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Sermon on the Mount

Week 09 Blessed are the Pure in Heart

Review

The Sermon on the Mount is the core of Jesus yoke and if we want to be true Jesus followers, then we

need to understand how to live out his yoke. The main purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to showhow to live a life that God finds pious, that is, how to live out the righteousness of God here on Earth.To do this, Jesus begins his sermon with the Principles of the Yoke, the Beatitudes. We have learned

that the while the word Blessed literally means happy, it is much more than that. It more closelyresembles something akin to Held in honor by God or In a righteous relationship with God.

IntroductionLast week we looked at three ways to show mercy. This week we continue on our journey to discoverwhat Jesus listeners would have heard when He talked about being pure in heart.

When we think of purity of heart we might think of having completely pure, blameless, sinless lives, or

perhaps a heart that is pure from temptations and sins (primarily, we think of the sexual ones).Sometimes our connotations of what the Bible means actually limit drastically the implications of itsteaching for our lives. Jesus isn t saying if we don t get involved in sexually active relationships we re

pure in heart and will see God no matter what else we do with our lives, and he also isn t saying webetter be 100% sinless or we can wave goodbye to the change of ever seeing God. What he is saying is

much better than that!

The Bible doesn t leave us in the dark and guessing what purity of heart is; it talks about it in many

different places and sets out stark contrasts to what purity of heart defiantly isn t.

Pure in Heart

Discussion Question

1. What does it mean to you when you hear the phase, pure in heart ? What sort of imagesor thoughts sprint to mind?

2. How do each of these help us understand pure in heart.? What do these passages tell uswhat is NOT pure in heart.

The image of the heart as used in the Bible generally refers to the true self. This metaphoricimagery of the heart being used to represent the inner person, the seat of motives and attitudes, the

center of personality, is found in many languages and cultures, including our own. If I say, Let s get tothe heart of the matter. We all intuitively understand that I want to get down to the real truth, to chip

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away all externalities and pretenses surrounding an issue to discover the underlying truth. The heart iswho one really is, apart from pretense. Thus, we see that to "understand with the heart" (Matthew

13:15) means to understand truly and to "forgive from the heart" (Matthew 18:35) means to forgivetruly and so on.

We can therefore imagine that the pure in heart are those who are truly pure, as opposed to the whoare only apparently so (Matthew 23:25-28). Just as there are some people who can worship God withtheir lips, though their hearts are from God (Matthew 15:8), so can somebody appear to be pure, whenthey are actually full of uncleanliness (Matthew 23:28). This would lead us to believe that Jesus istalking about people s whose internal motives and attitudes reflect their external behavior. That is,

Jesus is talking about personal integrity. Our external actions indicate our internal priorities (Matthew6:21).

It should be noted (again) that this purity is not merely the avoidance of impure thoughts, but refersto single-minded devotion to God (Deut. 6:5; Psalm 86:11). In other words, it is a single-hearted passion

for God. Many of our people have no passion for anything; or they have divided passions.

It is so easy for us to be controlled by the cares of this world (I John 2:15-17) and to allow those things todistract us from staying focused on God and Him alone. The stuff of this world is all about me. Itsabout making me look good and making me feel good. One of the whole tenets we have continuallyseen through our study, though, shows that the righteousness and piety are about how we live inrelationship with God and in relationship with others. The core of Jesus yoke is, stop looking after youand yours and look out for the poor and weak. Stop being so selfish and take care of others. Someone

who is pure in heart is unselfish.

The beautifully profound imagery of the original Aramaic is lost in English. In Aramaic, there is no actual

word for unselfish . Instead, the equivalent phrase literally means to have a good eye . The line literallyreads in Aramaic, How fortunate are they who have a good eye, for they shall see God.

A person who is pure in heart is a person whose motives are pure when they helping others. When theysee a need, they truly want to help without any thought of what that means for them. We can contrastthis with people who help others so that they can get something in return. Maybe they give because

they are seeking the honor of men (Matthew 6:1-4). Maybe they are giving because they storing up forthemselves treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21). Maybe they are trying to appease their own guiltat what they have or things they have done. Maybe they are trying to make a political or social

statement. The fact is that all of these things are not pure motives.

When we empty ourselves of ourselves and seek to help those who need it