A Gospel Appetite

I don't know if the Snickers commercials are still doing the same thing.

I remember a couple of years ago, they had that motto which was, you're not you when you're hungry.

If you remember those commercials, I don't know, they basically someone got hungry and they started acting like a diva, and then someone would produce a

Snickers, and they take a bite of the Snickers, and boom, they're back to normal. In fact, the whole motto was, you're not you when you're hungry,

Snickers satisfies. What I want to do tonight, silly maybe at first, but I want to reflect on that statement from a

Christian worldview. You're not you when you're hungry.

Turn to Matthew chapter 5 tonight. Matthew chapter 5, we continue our walking through the

Beatitudes here in the Sermon on the Mount. I think Jesus, well,

I know Jesus would say something a little different. He says, blessed are those who are hungry, in a sense.

Maybe he'll tweak the Snickers motto just a little bit to say, you're not you when you're not hungry.

That is, Jesus says, blessed are those who are hungry.

If you're not hungry as a follower of Jesus, you're not you. Meaning, you're not seeing your purpose in life, which is to enjoy

God and glorify Him forever, to be satisfied in the triune God.

True believers are hungry. And true believers have an appetite.

Now, this doesn't mean we act like divas, right? But it means that we have an appetite for the things of God, for gospel things, as we seek

His standard of righteous living. So, as we begin tonight, the question for you is, how is your appetite?

We'll cover tonight, not all of Matthew 5 -6, but the first part of it.

And then next time, whenever that may be, we will cover the rest of it. So, let's stand and we'll read the whole beatitude together.

Matthew chapter 5, verse 6. So, we leave the satisfaction to another day, but we talk about, first of all, verse 6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Father, we pray tonight that you would help us to understand this text by means of the

Holy Spirit. We pray that we would be a people who are hungry, and we pray,

God, that tonight you would increase our appetite for righteousness, for the gospel, for living according to your word, that we would be a people who are hungry and holy.

And we pray your blessing upon the preaching of your word this Lord's Day evening. We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen. You may be seated. Well, let's jump right in tonight, then.

Number one, the origin of a gospel appetite is faith.

The origin of a gospel appetite is faith. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Jesus is addressing his disciples. Remember verse 1, seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Verse 2, and he opened his mouth and taught them. He's teaching his disciples.

The origin of a gospel appetite is faith. Specifically, the

Spirit's gift of faith. We understand that faith is not something originated from within.

It's actually part of the Holy Spirit's work in our life. When he makes the dry bones, as it were, come out of the graves, when he brings the heart of stone out of us and replaces it with the heart of faith, the heart of flesh,

I should say, it is also a heart of faith. Let me just mention one text. I'm going to flip over to Philippians 1 and verse 29.

Paul tells the church at Philippi, For it has been granted to you, for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

Two things, Paul says, the Philippian church was granted. One was that they would suffer. But another thing included here is that they would believe.

So, belief, true belief, saving faith is a gift of God.

We could also look at Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. We don't have to do that right now. But the origin of a gospel appetite is faith.

Specifically, the Spirit's gift of faith. Now, let's just think for a moment a connection between this beatitude and the others.

In Matthew 5, 3, blessed are the poor in spirit, you have an inability. I'm bankrupt.

Matthew 5, 4, you have blessed are those who mourn, so the idea of mourning sin. And then you have a proper perspective of God and self in Matthew 5, 5, blessed are the meek.

And then you have in Matthew 5, 6, now, I want righteousness. I hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Now, think about this for a second. You cannot say to a person, anybody who has children, you know this, you cannot say to your child, if they're not hungry, put food in front of your child.

Say, I'm not hungry. Sometimes kids aren't hungry. You can't say, go get hungry, right?

Make yourself hungry. It doesn't happen that way. In fact,

Jesus in verse six is not commanding anyone to go get hungry. It's not a command here.

It's just an indicative. He's just saying that those who are hungry are the ones who are blessed. So what you can do to a hungry person is you can set food in front of them.

And if you want to follow the analogy here, the Holy Spirit brings the smell and the sight of the food, which is

Christ to a person. The only proper response for that person is faith.

So the origin of a gospel appetite is not looking outside to the world.

It's not looking inside in and of yourself. It's looking to Christ.

So God does not require affluence, assets, or abilities for righteousness, but appetite.

The origin of a gospel appetite is faith. Now, there's some debate here, but I'll give you my position.

I don't think that the righteousness referred to here is the righteousness received from justification.

In other words, I don't think that Jesus is saying you have to pursue holiness, clean up your life, then

I'll accept you. He's not saying hunger and thirst in order to be saved, but that rather the saved, those born again, do hunger and thirst for righteousness.

So think about it, when we see Christ for who He is, when we feel our need of Him and come to Him in faith and repent of our sins and we trust

Him and we trust His forgiveness, His perfect life on our behalf and His crucifixion for our sins, when we trust these things,

God declares us justified. Justified, you remember, means just as if I always obey.

So when we come to faith in Christ, we get credit for the life that Jesus lived because on the cross,

He got credit for the life we lived. So I want to just be abundantly clear here.

We are saved by faith alone, by faith alone we're justified. We cannot and will not be justified before God by our works.

It is grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone. However, saving faith, hear me clearly here, now we set this up and we make the connection.

Saving faith is the origin of hunger, of a gospel appetite. So here's what happens.

By grace, God has opened our eyes, we've been, the dry bones have been resurrected, we've been resurrected out of the grave, we've been given a new heart, we are coming to Christ now through faith, we are declared to be holy and blameless, clothed in the righteous robes of Jesus, and now enabled by grace and transformed by the power of the gospel, now we seek to live as citizens of the kingdom.

And one of the markers, one of the realities of a citizen of the kingdom is that we hunger and thirst for righteousness, for righteous things, righteous thoughts, righteous feelings, righteous living.

So look to Christ in faith, put your trust in His finished work on the cross and you're forgiven, place your faith in Christ and understand,

Charles Quarles says, understand that the lifestyle described by the Sermon on the Mount is not the product of mere human effort, it is the result of transforming grace.

Grace, so those who look to Christ, and just even on a Sunday night, I issue a gospel appeal, if you're not in Christ, the answer for you is to look to Christ, believe, repent, trust

Christ, trust His atoning work, His life and His death, His burial, His resurrection, and then understand that those who have repented and believe the gospel, those who've closed with Christ in faith are lives are different.

And part of the reason, part of the thing, our affections are changed in such a way that we now have a gospel appetite, a hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

Okay, so what is this righteousness that we hunger for? This leads to our second point. So first, the origin of a gospel appetite is faith.

Number two, the object of a gospel appetite is

Christ likeness. The origin of a gospel appetite is faith. The object of a gospel appetite is

Christ likeness. Let me illustrate it this way, and I need to be careful.

I need to be careful because we have people in our church that are currently, it's not appropriate maybe to just call it a condition.

Let me get on with the analogy. The analogy is, have you ever been around a pregnant lady who's had a craving, right?

And let's say the craving is, I really, really, really, really want a pickle -flavored snow cone with chocolate syrup on top mixed with marshmallows and anchovies or something.

Okay, if you have had a craving like that, I personally have not, if you have had a craving like that, nothing short of that is going to satisfy you, right?

That's what you want. So you need that. Oh, I guess I would give counsel to husbands.

Do your best to provide such an appetite fulfillment, if you will.

But the idea here is the object of a gospel appetite is Christ likeness. What we crave as Christians is righteousness.

This is our craving. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Now, maybe we're slicing this too thin here, but he says for righteousness, not happiness.

Because I would say this, everyone in the world today is hungry for happiness.

Not everyone is hungry for righteousness. So Jesus is not saying, blessed are those who are hungry for happiness.

Because then we'd go door to door. Hey, we're here from Perryville Second Baptist Church. Are you hungry for happiness?

Do you crave happiness? And they would say, yes, and we could just walk away. So, okay, Jesus says you're blessed.

But that's not what he says. He says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Not the world standard of righteousness.

By the way, every culture has a standard of what morality is, even our depraved culture.

And basically today, what is the standard of morality in our culture today? Well, there's a few things that we could think of, but one standard of morality in our culture today is you're okay as long as you don't tell someone else what it is they ought to believe, right?

That's one standard of morality we have. But even, think about it, even thieves and pirates have their codes of honor.

We're not after those things. We're after something deeper. One commentator says it this way. It is a righteousness of character and conduct which pleases

God. An inner righteousness of heart, mind, and motive. For this we should hunger and thirst.

Let me just say it this way. The Christian longs to be like Christ. We hunger and thirst for Christ -likeness.

We're already justified. We already have the righteous robes of Christ around us.

We're already, so by the way, this is why the biblical teaching on justification does not lead to antinomianism.

So this is what the Roman Catholics would say and others even would say. There are some people who would say because Southern Baptists believe in a once -saved, always -saved doctrine that it leads to lawlessness.

This is what everyone misunderstands. A true understanding of justification, that is that we're declared righteous.

We don't keep it up. It's not kept up by the sacraments. It's not kept up by doing good deeds.

It's not kept up by whether you've prayed enough or not. Your righteousness is secure. Once you're justified, you are justified because it's not your righteousness, right?

It's an alien righteousness. It's the righteousness of Christ. Once you're justified, you are justified. You can't get any more justified than you already are.

People say, aha, if you preach like that and if you teach like that, then what's gonna happen is since people are justified, they're just gonna go live recklessly and sinfully.

But here's what they don't understand. Those who have been justified now as a result of their regeneration have a desire within them to be like Christ, not to get more justified, but to live out the reality of what

God has worked in through the work of Christ. We hunger and thirst for righteousness.

What was Christ like? Think about that for just a moment. Think about it in your mind for just a moment. What was

Jesus like? That's what we want to be like, not because we can attain that standard, not because God will accept us if we just reach a certain level.

Rather, we want to be conformed to the will of God. Isn't that the desire of your heart tonight? Like, that's what

Jesus was. Jesus is perfectly conformed. He is God, so He's perfectly conformed to God and His will.

He's perfectly righteous and free from sin. So He tells us things like in Matthew 6 .33.

Look at that for example. In Matthew 6 .33, He tells us things like, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

I can't speak on your behalf, but I can tell you from my perspective, I can tell you from my perspective as a

Christian, I've gotten in more trouble in my life, added more anxiety to my life, added more stress and problems in my life when

I have sought other things before the kingdom of Christ. And this is what

Jesus teaches. You want to be Christ -like? You want to listen to Jesus? You want to be conformed to His will as a believer?

Then seek the things that Jesus teaches us to seek. Seek the kingdom. We're not after the world standards, but Christ.

In fact, Jesus is very concerned about righteousness. Look at Matthew 5 .20.

In Matthew 5 .20, Jesus says, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Boy, that's important. You better understand what Jesus is talking about there. I think we can take it in twofold.

In one sense, there is the reality that our righteousness does exceed the Pharisees because we have the righteousness of Christ imputed to our account.

And then another thing I would say, in another sense, our righteousness exceeds the Pharisees because we have a desire for righteousness that does not stem from outward actions and the applause of men, but stems from a heart that's been born again.

So consider, as we think about the object of our gospel appetite is Christ's likeness, let me give you a few sub points.

First, there ought to be a personal hunger and thirst. So blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Now, I'm just gonna be, let's be real for a second.

Most of us, unless I'm, you know, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but most of you in here have not experienced hunger in the sense that some of these people listening to Jesus had experienced.

Have your kids ever come to you and open the door and they're just, they're whining and they say, mom, dad,

I'm what? Starving. No, you're not.

You're not starving. You may desire something to eat, but you're not starving.

But listen to me, these people listening to Jesus, this was a reality.

This was a real threat, meaning God forbid that we ever have a situation in our country where we really have to worry about where food will come from.

But this was a constant reality for the people listening to Jesus as he's preaching. Am I sure

I'm gonna have food tomorrow? So for Jesus to speak about hunger to these people, for Jesus to speak about thirst to these people, it's something that they really understood.

They really understood the analogy that he was saying. And so the idea here is there must be a personal hunger and thirsting for righteousness from his disciples.

You remember Psalm 42, one? For most of us, it's a cute little saying, but think about as the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you.

Like we don't understand thirst like maybe the psalmist understood thirst, like maybe people who lived centuries ago or millennia ago understood thirst.

Our personal hunger and thirst ought to be a reality, and it shows itself in a few ways.

This is one of those sermons that you get sub points to sub points, but it shows itself in a desire to be free from sin.

Martin Lloyd -Jones says the desire for righteousness, the act of hungering and thirsting for it means ultimately the desire to be free from sin in all its forms and in its every manifestation.

So put these two things together, they go together. One, to hunger for righteousness is to desire to be free from the pollution of sin, right?

Put spinach and ice cream in front of a three -year -old. Say, what are you hungry for?

You want these together? You wanna mix the spinach on top of your ice cream and eat it together? What would they say?

No, get the spinach away from me, I want the ice cream. Okay, Christians, we don't want sin, although in that analogy, the spinach is better for you, but you understand what

I'm saying. We don't want sin, we want righteousness. So we wanna be free from sin.

Oh yeah, this sub -point has three sub -points. What a glorious reality.

So we wanna be free from the pollution of sin. That is, sin has infected us from head to toe, our thoughts, our will, our efforts, all of this is tainted with sin.

The believer desires freedom from the pollution of sin and he hungers and thirsts for righteousness. He yearns, he longs, he craves righteousness.

We wanna be free, secondly, from the power of sin, the pollution of sin, the power of sin. In Genesis four,

God tells Cain something interesting. He says, sin's desire is for you and it's crouching at the door.

It's ready to leap on you, right? Like if I told you, hey, there's a lion outside your door and when you walk out this afternoon, you better be careful or it's gonna pounce on you.

That's sin, right? And so the Christian desires not only to be free from the pollution of sin, but the power of sin in his life.

Jesus says, he who commits sin is what? A slave to sin. And so the

Christian doesn't want the pollution of sin, but we don't want the power of sin. We don't want sin to reign in our body.

We fight it, we hate it. Thirdly, passion for sin. So pollution of sin, power of sin, passion for sin.

Does sin make people happy? Think before you answer that, think on it just a second. If sin always resulted in immediate pain and immediate consequences, people wouldn't sin, right?

No, sin brings a momentary manifestation, and sometimes that momentary manifestation may last for a while, of happiness.

It's pleasurable, it allures us, it is appealing. So the Christian, the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, doesn't just fight the pollution of sin and doesn't just fight the power of sin, but also the passion he has for sin.

He wants his desires and his affections to be changed. He wants righteousness.

He doesn't want sin to taste sweet to him any longer. So part of what it means for believers to hunger and thirst for righteousness is a desire to be free from sin.

The pollution of sin, the power of sin, the passion for sin. We wanna be like Christ.

Christ is our desire, Christ who knew no sin. Can we be perfect? Of course not. But do you hunger and thirst for righteousness?

If you do, you're waging war on your sin. Stop playing games with what we call peccadillos, little sins.

Don't play games with those. Kill it, mortify it.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness. Secondly, not only do we desire to be free from sin, but we also desire to be a slave to righteousness.

So listen to this. Some people talk about freedom in the

Christian life. And what they mean by freedom in the Christian life is like a freedom to do what you want.

And I got the chain breaker, way maker, whatever, pill taker.

It's all gone, right? So now I can live the life I've always really wanted to live and I don't have to deal with all these things.

So I'm no longer a slave to sin. Now I'm just free to do however I want. But the

Bible paints it a different way. The Bible says, hey, did Bob Dylan write a song that said something like we're always serving somebody or something like that?

Maybe, I have to look it up. Yes, okay, I've got, okay. You gotta serve somebody, thank you, thank you.

You gotta serve somebody. Great theologian, Bob Dylan, right? You gotta serve somebody.

Okay, but he's right. And you are either a slave tonight to sin or a slave to righteousness.

Now you say, you're just making that up. No, I'm not. In fact, let's just read it. So don't take my word for it.

Romans six. Real quick, I'll just mention two verses. Romans six.

So Paul says in Romans six, verse 17, but thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin, okay, gotta serve somebody, you were once slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness.

You understand? If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you desire to be free from sin first.

Secondly, though, it's not just being free from sin. Now you've come under a new master.

You are now slaves of righteousness. Subway sign coming in says you are what you eat.

Well, there's some truth to that. You're only, you really are what you eat and you're only really you when you are hungry.

And by that, we mean hungry and thirsty for righteousness, personally, but not just personally.

There needs to be a personal hunger and thirst for righteousness among the disciples of Jesus.

The most important thing about your life is not if you're a mom or dad or a husband or father, a sister, brother, son, daughter, whatever.

The most important thing about your life is are you a disciple of the Lord Jesus? Do you follow

Christ? And those who follow Christ hunger and thirst for righteousness. And there's a personal hunger and thirst for righteousness whereby we want to be free from sin and want to be a slave to righteousness.

But also, number two, there's a corporate hunger and thirst. There's a personal hunger and thirst.

There's a corporate hunger and thirst. Remember how we said this about mourning sin.

That was a few weeks ago now. But you remember how we said we want to mourn sin individually and then we want to mourn sin corporately.

It's the same with hungering and thirsting for righteousness. So think about it this way. You want to hunger and thirst individually, but the church corporately together, blessed are those, plural, who hunger and thirst.

Not just individually, corporately we hunger and thirst for righteousness. There's several applications here, but I'm gonna just hammer one for just a moment.

Practically what this means is we hunger and thirst for a pure church. So for example,

I've heard this all my life. In all my life, now I don't know if Kentucky counts as the

Bible Belt. Where I lived in Kentucky, they weren't sure if they were Southern or Midwest. They claimed to be

Southern, but in the cities they had a more Midwest flavor. But maybe that's about, apart from a year in Kentucky, I've lived my whole life in the

Bible Belt. And my whole life in the Bible Belt, I've heard this. There is no perfect church.

And to that I say, amen. There is no perfect church. I think Spurgeon might have said, if you ever find a perfect church, don't join it, because you'll mess it up.

Because you're imperfect. There's no such thing as a perfect church. The Confession was read this morning, chapter 26.

And it said, the purest churches under heaven are subject to a mixture of error.

That's chapter 26, paragraph three. There is no such thing as a perfect church.

But growing up my whole life, I've always heard that as an excuse for imperfection.

Well, there's no such thing as a perfect church, so why try, right? Well, there's no such thing as a perfect church, so it doesn't really matter what we think about.

Discipline, or what we think about church membership, or what we think about worship. We're just, we're gonna get it wrong, and that's okay, and God knows our heart.

But this is not the reality of a born -again Christian. The Christian hungers and thirsts for righteousness, not just individually, but also corporately.

Like, we come together, and we have this corporate hunger. We hunger and thirst together for a pure church.

We want to see the body of Christ, even though we know she'll never be perfect in this life. We want to see the body of Christ pure.

We want, Titus 2 .14. Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

We don't want to just see the church existing. We want to see the church holy.

That is going to begin, as we talked about, with morning sin, but that also leads to a hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Let me put it to you this way. There are some churches who won't tolerate sins, and to that I say amen.

Some churches will say if so -and -so is going to commit this sin, that's going to be a problem.

We won't tolerate that in this church, but it's more than just morning sin and not tolerating sin and dealing with sin.

There's also the positive aspect, and that is we hunger and thirst for righteousness.

We want to see the worship of God pure. We want to see the ordinances of God rightly carried out.

We want to see the leadership of God rightly installed. We want to see the ministries of God rightly followed.

We want to see all these things to the glory of God. A true gospel appetite isn't just hungry for individual righteousness, personal righteousness, but also corporate righteousness.

Friends, family, beloved, tonight, do you hunger for a holy church?

Because this is part of what the Spirit of God produces in the people of God, and it can be hard.

It can be difficult. It can be exhausting. It can be trying. It can be painful.

It can bring tears. It can bring sorrow. It can bring heartache. I'm not talking about the keto diet, although there's some truth there.

I'm talking about pursuing a holy church.

It can be hard, but hear me tonight. It is worth it.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they, and only they, shall be satisfied.

When you go on a special date sometimes, you'll wait in line.

Now, I don't like doing this, but there are special occasions where you'll sit and you'll wait in line maybe an hour, maybe two hours at a restaurant.

Why? Because you're hungry for a certain thing. So, brothers and sisters, the effort associated with holiness in the church is worth it.

If we can wait an hour, if we can deal with the pain and the suffering for an hour in line to eat at a fancy restaurant, then we can be reminded that the effort associated with holiness in the church is worth it.

Because we're hungry for it. Thirdly, I'll mention this, and we'll be finished. So, there was just two overarching points.

One, I didn't tell you at the beginning because you think, well, that's going to be short, but then we have all these sub -points. So, the origin of a gospel appetite is faith.

The object of a gospel appetite is Christ -likeness, and that involves a personal hunger and thirst.

It involves a corporate hunger and thirst. And then thirdly, and this may be a bit taboo in our world of critical race theory and such, but we can't overlook this.

There is a social hunger and thirst. We want to see. We want to see righteousness in the land, right?

We want to see and hold our magistrates accountable to righteousness, right?

We want to see that. We want to see locally, our mayor, our sheriff. We want them to uphold the standards of righteousness.

Statewide, we want to see our legislature. We want to see the Arkansas Supreme Court. We want to see our

Congress. We want to see our governor. We want to hold them to the standard of righteousness.

We want to see our Supreme Court of the land. We want to see our National Congress. We want to see the

Senate and the House of Representatives. We want to see our president and our vice president. We want to see them conform to a standard of righteousness.

And by the way, we don't set aside the Bible when it comes to politics, right?

We'll say, well, we got to set this aside. We set aside God's standard here, and then we just kind of come together with something.

No, no, we bring this standard into the social realm. We bring this standard into the public square, and we maintain a desire for righteousness in the land.

We live in a Genesis 3 world, a fallen world. Things are not right.

But we don't just mourn the sins of our country, but we long to see things set right.

And as we are able, friends, we help set things right the best we can.

Does that make sense? We hunger and thirst for righteousness. That includes things like voting, of course, but let me just say this.

Voting is like such a minimal thing. Like, I think Christians should vote, and you should vote according to the standard of God's righteousness, but that's a pretty low bar.

There are other things as we look around the world today that we can be involved in. Now, we seek first the kingdom, of course.

Our greatest effort is to go out and to preach the gospel. By the way, what is one way that will change our community?

If God begins to change hearts, that changes our community, right? Like one of the problems,

I know I've said this before, but it's maybe seemed like a minor issue, but it's sad to me. So I jog around town, and there's certain parts of town at certain times of the day that you're jogging, and it feels like all

I'm smelling while I'm jogging is marijuana. In Perryville, right? Like, what is this?

You know, so one solution, sure, you could pass a law that bans marijuana, whatever, and that would be right if that was on the docket

I would vote for. However, what if God begins to change hearts, right? That's another way.

And so we go, and we preach the gospel, and we share the gospel, and we knock on doors, and we give them the gospel.

And let me just remind you of this. If we don't do that, if our church says, we're not gonna bring the gospel to Perryville, let me ask you this, who's gonna do that?

Because it seems to be the strategy of places today that if people come into our building, they'll hear the gospel, maybe they'll hear the gospel.

But we're not, and maybe we'll do VBS and stuff like that. And I'm not against that. By the way, we've already been talking.

I wish we would've done a VBS this year, but all these ladies carrying children at the same time, it just wasn't good.

But next year, don't be pregnant. Next year, we're going to try to do a

VBS. I'm not opposed to that. But you understand the come and see approach. No, no, we go and tell.

We take the gospel to people because we desire to see people converted, but there's even another desire, the greatest desire is seeing them converted, but there's another desire.

We desire righteousness in the land. So it's more than just voting, though that's important.

It's also proclaiming the gospel. It's also being involved as you can. The Anabaptists, they got completely disengaged so they wouldn't serve in public office and stuff like that.

I encourage you. One of you came to me and was like, I'm thinking about serving on the school board.

I'm thinking about serving on the city council. I'm thinking about serving and this, that. What do you think about that?

I'll say, praise God. Bring righteousness to the land because we hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I hope that makes sense. Let me conclude where we begin. Remember when I say the word conclude, it means nothing.

But how is your appetite? Because Jesus says, these are the people, hungry people, thirsty people, hungry and thirsty for righteousness are the people who are blessed.

He doesn't command them to go out and get hungry. He simply states that this is the reality of those who follow

Him. Those who follow Jesus hunger and thirst for righteousness. The followers of Jesus, as we put it today, have a gospel appetite.

And I say this if you're a Christian. You're not you when you're not hungry.

When you're full of sin or full of the world or full of trivial things, you're not you.

You're really you when you're hungry. Have you by faith trusted in the good news of gospel?

Children, adults, can Christ really cleanse me and forgive me for all my sin?

Yes, but you must come to Him in faith, repenting of your sins, surrendering to Jesus as Lord.

Have you done that? You have the opportunity on a Sunday night right now to look to Christ and be saved.

And for those who are in Christ, the object of your appetite is Christ -likeness.

Do you long for this in your life tonight? Do you want to be like Christ, being more free from sin and more of a slave to righteousness?

Do you long for this in the church? Do you want to see the church holy, more free from sin and more of a slave to righteousness?

Do you understand today that the greatest need in the church is not that she would be superficially happy, but that she would be supernaturally holy?

Do you hunger for righteousness in the world today? Do you long for all the wrongs to be made right?

Are you willing to stand up for those who don't have a voice? Are you willing to stand up for truth and justice?

Jesus says, those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, it's these who are blessed. Now, much more to talk about what it means to be satisfied.

We'll get to that. Tonight, we end by asking ourselves this question.

Do I have a gospel appetite? I can't answer that for you.

And I can't make you hungry, right? I can tell you how good Stephanie's fajitas are, but I can't make you be hungry for them.

You've got to smell them, see them, taste them yourself. Similar tonight, do you have a gospel appetite?

If you don't, you must run to Jesus now. If you do, ask the

Lord tonight to make you a hungrier Christian. Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you that we have the word tonight in English and a language we can understand.

I thank you that Jesus is such a wise and wonderful teacher. And I pray that you would apply this truth to our hearts and lives tonight.

And I pray that you would make us a hungrier and thirstier people for righteousness. I pray that we'd be hungry and thirsty for personal righteousness, to kill sin and to pursue righteous living, to be slaves of righteousness, that we'd have a corporate hunger and thirst, that we would desire as a church to be a holy and pure church, that we'd have a social hunger and thirst.

That is, we would seek that justice and righteousness would flourish in the land.

We know these are all only evidences or results of your grace.

And we pray that you would grant that grace tonight. I pray for our children and any adult in this room that's not looking to Christ, that even tonight you would show them, you would beckon them to taste and see that Yahweh is good.