Purity of heart is the means of seeing God

Posted on February 13, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 2 Comments

Number 10 in the Sermon on the Mount Series

At one point in Jesus’ ministry he was accused by the Pharisees of allowing his disciples to break the tradition of the elders by eating with unwashed hands. This account is recorded In Matthew 15:1-20 and Mark 7:1-23. Jesus’ response is interesting when he declares that it is not what a man eats which defiles him, but the things which come out of his mouth are evidence of the defilement that is already inside.

Jesus is telling the Pharisees (and us) that it is the defiled heart which causes the wrong behavior. The behavior is a symptom and not a cause of impurity.

It is this context which makes the sixth Beatitude in Matthew 5:8 so interesting.

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

Practical Purity

In the Israel of Jesus’ day, there were many regulations regarding external purity. The nation had food regulations, commands concerning washing, laws about touching dead bodies, ceremonial cleansings and prescribed worship. When they complied with these regulations, they could claim that they had purity in their practice, or what I would call practical purity.

Modern day legalists operate in much the same way. We can have lists of things to avoid and things to do which are used as litmus tests to determine the level of purity or spirituality. If you’ve been around the church enough, you’re bound to have run into one or more of these modern day Pharisees.

This is not the purity of which Jesus is speaking of here. External purity can be produced by those who are impure in their motives. Jesus referred to them as white washed tombs that were clean on the outside but full of dead men’s bones (Matthew 23:27).

Positional purity

The purity to which Jesus refers is positional purity, or purity that is ascribed to us by God. Jeremiah tells us in Jer. 17:9 that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” David cried out in Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God,”

We have a congenital defect, we are born with a sin nature and as A. T. Robertson tells us, “Sin befogs and beclouds the heart.” In Hebrews 12:14 we read that without purity no-one will see the Lord.

So how then can this Beatitude be fulfilled?

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that when we are in Christ, we exchange his righteousness for our sin. In other words, we trade our impurity for his purity. We are then viewed by God as being pure.

It is only after this transaction has taken place that positional purity comes to an individual heart. It is because of this positional purity of heart that we can see God.

The Promise

This is another promise that has an immediate and an ultimate fulfillment. In Ephesians 2:4-5 Paul tells us that though we started out life dead in our sins, we are made alive in Christ. Spiritually dead people cannot see or respond to God. In Christ, however, we can begin to see God in the sense that we are aware of his presence and work in our lives. This is the immediate fulfillment.

The ultimate fulfillment comes when believers stand before God. We read in 1 John 3:2–3 we will see Jesus just as he is in his entire deific splendor. We will then be fully know and be fully known by God (1 Corinthians 13:12). What a day that will be!

Until that day, we have to be satisfied with our intermediate experience of God as our down payment on the ultimate experience. When that happens, the good will be transformed into the best.

What if we lived out what we say we believe?

Posted on February 9, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

A woman beginning her ninth decade laughs when she is told that she will bear a son. Her husband is ten years her senior which adds to the seeming impossibility. In response to her laughter, God asks Abraham a question, “is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14)

Fast forward a couple of millennia. Two men are walking with a stranger who explains how the Scriptures pointed to Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. Before the stranger began his lecture he said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25). The two men should have seen it coming, but their lack of faith prevented the insight.

Since we know how these stories turned out, since we know all the details before and after these events, it is too easy for us to think that we would have responded differently. It may be different for you but I don’t think I would have.

Why would I say this? Honesty dictates that I do.

A few nights ago, we watched the movie “Not a Fan” which makes a distinction between fans of Jesus and followers of Jesus. Fans fall away at the first sign of trouble. Followers stick it out even when it is difficult. This movie is a call to radical obedience to the commands and precepts of Scripture.

A favorite quote from G. K. Chesterton comes to mind: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Why has it been left untried? Because I am slow of heart to believe the promises of Scripture. Like Sarah, I do not appropriate the fact that nothing is too hard for God.

I’m not talking (writing) about head knowledge here. Sure I acknowledge the truth that God is fully in control, I say I believe this, but do I really live it out? Sadly, I do not.

What would my life look like if I lived in the full knowledge that God is in control, that he will take care of me and I only need to be radically obedient? What would my church look like if all of us did this? What would our world look like if the Church lived this out?

The question remains, “is anything too hard for the LORD?”

Thoughts on death prompted by my dog

Posted on February 4, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

I understand that the decline and death of a dog is not a major event in the larger scheme of things. But, our 10 year old golden retriever is having health issues which may lead to his death and it is difficult to watch. Compared to the loss of a spouse, parent, sibling or child, this is a very small hurt, but a real one none-the-less.

There is something in us that balks at death and is rightly angered by it. Yet in our response, we must be careful to understand our part in the root cause of death. We, like our first parents, begin life in rebellion against God. Apart from Christ we are by nature people who choose the behavior that caused death in the first place. In Romans 8:20 Paul tells us that the creation was subjected to futility by our rebellion and that creation groans to be released from that futility.

But God, combining love and justice, opened a way for us to experience life. Jesus took death upon himself so that we might have life. Death was defeated on the Cross. In Christ we are made alive (Ephesians 2:5).

We still must face the temporal consequences of our rebellion. God, in his wisdom, has not removed the consequence of physical death. As C. S. Lewis noted, statistics prove that one out of one of us dies. While I am not anxious for my own death or the death of those I love, I do see physical death as a mercy.

In Romans 7 Paul laments his inability to conquer his sinful tendencies. If Paul could not master himself fully, it is unlikely that I will do better. We know from Scripture that we will not fully expunge sin from our lives. John tells us in 1 John 1:10 that anyone who claims he does not sin is a liar. I ask myself this question in the face of death, would I want to continue forever in this state of partial cleansing? In the absence of fear of the process of dying, the answer would be no, I would prefer to move on and be with Christ. The result of that reunion would be the removal of all trace of sin in my life.

So while we must experience the physical deaths of friends and relatives, in Christ we have the hope of future reunion. While the pain of separation and the suffering leading up to death are very real, the sting is reduced for those who are in Christ.

I find comfort in worship of a God who wept at the grave of a friend, who understands that death and dying did not have to be. We have a God who grieves alongside us in the small hurts and the large. Pain, suffering and death did not have to be and Jesus experienced all these in his Earthly life. As one who has been through the pain, Jesus can connect with my experience and show me hope that I will emerge the better for it.

I will close with Hebrews 4:15–16 from the Amplified Bible:

15 For we do not have a High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning.

16 Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God’s unmerited favor to us sinners), that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find grace to help in good time for every need [appropriate help and well-timed help, coming just when we need it].

Thank God that we don’t have to go it alone.

The temptation of anger in response to militant atheism

Posted on February 1, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre 26 Comments

In Rhode Island, Jessica Ahlquist has been the front for a lawsuit against her school district. The result of the lawsuit is that the school must remove the School Prayer
from their walls. It is also reported that threats have been made against the girl and she has been the target of verbal abuse. A photo of the prayer pulled from the linked article is shown at right.

I understand the anger at and frustration with a court system which is increasingly opposed to Christianity. I understand how difficult it is to see a militant minority run roughshod over what has been the foundation of our culture for over 200 years. So I get the anger and the desire to lash out.

I feel the need to remind myself and others of a few things in response to this.

James reminds us that we are to be “slow to anger” because “the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” (James 1:19-20) Nothing of eternal value will result in responding in anger.
Matthew 22:39 tells us that the second great command is to love our neighbor. Jesus used the story of the Good Samaritan to illustrate who our neighbor is. This girl in Rhode Island is our neighbor and we are commanded to love her.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:1 that apart from Christ we are spiritually dead. We should not be surprised when spiritually dead people make spiritually dead choices.

Certainly threats and abuse toward Jessica are the wrong response on both a practical and a moral level. They accomplish nothing of temporal or eternal value.

The response of the Apostle Paul when he encountered the paganism of the Athenians is instructive here. Luke records in Acts 17:16 that Paul was provoked by the city full of idols. He was not provoked into anger, but provoked to respond with a defense of Christianity and a presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

God changes people from the inside. It is of little use for us to force change from the outside. So to do legal battle over a prayer on the wall seems like a futile effort.

We should, however, take events like this as a wakeup call. Parts of the church have engaged with the culture to the extent that their form of Christianity is almost indistinguishable from the society around it. Other parts of the church have so disengaged from the culture making themselves doctrinally pure, but irrelevant. Neither extreme puts the church in position to be effective in making disciples, the mission given to the church by Jesus.

If we live out the two great commands to love God and our neighbors, if we do this well, then we can trust that God will change us and he will use us to change our culture. Jessica needs God’s love and she needs our love, not our anger. She has plenty of that already.