Oh, be careful, little eyes, what you see, little ears, what you hear.  Oh, be careful, little tongue, what you say, little hands, what you do.  Oh, be careful, little feet, where you go.  There’s a Father up above looking down in tender love.  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (5:8).  Oh well.  So much for me, then.  Let me tell you about Martin.  He was not a particularly Christian man, though he had a clear sense of decency.  He was not a man of disreputable character.  At the end of a long workday, a co-worker invited Martin to dinner at a restaurant; they pulled into the parking lot of Hooter’s.  I guess the co-worker thought they had just the best burgers.  Inside, he leaned in and asked Martin how he liked the view.  Martin responded that the waitresses were all about the age of his daughters.  Maybe they left, after that.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  God sees everyone and everything.  God sees through us.  He sees into every dim corner and locked room of our heart and imagination.  You and I know—maybe we guys especially know, but maybe the women too, I like to hope so—that all that God sees in these hearts leaves us with no strong reason to feel proud of ourselves.  Purity of heart is quite likely the most difficult beatitude to keep, quite possibly the most impossible blessing to which we might attain.  A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?  Heaven is where our reach is acknowledged, despite the constant, continual shortfall of our grasp.

Purity of heart is not something you and I have.  We’re not even born with it because everyone is born predisposed away from God, predisposed for sin.  Maybe you don’t agree.  Purity of heart is given, a gift: the gift of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, God’s gift of merciful love.  He knows all our failings.  O, my failings!  He knows and chooses to forgive.  Love does not compel Him to forgive or leave Him with no choice but to forgive.  Because He loves, God chooses to forgive.  Those who receive His forgiveness are forgiven.  God is merciful.

A woman caught in adultery—not just suspected of it but caught in it—was hauled before Jesus.  Where was the man, by the way?  Jesus tells that woman, whose life he just saved, who had just been at the point of being stoned to death in public, Jesus tells her he does not condemn her—not because she has not merited condemnation.  Jesus does not condemn her because his mission is to save, not to condemn.  If his mission were to condemn, all would stand condemned.  His mission is to restore, not deplore.  So, having spared her, he says to her, “go and sin no more.”  She left, ran, to hide, weep, hate herself, her life, hate her hurts and hungers that made bad choices so easy; she hid herself away to wonder, reflect, and decide.  Sin no more.  Did she?  What do you say?  Did she sin no more?  Maybe not adultery, not after that!  But no sin at all of any kind ever again?

We all sin, beloved; the point is not to desire the sin, not just to throw yourself to the sin as though there were no remedy, no hope, no choice, just helpless surrender.  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  Jesus spoke of the sin against the Spirit as the one unforgivable sin.  We can feel slightly panicky, wondering what that sin might be—maybe we’ve committed it and don’t even know it!  I’ll tell you what I think it is, after having thought and read about it for a decade and more.  The sin unforgivable against the Spirit is not wanting forgiveness, not seeing that you’re doing anything requiring it.  Jesus never could do much for those who had no need for what he came to offer.  God cannot forgive those who do not want His forgiveness, though He holds His arms open wide to them, pleading with them to receive forgiveness.

You and I, we can prayerfully apply ourselves to nurturing whatever purity we may have left.  That’s not a pointless pursuit.  The tree looks more than half-dead, blasted, rotted from the inside, but there’s still life in it!  Nurture the life that is left.  Additionally, it’s imperative for us older disciples to make the effort to protect the innocence of the young disciples, the children.  Among other things, modesty and chastity are neither outdated nor worthless.  This world and this society are hellbent on ruining the children’s innocence, the sooner the better.  They’re coming for our children; that’s not paranoia.  They themselves are the ones telling us this—rather proudly, gleefully, even.  There’s so much to which those young eyes and young hearts, those young souls can be exposed so much more quickly and ruinously than we’ve ever known.  Technology brings many blessings.  I’m also concerned about the curses.  The tools we use won’t make us better people.  Our tools can only show us the sort of people we are, and people don’t often like to find out.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  They are the ones who are able to, whom God will allow to see Him, because they have not so filled their field of vision with filth, ugliness, and corruption that they’ve left no room for God to shine through.  There are things that intrude into our field of vision—unexpected things we wish we could unsee.  God gives grace.  We also make choices about what we see and do not see, will not see.  Whether or not pornography accounts for 10% of the internet, or more, or less; whether it generates $9 billion in revenue for its producers and purveyors, or more, or less, I think the unarguable point is that pornography is much more easily accessible now than ever before.  I put it to you that this makes for a bigger problem than ever before.  It’s not like the old girlie magazines back behind the black rack covers at the convenience stores.  Whatever in whatever variety is a click or two away: it’s positively pagan.  It’s not harmless.  It’s not victimless.  It’s ruinous.  Frankly, it’s depraved.

The blessing of Christ is that, impure as we are, he accepts us still; by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are cleansed, washed in God’s sight.  Now, it’s incumbent upon us to continue to strive, by the grace God gives, to stay on the path of righteousness.  Easy, no; blessed, yes.  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  Let us use the wisdom God gives: you and I can recognize invitations to harmful things that the younger disciples (God bless them always) can’t yet recognize, because they are still innocent, still blessed with innocence.  I hear people say, if only I had the children’s energy!  I say, if only I had their blessed innocence!

We can help the children, and we must.  Some of you may remember the entertainer Steve Allen, who died in 2000.  He rejected Christian faith entirely yet was sufficiently concerned for the children and youth of the country that, late in life, he strongly, publicly advocated for restrictions on the lewdness in film and on television that was becoming more common and more vile—this is the late ‘90s, almost thirty years ago.  In this country, censorship—well, before COVID, it used to be a bad word.  I’ll tell you, though, if pornography were banned here (God forbid, I know! but if it were), I would shed no tear.  Ah, the devil’s advocates pipe up, but what is pornography?  Well, in that case, yes, of course, how stupid of me—you see: what can be done?  Just don’t look, if you don’t like it.  And if it weren’t forced into my face through film, on television, over the radio, and in various performances at public libraries, in our public schools, and out on the streets—not here in West Columbia of course—I wouldn’t have to look, nor would my children.

But lasting purity of heart does not come by the negative way, by cutting things out of our lives, though there are things we Christians need to be cutting out of our lives.  Cleaning out the house of the heart isn’t enough.  With what shall we then fill the cleared, cleaned space?  Paul had some thoughts on that: “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8).  We have to fill ourselves, fill one another, and fill our children—fill this society, to the extent God allows!—with what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.  That would be Jesus—the Word of God.  Truth.  Moral excellence.  All that is in line with goodness and justice, as God teaches these.  Purity—of heart, yes, of life, of thought—what is that but the conscientious emulation of Jesus?  It’s not that Jesus was never exposed to ugliness!  Jesus wouldn’t let the ugliness claim him.  Jesus kept his heart trained on God, filled and continually being filled with God.

God doesn’t just fill us once and then leave us to figure the rest of it out—hey, now be careful and don’t spill what I poured into you!  God is continually filling us.  We are leaky vessels, after all, God knows.  Some of the leaks come from the cracks we have given ourselves, some from the cracks life has made in us, and other leaks are from God—what He pours into us is meant for others, too.  We come to God broken.  We do not come to God pure, not even the babies I baptize—crazy, I know!  Christ makes us purified in God’s sight.  What that means is that God, who knows how impure we are—even in ways and areas you or I may still refuse to acknowledge—God chooses, for the sake of Christ, to regard us as if we were not impure.  That as if is grace: getting what we don’t deserve.  He also blesses us with the Spirit, so that, by grace, our desiring gets nurtured for righteousness, purity, and mercy, and so that whatever still inclines toward impurity gets pruned.

The forces currently commanding this society are hellbent on insisting on their own definitions of truth and moral excellence, morality.  Our sex-addled culture and secularizing society insist on being the only, final, and absolute judges of what is true and morally good.  From where, however, are those understandings coming?  From where are those standards and definitions being supplied?  Notions of truth and moral goodness come from somewhere.  The Jesus Way is not love without question, love without judgment.  The Jesus Way is responsible love, obedient love, purifying love.  Contemporary notions of truth and moral goodness are coming from somewhere.  If not from the Bible, in what sense, properly, is any of it truly true or truly good when it comes to the conduct of life?  If all you and I can do is surrender to current social standards and cultural fashions, if the best we can do is learn our Bible from the commanders of culture, have we really heard the call of Christ at all?