The Beatitudes (Part 6 - The Pure In Heart)

Title: The Pure In Heart

Text: Matt 5:8

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Introduction:

- What does it mean to be pure in heart?

- To be pure in heart means a person who has been delivered from sin’s power by God’s grace and now strive without deceit to please and glorify God and to be like Him.

- Listen to this story that gives greater definition to pure in heart:

After a violent storm one night, a large tree, which over the years had become a stately giant, was found lying across the pathway in a park. Nothing but a splintered stump was left. Closer examination showed that is was rotten at the core because thousands of tiny insects had eaten away at its heart. The weakness of that tree was not brought on by the sudden storm; it began the very moment the first insect nested within its bark. With the Holy Spirit’s help, let’s be very careful to guard our purity.

- The pure in heart seek to have the same attitude of heart that God has, a love of righteousness and a hatred of evil

- Hebrews 1:9 says, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.”

- You see it’s not enough to love righteousness only, but you must hate evil also.

- Our example is Jesus Christ who loved righteousness and hated evil.

- Isa 11:5 says, “Righteousness will be His belt and faithfulness the sash around His waist.”

- Jesus was faithful and righteous to His Father while on earth. Thus it was the basis for God’s anointing of His Son.

- Now in the same way, our anointing will come only as we identify with our Master’s attitude toward righteousness and evil.

- So the pure in heart, the heart being are mind, will, and emotions is in tune with the heart of God.

- I Sam 13:14 says, “But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after His own Heart and appointed him leader of His people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.”

Transition:

- So now we know what it means to have a pure heart, by loving righteousness and hating evil.

- Therefore the unsaved man cannot have a pure heart as long as he rejects the Lord Jesus as Savior. Acts 4:12 says, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

- The things of God are foolishness to the unsaved. I Cor 2:14 says, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

- The Bible also says in Jer 17:9 that the natural or unregenerate “heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”

- So the question is this morning who are the pure in Heart?

- How do I know that I am living the pure in heart life?

- What does the pure in heart look like in people?

- I want to give you some points to look at that are found in God’s Word to help us live the pure in heart life.

Point 1: They Have Room For Only One Master

Matt 6:24 says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

- A person striving to serve the Lord with not be a person who says they are Christian but living a life contrary to the Word of God. That by definition is a hypocrite.

- A pure in heart person isn’t living the double standard life. They are a person who is thirsting for more of God.

- Meaning wanting to be more like Him and what the Word says.

- A pure in heart person has a newly created heart. II Cor 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

- David said in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”

- Listen to this story of a person who is not pure in heart:

He made free use of Christian vocabulary. He talked about the blessing of the Almighty and the Christian confessions which would become the pillars of the new government. He assumed the earnestness of a man weighed down by historic responsibility. He handed out pious stories to the press, especially to the church papers. He showed his tattered Bible and declared that he drew the strength for his great work from it as scores of pious people welcomed him as a man sent from God. Indeed, Adolf Hitler was a master of outward religiosity--with no inward reality!