DESIRE FOR A PURE
HEART
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they will
see God.”
Pure. What does that word make you think of? Pure gold?
Pure milk? Pure honey?
Most
products that we buy in the store are not pure anything. Cleaning products
advertise 99% effectiveness in killing germs. Food products might contain pure
ingredients but contain additives that we can’t pronounce.
But we
know that honey is a pure product. Unless it comes from China. The world’s
largest producer of honey, China is actually notorious for NOT producing the
purest honey. On the one hand, Chinese honey contains a banned antibiotic
chloramphenicol which is used by farmers to keep bees from falling ill. The
European Union outlawed Chinese honey as a result. On the other hand, Chinese honey
producers dilute their honey. They will inject honey with liters of water, heat
it, pass it through an ultrafine ceramic or carbon filter, and then distill it
into syrup. This process will take out the antibiotic impurities but you won’t
think its good honey.
Your
best option for pure honey is to buy Kleefeld honey. But you knew that already.
Kleefeld honey is pure honey – it says so right on the container. Sharon had
bought some “other” honey a while back and I could tell the difference. From
now on, I said, let me buy the honey. When you have had pure anything, the
impure version does not satisfy.
Jesus
makes a startling statement when he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart…”
Those whose hearts are 100% will see God. The most obvious question we face in
this beatitude is, what is a pure heart? The next question is, do I have a pure
heart? How do I get one?
The
short answer is: A pure heart is one
that is totally committed to living a life that pleases God. That is the
target, but we need to meditate on this blessing before we understand that
statement.
1. The Anatomy of a Pure Heart
a) What is a pure
heart? The Greek word for “pure” is katharos.
You might recognize the English “catheter.” A catheter is an instrument that
removes impurities from the body. The Greek noun suggests that the heart is
already pure or clean through the removal of contamination. The OT contains
some examples of what we mean by “pure.”
David
wrote, “Who may ascend the hill of the
LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false” (Ps
24:3-4). David tells us that a pure
heart is devoted to God. Another way to say this is: a pure heart is
single-minded. A person who loves God, loves only God, and does not share that
allegiance with anything or anyone. A pure heart recognizes only God as God.
Later on
in the SOM, Jesus talks about the heart. He says, where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also. Jesus clearly speaks about the lure of wealth,
something that can take our hearts away from God. He says no one can serve two
masters – that would be double-minded.
A pure heart also loves the truth. It
is painstakingly truthful and free from deceitfulness. Deceit is what you do
when you will two things, not one thing. You want to do one thing but you want
people to believe that you are better than that. If we show people what they
want to see in us rather than who we really are, we are deceiving them and
ourselves. A pure heart lives the truth, shows the truth of who we are – “poor
in spirit” as Jesus began the beatitudes. A pure heart loves the truth, as
David declared of God, “Surely you desire
truth in the inner parts…” (Ps 51:6).
In
keeping with this thought, a pure heart is
transparent. It is not afraid to let people see the hidden rooms of its
life. If you have a pure heart we will see that the person before us is the
same person we see in private. The pure in heart will not bless you to your
face and curse you to your back. No, the pure in heart are utterly sincere so
that we can take their words at face value. Their whole life, public and
private, is transparent before God and people. Their thoughts and motives are
unmixed with anything devious, ulterior, or crude. Hypocrisy is detestable to
them.
Though
we know this truth, we seldom remember that God sees all. A pure heart is bare
before God. David said, “Search me, O
God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is
any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps
139:23-24). A pure heart wants God to examine it and to surgically remove
offense.
b) How can I have
a pure heart? These are but three of the many aspects of a pure heart – I
could mention more. But the question on your hearts and mine is no doubt the
same: How can I have a pure heart like this? As a Christian who wants to please
God, this should be our desire. So how do we go about growing a heart like
this?
You can’t. It would appear to be an
impossibility. You cannot grow a heart like this. You cannot train your heart
to be pure. You cannot learn enough or do enough good to get a heart like this.
The Russian novelist, Ivan Turgenev, said, “I do not know what the heart of a
bad man is like. But I do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is
terrible.”
The
Bible has said this all along. When humankind spiraled into sin the first
chapters of Genesis, the writer declared that God saw that the heart of humans was
only evil all the time (Gen 6:5). And the prophet Jeremiah famously said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and
beyond cure” (Jer 17:9). Beyond cure…
If your
heart is like mine it is a lying heart. Deceitful, is what Jeremiah said. My
heart lies to me. In one instance it tells me I am no good, that others are
better at living the Christian life. It deceives me into thinking I am beyond
hope of Christ’s redemption. On the other hand, my heart likes to puff itself
up and look down on others who are not as mature or as educated as I would like
them to be. Isn’t your heart like this too? Kind of double-minded right?
But
Jesus did not give us a standard of “pure heart” and then stand back to watch
us flail at an impossible height. Scripture tells us that while you cannot
attain a pure heart on your own, a pure
heart is given to us.
First of
all, there has only been one man who has had a pure heart, Jesus Christ. His
singular focus on the Father’s will is beyond comparison. Christ’s love on the
cross is the one act of pure love, unsullied by any taint of ulterior motive
that has ever been performed in the history of the world. It is the self-giving
of God in Christ on the cross for undeserving sinners.
And
second, it is through believing in this beautiful Savior that the promise of a
pure heart is realized. Jeremiah prophesied, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts…I will
give them singleness of heart and action…” (Jer 31:33; 32:39). God promised
that one day people would not struggle to have pure hearts; He would give them
pure hearts so that they could focus on Him.
So the
answer to having a pure heart is to acknowledge that a pure heart is not
attained by our own efforts; a pure
heart is created in us through faith. David, the man after God’s own heart,
prayed, “Create in me a pure heart, O
God…” (Ps 51:10). A heart that seeks God in all things – work, family,
school, play and rest – is created only through being poor in spirit, mourning
our sin, meekly seeking mercy, hungering and thirsting for what we desperately
need, and finding it all in Jesus Christ.
2. The Satisfaction of having a Pure Heart
Now, the blessedness of being pure in heart is that these
people will see God. This is the most comprehensive of all the blessings.
Nothing but the sight of God will satisfy the longings of the disciple’s heart.
But what did Jesus mean when he said that the pure in heart will see God?
We are
told by John the Evangelist, “No one has ever seen God, but God the
only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (Jn 1:18). Even
when Moses spoke to the Lord on behalf of Israel he only saw a form of God, or
saw God’s back, as it were, when the Lord showed Moses His glory. In the OT we
are told that if anyone saw God directly, face-to-face, they would die (Ex
10:28-29). Most likely this was because no one had a pure (read: sinless)
heart. So when will the pure in heart see God?
John is
the one who told us that no one has ever seen God; he is also the one who said
that we will see Him when we pass from this temporal world into eternity. “Dear friends, now we are children of God,
and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he
appears, we shall be like him, for we shall we see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:2).
So we will see God in eternity.
There is a promise of ultimate transformation in these words: we will see God
and that will make us become something brand new. The pure in heart can see
God; and the reason the pure in heart are blessed with seeing God is because
only the pure in heart will want to see God. And to see God will be
life-changing.
For some
of us, this promise is so far in the future that we scarcely delight in it now.
It is one of those theological ideas that we know is true but cannot grasp in
real time. But I believe there is another aspect to the blessedness of seeing
God. I believe we can see Him now.
One of
the only poets I care to read said this beautifully: “Earth is crammed with
heaven, and every bush aflame with God, but only those who see take off their
shoes” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning). To see God is not necessarily seeing God
in heaven, but it is seeing God here and now. The pure in heart will see God in
everything. Not just in nature, but also in their circumstances, good and bad,
in their family, church, school, job and so on. Life is full of the
fingerprints of God and those who seek Him will find Him in it.
The
Apostle Peter said something similar, “Though
you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now,
you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy…” (1
Pe 1:8). A pure heart, a single-minded devotion to Christ, will be able to find
joy in life, even when others do not see it.
We often hear the expression “think with your mind, not
with your heart,” or some variation of that. The point is that we tend to
divide the mind and the heart. We see the mind as the seat of the intellect,
logic, rational thinking; we see the heart as the seat of emotions, like love
and other “gushy” feelings.
The
ancient Jews saw the heart and mind as one. The heart is the seat of the total
person, the true person. If the appearance of a person said one thing, and the
heart was totally opposite of the appearance, the heart would eventually betray
the appearance. Our hearts will tell on us.
When we
allow Christ to come and rule our hearts, we allow Him to change that
dichotomy, that dualism, that hypocrisy. We allow Jesus to transform us, giving
us a pure heart that seeks one thing, lives one way, desires only God. Then we
begin to have a heart that is pure and is committed to living a life that is
totally pleasing to God. Obedience to the law of God written on hearts becomes
a delight, not a duty.
Does
this describe your heart? Do you long to see
God? If you long for this, if you realize your heart is not pure, I direct you
to the beginning of these beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” because
the beginning of this transformation is admitting that you need Jesus to change
your heart. I know I do.
AMEN
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