Hungry for Satisfaction

Introduction

Have you ever thought about how a baby, or even a child, will let everyone around them known they are hungry and ready to eat. As an infant it is done by crying. The hunger pangs hit and the baby cries and is fed by mom or dad. In childhood, the child begins to get a bit cranky. They may ask if they can have a snack or ask when dinner will be done. If they’re old enough, they may not even ask, they just grab something to eat. They are hungry. They don’t like being hungry and so they satisfy that hunger. In reality, no one, likes being hungry. Hunger is uncomfortable.

Here’s a little science lesson for you. Infants are born with about 9,000 taste buds. And those taste buds, made up of sensory cells, regenerate themselves every week or two. But as we grow older, it gets harder to regenerate damaged cells and so foods can lose taste. The same is true about smell. The older we get the olfactory nerves lose their ability to send signals. So it is easy for older people to experience nearly tasteless food. And because of that, they don’t like to eat. And the less they eat, the more their bodies get used to not eating and stop craving food as much.

In our passage this morning, we are continuing on with the Beatitudes and we see Jesus talking about the hungry and the promise to those who are hungry. But we are also continuing on with the Woes and Jesus’s talking about the filled. And as we see these contrasting teachings, my hope is that we consider that which we are craving and then consider where our satisfaction lies. So once again, we are given two choices about how we will live our lives: famished or full. And again, as we close, I want us to look at two biblical examples.

Live Famished

Live Full

Biblical Examples

Luke 6:21 ESV

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

Luke 6:25 ESV

“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

Live Famished

The first option that we are presented with is the option to live a famished life. Now, I will admit. This is not me. Not literally. And not usually. When Jesus used the word for hunger here, it is a word that means to be hungry—having hunger pangs. This isn’t snack-time hunger if you know what I mean. This isn’t that breakfast is wearing off in the mid-day and so I better go grab a donut or eat a bag of chips before lunch. This is hunger that hurts. It’s the hunger we would describe as being famished. And that is usually not me—if we are speaking literally.

I don’t like to feel I have an empty stomach. I don’t like to feel hunger and so I drink all the time. I used to drink milk when I was a kid, then moved to sodas or Yoohoos. Now I typically drink coffee or water. And I have been asked more than once if I was a diabetic because of how much I drink. And I have to explain that I’m not; I just don’t like feeling like I have an empty stomach. I have never missed a meal simply on the basis that I could not get to one. I’ve missed them because of sickness or maybe because I was in trouble or I was fasting, but I’ve never not been able to afford one or for lack of food. Most of us are probably in that same boat. Or at least have been in that boat for quite some time.

It sounds strange to hear and pray the words, “Give us this day our daily bread,” when we live in a culture where we have weekly bread or even monthly bread. When my dad was in the army and even after he retired, my mom would go to the commissary once a month and get cart loads of food for us to eat on for the month because it was cheaper but further to drive. Today, there are entire industries given to prepping for the worst. Storage containers of food that will last five or more years. The idea of not having a meal or going days without a meal is foreign to most of us.

But the promise here is that those who are hungry—those who are famished will be blessed.

And remember that word “blessed” has the beatific ring to it. It isn’t just a happiness, but a deep, inner joy and excitement. So you who are hungry are you who are deeply joyous and excited. Why? Because you shall be satisfied. And here is a general point that we need to learn. Last week’s blessing that the poor feel and this week’s blessing that the hungry feel, and those blessings we will see over the next few weeks, these blessed feelings are not caused by the predicament they are in, but the promise they are given. This deep joy and excitement is not caused by the predicament, but the promise.

Hence we find in James saying

James 1:2–3 ESV

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

The trial isn’t a cause of joy and excitement. But the promise of steadfastness is. Or Peter who said,

1 Peter 1:6 ESV

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,

In this—not the various trials, but—in this, the promise of God to guard you through faith unto salvation you rejoice. The trials can certainly cause grief for sure, but under that grief is the joy of the promise. Or even the writer of Hebrews who wrote,

Hebrews 12:1–2 ESV

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Christ endured the cross. He despised the shame. So what brought him joy? That promise that was set before him.

And certainly Paul tells the Ephesians and us to give thanks for everything. But the context of this and everything before it is given in the first verse of the chapter—chapter 5. We are to be imitators of God as beloved children. Thus, we can give thanks for everything because it is making us like our beloved Father. It is no different than what Paul stated in Romans 8:28.

So here is Jesus saying that you who are hungry experience a deep joy and excitement because you will be satisfied. That’s the promise. You will be satisfied. You will be satisfied! Jesus is not just predicting the future. He is making a promise. We do this quite often ourselves. Kids acting up at the store or in church or something like that and on the way home, we say something like, “You and I will be having a talk when we get home,” or “You will go to your room when we get home.” We’re not predicting the future; we’re making a promise. In this case, Jesus’s promise is that the hungry will be satisfied. And though I’ve mentioned it before in other places, I’ll mention it again. This is an occasion of the divine passive. In an effort to not take God’s name in vain, the divine passive was used so that if there is no obvious person performing the action, then it is God who is performing it. Since then, there is no obvious person giving satisfaction, Jesus is saying that it will be God himself giving it.

And it is interesting that Jesus used this word. Even in the English, this word is not the same as the word in verse 25. Here we have “satisfied.” There we have “full.” And certainly they are synonyms. And I haven’t found a single commentary that points out that these are different words in the Greek, so it is obvious that using these different words doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. So I don’t want to make too big a deal where it is not a big deal. But what I did find out as I researched these words is that this word here, “satisfied” is used primarily with non-food related satisfaction in the first century. While the word that we have as “full” is primarily used with food-related fullness.

So it is almost as if, in the promise, Jesus shifts the focus of not simply being made full, but being satisfied. He brings the physical and the spiritual together—after all we are pyschosomatic beings. We have a soul and we have flesh. And Jesus seems to bridge these gaps between the longing of our stomachs and the longing of our desires. So that in one word, we become “satisfied.”

As Blaise Pascal wrote so long ago:

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

So what is that you hunger for? What are you famished for? It certainly could be for righteousness (as Matthew recorded). It could be for companionship—family and friends. Maybe for purpose—to make a difference or be wanted. Are you hungry for God? The promise of satisfaction is made. We need only be patient for it to be fulfilled.

Live Full

Which leads us to the second option in life. The first was to live famished. The second is to live full. There are those of us who are too impatient. We cannot wait for God to satisfy us, we seek to fill ourselves. And this is a woeful state to be in.

As we saw last week, the word “Woe” simply means a deep sorrow or sadness. Thus, those who are full now are to be pitied. And why? Because they will be hungry. This is different language than we saw in the blessing. Where as Jesus said the cause of the blessedness is that they will be satisfied—future, passive, indicative—meaning that it is something that God will do for/to them in the future, Jesus simply stated that “you will be hungry.” This is future, active, indicative. In other words, God is not the one that is doing something to/for them—God is not the one making them hungry. Rather that hunger is coming straight out of themselves. The hunger naturally flows from the state of being full.

Some of us celebrated Christmas yesterday with a big Christmas feast. Other’s will be getting together with family today or sometime soon and having a nice Christmas dinner. Many of us will gorge ourselves so that we feel as if we will explode if we eat another bite. But if we give it a few hours—four, eight, twelve!—we will find ourselves wanting more food. The natural progression of being full is to be hungry all over again. That’s not the same for the opposite. Just because we are hungry doesn’t mean that we will soon be full. But within hours of being full, we will most certainly be hungry.

Jesus said that this is a sad state to be in because it will lead to hunger all over again. Eventually, it will lead to a hunger that cannot be filled. If you’re like me, you constantly make provision so that your stomach doesn’t feel empty.

My guess is that this is most of us. Maybe not physically, but certainly spiritually. We are continuously seeking to fill up our souls with anything and everything we can. Rather than allowing that hunger to continue until God chooses to fill it, impatiently we fill it ourselves. Like the woman at the well, some of us may hunger for companionship and rather than waiting for God to move, we go from relationship to relationship leaving more hungry than we were before. Some may hunger for purpose and rather than waiting for God to fill it, we seek our purpose in our work, our talents, our looks, our involvement in community or church. And soon we realize that what we are doing still feels purposeless. We hunger for truth and so we read the philosophy books and study religions and still feel empty. It’s like eating potato chips.

Potato chips are an interesting food. Lays old slogan was, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” Pringle’s slogan was “Once you pop, you can’t stop.” There is a reason behind that. Potato chips are full of two ingredients that start to control the body’s responses. The first is salt. The saltiness causes the body to crave more and more of the chips. They’re tasty and salty and the tongue says “more!” And you would think that the stomach would eventually say, “no more!” But it doesn’t. Why? It’s the second ingredient: grease. The grease tricks the stomach into thinking it isn’t full. The result can be that we eat hundreds or even a thousand calories in one short sitting. But we also teach our bodies to find satisfaction in junk rather than healthful foods. Our bodies are starving for nutrients and yet are craving nuggets.

So our souls are filled with junk, starving for sustenance but fed sophistry—reasoning and philosophizing that sound good, but mean nothing. Paul told the Colossians:

Colossians 2:8 ESV

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

Others of us though are more like our post-Christmas dinner selves. We’ve gorged ourselves on God and we’ve had enough. We’ve been going to church since we were knee-high to a grasshopper. We’ve heard the stories in Sunday School. We’ve heard the sermons in Sunday Worship. We’ve sung the same songs for the last twenty, thirty, even fifty or sixty years. Vacation Bible School? We invented it! We haven’t filled ourselves with false things; we’ve filled ourselves with the one true God. We’ve got the theology. We’ve got the words. We’ve got the concept. There’s really not much left to learn, right? More pie? No, I’m full. More God? Thanks, but I think I’m good there too.

And most of us would never say such a thing; but we sure are living full lives. It’s not full because you are constantly feasting on his Word or prayer or communion. You’re full because you’re living on the previous feast. Like the elderly man or woman who is wasting away because they’ve lost their senses of taste and smell for food, so you’ve lost your taste for God. He no longer smells sweet. His word is no longer savory. You’re hungry. You just don’t know it yet. And that, brothers and sisters, is a deeply sad state of affairs.

Going back to the Lord’s prayer, where we ask for our daily bread and how weird that really is for us in our culture. But the reality is that our bodies cannot survive long on a meal previously eaten. We must eat again. The same is true about our souls. They cannot be survive long on a previous meal. Like our bodies, our souls will grow anemic. Though there is food all around us, we must eat of it daily!

Whether we try living off the previous well-balanced meal or are snacking on potato chips or constantly eating fast food because we’re too impatient for God to prepare our dinners, the results are similar. We become unhealthy spiritually speaking. We become spiritually anemic; we become spiritually fat; or we become spiritually dull. In other words, we are hungry. We are famished. If you’ve ever seen a person in the midst of anorexia as they are just skin and bones or a person who is too heavy to literally get out of bed or even a person who is so in a rush that they cannot sit and enjoy a meal, you probably know a little of the pity of what Jesus speaks of. If such is the case of the body, how much more the soul?

Biblical Examples

I quickly want to give two examples from the Bible of a person who was hungry and a person who was full. The first was King David. King David hungered for God. That doesn’t mean David was perfect. Just that he was hungry. Listen to his words that he wrote in

Psalm 63:1–2 ESV

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

and then jump to verses 5 and 6 of the same Psalm.

Psalm 63:5–6 ESV

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

Notice when the soul is satisfied? It isn’t from the previous meal, but from the present meditation in the watches of the night.

The second example is King Asa. The author of the Chronicles wrote,

2 Chronicles 14:2 ESV

And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.

If you go to 2 Chronicles 14 and 15, you’ll see Asa leading Judah in spiritual reform; leading them back to seeking the LORD. He was doing everything right! But in the sixteenth chapter, something happened. We aren’t told what, but we read, that he stopped craving the LORD and instead craved the help of the King of Aram. When he was confronted by a prophet of God, unlike his great, great grandfather David who repented of his sin, King Asa threw him into prison. And then we read,

2 Chronicles 16:12 ESV

In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.

The King of Judah had hungrily sought after the LORD, but as he grew older, in his fulness, he ceased to hunger for him and gorged himself on foreign alliances and physicians. What a sad—woeful—state to be in.

Conclusion

As we finish this beatitude and woe, let us remember, as with last week, this was stated to the disciples. Verse 20 tells us he lifted his eyes to his disciples and spoke these words. These words are personal—blessed are you, woe to you. So we must ask ourselves: which state do we live in? Are you hungry and thus blessed with joy and excitement in God’s promise of filling? Or are you full because you cannot be patient for God to do his work? Would you rather go hungry today and feast on what God has prepared? Or would you forego the feast so your belly doesn’t grumble today?

Jesus used the word “now” in his beatitude. I think that is because it is something we must assess now, whatever time now may be. When we wake up. When we are tempted to satisfy our hunger. When we see others are filled by God’s promise before we are. When we go to bed still hungry. Whatever the now may be. You see, you and I will be hungry. It’s inevitable. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Will you be hungry now, but satisfied when God’s finished preparing your meal, or will you be full now, and go hungry later?

And understand that we may never see this answer fulfilled in our lifetime. God may take us all the way through this life without filling our hunger. But that does not mean he is unfaithful. If he promised, he will fulfill. Like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest, sometimes we have to see the larger picture.

Hebrews 11:13–16 ESV

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

May we, in faith, hunger for the substance of heaven rather than be satisfied with the shadows of earth.