Living The Satisfied Life

Introduction

What are you hungry for?

The starved hungers for bread.

The parched hiker thirsts for water.

The student hungers for knowledge.

The soul-winner hungers for a soul.

The athlete hungers for winning or championship.

The imprisoned thirsts for freedom.

The lonely hungers for companionship.

The barren thirsts for

The

The business person hungers for successful enterprise..

People hunger in different ways based on values or needs.

The passivist hungers for peace.

The activist hungers for its way.

The weary thirsts for rest.

The miner hungers for mineral.

The dreamer hungers for a dream.

The ambitious thirst for success, position, power, wealth or some specific goal.

People hunger in different ways based on values or needs.

In life people are looking for satisfaction in one or multiple ways. We often hold beliefs based on our what we think is in our best interest.

In life, everyone is looking for something.

What’s really startling is that people can spend a lifetime and fortune chasing something only to discover that when they get what they have strived so hard for, they are still unsatisfied.

If a man searches for a wife because he thinks that a woman is what brings happiness, and if she doesn’t make him completely happy, he falsely thinks that she must be the wrong one, so he searches for another.

An athlete dreams, trains, practices, and competes, sometimes for years and years, to win a championship. Often only to desire another.

Nutritionists have dramatized the importance of diet by telling us that we are what we eat. The thinking is, if we eat too many doughnuts and cream puffs, we’ll become walking pastries.

In the realm of the mind and the spirit, “ you are what you eat” is more penetrating. If you feed on power, position, violence, excitement, erotica, and materialism, you will eventually personify them. You will become what you eat.

Coaches do that when they

In , Jesus juxtaposes a basic physical need with a comprehensive provision.

He cuts the human struggle away from the rat-race of chasing wants, and he zeroes in on the comprehensive satisfaction of all desire.

Jesus has declared that blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Now in one paradoxical sentence, Jesus says that there is one thing that satisfies it all - righteousness.

Jesus tells us what we ought to eat and how we must eat if we are to have spiritual health and ultimate satisfaction. Spiritual health comes from hunger.

Jesus wants us to find fullness or happiness in life.

Blessed, happy, congratulations to those who painfully yearn above all else to be like Christ, for they alone will find satisfaction in life.

The simplest means to grasp this deep and profound truth is to look at the terms of this Beatitude.

The Pattern of Satisfaction is in the Life Portrait of Jesus. It’s called RIGHTEOUSNESS.

The whole world is seeking happiness - everything is designed for happiness.

But the great tragedy of the world is that thought it gives itself to seek for happiness, it never seems to be able to find it. What’s the matter? The world needs to understand this Beatitude.

We are not to hunger & thirst after happiness or blessedness. Yet, this is what most are doing.

Thus, we always miss it. Happiness is something that results for something outside of happiness itself.

Helen Keller said, “Many persons have a wrong idea about what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” That purpose is a person, Jesus.

V.6 says - they alone are truly happy who are seeking Righteousness.

Searching for happiness is tantamount to treating the pain instead of the disease.

We are NOT meant to hunger and thirst after experiences, blessedness, or happiness. Rather the blessedness and experiences of happiness are a gift from God that results from seeking Righteousness.

RIGHTEOUSNESS is both a legal and religious term. And it is a bit abstract.

The OT doesn’t describe this as simply morals or ethics. Righteousness is described as the relationship Israel had with Yahweh! Jehovah Tsidkenu, the LORD our righteousness.

In , God protects the righteous.

In , God supports the righteous.

In , God blesses the righteous.

The NT says that righteousness is to be pursued. ()

Righteousness is found in a person. That person is Jesus. He is the LORD out righteousness.

To hunger and thirst after righteousness is to be free from self, self-concern, pride, boasting, self-protection, sensitiveness, and vain or fearful imaginations.

Let’s look at the practical aspect of the satisfaction known as “righteousness.”

An Appetite for Walking with God is the Doorway to Satisfied Living.

Let’s look at the terms “hunger” and “thirst.”

Hunger (Gk) - means to long for something which is necessary for the sustenance of life.

In it says that Jesus was hungry after 40 days of fasting. Although the devil offered him food to fill his stomach, Jesus chose the only food that really fills…what comes from God.

says that in heaven people will never again hunger and thirst in life.

Hunger doesn’t just mean passing feeling. Hunger is something deep and profound that goes on until it is satisfied.

Thirst (Gk) - In the classical sense, it is used to describe the land that is desirous of rain. Literally, it means “to thirst after.”

The psalmist says, “as the deer pant after the waterbrook, so my souls pants after you, O God.”

Jesus tells the woman at the well, that He offers drink that eliminate all thirst.

When the prodigal son was hungry we went to feed on all kinds of slop, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.

To hunger & thirst really means to be desperate, to be starving, to feel life is slipping away. It is is to realize my urgent need for help.

The promise for those who hunger & thirst after righteousness is satisfaction! “Shall be satisfied” Or “Shall be filled” It means to fatten cattle on the pasture grass.

The Promise of Continuing Satisfaction is a Free Gift Given by God to Everyone Who Starves After Him!

“Hunger & thirst” - present tense, active voice

Present - continually

Active - The subject is doing the action. “Bill was hungering & thirsting.”

“Righteousness” - accusative case, meaning the limits end of righteousness.

“Shall be satisfied/filled” - future, passive, indicative mood.

Indicative - the essence of reality

Passive - the subject is receiving the action. “While hungering and thirsting, Bill was filled.”

Jesus, the bread of life, said, “To him who come to me, I will in no way cast out.”

The promised satisfaction in this Beatitude is both immediate & progressive.

CONCLUSION

Jesus makes it profoundly clear that to really be happy in life we have to have a hunger for something beyond. It requires a sense of poverty, mourning and humbling of self that leaves one deeply wanting. That wanting hunger & thirst can only be filled with Jesus. Hi is Jehovah Tsidkenu, the LORD our righteousness.

Let’s look back at this idea of “we are what we eat.”

Preaching the Word: Sermon on the Mount—The Message of the Kingdom Chapter 4: The Fullness of Hunger

I think we can accurately say that Elvis Presley never understood this. His life was a pitiful pursuit of materialism and sensuality. In Elvis’s heyday he earned between $5 million and $6 million a year. It is estimated that he grossed $100 million in his first two years of stardom.

He had three jets, two Cadillacs, a Rolls-Royce, a Lincoln Continental, Buick and Chrysler station wagons, a Jeep, a dune buggy, a converted bus, and three motorcycles.

His favorite car was his 1960 Cadillac limousine. The top was covered with pearl-white Naugahyde. The body was sprayed with forty coats of a specially prepared paint that included crushed diamonds and fish scales. Nearly all the metal trim was plated with eighteen-karat gold.

Inside the car there were two gold-flake telephones, a gold vanity case containing a gold electric razor and gold hair clippers, an electric shoe buffer, a gold-plated television, a record player, an amplifier, air conditioning, and a refrigerator that was capable of making ice in two minutes. He had everything.

Elvis’s sensuality is legendary. Those friends and relatives most familiar with his state in the last months of his life tragically reveal that Elvis had very much become the victim of his appetites. He was what he had eaten—in the profoundest sense.

Elvis Presley’s tragic life dramatizes the significance of the Lord’s teaching in this fourth Beatitude, because in it Jesus sets forth the appetite and menu that bring spiritual well-being: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled with all the fulness of God!

Jesus is the fulness of God!