If you would, please turn in God's word to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5 this evening we'll be looking particularly on chapter 5 verses 8 and 9, although I will read the first 16 verses of this chapter. Remember, where we are, this is the Sermon on the Mount, and as we saw, this is not the entrance exam into the kingdom. This is not Jesus' requirements for becoming his disciple. Neither is this the AP Christianity class, the advanced placement class for certain high-qualifying Christians. This is Christ's word to all of his people, how they are to follow after him as his disciples. As he climbs the mountain, gathers his disciples, opens his mouth and speaks to them. He gives them his new covenant law. And it begins with blessing. It begins with benediction. Yes, there will be difficult things. Yes, there will be challenging requirements of what it means to follow after him. But let it be said that our Savior begins by pronouncing great benediction upon his people, telling them that as they follow after him, they will be richly blessed, rewarded by their Savior. So be encouraged, hear God's word for you this evening, from Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse one. Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you and others who revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth, But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand that gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and to give glory to your Father who is in heaven. to the word of our God and King, let me pray and give him thanks for it. Indeed, Heavenly Father, I give you great praise and thanks for your word. I thank you that through Christ, you speak to your people. Through your spirit, you apply and press this word down into our hearts, the very core of our being, that we may know you, that we may know ourselves, our need for you, and the way you have made us new in Christ. We ask that you would do this tonight as we pray in his name. Amen. Perhaps one of the greatest peace treaties of all time was no peace treaty at all. On September 30, 1938, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom got off a plane in London, went out onto the runway, and flashed around a piece of paper that Adolf Hitler had signed, and Chamberlain, the prime minister, declared that he had won peace in our time. He had gone to Munich and to the belly of the beast, as it were, to meet with the Führer and to agree to a plan that would preserve peace in Europe, or so he thought. We'll let the jury decide if Hitler thought that he had found peace with Chamberlain that day, but Chamberlain certainly thought that he had. The up to 100 million people who died as a result of the war that began just the next spring as Hitler invaded Poland would beg to differ. You see, it is easy to stand on a tarmac and show someone a piece of paper that someone else has signed. But it is much, much more difficult to actually have peace in our time, peace in any time, peace with one another, peace with God. And yet, Christ, our Savior, calls us to be peace makers. How can Christ call us to be peacemakers? Or for that matter, if that sounds challenging, how about having a pure heart? Blessed are the pure in heart. How can Christ come to us and say that such a thing is possible, let alone to be expected of Christians in their walk with the Lord? This evening, our burden is simple. We are seeking to understand the answer to that question. and we'll see it very clearly, that as Christ has gone before us with a heart that is not merely pure, but is single-mindedly devoted to the will of his Heavenly Father, to the point of offering himself as a sacrifice on the cross for our peace, so we can be pure in heart, so we can be peacemakers and enjoy the sweetest greatest blessing of seeing God, of being called his sons, his children. Our outline, as you know, is super complicated. We're gonna see what is the blessing based on who are those who are blessed. That's as simple as it gets. We'll look at the blessing and those who are blessed from verse eight and then verse nine. We'll begin, though, with those who are pure in heart. When Christ comes to disciples and says, blessed are the pure in heart, perhaps you wonder, is this something that we gain? Is this something that we achieve? Is this something we pursue? Is this something that is given to us? And in a sense, the answer is all of the above. We know, of course, that Christ has called us to be pure because it is something that he has given us. And this is not even new to the New Testament. Do you recall when the Lord, through the prophet Moses, spoke to his people in Deuteronomy 30? He promised them that he would purify their hearts. Using the image of circumcision, Moses tells Israel that Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love him. So that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, so that you may live. Moses comes to the people and says, if you're going to have a heart that is pure, know that it is the Lord who is going to do the purifying, who's going to be doing the cutting away of the dead flesh and giving you purity. That's why when David sins with Bathsheba, when David causes the murder of Bathsheba's husband, and he is confronted by the prophet Nathan, and he falls on his face before the Lord in a prayer that he eventually writes down as Psalm 51, he prays what? Give me, create in me a clean heart, oh God. He recognizes that that purity of heart comes only as a gift of God. In Psalm 24, the psalmist asks, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? You probably remember the answer, he who has what? Clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false or does not swear deceitfully. But even in that answer the psalmist gives, did you notice that that doesn't mean that the person who has, who receives a pure heart, it doesn't mean that person is passive, does it? For the psalmist describes what it means to have a pure heart. He who does not lift up his soul to what is false. He who does not swear deceitfully. That's why Paul, late in life, when writing to his protege Timothy, can command him to flee youthful passions, to pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with all those who what? Call upon the Lord with a pure heart. One way to understand this dual nature of being given purity of heart by the Lord. and also pursuing that purity, is to recognize that this phrase, this description of a pure heart, can also mean single-mindedness. Single-mindedness. And why is this the case? Well, think about what it means to be pure. This is not the same word as clean, which is fine. It's good to have a clean heart. It's not the exact same word as holy or righteous, which is, of course, integral to the Christian life. But the particular word here is pure. Think of a chemical that is pure. It literally has no impurities. It has nothing to detract from its true nature. for what it is to be, what has been created to display. So purity of heart is to be understood as a single-mindedness of a heart that is not torn. As Elijah said on Mount Carmel, stop going back and forth between this way and that way like a lame man who can't walk in a straight line or one who limps. He says what? Love the Lord your God, call upon him, whom shall you serve? Have, as we read even from the commandments in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the Lord knows that worship is due him alone. So to be pure in heart is to have a single-mindedness towards his glory, towards the righteousness of his kingdom. is to understand that there will always be, just as the minute you wash a window, the next day, it's already starting to get dirty. You know, you already, you wake up the next morning and the sun's coming from a different angle and you see there's already things on this window I'm gonna have to wash again. There are always things seeking to attack the purity of one's heart. That's why the operative verb in that second Timothy verse was flee. It is not passive. It is not, Lord, I'll sit back, you give me a pure heart, and that'll be that. No, Christ is calling us to something as he allures us with a blessing given to those who have purity of heart. And scripture does this many ways, does it not? Sometimes it focuses on the impurities. Sometimes it focuses on the dirt and the lint and the food residue and the ashes from your candles and everything in your house that makes things dirty. And it says, flee those. Paul, when he was considering going back to Corinth for another trip, he wrote to them in 2 Corinthians 12, he says, I fear that perhaps when they come to you, I will find you as I might not wish. And he says, you might find me as you wish I were not. He says that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, disorder. Sometimes scripture focuses on the impurities. that need to be refined away and burned off. But oftentimes, scripture works the opposite way. As opposed to repelling us, we have magnets that are polarized in the same way and one pushes away the other. Sometimes scripture flips that magnet around and attracts us in the opposite direction with that which is pure, that which we are to pursue. Famously in Philippians 4.8, what does the apostle write to the Christians in Philippi? Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, anything worthy of praise, think about such things. Notice Paul prioritizes thinking, the activity of the heart. Set your heart on these things, that you will desire them, that you will pursue them, that more and more they will define who you are as a disciple. And as that is true of us, as that single-mindedness of heart, as that purity of heart, as we live out that circumcision of the heart that Christ does to us through his spirit, So we have the greatest of blessings, the sweetest of promises in all of scripture, friends, that we would see God. This is the blessing of blessings, is it not? That we shall see God. Think of this. What was it that the Old Testament saints of old could never have. What could they never receive? Even Moses, the prophet of whom there was no other prophet greater than he. Earlier we read from Psalm 24, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, who shall stand in his holy place. That was the closest that people could get to seeing God, was to stand outside the most holy place. Knowing that perhaps they could get closer, but for their sin. but for their rebellion. Even when Moses asks, show me your glory, what does the Lord say? Well, if you want to live, you can't. You cannot see my glory and live. That is barred from one of the greatest of saints in the Old Testament. But here our Savior comes to us and says, all those who are pure in heart, all those who are truly my disciples will see God. How is this? Actually, the story of Moses wanting to see the Lord on Mount Sinai is a good way to understand what it means to be able to see God. You see, in that text, language related to the face of God, the backside of God, the hand of God covering Moses' eyes. You know, some people read that language and they forget that Moses is speaking metaphorically and they actually think that God has a face. that God literally has a hand, that God can literally be seen. But we know that God is a spirit. We know that you cannot see God any more than you could see the words coming out of my mouth. There's nothing to see. God is a spirit. Yes, the Lord can, whenever he chooses, produce a physical manifestation of his glory, whether it be thunder lightning, rumblings, quaking, flashes of light, whatever he chose to reveal his manifestations of his glory were surely within his right. But he was never going to be able to see God, because you cannot see God. Even the Seraphim who are covering their faces in Isaiah chapter 6 are covering their faces from the holiness, the grandeur, of the glory, the brilliance of God. And yet, all those who are sitting on this mountain listening to this sermon are seeing God, are they not? He's right there speaking to them. He's right there preaching to them. He's right there gathering them to himself and teaching them. So is this blessing merely, you've already gotten it, you've already received it, you see me, you're good to go? Now there seems to be something held out for them even greater, is there not? See, even in their seeing of the Lord Jesus Christ, there was still that veil of sin. They were still seeing with eyes marked by the fall, eyes marked by weakness and doubt. The one who comes before them says elsewhere in scripture, when you have seen me, you have what? You have seen the Father. That comes in the gospel of John, and yet later when John has a vision of heavenly things, he holds out that great promise to God's people at the end of his revelation. At Revelation chapter 22, a great hope that those in the new Jerusalem, those with true eyes to see, those in the glorified state will see God. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, we see dimly, one day we will see face to face. Because we will see Christ in his glory. Because we will see the king and kings and Lord of lords on his throne. Because we will see the very word of God, the very essence of God shared with the Father and the Spirit sitting on the throne. And we will behold him in all his splendor and all his goodness, and all his moral purity, which is no longer something to scare us away or to cause us to fear in a cowering, servile way, but to fall before him in true fear and admiration and worship. Theologians who have a term for everything call this the beatific vision. You can see how that's even related to the word beatitude, the blessed vision. You think of what it means to see God. The Apostle John, who I've just mentioned from the Gospel of John in Revelation, addresses this too in his first epistle to the churches. He says, we are God's children now, but in what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. Don't skip over that word because. We will be like him because we will see him as he is. Beholding Christ will actually transform us to be like him in utter beauty, utter perfection. I think you can see now how this is the appropriate blessing for those who are pure at heart, do you not? What is the appropriate blessing for those who have single-minded devotion to God? It's to see Him, it's to be like Him. For it was Christ who had single-minded devotion to His Father that won that access to Him for us by His pure life. by his perfect obedience, by his sacrificial death. If we're gonna spend eternity beholding the face of God and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, what more could we want? What more can motivate us and spur us on to righteousness, to holiness, to purity of heart as Jesus calls us to in this text? That's why in the very next verse in 1 John, The Apostle says this, everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. You hear that? We, in a sense, purify ourselves. But how? By hoping in him. But by putting all our eggs in his basket. but by depending entirely what he has promised to be true, making that true forever in his new heavens and new earth. We purify ourselves by bringing our hearts in alignment with that promise, with that reality. And so we are blessed. We see God. We hope in him. We are given pure hearts and we pursue and claim pure hearts through our hope and our devotion to him. That's what it means when Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Continues in verse nine, we spend our final few minutes together this evening looking at his next benediction to his people, the peacemakers. Those who shall be called sons of God will see this as closely related to the previous benediction. But as I alluded to in my introduction, giving Neville Chamberlain a bit of a hard time, peace is a funny thing. Peace is a hard work. Peace is not sitting back and not rocking the boat. One wag said that peace is that time when everyone stops to reload his weapons. That's a good definition of peace. Well, there's no hot wars right now in the nearest 50 miles of me, so we must be at peace. Sometimes though, peace takes war. After all, it wasn't the piece of paper, that one piece between Nazi Germany and the British Empire. It was years of hard fought, Or peace was not going to be won any other way, as the Fuhrer made very clear. It doesn't mean we seek conflict out, going abroad looking for monsters to destroy, to mangle a quote from one of our greatest presidents. What did Christ say in his first coming? He came to bring not a sword, but what? He came to bring peace. He is the peacemaker far before we ever are. If you start looking in the New Testament, you'll see again and again and again the emphasis that scripture places on peace. Paul, in the letters to the Ephesians, can describe the gospel as a gospel of peace. He was writing particularly to a congregation that needed to understand the horizontal aspects of peace, that barrier between Jew and Gentile that needed to be broken down in that town and those churches, but really throughout the Roman Empire. But he roots it in the peace that God won through Christ between him and ourselves. is the peacemaker because we are the rebels. God is the peacemaker because we were not interested in peace, because we had no desire for peace. We were very happy where we were. Thank you very much. Heeding the word of the devil, eating the forbidden fruit. It was the Lord who had to come and pursue us. It was the Lord who had to come and make peace with us. But that's precisely what he did. As Paul says in Colossians, in Christ all the fullness of God was made to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, all things, whether on heaven, earth, making peace, making peace by the blood of his cross. And therefore, Paul can write, 1 Corinthians 7, God has called you to peace. Peter can write, 1 Peter 3, seek peace and pursue it, quoting Psalm 34. The writer to the Hebrews can exhort us to strive for peace with everyone, Hebrews 12. Again, the apostle Paul in Romans 12 can say, if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all. Hopefully you've noticed as we've gone through these Beatitudes how each of them is rooted in the character and work of Christ. We've seen how we are called to be poor in spirit because the Lord humbled himself and became like us, became obedient even to death. We are to mourn. Our sin and the sin of others because Christ was one who understood the depths of our sin. The depths he would have to go to undo it. We are meek because our Savior is gentle and meek. We hunger and thirst righteousness because we have a Savior who said his food was to do the will of his heavenly Father. We are merciful because we have been shown mercy. We have pure hearts. because we have been given the heart of Christ. We are peacemakers because God has made peace with us. You may think peace is hard in your everyday lives, in your relationships, and many times it is. Many times it can be hard to pursue peace with those who just don't seem interested in it, who seem to enjoy just stewing over the things that we perhaps have done to them in the past, or they perceive us to have done in the past. There are those in our families and in our workplaces who their worldviews just don't seem to align with ours, always seem to be at loggerheads, not finding peace. There are those in this world who would love nothing more than to consume us, to either allure us with sin, or to con us, to run over us, to cheat us. It's difficult to be at peace. But that's nothing compared to the peace that Christ had to win for us. The peace we are called to make is nothing compared to a world of rebels making war against the God who made them. Those who were not looking for peace and yet Christ was looking for them. And so offered himself as the peace making sacrifice on the cross. In light of that peace that he has won, that the peace that we seek doesn't seem Quite so unattainable, does it? When we are in a situation where it would be easier to ignore the conflict or to gossip about it or to appease it, the harder work is to pursue the peace, is to put ego aside. is to revel in the fact that we have a reconciling God and a message of reconciliation. That's the message that Paul said he was given to declare in 2 Corinthians 5. And by implication, the church now declares to the world, be at peace with God. For it is, in one sense, a result of the gospel. But in an even deeper sense, it is the gospel. We have a gospel of peace. Those who are at enmity with their maker, their hearts have been melted, their hearts have been circumcised, the deadness has been cut away. They've been brought to love the one they formerly hated. So we are called to make peace with those around us, not in a way that ignores truth, not in a way that explains away sin, but in a way that is rooted in our determination to know that whatever the world brings our way, we have peace with our God. There's nothing the world can do to knock us off that foundation. So we are free to pursue peace, doing all that we can, as Paul says in Romans 12, as much as it depends on you. It won't always depend on us. But in as much as it does, we can live at peace with all. And as we do, We are called sons of God. This is the blessing. This is the blessing. A rich reward is promised in scripture for those who pursue peace. Think of what James, brother of Christ says in his epistle in James chapter three, a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Sometimes I think people misunderstand the blessing to be called sons of God. What I don't think Jesus is saying is that if you pursue peace, if you live life as my disciple, then one day perhaps in glory you will be declared a son of God just like you are promised adoption in Scripture. He's not saying that one day adoption will be real, that you will truly be called sons of God. You know, now you're kind of in the provisional sonship stage, but one day you'll be called sons of God. No, that's not what Christ is saying. There is, of course, a sense in which right now we are Sons of God, that by faith in Christ, in union with the one who by his resurrection from the dead with power was declared to be the Son of God, as Romans 1 says. And so in union with him, that status is given to us. No, when Jesus says that you'll be called sons of God, don't skip the word called. It's an acknowledgment that we are like our Father. It's sort of like if you saw George Jr. playing on the playground, say you're longtime neighbors of the family and you see something that George does or you hear George's voice or a mannerism, you say, yep, that's George's son. He's just like his father. I think this is actually what Jesus is getting at when he says you'll be called sons of God. You will be acknowledged to be like your heavenly father. People will see you making peace and recognize that's only possible because they're like their peacemaking Heavenly Father. They're in the same family business, if you will. The Father provides the capital for the business, He provides the peace, and now we're going about the business of pursuing peace with everyone. As we do so, people will recognize our Heavenly Father in us. They will call us sons of God. Of course, that's not unrelated to what I said about what is objectively true about being adopted into the family of God, as having the Lord Jesus Christ as our elder brother in the faith, all those benefits that flow to us through our sonship, The spirit that cries out, Abba, Father, with us as we cry out to him. The inheritance that is awaiting us in glory as sons of God. Yes, all those things are objectively true. But also, as we pursue peace, we will model our peacemaking God. To be called sons of God, then, It's not far removed from the greatest blessing of seeing God. I remind you of what John said in his epistle. Those who, what, see God will be like him. There is that close connection between seeing God and being like him. There's that same connection in being called a son of God. As you are declared and called a son of God, you are showing yourself to be, proving yourself to be, revealing yourself to be to a watching world, a son of your peacemaking father. The one who sent did not spare his only son for you to make peace with him. Remember friends, if we are in the family business of Christ, if the Lord provides the capital, if he is the one making peace with us, That means the Prince of Peace is our older brother. It means we do what our older brother does. We follow after him. Just like a younger brother will literally sometimes walk behind his older brother and mimic and ape and walk in just the same way and put his feet in the very footsteps of his older brother. So as peacemakers in this world, or brothers of the Prince of Peace. You may have noticed how the Beatitudes begin with our heart disposition, a turn toward a disposition before God, and at the end, in the final few, Beatitudes really begin to look at our disposition toward the world. This time it has been positive. It's been making peace. Next time it will be negative. It will be persecution from the world. But regardless of where we find ourselves, we are secure. We are adopted sons of God. We are brothers of the Prince of Peace who has made peace with us. As we live out this calling, we will show the world that we are sons of our peacemaking Father. Let us pray. O Lord, indeed you are our Heavenly Father. We ask that you would bring all praise and glory to your own name, that as we walk before a watching world as disciples of the Lord Jesus, they would see you, the one who has called us out of darkness into light and give you all glory. Give you all praise and honor for what you have done for us and would do for them, Lord, if they would merely turn to you in repentance and faith. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.