Hungering and Thirsting for True Righteousness | Matthew 5:6

That his heart is desiring the finest of foods, the finest of drinks, even the finest or not so finest of women, as is pointed out later in the parable.

He does what he wants to do, and he does it to the fullest.

But it doesn't last.

He soon finds himself starving.

I'll ask you a question.

When you skim that text, or maybe you're just thinking about the text, maybe you're not turned there, maybe you're familiar enough with it.

When you think of that text, let me ask you a question.

Is he satisfied?

Does he sound blessed when you read about him as he is sitting with the pigs?

When he wishes he could just eat their garbage?

Is he satisfied?

You see, this time there's no one there to satisfy his hunger.

He has a hunger, but he cannot fulfill it with what he has before him.

And he says, How many of my father's hired servants, catch this, have more than enough bread.

He thinks back to his time at home, though his heart was not in it.

His eyes were there, and he saw what he saw, and he remembers those who are blessed and fully satisfied in his father's house.

But I, he says, perish here with hunger.

Up until this time, the famine had come in.

He would have settled for nothing less than the finest luxuries that the world could offer.

And there is an excellent cross-reference.

If you're there in your text and you make a habit of using your text as a tool, as God designed it to be, write down this passage right next to Luke 15, 17.

1 John chapter 2, verse 15.

1 John 2:15

Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

We can't love both the Father and have ourselves dedicated to the world.

I know they both offer something awfully special, but one is far superior to the other.

And we can't have both as the master.

One will be walking, one will be riding.

And so John goes on to say, all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride of life is not.

Underline it, highlight it, circle it from the Father, but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires.

But whoever does the will of God abides forever.

You think I'm going to live a long time.

Let me say to you, the world is passing away.

Look at your parents, look at your grandparents, look at your great-grandparents.

They all had to leave this place.

Maybe not your parents yet, but they will, just like you and me.

At some point, provided the Lord doesn't return yet, they all pass away and they are separated from all of the worldly things.

No matter how many of them they had or how little they had, it made no difference.

Our spiritual appetite can never be satisfied by the world.

Not really, not forever.

The desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, they will all pass.

All of these are passing.

All of these will be separated from.

But the one who does the will of God, John says, abides forever.

Again, John recording what Jesus had to say, this time not in his epistle, but back to the gospel of John in chapter 4, verse 34.

Jesus says, There, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.

Was Jesus just bragging about himself, or was he saying, That's your work too?

That's your food as well.

What are the hungers, brothers and sisters, in our lives?

What are the longings that you yearn to have satisfied?

We all have to consider that from time to time, and probably should pretty frequently.

What am I hungering and thirsting for?

Are you hungering and thirsting to provide for your family?

Job one.

Number one is my job.

That's my greatest duty God has given.

You know that's a lie from Satan.

Your greatest duty God has given is to remain a faithful Christian.

Your job comes somewhere down the line.

But it's definitely not first or second or third.

What I want more than anything else in life is to be married and to have a great, successful marriage.

That's a great purpose, but it's not number one.

My work, my possessions, for some it's control.

For others, it's what people think of me.

For others, it's being in a position where I can make the decisions I want to make in my life.

These are all number one for many people.

And I'll say to you: if your desires are apart from the will of God, to satisfy them will only mean disappointment for you because you will be separated from them at some point in your life.

You will not have control over that.

Somebody else will take control, as Solomon said.

They'll spend your money in ways that you wouldn't have spent it.

They'll do with your possessions what you would never have done with your possessions.

Why?

Because you no longer have control.

They do.

Someone else does.

Fearful expectation of judgment comes to those who have lived their life craving, eating, and drinking only what the world has to offer them.

Jesus identifies a better way, the true source of great blessings.

And again, the word righteous means doing what God says is right.

A person can feel lasting joy.

A person can have true blessings.

When he or she has concluded, they will follow God in what God says is right.

That's where our greatest of blessings all come from.

We can endure a difficult financial strain.

And then conclude for ourselves, really, I feel very out of control with my finances.

We can endure that when we know that we're doing what's right and honoring God with our finances.

We can have joy overcoming strainful or strained relationships when we know we're trying to honor God in our relationships.

We can overcome whatever happens to our possessions when we're trying to honor God with all that He gives.

As we often hear during the time of the Lord's treasury collection.

That it's not ours really anyway, is it?

He's only given what he sees fit to give.

He doesn't give what he doesn't see fit to give.

Jesus endured the cross, despised the shame for the joy of doing what he knew was right in the sight of the Father.

What he said he came to do.

There is no escaping the fact, brothers and sisters, that when we scan the horizon of scriptures that we have been given so adequately by God, the people we see most blessed are men and women that we read of listening to what God had to say and following it.

Hungering, thirsting for righteousness in the sight of God.

What God said was right, they were going to follow, regardless of the cost it may have cost them.

It was their truest and greatest satisfaction.

It was their greatest point of joy in life.

It was worth everything to them.

Some of them paid great dear prices for this.

But they all gained fulfillment.

They all gained true satisfaction.

And the reward was worth it all.

After the Exodus, you might remember Israel constantly was wanting to go back.

We just think of all the things we had there in Egypt before Moses came and God freed us.

What a comparison to think about melons on a table.

Instead of not having somebody whipping you with a load on your back day after day after day.

Missplaced.

You see what they were doing?

They're trudging along, walking, while the memories that they had so grand ideas about, which weren't even factual, were up there riding like a prince on the horse.

Moaning and groaning.

Not everything's the way they wanted it in life.

Not enjoying the blessings of their greatest freedom, both physical and spiritual freedom were coming to them.

They were experiencing that every day, but whoa, the melons and the leeks and the onions that are there on the dining table back in Egypt.

Water coming from a mountain, bread coming out of heaven.

Or manna, whatever it was.

Literally, that's what manna means.

Whatever this is.

What is it?

I'm just saying to you, brothers and sisters, sometimes we can just get out of whack, and that's what Jesus is talking about.

Protection from God, the many blessings that were yet to come, those things they were incomparable to where they came from.

Pitiful comparisons.

People like Moses were looking at what God said and wanted.

Moses found fulfillment and contentment because he he cared more about being right with God than he cared about anything else.

Anything at all.

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 27 says, Moses persevered.

Hebrews 11:27

How did he do that?

Because he saw him who was invisible.

He thirsted and hungered for God and what God had to say.

The prodigal son became a slave when he rebelled against his father.

And he lived only to please himself in this world.

When he turned to the father and accepted what the father said was right, he experienced contentment and blessings.

For the very first time in his life, he actually loved his father and the blessings that come with it.

It was then that he began to truly enjoy all these blessings from the father, his household, that the father had for him all along.

He just couldn't see it because he just wanted to be the slave, walking.

All of God's blessings, brothers and sisters, those are a byproduct of living by what God says is right.

It's the same sermon from Jesus that he preaches in other places, but here more condensed.

For example, he says in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33, this same sermon, but a different point.

Matthew 6:33

Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness.

All these needs that you have will be added to you.

When we live for doing what God says is right in our life, then we see the blessings that are all around us and they're overflowing.

When we choose to live for the world, we never find contentment for very long.

Jesus says, if you have a hunger and a thirst for finding fulfillment, for being blessed, if I could put it into practical, usable terms, expounding upon what he says in a way, what that means is you'll pick up God's book and you'll read it.

What that means is you'll listen to the words that you're reading and you'll find ways to meditate upon those so as to best apply them in ways into your own life.

And when you've done that, you'll find yourself going back to the dish because you just can't get enough of what he has to say.

It makes our lives better.

And Jesus is pointing out you don't have to be the one who is the slave that's that's that's that's that's walking.

You can be the prince.

You can be the princess, you can be the child of the king, the king, not just a king.

And he has blessings abundantly to give you.

It's a matter of survival, brothers and sisters.

It's not just that we want what's best in life, it's what we must have to survive.

So I ask you again, are you filled?

Are you looking for more than this physical life can give?

Listen to the words of the great prophet Isaiah.

When he says, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.

You say, Well, I don't have anything to purchase anything with.

Does that mean you're poor in spirit?

So God says, Come and buy it, without money and without price.

In fact, he asks the question through Isaiah: why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in rich food.

Incline your ear and come to me here that your soul may live.

I have seen slaves on horses and princes walking on the ground like slaves.

We are not meant to be ruled, you and me, by anything.

We were meant to live as children of the king.

God promises to satisfy and fill our deepest hunger, our greatest thirsts that everyone at some point in their life has.

But you see, it's our responsibility to have an appetite for listening and drinking it.

God's not going to force on you to be his child.

God's not gonna say, no, no, you are gonna have these blessings.

That's up to us.

That's our appetite at work.

And I'll say to you that if we won't make that commitment, we will not be filled because we will become what we eat and drink.

You heard that since you were a kid.

You are what you eat, right?

That's absolutely true.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Let's close in a word of prayer together.

Our God and our Father in heaven, we come before you at this time, grateful that you have not left us to find our way on our own through this upside-down world.

Help us to hunger and thirst for righteousness and give us an appetite for your word, the digesting of it, and the application that comes from it, the wisdom, in order to listen and to utilize it.

Help us to meditate upon what you said and make your truth a necessary part of our lives.

Teach us to seek you first, your kingdom first, your righteousness, trusting that you know what we are in true need of.

And you will multiply our blessed state.

May we live as your children, Father, children of the King, children of heaven and earth.

Keep our hearts from allowing the things that you give, which are meant to serve us, from becoming our masters.

May we rule over those things, making them items by which we can better honor and serve you.

Our Father, and give us a heart that craves you, and what you tell us is right and good above everything else.

Father, if there are any here this morning that you know have been hungering and thirsting, but lacking fulfillment by the means of this world, we ask that you touch their heart, you give them insight into what you have taught today, give them courage to seek what you want in their life as you teach in your sermon in the book of Matthew.

To fulfill their spiritual hunger and their spiritual thirst with spiritual things from your word.

We ask these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Maybe you're that prodigal son, and maybe you need to make a change, that prodigal child, and you need to make a change this morning.

That change isn't gonna happen unless you take that step.

God's not gonna force you.

You need to get up.

You need to come to Him.

And when you do that, before you even finish, going through the spiel of how desperate you are, He will take you in.

He will count you as His renewed child.

And he'll treat you like the prince or the princess that you were meant to be in his spiritual realm.

That's the ending to that story in Luke chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

God still does that even still today.

If you've come to that same conclusion, it is time for you to do that.

And we hope you'll take advantage of that this morning, right now, even.

If you need to study about it or talk with it more, uh talk about it more with me or one of the others that are elders or deacons or faithful members here, do that.

But I'll tell you this don't put it off any longer.

And if you if you if that time in your life is right now, I hope you'll take advantage of it by coming forward as we stand and sing together.