Please turn with me this morning for our background reading to Psalm 24, Psalm 24. We read that in connection with the beatitude of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount that we consider this morning. Just remind us again of what our Lord said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. And now in verse 8 of Matthew chapter 5, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Psalm 24, as we now hear God's Word through David. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. For He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false, he will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God His Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O you gates. Be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O you gates, lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is He, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty. He is the King of glory. May God add His blessing to His Word this morning. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, what is the state, the condition of your heart? It may seem like a strange question, but it's an important question. What is the condition of your heart? And of course, you know that I'm not talking about your physical heart, the heart that beats inside your body. I'm not asking whether that heart is strong or weak or whether your heart needs medication or not to sustain it in this life. But spiritually speaking, What is the condition of your heart? You see, as we make our way through these beatitudes, these Christian birthmarks, these characteristics of the kingdom citizen, as we make our way through them, as we have just been refreshed by God's grace through the working of the Holy Spirit, in some way we can identify with those which we have already considered. I understand what it means to be poor in spirit, that I have nothing of value, Nothing to offer God in any way to earn His favor. I am a sinful man and my sin troubles me and because of that, I mourn. I suffer because of my sin, because of the offense that I know that it brings to God. I strive to be meek. I do desire to be righteous and to live righteously. And at times, I am merciful. As believers, by the grace of God, we can identify with those Beatitudes, at least in part, not perfectly, but then Jesus says in this beatitude, blessed are the pure in heart. Being reminded of my sin. And then Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart. And I'm stopped in my tracks. You see, beloved, we know enough about purity on the one hand, and we know enough about ourselves on the other hand that we cannot help but to wonder that is there any hope for me? We cannot help but to wonder that as Jesus here addresses the Christian's heart character. And as He addresses that heart character, we want to notice first of all the problem of a pure heart. The problem of a pure heart seen again on the one hand in the meaning of heart as what we might call the compass of life. You see, physically speaking, we might say that the heart is life or we equate the heart with life because when the heart stops beating, we know, then the body stops living. But the heart in biblical imagery is the center of one's entire being and personality. We might describe it this way. we might say that it is the fount out of which flows the mind and the thoughts and the conscience and the affections and the emotions and the will. It's the center of one's being and personality. The Bible points to that in Proverbs 4, verse 23, Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. And Jesus in Matthew 12, verse 34 says, For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And then throughout Scripture, both Old Testament and New Testament, take a concordance, look up the word heart and you'll see how many references there are, but if you look at that, throughout Scripture, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, we read about sorrow or truth or joy or grief in the heart, as if the heart is some sort of a holding container for these things. We read in Scripture about opened or closed hearts. We read about proud or humble hearts. We read about thinking in the heart. And we even use some of these same sort of expressions. We speak of heavy hearts or having a heartache or joyful, happy hearts. Or of even following your heart. It is the center of one's being or personality, the compass of life. And as the compass of life, the heart is also then the instrument of belief or unbelief. That's where it's found. The psalmist in both Psalms 14 and 51 says, The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. And the Lord in Ezekiel 36, verse 26 says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone, that heart of unbelief, boys and girls, and give you a heart of flesh. The kind that, as Paul says in Romans 10, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. The heart as the center of one's personality, as that compass of life, is then also the instrument of belief or unbelief, And it's for that reason that the heart is also then the focus of the Gospel. It's the focus of the Gospel. Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart. Not blessed are the highly intelligent or the publicly pious, or not blessed are those who do all kinds of good works. The Pharisees, some of whom no doubt were listening to Him, would have loved that if He had said that. Because they didn't care about the inside of the cup, as Jesus says in another place, the heart, that is. They only cared about how they looked on the outside. And indeed, we know that correct doctrine, a correct teaching, and a correct understanding of that teaching is absolutely essential. We know that good works are necessary in the Christian life, but it's not the head and the hands, first of all, that God looks at. But as Samuel said to David, God looks at the heart out of which flows that which is in the head and that which comes from the hands. The heart is the focus of the Gospel. And man needs a heart change because by nature in sin that heart is not right. It is not in tune with God. Jesus in Matthew 15 says, But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and these make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. Jesus does not paint a very rosy picture of the heart, does He? And we have to confess that we understand that in and of ourselves. Especially when it comes to purity or impurity. He doesn't paint a very rosy picture of the human heart. And throughout history, especially the last hundred years or so, man has blamed the environment for his troubles. Change the environment and you change man. Many still believe that today. Yet the very same ones forget to realize that it was in the perfect environment of paradise that Adam fell into sin. It's not the environment that is the cause of man's troubles. Man's troubles are because, as Jeremiah 17.9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? You see, beloved, the truth of man by nature is that he is dead in sin. With a heart that hates God. And he is, as Paul says in Romans 2, storing up wrath against himself for the day of God's wrath. That's the truth of the human heart. and then we hear these words, blessed are the pure in heart. And that presents us with a problem. And that problem is also seen, on the other hand, in the meaning of pure, in a sense to add insult to injury. Because we understand what pure means. On the one hand, it means something that is undivided, unmixed. It is uncontaminated. something that is without hypocrisy, without compromise. It's not infected or polluted. And when we're talking about a pure heart, we're talking about an open heart. A single heart. Not a double or divided heart, but a single heart. Nothing is hidden. A heart that is filled with sincerity and honesty and is not selfish. And in relation to God, that pure heart is not faltering between two opinions as Elijah accused the Israelites of Mount Carmel. If the Lord is God, if Jehovah is God, worship Him, he says. If Baal is God, worship Him. But you can't have it both ways. You cannot sit on the fence. And in Psalm 24, the psalmist makes clear that the pure heart is one that does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. It is not compromised. It is not filled with hypocrisy. It is a commitment of heart and mind and will to God alone. It loves what God loves and hates what God hates. God, the highest good, is the highest good to whom the pure give undivided love and obedience. He is their only concern. And a pure heart with man. Calvin addresses that when he says, the pure in heart take no delight in cunning, but converse sincerely with men and express nothing in word or look which they do not feel in their heart. Again, a pure heart with relation to our fellow men is not a heart that is filled with hypocrisy. It's not a heart that is filled with false motives. Psalm 15 helps us here. And also, the pure in heart are merciful without any selfish motives. They extend mercy to another without planning ahead of time on getting something in return. And again, the psalmist in Psalm 15 addresses the pure heart before God and man when he says, Lord, who may dwell in Your sanctuary? Who may live on Your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue. Who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellow man. Who despises a vile man but honors those who fear the Lord, who keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken. Integrity, honesty, sincerity of heart. And that psalm also then points to another understanding of pure, meaning cleansed, without defilement, without sin. John in the book of Revelation, chapter 21, verse 27, and chapter 22, verse 14, in those verses, they make clear that nothing unclean or impure or defiles will enter into the heavenly Jerusalem. Nothing. And the writer of Hebrews in chapter 12, verse 14 says, Make every effort to live at peace with all men and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see God. Beloved, we look at ourselves. We know ourselves to be poor in spirit and we mourn because of our sin. We know our sin and misery, the horrendous nature of our sin. And indeed, we are sorry for it. But yet, we hear this beatitude and knowing these things, knowing that our heart is not pure before God in and of itself, we are confronted with a problem of a pure heart. Yet, the very same knowledge and understanding of our sin and misery, along with the desires for righteousness and the desire to be merciful points us to and is evidence of our hope in Jesus Christ. And in the second place, the creation of a pure heart. You see, beloved, purity is possessed by the believer, by the child of God, only through Jesus Christ, only because of His redeeming work, because of His pure heart and the purity of His blood that was shed. To pay for all of our sins. Paul in Ephesians 2 says that in Christ we are made alive. From death to life. And we are those to whom the Holy Spirit gives that heart of flesh in order to believe. And as Paul tells us in Philippians 1, verse 6, the Holy Spirit begins that powerful work in your heart and mine. And through faith in Jesus Christ, He transforms our very lives with confidence of our salvation and with the confidence of a new relationship with God in which that purity is practiced. And it's practiced before God. And again, knowing our sin and misery, this is where it may become confusing for us, but before God, you see, that pure heart is seen in the morning of the believer because of his sin. Apart from having that pure heart in Christ Jesus, one would not mourn because of their sin. Before God, the pure heart is seen in the believer's consciousness of sin as he continues to struggle with it and desires and strives to fight against it and instead to worship God according to the truth of His Word. And with undivided heart to please and to glorify and to be obedient to God. To dwell on and practice the Christian virtues of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. Constantly striving in the strength of the Holy Spirit to put off the old self and to put on the new, using the means given by God to purify us. But that purity is practiced also before man. Again, in practicing those Christian virtues, but also purity is practiced in exercising love and selflessness for our neighbor. It is practiced by exercising meekness, not returning evil for evil, but returning good for evil. It's practiced by exercising mercy, desiring, striving to relieve another of the misery they are dealing with. It's practiced in desiring the purity of others. And as well, for example, young people. Exercising purity before God by surrounding yourself, by dating, by one day marrying only those, only another who is pure in heart before God. Beloved, the pure in heart are those who are born again by the grace of God. They are those who have true faith in Jesus Christ, not those who are sinless in this life as being poor in spirit and mourning remind us. We still struggle with sin in our lives and that's why we cannot always follow our heart as we say because oftentimes our heart in this life is deceived. We still struggle with sin daily, yet God sees us today. He looks upon you and me in Christ today and He sees us as pure and righteous. Jesus Christ has solved the problem of a pure heart for you and me. And in Him, our God sees us as pure and righteous even as the Holy Spirit is making us pure as we need to be in order to dwell in His presence. John in 1 John 3, verses 2-3 says, Dear friends, now we are children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure. Do you hear what John says there? We don't know exactly what it's going to be like. We don't know what we will be like, but we know that we will be like Him and we will see Him as He is. That's the hope that we have, John says. And that hope pushes God's people to action knowing these things. Knowing that the Holy Spirit will complete His work in me, as Paul says. Knowing, as Paul also says, that Jesus is going to present His bride one day spotless and without wrinkle to Himself in glory. Knowing that truth. Knowing the purity of our God, at least in as much as we can understand it. knowing the purity and the perfection of His kingdom. And knowing again, as the writer of Hebrews says, without holiness, no one will see the Lord. John says that the kingdom citizen strives to purify himself, to live in purity on this side of glory, using the means that God provides to grow in him. The preaching of the Word and participating in the sacraments. Scripture reading faithfully and prayer. surrounding ourselves with Christian friends to encourage us, avoiding what would cause me to sin, seeking indeed whatever would keep me accountable. The child of God who has that hope, John says, purifies himself in preparation in the third place for the blessing of a pure heart, as Jesus says, for they will see God. Oh, beloved, that is not a divine maybe. That is a divine guarantee. We buried Ingrid this past week. She's with the Lord, we believe. Not because she was pure in heart because of herself. Because she was pure in heart because of Jesus Christ. And His promise is fulfilled for her. We don't know what's going to happen with Paul. We don't know if the Lord is going to let him tarry here on this earth for a bit or take him home to glory, but we trust that he will be with the Lord. Not because his heart is pure in himself, but because it's pure in Christ Jesus. And Jesus is blessed with the pure in heart, for they will see God. That's a divine guarantee. And we know that it points ultimately to glory. but I believe it also includes seeing God by faith today because the believer sees, or we might even carefully use that word, experiences God in a way that the unbeliever does not and cannot. The blessing of a pure heart includes seeing God by faith today, for example, through creation, as Paul says in Romans 1, that through creation, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen. and seeing God by faith today through providence. We see His hand in the events of history. We see His hand in our lives directing us and guiding us, comforting us. Giving us a peace and giving us assurance of His forgiving love and of a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. And also seeing God by faith through His Word, through His Word, He reveals His sovereignty, His power, and again, our salvation through Jesus Christ His Son. Yet we know that that sight by faith is not perfectly clear, is it? In 1 Corinthians 13.12, Paul says, Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. the blessing of a pure heart, seeing God by faith today, but again ultimately seeing Him face to face in the perfection and the glory of heaven, seeing our God face to face. And as Isaiah 11 verse 9 says, the earth, and He's talking there about the new earth, will be full of the knowledge of God. Beloved, then we will see Him forever as He is. No distortions from our side of things. We will see Him forever as He is, never again to lose any sort of sight of Him. Dear people of God, this promise of Jesus Christ is incomprehensible. No matter how hard we try, we cannot even begin to wrap our minds around it. We cannot begin to truly understand just how awesome and just how wonderful it will be. And sadly, maybe that's why sometimes we often live this life as if we'd rather stay here. But this promise of Jesus Christ, it is to grip us in such a way as we understand our salvation, how great it is what Jesus Christ has done for us. Again, we can't wrap our minds around it. We cannot wrap our minds around being rescued from eternal punishment. Boys and girls, when you are punished for some reason, if it hurts, it may sting for a while, but it goes away. But for those who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, their punishment will be worse than anything you and I could ever have imagined and it will never end. It will never let up. And we cannot even begin to imagine just how great that salvation is because of His pure sacrifice, Jesus Christ has earned us an eternal audience with our Almighty God. Jesus Christ is the King of glory who entered heaven before us on our behalf and our purity is found only in Him. It is found only because of Him. Apart from Him, no one will see God. And that's why the Gospel is focused on the heart to transform that heart to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Because in Him, for those who are in Him, they will dwell with God forever. He has earned us an eternal audience with God. And beloved, what then an incentive to purity, as John says. To desire purity, because God is pure. To delight in Him. And we are called to prepare by faith actively participating with the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. It's His work. He will accomplish it. But He uses us. In a sense, He gives us a job to do. He gives us a new will and new desires, a new heart. And we are called to follow those new desires. Putting to death the old self. Striving to stay away from that which promotes impure thoughts and words and actions. Again, we talked about with adultery a couple of weeks ago. It's out there. It's right before our eyes. But to strive to stay away from that which promotes, for example, lust and envy and that which leads to anger and hatred and sinful actions. Striving to stay away from anything that does not help me prepare for that day. Beloved, let us not waste our time on that which does not encourage our faith and that which does not draw us closer to God, but instead, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, setting our minds on things above where Christ is, seeking only that which is pleasing to Him, desiring to see Him more clearly through His Word by faith. Because the purity of heart is needed, this beatitude is for you and me here in this life. Even as we are reminded of our sin and misery, even as we are brought to mourn because of it, this beatitude then is there for a purpose too. It interrogates us. It interrogates us with searching questions. What are your thoughts like? What are the things you desire? What do you think about when your mind slips into neutral? We've all said it before. I spaced out for a time. What is it that your mind slips in? Think about when your mind slips into neutral. And for example, are you drawn toward deceptive practices? Do you have an inclination toward them or to stay away? Or how much sympathy do you have for off-colored humor, no matter how funny it might be? What has your constant, your full allegiance? What is it? Or how do your words and actions accurately reflect what's in your heart? Or, how do your words and actions cover up what's in your heart? And when you catch yourself with impure thoughts and desires of lust or revenge or coveting or anything of that nature, how do you respond? Beloved, we do need to be constantly asking these questions as we remember the purity that God requires that is pleasing to Him, that is fitting of Him. You see, the constant prayer of the kingdom citizen is create in me a pure, a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. And praise God that we can pray that confidently, knowing that the Holy Spirit is preparing us to see God face to face. One day our faith will become sight. And we will see God as He is in all of His splendor and glory. And as we anticipate, as we long for that day, beloved, May He be our true vision and our delight today. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, You have challenged us this morning with something so difficult. To be reminded of the truth of ourselves, of how we are in and of ourselves. Our hopeless and helpless condition before You. only to say that it is the very opposite of ourselves by nature that we must be in order to be in Your presence, to see You, to enjoy You forever and ever. But therefore too, Father, even as You remind us of something so difficult and so impossible for us, You equally remind us of the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He reminds us of His precious work and all that He accomplished and the result for us, both now and forever. And Father, we thank You for that cleansing that Jesus Christ has accomplished that is given to us so freely that we might never doubt that we will be with the Lord. That we might enjoy Your grace for today throughout this life and Your glory for eternity You will take us to Yourself in glory. And Father, then, fulfill the desires of our hearts in a way that we might see throughout this life, that we might be able to see the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit with those renewed desires. And those desires transformed into actions as more and more we render obedience to You. Father, we are humbled because of your goodness to us, so rich and so undeserved. Thank you for doing for us that which we could not begin to do for ourselves. Thank you for such a great Savior, even Jesus Christ our Lord. In his name we pray. Amen.