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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
Kerry Duke: Hi, I'm Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
In Matthew chapter 5, verse 8, Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” We look for things that are pure in life. We talk about pure gold or pure silver. We read a sign that talks about 100 percent pure orange juice or grape juice. We don't want anything else to be mixed in. We don't like for things to be watered down because that weakens it or it cheapens it.
This is what God looks for in us. God wants us to have hearts that are pure. God wants us to be genuine and sincere—without hypocrisy, without ulterior motives, without mixed feelings, without confused priorities—just pure, simple, childlike faith. And what could be purer than a child's love? That's why Jesus said in Matthew chapter 18, verses 3 and 4, that unless you are converted and become like a little child, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. You have to humble yourself, He said in verse four, in order to get into the kingdom of heaven.
You see, the Sermon on the Mount is about the kingdom of heaven. It tells us how to live as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. It tells us how to have a pure life. But before we can have a pure life, we have to have a pure heart.
That is what these Beatitudes are all about. Jesus begins by telling us how to get our hearts right and that we must have our hearts right to get into the kingdom of heaven and to stay in the kingdom of heaven. It all begins in the heart. The Bible says in Proverbs 23 verse 7, “As he thinks in his heart, so is he.” In Matthew chapter 12 verse 34, Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” So we have to focus on the heart first if we're going to do right and be right in God's kingdom.
God loves to see a soul that's pure and sincere and genuine like Timothy. Do you remember what Paul said about Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 5? He said, “When I called to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.” Timothy's grandmother was sincere. She was not a hypocrite. She was not halfhearted. She was very genuine. His mother was a very genuine woman. And Timothy followed suit. You have three generations of very sincere, committed people here in their spiritual life. Timothy was a very honest and a very genuine person.
As a matter of fact, here’s what Paul said about him in Philippians chapter two, verse 20. He said, “I have no man like minded who will naturally care for your state.” Paul said, I don't have anybody else like Timothy. Now Paul was acquainted with a lot of Christians, but he said I don't know of anybody like him. I don't have anybody available, at least at this point, to send there to Philippi who will naturally, that is, who will genuinely, be concerned about your spiritual condition. Timothy was an exceptional man in a lot of ways, but one of those was the fact that he was very sincere.
Nathanael in the Bible was a very genuine man. He had a very honest heart. He was pure in his motives. In John chapter 1 verse 47, Jesus said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” Now the word guile in the King James Version means deceit. Jesus is saying that Nathanael was a genuine person. He was not deceptive in any way. He was very sincere and you could trust him. And this is what we ought to strive to be as Christians. We ought to aim to be pure in heart first. Yes, we need to be pure in life. Yes, we need to be pure in the way that we talk, but that all begins with our heart.
We have to get the inside right first. Paul said in 1 Timothy 1 verse 5, “Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith.”
So the Bible gives us a lot of good examples of people that were pure in heart, but you know the Bible also teaches by contrast. It teaches by showing us the opposite of what we ought to be. So, there are people in the Bible who didn't have a pure heart and we need to look at them and avoid that kind of attitude. For instance, the Bible says in Genesis chapter 49 verse 4 that Jacob said these words about his son Reuben: “You are unstable as water.”
Have you ever seen somebody that was unstable? Ruben was unstable. He was unstable like water. In other words, he could go in any direction. He might tell you one thing and do another. You could never really predict him. He was not a stable individual. Why? Because he had not really fully made up his mind. His heart was not pure. It was mixed.
Another example is the men of Gibeon. In Joshua chapter 9, they came to Joshua and pretended to be something that they were not. They said that they'd been on a long journey. They were weary, and they needed help. Joshua made the mistake of believing them. They were deceptive people.
And then you have some Jews in the New Testament that actually thought that they could trick Jesus. The Herodians came to Jesus in Matthew chapter 22 verse 15. They pretended to be respectful. They tried to flatter Jesus, but Jesus saw through them and He said, “Why do you test me, you hypocrites?” And so in the Bible you have some people who were sincere and some people who were not sincere.
And as we read the Bible, we should learn from both kinds of stories. We ought to look at the stories of people that were sincere and ask ourselves the question: Am I that way? Am I a genuine person? And when we look at people who are insincere and people who are pretending, we ought to ask ourselves the question: Does that in any way describe me? We ought to strive to be better.
How many times today do you see people who are sincere in anything, whether it's work or play or church or anything else? How many times do you see insincere people? So many times people have a selfish reason for what they do or what they say. They have all kinds of ulterior motives. And I know that politics can be notorious for this. I know that business can be full of deception and insincerity, but this can be in any place in life. It can even be in the church. It can be in religion. As a matter of fact, you find a lot of insincerity in religion today. And that's one of the most difficult things for us to live with and to endure as Christian people.
The positive part of this is that in a world with so many insincere people, and in a world where it is rare to find someone who is really genuine, this makes a true Christian stand out all the more. People today are so sick of the lies, and the insincerity, and the lack of integrity, and honest humility that they see in people around them that they are greatly encouraged and they notice someone who is really genuine, especially about his belief in God and his faith in Jesus Christ.
Now let's talk about purity of heart in the Christian life, and let's start with conversion. This begins when a person is converted to Christ. And I want to take you to Romans 6 verse 17, which says that we are to obey from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to us.
You have to go back earlier in the chapter to see what he's talking about. That form of doctrine was the pattern that he sets forth in verses 1 through 6. He talks about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. And he says when we're baptized, Romans 6, 3 through 6, that we are buried with him in baptism and that we are raised to walk in newness of life.
The Bible says that this is a form or a pattern of doctrine or teaching. And the Bible says that we are to obey that doctrine. In other words, when we are baptized. We are to be baptized from the heart. We're not to be baptized because our parents were. We're not to be baptized because a bunch of other people decided to get baptized. We're not to be baptized because we want to socialize with a group of people at a church. We're to be baptized for the remission of our sins [chapter 2 verse 38]. We're to be baptized believing that Jesus Christ died and that he was resurrected [Romans 10:9-10]. We are to obey with the right understanding and also from the right motive. We're to obey from the heart. Romans 6 verse 17.
When we ask the question, “Why do we and why ought we to attend church?” We need to ask the further question: What is our motive? Why are we attending? Some people attend church for the wrong reasons or for mixed reasons. There are some people that attend church because they want to further their business.
Some people attend church because they want to win votes. Some people attend church because they just want to socialize with others and see other people. Some people attend church because it's just a custom. It's just a tradition. Some people attend church just to please their parents or to please somebody else.
If our heart is pure, we will worship God and love to do so because of who God is and because of who we are. Psalm 122 verse one says, “I was glad when they said to me, let us go up to the house of the Lord.” And we don't have the house of the Lord like they had in the Old Testament. We don't worship the same way that they do, but we should have the same kind of attitude about it. We should have the same kind of motive. We should love and enjoy worshiping God, especially on the first day of the week in the worship assembly. In Psalm 89, verse seven, the Bible says, “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him.”
If a man is having trouble with being motivated to worship, all he needs to do is to think about these two things that I mentioned. If he really thinks about who God is [He is the Creator, the giver of life and the giver of all good things] and number two, to think about who he is [that he is a frail man, that he is made of the dust of the ground, that he depends on God for everything that he is and has], then he will have all the reason in the world to worship God, and he should have a pure motive about that.
Now we're talking about having a pure heart, not a mixed heart. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart” [Matthew chapter 5 verse 8]. And it's interesting that this is not the last time that Jesus will mention this in the Sermon on the Mount. Because in Matthew chapter 6 verses 1 through 18, the question there is, what is a man's motive?The whole subject is that we have to have the right motive behind what we're doing. Not the wrong kind of reason, but a pure motive behind the good things that we do. So he talks about three things in Matthew six, verses one through 18. He talks about doing good to others. He talks about praying and he talks about fasting. And Jesus said in all those things you have to have the right reason. And what he was talking about in particular was the fact that some of these Jews did those good deeds in their religion to be seen of men. Saying or doing the right thing for the wrong reason is thousands of years old.
And then, of course, we think about Judas Iscariot. There's a story in John chapter 12 verses 1 through 8 where Mary took an alabaster box of expensive ointment and she anointed Jesus with it. Judas Iscariot criticized her. He said that this should have been sold and the money given to help the poor. The Bible says he didn't care anything about the poor. He wanted that money so that he could steal it from the bag that he was carrying. The sad thing is the other disciples went along with him and criticized Mary for that until Jesus stood up for that woman. But Judas Iscariot was a liar. He had an ulterior motive. He had a mixed heart. His heart was really not with the Lord.
It was about money. And Judas Iscariot's real nature, his true colors, really came out at the end, didn't they? Because the Bible says that he betrayed his Lord for 30 pieces of silver. And when he got the 30 pieces of silver, he threw them down, went out and hanged himself.
In John chapter 6, you have a story of some people who had mixed motives and it eventually came out. In John chapter 6, the Bible says that thousands of people were following Jesus. He fed the multitude. In John chapter 6 verse 15, they were so convinced that he was the one that they tried to take Him by force and make him a king. The Bible says Jesus got in a ship, He went across the sea, and when He got to the other side near Capernaum, these people had followed Him in their boats. And when they found Him in John chapter 6, the Bible says in verse 25, they asked Him, “When did you come here? And Jesus answered them, Verily I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” The reason you're following Me is not because you saw the miracles and you have such great faith in Me and you want to hear my teaching. It's because you were fed. It's because you got some material benefit out of following me. And so what happens eventually is after they hear him teaching in the synagogue in John chapter 6, when they finally had enough of his teaching, the Bible says in John chapter 6 verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with Him. Why did they do that? Because they didn't have the right motive to start with. They had the wrong kind of motivation to begin with, and it came out in the end. But on the other hand, if we are genuine in our faith, if we are pure in heart, people will see it. They will know it.
That's why it's so important to work on our heart to make sure that we're right on the inside. The Bible says that the greatest of all the commandments is to love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all of your strength. And if we're pure in heart, if we love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, that will be a defense.
It will keep the wrong things from coming into our hearts. Things like unbelief. This is an enemy that is always there. It's always threatening us. The Bible says in Hebrews 3 verse 12, “Take heed brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” In James chapter 1, verse 5, the Bible says, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that gives to all men liberally and upbraids not, and it shall be given to him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways [James chapter 1, verses 5 through 8.]
Also, if we're going to be truly pure in heart like Jesus said, we must keep the love of the world out of our hearts. The Bible says in James chapter 4 verse 4, “You adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” In 1 John chapter 2 verse 15 the Bible says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abides forever.”
In Matthew, chapter 13, verse 22, Jesus said that some Christians are filled with the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.” In Second Timothy chapter four verse 10, the Bible talks about one Demas who at the end of Paul’s life had departed from him “having loved this present world.” We have to keep the world out of our hearts.
It also means as a part of that that we have to keep greed out of our hearts. Again, Jesus builds on this idea of being pure in heart in the Sermon on the Mount itself, because also in Matthew chapter 6, verses 22 through 24, Jesus says you have to keep greed and the love of money out of your heart. You have to be pure in your heart. In Matthew 6:24, Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon,” which is money. Be pure in your heart. Make sure that you have the right attitude toward money.
Make sure you have the right attitude toward the things that you have, because you only have them for a while, and you only have them because God allows you to have them. Don't get attached to them. Oftentimes, Christians become impure in their heart because of the love of money and oftentimes they're blind to what they're doing.
But there's something else that I want to talk about in regard to being pure of heart. And it's also a matter that Jesus elaborates on in Matthew chapter. And we will talk about that more, Lord willing, when we get there later in this study. But I do want to bring it up now, because it does relate to, it is a part of, being pure in heart.
Matthew 5, verse 27: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you, That whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Today we have a tremendous problem in our society. It's not just a problem in this country. It's a problem worldwide. What Jesus talks about has always been here, but now it's worse because of technology. I want to take you back to the Old Testament to look at a few passages of Scripture that talk about this problem among mankind and especially among males in society. I'm going to go back to the Ten Commandments found in Deuteronomy chapter 5.
The Ten Commandments are recorded in Exodus chapter 20 and also in Deuteronomy chapter 5. The last of the Ten Commandments is about covetousness. And in Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 21, the Bible says, “You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.” To covet means to desire something that one does not have, something that belongs to someone else, something that an individual doesn't have a right to.
The word covet points to the heart. It points to the attitude. And the Bible says in the Ten Commandments that it is a sin for a man to covet someone else's wife.
Now, let's go to another example. It's found in 2 Samuel chapter 11, beginning in verse 2. The character here in the story is about David. Second Samuel 11 verse 2 begins, “Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof, he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold.” David sent and inquired about her. The Bible says later in verse 4, “David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her, and then she returned to her house.” That's the beginning. of the saddest chapter in David's life.
How did that begin? It began with a sin in his heart and because David acted on that sin he paid for his transgression for the rest of his life. Now let's go to Job, the book of Job chapter 31. Here Job is defending his character. Now Job was not a perfect man. He said some things in this book that he should not have said toward God and about God.
He was a godly man. As a matter of fact, the very first verse in this book of Job says that he turned away from, or he shunned evil, so he was a good man. Here in Job chapter 31, Job is giving somewhat of his last stand, his last defense to his friends who were accusing him of being an evil man. And so in this section, Job says, if you can prove anything that I've done, like you say, then I'll repent of it. Not only that, I hope that God punishes me if I have done wrong. Now listen to what he says as one example of his character in Job chapter 31 verse 1. “I have made a covenant with my eyes.” I made an agreement with my eyes. “Why then should I look upon a young woman?” Now notice the wording here. He says, “Why should I look upon a young woman?”
He doesn't mean just to glance. He doesn't mean just to see a young woman. He means to look in the sense that Jesus was talking about in Matthew 5 verse 28. To look upon in the sense of lusting after. That's what he's talking about in this passage. The covenant that he made with his eyes has to do with the fact that when he married his wife there was an agreement.
That agreement was that, as we say today, he would keep himself to her and to her only. Those words may not have been said, but that was the idea. That's an agreement. That's what the marriage vows are about. There is a covenant that is made there, a pact that is made, that we're not to transgress. We're not to break that.
Sometimes you hear people say, the Old Testament only condemned the outward act of sin, but the New Testament condemns the heart behind it. That's not true. And we're going to see that in Matthew chapter 5 as we continue to unfold it. But here is a prime example. This passage says that Job defended his character by saying that he did not have that kind of heart. He did not have that kind of mindset. He was not dirty minded.
Now let's go to Proverbs chapter 6. Proverbs chapter 6: here we have the writing of King Solomon. And in Proverbs chapter 6, verse 25, here's what he said. “Do not lust after her beauty in your heart.” Here the Bible specifically uses that word lust. Do not lust after her beauty in your heart. So the Bible couldn't be more direct about this.
And as we bring this teaching down to our time, let's begin by saying that we are living in an age of a pandemic. I'm not talking about the kind of pandemic that we saw just a few years ago. Before that age, you really didn't hear about that word very much.
But if there is a spiritual pandemic, this has to be one of if not the greatest pandemic that we are facing. I'm talking about the plague called pornography. I realize that this is not new. Pornography has been around for thousands of years, but technology has made it so readily available. It has made it so widespread and so graphic that it is a problem that is perhaps unparalleled with any age in the history of the world.
This moral problem is destroying homes. It is wrecking marriages. It is rotting our country from the inside out. It is crippling churches. You've seen surveys taken among those who claim to be Christians asking them if they had viewed pornography in the last month, or the last week, or over the past 24 hours. It's amazing to see that the majority of men said yes, they are doing that.
Now, there's no way that a man can put that kind of material into his mind without it affecting his life and actually without controlling his life. So if even people who claim to be Christians are putting this kind of dirt into their mind, then we shouldn't wonder about why religion is in the state that it's in in our country and in other countries of the world. It shouldn't be a surprise to us that so many preachers are weak. It shouldn't be a surprise to us that people don't listen to the gospel anymore. If you have a man that's been putting this kind of material in his mind during the week, and he comes to church on Sunday morning and hears the pure word of God preached, he's not going to have an appetite for it.
He's not going to be interested in the word of the gospel or in the work of the church, because he's not spiritually minded. He is a carnally minded man. He's put so much evil material into his mind that his heart is twisted. The Bible says, in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 19 that some people reach the point where they are past feeling.
That means they cannot feel pain in their conscience. They don't feel guilty anymore about much of anything. They're not sensitive to the Word of God, whether it's preached or whether they read it themselves. Here's another verse to consider. In Titus chapter 1 verse 15, Paul said, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but even their mind and their conscience is defiled.”
You may be thinking, “He's painting a pretty dark picture,” and I know that it is. So is there any hope for young men and men in general who have put this kind of material into their minds? First of all, don't underestimate the power of the gospel. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter four, verse 12, that “the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edge sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”The word of God is powerful. It can break that stony heart of a person so that he hears the gospel and so that he changes his life his mind and turns to God.
Number two, don't underestimate the fact that a man reaps what he sows. In Galatians six, verse seven, the Bible says, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” Sometimes it may take years. But a man will regret oftentimes what he has done. He will pay the price for putting those kinds of things into his mind. And that may be the time when he turns back to God. That may bring forth repentance in his life.
Number three, there are other hardships in life just because we live in a world where there are troubles that may bring a man to his senses. When a man suffers great pain, whether emotionally, or physically, or mentally, or all of these together, it has a way of humbling a man. So being pure in heart certainly includes keeping these kinds of thoughts out of our minds. And lastly, I want to emphasize, and this is very important, that this is a choice that every man makes.
A man makes a choice as to what he listens to, where he goes, what he does, and what he looks at. I realize that many men feel sorry for themselves and say, “I can't help it. This is just the way that men are.” That's a lie. That is a lame excuse. James chapter 1 verse 14 says that “every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust.”
Pornography is just like any other sin. It is a choice. And if a man chooses to watch it, he can choose to put it down. He can choose to stop it. He may have been doing it so long that he has his mind so full of that kind of material that it's really going to be a challenge. But that's true of any sin.
Any sin that you commit can be addictive. It can be so habit forming that it's hard to get it out of your system. And yet the Bible also says this, following those verses in Matthew chapter 5, 27 and 28, that sin is so serious that Jesus illustrates it by saying that you have to cut your hand off or pluck your eye out.
Now, those are not physical commands. He's not saying physically that you have to pluck your eyes out or that you have to physically cut your hand off, but he's using those as illustrations to say that it's going to be a painful surgery in your heart to get rid of this. But it can be done.
But let's take one more look at Matthew chapter five, verse eight, where Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God to see God” doesn't mean that we will see God in His spirit, in His essence, and in His being in this lifetime. The Bible says in John 1:18, “No man has seen God at any time.” But in the sense of experiencing God, we see Him in that way.
The word see in the Bible sometimes means to experience something. In John chapter eight, verse 51, Jesus said, “If anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death.” That means he will never experience death, that is, spiritual death. And so, the man who is pure in heart will experience God. And that doesn't mean that he's just going to have a feeling that he just talks about and it's some kind of mysterious relationship with God.
That simply means that he is going to listen to God, obey God and be in a right relationship with him by obeying the gospel of Jesus Christ and being faithful to him.
Thank you for listening to my God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee offers undergraduate and graduate programs.
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