Sermon from the Mount (week 5)

Matthew 5:6

Matthew 5:6 NKJV

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

In 2004 Victor Yushchenko stood for the presidency of the Ukraine. Vehemently opposed by the ruling party Yushchenko’s face was disfigured and he almost lost his life when he was mysteriously poisoned. This was not enough to deter him from standing for the presidency.

On the day of the election Yushchenko was comfortably in the lead. The ruling party, not to be denied, tampered with the results. The state-run television station reported “ladies and gentlemen, we announce that the challenger Victor Yushchenko has been decisively defeated.”

In the lower right-hand corner of the screen a woman by the name of Natalia Dmitruk was providing a translation service for the deaf community. As the news presenter regurgitated the lies of the regime, Natalia Dmitruk refused to translate them. “I’m addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine” she signed. “They are lying and I’m ashamed to translate those lies. Yushchenko is our president.”

The deaf community sprang into gear. They text messaged their friends about the fraudulent result and as news spread of Dmitruk’s act of defiance increasing numbers of journalists were inspired to likewise tell the truth. Over the coming weeks the “Orange Revolution” occurred as a million people wearing orange made their way to the capital city of Kiev demanding a new election. The government was forced to meet their demands, a new election was held and Victor Yushchenko became president.

Philip Yancey writes

“When I heard the story behind the orange revolution, the image of a small screen of truth in the corner of the big screen became for me an ideal picture of the church. You see we as a church do not control the big screen. (When we do, we usually mess it up.) Go to any magazine rack or turn on the television and you see a consistent message. What matters is how beautiful you are, how much money or power you have. Similarly, though the world includes many poor people, they rarely make the magazine covers or the news shows. Instead we focus on the superrich, names like Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey.… Our society is hardly unique. Throughout history nations have always glorified winners, not losers. Then, like the sign language translator in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, along comes a person named Jesus who says in effect, Don’t believe the big screen – they’re lying. It’s the poor who are blessed, not the rich. Mourners are blessed too, as well as those who hunger and thirst, and the persecuted. Those who go through life thinking they’re on top end up on the bottom. And those who go through life feeling they’re on the bottom end up on the top. After all, what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”

Source: Philip Yancey, What Good Is God, pages 184-186

Hunger is something that every human will probably face at some point in their life.

Jeremiah 2:13 NKJV

“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Many of you here this morning are like this. Your soul is hungry and your heart is thirsty. You feel an insatiable longing for something. You are restless. Almost everywhere you turn, the grass is greener than where you stand. And the great tragedy for some of you is that even though this is the Spirit of God beckoning you to himself, you turn away again and again to short term, temporary, backfiring pleasures. And everything turns to ashes in your hands. The thrill of lust leaves behind guilt and loneliness. The drugs and alcohol can’t keep you from waking up in the real world again and again with your messed-up relationships, the new toy is so boring in just a few weeks, and the career becomes just another job after a while. We drink at broken cisterns. And we eat bread that does not satisfy. And the words of C.S. Lewis ring more and more true. He said, If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. So, what is this idea of righteousness that Jesus is talking about?

In Matthew 5:20, Jesus said that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. It has to do with showing mercy, and being radically pure in your heart, and making peace instead of retaliating. Righteousness is showing mercy to other people; and righteousness is being pure in heart before God who alone can see the heart; and righteousness is the effort to make peace.

And if someone should ask why the promise of satisfaction is made to those who hunger for righteousness and not to those who simply hunger for God, there are two reasons. 1. God’s Righteousness in View One is that Jesus surely means God’s righteousness — a righteousness like God’s, and a righteousness that God gives. Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Surely that is basically the same as saying, “Hunger and thirst for righteousness.” When we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we don’t look to the broken cisterns of our own resources. We look to God. So it is not either-or: we hunger for righteousness in God. 2. How the Sermon Ends But there is a deeper reason why Jesus promises satisfaction to those who hunger for God’s righteousness instead of promising satisfaction to those who simply hunger for God. The Sermon on the Mount ends in 7:22–23 with these words of Jesus: On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.” They called him Lord. They seemed to have the charismatic gift of prophesy. They were engaged in exorcisms of demons and miracles in Jesus’s name. And he turned them away at the last day saying he never knew them, because they were doers of evil and not righteousness. “The great tales of the future will be written of those who were committed to one thing — the righteousness of God.” They thought they knew him. They thought he knew them. But they were strangers: “I never knew you.” Why? Because they had not hungered and thirsted for his righteousness. They had been religious! They had gone to church. They had gotten involved in many religious activities. But the passion, the hunger, the thirst of their lives was not righteousness. And therefore they will not be satisfied, neither in this age nor in the age to come. Deep and lasting satisfaction for our souls comes not from the delights of the world nor from a merely religious or vertical relationship with God. Satisfaction comes from God to those whose passion in life is to know him in the struggle to be like him in the world Matthew 5:48

Matthew 5:48 NKJV

Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.