A woman leaving church said to the pastor, "Thank you for that
sermon, it was so helpful." The pastor said, "I hope it was not as
helpful as the last one." "Why what do you mean," she asked.
"Well," he said, "that last sermon lasted you three months." On the
other hand, there's a pastor who told a woman how glad he was to see
her so faithful in attendance each Sunday. "Yes," she said, "it is such
a rest after a hard week to come and sit down and not think about
anything."
These two cases are extremes, but nevertheless they are typical
attitudes which are happiness killers for many professing Christians.
A poor appetite means trouble in the body, and a lack of craving for
spiritual food is a sign of an unhealthy soul. Jesus says in order to be
happy we must hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is not enough
to nibble at it at your convenience. To hunger and thirst is a painful
experience which motivates a person very strongly. A craving for
food and water makes a person desperate and leads to revolutionary
action. Nothing matters to the person who is starving or dying of
thirst but the satisfying of that burning desire.
David entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence
which was unlawful, but he did it because he and his men were so
hungry. The Bible tells of two mothers in Samaria who, when the city
was besieged by Benhadad, made a pact to eat their own babies. This
has happened many times in history, and even here in America. The
Donner party on its way to California in the frontier days got
stranded in the mountain snows. Even though they represented the
best of American life, hunger drove them to eat the flesh of those that
died.
Thirst also drives men to desperate measures. People who heard
Jesus knew more about real thirst than we do. The hot sun in the
desert made water more precious to them than we can realize. Rider
Haggard in King Solomon's Mines tells of three men and their guide
who are running out of water. The Zulu guide says, "If we cannot find
water, we shall all be dead before the moon rises tomorrow." One of
the men reflecting back on the torture of thirst and the hallucination it
created said, "If the Cardinal had been there, with his bell, book, and
candle, I would have whipped in and drunk his water up, yea, even if I
knew that the whole concentrated curse of the Catholic Church should
fall on me for so doing..."
Men become desperate when they hunger and thirst, and all the
energy of their being is concentrated on one goal-to satisfy their need.
This sounds like misery, and it is, but it is in the spiritual realm
another example of the paradoxical misery that leads to happiness.
Without hunger men will not crave what they need. If the Prodigal
Son had not ended up eating husks being fed to pigs, he may never had
returned to his father. The misery and hunger motivated him to go
home, and to the spiritual banquet of forgiveness, as well as the
physical banquet of food.
Happiness through hunger is the next logical step in the beatitudes
of Christ. The first three have been downward. We must be emptied
of self; dependent upon God, and submissive in humility before we can
be filled with the righteousness of God. Those who are poor in spirit,
who mourn, and are meek are sufficiently detached from self, and now
ready for this new direction in which we are to climb.
Empty of self-righteousness and ready to be filled with the
righteousness of Christ. There are three attitudes that will
characterize us if we have arrived at this point, and truly hunger and
thirst after righteousness. First there will be:
I. THE ATTITUDE OF ADMIRATION.
Admiration is the appetite of the soul. Sir John Suckling said, "Tis
not the meat, but tis the appetite makes eating a delight." To be
happy in hungering and thirsting after righteousness we must have an
appetite for righteousness. If we do not admire the righteousness of
Christ, and men of righteousness in history are not our heroes, we will
have a hard time being a happy Christian. A happy Christian who
does not admire righteousness is as contradictory as a gourmet who is
repulsed by food, or a clown who does not like laughter.
If the Christian still finds sin very appealing, he will not hunger or
thirst after righteousness. The man who does not mourn over sin, and
long for the sanctified life that Jesus can give can never find the
happiness of this beatitude. He's hung up back on the negative
beatitudes, and is yet full of self-satisfaction. To such a person the
righteousness of Christ is as unappealing as a full course meal to one
with the flu.
Dr. William S. Sadler wrote, "I doubt if the highly self-satisfied and
conceited person is capable of genuinely admiring anything or
anybody. And we must not overlook the fact that when we enlarge our
capacity for admiration we at the same time increase our capacity for
joy and happiness." Admiration is an admission there is something
better than what you have, and it stimulates hunger. What you
admire you desire. This, of course, can lead to good or evil, but it is
necessary if we are to go anywhere. If you admire the movie stars,
you will hunger and thirst after fame. If you admire the wealthy you
will hunger and thirst for money. If you admire Christlikeness, you
will hunger after righteousness.
The whole Sermon On The Mount focuses on the inner man as the
realm of true happiness. Whatever you admire in the inner man is
what you will become. If you admire the proud and arrogant who get
their way by force you will not be poor in spirit nor meek. If you
admire the Casanova who deceives women you will let your lust be
the controlling factor in your inner life, but if you admire the man who
cherishes his wife and is faithful to her as long as they both live, then
you will be guided by that admiration to be just such a man yourself.
We must be aware that we are ever becoming what we admire.
Nobody wants to be a doctor unless they admire doctors; nobody
wants to be a pastor unless they admire pastors, and nobody wants to
be a better Christian unless they admire those who are better
Christians. Everybody is going in the direction of their admiration.
It all starts on the inside where you develop your appetite. The
history of a fisherman starts with a boy admiring his father, or some
other man catching fish, and he desires to do it too. He develops a
taste for it and just loves catching fish, and he aspires to become good
at it, and thus begins to commit time and money to acquire all that he
can to reach this goal. He buys tackle of all kinds, electronic gear for
the boat he has purchased, and he is filled with anticipation of landing
bigger and better fish. This is the normal pattern of life for the happy
fisherman. The same pattern is what Jesus is saying is essential in the
spiritual life.
Whatever wins your admiration wins your appetite, and becomes
the motivating factor in your life. Jesus does not want His followers to
miss out on all the blessings of admiring music, art, sports, and
numerous other values, but He demands a priority in our admiration.
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these
things shall be added unto you." In other words, the higher and
nobler the object of our admiration, the higher will be our happiness.
The ultimate is an attitude of admiration for righteousness. The
second attitude that is essential is-
II. THE ATTITUDE OF ASPIRATION.
Aspiration is reaching out for what you admire. Richter said,
"There is a long and wearisome step between admiration and
imitation." Many people admire Jesus and the life He lived who do
not aspire to be like Him. It would be all right with them if they could
attain some measure of righteousness, but they do not hunger and
thirst after it. These will never know the blessedness of being filled.
Only those whose aspiration is like that of the Psalmist will be: "As
the heart panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after
Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God...." And
elsewhere he cries, "O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee,
my soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and
thirsty land..." And again, "My soul longeth, yea, fainteth for the
courts of the Lord, my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living
God."
Here is a man whose appetite and thirst for God was unquenchable.
He wanted more and more, and more yet. This is the kind of
aspiration that will lead to fullness and happiness. The paradox is you
have to be always hungry to be filled. You must be ever dissatisfied
with what you are to find satisfaction. Perpetual discontent is the only
way to contentment. We must feel like Tennyson when he wrote=
An Oh for the man to arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be.
Andre Kostelanetz, one time the most listened to conductor on earth
with such orchestras as The New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia
Orchestra, and The Boston Symphony, tells of how
important inspiration is to him as a musician. He writes, "It is, I
think, a sense of discovery, a keen appetite for something new....
Someone has described the whole feeling as a divine discontent."
You can see how all that has gone before in these beatitudes are the
foundation for this one. You have to be poor in spirit and meek to go
on perpetually admitting you are still deficient and far from the goal
of righteousness. The only way to keep moving along the road to
perfection is to be ever conscious of our imperfection. We tend to feel
our dignity demands that we level off and be content with where we
have gotten. If we are fine respectable people that should be good
enough. We don't have to go to extremes. But Jesus says, you cannot
know God's best and experience the highest happiness unless you
persistently aspire to go all the way to the top. How far we get is not
as nearly as important as how far we desire to go.
Jesus does not say, blessed and happy are those who are righteous,
but rather, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after it. Many
Christians have died before they got far along, but if they aspired to
go all the way with Christ, they shall be filled. The thief on the cross
only lived a matter of hours, but he got to taste heaven that very day
because he hungered for it. Paul says he never arrived at his goal
because his goal was so high it could not be attained in this life. Right
up to his death he was pressing on toward the mark of the high calling
of God in Christ Jesus. He was hungering and thirsting to the end.
That is true happiness, and many Christians miss it because they are
too early satisfied. The only way to be like Jesus is to want to be like
Jesus.
We are not honest with ourselves, and poor enough in spirit to
admit we are in desperate need of more of God's righteousness. With
the evidence of spiritual malnutrition obvious, we in pride pretend we
need no food for our souls. Abraham Lincoln deserves the title honest
Abe because of his willingness to admit his deficiency and need for
God's guidance and righteousness. He said to a friend one day, "I
have been reading the beatitudes and can at least claim one of the
blessings therein unfolded. It is the blessing pronounced upon those
who hunger and thirst after righteousness." Those who have arrived
and are satisfied with their righteousness can never claim this
promise. If, however, you are discontent, unsatisfied, and aggravated
with your poor grasp of God's Word and ability to live it and
communicate it, rejoice, for this honesty with self leads to the attitude
of aspiration for greater things, and this is the key to happiness.
Dean Stanley says that on the Christian tombs in the Catacombs of
Rome the first sign of Christian life is pictured by a stag drinking
eagerly at the stream of life. This should be the perpetual attitude of
every believer. When the thirsty stag is no longer attracted to the
refreshing stream, then we can cease to hunger and thirst after
righteousness. This, of course, means a never ending aspiration.
As pants the wearied hart for cooling springs,
That sinks exhausted in the summer's chase,
So pants my soul for Thee, great King of Kings,
So thirsts to reach Thy sacred dwelling place.
As admiration must lead to aspiration, so aspiration must lead to the
third attitude which is-
III. THE ATTITUDE OF ANTICIPATION.
A mother said to her little boy, "Don't you think your older
brother should have the biggest piece of pie?" "No mama," he
responded, "He was eating pie three years before I was born." Here
was a little guy who felt behind in his pie consumption and he was
trying to catch up. That may be a foolish goal in the physical realm,
but in the spiritual realm it is not. The new Christian can anticipate
eating on the same level as the mature Christian. You can go from
milk to meat very rapidly if you only hunger to do so. Some stay on
milk all their lives, but others are rapidly into the meat of the Word.
A five year old Christian may be eating bigger and better meals than
a twenty year old Christian if they hunger to do so. The Christian who
anticipates catching up and eating spiritual meals fit for a king can
soon be at the king's table.
Hunger and thirst are a curse and not a blessing to the man who
has no hope of satisfying these desires. Hunger and thirst are only
blessings when you anticipate satisfaction. The man who is hungry
before a banquet is the happy man because he anticipates satisfying
that hunger. The Christian cannot be happy who admires
righteousness, and aspires to reach out for it, if he cannot do so with a
sense of assurance that he will be filled.
Jesus promises that if we hunger and thirst we shall be filled, and,
therefore, we must press on with expectancy anticipating each day
that God will supply daily bread for the soul. The problem with the
average Christian is that he does not really anticipate any exciting and
delicious morsels for his soul. He is so accustomed to the crumbs of
spiritual food that he does not expect anything more. This lack of
anticipation for a new spiritual meal every day lessens the appetite,
and the poorer the appetite, the weaker the aspiration and desire.
If you woke up this morning with no anticipation, and no
expectancy that this could be a day of delicious and delightful meals
for your soul, you are robbing yourself of one of the keys to the happy
life. Every day we must live with the attitude of anticipation. If we
are empty vessels longing to be filled with the water of life, we are
assured of being filled. T. E. Brown wrote,
At God's sweet fountain
Some one left me long ago
;Left my shallow soul expectant
Of the everlasting flow.
And it came, and poured upon me,
Rose and mounted to the brim;
And I knew that God was filling
One more soul to carry Him.
You should never be content with the great meals you have had in
the past. We have all had delightful experiences of eating, but we are
not content to leave it at that. We anticipate having other great meals
ahead. So it is to be with spiritual food. There is no point in the
previous beatitudes which leave us empty of self unless we follow
through and anticipate being filled with all the fullness of God.
Tennyson gives us a brief word portrait of the men who combined all
the beatitudes we have looked at so far.
We feel we are nothing-for all is Thou and in Thee;
We feel we are something-that also has come from Thee;
We know we are nothing-but Thou wilt help us to be.
This anticipation of God's helping us to be, combined with
admiration for Christ, whom we are to be like, and aspiration that
keeps us climbing to this goal, leads to the highest happiness of which
we are capable.
As we now by means of eating and drinking remember Him by
whose life and death we are saved, let us pray that beginning today we
will hunger and thirst after righteousness, and begin every day in the
attitude expressed centuries ago by Bernard of Clairvoux in this
poem:
From the best bliss that earth imparts,
We turn unfilled to Thee again.
We taste Thee, O Thou living bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still.
We drink of Thee, The Fountain Head,
And thirsts our souls for Thee to fill.
