HOME Mission History Worship Sermons Photos Contacts Directions Links

Beatitudes: Hungry for Righteousness and Purity of Heart

 Matthew 5:4, 10
Ezekiel 36:22-28, Matthew 16:24

August 17, 2003

⁶“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

⁸“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

²⁴Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

In the forests of Northern Europe lives an animal called the ermine.  It is small and its best known for its snow-white fur.  Instinctively, this animal protects its glossy coat of fur with great care lest it become dirty.

Hunters often capitalize on this trait.  Instead of setting a mechanical trap to catch the ermine, they find its home, which is well protected, usually in a cleft of rock or up a hollow tree, beyond the dirt and dust and impossible to get into by all but the ermine itself.  The hunter then dabs the entrance of this lair with tar. 

Then the dogs start their search.  When they've found an ermine, they chase the animal back to its home.   However, finding it covered with dirty tar, the ermine will reject its former place of safety.  Rather than soil his white fur, he courageously faces the yelping dogs who hold it at bay until the hunters capture it.  To the ermine, purity is dearer than life!

Through the author of the Book of James (1:27) God calls all those who wish to follow him, who are hungry for righteousness to be people who will be "unstained by the world"[1]

There are Christians who, in effect, define righteousness by what they shun, like the brave and courageous ermine, who cannot stand dirt.  They keep away from foods and drinks, from certain people, from certain places.

The traditional Christian way of thinking about this attitude is the concept of resisting temptation.  Which of course first shows up in scripture in the most vivid picture of failure one can imagine, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. 

What could be more "unstained by the world than" the legendary and perfect vision that we have of the Garden in Genesis

And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Is there anything in the universe that can be imagined as more pure, more unblemished and more pristine as that little Garden in Eden?

As you well know, that Garden didn't stay pristine for very long, and humanity, both men and women in the ages since the moment Eve and Adam fell, have been doomed to fall to temptation, to fail to keep their ermine white coats clean, again and again and again.

In fact in the passage from Ezekiel's 36^th chapter   that I just read, we find that this is precisely what God is angry about. 

It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. ²³I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them;

Three times in the matter of two short verses we hear the words, "my holy name which you have profaned."  Ezekiel says that God is angry that his people have once again taken God for granted and dragged God's name trough the mud.  In fact the words defile and profane together show up six times in chapter 36 and fifty times in the entire book of Ezekiel.  The issue of purity and failing to resist temptation is a recurring theme for Ezekiel as it is throughout the Old and New Testaments.  We hear that humans defile and profane God's name, each other, the law and themselves.  As a result, God is angry!

And yet things do not end in God's anger.  Yes, God hates what people do in God's name and in disobedience, yet God does not abandon them…

"I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses…A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances."

God has an amazing standard which is always held high for those whom God loves.  And God expects a great deal from those who follow him.  God expects righteousness and purity, expects followers to avoid the ways of the world, to avoid soiling what God has created good and to avoid the things that will lead to impurity and decadence.  Yet when folks inevitably fall short, God forgives and gives a way for people to be redeemed.  This is called God's grace, God's forgiveness, faithfulness, lovingkindness, and God's mercy.

But lets, stay a bit longer on the idea of purity and righteousness for a moment.  For much of Christianity, including and not limited to the Puritan thinkers and theologians who gave birth to congregationalism and eventually the reform-minded missionaries that influenced the Armenian Evangelical reformation some centuries later, purity was: not drinking certain things, not acting in certain ways especially on certain days and weeks of the year, not dressing in certain ways, not decorating churches in certain ways and without certain types of religious artifacts, not thinking certain things or saying certain things, essentially keeping away from things that will soil us, like the hunter's tar, away from our shiny and pristine white coats, like the brave ermine.. 

However, when Jesus himself spoke of profanity, impurity and things that defile, he taught a little bit differently.  Jesus spoke out against a way of defining unrighteousness that focused only on what was seen and apparent on the outside.  He stressed one's internal attitude, one's heart, 

“It is what comes out of a person that defiles. ²¹For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” [2]

It is easy to blame only the world for the stuff we are tempted into, the sin we are caught up in.  It is even more convenient to focus on the sins of others, to take the spotlight even farther away from ourselves.  It is convenient to understand sin in terms of actions that can be physically avoided.[3]

But we trick ourselves if we think that sin and impurity are only external to ourselves, that we can avoid disturbing thoughts about attitudes such as jealousy, envy, pride, hatred and all the other thoughts and feelings that are included in the horrible lists of sins we find throughout the bible, alongside the biggies like theft, murder and adultery.

We cannot avoid these things, because they come from inside, from the heart.  When God measures a man, he puts the measuring tape around his heart, not his head, or his waist or his bicep or the sole of his foot![4]

The key to it all is to ask, "How hungry am I for righteousness?  How much do  I desire in my heart to keep pure?  That is do I truly desire and hunger for purity and righteousness in my heart or am I simply going through the motions to keep up appearances or to live by a strict law of cleanliness with no real desire for God?

After a meeting this past week, a few of us now gathered here were discussing our favorite new television programs.  I mentioned that one of my favorites now is a show called "Monk."  The main character of the program is a private detective, who was once a police officer.  He had to leave the police force because at one point in his life he suffered a terrible tragedy, his wife died in a tragic car accident and as a result he became very ill.  He now suffers from an illness called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  Mr. Monk, lives the life of a monk.  He wants to remain pure and clean and untarnished every moment of his life.  He goes through his days avoiding touching doorknobs, shaking people's hands, and eating in restaurants.  His obsessions do not end there however.  He must fix every crooked photo hanging on people's walls, he notices every last detail of every last aspect of his environment and if anything is out of order in the least bit, he cannot handle it.  In fact, he has hired a personal nurse, who goes through life with him, handing him hand wipes and opening car doors for him, so he won't have to expose himself to the filth. 

For the purposes of the program, this situation is hilarious.  Mr. Monk faints every time somebody near him sneezes.  His nurse rolls her eyes and jumps in to deflect every awkward interaction when he's doing something eccentric and the grocery store clerk just doesn't understand what his problem is, for instance.  Also for the purposes of the program, we find that Mr. Monk's problem helps him become a brilliant detective.  He works very closely with his old boss the lieutenant and his fastidious attention to detail helps him notice and understand things mere healthy people would never have figured out.

Outside of TV-land, Obsessive-compulsive disorder is not so funny.  It is a real, terrible and serious problem that becomes even more acute when the stress and strain of life accelerates.  I once knew someone who could not help but shave his face, and probably did so dozens of times a day. 

He once told me that I could probably tell when things were going rough in his life by just how closely cropped his beard was, how thin and perfect the line of hair along his jaw was and how red, raw and irritated the rest of his face, the cleanly shaven portions of his cheeks looked.  This was a man who on several occasions had actually tried to take his own life.

The most tragic and sorrowful aspect of OCD, is that the sufferer, knows that what is happening to him or her is out of the ordinary, that its not helpful to wash hands ten times every hour or wash the car a dozen times a day.  "I know its not good," the OCD sufferer would say, "but I just can't seem to stop."

The Apostle Paul says " ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." (Romans 7:19)

When it comes to sin, we are all Obsessive and Compulsive.  Obsessive means we can't stop thinking about it, like a silly musical tune that we just can't get out of our head.  Compulsive means we can't stop doing it, like shopping or eating or washing our hands. 

When it comes to jealousy, envy, pride, hatred, fill in the blank with your personal favorite, human beings cannot stop.  That's what makes us human.  That's what makes us imperfect.  That's the flaw in the design.  That's how deep sin runs.  God knows this, accepts us despite our sin and gives us his grace nonetheless.  And yet we are not let off the hook.  Jesus says that there are extra blessings in life and in eternity for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and for the pure in heart. 

So what does it mean to be hungry for righteousness?  What does it mean to be pure in heart? 

Pure in heart?  Does it have anything to do with high blood pressure? Or cholesterol level?  What does Christian life have to do with our hearts?  I guess it all depends on what you define your heart to be…

"This is where your heart is!" said the teacher as she pointed to the little boy's chest.

"No!, the little boy responded, "My heart is here."  And he pointed to the top of his head.

"Now how did you get that idea?" asked the teacher.

The little man said, "Because, every time I do something good, my grandma pats me there and says, "Bless your little heart!"[5] 

Purity in heart has nothing to do with the muscle that beats in the hearts of all mammals.  Nor does it have anything to do with how much sin we can avoid, how little or how much we sin or how clean our ermine white coats remain.  

Purity of heart is as one theologian says, "unreserved commitment to the will of God…it is contrasted with the merely outward purity" of hypocritical legalists.[6]

It is a hunger and a desire and a never ending hope that we can over come our nature and reach toward God.  It is like I said last week, to remember who we are in before God.  To be pure in heart is not to be pure and clean and totally sinless in our hearts, but to realize that I cannot be pure in heart, and yet to search for God who wants to help me to be pure in heart.  To hunger after righteousness, is not to fool myself that I can be righteous, but to search for God who can give me hope and forgiveness and courage to try to clean up the messes into which my naturally unrighteous heart is going to drop me.

The hunger the desire for the purity of heart are the important parts, that hunger and that desire and the confidence that in God is the answer.

One of the most beloved and colorful sports personalities of our time was a man named Jim Valvano-"Jimmy V," as sports fans around the country affectionately knew him. Valvano died on April 16, 1993, after a year- long battle with cancer. He was forty-seven years old. He will he remembered as a great basketball coach. His North Carolina State team won the national championship in 1983, upsetting a great Houston Cougar team that was favored to win and stacked with stars who were destined to go on and become stars in the professional ranks as well. Valvano also will he remembered as an outstanding TV analyst, an eloquent inspirational speaker, and a lovable, wisecracking humorist. But most of all, he will be remembered for the courageous way he faced a debilitating illness.

A few weeks before he died, Valvano was honored on national television, and to that vast viewing audience, he said this:

Today, I fight a different battle. You see, I have trouble walking and I have trouble standing for a long period of time. Cancer has taken away a lot of my physical abilities. Cancer is attacking and destroying my body. But what cancer cannot touch is my mind, my heart and my soul. I have faith in God and hope that things might get better for me. But even if they don't I promise you this. I will never ever give up. I will never ever quit. And if cancer gets me then I'll just try my best to go to heaven and I'll try my best to be the best coach they've ever seen up there. [Then, pointing to his 1983 Championship team, he said,] I learned a great lesson from these guys; they amazed me! They did things I wasn't sure they could do because they absolutely refused to give up! That was the theme of our championship season: "Never ever give up!" That's the lesson I learned from them and that's the message I leave with you: "Never give up. Never ever give up!"[7]

The spirit of never giving up against sin, against our faults and the dirt that clings to us on the outside and that bubbles up from the depths our jealous, anxious angry or prideful hearts, that is not satisfied to say, "OH well, that's just me, I'm only human…" and doesn't give up in the face of inevitable failure, that is the hunger for righteousness and the true purity in heart.  It is the bravery of the ermine to stand up against all odds, and not necessarily how perfect his coat is.

And for those who hunger for righteousness and who have this purity of heart, Jesus says their hunger will be satisfied and that they will see God.

In the Beatitudes, the constitution of our faith, the bill of rights and the bylaws of our Christian life, Jesus speaks on this spirit of needing and desiring and searching for God, just after he begins with humility and meekness, and just before encouraging loving peace and working for harmony.

Next week we will move on toward that idea of peace in the Christian community and with God's love.