For Righteousness Sake

Matthew 5:10 (KJV) Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

      The man and his children had an air of piousness about them as they walked through the crowd and begin to set up their equipment. They knew the city had an ordinance against portable loud speakers but this family had decided to “invade the darkness” by joining the local festival and doing some preaching. They were very proud of the fact that they looked nothing like the pagans that were walking by them on the street and found no reason to smile or show themselves friendly to the crowd. Soon the “preaching” had begun. The father screamed and yelled at the people telling them that they were sinners and going to hell. He called them degrading names depending on what the people looked like and argued with many who took objection to his attacks. He would psychologically beat those that would stop to listen and offer to pray for them. It wasn’t long before the police came and requested that the family stop their “evangelism” and move along. When they refused the orders of the authorities the father was arrested and their equipment was confiscated. As the man was being handcuffed, he shouted to his children, “The Kingdom of Heaven is ours! We are being persecuted.”

     Too often Christians are much like this family. We somehow believe that no matter what we act like or who we offend, when persecution comes that means we are blessed. We couldn’t be farther from the truth.

      Jesus was very specific. “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake.” Not for having unpleasant personalities, being rude, insensitive, thoughtless, or piously obnoxious. When the world rightly discerns that you are proud and judgmental, lazy and irresponsible, or incompetent and untrustworthy, their rejection of you is not somehow blessed. You are not nearer the Kingdom of Heaven.

      We cannot use part of what Christ teaches us in an attempt to feel good or justify ourselves. The final blessing of the Beatitudes is that when we are persecuted for righteousness sake, that is right living, the kingdom of heaven is ours. Following the way laid out by Jesus in the preceding beatitudes will bring rejection by the world. His ways run contrary to the flesh, contrary to the world, and we will find ourselves suffering the same persecution that Jesus endured if we follow after Him.

      I read this statement today by Tony Robbins, “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there is no action, you haven’t truly decided.” When we “made a decision” for Jesus that decision must be followed by action. Faith without works is not faith. Real faith will be followed by action. When we accept Jesus Christ as our savior and make a commitment to follow Him there is a change that takes place in our lives. The world will notice that change. You will display the poverty of spirit, mourning and brokenness over sins, meekness, hunger for righteousness, mercy, purity, and peacefulness that exemplified the life of Jesus. These things will be lived out in your life, your every action. The world hated Jesus and it will hate you. Not because you are obnoxious but because you are filled with love, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

      Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:12, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” That’s right he said “everyone”! Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way,

     “Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master... That is why Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true church, and one of the memoranda drawn up in preparation for the Augsburg Confession similarly defines the church as the community of those "who are persecuted and martyred for the Gospel's sake."... Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. In fact, it is a joy and a token of His grace. “

     These proclamations stand in stark contrast to much of the proclamations by leaders of the church today. Multitudes gather to hear messages that tickle the ear but how many will respond to the message that Jesus and Paul preached? How many would be willing to follow Christ and embrace suffering as the badge of true discipleship?

Completely Satisified

Matthew 5:6 (KJV) Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

      One day Jesus told His disciples “I must go to Samaria”. This is an interesting statement in John 4:4 because on that day Jesus was departing Judea and going to Galilee. Samaria was not on the way. Jesus was going out of His way to enter an area where the people were hostile to the Jews and meet a woman who was looked down upon by her community. When Jesus got there He didn’t go into town but waited by a well at a time when everyone would have been done with the chore of drawing water. The chances of meeting someone there were very slim. Yet, Jesus waited by the well.

     I love reading this story because it reminds me of how much Jesus loves us. It is perfect picture of today’s Scripture. Here came a woman who was an outcast of society, looked down upon by her neighbors, seeking to fill her thirst. She was about to receive more than she had ever hoped or dreamed. Jesus had gone out of the way to meet her! It is comforting to know that God sees, God knows, God loves, and God is not too busy.
She had come to fetch water when this man asked her to give Him a drink. Wasn’t He aware of the social barriers? Jesus brushed past the protests and gently put his hand on her thirst. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would give you living water.”
     How did this man know? How did He know the hunger in her soul, the thirst that had haunted her since she was a little girl? She had tried to fill it with the affections of men and the pleasures of this world but everyday she would awaken to the same longing, the same pain. And now this man was telling her that He had the answer? What could He possibly have that would satisfy her soul? He didn’t even have something to draw from the well.
Then Jesus spoke to her need, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
     “Sir, give me this water!” She could feel that thirst rising up within her, the same one that she had tried to fill with so many things. What? How did He know about my husbands, my boyfriend? Who is this man?

     Jesus knows you! There is nothing hidden that He cannot find. He sees the longing of your heart and knows the mistakes you have made. He waits for you to bring that longing in your heart to Him, to bare your heart and empty your soul to Him. When we confess our sin, our wrongs, our mistakes, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is part of “hungering and thirsting after righteousness”. We must hide nothing from God. Too often we approach God with the superficial details of our life and mistakenly believe that we can hide the parts that are too raw, the parts that we have hidden from everyone. Jesus knows! But He waits. He waits by the well that we have been drawing from for all those years, always drinking but never satisfied.
He waits to fill us with living water! The living water that will spring up within us to eternal life. The water that completely satisfies the longing of your soul.

No More Junk Food

Matthew 5:6 (KJV) Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

I have to confess there are times when I am hungry and begin to rustle through the kitchen for something to satisfy my longings. I don’t want to take the time to cook or make something complicated, I just want to eat. I will open the pantry, the refrigerator, look in the bread box, and cabinets but can find nothing to eat. Now we all know there was plenty to eat in those places but I didn’t want to go to the trouble. So, having gone through my exhaustive search I pull out the bag of candy and have a snack. It is just enough to relieve the hunger and trick my mind into thinking that I have eaten. Healthy? No way! Am I really full? Absolutely not! Will I be back in the kitchen looking for something? Before you can even ask the question.

Unfortunately, we are not only guilty of this with our physical eating habits but in so many other areas of our life as well. Commercials fill the air waves with “time saving” gimmicks that promise to make our lives easier and fulfill our needs. Being hungry or needing help and reaching out for the wrong thing will never truly satisfy. Instead we waste valuable time and effort on that which can give us only fleeting satisfaction.

When we hunger and thirst for righteousness there is a deep, yearning in our soul that cries out to be satisfied. Some try to fill that hunger with legalism and think that in their rules and regulations they will be filled. The Pharisees were caught in this trap and history tells us that they were never satisfied but had to always find new laws, new rules, new regulations to follow. None of these ever truly made them righteous. No human effort ever could.

Others tried to dismiss their hunger with excuses for their sinful behavior. Grace became an excuse to be unrighteous and no amount of grace applied could ever fill the longing to live right before God. Instead of becoming the satisfaction that God had meant for grace to be in the lives of men it became the opposite of what it was intended to be. They had frustrated the grace of God.

God’s law and His grace are both important parts of salvation. Used properly they can build us up in the faith and help to create a strong, healthy body. It’s important to remember that when we hunger and thirst for righteousness there is only one who is righteous, Jesus! We must take the time to gather all of the ingredients for this meal.

The Law is our school master that brings us to Christ.

Grace is the door wherein we can enter into this new life in Christ.

The Church is the means by which the Holy Spirit teaches us of Christ.

As we hunger and thirst for righteousness we must never forget that the main thing, the only thing that matters is Jesus! He put it this way,

“Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever." John 6:53-58

Hungry? Thirsty? Only Jesus can satisfy that longing down in your soul.

Desperate Hunger

Matthew 5:6 (KJV) Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

A newborn baby lives for just two things. Their first priority is to eat. They have a desperate hunger and cannot be satisfied with anything but that which will fill their emptiness. They also need to be loved. That is another kind of emptiness that needs to be filled. There is nothing so sweet as the picture of a trembling, crying infant nestled in the arms of his mother and finding that place where he can feed both body and soul. Christians are not so different. Scripture speaks of our new birth and the growth that believers experience. The call of Christ for us to “hunger for righteousness” often stands in stark contrast to the slick, worldly, self-satisfied, and half-hearted religion of so many churches today. Jesus left no room for the unrepentant or self satisfied in the Kingdom of Heaven. If we are going to receive, we must empty ourselves and love God with all of our heart and soul.

When Jesus spoke to the seven churches of Asia He had a dire warning to the church at Laodicea. I like the language used in the God’s Word version,

“I know what you have done, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. But since you are lukewarm and not hot or cold, I'm going to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I'm rich. I'm wealthy. I don't need anything.' Yet, you do not realize that you are miserable, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you: Buy gold purified in fire from me so that you may be rich. Buy white clothes from me. Wear them so that you may keep your shameful, naked body from showing. Buy ointment to put on your eyes so that you may see. I correct and discipline everyone I love. Take this seriously, and change the way you think and act.” Revelation 3:15-19 (GW)

This pictures a people that were not poor in spirit but self satisfied and content, they no longer mourned their sin but boasted of their sufficiency, they were full of themselves and left no room for God in their lives. How could they hunger and thirst for righteousness? They saw no need for it. They saw themselves rich, wealthy, and in need of nothing. Jesus saw them much differently. They were miserable, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. If only they had seen themselves this way, they would have cried out and God would have filled them, clothed them, and given them Heaven and Earth. They were positioned for great blessing but because of their spiritual blindness and lack of hunger they were going to lose everything. Jesus warned them, “Take this seriously and change the way you think and act.” There might be no better way to describe the work of hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

When we are no longer satisfied with this world and we cry out for the Holy Spirit to lead us into the paths of righteousness, we are on the right path. When we long for a new way, a new song, a new life that is changed by the hand of God, we are pursuing real gold that has been tried in the fire. John was writing to “The Church at Laodicea” but really he was writing to people. The Church is a spiritual corporation that God has established and works through, but it is only as viable as the people that form it. When we hunger and thirst for the way, the truth, and the life of God, we will be filled. When we are filled with the righteousness of God and walk in His light the Church will be positioned to reach the world with the Good News and Jesus will glorified in all the earth.

More! More! More!

Matthew 5:6 (KJV)    Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
  
 They tell us that we are what we eat.  If we spend our days eating donuts and pastries we will become a big cream puff.  If we eat greasy food our arteries become clogged drains.  This line of thinking is even truer when we speak of spiritual matters.  If you feed your mind and soul on violence, excitement, erotica, and materialism your life will soon personify them.  You will become what you eat.  But those that hunger and thirst for righteousness will become more and more like Jesus. 
     The word “righteousness” is used seven times by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  It is from the repeated usage of the word in Christ’s discourse that we can define His intended meaning.  We are to hunger and thirst for “righteous living” and to passionately desire to do God’s will and live in obedience to Him, to see righteousness prevail in this world.  We must be aware of a growing need for God and desire to be like Him not just in a superficial way but deep in our souls we must long to reflect His character and bring forth much fruit, the fruit that only the Holy Spirit can offer. 
     The Psalmist gives us an ideal example of this hunger in his writing as he pens the cry of his soul.  “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is”  Psalm 63:1.  In Jesus’ day there was no indoor plumbing or mini-mart only wells and rivers.  The land was arid and dry and the possibility of dehydration was a very real possibility if you were far from a source of water.  Israelites knew exactly what it was like to be in a dry and thirsty land and long for life giving water.  It was a matter of life and death.  This is the way we must hunger and thirst for righteousness always hungering, always thirsting, never having enough of God’s Spirit, never satisfied or filled but constantly seeking as if our life depended on it.
     It is in our hunger and thirst that we will be filled and as we are filled we become more like what we eat and drink.  More like Jesus!