Matthew 5:1-12 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them, saying: 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you
Seeing God
Seeing the invisible God
Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
There is a problem with this beatitude. Jesus said the pure in heart will see God - the problem is God is invisible.
1 Timothy 1:17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory
The word “invisible” means “not seeable.” God cannot be seen.
1 John 4:12 No one has ever seen God
So if it is impossible to see Him because He is by nature invisible, then why do so many passages in Scripture talk about seeing God?
Psalm 63:2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
Sometimes the Bible says God cannot be seen and other times it says people saw Him. In fact in Hebrews 11:27 it says both in the same verse.
Hebrews 11:27 By faith Moses ... saw him who is invisible.
Obviously there are two different kinds of seeing.
The kind of seeing that is impossible is seeing with your physical eyes. But there is another kind of seeing. Very often Bible writers use the word “see” as a figure of speech to describe an experience. To “see” something in that way means to experience it. When Psalm 16:10 says God will not let his Holy One “see decay” the point is that he will not experience decay. When John 3:36 says “whoever rejects the Son will not see life” the point is that he will not experience life - he will not live.
But what does it mean to experience a person? We actually use that same figure of speech in English. We might say, “I’m going down to Florida to see my friend.” Does that mean I am going to fly down there, stare at my friend and then fly home? No, it means I am going there to be with him and to enjoy interactions with him. That is what it means to experience a person. I am going to see him in the sense of being near him and enjoying him. So to see God means to be near Him and to enjoy direct experiences of His attributes.
Remember when Moses said to God, “Let me see Your glory”? How did God respond? By letting Moses see some vision with his physical eyes? No, God showed Moses His glory by revealing His attributes.
Exodus 33:18-20 Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the Lord said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you ...
Exodus 34:6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness
Moses saw God not with his physical eyes, but by being given a special experience of several of God’s attributes.. (goodness, compassion, mercy, patience, love, and faithfulness).
That is what David meant in Psalm 63:2 when he said he saw God.
Psalm 63:2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
I “saw” You in the sense that I had a direct experience of those two attributes - Your glory and Your power. Prior to going in the Sanctuary David knew about God’s glory and power, he had the information in his head.., but when he went inside he had an experience of God’s glory and power. There is a huge difference between being aware of information about something and being awestruck by an actual experience of that thing. It is like the difference between sitting at your kitchen table doing calculations about the size of the Grand Canyon versus actually standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon. That is the difference between knowing about it and seeing it.
And it was such a wonderful experience that David longed to have it again. That is what he is talking about in verse 1.
Psalm 63:1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
He was longing for another experience of God’s attributes like He had before.
David was living out in the desert at the time he wrote this. He could look up to the sky any time he wanted and see an awesome display of God’s power and glory. He is the one who wrote Psalm 19 - The heavens declare the glory of God. But David longed for a greater experience of God’s glory than that.
Sometimes you look at the stars and you are awestruck with God’s glory. Other times you look up and it has no effect on your heart at all. Sometimes the information in your head about God brings no joy, no delight, no hope, no strength, no comfort – it is just information. You are reading calculations about the Grand Canyon but you are not standing at the rim. (And for the unregenerate person, that is how it is all the time. Their eyes are never opened.)
2 Corinthians 4:4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.)
And sometimes our eyes are closed too. But other times God opens your eyes and lets you see what is so spectacular and wonderful about one of His attributes, and it thrills your soul. And that experience is satisfying and strengthening, like food and drink. It is comforting, motivating, encouraging, awe-inspiring. That is what it means to see God.
Last week when I preached about God’s mercy some of you came in that morning already knowing in your head that God is merciful. You had done the calculations at the kitchen table about that Grand Canyon. But during the course of the sermon as you were fixing your gaze upon what Scripture says about God’s mercy, and meditating deeply about it, finally at some point God opened your eyes to see what is so glorious and wonderful about His mercy, and you found your whole being craving it - saying, “Yes, Lord, Your mercy is amazing! I want it - more than anything else right now I want an experience of Your mercy!” You were floored by God’s mercy, and you walked out afterward with the fires of your love for God just that much hotter because of how amazing His mercy is. And nearness to God was that much more desirable to you. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened - You saw God! That is what Scripture means by seeing God.
What about the people who came in already knowing that God is merciful, and who added a few more pieces of information to their knowledge base about God’s mercy…, but left without it having any real impact on their affections? They left without being bowled over in amazement. It did not leave them awe-struck, did not increase any spiritual appetites, did not cause much joy or delight on longing or craving. What happened there? Those people didn’t see God. They were still at the kitchen table just gathering information. The first group saw God; the second group did not.
The only thing that matters
My goal in every sermon is for you to see God. My goal all week in preparation is for me to see God, and my goal in preaching is for you to see God. I do not ever want my preaching to descend to the point where they become mere lectures - doing nothing but passing on information. I don’t want to just open people’s eyes to understand principles; I want God to use the preaching to open our eyes to see Him. That is the only thing that even matters in life.
Psalm 27:4 One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.
It is not that seeing God is the most important thing in life. It is not that it matters more than everything else. Seeing God is the only thing that matters in life at all. Having experiences of the presence of God that increase my love for Him and desire for Him - that is the only thing that matters. “What about ministry?” Ministry is only worthwhile inasmuch as it is an exercise in seeing God. “What about going to work every day?” Going to work or school is only important inasmuch as it opens my eyes to see God. And those things are crucial for seeing God.
The reason why God does not want us to be kneeling in our prayer closet with a Bible in front of us twenty-four hours a day is because if we did that we would limit our ability to see Him. To really see Him requires extended prayer, deep study of Scripture, then going out into the world and living the things we have learned and walking alongside God and joining Him in the work that He is doing; walking in His way and enjoying the unfolding of His plan and treasuring His will. So we have a lot of things we do in this life, but all of them should be for the purpose of seeing God.
Sometimes you get up in the morning and read about His mercy and your eyes are not really opened, and you struggle to appreciate it. Then you go to work and suffer some horrible injustice or get in some terrible trouble; then the next morning you get up and read about His mercy and your eyes are opened to how marvelous it is. And your eyes never would have been opened if you had not gone to work and been mistreated. One thing I desire - to gaze upon Your beauty.
The writer of Psalm 119 prayed for that.
Psalms 119:18 Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
He already knew where the wonderful things were and what they were (many of them he wrote with his own hand); his prayer was that he would be able to see them – to experience, appreciate, delight in, and be moved by them.
Transformation - You are what you see
I think most people probably do not appreciate what an incredibly loving thing it is for God to allow us to see His beauty and glory. It is loving not just because seeing beauty is pleasurable and enjoyable. Seeing beauty is pleasurable and enjoyable, but more than that it changes you. It transforms your heart.
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all behold the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory
You have heard the saying, “You are what you eat”? Well, you can also say, “You are what you see.” You become like what you gaze upon.
1 John 3:2 … we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
How it works
How does that work? We all understand how beholding beauty is enjoyable, but how does beholding beauty - particularly moral beauty - transform you to become more like the thing you are beholding?
Igniting desire
One way it works is by touching your desires. When you see firsthand how wonderful God’s righteousness is, and the eyes of your heart are opened so that you can appreciate what is so delightful about it, - that makes you want it. It makes you hunger and thirst for righteousness.
And it also reduces the tug of sin on your heart. The only way sin can keep up its appeal is through blindness. That is the only way an ugly thing can trick you into desiring it - by blinding your eyes so you cannot see how ugly it is.
But when you take that corrupted, temporary, shallow pleasure and put it alongside some spectacular, breathtaking, infinite, eternal pleasure...the ugliness of the ugly one is exposed and your desire for it diminishes.
Increasing faith
Another reason why seeing God transforms you is it increases access to God’s grace. We overcome sin in our lives by faith. Faith is always the way to gain access to grace. And the more we see God the more our faith increases.
It is hard to trust God about some upcoming crisis when all you have is information in your head about His power and kindness and goodness. But when your eyes are opened to those things, and you experience them firsthand, it is easy to trust Him. Seeing is believing. When you have a firsthand experience of something it is much easier to believe it.
In our study of the life of David we were amazed at his faith. How can a man come to the point of having such strong faith in God? The answer to that question is in Psalm 31. In that Psalm David is in deep trouble, and yet...
Psalm 31:14 I trust in you, O Lord
How did David manage to be able to trust God when circumstances were so horrible?
21 he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city. 22 In my alarm I said, "I am cut off from your sight!" Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.
Prior to this crisis David had been in another crisis. And it was so severe that David felt like he had been cut off from God’s sight, and he cried out to God for mercy. And God heard his cry and showed David His love. The literal translation of the Hebrew in verse 21 is this: “He has caused His love to be amazing to me.” David already knew about God’s love, but in the midst of his anguish and fear he needed a lot more than just theoretical information. He needed to stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon of God’s love so that it became amazing to him. He already had some information about it, but he needed to be awestruck by it. And God answered that prayer, and David saw God - he experienced God’s love in a way that amazed him, and remembering that was what enabled David to have such strong faith in God the next time.
Examples
Now please don’t misunderstand - I am not disparaging the importance of information. Without information there is no knowledge of God. You cannot bypass that step. If you try to have experiences of God’s presence without doing the hard work of study and learning information about God you will fall into every kind of error. You have to learn the facts. But merely learning the facts is not enough. That is the starting point, but it is not the goal. The goal is to see God.
I begin every day by focusing my attention on one of God’s attributes and begging Him to cause that attribute to be amazing to me. I study what Scripture says about it, and I pray about it, and I think and meditate and ponder and write down some ideas and prayers about it, and sometimes I have to keep that up for a week or two before finally the Lord lets me see it in a way that amazes me and fills my heart with joy.
I commend that practice to you - it is the meat and potatoes of my whole spiritual life. More than anything else that is what fuels my love for God and delight in Him. More than anything else that is what strengthens my faith. And more than anything else that compels me to heartfelt worship. That is why we put up the slides prior to the worship service about God’s attributes. Nothing will prepare your heart better for worship than seeing God.
That is also why we post those devotionals on TreasuringGod.com every day in the resource library page. Each day there is a meditation on another attribute of God. And if you don’t like going online, or you would like to have a whole bunch of them so you can pick which attribute you want to focus on each day, send me an email and I will send you one hundred of those meditations. And if you get tired of those I can send another couple hundred that are not edited yet. And maybe the insights that amazed me will not affect you the same way, but at least they can get you started in your seeking and you can pick up where I left off and keep pressing and pressing and seeking hard after God and studying until He finally opens your eyes and amazes you with that attribute. And when He does, write down your thoughts in a prayer and keep that somewhere so when the day of darkness and tragedy comes you can look back like David did and strengthen your faith.
Seeing God will transform your heart by re-directing your desires and by strengthening your faith. That is why no matter what spiritual problem or goal you have in your life right now, the solution is greater appreciation of God’s attributes - seeing God. When the blinders are ripped away and you are able to see firsthand and personally experience His patience or sovereignty or wisdom or tenderness or generosity or transcendence or nearness or eagerness to listen to our prayers, or food-likeness or eternality or any other attribute of God, when you see it in such a way as to be able to appreciate what is so absolutely, breath-takingly marvelous about those things, it will cause heart-transforming, righteousness-producing, sin-dwarfing, God-glorifying, faith-strengthening joy in your heart.
Test of conversion
So that is a brief summary of what it means to see God. And I hope you desire that. If seeing God has no appeal to you, no tug on your heart at all, that should cause you to seriously question whether you are truly born again. It is a terrible thing to have a heart that does not even want to see God.
The biggest difference between physical blindness and spiritual blindness is people whose physical eyes are blind at least know that they are blind. But the spiritually blind usually think they can see just fine. Most people in this world think they can see God. They think their conception of God is pretty accurate. That is why they do not love God. They have this lame conception of Him, and they think that is what He is like. And they have no idea that they are completely blind to His glory.
And many of those people are Bible scholars. They know more information about the Bible than I will ever begin to know in this life. They study the Bible, but not with the goal of seeing God. There is a kind of Bible study that does not lead to knowledge of God. For example, reading the Bible, not to see God, but to get support for the things they already believe; or reading the Bible to bone up on their Bible knowledge so they won’t be embarrassed around church people. But the true child of God reads the Bible with the goal of seeing God, because that is the desire of his heart. And that is a sign of a redeemed heart.
Heart Purity
So how do you have this amazing experience? Who are the select few whose eyes are opened to be able to see God?
Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they (and they alone) will see God.
Internal
When we use the term “purity” we tend to use it predominantly in a sexual context. If someone says, “I’m struggling with purity,” usually he is not talking about a problem with lying or selfishness he is talking about sexual sin.” But that is not how the word is used in the Bible. This particular word is the normal Greek word for clean. And in the Jewish context when they heard the word “clean” in relationship to God they thought of one thing - ceremonial cleanness. If you follow all the ceremonial rules you are clean. And Jesus showed them again and again that religious and ceremonial cleanness on the outside is meaningless without cleanness of heart on the inside.
Matthew 25:23-28 You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27 "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 dead men's bones and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
They were clean on the outside and defiled on the inside.
Idolatry
So what is it that makes a person dirty on the inside? Let’s look back at the Old Testament context.
Jesus has been formulating each of the beatitudes from various Old Testament passages, and this one comes from Psalm 24. Who can see God? Who can draw near to Him and behold His glory and experience His nearness and His attributes? That is the same question that is asked in Psalm 24:3.
Psalm 24:3-4 Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart. ... 5 he will receive a blessing from the LORD ... 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob.
Who receives a blessing from God? Who can approach and go in to see God? - He who has a pure heart. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
So what does the psalmist mean by purity of heart? He goes on to tell us exactly what he means:
4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.
That is what cleanness of heart means. Not lifting up your soul to an idol or swearing by what is false.
In other words, do not be guilty of idolatry. In the Bible, dirtiness of heart refers primarily to idolatry.
Ezekiel 36:25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you ... from all your idols.
Two kinds of worship
So it is idolatry that defiles the heart. But what I think is fascinating is the way the psalmist describes idol worship. He mentions two kinds of worship - lifting up your soul and swearing.
Swearing
At first that sounds like a strange way to describe worship - swearing? But it is not talking about foul language - not that kind of swearing. It is talking about an oath. When you make an oath, the purpose of the oath is to demonstrate to others how serious you are about being truthful by swearing by something you hold sacred. In our judicial system there is a tradition of putting your hand on a Bible and swearing an oath to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That tradition dates back to a culture in which the people were afraid to lie to the God of the Bible. They might lie to a human court, but they would be scared to death to break an oath to the God of the Bible. So swearing by a particular god means you fear that god. You take him seriously as a god that must not be offended.
So swearing is an act of worship because it is an act of loyalty to that god and a statement of how worthy that god is to be feared.
Joshua 23:7 Do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them. You must not serve them or bow down to them.
Those are all acts of worship - bowing down, serving, invoking in prayer, and swearing by them. The Lord required that His people swear by Him alone, and no one else.
Psalm 63:11 All who swear by God's name will praise him
The righteous are those who swear by Yahweh alone.
“But what about later in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us not to swear at all?” We will get to that. For now I will just say this - what Jesus was saying in that context was that the sort of swearing the Pharisees were doing – that is something we should never do. They were using a system of oaths that was designed for the purpose of deceiving through technicalities - like writing a contract with loopholes. And in a system like that it is better to just bag the use of oaths altogether and start being truthful. But Jesus was not saying that there is never a time for an oath - we see oaths all through the New Testament. God Himself even swears an oath in Hebrews 6:13. Oaths for the purpose of getting yourself off on a technicality are forbidden. But oaths that recognize God as the supreme authority to be feared above all are actually a form of worship.
Lifting up your soul
The other form of worship mentioned in Psalm 24 is the lifting of the soul.
Psalm 24:4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol...
What does it mean to lift up your soul?
The soul is the seat of the appetites. All the cravings and desires and longings and wants and appetites and drives - all that is your soul. In fact sometimes the Hebrew word for soul is translated “appetite.” For example,
Numbers 11:6 But now we have lost our appetite (soul); we never see anything but this manna!"
Literally it says, “Now we have lost our soul.”
Proverbs 16:26 The laborer's appetite (soul) works for him; his hunger drives him on.
His soul is the same thing as his hunger.
Isaiah 5:14 Therefore the grave enlarges its appetite (soul) and opens its mouth without limit
The soul is the seat of the appetites.
So lifting up your soul (appetites) to something means looking to that thing as that which will satisfy. If I think the solution to all my longing and craving and emptiness is a vacation, then I am lifting up my soul to the vacation. If you think the thing that will really satisfy will be a boyfriend or girlfriend or marriage partner, you are lifting up your soul to that relationship. If you think money will do the trick, then you are lifting up your soul to money. And so one of the highest expressions of worship in Scripture is when someone lifts up his soul to God, and looks to God as the only satisfier of his longings and cravings.
Psalm 25:1 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul
Psalm 86:4 Bring joy to your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
Psalm 143:8 to you I lift up my soul
Undivided loyalty
So Psalm 24:4 describes two forms of worship - lifting the soul and swearing - looking to God as the only satisfier of the soul, and fearing God as the ultimate authority. And now that we understand all that let’s see if we can figure out what a pure heart is.
Psalm 24:3 Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.
A pure heart is a heart of undivided loyalty to God. It does not look to God and other things for satisfaction of its appetites - it looks to God alone. And it does not fear God and other things - it fears God alone. Undivided loyalty. Dirtiness of heart is divided loyalty.
A minute ago I read the promise from Ezekiel about God making our hearts pure and clean.
Ezekiel 36:25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you ... from all your idols.
That same promise is stated in another way in chapter 11.
Ezekiel 11:19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them
A clean, pure heart is an undivided heart.
When God required loyalty from His people and commanded them not to worship any other gods, He was not just talking about praises and prayers. It is not just your prayers and praises that belong to God alone; it is also your appetites and fear. We all understand that it is disloyalty to share your praises between the true God and some false god. But we need to understand that it is also disloyalty and idolatry to share your desires and fear with someone other than the true God.
Fearing someone other than God is evil.
Isaiah 51:12 I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men?
“Who do you think you are - fearing someone other than Me?” Just as our love belongs to God alone, so does our fear.
So if some person is threatening me, I should think, “If what this person is about to do to me is an expression of God’s displeasure with me, or God’s chastisement - then I’m scared to death of that. But if I know I have God’s favor, then I am not afraid at all. If I have God’s approval, what can man do to me? The only thing I am afraid of is God’s displeasure - nothing else.”
Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
So sharing your fear between God and someone else is idolatry; it is spiritual adultery against God, and it soils the heart. And the same goes for lifting up your soul to anything other than God. Looking to some created thing to satisfy your appetites is the definition of greed. And that is disloyalty to God.
Colossians 3:5 Put to death, therefore ... lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.
Greed is idolatry because it is a lifting up of your appetites to some created thing.
Our worship belongs to God alone. Our praises belong to Him alone, our prayers, our desires, our fear - those are all components of worship and they all belong to the Lord Jesus Christ alone. And to share any of that with some created thing is unfaithfulness that makes the heart dirty.
So a clean heart is an undivided heart. It is a heart that says, “I’m going to put all my eggs in one basket. I’m going to look to God alone for everything without any backup plan.” A dirty heart is the heart that has one foot in the church and the other foot in the world. Dirty-hearted people are the people who are holding on to some earthly insurance in case God doesn’t work out. They are the people who are giving Jesus a try. They are taking Christianity for a test drive. There is no full commitment. If they decide it is not for them they have got something to fall back on. They are still holding on to the things of this world that they look to for the satisfaction of their desires. They are not willing to give those things up just yet. They don’t want to make any commitments that might tie their hands in the future and prevent them from being happy.
“I’ll come to church, but I’m not going to stop living with my boyfriend.”
“I’ll try Christianity out, but I’m not going to repent and turn my back on the world just yet.”
“I’m going to maintain a mixed allegiance for now. I’ll worship God with 50%, I’ll approach and try to see God on that basis, and if I like what I see I’ll give the other 50%.”
And Jesus says, “No. If you approach God on that basis you will not see Him at all.” Having a divided heart like that will blind your eyes and make it impossible for you to see any of His glory. James calls those people “double-minded.” He also calls them adulteresses. And God is like a husband who says to his fiancé, “I am willing to marry you and bring you into my home, but only if you are willing to break it off with your other boyfriend first. If you want to marry me and move in and fill up our bedroom with photos of your other boyfriend, forget it. Give me your whole heart or nothing at all.” And if the woman says, “I’m considering giving you my whole heart, but I want to be sure before I burn bridges with my other boyfriend. I need to have a fallback, so let’s just get married, and let me try it out for six months to see how it works out, and then I’ll make a decision about leaving my other boyfriend” - his answer is, “No, this marriage requires a full commitment. If your plan is to share your body with another man, or share your heart with another man, or share your loyalty with another man, or share any part of you with another man then the wedding is off.”
It’s unfaithfulness, not actions, that defiles
You see it is not sinful actions that soil the heart – it is unfaithfulness. If you fall into sin and engage in some horrible, sinful activity; that does not soil your heart. That activity does not make you dirty. It is disloyalty to God in the heart that makes us dirty.
Very often people cannot understand why certain things are sin - because it does not seem like they hurt anyone. “What’s wrong with that? It doesn’t hurt anyone!” But hurting people is not what makes something evil. What makes something evil is if it is an expression of fearing or desiring something or someone other than God (because that shows that thing or that person to be more worthy of fear or desire than God).
Conclusion: Absolute and relative application
Now, once again this has an absolute application and a relative application. In John 13 Jesus makes this amazing statement:
John 13:10 A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean.
There are two kinds of dirty people in this world - the ones who need a bath, and the ones who just need their feet rinsed off. In John 13 Jesus and the Disciples are in the upper room the night before Jesus died and Jesus is on His hands and knees dressed like a slave washing the Disciples’ feet. And when He gets to Peter He runs into a little resistance.
John 13:8 “No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."
The only way to be near the Lord is to be washed and cleansed by the Lord. No one can be near Him or see His glory unless they are clean.
9 “Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!"
Peter had the right attitude - “If cleansing is what I need to see God, then give me a bath from head to toe!”
10 Jesus answered, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you." 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
Eleven Disciples had loyal hearts; one did not. Those with loyal hearts were clean.
However, even those who were clean still needed a certain form of cleansing. If you are a Christian then you have had a bath and you can say, “My heart is clean.” If you are resolved to worship God alone, and there is nothing you are unwilling to give up - you have made the decision to turn your back on any competing loyalty and any competing source of satisfaction and any competing fear and devote yourself completely to Christ - if that is the resolve of your heart, then you are saved (even though you often fail). You are a true Christian and you have access to seeing God. And someday you will see Him as He is face to face and you will be totally transformed. That is the absolute sense.
But there is also a relative application for believers. You are a true Christian, you have God as your Husband, when you sin you despise the mutiny of the flesh and repent, and so you have access to seeing God and will someday see Him fully - how much do you get to see His glory in the mean time? How much do you get to see Him on a day-to-day basis? That is the relative part – it is dependent upon how divided or undivided your heart is in practice. It depends on how clean your feet are. The more you fall into moments of idolatry, the more you cloud your vision of God. When that happens you do not lose your salvation and need a whole bath again. You just need the Lord Jesus to rinse off your feet.
That can be illustrated with marriage too. For the man to be willing to take the woman as his wife requires a total commitment and resolve of her heart to be loyal to him. But once they are married her loyalty is not perfect. And she has failures. Each time she has a failure to be perfectly loyal to him he doesn’t say, “OK the marriage is over.” They are still married, she still has access to him, still lives in his home, still shares his name and all the rest, however there is a relative sense in which she is not quite as close to him when she is unfaithful as in times when she is fully devoted to him. When she sins against him it puts a certain distance between them until she finally repents and he forgives and the relationship is healed.
That is the Christian life. In the absolute sense, if you have saving faith and are resolved in your heart to follow Him, then you are saved and have access to seeing Him. But in the relative sense, as you live your Christian life the more faithful you are the more clearly you get to see Him. And the more divided your heart becomes the more distant your relationship becomes.
And that is why the psalmist cried out to God...
Psalm 141:4-8 Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies. ... 8 But my eyes are fixed on you, O Sovereign Lord
Benediction: 2 Timothy 2:22 Flee youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Hebrews 2:14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord
Summary: “Seeing God” refers not to physical sight (impossible) but special experience of God’s attributes through enlightenment. It is the only thing that matters and it transforms you by re-directing your desires and by increasing your faith in God. Purity of heart is internal cleanness that comes from singleness of heart (no idolatry). Idolatry includes lifting up the soul (appetites) to or fearing a created thing. Cleanness of heart is an undivided heart.
