The Upside Down Kingdom – Part 7 – The Pure in Heart
- If you have your Bibles, please open them up with me today to Matthew chapter 5:8
“Jesus didn’t come to make better men – he came to make new men.” – C.S. Lewis
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt 5:8)
- to put it simply The heart is the center of who you really are.
And you can see this view of the heart all over Scripture. There’s a lot of verses here that we could talk about to illustrate this – but I’m just going to give you three.
- Proverbs 4:23 says “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
- Psalm 119:11 says “I have stored your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”
- Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding.”
- Scripture paints a pretty bleak picture. Here’s a couple more verses for ya about our heart’s natural state.
- (Jeremiah 17:9) “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
- I got one more for ya – this one comes from the mouth of Jesus in Mark 7
- Mark 7:21-22 “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness”
Jesus says that these sins that we struggle with – are not blips in the system – there is no “the devil made me do it.”
- It’s our heart – we do it.
“I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ez. 36:26-27)