Pure in Heart Day 14
We made it to the last day of our Pure in Heart study! It has been such a blessing to go through these Scripture’s with you, and I hope you have benefited from this study as well. For Day 14, we are going to take a look at Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” While today’s verse is not from the Psalms, I think this is a great way to wrap up our study.
We find today’s verse in the Beatitudes as part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus gives 8 specific quality traits that He calls “blessed,” and being pure in heart is the sixth. Jesus says in this verse that the pure in heart shall “see God.” This is interesting, because back during Biblical times it was considered a high honor to be in the presence of kings or other royalty and to be permitted to see them. “Barnes Notes on the Bible” talks about this, and also discusses that those who stood in the kings presence and were permitted to see him were his friends and those he loved. In this passage, seeing God means to be well known and loved by Him and being able to one day dwell in His kingdom.
I feel that I should elaborate that this does not mean you have to be perfect to see God and make it to Heaven someday. That would be impossible, and would defeat the purpose of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross. We discussed this a bit in Day 6 of our study, that we can only be made pure by the blood of Jesus. Even so, God does expect purity in His presence. This does not mean that we are supposed to keep living in sin, but that it is now up to us to follow Jesus’ example by living a pure life. We will not be perfect, but we should still strive to live a pure life that honors God. As Paul tells the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4:7-8, “For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives His Holy Spirit to you.”
By this point we have discussed many different ways that we can purify our heart, and also what it looks like when our heart is pure. Ultimately, the main thing we need to consider is what we are serving. If we are attempting to serve multiple “masters” with our heart, it is not pure. A pure heart is one that has one single purpose. I love how the GotQuestions website explains this concept. In their article on what it means to have a pure heart they wrote, “Being pure in heart involves having a singleness of heart toward God. A pure heart has no hypocrisy, no guile, no hidden motives. The pure heart is marked by transparency and an uncompromising desire to please God in all things. It is more than an external purity of behavior; it is an internal purity of soul.”
As we seek to have a pure heart, we ultimately need to make sure our heart is focused on God. When we make Him the ultimate authority of our lives and allow Him to work in us, our hearts will be made pure. I encourage you today to call out to God and trust Him with your heart. Allow Him to work from the inside out to purify you. Ask of Him the same thing David asked Him in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” As we have learned throughout our study this month, everything we do flows from our heart, so it is vital that we take the time to purify it.
