Purity of heart

“He who loves purity of heart and whose speech is gracious, the king is his friend.”  Proverbs 22:11

Purity of heart – Clean clear through.  The Hebrew word tahor is about ritual purity.  It describes all those Old Testament dietary laws about clean foods.  It covers the laws about events in life that defile a person.  It’s all about who can enter into worship.  But in this verse we learn something deeper.  God wants our outward behavior to be clean.  He wants it to conform to His laws about sanctified living.  But He is looking for more than outward conformity.  He is looking for clean clear through – a purified heart.

Stevenson, an Old Testament scholar, points out that this verse is contrary to human experience.  Kings usually don’t make friends with people who are pure of heart and speak the truth.  Kings usually want to hear only what pleases them.  Stevenson suggests that the king in this verse is not a human ruler but rather God Himself, the ultimate King, who really does want His people to have pure hearts and truthful speech.  God loves those who seek to obey.  A pure heart is a description of total obedience.  Lev (heart) is the common Hebrew expression for the whole person.  That means words, thoughts and deeds; all sanctified to God.

So here’s the test.  Do you offer everything in your life to God in worship?  Do you talk one way when you are in God’s presence and another when you think He isn’t listening?  Do you act one way when you are worshipping and another way when you imagine you are outside the worship experience?  Do you think about things differently when you approach God compared to your usual thought processes?  Purity of heart covers all of you.  The verse says that God loves those whose lives are fully given to worship, who are ritually clean in everything they say, do and think. 

Life is worship.  And the worshipping life requires a clean heart.

Does that worry you?  Does it make you realize that some words, thoughts and deeds are not worthy of worship?  Do you suddenly get a pang of moral consciousness reminding you that you may not be living a completely worshipping life?  There is only one solution.  It’s David’s cry:  Lord, create in me a pure heart and clean hands.  I can’t do it on my own.  My heart will never be worshipfully pure unless God does the cleaning.

Time to pray.