Blessed are the Pure in Heart

Morning, Church. How are you? Morning. I heard it. Great over here.

That was the right response. There are a lot of good responses, but great was a great one. How many of you have been to a museum in the past six months, like an art museum? Have any of you done that? A couple of you.

Look at that. You cultured people. You're awesome. I had the opportunity to go to two incredible museums last fall. One in Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and one in Chicago, the Art Institute.

Has anybody been to those before? If you have not, you should be. Linda did. She's our resident scholar there. I had two distinct trips that were unique, and both of them had incredible museum moments.

One of those trips was with my wife for her 41st birthday and kind of a delayed 20th anniversary trip. We went to Chicago. We'd always wanted to go mainly for food, but here and there, other things. When we got there, we got off the plane and we immediately went to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is an incredible museum. And my wife has an inner artist.

Some of you know it, some of you don't know it, but we. Some pictures from some things. This is Picasso. You've seen this, right? An art class, if not somewhere in life.

Picasso, Cezanne. There. There's. Give me some more. There's Monet.

This is my wife's favorite. We've seen Monet in different museums around the world, and they're all over our house. But she's the person who can stand and just stare into a painting and just, like, live there. I kind of look at it. I go, that's nice.

It's a lily pad. What's next? It's another lily pad. Okay, what's next? It's another lily pad.

There we go. But she just drinks it in. This next one's kind of cool. Georgia o' Keeffe isn't even, like, in an exhibit room. She's just decorating the stairwell, which is amazing to think about.

And this is a massive painting that looks small from this angle, but just beautiful works of art. Great trip with my wife. Beautiful things that we saw. And then I also had a trip with my brother to Philadelphia. I've never done, like, a trip with my brother before.

We realized that as adults, we're only together when our families are together for holidays. And we said, well, what would it be like for us to go away for a weekend? So we went to Philadelphia and we saw the Sixers play. We got cheesesteaks and, you know, two dudes. What do you do?

You go to a museum, but let's be honest. It's where the Rocky statue is. So we went and we stood in line for like an hour to get a picture with the Rocky statue. Which was our favorite movie as kids together growing up was Rocky. And we ran the steps and then we got in into the museum.

And I, you know, my brother doesn't have the inner artist that Lindsey does. And I didn't know how long would we be here? But that's him in the corner there, kind of hanging out. And we just stayed and we stayed and we went from section to section. We started with, like, armory and swords and ancient warfare kind of stuff.

Then we moved from section to section, and we just were transfixed by the things that we saw. The colors and the movement, the lines, the beauty and the detail. And that's because it's always been true that when you see something beautiful, it has the power to transfix you. And not only that, it also can begin to transform you. And something we talk a lot about here as a church is how we become like what we behold.

Have you heard me say that before we become like what we behold? I want you to hear Psalm 27, verse 4. David, the Psalmist says, one thing I have asked from the Lord, and it's one thing. And it's not, can you give me a new car? Can you give me a new job?

I need a new girlfriend, you know, can you make me. Well, can you make my financial problems go away, which are all fine things to pray for. You can pray for the those things. Because there's one thing that I really want, one thing that I would seek, and it's that I would dwell in the house of the Lord. And he's talking about in his day, the temple.

The temple was the place where heaven met earth. It's the place where God resided with mankind. It's the place where you could go and be with God and behold his glory. And he says one thing I ask, God wants to be with us. He goes, that I could just be with you, fully present with you, that I could behold the beauty of the Lord and meditate in his temple.

I read that, and it's made me wonder how often my prayer life and your prayer life is like this. Like, how often are we in prayer going, God, I just want to seek you. I want to seek you and find you and know you and behold your glory and behold your beauty. Even as a guy, for some reason, when I see the word beauty, there, some Something in me goes, can I change that to a different translation? It feels weird to me.

I don't know, maybe it's too much of, like, 1980s manhood in me, right? But I go, how often do I pray? God, I just want to dwell in your beauty and your goodness and your glory. I just want to. I want to be near you and I want to gaze upon you.

You remember the Acts prayer? Did you ever learn that? When I was a kid, this is what I learned. Adoration, confession, Thanksgiving, supplication. Remember the Axe prayer?

I was taught to pray that way as a teenager, and I've thought about it a lot in my life. I'm a lot more prone to pray the prayer, which is the confession. I'm good at that. I know all the things I've done wrong. Thanksgiving, my mom taught me how to say thank you.

Supplication. I'm really good at saying, God, can you give me this? Will you do this for me? Will you help me? But where I really do struggle is sitting in adoration of God.

And probably it's because I don't spend enough time being able to focus on God. We struggle with focus in our day. We struggle to focus upon one thing at any time, especially God. Just to focus upon his beauty and his glory, just to gaze upon Him. The psalmist says, all I want to do is to gaze upon you and behold your beauty.

To worship God for who he is, not just for what he does. I mean, as people, that's what we would all want, too. We don't like it when people use us just for what we do for them. We want people to know us for us and to love us for us. Right?

How much more deserving is God of our full attention and our adoration?

Psalmist says, I desire to gaze upon your beauty. Where's your gaze this morning? Where's your gaze when you get up tomorrow morning? And where are you seeking satisfaction and peace and healing and wholeness in your life? Something happens when we gaze upon the Lord.

When we really get a glimpse of God, it transfixes us. It has the ability to transform us. We want to become beautiful in the way that he is beautiful in the midst of an ugly world. We want to be more like Him. In the midst of all the chaos and the craziness that we're seeing through the week, we become like what we behold.

Listen, if you behold the news all the time, you're going to become something. If you behold the news, you're going to become anxious and critical more and more in your spirit. If you are beholding the way People are treating people all of the time. You're probably going to be filled with insecurity or you're going to become full of pride. If you're constantly beholding all of the stuff that other people have that you want, you're going to become covetous.

That's what basically most of our social media feeds are. It's beholding what everyone else has that I don't have and I want, and I become covetous because of it. But if I'm beholding the Lord and his beauty, beauty and his goodness and his glory, he unlocks the power to transform us from the inside out. What's it look like? I want you to hear this.

This is the message paraphrase of one of my favorite passages in Second Corinthians 3. Peterson, he writes it this way. He says, whenever they turn, whenever people turn to face God, as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are, face to face. And he's looking back to the time in the Old Testament where Moses would meet in this holy place on Mount Sinai with God, and he would behold the glory of the Lord, not the full glory. God said, you can't handle.

You can't handle the full glory, but I'll put you in the cleft of a rock, and as my glory passes by, you'll see it. But Moses would meet with God in this unique way, and he would behold his glory. And he was so changed. In the midst of being in the wilderness, in the midst of having a people who were rebellious, in the midst of people who were becoming disloyal to him, he would go away with God, and he would gaze upon his beauty, and he would become changed when he was with God. So much so that even had a physical change on.

On Moses. And the people were freaked out by it. And so he would wear a veil over his face so they wouldn't see this guy has been God, been with God in such a way that it's freaking us out right now. And here in Second Corinthians, whenever people turn to face God, as Moses did, God removes the veil. And there they are, face to face.

And they suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living spirit, that old constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free from it, all of us. Nothing is between us and God. Our faces are shining with the brightness of his face.

And so we are transfigured, much like our Messiah. And you think about Matthew 17 when Jesus went up to that hill with Peter, James and John, and for just a moment, they got a unique experience with Jesus where his humanity was peeled to see and what they saw was glory. And they said, this is so good. We just want to stay here. We don't want to go anywhere else ever again.

Let's just stay here. And the author here, Paul in Second Corinthians says, we are like that. We're transfigured like the Messiah. And our lives are gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him, we behold like what we become. How do we see God then?

How do we do that? That's something we would want. How do we see God? Well, Second Corinthians 4 says, For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, and he's calling back to Genesis. In the beginning, God said, let there be light.

For God, who called light to shine out of darkness, is the one who is shown into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Christ. If you want to know what God looks like, you focus on Jesus. You. You look to Jesus. The Bible in John 1:14 says, he's full of grace.

He's full of truth. 100%. 100% and no compromise. It's not 50, 50. He's always full of grace.

He was always full of truth. And in him we beheld the glory of God. John 1:14 says, if you want to know what Jesus, what God is like, you look at Jesus, you look at his life, you look at his teaching, you look to him and ask him to show Himself to. To you. And it's about knowing him for who he really is and experiencing him for who he really is.

If you want to know what God is like, you look to Jesus and he begins to open your eyes. It's about where you place your gaze. It's about where you're seeking satisfaction. Now turn in your Bible to Matthew, chapter five, because we are still in the Sermon on the Mount. We are still in the Beatitudes.

It's my long way of getting to this particular Beatitude. We've been through five of them so far. And Jesus is teaching about what the blessed life or the happy life looks like. And over and over again, he says, it's not about outward circumstances that make us happy. It's not about gazing upon this desired thing or this ambition that I have or this vacation that I want so that I could be happy, or this relationship that would just.

I'd be Happy. I'd feel blessed if this worked out. But Jesus says over and over, it's about this inner delight that he is making possible in people. And when he gives this inner delight, begins to, like a root, begin to grow up and produce fruit in a person's life. And in Matthew 5, verse 8, Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. God wants to be seen. He doesn't desire to hide from you. He wants to be seen and known and enjoyed and delighted in God wants you to see him. Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

A part of you being happy is you being rooted in a pure heart so that you can see God for all that he is worth and all that he is to be delighted in him more than any other thing. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. There's a problem though. Problem is I'm not pure in heart. Is that a big problem or a small problem to very, very big problem.

I'm not pure in heart. That means I can never be happy. I can never be satisfied. And I've tried everything to be satisfied. I can never be content because I'm not pure at heart.

And blessed are the pure in heart. That's who will see God. This isn't just the Kevin problem, though. The Bible says this is a problem that everyone deals with. Proverbs 20, verse 9 says, who could ever say, I've kept my heart pure and I'm clean without sin.

Go ahead and raise your hand. I mean, if you're the exception to the rule. Who could ever say I'm pure at heart? Jeremiah 17:9. The heart is more deceitful.

This is why the heart's more deceitful than all else. It's desperately sick. Who could even understand what's going on in their heart, right? Psalm 24 says, who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?

Here's the answer. He who has clean hands and a pure heart. And you can see what David means by a few a pure heart. In the next few words he says, the one who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully. In other words, a pure heart is the person who is is integrally honest.

They're honest with himself about the condition of their heart, what's there and what's not there, and what they love and what their affection is placed upon. And the one who is not deceitful and let me give you a definition for deceit. Deceit is, is what you do when you will two things and not one thing. And what I mean is, it's like when you go, what I really want, what I really will is this, but I want people to think that I will this. Right?

That's willing. Two things and not one thing. And Psalm 24 tells us what the one thing is that brings satisfaction. Verse six, he says, it's those who seek God who seek his face. Jesus says, you can't have satisfaction and, and inner abundance until you're seeking the one thing.

And the one thing is that you're seeking the Lord. James 4, 8 says the same thing in the New Testament. It says, draw near to God and he'll draw near to you. And it says, cleanse your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts, you double minded. And just like Psalm 24, there's clean hands and pure heart.

This word just stands out for me. The way James describes it, he says, you are double minded. You can't be double minded and expect to be satisfied. You can't have it with mixed motives. You can't have it both ways.

You can't expect to seek satisfaction in the things of this world and also have satisfaction ultimately and completely in the Lord. Right? You can't go, I want to be ultimately just close to you, God, I want to know you, I want to love you, but I want all of this stuff. And I'll only be happy when I get these things, when these conditions are right. My life.

James says a couple verses back, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God? You can't be double minded. Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And James wasn't taking liberty in coming up with this idea. He was talking about what his brother Jesus said.

Jesus said, you can't serve two masters. Remember this. Either you love one and hate the other. You'll hate the one and you'll love the other. You can't go two directions at the time.

Same, same time. It's like the wife who has a husband and a boyfriend. It's not going to work. Some point, there's a collision course and you will not be satisfied and you will only bring about destruction on yourself. You can't live in close fellowship with God and expect to chase satisfaction and have an aim on satisfaction in this world.

And truth is, on my best day, I'm not pure at heart. And on your best day you are not pure at heart. And there's only one way that you and I, who are not pure in heart, can become pure in heart. And it's not by our efforts and it's not by our performance that we might achieve it, but it's by another's efforts and another's performance. It's by what Jesus has done.

It's by Jesus leaving heaven and coming to earth and living a sinless life, always walking in the will of His Father, always gazing upon his beauty, walking in a life of integrity and then being penalized and paying the price for our sins. It's only by his efforts and by his will and by his achievement that we can become pure at heart. Ultimately. How can we become pure at heart? Well, become pure at heart by grace.

It's a gift that he offers and that he gives to us. We become pure at heart only by the grace of Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, the prophets were dying for the day. They were begging and pleading. They were longing for the day that God would give grace when they saw their people in the cyclical pattern of sin.

Like, God, we love you. God, we love you. God, we're gonna do whatever we want to do. God, we love you. God, we God, we're gonna do whatever you want to do.

Listen, this is just free. This is just a random memory that popped up. A Christian author last year was recording her voice for the entire Bible. And I saw her post a video this week, and she said that she had audio engineers. You saw this.

I see people nodding. Audio engineers who were sitting in the studio who were not necessarily Christians, who were reading every word of the Bible, recording every word of the Bible. And she would go into each session just praying, lord, by your word would you change their minds and hearts? She was with this one audio engineer through the prophets, and she had to go back and rerecord Genesis. And that same audio engineer, she said, what did you think last time?

He said, well, it seems like that these people just keeps doing. Doing the same stupid stuff. She goes, yeah, that's right. And I think today you're going to see probably the reason why. And they went back and read Genesis.

End of story. Just the reading of Scripture, not preaching even, just the reading of Scripture led him to come to the Lord and find joy in life in him. Isn't that cool? That's free. Okay, come back to this.

The people of Israel are in the cyclical loop. We're love you, God. We're going to go our own way over and over again. But the. They saw it and they Longed for the day that God would give grace.

And so, like you. Look at you. Look at Ezekiel. He goes, God, you gave me this promise. I just want to cling to it.

God, you said, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I'll give you a new heart. This is what it looks like when you become transfixed on God and he begins to transform you. I'll give you a new heart.

I'll put a new spirit in you. I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh. I'll give you a heart of flesh. And he clinged to this. Ezekiel says, lord, bring the day.

Clean hands, pure heart. We need it. Jeremiah held onto it. Behold, the days are coming. God said, I will put my law within my people, and on their heart I'll write it.

I'll be their God, they'll be my people. I'll forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more about David. King David. David knew that he didn't have a pure heart.

David knew that. He knew he was poor in spirit, that there was no good thing in him. He was spiritually bankrupt without the grace of God. He cried out. He grieved his sin.

He said, God, I need your help. He said, give me a clean hand. Give me a pure heart. Make your joy come alive in me. In Psalm 51.

How do we become pure in heart? Grace? It's a grace of God only that is received when we trust in Jesus Christ. How is grace given? It's given by Jesus.

When I am poor in spirit, when I come to the end of myself, of all my attempting to achieve, improve and earn and gather. When I quit trying all of the other things for satisfaction, and I realize I got nothing, when I begin to grieve that I got nothing. And I call out, God, I need your help. I need you. I place my life under your control.

That's when I receive his comfort through comfort of his mercy, the comfort of his grace. And he does in me something I could never do in myself. He makes my heart pure. What could wash away our sin? Remember the hymn, Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.

What could make me pure again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. It's not a song. It's the truth. First, John, if we confess our sins, Jesus is faithful.

He's righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He can restore all of the broken things in our lives. He wishes to do so. He wishes to put us in a situation where we can come close to God. We can be near Him.

We can be in his presence. We can made pure through faith in Jesus. Now, does pure mean perfect in this sense? Think about that for a second. Does him making my heart pure mean that I am perfect?

No. And Jesus will say that your righteousness has to exceed that of the Pharisees later. But that's not something that you can do. Remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to what completion or perfection? He will make it perfect.

He who makes your heart pure is the One who will make it perfect. The aim of the pure in heart. This is our aim. If he's made your heart pure, if you have rested in him, your aim is to be satisfied in him alone. To cut off every single thing that you've been seeking satisfaction in apart from Him.

To be satisfied in him alone. To be aligned with his truth alone. Not a little bit of his truth and a little bit of philosophy. To be fully consumed with magnifying his worth, not your worth. If you want to be pure in heart, it means more than just in your feelings, right?

It means more than being in your bag of emotions. If you want to be pure in heart, you're pure in aim. Your will, your mind, your affections, your directions of your life are set upon Him. That's how you gaze upon the Lord in His temple and his dwelling place. That's how you behold his beauty.

It's no, I'm living on coffee and you know a little bit of Jesus. It doesn't work that way. Martyn Lloyd Jones said, blessed are those who are pure not only on the surface, but in the very center of their being and at the source of every activity of everything in your life. What are we to do? We're to fall on Jesus and everything.

We're to fall on his grace in everything. Every morning we wake, we get up and we fall on his grace. Every morning we depend on his grace. Every morning. Morning.

Every morning we look to Christ. Every morning we gaze upon his beauty. Every morning we gaze upon his wonderful words. We dwell with his goodness by His Holy Spirit. Every day we fall upon Him.

It's him that has made us well. And we realize that we cannot experience anything good on our own. And we realize that this is the desire of his heart. Did you realize that that's what Jesus wants for you to see him, to delight in him, to enjoy him and. And to be satisfied in Him.

Jesus was talking to the disciples. And he said, I want you to abide in me and I'm going to abide in you. When you abide in me and I abide in you, I'm going to bear up fruit in your life. And ultimately, what's that going to look like? I want my contagious joy to be in your life and I want your joy to be full.

That's what Jesus wants for you.

Do you receive that? That's what Jesus wants for you? It's not, I want you to live under my control. He's like, I want you to live under my control so that you can have joy. I give life.

There's an enemy who steals, kills and destroys every good thing. But I came to give you abundant life. And it's marked distinctly by my joy. So next question. Is seeing God the prerequisite or is it the products?

All right, because which comes first? You said I have to see God in order to be made pure at heart. But if I'm not pure at heart, I can't see God. Which comes first? Is it a prerequisite or is it the product?

And the answer is, like chicken and egg, it's yes. Salvation and satisfaction come by beholding the Lord. It's all wrapped up in Him. The alpha and omega, the beginning, the end. Salvation itself and satisfaction come by beholding the Lord.

It starts with seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ that causes us to fall in love with God and to fall out of love with everything else. It's seeing Jesus standing above all other things. That he is Lord of Lords and King of kings. That he's really the good one. He's the all powerful one.

He's the only one. So we fall before him. We lay our lives down and we wrap our lives up. We him and we go. I want nothing other than life with you.

And that's salvation. But when we begin to walk in him and he's made our heart pure, now that pure heart can see better because purity leads to clarity. Does that make sense? Purity leads to clarity. Pure hearts can see even more the value of his worth.

Pure hearts can see even more the wonder of his works and of his love. Think about this. The more you walk with the Lord, the more clear, clearly you can see how good he is. Isn't that true? And the more you look at other things, the more cloudy your vision gets.

Imagine this. Imagine you have a boss who is very vain and very shallow. Patrick, put your hand down. Imagine you have a boss who is only fixated on Physical things, loves to surround himself with pretty things, shiny things, attractive employees, and is in hiring season and is looking at a couple of candidates. And you've been paying attention and you know that there are a couple of candidates in the.

The first candidate is very qualified, both in, like, knowledge and in experience. And you go, this would be a great addition to our team. And then there's a second candidate that is very attractive, you know, very good looking, well dressed, charismatic, very confident, but dumb as a door knob, Right? And you know it. Everyone at the company can see it.

There's one real candidate and one joker. But your boss is so vain and so shallow and full of lust and impurity that his eyes are clouded. And who's he gonna hire? He's gonna hire this pretty, shiny thing and not the one who's qualified. That's not the only time it happened at work.

It happened in the Old Testament when Samuel was sent to anoint David as the future king. Do you remember this? Samuel was sent by God to anoint the future king. And he goes out looking amongst this family and he sees all these brothers lined up. He's like, there's the tall one and there's the broad one and there's the really attractive one.

And he can't see the young little shepherd boy, David, who God had chosen to be king because he was always fixated on what looked kingly. And God said, that's not the way that I look. In fact, he said, you look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart. What you look at affects your ability to perceive God and to know his will. Whatever you're placing your eyes on all the time truly affects the way that you perceive God and what his will is.

And there are times when we feel like God is far from us. Maybe God doesn't care. Or we go, God, I don't know what your will is. And it's not because there's a darkness in him. It's because we've allowed other things to fill our minds.

Because our eyes are the window to the what? To the heart. And the things that we are gazing upon allows things to enter into our heart. And our heart becomes full of those things and clouds our vision. And we're going.

Sometimes we're just so frustrated. God, where are you right now? God, what do you want from me? What am I supposed to do? Do I go this way or this way?

Which way do I go? The darkness isn't in him. It's in our hearts. When we've allowed other things to enter in there. Think about this.

Before you were a Christian, for those of you who are, you had thoughts about God. And maybe some were rightish and maybe some were very, very wrong. Ish. But you had thoughts about God. But when you depended upon Christ and became a Christian, you begin to see things more clearly.

Isn't that true? And then in seasons, when you began to kind of walk away from the Lord, maybe not overtly, maybe you weren't like, oh, I reject God, but you're like, I'm just really busy at work right now, or I just got to get to this next goal, or I've just got to focus on this relationship. And you took your eyes off the Lord and you focused on these things. What happened? More and more your eyes were clouded to the truth about God's nearness and his care and his love for you and that he does have a will and a plan for you.

It became harder to see those things because you weren't looking at him, you were looking at other stuff. But in seasons, when you came back and you were looking close at God, it became clear again. I can see clearly now. I'm not going to sing that song right now.

Single mindedness, purity of heart leads to clarity. Cannot serve two masters. Watch out, you double minded. Give us clean hands and pure hearts. Those who are not deceitful, who are not trying to will two things at the same time.

Single mindedness leads to clarity. I told the students this last night. Last night, last Sunday night. And hang out with the students last night. Hang out with the students last Sunday night that Jesus prayed for them.

Did you know Jesus prayed for you in John 17 like he prayed for you. He didn't just. He said, I pray for all my followers, but all who will come to follow me. There's a lot of things he could have prayed. I love that he prayed this.

Father, I ask for those whom you've given me that they would be with me. And why? So that they might see me.

God, there's so many things that I desire for these. What I desire is that they would be with me. And that they would be with me. They would be able to see me. And why?

Because I am the greatest glory in the universe. And I desire that they would be satisfied by the greatest glory in the universe. And I don't want their eyes full of other things. Because then they would be denied their greatest joy. They would be denied their greatest satisfaction.

They could never be happy if they were apart from me and could not see me. So God, Father in heaven, I pray this one thing for all who would follow after me. That they would be with me in such a way that they could see my glory. And that all the desires of their heart would be satisfied, completely satisfied in me. Blessed are the pure in heart.

For the pure heart will see God. One author said, the impure are neither granted admittance to his presence, nor are they awed by the glory of his holiness. Nor are they comforted by his grace, which is devastating news to every one of us. So much so that the disciples knew it. They felt the gravity of it.

They said, then who could be saved? And Jesus answered and said, with people this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. He creates a purity in us, for us and in us that we might pursue greater purity and clarity in Him. He gives a pure heart that we might long to know and chase and love him with all of our days.

And he puts a purity in our hearts that our one aim may be treasuring Christ above all things. Walking in his ways and not trusting in my own. He does that. The pure in heart will see God. When we see him, we become transfixed.

And that transfixing allows us to begin to be transformed. How many of you have ever tried to take a big family photo and it just was not working out?

You know, you get your family together and it's not working out because everybody brings their own attitude to the picture. And you've seen some of the funny pictures where, you know, brother and sister are, like, strangling each other and mom is yelling and dad is waving his fist or he's bored, like, looking like this one kid's got a finger up the nose. Because everybody brings their attitude to the picture. I was thinking about that this week, how when Jesus was sitting down, Sermon on the Mount, he would have been sitting rabbi's posture. And the disciples would have been gathered close around him.

But they weren't the only ones. There were lots of groups of people bringing their own attitude to the picture. And there were at least three different groups. There were the devoted, and that's the disciples who had come close and they're leaning in. They want to gaze upon his beauty.

They want to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And when Jesus was with them, he's where heaven met earth.

There we go. He's where they wanted to be. Good news is by faith in Jesus, heaven and earth meets in us. The devoted wanted to be where he was. We just want to gaze upon your beauty.

We want to know your worth. We want more further up and further and there's a second group, and those are the deciding. That's the crowd of people, the crowd who are kind of looking at each other, going, I don't know. What do you think about Jesus? I don't know.

Sounds like a good guy. Or he did some good things and they're all trying to decide about him. And then there's the distant crowd, that's the Pharisees, who are going, I don't need anything at this Jesus guy. I don't want anything. I'm fine on my own.

I don't need him in my life. Well, as this morning, like, we probably have all three of those groups here also. We have the devoted, we have the deciding, and we have the distant. And as I came to this beatitude this morning, it was one in which I didn't feel like I could go. Let me give you three points of what you should do this week.

And you become more pure in heart. I mean, it's one point. Let's make it your aim to see Jesus. And there's no end to his beauty. There's no end to his glory and no end to his worth.

The one aim is to see Jesus. So I wanted to make some room this morning in the chaos and busyness of your life, for you to pause and just seek Him. And it's my prayer that you would seek him and that you would find him, and that you would see his beauty and it would draw you further up and further in that he'd give you a pure heart. He'd give you a desire to have a perfect heart, right? To be beautiful as he's beautiful.

The myths of an ugly world. If you would, for just a moment, bow your heads, close your eyes, and I'm gonna, from my seat, be praying for three groups, maybe praying for some of you that like Genesis 3, verse 7. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, their eyes were opened and they saw they were naked. I pray that there are some of you this morning who come. And as you begin to seek the Lord, your eyes would be open, open by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And you would see that you are naked apart from Christ, that you need to be clothed with Christ, as the New Testament says that you would seek him and you would find him, you would know him and you would love Him. Praying for a second group, like Matthew 6:22, you'd be reminded that the eye is the lamp of the body.

Maybe you're still deciding, but Jesus would be bright and he would bring light to the whole body, to the whole life as you see him this morning. And for a third group, I pray that, as Ephesians 1:18 says, that the eyes of your heart would be opened, because maybe you've placed your faith in Jesus. But if we're honest, you have more than one will in your life, and that you would be overcome by the power of the hope and the riches that he has placed within you. The eyes of your heart would be open, and you wouldn't glance briefly, like looking at a painting on a wall, and said, oh, it's a lily pad. But you would see the intent and the creativity and the care that Jesus has for your life and all that he has placed within you.

And so take the next few moments. I'm going to go to my seat and be praying for you. Pray that you will seek him and that you will find Him.