NOTE: Study materials used for this message were taken from the following: "The Message of the Sermon on the Mount" Stott; "The Complete Biblical Study Library" Matthew. Since Michael King’s message "Assurance of Salvation" which I used for reference on part 1 only named the first 3 attitudes, the remainder I tried to create in order to build from one beatitude to the next. I also have power points for all the messages in this series, if you would like to use them, feel free to email me pastordeb@firstassemblyonline.net. The video used at the end of this message can be found on sermonspice.com "How Often Must I Forgive?"
BEATITUDES - PART II
TEXT: Matthew 5:6-7
INTRODUCTION
1. The “Be” Attitudes are the constitution for the believer.
2. Each “Be” Attitude works as a building block one upon the other and are not to be treated as separate blessings but the requirements for Kingdom living are that every believer should pursue each in his/her life.
TRANSITION: The next attitude Jesus exhorts us to have is the ATTITUDE OF YEARNING
I. ATTITUDE OF YEARNING
Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.”
1. The desire for food and water are the strongest appetites we have as human beings.
2. Why is it so difficult for so many Americans to loose weight? Because that desire for food is powerful, and difficult to fight with.
3. Hunger is powerful. It controls us, it so often determines our directions.
4. I think it’s interesting that Jesus used the metaphor of hungering and thirsting, because:
They extremely powerful and essential desires for our survival as humans. Eating is fun! It’s pleasurable! We enjoy it(some of us enjoy it a LOT)!
5. Let’s take a closer look at this Scripture to discern what exactly Jesus was telling His disciples when He said:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…“
6. The word He uses for:
hunger is “peinao” (pee-nah’-oh), and it means to ardently crave food.
He uses an equally strong word to describe thirsting: “dipsao” (dip-sah’-oh), which means to painfully feel the need for water.
7. In that region, few were prosperous, and more than likely, at one time or another, those listeners that day had experienced the kind of hunger he’s talking about here.
8. It’s a desperate kind of hunger.
9. When I have gone a long time without eating, I never dream about eating liver & onions, licorice, brussel sprouts; mainly because I hate that stuff!
10. Now, if I’m really hungry and that stuff were put before me, I’d eat it right up. But in terms of how my craving is being expressed, when I’m hungry and I think of food, I think of the food I love.
11. And yet, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come to this passage and walked away with an uneasy, sickly, sense of condemnation, because so often it’s been presented like this:
“If you’re hungering and thirsting for righteousness, you are going to be: memorizing Bible verses praying at least an hour a day reading and studying your Bible
Being here every time the doors of the church are opened!
12. So, because we are supposed to be hungry for righteousness (if we’re good Christians) we are suddenly confronted with a plethora of obligations that we aren’t getting accomplished. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness becomes another way of expressing DUTY.
13. I have to tell you, this is totally contradictory to the imagery that Jesus is using here.
14. No one who’s normal, when he’s hungry, starts thinking about his obligation to eat.
15. No one thinks:
“Man, I’m hungry, it’s really my duty to eat some food so that my body has fuel”
“I’m so hungry, and I know I’m obligated to eat, so I guess I better get to it...sigh”.
16. No way, when I’m hungry, I’m going over in my mind all the stuff I really like to eat
ILLUSTRATION:
Staff & food discussions. Our staff loves to talk about food. If we are together for any length of time, our discussion will invariably become centered around what we are cooking for dinner, recently tried recipes, etc.
17. I’m getting excited because not only is my hunger a driving desire, the satisfaction of that hunger represents something pleasurable to me, not an obligation!
18. Do we really think that Jesus, in this Sermon on the Mount, has gone from telling us of our broken state; revealing that we’re poor in spirit, aching and mourning, and humbled in meekness before him, only to then beat us up by pointing out our religious obligations?
ILLUSTRATION: (drill instructor)
It’s like he turns from being a caring Savior to being a drill instructor with one sentence…. “LISTEN UP lazy people...if you are hungering and thirsting for righteousness then you WILL learn to love sitting in a hard pew instead of enjoying baseball games...you will LOVE old stale and archaic church music sung only in 4/4 time, and you will learn to cherish and memorize the KJV of the BIBLE, So GET RIGHT OR GET LEFT!!!
19. If we do, then we are completely missing the depth of what He’s saying.
20. Something else that is interesting about hunger is that we don’t have to “work up” a hunger do we?
ILLUSTRATION:
My husband eats meals like clockwork. That is how his family ate meals. Promptly at noon and by 12:15 they were washing the dishes. My family was quite the contrary, we ate whenever we were ready to get up and fix it for ourselves. Thus, I can go all day sometimes without eating and not even think about it. But my husband on the other hand, is already thinking about "What’s for lunch" as soon as breakfast is over.
21. No where in this Scripture did Jesus say, “blessed are those who work up a hunger and thirst …….”?
22. Catch this important point…..No matter who we are, we DO hunger and thirst!
ILLUSTRATION: Bruce Springstein
”Everybody’s got a hungry heart”….
23. Everyone is hungry, every human on earth is thirsty, we just didn’t know for what. Since the fall of mankind in the Garden, when God was ripped from our hearts, every human being born was born hungry!
24. We have a craving for that which is missing.
25. The fall blinded us, the fall ruined our senses, we didn’t know what we were hungry for! We spent our lives searching to fill that emptiness with something.
26. This search goes in two main directions:
CARNAL SEARCHING SUBSTITUTES
For so many in this world, this is where they live.
Trying to satisfy that hunger by chasing after the stuff that gratifies their flesh.
Root that feeds all sinful behavior - trying to soothe those hunger pains / trying to quench that thirst
Not just the natural evils we think of when we think of sin: sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, drunkenness
Also attitudinal things: self-pity, negativity,
Attitudes and behaviors we fall into that provide some sickly gratification, but don’t really satisfy that hunger.
(I.e. eating salt only makes you more thirsty - feeding sawdust to a hungry person, it fills their stomach but provides no sustenance)
Isaiah 55:1-3 (Message) "Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you penniless? Come anyway--buy and eat! Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. Buy without money--everything’s free! Why do you spend your money on junk food, your hard-earned cash on cotton candy? X Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best, fill yourself with only the finest. Pay attention, come close now, listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words. I’m making a lasting covenant commitment with you, the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.
We spend our time and resources of our lives trying to satisfy that hunger, but on stuff that isn’t real food. That’s the carnal substitute.
SELF-RIGHTEOUS SEARCHING SUBSTITUTES
This direction is just as bad, maybe worse, by trying to satisfy our hunger with SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
(I.e. Pharisees example - their righteousness was established by their works)
They assumed that the hunger they felt could be satiated by doing more, and feeling good about all they had done to be “Godly”.
Of course, so many fall into this trap, feeling that desire, that aching hunger and thirst, and trying to satisfy it by being the best “rule-keepers” they can be.
The hunger remains, but now with an aftertaste of condemnation, because no one can ever keep the rules well enough.
27. So, if we’re hungry, and what we want is something that satisfies that desire in a way that we enjoy, then what IS it? What does Jesus mean when he says hunger and thirst for righteousness?
28. The righteousness Jesus is desiring His followers to hunger and thirst after is best defined as a hunger for a right-ness in relationship with God that comes from heaven to us.
29. This righteousness isn’t about doing stuff. This righteousness is about being right with God, it’s about relationship! Being restored to community with God, being restored to our true identity!
30. Hungering/thirsting is inherent...we must learn to see what we are truly hungry for...we’re hungry for God.
31. We’ve looked at this passage too many times with the thought going through our head “if only you were hungry for God like you are for other things”...and we feel so condemned by that we shrink away from him...but that’s not what this passage is trying to speak to us!
32. This is Jesus saying “I know your hungry...but you haven’t realized what will bring you the most enjoyment yet, you don’t realize what your really craving….it’s ME!”
John 4:13-14 “Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be FILLED.”
33. And the greatest part of this whole thing is that we not only have this inner hungry for God…God is equally hungry for us!!
ILLUSTRATION:
Astronaut James Erwin is one of but a few men to walk on the moon. As he stood upon the lunar landscape and looked up at the earth, he prayed for the first time in his life. He thought about the strife among nations, poverty, hunger, and rampant evil; and he thought to himself: "What is more important than man walking on the moon is that God should walk on earth."
34. Now...will there be more Bible reading, more prayer? Yes...but as a means of communicating with the One we love, a response of love to our Hero...not a religious duty.
35. Will we turn from those counterfeit substitutes for real food? Yes...but out of the satisfaction and pleasure of having our REAL desires met, not as a compliance with a set of rules.
TRANSITION: When we are filled with a full right relationship with God, we feel overcome with the sense of all we have been so freely given: forgiveness, salvation, redemption, Holy Spirit, healing, restoration, grace and mercy. We have such an overflowing sense of where we’ve come from and how much God loves us which flows so naturally into our 5th “Be” attitude, an ATTITUDE OF FORGIVENESS.
II. ATTITUDE OF FORGIVENESS
Matthew 5:7 “Blessed are merciful for they will be shown mercy.” (NLT)
1. The Greek term for “mercy” (eleos) does not mean external pity, but total identification with the other person’s situation.
2. Jesus does not specify the categories of people He has in mind to whom his disciples are to show mercy. Those who have: Those who have wronged us - we are to forgive Prisoners - visit them; Poor - don’t treat them any differently than you do the wealthy; Less fortunate - give them places of honor
3. Mercy is not humanism (1 Co 13:3 NIV) “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4. Mercy is an attitude
5. Mercy flows from an attitude to any action
6. We must show mercy not only because of the mercy that has been shown to us but we also must remember that the amount of mercy that we show to others will determine how God measures out His mercy upon our lives.
ILLUSTRATION:
John Wesley visited General Ogelthorpe when he was Governor of the colony of Georgia. The General mentioned an incident involving a man who had angered him and remarked “I shall never forgive him!¨ Wesley responded, “Then I hope sir, that you never sin.”
VIDEO “HOW OFTEN MUST I FORGIVE?” www.sermonspice.com
