This morning we come to the fourth beatitude in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We find that beatitude in Matt. 5:6. From this beatitude I want you to see three points: A deficiency in righteousness, the definition of righteousness, and the delight of righteousness.
First, consider the deficiency in righteousness. This beatitude starts with a deficiency in the one who is blessed… actually, two deficiencies. We read that those who are blessed by this inbreaking kingdom of God are those who hunger and thirst. Besides breath, hunger and thirst are the most basic needs that we have as humans, and there is no mistake in Jesus’s use of these basic needs to communicate our spiritual need for righteousness. When I was a teenager, I stayed hungry (much like Logan now, who is eating us out of house and home). I remember feeling like I could never get enough to eat. To make matters worse, my football coach told me, in the 10th grade, that I needed to weigh 220 pounds before I graduated high school. At the time, I weight 170, and that was in spite of a pretty aggressive diet aimed at putting on the pounds. I did everything I could (drank whole milk at every meal, ate peanut and butter sandwiches for snacks, consumed as much meat as my mom would cook). My senior year, I weighed 180 pounds. But, when I went to college, Auburn had a Chic-Fil-A in their student center, and every day I’d go by and get two chicken biscuits on my way to class. Besides that, I didn’t touch a weight my whole freshman year. So, by the end of my freshman year, I’d gone from 180 to 220. Coach would be so proud!
Whether you’ve experienced hunger through teenage growth pains or fasting or just not having money for three square meals, I think everyone understands the need for food. But, while hunger and thirst are basic needs of our bodies, they are not our deepest, nor our most important needs. Consider the fact that a person struggling with depression will refuse to eat, or the fact that someone will starve themselves to death on a flawed perception of their own beauty. Think of how a man facing immense pain will turn his face to the wall and refuse to drink or eat. These emotional and spiritual struggles point to the fact that there is a deeper hunger and thirst that we have as humans. In Matthew 4 we read that Jesus goes into the wilderness and fasts for 40 days and nights. In verse 2 it says simply, “and he was hungry.” It is at this moment of intense physical hunger that Satan comes to tempt Jesus with his most basic (and at this point, most urgent) need. He says, “If you are the son of God, command these rocks to be turned into bread.” Jesus answers with Scripture by saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Imagine that! A man, likely on his last day of life due to prolonged starvation, but yet the very Son of God with all the ability of the Godhead to transform rocks into bread. In that moment of supreme weakness, he says that there is something more important than eating.
Or, consider John 4, where we find Jesus at a well in Shechem. It is high noon, he has been on a long journey, and a woman approaches with a 20-gallon vase to fill for her home. He asks this Samaritan woman for a drink, and she is shocked because of the racial hatred that their two peoples shared for one another. She asks, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink.” Jesus answers, in verse 13, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water I will give him will never be thirsty again.” Jesus knew this woman. He knew her sins. He knew that she had been searching for love in all the wrong places. He knew that she had gone to all of the different wells of life to find meaning and had come up dry each time. She needed something more than water. She needed something more than this world can offer.
This deep spiritual hunger and thirst is ultimately for righteousness, as Jesus says in our beatitude – “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” So what is righteousness, that we should hunger for it? For that, consider my second point, the definition of righteousness. Sadly, I think we’ve lost a biblical understanding of what righteousness is. For most religious people, we equate righteousness with moral purity. This takes a few different forms. Some take a “better than” view of righteousness. When asked whether they will go to heaven when they die, these folks might say, “well, I’m not as bad as some people. I’ve never murdered anyone. So yeah, I think I’m pretty good.” Others take a self-righteous view of righteousness. By this I mean that they have a certain set of rules or moral standards to which they unswervingly hold, while ignoring all of the other laws and commandments of God. I’ve known folks who live bitter, immoral lives, and yet feel that they are morally superior because they were baptized in the right church and take the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. Still others take a ”least-common-denominator” view of righteousness. You might hear these folks say something like, “You know, all that really matters is love. After all, didn’t Jesus say that the two greatest commandments are love of God and love of others. I have good feelings about God and other people, and therefore I’m righteous.”
But, what Jesus (and the Bible, more broadly) means by righteousness isn’t concerned with how you stack up against other people. It’s not concerned with how many boxes you check on your list of rules. It’s doesn’t consider how you think you feel. The Greek word that Jesus uses here is dikaiosyne. This word, in its various forms, is very important in the New Testament. It means “to be acceptable or justified before God.” You see, righteousness, in the Bible, is not primarily a concern for what you do but for your standing before God. To be righteous is to be considered a part of God’s family, to be on God’s side, or to be one of his elect.
Now, there are two ways that one can be counted as righteous. One way is indeed moral purity. As Paul warns in Gal. 3:10, “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’” Sure, you can seek acceptance before God through perfect moral purity according to the Law of God but recognize the weight of that. Paul says that the one who would set out to do this is cursed because in order to be accepted by God in that way, you must keep every last dot and tiddle of the law.
Yet, there is another way. There is the way of faith. As Paul says in Romans 4:4, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” God has always had a way of righteousness that was apart from the law. God has always accepted those who trust in him to provide salvation. God’s acceptance of Abraham was not based on Abraham’s works, but on his faith. God’s acceptance of David was not based on his mighty victories, but on his faith. So too, God’s acceptance of us is not based on our moral purity, but on our faith.
This brings me to my final point: the delight of righteousness. Jesus says that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be blessed with satisfaction. The word for satisfaction here means to be gorged or filled up with food. In the south, we’d say, “I’m stuffed.” Understand, this blessing of Christ’s kingdom isn’t just a momentary blessing. It’s not just enough of a blessing to get us in the door of the kingdom. No! God intends to bless those on whom the kingdom comes with so much righteousness that they will be gorged on it! We see this pictured in Jesus’s ministry. In John 6 we read of Jesus’s feeding of the 5000. In that account, it says that Jesus multiplied the five loaves and two fish to feed everyone present, but it wasn’t just enough for each to get a taste. Instead, verse 12 notes, “they gathered twelve baskets with fragments.” So later, when the disciples ask for bread again, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (v 35). Jesus’s point is clear – “Sure, you have been filled with bread, but you have a much deeper need. You need to be accepted before God. You need spiritual life or you will face spiritual death for all of eternity. Yet, in me, you can have that spiritual life that will never end.”
You see, friend, the only way to satisfy that deep need that you have for truth, for meaning, and for reconciliation with God, is in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only truly righteous one. As 2 Cor. 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” If you want to be accepted before God, you must be in Christ.
Brothers and sisters, we have the righteousness of Christ, if we are in him. We have received his Spirit, who empowers us to live in faithful obedience to God. This means that we are being sanctified, which is to say that we are being made more righteous every day. Our hunger for righteousness is not that of a man stranded on a disserted island with no hope of food, but of princes and princesses reclining at the king’s table, who need only ask for more. May we leave this place hungering for the things of God, knowing that we will be satisfied in him.
No comments:
Post a Comment