Pure in Heart
Notes
Transcript
Justice For Fanny
Justice For Fanny
If I were to ask most of you to name a few of the great hymn writers. It it likely that you list would include:
Charles Wesley,
Isaac Watts,
John Newton
Fanny Crosby.
Most people who are familiar with Fanny Crosby know two things about her.
She wrote more than 8000 hymns.
Among these are “Blessed Assurance”, “To God Be the Glory”, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me”, “Praise Him, Praise Him Jesus My Blessed Redeemer”, “Take the World But Give Me Jesus”, “I Am Thine O Lord.”
She was blind.
Her blindness was from infancy. It was either the result of an infection, or medical malpractice… the family doctor was away and someone impersonating the doctor treated her by placing hot mustard poultices to her eyes.
Her illness eventually departed, but so did her vision.
If you know much about her story then you know that her blindness did not seem to slow her down.
There is an recorded encounter of her speaking to a preacher - one source calls him well meaning - who said to her:
"'I think it is a great pity that the Master did not give you sight when he showered so many other gifts upon you,'
Fanny, having had heard similar comments before, responded without missing a beat:
'Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition, it would have been that I was born blind?' said the poet, who had been able to see only for her first six weeks of life. 'Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.'" (131CESK)
Fanny Crosby had a desire, and a hope in the promise that she would see God.
And this hope to see God is maintained in many of her hymns.
One such example is from “My Savior First of All” which sings:
Oh, the soul thrilling rapture when I view His blessed face,
And the luster of His kindly beaming eye;
How my full heart will praise Him for the mercy, love and grace
That prepared for me a mansion in the sky.
When Crosby uses the word “rapture” she means extreme joy, or ecstatic wonder. So in this hymn she sings of the extreme joy that awaits her when she sees the blessed face of the Lord.
Greater than any desire to see, was her great desire to see the Lord.
And isn’t that what we all truly want?
How many times have you heard someone make the comment - if I could just see God I would believe, if I could just ask God one question, I just wish God would show himself to him… all sorts of comments like that are made by people who want God to serve them.
So this morning, I am going to look take us through three different aspects of seeing God.
The Prerequisite to Seeing God.
The Promise of a Pure Heart
The Perspective of the Redeemed
The Prerequisite, or the necessary requirement to see God is a pure heart.
The Prerequisite
The Prerequisite
David himself traces out this question in Psalm 24.
In Psalm 24:3-4
3 Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 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.
He begins by asking a question… and then answering it…
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord… and his answer is:
those with clean hands and a pure heart.
And this is seemingly where Jesus gets the beatitude. Those who have a pure heart will see God.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
So How’s your heart?
When it comes to one having a pure heart - the modern concept of purity of heart is pretty common… but it’s also a bit meaningless.
Sometimes you will hear of someone referring to another person as pure hearted - meaning that they are innocent.
Other times you might hear someone saying that another person has a good heart. It’s normally a backhanded compliment - they did something wrong but with good intentions.
He made a mess of the kitchen baking a cake that tasted terrible and broke the whisk in the process… but he made a cake for his mom for mothers day. It’s cute, but it’s wrong… is the kind of idea when we generally refer to someone having a good heart.
But it also connects to the idea of what kind of person are you? Are you a good person?
As I mentioned last week, nearly everyone thinks that they are.
The Bible however, shows us that we are not.
When we think of it what is meant by heart - our modern usage is pretty much the same as the biblical use… When the Bible refers to the heart it is referring to the The total man. Your will, your mind, your heart. Not just your emotions - which is what it can mean sometimes.
However, the big difference is how we understand the condition of the heart. The world has this understanding of everyone’s heart being basically good.
Which is why you will hear people say “follow your heart.” or “He’s got a good heart.”
The Bible however, tells us that:
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
So if someone tells you to follow your heart… your answer as a Christian should be ABSOLUTELY NOT.
Don’t follow your heart. Follow Jesus.
And in Matthew Jesus states:
19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
(Calvin, the heart is a factory of idols.)
The Bible demonstrates that our hearts are not basically good. But rather deceitful and evil.
So our Pre-requisite comes with a problem.
So when we consider the pure heart - the question becomes who then has a pure heart?
The answer to this question is easy. It’s Jesus.
And for the Christian, since we know the King is pure, and we are in the Kingdom, and desire to be like Christ - so then we would desire purity.
Especially, when we remember the language of Revelation 21:27
27 But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
(Knowing himself to be in the kingdom already, he is concerned with purity because he recognizes that the King is pure, and the kingdom in its perfected form will admit only purity.
“Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World: An Exposition of Matthew 5–10 The Beatitudes, 5:3–10”
D.A. Carson)
And frankly, Revelation 21:27 is really just saying the same thing that Jesus is here.
The unclean will not be permitted in the Kingdom of Heaven is another way of saying that only the Pure in heart will see God.
But if only Jesus truly has a pure heart. Then how can we become pure/how can we see God?
And this connects back to several Old Testament promises.
But first… what does it even mean to be pure?
One definition is without defilement. That’s probably where each of our minds go when we think of purity.
Especially, if you think of purity with the terms of metals - copper, gold, silver, etc -, or with water. In those instances, 100% purification is not possible. But 99.99% is possible.
In those circumstances - they are removing the undesirable impurities from the metal or the water. However, when it comes to precious metals - the impurities are where they get their color. But they are not completely pure - they are getting as close as they can to purity.
Complete purity is not something that man can accomplish by himself.
However, another definition that comes up for the word is “cleansed.”
For our hearts to be purified they must be cleansed.
Ultimately, this all connects to the idea of holiness.
To be set apart and unstained from the world.
This is a major theme in the SOTM.
Next week we will have new bulletin covers - that will correspond to our sermon series. On the cover, I put Matthew 5:48. While I was designing them, I sent the file over to my mom to ask for her opinion. She said “they look great, but I don’t like that verse.”
However, that was kind of the point… We’ll get there in a few weeks…
48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
However, in that verse Jesus is referencing Leviticus 19 - which tell us to be holy as the Lord your God is holy.
Purity/Perfect/Holiness… all of this stacking up should show us clearly that this is not about working to obtain a pure heart - but it is something that must be for us.
Purity is not something that we can obtain on our own.
So how can you obtain a pure heart?
The Promise
The Promise
The good news is that there is this beautiful promise in the book of Ezekiel. In Ezek 36:25-26 the Lord promises to take care of this for us.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
26 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.
The Lord makes this New Covenant promise to not only cleanse us from our uncleanness and our idols, but also to give us a new heart. So both definitions of a purity that we have discussed are active here.
There’s no question of this being a 99.9999% clean because the Lord is taking care of it.
Jesus doesn’t do close enough.
While this does convey an aspect of the already/not yet. Each of us will still sin until we are given a glorified body - but even so we are forgiven of our sins, and declared righteous. We are stamped pure and blameless in Christ Jesus.
Even though our hearts and deceitful above all else, factories of idols and from them pour forth all kinds of evil then the promise for a new heart is a promise for the believer to see God.
Then the promises continue as the Lord promises to put his Spirit in his people.
27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Ezekiel 36 loads on promises for the believer.
To be cleansed, to be given a new heart, and him to place his Spirit within them. As much like the rest of the beatitudes, we see that these are what the Lord accomplishes within us when we are born again.
But the promise does not merely end with being given a pure heart. With the gift of a pure heart we are given a promise for a glorious perspective.
We will see God.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World: An Exposition of Matthew 5–10 The Beatitudes, 5:3–10
nowing himself to be in the kingdom already, he is concerned with purity because he recognizes that the King is pure, and the kingdom in its perfected form will admit only purity.
D.A. Carson
The Perspective
The Perspective
When we think of the eternal benefits of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We generally start with the concept that we will have eternal life with God.
But if we really think about what it means to be in the presence of God - it means that we will see God. We will lay our eyes on the eternal one.
This Moses desire in Exodus 33. He wanted to see the Lord’s Glory. But God is too glorious for any sinful human to see with their own eyes. If Moses request was granted he would die. (Ex 33:20)
We have the same conundrum. This is why we need a new heart to see God.
But it is not just Moses who had this desire, and more than that Moses’ desire is promised to be the reward for the followers of Jesus.
There is several promises in the Bible that we will see God.
In Psalm 17:15, we read:
15 As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.
In Isaiah 33:17, we read:
17 Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar.
This verse would speak of Jesus as his return. When Jesus returns, we will see him in his beauty - we will see him in his glory. And Paul writes in Colossians 1:15 - that Jesus is the image of the invisible God - all who have seen Jesus have seen God in human flesh.
But Job in his misery upon losing everything, except a nagging wife, takes comfort in the promise that at the end he will see God.
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!
Job’s verse we understand very different today.
But it’s absolutely remarkable. We have no idea when Job was written - but Job probably lived around the same time as Abraham.
And yet this passage in Job points to the eternal promises of God. It is one of the earliest accounts in the Bible and even so:
Job celebrates a living redeemer. (Job just meant that God is alive, God is active and he will plead his cause.)
A bodily resurrection of the dead.
He takes comfort that he will in risen flesh see God.
We know that our redeemer lives because Jesus though he died on the cross has risen again. OUR Redeemer lives. And in his redemption of our souls - he has given believers the pure heart that we need to see God.
So we have the same hope as Job. For us it is much fuller, because we have seen how Jesus has fulfilled the hope that Job had - and makes certain on those promises. So like Job, we can have hope and steadfastness in the toughest circumstances knowing that even when our skin has been destroyed, we will be raised on the last day, and we shall see God.
And in his first epistle John makes this clear.
2 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.
When Christ appears, we will be like him - and we shall see him as he is.
The redeemed will be given a new heart - a pure heart and they will see God - and be like him.
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
We’ve looked at a lot of verses today. All this to demonstrate that this beatitude that Jesus speaks of here in Matthew 5:8 - blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God - is one of the great promises of Scripture. The hope and the desire for eternal life with him - is the hope and the desire to see God.
That though each of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God - though our hearts are not pure, but wicked and deceitful… those who believe in Jesus are born again, and given a new pure heart.
Do you want to see God? Trust in Christ Jesus, the savior, to forgive you of your sins and give you new life in him. Trust that he only can give you a new heart. That you cannot have a pure heart on your own. Rejoice that he will raise you on the last day - and you shall see him as he is - and be like him.
