Matthew 5:8
US News and World Report did a study about television. That study showed that children on average will spend more than 20,000 hours before the television set, which is far more time than he will ever spend in a classroom. What do they see? Violence, perversion, lying, cheating, stealing, blackmail, embezzlement and other delights of our age. Violence, for instance, is so common on TV that it occurs five to nine times in on hour of prime-time television, and as often as thirty times in one hour during Saturday morning cartoons and after-school cartoons. Researchers have found clear evidence that “heavy TV watchers” are no longer shocked or horrified by violence. The report concludes in this way, “It will be difficult for the children who are raised in this era when they reach adult life to be decision-makers about right and wrong, because they have been without guidelines. They will have no idea what moral concepts are all about.” The date of this study? 1975. Has the situation gotten better or worse since then? Has it gotten better or worse in our community? What is purity of heart?
Often we think that purity is unattainable. We think that purity of heart is for those “super-Christians” out there who have got their act together. But Jesus says that only the pure in heart will see God. That means that we all need purity of heart.
Purity in heart comes in two sizes. The first one is purity of conversion. That means that when we come to union with Jesus Christ, we are clothed with righteousness. That is, while we are still sinners, Christ takes out our heart of stone, gives us a heart of flesh in regeneration. We are then clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. When God looks at us He sees Jesus’ righteousness.
By the way, if you do not know Jesus, now is the time to recognize that you are not pure in heart. None of us are really pure in heart. We need someone else’s purity to clothe us.
The second kind of purity is the process of purity. That happens throughout our lives and that is what Christ is mainly talking about here. Purity means unmixed holiness. When we say “pure gold” we mean that there is only gold there, nothing else. So when Jesus tells us that we need a pure heart, it means that our hearts need to be righteous without anything else in there. Thomas Watson says this, “A Christian’s great care should be to keep the heart pure, as one would especially preserve the spring from being poisoned. In a duel, a man will chiefly guard and fence his heart, so a wise Christian should above all things keep his heart pure. Take heed that the love of sin does not get in there, lest it prove mortal.”
When Jesus spoke the woes in chapter 23 that are the negative version of the blessings given here, one of the woes was spoken to the Pharisees. Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.” Jesus is talking about purity here. There needs to be purity not only on the outside, but also on the inside. It is not enough to say that we have not sinned outwardly. We also need to be sin-free on the inside, that part that no one can see.
But why? What reason is there to be pure in heart? First and foremost, because God will not tolerate impurity in His presence. What would God do with an unholy servant? Christ also says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” Another reason for purity is that God dwells in us. You would not want to go live in a house that was incredibly unclean, with roaches, ants, termites, wasps, and filth all over the place, would you? Then why do we expect God to dwell in us, when we have such filth in our lives? Why would God want to come live inside a dirty, filthy, rotten hole like our hearts? If our body is to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, our heart is to be the Most Holy Place, where God Himself has set up His throne. Those are the reasons why we must be holy.
What purity of heart is not can be readily seen. We must not be content with outward purity. As Christ said, a person can be spick and span outside, but be full of murder, adultery, covetousness, and all manner of other sins on the inside. Christ said that out of the heart comes all these sins anyway. Let me just say a word here about behavior. Often we think that if a person changes their behavior, then they must be okay on the inside, too. That is a lot like a parable one of my professors told one day in class. His wife was upset that their apple tree was looking very ugly. It has brown ugly fruit on it, and wouldn’t the husband please do something about it. So the next Saturday, the wife looks out her window to see the husband with a ladder, a bushel of apples, and a staple-gun. About an hour later, she looks out again and sees a beautiful tree full of beautiful apples. How long will it last? As long as those apples last. Those apples, though, are not connected to the root. If they were connected to the root of that tree, then they wouldn’t be such beautiful apples. Those apples are just like our outward behavior, and the root of the tree is just like our heart. If the root of the tree is sound and healthy, then the apples that will be produced will be sound and healthy apples. However, if he root is rotten, then no amount of fresh apples will change that root. The problem will only be temporarily fixed. Eventually, those apples will shrivel up and drop off the tree. In this community especially, I see a focus on behavior. There is nothing wrong with that. We want to see behavior change and come into conformity with God’s Word. But without a pure heart, it will not ultimately change the behavior. Eventually, the “new behavior” will look just like the old behavior. We cannot be satisfied with outward change. We need to be concerned with issues of the heart.
Any issue of the heart that introduces impurity will always have an idolatry associated with it. You can think of any sin in the world, and I will tell you what idolatry is going along with it. For instance, covetousness, theft, and envy have a heart idolatry of wealth. Wealth is desired more than God, and so God is set aside in the heart. You cannot add anything to just God in the heart without an idolatry. Another example: adultery and lust have as their heart idolatry man itself, and finding pleasure and ultimate satisfaction in something other than God. There is no sin that is not idolatry. Idolatry is the very definition of impurity. Instead of being filled only with worship of God, we introduce a substitute, something impure. What Christ is really saying here is “Blessed are those who worship God alone, for they will see God.”
What are some things that contribute to heart idolatry? Ignorance is one. Sometimes we pride ourselves on saying something like this, “I may not know much, but my heart is pure.” That is a lot like saying, “I may be blind, but my eyes are doing well.” Ignorance of God and the Bible is opposite to love. You cannot love someone you do not know. Hollywood says something different, I know. They think it is possible to love at first sight. Hey still believe that after all these years. But the fact is that you cannot love someone you do not know. That means that the less we know of God, the less it is possible for us to love Him. Ignorant minds are impure minds. You cannot go to heaven in the dark.
Another thing that contributes to impurity is a sense of self-sufficiency. Those who say that they do not need purity are those very people who need it the most. If you have cancer, and you keep on saying that you do not have cancer, that denial is worse than the disease. Do not deny that you need purity. Do not deny that you are not there yet. Do not say that you have arrived, and those poor other people out there are much less holy than you are. That is proof of an impure heart.
Another impediment to purity of heart lies in sin itself. Sometimes we think that we can be pure while holding on to just one sin that we cannot let go. But Satan can hold on to a person by just one sin. Another way we do this is to plan sin in our lives. Sinners cater to their own desires. For instance, if you know that you have trouble wasting time on the TV, why do you not throw the TV away? Or if you know that a bad program is coming on the TV, why do you make sure that everything else is out of the way so that you can watch that bad program? If you eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. That is, if your TV causes you to sin, take out the plug of the TV and throw it away. There are far better things in life to do than to watch TV.
Instead of doing these things, desire purity. That is the first step. A good sign of a pure heart is that it desires purity. How much do we desire purity? Oftentimes we will avoid sin merely because we want to avoid sin’s consequences. In our community, how often do we avoid sin merely because our neighbor would catch us at it, and we would lose our standing in the community? Should we not rather desire purity for itself, and because God wants us to have it? Purity of heart means desiring purity of heart.
Purity of heart also means avoiding the appearance of evil. The reason we should be afraid to sin in front of other people is not because we will lose OUR standing, but because we might cause someone else to sin. Purity of heart then means selflessness, not selfishness. Peer pressure can be intense. “Everyone else is doing it” is a common plea to justify our sin. A pure heart looks at God’s Word, which is pure, and says, “This alone is my guide for right and wrong.”
With whom do you spend your time? Do you spend it with sinners or saints? Now I know, the first objection that will come out of your mouth to this is that because Jesus spent time with sinners wanting to make them pure, therefore we should do the same. However, we are not Jesus. It is true that we must evangelize. But in what setting? How much evangelization has ever happened in a bar, for instance? If you want to spend time with an unbeliever for the purposes of evangelization, then invite him into your home. Let him see what a difference Christ has made in your life. Rather, we should spend far more time with other believers than we do now. Those are the people who can encourage us. They can sharpen us. If we want to be pure, then we must walk with those who are pure.
What is the promise for those who are pure in heart? They shall see God. Do we even know what a privilege that is? That is what Moses wanted more than anything else. He said to the Lord, “Show me your glory.” The Lord said that no one could see God and live. But he showed Moses just the backside of His glory as he passed by. Just that one glimpse was enough to set Moses’ face glowing so much that the people down at the foot of the mountain were afraid. If we were to really examine our hearts, we would find that the thing we really want the most is to see God. For one thing, seeing God transforms us. It is pure joy to be a pure child of God seeing the pure God of the universe. When the thief was on the cross, Jesus said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. Paradise is seeing God. This will not be like some earthly pleasure that grows old. God will make us desire Him ever more fully, and yet He will fill us to the very last drop. He will increase our desire for Him, and keep that desire completely filled. Maybe at some point in your life, you have “seen God” with the eyes of faith. You have had one of those “mountain-top” experiences. It might have come at a very odd moment in your life. Maybe it was while you were combining on a crisp gorgeous fall day, like yesterday. Maybe you went on a vacation and saw beauty that pierced your heart. Maybe you had a dream that was so beautiful that you always wanted to get back to that dream and enjoy it again. Those desires that awakened in you are really desires for heaven and to see God. That is what you will receive immediately upon quitting this life, if you are pure in heart. Jesus says also, “Cursed are the impure in heart, for they will never see God, except as judge.” Do not put off the pursuit of holiness, and of purity. Get rid of your heart idols. Have fellowship with others who also desire purity of heart. Look to God, for then you will see Him.
television purity conversion imputed righteousness righteousness hypocrisy behavioral change idolatry sin friends