Intro: “Mommy I’m so thirsty. I want a drink.”
Susanna Petroysan heard her daughter’s pleas, but there was nothing she could do. She and four-year-old Gayaney were trapped beneath tons of collapsed concrete and steel. Beside them in the darkness lay the body of Susanna’s sister-in-law, Karine, one of the fifty-five thousand victims of the worst earthquake in the history of Armenia.
Calamity never knocks before it enters, and this time, it had torn down the door.
Susanna had gone to Karine’s house to try on a dress. It was December 7,1988, at 11:30 A.M. The quake hit at 11:41. She had just removed the dress and was clad in stockings and a slip when the fifth-floor apartment began to shake. Susanna grabbed her daughter but had taken only a few steps before the floor opened up and they tumbled in. Susanna, Gayaney, and Karine fell into the basement with the nine-story apartment house crumbling around them.
“Mommy, I need a drink. Please give me something.”
There was nothing for Susanna to give.
She was trapped flat on her back. A concrete panel eighteen inches above her head and a crumpled water pipe above her shoulders kept her from standing. Feeling around in the darkness, she found a twenty-four-once jar of blackberry jam that had fallen into the basement. She gave the entire jar to her daughter to eat. It was gone by the second day.
“Mommy, I’m so thirsty.”
Susanna knew she would die, but she wanted her daughter to live. She found a dress, perhaps the one she had come to try on, and made a bed for Gayaney. Though it was bitter cold, she took off her stockings and wrapped them around the child to keep her warm.
The two were trapped for eight days.
Because of the darkness, Susanna lost track of time. Because of the cold, she lost the feeling in her fingers and toes. Because of her inability to move, she lost hope. “I was just waiting for death.”
She began to hallucinate. Her thoughts wandered. A merciful sleep occasionally freed her from the horror of her entombment, but the sleep would be brief. Something always awakened her: the cold, the hunger, or most often the voice of her daughter.
“Mommy, I’m thirsty.”
At some point in that eternal night, Susanna had an idea. She remembered a television program about an explorer in the Arctic who was dying of thirst. His comrade slashed open his hand and gave his friend his blood.
Her groping fingers, numb from the cold, found a piece of shattered glass. She sliced open her left index finger and gave it to her daughter to suck.
The drops of blood weren’t enough. “Please Mommy, some more. Cut another finger.” Susanna has no idea how many times she cut herself. She only knows that if she hadn’t, Gayaney would have died. Her blood was her daughter’s only hope.
Transition: Hunger and thirst represent the necessities of physical life. Jesus’ analogy demonstrates that righteousness is required for spiritual life just as food and water required for physical life. Righteousness is not an optional spiritual supplement but a spiritual necessity. We can no more live spiritually without righteousness than we can live physically without food and water.
Jesus declares that the deepest desire of every person ought to be to hunger and thirst for righteousness. That is the Spirit-prompted desire that will lead a person to salvation and keep him strong and faithful once he is in the kingdom. A starving person has a single, all-consuming passion for food and water. Nothing else has the slightest attraction or appeal; nothing else can even get his attention. Those who are without God’s righteousness are starved for spiritual life. But tragically they do not have the natural desire for spiritual life that they do for physical. The tendency of fallen mankind is to turn to itself and to the world for meaning and life.
Lucifer was one of the most powerful angels in all of heaven. He basked in the splendor and radiance of God’s glory. The name Lucifer means, “star of the morning” or, more literally, “the bright one.” But he was not satisfied with living in God’s glory, and he said in his heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High” (Isa. 14:13-14). His ambition was not to reflect God’s glory but to usurp God’s sovereign power – while forsaking righteousness. Therefore when Satan declared his intention to make himself like the Most High, the Most High responded by declaring to His adversary, “You will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the pit” (v. 15).
Nebuchadnezzar lusted after praise just as Lucifer lusted after power. One day as he walked on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, “the king reflected and said, ‘Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?’” (Dan. 4:29-30). God’s reaction to Nebuchadnezzar’s lust for praise was immediate. “The words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven, "This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. 32You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes." (Dan 4:31-32)
Jesus told a parable about a rich farmer whose crops were so abundant that he did not have enough space to store them. After planning to tear down his old barns and build bigger ones, he said, `This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." ’"But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God." (Luke 12:18-21)
Illustration: John S. Dunne tells of early Spanish sailors who reached the continent of South America after an arduous voyage. The caravel sailed into the headwaters of the Amazon, an expanse of water so wide the sailors presumed it to be a continuation of the Atlantic Ocean. It never occurred to them to drink the water, since they expected it to be saline, and as a result some of these sailors died of thirst. That scene of men dying of thirst as their ships floated on the world’s largest source of fresh water is a metaphor for our age. Some people starve to death spiritually while all around them manna rots.
Jesus had a skill for connecting thirst – physical, parched –throat thirst and also the thirst for intimacy – with a thirst for transcendence that only he could resolve. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst,” he said.
This Samaritan “outcast” woman was the first person to whom Jesus openly revealed himself as the Messiah. After the conversation beside a well, this same woman led a wholesale revival in her town. “When her deepest thirst was quenched, a thirst she had never even recognized before Jesus named it, all other thirsts took their rightful place.
When the prodigal son was hungry, he ate the pigs’ food, but when he was starving he went back to his father’s house.
Illustration: During the liberation of Palestine in WWI, a combined force of British, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers was closely pursuing the Turks as they retreated from the desert. As the allied troops moved northward past Beersheba they began to outdistance their water-carrying camel train. When the water ran out, their mouths got dry, their heads ached, and they became dizzy and faint. Eyes became bloodshot, lips swelled and turned purple, and mirages became common. They knew that if they did not make the wells of Sheriah by nightfall, thousands of them would die – as hundreds already had done. Literally fighting for their lives, they managed to drive the Turks from Sheriah. As water was distributed from the great stone cisterns, the more able-bodied were required to stand at attention and wait for the wounded and those who would take guard duty to drink first. It was four hours before the last man had his drink. During that time the men stood no more than twenty feet from thousands of gallons of water, to drink of which had been their consuming passion for many agonizing days. It is said that one of the officers who was present reported, “I believe that we all learned our fist real Bible lesson on the march from Beersheba to Sheriah Wells. If such were our thirst for God, for righteousness and for His will in our lives, a consuming, all-embracing, preoccupying desire, how rich in the fruit of the Spirit would we be?” (E.M. Blaiklock, “Water,” Eternity (August 1966), p. 27).
This is the kind of hunger and thirst of which Jesus speaks in this beatitude. The strongest and deepest impulses in the natural realm are used to represent the depth of desire the called of God and redeemed have for righteousness. To hunger and thirst is not a one-time thing but a continuous longing, continuous seeking.
Moses had seen and heard God in the burning bush. He saw God part the Red Sea; he saw God’s glory in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, which led Israel in the wilderness. He built a Tabernacle for God and saw the Lord’s glory shining over the Holy of Holies. Over and over Moses had sought and had seen God’s glory. 11The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. (Ex 33:11) But Moses was never satisfied and always wanted to see more. “Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’(Ex 33:18).”
As with the other beatitudes, the goal of hungering and thirsting for righteousness is twofold. For the unbeliever the goal is salvation; for the believer it is sanctification.
FOR THEY WILL BE FILLED: The result of hungering and thirsting for righteousness is being satisfied. It’s like when you eat your favorite desert, when you’ve had a portion, you might be full, or satisfied, but you always want more.
Conclusion: There are several marks of genuine hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness.
1. Dissatisfaction with self. The person who is pleased with his own righteousness will see no need for God’s.
2. Freedom from dependence on external things for satisfaction. A hungry man cannot be satisfied by an arrangement of flowers, or beautiful music, or pleasant conversation. Only God’s righteousness satisfies the person who has true spiritual hunger.
3. A craving for the Word of God. Which is the basic spiritual food He provides His children. Feeding on God’s Word increases our appetite for it.
4. The pleasantness of the things of God. To a famished man any bitter thing is sweet.
Beneath the rubble of a fallen world, Jesus pierced His hands. In the wreckage of a collapsed humanity, He ripped open His side. His children were trapped, so He gave His blood.
It was all He had, His friends were gone. His strength was waning. His possessions had been gambled away at His feet. Even His Father had turned His head. His blood was all He had. But His blood was all it took.
