Have you ever really been hungry, not its noon I better have some lunch hungry. Not “I haven’t eaten all day hungry, but if I don’t eat soon I will die hungry”? Have you ever gone two days without a drop of water to the point that you start hallucinating and are close to going into a coma that leads to death?
Well, probably half the population in the world knows this kind of hunger or thirst. Certainly in the desert area Jesus wandered through these things could be very scarce, especially water.
And in our beatitude today we’re going to see how God wants us to seek after him and his justice. We have recognized our utter dependence on him for life and salvation, we have grieved over our sin and the spiritual state of the world. We have embraced the fact that we have no rights in God’s eyes, yet he gives us freedom and he is there with an indescribable inheritance when we allow him to be our Lord.
Is that enough for us to hunger and thirst for him as if our lives depended on it? Is our desire for his justice and righteousness as important as the air we breathe? Well, Jesus is saying it should be if you are truly a Christian.
This is the beatitude that best expresses our attitude toward God. To hunger and thirst as if our lives depended on Him, which they do. The first three beatitudes described what we are as Christians, this one now speaks of what we do. We must put some effort into this one.
Let’s look at:
I. The Need (Mt 5:6a)
What is righteousness? As always, let’s start with the original Greek word dikaiosune. Which literally means equity or justification, and its root is the word meaning holy or innocent. This word is in the accusative case which simply means we don’t hunger and thirst for just a portion, like a slice or even a loaf of bread, or some righteousness, but all of it, total righteousness, all that is possible to have.
So what we’re talking about here is the desire to be made right with God. To be declared innocent. We know we cannot be righteous on our own, with our own justification for our sin, only God through Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice can make us right with God, holy, innocent, justified in the cosmic court.
If you want a really comprehensive view of biblical righteousness, have a look at the Proverbs especially chapters 10-13 where there are numerous uses of the word righteous.
David was a great example of this in his Psalms. He speaks often of “his soul thirsting for the living God”, “my body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water”, “my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God”, “as the deer pants for water, so my soul pants for you, Oh God”.
These are not religious platitudes or superficial emotions, they are whole hearted, desperate, earnest cries from one for whom life without a sense of God’s presence was the equivalent of dying of thirst or starving to death. How often do we feel like that?
Let me illustrate. You’re driving down the road and notice your fuel gauge is very near empty, and there’s no gas station for miles. Or maybe you have had that heart sinking feeling when your vehicle just gives out when you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere.
Some vehicles have warning lights or other alerts when you’re running low, but the vehicle itself has no desire or thirst for fuel. It’s not a perfect illustration, but isn’t that a picture of many professing Christians? Outwardly everything seems fine. They live respectable lives, they attend church regularly, they use religious language, but inwardly and spiritually they are dangerously near empty.
There’s no sense of need, no hungering and thirsting after God, no desperation. Even worse, they’re not aware of it. They remind us of the Laodicean Christians in Revelation who thought they were rich and didn’t need a thing, but Jesus said, “you don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked”. Every one of us whether a new Christian or a lifer, needs to keep an eye on our spiritual gauge everyday because it is this false sense of our spiritual state that is an epidemic in our churches today.
Again we see how this will naturally come from an awareness of our spiritual poverty, our mourning for sin, and our meekness in the first three beatitudes. Those things must naturally lead us to a desperate zeal for Jesus and his righteousness, and the righteousness of others. In a sense it’s an anger that motivates you and has been tempered by meekness to produce positive results.
If you’re angry after you run out of gas, which you surely will be, there is a good chance you will take measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again. You have a hunger to avoid the same circumstance in the future.
But it’s also a desire to see God’s righteous justice take place. Remember in the book of Revelation, the heavenly host and the elders in heaven were always crying out for his justice to be done on earth. This means hungering and thirsting for poverty to end, starvation, murder, war, all the things in this world that are unjust. We long for Him to make the world holy and perfect once again.
Every second an unsaved person is alive, they are literally on their eternal death bed. If at any second our lives can be taken, then we are perpetually all on our death bed.
And for the Christian this is also true to the extent that we want to be right with God more than anything, even if we have already been saved. And our greatest concern is not ourselves but others who suffer injustice and have not been made righteous through salvation.
So obviously if this righteousness can only come from Christ, then we are famished, and toil for Him every day (that is what this word hunger means), and thirst for him just as the rich man pleaded for Lazarus to give him a drop of water to wet his parched tongue in Hell.
We are talking about an unquenchable, passionate, ongoing spiritual desire to be right with God and free from the shackles of sin, and to see His will become reality on earth. Righteousness comes before happiness, but the world has it backwards, we try to make ourselves happy first by whatever means, then maybe look at the possibility of righteousness and giving everything up for God. We like to satisfy our other hungers first. Jesus is saying throughout the Bible, “Good luck with that”.
These characteristics are like:
II. The (Spiritual) Vital Signs
Martyn Lloyd Jones says that this beatitude is the major measure of the vital signs of the church. Why, because hunger is a sign of health. Go to Bayside and the most important thing they are looking for is whether a person is eating or not. The loss of appetite medically, indicates sickness or the slipping away of life.
One of the greatest signs of sickness in the Christian church today is the widespread lack of hungering and thirsting after God, our lives are so comfortable and we have become lukewarm. One Scottish preacher said that if you love anything more than your prayers, the Bible, going to church, and sitting at the Lord’s table, more than Christ himself and the hope of heaven – take alarm!
We have seen this in reduced services. Remember some of you when there was a Sunday morning and evening service and a Wednesday service, and the whole church usually showed up? There are some large churches I know of in Canada and the US who have considered closing down for June, July, and August to give the members a break and to save money because not many would come anyway. Surely this lack of appetite is a sign of sickness.
What about the people in church who get fidgety, restless, listless, treat the sermon as a lullaby, who treat a church service like a spectator sport? If the game isn’t exciting they tune out and change channels.
Look what Job said, “I have treasured the words of God’s mouth more than my daily bread”, and David who called the Word of God “more precious than Gold, than much pure gold … sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb”.
We have so many bibles in all sorts of translations, yet there seems to be little hunger or thirst for it at least in this part of the world. We treat it like any other book, “I’ve read that one, or I’ll get to it” and it goes on the shelf.
Many in the church seem to be hungering for power, exotic spiritual gifts, happiness, peace, emotional highs, or some other blessings.
We spend an hour or an hour and a half at church where we usually spend the last 15 minutes waiting for it to end. Shame on us, after what he did and does for us we can’t give him 90 minutes a week of our undivided attention. Because frankly I know that many Christians are not giving him much time outside of Sunday morning.
People, the church is not here for you, you are here for the church, for Christ, to hear his word, worship him with your life, and get out of here to live it out in the world.
Our appetite should be for him, not on the benefits he can give us. And we can see here if we have not become meek, gotten our worldly passions under control, this will be hard to achieve. Remember we have already gotten way more than we deserve. We should be happy if we come to church and someone just sits here and reads God’s Word to us in a monotone voice for an hour, don’t tempt me.
In the theology of the Bible the words righteousness, salvation and justification can almost be used interchangeably, especially if you look through the later chapters of Isaiah.
We have to go to Romans to learn more about this. Romans 2 talks about God’s righteous judgment, then chapter 3 speaks of his righteousness upheld. “We hear that no one is righteous, not one, no one seeks after God, all have turned away”.
Verse 20, “For by works of the law no one will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin (the first two beatitudes). But now a righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ, and we maintain that man is justified (made righteous) by faith apart from the law”.
God’s righteousness is moral and spiritual perfection, and he bestows this upon us when we believe in and choose to follow his perfect son. We can’t ever make ourselves righteous.
We’re really talking about the doctrine of original sin, that we are born unrighteous. This is not popular today. In fact Robert Schuller who bases much of his philosophy on positive thinking, said in a book he wrote that “the most serious sin is the one that causes me to say, ‘I am unworthy’. For once a person believes he is an unworthy sinner it is doubtful if he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ”.
What? The exact opposite is true, that is basically heresy. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons the Crystal Cathedral declared bankruptcy a few weeks ago, with reports stating they owe creditors between 50 and 100 million dollars. Self-esteem theology is far from biblical theology and it does not stand the test of time. It’s a fad.
Jesus had to come rescue us because there was not anything we could do other than perfect obedience for our entire life, that would save us from the wrath that is the result of sin. Peter put it perfectly in 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ died for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God”. We can now be brought to God not because of our holiness but because of his.
All our sin is debited to Christ, and all his righteousness is credited to us when we put our faith in Him.
Then he gives us:
III. The Invitation
“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” (Isa 55:1).
When you invite someone for dinner do you make them pay for it, no, just bring your appetite, make me happy by eating and enjoying what I make for you.
Jesus said in John 6:35 to the crowds in Capernaum, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty”.
A little later he says again, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink”. This is the water of life.
God’s promise in Jeremiah 29:13 is as relevant today as it was back then, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”. Zeal. There are no promises for the browser, for the window shopper, knowledge of our spiritual condition causes us to seek him passionately for we long for his salvation.
God grants salvation to desperate beggars, not boasters or bargainers. If you are not desperately hungry at God’s drive thru window, there’s no food for you, it’s saved for the hungry. Mary said in Luke 1:53, “He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty”. That is a chilling verse for most North Americans.
OK, so we have this invitation to come to him hungry and thirsty, and finally he promises:
IV. The Satisfaction (Mt. 5:6b)
When you come to God with this desperate hunger and thirst you will be changed. Sanctification and justification are like Siamese twins. Justification is the one time being made right with God, sanctification necessarily follows and it is the ongoing change toward holiness that all those who are justified enter into.
Someone confronted Martin Luther after he had come to an understanding of the doctrine of justification with this comment: “If this is true, a person could simply live as he pleased.” Luther replied, “Indeed! Now what pleases you?”
King David’s answer would have been from Psalm 40:8, “I desire your will, O my God; your law is within my heart”. That will be the response of any truly converted, justified person. The person who has been through each level of these beatitudes to this point, will be completely aware of their desperate need, and will gladly accept the new life that Christ offers.
As Paul said, “If any person is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old things have passed away, behold the new things have come.”
That is the first satisfaction, you notice that God is changing you through the indwelling Holy Spirit, and obedience to God becomes a joy rather than a chore. This righteousness that you hunger and thirst for will start to be made manifest in your life and attitudes.
Jesus has shown us in the first three beatitudes who we are, and now he is showing us that this knowledge demands a hunger to be different. “We are created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24), and in 1 Thes 4:3, “It is God’s will that you should be holy.”
In the next part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus again calls his followers to action, “Seek first (before anything else) God’s kingdom and his righteousness”. Our sanctification matters greatly to Jesus, and the Christian’s greatest desire is meant to be that Christ would live in us and through us.
A few verses later Jesus will say, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven”. These religious people’s righteousness was superficial, selective, and self-centered, but God’s righteousness is genuine, whole hearted, and God-centered, coming from His nature which is love.
When I think of this beatitude it honestly makes me feel worn out. Because we are talking about as John Blanchard puts it, “unsatisfied satisfaction”. We can be fully satisfied that we are justified before God, salvation is assured, but as long as we hunger and thirst to know God, to get to the fullness of righteousness in this life, we will never be completely satisfied. We will hunger and thirst for this until the day we die because we will never get all the way there. And that’s how God wants it so that we don’t stop hungering and thirsting.
No matter how much I read the Bible, pray, serve, I will never get there in this life. But like Paul, God wants us to press on, and ultimately we will be fully satisfied in our next life, the long one. It’s not just about being obedient, but also about knowing God more fully and becoming more and more like him in character.
As Paul can attest, the Christian life can be a constant, life-long, self-denying, costly, painful struggle, but athletes do it to attain a gold medal or a Super bowl. Actors do it to attain fame. Paul did it to attain a crown in heaven.
We can’t take the Gold medal with us, our fame will fade, but God’s approval and our righteousness in Him will last for eternity.
The word for satisfied is literally filled, yet in the tense it’s used in Greek it means those who are filled continue to be hungry. The more we are filled the more we want, kind of like Lay’s potato chips, only you never get full.
The battle with sin will never end in this life. There will soon be an end to our struggle with sin though, if we can’t take it away from ourselves God will take us away from it.
Or we can serve sin for the rest of eternity and see what the true penalty for it is. There has to be a zeal for us to fight against sin if we have mourned over it. And even more than that, we have to admit that we like some sin, and we must desperately ask first for the desire for that sin to be taken away.
This all sounds exhausting to me, how do I have that kind of hunger and thirst, that kind of zeal for a lifetime? But here’s where the second and greatest part of the satisfaction comes. Remember what we heard in Revelation?
First that this New Jerusalem we will live in will be completely righteous and holy, nothing unholy will ever enter it. We will finally be completely filled in our desire for righteousness. For God’s perfect justice to prevail.
But here’s the kicker. Last week we heard Jesus say “I will give you rest”, but here it’s even better. Revelation 7:16, “Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst”. This is not just physical hunger and thirst. There will be no more struggling, no more fatigue, no more frustration, no more being in want, we will have everything we truly desire (of course our desires may be different). Jesus himself will lead us to springs of living water, and the trees of life will bear fruit for us all the time.
And let me finish with the words of David in Psalm 17, “And I, in righteousness shall see your face; when I awake (meaning from death), I shall be satisfied with seeing your likeness.” It’s not about food or drink or things - being filled with Him, being in his presence for eternity, will be the ultimate satisfaction that will pale everything else in comparison. Do you believe that in your heart?
I know when all these tangible goodies in the world are within our reach, it’s hard to have the kind of zeal for an invisible God that we are to have. But the active part of this beatitude includes resisting and avoiding things that are not righteous. This obviously includes outright, obvious sin, but also anything that takes away from our spiritual hunger, things we hunger for more than God.
We all know what happens when we eat too much between meals, we’re not hungry at mealtime. The things we fill up on may not be that bad, but they take away from our hunger for the things of God.
There are many things in our life that are not bad in themselves, but if I find myself spending too much time and desire on them I find myself wanting God and spiritual things less and less.
We have to first have poverty of spirit, grief over sin in ourselves and the world, and a sense of meekness, from the first three beatitudes in order to have the kind of eternal, heavenly perspective we need to truly desire God and his righteousness that much.
I gave you some very difficult questions in your action plan today to see where you’re at. Unless we can say yes to these questions, we do not yet have that kind of hunger and thirst, and we will not see God filling us very much. We must pray for God to change us, if we truly want to be changed. And we must answer that question first.
