Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
January 6, 1985
Blessed Are the Pure In Heart
Matthew 5:8, KJV
Americans have an obsession with purity - at least with certain kinds of it. One brand of soap advertises that it is 99.98% pure. Pure what? I've never been able to find out, but it is pure. It's gotten to the point where people won't touch food that contains preservatives or artificial colors.
Just look at soft drink commercials - They tell you what they don't contain, not what they do contain:
7-UP says it doesn't have artificial color.
Sprint doesn't have any caffeine.
Diet Pepsi doesn't have saccharin.
Who cares that they taste like battery acid - they're pure.
You're concerned about the purity of your food. How concerned are you about the purity of your life? It seems odd, but most people don't want to be 99% pure. Everyone would laugh at you. Who wants to be a goody-goody-two-shoes? Deep inside, all of us want to think we have a dark secret that makes us pure - pure as the driven slush.
When I was in high school Ann Landers printed a Purity Test that we discussed at our church youth group. It was the kind of test where you earn points according to your level of experience -
Holding hands - 1 point.
Kissing - 3 points.
Now I'm not going to go into details, but this test covered just about everything. In the end we added up our points to see how depraved we were. Even in this church group, kids were bragging about how high they scored. My sister, on the other hand, only got a 6. She didn't tell anyone because she was ashamed.
If Jesus was up-to-date, he would say, "Blessed are the sleaze-balls, for they will be envied." But he doesn't say that. He says,
"Blessed are the pure in heart."
The word "heart" is important, because it indicates the kind of purity Jesus is talking about. In biblical imagery, the heart is the center of our personality. Love and emotions are associated with the heart and so is our mindset or character.
Jesus view of the human heart is not very encouraging. Turn to Matthew 15:19. He says -
"For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murderers, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies - these are the things which defile a man."
You'll notice that Jesus associates with the heart what we associate with a warped mind. His attitude is shared by other writers in the bible. Jeremiah 17:9 says -
"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?"
Apparently only Ann Landers knows for sure.
Despite this negative diagnosis, the sixth beatitude insists we have purity of heart if we're going to have fellowship with God. Purity of heart involves several things. One of them is our inner thought-life. To see how pure you are ask yourself some questions:
What do you think about when your mind slips into neutral?
How much do you admire deceit?
How are your thoughts reflected in your actions?
There is a lot of wisdom in what Jesus says about the heart. Whether you like it or not, the thoughts in your heart are going to affect your actions. If you are allowing your thoughts to dwell on anger, revenge or lust your actions will eventually show it. Maybe not directly - if you really detest your boss, that doesn't mean you're destined to plant a bomb in his Mercedes. But if you hate your boss and dwell on it, you'll end up more tense around your family and friends. You'll also be more likely to bite the heads off people you tried to tolerate toward at other times.
Purity of the heart refers to the moral state of your thoughts and actions. The Greek word for pure has another meaning as well, which is something unmixed and unalloyed. To be pure in this sense means you are completely sincere and not divided against yourself.
The opposite of this kind of purity is hypocrisy. Very few people live a completely open and consistent life that is free from hypocrisy. When you get right down to it, only Jesus was pure enough to avoid it. The rest of us try to get along by covering it up.
Unalloyed purity means you don't serve two masters. In your heart you love God and nothing else gets in the way. What a lot of people do is mixed their love of God with love for an idol. Money makes a good idol. You may be triple-tithe, but still worship the almighty dollar.
According to Jesus, this kind of compromise is not partial purity but total corruption. If impurity or compromise fill your heart, you are going to feel more distant from God. It is inevitable.
When King David committed adultery with Bathsheba we tend to think he got away with it, but he didn't. Turn to Psalm 51. David wrote this Psalm after his sin was exposed. In verse 8 he talks about the consequences of his impurity. He admits he is depressed and broken in spirit when he says,
"Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones thou hast broken may rejoice."
Notice that David realizes he needs more than forgiveness. In verse 10 he pleads,
"Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
The only thing better than forgiveness is to have your heart changed so you won't sin again. Humanly speaking, this is impossible. You can never make yourself pure enough to please God.
The beauty of the gospel is that God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The moment we believe in Jesus, God makes us pure in his sight. As we yield ourselves to the urging of the Holy Spirit, in all our daily activities, God can make us pure in a practical sense.
Absolute purity will be given to us the day we enter God's kingdom by dying. That is when we will truly "see God." What a blessing!
________
Typed on February 2, 2005, by Sharon Lesko of Ledgewood Baptist Church, New Jersey
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
Created with the Freeware Edition of HelpNDoc: Easily create Help documents