How many of you have ever climbed a mountain? I mean a big mountain. Not a Texas-sized hill but like a big Colorado mountain. When you hike a big mountain, you first have a steep, difficult climb up. Then you reach the top. You can stop and pause. You can see the amazing view. And then, refreshed and inspired, you have the climb down. This is sort of like our journey through the beatitudes. The first three beatitudes are the difficult climb up. Being poor in spirit, mourning because of our sinfulness, and meek as a result of knowing who we truly are. We see that we are full of ourselves. Living for our own kingdom. If I could summarize these three beatitudes, it would be we see our need. We see are on the wide road, on our way to our destruction. We need to be rescued. When we realize how needy we are, we come to the top of this glorious mountain and hear that our need can be satisfied. We hear these beautiful words Jesus says, blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Once we know we are in desperate need, we hunger and thirst, and then God comes and tells us, we will be filled. That is amazing grace. Now we are filled with the grace of God, we walk down this mountain. We become merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers.
Today we look at one of the most glorious ways to describe a true Christian, pure in heart. Let’s look closely at what Jesus is talking about. First, we have to understand what He means when he says “heart”. Your heart is what you are. Your secret thoughts and feelings. Things only you and God know. It is the core of who you are and it is where everything you think, you say and do start. Here is how the Bible puts it. In Matthew 15:18–19 it says
“What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart . . . For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man
” .
The words that come out of your mouth are not by accident. I frequently talk to students and they tell me, I didn’t mean to say that. The Bible says, what you said is exactly what you meant to say because if it came out of your mouth, it flowed from your heart. You just may not have liked to actually hear it out loud. Matthew 12:33–34 says
“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit . . . For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”.
There is no way that you can say something apart from your heart. Everything you say is on purpose.
What Jesus is talking about is not who you are on the outside, but the real you. What is inside you. What the Bible says is, your problem is not your parents. It’s not your friends. The TV, phone or computer. Your problem is inside you. Again,
“For out of the heart come evil thoughts…These are what defile a man”
Your problem is you. Your heart. The problem with me is my heart. Bad choices come from the heart. Nowhere else. You sin because of the desires of your heart. No one made you do it.
I grew up on a farm and at the back of our 80 acres was this pond. It didn’t have a nice sandy bottom like around here. Oh no. It had a soupy mud bottom. When I walked into it, I would sink to my knees in mud. It was the only place that we could swim so my sister and I would ride our horses into it and have them stand in the mud and we would dive off them. They weren’t real springy diving boards but we made it work. They weren’t real fond of cannonballs either. Every once in a while, I would end up in the mud. When I pulled out my leg, it was covered in black sticky goo. You can imagine what the water looked like. Dark brown, almost black. What if I told you that I wanted this pond to be sparkling clean. I want crystal blue water so that when I’m in the middle of the pond, I can see straight to the bottom. You would tell me that’s impossible. The whole pond is full of mud. Even if you brought in tons of sand, every time it rains, more mud runs into it. It is like that with our heart. It is black. Filthy. If all of our words, our thoughts and actions start from this black heart, we are hopeless. Now, this is why the gospel is such good news. God in His grace sends His son to do the impossible and wash us clean so that when God sees us, He declares us pure in heart. That is why grace is so amazing. The good news takes us from the pit and raises us up to heaven.
We have talked about the heart but what does Jesus mean about being pure in heart. First, he means without hypocrisy. A hypocrite is an actor. He pretends to be something he is not. Someone who puts on a mask. He is two people. Divided. So someone who is pure in heart is single. One. They are single-minded. Pure. Their heart is not divided. It is one. They do not worship God on Sunday or in chapel or in Bible, but then turn around later and live like God doesn’t matter to them. We all have to pause here and say, we all struggle with being two people. We want to trust God but we also, at times, want to do our own thing.
Think of it this way. There was a time that it was fashionable to wear clothes with lots of folds in them, called pleats. You would see them, especially with ladies dresses or men’s dress pants. You can see one in my pants. Imagine if I had a bunch of them on my pants. These ladies skirts would be ironed to have these pleats all the way around the skirt. In a sense, the skirt was divided into these seams. Each part separate from the other. Some of the fabric was folded over and you couldn’t really see it. Is this like your life? You have the Annapolis part of who you are. Then you have
“Unite my heart to fear your name.”
Lastly, pure in heart means clean. King David wrote create in me a clean heart. The Bible says if you want to see the purity of your heart, judge how pure your words are. How pure are your thoughts. How pure are your actions because all of those start with your heart. And if you see impurity in those things, then you need to do what King David did and pray to God for a clean heart. This is not a one-time prayer, but it must be a continually, daily prayer.
Our desire needs to be that we must fight each day to be pure in heart. Don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t act one way with one group and then act another way with someone else. Be unified. If we all were honest, we all struggle with this but it is especially difficult as you get closer to junior high. The answer is not to look to friends or what you see other people your age doing or even to trust your own heart but to run to Jesus, trust His Word, the Bible and lean on His everlasting arms.