Have a new favorite song, the one we just sang.

Find Matthew chapter five in your bibles or on your devices, wherever you get the scriptures today. And if you're a guest, I want to warmly welcome you and say that we're in the middle of a series called how can I be happy when? And we're answering that question with one of the beatitudes of Jesus the wise, sayings that he began the sermon on the Mount with in Matthew chapter five. And as you're finding Matthew five eight today, I want to tell you just a story that we got from Todd Trent, one of our members. He said this happened at a small group on a Wednesday night.

Another one of our members in his small group named Kim Fullwood said that she had been experiencing a weird pain in her back that would take her breath away, one of those sympathetic pains in our prophetic ministry. And she asked if anybody in the group had a pain like that. And Todd said, I told her it was me. And my small group laid hands on me and prayed for healing. And I have lived with excruciating pain in my back for 15 years.

Immediately the sharp pain that would take my breath away subsided, and I have not experienced that specific pain since. Is God good?

You came to a church today that believes that God hears our prayers, and we're just kind of, we're going to pray all the time. We're going to pray at the end of our service after we adjourn, and anybody can receive prayer. We'll have prayer teams across the front here, and we'll pray for you and pray with you and stand with you and encourage you and just minister to you. And so if you need to receive something like that, by all means, come for prayer today. How can I be happy when living by faith does not seem to pay off?

That's today's installment of our how can I be happy series. I want to, before I do that, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever considered what the Bible says about the human heart?

The returns are not good. Jeremiah declared, the heart is deceitful and above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? So if you're keeping score, that's deceitful and desperately wicked. Jesus, our Lord takes it even further.

He says that we are defiled by what is inside our hearts. Matthew 1519. Our Lord says, for out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies. Christians agree with him. Yes.

Before I became a Christian, I was so filled with pride I would have said, that's true of others. It's not true of me. But when you come face to face with the living God and you receive the gospel, he humbles your heart and you go, you know what? When nobody's looking and nobody knows my thoughts, I do have thoughts of murders and adulteries and fornications and false witnesses and so on. That is exactly my resume.

And so if our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and if these things are in our hearts that Jesus says are in there, then we have a big problem, don't we? And that big problem requires a severe remedy. But the good news is the gospel's made some promises and the promise of the good news of Jesus, the promise of the gospel is that God will give us a new heart, you see, the one we were born with. And by the way, I'm not talking about the muscle that pumps blood metaphorically. Your heart is what makes you you, that inner man on the inside of you.

And we're born into this world with one that is of no value to God. But because of what Jesus did for us on the cross and because he rose from the dead, God's going to remove that old heart that was hardened against holiness, and he's going to replace it with a tender heart and with a new spirit. That's what he says in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah. And so you have a heart. You have a something on the inside of you that makes you.

You keep that in mind as I read our beatitude today. Matthew five eight. If you're ready, say yes. Early service. Awake.

Okay, good. You usually are. Matthew five eight. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Your human inclination is to read that verse the wrong way.

You'll read that verse and say, here's what God is saying to you. You better try harder. You better do better and get your heart pure, because if you don't, you'll never see God and you won't be with him. I have great news for you today. That's not what Jesus meant at all with this verse.

I've already told you that the last of the beatitudes really govern all the rest of them. And that's the one where Jesus says, blessed are you if you're persecuted for my sake and driven out and cast out from even your family. And so the idea was, Jesus says, when that happened to you in your culture in the first century in Israel, that's going to make you shamed but really, that word blessed, you can substitute it with the word honored. And Jesus says what the culture meant to do to shame you. I'm saying that if this happens to you on my account, if you're persecuted because of me, you're not shamed.

You're honored. Honored are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. So in my sermons, I normally just ask and answer questions of the text. So here's the first question we have to know. What does it mean to be pure in heart?

Well, here's what I learned. It'll be very simple today. The pure in heart are those who are inwardly clean from sin. Through faith in Jesus, they are continually aware of indwelling sin, and they actively oppose it. And so, by faith, Jesus has cleansed you.

You know that you still have the old man and the old woman inside of you, that you'll have that person until this flesh is no more, until the next world, till your body dies and God gives you a resurrected body at the end. So until then, inside of you is indwelling sin. And as a believer, you know this and you're not happy about it, and you fight for it. You oppose it. You say, I don't want that to rule my life anymore.

Somebody said, pastor, do you think I have a new relationship with God? And I would return that question with this. Well, do you have a new relationship with sin? Because when you meet Jesus, the things that your flesh loved, you now have an aversion to, and the things that your flesh hated, all the goodness of God that is repulsed by that inner man. Now you love it.

Now you love God. And so if you want to know if you have a new relationship with God, if you want to have assurance of salvation, the question is, what's your attitude towards sin? Because blessed are the pure in heart. They're the ones who are going to see God. Here's a proverb for you.

Proverbs 29. Who can say, I have made my heart clean. I am pure from my sin. Do you know what a rhetorical question is? It's a question you ask that doesn't require an answer, because the answer is obvious.

Who can say, I have made my heart clean. I am pure from my sin. The answer is, no one but Jesus. Jesus. Yes.

Isn't that the right answer?

And so this is all of us. Even if you've tried, you haven't been able to clean your heart enough before God, and you haven't been able to make yourself pure from sin. So here we are in Matthew five eight. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. It's interesting to me that in Matthew he only uses the word translated pure three times in his gospel.

The first time it shows up is right here in Matthew five eight, and the next two times it shows up is late. It's way at the end. But it's interesting how he uses the word. The word translated pure in Matthew five eight is translated clean in Matthew 23 26, where Jesus says, clean the inside of the dish, and then the outside will be clean. And then when Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus dead body off the cross and put him in his borrowed tomb, do you recall this?

He wrapped him in Matthew 27 59, he wrapped his body in a clean linen cloth, one that's never been used, one that was holy and set apart. And so in Matthew's gospel, clean means purified, and pure means cleansed. So the primary meaning, and here's what we want to know, because we're answering the question, what does it mean to be pure in heart? The primary meaning of pure in heart. Everybody look at me.

It's single minded.

Somebody said it's to be freed from the tyranny of a divided self. Pure in heart. In Matthew's gospel, the way Jesus used it means to have a singular will that means pure in heart. Everybody look is about loyalty, not morality.

Pure in heart. You got this singular focus. And the singular focus is to know and glorify God. Well, we're in bad shape. If Jesus means the pure in heart, see God.

And you better see to it that you moralize yourself that if you want to go to heaven one day, you got to get a whole lot better at living life than you are now. You better try a lot harder. You better go drum up some good works. If that's what pure in heart means, we can close the Bible and go home because none of us has a shot.

It's by grace. You've been saved through faith. It is not of yourselves. It is a gift of God. So that no.

1 may boast, you know these verses. And so Jesus can't mean that. What he means is the pure in heart have one goal, they have one purpose, they have one focus. It's loyalty to the heart of God. And I'll show you this exactly what James four eight means.

Draw near to God. Everybody say, draw near. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. It's reciprocal. It's like God wants to see.

Do you even have enough faith to take the first step? You take the first step, and I'll close the distance the rest of the way. Draw near to God. He'll draw near to you. Now you see if these next words look like our beatitude.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts. You double minded. It's the double minded that need a purified heart. In other words, it's the ones that that have it.

They've got more than one focus. Their life's going this direction and that direction. They can't decide what their main priorities are. They are double minded. One day they want to live for God, the next day they want to do what the world does.

Those are the ones that the apostle James says. James, the Lord's brother, says, purify your hearts. Your focus isn't lasered enough. So I want you to know what purified hearts means. Let me say it this way.

With a pure in heart, what you see is what you get. They have one motive for what they do, and they harbor no hidden agendas. The pure in heart are trying to climb the mountain of God. And speaking of climbing the mountain, let me ask you this question. Go back to your childhood days in school, history class, science class.

Who invented the light bulb? Just yell it out. Everybody that said, edison's wrong.

Let me clarify what that means. Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb. He perfected it. He perfected it and put it on display in 1879. But the light bulb was invented at the turn of the 19th century.

I'll give you the guy's names. Alessandro Volta in 1800 invented the first battery for light. Vasily Petrov in 1802 invented something called the electric arc that connected to Volta's battery. And it made a light, but it burned out very quickly. Humphrey Davy in 1806 made the arc light.

It was like one of the first light bulbs that shined for any amount of time, but none of them lasted. Thomas Edison said, that's not good enough. And so he began to experiment on a better filament. Do you know how many times he failed? 2774 times over 14 months.

Think about that. That's a busy dude. Over about over a year. And finally, he picked the filament that made your light bulb we're all enjoying today. That made the first incandescent light.

He finally found it and it burned for a record 14.5 hours. They came from everywhere to his laboratory called Menlo park in New Jersey to watch it burn. He climbed the mountain. Now, Thomas Edison died with 1093 patents to his name. He invented lots of things.

He invented the phonograph. He had major breakthroughs from the telegraph and so forth. But it was that light bulb that did it. It was the light bulb that he spent his time and his focus and his priority on. He climbed the mountain.

You can say that when he was inventing the filament for the light bulb, he was pure in heart. His focus was singular. Now let me show you the data in the Old Testament. Psalm 24, three, four and five. God says, you want to climb the mountain?

You want to climb my mountain? Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? Are you ready for the answer? This answer sounds a whole lot like Matthew five eight.

He who has clean hands and a what? Say it out loud. A pure heart. Clean hands and a pure heart. Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol nor sworn deceitfully, he will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from God, his savior.

Jesus surely had psalm 24 in mind when he delivered the beatitude that we're studying today, because it mentions blessing and pure heart together.

So as we're learning what it means to be pure in heart, I want you to think about this. Pure in heart points to someone who loves God with all his heart. That means his loyalty is undivided. He doesn't lift up his soul to an idol. He has no other gods but Yahweh.

He loves God with all his heart. You know what that means? That means that his inward nature corresponds with his outward confession. That means what he is on the inside shows by what he does on the outside, his external actions match his internal integrity. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from God, his savior.

You know, it's interesting. Jesus preached a sermon on the mountain to a crowd. His disciples were there, but so were other people on the mountainside. And they were not elite. They were blue collar.

They were often forgotten. They were the suffering. And Jesus looks into their eyes and he says, blessed are the pure in heart. They'll see God. And do you understand that the people that Jesus preached the sermon on the mount to are the very opposite of their own respected religious leaders?

They were living a life by faith, better than their Bible teachers. I'll prove it to you. Matthew, in his gospel, presents the Pharisees and the scribes, the Bible teachers, the religious leaders of the first century in Israel, as model citizens of an external, rule oriented purity. And that external, rule oriented purity, Jesus, not only did he reject it, he condemned it. He said, the way to God is not keeping rules.

The way to God is trusting in him. And so let me show you these are the reason that Jesus rejected and condemned this rule oriented purity is because it just masked their inner corruption. They were giving religious head fakes. When's the last time you watched a good magician up close? Do you know why a magician can blow your mind?

And what does everybody say after they see a trick? They go, how did you do that? In fact, if you're a magician, I've been reading books on magic, and I'm not any good at it, but I've got one. What I've learned is the magician just longs for that moment where they get the effect and you can't help yourself. You say, how did you do it?

Do you know that most of the tricks that you watch are just misdirection? You know what misdirection means? It means he's doing, or she's doing something to distract you and has drawn your eyes over here. And the real trick is happening over here where you're not looking, by the way. Let me just.

Let me just go down a rabbit trail just for a second. Everything you're seeing in the media today, all this nonsense on the protests on college campuses, every bit of that is a head fake. It's all misdirection. If the media and the government wants you to look at it, it's because they don't want you to see what they're really doing. Does that make sense?

Okay, look, this is what the religious leaders were doing to those who are hearing Jesus sermons in the first century. They were doing misdirection. They were, and Jesus called them hypocrites for it. Matthew 23 25. Woe to you, scribes and pharisees.

Hypocrites, because. And see if this sounds like our beatitude, because you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self indulgence. Jesus hated this nonsense, this outward rule keeping religion, because it did nothing for their hearts.

Do you realize that Jesus takes very sinful people to heaven with him?

Who else does he have to save and to choose from?

It's just the ones that his gospel convinces that they trust him. You know, the problem I have in evangelizing, especially older men, is convincing you that God's not waiting for you to get your act together.

God's not waiting for you to finish working on it. He'll change your heart, and then he'll clean you up. Jesus said to the religious leaders, you tried to clean the outside, and you left the inside undone. And that just won't do. Are you following what I'm saying at all.

Jesus connected being a hypocrite, with lots of talk about him, but no heart for him. I'll show you. Matthew 15, seven, eight. Hypocrites. Well, did Isaiah prophesy about you saying, these people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

Lot to talk about him. No heart for him. And the rabbis at the time of Jesus placed all the emphasis on everybody. Look at me. Clean hands.

The external mattered more to them. And the rabbis in Jesus day didn't teach the Bible. They taught a book about the Bible. It's called the Mishnah. It's a commentary.

All right? And in the Mishnah. And the rabbis are still teaching it today. In the Mishnah, there's an entire division on a subject titled, and it sounds weird in English, cleannesses cleans, cleaning. So on the division in the Mishnah, on cleannesses.

Listen to me. It's 200 pages long. It's divided into what they call eleven tractates. A tractate is just a long essay. 200 pages long.

Eleven long essays of the 200 pages. And they discuss how to clean things to make them acceptable to God. And the list, it discusses items like vessels or cups, tents, immersion pools. In the Mishnah. It even talks about how to clean your hands.

Nowhere in the 200 pages does it talk about how to clean your heart.

My brothers and my sisters, clean hands are not enough. They must be accompanied by a pure heart. Don't you want to climb the mountain where God is, who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Now, others may think about you, that you have real faith. You might be a very good actor or actress.

You may have the people closest to you fooled, but I want to ask you a question. What does your conscience tell you, as I've been talking about the heart being more important than the hands, what is your inner person saying as you hear these scriptures that we're reading? Friend, does your heart match your hands? Because to us, your hands look good. You have cleaned yourself up well.

You get our benefit of the doubt because. Because the Bible says that man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. He doesn't mean the outward appearance is bad. He just says it's not enough.

Let's go the other side of that. Maybe you're not trying to fool anybody. If the way that you've lived recently has dirtied your hands. And you're like, you know what? I hadn't been trying to live for God I've been living for me.

I've been doing what the world does. I've been diving in the cesspool of sinfulness and worldliness. If the way you've been living has dirtied your hands, what does that say about your heart?

What does it mean to be pure in heart? It means a singular focus on the love of God, to know him. Now the second last question. I'm almost done. What does it mean to see God?

If the pure in heart see God, what does that mean?

Well, did you know that there's a sense where seeing God with our eyes is impossible in this life? That's what the Bible says. Do you remember what the Lord said to Moses? Exodus 33 20, God said to Moses, you cannot see my face, for no man shall see me and live. Well, that's old Testament, pastor.

What about the New Testament? In the beginning of the gospel of John, the prologue, where it speaks so highly of the word, who's the Lord? Jesus. In John 118, it says, no one has ever seen God.

So if you see God and it kills you, or no one's ever seen God, how can those who are pure, how can the pure in heart ever see God? It seems like these contradict. That's a good question. There are prophetic visions elsewhere in the New Testament that inform us that seeing God will be included in the blessings of the world to come. Do you know this?

The Bible says that eventually you can. Eventually you get to see him. If you know him, only the pure in heart see him, though first. John three, two. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it's not yet been revealed what we shall be.

But we know that when he's revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. You realize that one day your eyes are going to. They're going to see the risen Jesus.

And for some that'll mean judgment, and for others it'll mean joy. We shall see him as he is. When Christ returns, we'll be changed because we will see him. Here's another thing I love about thinking about the next world. In eternity, sin will be done away with, and we will serve the Lord in heaven.

And I'm going to show you verses where at his throne, we will see his face and receive his name. You want to see those verses? Revelation 22, three, four, five. And there shall be no more curse. But the throne of God and of the lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him.

They shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there. They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. When you get to heaven, because the pure in heart see God. When you get to heaven saved person, you'll see his face and you'll get his name.

Did you catch it in verse four? They shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. I'll be forever the property of the lamb on the throne.

I want you to take this home with you. You ready? To stand in God's presence is the greatest conceivable blessing.

Not going to be on the screen. Just thought about it. Too late to get it on the screens. Luke 119.

Mary was visited by an angel. Do you remember this, yes or no? What was his name? Gabriel. Do you remember what he said his resume was?

And the angel answered and said to him, I said, this is to Joseph. This is Zechariah. Excuse me. Same angel, though. The angel answered.

And he said to him, I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings.

So what is the prerequisite for entering God's presence, friends? It's holiness.

Hebrews 1214. Pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Holiness is not inherited from christian parents. Holiness is not gained at Bible college and seminary. Holiness is not what you get when you come out of the waters of baptism.

Holiness is the possession of no man. It belongs to the thrice holy God. And if you want to get it, you must believe in Jesus. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. If you don't put your trust in Jesus, you don't get to climb the mountain.

The pure in heart are the saved.

They're the rescued. They're the redeemed. The pure in heart pass the holiness test. So they'll see God and they'll experience close friendship with him. Now I'm going to apply the message and land the plane.

Pastor, I've been walking and sometimes stumbling down the narrow road with Jesus. But, Pastor, I got to be honest. Many in my social circles are doing the opposite. They're not on the narrow road. Jesus is not important to them.

And, pastor, I got to tell you, I wouldn't say this out loud, but it looks like my friends who aren't following God are having more success than me in life. And not only that, they seem to have more joy than me. Pastor, it feels like they're winning and I'm losing. Why is that how can I be happy when living by faith doesn't seem to pay off? Because the payoff is largely reserved for the next life doesn't mean you can't win now.

Doesn't mean you can't walk under an open heaven here. It doesn't mean that your life can't rock and roll. Following Jesus, I've experienced that over and over. I've experienced more joy, and then I have suffering because of the grace of God. But I still haven't seen him with my eyes yet.

The pure in heart see God. The pure in heart see God in a way that the impure never know in this life. Galatians, chapter six, verses nine and ten. I wrote this late, too. I didn't get this in my notes.

Can I read you some bible, yes or no? Galatians six nine. Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Look, the payoff is coming for the believers. But the main thought points us surely to the new heavens and new earth, because the reward for complete and inward integrity is to see God.

So here's the question, and the answer as I close how can I be happy when living by faith doesn't seem to pay off? The answer is a pure heart is one whose singular focus is to know God. Those who know God in this way will one day see him in his kingdom.

I think that's good news.

If you are one of the pure in heart, you may not be. It's possible that you haven't trusted in Jesus yet, that you haven't come to Christ and gone from death to life. But you can believe right where you are today. You can, as best you know how, say Jesus. I've heard that if I call on your name, you'll save me from my sins.

If I cry out to you, you'll make me a Christian. If you just do that, everything changes. And God keeps his promises to as many as received him, even to those who believed in his name. He gave the right to become children of God. John 112.

Do you believe this? Receive Jesus today, the pure in heart see God.