Matthew 5:6 - June 23, 2024

Mount Zion Community Church

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So for those of us who are with us for the first time, even if it's the only time for another year, my name is

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Matty, I'm the pastor of Mount Zion Community Church, and what we've been doing for the past several months now is walking verse by verse through the

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Gospel of Matthew, and we're gonna continue that today. We've been going through the Sermon on the Mountain, specifically the

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Beatitudes, and today we are in Matthew 5, 6. And this week actually marks something of a shift in the focus of the

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Beatitudes in a couple of very significant ways. So first of all, the three

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Beatitudes that we most recently discussed, they were more internally focused. They were looking at us.

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They were looking at our soul, the condition of our hearts and our lives and our sinfulness as well.

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But what 5, 6 is gonna do is start to shift the focus just a little bit.

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It's gonna shift it to a slightly more external focus, which I think you'll see in just a minute. And then secondly, the first three

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Beatitudes had a slightly more negative focus. We were talking about being poor in spirit.

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We were talking about being meek. We were talking about mourning. But now we're gonna move on to something that's a little bit more positive.

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So again, our verse today is Matthew 5, 6, and that says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

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And right from the start, we can pretty easily pick out three major concepts that we're gonna have to look at today, three major concepts that we'll have to understand.

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We're gonna have to know specifically what righteousness is. We'll need to understand the idea of hunger and thirst, which probably sounds obvious, but we're gonna go into it a little bit more in depth anyway.

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And then we need to make sure that we have a right concept behind the idea of being satisfied.

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Now, of course, there's also the concept of being blessed or blessed, which we've talked about a bunch before, but we can just think of that as a much deeper and more significant form of happiness.

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But today's Beatitude is really gonna drive home the difference. It's gonna help us understand and demonstrate in much more clear terms why we often seek after happiness and why the things that we seek after to become happy are ultimately so unsatisfying.

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And then I'm also gonna take this opportunity to give you my weekly disclaimer and my weekly warning that this

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Beatitude might just be one of those Beatitudes that can be particularly challenging for some of us.

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Because what we're gonna start doing here is if we haven't started it already, is really turning the focus on the condition of your soul.

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This Beatitude is gonna speak in a large measure to the true nature of your faith.

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And once again, I also wanna take a moment to highlight the fact that these Beatitudes are continuing to build upon one another.

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We talked about poverty of spirit, which moved into mourning our sin when we see the true state of our souls.

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And then we moved into being meek because when we're poor in spirit and we mourn over our sin, it's hard to have pride, which we shouldn't have pride anyway.

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And then when we get to this point, it's where we begin to naturally hunger and thirst for righteousness.

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But one of the first things I wanna do today is read you the parable of the prodigal son.

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This is coming out of Luke. And as we go, we're gonna see how some of these concepts are related.

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So while this idea of righteousness and hunger and thirst is not exactly the point of this parable, there's some concepts that tie in very strongly here.

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So let me read this to you. This is Luke chapter 15, starting in verse 11. And he said, a man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.

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So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country.

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And there he squandered his estate, living recklessly. Now, when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country and he began to be impoverished.

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And he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into the fields to feed swine.

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And he was desiring to be fed with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him.

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But when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger.

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I will rise up and go to my father and will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

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I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men. So he rose up and came to his father.

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But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

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And the son said to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

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But the father said to his slaves, quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet and bring the fattened calf, slaughter it and let us eat and celebrate.

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For this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found.

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And they began to celebrate. I'm actually gonna leave off right there. And I rang the bell.

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So I think the first concept that we need to get a firm grasp on as we discuss this beatitude is the idea of righteousness.

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And the idea of what righteousness actually is as discussed in this parable.

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Because if we don't get our hands around the idea of what Jesus means by righteousness, we run the risk of going kind of far off in the wrong direction in a lot of other areas as well.

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So what is righteousness? Righteousness can be a lot of different things.

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And when we think about righteousness, a lot of times we think about it as behavior specifically.

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Martin Lloyd -Jones gives this example in his book on the Sermon on the Mount. And he says that what's talked about is not so much a general sort of righteousness or a morality between nations.

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And he said that when he preached that, it was probably in the 1940s maybe.

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And I could be getting that date completely off. But he was a pastor of a church in England during World War II, I believe.

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So while he talks about that now, it's as appropriate for us in our time as it was for him in his time.

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So righteousness is not specifically about morality. It's not about being a good person.

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Righteousness is not about how you treat others. It's not about keeping your word. It's not about standing up for other people or anything along those lines.

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And while I say that, none of those things are bad. And we're not saying that you shouldn't do those things.

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But that's not what we're talking about when we look at the idea of righteousness as Jesus is telling it in this beatitude.

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So I want you to listen to how the Puritan author and pastor J .C. Ryle explains righteousness.

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He says, the Lord Jesus calls those blessed who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

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He means those who desire above all things to be entirely conformed to the mind of God.

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They long not so much to be rich or wealthy or learned as to be holy. So that's exactly what we're talking about today as we talk about the idea of being righteous.

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To be righteous means to be completely conformed to the mind of God. And there's two types of righteousness, or actually it's more like two forms of righteousness that we are seeking here.

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And Thomas Watson referred to these two forms as imputation and implantation.

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But I'll make things a little bit easier by translating those words into modern English so that we can understand what we're talking about a little bit better.

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And the two forms of righteousness that we should hunger and thirst after are salvation and sanctification.

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So we'll talk about salvation first. And this is probably the most foundational form of righteousness that we should seek.

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And this is probably, this would be the form of righteousness that an unbeliever or anybody among us today who is not actually a

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Christian, who doesn't consider themselves to have been saved by Jesus, this is the form of righteousness that you should be seeking, or that anybody should be seeking first.

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And while salvation is a word that we all know and understand, I believe, I don't wanna completely put the idea of imputation aside because even though it's not as familiar of a word, it carries with us a really important piece of context or contextual information that we have to have in order to fully understand this form of righteousness.

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So one example I wanna take you to comes from Abraham and it comes from Genesis, chapter 15, verse six.

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So Abraham was old and didn't have any children and God had just told him that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

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And chapter 15, verse six simply says, then he believed in Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness.

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So this example shows the role of faith in the process of righteousness and salvation.

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But it's different for us, obviously, it's much different for us than it was for Abraham because we now know what

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Jesus has done on the cross and we know what Jesus has done on our behalf. So we'll get back to faith in just a little bit, but to try and hopefully make this a little bit clearer, we talk about the gospel a lot, we talk about the good news and we say stuff in church like Jesus died for our sins.

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We say this all the time. Jesus took our sin upon the cross. But what does that mean specifically?

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What does it mean for us to say that Jesus' death takes away our sins?

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And this is where the idea of imputation comes in. And interestingly enough, one of the most helpful definitions of that term came from the world of finance.

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So bear with me just a little bit, as I know it seems like we're kind of going off into a really weird direction, but we're not.

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I'll bring it back, I promise. But the definition was essentially that imputation is the assignment of value from one thing to something else.

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And in this case, in our case, taking it out of the world of finance and back into the world of what we're talking about,

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Jesus had something which none of us have, and no one individual after the fall of Adam has ever had, and that is righteousness in the form of sinless perfection.

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You see, the sin that we've been talking about for the last few weeks as we discuss these beatitudes has basically left us completely devoid and completely empty of any kind of righteousness.

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And specifically, it's left us empty of any kind of righteousness that would allow us to escape the wrath of God, something that we see in Romans 118, which says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and righteousness.

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Because this is our natural state. Unrighteousness is the natural state of humanity before the work of Christ.

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Romans 3 .10 reminds us that. There is none righteous, not even one. When we look further, we look at 1

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John 2 .1, this verse highlights the one who is truly righteous. In this verse,

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John is writing about Jesus, and he says, my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin, even though we have all sinned.

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And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.

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So where this finds us is standing right where we are, standing before God, without any form of righteousness of our own.

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And in fact, there's nothing that we can do about that either. Isaiah 64 .6

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says this. It says, for all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.

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I know that some of you have come from faith traditions that teach you that there are things that you can do to contribute to your salvation, or there are things that you can do that will make you appear right before God.

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But I would say that Scripture tells you the exact opposite of that. There's nothing that we can do individually to save ourselves.

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And 1 Peter 1 .19 reminds us again why it is that Jesus was righteousness.

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It says that Jesus was a lamb unblemished and spotless, again, to say that he was without sin, and to say that he was perfectly righteous.

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So we have us on one hand with no righteousness at all of our own, and Jesus on the other hand with perfect sinless righteousness.

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And how do we connect these two things that are so far apart? If we can't do anything on our own to achieve that righteousness, what is it that we're supposed to do?

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What is it that's supposed to happen? And this is where the idea of imputation comes into play.

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This is why this is such a cool concept or such a useful concept. In 2

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Corinthians 5 .21 says, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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And we talk about Paul a lot. Paul was, after his conversion, one of the greatest evangelists, one of the greatest church planners, one of the greatest scripture writers of all time.

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He was a well -known Jewish scholar before his conversion.

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And we've talked about this before, but he counted everything that he'd done, everything that he achieved, everything that he had ever accomplished as loss so that he could be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God upon faith.

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That's Philippians 3 .9. So when we say in church that Jesus died for our sins, when we say that Jesus took our sin upon the cross, what we mean is that by his death, he took us, all our righteousness, a filthy garment, and he completely cleaned it up.

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He took our righteousness and covered it entirely with his righteousness before God.

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And that's the righteousness that we're talking about when we talk about salvation.

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We talk about the fact that Jesus has given us the opportunity to be completely clothed in his righteousness before God through what he's done on the cross.

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And we'll tie that back into the issue of faith in just a minute, but first I wanna discuss the second form of righteousness that we mentioned as well.

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And the second form is sanctification. And we also use the word implantation or impartation.

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And the hunger and thirst for this form of righteousness follows naturally after the first.

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Once you've received the imputed righteousness of Christ, once you've received salvation through faith in him and what he's done, the result of this is ultimately a life that's completely changed.

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So you go back through the first three Beatitudes and you realize that you see what you've done in your life and that a change needs to be made because the way that you previously lived your life before you knew of the salvation through Jesus is not something that you can do any longer.

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And I was looking at 1 Peter chapter two, verse two. And this is a good reminder because this is addressed to new believers, but it's hardly exclusive to new believers.

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It applies to us as well. And it says this, like newborn babies long for the pure milk of the word so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.

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And that growth in respect to salvation is what we mean when we talk about sanctification. So sanctification is what happens after you're saved.

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It's the process of becoming more and more like Christ. It's the process of becoming conformed to the mind of God.

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And what we're hungering and thirsting for in this form of righteousness is for the help of the

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Holy Spirit to impart or implant those desires to do what is right and to do what is pure and what is holy and pleasing to God.

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Speaking of Paul, he writes this in Galatians 5 .16. He says, but I say, walk by the

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Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. A little further down in verse 25, he says, if we live by the

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Spirit, let us walk in step by the Spirit. And it really does take the help of the Holy Spirit to live a life in that way.

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And this is also why Paul instructs Timothy to flee from the things of the world and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.

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The point of this second form of righteousness is that we should be pursuing sanctification.

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If we're looking at this beatitude, we should be hungering and thirsting for the change of life that comes from the way the

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Holy Spirit changes our heart. So I wanna wrap up this heading on righteousness, even though there's plenty more that can be said.

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We were coming back from somewhere a couple of days ago and I said to Amy, I almost made this one a two -week beatitude too.

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But then I changed my mind. I said, no, we're gonna cover it all in one week. And she laughed at me just like some of you are doing.

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But all that said, when we talk about righteousness, the idea of righteousness as we're looking at it in this beatitude, it means being conformed to the mind and the will of God.

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That comes first through salvation. Salvation is that gift from the Holy Spirit that allows us to have faith and allows us to have belief in what

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Jesus Christ has done on the cross. It allows us to be, or to take part in the imputation of Christ's righteousness.

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And from there, we have sanctification, which is given to us by the Holy Spirit and what allows us to live as Christians and what allows us to continue that walk.

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So when we talk about being conformed to the mind of God, that's what we're talking about, being conformed to what

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God says we should be in Scripture. And again, all of that is revealed in Scripture.

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So if we have that concept of righteousness now, or at least an idea of the concept of righteousness, what we wanna do next is talk about what it means to hunger and thirst.

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And in what should come as no great surprise to a lot of you at this point, the first step here, as we consider the concept of hungering and thirsting, is to go back to the first three beatitudes, is to go back to what just came before this, but in particular, is to go back to the third beatitude, the one that said, blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

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At least I think that was the third one. But why is this? Because it's only through truly mourning the wretchedness or the true state of our sin in our soul that we can fully grasp the intensity that we're talking about here when we talk about hungering and thirsting.

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Because I think we have to discuss this a little more, because we're lucky. Most of us don't ever truly experience hunger or thirst, like in the deepest sense that other people in the world do.

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I mean, we even have a cute word for what happens when we go a little bit longer between meals than we wish that we had.

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But even hangry is not true hunger. So consider this, and don't answer.

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But how many of you have ever had someone come up to you, and maybe this person that came up to you is like a smaller version of you, and they say that they're hungry.

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So you offer them something like a carrot. And they're like, no,

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I don't want that. That means they're obviously not really that hungry. So we might say we're hungry.

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I could say I'm hungry right now as in I could eat something, but I can also survive the next hour and a half of this sermon.

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Okay, good. I'm glad somebody caught that. We all caught it.

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Yeah, that's right. It just wasn't as funny to everybody. So somebody who is truly hungry is gonna eat absolutely anything that they're given.

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In fact, somebody that's truly hungry will stop at nothing and will go to whatever length necessary to satisfy that hunger, to acquire what it is they need to satisfy that hunger.

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I mean, if we go back to that story of the prodigal son, and we look at 15, 16, the prodigal son went and got a job feeding pigs, and 16 says that he was desiring to be fed with the pods that the swine were eating.

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So he was so hungry, he got a job feeding pigs just so he could eat what was being given to the pigs.

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Now, that's more hunger. That's probably not even the depth of what we're talking about here.

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And that's not the end of the story, obviously, which I think we'll get to that later. But the point is, when we talk about hungering and thirsting as referenced in the context of this verse, we're talking about something that is all -consuming.

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This is a desire that absolutely has to be satisfied at all costs, because without satisfying this desire, you literally will die.

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This is not a take it or leave it, or I'm hungry, but not for that.

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Martin Lloyd -Jones says to hunger and thirst really means to be desperate, to be starving, to feel life is ebbing out, and to realize my urgent need of help.

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And hopefully we don't need to belabor this hunger and thirst point, but I do wanna share what

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Thomas Watson had as five characteristics of spiritual hunger, just to kinda drive the point home here.

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So the first one is hunger is painful. Hunger is, this is something that you physically feel, and without attaining or obtaining the thing that you hunger for, you are truly suffering.

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I mean, like, unbearable pain. The second is hunger is satisfied with nothing but food.

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And again, this is obviously a metaphor at this point. So we're talking, when we talk about food, you may as well just, maybe

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I should do it instead. You may as well replace the idea of food with righteousness. So hunger is satisfied with nothing but food.

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So what this means is that nothing but the true object of your hunger will alleviate that pain.

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So if you were hungry for food, and someone said, well, here's a fan, because this will help cool you off, so at least you won't be so hot while you're hungry.

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Well, that's great, but it's not gonna help your hunger. Only true food, true spiritual food, righteousness, is gonna alleviate that pain.

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Number three, hunger does the work necessary to get that food.

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Again, when you're truly suffering, when you truly understand your spiritual condition, truly, you'll do whatever it is that you need to do to fix that.

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If you're to hunger and thirst for righteousness, you'll do the work that's necessary.

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If you realize your eternal state apart from God and the truth of that, and you believe it, you'll do whatever is necessary to fix that.

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Number four, along those lines, hunger needs no persuading to eat.

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If you're truly hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I don't have to give you some kind of extra special point -by -point argument that this is why you need to do that.

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If I have to do that, you're not convinced, and you're not actually hungry. You don't want the carrot, you want a hamburger, or you want cake, or whatever it is.

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And then finally, number five, hunger enjoys every aspect of the meal.

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I just love this food metaphor. So every single bit of what you're given to satisfy this hunger is seen as sweet, even if it's harder to chew, even if it is somehow a difficulty, or even if it's part of the meal or part of achieving righteousness that's not as comfortable.

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It's the part that you don't like as much as the other parts. It's the part that doesn't come as easy to you. If you're truly hungry, even those parts are gonna be sweet.

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Even those parts are gonna have some aspect of them that you enjoy. So again, the hunger and thirst for righteousness is this all -consuming, desperate need that has to be met.

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And this is not, this is not describing an emotion or a feeling. It's not describing something that comes and goes.

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And it's not describing something that can be satisfied with anything other than righteousness.

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So again, take the word food and replace it with righteousness, like we just talked about.

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And that righteousness comes only from God. And what does

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Jesus tell us when we talk about the, excuse me, the idea of being satisfied? What does

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Scripture tell us is the result of the hunger and thirst for righteousness. Well, this beatitude says those who truly have it will be filled, that the hunger will be satisfied.

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That's the result. And we see this again and again in Scripture. Psalm 107 .9 says, for he has satisfied the thirsty soul, and the hungry soul he has filled with what is good.

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Psalm 34 .10, the young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they who inquire of Yahweh shall not be in want of any good thing.

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Jeremiah 31 .14, I will fill the soul of the priest with richness, and my people will be satisfied with my goodness.

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And then a well -known verse, John 6 .35. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

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He who comes to me will never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.

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Now, I think we all could agree that we've experienced hunger and thirst in one form or another.

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And I mean in our spiritual lives. But how can we tell if it's hunger for the right things, or if we feel like it's for the right things, how can we tell that it's true spiritual hunger for righteousness?

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And here, I'm gonna suggest four ways that we can clearly contrast true spiritual hunger with, we'll just call it a worldly hunger.

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It's probably not the best term, but we're gonna use that anyway. So number one is true spiritual hunger seeks righteousness for its own sake.

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And what I mean when I say that is that we don't seek righteousness from God because it makes us feel like a better person, or because somebody else will look at us as better.

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It's the deepest desire of our heart because we understand that without this righteousness from God, spiritual death is imminent.

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I would say the worldly spiritual hunger, again, it seeks righteousness for the sake of reputation.

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Or, and this is a real subtle difference, but it seeks righteousness to avoid hell more than it seeks righteousness to get to heaven.

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It's more about avoiding punishment than it is to truly worship and appreciate what

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God has done for you. So it's seeking righteousness for its own sake, not for another reason.

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For example, in Acts chapter eight, verses 18 and 19, we see the story of Simon the magician.

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And Simon had heard about what these apostles were doing, you know, this new church that's happening, and he was really impressed by it.

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And Simon was a pretty impressive guy in his own right. Simon was a well -known magician who could do all kinds of tricks.

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He was famous because the things that he did were so fascinating, but what he was seeing, he knew was different.

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So in verse 18, it says, now when Simon saw that the Spirit had bestowed through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom

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I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. So Simon the magician, he wants to buy the power of the

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Holy Spirit. He wants to buy the power of the Holy Spirit though, not for the change that it's gonna make in his life, not for the fact that it will grant him salvation from the eternal hell that he's facing.

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He just wants to add it to his act. So he wants righteousness so that people will continue to think highly of him.

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Number two, true spiritual hunger pursues righteousness at any cost.

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True spiritual hunger is not gonna be put off by some kind of difficulty or struggle or challenge.

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The desire for righteousness in true spiritual hunger is unconditional.

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And this is the kind of thing that we see in the lives of well -known

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Christian martyrs. And we see it in the lives of Christian missionaries, particularly the older ones like Adoram Judson.

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I probably didn't say his name right. These are people that are seeking the righteousness of God and taking the gospel of God to other places, no matter the cost.

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We see this in the lives of Christians today in places like China, in places like Russia.

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We see it because in countries like that, the church is actually experiencing persecution.

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Not the sort of low -level persecution, we're not as popular or people think we're weird kind of persecution that we have here.

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No, this persecution like they'll kill you for going to church or kill you for having a Bible. Worldly spiritual hunger says things like,

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I don't have time to read the Bible or I don't have time to pray or we're too busy to go to church or we had a busy week and I'm too tired to go to church or a

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Bible study or whatever. Worldly spiritual hunger says if it's easy, we'll do it.

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But if any kind of roadblocks pop up, maybe we'll go next week and it'll make excuses.

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So again, true spiritual hunger pursues righteousness at any cost. Number three, true spiritual hunger leads to action, not just talk.

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This is kind of related to the last point and it's also the image that we see in Proverbs 19 .24

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which says, the sluggard buries his hand in the dish but will not even bring it back to his mouth.

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Worldly spiritual hunger buys a Bible that sits on the shelf and never gets opened as if having it there does something for you.

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Worldly spiritual hunger and you can ask my kids about this and I'm telling a story of myself now.

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Worldly spiritual hunger picks one of those one -year Bible reading plans but then never starts it or quits it in February or just something else comes up.

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Worldly spiritual hunger commits to go into church but then decides to sleep in or do something else again instead.

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Again, true spiritual hunger means that you will take the actions that you'll say.

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You're not just gonna talk about it because guess what? Buying the Bible doesn't do anything for you if you don't read it.

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And saying that you're gonna read the Bible also doesn't do anything for you if you don't read it.

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And then number four, and this is probably the most important one, and that's that true spiritual hunger recognizes that only

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God can satisfy that. But not only that, it recognizes that there is nothing that we can contribute to this righteousness.

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Again, if the righteousness we're talking about is salvation and sanctification, and those can only come through faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross and the imputation of his righteousness to us, but again, it also recognizes that it can't be achieved by any effort that we make.

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Now, that's not to say that there aren't steps that you can take. And again, when we're talking about sanctification specifically, the outworking of our salvation is gonna be evident in the steps that we take, but it's important for us to realize that nothing that we do will result in our salvation, and you can't buy it, you can't check boxes to get there.

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It's only through faith in Christ, and it's only through faith in what he's done for us.

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Now, true spiritual hunger for righteousness, it desires the things of God, and it desires the people of God.

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That's why we gather. This is also, church is part of the things of God. You cannot be a

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Christian and not go to church somewhere. I'll just tell you that right now.

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You can't say, well, this is my personal relationship with God, why do I need to go to church? Because scripture knows nothing of the

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Christian who calls himself a Christian and doesn't gather with other Christians. But I think this brings up a valid question, too.

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What about people who feel like they desire the things of God, but they're wondering if the desires are weak, and they're wondering if those desires that they have are not as strong as how

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I'm yelling at you right now, then are they real? And Thomas Watson said this, and I think this is encouraging.

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He said, though a pulse beats but weak, it shows there is life. And we all suffer weakness at certain points.

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We all have those times when we know that we should read what we're supposed to read in the

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Bible, or we know that we should sit down and pray, and somehow we can't do it, right? But thank

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God for grace. Isaiah 42 .3 says, a crushed reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not extinguish.

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He will bring forth justice and truth. That means there are people that are trying, and Jesus is not gonna just crush you because you didn't do everything perfectly, because none of us are doing anything perfectly.

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I think a perfect example of this story is this one in Mark chapter nine.

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And when they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them.

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And immediately when the entire crowd saw him, they were amazed, and as they ran up, they were greeting him. And he asked them, what are you arguing with them?

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And one of the crowd answered him, teacher, I brought you my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute, and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground, and he foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid.

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I told your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it. And he answered them and said, oh, unbelieving generation, how long shall

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I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to me. And they brought the boy to him.

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When he saw him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion and falling to the ground, he began rolling around, foaming at the mouth.

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And he asked his father, how long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood.

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And it is often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.

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And Jesus said to him, if you can, all things are possible to him who believes.

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And then the next verse is verse 24. And this is pretty much every single one of us, right? Immediately the boy's father cried out and was saying,

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I do believe, help my unbelief. I love that verse. So look, are you questioning if the desires are weak?

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That's a prayer for you right there. Help my unbelief. If you have even so much as that little spark, you can turn that into the full flame of hunger and thirst.

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And I encourage you to press into that desire if you have it for a couple of reasons.

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And the first one is this. If you don't hunger and thirst for righteousness, you won't get it.

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You will not be able to attain it. If you don't hunger and thirst for it, it won't be given to you.

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You won't get it. Jeremiah 29, 13 says, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

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And John 6, 37 says, all that the father gives to me will come to me and the one who comes to me, I will never cast out.

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But we also see this, we see this in the Old Testament too. For example, 2

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Chronicles 15 verses one through two. Now the spirit of God came on Azariah, the son of Oded, and he went out to meet

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Asa and said to him, listen to me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin, Yahweh is with you when you are with him.

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And if you seek him, he will be found. But if you forsake him, he will forsake you.

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And 1 Timothy 4, one says, but the spirit explicitly says that in later times, some will fall away from the faith.

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And Hebrews 6 warns us about falling away as well, which means it's possible.

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Oh, and again, we have another great story because the second encouragement to hunger and thirst is if you don't hunger and thirst now, you might find yourself doing it when it's too late.

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And we see that also in Luke, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

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That's in chapter 16 verses 19 through 20. The 19 through 30, excuse me.

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Now there was a rich man and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day.

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But a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man's table.

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Besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. Now it happened that the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom.

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And the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, he lifted up his eyes being in torment and saw

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Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. So now this rich man is dead. And he cried out and said,

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Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue for I am in agony in this flame.

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But Abraham said, Child, remember that during your life you received good things and likewise

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Lazarus bad things. But now he is being comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you, there is a great chasm fixed so that those who wish to come over from here to you are not able and none may cross over from there to us.

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And he said, then I am asking you Father that you send him to my father's house for I have five brothers in order that he may warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.

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But Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. We have the

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Bible, read it. But he said, no, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

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But he said to them, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.

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So we see in the story of Lazarus, and it doesn't actually, that would be an example of worldly spiritual hunger, right?

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He does not hunger and thirst for righteousness until he is dead and suffering endlessly.

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And now there's nothing that can be done. So if you have even that small spark, that small desire to hunger and thirst for righteousness like we're talking about, press into it.

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Open up your Bible, spend time praying even if you don't know what to say.

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Open up your Bible and say what's in there. So as we move in the direction of wrapping up,

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I wanna give you some steps to help increase or maintain your level of spiritual hunger for righteousness.

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And actually, it's really just two. One is a negative and one is a positive.

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So the first one is to avoid things that dampen your spiritual hunger.

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This is like when we tell our kids or we tell ourselves not to eat that before dinner because you'll ruin your appetite.

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So they might be hungry for what you're gonna fix, but if they have a snack, if they have some chips or a cookie or candy or whatever, they're no longer gonna be quite as hungry for that.

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And it works the same way in our spiritual lives. You got that desire, you feel like you're hungering and thirsting for righteousness, you wanna read the

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Bible, but then you turn on the television instead.

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And you say, well, I'll do it tomorrow morning. Morning's better, it's quieter, I can focus better.

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So you put it off. But now you sort of crunch that desire down, you're dampening the spiritual hunger.

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And the thing about this is that whatever it is that does this, it's specific to each and every one of us, right?

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We all have our own things that temporarily satisfy our soul, temporarily make us feel as though we don't need the righteousness that we're talking about now.

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It could be your hobby. Again, it could be television, it could be work, it could be all that stuff that we've talked about over and over and over and over and over and over, and you're like, stop talking about stuff and houses and cars and money and work.

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But these are the things that come between us and God. These are the things that come between us and our desire for what we truly need and what can only come from God.

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And when we stop looking for it, we may not find it.

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And related to this, just the flip side, is to do the things that provoke your spiritual appetite.

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Pray, read your Bible, go to church, go to Sunday school, go to a small group.

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Instead of turning on music in your car, turn on a sermon. I know that sounds crazy, right?

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You're gonna listen to somebody else talk about the Bible? That's not entertaining. But instead of some kind of meaningless, mindless form of entertainment, put on something that actually does enrich your soul.

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Put on something that does cause you to hunger and thirst for righteousness, because you control all the things that go into your mind.

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You control what you consume. So make it worthwhile, don't waste your time.

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Related to that, if we're talking about physical hunger, exercise often makes you hungry, right?

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I know that if I go to the gym or I go run or whatever, then I wanna eat. 1

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Timothy 4, seven says, train yourself for the purpose of godliness. Exercising those spiritual muscles are gonna make you hungry for more.

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Doing those things, praying, committing to a plan and following through will help you.

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It will help push you to want to do that more. So bury yourself in Scripture.

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And then after you do that, read some different books or watch a video or listen to a podcast to help you understand what you just read more deeply.

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Because as you see, these things are far more than what we catch just skimming the surface of them.

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And there's a lot of people that are really smart and really holy that have put a lot of time and effort into helping you understand that.

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But as you read these books, They're gonna help you understand to get your spirit, your soul, your mind, all the gems out of this that you possibly can. Because this is what your soul needs more than anything else.

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It needs to find its peace and rest in God. So what I want you to remember one thing is

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I encourage you to do all this. as I encourage you to hunger and thirst for righteousness. And if you don't remember anything else, remember this.

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The hunger and thirst for righteousness should be the single greatest desire of your life and of your heart.

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It should take precedence over every other desire that you have.

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And you should do all that you can to seek after righteousness, over and above everything else.

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And why? Why do I say that? Because until you have received the righteousness that we're talking about hungering and thirsting after, until you receive the righteous imputed to you by Jesus's work on the cross, you're under the wrath and judgment of God.

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I'm gonna read to you from Ezekiel chapter seven, verses five through nine.

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This is a short passage. This is the kind of thing that prophets in the Old Testament often had.

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It says, thus says the Lord Yahweh, a calamitous evil, a unique calamitous evil.

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Behold, it is coming. An end has come. The end has come. It is awakened against you.

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Behold, it is coming. Your doom has come to you, O inhabitant of the land. The time has come.

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The day is near. Confusion rather than joyful shouting on the mountains. Now it is near when

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I will pour out my wrath on you and spin my anger against you and judge you according to your ways and put on you all your abominations.

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My eye will show no pity, nor will I spare. I will give to you according to your ways while your abominations are among you.

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Then you will know that I, Yahweh, do the striking. And I say this to say, don't put it off.

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This righteousness can only come through God by the Holy Spirit. So are you spending your time praying for righteousness?

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Are you spending your time asking God for righteousness, particularly your own righteousness? You can certainly pray for the righteousness of other people, but you gotta make sure that you're squared away first.

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And don't ignore, don't misunderstand what is the plain teaching of the

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Bible, and that's that anyone who dies in this world without receiving the righteousness of Jesus is gonna find themselves condemned to an eternity of suffering, torture, wretchedness, in hell, eternally separated from God.

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Just like the rich man in the story of Lazarus. If you do not seek the righteousness of God, that's ultimately what's going to happen to you.

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And I believe that if we truly understood this, and not only that, but if we truly understood it and truly believed it, there's nothing else that we would pursue, and we wouldn't let kind of the sparkly things of the world distract us from it.

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Hebrews 10 .31 says this, it's a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. So don't let that be your fate today.

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Pray, pray for the hunger and thirst that Jesus talks about. Pray for the righteousness, pray for the fulfillment of God, because remember, 2

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Peter 3 .9 says, it's not the will of God that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance.

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And the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. But even more encouraging,

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Jesus says this, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find.

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Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds.

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And to him who knocks, it will be opened. Now you can take these two verses, and you can think that they're an invitation to pray for stuff, or you can think that they're an invitation to pray for material wealth or material blessings, but these verses are an invitation to you.

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Not only are they an invitation, they're a promise to you to pray for righteousness, to pray that you can hunger and thirst for righteousness.

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Because it's also written that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. We bring these verses back all the time, because yes,

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I hope that I will never shy away from telling you that if you don't seek after this, hell is your destination.

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But guess what? This is why we have everything that we have in the New Testament. This is why we have the gospel.

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This is why we have the good news. It's because Jesus died so that that would not happen to you. And that invitation is open to everyone.

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So my encouragement to you is to pray. Pray and seek it. Whoever calls on the name of the

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Lord will be saved. And with that, will you all pray with me, please? Heavenly Father, thank you for your

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Son. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to do something that we could not do on our own.

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God, once again, we pray that the Holy Spirit would touch hearts and would open minds for us to understand that we can't ask for this.

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It's okay to pray for righteousness. It's okay to ask for the desire to hunger and thirst.

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It's okay to pray to help our unbelief, God, because you ultimately have the only thing that we need.

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You have the only solution, the only desire for our eternal souls, which is to spend an eternity in heaven with you.

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And you've given that opportunity to us through the work of your Son on the cross. God, I pray that you would help us all to believe in the truth of the gospel.

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I pray that you would help us all to have the faith to understand what Jesus has done for each and every one of us.

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Lord, I thank you for each and every soul that's gathered here today. I thank you for the people that are visiting.

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I thank you for the people that faithfully attend. I just pray that, again, minds would be open, hearts would be open, and that all would call upon your name to be saved.

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we thank you for how you love us, and we pray all these things in your Son's name, amen.