Happy Are the Hungry B

Zero I'm so miserable in my whole cuts I gotta find a way. How can I be happy. No, that's not what your BF happiness is a byproduct.

Happy are those who hunger and thirst after doubt your mouth is going to water at least a little. We all know what it feels like to want food but how is your appetite for holiness to tough question, but you need to ask yourself how long since you had hunger pangs that only Jesus Christ could satisfy well today. John MacArthur's going to help you see if you're hungering for the right things stay here as he continues his look at Jesus opening words from the sermon on the mount where you find those familiar statements that each begins with Blessed are like John series. Those statements are called the Beatitudes. Here's today's lesson taken by the way I look at Matthew chapter 5 in verse six, Matthew chapter 5 verse six.

Let me read verses 1 to 6 to set the pace for what comes in verse six and seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain and when he was seated his disciples came on to him and he opened his mouth and taught them saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.

First John chapter 2 warns that you can't get satisfied in the world love not the world, neither the things that are in the world what's in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life and none of that stuff abides forever just wind so right at the start.

Ask yourself this, but as we begin our study. What you hungry for power. Praise possessions, pleasure are you feeding yourself on the husks of the swine are you like the dog who lets his own vomit.

The pig that wallows in his own mire. Are you looking to the only real source because the answer you give to that question will determine whether you're in the kingdom are not what you hunger for the blessing hunger and thirst after righteousness. Those in his kingdom. Hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now let's ask some key questions as we have for each of the Beatitudes's question number one. How does this beatitude fit in with the others will notice first of all, in verse three it says Blessed are the poor in spirit. We talked about the fact that that means morally bankrupt us take a second question, what is it mean to hunger and thirst. We've already hinted at it. It has to do with desire and by the way, a great and intense desire. The force of Christ's words here are just powerful, particularly in that culture, maybe not so much in our culture because we don't know what it is to be hungry. We don't know what it is to thirst and so we don't understand this when you think of thirst do you think of that you've gone out runaround obit your thirst.

You don't know what it is to help to be in the midst of a drought where you had no water for days when you think of hunger. You mean it's 1 o'clock and you're used to eating at 1215. You don't know what it means to be hungry, you don't know what it is to go without food, but the idea is desperation is an interesting book written by Maj. V. Gilbert entitled the last Crusade, and in a 1966 issue of the national Christian magazine EM Blake Locke reiterated the story that this major Gilbert tells in this book the last Crusade in the book is written about the British liberation of Palestine and World War I. Remember Gen. Allenby was a part of the liberation of Palestine World War I Blake Locke tells the story about this major is what he says, driving up from bear Sheba a combined force of British Australians and New Zealanders were pressing on the rear of the Turkish retreat over arid desert the attack outdistance its water carrying camel train.

In other words, they got so far ahead of their water. They were separated the water bottles were empty. The sun blazed pitilessly out of the sky where the vultures wheeled about expectantly our heads. Eight rights major Gilbert.

Our eyes became bloodshot and dim and the blinding glare.

Our tongues began to swell our lips turned to a purplish black and began to burst those who dropped out of the column were never seen again. But the desperate force struggled onto Sherry.

There were wells that she area and had they been unable to take the place by nightfall.

Thousands were doomed to die of thirst, and so we thought that they rights major Gilbert as men fought for their lives. We entered Sherry a station on the heels of the retreating Turks.

The first objects which met our view were the great stone cisterns full of cold clear drinking water in the still night air. The sound of water running into the tanks could be distinctly heard maddening in its nearness, yet not a man murmured when orders were given for the battalions to fall into deep facing the cistern.

He describes the stern priorities. The wounded those on guard duty.

Then company by company. It took four hours before the last man had his drink of water in all that time they had been standing 20 feet from a low stone wall on the other side of which were thousands of gallons of water.

I believe major Gilbert concludes that we all learn our first real Bible lesson on the march from bear Sheba to Sherry a Wells, if such were our thirst for God and for righteousness for his will in our life. A consuming all embracing free occupying desire how rich in the fruit of the spirit.

Would we be. That's what Jesus is trying to say he's talking about hunger and thirst to people who understood what it meant. The Greek verbs are just very powerful pain on tastes means to be needy to suffer hunger. It has the idea of a deed hunger not just superficiality. The word dips below to suffer thirst again carries the idea of a genuine thirst, and here they are the strongest impulses in the natural realm and by the way they are in a continuous present participle. The ones who are hungering the ones who are thirsting is a continuous thing and so I say to you, beloved, this is not only the one the condition of the one coming in, but this is the condition of the one in the kingdom.

You know, put it this way when I came to Jesus Christ. I hunger to thirsted for his righteousness, and now that I know in my hunger and thirst for more of it right.

That's what he say in fact Linsky the great commentator says this hunger and this thirst increases in the very act of being satisfied.

Luke adds that a note to this, Luke is a parallel passage, and he adds the word now. Blessed are they who are hungering now is a present is a continuous thing is a moment by moment way of life. When you become a Christian you don't stop, listen, look at your life if you don't, hunger and thirst for righteousness is a question whether you're even in the kingdom we give illustration Moses Moses, it seemed God. Moses when he was in the wilderness for 40 years had God calling any came in he saw God in a blazing burning bush. Seeing God, he saw the Shekinah of God, as it were blazing in the bush and God said doing take your shoes off Moses are standing on holy ground and later on when God that went back to lead Israel out of that land he saw God he saw God's hand in the miracles, the plagues he saw God when God parted the Red Sea and let them all walk through and and round all of the Egyptian army. He saw God as they moved, guided by that great Shekinah glow of God in the heavens. He saw God. He knew what it was to hunger after God and be filled, but you know something in obedience to God's command to build a tabernacle and when the tabernacle was completed, the glory of God came into that place because Moses said doing God. I want to see your glory you might say Moses enough is enough guy when you have really seen a lot of stuff Moses would say, but not enough. God took him up into the mountain. God showed them the flaming finger that scratch the law of God in the tables of stone in the side of a mountain and Moses came down. It wasn't in honey said show me your glory and when he came down he was and is the glory began to diminish. He went back up the mountain and he looked again at God's glory. And then he came down and they went back again.

It was never enough. It was never enough, I beseech you, he says in Exodus 3318. I beg you show me your glory see this is the character of a son of the kingdom. You see, he never is satisfied. There is under satisfaction in the very satisfaction itself was a hunger for more I think of David. David man after God's own heart. David walked in close communion with God, David, who wrote the Psalm Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He elitist me beside the still waters. He maketh me lie down in green pastures his rod and his staff they comfort me known God he'd known God in his life got it protected him.

God had cared for him God and guided him. God directed him zeal for God's house and eaten them up the pain that fell on God fell on him. He knew God in an intimacy you would say there's a man who knows God a man out of whom the psalmist flowed like water out of a stream Psalm 63, he says, oh God, thou art my God didn't stop there. He said early will I seek the my soul thirsts for the my flesh longs for the in a dry and thirsty land where no water is what he saying you see is that the hunger and thirst never diminishes in a true son of the kingdom.

It's a way of life. Look at the apostle Paul, the apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 3 why you say Paul, you know it all there is to know you. You and your lifetime had personal visions of Jesus Christ.

Beginning on the Damascus Road and then when you were in jail in Jerusalem and then my goodness Paul caught up into the third heaven to see things too wonderful of a halt while Paul allows can be sick call you write all the theology you have penned the great expressions of divine truth in the New Testament. What more could you want in the crime is hard in Philippians 310 is all that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings is never enough.

It's never enough. Sure he knew the law. He says in verse six, I knew the righteousness of the law, but I counted that as refuse dung.

I just want to know God.

You hear Peter who cries out grow in grace and grow in the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's never enough.

Mr. Darby great man of God who was so responsible in the early days of the Plymouth brethren movement said this to be hungry is not enough. I must be really starving to know what is in God's heart toward me when the prodigal son was hungry, he went to feed on the husks, but when he was starving. He went to his father.

Yes, that's what Jesus is talking about the kind of desperation. Only God can satisfy.

Not until people hunger and thirst after righteousness to the seek the fulfillment of God can give. In Luke 153. The Bible says he hath filled the hungry with good things. But the rich. He sent away empty. The people who had only needed when away empty so we see why this beatitude falls into this place and we see what it means to hunger and thirst. It's a tremendously intense thing and it knows no end. It knows no end. I believe in my life. I hunger more for the righteousness of God now than I ever did and I will believe tomorrow will hunger more than I did today until the day I see Jesus Christ. It will be in undiminished third course. What is this that we hunger for what is this righteousness, Amos said that people in the world pant after the dust of the earth's pretty stupid, but they do. The world just pants after the dirt of the earth say will what are we to hunger for, well, something would say happiness and I guess maybe that's what the world hungers for a lot. They want happiness. People are really after happiness. They just want happiness. And if you could just make him happier. All right will just nothing.

It always amazes me is the number of amusements we have in our society, our life is so full of amusements trying to make people happy entertainment and you know it's like a man with a painful disease who just wants to be relieved of his pain. But on their want to bother with the disease and with you because of the doctor and the doctors as well. I can relieve your pain give you shot a bunch of pills. I support Dr. he didn't do anything to diagnose and cure the disease. I see the world as a disease but it wants to eliminate the pain with happiness, but never wants to deal with the disease so the world is hungry and thirsty for happiness, and one is about.

That's even true in the church.

I meet a lot of people who are Christians and what they really want us happiness say what I mean. But thereafter some kind of an ecstasy they want. They want a holy hi, they want an experience they want a spiritual ecstasy.

They want to feeling and there a lot of other they run to a seminar and they run to a conference or to a counselor to try to get some spiritual ecstasy and that isn't what their deceit if we just try to find happiness is a well I'm so miserable in my whole got better find a way. How can I be happy. No, that's not what you'd be after happiness is a byproduct.

Happy are those who hunger and thirst after what righteousness want to be happy, comes as a byproduct of righteousness not not any holy hi you get with some Zap is not some experience. You find that is what it is to Kyle assuming righteousness, justification to be made right with God and what am I saying listen simple. The only real happiness in life is to be right with God. That's it. The only real happiness in life is to be right with God and I believe this points to two things. First of all, salvation, and second of all, sanctification. First of all, salvation and second sanctification must talk about salvation for a minute somebody hungers and thirst after righteousness. First of all, seek salvation, the righteousness that comes when you believe the righteousness is given you in Christ, he sees his sin he sees is rebellion.

He sees himself separated from a holy God. He is broken. He is mournful he is meek and he wants all Macs to restore himself to God.

He wants forgiveness and so he hungers and thirsts. After the righteousness that comes in salvation is a desire to be free from self as a desire to be free from sin and its power, its presence and its penalty. And this is what initiates salvation in many Old Testament passages. Righteousness is synonymous with salvation. One prophet in particular makes this parallel that is Isaiah. Isaiah repeatedly equates righteousness with salvation. And that's true if you hunger and thirst after righteousness. It's at the moment of salvation you receive in Isaiah makes this point particularly in chapter 4546 5156 and 61 for the end of his book when it comes to the salvation element in those final chapters. Isaiah sees righteousness as that gift of God that comes in salvation.

So what we say that we can put salvation and as a substitute word.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after salvation want be happy hunger for salvation hunger to be saved. Hunger to have the blood of Christ, closer sin, hunger to have the righteousness of Christ applied to you hunger to have your sins forgiven when a man abandons all hope of saving himself abandoned abandons all hope of his own self-righteousness and being gives a hunger for salvation. It can only come at the hands of God that is going to happiness and this is where the juicy were hung up. They were trying to gain their own salvation by their own works and what Jesus says to them is literally revolutionary. You have it. They were saying we are aware already with righteous. He was saying until you are flat on your back hungering and thirsting for righteousness that you can't gain your never know what it is to be happy that I miss it. Simplicity happiness belongs to the holy that's what he said if you're unhappy in your life. Somewhere on the line run holy Jesus was talking to Jews who thought they were righteous to them. Holiness was a conformity to rules. It was an external thing, but it wasn't enough. That's why Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees will never enter the kingdom that righteousness doesn't cut the Beatitudes took the external stripped away and forced us to look at the inside and when you hunger and thirst for salvation, then you will be filled but there's a second I think it also implies sanctification. I don't think once you get saved to stop hungering and thirsting, as I said then you hunger and thirst for sanctification for increasing holiness. But I don't how to express this strongly as I feel it I I hope in your life.

There is this hunger. Hunger that never stops the desires to be more and more like Christ. This is the mark of the Christian you keep on hungering to keep on thirsting to the desire of more virtue a greater purity more Christ likeness that you never get to the place where you are right that is the most disgusting, revolting, sickening attitude.

There is both by unregenerate people say well what we've saved ourselves and by Christians who think they were sons of the kingdom never stop hungering. Paul says in Philippians 19 I pray that your love may abound yet more and more.

See you not done.

The matter how much you love you a lot more matter how much you pray, pray more matter how how much you obey will be more the matter how much you think like Christ, you want to think like Christ more. This should be the consuming desire never ending Blessed are they which do continually hunger and thirst. The word now says Luke. You're now in doing this, demonstrated truth that I think is really richer. That shows you the totality of what you're seeking isn't that were just seeking bits and pieces of righteousness.

We are seeking all the righteousness there is. Get that we are seeking the totality of righteousness to be like Christ me show you why this is important in the Greek language verbs like hunger and thirst are normally followed in the genitive case expressed by the pronoun of and this is what is called in Greek the positive genitive testing. This is fascinating so that a great, you'll see.

So the Greek would say you would say hungering and thirsting and then he would add the genitive case. They have cases to show meaning on he would present this.

I hunger for of food I thirst for of water and the party did genitive simply means he did it. It didn't delineate that he wants part of it. For example, he would never say I hunger for because to him that would represent all the food there was he's got to have a case which limits it the part of genitive means I hunger for of food. Another was in on all the food you really just want some you would never say I thirst for water.

Not all the water of the world he would say I thirst for of water.

I thirst for of water. A part of water enough for my thirst. This is normal.

This is the normal expression for the Greek to use in his language and what fascinated me as I studied this is that in this passage that normal use of the Greek is abandoned. You would've thought that it would say Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, but it doesn't, it drops the genitive case altogether, which is normal Greek expression and it drops to the bottom of what we call the accusative case and becomes a direct object unqualified. I hunger and thirst for righteousness, all origins the tremendous truth were never satisfied because no matter how much righteousness we may have by God's grace we don't have all there is right so the hunger and thirst goes on we cry out with Dave and I will be satisfied when I awakened I likeness and I will not be satisfied until I that's John MacArthur continuing his study from Matthew five titled the Beatitudes along with his teaching ministry here on grace to you. John also serves as Chancellor of the Masters University in seminary in Southern California. This notion of hungering and thirsting for righteousness thought about that.

We've all seen those signs that read no outside food or drink allowed in a way that's a fitting thought for the church.

The church already has the only message. People need to hunger and thirst for and anything outside that message outside that truth will I'm sure you'd agree John is no place for it. Everything we need for life and godliness is provided for us in the word of God and applied to us by the Holy Spirit of God, everything is in the word that there is no other source. And I'm not saying there aren't other books because we obviously produce them but everything everything that we produce as a spiritual resources designed to help you understand what's in the Bible. It's not something in addition to the Bible. Remember not too many years ago people were saying the Bible is very important, but psychology is also important and you probably what would want to get to the Bible until you'd studied some psychology because that would that would help you we we would say you don't take the Bible and somebody's opinion on human behavior as a psychologist you. The Bible has everything we need for life and godliness and that is very demanding, you're saying to people. It's the Bible and nothing else is a lot of other literature in the world but when it all comes down to the bottom line, the only Bible that's absolutely true in life transforming eternally is the word of God, but even having said that not everybody runs to the word of God easily embraces it. I just want to mention a book to you. That kind of deals with this reality because I know you probably shared the word of God with the friends you may be brought under Bible study or taken to church never heard the word of God. The books title is hard to believe. Hard to believe this book examines the modern attack on the gospel message and it's an attack coming from within the walls of the evangelical church is a Christian you should wonder is the gospel of the Bible all about man and his needs or about God was the gospel message that Jesus taught something to make people feel better about themselves or truth to save them from eternal punishment.

Hard to believe, thoroughly speaks to issues like is the gospel message of self-fulfillment or self-denial, can someone who rejects the hard demands of the gospel and clings to his own life really be a Christian.

The book exposes the flaws in the seeker driven evangelism, an approach that is loading congregations with self deceived false congregations affordably priced the book again.

Hard to believe. Order your copy today and by the way this book can help you know if the gospel you believe is really the same good news that Jesus proclaimed to get a copy of hard to believe. Contact us today pastors Sunday school teachers, and anyone involved in evangelism, which really means every Christian will benefit from the clear explanation of the gospel. This book provides to get a copy of hard to believe for yourself or to give to a friend call us toll-free at any time 855 grace or go to our website Jide TY.org again to order, call 855 grace will go to Jide TY.org. Something else to keep in mind we are able to produce books like hard and broadcast your own radio and distribute thousands of every month to help people better understand God's will because friends like you support us financially. So if you're benefiting in you'd like to connect people in your area and beyond with life-changing biblical truth. Mail your donation to grace to you. Box 4000 panorama city, CA 91412. You can also donate online at Jide TY.or call 855 now for John MacArthur on Phil Johnson reminding you to watch grace to you television this Sunday. Check your local listings for channel and times and then be here Monday, when John shows you how God blesses those who hunger after righteousness. Don't miss the next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on grace