In using these verses to teach salvation, the first four beatitudes climb in a logical progression. Each step leads to the next and presupposes the one that has gone before. To begin with, we are to be “poor in spirit,” acknowledging our complete spiritual bankruptcy before God. Next we are to “mourn” over the cause of that bankruptcy – our sin and our sins. Generally we use the word “mourn” in regard to a death. And the fact is, sin has been the cause of our spiritual death – we were spiritually still-born. And the poisonous sin flowing through our veins has provoked, encouraged, augmented and empowered all the specific sins that we have committed throughout our lives. The 3rd beatitude suggests we are to be “meek,” humble and gentle, recognizing our true spiritual condition. Who are we to condemn anyone else in this world? In fact, they are perfectly just in condemning us, because we know ourselves to be sinfully hideous. Hearing those charges, we should meekly admit to them, knowing that it is not so much that another sinner is accusing us, as it is the Word of God standing before us. The 4th beatitude, which we will consider this evening, turns the previous negative things more positively. What good is it to confess and lament our sin, acknowledging the obvious, if we leave things there? Confession of sin must lead to a hungering and thirsting after righteousness. I can’t say that Judas Iscariot understood beatitudes #1 and #3, but we do hear his confession. “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.” Sadly, from there, rather than turning towards Christ and righteousness, he went out and hanged himself.
I debated with myself about where to start in our analysis of this verse.
Let’s start with the nature of hungering and thirsting.
These are two of many appetites which have been created in us. An “appetite” is defined as an instinctive physical desire. Some of our appetites were a part of God’s original creation, but others have been created by sin. To be thirsty is a part of the human condition, and I think that Adam may have known what it was. Did he ever get hungry? I don’t know that he had the opportunity, but the propensity was there. I suppose that all of our instinctive physical desires have been sinfully exacerbated. I don’t think that we have any here, but gluttony is an ordinary appetite – accelerated by sin. Some people have an almost uncontrollable hunger for physical exercise, or for sleep. Sexual immorality is a proper appetite which has been stolen and enslaved by sin. And in a somewhat special context, what does Paul say is the root of all evil? “The Love of money.” The necessity of money is something natural to our sin-cursed world, but it is not sin in itself. The need to earn money is not a sin. The desire to give money is not a sin, but quite the opposite. And yet the love of money – to have an inordinate appetite for money – is the root of all evil – sin.
Stripping away the sinful aspects of appetite, what does it mean to be hungry or thirsty? James Strong suggests that the Greek word for “hunger” comes from the root word for “pinch.” Hunger is a pinching feeling in the pit of your stomach; The back wall of your stomach is touching the front, and the top is scraping against the bottom. And what does Jesus mean when He speaks of being hungry or thirsty? When are you most likely to be thirsty? Generally speaking, you’ll be thirsty after hard work – maybe after sweating; after hours in the sun. Your body has been so depleted, through one means or another, of the moisture that it needs to function properly, that it mysteriously calls out for water – it gets thirsty. Your blood literally gets thick and sluggish. Your plasma can become so thin that it can’t carry all of the cells and other materials that you need. Under those circumstances it yearns for moisture – for water – you get thirsty. And the same sort of things can be said about food, so that you become genuinely hungry. Yes, we can let our fallen natures control us that we hunger for the wrong kinds of food or drink. But even without sin, after just a few hours of not eating well, our bodies will get hungry.
But the child of God is not merely a human animal with nothing but physical appetites. The person who has been born again – regenerated – has a renewed spiritual nature. And that spiritual nature will have a natural appetite as well – but in this case it will be for the things of God – for righteousness.
Obviously, this can be a test – enabling us to determine if indeed we have been born again. The soul and spirit of the child of God, will have as much need for the Lord and righteous as his body has an appetite for food and water. He will at times ache for righteousness, just as you might not be able to sleep because of thirst. The Christian will long for the Lord “as the hart panteth after the water brooks” – Psalm 42:1. ”O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” – Psalm 63:1-2. Doesn’t this express much the same thing as our beatitude? “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God” – Psalm 84:2.
To hunger and thirst is to have a craving which cannot be satisfied with anything but the proper counterpart.
And for what will the saint of God be hungering and thirsting?
Negatively, the answer is so obvious that I shouldn’t have to say a word – and yet I will. The Christian should not have an excessive thirst for riches – for money, for any kind of wealth. As Paul told Timothy, “the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Generally speaking, the more we desire this world’s wealth, the more sorrow we will heap upon ourselves. And we have all observed it, even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves, but the man who has $1,000 will always want $10,000. And the man who has $10 million dollars will want to have $100 million. They “pierce themselves through with many sorrows” – unending and innumerable sorrows.
We should not have a hunger for glory and honors, pleasures, toys, lands, cars, boats, or even postage stamps. Most of the things which people crave – really crave these days – might be reclassified as idols. We may not actually bow down and worship these things, but we treat them in idolatrous ways nevertheless. “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 what should, and will, the saint of God be hungering and thirsting? “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness…..” Righteousness in the Bible has at least three aspects, and none of them are excluded from our Lord Jesus’ statement. There is a legal righteousness, a moral righteousness and there is also a social righteousness.
There are some interpreters who suggest that this beatitude is referring to the righteousness of salvation. Or more specifically the righteousness of justification – the Lord’s gracious imputation of righteousness to the person who is filthy and corrupt by sin. This legal righteousness involves a right or a righteous relationship with the holy God. Remember that the Jews of Jesus’ day, pursued righteousness, but in the wrong way. They, being basically ignorant of God’s righteousness, were going about to establish their own righteousness, and were not submitting themselves unto the righteousness of God. This beatitude speaks of a hunger and thirst after God’s righteousness, and at the same time implying that the hungry person is incapable of satisfying his own need. To hunger and thirst is to admit a need. But in regard to this aspect of righteousness, remember that Christ was speaking to people who had already been justified – declared righteous.
Another aspect of the word involves the society around that Christian. Because this man has come through the process of recognizing spiritual poverty, mourning over it and meekly receiving God’s grace, he naturally has a burden for his kith and kin (friends and family) that they too will have the same hunger. Mom has tasted a wonderful recipe at a neighbor’s house, and she has a hunger for more of it. Not only that, but she has a vicarious hunger on behalf of her family, that they too would want it. So she copies the recipe and goes home to share the real thing with her husband and kids. The Christian has a hunger to share God’s righteousness with the people around him. And then on the other side of the question, how do you feel about the inequities of our criminal system? How do you feel about murderers being sent to prison for the rest of their lives, with better medical care and other amenities than the honest man at home? What do you think about the convicted thief spending more time in jail than the drug dealer who ruined the lives of hundreds of people? The Bible tells us that God’s “law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” The law of God is righteous. And the Christian should have a hunger and thirst to see it properly implemented in general society.
But perhaps it’s the third aspect of righteousness which the Lord Jesus most stresses in this beatitude. Moral righteousness is that righteousness of character and conduct which pleases God. The Lord Jesus, followed by Paul and others, spends much time, comparing the moral code of the Pharisees with Jehovah. Their’s was a righteousness contained in rules and conformity to detail after detail. It was a righteousness working on the outside with a hope of reaching inside – but without a hope. In contrast to that, the righteousness of the Lord starts with regeneration and proceeds outward, using the Law of God as its guide and pattern.
Even more than a desire for justice and equity in our wicked world, we should have a hunger and thirst after personal holiness – righteousness. Much of the rest of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount deals with this subject. The Christian will hunger and thirst after more and more of God’s righteousness. It should break our heart when we find our minds turning to lustful thoughts. These are not righteous. It should tear us up when we unjustly lose our tempers, showing more satanic character than divine. Worry over possible and potential troubles is not righteous. When we see idolatry creeping into some corner of our being, we should become alarmed. It should humble us when we find our hearts hungering for the things of the world rather than of God. Why is there so little desire to attend the house of God by people professing to be God’s children? Yes, I know that some of them blame the preacher. He is not dynamic enough, he is not diversified enough; He is not personal enough; he is not personable enough. That is probably true on every point. But does mom prepare your favorite food meal after meal? Yet you continue to eat. Why? Sometimes you eat because you are hungry, but more often because you know that you need to eat. Unconsciously, you know that you don’t want to become hungry, so you eat what she fixes. Once in a while, but actually rarely, is it the preacher’s fault when the church members are backslidden. And perhaps never is it his fault when they are not hungry and thirsty for the things of God.
For the last 3 weeks, I have been tempted to say that our Lord Jesus was commanding us in these verses. But I have to keep reminding myself that these are not commandments or even exhortations. He was describing the character of the children of God. But even that fact makes me want to command and demand each of these points. Yet I have to restrain myself and simply ask you, “do you hunger and thirst after righteousness? Personal righteousness? Do you manifest this evidence of the new birth?”
If you do, then to you is Christ’s promise, “You shall be filled.”
I think it’s important to notice that this promise says nothing about people filling themselves. Like the other aspects of these beatitudes, the blessings are a part of the grace of God. If we have the hunger, we shall be filled; if we have the right thirst, we shall be satisfied.
The word “filled” means satisfied or saturated. An old equivalent is “sated.” There is an unnatural contradiction in these thoughts which God overcomes in His omnipotence. The verse essentially say, “Blessed are those who have an insatiable desire for God’s righteousness, for they will be sated.”
In my preparation I ran across a very appropriate paragraph of warning. The author pointed out – In this life, our hunger will never be fully satisfied, nor will our thirst be quenched. True, we receive the satisfaction which the beatitude promises. But our hunger is satisfied only to break out again. Beware of those who claim to have attained, and who look to past experience rather than to future development. Like all the qualities include in the beatitudes, hunger and thirst are perpetual characteristics of the disciples of Jesus, as perpetual as poverty of spirit, meekness and mourning. Not until we reach heaven will we “hunger no more, neither thirst any more,” for only then will Christ, our Shepherd, lead us the “to springs of living water.”
There is a day coming, probably not too far into the future, when all the wrongs will be righted. There is a day coming when wickedness will be overcome by absolute righteousness. There will also be a day when we will find ourselves righteous and perfectly holy. But it will not be a day of our own creation, no matter how strong and earnest our desire might be. The day when we will be most fully satisfied will be that day of Lord’s return. “Even so come, Lord Jesus.”