The State of the Heart

Series: Preacher: Date: August 20, 2006 Scripture Reference: Matthew 5:8

If you were to ask me to name my favorite television show at the moment, I think I would have to say that, since Everybody Loves Raymond is no longer on the air, it would be the USA network’s Monk. I really get a kick out of that show every time I get a chance to tune in! It always provides me with a much-needed dose of stress-reducing laughter. Do we have any other Monk fans present this morning?

If you’re not familiar with the show, I think the best way for me to describe Monk for you would be to say that in some ways it is similar to the old Columbo series in that it’s a show about sort of a bumbling but absolutely brilliant detective. The main character is Adrian Monk, a former San Francisco cop who developed an obsessive compulsive disorder when his beloved wife was murdered. His OCD was so bad that he had to retire from the force but at the same time it enhanced his detective skills because now Monk notices absolutely everything-I mean everything! In fact, this aspect of his OCD has turned him into a very famous private investigator such that whenever there’s a crime the police can’t solve, they hire Monk to help and he does. He comes down to the crime scene and walks around, moving his hands in odd ways, silently taking it all in from various angles. With this odd way of “scanning” the area, somehow Monk always discovers some crucial piece of evidence that everyone else missed and then his amazing mind goes to work sifting through all the evidence until finally he solves the crime.

The main source of the show’s humor comes from the fact that, like some people who suffer from OCD, Adrian Monk is absolutely obsessed with PURITY. He can’t stand dirt or germs or disorder in any form whatsoever. Everything has to be perfect. Here are some examples the things his OCD leads him to do:

· Monk drinks only one kind of bottled water. He would die of thirst before drinking something else because he swears by the absolute purity of his favorite brand. Other brands may be close but in his OCD opinion his is the only truly PURE water.

· Monk washes, dries, and irons his paper money before he will put it in his wallet.

· Monk wears only one kind of underwear. In fact, before he wears it he has to look at the little piece of paper you find in the package to make sure that it has been inspected by inspector #10, because after a great deal of “research” he knows she never misses an underwear flaw. She only lets “perfect” underwear through. She’s an underwear “purist” in that she allows absolutely no flaws whatsoever. I’ve often wondered if she’s the same underwear inspector in the old TV commercials who used to boast, “They don’t say HANES until I say they say HANES!”

· Another thing about Monk’s obsession with purity is that he makes sure his assistant carries baby wipes at all times so that whenever he touches something, anything, he can instantly clean and sanitize his hand.

I remember in one commercial for the show Monk is at the check out of a grocery store and his cart was full of stuff. But instead of paying for it all, he told the clerk that these are all the items in the store whose expiration dates have passed. He’d gone through the entire store examining the label of each product on each shelf on each aisle, found the ones that were out of date and then brought all this “impure” stuff to the clerk to dispose of. Adrian Monk is that serious about purity.

I bring all this up because, as we will see in the study of our next beatitude, our Holy God is serious about purity as well. In fact, in our text for this morning He goes so far as to congratulate those of us who, similar to Detective Monk, strive for purity in our own lives. Take your Bibles and turn to Matthew 5 and you’ll see what I mean. Now, it shouldn’t be hard for you to find this particular chapter of the Bible because we’ve been looking at it for so long now that, well, your copy should just automatically open to that passage! But even if it doesn’t do that yet, turn to Matthew 5 and once again let’s get a running start by beginning with verse 1. Our text is in verse 8.

1 – Now when [Jesus] saw the crowds, He went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him,

2 – and He began to teach them, saying:

3 – “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 – Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5 – Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

6 – Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

7 – Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

And then our text for this morning:

8 – Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Now, this particular saying of Jesus is kind of mysterious isn’t it? Wouldn’t you agree it’s a bit hard to understand? What exactly is our Lord saying in this sixth beatitude? What is Jesus getting at? To solve this mystery, fellow detectives, I mean disciples, to fully understand this 8th verse, I would say that we need to conduct an investigation of sorts, a very careful investigation in which we seek the answers to three questions and the first is this:

(1) What does the phrase, “pure in heart” mean?

And, in true “Monkian fashion” let’s study this first phrase very closely by breaking it down word for word, beginning with the word “heart.” A thorough investigation of the Bible would show that the word for “heart” appears more than 100 times. I guess Monk would give you the exact number but that’s not important. No, the important thing for us to note is the fact that the vast majority of the times the word “heart” is used in Scripture refers not to the organ that circulates blood throughout our body, but rather to our innermost being. Our text in Matthew 5 is one of those times. So, please understand, when Jesus used this word in His sermon of sermons He was talking about the psychological core of a person. He was talking about the real person.

Let me remind you that these bodies we walk around in aren’t really us. This flesh is not the real person. As most of you know my flesh, my body, turned 52 last week and as amazing as it is, it’s beginning to wear out. In a few more decades I’ll lay this “earth suit” aside. My children will bury it in a hole somewhere. But that’s okay because these bones and muscles and veins and arteries aren’t the real me. The real me is inside. The core of my being, the real of Mark Adams, is eternal. I doesn’t wear out. And this real me is what Jesus was referring to when He used the word, “heart.” He was referring to the core of a person, the real person.

The people sitting on that mountainside would have understood this because in their culture, the heart was considered the center of the personality, the source of every activity. Proverbs 23:7 reflects this thinking when it says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is!”

In His book, The Applause of Heaven, Max Lucado writes,

“To Jesus’ listeners, the heart was the totality of the inner person-the control tower-the cockpit. The heart was thought of as the seat of the character-the origin of the desires, affections, perceptions, thoughts, reasoning, imagination, conscience, intentions, purpose, will, and faith. To the Hebrew mind, the heart is a freeway cloverleaf where all emotions and prejudices and wisdom converge. It is a switch house that receives freight cars loaded with moods, ideas emotions, and convictions and puts them on the right track.”

To continue Lucado’s analogy, I would say that the Bible repeatedly tells us that most of the time our “inner switch houses” put our moods and ideas and emotions and convictions on the wrong “track.” Since we are fallen creatures, most of the time our heart’s first response is to sin. This is because, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Jesus’ statement later in Matthew’s gospel sums it up perfectly: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean.” (Matthew 15:19) So that’s what Jesus was talking about when He referred to the HEART. All you detective disciples understand?

Good! Let’s move on in our investigation by taking a close look at the word, “pure.” Why does Jesus say that a person is blessed if “pure” describes their heart, their control center? In Greek this word is “katharos” and my research this week showed me that it is a word that is used 28 times in the New Testament. I also discovered that “Katharos” has two basic meanings. It could be used to describe something that was dirty but had been made clean, like a soiled cloak that had been washed such that the stain was removed. Or it could be used to describe something that was clean or pure in the sense that it was not mixed with something else.

For example, In Jesus’ day you would hear Greek farmers at the market using “katharos” to talk about wheat that had been picked and winnowed or sifted and cleansed of all chaff. All you had left was pure wheat. You might hear Greek generals using “katharos” to describe an army that had been purged or cleansed of all its cowardly or inefficient soldiers so that it had become a force that was made up solely-purely, of first-class fighting men.

I think Jesus was combining these meanings here in verse 8 by saying people are blessed if first they know that their hearts are dirty, that they can’t clean them on their own, that since we all have this “bent” toward sin, since our hearts are deceitful above all things, then even our best efforts at goodness leave us spiritually bankrupt before our holy God. Genuinely blessed people know this and have mourned about it and then in meekness they hunger for the true righteousness they know that only God can give them, such that their single, pure, unadulterated desire is to know God and please Him. All other desires have been purged from their system so that they genuinely “seek first the Kingdom of God…and His righteousness.” (Matthew 6:33)

Another way to put it would be to say people are genuinely blessed, they are to be congratulated, if they sincerely love God and sincerely seek to obey Him in life. This mind set is manifested in pure lives. It is seen in people who are sincere in that their walk matches their talk; their desires match their actions; their insides match their outsides; their Monday’s match their Sundays. Let me ask: would you say that you are blessed in this sense?

Now fellow detectives, at this point in our investigation it will help us to understand the force of these words if we understand the culture in which they were spoken. The evidence shows that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were experts at outward purity. They had all sorts of rules on what to eat, what to wear, how far you could travel on the Sabbath, and so on. This rule-making and rule-keeping was what they lived for. But tragically, sinfully, self-righteously, they spent all their time trying to make the outside look good, to the point of blatantly ignoring the inside. They acted like God came first on the outside but on the inside they could care less. They didn’t have pure hearts because they were double-minded. They had mixed motives. Jesus reserved some of His harshest words for these religious leaders. He was the hardest on these people who were experts in masking their dirty hearts with their external obedience to man-made laws. Do you remember His words in Matthew 23:25-28?

Jesus said, “Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees-you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence.

Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish and then the outside will be clean. Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees-you hypocrites!

You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything is unclean.

In the same way on the outside you appear to people as righteous…but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

Jesus saw through their pretense and looked right in their hearts as He quoted Isaiah and said, “These people honor Me with their lips but their hearts are far from Me!” (Matthew 15:8)

To be honest, we’d have to say that our culture is very similar to theirs. Unfortunately, things haven’t changed much in 2000 years. These Pharisees remind me of many people in our day and age in that so many of us tend to focus on the outside rather than the inside. So often our hearts aren’t pure because the lives we live out there don’t match up with the statements we make in here. Our behavior doesn’t match our belief.

This week I read about a cartoon that showed a pastor and his wife deep in conversation. The wife says, “Today let’s do something different. Why don’t you be charming at home and grouchy at church?” Of course this happened at another church! But you know what I mean because we’re all like that. So often our day to day lives indicate that our devotion to God is not pure in that it’s not single-minded. Our vows and commitments to do God’s will are weakened by our own selfish pursuits and because of this, time and time again our lives just don’t match the faith we profess.

Bruce Hamsher has written a poem that illustrates this sad truth.

“If Jesus came to your home today to spend a day or two.

If He came unexpectedly, I wonder what you’d do?

I know you’d give your nicest room to such an honored Guest,

And all the food you’d serve to Him would be the very best.

And you’d keep assuring Him you’re glad to have Him there,

That serving Him in your own home is joy beyond compare.

But when you saw Him standing there, could you go to the door,

with arms outstretched to welcome Him? Would your heart begin to soar?

Or would you have to change some things before you let Him in,

Or hide some sinful things and place the Bible where they’d been?

Would family conversation be continued at its current pace?

I wonder, what would have to change if you saw Him face to face?

Would you be glad to introduce Him to your closest friends,

Or would you wish they’d stay away until His visit ends?

Would it cause embarrassment, these crazy things you do

If Jesus came to your own house to spend some time with you?”

Does Hamsler’s poem strike a chord? Does it hit close to home? I know it does with me because many days my attitudes and actions aren’t pleasing to God. I’m not alone in this hypocrisy. So many times we miss out on a “makarios” caliber of life because our devotion to God isn’t pure, it isn’t single-minded. Anyone feel like hanging their head and saying, “amen?”

But let’s get back to our investigation. I realize that by now you may be getting a little tired of hearing words like that, maybe you’re thinking all this “crime scene investigation” stuff a little too trite for a sermon. If you think that way, then let me just say that there is a very real sense in which we are involved in crime investigation this morning because our study of Matthew 5:8 touches on the central problem of our culture. All of our world’s troubles, all the “crimes” of this world can be traced to once source, one cause: dirty hearts.

To show you what I mean, let me remind you once again of Jesus’ words in Matthew 15:19. He said, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” In other words, all the evil thinking in this world, all the murders, all the adultery, all the sexual sins, all the lies, all the slander, all the robberies and burglaries, all the problems of our culture can be traced to the heart.

Billy Graham once referred to this and said, “We’re suffering from only one disease in the world. Our basic problem is not a race problem. Our basic problem is not a poverty problem. Our basic problem is not a war problem. Our basic problem is a heart problem.”

He’s right! And one thing I want to make sure you understand this morning is that the state of your heart is the most important thing in your life. Everything is built on “heart health.” So the state of your heart, the state of your inner being, is more important than the state of your marriage, the state of your business, the state of our country, the state of our economy, or the state of anything else. This is why Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart because it affects everything you do.”

In fact, let’s stop for a quick heart check. Let’s evaluate the state of our hearts this morning.

Max Lucado suggests some great heart examination questions:

· When someone barks at you, do you bark back or bite your tongue?

· When your schedule is too tight or your to-do list too long, do you lose your cool or keep it?

· When you are offered a morsel of gossip marinated in slander do you turn it down or pass it on?

· When you make a mistake in life do you accept fault or to you blame others?

· Do you see the bag lady on the street as a burden on society or an opportunity for God to work through you?

· When a cashier gives you back too much change do you keep it or do you gently point out his error and give him the money back.

· When your wife asks for some quality time with you, do you arrange your work schedule to meet her need or do you criticize her for not understanding the demands of your career?

Your response to each of these scenarios depends on the state of your heart. And, let me ask, how did you do? How diseased is your heart? Please don’t let this go in one ear and out the other. Please hear me! The state of your heart is so very important! It dictates whether we harbor a grudge or give grace, seek self-pity or seek Christ, drink human misery or taste God’s mercy.

All this has to do with your heart because the heart is the center of the spiritual life and this is why if we are to have a blessed life, a “makarios” life, we have to treat the heart.

Let me put it this way: if the fruit of the tree is bad you don’t try to fix the fruit, you treat the roots. And if a person’s actions are evil it’s not enough to change their habits. You have to go deeper. As Lucado puts it, “You have to go to the heart of the problem, which is the problem of the heart!”

We’ll deal more with solving our individual heart problems in a moment but first let’s seek an answer to a second investigative question-namely:

(2) What is Jesus talking about when He says the pure in heart will “SEE GOD?”

Basically our Lord was referring to an inner desire that all people have, a longing to see, to know, our Creator. The fact is all men and women yearn to get back what the first man and woman lost due to their sin: a personal, intimate relationship with God. This yearning to see God is the “God-shaped vacuum” that Paschal said is in each of us. If you are here today and are not a Christian, well, that’s what’s missing in our life. This is the reason nothing really satisfies you in life. The emptiness and loneliness you feel so often is symptomatic of this longing you have to see God. You yearn for the blessedness of a daily intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father, one in which He loves you and guides you and helps you.

As Psalm 24:3-4 says, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in His holy place? [Who will see God?] He who has clean hands and a pure heart…”

So in verse 8 Jesus was promising that when our pure, unadulterated, absolutely sincere desire is to know God, we will know Him. It is just as God says in Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek Me and you will find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.”

As I said, all people yearn for this. As St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” And you know, the good news is that God wants to satisfy this desire that we have. He wants us to see Him, to Know Him. The feeling is mutual. This is His desire as well. 2 Chronicles 16:9 says, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.” In Revelation 3:20 Jesus says, “Behold I stand at the door [of your life-of your heart] and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in.” You could say that the bottom line is that God sees our hearts and when our hearts are pure we see Him, and that brings us to our final investigative question and it is this:

(3) How can we become pure in heart?

How can we get our hearts cleansed so that we can see God, know God? How can our hearts, hearts that are restless for God, be at peace?

In his ignorance, man has tried various ways, various philosophical approaches to solve this problem.

Some have tried LEGALISM.

They’ve come up with long lists of rules that must be followed in order to gain favor with God. Think of this as “heart self-purification.” We’ve already talked about a new testament example of this philosophy: the Pharisees with all their religious rules and regulations. But this treatment didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now because as I inferred earlier, it only deals with the outside. Legalism, no matter how long a list of rules it generates, no matter how well you do at keeping the rules, doesn’t deal with the heart of the matter.

Others have tried MODERNISM to clean their hearts.

This is the opposite end of the spectrum because it involves ignoring Scriptural standards and beliefs and rules. The Sadducees of Jesus’ day were like this in that they rejected key doctrinal truths and instead they just picked and chose what they wanted to believe. This old idea is back because this “religious buffet” way of thinking is very popular today. It doesn’t work either because it basically says there is no problem: modernism says our hearts are fine, that we, not God, determine whether or not we have a heart problem.

A third man-made treatment for heart problems is ACTIVISM.

People who embrace this way of thinking believe that the only way to bring purity into our world is through political change. And while we need Christian statesmen, and while believers certainly need to participate in the democratic process by voting, only a change of heart will bring about a change in our society. Because, as I said, to solve our world’s problems we have to deal with the root not the fruit.

Another attempt to deal with heart problems is MONASTICISM.

Some individuals believe that they must totally disengage from our sin-filled society in order to be pure. We Baptists may not have monasteries and nunneries but we keep ourselves so busy at church we might as well. And the problem with this tactic is that sin lurks in the heart, not just in the world. I could go on because there is a long list of man-made treatments for this problem. In fact, Max Lucado has come up with a very humorous illustration of some of the other man-made attempts at heart purity, in a very creative story about a freezer full of food that had been left unplugged for several months with the inevitable ROTTEN results. He writes:

“What is the best way to clean out my freezer’s rotten interior? I knew exactly what to do. I got a rag and a bucket of soapy water and began cleaning the outside of the appliance. I was so sure the odor would disappear with a good shine, so I polished and buffed and wiped. When I was through, the freezer could have passed a Marine boot-camp inspection. It was sparkling. But when I opened the door, that freezer was revolting.

No problem, I thought. I knew what to do. This freezer needs some friends. I’d stink too, if I had the social life of a machine in a utility room. So I threw a party. I invited all the appliances from the neighborhood kitchens. It was hard work, but we filled our apartment with refrigerators, stoves, microwaves, and washing machines. It was a great party. A couple of toasters recognized each other from the appliance store. Everyone played pin the plug on the socket and had a few laughs about limited warranties. The blenders were the hit though; they really mixed well. I was sure the social interaction would cure the inside of my freezer, but I was wrong. I opened it up and the stink was even worse! Now what? I had another idea.

If a polish job wouldn’t do it and a social life didn’t help, I’d give the freezer some status! I bought a Mercedes sticker and stuck it on the door. I installed a cellular phone on the side. I hung a Rolex on the other side. That freezer was classy. It was stylish. It was cool. I splashed it with expensive cologne and gave it a credit card for clout. Then I backed away and admired the high-class freezer. You just might make the cover of Popular Mechanics’ I told it. It blushed. Then I opened the door, expecting to see a clean inside, but what I saw was putrid-a stinky and repulsive interior.

I could think of only one other option. My freezer needed some high-voltage pleasure. I immediately bought it some copies of Play-Fridge Magazine-the publication that displays freezers with their doors open. I rented some films about foxy appliances. My favorite was the The Big Chill. I even tried to get my freezer a date with the Westinghouse next door, but she gave him the cold shoulder. But after a few day s of supercharged, after-hours entertainment, I opened the door. And I nearly got sick.”

Have you tried any of these cover-up treatments: possessions, popularity, pleasure, or status? Did it help? Did it satisfy your inner longing? Did it make you feel clean inside? What about those of you who have tried the philosophies of legalism or activism or monasticism or any other “ism?” Did that work? All heads should be shaking left to right because all man’s attempts at dealing with heart problems fail for two reasons.

First they tend to focus on the outside and as we’ve already said this morning, our problem is on the inside. And the other reason our attempts don’t work is because since our sin taints every part of us, it is impossible for us to clean our hearts on our own. As Proverbs 20:9 puts it, “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin?'” No one! Man’s attempts at righteousness are like doing heart surgery with dirty surgical instruments. It only spreads infection! Man’s attempts are like finding someone who’s just spent the day inside a dirty chimney and asking them to clean a white sheet with his bare hands. All of man’s attempts fail miserably! They leave our hearts dirtier than before! No, only the power of our holy, pure God can cleanse our impure hearts. The only way to be pure at heart is to do it His way: through faith in Jesus Christ.

This is why He came. On the cross of Calvary, God in the flesh literally opened up His heart so that His blood could pour out and cleanse us from iniquity. Jesus’ promised coming is what God was talking about through His prophet Ezekial when he said,“…You will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:25-27) This heart cleansing treatment is what God was referring to through Jeremiah when He said, “I will give them a heart TO KNOW ME, that I am the Lord.” (Jeremiah 24:7)

Our hearts are made pure when we admit our sin to God and believe in faith that Jesus died for us, claiming the forgiveness and cleansing that is only possible through His blood. As Acts 15:9 says, our hearts are “purified by faith.” This is the only way to get a pure heart: by becoming a Christian.

Once we make this all important decision, we still need God’s power. We need His help because we still live in an impure world and we still have a bent for sin. So daily we need to pray as King David did, confessing our sin and saying, “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me.” (Psalm 51:10) We need God to give us regular heart checkups: times when we pray, “Search me and know my heart. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139) We need to read His Word and live by it’s teaching. Remember Psalm 119:9? It says, “How can a young man keep his way… his heart…pure? By living according to Your word. I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.”

Time with God in prayer and time with God in His Word is like putting our lives through a refinery: it cleanses our thoughts and attitudes helping us to stay pure, single-minded. As someone has put it, “Jesus came to reformat our heart drives.” and as Christians we need that reformatting daily as a way of dealing with all the viruses the world throws at us.

LET US PRAY

Father God,

In these closing moments examine us. Show each of us present the treatment that our hearts require in order to be pure.

First-knock on the doors of hearts that aren’t Yours. Draw them to You God.

Help people present who haven’t invited You into their lives to see that they desperately need the forgiveness and cleansing that is only possible through faith in Your Son.

And then convict Christians present of our need to truly put You first….show us the things we need to turn from in order to be wholly devoted to You.

I ask all this in Jesus’ name. AMEN

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