The Pure & Holy

Beatitudes

The first beatitude to be poor in spirit leads to the second beatitude, which is to mourn.

The second beatitude then leads to the third. Those who know their spiritual poverty and weep will be meek. And the meek and “shall inherit the earth.”

If disciples know their sin and weakness, mourn for it, and live humbly because of it, they will ask God to meet their need for righteousness.

If you have an intense longing for righteousness, you are blessed.

To long for righteousness is to refuse to be satisfied by anything less than God.

And if you love for righteousness, you will be merciful.

And mercy will lead to purity.

Pure in Heart

Matthew 5:8 ESV

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

This beatitude convicts us of our need for the help of God. The disciple who mourns their sin will be pure in heart.

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” - St. Augustine.

You must see your sin and weep over it and develop a great impulse to root out sin in your life and become purified, and this will create a longing to see God.

People who seek purity in heart, their lives will be marked as morally pure, honest, and sincere.

There is no other method of living piously and justly, than that of depending upon God. - John Calvin.

Purity is a resolve to live without compromise.

People of integrity with a single-minded commitment to God and will seek to be morally clean.

Because of their passionate devotion to Christ, they will see God, here and now, through the eyes of faith and face-to-face because the kingdom of God is now and not yet.

1 John 3:2 ESV

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

Purity is nobility and righteous action. David shows this when he asks, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?… He who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps. 24:3–4).

As Philip Yancey noted, “The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity.”

Those seeking purity seek the Lord.

The pure do good not for a reward but because they love beauty and holiness.

1 Peter 3:3–5 ESV

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands,

The Heart

The heart’s motivations and intentions are the focal points of the kingdom.

The heart is the center of thought, where vision develops. For example, the psalmist writes, “[I] remembered my songs in the night. My heart mused and my spirit asked” (Ps. 77:6 NIV).

And the book Genesis tells us that before the flood, God noted “how great the wickedness of the human race had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5 NIV).

When the Bible conveys internal dialogue, whether a prayer to God or personal reflection, it uses the heart idiom.

For example, Hannah prayed to God “in her heart” (1 Sam. 1:13).

In Ecclesiastes, the Teacher’s mental processes are reported as something he “said in [his] heart” (Eccl. 2:1, 15).

When Mary witnessed the events associated with the birth of her son Jesus, she “pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19 NIV).

But it goes even more profound than that because the “heart” directly correlates with the act of seeing God.

The positions of our hearts describe how God examines our inner attitudes, evaluates our motives, and observes our private behavior.

Jesus said, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

Jesus told the disciples to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48 NIV).

“Perfect” here may also be translated as “mature” or “whole,” meaning loving with sincerity.

The Heart is Deceitful and Incurable

The human heart is fundamentally compromised because the sinful nature is turned toward itself and away from God.

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Ivan Turgenev, the Russian novelist, said it well: “I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But I do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.”

Martin Luther built on this assessment, explaining that our nature is so curved in upon itself at its deepest levels that it not only bends the best gifts of God toward itself to enjoy them … [and thus] “uses” God to obtain them, but it does not even know that, in this wicked, twisted, crooked way, it seeks everything, including God, only for itself.

The Eye & the Heart

There is an inborn connection between the eye and the heart, which is Jesus’s central point.

As those who once lived in darkness, this is our calling- to walk as “children of light”

Ephesians 5:8 ESV

for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light

The New Testament warns us to avoid temptations and distractions.

Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matt. 6:25).

All these worries and cares do is choke God’s word from flourishing in our hearts and prevent us from seeing him

Matthew 13:22 ESV

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

In a nonstop advertising and marketing culture that makes us fearful about what we eat and our clothing, our hearts are restless, always trying to extend ourselves with fine goods to support our identity.

Many of us have become consumed with our place in society, developing a hyperawareness toward others that sees them as big and God as small.

We have placed human interaction to be more valuable than worshiping our creator.

What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer. - E. M. Bounds.

And my hope today is that this beatitude remind us that the focus of our sight is directly linked with the placement and direction of our hearts.

You need clear your minds of the impure clutter of this world if you want to behold the king in his beauty, and you will see a land that stretches afar” (Isa. 33:17.)

“You must every day make higher ground. You must deny yourself to make progress with God. You must refuse everything that is not pure and holy. God wants you pure in heart. He wants you to have an intense desire after holiness… Two things will get you to leap out of yourselves into the promises of God today. One is purity and the other is faith, which is kindled more and more by purity.” - Smith Wigglesworth.

I Saw the Lord

Isaiah 6:1–3 ESV

1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

When John saw Jesus

Revelation 1:17 ESV

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last,

Be Holy

1 Peter 1:14–16 ESV

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”