Trinity Baptist Church

 

There are some things in the Bible that you feel you can sort of handle. There are some truths in the Bible that you feel you can get a grip on and transmit. But then there are those things that seem like they are bottomless pits. They are wells whose depths are immeasurable. They are truths the breadth of which are impossible to encompass. This is one of those. To attempt to deal with such an incredible statement as "Blessed are the pure and heart for they shall see God." In one brief time would be an insult to God and to the power and the depth and insight of His own word.

 

This is one of the greatest utterances I believe in all of the Bible and there's no way that I can even begin to deal with it let alone exhaust it. It's one of those all encompassing things that stretches over everything else that's revealed in scripture. 

 

The subject of purity of heart can be tracked from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible. The theme of purity of heart being necessary to see God is something that is vast and infinite. And it draws in almost every single biblical theme. There's no way we're going to be able to discover all that's here. But I do want to help us to be able to at least focus on a central meaning that will be rich and meaningful for us.

 

Think about that historically.

 

Being holy or pure in heart has always been a concern for people. Not just religious people, but people in general. 

 

In fact, when you think about the interaction that Jesus had iwht people, very often the conversations had to do with being accepted by God, or entering the kingdom or going to heaven, or inheriting eternal life. 

 

It was on the mind of Nicodemus when he came to see Jesus one night.  It was on the heart of the rich, young ruler. Even the woman at the well, one of these days, Messiah will come. . .

 

And even though the circumstances are different and the question is posed in different words, it is always the same basic question. How do we get to the reality? See? How do we get behind the ceremony? How do we get forgiveness? How do we get in the kingdom? 

 

Jews, particularly, in Jesus day had no sense of security. So faced with a legal system which you cannot keep and cannot maintain, you are faced with a terrible sense of insecurity. And they wanted to know how they could have security. How they could know they were citizens of the kingdom.

 

And I really think that this was the perfect time for Jesus to come, because He had the right answer. 

 

God is a holy God. And God as a holy God does absolutely righteous. In Him there is no sin. And God, in the flesh of Jesus Christ, stepped into the world and offers salvation to sinful man. And sinful man says to himself how can a holy God give salvation to a sinful man. And a Jew says how can it be? An honest devout Jew would say how can I ever enter God's kingdom when I can't keep God's laws? If that's the condition, how can I do it?

And that poses the question that Jesus answers in the Beatitudes. The simple question is this, "how can a person be saved?" How do you enter the kingdom? How do you inherit eternal life? How do you become righteous? How do you get in the kind of a situation where a holy God with no sin can ever accept you? How can that be? And believe me, this is the question most in the minds of the people sitting on that Galilean hillside as our Lord speaks in Matthew Chapter 5. 

 

And I believe more than any other single Beatitude this Beatitude, verse 8, gives the answer. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they," they and they alone is the emphatic meaning, "shall see God." 

 

If I can paraphrase, you want to know who gets in the kingdom? The pure in heart and they and they alone will see God in His kingdom. That's the answer. It's the pure in heart. 

 

Now watch this: that means, then, that it is not those who observe the external washings. It is not those who go through the outside ceremonies. It is not those who have the religion of human achievement. It's not those who crank out a ritualistic external works righteousness system. It is the ones who've had their hearts purified who see God and they alone are the ones who see God. What an incredible statement this becomes then. This is the answer to the question that's being asked by the population that Jesus confronts.

 

Now man tends, now I want you to listen to this, man tends to measure himself by his fellow man. In other words, you use another human criteria.

The Pharisees were good at that. In other words, whenever you desire to test your character or whenever you desire to test your morality or whenever you desire to test your ethics or whenever you desire to test how good a person you are, you always find somebody worse as the criteria.

 

Right? Think about it. Sure you do. You can always find an inferior human standard. And that's what the Pharisees would do. The Pharisee would come in and pray thus with himself, "I thank thee that I'm not as other men even as this publican, wretched man." See? His standard was lower than himself. Now do you know what that does? That means that the ultimate human standard is the most rotten person alive, because if everybody just keeps basing his own evaluation on one person lower, the whole thing spirals down till the ultimate standard is the most rotten person in the world.

 

But that's not the way God set it. When God set a standard for acceptable character, He didn't say you have to be better than a publican. You have to be better than an immoral man. You have to be better than a liar and a thief and a cheat. You have to be better than one who isn't fair to those around him. He enacts injustice. You have to be better than somebody who beats his children. You have to better than a murderer.  

 

He said, if you want to see God, you have to be 100% what? Pure. And the standard is God and 1 Peter 1 says it, "Be ye holy as I am holy." And if you want it in terms of the Sermon on the Mount, you'll find it in Chapter 5 and verse 48, "Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect." Now that's the standard.

Now men want to set the standard as the worst human being alive and God sets the standard as Himself, the absolute holy, righteous, and only God of the universe. Who's going to enter the kingdom? Who's going to heaven? Who's going to be saved? Who is fit to ever enter God's presence? Who will ever have a vision of God? Who will ever see God face to face? Who will ever enter into bliss? Who will ever know blessedness? Who will ever know true happiness? Only those who are pure in their hearts.

 

Now when I began to think about that, I thought boy that really hits them right where they were in their day because they were so concerned with externals weren't they. The Pharisees used to get uptight if they didn't have certain washings of the hands and pots and pans and if they didn't go through all of this ritual. And the Lord says they were great at tithing of mint and cumin and anis. In other words, they'd make sure they gave ten percent of some little tiny herbal leaf while paying no attention to love and truth and mercy and justice.  

 

It's all so superficial. Jesus said to them on the outside you are white and you look all wonderful, and inside you're full of dead men's bones. You're like a white-washed grave. You hypocrites. You hypocrites. Everything was external and the Lord just takes that whole cloak of hypocrisy and shreds it in one statement. Who will see God? Not the externalists, but those pure on the inside. See? They alone see God. 

 

Now that raises a question: if this Beatitude is so important, so significant, then why does it come halfway down the list?

 

Think about the significance Chronologically.

 

Every one of these Beatitudes is critical and they flow in a beautiful, magnificent sequence in perfect order according to the mind of God. It isn't the matter that the first or the last or the middle is more important. They are equally important. They are all part of the same thing. They are all part of one great reality. You can't isolate the one from the whole. 

 

You begin with the reality of being poor in spirit. And when you see yourself as a cowering beggar in a corner reaching out a hand that can only be given a gift, you have no power to earn anything. And as a cowering beggar ashamed to show your face, you reach out in tremendous sense of inadequacy. You reach out to God. 

 

The next response is to mourn over the sin that has put you in that position. And out of your total sense of sinfulness, you fall meek before an absolutely holy God. You couldn't be anything else but humble. And in your humility, all you can do is cry out and hunger and thirst for a righteousness which you can't attain and yet you've got to have. And you cry that God would give it. And then what happens, He gives you mercy and that's the next Beatitude and you become one of those who are merciful. 

 

 

 

And once you have been granted mercy and once God by His mercy has cleansed your heart because you hungered for His righteousness, then and then alone do you become pure in heart. And only when you are pure in heart could you ever be a peacemaker.

 

You see there is a flow that cannot be isolated and once you become a peacemaker in the world, you're going to find the world will persecute you and lie about you and hate you and despise you, but that's all right, because verse 12 says you can rejoice, God's going to reward you. 

 

So one reason that this one is here is because it's the natural flow. Purity of heart comes after you've hungered and thirsted for righteousness and after God has dispensed His mercy to you. And it is His mercy that sweeps your heart clean. It is mercy that cleanses your evil heart. It's not something you earn. It's something He gives out of His mercy and in the clean heart that comes from His mercy as the purity that allows you to see God.

 

But there's another beautiful thought too as to why this one is here. The first seven Beatitudes all kind of fit in a beautiful way. The first three lead up to the fourth one and then the next three follow after. The fourth one which seems to be kind of the apex is to hunger and thirst after righteousness. 

 

You begin with a beggarly spirit and out of the beggarliness of your own spirit comes a mourning over sin and when you see yourself as a total sinner, you're humble and meek before God. And at that point, you cry out for righteousness and then God acts. And you find His mercy and you find purity of heart, and you find a gift of peacemaking so that those flow out of the fourth. The first three lead up to it, the last three flow out of it. 

But there is something that's even more intricate. The first and fifth, the second and sixth, and the third and the seventh seem to compare also.

 

For example, it is the poor in spirit who realized that they're nothing but beggars who are going to reach out in mercy to others right? Because as a beggar, you know that anything you have is a gift of mercy and you're going to tend to be merciful too. 

 

It is secondly those who mourn over their sin who are going to know the purity of heart, because unless you mourn over your sin, there's no cleansing of that sin. True repentance involves mourning and so the mourning seems to be connected in some sense with the purity at heart. 

 

And finally, it is the meek who are the peacemakers. Nobody is ever a peacemaker who doesn't do so from the vantage point of humility.

 

So there's a beautiful way in which the weaving together of these Beatitudes shows how the mind of God works. 

 

So it is fit in the right place historically. 

 

It is fit in the right place chronologically.

 

Then think about the significance Spiritually.

 

Now remember that among the crowd that day were the Pharisee legalists. And by the way, they're in every religious crowd. 

The woods are full of them. They're going to heaven because of their human achievement. The Lord certainly couldn't send me to hell. I don't kick cats. When my neighbor has a problem, I give him my shovel. 

 

I'm going to...I've never done...I've never killed anybody. I never ran out on my wife. I'm a pretty good father, I provide for my kids. They don't go around without clothes and we've done the best we can in this life. That's the religion of human achievement.

 

Then there are people, you know, who go down here to the Buddhist temple and they go in there and they burn their little thing. And they put their little dinner down there. And they're going to work their way up into whatever is up there, Nirvana. Think themselves into exquisite nothingness. They are all over the world. 

 

There's only two kinds of religion in the world. Only two. People say oh there's so many religions. No, only two. Only two religions in the whole world. The religion of human achievement and it comes under every brand imaginable, but it's all the same. You earn your own way. 

 

And the religion of divine accomplishment and that says you can't do it. God did it in Christ and there's only one that says that and that's Christianity. 

 

Those are the only two religions in the world. The religion of human achievement and divine accomplishment. Take your pick. Human achievement comes under all kinds of labels, but it's all the same stuff. It's Satan's lie. 

And so in every crowd, you have the people who are going to make it on their own. They're going to earn their way to heaven. They're going to get there on their own energy, their own power, their own resources.

 

And they were in that crowd that day and the Lord Jesus Christ stripped them bare. They were content with external ceremonialism. They were content with superficial works, righteousness, and systems that dealt only with the outside. And Jesus is saying to them, sorry folks you don't qualify to see God. You'll never be in my kingdom, because I'm after the pure in heart. I'm talking about the inside.  

 

And yet so many have missed this. Let me say it this way people, you'll never see God. You'll never be in God's kingdom. You'll never enter God's presence. You'll never have His forgiveness. You'll never know the Redeemer that comes out of Zion. You'll never know what it is to come and drink of the well of salvation. You will die frustrated in your sins unless your heart is pure. Unless your heart is pure.

 

But you know the wonder of it all? Is that that is exactly what Jesus Christ has come to do to purify your heart. Because when He died on the cross, you see, He took the sin that was accounted to you and He paid all the penalty for that sin. And the Bible says He then imputes His righteousness to you. It's a fantastic exchange. He takes your sin, gives you His righteousness so that when you put your faith in Jesus Christ and God looks at you, God sees you pure. And on no other condition does He see you that way.

 

It is because Christ took our place, bore our sins in His own body on the tree that His righteousness is given to us. And so by faith, God makes us pure. That was what His message was. And that was the context of it.

 

Second question, what does it mean to be pure in heart? 

 

This is the key question. What does it mean to be pure in heart? 

 

The heart in the Bible is always seen as the inside part of man, the seat of his personality, his inner man. Predominantly, it refers to the thinking process. The heart is not specifically the emotions. When the Bible wants to talk about emotions, it talks about the bowels of compassion. The feeling in the stomach, in the mid-section, it uses very different. Very different...in fact, sometimes it even talks about the liver as an organ of emotion, if you can imagine that.

 

And the reason they use those terms is because the Jew would express his feeling as in terms of what he felt in his stomach. You know, when he really loved, he felt it in his stomach. When he really hated, he felt it in his stomach. When he really had some emotion, it turned him in the stomach. And that's still true today. Our emotions affect our inside organs, but the mind and the heart were really together. "As a man thinketh in his," what, "heart." 

 

So the heart became the equivalent of the thinking process predominantly. But note this: sometimes the word heart does have reference to the will and the emotion as they spin off of the intellect.

For example, my mind does something, and if my mind is really committed to that something, it will affect my will, which will affect my emotion. The mind generates the will, which generates the emotion. 

 

And so what our Lord is speaking about here when He says the pure in heart is the inside. And He's first of all thinking of the mind which controls the will, which controls the responses of emotion.

 

And boy this was a shot at the Pharisees and the legalist who were telling everyone that all you needed to do was take care of the outside and that only the outside was the issue. And if you just bide by the externals and crank out the external religious activity you're going to be all right and that is not the answer. 

 

The heart refers to the inside. It's the place where everything happens inside of you in Hebrew thinking.

 

God has always been after the inside. People let me tell you something, I don't care if you go to church every day of the week. I don't care if you carry a Bible around and if you recite verses. If your heart is not clean, you haven't met God's standard. It doesn't matter how religious you are on the outside. 

 

Let me illustrate it by David and Saul. When God called Saul, Saul was kind of a mess, tall, dark, and handsome, but nothing else. And so it says in 1 Samuel 10:9 that "God gave Saul another heart." Isn't that great? Because God had to change him on the inside. 

 

So it says in 1 Samuel 10:9, "God gave Saul another heart." But you know what he began to do? He began to disobey God and he came to the place where he actually acted as priest and Samuel came to him and said Saul, the Lord says you're finished. You will have no kingly line. Why? Because God has sought a man after His own heart. You see?

Why? Why does God care about that? And the reply came in 1 Samuel 16:7, "Because man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart." 

 

Who was the man after God's own heart? Well, it was David. And God selected David because his heart was right. 

 

David said this in Psalm 9:1, "I will praise thee oh Lord with my whole heart." 

 

In Psalm 19:14, David said, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight oh Lord my strength and my Redeemer." 

 

In Psalm 26, verse 2, David cried out "Examine me oh Lord and prove me and test my heart." 

 

In Psalm 27 and verse 8, "When thou saidst seek ye my face," David says, "my heart said unto thee thy face Lord will I seek." You see it was a man who was ruled from his heart from the inside.

 

Psalm 28, verse 7 and I'm just dealing with the first part of the Psalms, he says, "The Lord is my strength and shield, my heart trusts in Him." There was a man after God's heart. 

 

David in his innermost being sought God. And you know what the sum of it all is? 

Psalm 57:7 David cried this, "My heart is fixed oh God. My heart is fixed." Isn't that great? I'm locked in on You in my heart. That's the kind of worship God wants. There's a man who saw God. Oh he failed on the outside, but his heart was set toward God.

 

These people may not have failed on the outside, they may have cranked out all the ritual, but the heart was not toward God. 

 

The second term in the phrase, pure in heart, is the word pure. What does that mean? 

 

People say purity is some flat insipid pedestrian rather vague, unattractive commodity that belongs to strange people in long robes who live in monasteries. What does it mean to be pure? The word is a noun, which means to cleanse from filth and iniquity. It means to cleanse from filth. I mean, that's as simple as you need to know. In a moral sense, it means to be free from sin.

 

The word simply means to be cleansed. 

 

Some suggest the idea that it means unmixed. Pure means in the sense of unalloyed or unadulterated or unmixed or sifted or cleansed of chaff if used of a wheat kind of a context or winnowed. 

 

And that what our Lord is really saying here is I'm after a heart that is unmixed in its devotion. That is unmixed in its motivation. Pure motives out of a pure heart. And so it might be the idea of spiritual integrity. 

 

It has to do with attitudes. It has to do with integrity and singleness of heart as opposed to duplicity and a double mindedness. That's that single devotion, that single purpose. And in other words motive, motive, pure motive. And I think that's very important. 

 

We’ll see that later on in the Sermon on the Mount as He gets into Chapter 6 and verse 19-23. He says, "Where your treasure is there will your heart be also. The lamp of the body is the eye, if therefore, thine eye is healthy, the whole body shall be full of light. If thine eye be evil, they whole body shall be full of darkness." 

 

In other words, He's seeing here the reality of how you look at things, how view things will effect your whole life. If your motive is pure, then your life is pure. If your motive is corrupt, then your life is corrupt.

 

And so there needs to be a singleness of heart, a singleness of devotion, a singleness of motive and He sums it up in verse 24, "No man can serve," what, "two masters." There's that singleness that He is after. 

 

So there is this sense beloved that God wants a pure motive.

 

And you want to know something? I believe if you're a Christian, it is normal for you to have that kind of motive. 

 

I believe if you're truly a Christian that that motive for purity is really there. And if you don't have that in your heart, I question whether you know God, because the only people who really see God, the only people who really know God are those who are pure in their hearts in the sense of a motive that is toward God.

 

Whenever David sinned, it was because he corrupted his motives. But he would always go back to the same thing. You know when he cried out, "my heart is fixed oh God, my heart is fixed," do you know where he was? 

 

He was hiding out in the cave of Adullam. You know why he was hiding in the case of Adullam? Because he had acted like an idiot when he was up there in Gath. And he was at Gath and he was in the Philistine country and he thought the Gathites, these Philistines, they're going to kill me. Oh I'm so afraid and he failed in his trust toward God and so he played like a mad man and he spit all over his beard and clawed the walls like he was nuts.

 

And tey said we don't need any more nuts around, ship him out. And he's in the cave of Adullam and he says to himself, oh David, you were going to protect yourself, save your own hide instead of glorifying God, you played the idiot and it was written in scripture so everybody throughout the rest of the world's going to know what a dumbbell you were. You dishonored God, you failed to glorify God, and then he stops and says from here on God my heart is fixed. "Oh Lord my heart is fixed." 

 

No more double-mindedness. 

 

How about you? Do you have that desire in your heart? Do you have pure motives? 

 

The great John Bunyan who wrote the masterpiece Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War and so many things, was once told by someone how great a preacher he was and that he had no doubt preached a masterpiece that day. 

 

Bunyan very sadly replied and I quote, "thank you, but the Devil already told me that as I was coming down the pulpit steps." 

 

Pure motive, but let me add something to that people. That's not enough. Pure motive isn't enough. The word goes beyond motive. Don't stop there. Listen there are a lot of people with pure motives and they never come to God. Do you know that? 

 

All over the world there are those who try all kinds of radical approaches to come to God, and they will die and go to hell. Mexico, shrines and offerings. 

 

No doubt the worshipers of Baal had some sincerity in Elijah's day when they got out there with knives and started hacking themselves up. I'd say that's sincerity. You start cutting yourself up and you're meaning business.

 

There's more than motive in the meaning of purity. 

 

It also speaks of our deeds. And they both have to be there. It is the purity that issues out of a pure motive. Thomas Watson said "morality can drown a man as fast as vice." He said, "A vessel may sink with gold or with dung." 

 

 

You can say I'm a very religious person and want to please God, but if your deeds aren't according to His word and they don't reveal a purity, it doesn't matter.

 

So we're talking about motive, yes, but motive plus. 

Now let me conclude by giving you a final little thought or two. 

 

There are five kinds of purity. 

 

Number one is what I call

 

Foundational Purity. 

 

That's the kind of purity that exists only in God. It is as essential in God as light is to the sun as wet is to water. It is His fundamental or foundational purity.

 

Second, there is what the Bible presents as

 

 

It is the creation of a pure being before the fall. God created angels in purity, created man in purity and then both fell. But it's created purity. So you have foundational purity, that which is true only of God. You have created purity, that which He grants out of His own purity to a being He creates. 

 

Third, ultimate purity. 

 

Ultimate purity is a category of glorification. In other words, ultimately all the saints of God will be completely pure, right? Some day we're going to have all of our sin washed away. 

We're going to be cleansed, totally clean, we're going to dwell with God in His eternal heaven forever. And at that point, we will experience ultimate purity. 1 John 3:2 tells us how it will be. "We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is."

 

Fourth is positional purity. 

 

Positional purity is the purity that we have been given right now by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. When you believe in Jesus Christ, God imputes to you a positional kind of purity. In other words, your position in Christ grants to you purity. When God looks at Terry Tolbert, believe it or not, He sees me as absolutely pure in Christ. The righteousness of Christ has been applied to him because he believed in Jesus Christ.

 

Fifth, practical purity. 

 

Now this is the hard part folks. Only God knows foundational purity. Only God can bestow created purity. Some day God will give every saint ultimate purity. Right now every believer has positional purity, but boy we have a lot of trouble with the practical kind don't we? 

 

Trying to live out what we are in position. And that's why the apostle Paul cries out in 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 1 that tremendous statement to all believers. And we must hear it, listen to what he says. "Dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit perfecting holiness and the fear of God." He's not talking about foundational, created, ultimate, or positional. That's God's business. What he's crying for is a practical living purity. 

And at best, it'll be gold mixed with some iron. At best, it'll be a white cloak with some black thread.

 

But God wants us to be as pure as we can be, practically before Him. Listen people, it's those people who are positionally pure in Jesus Christ who will see God, who will be in His kingdom. 

 

And those people will manifest it in a purity of life, in pure motives and in pure living. If that's not true in your life, then you're not a Christian or you're a Christian living in disobedience. We fail. Sure we fail. But the Bible tells us how to deal with failure. We're going to be tempted to be impure. We're going to be tempted to have impure thoughts, say impure words, do impure things. We're going to be tempted to have motives that aren't right that'll issue in words and deeds that aren't right. But the Bible tells us how to deal with temptation.

 

You say, but what if I fail? What if I fail? The Bible tells you how to deal with that. "If we confess our sins, He's faithful and still righteous to keep on cleansing us from all unrighteousness." It tells you how to deal with the temptation and the failure. And every time you face it and you repent and you deal with it and God cleanses it and you move on to a greater level of purity.

 

It's a tremendous thing to know that God makes us pure. There's another question you have to know. And it's this question. 

 

How can my heart be made pure? 

 

 

Some people say well, in order to really be pure you've got to go to a monastery up on a hill and get away from everything. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. 

 

Other people say no, what it really is is a second work of grace. After you've been saved a long time, you go to the second work of grace and God by a divine act eradicates your sin nature and you'll never sin as long as you live. 

 

I don't think separation cuts it. I don't think perfectionism cuts it either. How do I find my heart made pure? 

 

I’ll give you three things, and I’ll be done: 

 

1. You can't purify your heart by works. If you want a pure heart, know you can't do it on your own. There's no way, no way at all.

 

2. You can purify your hearts by faith. You can't do it by works, but you can do it by faith, by believing; by putting your trust in the finished work of Christ. 

 

Accept the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Accept what He has already done.

 

You say Terry, I've already done that. I've already given my heart to Jesus Christ and I know I'm positionally pure and I know I'll be ultimately pure, but oh I have a terrible time with practical purity. 

 

 

How can I be practically pure? Stay right here in this book. Hear the words of Jesus. John 15:3, "Now are you clean through the," what, "word." "Now are you clean through the word."

 

And the second thing, if you're a Christian, stay in the word and pray. Pray and hear the words of Job who said who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean. And there was only one answer that echoes down through eternity. God can. 

 

So if you're asking initially how can I be clean, realize you can't do it by works. You can know purity by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ shed for you. If you've done that and you're a Christian, then commit yourself to a life of purity by looking to the word and to prayer. 

 

There's one other question I need to mention. 

 

What is the promise attached to such purity? 

 

What happens if we're pure? The end of the verse, "they shall," what, "see God." This is a future indicative in Greek. A future continuous tense. Let me read you how it should go. 

 

"They shall be continually seeing God for themselves." You know what happens when your heart is purified through salvation? You live in the presence of God. You don't see God with a physical eye. You see Him with the spiritual eye.

 

You comprehend Him. You realize that He's there. You see Him. And like Moses who cried "Lord, show me thy glory." The one whose heart is purified by Jesus Christ sees again and again the glory of God.

 

Hey listen, did you know that to see God was the greatest thing that a person in the Old Testament could dream of? Moses said, "show me thy glory." What a thought. 

Philip said that day to Jesus, "show us the Father." And that's sufficient. And beloved, when you are purified in your heart by Jesus Christ, you will see God. He'll be alive to you and you'll go on seeing Him. And as you mature, and the more pure you become, the greater the beatific vision becomes.

 

The more pure your heart, the more of God you see. What a great reality it is. Job said, oh, Chapter 42, "I heard of thee with the hearing of mine ear. But now I have seen thee with mine eye." And you know where he saw Him? He saw Him in trouble. And the Psalmist saw Him in creation. And others see Him in circumstances. And some see Him in the hearts of other people, but He's alive in His world. And you're not alive to that unless you've been purified in your heart.

 

Do you want to see God? Do you want to have God alive in your world for now and forever? Then purify your heart. And there's an ultimate sense, because some day you'll see God with real eyes. 1 John 3:2, "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is in the form of Jesus Christ." Oh what a day it'll be. To see Christ face to face. 

 

F. F. Bullard wrote, "When I in righteousness at last, thy glorious face shall see. When all the weary night is passed and I awake with thee. To view the glories that abide, then and only then will I be satisfied." 

 

Let's pray.