Fantastic News for Living from the Sermon on the Mount PART 2
Matt. 5:6
Lying on his deathbed, a loving husband was wavering between life and death when he thought he smelled chocolate chip cookies baking. They were his favorites. So he dragged himself out of bed, crawled to the kitchen and was just reaching up to take the cookie off the plate when his wife slapped his hand with a spatula. “Don’t touch!” she commanded. “They’re for the funeral.” Today we speak of hungering after something so you can be filled… and it’s not with chocolate chip cookies.
OT Background of Jewish expectations:
1. Expectation of Great Feast
Isaiah 25:5-8 (NIV)
And like the heat in the desert; You silence the uproar of foreigners;
As heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled
On this mountain, the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples
A banquet of aged wines – the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain, He will destroy the shroud (covering NKJV) that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet (veil NKJV) that covers all nations.
He will swallow up death forever,
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces;
He will remove the disgrace of His people from all the earth;
the LORD has spoken.
2. Based on the Exodus experience
Deut. 6:10-11 (NLT)
“The LORD your God will soon bring you into the land he swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a land filled with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant…
3. Based on the Invitation of God
Is. 55:1,2 (NLT)
“Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink—even if you have no money!
Come, take your choice of wine or milk—it’s all free! 2 Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen, and I will tell you where to get food that is good for the soul!
Not meant to hunger and thirst after happiness of this world
Lloyd Jones (1959,p.75) wrote: “We are not to hunger and thirst after blessedness; we are not to hunger and thirst after happiness. But that is what most people are doing. We put happiness and blessedness as the one thing we desire, and thus we always miss it, it always eludes us.”
Illus. Pain - symptom of disease. But most focus on pain, rather than disease. If doctors merely treat the pain and not the disease, the result will be death.
Not meant to hunger and thirst after experiences.
But we meant to hunger and thirst after something more permanent… righteousness…
So how can we find it when obviously are in short supply…
Romans 3:19-31 elaborates for us where true righteousness is found:
Obviously, the law applies to those to whom it was given, for its purpose is to keep people from having excuses and to bring the entire world into judgment before God. 20 For no one can ever be made right in God’s sight by doing what his law commands. For the more we know God’s law, the clearer it becomes that we aren’t obeying it.
21 But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight—not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. 22 We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done.
23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24 Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. 25 For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. 26 And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus.
27 Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. 28 So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.
29 After all, God is not the God of the Jews only, is he? Isn’t he also the God of the Gentiles? Of course he is. 30 There is only one God, and there is only one way of being accepted by him. He makes people right with himself only by faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. 31 Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law.
Brennan Manning (1990, p.28) once told this story:
According to ancient Christian legend, a saint once knelt and prayed “Dear God, I have only one desire in life. Give me the grace of never offending you again.” When God heard this, he started laughing out loud. “That’s what they all ask for. But if I granted everyone this grace, whom would I forgive?”
The promise given to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness is that they will be filled. This filling is three-fold.
A. Filled Initially
1. The initial filling deals with the salvation experience. The moment an
individual is made to see their need of Christ and they come to Him in repentance and faith, their initial need for righteousness is met in Him
2. The problem when it comes to salvation is that so many people turn to things
other than Christ to try and satisfy the craving of their soul.
B. Filled Continuously
Jesus is committed to it by saying in John 7:37-39 (NLT)
37 On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “If you are thirsty, come to me! 38 If you believe in me, come and drink! For the Scriptures declare that rivers of living water will flow out from within.” 39 (When he said “living water,” he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him. But the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory.)
1. Our sanctification is the goal of this continuous filling. The satisfaction we
experience initially in Christ is so sweet to our spiritual taste that we desire to
have more of Him and to be more like Him in our daily walk. Eph.5:18
Philippians 3:7-16 contains the summons to keep on growing till the day we see Christ. No one is perfectly filled yet… In other words, in his coming to know Christ, Paul had a desire to get to know Him better. He had an appetite for the things of Christ.
7 I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. 8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ 9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own goodness or my ability to obey God’s law, but I trust Christ to save me. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. 10 As a result, I can really know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I can learn what it means to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that, somehow, I can experience the resurrection from the dead!
12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. 13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.
15 I hope all of you who are mature Christians will agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. 16 But we must be sure to obey the truth we have learned already.
C. Filled Ultimately
1. There is coming a day in which we will be perfectly, completely, and entirely
Righteous and filled .
2. Rev. 19:9 fufills the Jewish expectations of the great feast ultimately.
And the angel said, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he added, “These are true words that come from God.”
Rev. 21:1-4 (NLT)
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a beautiful bride prepared for her husband.3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, the home of God is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. 4 He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever.”
Practical Implications:
1. God expects us to feel the hunger and thirst as we wait on Him to fill us.
We will grow through waiting on Christ to satisfy, to fill us up. Psalm 63 for instance teaches us to wait on God in midst of realities of a broken world
v.1 acknowledge our thirst and longing
v.2 remember the past blessings
v.3 remember God’s love (befriends us)
v.4 choosing to worship
v.5 choosing to hope in God’s deliverance. So will we hunger and thirst like that and so be filled?
2. This means cultivating over time a trusting relationship with God.
A.W. Tozer (1955,p.11) once wrote: “The temptation to make our relation to God judicial instead of personal is strong. Believing for salvation has these days been reduced to a once-done act that requires no further attention. The young believer becomes a ware of an act performed rather than a living Saviour to be followed and adored… there is no short cut to sanctity. Even the crises that come in the spiritual life are usually the result of long periods of thought and prayerful meditation. As the wonder grows more and more dazzling there is likely to occur a crisis of revolutionizing proportions. But that crisis is related to what has gone before. It is a sudden sweet explosion, an uprushing of the water that has been increasing its pressure within until we can no longer contain it. Back of it all is the slow buildup and preparation that comes from waiting upon God.”
3. It is by grace we are saved, so keep living in the Good News.
A.W. Tozer (1955, p.16) said: “Some of us are religiously jumpy and self-conscious because we know that God sees our every thought and is acquainted with all our ways. We need not be. God is the sum of all patience and the essence of kindly good will. We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, and believing that He understands everything and loves us still."
Fantastic news!
References:
Lloyd, Jones, D. Martyn. (1959). Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Grand Rapids, MI.:
Eerdmans.
Manning, Brennan. (1990). The Ragamuffin Gospel. Oregon: Multnomah.
Tozer, A.W. (1955). The Root of the Righteous. Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications.
