Fully Known, Fully Loved

Hello there!

This past weekend, I had the privilege of preaching on Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

You can watch or listen to the sermon in the link below or by clicking here. I’ve also included the full sermon transcript below. 🙂

I pray the Lord blesses you through His Word!

~Blake

P.S. The sermon starts at the 43:00-minute mark.

Introduction

Good morning. It is a joy to be here and to worship Christ with you today.

I had an opportunity to connect with Pastor Dan about a week and a half ago, and he spoke very highly of your love for one another and your unity in the Gospel. I have been looking forward to meeting you and worshiping with you today.

As Mike mentioned, I am a pastoral resident at Chapelstreet Church in Geneva, and our church is currently going through a sermon series called Kingdom Citizens. Our approach in this series is to teach through the Beatitudes from Matthew 5, which are a list of attributes of people who live with Jesus as the King and Savior of their lives.

Last week, I had an opportunity to preach on the sixth Beatitude, which we will consider today. Just one verse—Matthew 5:8—which says this:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Purity of heart

I joked with our congregation last week that I probably don’t even need to preach on this Beatitude since we all probably have purity of heart nailed down, right?

I told someone recently that the only thing that makes me qualified to preach on this topic is my neediness for the gospel.

As it has been said, a preacher is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread—and that’s what I hope to accomplish today.

Now, a number of the Beatitudes have been misunderstood, but perhaps no Beatitude has been more weaponized than this one.

An older friend once told me the story of a girl he dated for three years. (I’ll call my friend John and his girlfriend Sue for the sake of this story.)

John and Sue got very close and were on track to get married. John was planning his proposal, but one thing nagged at him—and that was that he had never told Sue about “his past” (e.g., mistakes he made in previous relationships, and so forth).

So, one day, John asked Sue to dinner to discuss their relationship. He told her he didn’t want to enter marriage with secrets and proceeded to explain his past sins and mistakes. Sue listened quietly. When John finished talking, he held his breath and waited for her response.

After a moment, Sue excused herself to go to the bathroom, where she remained for an unusually long time. (The waiter even asked John if she was coming back.) When Sue finally returned, she said she’d need some time to think about what he shared. John described the drive home as “awkwardly silent.”

A few days later, Sue told John she was ready to talk. John drove over nervously. Sue got straight to the point and spoke a few words that have stuck with John for over 25 years: “John, I’m sorry. But I just can’t imagine marrying a guy like you.”

John was crushed. In the moment he had made himself most known and vulnerable, he was met with disgust and abandonment. John and Sue immediately broke up, and John was left reeling.

Don’t worry—there is a happy ending to the story—John has been happily married to someone else for over 20 years now. But here’s what I want us to see: Because of John’s (you might say) impurity, Sue could not stand to be with him. John’s mistakes ruined his chances of seeing Sue. 

This, unfortunately, is the way many people have understood (or even taught) Matthew 5:8. The idea is that if you have messed up—if you’ve done something impure—God cannot stand to be with you. You’ve ruined your chances of seeing him.

Even if you repented of your sin and asked God for forgiveness, he would say, “I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine uniting myself to a sinner like you.”

Abuses of “purity culture”

Even the word purity causes many of us to squirm, as discussions on purity are often more shame-based than hope-based.

Some of us have even had authority figures (in the church or home) insinuate that if we’ve messed up—especially sexually—we are forever stained. Dirty. Unredeemable.

Even more lamentable is the fact that some people have been taught that if they have been sinned against, they are now impure. Guilty. Defiled.

Unhealthy versions of (what has been called) “purity culture” have told people, especially women, that if they have been sinned against, it was probably their fault—and the Bible has sadly sometimes been misused and weaponized against victims to rub their nose in their shame rather than to free them from their shame.

These teachings are not only wrong and frankly evil, but they are exactly the opposite of the gospel and of what Jesus is teaching in Matthew 5:8.

In fact, according to Matthew 5:8, when we humbly and repentantly look to Jesus in our brokenness and impurity, Jesus responds not by shaming us and leaving us but rather by:

1. Making us who we long to be. (5:8a)
2. Showing us who we long to see. (5:8b)

That is our two-point outline for today. Please join me in a word of prayer, and then we’ll dive in.

Heavenly Father, use Your Word today to make Jesus and the gospel more precious to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Why can we have hope in our brokenness and impurity? 

According to God’s Word—and Matthew 5:8 in particular—we can have hope because we have a Savior (Jesus) who makes us who we long to be.

1. Jesus makes us who we long to be. (5:8a)

We see this in the first half of our verse, which says, “Blessed are the pure in heart. . .”

When I was a freshman in high school, I was terribly insecure, and I did not know who I was. I still remember sitting in a study hall one day with a guy named Andy. Andy was not exceptionally athletic, brilliant, or handsome by worldly standards—but he was confident.

So, one day, I whispered to him, “Andy, how are you so confident?”

He whispered back words I still remember years later: “Just be yourself, man.” 

I remember thinking two things in that moment:

First: “Woah. That’s inspiring.” 

Second: “But I don’t even know who I am.” 

This interaction took place shortly before I became a Christian.

Purity and identity

Some people are afraid of Christianity because they think Jesus is going to change them in a way that keeps them from “being themselves” (or “becoming themselves”).

They think, “If I become a Christian, I know what God’s going to do: He’s going to make me give up my passions, hobbies, and personality—and make me become a monk!”

But the great news of the Gospel—and what I powerfully experienced in my own life when I became a Christian as a sophomore (or junior) in high school—is that Jesus does change us, but he changes us by freeing us from the sins and false saviors that keep us from becoming who we long to be.

According to God’s Word, sin is not a list of arbitrary rules. Sin is anything that robs us of being who God created us to be and seeing who God created us to see (namely, himself).

A relationship with Jesus does not make us less ourselves but more ourselves!

Jesus does not want to change your personality; he wants to purify you and empower you to become the person you were created to be.

Praise the Lord that Jesus does not say. . .

• Blessed are the ESFJ’s (from the Myers-Briggs) in heart.
• Blessed are the enneagram type 3’s in heart.
• Blessed are the outdoorsy in heart.
• Blessed are the bookworms in heart.

He says, “Blessed are the pure in heart”—and it is through the purity Jesus talks about here that we find our true identity and become the people we long to be.

Two kinds of purity

What exactly is this purity that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5:8? 

Commentators note two kinds of purity:

1. Positional Purity
2. Practical Purity

Positional purity is synonymous with justification, and it means that through the blood of Christ, we are already perfectly pure in the eyes of God.

• In John 15:3, Jesus says, “Already you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”

• Ephesians 1:4 says, “God chose us in him before the foundations of the world to make us holy and without fault in his eyes.”

This is positional purity (or justification).

Practical purity is synonymous with sanctification, and it refers to the fact that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are progressively becoming more like Christ in lived-out holiness.

We see both kinds of purity described in Hebrews 10:14: “For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever [positional purity] those who are being made holy [practical purity].”

Now, how do these two kinds of purity give us hope in our brokenness and ongoing battle with sin?

Let’s consider each briefly.

Positional purity

There are two glorious aspects to positional purity—two glorious ways the blood of Christ perfectly purifies us—and that is that he purifies our…

1. Evil works
2. Good works

First, our evil works: 

The Bible teaches that through the blood of Christ, all of our sins—past, present, and future—are fully and forever forgiven.

1 John 1:9 says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

This reality gives me so much comfort as I stumble forward as a sinful follower of Jesus.

But a more commonly overlooked aspect of the Gospel is that the blood of Christ also purifies our good works. 

Have you ever done something good on the outside but wondered how pure you were on the inside? Have you ever wondered if you could do anything with perfectly pure motives—loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Tim Keller said, famously, “If you wait until your motives are [perfectly] pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.” You’ll never act.

But Christians are freed from this paralyzing self-analysis of motives because the blood of Jesus not only forgives all of our evil works; it also purifies all of our good works to make them perfectly pleasing in the sight of God.

How does God look at you?

Perhaps you have heard it said that God looks at you as if you were Jesus—as if you lived his life and he lived your life. While there’s some truth to this statement, I believe it’s more accurate that God looks at you as if you were you—as if you lived your life—but with all of your sins forgiven and all of your good works perfectly purified and pleasing to God through the blood of Christ.

Because of the doctrine of positional purity, you can rest knowing that your approval before God does not fluctuate with your always changing ‘performance.’

Your status before God isn’t swinging back and forth from pure to impure on good days and bad days or good weeks and bad weeks.

Ultimately, the way God loves you—and, dare I say it, the way God likes you—does not change.

Let me ask you: How do you think God looks at you on a bad day?

There are at least three common images we think of when we imagine how God looks at us after we sin. Ask yourself if you can relate to any of these images:

1. Disgust

We picture God with a wrinkled nose, frowning eyebrows, and a stiff arm to keep us away. We imagine him nauseated at the thought of embracing us while we’re still sinners.

2. Disdain

We picture God so angry at us for our sin that he despises or hates us.

3. Despair (or perpetual disappointment)

We picture God throwing his hands up in the air and saying, “I’m done trying to help you. You’ve blown it too many times!”

Have you ever pictured God in one of these three ways?

Praise the Lord that the Gospels give us drastically different images of Jesus toward repentant sinners. What images does the New Testament show us?

It shows Jesus serving sinners, supping with sinners, and saving sinners. (This is why we must continually renew our mind in Scripture—to get an accurate view of God!)

God loves us while we are still sinners

Perhaps you’ve heard it said, “God can’t stand to be in the presence of sin.”

But that’s not totally accurate.

It’s not God that can’t stand to be in the presence of sin; it’s sin that can’t stand to be in the presence of God. 

Jesus entered into a world of sin—even became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21)—so that we could become pure—the righteousness of God.

God’s loving gaze toward you isn’t swinging back and forth from delight to disgust based on your personal purity.

Why is that true? Because God does not love us because we are pure; he purifies us because he loves us. 

Romans 5:8 says God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God isn’t waiting until you’re perfectly pure or have it all together to start loving and even liking you.

There is infinite security for every Christian because we know that nothing in the universe can separate us from the loving gaze of God.

For every Christian, in all of our brokenness and changing circumstances – the God of the universe speaks these unchanging words over us:

You are clean. Pure. Holy. Without blemish. Dearly loved.

All words the New Testament used to describe God’s people.

That’s positional purity. But there’s one other kind of purity Scripture talks about:

Practical purity

Over and over again in Scripture, God calls us to live out the holiness that he has purchased for us through Christ.

One of the first verses I memorized when I became a Christian is 2 Timothy 2:22, which says: “Flee also youthful lusts, but pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”

Purity of heart involves actively fleeing from evil and pursuing righteousness. 

But many commentators note that often in Scripture, purity of heart is actually not describing sinlessness but rather singleness of worship.

For example, James 4:8 says, “Purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Here, purity of heart is contrasted with double-mindedness or hypocrisy.

One of our pastors said, “To be pure in heart is to worship one thing.” It’s to look to Jesus alone to save us and to sanctify us. 

So, what exactly does it look like to pursue practical purity? What is powerful enough to change us—not only externally but internally?

This brings us to our second point:

2. Jesus shows us who we long to see. (5:8b)

We see this in the second half of the verse, which says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Now, it is impossible to explain the magnitude of this promise in a short sermon. So, that is why we have decided to extend the sermon today to eight hours—so feel free to get comfortable.

Why is the promise of seeing God so precious?

Countless reasons—I will provide just two: 

1. Seeing God is what satisfies our souls.
2. Seeing God is what purifies our hearts.

Let’s consider each in turn.

Seeing God is what satisfies our souls.

Commentators have labored for centuries to illustrate the preciousness of seeing God. Here are a couple of descriptions:

• “The most rapturous delights you have ever had—in the beauty of a landscape, the pleasure of food, or the fulfillment of a loving embrace—are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face.” (Timothy Keller)

• “When we get to heaven and behold the form of the Lord, we will say, “Now I am home. This is what I was made for. This is what every experience in my life positioned me for. This is why I exist. To (see) this.” (Gavin Ortlund)

Have you heard of how sunflowers turn to face the sun all day long? Just as a sunflower was created to gaze at the sun, our souls were created to gaze at God.

Now, in this life—because of the brokenness of the world and the sin in our hearts—our vision of God is partially obstructed. We’ve all felt this.

But C.S. Lewis says (beautifully) that “the pages of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so.” One day, we will gaze at Jesus face-to-face, no longer obstructed by sin or suffering.

This is what we were made for!

Seeing God is what purifies our hearts.

There’s a special blessing to this Beatitude: you can read it both ways, and it remains true.

• Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
• Blessed are those who see God, for they will be pure in heart.

Seeing God is not only something we do; it’s something that does something to us.

1 John 3 says, “When he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”

According to this verse, it is actually through beholding God that we become the people God created us to be. It is by seeing God that our hearts are purified.

How seeing God purifies us

One of the best illustrations I’ve heard of this concept is by a pastor named J.D. Shaw. (This illustration is slightly edited to fit this sermon.)

What is it about seeing Jesus face-to-face that is going to perfectly purify us? Shaw says,

One of the best movies I’ve seen is James L. Brooks’ film As Good as It Gets. Jack Nicholson plays Melvin Udall, who is a first-class jerk. He is a writer, he’s famous, and he’s rich—but he’s also miserable. He’s a miserable person, and he’s miserable to be around. But he’s in love with Helen Hunt’s character named Carol. 

Carol sees what a jerk Melvin is—and at first, she wants nothing to do with him—but somehow—because it’s a movie—they wind up on a date. And Melvin, being Melvin—he can’t help it—insults her terribly. And she says, “If you don’t pay me a compliment right now, I am getting up and walking out.” 

Melvin says, “Okay, sit down, sit down, sit down.” He sits there and thinks for a second. Then, he says, “All right, I’ve got a really good compliment, are you ready?” 

“I am so afraid you’re about to say something awful,” Carol says. 

Melvin continues, “You know I have this ailment. My doctor says if I’ll take this pill every day, more than likely, I will get a whole lot better, but I hate pills. And I can’t use that term strongly enough—I hate pills. But when you told me last night that you were never going to be in a relationship with me, I went home, and I started taking the pills.”

Carol looks at him confusingly and says, “I don’t quite get how that’s a compliment for me.”

Melvin looks down, gathers his thoughts, then looks back at her and says iconically, “You make me want to be a better man.”

 Shaw goes on to say,

Many people have thought, “You know, as long as I had the love of a good woman or a good man, then I could change.” And to some extent, this is true! Some of us have gotten into a relationship, and we suddenly had the power to change behaviors because of the relationship.

But our change is always limited in either time or extent. Sometimes, our good habits fade, and we fall back into our old habits. Other times, we keep our good habits, but other problems sprout up. We aren’t completely perfected by this person.

Shaw says,

No human being is big enough, glorious enough, or beautiful enough to create perfect and permanent change in your life the way you need it. No human being can do that—and that’s why so many people get disillusioned in relationships all the time—they’re looking for a savior, and that person is not a savior! But Jesus can do that to you. When you see Jesus as he is—when you see him in all of his glory, and you behold him with your eyes, it will be so glorious that the Bible says he will change you eternally! Seeing him will right all of your desires and satisfy you forever. As the psalmist writes—“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.” (Psalm 17:15)

 Shaw concludes,

The Bible doesn’t say to believers, “If you want to become pure, just try really hard to stop sinning.” Instead, the Bible says, “If you want to become pure, fix your gaze on Jesus. And remember, continually, what you will be when you see him face-to-face: perfectly happy, perfectly sinless, forever.”

If you are here today, and you have not put faith in this beautiful, heart-purifying Savior, Jesus is calling you today to himself.

Jesus wants to make you who you long to be and to show you who you long to see.

So come, find in Jesus forgiveness. Find in Jesus purity. Find in Jesus eternal salvation and satisfaction. 

Will you receive Jesus into your heart today?

If so, please pray this with me (and let’s all pray this together silently):

Lord Jesus, forgive me for my sin, which keeps me from being who I long to be and obstructs me from seeing you. Come into my heart today, and declare your forgiveness and purity over me so that I may see and worship you alone forever. Be my Lord and Savior today and for the rest of my days. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Benediction

Hear now this benediction:

When Jesus appears, we will be made like him, for we will see him as he is. Go now in the love of the Father, the grace and purity of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

__________________________________

Blake Glosson (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is a pastoral resident at Chapelstreet Church in Geneva, Illinois. He has been published and/or republished or referred by:

• The Gospel Coalition
• Life Bible
• Crosswalk
• Eternal Perspective Ministries (Randy Alcorn)
• Challies.com/Tim Challies (here and here)
• DashHouse (Darryl Dash)
• Moody Radio (here, here, and here)
• The JOY FM (here and here)
• ChurchLeaders.com
• Monergism.com
• The Aquila Report (here and here)

Previously, Blake served as the director of young adults at New Covenant Bible Church in St. Charles, Illinois.

Watch or listen to more of Blake’s sermons here.

Read “3 Lies To Combat in Suffering and Anxiety” here.

Read “Christian, You Are Fully Known And Fully Loved” here.

Read “Atomic Habits and Bible Intake: How Tiny Changes Add Up” here.

Read “Satan’s Two Favorite Lies (and Christ’s Victory)” here.