4 Blessed Are Those Who Hunger And Thirst For Righteousness
4 Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.(NLT) )6 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice,(Or for righteousness) for they will be satisfied.
Some of the most evocative words in the Old Testament come from Ecclesiastes 3:11,
11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.
What does this mean: that God has planted eternity in the human heartand yet has withheld from us the vision of what he has done from everlasting to everlasting?
Restlessness and Longing St. Augustine said,Thou madest us for Thyself,and our heart is restless,until it rest in Thee.
Restlessness and longing are universal behaviour of the human heart.
God has put eternity in our hearts and we have a broken-hearted longing. We try to satisfy it with scenic holiday, achievement of creativity, stunning cinematic productions, sexual exploits, national sports extravaganzas, hallucinogenic drugs, etc., etc. But the longing remains.
Isaiah put it like this in 55:2-3:2 Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good?Listen to me, and you will eat what is good. You will enjoy the finest food.3 "Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life.
And Jeremiah, like this in 2:12-13:"For my people have done two evil things:They have abandoned me- the fountain of living water.And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can
Many of us are like this. Our soul is hungry and our heart are thirsty. We feel an unquenchable longing for something. We are restless. Almost everywhere you turn, the grass is always greener than where we stand. And the great tragedy for some of us is that even though this is the Spirit of God calling us to him, before longwe turn away again ,briefly, to backfiring pleasures of videoor movies, or drugs or alcohol or a new toy.But after a while those things turn out to be boring in just a few weeks
And everything turns to ashes in your hands. We drink at broken cisterns. And we eat bread which does not satisfy. And the words of C.S. Lewis ring more and more true. He said,If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
Jesus Has Something to Say About Longing Jesus has something to say to us about this universal experience of a broken-hearted longing. He has something to say about the unquenchable hunger of the human heart, and about the relentless thirst of our soul.
His words are found in Matthew 5:6 where he says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Let's think for a while about two things:
1. What Is the Righteousness Jesus Is Talking About?
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for RIGHTEOUSNESSLast week we explained the meaning of meekness by going back to Psalm 37:11. The reason was that Jesus seemed to be quoting that psalm almost word for word in Matthew 5:5. And, besides that, the word “meekness” does not occur again in the Sermon on the Mount.
But today’s beatitude is not a quote from the OT and the word “righteousness” occurs five times in this sermon (Matthew 5:6, 10, 20; 6:1, 33). So the best way to undertand Jesus’ meaning in this sermon is to look at these other instances of the word righteousness.
But we will only have time to look at a couple. So let’s look at the ones that are closest.
Persecuted for Righteousness’ Sake
verse 10. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.“ What does righteousness mean here when it says, “persecuted for righteousness’ sake”?
The Structure of the Beatitudes
To answer this, it helps to see the structure of the beatitudes again. There are eight beatitudes with verse 10 as the last one and verse 11 as an expansion of it. The first beatitude (verse 3) and the last beatitude (verse 10) give the same words of assurance: “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”It looks like a kind of sandwich: the top piece of bread and the bottom piece of bread both say, “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”What Ihaven't mentioned yet that there are two groups of four, and the first four and the second four end with a reference to “righteousness.”The first group of four ends with verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”The second group of four ends with verse 10: “Blessed are those who are persecuted the sake of righteousness.”Emptiness and Longing for FullnessThe more you think about it , the more significant this becomes. Notice that the three beatitudes leading up to hunger for righteousness in verse 6 are descriptions of emptiness or passivity: Poverty-stricken in spirit (verse 3), Mourning over our sin and our misery (verse 4), Meekly accepting criticism without retaliation or defensiveness (verse 5). These are not characteristics of overflowing fullness. They are beautiful and good in their proper place, but they are not yet the richness and fullness and overflowing activity of goodness that we long for. And so isn’t it natural that following these first three beatitudes the Lord would say, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”-those who long to be filled with righteousness?
In other words, after pronouncing a blessing upon those who recognize their emptiness and grieve over it and don’t try to justify or defend themselves, Jesus now makes a change from emptiness to fullness by saying that hunger and thirst for righteousness is also blessed.
Fullness and Persecution
Then look at the next three beatitudes. This is just what we find. After hunger and satisfaction in verse 6 comes, “Blessed are the merciful” (in verse 7). Now the blessed person is full and overflowing in mercy. He is not merely broken and sorrowful and meek. He is now active and overflowing with deeds of mercy. Verse 8 says that he is pure in heart and verse 9 says that he is not just peaceful, but a peacemaker.
Then this second group of four beatitudes ends with another reference to righteousness. Only this time it is not a hunger for righteousness which we were lacking, but a persecution for righteousness with which we are overflowing.
A Definition of Righteousness
Do you see the structure? The first four beatitudes describe the broken, grieving, quiet person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness. And the next four beatitudes describe the merciful, pure peacemaker who gets persecuted for his righteousness. Doesn’t this structure, then, give us the definition of righteousness? If we were hungering for righteousness in verse 6 because we were empty, and then we get persecuted for righteousness in verse 10 because we’ve been filled, isn’t it proper to define righteousness as that with which we have been filled?-namely, mercy, purity, and peacemaking?
Righteousness Exceeding That of the PhariseesWell, let’s look at one other use of “righteousness” in the sermon to see if it confirms this understanding.
In Matthew 5:20 Jesus says, 20 "But I warn you-unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!Then what follows in the rest of chapter 5 are six illustrations of how our righteousness must surpass the righteousness of the scrupulous law keepers of the day.
So it is pretty clear what Jesus meant back in Matthew 5:20 when he said that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. It has to do with showing mercy, and being radically pure in your heart, and making peace instead of retaliating. So our understanding of righteousness from the structure of the beatitudes is indeed confirmed. Righteousness is showing mercy to other people; and righteousness is being pure in heart before God who alone can see the heart; and righteousness is the effort to make peace.
Now there may be much more to it than that. But that seems to be the focus of these verses and this chapter, and so we will leave our focus on this: mercy, purity and peacemaking.
2. What Is the Nature of Our Hunger and Thirst? The second thing we want to briefly think about is the nature of hunger and thirst and how they turn into satisfaction. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
Astonished by RealityLet’s think about children for a moment. We can learn much about ourselves by watching the children. See if you don’t find yourself in what G.K. Chesterton had to saywhen wrote these words 80 years ago, and I quote from his book(Orthodoxy, p. 53f.)We all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic . . . This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.(Orthodoxy, p. 53f.)Longing for Absolute RealityWhat does this mean? Does it mean that the longings we all feel for greener grass are really longings to go back to that two year old simplicity when we were awed by the fact that rivers run with water and giraffes have long necks and eggs are yellow in the middle?
No. That would be like a man who looked at my photograph of the Great Reformer’s wall in Geneva and said, “O, to return to the day that you stood there and took that picture! O, to be there like you were there and to see those great towering figures of Calvin and Luther and Zwingli in Geneva!” No. That is not what we really want. We want the real Calvin and Luther and Zwingli. We want to be swept up in the realities they were swept up in. We don’t want a great statue. We want the flesh and blood reality of these men and their cause.
That is how it is in the world.We don’t really want the first thrill of wonder that rivers run with water. We want the eternal reality behind the river. The reason the river stirs up wonder in us and then leaves us thirsty again is because the river is just a picture. It is just a pointer. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. It flows with the water of life, bright as crystal from the throne of God and from the Lamb.
The hunger and the thirst of your life that cannot be satisfied by anything in this world is God reminding us to remember that you were made for another world, you were made for God.
Not Withdrawal from the World But let us be very careful at this point. For just here we could make a very dangerous mistake. We could withdraw from the world. We could become monks or nuns or forest rangers. But just here is where the words of Jesus become all-important–to keep us from making that mistake.
Jesus says that the people who will be satisfied in the end are not people who have gone off into the woods to find solitary communion with God. Rather they are the people whose hunger and thirst has been for righteousness, People who have craved for the grace to be merciful, People who have yearned for radical purity of thoughts and feelings, People who have passionately desired to make peace.
Why Not Simply Hunger for God?And if someone should ask why the promise of satisfaction is made to those who hunger for righteousness and not to those who simply hunger for God, there are two reasons.
1. God’s Righteousness in View
One is that Jesus surely means God’s righteousness-a righteousness like God’s, and a righteousness that God gives. Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Surely that is basically the same as saying, “Hunger and thirst for righteousness.”When we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we don’t look to the broken cisterns of our own resources. We look to God. So it is not either-or: we hunger for righteousness in God.
2. How the Sermon Ends
But there is a deeper reason why Jesus promises satisfaction to those who hunger for God’s righteousness instead of promising satisfaction to those who simply hunger for God.
The Sermon on the Mount ends in Matthew 7:22-23 with these words of Jesus:22 On judgment day many will say to me, ÔÇÿLord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.' 23 But I will reply, ÔÇÿI never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God's laws.'“
They called him Lord. They seemed to have the charismatic gift of prophesy.They were engaged in exorcisms of demons and miracles in Jesus’ name. And he turned them away at the last day saying he never knew them, because they were doers of evil and not righteousness.
They thought they knew him. They thought he knew them. But they were strangers: “I never knew you.”Why? Because they had not hungered and thirsted for his righteousness.They had been religious! They had gone to church. They had gotten involved in many religious activities. But the passion, the hunger, the thirst of their lives was not righteousness. And therefore they will not be satisfied, neither in this age nor in the age to come.
Deep and lasting satisfaction for our souls comes not from the delights of the world nor from a merely religious or vertical relationship with God. Satisfaction comes from God to those whose passion in life is to know him in the struggle to be like him in the world Matthew 5:4848 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.
Make Righteousness Your Passion and Be Satisfied Let's make it our passion that thehunger and the thirst of your life would be to do great acts of righteousness. Don’t settle for the little half-hearted satisfaction of being a millionaire.And remember:It is never too late to change your diet. Do you plan to eat tomorrow? Then why not plan to eat righteousness? Do you plan to drink tomorrow?Then why not plan to drink righteousness?
Could it be that one of the reasons the grass is greener everywhere you look is that your life is not devoted to the central pursuit of righteousness, but to the pursuit of other things? Let us consider this: just as we have strong urges and need to pursue food and drink day after day. Let us make it our prayer that we will hunger and thirst in that same way to establish righteousness-in our own souls and in all our relationships and in our land and in the world.Matthew 5:66 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice,(Or for righteousness) for they will be satisfied.