Come Hungry

Hunger and Thirst

We are four weeks deep into Jesus’ sermon on the Mount, where Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven – how to get in and what the kingdom looks like. He begins by pronouncing blessings, which the church has traditionally called “the beatitudes” – blessings based on a new order of things. He blesses those who are poor of spirit and empty, because when we are empty, then he can fill us. He blesses the mourners with the comfort of the Holy Spirit. He blesses the meek, those who hold great power under control by giving them an inheritance of everything that can’t be bought. And today he tells us to come hungry. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

I don’t know if you have ever had these restaurants around here, but one of my old favorite restaurants was called Bonanza. It was pretty much the same as a Ponderosa, a lower-scale steak joint with an all-you-can-stuff-down-your-throat salad bar. My brother and some friends and I used to have a contest where the first one to see a Bonanza got his bill paid by the others in the car. The best way to hit one of these places was hungry. After all, you were going to eat all you could – and we took this as a challenge.

I’m not trying to glorify binge eating, because it’s not healthy or positive. But the point is that we are all hungry for something. The secret to personal spiritual growth is spiritual appetite. There are plenty of people who wonder why they are in a spiritual rut, yet they have no appetite for spiritual matters. They don’t spend any time in the Word. Their prayers are laundry lists or “help me” lists or perfunctory blessings before meals (none of which is bad, they’re just not the entirety of prayer). Conversations, even with other Christians, aren’t about Jesus or about how to share the Gospel in an increasingly secular society. They have little to no excitement or passion for Jesus. They have no spiritual appetite.

We often have no spiritual appetite because we have grown so accustomed to spiritual snacking. We try to find our satisfaction everywhere… It can be easy to point fingers at those who fill their hunger with alcohol or drugs or material possessions, but what is just as bad is this: think about this scenario: it’s 2:30 pm, and you’re hungry. It’s going to be hours until you eat dinner. What do you do? Their old advertisements told us that Snickers satisfies us. So you grab a Snickers bar and chow down. Or maybe a bag of chips. Or some ice cream. Yeah, ice cream. So we keep on eating junk food and pretty soon we find that we have no room for anything of substance. The meal is served and we’re already full.

The same thing happens spiritually as well. If we settle for spiritual snacking, we won’t have room for spiritual maturity. If you wonder what spiritual junk food is – think of Oprah spirituality. Christian feel-good quotes alongside Precious Moment figurine pictures. I’m OK, you’re OK theology. We mix in a few Ben Franklin quotes like “God helps those who help themselves” and we subscribe to a theology that says that as long as we’re nice to one another we’re OK. And then we wonder why we aren’t living a full and fulfilling life.

French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal wrote this in response: "What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself."

To paraphrase Pascal, there is only one thing that can satisfy our souls, and that is God himself. We can be hungry for all the wrong things, or we can be hungry and thirsty for the only thing that can satisfy.

Jesus calls his followers to hunger and thirst for righteousness. That’s one of those great church words that has lost its meaning. Righteousness is, simply put, is being in a right relationship with God.

The Jews saw righteousness as conformity to the Old Testament laws. The Pharisees, as the holiness movement of their day, heaped law upon law in order to adhere to the 613 individual statutes of the law. They behaved in a way that made them look righteous, but Jesus told his followers: unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)

You see, they had all the acts down, but their hearts weren’t right. In fact, their greatest obstacle to receiving the Good News was their self-righteousness and self-reliance – their confidence in their own purity and holiness. They didn’t hunger and thirst for God. It was all about themselves, not about how much they needed God! In fact, it was as if they didn’t even need God, they were so holy and pure!

Righteousness isn’t just doing the right things, it is about having a right heart. Is your heart right? Righteousness is a response of our everything: heart, strength, soul, and mind. We cannot be in right relationship with God while our lives are stained with sin; sin separates us from God. This is why Jesus would tell his followers to be perfect; because unless we are, we have no part of God! But right relationship with God comes when we accept that we can’t do it on our own. We are poor in spirit. And we mourn our sin. And we meekly hold our power under control. Any of this sounding familiar? And the gift of Jesus Christ actually makes us perfect. But he won’t give it to us when we’re already full of ourselves or stuffed with spiritual snacks.

I love this quote from John Darby: “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 turned to his father.”

When he was starving, he turned to his father.

This is the word Jesus uses – not a “my tummy is rumbling” kind of hungry, not a “I’d like a drink” kind of thirsty, but starving. Dying of thirst. Do you want that right relationship with God like a starving person needs food?

One of the difficulties in our tradition is that we have often been guilty of calling people to the altar and then leaving them there. They come, hungry for that right relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and they get saved and at that moment they are in perfect relationship with Him, but then we don’t help them continue to move ahead. The author of the book of Hebrews recognized this tendency in his audience. In Hebrews 5:11-14 he saw people who should have been spiritually mature, but they just weren’t.

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Are we, who are saved, hungry? What are we hungry for? Are we hungry for more and more of Jesus? Are we ever satisfied until we are more and more Christlike? Here’s another good church word: sanctification. Being set apart by God for God and being transformed by God into Christ’s likeness. It is both an instantaneous event, happening at our salvation, as well as a gradual transformation, culminating in our perfection! We don’t make ourselves sanctified or perfect – we seek, we hunger after it, we continue to fill ourselves with only that which really satisfies, and it is God who works in us.

The blessing in this beatitude is that when we hunger and thirst after a right relationship with God, then God satisfies. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. The picture here is one of being filled to absolute satisfaction.

In Matthew 6, still part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus elaborates on this, telling his followers, “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:31-34)

Because of who God is, we can trust God to provide. Many of us chase after all kinds of other things because we honestly don’t believe that God will provide. We worry about all these things when our relationship with God should be our primary concern. When we seek him first, not only does he give us what we need, but he also gives us what we want.

Psalm 34:10 says: The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. This is all about trusting God to provide for us. We have to remember God’s nature; many have portrayed God as an angry tyrant, just waiting to blast people who misbehave, doubt, or don’t believe. One false move and BOOM – lightning strikes. That is not God’s character! God’s character is this: Psalm 107:8-9: Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Our God is a God of unfailing love and wonderful deeds. Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.

How does God go about doing this? There are times when we want something that isn’t good for us. If you ever go shopping with your kids, you probably have a plan designed with the check-out lanes in mind. You know that it’s no accident that all the candy is right at our kids’ eye-level, and they want it all. Not everything we see or want will satisfy. In fact, if we eat too much of it, we’ll get sick. But God knows what we need, even more than we know ourselves. In John 4, we read the account of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at the well. It’s a fascinating interchange on so many levels. Jesus asks her for a drink, which broke several cultural taboos. Then he told her, “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 have given you living water.” (John 4:10).

She deflected the comment, but Jesus stuck with it. In John 4:13-14: Jesus answered, “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.”

In John 6:35, after Jesus fed 5000 men plus women and children, the crowds were talking about the feeding, basically wanting him to feed them again: Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

This gets to the heart of the matter: only Jesus Christ can satisfy, and when we seek God, when we hunger and thirst after a right relationship with him, God gives us the only thing that can satisfy: Himself.

So, how do you know that you are hungering and thirsting for righteousness?

First, you aren’t satisfied with yourself. This doesn’t mean that you need to be in a state of depression or self-hatred. Remember that God created you to be you – no more and no less, and God “don’t make no junk.” God made you the way you are on purpose. But also remember that your weaknesses are areas in which God shows his strength. By “not satisfied with yourself” I mean that you realize that your desires will not satisfy. By realizing this, you acknowledge that God has a bigger plan for you and that you’re going to have to get out of the way and let him work! Remember that God is the one who has the plan, and it is God who will work it to completion! But if you are satisfied with who you are and where you are, then you’re not hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

You are hungering and thirsting for righteousness when you find that you are no longer dependent on external things for satisfaction. This is where fasting comes in. Most of us depend on a whole lot of other things. We depend on our achievements and accomplishments for satisfaction, or even the external acknowledgement of those accomplishments and achievements. We depend on our relationships for satisfaction: spouses, friends, parents. I’ve known women who don’t think they are complete without a man. I know men who derive their worth from the woman beside them. I know men who depend on their toys for their worth. They will never satisfy. Hunger and thirst for what does.

Do you find yourself craving the Word of God? You sit down to read the Bible and it speaks to your heart and captivates your emotions. Listen to what Jeremiah wrote: When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, Lord God Almighty.” (Jeremiah 15:16) Does this resonate? Or do you feel like you’re going through the motions when you are in prayer or reading the Bible? If that’s the case, ask God to meet you there. Ask the Holy Spirit to remove self-satisfaction, to help you to want to be completely there.

If you are totally seeking him, you will find yourself discovering the pleasantness of the things of God. You’ll begin to see him at work all around you in every moment. You will even begin to appreciate God’s discipline. And your behavior will even begin to change as you don’t have to think twice or three times about obedience, no matter how demanding. You begin to see the reward in the things that God requires of you; you no longer see the difficult circumstances for themselves but rather, as an avenue to become more and more Christlike. And you’re satisfied with Christ himself, no matter what the circumstances.

So, are you hungry and thirsty for righteousness?

If you aren’t, but you want to be, take heart, you’re in the right place! For the hungry and thirsty find themselves in the paradoxical situation of both being hungry and thirsty for more and yet, at the same time, being satisfied completely by Jesus!

Ask the Holy Spirit to be enough for you. Make an intentional time every day to read and feast on the Word of God. Don’t just read and check that box off. Don’t just go through your prayer list and be done. Really feast on his Word. And while I’m talking about feasting, take a time of fasting. If there is something external that is taking your attention, fasting will help you gain freedom and independence from external things. And most of all, remember that it doesn’t come automatically, especially when we’ve tried for so long to satisfy ourselves with so much less than what we’re made for. Be patient. Don’t beat yourself up. But don’t settle for anything less that God himself.