Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
December 30, 1984
Hunger and Thirst After Righteousness
Matthew 5:6 (NIV)
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness …" Have you ever been hungry? I would have to say that I never have. I have been on diets, and there have been some afternoons when all I could find in the pantry were some stale Pop Tarts - but I've never known what it's like to be truly hungry or thirsty. I can be very thankful that I live in a country where the majority of people have more than enough to eat.
Other parts of the world aren't so fortunate. The famines in Ethiopia and Chad have been well publicized lately. The TV news programs show sickening pictures of starving people lining up for gruel dished out by relief agencies. For water they may have to hike ten miles with a bucket. 150 million people in Africa alone know what it is like to be hungry and thirsty. This is the kind of hunger and thirst Jesus is talking about. It is not the type which can be satisfied with a mid-morning stack. It is the hunger of a man who is starving for food, and the thirst of a man who will die unless he gets something to drink. Physical hunger has always been a tragedy for mankind. It is especially tragic what you think that there are people in our own country who did not get enough to eat. However, Jesus is talking about a different kind of hunger here. It is a spiritual hunger. He is saying that you should want to be righteous just as much as a starving person wants to be fed. It is ironic that many of the best-fed people are actually famine victims in Jesus' eyes.
The important question concerns that kind of righteousness we are supposed to be starving for. To many people, someone who is righteous is a prude or is narrow-minded - the kind of person who turns up their nose at all the scum around them. This is a form of righteousness - it is called self-righteousness, and too many Christians exhibit it. In Jesus' day the religious leaders who were called scribes and Pharisees thought they had a monopoly on righteousness. Look at Matthew 5:20 for Jesus' attitude: "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 best way to understand the term "righteousness" is to see how Matthew uses it. Two aspects stand out. The first aspect is a righteousness that comes as a free gift from God. The second is a righteousness that results from the free gift, and consists of living in a way that pleases God. To summarize, righteousness involves God's gift and God's demand.
Let's look first at righteousness as God's gift. This is a righteousness, or right-standing with God, that he gives to those who don't deserve it. Elsewhere in the Bible it is called justification. To be righteous like God you would have to be absolutely pure and sinless. Believe it or not, this is the standard he has for everyone who wants to enter heaven because God cannot tolerate sin in his presence. According to the Bible, if you break one of God's commandments, even a little one, you have disqualified yourself. In James 2:10 it says: "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." This would seem like an impossible situation. As his disciples once said, "Who then can be saved?" Apart from Jesus Christ and Muhammad Ali*, heaven would be pretty limited.
Fortunately God has come up with a solution that safeguards his holiness. If we cannot become righteous by our own efforts, he will make us righteous. It is a gift, available to everyone who will repent of their sins and accept Christ as their savior. Jesus teaches the same principle in Matthew 6:33 - "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things [referring to our earthly needs like food and water] will be given to you as well." Notice how similar this is to the beatitude - if we seek the kingdom and God's righteousness, all our other needs will be met as well.
The kingdom of God involves everything we associate with salvation. Jesus says you don't seek the kingdom by being righteous, like so many people think. You seek the kingdom and his righteousness. By putting God first in our lives, he promises to "add" or give to us salvation. Salvation as a gift is also stressed in Matthew 13:11. Jesus says to his disciples, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you." All of this is involved in hungering and thirsting after righteousness. You realize how separated you are from God, and that you can only receive his salvation and righteousness if he gives it to you.
There is also another side to righteousness in Jesus' teaching. Many times he refers to right-living, conducting your life in agreement with God's will. I used to be very confused about this. If salvation has to do with your lifestyle, then it cannot be a gift, and vice-versa. The solution is to see that right-living does not earn salvation but accompanies it. It is our response to God's gift. When God gives us his righteousness, he expects us to begin conforming our lives to it. You'll never completely succeed, but you have to try. Or as Jesus puts it, you have to hunger and thirst after right-living.
This is one area where Christians are especially weak. We latch onto the idea of salvation as a gift and forget the responsibilities that go with it. There is very little passion or hunger in trying to conform ourselves to the way God wants us. Instead we think will get by with a little bit of righteousness and a lot of complacency.
We could learn some lessons from the world. According to the national media, one of the most significant groups in the United States is going to be the Yuppies. There are only about 20 million of them, but they will set many of the trends for the 1980s. A Yuppie is a Young Upwardly-mobile Professional. As a group, they were first noticed in the Gary Hart campaign.
Newsweek magazine did a profile on a Yuppie named Laurie Gilbert. She is a 28-year-old lawyer, and she says that without children, she would be comfortable with $200,000 a year. She would need that much because she buys two outfits of clothes each week. Laurie met her second husband at a job interview in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the interview was one of several that she had managed to schedule in during her honeymoon with her first husband, so she had to go back home for a divorce. "I know it sounds shocking," she says, "but there are times in your life when you just have to go after what you want."
There is a lot of truth in that. If you really want something you have to go after it. How badly do you want to live for God? The Bible says you shouldn't just measure your feelings, but your actions. Matthew 25 tells about the judgment of believers. All of these people think they are saved - but only the ones who feed, clothed, and visited the needy are saved. Were the others not good enough Christians? No, they were not Christians at all. Righteousness is much more than feeling religious. It involves good works. It involves avoiding sin. Our lifestyle matters.
[Challenge to congregation to examine their own life and spiritual passion]
________
*Muhammad Ali had probably said something outlandish that week, but I forget what it was. "I am the greatest!" fits the bill, of course.
________
Typed on February 2, 2005, by Wendy Ventura of Ledgewood Baptist Church, New Jersey
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
Created with the Freeware Edition of HelpNDoc: Free Web Help generator