Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Beatitudes, Part 38 of 50

TEXT: "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8).

IDEA: An emphasis on externals easily substitutes for a purity of heart.

PURPOSE: To help listeners understand that external purity (“clean hands”) must be accompanied by purity of heart.

Would you agree that men and women who are serious in following Christ will have both external purity and internal purity?

I. Both aspects of purity were in the tradition available to Jesus, but there was a stronger emphasis on the externals.

In the first century when Jesus was on earth, the religious leaders placed a stronger emphasis on the externals.

The Mishnah includes an entire section on the subject titled “Tohoroth” (Cleanness) that goes on for 200 pages. Among the rabbis quoted in that section is the great Rabbi Hillel who lived about a generation before Jesus.

In the Mishnah there are extended discussions on the cleansing of hands, vessels, immersion pools.

We see this reflected in Matthew 15: 1-20: we read about an incident when the Pharisees and other religious leaders traveled all the way from Jerusalem to the Galilee to ask Jesus why His disciples didn’t wash their hands before meals.

Were they talking about hygiene?

Eating could involve an elaborate religious ceremony. The Pharisees had to wash their hands in a prescribed way. To please God they had to go through the proper rituals and ceremonies. Where do you imagine that idea came from?

One Rabbi was arrested by the Romans and given only a couple of bread crusts and a cup of water for a meal. Instead of drinking the water the Rabbi used it for ritual purification saying he would rather die than go against the traditions of the fathers.

Is an emphasis on “clean hands” necessarily wrong?

II. Why do you think devout people who are drawn to the externals are sometimes less concerned by the internal issues of the heart?

What did Jesus mean by “the heart’?  Is it only the feelings?