Matt 5.6 ’Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.’
ILL: Have you ever spent time fasting? I think some of the youth are thinking about doing the 40 hour famine in a few weeks. If you’ve done it before, how much are you actually thinking about the message during those last few hours? Not much, I’ll bet. I bet you’re sitting there thinking about the gnawing sensation in your stomach and how good lunch is going to taste in a couple of hours!
Once when I was helping with a youth group in Alice Springs we went hiking up a mountain but we hadn’t brought enough water. I tell you, the hike back down was a nightmare. The water was gone in no time. We came across what looked like a reasonably clean pool of water and filled a flask up. I didn’t really trust the water - you don’t go drinking water from still pools in the desert - but we used it as a carrot for all those exhausted kids on the way down. By the time we got down all we could think about was water - I have never been so thirsty in all my life. ASome people were getting so desperate they were fantasizing about drinking the coolant out of the car engine!
I guess most of us know what it’s like to be very hungry or thirsty, but what about spiritual hunger? Many people have some sort of desire for the spiritual, but in this age of designer spirituality that can mean almost anything. What Jesus was talking about here was a hunger for a spirituality that connects with God.A hunger for his righteousness.
1. RIGHTEOUSNESS
What do you think of when you think of righteousness? Stuffy doctrines? Saintly people who seem to float above the cares of the world?
Of course, Jesus wasn’t talking about either. It’s true that righteousness is a very rich and loaded word. But it really just boils down to a few simple ideas.
A. RIGHT WITH GOD
First of all, a hunger for righteousness comes from a desire to be in a right relationship with God.
For the Old Testament Jew pursuing this meant living obeying the law. But godly people throughout the ages have realised that despite our best efforts, we simply can’t live up the law. As the Bible says, "No one is righteous, not even one person!" (Rom 3.10).
But that’s a positive thing, because when we’re at that place all we can do is cry out to God for mercy and grace. Even the Old Testament prophets and poets realised that. So in Psalm 51 the psalmist says to God:
"Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me" (Ps 51.9-11).
When we get to that point, we’re expressing a hunger for righteousness.
B. OBEDIENCE TO GOD
Not only is righteousness about relationship with God, it’s also about wanting to please God.
Lots of people think that pleasing God is about obeying rules, going to church and all those kind of things. Of course, all of that is really important, but it’s not the essence of righteousness. In fact, it can quickly turn into legalism. We become like the pharisees who did everything right on the outside: they come to worship and they did their acts of service and they kept the law, but thought they came to worship they didn’t worship. They did acts of service, but they didn’t have a servant-heart. They were bitter and screwed up.
A hunger for righteousness is more like the psalmist’s cry, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Ps 42.1-2).
If you are hungry and thirsty for righteousness it means you want to live a life in step with the Spirit. This is the kind of yearning you can’t fake. Behaviour follows being and hunger for righteousness begins with a heart for God. It flows from love. Then doing righteous things come naturally. We go to worship out of a desire to worship God. We seek out the fellowship of other believers out of a desire to be with God’s people. We serve others out of a deep sense of love and joy for what God has done for us through Jesus. We avoid sin because we love righteousness.
ILL: I notice this with my kids. Sometimes we’ll ask them to do something - tidy their room or help with the dishes - and we wind up sorry we asked! It’s just a grind to get them to do their chores. But then at other times, they’ll spontaneously come and help. It’s something that’s come from the heart. They’ll just do it and then want to show it off to us! Not that they need to win our approval, but they really want our praise. And don’t we love to give it!
A hunger for righteousness is wanting to be like God.
C. JUSTICE
The Greek word for righteousness includes the idea of both moral rightness and also of justice. When you think about it, how can you have one without the other? If we truly have a heart for God and his righteousness, it will also be expressed in a desire to see justice in our world.
The people who were listening to Jesus that day knew all about injustice. Then as now, the world was filled with injustice and unrighteousness. Then as now people lived to please themselves, exploited the poor so they could have cheap consumer good, didn’t really have a heart for God or his standards.
How can we say we have a hunger for righteousness if we don’t have a desire to see God’s righteousness shine in our world. That means social justice as well as moral integrity. How can we have a hunger for righteousness if we don’t want to help the hungry and the poor? If we don’t care about the moral state of society? If we don’t cry out to God: ’Your will be done on earth as in heaven.’
A hunger for righteousness is a hunger to see righteousness shine in our world.
2. BEING FILLED
When we start to look at righteousness - being right with God, personal obedience, and a just society, we can become pretty discouraged. I don’t know about you, but I don’t always walk in the intimate fellowship of the Spirit as I want to. I despair at the injustice and godlessness in our society. And it’s only made worse because of this desire I have for righteousness. I want to be like Jesus! To have a life of love and worship and justice. But I am so far off the mark!
So how are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed?
A. THE CROSS
First of all, through the cross.
Rom 4.25 says, "He was delivered over to death of our sins and was raised to life for our justification." The word for justification here is the same word as righteousness, and the idea is that God makes us righteous through Christ. This isn’t automatic, we have to receive it by faith - believe in him and turn from our sins. But when we do that we come into a right relationship with God.
If you haven’t accepted Christ as your Lord and Saviour, I want to invite you to do so this morning. This isn’t just about ’being saved’, it’s about friendship with God. Knowing him and being counted as one of his children. And it’s yours for free if you’ll accept it!
The hunger for righteousness is met as we accept God’s grace through faith.
B. THE SPIRIT
God saved us through the cross, and then he transforms us through his Spirit.
When we become a follower of Christ, God gives us His Holy Spirit, and the Spirit gives us a new nature and starts to influence our thoughts and our lives. He enables us to become like Jesus. This is called sanctification. Rom 8.5 says, "Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires."
But we have to cooperate with him in the process. Eph 5.18 commands us to be filled with the Spirit. You can’t fill yourself with the Spirit, but as we submit to Spirit’s ministry and to the Word of God, he fills us and we live the righteousness we have become in Christ. We experience the love, joy and peace that comes from living the Spirit-filled life and leads us to worship the Lord. We have the power to serve, not out of duty, but from a servant heart.
Maybe you’ve accepted Jesus as Saviour, but you’re not really walking in the Spirit. You’re not living in submission to him. You’re missing out on the Spirit-filled life.
The hunger for righteousness is filled by the work of the Spirit in our lives.
C. THE ESCHATON
And what about justice? We all want to be part of a better world, don’t we? Some Christians believe that we can achieve this through social action or the political process. Now I believe that Christians should be involved in politics, and we are called to serve the poor. But the chief way we’ll see justice come to our world is when lives are changed by the gospel. We need to be telling others!
The bottom line is we’re not going to have our hunger for righteousness completely satisfied this side of heaven. God has made us righteous through the cross, and is making us morally righteous through the Spirit, but we still sin, and evil still wars against God.
2Pet 3.13 says, "We are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness."
Get this - the new heaven and the new earth is the ’home of righteousness’. Simply put, not until Jesus comes and conquers sin and evil once for all will righteousness rule without anything to muck it up.
And that will be when our hunger is satisfied and our thirst quenched once and for all.
CONCLUSION
For the truth of all this, we need to remember that Jesus said it’s those who hunger and thirst for righteousness that will be satisfied. A lot of people treat faith like an insurance policy. We take it out but then we stick it in the bottom of the drawer and almost forget about it until a rainy day.
Jesus wasn’t talking about the kinds of people who want to own the name of Jesus and then live for themselves. We are so ready to fill up our lives on junk food - on entertainment or sports or work or hobbies or even family that our appetite is satisfied, but with junk food.
But Jesus was talking about the kinds of people who are like that bunch of kids were coming down the mountain that day. So desperate they were ready to drink engine coolant! How desperate for God are you? It’s the desperate who find satisfaction, not those who just want to snack on junk food!
God puts an offer to us. He says in Isa 55.1-2 "Come, all you who are thirsty,come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."
