The Beatitudes | Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

So given that my name is Mandy. I am on staff here at reality

and have the privilege of sharing from God's word with

you. This morning.

Hopefully, everyone will have Grace towards me.

If like you the daylight savings is kind of impacted my energy

level but we're just gonna lean into the Holy Spirit and trust

that God wants to speak to us this morning.

So yeah, the Beatitudes this has been ton of fun.

We are now halfway through our series.

It's this collection of of the bad attitude are this collection

of as a one author calls, it, Soulful riddles.

I really like that phrasing that are put forward by Jesus at the

beginning of his most famous teaching, The Sermon on the

Mount and the Beatitudes are likely going to capture our

attention. If we have ever wanted our lives

to be hashtag blessed, that's the hook at the beginning.

Of each of these sayings. The word makarios in Greek which

means blessed, happy fortunate, the poet, Elizabeth, Rundle

Charles. Described makarios as a heart in

harmony with itself, a trust content satisfied.

Full of all the music of which the human hearts, are capable,

isn't it? Lovely?

I really like that idea of true contentment a heart at rest.

A soul that is satisfied, a blessed life and to some degree

I would say that that's what I was looking for.

When I started reading the Bible for the first time at the age of

19, I was longing for guidance on How to live my life in a way

that would lead to flourishing and not damage or

disappointment. And I was trying to make sense

of these competing voices in the world, telling me what to pursue

Each of, which seemed to contradict the others.

I was looking for truth, but I was also just looking for a way

to calm the anxiety inside me that feared taking a wrong turn

and wasting my life. So a lot of you know me, you

know this my story but I started when I started college, I wasn't

a Christian. I actually hadn't been raised to

follow any particular religion or ideology.

Balaji. So when I was suddenly sent out

into the world as an adult free to pick any path, I chose it

struck me that they didn't seem to be any way to know what the

right path was, until you actually walked it.

And I found that to be terrifying, but the only

alternative is to try to figure out which voices I could trust.

And I thought, if I could just look more deeply into another

person's life and see what it actually looked like, to follow

the path that they were recommending, maybe I could see

down that path. Far enough to predict where it

was actually leading and make a good decision.

And so, one thing I found compelling about the Bible is

that it's biographical the gospels in particular Center, on

a person who is the Son of God, the Divine being incarnate, the

Savior, the Christ and me to watch him live out.

The ideology that the beliefs, the the faith that was named

after him Christianity. So in the gospel of Matthew,

which is what we're in today, chapter four marks, the

beginning of Jesus ministry, as he begins, proclaiming, the

gospel of the kingdom and healing every Disease and every

Affliction among the people at their core, the people of Israel

listening to Jesus message. One of the same thing that we do

a life of blessing, and they saw in Jesus, something

extraordinary, his words are compelling and their follow up

with action. He doesn't merely preach an

abstract concept of God in heaven.

He brings God and Heaven here to Earth.

He heals the sick, he liberates. Those oppressed by Demons.

He causes paralytics to walk again.

And as the people see this, they find themselves thinking, if

anyone can help us move toward a better life and a better world.

It's got to be him. You've never seen anything like

this. So as we turn to Matthew Chapter

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

5, Jesus is already surrounded by crowds of people.

And so, he sits down to teach them.

And the first thing Jesus says, is a complete reversal of

everything. His listeners associate with the

good life. He speaks blessing not over

those who are like the religious Elite but over the poor in

spirit, he speaks blessing, not over those living in comfort and

ease. But over those who mourn, and he

speaks blessing Not Over The Bold and The Powerful, but over

the meek So the Beatitudes kind of subvert our expectations by

giving the kingdom of God and all of its richness to the

people that society would least expect and Jesus's teachings

function like a kind of reset button.

We realized that if what he's saying is true, we must not

understand the blessed life at all.

His word should stir up a curiosity about these blessings,

what they mean for our lives and the type of Kingdom that Jesus

is announcing. So Dallas Willard, Christian,

philosopher and author had this insight about the attitudes.

He says that the Beatitudes, served to clarify, Jesus

fundamental message, which is that the free availability of

God's rule in righteousness, to all of humanity, through

Reliance Upon Jesus himself. And the Beatitudes do this,

simply by taking those who from the human point of view are

regarded as most hopeless. Most beyond all possibility of

God's blessing or even interest and exhibiting them as enjoying

God's touch. Abundant provision from the

heavens, the religious system of his day.

Left the multitudes out but Jesus welcomed them all into his

kingdom. Anyone could come as well as any

other and they still can that is the gospel of the Beatitudes.

So as we begin this conversation about the Beatitudes we need to

remember that we're not just talking about rules and virtues

in the pathway to blessing. We were talking about a

revolution in which God the king of creation comes to reclaim his

throne and he cast a vision for Russ about what his kingdom will

look like. And who will be invited to his

table and the question for us will be?

Do we want in? Do we want to see his Kingdom?

Come On Earth as it is in heaven.

So as we ponder that, let me pray for us for a start.

Jesus, we come to, you wanting to learn your ways.

God, we come to, you wanting to understand more about who you

are, wanting to understand more about your kingdom, wanting to

be shaved by you. Lord, I pray that today.

No matter what, we've come in here with whether we're feeling

tired or full of energy, if we're feeling burdened, if we

have questions on our minds, if we are asking ourselves, if we

want to follow you God, regardless of where we are right

now, we just Pray that you would speak to us and that you would

show us more of yourself. Lord God, we pray that your word

become a life to us. We pray that your spirit would

be tangibly present with us. We pray that this would be a

space where we are able to encounter you and be stirred up

to remember why, why it is that we can come together and Worship

You? Lord, that we would see you for

all your goodness and righteousness and Beauty today.

I pray these things in Jesus name, amen.

So the P attitude that we're focused on today is Matthew 5,

6. Blessed are those who hunger and

thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.

So, when I was assigned this verse to teach on, I was nervous

about it because I have so many questions about it, and I still

do so congratulations. You get to join me an unpacking,

these questions and looking to see what God's word might have

to say about them. Even my main sermon points are

questions and I have three of them.

So first what exactly is righteousness?

Second, why are those who hunger and thirst for it?

Blessed and third. What does it mean that we will

be satisfied or filled as some translations say?

So first Big Kahuna. What is righteousness?

Since question is important for readers of the Bible because the

word righteousness appears in the English Bible 277 times.

I'll pause to let that sink in 277 times, which means It,

outranks mercy and Justice in terms of frequency and it almost

outranks Faith, which is mentioned 278 times.

So both the Greek and the Hebrew word that we translate as

righteousness imply being right. In a moral sense like walking on

a straight path. So one who is righteous is

truthful? Ethical, just Equitable.

Holy some authors Define righteousness as the perfect

Holiness of Christ moral Purity or to act in keeping what with

what is right and just So coming up with a nice pithy definition

is one thing, actually imagining what it looks like to live.

This out is completely different because we as Humanity can't

seem to agree on what constitutes truth, justice and

morality. And even if we agree that these

things were worth pursuing, we would all likely set off on

somewhat different paths. So in theory, the church should

have a shared golden standard for what it looks like to live a

righteous life, but we seem to struggle as much.

Is anyone in my lifetime? The church has not always had a

reputation for being righteous unless you add the prefix self

to the front, which changes the definition and not in a good

way, religious people for religious people in particular,

there seems to be a slippery slope leading into

self-righteousness. So this week, I stumbled upon

this article in Psychology today of all places that attempts to

distinguish between righteousness and If

righteousness and I thought was interesting because even though

it's a secular article, the author actually chose to begin

by exploring the perspective of religion on these topics.

So it's fascinating. So the article says, biblically

speaking righteousness is about being in right standing with God

versus self righteousness, which is giving final Authority for

one's decisions. Not to God, but to oneself.

So self-righteousness becomes paradoxically a kind of self

trusting sacrilege the Person isn't serving God's will, but

profaning, God by serving or taking vinyl direction from

themselves? So when I read that I was like

oh that stings a little, the tendency to take direction from

ourselves to give final Authority for decisions to

ourselves. So way to relatable,

self-righteousness sets our very selves up as Rivals to God.

And the trouble for Humanity is that are longing for

righteousness on the one hand and our propensity towards

unrighteousness in self-righteousness.

On the other hand are intermixed inside of us in ways that are

really hard to untangle most times humans often.

Make kind of poor measuring sticks for what righteousness

actually looks like. With one exception, Jesus has

the benefit of being both human and divine free from sin.

So when he speaks on the topic of righteousness, it's time to

listen closely. So Mom, Jesus is mentioned of

righteousness. One, Parable stood out to me

from Luke 18 and now I was, I was biased and choosing this one

because I already love this story so much that I've actually

been excited. Share it with you, it's so good.

So if you recognize it, if you know it just pretend that you

don't for a moment so you can actually hear it a fresh.

But it's about a Pharisee and the tax collector and a Pharisee

is a member of a strict devout Jewish religious sect and a tax

collector is basically the poster child for betraying, your

nation for personal gain. So that's what we're dealing

with here. But the passage says that Jesus

told this, Parable to some who trusted in themselves, Elves

that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

So goes like, this, two men went up to the temple, to pray, one,

a Pharisee and the other a tax collector, the Pharisee standing

by himself prayed. Thus God, I thank you that.

I'm not like other men, extortioners unjust adulterers

or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that. I Get.

But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up

his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful

to me a sinner. They tell you this man went down

to his house Justified, rather than the other for everyone who

exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself

will be exalted So, once again, Jesus is inverting the expected

order of things because the listeners expect the Pharisee to

be elevated and praise to be in the right spiritual posture.

But instead the person who is praised is the tax collector,

the one who is despised by society and assumed to be

unrighteous and I want to point out this one phrase so the tax

collector it says went down to his house Justified.

So do you know what the text actually says the Greek word

translated Justified is de gallo.

O Greek, which is the verb form of the word righteous.

So another way of saying this is that the tax collector was

rendered righteous. How well the reveal is given at

the end of the parable, everyone who exalts himself will be

humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted So the

righteous are not the ones who think they have all arrived

spiritually, the ones who think they've figured out how to play

the game and win brownie points with God, the righteous based on

this. Parable are those who repent.

Is that what you think of when you think of righteousness?

It's not what I think of first. I was very surprised to make

this discovery. I'll say it again.

It's so surprising. Those who are counted as

righteous by God, are those who repent, who humble themselves

before God, who are willing to be set right with God and so

call upon his mercy, God be merciful to me a sinner.

This Revelation actually gave me chills.

When I was reading these things because this is not, this is not

the wisdom of the world and it's not even the wisdom of most

religious ideology, but it is the wisdom of Jesus.

And so we need to know more about the surprising teaching.

So let's turn to the Apostle. Paul, who is an Ardent follower

of Jesus because Paul talks about righteousness in an

unexpected way, Paul has this obsession with a connection

between righteousness and faith. And we see that especially in

the Book of Romans. So here are just a few examples.

Romans chapter 1. For, in the gospel, the

Romans 1 · chapter mention

righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith

From First to Last. Just as it is written, the

righteous will live by faith. Romans 3, but now the

righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,

the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

For all who believe Romans for what the scriptures say, Abraham

believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Now to the one who works his wages are not counted as a gift,

but as his due and to the one who does not work, but believes

in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is Is counted

as righteousness. So this is not the end of the

list. But again, and again, Paul

connects righteousness with faith with belief, with the

gospel of grace, and I think this highlights for us kind of

this hidden trap, which is that the tricky thing, is that it is

so easy to let righteousness become about rules alone, but

righteousness is not in the law itself, although good laws

should reflect and steer us towards a righteous living.

But when we talk about true righteousness, We are talking

about a person righteousness is in God himself.

He defines it, he embodies it. Jesus himself is how we know

what righteousness actually is. And for Christians, Jesus is our

righteousness. That's how the Bible talks

about. He is our righteousness and that

is a major point for Paul that he's trying to emphasize for us

as a former Pharisee. If we divorce righteousness from

the person of God, it quickly becomes, shame or legalism.

We might even start out by defining a set of rules that are

inspired by Jesus and modeled after Jesus.

But then once we have those rules, it becomes tempting to

act like the Goal is to live righteously on our own without

Jesus, but we write God out of the picture and we make it about

our own performance, but the law, the guidelines me, which we

live the values that govern our Behavior.

It's good. But laws are only guardrails.

They're not our savior. Jesus is and the righteousness

we receive through faith, belongs to him, becoming

righteous is becoming like him. He is Equitable, just holy and

more. The pure.

He's the only one who unfailingly acts and keeping

with what is right and Faith turns us toward Jesus.

It leads us to submit to Jesus it teaches to love Jesus and the

righteousness that we receive through, faith is transformative

because it brings who Jesus is the one righteous person alive

in our hearts. And so we learn too long for him

and for the goodness that we see in him and true.

Righteousness is born from that longing for God.

God himself and for a world that reflects who he is.

So that brings us to our second major question, which is what is

the significance of that? These words, hungering and

thirsting for righteousness? How is that connected to

blessing? So what I find interesting about

Jesus's word choice, is that hunger and thirst are

instinctive longings. We need food, we need water and

something inside of us aches when we don't get that

sustenance and reminds us to go out and seek it.

So in the Bible hunger is often also used metaphorically.

One commentary says that the hunger.

Means to Crave ardently to seek with eager desire and a thirst

is so painfully. Feel your want of or your lack

of those things, by which the soul is refreshed supported and

strengthened so on a soul level, righteousness is meant to fill

an essential need and it's possible for her inner being to

egg with a desire to be set right ourselves for our world to

be set, right? So when I was in high school,

it's a long time ago before I really began my spiritual

journey. I started reading self-help

articles, which is maybe a weird thing for a 16 year old to do.

But I think I was at a point where I was really starting to

recognize things inside of myself that I did, not like

selfishness, Envy vanity, a critical and prideful Spirit,

but I didn't have any clue what to do about it.

If I had been taught really any strategies, theoretically, it

was more along the lines of To focus on your strengths or

honestly, to compare yourself to people who are more frog than

you. So you can feel better about

yourself. So those were the coping

mechanisms available to me, positive, reframing, and pride,

and they were like, Band-Aids on a flesh wound.

They were wildly and sufficient to change my heart into heal the

Brokenness. I discovered inside of me, maybe

you relate to that, but even if we struggle to identify our own

Brokenness, we usually have no problem seeing it in other

people and This technological age, it has become harder and

harder to ignore the Brokenness in the world around us.

War is rage on. Seemingly fueled by power-hungry

arrogance. People are trafficked as if

they're less than human con artists, he people out of their

money in compromise, their ability to provide for their

families, marriages end in betrayal and contempt, and even

violence. And I'm literally just listing

things that I've seen on the news recently.

But none of it is new war violence, corruption, abuse.

All of it was present during Biblical times, but can you see

why people flocked to Jesus? It is time even the most

religious, the most supposedly Pious in upright, people of the

day cared more about strictly following these rules that

they'd created that about the welfare of people.

So, I'll give you an example. This is from Matthew chapter 12,

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

Jesus interest, a synagogue, so synagogues, so he's in a place

of worship. Up.

And he sees a man with a withered hand, but the Pharisees

who are there, the religious leaders are totally focused on

just trying to entrap Jesus and to somehow prove that he's less

than holy and so they essentially display, no mercy to

the man who is likely struggling to provide for himself whose

limited Mobility. Probably means that he feels a

sense of shame in his Society. So a man who was in desperate

need is standing right there and the Pharisees want to play mind

games. Oh, are you ailing or injured?

Sorry, it's the Sabbath. We don't work on the Sabbath so

you'll just have to suffer one more day.

But Jesus says, never mind, I can heal you.

And when Jesus heals the man, the Pharisees don't celebrate at

the site of the miracle. It says they went out and

conspired against Jesus how to destroy him.

Does that sound anything like righteousness?

But the Pharisees reputation was that they were righteous people,

they cared about the law. Many people had drifted far from

God's ways and they are religious group is dedicated to

Bringing people back to the way of Holiness of modeling.

What it looks like to be faithful to God.

So how did they get? So off track?

Many of us in this room are religious people, and we want to

live by the words of scripture, and we want to call others, to

do the same. But if our pursuit of

righteousness, is not deeply rooted in our love of God, and

our love of others, the two greatest Commandments.

If our righteousness, is not interconnected with our

relationship with Jesus, we will completely miss the point.

Jesus cares about healing about restored.

Relationships about Justice about forgiveness.

The point is not just to be a law-abiding citizen as if that

were an end in itself. The end goal is the reign of God

flooding the Earth like a cleansing power and making

everything new reshaping, our hearts to reflect God's very

character and drawing Us in to God's very presence to worship

him. For all of eternity.

That is the point. Hungering and thirsting puts us

in a posture of seeking, God of clinging to him of wanting to be

filled by him longing, for who Jesus is and what he brings into

this world. It puts us in the mindset of the

tax collectors and prostitutes, who knew that they were broken,

and wanted to be made right with God.

So when Jesus opened his arms to them, and invited them to his

table, they came running and they were healed.

They were changed. They were redeemed.

Do you see the two halves of the kindness of God in that

receiving the unbelievable? Grace of God, lays a foundation

of Faith, where we know that we need Jesus, but we also just

love him. We are in awe of him.

And if we are stunned and preoccupied and overwhelmed by

the beauty that we see in, Jesus won't we naturally want to live

in Imitation of him, won't we want to live righteously Blessed

are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall

be satisfied. So final question, what does it

mean that we will be satisfied or filled?

So, the beauty of this beatitude is that we learn that God is

responsive to our hunger and to our thirst.

He wants to fill our desire for righteousness.

And again, hunger and thirst are natural, impulses.

So we're not looking to manufacture an air of longing as

if that would help us to secure a blessing somehow.

But by recognizing that hungering and thirsting for

righteousness, is a state of the soul that Jesus celebrates, we

can lean into it and look for how he wants to use that ache

inside of us to bring about good.

So to end our time today, I have kind of three suggestions if you

will to help us to just focus on seeking satisfaction from God.

So first Let your heart be filled with awe at God's Beauty.

Second repent and receive God's righteousness by faith and

third, let your soul stay desperate for a better world.

So first, let your heart be filled with awe and God's Beauty

meditating on the person of Jesus in the way that he lived

in the purity of his heart, it isn't just an intellectual

exercise or like a practical exercise to figure out when we

do the core of it is to look at Jesus and to find him.

Lovely. To want more of him to find his

presence to be satisfying in Jesus.

We have this beautiful purity of character, which is something

that we do not see much of in this world, and by walking

closely with him seeking to know his heart.

And miring him to the point that we long to imitate him, that

will change us righteousness, is the byproduct of a life lived

truly and fully with God. Psalm 27 verse 4 King.

Psalms 27:4

David says, one thing I have asked of the Lord that I will

Seek after that, I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the

days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to

inquire in his Temple. So, David lists this up as his

ultimate goal gazing upon the beauty of God and seeking his

presence. And his goodness, and similarly

standing, a knob Jesus can become a part of our devotional

lives. Read the gospels, pay attention

to Jesus character. And the way that he seamlessly

integrates mercy and Justice, obedience, Cultural courage,

reconciling, love, and moral Purity.

Let your heart be filled with awe at God's Beauty.

Secondly, repent and receive God's righteousness by faith.

So, earlier, we talked about the connection between repentance

and righteousness and the one who confessed his sin and came

to God for. Healing, was the one who was

rendered righteous by the grace of God.

Repent. Does not have to be a scary

word. The call to repent can be an

invitation to let Jesus renovate our hearts.

Imagine you can like a pagan Temple.

If the ones that you read about in the Old Testament, so it's

filled with like, Choose and murals and iconography

everywhere celebrating these false gods.

This is what the human heart is like without Christ.

Putting our faith in Jesus means letting him renovate that Temple

and remove all evidence of Every Idle.

We've ever worshipped clearing out the Clutter from her past

life and sanding down. Like the patterns of sin that

have been engraved into us until they're no longer visible.

And at the end of it, all the temple will be clean as if it

were brand new. And it will be a place where

Jesus alone is worshipped in, this is what happens through

repentance. We, our hearts are slowly made

new. Now, the one hand, this

renovation project is in Jesus's hands, so we can rest in the

fact that it's going to be finished.

Because Jesus, finishes everything he starts.

On the other hand, it's a lifelong journey for us and so

we can grow weary of repenting again and again and uncovering

more remnants of sin and like every nook and cranny in our

lives. But we have a vision of who

Jesus is and who we can become. If you have a longing to be

cleansed of idolatry and may be drawn near to Jesus.

And to be filled with God, that is the motivation.

We need to lean into that and to be transformed, Jesus is calling

us just to Repent, and to the leave, the good news, hand over

your sins, your past, your Brokenness, or selfishness, your

self-righteousness, Give It All to Jesus and say, God have mercy

on me. A sinner repentance is a simple.

But powerful way to say, God, I want more of you in my life.

I want to clear more space. I want to be filled by your

goodness, Jesus. Lastly.

Let your soul stayed desperate for a better world.

Life is fairly satisfying and even when it is, it usually only

lasts for a moment or a temporary span of time.

So we often end up chasing one high after another trying to

fill ourselves up somehow or we just despair of it all and just

learn to live perpetually cynically dissatisfied.

But the Paradox of scripture is that through our fellowship with

God, through our life of faith, we can experience a type of

satisfaction in God that actually then stirs up more

hunger and more Athirst. So, for example, I can think of

many times when I've been let's say I'd like a worship night or

or a prayer Gathering and God's presence is suddenly.

So Putin to me that it feels as if the cloud of his glory is

filling the air around us and for a moment, it satisfies that

desire to be close to him. But in the Gathering ends and we

wake up as if from a dream, the man, you just want that back.

It could be tempting to try to schedule like paradise and

Retreats and all those things like every night and hopes of

recapturing, that feeling. But what's happening is, we're

getting a taste of what we were made for to dwell in the

presence of God in a world. That is saturated with his

goodness. Always our hearts want Eden back

and God Stokes that hunger so that we will seek him and move

deeper into The life that we have for him or that he has for

us. So you probably heard this quote

popular 1 by c.s. Lewis, but it's really great,

so, it does bear repeating. He says, if we find ourselves

with a desired that nothing in this world, can satisfy the most

probable explanation is that we were made for another world and

I think the Beatitudes suggest that the goal is not to try to

extinguish that hunger or eliminate that desire for more.

We should want more because a better world is coming through

Christ. I think God wants us to Crave

it. The discomfort of that craving

might up to us, to try to scratch that itch ourselves and

look for things in this world that at least temporarily

satisfying, but the kind of satisfaction that actually gives

life and creates growth can only come from God.

So church let yourself long for these things, these things that

God promises his presence. His goodness, his healing, his

Justice, his righteousness. And find your rest in the truth.

That God always comes through on his promises. has second Peter

2 Peter 3:13

chapter 3 verse 13 says, In keeping with God's promise, we

are looking forward to a new Heaven and a new Earth where

righteousness dwells. So, let's pray now that God

would Empower us to seek first, his kingdom and his

righteousness until we don't him alone for satisfaction.

That's right.