Part 6 of BLESSEDR: A Study of the Beatitudes
November 1, 2026
Glynwood Baptist Church, Prattville, AL
James Jackson, Pastor
Good morning! Please open your Bibles to 1 John 3. We’re continuing our study of the Beatitudes, and today we come to the sixth: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
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I don’t know if anyone else grew up like this, but in our house, we were loyal to one brand of soap.
Maybe you were a Dial family. Anybody grow up with Dial? Remember their commercial? “Aren’t you glad you use Dial? Don’t you wish everybody did?”
Or maybe you were a Zest family. “You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zestfully clean!”
Or Irish Spring. “Fresh and clean as a whistle!”
Well, I can tell you that the Jacksons were Ivory Soap people.
I loved Ivory because it floated! One time my mom made a little sail out of a toothpick and construction paper and stuck it in a bar of Ivory soap. Then I took my little SS Ivory to bath time with me and had the best bath ever.
But what always fascinated me about Ivory was this oddly specific claim printed right on the wrapper. And they still print it:
99 and 44/100 percent pure.
Even as a kid, I wondered, “99 and 44/100 percent pure … what? And what’s the other .56 percent?”
Now, that sounds pretty impressive. But in 2007, the Royal Canadian Mint topped it.
They minted five ginormous gold coins, each weighing over 200 pounds. The coins had a face value of one million Canadian dollars (which are like American dollars, but more polite).
And here’s the kicker: The gold was 99.999% pure. Only one thousandth of one percent of each coin was anything other than gold. Of that massive, 200-pound coin, the impurities weighed less than a single paper clip.
Here’s the thing, though.
Ivory soap still has .56% of something other than soap.
Canada’s gold coin still has a paper clip’s worth of something that isn’t gold.
So when Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” it’s logical to ask: How pure do you have to be?
Because just a few verses later, Jesus says, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
99.999% is good. But it’s not perfect.
So Who Qualifies to see God?
Think about the last 24 hours of your life. Every thought, every attitude, every behavior, every intention. How many of you could honestly say, “Oh yeah, I’ve been 100% pure in heart”?
Okay, maybe not 100%. How about 90%? Could you say 90% of your thoughts and intentions have been pure?
I heard about someone who prayed,
“God, I want to thank You that so far today, I haven’t lost my temper. I’ve been calm. I’ve guarded my thoughts. I’ve kept my eyes on You. I haven’t given in to temptation. So thank You for being with me so far today…
…but in a few minutes, I’m going to get out of bed, and I’m really going to need Your help then!”
So if only the pure in heart can see God, what chance do any of us have?
I want us to read what the apostle John says about the pursuit of a pure heart. Please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word.
[Read 1 John 3:1–10, ESV]
You may be seated. Let’s pray.
So how pure do we have to be?
Look at the grace in verse 1. John doesn’t say, “Look at the purity you’ve attained! You’ve earned the right to be called children of God!”
He says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us.”
The CSB says, “See what great love.” And the Greek word for given is stronger than our English word might suggest. Some translations say God has lavished His love upon us.
That we should be called children of God.
And so we are.
God calls us His children not because of our merit, but because of His love.
As the hymn says, I’m made pure “not for good that I have done,” but only through the blood of Jesus.
And that brings us to five kinds of purity we find in Scripture. Let’s look at each of them..
Five Kinds of Purity
Divine Purity: Who God is in His nature.
John described God like this in 1 John 1:5:
“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
God’s character is absolutely pure. As James 1:17 says, there is no variation or shadow due to change in Him.
Designed Purity: Creation before the Fall.
Genesis 1:31 says God looked at everything He had made, and it was very good. Ecclesiastes 7:29 says, “God made man upright.”
But that verse doesn’t stop there:
“God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”
There’s always a but.
Sin entered the world and defiled God’s perfect creation. And we still try to minimize it. A paper clip’s worth of impurity in a 200-pound gold coin. Just .56% of a bar of soap. Surely that’s not such a big deal!
We rationalize. “It was just one bite of forbidden fruit.” “Just one time I looked at someone else’s paper during a test.”
“Just one weekend when I was traveling for business.”
But remember the standard: “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” No sin, however small we think it is, can meet God’s standard of holiness.
Which is why the next kind of purity is our only hope.
Declared Purity: Christ’s righteousness credited to us.
Because of God’s great love, lavished upon us, we are called His children. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that God made Him who knew no sin—that’s Jesus—to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
In Him, we are declared pure.
But does that mean we’re already everything we will ultimately become? No. John goes on to describe our:
Destined Purity: Our ultimate likeness to Christ.
Verse 2 says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now”—that’s declared purity—“and what we will be has not yet appeared.”
We’re living between the now and the not yet. But one day, when Christ returns and our salvation is complete, “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”
And while we wait for that day, we pursue the fifth kind of purity:
Daily Purity: The ongoing pursuit of holiness.
Verse 3 says:
“And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
It sounds like a paradox: Those who have already been made pure are called to purify themselves.
Paul describes the same paradox in Philippians 2:12–13:
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
Paul doesn’t say, “Work out your salvation even though God is working in you.” He says, “Work out your salvation because God is working in you.”
God gives us both the desire and the ability to pursue holiness.
And the rest of our passage shows us how.
2. The Pursuit of Purity
The first step in pursuing purity is to take sin seriously (vv. 4–6).
Verse 4 calls sin lawlessness. When someone continually disregards the laws of a country, it raises questions about their respect for the authority behind those laws.
Sin is like that. It’s more than breaking a rule. It’s disregarding the authority of the One who gave us the rule.
Verse 5 says Christ came to take away sin. So I’ll ask the same question the Apostle Paul did in Romans 6:2: How can we who died to sin still live in it?
John isn’t saying genuine Christians never sin. He’s already told us that anyone who claims to be without sin is deceiving himself. And in chapter 2, he reminds us that when we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
But there’s a difference between stumbling into sin and settling into sin.
We all struggle against sin. But in verse 4 John is talking about making a practice of sinning. That’s when you come to the point where you say things like, “Well, it’s just who I am. Or, “Well I’m not hurting anybody.” Or even, “time has changed, and what the Bible calls sin maybe isn’t a sin at all.”
Friends, I say this with all the love in my heart—if you disagree with the Bible about what is or isn’t sin, guess who’s wrong.
If Christ came to take away our sins, why would we make ourselves at home in them?
Next, the pure in heart practice righteousness diligently.
Notice that John uses the same vocabulary he used when talking about practicing sin. Verse 7 says, “Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous.”
Speaking of little children, our four-year-old grandson Jordan stayed with us this week. One of his bedtime rituals is reciting Psalm 24 with his mom and dad, so Trish and I tried to keep that up.
Trish would say:
“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?”
And Jordan would repeat, in his sweet little four-year-old voice,
“Who shall ascend da hiwofda ward?”
“And who shall stand in his holy place?”
“And who shaw stand innis ho-wee-pwace?”
“The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully.”
That’s not a bad place to start. How do you pursue righteousness on a daily basis?
- Pay attention to what your hands are doing. Are they helping people or hurting people? Are they clenched in anger or open to give?
- What’s going on in your heart? What occupies your thoughts? What captures your affections? What do you think about when nobody else is around? Paul says in Philippians 4:8 to dwell on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and worthy of praise.
- Are you lifting up your soul to what is false? Are you trusting in anything other than God for your salvation, your security, your hope, your future?
- Are you swearing deceitfully? Do you make promises and not keep them? Are you spreading gossip? Are you talking about people instead of to people?
Notice that David doesn’t just talk about clean hands. He talks about a pure heart. God cares about what we do, but He also cares about why we do it—and what we love most.
And that’s why pursuing purity isn’t just about avoiding a thousand wrong things. It’s about pursuing the one right thing: God Himself.
Since we’re talking about one of David’s Psalms, let’s talk about David. People often wonder, “How could David be described as a man after God’s own heart when you look at some of the terrible things he did, like his adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of her husband to cover it up.”
But being a man “after God’s own heart” doesn’t have to mean David’s heart was like God’s. Maybe it wasn’t about who David resembled, but who David pursued.
When I fell in love with Trish, I began to pursue her. I wanted to please her. I wanted to get to know her better. Ultimately, I wanted her to give me her heart.
In other words, I became a man “after Trish’s heart.”
And that’s what David did. Look at Psalm 27:4:
4 One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.
One thing.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book with a title that has stayed with me: Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing.
One thing.
Not impressing people. Not earning God’s approval. Not checking off a list of religious activities.
Just God.
Is that the one thing you are seeking after?
Third, Live Out Your Identity Consistently (vv. 9–10)
Verse 9 says:
“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.”
If you are truly born of God, His seed abides in you. You are His son. You are His daughter. And to continue in sin is to go against your spiritual DNA.
One of my favorite movies is The Lion King. And if you’ve heard me preach very often, you probably already knew that!
Remember the scene where Simba has run away from Pride Rock? He’s out in the jungle with Timon and Pumbaa, hakuna-matata-ing without a care in the world. But then he has a vision of his father, Mufasa, who tells him he must return and face his responsibilities.
And do you remember what Mufasa says?
“Remember who you are. You are my son and the one true king.”
Simba didn’t stop being Mufasa’s son when he ran away. And Mufasa doesn’t tell him to go back and become his son.
He tells him to remember who he is.
Go back to verse 1: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”
And so we are.
If you’ve been born again, you belong to the King. You don’t have to earn your place in His family. But you do need to live like you belong to Him.
And when you fall into sin, don’t make peace with it. Confess it. Turn from it. Remember who you are.
But John is also warning us that if we can continually live in rebellion against God without repentance, we need to ask whether we’ve ever truly belonged to Him.
Look at verse 10:
“By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”
Notice that last phrase. Our identity as God’s children is revealed not only by how we resist sin, but by how we love one another.
You can’t claim to love the Father while refusing to love His children.
3. The Promise of Purity: Seeing God
Let’s get back to the promise of the Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
We’ve talked before about how the first and last Beatitudes have present-tense promises, while the others point to the future. And one day, we really will see God face to face. Revelation 22:4 says, “They will see his face.”
But I don’t believe we have to wait until heaven to experience something of that promise.
Do you remember Zacchaeus? Yeah—the wee little man. That Zacchaeus. Do you remember why he climbed up in the tree in the first place? He wanted to see who Jesus was, and He did.
Do you remember when Moses asked God to show Him his glory? He did.
So the promise to see God doesn’t just have an ultimate fulfillment. We can see God now. In John 14:21, Jesus says that those who love Him and keep His commandments will experience Him making Himself known to them. I believe purity of heart helps us recognize God’s presence even now.
Yesterday, I asked my friend Jonathan Denham to take me for a ride in his convertible Corvette. It had been a long time since I’d ridden in a convertible, and I needed a reminder of what it was like.
And it was everything I remembered!
With the top down, everything just felt more THERE. You could feel the wind. Smell the air. Hear everything around you. It was like all your senses were turned up a notch.
Compare that to driving around in my truck. When I’m in my truck, but I’ve got the windows up, the air conditioner running, and the radio playing. I’m driving through the same world, but I’m insulated from everything outside.
Same roads. Same route. Same world. But a completely different experience of it.
That’s what happens when we make knowing God the one thing we’re after. It’s not that God suddenly starts doing more around us. We become more aware of what He’s been doing all along.
Purity of heart doesn’t just change the way we live. It changes the way we see.
And one day, when we see Him face to face, the top will be down for good.
Response
As we come to our time of response, I want to share Psalm 86:11:
“Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth…”
Now, here’s where two translations express the same prayer in slightly different ways.
The ESV says, “Unite my heart to fear your name.”
The NIV says, “Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”
Both faithfully express the Hebrew. But I think we can apply that one prayer in two different ways this morning.
Some of you need to pray, “Give me an undivided heart.” You need something you don’t yet have. You need to be born again. God promises in Ezekiel 36:26 to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh.
If you’ve never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, trusting Him to forgive your sins and make you new, I urge you to do that today.
But others of you need to pray, “Unite my heart.” You belong to Christ, but you’ve allowed your heart to become divided. You’ve given pieces of it to so many other things.
On Sunday, you look to Jesus. But Monday through Friday, you look to success at work. On election day, you look to a politician for salvation. On Saturday, you look to leisure activities or college football for happiness.
And somewhere along the way, you’ve lost sight of the one thing that matters most.
This morning, ask God to unite your heart. Make knowing Him the one thing you’re seeking above everything else.
So which prayer do you need to pray?
Give me a heart I don’t have yet?
Or unite the heart I’ve allowed to become divided?
Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
And there’s nothing in this world more worth seeing than Him.
Let’s sing together.
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