How many of you wear glasses? I’ve worn mine since I was seven years old. I was able to wear contact lenses for about 20 years but after about 40 they don’t work so well. And since I got cataract surgery and don’t need glasses for distance, I’m using reading glasses – so I have to take them on and off all the time, and every time I put them on I have to clean them off. I used to just pull out a shirt-tail or get a clean tissue but it turns out that abrades the non-glare coating that I pay through the nose for, so I’m pretty careful to use their special cleaner and a soft cloth. It’s a major pain.
Everybody in my family wears glasses. And all my three god-children wear them, too. Ted started when he was 2 or 3, because he has amblyopia - you know, lazy-eye syndrome - and he’s now 33. But neither he nor Philip, the 31-year-old, ever learned to keep their glasses clean. When they were in their teens I gave each of them a little bright-colored plastic case with special glasses wipes in them that they could clip to their belts or their backpacks, but did either of them think to use them? Never, so far as I could tell. It drives me crazy to have so much as a little spot on my glasses, and yet they went around with so much sludge on their glasses - and I mean sludge, not smudge - that I couldn’t even see in. Nowadays they wear contact lenses most of the time. They may even have learned to keep their glasses clean!
But has it ever occurred to you how many people go around their whole lives with their spiritual lenses just that blurry? I’m not even talking about non-Christians, here. I’m talking about people who know their spiritual vision needs correcting, they’ve gotten their glasses, but they don’t bother with the minimum level of maintenance to keep them doing what they are designed to do.
How many of you are wondering what I’m talking about?
Let me explain.
Our ability to see clearly is dependent on the condition of our hearts. You all know the phrase, “rose-colored glasses,” right? That means seeing the world with an optimistic perspective. A person with rose-colored glasses always sees the good side of things, always expects things to turn out right. That perspective is the result of the condition of their hearts.
Many of you have heard the story of the traveler looking for a new place to settle down who drove up to the gas station on the outskirts of a small town and asked the attendant what kind of people lived there. The attendant thought for a moment and said, “Well, what were the people like where you came from?” The traveler answered, “They were a bunch of small-minded, provincial, nosy bores.” The attendant said, “Well, they’re pretty much the same way here.” The driver snorted and drove on. A little while later, another car pulled up; the driver asked the same question and got the same question in return. This time the answer was, “Oh, they were great people, generous and hard-working! I hated to leave.” The attendant said, once again, “That’s what they’re like here, too.” Two sets of expectations, two different outcomes.
A lot of people think that the difference in experience - which is unquestionable - reflects a difference in the underlying reality. But what we are able to see depends as much on what’s inside of us as on what’s outside of us.That truth is at the bottom of a lot of the contemporary insistence on the notion that there is no such thing as objective truth, and the corresponding idea that we create our own reality.
But the fact of the matter is that there IS an underlying reality, and the most real thing that there is in the universe is God. That is what God meant when he gave Moses his name, “I AM THAT I AM.” God is what is. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be... God is the only reality in the universe that is not dependent on anything. Everything else is dependent on God. The entire creation, including ourselves, are dependent on God.
But we can’t see it if our hearts aren’t pure. We can’t see ourselves, and we can’t see God, if our hearts aren’t pure. And most people can’t even see that they’re missing something. They may have a hunger for spiritual things, they may even believe that they are deeply spiritual - and yet without two things - the corrective lenses and the clean heart - the God who is, is still beyond their comprehension.
How many of you remember that first day you went in to get your glasses fitted? You know how it goes - the optometrist puts this device on your nose and then flips different lenses back and forth until you can read the chart. That moment of revelation is like step one in the Beatitudes: the moment when you first recognize your poverty of spirit, and then in step two begin to mourn over sin - yours and the world’s - and realize that you can’t get to God on your own. At that moment you realize for the first time just how much there was that you couldn't see before, and the reality around you suddenly springs into focus. But just getting the glasses isn't enough; you can't just take them home and leave ‘em on the night stand or in your breast pocket, only putting them on now and then to read the fine print in a contract or when you trip over something. You have to wear them, and you have to keep them clean.
You have to keep your heart clean, too, to keep your view of God from getting distorted.
How do you do that? What does it mean to be pure in heart?
The main meaning of purity is “to be all one thing through and through” - like pure water or pure orange juice or pure olive oil. There are some pure things that you need to add something else to in order to make usable. For instance, pure oxygen needs to be mixed with nitrogen and other gases before we can breathe it. But in other cases adding something means reducing the value, adulterating, or making dirty. In those cases, purity is the same thing as cleanliness. And that is especially true when we add to or alter what God has created. So when we are talking about spiritual matters, purity and cleanliness are one and the same.
Preacher and author Coy Wylie identifies at least 6 different kinds of purity in Scripture. First of all is divine purity: the very nature of God himself, which we see in Jesus Christ. Second is created purity: the original creation, good in itself before the fall. Third is positional: that is the privilege we have of getting the benefit of Christ’s purity. Fourth is what Wylie calls actual purity, that is the reality that because of the gift of the Holy Spirit Christ’s nature is actually beginning to transform our inner nature, we’re already beginning the process of being transformed to the state of ultimate purity that will be ours in eternity. The hard part is what he calls practical purity. That is letting the character of Christ rule in our daily lives. Chuck Colson, in his book Loving God, puts it this way: “Christianity is not just a high sounding ritual which we perform on Sundays. Christianity is abiding by Biblical standards of personal holiness and in turn seeking to bring holiness into the society in which we live.”
And that the lens-cleaning process that we have to go through is a prerequisite for actually practicing the purity we are called to. Because every time we turn away from God a layer of worldliness smears over the surface of our hearts, and blurs our spiritual vision. And being human, we turn away from God dozens of times every day - or more, if we’re just beginning to grow in our faith.
I’m not just talking about sexual purity, although that is what people tend to focus on, and given our society, it is certainly one of the first ways in which being out in the world can add a layer of grime to our spiritual lenses. There’s also materialism, a lack of respect for the truth, the idea that it’s ok to step on other people on your way up. . . there are countless ways in which the world can distort our view of God.
But how do we get rid of it? We know how to get clean to begin with. By accepting Christ as our savior, the waters of baptism attest to the initial cleansing. But after that we need to return regularly to Jesus. At the last supper, when Peter didn’t want to have his feet washed, Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” [John 13:10] Jesus uses the feet metaphor, and I’m using the glasses metaphor, but the point is the same. Being out in the world gets you dirty, and has to be dealt with.
So how do you do that? How do we stay clean? People have tried a lot of different ways.
Some practice legalism, defining purity as following special rules and regulations, judging themselves and the world by how well they toe the line. That was the Pharisees’ method, and it’s still the practice in some Christian churches today. My sister-in-law almost lost her faith because her family belongs to one such sect. But Jesus said they were like “whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” [Mt.23:27] Strict rules aren’t the answer.
Others have tried activism, pushing for social and political change. The liberation theologians in our day, and the Zealots in Jesus’ day, all believed the way to obey God was to change society. But that’s not the answer, either. When asked what was wrong with the world, renowned Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton said, “I am.” You see, the core problem is in people’s hearts, not their environment.
There’s also a long tradition of seeking holiness through monasticism, people removing themselves from society and the concerns and distractions of the world, devoting their energies to prayer and meditation, in order to keep from being polluted by the world. And although there’s some merit to that, especially for brief periods, it’s not what Jesus calls us to do. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world,” Jesus said to his father in the upper room, “but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” John 17:15 Purity is not something we are to cultivate purely for our own benefit, but so that we can represent God to the still-blind world.
So how do we do it? What cleans us?
Very simply, three things. Scripture, Prayer, and Worship.
God’s word is essential to maintaining a clean heart. First of all, it cuts through the grime better than any detergent on the supermarket shelves. Whose ad - is it Mr. Clean? used to boast, “Stronger than dirt!” Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” And secondly, it’s a spiritual Scotch-guard. It keeps the stain of the world we have to live and work in from sticking, from sinking in to the fabric of our spirits. Ps.119:11 says, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You!”
Prayer is the essential ingredient that gets Scripture from your head to your heart. It’s that simple. Spending time with God, conversing with Jesus about your life, turning your days over to him for his evaluation - that is what actually does the scrubbing, loosens those extra-stubborn baked-on, dried-in spots.
And worship washes it all away. Whether corporate or private, here raising our voices in company with fellow Christians or stunned into silence at a thunderstorm or a sunrise - when we deliberately turn to God in praise, the day’s garbage, the week’s junk is washed away, and our view of God begins to clear.
Scripture, prayer, and worship: Scripture is the soap, prayer is the muscle, and worship is the water flushing all the dirt away. But don’t forget the first principle: Single-mindedness. Being one thing through and through. None of these activities will do you any good at all if you come to them - to God - with a divided heart. “...The doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. [James 1:7] And people can be divided in any number of ways. You can be divided time-wise - today for God, tomorrow for the world. You can be mentally divided, with half of you saying “yes” and half of you saying “not yet.” And you can be divided between the internal and the external, with the outside looking good and the inside rebelling or resisting. Any of those divisions will keep your spiritual vision clouded. And yet God has a solution even for this condition. “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” [James 4:8]
It’s a life-long, daily struggle for us all - because we’re all naturally double-minded, and it’s really easy to get used to blurry vision, especially when we’re busy. But the benefits of keeping clean are incalculable.
The great preacher Charles Spurgeon said that “the man whose heart is pure, will be able to see God in nature. When the heart is clean, he will hear God's footfall everywhere in the garden of the earth in the cool of the day. He will hear God's voice in the tempest, sounding in peal on peal from the tops of the mountains. He will behold the Lord walking on the great and mighty waters, or see him in every leaf that trembles in the breeze. Once get the heart right, and then God can be seen everywhere. To an impure heart, God cannot be seen anywhere; but to a pure heart God is to be seen everywhere.” Isn’t that worth striving for?
Spurgeon goes on to say that the pure heart, the pure eye also sees God in Scripture and in the Church. But even beyond that, he says, “the pure in heart begin to discern something of God’s true character. Any man who is caught in a thunder¬storm, and who hears the crash of thunder, and sees what havoc the lightning flashes work, perceives that God is mighty. If he is not so foolish as to be an atheist, he says, “How terrible is this God of the lightning and the thunder!” But to perceive that God is eternally just and yet infinitely tender, and that he is sternly severe and yet immeasurably gracious, and to see the various attributes of the Deity all blending into one another as the colors of the rainbow make one harmonious and beautiful whole - this is reserved for the one whose eyes have been first washed in the blood of Jesus, and then anointed with heavenly eye salve by the Holy Spirit. It is only such a man who sees that God is always and altogether good, and who admires him under every aspect, seeing that all his attributes are beautifully balanced, and that each one sheds additional splendor upon all the rest. The pure in heart shall in that sense see God, for they shall appreciate his attributes and understand his character as the ungodly never can.”
And last, and most important of all, only the pure in heart are admitted into God’s very presence at last. And that, isn’t it? is where we all want to wind up
