The Kingdom Norms, Part Four

Matthew 5:6
P. G. Mathew | Sunday, March 16, 1997
Copyright © 1997, P. G. Mathew

God Guarantees Satisfaction

The beatitudes describe the character norms of the citizens of the kingdom of God. In our previous studies we have learned that such people, first of all, are poor in spirit. They are the ones who declare before God their utter spiritual bankruptcy. Second, such people also mourn, specifically and particularly, for the sins they have committed, and detest and forsake those sins. Third, such people are also meek and humble. Why? Those who see God are meek, and these people have seen God. And the fourth norm, which we will discuss in this study, is that such people hunger and thirst for righteousness, and God guarantees they will be satisfied.

Two Pursuits

There are two things people are hungering and thirsting after in today’s world: money and happiness. The citizens of the world, and especially the citizens of the United States of America, are in hot pursuit of happiness. They seek earnestly to obtain money, by hook or by crook, for they know that money will give them the happiness of things, as well as the happiness of power, pleasure, respect, recognition, health, welfare, and so on. Money gives us access to and influence with powerful people. It only takes money to do many things.

But while the world is seriously seeking happiness, the citizens of the kingdom of God are engaged in serious pursuit of another goal. What is it? Righteousness. Blessed and happy is the man, Jesus says, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness.

Happiness through Righteousness

What is man’s greatest problem? We may think it is a lack of happiness, and that is why we pursue happiness and money so vigorously. But let me assure you, that is not our greatest problem. If we understand humanity from a biblical point of view, we realize that our greatest problem is sin. And so an individual’s most fundamental question should not be how to find more money, but, rather, how to get rid of sin and become filled with righteousness.

In his commentary on this passage, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that if we seek pleasure, we will get misery (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount , [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971, reprinted, 1982], 75). In other words, although we give all we have to the pursuit of happiness, we will become unhappy in the end. How, then, can we obtain happiness? In this beatitude Jesus teaches that human happiness can be indirectly obtained through the direct seeking of righteousness. And what does Jesus mean by righteousness? Complete conformity to the revealed will of God.

We can obtain happiness through righteousness. Concerning Jesus it is said, “Here I am, I have come–it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart” (Ps. 40:7, 8; Heb. 10:7, 9). In his Confession, St. Augustine said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless,” meaning we are unhappy, we are miserable, we are wretched “until they find their rest in Thee.”

The happiness of a man is a byproduct of his fellowship with God. But there is a problem. What is it? Sin. A sinner cannot fellowship with a righteous God. He or she must become righteous in order to meet and fellowship with God. Remember, the byproduct of fellowship with God is human happiness. That is why we must hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones tells us that this verse is a test for all of us. He says, “I do not know of a better test than anyone can apply to himself or herself in this whole matter of the Christian profession than a verse like this.” And he continues, “If this verse is to you one of the most blessed statements of the whole of Scripture, you can be quite certain you are a Christian; if it is not, then you had better examine the foundations again” (Lloyd-Jones, p. 74). I urge you to pay heed to his counsel in this statement.

Not A Halfway Righteousness

Jesus said blessed are the people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The expression for righteousness used in the original Greek text tells us that Jesus is not speaking about hungering and thirsting for a partial righteousness, but for full, complete righteousness. In other words, Jesus is speaking about hungering and thirsting for nothing less than perfect, divine righteousness in all its fullness. So the noun “righteousness” is used in the accusative, not the genitive, case.

Jesus was not pronouncing a benediction upon people who live a halfway decent life, by the world’s standards or on people who are in some way interested in social justice. This beatitude is not a benediction for people like Mahatma Gandhi or those who perform occasional deeds of charity. No, it is a benediction upon those who hunger and thirst for whole, perfect, divine righteousness, or to put it in a different way, it is benediction upon those who hunger and thirst for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Human Righteousness

If that is the case, the first thing we must do to obtain God’s righteousness is to deny our own self-righteousness, arrogance, and self-centeredness. We do so on the basis of Scripture itself, by recognizing how our own righteousness is described in the Bible. In Isaiah 64:6 the prophet Isaiah says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts”–our righteousness, in other words–“are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” The self-righteousness in which people take pride is so unclean and detestable in God’s eyes.

Before his conversion, the apostle Paul took great pride in his own righteousness. He did not hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness; rather, he gloried in his own. Of himself Paul wrote in Philippians 3, “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.” But then Paul trusted in Christ. And I say that before a person can hunger and thirst for righteousness–the kind of righteousness we just defined–one must deny and forsake self-righteousness as Paul himself did. After Paul did that, what did he say about his own righteousness? “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” How did Paul describe his own righteousness? To him it was loss, dung, and rubbish!

In Luke 18 Jesus told of a Pharisee who went to the temple to pray. How did he go home? Not justified. Why? Because he gloried in his own righteousness. The first thing we must do to obtain God’s perfect, full righteousness is to forsake the filthy rags of our own self-righteousness, uncleanness, self-centeredness and boasting.

What else must we forsake? Sensitivity. There are many people to whom a preacher cannot speak a word. Why? If he says one word, they are hurt. Such people, it seems, have their feelings all over the place. A minister must always wonder which way to go, because if he says one thing, they are offended. But the person who is hungering and thirsting after the righteousness of God will lose his or her sensitivity, which is due to self-centeredness.

God’s Righteousness

So we deny such self-righteousness, self-centeredness, touchiness, such arrogance, such boasting, and then we seek God’s perfect righteousness. And where is it found? In Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1:30 Paul says, “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” That is what we are hungering and thirsting for–Jesus Christ! Paul writes again in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” And in Jeremiah 23:6 Jeremiah speaks of “The Lord our righteousness.” It is not this halfway decent moralism, this worldly idea of righteousness, that is being described here.

Isaiah speaks of this in Isaiah 61:10: “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness. . . .” We must realize that God is not going to grade us on a curve. He requires us to be clothed with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ–his divine, perfect, and complete righteousness.

In Psalm 11:7 David wrote, “For the Lord is righteous, he loves justice”–and then he adds–“upright men will see his face.” That is fellowship. God is righteous and holy, but we cannot see his face unless we are upright. And what does it mean to see God’s face? It is blessing inexpressible. It is beatific vision. It is bliss unending.

David longed to see God’s face. In Psalm 17:15 he wrote, “And I–in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.” What was he speaking about? Death and resurrection. When he awoke, what would happen? He would be satisfied with seeing God’s likeness. When we awake after death, we cannot glory that we gave a lot of money to political causes and got to sleep in the White House. That will not enable us to see God’s face. We must have righteousness.

Practical Righteousness

This righteousness involves both justification and, more particularly, sanctification. This righteousness is imputed to us in justification, which is a legal declaration that we are just. God justifies the ungodly by imputing to them the perfect divine righteousness of Jesus Christ, which gives us legal standing before God.

But, more particularly, this righteousness involves our ethical conduct. He who justifies us also sanctifies us, and we cannot separate justification and sanctification. He who imputed righteousness to us also implants and imparts it to us so that we will live disciplined lives that are in conformity with God’s will. He who justifies us will also produce the fruit of the Spirit in our souls. And what is that fruit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. When the Spirit of the living God produces those qualities in our lives, we will manifest them in our actions and attitudes.

Sufficient Righteousness

This righteousness is qualified and sufficient, as I said already, to enable us to see his face and be satisfied on that day when we awake. Psalm 24:3,4 says, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” In other words, who can dwell with a holy God? And the answer is, “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.” A righteous person, a holy person, will see the holy God. And what will this seeing will give you? Satisfaction. People think that we gain satisfaction through sex, money, houses, cars, or sleeping in the White House. Woe unto you if you are satisfied with such frivolous things! God has created you so that you may behold him and be satisfied.

We must always remember that the day of our departure–the day we die and enter into our eternal destiny–is soon coming. We must hunger and thirst now. But do we know what it means to hunger and thirst? I don’t think we do. Let us, then, acknowledge that, confess, and ask God to forgive us. Then ask him to teach us, saying, “O God, we don’t know what it means to hunger and thirst. Teach us, O God, because we don’t know what it is.”

Intense Hunger and Thirst

What kind of hunger and thirst is Jesus speaking about? Let me assure you, it is intense hunger and thirst. In Joel 2:12 we read, “‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.'” That is pretty intense, isn’t it? And if you read further, you see the bride and bridegroom, the priests, the elders, the children, even those at the breast, all coming out.

This is not the hunger we experience for a snack at 4:00 p.m. It is not the thirst for a Coke at 10:00 a.m. It is a hunger that is so intense that one is literally dying, as people did during a famine in Rome in 436 B. C. They jumped into the Tiber River to kill themselves for lack of food. It is a thirst as intense as a man would experience if he was stranded in the Sahara Desert. It is the thirst that a deer experiences in the summer when all the water holes are dry. The deer will pant and move around continually as it searches earnestly for just a little water to drink. It is a hunger and thirst that cannot be satisfied by anything else.

I think our hunger and thirst will be instantly satisfied if we get one hundred dollars more a week. But Jesus is talking about hunger and thirst like that of the prodigal son. He came to the point that he was dying of starvation. Knowing where the food was, he finally came to himself and said, “How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am, starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father.” He rose and went back to his father’s home where he knew he could eat and be satisfied.

Do We Have Real Hunger?

We need to examine ourselves to see whether we have such hunger. I once asked a young boy, “Write down whatever you do with passion and prioritize your list.” God helped him, and he put electronics as number one. In other words, he is most fascinated with that, rather than with God. God was number two on his list, parents were number three, and so on. I wish we could all be as honest as this boy! Then we could confess our sins of idolatry, of not serving God first, of not truly hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and be delivered from hypocrisy and pretension.

What are the signs of true hunger and thirst for righteousness?

1. If you have real hunger, you will experience pain. Isn’t that true? You will experience pain and feel your life ebbing away from you, as we read in Psalm 107:5, “They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away.” It is the kind of pain you feel in your stomach that can only be relieved by eating. We must have such a hunger for righteousness, for perfect conformity to God’s revealed will. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says there are certain Christians who are always looking for happiness. He writes, “There are large numbers of people in the Christian church who seem to spend the whole of their life seeking something which they can never find, seeking for some kind of happiness and blessedness. They go round from meeting to meeting, and convention to convention, always hoping they are going to get this wonderful thing, this experience that is going to fill them with joy, and flood them with some ecstasy. They see that other people have had it, but they themselves do not seem to get it. So they seek it and covet it, always hungering and thirsting; but they never get it” (Lloyd-Jones, p. 76). Such people go from seminar to seminar, from book to book, from tape to tape, and from video to video. They are always looking for some kind of experience. They don’t want the real thing. They don’t have a hunger and pain for righteousness, for the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Real hunger is only satisfied by Jesus Christ. If you truly are hungering and thirsting, then let me assure you, only God’s righteousness will satisfy you. Nothing else will satisfy you–not money, not sex, not power, not fame, not friends, not art objects, not sleeping in the White House. Nothing will satisfy you but Jesus Christ himself. In Psalm 73:25 we read, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” That is the real hunger we are talking about–painful hunger that only righteousness will satisfy.
3. If you have such hunger and thirst, you will overcome all difficulties that stand in your way. In Genesis 42 we read about a great famine in Israel. And in Genesis 42:1-2 we read, “When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, ‘Why do you just keep looking at each other? I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy some for us so that we may live and not die.'” And because of their need, his sons made the long journey to buy food.

In Mark 2 we are told about a man who was paralyzed. Four people brought him to Jesus, but there was no room inside, so they climbed to the roof removed the tiles and dropped the paralyzed man from the roof into the very presence of Jesus Christ. That is overcoming difficulties!

Look at blind Bartimaeus, sitting at the highway through which Jesus was going. The people around him to be quiet, but he continued to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me!” And when they told him again, he shouted the more until Jesus stopped. (PGM) Don’t tell me that we hunger and thirst in that way. It is simply not true.

In Matthew 13 we find the parable of the hidden treasure, and in verse 44 we read, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” If you are hungering and thirsting for righteousness, you will do anything and everything necessary to be filled with God’s righteousness. You will give up your ambitions and many other things because you realize the kingdom of God alone matters.

In Luke 14:26 Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife, his children, his brothers, his sisters–yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple.” Such a person will do what Jesus Christ demands. Why? He wants to follow him and enjoy this fellowship. He will overcome all difficulties to do so.

Are You Hungry?

What if we don’t have this hunger and thirst–this overwhelming, intense, all-consuming, painful hunger and thirst? It could mean that we are dead. Why? Dead people don’t hunger. Or it could mean we are sick, because sick people don’t hunger either. Let me assure you, hungering and thirsting is a sign of life and health. We must examine ourselves to see whether we are truly hungering and thirsting after righteousness.

In Matthew 11:12 Jesus said, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” Have you ever wondered why prostitutes and publicans enter into the kingdom of God ahead of Pharisees, the self-righteous, the arrogant, and the self-satisfied? They realize their lack of righteousness and are hungering and thirsting for God’s. In other words, like the pilgrim at the wicket gate, they knock and knock and knock until it is opened. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7). The violent take the kingdom of God by force.

If you are hungering and thirsting for righteousness in this way, you will avoid all of the sins that you are practicing because they are opposed to righteousness. In fact, you will be so eager to get rid of sin. And if you have no passion to hate, detest, forsake, and say goodbye once and for all to those sins, don’t tell me you are hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It is not true!

Not only that, Dr. Lloyd-Jones says that we must also avoid things that dull our appetite for righteousness. There are many things that are legitimate in themselves but they dull one’s spiritual appetite.

How to Get Filled

What must we do to be filled? If we are hungering and thirsting after righteousness, we will place ourselves wherever we can, in all probability, be filled with righteousness. We will go to church with great passion and listen to the preaching of the word very attentively, knowing that Jesus said if two or three are gathered in his name, there he is in their midst. We will also read the word of God with great appetite and intellectual discipline. Why? Therein we see Jesus Christ. We will also pray earnestly like blind Bartimaeus. Of course, his praying did not earn him his sight, but it expressed his deep hunger and thirst. What did he pray? “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” And we will pray like the publican: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

If we want to be filled, we will also read voraciously not only the Holy Scriptures, but also the lives of God’s people. We will discipline our lives and prioritize our life activities in such a way that we eliminate things that are meaningless in the final analysis. We will clean the junk out of our lives, in other words. You see, I have come to a time in my life in which I am getting rid of junk. I will look at something and say, “It has no meaning for me. Get rid of it!” We must do this so that we can earnestly pursue righteousness.

What will happen if we do these things? God says we will be filled. Oh, that is wonderful. Filled is a divine passive which means, simply, that it is God who fills us. The beatitude simply says, “they will be filled,” but the meaning is “they will be filled with the fullness of divine and perfect righteousness,” because that is what they have been hungering after.

In Colossians 2:9, 10 we read, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ.” We have been given Christ’s righteousness, divine and perfect, in its fullness so we could see him who is righteous and be satisfied.

When Does He Fill Us?

We must realize that this filling is immediate. In Romans 5:1 we read, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God. . .” God’s Holy Spirit comes into us, fills us and reveals to us the glory, the wonder, and the majesty of Jesus Christ. He fills us immediately.

God fills us in the present. What did David say? “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil,” and what else? “My cup overflows” (Ps. 23:5). And in John 7:37-38 Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” And what did he promise? Out of your innermost being rivers of life shall flow.

God fills us continually. From glory to glory he is changing us, isn’t that true? That is what sanctification is. We hunger and thirst and we are filled. And then we hunger and thirst for more, and we are filled. Again and again we hunger and thirst and are filled. We receive from his fullness grace after grace after grace, which is sufficient for all our needs.

Not only that, we will be filled when we see him, and that will be the fullness of all filling. In 1 John 3:2 we read, “We shall see him as he is.” It will be a fullness where there is no sin. He delivers us now from the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and the pollution of sin, but, finally, the fullness will come when the presence of sin itself is removed from us. Paul says “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature” (Rom. 7:18). But there will come a day when God will have done such a work in us that sin will be totally removed, and that will be fullness indeed.

Filling Is A Gift

What else does it mean to be filled with God’s righteousness? It means it is a gift. Jesus is not speaking about work righteousness or self-righteousness. God wants us to bring an empty stomach just as the prodigal son did. Our hungering and thirsting will never earn salvation. No, ours are hands of beggars lifted up to receive the gift. Salvation is by grace from beginning to end.

And it says, “they will be filled.” What does that mean? It means, “they alone–those who hunger and thirst after righteousness–will be filled.” Mary, the mother of Jesus, spoke about this in Luke 1:53, and I believe she was quoting Psalm 107. What did Mary say? “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

The Nature of God

What can we conclude about this beatitude? First, in this beatitude we see the nature of God. We see that God is compassionate to those who hunger and thirst. Remember how Jesus showed compassion to the Syro-Phoenician woman? We must consider this, that God is also compassionate toward us.

We see that God keeps his promises. God is not a man that he should lie, as we read in Numbers 23:19. This promise-keeping God is the one who said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” and he will fulfill that promise.

We also see that God is the one who produces this hunger in us. If you are hungering for the righteousness of God, you can know for sure that it is God who produced that desire in you in the first place.

We also see that God has a relationship with us. What is that relationship? He is our heavenly Father. So in Luke 11:13, we read this wonderful promise: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

The Invitation of God

Second, not only do we learn who God is but we learn that God calls. He invites us to come and be filled. In Isaiah 55:1-2 we read, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat . . . and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” Come! This is divine invitation.

We recently held a conference to which so many people came that we had to turn some away. We did not fulfill the promise we made when we invited them. But when God invites us, he will surely satisfy us. Remember how he told us in John 7:37 that if we are thirsty, we are to come to him and drink, and out of our innermost beings will flow streams of water? Remember what John wrote in Revelation 22:17, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of water of life.” Let me tell you, that invitation still stands.

The Command of God

Third, we see that God commands us to seek his righteousness. In another part of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6:33, Jesus told his disciples, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Let me tell you, he will first give you righteousness, and then, along with that, he will also provide for your needs–not your wants, but your needs. He commands us to seek his righteousness.

Thirst Now, Drink Now

Fourth, if you thirst now, you will drink both now and later. If you do not thirst for righteousness now, you will surely thirst later, as rich man thirsted in Luke 16:24. But then it will be too late, and not only will you be thirsty, you will be sent to hell for eternity.

Your Hunger and Thirst Must Be Serious

Fifth, your hunger and thirst must be in earnest. You may say, “I was hungry but God failed to fill me. I prayed, I went, I sought, but nothing happened.” What does God say to that? You were not hungry enough to forsake your sin and wait patiently for God. In Hosea 6:4 he said, “Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.” In other words, it is not intense, persistent, and purposeful. God’s Great Guarantee

There is a great guarantee given by God in Deuteronomy 4:29. In the midst of speaking about his judgment being poured out to his people because of their idolatry, God says, “But if from there,” meaning from captivity, from slavery, from misery, from loneliness, “you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Jeremiah says the same thing in Jeremiah 29:11-13. And in Psalm 107:5, 9 we read this great statement: “They were hungry and thirsty and their lives ebbed away. . . .[but] he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.”

All Must Hunger and Thirst

Finally, this invitation to hunger and thirst is addressed to all sorts of people. To sinners God says, “Come!” To backsliding Christians he repeats, “Come!” And to Christians themselves he says, “Come!”

“Come!” God is exhorting us. “Hunger and thirst with passion, with purpose and perseverance. Hunger enough to forsake all sin! Hunger enough until you experience pain in your soul! Hunger enough until nothing but Christ will satisfy!”

You may want to come up to me afterwards and say, “This was certainly a good sermon.” If you do, I will say, “No, it is not a good sermon for you unless you repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, you are giving me a platitude and I do not need it.” A good sermon always offers life to the dying, hope to the hopeless, comfort to the comfortless, and light to those who sit in darkness. And if we respond to God in repentance and faith, our satisfaction is guaranteed by him. May God help us to bow our knees now to his Son, Jesus Christ, the only Lord, that we may be filled. Amen.