Senior Pastor Mark Stafford

Hungry for Righteousness | Matthew 5:6

Many years ago, I had an Alaskan husky and German shepherd mix named Chief.  He was a hundred pounds of muscle surrounded by a huge, thick coat. 

On day, Lara, Chief and I decided to go on a mountain bike trip in the woods.  The trail was a seven or eight-mile loop and was quite challenging.  About two hours into the ride, the trailhead was still nowhere in sight.  We were tired and Chief refused to move unless we continually gave him water.  Water was essential for his forward movement.  Our need for water is why Jesus used “hunger and thirst” as a spiritual analogy.

Righteousness is necessary for spiritual life.  It’s not an optional luxury.  For that reason, Jesus compared a spiritual desire for righteousness to a physical desire for food and water.  The comparison is rich with meaning.

Food and water are necessities for life.  We are fortunate enough to live in a country where we have access to a variety of foods, twenty-four hours per day.  Most of us have enough money to buy whatever we need.  Sometimes I even get to choose what kind of food I’d like to have. (When I choose, it’s usually Mexican!)

We can drive up to a window, in a car that we personally own and they’ll hand us what we want to eat.  There are some places in the world that driving your own car through a place like Taco Bell would be a luxury beyond belief!  Even the poorest folks in our country have access to soup kitchens and food banks that offer them enough food for survival.

Famine is almost unheard of in the US, so it’s hard for us to relate to real hunger.  We live in a city with grocery stores and restaurants on nearly every corner of every major intersection.  It is difficult for us to imagine the desperate hunger faced by those who have access to absolutely no food at all.  They haven’t just skipped a meal of two, they literally don’t have any food.

According to the United Nations World Food Program, someone dies of a hunger-related illness in our world every four seconds.  That amounts to 21,000 every day!  Right now in Africa (especially Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Chad), in India and in some parts of Latin America, hunger is especially deadly.  During this message this morning, approximately 500 people will die of hunger in the areas I just mentioned.

In Jesus’ day, Palestine was susceptible to famine.  The people who were listening to the Sermon on the Mount understood the threat of famine very well.  Food and water were never wasted because they were often in short supply.  People didn’t work farms just to make a profit.  Most people were not concerned about working hard to purchase luxuries.  They worked hard just to stay alive!  For them, plowing a field and owning a well were matters of life and death.  The threat of starvation was real and they knew the necessity of bread.

So when Jesus linked together hunger, thirst and righteousness, he was communicating that just like food and water, righteousness is not a luxury.  Righteousness is a necessity for our spiritual growth.  Just like our physical bodies crave and depend on food and water to stay alive, our spiritual life depends on righteousness for ongoing health.

It has been often said that “you are what you eat.”  In this computer age, you’re likely to hear “garbage in, garbage out.”  These principles are not just true for our physical health, they are also applicable to our spiritual health.

Just like our bodies depend on the pursuit (and acquisition) of food and water, our spiritual health depends on the pursuit (and acquisition) of righteousness.  Our spiritual life has appetites that must be satisfied or we’ll begin to wither away spiritually.  If our spiritual appetites are not given the spiritual food that God has provided for us in His Word, then we will quickly become spiritually weak.  Our spiritual lives must be frequently fed.

Spiritual Life Creates and Appetite for Righteousness – Luke 15:11-32, Hebrews 5:14, 1 Timothy 4:7, Titus 3:4-7

Healthy people are hungry!  People who are never hungry are either sick or dead.  Hunger and thirst in a living being are evidences of life.  Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness have evidence in themselves of being spiritually alive!  Our main text today says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

To define it simply: to be “righteous” means to be right.  It is being right with God, right with yourself, and right with others.  To hunger and thirst for righteousness means to function the way that God made you to function.

• These believers have learned and applied spiritual discernment in their life

Instead of running after the promises of the secular world, they are pursuing all they need in the person of Jesus.  They have found a better pursuit in Him than anything this world has to offer.

Every person is born with a hunger for God at some level, but only the believer is actively pursuing righteousness.  It is tragic when people try to satisfy spiritual cravings with secular food.  This was the case with the prodigal son in Luke 15.  Let’s read this parable together… starting in verse 11:

In this passage, Jesus is telling a story in order to illustrate a spiritual point.  He was speaking to a mixed crowd of self-righteous religious leaders and some regular folks labelled as “sinners.”  The parable assumes that this a wealthy family and there was a fair share of inheritance to be had.

¹¹ And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them.

Culturally, this would have been a highly offensive move by the younger son.  Family fortunes were passed down from one generation to the next when the patriarch of the family died.  The son was asking for his inheritance early so that he could leave the family for the pursuit of excitement and popularity in a distant, god-less country.

¹³ Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.¹⁴ And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need.

The excitement of the secular world didn’t last.  He soon found that trying to fill his appetites with the depravity of sin left him penniless, broken and starving.  Sin was fun for a season and then there was nothing to show for it in the end.  Sin is like cotton candy:  It tastes great for a moment, but leaves us hungry and empty.

¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶ And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

The “pods” were probably referring to carob pods which grew in that region.  (The same stuff they make the chocolate substitute out of today.)  They were hearty enough to withstand a famine, but they were inedible for people.  He knew that the pods weren’t enough to satisfy his hunger.  He needed something better.  In verse 17, it continues,

17 “But when he came to himself…

This means that he came to his senses.  He woke up to the reality of what sin had produced in his life.  Falling to the bottom of a pit jolted him out of the illusion that sin might be satisfying.  He was thinking clearly and knew he needed to return to his father.

17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!

He was the son of a man with a large estate.  Before he left his father’s house, he never knew hunger.  Now, he was so hungry that even the bread his father’s day-laborers ate sounded better to him than starving to death.  So he headed back home to plead with his Father.

Jewish men of that day were not always accepting of a wayward son.  The Hebrew culture was not naturally a merciful culture.  Children who turned their backs on their families (like the prodigal in the story) were often not allowed to return home.  Some families would even have a funeral for a wayward child and completely disown them.  The son’s only hope was to throw himself on his father’s mercy.

He rehearses what he’s going to say.  Look at verse 18:

¹⁸ I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father,I have sinned against heaven and before you. ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ ²⁰ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

This was unheard of behavior for a man of his day.  Older Jewish men didn’t run, they didn’t freely extend mercy and they certainly did not show joy over a wayward son.  The crowd listening to this story would have never anticipated this twist in the plot because this father was so different than the norm.  The prodigal pulled out his rehearsed line and said in verse 21:

²¹ And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

What the father did next was radical.  He accepted the son back with no conditions.  He was welcomed back home with full rights and privileges.

²² But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. ²³ And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. ²⁴ For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

The older brother was not so excited.  In the story, he represented the Pharisees and Jewish leaders of their day.  Pharisees believed that a wayward child should feel the full weight of the father’s wrath.  They felt that only weak men showed mercy.  The son should have been cut off from the family and from the village.  His behavior was inexcusable and unforgiveable.  Look at verse 25

²⁵ “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. ²⁷ And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’

²⁸ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, ²⁹ but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.

³⁰ But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ ³¹ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”

The shocking reality is that the Prodigal Son is not merely a picture of the worst of sinners, he is a symbol of every redeemed sinner!  Before we knew Jesus as Lord and Savior, we were prodigals too…  Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t treat us according to our sins but according to His mercy!  Titus 3:4-7 says,

“…when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, ⁵ he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,⁶ whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷ so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

One day, I hope to take a Sunday or two and unpack the implications of this parable, but the one spiritual lesson I want to focus on today is that spiritual appetites can’t be satisfied with the things of the world.

Spiritual Appetites are Fed by the Pursuit of God’s Will – 1 John 2:15-17, John 4:34

Spiritually, when we look outside our Heavenly Father’s house for fulfillment, we’ll often find devastation instead.  The apostle John says in 1 John 2:15-17:

“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. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

The “desires of the flesh,” “the desires of the eyes” and “the pride of life” all pass away but “whoever does the will of God abides forever.”  This reminds me of Jesus’ statement back in John 4:34.  The disciples were encouraging Jesus to eat and He said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”

Those who are spiritually alive experience new cravings and new desires.  They begin to hate sin and its bondage.  Sin no longer satisfies and they desperately was to run back to their Father’s house when they find themselves bound up by it.  Disciples develop a new love for Jesus and His righteousness alongside a new hatred of sin.

Spiritual Life Develops a New Sense of Taste – Psalm 34:8, 1 Peter 2:3, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Psalm 42:1-2

• The psalmist tells us that believers can “taste and see that the Lord is good!”[3]
• The Apostle Peter said of believers, “…you have tasted that the Lord is good.”[4]

Every soul has a hunger and thirst built into it at creation.  Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “he has put eternity into man’s heart.”  In other words, God has made us to know that this world is not all there is.  It’s part of our nature to seek God until we find Him.  Augustine once said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

David said in Psalm 42:1-2, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. ² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”  An unbeliever may not know that their hunger and thirst is for God, but they know something is missing.  Often they will try to substitute that hunger and thirst with something far less fulfilling.  Like trying to replace water with soda, trying to quench our spiritual thirst apart from the pursuit of God will only leave us thirstier.

God has put this desire for eternity in our hearts and the pleasures of this world are never enough to provide lasting satisfaction.  Satisfaction is only found in Jesus.  Those who have trusted in Jesus have found the spiritual food and drink they need to finally be satisfied.  Only Jesus can satisfy!

Spiritual Thirst is Satisfied by the Pursuit of Christ – John 6:35, 4:13-14

In John 6:35, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

When Jesus was speaking to the woman at the well, He said to her (in John 4:13-14), “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The believer who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is displaying not only evidence of spiritual life but also of spiritual health.  One of the first symptoms of sickness is a loss of appetite and one of the first signs of regained health is the return of appetite.

Spiritually speaking, when a person allows an infection of sin to enter into their life, they begin to lose their appetite for spiritual things.

• They will often spend God’s money on things that draw them further away from God instead of spending it on the things draw them closer to the Lord and on things that further His Kingdom.
• They begin to lose their taste for good spiritual food and begin to feed upon substitutes. For example, they might trade out Bible study for a favorite hobby or TV program.  In doing so, they are never satisfied!

Whenever a Christian realizes that they’ve drifted from God and confess their sin, the appetite and thirst for spiritual things returns to them.

• So, what are the hungers in your life?
• What are the yearnings that you need to have satisfied?

If our desires in this life are contrary to the clear, stated will of God as it appears in the Bible, then we will only find ourselves disappointed in those pursuits.  We need a better pursuit!  When we pursue those things in line with the will of God, then we can be truly satisfied with enjoyment, growth and fulfillment in the Lord!

Application

Feeding the Right Appetites is the Key to Growing Spiritually – Luke 15:11-32

God has made a person’s heart so that nothing can ever fill it but God Himself.  A believer is able to identify those cravings and he knows that nothing short of the pursuit of righteousness will be satisfying.

Are you in the Word?

Do you spend time in prayer?

Is church a top priority for your family?

Are you feeding yourself spiritually?

The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we want to know Him.  A relationship with Jesus creates a hunger for more holiness.  What is holiness?  Holiness means to be “set apart for God’s purposes.”  It involves the whole person.  In fact, it comes from the same Greek word as the word “wholeness.”  Sin destroys and divides, but holiness builds us up.  To have Christ planted in the center of your life means that Christ begins to make you whole again

When the prodigal son hungered for material possessions and thrills, his life simply fell apart.  However, when he returned to his father, everything was made whole again.  In fact, everything he was looking for in the distant country he found right at home with his dad.

In the same way, everything thing we think we will find in the pursuit of the secular world we’ll find perfectly in the pursuit of righteousness.  The promise of Matthew 5:6 is that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied and blessed.  Holiness always produces God’s blessing in our lives

Pursuing Holiness Produces happiness – Matthew 6:33

The prodigal son became a slave when he rebelled against his Father and lived only to please himself.  When he returned home and began a new pursuit of a life submitted to his father’s will, he was able to find the happiness he was seeking.

All of God’s blessings are the by-products of the pursuit of His righteousness.  Consider Matthew 6:33 that says, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  When we live for God’s purposes and live under His rule, then we’ll be able to enjoy life the way God intended.

There is no shortcut to happiness or holiness.  We must begin with a hunger.  As we begin to fulfill that appetite with the things of God, we’ll develop a taste for righteousness.  “We are what we eat.”  If we put garbage into our lives, garbage will come out.  But if we fill our lives with Christ and His righteousness, then happiness, joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction is the end result.

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

[1] Hebrews 5:14

[2] 1 Timothy 4:7

[3] Psalm 34:8a

[4] 1 Peter 2:3