For Those Who Hunger and Thirst: Sermon on the Mount Part 3

(upbeat music) Today on The To Win the Mini Podcast, as I get tongue-tied, introducing The To Win the Mini Podcast, we are back in the Summer of the Mount. We are continuing our lessons through the Summer of the Mount. This will be our third episode, our third session in the Summer of the Mount. We began just setting the context of what a kingdom citizen is to look like, meaning the kingdom of God is opposed to the kingdom of this world. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven ruled by God, and we are to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of being labeled and called and characterized as kingdom citizens. So the question for us is, what does that look like? And the Summer of the Mount helps us identify and establish what the kingdom citizen looks like. We are walking through the Beatitudes, and as we began walking through the Beatitudes and looking at this sense of kingdom citizen, of course we started there in verse three with the Beatitude, bless the poor and spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And we followed that up, talking about meekness from verse five, we in some ways combined what it means or looks like to be poor and spirit with what it means and looks like to be meek. And then we followed that with session two, where we evaluated and considered what it means for us to mourn and the paradox of what it looks like to be a Christian with joy and at the same time be a follower of Christ who mourns over the state of sin in our own lives and the state of sins in the affairs of humans around us and living in a fallen world and fallen bodies surrounded by fallen people. There is a sense where we should mourn, but we should mourn appropriately and properly. So we continue now by looking at verse six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be fueled, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be fueled. Now the imagery is intentional and the imagery is powerful. For us though, it's really difficult because most of us have not experienced true hunger. Now most in the ancient world had. Our remember being in New York City, we were up there on a mission trip or scouting it out for a potential mission trip. We had engaged in all kinds of activities there in New York as you know if you've been to New York and there's a lot to do in New York. So we made our way down into the subway system and we were getting ready to be on a train and I saw this homeless guy to the side as we're waiting to hop on the train and this homeless guy was, he was walking back and forth there on the landing, waiting for us to, or waiting for everyone to get in the train and he looked into the garbage can and as he was looking into the garbage can I saw him reach into the garbage can and he pulled out a partially eaten slice of pizza and he began eating that slice of pizza. And I remember seeing that image and recognizing oh, that's hunger, that's legitimate hunger. This guy had no idea the kind of person who was eating that slice of pizza. He had no idea where that slice of pizza had been even before it landed in the garbage can and he had no idea what was in the garbage can. However, he was so hungry that he was willing to not even consider those characteristics that would affect that slice of pizza. All he knew was he was hungry and he needed food. That's the picture of true hunger, which again, most in the ancient world had experienced but most of us have not. And it's a word normally used in the Septuagint to denote persistent hunger. So it's not the idea that, well, I ate breakfast and I skipped lunch so I'm really hungry going into dinner time. It's a persistent hunger and this persistent hunger results from famine, meaning there is no food or siege, which means we can't get access to food because the enemies have blockaded our source of food. And it's often associated with this famine or siege that results in national distress or social distress. So you can think back in the Old Testament time. Remember there was a guy in my church when I was pastoring and he said, "Man, I need you to help me understand why a woman would eat her child." And he was talking about in the prophets and he was talking about at these times when it was so bad that the women were negotiating over whose child they were going to eat first in the event that of their children dying. And that is famine. That is persistent hunger that results in national or social distress. However upsetting it might be to us, I'm trying to paint the picture here, which is intentional and powerful of what it means to be hungry. And you can go back to Second Kings chapter six for that reference, if you'd like. But as one said, the ancients knew of hunger so intense that one would do or give anything to satisfy it, even as we see in Second Kings cannibalism. Now let's pivot away from that horrible picture and imagery to the spiritual sense. There is a hunger in all of us. What are we seeking, though, to satisfy this hunger? What are we seeking to satisfy this hunger? When I broke my leg, they gave me these pain meds. And if they didn't treat, though, with the pain, the pain meds didn't help with the overall problem, the pain medicine that you get for an injury, whatever type of injury it was. Mine was a significant breaking of the leg. But the pain meds that they gave me, they would not help with the brokenness of the leg. They would treat the symptoms of the pain that was caused by the brokenness, but they didn't help the brokenness. Now, if the doctors did not treat the brokenness, the pain meds are going to continually be needed. And they're also going to offer absolutely no long-term solution. They just, in some ways, numb me to the brokenness of my leg. The brokenness had to be treated. The brokenness had to be fixed. Mike Tyson said, "One time the worst I ever felt in my life was the most successful I have ever been." The worst I've ever felt in my life was the most successful I have ever been. There is a brokenness inside of us that has to be treated. It has to be treated. And that's what we're hungering for. That's what we're thirsting for. And the follower of Christ longs for more of God because we've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. So we know that He is the only one who satisfies. So for the kingdom citizen, the follower of Christ, we recognize, man, yes, we've had a taste of God, but we want more. It's not that we need more of Him inside of us in the sense that we've got to add more of Christ in us internally. What it means is we need to pursue God and surrender more of ourselves to Christ. And we're hungering and thirsting for more of God for Him to have more control, for Him to lead us and us actually follow Him. We want to experience Him more and more. So God's people are hungry for more than material things. We're hungry for the spiritual realities that only Christ offers, that only God can give us. The hunger for righteousness, meaning a right standing with God. We're in a right relationship. Don't think of it as a salvific relationship, meaning we're lost and we're hungry to be safe. Although there is certainly an element to that. The lost people, as Blaise Pascal noted, the only thing that can feel an infinite abyss is an infinite being. And so we're trying to feel this infinite abyss with finite things and we are never satisfied. No matter what we coat our emptiness with, we are never satisfied. But then we encounter God. So we're talking about kingdom citizens here. We're talking about those who have a right relationship with God in terms of their eternal destination. And the Holy Spirit is indwelling in us as Ephesians once said, as the deposit guaranteeing what is to come. But we've tasted and seen and we want more of Jesus. We want more of Him. We want to consume more of Him in our life. And we hunger for Him. And we hunger for right standing, meaning we hunger for intimacy with Jesus. We hunger for our prayers to be answered, but we also just hunger to spend time with Him in prayer. We hunger for His Word to penetrate our hearts and lives. And for His Word to have its effect, we're hungry for the things of Jesus. We want to be right with Him. And we also hate sin because sin leads us away from Jesus. Sin, it messes with our intimacy with Jesus. So we're hungry. And these words that are used here for hunger and thirst, they're present participles, not to get all grammarly there only, but the spiritual yearning is constant. It's perpetual. It will not cease until we possess more of Him. of God, and this side of eternity, we will not be able to possess enough of God that will satisfy us all, but there is coming a day, there is coming a day where we will be satisfied. And that is the sense of the Sermon of the Mount, the already not yet. We've already experienced Jesus and we want more of it, but we know we cannot get enough this side of heaven, but we yearn for the day when we, this will be fulfilled, it will be fully consummated, and we will be with Christ in His presence for eternity. Now in the meantime, like Matthew 6.33 says, we order our lives in a way in which we are pursuing God each day. We make it our goal. We make it our job to seek first Jesus in His kingdom and His righteousness. And Hebrews 12 reminds us in verses 1 through 3 that we eliminate those things that would hinder us, we eliminate those sins and those obstacles between us and God. And we are hungering and we're thirsting for God, we're yearning for God, we're growing closer to God as we spend more time with Him. And then we see the beauty of the promise in verse 6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. What happens to those people? They will be filled. They will be filled. Now this is a passive meaning it's not us filling ourselves. It means God is the one who fills us. God gives it rather than us attaining it. So it's not even our hungering and thirsting that attains it. It's just our hungering and our thirsting that puts us in a position that God fills us with more of Himself. We experience more of Him daily. Again, we keep longing this side of heaven. We keep longing this side of heaven. We're never going to be satisfied. But kingdom citizen, I implore you to pursue God today, pursue God tomorrow. You've tasted and you've seen that the Lord is good. So keep chasing, keep pursuing, keep walking with Him. Pray more, read more scripture, be around God's people more, hunger and thirst for righteousness. More than you hunger and thirst for food. Rest so that you will be in the kind of mental head space that you are constantly reminded that you are hungry for things that are not of this world. Seek Jesus, seek a right relationship with Him. Run from sin, hate sin, love Christ more and keep walking in that, knowing that there will come a day when we will draw our last breath and then we will get to heaven. And as Revelation 7 reminds us. We will get to heaven and Christ our shepherd will lead us, as it says in verses 15 through 17 of Revelation 7, he will lead us to springs of living water, which takes us back to Psalm 23. He is that good shepherd and he is leading us. But we know we're not going to be fulfilled completely this side of heaven. But there's coming a day when we will. So believe it, keep walking, keep hungry and thirsting long for the things of God. And may your hunger and your thirst for the things of the Lord and for a right relationship with Him. A deep and abiding intimacy with Him. May that grow more and more every day of your life until you stand before the one that is your shepherd, that is your savior and the one that will be with us, guiding us and the one will be worshipping in and for an eternity. That's good news. There's hope in that. In the meantime, we must be the kind of people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And we know that as long as we do that, we will be filled. We finish up with the CERMAL AMOUNT and the next few episodes, so hang with us and rejoin us next time as we walk through the CERMAL AMOUNT.