When he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain,
and after he sat down, his disciples came to him,
and then he began to teach them, saying,
blessed are the poor in spirit,
for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy,
and blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
This is God's word.
The heart is more deceitful than anything else,
and incurable, who can understand it?
The heart is more deceitful than anything else,
and incurable, who can understand it?
Jeremiah chapter 17, verse nine.
What comes to your mind when we read those words, the heart?
It's certainly not merely the physical muscle
in your chest, right?
You might hear something, or someone say in our day and age,
follow your heart, but your heart's in your chest.
You don't need to follow it.
They must mean something else.
What do you hear?
What do they mean?
Is the heart a metaphor for our passions,
for our emotions, for our strong desires?
Well, if we think along those lines,
I would say that that would be far too limiting
of a definition for what is in view
when the Bible uses the metaphor of the heart.
In view of the Bible, the heart represents
the whole inner self, all of it.
Your thoughts, your will, your emotions,
all your collective energies, your personal life.
Your heart is the seed of your rational,
emotional, and volitional life.
It is at a heart level that one's moral
and religious condition is not just
a religious condition, it's to be measured.
Your heart, in biblical terms,
is the center and source of your whole being.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Here's my amplified version of that scripture.
What a kingdom life!
How flourishing!
Fully satisfied are the citizens of the kingdom,
the pure, the clean, the undivided,
the unclouded in the center and source of their whole being.
They will see, yes, they will behold.
They will lift their heads up and lay eyes on God.
So let's talk a little bit this morning
about the pure in heart.
Under a couple of points, the first one is this.
What is a pure heart?
It was once said that a pure heart is one
that is single-minded, free from the tyranny
of a divided self.
It's something worth noting in the Beatitudes
is that the Beatitudes are filled with ideas
that are not open to isolated, subjective definitions.
So what do I mean by that?
They're not open to isolated, subjective definitions.
I mean, we can't pluck out the Beatitudes,
out of the Beatitudes, and then apply any sort of meaning
to say, let's say, mourning.
What does it mean to mourn?
Or to pour in spirit, or to be humble?
We can't say that mourning is grief over anything, anywhere.
Each one of these must be read in relation
to the whole revelation of God's word,
and understood in light of that revelation
in order for us to begin to grasp the true meaning of it.
For instance, some have actually tried or attempted
to use blessed are the poor in spirit
to refer both to physical poverty
and the emotional toll that poverty takes on an individual.
Physical poverty and the emotional toll taken on that.
And that would be an inaccurate way of understanding
blessed are the poor in spirit.
Jesus isn't inventing new concepts here.
What Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount
is he's deepening the well of revealed truth.
He's digging it deeper.
He's mapping out its implications into our life
so much deeper than the people of his time had ever heard.
They were marveling at it.
We called these macarisms blessed are for they,
blessed are for they, these macarisms.
Well, these macarisms are rooted
in Old Testament revelation as Jesus begins to unfold them
in a new, deep way or a deeper way.
And so as we think of the pure in heart,
we would do well to explore that theme, that thread,
throughout the whole of scripture
in order for us to get a plumb line
for what pure in heart actually looks like.
Take for instance water, right?
We've got some water bottles around here.
What makes water pure?
Well, it'd be the absence of anything other than
and the presence only of H2O.
You add any other letter in there or number
and you probably don't have water.
I'm not a chemist, so I'm assuming, but.
H2O, the absence of anything else
and the presence of only H2O makes for pure water.
Well, what makes a heart pure?
What makes a heart pure?
What absence of or presence of makes a heart pure?
And this is gonna take us all the way back
to Deuteronomy chapter four.
Deuteronomy chapter four, Deuteronomy chapter six,
verse four, Deuteronomy chapter six,
verse four reads like this.
Listen Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Some of you may know what comes next.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul and with all your strength.
These words that I am giving you today
are to be in your heart.
Repeat them to your children.
Talk about them when you sit in your house
and when you walk along the road,
when you lie down and when you get up.
Bind them as a sign on your hand
and let them be a symbol on your forehead.
Write them on the doorposts of your house
and on your city gates.
All the way back in Deuteronomy chapter six,
verse four through nine, we find that the command is
that loyal, faithful love is to be given to God
with an undivided loyalty from the center
of our whole being, from our heart.
All your heart, all of it.
The human heart in obedience to God
is to be filled only with the presence
of loyal love, undivided, unclouded by any other element,
loyal love for God.
So what's the absence of, the presence of?
Anything other than loyal love for God
makes for impure heart.
Not only that, but we are to retain the words
of this command in the center of our being as well,
in our heart, and from there, they are to work their way out
into our everyday life and our actions.
Deuteronomy chapter six sets a plumb line
for what a pure heart looks like.
A pure heart is the whole inner self
devoted to loyal love and fidelity to God alone.
These words are so very important
that they are never to be forgotten.
You heard him, right?
Write it here, do it here, walk when you're walking here,
when you're laying down, put it everywhere, don't forget it.
Jesus even repeats them in what we know
as the greatest commandment, right?
And that scripture represented the Shema, right?
The Jews would often repeat this
because this was to be before them, always.
Any idea of pure in heart, any idea
of what it means to be pure in heart
must have at its foundation this command.
Pure, loyal, faithful love at the center of ourself.
Everything else flows out of here.
So how would Psalm 24, for example,
describe what it means to have a pure heart?
So let's look at Psalm 24, verse three and four.
This is a fairly well-known one as well.
Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not appeal to what is false
and who has not sworn deceitfully.
You can see here again this theme of being undivided
does not appeal to what is false
or swear deceitfully, but appearance alone
is not good enough, right?
We see that clean hands are good, but not good enough.
Clean hands and a pure heart,
they are the ones who ascend the hill of the Lord.
They are the ones who stand in his holy presence.
You see the similarities between the Beatitude
we're studying this morning in Psalm 24?
Oh, the pure in heart will see God.
Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?
Who's gonna stand in his presence?
Who's gonna see God?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart.
In the NIV, it's probably the one
that I'm more familiar with and many of you as well.
Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord
and who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol
or swear by a false God.
Who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false God?
It takes the appeal to what is false
and the deceitful swearing as directly related to idolatry.
The translators in the NIV go,
oh, we know what he's talking about here.
He's talking about idolatry.
He's talking about a divided heart.
And this connects us right back to Deuteronomy six.
Idolatry is nothing more than disordered loves
as Augustine would have put it.
The essence of sin is disordered loves.
You guys know what disordered loves is all about?
Maybe some of you have heard that before.
We all have loves, things that we give our hearts to.
But there is to be an order of those loves.
Those loves, as Jesus says later in the scripture,
he talks about unless a man hates his father and mother,
then he's not worthy to follow me.
And we go, well, that sounds pretty severe.
Sorry, mom, sorry, dad, Jesus said I need to hate you.
But in reality, we're talking about ordered loves.
It's not wrong to love your parents,
it's wrong to love your parents supremely.
It's not wrong to love your children,
it's wrong to love them supremely.
The same with your spouse or any other thing in this world.
And so Augustine's elaborated that sin itself is,
in essence, is when our loves get out of order.
And our desires for things trump our desire to please
and honor God through faithful, loyal obedience.
We move things out of order and that disorder is sinful,
but it also creates chaos, unrest,
cloudiness in our minds and our hearts.
Many of you guys have probably felt that.
Have you guys ever felt that,
where you had a disordered love
that rose too high on the scale,
and it was hard to perceive God's presence
and hear his word, feel his nearness,
until that love was reordered in its proper place?
Idolatry is disordered loves.
I think Tim Keller was the one who connected
Augustine's perspective with the idea of idolatry.
Idolatry is simply a disordered love.
And Jesus was very critical of the Pharisees.
You guys remember this?
What did he say about the Pharisees
with regard to whitewashed tombs?
He said, woe to you, you scribes and Pharisees,
you're hypocrites.
You are like whitewashed tombs
which appear beautiful on the outside,
but inside are full of the bones of the dead
and every single kind of impurity.
Beautiful on the outside.
You done good, but the inside is rotten to the core.
They lived in falsehood and deceit.
Right, who can extend the hill of the Lord?
Not the one who lives in falsehood and deceit,
for their heart's not pure.
But they lived in falsehood and deceit.
They're hypocrites, right?
Hypocrites, play actors, fakes.
They fabricated an outer nature
that did not correspond to their inner nature.
They fabricated an outer nature.
They lived a divided, idolatrous life
and Jesus says you're a whitewashed tomb.
Like you had dead bones, dead bones unclean,
they were unclean.
Uncleanliness within you, all kinds of impurity.
You think you're doing so well
because the outside looks good?
Have you ever been there?
Have you ever judged yourself for someone else's purity
on the basis of the outside alone?
Well, they live a good life.
They're pretty good.
They're kind, they look good on the outside.
And Jesus had a way, and we're gonna see this more and more
as we walk through Matthew,
but Jesus had a way of flipping the light switch on,
the light switch of truth,
in order to expose the hypocrisy at a heart level.
Because many of us can say,
and we've talked about this in weeks past,
oh, they're good, they're a good person.
They do good.
And we think that is enough,
and Jesus comes along and flips the switch of truth on,
the light switch of truth,
and shines light into our darkest heart
to expose the hypocrisy at our heart level.
As we'll study in the coming chapters,
Jesus says more or less this.
He says, okay, men, we'll talk about men right now,
you've never cheated on your wife with another woman?
You look pretty pious and pure.
Good job.
You ever looked at a woman lustfully though?
Oh, you did?
Oh, you committed adultery.
You committed adultery.
By that definition, by Jesus' definition,
how many adulterers are in the room?
How many adulterers are in the room?
By Jesus' definition, He flips that switch on
and says, oh, your outside looks pretty good.
Yeah, no, no cheating, no unfaithfulness, no whatever.
Have you ever looked from the inside out with lust?
Well, that came from the corruption in your heart.
You give to God, what is God's?
You pray faithfully, wow, you're looking pretty super pious,
worshiper of God, good for you.
But how did you treat the poor?
How did you treat the prisoner?
How did you treat the immigrants?
Because whatever you did for them, you did for me.
And whatever you withheld from them,
you withheld it from me.
Are there any murderers here today?
Have you ever harbored anger or bitterness
in your heart against someone?
Have you ever shown contempt or that seed of hatred
allowed it to grow within you?
Jesus said that you killed them
over and over again in your heart.
And on that point, you're guilty, you stand in sin.
And on that point, you're guilty, you stand condemned.
Why?
Because sin doesn't begin with the action.
It begins in the heart.
And God's word tells us that the heart is more deceitful
than anything else and incurable.
Who can understand it?
I would say when we consider the scriptural theme
of being pure in heart and then hold up our lives against it
as we have lived, then we are encountering
that sinking reality that in and of ourselves,
we are not pure in heart.
And Lord knows how to become it.
So let's talk about that, how do we get it?
How do we get it?
If our heart is in such a deplorable condition,
then we need a heart transplant.
We need a heart transplant.
We need a new heart.
It's said, it's corrupted and incurable.
We need a new heart.
And I'm here to tell you the good news of the kingdom of God
is that is exactly what is given to a citizen of the kingdom.
That is exactly what is given to a citizen of the kingdom
of God, to the one who's put their only hope and faith
in Jesus Christ, he gives them a new heart.
He gives them a new heart and he gives them the spirit,
the Holy Spirit, to incline them their will
toward obedience.
Jesus gives that to them, to the citizen of the kingdom.
Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 25 through 27 says,
I will also sprinkle clean water on you
and you will be clean.
I will cleanse you from all your impurities
and all your idols.
Who's talking here, this is God talking.
I will cleanse you from your impurities and all your idols.
I will give you a new heart
and I will put a new spirit within you.
I will remove your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will place my spirit within you
and cause you to follow my statues
and carefully observe my ordinances.
In Ephesians, we are told that we were once dead
in our sins and our transgressions
and we were carrying out all the inclinations of our flesh
and the desires and thoughts
that come from the corrupted heart.
But then it goes on in verse four, it says,
but God, who is rich in mercy,
what was Ezekiel all about?
It was all about God and what he was doing,
what he was working in us.
But God, who was rich in mercy,
because of his great love that he had for us,
made us alive in Christ,
even though we were dead in trespasses.
By grace, you are saved.
In other words, how do we get it?
Well, it's not do, do, do, do, and do more.
It's done.
And I've said it before, the blessed state of the Beatitudes
is not a list of do's and don'ts,
but more of a proclamation.
It's kind of like, what a crazy, cool, awesome,
flourishing life, the one who has made pure in heart
when they entered into the kingdom of God through Christ.
How blessed, what a life, living the life.
If you're in Christ, you're living the life,
the blessed life.
How blessed is the one who is declared righteous.
How blessed is the one whose sins
are not counted against them.
How blessed is the one who is made pure.
In Christ, all is ours.
All is ours, but some of you are probably sitting there
going, but my experience tells me differently.
That's nice, my experience tells me differently.
So, final point, how do we experience more of it?
I don't know if you know this, but something can be true
and yet not fully experienced by the one it's true of.
Something can be true and yet not fully experienced
by the one that it is true of.
We see this with regard to inheritance.
Someone can inherit something and not know about it,
and it's theirs, legally, but they haven't experienced it yet.
They don't know.
They haven't laid hold of it, they haven't seized it.
They haven't walked in the experience of it
or grown in the experience of it.
So all that I said before is true
according to the word of God.
True, and if you are a person of faith,
then that means you believe it by faith.
Right, you don't see it, right?
But you believe it by faith.
When we understand what is true, we can begin to live it out
and we can begin to live out of it.
Our lives take on a new way of operating
as we understand what is true
and we begin to live out underneath it.
It's like when someone goes from,
as a young man in the video,
when someone goes from being an orphan to being adopted,
oftentimes that transition is very difficult.
They don't know what it's like to be a son.
They can be fully, completely a son
and yet even rejecting love and advancements of care
and love and comfort that are brought to them
because they don't know how.
They don't know how yet,
but as they grow in knowledge and experience of that,
they begin to experience more and more
of what is absolutely true of them,
that they are a son or a daughter.
As we understand what is true
and we begin to live out of it,
we will see more and more, our eyes will be open
to the implications that it has on all areas of our life.
But before Christ, this is important,
before Christ we had a heart.
You and I had a heart.
You were before Christ, you hadn't received him yet.
You had a heart that was in union, in union with your flesh.
They were like pals, walking along,
heart and flesh, making it all happen.
In Christ, we have a new heart
that is at war with the flesh
and is inclined toward obedience by the Spirit.
In Christ, we have a heart that's at war with the flesh
and is inclined toward obedience by the Spirit.
Before Christ, we had a heart
that was in union with the flesh.
They were going all out.
One writer put it this way,
the difference between an unconverted
and a converted person is not that the one has sins
and the other has none.
The unconverted has sins,
the converted one now doesn't sin.
But that the one,
the one takes part with his cherished sins against God.
He's in union with his cherished sins against God
and the other one, the converted man,
takes part with a reconciled God against his sins.
You see the difference?
Are you in partnership with your sin?
To go about in an unholy, unpure life
or are you in partnership with the Spirit of God within you
to fight and wage war against sin in your heart?
Our flesh that remains corrupted by sin in the fall
must be sanctified.
It must be put to death and mortified.
That's a big word, mortified.
And in this in between that we exist in,
while we continue to live in this flesh,
we will be at war.
We will be at war.
It's true that when God regenerates us,
he gives us power to fight against and overcome sins,
1 Corinthians 10, 13.
But because we will continue to struggle with sin
until we are ultimately glorified,
we have to remember that genuine repentance
is more fundamentally a matter of the heart's attitude
towards sin than it is a mere change in behavior.
Here's the big question for you.
Do you hate sin and war against it
or do you cherish it and defend it?
Do you hate sin and war against it
or do you cherish it and defend it?
So how do we war against this flesh then?
How do we war against it?
Well, Psalm 119 has a pretty cool scripture in it.
How can a young man keep his way pure?
By keeping your word.
I have sought you with all my heart.
Don't let me wander from your commands.
I have treasured your word in my heart
so that I may not sin against you.
Sounds like this young man is living out Deuteronomy 6, huh?
He's riding in on him, he's walking in it,
he's thinking about it.
First, how do we war against the flesh?
Number one, we are devoted to the word.
Devoted to the word.
We must treasure God's word.
We must feast on it as food for our new heart.
The word of God is food for our new heart.
We must obey it as if it were a good,
benevolent, loving caretaker.
God's word is a caretaker for me,
a caretaker for my soul to walk with me and help me
and provide guardrails and guidelines
to help keep me from straying, from wandering
as I'm so prone to do with everything that's shining.
We must trust in God's word over our own wisdom
and our own cleverness.
Some of y'all are pretty clever.
We must see and acknowledge and worship the God
from which this word proceeds.
Colossians tells us to let the word of Christ
dwell richly among you.
Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you.
In all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another
through Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,
singing to God with gratitude in your heart.
We gotta devote ourselves to the word.
Number two, we must not leave room for the flesh.
We must not leave room for the flesh,
but we must destroy the flesh.
I don't know if you know this is true,
but what you feed grows.
What you feed grows.
If you feed the flesh, the flesh will grow
in size and strength.
If you feed anger, anger will send out its roots
into your heart.
If you feed self-centeredness, you will find yourself
more and more entangled in yourself.
If you feed sexual impurity, your flesh will crave it
more and more and more.
What you feed will grow.
But what you cut will bleed and die.
We wanna destroy the flesh.
We don't just wanna starve the sins of the flesh.
Oh, let's abstain.
We wanna destroy them.
And so I'm saying don't just abstain from it.
Target it.
Target sin when you see it in yourself
or someone else sees it in you.
Lock in on it.
Lock your radar in on that sin and go after it.
Because sin flourishes in the darkest corners of hiddenness.
Sin flourishes there.
So how do you cut it?
How do you cut it down?
How do you destroy it?
Confess it.
Confess it out loud.
I know this is scary for a lot of people,
but that's because sin has taken such a big role
in making such a root in your heart
that you believe that you will be condemned
if you confess it.
And I'm telling you, you confess it to bring it to the light
so that you're healed, not condemned.
Confess it.
Say it out loud to a brother or sister.
And then the Bible says to have them pray for you.
Have them pray for you.
Have them stand with you against that sin.
Get an ally, a partner who will wage war with you
against that sin.
Name it.
This is big.
Name it.
Call it out.
Don't pretend you don't have it.
And whatever you do, please, don't give it a pet name.
Don't give it a pet name so it takes the sting out of it.
What I'm telling you is to use the language
you are learning as you are devoted to the word.
Use the language of the word against it,
not your own pet name.
Use the language of the word against it,
not your own pet names.
If the Bible calls it sexual immorality,
don't say, oh, I have a problem
with looking at things I shouldn't.
Call it what it is.
Call it lust.
If you're married, call it adultery.
I have a problem looking lustfully.
Don't give it a pet name.
Call it out, confess it.
And finally, we devote ourselves to the word.
We destroy the flesh.
And finally, by faith, we depend on the finished work
of Jesus Christ.
In the book of Hebrews, chapter 11,
we're told that Moses left Egypt,
which Egypt was like an archetype of sin's corruption
in humanity and how sin had corrupted humanity so much.
We're told in Hebrews 11 that Moses left Egypt
by faith as one who sees him who is invisible.
He left by faith as if he saw God and was following him.
He left as if he saw God.
What is the promise of today's scripture
for the pure in heart?
That they will see God.
There's both an initial and an ultimate fulfillment of this.
The initial fulfillment is that through the gift
of the Holy Spirit within us
and at work in us, we can ever grow in our knowledge
of who God is by faith and can better perceive
his presence in our life.
That is yours, that is your promise if you are in Christ.
You can better perceive his presence in all areas
of your life as you grow in the knowledge of who God is
by the power of the Holy Spirit and as you say no
to ungodliness and worldly passions.
But the ultimate fulfillment of this promise
that we will see God is what scholars call
the beautific vision.
The beautific vision, it's another one from Revelations.
Revelation chapter 22 and verse four.
And we'll wrap up with this.
Then he showed me the river of the water of life,
clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God
and the lamb down the middle of the city's main street.
The tree of life was on each side of the river
bearing 12 kinds of fruits and producing its fruits
every month.
The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations
and there will no longer be any curse.
The throne of God and of the lamb will be in the city
and his servants will worship him there.
Verse four, they will see his face
and his name will be on their foreheads.
Nights will be no more.
People will not need the light of a lamp
or the light of the sun because the Lord God
will give them light and they will reign forever and ever.
They will see his face, not veiled, they will see it.
This is a promise by faith for all of the citizens
of the kingdom of God.
All those who by faith follow Christ.
How blessed are they who are pure in heart
for we shall behold him.