Well, good morning everyone and welcome to The Edge Church. We are so glad you are spending your morning with us as we worship the Lord. We’re in Aurora (Illinois) but wherever you are, we just want you to know that we are so glad that you’re with us.
We’re continuing in our series today called Blessed. It’s a study of the beginning of Jesus’ most famous and extensive sermon known as The Sermon on the Mount. These sayings of Jesus have been often misinterpreted as they’ve been enveloped into our culture over the last couple thousand years. Pastor Tim Keller notably said that when people prefer The Beatitudes over the Ten Commandments, then it’s very clear to him that they don’t understand what Jesus is getting after.
Some people have this idea that the Ten Commandments are really hard lines in the sand about behaviors and that The Beatitudes are more like whimsical or poetic sayings. Jesus always took things deeper to show what God’s original intentions were always all about. It’s very important to take note of the fact that Jesus never came down harshly on regular people. Now to be really clear about what that means Jesus always spoke clearly to the sin in people’s lives and he never hesitated to call them to change but he wasn’t harsh with them.
But Jesus was really harsh with the Pharisees — the religious leaders of his day. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus called the Pharisees all of these things; he called them blind guides, he called them fools, he called them whitewashed tombs, he called them serpents and he called them a generation of vipers. But it’s confusing because these were the people that everyone was trying to be like. Here was the key problem: they were just actors. They put a high value on outer appearance and they spent little time cultivating their inner person.
We’ve all been there. Before we look at the Pharisees and say, “I can’t believe how bad they were,” let’s just be honest about ourselves. Who of you has not been forced to apologize for something that you did but you knew you weren’t sincere in your apology? Now let’s be honest, you probably said the right words; they might have sounded gracious but there’s a good chance that your tone and your heart were still standing tall with pride.
Today we’re going to speak to another matter of the heart and it’s in our next beatitude Matthew 5:6. It says:
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness,
Honestly, this verse trips me up because if I’m real, when I sit with myself and I really think about who I am, I don’t know how often I truly hunger and thirst for righteousness. I understand a little bit about hunger and a little bit about thirst — at least in the American sense of what it means to be hungry. What that usually means is that I’ve had a craving for a particular food and I just haven’t gotten around to going through the drive-through yet for it. It might mean that I haven’t eaten in hours — shocking, right? It might mean that I’ve gone maybe a day or on rare occasions a couple of days without eating but I’m not like the rest of the world or most of the rest of the world where 800 million people live in poverty.
800 million people around the world live on the equivalent of about $1.25 USD per day. Those people skip meals all the time. It’s rare for them to have more than one meal a day. I’ve never had a hunger like that before. Though I have come closer to experiencing real thirst in my lifetime. At least a couple of times I’ve been quite thirsty.
I remember during my fraternity initiation week I had a recurrence of mono. First of all, if you haven’t had mono, don’t get it. And if you get mono, you don’t want a recurrence. If you have a recurrence, you don’t want to be in the middle of your fraternity’s initiation week. I was kept from water for 24 hours while I had a fever over 103 degrees. One other time I ran out of water at the midpoint of a six hour hike in the very hot mountains of Haiti. I was completely obsessed with finding water. I didn’t worry about anything else. I knew I couldn’t go on much longer without it.
But have I actually ever felt that way about God and about his righteousness? Have I ever had a hunger and a thirst that was that great for him? Well, maybe one time in a health crisis I did. I remember when nothing else mattered but hearing from him and experiencing his peace. There are other times that I’ve clearly needed the Lord in huge ways and I’ve pursued him more fully but how often have I really hungered and really thirsted for righteousness? For the most part I fail miserably at it. My appetite is often much more about what I need to do to make it through today. I suspect yours is probably that way too pretty often.
Then in Matthew 5:20, Jesus said this:
20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
What a buildup, right? Maybe at first glance you read it like I do. It’s almost as if the boss just added one more thing on Friday afternoon that you have to get done before the weekend. You already feel like you do not have enough strength to finish the tasks that he already gave you and you’re just not measuring up. Well, if you’re feeling like that when you read that scripture, you have to ask yourself the question: is that really the character of Jesus?
Maybe there’s a different way to look at it because Jesus also said things like this. In Matthew 11: 28-30:
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Now if you just look at those two passages at face value you may have a little bit of a conflict in theology because what I hear from these two passages is, “so be really good, like be better than you actually think you can. Be better than all the religious leaders of my time. But also come to me and I'll give you rest.”
What’s key here is that we understand what righteousness actually is. It’s key for us to understand what it is and the Pharisees didn’t understand it. We often don’t either and our lack of understanding is so evident when we try to do all of these religious flailings. We sort of flop around and we try to create our own mile markers about how good we are. But is that righteousness? No, that’s not about right standing before God.
Our right standing before God cannot be attained by our best actions on our very best days or by our best attempts to exemplify good character. It can only be received. That’s a tough thought for some overachievers. Isn’t it? The apostle Paul wrote about his struggle with this. Maybe you can identify because he tried to be really good and he was actually pretty good at it. He was really proud of it and then he explained his transformation in Philippians 3:4-9. He said:
4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:
What he’s saying is, if you think you know how to be good, I can do it better. Whatever you do, I can do better is what he is saying and then he explains, he said:
5[I was] circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
Wow, that sounds really prideful, doesn’t it? He continues:
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
Paul was saying, listen. Everyone, listen. I know what it’s like to try to be good. He says, I know what it’s like to try to keep the law and I did a really good job of it. Maybe you feel like you’ve done a really good job of this too, particularly when you compare yourself to other people like Paul did. Then Paul says this, but I found out that’s not where rightness with God is actually found. That rightness with God can only be obtained by receiving it as a gift from God himself. So there’s nothing that Paul could do to become righteous and there’s nothing that you can do to be righteous and there’s nothing that I can do to be righteous. It’s just about receiving the gift that Jesus has offered you, which is himself.
But what do we do with this other idea that the blessed life comes from hungering and thirsting for righteousness? Because that speaks to the reality that there is something for us to do but here’s a hard question. How do we get hungry and thirsty for something that maybe, if we’re really honest, we don’t have a lot of hunger and thirst for? How can we cultivate a hunger and cultivate a thirst? Or is this just something that you either have, or you don’t and hey, good luck?
We always have to think about the goodness and the character of Jesus. I believe that God wants to speak to every area of our lives — not just spiritually. He wants to speak to our mind, to our body and to our spirit. So much of life is about choosing a course and sticking to something because you know it's just good for you, right?
Very few people have a natural built-in desire for healthy foods — it’s cultivated. We tend to have a bent towards things that when we eat them and drink them over a lifetime they make us ill, but we do it anyway. Very few of us have a tendency to want to exercise on a regular basis because if we’re being honest, it’s just easier to be lazy. But when you start to eat healthy and you start to exercise, what happens over the course of a few weeks or a few months you start to see these changes, these external changes and it’s kind of fun. People notice those things and you start to feel good about yourself and suddenly you have this internal motivation that you didn’t have before.
When this internal motivation happens, it starts to change how you think and suddenly you have this motivation that is going to create long term commitment and external change. It’s no different in our spiritual lives. I love The Message version of the Bible for Isaiah 55: 2 says:
Why do you spend your money on junk food,
your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,
fill yourself with only the finest.
So when you eat junk food regularly don’t be surprised that you don’t have a taste for what’s actually good for you. It’s the same with our spiritual lives. When you go everywhere else except to the source of your very life, don’t be surprised when you don’t have a taste for God and the things that he cares about.
This is not a message of condemnation. This is a message of hope. Hope has to end with us when we look towards him. By God’s grace we can change. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says:
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Did you catch that? That rightness with God — righteousness with God or from God — it’s a state of right standing before God but we are called to become what God says we already are. This is very mind blowing for us because we only see what’s right in front of us. But God has declared that if you have received Jesus Christ as your savior, if you are following him, if you’ve repented of your sins, he has declared that you are made righteous in his sight. He no longer sees your sin. He sees the rightness that comes from a relationship with Jesus. He hasn’t called you to stay in that place, he has called you to partner with his spirit that he sent to you the moment that you accepted Jesus.
It’s this process of sanctification, where we are learning how to walk out our faith. How do we do that? One significant way is that we regularly read the Bible so that we have what 2 Timothy 3: 16-17 says, that we are trained in what righteousness looks like. I know from experience in my own life that when I am regular about reading the Bible, not to prepare for a sermon, but to prepare my heart to be connected to him, I develop a hunger and I want more of God because he is the ultimate one. He’s the ultimate satisfaction in our lives.
Maybe you’re watching this today and you realize that you are chasing after things that, honestly, we all have a taste for. We want success in our jobs and we want good relationships and we want enough extra money to go on vacation sometime. The formula to get all of the things that we need and want is not by pursuing all the things wasting our life — chasing after pleasure — but it’s to pursue the God who created us and he will add to us all the things that we need and often, because he’s good and he’s gracious, some of those things that we desire.
A little later in Matthew 6: 33 Jesus said:
33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Let’s be clear about those things. We have all sorts of desires and some of us are like, “man, I’d love a Porsche,” or “I really need a vacation home.” Maybe you’ll get those things and that’s great — no judgment, that’s a wonderful thing. But maybe you won’t because God doesn’t want you to have anything that will take you away from him and his righteousness and he knows exactly what those things are that will distract you from the most important things. Maybe not all of your desires will be fulfilled but God promises that you will live a blessed life, a satisfied life, when you pursue him and you develop a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.
CS Lewis spoke to our desires and how he perceived human desires and wants. In The Weight of Glory, he said:
“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, we are like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
What would happen in our lives if we stopped making second things first and we focused on God and all that he has planned for us? Maybe you’re watching this today and you know that you have tried so hard, just like the apostle Paul, to be good. And you also know what’s just not working — you cannot be consistently good. Nobody can. You can try to be good and try to have all the right attitude and try to do all of the right things and your own actions will condemn you won’t they?
Well, let me tell you this. If that’s you, you have gotten to this point — the end of yourself — by the design and the grace of God. God has been gracious to you to show you today that you were meant to come to the end of yourself, so that you would reach out with your hand and more importantly your heart to the only one who can change everything because he is the one who made a way to receive his righteousness. You can only do that by faith. Romans 4: 4-8 says:
4 Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. 5 However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. 6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are those
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
8 Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”
If you want to receive that blessing, if you want to receive this righteousness from God today, you can do it right where you are. You can get on this brand new journey today. Acts 2:38 says:
38 “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It’s all about receiving this gift. God is the giver of good gifts and he wants to give you this one. I’d love to talk to you if you want to take that next step. We can do that offline. Email me at neil@edgeaurora.com and let’s continue the conversation.
We also love to give you questions to discuss. You may be in a house church today and we love that. Community is so essential at this time, so if you want to talk in your house church now, we’re creating some space for that before the end of our gathering today. Maybe you’re by yourself. I encourage you to pick up the phone and have a conversation with someone this week about these questions.
1. What is your main takeaway from this message today? What is God speaking to your heart?
2. Many of us are tired of trying to be good enough for God. What do you think you have to do to be good with God? And I really want to encourage you, no religious answers allowed. Some of you know the “right answer,” but your heart is telling a different story. Be real about where you are.
3. What are you hungry and thirsty for? Is righteousness on your list and if not, what will you do this week to change that?
God bless you. We’ll see you next week.