Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
“Hunger
and thirst, in the natural, are indicative desires that show you are alive and
not dead. Though you might not be saturated yet, but when you hunger and thirst
after righteousness, it shows that you are spiritually alive.True
spiritual yearning and thirst for God’s righteousness moves the believer into
the action of prayer, and into places where he can be satisfied. “As the
hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My
soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before
God?” (Psalm 42:1, 2). The spiritually alive manifests a longing, a
passion and a desire to possess the nature of God. Like the hart, when your
longing for the sustaining water of life is a consuming one, you will leave
everything you do to seek it and run after it. Physical thirst has the power to
redirect your thoughts, imagination and feelings and get them focused on the
possible solution. Then, you passionately seek to satisfy that quest. So also
is hunger for righteousness. When the thirst or hunger for righteousness is in
you, material things, friends, people, opportunities and privileges will not be
important to you at that moment.Why
are many people so indifferent to spiritual things? They are not thirsty and
hungry for them because they are satisfied without the river of life. Even when
God wants to fill them with His righteousness, He does not find them thirsty.
How can they be made thirsty? It is by waking them from spiritual deadness
through salvation and restoration. The passion of the thirsty is an(i)
individual desire, (ii) internal desire, (iii) intense desire, (iv) increasing
desire, (v) incomparable desire, (vi) interminable desire, and (vii)
instructive/influential desire.
“For
I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I
will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring ”
(Isaiah 44:3). He does not grant righteousness, as an experience, to just
anyone. He gives to those who manifest and reveal their heart-hunger and
earnestness for it. The only thing that satisfies a child of God is
righteousness. There is something deadly wrong with a Christian who is not
thirsty after the righteousness of God. God’s promises to fill the thirsty with
righteousness are great. But we must thirst and respond to His call so He can
fulfil them in our lives.
He
has given His Son, Jesus Christ to atone for your sin and make full provision
for your righteousness. If you passionately desire His righteousness, “…he
shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:4). God imparts
His nature of holiness to those who are alive in Christ and thirst for it. And
if we have not experienced the promised fulness of righteousness, it is because
we have failed to do our part of passionately desiring it. If we desire and
seek Him with faith He will fulfil His promise. “Blessed are they which
do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” He
will fill us with His righteousness. When God makes promises He fulfils them,
when the conditions are met: “… for he is faithful that promised ”
(Hebrews 10:23).”– from outline.
Please listen to this week’s Bible Study.
May God so fill us with hunger and thirst after His righteousness and may we be filled with inward righteousness as well as outward in Jesus’ name – amen.
God bless,
-Charity