S.O.T.M. Happy are the Righteous [Matthew 5:6]

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 5:6]

The Christian’s concern is to view life in this world in the light of the gospel; and according to the gospel, the trouble with mankind is not any one particular manifestation of sin, but rather sin itself. Adrian Rodgers said, “It is not the amount of sin the condemns a man, it’s the fact of sin.” If you are anxious and scared by the state of our world today and all the possible threats of disease, dissension, and division..then I assure you the best and most direct way to avoid such anxiety is to carefully consider the words of our text to day… “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; for they shall be filled.”

Here then is the only way to real peace. All other considerations eventually don’t touch the problem. All of the world’s attempts to solve the world’s problems are ultimately a waste of time without true consideration of the word’s of the one who created the world. If every human being knew what it meant to hunger and thirst after righteousness than all the world’s problems would be solved.

Do you know what the greatest need in the world is today? More Christians, not those who claim to be Christians but there is absolutely no evidence they are…no the world’s greatest need is for more Christians who hunger and thirst for righteousness. More Christians who’s sole desire is to be more like Christ! If more Christians, who desired to be more and more like Christ, influenced their homes, influenced their workplaces, influenced their communities, influenced local government, influenced larger government, how different would our world be?

Maybe you think, “that’s a fantasy pastor.” Is it??? Have we so limited God’s power today that we think God can’t change a community, a nation, the world??? I don’t know about you, but the bible I read, and the God I know does world changing things when his people do what??? Hunger and thirst for righteousness. 2 Chronicles 7:14, “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Friends that isn’t a fantasy that’s a promise of God!

I believe the problem today in the church is we don’t believe this. We don’t truly believe that God will change our workplaces, our communities, our nation. I think many Christians have thrown in the towel and said, “that’s just the way it is, and it’s not going to get any better.” Let me tell you, it won’t…with an attitude like that. As long as we continue to put God on a shelf and rely upon ourselves and our abilities and programs…then God won’t change a thing, because we won’t learn a thing, we’ll take credit for it and won’t give glory to God.

But…when God’s people humble themselves and become poor in spirit, aware of our own inability and depravity, when we mourn over our sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world, and we become meek people under control…under God’s control…then guess what happens…we begin to long and desire for more and more of God, we hunger and thirst for righteousness…we become done with self…self-concern, self-interest, self-reliance which leads to our being unsatisfied…and we want more and more of Christ…then we become, what??? Truly happy!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but have you noticed in this beatitudes…that according to the scripture happiness is never something that should be sought directly; it’s always something that results from seeking something else. Have you noticed that? Happy are the poor in spirit, mourn, meek, hunger and thirst for righteousness…happiness is never sought directly, it’s always a result of seeking something else. You see that’s why the world and worldly people are never truly satisfied…because they seek after happiness first and blessedness first as their number one desire, but the word of God tells us that true happiness only comes when we seek Christ and His ways first.

This is why this is so important, I do believe many Christians have made this same mistake. Whenever you put happiness as your number one goal, you’ll never find it…when you put happiness before righteousness, you’ll find misery and frustration because you’ll never be able to grasp it. This is the great message of the bible from beginning to end. The only ones who are truly happy and the ones who are seeking righteousness…put happiness in the place of righteousness and you’ll never get it.

It’s kind of like the doctor who’s only concern is relieving the patients pain, that’s a bad doctor. The good doctor is not only concerned with relieving the patients pain, he’s concerned with discovering the cause of the patients pain. Pain is a symptom which calls attention to the disease, and the ultimate treatment for pain is to treat the disease, not the pain. So the doctor who is only focused on the pain and not the discovery of the disease is doing something dangerous for the patient. Such is the folly of the world who seeks to treat the pain and not the disease.

I’m afraid many Christians do the same foolish thing, spending their whole lives seeking something they’ll never find…seeking some kind of feeling and experience, hoping to be filled with some sort of ecstasy, they think is satisfying, only to have missed it. We are not meant to hunger and thirst after experiences; we’re not meant to hunger and thirst after blessedness; we’re meant to hunger and thirst after righteousness! Friends the experiences are a gift of God; but they are not what we are to covet…we are to seek righteousness! So then...

What does righteousness mean?

It does not mean a sort of general morality. While there is a moral code involved in righteousness, it’s not some generic morality of the world…the Greek philosophers used the word in this way, but the Christian gospel doesn’t stop there. How often do we see politicians speak of their morality, honor, and their keeping their word, yet they are disloyal to their own wives…so it has to be something deeper.

First, righteousness means justification. Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Justification brings the believer unto a relationship of peace and favor with God. Paul used this word righteousness in this way to mean justification…but it doesn’t stop there. Righteousness means justification, but als includes sanctification. Sanctification is the process in the regenerate persons life of continually growing in moral and spiritual maturity through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit…growing in grace. Let me divide that out a little to help drive it home.

It means a desire to be right with God. This is a fundamental thing here…after all, all the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man is not right with God, and it’s because man is not right with God that he has gone wrong everywhere. That is taught all throughout the bible. So the desire to be righteous is a desire to be right with God, and a desire to get rid of sin, because sin is what comes between us and God. The one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is the one who sees that sin and rebellion has separated him form God, and longs to be in right relationship with God.

It means a desire to be free from the power of sin. The one who desires this sees the world is under the power and control of sin and Satan and longs to be free from the power that drags him down. Paul talked about this battle in our members in Romans 7, the desire to sin, and to be free from sins power.

It means a desire to be free from the very desire of sin. This hunger for righteousness goes beyond a desire to be free from the power of sin but they very desire of sin altogether. This man truly examines himself in light of the scripture not only to discover that he is in bondage to sin, which is horrible enough, but that he still wants it or still desires to be in bondage to sin. Even after he sees it’s wrong still wants it. But the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness desires to be rid of the desire of sin inside as well…sin completely pollutes the man…and the Christian should desire to be rid of sin altogether.

I’m afraid many Christians say things like, “I’m a sinner, and I’ll always be a sinner.” This is true, but I wonder if it’s just a justification for their sin. The one Jesus is describing here in the beatitude is the one who desires to be free from sin completely… no so they can be admired by others…but because they truly know just how bad they are, but want to be Christ like. I often have the same feeling as one of the puritan preachers put it, he told his congregation, “I’m afraid if you knew just had bad I really was, you’d never listen to me again.” That’s a true hunger for righteousness...

It’s a longing to be positively holy. The one who hungers and thirst for righteousness is the one who desires to exemplify the beatitudes in his daily life. He wants to show the fruit of the spirit in all daily activities…he wants to be like Christ!

It’s a desire to know God and fellowship with Him. that is the longing above all else, is to know more of God and fellowship with Him. Personally, the more I study God’s word and the more time I spend with God, you know what I want…more of His word, more time with Him. I can’t even begin to describe to you what this particular study of the sermon on the mount has been doing to me. Each week we’ve been tackling one small verse and I feel as though I’m only giving you the tip of the iceberg, we could spend several weeks just mining the depths of one verse, because the more I dig into God’s word, the more I discover God revealing himself to me, and the more I want to share with you. so then...

What does it mean to hunger and thirst?

This is important because it brings us to the practical aspect of this matter. Obviously it does not mean that we can attain righteousness of our own efforts. That would be a worldly view of pride. It means a consciousness of our deep need. An awareness of our desperate need, it’s not just a passing feeling or a passing desire. Remember what the prophet Hosea said of Israel…He said Israel was always coming forward with remorse over their sin, yet then turned back to her sin…this hungering and thirsting is not here one second and gone the next.

It’s something deep and profound that goes on until it is satisfied. Like the man who is hungered and thirsts…it hurts, it’s painful, it’s something that goes on increasing and makes one feel desperate until it’s satisfied.

Just consider the person who desires a new great position at work. He is restless, he cannot keep still, he is working hard for it, he thinks about it, and dreams about it; it becomes his ambition in life. It becomes an all consuming thing that the only thing that matters to the man is what they are hungering and thirsting for.

The Psalmist captures the heart of this idea when he wrote, “as the deer panteth for the water, so my soul panteth for your O God. My soul thirsts for the Living God!” That’s it right there, there’s the picture. it’s a desperate desire to be satisfied by God.

As J.N. Darby put it… “to be hungry is not enough; I must really be starving to know what is in God’s heart towards me.” He said, “When the prodigal son was hungry he went to feed upon the husks of the pig food, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.” That’s it right there!

It means to be really desperate. Desperate for God…and not just a little bit of God…all of God…all of righteousness! In the Greek language, verbs like hunger and thirst are normally followed in the genitive case expressed by the pronoun ‘of’. And this is what is called in Greek the partitive genitive. Now stay with me, this is fascinating. So that a Greek would say – he was “hungering” and “thirsting” and then he would add the genitive case ‘of’. They have cases to show meaning. And he would translate it this: “I hunger for of food. I thirst for of water.” And the partitive genitive simply means he – it delineates that he wants part of it. For example, he would never say, “I hunger for food” because to him, that would represent all the food there was. He’s got to have a case which limits it. The partitive genitive means I hunger for of food. In other words, I don’t want all the food in the world, I just want some, just enough for my hunger. He would never say, “I thirst for water.” Not all the water of the world. He would say, “I thirst for of water. I thirst for of water, a part of water, enough for my thirst.” This is the normal expression for the Greek to use in this language.

Now, what fascinated me as I studied this is that in this passage, that normal use of the Greek is abandoned. You would have thought that it would say, “Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after of righteousness.” But it doesn’t. It drops the genitive case altogether, which is normal Greek expression, and it drops to the bottom of what we call the accusative case and it becomes a direct object unqualified. “I hunger and thirst for righteousness, all there is.” It’s a tremendous truth. And we’re never satisfied, because no matter how much righteousness we may have by God’s grace, we don’t have all there is, right? And so the hunger and the thirst goes on. There is this constant desperate need for more and more of God.

What’s the promise to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness?

They shall be fill. This is an instant thing and a continuing thing, there is a sense where I am filled and am being filled. That is where the gospel of grace comes in; it’s entirely a gift of God. To obtain all that you need is found in Christ alone. When you and I know our desperate need for God because we are helpless without him…he then, by his grace, fills us up with himself. It’s a blessed gift.

How and when does this happen? Immediately upon repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are truly justified before God by Christ, and His righteousness is imputed to us and the barrier of sin and guilt between us and God is removed. If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, if you believe in him dying on the cross for your sin, you have been forgiven. Thank God for that…because of Christ.

God looks at the Christian in the righteousness of Christ and he no longer sees the sin. He sees you as a sinner He has forgiven. You are no longer under the law, but under grace, you are filled with the righteousness of Christ and your standing before God is justified by Christ…this is a glorious, wondrous truth. At this very moment if you are truly in Christ you stand righteous before the Father because of Christ and by his grace.

It’s immediate and continual. The Christian is made perfect in Christ immediately, and the Christian is being made perfect continually in Christ. Let me explain, The Christian never has the mindset that he has arrived, that he has reached some point where he says, “that’s good enough, I’m enough of a Christian or I know enough of God, or I have all I need of God.” No…the Christian knows he is right before God in Christ, but is being made more right with God through the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

The Holy Spirit begins he great work of delivering us from the power and pollution of sin…and the Christian has a hunger to be rid of this power and pollution that once dominated their lives. We know that this will only be fully fulfilled in eternity when every fault and blemish will be wiped away by God and we’ll be given new perfect bodies transformed and glorious. But you see, what we should see is the Christian is perfect, and yet he is becoming perfect in Christ.

I don’t know how you feel about this but this is fascinating to me. You see the Christian is one who at one and the same time is hungering and thirsting, and yet he is filled and satisfied. And the more he is filled and satisfied, the more he hungers and thirsts for righteousness. That is the blessedness of the Christian life.

You see you reach certain stages in sanctification, but you don’t rest there for your life. You go on changing, by his grace, from glory to glory. As the scripture tells us ‘of his fullness we have received grace upon grace, and grace added to grace.’ You see it goes on and on, perfect, yet not perfect, hungering, thirsting, yet filled and satisfied, but longing for more, never having enough because it’s so glorious and so wondrous; fully satisfied by Him and yet a supreme desire to know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

The question before us then is…are you filled? Are you blessed in this sense? Are you hungering and thirsting for righteousness?