6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Here in Canada/America - we don't really know what it means to be hungry and thirsty. To us hunger is when it's 1pm and we still haven't eaten when we're used to eating at noon. That's not hunger.
Food and water are necessities and when we are denied them for any large amount of time, we become absolutely desperate for them. The need and desire for food and water becomes all-consuming.
MacArthur reads a story in his sermon, Happy are the Hungry....
"Driving up from Beersheba, a combined force of British Australians and New Zealanders were pressing on the rear of the Turkish retreat over arid desert. The attack outdistanced its water carrying camel train." In other words, they got so far ahead of their water, they were separated. "The water bottles were empty, the sun blazed pitilessly out of a sky where the vultures wheeled about expectantly. Our heads ached," writes Major Gilbert, "our eyes became bloodshot and dim in the blinding glare. Our tongues began to swell. Our lips turned to a purplish black and begin to burst.
Those who dropped out of the column were never seen again, but the desperate force struggled on to Sheria. There were wells at Sheria and had they been unable to take the place by nightfall, thousands were doomed to die of thirst. And so we fought that day," writes Major Gilbert, "as men fought for their lives. We entered Sheria's station on the heels of the retreating Turks. The first objects which met our view were the great stone cisterns full of cold, clear, drinking water. And in the still night air, the sound of water running into the tanks could be distinctly heard maddening in its nearness. Yet not a man murmured when orders were given for the battalions to fall in two deep facing the cisterns.
He describes the stern priorities, the wounded, those on guard duty, then company by company. It took four hours before the last man had his drink of water. And in all that time, they had been standing 20 feet from a low stone wall on the other side of which were thousands of gallons of water. I believe," Major Gilbert concludes, "that we all learned our first real Bible lesson on the march from Beersheba to Sheria wells. If such were our thirst for God and for righteousness, for His will in our life, a consuming, all embracing, preoccupying desire, how rich in the fruit of the spirit would we be."
Do we have that all -consuming, all embracing, preoccupying desire for righteousness, for God?Martin Lloyd Jones writes...
This Beatitude follows logically from the previous ones. It is a statement to which all the others lead. It is the logical conclusion to which they come. It is something for which we should all be profoundly thankful and grateful to God. I do not know of a better test that anyone can apply to himself or herself in this whole matter of the Christian profession than a verse like this. If this verse is to you one of the most blessed statements of the whole of Scripture, you can be quite certain you're a Christian. If it is not, you had better examine your foundations again.
MacArthur...
Because if you have been broken in your spirit and are overwhelmed with your sinfulness and you mourn over your sinfulness and then you look up to recognize the holiness of God, the response should be that you hunger and thirst for what He has that you need. And if you do not hunger and thirst after righteousness, you are not a citizen of God's kingdom. Our society chases all the wrong things, you see. They chase money, materialism, fame, popularity, pleasure, usually all because of greed, not need, but it's all the wrong stuff. And you know the sad part of it is, even though the United States grants us the pursuit of happiness, people don't find it, because they define happiness in a wrong way.... Here it says, happiness is brokenness, happiness is mourning, happiness is meekness, happiness is hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
But you'll notice the response to each of those. Look back at verse 3 again. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They shall be comforted. They shall inherit the earth. They shall be filled." Isn't that fabulous? If you sum that all up, you know what you get? You get everything there is. You're filled, you inherit the earth, you're comforted and you inherit the kingdom of heaven. That's fabulous. In other words, on God's condition everything is going to be yours. And here's the point, the world is working like mad to gain material things to gain money, to gain all of this stuff, when if they came into God's kingdom on His terms, they'd get it all in the end anyway. Right? It's the whole point..... In other words, it's available as a gift. You just can't earn it.
You want to be happy? Hunger for salvation, hunger to be saved, hunger to have the blood of Christ cleanse your sin. Hunger to have the righteousness of Christ applied to you. Hunger to have your sin forgiven...Then you hunger and thirst for sanctification for an increasing holiness. ..No matter how much you love, you ought to love more. No matter how much you pray, you ought to pray more. No matter how much you obey, you ought to obey more. No matter how much you think like Christ, you ought to think like Christ more. This should be the consuming desire.
You hunger and thirst and you're satisfied, but never really satisfied. Maybe it's this way, have you ever had that really great pie your wife makes? I mean, the best pie. My wife makes a good lemon pie, it's a special kind. And I'm always so satisfied when I eat that pie. But I always want more. I'm full usually because it's after dinner, but I always want more, because the taste and the fulfillment and the satisfaction of what I've already taken makes me want more. And so I'm satisfied but I'm not satisfied. So it is with righteousness - we are filled and the filling is so sweet and so rich and so full that there's more that we desire.
So Jesus is saying this, you can tell a kingdom person. He has a consuming ambition, not for power or pleasure, not for possessions or praise, but for righteousness.
Isn't that a beautiful picture?
How do we know if we're hungering and thirsting after righteousness? MacArthur has some test questions for us....
Are you dissatisfied with yourself? Or are you so self-righteous that you think everybody else is wrong and you're right. Ask yourself, are you dissatisfied with yourself? That's a symptom of someone who hungers and thirsts after righteousness.
does anything external satisfy you? one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness will not and cannot be satisfied with anything else.
do you have a great appetite for the word of God? If you're hungering and thirsting after righteousness, you will have such an appetite for the word that you will devour it. You never...I've never seen anybody beg a hungry man to eat. Have you?
are the things of God sweet to you? I can tell somebody hungering and thirsting after righteousness because when God brings devastation in their life, they're filled and satisfied because they know it's God, even though it's painful.
ask yourself if your hunger or thirst is unconditional. ..A hungry man does not want food and a new suit. A thirsty man does not want food and a new pair of shoes. He could care less about the suit and the shoes. Just give him the food and the water.
Wow, this is a long post - and that was just on one verse! I think I'll do another post about the other verse a bit later...
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Matthew 5:8-9
1 comment:
Very good thoughts here.
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