#Blessed beyond Measure #4

Northside Christian Church 11/15/2020

Blessed Beyond Measure #4 Jamey Mills

Good evening Northside, my name is Jamey Mills and I am one of the pastors here at Northside Church… as many of you know we are doing something new… just to shake it up a little… we call it Church Norris November… Matt and I will bring our best Norris joke each week… I won week one, Matt sorta won week 2… with a much weaker joke… it was a mercy voting… Loser has to deliver dinner to the winner's family.

Matt:

Jamey

Don’t forget to text the name of your winner to 541-497-7885

How many of you all have seen the movie Walter Mitty?

It’s one of my favorite movies… I guess because I feel like I can relate a bit. It’s about this everyday, ordinary guy who through life circumstances felt stuck… It’s like he knows he was meant for something better… and he ends up having these episodes right… zoning out and sort of day dreaming about how he wishes he’d react… punching his jerk boss in the face, saying just the right thing to girl he likes Cheryl Mailhoff, rescind 3 legged dogs from burning buildings…

He worked for LIFE magazine and he ended up thinking that he’d lost this exclusive and critically important photo… the very last cover for the magazine… and his life’s mission became finding it… He was driven… he found himself going places he’d never go… Greenland, Iceland, Afghanistan… and dong things he’d never done… flying with intoxicated heli pilots, jumping in the water with sharks, outrunning volcanos, longboarding down steep winding roads, and… in the end… getting the girl.

Walter found real value in the searching… at first it was about keeping his job, but in the end… it was the searching… the process… the journey… the drive… the hunger that held value.

And with that there are two questions… that will lead us this evening… hear they are…

What is it that you really want? What motivates you? What drives you? What do you hunger for?

What gets in the way?

We are in week four of our 8 week series… #blessed beyond measure where we are looking at the very beginning of the best sermon that’s ever been preached… we call it the Sermon on the Mount… and Jesus is speaking deep and needed truth about what it means to be truly blessed into the deep and perpetual brokenness that sin creates in us… and in the world around us.

Jesus is not telling us how to simply act better… or how to earn God’s blessing… but instead where a truly blessed life is found…

And He does it through these 8-9 phrases that start like this… blessed are those…

There really does seem to be a progression here… that each one of these blessed statements sort of builds off the last… one author said they are in a sense like rung on a ladder… that they are leading somewhere… but it's also important for us to realize they are continual. THey aren’t one and done kinds of things…

And what we are learning is… A life blessed by God is found in areas we often don’t look or are unwilling to look. It has this sort of upside down feel to it.

Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit… those who come to truly see their deep need for God… they are the ones that will see God and experience His rule and reign in their lives.

Blessed are those who mourn… that mourn over the offense their sin is to God… for they will be comforted… have a greater sense of God’s presence… It’s the type of mourning that leads to real change in our lives.

Last week Jesus said blessed are the meek… those who are willing to truly submit to the leadership of God in their lives, to His will and way… they will experience restoration… and find themselves in a position to be used by God.

And those three things… seeing our need for Jesus, mourning over sin, and submitting to Him…. Jesus says it leads to what it is I want to talk about today.

Matthew 5:6 (ESV)

6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

There are days where things get so hectic and busy… that sometime in the evening it dawns on me that I hadn’t eaten anything that day… and yes, I know that is incredibly unhealthy on a few levels… it’s not good to ignore hunger and it can lead to some pretty bad places.

Jesus uses these powerful words… and they sound a little different to our culture. Few of us know what it means to hunger or thirst in the sense Jesus is talking… People in Jesus day and in that area… they would have heard his words a little differently… a good portion of the world around us still today… would hear these works differently what is it… over 900 Million today go without enough food in our country… I didn’t know this… but over 500k in Oregon experience what they call food insecurity… not having confidence in the how, when, and where of the next meal.

Jesus skips over desire… even priorities… and into one of the most primal and deep motivations there is… HUNGER… and THIRST…

They aren’t emotions… people are often emotional when they're hungry… that's what HANGRY is… but.. Jesus isn’t saying… Hey I need you guys to be emotional about righteousness…

Hunger and thirst… it’s more like an experience… a drive or a craving that sort of wells up from within us…

Hunger and thirst screams of need

Hunger and thirst.. Is our body telling you of an absence of something. That something is missing that is needed… and that it won’t go well if we don’t respond.

And spiritually speaking… when we don’t hunger or thirst… is a sign that we honestly don’t see the need for Jesus… or for righteousness.

Hunger and thirst is a sign of life.

living things experience hunger and thirst… Charles Spurgeon says “to hunger after righteousness is a sign of spiritual life… that part of the new life God gives us is a hunger to do what's right… it's something our old nature never did, never could and never would”.

Hunger and thirst is an indicator of health… right… one of the questions we get asked by medical professionals is… have you lost your appetite, why? Because it's a sign things are working the way they should. And when it returns, it’s a sign of healing.

Spiritually speaking a lack of hunger is a sign that something is out of whack a bit… that adjustments or overhauls are needed.

Hunger and thirst… drive us… motivate us… in ways that move toward action in ways that only hunger and thirst can. A person that is truly starving has a single all consuming passion for food and water… their life is driven by it… depends on it.

Jesus says… pursue... righteousness like that…

David says…

Psalm 63:1 (NLT)

1 O God, you are my God;

I earnestly search for you.

My soul thirsts for you;

my whole body longs for you

in this parched and weary land

where there is no water.

An ache for righteousness…

Notice that

Jesus didn’t say blessed are the righteous. He could have… it would have been easier to… and I think that is a critical distinction for us… and a reminder of what really matters to God…

It’s not your performance… it’s not your doing… it's your hunger… your heart for Him. Because he knows where your treasure is… what it is you are motivated for… what it is you drive after… is where your heart is.

That old saying you are what you eat… Jesus says that what we hunger for matters…

Hunger… it can’t really be manufactured… it’s something that happens… but I do think it can be encouraged and induced a bit… right… and thats good news for us.

Go hang out at a bakery.

Buy your neighbors a smoker.

Look at pictures of smoked meats…

You can induce hunger a bit… and I hope we realize that we do this… this is a truthful part of life… right, we do it with porn, with sports, with food, with money, with image…

There are ways that we feed the things we hunger for…

Spend time in the word…

Join a small group

Practice the things Jesus is teaching in the sermon on the mount…

PRAY FOR IT.. PRAY that God would give you a hunger for His word, and for His righteousness in our lives… every time… I have prayed for that honestly… I have never been disappointed.

And I believe that true of righteousness too. There are things we can do to induce the drive and craving for righteousness in our lives…

You can expect that whatever hunger you are inducing in your life will cause an increase in yoru appetite for that thing.

Jesus says what we hunger for matters… and we don’t just hunger for anything…

He says… Hunger and thirst for Righteousness…

I’m guessing we’d agree… that there seems to be a lack of those who truly pursue righteousness… let alone ache for it.

Years ago… it was actually spelt like this…

“rightwiseness”

Which is fairly telling… there is true wisdom in knowing what is right… but simply knowing it is not what Jesus is talking about either. Hungering and thirsting… these deep motives that are a sign of life, of health and that require action…

And this idea of righteousness… has a couple of things to consider.

What it means to become “right” with God. For those who have not come to the point of truly come to putting their faith in Jesus… I think Jesus has been speaking into that…

Recognizing your need for God… is huge.

Coming to this place where we realize our sin is offensive to God, and mourning over it in a way that leads to real change is huge.

And submitting to the leadership of God in our lives is HUGE.

But getting right with God all starts and stops with what Jesus said in John… coming to this place where you realize God loves you so much that even though your sin offends Him, He sent Jesus to take your sin to the cross… so that ALL who believe in Him will NOT perish… but will experience what it means to be right with God… and will experience Heaven.

If you have not come to that place and want to talk about it… will you let me know… even know email me at [e-mail]

Becoming right with God… is not based on your doing, but in believing in Jesus’ doing… but our faith in that.

It also means reflecting His nature…

Micah 6:8

8 He has shown you, O man, what is good.

And what the Lord requires of you.

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.

I love this verse…

That word justly… and our word for righteousness… have a LOT in common… in fact some translations actually translate our word for righteousness as justice in matt 5:6.

When I teach this passage in Micah, here is how I translate it…

God has already told you what He desires and requires… to do what’s truly right, to love what’s truly good… and to walk daily with God.

That's really what God desires and requires… and part of that is to do what's right under God.

Jesus is talking about HUNGER and THIRSTING to be right with God… and to reflect God…

One definition of the word righteousness is right here…

Righteousness means accurately reflecting that which is consistent to the nature of God.

Jesus is talking about Change… Jesus didnt save you so that you’d experience more of the same.

When we come to know Jesus… in part it's coming around to the truth that we have hungered after the wrong things… things that could never satisfy… and this change… is drastic… Jesus Himself illustrates it with the phrase… being born again… lIt’s literally like a new life… everything changes… including what it is we hunger for.

Righteousness is both being right with God and reflecting His nature more and more. That process of change… of growing to reflect the nature of God more and more… the churchy word is sanctification.

Hunger and thirsting… Jesus is saying God desires us to LONG for that change… to ache for it… to become more and more like Jesus… to love the way he loved, to live the way he lived, to serve the way he served, to forgive the way he forgave, to make time for people others wouldn’t, to speak truth…

So much of what the world hungers for doesn’t lead to true satisfaction… so much of it leads to places we’d admit we honestly don’t want to be…

And the truth is… so much of the world's problems would go away if we learned what it meant to truly be HUNGRY… and THIRSTY for God’s righteousness. In our lives, in our families, in our communities, in our churches, in our politics…

Just a few verses later, Jesus says this…

Matthew 5:20 (NIV)

20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The pharisees, they chose to only hear the first part of what Micah said… the part about doing what's right… they left out the parts about loving what is good and walking with God. It was more about results that it was about the heart and Jesus is clearly saying… LOOK, I care! I care about you and not just the result. I don’t want you to experience emotion… or just morality… but I want you to know what it means to be filled… to be full!

And that word… satisfied in our passage… I love this… It actually means… filled. FULL!! Jesus longs for you to be full… Jn. 10:10 he came to give life and give it to the full. Life the way God intends… FREE and FULL.

Walter Mitty found himself in the journey… in the searching…

Jesus didn’t say blessed are the righteous… but blessed are those who hunger for it… and thirst for it. Satisfaction… being filled… is found in the seeking… if we hunger and thirst to be right with God… the doing will take care of itself.

COMMUNION

At the end of our services we provide the opportunity for communion… It’s something Jesus instituted for those who have come to this place of putting their faith in Him. It’s a time where we celebrate… remember… and sort of meditate on the deep meaning of what Jesus told us in Jn. 3:16… that God loves you so much he didn’t abandon you to let sin have its way with you… but he intervened… He sent his only son to take your sin and nail it to the cross… that those who believe in Jesus… who see their need… will not perish but have everlasting life…

And so we take the juice and the bread… remembering His death… that leads to real FULLNESS…

So if you’d like to participate, during the next two songs, there is communion on the back table, please keep social distancing in mind... and take it whenever our ready

Lets pray.