The Sermon of the Mount SeriesSample

The God-Shaped Hole – Blessed Are Those who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

They followed Jesus around, repeatedly confronting Him and looking for ways to undermine His teaching and authority. Their motives were substantiated by over 200 hundred years of spiritual power over Israel.

The Pharisees were doctors of the Law, responsible for teaching in the synagogues, which had become an essential secondary institution in Jewish life following the building of the Second Temple around 530 B.C. by Ezra after the Babylonian exile.

The people believed the Pharisees. Followed them. Trusted their teachings and judgment.

And the Pharisees loved to judge.

As I mentioned earlier in this series, at the time in Jewish history when Jesus started His ministry, the Jews’ understanding of righteousness had been entirely corrupted by pharisaic teachings.

These teachers had codified the Law of Moses into 365 prohibitions and 248 commandments. There were laws for just about anything. And therefore, a fearful Israel hopelessly tried her very best to enter God’s kingdom by fulfilling impossible rules.

It was under the scrutiny of these powerful men, determined not to disturb the establishment, that Jesus started His ministry. And after showing God’s power to the masses by performing many miracles and teaching about the Kingdom of God throughout Galilee and Judea, He sat down to address His followers on the Mount of Beatitudes.

To the Pharisees, each proclamation on the Sermon of the Mount was heresy… and, above all, an assault on their authority. Throughout the long discourse, Jesus dared to confront the religious establishment by proclaiming that true righteousness is not guaranteed by birth, nor is it obtained by following rituals and external ordinances:

Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are those who mourn… blessed are the gentle. And today’s focus:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6)

With each Beatitude, Christ invited His followers to look past laws that bind us to the physical realm and look deeper. This time, He focused on appetites.

God created His children with appetites.

We hunger for food. We crave love. We thirst for recognition and success. Truthfully, we look for ways to satisfy our hunger, thirst, and cravings daily.

We eat a large breakfast at 7 am, but by noon our belly reminds us that it’s time to fill it up again.

We fill emotional voids with food, alcohol, success… or people. We cover internal holes with external, temporary fillers. We feel satisfied, but only momentarily because these “fillers” are all fleshly, fallen, and inadequate.

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.” Blaise Pascal

Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God, is the only One who can satisfy the hunger and thirst that linger in our souls.

And that’s the heart of this beatitude.

When Jesus proclaimed the fourth beatitude, He was teaching His followers something that you and I should never forget: If we want to be “blessed” – or, as a better translation of the original states: “Happy, joyful,” we must seek to satisfy our hunger and thirst with the things of God first.

One cannot stress enough the importance of this principle – Jesus summarizes it again in final words on the Sermon of the Mount:

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and all its righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6:33

The Pharisees did not hunger for such righteousness, for they were satisfied with external religion and asserted their right to Heaven by proudly affirming their Davidic lineage.

They were blind and did not know it.

Twentieth Century Pharisees

That blindness did not end with the Pharisees. It remains today.

Indeed, many Christians seem satisfied with fluffy religion: Go to church - check. Pray before a meal - check. Teach Sunday School - Check. Volunteer on one more committee - Check. Check. Check.

Yet, deep down, they know it: They feed on religion, not righteousness.

When we feed on righteousness, the world around us changes. We change. We are… satisfied.

Matthew Henry challenges the believer concerning the hunger that Christ calls for in the Beatitudes:

“The quickened soul calls for constant meals of righteousness, grace to do the work of every day in its day, as duly as the living body calls for food.”

We are all hungry. We were made with that God-shaped vacuum, as 17th-century French theologian Pascal masterfully put it in his famous quote. But the question is, how are we filling it?

Do we hunger and thirst for His Righteousness every day? For if we do, this is what our lives should look like:

• We should hunger more for His Word than meaningless entertainment.
• We should thirst more for forgiveness than for preserving our pride.
• We should hunger for the Fruit of the Spirit when someone wrongs us... and be satisfied by knowing that as we keep our peace, God becomes our Justice.

May we be challenged each day not to be satisfied with religion alone. Rather, may we allow the righteousness of Christ that we received upon salvation to radically transform our hearts, thus affecting how we live… and how we love.

Question: Do you hunger for the type of righteousness Jesus talked about in this sermon or are you tempted to be satisfied with “religion?”