Our Quick Devotion this morning comes from Matthew 5:8 NKJV
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
The first thing we learn from this beatitude is that Jesus is concerned with our heart. It is not enough to clean up our act on the outside. Later in Matthew Jesus make this point very clear as he talks to the religious people of his day.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Matthew 23:25-28
1 Timothy 1:5, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere [i.e., unhypocritical faith].”
“Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 51:10).
How do we pursue a pure heart? I believe the answer is found in my favorite verses in the whole Bible in Matthew 22:36-40 where Jesus was asked what is the most important and greatest commandment in all of the laws and he boiled it all down so beautifully!
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”