Matthew 5 (Part 6) :8

Well, obviously we're dealing with this last verse that we've read, verse 8, blessed are the pure in heart. And to be completely honest, I think that a lot of Christians hear this particular verse, blessed are the pure in heart, and we just kind of tune out. Because we're kind of like, I don't know, we assume that pure in heart means sinless, you know, pure and without sin. And so when we hear Jesus saying something like, blessed are the pure in heart, we're kind of like, yeah, well, that's obviously not me. You know, because we know that we know what we're like. In fact, you know, we've been on the stairs, haven't we? Remember we talked about, we've talked about this from the very beginning, let's put up the stairs of the Beatitudes. And we've been on the very first step, which is blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And remember we talked about poor in spirit means coming to terms with your sin, coming to terms with who you are, the depravity of your sinful condition, the hopelessness, the bankruptcy, the absolute total devastation of what sin has done in your life and in your relationship with God. It has decimated it to the point where without him intervening, you have no hope. Well, we've all been on that step, right? And so we know what's going on inside here, right? There's no games, there's no question marks as to what is going on in our heart. And we've been on the rest of the way up to the stairs, we've been, you know, we've had sorrow over our sin, blessed are those who mourn, you know. And then we went to the next step, which began to change our whole outlook of who we are, who other people are, and it gave us an attitude of meekness toward those people. And then from there, we began to see in ourselves a new and dynamic hunger and longing for the things of God, for righteousness and purity of that daily sort of a kind. And we found last week that it also challenges us to extend the same expression of mercy to others that we ourselves have received. Remember? Blessed are the merciful. So we've been up these steps together in Christ, and then we come to this next step and Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart. And we're kind of wondering, you know, how is it that Jesus can even bring up the issue of purity of heart? Because, I mean, we had to sit there on the very first step and recognize our sin. So how now can he speak of purity of heart? But once again, remember guys, our assumption is that purity of heart makes reference or speaks of no longer sinning. But wait a minute, it can't mean that, right? It can't mean that. Otherwise, we have other scriptures in the Bible that don't make sense any longer. Like 1 John, let me show you. First, you remember this one? 1 John 1.8. If we claim to be without sin, what? We deceive ourselves. And John writes, and the truth isn't in us. So obviously, we're not people who've stopped sinning. We're not people who have become utterly pure as it relates to sin. If we begin to even think that way, John says, we've entered into a state of self-deception. Hmm. So maybe, just maybe, this purity of heart that Jesus is referring to as he pronounces this blessed condition is something other than sinless purity. In other words, sinless perfection, which again is what people kind of, you know, think. Well, it has to be because we know we're not going to be rid of our sinful nature until either Jesus comes back or we die. That's when we're separated finally from the sinful nature. For right now, it's still very much a part of us. And as John says, we continue to mess up. But pure doesn't refer to sinless perfection. So what does it speak of? Well, now, don't get weirded out on me now, but I want to show you a picture of what, this is a common photo of the idea of pure. Let me put this on the screen for you. Now, this isn't a commercial and I'm not getting a kickback. The reason that I'm putting this up on the screen for you is because when you look at something like this, which is water purification, and you see the word pure. Now you don't think that this means sinless, do you? No. When you look at water purification or an ad for water purification, what comes to mind naturally is the idea that it is water that has had the impurities taken out of it. Okay. It is, and that's what they're advertising basically. Pour your water through our filter and it will filter out the impurities and the water will be pure. Do you know why I wanted to put this picture up for you? Because this is really a better illustration of what the Bible refers to when it talks about purity than the idea of sinless perfection. It speaks of filtering out the impurities, the pollutants. Okay. The heart of man can so easily become polluted and so it needs to be purified. And I'm going to talk to you or show you here what that means. And I'm going to show you a song that talks about purity and it's from Psalm chapter 24 and it goes like this, who may ascend the hill of the Lord. In other words, who may come into his presence, who may stand in his holy place. And then it answers the question, he who has clean hands and a pure heart. But then this song goes on to explain what it means by clean hands and a pure heart. It says, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. Now that's interesting. What this Psalm is telling you is how we have a pure heart, how we can gain a pure heart. Again, it's not sinless perfection, but he brings up two things. First, he brings up that this individual does not lift up his soul to an idol. Okay. What does that mean? What does it mean to lift up your soul to an idol? It, you know, in, in old Testament terms, we know that idols were these little small G gods that they would fashion out of wood or stone or something like that. And they would literally worship them. Now, idolatry is still very much alive today in all our culture. We'll talk about that, you know, cause we do have our idols today as well, but it basically refers to somebody who is worshiping something or someone along with God. There is an impurity in our worship. We're not just worshiping God. We're worshiping something else as well. We've lifted up our soul to an idol. Do you see what it's saying here? It's saying your worship to God is not pure. It needs to be filtered because there are impurities in there. You say you worship God, but there's other things in your life that you may be bowing down to. Okay. But this also speaks of another aspect of purity. And the second thing it mentions is the person does not swear by what is false. Now this is interesting. This doesn't refer as much to our relationship to God as it does our relationship to other people. Okay. So purity, a pure heart, as God describes it here in Psalm chapter 24 is pure worship to God where there's no other idols or anything else vying for our attention or which we bow down to. And it is being honest and sincere and open to our fellow men, not swearing by what is false, being completely transparent, completely upfront, completely open to our fellow man without impurity. Well, that's difficult. We've learned how to dodge the bullet of truth so well when it comes to dealing with other people, you know, that we've, I mean, we've absolutely gotten good at it. Um, but it basically means, well, let me put this up for you. Let me define these kind of in a different way. Psalm 24 defines clean hands and a pure heart as this idolatry filtered out of our worship of God and dishonesty filtered out of our dealings with one another. How does that sound? So you see a pure heart isn't sinless perfection. It's purity in our relationship to God and purity in our relationships to one another. Okay. pure heart. That makes sense. It basically means no longer playing games with God. And it means no longer playing games with people. You know, I'm not trying to do the end around with you to try to get you to do something that I want you to do. I'm not going to manipulate you. I'm just going to tell you what's really going on. And in my worship to God, I'm not going to play games with God either. I'm not going to come and worship God and really have these kind of ulterior sort of idols in my life. That I am actually worshiping instead of God something. I really want badly. Other than God. You know, when I when I when I think about this whole concept. If I had to come up with a biblical story that I thought really illustrated well, I would have to come up to with the story the familiar story of the rich young ruler. Because here's a young man who has at least on the outside an expression of pure desire. Now we find out in the story that it's not pure desire, but it appears at first to be a pure desire to know God to be right with God to to to have God in his life and he comes to Jesus and he's just he's breathless and he's like, you know Master tell me what must I do to have eternal life? I mean that that question is a beautiful question, you know. But Jesus of course sees into this man's heart in a way that you and I can't and so he begins to talk to him. About various things and you know how the story ends Jesus knows that there is an idol in this man's life. His worship to God is not pure. It is tainted. It is polluted by a love of money and Jesus knows that and so he calls him out on it and says, you know, if you really want to be perfect sell all that you have and give the money to the poor and come follow me and what does it say says the man went away sad because he had great wealth. Does Jesus want all of us to sell our possessions and give the money to the poor? No. Only if it's an idol perhaps he might he might very well say that to you if it's an idol. You see what Jesus was saying to the rich young ruler is son. You come here with this attitude of longing. And desire that looks on the outside to be. Pretty sincere pretty genuine. But I see you as you really are I see your heart as it is and I know that there are things going on in your heart that are actually standing in the way you may not even completely be aware of them. Let me help you out here. Let me help you become aware of those idols in your life when it comes to pure worship take all of the that you own sell it and give it to the poor and come and worship me and the man was like. Can't do that. This can't do that. You've asked too much of me. And what he proved by that response to Jesus is there was an idol there. There was something in the way you see he and like I said, he may not have even been aware of it, but you know, Jesus has a way of making us aware of those idols in our lives and he convicts us. He's still doing it today through the convicting work of his Holy Spirit. He's speaking to you and I about those areas in our lives, you know that that are are keeping us from a pure worship of God and he will expose those those things in our hearts today. You know, it could be could be seen in a lot of different sorts of situations. It could be the guy who you know pretends to to worship God but the real gods in his life or like the rich young ruler things like money and possessions. Those are the things he really loves. And when push comes to shove he'll work to protect those things first or for another man. It might be laziness and cruelty. You know. He might appear on the outside to kind of want God in his life. But inside it's just not happening for another man. It might be, you know, come into church. He's got his Bible, but he's worshiping the gods of pleasure. Which may present themselves in the form of, you know, pornography or or some other form of pleasure for others. It might be the longing for, you know, drugs and alcohol to to meet a need that they feel just God just can't take care of for some reason. And I'm not let me let me make a point. I think this is an important point. I'm not suggesting to you today that a genuine born-again Christian can't struggle with those things. I'm not saying that I'm not saying as Christians. We should never ever struggle with those things because once again, we do have a sinful nature. Once again, we do struggle with sin. We do we do fall down from time to time. But we ask for forgiveness. We get back up and we come to God and we say Lord purify my heart because obviously there's things in here that shouldn't be and he's convicting us of that and so forth. I'm talking about someone here who really truly lacks sincerity about their sin and he chooses like the rich young ruler to kind of ignore those other small G gods in their life until they come to a point in their lives where they have to make a decision and Jesus brings us to that point. He brings us many times to that crossroads where we have to you know, boom. We got to make a decision. I'm at a fork in the road. It's either Jesus or this, you know, and the rich young ruler is kind of brought up short as it relates to you know, his his spiritual desire for God. He he thought that he had this overwhelming desire to know God and love God and be with God. But when but when he was confronted with this other God in his life, he realized wow, that thing really does have a hold on me and my worship to God is not pure. And so forth. And the reason Jesus did what he did to the rich young ruler, which is exposing his heart is because God cares about our hearts. He cares about what's going on inside. We can kid ourselves. We can deceive ourselves into thinking that my relationship with God is good. Everything's going fine, but he knows better and he does bring us to that place of conviction. And he always looks at the heart. Do you remember remember that story in the Old Testament? I really only share it with you to kind of make a point about where God's looks in our lives, but it was that story about when Samuel was called to go and anoint a new king over Israel because Saul King Saul had completely gone mad and disobeyed the Lord. And so Samuel was told to go to the house of Jesse and there among the sons of Jesse, he would find the next king of Israel. Well, the Bible says that one by one the sons of Jesse were brought in and they kind of were paraded in front of Samuel and when the first son of Jesse came in you remember what Samuel's response? He was kind of like, oh well here. I mean this man. He's tall. He's strong. He's handsome. This is obviously the Lord's anointed and you remember what God said to him. He had a pretty strong rebuke for him. I'll put it up on the screen for you. He said but the Lord said to Samuel do not consider his appearance or his height for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at what looks at the heart. Now that that reality is the same thing that God is doing in your life in terms of getting at what's really happening in your heart. See man looks at the outside. I you know, we can we can come to church here on a Sunday morning and it looks good on the outside. I got my Bible. I got it under my arm. I'm coming to church. You know, I'm all cleaned up spiffed up, you know. All right, praise the Lord shaking hands. How you doing? So forth sit down raise my hand while I sing sing the songs, whatever sit down listen look like okay pastor. Excellent. Good thought. Yeah, great close my Bible put my check in the box out the door and God says, you know what? It's a sham. Because he sees the heart. You know, and you and I might look at the outside and say he's a good Christian man or she's a godly Christian woman and God says it's a sham. Because I know better. I know there are impurities in there. I know that what's going on in the heart. Is what's really going on at the center of their being and I know that this person is. actually worshiping at the feet of other gods, small g. See? God always cares about your heart. What you do on the externals, you know, he's not so concerned. It's what's really going on on the inside. And why does God care so much about the heart? There's a great verse in Proverbs chapter four. It goes like this. Above all else, guard the heart, for it is the wellspring of life. You guys know what a wellspring is? It's not just a well or a spring. A wellspring is that which feeds the other wells and the other springs and streams. It is the source of water, right? And if the source is impure, guess what? The other streams and so forth and wells are gonna be impure too, aren't they? So that's why God says in Proverbs, guard this. Guard the heart because it is gonna spill over into all these other areas of your life. And if it's clear and pure, it's gonna purify these other areas as well. But if it is polluted and tainted, then that too is going to spill over as well. And so we have to ask ourselves, is the well of my heart pure? Or has it been contaminated by the world? One of the best ways to find out is just to know. I mean, look at what the world's running after and see if we're running after the same thing. You can tell a lot when the mega jackpot gets up to about $550 million or something like that. You can tell a lot where people's hearts are. You know, you can see it. And there's other things, there's other ways. But you can see whether we are secretly worshiping at the feet of another God. So that's the question. Does God need to do a purifying work in your heart? I think the answer is probably yes for most of us. But here's the next question that we need to ask. How does God filter? How does God bring that work of purity into our hearts? Well, there's a wonderful verse from John's gospel, chapter 15, Jesus with his disciples. He says, I am the true vine. He says, my father is the gardener. And he cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. Well, every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. Look what he says here. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. How does God do that work of purifying in our lives? He does it through his word, coupled with the Holy Spirit, who obviously brings the word to life for us and brings application. So how does God do his purifying work? He convicts us with his word. We read something in the Bible, we hear something in a message on the radio. Maybe we're listening to something or even something somebody says, but God, you know. You know that you know that you know. It's God speaking to you. And he's saying, you need to put that away. You need to take that God and you need to fire him from your life. You need to literally cut this situation out of your heart. And the question is always the same for you and I. Are we going to do it? Are we going to do it? Or are we going to make excuses and say, well, it's really not that bad. And I don't look at pornography that often. Or I don't, you know, my jealousy is a natural result of what's going on in my life. Or I'm angry because there are things that truly make people angry. And so I'm justified in my unholy anger or this or that. You know, whatever God is convicting you of. Whatever his word is convicting you of and he's speaking to you and saying, you know, put this away. There needs to be a purifying work. Listen, the word doesn't naturally, or the word, you know, let me say this. The word doesn't automatically purify us. We have to embrace it through the Holy Spirit. That's when the word purifies. Jesus said, you're clean because of the word I've spoken to you. That's because they received it. They opened their hearts to it. They accepted that word. And the word does that pruning, purifying, filtering process of purifying our hearts from those impurities that the world is, you know, putting into our life. And then finally we come to the promise of this verse. And you'll remember that verse eight says, blessed are the pure in heart. We now know what that means. Those who've had their hearts filtered from the things of the world so that their worship to God is pure. No other small G gods in sight. And their dealings with man are pure and sincere. There's no deception. There's no falsehood and so forth. Blessed are the pure in heart. And here's the promise, for they will see God. They will see God. Does this mean they're going to, you know, sit up in bed some morning and just have this vision of this theophany in their bedroom where, you know, there's this shining glorious? No, it doesn't. I want to show you what it does mean. Turn in your Bible to Psalm chapter 32. Just go ahead and go there. Psalm 32, because David writes about this. He writes about the man whose sins are forgiven, whose heart has been purified, and then the kind of a relationship now he has with God. You ready? It goes like this. Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered, literally atoned. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him. And look at this, and in whose spirit is no deceit. And again, in his spirit is no deceit. That means I'm not saying I'm worshiping God and then worshiping other gods. I'm not talking to my fellow man and saying one thing but meaning another. There's no deceit. There's purity in those things, all right? Look what he goes on to say. This is interesting. He says, now, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. Your strength, my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Stop there. We will read the rest, but just give me your attention. What's David saying? He's saying that there was a thing you were convicting me of and I wouldn't look at it. I just, I chose to ignore it. I chose to put it aside and just say, no, I'm not gonna deal with that. So, and he says, but you know, that conviction process, you ever been under that conviction process of the Holy Spirit and you're doing something or you're thinking something or you got something in your heart and you know the Holy Spirit's talking to you about it, but you're just kind of like, you're not listening, da, da, da, da, sort of a thing with God. You know, we can do that. You know how you did that when you were a kid? Somebody want to tell you something that you didn't want to hear? And God's sitting there speaking to us and we're like, you know? And David admits now after the fact, he says, you know, I was under such an incredible conviction from the Holy Spirit. And he said, it literally sapped my strength. I mean, I was working harder at covering up my sin with what the Holy Spirit was convicting me of. I was working harder at that than it would have taken just to confess the dumb thing, you know? And he says, and it was just this heaviness that was upon me. He says in verse five, and then I just acknowledged it. I said, yeah, you're right, I did this. I didn't, I just, I wasn't gonna cover it up anymore. And I said, I'm gonna confess. And he says, you know, you forgave me. Verse six, now he talks about what it means. See, now he has a pure relationship with God again, right? Because he's confessed his sin. Now he's gonna talk about what it means to see God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Here's what he says. Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found. Surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him. You're gonna see God in deliverance. Where else are you gonna see him? He says, you are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. I'm gonna see God in these areas. And he says, and then look at the Lord speaks. I love these last couple of verses. God says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you and watch over you. And he says, don't be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle, or they will not come to you. Here's God. David starts off saying, God, I see you now as the deliverer of my life. And God says, oh, even more than that, I will lead you in the way that you are to go. You will see me. You will see my direction. You will see my plan. You will see my will poured out in front of you. You will see these things begin to open up. You will begin to see my work in your life. Some people come and say, pastor. I just can't see what God is doing in my life Maybe there's an issue of impurity that you God is convicting you of an issue where you know, there's just something in the way You know, you're living a life of deceptiveness in your relationship with God He's convicted you of something some other idol and you just haven't responded Maybe it's that relationship with others where there is just some falsehood and and so forth and you need to get those things cleared away And Come to God blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God in their lives, you know Isn't it's just the most wonderful thing in the world guys when we begin to see God working in our lives You know when we begin to just kind of you know, you can see it's like Oh Lord now I can see you working in my home and my marriage in my children. I see your acts of deliverance in my life I see you leading me in the way that I am to go. I'm reading the Bible. It's like oh, there's the answer I was looking for I see you guiding me and directing me and your promise in the word is that you will do that But what is what does God say here at the very end? He says don't be like a mule You know where you got to put a bit in their mouth and you know jerk on it to get him just to come along He says don't be like that. Don't He wants you and I to respond to the Holy Spirit Because we know he's right You know Don't be like a mule Don't be stubborn Don't be unresponsive When the Holy Spirit brings conviction of something in your life that has perhaps taken precedence over him Just confess it Be honest in your dealings with God be honest in your dealings with man That's pure in heart when you do that the promise is you will see God working in your life Because it is only in purity that we can see God If impurity is Shrouding our eyes. We cannot see the workings of a pure God They are we are blinded from that You