%e 'Beautifu[

'Beatitudes
ToddW.AUen
We corne today to the sixth beatitude. Each of the
beatitudes follows a definite sequence of thought Our
Lord begins by spea1dng of the blessedness of having a
Personal knowledge of one's own moral nakedness and
poverty. The first beatitude is a foundational blessing
which then leads on to all the others. Having understood
clearly my own moral and spiritual bankruptcy, I go on to
mourn about my condition. I ttuly deplore my wretched
sinfulness andleamestJy long to let God know how very
sorry I am for my shameful condition and conduct.But
Godcomforts me with the stupendous good news that he
has done something aboutmy sin which makes itpossible
to be forgiven and be accepted as arighteous person in his
holy eyes. This produces in me a very humble and meek
attitude. I no longer strut and boast about any supposed
or pretended righteousness. I don't have to defend my
ego from anything anymore. I see myself as I really am
and I am abased by what I know about myself.
But now I fmd a hunger and a thirst for righteousness
driving my soul. I know where to fmd that righteousness
now.1tisn'twithinmyselfbutfromoutsidemyselfinmy
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He satisfies my longing
for perfection and holiness. His blood sprinkled on my
sinful self is able to take away my guilt and He can deliver
me from sinful desires and attitudes and lusts.
I have obtained mercy in Him and now I can show a
corresponding mercy to others, something I could not do
before. I can forgive those who have wronged me. I can
be moved to compassion for others distressed and vic-
?nrlzed by sin. Each beatitude follows the preceding one
in logical sequence. My blessedness is now manifold. I
have tosomeextentexperienced theblessingpromisedin
each beatitude already in this life, and the fullness of the
blessing will be when I have passed into the presence of
God in heaven, which brings me to the sixth beatitude.
Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
I Purity a Requisite
1. The human eye is a marvel of God's creative genius.
Nerve cells in the eye perform about 10 billion calcula-
tions per second. During that same second, the eyeballs
have moved around in their sockets about 100 times. This
eye tremor does not blur vision, but actually improves our
ability to see very fme detail, it allows the brain toprocess
light that falls on the eye at different angles. But the eye
is really a kind of radio receiver for the brain. Maybe this
is why we say, "I see" andreally mean "I understand". As
light acts upon the eye it radios a message to the brain
which then interprets the signal received and gives us a
pictureofwhattheeyessee. 1tis all very complicated. But
eyesight undoubtedly has the preeminence among the
five seuses. To see, to know, to comprehend is the
sensory stimulus to the soul. Whiit touch, taste and
feeling are to the body, sight is to the soul. We were
created in the image of God so thatwe can know, we can
see in a spiritual sense more than what animals can see.
There are wonderful things to see in this world. Most of
us enjoy travel because we can see new sights. There are .
places we have heard of that we want to see---the Grand
Canyon, Paris, London, Berlin, New Yorlc, Tokyo, Mt.
Everest, visit the Louve, Smithsonian Institute, the
pyramids of Egypt, and many more places and sights . .
The Counsel of ChalcedoD January 1991 Page l1
We don't have an official list of the seven wonders of the
world today. But the ancient world did. The only
remaining wonder of the ancient world would be the
Pyramids of Egypt. The largest Pyramid, The Great
PyramidofKhufu,orCheops, is a solid mass of limestone
blocks covering 13 acres. It is estimated to contain 2.3
million blocks of stone, each stone averaging 2 112 tons
and some weighing 30 tons. It took reputedly 100,000
laborers 20 years to build.
But gone from the earth are the other six-The Hanging
Gardens ofBabylon, The WaIlsofBabylon, TheColossus
of Rhodes, The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, The
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and The Pharos of
Alexandra All of these were man-made, but God has
many wonders left for us to explore and enjoy, and man
has many new buildings and structures and works of art
to rival the seven wonders of the ancient world.
But the grandest, most sublime experience conceivable is
theoneprornisedin the sixth see God. This
is the whole purpose and grand objective of all religion.
If seeing the creative works of God and the puny efforts
of man to imitate His genius are a thrill to the soul of man,
whatmustitbeJiketohaveanopenvisionoftheGodwho
made all things and who has resident in Himself all
wisdom, majesty, glory and honor and might and do-
minion! Nothing can remotely compare to seeing the
Lord of Hosts, the God of Glory, theKingofallkiilgs, the
FirstandtheLast! Truly, we are on holy ground when we
consider the sixth beatitude.
2. Our text tells us that what is requisite to seeing God is
a pure heart. And this purity is not partial but perfect.
Ivory soap claims tobe99 + 44/100% pure. Butthatisnot
100% pure. To see God One must have an immaculate,
a perfect purity. .
What exactly does it mean to have a pure heart. Ibelieve
wecanreduce this down to two basic divisions of thought.
The first would be "Without Hypocrisy".
We would use the word "sincerity" to describe the person
free from hypocrisy. Jesus said that the lamp of the body .
is the eye and that if your eye is clear, single, healthy,
good, that your whole bodywill befullofJight, butifyour
eye is bad, your whole body wiUbe full of darkness. Then
he said something very strange. He said, "If therefore the
light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Can light be darkness? Apparently it can. I can program
my soul with error, with faulty infonnation about God
and reality. When this happens I am in darkness even
though r Seem to have light. The light is flawed so that my
The Counsel of Cba\cedon January 1991 Page 12
soul remains in darkness. The soul must be totally free
from hypocrisy in order for there to be clear visiort, tr\le
data about spiritual things.
David wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in
Psalm 86: Teach me thy way, 0 Lord; I will walk in thy
truth; unite my Mart to fear thy name. The heart can be
divided. As Paul expresses it in Romans 7, he had a flesh
side to him that worked against his spiritual side. He
wanted to walk in the law of God. He agreed that the law
was right and good, but his flesh side caused him to
practice evil contrary to the law. He was divided within
himself. Like David of old he had to tum to God and ask
that Christ deliver him from that doublemindedness. He
saw that there was hypocrisy within him and he deplored
it but found that the purity and unity of heart that he
wanted could not arise from himself.
The second thing 1 would say about purity is thatitmeans
"without defilement". The heart must be cleansed in
order to be pure.
IT How May A Person Have Purity?
1. In this matter of purity there are two great ideas. The
first is what we might call the monastic idea The thing
one must do under this idea is withdraw from the world,
segregate ourselves and devote yourself entirely and
continuously and perpetually to purify oneself. Martin
Luther tried that. Caught in a violent thunder storm when
he was 21 years old he was shaken to the depths of his
soul. He made a vow that if God would deliver him from
this danger that he would abandon the world, and devote
himself entirely to God. He had already been thinking
about it Now the fon:eand fury of the bolts of lightning
fa11ing all about him brought him face to face with death
andhis unpreparedness tomeetGod. Helongedforapure
heart and a holiness of life. So he entered a monastery to
seek the holy life.
He spent three years at the Convent of Hermits of St
Augustine. He says of those days, "I tortured myself
almost to death in order to procure peace with Godformy
troubled heart and agitated conscience, but surrounded
with thick darkness, I found peace nowhere." He went
every day to confession. Noone surpassedhimin prayer,
fasting, night watches, self-mortification, and still he was
tortured by the sin he saw within himself. ''Look,'' he said
to himself, "You are still envious, impatient, passionate!
It profits thee nothing, 0 wretched man, to have entered
this sacred order". All such man-centered attempts at
purity are unscriptural and doomed to failure.
The Divine Way
2. God alone can give a clean heart, as He says in His
Word. God had poured out wrath upon Israel because
they had shed blood and defiled the nations, and they were
dispersed throughout the lands. According to their ways
God judged them. And wherevertheywenttheyprofaned
His Holy Name because people said of them, THESE
ARE THE PEOPLE OF THE LORD; YEf THEY
HA VB COME OUT OF HIS LAND."
Then Godsays thathehadconcemfor His holy Name and
He would vindicate the holiness of His greatNAME, and
the nations would know that He was the Lord when He
proved Himself among the people of God in their sight.
Then God tells how he will do that He says he would
gather together His people and sprinkle clean water on
them so that they would be clean .. He would by that act
cleanse them from their filthiness and from their idols.
"Moreover I will give you anew beart and putanew spirit
within you; and I will remove the heartof stone from your
flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My
Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and
you will be careful to observe my ordinances" (Ezekiel
36:24-27).
To have a pure heart you have to have a new heart, there
must be a sprinkling of the water for cleansing, which is
the blood sprinkling spoken of in Hebrews 10, that
cleanses the body and the conscience. The Holy Spirit
takes up residence in the new heart and this commences
a protracted process of sanctification, so that by His
power we are able to mortify the flesh and live a life
pleasing to God.
3. The Christian man has begun to see God already in the
face of Jesus Christ Jesus said to the people of his day,
''The Father who sent me, He has borne witness of Me,
Y ouhaveneither heardHis voiceatany time, nor seen His
form" (John 5:37). This tells us that God has a form, a
shape. Again he said, "not that any man has seen the
Father, except the one who is from God, He has seen the
Father" ... Remember how Philip asked Jesus to show
them the Father and it would be enough and Jesus
answered him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you
have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me
has seen the Father; How do you say, 'Show us the
Father? Do you not believe thatIamin the Father, and the
Father in Me? (John 14:8-11). Jesus has come to save us
from our sins. When you turn to Jesus Christ you turn to
God, and turning to him you begin to see his perfections,
his glory, his love, his mercy, his power. Christian people
can see God in a sense that nobody else can. We can see
God in nature, in history, in Providence, in every wind
that blows, every leaf that falls to the ground. We are able
to see Him who is invisible in the works ofRis hand, the
experiences He leads us through. But beloved, we have
not yet seen Him in the fullness that we shall see Him.
Now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see
Him as He is, and we shall be like Him. We shall be in
heaven where we will have an open vision of Him that
exists eternally by His ownBeing. He is the One and only
great I AM. And we shall see Him face to face. This is
the destiny of the born-again child of God. The sixth
beatitude speaks of this as both a present and future
blessing for the pure in heart
We have the witness of His Spirit within in our new
hearts. Wehavetheeyesofourunderstandingillurninated
to see God in J esus Christ, "For God, who said, Light shall
shine out of darkness, is the One who has shone in our
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Christ" (IT Corinthians 4:6).
By the grace of God you and I can have pure hearts. God
promises to make Himselfknown to you and me in the
person of His Son Jesus Christ When we acknowledge
and confess our sinfulness to Him and call upon Him for '
mercy and His salvation, He says He will not turn any
person away . Haveyouconfessed your sinfulness to God
and turned to Jesus Christforthe mercy He hasprornised?
Corne to Him today. Q
GRACE

ChUl'lcs Haddon Spurgeon
Ten sermons extolling the majesty and
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