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