Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

The word means to cleanse from filthy and impurity. It means, in a moral sense, to be free from the defilement of sin. So what is God looking for? He’s looking for people who have had their heart cleaned, who have the core of their nature regenerated

That’s what God is after, pure hearts. Matthew 6, “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”

In biblical imagery, the heart is the center of the entire personality. Jesus’ assessment of the natural heart, however, is not very encouraging. Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel he says, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” Rom. 1:21; 2:5).

Despite this horrible diagnosis, the sixth beatitude insists that purity of heart is the indispensable prerequisite for fellowship with God, for “seeing” God. God is holy; therefore the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews insists, “Make every effort … to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).

Purity of heart must never be confused with outward conformity to rules. It is not enough to clean up our act on the outside

Jesus is Concerned About Our Heart

Here in the beatitudes Jesus is not making optional suggestions, and this sermon is not a series of suggestions on how to make the world better. Jesus is describing the pathway to heaven, and what we are trying to do today is a message from God to urge you to get on that pathway and stay on that pathway so that you can be called sons of God at the last judgment.

If you are on the narrow path which leads to life, we want to help you stay on it. And if you are still in the broad way that leads to destruction, we want to help direct you to the path of life.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean. (Matthew 23:25–26)

The aim of Jesus Christ is not to reform the manners of society, but to change the hearts of sinners like you and me.

The heart is what you are, in the secrecy of your thought and feeling, when nobody knows but

God. And what you are at the invisible root matters as much to God as what your are at the visible branch. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). From the heart are all the issues of life.

What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart … For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man. (Matthew 15:18–19)

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.” That’s the best Old Testament definition of the heart. The heart is that part of us from which all the issues of life arise.

The heart is the source of all the best and worst of us because the heart is really the inside person. The heart, therefore, is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it, Jeremiah

17:9. In Genesis God said every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, speaking of man, was only evil continually. So the heart is what thinks and feels. The heart is our person, our inner person.

And so what the Lord is saying in this beatitude is before you ever see Me there’s going to have to be a substantial change at the core of your being.

It’s not all about religion. It’s not all about the outside, It’s all about the inside. It’s all about a total dramatic change of the inner person. The problem is right at the heart.

David after his great sin, Psalm 51:10 said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” I want a clean heart. And David and Saul certainly illustrate that truth. When God called Saul to be king, 1

Samuel 10:9, the Bible says God gave him another heart. God changed him in the inside, at the very core of his being. And the beginning of his reign was good but then he disobeyed God by acting as if he could function like a priest, and he couldn’t. It was forbidden. And Samuel said,

“The Lord says the kingdom shall not continue for the Lord has sought him a man after His own heart.”

God did give him another disposition. God did give him another heart, another sort of direction from the inside to be king. But it wasn’t a heart after God’s own heart. First Samuel 13:14 says God was looking for a man after His own heart. Who was that man? David … David was that man after God’s own heart.

So the heart is utterly crucial to Jesus. What we are in the deep, private recesses of our lives is what he cares about most. Have you thought recently how helpless the local, state, and federal government is to solve problems of our society?

This beatitude is emphatically irrelevant if measured by contemporary social standards. Blessed are the pure in heart, Jesus says, not because they will save the government millions of dollars, but, because the pure in heart, shall see God.

“Blessed are the pure in heart,” not first because they change society, but first because they will see God. Seeing God is the great goal of being pure. Abandon that goal and human culture collapses into ruin.

What Is It to See God?

To see God means to be admitted to his presence.  “Get away from me; take heed to yourself; never see my face again; for in the day you see my face you shall die.” Moses said, “As you say! I will not see your face again.” (Exodus 10:28–29)

When a king says, “You will never see my face again,” he means, “I will never grant you admission again into my presence.”

Seeing God means being awestruck by his glory, by a direct experience of his holiness. After

God confronted Job in the whirlwind, Job said, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Virtually all of our spiritual sight in this life is mediated to us through the Word of God or the work of God in providence. We “see” images and reflections of his glory. We hear echoes and reverberations of his voice.

But there will come a day when God himself will dwell among us. His glory will no longer be inferred from lightning and mountains and roaring seas and constellations of stars. Instead our experience of him will be direct. His glory will be the very light in which we move (Revelation 21:23) and the beauty of his holiness will be tasted directly like honey on the tongue.

Psalm 27: 7–9

“Hide not thy face from me,” is the same as saying, “Be gracious to me!” This means that seeing the face of God is considered to be a sweet and comforting experience. If God shows his face, we are helped. If he turns his face away, we are dismayed.

So when Jesus promises the reward of “seeing God” there are at least these three things implied: we will be admitted to his presence, not just kept in the waiting room. We will be awestruck with a direct experience of his glory. And we will be helped and comforted by his grace.

And this we will have in part now, and fully in the age to come if we are pure in heart.

What Is It to Be Pure in Heart?

Psalm 24:3–4.

You can see what David means by a “pure heart” in the phrases that follow it. A pure heart is a heart that has nothing to do with falsehood. It is painstakingly truthful and free from deceitfulness. Deceit is what you do when you will two things, not one thing. You will to do one thing and you will that people think you are doing another. You will to feel one thing and you will that people think you are feeling another. That is impurity of heart. Purity of heart is to will one thing, namely, to “seek the face of the Lord” (verse 6).

According to James You can see this idea of purity in James 4:8. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind.

Just like Psalm 24 there is reference to both clean hands and a pure heart as preparation for drawing near to God, or “ascending the hill of the Lord.” But notice how the men are described who need to purify their hearts: “men of double mind.” That is they are men that will two things not just one thing.

The impurity of double-mindedness is explained in James 4:4. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

So the double-minded man has his heart divided between the world.

 

Jesus Explains Purity of Heart

Matthew 22:37  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. Not with part of your heart. Not with a double or divided heart. That would be impurity. Purity of heart is no deception, no double-mindedness, no divided allegiance.

1 Timothy 1:5, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere unhypocritical faith.”

Purity of heart is to will one thing, namely, God’s truth and God’s value in everything we do.

The aim of the pure heart is to align itself with the truth of God and magnify the worth of God.

Jesus only gives us part of the answer here. It is a true part, but only part. He says that the pure will see God. That is, purity is a prerequisite for seeing God. The impure are neither granted admittance to his presence, nor are they awed by the glory of his holiness, nor are they comforted by his grace.

Hebrews 12:14, “Strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

And of course that leads every sensitive soul to cry out with the words of Proverbs 20:9, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin?’ ” And with the disciples: “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus’ answer comes back just like it did to the disciples in Matthew 19:26, and this is the rest of the answer “With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

God creates a purity for us and in us so that we can pursue purity. 

And by his grace we must seek that gift by praying with David, “Create in me a clean heart, O

God” (Psalm 51:10). And we must look to Christ “who gave himself for us … to purify for himself a people” (Titus 3:14).

Acts 15:9, “God made no distinction between us and them, but purified their hearts by faith.” God is the one who purifies the heart, and the instrument with which he cleans it is faith.

Therefore, trust in the Lord with ALL your heart (Proverbs 3:5). Will this one thing. And you will see God.

When the disciples said to Jesus, “Show us the Father,” He answered them by saying, “Have I been so long with you and you still don’t know?” You’ve been seeing the Father. You see, purifying the soul cleanses the vision of the soul so that we see God.

One day, when the kingdom of heaven is consummated, when there is a new heaven and a new earth in which only righteousness dwells, when Jesus Christ himself appears, we shall be like him (1-John 3:2). That is our long-range expectation, our hope. On this basis John argues, “Everyone who has hope in him [that is, in Christ] purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3).

According to John, the Christian purifies himself now because pure is what he will ultimately be.

His present efforts are consistent with his future hope. 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.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (5:8).