February 11, 2007
The Blessing of Staying Focused - Mt 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart…
A 5-year-old grandson was sitting with his parents at a prayer meeting. His mother gave him paper and pencil, and he was busily printing words. Then he poked his mother and whispered, "How do you spell 'sex'?" Shocked, she replied, "What did you say?" The boy said, "How do you spell 'sex,' Mom? You know, 'in-sects.'" She looked over, and sure enough, on the bottom of his paper he had drawn a bug.
Sex is a difficult topic and I won’t be addressing it this morning. So breathe easy. But I will be talking about purity and that is something we all need help with. Who of us can say this morning that they are pure in heart as Jesus tells us he wants us to be in this beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
Last November, one of Evangelicalism’s champions, Pastor Ted Haggard, President of the National association of Evangelicals and pastor of the 14, 000 member New Life Church confessed to being involved in a same sex relationship. He also confessed to buying methamphetamine but said he never used it.
He went on to resign from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals which represents more than 45,000 churches and 30 million members. He also stepped down as he should have from the pastorate of New Life Church.
Do I bring this up about Pastor Haggard to trash him? No, I bring it up as an example of how even those who seem like they are pure, and think they are pure, can deceive themselves and everybody else. As Jeremiah tells us in 17:9 that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure who can understand it? Beyond cure, I wish I had seen that when I was doing counseling. We can’t reform our hearts. Our hearts have to be transformed by God’s Spirit. If we think we’re pure, we probably aren’t. After all, the Pharisees thought they were because they didn’t commit adultery but Jesus went beyond their actions to their attitudes when he said, “But I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart.”
Aren’t we glad that we don’t have to pass through a X ray machine that looks at our hearts before we come into worship? But that is what God’s word is. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that God’s word “judges the thoughts and attitudes of our heart.” Maybe that’s why we avoid reading and studying God’s word. We really don’t want to know what’s going on in our hearts.
As Max Lucado has said in his book, The Applause of Heaven, “The heart of our problems is a problem with our hearts.”
You may think God is impressed by your good, pure actions but he’s not. Because as I Samuel 16:7 says, “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Jesus affirmed this when he confronted the Pharisees in Mt. 23:25-26, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
I believe Jesus is talking about our motives here. If we are doing things to look good to others so they will think well of us yet harbor ungodly attitudes and motivations, then we are not pure in heart. Jesus is talking about our motives here in Mt. 5:8. Are our motives pure or do we simply look good on the outside but on the inside we are full of greed and self-indulgence?
The heart of the problem is a problem with our hearts.
But is it hard to keep our hearts pure with so much impurity out there. Our kids spend an average of 16-17 hours per week watching TV. Did you know that they will see about 14,000 sexual scenes and references each year? That’s about 38 sexual references a day. And almost 90% of teens have viewed pornography online at one of 300,000 adult websites.
And before you bust your kids about going to those kind of sites, how about you? Are you frequenting those sites. If you are going to those kind of sites, you may look good on the outside to your kids and everyone else but on the inside your full of greed and self-indulgence.
I was youth pastor at another church a few years back before I came here. It turned out the dad, a pillar of the church, was going to porn sites on the internet. He and his wife went of vacation and his son was at his desk and opened the drawer. There he found a web site address and he went to it. He found out his dad’s secret and it was pretty hard if not impossible for this dad to tell his son anything about purity.
If he did demand his son remain pure, he would be a hypocrite. And dads and granddads don’t think you’re kids aren’t watching you. They want to see if your actions and words match.
When Jesus mentions purity here in this beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,” He is referring to the center of one’s life being pure. The word heart, kardia, means the center of one’s desires, impulses, feelings, passions and motivations.
Jesus is saying, “Blessed is the one whose heart, whose motives, are pure. Pure is the word, katharos, from which comes our word, catharsis or cathartic. It means a cleansing, a purification. It was used to describe metals that had been refined by fire of all impurities, of soiled clothes that had been washed clean, of grain that had been sifted to remove all impurities. It can also mean “unmixed, unadulterated” or as Warren Wiersbe says, “singleness of heart, as opposed to a divided heart.” James tells us to purify our hearts, you double minded. He also tells us that the double-minded person is unstable in all his ways. If our hearts are pure, we want to give the glory to God not ourselves.
Jesus told his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount that they were not to be like the Pharisees, the hypocrites who liked to be seen by others when they helped the poor, when they prayed on the street corners, and when they fasted. There motives weren’t pure. They hadn’t been cleansed or made pure by Christ. They had cleaned the outside of the cup but not the inside.
Clearly, the Pharisees motives were not pure. They wanted to be seen by others. They wanted to be glorified by others not bring glory to God. Their hearts were divided. How about yours and mine this morning?
But all of us struggle with pure motives, don’t we?
The story goes that a single woman and single man were in an accident. The two got out of their cars, exchanged insurance information and waited for the police. While waiting for the police, it seemed to the young man that the woman really liked him. They started to talk and she gave every indication that she was interested. They got in her car to wait and she suggested that they celebrate their new found attraction while they waited for the police with a bottle of wine she had just purchased from the grocery store. He was thrilled so he slugged it down hard and fast. After he had a good bit of the bottle, he asked her if she wanted some. She politely declined and said she would have some after the police got there. Her motives weren’t pure and neither are ours much of the time.
I’d like to say that I haven’t wanted any of you to see me help the poor, or that I haven’t struggled with wanting you to think my pastoral prayers or sermons are the best you’ve ever heard. But I can’t. There have been times where my motives haven’t been pure. I haven’t been motivated by love for the Lord. I’ve been motivated by something other than that. When our hearts aren’t pure, we will want to be honored by men as Jesus said about the Pharisees. We want the applause of men rather than the applause of Heaven. But the problem is this, when we try to get the applause of people, we lose the applause of heaven. Jesus doesn’t want that for us.
You’ve struggled too I’m sure. You want people to think well of you and there is nothing wrong with that if it’s just a consequence of doing things to the glory of God and not to your glory.
Psychologist Perry Buffington tells us “psychologists have found there are at least three situations when we are not ourselves. First, the average person puts on airs when he visits the lobby of a fancy hotel. Next, the typical Jane Doe will try to hide her emotions and bamboozle the salesman when she enters the new-car showroom. And finally, as we take our seat in church or synagogue, we try to fake out the Almighty that we've really been good all week.”
Paul says in I Corinthians 4:4, 5, “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts.”
So our motives will be judged by the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ and if our motives were to please the Lord and give glory to Him our work will be rewarded. If our motives were to please ourselves and give glory to ourselves, our works will be burned up but we will still be saved but as by fire.
So what does Jesus mean here when he says those whose hearts, whose motives are pure will see God. Is this a future sighting or both now and later? The answer is both.
Remember the context of the Beatitudes. Jesus is talking to his disciples who were believers. So as I said two weeks ago that there is a positional righteousness and a practical righteousness, there is a positional purity of heart and a practical purity. Because the beatitudes are God’s core kingdom values for believers, Jesus is talking about practical purity. When we trust Christ as our Lord and Savior, He becomes our righteousness, our holiness, we are cleansed, made pure, from our sin. We are given his righteousness and holiness and wisdom as a gift. We are positionally pure and will see God in heaven for all eternity. But practically, even though God sees us through the righteousness of Christ, we still are to be holy as He is holy. We are to grow in Christ. We are to be people with pure motives who are single hearted in their devotion to Christ. But this is a process. The theological term is progressive sanctification. We become like Christ, in a progressive way. Areas of our lives become more and more submitted to the Lordship of Christ.
Dead leaves on an oak tree are pushed off by the new leaves coming out. It’s the same way with sanctification. As we grow in Christ, our character is not reformed by the power of man but transformed by the power of the Spirit of God.
So Jesus is talking about practical purity here with this beatitude, every day purity. The Beatitudes are for believers. They are not the way to be saved. They are the way for believers to live. And if we are poor in spirit , we know we are bankrupt and that our righteousness is like filthy rags. As a result of hitting bottom, we mourn over our sin. That sorrow leads us to being meek, not demanding our own way and being obedient servants of the Lord. As obedient servants, we hunger and thirst after righteousness, practical holiness. In doing that, we realize how merciful God has been to us so we extend mercy to others and if we are merciful, we will have God’s perspective on life and our motives will be pure, our vision will be on the Savior and we will see God not just when we get to heaven but every day.
When our motives aren’t pure we suffer from double vision. We can’t see God anywhere. In fact, we become deists who think God wound up the universe and then went to watch TV.
When we stay focused on the Savior, our motives will remain pure and we will see God here and now.. When we stay focused on him we read His word, talk about Him with others, study His word, pray, fellowship, we behold him and we are transformed by his Spirit. That’s the New Covenant. Even though the Spirit now dwells in us, we can still sin. We don’t want to sin but when we do, we immediately can go to him and confess our sins and he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Paul Thigpen has said this about sin and what it does to our vision, “Unfortunately, sin has blinded us, leaving our spiritual eyes swollen shut. If our vision of him is to grow, wider, clearer, and brighter, our will must be united in a single focus on Him and an overriding desire to know and love him.”
When we stay focused on the Savior, our motives will remain pure and we will see God here and now.
Stephen, the patron saint of Stephen Ministry, was someone who stayed focused on the Savior. In Acts 7: 54 – 60 after Stephen confronted the Jewish religious leaders, the Scripture says, “When they, the religious leaders, heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth.” But Stephen full of the Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Look, he said, “I see heaven open and the son of man standing at the right hand of God.” They became extremely angry with him at that point. They rushed him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. While he was being stoned Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And then he died.
Clearly, he stayed focused on the Savior even at his death. His motives were pure and he saw God here and now. But you might not believe you can see the Lord as Stephen did. There’s another way you can. In our passage from Mt. 25: 34-40, Jesus says to the righteous that they saw him when they gave someone who was hungry a bite to eat, when they gave someone who was thirsty, a drink, when a stranger came by, they invited them in, when someone needed clothes, they clothed them, when someone was sick, they looked after them, when someone was in prison, they visited them. Jesus said, when they did these things to whomever, they did them to him. It’s as though Jesus comes to the door of this church every day and to the door of our lives. How we treat them is important because how we treat them is how we treat Christ. If we are merciful, we will receive mercy.
When we stay focused on the Savior, our motives remain pure and we will see God here and now.
John also tells us another way for us to be purified. He tells us in I John 3:2 & 3 “we know when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” He goes onto tell us in verse 3 that “everyone who has this hope in him, purifies himself just as Jesus is pure.”
Do you have that hope this morning? Are you looking for his return today? If you have that hope of his soon and sudden return, your motives will be pure because you will be focused on the Savior and you will see God here and now. Your eyes will be open and you will see him in people all around you.
8:15 -- Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
10:35 – Stephen saw Jesus standing on the throne of God, can you imagine what that must have been like. Ted Swift and Connie Parkins know what it’s like to be in his presence. As for you and me, we can only imagine what it will be like. May we all long for that day when we see him as he is but until then we can only imagine.