The Heart That Seeks God Will See God
If you done the job of parenting a child, gone through the early years of raising little ones through infancy, kindergarten, first, second, third and so on... There are certain things that you remember, certain movies, books that come right to your attention that normally wouldn’t come. Do you remember Where’s Waldo? It’s about this guy that keeps popping up everywhere. There is an adult version of the game that we play and it is called Where’s God.
Like Mary Rubio seeing God on Tortillas - a woman from new Mexico who was rolling out burritos and as she was cooking her tortillas she began to see the suffering face of Christ on her skillet burns. Over 9,000 people showed up at her house to witness the appearance of Christ on her tortillas.
Man in California who’s home during a certain time of day on his garage when the sun starts to go down gives the appearance of Christ on the cross, and on a given weekend 9,000 people came to witness it.
Oral Roberts had a vision of a 900 ft tall Jesus who told him to build City of Faith Medical and Research Center. He needed to finish the project and to appeal to people to raise the money to complete the project or God would call him home.
It’s an adult game we seem to play, “Where’s God” we look for him in our pancakes and syrup. It is a nice little distraction to keep us from the pressures and the realities of life. A cosmic cartoon character that we look for in life. Outside of that anyone who is truly seeking to look for God in the mist of the difficulties of life, there distracted in the wrong way, they are delusional, because you can’t see God like that. That’s just denying reality, being irresponsible, taking time to work on your problems and earn money and wasting it looking for God where he can’t be found.
It’s always been like that, it isn’t just our culture that views it that way you can go back to beginning of time, right back to Adam and Eve, to the people of Israel who would look for God in images, idols, in things that they could hold and things that they could manipulate knowing that he wasn’t really there but willing to settle for God in a box.
It’s not hard to understand in once sense is it? Can you really see God? I think in one sense or another we all wished we could see God and have him speak to us. How many of you wished “I was around when Jesus walked this earth.” What about all of us who haven’t seen God like that?
Jesus the Son of God, God incarnate who walked this earth came to give us an answer to that question. The answer is yes, you can see God today.
We began this study on the Beatitudes looking at how God takes us and transforms us. We began because of the new year and the whole idea of having a happy new year but realizing what’s more important than being happy is being blessed and having God’s favor upon you. It is when you have God’s favor upon you great things begin to happen. You not only end up happy but end up blessed with the joy of God.
Review of Series
Matthew 5
Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount
5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
The Beatitudes
He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
It means intellectually they get it, they come to the point that they have sinned against God. They recognize that they are missing something, they are far off from God. They have come to an understanding that they have made a mess of their lives.
A Recognition Of Spiritual Poverty That Produces Humility And Dependency.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
The intellectual recognition drives the emotional expression, they mourn. The Second Beatitude, blessed are those who weep and grieve and are broken hearted over the fact that they have sinned against a holy God and have sinned and hurt people around them.
Mourning Is The Regret Of A Heart Looking For A New Morning
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Those who have got it intellectually, experience it emotionally and now volitionally they walk in a new humility. When you go from the first Beatitude to the last Beatitude what you will see is the making of the Christian man, woman or child.
Meekness Immeasurable Power Under Intentional Control
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Their direction now becomes changed, they no longer want the things of this world but want the things of God. They understand that just going after the same old stuff even though you grieve your sin would just bring more sin and more grief and out of gratitudethey want for themselves what God wants for them.
Greater Satisfaction Experienced When Passions Are Directed By Convictions
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
after reviewing the first four Beatitudes there is a transition that now is taking place. Because we now act like God. Once you get it that you are poor in spirit, that you grieve it, that you mourn it, that you regret it, once you walk in humility and you began to hunger and thirst for righteousness then you start acting like God and you start showing mercy to others like God has show mercy to you.
Mercy Is The First Act Where We Become Like Him
This Week Series Begins
8 Blessed are the pure in Heart, for they will see God.
What is the real truth in this?
The Heart That Seeks God Will See God
It’s the promise of God, that if your heart is where it should be, then you will see God where ever it is that you are.
What does it mean to have a pure heart?
1 Timothy 1:5
“The Goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
Notice that a pure heart is linked to good conscience and a sincere faith. A pure heart is a heart that is consumed for God. It is a heart with loyalties that is not divided. A heart that is devoted to God. A heart that wants to be about everything that God is about. A heart that is not distracted.
We often think about a pure heart as a clean heart, no looking at porn, no drinking, no swearing, no being greedy, so if you just stop doing all of these things you will have a pure heart. Stop sinning and you will have a pure heart and this is how the Pharisees thought. They were the religious good guys of Jesus’s day and they walked around with all of these symbols and great works they would do, all of the prayer beads and tenements they would use to help them to draw nearer to God outwardly and Jesus said they were a bunch of white washed tombs of deadmens bones. He said they looked great on the outside but on the inside they are rotten, decrepit and decaying and they had no pure heart at all.
A pure heart isn’t about the things that you do or you don’t do. A pure heart is having a heart that is fully directed at God that pays attention to God.
How well do you pay attention, did you start the day with goals and then get distracted during the day, when you talk to someone do you often wander off thinking about other things. Is that a pure heart? No. Is that a focus mind? No. We do this with God and we aren’t even that good at it. We don’t even put that much effort into it. We pray and say thank you God and go off on our way living our lives for our purposes.
You know in your mind that God has saved you in Christ, that he loves you and every good thing that you have comes from him, you know that in theory, but theory never seems to turn into reality because you go off and sweat, fret, struggle, walk in humiliation, shame, and sin and you don’t know why and then you come back and reconnect with God and say we really love you and want you why can’t I have more of you, why can’t you be more present in my life and then we go off into our lives doing the same old stuff.
Jesus said, Blesses are the pure in heart, Blessed are those who are devoted to him. Why? Because if they are then you will see him.
David talked about seeing God every he went. When David saw lightening his response was the voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightening, I can hear him. Why? Because David devoted his heart to God.
Psalm 29
3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters; The God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic.
a. Undistracted
Blessed are those who go undistracted for they will see the face of God.
When we turn our attention away from God to anything we create idols. What are idols? They are objects, people, ideas, money, that we look at and think that this will save us or do something for us and we look to them and want them and they become our passion, they become our gods because we endue power upon them in our own minds to be powerful in meeting our needs and we become idolaters and the only gods we see are the ones we hold that look like us and they are no gods at all.
b. Eyes
Blessed are those who keep their eyes upon him because if they do, they won’t be distracted by all the glitz and glamor of this world that is nothing more than sin. Nothing more than the stuff that cause us to go in the wrong direction, marry the wrong person, engage in the wrong behaviors that will leave us bankrupt, the things we lust for that will causes us distortions in the way we think and the way that we look at God.
c. Minds
Blessed are those who keep their minds on him. You can’t have a pure heart on your own. A pure heart is something that God gives to you. That was the promise that God gave to Jeremiah that I will give you a new heart, a heart with my spirit in it, a heart thatwill be more powerful if you press into it than the wicked decay heart that you have. It’s what Jesus came and brought to us and the new life we have in Christ.
How do you grow and see God with a new heart?
I. Ask
You simply ask, you ask God to take your heart and shape it as you would have it. God come into my life and by your spirit each moment redirect me, when I get off track, help me to see quickly to see that I am off track. If you are earnest and you ask for him to set you back on track then you will know when you are drifting. If you earnestly just want and ask then God will do his part for you.
II. Surrender
Let go of your fears, we walk in faith or we walk in fear there is no in between. Fear that you will never have a fulfilled life, that you will never get married, that you will never have enough to provide for your family, fear that you will never be able to retire, just fear and you will never live. You will never see God in fear because God doesn’t walk in fear. God shows up in fear and offers you faith and you have to grab it and walk out of it. Be willing to let go of your fears, of the things that you long for and lust for that have nothing to do with where God is directing you. Willing to let go of your greed, you wanting more and more of yourself and seeing less and less of God and God in others.
III. Look
A heart that seeks God will see God, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see the face of God.
If you hunger and thirst for God for his righteousness you’ll be filled, if you love others and show mercy because you understood that you needed it and you were given it and have been humbled by it. If you do this everyday, you will see God everywhere. You will see God in the people you talk to even though they don’t even know him, you will see his image in them.
You will see Christ in your life and you will know that you don’t need anything other that what he has given you. If we are willing to just listen to God and to just ask and to surrender and to look we will see him.
Notes taken by: Lorelllawrence@comcast.net The notes is for you to have for review in the series, also to reflect on during the week.
God Bless,
Sermon by: Pastor Frederick Williams