Blessed are the pure in heart:
For they shall see God.
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts;
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, meet for the Master’s use, prepared unto every good work.
But flee youthful lusts, and follow after righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Dear Heavenly Father, we are most grateful to Thee for giving Thy only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus, to us in such a way. Lord, we cannot thank Thee enough for it.
Lord, we do praise and thank Thee for the privilege of remembering Thy Son at Thy table. We pray that Thy love will always constrain us.
We thank Thee for Thy presence with us, and we thank Thee for Thy precious Word. We ask that Thy Holy Spirit will breathe upon Thy written Word and make it living, and operate in our lives, that Thou mayest be glorified. We ask in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Lately, my heart seems to be attracted to Matthew 5:8:
Blessed are the pure in heart:
For they shall see God.
We know this is one of the Beatitudes, the words that our Lord Jesus spoke to His own disciples.
What our Lord wants to say to us is, “You who are My disciples, this is the kind of person you are.” Our Lord is the One who is pure in heart. This is His character, and His desire is that we, His disciples, will bear the same character in our lives.
But, brothers and sisters, according to the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 17:9-10, we are told that the heart is deceitful above all things, and it is incurable. Who can know it?
Only the Lord searches the heart and tries the reins, and He will give to each according to the fruit of our doings.
So far as our natural heart is concerned, it is incurable. It is wicked, and yet nobody knows it. We do not know how evil our heart is, and we will not accept that it is incurable. Yet this very fact shows that we do not know our heart. Only God knows our heart. He searches our heart.
But that does not mean that we are hopeless, because we do thank God: when we believe in the Lord Jesus, something happens.
In Ezekiel 36:25-27, He said that to those who believe, the Lord will give us a new heart, and He will give us a new spirit. He will take away our stony heart and replace it with a heart of flesh.
In other words, when we believe in the Lord Jesus, He gives us a new heart. It is a heart of flesh. Instead of being a stony heart—a heart that is hard and insensitive to God—it is now a heart of flesh that is soft, tender, and sensitive to God.
So when we believe in the Lord Jesus, thank God, He has given us a new heart.
We know that the heart in the Bible occupies a most important place in our spiritual life. As the physical heart is the centre of our physical being, so the heart in Scripture does not refer to the physical heart, but to the spiritual heart. That heart is the centre of our spiritual being.
In Proverbs 4:23, we are told, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” We know that out of the heart are the issues of life. Just as, in the old days, out of the natural heart issued forth everything about our life, so now, with a new heart, out of this new heart will be the issues of the new life.
Brothers and sisters, probably when we read the Scripture about the heart, we really wonder what the heart is.
We know that when God created us, He created us with a spirit, a soul, and a body. But what about the heart?
The heart, actually, is a passage between the spirit and the soul. Or, to put it another way, the heart includes some functions of the spirit and all of the soul’s functions.
Now, if you turn to Hebrews 10:22:
Let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience: and having our body washed with pure water.
Here you find that, so far as our heart is concerned, it says, “having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” Now, conscience is one of the faculties, one of the functions, of our spirit.
As a matter of fact, in Old Testament times, you do not have the word conscience; you only have the word heart. You remember the story when David cut off a piece of Saul’s robe: his heart smote him. What it really means is that the conscience in his heart smote him.
In the Old Testament, you do not have the word conscience. But when you come to the New Testament, we find the word conscience there. It is part of the functions of our spirit. Often we say the voice of conscience is the voice of God.
So we cannot neglect our conscience, especially we who have had our evil conscience purified. Our conscience is now being purified, and God has become the standard of our conscience.
Formerly, we had no contact with God; therefore, our conscience had lost its standard. Custom, or the world, became the standard of our conscience. Therefore, our conscience was so wicked that we did not know right and wrong, because we had no standard.
But after we are saved, we have a new heart, and the conscience of that new heart has God as its standard because it has been purified by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus. The wicked conscience, the evil conscience—thank God—it has all been cleansed by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus. So we have a clear conscience before God. Conscience is part of the heart.
If you turn to Hebrews 4—I will try to limit myself to Hebrews, though actually you have many references in other places—and read verse 12:
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The Word of God is so sharp, so living, that it can penetrate into our inner being, dividing the spirit and the soul, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Here you find thoughts belong to the heart. Now, thoughts—that is, our mind—are part of the faculties of our soul, but here you find thoughts included in the heart. Then there are intents. Intents are our will: what we intend to do, decide to do. This is the will of our soul, and yet you find it is part of the heart.
Then, if you turn to Hebrews 3:7-8:
Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith,
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
Here, “Harden not your hearts” simply means your love, your emotion, toward God. If you do not listen to the Word of God, then your heart will become hardened emotionally. You will not be soft and affectionate toward the Lord.
So here again you find the emotion. Now, emotion is part of our soul, but it is within the heart.
The heart in Scripture includes the conscience of the spirit, with the will, the mind, and the emotion of the soul. So you can see, it is really the centre of our spirituality. The heart is very, very important in our spiritual life.
The thing that we need to be careful about is the heart. We have to guard it, keep it, guard it above all other things, because out of it are the issues of life.
Now, that is a pure heart. A pure heart is more than just a clear heart, a clean heart, a heart that has been cleansed and purified by the precious blood of the Lamb.
Oftentimes our conscience is under condemnation. We do something against what our conscience says to us, and when we are doing that, we have an unclear conscience, a guilty conscience. But, thank God, there is the blood.
Whenever your conscience smites you, or you are pricked in your heart, go to the Lord. Confess. The blood of the Lord Jesus purifies us from our evil conscience. Of course, a pure conscience must be a conscience without offence. That is important.
But a pure heart is more than that. It is more than just a clear conscience, where there is nothing that accuses you before God or before yourself. A pure heart is not only a clean heart; it is an undivided heart. It is a single heart.
If you read the books of Kings or Chronicles, you find, for instance, that Solomon’s heart was not as perfect as the heart of his father David. In the beginning, Solomon did have a perfect heart toward God. He loved God with all his heart, and God gave him great wisdom and understanding.
But unfortunately, when he became old, he was enticed by his foreign wives, and his heart was not perfect anymore. But David’s heart was perfect toward God. So a pure heart is a perfect heart, a heart that is perfectly centred upon God.
In Acts 13:22, we are told that David was a man after God’s own heart. In Kings and Chronicles, you find that God always used David as a kind of criterion to measure the hearts of the other kings. There were kings who loved the Lord, whose hearts were toward the Lord, but not as perfect as David’s. David had a perfect heart toward the Lord.
What is a pure heart? A pure heart is all of your heart. That is a pure heart.
In Deuteronomy 6:4-5, we read:
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
So a pure heart is an all heart. In other words, all the heart. It is not divided. It is not that part of your heart loves the Lord and part of your heart loves the world—a divided heart—but all your heart.
Psalm 119:2 says:
Blessed are they that keep His testimonies,
That seek Him with the whole heart.
The whole heart is toward the Lord.
So, brothers and sisters, the Bible tells us, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” What God desires is a pure heart: a heart that is perfect, that is all, that is whole, undivided, single—a virgin heart, a heart that is wholly toward the Lord.
In Matthew 6, we are told that the lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is single, your whole body is full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body is dark.
When you read the connection in Matthew 6:21-23, you find that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. In other words, what is a pure heart? A pure heart is a single eye.
The dove’s eyes can only see one thing at a time. So, in the Song of Songs, dove’s eyes are used to describe the virgin whose heart is single toward the Beloved.
The Lord really desires that our heart be single toward Him. In other words, we see Him, Him alone. We are not double-visioned. We do not see Him and also see other things as just as important, essential, precious, and treasured to us as the Lord Himself. Our heart needs to be pure toward Him.
Think of our Lord Jesus and His life on earth. How pure His heart was toward His Father. His whole life was governed by His Father. He always thought of His Father.
Whatever He did, whatever He said, it was His Father. He said, “I can do nothing of Myself.” He did what His Father did. “I can say nothing out of Myself,” but He heard His Father speak, and it was the Father who spoke within Him.
“Your time is always ready, but My time”—He had to wait for His Father’s time.
If you remember Psalm 40, a prophecy concerning our Lord Jesus, He says:
Lo, I am come;
In the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do Thy will, O my God;
Yea, Thy law is within my heart.
The whole life of our Lord Jesus was governed by that heart, that purity of heart toward His Father. That is the way our Lord Jesus lived.
As He lived, this is the way we must live. This is the way that He expects of us. More than anything else, brothers and sisters, what the Lord is really looking for is only one thing: purity of heart. How about your heart toward the Lord?
When the Lord gives us a new heart, that new heart is pure. But unfortunately, as days go on, we find gradually that the new heart is being affected, defiled, corrupted by many things.
In Hebrews 3, we are told, “Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” If you harden your heart, your heart will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Do not think it is a small thing. For a believer to commit something hideous is probably not so easy, because your heart will smite you and somehow you dare not do it. But it is the little foxes, you know—small things. You can say, “That is nothing. A little lie, maybe a white lie, it is okay.”
If you harden your heart, you do not know how deceitful sin is. It will deceive you, and through deception your heart gets harder and harder. Sometimes our new heart, which is pure, can become hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
So, brothers and sisters, especially young people, remember this: it is the little foxes that spoil the vineyard. We need to be very sensitive before the Lord. Do not be deceived and let your heart become hardened toward the Lord.
Sometimes it may be the world. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
What is the world? The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. In Matthew 6, it says no one can serve two masters. You either love the one and hate the other. You cannot love God and mammon at the same time.
The enemy of God will try to use the world to capture us through the lust of the eyes. Of course, our eyes are made to see things, even the beauty of the Lord in the universe. But when it becomes a lust, lust is something that goes beyond what it should be. There are things you should not see, and yet there is a lust there that wants to see them.
The lust of the flesh: you know it is not right, and yet your flesh lusts after it—an inordinate affection. And the pride of life is simply wanting to seem great, trying to compete and get on top in order to show off yourself.
This is the world, and you will find the world can divide your heart and make it impure.
Of course, our flesh, our self, can contaminate our pure heart. We think of ourselves. Look at Peter.
Before the other disciples, he said to the Lord, “Though all the others leave You, I will never leave You. I am willing to go and die with You.” Yet before a little maid, he denied the Lord. Why? Because he thought of himself: self-life.
So, brothers and sisters, you find our heart can be contaminated. That pure heart can easily become impure and divided.
I do not think that anyone here would say, “I no longer love the Lord.” I believe everyone here loves the Lord. But is it a divided love, or is it a pure, single-hearted love? Now, there is the question.
What should we do with our heart? Since our heart is so important to our spiritual life, it is the source of it. God looks upon the heart, not upon appearance. Man looks at appearance. So far as you appear all right, it is okay. But God looks on the heart. Always remember that. Otherwise, we will live a double life.
Our heart is so important, and it can be impressed rightly or wrongly so easily. So what should we do with our heart today?
Number one: you cannot keep your heart pure. It is beyond ourselves. So the only right thing for you to do is give your heart to the Lord and let Him keep it for you.
In Proverbs 23:26, it says:
My son, give me thy heart,
And let thine eyes delight in my ways.
God is really calling us. He says, “My son, give Me your heart.” He will keep it for you. When you give your heart to the Lord, then your eyes will delight in His ways. You will begin to see clearly.
Paul said, “I know Him whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” There is the preservation of the saints, the perseverance of the saints.
We cannot keep our heart pure, but give it to the Lord. He will keep it for us. I hope that every one of us here has really given our hearts to the Lord.
If you have not given your heart to the Lord, no matter what you have given to the Lord, it does not count. We have to give our heart to Him. When you give your heart to the Lord, you give all to the Lord, and He will keep it for you.
Number two is prayer. I feel we should constantly pray, and that is the prayer of the psalmist in Psalm 139:
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts;
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
Actually, in Darby’s footnote, it says that “thoughts” here has the meaning of conflicting thoughts. There are things within you conflicting with each other. Some things come from God; some come from yourself. They are combating each other and conflicting with each other, and you cannot tell which is which. The Lord says He will prove your thoughts.
“See if there is any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” The grievous way—another translation says, “an idolatrous way.”
Now, idolatry is serious, is it not? But if our heart is not pure toward the Lord, it is infidelity to God.
So, brothers and sisters, I feel that we need constantly to pray this prayer. First, give your heart to the Lord to keep. Secondly, constantly ask the Lord to search your heart.
Why do we need to pray such a prayer? Because even if you have given your heart to the Lord, it is very easy for you to take it back. When the Lord searches you, you try to flee away and hide yourself among the trees, just like Adam and Eve. You do not want Him to search you.
If you do not want Him to search you, then your heart will gradually be adulterated; it will be changed. So we need to express our desire: “Lord, search me. I am willing to be searched, that I may walk in Your way.”
Thirdly, as you are doing that, one thing you cannot avoid is the cross. Do not think that you can get by without bearing the cross.
The Lord Jesus said, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.” This is the condition for discipleship.
If you are not willing to deny yourself, if you are not willing to take up the cross daily, then whenever the finger of God searches you, there will be a cross involved. You have your thoughts, your opinions, your wishes, your self-love, self-rights, self-preservation, and so on and so forth. So there will be a cross there.
Are you willing to take up the cross and follow the Lord?
The Lord said, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.” Take His yoke, so you can learn from Him. He is meek and lowly in heart, and there will be rest in your soul.
So, brothers and sisters, these are the things that we need to do in order to keep our heart pure toward the Lord.
That is the blessing of the pure in heart. The Lord says, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
Is there anything in the world more valuable, more precious, more wonderful, than seeing God? Is that not the whole thing? When we see Him, that is the whole thing. Who can see God? The pure in heart.
In the Old Testament, Moses was so privileged by God because he was so faithful to God. He dared to ask, “Show me Thy glory.”
God said, “No man shall see Me and live. You cannot see My face. I will let you see My back.” You remember the story in Exodus 33:18-23. God hid Moses with His hand, and as God passed by, Moses heard God proclaim His name: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger,” and so forth.
In other words, Moses was privileged to see the back of God. But, brothers and sisters, we today can see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
It is because of the blood of our Lord Jesus. It is because of the new and living way that He has opened for us. It is because He is our great High Priest. It is because the Holy Spirit dwells in our spirit.
When we turn our hearts toward the Lord with unveiled face, we can see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. As in a mirror, we will be changed from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
Now, brothers, just think of that: the pure in heart shall see God’s face.
It is just like pure water. When you come to quiet water, there are no waves, no foam, and when you look at it, it reflects.
When we turn our hearts to the Lord with unveiled face—in other words, with a pure heart, a true heart—then we see the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ. You look at Him with a pure heart, you see Him, you see His glory, and He begins to reflect in your life.
This is how God makes us to be like God. His character becomes our character.
The first blessing is that you see God’s face. You see His glory. You see His character. You see who He is and what He is, and it begins to be reflected and reproduced by the Holy Spirit in your life.
Also, when you see God, you see His heart. It is heart to heart.
What it really means is that if you are pure in heart, you will see God’s heart. You will see His mind. You will see His purpose. You will see what He is really after and what He is really doing.
Because the secret of the Lord is revealed to those who fear Him, who are close to Him. He will tell you what He is going to do. Just like Abraham, God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do?” He had to tell Abraham what He was going to do.
Brothers and sisters, with a pure heart, you see God. You will see what His heart is after, what is in His heart, what He is doing, what His mind is. You will see it, and by doing that, you are able to serve Him.
We can only serve Him if we know what His heart is. Otherwise, we may do many things for Him, and yet God is not there. It is all useless.
Seeing God is seeing His hand. You see Him behind everything. Nothing will happen without His hand. You begin to understand that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord, who are called according to His purpose.
Brothers and sisters, oftentimes we do not see His hand. We see human hands. We even see the hands of the enemy. But we can see God’s hand, for all things work together for good.
But you need a pure heart. I think there is nothing more blessed than that: to see God. That is really what we want, is it not?
Now, brothers and sisters, we are living in the last days. Everything is changing and has changed. Not only is the whole world changing for the worse, but even among God’s people, the same thing is happening.
That is why I read 2 Timothy. The church today—the so-called church today—is like a great house. There are vessels unto honor and vessels unto dishonor: vessels of gold and silver, and vessels of wood and earth.
We live in such a time, even in Christianity. What should we do?
We are told that if we purify ourselves from these—and these refer to vessels unto dishonor—we shall become vessels unto honor.
There are believers in the house of God who are content to be wooden and earthen vessels, vessels unto dishonor. Though they are the Lord’s, they live according to the flesh, according to the old nature. They are content to be such vessels in the house of God.
But is it God’s will? He wants us to be vessels unto honor. How can we be vessels unto honor, gold and silver vessels? We have to purify ourselves from these.
In other words, we are not content to be wooden and earthen vessels. There is a holy discontentment. Of course, in another sense, we should be content with what the Lord has given us, and we thank God for that. But there is a spiritual, holy discontentment.
We are not content to be merely wooden and earthen vessels in the house of God. We want to be gold and silver vessels, vessels for honor, that we may be sanctified and fit for the Master’s use—not for ourselves, but for the Master’s use.
Brothers and sisters, do we have such a desire? If we have such a desire to purify ourselves, it does not mean we ought to be separated from our brothers and sisters. It means we are separated in ourselves from that which is mean and earthly.
We need to aim to be vessels unto honor, fit for the Master’s use, to please the Lord. What shall we do? We shall flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.
This is what the Lord expects us to do. It is not only that we individually need to seek to be of a pure heart, but we should seek righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.
This is what we should do in these last days, in the last stage of this age. So may the Lord help us. Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we believe that in Thy Word Thou hast shown us Thy way. Thou hast called us to be Thy disciples, to be pure in heart as Thou art pure in heart.
We thank Thee that Thou hast promised us that we shall see God. Lord, this is our humble prayer and desire. We want to be among those who call upon the name of the Lord out of a pure heart. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.