Here are some questions based on last Sunday’s sermon text (Matthew 5:8), in case they’re helpful to you for personal growth or group discussion…

• “Blessed are the pure (root: kathar-) in heart…” Jesus talks about the “heart” as the spiritual core of a person’s life, the inner person, the seat of the affections, the source of actions (Lk. 6:45). The heart of a hypocrite is impure (root: akathar-, “unclean,” Mt. 23:27-28). Hypocrites have bad motives for appearing externally to be good people, and they want to fool others (and themselves) about their goodness. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? ‘I the LORD search the heart and test the mind'” (Jer. 17:9-10). Do you find yourself wanting to convince other people that you are a better person than you really are? Why are our heart motives impure? Why are our heart motives often hidden from ourselves? Are you ever worried about deceiving yourself? Do you live as if it is possible to deceive God? Is it possible to find comfort in the truth that God searches your deceitful heart? Where can you go to have your own heart revealed to you?

• “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin’?” (Prov. 20:9). This is a rhetorical question—no one can say he/she has purified his/her own heart. God teaches us that the impure and unclean need an unblemished, spotless sacrifice to purify and cleanse us from our sins. Jesus is the true sacrifice we need. He alone has loved and obeyed God from a pure heart. In our vicarious salvation through faith in him, his purity is counted as ours. And in our sanctification, his purity of heart comes alive in us through his Spirit. Can you imagine what it is like for Jesus to be the only truly pure-hearted person ever to have lived? Can you imagine living with God’s own purity? If his purity of heart meant he could see the God of love, do you believe you will see the God of love because of his purity accounted to you? Is that becoming the one desire of your heart (Ps. 27:4)? Are you praying for Christ’s own purity of heart to become yours, experientially?

• FOR THE CHILDREN: Do you have a pure heart? Does anyone? Does Jesus? If you need a pure heart to see God, how will you be able to see God? What should you do about your impure heart? Who makes it possible? Do you want to see God?