Blessed Are the Pure in Heart (Matthew 5.8)

Introduction

Today, I want to talk about how to see God. I don’t mean ‘see him with your eyes’, at least not in this life, though you may be an eye-witness of his transforming power. But mostly we walk by faith, not by sight.

When I talk about ‘seeing God’ I mean a spiritual revelation. I mean understanding and grasping and perceiving spiritual and eternal realities you’d never grasped, or perceived before. It’s like when you don’t understand something, and then the penny drops, and you say “Ah, I see!”

We’ve started 2019 by looking at eight unique blessings in Matthew 5 that Jesus speaks over particular kinds of people. And we’ve found that Jesus says some surprising things. In fact, the blessings he speaks challenge our normal human perspective on just about everything.  

That is just so like Jesus isn’t it? Always counter-cultural, always radical, never predictable, he never reads the script. Jesus’ way of living almost always flatly contradicts our cherished values. It’s why what Jesus says so often seems baffling to those on the outside, looking in. His kingdom is not of this world. He actually said that himself. 

Here’s what I mean, for example:

·        People crave happiness at almost any price. But Jesus calls blessed those afflicted by sadness and grief.

·        The entertainment and fashion industries flaunt wealth and success. But Jesus calls blessed those who are spiritually poor.

·        In the political world, people seek power and influence and dominance. Prime Minister’s Questions is a weekly contest of barbs and put downs. But Jesus calls blessed those who are meek.

·        In sport, cheating, doping and arguing with the referee are normal. Commentators say, “if there’s contact, fall down and earn a penalty.” But Jesus calls blessed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

·        In war zones, bitter enemies plot their revenge; sometimes enmity between nations lasts for centuries. But, as we’ll see next Sunday, Jesus calls blessed those who make peace.

And what does Jesus say to us today? Jesus calls blessed those who are pure in heart. “Blessed are the pure

in heart,” he says, “for they shall see God.” 

How relevant that is in our society, where every week it seems, someone has to apologise for uploading something obnoxious or indecent on Twitter.

Blessed are the pure in heart. Did you know that, in the UK, more pornography is viewed at work than at home? Figures released last year revealed that there were, on average, within Parliament, 160 attempts every day to access blocked pornographic websites. And that at a time when some MPs are campaigning to abolish prayers in Parliament, which are just five-minutes long, occur before the chamber sits, and are non-compulsory.

The Heart

This is the saintly Jean Vanier founder of the l’Arche Communities, which are Christian places of love and welcome for people with severe developmental and learning difficulties.  

In 2004, a CBC poll ranked this man as number 12 in a list of greatest ever Canadians. He’s certainly great in the kingdom of God…

He once talked about a conversation he had with a member of one of the 147 l’Arche Communities around the world, a man called Andrew. 

Andrew had been feeling unwell with respiratory problems so he’d been to see a cardiologist. When he got back to the Community, Jean Vanier asked Andrew how he had got on at the hospital. 

“Well,” he said, “the doctor looked into my heart.” “Wow, that’s amazing. That’s amazing... And what did he see in your heart?” Andrew looked back in surprise, and with a big smile he said, “When he looked in my heart, he saw Jesus of course!” 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. I could almost end my sermon right there! There is something beautiful about the simplicity and innocence of that profoundly disabled man that sums up what the kingdom of God is like more than anything I could say.

But I’m a preacher, and I’d feel very guilty about leaving you with a 5-minute sermon, so I feel bound to say a bit more…

The Bible has a lot to say about the heart. The word appears nearly 750 times. The word kardias, from which we get cardiac of course, means first of all the muscular organ in your chest, which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. 

But it’s usually a metaphor. It means your inner self, the real you, your true personality. The heart is what you are, in secret, when no one’s looking, what nobody sees but God. “People look at the outward appearance,” says 1 Samuel 16, “but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Deuteronomy 6 calls us to love the Lord with all our heart. Mary, the mother of Jesus, we’re told on two separate occasions, ”treasured God’s word in her heart.” 

It is significant that God tells us in Ephesians 5.19 to sing and “make melody to the Lord with your heart.” You might be tone deaf and sing like an alley cat on heat, some of you do in fact! But if your heart is good, God hears music worthy of the Royal Albert Hall.

David, after a catastrophic and serious moral failure, in a moment of utter humiliation and shame prayed in Psalm 51, “create in me a clean heart, O God.” 

You see, who we really are in the private and hidden aspects of our lives is what Jesus cares about most. He did not come just to help us tidy up a few bad habits. He came because we, like David, have dirty hearts and they need to be cleaned up.

In Psalm 24 David asked the question, “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” In other words, “who is going to get to enjoy the presence of God?” 

And he answers his own question; “The one who has clean hands and a pure heart.” And then it says this about people who have a pure heart; “They will receive blessing from the Lord… Such is the generation of those who seek [the face of God].”

This week, many people will celebrate Valentine’s Day and already you can see cardboard hearts in shops everywhere promoting special offers on cheap knickers and bottles of wine. The heart is the universal symbol of love.

Four Loves

The Greeks used to have at least four different words, each of which is sometimes translated by our English word “love” and you can find all four of these words in the New Testament.

·        The first word is epithumia and it’s the love of addiction. It’s like a passion, an obsession, especially something that is forbidden and it only comes from an impure heart. It’s not a nice word really, in fact, it’s more like lust than love.

·        Secondly, eros is the love of attraction between a man and a woman. It’s a beautiful gift from God and, when you think about it, it’s how all of us got to be here; sexual attraction between our parents. Maybe don’t think about it too long… This kind of love can come from a pure heart or an impure heart because it can be directed towards the wrong person.

·        Thirdly, philia is the love of affection. It’s friendship, it’s enjoying the company of others, people you feel good with and want to be around. This kind of love can also come from a pure heart or an impure heart; you can spend time in good company or you can get corrupted by getting in with the wrong crowd.

·        And finally, agape, which was very rarely used, is the love of action. It is not about just about how you feel, though it starts with compassion and even emotion, agape is mostly about what you do. It’s selfless and kindhearted. It gets involved. Agape, unlike the other three, only ever comes from a pure heart.

Here’s the thing: In the New Testament, none of the first three words are ever used to describe what God’s love is like. Only the fourth one is. That’s really important because it tells us very clearly what God’s love is like. It’s maybe not like we might think it is.

·        God doesn’t love us because he’s addicted to us as if he is needy, or lonely, or kind of sad and incomplete without us. 

·        God doesn’t love us because he is attracted to us either. He doesn’t look at us and blush or swoon or go weak at the knees. He is not sentimentally besotted with us at all. 

·        God doesn’t love us because he likes us either. Sorry, but nothing in the Bible gives me any indication that God likes us at all! And that’s good news, because it means that he would still love us even if there is nothing likeable about us whatsoever.  

·        This is what the Bible says about God’s love – and it says it over and over again. God loves us because his heart fills with compassion and pity at our utter inability to save ourselves from an eternity of anguished separation from him.

And it moved him to come as one of us in Christ and pay in full the price, his own blood, every last drop of it, to deliver us from a never-ending hell, banished from the light of his presence. 

It’s while we were still sinners, in defiant rebellion against him, that Christ died for us. If you ever doubt that God loves you, just look at the cross. There’s the proof that he does - forever.

Purity

Nicky Gumbel once said, “When God measures a person, he puts the tape round the heart, not the head.” 

Well, what is a pure heart like? The word translated “pure” here (katharos) actually had three related but slightly different meanings. 

Firstly, it just meant “clean.” When I was a child, my brother and I used to play football on the common, jumpers for goalposts, and we would return home with mud ground into the knees of our jeans from our knee slide celebrations when we scored. 

Obviously, mine were dirtier because he is younger than me, so I made the rules and he had to go in goal most of the time. But our jeans would emerge from of the washing machine a couple of hours later miraculously free from any hint of any stain. That’s katharos – pure.

But it also meant “separated.” It was used to describe winnowing corn to sort the wheat from the chaff, or pruning roses to cut off unfruitful branches. And when you shake earth through a garden sieve to remove all the stones, the word you’d use to describe the soft, sifted earth is katharos – pure. 

And finally, it meant “untainted, unmixed.” It was used to described filtered water. It referred to gold or silver that is refined in a furnace until all the dross has gone. 9 carat gold is only 37.5% gold. 24 carat gold, the purest, is at least 99.9% – that’s katharos – pure.

Clean, separated and uncorrupted; anyone with a heart like that will be truly blessed to see God.

Jesus is interested in purity of heart. In other words, Jesus is concerned primarily with how things work on the inside. He doesn’t care at all for religion as a game to impress others. Jesus sets himself against the Judaism of his day, which was all external. He says, “No, it starts and ends with the heart.

The Scribes and Pharisees of that time are only interested in a display of ceremonial and outward purity. They are utterly false. It is all about looking good and projecting an illusion of piety. As William Barclay put it, they “basked in the sunshine of their own self-approval.”

Jesus reserves his most scathing and chastening words, not for prisoners and prostitutes and pickpockets, but for these well-heeled religious leaders.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23.27-28).

Imagine Jesus looking intently at you and saying that! It must have been devastating! But instead of wilting and humbling themselves, they hated him for it and determined to do away with him.

The Pharisees are an easy target with their pompous moralising and elf-obsession. All holy on the outside. All rotten on the inside. 

But, as John Stott says, “How few of us live one life and live it in the open! We are tempted to wear different masks and play a different role according to each occasion.”

The church is guilty of this, let’s be honest. In our culture we’re usually better at diagnosing impurity of heart in other people than cultivating purity of heart in ourselves. 

It is good for us to ask God to show this to us so we can see the Pharisee in me and repent of it before it gets a foothold in our lives.

Alone among men and women, Jesus Christ was absolutely pure in heart.

Healthy Heart Clinic

·         The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

·         On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. 

·         In Kenyan they drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. 

·         The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. 

Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

A few years ago, being a native English speaker, I thought I’d better go for a healthy heart check. My father had a quadruple heart bypass when he was about 50 and he died about 30 years later of heart disease, so I thought I’d better get myself checked out. 

So, they stick pins in you to measure the level of cholesterol in your blood, they calculate your BMI, ask you how much you smoke and drink, and run the usual tests; pulse, blood pressure, stethoscope and so on. And they ask you about your diet.

The director of Soul Survivor Mike Pilavachi once admitted to counting the gherkin in a double cheeseburger as one of his five a day.

Well, it turns out that I haven’t inherited my dad’s cardiovascular makeup and that I’m a cross between Superman, the Incredible Hulk and Captain Scarlett. Practically bullet-proof…

What they didn’t do is give me any feedback on how pure my heart is. I don’t think I would have been entirely comfortable with that. I’m not sure I could have looked the nurse in the eye. I don’t have the simplicity and purity of heart that Andrew in my story earlier has.

If it were possible to plug you in to a spiritual cardiogramme today, what would it show? How healthy is your heart?

Jesus said, “A good person brings good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

What comes out of my mouth? Do you ever find that gossip, or jibes, or coarse joking, or angry words, or grumbling or swearing come from yours? Jesus says that actually originates in the heart.

Ending

The really good news, as I end, is that Jesus can set right every disorder of the heart. He binds up broken hearts. He softens hard hearts. He strengthens faint hearts. He fills empty hearts. He specialises in heart transplants. He cleanses dirty hearts. That’s what he came to do. That’s what he wants to do today, that we may see God.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 10 February 2019