Blessed are the Pure in Heart
…for they will see God.
Matthew 5:8
What do you want from this life? Have you ever felt like you’re running on a treadmill trying to attain what you’ll never reach?
Do you want more? Back in the book of Genesis, we find that God created humanity to walk with him and look at him, face-t0-face. But unfortunately, when Adam and Eve sinned, they were no longer able to look at God.
In Exodus 33, Moses, the God-chosen leader of God’s people, asked God to show him His glory. God responded this way: (Exodus 33:19-20) “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, YHWH, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
Our sin renders us unworthy and thus unable to see God and live. Yet here is Jesus saying that you can indeed see God.
The heart of the matter is this: to see God, we must have pure hearts. Think about this: there’s a reality TV show that’s out right now in which contestants undergo lie detector tests while the host asks them all sorts of embarrassing and prying questions. Recently, in an attempt to win money on this show, a woman admitted on national TV that she was having an affair, but she didn’t end up winning any money. What question tripped her up? She was asked, “Do you think you’re basically a good person?”
She said she was, but she didn’t believe it.
The struggle for so many is that they desperately want to be good people, for their good to somehow outweigh the bad, but it just doesn’t happen. And God requires a pure heart, not just a more-good-than-bad heart.
Psalm 24:3 asks “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer comes in the next verse: “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.”
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
But how do we get pure hearts? Isn’t that really the question we’re after? Really it’s not about how good you’ve been – impure can’t be made completely pure by dilution. That’s not how it works. The only hope we have is in Jesus Christ. As we participate in Communion this morning, we remember that we have been made pure – not by what we’ve done, but by what Jesus did. And thus we can see God.
But did you know this: not only can we see God, but others can also see Him through our pure hearts. When we have pure hearts, others will see God, too. And that’s what living Kingdom of Heaven life is all about.
Matthew 5:8
What do you want from this life? Have you ever felt like you’re running on a treadmill trying to attain what you’ll never reach?
Do you want more? Back in the book of Genesis, we find that God created humanity to walk with him and look at him, face-t0-face. But unfortunately, when Adam and Eve sinned, they were no longer able to look at God.
In Exodus 33, Moses, the God-chosen leader of God’s people, asked God to show him His glory. God responded this way: (Exodus 33:19-20) “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, YHWH, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
Our sin renders us unworthy and thus unable to see God and live. Yet here is Jesus saying that you can indeed see God.
The heart of the matter is this: to see God, we must have pure hearts. Think about this: there’s a reality TV show that’s out right now in which contestants undergo lie detector tests while the host asks them all sorts of embarrassing and prying questions. Recently, in an attempt to win money on this show, a woman admitted on national TV that she was having an affair, but she didn’t end up winning any money. What question tripped her up? She was asked, “Do you think you’re basically a good person?”
She said she was, but she didn’t believe it.
The struggle for so many is that they desperately want to be good people, for their good to somehow outweigh the bad, but it just doesn’t happen. And God requires a pure heart, not just a more-good-than-bad heart.
Psalm 24:3 asks “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer comes in the next verse: “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.”
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
But how do we get pure hearts? Isn’t that really the question we’re after? Really it’s not about how good you’ve been – impure can’t be made completely pure by dilution. That’s not how it works. The only hope we have is in Jesus Christ. As we participate in Communion this morning, we remember that we have been made pure – not by what we’ve done, but by what Jesus did. And thus we can see God.
But did you know this: not only can we see God, but others can also see Him through our pure hearts. When we have pure hearts, others will see God, too. And that’s what living Kingdom of Heaven life is all about.
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