Eight blessings (6): The blessing of the pure in heart

Eight blessings (6): The blessing of the pure in heart

 

 

[Matthew 5:8]

 

 

Do you have a “ba.bo”(바.보.) among the people you love?  How would you feel if someone who loved you came to you and said, 'You're ba.bo.'?  Do you feel bad for yourself and your pride hurt?  Here, “ba.bo” does not refer to the ‘stupid and foolish person’ we usually think of.  But it means ‘the more we look, the more we want to see’.  A long time ago, when I heard the meaning of this slang term ‘ba.bo.’, I thought, ‘I want to be a ba.bo.’  How good is it that the more you look, the more you want to be seen?  It is a blessing to be able to see and live with the people we want to see while we live on this earth.  How many people live in this world without seeing the ones they love?  How much would you miss, especially if your loved one has already passed away and fell asleep?  Especially when we are having a difficult time, it seems that we think more of the deceased we love more and more.  Are you sure that you will go to heaven and meet your loved one again?

 

We have already begun to learn what the Lord requires of us as disciples of Jesus Christ by meditating on Matthew 5:7.  The first requirement is ‘have mercy’ (Mt. 5:7).  We learned that the word to be merciful is to suffer with the afflicted, but specifically to help the poor, and also to have compassion on and forgive those who have wronged us.  Then we learned that the fifth blessing the Lord gives us is that we will receive mercy.  When we meditate on the word we have learned in connection with today's text, Matthew 5:8, the heart that the Lord requires of us is a heart of compassion.  And the heart of compassion is a heart to give to those who are suffering because of poverty, and also a heart of forgiveness that forgives those who have sinned.

 

Today, we are going to learn the second request of what the Lord requires of us, focusing on today's text, Matthew 5:8.  Look at Matthew 5:8 – “"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  The second requirement is to ‘purify your heart.’  Personally, when I think of this second request of the Lord, it reminds me of the title of the first book I wrote in 2007, ‘Those who are pure in heart.’  The biggest reason I decided to title the book at that time was because of God's grace that I received while meditating on Psalms 73.  That grace is the lesson that we should carefully guard our heart, the source of life, from all the sinful things that deceive, defile, and pollute our hearts in this sinful world.  Especially in Psalms 73, the psalmist Asaph confessed that God does good to the pure in heart among Israel (v. 1).  I was taught to be on the lookout for these three factors that cause me to stumble from keeping my purity of heart.  These three factors are (1) that we can stumble like Asaph in jealousy because we see the wicked prosper (v. 3), and (2) that we can suffer and stumble like Asaph because of the pride of the wicked. (v. 6), and (3) that we, like Asaph, can stumble because of those who followed the wicked (vv. 10-11).  When the psalmist Asaph saw the prosperity of the wicked, the pride of the wicked, and how he reacted to those who pursued the wicked, he said, “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence” (v. 13).  In other words, when he saw the wicked, he thought that surely in vain he had kept his heart pure.  And he lamented his miserable life (v. 14).  He was envious and his feet came close to stumbling because he saw the prosperity of the wicked while he who lived righteously to keep his own pure heart was suffering.  Have any of you, like the psalmist Asaph, almost stumbled?  What we Christians also implicitly think about is that there is no one in this world who does not dust off their clothes and thus are living in compromise with the world in the thought of what it is necessary to live so cleanly and honestly.  And while we live in compromise with the world like that, we don't have any sense of shame in our hearts, but there's a bigger part of our heart than that is that everyone seems to think that it’s okay to do that.  Therefore, when we see our Christian brothers and sisters striving to live honest and clean lives among us, we may express praise and respect with our lips, but in our hearts we may see them as ignorant and foolish people who do not know how to live in this world.  Among the contents of the letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in the church in Corinth, 2 Corinthians 11:3 comes to mind: “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”  Now, Satan is deceiving us, Christians, with his tricks, and the purpose to lead us astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.  In fact, how far away are our hearts are from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ now?  How many people around you think, ‘Oh, that person is a true Christian, and that person loves the Lord with a very pure heart’?  I think that is the evidence that we are now deceived and have lost the sincerity and purity of their hearts.  Now, our hearts are mixed with truth and lies, and are polluted with the world's sinful things.  Therefore, we must listen with longing to the message that Jesus gives us in Matthew 5:8, ‘Purify your heart.’

 

So, who are “the pure in heart” Jesus spoke of in Matthew 5:8?  Who are the pure in heart?  Here, the original Greek word meaning for “the pure in heart” means a person who is morally and spiritually free from transgression, so a person who is good in God's sight and without sin (Friberg).  In other words, “the pure in heart” Jesus spoke of refers to those who have been cleansed or purified spiritually from the responsibility of sin and the pollution of sin (Zodhiates).  To understand what it means to be spiritually cleansed or purified here, we need to consider the words of Jesus washing the disciples' feet in John 13.  This is because the Greek word for “the pure in heart” that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5:8 also appears in John 13:10.  Look at John 13:10 – “Jesus said to him, ‘He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.’”  Here, Jesus said to his disciples, “He who has bathed” and it refers to washing their entire body.  What that means for us is that all our sins are washed away by the shed blood of Jesus on the cross.  So Jesus said, “He who has bathed  …  is completely clean ….” (v. 10).  Because Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, shed his precious blood on the cross, God has already washed away all our sins and made us clean.  That is why we are able to praise God by believing in the hymn “Have You Been to Jesus”: (v. 1) Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing pow'r, Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb, Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour, Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb, (Refrain) Are you washed in the blood, In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb, Are your garments spot-less Are they white as snow, Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb, (v. 4) Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin.  Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb, There's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,  Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb.  We have already been washed clean from all our sins by the blood that Jesus shed on the cross.  We who believe in Jesus are free from sin in the sight of God and are without sin.  We are pure in the sight of God.  But why is it that in today's text, Matthew 5:8, Jesus is telling us also to purify our hearts?  The reason is because even though we have already been forgiven of our sins and justified by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we will continue to commit sins in this world until we die and enter the glorious kingdom of heaven.  That means that, through the death of Jesus on the cross, our original sins, past sins, present sins, and all sins that we will commit until death are forgiven, and through His resurrection, we are justified, we must lead a life of faith that pursues purity of heart as Jesus said because we are sill qualitatively living in this body that is capable of doing unrighteousness and committing sins.  As if in God's court, we were forgiven of our sins through the death of Jesus on the cross, and we were justified by wearing the righteous cloth of Jesus through the resurrection of Jesus.  But we still have the old man's nature to do what we don't want to do, and not doing the things that we want to do.  To make this easier to understand, I thought about the word “imputation”.  When we think about “imputation”, we believe that God’s righteousness is imputed to us through Jesus’ death and resurrection.  But we do not seem to think well that our sins are imputed to Jesus.  When we think of the fact that our sins were imputed to Jesus, the perfect God and man, who was righteous, without any sin, and died on the cross to pay for all our sins, does that mean that Jesus has sins because our sins were imputed to Jesus?  Absolutely not, isn’t it?  In the same way, because God's righteousness is imputed to us, we are justified, but are we perfectly righteous?  It isn’t, right?  Aren’t we still sinning?  So Jesus is telling us to live a life of righteousness.  And the second righteousness we must practice is to live a life that pursues purity of heart.

 

Then, what is life in pursuit of purity of heart?  How can we pursue purity of heart?  I think of 3 things: (1) As we have already meditated on in Matthew 5:4, we must become mourners.  In other words, if we seek purity of heart, we should grieve and suffer for our sins against God.  And we must be contrite for our own sins with a broken heart.  In a word, we must repent.  We must confess and repent of our sins daily and moment by moment.  This is the basic and fundamental to a life that pursues purity of heart.  (2) In order for us to pursue purity of heart, we must have the Word of God in our hearts.  Look at Psalms 119:11 – “Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You.”  Like the psalmist, we must treasure the word of the Lord in our hearts so that we may not sin against Him.  How, then, can we treasure the word of the Lord in our hearts here?  Look at Psalms 119:9 – “How can a young man keep his way pure?  By keeping it according to Your word.”  In order to have the word of the Lord in our hearts, we must live by the word of the Lord.  In other words, when we live by keeping the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord becomes ours (v. 56).  The Apostle Peter says that we purify our souls by obeying the truth (1 Pet. 1:22). In doing so, we should seek purity of heart.  (3) In order for us to pursue purity of heart, we must be poor in spirit (Mt. 5:3).  Although we feel spiritual need, we must humbly acknowledge the fact that we cannot pursue purity of heart on our own and ask God for help, knowing that no one can help but God.  So the psalmist David prayed to God.  Among the prayers, Psalms 51:10 reveals the content of this prayer: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”  It reminds me of the gospel song “Create in Me a Clean Heart”: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a right spirit within me, Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a right spirit within me, Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord, And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me, Restore unto me, the joy of Thy salvation, And renew a right spirit within me.”  What kind of blessing does God give to those who pursue such purity of heart?  That blessing is that we will see God in the future.  Look at Matthew 5:8 again: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  The Bible 1 John 3:6 says, “…   no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.”  Also, the Bible 3 John 1:11 says, “…  he one who does evil has not seen God.”  What do you mean?  How can one who commits evil and commits a sin see a holy God?  However, those who were sinners like us and who were enemies of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross received the forgiveness of all sins and were justified, so that we could see God in the future.  The Bible says that we will see Him face to face (1 Cor. 13:12).  Can you imagine that the day He returns to this world we will see Him face to face?  Today, the Lord promises to give this blessing to the pure in heart (Mt. 5:8).  Wouldn't you like to receive this blessing and enjoy this blessing?

 

As I was sleeping in the church shepherd's room at dawn last Thursday, I woke up suddenly around 4 am.  I woke up from a very vivid dream, because I saw the late Pastor Andrew Kim in my dream.  What I still remember is that when Pastor Kim was in the hospital, my father came and went, and then my uncle Pastor Andrew quoted a verse from the Bible and said to me.  That Bible verse was Genesis 33:10b – “…  for I see your face as one sees the face of God, ….”  At that time, Pastor Andrew said this word to me after meeting he met his oldest brother.  However, last Thursday at dawn, when I saw the face of the late Pastor Andrew Kim in my dream, it seemed to me that I had seen the face of God.  His bright, bright and kind smile is still unforgettable.  Pastor Andrew Kim approached me with that smile, and hugged me in my dream.  Then I cried in my dream, but when I woke up, there were tears in my eyes.  This is what the Bible Psalms 17:15 says: “As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake.”  We will see the face of the Lord in righteousness.  Through the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross, all our sins are forgiven and our hearts are pure, we will see the Lord whom we miss.  We will go up to heaven and see the face of the Lord in the house the Lord.  At that time, we will gather together with the saints who have fallen asleep first and give praise to the Lord in glory, hallelujah, with joy.  Until the day we see the face of the Lord in that bright heavenly house, I hope and pray that we will all strive to live with compassion for the souls, which is what the Lord has commanded us to do, and pursue purity of heart.