Matthew 5:6
Reading the scripture tonight
is from the Beatitudes. We’ll read Matthew chapter five
verses two through, or one through 12, but our Beatitude is verse
six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
for they shall be satisfied or filled. So reading at verse one
of Matthew five, it says about Jesus, seeing the crowds, he
went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came
to him. He opened his mouth and he taught them, saying, blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed
are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are
the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Blessed
are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile
you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you
falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your
reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets
who were before you. This is God’s word for us. So,
verse six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied. How many of you have missed a
meal in your entire life? Oh, we got a few hands raised.
Would you do the 30 hours of famine or something like that?
Did you grow up on a dirt road with no electricity? It was a
dirt road. It was a dirt road with no AC. That’s pretty bad. Right. But
we’re not starving. Right. I mean, just look at me. We’re not starving people. Food
is readily available to us. If you walk this way, just 150
yards, there’s a little food mart. And so if you’re hungry
and don’t want popcorn for supper, you could probably go in there
and get a hot dog and a mellow yellow. Not very nourishing, but you
could. Or some Twinkies and some Doritos and all kinds of other
things. You go half a mile that way and there’s a Harris Teeter
that has way more food choices than any American needs. We have
fast food, we have restaurants, we have grocers, we have supply
chains, we have refrigeration. I bet if you went home to your
cupboard tonight You opened it and said, honey, or whoever’s
around and earshot, cat, whatever, there’s nothing to eat. You would
at least have a can of refried beans that are just waiting for
the next food drive that the post office is putting on and
for you to put out there because you don’t want them anymore.
But there’s something in your cupboard to eat. We don’t go hungry. And
so when we hear words like blessed are those who hunger and thirst,
we don’t recognize or realize the urgency in those words. We’re always with food and drink. Now, this is not so in even the
distant past. You think about, was it the Dust
Bowl of America? You think about the Great Depression
not too many years ago. You think about the famines that
have swept through countries about every couple hundred years,
such a severe famine, the entire populations were wiped out. So
we’re living in a very blessed time. Did you know that only
the aristocracy, I’m going to offend somebody, were as fat
as we are back in days gone by. I mean, most people ate just
enough to get by up until recent years. And so food is so readily
available to us. It’s too readily available, especially
at 10 p.m. when my wife hears the spoon
drawer open and then the ice cream. Freezer open or the peanut
butter. Yes, that’s right. I get caught
But we we have food readily available to us. So these are strange words
to us because we are never without and I would say this spiritually,
probably most of us have been in church all our life, and to
spiritually starve would be an odd thing to us. But Jesus is
speaking to disciples in such a way that they get his progression
of speech, blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who are impoverished
in spirit. Then he moves on to those who
mourn. They mourn over their impoverishment. They mourn not
because they’re sad, they’re without. They mourn because they
realize that before the God of the universe, they have nothing.
So they are poor, but they mourn their sin, their spiritual state.
Blessed are the meek, those who recognize their condition, they
mourn over their condition, and they are willing to bow low,
and submit to Almighty God and say to Almighty God, whatever
it takes, I’ll be your disciple, I’ll be your servant, you will
be my master, and I will let you serve me in that way. And
so tonight, the fourth beatitude picks up on that logic. The poor
who mourn and are meek are blessed by God when he fills them as
they hunger and thirst for righteousness. When I was in seminary, pretty
much all guys situation. You know, going to a seminary
that feeds the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church
in America, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, three reformed
denominations that do not ordain women to the office of minister.
So most folks there were in the, you know, masters of divinity
track, ready to go to gospel ministry. But on occasion, we
would get a female student who was there for a master’s in theology
or a master’s in biblical studies. Well, I remember one particular
Old Testament class. I think it was Genesis to Joshua. About a three hour long class.
Again, full of guys, probably 40, 50 guys in the room. Male
teacher, one gal sitting up front. She starts crying. Well, what
do 50-some guys do when a girl starts crying? You know, we think
of, yeah, we run. We think of, what’s that famous
line? There’s no crying in baseball.
You know, there’s no crying in seminary. But the professor,
being the tender guy he was, having pastored a lot of years,
he asked her what was wrong. She said, oh, nothing is wrong.
She said, I just realized that everybody ought to know the things
we are learning. And that, I mean, if I didn’t
learn anything else in seminary, that’s one of the things I remember.
Because that was a very tenderhearted moment where someone realized
the church in America is impoverished. The people of God are starving
for a lack of knowledge of the things of Almighty God. And so
think of that as we hear this call from the Lord Jesus, blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and the promise
they will be filled. This was a young gal who, literally
devoured the word of God. I remember watching her for a
year or two. She was sent over from Korea by her family, sort
of to round out her education, probably a child of privilege.
This was just extra study time, and so she was sent to America
to study, and what a privilege she had, but she devoured God’s
word, as should be our desire. So what does the Lord Jesus mean? Now notice at the very beginning
in chapter five, we read over this every week, we may not understand
it, but we will, or may not remember it, but I think we are familiar
with it. It says, seeing the crowds, he
went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples
came to him. So Jesus has sat down like a
rabbi. His disciples are gathered around
him and he’s teaching them. What is he teaching them? He’s
teaching them the values of the kingdom. Here he is, the king
of the kingdom, and he’s teaching them the values. If you’re gonna
follow me, if you’re gonna be a Jesus follower, if you’re gonna
be a Christian, these are the kingdom values. and he’s given
them their spiritual condition. You’re poor, you’re impoverished,
you’re poor in spirit. He’s given them the need to respond
to that impoverishment, and that is to mourn over your sin and
your emptiness. And then he’s told them through meekness, you
submit to Almighty God, and he harnesses you, he puts a bed
and bridle on you, and he drives you and uses you in the right
way, strength under control. And now he’s saying it’s time
to feed you, it’s time to fill you, it’s time to fatten you
up, as it were. And so our goal as a Christian,
our desire as disciples of the Lord Jesus, as followers of Christ,
is to be filled with his righteousness. Now we could look at righteousness
in a couple different ways. This morning, for example, in
Philippians 3, we want that righteousness which is God’s legal declaration.
Because you have put faith in me, the righteousness of Christ,
the legal declaration that you’re forgiven, pardoned before God,
that’s one aspect of righteousness. But here it’s a little different.
That is a true thing. We need to pursue the righteousness
of God and have the right standing before Almighty God. But here
it’s being filled with the righteous ways of Almighty God. It’s being
filled personally with righteous things. We hunger and thirst
for the word. We hunger and thirst for the
kingdom values. We hunger and thirst for the kingdom principles,
the way of life. And it’s so that we can, on our
inside, be filled full of godly things, it’s personal, but it’s
also so that externally, towards our neighbor, we can be righteous
toward them. Hunger and thirsting is a metaphor
we see throughout the scriptures. You can probably call to mind
all kinds of places where God speaks about hungering for the
right things and thirsting for the right things. We read Isaiah
55 just a little bit ago, come to the waters, come all you who
are hungry, come without money, buy and eat and be filled. And
it spoke of rich things, of milk, of wine. God gives us many great
things. I think of, what is it, Psalm
30, 30 something, 35 maybe. Taste and see that the Lord is
good. What’s something we do monthly
in this congregation where we eat wheat? We sup with the Lord,
we have communion, we have the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
Psalm 42, which I believe we’ll sing in just a few moments. As
the deer pants for streams of living water, so does my soul
pant for you. Now we got lots of restaurant
choices nearby. You could leave here tonight
and you could go to Moe’s. If you’re so inclined, you could
go to Zach’s. I don’t recommend it. You could go to McDonald’s,
you could go to Wendy’s, you could go to what is there there’s
Applebee’s, there’s the Olive Garden, there’s the Outback,
you could go get a milkshake, you get a cold drink at Sonic,
you could go to cruise through all kinds of places you can leave
here and go and you could be filled full. And you know, we
get little hunger pains. And we say we need a Snickers.
Or we go to the back pantry and we dig out the cookies, the Oreos.
We decide we need a little comfort food, so we go out to eat. But
one thing’s for sure, we always feel that void in our tummies.
We do, don’t we? I mean, there’s no stopping us.
We get irritable. But are we that way with hungering and thirsting
for the righteousness that comes from God? We’re living in a day
and a time where, you’ve probably heard me say this a thousand
times lately, the older generation still goes to church. The middle
generation goes to church only when there’s not a trip to the
beach or some other interesting option. And the younger generation,
they just don’t go at all. So how do you fit hungering and
thirsting for righteousness in that if the feeding trough is
the place with the steeple on top? That’s something to think
about, isn’t it? It’s a weighty, weighty matter. But the metaphors throughout
the scripture, God says his people are hungry, and they’re thirsty
and that is only, their stomach is filled and their thirst is
quenched only with Jesus, the living water and the bread of
life. Now, what is it that we’re hungering
and thirsting after if it’s not the things of the Lord? Well,
we want fame, we want wealth, we want sex, we want notoriety,
we want our financial accounts filled full, we want real estate,
we want experiences, we want mountaintop experiences after
all, Because those are wonderful things. So many good things,
they’re good things, right? It’s God’s creation, made the
world and everything in it for us to enjoy all things. But there
are so many things that we chase after, and they’re lesser things,
and they eclipse. That’s a good word to use this
week, isn’t it? They eclipse, they cover over the main thing. And it’s a wonder we’re living
in a day and time where God is nearly completely covered over
in the lives of certainly the world. I mean, we don’t even
live in a world that’s halfway Judeo-Christian anymore. I mean,
it used to be what, even in my childhood, you could kind of
move in all circles and have Judeo-Christian values. That’s
really gone now. But the church has gone worldly
as well. And that is a really sad thing.
One theologian has said very well, the church has begun to
minister to the world in the world’s ways and not heaven’s
ways. And so the church has really become a circus in America. We
have to entertain, we have to be sentimental, we have to provide
all kinds of felt needs in order to make people happy and keep
the doors open and the room filled. And so the church, The church
has gone after lesser things and shown people that’s the thing
you prize. And so, if we’re going to hunger
and thirst for righteousness, what are things we should be
filled with? What ought to be at the buffet? What ought to
be in the feeding trough? Well, a couple things. The word
of God. That goes without saying, doesn’t it? We need God’s word.
We need it read, we need it preached, we need it sung, we need it prayed,
we need it confessed, we need it, we need to hear God speak
it to us, he needs to hear us speak it back to him. That’s
why worship is a dialogue, right? God greets us, he calls us to
worship, we affirm our faith, we confess our sin, he assures
us a pardon, we give our offerings. It’s a two-way conversation between
God and his people. And we need that. And it ought
to be word-centered and word-saturated. So we need the word of God. We
need the people of God desperately. Was it Mark Zuckerberg recently
who said, I’m going to replace the church? Facebook will replace
the church. Well, that’ll last a generation.
That’ll last a generation, right? People want to belong to a place
where their name is known, but it can’t be through cyberspace.
It needs to be touched. I mean, was Facebook gonna move
Foy Evans into his house yesterday? Was Facebook gonna connect his
dryer, get it up and running? Was Facebook gonna carry 200
boxes from a truck to the house? Absolutely not. Now, Facebook
could have gotten the right people there, but we need to be with
other people that we really touch. That’s why the Bible is full
of one another’s, right? That’s why the Bible is full
of how we’re to get along together, how we’re to work together in
the common thing. So we need the word, we need
people, We need to go through the process of sanctification.
We need to let God be at work in our lives where we love what
he loves, we value the kingdom values, and we hate what he hates.
We hate the world’s values. And we grow in grace and the
knowledge of the holiness of God, the love of Jesus Christ,
and the gospel of our Lord and Savior. So we need the word,
we need people, we need sanctification, we need to be more Christ-like.
Those are individual things that have kind of corporate or church-wide
participation implications. Individually, we need the word,
but we do it with others. Individually, we need other people
in our lives. Individually, we need to grow
in holiness, but we also need to help others grow in holiness
and be Christ-like and so forth. But how about as we leave the
church doors, what do we say every week, every week when there’s
a benediction? You’re going in the world, but
you’re not going in your own strength. You’re going to be
a light. go with God’s blessings, not in your own strength. And
so there’s a blessing, there’s a benediction, a good word placed upon you.
And the implication is this, as you go and live in your neighborhoods,
as you go into your doctor’s offices, the grocery store, your
places of work, your schools, your PTAs, the dentist office,
wherever it is you go, hopefully all godly places, right? That’s
implied. We serve others. We serve others and we practice
evangelism. We support world missions. And
so if we hunger and we thirst for righteousness and we are
being filled full as we come to the feeding trough that has
the steeple on top, not Quincy’s or the shopping mall, but we
come to the feeding trough that has the steeple on top and we
are filled full of God’s grace and his word, we can be good
for the world and the things around us. I’ve been in a lot
of homes as a minister, I don’t know, probably 1,500 homes I
would bet. But I’ve probably been in at least that many or
more when I worked in the family furniture business. And you can
tell a whole lot when you walk into a home, whether it’s neat
or messy, whether the kids roll it or the dog does. And you can
tell whose chair is whose, you can tell a lot about family pictures,
all those things. But you can tell whether or not
it is a Christian home by the things around the house. And
you know, you go in a lot of homes and over the door, it’ll
say, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Or it’ll
have a little cross-stitch of, you know, this date and this
date and this person and that person and marriage and all the
rest. Or it’ll say something like,
Christ is Lord of this home. But you know what is a real true
sign? It’s not the cross-stitching. It’s not the family Bible on
the coffee table. not the magazines and all that.
Is there a hunger and thirst for righteousness in that home?
Whether one person lives there or it’s a family of 10 or 12,
whatever the case may be, does that family have hearts that
beat for the Lord? Are they in church? Are they
at the feeding trough, the place with the steeple on top? Are
they loving their neighbors? Are they serving in the workplace?
Are they being faithful Christians wherever they are because God
has filled them full and they’ve gone out into the world full
of that grace to extend it to others? Now, I don’t completely
understand how language works, but in the Greek New Testament,
when the writer wants to say something is half-hearted and
something is wholehearted, It uses different words, different
cases. There’s nominative and accusative
and dative and something else I can’t remember. I don’t even
know what it is in English.