Hungry and Thirsty for Righteousness

Many of you already know that I have a weakness for chocolate. Let me confess to you another weakness I have. I love Chinese food. But there’s one problem with Chinese food. You eat it, and two hours later you’re hungry again.

That, in a nutshell, is what the fourth Beatitude is all about. It’s about what we feed our lives on, and whether or not that satisfies us.

One of the most amazing inventions of recent years is the GPS—the Global Positioning System. The GPS is made up of a series of about a dozen space satellites in stationary orbit above the earth. Each one of them beams a radio signal down to earth. At least three satellites are above the horizon at any given place on earth.

You can purchase a little hand-held receiver that can read those signals. And by a simple process of triangulation, as it compares the signals that it is getting from the various satellites, that little receiver can tell you, to an accuracy of a few feet, exactly where you are on planet Earth.

Hertz is already putting these GPS receivers in its rental cars, coupled with a computerized map system that tells you exactly where you are and how you can get to where you want to go. You’ll never be lost again!

The first three Beatitudes are like an SPS—a Spiritual Positioning System. They tell you exactly where you are in relation to God and to other people. Being poor in spirit and mourning describe where you stand in relation to God. We’re sinners: we have nothing good to offer God. We stand before him in spiritual rags, and we mourn when we truly come to understand that fact.

Jesus said that unless you start there, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

When we begin to understand our true position in relation to God, we gain a new perspective on our relationship to other people. We no longer want to insist on having our own way, on promoting our own cause, on waving our own flag. Other people become more important to us than ourselves. That is what the third Beatitude calls meekness.

Now if the first three Beatitudes are about position, the fourth Beatitude is all about purpose. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” The first three Beatitudes talk about where you’re at; the fourth talks about where you’re going.

Last month, we attended the Men’s Action Group at Camp Hebron. Some of us went mountain biking during our free time on Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful, warm sunny day. We went up hills and down hills for a couple of hours, and when we came back to the camp, we had really worked up a thirst.

So we went downstairs to the Ocean Spray drink machine. There on the front of the machine, in a beautiful lit-up display, was a larger than life size picture of the most luscious fruit—apples, oranges, strawberries, cherries—all covered with those little water droplets that make them look even fresher. In a matter of seconds, I was peeling open the top of an ice-cold can of cran-apple juice, and drinking it down. It was delicious!

That was about as thirsty as I ever get. But that doesn’t even come close to what a man must feel who is lost in the desert. Or a survivor of a disaster at sea, who is bobbing up and down in a little life raft, parched with thirst, surrounded by water and unable to drink any of it. That’s the kind of thirst Jesus is talking about in the fourth Beatitude—not the momentary kind that is easily satisfied.

When he talks about being hungry, he isn’t talking about the kind of hunger you get when you’ve skipped lunch. He’s talking about the kind of hunger you get when you’ve fasted for forty days. It’s a life-dominating hunger. It’s all you can think about.

Some of the hostages who were kidnapped and held for years in Lebanon back in the 1980’s tell how they used to pass the time by thinking and talking about the glorious meals they would enjoy when and if they were ever released. They were just barely existing on meager rations that were the same every day, poorly prepared, and practically thrown at them by their captors. It’s no wonder that food was on their minds all the time.

Jesus says that unless we develop that kind of hunger and thirst for righteousness, we’ll never be satisfied; we’ll never be filled. But what is this righteousness he’s talking about?

Very simply, it means wanting to be right with God. Wanting God’s way for our lives, not our own way. Wanting to be rid of the sin in our lives and wanting to do God’s will instead. That’s all part and parcel of what righteousness means.

And Jesus says that if that is the purpose and direction of your life—if that is what you truly want with all your heart and soul and mind—then, and only then, will you be filled.

Everyone is trying to find fullness. Some people try to find fullness by pursuing happiness. Just last Monday, I stood in the room in Independence Hall in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

At the beginning of that document are those familiar words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That may be a wonderful political statement, but it is a totally inadequate spiritual statement. Because no one ever finds happiness by pursuing it.

People say “If only I had more money, I’d be happy. If only I could win the lottery.” Surveys have been conducted of the various lottery winners around the country to see whether their lives have improved after having gained all that wealth. And invariably they have found that the lottery winners are more miserable, more unhappy, as a result of winning the lottery than they were before.

One man in Michigan won the Michigan State lottery a few years ago, and being a careful man, he banked most of the money. In fact, the only indulgence he allowed himself was a new Cadillac, because he had always wanted to own a Cadillac.

So he bought himself a brand new Cadillac, loaded with all the options. And one morning his wife looked in the garage and found him dead behind the wheel of his shiny new Cadillac. He had been sitting there listening to the stereo system with the engine running and had asphyxiated himself.

Some people say “If only I could find true love, then I’d be happy.” So they cycle through a series of partners, marrying and divorcing, (or just living with) while their lives grow more and more complicated, frustrated, and unfulfilling.

Some people say “If only I could win the respect of my peers, then I’d be happy.” So they give themselves to accomplishing great things, and seeking recognition and fame. Some do it in the business world, some do it on the athletic field, some even do it in the ministry.

(Believe me, the ministry is a place where you’ll find a lot of people trying to establish their own significance. They’re looking for recognition; they’re looking for praise, and they’re using the Lord’s work as a platform for their own ambition.)

There’s a fascinating verse in Jeremiah that I’d like you to turn to. It’s found in ch. 2:13…

My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

There are three words that I’d like you to notice in that verse.

1. Forsaken

When you forsake something, it means that you turn away from it. You abandon it without any intention of ever coming back to it. God says that that is what we have done with Him; we have forsaken Him.

2. Dug

What is involved in digging? Well, any digging I’ve ever done takes a lot of hard work! God is saying here that we have not only turned our backs on Him, the spring of living water, but we have set about working very hard to find our own source of water.

Instead of drinking at his spring, we’ve set about digging our own cisterns. And the harder we work at that project, the more proud and arrogant we become. You know how it is: the more work you put in on something, the harder it becomes to walk away from it. You can’t disengage because your pride won’t let you!

3. Cisterns

A cistern is an underground holding area for water. In Israel, up on the fortress of Masada, which I’ll be showing you tonight, King Herod the Great built huge cisterns to hold the rainwater that fell.

A cistern is not a well. It is not a spring. It cannot produce any water of its own; it can only hold the water that you put into it. And the Lord says that the cisterns that we build are broken—they cannot hold water. What good is a cistern that can’t hold water?

Do you see what God is saying to us here? Do you see how it relates to what Jesus said in the fourth Beatitude?

When we direct our lives toward anything other than hungering and thirsting for God’s righteousness, we are trying to dig our own cisterns.

We look for happiness, we can’t find it. We give ourselves to pleasure, and it doesn’t please us. We try to acquire material things, and we become bored with them when they don’t fill those empty spaces inside us. We give ourselves to learning, but we can never learn enough. We pursue careers, but we find that climbing the ladder of success leaves us empty and drained. We demand our rights, but we find that pursuing our rights turns us into angry, bitter people.

A famous king who lived 3,000 years ago went through all of this. He even wrote a book about it. It’s called Ecclesiastes. ““Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?”

And then Solomon goes into detail on it. He lists all the things he has tried in order to find meaning and significance and fulfillment. All the cisterns he dug. And none of them worked. None of them held any water. So at the end of the book, he gives his conclusion.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

Do you hear the echoes of the fourth Beatitude in that statement? Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—that’s fearing God and keeping his commandments—for they will be filled.”

Everyone, at some point in his or her life asks: “What is the purpose of my life? Why do I exist? How do I find meaning? How do I satisfy my need to be significant?”

And the fourth Beatitude supplies God’s answer. The only true meaning in life comes through seeking God. Hungering and thirsting after Him and His will.

Anything else we try to feed our souls on is like junk food. It fills you for a moment, but it leaves you feeling empty later on. A steady diet of it starves you to death.

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably saying at this point, “OK, I agree that I need to hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness, but HOW? How can I cultivate that appetite in my life?”

Well, let’s recognize up front that this is not something that we can do by ourselves. We can’t just set out to hunger after God. Like the other Beatitudes, a hunger and a thirst for God have to come from God himself. They are a gift of grace. He has to work in our lives to produce this appetite.

But on the other hand, we can’t just sit back and say “Well, I’ll just wait until he does it.” There is work that we can do to prepare ourselves for His work of grace in our lives. I’d like to suggest three things:

1. We can pray that God would give us a hunger and a thirst for Him. This is a prayer that God wants to answer: “Lord, build in me a greater hunger for You and for Your righteousness. Take away my craving for the spiritual junk food that leaves me feeling so empty, and put in its place an appetite for You.”

Pray that God would make you like the Psalmist, who wrote “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”

2. We can make His Word a deeper priority in our life. As we develop a greater appreciation for the Word of God, we will cultivate a taste for the Author of that Word. We will begin to appreciate His thought patterns, His perspectives, His wisdom.

Imagine that you were to go into a five-star restaurant, a place world-famous for its superb cuisine. The waiter comes and hands you a menu. The menu is beautifully printed and bound, and contains a mouth-watering description of the food that is served at that restaurant.

Suppose that you were to spend an hour just scanning over the menu, studying it, and even memorizing certain parts of it. Then you close the menu, thank the waiter, and get up and leave. Would you have enjoyed that dining experience? Would you have been satisfied by it:? No, of course not. The experience is only made complete when you order a meal and eat it.

In the same way, the Bible is to God as a menu is to a meal. It’s the doorway to the full experience. Many Christians spend all kinds of time and effort mastering the Bible, but then they close their Bibles without ever having met with God.

And you can tell it by their lives. They have their heads full of Bible facts, but their hearts are not full of joy and love. They’ve read the Book, but they haven’t spent time with the Author. God gave us the Bible to draw us into relationship with Himself. If your relationship is only with the Bible, you’ve really missed the boat.

We need to make the Bible a priority in our lives in order to give God a chance to reveal Himself to us.

3. Forsake sin. The problem with all of us is that we have embraced sin and forsaken God. We need to turn the tables.

Now I know that we are unable to forsake sin on our own. I’m a good Calvinist—I believe in the total depravity of man. I know that it takes a work of God to overcome sin in our lives.

But we can line up our will with what God wants to do in us. We can ask Him to make us sensitive to areas of our lives where sin is just lying in the weeds, hidden and unseen by us. We can pray, like David did in Psalm 139…

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

We need to ask God to make us sick of our sin.

I know someone who had to go on a low sodium diet. This person was having a problem with high blood pressure, and the doctor ordered him to cut down his salt intake. The salt was slowly killing him.

Well, at first it was very hard, because he loved salt. He was one of those people who, as soon as a plate of food was placed in front of him, he would automatically go for the salt shaker. So it was hard for him to forsake salt.

But after a few months of the low salt diet, he found that he had lost his taste for salt. If something was set before him that was salty, he couldn’t eat it, because he had overcome that craving for salt. In fact, salty food made him feel sick.

It wasn’t that my friend was turned off food. In fact, once he got over his salt habit, he claimed that he actually enjoyed his food more, because now he could actually taste it.

We need to ask God to do a work like that in our lives when it comes to sin. To give us an aversion to it, a dislike for it, a desire to avoid it, so that we can enjoy the taste of life lived according to God’s will.