Hunger and thirst

Matthew 5:6

Good morning, church!

As you can see, we are going to go a little out of order this morning and I hope that before the end of the service, you will understand why.

Let’s start with this,

HE IS RISEN!

Repeat back. Some of you weren’t raised in a SBC!

Let’s try it again!

HE IS RISEN!

Repeat back

This is the day of all the days in the Christian faith! Its the day that we celebrate Jesus! Our Risen Savior!

Without the cross we would still be in sin. Without the empty tomb, the we would have no hope. The enemy would still be reigning.

But the enemy and death was defeated! THAT is why we celebrate!

Amen!!

This morning, we are going to take the Lord’s Supper. We do this to remember the Cross of Jesus. Typically, this is something we would do before Easter Sunday, but as I was praying about this morning, this felt right with our passage for the morning.

We are 4 weeks into a study on the Beatitudes.

Don’t worry if you have missed the other weeks. We will see and review 1-3.

Review.

Let’s read the verses and focus on our verse for the morning.

Matthew 5:1–6 ESV

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

A couple of things to remember.

These beatitudes are spiritual in nature.

So this passage is using physical words to describe a spiritual feeling.

πεινάω (peinaō): vb.; ≡ Str 3983; TDNT 6.12—1. LN 23.29 be hungry, be in a state of hunger (Mt 25:35); 2. LN 25.17 desire strongly (Mt 5:6; Lk 6:21+)

διψάω (dipsaō): vb.; ≡ Str 1372; TDNT 2.226—1. LN 23.39 be thirsty, a basic bodily desire for liquid (Mt 25:35; Jn 4:13), also a figurative extension of a spiritual need that God can satisfy (Jn 4:14; 7:37; Rev 7:16; 21:6); 2. LN 25.17 desire strongly (Mt 5:6)

So, what you see here is BOTH of these words are defined as to desire strongly.

Hunger and thirst are physical indicators that you body is lacking, missing it’s need for food and water.

Now, we may think we understand what these words mean, but I doubt seriously that we, in America, truly understand hunger and thirst.

I remember, in the CG, helping Haitian migrants from over packed tiny boats fleeing a war torn country in hopes to find a place of safety from starvation and death. I remember them pulling kids off of these boats and finding one bag of rice for the entire group to share. They were sooo thankful for two meals a day of rice and beans, we would give them.

We do not understand physical hunger and thirst.

I believe it is this kind of hunger and thirst that this verse is talking about. On the point of death and starvation, to strongly desire to be satisfied.

But how do we see this as a description of spiritual needs.

David, all throughout the Psalms explains this over and over again.

Psalm 42:2 (ESV)

My soul thirsts for God,

for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?

Psalm 63:1 (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.

To understand the reason for this hunger and thirst in our souls, we must look back to the beginning.

In the garden, God created Adam and Eve and placed them in a place that all of their needs were met. He created humans with needs physical and spiritual. And He intended to meet them all! He said eat anything of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Mankind had right standing with God and all of our needs body, soul and spirit were satisfied in Him.

But obviously, you know the story, humans chose to sin. Chose to disobey because they did not feel that the satisfaction that the Lord was offering, the relationship with the Lord that they had was not enough. Mankind chose to seek satisfaction and fulfillment from something other that God.

And because of that, sin broke two things.

We were no longer in right standing with the Lord

and our needs were now, not fulfilled by the Lord.

They were removed from the garden and told to start working the ground for food.

So, in us still today, everyone of us, still has those basic needs within us.

We all, you may not know this is what it is, but all of us have a deep desire within us to be in a right relationship with our Creator!

You may have never been told that, or you hear that years ago and didn’t believe it, or maybe you have heard this over and over again and are sick of hearing about it.

But right now, at this moment, you know that within you, you know that you are lacking. You know that something is missing. You know that things are not right and everything you have tried to fulfill it hasn’t worked.

Neil Anderson says that this lack, this something missing can be felt in our need to be accepted, feel secure and significant.

We desperately desire to be accepted by others, even if its one or two people because you have been hurt too often by others. But the desire is there within us all.

We all desperately desire for security. We want to be in a place that we do not have to fear. We want to know that there is someone in this world that won’t abandon us or turn away from us! We all would just at least be able to have one relationship like that!

We all desperately desire to be significant in this life. One of the main question, we all ask eventually, why am I here? What is my purpose? Many have you have tried different things and bought into the lie that you don’t have significance. You aren’t special.

Each and everyone of us at one point or another have felt this deep desperate desire for one or all three of these areas of lack.

We may not really understand physical hunger or thirst in America, but I can guarantee that each of us in this room understands what it means to desperately desire these three things in our lives.

Understand this, when it comes to the other Beatitudes, I believe that you can’t produce those within yourself without the Holy Spirit, but this one, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, I believe that the Lord put this in each and everyone of us.

Because there is a very interesting word as the object of our hunger and thirst.

Righteousness.

A word that means to be in fulfillment of God law. To be what is right.

So, what i’m saying here is that we are all created with the strong desire to be made right with God.

But wait, what about sin nature? Yes, we are all born with sin nature to rebel against the Lord, but we also have within us all a desire for eternity. For something more. We recognize that our soul are eternal.

One of the constant searches throughout history is for immortality. From the fountain of youth to cryogenics. Mankind was made for eternity.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESV)

Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart,

So, within each of us is the desire for acceptance, security, significance and eternity.

Now, I’m here to offer you a solution. THE solution.

The solution to the problem is righteousness. Or right standing with the Lord. To be restored back to the relationship that we were created to have all of our needs met physical and spiritual. A place that you can be accepted by God, you can find your security in Him and find significance that you are loved and adopted by the Creator of the universe.

You can be restored to that right standing with God!

And righteousness is the price.

Jeremiah 23:5–6 ESV

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

The Lord is OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS!

Do you here that? Jesus, the righteous branch, came to become our righteousness. He came to meet that need for us because we can not do it ourselves because of our sin nature.

I’m going to tell you two stories from the Word in a minute that shows how two different people trying to fill this need within them but first, I want to show you some of the things that Jesus taught. Don’t take my word for it!

John 6:47–51 ESV

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Jesus says that He is the bread that satisfies the desire for eternity within us all!

John 4:13–14 ESV

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.”

Jesus in many ways taught that He came to satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst for right standing with God! It was a constant theme throughout His teaching and life!

He talks about eternal life all the way throughout His ministry.

But He proved the path for you and me to find and receive this righteousness through His death and resurrection!

Through Jesus’ death on the cross, by His blood being poured out for us, we are provided with a way to have His righteousness placed on us! Think about that! Nothing you have done wrong is too big! You can not out sin His blood! His righteousness, His perfection, becomes our’s!

Colossians 2:13–14 ESV

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

You were dead, spiritually lacking, without help in our sins. Righteousness is the desire and the price. We can not reach it.

But God! made us alive with Him! With God! Made us in right standing with God! By taking our sins and cancelling the debt! Nailing it to a cross!

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Do you hear that? We can have our strong desire, our hunger and thirst to be made right with God, We can have that desire satisfied in Christ!

THIS is apart of what we are here to remember and celebrate this morning! That Jesus poured out His blood on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of GOD!

That we when we believe and put our faith in Him, we become a part of His body! Where our need to be accepted, secure and significant can be satisfied in Christ!

This is why we take the Lord’s Supper. To remember what Jesus did and remind ourselves what He did for us!

If you are a believer here today, when we take this bread and juice this morning, we should stop to remember all that the cross means to us! That we came to place that we recognized that without Jesus, we could not find this right standing with the Father! And thank Jesus for His blood and body that was sacrificed for us!

But also, let it remind us that we should be hungry and thirsty to live righteous lives! Let us as believers recognize that the needs in our lives are still to be accepted, secure and significant and we can not find this satisfaction in anyone other than Christ!

May we when we take the bread and juice, ask the Holy Spirit to stir up within us a desire to put to death the persistent sins in our life that we still turn to other that Christ.

May this time at the Lord’s table be a time of remembrance and repentance for us. Because the promise of this verse is that you will be satisfied! Lord, help us not seek satisfaction from the world when we have the bread of life and spring of living water within us.

If you are here today and you know that you have never put your faith in Him to be your righteousnes, you have never begun a relationship with Jesus,

But you recognize the hunger and thirst within you. You recognize that you have a need in your heart and life to be accepted, secure and significant. And you have searched the world and other people to meet those needs. Would you put your faith in Jesus to be that for you?

Would you believe that He came to bring you life?

That He came to bring restoration and right standing between you and your Creator?

Would you believe like so many others in the room that Jesus can satisfy the deepest needs in your heart?!

That He can place His righteousness upon you! And in the eyes of God you can be found righteous?!

That the blood of Jesus can be your righteousness and that His body in the bread of life that can satisfy you?!

But not only that! But wait! There’s more!

When Jesus resurrected from the dead, when He walked out of that tomb, He defeated death!

Do you hear that?! Death has been defeated!

That eternal desire within you, that has been in all mankind, can ALSO be satisfied in Jesus!

Think about this, spiritual dead, which is what sin brought into the world, is eternal separation from God. That is what hell is!

But Jesus came to offer salvation, righteousness, right standing with God, defeat of death, defeat of sin, satisfaction for the strong desires of our heart and soul!

THIS is what we celebrate this morning! THIS is why we are here!

This is what Jesus is offering to you right now!

Now, the question is, how are you going to respond?

Are you in Christ?

Are you going to take this morning to remember what Jesus did for you and celebrate?!

Are you going to take communion and ask the HS to produce in you a desire to pursue righteous living?

I pray that you do that and then worship with deep appreciation for what Jesus did for you!

Are you here this morning and you know that you don’t know Him?

Do you recognize that you are hungry and thirsty?

Let me tell you about two people that had interactions with Jesus.

One was a young man that was rich.

He thought that he could figure out how to get eternal life on his own. He asked Jesus this question, a question that you might be asking.

What good deed must I do to have eternal life?

Jesus told him that if he wanted to do enough good deeds to receive eternal life, that he must be perfect and keep the law without mistake.

The young man actually thought that he did that, but still he said, what do I still lack?

He recognized that he lacked. That there was something missing in life even though he thought he was a really really good person!

That young man went away sad because he didn’t recognize that only Jesus can give eternal life.

In fact, Jesus says there, that with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

Jesus is saying, it is impossible for you to earn eternal life! We must recognized that we are incapable of anything spiritual! We are spiritually dead.

It is only possible through Jesus Christ and His righteousness placed on us!

Now, in another conversation, Jesus meets a woman who is avoiding other people, and is searching to find satisfaction through relationships with other people. It says that she was married 5 times and with someone else. She was searching for satisfaction for the thirst that within her and she had made a lot of mistakes trying to find it in this world.

Jesus tells her that He can give her living water that will well up within her that leads to not being thirsty anymore and eternal life!

She didn’t think that where she was in life that she could worship God.

But Jesus reveals to her that He is the Messiah! The one that is opening up the pathway to God and the meeting of all of her spiritual needs!

And she believed! She recieved that living water that satisfied her heart!

Oh that you would be like that woman today...

Recognizing that without Jesus, you can not bring eternal life. That humans will never be able to bring satisfaction to your thirst for acceptance, security and significance.

Would you humble yourself before the Lord who knows your mistakes and welcomes you anyways?

His death took the certificate of sin in your life and nailed it to the cross!

His blood poured out for you, can declare you righteous today!

Becoming a member of His body can satisfy all of your spiritual needs!

His resurrection is a promise to you that sin can be defeated in your life and you can have eternal life in right standing with God!

Would you meet with me right now here and get this settled in your mind and heart?

Would you then take the Lord’s supper with us for the first time as a child of God declared righteous and restored to God?

I would love it if you would come meet me down here this morning.

Church, the band is going to play quietly for a few minutes.

If you are a believer, would you pray in to remember the significance of His blood and body for you?

Would you ask the HS to create in your a strong desire to do what is right in life?

Then come and get the bread and the cup and return to your seat and we will take it together.

If you are here and want to accept this gift of Jesus, during this time would you come sit with me in the front row and let’s talk about how to get that settled in your mind?

Pray