WWUTT 1928 Blessed are the Pure in Heart (Matthew 5:8)

Matthew 5:8 and the Meaning of Purity of Heart

Matthew 5 8 says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. What does it mean to be pure of heart, and even to see God, when we understand the text?

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we are in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5, verses 3 -10, which I'll be reading once again from the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted, for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Purity as Cleanness, Separation, and Being Washed by Christ

We're up to verse 8 today. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Now, that seems straightforward. Once again, like what we read yesterday. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

But again, as we've been going through each one of these Beatitudes, there's something so much deeper here than just that. What does it mean to be pure of heart? Well, to be pure means to be clean. It means to be unstained.

It could be a person who is ceremonially clean or spiritually clean. They would be referred to as pure. They are guiltless. They are innocent. They are, as Psalm 1 describes them, upright. To be pure means to be without mixture.

So, there's nothing else within that would stain the thing that we are calling pure. Like, you understand the concept of purity, right? What is pure water? It's water without any additives. It's water without any substances in it that may cause it to taste funny or look cloudy.

If you hold up a clean glass of pure water, it's as clear as the glass. It has no impurities in it, or as my children would call them, floaties. There's no floaties in that water. It's just good, clean, pure water.

We understand the concept of purity. Being without mixture. So, what should we not be mixing with? Well, we're not supposed to mix with the world, right? If we've been called out of the world by God, we've been cleansed.

We've been made holy, and we've been purified. Purified in Christ. And so, we're not supposed to be mixing in with the world. James gives this warning, you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

We've intermixed with the world, and that which God has called us to be, which is pure, has now become impure. We have mixture in us. So, we're supposed to be without mixture. We're supposed to be separated.

In our case, who are followers of Jesus Christ, we've even been purged. So, we were dirty water. We were disgusting and undrinkable. And God has cleansed us. He has purged us of all unrighteousness. He's put us through his filtering process, and now we are to be, in Christ, pure, clean, good, as God has cleansed us and made us this way.

You understand 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9, which says,. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. And then Paul gives a list of impurities, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And then in verse 11, he says,. And such were some of you, but you've been, what? Do you know the word? You were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God.

We've been washed. We've been purified by Christ. When we come to Christ, he cleanses us. 1 John 1, 9, if we ask forgiveness for our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So we are to be without stain or blemish because we have been cleansed. So let us not return to those things, but let us be called out, separated, clean, we've been purified by God, free from contamination and even the contaminating influences of sin.

Let us not return to those things. Let us not intermix with the world. Let us not allow ourselves to be tempted by Satan, drawn near to Christ and be cleansed by Christ. This is what it means to be pure.

The Heart as the Core of the Person

Now, of course, in verse 8, it's deeper than that. It's blessed are the pure in heart. So what does it mean to be pure in heart? Whenever we see that in the New Testament, it's not referring to the heart that is the organ.

It's not saying, hey, keep your heart pure and free from high cholesterol so you don't have a heart attack early and die. That's not the instruction that we have here. The seed of the emotions in the Middle East at this time was actually the kidneys.

So in some of these places, you just have to do this yourself sometime, but you can you can find a translation of heart is actually translated kidneys because that was really the seed of the emotion, the center of the body right there at the kidneys.

And so that which we refer to as the heart, like put your heart into it in the Middle East at this particular time in the first century, they would have said, put your kidneys into it. That certainly changes a lot of love songs, doesn't it?

Don't break my heart. Don't ruin my kidneys. However, that would translate in our American vernacular. But whenever we see this reference to heart in the New Testament, it's talking about the core of the person, the deepest part of the person, right straight down to the center.

So where it says, blessed are the pure of heart, it means that our purity is from the inside out. It's not just something that people see on the outside. It's not just something that we display or demonstrate in view of other people.

It's actually who we are right down to the core. We have been purified so that our desires are not for the sinful, not for the wicked, not for this world. Our desire is for Christ and his righteousness.

Remember, again, we read later on in Matthew chapter six, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. That's the pure of heart. From our heart, from our core, we would desire that. And if we're pure at the very center of ourselves, then from the inside out, the rest of us will be pure.

But you can't just simply be pure on the outside and expect that your heart will also be pure. That's not the way that it works. We get transformed from the inside out by Christ. So if we're pure from the heart, everything else will be purified as well.

It's kind of like a spring. You know, there was this lake in Pennsylvania when I was growing up as a kid in Pennsylvania, born in South Carolina, lived in Pennsylvania. But there was this lake that was fed by a spring.

So this lake was really, really cold. I don't know if you've ever swam in a lake before. That's a spring lake, but it's really cold because that water's coming up from the ground. But you could go to the side of the lake.

There was actually this little clearing area off from the lake where the water from the ground is bubbling up in this little spring, and then it feeds into the lake. And so we'd go to that little spring area and just put our hands in it.

We can feel the water that's coming up from the ground. We thought that was pretty cool. The whole lake was pure. It's the purest. To this day, it's still the purest lake that I've ever swam in because of how fresh and clear that water was coming up from the spring.

Feeds into the lake.

It's all pure.

You could go to any part of that lake and see the bottom of the lake. That's how pure that water was because the source was pure. But if you were to dirty that somehow, like say there was an oil line running by there, that pipe broke and fed into that spring.

And so what's coming out of that spring is a mixture of that clean water and oil. Well, it wouldn't really be clean water anymore, would it? And then it feeds into that lake. What's going to happen to the lake?

The whole lake is going to be disgusting. And you wouldn't be able to see to the bottom of it anymore because it's bad at the source. And so it is with us as well. If from the very center of ourselves, we are impure, we love sin, we are enticed by the world, we kind of like what the world offers.

We're even jealous of people in the world.

Wow.

Look at what those people get to do. I wish I could go and do that. You know, the Psalms warn about being jealous of the wicked. Don't do that. Don't desire what they have. Proverbs also talks about this as well.

They're going to their destruction. Why would you envy them and what they have and the pleasures that they're enjoying in this world? They're headed to hell. Don't envy or desire that. Love what God has given to us.

Love Christ. The most pure thing ever that has been given to us is Jesus Christ. There's never been a a pure offering than Christ himself who offered himself on our behalf, dying on the cross for our sins.

The spotless lamb who took away the sin of the world, as John describes him in John chapter one, desire Christ and his purity and his righteousness. And when Christ has cleansed us from our core, from the inside out, then the rest of us will.

Be pure.

Scriptural Examples of the Pure in Heart

Remember the rebukes that Jesus gave to the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 23. We'll get to that a little bit later on. But the seven woes that we read there in Matthew 23, one of the things he says to the Pharisees that you are whitewashed tombs, whitewashed sepulchers full of dead men's bones.

So you look pure on the outside, but what are you on the inside? Dead, disgusting, decaying a corpse. So we must be transformed from the inside out, not just trying to do righteousness. So we look good on the outside.

What we do is never truly going to be righteous unless it is God who has changed us from the inside. And we have multiple instructions in the scriptures about being pure of heart. And like I said, with regards to the beatitudes, everything that Jesus says here, we can find in the old Testament.

Being pure of heart is something that you find regularly in the old Testament, especially in the Psalms. Psalm 24, 3, who may ascend to the mountain of Yahweh and who may rise in his holy place. He who has innocent hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to worthlessness and has not sworn deceitfully, he shall lift up a blessing from Yahweh and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

Now, of course, Christ is the one who is innocent and pure of heart, who did not lift up his hands to worthlessness and is not sworn deceitfully. So as Christ has accomplished these things for us and given himself as a sacrifice, so all who are in Christ are clothed in his righteousness and we too will be made pure of heart.

Psalm 73, 1, surely God is good to Israel to those who are pure in heart. Proverbs 20, verse 9, who can say I have kept my heart pure? I am clean from my sin. It is by his deeds that a young man makes himself known if his conduct is pure and right.

Consider the instructions that Paul gave to Timothy in both letters. I'm going to read from both 1 and 2 Timothy here. So first of all, in 1 Timothy 1, verse 5, he says the goal of our command is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere or an unhypocritical faith.

So we who are ministers, speaking of myself being a pastor, the ambition, the desire in my ministry is that I would operate out of love, out of compassion and consideration for others. That comes from a pure heart.

It's not out of my selfish desires and ambitions that I conduct my ministry, but it is a true and good heart that desires to honor God and love other people. And I have a good conscience in this. I don't feel guilty because my heart desires one thing and then my actions are another.

Nor is this an unhypocritical faith. What I preach and what I do are the same. My actions back up my words. And this is a preacher who desires to do well in pureness of heart. Pureness, is that a word?

Purity of heart.

There we go.

Consider an instruction that Paul gave to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, 22. Flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

So we are to desire purity. We are to pursue purity. Consider also these words from the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 4, beginning in verse 4. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

Let your considerate spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things.

Those things that are right and good, that God has declared righteous, so that our minds would even be fixed on that which is pure and not on those things that are impure. And consider once again, what is the reward for those who are pure of heart?

They desire good things. They pursue good things. They are pure right down to their very core. What do they receive? Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And again, I really think Jesus had Psalm 24 in mind here when he said that very thing.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Let me read that again, starting in verse 1. The earth is Yahweh's as well as its fullness, the world and those who dwell in it. For he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.

Who may ascend into the mountain of Yahweh? Who may rise in his holy place? He who has innocent hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to worthlessness and has not sworn deceitfully. He shall lift up a blessing from Yahweh and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

This is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face. Pay heed, O Jacob. Selah. So, if we are pure of heart, we are able to ascend to his holy place, and the promise is that we shall see God.

It's right there in Psalm 24. And so, Jesus fits that very thing into this beatitude when he says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Now, maybe you have not been pure of heart. Maybe you have done wickedly and your heart has desired wickedness.

Well, I would encourage you to turn to Psalm 51. Repent of your sin before God. Ask him to cleanse you and renew a right spirit within you so that you would desire those things that are pure. You would be purified by Christ and so that even your intentions would be pure.

David prayed in Psalm 51, against you, against you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified when you speak and pure when you judge. He goes on to say, purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Prayer for Cleansing and the Promise of Seeing God

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Heavenly Father, we want to see you. And we have the promise in 1 John 3, 1 that a day is coming in which we will see you as you are, because we will be made to be like you.

But right now, as we live in this world, we know you only by faith through what is said in your word. And I pray that you keep us according to your word, that we would be purified, even cleansed by the word, as said in Ephesians chapter 5, so that we would know what is right and good and just and pure in your sight.

Let us desire those things and pursue those things. Christ, who is the purest of the pure. And if we desire Christ and do all that honors God, we are given this promise that we shall see God. We already know you intimately now through Jesus Christ.

But looking forward to that day when we will see you all the more in your glory. Purify us that we would be ready for that day. We ask these things in Jesus name.

Amen.

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.