Today we continue in our study of the Sermon on the Mount. And we study today at Matthew chapter 5 and verse 8. Matthew 5 and verse 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. They shall see God. What a prospect, what a promise. And who can give such a promise but God alone?
Now I'd like you to notice, first and foremost, the future tense here. They shall see God. Future tense. We do not yet see God in His glory and in His majesty. We see in a glass darkly. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 12. We see but in a glass darkly. But Paul goes on to say, we shall then see Him face to face.
You know, what is the goal of human life? I wonder what the goal of your life is. And where does this life lead us to? Where does the road of life end? How many times I have observed that the road of life leads nowhere but down into a hole, some several feet below the ground. And all one's strivings and all one's labors are going to end up when we go down into this hole a few feet in the ground. And you cannot be in the ministerial work without from time to time having to officiate at a funeral and to realize that that is the way of all flesh. And it is hard for us in our youth and in our good health to ponder this reality that whether we like to ponder it or not, the way of all life ends in the ground.
But if we stop there, we should all be pessimists. Or else we should just have to be like the British and keep a stiff upper lip and try to make the best of a bad case. For we seem to be going precisely nowhere but into the ground. If that is all the prospect of human life, then it is a gloomy prospect indeed. And even those of us who must from time to time officiate at a funeral go away with many solemn thoughts in our minds as to what life after all is all about. And it seems so meaningless at the grave to recite the accomplishments of the deceased. That he did this and that. That he had this and that degree. And that he took this and that honors. It seemed all so irrelevant to go through all that. It is all at an end. It is all passe. It is all gone. And so to recite past honors is just like taking out a photograph album and looking at old bygone days. All of which is no more in the present. But where, if you do not know God, will you go? For this life leads you nowhere. It is a dead end. And literally, dead end. The end is dead. The end is death. Very literally, a dead end.
And the tragedy of those who do not know the Lord is really quite pitiful. And they do their best to take their minds off the subject only to have it return again and again whether it be in the quiet moments of the night when our thoughts come back to us after the labors of a day have ceased or whether it be that some loved one passes on and we are confronted once more with the one thing we don't want to think about.
When I was in Hong Kong a few months ago I saw an old friend of mine and she was one who grew up with me right back in Shanghai and she always was a very brilliant girl and very good at whatever she put her hand to whether it be the piano or whether it be her studies and she went to the United States and made a very fine career for herself in the sciences and ended up very high in the academic world. Well, she was getting her master's degree before I even came anywhere near to my first degree. So far was she ahead of me in the matters of academic pursuit. She started early and she finished early. And at a very young age she had not only accomplished the work and finished her work at the PhD but she was already an associate professor I believe in the State University of Michigan. And soon as a very young person she was there up in the heights of the scientific world in her specialized fields of crystallography especially and mineralogy.
And then when I talked with her in Hong Kong she was no longer in this business of science but she was in the business of business. She was now running her father's business, her father being a very wealthy man, a millionaire in Hong Kong or maybe a multi-millionaire I should say since there are an awful lot of millionaires in Hong Kong these days especially with the Hong Kong dollar. And so I had a good conversation with her and I asked her why did she give up her very brilliant career in the sciences to be managing her father's business since it seemed to be completely unrelated. She said that's why she did it because it's completely unrelated. I said what do you mean? She said well I had reached more or less the top of my field and there was nowhere else to go. It was the end of the road. It was a dead end. I couldn't see any more prospects. One could go on doing a bit of research but there wasn't really anywhere interesting to go as far as she was concerned. She had reached the top she was at the professorship and what else was there to do?
And so when her father invited her to manage his business in Hong Kong she said well I know nothing about business but she was always eager for a new challenge. And so she went into business became the manager of her father's business and apparently did very successfully in business too. Soon mastering with a very brilliant mind every department every aspect of the business world from stocks and shares which was not strictly her business to other departments of the business world. And then when I was talking to her I said you find the business world very interesting? She said I did in the first year but now I don't find there's much left to learn and I find the whole thing getting very boring. It's all routine now and the challenge is gone. So I said well what does that mean? She said that means I better look for something else to do because I'm getting bored by this routine. She had reached also the top of the business world and there was again nowhere else to go.
So I said well what other fields do you hope to try having tried science and business that doesn't leave you all that much left to go for. And so we got to the subject that life seems to be all a dead end road. There doesn't seem to be anywhere to go. There seems to be so little that one can do when one has reached the top. When you are below at the foot of the mountain it looks so glorious the snowy peaks above. What a challenge what heights. But when you are standing at the top you've got nowhere else to go unless you've got a helicopter to lift you up. And then the helicopter can't go that far up either.
And so we find that this seems to be the whole story of human life. And when I considered her case I looked at the case of mankind generally. I see people struggling so hard for this bachelor's for this master's for this PhD and then for this whatever it is you can try after that, and then you don't know where else to go. What's left to do? What's left to accomplish? It seems to come finally to some dead end. Well there are still little research projects you can pursue here and there. But is that what you're going to put your whole life into? Is that what the whole life is about?
And then when it comes to making money, money was not a problem. She's just with a father who's a millionaire and you're at the top of some business. Who wants to talk about money? What can you do with it? You can paper your walls with it after a time. Even that doesn't look nice. And so when you've got the money and you've got the degrees and you've got the status and where do you go from there? It seems to have arrived at the dead end.
But how glorious the prospect when we can look beyond all this and say we shall see Him face to face. Now for me that changes the picture. When I was a non-Christian I felt exactly the same way. I studied life, I looked at life and I couldn't see that there was anywhere to go. Because sure there is a road but what comfort it is to go traveling down this road only to realize that you have come to a dead end. That's not very interesting. And many times I felt a sense of utter frustration and wondered what all the toil of this world was about.
Now I didn't become a Christian in order to have some glorious prospects. That's not the case at all. I didn't become a Christian because I hoped to find some road beyond the dead end. If the truth and the reality of the matter is that there is nothing more than a dead end then we just have to accept that. And like Bertrand Russell simply say well even though life comes to a dead end we just got to make the best of it. Not surprisingly Bertrand Russell was British and he had quite a lot of exercise in the stiff upper lip. But the question is, is there something beyond?
And the Lord Jesus tells us that for the pure in heart there is an awful lot beyond and that we may experience that. It will be ours but the Lord Jesus doesn't offer it cheap. You've got to be and this is the conditional aspect of it, you have got to be pure in heart and that makes it ever so difficult doesn't it? The Lord Jesus does not dish out salvation in a cheap and easy manner. Rather after the fashion of our modern evangelist who is forever trying to sell his goods by cutting the price. The Lord Jesus tells us frankly you can see God, God will be seen by you provided that you are prepared to be pure in heart.
Now this is most essential that we study what it means to be pure in heart and whether or not this vision is after all a reality. Now the question also hinges on this unless God becomes real to us in this life we might only be talking about a pie in the sky. We might be just trying to comfort ourselves and refuse again to believe that dead end is dead end. We would like to invent some future for ourselves that we shall call the vision of God.
As I told you I did not become a Christian because I wanted to see something beyond the dead end. I was willing to accept the dead end if that is the way it is. Until I met with God. Until I met with God and I realized that God is. God is. And how I met with God I have shared with many of you before and I shall not repeat again. But that experience of God completely revolutionized my life. I realized that God is real. That God is there. That was the beginning.
But unless you have met with God in some way here and now, then this prospect of the vision of God must to some extent always be rather evasive, rather evanescent, rather mythical if you like. And that is why I have time and again stressed the importance of a relationship, a living relationship with God here and now. Otherwise your faith is going to be founded perhaps more on fantasy than on reality.
We are not able unless we walk in purity of heart here and now. We are not able to say with Paul, I know whom I have believed. Are you able to say you know whom you have believed? Or are you simply able to say merely a tautological expression as the logicians say, I believe in whom I believe. That doesn't go very far. For we can all believe in whatever we choose to believe. We have to go beyond merely the believing of what we believe to a knowing of the one whom we believe in. And the way to know Him is through this step of commitment. This step of total commitment.
There is no other way that you shall know God except through total commitment in this life. And this is the reason why I have emphasized it time and again. Because without totally committing yourself to God and merely professing some type of intellectual faith, then you are only going to have an intellectual faith in God. That's as far as you will go. And an intellectual faith in God may be very interesting for philosophers. It is not much use on which to build your life solidly. Intellectual faith is for academic interest.
Is your faith intellectual or is it founded upon a reality in which you are able to say with the apostle Paul, I know whom I have believed. Because I have experienced His power in my life. Because I have met with Him in this transforming relationship whereby He has made me to become a person that can be rightly called a new creature in Christ. Can you say that of yourself? If not, then whatever faith you have of God must frankly be labeled an intellectual faith. Very good for psychological purposes, very good for intellectual discussion and of some interest to philosophers, but of very little practical use. Because our life, our faith in God must find its roots in life. And the purity of heart is a quality of life. It is not an intellectual persuasion, an intellectual conviction. It is rooted in life, in the quality of your life. That's very important to understand.
And so I say once more again, that salvation in the Lord's teaching is not a salvation by faith which simply believes that certain things are true, that there is a God, that Jesus died, and so forth. Nor is salvation by means of doing this and that, performing good works, burning candles in churches, putting some money in the offering, doing some kind deeds here and there. It is not a salvation by works. It is not a salvation by intellectual faith. It is a salvation by transformation. A salvation by the grace of God that comes into your life and changes you into a new person.
Now that is reality. That is talking about something that you know has happened to you, something that you can speak of as having experienced in your life, and not simply believed on in your mind through intellectual persuasion. Now I do not say there is anything wrong with intellectual persuasion. That is very good. By all means study apologetics and study the philosophers, the Christian philosophers if you like. By all means do all of this. But if you stop there, then your salvation is short of heart.
So notice the conditional aspect of this statement. You may see God, but conditioned on that you are pure in heart. Blessed are the pure in heart for they, not anyone else, but they shall see God. This means the negative form of the statement is equally true. That is that if you are not pure in heart, you don't have to worry about seeing God. Because that's not going to be your portion. For it is they, the pure in heart, who shall see God. The others do not receive any kind of promise of salvation.
Now notice carefully the conditional aspect. I must stress this point, because salvation is conditional. There is no unconditional salvation in the scriptures. And I must stress this because as I mentioned last time, our good friend Martin Lloyd-Jones did precisely this thing. He tried to remove the conditional aspect of this. He seemed to be for dogmatic reasons disturbed by the saying, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. In other words, if you desire to receive mercy, you must be, not you may be, or you ought to be, or it's rather nice to be, you must be merciful.
This disturbed him, because for his sake, he wanted to base salvation purely on one thing, as he himself says, forgiveness is based solely on repentance. But now it is repentance plus being merciful, and that disturbs his theological or dogmatic equilibrium. It unbalances him. And so what does he do? Well, the good Dr. Lloyd-Jones decides then, somewhat to restructure the Lord's saying, and this I find is unpardonable, this may not be allowed to pass.
What he actually does in order to remove the condition is to turn the Lord's saying upside down. And when you study the way he expounds the passage, what he effectively is saying is, blessed are those who have received mercy for they shall be merciful. Now, nothing gives us the right to turn the Lord's words upside down. First of all, in order to do this, to turn a conditional sentence into an unconditional sentence, he had to turn it upside down, but more than that, he had also to change the tense, for as you have noticed, what the Lord is saying is, they shall receive mercy. It's an eschatological statement, that is, it is a statement regarding future things. They shall, in the future, when God's salvation comes upon their lives, they shall receive mercy on that day.
But Dr. Lloyd-Jones has to turn it, and they have received mercy, and therefore, they should be merciful. Now, that is also true. Of course, what Dr. Lloyd-Jones says is also true. Blessed are those who have received mercy, for they shall, or at least ought to be merciful. Now, even though that statement is true, because the Lord Jesus says that in Matthew 18 verses 33, it is not what the Lord Jesus says here in the Beatitude. So, in Matthew 18:33, the Lord does say that. So, the statement is true in itself, but it is irrelevant as far as we have to go from Matthew 18:33 to 18:35, and in 18:35, the Lord says, if you do not forgive others, neither shall you be forgiven. It's so plain, that it's not a question of interpretation. One doesn't require any interpretation. One just lets the words speak for themselves. They're perfectly plain.
Now, we must not, and we dare not change the conditional aspect of this sentence. We may not indulge in removing a condition that the Lord has set. It is most important to observe this. We may not play around with God's words. And then Dr. Lloyd-Jones, when he finally comes to the end of his sermon on Matthew 5:7, realizes that he has not really been saying what the Lord has been saying. He also realizes that. And then he makes a few statements more or less to the effect that blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. But in the meantime he has already wanted to tell us that the conditional aspect has been removed. This will not do.
So here we must realize that it is a condition. You shall see God if you are pure in heart. Curiously enough when Dr. Lloyd-Jones comes to Matthew 5:8 he does not seem to want to argue about the conditional aspect anymore. He seems to have dropped the subject. And that is very curious too.
Now this we must bear in mind. As Professor Schweitzer rightly sees he says this: no one can count on God's mercy who does not himself show mercy. Now that is perfectly correct statement and perfectly correct understanding of what the Lord says because that's precisely what the Lord says. No one can count on God's mercy who does not himself show mercy. That is most important to bear in mind.
So when we come to this matter and I'm joining these two because there is a close relationship between blessed are the pure in heart and blessed are the merciful. This relationship comes out very clearly in Psalm 24 verses 3 to 4 and let me read to you Psalm 24 verses 3 to 4 which in fact is the Old Testament foundation for these words of the Lord Jesus. Psalm 24 verses 3 and 4 read like this:
Who shall ascend the hill of Yahweh and who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.
Now and it goes on to say verse 5, he will receive blessing. Notice the blessed are those who are pure in heart. He will receive blessing from Yahweh and mercy from the God of his salvation. This is the word mercy is here translated as vindication also quite correctly so in the RSV and the Greek Old Testament has mercy. He shall receive mercy. So tying it up with the previous beatitude of the Lord's teaching.
But there is one more thing before we proceed to examine what it means to be pure in heart and it is this and it is also a question raised by our good Dr. Lloyd-Jones and he raises the question about the vision of God. Do we see God on that day? Do we see him with the naked eye or do we see him in some spiritual sense? How shall we see God?
Now I would not raise the question if he didn't raise the question but since he raised the question and since his is one of the most widely read commentaries on the Sermon on the Mount I am bound to have to comment upon it. Well having considered the issue Lloyd-Jones then goes on to come to conclusion that we don't know the answer to that question very surprisingly.
Now for me that will not do because the question is too important to leave as vague as that. Shall we see God on that day with these physical eyes? Shall we really see God as Job says in my flesh I shall see God? Or do we mean simply we are going to see God in some kind of a spiritual sense? In other words this spiritual vision of God would be not different in quality, not different in kind from the way in which we see God now but only that we will see Him more clearly? We see Him now but only vaguely, unclearly. We see Him with the eyes of faith spiritually but we do not see Him very clearly and we see in a glass darkly but we do not see Him precisely. But on that day this vision of God will become clearer it will become purer because our spiritual life presumably will have come to perfection.
And so in answer to this Lloyd-Jones presents some evidence of scripture and says that on the basis of that evidence we don't know. But I need to comment first of all that the evidence that he presents is very far from complete. He has missed out a great deal of the important evidence and so we need not be vague at all about this matter.
For example in one case he quotes the case of Moses. He says Moses was not allowed to see God face to face, he only saw the back parts of the glory of God and therefore he goes on to say man cannot see with these physical eyes the glory of God. But this statement frankly the case of Moses is quite irrelevant and it is irrelevant because once more the good doctor has forgotten that we are talking about eschatology, that they shall see God at some point in the future.
Eschatology, that is something not in the present situation, not in this age but in the age to come. So quoting Moses is quite irrelevant. In this age, in this present time, in the non-eschatological situation, that means living as we are in this present state of sin, that we are in, no man given this situation of being a sinner can see God and live. That the scripture has said very clearly and Moses being a sinner like all the rest of us of course could not see God and live as that passage says. So he could only see the back parts of God. He could not see God face to face.
But that has nothing to do with the words of the Lord Jesus here because we are not talking whether or not we can see God now with these particular eyes in my particular situation but whether we shall see God in that day when this same body will be transformed. When the corruption shall put on incorruption. When the mortal shall put on immortality. When the sinful body will be no more and this new body fully glorified and Christ-like will be there. We are talking about eschatology. And here the good doctor has forgotten the subject again. And quoting Moses is utterly irrelevant. Moses has nothing to do with the discussion at all because we are talking about they shall see God on that day. On that day when they shall put on immortality when this body will be transformed into the likeness of the body of the glory of Christ's body as Paul tells us in Philippians chapter 3.
Nothing to do with it. Moses could not see God face to face and that is precisely what we shall do in God's grace. We shall see Him face to face. And what is more, the vision is not the same in kind but only different in degree. The vision is entirely different in kind as Paul himself makes plain. For now we see in a glass darkly but then our vision will be of a different kind. But then we shall see face to face.
What does it mean glass darkly? It means now our vision of God is indirect. A glass there is not the kind of glass we are talking about here where we look through a glass. The glass there is the looking glass, the mirror. We see now in a mirror in a reflected way the glory of God darkly. And in those days as many of you know the mirrors as you have been to a British museum or to any museum of antiquities you know that the mirror was of polished brass, of polished metal of a kind that was polished so smooth that you could see into it and see a reflection. They didn't have mirrors in the sense that we have mirrors today.
So Paul says we now see His reflected glory. We see in a glass darkly. But then our vision will be of a completely different kind. It will not be an indirect vision looking through the reflection but
# Blessed Are the Pure in Heart (Part 2) — Matthew 5:8
So the scripture does not leave us in doubt as to what is the nature of our vision of God. We shall see Him. And that is an exciting prospect. We shall see Him. Now if that doesn't excite you, then there isn't very much in this world that's going to excite you. What excites you? To be able to drive a TR-7? What excites you? I don't know what, to fly a helicopter? For me there is nothing more exciting than that prospect. We shall see Him as He is. For we shall be like Him. We shall be like Him. Because He will have fully transformed us. In this mortal flesh, with all its sin, I cannot see God and live. But on that day, we shall see God and live.
So let us come speedily then to the consideration. How shall this glorious vision be ours? How will it be possible for you and for me to have a share in this glorious vision? Oh, what prospect to see God. What does pure in heart mean? What is it that has to happen to me?
Well, we see from scripture that by nature, man's heart is very far from pure. It is desperately wicked. It is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things. Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9 and following tells us exactly that. The heart is desperately wicked. Man is deceitful. He is even good at deceiving himself. Never mind deceiving other people. How we know how to kid ourselves. We know how to fool ourselves. We manage to talk ourselves into all kinds of nonsense. Our hearts are deceitful. We must ever be on the guard for this deceitfulness of our hearts.
So how shall we become from having a deceitfulness of heart to becoming pure in heart? The Lord Jesus tells us exactly the same thing in Mark chapter 7 verses 21 and 22. He tells us there that out of the heart, out of the inner part of man, there comes forth every manner of sin and evil. Just read the whole long list for yourself there in Mark chapter 7, 21 onwards. It's a long and unsavory list of evil things that come out of the heart. So my condition being such, what prospect will I ever have of seeing God? The answer is none whatever. Left to myself, none whatever.
So what's got to happen? What's got to happen is that God has to do something to my heart. He is going to have to perform a heart surgery on me. He is going to have to take out my old heart, which has already died of arterial, spiritual arteriosclerosis, and implant a new heart into me that is truly alive. He is going to have to do the heart transplant. And thanks be to God, when He does a heart transplant, my chances of survival are pretty good compared to those poor people who have heart transplants today and don't survive for very long. And when he lives for six months, it's declared to be a fantastic success. Well, presumably if he hadn't got the transplant, he would have lived for two years. But having had the transplant, he could have the glory of living for six months. This of course is very interesting as a scientific experiment. But as an art of prolonging man's life in this present age, that can hardly be described as too fantastic. Anyway, I shall not get into medical debates. I am talking about a spiritual heart transplant and the very good prospects on that subject.
And so, how is my heart going to be cleansed? How does God change my heart? How does He give me a new heart? Oh, this teaching is precisely there to be found already in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, we are already told that God is going to give us a new heart. Ezekiel is particularly the prophet of the new heart. He says that several times. For example, in Ezekiel chapter 11 and verse 19, he speaks of having a new heart and a new spirit. He says this also in chapter 18 of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 18 and verse 31. And I shall read 18:31 to you because it is significant for our purpose. And this is what Ezekiel says: Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed against me, and get yourself a new heart and a new spirit. For why will you die, O house of Israel?
Now, I'd like you to notice a very interesting thing here, which has to do with how we get a new heart in a moment. It says, cast away from you your transgressions and get for yourself a new heart. God can give us a new heart, but we have to seek it. This aspect of God's gift and our desiring, hungering and thirsting for it is most important. But we shall return to this in a moment.
But let us notice what we must do. How then does God change our heart or cleanse our heart? Well, there are three things we see in the New Testament relating to the cleansing of the heart. First, in Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 14, we read that the blood of Christ cleanses our hearts or our consciences from sin. It is the blood of Christ that can cleanse our hearts. It is He who makes us clean and so gives us a new heart. The same thing is said in 1 John chapter 1 verse 7. That if we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
Secondly, we read in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 26, that He cleanses us also by the water of God's Word. The Word of God cleanses our hearts. John chapter 15 verse 3 says the same thing. The Lord Jesus says to His disciples, "But you are clean by the Word which I have spoken to you."
And thirdly, we are told that the heart is cleansed on our part by means of faith. Acts chapter 15 and verse 9. Faith is that by which God cleanses our hearts. But we on our part must have faith. So you can change the imagery, but the imagery is the same. Either the image is speaking of cleaning the heart which is dirty, or changing the heart which has become hardened. Scripture uses different pictures to say the same thing. The pictures may be different. The message is the same. That in each case, a heart that is cleansed is as good as new. Or a heart that has been changed is a new heart. Either way it is the same thing.
What then is the heart actually? What is being changed? Or what is being cleansed? In a sense, of course, we must realize the heart in scripture is speaking about what Paul would speak of as the inner man. The inner man. With all its emotions, its decisions, its capacity to think. The heart in scripture simply is another way of speaking about man in his innermost self. Man as you really are. Not what you just appear to be on the outside. It is what you really are on the inside. It is not what you show other people that you are. Maybe you are very charming in your outward behavior. Very bad tempered on the inside. Not many people are like this. They live a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of existence. A kind of spiritual schizophrenia. They are one thing inside and another thing outside. But the heart is what you are really in your inside. The inner man. That is the important thing to grasp.
It is what you really think. Not what you tell other people that you think. When people ask you what you are going to vote for on May the 20th, you say, I will vote "we." But when the day comes you vote "no." You see. So one is for public consumption. The other is for the actual thing that you are going to do. What you think is not necessarily what you say. What you say is not necessarily what you think. So when scripture speaks about the heart, it is speaking about what you are in your real self. What you really are. It is that which needs to be changed first.
The Bible and the Word of God is concerned to treat us at the deepest level of our problems. Not to change some symptoms. Not to say, well you got a pain here, so I will give you aspirin. That will help you to relieve the pain. Well that is okay. And the pain goes away here. And then it comes up over here. You see. It is rather like so much of surgery today. You remove the cancer from this point. And that is it. And it comes up even worse in another point. So you cut off this part. And it comes up in another place. It is like our trying to remove dandelions nowadays. You pull up the dandelion flower. And next time you have two dandelions there. You say, I pulled it up the other day. What happened? So you pull this thing up. And you cut a little bit deeper. And then you discover three dandelions. You say, this is impossible.
And so this is symptomatic treatment. You deal with symptoms. But the scripture goes to the root of the matter. He wants, the scripture wants to, God wants to deal with you at what you really are inside. Not that so you come to church, you have a beautiful smile. And look at this nice suit you got here. And you come in here with this beautiful Bible. And genuine Morocco leather. Costing $56 to buy. And you strut in with this. Looks so beautiful on the outside. And what's in the inside? So when you get home, you are shouting at your wife. Grab your brother by the throat. Make life miserable for your roommate. And then the real self begins to come out. The real self is there. God wants to deal with the heart.
And so heart simply means the real self. The inner man. We see this for example in Ephesians chapter 3 verse 16. In chapter 3 verse 16 Paul speaks about the inner man. And in verse 17 he talks about the heart. Which is exactly the same thing of course. It's simply the inner man. Man as he really is. That's what it is.
And this is what the Lord Jesus comes to. He must cleanse this inner man with His blood. Not with an outward garment of religion that you can put on and look more religious than you were before. Not that you can stick up a nice necklace with a cross hanging there which makes you look even more religious. And if my tie doesn't look good, next time I will turn up with a clerical collar so that you can respect me for being clergyman. And if my clerical collar doesn't impress you of my sanctity, then I shall come with a proper preaching gown next time. A black one. And if my preaching gown still doesn't impress you and my collar still doesn't impress you that I am a minister and a clergyman, the next time I shall come with my collar, my gown and my academic hood as well. By that time I hope you are thoroughly impressed that I am a minister of the gospel.
Now if I have to impress people of being a Christian by these external means, then I have missed the whole point. If my sanctity depends upon the blackness of my gown that I wear for preaching. And if it's too black then I put two white collars here just to relieve the unrelieved gloom of blackness upon me which I shall then call the Geneva collar. This is pitiful. This is pitiful. Today we have to preach and try to establish our religion by outward clarity. When God wants to look on the inner man. God looks upon the heart. He wants to change man in the inside of him.
And what is true for the clergy applies to the Christian. And I am stressing this point because the purity of heart here is very, very practical. It is very practical. Because not only is this a purity in the heart, but it is a purity that will be seen in the life. Not seen simply in the way you wear your clothing and that you stick a little cross on your lapel. Well I have no problem. You like to stick a cross, go and stick a cross on your lapel. But that sticking of a cross does not make you more holy than anyone else. And because your Bible is in Morocco leather and mine is only in plastic cover does not mean that therefore you are a better Christian.
So what then does purity of heart mean? Now we know what is the heart. We know how the heart becomes pure. We still have to ask precisely what does the purity of heart mean? Well when we study the scripture we find that this again is rooted in the Old Testament. As we saw in Psalm 24. Therefore the cleanness of heart is extremely practical. I hope you read it very carefully. In case you didn't, I hope you look at it again. Because there it says: purity of heart, cleanness of hands, and truthfulness of speech. They are all of the same package. You cannot have one without the other. Purity of heart will be certainly manifested in the cleanness of hands, that is you do not indulge in sinful acts, doing sinful things. And it will be expressed in the truthfulness of your speech. That what you say is true. That one does not have to guess now how much of that statement was true, how much of it was exaggeration, how much was jia yen jia cu, how much of it was salt and how much of it was vinegar.
Now if you come from the Hong Kong society, for sure you know that becomes a major problem of analysis. Because every sentence you have to take a big discount on. Because when you have made heavy discounts, maybe by the time you are finished with the analysis, maybe 20% of it is true and 80% is false. But that reflects the impurity of heart. Where the heart is pure, then your statements will be true. A man when he says the word, you know that word is true. There is no messing around. His hands are clean.
In other words, when the Lord Jesus speaks about a purity in heart, we must not make it so spiritual that it comes to mean absolutely nothing anymore. Because spirituality, and many times, and I stress this point, because when people say, "Oh that's very spiritual but very impractical," as though what is spiritual is never practical, that's incredible. Because in scripture the opposite is true. What is spiritual is practical. What is unspiritual is precisely what is airy-fairy and not practical. Because it's not true. We must learn to change our thinking. When scripture speaks of a thing as spiritual, when you say pure in heart in the spiritual sense, it means that your change is extremely genuine. It means that what is pure is genuine. It is true. Because it's clean. And cleanliness must be expressed in every aspect of one's life. Even in the way I hope you dress.
Some people think it's very holy to be very dirty because you prove that you don't care much about external things. You see, you just saying you preach just now that I mean it's the inside man that counts and the outside man doesn't matter. So if I don't comb my hair it's okay. If I don't wash my hair and it is all standing up on end and all greasy, I'm very spiritual. It's important it's pure inside. And if I'm very rude, it doesn't matter. You see rudeness is only external. In fact I'm very kind inside. Now this is the kind of thing we must not fool around with when expounding the Lord's word.
It says pure in heart does not mean the outside doesn't really matter and how you behave doesn't matter because it's really in the heart. No, no, no. Pure in heart in scripture means that it has a very definite and practical application. It means that you do wash your face even though you're pure in heart. That not only your heart is clean, your face also is clean. That's what the scripture means. It's so practical. It comes all to your heart. That's why your hands are clean too. You saw that? In Psalm 24. Clean hands. Okay, I do know that that means not committing sin. But it also means that you can wash your hands. I mean quite literally. It is a witness for Christ that Christians are careful even in the way they dress. Christianity is as practical as that.
I am concerned about the appearance of every Christian worker because some Christian workers really can improve on their appearance. And whether you brush your shoes or not matters also. It matters too. Let your shoes also be clean when your heart is clean. And I have said in other things too, the practical aspect of every life. To go to a Christian home, one hopes to see that that Christian home is also clean. And not to say, "Well spiritually I'm, you know, purity is inside the heart, so if my house looks like a garbage bin that has been overturned, well it doesn't matter too much because it's all in the heart." You see. I stress this point because so many Christians think that spiritual is inward so outward doesn't matter. And so we can go on from there to say that behavior also doesn't matter. And no wonder that there are some Christians and some pastors who are unbelievably rude. But if you challenge them on the rudeness of their behavior they say, "Well it's the purity of heart." They can't see. Well I would like to see the purity of heart in scripture seen in the way you behave, in the way you manifest yourself, in the way you conduct yourself.
So it says let your speech be true. And the Lord Jesus is going on to that in the Sermon on the Mount. Let your yes be yes. Absolutely true. Oh yes, the scripture is so practical. But not only in this passage, the scripture speaks of this in many ways. That time and again we find that the cleanliness of heart finds expression in obedience to God. It is seen in the practical obedience of everyday living. It is as concrete and real as that.
There is this term "perfect heart" in the Old Testament, used many times. Perfection of heart. It is used for example in 1 Kings chapter 8 and verse 61. Or 2 Kings chapter 20 and verse 3. And many, many times in the scriptures. And there you find when you look at it that it refers to a heart which is holy and totally committed to God. But because it is totally committed to God, it expresses itself in practical obedience. And so for example in 1 Kings chapter 8 verse 61 you read there that that wholehearted, perfect-hearted obedience. The word perfect means whole. A complete heart without any division. Being pure in heart means you love God with your whole heart, not with some part of it. And that is very important to understand. Very important.
In 2 Chronicles 25 and verse 2 it is said of the king Amaziah that he did what was right in God's eyes, yet without a perfect heart. Very interesting. You can do what is right in God's eyes and yet your heart is imperfect. Now will a person like that see God? Not if we follow the Lord's teaching very carefully. He says the pure in heart shall see God. The perfect in heart. Pure means perfect. It means no blemish, no imperfections in it. Means perfectly clean, no spots or soil. And that is why only a heart that is whole, totally committed to God, shall see God.
But Amaziah, it is said that he did what was right. Strange. He did what was right. Outwardly he did everything right. But inwardly his heart was not perfect with God. Not perfect. Now this is very important. We must keep therefore the balance. It must be perfect inside but find expression also on the outside. But it cannot only be on the outside. It must be perfect on the inside. Totally committed to God on the inside. Whole. Perfect. Means total. That's what it means. Total heart for God. That is how you become single in your eye, in your vision of God.
Finally it also means to be circumcised in heart. Romans chapter 2 verse 29 speaks of the circumcision of the heart. So does Colossians chapter 2 verse 11. Circumcised of heart. What does circumcised of heart mean? It means removing of the flesh from the heart. What does removing of the flesh from the heart mean? It means pure in spiritual motive. What does pure in spiritual motive mean? It means very simply to be utterly obedient to God. Unreserved obedience to God. And obedience that is motivated by love for God.
And so with that we must close. I trust now we understand then how we become pure in heart. We understand what is the heart. We understand what purity of heart is. Purity of heart is the doing of God's will. And doing His will wholly and completely without reserve. Great to God that leaning by His grace, to be transformed by His power, and depending on His grace to do His will, you and I shall see God on that day face to face. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.