“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” (Matt. 5:6)
The hunger and thirst that is referred to in this verse is a desire for the Word of God, a love for the holy writ of Scripture. We’re not talking about learning for the sake of information or mastery of the Bible version of Trivial Pursuit.
I listen sometimes to news programs like “In Search of Jesus” presented by ABC newsman Peter Jennings several years ago, and these shows feature scholars who know so many facts about the Bible but wouldn’t know Jesus if He knocked on their hearts’ door and introduced Himself. These so-called experts are full of information, but they are also full of themselves and empty of God.
Many people like this have much information with no application. Knowing about the Bible and truly knowing the Bible and its Author are two very different things. I know a number of people who are professional students, having studied Greek and Hebrew for years and years without ever accomplishing anything for the Lord. People piously claim to be “students of the Word of God” but you never see them doing anything with what they have learned.
A lot of independent Baptists who used to mock that kind of learning now desire to have the world’s stamp of approval through accreditation of their educational institutions. According to my Bible, we are not to seek the approval of the heathen. I would rather have a man who is barely literate by the world’s standards but has spent a lifetime in the Word, instead of a Ph.D. who doesn’t know God.
Many people come to church just to hear the message but they never apply what they have heard. They want to see and be seen. Hungering and thirsting for the Word is more than just having a Bible in your hand; it means taking the time and effort to read it and find out what God has in its pages for your life.
In this Beatitude, Jesus is not talking about the Pharisees and scribes of the time whose duties included the handling of the Scriptures. He was describing people who worked zealously to learn and apply in their lives the principles found in God’s Word.
I’m afraid that today as a nation we are in the prophetic state of famine with regard to the Bible. There was a time when nearly everyone knew the basic stories and principles of the Bible, but today we are finding in youth rallies and elsewhere across the country that we have a generation that is Biblically illiterate.
We used to have preachers who would open up the Book and proclaim, “Thus saith the Lord.” Now we have those who say that they will use the Bible as a “starting point” for their sermon. I’ve got news for you: I don’t need your psychology or philosophy. Let’s just jump into the Bible and see what God has to say.
God help these preachers who will take a text and spin it any way they want. As a friend of mine in Michigan likes to say, “It’s on the page.” We need more “page” preaching from men of God who just want to know, “What saith the Lord?”
My home church has gone through difficult times just like any other ministry, with burdens and needs of all kinds. My wife and I have tried to counsel and help young people who have made bad choices and found themselves in tough situations. In the midst of a particularly busy period like this, I turned to my wife one night and said, “Valerie, I love the Bible.”
We are living in an especially tumultuous time in this world. People are wrecking their lives at every turn and going down on the rocks of discouragement and despair. Thank God we’ve got a Book that we can turn to with something solid to hold onto when the rest of the world is crashing and burning.
I don’t always like what the Bible says, but oftentimes it will bring the truth right to where I am. I love that the Word of God is always steady and true, never changing on the whim of man’s thought or imagination. Its words promise us that if we stay on the path, we will have success and be able to look at God one day to hear Him say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
How much do we hunger and thirst after righteousness? It’s what revival is all about – getting back to that first love, and finding out about God through His revealed Word.
Let’s start by looking at a few basic dietary rules concerning hunger and thirst. First of all, eating and drinking are signs of good health. Many people who are not in good health must be force-fed through intravenous devices or other means. When people lose their appetites due to sickness, it often leads to a loss of cognitive reasoning abilities so the prescribed medical treatment often includes special feeding measures.
Cravings correspond to your particular needs. Sometimes you want something salty, and other times you want something sweet. Once my wife woke up in the middle of the night with a craving for a certain brand of salsa and chips, and a few days later we discovered that she was pregnant. A man in my church once went to a bakery on a Sunday morning to buy chocolate-covered donuts with a certain type of sprinkles on them for his pregnant wife. Because her body is changing and a precious baby is inside her, this woman has a desire for specific dietary items.
When you have a craving, you will do whatever is necessary to satisfy it. As we have seen, husbands of pregnant wives are very familiar with this concept.
Another basic dietary rule is that we don’t have to be persuaded to eat. No one has to say to me, “Eat something.” In fact, I need to have more people tell me, “Stop eating.” The very existence of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and other companies like them is proof that people do not have to be forced to eat. Many of us like it so much that we can’t stop.
Eating and drinking are signs that a person is enjoying life. How do you celebrate a special occasion? You go out to your favorite restaurant. Most ball teams celebrate their victories and reflect upon their defeats the same way – over a burger or a pizza. We feed our discouragement literally, with a pint of ice cream in the evening as we sit in front of the television. When you have an emotional craving, it is often addressed at the dinner table.
Now let’s make a spiritual application to these physical examples. If you crave to read and hear God’s Word, that is a sign of spiritual health. During the month of January, I look forward to our church’s annual February camp meeting the way an addict anticipates his next fix.
When you are spiritual, you will do whatever it takes to satisfy your appetite. You’ll find a way to get to church. No one will have to persuade you to get around the good things of God. My staff and I often spend half of our time during the week following up with our own church members, trying to get them to come to Sunday school. When people are spiritually healthy, that’s not necessary. They don’t sit in a church wondering when the service will be over so they can get to whatever other place they want to go.
If you get bitter over hearing a preacher talk about that or some other truth, and you aren’t enjoying the house of God like you should, it’s not the preacher’s problem. The Holy Spirit is knocking on your heart’s door. It’s a “you” problem if you are not excited about the Word of God, the songs of God, the place of God and the people of God.
There is a process to developing a hunger and thirst for righteousness. When I got right with God, I didn’t immediately start reading my Bible and praying as often as I should. I didn’t always listen to the right things or watch the right things. It doesn’t happen overnight. But by a slow process I got to where I needed to be.
When new believers come to me with their concerns about how hard it is to get close to God and push away from the world, I have one thing to say to them: “Welcome to the Christian life.” Growing closer to Christ will cost you something, mainly the fact that you have to give up your love affair with the world.
It is a molding process. Phil. 3:10 says, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” If you are going to conform to something, you will want to be just like it. To be conformed in this verse is to be molded and made like Jesus Christ.
Jesus wants you to be a Christian. That means being Christ-like. You can be born again, bound for Heaven and still not be a Christian. You can be saved and still be backslidden, and even be involved in some of the vilest sin known to man. But when you are saved, God’s plan is for you to begin the process of being molded into His image and becoming more Christ-like. The only way to do that is by knowing who Christ is, and that knowledge is found in the Word of God.
It is a motivating process. The Bible says in I Cor. 10:31, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Let me ask you a question: If God saved you, why are you not motivated to serve Him? I don’t see how I can rejoice in the cross and not have a desire to be exactly what Christ wants me to be.
How dare you take back the reins of your life after He died on the cross and gave you eternal life. How dare you think that you know better than the God who saved you and that you can make decisions contrary to His Word.
I am motivated because He loves me so much that everything good in my life has come from Him. That makes me want to live for Him.
It is a measuring process. John 14:21 says, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” We are to keep His commandments.\
I Pet. 1:15-16 says, “But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.”
Each of us from time to time thinks, “I am so glad I’m not like So-and-so. I’m a much better Christian than that.” The person you are talking about is probably thinking the same thing about you.
Who are you measuring your Christianity against? The measuring stick you should be using is the Bible. It doesn’t matter how you compare to someone else; what matters is how you stack up in light of the Word and its commandments.
We can always find someone who is worse than we are. Every week I go preach in the federal prison, and I usually leave there thinking, “Thank God that they’re in there and I’m not.” When I start feeling good about myself because I haven’t committed any major felonies, I open the Bible and I’m reminded that it’s not about what they did, but how I am living according to the Word of God.
One day we will all be judged out of that Book, and how we did in comparison to other people will not matter. That’s a good reason to know what is in God’s Word. I find it funny that we have this big test looming and we aren’t taking the time to open the textbook. All of us, whether saved or lost, will stand and give an account of ourselves before God.
If I read my Bible just so I can check off another item on a to-do list, I’m not reading it to be edified or changed. You should analyze what you read so you will know what it says. The Bible has the answer for every question in your life. There is nothing you face for which God does not already have a clear Biblical principle or precept.
I was preaching once to a group of teenagers when a pretty girl came up to me accompanied by a scraggly looking boy. I knew after just looking at him that he needed someone to beat him over the head with a two-by-four.
“Preacher, you said you had an answer from the Bible for everything,” he said. “She wants to know if she should date me.”
I looked him right in the eye and said, “Are you saved? Have you been born again?”
“Yes,” he said with a more serious tone in his voice than before.
“Have you been scripturally baptized by immersion?”
“No.”
“Then she should not date you because you’re a disobedient Christian. If you’ll disobey in baptism, you’ll disobey in other things.”
It’s not rocket science, folks. Just look at what the Bible has to say. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (II Cor. 6:14).
The Bible says in II Tim. 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” It may not have been written directly to me, but all of it was written for me. It was written for the Jew in the first century and for me in the 21st century.
Analyze what you read in the Bible. If you don’t know what a word means, get a dictionary and find out. Once you analyze it, memorize it. Ps. 119:11 says, “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”
Sometimes I want to do something wrong, and then the Bible tells me, “Oh, no you don’t.” That’s because of the Word in my heart, way down deep, going all the way back to my childhood.
Familiarize yourself with what the Bible says. Meditate on it. As a dog chews on a bone, keep it in front of you all the time. My father-in-law’s life verse is Ps. 19:14, which says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” Get yourself a verse that you can hold onto and point to as your focus, and let the Word of God be fresh with you every day.
When I got right with God, I moved in with my father and stepmother. She would have sticky notes all over the house with Bible verses on them, so you would be reading the Bible no matter what else you were doing in the house. She was helping me familiarize myself with the Word of God, which Prov. 12:26 says is the path of righteousness which is the “more excellent” way.
As you study the Bible, you need to personalize it and see how it will affect your life. Some people think it was just written by a bunch of old men centuries ago, but it can help you live differently today than you did yesterday. The people today who talk about “relevant Bible teaching” need to realize that the Word has always been relevant and it will still be relevant long after they are gone.
There has never been anything wrong with the Bible. The problem is that every generation has wanted to ignore what it has to say. If it says that I should “flee youthful lusts” (II Tim. 2:22) and “abstain from all appearance of evil” (I Thess. 5:22), then I need to put some things in place in my life that will help me do that. Too many people just talk about how pretty it sounds when they read it and don’t want to put it into practice as they live.
None of us can ever believe that we have arrived in the Christian life, but if we hunger and thirst after righteousness we are going in the right direction. That direction is reflected in our actions.
First, we confess our sin. The Bible says in I John 1:8-10, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
I worry about people who never come to the altar. You can’t be around good Bible preaching more than a few times before you find something you need some help with. After you go too long without making a decision you just become rebellious.
I do everything I can to stay right with God, but every morning I realize that there are some deep waters I have to pass through. When you get in the Word you will find God working in your heart, and you’ll discover some things that you should not be saying or doing. The closer you get to God, the more you realize that there is some baggage you should be leaving behind, especially when the Holy Spirit shines that giant spotlight on you.
Do you wonder why we don’t have revival? One answer is found in Ps. 66:18. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” That’s what happens when God shows you something in your life that you need to change, but you refuse because you don’t want to give up your favorite sin. That’s what keeps revival from happening.
Many of us know II Chronicles 7:14, but we need to read it with the preceding verse for proper context. “If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
When you hunger and thirst after righteousness, your affections will change. Col. 3:2 says, “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”
I John 2:15-17 says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
If this world still tugs on you too much, you’re tied to it too much. You need to release it. There is no bigger sports junkie than me, but it doesn’t have a hold over me because it passes away. I don’t ever wonder whether to be in the house of God when something big in the sports world is going on.
I have no desire to be around a crowd of people drinking and carousing. If you do it, I hope the Holy Spirit breaks your heart and makes you think about that blood dripping off the cross and what put Jesus Christ there. I’ll just be having a good time in church, and the next morning when I wake up I won’t be wondering who I am, where I am or who I was with.
To help you change your affections you will need some unction from the Holy One as described in I John 2:12. That will help you when you’re tempted to do something you shouldn’t do and no one is around to tell you not to. When the world tries to pull you one way, the unction from the Holy One pulls you the other way. This is where we see who can get victory over temptation and who cannot. If the Holy Spirit is not real and evident in your life, you cannot live the Christian life. Having a hunger and thirst for righteousness will result in a demonstration of God’s presence and power.
When I die, I don’t want to have lived in vain without investing my life in someone. The kind of car you drive or the house you live in will not matter in 100 years. What will matter is who you invest yourself in. If I remain faithful with God’s help, one day there will be younger people who I led to Christ that are continuing to live for Him and see souls saved long after I’m gone.
The promise for the believer in this Beatitude is found in the second half of the verse: “for they shall be filled.” That means they will be satisfied. You know the feeling when you’ve eaten just enough that you don’t feel stuffed but you still feel good. That’s one way to feel satisfied.
As for me, I’m satisfied with Jesus. He has never done me wrong. I could give you dozens of examples of people whose lives were turned around by Him and now they are extremely satisfied with what He has done for them.
You can have the world; I’ll take Jesus. I can take you to the graves of young people who thought they could be happy with what the world had to offer, but they took their own lives because it wasn’t enough. They left grieving families behind because they thought there was nothing left to live for.
When you chase after that kind of life, you’ll sell all you have to get it and then find out that it’s worthless. By the grace of God, I can also introduce you to some people who will tell you, “I’ve done everything the world had to offer, and it left me with nothing. But I’ve got Jesus and I’m satisfied now.”
I’ve been down that path as well, but I’m satisfied now. I’m full and blessed beyond measure.
I don’t want to go back. I want to keep going forward.
I’m satisfied.
