Blessed Are the Pure in Heart
The beatitudes are attitudes attuned to walking in fellowship with God. You can choose a blessed attitude by focusing on the things of the kingdom of God. Blessed attitudes are diametrically opposed to the World’s attitudes. The nature of our fallen flesh that we inherited from Adam revels in the attitudes of this world. However, What the world considers blessings are the opposite of what Jesus defines as God’s blessings. Therefore Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit. The world doesn’t consider poverty a blessing. However until we empty ourselves of our own prideful spirits, God cannot fill us with his holy spirt. Without the spirit of God in Christ, we cannot receive or understand the things of the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The comfort is in the gift of God’s Holy Spirit… the gift of the new birth we received when we were saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Jesus said, I am the bread of life and I am the fountain of living waters. For Jesus Christ who was without sin became the perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of God in him. In him we’re sanctified…set apart, fit for the purpose for which God designed us with a heart of Christ in us the hope of glory.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. The meek are eager to seek God’s instruction and humble to receive the word of God with a heart of joy and rejoicing. With a heart of meekness, a Roman centurion approached Jesus and said, my little daughter is sick and near unto death. Jesus said, I’ll come heal her. The centurion said, I am a man of authority. I command men and they obey my words. You are a man of authority. Just say the word and she will be healed. Jesus marveled at the centurion’s believing. He said, I have not see such faith, no not in Israel. Meekness in believing is the condition to receive the promises of God.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Loving kindness and tender mercy are the very nature of God himself. His steadfast love endureth forever.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. A heart purified by God’s righteous payment of his son’s sinless life on our behalf is blessed by the things of the spirit of God. We even glory in tribulation because God purifies our hearts through trial and testing. Chuck Smith said, God will deliver us through the fire, in the fire, or by the fire. Proverbs says the crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold, but God tries and purifies the heart.
The Pharisees in the time of Jesus thought that they were justified by keeping their interpretation of the Old Testament law. They thought they alone were righteous and that everyone else was condemned because they failed to keep their Pharisaical laws. Jesus reproved them… they were proud, arrogant, judgmental and unrepentant. In Mark 7:5-7 he said to the leaders of the Pharisees, “Well hath Esaias (Isaiah) prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
It’s important to take a “check-up from the neck up”…. how’s your walk with God? We’re all products of our environment… of our own intellect and of our secular educations. We’re most like the people with whom we choose to associate, including our earthly families. The Pharisees were proud of their pedigree and traditions of their families. However, Jesus was not impressed by their worldly credentials. He said, Blessed are the meek… those who are humble and teachable… those who forsake worldly pride to approach their Heavenly Father with a heart of humility and love.
What does it mean to be pure in heart? A pure heart has been purified by God according to his Word…. for every word of God is pure like silver tried in the fire seven times. Therefore, try me, mold me, and make me after thy will, while I am willing yielded and still. God will purify our hearts when they are malleable and moldable from the heat of the crucible and the fire of the furnace. Through the refining of trals, he will purity our hearts to reveal His character within us..
Keeping a pure heart will cost us in a world of darkness.. For Believers, it’s not about the cost it’s about the value. What is it that you value most?
Blessed are those who have been washed in the blood of Christ. He is the lamb of God without spot and without blemish. He is our Passover lamb whose innocent blood was sacrificed in our stead so that our guilty blood would not condemn us to death without hope and without God. Because Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins, we who have been born again are clothed with His righteousness, not the filthy rags of our flesh. He is the one who cleanses and purifies our hearts. Though our sins are as scarlet… because of his perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf, we shall be white as snow.
The first and great commandment says, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength. When our hearts are infused with the love of God, our minds focused and fixed on the things of the spirit of God, then God will work with us and within us to will and to do of His good pleasure.
How do we cleanse and purify our hearts from sin that separates our hearts from God’s heart? The answer is in 1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” The purifying and cleansing is in walking with our Lord and in fellowship with believers. Jesus Christ is the light that disinfects us from the contamination of the darkness of this world.
As we walk in His light, we are purified through the trials of life… Trials and tribulations reveal God’s character in us. Paul said, I buffet my body to keep it under subjection… I press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Thank God that because he has given us the spirit of Christ in us, we can delight ourselves in the Lord… then when our delight is His delight, he will give us the desires of our heart… to walk in fellowship with the Lord. cleansed and purified in His presence…
… that we may ever live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael
