Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

Martyn Lloyd-Jones suggest that these Beatitudes are broken into two corresponding sets. The first three tell us a need, then in the middle is the answer, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, then the last three are the results corresponding to the needs. So “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”. We mourn over our sinful hearts, but when we recognize our sin then there is comfort to be had. That comfort comes from knowing with a pure heart we will see God.

We need to be pure in heart…

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

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

Uh oh! We have a dilemma! But God loves us too much to leave us!

Those who are wholly devoted to God will be with Him in his Kingdom.

PRAY

The Human Heart

The heart is important. We know this.

I’ve got a buddy who is in medical sales. He goes around to hospitals and talks to surgeons about his company’s products. He and I are in a group message with a bunch of guys, we all went to Alabama together. The other day he sent a picture to our group text. It was a heart. A real heart. I saw that picture and I got a real weird feeling because it was a heart! We know the heart is important!

It turned out that that heart was a pig heart for a product training session. Y’all want to see the picture?! Nah I’m just kidding!

But we aren’t even talking about the physical heart. We’re talking about who we are.

What do we need to know about the heart?

Our hearts are the center of our being.

The heart is the center of our being. Our core. Where our true self can be found. This is what Jesus is talking about, what God is after. He told Samuel that man looks at the outer appearance but the Lord looks at the heart. The heart is who we truly are. Our deepest and strongest desires. Our greatest loves. We can hide our hearts from others with outward disguises, maybe even hide it from ourselves, but never from God!

Our hearts are the very center of who we are.

I took chemistry in the 10th grade. I was bad at it. I got one of the two lowest grades I ever got in that class. One of the football coaches taught it and he was a crazy guy. Lot of energy! I struggled so much in that class that I got a tutor. We met once a week at the library on White Station. This tutor started teaching me chemistry and it was completely different from the way Coach Polk did it in class! The answers were the same, but the path was totally different! I was just more confused.

But one thing I remember is that you know what an element it is by getting to its core, to the atom. There you find its “heart”, so to say. It’s determined by how many protons and neutrons it has and that tells you what it’s attracted to and repelled by. We can’t ever see that without a microscope, but we can see how it interacts with other materials because of the kind of atoms it has.

Our hearts, not in our chest but the core of our being, can not be observed. But they flow out into our lives. Jesus said that our behavior flows from our heart.

Matthew 15:18–19 ESV

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

Matthew 12:35 ESV

The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

So a thankful heart shows gratitude. A discontented heart is selfish. …

Your heart is where your deepest desires live, the things that drive you. But we have a problem…

Our hearts are by nature sinful.

We have already seen that God said through Jeremiah that our hearts are sick and deceitful.

They are sinful because of our first parents Adam and Eve.

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

Paul told us in Ephesians that we are by nature children of wrath.

This is what theologians call total depravity…

Our hearts are at birth selfish and self-worshipping. That looks different for different people. But there is good news.

God wants our hearts.

We must understand this!

Mark 12:30 ESV

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

But we also have to understand that because our hearts are sinful, God can not receive them because of his holy Character. Isaiah told us that sin has separated us from God. Our hearts must be pure.

Purity

Pure means solely devoted. Single-minded focus.

Locked in!

Gold is refined by fire to make it pure…

The goal is to remove all the other materials from the gold. To have pure, unpolluted gold. The purer it is the more valuable it is.

Why is this purity so important? Let’s change what we’re thinking about. I like to cook, it’s really fun to me. I like making a good meal and presenting it to people. So let’s say I’m cooking a meal for you. It smells good, it looks good. I’ve been working hard in the kitchen. Now obviously, I didn’t have a hair fall in your food. But listen, the stove was on, the oven was cranked up, I was moving fast to keep everything going. I got sweaty. And at one point a few drops of sweat fell into the food. But not much! You won’t have to add as much salt now!

Purity matters, right?

This is how our hearts must be.

There are two aspects to purity that we need to think about, the positive and the negative. They go together, move together. But we should be aware of both.

Positively, a pure heart is fully and only focussed on the Lord.

Negatively, meaning what is missing, is the stain of sin.

An impure heart is polluted with sinful desires.

Matthew 5:28 ESV

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

This is what we often think of when we think about purity, sexual purity. This is for sure a part of it, but purity is so much more than just that! It’s everything…

What can happen when our hearts are not pure?

Romans 1:24 ESV

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

So what are we to do?

2 Timothy 2:22 ESV

So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

But we have already established that in our own power, we cannot do this. Total depravity…

Proverbs 20:9 ESV

Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”?

None of us can say it. We don’t have the power. But there is one who can have a pure heart! The one who has put their faith in Jesus!

1 Thessalonians 3:13 ESV

so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Ezekiel 36:26 ESV

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

When we call out in faith, we can be made pure. It reminds me of David in Psalm 51.

David asks God to give him a pure heart. Psalm 51:10-12

What does a person with a pure heart look like? Galatians 5:22-24

So when we call on Jesus in faith, our hearts are made pure on the basis of his life, death, and resurrection. Then we have this promise…

Behold the Reward

This is the prize of our faith is to see God! Not to receive blessings, but to see our Creator!

Kristen doesn’t go out of town without us much. Not because I don’t let her, I encourage her when the opportunity comes up. She just hates being away from me. When she comes home there is a different reaction between me and the boys. What do the kids ask when mom or dad gets back in town? “D’ya bring me something?!”

But I’m just excited for her to be back home. I don’t need a gift from her, I just want to see her. And for her to make dinner.

What we want is to see God, He is our reward! If you’re looking for anything else then you may end up missing both!

In Psalm 24 the Psalmist asks…

Psalm 24:3–4 ESV

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.

It is the one who has called on the Lord in faith. We will see God!

We see him in this world in the way He works in our lives and interacts in our world. We have the joy of knowing that He is at work for his people and his Kingdom and we can see his goodness in what unbelievers think is chance. We see the beauty of the Gospel while others see folly.

But the final fulfillment, the eternal fulfillment is the full vision. Now we are looking through the little hole on the hotel door, but then we will see the full glory of our God!

The moment we see him in full glory is described in Revelation 21:22-22:4.

So pursue a pure heart, from where ever you are…