Blessed are the pure in heart

When I was in Edgehill College I got to go on a placement to Sri Lanka.  On one occasion a group of us climbed a small mountain called Bible Rock.  We ascended through a leach infected forest.  At the top was a plateau.  To our surprise there was a hut there, which was the home of a Buddhist monk.  To our even greater surprise he had a television in that hut.  And I am not too sure how surprised we were that he wanted to charge us money to see his shrine.

Presumably that monk believed that by breaking away from society he might be more able to live a holy life.

I hope that holiness is a concern for each of us, but if you are like me not only is there the desire to be holy there is the disappointment as we realise how unholy we are.              

            As we look at Matthew 5 verse 8 we are going to ask five questions.

1.  What is the heart?

2.  What does it mean to have a pure heart?

3.  How can our hearts become pure?

4.  What about the impurity I see in my heart?

5.  What does it mean to see God?

Question 1:  What is the heart?

We tend of associate the heart with affection.  If we love someone we put a heart by their name, if we lose someone we are broken-hearted.  However the Bible uses ‘heart’ in a much broader way.  

            Mark 2:6-7, reads, ‘‘Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, “Why does this fellow talk like that?”’ The word translated ‘thinking’ is ‘kardiais’, which comes from kardia (heart).  Hence the King James Version translates, ‘they reasoned in their hearts.’  The heart for the Bible writers includes what we might refer to as the ‘mind’.

            There are numerous passages in the Bible that talk of people being hard-hearted, they are stubborn.  The heart referring to the ‘will’. 

So when we look at this verse we are not just talking of our affections, but also our ‘mind’ and our ‘will’. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, says that in the Bible, ‘heart’ means the centre of one’s personality.  Purity of heart has to do with our very core being, it is to show itself in our likes and dislikes, our motivation, our thoughts and our understanding.

The Bible also tells us that humankind has a heart problem. In Mark 7:21-23 Jesus declares, ‘. . .out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.’  Out of men’s hearts—you see that Buddhist monk was wasting his time thinking that by breaking away from society he would achieve holiness, for as he climbed up that mountain (presumably on one occasion bringing his) his problem came with him.  It has been said that, ‘The heart of the human problem, is the problem of the human heart.’  If we are to have real holiness then something needs to happen in our heart.  

Question 2: ‘What does it mean to have a pure heart?’

The primary emphasis on the word pure in our verse, according to John Stott, is ‘sincerity’.  J. B. Phillips translates these words, ‘blessed are the utterly sincere. . .’

During Jesus earthly ministry people who would have had a great reputation for holiness would have been the Pharisees.  They seemed to hover around the Temple and Synagogues, they tithed even the herbs of their garden, they fasted and prayed, they would have been great for quoting Scriptures; but this is what Jesus says to them- Matthew 23:25-26, ‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee!  First clean the inside of the cup, and then the outside will also be clean.’

The word hypocrite comes from a word meaning ‘to act’.  Their actions are not sincere, it was all just a show.  So what does he tell them?  ‘First clean the inside of the cup’, their heart- their desires, their motives, their mindset, their very being must be transformed; ‘and then the outside of the dish will also be clean’—they will act with sincerity.  Genuine holiness is heart holiness, it is sincere rather than an act because it works from the inside out.   

Question 3: ‘How can our hearts become pure?’

We have already pointed out that humankind has a heart problem, so how can we ever hope to have a pure heart?

David prayed in Psalm 51, ‘Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.’ God can do for us, what we can not do for ourselves.

            Tragically that Buddhist monk on his own on top of that mountain, lacked the one thing he needed if he ever was to have heart holiness: a relationship with the true and living God.

Yes we may be able to change some of our patterns of behaviour, but only God can change our very core—our heart. 

            However the fact that it is God’s work doesn’t mean that we just put up our feet and wait for it to happen.  Philippians 2:12-13,  ‘. . . continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good pleasure.’

            It is God who changes us, verse 13 . . . who works in you to will and to act according to his good pleasure’ and because of that we are to ‘continue to work out our salvation’ i.e., to grow up in our faith; there is a responsibility upon us, to act dependant co-operation. Not activism or self dependant effort.  Not passivism or apathy. Dependant co-operation.

Question 4: ‘What about the impurity I see in my heart?’

            I want you to turn to page x (2 Corinthians 3).

            When we became Christians, when we were born-again God did a work in our hearts.  We see this in verse 3.  Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth saying, ‘You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts’ (a reference to our Old Testament reading).

            Yet even as born-again people we are so often aware that we are not as we ought to be.  That we so often fail to be like Jesus.  Well thank God his work in our hearts has not finished.  Look over the page to verse 18, And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

            We are ‘being transformed’, we are not yet the finished article, but there is a change taking place.  It is as if God has put a ‘work in progress’ sign over our hearts.

John Newton the slave trader who became a Christian, and who wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ said, ‘I may not be as good as I ought to be, but by the grace of God, I am not as bad as I used to be.’  

Question 5: ‘What does it mean ‘to see God’?’

Martin Lloyd-Jones, ‘Christian people can see God in a sense that nobody else can.  The Christian can see God in nature, whereas the none Christian cannot.  The Christian sees God in the events of history.  There is a vision possible to the eye of faith that no-one else has.  But there is a seeing also in the sense of knowing Him, a sense of feeling he is near, and enjoying his presence. . . Another way that we see him is in our experience, in His gracious dealings with us . . But of course that is nothing compared with what is yet to be.’

The pure in heart experience God. 

Knowing him, sense of feeling he in near

1 John 3 verse 2-3, ‘Dear friends, now we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  Everyone who has this hope purifies himself, just as he is pure.’

‘[T]he Christian purifies himself now because pure is what he will ultimately be’ (Carson) . 

‘The pure in heart are blessed because they will see God.  Although this is not ultimately true until the new heaven and earth, yet it is true even now.  Our perception of God and his ways, as well as our fellowship with him, depends on our purity of heart’ (Carson).  What an incentive to purity!

‘Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they shall see God.’