“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
As we come to examine this fourth beatitude I make two fundamental observations. One is that it is the first one that is not focused on us, but focused on God. The first three have to do with the condition of the Christian in approaching God, where this one is about desiring God and Godliness. The focus changes from the Christian character to wanting what God wants.
Secondly, the very wording of this beatitude proves once more and possibly more strongly than before that this has to do with the spiritual condition, not the physical.
No person has to be convinced that speaking in purely physical terms there is no happiness to be found in being hungry or thirsty. Both are uncomfortable even at their earliest onset.
If Jesus was speaking in physical terms when He said, “Happy are those who hunger and thirst…” He would have been written off as a raving lunatic. He was, after all, addressing a culture of people in a time when daily rationings of food and water were something they had to work hard for. The rich and elite may have had people waiting on them hand and foot and never had to miss a meal or go thirsty for longer than it took to order someone to bring them water. But these folks gathered around to hear Him speak knew what it was like to be hungry. They knew what it was like in a time of drought to go long without water.
So there is no double meaning here. It can not be said that He meant it on one level in the physical sphere, and another level in the spiritual realm.
Cannot be.
I would like to make this third observation though, and we will use it to vault ourselves into the study.
We don’t make ourselves hungry. We are creatures sustained on food and drink and the need engenders the desire. The greater the need, the more acute the desire. Let’s remember that as we discuss this beatitude.
RIGHTEOUSNESS
The first thing we need to be clear on is what Jesus was referring to when He said ‘for righteousness’.
If I asked you on a chilly day, as you’re coming in out of the cold and removing your gloves and heavy coat, ‘how would you like some quidil guy?’ you would look at me funny and maybe just shrug your shoulders, unless you’re from Thailand or have been there. The question would excite nothing in you except maybe your curiosity about whether you heard me correctly.
But if on that chilly day I asked, ‘how would you like a bowl of hot homemade chicken noodle soup?’, it would be much more likely to stir your appetite, especially if you hadn’t eaten for 5 or 6 hours, and you might be likely to say, ‘hey, that would hit the spot!’
So we need to understand this word, ‘righteousness’, before we can be clear on why it is important to hunger and thirst for it and why we are blessed in that manner of desiring.
The same Greek word is used throughout the New Testament from which we get ‘righteousness’, with the only exception being in Romans 10:5 where Paul is quoting Moses and referring to a righteousness that is worked for by self; a self-sought righteousness.
In that case it would be referring to someone who is trusting in his faithful keeping of the Law or of a moral/social standard in order to attain to right standing before God.
In every other case it is used as a reference to being right with God, as in the doctrine of justification and/or living life in such a way that is pleasing to God, which only the regenerated man or woman can do because it is done with the help of the Holy Spirit in them.
We’re going to go on to explain that more, but I want you to understand fundamentally something that the language guys will tell you. Words of scripture can have varied application within the framework of their basic meaning.
“Righteousness” is an example of that. In Romans Paul uses the word almost exclusively with regard to the doctrine of justification; of right standing with God through faith in the shed blood and resurrection of Christ, alone.
Here in Matthew 5 just the context in which it is used and the things that are said in relation to it by Jesus tells us that His application of it is broader, referring not only to initial justification, but also sanctification.
The man who is poor in spirit, sorry for sin and surrendered to God is declared by God to be right with Him through faith in the shed blood of Christ alone.
He has seen his sin, he has come in repentance to the cross of Christ and has laid down his life. That is when he is given new birth from above and received God’s total acceptance as he now stands in Christ’s righteousness, not any of his own.
As Jesus uses the word in the context of His sermon though, this word takes the man beyond the cross, beyond initial justification, to sanctification.
The soul came hungering and thirsting to be right with God, and now having received that by grace, he continues to hunger and thirst after holiness. That’s what Jesus is saying, and that’s what I want to spend the rest of this time explaining.
A DRIVING DESIRE
“To hunger and thirst after righteousness is nothing but the longing to be absolutely holy.” Studies in the Sermon on the Mount D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Eerdman’s 1974 pg 79
Lloyd-Jones said that in his “Studies on the Sermon on the Mount”. He followed that statement with, “I can’t think of a better way of defining it”.
Now when someone first comes to God they aren’t thinking about holiness. That is what they are after, they just don’t know it. They want to escape Hell, and they want to gain Heaven.
The one who has truly recognized his sinful condition and is coming in repentance will be coming with a dread of Hell, and begging for Heaven.
What happens then is that God makes them holy and blameless.
Ephesians 1:4 “…just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.”
That is our immediate spiritual condition at the point of salvation. God sees us in Christ and as a new creation in Him, and we are therefore immediately holy and blameless.
I have often said this to you and I say it again; the moment you believed and were given life from above as Jesus put it to Nicodemus in John 3, you were and are from that moment just as acceptable to God as His Son Jesus Christ. Because you stand before Him holy and blameless only by virtue of His Son’s perfect atoning work on the cross.
Now that you stand absolutely and forever right with God, set apart to Him and called holy, He has begun a work and will continue that work until the day you go home to be with Him in Heaven at which time that work will be completed in an instant as you are glorified and your perfection is completed. I Thess 5:23 II Tim 1:12 I Jn 3:2
We call that work ‘sanctification’. It means to be purified, set apart, made holy. So while you are called holy by Him at salvation, the Holy Spirit of God continues the work of making your life holy in a practical sense. In this you are a partner with Him. Your initial holiness was all His doing and you were not even really aware of the process. But you are to be aware of progressive sanctification and even cooperate with Him in that process.
That is why Jesus said we are to hunger and thirst after righteousness. He may as well have said ‘hunger and thirst for holiness’.
Now here is the negative side of all this and as unpleasant as it is we have to address this issue.
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of hungering and thirsting going on among Christians these days.
I want to read just a portion of a short article that was in the April/May 2006 issue of the Rocky Mountain Baptist, a periodical published by the Colorado Baptist General Convention. It came in the mail to me just the day before I was to set to work on this sermon.
Now the article is talking about a recent survey by the Barna group, and I didn’t have the actual survey in front of me; just this article.
It said that according to the survey most Americans who were asked to define the word ‘holy’ said that they could not.
The article did not say that it was necessarily Christians who were being surveyed; it only said ‘Americans’. So I didn’t pay much attention to the statistics.
However near the end of the article Barna was quoted as saying, “the results portray a body of Christians who attend church but do not understand the concept… of holiness…The challenge to the nation’s Christian ministries is to foster a genuine hunger for holiness among the masses who claim they love God but who are ignorant about biblical teachings regarding holiness.”
Now I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that when he suggests leadership ‘fostering’ a hunger for holiness among the masses he means that teachers in Christian ministry should teach what holiness is, by definition, and then preach the Word and encourage study of the Word and a prayer relationship with God so that they will be spiritually healthy and the desire for holiness will grow in them.
I hope that’s what he meant.
Because Christian brothers and sisters, nothing I can say to you will make you hungry and thirsty if you are not already.
When someone is sick and in a hospital bed and they have no appetite for food, you will not make them want food by telling them it’s good for them. They will not be hungry for food until they begin to get well. And if you find that you are not hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for a growth in holiness in yourself and a desire to see right done in God’s name, then you would do well to examine yourself and find out why you are sick.
Let me interject here that while you may be convicted by this and feel a bit of a pang because you know you have not been desiring holiness and have just been sailing along, distracted by the world and the things of the world and neglecting the pursuit of God in your life, I want you to know that no one in the room is more convicted than I.
Remember, I’m the one who has to study and prepare for these sermons. Do you think I might get a little convicted when I’m reading the words of Godly men of the past like D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones when he asks:
“Are we filled? Have we got this satisfaction? Are we aware of this dealing of God with us? Is the fruit of the Spirit being manifested in our lives? Are we concerned about that? Are we experiencing love to God and to other people, joy and peace? Are we manifesting long-suffering, goodness, gentleness, meekness, faith and temperance?”
Do you think I might get a little convicted when I read the words of Paul when he says of himself, “Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” I Cor 9:26-27
Friends and family, if the Apostle Paul thought he should constantly concern himself with whether he was practicing what he preached and that he should be on guard against being disqualified in the race, doesn’t that say a great deal about what ought to be the focus and attention of the rest of us?
Do you think I might get a little convicted when I hear or read accounts of the great saints of the ages who spent large chunks of their day on their face before God and devouring His Word because the pursuit of holiness was the driving force of their lives?
And Christian listen to me. Every man, woman and child since Adam has had the same number of hours in their day. So if you’re thinking defensively and saying, ‘Yeah, well, life is more complicated these days’, or ‘Hey, preacher, you don’t know what I have to deal with on a day to day basis’, or any other defense that wants to pop up and let you off easy, let me just point out that there is a reason we know their names.
There is a reason we know of Luther and Mueller and Whitfield and McCheyne and all the others, and it isn’t because they wrote treatises or built big cathedrals or changed social conditions of their day.
We know of them because they had their priorities right. We know of them because GOD CAME FIRST! And we know of them because they hungered and thirsted after righteousness.
Not casually. They didn’t just wish that right would be done in God’s name. They didn’t just offer up a quick prayer as they climbed into bed saying, ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done and good night”.
J. N. Darby wrote somewhere:
“When the prodigal son was hungry he went to feed upon husks, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.” J.N. Darby, as quoted by Lloyd-Jones
We know their names because they were starved for holiness and constantly sought it at the Father’s table.
Do you think I’m convicted? Then you are right. And so should you be.
FILLED BUT ALWAYS HUNGRY
Well, once again we turn to our perfect example; the Sermon on the Mount incarnate. The One who is described perfectly by the beatitudes themselves.
The writer to the Hebrews quoted the Psalmist, who, unless he wrote this song in a trance, had to know he was talking about the Promised One who was yet to come when he penned:
“You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness above Your companions.” Heb 1:9
To His parents Jesus asked why they didn’t know that He had to be in His Father’s house.
To John He gave the command to baptize Him so that all righteousness might be fulfilled.
He drove the money changers out of the court of the Gentiles because He was jealous and zealous for the preservation of holiness in the place set aside for the nations to pray.
Time after time we read of Him praying all night. Or going off by Himself away from the crowds to pray.
He sought His Father’s company constantly and lived to see righteousness fulfilled, and died to see righteousness fulfilled and rose bodily from the tomb so that He might bring righteousness to pass in those who hunger and thirst for Him (II Cor 5:21 Romans 8:3-4).
Just as drastic as the meaning of hungering and thirsting, is the word for satisfied. Your Bible might say ‘filled’.
It implies a fattening. A total satisfaction.
See why I said in an earlier sermon that Jesus must have been the happiest man who ever lived? He said the one who hungered and thirsted for righteousness would be blissful, and no one ever pursued righteousness with the absolute surrender and sacrifice with which He pursued it, fulfilled it, satisfied it, provided it.
I’m going to return to a theme that will be familiar to those of you who have been under my teaching for a while. We’re backwards. In our human nature we are exactly the opposite of what God would have us be.
That is why the word sin is used in scripture and it’s why the word repent is used. To repent is to do an about face. It’s a military term and it means to turn completely around and face in the opposite direction from where you were facing.
Therefore even after we become Christians our fallen nature wants to keep us backwards. As that condition relates to today’s topic, our backwards nature wants us to hunger and thirst after happiness. It wants us to hunger and thirst for satisfaction and filling, not of the spirit but of the flesh.
Remember, the fallen nature is fleshly and not spiritual so the old man in us is not going to drive us to spiritual matters; it will keep us focused on the physical.
This is why Paul, in the passage I quoted a few minutes ago, said that he ‘buffeted’ his body. He was talking about beating himself up. Getting the flesh under control like a boxer who knocks out his opponent by punching him in the face. That’s what Paul was talking about, except he saw himself as the opponent. He was talking about punching himself out!
Does that sound like us most of the time? No, most of the time we’re doing just the opposite because of our backwards thinking.
Jesus said to hunger and thirst for righteousness and the happiness and satisfaction would come from that. We have it the other way around.
And believers in Christ, that is why you must listen and read with great discernment, the voices you hear and the printed materials that come your way.
It doesn’t matter who the author is or what Christian publishing company put it out; it doesn’t matter what the name and reputation of the handsome preacher on the screen or talking to you over the radio.
If they’re telling you that you can do this or that spiritual exercise for 10 minutes per day and in a month you’ll be holy drop them like a hot iron.
If they’re telling you that you need a higher self-esteem and a healthier body so you can serve God better and then you’ll be happy, stop listening to them.
If as they talk or as you read you find yourself feeling pretty good about yourself raise the red flags and think it through.
Listen, Christians, many of us, maybe most of us, need to do an about face.
We need to wake up and realize that the voice we’re listening to quite often is the voice of the old man and he’s got our thinking turned backwards, and therefore our spiritual walk blocked and our spiritual growth stunted.
I have to issue warning this morning; I’ve read ahead. I got to just about this point in writing this sermon and I stopped, picked up my Bible and started reading the rest of chapter 5 and into chapter 6 before I put it back down, and I have to tell you that for the one not hungry and thirsty for righteousness, disinterested in the pursuit of holiness and a deeper relationship with God in their life, the things Jesus is going on to say later are going to be very hard to hear.
But you know what? I’m going to say them. Whether they knock you or me on our faces like Lewis’ sledge hammer or whether they come as a bugle sound, encouraging us and spurring us on in our walk is going to depend to a great deal on whether we as individuals have done our about face, immersed ourselves in the Word and in prayer and asked God to give us an insatiable hunger and thirst for righteousness.
‘Cause like I said earlier, I have to prepare these sermons and they speak to me at least as much as they will to you; and if I have to go through this you can be sure I intend to spread the wealth around.
Jesus made a promise to us my friends, and it comes to those who are starving like a man without food and thirsty like a wanderer in the desert for holiness. He said they would be filled to fattening.
Now are you hearing me? We’re still not talking about physical things, but spiritual things. He said we will be satisfied. Let me say it another way.
Jesus promises that if we continue to be hungry and thirsty spiritually to the degree that we pursue righteousness/holiness with a desperate desire, we will be filled up with what we’ve hungered and thirsted for.
Wow! Think of the possibilities! What might future generations, if the Lord tarries, read about us then?
Well, if anything, they’d at least read that we were blessed. Because when someone loves righteousness and hates lawlessness God anoints them with the oil of gladness.
Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
