Before
we really begin looking at this Beatitude today I want to start off by asking
each of you a question. However, before
I can ask you that question I have to ask you to take your mind out of the
church setting. In other words, I don’t
want the church answer. You know…if you
ask a kid in church what’s brown furry and has a tail, then they’ll answer you
by saying either Jesus or God even though everything in them is telling them
that the answer is a squirrel. I don’t
want that. I want you to be completely
honest with yourself here. I want you to
at least let down your guard with yourself to answer one simple question. What is your desire in life? What is it in life that you want more than
anything else? What is that one thing
that if you could have you would want above anything else? Now I know that that answer tends to change
over time. When I was a kid it was to be
great at sports. I got older and it
became about the right car, the right college, and eventually the right
girl. I became a parent and my desires shifted
from myself to my children. I know that
as people get diagnosed with certain diseases and illnesses that their main
focus is upon beating whatever afflicts them.
So, I know that our desires change over time, but what about our number
one desire?
Well,
that’s what’s at the heart of this Beatitude, the fourth Beatitude. We’ve looked at three Beatitudes thus far
that deal with our needs, with our emptying of ourselves. Blessed are the poor (empty) in spirit, those
who mourn their sin, and those who are meek (humble before God). Well, now we come to something a little bit
different. Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
says that this fourth Beatitude is the statement to which the first three
lead. He says that it is the logical
conclusion to which they come. “Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Let’s change the wording up a bit so that it
reads, “Greatly filled by God are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Now, before we deal with the rest of this verse, I want to flush out the
severity of several words here.
Unfortunately, in translating these words from Greek to English and now
finding ourselves in the age that we are in, we lack some understanding in
these areas.
The
first few words I want to look at are the words translated “hunger” and
“thirst”. Do we have any idea what it’s
like to actually hunger or thirst? Don’t
get me wrong, I’ve been hungry and thirsty before, but I mean real hunger and
real thirst. I mean you don’t feel like
you have anything strength to go on and you would give anything for a morsel of
food or a sip of water and it just isn’t anywhere to be found. I don’t think many of us understand hunger or
thirst in that sense. You see, these two
words carry with them a sense of need and an earnest desire. In other words, it’s as if they are so vital
that they are the most important things of this world.
Let me place my
finger there to hold my place and just really quickly look at the second word
that I want us to look at; the object of this hunger and thirst, the word
“righteousness.” Righteousness has to do
with a purity that is up to God’s standard.
It has to do with being completely without sin and receiving God’s
divine approval. We need only look to
Romans 1 to find Paul exposition of what righteousness truly is; “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it
is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first
and also to the Greek. For in it the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The
righteous shall live by faith.’”
Friends, Paul is saying that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God
to us, and what the gospel reveals to us is Jesus. Jesus is the righteousness of God
revealed. Jesus is the righteousness,
the purity, the perfection of God revealed and made available to us.
Ok. So, if we go back and understand
righteousness in terms of Jesus as God’s revealed righteousness then this verse
now reads, “Greatly filled by God are those who deeply desire and deeply need
the righteousness of God that is Jesus Christ, for they will be filled.” Now, before I finish this all the way
through, I want to talk about this word “filled.” It could also be translated as satisfied, fed,
or fattened. You get the picture don’t
you? This isn’t just a “I’m not hungry
or thirsty anymore”, but a “I’m so full that just the thought of eating or
drinking anything else will make my stomach hurt.” I want to invite you to turn to two passages
in the gospel of John, the first in chapter 4 between Jesus and the woman at
the well. “The Samaritan woman said to Jesus, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for
a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’
Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is
saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have
given you living water.’ The woman said
to him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it
himself, as did his sons and his livestock.’
Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty
again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be
thirsty again. The water that I will
give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this
water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.’” The second text that I want us to see in
John’s gospel is 6:35, “Jesus said to
them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger,
and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’”
What
does all this really mean? What does it
mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness?
It means to place Jesus as that number one desire in our lives. I opened up by asking you what your greatest
desire in life is? How many of us can
honestly answer that question by saying Jesus.
My wife has read all the Harry Potter books and we’ve each seen the
movies numerous times. In one of the
first few books/movies, there is this mirror, the Mirror of Erised. This mirror, when you looked at it would show
you your deepest desire, the thing that you wanted most in this world. How many of us could look into that mirror
and see Jesus standing beside us? Now, I
certainly don’t want to offend, but I don’t think many of us would. We would see ourselves surrounded by our
family, healed of our infirmities, living the life of luxury, or finally
hitting that target weight or status in life.
Now, none of these things seem dangerous or sinful in and of themselves,
but think back to those words that we just looked at from John’s gospel. Jesus, the well of living water and the bread
of life, is the only source of true fulfillment. Seeking and desiring for other things outside
of Christ may provide temporary relief, but they will never fully satisfy.
I want us to
see what I view as Jesus’ commentary on what it means to hunger and thirst for
righteousness, to hunger and thirst for him.
You only have to turn in your Bible one page, Matthew 6:25, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious
about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body,
what you will put on. Is not life more
than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air:
they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you
by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow: they neither toil nor
spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which
today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more
clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore
do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or
‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles [or
pagans] seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that
you need them all. But seek first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added
to you.”
Christ
knows what we need. Christ knows what we
need better than we do. This is the
promise of God spoken through His Son that he will care for our every need. Now, I’m going to hit close to home for you
for just a second. None of us live
without worrying; therefore we fail to live up to Jesus’ words here. I heard someone say recently that many of us
look at Jesus as being of great use in the afterlife, but as for this life, we
feel the need to work for ourselves and get what we can for ourselves. Friends, this Beatitude doesn’t say, “Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for happiness, for their needs will be met.” It says that we are to desperately and deeply
desire Christ above all others so that we will be filled with him. If we are able to place Christ as our deepest
desire, then there is no need to worry about things of this life because Christ
has promised to care for our every need.
Unfortunately, virtually none of us can actually say that Christ is our
deepest desire. We desire our comfort,
our luxury, our security, and even our continued existence. Yes we need to care more about Jesus than we
do about our own lives. Yes, I know how
hard/impossible that actually is. It is
completely impossible for us to reach this point. It’s impossible on our own. However, we have the righteousness of God,
Jesus Christ, revealed to us and made available to us. We can rest on the promises of God. We’re not Old Testament Israel; we’re not
waiting for the Messiah. He’s come, he’s
died, he’s risen, he’s conquered sin, and he’s ascended into heaven. He’s achieved for us what we cannot and could
not on our own. There is nothing greater
than that which he has given to us.
Therefore, our number one desire in this world should be to come to know
him as closely and as intimately as we can.
And when we do that, everything else will take care of itself, not
necessarily because it will be easy, but because we will be so filled, fed,
fattened, and satisfied with the love, mercy, and grace of Christ, that nothing
else will matter. Glory be to God; in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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