Phil Cox

The Beatitudes


(Bible quotations are from the NIV unless otherwise stated)

The Beatitudes
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The Beatitudes - Part 4

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

14th June 2008

The fourth beatitude is:

Matthew 5v6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled

What are you hungry for? What do you really long for? A big house? A fast car? An expensive holiday? To save enough for a quiet and pleasant retirement? A marriage partner? Children? To move to a nicer area? To be promoted?

We think these things will make us happy and content. But such things can never make us happy or content. They can never give us peace of mind. If we put happiness before righteousness, we find only misery.

The world admires ambition. The world says "go West young man, and make your fortune", "make your way in the world", "aim for the top", "keep up with the Joneses". People long to be successful, many long to be famous.

But Jesus says “be hungry for righteousness”.

Sometimes, you can only achieve something by aiming for something else. Jesus said,

Matthew 16v25
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

In the same way, if your ambition is to be happy, you will never find happiness. Instead, make it your ambition to be righteous. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be blessed – that is, they can be happy. Later in the Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew 6v33) Jesus says "Seek first His [that is, God's] kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you".

Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins, so that we might be made righteous, and when we have been made righteous, we’re able to find happiness. In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones offers this analogy: If a man is suffering great physical pain, all he thinks about tends to be the removal of that pain. Indeed, he can’t think of anything else. But a doctor will seek the cause of the pain. He’ll treat the disease, not just the symptoms. In the same way, because our unhappiness is caused by our sin, God must deal with the root cause, the sin, not just alleviate the symptoms. And we must seek a cure, not just an aspirin.

All the cars, houses, relationships and money in the world can’t buy us happiness, because they can’t by us peace of mind, because we know we’re sinners.

We keep busy, and ambitious, and we go shopping a lot, and we plan holidays, to keep the problem of our own sin and loneliness away from our minds. But we can’t. They’re always there. Sooner or later, there’s a moment of quiet, and our unhappiness haunts us in those moments.

Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins. Through faith in Him and in His sacrifice, we can have our consciences washed clean, we can know God personally, we can be certain of a future in heaven. We can be happy.

But first, we need to acknowledge that we are sinners. That we are guilty. And we must be hungry – desperate – to be forgiven and to live right. And then we can come to Jesus, accept His redeeming sacrifice for us, and be totally forgiven. At that moment, we become children of God.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.