Heart = Physical heart (the organ)
 
• Your heart is directly linked to your life
• If your heart is not right you will face death.
 
Proverbs 4:23 -
Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.
 
Jeremiah 11:20
But, O LORD Almighty, you who judge righteously and test the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause
 
Revelations 2:23
I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will
repay each of you according to your deeds.
 
 
God watches the heart, not your outwardly actions
 
Heart includes intellect, emotion and will. Total character of man.
 
But here is a problem….
 
Jeremiah 17:9 -
"The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?
 
If all the sources of your life come from the heart, but the bible also says that the human heart is the most deceitful
of all things, what does that mean? It means we're dead.
 
Which is why Paul says we're dead in our sins and transgressions.
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Then what does Jesus mean when he says blessed are the pure in heart?
 
Pure means "clean", "spotless" in the dictionary…
 
Is that what the bible means by pure in heart?  Is this possible for you?  Even Paul couldn't do it -
James 4:6
 
6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts,
you double-minded.
9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
 
 
The impure heart is a divided heart.
 
Divided between what? God and me.
9 Grieve, mourn and wail.
Everybody in this world wants to be joyful and having fun by worshipping themselves but James says you have to
humble yourselves and grieve, mourn and wail. Why? Because this is how you purify yourself. This is the same as
the sermon on the mount where Jesus says blessed are those who mourn.
 
This is an issue of Arrogance before God - lifting ourselves above at the same level as God and above God.
 
You cannot serve two masters like Jesus said. That's the impure heart that Jesus is talking about. And that is the
state of you and me in front of God's wrath. We all do this. We serve either God or the devil.
 
What this means is that children of God will absolutely be led by God's grace to be someone who ONLY depends on
God, who ONLY gives their hearts to God.
 
In other words if you belong to God, then He will start to take away all your love of your self, and all your reliance on
yourself, and all the things you love other than God.
 
Romans 1:28
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved
mind, to do what ought not to be done.
 
Our hearts need to be in God to be a living being. Your heart needs to be conquered by God to be living. There are
people who do not want to have God in their hearts, and rather fill that with themselves in their hearts - that's what a
"depraved mind" is, a "depraved heart". That is a dead heart.
 
This verse says that it is a curse by God to just let you keep having your heart filled with yourself - then a blessing from
God would entail a changing of the heart to be filled with God. One heart for God. Not a divided heart.
This is in order to give life to us!
This process involves making you let go of all your selfish nature - this is very painful.
This is not something you can do yourself, but something God has to do himself.
 
But this is hard… which is why it says blessed are those who mourn, grieve and wail.
 
God does this himself and it manifests itself as a purifying of our hearts - more and more he will make us let go.
But it's like your flesh being cut and taken out… initially the pain is great… like withdrawal symptoms from addiction.
 
 
To those God has gifted faith, God will also make them pray "God please give me a pure heart for you.
Please cut off all these things that I have to cut off before you"
 
 
James 1 - James calls the double-minded ones as "doubters" and the purified, single hearted ones as "believers".
6 But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea,
blown and tossed by the wind.
 
Peter - Matthew 14:28
 
 
So as God takes all the believers' focus away from worshipping themselves, he makes them focus on him more and
more. Because he's all they can depend on. As he does that, they begin to see that all the realities of their lives are
within God's grace to cut off the desires of their divided hearts, and to make a pure heart. Though this may be painful,
the believer will see the work of God in all their realities - this is what it means to "Blesses are the pure in heart for
they will see God"
 
 
You should not sit here and think "how do I purify my heart?"
 
It is He who does it.
 
Ezekiel 36:17:
 
17 “Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their
actions. Their conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness in my sight.
18 So I poured out my wrath on them because they had shed blood in the land and because they had defiled it with
their idols.
19 I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered through the countries; I judged them according to
their conduct and their actions.
20 And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, ‘These are the
Lord’s people, and yet they had to leave his land.’
21 I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone.
22 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, O house of
Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the
nations where you have gone.
23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have
profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show
myself holy through you before their eyes.
24 "For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all
your idols.
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
28 You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God.
29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine
upon you.
 
Purify with what? The blood of Jesus Christ
 
This is what "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God".  Those who treat God like God, and not themselves
as God. He will make that happen in the believer's life, and for that the believer will go through cutting off from the
world. Which is why the life of the believer will involve mourning, grieving and wailing, poor in spirit. Hunger and thirst.
 
Proverbs 20:9
Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?
 
 
This is God saying "which of you can claim to be pure of yourself? No one!"
 
See how also the pure heart is linked to being clean and without sin?
 
Hebrews 9:13
13 The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify
them so that they are outwardly clean.
14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God,
cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
 
 
Pure in heart means - the reality of a believer in coming to depend more and more on ONLY the blood of Christ.
 
Jesus is the only one who was ever truly pure.
 
• He did not have two minds
• He went straight for the will of His Father only
• He only looked at one way - God's glory
• That's a pure heart.
• Even on the cross he saw the wisdom, glory, mercy, love, justice of His Father.
 
John 14:9
 
Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has
seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
 
 
Pure heart is to rely only on Jesus. Seeing Jesus is seeing the father.
 
Is this taking place in your life?