“Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst”

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 5:6

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Well, this morning as we round out our first month in Matthew 5 with the fourth beatitude, we want to take stock of the way that these beatitudes, especially the first four beatitudes have been a thematic whole.
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And as we shift now to the latter four in the next month to come, we'll see that there's a slight shift in the direction as well as the emphasis.
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And I hope we won't forget what the Lord has revealed to us, not only in our times on these past several
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Sunday mornings, but I trust with all the days in between, the
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Lord has given you an opportunity to see in your own life ways that you are poor, ways that you need to be meek as you mourn over your own failures, over your own sins, over the state perhaps of broken relationships in your life or just the world around you.
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And so as we turn to verse 6 in Matthew 5, we want to bring that past month to bear.
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Blessed, Jesus says, are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
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The meek are still in view. As we considered last week, the meek, of course, are those who are poor in spirit.
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In fact, those are parallel terms between the first and the third beatitude. The poor in the spirit are meek.
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They're meek because they're poor in spirit, and these are the ones who mourn as it were. And as we looked at those who are meek last week, we saw the importance of Psalm 37.
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That's what the third beatitude was drawing from. And I'll read just beginning from verse 9, but of course, verse 11 is where the third beatitude came from.
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Evildoers will be cut off. Those who wait on the Lord, they will inherit the earth for yet a little while, and the meek it will be no more.
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Indeed, you'll look carefully for his place, but it shall be no more. Here's verse 11, but the meek shall inherit the earth.
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And so we considered that, the poor, the humble, the afflicted. These are the meek, and Jesus says these ones are blessed.
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Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit. And as we saw from Donald Hagner, the term blessed there refers to those who have long awaited the salvation promised by God and are beginning to experience it in their lives even now.
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These are the ones that Jesus declares are his disciples. These are the ones that Jesus declares are blessed.
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Now week by week, we've also seen Jesus draw these beatitudes like a dragnet through the
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Old Testament, calling certain imagery from Deuteronomy and the Psalms, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and especially
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Isaiah. Isaiah was the sort of paradigm for the Sermon on the
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Mount, indeed for much of the Gospels. And we saw therefore from the
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Psalms and especially from Isaiah that this opening of the Sermon on the
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Mount is drawing his disciples toward an end times hope, toward an eschatological hope.
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And we emphasize those future tenses. Tense is very important.
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Alright, you began with blessed are the poor in spirit, they shall be.
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That's future. They shall be comforted. The ones in view here will inherit the earth.
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They will be filled. Those future tenses are important. There's something that begins to occur in the lives of God's people now and yet they await.
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They're blessed and therefore in one sense the wait is over, salvation has come, but in a much deeper and more profound sense they're still waiting for the consummation of all that God has promised.
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These are those who hunger and thirst. Now a humble person, a meek person, a poor person is one who is humble, one who has acknowledged their sin, one who's hungering and thirsting not just for righteousness within them but righteousness without.
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This too draws us toward that eschatological hope. There is a day that is fixed, a day with a capital
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D, a day when the Lord will return and the whole earth will be put to right. And to such that wait for this blessed day,
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Jesus says, they will be filled. They will be satisfied. They will inherit this earth that is put to right.
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They will be comforted. So let's first, we're going to walk through verse 6. Let's first talk about those who hunger and thirst.
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Again, Jesus declares, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for they shall be filled.
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We live in days where there is comparatively little hunger compared to most of human history.
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The parallel for Matthew 5, 6 in Luke chapter 6, the Sermon on the Plain, Luke records, blessed are you who are hungry now for you will be filled.
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So Luke goes all in on hunger and he says, blessed are you who hunger now, whereas Matthew records, blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for you will be filled.
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Both emphasize this deprivation, this drive that is born out of hunger, born out of need, born out of practical starvation.
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What human history was no stranger to until we really come to the post -industrial age where food is almost always at the ready unless you live in a communist nation, right?
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Food is almost always available to us. We don't really understand the psychology of deprivation in this way.
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How many in this room can say we know what it's like to be starved toward death? I don't suppose any of us, right?
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You might feel that way on Thanksgiving morning when you have to wait until 2 p .m. That's not really what the biblical writers have in mind.
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We don't live in a day where hunger is a real terror, where the threat of famine is something that can, as it were, haunt a nation, pursue it to death.
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This is the time that the scriptures are written. The Romans were ingenious with their agricultural structures and their ability to import and export food across the
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Mediterranean, but even they were haunted and pursued by the terrors of famine.
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Peter Garnsey, a Roman historian, wrote an excellent book on famine and food supply in antiquity.
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And he talks about this at length. We cannot relate. The fact that most people, the people that Jesus is speaking to in this blessed beatitude, most people lived at a subsistence level unless they were elite and extravagantly wealthy.
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And no one in this room can relate to that, right? We have the belt sizes to prove it.
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We probably have snacks stuffed in our cars. We don't know what it's like to actually hunger and thirst in this physical way.
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I think most of human history would be downright disturbed that one of the things we do to entertain ourselves is watch people eat.
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When I was first married, Alicia and I spent too many hours watching Food Network. I wish
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I could get those hours back. What a waste. What would most of human history think?
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What would their verdict be that a form of entertainment for us is sitting in front of a screen to watch diners, drive -ins and dives, or the
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Coney Island hot dog competition, which was recently held? No one's starving there.
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The point is, how many hot dogs can you shove into your gullet within the appointed time?
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This is where we are as a society. I remember one back in the day, Hirafumi the
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Tokyo Terror. He was this thin little Asian boy who somehow could crush the competition at the
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Coney Island. We're just entertained by eating. That's how available food is to us. I wish
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I could delete from my mind what I know from all those wasted hours on Food Network. I'm never going to sous -vide anything.
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Why do I know what the process involves? We're entertained by eating. Food is so available to us that it's more than just a luxury.
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It's an amusement. It's a pastime. We'll eat when we're not even hungry. So how are we going to step into these sandals 2 ,000 years ago and understand exactly what it means to hunger and thirst unto death?
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That's the world that Jesus is addressing. Now, of course, the ancient world wasn't all toward the threat of starvation.
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It was only those at the socioeconomic tail. At the head, of course, you had the wealthy.
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The Romans, of course, were known not only to extravagantly feast, but to feast to the point of actually vomiting so that they could eat more.
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Sorry to poison your appetite for lunch. We'll be past this in a moment. The Emperor Vitellius, and they almost needed to mint bigger coins to fit his image.
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He was an emperor for a very short time in the year 69. Cassius Dio says he feasted four times a day.
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Every day. He was a big boy. He feasted four times a day. Archaeologists wrongly say that one of the rooms that wealthy
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Romans would have had was called the vomitorium. As you're banqueting, you need more room because more dishes are coming.
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So you go take care of that. You can come back and keep feasting. This is what Seneca said, criticizing this extravagance.
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They vomit so that they can eat. They eat so that they can vomit. They never even consider the dishes which they have assembled from across the earth worthy of their digestion.
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It's all about the consumption. It's all about eating. This is a picture of total excess.
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So as we approach this fourth beatitude, we need to begin with the genuine threat, the genuine plight, the genuine terror of hunger and thirst.
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Jeremiah Burroughs, a great Puritan, and you can look up his exposition of the beatitudes.
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You know, I've taken a week for each beatitude and we've been at this now for four weeks.
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He did four weeks on a single beatitude, as he did here with verse six. He points out, hunger always comes with a strong effort.
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We often say hunger will break through a stone wall. Nothing becomes too difficult when it comes to acquiring bread for a starving man.
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If someone's on the verge of starving, they won't simply stay home because the weather has soured. If there's bread to be had, no matter how far and how hard the journey, they will go to get it, like Jacob when he heard that there was grain in Egypt.
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Until hunger is satisfied, nothing else matters. For a person ready to perish from this lack, all other offerings mean nothing.
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They would disregard anything else while they're starving. Nothing can satisfy but bread. Even if someone were to present them bags of gold and silver, it means nothing to them if they can't eat.
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These are the ones that Jesus says, hunger and thirst after righteousness.
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These are the ones that Jesus says will be filled. Of course, the immediate reference to this would be the
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Israelites who, day by day, would starve unto death unless the
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Lord had provided for them in the wilderness. Remember, He had brought them out of that affliction, and as they're wandering across these 40 years in the desert, the
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Lord is daily providing them bread. He is the reason they don't perish out of this need for hunger or for water.
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Psalm 107, most likely the immediate reference for this beatitude, and we read there at the beginning,
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They wandered from all of the lands, from the east, from the west, the north, and the south. They wandered in the wilderness, in a desolate place.
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They found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them.
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And so they cried out to the Lord in this distress, and He delivered them out of all their trouble. He led them forth by the right way, that they would go to a city for a dwelling place.
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Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness. He satisfies the longing soul.
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He fills the hungry soul with goodness. This is the backdrop. The wilderness wanderings, the hungry, the thirsty that cry out to the
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Lord, and the Lord therefore hears and feeds them. He fills them with His own goodness.
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This is the immediate reference point. And by the way, this gets developed as it's again taken from the
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Pentateuch through the Psalms, and then it's sort of developed in its fullness by Isaiah, which
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Matthew is using as his sort of curtain, his screen, as we read his Gospel.
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And Isaiah takes this motif of the wilderness wandering, of the people of God hungering and thirsting, and he projects it toward this ultimate promise of fulfillment.
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In other words, it's not just looking back to that desert wandering, it's looking forward to the ultimate fullness of God, the ultimate restoration of God, the consummation of fullness.
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Isaiah 49, in an acceptable time, beginning in verse 8, In an acceptable time
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I have heard you. In the day of salvation I have helped you, and I preserve you, and I will give you as a covenant to the people to restore the earth, to cause them to inherit the desolate heritage that you can say to the prisoners, go forth.
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You can say to those who are in darkness, show yourselves. This is just like Isaiah 61, which
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Jesus is fulfilling. What does he go on to say? They shall feed along the roads, their pastures will be on the most desolate heights.
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They'll neither hunger nor thirst, and the sun shall never strike them. So Isaiah is taking this imagery, and he's saying this will be true when the king comes to bring his righteousness on the earth.
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No wonder then that Revelation 7 quotes this very passage. They shall neither hunger nor thirst anymore, the sun shall not strike them, nor the heat.
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So all of this is taken toward the future restoration and consummation of God. And this imagery of God feeding his people, as it is developed by Isaiah, becomes a picture not of the
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Lord showering manna morning by morning, but rather in Isaiah it becomes this eschatological banquet.
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It's the supper of the Lamb. It's a wedding feast. It's not just an allotment of bread.
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It's not what the government would do with cardboard boxes full of MREs. This is a feast. This is a feast to end all feasts.
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This is a feast that Vitellius couldn't hold a candle to. This is the feast of the mighty king, eating in the fullness and blessedness of his redemption.
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And so the filling, as Craig Evans points out, it's really developed by Isaiah 25,
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Isaiah 41, 43, 44, 49, 55. Isaiah loves to write about food.
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More importantly, he loves to write about God feasting with the people that he has redeemed. The Lord of hosts, we read in Isaiah 25.
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He will make for all peoples a feast. A feast of rich food. A feast of well -aged wine.
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Of rich food filled with marrow. Dripping with marrow. With well -aged wine strained clear.
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This is the messianic banquet. It's, of course, the backdrop for Jesus' depiction of the great banquet in Luke 14.
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And what does he say there in verse 15? Blessed are those who eat the bread of the kingdom of God.
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Now an ancient commentary on Matthew connects this to the next part of our beatitude.
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An ancient commentator, I don't know if it's pronounced chromatia or chromatia. I'm going to go with chromatia.
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Chromatia of Aquileia. I know we have some pregnant ladies. That name is available.
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Little Chromie running around. Wouldn't that be great? Chromatia. He says,
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Jesus means here in the beatitude that the blessed are those who burn with an inward desire to attain righteousness.
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Just as in the manner of hungering and thirsting after food. If any of us who hunger and thirst crave with this kind of longing, we can't do anything but think about righteousness and seek after righteousness.
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Because when one is hungering and thirsting, they crave what is hungered and thirsted after.
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We must therefore always hunger and thirst for this righteousness so that we will be worthy of being filled with the food at the everlasting banquet.
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You see, he's connecting all of these things together, rightly so. Jesus is saying essentially the same thing.
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Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness on that great day, at that great feast, they will be filled evermore.
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Satisfied, never to be dissatisfied ever again. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
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They shall be filled. So what about this word righteousness? What is the righteousness in view?
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There's actually a lot of debate about how to understand this. Of course, righteousness is absent in Luke 6, but it's important for Matthew.
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In fact, it's one of the words that he quite frequently returns to throughout his Gospel. At the very beginning of Jesus' ministry in Matthew 3, we're already keyed into this theme.
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Why does Jesus consent to being baptized? According to Matthew 3, to fulfill all righteousness.
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So already we're understanding that the coming of Jesus, the work of His ministry, has something to do with the promised righteousness of God and the requirement of the righteousness of God.
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Let it be so that righteousness may be fulfilled. Now, some commentators like Jonathan Pennington, who
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I'm somewhat partial to, view righteousness as the overarching idea of the Sermon on the
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Mount. What's the Sermon on the Mount centrally about? Pennington would say righteousness.
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In fact, that word is used several times between chapters 5 and 6. It's held forth even when the word is not used.
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The concept is there in the parables and in the teaching. For example, in Matthew 5,
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Jesus says that we will be blessed when we are persecuted for righteousness' sake.
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And later He warns that righteousness must exceed that of scribes and Pharisees.
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But He also says this righteousness is not to be practiced so that others may see it, that's 6 .1,
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even as He exhorts them, seek first the kingdom and its righteousness.
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You see, righteousness is central to what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount. And then, of course, it opens up to the whole
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Gospel of Matthew itself. Now, if we connect righteousness to the coming of Jesus, the coming of the
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Messiah, the coming of the long -awaited King, we can see that righteousness is something that His disciples were craving.
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Righteousness is why people went out to the wilderness to be baptized by John in the first place. They recognized that they were not righteous, and that they sought to be righteous with the righteousness that God promised
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He would provide. And the Messianic King that they were looking for, according to Jeremiah, would be a branch of righteousness, a descendant of David himself.
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Jeremiah 23, beginning in verse 5, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord. I will raise to David a branch of righteousness, a king that will reign and prosper and execute righteousness in the earth.
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Now, that has to be a backdrop for the beatitude. What were some of the disciples seeking?
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Basically, the fulfillment of that in their own understanding. The King has come.
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He's going to execute judgment and righteousness on the earth. Bye -bye, Romans. That's about as much as the disciples understood about the kingdom of God or the reign of this righteous
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King. But, of course, this term righteousness in Matthew goes a lot deeper and farther than that.
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The term itself can mean either justice or righteousness. That's true of both
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Hebrew and Greek. In Hebrew, tzedakah, in Greek, tekaiosune, translators decide when the context warrants either justice or a concept of justice versus righteousness.
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We use those words slightly differently where the ancients held them together.
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That's very telling about how we should understand righteousness in terms of justice.
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I really appreciate what R .T. France in his commentary said about this, this understanding of the word righteousness.
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He says that the desire for a relationship of obedience and trust with God is what
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Matthew holds out here in verse 6. So what is righteousness? France says a desire, a hunger, a thirst for a relationship of obedience and trust with God.
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And then he elaborates. The idea of vindication, that's a very common use in the
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Old Testament. We saw it in Jeremiah 23, righteousness or justice being vindicated when
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God comes. Well, the idea of vindication, he says, or even the idea of justification, the word justified is from that tekaios word group, tekaia.
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So whenever we come across the language of justification, we're talking about righteousness, justice.
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He says these things may be implied, right, the idea of vindication, the idea of justification, but if they're implied, it's in a very subtle and minute way.
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The whole point of this beatitude is that those who are seeking, hungering, thirsting for the promise of God will be satisfied when
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God fulfills His promise. So chiefly what they're desiring is this relationship unclouded by their own disobedience in a way that when
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God moves, righteousness will be true not only in them but all around them. The world will be permeated with the righteousness that God will bring.
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And that brings us, lastly, to the last part of verse 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled, they will be satisfied.
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The plight of hunger, the terror of starvation, held out in physical terms in the ancient mind, is here transferred to the longings, the starvation of the soul.
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To hunger and thirst after righteousness is much deeper than physicality.
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It's at a soul level that we hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God. It's at the level of our soul and all that we are, in our mind, in our strength, that we hunger and thirst after this kind of righteousness.
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It's not less than physical, but it's far, far more. Psalm 42 shows us how these things relate.
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Notice the emphasis on the soul. By the way, that word soul comprehends the whole of one's life, the deepest point of one's life, the comprehensiveness of life.
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It can be translated as life, nefesh, life, soul, our wherewithal.
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And this is what David records in Psalm 42. As the deer pants for the water brook, so pants my soul for you.
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So there's this animal that's panting. Why? Because they're thirsty.
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And they're panting because if they don't find water, they're going to die. And it's translated to the level of the soul.
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David says, this is what my soul, my very life, everything that I am is like toward you,
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O God. My soul is panting for you. If I don't drink soon, I'm going to perish. O God, he says, my soul thirsts for you, for the living
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God. When will I come and appear before God? What has he been feeding on?
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What's been sustaining him in this time? He says, my tears have been my food day and night. And the resolution, of course, is hope in God.
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David says to himself, I will yet praise Him. So in this life, he's poor in spirit.
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He's mourning. Right now, as he's writing Psalm 42 in a very vivid way, his tears are his food.
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But his soul is as this deer panting after a stream that has dried up, as it probably would have always happened in the
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Negev, in that arid region of the south. The streams would come and go after a rainy, seasy, a waddy, would shrivel up and there'd be no water left.
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And so something that had been a source of life in this dry season now had this haunting air of death.
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Well, if that's dried up, and that was the deepest point of water, where else am I going to find water? If the stream is dried up,
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I'm not going to find a puddle. And so things are desperate now. And David says, my soul's like this,
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God. When will I drink? How am I going to live? My soul is thirsting for you.
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And soul thirst is nothing new. We shouldn't think of that as some modern buzzword for the emergent church.
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We're just here to try to create soul thirst in the people of God. No, actually this is legit.
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Soul thirst is something that's always been a part of the people of God. Gregory of Nyssa, another ancient father, recognizing what
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David is saying here, he says, it seems that the Spirit of God instructed David beforehand of the very beatitude.
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For David later says, and this is Psalm 17, verse 15, As for me, I will see your face in righteousness,
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I will be satisfied when I awake in your likeness. Or when I awake to see your glory.
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And so David too recognizes this hunger, this thirst, can be met by God, yet never fully satisfied until I see
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Him in His glory, until I'm with Him and see Him face to face. David says essentially, I'll hunger and thirst until that day.
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Until the promise is yes and amen in consummation, I'm going to hunger and thirst like a deer panting after water.
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That's exactly what Jesus is saying in this beatitude. In Matthew 5, verse 6,
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Jesus does not say, whoever is hungry and thirsty will be filled. He does not say that.
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Whoever is hungry and thirsty will be filled. He says, whoever is hungry and thirsty for righteousness will be filled.
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And the point is this, everyone is hungry for something. Everybody's thirsty.
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We live in what Ron Sider once called an age of hunger. It's why it's an age of consumerism.
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All we do is consume. Why do we consume? Because we're hungry. Because we're thirsty.
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We think a little more. Something different. Something out of reach.
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If I can just get this in this way at this time with this kind of amount, if I just have this,
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I'll be satisfied. Everyone is hungry for something. Everyone is thirsty in this age of hunger.
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It's what Isaiah already assumes when he says, why are you spending money for what's not bread? Why do you spend your wages on what never satisfies?
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And he says, listen carefully to me. Eat what is good.
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Eat what is good. Let your soul delight itself in abundance.
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Listen carefully to me. Eat what is good. Don't spend your time, your energy, your wages, your dreams, the fibers of your ambition on what is not bread.
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On what cannot satisfy. Don't try to satiate a hunger that only
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God can fill and chooses to fill on a day of His appointing. And, of course, in the verse prior is the very invitation.
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God says, in fact, save your wages. Come buy bread without price. Oh, to whoever thirsts, come to Me.
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I give it freely, He says. And those who are in need of the bread that is free, of the water that is given voluntarily, are the poor.
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And so here we are, the poor in spirit. They're the ones who need to buy bread without price.
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They have nothing to pay with. They're beggars. Beggars are the ones who, they can't buy that Fenway bottle of water for probably $9 now with Bidonomics, right?
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They can't afford that. They need water without price. They don't have wages to satisfy their hunger.
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If it's not given to them as a gift, they'll die. That's the idea. Beggars. By definition, the poor are hungry.
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By definition, the hungry are the poor. This is the primal need.
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Not a day goes by unless it's a day of deliberate fasting. Not a day goes by where we don't eat.
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We need to eat in order to live. So by definition, the hungry are the poor. And so it's the poor in spirit that hunger and thirst for righteousness.
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Some of us were reading yesterday morning this great explanation of faith in Thomas Watson's book on the
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Ten Commandments. And we saw there, Watson described faith not as this act, not as this token of merit that God rewards, but simply as the beggar's hand that receives what
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God freely gives. That faith is not in itself a means that God rewards, because then faith is likened to a work, but rather faith is just the open hand that receives
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God's work by God's grace. It's a beggar's hand. And you shouldn't think of a beggar, the poor in spirit, the one who's hungering and thirsting unto death, the one who unless water and bread is given to them, they will die.
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You shouldn't think of that beggar as someone sitting alongside the road with a cardboard sign saying, we'll work for food.
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That's not someone starving to death. And the Lord knows there's a lot of people that come to church and their whole approach to God is, we'll work for food.
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I've got these issues in my life. I've got this baggage in my past. Lord, you work with me,
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I'll work with you. Straighten some of this out. Give me some saltines along the way.
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I'll work. I'll get my acts together. I'll come. I'll attend. We'll work for food.
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That's not the image here. That's not the one who ends up being blessed. That's not poor in spirit. The beggar is one who almost doesn't have enough strength to extend their hand.
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They're just in a heap on the side of the road. Jesus comes alongside the poor in spirit like the
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Good Samaritan. There's no begging. There's no bartering. It's just He scoops them up in a rescue.
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That's what it means to be poor in spirit. Those who hunger and thirst, those who mourn, those who are poor in spirit in this way, as Calvin said, are so afflicted that they have nowhere else to turn but God for refuge and relief.
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And believe you me, they've tried to turn in every other direction possible. There's just nothing left.
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So again, by definition, the poor are hungry. And the poor in spirit, by definition, hunger and thirst after righteousness.
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Augustine placed the Beatitudes. Marvelous how he did this. Augustine took the Beatitudes and he placed them alongside the petitions of the
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Lord's Prayer. And so as he did this, he said, hunger and thirsting after righteousness is parallel with give us our daily bread.
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You see, the petition matches this declaration. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
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And these hungry ones, day by day, go to the Lord and say, Lord, today, feed me. Lord, today
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I'm hungry unto death. Lord, feed me today. Lord, today I awake.
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My soul is thirsting after you, the living God. When will I be where you are? So feed me daily bread today,
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Lord. Give me my morning manna. Get me through another day toward the courts of your temple.
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So it's more than just a physical provision in this petition of the Lord's Prayer. Give us our daily bread is speaking at the deepest level of this daily provision of God.
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Because as Jesus says elsewhere, man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
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Give us that daily bread, Lord. Are you living with that kind of hunger right now as a
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Christian? We live in a land where our cupboards are full.
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If that's true physically, spiritually, we have so many resources drowning our ears that we're almost unable to even develop an appetite.
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So many Bibles that we can't even open one of them. How different it is to be in a place in the world where daily bread is a daily reality, and that translates spiritually into, this is the only
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Bible we have in the village. And we hang over every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
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It's our daily bread. How rarely do we see hunger in a physical way in our lives.
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And by the same token, how rarely do we see this kind of spiritual hunger characterized in our walks with the
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Lord. I think Paul could say to so many of us, you're already full. You're already rich.
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You've got your playlist filled with Paul Washer. And it's powerless in your daily walk.
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Because you're already full. You know what it is to eat when you're not hungry.
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You don't know what it's like to beg when you're starving. That's the difference between the
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Lord's blessing in this beatitude. Behold, the days are coming, says the
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Lord God. I'm going to send a famine on the land. Not a famine of bread, not a thirst for water, but hearing the words of the
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Lord. And we lament this famine in the land. We're living in the middle of this famine in the land.
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Where the word of God is not only not heard, it's openly mocked and blasphemed. I was commenting yesterday,
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I used to love as a boy, watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics. I'm glad I didn't watch it this year. What a sacrilegious travesty.
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Open mockery. It's a famine in the land.
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In the land that was once haunted by the doctrines that we cherish. We now see the
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Lord's name put to an open shank, held in derision, blasphemed by the nations. There's a famine in the land.
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The problem, as Tolstoy said, is this. Everybody wants to change humanity, but nobody wants to change themselves.
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I don't want France to have the gall to mock my Lord in that kind of open way, but that doesn't mean
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I'm going to deal with the sins in my life. We all find our own little ways to avoid hunger pain.
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But hungering and thirsting after righteousness means I long to see the righteousness of God as replete in the world and the society around me, as I long to see it in my own life.
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And so when I see things that are crooked and blasphemous and abominable in the headlines, in the news waves,
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I can't help but see all that is crooked and unripe within me, and it drops me to my knees, and I say,
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Lord, when will I be with you? When will you deliver me from this body of death?
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Have you ever read Paul's epistles? In a few places, in 2 Corinthians, in Romans, in Philippians, he talks about being hungry and thirsty.
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It doesn't seem to bother him. In fact, he says, we know what it's like to be hungry and thirsty. We know in all things how to be content.
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He doesn't seem bothered by physical hunger and thirst. He knows what it's like to be hungry. You know what he seems bothered by?
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That he's a chief of sinners, even still. He seems bothered when he says, wretched man that I am.
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All the things I want to do, I don't do. And my conscience convicts me because I know that it's right and good, and I want to do it, and the moment of desire is so fleeting that I end up not doing it all, and in fact, so much so, the very things
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I don't want to do, I end up doing. Who's going to deliver me from this body of death? There is someone who's hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
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So even though we're surrounded by the famine of Amos 8, in this land of a famine for the
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Word of God, this beatitude calls us to trust the Lord, to wait on this blessing, to feed on Him, our daily bread, to eat in this way and be satisfied.
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I opened with Psalm 37. That was the main focal point from the third beatitude. We'll just read it again and see how we go from the third beatitude to this fourth beatitude.
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Psalm 37, Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land. Feed on His faithfulness.
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Delight yourself also in the Lord. He'll give you the desires of your heart. Verse 18,
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The Lord knows the days of the upright, the days of the righteous. Who are the righteous in Psalm 37?
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Those who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Why? Well, because they're the meek ones that inherit the land.
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Why? Because they're the ones who are mourning. They're waiting to be filled, waiting to be comforted. And He says,
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The Lord knows the days of the righteous, of the upright. Their inheritance will be forever, and they will not be ashamed in the evil day, for in the days of famine they will be satisfied.
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We've said the beatitudes are future oriented, but as with all things eschatological, there's a now and a not yet element.
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There's something true that this blessing, we await in consummated fullness. So we wait.
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Not yet. But there's, praise God, a now that is true.
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Now, in the days of famine, the Lord says, we will be satisfied.
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Being hungry for righteousness is proper, Augustine says. Being hungry for righteousness is proper to this earth of ours.
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Being satisfied fully will come at another time when nobody will sin. But in the meantime, we who hunger and thirst for righteousness say to God, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Now and not yet. We're fed in the wilderness even as we wait to enter a land flowing with milk and honey.
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We're fed daily bread. We gather in worship to feed upon the broken body, the poured out blood.
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We await the wedding feast where even the water is turned to the richest of wines.
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So God fulfills the hungry now in part, and then as they long, as they wait in hunger and thirst, they await
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His perfect satisfaction on that glorious day. God satisfies us in the here and now by His Spirit.
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What does that look like? The Spirit of God drawing us into communion with the Son, by whom the love of the
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Father is shed abroad in our hearts. That's how you experience feeding on Christ, being satisfied, even as you awake again to hunger and thirst and pant.
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This is why Jesus could say in John 7, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He doesn't say,
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If anyone thirsts, let him come and wait until the glorious day when he... No, He says, come to Me now. Drink now.
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You can be satisfied in the Lord now. Now, even as you await the fullness of that satisfaction.
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He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of His heart will flow rivers of living water. And we read there, this
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He spoke concerning the Spirit. This is the role of the Spirit of God to feed, to quench, to guide us into this appetite of hunger and thirst.
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And the Spirit and the bride say, Come, the end of Revelation 22. Let him who hears say, Come. Let him who thirsts,
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Come. The same invitation extended. The Spirit unites His people to the
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Son. The very Son who says, You know what My food is? To do the will of My Father.
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The Spirit unites us to that Son who eats the will of His Father as His food.
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That's why those who have the Spirit hunger and thirst for righteousness. What is righteousness? It's the will of the
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Father. It's these ones who have a fountain of water springing up into life everlasting.
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It's why Jesus says in John 6, Don't labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the
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Son of Man will give to you. Don't labor.
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Essentially, Isaiah 55, Don't labor. Don't spend your wages on what is not bread. Don't labor for the food which perishes.
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I'll give you bread unto life everlasting. I'll give it to you. You don't earn it.
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It's given. And why is it given? It's in light of what we saw last week in Psalm 22.
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It's because of Jesus living a perfect life and dying that death on the cursed tree. It's because Jesus Himself knew what it meant to hunger and thirst after righteousness.
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Jesus was the supremely one blessed of God. Why? Because He, above all, with perfection, with infinitude, hungered and thirsted after righteousness.
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Yes. No matter the cost. It was His food to do the will of God.
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And that's why we read in Matthew, He hungered in the wilderness trial.
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It's because He was hungering after the righteousness of God that though as the Son of God, He could turn stones to bread,
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He instead submitted Himself to the will of God. Humbled Himself. And He hungered.
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Forty days in the wilderness. He hungered. To the brink of human physicality.
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He hungered. Listen, no one's ever hungered like Jesus. No one's ever hungered unto death like Jesus.
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No one's ever hungered after righteousness like Jesus. That He would be stripped bare.
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And not just bare the shame of sinners, but the wrath of an almighty God. In order to satisfy
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His hunger for righteousness. Who here has hungered like that?
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And do you know what He said? One of the seven sayings when He was on that cross. Do you know what He said? I thirst.
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It's not just a throwaway statement, right? Gospel writers record everything that matters under inspiration of the
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Spirit of God. There's a world of meaning behind those two words. I thirst.
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This is the one who in the midst of hungering and thirsting after righteousness is going to succumb to that starvation.
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Bearing the full judgment of God on our behalf. And as He crumples into death in that sinfulness that He's constituted in our own rebellion against God.
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He does it for the joy that's set before Him. A feast that awaits. Oh, how
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I've longed to eat of the fruit of the vine with You. Oh, how
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I've longed to feast with You. It's what we saw in Psalm 22. My praise shall be of You in the assembly.
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The poor, the meek will eat and be satisfied. That's Psalm 22. That's the beatitudes.
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The meek ones. The mourning ones. The ones who hunger and thirst in some small way like I'm hungry and thirsty.
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They'll be satisfied even as I am satisfied. Why? God has heard my cry. He's not left me in Sheol.
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He's delivered me from the clutches, the jaws of death. So we don't isolate these verses.
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It's the poor. It's the mourner. It's the meek who hungers and is filled. Who thirsts and is satisfied.
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They and they alone will be filled.
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That's what the Lord said. So what are you filled by?
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What are you hungry for? We read of the prodigal son in Luke 15.
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He would have gladly filled. Same word. Kortadze. Same word. He would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that swine ate.
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That's what hunger does to a man. Something that's detestable all of a sudden becomes necessary.
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So necessary, he would have gladly filled his stomach with it. That's what hunger does to a man.
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We read in Luke 15, he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate.
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No one gave him anything. No one gave him anything.
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What did Jesus say? I will give you food that endures to everlasting life.
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The prodigal says, no one cares about me. I'm starving.
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My life is full of misery. I'm thirsty for I don't know what.
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All I know is no one cares. And no one can satisfy that longing in my life.
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Jesus says, I'll give it to you. In a world that no one will give anything to a prodigal who's far away.
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When He came to Himself, He said, how many of My Father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare? I'm dying with hunger.
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So I'll go to My Father. I'll say to Him, Father, I've sinned against Heaven. I've sinned before You. I'm no longer worthy to be called
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Your Son. Make Me like one of Your hired servants. How hard did
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He fight to stay where He was? Daydreaming about eating swine pods.
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How much was He resisting and fighting the fact that the only way He could live would be to go back to His Father.
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The Father that He had wished for dead. The Father that He dreaded seeing. He can't appear as a son.
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He thinks, maybe I can appear as a slave. And we can just forget all that happened, because all that really matters is my hunger.
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I'll do anything because I'm going to die from this hunger. That's the only thing that will move anyone who's far from God.
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They're hungry enough that they're going to die. There's a lot of people that are curious about the faith.
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They're not hungry. I was out to breakfast with Ryan yesterday after the study, and some woman overheard us talking and came up and said, you know, do you go to church?
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We talked very briefly. I said, well, where do you go to church? And she said, well, I'm looking for a church.
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I said, you need to come. She said, well, where is it? You know, what time? The address? Oh, right downtown Barrie. Oh, well,
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I'll see you tomorrow. I don't see her here today. She was curious.
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She was interested. Oh, I need to go. I want to go. She was curious.
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She wasn't hungry. She wasn't dying. Nothing will cause the prodigal to return, but this,
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I'm going to perish if I don't eat. And though I dread appearing before God, He's the only
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One that can give freely. And so if I die, I'll die at His feet. If I die, I'll die begging
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Him bread. Because I'm going to die either way. And the one who's perishing in that way will be filled,
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Jesus says. Will be satisfied. They'll be given not just bread for a day, but bread to everlasting life.
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They'll be given water that they'll never thirst again. Give me this water, the woman says at the well.
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No wonder when the prodigal comes, what does the father do? Doesn't say, look who showed up.
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Give him some croutons and tell him to get out of my sight. Is that what we read in Luke 15? Kill the fatted calf.
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Prepare the feast. My son was dead, and now he's alive.
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The father always spreads a feast when the prodigal returns to him. Always.
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The only question is, are you hungry enough to end your foolish resistance?
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To overcome your dread of standing before God? To swallow your pride and acknowledge your sin and come as a poor, mourning, meek beggar and say, give me the bread that you alone can give.
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Feed me till I want no more. What do you long to be filled by?
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What are you hungering and thirsting for? What are you hoping will satisfy you? In a wonderful little introduction to Christianity, Herman Bovink, it's called
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Our Reasonable Faith. Wonderful little book, translated into English. And he speaks toward the beginning about this enigma of man.
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Because on the one hand, there's this greatness that accords to man being made in the image of God.
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Man is the image bearer of God. It's the glory of God. So man has this inestimable greatness over everything that God has made, and yet man is an enigma because in the midst of that greatness, man is an absolute depiction of misery.
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And he says, man longs for truth, but is false by nature.
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He yearns for rest, but throws himself upon distractions and diversions.
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He pants for something permanent and eternal, but then seizes on the pleasure of a moment.
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He seeks for God, but always loses himself in the creature. He's a hungry man, but a man that's only dreaming that he's eating.
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And when he wakes up, he finds that his soul is empty. Is that you?
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Listen, are you hungry this morning? Or are you just dreaming that you're eating?
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No, I'm good. I'm here. I have all that I need. In due time.
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I'll come. Things aren't quite ready yet. There's more things I need to think through, more things I want to work through. I'm young.
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Maybe in about 13 years I'll come to the Lord. Are you hungry or are you just eating in your dreams?
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Some people are fortunate enough to wake up in this life and realize their soul is empty.
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For most of us, we wake up on that last day to find that we had never been eating anything.
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And now we'll never be satisfied for all of eternity. We'll be in misery. These are the stakes.
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So this is a plea for those who are hungry.
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Not just those who aren't believers, aren't walking with the Lord, have not been baptized, don't commune, but for all of us.
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Listen, I'm addressing every single person as I speak to myself. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?
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Are you longing for righteousness? Are you seeing all that makes you mourn, all that humbles you, all that makes you realize
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I'm nothing more than a beggar, I'm ashamed to be a beggar, but that's what I am. And do you hunger and do you long for your life to be made right in the context of God putting the whole world to right, of redeeming all that has been cursed by the fall?
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Are you hungry in this kind of way? Do you have a soul thirst for God? Well, let me tell you, let me invite you.
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There's room enough at the Father's table for you, and room to spare. There's room enough at the
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Father's table for you. But as the
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Old Hymn puts it, even though the offer's free, come freely eat, come freely drink, come all who thirst, come all who are hungry.
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The Spirit says come. The Bride says come. Even though this is true, as the
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Old Hymn says, thousands make a wretched choice that'd rather starve than come, that'd rather die than eat.
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What a horrific condition of life. They'd rather starve and die than eat and live.
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They'd rather be reduced to swine pods when all the traces of temporary satisfaction leave you hollow.
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Then find that even a crumb falling from the King's table, as that Syrophoenician woman marveled
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Jesus with, even a crumb from the Master's table is a feast enough. But He doesn't give you crumbs.
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He spreads the table with the fatted calf. There's room enough at the
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Father's table for you. Do you know what we read in Matthew 15? When thousands came to Jesus, how big was
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His table? How many did He feed? Most. When He had that basket of scraps and fishtails.
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Who ate of all that came to Him? Of all that gathered to Jesus, how many? What was the proportion?
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What was the fraction? We read in Matthew 15, everyone ate. Everyone was satisfied. Everyone was filled.
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In fact, there were leftovers. People were stuffed they were so filled. Do you see the picture there?
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There's room at the Father's table. If you come to Jesus, though it seems in this setting at this time, it's but crumbs and fishtails, you'll be filled to everlasting.
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Don't ask me how I know this, but rappers have this line or this saying whenever one of them makes it, and all of a sudden they're multi -millionaires, they say, everybody eats now.
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In other words, everyone that I grew up on the block with, now they're all eating. Jesus in a way says that of those who are with Him.
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Everybody's eating now. I made it. I was humbled for a season to receive a name from the lips of sinners unto whom
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He came. He says I brought that name victorious back from death.
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Everybody eats now. Everybody eats. There's room at the table for you if you hunger and thirst in this way.
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But that seat will be empty, and that table will not answer your hunger so long as you're far from God, longing and looking at the swine pods of this fallen world, dreaming that you're eating.
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So can you echo the experience of the fourth beatitude? Can you match and fulfill the words of the
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Psalms? Like Psalm 63, O God, You are my God. Early I seek
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You. My soul thirsts for You. My flesh longs for You.
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In a dry and thirsty land where there's no water, I look for You in the sanctuary to see
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Your power and Your glory. Is that You? Is that You this morning? Let's pray.
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Lord, as You tell us, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
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And we say with the hymn, O God, revive Your work, O Lord.
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Your mighty arm make bare and speak with the voice that wakes the dead. Make Your people hear.
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Revive Your work, O Lord. Disturb our sleep of death. Quicken these smoldering embers now by Your almighty breath.
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Revive Your work, O Lord. Create soul thirst for You and hunger for the bread of life.
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O, may our spirits be. Father, we ask these things in Your Son's name.