"Hunger for Righteousness"

Well, good morning, church. Would you turn with me to Matthew chapter 5?

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

This summer we've been studying the Beatitudes, and we're going to continue that study this morning.

And the Beatitudes are Jesus' description of the character of God-centered, kingdom-centered disciples.

This is what they're like, and that means that these Beatitudes are Jesus' description

of what we've been calling a genuinely flourishing human life.

You see, for Jesus, the flourishing life and the life centered on God and God's kingdom are one and the same.

So in the Beatitudes, Jesus is inviting us to the life that's truly worth living,

the life with God and God's kingdom at its center.

And this morning, we're looking at the fourth Beatitude in Matthew chapter 5, verse 6.

Matthew 5:6

That's page 759 in the Pew Bible.

In Matthew 5, 6, we read,

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they should be satisfied.

But I'm going to read the whole section of this part of Matthew so we get the context.

And then we'll circle back to verse 6 as we explore the rest of our sermon this morning.

So let me read Matthew 5, 1 through 12, and then I'll pray.

Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

All right, let's pray together.

Father, help us as we consider these beatitudes again today.

And as we consider particularly this hungering, this thirsting after righteousness.

By your Holy Spirit, make us those sort of people as we attend to your word.

Spirit, this morning, would you blow through our dry bones and cause us to come alive to your kingdom

and above all to your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the true and only satisfaction for our souls.

In his name we pray. Amen.

Well, I think it goes without saying that nearly everyone wants to be happy.

Or better, we want to be, as the end of Matthew 5, 6 puts it, satisfied.

Isn't that what the life worth living should feel like?

A deep and lasting satisfaction, a fullness.

But the great tragedy is that many of us are seeking satisfaction but not finding it.

And this is true for those inside and outside the church.

Outside the church, people seek all sorts of means to feel satisfied.

Money, pleasure, success, power.

But in seeking satisfaction in those things, the irony is,

we end up feeling not filled but empty.

Now inside the church, we can seek satisfaction in the same things, can't we?

We often fall to the same temptations as our neighbors, if we're honest.

We seek money and pleasure and success and power.

But in the church, on top of those things, we can seek satisfaction in spiritual experiences

or in relationships.

But these things, too, also leave us feeling not full but empty.

The spiritual experiences are fleeting.

The relationships are never deep enough.

They always let us down.

They never meet our needs.

So Jesus' words in this beatitude come to us first as a diagnostic question,

a soul question to examine ourselves.

What are you hungering for?

What do you think will really satisfy you?

What do you think will fill your emptiness?

And is it working?

You know, at times, sure, it feels like your life is a well-tuned bicycle, right?

The wheels are turning.

The sun and the wind are blowing through your hair.

You can almost just lift your feet from the pedals and roll along.

But even in those rare moments, isn't there still a lingering sense

that life must be more than this?

Isn't life more than just a self-centered pursuit of getting my needs met

and living as long as we can at the corner of happy and healthy,

as the Walgreens commercials used to say?

Do you remember those?

But here Jesus isn't just trying to expose our faulty attempts at finding satisfaction.

He's also inviting us to redirect our desires to the true place where they can be met.

Jesus is not merely a cynic pointing out the futility of human life.

Jesus is our good shepherd who's come to lead us in the way that we should go

to the green pastures and the still waters where we will find the filling our souls long for.

And where is that to be found?

What should we hunger and thirst for?

Jesus says, righteousness.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Now, righteousness is one of those rich biblical words that we must all come to know and love

if we're to understand true biblical Christianity.

More than that, according to Jesus in this verse,

knowing what righteousness is and hungering for it and thirsting for it

is the only way to real satisfaction.

So I want to spend most of our time considering what righteousness is

and what it looks like to hunger and thirst for it.

So then, what is righteousness?

Well, in Scripture, the word righteousness has three aspects or three meanings

which are all relevant here in Matthew 5-6.

And these three aspects are all interconnected.

They're sort of like a prism with three sides.

You know, you look through one side of a prism and you sort of see the other two, right?

That's what these three meanings or aspects of righteousness are like.

To see one of them, you see the other two as well.

They're interconnected and they're all relevant here in Matthew 5-6.

But we're going to look at them one at a time so that we can get the fullness of what Jesus is saying.

So first then, to hunger and thirst for righteousness means that we must hunger and thirst for God's delivering righteousness.

In other words, we hunger and thirst for God's full future saving justice.

Righteousness in this sense is something God is and something that God will do.

God will act to deliver his people, to end oppression and violence, and to restore peace and wholeness to his creation.

God will save and God will judge.

God will save and thirst for peace and thirst for peace and thirst for peace and thirst for peace and thirst for peace and thirst for peace.

This is what all the prophets looked forward to.

This was the vision that fueled their hope and perseverance through dark days when it seemed like all hope was lost.

Now, we could consider many passages from the prophets and from the Psalms, actually.

You see it often, David talking about, God, save me in your righteousness.

But one passage I think that captures it well from Isaiah is Isaiah chapter 11.

Isaiah 11 · chapter mention

In this chapter, Isaiah speaks of the coming Messiah whose righteousness will judge evil, restore his people to safety, and heal the broken creation.

If you want to turn there, it's page 539 in the Pew Bible.

I'm going to read the whole chapter just so we get a sense of this sweeping vision of what the prophets looked for and longed for when they spoke of God's righteousness, his justice to come.

So Isaiah 11, starting in verse 1.

Verse 1.

Verse 1.

Verse 1.

Verse 1.

Now, the prophet here is obviously speaking in rich, figurative language about this coming day when God's righteousness will be expressed in full.

And we see the different elements here in this passage.

And we see the different elements here in this passage that just like God acted in delivering justice to save his people from Egypt and lead them home.

So the prophet.

So the prophet longed for the prophet longed for the prophet long, to put down the evil oppressors of God's people and God's creation,

and lead all of his redeemed people, Jew and Gentile, into a healed creation where there was no more sin or sickness or death,

where there was no more violence, where there was no more violence, where there was no more violence, where even the wolf could dwell with the lamb and a little child could lead them.

Righteousness, right?

Your will be done.

Your will be done.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's God's righteousness.

The inbreaking of God's reign when he will at long last put the world to rights.

And friends, this is why Jesus came, to inaugurate this kingdom righteousness, to set it in motion.

In Luke chapter 4, Jesus used the words of Isaiah 61 to describe his own ministry.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

In Isaiah 61, 1 through 4, we read,

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion,

to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, and the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

They shall build up the ancient ruins.

They shall raise up the former devastations.

They shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

So you see this picture that the Old Testament has of God's righteousness,

of his delivering, healing, restoring, world-fixing justice

that Jesus himself set in motion in his earthly ministry,

and that will be fulfilled one day when he returns in glory.

Hunger and thirst for that, Jesus says.

Jesus says.

Jesus says.

Jesus says.

Friends, you were meant to be consumed by a vision so much greater

and of so much more weight and importance and eternal significance

than to merely live at the corner of happy and healthy for as long as you can manage it.

Jesus is saying.

Jesus is saying.

Break out of your small dreams and step into a longing that is as wide and as bold

as the restorative reign of God's righteousness.

One person's heart who was captured by a hunger and thirst for God's righteousness was Ida Wells.

I don't know if you know the story of Ida Wells.

Here's how her story went as told in a book called Life Worth Living.

Ida Wells was a young woman building a life in the midst of difficult circumstances.

She was born into slavery in Mississippi and freed as a child by the Emancipation Proclamation.

And Wells lost her parents and her infant brother to a yellow fever epidemic when she was 16.

To support herself and her surviving siblings, she took a job as a schoolteacher.

And by her 20s, she had saved enough money to purchase one-third in an upstart newspaper called The Free Speech

and to start a journalistic career.

Things were looking up for Ida.

Until a horrifying but all-too-predictable injustice changed everything.

On March 9, 1892, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Henry Stewart were lynched just outside the Memphis city limits.

And this crime was personal for Wells.

She was the godmother to Moss's daughter, Maureen.

And the experience led Wells to see that she had actually been fed a lie.

She wrote,

It was different because Wells knew Moss and McDowell and Stewart.

And she knew they had committed no crime against white women.

And suddenly she saw that lynching was really, as she wrote, an excuse to get rid of Negroes

who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized.

Few others in Ida Wells' time would speak this truth so clearly.

And when Wells said it plainly in print, a mob of vigilantes ransacked the Office of Free Speech

and left a note saying that anyone trying to publish the paper again would be punished with death.

So Wells lost her paper.

But she stood firm in her vocation to tell the truth about lynching to a world that didn't want to listen.

Now, friends, what was it that fueled Ida B. Wells to do what she did with such courage?

Well, when you study her life a little more closely, you begin to realize that it was her tenacious faith in God

and in God's righteousness.

Her journals show us a woman who had a deep and resilient faith in the Lord Jesus,

believing that God would fight for her no matter what was happening.

Ida Wells' life was not lived at the corner of happy and healthy.

It was lived hungering and thirsting for God's delivering righteousness,

His future justice that would put the world to rights.

How about us today?

Where is God's coming righteousness inaugurated in Jesus calling you to speak and act?

Where is the righteousness of God unmasking the lies of our day and age like it unmasked the world's lies for Ida Wells?

Perhaps God's righteousness is opening your eyes to the vulnerability of unborn children

in a culture that would seek to dehumanize them with the rhetoric that we use.

Perhaps it's the vulnerability of migrants and refugees in a culture that seems equally hell-bent on dehumanizing them.

Perhaps it's the vulnerability of children needing foster homes,

or the vulnerability of our aging neighbors,

or the vulnerability of women with unplanned pregnancies feeling scared and lost,

those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

Jesus says.

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied.

Now, this doesn't mean we will necessarily see all the change that we desire to see in the world.

In fact, we can be assured, we can be assured that we will not see

all the change we desire to see in the world.

The righteousness of God will only be fully complete when the Lord Jesus returns in glory,

and all evil and injustice is excluded from His good creation once and for all.

But until that day, we hunger and thirst for it.

We don't let Walgreens' vision of being happy and healthy lull us to sleep.

There's no satisfaction there.

Only in hungering for righteousness.

But as we hunger for this delivering kingdom righteousness of God,

God's full and complete justice that's coming one day,

we begin to realize that there's another aspect to this righteousness.

For if we begin to hunger,

if we begin to hunger for that justice to be complete in the world,

we also begin to realize that it's we ourselves who need reformation just as badly as the world.

And this brings us to the second aspect of righteousness.

To hunger and thirst for righteousness means that we must hunger and thirst for right living.

To hunger and thirst for our own actions and desires,

to be in accord with God's righteous character and God's good commands.

If the first aspect of righteousness points us to God's justice,

the second aspect of righteousness points us to godly living.

And just as the first aspect of righteousness has as its center Jesus,

God's just king,

so this second aspect of righteousness has Jesus at the center as well.

For when we hunger and thirst for the righteousness of right living,

we are hungering and thirsting for conformity to Jesus, the righteous one.

And that is the hunger and thirst of every genuine Christian,

to be like Christ.

Growing up, you probably had a hero or two.

Maybe it was a sports figure that you longed to be like.

So you studied her movements, you learned about her training routine,

maybe even bought the products that they endorsed, right?

As a kid growing up in the 90s,

you know, any kid growing up in the late 80s, early 90s,

knew all about wanting to be like Mike, right?

You know, so we all stuck out our tongues when we drove to the hoop,

and we all spread our legs as we jumped for our layups.

You know, you see the same thing today as young kids are playing soccer,

and they score a goal and yell,

Sue!

Right?

They're imitating their heroes.

But a small dream, isn't it?

It's a petty desire,

compared to hungering and thirsting,

to be like the one we see walk across the pages of the New Testament.

Every earthly hero we discover sooner or later has feet of clay.

But this one,

in this one there was no guile,

no secret motive,

no selfish desire.

He was powerful enough to calm the raging seas,

to speak with an authority that no one had ever known,

and yet humble enough to wash his disciples' feet,

and to receive the lowest of low and call them his friends.

Isn't this the great question our culture is asking again and again and again?

Who do I want to be?

What identity should I construct for myself?

Friend, there is one

who is able

to be the model

for your humanity

and leave you satisfied.

The Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the truly human one.

When you learn of his life

in the pages of the New Testament,

you are seeing the portrait

of the full,

flourishing life

that you were meant to live.

And wonder of wonders,

this Jesus does not say

that only the best

and only the brightest

can enter his school of living.

No.

He says,

anyone who comes to me,

I will in no wise cast out.

There are no tryouts

in his school of life

the doors wide open

for you to come in.

But Christian,

do you hunger for this?

Do you thirst

to be more like Jesus?

Perhaps the reason

you're feeling so empty,

so lost,

is because your hunger

hunger has been captured

momentarily

by a meal

that can't really satisfy.

You thought a relationship

could do it.

You thought a new job

could do it.

You thought a new city

could do it,

but the hunger remains.

Hunger and thirst

for righteousness.

Hunger to become like Jesus.

Thirst for conformity

to Christ.

hunger and thirst

to be transformed

into his image

in increasing measure.

I wonder,

is there an area

of your life

right now

that you know

falls short

of his ways

or his words?

Perhaps you're stuck

in an addiction

and you need help.

Friend,

if that's you,

this is the place

for you.

We're all sinners

needing redemption

and needing help.

And if you're stuck,

come talk to me

or talk to Alex

at the door.

We can connect you

with fellow brothers

or sisters

who can help.

Change is possible.

It's not easy,

but it's real.

You can find

a new satisfaction

in the arms of Christ.

Perhaps for you

it's not an addiction.

Perhaps it's a character trait

that you want

to see more of

in your life

or it's an attitude

or an action

that you want to see

less or more of

in your life.

The Holy Spirit

maybe right now

is impressing

something on you.

Friend,

don't let that desire go.

Hunger for it.

Thirst for it.

Pray for it.

Share that desire

with trusted friends.

Study it in the pages

of Scripture

and in the life

of Jesus most of all.

Think of ways

that you can be

cooperating

with the Holy Spirit

and the means of grace

to see that virtue,

to see that action

develop more and more

in your life.

Your humanity,

brother,

sister,

is a beautiful thing.

Christ became flesh

to redeem

your whole life.

So don't hunger

or thirst

for anything less

than righteousness.

Righteousness

in every area of life.

Of course,

we won't see this work

of ongoing growth

and righteousness

completed in this life.

We'll never reach

sinless perfection,

so we'll always be

hungering and thirsting.

But we will also

know satisfaction.

We can know

a closer walk

with Christ

and a closer likeness

to Him.

And when we see Him

on the last day,

we'll be like Him

because we'll see Him

as He is.

God promises

that Jesus will complete

the good work

He's begun

and that will be

eternal satisfaction.

But there's one final aspect

to this hungering

and thirsting

for righteousness.

The first aspect

was God's saving righteousness,

His world-righting justice.

But our hunger

for that sort of righteousness

drove us to a hunger

for personal righteousness

because we can't just hunger

for God's righteousness

in the world

and not at the same time

hunger for God's righteousness

in us

in our personal

daily likeness to Christ,

the righteous one.

But this hunger

for personal righteousness,

it drives us

to yet another hunger.

For as we hunger

for personal righteousness,

we realize

that our progress

in righteousness

will never be enough.

even as the Holy Spirit

conforms us more and more

into the image of Christ,

we know

that we're still lacking,

that we're still poor

in spirit.

You know,

the experience

of all the saints

throughout church history

has been like this.

The closer they get to Christ,

seemingly more

holy and Christ-like

they become,

the more they understand

their deep sinfulness

and their unrighteousness.

At the age of 21,

David Brainerd

came to see

the kind of awesome

worthiness of God

and God's kingdom.

Two months before

entering Yale

to train for the ministry,

Brainerd wrote,

the Lord I trust

brought me

to a hearty desire

to exalt Him,

to set Him on the throne

and to seek first

His kingdom.

That is principally

and ultimately

to aim at His honor

and glory

as the King

and Sovereign

of the universe.

He says,

I felt myself

in a new world.

It was a conversion

experience for Brainerd

and his zeal

for the Lord

only grew.

While at Yale,

the Great Awakening

was taking hold

and Brainerd's love

for Christ

kept burning hot.

It burned so hot,

in fact,

that he was expelled

from Yale in 1742.

He was kicked out

for being overheard

as saying that

one of the Tudors,

Chaunceley Wittlesley,

had no more grace

than a chair.

And he wondered

why the rector of Yale

did not drop down dead

for finding students

for their evangelical zeal.

So that was Brainerd

in his youth.

So Brainerd left Yale

and became a missionary

to Native Americans.

First,

the Housatonic Indians

about 20 miles northwest

of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

And then among

Native Americans

in New Jersey

and Pennsylvania

along the Delaware River.

Tragically,

Brainerd's life

would be cut short.

He contracted tuberculosis

and eventually died

at the house

of Jonathan Edwards

back in Stockbridge,

Massachusetts

in 1747,

only five years

after leaving Yale.

Now, surely,

for someone

whose life

burned that bright

for the gospel,

there would be

just an overwhelming,

unrelenting sense

of satisfaction, right?

After all,

what a great example

Brainerd is

of hungering

and thirsting

after righteousness.

Brainerd loved

the Lord Jesus.

He laid down his life

as a missionary,

preaching the gospel,

loving the lost,

planting churches,

aspiring for God's kingdom

and righteousness.

But yet,

the same Brainerd

would also write

in his diary

entries such as these.

In preparing to go

to the Konomic Indians,

about halfway between

Stockbridge and Albany,

Brainerd said

on November 27, 1742,

Surely I may well love

all my brethren,

for none of them all

is so vile as I.

Whatever they do outwardly,

yet it seems to me

none is conscious

of so much guilt

before God.

Oh, my leanness,

my barrenness,

my carnality

and past bitterness

and want

of a gospel temper.

These things

oppress my soul.

I rode from New York

30 miles

to White Plains

and most of the way

continued lifting up

my heart to God

for mercy

and purifying grace

and spent the evening

much dejected

in spirit.

How could that be?

Was Brainerd

just a bit morose,

a bit too introspective?

Did he suffer

from a bit of depression

perhaps?

Well, maybe.

But there's truth

in what Brainerd

saw too, you know.

Like the Apostle Paul,

Brainerd knew

what it was like

to say,

I am the chief

of sinners.

And the more

we hunger

for personal righteousness,

the more we will

see that too.

We'll be like

the tax collector

in Jesus' parable

who goes up

to the temple

beating his breast

saying,

Lord,

be merciful to me,

the sinner.

Now,

where does this leave us?

It leaves us hungering

and thirsting

for the final

and the most surprising

aspect of biblical

righteousness.

For this third aspect

is not the kind of

final saving justice

of God

and his in-breaking reign.

This righteousness

is not the ongoing

personal holiness

or Christ-likeness

that God works in us

through his spirit.

This righteousness

is the gift

of what Scripture

calls justification,

the righteousness

that is credited

to us

simply through faith

in Jesus Christ.

You see,

Jesus didn't just live

the model human life,

the life worth living.

No,

much more than that,

Jesus Christ lived

the only truly worthy life.

The life he lived

on earth

before the Father

was the life

you and I

were meant to live

but did not.

And the death

he died on the cross

was the death

you and I

deserve to die

because of our great sin.

And everyone

who comes to admit

that their own righteousness

cannot save them

and who come to trust

instead in Christ's

person and work

on their behalf,

they are declared

right.

They're justified

freely

by grace.

God,

you see,

credits

the righteousness

of Christ

to their account

and they're fully accepted

not on the basis

of their works

but solely

on the basis

of Christ

to whom

they are united

by faith.

hunger and thirst

for that righteousness.

The righteousness

that fills

your deepest hunger

because your deepest hunger,

friend,

is to be in a right

relationship

with God.

Why do you seek

satisfaction in money,

in relationships,

in power,

in success?

Why do you seek

satisfaction in those things

when you know

they don't work?

Why does your life

feel like an endless search

for something

you can't find?

Because you were created

to be gods

and gods alone

and sin has separated you

from that God.

But the beauty

of Christianity

and what sets it apart

from all other religions

is that in Christianity

the triune God of love,

Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit

planned for eternity

to provide you

the very thing

that was required,

a perfect righteousness

so that you could

spend eternity

reconciled to Him,

living in His presence

and be satisfied.

God the Son

became flesh.

He lived and died

in love for you

so that you could be

credited His righteousness

not by works

but by faith alone.

And if you hunger

and thirst

for that gift

of righteousness,

you will be satisfied.

As the prophet Isaiah wrote,

come,

everyone who thirsts,

come to the waters

and he who has no money,

come, buy and eat.

Come, buy milk and wine

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?

Friends,

Christ has accomplished

everything we need

to be accepted

as righteous before God

so we can come

without money

and we can eat

and we can come

without payment

and we can drink

and we can be satisfied.

And from that place,

from that place

of deep security

in the gift

of righteousness

in Christ,

purchased by His own

death for us,

in that place,

we have a settled place

now

from which our hunger

for personal righteousness

and our hunger

for God's ultimate justice

can grow.

You see,

only if you know

this last sort

of righteousness,

the free gift

of righteousness

for sinners,

only then

can you know

peace

when your personal righteousness

falls short, right?

And it's only then

that you can know humility

when your personal righteousness

seems to be growing.

Knowing that gift

of righteousness,

in other words,

will keep you

from becoming

self-righteous

even as you grow

in Christlikeness.

And it's only

when you know

the grace

of God's justifying

righteousness,

the gift of righteousness,

that you can hunger

and thirst

for His ultimate justice

and hunger

and thirst

for it rightly

in a fallen world

because a right hunger

for God's ultimate justice

also includes

a love for our enemies.

Our hunger

includes a desire

that those who work evil

would come to repentance

and know God's grace

just as we

who were once evil

have come to know

God's grace.

You see,

without justifying grace,

your longing for justice

will turn cold

and it will become violence.

So justifying righteousness

puts everything else

in its proper place.

And it ultimately

puts our hunger

in the proper place.

for when we hunger

for this justifying righteousness,

this third aspect

of righteousness,

what we're ultimately

hungering for

is Christ Himself.

And it's in union

with Christ,

personal,

close union with Him,

that though we may be hungry

and though we may be thirsty,

and even though He calls us

to take up our cross

and follow Him,

it's in union with Christ

that we will always be satisfied.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus,

Lord Jesus,

work by Your Spirit

to make us a people

who hunger and thirst

for righteousness.

and would we know

what it means

to be satisfied in You.

Amen.