life changing that nothing else even compares. That being said, there are many in this very room that have traded down that kind of supernatural heavenly pleasure for the brief, temporal and hollow pleasures of this world. I pray today that you understand the: devotion to purity and the depth of purity so that you have an insatiable desire for purity. To understand that pure is more.
Invitation:
In closing, let me bring us back to the story I told for my introduction. Remember 62 year old Mrs. Pennica? She was blind for 62 years until a “miracle” procedure that gave her sight. Now, as Paul Harvey would have said, “the rest of the story”.
According to her “miracle” eye surgeon doctor, “surgical techniques available as far back as the 1940’s could have corrected her problem.” Don’t miss this. Mrs. Pennica lived forty of her sixty-two sightless years needlessly blind.
Perhaps you are here today and you do not have the joy, comfort and power that come from a pure heart because you have never taken that first step of being poor in spirit. That is the thought brought out in our Christian anthem Amazing Graze, “I once was lost but now I am found, was blind but now I see.” Please let me introduce you to the Great Physician that has been performing the same sight saving procedure for over 2000 years with a 100 percent success rate. His name is Jesus.
