Hungering And Thirsting For Righteousness (pt-1) - [Matthew 5:6]

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Well, even now, as I take a drink of water, have you ever wondered what causes people to be thirsty? Oh, certainly cotton mouth.
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I can attest to that right now. If you exercise a lot, you kind of get thirsty.
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But why do people get thirsty? Is it learned behavior? What is the physiological aspect of thirst?
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Hunger? McGraw -Hill says this on the
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Internet. Cells in the lateral preoptic area of the hypothalamus, called osmoreceptors, are sensitive not only to the relative amount of water in the blood, but more particularly to cellular dehydration due to the amount of salt that becomes concentrated as the blood dehydrates from the loss of water.
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There's going to be a test on this, by the way. An increase in the amount of salt in the blood will thus cause the anterior hypothalamus to signal the pituitary gland to secrete antidiuretic hormone,
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ADH, not to be confused with ADHD, which causes the kidneys to slow down their production of urine.
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This restores body fluid. At the same time, the hypothalamus signals the brain's cortex to create a thirst drive to force the increased water intake needed to restore the normal salt level.
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I only have one comment to all that. Ain't evolution grand? It's amazing what
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God could do to make us thirsty. We have involuntary impulses, breathing.
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We just have to breathe. But what about hunger and thirst? Prolonged water deprivation also results in the stimulation of the receptors in the kidneys.
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The kidneys then secrete the hormone renin that produces angiotensin in the bloodstream.
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This causes the kidneys to retain more water and stimulates the sub -fornicle and cortex areas of the brain to create a thirst drive.
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Drinking more water then restores homostasis.
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I just thought that was amazing that God could make in our bodies the desire to take in more water when we know it or whether we don't.
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Brilliant. What did you say, Charlie? Wow. That's amazing. Talk about the stupid
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Sprite commercial. Obey your thirst. We are now in the midst of,
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I think, a life -changing series going through the book of Matthew, specifically the
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Sermon on the Mount. If you'll turn your Bibles to Matthew 5, please. I want to ask this question.
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Should we be as hungry for spiritual things? Should we be as thirsty for spiritual things?
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As we become thirsty and hungry for food, water, where do we get this desire for spiritual thirst and spiritual hunger?
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What causes spiritual thirst? What causes spiritual hunger?
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And today we'll have that answered in the fourth beatitude found in verse 6 of Matthew 5.
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Augustine was the first one to call it the Sermon on the Mount. And we call it just the Great Sermon in Matthew 5 -7.
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We could call it the Sermon on the Mount if we'd like. They will show us, almost especially the first three, like salt to the palate, the desire it brings within us to look towards God for our righteousness and for our standing.
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Jesus basically comes to town and says this. I know these Romans require this to live in their kingdom. They've taken you over.
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But here's what I require as the king. I'm not here to destroy all this by military force or might.
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I'll do that later. And that's called Revelation 19 and the second coming. But here I'm telling you what it takes to live in my kingdom.
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It's a spiritual kingdom. There are spiritual requirements. And he starts off in the beatitudes, the first several blessings to tell people that exact thing.
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And we can learn so much. I've been so encouraged this week as I've studied to think, Lord, you've made me this way and I want to be even more that way.
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I just want to be more thirsty and hungry. And I don't know about you, but I don't know if I've ever starved for food.
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Have you ever gone without a meal because you couldn't afford it? These people would understand as they would hear
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Jesus there at the Mount of Beatitudes talking about thirst and hunger going for long periods of time without water or food.
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And let's just pick this up in Matthew 5, verse 3, for the first beatitude and review, review the second, review the third, and then today come to the fourth beatitude that I hope will really increase your desire for righteousness and then quench your thirst by the grace of God.
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Beatitude number 1, verse 3, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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And you remember what the word blessed means? By the time we get through with these eight blessings, you should have it memorized.
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You could probably preach it. I heard Charlie yesterday got up and preached the Iwana message with six minutes notice.
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That's about what we need as we study the word of God over and over and over. Probably seven or eight would have helped.
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We preach, pray, or die with six minutes notice. And here as we review, it just becomes part of our fabric and it becomes ingrained in us these beatitudes.
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And remember there is a logic to this, there's a sequence to this, and Jesus isn't just like some kind of card dealer just throwing them out indiscriminately.
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You think, well, that's a bad illustration, Jesus the card dealer. I don't mean he's like a card dealer in every way, shape, and form, but just the indiscriminate dealing of these things.
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He is not even like that. He starts off where we need to start, blessed and approved by God.
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What does God think of this person? He's blessed, he's approved. The opposite of woe or judgment are the poor in spirit, the one dependent upon others.
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As people are poor with food and they are just recipients of whatever a generous person might give them, so too,
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Jesus says, are the ones who are spiritually poor and they are at the mercy of the one giving the food, shelter, whatever it might be.
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No spiritual worth, we come to God with what spiritual worth? God, you should save me. God, look down the corridors of time and see how good
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I am. I'm so lovely and beautiful. Well, maybe not that lovely or beautiful, but compared to that guy,
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I'm lovely and beautiful. And Jesus said, there's only one kind of person that gets blessings from me and gets my approval, and that's the one that comes with chapter 11 spiritually, chapter 13 spiritually.
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They're bankrupt and they know it. That's why Jesus was so kind to the woman at the well and others, where they knew that they were spiritually bankrupt.
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Secondly, the second beatitude follows this intellectual beatitude number one. This is more emotional.
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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And in this building block, this logical sequence,
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I realize I'm empty, and I realize now that I'm a sinner, and that sin is against God, and that means that I'm guilty, and that means
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I'll be judged, and I'm going to cry and mourn over my own sin.
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I'm sad about it. There's grief, there's lament. It's ongoing, by the way. Blessed are those who continually mourn, for they shall be comforted.
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God supplies not just the kingdom in the first beatitude, but now with great comfort, even through the one who's called the comforter, the
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Holy Spirit. Thirdly, this third facet of the diamond of repentance is found in verse 5.
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Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Gentleness and meekness, as we looked at the last two times, is just basically a proper self -assessment.
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I realize who I am. I've assessed myself properly. I've got a true estimate of who I really am before God, and I realize that I am bankrupt.
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I realize that I have sin, and now I realize I can't promote myself. I can't get to the head of the class.
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I can't get in the top echelon of pleasing God, because I can't move anywhere.
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If I'm going to be promoted to salvation, God will have to promote me. James Boyce said it as this, taking a lowly place before God in order that he might receive
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God's salvation. You rely on God to give you His grace.
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Powerless and looking to God. And now we kind of turn.
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We turn from we've got a problem, and if you look inside yourself enough, you're going to see a problem. And now in the fourth beatitude, we find a solution.
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When we look at ourselves so much, there's a problem, and now we come to beatitude number four, the solution, the only ray of hope, as it were.
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And we are going to see a grace that's greater than our poverty, greater than our sin, greater than our powerlessness.
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And beatitude number four is found in verse six. By the way,
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I hope you study your Bible this way at home. Verse after verse after verse after verse. Instead of here a verse, there a verse, everywhere a verse, verse, and you kind of open up your
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Bible and you say, I need a word from God today. And why do people always go to the Old Testament for the word of God in a sentence?
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And they open it up, and they look down, and it says here, I just did it randomly, He must not go up with us to the battle.
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1 Samuel chapter 9. I'm not going to fight with my wife today. We're one in Christ.
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I'm head, and she's the follower. We're not going to go to battle. It's got us there. Who's the closest person in my life?
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My wife. Empower me.
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I can make a whole sermon on any verse. By almost default,
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I'm trying to encourage your own personal study to say, I'm going to study the way the pastor preaches, and that's in context.
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I want to know what God says in context, because it only means one thing. It doesn't mean one thing to you and one thing to me.
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To me, it means one thing, and we want to find out what that one thing is. And here in the logical sequence of the
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Beatitudes, we see this hungering and thirsting. Listen to verse six. Blessed.
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Approved. So much more than a feeling of happiness, the approval of God are those ones who keep on hungering and those ones who keep on thirsting.
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And as I always do every week for a teaching illustration, they're thirsting for wealth.
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They've got a hankering for power. They've got a craving for prominence.
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They've got a desire, an ardent, just longing to be known, to be educated.
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And Jesus, like every other time, just does the exact opposite of what we hear. You want to hear what the world teaches? Turn on any radio station, on any internet site practically, and then you hear the exact opposite Jesus tells us, and we assume that He would do that.
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Blessed are those approved by God for those who thirst and hunger for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
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Now we're beginning to look away from self and looking to God for a solution. And there's a progression in all this.
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You can't just stop at the first three Beatitudes if there are only three Beatitudes. I'm bankrupt, I'm mourning over sin, and I can't promote myself.
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Let's close in prayer. No, now the eyes kind of look from within to look up.
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It's like the person who knows reinforcements are coming, and you're attacked on all sides, and you're just waiting to see the tanks come over the hills for help.
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We analyze ourselves, and here's what we see. I am unrighteous. I have no righteousness.
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So I'm going to need righteousness from someone else. I see my need in the first three
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Beatitudes, and now here comes the solution. Sinclair Ferguson said,
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Driven into ourselves, we now need to be driven out of ourselves. I'd ask you this question.
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What's the only cure for incurvatus ensae? Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
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I get a shot for those before I go to India. Incurvatus ensae. What's the only solution for incurvatus ensae?
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Luther would always call himself that. Incurvatus ensae. Turned on himself.
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Selfish. What's the cure for self -centeredness? God and His righteousness.
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Someone's going to have to come and grace us. And here's the progression. We realize we have a need.
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We realize we're mourning over sin. We can't justify ourselves anymore before God. And now we look to our captain of our salvation, the author and finisher of our salvation.
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We're looking up. My old pastor said this, Jesus' call to spiritual hunger and thirst also follows logically in the progression of the
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Beatitudes. The first three are essentially negative commands to forsake evil things that are barriers to the kingdom.
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In poverty, we turn away from self -seeking. In mourning, we turn away from self -satisfaction.
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And in meekness, we turn away from self -serving. The first three Beatitudes are also costly and painful.
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Becoming poor in spirit involves death to self. Mourning over sin involves facing up to our sinfulness.
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Becoming meek involves surrendering our power to God's control. The fourth Beatitude is more positive and is a consequence of the other three.
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When we put aside sin, self, and power to turn to the Lord, we're giving a great desire for righteousness.
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There it is. We have no resources in ourselves, so we turn to the one who has all resources. Satan can't help us, we turn from him.
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The world can't help us, we turn from it. We can't help ourselves, so we turn from ourselves.
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And the triune God, with His grace and generosity, is there to satiate us, to glut us, to gorge us with righteousness.
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Isn't that good? Have you ever been just glutted with food? Satiated? I remember one time
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I was going down to Acapulco. I was 18 years old, and I was told that the person
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I was staying with owned a hotel that had a restaurant, and we could go have a free meal. 18 years old, we were at the beach.
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I was with two other buddies, and I think it was called El Jardin, the garden. So we'd go down to the garden, and the owner of the restaurant at his home, without telling the waitresses, said to me,
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Now, after you get the bill, you just sign my name, Carl Renstrom. He was kind of the designer and marketer of tip -top curlers.
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Does anybody know tip -top curlers? It's a Nebraska thing. So we ate.
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Would you like an appetizer? Would you like an appetizer of Claro KC? Of course we'd like an appetizer.
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Give us just as many. And we just ate, and we ate, and we just kept on eating and eating.
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I should have listened to my gluttony sermon a long time ago. Well, we were basically just kind of sitting there, you know, wishing we had kind of elastic pant waist kind of things that they have now.
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I went to Sam's the other day, and all the man's slacks have these kind of expand -o -matics waist.
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We just, we really overate because it was all free. Well, just to let you know about the signing thing,
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I signed the name, and they said, Who do you think you are? Well, I was told to sign. Yeah, right.
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Anyway, they finally made a phone call. It was okay. But we went out to the beach, and I just remember laying there on the beach chair in Acapulco as the sun went down, and I couldn't lay on my back because the food in my stomach was so heavy, it was pushing down on my innards.
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Luke's looking at me like, Never heard that one before, Dad. And that certainly was just,
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I wasn't taking advantage of the man. He said, Eat as much as you want. But here you have the picture of the starving person and the banquet feast.
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And then just start thinking about the spiritual equivalent of that, the spiritually bankrupt, starving, emaciated person before God, and then the feast of God, the great supper of God and His righteousness to just fill in such a way that just gives satisfaction.
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That's basically what Jesus is going to talk about here, spiritually satisfying the hungry soul.
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And He uses two words, two desires that we have in our own bodies to help us realize the extent and the degree of our desire for righteousness.
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You see the two words, hunger and thirst. Both are desires, both are impulses in our bodies for food and water.
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And here, hunger just means keep on hungering. It's used nine times in Matthew, eight times it's just real hunger.
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Here's the only metaphorical use of a hunger for righteousness. And the same thing here, thirst.
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Thirst just means I'm thirsty, just generally thirst. And put together, often in the scripture, they just show the ardent desire and longing for the craving of something that's either good or it could be bad, but certainly the context here is good.
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Two physical drives to illustrate the point. Two primary needs to say as this human needs food and water, so too we as spiritual beings need someone else's righteousness because Beatitude 1, 2, and 3 has proven that we have no righteousness.
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All in the context of the Pharisees saying, we're righteous, we do this, you do what we do.
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And Jesus is saying in Matthew 5, 20, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you can't even see the kingdom.
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That's basically what He's saying. Now let's just think about this for a minute.
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The blessing on a man who just desires after the righteousness of God. If you've got a starving person, do you need to preach to them to eat?
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If you've got somebody who has not had anything to drink for three days, do you need to give them a little lecture with alliteration on why they should drink that water?
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Let me give you a three -point sermon. My sermon's about eating. And so E -A -T.
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E, eat. A, always eat. And T, time now is to eat.
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Do you need to do that to somebody? You just put the food in front of them, and as they're in the concentration camps rescued, you'd have to slow them down because they'd want to eat so much, and their stomachs have been shrunk, and you have to make them be careful.
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And as a starving man in Palestine, wanting to eat and gorge himself, so too it's just natural in the life of the person that God is working on in salvation that He gives you that desire and hunger, and no one has to tell you, you've got to eat, you've got to learn, you've got to grow, you've got to read your
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Bible, you've got to have a sermon on all that. No, it just should be normal and natural. You don't eat for several days, you're going to get hungry.
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You're going to want to eat. Matter of fact, let's think about it this way, as Christians even, let's do
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Christians next week. For unbelievers, when there's a stirring in your heart to say, I realize
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I'm not righteous, there's another one who's righteous. Let me hear about that righteous one as it's almost food to my soul.
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That person doesn't say, and by the way, I only want junk food.
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I don't really want it except 78 degrees in the center. I don't really like that kind of cranberry sauce that you put on that stuff.
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Here's the way I want my food. I want it just right. I don't like the carrot juice dripping over into the potato area.
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I just want it all set up right. The man who's not a believer, and the woman who's not saved, realizing that they have no righteousness, and God has so worked that conviction in the heart of their souls, and now is turning their eyes to Christ, doesn't say, that whole big deal about lordship,
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Jesus is Lord, I don't want that. I'm kind of hungry, but I'm not that hungry. The whole issue about deny father and mother and everything else, no,
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I'll pass. I kind of want seconds on all the love and the grace and the mercy, but I'll tell you what you feed me and what
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I want to eat. It's just so strange. Thomas Watson, the
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Puritan, said, a hungry man tastes sweetness in his meat, so that he hungers after righteousness, he relishes a sweetness in heavenly things.
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He can feed upon the myrrh of the gospel, as well as the honey. Whatever Christ is offering, it's food and it's righteousness.
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Yes and amen, we have nothing. We'll take the demands of the kingdom. People worship, don't they?
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Unbelievers worship for something. True? Yes. Ecclesiastes 3 says,
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God has put eternity in the hearts of people. He's made them image bearers of himself, and they have a longing to worship, an ambition to worship, and we want to have a holy ambition to say,
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God, we want what you have for us. As in Isaiah 55,
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God says, why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?
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They're kind of like the broken cisterns in Jeremiah 2. Broken cisterns?
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That's in a different chapter of the Bible. Broken cisterns. They just don't hold anything. There's nothing good there.
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John Darby said, to be hungry is not enough. I must be really starving to know what's in God's heart toward me.
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When the prodigal son was hungry, listen to this, he went to feed on the husks, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.
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I'm starving for your righteousness. I have nowhere else to go. And as Moses struck the rock, and the water gushed out to quench the thirst of two million, so too at Calvary 2 ,000 years ago,
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God the Father struck his son. As it were, the blood of Christ and his salvation can flood out to all those who would ever believe beyond millions.
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Look back at Matthew 5, verse 6, the object of the desire here. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
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That's what he wants us to thirst after. He could have said God's righteousness, but he's just using shorthand here.
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And certainly the people would know, in the context of the Old Testament, and now the Sermon on the Bound of Beatitudes, okay, this is
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God's righteousness. He just got done saying, you don't have any of your own righteousness anyway, so it's got to be this other kind of righteousness,
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God's righteousness, an alien righteousness. And righteousness can kind of have two components. Since righteousness means doing what is what?
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Right, or conforming to a norm, doing the right thing. Here's what I require, God says. It can either mean, ethically,
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I do the right thing. Blessed are those who just do the right thing in the kingdom of God. Or it can have an idea of God's righteousness.
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Blessed are those who are hungering and thirsting after God's righteousness, Christ's righteousness. They want to be like God.
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They want to be like Christ. Now one of the things we do, and I told a new membership class, we like to go slow, and we like to dig deep.
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And I brought, let's see, just to give you a little inside to behind the pulpit view, I brought 34 pages of notes today.
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I'm on page 10 right now. We've been here a half hour. You do the math.
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Why do I do that? I never know how to make a conclusion to a sermon, because frankly, I don't know when I'm going to end.
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I get bad grades at Southern Seminary because they said you've got to have a locked tight conclusion. Know where you're going to start. Know where you're going to end.
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And I just think, I just get caught up in all this and want to share. And there's something to be said for just the Spirit of God moving the sermon around and moving my mind.
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And here's how I want my mind to be moved. And that is into the depth of Scripture and not just its kind of superficial zoom through it.
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Here is now going to be a payoff for deep study in your own study area or from the pulpit study where when you see it, you go,
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That's great. I'll never read this passage again without thinking about that. I can't believe the nuance there.
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It means something to me. It's not some kind of passive verb that doesn't mean this or that. Here's something that's even better and it has to do with Greek though.
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It has to do with the difference between genitives and accusatives. Are you excited? Genitives and accusatives.
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And this isn't a genitive, it's an accusative. Can I get a witness? Every word of God is inspired.
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And if there are different endings in the back of a Greek word, if I say of or from or to or different prepositions, every word in Greek is there for a reason.
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Matter of fact, so much so that when God in His wisdom said, The Old Testament is going to be written mainly in Hebrew.
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Some Aramaic there in Daniel and one other book. But I want the Greek language here to be used.
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So hundreds of years before even Christ was born, I'm going to take this man named Alexander the Great, an unbeliever, and I'm going to take him by the jaw and pull him down across Europe, down into Israel area,
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Palestinian area, and I'm going to have him bring in the Greek culture and the Greek language because, well, lots of reasons, but one particular reason is because I want a precise language.
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Greek is very precise. Hebrew is kind of picturesque and poetical. You could have some precision there, but you have to work on it more to be precise when you write.
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Greek is just black and white technical and you just know exactly what the author is trying to say.
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And in this particular case, he uses not the genitive, he uses the accusative, and you say, well, what does that mean?
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If I were going to be back in the days and I wanted to have some bread, here's what I would say.
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I would use the genitive and I would say, I would like some of bread. Of is the genitive.
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I would like some of bread. It sounds weird to us, but to them, it would sound perfectly normal.
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It would be like us saying, I would like some of that bread. You go to the restaurant and you have a little loaf of bread there and they give you a knife and some butter.
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And so you say to the person across the table, if you were back in those days, you'd use the genitive and you'd say, I would like some of bread.
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Because it would be very rude to say, I'd like all that bread. You don't get any of that bread. You cut it all for me and you give it to me.
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So the genitive tells us this. I want just a little bit of it. I want a portion. I want a piece.
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I want just some of it. I don't want all of it. So I'd like some of bread. Same thing if there's a glass of water and I said, okay, using the genitive,
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I would like a little, I would like, I thirst for some of this. And so I just drink it.
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Now Jesus is there. They have no righteousness. And with three just quick verses,
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He just says, even in front of the Pharisees, you're going to have to look to another to have them, to have
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Him give you righteousness. And He says, you're going to need righteousness. And you think Jesus would say, you need a little bit.
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You need some genitive. You need some of. You need a little piece. You need a portion. You need a nibble. You need a snack.
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You need a crumb. Or do you think He'd say, when it comes to righteousness, you need all there is to righteousness.
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It comes with a loaf of bread. You want all of that bread. You want everything that there is that the host will offer you.
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Which one do you think He'd say? You need to have a little of, or you need to have the whole deal. Which one would you pick?
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And it's weird because the society is always like, I want a little of. And Jesus doesn't use the genitive. He uses the what?
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Look at how smart you are! He uses the accusative. You say, I can't remember all that.
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You don't have to remember any of it. You just need to remember this. Jesus said, the ones are blessed. None of the other ones are blessed.
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But the ones are blessed when they hunger and they thirst after all the righteousness there is to be had by God.
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Not I'm just going to get a little bit better. Not that I want to be almost close to the Pharisees. Not that I want to be a little bit more righteous than the
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Pharisees. No, I want to be so righteous I'm righteous like God is righteous.
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That to me is just amazing. He's not saying little snacks and just do a little bit better. Just do a little bit harder.
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Just do a little bit more. Just be better than your neighbor. He's saying when it comes to righteousness, those ones that are approved and only those ones are only those ones who thirst and hunger after all the righteousness there is to be had.
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So I love study. I love to just get into it because it makes so much more sense.
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How needed is this when there are a variety of descriptions in the Old Testament for unbelievers.
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Jeremiah 8 .6 People who pursue his own course like a horse charging into battle.
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Proverbs 6 .18 Hearts that devise wicked schemes. Feet that are quick to rush into evil.
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Proverbs 4 .17 They eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. Amos 2 with the same kind of desire and longing.
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They pant after the dust of the earth. Ephesians 4 It says sinners sin with greediness.
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Amnon was sick to his stomach until he defiled Tamar. And here we have a group of people that are unrighteous and if it wasn't for the mercy of God who saved us, we'd be in the same boat and God says it's time to stop not looking in toward yourself.
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It's time to look at the one who can give you his righteousness. That's what he's saying there.
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Sadly the leader of the Christian cathedral said righteousness is not absolute holiness or perfection either.
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I don't believe Jesus is saying that a person who has an incurable compulsion to holy living will really be satisfied.
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If we had to live perfect holy lives in order to be satisfied, we'd be the most miserable of all human beings because we'd make too many mistakes.
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We all commit sins. None of us is going to be perfect. And repentance is twofold process.
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It is saying no to the negatives and it's saying yes to the positives, the good, the healthy. It is saying yes to God's dream for you and me.
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I only have one comment. What? What's that? That is nothing. That's not well,
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I kind of hope God's got this dream for me and I'm going to hope I'm going to be a little bit better. I'm going to say yes to the good things and bad to the no things.
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Here's the blessed one. The blessed one knows because he's been convicted by God and she's had her eyes opened by God that it takes perfection to get into heaven.
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Any qualifiers here? Any takers? Look down at Matthew chapter 5 verse 48 if you don't believe me.
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When I do children's chapels, I always say, I've got a question for you, you're going to get the wrong answer. How many people think you have to be perfect to get into heaven?
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Nobody raises their hand. And then I say, well Jesus said, therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly
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Father is perfect. I realize so I am. I'm mourning over it. I can't forward myself. God, you're going to have to give me your perfection.
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You're going to have to give me your righteousness. If anybody's going to make me perfect, it's going to have to be you. And I'm going to do it in such a way that it's like I'm on a desert island without water and without food.
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It's not saying yes to the positives. So many times in the Old Testament, righteousness is a good synonym of salvation.
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Listen to some of these. Isaiah 45, Drop down ye heavens from above and let the skies pour down righteousness.
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Let the earth open and let them bring forth salvation. And let righteousness spring up together.
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Isaiah 46, Hearken unto me ye stout hearted that are far from righteousness. I bring near my righteousness it shall not be far off and my salvation shall not tarry.
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Isaiah 51, My righteousness is near. My salvation is set forth. Isaiah 56,
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Thus says the Lord, Keep ye judgment and do justice for my salvation has come near and my righteousness is to be revealed.
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A great synonym for salvation. God, I'm going to need to be saved. And the way we're saved is God gives us
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His perfect righteousness. We are not righteous. Jesus was perfectly righteous. And at Calvary, God credits
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Jesus' perfect righteousness to our account even though we're sinful. And simultaneously at Calvary, God credits our sin to Jesus' account even though Jesus isn't sinful.
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Right? The great exchange. And God says, I affirm that by raising Christ from the dead. So Jesus is saying,
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He could be saying, Well, certainly you need to live righteous lives but to start even living righteous, there has to be the righteousness of God given to the people.
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And you'll understand this when I read Isaiah 61, 10. He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation.
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He hath covered me with the robe of what? Righteousness. And when you put that white dress on the bride, whatever that bride's background might be, the white dress just covers that bride and you just look at that bride and say,
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Holy and pure and undefiled. How much more does Jesus then, who lived the perfect life,
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He did everything properly, He loved the Lord His God with all His heart, soul, mind and strength, He loved
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His neighbor as Himself. And God says, I'm going to take Jesus' perfect conformity to the moral will of God, to the law of God, to the civil ceremonial, any kind of law you want to come up with.
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He obeyed perfectly and I'm going to take Jesus' perfect righteousness and I'm going to give it to you.
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And you're not going to be saying, I just want a little bit of it. You're going to be saying, I want it all. Did you notice the text does not say,
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Blessed is the man who is righteous. The Pharisees would have said, I'm righteous.
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But blessed are those who know they don't have their own righteousness and so they're seeking for the righteousness of another, a different kind.
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Luther would call it an alien righteousness, a righteousness that comes from above, that's not in us, that's externas, outside of us.
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We're looking for something outside of us and it's going to take the grace of God, the Spirit, inside to draw and convict and make us say, you know what?
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I pretty much had enough of myself. So when Jesus said, you know, you want to follow me? Be sick of yourself, then you come follow me.
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Well, what is He saying? You're not righteous. Come and follow the righteous one who will give you my perfect righteousness.
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Our sins credited to Jesus' account at Calvary. Jesus judged as a guilty sinner, as an unrighteous person, even though He wasn't.
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He was judged that way. Jesus' perfection credited to our account. God looks at us and says, perfect, righteous, filled with righteousness.
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You're declared righteous. I affirm you as, even though you're sinful, the way
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I look at you is I see Christ covering you as we talked about last week. If you'll turn to Philippians chapter 3, let me give you another illustration of this very point about the righteousness of God and how it takes the
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Spirit of God's work in our lives to say no to who we were, who we thought we were and now having a proper assessment.
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And Paul does this in Philippians chapter 3. A great passage. It's a whole sermon in and of itself.
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I'm getting thirsty. Philippians chapter 3 is a good illustration of God's righteousness so sought after by Paul that everything else in his life was put into proper perspective.
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Philippians 3, 7. Just jumping right in, he says in verse 3, but whatever things were gained to me, those things
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I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. How many accountants do we have here? Any accountants?
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Pete Marwick, Mitchell, Maine. Okay, we have some accountants here. This is accounting terminology.
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This is cost accounting terminology. They were in the gain ledger.
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They were in the profit ledger. They were in the credit ledger. They were in the assets ledger. It's an accounting term that just means profit.
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I used to have things that I used to put over here in the plus column. It's in the black.
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And I had all kinds of things that I thought, you know what? This will give me good standing before God. These things are my righteousness. I'm righteous.
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I've done right by doing those things or being that way. And then he says, but those things
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I've counted as what? Loss. Greek tense, I counted in the past as loss and I still even do to this very day.
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I thought all those things that were good, I said get out of the plus column and get over here to the negative column.
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I'm putting you all in a big loss column. Matter of fact, the gains is plural in the text and the loss is what?
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Singular. All these gains. Baptized as a kid. Confirmation.
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Go to church. My dad's a pastor. Long time member of the church. Do good things. Help the widows.
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Read my Bible. Whatever it is. It's a huge thing. Gains. Paul says, when it comes to gains for me,
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I took all my gains and threw it into one big singular lump of loss. It's loss. They mean loss.
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Conscious decision, you know what? God's grace has so affected me and infected me as it were. That stuff that I used to think was good, is not good.
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It's loss. These things aren't going to somehow help me get to heaven. One parcel of loss.
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From asset to liability. Then what does he say? This is amazing what he says.
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He says in verse 4, if you go back, let's look at some of his gains. What do we think his gains might be?
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What were all these gains? Although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh,
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I far more. You think you've got righteousness of yourself? Let me show you how mine was more than you do.
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Kind of a one -upsmanship as it were. Look at all these. Some by birth, some by heredity, some by other things.
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Verse 5. Circumcise the eighth day. Here's the first gain. You want to talk about pleasing
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God with a proper pedigree? I was circumcised the eighth day.
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What was the prescribed day to get circumcised on? The eighth day. By the way, I'm not a heathen nor an
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Ishmaelite because they were circumcised when they were mature and they were 13 years old. I was circumcised on the eighth day.
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According to Leviticus 12 .3. I'm of the nation of Israel. By the way, my descendants were
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Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael. No. And Jacob.
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I've got pure Abrahamic lineage.
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Abraham's descendants could be Ishmaelites. Isaac's descendants could be Edomites. No. Pure, clean.
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He's not some kind of Pines 57 mutt. I'm a Jew from the cradle. Like talking to the kids yesterday.
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Our kids are one quarter Scottish, one quarter English, one quarter
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German, one eighth Danish, and one eighth
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Swedish. We'll just take a look at them.
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You'll see. All this kind of... They don't live in a theocracy.
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But back in the theocracy, where Israel is the apple of God's eye, Paul says, eighth day circumcision, and I've got all the right lineage.
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Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I'm of Israel. Great history behind that. Thirdly, he says,
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I'm the tribe of Benjamin. Some people might lose their tribal identity, but Benjamites didn't.
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Highly esteemed. Only Benjamin was born in the promised land. Holy city of Jerusalem and the temple were within the territory assigned to Benjamin.
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Benjamin was the only house that remained loyal to David at the time of the breakup of the monarchy. The new core of the colony in Palestine, Benjamin and Judah.
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First lawful king of Benjamite. Pedigree of all pedigrees.
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God, aren't you glad I'm following you? Aren't you glad I got some righteousness here?
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Circumcised. I'm an Israelite. I'm a Benjamite. I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews. My parents were
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Hebrews. They maintained all the kind of background and tradition and language, one man says, even while living in a pagan city.
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By the way, by choice and conviction. Five, I'm a Pharisee. I'm not those lame, liberal, ecumenical
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Sadducees. I'm a Pharisee. I'm conservative. I believe the Bible. I do what the Bible even says.
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Paul said in Acts 26, I lived as a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of our religion. I'm not lax.
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As to zeal, number six, a persecutor of the church. Faith without works is dead.
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I lived out my convictions. If James were to ask me, are you a
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Jew? Yeah, prove it. Here's my proof. I'm a persecutor.
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By the way, very interestingly, he doesn't use past tense. It's almost so vivid in his mind because it just brought up the horror of him killing people, killing
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Christians. He uses it in a present tense. I'm a persecutor. And number seven, here's his game.
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The righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Certainly not internally and with the motives that are proper, but on the external.
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Here's the standard, and I was blameless. You couldn't look at me and say, you know what, I saw you in that one day last week that Sabbath, kind of Saturday morning you were playing frisbee with your friend, doing all that.
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What a resume! What a CV of all kinds of stuff. And Paul says, these are gains. And he says,
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I'm treating that as a loss. So much so, look at verse eight. More than that, I count all things to be loss. I counted it loss back then, and that and anything else, anything else,
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I'm going to count that as loss. And here's how Paul does it. Paul just adds up five particles in the
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Greek because he doesn't know how else to say it to make it super emphatic. And he says this, yes, indeed, therefore, at least, even.
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It's amazing. It can't be translated. It's just forceful. It's untranslatable. He's stirred up. And he says, more than that, yes, more, indeed, therefore, even, at least,
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I count all things to be loss. How can you count all those things to be loss? Even the things that he has now as a
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Christian, as an apostle, as an apostolic messenger of Christ Jesus. I've counted all as loss.
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Why? In view, with the right view, things just look different. In view of the surpassing value of knowing
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Christ Jesus, my Lord. It's all worth it just to know Him, to be known by Him.
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I will gladly give up all that. Matter of fact, on that Damascus road, I gave it all up, everything.
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And I used to think they were gain, and now they're loss. I used to think, to use the Beatitudes language, I used to think
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I was something, and I saw Jesus, I knew I was bankrupt. I used to think I kind of, you know, wasn't too bad of a sinner, but when
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I saw the holiness of God at that Damascus road, I realized I was a sinner, and I mourned over my sins.
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That day that I was going to the Damascus road to go kill more Christians, and tie them up, and separate them from their parents, and everything else that Paul would do, he said, you know,
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I realized I couldn't forward myself anyway when I saw the Shekinah glory of Jesus, I realized
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I was undone, and I was on my face, and I had to realize that whatever I was, whoever I am, whatever
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I had in the ledger column of asset, credit, plus, gain, profit,
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I realized, you know what? Compared to knowing Jesus, it was all what? Unrighteousness. It's nothing.
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Knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, the beauty, and the desirability, and the matchless name of Christ, it's worth it all, the great exchange.
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That's why Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 uses hunger and thirsting, because those people will never have any conditions.
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They'll never say, I'll only do it if you do this. It's like Paul. Paul wasn't going, you know what? Let me kind of, you know, my bank account,
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I don't want you to touch that, Jesus. I want to be a Christian, but I'm not, that whole giving thing, I'm not really into that. No.
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Well, you know, I've got that kind of special sin in my life, and you know that girl that lives in Minnesota someplace, or I guess he didn't know what
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Minnesota was at the day, and you know, I've got these special compartments of sin. He just says, you know what? Everything I have, and I'm unrighteous myself,
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God, you're going to have to give me your beauty. It's Christ Jesus. And I count them as what? You know the word.
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Scoobalon. It could be used of discarded food. It could be used of droppings, refuse.
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I used to think this was good. I polished these things. I put wax on them. I promoted them.
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I wore them on my shoulder, and now it's just what? It's just dung. Because Christ is so great, how can
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I realize that me and what I produced is anything? I could ask you the question, are you trusting in anything besides Jesus Christ alone?
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He counted them as rubbish. Why? In order that I may gain Christ. Because you've got to toss these things to gain
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Christ. If you want to gain Christ on the asset side of the ledger, you're going to have to get rid of everything else.
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You're going to have to see what you are with the eyes of Christ so you can say, you know what? I need your righteousness,
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God, and when you give me righteousness, I am full. Let's go back to Matthew chapter 5 and wrap this up.
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I am satisfied. That's why people think if you become a Christian, you have to give all these kinds of things up.
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It's no fun. It's a bunch of no -can -dos and everything. I may have to give things up, yes. But now
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I get the satiated greatness and beauty of Christ and His righteousness. I get it all. Matthew chapter 5 verse 6, back there.
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For what? They shall be satisfied.
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Passive. They're satisfied by someone else. Same word used in Revelation 19. The birds were filled with their flesh.
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God just feeds the hungry soul. He just gives us everything we want. And we all can know that as a
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Christian. We realize, you know, when God saved me that day, it was worth the divine transaction and He just planted a holy desire in me and I just love the
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Lord now. I have new affections, religious affections by Jonathan Edwards. I now love what I used to hate and hate what
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I used to love. It's an act of God. You see the beauty of Christ. You don't see, oh,
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He's up there telling me what to do. You just think, Lord, I'll just do anything for You. It reminds me of Psalm 1715.
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As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake.
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Or how about John 4 .14? Jesus said, Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never what?
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Thirst. Satisfied. But the water that I give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.
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Similarly, in chapter 6, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger.
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He who believes in me will never thirst. Why? Because they're full. They're filled. They're satisfied.
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The same word used as cattle. You'd feed cattle and they'd get full. Here we're filled with the righteousness of God.
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God declares us righteous and then He gives us new birth and we start acting righteously. Thomas Watson said,
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The Gospel is a spiritual thing. Kim and I went to Honolulu years ago.
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I had to work and so she had some frequent flyer miles and I told you the story there where we saw this little thing down by the beach in Waikiki.
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18 course. Hawaiian. Going out on a hot date tonight.
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Romance. Romantic date. Don Ho the 19th was going to be singing.
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I thought Don Ho died like nine times and in fact he has. They just keep reincarnation of the new
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Don Ho. They're playing down by the beach. We're all excited. Driving down.
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It's dark. I was just thinking it was going to be so good. I'd work during the day. Kim would surf and we'd eat macadamia nuts for lunch.
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I just thought it's going to top it all off with a banquet. I don't know how much it was.
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49 bucks or something. Some outrageous price. I knew something was kind of wrong when
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I saw some kind of nuclear reactors close by the beach. I'm thinking it's kind of industrial area or something.
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Maybe they need to pick up some I don't know pineapple rings or something. I don't know what we're doing.
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Pineapple manufacturer plant or something. And we showed up and it was the cheesiest. Most horrible.
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There was 18 things and they're all in these little kind of pans and I was looking around these other 19 other people who got all ripped off by the
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I'm a tourist kind of slogan guy. And I just looked and I thought oh man it was greasy and it was nasty and there were 19 big things of just nothing.
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A little kind of just horrible. I thought false advertising. Who wants to eat?
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Then you're stuck in a quandary. I paid 49 bucks so I probably should eat it anyway. Off you go.
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And I just thought it was advertised as something that it's not and it was not filling. It was not good. It didn't taste great.
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It wasn't less filling. It was nothing. And here we have the
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God of the Universe who says here's my spiritual banquet to gorge yourself on and it's
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Jesus Christ and His beauty and His kindness and the forgiving Christ. You were never going to go you know what? I got ripped off on that one.
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I should have kept my whole dung pile and I got that instead. Thanks a lot. $49 rip off Jesus.
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You know somebody like Paul would just say it's like Isaiah 55 ho everyone who thirsts come to the waters and you will have no money.
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Come anyway. Buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
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Socrates wanted to try to teach a follower how to acquire knowledge. Took him to a river. Held him under.
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Struggled to free himself. Kept him under. Finally he broke loose and emerged from the water and Socrates said when you thought you were drowning what was the one thing that you wanted most of all?
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Still grasping for breath the man exclaimed I wanted air. Socrates said wisely when you want knowledge as much as you wanted air then you will get it.
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And that's what happened in our life as sinners. God realized God performed a work in our life so we would realize that we want his righteousness more than anything else and like a hungry thirsty famished emaciated person we say we have nothing.
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We have no dinner and God you're the God of all grace you're the God of all comfort you're the God of all righteousness
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I need your righteousness to fill me and Jesus said the people with that kind of attitude are what?
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Approved. A work of God in the heart of man and man responds. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
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Let's close in prayer please. Father thank you for our time today and Lord we praise you most of us here are
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Christians we praise you that we were so submerged in self you let us up for air you pulled us out you gave us new hearts and new minds and made us born again born from above and you gave us hearts to want righteousness
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Father save those today who still are content who still are happy sitting there in the beach in Honolulu eating the fruits of self righteousness
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Father break into their world and save them give them a desire to thirst and hunger after your son's righteousness and for us
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Lord as Christians and even as we look into it next week would you give us a word would you give us a desire for the word this week
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Lord so we could just hunger and thirst it's kind of like we still hunger and thirst now because we want the word we want to see it as honey and something good for us
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Lord we know that you're a great God and thank you for giving us the great exchange in our mind knowing that the world was to be turned from and we turn to you the great savior of our souls we did it not of our own but by your grace thank you for that help us to sing now for your glory after we've learned the revelation from God now help us to respond with singing in Jesus name,