Today we are looking once again at our ongoing study of the Sermon on the Mount, and we are looking specifically at one of the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes, you will remember, constitute a list of the characteristics of a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. This is the basis of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus, as the Apostle John described, is the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us. He was in the beginning with God, He is God, and all things were made by Him. So this is the message of God to the world. This message gives the world the requirements to become a citizen of heaven, not just a citizen of the temporal world, but the way to be transferred into the eternal kingdom of God and to enjoy all the blessings of that citizenship forever.
Throughout the centuries, man has been searching for the fountain of youth. Searching for a way to escape death. A way to achieve immortality. Ponce de Leon thought that he found the fountain of youth when he explored Florida. But time eventually proved his hope was false. However, God has told us in His word how that we might have eternal life. Jesus came to earth to provide the means by which we can enter into immortality and have life more abundantly. But this eternal life isn’t found in a fountain in Florida, but in the fountain of blood which flowed from Calvary, when Jesus gave His life on the cross so that whosoever believes in Him might have everlasting life and enter into the citizenship of heaven.
The particular Beatitude we are considering today is found in vs 8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” We have said before that all of the Beatitudes are for all Christians, and they are all essential for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. But this particular Beatitude seems to have a certain preeminence. Of all the Beatitudes, this one certainly seems to offer the ultimate goal of our religion, that we might see God. That we might be found fit to stand before the majesty and glory of God and not perish. And if we should stand in HIs presence and live, then must we not then have true life, since He is the source of life?
So it brings up the question, why was not this the first of the Beatitudes? Why here at this point, not first and yet not quite in the middle? Well, I believe the answer comes in recognizing that God has a divine order in these Beatitudes. There is a progression in the Beatitudes. The one who aspires to become a citizen of the kingdom of heaven must first recognize the poverty of his spiritual condition (blessed are the poor). Then recognizing his poverty of spirit, he must mourn over his sin which is repentance (blessed are they that mourn). Along with repentance is the need to humble yourself before God and recognize your need for a Savior. To recognize your lostness, and call upon God to save you requires humility (blessed are the meek). Then in response to your cry for salvation, comes the supply of the Savior, righteousness imputed to your account through the grace of God. (Blessed are they which hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled).
This imputation of righteousness to my account, makes me cognizant of my own unworthiness, and out of God’s mercy to me, I become merciful. Through the change of heart which God gives me in salvation, I acquire the compassion of God. (Blessed are the merciful). Then in addition to that characteristic of God which is mercy, He adds another, holiness. I am holy because of the imputed righteousness of Christ, and purified in holiness by the Spirit of Holiness who works within me. Purity cannot happen until I am regenerated. I cannot obtain purity on my own. And so that is why this principle comes at the point in which we find it here. Purity is the result of my regeneration. Purity is the result of receiving the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Now let’s break down this doctrine more thoroughly by looking at the individual terms contained in it. The first one we should consider is “heart”. The word heart is a word used often in the Bible. God told Samuel, “man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.” The inward part of a man is that which God is greatly interested. But of course, God is not referring to our physical heart, the organ that pumps blood through our veins. The heart speaks of the center of our being. The heart is the seat of our desire, the source of our will, the origin of our affections, the origin of our motives. It is the seat of our emotions. It includes the mind, the intellect. It’s the total center, the soul of our being.
A lot of people want to characterize the heart as primarily the emotional aspect of our being. We hear references to someone’s heart is breaking, or their heart is full of love, etc. But the heart as God speaks of it must be both emotional and intellectual and comprehends all of our inward faculties such as our will, our motives, and desires. The Bible always emphasizes the heart as the source of our actions. Jesus said in Matthew 12: 35, “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”
So the heart is not only the source of good things, but of evil things. Jesus said in chapter 15 vs 19, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” Proverbs says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” The great fallacy of modern society has been an attempt to attribute man’s lawlessness, or wickedness to his environment. Modern philosophy says that if you change one’s environment, then you can change the person. But when they say that, it escapes their notice that man started out in a perfect environment in the Garden of Eden. And yet even in a perfect environment, man fell into sin. The source of our sin is found in the heart, in our affections, in our will, in our intellect, in our desires.
The prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 17:9 "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately wicked; Who can understand it?” So we need to understand that man’s wickedness is not a product of his environment, it’s not a condition of circumstances that we can overcome, but it’s a matter of the natural sinful inclinations of the heart. The solution to our problem is not to try to add something to it, or change it’s environment, but we need a new heart altogether.
Jesus said, “blessed are the pure in heart.” We have just established that the heart of man is deceitful and desperately, hopelessly wicked. Now we hear that God’s standard is a pure heart. The next question then would be what is meant by a pure heart? There are two primary meanings of that word which are accepted by most Bible scholars. One meaning is that it refers to the idea of singleness, or without hypocrisy. What that is talking about is being devoted to one purpose. Having a single minded devotion.
Psalm 86:11 speaks to this idea; “ Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name.” The problem with us is our divided heart. We say love God, yet we still love the world. A pure heart then is one which is not divided. That’s why the Psalmist says unite my heart. Take out the dueling affections which pull me in different directions. May I be solely devoted to the Lord.
The other meaning of the word purity is the idea of being cleansed. To be undefiled, unspotted by the world, is the idea of purity. After David sinned with Bathsheba he prayed a prayer of repentance and asked the Lord to give him a clean heart, to purify him from his sin. That prayer is found in Psalm 51; “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin. ... Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ... Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. ... The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” If we are to have a pure heart then we need it to be cleansed and made right by the Lord. A pure heart is sanctified, holy, set apart, devoted to God above all else.
The ultimate example of a pure heart is of course, Jesus Christ. He was the spotless Lamb of God. He was without sin, the One in whom they could find no fault. He was utterly devoted to the Father. He loved the Father. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with an undivided love. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and all your mind.” That’s an undivided, pure love for God that puts Him before all else.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks the question, “What is the chief end of man?” The answer is, “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” That should be the supreme purpose of our life, to love God and serve Him forever. To know Him, to love Him and to serve Him. That is what it means to be pure in heart. To put the Lord first in your life.
To be pure in heart requires holiness. Peter’s epistle quotes God as saying, “Be holy even as I am holy.” To be holy is to be pure in heart. Hebrews 12:14 says, “pursue…holiness, without which, no one will see the Lord.” It’s interesting to notice that Jesus says the pure in heart will see God, and Hebrews says without holiness no one will see God. So obviously purity and holiness are synonymous. If you would see God, then you must be pure of heart and holy. Holiness and purity speak of the entirety of being. You can’t be partly holy. You either are 100% or you are not.
That brings us to the other term that needs explanation. What is meant by “they shall see God?” I believe there are two meanings to this. One is that we may see God now, and the other meaning we shall see God in glory. In a manner of speaking, we can see God now with the eye of faith. We see Him in scripture most clearly. In scripture we come to know Him. It is written, in thy light we see light. We see God in scripture. We are purified through scripture. In Ephesians 5:25 it says, “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” So we are purified in the word and we see God in the word.
Paul said speaking in Romans 1 that we can see in nature the invisible attributes of God, His eternal nature. And we see the hand of God in the events of history and fulfilled prophecies. As it is said of Moses in Hebrews 11 that by faith he endured, “as seeing Him who is invisible.” By faith we see God.
But there will also be a day when those who are Christians will see Him face to face. Paul said “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” One day we shall see Him as He is in all His glory. John said in 1Jo 3:2-3 “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope [fixed] on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
I don’t think that the natural man can fully ascertain what it means to see God face to face. I don’t believe that there is any greater experience in life than to see God. To be in His unmitigated presence. Nothing else on earth can even be compared to it. Men risk their lives, many of them losing their lives, in order to climb to the top of Mt. Everest, to experience the thrill of being on the top of the world, at the highest peak. Men risk their lives pursuing extreme sports like riding giant waves or jumping out of airplanes, hoping to find a moment of pure bliss in which everything else in life fades away. We all believe that finding true love can provide a glimpse of that kind of experience. But I believe all those things cannot even be compared to the promise of being face to face with the Almighty God, immortal, invisible, the Creator of the universe, wonderful, majestic, holy, wrapped in light, attended to by thousands upon thousands of powerful, angelic beings. To be in the presence of the source of truth, the source of light, the source of life, by which all things hold together and have their being is something incomprehensible to finite man.
Theologians call this principle of seeing God the beatific vision. To one day see God face to face is to experience all the blessings of life in perfect fullness and perfect satisfaction and perfect joy. It is incomprehensible and beyond comparison. But we know that it will be worth it all, when we see God.
So the logical question remains, how do we attain being pure in heart? First let me say what it is not. It isn’t becoming a monk. It’s not sequestering yourself away from the affairs of this world in a cave somewhere. It’s not found in a vow of poverty, or a vow of silence. ( though I might wish some people would take a vow of silence.) It’s not found in celibacy. It’s not in something that we can do in or of ourselves.
The answer to how I may be found pure in heart is found in David’s prayer once again. “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.” God alone is the one who is able to create in me a clean heart. And in Ezekiel 36:25 we read that God promises to give a new heart to those who mourn over their sinful state. "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”
That’s the most wonderful promise of God to cleanse you and give you a new heart, to purify you and make you holy by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is the work of God, but we must also continually offer our hearts to God as a process of our sanctification. James says, Cleanse your hands you sinners, and purify your hearts you double minded.” The fact that God gives me a new heart and cleanses me from all unrighteousness is motivation for a constant renewing of my mind which goes on continually, day by day as I follow after the Lord. It requires a daily mortification of the flesh, that we might walk in newness of life.
John said in 1John 3:3 “And every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure.” Are you purifying your heart in preparation for seeing the Lord? Do you have a single minded devotion to the things of God, or are your affections divided? Do you love the world, or love the Lord with all your heart? Only those who are pure in heart will see God. Examine yourself, and if you fall short in that examination, then pray the prayer which David prayed.
Psalm 51:5-12 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, Let the bones which You have broken rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit.”
The sacrifices that God accepts is the sacrifice of a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, God will not despise.
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