Blessed Are the Hungry
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Introduction:
This morning we are on the cusp of something that I hope and pray is to be a big deal. I challenged our group at Prayer Meeting this past Wednesday night to join me in praying for revival in our nation. I am asking specifically for us to pray for a movement of God that is bigger than we can contain and that is the work of the Holy Spirit poured out in abundance on us. We desperately need revival.
I mentioned that if you look around at every one of our meetings, we have empty seats. That means there is room in the Father’s House for someone else to experience the grace of God.
I am going to tell you this morning that every week, I come down in this room and walk up and down the aisles begging God for revival. I know that the Bible says to not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing and that when you pray to go into your closet and pray that your Father who hears in secret might reward you. I believe that with all my heart.
But Jesus also said that where two or more are praying and agree on something and ask for it in Jesus’ name, we will have what we ask for. The Bible says that God delights to give His children good gifts. I can’t think of a better gift than an outpouring of the Holy Spirit! It’s been far too long since the wildfires of the Holy Spirit burned the underbrush of our lives and got rid of the junk and the garbage!
I want you to join in with me and pray. I have been praying and fasting for revival for about a week now. I ask you to set aside some time to do the same with me. I ask you to hunger for God. Hunger and thirst for His righteousness. It can be one meal that you fast and pray through for this. I can be a whole day. I ask you to pray with me that the Holy Spirit would move in our church in power and in our community in power!
I want to tell you today that God will answer these prayers if we will pray! I was walking these aisle praying for this on Wednesday and I asked our crowd at prayer meeting to pray as well. I had absolutely no idea what was happening while I was praying, but I want to share some encouraging and hopeful news with you today.
How many of you have seen anything about what is going on at Asburry College in Kentucky? There are reports coming out that revival has broken out on campus. It started on Wednesday in their chapel service and they have continued to people staying in that chapel since then. They are worshiping and praising God and people are taking notice.
N!ow, I don’t know what will become of this revival at Asburry, but I pray it is the epicenter and spark of a great awakening that is about to sweep our nation. It is due time! God moves in every generation and revivals are a big part of God’s plan to replenish His church and His pulpits. We desperately need revival.
We need to hunger and thirst after righteousness and wouldn’t you know it that God just so happened to orchestrate that this topic is what we would be covering this Sunday morning!
So this morning, let me read our text to you. I want you to remain seated and listen as I read it and if God will let your body, I want to ask you to get on your knees as we pray.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Pray
1. We must have a hunger for God
1. We must have a hunger for God
Jesus tells us that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be satisfied.
What does it mean to hunger and thirst after righteousness?
First, we must understand that hunger and thirst are natural bodily reactions that are God-given to help us satisfy a real need.
My wife and I were watching a movie the other night and one of the characters was using a dating app to find a date. The guy shows up and he is doing intermittent fasting. Have you ever heard of that? It’s become a popular dieting phenomenon, because people restrict their eating to a certain time window and they can still eat whatever they want and lose weight. What really happens is you are restricting your calories and this leads to weight loss.
Anyways, the guy is explaining to his date that he is intermittent fasting and while he is doing this he is falling asleep because he has no energy!
The body was made to eat food. Food is a necessity. Jesus uses hunger and thirst as a way of teaching us that we need God and His righteousness. We need a relationship with God just as much as we need food. There are many people that are hungering for this relationship and they may not realize it. They may be trying to satisfy it with something else, and they keep falling empty.
Think about the woman at the well in John 4.
Jesus asks the woman for a drink and she questions why he would want to have anything to do with her. He tells her this:
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus was not talking about physical water, though that’s what the woman thought he was referring to. She had to come in the middle of the day to draw water because she was considered unclean and unfaithful. We later find out that she had five husbands and was now living with a different man. It’s safe to say that this woman was thirsty for something that her soul was not able to find.
Jesus promised to satisfy that thirst with living water. Water is precious in the middle east and often people have to dig big pits called cisterns to capture the water that falls on the ground and runs off during the short rainy seasons. This water will sit there for a long time and it becomes stale. Imagine taking a glass of water at your house and filling it up with water and coming back to drink it a week later!
Anytime water was found from a spring or well, it was considered to be living water. Jesus promises this woman living water, but what He is referring to is salvation. He promises her that He will satisfy her thirst. We will come back to that part in a minute, but first we need to see that the soul is thirsty!
Jesus referred to thirst again in John 7 at a festival that was celebrated in the Fall of the year called the Feast of Booths. Jews would make shelters and cover them with palm branches and live in them for a week to commemorate their time in the wilderness. At the end of the feast it was a tradition to offer a drink offering on the altar. This offering was known as the libation offering.
The libation offering represented the Jewish end-time belief that living water would flow throughout the land from under the temple in Jerusalem during the Messianic kingdom. It’s interesting for those people who don’t believe in a physical kingdom of Christ on this earth that the Jews did and still do believe that this is not some spiritual kingdom, but will be a reality.
In Ezekiel 47, we have a description of this river of living water.
Pause to give time to turn in their Bibles.
1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.
2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.
3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep.
4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep.
5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through.
6 And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he led me back to the bank of the river.
7 As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other.
8 And he said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh.
9 And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.
10 Fishermen will stand beside the sea. From Engedi to Eneglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea.
Did you see that? Everything this river touches is made alive, even the Dead Sea is going to spring back to life. Now, let me tell you about the Dead Sea. It’s eerie! There is this huge sea in southern Israel and it is the lowest place on earth that is on land. It is a place where water flows in, but it can’t flow out, so the water just evaporates. It become incredibly salty so that anybody can float in the water. It’s a weird phenomenon. You literally can’t make yourself sink! But what is also weird is that on this big sea, you see no boats and no recreation activity and no life!
The sea is too salty for boats. It will eat them up. I only saw one the whole time we were there. There are no fisheries, though if you didn’t know it, you would think you were looking at a huge freshwater lake. The water that flows in is actually fresh water!
I believe that God made this sea on purpose to illustrate this point. I believe He intentionally gave Ezekiel this vision to show him (and us) that anything we try to pour into our lives to fill it up besides a hunger and thirst for God and for His righteousness is going to just make us stagnant and leave us dead inside.
Now, based on the description that Ezekiel gives, I don’t think this is just a symbolic vision that he sees for the last days. I do believe that there is going to be a miraculous flow of water that is going to come out of the temple and it really is going to restore the land and flow into the sea and there will really be fisherman on the lake and shore during the reign of Jesus on this earth.
However, I also believe that this is a symbol of what the Holy Spirit does through faith in Christ as well. Listen to what Jesus said on the last day of the Feast of Booths when the water was poured out on the altar.
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ”
39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Don’t tell me that God did not inspire the Bible! Don’t tell me that God did not orchestrate everything in this world and in His Word from Genesis to Revelation!
Jesus offers Himself to all who are thirsty. Anyone who will believe can have their thirst satisfied and they will have living water from the Holy Spirit bring them back to life again. They will have new life given to them and they will blossom and bloom like the desert!
But there is another metaphor that Jesus gives us. Look again at Matt. 5:6
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
He says blessed are those who hunger and thirst.
If you have ever been fasting and you just had water, you know that water can only satisfy you for so long. I gets hongry! Some of you even get hangry!
Well, Jesus has an answer for that too! Jesus said anyone who hungers after righteousness will be satisfied. In fact, in John 6:32-35 Jesus told the people following Him that He is the Bread of Life.
32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Did you catch that? With the price of food I’m sure that a lot of us can relate. They wanted Jesus to give them some of that bread so they didn’t have to work anymore for it.
Jesus responded,
35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
You see here again thirsting and hungering.
Do you remember that I told you last week that if we are going to understand Matthew’s portrayal of the Sermon on the Mount, we have to see it with Moses and the Israelites in the background? Jesus is the better Moses. He is the more faithful Israel.
Go back to the Old Testament and remember the story or listen to it for the first time if you are new to the Bible. The children of Israel have just been delivered out of slavery to the Egyptians. They have gone through the desert and come up to the Red Sea. God saves them from the hands of the Egyptians who had changed their minds about letting Israel go. God parts the Red Sea and Israel walks through on dry ground. The Egyptians follow and begin to get stuck in the same sea floor that the Israelites have just crossed through with no problem and then God brings it all crashing down on them so that not a soul is left.
By the way, did you know that in the history of Egypt, there is recorded a time when the army is wiped out and they are invaded by Canaanite nations and no historian can explain what happened. That’s because they don’t read the Bible and they also have their dates wrong, but that’s for another time.
Anyways, the Israelites are on the other side now and they are going through arid desert wasteland to Mt. Sinai where they will receive the Law of God. It’s quite the polar opposite of what the disciples are enjoying on this lush mountain that Jesus has brought them up on to give them the Law of the Kingdom of Messiah.
The Israelites start to get thirsty and hungry. Any of us would and this is natural going through this barren wasteland and desert. So what do they do? Do they pray and ask God to bless them with their daily bread and water to drink? No! They complain and say that God doesn’t care about their needs. They were led by Moses into the wilderness because there were not enough graves in Egypt. They deny God’s ability to satisfy their needs.
But God is merciful and so He tells Moses to strike a rock with his staff and water comes flowing out. This is not some hole in the ground cistern that has been collecting water in it that has putrefied like a bad episode of Bear Grylls! This is living water, probably better than any spring water you’ve ever tasted.
God also gives them bread that comes down from heaven. It is describes as being like coriander seed and at the same time sweet. They are fully satisfied and even find out that if they get more than they are supposed to get, because they were not to collect on the Sabbath, it bread worms.
In other words, they have to rely on God daily to satisfy their hunger and thirst. You getting this?!
God is even so generous that he makes quail fly into the camp and feeds them the quail.
Well, we could go on but let’s get back to Jesus and the other mountain. Jesus says in John 6 that he is the real bread that comes down from heaven and that he is the one who quenches their thirst to give them rivers of living water flowing from within them.
The Israelites got the picture. They saw the connection to their ancestors that you and I can easily miss.
Jesus promises to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Look again at Matthew 5:6
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
The promise is:
2. We will be satisfied
2. We will be satisfied
But what is this righteousness we long for? How do we know we are satisfied?
Is it our good works?
Is it social justice?
Is it something completely different that encompasses both of these things?
The answer is number 3!
You see Romans tells us that we cannot attain our own righteousness.
3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.
Paul says again in Phil 3:9
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
So how can we be satisfied if we can’t attain our goal of hungering and thirsting after righteousness?
Well, remember how I said that all of these beatitudes find their fulfillment in Jesus last week?
Jesus promises to give us the righteousness that we so long for.
Look with me at Phil 3:7-9
7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
You see our righteousness is no better than what Israel tried to offer up in that wilderness. In fact we tend to make golden calves of our righteousness. God offers something better.
In the place of Isaac who Abraham was told to offer up, there is a Lamb. On the mountain of God, it will be provided!
We find our satisfaction in Jesus. He fills us with His righteousness. He satisfies our need for justice. He will one day right all wrongs and settle all debts. Meanwhile as we live in His righteousness, we will also become more like Him. We will become more just in social issues. We will become filled with the Spirit and given life. We will be satisfied.
Conclusion
This morning are you hungry? Your stomach may be rumbling at this time of day, but I’m not talking about your need for physical food. I’m not talking about your stomach at all. I’m talking about your heart.
Are you acting out like the woman at the well, because you are really hungry for something that your lusts cannot satisfy?
Are you starving and thirsty as you travel through that barren wasteland trying to get up the mountain to God?
God had to come down on the mountain because no one could ever touch the mountain, let alone get up it and live! Jesus came to that mountain and invites us to sit down with him.
Psalm 23 says,
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
May God grant your soul rest today as you find Jesus. May he satisfy you with His love!