Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Can we find some Good News in these words: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8)?
If you are "pure in heart," that of course is Good News. But how many people have seen God? John 1:18 says, "No one has seen God at any time." So, how many people really are "pure in heart"? Romans 3:10 says, "There is none righteous, no, not one." Saul of Tarsus thought he was until he discovered the tenth commandment, which says, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife," and he realized that the deepest thoughts, emotions, and feelings of his heart were not pure.
Hebrews 12:29 says that "our God is a consuming fire." It would be very bad news for anyone with an impure heart to see God! We may imagine that our hearts are pure when in fact they are not, because Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"
Perhaps this discloses the real reason why Jesus has not yet returned in the clouds of heaven. When people see Him come if they are not ready, it will be disaster for them, because "when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels" it will be "in flaming fire" (2 Thess. 1:7-9). Only the "pure in heart" can "dwell with the devouring fire" when "the sinners in Zion are afraid; [and] fearfulness has seized the hypocrites" (Isa. 33:14). His coming is Bad News for the impure in heart!
So, where's the Good News? Here it is, in Psalm 51:7-13, the prayer of an adulterer and murderer crying out for salvation: "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ... Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me. ... Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You." And Joel says, "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved" (2:32).
Cry out for true cleansing of heart! If you are serious, and not a hypocrite, the Lord will cleanse your deep, inner heart.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 17, 1998.
Copyright © 2015 by "Dial Daily Bread."
