KEY THOUGHT:

“The righteousness of God is the only thing worth pursuing and the only thing that will truly make us happy”

1. WHAT DOES JESUS MEAN BY SAYING WE ARE 'BLESSED'?

Happy, joy…Blessed is another word for happy.

Everyone is looking for happiness. People pursue all kinds of things they think will make them happy, but they do not satisfy. It is like eating your favorite meal. You enjoy it and say, “I’m full, I can’t eat another bite!” But in a few hours, you are in the pantry looking for something else to eat. Just like the food in your refrigerator does not last, so the things of this world do not bring lasting fulfillment. Only Jesus can bring you lasting happiness.

C.S. Lewis:
“We are half hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.”

2. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO 'HUNGER AND THIRST'?

It is an unquenchable state of being hungry and being thirsty

Starving for righteousness…an incredible pull, longing, to be faithful and loyal to God, his will, his commands, his way for my life…our progressive growth in holiness…being made in the image of Jesus, becoming like him

Hunger and thirst are in the present tense in the greek…which means it is a current, ongoing thing in my life, not just a one time deal…here are some examples of how the Psalms portray hunger and thirsting after God…

[PS 42:1-2]
1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

[PS 119:33-40]
33 Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. 34 Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. 35 Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. 36 Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain! 37 Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways. 38 Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared. 39 Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good. 40 Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life!

[PS 63:1-8]
1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. 3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. 4 So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, 6 when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; 7 for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. 8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

—> Q: how closely do these words and phrases describe your hunger and thirst for God?

3. WHAT DOES JESUS MEAN BY 'RIGHTEOUSNESS'?

Different types of righteousness:
1. Justification, righteousness imputed by Jesus
2. Sanctification: our pursuit of God and his will, submission to do what he has called us to do, starving to do his will, passionately.
3. Social: not only desiring our own holiness, but the holiness and justice that is needed in our world, pushing peace and justice for everyone

- In this passage it is not justification…it is faithfulness/loyalty to God and his will, which is the process of sanctification in our lives…the pursuit of holiness
- For lost people righteousness starts with justification…imputed to us through Jesus by the Father…through his death and resurrection
- For saved people righteousness is ongoing…sanctification (present tense). This righteousness plays out in our lives as we pursue being loyal to Gods will and way in absolutely everything in our lives: our thoughts, our words, our actions
- Jesus was clear in resetting what that pursuit of righteousness would look like || audience believed Scribes and Pharisees were the righteous ones, but Jesus flipped that upside down to have them understand the religious leaders had it wrong

[MATT 5:20]
“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

- Jesus insisted our righteousness needs to be better than the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees, what did he say about their righteousness? Lets look at

[MATT 23:1-39]

- What an indictment, Jesus was making clear what he meant. We often substitute righteousness for self-righteousness. Self-righteousness makes a list of rules. It’s the way the Pharisees lived. Their righteousness was outward and external but was not genuine on the inside. They were great at pretending to be something they were not.

- Simply put, righteousness is…to long for, starve for, God’s total rule in our life.

- In Jeremiah, we read a story about how the nation of Israel had abandoned God and turned to other things to satisfy them, they no longer were hungering and thirsting for righteousness, they sought other things to satisfy them…but the truth is that nothing ever did and it was true with Israel. God said this to Israel through Jeremiah…I would challenge us to listen to these words as spoken to us too…

[JER 2:2b-13]

key verse || 11b…But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. 12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, 13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

—> Q: In our pursuit of happiness, meaning, satisfaction…have we done what Israel did? Have we forsaken God in this way, pursuing worthless things…made cisterns for ourselves to drink from that are broken, that cant hold water…

- Jesus said that he is “the bread of life” [John 6:22-59], that he is the “living water” [John 4]
- Starving, thirsty people are ‘single-minded, focused on one thing’…to get food, to get water

--> Q: Spiritually speaking, what are we focused on, single minded, pursuing? What food and what water are we consuming to try to bring peace, meaning, purpose, joy, happiness into our lives?

- Jesus is calling us to a righteousness, a life lived, that is single minded, focused on him and his glory, that our lives would be increasingly submitted to the Lordship of Jesus and to the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit…his righteousness, not our own self righteousness…

4. HOW DO WE BECOME RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE?

—> Here is the key: Righteousness is first a gift that is given, before it is an action that is performed.

—> A Gift is Given:
God Himself came down, humbling Himself, and took the form of a man, a servant, Jesus Christ. And while we all have failed to measure up to God’s standard, Jesus simply did not – He perfectly obeyed it. The book of Hebrews describes Jesus...

[Heb. 4:15]
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but [Jesus] who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin,”

Jesus, though attacked and tempted just as we all are, never sinned, never failed to uphold God’s righteousness. But at the end of Jesus’ perfect life, He received a death, penalty, and condemnation that He did not deserve. Paul explains...

[2 Cor. 5:21]
“For our sake God made him to be sin who knew now sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,”

- When Christ died, His death forgives us of our sins, but it is His Law-keeping life, His righteous record, that is now given to us who have put their faith in Him || This is why Paul finishes his critique of his Jewish brothers’ ignorance of God’s righteousness with...

[Rom. 10:4]
“For Christ is the end of the law of righteousness to everyone who believes,”

- That is the gift of righteousness, given to us freely by God and received with faith alone – this righteousness that we receive vertically from God, then leads us to live horizontally righteous lives on earth.

—>An Action Should Be Performed:
This righteousness from Jesus gives us the right motivation to OBEY Him.

- We don’t obey God to try and prove to Him that we are worth accepting. We obey God because when we were at our lowest, He gave up His pure, perfect, costly, spotless robes of righteousness, and draped them over the filthy, ragged shoulders of spiritual beggars like you and me. We obey God because we love Him. We love God, because He loved us.

[Titus 2:11-13]
“11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

—> This is so helpful, it is God’s grace that trains us to be godly, to act righteously – not His anger, or His judgment, but His kind, undeserved grace. In light of what is to come, the eager expectation of seeing God, we live self-controlled lives. It is His love that compels us.

—> We get better at things through practice…both sinful things and righteous things! Lets close with a look at what John said…

[John 3:1-10]
"3 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother."

—> So…What we PRACTICE gives evidence of our righteousness, is it based in my own self righteous life, which is sin, or is it based in my obedience, my hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God? When we practice his righteousness, when we hunger and thirst for it, the promise is that we will be satisfied, we will finally have the joy, the peace, the meaning, the happiness that we are truly longing for!

- As the song “when I survey the wondrous cross” says…it “That type of Love is so amazing, so divine…Demands my soul, my life, my all.

WHEN I SURVEY THE WONDROUS CROSS...

When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them through his blood.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

PRAYER AND COMMUNION…

Q: What is hindering my hunger and thirst for righteousness?
Q: What is it that I hunger and thirst for? What does the object of my hunger reveal?
Q: What can I do to increase my hunger and thirst for righteousness?