Thursday, May 21, 2020

The Result of Holiness (Matt. 5:8)


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/21/2020 11:13 AM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  “The Result of Holiness”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 5:8

            Message of the verses:  "Happy are the utterly sincere, for they will see God!”

            In Today’s SD we will look at the last main-section for Matthew 5:8.  I think that one of the things that we can do, and perhaps I should do as I look at these sections and sub-sections is ask a question, for instance for today’s we could ask “What are the Results of Holiness?”

            The answer to what is the great blessing of those who are pure in heart comes at the end of verse eight “they shall see God.”  MacArthur writes “The Greek is in the future indicative tense and the middle voice, and a more literal translation is, ‘They shall be continuously seeing God for themselves.’  It is only ‘they’ (the emphatic autos), the pure in heart, who shall see God.  Intimate knowledge of and fellowship with God is reserved for the pure.”

            It happens when a person has their hearts purified at salvation that we begin to live in the presence of God, as we begin to see and to comprehend Him with our new spiritual eyes.  We become similar to Moses, who saw God’s glory and then asked to see more as recorded in Ex. 33:18, the one who is purified by Jesus Christ sees again and again the glory of God.  2Co 3:18  But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

            One of my favorite OT verses from the Psalms is Psalm 42:1 “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.”  We can see from this wonderful verse that it was the greatest hope of OT saints was to see God.  Job rejoiced when he was able to say the following in Job 42:5 “"I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You.”

            We conclude this SD and the comments on Matthew 5:8 with a quotation from John MacArthur and then another quotation from F. F  Bullard.

            “Purity of heart cleanses the eyes of the soul so that God becomes visible.  One sign of an impure heart is ignorance, because sin obscures the truth (John 3:19-20).  Evil and ignorance come in package.  Other signs of an impure are self-centeredness (Rev. 3:17), pleasure in sin, (2 Tim. 3:4), unbelief (Heb. 3:12), and hatred of purity (Mic. 3:2).  Those who belong to God exchange all of those things for integrity and purity.”  MacArthur then quotes F. F. Bullard:

When I in righteousness at last
Thy glorious face shall see;
When all the weary night has passed,
And I awake with Thee,
To view the glories that abide,
Then and only then will I be satisfied.

5/21/2020 11:36 AM




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