For blessings now, O Lord, I
humbly plead." These blessings, these beatitudes, I hope have
been a blessing to you. I hope they've been a comfort
to you. You and I know that it is the
Lord that blesses, right? All blessings come from Him. When the Lord told Moses and
Aaron And the priest blessed the people. Here's what he said. He said, this is how you bless
the children of Israel, God's people. Say to them, the Lord
bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine
upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance
upon thee, and give thee peace. Do you see how it's all the Lord's? For us to be blessed is the Lord's
in it. Or I go to our text in Matthew
5. I hope you've been blessed by
this. I have. Maybe you're approaching this
one a little bit differently. I hope not. They all go together. They all go together. We're not
going to see something new here. Not at all. I have been blessed
and I've learned a great deal, but it's the same thing, the
same lessons the Lord is teaching us, the same lessons and salvations
of the Lord. And this is the blessing of all
blessings. We've seen how that Christ is all of this, haven't
we? Psalm 1 begins with, Blessed is the man. He has the preeminence. So He is that blessed man. And we are blessed in Him. All of God's people are blessed
in Him. You know, men preach messages over the years, and
some of them you'll never forget. My father has many, and other
men have some. Brother David Edmondson, he preached
a message entitled, One. Do you remember that? It was
so good. From Psalm 72, 17, it says, men
shall be blessed in Him, in Christ. And we've seen that Christ became
poor forever. That Christ was a man of sorrows,
mourn, over his sins, ours. Hungered and thirst for righteousness. His meat was to do God's will,
his drink. Meek? Oh my. He said, take my
yoke upon you and learn of me. I'm meek and lowly. You'll find
rest for your soul. He took what God did to him and
what men did. Merciful? None more so. He's the epitome, the personification
of mercy. And he first on the cross, the
first thing he asked for was mercy for those that were unmerciful
to him. And we're blessed in Him, you
see. This is our substitute. Pure in heart. Brother John read, rightly so,
Psalm 24. Who shall ascend unto the hill
of the Lord? He read that in the study. He
that hath clean hands and a pure heart. He goes on to say, open
the gates. Who's going to ascend to the
hill of the Lord? I'm already telling you what this blessing
is. And you know this. He goes on
to say, now open the gates, for here's a man with pure, clean
hands, a pure heart, never lifted up his soul unto vanity, or swore
deceitfully. Who is this? It's the King of
glory. The King of glory. Well, look behind him. There's
people coming in by virtue of him. You see that? So you're
not... I'm not going to... We're talking about poor morning
sinners, okay? One man said, the only pure heart
is a heart that knows it's impure. Are you with me? The only good
heart, my pastor used to say, is a broken one. David said,
my heart is fixed. How's that? Well, it was hard
as stone. And he broke it. You understand
that? You're not going to learn anything
new. This is something you've always known, okay? Alright. Did the Lord bless you because
you were poor in spirit? Or did he bless you to make you
poor in spirit? There was a time you thought
you were something. Didn't you? I can do anything.
Didn't we, brother? I can do anything. Then we found
out you can't do anything. And we mourn over our sins. Did
the Lord bless you because you repented? Or did He bless you
to give you repentance? Huh? You know these things. Did the Lord bless you because
you hungered and thirsted? Or did He bless you to give you
hunger and thirst? Did the Lord bless you and save you because
you're meek? Or to make you meek? Did the Lord show mercy on you
because you're merciful? It was just because you were
guilty, and he needed mercy, because he's merciful. As the
Lord bless you, because you're pure in heart, now you know better
than that, don't you? Can you purify your heart? Can you make your heart clean?
Job is the oldest book in the Bible. He says, who can bring
a clean thing out of an unclean? David said, I was shaping an
iniquity, and sin did my mother conceive me. Well, how can a sinner condemned
unclean come before a holy God? He says, he that hath a pure
heart is going to see God. It's all clear in the Gospel
of David. Go to John 13 with me. It's all
clear. John 13. This is the story of
our Lord washing the disciples' feet. You remember that? Oh, I love this. If you want
to hear that, hear this. I'll preach on it. I'd love to
do that. What a picture this is of who
our Lord is and where He came from and what He did and who
He did it for and where He is now. Look at John 13, verse 1. Before the feast of the Passover,
when Jesus knew that his hour was come, he should depart out
of this world unto the Father, having loved his own, which were
in the world. He loved them unto the end. The
supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart
of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him. And Jesus, knowing
that the Father had given all things into his hands, and he
was come from God and went to God. He rises from supper and
laid aside his garments, took a towel, girded himself. After that he poured forth water
into a basin, began to wash the disciples' feet, to wipe them
with the towel wherewith he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon
Peter, and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? He was embarrassed that the Lord
was washing his feet. Jesus answered and said unto
him, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt
never wash my feet. Jesus answered him and said this,
Listen, if I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. If I Wash
thee not in no part. You can't come to God. You can't
be clean. Simon Peter said, Lord, not my
feet only, but my hands and my hands. Wash me all over. Our
Lord said, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his
feet. He's clean every whit. Blessed are the pure in heart. But not all. He went on to say
he knew who should betray him. If you're not clean, you will
betray him. That's one thing for sure. If you have a pure
heart, you will not betray Christ. You won't leave him. You'll cleave
to him. Like Mary Magdalene. She was
the last person. You ask her, Mary, do you have
a pure heart? She would cleave into him. Pure
in heart. Pure in heart. Our Lord, 1 Peter
1. Go over to 1 Peter chapter 1.
Peter deals with this. He speaks of it. He was there
when the Lord washed his feet. You remember Ezekiel 36? I just
read that. If you haven't read it in a while,
read it again. Such a blessing. The Lord said,
I had pity for my holy name. He said, you profaned it among
the heathen everywhere you went. He said, I'm going to sanctify
my great name. And he said, I'm going to take you from among
the heathen. And I'm going to gather you out of all country.
And I'm going to bring you into your own land. I'll sprinkle
clean water upon you. And you shall be clean. from
all your filthiness, from your idols, I will cleanse you. A
new heart will I give you. That's what he said. A new heart
and my new spirit will I put within you. I'll take away that
stony hard heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of
flesh. And it goes on to say, and here's
this new heart. You're going to remember your
evil way and you're going to, that we're not good. You're going
to loathe yourself in your own sight. There's not a person in
here that thinks they have a pure heart. If you do, you don't. If you don't, you do. It's a
paradox. It's a paradox. Where am I? 1
Peter 1, look at this. Verse 20. Oh my, I want to read
the whole chapter, don't you? You want me to preach from 1
Peter 1? I'd be glad to. But verse 20, it says, Christ
was verily foreordained before the foundation of the world,
but manifest in these last times for you. Verse 19, you're redeemed
with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish,
without spot, with a pure heart, clean hand. In Him is no sin,
and you're in Him. Verse 21, And you by Him do believe
in God. By Him you believe in God. Didn't
He say to the disciples, you believe in God? Believe also
in Me. That raised Him up from the dead
and gave Him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing you have purified your
souls, how? In obeying the truth. What's
that mean? Believing Christ. He's the truth, isn't He? And He went on to say, See that
ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently. Ah, you purified
your soul, but that faith is not of yourself. But God says
the soul that believes Him, like Abraham, it's imputed unto Him
for righteousness. For doing what? Nothing. Just
believing Him. You're pure, God says, you're
pure, clean, holy, unblameable, unapproved on God's side. For
trust in Christ. Is that it? That's it. Let's go home. It's nothing new. The word pure
means clean, doesn't it? And the Lord looks on the heart. Well, what heart? And this is
a difficult thing, and only born-again people understand it. They've
got an old man and a new man. They've got an old man and his
desires and his – you want to call it a heart? So we have two
hearts? No, but I know this. That old
heart of flesh is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know
it? But there's a new heart that's
pure, that's clean. It's a new man that's without
sin. That's what this book teaches,
doesn't it, John? That's what this book teaches. How? Christ
made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. The Holy Spirit comes and brings
this pure Word. It puts it in us. It's incorruptible
seed. The word pure means clean, it
means holy, it means righteous, it means without sin. Are we
talking about sinless perfection? Well, yes, but not in this one. Not for us to obtain, but something
that Christ has done for us and in us, the Holy Spirit. We can't do this, we know that,
but he is able, what is he able to do? To present us faultless. Here's my people, they're going
to have clean hands, a pure heart. Well, not in my flesh, but this
new man in the image of Christ. You remember Christ said, now
you're clean. He said, and in the next chapter in John, he
said, you're clean through the word I've spoken of you, didn't
he? You're clean because I said so.
Don't you love Romans 8? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? Why? God justifies. Two men went to the temple to
pray. One a Pharisee, finest, most upright, you think, moral,
devout fellow. Everybody just thought, if anybody's
saved, he is. And here's this old publican
that has never lived in his whole life in sin, and everybody thought,
if anybody's lost, he is. If anybody's going to heaven,
he is. If anybody's going to hell, he
is. What Christ said. He's justified. Completely, 100%, justified from
all things which cannot be justified by the law which that Pharisee
thought he did. He's condemned unclean. He's
clean. He's pure. He's spotless. He's
going to see God. I don't understand. Yes, you do.
Yes, you do. If thou, Lord, shouldest mark
iniquity, who shall stand? How are we going to stand in
a judgment? We stand in Him. He's our standing. He's our sitting. He said, now are you clean through
the word I've spoken of. Clean, pure, just by believing.
Even that's not of yourself. It's not. It's not your faith
that makes the blood effectual. It's the blood that makes your
faith effectual. And it would just believe Christ
in it. Faith is the fruit of Christ's blood and righteousness,
not the cause of it. Okay? You know this story, Leviticus
13. I love this. Leviticus 13. You want me to preach on that?
I'd be glad to. I am, aren't I? Leviticus 13, the story I'll
never forget when I read Charles Spurgeon. He's the one that first
brought this to my attention. I just leapt out of my seat. This is the story of a leper
coming before the high priest, okay? And it says in verse 1
and 2, the Lord spake to Moses and Aaron, when a man shall have
the skin of his flesh arise in a scab or a bright spot, just
a little spot. If there's just a little spot,
and it's rising, it looks, you know, and he brought to the high
priest, and he goes on to say, the high priest shall pronounce
him unclean. He's a leper. He's got one little
spot. One little spot? Yeah. When Adam and Eve sinned, they
sinned one sin. Didn't they? One sin. Now they're sinners. through and through. Dead and
trespassing sin. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark
iniquity, one sin to offend in one point is what? Guilty. Guilty. Now look at verse 12. If you've never seen this, go
ahead and shout. It says, If the leprosy break
out abroad in the skin, the leprosy cover all the skin of him from
his foot Put his head to his foot, and the priest looks, and
behold, the leprosy is covered all his flesh." Verse 13. He'll
pronounce him clean. It's all turned white. He's clean. William, I don't
understand. Yes, you do. When he says, from
the sole of my feet to the... He comes when every sinner that
finds out he's unclean comes to the great High Priest, our
Lord Jesus Christ, and if we confess our sin, He's faithful
and just to forgive us all our sin, and the blood of Jesus Christ,
God's Son, cleanses us from how many sins? All of them. This is what we profess. We say, Lord, in my flesh, I
can't find one good spot From the sole of my feet, my walk,
to my thoughts, no soundness in me. Is that your confession? Sure is. You know what the Lord
says? Clean. Justified from all things. One of the old writers said,
as soon as our sins are admitted, they're remitted. Sinners are admitted if we confess
our sins. Where am I? I was going to go
to 1 John, but look at Acts 15. Look over here. Acts 15. John, I know you had such a good
time teaching through Acts. Did you get to Acts 15? Acts
15. This is where the disciples came
back to the church from preaching to the Gentiles. And certain
men, verse 1, certain men came down from Judea, Jews, that said,
except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot
be saved. And this dissension, verse 2,
and disputation, Paul and Barnabas argued with them. They took issue
with it. And so they went to Jerusalem,
to the apostles and elders about this, and they came down there,
and look at verse 6. The apostles and elders came
to consider this matter, and there was much dispute, and Peter
rose up and said unto them, Men and brethren, you know how a
good while ago God made choice among us that the Gentiles, by
my mouth, should hear the word of the gospel. That was Cornelius
and his household. Verse 8, And God, which knoweth
the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even
as He did unto us, and put no difference between us and them.
What does it say? Purifying their hearts by faith,
not works, not circumcision, faith. Now verse 10, I love this. Now,
why tempt ye God to put a yoke on the neck of the disciples,
which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? We believe.
Now here's how you're saved. It's what we believe. That through
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as they. Simon Peter said, we're all apostles,
we're all Jews, we're all, you know, Hebrews and so forth and
so forth. If we're saved, It's going to
be like these poor Gentiles. It's going to be exactly the
same way. We're saved the way they're saved. By grace are you
saved. So, you're not hearing one thing,
are you? One thing you didn't know already.
You were worried about this. Oh, the Word of God is pure. It's pure. I was going to take
you to Malachi 3 where it says, He shall come like a refiner's
fire and fuller's soap. And He shall sit as a refiner
and purifier of silver. And He shall purify the sons
of Levi. Who does? You do? He does. as gold. He'll purify them and
purge them as gold and silver. David said, purge me with hyssop. And he's referring back to when
they took that hyssop. When it all started, way back
there, when the Lord was bringing them out of bondage and saving
them and not killing them like He did the Egyptians by blood. He said, you take hyssop and
you put it on the doorpost and let And when I see the blood,
I'm going to pass over you. And when I see the blood, I'm
going to say, Forgiven, pure, holy, unblamable, unreprovable,
my son. These are my people. You're coming
out. You're going into the promised land. You're going to see God.
Why? Because of Jesus Christ. That's
it. Those that come unto God, how?
By Him. That's a pure heart. You know,
the word pure also means this. It means sincere, without hypocrisy,
like the unleavened bread, with the unleavened bread of sincerity
and truth. Do you sincerely believe that
you're a sinner deserving of hell? I know people say that. Do you sincerely believe you're
no better than Mary Magdalene, or the thief on the crowd? Do
you? God looks on the heart. This is about the heart now.
We can't fool God. Pharisees can fool me, and we
can't fool God. Our Lord, He had nothing. He had words of
comfort to sinners that came to Him, but nothing but condemnation.
He said, you beware of these scribes and Pharisees. They're
just a bunch of hypocrites. If they had really believed Christ
and needed Christ, they would have took those clerical robes
off and those phylacteries off and cast them at His feet and
been right there sitting with Mary Magdalene. It means sincere without hypocrisy.
Like Paul said to Timothy, he said, your mother and your grandmother,
this is unfeigned faith. This is real faith. Pure means single. If that I
be single, if your heart be single, your heart is set on one thing. Set your affection on things
above, where Christ sits. Is your affection really set
on Christ? David said, unite my heart. David
mourned, and we all mourn how that there's times when our hearts
seem to go after other things. Well, a pure heart is one that
mourns over death and says with David, Unite my heart to fear
thy name. Unite my heart in thy praise. Lord, set my affection, my heart,
my mind, my soul, everything on things above where Christ
is. That's a pure heart. It's not a double heart. It's
not a heart of pretense. The word pure also means unmixed. Unmixed. like pure olive oil. I love olive oil, it's very good
for you. You know they say there's nothing
more counterfeited than olive oil, because people think it
has healthy qualities, and it does, it's scripture. But it's
the most counterfeited thing of all the oils. Well how fitting
is that? Because all this talk about the
anointing of the Spirit, there's nothing more counterfeited than
that. The oil of the Spirit, the precious ointment that came
down from the head, even our high priest under the beard and
the skirts of the garment, that's the Holy Spirit and all that's
about Jesus Christ. The oil, the anointing, the holy
anointing oil throughout the tabernacle is called beaten oil,
wasn't it? That lamp was lit with beaten
oil, olive oil, pure. What's that? That's the blood
of Jesus Christ. Unmixed. We're saved by pure
blood. Sinless blood. Not the blood
of a man. It's the blood of a man who was
born of a virgin. No son of Adam. It's the Son
of God. This is God's blood. Pure. Pure means unmixed. A pure heart. Olive oil is pure. It's virgin.
The best kind is virgin olive oil. Who came up with that? God said, write that down. Our Lord was saved by the Son
of God. He was born of a virgin. Pure. You cut into anything that's
pure. You cut into a banana. Okay? You cut into a banana.
You're not going to find an apple or an orange or anything like
that. It's going to be banana through and through. Cut into
an apple. It's going to be an apple to
the core in it. You plant the seed, it's going
to come out an apple. Anything pure. You cut into the
heart of a believer. You know what you're going to
find? Christ. You're going to find
pure grace. How do you say? Grace. Mercy. Blood. Righteousness. You cut
into the heart of any child of God, it's going to be pure grace. Not gwerks. Grace and works. Grace. We know the difference,
don't we? We know the difference. Grace
is grace. Works is works. Works are merit. Grace is mercy. It's pure. This gospel is pure.
And God's people have a pure heart. You understand that? You have a pure heart. If you
believe your salvation is 1,000% by the mercy and grace of God
that's in Jesus Christ, you've got a pure heart. And God gave
that to you. He has to give it to you, that
unmixed, undiluted with flesh. And the promise is, let me close
with this, look at our text again. I want to spend a little more
time with this, but I admit, I only meant 30 minutes. I got
15 more. No, I'm going to quit. But look
at verse 8, it says, blessed are the pure in heart, they shall
see God. There's nothing in heaven that's
going to be undefiled, unclean. No one. How are we going to get
there? Right. We're going to see God. There's a sense in which God's
people can now see God when no other people can't see Him. We see God in nature. People
in the world can't see Him. They're blind. Right? Our hearts, we know from the
bottom of our heart that God created the heavens and the earth.
The heavens declare His glory, the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day, others speak. There's
nothing anywhere that we don't see God in it. The world can't
see anything of God. And there's a sense in which
we know Him and feel His presence and enjoy His presence, like
Moses. It says in Hebrews 11 that Moses
endured as seeing Him who is invisible. How do we endure? Because this is real. Because God is real, really with
us and in us and for us. We see Him who is invisible. We do. We see Him in our experience. His gracious dealings with us,
His providence. Don't you see the hand of God
in your life? There's so many things that have
happened to me in my lifetime, I think God spared me. He just
clearly took His hand and did this. Do you not see that? Do you not clearly see that you're
in God's hand and everything else is too? The world can't
see that. Now, there's nothing now that
we see, no way we see Him now that's going to be compared to
when we see Him face-to-face. We're actually going to see God. Who are we going to see? Jesus Christ. And most of the
world doesn't believe that, do they? Do they, Sister Helen?
They don't believe Jesus Christ. We say, Son of God. Nope. He's
very God of very God. He's the God that created everything.
The only God anybody's going to see is Jesus Christ. And our Lord said, no man has
seen the Father but the Son. The only begotten Son, He hath
declared Him. And He said to His disciples,
if you've seen Me, you've seen God. Thomas, that's Thomas. That's
Thomas right there, sit. He'll tell you, he's my Lord
and he's my God. Who? Jesus Christ. That's Him. We see through a glass darkly
now, then we'll see face to face. And it doth not yet appear what
we shall be. We know that when He shall appear,
we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And the Lord is preparing us
now. Do you know that very soon we're
actually going to go see God? He's preparing us now for that.
We're going to spend our eternity in His glorious and eternal presence
and see His face. That's what Fannie Crosby wrote.
That's what I want to see. I want to see His face. In the book of Revelation, you
read of the people there that they They're in the presence
of God, and they're just singing, and they're just happy, and nobody's
crying, and nobody's unhappy, and there's nothing to worry
about. Why? They're in the presence of God.
They see God. And they see so clearly. They
know as they've been known. They believed, but oh, they mourned
their unbelief. They knew that the only way they
were going to be in God's presence was Jesus Christ. And now they're
in His presence and they really know now. So they can't quit
singing. And we're going to join them
very shortly. Okay, stand by.