Turn back to that fifth chapter
of Matthew's Gospel. There are a number of things that appear. I said appear. to contradict themselves in the
Bible. Oftentimes, God is talking about
His people on the one hand as they are by nature, and then also, on the other hand,
as He makes them to be by grace. But oftentimes there are things
that are just, it seems to us, contradictory. Things that cannot
be reconciled. And yet they are reconciled. And we find them to be so when
we are brought to the knowledge of Christ and Him crucified. That's why he's called the wisdom
of God. And here in this fifth chapter
of Matthew, we've been looking at what I've been calling a profile
of the blessed. Everybody wants to be blessed,
they say. And many in our day describe
themselves as blessed. But we've been coming back to
the blesser himself. And we've been looking at this
profile that he gives, these characteristics that he gives
of those he knows are truly blessed. In this eighth verse today, he
says this, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God. Did you catch in our reading
of Psalm 24, when he asked that question, who can enter into
God's presence? into His holy place, His holy
heaven? He said, He that hath clean hands
and a pure heart. He says, blessed are the pure
in heart. And like all the other descriptions
in the verses before this one, this purity of heart is not in
any way a natural thing. It is in no way because of anything
we do. We are not born with a pure heart. So if you'll hold your place
right here and turn back over to the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah
chapter 17, what we have in this verse I want us to look at is
God telling us exactly what the natural heart is like. I've grown through these years
hearing time after time about people who are described in this
way. Well, they do some things that
they ought not to do, but they've got a good heart. But the only way to know what
kind of heart we have by nature, what kind of a heart we have
As those born in this world, the sons and daughters of Adam,
we have to hear what God says. So here in Jeremiah 17 and verse
9, he says this, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? The heart. Your heart, my heart,
every one of us as we are born in this world. He says the heart
is deceitful above all things. I remember hearing many people
say, well, if I know my heart, I'm this, that, or the other. We don't. He says in these verses, the
Lord searches the heart. And the one who has searched
the hearts of Adam's race, he says that every heart is deceitful
above all things. Our own heart deceives us more
than anybody else. And then he says it's desperately
wicked. That's what God says. And he
doesn't splurge on these superlatives. He says, it is desperately wicked. Then he says, who can know it? Who can know it? And what we
find is that this is exactly how the hearts of men have been
since our fall in Adam. When we fell in Adam, something
happened to our race. And that which happened to our
race brought about a change in our race when we are born. Listen to what he says in Genesis. And God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Every imagination of every heart
was only evil continually. That's not good. Then he says this in Proverbs. He says, He that trusts in his
own heart is a fool. Well, this is what I feel in
my heart, and I'm going by that. He said, you're a fool. Why? Because he just told us the heart
deceives us. Our own heart deceives us. And then he says this, by the
wise Solomon in Ecclesiastes 9. He says, This is an evil among
all things that are done under the sun, and there is one event
unto all, yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of
evil, and madness is in their heart while they live and after
that. They go to the dead. Madness of heart. Madness of
heart. And then by what he says to Job,
or by Job, in Job 25, we ought to really consider what we've
read in that 8th verse. He says, Behold, even to the
moon, and its shine, if not, yea, the stars, are not pure
in His sight. All these things who have not
sinned against God and who shine in great brilliance as that which
has been made of God, they're not pure in His sight. This is the God we're talking
about. He is the one who searches our heart and who truly knows
our heart. And yet Christ says here, blessed
are the pure in heart. And even He is not contradicting
what He has said in another place in Matthew 15. He says, Do not
ye yet understand? that whatsoever entereth in at
the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the drought?"
Here you are, all your religions and all of your teachings and
all of your grounds for morality and goodness and purity, it has
to do with what goes into your mouth. Don't you know? He says
that those things which proceed out of the mouth, they come forth
from the heart and they defile the man. I've told you that old saying
many times. It's what's in the well that
comes up in the bucket. And we say, the things that we
say, And we speak the things that we speak, and they proceed
from the heart, he says, they defile the man for out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
Thefts, false witness, blasphemies. And if they have not been expressed
in our lives and in our actions or spoken by our mouths, they
are still in our hearts. Don't you ever say at any point,
I could never do that. If what our Lord says is true
here, you and I at any time could do anything and would do everything
were it not for God's restraining grace. The only reason why that which
is in our hearts has not been demonstrated The only reason
I've not proven a Charles Manson or you've not proven a Hitler
or whatever it is, is because God's restraining grace has kept
us from doing what we are. The heart of men and women, these
hearts are desperately wicked deceitful of all things, and
a cesspool of every imaginable evil and vile thing that we could
ever think of. And what our Lord says here,
not only is He not contradicting that fact, He Himself stated
that fact. He is not speaking about some
kind of a purifying or an improvement in our flesh. If you are enabled to make any
improvement in this flesh, if you are able to perform something
or change to something that somebody might think is a purification,
Mark it down. That's not who he's talking about
here. Because it is not in our power. It never was nor will be in our
power to purify our hearts. And the purifying of the heart
that he speaks of here is the gift of God's grace. If he doesn't purify it, it ain't
ever going to be a pure heart. And it is the work of the sovereign
Spirit of God. I have to use that word a lot
because it's necessary to remind our generation that God Himself
is described in this book as an absolute sovereign, which
means simply that as God, He does what He will, and most especially,
He saves whom He will. He doesn't owe anybody anything
but judgment because of sin. He doesn't owe you and I any
kind of a favor. He's not tripping over His feet
trying to save us. He saved whom He will. And so if anybody has a pure
heart, it is because that His sovereign Spirit acting in great
power, gave to them the true gift of faith. You see, men and
women in our day are approached like this. You've got faith. All you've got to do is exercise
it. That's not true. As a matter
of fact, this book says it plainly. All men have not faith. And what he says is this. He
says to those Ephesian believers in chapter 2, For by grace are
ye saved through faith. I heard that repeated more times
growing up than I could hardly ever remember. I heard just those
words stated. And then it would be that the
preacher would turn to me as if to look to me to do something
in the exercise of that faith. Let me tell you this. If you
have faith, you can't help but exercise it. But rather than
be an exercise, faith is a relaxation. Why? Because we are brought to
rest in Christ. But what I never heard much was
the rest of that verse. He says, for by grace are ye
saved through faith. The next phrase, and that not
of yourselves. It is the gift of God. If I've got faith, it's because
God gave it to me. The reason this one believes
and this other one does not believe is because God has given faith
to this one according to his will, and when he receives faith,
he believes. And that's why we're not to stand
up here and browbeat people and try to trick them and coerce
them in some way or sneak up on them with the gospel. We preach
the gospel. We preach the one men and women
are to believe in. And if God gives them faith,
they will. And if He doesn't, they won't. If He leaves them to their own
selves and their unbelief and justly punishes them for their
sin, He'll still be God. He'll still be good. He'll still
be right. He says, It's the gift of God. If I have it, it's the gift of
God. So, in reality here, the pure
heart that Christ is speaking of is the heart of faith. Now, most folks don't associate
the heart with faith. But the heart is simply the very
center of all that we are, our affections and our understanding
and all these things, because he says in Romans 10, for with
the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth
confession is made unto salvation. So all this business of this
purifying of the heart is not by something we do. It's not
by striving or something like that. It's through believing. Believing. And these that Christ
describes here in our text, though they still sin and though they
still having have indwelling sin in them. They still have
impure thoughts and impure motives and such as that. They are pure
in the sense that they have been justified from all their sin
by God's righteousness. They have been brought. They
have been brought by God Almighty to know and to believe that their
sins, all their sins, have been put away by the Lord Jesus Christ
and the sacrifice of Himself on the cross. Do you think David ever had an impure
thought? He had them, and He acted on
them. Not only with the matter of Bathsheba,
but also in the matter of Uriah, her husband, he had an impure
thought as to how he could move him out of the situation by sending
him down to the heat in front of the battle where he would
surely be killed. Somebody says, but that's before
the Lord saved him. No, it wasn't. He was at that very moment, these
that Christ describes as the pure in heart. Why? Because he did not look to himself
for this purity, but he looked to Christ. The pure in heart
are pure in heart because they're pure in Christ. You remember how many times the
Apostle Paul speaks of not only being, but desiring to be found
in Christ? The Bible says, and in Him is no sin. He said, you're complete in Him. In Christ there is no sin. And this purity is in the eyes
of Him, the Lord Jehovah, who searches and knows all things. He didn't have the need for anybody
to tell Him anything about themselves because He knew what is in the
hearts of all men. And in this people, though that
all-seeing eye might look at them and see the vilest, most
impure thoughts, whatever they might be, because we are still
yet in this flesh, we have not been glorified. But what will
not be found in the heart of the pure heart is a trust in
anything or anybody but Christ. You ask somebody, do you have
hope of heaven? Are you a believer? Are you a
Christian? Oh, I'm surely a Christian. What do you base that on? Well,
I remember when I was a little boy, and we were there in that
old, what they called a revival meeting. And I just felt this
feeling. I just felt this stirring somehow. I just got under what I thought
was conviction. And I went and talked to the
preacher. And I got a feeling of relief. He told me if I prayed this prayer,
I'd be saved. He told me if I believed on Jesus
and took Him as my personal Savior and accepted Him, I'd be saved
and nobody could ever tell me otherwise. I did the same thing. But I was lost. You remember what Paul, the moral
man, the religious man, the teacher, the Pharisee, the scholar, biblically,
what he said? When he was brought into the
light of Christ and shown that salvation is in Him and only
Him through His cross death." He said, I was before a blasphemer. No, Paul, you were just a Christian
and you just came to the doctrines of grace. No. You were a Christian
and you just saw greater light and followed that light, or you
got greater..." No, he said, I was a blasphemer, injurious,
and a persecutor. Only in Christ is there this
purity. It's not in what I do for Christ.
It's not even in what I believe about Christ. It's in what He
did. Now, my friends, either when
He hung on that cross, He put away all the sins of His people,
or He didn't. Either He did, as the Bible says,
made an end of sins, or He didn't. In the pure heart. being able
of God's grace and mercy, believes that he did just exactly that,
and confesses all our impurities. I don't have any impurity in
myself. Or impurity, I mean. I don't
have any cleanness in myself. But in this Scripture, our Lord,
and elsewhere, He says of this people that he describes here
as being clean of heart, that they are clean of heart through
the Word of Truth. Joe, are you pure? How would
you know you're pure? How would I ever go about trying
to find hope for myself or anybody else that they were pure when
there's nothing but impurities to be seen. He said it's because
God says I was. I'll never forget reading a little
incident I read a long time ago. I've told it to you a dozen times
probably, but there was a man in Napoleon's army and Napoleon was a rather short
man, but he rode a big horse. And one day he was riding along
on his big fine horse dressed in his soldier's uniform, you
know, and he was riding along, and all of a sudden, as he was
inspecting the troops, riding along in front of them, all of
a sudden something spooked the horse, and the horse began to
go wild, and he began to lose control of him, and all of a
sudden a man out of that row of the troops stepped out and
grabbed that horse's bridle and stopped him right there in his
tracks. He just reached up and handed
the reins back to Napoleon. Little old poor, measly private. Napoleon looked down and said,
Thank you, Captain. So that young man went then,
and the first thing he went to do was he went to eat in the
tent that was the officer's mess. And he came in, and you know
what he looked like probably, a little ragtag private. And
he sat down there and got some food and started eating. And
some of the other officers, they said, what are you doing in here? He said, this is where the captains
eat, isn't it? They said, who said you were
a captain? He pointed out the tent door.
He said, he did. That's the way we're pure. That's
why we're pure in the only way we can be, and that is if God
Almighty has said. And you see, that's what the
Gospel is about. The Gospel is called good news. It's described as glad tidings. How could it ever be glad tidings
and good news to such impure, fallen, sinful creatures as we
are? It is because God in Jesus Christ
has said to us, you're pure. I put away your sins. I finished
that work. I made an end of all your unrighteousness. Christ said, I've been made sin
for you. I'm the one who of himself knew
no sin, but I've been made sin for you that you might be made
the righteousness of God in me. I'm not righteous in any other
way. I'm not righteous in myself. He said, I made the very righteousness
of God in him. My friend, you can rest there. It's not in your believing. It's
not in your doing. It's not in your accepting. It's
not in your works. It's not in your law keeping.
It's not in your Bible reading. Surely, these things, Even the things that we're commanded
to do, they're never to save us. They're never to be the proof
of our salvation. Our salvation is in Christ. And
I'll tell you what, that's bad news to a self-righteous person. That's bad news when you have
all your hope built on an experience or a feeling or something, and
you're so confident in it that you'll be found amongst those
that Christ describes in Matthew 7. He said, they'll come before
me in that day, and they'll say, Lord, Lord, we've cast out devils
in your name. We've done many wonderful works
in your name. We've preached in your name.
And he'll say, depart from me, I never knew you, you that work
iniquity. That wasn't purity, that was
iniquity. Why? Because it was a trusting
of something or someone rather than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. the pure in heart, they once
brought to be that through believing on Christ, they never, ever reach
a point when they need Christ any less, or when they ever see
in themselves any progress. You see, to be clean before God
is to be righteous because God has declared us righteous through
Christ and Him crucified. Because all our righteousnesses
are what? Filthy rats. Man at his best
state is altogether vanity. The best person you've ever known
doing the best you've ever seen, acting like a Christian the most
you've ever seen. Christ was not their hope. They were not the pure in heart. You see, to be pure in heart
is to have our heart sprinkled, as the Bible says, with the blood
of Christ. Which is to know that He is the
only righteousness, that salvation is only by the grace of God in
Him, And the pure heart looks only to Christ, believes only
in Christ, trusts only in Him alone, and rests in His shed
blood, and has Him as its only hope. What did the hymn writer say?
Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to the cross, to the cross
work and the one who hanged on that cross I come. That's it. You see, it's not Christ plus
anything. It's not Christ plus your obedience
to the law. It's not Christ plus your doing
this and that and the other. Not Christ even plus your baptism
or your good works, whatever it is. That's not salvation,
because He's the Savior. He either has saved us, or we're
trying to save ourselves. The Proverbs says, "...the way
of a man, is froward and strange, but as for the pure, his work
is right." Whose work would that be? The work of Christ. That's what I say. Every work
I've ever done, on my best day, has been wrong, but His work
is right. His work is true. As a matter
of fact, Paul or whoever is the writer in Hebrews 9 says, How
much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God? What does that word
purge mean? It means to clean, wash, What's
the only thing that can purge our conscience from those works
that we imagine commend us to God, when in reality all they
do is bring us to death? What can purge that from our
conscience, cleanse us, make us pure? The blood of Christ. And all that simply means is
that the Holy Spirit takes the Word of Truth which declares
who Jesus Christ is and what He did in His life and death
and shows to us that that is all of our salvation and everything
else is cleansed away. And these are just the opposite
of the Pharisees. Christ said of these Pharisees,
Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are likened
to whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but
are within, full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." If the Pharisees by this name
had, they lived in our day, most folks would look at those people
and they'd say, buddy, there's a real Christian for you. I mean,
they take this business seriously. You won't find them in any immoral
acts. You won't find them doing anything
like that. You won't find them in any way
not fully following what God commands." But he said on the outside, he
said, you look like a fine decorated cemetery. But on the inside, he said, there's
nothing but uncleanness. Uncleanness. You see, this purity is before
God, and it was pictured in the Old Testament in the way that
men were made legally pure. You stop and think about it.
When something is pure, what does that mean? It means there
is no mixture. Everything in the tabernacle
and the temple, every part of it, it was said to be used and
made of pure gold. They used pure oil and pure this
and pure that and the other. And all of this was pointing
to Christ to show that salvation and acceptance before God is
only in Him with no mixture. Would you like me to give you
an example of a mixture? Well, I believe that we are saved
by grace, but I believe that Christ saves us,
but whatever comes behind that but
is a mixture, and then it ceases altogether from being pure. How were they purified? for service to God or to enter
into the sanctuary. Hold your place and turn back
to Numbers chapter 19. You know, Christ said everything
in the law and the prophets and the Psalms, everything He said
is about me. Listen in Numbers 19 at verse
9. This was the process and way
of purification. Verse 9, And a man that is clean
shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without
the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation
of the children of Israel for a water of separation. It is a purification for sin."
Now, you notice that this all starts with a clean man. It can't be anybody but Christ.
The clean are Christ and those He cleanses. All right? Look on down in verse 16. And
whosoever toucheth one that is slain by a sword in the open
fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or of a grave, shall
be unclean seven days. All he had to do was to go in
a tent where there was a dead body. And he was considered ceremonially
unclean. Go take up a body off the battlefield
to bury it. Unclean. And for an unclean person, they
shall take the ashes of the burnt heifer. That was a sacrifice.
slain as a picture and a type of Christ, his blood poured out,
then burned as a sacrifice to God, but they
saved the ashes. For an unclean person they shall
take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin,
and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel. And a clean
person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle
it upon the tent, and upon all the vessels, and upon all the
persons that were there, and upon him that touched a bone,
or one slain, or one dead, or a grave. And the clean person
shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the
seventh day, and on the seventh day shall purify himself, and
wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean
at eve." You mean to tell me just good
soap and water wouldn't get the job done? Not before God. The ashes of that sacrifice had to be taken and sprinkled
in that water, and then that water was taken and dipped on
that shrub and sprinkled on that person so that before God they
were made clean through the effectual, efficient, and continually efficient. sacrifice. The only way we're ever made
pure is through the suffering and dying of Christ. And when
we sin, the only way we are maintained pure is through the suffering
and dying of Christ. Isaiah. He said, in the year
that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And I said, woe is me, for I'm
a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people among unclean
lips. But it says that one of those
living creatures he saw, took the tongs from off the altar
and took a coal. What was that? That was simply
the remnants of the sacrifice that had been burned down to
just a coal. It says that he took that coal
and the tongs from off the altar and he came and he purged his
lips. Cleansed him. Our Lord one day got up from
the table at supper time, and the Bible says He wrapped His
garment around Him and took water and began to wash the feet of
the disciples. He got to Peter and said, Peter,
don't wash just my feet, Lord. He said, wash my whole head and
all. He said, Peter, you of all people
ought to know this. Number one, what I call clean,
let no man call unclean. But he said, those that are washed,
they are clean. He said, they need only with
a cleansing of their feet. That natural defilement that
we partake of as we live in this world. Esther, who was found pleasing in the
eyes of the king, it says that she obtained kindness of him
and he speedily gave her things for her purification. Turn over to 1 Peter chapter
18. 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 18. He says, For as much as you know
that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver
and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your
fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last
times for you, who by him do believe in God that raised him
up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope
might be in God. seeing ye have purified your
souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure
heart fervently." As far as Manward is concerned,
how does he say that their hearts were purified? It's through believing, through obeying the truth. by the enabling of God's Spirit,
they believe the truth of this redeeming sacrifice of Jesus
Christ, that He had redeemed them by His blood. And so, the heart being purified
through faith in Christ, now how are they described? He said,
you love the brethren fervently with a pure heart. That's a believing heart. John said, Every man that hath
this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. Paul says to Timothy, Flee also,
youthful lusts. Follow righteousness, faith,
charity, peace with them that call on the Lord. out of a pure
heart. Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God. They see Him now as He is because
they see Him as He is described by Himself in His Word. They see Him because they are
born of God. He says, except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He cannot enjoy it. He that believeth not the Son
shall not see life. He shall not be in possession
of eternal life. They see Him through the eyes
of faith. There's a lot of contradictory
sounding things in Scripture that can only be understood in
the light of grace. He says, "...of Christ, whom
having not seen, you love, and you rejoice with
joy unspeakable." What do you mean? How can you love someone
you've not seen? Well, I've not seen Him by the
natural light, but I've seen Him in His Word by the enabling
work of God's Spirit, and I see Him by faith. You remember what Christ said
of Abraham? He said, Abraham rejoiced to
see my day, and he saw it and was glad. And then they'll see God in the
future at his coming. John said, Beloved, now are we
the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall
be. But we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Blessed, happy are the pure in
heart. Now, that tells me one thing
for sure. If you're trusting anything, anyone but Christ and
Him crucified, you're not really happy. That's why you don't really
have that inward peace. If you're trusting Christ plus
anything, you're not happy. Conscience won't let you be happy. And the more you try to prove
yourself happy to yourself, the less happiness you find. But blessed are the pure in heart. This is their purity. They have
no hope that Christ and Him crucified. And they sing with that old hymn
writer. They sing in their heart this truth. My hope is built
on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not
trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. When you do that, you can truly
say, I'm blessed. Father, we thank you this day
for the good news of your gospel. When we're brought to see that all hopelessness is in everything else, What happiness it brings when
you give us that gift of faith and we are enabled to see and
believe on Jesus Christ. Have, as the scripture says,
faith in His blood. Rest in what He has done rather
than in what we hope to do. We thank you and we pray that
you'd be pleased to make yourself known to your people in these
days, for we ask it all in Christ. Amen.