The Right Desires
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Intro: Let me begin by asking you all a question. If there was one thing in your life that could be permanently fixed right now and , what would it be?
Some major repair in your house?
Some lingering health issue? Maybe a bad habit?
Some work project that beyond damage control?
A broken marriage, or wayward child?
If you are a student—a bad grade that’s really going to hurt you?
A lingering health issue of some sort?
Or maybe the suffering of someone you love.
Whatever that one thing is, is likely something really, really important to us.
Now our oven and fridge both need fixed, but would not make my list; they are not the most important things in my world.
As human beings, one thing that is broken that we should want fixed permanently is our desires
All of our sin begins at the desire level—
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
When a person comes to Christ, their desires change and are renewed—but still remain in a state of conflict
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
**The beattitudes we are looking at today are about right desires
Righteousness, Mercy, and Purity
*If we are going to go deep in our discipleship, we will need to take very serious our desires.
**Again, just as a reminder that every beatitude will only grow in us by the grace and enablement of God—these are “spiritual fruits”
Dive in:
DESIRING RIGHTEOUSNESS (V6)
DESIRING RIGHTEOUSNESS (V6)
Jesus uses language of desire all humans can relate to—hunger and thirst. We all desire to eat and drink.
We all have favorite foods....and know that coffee only tastes good if it’s made well and black (unadulterated)
As in other beatitudes, Jesus takes something natural we can all relate—and turns it to prove a spiritual reality
We see this metaphor in the psalms to describe spiritual hunger
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.
Apply: At the most basic point this shows us the value of spiritual hunger, and asks if it even exists.
Are you hungry for spiritual things?
The most pressing question:
What kind of righteousness is this?
The Bible describes several (Legal, moral, social—Stott)
Legal=justification. Right standing with God (the kind described in Romans)
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Legal righteousness is the righteousness that God bestows by faith in his Son.
Moral=Right living before God—a desire to see God’s Word obeyed and applied to every area of life
Social=when a society, culture does what is right; usually tied to righteous leaders (Prov 14:35) “Righteousness exalts a nation” or “the throne is established by righteousness” (Prov 16:12)
A disciple who has a right standing with God through believing the Gospel—will also have a strong desire to live right before God, and pray, work, crave that the society followed after righteousness.
In context, this seems to stress the moral righteousness—or what is called sanctification
Lloyd-Jones
“In other words, the desire for righteousness, the act of hungering and thirsting for it, means ultimately the desire to be free from sin in all its forms and its every manifestation”
That’s what this hunger is about…..and it’s the normal state a disciple
Apply: Jesus used words of desire to drive this home. Hunger and thirst, or we sometimes say “crave”
**If you have ever been pregnant or lived with one—crave
When Em was pregnant with one of our kids, she craved milkshakes at 10PM
Do you crave to be free from in all its forms in your own life?
Also, this promises enjoyment “filled/satisfied”
“Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
**The normal appetite for the disciple is to be spiritually satisfied—in God and what Jesus offers.
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
The normal state for a disciple is satisfied—enjoying God and living for him
That’s the acid test here: do you enjoy God and living for him?
Practically, what does this look like; how do we know
MJ-J suggests a few basic things
That we give our best time (as opposed to leftovers)
—With God, His Word, and Prayer
—With other believers in church and in community
—With good reading and listening material that promote our spiritual growth
Apply: Do we give our best time to things that increase our spiritual appetite; hunger for Christ and being more like him?
Are you enjoying your Christian life? Or does is come across as mere duty, or even an unhappy burden.?
DESIRING MERCY (V7)
DESIRING MERCY (V7)
Illus: Funerals can tell a lot about how a person lived. Not necessarily due to what is said at the eulogy, but who shows up….or who does not.
I was asked to help officiate a funeral once for a man who had such a strained relationship with his pastor, and even his family.
There was such an awkward silence
It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
The natural disposition of mankind is not to be merciful..sometimes it only expoed at the end of a life
How do we define mercy?
-First, look to God
When God revealed himself in Ex 34:6, mercy is highlighted
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
Grace and mercy seem to be overlapping ideas;
Yet grace tends deal more with guilt, where mercy deals more with misery
The clearest illustration the Good Samaritans, who is characterized as “one who showed mercy” (Lk 10:37)
—Mercy is disposition toward others that desires to see people lifted out of their misery
Not merely desires, but acts
Apply:
Now For mercy to work well inside of us—we have to get past our naturally tendency to judge.
That’s a major lesson in the Good Samaritan
***Our world is not friend to mercy —it’s very hostile to mercy.
The natural response is revenge, bite back.—take it to the courts. Write people off, cancel them.
Question for us—we will follow this world, or live counter-culturally?
Mercy is “Pity in Action” —
Mercy moves beyond the emotion to action
Gospel:
When Jesus came to this earth, it was an act of pure mercy.
God did not close his heart to pity (Ps 17:10)
Jesus is God’s pity is action.
Even to his dying words: “Father, forgive them; My God, why have you forsaken me?
It is finished!”
God desires to lift people like you and me out of our misery that our sins have caused
But we have to look to Jesus.
If you have not looked to Jesus in faith, to receive mercy…I urge you today
Finally, the ability to respond in mercy comes from God
I’ve heard some powerful stories of people who because of their faith in Jesus Christ, were able to extend mercy in some unthinkable situations.
**I’ve also knows others to grow cold and bitter because they were not merciful
**Withholding mercy is one of those self-inflicting wounds; someone can think they are causing pain to another—but they are deceived—they misery turns on them
A man who is kind benefits himself,
but a cruel man hurts himself.
Apply: Think of your funeral. Will the people who show up do so because you were a merciful person? That you life was live from an overflow of the tender mercy of God you experienced through Jesus?
DESURING PURITY (V8)
DESURING PURITY (V8)
The final desire, and one that captures all right desires, is the desire for purity in the heart
In the Bible, heart is not the emotions, but what motives us—Heart is about the desires.
We need to think back the context when Jesus preached this; the religious leaders at were very focused on externals—keeping things clean on the outside, follow ritual washings, food laws.
*The Jews were overly scrupulous about ritual purity—
Jesus told folks—that’s not the main thing to be concerned with
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”
This was no new teaching—Psalm 24:4-5
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.
He will receive blessing from the Lord
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
Purity is about character and motives
John Calvin tied it to being fee from deceit
“Purity of heart is universally acknowledged to be the mother of all virtues…..he pronounces those to be happy who have no delight in cunning, but converse sincerely with men, and express nothing by word or look, which they do not feel in their heart”
Godly sincerity
Apply: The practical test then.
--Our honesty.
--Do we slander, backbite
—nice to someone face, but secretly dislike them.
—Do we wear different “masks” around different people?
—Do we use others, have ulterior motives?
—Are we the same person at home, behind closed doors as we are in public.
—Is there a private life that we would be so ashamed if it was exposed?
Those expose where our true desires lay.
Sum: Having the right desires is countercultural—because the reward is.
Seeing God.
For they shall see God.Rev 22:4-5
They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
This is the reward, and ultimate motivator of every right desire.
*And every right desire begins with the right heart
Conclusion:
Someone asked me a great question recently: How do I decide what to preach on?
Great question—66 books; 1189 chapters; over 31,000 verses
First, I try to preach “The Whole counsel of God”
But the main answers is very simple: I pray and ask God what our hearts need—what my own heart needs
Even as we’ve covered these beatitudes so far, I’ve realized how my heart needs this.
Even as a Christian, I know my desires are constantly at war, and in constant need of gospel repair.
As I look at these beatitudes, I know how none of them come “naturally” to me.
But thanks be to God, by his grace he is transforming us—degree by degree into the image of his blessed Son, our Lord and King.