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Matthew 5:8
Amen. It's a beautiful thing to hear the saints singing tonight as you turn in your
Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. A question for you to consider.
Are you blessed? Are you blessed? A lot of times I see people saying things or maybe mentioning on social media,
I'm so blessed. And I wonder what it is people mean in our area, in the
Bible Belt. When they say they're blessed, what do they mean? Sometimes I'm afraid that they simply mean, well, they have their health and they have material possessions and they have what they consider a good life.
And they consider based on those things, they are blessed. Now, I don't want to go too far off the side on a ditch or whatever.
Certainly, if you have your health, if you get a raise at work or something like that, praise
God for His blessing in your life. But in the Beatitudes, I want to caution us.
Because in the Beatitudes, Jesus seems to indicate the opposite of what some people consider blessing.
We might say, blessed are the strong. And He says, blessed are those who mourn.
We might say, blessed are those who have all financial riches in this world. He says, blessed are the poor in spirit.
And we might say today that blessed is the man that can just live his life and rank immorality.
And when Jesus says in our text, blessed are the pure in heart. So we continue our study in the
Beatitudes. And tonight, we just look at this one in Matthew 5, 8. Actually, it will take us two weeks to finish it.
But we look at the pure in heart. Matthew 5 and verse 8. Would you stand as we honor the reading of God's Word?
Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart. For they shall see God. Father, we thank
You for this text. We thank You for our Lord Jesus who preached it from the Sermon on the Mount.
We thank You for Matthew recording this. And we know that he recorded it under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. So we come before You tonight, sitting under Your Word. We pray that You would speak to us through it.
Help us to be a people who are pure in heart. To be a blessed people, a blessed church.
We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Blessed are the pure in heart.
I really want to cover the first half of this verse. And then next week, we'll talk about what it means that they shall see
God. But if I can just mention a couple things about that aspect. Isn't that an amazing reality?
Like, isn't that an amazing promise? Who's going to see God? Jesus says, those who are pure in heart.
So, number one tonight, I want to talk about the problem of impure hearts. So, Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God. In other words, Jesus, by selecting a group of people here to call blessed, that is, it's the pure in heart that are blessed.
Well, it's obvious that there are those within His hearing, and in our world today, that are not blessed.
So, blessed are the pure in heart makes it obvious that He also means there are those who are not blessed.
In other words, the impure in heart are not blessed. Now, here's the problem with impure hearts.
No one that I know of, who may be a candidate of having an impure heart, thinks they have one, right?
Everybody appeals to the purity of their heart. In our culture today, everyone seems to say these sorts of things.
God knows my heart, right? They can live in any kind of rank immorality. They can be living with someone outside of wedlock.
They can be addicted to some sort of drug or alcohol or something like that.
In drunkenness, they can be doing any sort of wicked act, but they'll appeal to the purity of their heart.
The problem with impure hearts is nobody thinks they have one. It's always the people who act differently than me that have the impure hearts.
They vote differently or they drive differently or whatever. Well, Solomon asked in Proverbs 20 verse 9,
Who can say, I have made my heart pure? I am clean from my sin.
Or flip over to Matthew 15 for a moment. We're in the book of Matthew. Just look at Jesus' concern about the heart and what a wise teacher
He is about the heart. In Matthew 15, 19 and 20,
Jesus says, For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.
In other words, in Jesus' teaching, He's much concerned about the heart.
Now, what is the heart? We understand that the heart is more than just merely your seed of emotions. Biblically, the heart is the center of all that you are.
It's not just an organ in your chest pumping blood, but it represents your inner self, your mind, your heart, your soul, your inner being, the core of your very being.
And Jesus says, It is the pure in heart who are blessed. Jesus is concerned about the heart.
Not, by the way, hear me clearly on this, not that He's not concerned about actions, but there is a proper order.
Purity of heart produces piety. Here's where the Pharisees missed it. They thought piety could produce purity of heart.
It can't do it. You can't do pious actions in order to produce purity of heart.
It's the other way around. When the heart is pure, the actions are pious.
So let me speak for a moment on the problem of the impure heart. First, the impure heart is dead.
Now, by dead, we don't mean it doesn't feel emotion, or that it doesn't love.
It most certainly does these things. But by dead, we mean that the impure heart, listen carefully to this, by dead, we mean that the impure heart has no taste for heaven's joys.
I'm not saying that the impure heart may not desire heaven. Of course it does. It desires heaven in the sense that it doesn't want to go to hell.
It wants to live in a better world. It wants to see loved ones. Oh, I can't wait to see
Grandpa Johnny when I get to heaven, or whatever. The impure heart desires heaven, desires a pain -free, blissful eternity, sure.
But it has no ability, an impure heart is dead, it has no ability or desire to delight in the things of God.
Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs wrote, When individuals have defiled hearts, even the most wholesome and blessed truths of God become tasteless to them.
I don't want to sound like I just harped on evangelicalism today, but I think it's important.
Do you know why churches are tempted to minimize God today?
Why doctrine is deluded, the gospel is gutted, Christ is compromised.
Do you know why churches are tempted to do this? Because they are enslaved to the whims of those with tasteless hearts.
Hear me, church. Too many churches are enslaved to the whims of those with tasteless hearts.
It's like, if I may use this analogy, let's suppose that you go, surely you would never go to something like this, but let's suppose you do.
You go to the Great Vegetarian Convention. I don't know, it's held in California, I'm sure.
And you go to the Vegetarian Convention, and you set up a booth. But no one comes to your booth, and they don't buy what you're selling.
Why? You're selling beef jerky. Nobody at the Vegetarian Convention wants that.
Why? Because they don't eat that stuff, right? So ask an unregenerate man, if he wants a sermon on the glories of Christ, on the great doctrines of the
Bible, on the sovereignty of God, on the holiness of God, on the great truths about election, or the church, or sanctification.
Ask him, do you want that unregenerate man? Or do you want a sermon about self -esteem?
And about how good you are. And about how you can have a great life.
It's no contest. It's like asking a four -year -old if they want broccoli or Skittles, right?
What are they going to choose? Get the broccoli out of here, right? I want the Skittles.
Why? That's their taste. And I'm just telling you that too many places, and we need to be careful here, we're not immune.
Too many places fall into the temptation that we need to entertain goats rather than feed sheep, right?
We need to appeal to the taste of the unregenerate heart. But the taste of the unregenerate heart is not toward God.
The impure heart is dead. Jeremiah says it's unfeeling like fat towards the things of God, toward the true gospel, toward biblical
Christianity. Second, the impure heart is delinquent. It's dead. Secondly, it's delinquent.
And what I mean here is that not only is it in a state of not being able to taste heaven's joys, to taste and see that the
Lord is good, to taste the sweetness of God, but it's also in a state of active rebellion.
So in Psalm 23, David says in verse 3 and 4, Who shall ascend the hill of the
Lord? And who shall stand in its 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.
The impure heart cannot stand in God's holy place because it is delinquent.
It is rebellious. It rejects God's rule. It lifts up its soul to what is false.
It swears deceitfully. The impure heart is dead. The impure heart is delinquent.
Thirdly, the impure heart is deceptive. Please hear me carefully on this third one.
In Proverbs 20, verse 6, Solomon wisely observes. Can I just make an application?
We're reading right now as a church through Proverbs. I don't know if you're on the reading plan or not. I hope you are.
If you're not, I hope you're regularly reading in the Bible. But every time I read through the book of Proverbs, I'm like, honestly,
I need to read this more. I need to feed my soul more.
The Proverbs, they're so wise. They're so practical. And Solomon wisely observes in Proverbs 20, verse 6, many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find.
In other words, many a person is out there today proclaiming their purity of heart, their steadfastness of love.
But are they really faithful? In fact, how many unbelievers have you encountered that really believe that they deserve hell?
Now, you will run into this sometimes. But secondly, how many unbelievers have you ran into that actually believe that they're headed to hell?
You understand. Like, don't you feel like, in a way, like, shouldn't the gospel, like, in one sense, shouldn't the gospel, like, be so easy?
Like, we go out to harps, or we go knock on doors, or we pass out tracts, and, like, here's all we're saying.
Look, you are in rebellion against the God who made you. You are a sinner.
And God is willing to send you to hell if you don't repent, if you stand in opposition to Him, and you die in that state.
God will cast you off into an eternal place called hell. And yet, this God is gracious, and holy, and loving, and merciful.
And He has sent His Son to die on the cross so that sinners may find refuge and pardon.
And you can be forgiven. You can be reconciled to God. You can have eternal life if you will repent and believe the gospel.
Like, doesn't that seem like, boy, that should be easy, right? Except the problem is the rebellious heart.
It's deceptive. It leads you to believe that you should be
God of your life, or it leads you to believe that you're in a state before God that is actually absurd for you to believe.
It leads you to believe that God has made a path for your sin. Oh, sin is wicked, sin is evil.
My sin's okay. It's okay that you find God and His ways, and Christ, and the gospel, and the church a burden, or an inconvenience, or even just a bore, right?
I run into people all the time. It's probably because I'm a pastor. I'm sure Jacob runs into this too. But it's like, you almost get unsolicited confession sometimes.
It's like, you see somebody in Walmart. And they're like, hey, how you doing? Like, oh,
I know I should be in church more, right? Like, I didn't ask for that. I legitimately was just asking, how you doing, right?
And they may not, I'm not talking about they go to this church. I'm just talking about, I just hadn't seen them in a while. And they're like,
I know I should be in church more. There's a little bit of a guilty conscience there, right? They know what they should, but they've convinced themselves somehow, their deceptive heart, that they're okay with God.
Jeremiah 17, 9, you know it. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.
Who can understand it? Now listen to me very carefully. Because I think that this is the most sobering reality.
I'm not trying to scare anyone tonight. But as one of your pastors, this is one of the most sobering realities of the heart in the
Bible. And that is, the Bible is deceptive. It convinces you, or sorry, the heart, did
I say that wrong? Erase that off the video. Yeah, heresy.
The heart is deceptive. The Bible teaches, the heart is deceptive. I'm disturbed that none of you called me out on that.
Stand up, right? No, right? Well, I appreciate the confidence that I was going to correct my own error.
The heart is deceptive. Now listen, just follow this logic with me for a second. If your heart has deceived you, do you know that to be true?
Well, I think it's the definition of deception for you not to know, right?
If your heart has deceived you, then you are by definition, this is just plain, deceived, right?
Turn with me for just a moment to Hebrews 3. This is important. Because I'm not trying to scare you, but I am trying to assess this sobering reality and think, okay, well, what do we do?
Is there an antidote to this? There is an antidote to this. But there's also this reality in Hebrews 3.
Verse 12, the author of Hebrews says, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living
God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
So hear me carefully. Don't miss the theology and the doctrine. There can be within professing
Christians, within, that's important wordage, professing
Christians, there can be within professing Christians a deceitful, unbelieving heart.
Professing Christians and true Christians are not always the same. You understand that?
There cannot be within a true, regenerate, born -again person a heart that causes him to fall away from God.
You cannot be truly born again and then become unborn again. But you can profess
Christ and think that you have a heart that's born again, but have a heart that has deceived you and a heart that is not born again and a heart that eventually leads you to fall away.
Not that you were saved and then unsaved, but that you were never saved. That's what the author of Hebrews is teaching.
They're living a lie, these people. They're unaware of this reality and will, even according to Matthew 7, they'll argue with Jesus.
Jesus says, depart from me, I never knew you. And what will they say? They'll give a retort. They won't be like, okay, you were right.
No, they'll be like, wait a second, Jesus? Even at that point, they're still making a case for their belief.
Jesus says, I never knew you. This is why, listen, this is why we're so all in on the local church.
This is why the local church is so vital. Because in Hebrews 3, the author of Hebrews says that we're to exhort one another in the truth.
Okay, we're to exhort one another every day. We're to feed each other the truth. Here's truth, here's truth, here's truth, here's truth.
Why? Because only truth is the antidote to deception. You understand that someone who separates themselves from the church and has a deceived heart, they never receive that antidote.
They never. Like, if you're in the church and you've deceived yourself and you're in a healthy church and people are talking about Christ, they're talking about the things of Christ to you, then it's hopeful, and surely, hopefully, there'll be a time that that's exposed and you're like, no, right?
But if you separate from the church, you're in very grave danger.
Because the heart is deceptive. I've spent a lot of time on that, I know. But the impure heart is dead, it's delinquent, it's deceptive.
It is an unblessed heart, it leads to an unblessed life, and it will lead to an unblessed eternity.
It is part of a wasted life and an eternal lake of fire. But now let's move to our second point.
The beauty of a regenerate heart. So that's the problem of an impure heart. Secondly, the beauty of a regenerate heart.
Okay, confession. Sometimes I don't have time to alliterate all the Sunday night poems. But here we are.
The beauty of a regenerate heart. Blessed, Jesus says, are the pure in heart.
Now, the pure in heart are Christians. There's not two categories of Christians in the text.
There's not the pure in heart ones and the impure in heart ones. No, no, no. Look, every Christian is one who is pure in heart.
Every Christian is one who will see God. So what does that mean? It means that you must seek purification from the only one who can give it.
It's not the works of your hand. You can't make your heart pure, but you must look to Christ.
So listen carefully to this, and I wonder, even on a Sunday night, if there might be a child or an adult who needs to hear this.
A pure heart, number one, has been wounded. What is a pure heart? Number one, a pure heart has been wounded.
Psalm 109 .22. I wish Brother Charles was here because this is from the
King James. Psalm 109 .22 says in the King James, my heart is wounded within me.
Never, listen, never has a heart been pure that has not first been broken.
Never is a heart whole that has not first been wounded. That's what we talk about in verse 4.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. You understand this evening that there is symmetry and order to these beatitudes.
You don't get to those who are pure in heart separated from those who are impoverished of spirit and who mourn sin.
So a pure heart has first been broken by God. Tonight, I'm asking you, church, has there been a time in your life when your heart has been broken before God?
It has been wounded before God because of conviction of sin. It's been made to feel its inadequacy.
It's been made to know, as it were, it's just deserts. It's been made to understand, at least in part, its wretchedness.
Has there been a time in your life that you mourned your sin and God broke your heart? Because a pure heart has first been wounded.
Secondly, a pure heart has been opened. In Acts 16 .14, it says explicitly, the
Lord opened Lydia's heart. He opened it.
She had a cold, unfeeling, unlistening heart and God opened it up.
The heart, by default, because of sin, has been sealed up in unbelief and rebellion.
It is chained to its own transgressions and no one has the key.
It's locked up. No one has the key that is, but our sovereign and gracious and holy
God. He has the right, He has the power, and He has the mercy to unlock hearts, to open hearts up to His divine truth, to open up a wretched, rebellious heart and to pour into it the antidote of the
Gospel, the truth of the Gospel of Christ. A pure heart has been wounded and a pure heart has been opened.
And then thirdly, a pure heart has been replaced. This is the great promise of the
New Covenant. Those who are in the New Covenant, those who are Christians, have been given a new heart.
God wounds the heart. God opens the heart. God replaces the heart.
Now what does that look like? Well, for those of you awaiting the alliteration, here it is.
First of all, it has new affections. A replaced heart has new affections.
If you want to use the analogy of taste buds here, you can. The heart now that's been replaced, it has taste for the things of God.
It wants Christ. Preach Christ to me. Let me hear the doctrines of the
Bible. Let me hear about the church. Let me hear more about the sweetness of heaven. Let me hear more about John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress.
Let me hear about the great saints of the past. Let me hear these truths. I want to know them. Why? Because now
I love God. Affections have been changed. It desires now to make much of Christ in life, in word, in deed, in thought.
We know it has passed from death to life because now it loves the local church. That's 1
John 3 .14. It's been given new affections. Secondly, a replaced heart has new attitudes.
That is, it now seeks the interest of its brothers and sisters. It seeks the good of the church.
Its motivations now are pure. Thirdly, it has new affections, new attitudes.
Thirdly, it has new actions. That is, it has gone from being a sin lover to a sin killer.
Romans 8 .13. Mortify the deeds of the flesh. So as a believer now,
I walk in the light. I'm to be authentic. I'm to be genuine. I don't have to politic. I don't have to be a hypocrite.
I shouldn't have ulterior motives. Purity of heart means that now I don't want to hide anger there.
I don't want to just not show anger on my face. I don't want to have anger in my heart.
I don't want to have lust in my heart. It's not just outwardly that I don't want to look at things on the television or internet that are impure.
I don't even want lust in my heart. I don't want idolatry in my heart.
I don't want anxiety in my heart. These are all things, by the way, anger, idolatry, lust.
These are all things, by the way, that Jesus deals with explicitly in the Sermon on the
Mount. Yes, these things are a fight. We're not perfect like we talked about this morning. Far from it.
They're a fight. They're a struggle. Sometimes we feel like we took eight steps forward, 15 steps back. But we're fighting.
It's a struggle. But purity of heart means I endeavor to rid myself of even the smallest impurities.
The new heart seeks to mortify sin and not coddle it. The pure in heart is not a perfect heart.
If you could see it, perhaps you'd see some scars. Perhaps you could see some vestiges of the old man hanging around.
It's not that we enter a state of sinless perfection, but we do really and truly have pure hearts in the sense that we seek to put sin to death and to resist the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Fourthly, a new heart has new affections, new attitudes, new actions. And fourthly, a new heart has a new aim.
A new aim. Commentator Daniel Doriani notes, Jesus blesses the eye that is set on one thing.
The will that determines to serve one master.
A pure heart is an undivided heart. It chases after Christ.
I think about the cool weather coming. I think about that a lot, right? The cool weather's coming.
The Lord's merciful. It's coming. Maybe not so much the next few weeks, but it's coming.
And when the cool weather gets here, many of you men and some of you ladies, you'll be thinking about deer hunting.
And you'll wake up early in the morning, and you know what will be on your mind?
One thing. You're going to get the big buck, right? You're probably not necessarily worried at that moment about the stock market.
You're not worried about that moment about the Razorbacks. You're maybe not even worried about things that need to be done around your house.
You've put those aside. You've put everything on your life on hold. I'm not complaining about it. I do it too.
And you say, hey, I'm going to go, and I'm going to hunt deer. Because that's your aim. Well, similarly, but to a much greater degree, in 2
Corinthians 5 -9, Paul says, we make it our aim to please Him. That is, it is the aim of the regenerate heart to please
Christ. It is the aim of the pure in heart to please our
Lord Jesus, to honor the King that my lips and my life and my thoughts and our church and everything about us would bring glory to Christ.
That we would let the Word of God govern our life. That it would shape our plans and our goals and our dreams.
It would be a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path. Even if it may bring us great cost in this life, we just want to see
Jesus honored, right? That's the aim of our heart. Oh, Lord Jesus, use me in whatever way you please.
Just please, please, please, don't let me bring reproach upon the church. Don't let me bring reproach upon your name.
Use my life to bring glory to Christ. That's our aim.
That's what we want to see. Christ, please. I prioritize
God in our life. We prioritize God in our life and the things of God.
We prioritize His Word and His church and prayer and evangelism and fellowship.
He is my master. He's my master. He's my only master. Listen, sin now is no longer my master.
Money is not my master. Entertainment is not my master. Hunting, not my master.
Sports, not my master. Christ is my King. I seek first. That's what Jesus says in Matthew 6, part of the
Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, 33. Seek first the kingdom. Christ is my King.
He's King of the universe. And He's King of my heart. Friends, church family, is this the state of your heart tonight?
Jesus' heart stopped beating on Calvary so that it could beat anew in the hearts of His people.
Do you have a new heart? Christ is the only way. Listen, I know it's August, but if it's okay, we're less than four months away,
I'm going to quote a Christmas song to you. Will this be your prayer? Come, desire of nations, come.
Fix in us thy humble home. Rise, the woman's conquering seed.
Bruise in us the serpent's head. Adam's likeness now efface.
Stamp thine image in its place. Final Adam from above. Reinstate us in thy love.
How terrible to sit through a service on a Sunday night. Children, I exhort you, my own children, think about this.
How terrible to sit in a service on a Sunday night and have an unbelieving heart. When Christ, even tonight, is held out to you,
Christ who is our hope, Christ is offered freely. Church, you may have
Him by faith. You may be given a new heart justified before God, forgiven of all your sins, set upon the righteous a narrow way.
Christ is yours if you will have Him. And the promise of this verse, we're going to cover that next week, but we can't overlook what a glorious truth.
Blessed are the pure in heart. Why are they blessed? Why are the pure in heart blessed?
Because they'll get a parking spot every time when they're trying to go to Walmart, they'll get a parking spot.
It's like, wouldn't that be terrible? They'll always get the big deer. They'll always get the new truck.
They'll always have the health that lasts. They'll live to be 98 years old. No. Blessed are the pure in heart.
Why? They shall see God. We'll talk about what that means next week.
And I remind us tonight that we celebrate this reality in the
Lord's Supper. Christ crucified for the impure. For the undeserving.
Risen again in victory. This Supper reminds us of His healing work, His atoning sacrifice, and the communion that those who are pure in heart have in Him and with Him.
Tonight, the Supper is not for perfect people. That's not what we're saying. But it is for the pure in heart.
Do you have a new heart? Are you trusting Christ? Friends, those who are friends of sin are enemies of our
Lord Jesus. Let us repent. Let us lay hold of Christ.
And let us cling to this wonderful promise that the blessed in heart will one day see
God. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this truth.
We pray that You would bless us tonight in the way that Your Word describes blessing.
And so let us be those who hear Your truth and respond to it in faith. I pray tonight that in this room is filled with those pure in heart.
I pray for the young people in here, even tonight, that they would call out to Christ and be saved.
I pray for even those who might have a deceptive heart. And even tonight, perhaps, the Holy Spirit is working, and they are wrestling, and they believe, oh no,
I have a deceptive heart. I pray that their response right now would decry out for mercy in Christ.
Bless the reception of Your Word. And may it continue to work in our hearts decades in the future.