Matthew 5:6

Well, good morning, church! Great to see you! Great to have you with us!

I have two siblings. My older sister is named Charlotte, and she and her husband, David, live up in Rock Valley in northwest Iowa. Then my older sibling is named Doug, and he and his wife, Judy, live on the north side of Sioux Falls. They own a beautiful little ranch overlooking the Sioux River. And prior to living there, they lived about an hour down Interstate 90 to the west near a city called Mitchell, South Dakota, world-renowned for its Corn Palace. Maybe you’ve seen it. It’s also known as a major settlement for a Hutterite colony. The Hutterites are similar to the Amish in orientation, and religiously they’re given to what could be called “works” righteousness, trying to earn their way to heaven by what they do.

My brother Doug met a man, a Hutterite man, by the name of Dave Wertz, who had been amazingly converted to Jesus Christ. He was so effervescent, so full of the Spirit, so joyful, so passionate, he went to his extended family, led most of them to faith in Jesus Christ! But the oppression from his fellow Hutterites was so severe, he pulled up stakes and moved to southern Minnesota and established a new colony founded upon Jesus Christ and justification by faith alone. Amazing!

Despite the persecution, Dave never lost his joy in the Lord. To hear my brother tell it, it was amazing! On occasion, they’d encounter each other in downtown Mitchell, either side of the main street, and Dave was so enthusiastic, so unashamed, he would call out in his Hutterite German brogue, “Good morning, Doug! And how is it between you and Jesus today?” My brother never ceased to thrill at the encouragement that his friend Dave Wertz brought him!

Shortly after moving to Minnesota, Dave was tragically killed in a car accident. So in a sense, I’m here today to carry on his legacy. I’m here today to pay it forward. I won’t yell at you from across the street, but I wanna talk to you from across the room. I want to, in effect, call you by name, and I wanna ask you right now, how is it between you and Jesus today? That’s where I’m going with this message.

Our text is in Matthew chapter five. We’re studying the Beatitudes. For those who may be new to the word of God, beatitude is a Latin word we use to apply to this text. It means blessed or happy. Translates the same Greek word, makarios, blessed, happy. And so “blessed” is the one word that really is the common denominator between all of these character qualities we see here in this text.

But in a play on words, I believe these eight insights, these character qualities could also be called, watch the play, the “be…attitudes.” They’re the attitudes of our inner core of being. And so far we’ve learned that those blessed of God are broken, and they are repentant, and they are meek. Today, we learn that they’re also hungry… hungry for God, hungry for the righteousness of God, they’re hungry for Jesus Christ. So here is our Beatitude.

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

A point of instruction, the Greek tense for hunger and thirst is present tense, so it might be better translated, “Blessed are those who are continually hungering and thirsting after righteousness.” Even though we come to faith in Christ and we receive His righteousness, we hunger to be more and more like him, to be passionate and following hard after God. And then the end of that verse gives a promise, “they will be satisfied.” That’s a future tense. And again, while here and now we’re satisfied in Christ, we will be perfectly satisfied at home in heaven when we’re made just like Jesus! And when we get home to heaven, we won’t sin anymore. And we won’t want to sin anymore. And we won’t want to want to sin anymore, because we’ll be just like Jesus! I can’t wait for that! I can’t wait to get a home to heaven!

Some of you have been looking, you’ve been looking for a long time for satisfaction in all kinds of areas of life. I’m here to submit that satisfaction is found only in God. By definition, God is the happy God. His happiness is found in Himself. He loves Himself because He’s the ultimate joy. Therefore, our ultimate joy can only be found in Him. He alone satisfies. He’s not an egomaniac. He’s the essence of all life. He is life! He’s the zoe that is given to us. It all surrounds Him. For Him to love someone else better than Himself would be idolatry, as it would be for us as well.

Okay, here’s what I want to do today. I want to really be practical. I want to help you in this hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And I want to show you how to be happy in God by feeding on Jesus.

It’s interesting to me as I compare Matthew chapter four with Matthew chapter five. In chapter four, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by the devil. And in that passage, you’ll recall, He denies Himself food for fellowship with the Father. But in chapter five, at least figuratively speaking, He recommends food for fellowship with the Father. Of course, food is not the object. It’s only the object lesson. What do you feed on? What do I feed on? To whom do we listen? As we learn from Matthew four in the temptation, we can listen to the voice of Satan for food, or we can, as illustrated by Jesus, listen to God for the food that we receive from Him. Food is not the object. It’s the object lesson. We’re talking about food. We’re talking about the voice of God. What do we feed on? We can listen to Satan or God.

Now look at the comparison between these two lists. I’ll flash it on the screen for you. Satan’s voice rushes you. God’s voice stills you. Satan’s voice pushes you. God’s voice leads you. Satan’s voice frightens you. God’s voice reassures you. Satan confuses you. God enlightens you. Satan discourages you. God encourages you. Satan worries you. God comforts you. Satan obsesses you. God calms you. And finally, Satan’s voice condemns you. Whereas God’s voice only convicts and corrects you. What a contrast! What a difference!

Now when I describe the voice you hear, I’m not talking about an audible voice. That would be weird. I’m talking about a voice in your spirit, like a silent message popping up in your brain, an alarm bell in your heart, a nudge in the core of your being. You can hear it right now, even as I speak if you’re listening. I guarantee God will speak to you today if you’re really listening… attentively. ‘God, talk to me!’ Jesus said to the churches of

Revelation 2:7,11,17,29 and Revelation 3:6,13,22, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches” — what he’s saying to you today.

We all “hear voices,” quote unquote, but we need to feed on the voice of God if we’re to be satisfied. And that means we need to feed on God’s word. Remember, in chapter four when after 40 days Jesus was really hungry when the devil came to Him, and He said in effect, ‘Hey, you’re God. Why don’t you just turn those stones into bread?’ — And how did Jesus return? How did he reply? What did he say?

Matthew 4:4, “Man shall not live by (physical) bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

I love that! And Job put it this way.

Job 23:12, “I’ve treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.”

Now let me give you a scaffold to hang this building on by having you look with me at a passage of Scripture from the Psalter. This is the Hebrew hymn book. It’s taken from Psalm 63, verses one through six. And I wanna give you the steps to satisfaction. This is an illustration of our text in the New Testament. Psalm 63, I’m gonna give them to you quickly, these steps, and then circle back and elaborate more. Here they are quickly. Number one is earnest seeking, then focused looking, which leads to mindful meditating and active worshiping, and then we finally experience enjoyable eating. Now let’s look at the text more in depth. The first one, earnest seeking, found in verse one. David writes,

Psalm 63:1 “O God, you are my God. Earnestly (There’s our word)… earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you as in a dry and a weary land where there is no water.”

Where was David? He was in the Judean rock desert. He was in an impoverished place. He was running from wicked King Saul, jealous of David. He wanted to kill him! And David was so thirsting, not just physically but spiritually thirsting, for God, and the two often intersect.

Then in the second verse, we find focused looking.

Psalm 63:2, “So I have looked, (he writes) upon You (speaking about God) in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.”

What is the sanctuary? It’s likely a reference to the tabernacle to the most holy place, the Holy of Holies, where God met with His people once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Blood was sprinkled so that the people of God could have their sins covered. Application for us is the Gospel. Every day, we must preach the Gospel to ourselves and rehearse again what Jesus has done for us because the voice of the enemy condemns us, and we need reassurance from the word of God by looking at the sanctuary of the cross and the resurrection.

Then we move to mindful meditating; verses three and six.

Psalm 63:3, “…because Your steadfast love is better than life,” (That’s quite a statement!) my lips will praise You.“

6 “When I remember You upon my bed and meditate on You in the watches of the night.”

I wanna grab that two-word description in verse three, “steadfast love.” It’s a phrase, a Hebrew word, “hasd,” which occurs again and again and again in the psalter. The psalter celebrates God’s love to us. It’s a covenant love, a faithful love. It finds its origin in the book of Exodus 34:6-7, when Moses is asking God, ‘Would you please reveal who You are to me and tell Me Your name?’ And He said, “I AM the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding (here it is) in steadfast love and faithfulness, showing faithfulness unto thousands and forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”

That’s this steadfast love! That’s His forgiveness. That’s His mercy that is yours in Christ. This is amazing, steadfast love! We need to meditate upon it.

Psalm 63:4, active worshiping, that leads to worship. “So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name I will lift up my hands…[in thy Name.]”

It’s scriptural to lift your hands as we’re praising the Lord even in song!

I’m not really a musician. You wouldn’t want me up here singing, I don’t think. But I enjoy music so much! And as God is my witness, my car is tuned to a Christian radio station, and even in my commute, I’m listening to Christian music, and if I know the lyrics to the song, I will sometimes sing along or I’ll hum along, and sometimes the emotion will just well up within me. I’m so grateful for what God has done for me in Christ! It helps me to worship and to hunger and thirst after righteousness by listening to Christian music!

You have to set up your diet to be hungry and thirsty for God. And then if you do all these things, verse five promises you’ll have enjoyable eating.

Psalm 63:5, “My soul will be satisfied (there’s our word from Matthew 5:6) as with fat (the word means plentiful) and rich food, and my mouth will praise You with joyful lips.”

Oh, to be satisfied! Are you satisfied today? Satisfaction implies joy. The joy of the Lord is our strength. So again, I ask you, how is it between you and Jesus today? — the joy factor, the satisfaction factor? Do you envy those believers who you hear sometimes testify, ‘You know, I had the sweetest time, most intimate time in the word, in my daily devotions, just drinking it in! it was such a blessing!’ — and you’re thinking, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. This book is dry as dust to me.’ Is that you? Probably at any given time it’s all of us if we’re honest.

So let me give you some pointers on meditation to help you gain intimacy, satisfaction, pointers on how to have an effective personal time in the word. Here it is. Number one, read until your heart is warmed, convicted, encouraged, or enlightened. Please, don’t just blow through your scripture reading, close your Bible and check a box. This is God talking to you! You gotta interact with the text of scripture. What’s it saying? What’s He trying to communicate to me? Let Him talk to you. This is how God communicates and how you develop fellowship. And then once you determine that, number two, write it down in a journal. I’ve done this for years, journaling what it is that God has spoken to you from His word. And then number three, pray it back to God in prayer. I’m convinced the best kind of prayer is praying scripture back to him ’cause we know that’s His will. And then finally, number four, share what you’ve learned with another believer. That’ll help it to stick. But be careful. Listen carefully. More is not necessarily better. Read scripture slowly, meditatively. Let it sink in. Journal slowly, meditatively. Pray slowly, meditatively. This will help you in your pursuit of God’s righteousness and being more like Christ. You and I must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives. For our own spiritual prosperity, we must regularly shut down all the outside noise, including social media, quiet our soul as well as our body. We must discover the recuperative powers of solitude. And so… simple advice… go for a walk. Listen to the birds. My lilacs are blooming right now. I just go out there and smell ’em and it gives me great joy, a created fight by God for His glory and for my good! Smell the lilacs and go look at the tulips and praise God! And learn to meditate on eternity.

You know, we’re four months now into the new year, and some of you will hearken back to January 1st, and you’ve made God a promise. ‘Oh yeah… yeah, God. I’m going to be daily in the word this year. I’m gonna have devotions every day,‘ — and somehow in the busyness of life, that’s fallen by the wayside. The busyness has overtaken you. I want you to beware because our soul is a complex spiritual ecosystem. Let that sink in. If we are snacking on junk food, we’ll have no appetite for the substantial meat of the word. Check out your diet spiritually when you go home. What are you listening to? What are you watching? What’s dominating?

John Piper’s declared it and I love this quote.

“I’ve never met a mature, fruitful, strong, spiritually discerning Christian who is not full of scripture, devoted to regular meditation of it and given to storing it in the heart through Bible memorization.” John Piper

There is more to the Christian life than Bible reading, but there’s never less. Treat it like your cell phone. Always with you, always looking at it… the Word.

Now let me take you back to our primary text in Matthew 5, and emphasize the centrality of a right relationship with God through faith in Christ to be spiritually satisfied. And sometimes I think of illustrations from scripture like the familiar story of Martha and Mary in Luke chapter 10 when Martha’s all hot and bothered. Her sister’s not helping her. What did Martha do? (And this is not original with me, but I like this quote.)

“We try to feed Jesus before we feed from Jesus.”

And that order is inverted. To put it another way, sometimes I could say that I think we think the plan of salvation is just a mere mental ascent to some gospel facts, instead of a vibrant relationship with the living Lord. And so we try to serve Him before we really know Him. All kinds of people go to church. They are, quote, “Serving the Lord.” They don’t even know Him! They don’t even know Him. Is it possible that many professed believers lack joy and intimacy because they can parrot the Gospel facts, but they don’t really know this personal Savior of whom they speak? They have prayed the sinner’s prayer, but never have fallen in love with the Lord Jesus?

Now, our dear Pastor Pat has addressed this a couple of times within this series on the Beatitudes, and I believe he’s right. I think I know what people mean when they say ‘I prayed the sinner’s prayer,’ but it’s often fraught with confusion. It was in my life. So I’m gonna tell you my own story here briefly of my own struggle, because I know that many of you are having the same struggle.

When I was a kid, late grade school and then into adolescence, I struggled horrifically with a lack of assurance of salvation. I mean, horrifically! It was a bondage. I was in the dumps. I prayed the sinner’s prayer, claimed that I was saved, and I may very well have been, but I was looking at myself and my feelings, and so I’d pray again and ask Jesus into my heart again. Again I struggled with doubt, so I’d pray it again, and again, and again and again! Do I have a witness from anybody else out there? You don’t have to raise your hands. You would say, ‘Oh man, Curt!’ I’m convinced from the counseling I do in our church that maybe even the majority of Christians have prayed this prayer over and over again because they’re uncertain, they’re doubting, they’re fearful, so they just keep doing it again and again. I’m gonna give you a resource that I hope will help you. We’ll flash the book on the screen here by J.D. Greear. Interesting title, don’t you agree? Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart. J.D. Greear, who is, by the way, pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He says in the book that he thinks he may rival the Guinness Book of Records for most times of asking Jesus into his heart. (congregation laughing) Now, I’m not exaggerating! In the book, he says he recounted it. He said, I asked Jesus into my heart 5,000 times by age 18. 5,000 times! He admitted that he got baptized four times. He joked that he should have had his own locker in the baptismal changing area! Can you relate? In that same book, he recounts a Barna survey from 2011 that reveals nearly half of all Americans have prayed the sinner’s prayer! — And we know the vast majority of those folks aren’t saved. They’ve just said some religious mumbo jumbo, but their life hasn’t been transformed. They’re not hungering and thirsting after righteousness. I’m not sure that using that phrase, “praying the sinner’s prayer,” is the most helpful or most scripturally descriptive. So you say, ‘Well, then, Curt, land the plane for us. What did you do after all these times?’ I had to, first of all, tell myself, ‘Curt, stop asking Jesus into your heart.’ And then I had to ask myself a second question. ‘What are you right now trusting to get you to heaven? If you have repented of your sins, turned from any self-reliant self-righteousness, if you’ve placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your substitute, your sacrifice on the cross to pay the penalty of your sins and believe he rose again, and you’re believing that, you are saved right here and now!’ Wow! You say, ‘Where do you find that in the Bible?’ How about

1 John 5:12? “He that has (present tense) the Son has life. He that has not the Son has not life.”

Stop focusing on the amount of faith you have. ‘Oh, my faith is so small!’ So is mine! It’s not the amount of faith. It’s the object of your faith that saves you. It’s Jesus! A word to those of you struggling, stop asking Jesus into your heart again and again and again. Here’s the way JD put it in his book.

“The way that you know you made the decision is by the fact that you’re resting in Christ now. Salvation is not a ritual. It’s a relationship with the living Savior who wants to become your everything.” J.D. Greear

I love to read Elisabeth Elliot and her writings. And she wrestled with some of this same stuff in her own life. She says, “I learned that faith can be rooted in the wrong thing, even without knowing it.” She came to a crisis of faith in her own teenage years. And I’ll just give you the quote here. She realized that… “What I thought was faith in God was really my belief that my life would turn out well as long as I believed. In other words, if I did my part, God would do his.” No, that’s works righteousness. But then God revealed to her this truth that “…Genuine Christianity is a person,” — And suddenly the switch clicked inside of her mind and her heart, and as she put it… (again I quote) “It wasn’t ‘something‘ I believed anymore. It was ‘Someone‘ I believed in.” — And that someone is Jesus!

So how is it between you and Jesus today? Let me illustrate from the life of Doubting Thomas. Thomas wasn’t present when Jesus first showed up after His resurrection. So he’s, ‘I can’t believe unless I see Him and touch Him.’ So Jesus showed up eight days afterward. And He said, ‘Okay, Thomas, go ahead.’ — And Thomas put his fingers into the nail prints. And what did Thomas say? I love this! What did Thomas say about Jesus? “My Lord and my God!” There, it’s personal! Jesus died. That’s history. Jesus died for sinners. That’s theology. But it’s only when you say Jesus died for me that it becomes salvation! Have you made that personal? You can today and know that you have eternal life!

Some of you have heard of this personal relationship. You’ve heard about it with Jesus, but to you, (if I can use an analogy) it’s only a distant heat lightning on the western horizon. But true regeneration is like a forked lightning bolt striking your heart from heaven, and the Spirit of God electrifies you with the reality of knowing Jesus Christ personally, and you’re supernaturally born again by the sovereign grace of God! Has the bolt hit you?— and as a result, if you’re truly saved, you will hunger and thirst and keep on hungry and thirst after righteousness!

But what does righteousness mean in this context as I read it? What it’s saying? What does it mean? In context, righteousness here is a Godly character that reflects a right relationship with God through Christ. We need His righteousness, but when He gives it to us, it shows up in acts of righteousness from us that demonstrate our faith is real. “Faith without works is dead.”   [James 2:17]

In the original translation of Matthew 5:6, there’s a definite article in front of the word “righteousness.” In other words, it should be rendered,

Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after the righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”

It’s a reference to a specific kind of righteousness that comes from outside of you. It’s an alien righteousness… a righteousness not your own. Stop trying to be good enough to get to heaven. You’ll never accomplish it! When the lightning bolt of truth explodes in our spirit, we’re awakened to the fact that we must discard the soiled shirt of self-reliance and self-righteousness and instead replace it with the royal robe of the righteousness of the Redeemer… That’s Jesus!

[2 Corinthians 5:21] “For God (the Father) made Him (Jesus) who knew no sin to become sin for us (i.e. the sin offering for us) that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

It’s not your righteousness. It’s His righteousness that you need, and you trust Him for it and then God gives it to you.

Now let me try to illustrate this, especially for the kids, because this gets a little heavy maybe. Okay, we’ve got the righteousness of Christ over here and we’ve got your sin over here. Here’s what has to happen. You have to give your sin to Jesus. He bore your sin in his own body on the tree. That’s applied to Jesus. And in its place, when you come to Jesus by faith, God takes Christ’s righteousness and He credits it to your account. Theologians call that imputation. It’s credited to you. The righteousness of Christ is given to you.

I don’t know how you see yourself, but if you’re in Christ God sees you as righteous. You’re a saint. You’re holy because of Jesus, NOT because of you! If you hunger for this righteousness of Christ and you trust Him for it, the lightning bolt of salvation will strike you, and when you discover Him, you will find Him to be the satisfaction you’ve been looking for, because the Gospel celebrates Christ.

I’m gonna level with you. When I knew I was gonna be preaching on this text, the burden that God really put in my heart is that so many Christians are bored with the Bible. They’re bored with church. They’re bored with Christianity. I just yearn for the truth of this passage to be made alive to you, that you

[Deuteronomy 6:4-7, Matthew 22:37-40, Mark 12:30-31, Luke 10:27] “…love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and ALL your soul and ALL your mind and ALL your strength.”

You can never love Jesus too much! You can never rely upon Jesus too much! The Gospel celebrates Christ! He’s the highest and the best and the greatest and the only! He’s the bright and morning star! He’s the pearl of great price! He’s the treasure hidden in the field! He’s the delight of all nations, the desire of all nations! He is the climax and consummation of all things!

[Romans 11:36] “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory foreve!.”

(Amen! Amen! Congregation applauds!) A clap goes to Jesus! Christ is both the goal and the prize of our journey to heaven.

Oh, hungry friend, my brother’s late friend, Dave Wertz, would say to you, ask you, (and I’m asking you in his stead) “How is it between you and Jesus today?

[Psalm 34:8] “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”

[Matthew 5:6] “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be satisfied.”

Would you pray with me? Father, my heart yearns for those who don’t have an assurance of salvation. Help them to land the plane today, right now, right here now, believing what God’s word promises. There’s life to all who put their trust in Christ alone, immediate life and forever life. And to my Christian friends, who for whatever reason just kinda drag through life, there’s not much joy or gratitude. There’s at times hardly even any evidence that they’ve found their satisfaction in Christ because they keep looking to other things. Please convict them and please help them to get back to “the Book,” and thirsting after the water of life, the hunger for the bread of life. Lord, as we sing this song, I pray that our hearts will rejoice for those of us who are in Christ through the satisfaction we’ve found in Him! Please do what only your sovereign Spirit can in drawing people to Christ. And may you impart your righteousness to them by faith in Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.