A Call to Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
Notes
Transcript
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.
But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
John 6:33-35,
For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Then they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.
The humble will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him. May your hearts live forever!
Church, the battle’s not coming to our front door, it's already at the doorstep. In just the last few years we've seen evil move forward and move across the country and the world in a more bold and brash way than we've ever seen before.
We have people openly on award shows praising the devil…their sign, after sign, after sign of evil practices going on.
We have our young people who don't know if they're a boy or a girl, who don't know if they are a cat or a dog; they don't know if they're binary or non-binary, but I'm here to tell you this morning that we have the answer. We have the key. We have the only thing that can combat these evil things - and –
His name is Jesus Christ. His name is Comforter. His name is Redeemer. His name is Yahweh. His name is Yeshua. His name is Emmanuel. His name is Jehovah Jireh: The LORD our provider. His name is Jehovah Rapha: The LORD our Healer. His name is ABBA Father. His name is El Shadai. His name is Alpha. His name is Omega.
He is God Almighty and His Holiness and His love and His grace and His mercy is the only thing in this universe that can combat the things that we are seeing in our society.
I’m here this morning to call all Christians to hunger and thirst for righteousness. To hunger and thirst with everything that we have.
We're at a point to where lukewarm, halfway Christianity must become a thing of the past. We can't go to church; we have to be the church. We can't practice religion; we have to live a spiritual, God-filled life.
We don't justify the flesh to avoid offending or making enemies; yet we must know and understand that the enemies that we do have, have heard the Word of God as black and white as it was meant to be. We don't live in darkness; we have a counselor who is light.
God has put this on my heart for the last couple of weeks - hunger and thirst for righteousness and you shall be filled. We must understand that the evil of the enemy is powerless when the godly are unafraid, and the godly are only unafraid when they're hungering and thirsting for righteousness and they are filled with the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. We all know the 23rd Psalm and this fits with hungering and thirsting for righteousness, because we have to fight the battle.
The reason that God is calling us to continually be hungering and thirsting for righteousness is because we're in a war; we're in a battle, and he's telling us “Pay attention to me. Let me fight the battle. Hunger and thirst for more of me. Want more of me, knowing that when you want more of me you will get more of me.
We only fear in the battle because we're not sitting at the table with Jesus. He prepares a table in the mist of my enemies. When we keep our eyes on Jesus we can feast. We can know that our cup is overflowing in the presence of our enemies. And the way we are fighting the battle, is never truly us, it's never truly us fighting in our own power. It's always us hungering and thirsting for more of God and being filled until our cup runs over. We fight with an overflowing cup because we have our eyes on Jesus, and Christ in us is the hope of glory! When we're filled with Him we are able and enabled to fight the good fight.
There's so many people that need us to be white-hot on fire for Jesus. There's so many lost people out there that need us to have our cup running over. There's so many lost people out there that need us to understand that we have to hunger and thirst for more of God so that we can be prepared when we encounter them…so that we can live our lives the way God calls and enables us to live our lives.
Along with the verse hunger and thirst for righteousness is the fact that in these last days we need to be taking our relationship with Jesus to the next level! God is calling his people into his presence for a deeper relationship with Jesus, not only so we can endure in these last days, but so we can flourish in these last days, because there's a huge uprising of false prophets and false teachers, and it's up to the true people of God to be so on fire for Jesus so that people are drawn to the fire in us. We need to be so on fire for Jesus that anyone who comes in contact with us will also burst into flames with the fire of God - because fire spreads when it comes in contact with others that are flammable!
God is calling us to humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways and seek his face and hunger and thirst for more of Him so that we can spread the love of God, so that we can be the love of God and the grace of God, and the mercy of God will spread like wildfire that no number of firefighters could ever put out.
We must hunger and thirst for more of God's holiness because there's so many demonic deceptions, and if you're not consistently in the presence of God you're going to be deceived. If you aren’t actively seeking God to know him more, if you don't have a burning desire to have more of Jesus, if you're not trying to look more like Jesus, to sound more like Jesus when you talk, to love how he loves, then you're falling away from God.
There's no standing still in our spiritual walk with Jesus. We're either growing and coming closer to God or we're moving away from God and more into sin.
The Bible tells us about the apostasy, the great falling away, and we’re seeing just that.
I want to go over a couple of verses that show exactly what I'm talking about. This first verse is Matthew 24:9-14
“Then they will hand you over to be persecuted, and they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations because of my name.
Then many will fall away, betray one another, and hate one another.
Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.
Because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold.
But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
This good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Jesus has been explaining what's going to happen when the end times come, and he just finished explaining about nation coming against nation, and all of those things. You should study it on your own, and then he comes to these verses where it talks about what's going to happen to Christians after the initial birth pains of nations against nations and that's been going on for years.
Matthew 24:9-14. 9 “Then they will hand you over to be persecuted, and they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations because of my name. 10 Then many will fall away, betray one another, and hate one another. 11 Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 12 Because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 This good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
In the next verse, II Thessalonians chapter 2, Paul is talking about Jesus coming back. So in the verse that we just looked at, we saw Jesus talking about coming back and in this verse Paul is explaining what we need to look out for.
Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s temple, proclaiming that he himself is God.
Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. 4 He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s temple, proclaiming that he himself is God.
Now jump to verse 7.
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but the one now restraining will do so until he is out of the way,
and then the lawless one will be revealed. The Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of his mouth and will bring him to nothing at the appearance of his coming.
The coming of the lawless one is based on Satan’s working, with every kind of miracle, both signs and wonders serving the lie,
and with every wicked deception among those who are perishing. They perish because they did not accept the love of the truth and so be saved.
For this reason God sends them a strong delusion so that they will believe the lie,
so that all will be condemned—those who did not believe the truth but delighted in unrighteousness.
7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but the one now restraining will do so until he is out of the way, 8 and then the lawless one will be revealed. The Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of his mouth and will bring him to nothing at the appearance of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is based on Satan’s working, with every kind of miracle, both signs and wonders serving the lie, 10 and with every wicked deception among those who are perishing. They perish because they did not accept the love of the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a strong delusion so that they will believe the lie, 12 so that all will be condemned—those who did not believe the truth but delighted in unrighteousness.
So, I could preach three days on one of these verses alone, but as God was speaking to me and I was preparing this sermon, He revealed these Scriptures as a point to show you how important it is that we draw near to God because we're seeing everything these scriptures are talking about.
In the first verse of the first Scripture we looked at in Matthew, it tells us that we're going to be persecuted, we're going to be hated by all the nations, that many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another, that we're going to see false prophets.
We're seeing it but hold fast to the Hand of God because He's prepared a table for you in the midst of your enemies, and if we're not seeking the face of God, if we're not hungering and thirsting for more righteousness no matter how much righteousness we have, our cup might overflow, but the cup has holes in it so we need more of God. We need to continue seeking God.
We have to be hungry for God. We have to be thirsty for God, and we have to be seeking the face of God and sitting at the table that He's prepared for us because the enemies are coming - the persecution is here - the battle is at our front door, and we have to kneel to stand…We have to die to live…We have to give to gain.
You see playtime is over. It's time for the real Christians to stand up. We see exactly what Jesus was telling us in the first Scripture. We see exactly what Paul was describing that happened to the Thessalonians in church, I'm telling you the writing is on the wall.
This is not meant to scare you. This is meant to motivate you… this is meant kind of like when you get the weather alert on your phone. That alert is there for your preparation. It's there so that you can say, “oh OK, bad weather is coming”.
The word of God is so many things, but it's there for comfort; but it's there as a warning to tell you when you see these things - be prepared, and the only way that I know to be prepared is to seek the Face of God passionately and fervently, and to be 100% surrendered to God.
Before you can fight for God you had to surrender, and you have to keep surrendering every single day. I'm going to say it's not too late right now for you to get it right, but everything that we've talked about tonight is meant for each one of us to #1 - humble ourselves and #2 - repent and then ask God to help you hunger and thirst for more of Him and then get ready because you will be filled.