(Sermon #6 of Sermon On The Mount Series)
Parkview Church of the Nazarene
J. Richard Lord, Jr.
Hungry?
Matthew 5:6
When was the last time you were really hungry?
I’m not talking about those few pangs you get when it’s time for dinner.
I’m talking about what you feel when you have missed more than one meal and you have become weak and shaky and you have this horrible pain in your middle because your stomach is contracting and creating acids that are reacting against your stomach lining because their is nothing there to absorb them. It’s been so long since you have had something to eat that chewing on a toothpick actually tastes good. You dream of a T-bone steak, cooked to perfection, smothered in mushrooms, with a baked potato drowning in butter and sour cream on the side, with a couple of gallons of ice tea to go with it.
Speaking of ice tea, what about thirst? To add to your hunger, you have this dry condition in your mouth that feels like its full of cotton. Your lips are parched and you can’t even get enough saliva to spit. You are almost delirious with thirst. You dream of immersing yourself in cool clear water, and drinking a couple of buckets full.
I doubt many of us has experienced any serious bouts with real hunger and thirst. Oh, I know we’ve been hungry and thirsty, there may have been a few times in our life when we’ve had to skip a meal or two, or we’ve been a little dry, but we are the fortunate in this world who have all the water we want to drink and never go to bed truly hungry.
But yet we understand this kind of physical hunger. With our brief experience, we can imagine and even empathize with those who experience it on a daily basis. That’s the reason those commercials that show hungry, destitute little children tug at our heartstrings. We can imagine.
With that picture in your mind, there is another question. When was the last time you were really spiritually hungry? I’m not talking about feeling guilty because you skipped church, or reaching for your Bible because you are in some sort of trouble or you have a few questions on your mind. I am talking about a sense of being lost, of feeling undone, out of control of your life. I am talking about having such an emptiness in the depths of your soul that your whole being cries out for relief. I am talking about a pain of loneliness that comes from having no one to turn to in your time of need. I am talking about feeling the weight of your sin pressing down on your heart so hard that you feel like you are going to die.
Your whole world is out of kelter. You are lost. Nothing feels right about your life. You are guilty of your sins. You feel a sense of impending doom surrounding you. You’ve tried to do the right things, but it has turned wrong. You are depressed, unhappy, and don’t see how you can go on living.
That is spiritual hunger. Multiply that millions of people on this earth that have never heard the gospel preached in its beauty and simplicity. Add to that millions of people who have heard the gospel, but for some reason have rejected it, and have tried every other thing they can think of, and you get a picture of a majority of people in this world, right now.
This spiritual hunger is what Jesus was talking about. This scripture might be better translated, “Blessed are those who are in a continual state of hungering and thirsting for righteousness. . .”
He understood the condition of the people he was ministering to. He knew the minds and hearts of those who surrounded Him. He felt our pain, our loneliness, our burden of guilt, our spiritual hunger.
In the middle of these life-changing lessons that He was giving, Jesus was making a promise. He was promising us that no longer shall we stumble through life without any direction or comfort, no longer shall we live “out of control,” no longer shall we carry the burden and guilt of our sin, no longer shall we be lonely, because He is here, He has come!
Jesus’ promise to us that those who have lived in that state of spiritual hunger “shall be filled.” The term “be filled” is the same term that was used to mean to “fatten up cattle,” to “fill full.”
Jesus’ intention for us is to fill ourselves up “full” with Him. Our hunger is to be satiated. He will bring us to a full state of health because we can feast and drink from Him till we are full, full of the Spirit, cleansed from all sin, sanctified wholly, set apart from the world to serve Him and love Him all of our days. He quenches our thirst with the “springs of living water” that “flow from the throne of grace.” We are full of His presence, which guides us and keeps in our walk, keeping us from the snares of Satan and keeps us from being lost in the detours of life. For all eternity, we will never be lonely again. “He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own. And the joys we share as we tarry there, no other has ever known.”
Being filled with the Spirit is the greatest joy man can ever know. It is beyond the joy of marriage, of watching your children being born, or even a sunrise. All of these are joyful, but being filled with the Spirit is greater than these.
Because we were hungry, Jesus filled us.
We, as Christians, enjoy a lifestyle and a life that not everybody in this world shares. We actually have found the “Nirvana” of the Buddhists and the “Utopia” that many other religions espouse. All others religions say that this experience is something that one must achieve, but somehow they never quite find it. But I’m here to tell you this: “Oh, I have found it, the Crystal Fountain, where all my life’s deep needs have been supplied.
So freely flowing, from Calvary’s mountain. And now my soul is fully satisfied.”
Okay, so we are now full. We enjoy life. But you know what happens after you’ve had a big meal. Yes, you guessed it. You go to sleep!
We Christians sometimes act like we’re in one continuous Thanksgiving holiday. There are many who traipse from church to church saying, “Feed me, Feed me!” And if they don’t get just what they want, they traipse off to somewhere else, complaining, “I’m just not getting fed there.”
I heard a preacher on the radio a few weeks ago make this statement: “Most of us have heard enough sermons, and been in enough Sunday School classes and heard enough gospel that we learned how to be saved many years ago, and we will get to heaven. If something was to happen and we never heard another sermon or sat in another Sunday School class, we know enough on how to live the Christian life and get to heaven.” He went on to say, of course, that he doesn’t necessarily recommend that, because the Bible tells us not to “forsake the assembling of ourselves together.” We need the fellowship and the praise time and the reminders such as communion, and, of course, we always want to know more.
But if something was to happen that cut us off from church attendance, such as a serious illness that leaves us bedridden, or such as the men who have spent years as prisoners of war where they could not have regular worship, we could make it on what we know now.
That’s part of the problem, we have become satiated. We have grown fat on the Word. Now this sounds funny coming from me, but do you know what you do when you grow fat, you exercise. (that means you, Richard) How do we spiritually exercise? What we have received, we share. It’s that simple.
Then something funny happens. When we go out into the world and share what we have, we grow hungry again. When we expend ourselves in the service of God’s kingdom, this creates in us a need to refill.
Jesus is teaching His disciples an important principle. It is not enough for us to be filled just once. The way this scripture is worded in the Greek indicates not something that happens just once. It is best translated, “Blessed are those who stay in a continual state of hungering and thirsting, for they shall be filled. “ Filled for what? Filled so we can then share what we have been given. This is Jesus’ prescription for Christian growth. We can only grow as a Christian if we stay in a state of continual hunger. He fills us, then we empty out to others, and He fills us again.
There is a hymn in our hymnal, No. 782, called “Sent Forth By God’s Blessing.” In the second verse there is a phrase that says, “With praise and thanksgiving To God ever living, The tasks of our everyday life we will face. Our faith ever sharing In love every
caring, embracing His children of each tribe and race. With Your feast you feed us; with your light now lead us. Unite us as one in life that we share.”
Jesus did not intend for us to sit around and grow fat on the Word. He intended us to “stay hungry” by “exercising our faith.”
