Outline
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matthew 5:8)
U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recently published a disturbing essay
entitled "Defining Deviancy Down." In the Nov 22 issue of The New Republic,
Commentator Charles Krauthammer writes that "Moynihan's powerful point is that
with the moral deregulation of the 1960s, we have had an explosion of deviancy
in family life, criminal behavior and public displays of psychosis. And we have
dealt with it in the only way possible: by redefining deviancy down so as to
explain away and make 'normal' what a more civilized, ordered and healthy
society long ago would have labeled--and long ago did label--deviant." Christian
Research Institute letter, December 6, 1993
Former Education Secretary William Bennett sees evidence of such decline in
research identifying the most serious problems in public school classrooms. In
1940, running in the halls, chewing gum, and talking in class headed the list of
teacher's disciplinary concerns; today, robbery, rape, alcohol, drugs, teen
pregnancy, and suicide are most often mentioned. Bennett argues, "If we turn the
economy around, have full employment, live in cities of alabaster and gold, and
this is what our children are doing to each other, then we still will have
failed them."
Bennett believes one way to improve our national debate is to counterbalance,
the Commerce Department's index of leading economic indicators with a collection
of some 19 "leading cultural indicators" including the divorce rate, the
illegitimacy rate, the violent crime rate, the teen suicide rate, and even hours
devoted to television viewing. While these cultural variables are only crude
indicators of our nation's social health, they do provide a more complete, and
more accurate, empirical assessment of the condition of American society than is
available from economic variables alone. Using economic variables -- even
under-utilized variables like business productivity and hourly compensation
rates -- it is difficult to explain public opinion polls showing that a majority
of Americans believe the quality of life in America has declined over the last
three decades. To understand such perceptions, one has to consider that since
1960, violent crime has risen 560 percent, illegitimate births have increased
400 percent, teen suicides have risen 200 percent, divorce rates have
quadrupled, average SAT scores have dropped 80 points, and the proportion of
children living in fatherless families has increased three-fold.
In essence, then, Bennett's leading cultural indicators are to our national
debate what statistics like saves, fielding percentage, and earned run average
are to baseball: reminders that economic production (or run production) isn't
everything. Indeed, a society which manages to make great gains economically,
but fails to progress in the cultural areas outlined by Bennett is likely to be
no more successful in the long run than the 1931 New York Yankees. That
ballclub, which featured sluggers like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, scored more
runs (1,067) than any other team in major league history. But New York still
finished 13 and one-half games behind the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1931
American League pennant race, in large part because the Yankees' lousy pitching
more than offset run-scoring prowess. Family Policy, June, 1993, Page 5-6
The debate over morality in our culture has rightly underscored the importance
of behavior but, morality, it seems to me, is more than simply behavior and
this is something that may be missed by our culture if we are not careful.
While we may be able to impact the behavior of individuals in our society by
certain restrictions of law, we will never be able to change the essence of a
person's morality in that way. Limiting what a person can do outwardly does not
change who that person is inwardly. Behavior flows from the inward nature of an
individual. You might say that is it a matter of the heart.
So, when Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart . . ." He was emphasizing
that what we all really need is to be right on the inside.
We are Called to Purity
A. Purity Must Impact All of our life.
a. We cannot “clean up” selected areas of our life, we must deal with the
totality of our being.
b. Our heart’s condition is of primary importance to Christ.
B. We Cannot fool God.
a. I Samuel 16:7 tells us that God looks at the heart.
C. Our motives must be pure as well.
a. We must be of a single mind.
How to Become Pure
How can we make our hearts pure? If we find that our motives are mixed, how can
we return to a single-minded devotion to God?
A. We must recognize our sinful condition.
a. We need to see where we have problems with our heart.
B. We must practice Holiness.
C. We must Hunger and Thirst after righteousness.
What Becomes of Purity
The reason we must become pure in heart is that only those who are shall see
God.
C. S. Lewis says:
We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall
no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a
mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall
see God, for only the pure in heart want to.
n C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain. Christianity Today, Vol. 36, no. 7.
A. What a wonderful reward! We will see God!.
B. We are Tuned to Him.
C. We will fellowship with Him.
The pure in heart are hard to find today, even among our churches. God is
calling us to purity today. He is calling us to a closer walk with Him
resulting in personal holiness.
Ó2000 by Claim The Victory Ministries
South Peninsula Baptist Church
Rev. Charles S. Mims
Adapted from a message by Rev. J. David Hoke
