Blessed Are The Cleansed of Heart

Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they shall see God.

Blessed are the pure in heart.  What’s you initial response as you read those words?   We’ve read the other beatitudes – difficult, but not impossible with the Lord.  As believers we have all experienced being poor in spirit, mourning over our sin, and meekness.  We have all wanted more of Jesus and so, hungered and thirsted after righteousness.  And we’ve all showed mercy to someone – at least once.  But, this one.  Pure in heart.  I’ve never been that – and I know you haven’t either.  Not even once has my heart been pure.  So, you, like me, might read this one and say, well, that leaves me out – and it does – it eliminates everybody that has ever lived out.     Jeremiah 17:9  "The heart is deceitful above all things,   And desperately wicked;…   Above all things my heart, your heart is deceitful and it’s desperately, desperately wicked.  Who can know it?  You can’t.  I can’t.  Our heart all too often surprises us, doesn’t it?  And so we say things like “I can’t believe I said that” or “did that.”

Some of us have tried.  We’ve tried to be pure.  But no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, we find our hearts to be just as corrupt as when we started.

The  word used to remind us that we can’t know our hearts, is the same Hebrew word that is used in other verses to describe the fact that God knows our hearts.  And yet, we can’t discount this beatitude, because look at the blessing of being pure in heart – they shall see God.  Oh, how I want that – not just in heaven, but in this life – right here and right now.  And if I’ve got to be pure in heart to see God, I want to know how that can happen.  Remember to the unsaved, Jesus is putting forth impossibilities in this sermon. But to the saved, He is putting forth a way of living that is possible and blessed.

Just what does Jesus mean when He speaks of the pure in heart?  Let’s consider the opposite – we might think it to be evil in heart.  But the true opposite of pure is “mixed”.  A good definition of pure is “unmixed”.  Before we came to the Lord, our hearts were just evil – selfish – out for ourselves.  Even when we did something seemingly good, there was a selfish motive behind it.  So, what did God say to us? Isaiah 1:18  "Come now, and let us reason together," Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow;…

So, how does this happen?  David overwhelmed with his sin with Bathsheba wrote psalm 51.  What was his cry?  Have mercy on me, O God.  Then what did He tell God?  I’m going to get it together.  I’m going to be good from here on out?  No, David knew better than that.  David knew he couldn’t cleanse his heart and an uncleansed heart is prone to sin. 

So, what was David’s prayer?

v.1 blot out my transgressions

v. 2 wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

v. 7 purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow

v.10  create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit in me

Wash me, cleanse me.  This word translated as "pure" has often been translated as “clean” in the Bible.  Once it was translated as "clear" – again, unmixed. God is the cleanser of hearts.  I love looking at this beatitude this way : Blessed are the cleansed of heart.

Consider the steps taken in David's prayer.  What do you see?