As we continue through the study, we'll be looking at verse 6 this morning, Matthew 5 verse 6.
Let's read the text and then we'll ask the Lord to help us this morning.
The Lord Jesus speaking to a crowd on that day says,
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Would you bow with me in prayer?
Heavenly Father, Lord, this morning,
Lord, as we step into the pulpit and behind what we call the sacred desk,
Lord, there is a, almost a fear.
Lord, God, help me this morning.
God, go before me, Lord, I pray for the aid and help and comfort of your spirit.
Lord, our job as preachers of your gospel
is to put forth Christ crucified and risen again and every man complete in him.
Would you help me to do that this morning?
Would you help me, Father, by your spirit
to preach the glorious gospel of grace that centers in your Son?
Lord, God, I would ask, Lord, this morning
that there would be rapt attention not to my words but from heaven itself.
Lord, God, help us as you would meet with us, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
The Puritan Thomas Watson said this, he said,
Desire is the discovery of a Christian.
Now think with me.
The desire, your desires, is the discovery of a Christian.
What did he mean by that?
Well, let me ask a few questions.
What is it that drives your life?
What does your heart really desire?
If you can think about what you most long for,
what is it that you spend most of your time thinking of and about?
And the reason that is so important is because
what you desire actually explains your heart.
Desire is the discovery of a Christian.
How do you know what's in your heart?
Well, look at what you desire most.
Because your desires will reveal what your heart is set upon.
Your desires reveal what your heart is actually cherishing.
And what your heart cherishes drives your life.
It's what sets the trajectory of your life.
And whatever it is that is driving your life is your God.
Now that's true functionally, not necessarily confessionally.
Now let me make that clear.
You can have an orthodox, correct confession concerning Christ,
meaning what you say about Christ,
what you say you believe about Christ is correct.
But it is your desires that will reveal who or what you truly worship.
In other words, what you long for reveals your God.
It reveals what you cherish.
And everyone worships something, everyone,
because we have been created by a relational God
who created us as worshiping beings.
Now there can be atheists and there are people who say they're atheists,
but they still worship.
Now they do it unknowingly.
But think with me even of the gods of modernity,
the gods of our culture.
Our culture cherishes, prizes, esteems independence,
self-expression in whatever form,
autonomy over the individual,
and of course pleasure at all costs.
Our culture bows down at the altar of self and the altar of happiness.
They are absolutely obsessed with self-expression and personal fulfillment.
That's what our culture prizes.
And people spend massive amounts of money to pursue those gods.
They spend massive amounts of money in entertainment and amusement.
And why are they doing that?
Because they want to be happy.
And so what they're doing, they're pursuing personal fulfillment
with no abandon, whatever it takes.
However, this hedonistic pursuit of pleasure proves to be futile.
Ironically, when one pursues happiness as the goal of your life,
you will find happiness to be elusive.
You seek happiness.
That's what you want.
You will not find it there.
And the more you try to find happiness,
the more trouble you actually have in finding it.
Why?
Because just look at our culture.
Sadly, what they are pursuing cannot offer the satisfaction
that they are really looking for.
It's very similar to a man who has a severe illness,
and he has all kinds of symptoms, and he goes to the doctor
and all he wants is relief of the symptoms.
Now, could a doctor do that?
He could give him medicine, relieve his symptoms,
but if he doesn't treat the underlying cause,
that man is no better off.
In fact, he's worse.
How is he worse?
Well, let's say he gets immediate relief of his symptoms.
So the problem would seem to be better,
but the ailment, the illness is still there
and is actually growing worse.
So when someone pursues self-satisfaction,
they pursue personal fulfillment,
they may get some short-term relief.
All right?
I mean, after all, the Bible says there is pleasure in sin
for a season.
There is a trade-off.
There's some pleasure that's given.
But that pleasure, that short-term relief,
causes them to become anesthetized to their real problem.
Well, they begin to think they're okay
because that longing is now temporarily satisfied,
but the problem that's underlying,
the real disease is still there,
and it's growing worse each day.
And we don't have to spend a lot of time on this.
It is self-evident that a lot of people from all parts of the world,
they're looking for happiness.
Where?
In our country, it's an epidemic of drugs.
I mean, drugs are everywhere.
It's ubiquitous.
Alcohol, sex, relationships, beauty, entertainment, sports,
and try as they might, they're becoming increasingly unhappier.
I think the quintessential example of this would be Hollywood.
I mean, these people, they have beauty.
They're beautiful people, and they're powerful,
and they have money, and they seek after pleasure.
They give themselves to it,
but there's no lasting satisfaction there.
Drug abuse, overdose, divorce, suicide,
all of those are extremely prevalent there.
But the question this morning, what is causing all this unhappiness?
What's causing all this angst, if you will?
And my suggestion to you, it is there's a hyper-intense focus on self.
The problem with man, according to Jesus, is his heart.
And we're talking about heart, we're not talking about the organ.
The heart is the driving force of life.
So from the heart, we are told, all the issues of life come from that.
Sinful man, born that way, has a sinful heart,
and that sinful heart produces sinful desires.
So here's the problem, is that man is naturally seeking after
and desiring the wrong things.
They're looking for satisfaction, if you will, in all the wrong places.
It was St. Augustine who famously said,
our hearts are restless until they come to find their rest in thee.
There's a restlessness, there's an angst, and we feel it.
And we look around, we see it in the culture.
But you're saying, well, of course, lost people are looking for answers
and satisfaction in all the wrong places.
Of course that's true, and it is, but God's people are not immune to this either.
You see it over and over in the Old Testament.
I think in Jeremiah's day, when Jeremiah wrote this, he said,
God's speaking through the prophet.
For my people, they committed two evils.
They have forsaken me, that's the greatest evil, the fountain of living waters,
and they've hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Now consider how foolish this was of this nation.
They're thirsty, it's an arid desert climate.
They have a fountain of flowing water that's available to them.
That's what they would want.
Yet they ignore it, and they go to some broken cistern
that is incapable of holding any water.
So the very thing that people needed and wanted was available to them.
But what's happening?
They're looking in the wrong place.
They had forsaken the fountain of living waters.
It's very much like a hungry man who keeps feeding on the trash heaps of the world
while he ignores an invitation to feast at the table of the king.
It's just foolishness here.
But we come to our text now in Matthew 5-6,
and Jesus tells us where lasting satisfaction is actually found.
Everyone hungers, and everyone gets thirsty.
But Jesus pronounces a blessing on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Now again, it's a seemingly odd benediction.
Jesus' blessing, he's pronouncing a blessing, and he says,
happy, and that Greek word is merkadias.
It's favored by God.
The blessed man is happy because he's favored by God,
but who is this blessed, favored man?
The one who's hungry and thirsty.
But it's hungry and thirsty for righteousness.
Now this is the fourth beatitude, and they naturally flow.
Remember the first one is the poor in spirit.
The very first person Jesus said is blessed is the blessed or the poor in spirit.
That is the man or the woman who realizes they have no righteousness.
They are spiritually bankrupt.
And as they begin to grow in that understanding, that leads him to mourn.
Blessed are they who mourn.
It leads him to mourn and grieve over the sinful condition.
I am not righteous. I cannot make myself righteous.
And they mourn.
And then that humbles them.
I can't fix the problem.
And that's the meek.
And there's a disposition of meekness that is formed.
And the meek, they become humble, and they take this lowly place before God.
And having been changed by God, new appetites begin to form.
They begin to be hungry and thirsty again, but not for food and drink,
rather for righteousness.
Now the question that's really important is what is this righteousness that Jesus is blessing?
Now some will say, well clearly it's the imputed righteousness of Christ
given to the sinner in salvation.
Now that's a true statement, but that doesn't fit the context.
We have to be careful. That's not used in Matthew's Gospel that way at all.
So the word for righteousness in Greek, it's dikaiosune.
Dikaiosune.
It is often used with the concept of justice.
You could even maybe use the word equity there if you wanted.
So how this term is used in Matthew's Gospel,
it's used to describe living in a right relationship with God and other people.
Acting justly, acting honestly, acting faithfully according to God's instructions.
That's the definition of righteousness here.
So there's twofold, and I want to look at both of these briefly.
The first one would be justice.
We could even refer to social justice, but I don't like that term.
So here's what this means.
God's people, you and I, we live in an unjust world.
The strong, the powerful, they run roughshod over the poor and the weak.
I mean, there's so much injustice in our world, and we don't have to look far to find it.
Those who should be caring for the poor and the marginalized,
they exploit them for their own advantage.
Our leaders, both political, civic, and sometimes religious,
they are often bought off, bribed by special interest groups or lobbyists,
interested in only patting their own pockets.
So in our day today, it seems like the wicked seem to prosper,
and yet they defiantly live in rebellion to God and to his law.
But not the righteous.
The righteous that Jesus is speaking of long for the day when this will be no more.
We long for the day when the wicked will be removed and God's kingdom will come in its fullness,
and we no longer live in an unjust land.
We long for that day when righteousness covers the earth, as the Old Testament says.
So yeah, we long to be righteous personally, but we long for justice everywhere.
We long for just laws and just people when the wrong will be made right.
But what's the meek doing?
The meek is crying out. They're suffering in this age.
Often they're righteous, often those who do good, often those who are named by Christ suffer in this age,
and they're crying out for justice, for righteousness.
And God will answer their prayer in Luke chapter 18, Jesus speaking.
And shall God not avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him, though he bears long with them?
You have these elect, you have these people of God, they're crying out because of all the injustice,
and it says God is bearing long, he's being very patient with them.
He says, I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.
When the day of judgment comes, it comes quickly.
It falls like a hammer.
And Jesus said, blessed are those who are hungry right now and thirsty for righteousness.
It's a longing for the kingdom to come, and that's what we pray as the saints.
We pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And Jesus said, by the way, you're going to be fulfilled.
You're going to feed, you may be hungry right now, you may be thirsty right now,
but there's a feast coming in the age to come, and you're going to partake of it.
That's the first way. It's a social aspect.
Secondly, there's a personal aspect.
It's a personal righteousness, not only for justice in the earth, but you want to be righteous yourself.
If you know Christ this morning, you long to be obedient to God.
That doesn't mean you always are. Of course you're not.
That's why we have a confession of sin each Lourdes Day.
We long, though, for right actions and right thoughts before God.
We long for the day when we will be free of sin.
We hate it. We hate the struggle.
So those who are hungering and thirsting for righteousness,
it's a hunger and a thirst to be made more and more like Christ.
Now this is not the self-righteousness.
So many people criticize the church for hypocrites.
Listen, the Pharisees of Jesus' day were hypocrites.
They were self-righteous, and we loathe that.
We disdain that.
But we do long for inward righteousness.
We do long for inward obedience to God.
That great British preacher, Martin Lloyd-Jones, wrote this.
He said, 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 are a Christian.
If it is not, then you had better examine the foundations again.
What he's saying there, if you don't have a hunger and a thirst for righteousness,
you might want to check and say, do you know the righteous Lord?
See, the character of the Christian is that he longs for holiness.
He desires it.
There's an intense desire to be like Christ.
The Holy Spirit has taken up residence within you,
and you want to be conformed to the image of your Lord.
But you say, but pastor, I still wrestle with sin.
Yeah, welcome to the club. So do I.
We wrestle. We battle against the flesh.
We feel the flesh in its pull toward unrighteousness.
Let's be honest, sometimes we lose the temptation.
Sometimes we get unjustly angry or wickedly impatient.
But the constant desires of the Lord free me from that.
I want to be more like your son.
That's why in Romans 7 you and I can identify,
we cry out with the apostle Paul what he wrote at the end of that chapter,
oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?
And then he answers his own question, I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord.
We long to be like Christ. We're not there though.
But let me say this, part of the problem that many Christians have no spiritual appetite
is because you are full of other things.
Schedules, and I see this and I really lament and mourn for this.
Schedules of Christian families are so packed,
there is little room to cultivate a relationship with Christ.
You will not and cannot hurry holiness.
Far too many Christians have no margin in their lives at all.
Everyone's life is spent on the go today.
But wisdom, you can't hurry up wisdom.
You cannot pursue wisdom and holiness and growth and grace when every spare moment of your life is spent on a ball field.
It just can't happen.
That not only hurts your family, and it does, but it greatly hinders your walk with Christ.
So longing for righteousness, it's a longing for what God wants, to seek first his kingdom, his righteousness.
Let me ask you a few questions and just answer these privately here.
Do you and your family, do you have time to linger at a dinner table as a family?
Just to linger, to enjoy each other.
Do you have time to read the Bible or at least sing a hymn as a family?
Do you have time to catechize or educate your children in the faith?
Or you're like, well pastor, this is not the season, those things just seem impossible, we're just too busy.
Too busy is a detriment to the hunger and thirst that our Lord pronounces a blessing upon.
We're too full of other things.
You cannot fill up your lives with insignificant things and still expect a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Now this doesn't mean, I'm not living sinfully, I'm not saying you are.
You can have your life full of other things.
They're not sinful, but they're not important.
I think we need to go back and take what Jesus said seriously in Mark 4.
Listen to the words of our Lord.
This is so very important.
Now these are the ones, he's talking about the seed that's sown and it says at the end, it says,
they spring up, but the cares of this world, let me just read the verse.
These are the ones sown among the thorns.
They are the ones who hear the word, so they hear the word, they're not antagonistic toward it.
And the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, some are pursuing riches.
But look at that last phrase, and the desires for other things entering in, what's it do?
It chokes the word, suffocates it, so that it produces no fruit.
It becomes unfruitful.
So these people, Jesus, he's not saying, these are not the antagonistic ones.
They're not the ones who hate Christ or his gospel.
They hear it, oh, it's okay, it's good, I assent to that.
But it's not the priority for them because they desire other things.
And that's what I want you to look at, that desire for other things, what does that do?
It chokes out the word of God.
And Jesus would say, if you have ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church.
Friends, you must, if you are going to hunger and thirst, you must develop an appetite
by making Lord's Day worship the priority for you and your family.
The priority.
If you're going to seek first, it has to be the priority.
God's not going to bargain with you.
You don't sit at the table and say, well, how about this?
No.
I love what Joel Beeke said.
He said, we need the Sabbath, the Lord's Day, so that the weeds of worldly cares and concerns
do not choke the word and smother the hope that is ours in Christ.
Friends, you live in enemy territory, hostile.
You need to have a wartime mentality.
And this has got to be the priority or else you don't really believe the word.
You're thinking, smooth sailing, right?
Jesus is my homeboy.
We're good.
No, you're not.
We need to live our lives in light of eternity every day.
Martin Luther, that famous reformer, he said, there are two days written on my calendar.
This day meaning today and that day meaning judgment day.
This day and that day.
That's it.
So what did he mean?
He meant we should all live in the light now of how God will judge our choices then.
Do you stop and think about that?
William Law, he was an 18th century British theologian, he said, if you attempt to talk
with a dying man about sports or business, he's not interested.
He now sees other things as more important.
People who are dying recognize what we often forget, that we are standing on the brink of
another world.
I can't help and bringing it to you this morning, my good friend Scott Bowling that went to
be at the award several years ago now, he and I had several private conversations and
he said, Ryan, I wish he was dying.
He said, I wish, I wish, I wish that people could see life the way I see it now.
Death has a way of clarifying priorities.
That's him.
He's a dying man.
That's what he told me.
There's a medical doctor named Dr. Richard Swenson and Zach Herberlin recommended this
book and I recommend it to you.
It's A Minute of Margin, Restoring Balance to Busy Lives.
So he wrote a reflection of those who were in the World Trade Center on that fateful
day, September 11, 2001.
Let me just read this.
He said, when you have 10 minutes to live, what are your thoughts?
What is important in the last seconds?
As a tribute to those nameless faces staring down at us from the smoky inferno, he said,
can we stop what we are doing long enough to listen to them?
Seeing death from this perspective is not morbid, rather it helps us to see life.
Those on that day who found phones, they didn't call their stockbrokers to check the latest
ticker, nor their hairstylists to cancel the afternoon's appointment.
They didn't call their insurance agents to check coverage levels.
They called spouses to say, I love you, one last time.
They called children to say, you are precious, one last time.
They called their parents to say, thank you, one last time.
Through tears, they made phone calls to best friends and neighbors and pastors and priests
and rabbis, I just want you to know what you mean to me.
And surely, those standing on the brink of another world thought of God, thought of truth
and eternity, judgment and redemption, grace and the gospel.
Even at death has a commanding power to straighten life's priorities with a jolt.
At such dramatic moments, people suddenly realize priorities matter.
If that were you on the 103rd floor on that day, what would have been your priorities?
Now, live like that today.
Live like that today.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, both social and personal.
But if you're not hungering and you're not thirsting, well, when you have no appetite,
it's a sign of sickness.
If you're physically ill and someone offers you a pizza, you have no appetite for it.
You don't want a big Coke and you don't want a bag of chips, you're sick, your appetite's gone.
And far too many have lost their spiritual appetite because they're sick.
In our culture, we don't know much about hungering and thirsting.
Why?
We have overflowing cupboards and we have overflowing refrigerators.
But not at the time which Jesus spoke.
It was very different.
People were often hungry.
Some starved to death.
Wages were low.
The people couldn't afford to buy food and they couldn't work.
They lived in a desert climate.
Sun is scorching.
Windstorms were frequent.
So thirst was always with them.
They were always thirsty.
Jesus is speaking to that crowd.
And he said the words here, when he's using these words of hungering and thirsting,
he's not talking about like you and I.
He's talking about people who are starving to death.
You're parched.
You desperately need water.
And he says, hey, you're blessed.
I'll fill you up.
You'll be filled.
To us, when we say hunger, it means a time between breakfast and lunch.
I mean, probably rarely any of us have time to get hungry.
But we've never known starvation hunger. Maybe someone has that I'm unaware of.
But Jesus said if you have an intense, an intense laser-like desire for righteousness,
man, you are blessed of the Lord because you're going to be filled.
And that word filled, it's a Greek word, hortazzo, and it literally means you're going to be gorged.
It was used in the farming industry for feeding animals.
They could stay at the trough until they wanted nothing more.
You could stay there all day until you're completely satisfied.
So this person with this intense desire for righteousness,
we will be filled to overflowing in the age to come.
He's not just promising a meal, folks.
He's promising a feast, a feast that you can partake of until your heart is content.
God's people may hunger now, but they will feast later.
And we need to keep in mind God is not stingy with his rewards.
These verbs are in the present tense, meaning it's continual hunger and thirst.
This is not a one-time event, one and done. No.
It's not you eat one meal and you're full forever.
We come to Jesus. Who is it? He's the bread of life.
And he satisfies our hunger. And he's the water of life.
And he satisfies our thirst. But after you know him, you know what you want to do?
You meet Jesus. You want to know him better.
You keep wanting to, you long for more of him, more holiness in our lives.
Phil Newton, I think that quote is up there, guys, if you can find it on the slides.
Phil Newton said this, what you hunger for reveals the character of your heart.
You can mask your outward performance.
You can churn out Christian lingo and put on a happy face, but you know what you really desire.
Multitudes flock into churches each week with Christian masks
that hide the reality that their appetite is not for Jesus Christ, but for the things of the world.
But Jesus tells us that only those who have the spiritual appetite to hunger and thirst for righteousness
will find satisfaction. So many people are miserable today.
They're pining, they're longing, they're hungering, they're thirsting, but all for the wrong thing.
They keep going to the broken cisterns that can hold no water.
But notice the promise again. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, there's fulfillment.
You will be satisfied. But how can you tell? How do you know?
I don't know if I'm hungering and thirsting. We're starting to close here.
Bruce Hurt in his commentary gives three ways. He said, one,
there's an increasing desire to know and obey the word of God.
Psalm 42, Tim Moot's favorite song.
As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God, when shall I come and appear before God?
Can you read that with conviction? My soul thirsts for you?
Spurgeon says, like a deer that has been hunted in the chase and is hard pressed and therefore pants for breath,
so did the psalmist pant for the entrance of God's word into his soul.
Nothing else could content him. All that the world could yield him left him still panting with an open mouth.
Amen. Number two, there is an increasing love of the things that God loves and a hatred of the things that God hates.
To know God is to love God and it's also to hate the things that God hates.
Number three, there is a growing longing to do God's will.
As I started, I said, what you hunger for shows your heart.
Those who have a hunger for righteousness, Jesus said you'll find satisfaction, you'll be filled.
And what is he referring to? Inward satisfaction, contentment.
Isn't that what we all want? Inner contentment, inner satisfaction.
When was the last time you could say your soul was really content?
And again, I want to quote Martyn Lloyd-Jones because he's so worth quoting. Are we filled?
Have we got this satisfaction? Are we aware of this dealing of God with us?
Is the fruit of the Spirit being manifest in our lives? Are we concerned about that?
Are we experiencing love to God and to other people, joy and peace?
Are we manifesting long-suffering, goodness and gentleness and meekness and faith and temperance?
They that do hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled. They are filled and they are being filled.
Do we know that we have received the life of God? Are we enjoying the life of God in our souls?
For if we do hunger and thirst, we shall be filled. There is no qualification at all.
It's an absolute statement. It's an absolute promise.
Friends, listen. A feast is promised to you.
But there is one prerequisite to enter into this feast. You come hungering and thirsting.
I love the way Isaiah in his preaching gave this wonderful gospel invitation.
Isaiah 55, ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Now he knows what you're thinking. You have no money.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me. Eat what is good and let your soul delight itself in abundance.
Incline your ear and come to me. Here and your soul shall live.
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the sure mercies of David.
God giving this wonderful invitation, he said, listen, satisfaction is found in me. Come to me.
And there's two closing considerations here.
Number one, unless you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you'll never have it.
Listen carefully. God does not give his blessings to those who do not desire them. They're too precious.
He's not going to cast his pearls before swine. So what are you desiring?
So I would say this. There's my pastoral exhortation to the people gathered this morning.
Beg God. Beg him to give you a hunger and thirst for his righteousness that will only be satisfied by him.
God make me hungry, make me thirsty for you.
Secondly, if you don't thirst now, you will thirst later. It'll be too late.
David in Psalm 42, he said he thirsted for God. He had this intense desire for God and the things of God.
And he found satisfaction. But there was a rich man. Compare him in Luke 16.
There was a rich man and he had all that his soul desired here.
He was a very rich man, a very wealthy man. And yet he was content to leave God in the periphery of his life.
Not an atheist, but he lived in luxury. He had no need. He had abundance on this earth.
But he died and being in the flames of hell's torment. And he said, I thirst.
But it was too late. Happy, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
For they are the ones who are going to be satisfied.
I would say this to everyone here. A fountain of living waters is offered to you.
And I beg of you, don't turn to those broken cisterns that can't hold any water.
If you're hungry today and you're thirsty and you're a sinner, come to Christ.
You will find true, and I mean lasting satisfaction.
Hear the words of Jesus, the risen Son of God.
I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.
And whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Do you believe that? Come and take him at his word.
Let's prepare our heart to commune with this gracious God who's given us everything.
Everything in his Son. Let us remember and commune with our great and risen Lord.
Father, help us this morning, I pray, as we enter in this time of communion.
Lord, prepare our hearts for it. We pray in Jesus' blessed name. Amen.
Deacons, if you would come.
And then after communion, I'm normal or civil.